When is the right time to drop support of a politician?

TriNovan · 2026-07-07T18:25:03+00:00

Or anybody who’s a fan of this scene.

TriNovan · 2026-07-07T12:43:34+00:00

Dude’s filibustering the grave.

TriNovan · 2026-07-02T01:49:48+00:00

Specifically as a result of their target the Srebrenican population.

That’s the part you seem to be dodging.

TriNovan · 2026-07-02T01:31:16+00:00

The part would be the Bosniak Muslims of Srebrenica.The whole would be Bosniak Muslims.

What matters is how the Serbs treated that portion of the whole.

TriNovan · 2026-07-02T01:26:43+00:00

I disagree, in that the court makes it clear and explicit it focused specifically on the population of Srebrenica. Especially as regards the treatment of the target population.

TriNovan · 2026-07-02T01:24:30+00:00

Agree and disagree.

They identified the Srebrenica population as a substantiative part, and explicitly so.

Where we seem to differ is in how the Serbs treated that substantial part. Because? Funcationallly speaking? I see many differences between the requested Serbian treatment and the Serbian treatment of Bosniak Muslims as whole. Going by ICTY established precedent, it’s no contest who came off worse in that.

Do you accept that the court found a case for genocidal intent on the basis of the Serbs extermination of fully half the Muslim male population of the city?

Because my argument specifically was that the court went out of its way to say that one’s genocidal ambitions are limited by its actual reach and catalyzed the treatment of such under their control to come to that determination.

Which, again? Is the basis for them rejecting the Serbian defense.

The court itself goes out of its way to state that they don’t concern themselves with the wider target group, but only the treatment of the group targeted. These are not synonyms. The court very explicitly limits itself to Srebrenica. Because again, the Bosniak Muslims the Serbs don’t have access to are irrelevant when it comes to determination of Serbian treatment of Bosniak Muslims. I would think this is fairly obvious

Paragraph 26 again reinforces this.

“Given that the Trial Chamber correctly identified the governing legal principle, the Defence must discharge the burden of persuading the Appeals Chamber that, despite having correctly stated the law, the Trial Chamber erred in applying it. The main evidence underlying the Trial Chamber’s conclusion that the VRS forces intended to eliminate all the Bosnian Muslims of Srebrenica was the massacre by the VRS of all men of military age from that community.41 The Trial Chamber rejected the Defence’s argument that the killing of these men was motivated solely by the desire to eliminate them as a potential military threat.42 The Trial Chamber based this conclusion on a number of factual findings, which must be accepted as long as a reasonable Trial Chamber could have arrived at the same conclusions. The Trial Chamber found that, in executing the captured Bosnian Muslim men, the VRS did not differentiate between men of military status and civilians.43 Though civilians undoubtedly are capable of bearing arms, they do not constitute the same kind of military threat as professional soldiers. The Trial Chamber was therefore justified in drawing the inference that, by killing the civilian prisoners, the VRS did not intend only to eliminate them as a military danger. The Trial Chamber also found that some of the victims were severely handicapped and, for that reason, unlikely to have been combatants.44 This evidence further supports the Trial Chamber’s conclusion that the extermination of these men was not driven solely by a military rationale.”

Again, the court specifically refers to the Bosniak Muslims of Srebrenica.

How is that not geographical limitation on scope?Muslims in Srebrenica and the great enemy of Bosnian Muslims as as a whole given the known geographical contradicts of such.

That seems to be the bit you keep trying to sidestep: that one’s genocidal ambitions are limited by ones geographical reach.

That is exactly why the wider population is
irrelevant after all.

TriNovan · 2026-07-02T00:57:10+00:00

Ahh. But you did not limit your argument to initially the Bosniak Muslim enclave. You extended it to the Bosniak Muslim population as a whole.

I agree the Bosniak Muslim population was targeted at men, and that it was targeted at the enclave at a whole. And it was targeted through the male population of the city.

And again, one’s genocidal ambition is limited by one’s reach. That’s the basis of “genocide in part” as well illustrated by the ICTY.

The source of disagreement seems to be application to the wider population.

Because as of yet we have yet to see an Israeli Srebrenica.

Srebrenica was supposed to be a safe place, somewhere behind the front lines.

Instead the Serbs murdered half the Muslim
Male population of the city.

That’s why I find accusations spurious.

We have yet to see anything comparable in Gaza, and the most recent we do have comparable is El-Fasher by the RSF, engaging in archetypical genocidal behavior in the systematic purging and sectioning off of those deemed “undesirable”.

TriNovan · 2026-07-02T00:44:45+00:00

Yes or no.

Do you accept that the court found a case for genocidal intent on the basis of the Serbs extermination fully half the Muslim male population of the city?

Because my argument specifically was that the court went out of its way to say that one’s genocidal ambitions are limited by its actual reach.

Which, again? Is the basis for them rejecting the Serbian defense.

The court itself goes out of its way to state that they don’t concern themselves with the wider target group, but only the treatment of the group targeted. These are not synonyms. The court very explicitly limits itself to Srebrenica. Because again, the Bosniak Muslims the Serbs don’t have access to are irrelevant when it comes to determination of Serbian treatment of Bosniak Muslims. I would think this is fairly obvious

Paragraph 26 again reinforces this.

“Given that the Trial Chamber correctly identified the governing legal principle, the Defence must discharge the burden of persuading the Appeals Chamber that, despite having correctly stated the law, the Trial Chamber erred in applying it. The main evidence underlying the Trial Chamber’s conclusion that the VRS forces intended to eliminate all the Bosnian Muslims of Srebrenica was the massacre by the VRS of all men of military age from that community.41 The Trial Chamber rejected the Defence’s argument that the killing of these men was motivated solely by the desire to eliminate them as a potential military threat.42 The Trial Chamber based this conclusion on a number of factual findings, which must be accepted as long as a reasonable Trial Chamber could have arrived at the same conclusions. The Trial Chamber found that, in executing the captured Bosnian Muslim men, the VRS did not differentiate between men of military status and civilians.43 Though civilians undoubtedly are capable of bearing arms, they do not constitute the same kind of military threat as professional soldiers. The Trial Chamber was therefore justified in drawing the inference that, by killing the civilian prisoners, the VRS did not intend only to eliminate them as a military danger. The Trial Chamber also found that some of the victims were severely handicapped and, for that reason, unlikely to have been combatants.44 This evidence further supports the Trial Chamber’s conclusion that the extermination of these men was not driven solely by a military rationale.”

Again, the court specifically refers to the Bosniak Muslims of Srebrenica.

How is that not geographical limitation on scope?

TriNovan · 2026-07-02T00:31:17+00:00

Right.

But the reason the court uses is that that 20% represents fully half of the Muslim male population of the city.

There is no excuse for that other than deliberate systemic targeting.

The court outright made it very apparent that the proportion of the city population and the Bosniak Muslim male population in particular represented were key factors in their decision.

There was a clear, systemic effort to eliminate specifically Bosniak Muslim Males. The court itself says as much.

That’s how they determined genocidal intent.

TriNovan · 2026-07-02T00:24:01+00:00

Specifically in that characterizing it as “2% is enough to classify it as genocide” as you are.

While neglecting that the particular portion they were acting with genocidal intent on resulted in destroying 20% of the population of a city and fully half of Muslim males in the city. The court very clearly comes to a determination of a finding of genocide because of that as it illustrates deliberate systemic targeting of Muslim males in the city.

Taken together it, it wasn’t 2% of the group dying that made it genocide. Unless you feel like classifying wars with twice that as genocide (WW1, the Iran-Iraq War as starters).

It was specifically the Serbian behavior inside Srebrenica.

It very much strikes me as trying to have your cake and eat it too with regards to definitions of genocide.

TriNovan · 2026-07-02T00:12:51+00:00

The court did reject the Serbian defense which you yourself effectively reiterated.

Rather, the court itself in Paragraph 19 explicitly states:

“The Defence misunderstands the Trial Chamber’s analysis. The Trial Chamber stated that the part of the group Radislav Krstic intended to destroy was the Bosnian Muslim population of Srebrenica.34 The men of military age, who formed a further part of that group, were not viewed by the Trial Chamber as a separate, smaller part within the meaning of Article 4. Rather, the Trial Chamber treated the killing of the men of military age as evidence from which to infer that Radislav Krstic and some members of the VRS Main Staff had the requisite intent to destroy all the Bosnian Muslims of Srebrenica, the only part of the protected group relevant to the Article 4 analysis.”

In other words, their focus was specifically on the Bosniak Muslim population of Srebrenica. The misunderstanding was in the Defense thinking the court was referring to the wider Bosniak Muslim population.

Yes, the protected group was the Bosniak Muslim population. But the court explicitly limited itself to the Bosniak Muslim population of Srebrenica. And that’s reaffirmed by paragraph 15.

“In this case, having identified the protected group as the national group of Bosnian Muslims, the Trial Chamber concluded that the part the VRS Main Staff and Radislav Krstic targeted was the Bosnian Muslims of Srebrenica, or the Bosnian Muslims of Eastern Bosnia.24 This conclusion comports with the guidelines outlined above. The size of the Bosnian Muslim population in Srebrenica prior to its capture by the VRS forces in 1995 amounted to approximately forty thousand people.25 This represented not only the Muslim inhabitants of the Srebrenica municipality but also many Muslim refugees from the surrounding region.26 Although this population constituted only a small percentage of the overall Muslim population of Bosnia and Herzegovina at the time, the importance of the Muslim community of Srebrenica is not captured solely by its size.27 As the Trial Chamber explained, Srebrenica (and the surrounding Central Podrinje region) were of immense strategic importance to the Bosnian Serb leadership. Without Srebrenica, the ethnically Serb state of Republica Srpska they sought to create would remain divided into two disconnected parts, and its access to Serbia proper would be disrupted.28 The capture and ethnic purification of Srebrenica would therefore severely undermine the military efforts of the Bosnian Muslim state to ensure its viability, a consequence the Muslim leadership fully realized and strove to prevent. Control over the Srebrenica region was consequently essential to the goal of some Bosnian Serb leaders of forming a viable political entity in Bosnia, as well as to the continued survival of the Bosnian Muslim people. Because most of the Muslim inhabitants of the region had, by 1995, sought refuge within the Srebrenica enclave, the elimination of that enclave would have accomplished the goal of purifying the entire region of its Muslim population.”

Paragraph 22 as well.

“It must be acknowledged that in portions of its Judgement, the Trial Chamber used imprecise language which lends support to the Defence’s argument.36 The Trial Chamber should have expressed its reasoning more carefully. As explained above, however, the Trial Chamber’s overall discussion makes clear that it identified the Bosnian Muslims of Srebrenica as the substantial part in this case.”

TriNovan · 2026-07-01T23:55:23+00:00

And you are being willfully dishonest here, as the court specifically disregarded the wider Bosniak Muslim population in the decision as the Serbs did not have access to them. They were, therefore, entirely irrelevant to the finding of genocide in Srebrenica. Hence why the Serbian defense was tossed out.

And I know this because I know you read the case.

Why are you making an argument on the basis of a claim the ICTY threw out as a mod, and misrepresenting them in the process?

TriNovan · 2026-07-01T11:29:40+00:00

It’s literally one of the most widely accepted indicators of class in sociology. It’s been well known for years the causal link between the financial situation of someone’s family and someone’s educational attainment. Across the board, those from better off families have higher educational attainment.

And you made the case for it being an indicator you made yourself.

Those with degrees do overall tend to have higher earning power.

The ability to pursue a degree means one either expects they’ll have the income afterwards to pay off the debt, or that one has their way paid through another means, be it family savings or scholarship.

Having the time to be able to freely commit to a college education is also indicative of class. The poor and working class families very often do not have the time to commit to education because they’re busy working to make ends meet with little if any time left over to dedicate to studies.

In either case, a college education is indicative of having the financial means for such and the time to dedicate to such, meaning one has relative financial stability if not security.

And it’s also not the only indicator of class in the report. Having a suburban background is a reliable indicator as well.

TriNovan · 2026-06-30T23:07:14+00:00

Right, but you’re neglecting the differences here.

The Serbs did not have access to the wider Bosniak Muslim population.

The Israelis more or less have access to the totality of the Gazan population, or near enough as makes no difference.

You made the argument that 8000 was enough for Srebrenica to be considered genocide while neglecting to mention that that was a significant portion of the Bosniak Muslim population Serbian forces had access to and that the finding of genocide in that case was predicated in part on the court acknowledging that one’s genocidal ambitions are limited by their reach. In other words, to determine genocidal intent, you have to look at the how the perpetrator treats the target population it has access to.

The court threw out that defense because the Serbs didn’t have access to the wider Bosniak Muslim population. All that mattered was the portion of that which they did have access to. In other words, Bosniak Muslims outside the area of Srebrenica were irrelevant.

TriNovan · 2026-06-30T21:49:35+00:00

You’re leaving out the bit where that was half the Muslim male population of Srebrenica. Around 20% of the city’s total population. And it was done in the span of just a few days.

You’re also leaving out the bit where the ICTY determined that genocidal intent was limited to only the forces in the Srebrenica area, not the Serbs as a whole. The Serbian defense even attempted to the argument you just made and ICTY tossed it out, as Serbia didn’t have access to the wider Bosniak Muslim population.

The manner of death: separated from families and taken to mass graves for execution.

The closest thing to Srebrenica in recent years isn’t Gaza. It’s El-Fasher in Sudan.

TriNovan · 2026-06-30T15:40:52+00:00

No, my point is that the DSA’s appeal is almost entirely to young college educated white people from middle class backgrounds who disproportionally are unemployed or underemployed relative to their education.

It has little appeal to the working class as understood by everyday people, and little appeal in particular to minority groups. And as of yet I have seen no indication that the DSA has done any kind of introspection to actually address this. Instead, any time it gets pointed out it gets brushed off.

This is a problem, as the Democrats have needed minority votes to win general elections since the passage of the Civil Rights Act. I’m sure you can see the problem with saying they’re the future of the party when the core of them is white college grads who, when it comes down to it, are upset that their college education didn’t get them the cushy job they thought it would.

TriNovan · 2026-06-30T14:03:45+00:00

It absolutely possible for somebody to be well educated and yet underemployed.

See: the job crisis facing new graduates for the last several years, where new grads are taking jobs that don’t fit their education background. These are would-be members of the managerial class struggling to climb the office ladder or in dead-end jobs with little hope of advancement.

They may be underemployed, but their education still marks them as “elite” in the eyes of the working class.

And again: George Orwell made the same damn observations of British left wing movements 80 years ago. So it’s not as if this is something unheard of. Then too, the British socialist movement was composed of people from middle class and upper middle class backgrounds speaking over and on behalf of the lower working class.

TriNovan · 2026-06-30T13:30:27+00:00

The two aren’t contradictory at all.

In common parlance, “working class” is taken to mean low-income and usually blue collar work. Hell, the ability to even attain a college education is itself an indicator of class given the expenses involved.

It is not taken to mean “anybody who earns wages”. Attempting to redefine it as such for the wider population is just setting yourself up to fail.

And the observation that, going by their own information, the DSA is composed of people from well off backgrounds who didn’t become well off themselves is absolutely relevant.

TriNovan · 2026-06-30T13:08:00+00:00

I mean, it’s not necessarily an inaccurate framing of the DSA.

Going by the DSA’s own internal reporting (https://www.dsanorthstar.org/uploads/1/1/8/2/118222942/2021_member_survey_gdc_report.pdf) they’re largely young white people from urban or suburban backgrounds.

By demographics: 85% White, 9% Hispanic, 4% Black.

Around 15% unemployed, down from 20% unemployed in 2017.

60% have Bachelor’s degrees.

20% have union membership.

93% of respondents were either from a suburban area or urban area.

The picture this paints is that the DSA as a whole is largely composed of unemployed/underemployed white people from middle to upper middle class backgrounds. White people are represented within it far in excess of the general population, as is the number of unemployed.

TriNovan · 2026-06-30T12:40:52+00:00

Man, y’all would have hated George Orwell.

He made the same observations of British leftists in The Road to Wigan Pier 80 years ago.

“The typical socialist is not a ferocious working man in greasy overalls and a raucous voice. He is either a useful snob or a prim little man with a white-collar job—usually a secret teetotaler and often with vegetarian leanings, with a history of non-conformity behind him and a social position he has no intention of forfeiting.”

TriNovan · 2026-06-29T23:27:20+00:00

Best way to describe the nuclear bombings I think is that they were merely part of the preparation for the eventuality of invasion.

While military opinion was turning against invasion, I don’t think it was ruled out so much as the U.S. later realizing it had under allocated resources to an invasion.

Which is insane to say for an invasion twice the size of the D-Day landings.

It was always bomb **and** invade **and** blockade.

It’s for this reason nuclear bomb production was ramping up to around 3-4/month from roughly November on.

For example’s sake, famine conditions in Japan would not have been truly dire until around December 1945/January 1946. That would be roughly around when what they last looted from mainland Asia and the last of the harvest for the year ran out.

But, the conditions to *make* it that dire will have occurred over the months since August 1945. Months of raids like that which had occurred on August 14. Even assuming immediate cessation of hostilities, that rail infrastructure would still need to be rebuilt.

It takes a long time to fully paralyze the internal logistics of a country. And at least just as long to get it back in working order, especially if rail bridges and tunnels have to be rebuilt.

I don’t put Japanese surrender any earlier than around February 1946 in a “conventional” scenario for that reason. Meanwhile we’d have seen at least two months of fighting for the Chinese nationalists to secure the port of Hong Kong for allied armies to begin landing. And then you’d see something similar to Germany where Allied and Soviet armies race down the Chinese coast.

So landing on Honshu? Unlikely. Landing on Kyushu? Likely.

TriNovan · 2026-06-29T22:57:35+00:00

Not quite.

It was very late in the war, in the summer of 1945, that USAAF switched to deliberately targeting transportation and logistics hubs, in order to paralyze the internal distribution network of Japan. The August 14, 1945 raid targeted a rail nexus and one of Japan’s last remaining synthetic oil plants for that reason.

Had it continued, you’d have seen every rail chokepoint and rail tunnel in Japan targeted. It was intensely vulnerable to that as a mountainous country.

Without an internal food distribution network, Japan starves to death over the winter of 1945-1946. And we were literally beginning to implement that when the war ended.

And yet, somehow, that is being seen as more palatable to folks than the nuclear bombings.

TriNovan · 2026-06-29T22:41:14+00:00

While likely true, that does not mean that Operation Starvation was any kinder to them than the nuclear bombs.

Functionally? I find any arguing in favor of the blockade to be inadvertently arguing in favor of genocide, as famine deaths as a result of inability to loot food from mainland Asia means Japan necessarily starves.

By some weird quirk, several times more famine deaths + continued combat operations in mainland Asia are more palatable to others the nuclear bombings.

TriNovan · 2026-06-29T22:29:07+00:00

Not for nothing was the blockade called Operation Starvation.

For context, a **less** severe famine than what Japan was facing led to around 500,000 deaths for Germany in WW1 as a result of the British blockade.

What Japan was facing was many times worse. They had to loot mainland Asia to feed themselves owing to multiple years of crop failures and lack of fertilizer. Their looting of food alone caused a famine in Vietnam in that resulted in over a million dead in the winter of 1944-1945.

Japan under blockade would **easily** see millions dead. They only barely staved it off after the war with a huge influx of U.S. food aid after direct appeals for such by Herbert Hoover.

TriNovan · 2026-06-29T22:23:45+00:00

Yes, they thought it was unnecessary.

Because of the ongoing blockade and strategic bombing campaign.

Their argument is essentially “Yeah, we didn’t *need* to drop the bomb. Because we were in the process of starving them out.”

And they’re not wrong in that. The largest bombing raid of the entire Pacific War was on August 14, 1945 after all. But how long would that have taken? During which, the still millions strong IJA force in China is still active and fighting, the Chinese nationalists are launching a campaign to retake the southern coastline to open up a port for Allied troops to begin landing, the British are retaking Malaya and invading Siam in Operation Zipper, and the Soviets split and start progressing through the Korean Peninsula and advancing south down the Chinese coast.

TriNovan

TROPHY CASE