[FOX] Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates warned Sunday that artificial intelligence could fuel a wave of cyberattacks over the next year, and said that malicious actors are gaining access to increasingly powerful AI models without adequate safeguards.
Gates warned that criminals could exploit the latest AI technology to disrupt financial systems, extort businesses and carry out increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks.
"When you have bad people, no safeguards, and then the latest models, that's where, over the next year, primarily in the cyber area, we are going to have a lot of negative surprises," Gates said during a "State of the Union" interview with CNN's Jake Tapper.
Democratic strategist Oliver Libby told Fox News Digital that Gates' warning underscores the challenge facing policymakers as artificial intelligence advances and the United States seeks to maintain its technological competitiveness.
"The great challenge both for innovators and governments in the coming months is to balance continued progress in AI with smart regulation. Leaders who can balance ensuring that America is not left behind, but that no American is left out, will win public trust," Libby said.
Gates' warning comes as cybersecurity researchers report a sharp increase in AI-enabled threats.
According to CrowdStrike's 2026 Global Threat Report, attacks by AI-enabled adversaries increased 89% year over year in 2025, while the average time for cybercriminals to move laterally through compromised networks fell to 29 minutes.
Tapper pressed Gates about his warning that artificial intelligence could make it easier for terrorists to develop deadly biological weapons, citing his assessment that the risk of a bioterrorist attack could become 50 times greater than that of a natural pandemic.
Tapper also questioned how soon such an attack could occur and whether government leaders were doing enough to prevent it.
"Well, no, we're not doing enough," Gates said. "The real danger right now is not the AI is getting out of control. We need to work on that, but that's years away in terms of the big impact that might have."
Gates described potential financial motivations behind cyberattacks, including extortion schemes and disruptions designed to manipulate financial markets or betting outcomes.
"The front that we'll probably see most dramatically in the next year is cyberattacks, because there, there's a known business model where, you know, you threaten to do something and ask somebody to pay for that, or you create a disruption that changes something in the stock market or some betting thing that you go and do," Gates said.
Libby called for a coordinated regulatory approach that addresses security risks while preparing Americans for AI's broader economic consequences.
"Regulation should focus on federal and international standards, platform responsibility, cyber and deepfake penalties, child safety, and ensuring the participation of the population in the economic benefits of this powerful technological revolution — while starting to prepare our society for what could be profound workforce disruption," Libby said.
#2
"When you have bad people, no safeguards, and then the latest models, that's where, over the next year, primarily in the cyber area, we are going to have a lot of negative surprises," Gates said during a "State of the Union" interview with CNN's Jake Tapper.
[FOX] Heating season is here, and the Iran war is getting the blame for higher energy prices. The war explains the timing. It doesn't explain the vulnerability.
America produces enormous amounts of oil and gas. Why do prices jump when the Persian Gulf flares? Because oil trades on a world market. A crisis anywhere moves prices everywhere.
But the real problem is policies at the state level that have kept us from truly unleashing the bounty of our domestic energy supply.
In my home state of New York, like so many other states, we also have a self-imposed supply problem. Natural gas moves through pipelines, and New York has blocked those pipelines. Pennsylvania, right next door, sits on some of the richest gas fields in the country. The Constitution Pipeline, if constructed, would carry that natural gas 124 miles, with 99 miles of new right-of-way in New York.
The fight to build this much-needed pipeline is now 10 years old. In April 2016, the state denied the water permit. Courts upheld it. The company tried again in 2025, then withdrew in November after three notices that its application was incomplete.
And the problem runs deeper than one pipeline. Ill-conceived climate laws set sweeping emissions targets, and the plan to reach them is thin if not unattainable. Take New York City's Local Law 97. It fines large buildings that exceed emissions limits, and the limits tighten sharply in 2030. Owners must pay for costly retrofits or pay penalties. Either way, the bill lands on tenants, co-op owners and small businesses.
Posted by: Skidmark ||
10/12/2026 10:45 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[53 views]
Top|| File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life, & Kleptocrats
#1
State tax on gasoline in California adds $2 to the price per gallon at the pump and we get nothing for it. You've heard about the storms and flooding in southern California? The little bit of rain we get here is nothing like you get in other states. But you should see what a little rain does to the cheap ass new pavement on state roads and for that we pay $2 per gallon in gas taxes.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
10/12/2026 12:02 Comments ||
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[BB] The last-minute rejection of a trade deal with the United States and subsequent spin in media from Carney and other Liberal Party members was not the first move away from Western values. It was the latest in a concerted effort to poke their neighbor, which happens to be the world’s only existing superpower.
Canada’s anti-Trump government is choosing closer ties with China — a move that will accelerate the country’s economic decline under the leadership of far-left Prime Minister Mark Carney.
The last-minute rejection of a trade deal with the United States and subsequent spin in media from Carney and other Liberal Party members was not the first move away from Western values. It was the latest in a concerted effort to poke their neighbor, which happens to be the world’s only existing superpower.
Carney’s election in 2025 was driven by a frenzy he and his fellow Liberal Party leaders whipped up following concerns over trade and tariff policies destined to change when President Trump took office for his second term. Trump’s concerns over trade were not exactly new, as the U.S. – Mexico – Canada Agreement (USMCA) was an improvement over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) but was imperfect. One of the clauses built into the deal was a review of shortcomings, which U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer initiated July 1.
The Canadian Liberal Party maintained close ties to U.S. Democrats for over a decade, hosting former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at events, while also employing political operatives from the Democratic National Committee. Carney took an unprecedented step this year by naming one, Maia Johnson, to lead his office in a newly created Chief Operating Officer role while also managing Canadian-U.S. relations.
In January 2026, Canada and China agreed to a new trade deal. Under the terms of the agreement, Canada allowed China to dump 49,000 electric vehicles into the country at a most favored nation rate of 6.1 percent, replacing a previous 100 percent tariff. In exchange, China agreed to lower tariffs on Canadian canola seed to 15 percent.
Carney called the agreement the beginning of “a new world order” and talked glowingly of the two nations being “strategic partners.” This despite the fact 73 percent of Canada’s exports come to the U.S., compared to just 4.4 percent to China.
Canada implemented retaliatory tariffs on up to $20 billion in U.S. goods in early September despite warnings from U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent not to do so. Bessent warned Canada that with trade uncertainty, companies faced with the choice of moving production will choose the United States.
President Trump immediately identified concerns over the two nations’ deal, writing that if Carney was going to “make Canada a ‘Drop Off Port’ for China to send goods and products into the United States, he is sorely mistaken. China will eat Canada alive, completely devour it, including the destruction of their businesses, social fabric, and general way of life.”
The China trade concerns were echoed by Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow Brent Sadler, who said in an interview, “It might feel good at the moment to try to stick his finger in what he thinks is President Trump’s eye. The reality is he went to a country of an authoritarian communist regime that doesn’t acknowledge or respect religious freedoms, personal rights to freedom of speech. They have a social credit system that you get judged on every day in access to services, let alone medical services and everything else… It’s everything that’s antithetical to what the Canadian people seem to think and embrace in a liberal society. Makes no sense.”
Carney is reversing himself on China from his election-year position. He said China was Canada’s biggest security threat during the 2025 campaign, stating on April 18, 2025, the communist nation was one of the largest threats with respect to foreign interference in Canada and an emerging threat in the Arctic.
A report from the America First Policy Institute argued the agreement and any future attempts at continued economic integration between Canada and China would constitute an economic and national security threat to the United States.
“Distinctive aspects of the U.S.-Canada relationship, including a liberalized trading arrangement, trade of important commodities, and a border that is difficult to defend, are vulnerable to exploitation by U.S. adversaries,” the report summarized.
On the Canadian side, the Coalition of Concerned Manufacturers and Businesses Canada repeatedly warned Carney that instigating a trade war against the U.S. was a war he could not win. “Economic data about Canada that Carney cites in his communique paint a rosy picture of future Canadian economic prospects that simply defy belief give current statistics,” the group warned in August.
Canada’s economic output is already suffering. The country shed 110,000 jobs in the past two monthly jobs reports, with the unemployment rate edging up to 6.5 percent.
#1
Canada is most relevant to China as a distribution center for their products in to the US. There’s nothing in Canada that we need. If they insist on facilitating Chinese dumping into our economy, tariff them until the Chinese flow stops. Maybe the Canadian electorate will decide they don’t want to be a Chinese sock puppet.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
10/12/2026 6:57 Comments ||
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[Daily Signal] Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.
There’s been an ongoing controversy over Donald Trump for the last decade, both when he appeared on the escalator in 2015, the campaign, the first term, the wilderness years, and the first two years of his second administration.
It works out like this. He has an art of the deal style, where he is bombastic, that he says wild things. He puts his opponents, his partners, whatever the situation is that he’s across the table from, off balance. He demands things that are ludicrous. People are shocked, they criticize him.
And then the negotiations continue, and Donald Trump gets an edge, maybe a 52, 53% edge over the original request. They sign a deal. Donald Trump is very careful not to insult his trading partner or his trading opponent in any deal. And then he says he might have been taken himself, and he walks away with a singular accomplishment.
And then people are troubled. They look at the result of the negotiations, and they’re impressed, especially if you’re Americans. But they also say the methodology clouds the achievement.
Are they in the lead? Or are the polling companies and mainstream media playing games with poll questions and improperly weighted populations to make thr Democrats look better and depress Republican turnout? Here is just the first name the article discusses:
[NYPost] Talk about an October surprise!
Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, 37, disappeared off the campaign trail for more than 10 days, claiming a bad case of the flu. Now his office is denying reports that he spent the time in a mental health facility in Ohio, after conservative influencer Nick Sortor posted an unverified audio recording purportedly of an employee of the Lindner Center of Hope near Cincinnati, saying a patient named James Talarico had just been discharged.
The Center issued a statement Sunday night, saying: “Representative James Talarico has never received treatment from Lindner Center of Hope.” Talarico’s campaign called the allegation “a pathetic conspiracy theory.”
But that isn’t enough from the party that propped up Joe Biden for years and lied about his health problems. Democrats don’t get the benefit of the doubt anymore.
When a candidate in such a crucial race goes missing for so long in the final month before the election, the situation demands proof beyond an airy flu excuse and “trust me” attitude.
As White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller tweeted on Sunday: “Talafreako needs to release the medical records.”
#2
What if he’s not really in the lead and the polls are just lying. Would that be hard to believe?
Posted by: Super Hose ||
10/12/2026 7:01 Comments ||
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#3
We already know he's a nutcase.
Well, yeah. He's a Democrat.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
10/12/2026 12:09 Comments ||
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#4
They aren't. The polls have always over sampled the demoncrats so when the fraudulent elections happened they had a fig leaf of legitimacy and the MSM carried that high and waved it in front of everyone's face.
[Reuters] On paper, Democrat Justin Pearson, a 31-year-old Tennessee state legislator, has little chance of winning the state's 9th Congressional District, which Republican lawmakers redrew months ago from a Democratic stronghold to a deeply Republican seat.
Yet this week the national Democratic Party added the rural district to its list of midterm targets in November, part of a broader strategy to compete in President Donald Trump's conservative heartland despite long odds of flipping it.
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On its face, the strategy may look like Democratic overreach. Voters living in the 9th District's newly reconfigured boundaries, for instance, picked Trump by more than 21 points in 2024.
More than a dozen Democratic operatives, strategists and candidates told Reuters the goal in part is to force Republicans to spend money defending safe seats, draining resources from the swing districts that will decide control of the US House.
By expanding the map, the party is also signaling to donors that races are becoming more competitive amid high prices and the Iran war driving Trump's unpopularity, helping unlock money that might otherwise stay on the sidelines, they said.
"These expansions force Republicans to go on defense in more districts," said one House campaign official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "It's also a signal to donors and outside groups that House Democrats are taking these races seriously."
REPUBLICANS DISMISSIVE OF NEW MAP
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party's US House campaign arm, this week added Pearson's race and 13 others to its target list, expanding its battlefield to 66 Republican-held seats.
Getting on the target list gives candidates access to national party staff and campaign tools, while also raising their profiles with donors, potentially opening new streams of fundraising for their campaigns.
There are early signs the strategy is having some effect. Republican-aligned groups have begun spending in some newly added districts, while two Democratic campaigns in Republican districts told Reuters their fundraising accelerated after being placed on the target list.
Republicans have dismissed the idea that Democrats have a serious chance of defeating their party in districts that overwhelmingly voted for Trump in 2024.
Mike Marinella, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee - the party's House campaign group - accused the Democratic Party of "stretching its map a mile wide and an inch deep, pretending every district in America is suddenly a battleground." He said the strategy will force Democrats to spend in long-shot contests when the party is already being outspent by Republicans.
Analysts, too, are skeptical.
"I'll take it seriously when they actually put their money where their mouth is. There is a point at which it becomes fantasy land," said David Wasserman, an elections analyst at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, which rates many of these races as safely Republican.
Democrats say they have chosen these districts for a number of reasons, including the quality of their candidates and the chance they might pull off upset wins to increase the size of a potential House majority.
FOLLOWING THE MONEY
It remains unclear how much money Democrats will ultimately devote to the newly added districts. Recent campaign finance filings are not yet available, and the party declined to tell Reuters where it is spending or how much it plans to spend on its expanded map.
But there are signs Republicans are paying attention. Restoration of America PAC, funded primarily by billionaire Richard Uihlein, spent nearly $750,000 on digital ads backing Republican David Flippo in Nevada's 2nd District last week, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
The district, which Trump carried by 14 points in 2024, is among the recent additions to the Democratic target list.
"Democrats are on offense, Republicans are running scared, even in deep-red territory, and our expansive map reflects it," DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene said in a statement.
The new target list includes districts in Arkansas, New York and Virginia that Trump carried by as many as 24 points. Democrats say rising costs and dissatisfaction with some Trump policies are creating openings in rural and Republican-leaning areas.
"Rural America is unhappy with tariffs and rising fuel and farm costs, and that's pushing us into redder areas," Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said.
Democrats will need a net gain of four to retake the House. However, only about 50 of the 435 House races are expected to be competitive.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited by Oleg Shevchenko
[Regnum] A plane from Moscow landed at Keflavík International Airport, which was built as a US Air Force base and used as a NATO facility. General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa Maximovna, descended the steps. Air Force One, the US Air Force One that had earlier delivered US President Ronald Reagan to Iceland without the First Lady, had been parked on the tarmac for 24 hours.
Exactly 40 years ago, on October 11, 1986, Soviet-American negotiations began in Reykjavik, aimed at bringing the Cold War, which had been going on for 40 years, to a close. Gorbachev arrived at the meeting with proposals for reducing strategic offensive arms (START).
The Soviet delegation hoped to persuade Reagan to completely eliminate intermediate-range missiles. And most importantly, to dismantle SDI, the Strategic Defense Initiative, which was often referred to as the "Star Wars program" because strengthening the US missile defense system entailed the use of space forces.
The opposing powers chose Iceland as a halfway point between the USSR and the USA and a neutral territory. But this was an illusion.
Iceland, which has no army of its own, had been a NATO member since the alliance's founding and was closely monitored by the US military and intelligence agencies. Symbolically, the Americans were based at Villa Bessastaðir, the Icelandic president's residence, while the Soviet delegation stayed aboard the steamship Georg Ots, which had made a special visit to the island. Gorbachev was playing on someone else's field.
On a damp and cold morning (in October, the "Eurowinter" is already beginning in the North Atlantic), the two delegations' motorcades pulled up to Höfði's mansion on the Reykjavík waterfront and locked themselves in for 48 hours. Reagan aide Ken Adelman recalled the atmosphere as reminiscent of an Agatha Christie mystery novel. "Two brilliant men met... in an almost enchanted house, where rain beat against the windows and where both experienced incomparable sensations," Adelman wrote.
Soviet and Russian diplomat Anatoly Zaitsev later shared a very different impression. Several years after the Reykjavik summit, while accompanying staff from our Ministry of Foreign Affairs on a tour of the Icelandic capital, Zaitsev carefully read the inscription on the memorial stele and could barely contain his laughter and surprise.
"Next to the full name of the US President, 'Mikhail Nikolaevich Gorbachev' was written. Upon returning to the embassy, I instructed an aide to call the mayor's office and politely point out the error, " the diplomat wrote. "It took more than a year before the error was corrected."
This anecdotal incident reflected the larger history of Soviet-American détente. Behind the oddities and seemingly minor mistakes lurked a geopolitical catastrophe.
WHO WILL BE THE FIRST TO MAKE PEACE?
The détente of the perestroika era was not the first attempt to end the arms race.
By the late 1960s, the Soviet Union had reached parity with the United States in the number of nuclear warheads and delivery systems, which meant mutually assured destruction. The United States, which under Richard Nixon was slowly withdrawing from the Vietnam War, was struggling to compete with another superpower. During the 1968 diplomatic cycle, the initiative came from Washington.
The United States made peace with Maoist China, after which it began building bridges with the Soviet bloc. The American outpost in Europe, West Germany, recognized its post-war borders with Poland and Czechoslovakia.
In 1972, Nixon flew to Moscow and signed the ABM Treaty and the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) with Leonid Brezhnev. The USSR, unwilling to maintain a simultaneous confrontation with the US and China, followed suit. In 1973, an agreement to prevent nuclear war was signed, and two years later, the Helsinki Act, a document of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, was issued.
In 1979, everything was ready for the signing of SALT II, but at that moment history took a different path.
First, the 1979 oil crisis triggered a rise in fuel prices (which helped the Soviet Union at the time, but also made the country increasingly dependent on the market and the flow of petrodollars). The USSR tried to export as much oil as possible to Western markets, at the expense of supplying its partners in the socialist camp at "domestic" prices. This caused tension in the Eastern Bloc, which was noted in Washington. The outbreak of unrest in Poland in 1980 couldn't have come at a worse time for the Americans.
Secondly, in December 1979, Soviet troops entered Afghanistan, which dramatically complicated relations with the West. Jimmy Carter -style peacekeeping was becoming irrelevant. The Republicans, led by Reagan, who came to the White House in 1981, initiated a new phase of the arms race. It was publicly stated that the SDI program would create an impenetrable anti-nuclear umbrella over the United States and destroy parity.
Now the USSR found itself in the position of being the first to make peace.
DOVE OF PEACE INSTEAD OF "ALBATROSS"
Another option was to accelerate the development of systems capable of penetrating American space-based missile defenses—and then, from a position of strength, having restored parity, negotiate with Reagan. In the early 1980s, in response to SDI, work began on hypersonic weapons: Project 4202, which was renamed "Albatross" in 1987.
But Gorbachev, who came to power in 1985, made a political decision to prioritize diplomatic efforts toward détente over costly and complex defense developments. Moscow initiated the meeting first in Geneva in November 1985, and then the negotiations in Reykjavik.
Gorbachev and Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, who oversaw the negotiations, had this idea: to create a package of final documents that would outline a systemic reduction in entire types of nuclear warhead carriers, combined with the halting of all SDI projects, even at the laboratory research and general theoretical research stage.
The expected outcome was a freeze on the status quo, a mutual reduction in nuclear arsenals, and the long-awaited peaceful coexistence of the socialist camp and NATO.
Moscow continually offered meetings and new peace agreements. In Washington, Gorbachev and Shevardnadze's peace initiatives were seen as a sign of Russian weakness.
Against the backdrop of the declared détente, diplomatic scandals, the discovery of their spies and our intelligence agents, and the demonstrative violations of territorial waters by Western vessels increased suspiciously. It seemed the "partners" were testing the Politburo's patience. But Gorbachev and his entourage remained on their chosen path.
Following the Geneva summit, which resembled a head-butting, Moscow decided to speed up preparations for a new meeting.
THE FATE OF THE WORLD WAS DECIDED ON THE STAIRS
It was decided not to keep the negotiations classified but to make them open to the press. As a result, over three thousand journalists alone were accredited. The authorities of tiny Iceland were in a state of quiet panic: logistics, accommodations, and food supplies were unprepared... There were no more than a hundred police officers in the entire country.
On the Soviet side, the problem lay elsewhere: the time allotted for preparing this grand international meeting was extremely short—just 27 days. The plan for the complex negotiations on SDI and missile weapons was being drafted in a rush.
"Why travel to the ends of the earth? Over two days, October 11th and 12th, only six hours were supposed to be devoted to bilateral negotiations," recalled KGB General Nikolai Leonov.
Solving global issues in Höfði's small mansion left an impression of something frivolous and almost comical. Work was conducted "literally in the hallways, on the stairs leading to the attic," and strategic decisions were made "almost at the bathroom door," recalled Gorbachev's aide Pavel Palazhchenko.
The central issue of the negotiations was the reduction of strategic offensive weapons. Gorbachev proposed large-scale reductions, tying them to the renunciation of the militarization of space.
The Soviet delegation proposed that the Americans abandon all scientific research in this area and veto the very idea of developing space weapons and their ground support. Reagan, infuriated, proposed handing over all research data to the USSR to achieve parity.
To which Gorbachev chuckled: “The US doesn’t even hand over oil production technology, but now they’re promising to hand over top-secret military technology.”
Washington viewed the meeting as an informal conversation, a sounding board for the Politburo's mood, and material for compiling a psychological profile of the General Secretary. The Soviet delegation arrived to sign significant documents.
The Americans' game was disrupted and forced into a substantive bargaining session. But strategically, it was a loss. During the negotiations, Gorbachev rarely consulted his advisers, making unexpected, very bold, and sometimes shocking statements.
Consider the proposal to eliminate all nuclear warheads altogether, or the public admission that the USSR had human rights problems. Similar frankness (for example, about racial issues) was unacceptable on the American side—just as, for example, the proposal to reduce the number of aircraft carriers.
"I'M SORRY TOO."
Ultimately, the de facto owners of the venue—the Americans—came out on top. The parties didn't sign any mutually binding documents, but they did study Gorbachev's character and the behavior of his entourage.
"It's a shame we're parting this way," Reagan remarked. "I'm very sorry, too," Gorbachev replied. "I wanted an agreement and did everything I could to achieve it, if not more."
Nevertheless, after the fact, the Secretary General considered Reykjavik 1986 not a failure, but a breakthrough. "Gorby's" personal popularity in the West grew, personal contacts were being established, and the prospect of winning the Nobel Peace Prize loomed ahead.
Reykjavik did have a practical consequence: in 1987, the USSR and the United States signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). Here, too, Gorbachev proved himself a greater peacemaker: the Soviet Union destroyed 1,752 missiles, the United States 859.
The American INF program remained frozen until 2019, when Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the treaty. Russia was forced to respond in kind. But this occurred in a completely different geopolitical context.
And then, at the height of perestroika, the Americans became convinced of the Soviet leadership’s pliability.
In 1989, in Malta, Gorbachev and then-US President George H.W. Bush officially brought an end to the confrontation between the two superpowers. What followed was supposed to be either the end of history or the beginning of a harmonious world, in the spirit (according to Gorbachev) of "new thinking."
In reality, at that moment the Eastern Bloc was collapsing, paving the way for NATO's subsequent expansion, and the Soviet Union had only a few months left to exist.
[Jpost] After more than 20 books in English and Hebrew were written on what went wrong on the military and intelligence battlefronts, I became aware of the glaring need for a book presenting an Israeli insider’s perspective on what went wrong on the media battlefield for Israel and the international Jewish community. After all, every day since Oct. 7 has arguably gotten progressively easier on the military battlefield, while every day since the massacre has gotten progressively harder in the narrative war.
It could also be argued that while most of the lessons from the blunders on the military battlefield that led to Oct. 7 have long been learned and implemented, the media battlefield’s mistakes are still far from being internalized, and they have led in part to the antisemitism that is currently spiraling out of control in America and around the world.
My book reveals that unleashing that overwhelming and no longer shocking hatred of Jews was actually the goal of Hamas ..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,... head Yahya Sinwar and the Hamas leadership, who were unaware of the Nova music festival taking place 5 km. (3.1 miles) east of the Israel-Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... border fence.
They were, however, well aware that the Paleostinian cause was gradually being forgotten, as the Abraham Accords were about to expand to Saudi Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula, largely made up of sand and oil rigs. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual haj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. Formerly dictatorial and steeped in Olde Tyme Religion, deferring to Salafist holy men on all issues, it has now done a 180 and is making a serious effort to modernize, so as not to be left in the sand by its Gulf Arab neighbors. The holy men have been shoved to the background and the nation is now still dictatorial but somewhat rational. That doesn't make them trustworthy, but it's a start... and then to other countries and leave them behind. They wanted to bring the Paleostinians to the forefront of the world’s agenda, and no one can deny that they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
Hamas’s political bureau head Ismail Haniyeh ...became Prime Minister of Gaza after the legislative elections of 2006 which Hamas won. President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed Haniyeh from office on 14 June 2007 at the height of the Fatah-Hamas festivities, but Haniyeh did not acknowledge the decree and continued as the PM of Gazoo while Abbas maintained a separate PM in the West Bank. Zapped during the 2023-24 war, to eveyone's satisfaction... said very openly in a speech to the International Union of Moslem Scholars in Doha, Qatar ...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi... , on January 9, 2024, that Hamas initiated what it strategically called Operation al-Aqsa Flood to return the Paleostinians to the international agenda.
"The world, the international community, and global decision-making circles no longer raised the issue of Paleostine," Haniyeh complained as he justified the attack. "The world began to deal with it as an internal Zionist matter, to be handled in its own way. There were no international resolutions, no conferences, and not even talk of a two-state solution. Such talk was no longer circulating among decision-makers worldwide. The issue became completely marginalized."
THE ELEMENT OF SURPRISE
SO HOW DID they succeed in drawing back the world’s attention? By using what Haniyeh called "verbal jihad" and taking advantage of several assets, which are each explained from behind the scenes in the book.
Their first asset was the element of surprise, which caught both the Israeli government and the American Jewish establishment completely off guard. And Israel was even less prepared for Oct. 7 on the media battlefield than it had been on the military battlefield.
The IDF may have mishandled Oct. 7 completely, and its functioning was briefly limited, but at least it continued to exist. The Israeli government employed no English spokesperson on Oct. 7, nor did it have a consul-general in New York, where most of the international media is based. There was no strategic plan ready to deal with a crisis and media circus of this magnitude.
Hamas, by contrast, did have a strategic plan for the narrative war — formulated by their notoriously brilliant veteran propaganda chief Abu Obeida — which Hamas documents have revealed was prepared well in advance, alongside their military plans. They also had an army of trained journalist loyalists who worked for top international media outlets during the war, due in part to Israel’s decision not to let independent media into Gaza since 2014.
These terrorists, whom the world accepted as journalists, became part of the blood libel machine, funded by the Qataris who maintained an open channel of communication between Hamas and their government mouthpiece Al Jazeera, which was deeply involved in all aspects of strategically broadcasting the war to the world.
This all overwhelmed the leadership of the American Jewish community, which had been concentrating on building bridges with progressive groups to deal with intersectionality but found itself abandoned by purported allies when it needed them most. Jewish college students were nowhere near ready to go on defense in a fight forced on them and certainly not to go on offense.
Just like Hamas had 16 years to prepare for this war while Israel had not one day, anti-Israel groups in the United States and other countries around the world had been preparing for Oct. 7 for decades, with unlimited funding at their disposal. They were an integral part of the strategic plan — and the blood libel machine — and unlike Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran, their success has not been halted.
CONTINUING TO SPREAD HATRED OF JEWS AND OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL
They have continued to spread hatred of the Jewish people and the Jewish state, gaining positions of influence and scaring ordinary Jews who had no connection to what was going on in the Middle East, some 12,000 km. away. They exploit their numerical advantage and their head start on social media and AI platforms in what is nowhere near a fair fight.
Sinwar’s goal was to initiate a future multifront war that could succeed after Israel lost the world’s support, and ideally after Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... obtained a nuclear capability. That may appear more unrealistic now because of Israel’s military successes on seven fronts, but if international condemnation of Israel continues making the Jewish state even more isolated, it certainly cannot be ruled out.
That is why the book urges future governments of Israel to make the narrative war a top priority — as this column has repeatedly — which even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself admits openly has not been the case since Oct. 7. It is also why the book offers readers more than 30 tools for fighting for Israel on social media and AI platforms.
Those tools were praised in the book’s endorsements by hasbara (public diplomacy) heroes Natan Sharansky, Michael Oren, Nachman Shai, and Gil Troy, as well as Noa Tishby, who put the book in context in the foreword she wrote.
Because the narrative war has been at the forefront of international headlines lately, Wicked Son advanced its publication by a month, and it went on Amazon on the eve of the massacre’s Jewish calendar anniversary, Simchat Torah. I symbolically — and chillingly — received my first copy from the Pomeranz bookstore in Jerusalem on Oct. 7.
So I really did write a book, and I hope it makes the positive impact it needs to, so there won’t be anything like Oct. 7 ever again — on either the military or media battlefields. ■
The writer is the author of the book The Blood Libel Machine: Exposing the Anti-Israel Hate Network and How to Fight Back, which can be ordered from Pomeranz Books in Israel and Amazon around the world.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula, largely made up of sand and oil rigs. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual haj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. Formerly dictatorial and steeped in Olde Tyme Religion, deferring to Salafist holy men on all issues, it has now done a 180 and is making a serious effort to modernize, so as not to be left in the sand by its Gulf Arab neighbors. The holy men have been shoved to the background and the nation is now still dictatorial but somewhat rational. That doesn't make them trustworthy, but it's a start...
BREAKING: Israel says pilot tried to hijack flydubai flight to Tel Aviv that diverted, landed in Saudi Arabia
