Exploding Pagers Injure Thousands Across Lebanon 751
Wireless communication pagers, carried by thousands, exploded around the same time across Lebanon on Tuesday, injuring over 2,700 people and killing eight, in what security experts suspect was a sophisticated Israeli intelligence operation. New York Times: Hundreds of pagers blew up at the same time across Lebanon on Tuesday in an apparently coordinated attack that killed eight people and injured more than 2,700, health officials said on Tuesday. [...] Hezbollah said that pagers belonging to its members had exploded and accused Israel of being behind the attack. The Israeli military declined to comment.
[...] Three officials briefed on the attack said that it had targeted hundreds of pagers belonging to Hezbollah operatives who have used such devices for years to make it harder for their messages to be intercepted. The devices were programmed to beep for several seconds before exploding, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. Further reading: Reuters; CNN; NPR; Fox News; and WSJ.
Edward Snowden said, "If it were iPhones that were leaving the factory with explosives inside, the media would be a hell of a lot faster to cotton on to what a horrific precedent has been set today. Nothing can justify this. It's a crime. A crime. And everyone in the world is less safe for it."
[...] Three officials briefed on the attack said that it had targeted hundreds of pagers belonging to Hezbollah operatives who have used such devices for years to make it harder for their messages to be intercepted. The devices were programmed to beep for several seconds before exploding, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. Further reading: Reuters; CNN; NPR; Fox News; and WSJ.
Edward Snowden said, "If it were iPhones that were leaving the factory with explosives inside, the media would be a hell of a lot faster to cotton on to what a horrific precedent has been set today. Nothing can justify this. It's a crime. A crime. And everyone in the world is less safe for it."
So.. the question is.. did Clancy read Mossad, or (Score:5, Funny)
So.. the question is.. did Tom Clancy have "insight" into what Mossad did 30 years ago?
Or, did Mossad "steal" from Clancy?
I"m pretty sure in the book "Sum of all Fears" there were exploding cellphones by Mossad in the hands of Arabs. Boom!
Just like this.
Re:So.. the question is.. did Clancy read Mossad, (Score:5, Informative)
The Mossad famously used an exploding cell phone to kill the Hamas bomb maker known as "the Engineer." Quite a story, including a lot of social engineering to get him to use this cell phone. At the times cell phones were huge, analog, and were not so widespread. Pretty sure it even was using an Israeli cell network.
I'm sure the Mossad consider this latest operation a complete success, but I just can't see it helping anything to help the situation which is rapidly deteriorating.
Re:So.. the question is.. did Clancy read Mossad, (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure the Mossad consider this latest operation a complete success, but I just can't see it helping anything to help the situation which is rapidly deteriorating.
will see, what they want is hezbollah and maybe even iran to retaliate with a decisive blow and so drag the us into the war, which is what they have wanted all around.
let's just hope iran keeps a cold head and sorts out this nth provocation with the us with a negotiated and controlled response like before.
zionism is done, if they don't conquer the world or set it ablaze they will become the world most hated and despised pariah of the modern times, like the genocidal maniacs they are. and ofc drag the us with them. the world's hedgemon. for a few well placed bucks. it's astonishing.
Re:So.. the question is.. did Clancy read Mossad, (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So.. the question is.. did Clancy read Mossad, (Score:5, Informative)
When your side does it, it's justified. When the other guy does it, it's terrorism.
Side note. During the American Revolution, what some colonists did to Loyalists would be defined as terrorism (burning of buildings to get them to leave, attacking people simply because of who they are, etc). The same could be said for the armed forces of the colonies and what they did at times. For an in-depth look at what isn't taught about the Revolution, read Holger Hoock's Scars of Independece: America's Violent Birth [holgerhoock.com]. It's okay when we did it because we were seeking independence, but it was a travesty when the British did it to try and quell the uprising.
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When your side does it, it's justified. When the other guy does it, it's terrorism
In nature everything is in competition and the same is true for humans.
Most people don’t mind having a comfortable position in the race, and would rather stay peaceful, but if the competition puts you right at the very back, like, threatens your survival, then it means war.
The odd thing is people feel the need to make this compatible with being “good”, whilst all these wars break out.
Maybe instead we should just be honest. My interests are threatened too much, so will fight.
Maybe being mor
Re: So.. the question is.. did Clancy read Mossad, (Score:5, Informative)
Also the revolutionary war analogy is deeply stupid. They werenâ(TM)t bombing markets.
The revolutionaries tarred and feathered [google.com] people who were Loyalists. They tried to force at least one man to curse the royal governoer of the Province of Massachusetts Bay (page 25). The Boston Tea Party, as it is now known, destroyed 46 tons of tea along with having 46 crew members thrown overboard from private vessels (page 27). They burned the Peggy, a ship which docked at Annapolis, Maryland, when it paid tax under the Tea Act and for violating the Continental Association's prohibition on importation of British goods (page 32). Page 34 describes extra judicial acts such as Loyalists, or suspected Loyalists, being whipped or beaten until their ribs broke. Page 35 describes how one man was first tarred and feathered before taken to a pig sty where they rubbed dung into eyes and forced it down his throat, then attacked his house and destroyed his gristmill. Books were burned and newspaper shut down if they voiced pro-British sympathies (pages 38 - 39). Churches were attacked, damaged, or burned when priests offered prayers to the King or his appointees (pages 39-40). For the 2A folks, the Provincial Congress ordered local committes to diarm any unreliable man (page 41). Also, at the bottom of page 41 is a wonderful tale of a Loyalists being tarred and feathered, his feet burned causing him to lose two toes, and partially scalped. Page 42 has a nice desciption of the choices Loyalists faced in North Carolina: either join the patriotic cause and have yourself and property be safe, or be tarred and feathered, your home burned, your pigs shot, and your negroes seized.
This is what I found in just those pages. I haven't read the book, but it's quite clear the revolutionaries were committing acts of terrorism. In fact, on page 42, right in the middle prior to the above description, the author writes:
As Loyalist associations crumbled, Patriot committess of safety and militias refined their methods of bullying and terrorizing their domestic enemies.
Sounds like the OP is spot on with their remarks. The revolutionaries committed acts of terrorism.
Re:So.. the question is.. did Clancy read Mossad, (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not at all "pro-Israel", but if your argument is, "They can't be Hezbollah, they were buying food!", then I think you're extremely confused.
Re:So.. the question is.. did Clancy read Mossad, (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't see injuring hundreds to thousands of civilians who were doing nothing more malicious than going to the shops as terrorism that just says volumes about you.
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Re:So.. the question is.. did Clancy read Mossad, (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So.. the question is.. did Clancy read Mossad, (Score:5, Informative)
These are not innocent people. The pagers were literally a Hezbollah internal communications network used by the group that has been continuously firing missiles against civilians, both Israeli and Lebanese Druze, both Jew and Muslim, in Northern Israel for months. This is specifically about stopping the murdering of innocent people.
Re: But they didn't bomb a refugee camp. (Score:4, Insightful)
The people the Hamas operatives are sheltering near don't have a choice. They can be killed by Hamas or they can be killed by Israel.
Netanyahu has bragged repeatedly about making sure Hamas gets funding to create support for bombing Gaza. HE has a choice, and he has chosen genocide.
Re:So.. the question is.. did Clancy read Mossad, (Score:4, Insightful)
but how can it do anything but help Israel?
The fight with Hezbollah was so far somewhat incipient and somewhat targeted. This now represents a major escalation on another side of a country that has its resources largely occupied with a war it is already waging with someone else.
I don't see how this has helped Israel in any way. It's made them a big target. The collateral is affecting the patience of it's allies who were calling for a de-escalation. At this point Israel is beyond helping itself and seemingly doing many things to its own detriment. Israel is a huge force when fighting one country, backed by America. If it drags the entire region into all out war all the while alienating its allies it may eventually cease to exist.
Re:So.. the question is.. did Clancy read Mossad, (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see how this has helped Israel in any way. It's made them a big target.
Israel wasn't a big target before? I think you've been missing some things.
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Now these assassinations have escalated to using Weapons of Mass Destruction that indiscriminately kill and injure thousands in other countries, that's a major esclation.
Consider that Iran has the right to retaliate for assassinations on its soil. The retaliation must be proportionate to be legal under international law. Well now Lebanon and Lebanon's supporters have the right to retaliate, and proportionally kill at least 8 people and injure thousands in the process.
I'm sure these rights will be taken up t
Re:So.. the question is.. did Clancy read Mossad, (Score:4, Insightful)
Quite a number of the people who were expierienced, good at attacking Israel, and were mega-motivated to do that are now dead or severly injured. I can see how this doesn't help Hamas, but how can it do anything but help Israel?
It's reported that the attacks also killed and injured children and plenty of bystanders. How many people are now mega-motivated to attack Israel out of a sense of revenge and for the purposes of justice? These kinds of near-indiscriminate, terrorist tactics seldom have a net benefit. The Mossad may be feeling very successful and pleased with themselves right now, but I highly doubt that they have done the Israeli people a favor. Let's not forget that, as much as it was an atrocity and targeted the wrong people, the Hamas attack that triggered the current conflict did not come out of nowhere. It's all cycle of violence stuff, just like this attack.
Re:So.. the question is.. did Clancy read Mossad, (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's not forget that, as much as it was an atrocity and targeted the wrong people
Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group funded and supported by Iran, has been launching daily attacks on Northern Israel for months. The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates that Hezbollah has a stockpile of 120,000 to 200,000 short-range guided ballistic missiles, short- and intermediate-range unguided ballistic missiles, and short- and long-range unguided rockets for the express purpose of attacking Israel.
Those pagers were purchased by Hezbollah specifically for the purpose of strategic communications among its political and paramilitary members. There is a reason they were all purchased as a single large order and distributed to Hezbollah members. Israel's Mossad clearly knew exactly what they were doing.
Re:So.. the question is.. did Clancy read Mossad, (Score:5, Insightful)
About all it does is ensure another generation of fighting. If your goal is to stop the constant bloodshed this didn't help. If your goal is to continue it this worked well.
Re: So.. the question is.. did Clancy read Mossad, (Score:3, Insightful)
8 people dead. At least one of them was a little girl. And thousands of people radicalized by an indiscriminate attack on civilians.
Not a win for Mossad.
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You're just making up distinctions. This wasn't a war crime, which is why nobody serious is calling it one -- only the 112th Hamasnik Online Brigade. If you want a war crime and indiscriminate attacks on civilians, look at https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com] and https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/27... [cnn.com] and https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2... [fdd.org]. Look at thousands of other Hezbollah rockets that have compelled Israel to evacuate tens of thousands of people from their homes in northern Israel because Hezbollah can hardly
Re: So.. the question is.. did Clancy read Mossad, (Score:4, Insightful)
"Anytime Israel kills 1 innocent, it creates 100 Hamas supporters, who in turn get vengeance on Israelis."
Israel claims there are/were 20,000 Hamas fighters. They've murdered WAY more than 200 Palestinians in the last 20-30 years, so someone's math has to be way off, possibly both of you.
Israel's kill count is well over an order of magnitude higher than Hamas'.
Re:So.. the question is.. did Clancy read Mossad, (Score:5, Informative)
Supply-chain interception. Been done forever.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-p... [arstechnica.com]
Re: So.. the question is.. did Clancy read Mossad, (Score:3)
Planting this many explosives in this many devices without being detected prior to detonation is either very novel or the target organization is extremely incompetent. Not only the quantity, but these guys were literally carrying them on their person. How did they make it through e.g. airports without detection? Some of these guys were in Iran, Syria, and other places.
Now not only do you have likely many incapacitated Hezbollah members at once, but their identities also likely revealed. That last bit is a m
Re:So.. the question is.. did Clancy read Mossad, (Score:4, Insightful)
Hard to tear somebody a new one while lying in a hospital bed or when only having one hand. These were people already trying to kill Jews.
Re:So.. the question is.. did Clancy read Mossad, (Score:4, Interesting)
I've gotta think everyone is a bit paranoid about carrying a pager now.
Those 32 virgins aren't gonna do you much good with your balls blown off.....
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Re:So.. the question is.. did Clancy read Mossad, (Score:5, Informative)
Hezbollah (sp?) is already at war with Israel and are proxies of Iran in doing so....
They are constantly lobbing missiles over at Israel currently....this isn't going to trigger anything that isn't already going on....
Re:So.. the question is.. did Clancy read Mossad, (Score:5, Insightful)
This disrupted a major piece of their existing communications network. Sure, they can get new pagers and will probably dismantle all of them before using them next time but it will take them time to rebuild their communications network. I imagine that if the Mossad was able to plant explosives in these pagers they were also able to intercept ALL communications going to them. If you knew your foe had been reading all of your communications for a long time that means they likely know your organizational structure, and possibly know where everyone lives/works.
The Hezbollah fighters who thought they were safe in Lebanon have just been shown that they are not. That's a psychological blow. I imagine it will probably motivate some people to join up, but it will also scare other people off. It would be pretty disconcerting to know that the existing fighters were injured/killed/maimed while going about their daily routines.
Additionally it will make Hezbollah question the loyalty of the people involved in obtaining those pagers. And, make them distrust their existing supply chains. That's an additional psychological blow.
Only time will tell if it was truly effective. But, if it gives Israel even a brief respite then it is probably worth it.
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Why withhold attacks or act with restraint, if your enemy is going to attack you anyway?
Is that not the exact question that Israel was faced with? The attacks are already occurring and Israel was being restrained. This was not indiscriminate. This was very targeted. The pagers were in the possession of Hezbollah. Indiscriminate is launching hundreds or thousands of rockets a population centers and not caring whom you hit.
Israel has a history of using intelligence to identify attacks and preempt them before they are attacked. It has obviously failed such as last October. And, they hav
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These people were "ready to tear Israel a new one" before this. Otherwise they wouldn't have been carrying a pager in the first place. Israel did not create any new enemies here. They just took out a few old ones.
Re:So.. the question is.. did Clancy read Mossad, (Score:4, Insightful)
Stuff like this makes terror networks even less effective because now they're going to doubt everything.
So are these guys now super double plus mad at Israel, when they were previously just double plus mad at Israel?
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Well, except for complete disruption and destruction of a terrorist communications network.
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Honestly, Israel has been slapping the bee hive for years.
Not that I've seen any angelic qualities to Hamas either.
Re: So.. the question is.. did Clancy read Mossad (Score:3)
If you join a terrorist organization, you put yourself and those around you in danger. Who knew?
Bait ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Since he began to run out of war in Gaza Netanyahu has been looking ever more desperate for a new war to keep him in power and keep him from being dragged into a court, convicted and jailed for corruption. The absolute worst thing Hezbollah can do to Netanyahu is to just not take the bait.
Re:Bait ... (Score:5, Funny)
What planet are you from? Hezbollah has been shelling Israel with rockets and UAVs on a daily basis since October 8th 2024.
Are you from the future?
Re:Bait ... (Score:4, Insightful)
What planet are you from? Hezbollah has been shelling Israel with rockets and UAVs on a daily basis since October 8th 2024. Tens of thousands of Israelis have been displaced from their homes and are currently refugees. Until today there has been no major Israeli retaliation for these attacks, even though each of them was a casus belli, an unprovoked attack originating from a neighboring sovereign country. Israel can't be expected to sit idly and turn the other cheek forever, stop trying to turn this into some petty political game.
Wow, I didn't even realize that the rockets Hezbollah initially fired were on occupied Lebanese Territory [wikipedia.org].
Why the hell is Israel still occupying Lebanese territory? Of course that's a power keg that will blow up at the slightest provocation.
As for retaliation Israel has retaliated plenty of times, often targeting Iran specifically trying to escalate the conflict.
Make no mistake, on the Israeli side there's only two factions keeping this war going. The Settlers who figure the only way the conflict ends is with a full scale ethnic cleansing of the West Bank (and maybe Gaza too) so they'll use this opportunity to do as much as they can. And the second faction is Netanyahu, who the moment the war ends gets thrown out of office for helping funnel money to Hamas and risks getting thrown in jail for his ongoing corruption trials.
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It is disputed whether the Shebaa farms are Lebanese or Syrian. The Lebanese say they are theirs but for some reason from 1946 to 1967 were completely happy for Syria to administer the area. Before 1946 they were part of the French Mandate and before that, they were part of the Ottoman Empire. Calling it occupied Lebanese territory is disingenuous.
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Until today there has been no major Israeli retaliation for these attacks
Yeah sorry but that is bullshit. Anytime you play "wowes me that one side is soo poor" in this conflict you can straight away see an insane bias (or troll). Yeah Hezbollah has been shelling Israel, but to claim that Israel is just not retaliating is ignoring the the torching of south Lebanon with white phosphorous that has been ongoing this year which has left the south of Lebanon a burnt abandoned wasteland, or the rocket attack on army bases in Lebanon, or the droning of Hezbollah commanders,
Seriously sto
must be HP branded (Score:5, Funny)
HP: "We've noticed that you used non-HP components in your device. This is a violation of the user agreement." BOOM!
Zero-day hack? (Score:5, Insightful)
If so, it's a whopper. Most of us are just worried about data breaches, not physical harm.
On the other hand, I confess a little skepticism that these were unaltered pagers. Perhaps Mossad was able to get one or more moles into the factory, and sabotaged them in advance some way.
It will be very interesting to learn exactly how they did it, in the same way that Stuxnet was fascinating
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You can't make peace with someone who is intent on exterminating you.
Re:Zero-day hack? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well given the Israel's put plenty of effort into preventing peace with the Palestinians it doesnt seem terribly accurate to put all the blame on Hamas. Each one of Israel's 720,000 settlers (and growing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. is a roadblock towards peace.
The Israeli's are literally colonizing the Palestinian territories and have been for decades, that's just not a recipe for peaceful coexistence.
Never mind all the violence directed at Palestinians over the years.
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Because they turned Gaza into an open air prison.
If Israel complied with international law, evacuated all settlers in occupied territory, and became a good neighbour, the violence would end very quickly. Few people would be interested in carrying on when their major goal - the liberation of Palestine, and freedom.
Right now even the parts of Palestine that aren't occupied are controlled in other ways, such as controlling the water and electricity supplies. If liberated, people would be far more interested in
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Which side are we talking about here, as both sides have too many blood-thirsty and land-thirsty zealots running things, and there is plenty of evidence to back that up.
I believe a peace agreement will have to be forced by outsiders, as both sides are too frothed up to make the big sacrifices needed.
semi-offtopic Casio F91w hack (Score:3)
Went down the rabbit hole last night googling for f91w schematics and found this cool drop-in board replacement project [rymnd.net] that was funded a few years ago. For added style one might choose the newer F91wb case [casio.com] with less graphic clutter on the face.
Reminiscent (Score:4, Funny)
Me in the 80s and early 90s: Why is my pager blowing up?!? Oh it's an emergency
Hezbollah today: Aw shit
This message will self-destruct in 5... (Score:5, Funny)
4, 3, 2, 1 boom
I laughed so hard (Score:3)
I laughed so hard when this article came out on July 4th of 2000. Yikes. https://knowyourmeme.com/photo... [knowyourmeme.com]
An amazing supply chain attack (Score:3)
If you think about this, it's amazing this was pulled off without anyone finding out before they were detonated. There are so many steps were it could be discovered. Everything had to go right at every step, and nobody from Hezbollah ever thought to pick a few apart just to check. They won't make that mistake a second time. I eagerly await the detailed story on how it was carried out. Those usually come along a little while after things have settled down and details have come to light.
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Initially only a handful were injured... (Score:4, Funny)
... but then a Hezbollah middle manager got the bright idea to send out a blanket message "DON'T USE YOUR PAGERS!"
Schneier on Security's take (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Apparently battery overheating & exploding (Score:4, Insightful)
Batteries don't explode. They smoke and then turn into a fireball. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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20 grams of high explosive plus a bit of programming to make the pager ring first, does explode quite nicely.
Re:Apparently battery overheating & exploding (Score:5, Funny)
Hello?
Candygram for Mongo!!
wha?
BOOOOOM!
Re: (Score:3)
No they don't. The latent heat of combustion is too low for it to build up any meaningful pressure. There's a reason grenades are made of specific explosive material rather than just anything which will burn.
People have quite literally been killed by 18650s exploding in vape pens :
https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
not to mention people severely injured from it: https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
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Less relevantly, as someone else said, lithium batteries just burn very hot, but not very quickly. That is far different than the type of explosions that cause serious injuries due to blast/shrapnel, which is what happened here.
You need to be more careful analysing the
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And yet you've been on /. for years.
Re:Propaganda (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Propaganda (Score:5, Funny)
My guess is the pagers were built with a self-destruct mechanism and it was triggered, either accidentally or by hackers.
Apple, if you're reading this, I do not want this feature in the next iPhone.
Re:Propaganda (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Propaganda (Score:5, Interesting)
Not even close.
They want the dog / cat racist bullshit in the news, because they poll +10% on immigration issues, and that bullshit is keeping immigration at the front of the conversation, even if the conversation is about all the damage their lies are doing to Springfield, OH.
Any other topic, and they lose. They want public attention on immigration issues at any cost. If this election is about immigration, and the border, Trump has a shot. If it's about literally any other topic, he loses bigly.
Re:Propaganda (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't even know what to say this nonsense.
He withdrew from the race. In a party primary. That's how these work, how they always work.
Candidates have widthrawn part-way through most primaries in their history history. For example Nikki Haley had ~4 million votes, and she withdrew from the race too.
So what do you propose? People can't withdraw? What if they die? Do we go back in time and start the primary over? Physics has something to say about that. Do we push the election back and start over? How does that reconcile with the constitution?
Ranked choice voting, of some sort? Good idea... but picking which version and getting it adopted is quite the mountain to climb and the people in charge won under the current rules so they aren't really motivated to change them to favor someone else.
Re:Propaganda (Score:4, Insightful)
So what do you propose?
Let's start with the truth and dispense with the sanctimonius "find the wet spot" routine.
This man was set to be nominated in a matter of weeks. He was presented to the voters as a man fit for office.
The people in charge knew he wasn't fit for office. Proof: They used his mental disability as justification for overturning the primary.
You can't have it both ways.
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1. If he was competent, it was a coup.
2. If he was incompetent, there was a gargantuan conspiracy to hide it.
That assumes 'if he was competent' is a constant value that was known and agreed on by all. That clearly isn't the case and it leaves your conclusion hyperbolic nonsense. A lot of people, including 'people in charge' clearly changed their minds over time. It was pretty dramatic in the end, but this same situation plays out every day with seniors.
When grandma has a fall and the family finally recognizes that its time she moved into a care facility; even if grandma doesn't want to go - that's not a coup, And there wasn't a grand conspiracy covering for her up until the fall either. Its just how it goes.
Everyone around her was accommodating and enabling her to continue on, until suddenly they weren't. The value of 'is grandma competent enough' just got re-evaluated after the fall and the scales tipped over to the other side. The debate performance was Biden's fall. This of course was bigger stakes and a bigger stage - but at the end of the day its the same thing. It's not a coup and there is no gargantuan conspiracy.
Re: Propaganda (Score:3)
These are real differences. They involve basic human rights. We really have to address them, pretending they don't exist won't help.
Re:Propaganda (Score:5, Informative)
Hezbollah decided to switch to low tech pager because IDF was targeting their members with cell calls. All of these pagers appears to be a newer batch of 'secured' shipment. Iranian ambassador to Lebanon and 2 of his bodyguards were also injured since Iranian Revolutionary Guards is the one sponsoring Hezbollah.
Re: Propaganda (Score:4, Insightful)
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20 grams is a monster capacitor/inductor. Must have been the battery.
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The obvious place to put explosives would be in the battery, which is large and heavy compared to other components. The internals of the pager would then look just like any other.
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There would be one extra connection from the pcb to the battery.
Heck, if I saw a 4-wire cable instead of 3 I might miss it too.
Not my job, but I doubt anybody's would be. Many of those flat batteries are wrapped in a mylar pouch with just leads sticking out.
Difficult to defend against, though not impossible.
Like someone else said they probably got a wicked good deal from China but it was intercepted or routed through a middleman.
Shipping time is plenty to do battery swaps onboard.
If it were done at the fact
Re:Propaganda (Score:4, Interesting)
The obvious place to put explosives would be in the battery, which is large and heavy compared to other components. The internals of the pager would then look just like any other.
Agreed. A random bad actor needs to hide the explosive/bug among components. But if you're a technologically capable nation-state it's easy to make counterfeit components.
That actually raises a more important question. If you've got the capability to hide explosives, and to signal all the devices at once (probably just a list of the pager numbers), then presumably you also have the ability to alter things to eavesdrop.
I don't know enough about pagers or their communication protocols, but would they have been able to hide surveillance malware? If so, it raises an interesting question why they'd throw away the surveillance network in favour of setting off the bombs.
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The pager protocol is plain text and readable with a $10 RTL-SDR dongle. https://www.rtl-sdr.com/rtl-sd... [rtl-sdr.com]
Although some use encryption now due to hospitals and medical privacy.
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(those old enough to have carried pagers know what I'm talking about).
Supply chain issues (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]
About how extra chips were added to computer motherboards for unknown purposes.
The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate U.S. Companies
The attack by Chinese spies reached almost 30 U.S. companies, including Amazon and Apple, by compromising America’s technology supply chain, according to extensive interviews with government and corporate sources.
By Jordan Robertson and Michael Riley
October 4, 2018 at 4:00 AM CDT
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oh that old piece of propaganda...
you know, you watch things long enough and you can see when the same 'narrative content' is recycled over and over again, despite having been debunked the first time around.
Re:Supply chain issues (Score:4, Insightful)
Note that the Bloomberg report has no publicly available physical evidence to back it up.
They posted a follow-up report in 2021 [bloomberg.com] with no additional evidence.
With Stuxnet, we had the code and the reports of centrifuge damage.
With this pager incident, we have the explosions.
Where's the proof of the Big Hack?
Re:Everyone canceled their MossaddComm at once? (Score:5, Funny)
I got their latest pager model because I was told their innovative TNT batteries stored a lot more energy than Lithium Ion.
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PS: All 9/11 conspiracy theories aside, if you wanted to release the same energy in each of the twin towers as the 50 tonnes of kerosene the airplanes carried, you would need about 450 tonnes of TNT.
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You're confusing energy of combustion with electrical energy storage. You can also burn (most) li-ion cells, not just harness stored electrical enregy. Also, 250Wh/kg is low these days.
You know what has even more chemical energy than gasoline? A solid block of alumium. Yet for some reason people keep acting like the rate of energy matters, not just the total energy...
Re: Everyone canceled their MossaddComm at once? (Score:3)
Re:Science Fiction predecessor (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There will be repercussions (Score:5, Insightful)
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Interesting. Then it seems there are two new options: Either the supply was directly compromised at the final stage of distribution to ensure the exploding pagers got to the correct targets, or there are a lot of bomb-laden pagers out there and only 2700 were detonated.
I wonder if they considered slipping a GPS system into them to report movements for a whole before blowing them up. A little check maybe 4x a day wouldn't drain the batteries noticeably, and having a detailed movement map of 2700 members of
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Classic re-run of the ANOM playbook (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting. Then it seems there are two new options: Either the supply was directly compromised at the final stage of distribution to ensure the exploding pagers got to the correct targets, or there are a lot of bomb-laden pagers out there and only 2700 were detonated.
The IDF copied and replayed the ANØM playbook [wikipedia.org], which also means the IDF was probably 'listening' all this time and decided now was the time to 'blow their cover'.
Presumably the IDF had a high degree of confidence only Hezbollah members would be carrying the targeted pagers (with unique digital IDs) on their person in the middle of the day.
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Has Mossad done similar infiltration operations before?
Are they particularly motivated over the last year or so to do something like this?
Thousands of simultaneous personnel-debilitating explosions is not a random accident.
So some adversary intelligence agency did it.
The candidate list is short: Mossad and CIA. Which is more motivated? Which is more likely able to infiltrate the supply chain of Hezbollah via a sizable existing undercover agent force?
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So you probably just do it on a volunteer basis.
Re: This doesn't seem so smart (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Except not only terrorists got hurt, more innocent people got hurt. The terrorists in this story is Israel. But hee, they did exactly the same bombings/terrorists attacks before (new) Israel was created back in 1948. But this whole mess started when the UN approved to give the jews their own country (because most just approved out of pity for what happened in WW2) and therefore move the original population of their land. That should never have happened as up till that day the jews and arrabs that lived there were pretty much in peace with each other, except for an extremist group of jews who were running a terrorist campaign for many years already on the english who were there as peacekeepers.
And look at how the Israeli are treating the palestinians, having illegal settlements on the westbank and threathening the local population, like shooting them if they get too close to their illegal home. And you really wonder why the UN never intervened with something like a blue-helmet force/sanctions against Israel.
No wonder that groups like Hamas and Hesbolla are fighting against the Israeli. It's just one big mess, and both sides should just stop and help each other. We sure should ban religion as that's the root of all evil.