functor
2d ago
As someone who has attended a decent number of high risk demonstrations in Europe my take is that the unite the right rally was a failure of planning. First don't announce demonstrations far in advance. This gives time for antifa to mobilize. Antifa require a numerical advantage and their mobilization is slow. Demonstrations should only be announced when absolutely required.
Posting times and places is a major mistake. We used to apply for permits to demonstrate in one place and then go to another place and hold our rally there. We would be done before antifa had found our new spot.
The biggest mistake is assembling at the demonstration and then dispersing afterwards. Participants should never ever meet up on location but need to meetup somewhere far away and travel there in a group. Participants don't even need to know where they are going after assembling. Once the participants arrive on location the demonstration has to be efficient. Hanging around in the park while waiting for people was incompetent. Once people arrive on site the demonstration has to start within a minute.
The police tried to disperse the crowd forcing James Fields into the crowd of antifa by himself. At no point should he have done this. If the police push you towards antifa sit down and refuse to move. They can't physically force a thousand people to spread out one and one. The exit needs to be coordinated, and you can make deals with the police to leave as a group. Even with police dispersal leaving alone doesn't make sense. They should at least have left in small groups. The event is not over until hours later when everyone has safely returned. We often went home in groups making sure we would be a team of people at each house as antifa would ambush people as they came home.
The organizers of unite the right lacked the experience of groups like casa pound or generation identity and made beginner mistakes. They needed to learn by doing small scale street activism and building an activist culture. Instead they went straight for a mass event with predictable results.
The police love instigating fights and then arresting people for them. Antifa can throw things at a demonstration and then demonstrators get arrested for throwing things back. The police are not the demonstrators friend and they often have dirty tricks like forcing demonstrations into bad terrain, pushing demonstrations into tight spaces, holding people for long periods in bad weather and letting antifa get really close.
As for James Fields people react differently under riot like situations. A riot is surreal and the closest thing you can experience to a medieval battle. Especially inexperienced people need to have others around them to take care of them. He also needed a reliable lawyer available for advice from day one. This should have been provided by the organizers. Demonstrators need to be properly coached on what they can and can't do and how to handle arrests.
functor
2d ago
And why not refine it yourself if you can? Being dependent on imported fuel is a risk and a cost.
functor
3d ago
John McCain and Victoria Nuland were on Maidan square together and the US was actively funding groups in Ukraine and pushing for regime change. There was clear Ambition to expand NATO east and to cross Russia's red lines even though they were fully aware this would lead to a major war.
functor
3d ago
- Israel sold the plan of instigating a revolution in Iran:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/22/us/politics/iran-israel-trump-netanyahu-mossad.html
Trump admitted he gave weapons to protestors:
the US attacked Iran in 1941 and overthrew the government in 1953
Admittedly the war was more of a British thing at first but the US was clearly involved in the subsequent occupation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Soviet_invasion_of_Iran
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
The US overthrew a democratically elected leader and installed a brutal dictator.
the US paid Iraq to invade Iran;
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2003/9/22/us-plans-to-attack-seven-muslim-states
Netanyahu and the neocons have been pushing hard for war against Iran. US politicians talk openly about overthrowing Iran.
Iran was warming up to the west after 9/11
One bombing in the 80s fundamentally doesn't matter that much when millions have died in the middle east.
functor
3d ago
The number one fossil fuel producer in the world is the US which is also the number one nuclear producer.
Russia is the third largest fossil fuel producer in the world and has over the past decade been the number two country in building new nuclear.
UAE has fossil fuels as a main export yet has built a large nuclear power plant.
functor
3d ago
Biden helped Al Qaeda take over Syria.
Obama bombed Libya to the stone age, surged troops in Afghanistan, started the first Ukraine war and helped jihadists take half of Syria.
George Bush invaded Iraq and Afghanistan.
Trump's first term was relatively peaceful and Trump was the first candidate in a long time to be outspoken in his criticism of previous wars.
functor
4d ago
The US attacked Iran in 1941 and then overthrew the government in 1953. In the 1980s it paid Iraq to invade Iran which killed hundreds of thousands of Iranians. Since then the US has invaded a neighbouring country three times and launched to more wars in the past year against Iran. Israel helped jihadists take over Syria, a country that has friendly relations with Iran. The US and Israel has bombed Iranian embassies, flooded Iran with migrants and heroin, sanctioned Iran, shot down an Iranian airliner, assassinated plenty of Iranians and openly called for overthrowing the Iranian government.
This isn't Iran fighting a proxy war, this is Iran helping its neighbours in a justified way.
Iran wanted peace in 2001. The US refused it. The Iranians have tried to negotiate, and the US has murdered negotiators.
functor
4d ago
Mossad and CIA have been backing all sorts of groups to create chaos in Iran.
functor
4d ago
These protestors were armed by the US and Israel. It was an armed insurrection backed by an enemy state. Iran had every reason to shut if down and it is far better to shut it down than turn into Syria. The casualty numbers are sold to us by the same people who lied about every other regime change war.
functor
7d ago
Having spent time in southern Italy I don't buy the historic narratives. Singapore was a swamp long after the historic issues impacted Southern Italy. China was wrecked in the 1900s but they are really putting in effort into building their country.
The issues in Southern Italy are related to an inability to organize. Buses crawl through cities in Sicily because there are parked cars everywhere. Building will be in disrepair and nobody bothers to paint them. They are not too poor to buy paint. The ticket machine at the train stations are constantly broken. There is garbage on the street despite high unemployment. Why are they not cleaning if they have nothing to do? There are basic issues with petty crime, people not being able to queue properly, loud behaviour and other anti social issues that make life hard there.
What struck me most about southern Italy is the lack of any large scale organization. Even when walking through large cities like Naples there are few businesses or organizations that seem to have a turnover of more than one million Euros. There are plenty of small restaurants, cafés, tiny hotels etc. Southern Italians seem perfectly capable of managing their own small scale operation. But they seem to fail specularly at scale. There seem to be few instances of larger groups of people coming together to achieve anything. Southern Italians are the inverse of Chinese and Japanese people.
There is simply no way a semiconductor manufacturer or any high tech firm can function when people can't cooperate. Southern Italy is a bit like India. There is plenty of talent and individually the people can be amazing. However, as a collective there is widespread dysfunction.
As for HBD narrative I found southern Italians to be much more European and lighter in complexion than expected.
functor
8d ago
I have run several tech companies and worked in some high performing team. My experience is more software development than network engineering but the two are similar.
Employees often overestimate the importance of technical skills. We need a few really technically competent people but most just need to be able to do their job. Many technically weak people have succeeded in the industry. Even productivity requirements are often not that high and as long as you are producing something on a regular basis you are fine.
My main issue with devs is the inability to think. Developers who get assigned tasks and only focus on those tasks going away always cause problems. Your job is not your assigned tasks and the goal is not to clear tasks. Your team has some higher goal. Maybe it is a new feature, maybe the company wants to build new infrastructure and increase network load 10x. Maybe they want to get some compliance certificate. You need to keep the actual goal in the back of your mind and question what you are doing and ensure that it is aligned with the actual goal.
It is mindboggling how many in tech have worked on a product for years and have zero clue how it works, what the clients are, what the product road map is or the what the value of what they are working on is.
Lets say you are working for a company that makes software for dentists. Some people will work on the booking flow for months without really having any sense of how the booking goes. Instead of actually thinking through things words like booking, patient or dentist become abstract words. For example a sentence like "A dentist can only work one shift a day", becomes "A zongzong can only wingwang one zong per wang". It is some obscure businessrule that they have memorized but has no concrete value or meaning.
Taking responsibility for the network is key to succeeding. Feel a sense of ownership over it. It is your job to ensure it is doing its job and that it is improving. This doesn't mean going rouge and doing your own thing, it means asking questions, coming with suggestions, finding better ways of doing things and protecting the interests of the users.
functor
10d ago
The US is currently blockading the straight. The straight was open until Trump and Netanyahu started the war that brought us the completely predictable result of the straight being closed. The straight won't be open until they sign a peace deal with Iran.
I don't hate the west. I do hate wars that flood the west with migrants, stop oil supplies and cost a fortune. The wars in the middle east are anti west.
functor
10d ago
Is anyone else starting to freak out about the whole Hormuz situation? 13% of the world's oil, 22% of global LNG and a sizeable chunk of fertilizers is blocked. That means 13% fewer big machines running. That is a major decrease in the global economy. Yet markets seem surprisingly stable and people don't seem to be freaking out despite the impending cliff.
Is Trump actually crazy enough to cause a major crash in the global economy or is he willing to admit defeat and pull out? How bad will this crisis actually get?
functor
14d ago
It is fascinating how much resistance building grand buildings gets. Every year hordes of tourists visit palaces, cathedrals and other forms of monumental architecture. Last time I was there I could barely see the trevi fountain because of the tourist horde. GDP is higher than ever yet western civilization isn't producing wonders at nearly the same rate as we were in the 1890s. Western civilization should be outshining Versailles and the Vatican. We don't need to cargo cult and build copies of old styles. We need to make our own art and our own timeless architecture.
functor
16d ago
The women's quarters of the tsar's palace were particularly elaborate and were equipped with a separate courtyard, dining room, and children’s apartments, as well as a large group of maidservants, wet nurses, nannies, and ladies in waiting.
The women the elite had children with effectively lived in spas with exceptional luxury. The idea that they were forced into a miserable existence doesn't match reality.
functor
16d ago
The main issue with the book is that she understands the aesthetics of certain religious groups but has no real understanding of the mechanics of it.
In real life young attractive and fertile women were treated exceptionally well. The young women pharaohs had children with lived in luxury. Young women married to princes lived in luxury. In no culture do elite level men keep the mothers of their kids in basements.
On the flip side elite level men generally have had an easy time finding women and don't have to resort to capturing women. Taking slave wives that live in poverty is something low class men who would engage in.
Atwood really fails at evolutionary psychology and anthropology. Her books confirms my belief that many of the worst ideas in modern politics comes from people literature background who don't really understand the underlying mechanisms.
functor
16d ago
shotguns are pretty unregulated. Semiauto is no problem. Pistols are harder as they require being a member of a shooting club. I had to wait a year to take a 12 lesson course in air pistols to join. Then I had to take 12 classes in real pistols and achieve decent results in shooting to get my license. Several people failed the test because the shooting requirements were fairly strict. I have to redo the test every five years to keep them.
functor
17d ago
Sweden. Generally fairly relaxed. I got my hunting license in three days through a course and they guy who administered the test was the same guy who gave the course. He pretty much fed us the answers. I have sent in paperwork and gotten a yes on my 6 applications within a few weeks. The rules are wonky but following them strictly usually leads to consistent results. The main complaints are the nonsensical rules. But as long as I stick to them there are no problems.
functor
20d ago
Lets, say it works as well as Serbia worked despite Serbia having 1/16th the population and was fighting a ground war. It still took one year. Doing it with air power alone against a bigger country is a far more ambitious objective. Are people willing to accept a year-long oil crisis plus months more to ramp production up again?
The fallacy at the heart of the war was the idea that the US could send some missiles and achieve what the US failed to achieve against Yemen in 11 years within two weeks. The air war option could easily fail and even in an optimistic scenario it is a slow and expensive option.
functor
20d ago
air wars can be and historically were very efficient.
When has a country of this size been bombed to submission in purely an air war? Also what is the point of this? A monstrous humanitarian crisis for what? Besides, if Iran collapses there is a big risk they bomb their neighbours oil infrastructure and that there are surviving groups that fire drones at ships for years.
and won easily or something like that.
In other words, Trump has failed at that strategy as his war is not going well. 39% of Americans support the war, 54% oppose it. Those numbers will get worse as the oil crisis gets worse. Saddam didn't block Saudi oil.
Also the propaganda isn't as strong this time as this isn't a televised war, it is a war on social media.
functor
20d ago
First gulf war replaced Saddam with Saddam. It caused horrific civilian suffering and in today's world it would mean having thousands of drones and missiles hit other countries oil infrastructure. For what? What is the point of this war? Why can China be the biggest trading partner with these countries without the constant wars? In 1967 there was a major ground component. The Israelis took sinai.
There were also other precedents such as bombing of Serbia which resulted in peace from Milosevic or operations in Libya,
Both these cases took a year and both of these countries are less than 1/15 the population size of Iran. Again, what is the point of bombing 93 million people into a mega humanitarian crisis that is going to pull the rest of the middle east with it down.
Isis was defeated by tens of thousands of Iranian, Syrian and Hezbollah soldiers on the ground. Major help from the Russian air force absolutely helped. But ISIS was not bombed away.
In the end Trump will be more screwed as selling that he won a war in the middle east by killing large numbers of people will never impress the voters as much as pancaking the economy.
The situation is unwinnable and the lesson from Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan is get out fast. The war should never have happened and it was a giant mistake to let Israel suck the US in.
Wars are easy to start but difficult to end. There are only a few paths forward:
-
Land invasion. Trying to clear the straight y occupying sizeable area of Iran. This is not going to be easy. It took Israel 40 days and dozens of dead and wounded to take a town 10 km from Israel. The US will have a nasty logistics situation with soldiers having to be resupplied by air. Medical evacuation will be difficult and heavy equipment is hard to amass for an airborne invasion.
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Naval blockade. This would effectively be what the US had against the Houthis with both sides blockading each other for a year in Yemen. Not only will this blockade be a black hole for the US navy sucking in most of its resources it would also mean potentially years of fertilizer, oil, and gas shortages.
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More bombing. Not only a horrific humanitarian crisis to bomb a country to submission but air wars are inefficient. North Vietnam and Laos were bombed relentlessly and they held out. Yemen was bombed for years and held out. To make matters worse the US has burned roughly half their missiles in the first phase of the war. US munitions stockpiles are too depleted for this to be a viable strategy. To make matters worse Iran could bomb oil infrastructure in neighbouring countries causing a long term shortage.
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Realize that the war was fiasco and that the US lost this war. If you start a fight and lose you can't set the terms at the end of it. The US is not energy independent. The US needs to import millions of barrels a day to keep its refineries open. Oil prices in the US will be roughly the same in the US as in the rest of the world. Americans consume twice as much oil per capita as Germans. This war will also cause global food shortages as a sizeable chunk of fertilizers come from the region.
For the average American screwing over the global economy for Israel isn't worth it.
functor
22d ago
Funny how we have other people openly post about genociding Palestinians and that doesn't seem to get anyone banned.
Searching for the exact term "muslims believe" leads to 314 search results on the motte. Many of these comments are negative. There are over a thousand comments with the phrase "Russians are". Do they need specification as well?
functor
22d ago
Jews have disproportionate influence. They are nepotistic and work as a team for their special interest. A small dedicated lobby working for a specific issue can push the mainstream. That is what lobbying is about. It doesn't mean they are superior. There are plenty of cases in European history of one ethnic group having the upper hand in an empire over another. That doesn't require others to be inferior.
The issues with jews is that their interests are not our interests. Open borders migration and diversity makes sense for an ethnic minority protecting its interest. It doesn't benefit wider society. Promoting their ethnic subinterest over the majority's causes conflict. This is why throughout history they have been kicked out by the host population.
Christians and Muslims want to convert the non believers. The jews see the goyim as cattle with no soul.
To be fair patriot front hasn't had the same issues with violence. They are able to do street activism without mayhem. Their uniforms are cringe and they should change their outfits but other than that they seem to be better organized than previous groups.
I do think demonstrations still can work. They can get a lot of attention, they still attract newcomers and plenty of people who were activists on the street 15 years ago are now podcasters, internet activists and donors to political parties.
With that said it would of course be easier without repression.
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