Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia | Hacker News Reader

Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

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Serbia had the LRAD systems on hand, after buying them in 2022, most likely from Genasys, but possibly from HyperSpike.

It's a legal gray area in Serbia where the use against civilians isn't explicitly forbidden, so they're playing fast and loose and moving fast to crush opposition. It's better than troops just gunning people down, but for a modern, supposedly civilized country it's horrible to see.

The people in power are the type of people that use their power in these ways. The US shouldn't be supplying them. We're not the world police, we don't need to enforce global norms, and we shouldn't be selling hyperoffensive mass crowd control technology. They should be limited to Temu LRAD, or their LRAD at home; we shouldn't be providing them S-Tier dystopian authoritarian kits for DIY oppression.

The people that profited off of this are a special kind of evil. We shouldn't be outfitting dictators, gangsters, or warlords.

But, greed is good. The dollar is king. This is what happens when incentives and principles don't align.

the only acceptable condition to use it maybe if there are riot or violence breakout in that area not for peaceful protest

It's a weapon meant to deny the use of an area by threatening non-selective permanent physical damage. There are very few legitimate civil use cases for something like that.

Something like protecting the capitol from being stormed by a mob?

Only if you want to justify the mob's presence there.

I might have tried just closing and locking the doors first.

Yes because Trump's lot are too stupid to break down windows and doors

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/01/06/jim-himes...

You really believe the security of those windows in the Capitol comes down to the glass? That you're even willing to accept this proposition says something.

Anyways, to my point, clearly observable in that picture are security shutters, on the sides of the window, left open and unlocked. I might have closed and locked those.

Egg on the faces of the Capitol security team for not drilling on a mob riled up by the sitting President storming the US Capitol I guess.

You could outfit the front steps with crewed machine guns, but apparently they only do that if they expect people protesting in favor of liberal values.

I thought they made these sound cannons so they didn’t have to mow down their own populace?

I also feel like that’d have a counterproductive effect.

If you were at a protest that was starting to get a bit rowdy and somebody used one of these on you, what would you do? I'd either come back prepared for actual violence, or switch from protest to sabotage.

It just screams "escalation" to me.

And that is possibly the aim. When the protests turn into violence or sabotage, the state uses that to justify its own violent repression.

so you saying if there are violence or sabotage, you let these people do it??? how can that be better

They're suggesting that the point of an authority using this weapon on a mass of people may be to cause those people to become violent so that the authority can use the subsequent fear to justify further abuses.

Which I think is likely, but also a bad decision. Generally speaking, the job of a legitimate government is to make violent protest unnecessary. So depending on the situation, the best action may indeed be to back down and rethink how things got there in the first place, rather than continuing to provoke more violence. Continuing to escalate is not a sustainable strategy for anyone that intends to maintain power for long, as the numbers are not generally on their side.

Yeah but the problem is with mass movement people like this, there are good chance people that can take advantage of these protest (looting,rob etc)

the point of these weapon is not "defeat" but mostly to crowd control right because you cant rule out if there is no crime even in peaceful protest, both things can be true at the same time

also if such weapon is not permanently injure or harm people, I can see why this weapon is in need like pepper spray

That's very charitable to those in power. Believe me when I tell you most don't give two hoots about looting and vandalism.

You don't break up a gathering because there's the possibility of crimes occurring unless you live in an authoritarian society.

"most don't give two hoots about looting and vandalism."

of course who give a shit is the owner, its all sunshine until it happen on your neighbourhood

I think it's pretty clear the owners of the corner store are not deploying those tactics for they are not the state.

Thank you for engaging in good faith.

That's exactly it. Thank you.

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

Are chemical irritants preferable, then? Or just LEOs in riot gear with rubber batons? There's no amount of pushback or repercussion that a rioter will feel is fair or humane, and the mindset of "I'll turn violent and/or destructive if my participation in civil unrest is punished" is a perfect justification for these systems to exist.

> There's no amount of pushback or repercussion that a rioter will feel is fair or humane

I mean you're talking about using violence against people to stop or prevent property damage. Most options are off the table in the moment, in the same way you can't execute someone if you catch them vandalizing your car. Smashing their fingers with a hammer wouldn't probably kill them but you can't do that either.

After-the-fact repercussions like criminal charges or civil liabilities, well, it doesn't matter how they feel about it? That's not how court works.

This reads like you suppose the only thing to do is let rioters vent their outrage against whatever objects happen to be in their way at the time, and hope that there exists some legal comeuppance after the fact.

Why can't some reasonable degree of force be used to prevent property damage? What moral dilemma exists that makes protecting property deserve a comparison to executing someone?

> Why can't some reasonable degree of force be used

No one said that. It was suggested that physically injuring someone in direct retaliation for property damage wasn't appropriate. Add to that the fact that riot control measures are hardly targeted.

There are many non-violent options available. Sometimes rioters will escalate violently against the officers carrying those out. It's far less likely anyone objects to proportionate and necessary use of force in such cases.

If threat of injury is what stops someone from destroying your car, then it's appropriately leveraged.

I'm also curious, what kind of effective, 'non-violent' means are there to control the initial mob-martyrs, and ensure level-handed justice is served? Those looking to escalate will use any police activity against them or their group as justification to do so.

Your disagreement essentially amounts to "it's appropriate because it accomplishes my goal", or do I misunderstand? In a discussion of ethics that seems specious to me.

> Those looking to escalate will use any police activity against them or their group as justification to do so.

As I previously pointed out, once rioters escalate against the officers themselves most people are unlikely to raise objections to targeted use of force. That's quite different than a paramilitary force lashing out violently at anyone perceived to be up to no good.

Also important to note, most of the riots I have seen don’t start with the protesters escalating. It depends on the country, but based off of what I have seen, it is almost always the authority who escalates. Often, there is preemptive and disproportionate riot control.

> Your disagreement essentially amounts to "it's appropriate because it accomplishes my goal", or do I misunderstand? In a discussion of ethics that seems specious to me.

My disagreement is that the ongoing or imminent unlawful destruction of property should be allowed to be met with _appropriate_ deterring force, whether by law enforcement or by the property owners. I argue that because in a system of individual rights that include property ownership, the position that an impassioned crowd has more right to that property than the owner (by damaging or destroying it in this case) is morally indefensible.

> once rioters escalate against the officers themselves most people are unlikely to raise objections to targeted use of force.

That is untrue for at least the last decade or so. After the 2015 Baltimore riots, President Obama couldn't even popularly get away with referring to rioters as "thugs"[1] after ~300 businesses were damaged, 60 buildings set on fire, 113 police officers injured and 27 drugstores looted. Since then, there have been plentiful riots and mass demonstrations that either turned violent or otherwise sheltered violent activity, including the moment in 2020 that spawned the "mostly peaceful protests" meme of the reporter with a building burning down behind him because of the rose-tinted glasses public analysts used in their coverage. Mayors and governors gave lip service to violent demonstrations like CHAZ/CHOP [2] while violence was taking place, and only tepidly supported law enforcement's presence to curtail it after the fact.

_To this day_ those actions are routinely and popularly dismissed as racial outrage, justified, etc. largely along political boundaries, all to the detriment of the thousands of individuals whose livelihoods were damaged or destroyed as result. The idea that good consciences will win the day and protestors will distance themselves from n'er-do-wells among them is, as a standard, irreconcilable with the countless recorded hours of protest footage that exist.

Rights aren't trumped by implicit public vote to destroy your property, any more than two thieves can vote that they need their victim's wallet more than them, or a gang of rapists can hold a 5-1 vote for consent. QED, immediate and active threats against property should, morally and legally, warrant an appropriate amount of force to defend it.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2015/04/29/us/baltimore-riots-thug-n-wor... [2] https://www.fox13seattle.com/news/chop-seattle-mayor-walks-b...

> the position that an impassioned crowd has more right to that property than the owner

That is a blatant straw man. The original position is more or less that nonviolent enforcement action must precede use of force. You are arguing to start off with violence, and even to apply that to perceived precrime ("ongoing or imminent" in your words).

To be fair regarding your wording, depending on your definition of "imminent" and the crime in question I might be able to agree. But that doesn't appear to be the case here.

To the rest of your comment, you seem very politicized. Most of what you wrote is non sequitur to the point that it doesn't seem feasible or worthwhile to respond. An outraged minority on social media is not the "most people" I was referring to (indeed they are a clear minority). The mainstream media exhibiting an agenda about a particular event has approximately nothing to do with the general principles we were supposedly discussing here.

Why should your interest in asserting property rights be permitted to trump human rights and due process?

> Why can't some reasonable degree of force be used to prevent property damage?

It can, of course. If a police officer sees an individual engaging in property damage, that officer may walk over to that person and arrest them. If that person resists arrest, the officer can use appropriate force.

If you're talking about using force against innocent individuals who happen to be nearby, of course that is both outrageous and out of the question.

Outrageous, out of the question, and practiced at 99.9% of protests that disagree with the government's foreign policy.

maybe the government should consider protestor demands and reform in many cases

>Are chemical irritants preferable

Absolutely. You can heal from those. LRADs are maiming weapons designed to cause permanent damage. Under any reasonable legal system their use would be considered a war crime.

LRADs are not designed to cause permanent damage. They are explicitly designed under the intention of being a way to disperse a crowd without long term harm.

There hasn’t been much research on long term health impacts, but it’s not a tool to maim people.

https://phr.org/our-work/resources/health-impacts-of-crowd-c...

They are designed to produce sound pressure levels that cause permanent hearing damage from short exposure, which makes them maiming weapons. There is no safe way to use an LRAD. Anybody who uses an LRAD is evil. Stop making excuses for despicable behavior. Deliberately causing hearing damage is no better than smashing people's fingers with hammers.

They are not designed to cause hearing damage and the link I posted saying as much is a from a physicians org for human rights.

Speaking in hyperbole is counter productive to thoughtful discussion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_pressure#Examples

Threshold of pain: 120-140 dB(SPL)

Risk of instantaneous noise-induced hearing loss: 120dB(SPL)

A sonic weapon must cause pain to be effective. Any sound that reliably causes pain is capable of causing instant hearing damage. Therefore any sonic weapon is necessarily a maiming weapon and is designed as such. There is no hyperbole.

160 dB way over hearing safe. Most rifle rounds are in >140 dB territory, and that is quite sufficient to give you permanent hearing damage.

That's peak power at 1 meter for a large LRAD, not what someone 75 or 100 meters away experiences.

There will be some attenuation, but the output is focused into a beam, so you don't get the usual inverse square falloff with distance.

You do, there is just a greater gain factor constant.

The point is that LRADs are supposed to be an ethical alternative to guns and gases, as far as the original design intent is considered...

As LRADs are less ethical than CS gas, the true design intent is likely to produce something that looks insignificant on video recordings so it can be used as extrajudicial punishment of undesirables with less risk of public outcry.

this. and let's not forget that these....officers always receive the best, most top notch training to use these things safely. (/s)

yet another reason to ensure footage looks like 'nothing terrible happened to these people' as expertly trained cop uses a weapon of war against civilians.

I don’t think you need to be a rocket scientist to realize loud noise = hearing loss.

Just intuitively, I know many people with degraded hearing from concerts. And that hearing is gone, that’s how hearing loss works.

I think the people who designed these weapons aren’t anywhere close to stupid enough to think these won’t cause long term damage. Which means that the only explanation is they INTEND for them to cause long term damage.

Check out the link I posted. It’s from a physicians group focused on human rights.

> I don’t think you need to be a rocket scientist to realize loud noise = hearing loss.

Being a doctor and understanding that the levels people are exposed are not maiming if the thing is used “by design” should carry some significant weight in how you think about this.

> If you were at a protest that was starting to get a bit rowdy and somebody used one of these on you, what would you do?

Leave. The moment it turns into a riot you’re doing damage to your cause. (If you’re in a protest and see hooligans, restrain them.)

You might enjoy reading Rules for Radicals if you haven't already. If your riot can provoke a worse response from the authority, it can help your cause. The reaction is the action.

It may be that this protest in Serbia got a bit rowdy and riotous (see "diversity of tactics") and now the headline is about the government's use of a disproportionate weapon against protestors, not about a riot.

Rules for Radicals is one of my favorite books and I don't think this an accurate summary of what Alinsky says, at all. It's a short book, you can get it for free online, people should just read it.

This tracks so much with what you’ve said before.

> You might enjoy reading Rules for Radicals if you haven't already. If your riot can provoke a worse response from the authority

One motif of Allinsky's message is the importance of organisation. Triggering tear gas against your peaceful protest is one thing. Losing control of it such that stores start getting looted is not.

> It may be that this protest in Serbia got a bit rowdy and riotous (see "diversity of tactics") and now the headline is about the government's use of a disproportionate weapon against protestors

This is the first-order effect. They got a tweet. (Not a headline.)

I'm sceptical they'll get a second because this isn't a clear case of a nonlethal weapon being used against a peaceful crowd, it's something more muddled, and as a result there are zero comments in this thread discussing what the protesters are protesting.

Just for the sake of the thread, these are "anti-corruption" protests. It is essentially a mass vote of no confidence in the government. The immediate inciting incident was the collapse of a railway station in Novi Sad that killed a bunch of people, but it has turned into much more.

It's been going since November. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the prelude to a civil war.

> They got a tweet. (Not a headline.)

They got a headline https://apnews.com/article/serbia-protest-sonic-weapon-85025...

> Serbian officials deny illegal sonic weapon attack on peaceful protesters

This happened during 15 minutes of silence for 15 persons that died in the collapse. Everyone was silent and mourning.

That's good advice, but I mean what do you do when you get home? Now that your right to assemble has been effectively revoked, what's your next step?

Plan a legal assembly, an economic protest, and write your legislator.

Right to assemble is not a blank check for violent action, or even to assemble wherever and whenever your want.

The reason why these are legal is precisely because they are so ineffective.

Come back the next day?

> what do you do when you get home? Now that your right to assemble has been effectively revoked

Your right to assembly remains. You just made a risk-adjustment decision about not participating in a riot. The correct thing to do is go home, regroup and join the protest leadership to help plan another protest where the hooliganism is kept in check.

When deciding whether to pull the trigger on such a thing, what matters is whether it will make things worse, regardless of whether that worsening counts as correct behavior or not.

Also, not being in Serbia myself I'm reluctant to make judgements from afar about what degree of hooliganism is justified in this case.

> what matters is whether it will make things worse, regardless of whether that worsening counts as correct behavior or not

Correct. Escalating from peaceful to violent protest shouldn't (I'd argue cannot) be responsibly decided in the moment.

If you went to a peaceful protest "that was starting to get a bit rowdy," the situation clearly changed from underneath you. Go home. Take stock. Decide if what you saw was random rioting or targeted violence. If the latter, decide if and how you can help and if it will make things better or worse.

I'm struggling to imagine non-Hollywood scenarios where someone showing up to peacefully protest is useful when it effectively escalates to civil war.

Who defines what counts as a riot?

The people who have the state-sanctioned monopoly on violence are the ones who get to decide when a protest becomes a riot or unlawful assembly.

I’m not saying they’re always wrong but when only one group gets to pull the card that allows them to shut down protest it creates perverse incentives.

> Who defines what counts as a riot?

Practically, the media and the public at large. I forgot the source, but you can pretty much directly see the negative effect of e.g. bridge blocking on public sympathy for a cause.

I think it's pretty much a useless protest if everyone leaves the moment it become "a bit rowdy". Not to mention that if you meditate for long enough of time ( which is like the most peaceful kind of protest ) the Police will Spray / LDAR you anyway.

I don’t think this is true. In order for the media to consider something a riot there has to be some violence. Gone are the days of print media, we expect videos now.

But it’s trivial for police to incite violence. We saw it all the time in the US during BLM protests. A protest starts peacefully, then the protesters are pushed by riot control, then rubber bullets are fired into the peaceful protest, and now it’s not peaceful. Sometimes the protesters would even get surrounded and flanked so they can’t escape the descent into a riot.

Yep, if you are depending on perception by media you have already lost. They will manipulate it to look however they like, trivially and convincingly.

If change does occur, what will happen is they will repaint history to make it seem as if the most cowish placid of the protests brought the change, to fool the public. And people actually believe it.

Ukrainians didn't leave, and they ended up taking their country back. Twice.

> Ukrainians didn't leave, and they ended up taking their country back

I'm struggling to remember any rioting in the Maidan.

I mean, they have literally built a catapult on Maidan to throw molotov cocktails at the police. And used said molotovs to set fire to an APC.

> they have literally built a catapult on Maidan to throw molotov cocktails at the police. And used said molotovs to set fire to an APC

I guess I wouldn't characterise such focussed use of violence as "starting to get a bit rowdy." Rowdiness specifically implies unruliness, a lack of discipline. I'd also say that escalating from peaceful to violent protest is not a decision one should take in the moment--catapults and molotov cocktails imply preparation.

This thinking is dangerous and wrong.

You cannot fight against violence without violence. Violence is most effective when it's implied/threatened, before it is materialized.

The goal of protests are:

1) To serve as a show of force (they are literally called demonstrations in some languages because you demonstrate your ability to organize and act - large numbers of people are capable of large amounts of violence).

2) To paint your side as the victim by provoking an overreaction.

Westerners often think that 2 is sufficient because they live in democracies where a large part of the government is also unwilling to use violence and become the aggressor. But against a dictator who is willing to use as much violence against the people as is available to him, 2 alone is worthless.

Goal 2 only serves to maximize the number of people willing to rise up but the real goal is to break the enemy's will to fight. Either to make the dictator lose his nerve and flee or to kill him because corpses don't have a will.

The point is it's a delicate balancing act to paint yourself as victim/weak to get more support and angry/strong to make the dictator back down. Westerners focus on the first part because it works against their governments but against greater oppression, you will not get anywhere without actual will to fight and kill.

"You cannot fight against violence without violence."

well you wrong, in fact you can. latest news is US Navy bomb houthi as we talk right now

You cant do violence if you well die, it is effective

Is it a nonviolent bombing?

So, the moment a single cop lobs a tear gas can at a peaceful protest, is the moment when the protest starts doing damage to its cause?

That would explain why they seem to be so eager to employ violence against peaceful protestors.

> the moment a single cop lobs a tear gas can at a peaceful protest, is the moment when the protest starts doing damage to its cause?

No. The trigger was "a protest that was starting to get a bit rowdy." Not a peaceful protest that gets gassed. The latter is extremely effective at generating public sympathy.

So all the cops have to do is send one of them undercover to throw a couple of bricks, and then they have casus belli to gas the whole protest.

Ever wondered why protests always turn violent very shortly after the government decides it's time to disperse them?

yes, it is an escalation.

Governance is maintaining public support for the government having a monopoly on violent escalation.

If the government does not have this power, then any person has an individual veto over the rest of the country.

Laws are used to describe how and when individuals can protest.

As it turns out, part of maintaining that "public support" is not taking advantage of it. The very idea of a stable monopoly on violent escalation is obviously meant to deter violence. When it instead makes violence more likely (because the monopolist is suddenly planning to abuse its monopoly) that's quite a big change and people can be expected to react accordingly.

That is correct. It really depends on the temperature of public sentiment .

Many protests get a charitable assumption in the US as a legacy of civil rights and the Vietnam anti-war movements. However, I think a lot of that good will is eroding.

Each country has different perceptions, and ultimately, each protest is different (e.g. who shot first, is it abuse, ect)

At protests cops purposefully escalate things by having a cop undercover in the crowd to do something violent enough to justify police attacking the crowd.

They lob a rock in the general direction of their buddies and Bob's your uncle.

Years ago someone caught some campus cops tossing some bricks into the bed of one of their pickups behind their station.

They claimed they'd removed them from a section of sidewalk where they'd come loose and become a hazard. First time I've ever heard of a cop doing something like that...

I don't find it acceptable for any reason whatsoever.

You are aware that these LRAD systems have been used against US citizens, aren't you?

When?

NYPD -- https://gothamist.com/news/city-settles-lawsuit-protesters-w...

Apparently used multiple times during Black Lives Matter protests: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/06/04/204368...

Here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-range_acoustic_device#Uni...

Was an especially commonly discussed topic in 2020 during the George Floyd related protests. Some notable video resources on how to defend against these devices and what one can expect: [0] and [1]. To save you time, if i remember correctly, the most effective is one of those plastic riot shields held in reverse to direct the sound back at the sender (notably pretty difficult when you don't want to just hit other protesters, or don't know where the sound is coming from and/or are getting hit by reflections).

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXKTBQBugIA

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sqIvak-4Ek

Yes - we've got a long way to go with regards to these technologies.

Police also regularly use tear gas against US citizens. These are weapons that would violate the Geneva convention, but we're okay with them to disperse a crowd.

What would ICC think of it, I wonder.

The ICC is fine with it. France is a particularly big fan of firing tear gas canisters at protestors. It's not just the US.

are they against the Geneva convention because of the direct effects, or because in a war you’d then proceed to kill everyone while they’re coughing?

Both? Indiscriminate chemical weapons is the issue, not the intent. Otherwise wouldn't all weapons be illegal?

Some weapons are intrinsically forbidden because of their effects on individuals: soft-point bullets for instance. These are as discriminate as you want them to be, but are nonetheless prohibited in conflicts. Thus it's not just indiscriminate weapons that are banned by international agreement!

When asked why tear gas is banned, the answer I gave was "the weapon is indiscriminate and chemical" not "all banned weapons are indiscriminate and chemical".

For example lasers used to blind soldiers are generally banned as well and as you point out, lasers are basically arbitrarily discriminate.

AIUI they are mainly banned because they could lead to escalations in chemical weapons usage. If your enemy uses tear gas vs cs gas, it could be hard to tell right away and you might feel pressure to use all the tools you have available (including lethal chemical weapons) vs. Play by the rules.

Of course if you are fighting a real war, there is probably going to be chem weapons used. It happened in Syria. It is happening in Ukraine. It will keep happening. Geneva convention is wishful thinking.

something to consider is that in the Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm) the military used a bunker buster on a Sarin gas storage facility and shot the sarin high into the atmosphere, where it then floated far downwind and landed on US troops. Ofc, reporting on it doesn't really consider Iraqi civilians and is only weepy about US soldiers.

https://www.utsouthwestern.edu/newsroom/articles/year-2022/s...

> Geneva convention is wishful thinking.

It is a convention. It is useful for applying pressure. It certainly seems to reduce their use.

You could as well say that laws against murder or theft or whatever are wishful thinking.

Murder is generally punished. Unless you spew pollutants with known biological harm leading to numerous cancerous deaths and cover it up and pay off enough politicians. Then it is generally rewarded or at least tolerated.

It's because of the direct effects; chlorine gas for instance will almost instantly blind anyone exposed to it, and tear gas can also be fatal. My great-grandfather was gassed in the First World War and only narrowly survived. Chemical weapons were technically already banned by this point, but it was WW1 that prompted the modern Geneva Protocol (not the Geneva Conventions; these are slight different). Unfortunately, none of the Geneva treaties cover their use outside of wartime.

Many people don't realize this but many of the banned weapons are ones with a decent chance of maiming people but leaving them alive. This is worse for everyone involved in a war (everyone here meaning politicians and generals, not soldiers) than killing them. Cluster munitions, flamethrowers, and anti-personnel mines all fit in this category, too.

Most of Geneva Convention items are things that are huge liabilities to the own sides. e.g., there were such chemical gases that react with gas mask filters so to specifically bypass filtering. No one in Europe wants to pay welfare costs for factory leaks or downwind collateral damages in neighboring countries or army of veterans maimed with that thing, but they will have to if their enemies would use it to their advantages. Agreeing to a universal ban solves that problem.

The Geneva Convention bans all chemical weapons. Part of the rationale for a total ban is to avoid escalating to more dangerous chemical agents. Helpful r/AskHistorians thread:

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/gwtj89/the_c...

> Part of the rationale for a total ban is to avoid escalating to more dangerous chemical agents

Chemical weapons are tactically useless for modern militaries [1]. You’re pretty much always better off pounding with high explosives.

And there isn’t a known path to escalation potential. If there were, everyone would be developing it.

[1] https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...

Chemical weapons are tactically useless to the American combat doctrine, as described in that article. As we have seen, the Russian doctrine (and Ukraine's doctrine) relies on much more brute force to push a meter at a time and much more indiscriminate damage. It's hard to imagine chemical weapons being useless.

He makes the mistake of looking at how the US military fights and thinking that is the only way to fight a war. Incidentally, if you looked at how the Roman army used short swords and concluded that "long swords are useless for fighting a war," I bet he would have something to say about it.

Russian tactics have been largely ineffective and characterized by horrendous losses despite immense advantages in manpower and material

Russian tactics have worked so far in Ukraine, as gruesome as that is.

That very much depends on what you mean by "worked". And it's not like Western militaries are lacking the physical means to engage in heavier and more damaging attacks; they just have viable alternatives that they prefer.

1) Putin has conquered more population than he lost (even just counting fighting age men)

2) Putin has conquered more money/value/resources than he lost due to the conflict (by a factor of 10, maybe 100)

3) Even Ukraine's European allies seem to agree that Putin will get a ceasefire and sanctions relief where he gets to keep what he conquered

It's true that Russia did not achieve it's war goals (destruction or total control of Ukraine, and let's just not talk about the outright embarrassing "in 3 days" part), but they got quite a bit. Perhaps even more important, they got more than enough to make the conflict, at least potentially, a net positive for Putin.

Putin has conquered more population than he lost (even just counting fighting age men)

What a weird metric. More civilians subjugated than soldiers lost?

it's war goals (destruction or total control of Ukraine

Russia wants to destroy the Ukrainian cultural identity. It's cultural genocide, and it's been a goal of theirs for hundreds of years. This is why they steal Ukrainian children and ship them off to be adopted in Russia.

I agree it's weird. But it's the metric, I think, that most determines if Putin can just start another war in 2 years, 5 years, 10 years. That's my reason for why it's important. It determines the next phase of the war.

They’ve worked, at great cost, against Ukraine. They wouldn’t work against a more powerful foe with air superiority.

Why would e.g. sarin be useful for indiscriminate damage when A) you could drop a conventional or thermobaric bomb instead, and B) you can circumvent sarin by wearing a $200 suit from AliExpress? I'm not seeing how it's meant to fit into Russian military doctrine other than in niche circumstances.

It's much cheaper. Read the book "The Dead Hand" for details.

If you give me a specific quote from the book I'll be able to understand what you mean a bit better.

I know there's a quote floating around which gives the figure of $2000/km^2 for conventional weapons, $800 for sarin etc., $600 for nuclear, and $1 for biological. I'll respond to that.

The problem is, those numbers are for attacking civilians. You can of course make the argument that Russian military doctrine includes massacring civilians, but I would respond that not only is sarin more expensive against modern military targets, it's outright ineffective against them if they're prepared.

> He makes the mistake of looking at how the US military fights and thinking that is the only way to fight a war

Keep reading.

"And, so, where do we still see chemical weapons used? In static-system vs. static-system warfare. Thus, in Syria – where the Syrian Civil War has been waged as a series of starve-or-surrender urban sieges, a hallmark of static vs. static fighting – you see significant use of chemical weapons, especially as a terror tactic against besieged civilians. The limited manpower and capabilities of regime forces have caused the war to deteriorate into a series of sieges, sometimes stretching out years (fighting in Aleppo lasted for four years, for instance; the final siege itself ran from February 2014 to its conclusion in December 2016). Anti-regime forces are often poorly equipped (often completely unable, for instance, to engage regime air-assets) and the civilian populace was completely unprotected against chemical munitions, making them far more vulnerable targets.

But a major factor here is actually weakness, in the Syrian regime forces. Assad simply didn’t have a lot of modern air-to-ground munitions; chemical munitions weren’t being compared for cost- and mission-effectiveness against such modern weapons, but against barrels loaded with explosives, nails and scrap – weapons which would have been primitive by the standards of the 1940s, much less now. And – let’s be honest here – his ground forces lack manpower, but also perform quite poorly. Remember: the question for the effectiveness of chemical weapons is value-over-replacement – while the vulnerability of anti-regime forces increased the value, we also must note that Assad’s heavily weakened, static system forces also substantially reduced the value of the replacement. In a fight between what are, in the last analysis, two weak forces, the calculation on the effectiveness of chemical weapons changes."

I read the analysis. I think he's being far too dismissive of the doctrinal considerations in his analysis. Frankly, he is also not an expert on modern warfare in any way, too.

There is a good book called "eating soup with a knife" (and the author has given talks on this) that talks about the importance of doctrine and culture in constructing a fighting force (in this case, the book is mostly about counterinsurgency doctrine and how the American and British militaries are uniquely unsuited to it). An American-style doctrine simply does not work in Russia, even given unlimited resources, because of how the culture and the military work. The weapons are then built to fit the doctrine, not the other way around.

In other words, the "static system" actually is the way to get the Russian military (and the Ukrainian military) to work. That difference in doctrine, by the way, caused a lot of headaches because US weapons are not made for it.

> the "static system" actually is the way to get the Russian military (and the Ukrainian military) to work

Well, yes. They've been unable to launch combined-arms maneouvres. They failed to establish even air supremacy against decades-old NATO air defence kit. Russia has to fight the way it does because it's unable to fight more effectively.

The author's core point stands: we didn't outlaw chemical weapons because of any moral reasons, we outlawed them because the world's leading militaries don't need them. In cases where they have tactical value, lo and behold, they get used.

On that point we agree, that the world's leading militaries don't need them. However, they are a tool that increases the effectiveness of other militaries.

I disagree with him that the specific combined arms shock doctrine is what make those militaries the world's leading ones. Those militaries are leading because they have the best people, weapons, and training, and a combined arms shock doctrine fits with their culture.

> they are a tool that increases the effectiveness of other militaries

Sure. Which is why the world's leading militaries banned them. OP said we banned chemical weapons "to avoid escalating to more dangerous chemical agents." There is simply no evidence we were that high minded.

Chemical weapons are useless because they're expensive and ineffective. It's not like they haven't been deployed on the battlefield before.

>Chemical weapons are tactically useless for modern militaries

The defense of Azovstal steelworks and Gaza tunnels seems to show otherwise.

> Chemical weapons are tactically useless for modern militaries [1]. You’re pretty much always better off pounding with high explosives.

Maybe you know something I don't but in country we were always MOPP Ready:

    MOPP Ready – Protective mask is carried. First set of suit, gloves, and boots are available within two hours, second set within six hours.

My mask was usually in the truck or in my pack. We qualify with our masks on a yearly basis. It could be argued that the chance of chemical deterrents that require MOPP 0 and above is negligible due to the our current landscape but that can honestly change based on the opponent or geography.

> These are weapons that would violate the Geneva convention, but we're okay with them to disperse a crowd.

Isn't that a category ban that came out of a couple specific members of that category that were used and had particularly nasty effects? And then countries' domestic law enforcement rules tend to be defined in different terms.

It is. People think that the "Frangible bullets and teargas banned by the Genevan Conventions" means that they're seen as too cruel to use in war. Unfortunately the "wisdom of crowds" that we've created on social media has decided that it does.

The reality is that we're talking about the views of people in 1925, as informed by a previous group of people in the late 1800's. They were far more concerned with avoiding the use of gas as a weapon than in dealing with the LD50 of the various gasses.

Likewise with frangible/hollow-point ammunition, it isn't even banned by the Geneva Conventions, it was banned under the now-defunct Hague Convention. For better or worse they thought that these "tumbling" or "expanding" bullets were designed to inflict intentionally greater suffering. Who knows maybe the versions that existed in the late 1800's did too, the ones today aren't used because they're worthless against even modest body armor.

But again, people just see text on a picture in a meme and take it to heart.

> Who knows maybe the versions that existed in the late 1800's did too

The ones now and back then aren't any different. They do inflict greater suffering when the injury isn't immediately lethal. They essentially maim the target.

There's a legitimate case to be made for home defense because they won't penetrate common building materials nearly as far. It makes them much safer to anyone in the surrounding area.

There are also cases where the additional stopping power is invaluable, for example against a pack of dogs.

You can argue that any GSW that isn't immediately lethal inflicts suffering, I'm not sure how an expanding head changes that. In a handgun round mushrooming is absolutely about terminal ballistics rather than protection against over-penetration, but it is true that expanding .223 and frangible rounds are focused on over-penetration

But again the biggest reason you don't see expanding rounds in war is (especially modern) armor defeats them far more easily than standard .223.

An argument that modern body armor has largely negated the incentive does not imply that the ethical concerns don't exist. They are entirely separate points of discussion.

> You can argue that any GSW that isn't immediately lethal inflicts suffering, I'm not sure how an expanding head changes that.

It's a matter of intent and degree. If we collectively threw up our hands every time we encountered a grey area we'd never be able to agree on anything.

The point is that in the event that a weapon fails to kill the target, there are ethical concerns if it does more damage, particularly long term damage, than absolutely necessary. There's no need to make warfare even worse than it already is.

Except they are used today. Russian 5.45 is famously highly prone to tumbling due to its design with bubble of air in the front of the bullet (even more so than rifle rounds in general). If we look at American 5.56mm, the original M193 was prone to fragmenting, which the original study reports on what would eventually become M16 noted as the reason why it's capable of creating more devastating wounds then the then-standard M80 ball. And modern M855A1 fragments even more reliably (at lower velocities) while still punching through armor.

Pretty much any OTM round is effectively expanding and/or fragmenting (depending on velocity) as well...

So for all practical purposes this convention hasn't been followed for literally decades now. The pretense is that we claim that all these bullet designs just happen to do what they do. Although IIRC the US military authorized use of 9mm JHP in some circumstances, as well, so I think even that veneer is mostly gone by now.

Generally if you do it to your own people the world is fine with.. just about anything.

Serbia is currently using it on its own people, and yet we here we are reading about it and discussing, with no small amount of outrage.

I similarly condemn such actions. But unless we are in a position to enforce any change in behaviour on Serbia then being unhappy on a web forum doesn't count. It's as useful as "thoughts and prayers".

Take some meaningful action away from this forum and we'll see. I am not in a meaningful position to do so unfortunately.

Action isnt the only measure of meaning or the only determinate of caring.

Caring exists on a spectrum, and isnt black and white.

Thoughts and prayers are a form of caring as well, and an important one. It isn't always what a utilitarian wants, but it is part of a package deal when working with real humans with emotional and social lives.

I think you and I are largely in agreement in that caring is good. Without such caring then no such meaningful actions would ever happen. We need to care, it is a good part of society. But care without action can be ignored.

So as far as Serbia is concerned "no meaningful consequence = the world is fine with.. just about anything."

Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) (a follow-on to the 1925 "Geneva Convention") allows for the use of riot control agents (like tear gas) for law enforcement purposes.

https://www.opcw.org/our-work/what-chemical-weapon

I think that's inline with what the point the GP was trying to make. Tear gas would otherwise fall into the definition of a weapon that would violate the Geneva Convention if not for the specific earmark that its okay for law enforcement to use it.

Its a bit of a logical loop based only on definitions. Its not against the convention because the law includes the exception, but the exception otherwise goes against the principles of the convention.

> As explained in the military manual of the Netherlands, the prohibition of the use of riot control agents as a method of warfare is inspired by the fact that use of tear gas, for example, in armed conflict “runs the danger of provoking the use of other more dangerous chemicals”. A party which is being attacked by riot control agents may think it is being attacked by deadly chemical weapons and resort to the use of chemical weapons. It is this danger of escalation that States sought to avert by agreeing to prohibit the use of riot control agents as a method of warfare in armed conflict. This motivation is equally valid in international and non-international armed conflicts.

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule75

finally someone bringing some reason and evidence to this stupid discussion. thank you

>This motivation is equally valid in international and non-international armed conflicts.

Okay but clearly protesters aren't going to escalate to mustard gas just because police used tear gas?

I think the argument here is that its okay to use against a crowd because the risk of escalation is very low.

It's acceptable only because the authorities know the masses will accept it. And what could the masses do otherwise, gather signatures? So yes, it is how it is, until the masses somehow decide it's not - and then will get gassed again. Because the masses wishing for a change are rarely in a majority and authorities usually listen to majorities.

Well, by definition yes. The job of the masses is to resist by any means available. If it starts using terrorist tactics it stops being the masses. Of course besides gathering signatures there's many other peaceful adjacent things that can be done (leftist types love the meme of a general strike, but of course civil disobedience, road blockades, and so on are all on the table), and somewhere between guerilla warfare and spray painting stencils in the night there's a fuzzy ethical line. On one side it's Taliban style "we will wait until they leave" and on the other side it's again Taliban style, but the bad things.

Mostly the masses ought to be proactive, educate itself, and so on to avoid signing conventions that have these exceptions.

Yes, I know. :/

I think this discussion is missing a significant issue: why would a democratic government, of the people, by the people, and for the people, use tear gas? Why do British Bobbies carry batons?

The simplest answer, which is the basis of all police powers of the state: to prevent crimes against persons and crimes against property. Riotous mobs get people hurt, often killed. The businesses proximate to a protest, often small businesses, often under-insured due to cost constraints, are very likely to be severely affected by protests that turn violent. Major corporate storefronts can absorb the cost of damages, but the same damages to a mom-and-pop grocery could be the end of the business, no matter how much they sympathize with the community that is outraged. And let me reiterate what I started with: riotous mobs get people hurt, often killed.

Tear gas vs the baton is a lesser version of the observation by James B. Conant, president of Harvard University, in his autobiography: "To me the development of new and more effective gases seemed no more immoral than the manufacture of explosives and guns. . . I did not see in 1917, and do not see in 1968, why tearing a man's guts out by a high-explosive shell is to be preferred to maiming him by attacking his lungs or skin."

https://www.amazon.com/My-Several-Lives-Memoirs-Inventor/dp/...

Can you elaborate on your point here? It seems that you're linking to documentation of where the exception was made, but I don't think the existence of that exception was in question here.

I don't have a dog in this fight as it were, but the GGP comment was taking issue with the exception allowing a tool that would violate the Geneva Convention in war being used against civilians in a context where law enforcement considers it crowd or riot control.

> A party which is being attacked by riot control agents may think it is being attacked by deadly chemical weapons and resort to the use of chemical weapons. It is this danger of escalation that States sought to avert by agreeing to prohibit the use of riot control agents as a method of warfare in armed conflict.

The implication of the statement “These are weapons that would violate the Geneva convention, but we're okay with them to disperse a crowd.” is that riot agents are considered too barbaric to be deployed even in war, which is not the reason these agents are prohibited in wartime use. Instead, there was a worry that it would be too difficult to differentiate riot agents from chemical weapons (e.g. chlorine or mustard gas), which could lead the party attacked with riot agents to retaliate with chemical weapons.

Is your argument, or would you agree with governments making the argument, that the use of force should be acceptable as long as you/they know its asymmetric?

I made no such argument. My argument is that the claim

> These are weapons that would violate the Geneva convention, but we're okay with them to disperse a crowd.

is misleading because it implies that riot agents are comparable to chemical weapons. Riot agents are intended to disperse crowds while keeping casualties to a minimum. Chemical weapons are intended to kill people.

As opposed to citizens, who ought to just be thrilled their government is gassing them?

Nuking a non-nuclear country has less risk of MAD style escalation, yes? Same idea.

Is your argument that the use of force should be acceptable as long as you know its asymmetric?

I’m not making an argument, rather an observation.

A saying I’ve heard from many folks I know who have been in the US military is ‘fair fights are for idiots’. I think it’s a common mindset in any (successful) military.

For sure, I agree with that. How does that link back to having exceptions allowing law enforcement to use tear gas on civilians though?

Because civilians don’t have WMD style chemical weapons, generally? So are not an ‘MAD’ type risk. Unlike potential enemy combatants.

Morality has nothing to do with these scenarios (treaty/convention wise) near as I can tell.

It seems like you would agree then that the use of force should be acceptable as long as you know its asymmetric.

Am I misreading you there?

Clearly yes, you are misreading me.

If governments consider it acceptable or not has nothing to do with my opinion. Or yours.

This would be all well and good except that society is not actually constructed by neutral arbiters outside the world, as much as certain parties have their pretensions to that -- they are created by the interactions of interested parties. In other words: class struggle.

Suppressing protests in US isn't usually law enforcement, its purpose is to violate the law and suppress speech.

The link you were just given offers clarity on that point; the definition does not hinge on the meaning of the word "riot".

In the case of the Bonus Army, it was Herbert Hoover's intent to deny a means of existence with bullets to deny existence of vets and their families even sooner. History really wants to rhyme again soon, which is unfortunate.

Don’t worry, that will never happen again, because America will never be willing to fight another war in Europe.

How do you feel about the defensive use of pepper spray?

Ya, and what about high-velocity lead spray?

You asked the wrong person. I would rather that people ditched pepper spray for defensive uses altogether and carried guns instead.

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/1.5358303

It is an obvious fallacy to conflate the usage of tear gas canisters with the usage of mustard gas in WWI. They differ drastically in amount/concentration, area of effect, and long term health risks, thus should be treated differently in considering their usage.

Tear gas clearly sits on a spectrum of non-lethal arms with various other options that are more or less harmful. While it's entirely fair to criticize its use on a case by case basis, insofar as disorderly public gatherings can have varying levels of violence/destruction, it would stand to reason that some instances warrant the use of tear gas.

24/7 lighting of prisoners so they can't sleep is torture, unless it's the American police and they need to keep the lights on for 'safety'.

Electro shock torture is illegal... unless it's the cops using a taser to get a desired behavior/compliance.

Police use > legally defined torture/war crimes.

My American Citizen score card:

LRAD + Tear gas 2009

Tear gas 2017

Tear gas 2021

Still got the exhausted canister from 2009 as a souvenir. Carry a bottle of water, the tear gas rinses out quickly.

I went hiking in Honolulu once with this woman who worked for the US gov I met on tinder. We went through this bamboo grove behind the city. All of sudden there was this overwhelming tiredness that took me over and I had to sleep. I needed to sit down by a rock and fell asleep very quickly. Then I woke up really quickly but it seemed like avea have passed. It was crazy. I was super healthy back then and don't have any issues or take any medicines. It was crazy, let me tell you, that woman was very precise but very strange.

They have been used against US citizens in the United States? That is news to me.

If they have been used in other countries against US diplomatic corps that is an act of war.

Now if a US citizen uses a visit to a foreign country to protest against a government they’re on their own. I’m sorry, but US citizens shouldn’t be engaging in that and the US state department has no obligation to protect that condition.

it's actually quite common. i have personally experienced use of LRAD by police as a weapon.

the first actual use of LRAD by police as a weapon in the united states was possibly in 2009

https://www.aclupa.org/news/2012/11/14/city-pittsburgh-settl...

though it is known to have been deployed but not used as a weapon earlier than that.

but to clarify, i don't think the video posted by OP shows use of an LRAD. that is something else

Used in 2014 against protesters in Ferguson.

https://slate.com/technology/2014/08/lrad-long-range-acousti...

The US has also in some places explicitly legalized the use of cars as a lethal weapon against protestors: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/21/us/politics/republican-an...

It doesn't matter what it is, or where it's happening in the world, the conversation always comes back to the US. Always.

Example: https://www.theblaze.com/news/general-mark-milley-pentagon-a...

> It's better than troops just gunning people down

Except you're far more likely to use it.

This is why cops don't shoot to "injure" instead of kill (also, it's hard enough for them to hit center of mass in a tense situation; there's no way they hit a leg.) It's lethal force. Which means that for its use to be legal, that person has to die because they are an imminent lethal threat to others. If injury is sufficient to resolve a situation, they weren't an imminent lethal threat.

Tasers started out as a way to temporarily incapacitate someone so you didn't have to shoot them. Now they're being used as compliance and corporal punishment devices.

Lots of videos out there of cops ordering people to do something while shocking them with something that makes their entire body lock up and is extremely painful.

They know the person can't do what they want them to. "Stop resisting!" while tasering someone is the cop version of "stop hitting yourself!"

> If injury is sufficient to resolve a situation, they weren't an imminent lethal threat.

That requires more explanation.

An injury could render someone with lethal intent and capability unable to perform.

During the BLM protests US police realized that they could do serious injury with "nonlethal" rubber bullets. Several people lost eyes including a journalist.

The opposition protesting here is 1/5 of the population of the country . Its basically all people. Like 1 million protesting in a country of 5 million , is all voters between 18- 59. Russia is loosing , the rot of oligarchy is dissolving.

It is impossible for Russia to "lose" in Serbia. The vast majority of Serbs support Russia, and are pissed at their government for not supporting it enough.

It is very possible to juggle around with the opinions of "vast majority" like apples. Vast majority will always support the thing which a delicate minority will push into their throats via media.

This is pure nonsense. These protests have nothing to do with Russia, and everything to do with corruption

Did I say otherwise? I think you meant to respond to the OP who implied that Russia is somehow "losing" because of these protests. My Russian wife is telling me that they don't like Vucic either and if he were to vacate the premises no one in Moscow would shed a single tear.

That's a blatant lie. We are protesting because 15 people died in Novi Sad because of corruption, 4 months ago. We want justice.

That's exactly what I'm saying. These protests aren't what the OP makes them out to be, completely orthogonal to Russia.

Assuming average age distribution between 16 to 60 in the protesters, that leaves about 3 million non protesters in the same age distribution for serbia, with children and elderly making up the remaining population, which is around 6.7 million, give or take.

That's 1 out of 4 working age citizens hitting the streets - not all people, but a huge chunk. It's safe to say there are going to be a lot of sympathizers in the non-protesters, a lot of people who wanted to protest but couldn't. There are definitely those who support the government, but I'd wager they're less than 15% of the total population, with the rest in opposition, or at least not in support of the government.

The usual tipping point for revolution is lower - if 10-12% hits the streets, it's a strong signal that the movement behind that activity is taking power.

Age distribution is rarely "average", whatever you mean by that. See here a quick googled source for Serbia: https://www.populationpyramid.net/serbia/2022/

According to that graph the cohorts with age less than 15 and more than 69 form only 27.7% of the total. Parent was broadly correct.

> We're not the world police, we don't need to enforce global norms

How do you reconcile this statement with the rest of your comment in which you are advocating for enforcing global norms?

Disagree with "We're not the world police, we don't need to enforce global norms"

Someone should definitely enforce international laws and norms and the US was in the best place to do it

FWIW there was some nice MILsurp LRAD kit on eBay a few years back. Looked like there was some corrosion but repairable, possibly functional in its current state. Wasn’t the truck sized one, but big enough (about 1m emitter) to do what is seen in the video. Sold for around 3000 iirc lol. I don’t think anyone knew what it was or it would have sold for a lot more. The seller had no idea, or at least wasn’t letting on if he did.

So, it’s not like LRAD is controlled like SAMs or something. Also, pretty trivial to build. Idk what the IP looks like on it , but back of the napkin you can build a 1kw unit for around $7000 buying the parts at retail. The expensive bits are the transducers. Everything else is a few mosfets and MCU/software.

It's the most important time in human history to protest/fight unchecked power because it's likely the last era of humanity that we are going to be able to.

We are getting to the point where the technology that fuels oppression, including extremely pervasive surveillance, privatized intelligence services with no oversight, scalable AI agents that do as they are told, and crowd "maiming" or other forceful dispersal techniques are growing past the ability to resist them.

Wars historically happened under conditions where people died but the planet was largely left in tact, but we now have 3 countries with the ability to erase entire cities or make the world functionally uninhabitable by humans, which absolutely changes the calculus of war. If you do not have nukes your sovereignty is questionable.

Likewise if the tools to put down crowds, find saboteurs, and weed out dissent is perfected, meaningful dissent can only be expressed through withdrawal and there is no final check on abuses of power where any, instead of some, of the "checkers" of power are left in tact. Anti-dissent technology has the potential for a nuclear moment that fundamentally changes the calculus of protest and I think AI is very much potentially that.

Was expressing this fear to my wife and kids the other day. Ubiquitous cameras everywhere (like in the UK for many years) and other surveillance technology has always been a concern but had scaling limits -- but when you combine it now with the cheap ease of machine learning technologies we have a serious problem.

And then consider drones, mobile devices. And then mass disinformation and/or disruption via LLMs.

As a long time advocate of old school mass action, and a believe in active protest movements as part of a healthy democracy, I have a strong feeling of unease. I've had it since about 9/11, but it's now really bad.

e.g. if you know, with certainty, that heading out to a protest could lead to your instant termination from your job because a drone passed over and took a photo and identified all 100,000 people in the crowd instantly.. would you still go?

Or if having been identified, some malevolent actor could just turn around and mass produce fake content from you and others in the crowd, to discredit you?

Shivers.

AI also has the potential to detect your every unique tic in a way that humans would be incapable of doing. You could be masked but your gait and other body movements will give you away, or at least place you in a statistically likely pool of suspects.

"Walk without rhythm and it won't attract the worm."

Anti Walking recognition techniques have been under development for decades though..

https://youtu.be/iV2ViNJFZC8?feature=shared

> e.g. if you know, with certainty, that heading out to a protest could lead to your instant termination from your job because a drone passed over and took a photo and identified all 100,000 people in the crowd instantly.. would you still go

The funny thing is that most people see this as a feature rather than a bug. Before the 2024 election the policies of most surveillance platforms roughly matched the culture of upper-middle-class Californians, so the argument was "if abusive technology is used to shut down opinions I don't like, I don't see a problem with that". Good luck explaining why such an attitude is a problem.

"If guns are used to shut down crime, I don't see a problem with that."

Is kind of a cogent argument.

In this philosophically exaggerated isomorphism, you seem to be implying that either criminals and crime fighters should both be equally armed or that crime is largely subjective and therefore enforcement is wrong.

It seems like you're ultimately arguing for anarchy (nobody should have abusive technology -- guns), and therefore no institutions are worth protecting with force. It seems equivalent to believing that everyone will respect the commons in the tragedy of the commons without an enforcing mechanism.

Regardless of how you answer, you have run headlong into the paradox of tolerance, and the problem of what to do when people violate the social contract (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract), which is at the very core of what this country was founded on.

What "opinions I don't like" are you referring to? It's also worth reflecting on that you're writing on a platform where shutting down opinions you don't like is a major part of it, in order moderate extremism and promote curiosity.

Many events we celebrate as major achievements can be traced back to a group of people consciously violating the social contract, and succeeding to establish more rights for themselves using force.

I honestly don't know how to answer, because if you think long enough, you'll come to the conclusion that all rules are arbitrary, and everything could be questioned. Yet at the same time in practice we can agree on at least some basic principles of how the society should function. It's just incredibly difficult to formulate these principles in a manner that would be useful for logical reasoning.

I think what actually irked me was that many people say they believe in freedom of speech, but actually define it as "seeing others agree with me". I think that Reddit's "unpopular opinion" community is prime example of such attitude, where people say they value unpopular opinions, but actually promote popular ones.

>it's likely the last era of humanity

No. Just no. No matter what what the thing is. It just isn't.

That's not a reason to NOT protest/fight unchecked power. It just isn't the reason to do it.

That is a pretty disingenuous quotation, you cut it mid sentence destroying the context:

> It's the most important time in human history to protest/fight unchecked power because it's likely the last era of humanity that we are going to be able to.

I cut the context because the context doesn't matter.

Anyone making the claim that this likely the last era of humanity that anything is just wrong. The future (even just the future of humanity) is longer and weirder and wilder and more filled with unknowns than anyone alive now can imagine.

This is not the last era of humanity that anything.

We should still be protesting/fighting unchecked power.

There have been many last eras of humanity of things. The last era of gas lighting (lighting powered by gas, not the manipulation tactic). The last era of information being passed down orally. The last era of monarchs. The last era of human computers. I understand that you are saying there are no last eras of anything so this can't be the last era of something, and that's incorrect.

The post I was replying to was not worded as "the last era of X". It was worded as "the last era of humanity". Certainly things, practices, places, peoples, beliefs come and go. Humanity likely will end at some point, but that's not about to happen in any predictable way in the currently foreseeable future.

Incorrect. It was worded as "the last era of humanity doing X". It parses as "the last era of {humanity doing X}" and not "{the last era of humanity} doing X" (which isn't something that makes sense anyway).

One thing is for sure. These technologies don't make protest or revolution any easier. They give asymmetric power to whoever wields them (the state) against whoever doesn't (a loose collection of angry people on the street without the same tools).

This isn't the 1800s anymore where the most powerful tool was a gun, and you could distribute these symmetrically across state and people to keep the state in check.

Surveillance, crowd control weapons, access to banking, control over media, eventually AI and widespread robotics, have properties that empower the state. In the context of mass protest, the status quo gets harder and harder to dislodge.

None of this matters much while democracy is still existing, but it's a risk that's there. It makes the fall of democracy more of an absorbing state that you can't escape from.

The encryption gives asymmetric power to the people. Tor and Matrix for communications that can't be broken by the rich, no matter how powerful. Bitcoin for free transactions, vpn and torrent for the media etc.

You have a lot more faith in technology than me. There is a strong history of compromising data at rest (such as in phone backups) and getting metadata either directly or through side channels. It's not very hard for me to imagine a system that tells you who is talking with who, when, and with what IPs no matter how anonymized you think you are. That all assumes good opsec too.

My understanding is that Tor was compromised several years ago.

Pegasus alone means that once you become a target, you're done.

It also means these "defenses" are only generally available to the technically savvy.

It's easy to encrypt the backups (don't use g$$gle or apple clouds, of course).

That well might be true. But what about the people upu communicate with? They have messages from you, and probably don't have airgapped backups. So your ironclad backups don't matter much.

What I like in Telegram (though I don't use it), you can force delete messages on your interlocutor's device, at any time.

Telegram is Russian owned and run out of a monarchy. Telegram is not anyone's friend. "delete" is also not a black and white concept. There are many degrees of deletion.

Telegram used to be very hands-off with messages, no matter how criminal, unless they were hurting Telegram itself (spam). Then its owner got arrested for having actual knowledge of criminal activity and still not stopping it. Now it cares about reports, bans criminals and reports them to the police. There are rumours it uses keyword scans to find things that are not reported. Remember it has your phone number which is linked to your ID card.

There is a way to sign up without phone number, albeit rather convoluted. Certainly doable for a determined criminal :)

I'm far from a security expert, but I also have direct security expertise, and from the way you talk, I am highly confident that there are a lot of things you don't know you don't know and I think you've failed to imagine the wealth of information available to institutional powers.

The original MS Blaster writer was found because Microsoft uploaded a memory dump when the author was creating their proof of concept. Room 641a is the connection based data reception we know about. Snowden's PRISM showed a high level of corporate <-> government intelligence collusion. Pegasus is generally considered an intelligence "I win" button.

Compromising someone's security is not a matter of ability, it is purely a matter of resources and will, and as the ruling regime changes from protecting rights, to protecting itself, the "will" for invasive mass surveillance will become much much stronger and your ability to remain anonymous will wane into nothingness. Corporations will increasingly have little choice but to compromise their users.

In your list of security features you listed a what's what of "social media" based security offerings/"solutions" in which the security providers "profit" from you believing they provide security.

Tor was compromised. Matrix is Europe wanting their own messaging platform. Bitcoin is literally profitable for providers, I don't think it's generally considered private, and mostly it's a hedge against inflation based theft. Your browser directly betrays large amounts of information and finger printing is largely considered doable regardless of your configuration, which makes VPN's questionable security, not to mention there are whole lock down configurations required and many browsers upload browsing history to the cloud by default. Torrent is very not private.

If you haven't heard the phrase "bits of entropy" and can explain what that means and why that's an important concept, then you are speaking far beyond your level of knowledge.

You've read too many cheap spy novels.

Take my warning or not. You are definitely out of your depth.

Here's an entropy primer: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/primer-information-the...

your naivety is almost endearing

> Bitcoin is literally profitable for providers, I don't think it's generally considered private, and mostly it's a hedge against inflation based theft.

This is not what Bitcoin "mostly is".

How not?

Communication does not cause change. There are two factions at war. One has uncensored communication (but has been conditioned to only use censored forms) and the other has unlimited access to guns, bombs, and napalm, as well as uncensored communication on all platforms, including the most popular ones where it censors and gaslights the other faction. Which one wins the war?

It's a trick question. The former group have been made complacent. No war occurs. It was won before it started.

> it's likely the last era of humanity that we are going to be able to

Athenians were saying this in respect of writing.

I don't think they were?

> don't think they were?

Yes [1].

[1] https://fs.blog/an-old-argument-against-writing/

I'm very familiar with that argument, it's almost a trope at this point; however it is completely logically unrelated to the OP's take.

Unless you think hayst4ck was lamenting the plight of the dictators who have it too easy these days and won't learn to properly internalize the fine essence of clearing peaceful protests the old-fashioned way, when it needed riot shields and teargas?

> it is completely logically unrelated to the OP's take

The point is people have been arguing that their era is the last for freedom because after the invention of writing or phalanxes or cannons or blue-water navies or industrial warfare or nuclear weapons or AI and drones the powerful will have all the chips. It's not true, and you'll almost always find a balancing meme around how those same technologies are going to empower anarchists.

Drones, AI and all of the aforementioned technologies make projecting power easier. That says nothing about who holds that power. The same surveillance tools that make identifying protesters easier also make e.g. determining where particular riot police live possible.

Plato's argument wasn't that his era was the last for freedom, it was that writing would spoil people's ability to memorize their oral traditions when they have the comfort of reaching for their notes. And in fact he was probably right about that, and we experience the continuation in the extreme today with the convenience of Wikipedia, and I can hardly find my way downtown when my phone battery dies and I can't check Google Maps.

New technologies do change the world, and society, usually in irreversible ways. In many aspects for the better, but in some aspects for the worse. To argue that because Plato was wrong about writing, therefore the things you value about society will continue as always, is to bury your head in the sand. Freedom, anonymity, and the vulnerability of the few and powerful to the disgruntled many are all things that can disappear with the shifting sands of time and technology. An argument that they will or won't must be grounded on the merits of the particulars.

And the fact that authoritarianism is on the rise everywhere means the ruling oligarchs KNOW it.

The silicon valley elite are practically going insane over the prospect of total authoritarian control of the "lessers" ... of course couched in pure libertarian nonsense about unrestained freedom of the ultrarich to do as they please to them.

> but we now have 3 countries with the ability to erase entire cities or make the world functionally uninhabitable by humans

Only 3?

> we now have 3 countries with the ability to erase entire cities or make the world functionally uninhabitable by humans

If we're talking the Russia, the US and China then they certainly have the largest arsenals, but there's an order of magnitude difference between the stockpiles of the first two and the third. China doesn't have that many more nukes than France, and only has about double the number of warheads of the UK (though it is questionable how independent from the US the UK's capability is).

And then there's Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea.

(https://www.icanw.org/nuclear_arsenals)

China is growing their arsenal quickly. And frankly, more of their warheads may actually work than Russia's.

Are they?

I'm not especially up on this stuff, but I haven't seen much about their nuclear arsenal lately. It's not that I doubt you - it would be entirely consistent with their general move to throwing their weight around, sending their warships provocatively near to other nations etc etc.

Even so, when we have a distribution that's roughly - 5k, 5k, 400, 300, 200, 200, 150, 90, 30 - it seems a little odd to draw the line of who could make the planet uninhabitable after the 400!

Chinese nuclear weapons, 2025

from: Nuclear Notebook, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

~ Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda, Eliana Johns, Mackenzie Knight | March 12, 2025

  The modernization of China’s nuclear arsenal has both accelerated and expanded in recent years.

  In this issue of the Nuclear Notebook, we estimate that China now possesses approximately 600 nuclear warheads, with more in production to arm future delivery systems.

  China is believed to have the fastest-growing nuclear arsenal among the nine nuclear-armed states; it is the only Party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons that is significantly increasing its nuclear arsenal.

* https://thebulletin.org/premium/2025-03/chinese-nuclear-weap...

Also, the threshold laid out above was "erase an entire city" OR "make planet unihabitable".

Any nation or group with a first gen atomic weapon can erase a city .. exercising that ability can potentially lead to a greater nuclear exchange between others, particularly if it's unclear what happened and what might be about to happen.

Fair enough, thanks :)

I imagine France is now starting to polish everything up more fervently as well, after Macron's speech about putting the nation onto a wartime economy last week, and there are other nations now talking about wanting to be under the French nuclear umbrella...

We certainly live in interesting times, to abuse that old chinese curse.

> we now have 3 countries with the ability to erase entire cities or make the world functionally uninhabitable by humans

Nuclear war is horrible enough without requiring hyperbole. Each of the U.S., Russia and China have the ability to functionally end industrial civlisation as we know it. None has the power to make the Earth uninhabitable by humans (outside hypothetical asteroid redirect capabilities).

Admiral Rickover, the father of the American nuclear navy, testified to congress that he thought we would probably destroy ourselves and hardly anyone is more expert than he was.

  Senator PROXMIRE. What do you think is the prospect, 
  then, of nuclear war?

  Admiral RICKOVER. I think we will probably destroy 
  ourselves. So what difference will it make? Some new
  species will arise eventually; it might be wiser 
  than we are.

https://www.jec.senate.gov/reports/97th%20Congress/Economics...

Rickover said that in 1982, four years before our global nuclear stockpile peaked at 70,000 warheads [1]. Today, that number is closer to 12,000 [2].

If we'd continued accumulating nukes at the rate we were in 1982, yes, we might today have the power to render the Earth uninhabitable to human life.

[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2968/062004017

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/nuclear-weapons

I think this is the last chance for the people in power to stop messing around before US, the people with knowledge, get pissed off and take them down with force, using the technology WE make for THEM.

They already know words are meaningless and don't count for anything. Democrats have been trying to use words to get their way or even compromise and republicans fully understand they don't have to pay attention to them at all. Threats are laughable. If democrats had any power they would have used it. Their inaction is proof of their impotence.

Words don't matter, only actions matter. "upvotes don't count."

A street presence can barely be mustered.

Also if you start learning about history, you'll learn that "intellectuals" are the first people totalitarians crack down in precisely because of this threat you just made. So by the time you realize you need to make good on your threat, chances are it will be too late. Don't read about the Khmer Rouge killing fields or the Indonesian "communist" purge if you want to have a good day. American exceptionalism is fueling a "can't happen here" attitude that's fueling people's denial about our many potential futures. Inaction means that we aren't influencing what that future is. We are at someone else's whims. History doesn't tell you what will happen, but it tells you what can happen.

You're saying right now you're speaking softly, but carrying a big stick, so they better listen. I don't think you're carrying one, and the republicans purging the old guard and replacing them with loyalists don't think you are either. You're just speaking softly. We all seem to be.

to paraphrase another person: if you're posting it online on a public social media channel, it doesn't matter.

the stuff that's going to change the government, for the better or worse, is going to get the FBI and Secret Service on you, and you're not saying on that on the front page of reddit.

every twitter meme that makes the rounds, every sneering HN post is a sign of impotence. if there was real opposition DOGE would be afraid to go to offices. the best the US Dems can do is spray painting a few Tesla offices (save for one in Oregon that had some bullet holes, done well after closing).

The Jan 6th rioters were fascist rubes, but at least they had the balls to go.

It drives me crazy that none of the people targeted by DOGE have locked themselves in their office and called WaPo and CNN. If you want to keep your job, the image of jackbooted thugs dragging you out can't be better for raising alarms and drawing sympathy. Everyone is complying in advance.

Someone made the comparison between SK politicians shoving their way past guards to impeach their corrupt president, and Congressional Dems who let themselves get turned away. It's either theater or they're completely feckless (or both). How has there been not one Profile in Courage, with everything going on?

I don't know why people still think yelling and waiving signs around is going to do a single shred of good. Protesting means "doing nothing, loudly." You're not going to change anything, you're just doing performance art.

> It drives me crazy that none of the people targeted by DOGE have locked themselves in their office and called WaPo and CNN.

Nobody who is capable of opposing DOGE is willing to even lift a finger. As a flaming liberal, the most infuriating thing I've seen in the news all year was: Democrats sitting there impotently waving their stupid little signs during the President's address to Congress. Yea, your little sign saying "Save Medicaid" is doing next to nothing. Thank you, my elected representative, for being totally useless.

I just realized that capitalizing the word "us" sounded like United states :facepalm:

Close friend who was on the spot described it as car or plane running towards you, you don't only hear it, you also feel vibrations in the body creating panic and fear.

All demonstrations of LRAD I heard on youtube were with high pitched sound, not a "whoosh" as witnesses experienced last night in Belgrade. Can these devices play any kind of sound?

What is described by victims, and what can be heard on some recordings from last nights, sounds more like Vortex Cannon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJpChS-_RJg

I’m moderately suspicious of the details some people/articles say. Long story short, there’s 1-4khz audio weapons (LRAD), and microwave/heat based ADS. It appears that both of these were used, a Reddit army vet commented about how that’s apparently the “protocol” as the ADS is strong enough to pick off the last stragglers.

I’m ever so slightly suspicious of the “low frequency sound weapon” aspect because that typically takes a lot of energy (I’m speaking from an audio background). However the reports of feeling uneasy do match that of infrasound… yet typically (based on what I’ve read) infrasound doesn’t have an instant reaction but takes some time for people to feel it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon has a lot more info if anyone is interested.

Earshot NGO analyzed recorded sounds and found 4 of these videos "consistent with Vortex Ring Gun or Vortex Cannon":

https://x.com/earshot_ngo/status/1901661518153781534

Note that many videos didn't record the sound if the phone was further away from that center line.

This is the recording which perhaps captured sound the best:

https://x.com/stonexman/status/1901034916961309148

Thank you. Before I saw your reply, I saw this discussion and links on r/acoustics which in retrospect seems to be the best likely answer. It being a cannon (and not a speaker based device) would mean it’s closer to a controlled explosion than a speaker playing (really loud) music.

There’s still the questions of “how is it so small” (apparently) but at least some aspects are answered now.

Even without knowing the background of those protests: It is heartbreaking to see a crowd of peaceful people (seemingly during a moment of silence) being attacked by their own country and fleeing in panic and pain.

Here's some background: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2g8v32q30o

Another video, from a different angle:

https://www.reddit.com/r/serbia/comments/1jchks6/novi_snimci...

Please take into account that this occurred during the fifteen-minute silence observed by the protesters in memory of the fifteen victims of the accident, which the protesters blame on the government corruption and which was the very reason for the start of the protests.

I've seen some theories that it was actually an ADS (basically a low-power microwave beam, immensely painful but tuned to be just under the threshold to actually cause visible burns), since there haven't been any reported cases of permanent deafness yet.

The student organizers in the crowd did an incredible job clearing people out of there before the police could escalate further and cause more mob-crowding panic deaths.

>cases of permanent deafness

Ah so these sonic weapons are indeed seriously harmful. I was wondering if hearing loss was a result.

It really isn't smart to do this kind of thing.

Once an organization actually attacks you, it's very easy to decide that any legitimacy they view themselves as having is irrelevant and to come back next Monday with mortars and machine guns.

Reminds me of the escalation seen in the Ukrainian Maidan, went from some heavy handed policing to non-lethal rounds (eg: teargas / beanbags) to BBs to snipers and live firing on crowds.

Yes, although that was exceptionally irrational, to the point where I don't really feel I understand the events.

It would be rational if you would think killing a few (or a lot of) protesters will intimidate the rest of the country into submission. It didn't, but it could have.

But nobody thinks that way. If they can kill your friends, they can round you up afterwards and kill you.

Once it gets to that point, there's no reason not to immediately organize a military response.

Hold on to that thought we're going to need it this summer.

Ah, I'm Swedish, so I can't really help you.

Almost every single authoritarian thinks that way. That’s how they stay in power. Please google Volksaufstand (1953), Hungarian Uprising (1956), Prague Spring (1968), Tiananmen (1989), Vilnius Massacre (1991)…

>But nobody thinks that way.

And yet history shows many (dozens?) of instance where that's exactly what most people thought.

Military responses are very hard to organize if you're not already the military. Having a bunch of demonstrators killed is usually the final step in consolidation of power. Especially if the rest of the public isn't 100% behind the demonstrators.

Timothy Snyder put his history of Ukraine class on YouTube. The lesson on the Maidan was done by a guest speaker. The presentation is mostly dry and the person isn't the best speaker, but the content was quality and very worth watching, especially if you have any beliefs in "color revolutions" or American imperialism:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg_CLI3xY58&list=PLh9mgdi4rN...

It was now a revolt against произвол, an idea of arbitrariness tinged with tyranny, helplessness in the face of power, the feeling that the powers that be can do whatever they want to you, and you are helpless, that you are being treated as a plaything, as a thing and not as a human being, as an object and not as a subject, and the Maidan became a revolt against произвол, it became an insistence on being treated as a person and not as a thing, as a subject not as an object, and they began to call themselves on the Maidan the revolution of dignity.

It seems that Yanukovych (Ukraine's corrupt Russian puppet leader) was counted on the fact that if you shock people this way (brutally beating up protestors), not enough to kill people, but enough to terrify them, the parents will freak out and they will pull their kids off the streets... (after many people's children were beaten) Suddenly you have parents joining their children on the streets, and that is the moment that creates the revolution...

>it became an insistence on being treated as a person and not as a thing, as a subject not as an object

At the risk of inflammation: sounds like Black Lives Matter.

Wishing the person who downvoted this an ironic encounter with their ignorance.

Unfortunately, it worked in Belarus.

I knew those protests were going to fail as soon as I heard on the news that police were throwing down their weapons and joining the protesters.

The way to defeat a dictator is not by painting yourself as a defenseless victim. (That is only useful as the first step to gain support.) The way is to show him you have a greater potential for violence than him and if he doesn't flee, he will be punished (usually killed, sometimes tortured first).

They had huge numbers and if at least some police were on their side they were on the right track to escalating the threat of violence. At some point the dictator would have either broken or the violence would have materialized. But that requires the good people to keep their weapons and use them.

“Winter on Fire” on Netflix is a pretty thorough documentary of events day-by-day, though many scenes are difficult to watch.

Estimates are that something like 300,000+ people were out actively protesting just in Belgrade... in a country of 6.6 million people.

Yes, but polarization is a possibility. You can't know you're the majority, so until violence is used against you, you don't necessarily have a reason to turn the thing into a civil war.

Something like 1.6 million people across Serbia were protesting across the country, last I heard. They're the majority.

That seems reasonable, but my comment was intended as a continuation of my general 'if an organization attacks you...'.

You're using whataboutism to conflate the Serbian government with an imaginary counter faction. Civil war requires 2+ factions that cannot or will not express their grievances through political means. This simply isn't the case.

No, I'm actually not really talking about Serbia at all, but about the general situation, i.e. about violence and how one should react to it.

Basically, I'm saying that if one is attacked, the one can do as one likes, but if one is not attacked, then one can leave things to democracy; and it is difficult to know whether ones position, in the absence of an election, has popular support.

> any legitimacy they view themselves as having

I'm pretty sure that's not actually how power or legitimacy work anyway.

Once they're shooting at you, or going after you in some other way, that legitimacy etc. is irrelevant, simply because they're going after you.

The solution is then always an organized military response. This applies whether it's your government or somebody else's.

> The solution is then always an organized military response.

In actual history, not always, and not that often.

Case in point, for example, the Peterloo Massacre: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre

   took place at St Peter's Field, Manchester, Lancashire, England, on Monday 16 August 1819. Eighteen people died and 400–700 were injured when cavalry charged into a crowd of around 60,000 people who had gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation.

the response to that, from the general public, was general outrage, mocking of government, but no "organized military response".

The immediate effect of Peterloo was a crackdown on reform. The government instructed the police and courts to go after the journalists, presses and publication of the Manchester Observer.

  For a few months following Peterloo it seemed to the authorities that the country was heading towards an armed rebellion. Encouraging them in that belief were two abortive uprisings, [..], and the discovery and foiling of [..] conspiracy to blow up the cabinet that winter.

  By the end of the year, the government had introduced legislation, later known as the Six Acts, to suppress radical meetings and publications, and by the end of 1820 every significant working-class radical reformer was in jail; civil liberties had declined to an even lower level than they were before Peterloo.

The urge for reform increased, resolve stiffened, and eventually (after some time) change came about.

  Events such as [ ..these.. ] all serve to indicate the breadth, diversity and widespread geographical scale of the demand for economic and political reform at the time.

  Peterloo had no effect on the speed of reform, but in due course all but one of the reformers' demands, annual parliaments, were met. Following the Great Reform Act 1832 [ ... ]

I think Britain is special. It's always been about repression, Richard II said "You wretches detestable on land and sea: you who seek equality with lords are unworthy to live. Give this message to your colleagues: rustics you were, and rustics you are still; you will remain in bondage, not as before, but incomparably harsher. For as long as we live we will strive to suppress you, and your misery will be an example in the eyes of posterity" and so it has been, and Peterloo etc., are the demonstration.

The US has some stuff of this sort too, presumably at least partially inherited from British tradition.

Here in Sweden though, when we have attacked the government we have generally been successful and have obtained useful recompense. Violence, when you're organized and sensible, really works. It's terrifying to see properly organized people attack, because you know that even if you're willing to siege it out, level your own city, it's going to be like the Siege of Mariupol. If people know how to fight and have guns and mortars, there's no police force that can do anything useful, and no military force that can do anything useful without it being actual war, on your own territory.

> Richard II

You quote someone famously deposed by rebellion and died in prison as an example of uniquely British repression preventing revolution?

It's absurd and toxic to claim the sentiments of Richard II are uniquely British. European monarchies are better understood as an interconnected transnational class. Richard II aka Richard of Bordeaux, born in the presence of the kings of Castile, Navarre and Portugal, married the sister of the Holy Roman Emperor and then the daughter of King of France...

> Here in Sweden though, when we have attacked the government we have generally been successful

Oh? Möre uprising, Västbo peasant uprising, Värmland rebellion, Böda Uprising, Morning Star rebellion... etc. all suppressed and leaders executed.

you are stating this with confidence but it doesn't sound at all convincing - where are you getting this from?

aggressive crowd control measures have been used very often and they almost never result in an armed rebellion. that's just nonsense. There are many MANY levels of escalation left for both sides - as well as the real expectation of behind the scenes diplomacy and within-the-system politics.

like really, are you just fantasizing about a balkan civil war because it's exciting? or are you trying to get more people to think that civil disagreement may as well be considered warfare? just what are you on about, mate?

> come back next Monday with mortars and machine guns

Where the heck are they going to get those in Serbia? Weren't they rounded up after the war, especially mortars?

Also that sort of thing tends not to last very long against the regular army, who have a much larger supply of materiel and are better trained. It only really works if the army flips politically against the regime (think Ceaucescu, or less violently the Carnation Revolution).

There's a huge amount of weapons hidden away in attics, even after several campaigns to get rid of illegal weapons, no questions asked. There's also a huge amount of it in the region (Montenegro, Bosnia). I used to live first in Serbia, then Montenegro.

I've personally been to weddings in both Serbia and Montenegro, in the early-mid 2000s, where they fired full auto weapons with live rounds into the air. AK variants and such. I remember us kids collecting shell casings and stripper clips.

I'd say that it's mostly handguns and hand grenades, some AK and SKS variants, obsolete 40s-50s SMGs given out to territorial defense decades ago, some bolt action rifles and some Zoljas (anti tank rocket) and AP mines from the war.

I remember a guy in Podgorica, Montenegro (local football hooligan and drug dealer) firing a Zolja at a department store at night. He had obtained it for 200 euros in Belgrade, Serbia and "had to try it out". [1]

I also remember them catching a 15 year old with an AK in 2017 in Podgorica, Montenegro. [2]

I loved frequenting the local flea market and you could regularly see stuff like helmets for sale, also some magazines (I remember seeing one for an MP40 or similar SMG). I also witnessed a transaction, a guy buying a small pistol from another guy at the flea market. The gun quickly changed hands and dissapeared in his jacket, but I saw it beyond doubt.

Anything else I could write would just bring into question my credibility, so I'll keep these stories for us who lived through it. It recently happened to me that I started quesioning my childhood memories (age 8 or so), like "did that really happen or did I imagine it", so I asked people I remembered were there with me, and yep it sure as hell did. I even forgot some details and people involved. But I'd have a hard time beleiving it if I heard it.

Also bear in mind that a lot of the people who have these weapons actually support the government and loved Vučić's old party from the 90s. For example, one of the people firing an AK at his son's wedding was a policeman, and his grandson is now a policeman and Vučić sympathiser in Belgrade.

[1] https://www.b92.net/o/info/vesti/index?nav_id=211841

[2] https://volimpodgoricu.me/novosti/podgorica-uhapsen-petnaest...

Serbia has the 5th highest amount of civilian guns per capita. [0]

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

These LRADs have always been planned to be used against mass protests, from day one.

Planned? Perhaps. Destined? Certainly.

The imperial boomerang: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang

The Basque Country has been a huge sandbox against the later leftist groups in the rest of Spain.

This strikes at the core of the idea of solidarity.

If you see injustice but do nothing, you invite the same injustice on yourself.

Injustice at it's core is an arbitrary execution of power, so suffering injustice anywhere is to let power stay unchecked which communicates that there are no consequences for abuses of power, which only invites more abuses of power.

If there aren't consequences for power being used against others, there won't be consequences for power being used against you.

Weapons of war used by colonizers to oppress others inevitably turn these to crush dissent at home. And also journalism about atrocities such as what happened to Julian Assange or objection to military adventurism as the NYT turned on Chris Hedges.

I wonder how the engineers and scientists who contributed to that less-lethal weapon feel about it.

"Well I am not breaking any laws so this won't be used against me. And I need money anyway"

This has to be about people who pushes the button. Not about the people who invents the technology. Otherwise you might want to stop all the kitchen knifes production, cause people occasionally use those to kill each other.

No there is a very clear difference of responsibility between creating an instrument that can be turned towards harm and one that is designed to cause it. Someone designed, engineered, and built these tools knowing this is what they were to be used for.

Okay, but if the tool is a weapon and is designed specifically to inflict harm on humans, then I think that analogy completely breaks down.

It should be about the entity who brings something like this to a market and profits off it. In this case a corporation.

If you're an engineer or a scientist, you really should have a more developed understanding of causality than just "proximate cause is the only cause" mindset that we all learn before we reach 5 years old.

Probably enjoyed working on cool sci-fi shit. Invisible weapons are pretty cool -- though I think conceptually the heat ray class (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System?useskin=v...) is cooler than the LRAD class. How they're used or should be used? An unimportant question in the face of coolness. Then there's just basic pride in good engineering or craftsmanship that can help spark joy in whatever one is working on, from weapons to some hairy enterprise legacy ball of mud you're slowly making improvements to. A silly quote I've always liked, from Nathaniel Borenstein: "It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a "DestroyBaghdad" procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a "DestroyCity" procedure, to which "Baghdad" could be given as a parameter."

"However, it is my judgment in these things that when you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb."[1]

1: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Oppenheimer

Reminds me of a meme about how as an aerospace graduate, after a year and a thousand rejections, you just need to “live, laugh, Lockheed Martin”

Just like HN crowd enjoy working on cool AI toys, now widely used to suppress people in china, iran, russia and soon the trumpland.

Each one of them who INSISTED we should "Just talk about the tech, not the politics" and that "You can't hold someone ethically responsible for creating a weapon, you must hate ONLY the people who use them"

I will always have more respect for prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers and thieves than people working in "defense".

Even an exceptionally violent and prolific gangster could never come close to contributing to the suffering of as many people as your regular MIC employee, no matter where they're employed.

If I were to try to imagine how I could realistically inflict the most suffering on the world, the clear answer would just be "get a defense job", I really couldn't do any worse than that no matter how hard I tried. Maybe starting a defense company would be worse. Team work makes the dream work, as they say.

That's a very broad brush. You could use a roller, with handles on both ends for stability, if your surface is so uniformly flat.

How about if there would be an active deadly attack ongoing on you? Would working in defense then be less bad?

LRADs have been used against protesters in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, France, and Germany.

I don't necessarily dispute that claim, but do you have evidence to support it ?

It's extensively covered on the wikipedia page alone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-range_acoustic_device#Uni...

Also if you just google "LRAD use in [country]" there are source for any country you're actually wondering about...

If you actually read the page that you've linked, you'll see that many European countries were just using it to deliver COVID notifications

Along with offensive uses in Greece, Japan, the US, and New Zealand along with some uses on sea going vessels against pirates. It's not just notification uses and even just as a notification messages there are reports of hearing damage when turned too high.

that's not necessarely the weapon LRAD, Long Range Acoustic Devices may also be used for communication. I would be really alerted if this kind of weapon would be used in Germany.

> In the first half of 2020, Bad Homburg's fire brigade and city police used an LRAD 100X system more than 60 times to deliver COVID-19 information.

LRAD 100X: https://danimex.com/products?ProductID=PROD1666

The page also lists offensive/anti-protest usages in New Zealand & USA plus a number of other places as well. For Australia the usage is somewhat ambiguous but even used just as an "announcement" it can be turned up strong enough to be painful.

I assume it was used to disperse riots, in Serbia it was used as people were standing peacefully, observing 15 minutes of silence.

A lot of the uses in Western countries weren't even to disperse anyone, they were used as giant speakers to broadcast messages, e.g. during Covid in Germany.

It's crazy to compare that to what seems to have happened in Serbia. It's like saying "Carter has used a hammer, too" when commenting on a murder, and leaving out that Carter used the hammer to build houses with Habitat for Humanity.

"whataboutism" is pernicious, widespread, and devastating to civil society.

Precedent if I like it, whataboutisn otherwise.

Neither precedent nor whataboutism are a good way to run a multipolar world. Both include literally all of the worst of humanity throughout history.

Even though we haven't evolved much since then, we don't have to be savages: Consensus of the majority of nations is a more appropriate (albeit not perfect) way to resolve multipolar issues.

No it's not.

People make grand statements all the time and appeal to values they claim are universal. Then when you hold them accountable for the fact that they value they are claiming is not the same as the values they have supported, you get the "whataboutism" canard thrown at you.

If you support "Freedom of Speech" and support prosecution for speech, then you do not support freedom of speech. Even in a steel-manned case, you support freedom of speech "a" and I might support freedom of speech "b"; by pointing out inconsistencies, we are helping each other understand the real argument being made, not just the thought terminating cliche.

Just because one finds it tiring to have people expose their sophistic arguments doesn't mean that the rest of us don't see value in it.

Sure it is. The fallacy here is focusing on the messenger: THEY do this, THEY do that, if YOU do this, if YOU do that... But the messenger is not the topic.

Instead, focus on the initial charges and whether they are factually correct. The messenger doesn't matter. They could be a total hypocrite, they could have 0 values, they could eat babies, and still be 100% right on the issue. Not to mention, other messengers say the same thing, and attacking them won't make the claims incorrect, either. This is why the phrase "don't shoot the messenger" exists.

When you use whataboutism, you behave at least as poorly as the person you claim has no values, or who you claim is a hypocrite. This is because you yourself refuse to criticize the behavior present in the initial charges. How does sinking to what you believe to be their level, help resolve the initial charges?

tl;dr: there's a reason why 'no u' is considered a joke and not a serious defense of one's behavior

A riot is a label, to be controlled by central media and ubiquitous social media propaganda.

The difference between a peaceful protest and a riot is usually just a matter of who's doing the reporting. Or whether the police have bothered to plant a provocateur in the crowd to throw the molotov that justifies the police violence.

Famously: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-278930... - which side started the violence? Was the footage shown out of order? Was the state broadcaster complicit?

The idea that protest provocateurs are all 5th column police plants is, uh, wrong.

Where did the word "all" appear in my comment? How many r's are in strawberry?

The idea that anyone who disagrees with you is a generative LLM is also, uh, wrong.

Very important to know, though could you share a source where we can read about it?

  The LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device) was used for the first time in the USA in Pittsburgh during the time of G20 summit on September 24-25th, 2009

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSMyY3_dmrM

  The city of Pittsburgh has agreed to pay more than $200,000 to settle two cases stemming from the actions of the city during the September 2009 G-20 Summit, including $72,000 to Karen Piper, a bystander who suffered permanent hearing loss after Pittsburgh police deployed a Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) on a neighborhood street.

* https://www.aclupa.org/en/press-releases/city-pittsburgh-set...

What’s an LRAD? Explaining the ‘sonic weapons’ police use for crowd control and communication (2022) - https://theconversation.com/whats-an-lrad-explaining-the-son...

Thank you!

In Germany LRAD systems have been used to deliver Covid 19 information, not against protesters. Used by the fire brigade. I haven't checked uses in other countries.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-range_acoustic_device#G...

Is there any counter measure for this?

Hardcore hearing protection?

Noise cancelling headphones?

Handheld sound insulation "shield"?

https://youtu.be/CXKTBQBugIA

Probably also worth watching a related video from the same channel: "Defeating Microwave Weapons! - Part 1" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg_aUOSLuRo

The report I read said it relied on bone conduction, so hearing protection wouldn't do a whole lot. Only things that can attenuate low frequency sounds before it gets to the ear. So muff style headphones might work, or mass

Ear muffs aren’t going to do much against 160dB

to put a finer point on it: decibels are logarithmic, e.g. a tenfold increase.

as in, an increase of 10 decibels corresponds to a tenfold increase in sound intensity.

this means 160dB is a lot. a loooooooooooot

It's not so much that LRAD relies on bone conduction to inflict pain (and sensorineural hearing loss!), but that the sound levels are so high that even if you block the air conduction route with earplugs, the bone conduction route (approximately 30 dB of attenuation compared with air) still might deliver enough sound to the inner ear to cause pain and hearing loss.

This kind of thing is a problem on aircraft carriers, where people working on the flight deck are so close to loud jets that no amount of conventional hearing protection will adequately conserve hearing. Creare has been working for the last decade and a half on special helmets for the US Navy to overcome this issue, resulting in the HGU-99/P Hearing Protection Helmet.

Can you have a device which upon detecting the frequency emits some kind of counter vibration that cancels out th attack?

It's not theoretically impossible but it is completely impractical to engineer such a thing - destructive interference has to be precisely matched to cancel out a sound, and if it's not you just get "beats" as the phases overlap.

And that match depends on matching frequency and distance - or having a very fast tuning system, and then you've got to do all this in a device that's not just another LRAD (at which point you're back to "the best defense is a good offense").

This is how active noise cancellation works in headphones. You stick little microphones on the outside of the headphones, then play back what’s picked up through the headphones themselves but with a very slight delay so all the peaks and troughs match up. The problem is that you need to put out sounds at least as loud, and that’s a pretty bad thing to get even slightly wrong if the energy levels are that high.

You do it with the waves inverted otherwise the delay would have to be dynamic and frequency dependent.

Not sure how all NC earpones work, but I'd say you still need the delay to properly process the sound and mix it with whatever is playing (unless you rawdog the input flipped and amplified directly in analog).

Normally sounds don't change in frequency that often so that's good enough (tm). I can hear myself typing now (short burst of sound), but the washing machine nearby, which is louder without earphones, is completely gone.

Sorry, you’re right. My understanding was that it was the same in practical terms to delay by half a wavelength, but that wasn’t correct.

Once there's violence targeting you, the solution is to bring real weapons and resolve it using ordinary military tactics, that is, you kill the operator.

"Attack is the best form of defence" is a well-grounded doctrine, but it's not mutually exclusive with protecting yourself. Armies use armoured vehicles even though armour-piercing shells exist, for example.

It's also not always necessary; actively using force against the authorities would essentially be the start of a civil war, and personally I don't think starting a civil war is more likely to result in change than peaceful protest. For instance, Serbia is to some extent reliant on the EU, and has expressed an interest in joining. That should force the current government to reconsider and crack down on corruption much better than an attempted coup would.

Full disclosure: I have never been to Serbia and this is just my personal feeling. But for expressly peaceful protests to seamlessly turn into a full-blown revolution, and a successful one at that, seems incredibly unlikely to me.

Yes, but these kinds of systems are not actually very good as military weapons. They are easily countered by simply shooting the operators.

Are they? They seem easy enough to operate remotely, or by a guy in a tank or a bulletproof Popemobile or whatever.

It's probably something like a horn, or a speaker. A couple of bullets are probably enough to break it.

Defensive measure are also enjoyable as they give an increased tactical field - as to put it, they increase the luck area.

Yes, but presumably dealing with just a couple of systems like this has to be a quick matter. These things are probably off right now, so it's just a matter of finding them, shooting the people guarding them and either destroying or taking them.

Operator is typically thousands of kilometres away

No, he's probably just around the corner, having just set up the speakers and put on his hearing protection.

Yes, these weapons are much shorter ranged than an AK-47 in trained hands. They are not really for fighting wars.

That sounds bold and exciting, but it's clearly false and terrible advice.

Violence, like warfare, is politics by other means. Every expert knows that law of warfare - the first law of warfare, in a sense - that it ends when and only when there is political agreement. Even in warfare, violence just buys time and changes your political position.

In countries with rule-of-law, you can use the political / legal system to stop the violence and hold accountable the perpetrators. In countries without, the only solution is political.

It's also well-established that non-violence and other tactics can be quite effective. While if you attack back and injure others, your credibility and legality is gone - nobody will listen to you or pay much attention to 'they started it' (which the other side will dispute anyway).

Once there's violence targeting you, the politics is over and a different kind of problem solving begins.

If someone has attacked you and there has been no apology or attempt to solve the situation, he must be eliminated. Once he's done it, he may well try again, in which case you might die. Better then to get rid of him.

> Once there's violence targeting you, the politics is over

You are missing the fundamentals: violence is the continuation of politics, and is resolved by politics.

> If someone has attacked you and there has been no apology or attempt to solve the situation, he must be eliminated.

Really? If someone assaaults you, you must "eliminate" them? That is bizarre, extreme, dangerous behavior.

People have become highly indocrinated with violence as an ideology. Look at the absurdity of this comment.

I don't really agree that it's necessarily a continuation of politics. It's an interpretation of things from Clausewitz. It's to some degree a great interpretation, explaining certain aspects of warfare, but you choose the role that your violence plays. You can make it an extension of politics, you can make it simple self-defence, purely a matter of destroying your enemies.

>Really? If someone assaaults you, you must "eliminate" them? That is bizarre, extreme, dangerous behavior.

If the government or other powerful entities target you specifically, yes, you have to get rid of them.

Even in warfare, what dictate the end of it is politics, most war stop because of that, killing yourself just because "gun go brrr" in a democratic country is stupid, and probably is going to back fire, no one normal like people shooting each other for nothing and putting innocents in risk

> You can make it an extension of politics, you can make it simple self-defence, purely a matter of destroying your enemies.

You still don't understand.

> If the government or other powerful entities target you specifically, yes, you have to get rid of them.

Changing the government is politics; you are just accomplishing it through other means - violence.

You are going to "get rid" of the government through violence? When has that happened? And what are the results? Politics enables people to change governments regularly, and with much better results.

My perception is that it's an ideology of violence. People just want to advocate violence - like anyone else who wants to feel like a rebel against the status quo. Maybe find something bad to upend, rather than peace. If you can choose violence, so can other people, so can the next people who don't like you - it's not a good outcome for society or for you or your descendents.

You choose to interpret it as politics. But you can make decisions from many points of view, even a view of pure self-defence.

If somebody is engaging in pure self-defence it is a misframing to think of as political.

If you believed that it were political, then you could imagine compromises, coalitions etc. that could end it, but if it's pure self-defence then it will end when the threat is gone, and agreements etc. will be irrelevant.

It's hard to follow your argument. It seems that nothing has meaning because it's all perception. I'm saying there is reality out there, and in that reality violence is politics - whether or not you see it or I see it.

>And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say goodbye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrest, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood that they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. What about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur – what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked. The Organs [Soviet state institutions] would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!

If…if… We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation. We spent ourselves in one unrestrained outburst in 1917, and then we hurried to submit. We submitted with pleasure! … We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - The Gulag Archipelago

"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can't prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don't know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have....

"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose."

— Milton Sanford Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45

> the only solution is political.

This an idealized version of revolution and assumes elections are available and respected... There's rarely no violence during the fall of authoritarian regimes, even the most famous version of non-violent protest succeeding in India included a lot of fighting by Indian nationalists that pushed Britain to withdraw.

> This an idealized version of revolution

I'm not talking about revolution, but about all violent conflict. It's an actual, universal principle of violent conflict, and of warfare in particular. I didn't say there was no violence, I said violence is politics using a different means, and is only settled by politics.

Read some Fanon, then come back and review your comment.

He still right, nonviolent means are effective, go ahead start shooting each other in front of a school because "violence is the only mean" and see how many support you

The operator deserves to be killed for this. Stop defending evil

> The operator

who?

> for this

for what?

> deserves to be killed

Who are you to say? What if someone else disagrees, as they likely do? Should any one person have the authority to kill another? Maybe that's why someone is attacking you (in the hypothetical scenario).

Every reasonable person agrees with me. It’s obvious. Would you ever write a unit test to assert true is true? Sometimes you can just look at the problem and the right answer is so clear that everyone knows it

> Every reasonable person agrees with me.

It's exactly the opposite - you're spending too much time in the violent-ideology bubble.

Most of the world is law-abiding, avoids violence, and calls the police. Until recently in the US it was almost universal, afaik, that self-defense was the limit of legal violence, and you had a 'duty to retreat' if violence could be avoided. Only recently has the right wing passed 'castle doctrine' laws there. In other countries, people don't buy guns with the idea of meeting violence with violence; in the US, at least until recently, most people didn't have guns.

But there is already violence, since people turned on this device.

What device?

I didn't say violence didn't exist; I said the vast majority of people are opposed to it as a solution to problems.

I fully support targeted use of violence against oppressors and aggressors but it needs to be said that materialized (as opposed to threatened/implied) violence only works if you are able to deliver sufficient amounts of it.

Up until that point you need to paint yourself as the victim (the just/right/good side) to get more support to deliver more violence later what the time comes to materialize it.

Premature materialization leads to the oppressor/aggressor painting _himself_ as the victim and you as the aggressor. And because most people are uninformed, not terribly intelligent and conditioned to prefer peace over justice, they are more likely to take his side.

Yes, but you probably only need something like a 1000 men to get something like Mariupol. That of course does require all of them to be ridiculously resilient, but I think you can learn that.x

You're really up and down these comments advocating the start of another war in the Balkans, aren't you? How did that work out last time, and the time before that?

Think of it like this instead: if those who run countries or otherwise have power over people know that they if they attack people risk a proper response, then all such people who are sensible will refrain from violence.

If things get too out of hand there's always the possibility of calling an election.

Use some thick metal plate as a shield and let it reflect the sound back towards the source, most likely. Or something foamy, like mattresses or the like, to just attenuate it. But I don't think any of that would protect you if you're facing 160 dB (though it would indeed be useful if you're farther from the source); the appropriate tactic then is indeed to disperse uniformly over a larger area and make it infeasible for your adversary to launch a concentrated attack. (After all, this is how actual present-day military tactics copes with the existence of much older "area denial" weapons, such as machine guns, tanks etc.) Your protests should then become more "hit and run" in style, relying on highly visible gimmicks rather than mere physical presence to demonstrate continued support.

That's the exact same circumstances that lead to the development of guerilla warfare. I don't know how you'd go around creating a "highly visible gimmick" that has any lasting impact though.

The point is to simply demonstrate mass support by any means available. You can do it by gathering as a large crowd, but when that becomes a vulnerability your tactics must evolve somehow.

Dunno, ask Tesla owners how they're feeling about driving their vehicle and parking it, lately. On that note, ask Musk how he feels about the trending direction of his stock value. The highly visible gimmick of swastikas spraypainted on cars, torched charging stations & Cybertrucks, etc. seems to have an effect. Probably a lasting one, though that remains to be seen of course.

Umbrellas in Hongkong come to mind.

that was more about shielding your face, non?

> useful if you're farther from the source

Inverse square law, so yeah.

FPV drone blowing up the LRAD. Total cost below $1000.

At that point, you should realize that a round of 7.62 is under $1 and equally effective.

An LRAD is a big speaker array so you'd need a lot of shots to take out enough of the array or a lucky shot and angle to hit some control box.

if you're bringing FPV drones you're well past the point of protesting

For all we know, certain types of deafness may be immune.

You could get another one of those machines and turn it on with a precisely calculated delay. :P

in case anyone’s curious about the context of the protest, I wrote a brief summary for an outside perspective about a month ago https://markoanastasov.com/signals/serbia-student-revolution...

Excellent write up. Thank-you. Not anything in the available press, or media, has explained it so well.

The protesters described the noise it was like something huge was flying past over them, looking at the reaction it must’ve been terrifying

Serbia is one of the Russian-controlled Governments, along with Hungary and Georgia; these are the countries where we expect to see such attacks made to suppress protest.

(USA is not controlled, any more than say China is controlled, but is an authoritarian regime (so no real elections), so there's a shared world view, and here also I would expect to see much the same.)

> Serbia is one of the Russian-controlled Governments

Serbia is a major weapons supplier for Ukraine [0][1][2] and has backed Ukraine's stance on Crimea as it has implications for Serbia's stance on Kosovo.

Vucic only cares about Vucic, and will work with any country (Germany [3], Russia, China [4], America [5], Turkiye [6], UAE [7], etc) to continue to hold power and balance alternatives.

By becoming close with every major player in the region, it makes it easier for Vucic to continue to crackdown on opposition without dealing with condemnations (eg. Germany will remain silent because of the billions in FDI).

Orban did the same thing, but after grinding the EP to a halt, patients for Orban grew thin. By remaining outside the EU, Vucic can continue to hold power while not burning that many bridges with European leadership.

> USA is not controlled, any more than say China is controlled, but is an authoritarian regime (so no real elections)

Huh? Serbia is a night and day difference to the US. The best comparison to the US is probably Israel.

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/leaked-us-intel-document-claim...

[1] - https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/09/19/ukraine-is-a-boo...

[2] - https://www.ft.com/content/136ed721-fd50-4815-8314-d9df8dc67...

[3] - https://www.politico.eu/article/serbian-president-aleksandar...

[4] - https://apnews.com/article/serbia-china-xi-jinping-visit-nat...

[5] - https://amp.dw.com/en/serbia-and-us-the-next-great-trans-atl...

[6] - https://www.dailysabah.com/politics/diplomacy/defense-at-for...

[7] - https://www.mei.edu/publications/serbias-best-friend-arab-wo...

I am corrected.

Thank you, and very much; I had thought I knew where Serbia was in things, but I was mistaken. I don't want to be mistaken, especially not now, where the situation is so serious. It's an excellent post, and I'm very grateful to you for the time you spent pulling all the links together.

Given the correction, can you edit your initial comment?

I don't think it's totally clear-cut that the USA isn't currently Russian-controlled, at least in terms of some of the higher offices.

It's incorrect that Serbia has Russian-controlled government. Why would you say that? We're quite capable of having our own independent dictator, thank you. If anything, Vučić was widely supported by EU. One of our problems is that there's almost no pressure on government from any external side - not from US, not from EU, not from Russia, not from China. Opposition is entirely internal.

Pressure from the outside can always lead to polarization and finger pointing as it can't be expected (reasonably) that the other country doesn't in fact has a hidden agenda. So I think it is good there is no pressure from the outside, the government can't say "but it's the evil X that pressure us and supports the riots!"

I do hope something comes out of the protests (even if it is just the government being a bit less corrupt), without more horrible violence. But moving societies is hard and many times painful.

Can you share some details about this EU support?

It is not Russia-controlled but it has a long history of relationship with Russia: for example, Russian Empire entered WW1 to protect Serbia.

the Russians supported Serbia in the 90s as well, albeit in a more limited fashion since the wall just came down and things were pretty raw and hectic in the post-USSR world.

Are there any reputable sources confirming this? So far I've only seen random accounts on social media making the claim. The police, defence ministry and emergency hospital all deny the claim.

Jeez. Getting your comment flagged for asking for a source. I'm out.

The hospitals too? Got any sources yourself for those? The government agencies denying it I don't find particularly damning, because it makes sense to me that they would deny it, even if they did use them.

Associated Press wrote this:

> Belgrade’s emergency hospital has denied reports that many people sought help after the incident and urged legal action against those who “spread untrue information”.

Gonna be honest with you, "urged legal action against those who “spread untrue information”" sounds blatantly like propaganda to me. Can you imagine any decent healthcare worker responding like this to a situation like this, even if they disagree that such a weapon has been used?

But let's ignore that bit, not even important. If I read it right, the hospital "has denied reports that many people sought help". So they did not deny that those who did showed symptoms consistent of an LRAD or ASD deployment? Kind of a nothingburger I'd say.

I've seen a video on Reddit which would be very difficult to explain otherwise.

That's some impressive range, 200 meters.

And it seems as effective in the back as in the front.

I bet this video will 10x the orders for these devices.

I don’t think governments should have access to the “make the protestors immediately go away” button that they can just hit whenever they want.

Governments, by definition, have legal access to anything they can get their hands on.

That depends on where you put international law into this. Since 1945 it has generally been considered that there's a limit to the actions that a sovereign country can take. International law might work primarily with treaties rather than 'conventional' laws, but there are already parallels with national legal systems. We have a kind of international legislature (the United Nations General Assembly) and a judiciary (the International Court of Justice).

The people can and should act as a check on the social contract they have with their citizens

Technology also attacks this front, through mass surveillance and disinformation. Which is really what we’ve been seeing in the past 20 years. More and more, the focus is shifting to the “source”, the human minds who demand change.

The problem with these devices, for the government, is that the people _might_ come back, but this time with tools designed to defeat these devices (such as guns as explosives). If that happens, it can be very bad (for both parties).

Overuse of these kinds of things is...dangerous for the government

I mean history says that’s indeed the next logical step

I would never expect Tech Ingredients' video "DEFEATING LRAD" to become relevant on European soil.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXKTBQBugIA

i have a feeling it will be relevant on all continents before 2100

the world we're moving to is not one that is friendly to personal liberties

From what im reading elsehwhere, it was ADS. Active Denial System. Microwaving people from a distance. Source: Serbian protestors on youtube.

From the videos and the description, it looks like it basically makes you think there’s a vehicle approaching and everyone runs away to not get run over.

But would this actually work repeatedly or could you actively override the panic effect if you become aware that it’s just an illusion?

It’s not just loud and scary. Has physical effects on humans

As I understand, you can override the panic, but lose your hearing.

At least in the videos I saw, it didn’t look that loud.

People were more confused and looking for the source of the sound while trying to move away, not holding their ears like they were literally hurt by the noise.

it's loud enough to be carried though your bones; covering your ears doesn't help.

it's also very disorienting

One can easily protect themselves [0]!

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXKTBQBugIA

Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43377133

Is anyone knowledgeable what would be the best way to block the sound waves?

a) Earplugs? b) destructive interference?

Everyone here got so political and it's a shame nobody is discussing counter-measures available. Sound is one of the easiest forms of energy to manipulate, it is easily absorbed, reflected and reverberated.

Because these systems exploit resonance in the skull and inner ear, in theory a thick motorcycle helmet should do the heavy work already for blocking some of these from reaching your skull, as well as blocking any random projectiles flying around. Additionally wool blankets or other thick, soft materials can be wrapped around the neck+head part to further reduce waves from entering your skull and resonating there.

Also if you can identify the dominant frequencies used by the device, you could design surfaces with materials that reflect or diffuse those waves effectively. Something like an array of concave acoustic reflectors or even a shield coated with a material tuned to reflect those frequencies might work. Redirecting the sound back at riot police would be ironic — wonder if they’d be as comfortable with it as they are deploying it against crowds. :D

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43377133

This one kind of wins just by getting more votes and comments.

What happened to just shouting at each other? That would have been more civilized.

Better that than Maidan.

We had them used on lockdown protesters in Australia in 2022.

Welcome to the Totalitarian State Club, Serbia.

In Australia they were used for broadcasting audible messages and did not cause harm: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-18/coronacheck-sonic-wea...

We're not living in some oppressed totalitarian state here in Australia. It's a bit of a nanny state, and the media's pretty Murdoch-dominated, but it's about the same as any other Western democracy.

Wait, we're not totalitarian because we're about the same as the other scumbags?!

https://xcancel.com/nexta_tv/status/1901244199220982213

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