No evidence has been seen that a genocide is occurring in Gaza or that women and children were targeted by the IDF, UK government lawyers have claimed, as a high court case opened into the handling of arms exports controls to Israel.
They also suggested there was no obligation placed on the UK to make other states comply with international humanitarian law but only to ensure that no breach occured within its jurisdiction.
The government is seeking to defend itself in a judicial review brought over allegations that it acted unlawfully in continuing to sell F-35 parts and components to a global pool, even though some of those components might be used by Israel in Gaza in a way that the government regards as a breach of international law.
Much of the case will turn on the extent to which international law places obligations in domestic law.
Clearly you have thought more bout this than I have, which makes sense since you lived there for a decade.
But to the defense of UK, I think very many considered non western countries primitive and uncivilized, so they needed to be treated as such.
Which is of course sick and immoral as hell, but it wasn’t something exclusive to UK. Also UK did give voting rights to women pretty early, only shortly after the Scandinavian countries, and way earlier than USA, which was founded on being a democracy!
But I was thinking mostly about the time after WW2, where as you say they made many improvements. There’s a HUGE difference in the culture of our societies in the west from before and after WW2.
What a shitshow! But it was British, so the bigger scandal here is probably that they helped Trump win against Hillary. But clearly an example of underhanded upper class controlling the masses.
Well, considering non-western countries primitive and uncivilized hence needing to be treated as such was a very popular “civilized (white, always white) man vs savages” centuries old fable used all over Europe to justify inhuman treatment of those in cultures deemed “uncivilized”, and still is today - for example, why do you think Israel as always pushed so hard the idea that Palestinians (not Hamas, the actual Palestinians) are “violent” and even “human animals”, which is really just a “civilized man vs savages” framing of their white colonialism (and hence justifies stealing the land from the “violent savages” and even the Genocide as “self-defense” from said “violent savages”).
If you think about it, claiming that your own culture is superior hence it is moral to members of that culture to lead “lesser” cultures, with the conquest and domination of said “lesser” cultures being used as proof of one’s cultural superiority culture is self-serving circular logic. I mean, it’s fair to claim that such culture is “martially” superior, but that’s not at all the same as “civilized”.
One needs to be very, very weary of self-serving proclamations of one’s own group’s “superiority” in any way (be it Culturally or Racially) as justification for conquest, pillaging and even murder of those in cultures one claims are not “superior”.
If one learns a bit about British History, the word “civilized” isn’t exactly they one that emerges: absolutelly, they were and are heavy on their own version of ritualism in the exercise of power (as seen in things like judges and barristers wearing wigs in High Court) but highly refined rituals isn’t the same as being civilized, at least not by the standards of the later half of the 20th Century when ideas like Humanitarianism and Environmentalism (more specifically “the love of Nature”) became widespread. As I said, Britain ditched Slavery (good) but did so by paying compensation to all slave owners (bad) and 30 years later created Indentured Servitude (almost as bad as Slavery) which almost nobody else had so in practice the didn’t stop slavery, they just replaced Chattel Slavery with a different kind of Slavery and yet nowadays they really try an extract the maximum positive optics from the first (and only good) of those acts whilst never mentioning the other two.