Should EU allow Chat Control and Mass Surveillance?
M
maxpool@mathstodon.xyz
@maxpool@mathstodon.xyz
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Should EU allow Chat Control and Mass Surveillance? -
These fuckers are dropping white phosphorus bombs on Lebanon!(If you have ever felt that there is something weird about IHL and laws of war, continue reading)
Laws of war are dual use. IHL and the like do not exist just to reduce suffering, but to standardize and legitimize it in the public conscience so that war remains a tool of statecraft.
The 19th-century peace movements in the West were no joke. During the Hague Conventions, generals and legal minds determined what level of horror was militarily necessary and what level was economically or politically unsustainable. The conventions were the initiative of Tsar Nicholas II.. he and his ministers wanted to place limits on the lethal arms race because Russia was unable to compete.
The principle of superfluous injury, used to ban certain weapons, keeps a war something young men can volunteer into. In 1995, this principle was used to ban blinding laser weapons. A relatively easy method to permanently blind thousands of soldiers on the battlefield threatened the viability of war as a tool.
"You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out."
– Letter from William Tecumseh Sherman to James M. Calhoun, et al. (1864)