the able bodied revolutionary

This passage suggests an assumption - that anarchist society is reached through a revolution that requires forceful action. Or maybe war. But, I must note - even in disputes that were settled with artillery, not all revolutionaries were able bodied.

However, if the previous assumption is true, the subsequent conclusion is indeed true. In a war, you can’t depend on reliable supplies of medicine, fuel, electricity or even food and drinking water. A factory or warehouse may get bombed. A power plant may get bombed. A water treatment plant may get bombed.

Then again, I must remaind: states are quite and very capable of waging war, without any anarchist assistance. Yet people dare to live in states, despite risk that a local state will go crazy and attack others, or the risk that a foreign state will invade.

“We don’t exactly have alternatives, Sherlock”, one would surely counter. And indeed, most of Earth is owned by some state or another, notwithstanding Antarctica. Lucky people can pick the flavour and intensity of statism they live under. Less fortunate ones dont’ get a meaningful choice.

And indeed, a lot of people on Earth right know… would not have the option of getting insulin - despite living under a full blown hierarchy - not to mention accessing a tailor-made cancer vaccine (most of us on Lemmy don’t have that option either).

What would anarchism change?

Well, for a start, it might be permissible to cook it up at home. Speaking as an ex-biologist: you need a bioreactor and purification process or animal organs and a purification process to get insulin. Once you start making it, there’s no point making it for one patient only. There’s no point in making antibiotics for one patient only. There’s no point in making vaccines for one patient only.

So you industrialize and standardize the process. And I don’t see anything in anarchist ideology saying “no, you shall not industrialize any process or announce a standard”. I see critique of how resources are managed. Anarchism criticizes hierarchies of power (wealth == power). It does not typically critique medical or technical advancement, unless some form of advancement alienates people from their rights or concentrates power. Anarchism does criticize large organizations, but only a few tendencies of anarchism conclude that large organizations may not exist. Sometimes they’re needed. Risks that they bring can be grounded in various ways.

…but getting back to the beginning, I think one should try to reach anarchy without war. War very much necessitates acting like a state to maximize chances of victory. It shouldn’t be the first option for an anarchist, and might actually be a the last option to try (when a choice has been forced and nothing peaceful has worked).

From a personal perspective…

In that kind of scenario, I just…die.

Emigrating from a place where violent conflict looks to be imminent, would be advisable if once needs advanced medical care.

I would likely try the methods of car headlight repair:

• fine sandpaper (e.g. 600)
• followed by ultra fine sandpaper (e.g. 1000)
• followed by polishing sandpaper (e.g. 2000 or even more)
• followed by polishing paste (e.g. cerium oxide) on a felt pad

However, since I see that the sink has a glossy surface… I would be deterred by that. The method I mention may reach a layer which isn’t burnt, but will wear off glossy finish and there’s no certainty of it returning in the same tone after polishing is done.

What paint to use - sorry, no idea.

My interpretation:

• Netanyahu has already secured political control of Shin Bet (secret police) by swapping its director
• he wants full control of the IDF, but some people haven’t been willing to swear personal loyalty
• most likely, the general advocate was one
• those people are now removed, one by one, with various methods

As a result, the culture of impunity can continue.

The general advocate who was jailed - she was the person who received, among other documents (likely thousands of documents), the recommendations of the IDF internal investigators about the Rafah ambulance massacre (killing of 15 paramedics and destruction of 5 vehicles).

The IDF recommended to do nothing, claiming that they did nothing particularly wrong, just made some mistakes (executed 15 unarmed medics, some at close range with their hands bound, and tried to conceal the deed).

I don’t know what she would have done, but my reading of the background and signals suggests she might have recommended criminal charges. That would have made her removal absolutely vital for the Netanyahu regime.

Makes it quite clear: sea is responding with a delay, but it will respond, and then very likely - for a long while, it won’t stop responding even if the driving force is removed.

…and some return, too.

Ukraine is notable in one way: it does not draw up people under 25 years for war (so far). It trains them, it lets them volunteer, it welcomes if they build technology for war, but it doesn’t order them to go.

What the reasons are, I’m not totally sure, but I think the government and Rada might want to avoid creating a “lost generation” where many experienced wounds or trauma in youth. The generation they are attempting to spare is a weak spot in Ukraine’s population pyramid - relatively few people were born between 1999 and 2004. If that generation has considerably less kids than generations before them, there will be a pretty bad population decline coming.

Of course, some fear that under pressure, government might cave in and start sending increasingly young people to fight. Others meanwhile fear that many will move abroad and never return.

I’m not sure what to think about it. But I’m pretty sure a person just out of school isn’t the best candidate for war. Physical fitness is less important today, but psychological stability under pressure is required.

Forensic note: if a person is blindfolded while shot, the blindfold will limit where blood sprays. If you have a deceased person with a gunshot wound to their head, but half of their their face is clean, you conclude they were blindfolded.

First of course, it’s disrespectful to make insinuations to a sovereign country about whom they may vote into office.

Secondly, Trump doesn’t have authority to give loans.

He’s probably trying to deceive Argentinian voters with false hope of generous loans (which have to be paid back, I should note).

However, in the US, financial decisions are made by Congress. Certainly on the scale of tens of billons. The president has discretion to move far smaller sums.

In case humanity forgets about how to make CPUs, some folks would still remember how to make stateful relays, magnetic core memory, punch cards and pneumatic logic valves.

It would take a bit of time from there back to a CPU.

My take: a reasonably universal method of payment beats barter, because in a barter economy you can get stuck trying to exchange beans for oars, while the oar maker wants wood or carrots, and the wood cutter needs pumpkins or saw blades instead of peas. :)

However, a universal method of payment will create a finacial sector, and to avoid adverse outcomes, activity in the financial sector needs to match certain criteria. Typically there’s a state regulating things. In an anarchist economy, regulation would decentralized, but there would have to be regulation.

E.g. if there’s a currency, there has to be a mechanism protecting against issuing forged currency. It doesn’t have to be goons with guns (recent takes have involved cryptography instead of them), but a mechanism has to exist.

According to the latest that I’ve read, these “Gerbera” type drones (“Shahed imitators” but dangerous enough to do damage) carried an extra fuel tank that isn’t found in Gerberas that fly in Ukraine.

Seems like a deliberate test of response.

I think the response of shooting them down was correct. I hope that a minimum of information about operating procedures leaked during work. I hope the shootdown was cheap (e.g. planes or helicopters using autocannon instead of missiles) because Gerberas are cheap, dirt cheap.

Some additional message needs to be figured out by NATO countries and communicated (more likely via practical action, since talk is cheap) from which a conclusion of “let’s not do it again” would be read out in Moscow. Preventing a few oil tankers from reaching St. Petersburg to load Russian oil might be one option.

Also, the question of “what’s on our menu for countering dirt cheap weapons” needs to be asked in many countries, and likely has been being asked for a while now. My bet: air-dropped unpowered glide vehicles that intercept a drone. No motor, just enough velocity and altitude from the fighter (or farmer) which brought them.

A side note: by banning social media apps, the government also cut off communication with emigrees earning money in foreign countries.

So, power tried entrenching itself, and power also tried f*cking with a critical part of the Nepalese economy, and then cops used violence.

Currently the military is trying to enforce a curfew. As much as I’ve been told, they aren’t shooting violators at the moment, but telling them to go home.

As far as I know, the central offices of all 3 branches of government + a whole lot of other stuff got burnt down.

As much as I would like to agree, states have historically been far better at fighting wars than most kinds of anarchist organization. Yes, there have been bumbling fools here and there, states can be miserable at innovation - but their organizational model usually prevails if given some time. :(

The methods of state warfare and non-state insurgency differ a lot. A war is financed by the tax office, an insurgency is mostly financed by donation, theft and loot. A tax office will get a great deal further in raising money than even the most talented partisan, because they are pretty uncontestable and systematically squeeze everyone.

State-like methods will have industries leveraging scaling laws and division of labour to produce faster and cheaper (a trivial example: I can be much more productive and make less mistakes if I produce ailerons for 20 drones in a row, or parachutes for 20 drones in a row). A partisan organization will have difficulty doing that and evading detection.

In war, territory matters - you want to control territory that is safe for your side, and locate production where it cannot be obstructed, so you can make stuff by the ton.

This could somewhat change in the near future, but not massively. The destabilizing factor which might change things is likely low-cost drones in all environments. Attacking a big sitting duck might become, at least for a while, somewhat easier than defending a big sitting duck. Maybe it already has (referring to some incidents of a drone swarm flying out of a truck).

However, I am not convinced if this changes the playing field enough.

This somewhat saddens me. To prevail in military conflict, even an anarchist organization would have to adopt methods considerably resembling a state, and revert to its old shape later - if it can. I guess the old saying “war is healthy for a state” (and almost nobody else) isn’t so wrong. :(

Personal perspective: when Ukraine got invaded by Russia, I tried to influence the situation via anarchist organizations first, because that’s where I had contacts. At first, they achieved meaningful things. Ukrainian folks equipped their comrades for war, Russian folks torched and derailed various stuff… but as things continue, what counts more and more is ability to mass produce cheap technology. Anarchist methods have a vital place in research and innovation, but if something even remotely seems to get results, state financing and methods from big industry are better employed to quickly replicate a successful tool. So I foresee that if I come up with a successful tool and want it replicated, I would have to cooperate with an organization capable of mass production - and my anarchist comrades currently don’t have these. In a different world, maybe they would - as a result of experiences and opinions that point out the value of organizing things on big scale. It’s not impossible, anarchists have sometimes organized big stuff.

I’m quite certain that this is some misunderstanding.

Just like in every country where people don’t want to be caught bare-butted in a firestorm, I’m sure that in Belgium too, hospitals, water treatment, military units, air traffic control, rail traffic control, seaports, lighthouses, rescue services, communications hubs, data centers, critical warehouses (e.g. blood bank, vaccine storage, fuel distribution), big data centers and some industries (anything where devices would be ruined by an extended outage) have double or triple redundant power.

In my book, something becomes an electrical grid when power distribution lines cross from one plot of land to another. In some countries, monopoly to do that might be granted to the national grid company.

Now, as for housing and construction bureaucracy: it might be entirely possible that it’s near-impossible to build a decent-sized house in a normal-looking country (including Belgium) without requesting a grid connection for it. Construction bureaucracy is insane in some lands. They might demand you to build a road and lay plumbing too, just because you’re in “zone A” and some local regulation says “all living premises in zone A shall be connected to electrical, water and sewage grids”. My advise in that case: don’t build a living premise. Build something else but live there. :)

P.S.

I also note that Belgium seems to have regulations for microgrids.

https://www.energuide.be/en/questions-answers/what-are-microgrids/2129/

Public electricity networks in Western urban areas are extremely dense and also closely monitored. Because macrogrids are highly reliable, microgrids are virtually unnecessary.

However, efforts are being made to introduce renewable energy into urban environments, too. This is possible through collective self-consumption, for example, where consumers and producers come together as part of a local project (association, cooperative, co-ownership, etc.).

The principle is simple. Let’s say you want to generate sustainable energy, but you’re renting an apartment, living in a protected building or your roof isn’t suitable for solar panels. You can still form a cooperative with other individuals and generate electricity on the roof of a neighbouring school, office or warehouse, for example.

In Brussels, the distribution network operator Sibelga and Leefmilieu Brussel are examining the possibilities for collective self-consumption in the capital city.

Wikipedia tries to trace it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_2025_Indonesian_protests

On 25 August 2025, protests began in Indonesia as part of a larger civil unrest that began in early 2025 over economic frustrations and a proposed hike in housing subsidies for members of parliament. The protests, which were largely concentrated around the capital Jakarta,[42][43][44] grew in intensity and spread nationwide following the killing of Affan Kurniawan, a motorcycle taxi driver who was run over by a Brimob police tactical vehicle on 28 August during a larger violent and excessive crackdown on civil dissent.[42]

Protesters initially demanded the House of Representatives reverse its subsidy schemes and penalize its members who made insensitive statements, as well as pass the Confiscation of Assets Act for lawmakers convicted of corruption.[45] Following the death of Kurniawan, student-led protesters expanded their demands to include a complete and thorough reform of the Indonesian National Police and either the resignation or termination of the chief of police, Listyo Sigit Prabowo.[46]

One of my jobs is programming Android devices so my customers can use them for business critical tasks. The apps I write aren’t in a repository, they are sideloaded without exception.

As soon as control of what may run is passed to someone in a far away land - bye bye, Android, hello new platform (most likely a Debian-based Linux).

Thank you for the advise, I acted upon it too.

For those who don’t know: the Hind Rajab Foundation is the Palestinian equivalent of the Simon Wiesenthal Center - and just as necessary in our time. They take legal action to bring likely war criminals to trial.

• step 1: target a hospital
• step 2: kill journalists as by-catch
• step 3: kill rescue workers in a double-tap strike

I don’t know what will be done about it, but I would like something to be done that stops Israel from proceeding and eventually forces them to give up Netanyahu for trial.

A reality check:

Fuel Shortages Hit Russia’s Far East as Ukrainian Strikes Take Refineries Offline

My assessement: economically, Russia is very exhausted. Living conditions over there have objectively worsened. Inflation is so high that countries with a normal-sized police force would experience rioting (Russia has about 4 times more cops per citizens than a normal country, so it doesn’t).

Meanwhile, the weapons industry is of course booming and has gained lots of new knowledge. I’m not sure if the leading country in drone technology is Ukraine or Russia, but others are quite clearly bogged down in bureaucracy or lazy due to no perceived threat. Financing that industry is however close to falling apart.

Considering inflation (the same money is worth less) and the exhaustion of its sovereign wealth fund (saved up oil revenues) and considering that Ukraine is apparently enforcing a ban on oil refining in Russia (13% of refineries down in one month), Russia might have to reduce its military budget next year, despite not wanting to. (It has already reduced most other budget lines.)

Population has been reduced by emigration (those who could bailed out when it started), war deaths (about 1M men considered expendable are now dead or injured) and lack of births (people lack optimism about future). In fact, population data likely haven’t looked so miserable since the 1990-ties, for which reason publicaton of data was reduced.

Ukraine is, of course, experinecing the same kind of misery, but other European countries have enough resources to keep it functioning.

This could drag on for long, but would end if something broke. It would be far better if the agressor broke.

I cut aluminum with mine (and professional aluminum sellers cut theirs with their saw, but it likely costs thousands), but I will second the “be careful” part.

Aluminum can snag your saw blade (especially if you use a blade meant for wood, which I don’t recommend because it also produces messy output). Snagging can have dangerous results (saw jumping upward and losing teeth or more in the process).

Ensure the work piece is clamped down very well. Ensure that the saw is either on a large level surface or better yet - bolted or clamped down. Ensure that the saw jumping cannot hurt you in any way.

When cutting aluminum, push very gently. And when the raw material gets too small, don’t try cutting the last little piece. Small working material will increase the chance of accidents. I set my limit around 20 cm.

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