The Evil Empire Strikes Back Against Ukr ... Against Israel!

I am detecting a pattern here.

Pattern recognition. It is a powerful thing. Do you have it?

Let’s take our pattern recognition out for a test drive as we wind the clocks back to when General Surovikin was put in charge of the Russian war effort for a brief stint following several Russian retreats and PR disasters. Upon assuming his new position, he almost immediately unleashed a missile barrage on Ukraine.

You can read up on what I wrote about that here and here.

People were really hyped about the first wave of strikes, as you might recall. Most of the absurd claims about NATO bunkers being eliminated or secret biolabs being targeted were propagated in this period. These lies probably didn’t originate with Pepe Escobar, but he and his crew are responsible for popularizing them, so I usually just blame and mock them for it to save time. To this day, most Z-supporters think that “Mr. Kinzhal” killed a bunker full of NATO generals, that Russia shot down a nuke-carrying Israeli bomber headed for Israel and that teams of Spetsnaz were sent in to take out the COVID biolabs or something.

Like, this is established canon in many supposedly serious peoples’ heads now.

And this was all made possible because of the heavy-lifting PR work that the strikes did. Frankly, the Kremlin has been coasting on this hype ever since. For the next three years, the Kremlin would to simply lob these missiles every time that the UAF or NATO crossed a red line and clap the dust off their hands as if they’d just accomplished something of particular value or note. But it has gotten to the point where very few people get hyped up or mollified by the strikes anymore. The Kremlin’s PR people will need to find something better to do to keep up the illusion that they’re fighting this war for real. Especially after that very lackluster wet whimper of a retaliation following Operation Spiderweb.

And now we switch over to the Tehran narrative arc.

Apparently, the storyboard has been wiped clean and the previous lessons and plot twists have already been forgotten. The opening credits roll and now the exact same story begins to unwind before our eyes.

Act I: the antagonist boldly assassinates an entire section of Iran’s military and political elites using drones, missiles, planes and internal teams of saboteurs in a stunning and wide-sweeping operation. Iran’s refineries go up in flames. Military-industrial complex facilities are captured on smartphones burning.

And in response, Iran coughs up a few missiles. The first return volley is so weak that only, maybe, a dozen end up getting through. The world is subject to the harrowing image of an injured jew with a nosebleed holding on to his wallet for dear life.

Other than that, Tehran-sponsored social media accounts spam fake clips of Russian jets and submarines and AI generated revenge porn at the Israelies.

The average person (you) is now drowning in an informational shum storm and cannot sift out the facts from the disinfo being put out by both sides. Unable to make sense of any of it, he (you) simply decides to believe in the lies of the side that he supports.

Act II: the antagonist, impressed by the determined response that they received from the righteous victim, decides to up the ante by bombing even more targets. Once again, these strikes are carried out with impunity. The propagandists on Iran’s side would have us believe that Tehran is committed to punishing and thereby deterring future Israeli attacks with their firm responses. However, despite the deference measures working unquestionably well, they fail to deter Israel, who continues pummeling Iran.

Kind of a plot hole in the story, but the audiences don’t seem to notice it.

In response, Tehran coughs up some more missiles. By the looks of it, more this time, hamdullah! And more of them *appear* to have gotten through the defenses.

[We are here, now.]

You vaguely recall the triumphalist fist-pumping over the first return salvo which ended up being nothing but AI and footage from previous wars and a Jew with a nosebleed. But this is not enough to prevent the audience from knee-jerk fist-pumping and cheering the rather inconclusive results of this latest salvo, which you shrug and join in with. In a couple of days time, you will probably learn that a lot of the footage you saw was in some way fake, exaggerated or inconsequential.

But that is then and this is now, and you don’t have access to pattern recognition, sadly.

Act III: our antagonist will continue to pummel our moral, aggrieved, suffering hero with even more ordinance. Iran’s fleet goes down into the depths. Stockpiles, depots, bases go up in smoke. More government buildings are hit. Terrorists materialize all over the country in non-Persian regions.

All the while, Tehran continues to let off a few fireworks here and there over Tel Aviv to convince people (their own people first and foremost) that they are fighting this war seriously. Many are shocked to hear the news of armored columns driving into the capital from Allah knows where, unopposed and armed to the teeth.

…

I have two questions for the fist-pumpers now and they are simple ones.

Q: Do you think that Tehran is effectively employing deference and punishment against Israel’s aggression?

A: (Almost certainly some variant of “yes, yes I do, viva la resistance, hamdullah!”)

Having walked into my trap, I spring some pattern recognition on them.

Q: So do you believe that Israel will be deterred into no longer attacking or scaling back their attacks, at least? Do you recall what happened in the last two acts of this farce?

This is the point in which I slip into a defensive crouch.

A: … STONE THE HERETIC, HABIBI! STONE HIM!!!

*furious ululating as Muslim curse-spells are hurled at my astral form by robed and bearded men*

…

Oh, and do you remember how NAFOids on social media loved to pearl-clutch over the Russian strikes and phantom massive Putin offensives that never materialized? No? Well, that’s more of a memory thing than a pattern recognition problem, because I wrote about it ad nauseum for like a year straight and I was really hoping that the message would sink in and stay there. Pro-Israel and NATO accounts are pearl-clutching over the missile showers.

Basically, the same thing is happening now.

• Doesn’t this prove that Israel is shivering and holding on to its wallet for dear life in fear?

• Doesn’t it prove that the TehranAnon posters with their AI and fake clips are telling the truth?

• Doesn’t it prove that Tehran is serious about fighting back and is capable of doing damage on Israel?

Well, no, actually.

What is happening here is that you are falling for a cognitive trap wherein you rely on heuristics to do your thinking for you. Almost all scams are actually based on manipulating what people call “common sense” or what can more accurately be termed “heuristic-based thinking”. These approximations and short-cuts that we take in our thinking often land us in hot water, but most of us are too lazy to change our ways, unfortunately.

A clear example of what I mean is the simple knee-jerk response that most people have for evaluating truth wherein they simply ask themselves if they like the person or his religion/ideology before deciding on whether to believe them. That is, they don’t evaluate the claims themselves on their own merits, they simply use tribal loyalty instead to approximate truth. Or, they do the opposite and disbelieve everything that a person that they don’t align with ideologically is saying, simply because they are perceived as being the enemy (perhaps rightly, that is besides the point).

Thus, it is actually surprisingly easy for skilled propagandists to manipulate someone’s so-called common sense and I can quickly explain how it is being done now.

So, the reason why the pro-Israel and NATO people are kvetching about the strikes and how scary they are and how much damage they are doing is because this will justify more American and EU money being sent to support Israel. If they can say that Israel has run out of Patriot missiles and that Israelis’ wallets are tragically being blown out of their claws, then America becomes Christian morality bound to send over more Patriot missiles.

Don’t you recall them playing the same scam in Ukraine?

The big NAFO accounts were literally fear-mongering that Putin would march on Kiev with some phantom army for half a year straight because they were afraid that Trump would cut off Kiev’s money and military aid. He didn’t, and he in fact, increased it, just as I explicitly said that he would, even before he was elected. But NAFO accounts drummed up the phantom Putin threats. They drummed up the damage from the Surovikin air strikes too, as ZAnon crowed triumphantly to boot. When the dust settled though, Ukraine’s electricity continued to operate, its bridges were untouched, the NATO arms factories kept working, not a single politician or general was dead, and the UAF calmly invaded the Russian Federation proper several times.

Put simply: they clearly exaggerated their own bad position to get more weapons and money sent over to Ukraine. And clearly, using “common sense” heuristics, the peasants in both ideological camps fell for that ruse.

On a deeper level, the "West” uses “cry-bully” tactics and likes to portray itself as the victim in all of its dealings with other countries. The average Western citizen has also been thoroughly vaginalized, psychologically, and so these narratives also appeal to them. Israel + NATO pretend to be victims and the plucky underdogs, despite having all the best cards in their hands. But they’re perpetually on the brink of losing their state, their democracy, their freedoms, their fries or whatever, to a monstrous new threat somewhere in the East. And the Axis of Resistance like to role-play as that big, bad, sinister threat, despite actually being impotent and toothless.

It makes for a good show though, we have to admit that much at least.

To bring things full circle, my hypothesis is that Tehran’s government is just as comprador as Putin’s. Admittedly, I haven’t provided as much proof in the form of translations of Persian conspiracy theorists writing in Farsi (because I don’t speak it) like I did for Russia, but I see clear parallels and patterns in their behavior and pose the same question: is Tehran really this incompetent or are they treacherous?.

Furthermore, when I see the same pattern of NAFO pearl-clutching on the internet, and frantic demands for more weapons from Washington and the crowing from TehranAnon personalities who have been caught blatantly lying and making stuff up before about Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Russia for that matter, well, I start to get suspicious about the drama unfolding before my eyes…

…

“Wait a sec,” I say to the poltergeist from the attic that I’ve been having intense conversations with of late during the dark hours of the night. “Haven’t I … oh, pardon me ol’ chum … excuse me … yes, haven’t WE seen this movie together already before? You know, rather recently? This feels a bit like a sequel, no?”

The poltergeist from the attic chuckles sinisterly back at me in lieu of an answer.

Blood begins to ooze from the walls around me as he begins to recite a cryptic prophecy instead:

BABYLON WAGES WAR ON BABYLON, BABYLON VANQUISHES THE EVIL OF BABYLON, BABYLON FALLS AND BABYLON RISES, THE WARS AREN'T REAL BUT THE GENOCIDES OF YOUR PEOPLE ARE, HOW THEY MASSACRE YOU LIKE CATTLE! HOW GOD WEEPS FOR YOUR MISGUIDED SOULS! THEIR MERCHANTS DID TRADE, THEIR LEADER WORE THEIR CROSS, ARE YOU TRULY SO BLINDED BY THE SERPENT'S PROPAGANDA?! WHERE DID THEIR SCIENTISTS GO?! YOU QUESTION WHERE THE BODIES WENT, WHERE DO WE PUT OURS?! THE HEAD BITS THE TAIL, IN DEATH THEY ARE BORN.