Not really, we just like to pretend they are for political motives. Netanyahu pretty much levelled the whole of Gaza and I don’t see any US-led vote being held at the UN on that. The problem with international law is that it doesn’t actually exist in a set-in-stone way like national law (even though that can be pretty flexible at times too). Whether something is deemed a crime under international law depends on what’s in it for how many people and, as such, it’s a farce. When protesters start shooting, police will start shooting back, which can hardly be seen in the same light as shooting a person in the back at a time when there isn’t a protest and then planting your taser on them. If we don’t like the regime, we report that the government opened fire first, if we do like them, then the protesters are terrorists and they opened fire first.
My own personal perspective on it is that western civilisation endured tens of millions of deaths to reach the point of being a semi-rational, secular democracy. It wasn’t achieved by people emigrating and it wasn’t achieved by foreign intervention, it was simply achieved by people dying for what they believed in for several centuries. Is that acceptable in the 21st century? No, but the Middle East is not in the 21st century and there are several billion too many people in the world, so they should be left to negotiate their own way from the 14th century to the 21st century. And before you get too compassionate, let’s look at the statistics and understand why they are where they are:
23 Jul 2014
Pointing to a geographic imbalance, the report by the nonprofit Institute for Economics and Peace said five countries — Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan and Syria — accounted for four-fifths of the almost 18,000 fatalities attributed to terrorism last year. Iraq had the bloodiest record of all, with more than 6,300 fatalities.
NOV. 18, 2014
Terrorist related deaths have leaped by almost one third in the last 12 months as the world enters a deadly new phase in the cycle of violence
According to the dashboard, Iraq has endured the highest number of attacks in the last year with 3,158 incidents, while terrorism in Nigeria is the world’s deadliest, recording the highest number of deaths per attack, with an average of 24.
The MTSD classifies 12 countries as “extreme risk”, including Iraq at the top as most at risk, as well as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and Libya. It also includes the growth economies of Nigeria, the Philippines, Colombia and Kenya.
Iraq, rated as the highest risk country, recorded more than three times as many acts of terrorism as Pakistan with 3,158 attacks resulting in 5,929 deaths – an increase of 2,188 on the previous year.
And in Nigeria, the campaign of violence by Islamic militant group Boko Haram saw the country record the highest number of fatalities per attack, with Maplecroft’s figures recording 146 reported attacks between July 1 last year and June 30 this year, resulting in 3,477 killed – an average of 24 people killed per attack, compared to two deaths per attack in Iraq.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/the-geography-of-terrorism/382915/
NOV 18, 2014
The Geography of Terrorism
Of the 17,958 people who died in terrorist attacks in 2013, 82 percent were in one of five countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Syria. That’s one finding from this year’s Global Terrorism Index report, published by the Institute for Economics and Peace. The report is based on data from the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database, which has information on more than 125,000 terrorist attacks between 1970 and 2013.
The report found a 61-percent jump in terrorism fatalities between 2012 and 2013. “Over the same period,” the authors wrote, “the number of countries that experienced more than 50 [terrorism-related] deaths rose from 15 to 24″—an indication that the problem of terrorism was getting both more fatal and more widespread a year before ISIS declared a new caliphate.
But it’s also striking where terrorism didn’t occur. Much of the increase in terrorism-related fatalities in 2013 took place in Iraq, where terrorists claimed nearly 4,000 lives—a 168-percent increase over 2012. Worldwide, Iraq was the worst-affected country, accounting for 34 percent of terrorism-related fatalities in 2013, with Afghanistan ranked next with 17.3 percent. Meanwhile, between 2000 and 2013, the report found, around 5 percent of terrorism-related fatalities occurred in the 34 wealthy countries of the OECD. In 2013 specifically, there were 113 terrorism-related deaths in OECD countries—0.6 percent of the worldwide total. Six of these took place in the United States.
Deaths From Terrorism, 2000-2013
Percentage of Global Terrorism-Related Deaths, 2013
Biggest Increases in Terrorism-Related Deaths, 2012-2013
^That was even before ISIS.
http://csis.org/files/publication/150618_Patterns_in_Global_Terrorism_in_2014.pdf
BROAD PATTERNS IN GLOBAL TERRORISM IN 2014
Anthony H. Cordesman
June 19, 2015The State Department reports that there were a total of 13,463 terrorist attacks worldwide
in 2014, resulting in more than 32,700 deaths and more than 34,700 injuries. In addition,
more than 9,400 people were kidnapped or taken hostage. This meant the number of
terrorist attacks in 2014 increased 35% and total fatalities increased 81% compared to
2013.Looking back at previous editions and other data one sees the following patterns:
• The Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia continue to dominate world
terrorism. They had a total of roughly 9,600 terrorist incidents in 2013 – the vast
majority of which were carried, out by Islamic extremist or Jihadist groups.• No other region had more than 1,000.
The State Department data also decisively show that terrorism is not a clash between
civilizations, but a clash within one. So do Rand studies that reflect:• A 58-percent increase in the number of Salafi-jihadist groups from 2010 to 2013.
Cordesman: State Department Report on Patterns in Terrorism in 2014 6/19/2015• Estimates that the number of Salafi jihadists more than doubled from 2010 to 2013,
according to both RAND’s low and high estimates.• Approximately 99 percent of the attacks by movements like al Qa’ida 2013 were
against “near enemy” targets in North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia.
Getting back to assumptions, if people thinks F-22’s L/D ratio is better, then F-22 would need 7,4% better cruise L/D ratio only to match F-15’s internal fuel range.
In operations L/D would be much better because it carries no pylons or external armaments. Ferry range is unimportant because IFR is available. You’re also neglecting the affect of TVC on trim drag (~5-7%). And you should note that the petal-free nozzles on the F-15 add 3% to its drag. And the internal capacity of the F-22 is 18,448lbs, which is ~8,400kg (page 10-7 http://www.academia.edu/9336427/F-35_Weapon_Systems_Overview).
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