The great exploding pager psy-op Israel pulled on Hezbollah yesterday is a great example of how the focus of all politics has shifted from the practical world of doing things to the virtual world of saying things. Owning the information space in an effort to win the information war has taken precedent over accomplishing real things in the world of real things, even when it comes to war. Every operation, even those with practical goals, has a public relations element at the center of it.
As is always the case, time will tell if the initial reports are close to reality, but there is no doubt that pagers were exploding, and Israel was responsible. The questions not asked by Western media, much less answered, are why Israel would do this and what did they think they would achieve by it? That is the first clue. The media and their audience just assume it is a good thing and will result in more good things. What those things are and why they are good is not a topic of interest.
It is a clever caper, for sure. The Israelis accessed the supply chain that delivers these devices to Hezbollah. They most likely bribed an official at the Taiwanese plant that makes these things. This gave them access to the shipment, which they then sabotaged with some form of explosive. Then they waited until the devices were deployed and sent the signal to them. The sheer cleverness of it is admirable, so it is easy to see why that is the focus.
That is the thing about this caper. It is mostly a public relations caper, with little practical impact on the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. Sure, Israel won the news cycle for a day or two and the Hezbollah side feels stupid, but by Friday any practical impact is gone, and everything is back to where it was pre-caper. Hezbollah now has a new step in the process, where they inspect their communications devices, something they should have been doing all along.
This is where certain people insist that it was a great scheme because it affected important people. The reality of communications devices is that the closer you are to one, the lower you are down the status ladder. Low level people display their device on their person because that is all they have. Important people have someone who manages the communications gear. You do not call Warren Buffett. Your people reach out to his people to set up a call.
That aside, the shift in focus from practical reality to the abstract reality of public relations is something we see everywhere now. Washington’s war on Russia has mostly been about winning the information war, on the assumption that losing the information war would have a practical impact on Russia. Instead, Russia has lost every round of the media war, often failing to attend the fight, but Russia has seen its economy boom and its standing in the world rise.
In fairness, the schemers in Washington were reasonable to think “wrecking Putin on social media” would be a big win. In their world, getting wrecked on Twitter can have practical consequences. We have gone through a decade of “cancel culture” where people lose their jobs and their lives for imaginary crimes like using anathematized words or holding impure thoughts. In a world where being cancelled is a serious concern, cancelling Putin makes a lot of sense.
That was certainly the thinking inside the Israeli brain trust when they were cooking up this exploding pager scheme. They surely understood that sabotaging pagers would have little impact on Hezbollah. On the other hand, blowing them up like this would make for great memes on social media. The sheer cleverness of it would impress their American audience, who they sense might be bored with them. This caper got the crowd back into their seats for more of the Israel show.
The Roman poet Juvenal famously criticized the Roman people for caring more about the “bread and circuses” than their freedom. This is often twisted around to mean that the rulers relied on bread and circuses to trick the people out of their freedom, but Juvenal was focusing his critique on the people. Radicals of the ideological age have made a similar complaint. Marx famously called the peasants a sack of potatoes because they could not be politicized.
This narcotic of entertainment that troubled Juvenal is now corrupting the political class of the West. They care more about the show of which they are a part, or the show being put on for them by others, than the practical reality of their position. The manufactured reality of politics obscures political reality, not because the political participants cannot see it, but because they do not want to see it. They prefer their manufactured, abstract reality, over the practical reality of their position.
This is why Israel invested in the pager scheme. They understand that practical arguments about the reality on the ground in the Levant will have no impact on Washington or the American public. Similarly, Zelensky understands that he has to keep producing new acts to keep Western politicians amused enough with Project Ukraine to keep the money flowing. Like a Hollywood producer, he tells his generals he needs bigger explosions and bigger drama.
Objective reality has always been the substrate on which human relations operate, so there has always been a gap between the human drama and reality. Human relations, especially politics, are more often than not about what we think ought to happen, rather than what we think will happen. However, necessity has always kept the gap narrow, but that seems to be changing. In fact, it seems that politics is often about broadening that gap between itself and reality.
Reality is that thing that does not go away when you stop believing in it, so this turn from reality will eventually end. Israel cannot stay at war forever with its neighbors, no matter how good the show. The West cannot remain at war with the world, no matter how many times they cancel people they do not like. At some point the theater of politics, the theater of Western public life, must give way to reality and people who prefer reality over self-generated fantasy.
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Apparently, “Hezbollah” in this case were doctors and nurses who used the pagers to communicate in their hospitals, with the exception of American University of Beirut hospital, which retired the old paging system just 2 weeks ago.
Whether this version is the truth or not is hard to tell, but it matches Israeli behavior in Gaza, where hospitals and their staff were prime targets.
Link to American University Hospital ditching pagers two weeks ago? Would be highly relevant
https://x.com/Partisangirl/status/1836088534203318699
Thanks. Maybe they’re not not the most popular people in Beirut now…
I suspect the intent of the pager caper was a psychological blow at the foot soldiers of Hezbollah. Sow FUD among them to weaken the organization and its fighting capacity. In that way it is similar to propaganda directed at fighters that has been an element of war for millennia.
The meme battles are just a sideshow distraction.
Meme battles are extremely important after all we all know that Napoleon was a shortking and Hitler was worst than the devil. But of course you still have to win on the battlefield.
That makes sense if it works, but the results from three years of doing this to Russia say it does not work. In fact, history tells us that efforts to demoralize the enemy never work. In fact, they tend to get the opposite. This is what I find so strange about the thinking behind these psy-op capers. Why do they think they will work?
Much the same for mass civilian bombing campaigns in WWII.
Strengthens resolve, not weakens it.
It’s such a well known response that militaries who do this use “demoralization” as an excuse, not a strategy.
Does it all fell like female bullying?
True. Every day I can go to some corners of the internet and see a bunch of bloodthirsty NAFO psychos posting snuff film with dead Russians. Somehow that hasn’t stopped Russia from advancing and fighting.
All this will do is tell the whole of Lebanese society who their enemy is, because in a very real way they targeted the whole of Labanese society. They won’t back down.
One purpose of the Holocaust industry’s constant was-overdone-decades-ago battering of propaganda into white people is that it serves to sedate our normal moral instincts by hypnotizing most of us into thinking it’s good that Israelis take one truly nihilistically vicious and villainous action like this after another
If pagers can be manipulated, anything can. Including vaccines.
Now that you mention it (the vax), it’s sad how the biggest crime of the 21st century has been largely forgotten.
There is still 75 years to go, calling this the biggest crime of the 21st century is a bit premature.
So far, it certainly is.
Suppressed, not forgotten. It’ll be with us for a long time
Trust.
Every year at this time I would traditionally get a flu shot. This year? How do I know what other special ingredients may be added?
Nah, I think I skip it this year. Life in a distrustful society.
There is some percentage of True Jab Believers still out there. Some of them no doubt in the medical profession. Nurses, say. What if I end up in the hospital for some reason, one of them is attending me, it appears on my chart that I’m unjabbed, and she decides to remedy that without my knowledge? Not far fetched, I think.
Look up Alexis Lorenze.
Allegedly, she was forced to get not one, but three jabs, before a hospital would treat her.
There are before and after pictures of her. Can anyone confirm that the story is accurate?
I’m betting you’ll survive.
WCiv-
There’s been lots of chatter about adding the special sauce to the flu jabs.
There actually was a 4chan post from alleged Moderna scientists that purported to detail oddities in the therapeutic manufacturing process.
Today the pagerbomb, to morrow the phonebomb with code running to detect user wrongthought. Drawbacks include possible detection by dogs or scanners at airports. Islamist dogphobes and dog haters take note if the pagerbombs were made by adding an explosive compound, not by a electronics modification or software hack.
That may be the Israeli (and Ukrainian) plan.
The thing is, I don’t think they realize that AINO’s arsenals are seriously depleted at this point.
I think they also fail to realize exactly how slow, inefficient, and corrupt AINO’s military industry is.
It’s always 1942 and the arsenal of democracy in their minds
Yeah this only works if one accepts that “Hezbollah”=”Anyone in Lebanon”. This will go over well with low-watt Americans and their cartoon, 2D view of the world but for anyone with a clue this was just a disgusting move by a bunch of savages.
2000 wounded is a big deal, this would cause a fair amount of confusion right before you invade……….
It has a psychological impact on Hezbollah for sure. What i wonder is why now and not the moment a invasion happens so to maximise damage. Or they were forced to use this trick now or lose it or if was just for the memes the ukranians should have served as a lesson.
The central question of the pager operation is whether it was a hack or an implant, ie whether they made the lithium batteries explode with software or something physical not part of a normal electronic device was implanted. The media all say it’s the latter and of course they do. Because the former would mean that your cell phone, and possibly laptop, tablet and what have you, can kill or maim you at someone else’s command. And that would be the biggest story of the year: your cell phone is not just their spy, it could also be their assassin… Read more »
Doesn’t matter which. The possibility that your electronics can be detonated still applies with either method.
There’s a huge difference between whether they need to insert something physical or all the hardware to go boom is in place in a standard handheld device, just waiting for some malware they can send. It’s a smaller version of the difference between living on top of a bomb vs they first have to put a bomb in your house
Since deception is at the root of this method, we have no more way of knowing whether the electronics we already possess contain this than the folks in Lebanon did.
Engineers who have specialist knowledge of batteries would be able to gauge that. And unlike two days ago now everyone understands why this is not a marginal risk. Hack or implant is an incredibly important question to answer. There probably won’t be an official answer other than what they’ve already said, “implant”. I’d love to know the real deal
My guess is it will be tracked to a day zero vulnerability and no further. There will be no fingerprints on it. Just an “oops” in some firmware. There were reports that some people felt it heating up first, so probably not explosives.
Out of a few thousand pagers, someone will have forgotten to plug it in overnight. How about the ones that were used on the night shift and placed in chargers?
There is no mystery here. Israel did not crack open the Ark of the Covenant to find a way to magically make pagers go boom. The were able to intercept the shipment, replace it with pagers containing small amounts of explosive rigged to a specific calling number.
So, what’s next? I understand that the powers that be around the globe are looking to rack up sick burns on social media instead of really trying to change things. Someone or something (ideology) is going to ignore the show and become shocking and brutal and get what they want.
What a shame this brings to the IndoEuropean people who once had Alexanders, Tarquins, Martels … … who would find with honor. The degradations we suffer to countenance this small bug minded garbage are without end. This kind of trick is the kind of trick that the mastermind celebrates in moments of great vanity and self congratulation. It only strengthens the resolve of those who were the victims of the trick. Of course they command the hegemon’s trade networks and satellite networks and armaments and his blood and treasure. In the end, they hold a massive advantage in power. Another… Read more »
I remember a caper from a while back where either the FBI or CIA claimed there was a worldwide mafia bust when they got all of them to download an encryption app that was actually created by the American Government with an easy backdoor. The press release said how they captured hundreds of these guys in multiple countries in a monumental sting operation.
A couple days later, no one was talking about it. It makes one wonder if it actually happened, and if it did, how much the authorities jazzed it up for a good story.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/pr/fbi-s-encrypted-phone-platform-infiltrated-hundreds-criminal-syndicates-result-massive
“ The questions not asked by Western media, much less answered, are why Israel would do this and what did they think they would achieve by it?” ————————– Oh jeez – Z, that question was asked and answered long, long ago. The goal is ethnic cleansing of the Palestinkians. (I have no dog in that fight, I hate both sides and hope they kill each other). Recreational killing is on the table and has been for decades. I laughed like hell when some wank at Blab poasted up an excerpt from the Geneva Convention, high lighting this latest action as a… Read more »
You realize, of course, that a significant number of Palestinians are Christians, and that the Ashkenazi are targeting Christians for elimination as well as Muslim.
The wanton disregard for bystanders is typical of the morally depraved Mossad.
“have encrypted and protected communications on par with that of our world leaders”…. like Merkel?
The CIA (we always called them Christians in Action) has done these type of shenanigans for decades. They killed several Hezbollah folks in Lebanon and a couple of Medellin Cartel guys in Colombia with either exploding cell or satellite phones back in the 1990s. What they’d do is send in a team such Delta or Seal Team 6 to the target’s house, sneak in, swap the phones and leave without a trace.
There is nothing new under the sun.
This was neither just for show nor to win a news cycle. This was a useful intelligence operation. The main value is the identification of senior and field grade commanders of Hezbollah. This info will be pieced together over the next few weeks as hospital reports and deaths are analyzed. Of course many will be out of action for a while and some permanently. This will, at the very least, delay any action that Hezbollah was contemplating in Lebanon or northern Israel. A secondary effect is to make Hezbollah’s internal operations more cumbersome. For example, procurement now becomes a more… Read more »
All of these claims are post hoc justifications. Hezbollah has over 100,000 members. Israel knows the key players and has no reason to know about street level members. As far as disrupting their operations, that will be resolved in a few days. The imaginary psychological impact exists only in the imagination of the West.
We don’t know how many children and women and innocent bystanders were maimed in this, but I suspect it’s quite a few. We don’t know that every single one of these pagers went to a confirmed Hezbollah fighter, and I actually doubt that is true at all. We all know that Israel has lied about targeting fighters and terrorists for decades. Their definition of a Hamas fighter, for example, seems to be a fighting age man that they arrested. Ultimately, this isn’t that different from someone putting a bomb in a crowded marketplace. This stunt seems aimed at western Israel… Read more »
That’s a much better explanation than any I came up with. Nine killed out of “thousands”? That’s a rate that would make jogger-Americans hang their heads in shame. I disagreed with Ritter’s take, that it’s simply modern war. It’s a stunt, nothing more.
Anyone else notice that despite people not knowing yet whether it was “just” a hack, people still can’t pull their noses out of their phones?
Vox Day has a good description of the likely unintended consequences of this act. I will add one more. Airport security will get more difficult. Many people will be irritated over this and, over time, will come to blame Israel for it. Already many Americans now have a jaundiced view of Israel, mainly do to the past 25 years of mechanations on the part of AIPAC and the endless wars for endless peace pushed by the neocons, the majority of whom are members of the tribe.
The pager cleverness is actually not admirable, because many innocent people were killed or injured. Jackals and Hyenas are clever, but I don’t admire them.
Israel cannot do anything without the U.S., so our government knew or helped with this pager attack. Same thing regarding Ukraine with bombing civilian targets. It’s sad how low our government has fallen.
Here’s a couple ideas to ponder: They pulled off the pager OP, but got caught on Oct 7 with their pants around their ankles.
Had they collected all the Intel off the pagers, so no need to risk being found out?
And the bonus round: No one had any curiosity about what was inside of an important piece of equipment?
I read the company was in Taiwan but that they were contracted out to a Hungarian company who actually made them. Just one more reason a country should make their own stuff. If it’s not a Chinese counterfeit, it has spyware and if not, now you have to consider it could blow up on you.. This was terrorism, at least as far as terrorism can be done by a state. There was video showing one of these blowing up at a supermarket and injuring the clerk waiting on the guy with the pager. How many of these guys were in… Read more »
Most likely the latter, for most of them.
The pagerbomb caper has taken a new turn with fingers being pointed at a “Hungarian” firm, Bac Consulting KFT. The CEO is said to be one Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono. Check out the turdglobalist appearances.