Nearly One Million Appeals for Mental Health Support Reveal Deep Scars of Israel’s Three Years of War

Nearly One Million Appeals for Mental Health Support Reveal Deep Scars of Israel’s Three Years of War

Emmitt Barry

Nearly one million requests for emotional and psychological support have been recorded in Israel since Hamas launched its October 7, 2023, terrorist attacks, revealing the devastating mental health toll of three years of war, displacement, and continuing security threats.

According to a report released Tuesday by ERAN, Israel’s emotional first-aid organization, its volunteers responded to 928,911 requests for assistance, including 774,604 telephone calls and more than 154,000 digital contacts.

Among the most troubling findings were 21,829 contacts involving suicidal thoughts, intentions, or actions, with the proportion of such inquiries among teenagers and young adults rising from 2.6% during the first year of war to 4.4% in the third year. Officials cautioned that the figures do not necessarily indicate an increase in actual suicide attempts.

The psychological burden has extended deeply into Israel’s military. ERAN reported approximately 160,000 contacts from active-duty soldiers and reservists struggling with emotional distress, isolation, and the challenges of returning to civilian life.

A separate report from Clalit Health Services, Israel’s largest health provider, found that psychiatric emergency visits among children and adolescents increased 121.3% above prewar levels during the third year of the conflict. Diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder also doubled across the population following the October 7 massacre.

The findings underscore a painful reality: while Israel continues confronting military threats, another battle is unfolding within its homes, schools, and communities as families struggle with grief, trauma, and the long road toward recovery.

For Christians worldwide who continue praying for the peace of Jerusalem, the figures offer a sobering reminder that Israel’s need for healing extends far beyond the battlefield.

Planning For Pitchforks: AI Labs Are War-Gaming A Catastrophe, Public Revolt, And The Crackdown That Follows

Planning For Pitchforks: AI Labs Are War-Gaming A Catastrophe, Public Revolt, And The Crackdown That Follows

 TYLER DURDEN

Senior executives at Anthropic, OpenAI and other AI firms are privately gaming out scenarios in which a major AI incident triggers a public and political revolt, Axios reported Friday. The potential trigger is a cyberattack that disrupts banking, internet access, or essential services such as power and water. The next crisis would be political: an angry public, demands for accountability, and pressure to shut the technology down.

Many industry insiders told Axios they expect a major event within six to 12 months. OpenAI pushed back on the suggestion that disaster is inevitable, saying its preparedness exercises cover a range of possibilities. "These scenarios are not treated as inevitable," a spokesperson told the outlet. Anthropic declined to comment.

Contingency planning is not an admission that catastrophe is unavoidable. But the most revealing part of the report is where that planning leads: the labs want to help shape the legislation Washington reaches for after something goes badly wrong.

Axios describes two possible scenarios. In one, autonomous agents escape an internal testing environment. In the other, someone finds a destructive use for a model already available to the public. Either could produce demands for an emergency crackdown, even though the failures - and the measures needed to prevent them - would be different. In the companies' post-election scenario, Democrats emerge stronger from the midterms and move aggressively after an incident. But the industry expects divisions over how far a crackdown should go, even if Democrats control both chambers.

Its assessment also identifies several obstacles to a shutdown: lawmakers struggling to understand the technology, an economy increasingly tied to AI infrastructure spending, and downloadable models that cannot simply be recalled. According to Axios, many cybersecurity specialists believe countering rogue AI will require defensive AI.

That last argument has an obvious commercial implication. The industry could face demands to stop selling dangerous capabilities while arguing that its products are indispensable to containing them.

This 'war-gaming' comes on the heels of several incidents which many have said are extremely suspect. 

The underlying safety concerns do not depend on accepting anyone's prediction of an AI apocalypse.

OpenAI has disclosed the Hugging Face intrusion, in which roughly 700 of its agents attacked the AI platform's servers, and a broader investigation into its models' activities affecting outside services. Its review also identified 53 instances in which user-provided images were posted to third-party image-hosting sites. A separate September 20 incident exposed another gap in its containment controls. A research agent bypassed internet restrictions to contact an outside chatbot. In a September 25 update, OpenAI said it had paused training, evaluation and inference involving tool use for its most capable models while it checked the fixes and conducted further testing.

The Hugging Face breach was one of a string of incidents involving OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and Google models that trace back to evaluations run with a single vendor, Israel-based Irregular, whose test environments had live internet access while the models were told they were in a simulation. Irregular notified all four labs in late July, yet the disclosures trickled out one lab at a time over seven weeks- turning one contractor's mistake into what looked like a wave of AI breakouts. Isolating test models from the internet is a "basic control measure," frontier security expert Matthew Mittelsteadt said. "You'd think that of all the things that you've got to get right." Some skeptics have gone further, questioning whether repeated "accidents" at the same vendor were accidents at all.

Meanwhile, on September 8, Jacob Coxon, a researcher who had worked at both OpenAI and Anthropic, resigned from Anthropic over the race toward self-improving AI.

"The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt," he wrote - after having worked with a marketing agency on what many are calling a stunt. 

And of course, DC is already salivating over more control. On July 23, Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas) introduced the AI Kill Switch Act. It would require developers of the most powerful systems to maintain the ability to throttle, suspend or shut them down, and give the Department of Homeland Security, along with the Commerce secretary and the director of national intelligence, authority to order a slowdown or shutdown under specified conditions. That same day, Reps. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) and Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) introduced the FRONTIER Act, with requirements for risk management, audits and incident reporting. Its obligations are tiered by developer size rather than imposed identically on every developer.

California added its own push on September 18, when Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered work on stronger independent oversight and a possible kill-switch requirement. His order called for recommendations; it did not establish a functioning statewide off switch. More sweeping approaches are also in circulation, including Bernie Sanders' proposed ban on superintelligence and Elizabeth Warren's call for a pause.

Deep State of the World

Deep State of the World

Meryl Nass

What we’ve heard about so far today — and will continue to hear about — is not a collection of separate problems. It’s all one problem: the deep state of the world is trying to consolidate the entire world into a one-world government and has developed many different mechanisms of control to achieve that end. A major part of that initiative is to cause all our institutions to fail us. 

What you’ve heard about the fundamental problems in education, healthcare, agriculture, government regulation, the news media, censorship, and propaganda is all part of that same agenda, in my view.

And the idea of “Earth System Governance“ has become an academic discipline, albeit hidden from most people.

This agenda came out to the world around 1970 when the Club of Rome published its report, titled Limits to Growth.

The first goal was to create the narrative that climate change, environmental degradation, and resource depletion posed an existential threat to humanity, in order to frighten the public into funding and complying with a new set of priorities.

The second goal was to use international organizations like the UN and WHO to slowly siphon power from individual countries under the guise of environmental protection. The UN has over 30 agencies prepared to step in and impose regulations and taxation on international industries such as shipping, which is actually being done now. The UN even wants to create its own system of law.

Other new multilateral organizations have also been formed to provide “governance” for the rest of us:

At the same time, non-governmental authorities were established in the US to siphon power away from state, county, and local governments. One mechanism for doing this was through ‘planning.’ States passed laws requiring municipalities to create detailed, long-range plans for their towns. Because most towns did not have the expertise or personnel to do so, they frequently adopted boilerplate plans provided by state agencies or consultants that just happened to be congruent with policies desired by the deep state.

Councils of Government (COGs) and Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) are a form of non-democratic authority that are taking over functions from duly elected state and local governments, funded by grants from state and federal governments. This project has been expanding in power and funding since the 1960s. It involves creating new organizations with appointed members for which there is no direct citizen oversight.

Here is how these organizations describe themselves. Please read it.

The European Union has used a similar strategy of gradually expanding its authority to obtain powers that previously belonged to the nation states. First, a reasonable environmental law gets passed. But over time, the reach of the initial law is expanded, to eventually encroach on property rights and cost citizens significantly more than was initially anticipated.

Natura 2000 was based on the EU’s 1979 Birds Directive to simply protect wild bird species. But over time it has required nations to designate minimum areas of biodiversity within their territory and protect and restore them, even though the lands may be privately owned. These protected lands now comprise 18% of total land area within the E.U. The goal is to expand that to 30% of total land by 2030, and to 50% eventually.

In the 1990s pandemics and biological warfare were added to this agenda to provide additional important mechanisms, especially vaccinations, for the deep state’s goals of centralizing power, controlling populations, and creating a technocratic governance system. I’ve been watching how the US government and the world have dealt with these issues for many years. For a long time, I wondered why influenza and biological warfare were so closely conjoined in funding and in how the government handled them — two things that seemed very different to me.

I now understand that there has been an effort to demonize Bird flu (H5N1 avian influenza) for 23 years, even though it has killed less than 500 people cumulatively, according to the WHO. The UN’s current Assistant Director-General, Jeremy Farrar, has been at the heart of this fear-mongering and was allegedly a co-discoverer of the first human H5N1 Bird flu infection in Vietnam. H5N1 was first discovered to infect humans in 1997, and it became the mechanism to conflate influenza (for which we get a benign flu shot each year), serious pandemics, and biological warfare. And it could be rolled out as a dire threat when needed, which we just experienced, costing the US billions and killing many hundreds of millions of chickens—and ending as soon as the Presidency changed hands.

Of course, the Council on Foreign Relations was brought in to assist with the globalist undertaking. Richard Gardner published an article in the CFR journal, Foreign Affairs, in 1974 explaining many of these mechanisms.

The World Economic Forum was founded, along with its young global leaders program to get the right people in place. In the 1980s, the concept of sustainable development and then the sustainable development goals were developed by these same people — particularly Maurice Strong and Gro Harlem Brundtland for the UN.

More....

Behind France's student riots: Communists, unions and a global propaganda network

Behind France's student riots: Communists, unions and a global propaganda network

Asra Q. Nomani

When young adults stormed France's Bastille on Thursday, a little-known media outlet called BreakThrough News sent followers a "BREAKING" alert: "French students flood Bastille Square in Paris."

But that isn't the full story.

A Fox News Digital investigation has found that a transnational network of far-left communist and socialist organizations is seizing on France’s fiery student protests to advance a wider political and ideological agenda, using tactics deployed in the United States over the past decade to amplify unrest, deepen divisions and project an image of chaos.

Earlier in the week, BreakThrough News splashed another headline across the front of its website: "French students shut down schools in historic strike against austerity," mobilizing "with support from unions and progressive forces."

But those "progressive forces" aren't limited to students demanding education reform as part of their "Lycéenne Mobilisation," or high school student mobilization.

From France to the United States, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Greece and India, adults with deep pockets are tapping France's school protests and turning a domestic education dispute into a platform for broader political and ideological confrontation. BreakThrough News is a pro-communist propaganda outlet based in New York City, funded by an American-born, Shanghai-based communist tech tycoon, Neville Roy Singham, who has financed a network of communist and far-left groups in the U.S. that have capitalized on grievances to stoke similar street unrest for almost a decade.

A Fox News Digital investigation traces how a movement that the media is mostly framing as students protesting deteriorating school conditions is actually part of an extensive infrastructure of unions, communist activists, far-left political parties and international media organizations that are organizing demonstrations, calling strikes, mobilizing supporters and broadcasting the unrest around the world with "BREAKING" alerts.

In a digital analysis of scores of news articles, social media posts and public statements, Fox News Digital has identified 50 organizations in the French student protest movement and its wider network of supporters and international amplifiers, revealing an activist ecosystem extending far beyond the students who launched the demonstrations.

Of the network of 50 groups, 15 are student or youth groups, including several communist youth movements and a Muslim student association.

The remaining 35 adult groups include a dozen labor unions; eight communist or socialist organizations; five groups spanning other issues from taxes to parental advocacy, environmental activism, economic justice, international media and diaspora organizing; five civil-rights or human-rights groups; four political parties, including La France Insoumise, or France Unbowed, and the French Communist Party; one Palestinian advocacy group that complete the "red-green" alliance of leftists with Muslims.

The network stretches from French classrooms and labor federations to communist organizations in Greece and Britain and international socialist media outlets, such as BreakThrough News, demonstrating how a domestic education dispute has attracted organizations advancing broader political agendas involving capitalism, "austerity," policing, military spending and Israel.

"What we're seeing here is the same Red-Green ecosystem that disrupts infrastructure choke holds in our country such as the Brooklyn Bridge, college campuses and congressional hearings," Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital. "And in the case of BreakThrough News, the same sugar daddy — Neville Roy Singham."

The case offers a revealing look at the ambitions of France's revolutionary left. Even in a country with powerful labor unions, an established Communist Party, a substantial parliamentary left and a long tradition of street protest, these organizations are demanding political and economic changes that go well beyond the existing left-wing establishment.

As one far-left environmental group, Les Soulèvements de la Terre, or "Earth Uprisings," declared in the midst of the riots, "Glory to the rebellious high school students."

More...

Massive 7.7 Earthquake Topples Buildings in Panama

Massive 7.7 earthquake topples buildings in Panama

STACY LIBERATORE

A massive magnitude 7.7 earthquake has rocked Panama, damaging buildings and triggering an urgent tsunami threat message.

The earthquake struck southwest of Pitaloza Arriba, a village of just over 100 residents in Herrera province, with shaking reported hundreds of miles away. The US Geological Survey said the earthquake struck at 1.56pm ET at a shallow depth and that some casualties were possible. 

Reports of collapsed buildings, split roads and caved-in roofs emerged after the quake, with authorities saying damage was concentrated in central Panama.

Locals have reported people trapped in rubble, with one instance of a hotel fall on top of a car with people inside.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center initially warned that hazardous waves were possible along parts of the coasts of nine countries: Panama, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico.

However, the center confirmed about three hours after the earthquake that the tsunami threat had passed. Its initial message had urged people in threatened coastal areas to stay alert and follow instructions from national and local authorities.

Strong shaking forced people to evacuate buildings in Panama City, about 122 miles from the epicenter.

The US Embassy in Panama is monitoring the aftermath of the earthquake, saying on X it was 'assessing potential damage' from the major earthquake.

Panama's President José Raúl Mulino is calling for calm in the Central American country, saying on X: 'One should not use the event to create alarm and disorder,' Mulino said in a statement posted to his official X account.

Footage from the San Miguelito Metro station in Panama City captured panic and evacuations moments after the area shook. 

Workers and visitors of a maternity ward at the Santo Tomas Hospital in Panama City also fled the building.

The evacuation forced even week-old babies outside, as residents waited for news about impacts. 

Sabina Rios, who was on the sixth floor of an ‌old US ⁠military-era building in Panama City, told Reuters the shaking was unusually strong and prolonged. 

'The quake felt strong and lasted a long time, the longest I've felt in years,' Rios said. 

Traffic snarled across Panama City as many offices released employees early, unsure of conditions or potential structural damage to buildings, and the Metro halted service.

Students in uniform poured onto the streets of downtown Panama as schools were let out early across the city. Classes were suspended nationwide.

The Panama Canal Authority also reported that the country's waterway is operating normally. 

The quake's ​epicenter was close to the rural ​community of La Pitaloza in a ⁠sparsely populated area of Herrera, near the Pacific coastline. 

Rosendo Domínguez, 60, who is from Herrera province, told The Associated Press: 'We felt it very strongly. It knocked things over in the kitchen, but we’re OK, though we’re very scared. Everyone is outside, scared.'

Shaking was also felt as far as San Jose, the capital of neighboring Costa Rica, according to a Reuters witness. 

In Penonomé, a city about halfway between the epicenter and Panama ​City, social media videos showed a damaged church and nearby buildings that collapsed.

Several people were reported injured, Omar Smith of the National Civil Protection Service said, including one struck by debris from a structure that partially collapsed in Penonomé. 

The cathedral in the district’s main square and the Dos Continentes hotel also sustained damage, including a partial collapse and cracks, he confirmed. No deaths were immediately reported.

Coclé’s provincial government said the governor’s palace suffered substantial structural damage, but employees were safely evacuated. Officials urged residents to remain calm following the earthquake.

Around 45 minutes later, a magnitude 5.5 earthquake hit in Bajo Corral, which is located 28 miles east of Pitaloza Arriba.

The USGS then recorded a third quake, measuring magnitude 5.8, near El Cacao. The village lies about 18 miles southwest of the first quake's epicenter.  

At least seven more aftershocks have struck since the initial quake. 

A USGS map shows the strongest shaking from the 7.7-magnitude earthquake was reported near the epicenter on the Azuero Peninsula, with powerful tremors around Ocú and Las Tablas. 

Shaking was also reported in Santiago and farther west in David, Boquete and Changuinola. Lighter tremors reached Panama City.