perestroika

A longer excerpt for context.

The pledge of cooperation by Delcy and Jorge Rodríguez before the Maduro raid has not been previously reported. In October, the Miami Herald reported on abortive negotiations via Qatar, in which Delcy offered to act as a transitional government chief if Maduro stepped down.

Reuters reported on Sunday that Diosdado Cabello,the powerful Venezuela interior minister, who controls police and security forces, had also been in discussions with the US at a point months before the Maduro operation.

All the sources say there was a fine distinction to the agreement by Delcy Rodríguez: while the Rodríguez family promised to assist the US once Maduro was gone, they did not agree to actively help the US to topple him. The sources insist this was not a coup engineered against Maduro by the Rodríguez siblings.

Hours after the raid, Trump appeared to confirm the talks. He told the New York Post that Delcy Rodríguez was onboard. “We’ve spoken to her numerous times, and she understands, she understands.”

/.../

As the Miami Herald reported in October, Rodríguez tried to propose a transition government, led by her, that would rule Venezuela if Maduro agreed to a prearranged retirement in a presumed safe-haven.

/.../

By October, sources say, in secret, even the Americans who were most aggressive against Maduro were open to working with her. One factor was her promise to work with American oil, and her acquaintance with Americans in the oil business. “Delcy is the most committed to working with US oil,” an ally of hers said.

Kids are flexible. Some of those kids are future anarchists and rebels, once they realize how problematic their society is.

So, at least, some future Russian anarchists will get excellent drone skills from the state.

Thanks for contructive criticism. :)

A compact antenna for long bandwidth: wind a spiral. For 40 meters, you could could make a spiral of 1.6 m outer diameter ("a bit less than average human height"), 10 cm inner diameter and 15 turns of wire (if I used the calculator correctly). Not a terribly efficient antenna, but a very compact one for given wavelength.

Examples:

https://sergeev.io/projects/spiral-dipole/

https://www.avalonarc.org.uk/2019/10-27-an-80m-spiral-loop.html

https://sa0pej.wordpress.com/build-page-nvis-spiral-loop-antenna/

(I especially like the last one, third generation is made of copper tape and sized like a laptop computer, and the guy in Sweden is getting reception from as far as the Far East.)

I have heard (myself I don't use HF) that HF radios work tolerably with an antenna horizontally on a car roof (could be a truck bed). But it's true that there is little bandwidth on such frequencies. As for throughput: a channel that is 9 KHz wide is supposed to transfer 9.6 kbit / s with military data radios (with ionosphere reflection, despite all the multipathing that it causes - I have not checked, but recall a scientific paper telling so). A reasonable detection avoidance technique might be broadcasting from a depressed location or an urban canyon with tall ground clutter. You'd want the direction finder to chase reflections.

Even more fun scenarios exist: launch your guerilla transmitter on a free flight balloon, and will have plentiful line of sight. Essentially a pseudosatellite.

Yes, let's nitpick words. Broadcast implies that something is available to others. An ionosphere reflection definitely is. An unmanned pirate station also is. An agile frequency hopping signal conditionally is - if others know a key. Which would arguably make it unicast, a term I should have used in that part of my sentence.

and you should probably stop pretending to understand how radio transmission works

Oh highness, thou areth much holier than me indeed, I am humbled by this mere sentence.

Your recommendation is essentially to not transmit in a way that anyone can receive

I made several recommendations.

Good luck sending an e-mail that can't be filtered and blocked or traffic analyzed, even if the content is encrypted.

As a minimum before trying, I would advise a peer to peer mix network (TOR, I2P). But repressive governments block those as well as they can, and may pay users a visit if they suspect something.

I've seen tests where a reasonably equipped military vehicle could not detect a drone in the air near them transfering video, because the data link was roving through a band of several gigahertz at a thousand hops per second.

If you stay close to the noise floor, especially if you use parts of spectrum that others are using (very impolite, but people who don't want to be caught are unexceptionally impolite)... good luck to the catchers. Especially if the signal occurs at a pre-agreed time and remains short (read: don't try sending video, send something SMS sized).

...broadcast it upwards with a reasonably directional antenna, reflecting off the ionosphere.

...broadcast it from a solar powered relay station which you access via optical link from distance.

(Not a ham radio operator, but an anarchist, but I can draw a Doppler radar in GnuRadio and have implemented a monopulse tracker... with lots of help from other people who know better. My assessement: it's easy to track powerful signals on an expected frequency, but very hard to track weak signals which do agile frequency hopping with a random key, or hide among other traffic.)

I feel sad for the Belarusian ham radio operators, however. In case of crisis, they would be the people who could help develop something interesting to help others. They were practising their hobby openly and became targets because of that. People who do clandestine business don't exchange contact information openly.

I guess KGB (they still have it) decided that nothing interesting is ever needed in their land. :(

The situation seems to be extensively borked. I would estimate that while suffering a series of military defeats, SDF cannot look after the Islamic State militants it had previously taken prisoner. There is confirmation for a few hundreds escaping, but thousands more are likely to take leave from the low-security camps. Despite the Syrian government's efforts to enforce a curfew, their comrades who are free and armed, have already called for breakout attempts, and these are likely occurring.

There has been credible news that the Kurdish-majority city of Kobani is again under siege, and running low on food supplies.

There has been credible news that the SDF is trying to conduct a general mobilization, to multiply their manpower and counter the Syrian army.

There have been claims of the Turkish armed forces supporting the Syrian government with air strikes. Meanwhile, SDF has requested cross-border assistance from Iraqi Kurds and of course the US - but the US has been unresponsive.

And the ceasefire... of course it was violated almost immediately after being presented. Most likely, lots of troops even didn't get to know that a ceasefire existed.

Welcome everyone to the 15th year of Syrian civil war, still vigorous as always. :o With the Western countries dealing with a crazy president in the US, I am not optimistic about anyone stabilizing Syria.

Just came from watching the video and intended to post this. :) Truly impressive.

And likely possible due to the environment she lives in - very different from that of dairy cows. They don't live that long and don't have chances of exploring the world.

Thanks for the other poll. :) But in your link, you have confused "oppose" and "support". :)

86 percent in new poll against US taking Greenland by force

I think it would be better if we didn't judge other posters based on off-mark opinions.

That poster seemed like a reasonable person in some other matters. But their opinion on this topic seemed far too optimistic, given that troop movements and military activity were increasing at the same time. :(

P.S.

Allegedly (but I trust that BBC checks its sources well) there is a cease-fire agreement. It looks extremely unfavourable to the Kurds, and promises to al-Sharaa that he'll get almost everything.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gwk37ewvwo

However, when I checked out what's being written on "Kurdish Front News" (telegram channel, not news outlet, content warning, some videos depict death and violence, source ) I found a contradicting claim:

"It is important to note that, as of the time of writing, neither the SDF, Mazloum Abdi, the Autonomous Administration, nor any of their officials or media offices have announced acceptance of this agreement."

However, al-Sharaa is pictured presenting a document with signatures (which I can't verify) so I sort of expect that the ceasefire was signed by both sides, and a statement by the AANES / SDF will follow.

I think it will be confirmed in the following days that there has been heavy fighting for Raqqa (north / east of Euphrates, 500 000 inhabitants by the last count, largest city in previously Kurdish-held area, with an Arab majority population) between SDF and HTS (government troops backed by militias of some Arab tribes). According to ABC News, SDF has lost the town to Syrian government. source This would make it clear that the river can't work as a borderline between forces any more.

In short, it looks bad.

It could be that the autonomy of North-East Syria is over really soon, SDF will try to save its people by integrating with the Syrian army, and those who don't want that will hide their weapons and go underground to wait. If the Syrian central government proves central enough and not democratic enough (currently it's an oligarchy of former terrorists, now called government officials)... I predict that soon enough, quite numerous Syrian Kurds will want to leave their homeland.