Associated Press cites a member of Hezbollah to the effect that the new brand of handheld pagers used by the group first heated up, then exploded. According to this source, new pagers that Hezbollah members were carrying had lithium batteries that apparently exploded. Associated Press explains that lithium batteries, when overheated, can smoke, melt and even catch on fire. They can burn up to 590 C (1,100 F).

There are reports of social media images from Beirut’s southern suburbs that show people lying on the pavement with wounds on their hands or near their pants pockets. Emergency rooms in this impoverished country are said to be overloaded with patients, many of them with injuries to their limbs, some in serious condition.

Implications for Immediate War

Netanyahu, his government, and Israel’s citizens may have been rattled by what was in some quarters reported to have been a hypersonic missile attack on Ben Gurion airport, fired a couple of days ago by none other than the Houthis in Yemen - Palestine’s bravest supporters by far. First reports said that the missile, having evaded Israel’s not-so-iron dome, landed in a forested area outside of the airport, but I note that in interview on Monday with Judge Napolitano, Alastair Crooke opined that Israel might be attempting to hide the fact of significant damage to airport facilities.

In order to bring about the invasion of Lebanon as quickly as possible in the face of significant IDF resistance and sensible doubts as to the sanity of Netanyahu and his closest colleagues (one of whom, national security minister Ben Gvir, controls a two-ten thousand strong settler militia in the West Bank), Netanyahu ealier this week was reportedly signalling his intent to replace his defense minister Yoav Gallant in favor of somebody more amenable to Zionist aspirations. In his latest comments Gallant now appears to be going out of his way to prepare for the invasion.

This incident has the gravest possible significance. It has blind-sided Hezbollah on the very eve of a war that Israel has declared on Hezbollah. If, as seems possible, Hezbollah defenses are significantly impaired as a result, then of course the anticipated Israeli assault has more chance of winning. That possible eventuality, its probable chances now greater than before, may be sufficient to force Iran’s hand in the defense of Hezbollah and, also, Lebanon and Syria, igniting the regional war that Netanayu badly wants.

UN General Assembly

Assuming that Israel will ignore any such demand, and that the US vetoes a Security Council resolution to enforce the ICJ ruling of July 19 which found Israeli settlements are being maintained in violation of international law and that Israel should pay restitution to all those whom its illegal occupation has harmed, the General Assembly could convene an Emergency Session to take up what is called a Uniting For Peace resolution. This could:

“call for an arms embargo, an economic boycott or other UN sanctions against Israel – or even call for actions against the United States. Uniting for Peace resolutions have only been passed by the General Assembly five times since the procedure was first adopted in 1950.”

Passage of a General Assembly resolution by a large majority of members would:

“demonstrate that countries all over the world support the ICJ ruling, and would be a small but important first step toward ensuring that Israel must live up to those obligations...

“Whether the United States can still coerce or browbeat a few of its traditional allies into rejecting or abstaining from the General Assembly resolution on September 18 will be a test of its residual “soft power.”

The US to date has vetoed 46 UN Security Council resolutions that “either required Israel to comply with international law, called for an end to the occupation or for Palestinian statehood, or held Israel accountable for war crimes or illegal settlement building”.

“The ability of one Permanent Member of the Security Council to use its veto to block the rule of international law and the will of the rest of the world has always been widely recognized as the fatal flaw in the existing structure of the UN system. 

The authors note that while the US pretends, with rapidly diminishing credibility, to be acting as an honest broker in the conflict, it does everything in its power to prevent a ceasefire and to support the continuing extermination of the Palestinian people. China, on the other hand, having a very practical interest in the region because of its significant dependence on Middle Eastern oil supplies, invited Hamas, Fatah and 12 other Palestinian groups to a three-day meeting in Beijing in July, where a “national unity” plan was agreed to form a post-war “interim national reconciliation government.” This would oversee relief and rebuilding in Gaza and organize a national Palestinian election to seat a new elected government.

Israel meanwhile has declared its intent to promote it own, Israel, governor of Gaza.

145 of the UN’s 193 nations “have now recognized Palestine as a sovereign nation comprising Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and even more countries have voted for resolutions to end the occupation, prohibit Israeli settlements and support Palestinian self-determination and human rights”.

Assassinating Trump Poorly

Ryan W. Routh apprehended right after assassination attempt on Sept 16, 2024

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The latest alleged assassination attempt on Presidential candidate Donald Trump has implicated an American enthusiast for Ukraine, one previously involved in trying to recruit Americans and others to fight Russia alongside Ukrainians.

The assassin’s presumed rationale, not unlikely, is that were Trump to win the US election then he would quickly wind down US aid packages and force a negotiated outcome to the war. We don’t altogether know exactly how Trump intends to force Russia to the negotiating table short of threatening enhanced NATO aggression against Russia which would, of course, be a continuation of the same old same old in a context in which Russia is winning on the battlefields against Ukraine and successfully attriting Western armaments, even as the West hurtles with grossly insufficient capacity towards a three front war against Russia, Iran and China.

I note with some suspicion how conveniently the reputation of the Secret Service is salvaged by the quick witted reaction, according to some reports, of an advance spotter who noticed the barrel of a Kalashnikov 47 on Trump’s Florida golf course, even as the Biden administration reportedly continues to withhold from Trump the same degree of protection as Biden receives.

These injustices, which leave Trump supporters distraught, do not distract from the reality that Trump has threatened to dismantle US democracy, continues to insist on the basic of very insufficient evidence that he won the last election, a man who has helped incite an invasion of Capitol Hill, and who gives one very reasonable cause to doubt that he will respect the results of any election that does not go his way.

As dangerous as the Democrats are to the world (having brought us now, on several occasions, to the precipice of nuclear war), I believe that Trump is dangerous, first of all, to America, and then to the world. While he may seem moderate on Ukraine, he is a passionate supporter of Israel, and is extreme on China. His past record demonstrates an extraordinary degree of selfish, amoral, plutocratic, superficial, and erratic judgment.

BBC Crushes

The facts remain that Zelenskiy is a comedian of very modest talents and a simplistic neolibersl who was adopted and pushed to power in 2018 by a Ukrainian oligarch, and who won the election by promising “peace” with Russia and the end to corruption in Ukraine.

That Zelenskiy’s main objective, in the face of declining popularity after the election, was the apparent holy grail of Ukrainian membership of NATO - a status that is still today denied to Ukraine and opposed by many if not most NATO members even as they pretend to be looking forward to Ukraine’s joining at some invisible future point when conditions are right - certainly raises the spectre, as Scott Ritter did a year ago, that Zelenskiy has always been a tool of Western intelligence (recall that the CIA had already established 11 stations in Ukraine in collaboration with Ukraine’s SBU, and a significant number of biological warfare labs close to the border with Russia, seemingly admitted by Victoria Nuland).

Far from being an agent of peace, Zelenskiy was complicit with NATO and EU powers in sabotaging the one true path to peace that had previously been agreed through the Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015. In other words, he sustained the policies of the coup regime installed into power with the muscle of Banderite fascists by the West in 2014.

Exploiting generous “non-lethal” Western aid he continued to fortify Ukraine’s military lines along the self-declared people’s republics of Luhansk and Donetsk (who had only ever wanted greater autonomy within Ukraine). He embraced the idea of NATO weapons in Ukraine, including nuclear capability. He pursued “cancel Russia” cultural policies. he has pretty much sold out his country’s future to the likes of Western investment capital representative Blackrock.

His forces were poised to invade the people’s republics ahead of Russia’s now necessary SMO. He reneged on a peace agreement whose draft had already been initialled by Russian and Ukrainian negotiators in Istanbul in March 2022. But not before he allowed himself to be pressured by Boris Johnson, representing NATO, into sabotaging that agreementm and not before he helped the West fool Russia into withdrawing the troops with which it had encircled Kiev, in the belief that peace had been achieved.

He then relentlessly pursued a conflict which has killed and seriously wounded many hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians (I am inclined to guesstimate a million at least), that has seen millions (five?) of Ukrainians leave the country and at least an equally large number of Ukrainians who have been forced to migrate internally. His army and his weapons have been seriously attrited. He lost constitutional legitimacy as President when he refused last year to allow - and continues to refuse to allow - presidential elections. He rules, therefore, as an unelected dictator, a dictator who has wiped out free speech in Ukraine, whose regime murders, tortures and harasses dissidents, and which has closed down the counry’s principal spiritual habitus, the Russian Orthodox Church.

This is the man whom the BBC - effectively, if not legally, a State-manipulated propaganda poodle of a Washington poodle - has decided to glorify. I dont think I shall be watching it any time soon.