Lebanon pager explosions injure thousands, officials say, as Hezbollah blames Israel | CNN

Horrible and terrifying.

Though I'm confused how pagers can cause powerful explosions. Were they tampered with?
And why were so many people using them? I thought no one used them since the early 90's?

The Western world has largely gotten rid of pagers, but they're still used in poorer countries typically. I remember working with a guy several years ago who immigrated from Sudan and he always had a pager on him. He said that's just what many people use because they can't afford a smartphone. So they have the classic pager and a regular cellphone. Pagers are even still used in the medical field at times as well. 

But this is still terrible to hear. Mankind's ability to take each other out knows no bounds.

Yeah, I figured people would use regular cellphones instead. Like some old Nokia phone.
Maybe the cost of sending messages is cheaper for a pager.

I wonder if the explosions were caused by whatever is in the pagers normally. Can batteries of that size cause such powerful explosions?

That part is definitely confusing to me to have a blast so big it can affect that many people. I remember as a kid seeing my dad have pagers that would have proprietary batteries that were nearly the size of the pager itself, to newer models that literally took AA batteries. 

Either way, I have a hard time believing a battery causing that much damage. I remember like 10 years ago when Samsung Galaxy batteries were catching fire, but were never exploding. So my intuition says there was something more sinister installed in the pagers beforehand, but, idk enough about every kind of battery technology out there that a pager would use. 

Some experts here in Finland seemed to think explosives were the most likely cause and didn't think batteries ought to act like that, i.e. sounds like a supply chain attack to plant explosives, more or less as described in the linked article as well. The experts I mentioned also thought pagers were targeted because using cell phones involves certain risks for Hezbollah, hence causing Hezbollah to use pagers instead where possible.

It does sound like explosives, but it also appears the explosives were only planted on Hezbollah owned pagers. How could they get their hands on them?

Maybe something as simple as a directive from Hezbollah HQ: "Hey guys, turn in your pagers to tech support for security upgrades"

Of course tech support was infiltrated by Mossad agents, who secretly planted the explosives before returning them to their owners.

Later (like today) Mossad issues something like: Execute order 66

This would be defined as a terrorist attack if non-Hezbollah pagers were also attacked, but it appears they were not. This is a story worth following.

I've been to Lebanon, beautiful country with beautiful people, but they just can't catch a break.

Israel can get away with anything. They may as well wipe countries off the planet and most westerners including Arabs and Muslims will forget about it after a couple of protests, with a significant minority cheering gleefully and praising Israel's genius and their right of self-defense lol.

Netanyahu's record breaking standing ovation made me sick to my stomach. You just have no words for how evil and manipulative world leaders are. They've conditioned their citizens to effectively accept anything, if maybe with a frowny face.

Well, looks like any chance of a ceasefire just packed its bags and left the building. If these explosions keep going off, we’re headed for more drama than a soap opera marathon. As for Netanyahu, it’s like he’s trying to stay in power with the oldest trick in the book, start a regional war, stir the pot, and hope the U.S. shows up like it’s the season finale. I hope the U.S. skip this one for reruns.

If Netanyahu can pull this off to stay in power, then we might want to start treating our online comments like we're in a spy movie. One wrong tweet, and who knows? We might find ourselves getting tracked faster than a package from Amazon.

The US foreign policy perspective: Netanyahu bad, Hamas bad, Hezbollah bad, Iran bad....

What should we do? Obviously, we go after Iran and its proxies: Hezbollah and Hamas......Why?

Payback for the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979, and the October 1983 bombing of the USMC barracks in Beirut.

"A group called Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the (USMC barracks) bombings and said that the aim was to force the MNF out of Lebanon.....Some analysis highlights the role of Hezbollah and Iran, calling it "an Iranian operation from top to bottom". There is no consensus on whether Hezbollah existed at the time of bombing."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Beirut_barracks_bombings

Can't spell Nokia without KIA.

...

I'll see myself out.