The bombed pager attacks in Lebanon show how embedded the imperialist world order is in daily life

On September 17, “Israel” launched a terrorist attack in Lebanon through intercepted pagers that exploded remotely. We look at how this attack may have been carried out and what it means globally

If you like this article, please don’t hesitate to click like♡ and restack🗘 ! It’s a quick way to make sure more people will get to enjoy it too.
And don’t hesitate to subscribe to my newsletter for free to receive my new articles right in your inbox!

On September 17, 2024, “Israel” launched a not entirely new attack on Lebanon. By intercepting a shipment of pagers somewhere along the line (from manufacturing to shipping and transit), they embedded explosives inside more than 2000 pagers.

When an instruction was given to the pager, the explosive charge triggered, injuring and maiming whoever was carrying the pager as well as anyone in their vicinity.

The instruction was given at 3:30PM local time, on a Tuesday. More than 3000 people in Lebanon were injured, and over 10 died, including an 8 year old girl.

The next day on September 18, they did it again. Another set of devices was triggered to explode in Lebanon.

The mechanism by which the first attack was carried is very simple in its implementation. All one needs is access to the physical device, in this case a Gold Apollo pager.

Gold Apollo pager

The case is opened, and a few grams of an explosive material (such as SEMTEX) is embedded inside. This we know for sure. My theory for how they triggered the charge is only a theory but shows how simple such an attack can be (provided you have access to the actual device).

Once the explosive is embedded, a conductive wire can be linked to it, e.g. a nichrome wire — a conductive material that burns very hot very quickly, which are also used in toasters. Then, a switch of some kind (such as a MOSFET switch) is connected to the wire. This switch works similarly to a light switch, closing a circuit when flipped. Finally, a wireless receiver, such as an RF receiver, is connected to the switch. When the instruction is given, the receiver flips the switch. The wire heats up, drawing power from the AAA battery these pagers use. SEMTEX is sensitive to heat and pressure, and the heat is enough to set off the explosive reaction.

We must be very sure that this constitutes a war crime in several ways. The pagers were ordered by Hezbollah (as confirmed by themselves), but Hezbollah is a full-fledged political party that is part of Lebanon’s government. They employ civilians as well, and there’s no telling where the pagers ended up. “Israel” couldn’t have known this. They couldn’t have known where the pagers would be when they were set to detonate either. Videos circulated of pagers exploding while their carriers were at the grocery store, near women and children. In other words, while the pagers were ordered by Hezbollah, there is no information about the intent they had with these pagers and it’s factually false to say they were all destined for soldiers.

The entity is patting itself on the back for conducting a heavy operation on Hezbollah “terrorists” — which includes doctors and teachers in the victims — and delight themselves in the fact that they can inflict terror and war crimes on an innocent populace without consequences.

There is not much difference between this attack and ISIS ramming cars through crowds at festival. The intent is the same: make people scared of doing something that is part of their daily life. This is the definition of the word terrorism itself.

Not only did the entity do this attack twice in two days, this is not the first time they pulled something like this. It was well-reported by Lebanon in the 80s that during the 1982 war, the zionist entity embedded explosives in children’s toys dropped over the territory. In 2006, they dropped cluster bombs on unsuspecting civilian populations. Many children picked these up not knowing they were live ammunition.

Cluster bombs are now banned in warfare by the United Nations, but not before “Israel” and the United States were able to use them to their heart’s content.

Beyond terror: dismantling imperialism

Beyond the attack itself, I must give the entity one impressive feat if we are to analyze the event properly and dismantle it: they managed to embed themselves somewhere in the manufacturing journey of a civilian item.

We don’t know at this time where exactly the breach occured. The items could have been tampered with at the factory, during their construction. Or they could have been intercepted somewhere into their shipping route: at a port, in a truck, when leaving the factory…

There are many points of failure here, but there is a reason these attacks are not carried out more often: this is very difficult to pull off.

Unless you know the right people. To me, this attack has the master’s prints all over it — the USA had to be involved.

This attack highlights exactly how the imperialist world system is embedded and how strong it still is, and why many of us are proponents of multipolarity.

Let’s follow the trip. The pagers are manufactured by Gold Apollo, a company in Taiwan. The company, of course, claims they didn’t produce the tainted pagers. But the pagers came from somewhere.

(Please note that at this time, we don’t know exactly how the pagers came into Lebanon — the following explanation is based on how products normally travel around the world along logistical routes.)

The pagers are produced by Apollo Gold in a factory in Taiwan. They may then be sold directly to some entities from the factory (government entities, other businesses, wholesalers, etc.). If a wholesaler is involved, they will buy the pagers at a certain price and sell them for a markup in their store. We don’t know at this time who exactly Hezbollah bought the pagers from and if these were their usual pagers — it’s possible a mole implanted in Hezbollah drove them to buy from a shell supplier.

Regardless, the pagers need to leave Taiwan eventually, and they travel by sea — like all commodities — through various ports. The map above shows cargo traffic around the world; ships stop to resupply and to unload and onload more cargo. These ships cost millions to operate, and need to be efficient in their routes.

Eventually, the ship makes its way either to the Persian Gulf and unloads cargo meant for Lebanon in Saudi Arabia (where the products continue by land), or they sail through the Suez Canal and unload directly in Lebanese ports.

This is assuming direct transit of course. At any point, commodities get bought and sold, then shipped and reshipped. Products are exported from Syria to Lebanon too, for example, but Syria probably gets some of the necessary materials to make these products from somewhere else.

Sea shipping remains the most efficient and thus, in a capitalist system, the most cost-effective method to ship worldwide: cargo boats are fortresses on water, built for the sole purpose of carrying as many commodities as possible. However, ports need to be able to accomodate them, which is sometimes easier said than done. That’s why sometimes, commodities finish their trip by land through trucks. This is usually reserved for the last kilometres (the last kilometre is especially important and costly in shipping), but this is why commodities might travel through Saudi Arabia before they reach Lebanon, even if they are being shipped to Lebanon.

You can see that there are several points of failure: anywhere along the chain, the pagers could have been intercepted and tampered with, before being sent back on their way. At any of these ports, on any ship, in any truck, through any wholesaler.

The shipment could have also been sent to a friendly port, e.g. in South Korea or the Philippines (not too far from Taiwan), where the local intelligence services planted the bomb. We assume Mossad to be directly involved, but they might not be.

Except you still have to somehow get explosives, which is easier said than done.

All in all, the entity had two possibilities: intercept the shipment outside of “Israel”, somehow travel with or source explosives locally, plant them in the pagers, or redirect the shipment to “Israel”, where sourcing the explosives and other elements would become a formality.

In both cases one part of the operation is easy and the other is incredibly difficult. And whether the shipment was rerouted along the way without Hezbollah’s knowledge or whether it was intercepted, it shows that the entity has embedded itself in global shipping and manufacturing lines in such a way that they can tamper with anything. They just have to say the word and a shipment of civilian products meant to your country does a mysterious stop in “Israel” for no reason.

But “Israel” doesn’t have the pull to tell India, Saudi Arabia or Taiwan “hey, just send this our way for a week or two before shipping to final destination thanks”.

Hence the master controlling both Taiwan, “Israel” and a large part of Saudi Arabia (whose royal family, Saud, was installed by the British following World War I) had to be involved: I name the United States of America.

The US controls Taiwan’s economy and military. It controls “Israel”’s too. It somewhat controls Saudi Arabia, to the extent that what’s in the interest of the US is in the interest of the Saud family. And of course, it finds a lot of friendly and allied countries along the way — referring back to the map, we see Thailand, Indonesia, India, the Horn of Africa, Egypt, etc.

All potential points where the shipment could have been intercepted.

This is how embedded imperialism is in the modern day. It’s almost invisible but, sometimes, the cracks appear. It requires friendly countries that won’t say no. It requires such control over shipping routes that nothing gets to its destination without the tacit approval of Washington. It requires intel, the knowledge that Hezbollah was going to buy these pagers and a way to get the compromised pagers to them. It requires the involvement of many different parties.

It doesn’t even matter if the shipment was compromised by Apollo Gold at the factory (I doubt they would have been given SEMTEX), intercepted through a direct CIA order, stolen at the port, redirected to “Israel” or purchased by a shell wholesaler to resell to Hezbollah: each of these theories requires the same set of pre-conditions to be true to happen.

And which organization has intel on most of the world? The CIA is one. The NSA is another.

Mossad can barely find out when Lebanon is going to fire missiles on the occupied north.

Note that Gold Apollo claims they did not manufacture the products, but that they were made by a shell company in Hungary. This still falls under intel — the schematics, the branding, all of that had to be given over to that company somehow. It is very common for businesses to licence the production of their products somewhere else (China is a famous client after all), but the shell company doesn’t detract from the fact that something had to be compromised: in this case a factory implanted in Hungary. It also doesn’t detract from the fact that Taiwan, a supposed US ally, now sees its reputation as a tech manufacturer completely destroyed.

Remember: nothing happens from the IOF without Washington’s say-so. The White House has the numbers of victims in real-time, the videos and pictures, the intel… everything the IOF knows, Washington knows. And they did nothing to stop this.

If the explosives were embedded into the devices at the factory in Hungary, they still had to make their way there somehow. Smuggled under Hungary’s eye? Unlikely. Too many potential points of failure; 2-3g of explosives for more than 5000 pagers, perhaps up to 10,000, means at least 15 kilos of explosives had to be smuggled into Hungary over a short period of 5 months (from the moment Hezbollah ordered the pagers until detonation in September). It’s safe to assume the Orban government gave the go-ahead for the operation. Orban claims to want autonomy from the EU and a more independent Hungary, but his track record shows him to consistently happily wag his tail the moment he is placated with words and go with whatever the EU requires of him. Hungary is not a country that can say no to the EU, much less the US: we see that even Germany, when the NordStream pipeline was destroyed, did not dare say no to the US. But of course, it’s possible the explosives were never in Hungary and the pagers, after production, were briefly sent to “Israel” for hacking.

This is why China is now presented as such an enemy of the United States since 2019, because they don’t let themselves be controlled. Mind you, even Chinese tech could have been compromised at some point through the trip. If a Huawei phone travels through Saudi Arabia at some point, it can be seized there, and there’s nothing Huawei or China can do to prevent tampering there.

… Unless States start to decouple from the USA and become more autonomous and independent to the point that their ruling class no longer says “Yessir” to any request the United States make.

Think of it this way: this move was detrimental to anyone but the US and “Israel”. Gold Apollo is now branded a pariah; nobody will ever buy their products anymore. Taiwan will also be viewed with suspicion by anyone who does business with them from now on.

To inflict this on your own economy, government and people means that your consent was either deemed not important and not requested, or you readily gave it. We know already that Taiwan is all too happy to destroy their own economy by moving their chip production (the only thing that keeps them afloat truthfully) to the US to try and compete with China’s market. When the transfer is complete, Taiwan will have nothing left to offer and all chips will be produced in the US… that is, if they can complete their plan before China takes over the market.

This is the purpose of the Belt and Road Initiative, through which economical development improves the quality of life which improves self-reliance and the self-defense of national governments. The ruling class in Washington knows this very well, and this is why they attack the BRI directly, as well as China’s presence abroad. By weakening competing models, they hope to retain their monopoly over the world.

This event also shows that we are not as safe as we think we might be — this is true no matter where you live. Ultimately, the US decides whether explosive phones are allowed in your local stores. The shipment this time went straight to Hezbollah, sure, but it could have been lost along the way. It could have easily been rerouted somewhere else: containers contain a unique electronic ID which help route it. The contents go where the container goes. If you switch two crates of pagers in two different containers, they will go to someone else entirely.

As I write these lines, I start to think this might be the very first terrorist attack that actually achieved its goal: after the Bataclan, after firing sprees in malls, after school shootings, after cars being driven into crowds, after bomb threats… people were not deterred. They were inspired to live life to the fullest, not controlled by fear.

But how do you control for state-sponsored terrorism? Actual state-sponsored terrorism, not what the USA thinks terrorism is (when Iran does anything with its own money). We’re talking about a state that has easy access to SEMTEX (3 billion dollars worth of free weapons made available every year to them!).

I remember the sarin and dirty bombs scares. How ragtag terrorist groups might be able to source very difficult materials to obtain, such as deadly viruses or nuclear waste, and use them to inflict terror. They never did though — there was one sarin scare in Japan at the hands of a local cult.

Will Chinese phones be tampered with to implant explosives in them too? After all, China is considered an enemy of the USA — and by extension an enemy to “Israel”, to the EU, and to every peripheric country the US controls. Will you buy a Huawei and have it explode in your hand until you buy an All-American iPhone?

This goes beyond state-“sponsored” terrorism. We know “Israel” and the US already sponsored Al Qaeda and ISIS (famously, Bin Laden was funded and trained by the CIA to fight against the Soviets in the Afghan war). This is state-conducted terrorism; and the media and the sycophants for the zionist regime are praising each other and making jokes about the 3000 civilians maimed (more than were killed in 9/11) and refusing to call this what this is: a war crime and an instance of terrorism.

And today, we see that any rogue state, such as “Israel” or the “United States of America”, is able to source these materials very easily (they own the labs that study the viruses!) and use them in any way they want at the drop of a hat. They just have to give the go-ahead.

So congratulations “Israel”, I hand you this one: you really showed terrorists how it’s done, and with this attack you join the very coveted ranks of ISIS and Al-Qaeda on the podium. Here’s your medal, now please perish so we may move on.

All of my writing is freely accessible and made possible by the generosity of readers like you. If you enjoyed this essay, please consider supporting me. I’m on Ko-fi, Patreon, Liberapay.

Bitcoin (BTC SegWit network) - bc1qcdla40c3ptyrejvx0lvrenszy3kqsvq9e2yryh

Ethereum (Ethereum network) - 0xd982B96B4Ff31917d72E399460904e6F8a42f812

Litecoin (Litecoin network) - LPvx9z9JEcDvu5XLHnWreYp1En6ueuWxca

Upgrade your Substack subscription for $5/month or $50/year:

Share this essay: