darkcalling

He believes they remain secure even after the successful assassination of Nasrallah. He discussed in an interview with Judge Napolitano that the attack was the result of a humint breach (he saw the fact that Netanyahu approved it from the US the opportunity presenting itself through new intel) and stressed that it’s hard to get senior people to do things like never use cell phones (Note that an Iranian Republican Guard members were also killed in the same meeting; it’s possible the breach came from the Iran side).

This tracks with my thoughts.

And that interview was well worth the listen.

What do people make of the fact that every time they do this and claim most penetrated and that they hit objectives on the ground causing destruction and then in the US it's just denial, that 99% of them were stopped actually and the only ones that got through hit a Palestinian man walking his dog or some shit.

On the one hand I get they want to make the zionists look strong, but on the other wouldn't it lend itself to greater urgency and frothing rage if they met the Iranian narrative half-way and said that actually a number got through and damaged a fighter plane or two and therefore this is why we must immediately approve another 500 billion for the arms manufacturers?

Is it just that the zionists cannot admit that the iron dome failed and the western sources have to tail them and repeat whatever they say verbatim despite it being contrary to the interests of the warmongers?

Or is Iran inflating its numbers a bit?

Because thinking about it, if Iran's attack were to mostly fail or get intercepted and they don't want escalation (clearly they don't, all along they've been trying their hardest to back away) wouldn't it be in their interests rather than admit their attack failed and that they have to up the ante to instead just lie, say it worked instead? That way they can save face and act like they achieved something while not actually really provoking the zionists much thus preventing escalation?

I don't know what to believe here. There are too many parties who benefit from lies out of either end for me to decide. I'm sure they didn't get 100% interception rate but Iran's claims of taking out multiple F-35s also seems rather rosy.

That Israel is not interested in compromise, only escalation, and that this is a fight to death – not just against Israel but against the West that sponsors Israel.

That Israel’s ideological extremism – its Jewish supremacism, and its endless craving for Lebensraum

I suppose those who would stand to suffer most from seeing this would be most reluctant to act but to me it's been obvious based off the fact the leader of the zionist regime is very likely headed for prison and disgrace the moment the crisis ends that there are no off-ramps and never were. Add on that the nature of the colony is to do just this and its simply speeding up its long-term goals to exploit a crisis that they probably let happen (Oct 7) on purpose for their own ends and well the picture is pretty clear. We're basically a year in and by the time they started antagonizing Iran it became obvious they were fishing for a larger fight to draw the US in.

So not fighting them is pointless in my opinion. Conserving strength only works if you can actually conserve it. If they start decapitating your leadership structure using unprecedented mass supply-chain interdiction terror attacks it's time to get things into gear because they've declared war on you. You can't conserve your strength against an enemy like this, you can only lie down before them while they murder all your leadership and anyone else they can and are great at identifying sadly as they are a very good hacking regime.

There are basically two choices here in light of the reality and one is to stop any antagonism of the zionist entity, stop firing rockets, stop trying to drive their settlers out, stop trying to tie up their forces in the north to help Hamas in the south and basically take off your militant clothes, bury your weapons and plan to revisit the matter in 4-5 years as otherwise you're just lying down to be slaughtered which makes them stronger while you grow weaker. The other is to acknowledge the reality, acknowledge you're in a life or death struggle, that by attacking them as they engage in a genocide and by virtue of them striking back and decapitating your leadership in a mass terrorist attack and to fully commit. To hunker down, to distribute command structures, to not wait for them but go on the offensive against them and their backers.

Those are the only two logical choices. I can see why Hassan Nasrallah didn't move quickly, he struck me as a thoughtful man. I really can. He had such responsibility but the pager attack should have shown that they were not going to stop or back down or negotiate, that they had good intelligence, that they'd penetrated everything, that they probably knew everything including locations of command bunkers and that it was a now or never. At that point they'd tried to kill him and he and those around him couldn't do enough to keep him alive from their second attack even knowing it was imminent. This is the tactical reality they exist in. But Nasrallah was a good man, a man who didn't want to bring more bloodshed. And for it he was killed in a bunker that wasn't enough to protect him, along with allegedly we are now learning an Iranian official.

I am deeply suspicious that the Iranian official led the zionists to where Nasrallah was, unwittingly of course. But it does raise an interesting if disturbing thought and that is what if there are those highly placed in the Iranian government who want to conspire with the zionist entity to remove their conservative and hard-liners. To sue for a secret peace with the entity as well as their backers by making sure all those who would get in the way of them lying down before the west would be out of the picture beforehand. There is no evidence for this as of yet and we shouldn't really seriously consider it, but the fact is the zionists do have an incredible penetration of Iran on an intelligence level as well as that of the rest of the resistance and it's a damn big problem.

People talk of the zionist entity's fall being imminent, to the contrary I think they've not been stronger in some time. They're butchering their enemies while those enemies stay their hand because the US is near at hand glaring all the while also lying and claiming peace will come soon to keep their hands stayed. Yes it might be the beginning of a shift of public opinion in the west against them but they could care less. And it is a problem for the latter end of this decade or next. The zionist public opinion apparatus is so strong and entrenched I wouldn't be shocked that once the genocide is over their approval numbers go up and there's never a growing movement in the west to boycott, divest, and sanction them. The far right will recruit from those disillusioned by this, spread actual anti-semitism which the zionists will be gleeful to see. It's all going better to plan than it has in a long while for them. Public sentiment against them doesn't matter, it just pulls their people together more cohesively and they see it as a tool to recruit more Jews from abroad to them.

I am so sick of this shit. Lebanon would be devastated in a war with the zionist entity but they are being anyways. Hezbollah should stop turning the other cheek. It's obvious Benny is not going to stop until he gets a war or destroys his enemies because he's going to prison once the crisis is over so he can only escalate. The US meanwhile is putting on a pathetic show chasing after him pretending to beg and plead for peace while having no intention of making them stop and being there to support them with weapons and money 100% of the way and the zionist entity knows it.

Hasan Nasrallah seems an intelligent, reasonable man from what I know of him. Restrained even. But what credibility does the axis of resistance have if they allow this to continue? It's not like the US is going to force "israel" to stop. It's not like they are going to stop on their own. They could just keep on pushing the goalposts until they actually succeed in decapitating and destroying most of the resistance outside of Iran with these attacks (all while the US sobs for calm and promises they're on the right track to peace after a year of this genocide and aggression) or at least put them on such an awful foot that they can't stand up very long in a war.

I increasingly believe it's a question of whether they sit there and let themselves be destroyed to be seen as noble and peaceful victims who liberals can have a high opinion of and hope that somehow translates to a movement to actually isolate and destroy the zionist colony in the long-term (with hopes something happens in the medium-term that means the zionists eventually get tired of bombing after weakening their enemies badly and decide not to do any annexing today) OR to finally realize this isn't going to be resolved peacefully except through their deaths or total submission to the zionist entity and they stand up and strike back hard. Which yes will probably draw the US in but could also (who knows) actually force the US hand and cause them to force the entity to stop and make peace.

I just don't see a way out that doesn't end with the genocide of Palestinians being completed plus most of the axis of resistance being devastated to the point of needing years to recover their operational abilities and all the while being under threat of infiltration and spying and more bombs put in electronics.

This is awful. I feel awful. I wish Russia would give Yemen some long-range weapons. I wish they'd give Lebanon some strong anti-air systems to take down the isn'treali air force which is the only thing allowing them to be terrorists with impunity. Shoot down the planes and they can't do anything but use ground forces which will lose badly. That's the real balance of power here and the real problem is those planes. Someone needs to give the axis of resistance the ability to down them en mass.

I'm positive they're going to side with the west enough to matter in the coming struggle. Oh they'll keep their options open, they'll pretend to be "independent" because it makes the west court them more and lets them play both sides but when it comes down to it and the west gives them a knife to plant in China's back for minimal benefit of their own they'll do it in a heartbeat. They see their rise as tied to destroying China, as a zero-sum calculation, either they take industry from China and become a great power or China retains it and they get nothing.

They labor under the same kind of ignorance that the bourgeoisie of Russia had after the USSR was illegally dissolved, namely that they would be let into the big anglo bourgeoisie club and rise to the heights of it as equals. But that moment where they realize otherwise could be decades away, the west has utility in keeping them a country with a vast gulf between the workers and the wealthy and in keeping them thinking its in their own interest to side with the west enough of the time to cause troubles for China, for Russia, for the emerging anti-imperialist world order.

India is IMO a fair-weather enemy for the anti-imperialist bloc. They're not like the US or Europe where there is little in common and a direct threat to their hegemony from the rise of BRICS+ but when the going gets tough they'll assume a neutral pose or do some things to appeal to the anti-imperialist bloc before tacking back again towards sabotaging it.

Short of the US getting pulled into an extended war elsewhere it cannot extricate itself from until China is too much of a peer power to even risk a fight it is going to fight China as part of the larger push of decoupling, containment, humiliation. Almost certainly over Taiwan, they don't need to win per se, just inflict damage, bleed China and rally the western world and any hangers-on (India probably) to their side for sanctions and cutting economic and cultural ties as they do to China and Chinese people and culture what they did to Russia with the Ukraine war but much worse.

China just needs to be prepared and accept this. They need to prepare for war, they need to prepare for the possibility of cold war, of being completely cut off from the west and make plans for how they'll restructure their economy to survive that if it comes. They need to build out their nuclear deterrent as much as possible to deter the US from a decapitating strike attempt and they need to prepare for a much more hostile and western empowered India on their border.

Somewhat. Russia doesn't produce a lot of the things the US produces. For wheat and certain other things sure, but for soybeans, for fresh green vegetables, for nuts, for fruit? A lot of that stuff Russia doesn't have the right climate for whereas the US has a uniquely diverse climate that allows them to from California to the plains and mid-west to the south to the northeast grow a variety of cultivars spanning everything from cheap corn and wheat to most every type of green vegetables, roots, nuts, fruits, etc. California alone has enough fertile soil and farmland to feed hundreds and hundreds of millions of people, maybe a billion if supplemented with grain staples from elsewhere.

As I said China won't starve thanks to their own work in this area and their friends in Russia but well the Soviet people didn't starve but they also didn't have supermarkets with fresh tropical fruit or often an abundance of typical fruits and certain types of vegetables were not in the fullest supply due to the constraints of what they could grow. Agriculture has advanced somewhat but there are still limits and being cut off from the US and its incredible amount of produce will certainly drive up prices for Chinese people. This is why I think the CPC had that push to reduce food waste. If this comes to pass the Chinese people will need to be a bit more frugal with food.

For China to truly replace the US they need to free from the grips of US hegemony and maintain good trade relations with parts of the global south in Asia and Latin America which is still a work in progress. As I said as long as US controls global finance they can cut off trade or make it very expensive and for perishable goods like food that's a real problem because you can't afford another stop in your supply chain in another intermediate country and routing through shell companies for all of this stuff and even for stuff you can it introduces another point of spoilage and rot.

Consider that Russia still trades with the west and even sells them vital materials like titanium and winter gas and we’re 2 years in now to the conflict.

I think it depends entirely on whether the US cuts China off first. China needs US food to enjoy a higher quality of living and the US exports a lot to them. If that continues China has reason not to because they want the food supply to continue. They won’t face famine or mass starvation or anything but quality of life would badly dip in that area without US food exports and if the US does that Europe may follow.

If China is cut off anyways from US and European food exports then they have less reason not to act. Sadly even if they act it likely won’t really destroy the west. It’ll hurt the consumer market and drive prices through the roof for electronics among other things and cause some shortages but it’s likely the US will establish alternative supply lines through Indian middlemen (India it turns out is selling ammo to Italy which is handed directly to Ukraine and they know about this and are fine with it) just as Russia has done.

China also doesn’t have alternative markets for goods. Their economy will be in huge trouble if they lose the US and Europe (and if they lose the US they lose their vassal the EU). Africa becoming large enough to buoy them is still a decade away or more.

So China has no way of shutting out the US while remaining open to the rest of the world. The US by contrast has decades of experience doing sanctions and tracking supply chains and as long as they control SWIFT and have dollar hegemony they can force others to comply to enough of a degree that China is probably hurt a bit worse in a vacuum.

Sorry to say but not great opsec by Hezbollah. I get not opening all of them but they should have opened some at random just to check for the possibility of electronic hardware bugs. Unless it was packed into the lithium cells themselves which might be possible. Heck for all we know they found a way to mix explosive compounds into the lithium itself in a way not visible by physical inspection and only by chemical analysis and perhaps subjecting them to a higher than normal voltage or something triggers the reaction.

Edit I really am going to lean on the idea of either some sort of contaminant introduced into the lithium cells designed to make them more dangerous and likely to explode rather than just burn or some sort of explosive compound mixed in with them that required the battery be overloaded for it to go off.

Lithium batteries can be made to explode under the right conditions.

There's one of two things going on here:

1. The pagers were perfectly normal off the shelf pagers, maybe with some minor flaw to safety or charging systems but nothing that was intentionally introduced. In this case the zionists found a way to hack the pagers (or potentially cell towers to broadcast something that causes the condition) to induce conditions leading to a battery fire/explosion. I don't know enough about lithium batteries to say whether it's suspicious so many of them exploded instead of catching fire though reports say at least some people noticed them getting strangely hot and discarded them which does suggest lithium battery overload.

2. The zionists knew about their use of pagers and in some way intercepted or replaced shipment of the ones they received with a batch that could be triggered to explode. For plausible deniability I'm guessing it was still a battery explosion rather than micro-explosives but we'll have to see if any more info comes out.

Either one is problematic for Hezbollah's communications though at least 2 can be addressed by attempting to do more secure sourcing (e.g. getting Iran to get a direct shipment through an intermediary from a Chinese firm and securing that to be shipped directly to Lebanon). If it's 1 there's not much they can do other than do an investigation on exactly how it happened and contact the manufacturers and hope one of them responds by offering a fixed model not vulnerable to this technique.

And there it is, the NATO-sexual weirdos come out to defend their precious imperialist war of aggression.

This makes two attempts on heads of state (or potential ones) by NATO loving /r/neoliberal types with the attack on the PM/president of Slovakia just because they expressed skepticism of supporting the Nazis in Ukraine.

Oh phew. That's always good news. But it shows the US isn't backing down or changing in the least. It's still the same shameless hegemon it was when it killed Allende and installed Pinochet 50 years ago. I wonder if they got tipped off by friends in Russia or elsewhere or if this really was done entirely domestically. Either way good job.