People are made vulnerable to their idol going haywire - by the need to rationalize having supported him. Thus the 50% of Republicans who bluescreened with “great leader always correct”. If they have time to read up on the issue, it will drop a bit.
“What are they intending to do with this capability?”, I asked when going to read the archived link.
The masses of the smaller boats could also act “as missile and torpedo decoys, overwhelming radars or drone sensors with too many targets,” said Thomas Shugart, a former U.S. naval officer now at the Center for a New American Security.
This seems a reasonable explanation. Provide cover for those who must travel undetected. Obstruct those who must be prevented from traveling or seeing stuff.
A mass of fishing vessels loitering some miles away may actually blind a surface-based radar to things beyond them. Too much reflective metal, one would have to dial down sensitivity or only look high.
They could do worse, though - they could add wind generators to fishing boats for Doppler effect. Radars look for quick moving objects by detecting Doppler shift. The tips of wind generators move at drone-like speed.
This may not be the final word on the matter, but I’d like to see a US president ignore a the wishes of a supermajority of the population in a matter which would certainly affect everyone’s economic position quite badly.
If 10% of that becomes actual reality in schools, it might be an acceptable outcome.
In the context of sending more troops to stare down the barrel at Kurds’ positions, maybe or maybe not.
Context:
The leader of Kurdish-led forces in Syria announced Friday that they will withdraw from a contested area in northern Syria, potentially heading off a major clash with government forces.
The announcement by Mazloum Abdi, the leader of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, came as the Syrian military announced it had begun striking SDF positions, while the SDF reported “intense artillery shelling” in the town of Deir Hafer east of the city of Aleppo.
Hours earlier, a U.S. military designation had visited Deir Hafer and met with SDF officials in an apparent attempt to tamp down tensions.
The U.S. has good relations with both sides and has urged calm. A spokesperson for the U.S. military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Abdi said in a statement posted on X that “based on calls from friendly countries and mediators and in a demonstration of good faith,” the SDF would redeploy its forces to areas east of the Euphrates River Saturday morning.
Shortly before Abdi’s announcement, interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa had announced issuance of a decree strengthening Kurdish rights.
Source: Kurdish-led forces to withdraw from contested area in Syria
My interpretation: Kurds are trading territorial control for rights, under threat of violence. If Syrian laws prove to be more than “ink on paper”, maybe it will be good. But many people are leaving their homes and withdrawing together with SDF troops, because they don’t dare to live in territory ceded to the Syrian central government. For them, that is pretty damn bad.
As for the river - it does provide a logical (natural) border, with SDF on the eastern bank and government troops on the western bank. I guess Western countries urged SDF to fall back to a defensible position, and government troops shelled them to emphasize that their current position was not very defensible. The new Syrian government resembles the old one in this sense - it has such a friendly way of giving reminders.
It is sad to hear of their defeat.
The business of revolution is such: for a revolution to win, it must grow and spread decisively and fast. A revolutionary drops out of the calculation after being imprisoned. Since revolutionaries typically cannot detain people, a riot cop will return next day - unless disarmed and put in hospital condition. Thus, sadly, a revolution cannot afford to lose mass engagements and lose many people as prisoners. If it is opposed, it needs to be decisively violent. :( If it’s not being opposed, it can be peaceful. To prevail, revolutionaries need an big numeric advantage, coordination (know where to strike) and rapid action (don’t give a chance of defending). If opposed, they need weapons.
If a state manages to mobilize armed agencies to supress a revolution, military units must be either persuaded to defect (approach them with beer), bribed to switch sides (approach them with money), or defeated. Option 3 is the hardest, only possible if the population is well armed and organized.
Random samples:
in 1936 in parts of Spain, population was highly organized and dual power structures prepared for rebellion: they overcame military units and took their weapons in some regions, but not others, civil war followed
in 1991 in the USSR, dual power structures were already well developed and democracy was expected - the military delayed with implementing orders, negotiated about whose orders to implement and essentially defected to the side of the population
in 2010 during the Arab Spring, protest expanded so fast in several countries that goverment could not mobilize forces to supress it
in 2011 in Syria, protest was suppressed with violence in central areas, but protesters overcame government in less central areas, civil war followed
in 2014 in Ukraine, government was divided (president vs. parliament) and the military refused to choose a side, after which protesters overwhelmed riot police and the president fled
in 2025 in Nepal, protest expanded so quickly that protesters overcame civilian branches of government, drove ministers into emigration and torched the parliament, before the military could choose a side
in 2026 in Iran, protest grew too slowly, government was very prepared for repressions, and had enough time to mobilize armed supression and used heavy violence, prevailing :(
I believe the article is true. However, I would like to know what the rates are among Palestinians.
I expect there’s a bigger rate increase and numerically far more broken people among them. And most likely, they aren’t getting assistance.
Initial working hypothesis: subsonic ammunition in the context of a crowd chanting. The sound is that of bullets hitting, not shots being fired. The gun is, after all, some distance away.
I have never been shot at, least of all with subsonic bullets from a silenced gun. To validate my answer, I watched some gun nuts deliberately record getting shot at (behind a considerable amount of earth) from this combination. Start at 3:30 to skip the boredom and ads and listen to how .22 sounds (bigger projectiles will follow).
However, basing on reports that I have read so far, subsonic + silencer is a very big exception. The biggest damage was done with ordinary assault rifles, shotguns with pellets and truck mounted machine guns.
Edit:
Some folks recorded coming under fire, and the death (despite attempts to administer aid) of their co-protester. Incoming fire from rooftops sounds like clicks or mild cracks to me. They probably didn’t approach the shooters to ask if they had a supressor or silencer, subsonic or supersonic ammunition. The video is very old, from last week’s Thursday, January 8. The worst part was yet to begin. Content warning: blood and death.
There is no need to manufacture anything against a regime that uses everyday death sentences, supression and violence, especially during a time when it suddenly kills thousands of people.
The exact number of thousands is very hard to determine in the conditions of communications blackout and widespread protests. As much as I hear, getting infromation out of Iran can sometimes mean a motorcycle trip to the nearest border. Just like in case of earthquakes, when you first hear of 50 casualties and later hear of 50 000, an experienced person should be able to calculate in probabilities.
Side note: in the US, people are outraged over 1 protester getting shot.
Wow, interesting reading. Picking some things to highlight:
Early warning and response became increasingly local:
As ICE operations accelerated in volume and speed, the open, more nimble chat grew in members and became a space that attracted those who wanted to do more than simply record ICE operations. People integrated the existing whistle program to alert targeted people about ICE’s arrival and to harass the agents, then increasingly got in the way—blocking ICE vehicles with personal cars, using their bodies to block agents, using crowds and car patrols to intimidate small groups of agents into withdrawing.
As the chats got larger, more chats were made to break the city up into smaller and smaller segments—some of which have gotten as small as a four-block radius. This allows people to see reports directly relevant to them and respond to nearby sightings quickly and effectively.
Permanent counter-surveillance was set up:
Whipple Watch, as it’s called, has involved protesters and observers stationed there for months, gathering intel on the convoys headed into the city or taking detainees to the airport, identifying patterns of operations such as surge days and times, and carefully cataloging the plates of vehicles going in and out. This database of plates gets near constant daily use, enabling rapid responders on foot and in cars to confirm known ICE vehicles in real time. ICE has begun swapping out cars and plates throughout the day to undermine this counter-surveillance, but the volume of submissions pouring in is only growing.
Taxi, ambulance and police operating procedures were copied. The single point of vulnerability is Signal. If something happens to Signal, one should be ready to apply Telegram or Tox. If connectivity is disrupted, one should have a plan of switching to Briar or other meshes (wifi + backbone of radio modems).
Each chunk of the city (Southside, Uptown, Whittier, and so on) has rotating shifts of dispatchers, who admin a running Signal call throughout operational hours. Sometimes, multiple dispatchers overlap to split up the extra tasks of watching the chat, relaying reports to other channels, and checking license plates. Dispatch also helps people evenly distribute patrols across an area, takes notes, and assists people through confrontations. All patrollers in cars and on foot and stay on the call throughout their patrol. There is a constant flow of information, allowing other cars to decide whether they are well-positioned to join in, take over tailing the car, or continue searching for additional vehicles.
Since the structure has divided up into more granular neighborhood-based zones, people in many areas have also developed a daily chat system, with chats that are re-made and deleted each day to keep them clear and not maxed out of participants (as the maximum number of members of a Signal group is capped at 1000).
A “recruitment, vetting and instruction” process has appeared.
Another development was the Neighborhood Networks intake chat, which acts as a clearinghouse for incoming volunteers. New people from anywhere in the city—or anywhere in the state of Minnesota—can be added and oriented to a list of chat options, and admins will add them to the open chats or connect them to the vetting and training processes for the more closed chats.
Handing off work to another zone has appeared:
Most recently, dispatchers have experimented with a relay system in which patrollers who tail vehicles to the edge of their zone can communicate through dispatch across chats to pass off the vehicle to a patroller in the next region. This allows the patrollers to remain in tighter and tighter routes, which they can swiftly come to know intimately well in order to navigate them better than any ICE agents.
…and of course, this has made the thugs desperate:
The response from ICE has been measurable. They have changed their tactics. They have been chased out of neighborhoods during operations. They have been caught discussing how scared they are and the fact that many of them have left.
/…/
Agents have not only followed patrollers home, but have identified the driver or vehicle following them and led drivers to their own home addresses as a form of intimidation. Patrollers shared with us that agents have beaten them, have tried to run them over, have driven directly at their vehicles head on, held them at gunpoint, shot out their tires, dragged them out of moving vehicles, and shot them. While the murder of Renee Nicole Good shocked the nation, it came as no surprise to those who have been on the streets of the Twin Cities over the past six weeks.
And surprisingly, local cops don’t want a part in the federally imposed mayhem.
police are unlikely to deploy as reinforcements for ICE operations.
Thanks. You are the first one who pointed out their new owner, and new editor in chief.
For those who haven’t heard yet:
In October 2025, Paramount Skydance bought The Free Press for $150 million and installed Weiss, who had no prior experience in broadcast journalism, as editor-in-chief of CBS News.[1][73][74] She reports to David Ellison, the head of Paramount Skydance.[75]
My advise to Kallas: don’t start personally drinking, but organize credible and systematic drinking.
Find an expert drinker, the EU equivalent of Dmitry Medvedyev. He or she should preferably be a former head of state or PM from a large country. Health checks should be done, since we can’t afford this negotiator passing out too often.
This person should visit the Chinese embassy when sober, then get regularly drunk (observing the behaviour of Elon Mush, microdosing of ketamine might also help). Either way, this person should regularly enter “god mode” and taunt Trump with progress reports about European countries withdrawing from the Non-Prolilferation Agreement, buying nuclear powered space laser technology from China and perspectives for a new trans-Eurasian defense alliance that is coming very soon (and which will allegedly stop the Russian invasion of Ukraine “in 24 hours”).
(On days of high alcohol intake, promises to build a space elevator and climate control station on Greenland might be appropriate to include.)
Economically, yes.
Diplomatically, China is gaining a treasure from Trump’s agressive and unprincipled behaviour.
The US has been a preferred ally to cooperate with for many countries, and a safe haven for investing money for many decades - because the US was reliable, had independent courts and an independent central bank, and was considered a stable democracy despite the problems it had.
It was possible to rationally predict a US reaction to certain problems. The state seemed to have principles, and government seemed to listen to experts.
Now the choice is between a distant country unlikely to invade anywhere except its proximity (China), even if highly authoritarian - and an unstable democracy where experts are ignored and independent institutions subverted, whose foreign policy is overtly agressive and follows no principles.
…as for economy…
From an Eastern European perspective, what could the US offer to me? Microsoft, Netflix, Tesla, Starlink… all except Starlink are needless expenses, and Starlink can be replaced. What does China offer? Batteries, electric motors, combustion motors, generators, motor controllers, 3D printing eqipment, sensors, cameras, radio electronics, optics and fiber optics… the list is long. The only (and massive) downside to China is their intent of invading Taiwan - from where everyone, including China, get their most advanced processors and memory.
Here and now, the title link works for me. :)
Kurds live there on both sides of the border - if Iranian Kurds get in trouble, it is only logical for Iraqi Kurds to hatch a plan to assist them.
The only thing that was wrong was over-eagerness by Turkish intelligence services, who reported the plan to Iran, preventing the border crossing and turning it into a battle.
I hope other border crossings succeeded.
If people cannot cross, drones can be used to send goods - and drones can be used to carry more drones, FPV headsets and remotes.
Weather balloons can be used - they might want to copy a page from the textbook of Belarusian cigarette smugglers. Balloons travel so high that shooting from small arms doesn’t work, and if Iran shoots a smuggling balloon with missiles, they’re wasting 100000 euros to bring down 1000 euros.
P.S. As for what they are doing (aside from improving air defense) - Ukraine is attempting to buy several really small (around 60 MW) co-generation power stations for installation in / near Kyiv. They hope to get them by March. Because small installatioons are less attractive targets, and if one is destroyed, you still have several working.
They are trading strikes. Ukraine prefers burning down Russian oil refineries, since those give the Russian army its fuel and also give Russia income.
In winter, Russia prefers hammering Ukraine’s heating and electrical infrastructure.
District heating and electrical grids are difficult to defend if one attacks them with hundreds of drones. So, unfortunately, they will get damaged and there will be blackouts to fix stuff.
Ukraine cannot effectively defend their electrical grid, just like Russia cannot defend its refineries and pipelines.
As drone production becomes more efficient, swarms grow bigger and drones become cheaper, the list of things which cannot be defended will likely only grow.
The only countries which need not worry about their grid, are warm countries with lots of wind and solar power. But even that must be backed up by lots of small battery banks and small power stations. Big ones are just very expensive targets, unless you build them underground.
It did, and the US considered the outcome so concerning that they requested to lease the submarine (but not install a crew - Swedish sailors would operate it in the US navy). Since those were different times, with only mild insanity among US presidents, Sweden granted the request.
Wikipedia tells us:
Secondment to United States Navy
In 2004, the Swedish government received a request from the United States to lease HSwMS Gotland – Swedish-flagged, commanded and crewed, for one year for use in antisubmarine warfare exercises. The Swedish government granted this request in October 2004, with both navies signing a memorandum of understanding on 21 March 2005.[5][6] The lease was extended for another 12 months in 2006.[7][8][9] In July 2007, HSwMS Gotland departed San Diego for Sweden.[10]
His support numbers are certainly somewhat pushed up.
However, on Reddit (on the subreddit r/newiran, which I must note is disproportionately pro-Pahlavi) someone proposed a method of verifying how much of his support genuinely came from Iran.
They measured the drop in viewership of his videos at the beginning of the Internet blackout. They concluded that most viewers were from Iran, since traffic dropped several times with the blackout.
I hope you get decisively rid of this illness, and wish you luck. :)