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Best of the Web: Inside Israel's AI targeting system: How data from a phone become a death sentence

israel targeted assassinations
© Chris McGrath / Getty ImagesParamedics and civilians rush to a building hit moments earlier by an Israeli airstrike on April 8 in Nabatieh, Lebanon.
The buzz of the Israeli drone was constant that day, and every time Ahmad Turmus looked up, it seemed to be circling over him, like an all-too-patient bird of prey.

So when the phone rang as he was visiting family one Monday afternoon in February, Turmus wasn't too surprised that the person speaking accented Arabic was an Israeli military officer.

What surprised him was the question.

"Ahmad, you want to die with those around you or alone?"

Turmus, according to family members interviewed, answered with one word before hanging up: "Alone."

The targeting of Turmus, which Israel acknowledged, demonstrates how, time and again, its military has mastered an intelligence war for which Hezbollah appears to have no answer.

Ever since the spectacular pager attacks of September 2024 — when Israel remotely detonated explosives hidden in pagers carried by Hezbollah members — foot soldiers, support personnel, field commanders, chiefs of staff and even a revered secretary general have been felled by a targeting system powered by artificial intelligence.

Comment: The above is a sanitized version of what is taking place in Israel-occupied Palestine and southern Lebanon, placed within a context of 'hand-wringing over where the moral threshold for killing terrorists ought to be'.

In reality, Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization, and, more importantly, Israel is not using this 'kill chain' solely for targeting its political opponents.

An American journalist in Lebanon, Courtney Bonneau, not only reports about such linking of AI to cell phone locations to armed drones, she lives the experience daily, because she has a drone circling over her head, like a real-life 'sword of Damocles', threatening to exterminate her at any moment:


For reporting on Israel's invasion of Lebanon.

Bonneau lives, for now, perhaps thanks to her passport, but Israel has no 'threshold' barring it from exterminating Lebanese journalists, just as it didn't for Palestinian ones in 2023-2025, and has recently begun expanding its 'extermination dataset' to emergency workers like ambulance drivers (responding to Israeli drone strikes against civilians).


Snowflake Cold

Best of the Web: May blizzard buries the Russian city of Noyabrsk

mmmmm
Unusual snowfall was reported in the southern Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region, Russia, on Sunday, May 10, 2026.

Wind gusts reached 23 meters per second. A high alert status was declared in Noyabrsk.

Traffic was also restricted on regional highways in the Noyabrsk, Muravlenko, Gubkinsky, and Purovsky districts.

Drivers were advised to avoid traveling outside the city.

Public transportation was also suspended in densely populated areas.


Biohazard

Best of the Web: Trump's deadly trap: By rejecting Iran's proposal, US enters a strategic nightmare with no escape

Trump Iran deal war
© PressTV
In a theatrical move that fooled no one, US President Donald Trump rejected Iran's comprehensive plan to end the war he illegally imposed on the country 70 days ago.

The US president postured as a victor, dismissing Tehran's proposal with the bluster of a leader who expects capitulation. But the reality on the ground tells a starkly different story.

By every measurable metric, America is the defeated party in the asymmetric war that was imposed on Iran amid the nuclear talks in Geneva on February 28. And his rejection of Iran's terms in a social media post has not opened new options for Washington, but it has only trapped the US in a deadly three-way crossroads from which there is no easy escape.

Trump's rejection of Iran's plan, which was submitted early on Sunday through Pakistani mediators, is a grave strategic error as Americans hold no winning cards.

Iran's proposal: Fundamental, natural, and uncompromising

Iran's plan to permanently end the war was never meant to please Washington. It was designed to restore justice, recognize strategic realities, and secure Iran's undeniable rights after the unprovoked military aggression against the country and maritime banditry.

The core elements of Iran's proposal are not maximalist. They are rooted in natural and fundamental principles that any nation subjected to unprovoked aggression and holding the upper hand would rightfully insist upon:
  • War reparations - Payment of damages and reparations by the aggressor for the destruction inflicted on Iran's infrastructure, economy, and civilian population.
  • Management of the Strait of Hormuz - Recognition of Iran's sovereign control over this vital waterway, based on the mechanism already announced by Tehran.
  • Lifting of sanctions - The complete removal of all oppressive and illegal sanctions that have targeted the Iranian people for decades.
  • Release of frozen assets - The return of billions of dollars of Iranian assets illegally seized by the United States.
  • Permanent end to the war - A cessation of hostilities not only against Iran but also against the entire resistance front, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and other allied forces across the region.
None of these demands is unreasonable or impractical. They are the basic entitlements of a nation that has been attacked, bombed, and subjected to economic warfare for nearly half a century. What Iran is asking for is not special treatment but justice.

Black Magic

Best of the Web: The UFO Question: Demons and High Strangeness

costa rica ufo map photo
© Sergio LoaizaCosta Rican National Geographic Institute, September 4, 1971
Demons Out! When I was a young boy, my family often enjoyed watching and laughing at televangelists — especially Ernest Angley, who would regularly cast out demons for us on TV. Suffice to say, demons were considered a humorous component to my slight evangelical upbringing, not something to be considered seriously. Chevy Chase captured the zaniness perfectly in Fletch Lives-The Preacher

J.D. Vance-Aliens are Demons

Tucker, too

Turns out, lots of quite well-known people, and several commenters on The Unz Review believe these UFOs are demons. I would like to take a stab at seriously looking at this possibility.

There is a version of the UAP problem that is safe to discuss in polite company. It involves military pilots seeing objects that outperform known aerospace technology, radar systems confirming what the pilots saw, and a government that has spent decades lying about its level of interest in the subject. This version has congressional hearings, credentialed witnesses, and the imprimatur of the New York Times. It is, in the vocabulary of the national security establishment, a technology problem — something unknown is operating in controlled airspace, and the responsible question is what it is and who built it. Being alarming without being embarrassing is a considerable advantage. Senators can engage with it. Defense contractors can orient toward it. Journalists can cover it without their editors pulling them aside for a quiet word.

Comment: Simply stated, we're not on top of the food chain and Hyperdimensional Overloads are in charge of this farm that is our present reality. See also:

Unveiling the Hyperdimensional Control System: Elite Divisions and the Path to 2030

Unveiling the Unseen: Exploring AI Hallucinations, Schizophrenia, and Hyperdimensional Realities

Theodicy vs The Terror of History and the Impersonal Cosmos: Unveiling the Control System

Aliens Are the Demons We've Always Feared: Unmasking the Hyperdimensional Threat Hidden in Plain Sight

Demons, Aliens, and the Blind Spots of Belief: Why Knowledge Trumps Dogma in Unmasking the Hyperdimensional Threat

Echoes of the Hyperdimensional Matrix: Demons, Disclosures, and the Theology Trap

High Strangeness 2nd Ed Cover



Black Magic

Best of the Web: Hayek, Orwell, and "the end of truth"

orwell 1984 graphic industrial grunge
Even in free societies, "the most intelligent and independent people cannot entirely escape [the] influence" of state propaganda.

In 1942, after fighting in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1937), a disillusioned writer returned to London to write about his experience. It wasn't just that the fascists in Spain had won and his side — a small, anti-Stalinist Marxist group — had lost. What frightened him was the ease with which truth itself had been erased and replaced by propaganda.
I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories...and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened.
The writer was George Orwell, and the quote appears in his book Looking Back on the Spanish War.

Snowflake Cold

Best of the Web: Spring freeze tightens grip on eastern Europe

mmmmm
Cold air has settled over the eastern half of Europe.

Forecasts keep temperatures well below average through the coming week, with another cold front deepening anomalies.

Frost is still biting far into spring, even in France where low-lying regions such as Mourmelon-le-Grand dropped to -2.3C (27.9F) on Sunday morning — another hit to early-season crops.

The cold intensifies as we look east.

Arctic air surged into Belarus on April 26, flipping rain to snow across large parts of the country. Cities such as Grodno, Nesvizh, and Slutsk reported scenes more typical of January than late April.

Comment: Recent reports from the region:


Fireball 4

Best of the Web: Poland struck by meteorite after fireball lights up skies on April 17, impact crater and rock found on April 22

The meteorite was found when two researchers, Anna and Paweł Walczak, spotted a 40-centimeter-deep crater.
© Koluszkowska Stacja KosmicznaThe meteorite was found when two researchers, Anna and Paweł Walczak, spotted a 40-centimeter-deep crater.
Scientists in central Poland have recovered a rare iron meteorite believed to be the remnant of a spectacular fireball that streaked across the sky on April 17.

The 2.9-kilogram meteorite was discovered near Łódź in the village of Zadzim on Wednesday, just five days after it flew over Poland.

The rapid recovery makes it the first iron meteorite in Poland to be found so quickly after an observed fall, and one of only a handful worldwide with a precisely reconstructed orbit, the Skytinel meteor research network said on Friday.


Star of David

Best of the Web: Israel's ethnic cleansing of Area C and the slow erasure of West Bank Palestine through sexual violence and humiliation

west bank Israel palestine ethnic cleansing sexual violence
© 21st Century Wire
Palestinians are not leaving their villages in the West Bank because of "tensions" or "clashes." They are being driven out through a calculated campaign that weaponises sexual terror, military impunity, and land bureaucracy to make life unlivable. This article lays bare an illegal project of forcible transfer, enabled by the Israeli state and met with open international complicity through inaction.

A Palestinian family does not abandon its home in darkness because life has become merely difficult. A mother does not send her daughter away because conditions are unpleasant. A shepherd does not give up the land that fed his family for generations because he has suddenly changed his mind about where he belongs. These are decisions made after something far more sinister has taken hold, when the home is no longer safe, when the road to school is charged with dread, when a woman fears the walk to a latrine, when a family sleeps listening for footsteps outside the shelter, and when armed settlers violate the boundaries of domestic life while Israeli soldiers stand by as if none of it concerns them.

Stock Down

Best of the Web: Germany's energy minister admits commitment to renewable energy is ruining the country

Grok rendition of Katherina Reiche charicature
Grok rendition of Katherina Reiche, German Energy Minister
When Simon Wakter, Political Adviser to Sweden's Minister for Energy, posted on X last Wednesday with a simple "Wow, incredible article" and a clapping emoji, he captured the shock rippling through Europe's energy commentariat. The target of his applause was not some fringe sceptic but Germany's own Economy and Energy Minister, Katherina Reiche.

In a guest column for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Reiche delivered a verdict that would have been career-ending heresy only a year ago: "One fact has been concealed for too long: an energy transition that ignores system costs will ruin the country it claims to save." To anyone who has watched Germany's Energiewende — that totemic experiment in decarbonisation-by-decree — unfold like a slow-motion train wreck, Reiche's words land like a thunderclap from the Establishment itself.

Here is a senior CDU Minister in Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Government openly admitting that two decades of Green-inspired fantasy have saddled the continent's industrial powerhouse with hidden costs now running, according to estimates she cites, at €36 billion a year and climbing towards €90 billion. Grid expansions, backup power for intermittent wind and solar and the sheer inefficiency of trying to run a modern economy on the weather: all of it, she says, must stop being airbrushed out of the official narrative. The self-deception, she warns, is over.

Books

Best of the Web: The British Ruling Elite As A Subject Of Cultural And International Terrorism

This article examines the ingrained greed and historical ruthlessness of the Anglo-Saxon elites toward other nations and peoples, and substantiates, explicates, and introduces into scholarly usage the new authorial concepts of "British cultural terrorism", "cultural decolonization", and "historical anti-Russianism".

It analyzes British involvement in numerous Ukrainian terrorist attacks and acts of sabotage on Russian territory outside the zone of the special military operation (SMO), as well as the specific features, criminal plans, and international unlawfulness of the British-Ukrainian terrorist alliance that has taken shape to date.

Britain's complicity in such unlawful Ukrainian activity on Russian territory is classified as international terrorism carried out through the sponsorship and organization of the killing of Russian citizens, as well as acts of sabotage and terrorist attacks against military and civilian infrastructure. Relevant practical recommendations and conclusions are formulated.