Nostr notes by Tom Nomad

New episode just dropped. In this episode I sit down with Casa ...

2026-09-07T03:08:19Z

New episode just dropped.

In this episode I sit down with Casa and Maroon to discuss their new documentary series The Elements of Mutual Aid. We discuss the roots of the practice in communities, the ways that mutual aid can escape simple political orthodoxies, and how it can form the foundation of not only a response to the crises that we are living through, but also a route through which we can build the capacity to fight for something better in the midst of collapse.

For more information on the documentary, including information on upcoming showings, go to https://theelementsofmutualaid.com/

The series is available for viewing on PeerTube at https://kolektiva.media/c/elementsofmutualaid/videos

https://thebeautifulidea.show/elemental-anarchy-a-discussion-on-the-elements-of-mutual-aid/

Hey everyone! We just dropped this month's news roundup. In ...

2025-06-24T01:49:38Z

Hey everyone!

We just dropped this month's news roundup.

In this episode we have interviews with participants of the recent Statelessness conference and talk to Antifa International (npub1axk…ska9) about recent initiatives.

Of course we also have the news roundup (it is a BIG one this month) and I sit down with another member of the collective to talk about the National Guard deployment in LA, and why we need to be careful to not fall into the politics of spectacle built up around it.

https://thebeautifulidea.show/ice-melts-as-streets-erupt-revolt-at-delaney-hall-migrant-prison-uw-campus-occupation-against-war-profiteers/

thebeautifulidea (npub1qzd…6d5w) [@igd_news](https://kolektiva.social/@igd_news )

We just released a long discussion I had with Adam Greenfield, ...

2025-02-27T18:22:51Z

We just released a long discussion I had with Adam Greenfield, author of Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire. We talk about new horizons in radical thought, prepperism, and how to address a dying planet.

Hope you enjoy!

https://thebeautifulidea.show/the-long-emergency-a-discussion-with-adam-greenfield/

I'm excited to share this discussion I had with Xander Dunlap ...

2025-01-22T22:27:29Z

I'm excited to share this discussion I had with Xander Dunlap (https://bsky.app/profile/drxdunlap.bsky.social) on land defense movements, the damage caused by eco-Leninism, and the necessity of permanent ecological conflict

Hope you all enjoy!

https://thebeautifulidea.show/permanent-ecological-conflict-a-conversation-with-xander-dunlap/

That does not mean that MAGA goes quietly into the night, ...

2024-11-01T00:10:11Z

In reply to nevent1q…c3ea
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That does not mean that MAGA goes quietly into the night, probably far from it. If Trump loses two dynamics will emerge very quickly, and already are starting to. The first is the lone wolf action targeted politically. Many of those types of actions have been based in social violence, attacking a group of people. What we are seeing emerge now is the emergence of a similar figure, but this time targeted at politicians and other political targets.

The emergence of this dynamic, when coupled with the long running discussion among the far right about infrastructure attacks, leads to a disturbing possibility; the emergence of wide scale social attacks as a way to "attack the system" or something along those lines. We already see that rhetoric among accelerationists, but the people that have emerged recently come from outside of those circles by all accounts. We are watching a bit of leakage of that mentality and tactic set out of the traditional far right, and watching it morph into a new form.

Though your average Trump supporter is probably not going to go as wild as they did in 2020, that does not mean that we won't see either localized right wing violence or attacks against whole cities, or parts of cities, and the infrastructure that supports them. For those of us, and this includes me, who live in leftist areas of otherwise right wing parts of the country, we need to be watching what is happening around us, and taking it seriously.

That does not mean that everyone should go dig a bunker right now or something. Rather, and regardless of what the outcome of the election is, this is a reminder to have some basic things in place to make yourself and your community more able to deal with crisis. Whether we are responding to right wing violence or state repression having access to communications networks that are encrypted, backup means of communication, a place set to meet with friends if that is your threat model, and at least some supplies so you don't need to get them in the middle of a crisis.

These are things we should probably have in place all the time, but let us use this as a reminder of the importance of resiliency and mutual support. The next period of time is going to probably get difficult. Anarchists in the US, we have been through this before, and have been locked in a conflict with the state that has been more or less acute for the better part of a decade, without a break. We know how to prepare, to back one another up, and to defend the things we hold dear. All I can ask is that you all hold those principles close, take solace in our experiences, and steel ourselves for what may come.

If we are to game this situation out, that means that we can ...

2024-11-01T00:09:46Z

In reply to nevent1q…wk08
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If we are to game this situation out, that means that we can start to expect things to heat up right about now. We are already seeing an uptick in this talk about a stolen election, this setting of the ground, and that is just going to escalate until the election. Lawsuits are already being filed by Republicans all over the country, trying to purge voter rolls.

On election day itself I would speculate that we are not going to know what the result is going to be. The reality of this election is that this is all about 5% of people in 5-7 states; the rest of us don't matter. With margins that small, it is very likely that these states will be close, and will require recounts, at least in some cases. As a result, like last time, we are unlikely to have any sort of result for a little while.

At that same time we will probably start seeing their legal strategy play itself out. Just like last time they seem poised to utilize a staged strategy, escalating their approach as they watch their ability to resolve it to their liking within the legal system dissolve with every lost case. I would argue that, especially because they have already started to claim the election was stolen before it was over, they are going to have an equally difficult time in court.

The pattern that was followed last time was the attempt to essentially create a parallel electoral outcome, and invalidate the official outcome. This took the form of fake electors, sending in fake documents, to the National Archive falsely certifying election results. Many of the people involved in this scheme the first time are now either convicted felons or under indictment, and it is going to be a lot harder to find people to do the same things again.

Now, of course we all know what happens when that strategy fails, they unleash their supporters on state capitals all across the US, culminating in January 6th. It is important to remember that January 6th happened in pretty specific conditions; pandemic, lockdown, mass unemployment, lots of lost businesses, lots of divorces, the fragmenting of the social fabric. It was a climate uniquely suited for the proliferation of conspiracies through a fusion of extreme messages and social isolation due to lockdown. Those conditions have changed, many people have gone to prison for January 6th, Trump did not save them, and so there is not likely to be the same sort of outpouring of violent support.

This all seems to add up to the possibility of another ...

2024-11-01T00:09:24Z

In reply to nevent1q…3x82
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This all seems to add up to the possibility of another Fall-Winter 2020-2021 again. It seems as if we have one party dedicated to tearing apart the electoral system to gain and hold onto power. They seem, just as then, willing to say anything, do anything, and manipulate anyone in the service of this goal. The political realities of elections in general in the US lead to this unique opening for conspiracies to arise. So, we should all be gearing up for mass right wing rallies and stuff...right?

Actually, the likelihood of this happening in the same way it did in 2020 are probably pretty slim. The rhetoric is heated like it was in 2020, but there are two major changes that have happened since that time in right wing political spaces. The first is a languishing sense of enthusiasm. Many people have commented on it during this cycle, but this is an important point, people are leaving his rallies early, and fewer are showing up. It is just not that exciting after a decade of the same guy yelling about the same stuff, especially when he aimlessly rants. That would never have happened in the past cycles.

Secondly, there is a sense now in the right wing that breaking laws in the name of political goals can have actual consequences. I think anyone that is involved in anarchist spaces has known this for years, as we have fought off wave after wave of mass repression. Remember, though, many conservatives felt that state violence against protesters was justified, because it was against "ANTIFA" or something, and that it would never happen to "good people". If that violence did happen to them, then it was just a few bad apple cops and Trump would pardon them. It sounds absurd to think this, but go back to boards on thedonald.win from back in 2020, and this perspective is almost universally held.

Now that hundreds have been convicted of serious stuff, taken away from their friends and family, fired from their jobs, and sent to prison, without Trump stepping in, that sense has changed. Now, when journalists talk to Trump supporters, outside of the agro dudes, you find a lot of people that are not willing to take things to that level again, that recognize that there are significant consequences, and that they are just going to wait out the next 4 years if Trump loses. We also don't have the far right escalating things this time (they are relatively disorganized right now), and playing the role of open, state sanctioned vigilantes.

For a while I have been saying, in a number of venues, that we ...

2024-11-01T00:09:04Z

In reply to nevent1q…pvq9
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For a while I have been saying, in a number of venues, that we have to take the things the right wing says seriously, even if we know that usually it is bullshit. If we take on that perspective, we can already start to see this strategy coming together. The first indicator of this is the non-involvement the Trump campaign has in its own on-the-ground outreach. For this entire cycle Trump has been pushing the RNC to move away from voter registration, and instead train "election integrity watchers". The Trump campaign itself has almost no ground operation.

Instead he has outsourced all of that to Elon Musk, who, in turn, has been running an outreach campaign so shady and haphazard that not only are the numbers that canvassers are returning (counting doors knocked, voter preference, etc) to the campaign potentially wildly inflated, they are potentially so off that they are essentially useless. This was also the result of America PAC (which Musk runs) outsourcing to subcontractors who hired random people, didn't tell them what they were going to campaign for, and then threatened to not pay for food or lodging unless the canvassers hit unbelievable and unattainable numbers.

The RNC, on the other hand, following the Trump campaign has also made a number of moves. They have followed through on training these "election integrity watchers", claiming to have trained tens of thousands. They have also undergone staffing changes, where all attorneys that were not on-board for the whole stolen election thing have been pushed out and replaced with Trump loyalists. The money that the Trump campaign would have been spending on ground outreach, they have instead used to hire attorneys as well.

The rhetoric of the Trump campaign itself is also notable. The Trump campaign started talking about a stolen election around 3 months ago. Since that time that narrative has done nothing but deepen. Now, the rallies he does are grievance filled conspiracy fests about how this election is going to get stolen by the evil Democrats, even though the election has not even happened yet. From a legal perspective it is absurd to claim that someone cheated in a thing that has not happened, but in right wing politics, that is preparing the ground.

OK, so for those of you that tuned out, come on back now. ...

2024-11-01T00:08:41Z

In reply to nevent1q…7yry
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OK, so for those of you that tuned out, come on back now.

Let's talk a bit about what this schedule means, and what we can anticipate from the campaigns in response. Considering that we are not talking about what happens after Inauguration Day, and assuming the Democrats will just roll over if they lose, the biggest immediate impacts will be an emboldened far right, and probably the beginning of protests before he gets into office. We saw that script play out before, so I don't want to belabor it. We'll talk about incipient authoritarianism in January (isn't US politics fun...) if we need to.

For now, and for the purpose of my calendar and the length of this post, I want to focus on what could occur if Trump loses, and to be able to discuss that we need to go back to what I was saying earlier about how votes are counted and results returned on election night, and the ways that this does not express the accuracy of the situation. In the last number of elections we have watched conservatives look like they had a chance on election night, only to watch that lead evaporate either overnight or in the coming days as absentee ballots are counted.

This reality of the collision between an arcane political system and a capitalist media is that there is always this rush to declare a winner. In that rush nuances are thrown out, a speed of coverage is maintained to keep viewers and readers, and the complex realities of the situation are often lost. It is in this space, where the vote counts do not reflect actual vote totals, but are being reported out anyway, that conspiracies can take root

The entire conspiracy last time developed in real time on election day, as it became increasingly clear that Trump was underperforming. On the evening of the election, when things were still very close, and absentee ballots had not been reported, Trump declared himself victor, based on the reporting of vote totals that were being given out live on TV. The ability to utilize real time media in the construction of a conspiracy is incredibly powerful, and Trump used it remarkably well after he lost in 2020.

This convinces me of two things that will almost certainly happen on election night. The first is that we are not going to know who won, it will still be too close and the media is likely to be a lot more shy about calling things after the last time. The actual totals are unlikely to be clear for at least a week, and likely longer as campaigns demand recounts. The second thing, and I am almost certain of this, Trump will say he won anyway.

On election night, the results are posted by county boards of ...

2024-11-01T00:08:16Z

In reply to nevent1q…qh4a
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On election night, the results are posted by county boards of election to election data services. These counties report numbers when they have finished counting, and the media takes these and determined projections for outcomes in specific states from those results. This system makes sense, and is far more reliable than exit polling (polls taken at the exit to polling places), but it does create a very specific phenomenon; the shifting result.

Following this structure of reporting results we tend to see a number of dynamics that create a very specific illusion. In most states rural counties, which tend to be conservative, have fewer voters, and are returning results more quickly than precincts and counties in cities. Further, the counts given on election night are based on who voted that day, and what counties reported that evening. This leaves out absentee ballots (which tend to skew heavily in favor of Democrats) and counties that may have technical errors. Just to give you all an idea of how much that can skew results, according to the Washington Post around half of everyone has voted, and Harris leads by between 19 and 29 points depending on the poll (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/31/polls-show-harris-with-big-early-vote-lead-despite-gop-gains/). Now, again, exit polls, including those taken of early voters, tend to be a bit inaccurate, but the general trend here is one that has repeated in all of the presidential elections this century.

From that point a series of bureaucratic ceremonies have to happen over the course of a couple of months to complete the process, and again, a lot of people wear funny hats and things.

Before December 11th all states need to certify their presidential election results. They are not reporting the results at this point, just saying they have certified results. It was in this window that we saw the bulk of the lawsuits last time. The Trump campaign was attempting, first, to block certification, and to force the elections to be invalidated in a number of states.

Then, on December 17, the Electors gather in their respective states and vote for President and Vice President. It was in this period that the Trump campaign attempted to appoint "alternate Electors" to submit results on behalf of a specific state, even though they were not sanctioned to do so. The results of these votes are sent to the National Archive.

All states must return Electoral Votes to the National Archive before December 25th, which are then sent on to Congress before January 3rd. And, the infamous day, January 6th, is the day that Congress gathers to actually count those votes.

After all of that, after a number of ceremonies, and parties, and formal procedures, a vote total becomes an elected President, in one of the most absurd, confusing political voting systems on Earth.

For those of you unfamiliar with the weirdness that are American ...

2024-11-01T00:07:56Z

In reply to nevent1q…3k59
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For those of you unfamiliar with the weirdness that are American presidential elections they don't work like you would think that they do. It is not as simple as people voting, votes being counted, and a winner declared. Instead we have this whole multiple months long series of choreographed events, complete with fancy costumes and funny hats, that occur between early December and Inauguration Day, which is January 20th.

For the Americans out there that feel like they have a grasp on this, please feel free to skip ahead. For everyone else, this is how things go down:

First we have the actual voting, which has already started in a lot of states through people sending in ballots or going to the Board of Elections to vote before election day. Those votes are stockpiled and counted only after formal voting has ended. On November 5th (always the first Tuesday in November) everyone else will show up and vote, if that is something they want to participate in.

On the evening of the election the results that are given on news channels and in online columns are provisional, and based on the vote counts in each state. The totals that we see on election night are based largely on in-person voting, for one very clear reason. On election night the ballots cast in person are secured, taken to a central location, and counted. In the modern era voting machines provide provisional results, which news stations then use for their projections, but these are not official, and will not be for some time. In the days following the election, the absentee ballots and provisional ballots are counted, which can change the outcome.

The outcome of the vote totals is a really odd system called the Electoral College. Within this structure the popular vote for the presidency exists almost as a futile exercise of suggestion. It does not actually matter whether someone won the popular vote, they can still lose the election. Each state has a number of Electors equivalent to the number of House and Senate representatives that state has. In the Electoral College system these Electors are supposed to gather and cast their ballots, and it is the total of those votes that elects the president.

This has led to a situation in which George W Bush and Trump lost the popular vote and they still became President. The reason for that is that the Electoral College is not necessarily a reflection of the population. Every state, even the smallest ones, have 2 Senators, and therefore at least 3 Electoral votes, even though the whole state of Wyoming, for example, has less people than the metro area I live in. This gives small, rural, states a lot more power in deciding the presidency than would otherwise be the case if that were determined by population.

I know, I know, elections are bullshit and aren't actually a ...

2024-11-01T00:07:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…jaj6
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I know, I know, elections are bullshit and aren't actually a mechanism for political transformation (preferring instead to uphold structures of representation, hierarchy, and law). But, with that said, and out of the way, let's talk about why this election matters in the immediate, imminent, strategic sense.

When I am talking about an election mattering, I am not talking about policy. Though policy does have an impact in our lives, we all know that this is not a mechanism to achieve much of anything. Elections are, in the US context, often a triggering and gathering point for dynamics that stretch outside of the electoral realm.

We are also not going to be concerning ourselves with long term political speculations. When I am talking about the relevance of the election I am not going to be talking about periods of time much beyond a couple of months from now. Our concern here is not about whether a healthcare plan is going to be passed in two years, or what the dynamics of Congress are at the moment and how that impacts mid-terms or something. That stuff is ...fine...but it is not the world of politics that we are concerned with or that we intervene in.

I want us to shift our focus on the election away from who is going to win or lose, what swing states are going to vote what way, and things like Project 2025. Rather, I want us to focus our attention on the points where we saw acute conflict aggregate during the last election cycle, the period that happened after the election, but before the inauguration.

Happy Halloween everyone! Time for a spoooooky post...not really, ...

2024-11-01T00:06:38Z

Happy Halloween everyone! Time for a spoooooky post...not really, but we are going to talk about what is coming in the next couple of weeks (which is spooky in its own way).

Today I want to focus our attention on gaming out the election, but with some specific caveats. Normally, when these sorts of electoral tabletops happen the focus is on the election itself, but that's not what I am concerned with. We are going to focus, rather, on possible outcomes on a social-political level, namely, what the fallout of the election within our everyday lives may be, especially when it relates to repression and state action.

The second caveat here is that there is always an extreme amount of artifice involved in any sort of strategic tabletop, or any piece of strategy writing for that matter. Strategy is an act of incredible projection, not just projecting out into the future, but doing so in the recognition that this future is going to meet resistances. Not only are the actions we are taking modifying the terrain, but also is the counteractions being taken to stop us, and these create additional modification, to say nothing of the uncountable actions taken by billions of people, and the impacts that has on the dynamics of our lives. As a result strategy is impossible in any sort of context; it can never be evaluated on the level of being more or less accurate.

So, why even do something like this then? Well, though fictional and artificial, strategy games and tabletops can assist us in figuring out how to threat model future situations, and how to maybe start preparing for the outcomes we deem most likely. It is a chance to get together with others and have some important discussions, learn how one another react to situations, and how one another thinks. If you don't want to go all out and set up a think tank style tabletop exercise, playing Bloc by Bloc can give you all some of these experiences.

The motivation for writing this comes out of discussions I have been having with friends. In discussion after discussion I see a series of themes coming up. The first is anxiety. The election has been run through a language of menace and threat. Trump has run a campaign based on identifying who he thinks should be able to count, and be protected by the Constitution, and who should not. This has played out through the rhetoric of directly threatening violent militarized repression as an action to take regardless of circumstances. Going into this election a lot more people are taking things Trump says seriously, and are justifiably worried about the unleashing of state violence if he wins.

The second feeling, and this is always in tension with the first, is that no one seems to have a sense that the election will actually fix anything. The entire race thus far has been about avoiding risk, moving away from danger, prioritizing stability, security, and a stable economy. Regardless of whether we are talking about Trump or Harris, no one is actually saying they are going to change anything. Both campaigns have portrayed themselves as feel good barriers to the horrible evil represented by their opposition. All of the language around the election is about catastrophe and avoiding that catastrophe, which of course means maintaining the current way things are.

We find ourselves in a moment of extreme political uncertainty, and that is creating a strange sense. On the one hand there is this anxiety about the present and future, about not knowing who will win, or what will happen regardless of the results. On the other there is a sense of foreboding, of needing to prepare, get our communities ready to deal with repression, and to be ready to defend ourselves. It is simultaneously a moment where I am checking my supplies, and yawning every time the news comes on, at the same time. It feels as if we are stuck in a moment of suspension, where the only exits are acute authoritarianism or a continuation of things as they are.

I would recommend looking into LoRa and Meshtastic networks. LoRa ...

2024-09-19T12:22:44Z

In reply to nevent1q…25dx
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I would recommend looking into LoRa and Meshtastic networks. LoRa is a radio protocol (we use 915 MHz locally) that allows for text based communications over distance using a protocol called CHIRP.

Meshtastic is a framework built on top of LoRa which adds chat capability, adds encryption for messages with unique keys for each user, and creates a mesh net of devices to increase signal range.

I like this solution for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is off the internet and the cellular network, and works over commonly used radio frequencies, so they can't be jammed without significant social consequences. Secondly, this is going to force us to make our own devices. Thirdly, you have to proliferate the devices, they can only communicate with one another, so it only makes sense to do if more than one of us is doing it, necessitating the development of a network.

Making a LoRa device is not particularly difficult. You can get a HelTec board for around $15 US, and can get a Lilygo TDeck, which has screen and keyboard, for around $50. A 3D printer, a LION battery, and a little bit of time to flash firmware and configure things and you have a comms device.

If you want to guard against something like this some things to ...

2024-09-18T22:43:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…nccj
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If you want to guard against something like this some things to consider:

Firstly, the primary conditions that allowed for this to occur was wholesale ordering of devices and a leaky supply chain. If your affinity group all decides to use the same radio, or the same type of burner or something, go out and get them one at a time at regular stores. Don't try to order them in bulk; that is a very noticeable thing to do if the state is watching.

Secondly, when possible, learn how devices work and take things apart. When the social center gets a new printer, take the thing apart, learn how it works, and check for bugs. It may sound absurd, but a social center in France found a listening device in a printer once. Check out the laptop you just bought, and only buy laptops that can be disassembled and modified. Learn how to monitor network traffic to make sure the new thing you just bought is not pinging your location back to anyone. Just the knowledge that this is being done in the anarchist community raises the cost and complexity of trying something like this dramatically.

Finally, I think that this is one more example of why building parallel communications networks, using our own devices, is something we should really be putting time and effort into. The use of LoRa communications, which utilize radio to send text based messaging over long distances, can be paired with encryption and mesh netting to form cheap networks using easy to build devices. Ham radio is another option, of a protocol that is accessible, easy to learn, and easy to obtain devices that you can either take apart or build yourself.

The idea that devices are captured in shipment and modified is ...

2024-09-18T22:43:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…ylru
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The idea that devices are captured in shipment and modified is something that we know is done. Not only was this talked about in the Snowden leaks, but Israel itself has carried out similar operations where phones in apartments or hotel rooms were replaced with modified devices that exploded when called. A number of assassination attempts were carried out like this in the 1990s.

There are a number of incredibly disturbing implications to this attack that take some of the issues exposed in previous attacks and turn them into potential crisis points.

Firstly, this attack creates a space that allows for this to happen again. Once a nation deploys a tactic, and there is no forceful response, then that tactic has a nasty habit of being used again and again, across greater parts of the world, with greater frequency. The idea that this sort of attack would become common is horrifying.

Secondly, supply chains are almost impossibly complex. In the tech industry this has been a topic of discussion for some time. With capitalist globalization lengthening supply chains, and increasingly building supply chains based on just in time production, it is no longer clear who makes any given component or device. For actual supply chain security to be a thing we would need to know, from beginning to end, how each and every component of importance, as well as a device overall, is manufactured. Given the complexity of that process, this is functionally impossible for anyone to do.

Finally, as a result, we need to be more intentional with our use of technology. Abandoning communications tech is not a viable strategy, either politically or for everyday life, so it is not as easy as burning your devices. We also can't simply give up and continue going on as we do, buyig devices without thinking about where and how they are manufactured.

To begin to even plan an operation like this, detailed ...

2024-09-18T22:43:04Z

In reply to nevent1q…9ce0
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To begin to even plan an operation like this, detailed intelligence would need to have been obtained, including what was ordered, including model numbers, and details about the shipment. Then, Israeli intelligence would have likely acquired 3000 of the same models of pager (likely through a series of intermediaries). These pagers were then modified to contain a small explosive charge and an electronic switch.

That switch was triggered by receiving a specific message, meaning that they also had to modify the firmware on the devices for this functionality. By extension, that also means that in the short amount of time this operation had to take place, likely under a month, they reverse engineered the devices, modified firmware, and figured out how to reflash the devices in a repeatable, consistent way, with stable software. Those of us that work in low level tech can attest to just how difficult this would be to do.

After modifying the pagers they would need to have found a point of entry to the shipment. This could have happened at the point of production, but that would involve sharing operational details with untrusted companies, so this is unlikely. More likely they either had the shipping company allow them to access a warehouse to swap the real shipment with the modified one, or, more likely, they did so while the shipment was going through customs in a friendly country.

This means that not only does Hezbollah have a leak in their supply chain, likely more than one, but they also do not check devices after receiving them and before distribution (we will talk about that later).

From what we know of the attacks, the pagers that were targeted ...

2024-09-18T22:42:29Z

In reply to nevent1q…see9
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From what we know of the attacks, the pagers that were targeted were a part of a shipment of 3000 pagers purchased by Hezbollah for distribution to members and affiliates. The pagers that were ordered were branded Gold Apollo, mostly model AR924, with a smattering of others. The order was processed through a Hungarian company called BAC Consulting, who was licensed to produce the pagers in Europe. That company, in turn, subcontracts out production to yet another company, and that is where a lot of journalists have lost the trail. It is likely that the radios have a similarly complex supply chain.

For this to be possible, a large number of conditions need to line up, and seem to have in this context.

I'm going to kick off this new life posting on social media ...

2024-09-18T22:41:50Z

I'm going to kick off this new life posting on social media (don't really expect me to be here more than once a week) by speaking briefly about the absolutely horrifying attacks carried out in Lebanon. For those of you that are not aware, yesterday and today devices all over Lebanon started exploding. Yesterday around 3000 pagers, which were used by Hezbollah and affiliates for communications, began spontaneously exploding, killing and wounding hundreds, including children and random bystanders. Today the same thing occurred with an unknown, assumed to be a couple thousand, handheld radios also exploded.

A number of questions should arise for us at this moment; the implications of this for future conflict, the fact that a mass war crime was just committed, the fear this creates for anyone that crosses a state and uses electronics. But, before getting into all that, we need to talk about how this would have had to be done.

A Thread: