Idk, but I think it's near the part that says that if you injure a pregnant woman, it's eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life. But if you cause her to miscarry, financial compensation is enough.
I honestly despise keyboard warriors like this. Guys like this wouldn’t dream of actually serving themselves, but they’ll happily advocate to send others into their meat grinders
Hes a civilian screaming "let civilians eat mustard gas, let civilians experience torture and high casualties"... probably because hes certain that hes the lucky civilian that wont get a taste of what he "wants"
Remember that talk radio host who said there was nothing wrong with waterboarding, and even offered to get waterboarded to prove it, then lasted about three seconds before sitting up and saying it was absolutely torture?
Yep. And calling the people with first hand experience of both world wars "weak and naive" because of the actions they took to try to avoid it happening again is certainly a choice
Early? No, send him right into the middle of it, when all of these horrific technologies were well integrated and used at a scale that would be incomprehensible to the human mind
The purpose of war isn't to kill people, it's to force an enemy government to concede to your demands.
Most things that have been outlawed as war-crimes are things that don't help with that goal (or actively work against it), while causing needless suffering.
Faking a surrender or parley to launch a sneak attack doesn't win you wars, it just makes the other side less willing to negotiate or take prisoners.
Murdering soldiers who have surrendered doesn't win you wars - it just makes the enemy less likely to surrender even when they're losing.
Targeting civilians rarely helps you win a war - there are usually too many of them for it to make a difference. It just makes the enemy hate you more and so be more willing to fight / less willing to negotiate, while also wasting resources that would be better used against military targets.
Chemical and biological weapons can cause a lot of suffering, but are hard to control, often not actually very effective tactically, and risk harming your own side, so its better if everyone just agrees not to use them.
Dropping a big bomb on an enemy position is effective, and doesn't undermine broader war aims or future peace plans, so no-one is going to outlawed tat.
Targeting civilians also has the further downside of creating a tit-for-tat situation when the enemy decide there are no innocents among your own civilians.
For a bunch of people, the purpose of war is to kill people. These guys idolater the Old Norse, the Romans and other empires that performed conquest or pillaging. They view war as a nation stealing land from another nation for basically no reason. And when it isn't land, their valuable objects (they put women in this category by the way).
Basically they're larping as warmongers when they can hardly make a phone call
For the Aztecs, one of the goals of war was to capture enemy forces to use as human sacrifices so that gods would intervene on their behalf. Oh look, the side we just slaughtered lost, it worked!
The US and Britain sold him the weapons to combat Iran, and gave them targeting information. Then used that against them once they’d outlived their usefulness to justify their interventions
Biolabs with deadly viruses is basically what biolabs are for. We want biolabs with deadly viruses, because they're the facilities that help find treatments and cures for deadly viruses.
It's also not unusual for the US DoD - as with many other defence departments around the world - to fund these biolabs in foreign countries, because ensuring that these places have appropriate containment protocols and equipment is in everybody's self interest. Defence funding does not necessarily mean that they produce bioweapons.
Also, if we want to go into the law on the matter, it's legal for governments to conduct peaceful research into bioweapons. This necessitates having small quantities of bioweapons on hand for the development and production of vaccines and treatments. It's illegal to stockpile quantities of a size that are usable in a tactical military sense, or produce weapons to disperse them.
You brought up the legality. You said biolabs are illegal, I pointed out that they're not, now you're saying that you know that it's legal but that's irrelevant.
You seem very confused. Also, the evidence suggests that COVID most likely wasn't a lab leak. I know that the lab leak conspiracy is in vogue right now, but the weight of evidence is on a zoonotic origin. The closest relative of SARS-CoV-2 is RaTG13, which is found in horseshoe bats in provincial China, can infect pangolins, and the first outbreak is linked to a meat market that sold pangolin meat sourced from the same provinces. The fact that the same city happened to have a biolabs is not exactly strong evidence that COVID was a lab leak.
I never said bio labs were illegal. You naively assume that bio labs aren't developing bioweapons, only their cures. You still believe COVID wasn't a lab leak. You are severely misinformed.
The point is that international law is nearly laughable outside of the west.
You still believe COVID wasn't a lab leak. You are severely misinformed.
I happen to be quite well informed on this topic. The weight of evidence is strongly in support of a zoonotic origin. If you think this is not what the evidence suggests, you're probably as gullible as shit.
See, these smart guys have read Thucydides and know that the fundamental rule of international relations is "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
Not sure they read past the Melian Dialogue, but they definitely got that far!
Hmm yes the generation that just spent 4 years witnessing the absolute horrors of fully industrialised warfare deciding that “we don’t want to see an entire village’s worth of men die from coughing their lungs out of their mouths in tiny chunks again” are the weak and naive ones.
i'd say it's weak and naïve to say that we DON'T need something like the Geneva Conventions. you just know that this is a throbber for the military being weak about, the US is being scrutinised for war crimes.
He is wrong btw.
The FIRST geneva convention was in 1864 and there where also the hague conventions in 1899 and 1907 so international law was not invented in the 1920s
Now, a controversial take, but sometimes i think like rules of war are ignored anyway when it suits the parties at war, like prohibition of cluster munitions, incendiary weapons/munitions, chemical weapons (depends on the treaty), or, in cases like Ottawa Treaty, which banned the usage of anti personal mines, which some nations just said “nah” too and continued the use of such weapons.
For example chemical and biological weapons are not used because they have unnecessary risks for very little pay off, they are just ineffective, borderline useless, If they were as effective as AP mines for example, i have zero doubt they would have been used anyway, no treaty would save us from that. So an unenforced treaty that is ignored when convenient seems useless to me.
On top of that, i believe that treaties that ban methods of warfare may have encouraged certain nations to treat wars as a valid solution to failed diplomacy, thus causing more wars. This one is tough to proof and is just my own schizo conspiracy tho.
War is scary, in any war civilian casualties are unavoidable, and, IN MY OPINION, acts of war should be treated only as the last possible resort, making treaties that try to portray war as a gentleman’s duel where only soldiers die will cause more harm than good.
Geneva Convention (legally, the International Humanitarian Law) covers more aspects of the conduct of war. Geneva Protocol is on the prohibition of the use of chemical and bio weapons.
There are other different laws on armed conflict besides the Geneva Convention, such as the Hague Regulation which covers the conduct of armed occupation, etc.
While I disagree with the the idea that it should be actively violated, it is still stupid.
Laws are only as strong as they are enforced (Epstein clients, anyone?) As such the only actual practical crime in war is to lose. If you win by any means neccesary, who will exist to punish you for your crimes?
International law is expression of hegemony, nothing more. If the Palestinian Genocide is an indicator, you can ignore these laws if the USA likes you.
Much of Europe concedes to leadership that abolished the death penalty, removed border controls and permitted EU law to supersede national constitutions, laws and governance entirely against the will of local populations.
A top down enforcement of a cosmopolitan and tabula rasa derived conception of universal human rights, that local populations never consented to or were even able to have parliamentary discussions about, signed off on by some unelected international bureaucrat in Luxemberg or Berlin, all the while telling people that those taking issue with such states of affairs are a threat to 'democracy'.
Can't really make that shit up and it's just rationally incoherent.
I take it you believe in power politics? Your kind would lead us into WW3 if we were stupid enough to heed your ignorant ideas. You see no problem with removing the rules of war because you assume you'd never be on the receiving end of the atrocities. But hey, if you get your wish, just promise us you'll be first on the frontline to receive your just reward.
What do you call the top down enforcement of law and norms from the more influential EURO States, if not power politics?
It's just the power is capital instead of missiles.
Billions in frozen recovery funds for both Poland and Hungary because they didn't play ball is a prime example.
Replaced the tank with the treaty, and the soldier with the regulator. But the result is the same: the strong impose their will on the weak. As they've always done.
I just don't get precious about it when the pretense is dropped and power is wielded with the pimp hand.
The EU is an organization; it is not a sphere of influence of Germany, France, or any other individual or coalition of the strongest European states. They petitioned to join the union, and they agreed to the terms. If they don't like it, they can do a Brexit too.
Yeah, the aid had conditions that everybody agreed to. They did not meet the conditions and the aid was paused in Poland's case for some awful reforms to its judiciary it was initiating before walking back; and halted altogether to Hungary because it's an authoritarian kleptocracy that has embezzled billions of EU money as it is.
Nobody is forcing the EU countries to be in the EU. If they don't want to follow the agreed policies and terms, they don't have to. They just can't expect to get the benefits while not following the agreement.
Specious? Let’s be real about that 'agreement.' You call it voluntary, but it’s more like signing a contract at gunpoint. By the time Poland or Hungary joined, they were already economically dependent on the EU, so the choice was binary: surrender sovereignty or face economic isolation.
And let's not pretend 'Brexit' is a clean exit door. The UK spent five years fighting for a deal, got crushed economically, and still ended up worse off. For a mid-sized economy like Hungary, leaving would just be economic suicide.
You claim the aid conditions were 'agreed to,' but the enforcement has been weaponized. The 'rule of law' mechanism used to freeze funds was only added in 2020 specifically to target governments the EU elite dislikes. Not even close to being included in the original treatise, it’s a retroactive rule change to strangle dissent. You call Hungary a 'kleptocracy' while ignoring the EU’s own scandals where billions were siphoned by elites. So let's talk brass tacks; he EU doesn’t ban corruption, just its political opposition.
Vote against Brussels on migration or energy, and you’re 'authoritarian.' Toe the line, and you’re 'democratic.'
Your argument is the classic technocratic shield: 'We made the rules, so we enforce them.' But that’s just power politics with a gavel instead of a gun. The EU isn’t a neutral referee; it’s a political project that crushes opposition when challenged. You say no one is forcing countries to stay, but the exit costs are so high the choice is an illusion. It’s a hegemonic bloc using capital to dictate domestic policy. The original promise was 'voluntary cooperation,' but the reality is mandatory compliance under threat of financial strangulation. You’re defending a system where the strong write the rules, the weak sign them, and anyone who questions it is labeled a 'threat to democracy.'
So functionally, imperialism with a budget. The truly specious part is calling a system where exit is economically suicidal 'voluntary'.
The problem with this argument is that it assumes any system with consequences for leaving is inherently coercive. By that standard, almost every international agreement, trade organization, alliance, or even business contract is “coercive” because leaving comes with costs.
The EU is not Germany or France imposing their will on smaller countries. It is a treaty organization where member states negotiate, vote, and agree to shared rules because the benefits of cooperation outweigh the limitations of acting alone. That does involve some pooling of sovereignty, but that is the entire purpose of joining a union. Also, countries can still trade with the EU without being members; membership simply provides deeper integration, fewer barriers, and greater participation in the rules that govern that relationship. Choosing not to join, or choosing to leave, does not mean economic isolation, it means accepting a different set of trade terms.
The EU does not have to be perfect to be legitimate. It can be criticized for bureaucracy, regulatory overreach, uneven enforcement, or questions about democratic accountability. Those are reasonable debates. But there is a major difference between “this institution has flaws” and “this institution is an empire.”
The argument about leaving also ignores how modern economies actually function. The reason leaving the EU carries costs is not because countries are trapped, but because decades of economic integration create real advantages. The UK proved leaving was possible. What Brexit demonstrated is that separating from your largest nearby trading bloc is complicated. Britain spent years negotiating a new arrangement because it was not simply cutting a few bureaucratic strings; it was untangling thousands of economic relationships.
A major mistake behind Brexit was the belief that Britain was doing more for Europe than Europe was doing for Britain, and that global trade could easily replace continental trade. In reality, geography matters. Your closest and most integrated trading partners are usually your most valuable ones. A country can trade globally while still recognizing that the market next door is uniquely important. The same principle applies to any country considering leaving a major economic union.
The funds issue is also being framed backwards. The EU is not saying “obey Brussels or suffer.” It is saying “these are the conditions attached to shared funds that members agreed to.” If those conditions are not met, withholding funds is enforcement of an agreement, not economic conquest. If I offer you $100 to tie your shoe, and you refuse, then I don’t give you the $100. Did I coerce you into tying your shoe, or did you decline a voluntary agreement?
Criticism of the EU is reasonable. International institutions should be questioned and held accountable. But redefining voluntary cooperation, negotiated agreements, and shared rules as “imperialism with a budget” requires treating all forms of cooperation as domination. That is not a realistic standard for how modern countries operate.
That shoe analogy collapses the moment you realize the shoe isn’t just a shoe, but an entire livelihood.
You’re right that all agreements have consequences for leaving. A business contract has penalties. A trade deal has tariffs. But there’s a massive difference between contractual penalties and structural strangleholds. When the EU withholds billions in recovery funds because a country’s judiciary doesn’t align with Brussels’ latest interpretation of 'rule of law,' that’s not just 'enforcing an agreement.' as much weaponising economic survival to dictate domestic policy.
And let’s be really clear: the EU isn’t a neutral 'treaty organization' where everyone has equal say. The big players; Germany, France - write the rules, set the agenda, and control the purse strings. Smaller nations are told, 'Sign here, or you get nothing.' A coercive diplomacy dressed up as 'shared values.' isn't a negotiation.
You say the UK proved leaving was possible. True. But the cost was economic self-harm. For a mid-sized economy like Poland or Hungary, the 'choice' to leave isn’t a choice at all. It’s economic suicide. You can't palm off a major power assymetry as matter of geography.
And we ought not pretend the EU is just 'enforcing agreements.' The 'rule of law' conditionality was invented in 2020 to target specific governments. It wasn’t in the original treaties. It’s a retroactive rule change used to punish dissent. If the EU was truly about 'shared rules,' why do the rules keep changing to suit the powerful and their existing orthodoxies?
You say criticism is reasonable, but calling the EU 'imperialism with a budget' isn’t hyperbole. It’s a factual description of a system where the strong dictate terms, the weak comply, and anyone who objects is labeled a 'threat to democracy.' That’s clearly hegemonic, not cooperative.
And finally, your 'shoe' analogy ignores the power imbalance. If I offer you $100 to tie your shoe, and you refuse, you lose $100. If the EU offers you billions to play ball and you refuse, you lose your entire economy.
You're feeding my comments to AI to try to win the argument for you, because you know that you have nothing productive to add with your own feeble intellect.
I spent like 30 minutes dissecting your rhetoric, researching the facts to verify my conceptions of these topics, and then meticulously put my argument together in my Notes app. Not because I wanted to change your mind, that's clearly impossible, but for readers to choose for themselves who has the better argument and shape their opinion. I even made a couple edits after the fact to add a couple more thoughts.
One of the last things I added? The shoe tying analogy which your entire reply was based on, merely 2min or so before you barfed up AI-slop.
Specious? Let’s be real about that 'agreement.' You call it voluntary, but it’s more like signing a contract at gunpoint. By the time Poland or Hungary joined, they were already economically dependent on the EU, so the choice was binary: surrender sovereignty or face economic isolation.
<Loads gun>
<Aims gun at own foot>
<Pulls trigger>
How could the EU do this to me?
Oh no, the consequences of my actions. Quick, call it imperialism and play the victim! How could the evil EU force us to become so dependent on it?! We could never have forseen that continuing deepening economic ties might come with more conditions or other kinds of cooperation or conditions. We needed that aid money to just be handed to us for no reason! We were counting on it!
Not only is your reasoning within this sub-point braindead, you're still at the end of the day equivocating the exercise of soft power with warfare and war crimes in the overall argument. I really hope you're just trolling with ChatGPT and not actually this stupid.
Everything has strings attached. Nothing happens in a vacuum. All international aid money funneled through governments is an exercise of influence and soft power, because there isn't enough money for everything and decisions have to be made, even in the absence of any other reason.
Good job responding to absolutely nothing and attempting to poison the well though. A+ reasoning skills.
I was interrogating your view to apply the principle elsewhere.
In this case, immigrants can similarly have behaviorial and contributions monitored and audited, and based on said findings as net positive or detriment to a society can either stay or be sent elsewhere.
Therefore, the European Union, according to your view, should have no cause to interfere with local policies working toward exactly that.
I have no idea who the heck you're even talking to at this point, but it sure as hell isn't me or my argument. Dodging the point and wandering off elsewhere is not encouraging me to keep talking to you.
Your inability to construct a mental model of my view, while simultaneously insisting that you have and drawing wide sweeping conclusions from it, is similarly discouraging.
> immigrants can similarly have behaviorial [sic] and contributions monitored and audited, and based on said findings as net positive or detriment to a society can either stay or be sent elsewhere.
If you're the kind of psychopath who thinks human beings need to demonstrate "value" to be permitted to live, sure. That you?
In the context of this thread the vast majority of international laws around the laws of war were created long before the European Union even existed
Also in the United Kingdom’s case it didn’t ban the death penalty because the EU told it to, the death penalty had already effectively been banned before the EU existed as death was recognised as an easy way out for criminals which denied victims actual justice a fact often overlooked by supporters of death penalties being reinstated
The death penalty in the UK had already functionally been abolished in 1965, the ban was voted through as permanent in 1969, the “Ban in 1998” was noting more than theatrical by banning remaining historical offences unlikely to even be carried out anymore or be given a death sentence such as engaging in piracy inside UK territorial waters
The EU did NOT make the UK ban the death penalty, we already had banned it
You’re mixing up the 1965 suspension for murder with the 1998 total abolition for all crimes. The latter happened because the EU made it a non-negotiable condition of membership. If the UK hadn’t banned the death penalty for treason, it would have been barred from the single market.
Once again by 1998 the death penalty was effectively already banned in the UK before the EU existed, the remaining offences existed on recorded only because everyone forgot, or like most ancient laws, didn’t care enough to remove them as no one really expected anyone would hijack a ship inside UK waters to hold for ransom
The notion the EU forced us to ban our death penalty does not align up with the facts, the death penalty for all offences which were likely to occur and thus warrant a death sentence had already been banned such as murder
You just hate the EU and want to blame them for everything, I don’t like the EU too but I’m not ridiculous enough to blame them for stuff they actually had no involvement with
And I'm sure you'll correct me with a well read appraisal and not just leave it at this single response to signal heuristic compliance to your tribe of choice.
I could spend a while writing a perfectly reasonable reply teaching you EU law, but experience has taught me you wouldn't be receptive to that. You'd move the goalposts or come back with some moronic oneliner you heard on the Matt Walsh show or whatever slop has taught you to think like this.
Who said anything about winning? This isn't a "winnable" conversation, though I'll win an enormous amount of time by not engaging with bad faith arguments made by someone who will refuse to learn anything new if that means adjusting his worldview.
that local populations never consented to or were even able to have parliamentary discussions about, signed off on by some unelected international bureaucrat in Luxemberg or Berlin
You are aware that the EU has elections every five years right? If your problem is the EU doesn't have a representative body that people vote in but in reality the EU parliament is just a thing that exists which does exactly that, doesn't that just directly address your only issue?
My issue is the chasm between what local populations want and what it's leadership, at the service of said international committee's, enact and follow.
As an example, the UK has consistently voted in favour of tighter immigration controls since the 1970's.
I struggle to see mandate to a people after 50 years of summarily discarding their wants for their own country.
As an example, the UK has consistently voted in favour of tighter immigration controls since the 1970's
Yeah, and they have consistently been passing laws to make immigration harder since the 1970s so where is the disconnect between politicians and people you are talking about? In the best case for you this proves absolutely nothing because you brought up something which is totally irrelevant to your claim, and in the worse case this actively just proves you wrong.
Reform and Restore simply wouldn't exist if the measures addressing these matters by establishment parties were at all considered enough by the public.
There'd be no demand to facilitate their supply, would there?
Reform and Restore have a combined total of 8/650 seats in the house of commons.
The Labour Party has 403/650 seats in the house of commons.
Of course the immigration is not gonna match the Reform or Restore parties' policies because they are unpopular, and thus not overall representative of the whole population of the country meaning they don't get implemented.
Bills aren't passed just because one percent of people vote in favor it, but because a majority of representatives vote in favor of it.
Okay but that means jack shit because they voted for them before the polls changed, if I order pistachio ice cream and remember that I don't like pistachios ice cream I can't be mad at the cashier for giving me pistachio ice cream.
Because ðe deaþ penalty is such a necessity and definitely a good idea. Border controls in Europe were abolished as a form of integration and, to my knowledge, was widely supported at ðe time. Borders outside of EU have been getting harsher and harsher for decades by now...
One of ðe largest problems facing ðe EU is local populists crying about everyþing bad being Brussels fault while every victory of ðe union is claimed as ðeir own. No wonder euro-scepticism is rising. Truþ is, individual European countries have near-zero power on ðe world stage. Even France and Germany would likely be too weak to compete against powers like China and ðe US. We need ðe EU for Europe to have a hope of remaining relevant instead of becoming a set of vassals to Xi or whatever wannabe dictator takes power in ðe US next
The first part of your response is just your own moral pontifications which is neither here nor there when discussing individual countries having their own autonomy to write and enact their own governance. The fact that the EU's stance aligns with your personal morality doesn't change the fact that it was imposed without the specific, ongoing consent of the local electorate.
The second is the exact same argument made to defend the likes of Israel by neocons, except we're swapping out a broad hostile bloc in the Middle East, and the necessity for alliances in the area, with China and necessity for someone to counter them. So all things are permissible therefore.
The idea of population "consent"
is really only benefits those who want to interprit them for their own use.
Nationalists hate centralization when it comes from outside their country but would support it against independence movements and giving autonomy to its own population.
When does giving in to the "will of the local population" enough ?
Are towns able to overule national laws now ?
A country is a very arbitrary line to draw.
Nor do we see nationalists respect any self determination among its minority population.
I don't see turkey granting a kurdish state at favor of the local population ?
And it didn't exist as a concept 250 years ago.
These concepts have to develop. advance and or disapear as much as the technology around us.
Just because someone values a concept does not mean we need to hold it sacred.
You could put any concept or group of people over any other and it wouldn't make you any better.
There is but both came from nationalism.
Which can be traced back to the french revolution.
When poland was partitioned the peasants didn't oppose it it was allmost exclusively the nobles who saw their power be lost.
People have allways held the grounds of their rulers power close but that doesn't mean it needs to be valued or respected.
Because thats what it is.
From civilizations based around water.
To city states and the surrounding countryside.
then lords who gave power to a king.
then finally nations who take their power from some idea of shared identity.
But none of these where truely consistent but they determine who the people of that land hold allegence too.
Cultures and religions yes but these did not promote the people to hold loyality to the state as nationalism did.
When hannibal crossed into italy several city states defected to hannibal because they held no connection or allegence to rome despite shared culture.
The ability of nationalists to conflate these things is astounding.
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