tbf, the Japanese proficiency of English-speaking nations is probably lower.

No, they won’t. Trump will shut it down as soon as he can to serve his paymaster.

Wow, officials in India are a lot more expensive than the ones here in the US.

Not everything banned by treaty is a crime against humanity, though.

Ok, I see now that you have no interest in arguing in good faith,

Sorry that you don’t like being confronted with the fact that you don’t give a single fuck about Ukrainian lives and are just virtue signaling. But hey - have fun advocating for Ukranians to meekly submit to be massacred in order to take the moral high ground of (checks notes) not using explosives to stop the Russian advance. Really terrible stuff would have happened in this war if we allowed that, just absolutely exceptional suffering.

Also, nice one on running from the fact that you accused the Ukrainian government of being ready to just mine their own land and leave it that way post-war. Keep up the good work, I’m sure Putin and all the other fascist fucks are very proud of you.

The nature of landmines is that of an indiscriminate and long lasting danger. Do you really think that, once the war is one and it’s time for civilians to move back to the areas that war has displaced them from, Ukraine is going to dig them all up again?

Yes, that’s literally what fucking happens. Planned UXO operations are already going to take decades because of all the mines that Russia has laid, including in civilian areas, but I’m sure that you’re just really concerned about Ukraine’s post-war UXO situation becoming worse by (checks notes) Ukraine laying mines it itself has recorded in non-civilian areas.

This is some “Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki were all great” type nonsense.

Ah, the “Blockading Japan and having millions starve is the moral high ground” option.

Dresden was bad because it did not have commensurate military value to the civilian destruction it caused, and bomber command was well aware of that.

Oh they promised, did they? What a relief!

Oh, so we’re going on the assumption that Ukraine doesn’t care about their own post-war situation despite all of their actions thus far pointing towards the exact opposite?

Cool cool cool. Very paternalistic mindset, glad we’re still doing the “Noble Western Savior” thing in telling countries being genocided how exactly they’re allowed to defend themselves and accusing them of being savages if they disagree.

Yes. “Indiscriminately” being the operative word.

See? I agree. Landmines should not be used indiscriminately. Luckily, Ukraine has already pledged to not use them in civilian areas, and landmine protocols are a far fucking cry from the Vietnam era, so we’re good.

Glad to see we’re all on the same page of not demanding that victims meekly submit to genocide in the name of some nebulous and ill-defined moral high ground.

How many thousands of Ukranian lives are worth not using landmines to you? Tens of thousands?

They’re atrocious because they can make areas dangerous for anyone to traverse for years if not decades, blowing the limbs off of innocent civilians or making large swaths of land uninhabitable and unavailable to farm without risking death and dismemberment.

So like all UXO that’s indiscriminately used?

Working to ban something means it’s a crime against humanity. Great. Alright.

So when Ukraine returned fire after being fired upon, that was an escalation?

i strongly support Ukraine’s right to defend its borders, but landmines belong in the far distant pass. if Russia drops a bioweapon on kyiev will we follow suit?

This may be shocking, but landmines and bioweapons are not even close to equivalent.

Landmines are a crime against humanity now? Jesus fucking Christ.

The cruelty is the point.

I am all in favour for handing Ukraine the tools they need to win this war. But at the same time “the others are doing it” is no justification for a free pass on every weapon or tactic.

No, but neither is fighting with both hands behind their backs. Anti-personnel mines remain effective, especially considering Russia’s preferred tactics. Ukraine already is being attacked with chemical weapons regularly, having PoWs tortured and executed, and their civilians murdered and their children quite literally kidnapped by the Russian state, and we’re gonna draw the line at ‘using landmines in non-civilian areas to stop Russian advances’?

Fuck that noise.

Also anti personal mines and cluster munitions from i.e. the Vietnam war are still causing crippling and death today.

Those were also used in very different contexts. Modern cluster munitions do not have the same long-term potential for damage that Vietnam-era munitions did, and the same with landmines - especially since landmine recording protocols were updated in part because of the haphazard way they were used in Vietnam. And, for that matter, we dropped more ordnance on Vietnam than was dropped in the entirety of WW2 by the Axis AND Allies combined, all over the country. The same is not going to happen in Ukraine, neither in scale nor in type. They want to prevent the Russians from advancing along the frontlines, and are not going to use them in civilian areas.

Using weapons that are prone to cause damage to future generations for short term gains is in my opinion short sighted.

How many thousands of Ukrainians dead, maimed, tortured, or ethnically cleansed today would you consider it an insufficient short-term gain to avert?

We should provide Ukraine with more “sensible” weapons in quantities that makes using cluster munitions and mines obsolete.

And what weapons are those? What weapons would make cluster munitions and mines obsolete in the context of the current war?

You know, some people might regard “one side using ‘warcrime weapons’” first as the escalation, not the other side deciding to follow suit.

“Escalation” is when you start using a weapon that your enemy has been using since the start of the war, huh?

Sub human scum.

I might reserve terms like that for, say, the perpetrators of the Bucha massacre, or for those committing ethnic cleansing on a massive scale by kidnapping children. But hey, if you prefer to apply that term to Ukranians trying not to get murdered by fascist invaders, it’s not like I can stop you.

Ah yes, remember how this war famously doesn’t have anti-personnel landmines being widely used?

Oh? What’s that? Russia is already widely using them in Ukrainian territory?

Oh, how sweet, Ukraine is finally allowed to use the same tools Russia is.

Fuck’s sake. All this pussyfooting from Cold War dinosaurs…

Buckle up folks, and be sure to stand up for any trans folk you know or see. It’s gonna be a rough couple of years for the trans community.