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Yeah, I suppose the modern world is rubbish. Still the best humanity's even managed to come up with though, in the sense that the pre-modern world was consistently worse. Some 95% of the population...

That could be pretty effective if you managed to get it into their drinking water or food supply (one they don't cook, at least). Smearing the stuff on an arrow (what the thread's about), on the...

I'm not as well versed enough in historic sources to say whether it was commonly done or not (or at least documented to be common), but even if it was, it wouldn't be especially effective. The stuff...

While some people and some legal definitions do adhere to this point (usually because their own people's suffering and resulting compensation agenda relies on such a "forceful migration genocide"),...

The Americans were perfectly able to invade by their lonesome, and ended up doing all the heavy lifting anyway, so their allies not backing them up wouldn't have made much difference. As for the...

The first step for that would probably be for people to realize they exist...

Never had much use for honor. I determine what I find to be moral, ethical and worthwhile, not some loosely defined set of social norms that just as often as not leads to more harm than does good (as...

Even when that sovereignty is legitimized by democratic elections? Amazing how the fervently pro-democratic crowd always argues theirs is the only true source of legitimacy, but then promptly forgets...

This look like an obvious play meant to shift the blame to the Turks when the refugees start pouring into Europe again. The German leadership probably figured the refugee deal was going to break down...

Special forces work by sneaking up on an unsuspecting enemy and getting their business done before any major reinforcements can arrive. Being as mobile as they are means they don't have access to...

The idea of pretending Bin Laden was alive as an excuse to invade Afghanistan is ludicrous. Excuses to invade other nations are certainly a thing that happens, but typically only if they're of some...

Huh. I was under the impression neo-paganism was something of a drug-fume inspired and none-too-self-aware joke. I had no idea some of its branches have ties to neo-facist types; they poison...

There's a pretty pig difference between actively supporting and "they're fighting Daesh for the time being, stop being actively hostile for a while and give them some intel we that can't hurt us or...

For accuracy's sake, its worth mentioning the Kremlin isn't supporting the Taliban--the rumors that they are are most likely result of US state department propaganda. Now, I'm no fan of Putin's, but...

Actually, the law places no small emphasis on intent. That's why we have different degrees of murder a well as manslaughter and causing death by negligence or incompetence, all as different offenses....

I think the whole Vietnam war was a poorly thought out mess. The local pro-Western regime was militarily speaking, laughably incompetent, which meant that US troops would have to prop it up...

Those insurgencies the Europeans have must be really tame... In Israel, soldiers get into fire fights conducting routine arrests, live ammo is their first and sometimes only line of defense against...

I don't think the line between a guard dog on a chain and a rabid dog running amok is thin at all. One goes off only when it needs to, and you'll be quite sorry you don't have one if someone ever...

There's a big difference between civilians being killed due to getting caught in the crossfires of a war, and a regime murdering millions of its own people for what amounts to paranoia and madness.
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And then when the international police force starts acting up and breaks the law, we'll send over the international police police to arrest them too. And when those start causing problems...

The...

I suppose a better way to phrase what I meant was willingness to reform before being humiliatingly defeated (which hinges on realizing the pre-reform ways are lacking, which they may well not have...

This isn't exactly new. Fascist has been a stand-in for "that right wing leaning thing I don't like" since around WWII, just as communist has been a stand-in for "that left wing leaning thing I don't...

So, business as usual in the US congress?
Where I live, unplanned additions to the national budget don't even go through the whole legislative, just a small subcommittee dominated by the coalition...

This shouldn't take nearly as long, thankfully. The Mediterranean is not as deep, not as vast, and not in the slightest bit remote. If there's a black box to be found (and there probably is, given...

The drones aren't autonomous... Nobody can program a computer algorithm capable of reliably differentiating friend from foe from bystander under realistic conditions. Drones do have some autonomous...

The calculation is missing a pretty crucial ingredient. The simple truth of the matter is that not all human life is treated as equal; naturally, each side of a conflict will consider the lives of...

That's actually not as big a deal as you might think, because cold as it might seem, only foreign nationals in the third world are targeted. Its not even about most targets being Muslim, its about...

There's no real accountability in normal war either. Outright war crimes are dealt with either internally to maintain discipline in the ranks (justice is secondary in the army's eyes compared to...

Taking out (preferably key) members and infrastructure of terrorist groups makes it a lot harder for them to operate, you know, which is a reasonable outcome considering making peace with most of...

You're missing a crucial ingredient in Israel's internal politics with the unity government assessments. For a start, there is no labor leaving the ZU; the ZU is the Israeli labor party. The Tkuma...

If your definition of containing is turning swift one sided affairs into protracted Shia-Sunni proxy wars that last years longer, expand further and kill ten times as many people, than sure, they...

Its in disgustingly bad taste, and more than a bit hypocritical, but not near bad enough to be worth bombing or sanctioning them over it, so there's really not much to be done.
Though there's also...

That's not really the issue in this particular case.
Have you recently come into contact with what you would consider a typical 11 year old? They're not exactly a pillar of wisdom at that age, nor...

To be frank, there was never much democracy to ruin. The electoral college basically means that 95% of the time, elections are dictated in a handful of swing states, with the rest of the country...

If that's the case, they may be of the type that's willing to compromise their professional integrity to make a political point and/or set a precedent. Or they may just be incompetent at their job as...

Normally I'd side against stopping people with doing what they want with their own body, but I'd barely trust an 11 year old to get out of bed of their own power in the morning... Entrusting them...

This might surprise you, but the death penalty and using the presence and implied threat of men armed to kill to keep order isn't the part I have a problem with. The issue is doing it...

The whole point of NATO is that the sheer threat of it being used to escalate a smaller conflict into global nuclear war means that if it works, we'll never have to find out. It might not hold if...

He's probably only going to make things worse. The comparison to Trump is apt in that as far as we can tell, he has plenty of soundbites, but no actual policies ready to be put into practice. And...

That's actually pretty sane and sensible by her standards. Nobody in Israel takes her seriously except her fellow ultra-nationalists. Her own party sees her as a useful idiot; a secular pretty face...