I didn’t ignore it. It specifically means states can’t make laws that go against the treaties. That is all. It does not mean they are laws like any other law. Congress passes laws to say things are bad. Not everything that is technically a law is the same as something that a person can be put on trial for.

The part you ignored is where international treaties are called “International Law”, and “supreme Law of the Land”; They are therefore a law in a general sense of the word. As in “a piece of text defining rules of conduct”.

Also they are ratified by Congress (the Senate specifically), and are enforced by the contracting parties inside their own jurisdictions; So they are technically equivalent to a federal law (not just in the US, in most jurisdictions I’m aware of), insofar as de jure they have to be treated like one by the executive and judicial branches. So not sure why you are even trying to make up this distinction without a difference here.

But speaking of things being ignored. You ignored that congress has refused to approve any of the updates to the geneva convention.

Yeah I ignored that because it’s irrelevant and also incorrect. The US ratified Protocol III from 2005.

So you would have to check if the things that were done are even in the part they ratified.

The rule in question is derived from Article 12 of the Second Geneva Convention from 1949, which the US also ratified. Also you seem to be suggesting that the DoD released a manual discussing rules which don’t apply to them, which seems bonkers.

Even if they are, by not ratifying the updates, they have made clear they no longer support it.

Not how this works. If you want to no longer be bound by a contract you cancel it. The US did not do so. They could, but they did not.

So again, it is highly questionable as to if the things they did ratify can be considered laws like normal bills that are drafted and passed by congress.

To you maybe.

Right, just ignore that “treaties” are “the supreme Law of the Land”, which was the entire point of this quote.

International treaties are in fact of the same rank as federal law and the constitution in the US as per this article, which is even broader then the mere “ratified treaties are law” statement I made earlier, which I was trying to prove here after you called me stupid and confidently incorrect for it.

Dude, at this point let us just agree to disagree, because from my point of view you seem impervious to reason; As I probably do from yours. So let’s just cut our losses and part amicably. Good bye.

I get that you don’t understand subtle differences. Ratifyng a treaty is not the same as passing a law. In your head it is, but in a lawyers head it most certainly is not. […]

The manual of course is an interpretation by the administration. Not a judge. So the judge can feel free to completely ignore any and all of it. They could litterally write that by thier interpretation, they don’t believe we need follow the geneva convention. Nothing stops them.

Oh yeah? Well the constitution seems to disagree with you (article VI):

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

You are way off in your understanding of these things and are confidently wrong on a lot of them.

Huh.

It being law in the US is highly questionable.

What? How so? Do you not know how international law works? The US legislature ratified it, which makes it a law in the US.

But again, the op wasn’t talking about the geneva convention, it was talking about the manual.

What law do you think the “Law of War” manual is referring to? It’s the Geneva Convention.

And while the manual is “A” interpretation of international law, it isn’t the only one. So he can’t be tried for going against the manual.

This is getting a bit silly. The manual is basically all former US administrations since the ratification of the Geneva Convention specifically stating that what the current US administration did is a war crime under it. Since at the time of the incident the Geneva Convention was applicable (as it still is now since the US didn’t withdraw from it) the people involved in the incident could be tried under it, possibly by the next administration.

If someone wants to claim he violated the parts of the grneva convention that congress agreed to, which is not all. That would be different. But that isn’t what the post was about.

That is exactly what the post was about. What the hell are you talking about?

The manual is just giving an interpretation of the obligations arising from the Geneva convention, to which the US is a signatory and which it has ratified, so it actually is a law (the prohibition on killing helpless survivors, not the the Law of War manual). Also the action happened inside the US, since the action in question when talking about Hegseth is the alleged order to not leave any survivors.

There are quite a lot of packages running it through wine, on AUR, as snap/flatpak, and probably more I didn’t see in my cursory search. So the question is does this exploit work on wine I guess.

No you are still not following. I think if Hegseth was indicted it wouldn’t be by a court-martial, because the Secretary of Defense is technically a civilian elected to an office and not an enlisted member of the armed services.

Oh I didn’t mean civil as opposed to criminal. I meant civil as opposed to martial.

Apparently he does:

During a Cabinet meeting at the White House, Hegseth said he did not see any survivors in the water, saying the vessel “exploded in fire, smoke, you can’t see anything. … This is called the fog of war.”

I had to go to a different source, but here is the actual quote:

During a Cabinet meeting at the White House, Hegseth said he did not see any survivors in the water, saying the vessel “exploded in fire, smoke, you can’t see anything. … This is called the fog of war.”

So yeah, he thinks “fog of war” means literal fog…

Depends on the accused, in case of the general it would probably be a court martial. But for the Secretary of Defence I’m not sure, might be a civil court in that case. Either way I was talking about US courts deciding on this violation of international law. There never were international courts the US would obey.

I doubt any court would agree to that line of reasoning if this ever goes to trial. The real problem is the administration is just openly ignoring the courts that don’t rule in their favour. And again, Trump has pardoning power for federal crimes.

And I am willing to bet that nothing in it allows it. Not sure how that would be relevant though?

You can’t be held to a standard that didn’t apply at the time of the incident, but the standard that did apply during the incident clearly forbade it. So it doesn’t matter even if they change it now, because judgement would have to be made in the context of the rules applicable at the time. Of course Trump could just pardon whoever gets found guilty…

Yeah but they didn’t change it though, so it was forbidden under the current rules. Too late to change that.

Oh yeah, not saying that anybody using the word is a racist. Just ignorant, you shouldn’t use it if you are aware of its historical context.

Thus using “race” is biologically ambiguous and “ethnic groups” should be preferred, however it is still very well socially defined.

“Ethnic group” is an anthropological category, not a biological one. The correct biological term is “subspecies”, which Wikipedia defines as “populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (morphology), but that can successfully interbreed.”

Using “race” in a social context makes sense and is far from being racist.

Given the history of its usage in that context, I have to vehemently disagree. Plus it is so ill defined that it is a useless term anyway. From Wikipedia again: “[…] various definitions exist. Sometimes it is used to denote a level below that of subspecies, while at other times it is used as a synonym for subspecies.”

Using it invokes all the Social Darwinism and whatnot that the Nazis and others abused it for. So where is the sense in using it exactly?

Instead it’s a couple little boys peacocking around bragging about how masculine they are to a captive audience.

Uhm, well there was a lot of that stuff, but Hegseth spoke for like 45 minutes and inbetween the usual incoherent rambling and machismo, and the book plug [!], there were some actual important announcements thrown in. Internal investigations is to be gutted, records of wrongdoing will be expunged, “DEI” purges will continue, and a whole lot of “you can do whatever the fuck you want now, we will back you” messaging. This was a rallying cry to the fascists in the audience, and I fear there is a subset that will act on it.

Haven’t made it through the entirety of Trumps speech yet, but most of the first ~20 minutes have been his usual meandering.

Edit 1: Heh, nice Freudian slip a bit later into Trumps speech:

That’s why I chose ‘razin’ Caine. He’s fantastic, by the way. I hope you all agree. If anybody disagrees, could I please have your hand? Who disappears that ‘razin’ Caine is no good? Just raise your hand. *inhales* I don’t see any hands raised.

You have been at war since the January 6th beerhall putsch attempt. It’s just that one side didn’t realise and didn’t even put your new dictator into a luxury prison first before letting him get re-elected. Rookie mistake honestly.

[…] "And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.

"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.

"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. […]

Excerpt from the book They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer. Longer excerpt available here.

Kemp et al. 2022 - Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios

TL;DR: Societal collapse seems possible, more research is needed.