The Big Middle Eastern Thread

[Azeem]

I would go far and say this is another wake up call after that recent blue screen Microsoft failure for too much digitisation of everything. If they can blow up cell phones remotely certainly they can do something with your electric car controlled by an app and payments you make with your card or whatnot. 

[Azeem]

 

[Azeem]

2 hours ago, Azeem said:

I would go far and say this is another wake up call after that recent blue screen Microsoft failure for too much digitisation of everything. If they can blow up cell phones remotely certainly they can do something with your electric car controlled by an app and payments you make with your card or whatnot. 

 

[Azeem]

And to think most of the times we keep our phones in our pockets which are close to our thighs and love making area lol

[MUFC]

1 hour ago, Azeem said:

And to think most of the times we keep our phones in our pockets which are close to our thighs and love making area lol

@MUFC

[Spike]

7 hours ago, Azeem said:

I would go far and say this is another wake up call after that recent blue screen Microsoft failure for too much digitisation of everything. If they can blow up cell phones remotely certainly they can do something with your electric car controlled by an app and payments you make with your card or whatnot. 

Nah I disagree with this, these guys are just hysterical right now. This China opinion is also insane, drop shipping inferior or scam products is a daily occurrence, right now low quality mechanical litter boxes manufactured in China are getting dropped shipped and they literally kill cats. That’s some tankie shit.

[Azeem]

22 minutes ago, Spike said:

Nah I disagree with this, these guys are just hysterical right now. This China opinion is also insane, drop shipping inferior or scam products is a daily occurrence, right now low quality mechanical litter boxes manufactured in China are getting dropped shipped and they literally kill cats. That’s some tankie shit.

Israel planted explosive devices somewhere in the supply line of the phones allegedly made in Taiwan, that is the issue. Did they know about it and allowed Israel to do it ? 

Will any Chinese tech firm allow a third party to plant explosives in their consumer goods ? 

 

[Azeem]

@Spike someone gave you cookies, you ate them and almost died. Later you found out they were poisoned by your enemy. But the cookies came from my bakery. Will that make you suspicious about me that I allowed it to happen ? 

[Azeem]

 

[Azeem]

Taiwanese firm is denying they manufactured it. Product is part of their brand but manufacturing was done in Hungary by a partner according to them which is where possibly they were booby trapped. 

[Dr. Gonzo]

10 hours ago, Azeem said:

I would go far and say this is another wake up call after that recent blue screen Microsoft failure for too much digitisation of everything. If they can blow up cell phones remotely certainly they can do something with your electric car controlled by an app and payments you make with your card or whatnot. 

Sounds like Mossad intercepted the supply chain of an order made to Hezbollah.

Seems like a good way to avoid your devices potentially blowing you up is to avoid being a member of a terrorist group.

[Dr. Gonzo]

3 hours ago, Azeem said:

Israel planted explosive devices somewhere in the supply line of the phones allegedly made in Taiwan, that is the issue. Did they know about it and allowed Israel to do it ? 

Will any Chinese tech firm allow a third party to plant explosives in their consumer goods ? 

 

I’m fairly certain the manufacturer had no idea - I think there’s no indication that Mossad asked for permission.

If I bake you cookies after you order 12 cookies from me. I then send Tommy to deliver them to you, and then Spike bribes Tommy/knocks him out/does something where he has the opportunity to poison them…. and then poisons them and you eat them and die. Is that my fault for baking you the cookies you ordered or is that Spike’s fault for poisoning you without me knowing you’d been poisoned?

[Azeem]

 

[Azeem]

17 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

I’m fairly certain the manufacturer had no idea - I think there’s no indication that Mossad asked for permission.

If I bake you cookies after you order 12 cookies from me. I then send Tommy to deliver them to you, and then Spike bribes Tommy/knocks him out/does something where he has the opportunity to poison them…. and then poisons them and you eat them and die. Is that my fault for baking you the cookies you ordered or is that Spike’s fault for poisoning you without me knowing you’d been poisoned?

If you and Spike have the historical relation West and Israel has then 100% you would be a suspect that you knew all along what Spike was upto but did nothing or even provided cover.

[Azeem]

 

[Dr. Gonzo]

55 minutes ago, Azeem said:

If you and Spike have the historical relation West and Israel has then 100% you would be a suspect that you knew all along what Spike was upto but did nothing or even provided cover.

I'm pretty sure Mossad doesn't coordinate with anyone, even allied nations. When they did an assassination in the UAE using faked British passports - the UK government was furious. It's not like the UK government and Israel aren't close...

36 minutes ago, Azeem said:

 

I'm pretty sure that's bullshit. The pagers and radios that have reportedly exploded are reported to have been purchased around the same time. The videos of the pagers exploding look absolutely nothing like lithium battery fires. I think this is just now scare mongering against western products because they want to push the dystopian narrative that any western made product might be a secret bomb & that it's better to buy shit made in China - and that pushes a certain agenda for two parties who would be more than happy to have that agenda pushed.

Like most Mossad operations of this scale, I think it just indicates that they've got double agents and/or their own spies implanted in groups like Hezbollah and the IRGC & they're demonstrating how precisely they can hit at them as a means of saying "do you really want to keep escalating." Things like the assassination of the nuclear scientist with that robotic machine gun, an explosive planted in a secured compound to assassinate the head of Hamas, and now these explosive devices planted I just don't think are possible for Israel to pull off without some help from the inside.

[Azeem]

8 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

I'm pretty sure Mossad doesn't coordinate with anyone, even allied nations. When they did an assassination in the UAE using faked British passports - the UK government was furious. It's not like the UK government and Israel aren't close...

That's because it was done inside UAE a supposed ally. 

And these are much bigger than assassinations, never have such attacks of this sort and scale seen before. As you also alluded in your analogy Spike might have bribed Tommy to let him poison the cookies, making more than one parties likely involved. Let's wait and see

 

[Dr. Gonzo]

18 minutes ago, Azeem said:

That's because it was done inside UAE a supposed ally. 

And these are much bigger than assassinations, never have such attacks of this sort and scale seen before. As you also alluded in your analogy Spike might have bribed Tommy to let him poison the cookies, making more than one parties likely involved. Let's wait and see

 

Yeah we can wait and see, but whatever details Mossad reveals... they're going to be limited. Like they revealed that the assassination of the Hamas leader in Tehran relied on a few Iranians on the inside helping them out, and those double agents were safely taken out of Iran after the attack.

I think multiple parties had to be involved. You don't get an attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon and the revolutionary guard in Syria done in the exact same way without someone high up at the revolutionary guard either intercepting communications from people higher up than him... or it's someone ridiculously high up that's betraying Khamenei directly.

Perhaps the decades of neglecting Iran's domestic interests in order to fight a proxy war with Israel are now catching up with Khamenei and the regime. Now they're in a situation where their most valued proxy and possibly the most menacing element of Iran's foreign policy now looks absolutely vulnerable... having already basically burned another of their valuable proxies in Hamas, demonstrating they can't even keep Hamas leadership safe in Tehran.

Looks like neglecting Iran in order to prop up terror groups now has them in a position is domestically in a bad place while the terror groups they support look more weak than they've ever looked before. All they've really got is the fact they don't allow for human rights and have the boot on the neck of the Iranian public & as long as black markets exist the mullahs and sepahis will continue to make money while the rest of the country has to deal with things like bread prices doubling overnight.

This is possibly the weakest Iran has looked since Iraq invaded in the 80s.

[Spike]

6 hours ago, Azeem said:

Israel planted explosive devices somewhere in the supply line of the phones allegedly made in Taiwan, that is the issue. Did they know about it and allowed Israel to do it ? 

Will any Chinese tech firm allow a third party to plant explosives in their consumer goods ? 

 

 

6 hours ago, Azeem said:

@Spike someone gave you cookies, you ate them and almost died. Later you found out they were poisoned by your enemy. But the cookies came from my bakery. Will that make you suspicious about me that I allowed it to happen ? 

That’s a false equivalency, mate. You’re comparing a singular entity to an entire nation made up of conflicting governmental factions and agencies, as well as independent organisations. Maybe someone in Taiwan knew about it, maybe they didn’t, we don’t know but to immediately point fingers at entire countries is an overreaction.

Did Taiwan allow it? Or did it happen in Taiwan? There is a difference between the two. How many foreign owner companies manufacture in Taiwan? How many foreign companies manufacture in China? Every country listed does. So you’re gonna boycott a PlayStation because it’s Japanese despite it being assembled in China? That’s just paranoia.

There are a million ways to have bugged these devices, it didn’t have to happen at manufacturing. How did Israel know they used that particular model? How did Israel know that these were going to Lebanon? I’d say Israeli intelligence intercept these at warehouse distribution so they knew they were going to Beirut and not some random place.

[6666]

Israel injuring loads of random people to get a few members of Hezbollah isn't anything amazing unless you're just completely used to/numb to/supportive of Arabs getting injured/killed by western government interests.

[Azeem]

4 hours ago, 6666 said:

Israel injuring loads of random people to get a few members of Hezbollah isn't anything amazing unless you're just completely used to/numb to/supportive of Arabs getting injured/killed by western government interests.

 

[Dr. Gonzo]

On 18/09/2024 at 20:11, Azeem said:

 

How's it indiscriminate though? Pagers and radios ordered by Hezbollah for Hezbollah leaders seems pretty discriminate. Two children getting killed as collateral damage is obviously sad because they're just children - but it seems miles and miles better than the way Israel's been fighting in Gaza. Pagers and radios also ordered by sepah (IRGC) also are pretty discriminate.

Again though we're seeing an Israel that is willing to do what it can to limit how it goes after Iran and Iran's proxy Israel, without actually pulling Lebanon and Iran into a full blown war. I do think it's interesting the way Israel acts to counter Iran's direct interests of sepah & hezbollah compared to the way they seem to treat the people of Gaza - where they've not really demonstrated the same interest in being relatively restrained in their attacks and where schools, hospitals, refugee camps, etc. are all considered fair game. It actually blows my mind because technically Israel and Syria are still at war - yet they did much more to limit casualties of Syrians in all their attacks in Syria than they've ever demonstrated in Gaza.

It's a violation of international law, sure. But this is a conflict where all the parties involved don't give a shit about international law at all, tbh... and if Israel's going to commit war crimes like this, it's 1000% better than committing war crimes by bombing refugee camps or opening fire on people waiting for food aid after a blockade.

Honestly, I don't think anything changes for the Palestinians unless the Arab world actually unites around the Palestinian people, rather than relying on Qatar as the sole Arab government in the region that does anything for them and largely relying on the "power" of Iran, a country crippled economically with a host of domestic issues, as the protectors of the Palestinian people. And because the Arab states are largely western friendly dictator client states... it's not in the financial interests of the ruling class in most Arab countries, even Qatar, to actively have a unified regional movement in support of Palestinian human rights.

When you've got most of the power players in the region sitting on the sidelines watching Palestinians slaughtered and they're unwilling to lift a finger because it might impact their bank balances... I don't think it's too surprising that nothing is really done about Israel's atrocities. The west doesn't care about human rights violations that aren't going to stop business and cash flowing to them - Israel's proven that, the Saudis have proven that, Qatar's proven that.

Perhaps once the shackles of dictatorship are thrown from Arab countries we can see a better world. Or they'll go from one style of dictatorship to a different style of dictatorship lol and nothing changes for the better.

[MUFC]

 

[6666]

Israel is now trying to do to Lebanon what it has done to Gaza. This failed experiment of a country should've been stopped decades ago.

[Dr. Gonzo]

Yeah now Israel's moving away from discriminated targeting back to indiscriminate bombing campaigns. Guess old habits die hard.