By Jamal Kanj
Is there a connection between the original timing of the leaflets and the detonation of the pagers?
Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet has approved a plan to wage a war on Lebanon under the pretext of returning Israeli settlers to their colonies in the northern part of historical Palestine.
Thursday, 19 September 2024 —
Israeli soldiers operating in Gaza city, July 28, 2024. (Erik Marmor/Flash90)
As Israeli ministers, generals, and academics bay for a decisive new phase in the war, this is what Operation Starvation and Extermination would look like.
The date is October, November, or December 2024, or maybe early 2025. The Israeli military has just launched a new operation throughout northern Gaza — “Operation Order and Clean-up,” we’ll call it. The army orders the temporary evacuation of all Palestinian residents north of the Netzarim Corridor “for their personal safety,” explaining that “the IDF is expected to take significant action in Gaza City in the coming days, and wants to avoid harming civilians.”
In this week’s Calendar of Racism and Resistance, we note the aftermath of August’s riots and the arrests and sentencing of the far-right agitators. The Commons Library report ‘Policing responses to the Summer 2024 riots’, which terms them ‘anti-immigration’, but fails to call them out as racist, shows that since 30 August, 1,280 people have been arrested, with 796 people charged. The longest sentence of 9 years, has gone to a 27-year-old who added fuel to a bin fire outside the Holiday Inn Express in Manvers, Rotherham, housing hundreds of asylum seekers. The council leader is now asking the government not to renew the contract for asylum-seeker housing at the Holiday Inn because of the concerns of the wider residents of Manvers. Thus, the extremists set the limits on humanitarianism.
As we near the one-year anniversary of the genocide in Gaza, protests are being planned around the country. Many people are joining protests at the Labour Conference in Liverpool this weekend, and demonstrations are planned in towns and cities across the UK.
Pepe Escobar
And Russia is fighting an existential war for the survival of the Motherland – what it has done repeatedly over centuries.
This ain’t no party
This ain’t no disco
This ain’t no fooling around
No time for dancin’
Or lovey-dovey
I ain’t got time for that now
Talking Heads, Life During Wartime
First we had action: President Putin – cool, calm, collected – warns that any attack on Russia with long-range NATO missiles will be an act of war.
Niniko Morbedadze (Georgia), The Orange Clouds on the Boundary, 2018.
Dear Friends,
Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
On 13 September, at a conclave in Washington, DC, US President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer indicated that it would be acceptable for Ukraine to fire missiles, provided by the West, into Russian territory. No official decision has been announced as of yet, but it is clear where the conversation among North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) member states is headed. After Starmer – whose approval rating with voters sits at 22% – returned to London, his foreign secretary David Lammy told the press that the UK government is in conversation with other allies about lifting restrictions on Ukraine’s use of UK-provided Storm Shadow missiles into Russia. Sir John McColl, a retired senior UK army officer, went further, stating that these missiles would eventually be used against Russia, yet – by themselves – they would not enable Ukraine to prevail. In other words, knowing full well that these missiles will not change the tenor of the war, these men (Biden, Starmer, and McColl) are willing to risk deepening the conflict.
When I’ve had conversations about the commons with right-leaning people (and sometimes cynical people on the left too), a typical response might be something along the lines of: ‘don’t waste your time trying to build a more democratic, sustainable or peaceful society. It won’t work, because humans are inherently selfish, greedy and competitive’. This Darwinian approach is echoed by mainstream economics – humans are independent, self-interested creatures, but billions of small, selfish acts actually produce the most productive economy and wealthiest society in the long-run.
The NSA’s “Equation Group” is apparently behind the infection with malware of hard drive firmware on computers used by nations considered “enemies” by the United State. The installation of the malware is believed to have required access to trade secrets of IT manufacturers as well as physical access to the soon-to-be infected computers. Popular Science in their article “The World’s Most Sophisticated Malware Ever Infects Hard Drive Firmware“suggests that the NSA intercepted computers in transit through global logistical chains.
My column in the Deccan Herald newspaper on India’s fractured West Asian policies:
Deccan Herald, September 18, 2024
India’s military support to Israel is a hideous mistake
Doesn’t the government realise that this is adding to the growing perception internationally that the current government is ‘Islamophobic’ and ‘anti-Muslim’?
M K Bhadrakumar
It came as a disappointment that the Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud dismissed a joint petition filed by a distinguished group of intellectuals that the supply of arms from India to the Israeli military during the Gaza war is in violation India’s obligations under international law coupled with Articles 14 and 21 read with 51(c) of the Constitution.
The petitioners pleaded that the court had on previous occasions held that India is under obligation to interpret domestic law in the light of the obligations under the conventions and treaties that it has both signed and ratified. However, the apex court took note that this is an issue of foreign policy. The government is off the hook…
Read more at: https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/indias-military-support-to-israel-is-a-hideous-mistake-3195471
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… & Hamas spells out the Resistance strategy: to break the enemy’s political will just as they broke their military will.
Israel explodes pagers all over Lebanon, wounding thousands and killing at least 10. How did they do it? Why? Why now? What benefits did it bring, and at what cost? Also: fighting continues in West Bank and Gaza; Sinwar sends a message to al-Houthi.
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Three articles published over recent weeks and months demolish the EU Commission’s and New Zealand government’s proposals for deregulating new GMOs made with techniques such as gene editing. They show why the proposals, which would remove safety checks and labelling from a new generation of GMOs, turn their back on scientific knowledge as well as democratic principles. For example, in an excellent and fully referenced article aptly titled “Let’s cut the crap on gene technology”, molecular biologist Prof Jack Heinemann, himself a genetic engineer who makes extensive use of gene editing, says society should be asking itself why it needs to trade the security of its GMO regulations for unsecured promises from the speculative visions of genetic engineers. Prof Heinemann takes apart four myths that the advocates for deregulation promote to justify their aims and accuses them of “gaslighting the public”.
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A further update from Al Mayadeen: Security sources revealed to Al Mayadeen that the Israeli Mossad and military intelligence were behind the terrorist attack by rigging the IC (Integrated Circuit) units in the pagers.
The sources said that the explosives cannot be detected through through regular scanning equipment, adding that the detonation took place through a message relayed by advanced technology that activated the explosive material.
Sources further explained, “It wasn’t the pagers’ batteries that created the blast, rather the lithium in them that caused the detonation.”
Moreover, turned-off pagers and older models did not explode.
Regarding the detonation, roughly four seconds after beeping upon text message delivery, devices automatically exploded, whether or not they were opened to check the message.
The explosive material was designed specifically for this mission, with the ability to pass through scanning equipment available even in other countries and airports without being detected.
The security source further emphasized that the devices were made to kill, especially if the pager was waist-strapped, and that “Israel” has violated all red lines in security wars through this aggression.
Update: There seems to be two, very different theories as to what happened; the first, that somehow Israel could programme the batteries remotely to explode and second, that the pagers were preloaded with explosives in Taiwan during manufacture by the Taiwanese compamy Gold Apollo who deny that they made the pager in question. B
“Israel” chose to detonate the rigged pager devices in Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday, fearing that Hezbollah may have uncovered its covert plan, Axios reported citing three US officials.
“It’s barbarism. I see it coming masqueraded under lawless alliances and predetermined enslavements. It may not be about Hitler’s furnaces, but about the methodical and quasi-scientific subjugation of Man. His absolute humiliation. His disgrace”
Odysseas Elytis, Greek poet, in a press conference on the occasion of receiving the Nobel Prize (1979)
The famous German sociologist discusses the recent elections in eastern Germany, the need to return to the nation-state, left-wing communitarianism, and the shortfalls of right-populism
By Thomas Fazi
Sep 8, 2024
English translation of an interview that Wolfgang Streeck gave to Die Zeit.
Wolfgang Streeck is a German sociologist and political economist, emeritus director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne. Streeck’s work focuses on the tensions between capitalism and democracy, particularly how economic systems impact social and political structures. His notable books include Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, where he explores the long-term consequences of neoliberal policies. Streeck is widely recognised for his contributions to discussions on the future of capitalism in advanced economies.
Members of the London Assembly, the elected body that scrutinises the activities of London Mayor Sadiq Khan, are planning to hold hearings on public order policing in October.
Israel was most probably responsible for creating a spectacular attack on Hezbollah, by technologically getting their individual pagers or communication devices to explode. It does not look like a software hack. It looks like a small explosive device or material that reacts to heating up, was included in those pagers. Nobody doubts the responsible actor. (more…)
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A massive attack targeting pagers left hundreds of Lebanese citizens injured.
The attack is reportedly an Israeli cyberattack, though investigations are still ongoing.
Dr. Firas al-Abiad, Lebanon’s Caretaker Minister of Public Health, reported that the cyber attack targeting pagers, has so far killed 8 people, and approximately 2,750 injuries, with around 200 in critical condition. The injured are being treated across 100 hospitals.
UPDATE
The Islamic Resistance in Lebanon released a statement holding “Israel” “fully responsible for this criminal aggression” after “thoroughly reviewing all the current facts, data, and available information regarding the treacherous attack that occurred this afternoon.”
The statement highlighted that the Israeli attack, “which also targeted civilians, resulted in the martyrdom of several people and the injury of many others.” The Resistance also reaffirmed its unwavering support for the Palestinian resistance and Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied Wes Bank.
The statement concluded by vowing that the “treacherous and criminal enemy will undoubtedly face its just punishment for this heinous attack, in ways both expected and unforeseen.”
In the shadow of Russian power, Europe is faltering. Germany and NATO’s military backwardness in the face of Russia is a wake-up call, revealing the flaws in a security that seemed unshakeable. The consequences of such vulnerability are abysmal, threatening to plunge the region into the darkness of instability and war.
The New Dark Age 