Yeah, you can't do something this cartoonishly evil without it leaving a last impact on the reputation of both your country and it's products.

Sounds like a lot more opportunities to put some spicy batteries in Mid East bound electronic shipments.

Just in case you hadn't seen this follow-up:

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gold-apollo-says-it-did-not-make-pagers-used-lebanon-explosion-2024-09-18/

And some info even suggests that this B.A.C. company was a shell company owned by Israel:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/18/world/middleeast/israel-exploding-pagers-hezbollah.html

By all appearances, B.A.C. Consulting was a Hungary-based company that was under contract to produce the devices on behalf of a Taiwanese company, Gold Apollo. In fact, it was part of an Israeli front, according to three intelligence officers briefed on the operation. They said at least two other shell companies were created as well to mask the real identities of the people creating the pagers: Israeli intelligence officers.

B.A.C. did take on ordinary clients, for which it produced a range of ordinary pagers. But the only client that really mattered was Hezbollah, and its pagers were far from ordinary. Produced separately, they contained batteries laced with the explosive PETN, according to the three intelligence officers.

I think the meme is suggesting that they were literally made by "the West" but maybe I'm missing something

The pagers were licensed by the Taiwanese company. Officially produced in Europe by Hungarian company BAC. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/taiwan-firm-denies-making-pagers-used-lebanon-explosions-rcna171594. But BAC a shell company so the rabbit hole continues.

Now I'm wondering how much of the price we pay is due to the cost of manufacturing and how much is just a bunch of middle-men driving up prices. Maybe this is just a case of a bunch of shell companies organized for military purposes but I'm going to guess that the practice is relatively normal enough that it didn't raise any red-flags among the other firms involved.

Right in the middle of Berlin.

(This information may be 30 years out of date)

A western colony primarily made of western settlers and completely aligned with imperial core countries is western.

It's a political term rather than geographic. Same reason why Australia isn't part of the Global South despite being in the south, because it's controlled by colonizers.

It's less a geographical or hemispheric distinction, and more a political one.

This page on imperial core is good.

The little black box with a screen is a pager. Pagers have been in the news because Israel made a bunch of Hezbollah pagers splode, in case you somehow missed all of that.