perestroika

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Speculation has it that either "Palyantsia" (small turbojet drone) or "Neptun" (sizable cruise missile, antiship with ground strike capability) were used. Since part of the Russian facility was hardened and underground, I would ordinarily favour the hypothesis of "Neptun", but it's supposed to be out of their range and the videos recorded over Russia featured a turbojet sound and the video you linked has a small explosion (this would fit "Palyantsia", since it's small).

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago

Alternatively, and perhaps more plausibly - people who are new to politics fall for a populist.

I'm a bit scared of where the world is going, but it doesn't make me vote a local populist. One of the things that helps me recognize a scammer from distance - 3 decades of experience with garden variety politics.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (4 children)

As a happy user of Signal (no bugs or incidents from my viewpoint), I regardless chime in to say a word for decentralization. :)

Signal is centralized:

  • there is a single Signal implementation, with a single developing entity
  • you have to install its mobile version before you may run the desktop version

There exist protocols like Tox which go a step beyond Signal and offer more freedom -> have multiple clients from diverse makers (some of them unstable), don't have centralized registration, and don't rely on servers to distribute messages - only to distribute contact information.

In the grand comparison table of protocols (not clients), Tox is among the few lines that's all green (Signal has one red square).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I attempted to find the source of this image and its spread seems to originate from 4chan (or at least, 4chan was one of the earliest vectors).

Chances of this being a disinformation / prank seem pretty high currently.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

/me listening to the sound of a WinXP virtual machine booting under Debian Linux

They can shoot their foot with a grenade launcher next. I'm already out of range.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Alternatively or additionally, I think oxygen plasma glows blue or green, because northern lights (near the poles, at least) are greenish.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Came here to post this and say "finally", but someone had already noticed. :)

There's a quote that's probably not from Churcill, but is frequently mis-attributed to him (the actual source is probably Abba Evan, an Israeli diplomat visiting Japan). The distorted quote says something that's appropriate today:

"You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all other possibilities."

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

To resist an organized group, you communicate the problem (in an anarchist society, communicating the problem of a nascent state seems like the easy part), present evidence of the nature and severity of the problem, and ask people and existing organizations to mobilize.

Whether the next step is obstructing the state peacefully or mass production of munitions, would already depend on how bad the state has got.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (4 children)

The same that stops them from taking over a democracy. Sometimes.

If a society became anarchist enough to abolish state structures, there obviously had to exist a reason - there had to exist popular support.

Thus, someone attempting to recreate a state would face questions and opposition. People would try to persuade them of their error. If they declared a state, anarchists would not recognize it. If it claimed sovereignity above a territory, anarchists might not recognize that either.

The new state might encounter problems - unwilling residents would leave and be accepted in anarchy, annoyed anarchists would organize trade boycotts and sanctions, ultimately it could go badly and armed confrontation could follow. In some scenarios, the state might remain and attract people who want to live there. In some scenarios, war would follow - and if the majority really was anarchist, the state would lose and disappear.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Also notably, the Kronstadt anarchists held a general assembly to dicsuss the question of "shall we accept Lenin's ultimatum, or fight a battle against the Red Army?" and decided democratically to fight.

(The battle was extremely bloody, anarchists lost and the Red Army won, at the cost of losing at least 5 times more people. Considerable numbers of anarchists escaped to Finland.)

In short: anarchists can use heavy artillery when needed, even if they know that war is not healthy - neither for them or the society they want.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

YPG, the militia formed during the seperation of Rojava from the Syrian government, have been accused by Human Rights groups of using Child Soldiers.

Correct... and notably, unlike the other forces around them (Syrian dictatorship, Turkish-sponsored islamists, ISIS, etc) they responded to the accusation within a month:

In June 2020, United Nations reported the YPG/YPJ as the largest faction in the Syrian civil war by the number of recruited child soldiers with 283 child soldiers followed by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham with 245 child soldiers.[141]

On 15 July 2020, SDF issued a new military order prohibiting child recruitment. The NGO Fight For Humanity conducted multiple training sessions with hundreds of SDF commanders about the UN-SDF Action Plan To Prevent Child Recruitment, and distributed informational posters and flyers about it written in both Arabic and Kurdish, as part of an ongoing educational process. Syria-based researcher Thomas McClure observed that “SDF are less likely to engage in such practices than any of the other forces in Syria, but seek to hold themselves to a higher standard of accountability and human rights.”[142]

On 29 August 2020, SDF announced the creation of a new system that anyone can use to confidentially report to specialized Child Protection offices any suspected case of child recruitment, in accordance with the action plan that the SDF signed with the United Nations in the summer of 2019.[143][144]

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Sadly, until the IDF starts investigating and prosecuting their members for war crimes (and stops assigning people without the required education, skills and psychological traits to essentially do police duties) - some parts of the IDF will continue to perform the role of recruiting Palestinians into extremist and militant organizations. :(

I would not be surprised if one of the dead man's relatives decides at some point to take up weapons.

view more: next ›