Pedro Romero

Scientist, humanist, optimist, crypto amateur, SciFi, Spanish, Space and beyond. He.

[Pedro Romero @ElPedroReal]

@Gilnroll87 @Ooomar7 @yasnayae @TenochHuerta Hay un pequeño problema con todo ese sesudo análisis que muestras (el primero y principal), y es que el 99% de las economías allí comparadas son capitalistas, así que estás comparando algunos países capitalistas con otros. En efecto...

[Ross @ross64x]

Estoy hasta los huevos del bombardeo mediático sobre la misión Artemis 2 y, especialmente, de ese asombro ante la "misteriosa" cara oculta de la Luna.

En la ciencia, el forofismo ciego es, además de estúpido, una falta de respeto al rigor.

Conviene recordar que el 3 de enero de 2019 la sonda china Chang'e 4 ya se posó con éxito en el cráter Von Kármán de esa cara oculta.

Para lograrlo, China tuvo que desplegar primero el satélite Queqiao, un espejo estratégico que orbita en un punto de equilibrio para actuar como repetidor de señales, permitiendo la comunicación desde la cara oculta y la tierra.

En esa misión viajaba el rover Yutu-2 (Conejo de Jade 2), una máquina que, para sorpresa de los escépticos, sigue operativa años después, escaneando el subsuelo lunar mientras nosotros seguimos debatiendo sobre el encuadre de las fotos de los astronautas.

Por si fuera poco, en junio de 2024 la misión Chang'e 6 completó la hazaña de traer muestras de roca y polvo de esa zona directamente a la Tierra, un hito que ningún otro país ha logrado hasta la fecha.

Y mientras buscamos épica en los anuncios oficiales de la Artemis 2, allí, en una estructura sobre la superficie lunar, unas semillas de algodón brotaron y desplegaron dos hojas verdes: la primera vida vegetal creciendo en otro mundo.

Pero claro, supongo que las fotos de los astronautas americanos han quedado muy bonitas en el Instagram de la NASA.

[Pedro Romero @ElPedroReal]

@MarioNawfal Have the Iranians ever said they want to “back down”? They won’t stop until the aggressors regret their illegal war

[Pedro Romero @ElPedroReal]

This is a great, illuminating read. Recommended.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

I don't think people realize just how extraordinary what we're witnessing with Iran is.

I was arguing with a dear journalist friend of mine yesterday who was telling me that Iran was winning, yes, but only on the strategic level, not tactically.

The type of thing a skinny kid getting stuffed in lockers in highschool tells himself to make himself feel better: "These people will BEG to work for me in ten years. Everyone knows jocks peak in highschool. They'll literally beg." 😏

I think that's precisely wrong, and that's what makes the Iran war different. As of now, Iran is in fact holding its own tactically too.

Think about other U.S. wars of aggression these past few decades. Take Vietnam, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Serbia, etc. (the list is unfortunately very long). The pattern was roughly always the same with an immense power differential between aggressor and victim. These wars were, by and large, imperial: the empire attempting to crush a much weaker people whose only realistic recourse was guerrilla resistance. And that is when they actually had the will to resist: some - like Libya - barely even bothered, just resigning themselves to their fate (despite being, at the time, the richest country in Africa).

As spectators of these wars, if you had any moral sense, the dominant emotion was a kind of helpless disgust: you were watching a giant stomp through someone else's house.

Sure, the U.S. actually lost many - if not most - of these wars, famously replacing the Taliban with the Taliban or being expelled with their tail between their legs from Vietnam, but the power differential was no less real for it.

It's just that power doesn't always guarantee victory: sometimes the giant can't kill everyone, and eventually tires of trying. But the “victories” won this way were always pyrrhic at best: the people endured, yes, but what they were left with was a country in ashes that takes decades to rebuild. Meanwhile, in the grand scheme of things, the giant walked away with little more than a bruised ego.

Iran is - remarkably - proving to be an entirely different beast: when others were merely surviving a giant, Iran appears to be able to compete with one.

What just happened over the past 48 hours is the best illustration of this. You had the President of the United States issue a formal ultimatum: reopen the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours or we "obliterate" your power grid.

Iran's response was essentially: we dare you, if you do this we'll make all your Gulf allies uninhabitable within a week.

And, as we saw, Trump backed down: pretexting non-existent "VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS" with Iran, he said his ultimatum no-longer applied (or, rather, became 5 days). Adding he now envisaged the Strait of Hormuz being “jointly controlled by me and the Ayatollah.” To the amusement of Iran’s diplomacy (https://t.co/o4JnJJoAGS).

That, folks, is a textbook tactical victory. It is, remarkably, Iran demonstrating in this instance that it had escalation dominance over the United States of America. That is, the ability to credibly threaten consequences so severe that the US - for perhaps the first time since the Cold War - found it preferable to stand down.

That's no skinny kid being locked in a locker dreaming of revenge fantasies. That's the kid grabbing the bully's wrist mid-shove and watching his face change.

And it's not the only tactical victory in this war so far. Take the episode over the Israeli attack on Iran's South Pars gas facility. Iran had warned that if that happened U.S. allies in the region - including Israel - would face a symmetrical response.

And they delivered: famously devastating Qatar's Ras Laffan facility - which produced roughly 20% of global LNG supply - and leading, according to Qatar themselves, to a $20 billion loss of annual revenue for the next 5 years (https://t.co/Myd3QZDbYf).

Not only that but they also managed to hit Israel's Haifa refinery (https://t.co/XvFqewBZPZ), one of the country's most strategic and protected sites.

The result was Trump distancing himself from the South Pars attack, saying that Israel had "violently lashed out" unilaterally and that "NO MORE ATTACKS WILL BE MADE BY ISRAEL pertaining to this extremely important and valuable South Pars Field." Israel then said it wouldn't strike Iran energy sites anymore (https://t.co/tk0rA5NaWS).

From where I stand, that's another tactical victory. It is, at least, Iran demonstrating that is can fight back **symmetrically** against the U.S. and its allies. Not through asymmetric resistance with IEDs hidden in the roadside or traps hidden in the jungle, but eye for eye, and against some of the most heavily protected sites on the U.S.'s side.

That's qualitatively different from any other adversaries the U.S. has directly fought in recent wars.

There's plenty more, such as the pretty relevant fact that Iran has gained control of the single most strategic energy chokepoint on earth and the U.S. is finding it impossible to break that control.

To the point where Trump has been reduced to publicly begging China - of all countries - for help, which given Trump's ego mustn't have been easy to do. Only to be told no. By China. And by everyone else he asked.

This is the topic of my latest article: how this is, in fact, the first genuine "multipolar war."

First, in the narrow sense: because Iran is revealing itself to be a genuine pole of power - not a superpower, but an actor that cannot be submitted, which is all multipolarity is.

And second, because the war itself is accelerating multipolarity everywhere else: the U.S. has never been more isolated, never looked weaker and its security guarantees have never been more hollow.

In my article I lay out the full scoreboard - military, economic, political - and explain why this war has already changed the world, regardless of how it ends.

Enjoy the read here: https://t.co/FoB8dIKwTb

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

So, if I got that right, here's the narrative:

- A US F-15E fighter jet got shot down over Iran, despite Trump saying 2 days beforehand in his nationwide address that Iran has "no anti-aircraft equipment. Their radar is 100% annihilated." (https://t.co/3pnVUGxHyV)

- The plane's weapons systems officer - a "highly respected Colonel," according to Trump - ejected from the plane and got "seriously wounded" (still according to Trump: https://t.co/jUbGiGk9uM)

- He still managed to "hike up a 7,000-foot [2.1km] mountain ridgeline and hide in a crevice" in the Zagros Mountains, despite his wounds (https://t.co/ECTqgUFOZ3)

- U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drones started killing all "Iranian military-aged males believed to be a threat who got within three kilometers of [the American's location]" (https://t.co/86aZgrsXGT)

- To retrieve him the U.S. managed to seize an "abandoned airport," 200 miles deep inside Iran, near Isfahan (https://t.co/rOpRm3mqt9), which happens to be where Iran's largest atomic scientific center is located (https://t.co/jQfmg4zI8t)

- They landed two MC-130 military transport planes in that airport (https://t.co/k0mU0wqnvU) in an operation involving "hundreds of special forces troops and military personnel" (https://t.co/ECTqgUFOZ3)

- Both MC-130 planes got "stuck in the sand" and the U.S. destroyed them themselves "to prevent them from falling into Iranian hands" (https://t.co/k0mU0wqnvU)

- They deployed "three new aircraft to extract all the U.S. personnel" on the ground (https://t.co/k0mU0wqnvU)

- There are videos circulating online of "heavy clashes" with presumably Iranian missiles raining down in Kohgiluyeh County, in the Zagros Mountains during that night (https://t.co/VCeTzcC1vt)

- Iran sent pictures of the aftermath at the "abandoned airport" and it's a sight of utter destruction, with US plane and MH-6 helicopter parts scattered all over the ground, still smoking (https://t.co/mDpYT9qsKC). Iran claims they are the ones who in fact destroyed all the aircraft.

- Meanwhile a second U.S. plane, an A-10 Warthog, also crashed on Friday near the Strait of Hormuz according to two U.S. officials speaking to the NYT (https://t.co/lFs4zERw2t). In that instance too the lone pilot was apparently "safely rescued."

- In all this, after the multiple planes and helicopters destroyed or shot down, the documented heavy clashes, the "hundreds of special forces troops and military personnel" operating deep inside Iran, not a single US soldier was reported killed "or even wounded" (according to Trump: https://t.co/rCgrl6vMpT).

- And the 'highly respected Colonel' this was all for? No name. No photo. No interview. Nobody has spoken to him nor knows who he is.

So to sum up: anti-aircraft equipment that supposedly didn't exist shot down an F-15 (and, apparently, an A-10 Warthog the same day). A seriously wounded man climbed a 2.1km mountain. The US seized an airfield 200 miles inside a country it's at war with, next to one of its most strategic nuclear sites, and deployed hundreds of troops all apparently unimpeded. Lost two planes to "sand" and destroyed their own helicopters. Videos show heavy clashes, missiles raining down - but not a single person got "even wounded". And the man at the center of it all? Nobody knows who he is, completely anonymous, zero pictures, but Trump says he is "SAFE and SOUND." And so is the rescued A-10 Warthog pilot, who also remains anonymous.

Trump concludes this all proves the US has "achieved overwhelming Air Dominance and Superiority over the Iranian skies" (https://t.co/rCgrl6vMpT), despite the whole episode only happening because Iran shot his planes out of the sky.

Basically, the only thing that's "overwhelming" here is the audacity of the storytelling...

[Pedro Romero @ElPedroReal]

@WalterDossier Tal cual. los Sionistas nunca tuvieron humanidad

[Pedro Romero @ElPedroReal]

@diazpol ¿Cómo puedo comunicarme con la embajada o el consulado desde el exterior?

[Pedro Romero @ElPedroReal]

@maxmala_ ¡Fantástico! ¡Muchas gracias!

[Pedro Romero @ElPedroReal]

@HX_SR1 @el_crypto_prof By all means: please sell all your altcoins so I can buy them cheaper now…

[Pedro Romero @ElPedroReal]

@AstroFrog_BTC False.

[Pedro Romero @ElPedroReal]

@greybtc False. Altcoin season will happen as always. Top 200 coins get 98% of the total market cap.

[Pedro Romero @ElPedroReal]

@BillRob26460672 @maddenifico @jpb1467 @ShiveringLizard “So, let’s get an AR-15 and go to a school and deal with that gender identity problem once and for all….”
Did you _really_ pay attention to what she said?
Unbelievable 🙄

[Bill Madden @maddenifico]

This woman's righteous indignation over the loathsome piece of shit is spot-fucking-on. We cannot let Trump back into the White House. WE. CAN'T. 🔥🔥🔥🙌🙏👏🌊🇺🇸

[ᗰᗩƳᖇᗩ @LePapillonBlu2]

This 💯

[Pedro Romero @ElPedroReal]

@Jaspercatrules …..…And definidefinitelyweird 🤪

[Pedro Romero @ElPedroReal]

@DaveMarshallJr @SenSanders If your business doesn’t produce enough revenue to pay employees a living wage, then you are in the wrong business. Indeed, this shows we live in the wrong economic system. It’s just simple economics.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @AOC]

Being obsessed with repressing women is goofy.

Trying to watch what LGBTQ+ people do all the time is abnormal.

Punishing people who don’t have biological offspring is creepy.

It’s an incel platform, dude.
It’s SUPER weird.
And people need to know.

[Pedro Romero @ElPedroReal]

@MonederoJC La ley Venezolana exige la publicación de las actas de todos modos. No habrá tranquilidad hasta que sean publicadas y auditadas. Se sabía de antemano que la oposición no iba a aceptar un resultado adverso, así que había que estar preparados para publicar las actas.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @AOC]

It is a dark day in US history when an authoritarian with warrant requests from the International Criminal Court is allowed to address a joint session of Congress.

40k Palestinians are dead.
Hostages aren’t home.
Netanyahu is a war criminal.
I will be boycotting his address.

[ILIO @ilio_official]

Enter our giveaway to claim a copy of @Spectrasonics Omnisphere and a portable synth with full integration: @YamahaMusicUSA Reface CS, the @KorgUSA Minilogue XD, or the @WeAreNovation Bass Station II. https://t.co/dmtpB9Oo8l

[Pedro Romero @ElPedroReal]

Discord - https://t.co/1zjnLgIpuh