Did A Civil War In Mexico Just Begin?

Did A Civil War In Mexico Just Begin?

Michael Snyder

Selling illegal drugs to the United States is one of the central pillars of the Mexican economy. I understand that it isn’t a pleasant thing to think about, but it is true. The cartels that control the flow of drugs into the U.S. have become exceedingly powerful over the years. The cartels essentially run much of the country, and collectively they probably possess more military firepower than the Mexican government does. The good news for the Mexican government is that the cartels are not united. They have always spent a tremendous amount of time and energy fighting one another, but if something occurred that changed all that, it would certainly be a very ominous development.

Have we just witnessed such an event?

On Sunday, the death of El Mencho caused violence to erupt all over Mexico…

His death is not going to do much to disrupt the operation of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel because it is highly decentralized.

But it could potentially unite the cartels against a common enemy.

Without a doubt, the JNGC is going be seeking revenge, and there have been numerous reports of gunfire in and around Puerto Vallarta within the past 24 hours…

Cartel members aren’t just setting vehicles on fire because they are angry.

It is a common tactic for cartel members to set vehicles on fire in order to slow down the movements of the Mexican military.

One American that was in Mexico at the time that all the chaos broke out had an interesting story about how he got back to the airport…

So far, I have not seen any reports of any U.S. tourists have been killed, although U.S. Senator Bernie Moreno seems to think that the cartels are “hunting down American citizens”…

Bernie Moreno took to X on Monday to relay ‘troubling’ reports that narco-terrorists are ‘hunting down American citizens’ in Puerto Vallarta amid gangs clashing with authorities in the city.

‘The drug cartels should be aware that if any American citizen is harmed in Mexico there will be a violent and terminal retribution from the US. Any USMCA negotiations should cease until this situation is resolved,’ the senator added.

Yes, there are many Americans that are trapped in Mexico right now that are scared out of their minds.

An American couple on their first trip away from their four-year-old son have told their family members where their wills are hidden after becoming trapped in Mexico.

The unnamed individuals were on vacation in Puerto Vallarta when the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel was killed by the Mexican military on Sunday, prompting widespread violence across the region.

‘I had to call my mom today and, you know, just tell her, “Look, here’s where my will is. We just created this. I don’t want you to panic, but I may need you to stay a couple [of] days extra with my son”,’ the concerned father told Fox Digital.

A showdown between the large cartels and the central government in Mexico City has been coming for a long time.

And apparently the JNGC had already prepared an extensive plan in case something like this ever happened…

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First expansion since Six-Day War aligns with biblical vision of a growing Jerusalem

First expansion since Six-Day War aligns with biblical vision of a growing Jerusalem

ADAM ELIYAHU BERKOWITZ

A recent development agreement signed between the state and the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council would, pending final approvals, establish a new Jewish community that, in practical terms, constitutes the first expansion of Jerusalem since 1967. The plan calls for the construction of approximately 2,780 housing units in what is officially described as a new “neighborhood” of Adam, a community located just northeast of Jerusalem’s municipal boundary.

The project would be built on roughly 500 dunams of land between the Arab towns of Hizma and Al-Ram. The government has committed approximately NIS 120 million for infrastructure, public spaces, and community institutions. Although the development is technically considered a westward extension of Adam, it is physically separated from that town by Route 437 and the security barrier. In practice, it has far greater territorial contiguity with the Jerusalem neighborhood of Neve Yaakov, which lies inside the capital’s municipal borders.

The plan has not yet been submitted to the Civil Administration’s Higher Planning Committee, meaning that statutory authorization could take up to 2 years. Nevertheless, the Housing Ministry has already marketed 500 housing units for the first phase.

In a February 3 statement, the Housing and Construction Ministry said: “The agreement constitutes a significant step in continuing the development of the settlement and strengthening the settlement continuity in the area, while providing a response to the demand for housing in and around Jerusalem, and integrating a phased and balanced planning of new neighborhoods alongside the existing fabric.”

The Peace Now organization condemned the move, asserting that it constitutes “the first time since 1967 that Jerusalem has been expanded” beyond the Green Line. “Under the pretext of a new settlement, the government is carrying out a backdoor annexation here,” the group said. “The new settlement will function for all intents and purposes as a neighborhood of the city of Jerusalem.”

It should be noted that the so‑called Green Line is not an “official border,” but the 1949 armistice demarcation lines agreed upon after the War of Independence, marking where armed forces halted fighting. These armistice agreements, including the one with Jordan, explicitly state that the lines were drawn for military considerations and “are agreed upon by the Parties without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines or to claims of either Party relating thereto,” and that they “are not to be construed…as a political or territorial boundary.” This means they were never intended to define permanent sovereign borders. In practice, since there was no peace treaty, the line became a de facto reference point, but it has no legal status as a border for Israel or for any prospective Palestinian state and is explicitly a ceasefire line set solely to end hostilities.

MK Gilad Kariv, an extreme leftist member of the Democrats party, described the plan as “another unprecedented act of annexation,” warning that “annexation will bring about a security catastrophe.”

By contrast, Mateh Binyamin Regional Council head Israel Ganz called the agreement “the realization of the settlement vision,” stating that it would allow the construction of thousands of housing units while upgrading the quality of life for residents.

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Little hope for breakthrough as Iran prepares new offer

Little hope for breakthrough as Iran prepares new offer

Danny Zaken

There is deep skepticism that Iran's proposal, set to be presented Tuesday to Oman's foreign minister, will include any substantive changes from previous offers, and a breakthrough at the upcoming meeting in Geneva appears unlikely, a regional diplomat familiar with the negotiations said.

According to the diplomat, Tehran has already signaled publicly that it intends to focus on technical issues, including oversight of its nuclear facilities and the timeframe after which it would be permitted to resume uranium enrichment. No Iranian concession is expected on the core issue of enrichment itself, nor is there any indication that Tehran will agree to discuss its ballistic missile program or its support for regional terrorism.

Reports in Israel and elsewhere that Saudi Arabia is quietly backing regime change in Iran have not been denied by the Saudi royal court. A Saudi source told Israel Hayom that Riyadh prefers to wait for the outcome of the negotiations and unfolding events, but made clear that any meaningful weakening of the ayatollah regime or its replacement would be welcome news for the kingdom.

US officials Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are expected to attend the Geneva meeting, along with Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN watchdog overseeing nuclear activity. Grossi's presence showcases the technical nature of the talks and their focus on enrichment levels and supervision of Iranian nuclear sites.

Meanwhile, Iran's rapid trials are continuing, most conducted remotely via video. Special tribunals established to prosecute participants in the protest movement handed down death sentences at the start of the week to dozens of young people accused of burning mosques and committing other offenses. It remains unclear whether the executions have been carried out, but families have received official notifications.

Iran previously assured the US that it would refrain from executing protesters. Israel Hayom has reported, however, that hundreds and possibly thousands of detained demonstrators were killed in custody, most often by gunshot or strangulation.

The Strong Delusion of AI

The Strong Delusion of AI

Rob Pue

Technology is advancing today at break-neck speed.  As I mentioned in a previous message, research now shows that by the end of this year, technology and human knowledge will be doubling every twelve hours!  I can’t comprehend that.  Can you?

Take the iPhone, for example, first released in 2007.  There was a new, upgraded model once a year from 2007 until 2015.  Then, from 2016 to 2019, three new models were released each year.  In 2020 and ‘21, four new models came out.  In 2022, there were five.  And four new models have been released every year since then.  Software updates are released every couple of months, with more advanced features and technology.  I’d venture to say that virtually no one reads the fine print in the User Agreements before downloading the latest operating systems.  Who knows what we’re agreeing to?  Thankfully, there are some researchers out there that do, and inform us of potentially invasive privacy risks, and they instruct us to turn off “permissions” that could put us in harm’s way.

Technology can be dangerous.  We know our phones listen to us, even when we’re not using them.  Have you ever had a private conversation with your spouse while driving in your car, and by the time you get home, you find advertisements for things you spoke about privately in your email inbox, popping up on YouTube or social media sites?  That’s not a coincidence.

Our phones are also watching us.  Unless you’re savvy enough to turn off permissions for your built-in camera, numerous apps will take advantage of the opportunity to read your facial expressions, watch what you’re doing while browsing the internet, and watch your reactions to articles you may read or videos you may be viewing.  These things also monitor and track our internet activity; capture our voices and even home videos we take at family gatherings and vacation trips.

All this information is being stored and archived somewhere, creating massive data bases on every user, then creating algorithms to feed us news, advertising and information based on our interests and activities.  Whether you want to believe it or not, this is not a simple modern “convenience,” it’s a massive intrusion of our private, personal lives, and unless you know how to disable some of these cell phone features, you’re exposing your personal, private information to the World Wide Web “internet of things.”

And some of the apps available for download also take the liberty to invade your private space, then exploit it for profit.  And most people tacitly agree to that, because just like the phone itself, they never bothered to read the User Agreement. Even apps you’ve downloaded, but barely ever use, can be harvesting your personal information in the background — quietly, stealthily.

But aside from information, the internet is now being used as a “virtual reality” for many people.  A virtual — or alternative — “world,” and many people now prefer the “virtual” to the real world, even though they go in knowing it’s fake.  They prefer the delusion.  Having never fallen prey to that virtual world, I was truly astounded to learn recently just how deep this all goes.  I probably shouldhave been aware, but like most people, because I have no interest in this stuff, I never looked into it.  What I found is alarming.

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Zuckerberg’s “Fix” for Child Safety Could End Anonymous Internet Access for Everyone

Zuckerberg’s “Fix” for Child Safety Could End Anonymous Internet Access for Everyone

Mark Zuckerberg spent more than five hours on the stand in Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday, testifying before a jury for the first time about claims that Meta deliberately designed Instagram to addict children.

The headline from most coverage was the spectacle: an annotated paper trail of internal emails, a 35-foot collage of the plaintiff’s Instagram posts unspooled across the courtroom, a CEO growing visibly agitated under cross-examination.

The more important story is what Wednesday’s proceedings are being used to build.

The trial is framed as a child safety case. What it is actually doing, especially through Zuckerberg’s own testimony, is laying the political and legal groundwork for mandatory identity verification across the internet.

And Zuckerberg, rather than pushing back on that outcome, offered the court his preferred implementation plan.

Zuckerberg was pressed with internal documents, including a 2015 estimate that 4 million users under 13 were on Instagram, roughly 30 percent of all American children aged 10 to 12. An old email from former public policy head Nick Clegg was read into the record: “The fact that we say we don’t allow under-13s on our platform, yet have no way of enforcing it, is just indefensible.” Zuckerberg acknowledged the slow progress: “I always wish that we could have gotten there sooner.”

He also told the jury: “I don’t see why this is so complicated,” when pressed on the company’s age verification policies. His proposed answer to that question is the core problem.

Multiple times during his testimony, Zuckerberg argued that age verification should be handled not by individual apps but at the operating system level, by Apple and Google. He told jurors that operating system providers “were better positioned to implement age verification tools, since they control the software that runs most smartphones.”

“Doing it at the level of the phone is just a lot cleaner than having every single app out there have to do this separately,” he said. He added that it “would be pretty easy for them” to implement.

Note that. Zuckerberg is not proposing that Instagram verify the ages of Instagram users. He is proposing that Apple and Google verify the identity of every smartphone user, for every app, at the OS level.

Once that infrastructure exists, it does not stay limited to social media. It applies to every app on the phone. Every website accessed through that phone’s browser. Every communication sent through any app on the device.

This is more than age verification. It is a national digital ID layer baked into the two operating systems that run the overwhelming majority of the world’s smartphones.

The proposal also solves Zuckerberg’s immediate legal problem. If Apple and Google own age enforcement, platforms like Meta are no longer responsible for enforcing it. The liability shifts. The company under lawsuit in Los Angeles deflects the core allegation by pointing at Cupertino and Mountain View.

Who decides which apps require ID verification once this infrastructure exists? Apple and Google do. They would be deputized as identity gatekeepers for the internet. Two private companies, already under serious antitrust scrutiny for their control of app distribution, handed new authority over who accesses what online and under what identity.

Zuckerberg’s OS-level verification proposal fits neatly into a legislative agenda that was moving before he took the stand Wednesday.

California’s SB 976, the Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act, mandates age verification systems for social media platforms in the state. The California Attorney General must finalize implementation rules by January 2027.

The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), pending at the federal level, would direct agencies to develop age verification at the device or operating system level, the same framework Zuckerberg promoted from the stand.

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