It was at least a good source for psychological studies. In relation to the article discussed, one of the effects this had was reducing marriage rates.
The theorized reason is these children all grew together and therefore had sexual aversion similar to siblings
Doctors don't use pagers anymore, just like tech on calls used to and don't anymore. Mobile phones are far superior for that, and are very available anywhere in the world, and especially to doctors
Regarding whether that's brilliant, that is not my wording, but generally it was quite mild compared to the methods of Hezbollah and was highly successful in ending a war with very little bloodshed. The other alternative was tried in 2006 and in Gaza, and fighting a terror organization entrenched in an urban setting means bombings and killing civilians in the process. This was not the end result as Hezbollah fell apart relatively quickly afterwards, so I think it was good compared to any alternative for Lebanese and Israelis
Doctors still use pagers. I don’t know about Lebanon in particular, but I would wager they still use them there too.
The rest is a bunch of hypotheticals. I am also unsure where the conclusion that Hezbollah is dead is coming from. Was their operational capability degraded? Of course. Is the group dead? Absolutely not.
Regarding the pagers in any case these were specially imported by hezbollah, so these were not used by doctors, even if we assume they only use pagers in Lebanon.
Regarding the group, it has signed a cease fire agreement with very unfavorable terms which essentially let Israel bomb any of its members or locations that violate the terms of the cease fire agreement and the lebanese army did not work to resolve, this happens on a weekly basis since the end of the war
If you compare this state to the state just prior to October 2023 where Hezbollah had setup a tent in Israeli territory which Israel was too afraid to do something about for months over fear of starting a war, then this is essentially a complete break up in my opinion.
Is it dead? no. it's alive enough to keep lebanon in its permanent failed state status due to fear of all other sects of civil war. But together with what happened to its patron, and the local popularity it lost it might break up completely
I am aware of that, and hopefully they will become a Lebanese political party without an armed wing, similar to all other political parties, which are most essentially led by former warlords involved in mass killings
The UK's National Health Service (NHS) is widely considered the single largest user of pagers in the world, with over 130,000 devices in use as of recent years. This figure represented an estimated 10% of the total number of pagers remaining globally.
Where would a Lebanese doctor get an encrypted pager bought by Hezbollah and given to Hezbollah members with the explicit use for communicating with other Hezbollah members?
The idea that only criminals or terorists have pagers is ridiculous(you mentined doctors). But Israel didnt target pagers in Lebanon. They sold equipment for Hezbollah internal use om their own network (they convinced Hezbollah to pay a front company for the walkies).
That is the opposite of indicrimante.
as for
> white Judeo-Christian variety
Judeo Christian is a silly concept. Either say christian or say Abrahamic. While most casulties were affiliated with Hezbollah and therefore overwhelmingly Shia Muslim enough of the general public of Lebanon is Christian that they would make at least some of civilian bystanders injured. Also Lebanese people aren't any whiter in average skin color then the average Israeli
That's not the argument. Presumably a broad cross-section of Lebanese people have pagers. But only Hezbollah combatants had these pagers, which were specifically procured by Hezbollah through an idiosyncratic suppler, linked to Hezbollah's own military encrypted network, and triggered by a pager message encrypted to that network.
> linked to Hezbollah's own military encrypted network, and triggered by a pager message encrypted to that network.
I am not sure where you’re getting this information from. For instance, you seem confident that this network used exclusively by the armed wing.
Regardless, absolutely none of this negates the fact that this was an indiscriminate terrorist attack.
If the sides were reversed, or if virtually any other state executed this kind of attack, it would be rightfully condemned. But Israel, as always, gets a pass. And it was indeed a brilliant plan, but only in how comically evil it was.
The most obvious citation is Reuters, which did a whole article on this, including the specific circumstances in which the pagers exchanged hands. And, whatever the rest of the moral circumstances of the strike may have been, the fact of the devices being combatant communication equipment does mean that it was neither indiscriminate (it was in fact very discriminate) nor terroristic (it had combatant targets, not civilians).
The attacks can still be immoral for a host of other reasons. Pearl Harbor was deeply immoral. It was also not an indiscriminate terrorist attack. Words mean things.
I have expanded in other comments in this same tree, but it was indiscriminate in timing, location, and possession (unless Israel individually verified possession).
If it were a “discriminate” attack as you claim, then we wouldn’t have seen thousands of civilians (non-combatants, Hezbollah affiliated or otherwise) being injured.
> Words mean things.
Small aside: not saying this applies to you specifically, but I have found that most people who use this adage (if you will) are quick to apply it to situations they don’t agree with, but become more flexible when it aligns with their interests.
The typical example I use is how Western politicians vehemently deny/denied usage of the term “genocide” or even “war crimes” for Gaza, but apply it liberally to Ukraine, even though the latter is objectively (by any metric) “less” of a genocide than Gaza is. Bernie Sanders only came around just a few months ago.
I don't love "words mean things" and winced after I typed it, but I think we both understand what I meant by it.
My contention is that we did not in fact see thousands of noncombatants injured. I went into some pretty serious depth on this point elsewhere on the thread.
I think, for what it's worth, that I can pretty easily make the argument that Ukraine is a genocide and Gaza is not. In fact, I could say that about the Al Aqsa Flood as well! That argument will annoy the shit out of you. But I'd say that's because you've affixed undeserved gravity or finality to the term "genocide", as a sort of "worst possible crime". What Israel is doing in Gaza can be as bad as what Russia is doing in Ukraine without establishing genocidal intent (which Russia pretty clearly does have).
I think the push to label the Gaza campaign as a "genocide" has been a fairly spectacular own goal on the part of western Palestinian rights activists. Unless the situation on the ground changes (I grant that it could), people are just going to keep shooting that claim down, and advocates for Palestinians will be stuck explaining instead of persuading, against relatively powerful countervailing arguments.
The case for ethnic cleansing, atrocities, and widespread war crimes is trivial to make. It's just not enough for online advocates; it's like they're trying to get an in-game trophy for the term "genocide".
I understand we won’t come to an agreement here, but I wanted to respond to two of your points:
1. Re: the term genocide, do you know why Palestinians have been insisting on this specific word to be used? Because genocidal intent was clearly communicated from virtually day 1, and was backed by actions to prove this intent. Cabinet members were calling Palestinians “human animals” and “amalek” for God’s sake - and that’s not even close to the worst of it! Palestinians didn’t just wake up one day and say “well, it’s arbitrarily a genocide, and we want everyone to call it that”. And South Africa rightfully pursued a case at the ICJ. Firstly, because they recognized the shared suffering from their experience with apartheid, but most importantly, because they saw that there was a mountain of incontrovertible legal evidence to support their case.
1. Re: Ukraine, you simply cannot make that argument in good faith. Russia’s goals in Ukraine are in direct opposition to Israel’s goals in Gaza and the West Bank.
Russia ultimately wants to annex Ukraine to expand its influence and reinstate its past glory with the USSR. This requires that it absorb Ukrainians into Russia proper. Russia uses the shared culture and language as a justification in its propaganda, but I think there is a kernel of truth there when it comes to Russia’s motivations, particularly in eastern Ukraine. Given all this, genocide is a non-starter for Russia - how can you claim annexation when you are also working to genocide the local population?
On the other hand, Israel wants to cleanse the land of its people - in fact, the absolute last thing it wants to do is absorb Palestinians into Israel proper. From day 1, its intentions were crystal clear: Palestinians as a racial/ethnic group cannot remain in Gaza. They used all tools at their disposal in pursuit of this goal, including mass starvation, collective punishment, mass bombardment, forced relocation, and so on. Taken together with the statements made by top gov officials, this constitutes genocide.
This is all setting aside that Ukraine is a fully sovereign nation with an equipped and supported conventional military fighting a conventional war against a nation state aggressor.
Let me say first of all: super chill response and I really appreciate that.
On point (1), I've got reason to question the claims of genocidal intent that get bandied about in these kinds of conversations. Yair Rosenberg wrote a piece for The Atlantic debunking one of the most frequently cited "amalek" claims. It's easy to find people on either side of the conflict espousing genocidal views, but harder to map specific actions to realistically genocidal intent (especially when the views are ascribed to people with no decisionmaking authority over how the campaign is being waged).
I hate having to be so hedgy but I'll do it anyways: none of that is to say that the Gaza campaign was waged ethically or with meaningful concern for civilian life, and I fervently hope many of its architects end up imprisoned for their roles in it. But that's a cards-on-the-table statement, not a clinical assessment.
On point (2) about Ukraine: Russian decisionmakers at the highest level have repudiated the existence of Ukrainian ethnicity; Russia has deliberately --- in ways I don't think map cleanly to how the IAF has prosecuted the war in Gaza --- targeted civilian populations (Bucha is an obvious example), and, most damningly, Russia embarked on a campaign of family separation and coerced adoption with the specific intent of disrupting Ukraining ethnicity.
You point out that Israel wants to "cleanse" the land (call it Greater Israel, from the Jordan river and including the Gaza strip) of Palestinians. I'm not as sure about that, but I can stipulate to it. That by itself does not constitute genocide!† (Ethnic cleansing? A crime against humanity? Very possibly!) Genocide as a concept does not encompass any link between blood and soil.
It really pisses Palestinian advocates off to hear this, and I get why, but there is by rights already a Palestinian state in the Levant: it's called Jordan, where Palestinians have, at multiple points over the last 50 years, made up a majority of the resident population. Similarly, if we're doing comparative statecraft, Assadist Syria successfully cleansed itself of its concentrated Palestinian population, over just the last 10-15 years. See how often you see Palestinian advocates make claims about Yarmouk camp, though. You start to understand why advocates for Israel (I am not one of those) are jaded about this whole thing.
† You get a similar thing about "apartheid", a term I'm more comfortable using with Israel, from people who correctly observe that Israeli Arab citizens, of whom there are a great many, have vastly more rights than black Africans had under apartheid, to the point where the term makes more sense applied to other larger, more salient ethnic divides elsewhere in the world. But like, preemptively: I'm with you, it's effectively an apartheid system in the West Bank.
but we have the benefit of seeing live videos from actual shops where these hezbollah members were, and you can see the explosion was small enough to not hurt anyone in the vicinity
even if very close, one of the videos shows a supermarket line, and no one around is hurt
According to Hezbollah sources 1500 of their terrorists were taken out of commission due to this attack. Making the death ratio 42/1500 or 3% while if only taking the civilian ratio that's even lower.
Even the 12 civilian count is probably higher than reality because it is doubtful that 12 civilians had access to a military clandestine communication device
Regarding the leaked IDF document this was leaked to a minor blog yet cannot be seen anywhere.
But let's entertain it as real, these are 8000 named Hamas terrorists known for certain by one intelligence unit in the IDF to be dead. This only means the minimum amount of Hamas terrorists, this doesn't take into account the other armed groups in Gaza that had a prewar strength of 10,000s of terrorists or the Hamas members who are only known by uncertain intelligence to have been killed.
Taking that number and reducing it from the Hamas published death count (an organization that kidnapped babies for political goals, but is incapable of lying, and was caught faking death counts before) to get the civilian death count is very unscientific to be extremely mild
Hezbollah is designated as a terrorist organization by:
Argentina
Australia
Austria
Bahrain
Canada
Colombia
Czech Republic
Ecuador
Estonia
European Union
France
Germany
Gulf Cooperation Council
Guatemala
Honduras
Israel
Kosovo
Lithuania
Netherlands
New Zealand
Paraguay
Serbia
Slovakia
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
United States
They're military and political personnel. Terrorist designation is a made up political thing as Trump has made obvious. Hezbollah has done nothing that Israel hasn't also done.
Military personal wear uniforms, are clearly identifiable in their operations & movements and have standards of behavior in line with jus ad bellum & jus in bello.
did not undergo a stroke, but I find myself often navigating menu by memorizing the location in the menu, I also use the icons for memorizing and then I can speed up by not reading.
The first time I noticed that is the time I needed to operate a Finnish Windows machine and I could get it working pretty good by sheer memory
Then I'd argue that not having icons on every item in the menu, and having groups/separators helps more than just having nearly indistinguishable icons everywhere
maybe, but over use of groups can also be confusing
I find icons helpful to visually anchor things in the menu. It can be noisy when there are 5 identical "paste as" icons but generally I see it as a positive
This is such an insane stance. The proposal of chat control is surveillance of most private communication.
Blaming Russia is such a tiresome stance. Russian propaganda is so bad and so hilariously ineffective that it penetrates only small bubbles inside political parties, even after years of propaganda.
Also the current German government includes the historically most notorious Russian shill party.
The laws are absolutely the issue and if you are tearing down democracy to "preserve democracy", you just see democracy as a useful propaganda tool, for the sake of your own power.
It's not only Russia, it's also China and Iran. It's very easy today to control social media conversation by participating as both sides and creating hate. It's actually possible to remotely organize demonstrations, create entire movements from afar
If steering far off (based on Iran's MO in Israel for example) with a little bit of bitcoin and time you can hire someone to do anything for you in a foreign country. This includes graffiti, burning cars, moving weapons and finally assasinations.
Because democracies are so dependent on voters opinions, and organizations that have a vested interest in the failure of a state now have influence, this can be catastrophic (brexit, covid vaccines, race wars)
Can't say I support cracking down on free speech, but IMO that's exactly what we're going to see, especially in Europe where Defensive Democracy is already in place
Those have even worse reputations than Russia and even fewer and more fringe supporters. Iran shills are solely Iranian nationals or their descendants.
China shills are some niche communists.
No, if you will reread that was never my argument. What I was saying is that this is the real reason why speech is now curtailed and why this will get worse
These are people who vote according to their interests.
There are two economic systems in the US which are divided according to the parties, one is highly globalized and resides in the cities and includes most of the people here, and the other is local and is composed of older industries.
The local one was hit hard due to globalized policies and largely offshored, and these voters rightfully want to undo that, if that's possible is another case, but this is what Trump is doing.
Obviously this is against the interest and going to hurt anyone whose job is closer to Spotify, Stockholm than some Mining Town, Montana
Not sure what does that mean.
Americans poor and wealthy are in the top 10% of the world wealthiest and own a huge part of the world stock value accordingly.
That's simply capitalism, money is spread unevenly across everyone, that does not make everyone an elite
Is that a bad thing? Why would I want someone who can't even manage their own money to manage my life savings?
If anything I'd expect a company where the decisions are in the hands of 99% John Smiths and 1% Warren Buffets to be even more short sighted, *especially* when it comes to splurging on dividends.
The theorized reason is these children all grew together and therefore had sexual aversion similar to siblings
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