patrick.net

Rybar:

https://t.me/rybar_in_english/23009

For the first time in my adult life, pictures of widespread property damage began trickling out of Israel from odd corners of social media. Officially, Israel reports only three dead. I pray that is true. But the unofficial pictures of collapsed apartment buildings across the small country make the low casualty count difficult to comprehend.

The lack of transparency is a feature, not a bug. Israeli law allows the government total control of war news— every Israeli media outlet must sign an agreement with the military censor as a condition of operating.

When two veteran propaganda machines like Israel’s and Iran’s are engaged in open warfare, there is no such thing as journalism— we’re left to decode battlefield theater. Iran also censors, less formally and more brutally, through arrests, surveillance, and media shutdowns. Its propaganda machine is more centralized, but less internationally credible. Israel’s media, by contrast, benefits from the appearance of a free press while still subject to near-total narrative control, especially during war.

The lack of transparency is a feature, not a bug. Israeli law allows the government total control of war news— every Israeli media outlet must sign an agreement with the military censor as a condition of operating.

When two veteran propaganda machines like Israel’s and Iran’s are engaged in open warfare, there is no such thing as journalism— we’re left to decode battlefield theater. Iran also censors, less formally and more brutally, through arrests, surveillance, and media shutdowns. Its propaganda machine is more centralized, but less internationally credible. Israel’s media, by contrast, benefits from the appearance of a free press while still subject to near-total narrative control, especially during war.

Concussion speed looks mini-nuke. Did Russia give Iran some minis?

smallest Russian nuke is around 1 kiloton or equivalent to 1000 tons of TNT

USA had a 0.01 kiloton nuke

all that energy from that speed caused that much of a shock wave disturbance to the air

energy is always conserved so some of the energy from the hypersonic missile exploding on the ground was converted to that shock wave