Israel Rolls Out New Brand of Killer App
Technological innovation will inspire knock-offs to knock off more innocent civilians
Sept. 19: Second round of comms explosions … Trump vetoes government funding bill … Fed cuts borrowing rates … Teamsters refuse to do work of picking who to do endorse for president …
It was market-leader Israel, through its Mossad subsidiary, that disrupted the terrorism space by dropping a new brand of terrorism on consumers Tuesday, with another surprise rollout following yesterday.
Reportedly, Israel didn’t merely stick explosives into already-made pagers for its Tuesday attacks in Lebanon and Syria, the shell company that licensed the brand name was real enough to actually manufacture the pagers that killed 12 people and wounded thousands more.
In fact, the New York Times reports, the shell company created other shell companies to legitimize the identities of the people working at the main shell company in Hungary.
Yesterday, hundreds more devices reached the market, only this time it was exploding walkie-talkies, ending forever the walking and talking of 20 people and injuring hundreds more. All of the victims were allegedly in the targeted Hezbollah demographic, including hard-to-reach young Hezbollah consumers.
So what’s in store for today’s surprise roll-out? What can we expect for Lebanese trend-making beta testers? Or at the next Beirut CES?
How about combustible laptops? Poison earbuds or contact lenses? Alexas and Siris that play you suicide-inducing playlists?
Whatever the next innovative iteration, there’s no inherent reason today’s Personal Digital Assistants can’t be tomorrow’s Painfully Debilitating Amputations.
And it need not be electronic devices. How about radioactive tin cans connected by string? How about an ounce of explosives planted in anything?
Didja know everything we buy didn’t used to come sealed in plastic and impossible to open? That’s all thanks to one dude poisoning Tylenol.
Well, Israel just turned that one man’s prototype model into a fully funded LLC. And you can bet there’s a second round of funding coming.
Israel may have achieved market penetration beyond Hezbollah’s wildest nightmares, but now the cat is out of the (Haitian) bag. Anyone can now attempt some version of this.
And the potential knock-on effects of booby-trapped knock-offs are incalculable. With infinite ROI at stake, in theory the entire supply chain of everything is now under suspicion.
That means an excuse for entire industries to “offer”/require security non-blowy-uppy guarantees and upgrades. For money!
Which, potentially, will create tech segregation, forcing only the poorest and middle-classiest to rely on unsecured products. Or to go without entirely.
And anyone who cares only about killing Hezbollah of all age ranges is now celebrating this week’s innovative product roll-out. That includes not just right-wingers, but Never Trump right-wingers, using the megaphones Democrats have handed them to celebrate not just terrorism but the invention of a new model of it.
Utterly oblivious to the universal applications of this new killer app, here’s former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL):
“Islamist terrorists are at war against Israel. And Israel continues to go out of its way in unprecedented ways to defend itself by targeting the terrorists and avoiding [sic] civilian casualties. The entire world should thank Israel. The entire world owes Israel a huge thank you.”
Gee, Joe, maybe give Israel a call, then, on your brand new but weirdly hot phone.
Because every tool or weapon introduced to fight the evil ones will inevitably be available for use against all of us, once someone decides that we are — or might be — the next evil ones.
And I’m no international-law lawyer, but I’m guessing some pencil-neck bureaucrat somewhere at some point signed a law against making, selling, and distributing pagers packed with explosives and a detonator. At the very least that has to violate truth-in-advertising laws.
Plus, we may know more about the manufacturing today, but I haven’t seen al-diddly about the marketing. When do we get to hear about Mossad’s elite marketing team?
And it’s one thing to make exploding pagers in Hungary…but how do you then nail down that coveted Hezbollah distribution contract?
What else are terrorist marketers marketing to us, other than Russian propaganda and exploding pagers?
As crazy as it sounds, an entire industry could emerge dedicated to selling us products capable of destroying all humanity, with propaganda teams so effective that Americans take their side. Think about what a world that would hypothetically be if somehow bad guys got control of industries like Big Tobacco, Big Oil, Big Plastic, Big Sugar, Big Arms Dealers, Big Processed Foods…
If Trump Can’t Have the Government, No One Can
Former Pres. Donald Trump yesterday told House Republicans it’s better to shut the government down in October than to let people vote for a non-Trump government in November.
I’m paraphrasing. But not much!
As most Newsfuckers doubtless know, Oct. 1 is the deadline for the U.S. to pass a new budget and keep, uh, existing. So yesterday, the House of Representatives had a budget vote.
But some Republicans stuck something nasty to the underside of the budget bill: The Safeguard [sic] American Voter Eligibility [sic] Act. Of course, every voter is eligible to vote, because tautologies are true.
And there’s nothing to safeguard, because the vote is already safe. But Trump wants the SAVE [SIC] bill passed because it will do the opposite of its name and make it harder for every voter to vote, requiring them to prove their citizenship. Which is a lot tougher for some voters, the ones without personal assistants or butlers.
Here’s what Trump rage-typed before yesterday’s vote on the resolution to continue spending at current levels into next year (bolding added to indicate lies):
“If Republicans don’t get the SAVE Act, and every ounce of it, they should not agree to a Continuing Resolution in any way, shape, or form. Democrats are registering Illegal Voters by the TENS OF THOUSANDS, as we speak - They will be voting in the 2024 Presidential Election, and they shouldn’t be allowed to. Only American Citizens should be voting in our Most Important Election in History, or any Election! A [congressional] Vote [on spending] must happen BEFORE the Election, not AFTER the Election when it is too late. BE SMART, REPUBLICANS, YOU’VE BEEN PUSHED AROUND LONG ENOUGH BY THE DEMOCRATS. DON’T LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN. Remember, this is Biden/Harris’ fault, not yours!”
In other words, Trump told House Republicans it’s better to make the U.S. government stop being than to miss a chance to stop some people from voting against him. Obviously, the bill failed, because 14 Republicans ignored Trump’s, um, request.
Three Democrats voted for the bill: Reps. Don Davis (D-NC), Jared Golden (D-ME), and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA). The shutdown drama will go on until enough MAGA House members get close enough to the cliff to look over the edge and then get scared enough to let Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) negotiate with Democrats to pass a clean bill without that SAVE Act doody stuck to the bottom.
Because the alternative is to go over the cliff tied to the metaphorical boulder of a Republican shutdown one month before a presidential election and Senate elections and House elections.
Speaking of Denying Americans Good Things If They Deny Trump the Presidency…
The Federal Reserve yesterday cut the rates that determine how much banks charge in interest for borrowing, which is prohibited by the Bible far more often than any of its rules about where penises become abominations.
So, today, Pres. Joe Biden is set to give a speech reminding people that he’s still president and so everyone should like him for the rate cuts. Never mind that the Federal Reserve is an independent body.
The guy who oversaw the rate-cut decision is Fed Chair Jerome Powell. And Powell, recall, was an appointee of…once-Pres. Donald Trump. Meaning, Trump could be taking a victory lap today as the guy who put Powell there. But nooo…
Trump’s too furious that Powell is handing Biden yet more good economic news — on top of easing inflation and the end of the fictional recession. So instead of taking credit, Trump whined that the rate cut was political.
The rate cut was expected — and clamored for for months — but it was larger than some expected, half a percentage point, aka 50 basis points. And Trump World saw that as an in-kind donation to the Biden campaign.
Trump economic adviser Stephen Moore actually complained (h/t) that Americans were getting too much of a break on their borrowing costs, because helping them helps Biden:
“There's no reason they [the Fed] couldn't do 25 now and 25 right after the election. Why not wait till then?"
Steve is asking, of course, because rate cuts typically goose the market, and that inclines voters to reward whoever’s in the White House. Or, if that guy’s really old, then the vice president.
And, sure enough, world markets liked the rate cuts.
But to answer Steve’s question about why not wait til after the election, it’s to help Americans now, like I just helped you, Steve. You’re welcome, Steve.
Vance Denies Legitimate Immigration Status
Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) made news yesterday by rejecting the legitimacy of Haitian immigrant status.
Referring yet again to Springfield, OH — which must have tortured Vance in a prior life — Vance said the legal status of its influx of documented Haitian immigrants, uh, doesn’t count.
“[I]f [Vice President] Kamala Harris waves the wand illegally and says these people are now here legally, I’m still going to call them an illegal alien… An illegal action from Kamala Harris does not make an alien legal. That is not how this works.”
That is, of course, literally how this works.
But rejecting the legitimacy of legal Democratic exercise of authority is not only a long-held Republican practice, in this case it also sets the predicate for a “legal” rationale for the mass deportations Pres. Donald Trump has promised.
Which might not be the sharpest tactic when you’re hoping to win over voters of Latin American backgrounds.
And sure enough, there was Harris yesterday, addressing the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute.
“We all remember what they did to tear families apart,” she said, counting on folks not to remember what Democrats did, “and now they have pledged to carry out the largest deportation, a mass deportation, in American history.”
But perhaps the most important point about all of this is that an elite group of people actually knew all this three days ago. That’s when subscribers to the Jonathan Larsen Substack were the first to learn that Vance said all of this back in July, just five days before Trump made Vance his running mate.
Hmmmm!… is what I’d say if I thought Trump put that level of strategic thought into anything he does.
Reminder: Your TFN weekday morning newsletter is not changing. I’m just moving reported pieces — like that Vance one — and long-form commentary over to the Jonathan Larsen Substack. At the end of this week, EVERYONE who has signed up as a paid TFN subscriber will get added as a paid subscriber to the JL Substack, as well. So if you upgrade to paid TFN this week, you’ll get a notice next week of your paid JL subscription. Your paid subscriptions support the TFN newsletter and the time and resources it takes to do my original reporting.
Trump and Vance Swatted an Entire City
Miss Sassy is alive and well.
Anna Kilgore of Springfield, OH, told the Wall Street Journal that Miss Sassy, her cat, returned home safely after going missing for a few days in late August. But while Miss Sassy was out of pocket, Kilgore told police that her Haitian neighbors might have put Miss Sassy in their pocket and then turned her into a Hot Pocket™.
On Tuesday, a spokesperson for Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) shared a copy of that police report with the Wall Street Journal, to back up Vance’s claims of Haitian immigrants eating Springfield pets.
On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal not only reported on Kilgore’s debunking of her own bullshit claim, it revealed that, on Sept. 9, Vance’s staff asked Springfield City Manager Brian Heck whether Haitians were eating pets. Heck’s answer? Heck no!
“He [an unnamed Vance aide/future lobbyist] asked point-blank, ‘Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten?’” Heck told the Wall Street Journal. “I told him no. There was no verifiable evidence or reports to show this was true. I told them these claims were baseless.”
Vance kept his Tweet up anyway.
Falsely reporting a crime, bringing an armed response to the alleged location, is known as swatting when people do it to an individual. Vance and his running mate have now done it to an entire city.
You can argue that then-Pres. Donald Trump already did it to Portland, OR, but at least there was some non-fiction violence happening there. (Which, in a metaphorical swatting, became the impetus for collecting information on non-criminals.)
But virtually everything in the reports from Trump and Vance — reports which have drawn threats of violence down on the city — is false.
The city did not invite Haitian immigrants there, they passed a welcoming resolution that was purely rhetorical. In fact, before all of this happened, last year, Springfield began investigating unidentified businesses for working to bring in immigrant labor — without telling the city, denying Springfield officials a chance to prepare, and revealing why Springfield was not randomly chosen by the Haitians out of all America’s small cities.
The city is not besieged by crime, and a Haitian did not “murder” a Springfield child; it was a car accident and the child’s father has begged Trump and Vance to take his son’s name out of their collective mouths.
The county does not spend a third of its health budget on free services for Haitian “illegal immigrants” as Vance claimed. Clark County Health Commissioner Chris Cook told me over on the JL Substack that there’s no such thing as a county health budget. His office is a state office, and the county makes additional health expenditures. Other than translators, there are zero people on Cook’s staff dedicated solely to serving Haitians. Out of his office’s roughly 100 staffers, six speak Haitian Creole.
Communicable diseases are not rising. Despite the population increase, the absolute numbers are down, the Wall Street Journal found (in its excellent, in-depth report on the city). Infectious diseases were at 1,370 last year, the lowest in almost ten years. (Tuberculosis is up, however, from one in 2021 to four last year.)
Sexually transmitted diseases are not soaring. Yes, HIV cases increased in 2023…to just 31 (and some of those cases doubtless were not transmitted in Springfield). But overall, the number of STDs was down — despite the massive population spike! — to just 965 last year. Again, the lowest in almost a decade.
Ironically/tragically, swatting may not be the best analogy. There’s another kind of armed response that’s all too common. In this situation, someone calls 911 to get help for themselves or someone else, and they or that someone else gets shot by the responding officers. The worst responders.
Let’s call it fuzzing.
Because in this scenario, somewhere along the line of communication cops get really fuzzy about the nature of the call they’re responding to.1
The reason fuzzing is a more apt analogy is that this all started after Springfield asked Vance for help. Vance first spoke up the day after he got this letter from Heck, the city manager.
Second sentence: “Many factors have played in to where we are today…”
The ask: “...significant support at the Federal level…to provide ample housing for all of our residents.”
Heck did not say help us get rid of these Haitians. Heck did not say help us with crime or sexy-time germs. Heck blamed no one — “many factors” — for Springfield’s housing crunch.
And yet Trump and Vance have been fuzzing the entire city for more than a week now.
Schools and hospitals have been forced into lockdowns, evacuated thanks to the Republican Party’s worst responders.
Mayor Rob Rue told NBC: "We need help and not hate."
But you can’t call for help safely anymore. Because a cry for help is a confession of disorder. And order now matters above all else. Order must be imposed over all else.
In Florida, an 11-year-old boy allegedly threatened to shoot up a school. This is what used to be known as a cry for help. The kind ignored time after time prior to actual school shootings.
This boy’s cry for help was met with fuzzing. The sheriff arrested him. Then they handcuffed the boy, while he was still 11 years old, and videotaped him as they took him in for his mug shot.
The boy, still 11, was led into a metal cell with chains on his ankles, cuffed with his hands behind his back. An officer asked him, “Do you have any questions?” and locked the cell door.
“No, sir,” the boy said.
Do you have any questions in your 11-year-old brain that won’t be fully developed for 14 more years? “No, sir.”
We know all this because the sheriff released the video and mug shot online. And people loved it.
This is where fuzzing has got us. Where terrorism’s GPS guided us. Except there is no destination. There is no end to this path, because whatever degree of order we achieve will only leave us seeking the next one.
We’ve created a fuzzing engine that no longer has anywhere to direct itself but at us. We have fuzzed the enemy and it is us.
Electing Democrats isn’t the fix. Both parties have been complicit in the philosophical approach that got us here. Democrats are for sure less draconian and better able to recognize absurd fuzzing, but they’re not moving us in the other direction, they’re just lagging the Republicans on the same road. Militarizing police. The border. Everything inside the border.
The only answer is cultural. To reject fear, to elevate actual freedom over order, to embrace a vision of what seven or eight decades of existence ought to look like in the richest, most technologically advanced culture ever to emerge on this planet.
Because without that clarity, we’re fuzzed.
Teamsters Unable to Pick a Team
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters yesterday announced that it just can’t figure out whether Vice President Kamala Harris or former Pres. Donald Trump would be better for organized labor. This is now the most important job in history that union members have refused to do.
Harris has been in office for almost four years, and Trump was in office for five thousand years. But it wasn’t their track records, it was their promises about the future that left the Teamsters sitting this one out.
“Unfortunately, neither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before Big Business,” Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said. “We sought commitments from both Trump and Harris not to interfere in critical union campaigns or core Teamsters industries — and to honor our members’ right to strike — but were unable to secure those pledges.”
That’s likely a reference to Pres. Joe Biden forcing striking railroad workers to accept a contract. Neither Harris nor Trump would promise not to use that federal power again.
Although Harris and the Biden administration clearly have a dramatically superior record as labor allies — it was Harris, for instance, who cast the deciding vote to save the pensions of Teamsters and other unions — Trump has the support of most of the union members.
An internal poll of Teamsters members from April to July found that 44% of them favored Biden while 36% backed Trump. After Biden took early retirement, and after last week’s debate, new Teamsters polling found that only 31% supported Harris and now 58% backed Trump.
The radical shift has the nasty taint of racism and sexism. But there may be another issue at play here.
Consider the United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America. They endorsed Harris last week. But they added a caveat suggesting a possible undercurrent of resistance to Harris.
Union leaders said in a statement: “[T]he manner in which [Democratic] party leaders engineered Biden’s replacement at the top of the ticket with Vice President Kamala Harris was thoroughly undemocratic.”
I’m not sure how valid that is, but no one can argue there was a robust, contested campaign that gave Democratic voters any real options other than Harris.
Campaign Watch
POLLING BULLSHIT For the first time, the favorability ratings of Vice Pres. Kamala Harris are in positive territory. Meaning, most of the country likes her. And that ignoring the media apparently pays off.
The number that don’t like Harris has stayed relatively stable, and correlates pretty closely with the also-stable number of people who have a favorable assessment of Pres. Donald Trump. Which is not most people.
TCB
ONLY A FEW DAYS LEFT! I’m moving reported pieces over to the Jonathan Larsen Substack. But if you upgrade this week to a paid TFN subscription, next week you’ll get comped to a paid JL Substack subscription.
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Go get ‘em, kids!
And, yes, because once upon a time hippies and R. Crumb characters called police “The Fuzz.”
As Stephen Colbert pointed out, the cat’s name is MISS Sassy, not MRS. Sassy so therefore a childless lady cat.
Excess letters?
"Thise boy’s"
"pretty closel"