Or to put it another way…clean architecture is how you arrange the code so that you don’t need to keep ALL of it in your head at once, just the big picture and this bit here.
Totally agree and it depends on the current context of the programmer. For example, in the ACPUL language the program is split into boot images, files, modules, functions and expressions. All of these represent different levels of context encapsulation
The UNIX way would be to break things down into actual programs, where each one would be doing one thing well - and in such a way that they'd be useful as building blocks for solving other problems also.
This must not be done prematurely. Replacing function calls with processes quickly break “go to definition” and all the other conveniences or guardrails provided by your compiler toolchain.
Unfortunately been dropped into that situation. The system was constantly broken due to missing of malformated arguments. Nobody dared to change anything.
Same applies to prematurely microservicing a monolith. At least there folks seem to be sensible enough to use protobufs or json, instead of loosely typed strings.
IBM and execs are full of shit and say that because they want other company execs to buy their AI products. They will lay people off because they cost money. No other reason.
Quite to the contrary, most of GC is relatively low effort to follow unless someone revels in being evil. At the same time it makes no attempt to redefine the murderous nature of warfare, just to curb the absolute worst behaviors.
You started a hellish flamewar with this, even by the standards of this pretty hellish thread. Please don't do that again. Religious flamewar in particular will get you banned here, regardless of which religion you have a problem with.
I certainly didn't intend it turn it into a flamewar. Posting the link was poor judgement on my part. My intent was to outline a particular branch of ideology, not a whole religion.
Discriminating against a group of people on the basis of their religion can still be racist.
There's legal precedent for that in the US, Canada, the UK, France, the European Council on Human Rights, etc... Not Saudi Arabia though. Are you Saudi?
I don't see how that's "fucking scary" - the idea that only Arabs can be Muslim is itself racist, is it not?
It is somewhat understandable why some people associate terrorist attacks with Muslims, as unfortunate as that may be. Not that I'm saying that Muslims commit the most terrorist attacks, it just so happens that the most well known ones in the west happen to have been committed by Islamic extremists. E.g, WTC 93, 9/11, London Bombings, Boston Marathon.
Nobody needs to cite any statistics to proof that Muslims are in fact not more likely to commit terrorism. Claiming the need for such sources is hiding racism behind statistics, which is also a racist behavior. And on the flip-site citing any statistic to “proof” that Muslims to be more likely of terrorism is a fundamentally racist thing to do, and nobody should actually do that. The report you cited makes no such claim actually, it merely lists a number of terror organizations (with a western bias) and makes no conclusion about whether any group of peoples are more likely to commit terrorism. That was your leap of logic.
Terrorism is such a rare act that, and such an extreme act that any statistic is going to be dictated by either noise or third factors. If you find any group of peoples to be likelier to commit this act it is either because of random fluctuations or because of unrelated factors (including—and most likely because of—bias).
It is in fact a well known tactic among racists to hide their racism behind biased data. This goes well back to scientific racism of the 19th and 20th century, as well as among police districts justifying racial profiling (a deeply racist policy) in the 1980s and well into the 2000s.
I share your parent’s worry that we are having this debate here on HN, and that you are so willing to double down on an obviously racist idea.
why is terrorism most aligned with Islam? isn't it possible to frame any/every religion as "most likely to commit acts of terrorism" based on subjective interpretations of their tenets?
Only in recent times, with IS and similar organizations in the middle east. If you look at different historic periods you'd consider the Christians to be violent terrorists, even invading countries and starting lots of wars.
then we agree. personally i find the kind of terrorism associated with Christian Nationalism to pose more of an existential threat since i'm in the US and am exposed to a lot of it. despite that, i don't conflate christianity with terrorism.
the person i responded to thinks that Islam has a causal relationship with terrorism - what about the ideology leads you to believe that, besides the fact that the media you consume reports on it more often?
Yes the data is wrong, and the propaganda site is lying. It is presenting an extreme behavior as if it was typical of members of a certain group. On other words, the data, as presented, is wrong.
Islam is not an ideology, it is a religion. And members of this religion consist a group, or people. As such criticizing this religion is criticizing a group of people for whom they are, and it is racism.
I am criticising the ideology of Islamic extremism, which notably does not include non-extremists. That includes my white caucasian ex-Muslim friend and my Kyrgyz friend who is still a Muslim.
What you are doing is muddying the waters of the argument by making that association. Are you not the racist then by suggesting the attribution?
If you can't criticise extremism without being called a racist, we are truly and utterly fucked as as species.
My claim was that an act is more likely to be called terrorism if it was done by a Muslim. Your claim was that there might be a causal connection explaining that, implying that Muslims are more likely to commit terrorism.
Nowhere was I talking about extremists nor any ideology for that matter. Either you misunderstood me or you have moved the goalpost.
Your racist propaganda includes this sentence featured prominently on the page:
> TROP is a non-political, fact-based site which examines the ideological threat that Islam poses to human dignity and freedom
Note they say “Islam”, not “Islamic fundamentalism” or “extreme ideologies self proclaimed to be based on Islam”.
It is entirely not clear it is talking about a specific ideology or extremism, something one would expect they would make abundantly clear if their purpose was not to spread hate propaganda. In fact it seems like they are actually talking about an entire peoples and judging them based on the actions of the few. In other words, racism.
Considering Hezbollah is a designated terrorist organisation in many countries, this probably should be considered an anti-terrorist operation. The targets are enemy combatants.
Also notably, it clearly did not intentionally target civilians, although there may be civilian casualties which is uncharacteristic of a terrorist attack.
I assume by "many countries" you mean the US and its allies? Is that it then? Your definition of "terrorist" is whoever the West designates a terrorist? Ergo Nelson Mandela was a terrorist.
Hamas: European Union,[158][200] Argentina,[201][202] Australia,[17] Canada,[8] Israel,[203] Japan,[81][18] New Zealand,[162] Paraguay,[84] United Kingdom,[204] United States,[16] Organization of American States[205]
Not especially surprising, the GCC (of which the UAE is a member state) are Sunni petro-states that have been aligned with the US since the 50s. Hezbollah is a Shiite group who are patronized by Iran, who are the chief geopolitical rival of GCC countries and compete with them to sell fossil fuels on the international market.
I find it very difficult and out of place to discuss these kind of matters in HN. particularly because it is a very US centric forum, the user base share a lot of preconceptions and ideals that come from the education their society gave them.
It's expected, it's OK, but it just prevents discussion of certain topics.
Do you have a source? I didn't think any of the 22 countries in the Arab League considered Hezbollah to be a terrorist organization (either its political branch or its militia!).
Many of the countries you mention consider the militia to be a terrorist organization, but not the political wing. I wonder whether the pagers were carried by both groups.
My point is that countries designate groups of people as "terrorists" all the time for political reasons. Here's another example: "Venezuela: UN experts condemn use of counter-terrorism laws to convict trade unionists and labour leaders"
just to our ears and sometimes eyes during lgbt parade season, at least by this new definition of violence where the only requirement for it to be violence is for someone to make the claim that it is.......
In all seriousness though why even engage this line of argument at this point? very few brain cells are required to understand the solar system sized gap between the standards used for a western country to label something terrorist and for Russia (or Iran, or China, etc...). The argument is either being made in bad faith or in fanaticism driven ignorance, neither of which words on the internet will change. The correct and only action for this level of argument is ridicule.
I don't know about LGBT people, but I do know the IDF "deliberately targets non-combattantts with shocking levels of violence". If these designations are so fair and neutral and free of politics then they should be a designated terrorist group too shouldn't they?
Hard disagree. The IDF kills civilians, yes, but I am not aware of a deliberate effort to target civilians. The civilian deaths are overwhelmingly a consequence of Hamas blending in with the population and conducting operations where any retaliation puts civilians at risk.
There is a meaningful difference between collateral death and terrorism.
> According to paramedics and rescue teams involved in the recovery of the bodies, some bodies were found with hands tied, indicating possible execution. Other victims were found with bullet marks on their heads, raising suspicions of summary executions. There are also reports of torture marks on the bodies.[34][35]
>According to Palestinian government-run news agency Wafa, some bodies were found suspicious of organ theft with their stomachs open and stitched up, contrary to the usual wound closure techniques in the Gaza Strip. The mutilated body of a little girl wearing a surgical gown was also found, prompting suspicions that she had been buried alive.[34]
Genuinely curious, how so? This is what I see being reported in major news outlets. Thousands injured, including the families of low ranking officials who happened to be at home together when it happened.
> It killed and injured more than 3 thousand people, including children.
Well the number of killed versus injured is significant and not mentioned. The mention of children is bundled with the large figure. It could be interpreted that 3000 people were killed, 2900 of which are children, which is exactly how it will be quoted and portrayed.
This is pretty irresponsible use of language.
Check headlines and how this is portrayed and compare the statistical figures mentioned. Also who is being quoted and if they are in quotes or how they are quoted. There's a lot of ambiguity.
In times of war, which this unfortunately is, irresponsible reporting is dangerous and leads to further problems.
It absolutely does not. The violence will continue with both sides dishing it out and feeling completely justified in doing so because of what was previously done to them.
Or one side accepts a two state solution and stops using its proxies to attack Israel. Unfortunately, there have been eight attempts to give the Palestinians their own state and its been rejected every time. In the 90's, Bill Clinton gave them practically everything they asked for and was still rejected.
The only condition they will ever accept is when Israel ceases to exist.
Which begs the question - who's really initiating and continuing the violence? Israel has offered peace. HAMAS and its proxies like Hezbollah have rejected it every time. It should be obvious there's only one side who wants peace and one side who only wants war.
Unfortunately, there have been eight attempts to give the Palestinians their own state and its been rejected every time.
Can we have a source for that claim? I do not know how you would arrive at the number eight and how any offer would qualify as giving the Palestinians all they asked for. The Oslo process was probably the best shot but did not even come close to resolving the conflict. A lot of the contentious issue were just deferred to be figured out within five years and that simply never happened.
1st Rejection - The suggested split was heavily in favor of the Arabs. The British offered them 80% of the disputed territory, the Jews the remaining 20%. Yet, despite the tiny size of their proposed state, the Jews voted to accept this offer. But the Arabs rejected it and resumed their violent rebellion.
2nd Rejection - Ten years later, in 1947, the British asked the United Nations to find a new solution to the continuing tensions. Like the Peal Commission, the UN decided that the best way to resolve the conflict was to divide the land. In November 1947, the UN voted to create two states. Again, the Jews accepted the offer and again, the Arabs rejected it.
Only this time, they did so by launching an all-out war. Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria joined the conflict. But they failed. Israel won the war and got on with the business of building a new nation. Most of the land set aside by the UN for an Arab state, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, became occupied territory. Occupied not by Israel, but by Jordan.
3rd Rejection - 20 years later, in 1967, the Arabs led this time by Egypt and joined by Syria and Jordan, once again sought to destroy the Jewish state. The 1967 conflict, known as the Six-Day War, ended in a stunning victory for Israel. Jerusalem and the West Bank, as well as the area known as the Gaza Strip, fell into Israel’s hands.
The government split over what to do with this new territory. Half wanted to return the West Bank to Jordan and Gaza to Egypt in exchange for peace. The other half wanted to give it to the region’s Arabs, who had begun referring to themselves as the Palestinians, in the hope that they would ultimately build their own state there.
Neither initiative got very far.
A few months later, the Arab League met in Sudan and issued its infamous three-NOs, no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel. Again, a two-state solution was dismissed by the Arabs.
4th Rejection - In 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak met at Camp David, with Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Nasser Arafat, to conclude a new two-state plan. Barak offered Arafat a Palestinian state in all of Gaza, and 94% of the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital. But the Palestinian leader rejected the offer.
In the words of U.S. President Bill Clinton, “Arafat was here 14 days and said no to everything.”
Instead, the Palestinians launched a bloody wave of suicide bombings that killed over 1,000 Israelis and maimed thousands more, on buses, in wedding halls, and in pizza parlors.
5th Rejection - In 2008, Israel tried yet again. Prime Minister Ehud Omar went even further than Ehud Barak had, expanding the peace offer to include additional land to sweeten the deal. Like his predecessor, the new Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, turned the deal down.
The first two do not count, Israel did not even exist. They had nothing to offer, they wanted to take some of the land from the Arabs for their own state. They owned less than ten percent of Mandatory Palestin that they had purchased from Arabs and the United Nations decided to give them more than half of the land - admittedly including a lot of desert - for their own state. None of the Arab nations and obviously not the Palestinians agreed to that. Ben-Gurion took the offer and established the state of Israel, not because he considered it fair - he said he would be mad if he was a Palestinian - and not because he was satisfied, he saw it as a step to eventually take over all of Mandatory Palestin.
I can not say much about number three but your quote says that it did not get very far, so I am not sure why this is on a list of rejected offers if there was not even an offer, only considerations.
The way Camp David is described also does not match reality. They failed to agree on several points and therefore there was never an offer that could be rejected. One point of contention was the right to return for the Palestinians expelled by the Israelis. You can not say one side blocked it, the Palestinians wanted more than what Israelis offered, they could have accepted less or the Israelis could have offered more.
Number five, the realignment plan, that was a proper offer, but the characterization in your quote is still misleading. Israel unilaterally proposed to withdraw from most of the Westbank and permanently annex six percent of it containing the major settlements. There was also some other stuff including some land swaps included. I am not sure if the reason for the failure are welk known, you find claims about rejections, claims about just not accepting, that story about not being allowed to look at the map before agreeing, ... And given that it was an unilateral offer, I am not sure that it addressed all points deemed relevant by the Palestinians, for example what happens to the refugees. I would love if someone could provide additional insights.
> They owned less than ten percent of Mandatory Palestin that they had purchased from Arabs
If relations between the two sides hadn’t deteriorated to the point of civil war then the split would never have been proposed in their first place. Left alone the Jews living in the mandate probably would have continued living there as a minority like they were in many Arab states.
The Palestinians fear of Zionism has turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The Palestinians fear of Zionism has turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Nothing mystic or prophetic at all about it.
Palestine is in the situation it is in due to the calculated policies of the various colonial powers and their "post-colonial" successors -- perhaps better described as "modern great power chauvinist states".
And due to its own mistakes of course (as with any society, especial). But these are generally overshadowed by interventions (far) beyond its control, emanating from these aforementioned interventionist powers. One can dissect the various aspects and subaspects of this dynamic, but that's the long and short of the situation.
In any case, "prophecy" as such has nothing to do with the current status quo.
> The first two do not count, Israel did not even exist. They had nothing to offer, they wanted to take some of the land from the Arabs for their own state.
The Palestinian state also didn’t exist. Palestine was under British rule at the time, and prior to that they were ruled by the Ottomans, and prior to that they were ruled by Arab Caliphates and Christian crusaders, and before that the Romans.
That’s what makes the anti-Israel movement hypocritical. There have always Jews in Palestine, and in fact they predate the Arabs by centuries. And a Palestinian state would be just as much a modern creation as Israel is. The only way to legitimize a Palestinian state and delegitimize an Israeli one is a completely arbitrary set of rules. A two state solution is the only one that makes any sense of any kind.
Sure but even though I myself used the term state in my comment, I do not think that states are what matters. What matters are the people living in the region, it is their right to decide what should and should not happen, whether they are formally organized as a state or not. At the time of the Balfour Declaration the Jews were a five to ten percent minority in Mandatory Palestine. In the end it should have been the decision of the people living there - state or not - whether they want to accommodate the Jews that desired to settle there and even more so should it have been their decision whether they want the land split into two states.
The Israelis illegitimately took have of the land from the Palestinians with force and then occupied the other half when they resisted. Similar things happend all throughout history and they can not be undone. The people of Israel will not be forced back to where they came from just as we will not send all Americans back to Europa, Africa, and Asia to give the land back to the native Americans.
But the Palestinians deserve better than the status quo, they are the ones that were treated unjust. Israel should go out of its way to make good on past wrongs, if it does not hurt them, they are not doing enough. Israel now has a right to exist, they do not have to accept existential threats, but they owe the Palestinians a lot.
> The way Camp David is described also does not match reality. They failed to agree on several points and therefore there was never an offer that could be rejected.
You mean Arafat's refusal for to even define infinite "right of return" or participate in any way with the Summit? While every historian (including his Arafat's wife he told to hide in Paris) said he was preparing for the second intifada?
Also its widely known that the Summit was the closest they have ever gotten outside Taba. Its a hilarious statement to think there was no "offer".
I did not say there were no offers but that there was no agreement. Both sides made offers but none was accepted by the other side. To stick with the right to return issue, the Palestinians demanded a wider right to return than Israel was willing to accept, Israel offered a more restricted right to return than the Palestinians were willing to accept. But such a failure to agree can not be easily blamed on only one party, each party could have moved their offers closer to the other side. Only if one party is obviously unreasonable in their demands or refuses to even negotiate, then you might be able to put the blame on one side.
And let me add a note on the language. At least I but probably also others easily fall into a pattern of saying that Israel makes offers and that the Palestinians reject offers and have demands. This certainly reflects the power imbalance but it also has different connotations - making offers sounds much more positive than having demands and rejecting offers. I guess it would be better to talk about proposals and accepting or not accepting them. Both sides have made proposals and they have not been accepted by the other party sounds much more balanced than saying Israel made offers that got rejected by the Palestinians while Israel dismissed demands made by the Palestinians.
> In November 1947, the UN voted to create two states. Again, the Jews accepted the offer and again, the Arabs rejected it. Only this time, they did so by launching an all-out war. Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria joined the conflict.
You are glossing over a TON of important events between January 1947 and May 1948. Primarily the destruction of Palestinian towns and rampant slaughter at the hands of the Zionist Haganah and Irgun militias. Israeli attempts to memory-hole the Nakhba have failed.
^GDF cites many western and Israeli sources in this video
Also, between what you list as the 3rd Rejection (1967) and 4th Rejection (2000), you are omitting that the pro-peace settlement Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated......by the Israeli far-right.....who are pretty much the same people now running Israel into the ground on a path of violence.
Sure, I have no doubt that there are a lot of reasonable people that wish to settle the conflict and that have proposed ideas to reach that goal. But if I sit down and write a peace agreement, that is worth nothing, and if does not get implemented, that is not an rejection.
Israel could act unilaterally, they could decide to withdraw from the Westbank and then just do it, no need to make an offer or agreement and have it accepted by the Palestinians. The obvious drawback of that is that you have no idea how it will be received by the other side, will they be satisfied and the conflict ends or will they keep fighting because they are not satisfied?
So you probably want an agreement between both parties that codifies what both parties will and will not do if accepted. With that it is no longer about accepting an offer but reaching an agreement. If your offer is good enough, it might become an agreement without further negotiation, but as you want to offer as little as possible while getting as much as possible, this seems unlikely to happen. There will be a back and forth of offers and counteroffers and they will all be rejected until you reach an agreement that is acceptable by both parties or until you get stuck because of irreconcilable differences.
But even if you reach an agreement at the negotiation table, that does not mean you have succeeded. The agreement must also be accepted by the affected people on both sides and you have to be able to implement it. Agreeing to stop attacks is worth nothing if the people performing the attacks do not support the agreement and keep fighting and you do not have sufficient power to prevent this.
Long story short, what I want to say is that making an offer and complaining about getting it rejected does not make much sense. If you can act unilaterally, just skip the offer and do it, if both parties have to be involved, you have to reach an agreement and getting offers rejected during the negotiations is an expected part of the process. And unless one side has completely unreasonable demands, a failure to reach an agreement can not easily be blamed on one side alone, both parties have the ability to move their position towards the other side.
Long story short, what I want to say is that making an offer and complaining about getting it rejected does not make much sense
No one is complaining about it, they're pointing to the many generous and heartfelt attempts made, that were rebuffed, along with repeated statements that Israel should not exist.
This shows how unreasonable others are being, and how reasonable and open to resolving things Israel has been.
With the support of the United Nations and violence Israel took half of the land from the people living in Mandatory Palestine and displaced hundred thousands of them. And then occupied the rest of the land when they were fighting back. And terrorized and killed quite a few of them in the course of it. They better make a generous and heartfelt attempt to make good for that.
And with that I can just ask a similar question as before, where are those attempts that failed for unreasonable reasons? And I mean attempts that actually had a chance of getting implemented, backed by sufficient power to follow through if an agreement could be reached.
[...] along with repeated statements that Israel should not exist.
A good part of the people in power in Israel - not all of course - would similarly prefer if there was no Palestinian state, from Ben-Gurion who hopped that Israel will eventually encompass all of Mandatory Palestine to Netanyahu who rejects a fully sovereign Palestine.
Every country on the planet, every single piece of land, has people on it who displaced others. Yes, this includes the Palestinians too, they've displaced others, you just need go far enough back. Historical displacement is irrelevant, and only the oldest among us even remember a time when there was no modern Israel.
Israel belongs there too, Jews have lived in the region forever, and Jewish run states have existed for thousands of years in the region.
It's this simple. Israel exists, and is going nowhere.
People need to deal with it, drop historical hatred, and make peace.
Well you can't compensate a dead person, but you can compensate a living person. There is the cut-off from historical perspective. In this spirit, a single state allowing right of return and equal (voting) rights is a workable solution.
Thing is, Israel currently is an apartheid state, so the status quo is not acceptable.
In addition, tens of thousands of civilian casualties within the country, and ignoring ICJ rulings which Israel have signed up to, indicate effectively a rogue government, needing change.
There is a question over what defines Israel as a state, there's no reason why Palestinians and Jews should not be able to live together, with a shared government, but that's not the case here, and that seems to be because Israelis are taking land, making asymmetric laws, allowing anyone with 'Jewish' heritage citizenship regardless of their actual location, and so on. The issue is basically Zionism and the fact that Zionism effectively mandates ethnic cleansing, not Judaism.
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 anticipate America distancing itself from the conflict.
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.
Defense of Taiwan is very important for the sort od reasons you're talking about. The defense of Israel though? That's a net negative which causes America a great deal of reputational harm around the world. With regard to Europe taking their own defense industry seriously again, I think that is ultimately a good thing for the American public, and in any case isn't caused by the trend of younger Americans disliking Israel. Rather, it is caused particularly by a certain baby boomer presidential candidate who simultaneously suggests that America shouldn't oppose Putin invading Europe AND that America should instead triple down on support for Israel.
As for people going "further right" as they get older, the younger American generations disliking Israel isn't a right/left thing. Young right and young left both dislike Israel, for their own reasons. Churches in America, particularly white evangelical churches from whom support for Israel is the strongest, are in a precipitous decline. They look like nursing homes now, younger generations aren't coming back and the boomers in those churches are in a panic over it.
You’re rewriting history to suit your point of view. The Japanese state was uninterested in capitulating after the nuclear bombs. It’s the declaration of war by the Soviets and rapid invasion of then-Manchuria which led the Japanese to accept unconditional surrender. They trusted the West to keep the emperor more than the Communists.
You’re making an exclusionary argument to discredit mine and use the rewrite history point. Come on. My point stands as do your secondary points. But that was a principal contributing factor.
GP's actually true that the nukes wasn't the decisive factor but the Soviet invasion was. The popular narrative that American nukes ended it is merely the most useful version.
The bomb was not a principal contributing factor. We're talking about fascist ideologues hellbent on every man, woman and child dying to stall an invasion of their homeland. Of course the thing they feared most weren't new types of bombs, which did not change their situation. The thing the feared most were those horrible communists.
Correction, the best way this ends now is that Bibi lives to a nice old age and dies of natural causes and not in prison. This is not the Empire of Japan. This is a poorly funded proxy war being kept just below a boil so certain members of Israel's political class are not found to be criminals.
I agree there to some extent, but believe me it's not going to be all roses if you change the leadership. It will just be different actors. And in the transition time, things will get worse. I think you are chasing the wrong solution.
Has Israel tried removing themselves from lands they are illegally occupying?
Has Israel tried not constantly lobbing missiles and rockets at Lebanon? (yes, I know Hezbollah had launched many rockets at territories Israel are illegally occupying, something like 1/4 of the number Israel has launched).
Has Israel tried not dropping leaflets on Lebanese civilians, demanding they leave so Israel can steal their homes and land?
Has Israel even tried stopping harassing the Lebanese population with sonic booms and armed drones?
AFAICT the only thing Israel actually has tried, is more of the above.
Hezbollah launched a war against Israel 12 months ago. Why is it suddenly an issue for you when they get hit back? Is it only a problem when Israel fights back?
Stop launching rockets at Israel, comply with UN Resolution 1701, and the conflict is over. Why are you overcomplicating this?
It's rude to completely ignore the very reasonable argument someone brought up. The illegality of the West Bank settlements is not a new issue and long predates the latest round of military conflict.
You accuse me of whataboutism in a post about communication devices blowing up in Lebanon, where you yourself shift the blame on Israel because of the conflict with the Palestinians and settlers… you’re the only person shifting topics and using whataboutism so long…
I work mainly with undocumented stuff. That taught me to appreciate when there is manuals and documentation for anything and I read them. I don't watch YouTube videos, I read the manual. Of course until I can't figure it out and then still look into YouTube anyway.
Hezbollah has been warning its members not to use cell phones because they get targeted by using them too. Seems like the pagers were supposed to be the workaround for that.
Lots of pagers operate in one-way only mode. Towers transmit messages without expecting acknowledgement a few times, pager is configured to filter out and only alert on messages routed to its ID.
Sure, theoretically one can detect a receive-only radio, but its massively more difficult than detecting something which actively transmits.
Most pagers do, yes. They are also usually unencrypted. And due to the one way nature, even if they are encrypted, PFS (perfect forward security) is impossible. Meaning that if someone captures the encrypted messages they can decrypt them all the way back when the encryption key is obtained.
But the impossibility of any kind of location tracking is definitely a plus of one-way pagers. Not just for terrorists. I'd get one if there were still a network where I live. It'd be really nice to be reachable and not be tracked 24/7 for once.
While the messages are not encrypted, you just have your actual message coded. Have agreed on phrases and what not discussed out of band. Send dummy messages to throw people off and not know what is a real transmission or a dummy one. Is that numbers station just spouting gibberish or communicating with spies?
The market closes at 5, dinner at the hotel, Grandpa will bring home the wine, bring your hat. Charlie 5 Alpha 2 4 7 3 Bravo. Maybe this is just discussing someone's evening, maybe its coordinating a group action.
Many pagers are receive only. The tower has no idea who's listening; it just broadcasts out the messages that it's told to. Pagers are much less trackable than phones.
> Surely a pager message isn't transmitted from every tower everywhere.
They generally are!
Some systems required the sender to select a geographic region to increase bandwidth efficiency, or alternatively the pager owner to update their coarse-scale location with the operator after moving significant distances.
The latter is what the old Iridium satellite pagers did (do?), for example. (Not sure how the new GDB-based ones work.)
The new Iridium pagers are two-way as far as I've heard. Only the old ones were one-way.
I think the service is finally being decommissioned due to the Iridium Next satellites not supporting it anymore. It has been supported for more than a decade without onboarding new customers though.
> The new Iridium pagers are two-way as far as I've heard.
Apparently that's optional:
> Iridium Burst-enabled devices can be configured as receive-only so that no transmissions are made, a feature valued highly by some customer segments.
> I think the service is finally being decommissioned due to the Iridium Next satellites not supporting it anymore.
If that's the case, it would have been inoperable since 2017 – they deorbited the old satellites immediately after confirming deployment of the new ones.
That's exactly how they work, actually. Or at least worked, traditionally. There are assuredly some two-way pagers out there now.
But yeah, you'd usually pay for service in a certain (large) geographic area, and if you wanted to take your pager out of that area while on a trip, or if you moved, you'd have to let the pager company know so they could start broadcasting in the new area.
They might have watched The Wire: you page Alice, and she uses a public phone to call you. Undetectable unless you wire all public phones in the city, or someone is dumb enough to always use the same phone (which is what happens in the series; they eventually switch to burner mobiles).
To be fair, they rotate the burners in the series every 2 weeks and it takes the police more than a week to get up on the new ones.
It was cool to see that it was in fact an opsec fail (the guy buying the phones all over the country got lazy and bought too many from the same shop) to break through that. Pretty realistic. Like most of the wire in fact.
Although one thing in the wire I don't understand. Pagers are really easy to intercept, anyone with a scanner (with discriminator output) can do it and could do it in those times. I did it many times during the days when pagers were still in full swing. I really don't understand why they needed a court order for that (in season 1).
> Pretty realistic. Like most of the wire in fact.
The show creator worked for years as a journalist on the crime beat in Baltimore, I expect most of the opsec seen in the series comes from real cases.
> really don't understand why they needed a court order for [wiretapping pagers]
As others said, you need it from a legal perspective rather than a technical one. This is particularly true in the US, where the "fruit of poisonous tree" doctrine is pretty strict: if your evidence was not gathered in the proper manner, it must be discarded and it invalidates any further effort based on it. In specific, wiretapping is illegal even when done by authorities, unless they've been authorized by judges - the relevant US laws were tightened up after it emerged (with Watergate) that president Nixon was eavesdropping on his political rivals.
They recently introduced pagers because they're less trackable than phones. Presumably the ones which have pagers are more important so its probably more impactful than targeting 1 or 2 percent of the regular terrorists.
They have about 100'000 members, and this attack has killed about a dozen, and injured about 2000. Only one recent shipment of pagers was affected. I don't think they are unable to respond.
