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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

#381

Post by numpad0 »

laweijfmvo wrote: post #87
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.

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?

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.

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

#382

Post by asdf6969 »

mmooss wrote: post #116
impossiblefork wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 t…

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

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

#383

Post by impossiblefork »

mmooss wrote: post #342
impossiblefork wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 indo…

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.

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

#384

Post by JumpCrisscross »

hayst4ck wrote: post #377
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

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

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

#385

Post by tonyhart7 »

martin-t wrote: post #287
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #141

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? 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.)

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)…

"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

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

#386

Post by mdhb »

ncallaway wrote: post #154
mdhb wrote: post #14

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.

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

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

#387

Post by mdhb »

vvchvb wrote: post #58
mdhb wrote: post #14

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.

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

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

#388

Post by lijok »

observationist wrote: post #27

Serbia had the LRAD systems on hand, after buying them in 2022, most likely from Genasys, but possibly from HyperSpike. https://genasys.com/lrad-products/ 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…

> 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?

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

#389

Post by soco »

_heimdall wrote: post #264
gruez wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

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

#390

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

energy123 wrote: post #310
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

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. Survei…

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.
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