Using drones to terrorize a city [video] | Hacker News Reader

Using drones to terrorize a city [video]

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78 pointstomohawk71 comments

Not sure the first-person, movie-trailer-style, "I'm going to make a run for it" while dramatic music plays is really the right way to report this.

100% agree. I'm all for reporting what people in Ukraine (and Palestine/Lebanon) are suffering now, but making a show out of that is not the way. That is not a movie, people are actually dying there.

Yeah, I get that this aesthetic is how a lot of people consume media these days, but the aesthetics combined with the subject matter is repulsive.

Typically you can argue about classifying something as “state-sponsored terrorism”, but this is just about the clearest example I could imagine.

“Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.” - Peter Ustinov.

I don't know who said this quote but "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" also rings true

one man's terrorist is another man's war criminal

one man's terrorist is another man's subject of idol worship.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/23/bern...

also relevant: "history is written by the victor" is especially relevant in understanding the Israeli/Palestine crisis.

In the Palestine Mandate, Jews and Palestinians got along just fine. That all changed once the ideology that the land belonged to Jews began to make rounds following the conclusion of WW2 and awful events like Holocaust gave rise.

It would've been fine if the creation of Israel happened peacefully but its egregiously ignorant to assume the other co-habitants who assumed control much of the land previously would excuse themselves especially when the earliest attempts were violent. It's not clear who fired the first shot in the Palestine/Israeli conflict but its important that those who write the history are essentially the voice of those that won WW2.

Had Hitler won WW2, we would absolutely learn how bad one group was and why their extermination was justified. Then as economic prosperity set in, and wealth gap begins to naturally arise as well as freedom of expression, egalitarian ideology quickly spreads. Today's generation that argues that all humans are born equal and a blank slate would be defined as extremist ideology and a President who promotes that belief would be labelled a bigot, racist, and smeared 24/7 by the establishment that descended from the winning ideology.

Eventually the political spectrum shifts back to the center violently and proliferation of information via various technological mediums takes foothold, the waters become murkier and the victor's version of history begins to become shaky until it feels threatened enough to launch a purge of its ideology once and for all and those that resist it to become embroiled in a prolonged civil conflict.

This gives rise to a future where reality is so remarkably different than what we have, rather people hold a Bayesian model of reality one which is measured by statistics backed by groups of facts from both sides of the political fence. This ultimately results in a much more peaceful and less quarrelsome society one which can finally give path to true enlightenment, raising of the collective human consciousness so that we become interstellar species exactly like what we were supposed to do.

In the Palestine Mandate, Jews and Palestinians got along just fine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Hebron_massacre

When he writes "In the Palestine Mandate, Jews and Palestinians got along just fine" he clearly means that the centuries of peaceful co-existence before the arrival of Zionists are evidence that Zionism was and still is the root cause of hostilities and violence. That event which you referenced didn't happen in a vacuum since at that point Zionist colonization[1] was already in full force for decades and was systematically discriminating against the native Palestinians and trying to dispossess them deploying various strategies outlined in Jabotinsky's writings.

"The Irgun has been viewed as a terrorist organization or organization which carried out terrorist acts.

The Irgun policy was based on what was then called Revisionist Zionism founded by Ze'ev Jabotinsky.[6] Two of the operations for which the Irgun is best known are the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on 22 July 1946 and the Deir Yassin massacre that killed at least 107 Palestinian Arab villagers, including women and children, carried out together with Lehi on 9 April 1948.

The organization committed acts of terrorism against Palestinian Arabs, as well as against the British authorities, who were regarded as illegal occupiers.[7] In particular the Irgun was described as a terrorist organization by the United Nations, British, and United States governments; in media such as The New York Times newspaper;[8][9] as well as by the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry,[10][11] the 1946 Zionist Congress[12] and the Jewish Agency.[13] Albert Einstein, in a letter to The New York Times in 1948, compared Irgun and its successor Herut party to "Nazi and Fascist parties" and described it as a "terrorist, right wing, chauvinist organization".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun

[1] The History of "Socialist" Zionism | Leftist Zionists did the Nakba & founded Israel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehp9PZo4UR0

They can have it mean whatever they want it to mean.

But the statement by itself is nonsense, historically speaking.

If you isolate the statement and offer 0 charity then it is, but from the context and the following sentence it's clear that he a) either doesnt know exactly when the Mandate began or b) did simply mean Palestine but confused time periods which becomes apparent by the following sentence: "That all changed once the ideology that the land belonged to Jews began to make rounds following the conclusion of WW2...". So I think my interpretation is fair and charitable based on a holistic reading.

sure there were incidents like this on both sides but nothing whats unfolding today

The issue of concern at the moment is that the statement you led off with above ("They got along just fine during that time period") was plainly untenable -- and not only untenable, but basically an outright inversion of what was happening at the time -- by any reading of the conflict, no matter how one might view its broader causes.

There's nothing in the least controversial in regard to this point; it's just basic history -- and certainly nothing provocative in pointing it out:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercommunal_conflict_in_Mand...

It's very much as if you had just said "Protestants and Catholics got along just fine in Northern Ireland during The Troubles", and then went on to extrapolate and moralize further about that conflict -- in terms of measured statistics and Bayesian analysis, no less.

Do you not see any problem with this?

The hebron massacre happened 12 years after the Balfour Declaration so at that point the Palestinians were already fully aware that they were being colonized and they had also experienced discrimination and violence at the hands of the british and the zionists. Just describing this violence with "both sides" is erasing so much colonial history and justified resistance by Palestinians who had every right to oppose the colonization they saw unfolding right before their eyes.

This happens in Gaza on a massive scale, killing people with drones with mounted guns, or missiles.

To add some data about the situation in Middle East, just two days ago Israeli forces fired against the UNIFIL (UN) peacekeeping forces in Lebanon.

Hopefully the following (UN, BBC) are considered reliable enough sources.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/10/1155551

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy0g2ge1k81o

Not sure why you were down as voted as this has been widely documented.

https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6357/Gaza:-Israeli-arm...

That site doesn't seem very believable. Do you have some other reference?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/02/charities-halt...

That sounds like it's a normal military style drone with missiles, like the ones the US builds.

Any anti-Israel post or comment on this site, no matter how mild, gets downvoted and/or flagged very quickly. If this exact post was a video taken in Gaza, it would never have even reached the front page.

Easily untrue when you have posts like this at 1400 points and comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39918245

On the front page for 13 hours: https://hnrankings.info/39918245/

He's correct and you referencing a single article that is 6 months old, 1 of thousands that survived the flagging by brigading zionists, is not any sufficient evidence to the contrary.

One can easily see how many Gaza related articles get immediately flagged and removed here https://github.com/vitoplantamura/HackerNewsRemovals

"He's correct" when I just gave a counterfactual showing "any anti-Israel post" is false?

There have been many very prominent posts:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38616550

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39143043

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39603299

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38572675

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40267639

How many more do you need? Your bias is showing, same as when different people simultaneously complain that HN is "too left" or "too right."

> How many more do you need? Your bias is showing, same as when different people simultaneously complain that HN is "too left" or "too right."

Your reliance on a handful of outdated posts is statistically insignificant when trying to deny the clear trend of Zionist brigading over the past 12 months. Through the https://github.com/vitoplantamura/HackerNewsRemovals , we can track the data and see a clear pattern of brigading when it comes to anything that's remotely critical of Israel. And even those which you listed survived mass false flagging attempts.

How could five articles, all older than 5-6 months, ever be statistically significant against the backdrop of thousands of such articles being mass flagged by zionists EACH month? Ignoring this overwhelming evidence of coordinated downvoting and flagging only highlights your own bias.

The clearest example of terrorism is sabotaging a supply chain, booby trapping consumer devices and not caring because war?

OR building a neural network to target civilians indiscriminately based on the same egregious moral high ground?

Do Americans truly wish to put themselves in harm's way to support terrorism for some religious/ideological cause the same way the other uses terrorism for the exact reasons?

When do we stop and say enough is enough, America is for Americans and American interests only? Where do we draw the line?

Interesting to see that Russia has setup 2000+ cell phone towers in its occupied areas in attempts to gain intel from Ukraine cell phones.

This is an annoying, not very informative format. Fuck this.

Would be nice to have more objective reporting.

I suggest you take a look at https://malcontentment.com/.

They have a Patreon and a podcast with daily news (pdf) from Russian invasion of Ukraine.

This is the best source of news. X(Shutter) is filled with propaganda from both sides. The usual news sources are sensational and clickbaity.

Is this something you would like to read?

While the video is probably a bit much the Russians are hunting civilians with drones and has been doing this for some time according to my sources.

Also you can probably find a source with statistics about the number of hospitals and schools destroyed by Russia. Perhaps this will open your eyes?

I know this isn’t the same thing at all, but I do feel “terrorized” or at least violated when drones are used even in casual ways. Like when some jerk is flying a buzzing drone around people in a quiet park with nature walks, and ruining the experience for everyone else. It’s extra creepy when they’re flying over children playing at a beach or your backyard or whatever. But how do you stop them and not get in trouble yourself? I feel like the law around drones is not enforced even where it’s clearly illegal to fly them - for example near ship terminals where there are signs about this.

While I understand your point, I feel like the "drones are annoying" factors kind of get overshadowed by the guns.

People can be much more annoying than drones, yet they are legal..

But if you want to embrace your inner Karen, get a Remote ID scanner app for your phone - it shows operator position so you can go confront the person flying..

https://xkcd.com/1523/

I remember Slaughterbots (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughterbots) which was a clear warning of what the future would bring if we failed to regulate autonomous weapons that went totally ignored. It was just three years after that video was released that the UN reported the first use of autonomous drones being used in war.

the complexity of drone swarms may create an era of fully programmatic warfare though. this guys apprehension of how cell networks work and care regarding using a UK SIM in a warzone seemed reckless to the point of tourism. kids today, no opsec.

This guy's content would be far better with less dramatic editing and less of his hyperbolic narration. Hard to resist closing the tab.

I suggest imaging a city where drones are also cars, like robotaxis, no one in the city control nor own, but the sole means of transportation... Does that ring a bell?

Aren't the civilians in Kherson largely Russian citizens according to the official Russian line here? It's one of the territories they officially annexed.

Future of warfare, eh?

12 years ago: https://law.stanford.edu/press/living-under-drones-new-repor...

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-xpm-2012-oct-04-la-oe-gib...

TL;DR: how the US military drones terrorized an entire Pakistani city and bombed with seeming randomness, and impunity.

When we do it, its "precision strike" or "human shield penetration".

When the other side does, its "terrorism" no matter how small.

Terror, violence will never stop more bloodshed, you might get the upper hand today but you are borrowing from the future generation's peace.

If a region constantly requires tremendous human sacrifice to exist and constantly at the mercy of spun narratives, should it exist in the first place?

If a region constantly uses terror tactics while calling others terrorist, isn't it a sponsor of terrorism?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_strikes_on_hospitals...

Russia is hitting hospitals, schools and playgrounds on purpose. They are using cluster munitions on civilians and remote mining civilian areas. The drones are just a cheaper way of terrorising the Ukrainian population.

This has been going on for years by now.

you think Russia is the only one doing this ??!!

Actually, yes. This is part of their strategy. They used this in Syria as well.

It's a good job that this kind of thing could never happen "over here". Fortunately drones are very expensive and hard to manufacture. They're not sold in toy-shops so that any lunatic could terrorise schools, concert stadiums, airports or other places where lives would be lost in the crush. /s

Oh, but we need Amazon to deliver us more pointless tat we don't need and can't afford, and for the cops to "make everybody safe". So keep on cheering and normalising this as benign civil technology rather than as a weapon-system we have very few defences against.

EDIT: That took 3 seconds to mod down, Fastest I've ever seen.

Since critical military aid is only trickling through, Ukraine has been forced to improvise: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-ramps-up-arms-p...

While we’re at it, let’s also ban cars because terrorists can use them to carry bombs, just like they could use drones. Drones are not the problem here, the bombs are. And in States, any lunatic can buy an assault rifle and shoot up a school, no drones required:)

No, not any lunatic can buy a gun. You need to pass a background check. It's about as good as you're gonna get, and plenty good enough for purpose because lunatics have many options when it comes to hurting a lot of people besides legallu buying a gun off the shelf.

Drones are not the problem, nor cars, nor bombs per se. The problem is that there is an active state of war between these two countries. As long as that exists they may continue to harm each other by any means possible.

What action do you suggest?

I did suggest something in the comment; not glorifying, justifying and pouring money into the development of a technology whose abuses self-evidently vastly outweigh its societal utility. It's practically designed to be a terrorists tool.

The "Seven Questions" [0] by Neil Postman are a great read. I think they shhould be mandator reading on any engineering course.

[0] https://medium.com/@yogesvr/neil-postmans-seven-questions-to...

Conversely, since the US has fallen far short of upholding its obligations, Ukraine has no choice but to trailblaze drone technology. In a fight for survival, there's no time to ponder questions like the ones you linked to...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com