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US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists

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Re: US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists

#431

Post by Intermernet »

akerl_ wrote: post #423
Intermernet wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested, and I'm sure I'm not alone. This isn't easily researched information, and it would be nice to have a list of organisations to put on my boycott list. These companies should be named and shamed. They have no positive influence on the world. If they disclosed instead of exploited the vulnerabilities they have knowledge of, they would improve the security of most of the world's population. Instead, they…

You'd boycott these companies, that you don't know who they are? It's not much of a boycott to stop doing business with companies you already aren't doing business with.

How do I know if I'm doing business with them if I don't know what services they offer. Years ago I ended up providing services to a company that was involved in morally questionable activities. When I discovered the extent of those activities I stopped providing services. That company was the GEO group.

Re: US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists

#432

Post by thomassmith65 »

wesselbindt wrote: post #421
thomassmith65 wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Anti US bias' (that's a direct quote, not a jingoistic insult I throw around) is different than a refusal to choose between evils.

Ok, from what you say, I get the sense that the applicability of the quote is non-obvious. I'll paraphrase the quote: "people who choose the lesser of two evils, forget that they chose evil". In our conversation, we are essentially choosing between two parties: - The nazis, or the communists, or whatever. Let's call them the baddies. - America. The good guys! I personally believe (and you do not have to agree with th…

Our thread doesn't exist in a vacuum, it exists in the Chomsky-fied world of the 21st Century. This is a world in which quite a few people really do defend the regimes I mentioned, as though there were no difference between totalitarianism and a liberal democracy.

Note that I made a point of defending America in the 20th Century, not the 21st.

Because, at the moment, America has an authoritarian leader.

And I wonder if people who obsess on America's bad side, even know the difference!

Considering the last HN thread I commented on was full of comments in support of the anti-American yet horrifying Iranian regime, I don't have much hope.

Re: US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists

#433

Post by ashoeafoot »

lokashun wrote: post #367
ashoeafoot wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chomsky has supported "anti-imperialist" russia and ignored all warnings by the eastern European people, who dared to walk out on socialism in a freedom movement. Blood on the hands, blood on the quill, blood in the will..

Chomsky also believes 2+2=4. Is that also wrong because you don’t like some of his other beliefs? You seem to think so.

His language hierarchy holds up, but thats not how this works . You can not heap personal catastrophic beliefs into a train waggon and by proof of chaining that train, your work is invalidated or valid and valued.

His academic works stand independent of the unsavoury character -similar to Werner von Braun. But that doesn't remove the fact he supported "any-but-american-imperialism" decorated with racists undertones ("the brown people can not be perpetrator and victims at the same time") and tried to undermine the western value based world order.

Re: US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists

#434

Post by wesselbindt »

thomassmith65 wrote: post #432
wesselbindt wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, from what you say, I get the sense that the applicability of the quote is non-obvious. I'll paraphrase the quote: "people who choose the lesser of two evils, forget that they chose evil". In our conversation, we are essentially choosing between two parties: - The nazis, or the communists, or whatever. Let's call them the baddies. - America. The good guys! I personally believe (and you do not have to agree with th…

Our thread doesn't exist in a vacuum, it exists in the Chomsky-fied world of the 21st Century. This is a world in which quite a few people really do defend the regimes I mentioned, as though there were no difference between totalitarianism and a liberal democracy. Note that I made a point of defending America in the 20th Century, not the 21st. Because, at the moment, America has an authoritarian leader. And I wonder…

I'm talking about the 20th century as well. The silent holocaust was in the 80s, east Timor extended from the 70s to the 90s, the highway of death and the gulf war was in the 90s, the invasion of Vietnam and the illegal bombing of Cambodia and Laos was in the 60s, the mass killings in Indonesia were in the 60s, arming the Mujahideen (ultimately leading to 9/11) was in the 80s, bombing Korea, killing 20% of its population was in the 50s, the overthrow of the democratically elecred Allende leading to the reign of Pinochet, the terror they've inflicted on Cuba by Poisoning crops and the sanctions, the coup in Iran, the assassination of Lumumba, and so on, and so forth. On the whole, America has absolutely terrorized the world. And yes, that has been quite nice for the beneficiaries of this reign of terror, but to say the world did well in the American century is just wrong.

And regarding the support for Iran, it's possible to be supportive of a party you're otherwise critical of. Sure, the Iranian regime executes gay people, but do you think Israel's bombs and famine somehow make an exception for gay people? One side is worse, and it's the one that's been committing an ethnic cleansing for 77 years.

Re: US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists

#435

Post by thomassmith65 »

wesselbindt wrote: post #434
thomassmith65 wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our thread doesn't exist in a vacuum, it exists in the Chomsky-fied world of the 21st Century. This is a world in which quite a few people really do defend the regimes I mentioned, as though there were no difference between totalitarianism and a liberal democracy. Note that I made a point of defending America in the 20th Century, not the 21st. Because, at the moment, America has an authoritarian leader. And I wonder…

I'm talking about the 20th century as well. The silent holocaust was in the 80s, east Timor extended from the 70s to the 90s, the highway of death and the gulf war was in the 90s, the invasion of Vietnam and the illegal bombing of Cambodia and Laos was in the 60s, the mass killings in Indonesia were in the 60s, arming the Mujahideen (ultimately leading to 9/11) was in the 80s, bombing Korea, killing 20% of its popula…

I'm tempted to take apart that list of American evils, one by one, because in the cases with which I am familiar, it is Chomsky-level reductive, but that would take a few pages of writing. Again, there is a problem with this sort of discussion:

  This debate could continue forever since there's no single measure by which one can quantify how evil a nation is.
I wrestled over what I'm about to say, because it's condescending, but: it's one thing to read about the past, and it's another to live through it.

So many things feel real to me that might not if I were younger.

I grew up... surrounded by adults who lived through WWII, ...hoping for tens of millions suffering under Apartheid to be free, ...hoping for the Wall to come down and free hundreds of millions from Soviet oppression (not for ideological reasons, but because it was at North Korean levels), ...rooting for the Chinese protest movement to win. And so much more.

Thankfully, for the first half of my life, the world kept inching toward progress (and what I would give for young people to live through the 1990s!).

Then we had 9/11, and America embraced its worst side. That America is the only America young people know. That's a shame, because many of them now, politically, are sprinting straight towards the propeller-blades.

Re: US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists

#436

Post by Viliam1234 »

curseofcasandra wrote: post #426
ashoeafoot wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chomsky has supported "anti-imperialist" russia and ignored all warnings by the eastern European people, who dared to walk out on socialism in a freedom movement. Blood on the hands, blood on the quill, blood in the will..

Chomsky is right about some things and wrong about other things, like every human is.

When we call people experts, that doesn't mean they are infallible, but they are supposed to be better than average.

Re: US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists

#437

Post by DSingularity »

edanm wrote: post #380
DSingularity wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is possible to live in peace. Fact: millions of Palestinians displaced by the haganah, Irgun, and the lehi terrorists now live in refugee camps while the Israelis live on their lands and in their houses. Everything else you wrote is just a bunch of propaganda to distract from the central issue. If you have a problem with the Turks take it up with them. The Palestinians however have a problem with you because you c…

I don't agree with your characterization of what happened (you keep saying "stole the land" but that's just not true). But even if I did - why is this the root problem here, and yet not a problem for the millions of other people displaced in the world around the same time, and since then? There have been tens of millions of refugees around the world since 1948, they've all resettled elsewhere and stopped being refuge…

The Zionist terrorist groups went around murdering villagers and after villagers fled Zionists took their land.

You strike me as a person who repeats the “a land without a people for a people without a land” lies. You just leave out why you didn’t find people in one of the oldest continually inhabited land on earth: you displaced them.

Re: US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists

#438

Post by edanm »

DSingularity wrote: post #437
edanm wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree with your characterization of what happened (you keep saying "stole the land" but that's just not true). But even if I did - why is this the root problem here, and yet not a problem for the millions of other people displaced in the world around the same time, and since then? There have been tens of millions of refugees around the world since 1948, they've all resettled elsewhere and stopped being refuge…

The Zionist terrorist groups went around murdering villagers and after villagers fled Zionists took their land. You strike me as a person who repeats the “a land without a people for a people without a land” lies. You just leave out why you didn’t find people in one of the oldest continually inhabited land on earth: you displaced them.

No, I don't say stupid things like that, and probably very few people ever said it (well, except critics of Israel claiming that Zionists said that).

So to be clear, by "stole the land" you're only referring to the Nakba that happened because of the war? Those are the only cases of what you're talking about that I'm aware of (until 1948, I'm not talking about the despicable acts currently happening in the WB).

Re: US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists

#439

Post by sneed-oil »

Yeul wrote: post #391
jplrssn wrote: post #20

> Ciro Pellegrino, who heads the Naples newsroom of an investigative news outlet called Fanpage.it, received a notice on April 29 that his iPhone had been targeted. Last year, Fanpage secretly infiltrated the youth wing of Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party and filmed some of them making fascist and racist remarks. It's never a good look going after journalists, but this seems especially petty.

People talk about Japan but if there is one country that has never distanced itself from their role in WW2 it's Italy. Ofcourse they get away with it because literally nobody has ever taken Italy seriously in centuries.

Centuries? It's hard to take something seriously when it doesn't even exist yet...

Re: US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists

#440

Post by amdivia »

SuperCuber wrote: post #329
amdivia wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your numbers ignore the distinction between combatants and civilians killed. It also does not include those who are killed as a by product of the war. The number you mentioned is how many Israel directly killed. This ignores: * People who died out of starvation (especially kids and newborns) due to Israel's blockade * People who died due to lack of medicine due to Israel's blockade * People who died to the worsening…

It's hilarious that this figure keeps getting quoted with a link to a source that directly contradicts it. > Armed conflicts have indirect health implications beyond the direct harm from violence. Even if the conflict ends immediately, there will continue to be many indirect deaths in the coming months and years [...] In recent conflicts, such indirect deaths range from three to 15 times the number of direct deaths .…

My bad, you're right. This shows how bias can affect my readings, I'll work on that and I appreciate you pointing it out

But to stress again, even then this was assuming the war stopped back then, a year ago, and the public number also does not include the groups I mentioned earlier.

And this conflict is unique in how brutal it is for the civilians in Gaza. For instance the numbers used for the Russia-Ukrain war (500K-1M) are not those of civilian causalities. According to the latest UN numbers, it's around 13K for killed, and around 30K wounded [1]. Whereas in Gaza, the number of women and girls killed alone is more than double that (28K) [2]. The conflict is also unique in how many children have been killed, where it outnumbered the number of children killed in global conflicts in the last 4 years [3] (numbers from March, 2024)

What I'm trying to highlight is that when OP is attempting to undermine that conflict, they are not comparing the conflicts properly. Which leads to unjust assumptions, this does look like a genocide, and even if you want to fight this label. This conflict has been extremely devastating to civilians in Gaza, and perhaps is the number 1 most brutal conflict to civilians globally today.

[1]: https://ukraine.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/2025-05/Ukrain...

[2]: https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/news/2025/05/un-wome...

[3]: https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/03/1147512

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