American forces will be sent to operate a missile defense battery ahead of a likely Israeli attack on Iran.

The US has ordered the deployment of a THAAD air defense system to Israel, along with a crew of American service members to operate it, Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder announced on Sunday. The move marks the first deployment of US combat troops on Israeli soil since the Israel-Hamas war began last year.

According to Ryder, the THAAD battery "and associated crew of US military personnel" will be stationed in Israel "to help bolster Israel's air defenses following Iran's unprecedented attacks against Israel on April 13 and again on October 1."

US President Joe Biden, who the White House previously said had "no plans or intentions to put US boots on the ground in combat," ordered the deployment, Ryder stated.

The THAAD, or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, is a mobile anti-ballistic missile system designed to detect and intercept ballistic missiles during their descent stage. It fires a non-explosive projectile at eight times the speed of sound, relying on kinetic energy to destroy incoming missiles.

A THAAD battery consists of 95 soldiers and six truck-mounted launchers capable of firing a total of 48 interceptors.

Do you want to live in a society where you are required to have your face scanned wherever you go? If not, you may want to speak up now while you still can. As you will see below, the U.S. government is aggressively expanding the use of facial recognition technology for identification verification purposes. For now, the use of facial recognition technology will be optional. But as we have seen before, once a voluntary option is adopted by enough people our leaders have a way of making it mandatory. Of course it isn't just our government that is pushing facial recognition technology. It is popping up throughout our society, and given enough time it would literally be everywhere.

Login.gov is billed as "a single sign-on solution for US government websites", and now users of Login.gov will be given the option to use facial recognition technology to verify their identities...

An online hub for Americans to access benefits and services across the federal government is giving its users a new option to sign on.

The General Services Administration will begin offering facial recognition technology as an option for users of Login.gov, a one-stop for government-provided public services, to verify their identities.

GSA's Technology Transformation Services announced Wednesday it will allow Login.gov users to verify their identity online through facial technology that meets standards set by the National Institute of Standards and Technology's 800-63-3 Identity Assurance Level 2 (IAL2) guidelines.

We are being told that this will help reduce identity theft and fraud, and I don't know anyone that likes identity theft and fraud. But do we really want to live in a dystopian world where our faces are constantly being scanned all the time? I certainly don't.

An estimated 1.6 billion people rely on VPNs to carry out the most sensitive tasks online, from watching illegal videos to engaging in sexual or political activities. But few people know that a considerable chunk of that market — including three of the six most popular VPNs — is quietly operated by an Israeli-owned company with close connections to that country's national security state, including the elite Unit 8200 and Duvdevan Units of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

Previous MintPress News investigations into Israel's growing control over the tech industry have outlined how those units have been involved in many of Israel's most outrageous hacking, surveillance and assassination programs, acting as spies and death squads. Unit 8200, for example, has been the source of much of the world's most infamous spying software, including Cellebrite and Pegasus, the program used to snoop on tens of thousands of the world's top politicians and journalists, including by Saudi Arabia, who used it to help track down and kill Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

Given this context, justifiable fears arise that control over a vast VPN empire could add to Israel's influence over the online information and security world, creating backdoors for Israeli intelligence to carry out a vast kompromat operation on users around the globe.

This investigation is part of a series highlighting and detailing the power of Israel's growing tech industry to access and control people's data.

In the contemporary West, there's an obsessive focus on psychology, childhood trauma, and breaking cycles. The emphasis is squarely on the self, with the belief that if individuals can break generational patterns by consciously exploring the rabbit hole of their inner wholeness, they'll evolve into better, more enlightened humans — and society, as a whole, will "level up." Western society is beholden to this theory without noticing the glaring holes within it. If we're all to become more whole, then our institutions must also reflect wholeness and decency, rather than glorifying greed and power. Instead, we see systems rewarding the most morally bankrupt among us, legitimising their continued unholy existence. "Breaking trauma cycles" is the phrase du jour, yet there's almost no focus on breaking societal cycles. In fact, most history curricula fail to teach the cyclical nature of history or the Hegelian dialectic that explains cause and consequence over time.

Polybius, one of the earliest historians to write about the cyclical nature of politics and history, once stated, "Since the masses of the people are inconstant, full of unruly desires, passionate, and reckless of consequences, they must be filled with fears to keep them in order. The ancients did well, therefore, to invent gods and the belief in punishment after death." Just look at the modern news cycle for proof of how this tactic persists today. The relevance of Polybius' insight becomes even more pertinent when you consider that he wrote it during the decline of the Hellenistic empire — just as it was collapsing into the black hole of history — and holy sh*t that's eerily applicable as we watch the fall of U.S. hegemony in real time. Western society's fixation on the self and the use of scare tactics by institutions to maintain control inevitably leads to deceptions surrounding the conspiratorial and collaborative causes of events designed to induce fear. The narrative often attributes the cause of disruptive events to a "disturbed" individual, to wholly deflect from the all-encompassing truth, which, on the whole, is often far more disturbing.

Take, for example, the first assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. The official narrative of Crooks, a lone teenage gunman — disturbed, of course — crumbles under scrutiny. The behaviour of the security detail that day, the delayed response after the threat was identified, and the gunman's ability to get into position, firearm and ladder in hand, are all deeply suspicious. That he appeared in a Blackrock promo video only raises further questions. We'll get to the role of "banksters" soon enough, but citizen journalists have uncovered links between the gunman and phone calls to an FBI office, both months and days before Trump's Pennsylvania rally. Only a conspiracy nut could conjure such nonsense that the security state may have been involved because, of course, it's highly regular for most teenagers to be involved in some capacity with Blackrock and the FBI, and only a wholly rabbitholed kook could see the cyclical pattern of this narrative.

The Israeli government is now saying that the United States is preparing to deploy THAAD anti-ballistic missile systems in Israel, a major development which will possibly put troops in the directly in harm's way amid the tense showdown with Iran.

Times of Israel writes that "according to reports by Channel 12 news and Army Radio that describe the move as part of preparations for the expected Israeli response to Iran's recent missile attack." Importantly, "Channel 12 news says the advanced missile defense system will be operated by American troops on Israeli soil," TOI continues. However, there have been some initial contradictory reports.

The THAAD is an anti-ballistic missile defense system capable of shooting down short, medium, and intermediate-range ballistic missiles in their terminal phase. There has been no formal US vote or Congressional authorization for this, but it marks yet another escalation in the Biden White House's ongoing multi-billion dollar military aid program for Israel - a high risk one at that.

Any potential new exchange of ballistic missiles with the Islamic Republic is likely to involve direct attempts to target anti-air batteries positioned in Israel.

David Burke's book is relevant to all those interested in how MI6 have instigated terrorism in arenas as diverse as Russia, Armenia, Iraq and Syria.

Because David Burke's The Puppet Masters: how MI6 masterminded Ireland's deepest state crisis surveys how MI6's network of agents instigated the 1969-1998 Irish Troubles, his book is relevant not only to students of Ireland, but to those interested in how MI6 have more recently instigated terrorism in arenas as diverse as Russia, Armenia, Iraq and Syria.

Just as with our earlier review of Caroline Elkins' Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire, so do we find the same cast of cut-throats making their way to Ireland, which they subjected to more than 30 years of wanton violence.

Chief of these Colonel Blimp criminals is the notorious SAS General Frank Kitson, whose Low Intensity Operations classic is quoted on page 153, to remind us that "in the historical context it may be of interest to recall that when the regular [British] army was first raised in the 17^th century, 'Suppression of the Irish' was coupled with 'Defence of the Protestant Religion' as one of the two main reasons for its existence" and, by extension why both of those institutions must be destroyed root and branch.

As the world waits to see if Israel and Iran become ground zero for World War Three, I've been asking myself how any nation, let alone a tiny sliver of bleached rock, sand, and palm trees, can pretend it's all-powerful and immune.
Sure, Israel and America share a kind of proxy operation worldwide, but the wider world is a lot bigger.

The lead of a story by Gideon Levy on Middle East Eye answered the question for me this morning. The famous Israeli journalist and author wrote:

"A society cannot go far with its head buried in the sand, and will certainly be unable to cope with the real challenges confronting it."

Israel's Core Fanaticism

Levy also says, "There is not a single Israeli, not one, who knows where his country is headed." The grandson of Jews murdered in the Holocaust, Levy was for a time a typical mainstream Israeli, a full-fledged proponent of what he termed the "nationalist religious orgy." Today, the fears that pushed extreme nationalism to the forefront in Israel seem an inevitability. Like so many, the question whether or not Israel will exist in 20 years or so is preeminent. And, there is no talk of the long-term future and peace. The learned author reveals that his country is suffering from repression, denial, and self-delusion propagated by the same people eradicating Palestinians like insects.

Israelis probably still fear another holocaust is right around the corner. Given Bibi Netanyahu's fatalistic fanaticism of late and the multipolar world growing imminently disgusted with the American hegemony (and friends), it's not difficult to visualize. And it seems every Israeli is desperate to establish an escape route once Humpty Dumpty finally does fall off the Wailing Wall. To be clear, many of us criticizing Israel and the Zionists are concerned not simply for the state of Israel but for the Jewish community worldwide. Most writers and analysts are afraid to even hint at what could become a "Jew hunt" a thousand times worse than the Nazis perpetrated. We cannot be, however. Most Jewish people have had this on their minds since before Israel was reformed in Palestine.

Like anyone with Jewish friends or even good Baptists taught about the Israelites, I shudder to think about this unthinkable event in human history. Turning back to Levy's analysis of the current situation, we find the indisputable truth right before our eyes. A man who identifies as a "Patriotic Israeli" consolidates what has to happen to avert a horror humanity could never live down:

"Equality. Equal rights from the river to the sea. One person, one vote. So basic and yet so revolutionary. This path requires a parting of the ways with Zionism and the rejection of Jewish supremacy, and letting go of the entire self-definition of both peoples - but it represents the only ray of hope."

The 2024 race is still close.

But then so was the 1980 Carter-Reagan race at this same juncture.

Indeed, incumbent president Carter was then comfortably up in the last two October Gallup polls - before utterly and suddenly evaporating on Election Day.

But in the last seven days, there seems a sense of panic in the Harris campaign.

How do we know that?

Why are Democratic pundits - from Axelrod to Carville - blasting the Harris campaign and otherwise warning of bad things to come?

The statement comes less than a month after Russia announced changes to its nuclear doctrine in response to growing Western involvement in the Ukraine conflict.

Washington is ready for dialogue with Russia, China, and North Korea on nuclear security issues, US President Joe Biden said on Sunday. In a statement congratulating this year's Nobel Peace Prize Winners, the Japan-based anti-nuclear-weapons organization Nihon Hidankyo, Biden called on global powers to continue taking steps to make the world safer by ridding it of nuclear weapons.

Nihon Hidankyo is a group formed by survivors from the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, over which the US detonated atomic bombs during the closing stages of World War II. The organization was awarded this year's Peace Prize "for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons," according to a statement on Friday from the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Biden praised Nihon Hidankyo for "their historic work to ensure that nuclear weapons are never used again." He expressed eagerness to jointly work on ways to reduce the nuclear threat with other atomic powers.

Brussels does not see Belgrade as a true partner, Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin has said

Serbia will explore the option of joining BRICS instead of the EU, which has made increasingly stiff demands and offered no progress toward membership in return, Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin has said.

The country applied to join the EU in 2009 and has been a candidate for membership since 2012. During the intervening years, Brussels has upgraded its demand that Belgrade normalize relations with Kosovo into a de-facto recognition of the breakaway province's independence, failed to protect the rights of ethnic Serbs living in Kosovo, and tied Serbia's accession to the bloc with severing relations with Moscow and imposing sanctions on Russia.

"Just tell us: 'we don't want you,'" Vulin told the Berliner Zeitung in an interview published on Sunday. "Why do you keep setting us conditions that we cannot fulfil? We see the EU as a partner, but we are not entirely sure that the EU sees us as a partner."