More fallout from the pager/walkie-talkie attacks

The New Neo Posted on by

The more I think about it, the more audacious and astounding Israel’s recent attack on Hezbollah operatives seems. There’s little doubt this has been the largest and most precisely targeted attack on a terrorist group in history. Brilliantly planned and executed, the modus operandi ensures that there was very little collateral damage. It’s almost impossible to imagine a more targeted attack on terrorists.

And yet it’s drawing criticism from those who already hate Israel. Ironically, the same people who think Israel’s more conventional military efforts in Gaza have too high a ratio of citizens to terrorists also can’t stand this ratio which is extremely small. For example:

“This attack clearly and unequivocally violates international humanitarian law and undermines U.S. efforts to prevent a wider conflict,” Ocasio-Cortez stated. “Congress needs a full accounting of the attack, including an answer from the State Department as to whether any U.S. assistance went into the development or deployment of this technology.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which was among the organizations that blamed Israel for being attacked on October 7, called for the Biden administration “to condemn the Israeli government for killing children and maiming numerous civilians in Lebanon by detonating bombs reportedly placed in pagers without any regard for innocent life.”

Hezbollah has been lobbing rockets into Israel for years and has stepped it up post-10/7 to the point where many thousands of Israelis have had to flee their homes in the north for nearly a year, with no end in sight. The attacks by Hezbollah are terrorism, and have no military targets. They recently killed 12 children on a soccer field.

From Israel’s defenders:

“If Israel was responsible, then on available information these seem to be incredibly precise. Rules on targeting are principally necessity, distinction and proportionality,” Natasha Hausdorff, a barrister in the United Kingdom and legal director of UK Lawyers for Israel, told JNS.

“It is hard to imagine a better means of targeting Hezbollah operatives, whoever is behind the exploding devices,” Hausdorff said. “I would ask these individuals which international law they claim was violated.”

There is no such claim that is valid, but that doesn’t matter to Israel-haters.

I have some theories, though, about why this particular attack makes a lot of people uneasy, even those who acknowledge that it isn’t a violation of the laws of war, and that Hezbollah operatives are terrorists. The first involves its newness; there is something frightening about an attack that seems like something out of a science fiction action film. The second involves the obviously grisly aspect of the maiming that is involved, in which terrorists lost hands, eyes, and genitalia. The third involves the mechanism of delivery: communication devices. We can identify, because even though most of us don’t have pagers or walkie-talkies, we have cellphones that we carry around on our persons, especially in pockets. There’s been a lot of speculation on whether this could be done by China with cellphones, for example. Lastly, there’s a way in which it feeds into classic anti-Semitic memes of Jews as being diabolically clever and capable of nefarious action at a distance.

Israel is condemned by many people no matter what it does, but it’s in a fight for its very survival and it will do what it needs to do.

Until now it’s been assumed that the pagers were ordered through a foreign company – variously reported as having been in Taiwan and/or Hungary – and shipments were somehow intercepted and the explosives were added. But a competing explanation is that Hezbollah actually got pagers that were manufactured by Israelis, who set up a shell company for that purpose quite some time ago. From a story in the NY Times:

Even before Mr. Nasrallah decided to expand pager usage, Israel had put into motion a plan to establish a shell company that would pose as an international pager producer.

By all appearances, B.A.C. Consulting was a Hungary-based company that was under contract to produce the devices on behalf of a Taiwanese company, Gold Apollo. In fact, it was part of an Israeli front, according to three intelligence officers briefed on the operation. They said at least two other shell companies were created as well to mask the real identities of the people creating the pagers: Israeli intelligence officers.

B.A.C. did take on ordinary clients, for which it produced a range of ordinary pagers. But the only client that really mattered was Hezbollah, and its pagers were far from ordinary. Produced separately, they contained batteries laced with the explosive PETN, according to the three intelligence officers.

The pagers began shipping to Lebanon in the summer of 2022 in small numbers, but production was quickly ramped up after Mr. Nasrallah denounced cellphones.

Astounding. Israel has also said it has other tricks up its sleeve:

“We still have many capabilities that we have not yet activated,” Lt. Gen. Halevi assured Wednesday.

I have to imagine that this possibility strikes fear into not just Hezbollah, but terrorists all over the Arab world. It doesn’t seem like empty bragging at this point, does it?

The Sean Combs sex trafficking case

The New Neo Posted on by

I have zero wish to dive too deeply into the details of the case against Sean “Diddy” Combs. The allegations are incredibly sordid, and similar to those against Epstein.

But Combs is an extremely famous, successful, and fabulously wealthy man. So here’s some of the story so far, if you’re interested:

Hip-hop’s “Bad Boy” billionaire Sean “Diddy” Combs is drawing comparisons to the late sex-trafficking financier Jeffrey Epstein, who used his power and connections to lure young women and girls to a private island, allegedly along with a network of wealthy friends.

Now Combs is facing federal sex trafficking charges himself along with racketeering and other counts.

His arrest at a New York City hotel came six months after Homeland Security agents raided his mansions in Miami and Los Angeles and nearly a year after a series of explosive lawsuits began naming him as an alleged sex trafficking and domestic abuser, claims apparently supported, in part, by the leak of security video showing an assault on his ex, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, in a hotel hallway.

“This is like Epstein 2.0, if you think about it,” said David Gelman, a New Jersey-based defense attorney and former prosecutor. “You have a guy who is extremely rich and extremely powerful, just like Jeffrey Epstein was. You have him being charged with allegations that are inhumane and unheard of against women and potential minors for sex trafficking and sexually deviant acts, and the similarities are uncanny.”

Supposedly there are also videos.

Combs is being held without bail at the moment.

On “creating” stories: J. D. Vance

The New Neo Posted on by

I was speaking recently to a Democrat I know who is angry about the “eating cats and dogs” remark of Trump’s for a number of reasons. One of those many reasons this person gave – and the one I’m going to focus on in this post – was that, in a later interview, J. D. Vance had actually admitted to lying about the story and not caring that it was a lie.

This was an accusation I hadn’t yet heard. The person to whom I was talking had an actual quote from Vance, though, which went like this: “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do … ”

It seemed likely to me that what Vance meant there was “create a news story” by bringing it up in a way that would get more media attention. But I didn’t know, because I hadn’t listened to the quote. So I went looking for a clip. Coverage was mostly of the “see, Vance admits he’s lying!” variety (see this sort of thing, for example).

But Politico managed to show the quote in context. Here’s a transcript I made of the following video:

VANCE: The media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about the cat memes. If I have to …

BASH: [interrupts] But it wasn’t just a meme [unintelligible word] …

VANCE: … create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do, Dana, because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast.

BASH: You just said that this is a story that you …

VANCE: [overtalks] Yes!

BASH: … created. So, so the [shakes head] eating dogs and cats thing is not [he starts overtalking] accurate.

VANCE … [starts while Bash is still talking] We, we are creating … [closes eyes and shakes head “no” in some annoyance] Dana, it comes from first-hand accounts from my constituents. I say that we’re “creating a story” meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it. I didn’t create twenty thousand illegal migrants coming into Springfield, thanks to Kamala Harris’ policies. Her policies did that but yeah, we created the actual focus that allowed the American media to talk about this story and the suffering caused by Kamala Harris’ policies.

Here’s a longer clip of the interview, in case you’re interested:

I think this is a good illustration of how so many people come to hate Trump and Vance. The use of these truncated quotes, over and over, by the media as well as Democrat candidates and spokespeople, has created a very strong perception amounting almost to a certainly in many people’s minds that Trump and Vance and anyone who supports them are simply awful people – that the candidates are diabolical racists who lie and lie and lie and aren’t even ashamed of it.

This edifice of perception has been built, brick by brick by brick, over the course of many years. There are thousands of such bricks, and if you knock one down, there are plenty of others to shore up the building of belief. To argue in a manner that could make a dent in such beliefs, a person would have to knock down hundreds of such bricks, which would take an incredible amount of time and effort. And it would take remarkable and unusual patience in listening on the part of the Trump/Vance hater, as well. How many people are willing to go through that? Very very few.

Iran is playing the election interference game, big time

The New Neo Posted on by

Iran seems to be really, really reluctant to allow Trump to win the election. Now the FBI has announced that one of Iran’s efforts to thwart him involved attempting to enlist Biden aides by enticing them with hacked information:

The hackers sent emails in late June and early July to people who were associated with Biden’s campaign before he dropped out. The emails “contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails,” according to a U.S. government statement.

The announcement is the latest effort to call out what officials say is Iran’s brazen, ongoing work to interfere in the 2024 election, including a hack-and-leak campaign that the FBI and other federal agencies linked last month to Tehran. The Justice Department has been preparing charges in that breach, The Associated Press has reported.

Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post were among the outlets who received the communications from Iran, but they’re not saying what was revealed.

Of course, we have no reason to trust the FBI on any of this, due to past performance regarding Trump, dossiers, foreign involvement, the FISA court, and the media. But in the case of Iran, there’s no need to imagine any convoluted motives: Iran has obvious and very strong reasons to do everything in its power to prevent Trump from ever being elected again.

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) In Montana, a court ruling that may help sink Tester’s re-election chances.

(2) NPR tries to claim that Rich Lowry used the n-word in an interview. Of course he did not, and they know it. Doesn’t mean they won’t claim it.

(3) As far as I know, there’s been no further word on the ABC whistleblower allegations. I wrote yesterday that the network hasn’t issued a very impressive rebuttal so far. Stay tuned.

(4) Teamster members heavily favor Trump, but the union has so far refused to endorse either candidate. I’m not so sure how much official endorsements matter anymore.

(5) For what it’s worth, a new Gallup poll indicates that Trump is a tiny bit more popular than Harris, 46% to 44%. His popularity has risen five points since last month. Interesting.

Kamala Harris wants to present herself as a defender of gun rights

The New Neo Posted on by

However, this has now surfaced. It’s from 2007, when Harris was the DA in San Francisco:

And in fact, San Francisco did enact a gun law – and then-mayor Newsom signed it – that allowed city officials to do exactly that. I don’t know the current status of the law.

Which amendment does such a law violate more, the 2nd or the 4th? I suppose we don’t have to choose between them, but if pressed, I’d say it would be the 4th Amendment with its prohibition against unreasonable searches without probable cause to issue a warrant.

Harris’ instincts appear to be for government overreach and violation of rights. Earlier, I had posted another old video of Harris, this one from the 2020 Democrat debates, which illustrates Harris’ willingness to violate constitutional powers in order to ban guns. Here’s a memory refresher:

Terrorists and technology: the exploding pagers point out a fact about modern-day terrorists

The New Neo Posted on by

… which is that for the most part terrorists rely on the creations of Western technology.

9/11 was an excellent example of that. In a jijitsu-like move, the terrorists turned a modern Western invention – jet planes – against one of the societies that had created and maintained that invention. The move was utterly unexpected by the US government – although imaginative writers such as Tom Clancy had come close to envisioning it.

And if Iran gets a nuclear weapon capacity – and it seems well on its way – it won’t be because Iranian scientists came up with the idea and launched a Manhattan Project.

Nor did any Arab nation come up with the idea or technology of pagers (or walkie talkies – source of today’s new Hezbollah casualties). Even wealthy Arab nations such as the Gulf States get their income mostly from oilfields which were originally developed by Westerners and are only of any value because of Western inventions which make use of oil energy.

Even as early as 9/11, Arab terrorists made tremendous use of the internet. They are well aware, however, that although reliance on modern technology gives them greatly increased reach and power and the ability to coordinate attacks and spread propaganda about them, it also creates a vulnerability. That’s why Hezbollah had abandoned cellphones as too dangerous, and replaced them recently with pagers and walkie-talkies – probably to their great dismay at this point.

A commenter yesterday suggested, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, that terrorists might now resort to carrier pigeon. It’s a possibility, however, and was done (for example) by ISIS in 2016.

Israel, in contrast, is a country known for technological innovations. But it’s over-reliance on technology for military intelligence was one of the things that made it vulnerable on 10/7, when its leaders showed a failure of imagination that Hamas exploited. I hope it doesn’t make that mistake again. And I doubt Hezbollah will be using cellphones or pagers or walkie-talkies in the future. At the very least, it won’t be ordering them in bulk from foreign countries.

Is the ABC whistleblower bona fide?

The New Neo Posted on by

By now you’ve probably heard that there’s a supposed ABC whistleblower saying the debate was rigged, and it is alleged that he signed an affidavit to that effect on September 9 and sent copies to himself registered mail, as well as to others such as Speaker Johnson.

It’s either for real or a hoax, and we don’t know which at this point. I can’t find any statements by Johnson on the matter, for example.

Here’s what ABC debate moderator Linsey Davis has said about pre-debate agreements:

ABC News’ Linsey Davis, one of two moderators for last week’s presidential debate, admitted to the Los Angeles Times that the plan was only to fact-check former President Donald Trump, and not Vice President Kamala Harris.

As Breitbart News noted, Davis and co-moderator David Muir fact-checked Trump seven times — often incorrectly — while never fact-checking Harris once, even when she used hoaxes, such as the Charlottesville “very fine people” hoax.

Davis told the Times that ABC had deliberately targeted Trump — and only Trump — because of perceptions that he had been allowed to get away with false statements in the CNN debate against President Joe Biden in late June.

I can’t get to the LA Times story and see what Linsey actually said, but although I agree that all the fact-checking (much of it false, by the way) was against Trump, and that Harris was allowed to get away with lie after lie after lie, I would be surprised if Linsey Davis flat-out admitted “we only wanted to fact-check Trump.” And sure enough, I see here:

Despite zero fact-checks for Harris, Davis insisted that her team intended to fact-check both candidates throughout the course of the night.

The Times stated, “With co-moderator David Muir, Davis had studied hours of campaign rallies and interviews to prepare for the much-anticipated event at Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center, and were ready to counter the candidates’ most egregious statements.”

Davis countered accusations of bias by stating that she and Muir could not catch every misstatement, the Times reported, without noting that none of Harris’ incorrect statements received rebukes.

Horse pucky. It would have been simplicity itself to fact-check Harris. She uttered many lies, all predictable. Davis and Muir are either so abysmally ignorant that they should never be allowed on the air again, or would like to pretend to be just that stupid and negligent. It’s ye olde fool versus knave question, and I feel confident in saying that both are operative but almost certainly the “knave” factor is most in ascendance.

ABC has issued a statement on the whistleblower’s allegations, a highly inadequate one:

However, an initial statement from ABC did not address the specific claims made within the document, saying: ‘ABC News followed the debate rules that both campaigns agreed on and which clearly state: No topics or questions will be shared in advance with campaigns or candidates.’

A spokesperson for the network was subsequently forced to issue a more full-throated denial to the Daily Beast. ‘Absolutely not. Harris was not given any questions before the date,’ the spokesperson said.

But this is a strawman argument. The accusation wasn’t that Harris was given the actual questions flat out. The affidavit actually alleged that, “the Harris campaign was provided with sample questions that, while not the exact questions, covered similar topics that would appear during the debate.” Other whistleblower allegations included that the Harris campaign was assured that only Trump would be fact-checked and not Harris, and that certain topics listed by Harris to be off-limits wouldn’t be asked about. If there really is an affidavit listing these things, and it was truly dated the day before, that absolutely needs investigating.

Ryan Routh’s Iranian connections

The New Neo Posted on by

We all know that Iran would dearly love to assassinate Trump – although Iran’s not the only one. With the recent assassination attempts comes the idea that one or both of the would-be assassins were financed or helped by Iran. For Crooks, I don’t see much evidence on which to hang such a possibility, but Routh had a very different history and online profile that makes such a theory more plausible.

I still think it most likely Routh did this all on his own, but I don’t think it’s crazy to think he was recruited by Iran. At the very least, there are some strange connections. Here’s one:

In information shared with Townhall.com, Sarah Adams, a former CIA targeter and intelligence analyst, shared a Be On The Lookout warning (BOLO) from June 2, 2023 warning of criminal activities by Ryan Routh: …

“Beware of American Ryan Routh. Reports indicate that he is leading a human trafficking scheme. He is instructing Afghans to travel illegally to Iran with the promise they will link up eventually with the Ukrainian legion to fight. This is a fraud as NO official pathway exists for this from the Ukrainian Government for our allies in Afghanistan. Also, despite promised funding support it has not come to fruition and he has abandoned Afghans illegally in Iran.”

Does that mean he actually got some Afghans into Iran? How did he do that? Did he have contacts in Iran? Where did his money come from?

And in Routh’s self-published book he wrote:

“You are free to assassinate Trump,” Routh wrote of Iran in an apparently self-published book in 2023, “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War,” which described the former President as a “fool” and “buffoon” for both the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots and the “tremendous blunder” of leaving the Iran nuclear deal.

So he was greatly in favor of Obama’s Iran nuclear deal. Interesting.

The Ukrainians wanted no part of Routh:

But Routh never served in the Ukrainian army or worked with its military, said Oleksandr Shahuri of the Foreigners Coordination Department of the Ukrainian Ground Forces Command.

Shahuri told AP that Routh periodically contacted the International Legion of Ukraine with what he described as “nonsensical ideas” that “can best be described as delusional.”

Although Iran is trying to kill Trump, would they hire a loony tune like Routh? Then again, how did he get his traveling funds?

I wrote all that before I watched this video, which contains more information and speculation:

Paging Hezbollah

The New Neo Posted on by

I didn’t even know that this could be done or how this could be done, but apparently it’s a real story. This time, the word “unprecedented” is fully warranted (unless you’re talking about a science fiction writer’s fevered dream):

At least nine people were killed and thousands were injured when pagers held by Hezbollah members across Lebanon exploded on Tuesday afternoon, in what appeared to be a widescale, coordinated attack attributed to Israel.

The unprecedented wave of explosions, which also reportedly killed and injured several people in Syria, sparked chaos in a region already on high alert for the outbreak of full-scale hostilities.

It came hours after Israel designated the halting of Hezbollah’s attacks one of its main war goals and announced that it had foiled an assassination attempt by the Iranian proxy group against a former senior official.

Lebanese Health Minister Firas Abiad said in an evening press conference that nine people were killed and 2,750 more were injured in the blasts, including some 200 people in critical condition.

Iranian proxy Hezbollah has clearly been contemplating a huge attack on Israel in addition to the rockets that rain on Israel daily and have meant that, ever since October 7, citizens who ordinarily live in the northern part of Israel have been mostly evacuated and living as internal refugees.

Hezbollah claims that some non-Hezbollah members died or were injured in this pager attack, and I don’t doubt it. However, these were pagers, not cellphones, and therefore I would imagine there isn’t a whole lot of lending out of one’s pager.

An attack of this type has tremendous shock value in the psychological sense in addition to the physical sense. The message is something like: “we see when when you’re sleeping, we know when you’re awake – and we can get you in ways you’ve never even imagined.” It also adds to the perception that the Israeli intelligence forces still have nearly-magical powers, although those powers were sorely lacking on October 7.

As I already said, I haven’t a clue how this could be done. Did the pagers originate in Israel in the first place? I doubt it. Perhaps some Israeli scientists were told, by some Hezbollah-based spy or mole, what sort of paging equipment the terrorists of Hezbollah use, and a vulnerability in the lithium batteries was exploited. This article says that Hezbollah used to employ mobile phones but switched to pagers, but doesn’t say when. Also:

“It looks likely that the pagers they [Hezbollah] purchased may have been compromised and turned into remote bombs,” [an anonymous Israeli] security expert said, stressing that this was just speculation based on his expertise.

Related theories here:

Reportedly, the Israeli intelligence send a message to the pagers which shortened the batteries of the pagers, causing them to explode.

Another, less Tom Clancy‘ish explanation would be that these fighters all belonged to the same unit and someone sabotaged them (assuming here that pagers are routinely collected, stored and distributed; which would mean that pagers were distributed this morning; perhaps it’s a mix of both).

In other words, who knows?