The SMO will keep rollin’ on. And as the Europeans want it, to the last Ukrainian.

Let’s start with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s Road to Damascus moment:

“Frankly, it’s a proxy war between nuclear powers, the United States helping Ukraine and Russia, and it needs to come to an end�.

Now that’s a howler. Jeffrey Sachs to the rescue. Of course, the correct formulation would be “proxy war launched by the United States�. But still: Hallelujah! Such illumination – by proxy – from Heavens Above could never had hit the previous American Secretary of Genocide.

Now cut to panic. Total European panic.

Le Petit Roi, as popular in France as nighttime mosquitoes in a five-star beach resort, has declared that peace in Europe is only possible with a “tamed� Russia – and that Russia is a direct threat to France and Europe.

On Ukraine, he pontificated that peace simply cannot take place under Russian terms or via the – inevitable – Ukrainian surrender.

Le breathless Petit Roi literally went nuclear. He stressed that France possesses a nuclear deterrent – and offered it to the rest of Europe, while insisting that Europe’s future should not be dictated by Moscow or Washington.

Le Petit Roi napoleonically all but declared war on Russia. Well, the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of France would gladly agree that mini-Napoleon should be dispatched to the battlefields in the black soil of Novorossiya right away – where he would surrender in less than 5 minutes, waving a rainbow flag, as he realizes he’s about to be turned into an instant steak tartare.

Now couple this Moliere farce with the fate of the much larger, fatter, pan-European New Model Woke Army regimented by the Fuhrerin SS von der Lugen out of Brussels, allegedly to be financed to the tune of 800 billion euros – money that no one has, and would have to be loaned then repaid with sky-high extorsion interest rates to the usual international financial system vultures.

SS von der Lugen insists Europe is in danger, so the solution is a massive expansion of the military-industrial complex – in practice, buying more overpriced American weapons – and “rearmament�.

Talk about Gotterdammerung on crack.

Were the New Model Woke Army ever come to light, surrender would also be a matter of less than 5 minutes – brandishing rainbow flags – as its woke warriors would face the dire prospect of being Oreshniked to a pile of charcoal grilled burgers.

Add to it the Return of the Nord Stream Saga – with a new plot twist. Sy Hersh conclusively proved that the Nord Streams were bombed under orders of the previous Crash Test Dummy regime in Washington. Now Nord Stream 2, at least, could be back in business via a not-so-secret U.S.-Russia deal involving Gazprom and American oligarchs.

All that while fanatics in Berlin assure right and left they want to explore every possible way to prevent (italics mine) the Nord Stream system from being repaired – because after all no one, especially the new BlackRock chancellor, can deviate from the official policy of destroying the German economy by all means necessary.

Compounding the Kafkaesque scenario, the Prime Minister of Denmark – which is on the brink of losing Greenland “one way or another� to Trump 2.0 – immortalized the words, “peace in Ukraine will be more dangerous than war.� The Polish Prime Minister did not miss a beat, adding that “Europe is stronger than Russia and capable of winning in any military, financial, or economic confrontation.� Europe is in such a “winning� streak now – as the record shows.

All this discombobulated Tower of Babel proves, without a shadow of a doubt, that Europe is geopolitically – and geoeconomically – dead and buried. No Teutonic Gods – complete with fat lady singin’ – will be able to resurrect it.

Flirting with a one-way ticket back to the Stone Age

The notion that Europe is able to pose a military threat to Russia does not even qualify as trashy propaganda for sub-zero IQs. It would take at least a decade to re-militarize Germany as its economy is moribund, serially stabbed by unmanageable energy costs. Russia for its part is protected from a possible nuclear attack by Le Petit Roi’s puny “umbrella� arsenal by the most sophisticated missile defenses in the world.

The Aegis defensive missiles in Poland are relatively worthless – even if their prime danger to Russia remains that the system can be converted to handle offensive missiles. As a whole, the Aegis, Patriot, THAAD-PAC-3, SBIR-HIGH Ground Based Infrared Systems are all relatively useless.

Other than the U.S., NATO simply has no military worth. And Washington under Trump 2.0 simply will not be involved in the next European War.

The U.S. has satellite systems for targeting but no one else in NATO has them. With the U.S. pulling out, and in the event of a hypothetical von der Lugen-led New Woke Army attack against Russia, Russian missiles can knock out all European ports, airports and manufacturing and energy systems in a day max – instantly returning Europe to the stone age.

This applies to England, France, Germany, not to mention assorted chihuahuas: all of NATO. Russia can knock out all British power systems with Zircons launched from a conventional submarine. Stone Age, here we come. Russian hypersonic missiles cannot be intercepted.

Meanwhile, President Putin insists on talking sense to lunatics. At the Collegia of the FSB on February 27, he noted how, “some Western elites are still determined to maintain instability in the world, and these forces will try to disrupt and compromise the dialogue [with the U.S.] that has begun. We see this. We need to take this into account and use all the possibilities of diplomacy and special services to disrupt such attempts.�

As Andrei Martyanov has noted, superpowers have “only two options in the 21^st century: either start WWIII which will end with nuclear exchange or find a modus vivendi.� That’s a conversation for adults that automatically excludes the European hospice and the childish tantrums of the cracked actor in Kiev.

The cracked actor never had any (italics mine) cards. He now cuts a pathetic figure, doing somersaults to cling to power, propped by (former) collective West money, weapons and massive propaganda. Now the 404 nation he “created� is losing not only the war but the P.R. war as well.

The former adviser to the head of Zelensky’s office, Oleksiy Arestovych, as slimy as they come, but always with his pulse on reliable info, is convinced that the Ukrainian Army, blind and cross-eyed, can hold out at best for another one and a half to two months without all those American goodies. Without intel data, Kiev’s forces cannot prepare strikes against the Russian federation or conduct reconnaissance and cyber ops.

Country 404 as a whole is now entering Walking Dead territory. Europe, with or without its SS von der Lugen Invincible Armada, does not have the industrial capacity, the financial might, and the military capability to stop the debacle. Russia has already stated that any European “peacekeeping� troops will immediately become legitimate targets.

The spectacular failure of Project Ukraine is a sight to behold. It’s no wonder the current, tawdry, ghastly political “elites� are in total panic. Without Project Ukraine, and without the Mafia protection of His Master’s Voice, they are just, geopolitically, an irrelevant, post-colonial small peninsula on the western borders of fast-integrating Eurasia.

The Empire of Chaos will not take the competition lightly. The Middle Kingdom is unfazed – and ready to rock’n roll.

When President Xi Jinping hosted a recent – rare – meeting with an array of Chinese tech superstars, including a “rehabilitated� Jack Ma, Alibaba’s founder, he urged them to “show their talent�, code for going for broke in the tech war with the U.S.

It was no wonder that young Liang Wenfeng, founder of AI sensation DeepSeek, was among the guests.

DeepSeek threw not only Silicon Valley but the whole somewhat paranoid U.S. national security ecosystem completely off balance. Yet Beijing’s emphasis is not subversion, but a sound drive towards building an AI system totally independent from U.S. monopolistic pressure and Nvidia products. Alibaba, Huawei and Tencent will likely align their infrastructure with DeepSeek.

This process is perfectly synchronized with the Made in China 2025 project, which has already propelled China to the leadership position in several sectors – from electric vehicles, batteries and solar panels to smart grids and advanced manufacturing. The final breakthroughs will be on top semiconductors and aerospace.

It’s now common knowledge that DeepSeek’s development was not a product of Silicon Valley labs showered with billions of dollars of research funds. Liang Wenfeng himself revealed it: “I won’t lie, our AI was created on the basis of Soviet developments – the OGAS system of Academician Glushkov.�

The wonders of History: a Soviet marvel auctioned off for a pittance, $15,000 in 1995 possibly because it was considered worthless, is now the backbone of China’s new digital revolution.

Physics heavyweight Quantum Bird, formerly with the CERN in Geneva, is adamant: “The Americans lost the plot. It’s all about models employing less computing power and less data. Nvidia high-performance GPUs costing $40,000 consume too much energy. Then there’s financial speculation. Raspberry Pi [a small single-board computer], the size of a credit card and with a simple processor, costing $50 for students, they may run DeepSeek, consuming less energy than a cellphone.�

And that’s just the beginning, Quantum Bird adds: “When Russia and China come up with their first lithographic machine… It was Silicon Valley that pushed the world to this.�

Russia-China scientists have already accelerated scientific computing on conventional Nvidia graphics cards by 800 times, creating a new algorithm using reverse engineering.

That was pulled off by a joint group of scientists from MSU-PPI University in Shenzhen (MSU-BIT University), established in 2014 by Lomonosov Moscow State University and Beijing Polytechnic Institute.

In parallel, researchers using Made in China GPUs have already boosted 10 times their performance over U.S. supercomputers relying on Nvidia hardware. U.S. tech sanctions? Who cares?

Counterpunching Sanctionmania

Chinese scientists are not intimidated by any challenges. On hardware, production of advanced GPUs like the A100 and H100 is a foreign monopoly. On software, Nvidia has restricted its CUDA software ecosystem from running on third-party hardware; that’s a serious problem for those working on independent algorithms.

These may not be insurmountable problems when a rolling wave of Chinese scientists is coming back home to China mostly from the U.S..

Take Tsinghua University chip superstar Sun Nan. Tsinghua’s social media recently revealed that Sun Nan came back in 2020 after many years in the U.S. to “train chip professionals for China and solving the manufacturing problems of mid- and high-end chip technology�.

The key sectors, once again, are semiconductors and quantum computing. Nothing Trump 2.0 will throw at China in terms of “tech containment� will alter the Chinese drive.

Sun Nan and his team have already come up with high-performance circuit design tech they integrated into more than 50 chips used in the Chinese power grid, high-speed rail, industrial measurement and control, instrumentation and electric vehicles.

Countering the American drive to derail China’s development in AI and chipmaking equipment, interconnected Sun Tzu maneuvers paint the picture of a Chinese transformation of current supply chains, fomenting a tech crisis in the West itself. That is a key reason for Trump’s obsession with Greenland and Ukraine’s rare earth potential.

Sanctionmania has been going on since 2017, when Trump started to impose a 60% tariff on Chinese imports. The Cadaver in the White House administration then slapped a 100% tax on Chinese EVs, and dozens of export controls on China, via coercion of its own “allies� such as Holland’s ASML and South Korea’s Hynix and Samsung.

Trump 2.0 will come up with a renewed charge of the heavy brigade quite soon.

By 2018, China was entirely dependent on Western tech. That was a time when telecom towers came from Ericsson, GPUs and chips for neural networks from Nvidia, and cars from the European giants.

Now it’s a completely different ball game: a blowback game.

Huawei leads in global telecom equipment. BYD is the world’s top producer of electric vehicles – ahead of Tesla since last year. Huawei is ahead of Google in smartphone processor shipments, also since last year. Xiaomi will launch its own smartphone processor this year.

Huawei’s Ascend 910B chip is already just 5% behind Nvidia’s AI products – and 70% cheaper. Huawei is vertically integrated with its own chip design and manufacturing supply chain – offering mobile operating systems (Harmony OS NEXT), electric vehicles, streaming services, and autonomous driving.

How to “directly benefit society�

Apart from DeepSeek, ByteDance, Baidu, Alibaba, and 01.ai have all developed their own sophisticated LLM models.

China not only already leads in industrial AI applications from robotics and drones to autonomous driving; it is also metastasizing its industrial, technological and economic breakthroughs into military power.

Example: the recently launched world’s first 6^th generation fighter prototypes – not only one but two, simultaneously; the world’s first drone-carrier; the first hypersonic stealth unmanned airplanes for strike and reconnaissance; the first stealth unmanned warship; and the most powerful long-range air defence systems.

China is advancing at breakneck speed in directed energy weapons, military 5G, atomic timing, and space warfare systems.

For those who keep track of the slings and arrows crossing the broader geopolitical chessboard non-stop, it’s an immensely powerful – and humbling – experience to one day be contemplating the devastated Avdeyevka, in the heart of the war in Donbass, and a week later struggling to understand the devastation inflicted on villages in southern Lebanon.

It’s all about the transcending power of Resistance – uniting Orthodox Christianity in the black soil of Novorossiya to political Shi’ism in the Eastern Mediterranean.

It’s this close-up, in microcosm, of the tortuous, bloody, pitiless ways of the Angel of History – to remember Walter Benjamin’s searing metaphor – that really illuminate the always shape-shifting Big Picture, and help us to better frame complex historical processes on the move.

We are now, geopolitically, under the volcano. And one of the key questions ahead that may allow us to better find a way out is how the top BRICS nations will be reacting to the seemingly immovable Forever Wars ethos.

So let’s keep our feet on the ground. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has just gone through an intriguing Astana process loop. First he was in Turkiye – the new hegemon in Syria, at least in thesis. He met Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan – the former head of Turkish intel – and President Erdogan.

Even though Turkiye will hardly dare to become a BRICS partner – after it was officially invited at the Kazan summit last year – Ankara simply cannot afford to antagonize Russia, mostly for geoeconomic reasons.

Then Lavrov went to Iran – following up on the Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Cooperation signed on January 17 in Moscow.

Lavrov and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi discussed not only the proverbial mutually beneficial trade and economic cooperation agenda – especially on energy and transportation – but also the wider geopolitical chessboard, including ultra-sensitive nodes such as Syria, Yemen, the Persian Gulf, the Caspian, the South Caucasus and Afghanistan, as well as what could happen next for the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal.

Yet the absolutely key imperative remains the Forever Wars chapter in Ukraine – whose resolution (or not) will deeply affect geopolitics for the rest of the century.

Three years ago, at the start of the SMO, President Putin qualified a series of objectives. NATO responded by seeking to up the ante.

Examples. Let’s start with a security treaty imposing a demilitarized space on Russia’s western borders, and the return of NATO to its limits circa 1997. NATO responded by expanding in Scandinavia – and now the Baltic chihuahuas, supported by Finland, dream of turning the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake.

While the Lugansk National Republic has been 100% liberated, Donetsk stands at best at 75%. Kherson was 100% liberated in the summer of 2022, but then there was a retreat; it now stands at 75%. Same with Zaporizhia.

Ukraine has not been fully demilitarized yet – although the prospects are somewhat encouraging – or denazified (that will be a decade-long process, at least).

Ukraine as a non-NATO neutral nation remains a real red line to Moscow ahead of upcoming negotiations with Trump 2.0. Same with the acceptance by Kiev of Crimea and the four regions as Russian and the removal of all sanctions against Russia: Washington may remove quite a few, but the vassal EU will keep them all.

Not to mention it’s still a long and winding road – to put it mildly – for Moscow to eventually de-enclave Transnistria, which would require to establish a transport corridor through the Kharkov-Transnistria axis as well as Odessa – a Russian city – and securitizing the whole Black Sea littoral. Control of the Black Sea was the prime NATO obsession since before Maidan in 2014.

Walk on the Wild – Kafkaesque – Side

When we follow the money regarding the upcoming US-Russia negotiations on Ukraine, it’s clear that what matters for Trump 2.0 is to reestablish the position of American companies in Russia, all the way to buying Russian commodities – as suggested by Putin himself.

So geoconomics rule – again, bringing us all back to 2013 and the fateful free market agreement between the EU and Kiev.

Trump 2.0 is building the narrative that European troops – not directly NATO-linked – will be deployed in Kiev after the end of the war. That would fit into a soft power operation of convincing public opinion about NATO’s annexation of rump Ukraine.

Trump 2.0, meanwhile, is actively transferring to the collapsing EU the role of 100% globalist supporter of Kiev. Follow the money: this means the EU has to pay up. For everything – while the US gleefully exploits what remains of Ukraine’s resources.

In parallel, in this Kafkaesque universe, Brussels keeps piling up sanctions on Russia while removing sanctions on Syria on the energy and transportation fronts because Damascus, after all, is now ruled by jihadists: “our� jihadists.

Compounding the circus, clueless EU mutts such as the next BlackRock German chancellor now openly admit, regretfully, that Maidan, from the start, was in fact aimed against Brussels. The American goal – way before the toxic distribution of Nuland’s cookies – was to sever the EU from Russia and destroy it as a technological competitor. Mission accomplished.

Of course, in such a Kafkaesque domain, none of the above is enough to change the EU narrative. Brussels wants to allocate yet another 20 to 40 billion euros (which they don’t have) and an “unimaginable� amount of (American) weapons to Kiev, as stated by Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto.

Follow the Money – and the Shadow Play

Back on the Ukraine front, Putin has actually suggested that Zaluzhny might replace the current cracked actor in a sweaty sweatshirt. The MI6 is undoubtedly currently preparing Zaluzhny in London exactly for such a role.

As for military budget cuts, Putin also accepts Trump’s idea of dividing them by half (China politely disagrees). Were that to happen, Russia’s budget would roughly be back to what it was before the SMO, while the Americans would have to cut off $400 billion. Elon Musk’s DOGE will be thrilled; the Deep State will fight it to death.

For all the intertwined shadow play that is taking place on all fronts, invisible to public opinion, there is an undercurrent of skeptical dissent in Moscow according to which after three years of a narrative insisting the Ukraine war was a US war on Russia (certainly by the globalist Democrat axis), plus the Ukrainian biolabs, the tsunami of sanctions, the Nord Stream bombings, Moscow is now willing to re-start economic cooperation with Washington from scratch.

Of course it’s not so simple. But there are indeed fears that a possible “peace� deal may turn out to be yet another American “follow the money� win.

No one ever lost money betting on the batshit crazy “policies� of the ferociously yapping Baltic chihuahuas.

No one ever lost money betting on the batshit crazy “policies� of the ferociously yapping Baltic chihuahuas. Their latest power play of sorts is a drive to turn the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake.

The notion that a bunch of Russophobic sub-entities have what it takes to expel the Russian superpower from the Baltic Sea and pose a threat to St. Petersburg does not even qualify as cartoonish. Yet that is indeed part and parcel of NATO’s re-configured obsessions, as their warmongering “vanguard� has been relocated to a London-Warsaw-Baltic chihuahuas-Ukraine axis.

What kind of black hole rump “Ukraine� will turn out to be after the end of the war – which may not even happen in 2025 – remains to be seen. What’s certain is that in the case of a Ukraine exit – whatever the modalities – enter Romania.

The whole electoral farce in Romania – complete with the demonization of election front-runner Calin Georgescu – revolves around the upgrading of the Mihail Kogalniceanu base, which will become the largest NATO military base in Europe.

So, once again, this is all about the Black Sea. NATO wreaking havoc in the Black Sea carries way more savory prospects than NATO via chihuahuas monopolizing the Baltic Sea.

Ilya Fabrichnikov, a member of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, has published a remarkable essay essentially focusing on the Black Sea (this is a short version on the Kommersant daily).

Fabrichnikov convincingly argues that from an European – UE/NATO – angle, what really mattered in Ukraine was “to move its borders, along with its military, political and economic infrastructure, close to Russia’s, to put under full control the strategic Black Sea trade corridor – which easily stretches further north along the Odessa-Gdansk route – in order to more conveniently and quickly explore the economic spaces of Asia and North Africa, and to begin dictating its terms to Russian supplies of oil, gas and other resources needed by the European economy.�

As this focused power play instrumentalizing Ukraine is unravelling in real time, a replacement is needed – even as warmongering Eurocrats keep peddling their Orwellian “peace is war� dementia non-stop, complete with a non-stop tsunami of sanctions and renewed promises of avalanches of weapons to Kiev.

This is a classic Brussels vassals affair – even as the toxic Medusa von der Lugen as head of the EC and Rutti-Frutti as the new head of NATO were essentially appointed by Washington and London. Collectively, Europe has pumped way more military-political funds into black hole Ukraine than the Americans.

The reason is simple. For Europe there’s no Plan B apart from that mirific “strategic defeat� of Russia.

The EU/NATO Black Sea power play would make it even more imperative for Russia to connect with Transnistria. The only one who can answer whether this is part of the current planning is of course President Putin.

Neo-nazis go pipeline bombing

Russian intel is very much aware that the Europeans have to some extent already carved up their own areas in Ukraine – from ports to mines. Not surprisingly the Brits, via MI6, are ahead of the “continentals�, mostly Germany.

All that intertwines with the extremely murky weapons-for-metals deal clinched by Trump 2.0 with the totally illegitimate sweatshirt actor-turned-gangster in Kiev. The only thing that matters for Trump is to get U.S. money back – whether the total bill is $500 billion or less (actually, much less).

Into this kabuki steps in the real power in Kiev after the proclamation of martial law: the National Defense and Security Council of Ukraine. The unelected, actually illegal actor is not taking any major decisions for some time now. These are issued by the former head of the foreign secret service, Oleksandr Lytvynenko.

It was the council that on February 17 ordered the bombing of the crucial pipeline owned by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) linking Kazakhstan to Novorossiysk, exporting loads of Kazakh and Russian oil.

Crucially, CPC shareholders included Italy’s ENI (2%); the Caspian Pipeline Co., which is a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil (7.5%); and the Caspian Pipeline Consortium Co., a subsidiary of Chevron (15%).

Well, that’s not very bright; the “integral nationalists�, code for neo-nazis in Kiev decided to bomb a partially owned American asset. Not only there will be blowback by Trump 2.0; it is already on.

On the equally murky rare earths front, Putin’s recent interview to Channel One seems to have thrown everyone off balance. Russia, he said, has way more rare earths than Ukraine and is “ready to work with our foreign partners, including the U.S.� to develop these deposits. That’s classic Sun Tzu Putin: the Americans won’t have rare earths to exploit in the future rump Ukraine – because they don’t exist. But they can be partners with Russia in Novorossiya.

All of the above of course would presuppose a solid U.S.-Russia negotiation on Ukraine. And yet Team Trump 2.0 still does not seem to grasp the real Russian red lines:

1. No temporary ceasefire “along the front line�.

2. No trading of new territories acquired in the battlefield.

3. No NATO or European “peacekeepers� in the western borders of Russia.

Putin discombobulating Trump

As it stands, Washington and Moscow remain divided by an abyss.

Mr. Disco Inferno simply cannot make serious concessions – or de facto recognize the strategic defeat of the Empire of Chaos. Because that would seal the Definitive End of Unilateral Hegemony.

Putin for his part simply will not give away the hard-won victories on the battlefield. Russian public opinion expects nothing less. After all Russia holds all the cards leading to a possible negotiation.

The EU/NATO will never admit their own, self-inflicted strategic defeat; hence those Baltic/Black Sea dreams, which carry the extra self-inflicted fantasy of disrupting China’s New Silk Roads as much as “isolating� Russia.

Putin is actually performing virtual somersaults to instill some common sense. In his Mr. Disco Inferno he noted how, on U.S.-Russia relations, “t his first step should focus on increasing the level of trust between the two countries. This is exactly what we have been doing in Riyadh, and this is what our next high-level contacts will be devoted to. Without this, it is impossible to solve any issue, including one as complex and acute as the Ukrainian crisis.�

Trust is far from being re-established, especially vis a vis a Lavrov-defined “non-agreement capable� Empire of Chaos with its global credibility in tatters. Add to it bombast after bombast manufactured to control the news cycle 24/7: the preferred Trump 2.0 modus operandi. None of it leads to that prime diplomatic mantra: “confidence building�.

And it will get even murkier – and way more dangerous – if Russian public opinion is confronted with the fact that after 11 years fighting a vicious proxy war with the Empire of Chaos, they may become partners in strategic industry sectors that Putin himself defined as essential to Russia’s national security.

Just like that. Or that may be just Putin discombobulating Trump with some unforeseen Sun Tzu gambit.

Hassan Nasrallah’s funeral in Beirut became a powerful testament to the enduring spirit of resistance, as millions gathered to honor his memory amidst the wreckage left by the Israeli aggression in south Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut. Despite the destruction and constant threats, the resolute defiance of the people made it clear: the resistance remains steadfast.

BEIRUT – It’s about 1:30 pm on Sunday, 23 February. Inside Beirut’s vast Sports City Stadium, at least 100,000 people clad in black and draped in yellow resistance flags pay their respects as the caskets of the late Hezbollah secretary-generals Hassan Nasrallah and Hashem Safieddine begin to make a slow turn around the arena.

A photo of Beirut’s Sports City Stadium during Hassan Nasrallah and Hashem Safieddine’s funeral ceremony.

Suddenly a triangular formation of Israeli F-15 and F-35 fighter jets pierce the skies, buzzing the stadium as low as aeronautically possible. In any other nation, on such a somber occasion, this would have been an aerial tribute for the ceremony taking place on the ground.

But this is Lebanon – a nation under pressure by the usual suspects, whose national army is prohibited from purchasing high-tech jet fighters and any meaningful air defenses. So the Israeli aerial show was, predictably, yet another provocation – one which, incidentally, instantly turned against the perpetrators.

The whole stadium – plus the more than a million Lebanese congregating around it – outroared the agent provocateurs, in a cacophony of insults and deprecatory remarks.

Mockery prevailed, rather than rage. What are you gonna do? Bomb all of us at the same time – as you did with Sayyed Nasrallah on 27 September 2024? We’re here, and we’re ready. Bring it on, cowards.

EXCLUSIVE | The moment Israeli warplanes flew over Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah's funeral. pic.twitter.com/5lFZcsIeP7

— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) February 23, 2025

“Death to Israel,� they chanted, a sea of fists pumping the air. “Labayka ya Nasrallah� (“at your service, oh Nasrallah�), they roared in unison.

The handlers obviously did not get the message, because the pathetic Hasbara air show got a replay less than an hour later, met with even louder cries of derision and defiance.

Incidentally, Lebanese engineers confirm that when the Israeli Air Force dropped dozens of synchronized bombs on Hezbollah’s underground command HQ in Dahiye, the southern Beirut suburb, to assassinate the resistance leader, this could only have been accomplished with US high-tech intel/satellite know-how.

The gathered human intel that facilitated this massive hit could only have been collected by boots on the ground.

Israeli intel may boast of – potentially – infiltrating some nodes of Hezbollah’s nearly iron-clad internal discipline as well as possessing all the American high-tech gear it needs to stage everything from childish provocations to Hell from Above. But when it comes to the nitty gritty – actual battle – the Israeli occupation army is actually a bunch of wimps.

Masters of Destruction

And that brings us to the senseless devastation inflicted by Israel on south Lebanon with its failed “invasion.� Occupation troops tried desperately for 66 days to penetrate deep into the south, but were unable to progress more than a few kilometers across the border, before immediately retreating back to their safe zones.

This daily pattern of loss infuriated Israeli leaders, who made up for this deficiency by launching disproportionate and indiscriminate air attacks across Lebanon. The numbers vary, but at least 4,800 Lebanese were killed in battles and missile attacks across the south, the majority civilians.

With no tangible gains and massive Israeli troop demoralization on the Lebanese border, Tel Aviv literally begged Washington to strike a ceasefire deal with Hezbollah.

That inevitably opened the terrain for the true and tested specialty of a cowardly army: Revenge.

Nothing prepares anyone to witness the remains of the insane destruction perpetrated by the Israelis in selected south Lebanon latitudes – from Maroun al-Ras to Odaisseh – most of this carnage wreaked after the ceasefire agreement was struck.

Maroun al-Ras is on the top of a hill, strategically overlooking Palestine in the deep background. It’s now a classic case of how Israel totally destroys a village in order not to save it.

Maroun al-Ras, part of the union of municipalities of Qalaa, harbored roughly 600 residential units, with around 2,500 to 3,000 residents. During the ceasefire, the Israelis – who lacked the competence to occupy it during the war – came back and destroyed everything, from booby-trapping homes to bulldozing roads and uprooting trees.

Walking around the wasteland of Maroun al-Ras is the epitome of Desolation Row: a sort of microcosm of Gaza, equally unlivable. Yet the resistance is everywhere – from Hezbollah flags and countless pictures of local martyrs duly honored to the first bulldozers starting to remove piles of detritus.

A photo showing the destruction in south Lebanon’s Maroun al-Ras.

Odaisseh, smack at the Palestine border, is an equally horrifying case. Once again, the Israeli army failed to capture the town after two months of fierce fighting with Hezbollah. Once again, the ceasefire was used for a Revenge Operation. Odaisseh, today, stands literally razed to the ground.

In all these cases, there was absolutely not a single peep from NATOstan media and not a single forceful condemnation, not to mention action, by the United Nations.

Unlike Maroun al-Ras, where you see occupied Palestine from afar, at the top of the hill (in the foreground, it’s actually stolen Lebanese land), the limits of Odaisseh are right in front of an occupying/invading power checkpoint. A group of Israeli occupiers pointed their guns at us during our visit. But the most significant bunch were those who peered behind a wall in fear.

A photo showing the destruction in south Lebanon’s Odaisseh.

Tel Aviv, predictably, continues to violate the ceasefire it begged for: its troops remain as invaders in five hilltop positions in south Lebanon, and its air force persists in conducting air strikes across the country.

Seen as pieces in a mosaic, the aerial provocation on Sunday, coupled with the senseless destruction of villages in south Lebanon, depict what, at best, should be construed as a Revenge Killing Machine posing as a nation-state.

In Odeisseh, along the Palestine border. Zionists failed to capture the town after 2 months of heavy fighting with Hezbollah. But, during the ceasefire, amid Western media silence and UN indifference, regime forces entered town after town, destroying everything in their path. pic.twitter.com/tg1FWg8PpA

— Seyed Mohammad Marandi (@s_m_marandi) February 22, 2025

Yet the resistance, now embodied by the memory and example of Sayyed Nasrallah, simply will not be intimidated. It’s no accident that he is and will continue to be revered all across the Arab world, the lands of Islam, and the Global Majority.

So what if the president and premier of Lebanon did not attend the funeral ceremony on Sunday? These are mere puppets. What matters is what was sealed by this extraordinarily moving funeral ceremony: “We are the covenant.� The resistance’s rallying cry simply won’t be erased.