How Lebanon Got Involved with Iran's Plan To Wipe Out Israel

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                        

Hezbollah’s first attack on Israel as an organization occurred in 1985, shortly after its formal establishment, when it began launching guerrilla attacks and rocket fire against Israeli forces occupying southern Lebanon. 

Since its formation, the conflict has evolved across several major timelines:

• Initial Conflicts (1985–2000): Conducted a protracted guerrilla war against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon, leading up to Israel's withdrawal. This lasted for 15 years. 
• The 2006 Lebanon War: Began on July 12, 2006, when a Hezbollah cross-border raid ambushed Israeli soldiers, triggering a five-week war. 
• The 2023–2024 Conflict: Hezbollah launched rockets into northern Israel on October 8, 2023, in the wake of the Hamas attacks on Israel, the big one that Israel will never get over or forgive,  leading to major cross-border bombardments and an Israeli invasion in 2024. 
• The 2026 Conflict Escalation: Following a nominally observed ceasefire in late 2024, Hezbollah resumed attacks on March 2, 2026, in retaliation for U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Iran and the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. 
• Israel and Lebanon have remained in a continuous technical state of war since 1948. While their national armies occasionally engaged each other, major direct fighting has almost always involved third parties or Lebanese paramilitary groups like the Israeli–Lebanese conflict Wikipedia page outlines. The Israeli–Lebanese conflict, or the South Lebanon conflict, is a long-running conflict involving Israel, Lebanon-based paramilitary groups, and sometimes Syria. The conflict peaked during the Lebanese Civil War. In response to Palestinian attacks from Lebanon, Israel invaded the country in 1978 and again in 1982. After this it occupied southern Lebanon until 2000, while fighting a guerrilla conflict against Shia paramilitaries. After Israel's withdrawal, Hezbollah attacks sparked the 2006 Lebanon War. A new period of conflict began in 2023, leading to the 2024 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.  It seems that Israel was defending itself against Iran/Hezbollah on Lebanon's turf many  a time.  
  The most notable direct conflicts and incursions include:
  • 1978 and 1982: Following attacks by Palestinian factions based in Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) invaded southern Lebanon in 1978 and heavily invaded in 1982. The 1982 invasion involved the Lebanese National Movement and Syrian forces. 
  • The Lebanese National Movement (LNM) was a major coalition of leftist, pan-Arabist, and secular political parties active in Lebanon during the early years of the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1982). The LNM strongly advocated for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and sought to dismantle the country's confessional political system.
  • 2006: Following a cross-border attack by Hezbollah that killed and captured Israeli soldiers, a major 34-day war broke out between Israel and Hezbollah. 
  • 2023–2024: Following the October 7 attacks in southern Israel, Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel, leading to months of heavy cross-border fire. This escalated into Israel's fourth ground invasion of Lebanon. 
  • 2026 Conflict: Following an escalation that began in early March, Hezbollah fired rockets and drones into Israel in retaliation for a U.S.-led strike on Iran's supreme leader. Israel responded with airstrikes and sent thousands of troops to advance into southern Lebanon. Numerous U.S.-brokered cease-fires have been attempted, though the border continues to see volatile skirmishes. 
  While Lebanon's government has been highly involved diplomatically—most recently through the Timeline of Decades of Conflict Between Israel and Hezbollah and direct talks in the U.S. and Switzerland to broker truces—the physical fighting on the Lebanese side has been carried out almost exclusively by the non-state militant group Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran. To read more about how these political and military dynamics evolved, you can explore the Why is there fighting in Lebanon? breakdown by CNN.
• Resource:
• https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2026/06/the-rulers-of-lebanon-and-how-they-got.html

AI In Trouble With Trump's Security

 Nadene Goldfoot                                          

                                What AI looks like

Fareed Zakaria just told us this morning about an AI company that was given 90 minutes to get their product off the market.  What power!!!  Last Friday, the U.S. government did something extraordinary. It forced one of America’s leading artificial intelligence companies to withdraw its most advanced product from the market. Anthropic, the maker of the frontier AI model Mythos and its commercially available cousin Fable, was given little warning and, according to reports, roughly 90 minutes to comply.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) does not have a physical body; it is a set of computer algorithms. In the physical world, AI looks like everyday technology—such as computer servers, microchips, or a blank text box on your screen. Visually, it is often represented by circuit boards, glowing blue tech graphics, or shiny humanoid robots.

Anthropic’s Mythos and Fable are highly advanced, "Mythos-class" frontier AI models engineered for demanding software engineering, scientific research, and complex reasoning. Frontier artificial intelligence models like Anthropic's Claude Mythos and Fable 5 are highly specialized for rigorous, dual-use scientific and technical fields. Because of their advanced capabilities and potential risks, access to these systems is heavily monitored or restricted to qualified experts.

The two models share the exact same underlying intelligence but serve distinct purposes: 

• Claude Mythos 5: An unrestricted version meant exclusively for cyber-security professionals, government entities, and trusted infrastructure providers (via the Anthropic Project Glasswing program) to proactively identify and patch critical software vulnerabilities. 
• Claude Fable 5: The commercially available version offered to enterprise clients and general subscribers. It features built-in safety classifiers that prevent the AI from generating functional cyber-attacks or addressing sensitive biology and chemistry queries. 

Doesn't a business who invents something unique, and even perhaps got the patent for it have rights?

Businesses and countries keep competitor inventions off the market by acquiring, suppressing, or legally protecting them. This anti-competitive behavior is primarily achieved using sleeping patents, patent thickets, or government invention secrecy acts. 

It could be done most nicely and secretly.  Get the inventor in their clutches, wine and dine them, treat them like a king and offer a great price to buy the patent-or give them the rights to ownership somehow.  Evidently Trump was in a 90 minute hurry. Here's what happened with the AI invention:  

The Trump administration issued this 90-minute ultimatum to the AI company Anthropic to take its advanced "Fable 5" and "Mythos 5" artificial intelligence models offline over national security and cybersecurity concerns.

The  dramatic standoff—and Fareed Zakaria's subsequent critique—unfolded with these key specifics:

• The Catalyst: Security researchers at Amazon found a "jailbreak" that allowed users to bypass the AI's safety guardrails. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy directly contacted U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to alert the administration, leading to an immediate federal crackdown. Jassy is the son of Margery and Everett L. Jassy of Scarsdale, New York. Of Jewish Hungarian ancestry, his father was a senior partner in the corporate law firm Dewey Ballantine in New York City,  Jassy joined Amazon as a marketing manager in 1997. Early in his Amazon career, he helped run the company's first marketing team and later its compact disc business. He subsequently served as Jeff Bezos's first technical adviser, or "shadow", a role in which he accompanied Bezos to meetings and discussed potential business opportunities with him.
•  In 2003, he and Bezos came up with the idea to create the cloud computing platform that became known as Amazon Web Services (AWS), which launched in 2006. Jassy headed AWS and its original team of 57 people.
• In 2015, Jassy and Amazon executive James Hamilton helped lead Amazon's acquisition of Annapurna Labs, an Israeli semiconductor company whose technology became part of Amazon's effort to design its own data-center chips. In 2016, Jassy was promoted from senior vice president to chief executive officer of AWS. 
• The Ultimatum: On Friday, the White House and Commerce Department gave Anthropic executives just 90 minutes to comply with orders to pull the models down. 
• The Shutdown: Anthropic initially pushed back but ultimately complied by disabling global access to the models for all users. 
• The Political & Media Reaction: The ad-hoc, hurried nature of the ban drew heavy criticism, notably from foreign policy and technology commentator Fareed Zakaria. 
• In his Washington Post column, Zakaria argued that critical AI regulation cannot be governed by a "grudge" or arbitrary weekend bureaucratic fights. 
• He stated: "In its 90-minute demand to Anthropic... America was telling partners around the world: If your economy becomes dependent on American AI infrastructure, Washington can arbitrarily, and without warning or explanation, use its on-off switch." 
• Zakaria has instead advocated for establishing an independent regulatory body—an "AI Fed"—similar to the Federal Reserve to properly manage the industry.
• I'm wondering how many inventors have been bypassed by the USA interests and have gone to China, instead, to be bought and kept off the market because of competition.  I suppose this has been happening even in the USA as well.  That may just be classified as business, something very Democratic.  Here the inventor thinks it will sell like hotcakes and  reality is that no one will ever see it.  
• Anthropic's new Mythos model has sparked significant concern regarding its fearsome AI power and the potential risks it poses to global security.⁠ Sounds like it's good security to get it off the market. It's too smart.
• However, Mythos can hurt other businesses by accelerating cyberattacks to "machine speed," autonomously exploiting hidden software vulnerabilities faster than human teams can patch them. This leaves businesses—especially those relying on older, unpatchable systems in industries like energy and finance—vulnerable to severe breaches, operational downtime, and massive data theft.

How About Our Civil Rights? Who Do They Benefit?

 Nadene Goldfoot   

                                                               

Trump Says DEI, Civil Rights Policies Hurt White People. Do they?

President Donald Trump’s approach to civil rights legislation, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act, centers on rolling back policies designed to remedy systemic racism, which his administration contends constitutes "reverse discrimination". 

Judaism teaches respect for the fundamental rights of others as each person's duty to God. "What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor" (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a). Equality in the Jewish tradition is based on the concept that all of God's children are "created in the image of God" (Genesis 1:27). From that flows the biblical injunction, "You shall have one law for the stranger and the citizen alike: for I, Adonai, am your God" (Leviticus 24:22).

In the United States, Jewish people are protected from discrimination under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination based on race, color, religion, and national origin. Furthermore, federal courts have ruled that Jewish people are protected against racial discrimination in employment under these statutes, as Judaism constitutes a distinct ethnic and protected group.

Employment Discrimination: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act makes it unlawful for employers to discriminate against Jewish employees regarding hiring, compensation, or terms of employment. Employers are also required to provide reasonable religious accommodations (such as time off for the High Holy Days) unless it causes undue hardship. 

Hate Crimes: The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act provides federal jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed against individuals because of their perceived religion or race.

Housing and Public Accommodations: The Fair Housing Act and Title II of the Civil Rights Act prohibit discrimination based on religion or race in housing, real estate transactions, and public spaces such as hotels, restaurants, and theaters.

Specific actions and legal challenges have reshaped the enforcement of these historic protections: 

                                 MEDDDLING

• Executive Actions on DEI: Trump has actively sought to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives across federal agencies, contractors, and universities, arguing that modern equality programs violate longstanding civil rights statutes. 
• Challenging the Materiality Provision: The administration has moved to dismiss voting rights lawsuits that invoked the Civil Rights Act of 1964, specifically targeting provisions that prevent states from rejecting voter registrations based on minor, inconsequential omissions. 
• Federal Voting Restrictions: Trump issued executive orders to create a restricted federal voter list, limiting mail-in voting and imposing new requirements on registered voters. Civil rights organizations contend these restrictions violate equal protection guarantees. 
• Disparate Impact Reversal: The administration has targeted long-standing interpretations of the Civil Rights Act by de-prioritizing enforcement based on "disparate impact"—a legal theory utilized to combat policies that unintentionally discriminate against minority populations.
• Black People: Are protected primarily under the Race and Color categories of federal civil rights law.
• Upgrade:  Jewish People: Are protected as a religious group under the Religion category, and are also protected under the Race/Ethnicity category. U.S. courts have ruled that because Jewish people share historical, ancestral, and ethnic characteristics, they are protected against racial and ethnic discrimination (e.g., under Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866).
• The two groups have a deep history of interwoven civil rights struggles. Historically, Jewish activists and organizations played a significant role in helping found and fund the NAACP, and they had a prominent presence in the marches of the 1960s.
• While both groups rely on the same overarching civil rights framework to fight discrimination, the specific enforcement—such as arguing racial bias versus religious bias—depends on the nature of the incident.
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• Vote wisely this time, as Whoopi Goldberg advises.  "This is on us": She regularly uses this phrase to emphasize that the state of the country and the choice of leaders falls directly on the shoulders of the voters. The Problem With Whoopi  is Constant : This is on us refrain. 
• Updated:  2:55pm, 6/21/26