In the news

Daily occurrence here. News isn't reaching over the Irish Sea - nothing changes.
We have had NHS staff threatened out of their homes on many occasions recently and other similar incidents.

Edit - the news story
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd6qqwx9eqwo.amp

As someone sarcastically said on Reddit NI...some immigrants are the new "themmuns"

These attacks happens in paramilitary controlled shitholes. Like the riots here in Belfast. Like Brexit in some parts of the uk the shitheads now feel empowered to act out.

NI has a lot of work to do though, there is
definitely more bigotry against some groups of immigrants than say England.

From a bunch of immigrants.

(This is said with great sarcasm, or irony. Not sure. Like white Australian/new Zealanders complaining about boat people)

thank you @JWestland and @TGR

sad to hear that this is a daily reality in some areas. i hope there is a way to a better future.

In other news, climate change coming home to roost - does anyone know whether this is likely to happen with the Thames?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/flooding-budapest-wroclaw-poland-europe-b2614165.html

Education maybe or just some people really are...I'm not sure of the correct term to convey my anger and disgust for these people that they believe they have the right to do this.

climate change coming home to roost

In this instance, is that really the case if it's hitting those in Eastern European countries over places like China, the US, India etc? I imagine their overall contribution to global emissions to be orders of magnitude smaller than even places like Germany.

Its frankly unbelievable that they've managed to plant bombs in the pagers of practically everyone important in Hezbollah.
Also besides the deaths and injuries, they've wiped out Hebollah's communications network in one fell swoop (noone is going to use a pager again, without at least inspecting and disasembling each one) for quite some time, and also now able to visually identify Hezbollah's members from pager related injuries (missing hands etc).

Scary and horrific, but can't help but be impressed that such a large scale sophisticated attack was carried out.

They've probably been using 'burner' pagers of a specific type so they've introduced them to the supply chain and waited for enough of them to be in service.

Reluctantly agree it's a cunning plan.

Grim if they were wearing a pager belt clip. Might not kill you, but leg, hip, abdomen, groin injuries are gonna really fuck you up.

A real hindrance to the next generation of Hezbollah if this generation have had their cocks blown off.

A global cause leads to a global effect. Can't expect extreme weather to target the nations with highest emissions, it doesn't work like that.

Also, I know someone out that way (Czech) & he said 99% are fine & that flood prevention measures built since the 1997 floods have been highly effective.

Der Spiegel wrote it is all the same model "Gold Apollo AR-924". Hezbollah recently bought
thousands of them after they realized they were targeted with their mobile phone locations.

Apparently Schin Bet killed a Hamas bombmaker in 1996 with 15g of RDX explosive in a mobile phone. So it doesn't take a large amount.

At 08:00 on 5 January 1996, Ayyash's father called him and Ayyash answered. Overhead, an Israeli plane picked up their conversation and relayed it to an Israeli command post. When it was confirmed that it was Ayyash on the phone, Shin Bet remotely detonated it, killing him instantly

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahya_Ayyash

China and the US have had extremely severe flooding in recent years. Just look at this list of significant US flood events and how the incidence increases over the years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floods_in_the_United_States_(2000%E2%80%93present)

Northern Europe is a water-rich environment and has been hydrologically managed by humans on a large scale for much longer than the US. It's only in recent decades that old (and planned) floodplains have been built on, as in the UK, so that disastrous flooding events have become more threatening, as along the river Elbe, particularly in Dresden, in 2002. Quite a lot has been done since then, and the flood now coming along the Elbe won't hit Germany unprepared, but as Germany is a huge polluter, it is certainly affected, too.

That climate chaos is 'coming home to roost' is not news, though. It's obviously been going on for years. It's everywhere, too. Brazil, Nigeria, you name it.

How might one check one's phone for explosives? #askingforafriend

Seriously it is some dystopian nightmare to know this is possible and that comms devices are being weaponised like this.

I put on my tin foil hat & robe to speculate, if every Samsung & iPhone was prepped the same there could be a mass extermination event on a scale unimaginable. Bonkers.

For everyone grudgingly admiring the pager attacks, consider how you'd feel if Hezbollah had randomly blown up x thousand electronic devices scattered at random amongst a civilian population.

Pretty sure you'd call that terrorism.

Pretty sure you'd call that terrorism.

Of course it's terrorism, but it's still quite a coup to pull off a supply chain attack like that.

From the Beeb

Taiwanese firm denies any involvement in exploding pagers

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes

As we just reported, it seems the exploding pagers could have been "Gold AR-924" models.
But the founder of Taiwanese electronics manufacturer, Gold Apollo, has denied his company has anything to do with the thousands of pagers that exploded in Lebanon.
The founder, Hsu Ching-Kuang, said his company had signed an agreement with a European based company to manufacture the devices and use his company name.
He told reporters his company had signed an agreement three years ago with a European based company called BAC. It gave the company the right manufacture its pager design and use his company logo.
"We only provide brand trademark authorisation and have no involvement in the design or manufacturing of this product," he says.
Gold Apollo now says that company, BAC, is based in Budapest, Hungary.
Hsu told reporters he was extremely shocked about what happened in Lebanon, and that his company is also a victim.
Police are inside the Gold Apollo offices in Taipei, questioning staff and examining documents.

They have prior for exploding mobiles.

It's like 911, you don't want it to happen but still can't look away from those iconic images
and the aftermath was stunning.

Conspiracy theorists have been validated worldwide.
Perhaps they will stay off twitter in case their phones go pop.

if every Samsung & iPhone was prepped the same there could be a mass extermination event on a scale unimaginable.

Taking that a step further. When AI can build factories and implement this kind of thing it will really help it to keep the population in line.

I did wonder about human free production lines, but then how far away from automated multiple raw materials-> components -> end product are we?

That humans in a factory would modify 1000's of pagers to be lethal saddens me too, but then I'm not trying to survive in a conflict zone where anything goes.

Yeah I'm incredibly uncomfortable with all of the "wow, this could be a movie". From the reports I read a 9-year old girl was killed, and there is no confirmation at all that 100% of the thousands wounded were "guilty".

Not the kind of movie I'd watch, and pretty sure if the ethnicity were different the western world wouldn't be so admiring.

Not the kind of movie I'd watch

I feel like this about movies like the hunger games, battle royal etc.