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Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

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Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#181

Post by luckylion »

photodeveloper wrote: post #102
tptacek wrote: post #19

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

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.

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#182

Post by Tadpole9181 »

impossiblefork wrote: post #61
crooked-v wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#183

Post by mrob »

Philorandroid wrote: post #108
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

>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.

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#184

Post by cantrecallmypwd »

impossiblefork wrote: post #61
crooked-v wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#185

Post by fer »

treyd wrote: post #103
d1sxeyes wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#186

Post by zozbot234 »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #179
jncfhnb wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#187

Post by vladms »

grujicd wrote: post #68
casenmgreen wrote: post #20

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.)

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.

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#188

Post by cantrecallmypwd »

chinathrow wrote: post #3

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

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.

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#189

Post by hayst4ck »

tpm wrote: post #98
impossiblefork wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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...

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#190

Post by axus »

gruez wrote: post #170
pclmulqdq wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

Or "murder is wrong, because God said so"
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