[Non-US] News That Makes You laugh/cry/neither...

[Kaelik]

Funnily enough, the pagers had the bombs planted in them in Taiwan. So uhhhh..... guess the whole US client state network are just working together to do terrorism.

Anyway, apparently pagers were just phase 1.

Today, radios, walkie talkies, intercoms, and solar panels have been exploding.

I want to stress that it would also be terrorism if they were "only" killing off duty soldiers in their homes (and therefore also sometimes their family), and it would also be terrorism if they were "only" killing civilian members of a political party (their stated goal) but also they are definitely not actually even trying to limit casualties to any specific group when they started installing bombs in random household electronics and intercom systems.

[deaddmwalking]

Taiwan says that the pagers were manufactured in Hungary.

[PseudoStupidity]

Israel really is just a terrorist state at this point, and I suspect this is going to really put a damper on the Israeli economy (or whatever is left of it). No trusting anything they have a hand in anymore, as it might literally fucking blow up and kill you.

[deaddmwalking]

I mean, it's pretty obvious that Hezbollah wouldn't have trusted any devices that Israel had a hand in, which is why Israel didn't reveal that it had a hand in those devices even after they began exploding.

Still, people are willingly buying high-tech equipment from Israel including biotechnology devices, so maybe you're right. But I don't think most people will turn down life-saving medical care because the devices were produced in a country that sometimes puts bombs in places that other people prefer they not.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

I saw one western media apologist presented as an "expert" already making the argument that the pager attacks were CLEARLY selective and limited in a probably legal way because they were limited only to... the entire country of Lebanon.

Yes, an argument that EVERYONE in a country is a legitimate military target, and an as usual insanely racist assumption to get there.

[Kaelik]

Other things that have exploded in the last couple days:

— Hand held radios
— Lithium batteries
— Car batteries
— Employee fingerprint machine
— Biometrics ID devices
— Solar devices
— Laptops, computers
— iPhones, mobile phones

But maybe those were also all made in Hungary.

Sure seems like the pager explosion was explicitly a test to see if the US would just greenlight a campaign of terrorist bombings, and then when they got the go ahead they went all out.

I suspect people might turn down biometric devices from the people who plant bombs in biometric devices from now on. Usually this kind of thing results in people buying from other sources, not just watching people die and laughing at them.

Now class, raise your hand if you were suprised that deaddm responded to a series of terroristic bombing campaigns of brown people by defending the company that sold the bombs and the nation that definitely did the bombing.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Also a thing, the pagers alone, were probably an entire modified batch of 5000.

3000 were detonated.

Suggesting that out there, somewhere in the world other than Lebanon, there are maybe 2000 pagers with undetonated bombs in them. Adding the other devices, well...

Still clearly limited selected totally OK racist targeting right?

[Foxwarrior]

Maybe ddm is so supportive because he owns a lot of electronics and doesn't want to die.

[PseudoStupidity]

A 9-year-old was bringing her dad's pager to him because it went off, and then it blew up and killed her (NYT link because then ddm might care). I know this particular child murder isn't anything special, Israel murders children all the time and has already killed over 15k in Gaza (confirmed only, the real figure is obviously much, much higher) over the past year, but holy fucking shit what an unimaginably evil thing to do. How could there be anything but war after a state declares open season on children?

[MGuy]

deaddm would only be capable of caring if it were his own arm being blown off (and even then he'd probably say Trump would've blown off more).

I don't know if we'll see a full blown war. I really hope not. I don't see how it can be avoided as long as the US continues to seemingly be in the thrall of Israel. What I'm sure of is, given the grievousness of these war crimes, Israel will never see peace as long as it exists. I don't see a path to forgiveness when they've done so much evil, so blatantly, so consistently while crying about how attacked they are. The US has, of course, only made things worse. Whatever imagined legitimacy any international org lead by the US may have had is long long gone.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

One of the things I have seen liberals of various ilks totally fail at during all this is understanding the difference between objectively being politically against a death happening and actually caring about it with your personal feelings.

I think it is pure liberal brain rot to demand people CARE about Israeli deaths. Especially IDF, and extra especially settlers, but even civilians. It is probably the ethically correct thing to acknowledge that all the deaths are bad, especially civilian deaths, on all sides and to work towards ending that. But that ethical correctness does NOT demand I actually fucking CARE and the human response to the sheer evil Israel commits time and time again IS to no longer care, or even to be glad when there are Israeli casualties.

But, like so many liberal foundational ideals, their concept of being a good person requires performative personal feelings that are in direct contradiction of natural human emotional responses to stimulus.

[deaddmwalking]

deaddm would only be capable of caring if it were his own arm being blown off (and even then he'd probably say Trump would've blown off more).

A yuppie parks along a busy street and without any thought or concern for others around him swings his car door open directly into oncoming traffic. A car, moving too fast to stop, slams into the open door, completely ripping it off its hinges. The driver stops while the yuppie begins berating him yelling "look what you've done to my Mercedes!" The driver responds "What's wrong with you? You're so worried about your car you didn't even notice that your arm was completely ripped off. You need to get to a hospital."

Looking at his shoulder, the Yuppie realizes the other driver is right.

"My Rolex!"

[PseudoStupidity]

The ddm botposting intensifies.

[Kaelik]

The ddm botposting intensifies.

I think the implication is supposed to be that 4 million palestinians are your car door, and Lebanese children are rolexes, and we are all fools for caring about genocide when "American Democracy" is on the line.

[PseudoStupidity]

Wait, so then the yuppie is America and... oncoming traffic is Trump? Do I need to have a Fetterman-level stroke for it to make sense? Trump isn't president and nothing has ripped our arm off.

Googled "Yuppie car joke" and it turns out this is actually just (barely) a rephrasing of an old joke car people use to make fun of car people they don't like. I am back to thinking he's botposting again. Source: https://www.gotjokes.net/misc-funny-jok ... eemer.html

[MGuy]

I mean whatever he posted is incomprehensible to me. It's a situation where a person could read anything out of it, like a text based Rorschach test. So nothing of substance.

What is notable is that he decided to actually respond and didn't deny that assessment. So I hit the nail on the head in a way that made him want respond and this was the best thing that the AI he's using to form his posts could generate.

[MGuy]

It's been reported that Anthony Blinken gave the go ahead to Israel to bomb humanitarian aid being provided as part of a greater goal to limit humanitarian aid getting to Gaza.

[Thaluikhain]

It's been reported that Anthony Blinken gave the go ahead to Israel to bomb humanitarian aid being provided as part of a greater goal to limit humanitarian aid getting to Gaza.

While I can well imagine the US doing that, I don't imagine Israel would worry about waiting for their approval.

[MGuy]

They didn't need to wait. The ok was given near the beginning of their operations. This news in no way changes my views on Israel and the US's obvious support of the genocide but for people who were under the illusion that this was not being supported by the Biden administration this can debunk that idea in totality.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

The Australian Federal Labor party won an election for once. And by a margin and in a way that seemed to guarantee three solid terms, so who cares that in the wake of that election the opposition fell into full foaming at the mouth fascism mode?

Don't you worry, the cowards allowed into leadership positions of the Labor party by the USA (no seriously, not a joke, they literally go and ask beg for permission each time) have never seen an election they cannot lose.

The numerous failures that have tanked their polls include minor but real corruption scandals for the PM directly, an anti corruption commission they promised us was real and had teeth that has... literally delivered LESS than zero results (they actually STOPPED anti-corruption prosecutions that were supposed to go ahead) and a big fat racist failure of a constitutional referendum WRITTEN, BUT THEN OPPOSED, BY THE CONSERVATIVE OPPOSITION PARTY.

Anyway here are the two big insane things they are doing right now purely to lose votes for no fucking reason.

1) They have literally just made 500,000+ smart phones ALMOST AT RANDOM in the country into bricks for no fucking good reason that no one, not even the telcos, not even the companies that sell phones ever asked for (though maybe the security state asked for it, apparently the very specific half assed, alt history ass, technology no one ever heard of until now is somehow a convenience for spooks and no one else). Oh and do you plan to visit Australia? Random phone bricking for no reason will now apply to tourists visiting the country too for maybe the next decade! INNOVATION! Still its better than letting the Chinese sell us REAL working 5G tech right, RIGHT?

2) But don't worry they are running a populist vote recovering campaign to... BAN UNDER 16s FROM ALL SOCIAL MEDIA, you know, "social media" like EVEN YOUTUBE. Yeah that's going to be a fucking WINNER even if it works as intended by magic. Definitely still a vote winner if they introduce age verification for every internet session in the country! Even a vote winner if they hot air it and let it die in comity before coming in contact with harsh reality too right? Especially for a party whose main PR issue is THEY HAVE DONE ABSOLUTELY ZERO OF POSITIVE, OR EVEN ANY OBSERVABLE, IMPACT IN THEIR LAME ASS NEOLIBERAL TERM.

Seriously, the Coward-banese Government has taken liberal incrementalism to an entirely new level of not actually incrementing! It is frankly astounding.

Really though this really happened, their polls were tanking because they had delivered less than nothing on their major material promises (oh and yeah, provided material support for a genocide, but I'm sure no one minds that). The phone bricking policy hit and "mysteriously" they now poll behind our marvel villain level conservative party, and yes, REALLY their plan to win back the population before the rapidly approaching election is to promise to boot every child in the country off of watching Youtube?

Fuck it, how can that NOT be controlled opposition behavior? How dumb would you have to be?

[PseudoStupidity]

We could all probably use some news that makes us laugh, right? Well, The Onion (satirical news site) has purchased Infowars (Alex Jones' insane conspiracy platform) at an auction. Delightful.

[deaddmwalking]

I saw it reported by CBS and my first thought was, 'did the media get fooled by an Onion article again?', because seriously, it sounds like an Onion article.

The Onion has a front page article saying they did it and it looks exactly like the article they'd write if they didn't do it. But other outlets are confirming it. Weird world.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

We could all probably use some news that makes us laugh, right? Well, The Onion (satirical news site) has purchased Infowars (Alex Jones' insane conspiracy platform) at an auction. Delightful.

... Is that non-US news?

[PseudoStupidity]

If I'm being pedantic it's not US news because it's not about the US (though it did happen in the US and only because of a lawsuit in the US), but I just didn't want to bump the US news thread or make a thread for what is really just a funny little news story.

If we want to redirect to Ausfailia, I recall reading that the US once literally replaced your prime minister but I was surprised that every Labor leadership position involves asking daddy USA if they're allowed to do it. That's fucking dire, and also shows the US cares more about who runs other countries' governments than its own.

[Kaelik]

Yeah I mean, you can kind of understand why they would beg the US for permission, because one time they didn't so we just did a coup, but still, bleak to ask.