In a comment I posted on Karl’s Substack yesterday, I proposed that we add the term “plausible believability” to the lexicon. Today’s post (with detailed drawing of the nuke in question) reinforces my belief in Pepe’s journalistic integrity. He believes in the reliability of his source while pointing out that all parties to this possible event are going to strenuously deny it ever happened. So what are info consumers like us to do? Go figger! (Remember “we report. You decide.” ?) Be of good cheer comrades! “The hour is darkest just before the dawn!”
17 January 1966 a US Air Force B-52G carrying four B28FI Mod 2 Y1 thermonuclear (hydrogen) bombs collided with its refueling tanker. The Tanker exploded killing its whole crew. The B-52 crashed killing 3 of 7 of its crew. And all of the hydrogen bombs fell to Earth. Three were found near the small fishing village of Palomares, Almería, Spain.
The non-nuclear explosives in two of the weapons detonated upon impact with the ground, resulting in the contamination of a 0.77-square-mile (2 km2) area with radioactive plutonium. The fourth bomb fell into the Mediterranean Sea and was recovered intact after two and a half months of searching.
This incident had no chance of sparking WWIII. But it was still so secretly handled that all the servicemen injured in the incident or the clean-up had a really hard time getting VA medical care. The Air Force and DoD and NATO, all but denied it happened.
With Iran and Israel and the near certainty of escalation if the F-35 incident occured the level of secrecy will be higher.
How do you respond to a nuclear attack? None of the options are pretty.
If such an attack occured there is a lot of pressure never to let details out. There are several holes in what we know. The countries involved have no interest in clarifying anything past denying.
What are we to do?
Wait.
Look for patterns.
Dont believe and don't deny. "I don't know." & "We don't know." are powerful statements.
We should know. There should be no doubt. But there is reasonable doubt.
And the whole scenario serves as an example of how fast the current conflicts can escalate. One or two crazy people with visions of victory or paradise or simply so full of hate that death is better than loss, can end us all.
In the meantime we wait. The truth, whatever it is will take time. If it is even remotely like 1966 Palomares Incident, it will take decades.
I remember that Palomares incident (not at the time but later I read about it.) It's illustrative. And I agree that if the nuke incident rumor is true, it may be a long time before we find out.
If we combine Crooke and others pointing out that the Iran attack seriously undercut Israel's perception of security, which Israel absolutely had to recover (especially after October 7) - and which the minimalist drone attack did not do - then it makes it very plausible that Israel took a serious decision to strike back hard at Iran. Whether that included a nuke attack or an EMP attack, the problem for Israel is that its response generally failed.
I pointed out in my previous article that Israel didn't have to do much - they only really had to make a minimal attack on Iran because Iran had already promised to hit back after ANY Israeli attack. But for purposes of bolstering Israel's perception of having a deterrent, Israel had to strike back hard.
So what we may have seen is 1) an Israeli attack from the air - which was shot down by someone, possibly the Russians - and then 2) a followup or concurrent drone attack launched by Israeli assets such as the M.E.K. or the Kurds from Iraq or inside Iran. The reason that attack was minimal may well have been because their main attack was a failure due to it being shot down.
Now if we assume that scenario is what happened, this still leaves Israel with the need to retaliate further. And it also leaves a requirement for Iran to retaliate against Israel for the drone attack - if not air attack (because that would require a massive attack which Iran may not wish to commit to at this juncture.)
Any way one looks at it, this is going to continue to escalate. No one has motivation to back down at this point.
I agree. Escalation or the perception of escalation is the likely outcome. Israel needs it in ways Iran does not. Iran has been an international outcast since the Ayatollah came to power. Whatever it has as a support base (improved recently with BRICS and relations with Saudi Arabia) is fairly solid. Israel does not have that luxury despite a much better PR program in the West.
And what you lay out - intent to hit back hard being muted in some way - is completely plausible. If that is the flavor that is served up internationally, Israel will need to change the menu.
Yikes! At the time of that incident I was 11 yrs old- about then air raid drills were finally dropped from the program in school. A couple of years later, in the wake of the MLK and RFK assassinations I clearly remember coming to the glum conclusion that some fanatic was going to push the button and that would be that. Somehow we “gave peace a chance” and, lo and behold, we’re still here after 50+ yrs. Except now we have a crop of Zionist fanatics who completely believe that ‘G-d’ is on their side and a messiah will arrive to proclaim the End of Days. Sheesh. Have we learned nothing from our past? I stand by my trust in “plausible believability” and “war is over IF you want it”! Thanks, Jack, for that timely bit of history and perspective. Go well!
I would have been 17 in 1966. Dropped out of high school, the next year I enlisted in the Army - otherwise I would have been drafted and if you were drafted you were infantry and I wasn't that stupid. :-)
Stupid you ain’t! Shortly after registering for the draft in’72, I came to a similar conclusion and walked into the Air Force recruiting office to explore my options. They “double-teamed” me and did everything they could to get me to sign on the spot. By then they had the lottery system in place and when my turn came up I drew a high number and literally “dodged the bullet”. Many subsequent friends and bandmates did serve and were generally messed up by what they had to see and do. ‘Nuff respect to you for your ordeal and survival!
Thanks and good job on your part. I should have been a draft evader and gone to Canada, where ten years later I'd have been pardoned and meanwhile could be developing a career. Oh, well... :-)
I am proud to say that at age 14 I was the youngest person in the history of the Delaware County Peace Action Group to be invited to become a draft evasion counselor. However, they required parental approval, so it was no go.
My high school science teacher was # 365. He learned it while adjusting his seat while driving. In his excitement he slammed his brakes & folded himself inside the seat.
My high school history teacher was # 1 or 2. He disappeared immediately. Rumor had it he took off on his motorcycle.
thanks richard.. i don't think anyone questions pepes integrity... the only question is has someone tried to tarnish is reputation with false info... and that is not a question that will likely be answered either, so the whole thing remains irrelevant for the most part... the part about iran and israel continuing with ongoing steps towards more war - i can't rule that out.. no one can... it might be the case too..
I don't think Pepe's sources are trying to mislead him. He said in the discussion on Ania's channel that he trusts his sources and they trust him. Whether his sources are being misled is another question. And Pepe believes they weren't but the question is whether he can be sure of that. Any intel which is "second-hand" intel is almost worthless if it's not supported by multiple sources. Pepe claims multiple sources but two are relying on the third main source - and we don't know who they are, although as I say it's likely China, if not Russia itself.
yes - he trusts his sources and they trust him, but the question is whether his sources have been misled, remains open... and of course he can't be sure of that....
I think the main point that speaks to the incident being real is IF - I say again IF - Pepe's main source - the original source that the others refer to - actually is China. Chinese intel probably would not have any reason to spread misinformation. The only possibility I can think of for that is if China wants to bring down heat on Israel by suggesting it would do such an attack.
But again, that is improbable, too. Without actual evidence - which the US would instantly know if such an incident occurred whether there is any or not since the US is watching everything that Israel AND Russia are doing in the region - such a claim would be instantly dismissed. So Chinese Intel would gain no benefit and would just look like idiots. Not that intel agencies personnel aren't often idiots...
And as far as I know, no one is dismissing the rumor - as if they're scared to give it any credence at all. That speaks volumes that the incident might have actually happened.
In other words, here is the actual evidence the incident occurred:
1) If Russia did such a thing, China would have been informed. I think we can count on that.
2) Russia would not want to reveal it - but China might - or China might have done so accidentally.
3) If it didn't happen, everyone would have denied it instantly: Israel, Russia, and the US certainly, China once it was suggested they were the source of the rumor.
4) No one is denying or even talking about it.
5) Pepe's sources have triple confirmed it. If you trust Pepe and Pepe's ability to vet his sources, that's pretty powerful evidence.
None of this is proof - but it's highly suggestive. If there isn't a public dismissal by all parties - assuming this story gets any traction publicly which itself is problematic - I'd be inclined to come down on the side of it - or something like it - actually happening.
Maybe the details are wrong. Maybe Israel did launch an F-35 attack - without nukes - and the Russians did shoot it down or gave Syria the green light to do so - or even someone else did so, like Hezbollah. Then someone in some country's intelligence blew up or mangled the details and it got back to Pepe. Sort of like that old game of telling people in a line something and having them pass it on and the end person gets a story that's nothing like the original.
We'll just have to wait and see if it blows over or is publicly and credibly denied by all involved parties.
LLM-derived tabular, visual, and textual breakdowns and summaries for the discussion of Seyed Mohammad Marandi, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen linked above:
Interesting. The LLM's own conventional bias - a result of the material it's trained on - is revealed in that recap. The sentence about "using" an attack on a consulate to "justify retaliation" - as if attacking a consulate was not universally considered justified for retaliation - is an example. Nonetheless, providing a wider context as well as citing its analysis sources was valuable.
The one real insight I gained from Marandi is that Iran might actually want a war, which I don't think was noted in the recap. This agrees with what Crooke and I have been saying: that both sides actually want a war in order to finally finish the overall conflict between the US/Israel and the Middle East and remove US influence from the Middle East.
It seems like your comment is regarding the LLM generated statement:
"The mention of Israel bombing Iran's consulate as a breach of international law highlights how states use such incidents to justify retaliation."
Even though LLMs have their own biases, that specific statement was created by an AI model programmed to be cynical and politically inclined. (And "for fun.")
Which pretty much means "bias"... although more cynical than conventional. Although I suppose one could consider that these days most "conventional" views are cynical.
The main point though is that consulates are supposed to be immune from attack by international convention, so, cynical or not, to be accurate and useful the AI should recognize that is a fact and not just a propaganda ploy.
In other words, who wants a cynical AI? They have enough problems with the stuff they're trained on.
I'm thinking of putting an AI on my box, although I'd have to upgrade the GPU from the current 2GB to something like 12GB or more. The Ryzen 9 5950X I have should be decent enough with 64GB of RAM which I might upgrade to 128GB (which I need for virtual machines anyway.) There are plenty of open source models to choose from.
I have something like 48+TB of data - ebooks, Web pages, videos, courses - I could train it on covering a massive range of subjects, including a lot of stuff that I'm fairly sure the big LLMs don't cover.
I don't know enough yet on how long that would take. But if I could train it on the material I have, I know I wouldn't have any "guardrails" or "censor" on it - and that thing would be really interesting as a result given the sort of oddball material I have.
Its comments would likely be way more radical than cynical. It might end up sounding like me - which would terrify a lot of people. :-)
Right now, training your own large language model with your own text data isn't an easy task. If you're trying, that's commendable, and if you succeed, that's even more impressive.
> In other words, who wants a cynical AI? [...]
For instance, consider this article where a sarcastic and somewhat cynical AI is being employed:
The article was amusing but not what I want an AI for.
Yes, training an LLM with text seems difficult. I'd settle for it at least to read my ebooks and Web pages using RAG so I can query that stuff. I'd also like it to view all my Youtube videos and video courses so I could use it to teach me all that stuff.
For now I'll settle for running some model locally and using online models for the rest. Running a local model doesn't seem too hard depending on the level of performance one wants to accept. Big GPUs with lots of cores are expensive thanks to the frickin' gamers. (OTOH they only exist thanks to the same frickin' gamers.)
Maybe not a comment you want to discuss but I moved away from B's blog at MoA due to his zealot pushing of the bioweapon during Covid. It appears he now is paying the piper for his stance on the gene therapy with fears of a heart attack/stroke and a compromised immune system evidenced via infection. Germans bought the vaxx propaganda strongly and remain silent on Nord Stream. Shame.
As they say in the medical profession, "anecdotal evidence (i.e., worthless)..."
In reality, studies have shown that those who had Covid have a slightly elevated risk of a cardio incident - those who took the vaccine have a slightly less risk of same.
That's all I have to say on the matter. I go by studies as presented by Dr. Eric Topol in his "Ground Truths" Substack.
In a comment I posted on Karl’s Substack yesterday, I proposed that we add the term “plausible believability” to the lexicon. Today’s post (with detailed drawing of the nuke in question) reinforces my belief in Pepe’s journalistic integrity. He believes in the reliability of his source while pointing out that all parties to this possible event are going to strenuously deny it ever happened. So what are info consumers like us to do? Go figger! (Remember “we report. You decide.” ?) Be of good cheer comrades! “The hour is darkest just before the dawn!”
17 January 1966 a US Air Force B-52G carrying four B28FI Mod 2 Y1 thermonuclear (hydrogen) bombs collided with its refueling tanker. The Tanker exploded killing its whole crew. The B-52 crashed killing 3 of 7 of its crew. And all of the hydrogen bombs fell to Earth. Three were found near the small fishing village of Palomares, Almería, Spain.
The non-nuclear explosives in two of the weapons detonated upon impact with the ground, resulting in the contamination of a 0.77-square-mile (2 km2) area with radioactive plutonium. The fourth bomb fell into the Mediterranean Sea and was recovered intact after two and a half months of searching.
This incident had no chance of sparking WWIII. But it was still so secretly handled that all the servicemen injured in the incident or the clean-up had a really hard time getting VA medical care. The Air Force and DoD and NATO, all but denied it happened.
With Iran and Israel and the near certainty of escalation if the F-35 incident occured the level of secrecy will be higher.
How do you respond to a nuclear attack? None of the options are pretty.
If such an attack occured there is a lot of pressure never to let details out. There are several holes in what we know. The countries involved have no interest in clarifying anything past denying.
What are we to do?
Wait.
Look for patterns.
Dont believe and don't deny. "I don't know." & "We don't know." are powerful statements.
We should know. There should be no doubt. But there is reasonable doubt.
And the whole scenario serves as an example of how fast the current conflicts can escalate. One or two crazy people with visions of victory or paradise or simply so full of hate that death is better than loss, can end us all.
In the meantime we wait. The truth, whatever it is will take time. If it is even remotely like 1966 Palomares Incident, it will take decades.
I remember that Palomares incident (not at the time but later I read about it.) It's illustrative. And I agree that if the nuke incident rumor is true, it may be a long time before we find out.
If we combine Crooke and others pointing out that the Iran attack seriously undercut Israel's perception of security, which Israel absolutely had to recover (especially after October 7) - and which the minimalist drone attack did not do - then it makes it very plausible that Israel took a serious decision to strike back hard at Iran. Whether that included a nuke attack or an EMP attack, the problem for Israel is that its response generally failed.
I pointed out in my previous article that Israel didn't have to do much - they only really had to make a minimal attack on Iran because Iran had already promised to hit back after ANY Israeli attack. But for purposes of bolstering Israel's perception of having a deterrent, Israel had to strike back hard.
So what we may have seen is 1) an Israeli attack from the air - which was shot down by someone, possibly the Russians - and then 2) a followup or concurrent drone attack launched by Israeli assets such as the M.E.K. or the Kurds from Iraq or inside Iran. The reason that attack was minimal may well have been because their main attack was a failure due to it being shot down.
Now if we assume that scenario is what happened, this still leaves Israel with the need to retaliate further. And it also leaves a requirement for Iran to retaliate against Israel for the drone attack - if not air attack (because that would require a massive attack which Iran may not wish to commit to at this juncture.)
Any way one looks at it, this is going to continue to escalate. No one has motivation to back down at this point.
I agree. Escalation or the perception of escalation is the likely outcome. Israel needs it in ways Iran does not. Iran has been an international outcast since the Ayatollah came to power. Whatever it has as a support base (improved recently with BRICS and relations with Saudi Arabia) is fairly solid. Israel does not have that luxury despite a much better PR program in the West.
And what you lay out - intent to hit back hard being muted in some way - is completely plausible. If that is the flavor that is served up internationally, Israel will need to change the menu.
Interesting times. Thank you for your analysis.
Yikes! At the time of that incident I was 11 yrs old- about then air raid drills were finally dropped from the program in school. A couple of years later, in the wake of the MLK and RFK assassinations I clearly remember coming to the glum conclusion that some fanatic was going to push the button and that would be that. Somehow we “gave peace a chance” and, lo and behold, we’re still here after 50+ yrs. Except now we have a crop of Zionist fanatics who completely believe that ‘G-d’ is on their side and a messiah will arrive to proclaim the End of Days. Sheesh. Have we learned nothing from our past? I stand by my trust in “plausible believability” and “war is over IF you want it”! Thanks, Jack, for that timely bit of history and perspective. Go well!
I would have been 17 in 1966. Dropped out of high school, the next year I enlisted in the Army - otherwise I would have been drafted and if you were drafted you were infantry and I wasn't that stupid. :-)
Stupid you ain’t! Shortly after registering for the draft in’72, I came to a similar conclusion and walked into the Air Force recruiting office to explore my options. They “double-teamed” me and did everything they could to get me to sign on the spot. By then they had the lottery system in place and when my turn came up I drew a high number and literally “dodged the bullet”. Many subsequent friends and bandmates did serve and were generally messed up by what they had to see and do. ‘Nuff respect to you for your ordeal and survival!
Thanks and good job on your part. I should have been a draft evader and gone to Canada, where ten years later I'd have been pardoned and meanwhile could be developing a career. Oh, well... :-)
I am proud to say that at age 14 I was the youngest person in the history of the Delaware County Peace Action Group to be invited to become a draft evasion counselor. However, they required parental approval, so it was no go.
My high school science teacher was # 365. He learned it while adjusting his seat while driving. In his excitement he slammed his brakes & folded himself inside the seat.
My high school history teacher was # 1 or 2. He disappeared immediately. Rumor had it he took off on his motorcycle.
Thank you. I hope you and yours are well too.
thanks richard.. i don't think anyone questions pepes integrity... the only question is has someone tried to tarnish is reputation with false info... and that is not a question that will likely be answered either, so the whole thing remains irrelevant for the most part... the part about iran and israel continuing with ongoing steps towards more war - i can't rule that out.. no one can... it might be the case too..
I don't think Pepe's sources are trying to mislead him. He said in the discussion on Ania's channel that he trusts his sources and they trust him. Whether his sources are being misled is another question. And Pepe believes they weren't but the question is whether he can be sure of that. Any intel which is "second-hand" intel is almost worthless if it's not supported by multiple sources. Pepe claims multiple sources but two are relying on the third main source - and we don't know who they are, although as I say it's likely China, if not Russia itself.
yes - he trusts his sources and they trust him, but the question is whether his sources have been misled, remains open... and of course he can't be sure of that....
I think the main point that speaks to the incident being real is IF - I say again IF - Pepe's main source - the original source that the others refer to - actually is China. Chinese intel probably would not have any reason to spread misinformation. The only possibility I can think of for that is if China wants to bring down heat on Israel by suggesting it would do such an attack.
But again, that is improbable, too. Without actual evidence - which the US would instantly know if such an incident occurred whether there is any or not since the US is watching everything that Israel AND Russia are doing in the region - such a claim would be instantly dismissed. So Chinese Intel would gain no benefit and would just look like idiots. Not that intel agencies personnel aren't often idiots...
And as far as I know, no one is dismissing the rumor - as if they're scared to give it any credence at all. That speaks volumes that the incident might have actually happened.
In other words, here is the actual evidence the incident occurred:
1) If Russia did such a thing, China would have been informed. I think we can count on that.
2) Russia would not want to reveal it - but China might - or China might have done so accidentally.
3) If it didn't happen, everyone would have denied it instantly: Israel, Russia, and the US certainly, China once it was suggested they were the source of the rumor.
4) No one is denying or even talking about it.
5) Pepe's sources have triple confirmed it. If you trust Pepe and Pepe's ability to vet his sources, that's pretty powerful evidence.
None of this is proof - but it's highly suggestive. If there isn't a public dismissal by all parties - assuming this story gets any traction publicly which itself is problematic - I'd be inclined to come down on the side of it - or something like it - actually happening.
Maybe the details are wrong. Maybe Israel did launch an F-35 attack - without nukes - and the Russians did shoot it down or gave Syria the green light to do so - or even someone else did so, like Hezbollah. Then someone in some country's intelligence blew up or mangled the details and it got back to Pepe. Sort of like that old game of telling people in a line something and having them pass it on and the end person gets a story that's nothing like the original.
We'll just have to wait and see if it blows over or is publicly and credibly denied by all involved parties.
LLM-derived tabular, visual, and textual breakdowns and summaries for the discussion of Seyed Mohammad Marandi, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen linked above:
https://complexiathesinker.substack.com/p/llm-over-iran-and-israel-at-war-seyed
Interesting. The LLM's own conventional bias - a result of the material it's trained on - is revealed in that recap. The sentence about "using" an attack on a consulate to "justify retaliation" - as if attacking a consulate was not universally considered justified for retaliation - is an example. Nonetheless, providing a wider context as well as citing its analysis sources was valuable.
The one real insight I gained from Marandi is that Iran might actually want a war, which I don't think was noted in the recap. This agrees with what Crooke and I have been saying: that both sides actually want a war in order to finally finish the overall conflict between the US/Israel and the Middle East and remove US influence from the Middle East.
It seems like your comment is regarding the LLM generated statement:
"The mention of Israel bombing Iran's consulate as a breach of international law highlights how states use such incidents to justify retaliation."
Even though LLMs have their own biases, that specific statement was created by an AI model programmed to be cynical and politically inclined. (And "for fun.")
Which pretty much means "bias"... although more cynical than conventional. Although I suppose one could consider that these days most "conventional" views are cynical.
The main point though is that consulates are supposed to be immune from attack by international convention, so, cynical or not, to be accurate and useful the AI should recognize that is a fact and not just a propaganda ploy.
In other words, who wants a cynical AI? They have enough problems with the stuff they're trained on.
I'm thinking of putting an AI on my box, although I'd have to upgrade the GPU from the current 2GB to something like 12GB or more. The Ryzen 9 5950X I have should be decent enough with 64GB of RAM which I might upgrade to 128GB (which I need for virtual machines anyway.) There are plenty of open source models to choose from.
I have something like 48+TB of data - ebooks, Web pages, videos, courses - I could train it on covering a massive range of subjects, including a lot of stuff that I'm fairly sure the big LLMs don't cover.
I don't know enough yet on how long that would take. But if I could train it on the material I have, I know I wouldn't have any "guardrails" or "censor" on it - and that thing would be really interesting as a result given the sort of oddball material I have.
Its comments would likely be way more radical than cynical. It might end up sounding like me - which would terrify a lot of people. :-)
Sorry for the late response...
Right now, training your own large language model with your own text data isn't an easy task. If you're trying, that's commendable, and if you succeed, that's even more impressive.
> In other words, who wants a cynical AI? [...]
For instance, consider this article where a sarcastic and somewhat cynical AI is being employed:
https://complexiathesinker.substack.com/p/israel-holds-mow-the-lawn-charity
The article was amusing but not what I want an AI for.
Yes, training an LLM with text seems difficult. I'd settle for it at least to read my ebooks and Web pages using RAG so I can query that stuff. I'd also like it to view all my Youtube videos and video courses so I could use it to teach me all that stuff.
For now I'll settle for running some model locally and using online models for the rest. Running a local model doesn't seem too hard depending on the level of performance one wants to accept. Big GPUs with lots of cores are expensive thanks to the frickin' gamers. (OTOH they only exist thanks to the same frickin' gamers.)
Maybe not a comment you want to discuss but I moved away from B's blog at MoA due to his zealot pushing of the bioweapon during Covid. It appears he now is paying the piper for his stance on the gene therapy with fears of a heart attack/stroke and a compromised immune system evidenced via infection. Germans bought the vaxx propaganda strongly and remain silent on Nord Stream. Shame.
As they say in the medical profession, "anecdotal evidence (i.e., worthless)..."
In reality, studies have shown that those who had Covid have a slightly elevated risk of a cardio incident - those who took the vaccine have a slightly less risk of same.
That's all I have to say on the matter. I go by studies as presented by Dr. Eric Topol in his "Ground Truths" Substack.