A brief analysis (with astrology) of the pager and radio attack incidents of the 17th and 18th, and some thoughts about the would be golf course shooter (analysis by Rappoport included)
This is the faceless “system”, against one candidate. I wonder how many people work together creating these scenarios. How many scenarios do they have already written down? The retention of power at all costs…
How did Hezbollah get the pagers that exploded in Lebanon? Al Jazeera traces a pager supply chain from Taiwan to Hungary to Lebanon — including a three-month port layover during which explosives might have been placed in the devices. Sarah Shamim, 9/18/24. Videos included.
Hundreds of pagers belonging to the armed group Hezbollah exploded on Tuesday in Lebanon, killing at least 12 people and wounding about 2,750. Some pagers belonging to Hezbollah also exploded in Syria, leading to some injuries. Lebanon, Hezbollah and the group’s allies have all blamed Israel. But what really happened? Many analysts believe the answer might lie in how Hezbollah got the pagers in the first place — because that might hold clues to whether the devices were tampered with to facilitate the explosions.
What happened to the Hezbollah pagers in Lebanon?
About 3:30pm (12:30 GMT), hundreds of pagers all over Lebanon started exploding. Hezbollah released a statement on Tuesday saying two of its fighters and a girl were killed as “pagers belonging to employees of various Hezbollah units and institutions exploded”. The Iran-backed group attributed the pager blasts to Israel, which has been involved in tit-for-tat attacks with Hezbollah across the Lebanon-Israel border since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza. Israel’s military has refused to comment on the explosions. Hezbollah has promised retaliation against Israel.
A Lebanese security source and another source told the Reuters news agency that the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, planted explosives in 5,000 pagers that Hezbollah had ordered months before the explosions. The sources said a code was simultaneously sent to 3,000 of the pagers, triggering the explosions.
While the exact mechanism used for the pager explosions is unclear at the moment, some experts speculate that the radio system that the pagers rely on was hacked, possibly through a doctored code. The batteries of the pagers could have been triggered to overheat, leading to a process called thermal runaway, which in turn caused the pager batteries to explode. [See article which follows from the Washington Post debunking that idea]
Some analysts, including Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former British army officer and chemical weapons expert, have speculated that the pagers may also have been tampered with along the supply chain and wired to explode on command. But Brussels-based military and political analyst Elijah Magnier told Al Jazeera his sources close to the ground in Lebanon had shared details from initial investigations carried out by Hezbollah on pagers that did not explode. Those investigations suggest that Israel placed 1 to 3 grammes (0.04 to 0.11oz) of pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), a powerful explosive, in each device.
Lebanon faces a range of sanctions from the United States, European Union and their Western partners. In addition, the US, United Kingdom and their allies, such as Japan, list Hezbollah among “terrorist” organisations. That means that companies both registered in these domains or trading with these countries are wary of direct transactions, especially in technology, with Hezbollah — and often with Lebanon at all.
In this case, Magnier said, the pagers procured by Hezbollah were with a third party and they sat at a port for three months, awaiting clearances, before they were finally moved to the Lebanese group. Hezbollah suspects that it was during those three months that Israel managed to plant explosives in the devices, the military analyst said. He added that Hezbollah’s investigation so far shows that metal balls were placed around the pager batteries, allowing the explosive force to propel metal fragments outward, “significantly increasing the lethality of the blast”. He added that this was also done during the three months when the shipment was on hold.
But where were the pagers made — and when?
The trademark of Taiwan pager manufacturer Gold Apollo has been identified on the remains of the exploded pagers, which appear to belong to the company’s AR-924 model. On Wednesday, the company released a statement denying that it had manufactured Hezbollah’s pagers and saying it was only its logo that was on the devices.
Instead, the pagers had been built by a Hungarian company called BAC through a licensing deal, the Taiwan firm said. “The design and manufacturing of the products are entirely handled by BAC,” Gold Apollo said in a statement. “We only provide brand trademark authorisation and have no involvement in the design manufacturing of this product.” BAC has not commented so far.
The evidence so far suggests that Hezbollah acquired the pagers around February when the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, ordered members to stop using cellphones because they could be easily intercepted and monitored by Israeli intelligence.
BAC Consulting is based in Hungary’s capital, Budapest. Reuters reported that the stated address for BAC is a peach-coloured building in a residential area. While the company’s name is posted there on an A4 sheet of paper, an anonymous source present at the building told the news agency the company does not have a physical presence at the building despite being registered there.
According to LinkedIn, BAC’s CEO is Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono, whose profile says she has worked for various organisations, including UNESCO. Her profile says: “We offer in-depth consulting guiding our client’s journey toward innovation, sustainability, and equity while ensuring connection, and authenticity. Our main services are business development, management consultancy, strategy and partnership planning.”
Al Jazeera reached out to BAC but did not receive a response.
Second wave of blasts hits Lebanon as Israel declares ‘new phase’ of war. Health Ministry says 14 people killed, 450 wounded in latest device explosions, which Hezbollah blames on Israel. 9/18/24. Videos included.
At least 14 people have been killed and 450 wounded in Lebanon in a new wave of blasts related to communication devices, the Ministry of Public Health says, a day after thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah detonated across the country. The attacks, which were widely believed to be carried out by Israel against Hezbollah, have raised fears that the two sides’ simmering conflict could escalate into all-out war.
Speaking to Israeli soldiers on Wednesday, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said: “We are at the start of a new phase in the war. It requires courage, determination and perseverance.” He made no mention of the explosions of electronic devices on Tuesday and Wednesday but praised the work of Israel’s army and security agencies, saying, “The results are very impressive.”
Multiple explosions were reported across Lebanon on Wednesday with the state-run National News Agency saying pagers and “devices” exploded in Hezbollah strongholds in eastern and southern Beirut as well as in the eastern region of Bekaa, where three people were wounded. Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV reported explosions in multiple locations, which it said were the result of walkie-talkies detonating.
Al Jazeera’s Ali Hashem, reporting from Tyre in southern Lebanon, witnessed two explosions. “There was a car that exploded just behind us. At the same time, there was an explosion at another place [nearby],” he said. “I’m currently in the middle of the street. There are a lot of ambulances, chaos everywhere.” Several blasts took place simultaneously, Hashem said, similar to the explosions on Tuesday. “But this time, it was mostly walkie-talkies or radios [that exploded],” he said, adding that reports suggested that solar devices and some batteries in cars also detonated. The National News Agency reported that home solar energy systems exploded in several areas of Beirut.
In Wednesday’s attacks, several blasts were heard at a funeral in Beirut for three Hezbollah members and a child killed by exploding pagers the day before, according to journalists with The Associated Press news agency at the scene. An AP photographer in the southern coastal city of Sidon saw a car and a mobile phone shop damaged after devices exploded inside of them. A girl was hurt in the south when a solar energy system blew up, the state news agency reported.
In Beirut, Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan said a blast was reported in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Lebanon’s capital city. The new round of explosions took place a day after pagers exploded nearly simultaneously in locations across Lebanon, killing at least 12 people, including two children, and wounding about 2,800. Hezbollah and the Lebanese government blamed Israel for Tuesday’s attacks.
Israel has not directly commented on the blasts. The attacks have shaken the civilian population with a stream of bloodied people overwhelming hospitals in Hezbollah strongholds of Beirut. Health authorities have called on all available medics to report for duty.
Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s explosions took place after Israel announced the expansion of its war goals to include northern residents returning to their homes near the border with Lebanon. Tens of thousands of people have left northern Israel since the start of the war in Gaza, triggered by Hamas-led attacks on October 7 in southern Israel, where more than 1,100 people were killed and about 250 were taken captive.
Israel has waged a brutal assault on the Gaza Strip since then, killing more than 41,000 people and reducing large swaths of the Palestinian territory to rubble. Since October 8, Hezbollah has engaged in near-daily exchanges of fire with Israeli forces along the Lebanon-Israel border in support of Hamas.
On Wednesday, Hezbollah said Israel was “fully responsible for this criminal aggression” and reiterated it would avenge the latest attacks while saying it would continue its fight against Israel in support of Hamas in Gaza. Cross-border exchanges with Israeli forces were “ongoing and separate from the difficult reckoning that the criminal enemy must await for its massacre”, Hezbollah said.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib warned the “blatant assault on Lebanon’s sovereignty and security” on Wednesday was a dangerous development that could “signal a wider war”. United Nations chief Antonio Guterres called for “maximum restraint”. “The secretary-general urges all concerned actors to exercise maximum restraint to avert any further escalation,” his spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said in a statement.
Hi Eric, just a point on your background summation of the October 6th or 7th incident. Wasn’t that Hamas as opposed to Hezbollah? I also recall Hezbollah being very involved with the US hostage crisis during the Carter administration.
Per CNN, "How it happened: Hezbollah bought the pagers that exploded in recent months, according to a Lebanese security source. Those devices detonated simultaneously after receiving a message. Explosives were planted next to the battery in each pager and a switch embedded for remote detonation, according to the New York Times”
The WaPo agrees, adding "Some batteries rely on the devices’ own software to regulate their use and temperature, so it is theoretically possible to hack into a pager and trigger its battery to heat to the point that it explodes, Meier said.
At the same time, videos of the attack posted to social media show the pagers exploding instantaneously, rather than catching fire. Overheating lithium batteries sometimes explode, but also catch fire or throw off streams of superheated material in unpredictable ways.”
Opinion across a bunch of mainstream media outlets, including Al Jazeera and France 24 is that Hezbollah’s leadership would have a hard time not retaliating in a big way, given how many of its members were targeted and how even their dependents were killed and injured. And given that the Iranian ambassador in Beirut was injured when his pager went off, the Iranian regime would have a hard time stopping Hezbollah or even not acting itself. What’s the astrology, if you can say briefly (or care to say at all)?
Yep, Israeli is on a suicide mission, some people actually believe biblical prophecies and believe they have a key role to play in making it happen. Victims are very dangerous.
Israel planted explosives in Hezbollah's Taiwan-made pagers, sources say. Senior Lebanese security source says group ordered 5,000 pagers made by Taiwan-based Gold Apollo, which several sources say brought into country in spring
Hezbollah fighters have been using pagers as a low-tech means of communication in an attempt to evade Israeli location-tracking, two sources familiar with the group's operations told Reuters this year.
But the senior Lebanese source said the devices had been modified by Israel's spy service "at the production level.”
"The Mossad injected a board inside of the device that has explosive material that receives a code. It's very hard to detect it through any means. Even with any device or scanner," the source said.
The source said 3,000 of the pagers exploded when a coded message was sent to them, simultaneously activating the explosives.
Another security source told Reuters that up to three grams of explosives were hidden in the new pagers and had gone "undetected" by Hezbollah for months.
Neither Israel nor Gold Apollo immediately responded to Reuters requests for comment.
Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo, based in Taipei.
Taiwanese company names European firm it says produced pagers
Gold Apollo, the Taiwanese manufacturer of the pagers linked to the deadly explosions in Lebanon, is saying that it has licensed its trademarked design to another company and that it had “no involvement in the design or manufacturing” of the devices.
“We authorise BAC to use our brand trademark for product sales in specific regions, but the design and manufacturing of the products are entirely handled by BAC,” the company said in a statement, providing the initials of the firm allegedly responsible for producing the devices.
Gold Apollo founder and president, Hsu Ching-Kuang, said BAC is based in Europe, but declined to offer further details on the firm.
“We may not be a large company but we are a responsible one,” he told reporters at Gold Apollo’s offices in New Taipei City. “This is very embarrassing.”
The latest, i’m listening to Al Jazeera right now, there’s a second wave of explosions in Lebanon, at least 9 more dead and 300+ injured. The explosions happened this time not in pagers, but in phones and radios. One explosion took place during a funeral for Hezbollah members who were killed yesterday! Someone is really asking for war.
I think Trump took one look at the real economic situation, both the US and the world, and decided he doesn’t really wanna be in charge when the shit comes down, and used to debate to throw the contest. And the mass media are happily jumping on the Kamala bandwagon. So yes, putting her in. Setting up for what? Or do they believe their own propaganda and don’t see the utter rot which passes off as the global economy? Some stuff i shared with What’s Left?
——————
Hi all, a couple of flashing red signals i saw today. Yes, totally limited to mainstream “economics,” but rather interesting data.
You Won't Believe What Europes Central Bank Just Did. Eurodollar University, 9/12/24. 20 minutes.
"The ECB cut rates for the second time, as expected, though amidst a strong bond/bund market rally that has now completely un-inverted that yield curve. This comes at a time when major businesses like Volkswagen are thinking about closing down factories due to how much idle capacity they have. What links all of these together, what explains all the facts, is that there was never a global recovery, only a transitory price illusion.”
"It was all banks all day yesterday. Basel rules foul-up. Warren Buffett continuing to dump BofA. Citi dumping on credit. Deutsche unloading CRE, or trying to. JP Morgan downgrading...itself. Most of all Ally Financial admitting unemployment is fast becoming a big problem and right on its balance sheet."
_______________
Again, the analysis is totally limited by a capitalist perspective, blind to both the value dynamics which are the focus of Marx’s crisis theory, as well as global material factors. But again, useful info.
The Debt Crisis Also Presents Great Opportunity For Investors | Gordon Long, Allen Taggert of Thoughtful Money, 9/12/24, An hour and 26 minutes.
"Total US federal debt now stands at $35.34 Trillion, now exceeding US annual GDP by $10 trillion. It has been growing at a faster rate than GDP for many decades. That dynamic shows no signs of reversing or even moderating. And on top of the federal debt lies the borrowing of households, businesses, financial institutions and state & local governments. When you add all that up, the total US debt exceeds $100 trillion. [And global debt is over $350 trillion, up 21% since the start of “COVID.”]
So what does that mean for the future? Are we hurdling towards a sovereign debt crisis, as a number of analysts warn? Or is there reason to hope the economy can handle this debt trajectory? For guidance, we're fortunate to welcome back to the program market analyst Gordon Long of MATASII: Macro Analytics & Technical Analysis Strategic Investment Insight”
The real fireworks start at around 14:00 or so. The explosion in debt has greatly accelerated in the last 5 years. Takes now $1.5 of deficit growth to get $1 growth in GDP!
Hi Eric,
This is the faceless “system”, against one candidate. I wonder how many people work together creating these scenarios. How many scenarios do they have already written down? The retention of power at all costs…
And, about yesterday, from Al Jazeera.
And, a report on how the pagers were blown up on Tuesday.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/9/18/how-did-hezbollah-get-the-pagers-that-exploded-in-lebanon
How did Hezbollah get the pagers that exploded in Lebanon? Al Jazeera traces a pager supply chain from Taiwan to Hungary to Lebanon — including a three-month port layover during which explosives might have been placed in the devices. Sarah Shamim, 9/18/24. Videos included.
Hundreds of pagers belonging to the armed group Hezbollah exploded on Tuesday in Lebanon, killing at least 12 people and wounding about 2,750. Some pagers belonging to Hezbollah also exploded in Syria, leading to some injuries. Lebanon, Hezbollah and the group’s allies have all blamed Israel. But what really happened? Many analysts believe the answer might lie in how Hezbollah got the pagers in the first place — because that might hold clues to whether the devices were tampered with to facilitate the explosions.
What happened to the Hezbollah pagers in Lebanon?
About 3:30pm (12:30 GMT), hundreds of pagers all over Lebanon started exploding. Hezbollah released a statement on Tuesday saying two of its fighters and a girl were killed as “pagers belonging to employees of various Hezbollah units and institutions exploded”. The Iran-backed group attributed the pager blasts to Israel, which has been involved in tit-for-tat attacks with Hezbollah across the Lebanon-Israel border since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza. Israel’s military has refused to comment on the explosions. Hezbollah has promised retaliation against Israel.
A Lebanese security source and another source told the Reuters news agency that the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, planted explosives in 5,000 pagers that Hezbollah had ordered months before the explosions. The sources said a code was simultaneously sent to 3,000 of the pagers, triggering the explosions.
While the exact mechanism used for the pager explosions is unclear at the moment, some experts speculate that the radio system that the pagers rely on was hacked, possibly through a doctored code. The batteries of the pagers could have been triggered to overheat, leading to a process called thermal runaway, which in turn caused the pager batteries to explode. [See article which follows from the Washington Post debunking that idea]
Some analysts, including Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former British army officer and chemical weapons expert, have speculated that the pagers may also have been tampered with along the supply chain and wired to explode on command. But Brussels-based military and political analyst Elijah Magnier told Al Jazeera his sources close to the ground in Lebanon had shared details from initial investigations carried out by Hezbollah on pagers that did not explode. Those investigations suggest that Israel placed 1 to 3 grammes (0.04 to 0.11oz) of pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), a powerful explosive, in each device.
Lebanon faces a range of sanctions from the United States, European Union and their Western partners. In addition, the US, United Kingdom and their allies, such as Japan, list Hezbollah among “terrorist” organisations. That means that companies both registered in these domains or trading with these countries are wary of direct transactions, especially in technology, with Hezbollah — and often with Lebanon at all.
In this case, Magnier said, the pagers procured by Hezbollah were with a third party and they sat at a port for three months, awaiting clearances, before they were finally moved to the Lebanese group. Hezbollah suspects that it was during those three months that Israel managed to plant explosives in the devices, the military analyst said. He added that Hezbollah’s investigation so far shows that metal balls were placed around the pager batteries, allowing the explosive force to propel metal fragments outward, “significantly increasing the lethality of the blast”. He added that this was also done during the three months when the shipment was on hold.
But where were the pagers made — and when?
The trademark of Taiwan pager manufacturer Gold Apollo has been identified on the remains of the exploded pagers, which appear to belong to the company’s AR-924 model. On Wednesday, the company released a statement denying that it had manufactured Hezbollah’s pagers and saying it was only its logo that was on the devices.
Instead, the pagers had been built by a Hungarian company called BAC through a licensing deal, the Taiwan firm said. “The design and manufacturing of the products are entirely handled by BAC,” Gold Apollo said in a statement. “We only provide brand trademark authorisation and have no involvement in the design manufacturing of this product.” BAC has not commented so far.
The evidence so far suggests that Hezbollah acquired the pagers around February when the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, ordered members to stop using cellphones because they could be easily intercepted and monitored by Israeli intelligence.
BAC Consulting is based in Hungary’s capital, Budapest. Reuters reported that the stated address for BAC is a peach-coloured building in a residential area. While the company’s name is posted there on an A4 sheet of paper, an anonymous source present at the building told the news agency the company does not have a physical presence at the building despite being registered there.
According to LinkedIn, BAC’s CEO is Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono, whose profile says she has worked for various organisations, including UNESCO. Her profile says: “We offer in-depth consulting guiding our client’s journey toward innovation, sustainability, and equity while ensuring connection, and authenticity. Our main services are business development, management consultancy, strategy and partnership planning.”
Al Jazeera reached out to BAC but did not receive a response.
A couple of items from Al Jazeera about the events of yesterday and today.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/9/18/multiple-explosions-heard-in-lebanon-a-day-after-hezbollah-pager-blasts
Second wave of blasts hits Lebanon as Israel declares ‘new phase’ of war. Health Ministry says 14 people killed, 450 wounded in latest device explosions, which Hezbollah blames on Israel. 9/18/24. Videos included.
At least 14 people have been killed and 450 wounded in Lebanon in a new wave of blasts related to communication devices, the Ministry of Public Health says, a day after thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah detonated across the country. The attacks, which were widely believed to be carried out by Israel against Hezbollah, have raised fears that the two sides’ simmering conflict could escalate into all-out war.
Speaking to Israeli soldiers on Wednesday, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said: “We are at the start of a new phase in the war. It requires courage, determination and perseverance.” He made no mention of the explosions of electronic devices on Tuesday and Wednesday but praised the work of Israel’s army and security agencies, saying, “The results are very impressive.”
Multiple explosions were reported across Lebanon on Wednesday with the state-run National News Agency saying pagers and “devices” exploded in Hezbollah strongholds in eastern and southern Beirut as well as in the eastern region of Bekaa, where three people were wounded. Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV reported explosions in multiple locations, which it said were the result of walkie-talkies detonating.
Al Jazeera’s Ali Hashem, reporting from Tyre in southern Lebanon, witnessed two explosions. “There was a car that exploded just behind us. At the same time, there was an explosion at another place [nearby],” he said. “I’m currently in the middle of the street. There are a lot of ambulances, chaos everywhere.” Several blasts took place simultaneously, Hashem said, similar to the explosions on Tuesday. “But this time, it was mostly walkie-talkies or radios [that exploded],” he said, adding that reports suggested that solar devices and some batteries in cars also detonated. The National News Agency reported that home solar energy systems exploded in several areas of Beirut.
In Wednesday’s attacks, several blasts were heard at a funeral in Beirut for three Hezbollah members and a child killed by exploding pagers the day before, according to journalists with The Associated Press news agency at the scene. An AP photographer in the southern coastal city of Sidon saw a car and a mobile phone shop damaged after devices exploded inside of them. A girl was hurt in the south when a solar energy system blew up, the state news agency reported.
In Beirut, Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan said a blast was reported in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Lebanon’s capital city. The new round of explosions took place a day after pagers exploded nearly simultaneously in locations across Lebanon, killing at least 12 people, including two children, and wounding about 2,800. Hezbollah and the Lebanese government blamed Israel for Tuesday’s attacks.
Israel has not directly commented on the blasts. The attacks have shaken the civilian population with a stream of bloodied people overwhelming hospitals in Hezbollah strongholds of Beirut. Health authorities have called on all available medics to report for duty.
Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s explosions took place after Israel announced the expansion of its war goals to include northern residents returning to their homes near the border with Lebanon. Tens of thousands of people have left northern Israel since the start of the war in Gaza, triggered by Hamas-led attacks on October 7 in southern Israel, where more than 1,100 people were killed and about 250 were taken captive.
Israel has waged a brutal assault on the Gaza Strip since then, killing more than 41,000 people and reducing large swaths of the Palestinian territory to rubble. Since October 8, Hezbollah has engaged in near-daily exchanges of fire with Israeli forces along the Lebanon-Israel border in support of Hamas.
On Wednesday, Hezbollah said Israel was “fully responsible for this criminal aggression” and reiterated it would avenge the latest attacks while saying it would continue its fight against Israel in support of Hamas in Gaza. Cross-border exchanges with Israeli forces were “ongoing and separate from the difficult reckoning that the criminal enemy must await for its massacre”, Hezbollah said.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib warned the “blatant assault on Lebanon’s sovereignty and security” on Wednesday was a dangerous development that could “signal a wider war”. United Nations chief Antonio Guterres called for “maximum restraint”. “The secretary-general urges all concerned actors to exercise maximum restraint to avert any further escalation,” his spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said in a statement.
Hi Eric, just a point on your background summation of the October 6th or 7th incident. Wasn’t that Hamas as opposed to Hezbollah? I also recall Hezbollah being very involved with the US hostage crisis during the Carter administration.
Happy to stand corrected if I’m wrong.
Thank you Jeff! So glad you’re on this story.
I also think your take on Trump and the economy is very interesting - in that he doesn’t want to take in this shit show.
You are correct, but the war with Hezbollah began within 24 hours after the Hamas event, in direct response to the Israeli large scale response.
Hezbollah was not founded till after the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon to eliminate the PLO, well after the Carter administration.
Musical observation about the Second shooting:
There is an album by Bob Dylan titled "John Wesley Harding". The shooter middle name is Wesley. Like the "Dread Pirate Roberts" Wesley.
I haven't listened to the album.
According to wikipedia, track one of side two is "Dear Landlord". Trump is something of a landlord, right?
Track six of side one is "Drifter's escape." The patsy is kind of a drifter, right?
And there are other suggestive titles.
Probably it's just my wild imagination, but I think they like to get inspiration in "pop" culture to do their psyops.
I'm gonna look at the charts of 1967: 10/17 and 11/6 and 11/29, which are the dates of recording of this album. Who knows what I'm finding there.
Unbelievable garbage… I can’t believe Eric you’d promote this Rapaport pro Trump BS. Staged to distract from fake Haitian propaganda ?
Rappoport is not pro Trump, he's one of my closest colleagues and his facts all check out. You are welcome to offer alternative theories.
When did Rappoport say anything good about Trump?
https://planetwavesfm.substack.com/p/another-year-another-war-stefano?utm_source=podcast-email%2Csubstack&publication_id=936745&post_id=137911869&r=1rgjhp&utm_campaign=email-play-on-substack&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true
JEFF STRAHL VIA EMAIL
Per CNN, "How it happened: Hezbollah bought the pagers that exploded in recent months, according to a Lebanese security source. Those devices detonated simultaneously after receiving a message. Explosives were planted next to the battery in each pager and a switch embedded for remote detonation, according to the New York Times”
https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/lebanon-pagers-attack-hezbollah/index.html
The WaPo agrees, adding "Some batteries rely on the devices’ own software to regulate their use and temperature, so it is theoretically possible to hack into a pager and trigger its battery to heat to the point that it explodes, Meier said.
At the same time, videos of the attack posted to social media show the pagers exploding instantaneously, rather than catching fire. Overheating lithium batteries sometimes explode, but also catch fire or throw off streams of superheated material in unpredictable ways.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/09/17/hezbollah-pagers-batteries-explosion-israel-lebanon/
Opinion across a bunch of mainstream media outlets, including Al Jazeera and France 24 is that Hezbollah’s leadership would have a hard time not retaliating in a big way, given how many of its members were targeted and how even their dependents were killed and injured. And given that the Iranian ambassador in Beirut was injured when his pager went off, the Iranian regime would have a hard time stopping Hezbollah or even not acting itself. What’s the astrology, if you can say briefly (or care to say at all)?
Yep, Israeli is on a suicide mission, some people actually believe biblical prophecies and believe they have a key role to play in making it happen. Victims are very dangerous.
JEFF STRAHL VIA EMAIL
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/b1l7itp60
Israel planted explosives in Hezbollah's Taiwan-made pagers, sources say. Senior Lebanese security source says group ordered 5,000 pagers made by Taiwan-based Gold Apollo, which several sources say brought into country in spring
Hezbollah fighters have been using pagers as a low-tech means of communication in an attempt to evade Israeli location-tracking, two sources familiar with the group's operations told Reuters this year.
But the senior Lebanese source said the devices had been modified by Israel's spy service "at the production level.”
"The Mossad injected a board inside of the device that has explosive material that receives a code. It's very hard to detect it through any means. Even with any device or scanner," the source said.
The source said 3,000 of the pagers exploded when a coded message was sent to them, simultaneously activating the explosives.
Another security source told Reuters that up to three grams of explosives were hidden in the new pagers and had gone "undetected" by Hezbollah for months.
Neither Israel nor Gold Apollo immediately responded to Reuters requests for comment.
Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo, based in Taipei.
JEFF STRAHL VIA EMAIL
More shit.
Al Jazeera.
Taiwanese company names European firm it says produced pagers
Gold Apollo, the Taiwanese manufacturer of the pagers linked to the deadly explosions in Lebanon, is saying that it has licensed its trademarked design to another company and that it had “no involvement in the design or manufacturing” of the devices.
“We authorise BAC to use our brand trademark for product sales in specific regions, but the design and manufacturing of the products are entirely handled by BAC,” the company said in a statement, providing the initials of the firm allegedly responsible for producing the devices.
Gold Apollo founder and president, Hsu Ching-Kuang, said BAC is based in Europe, but declined to offer further details on the firm.
“We may not be a large company but we are a responsible one,” he told reporters at Gold Apollo’s offices in New Taipei City. “This is very embarrassing.”
FROM JEFF STRAHL VIA EMAIL
The latest, i’m listening to Al Jazeera right now, there’s a second wave of explosions in Lebanon, at least 9 more dead and 300+ injured. The explosions happened this time not in pagers, but in phones and radios. One explosion took place during a funeral for Hezbollah members who were killed yesterday! Someone is really asking for war.
I think Trump took one look at the real economic situation, both the US and the world, and decided he doesn’t really wanna be in charge when the shit comes down, and used to debate to throw the contest. And the mass media are happily jumping on the Kamala bandwagon. So yes, putting her in. Setting up for what? Or do they believe their own propaganda and don’t see the utter rot which passes off as the global economy? Some stuff i shared with What’s Left?
——————
Hi all, a couple of flashing red signals i saw today. Yes, totally limited to mainstream “economics,” but rather interesting data.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSpOZyXJ750
You Won't Believe What Europes Central Bank Just Did. Eurodollar University, 9/12/24. 20 minutes.
"The ECB cut rates for the second time, as expected, though amidst a strong bond/bund market rally that has now completely un-inverted that yield curve. This comes at a time when major businesses like Volkswagen are thinking about closing down factories due to how much idle capacity they have. What links all of these together, what explains all the facts, is that there was never a global recovery, only a transitory price illusion.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jmWxePZyxY
Bank Balance Sheet Reveals MASSIVE Systemic Stress, Eurodollar University, 9/11/24. 19 minutes.
"It was all banks all day yesterday. Basel rules foul-up. Warren Buffett continuing to dump BofA. Citi dumping on credit. Deutsche unloading CRE, or trying to. JP Morgan downgrading...itself. Most of all Ally Financial admitting unemployment is fast becoming a big problem and right on its balance sheet."
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Again, the analysis is totally limited by a capitalist perspective, blind to both the value dynamics which are the focus of Marx’s crisis theory, as well as global material factors. But again, useful info.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5Lbk5qnFlk
The Debt Crisis Also Presents Great Opportunity For Investors | Gordon Long, Allen Taggert of Thoughtful Money, 9/12/24, An hour and 26 minutes.
"Total US federal debt now stands at $35.34 Trillion, now exceeding US annual GDP by $10 trillion. It has been growing at a faster rate than GDP for many decades. That dynamic shows no signs of reversing or even moderating. And on top of the federal debt lies the borrowing of households, businesses, financial institutions and state & local governments. When you add all that up, the total US debt exceeds $100 trillion. [And global debt is over $350 trillion, up 21% since the start of “COVID.”]
So what does that mean for the future? Are we hurdling towards a sovereign debt crisis, as a number of analysts warn? Or is there reason to hope the economy can handle this debt trajectory? For guidance, we're fortunate to welcome back to the program market analyst Gordon Long of MATASII: Macro Analytics & Technical Analysis Strategic Investment Insight”
The real fireworks start at around 14:00 or so. The explosion in debt has greatly accelerated in the last 5 years. Takes now $1.5 of deficit growth to get $1 growth in GDP!