Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say
781–790 of 1001 posts
Re: Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say
#782Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But I think a general distinction is the targeting of combatants vs civilians When Afghans took up arms against occupying American soldiers, they were routinely called terrorists in American press and media. When Muslims fight America or Israel, they are called terrorists. When the situation is reversed, that label isn't applied.
You should read up about the difference between Muslims and Islamists and how bad the Islamists are for Islamic communities themselves.
Let me guess, the ones you term to be "Islamists" are those who fight America or Israel.
Most of the Afghan fighters who took shots at American soldiers weren't motivated by some sort of boogieman religious extremism. They were simply shooting at armed foreigners who invaded their country. They weren't terrorists by any reasonable definition of the but were called so anyway because they happened to be Muslim and dared to defy America.
Re: Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say
#783Earlier quoted context omitted.
So what's your solution then? Incidentally it does work. It's just horrible. Nagasaki / Hiroshima are a fine example of forced capitulation. Now I'm not suggesting nuking anyone but the best way this ends, with the lowest future body count is someone wins decisively at this point.
Who said I have a solution? The violence will continue, I just want my country (America) to stop involving itself by providing material/financial/etc support to Israel. I think this is likely to happen once baby boomers are fully aged out of the political process (because the synthesis of christianity and zionism are far less popular with younger generations.) I do not propose a resolution to the conflict but do anti…
I don't disagree but if America distances itself now it will lose credibility, something which is somewhat low on the international stage at the moment. It has however done wonders for the defence industry here in Europe now we can't trust a traditional political ally. (This is not a criticism of the US, but a criticism of the UK and EU who should have military and political independence)
I think you miss that people tend to become less idealistic and further right as they get older. The "boomer" generation is just replaced by more of the same people. It's never going to change.
Re: Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say
#784Earlier quoted context omitted.
The supply chain for an iPhone is much stronger than for a Gold Alpha pager, and it's likely that the same thing will end up being true of these ICOM radios: they'll turn out to be designed and branded by ICOM, but actually manufactured and distributed by some random Eastern European outfit that paid to use ICOM as a skinsuit. That would never happen with an Apple device.
It is likely that they were authentic Icom devices. My understanding is that it is common for commercial radios to be programmed by distributor. Or Gold Alpha gave a good deal on pagers and radios and then were intercepted from warehouse. I don't think Icom would ever put name on generic radio, they make all their radios in Japan. It is like Toyota putting name on another car.
I read that Icom V82 is discontinued and most available are counterfeit.
Re: Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say
#785Earlier quoted context omitted.
Terrorism is just a label to describe attacks by people that powerful governments don't like. If you have enough military power, you're a legitimate government conducting a war (even if you're lobbing hundreds of missiles and drones into civilian targets like Russia is). If not, you're a terrorist org or government.
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> Terrorism is targeting civilians to further a politician or ideological agenda.
This is the old, pre- War on Terror definition. The definition of terrorism now, as used by most imperialist governments, is far less strict.
https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/terrorism
You will notice that the FBI's official definition of international terrorism doesn't mention either civilians or political goals at all:
> International terrorism: Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups who are inspired by, or associated with, designated foreign terrorist organizations or nations (state-sponsored).
Their definition of domestic terrorism is likewise unbound from civilian targets entirely, and is not only about political goals, but "ideological" goals (which is in fact any goal, by definition, i.e. "something you desire to see/ believe should be achieved"):
> Domestic terrorism: Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.
Terrorism is now any act of violence that serves the goals of any group that is designated as "bad".
The rest of your comment is just textbook Islamophobia.
Re: Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say
#786Earlier quoted context omitted.
Since we're bringing other conflicts into this... How come Ukraine is able to put in every effort to avoid civilian death when their opponent deliberately uses cruise and ballistic missiles on residential areas?
Because Ukraine was fighting on it's own territory, not the territory of the enemy. Just today, Ukrainians have blown up the Russian arms silo the size of a small town, and I don't doubt that a lot of Russian civilians have died. There's also been a lot of casualties around Kursk. There's been a lot of civilian casualties in different attacks on Crimea too. Quite a few people died when Ukrainians attacked the Crimea…
What a Ukrainian settlement looks like when taken by Russia is predominantly on the scale of heavily damaged to totally leveled. Whereas Ukraine has taken localities without huge artillery and bombing preparation and have supplied locals hiding in the largely intact settlements with food and water, about whom Russia had forgotten - furthermore they shell and bomb towns with both Ukrainian soldiers and Russian civilians in them.
Ukraine targets exclusively war-fueling infrastructure including refineries, ammo/petroleum depots, military airfields and yes, key logistics routes like said bridge that was built by an invading country spanning over to occupied territory.
Israel has set off explosives with the knowledge that statistically many hundreds of bystanders will be in the blast casualty radius in public and private spaces. That is magnitudes more negligent and accepting of civilian casualties in comparison.
Re: Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say
#787Re: Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say
#788'U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. called for a "full accounting" of the attacks to Congress to determine "whether any US assistance went into the development or deployment of this technology."' Are there any public records indicating the CIA is capable of pulling off something like this? I wish the US had been involved, but I seriously doubt it, if only because the opsec requirements are so high. If anyone…
Technically this attack is not overly sophisticated. The hard part is knowing right people, long chains of right people, motivation, timing, that kind of thing.
No agency in their right mind will even hint on whether they are capable of doing such things or not. Any whiff of information may put their people in mortal danger. They neither confirm nor deny. The fewer people know the better. The rest of the world learns about such operations by suddenly facing their results.
Re: Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say
#789Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Israel and Lebanon are not at war. Maybe not, but the combatants holding those devices were at war, no?
> but the combatants holding those devices were at war, no? The attack wasn't as targeted as you seem to think. It also hit health workers and bystanders. Approx half the casualties are civilians (including children). According to Humans rights watch: https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/09/18/lebanon-exploding-pagers... > Thousands of pagers simultaneously exploded across Lebanon and parts of Syria on September 17, 2024, r…
That still looks like a more targeted approach than "precise strikes" on schools and humanitarian zones like in https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyx9znxl4eo
Re: Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say
#790Earlier quoted context omitted.
>return the land to whom it rightfully belongs History puts pretty much everyone in the world living on land that was taken from someone else at some point in time. And if we all did our best to move to where our parents/GPs/GGPs came from we'd again face the issue of that land having been taken previously. This line of thinking is turtles all the way down and in no way a helpful path towards getting two peoples who…
The thing is, 'at some point in time' happens to be 'right now, today' in places like the West Bank. 'This sort of thing has always happened in history' is an incredibly poor argument to deflect responsibility for ongoing oppression. Jewish critics of Zionism have repeatedly pointed out how these very arguments have been employed against Jews in the not-so-distant past. Why would anyone reasonly expect Palestinians t…
I'm not aware of wide scale mass displacement happening to Palestinians in the West Bank. A few thousand people are displaced each year, and it does look like a lot of these are unjustly kicked out of their homes, but it’s out of 3,000,000 Palestinians there and I do not otherwise see anything that looks like a mass forced relocation. I'm sure there are "thin end of the wedge" arguments that could be made here but that's poor soil on which to plant a war. Is there an alternative view that better supports a belief of Israel trying to take it all away from Palestinians?