Ksin

Okay sure I'm not gonna say he's wrong because sure given that arresting the head of state of a powerful nation would carry immense consequences I can believe that most countries would just rather not do it, no matter the severity of the crimes, as he said that's just realpolitik.

But to freely admit that you would ignore your legal obligations when you didn't have to is just so fucking stupid!

My point of view on this is that the ICC is an arm of the rules based global order, which was constructed by and in the interest of "the west". Which means this statement delegitimizes the ICC therefore degrading western interests, so it real damn idiotic for the leader of Belgium to say this since it's essentially the capital of "the west"! Politicians may have a reputation for doublespeak but that's because there are a great many truths you simply can't say if you want to further your political interests.

This articles covers some interesting incidents and this wikipedia article is more exhaustive though covers the domestic anti-war events more broadly.

The last round of conscription was meet with uncharacteristically loud pushback from the russian public so pushing ahead with even more is interesting. Is the kremlin that confident in the effect of it's propaganda? or is it just that desperate?

That's seems pretty damn ballsy of them since unless they are extremely confident in the jury selection it's practically guaranteed to result in a hung jury if they know that finding him guilty will result in the most severe verdict.

It does and the actual wording is in my opinion a bit stronger in the EU guarantee, but I believe politically it's viewed as much weaker since the EU is fundamentally a economic/trade union and not a military one like NATO. That is to say, the EU could still exist without such a clause, but for NATO it's the entire reason for the organization to be.

That's a rather odd change of tone since the statement not only definitively states that Ukraine is a sovereign nation but it also outright encourages EU membership for Ukraine which comes with a similar military defense guaranty to NATO, though importantly it of course does not come with US backing. At a guess I would say that they are trying to preemptively position themselves as the "reasonable" party in the upcoming (on-going?) negotiations.

Even if Isreal acts in good faith on this I really don't see how this peace deal can possibly work.

The deal obligates the Lebanese Armed Forces(LAF) to take control of southern Lebanon and and maintain themselves as the sole(alongside UN forces) military presence in the area. But that would put the LAF in opposition with Hezbollah which just can't happen since it would reignite the Lebanese civil war. Like this whole thing is basically just a rerun of the 2006 Lebanon war which also ended with an agreement for the LAF to hold the area and for Hezbollah to leave, but since the LAF can't enforce that Hezbollah just resumed operations unopposed.

In my eyes at best we'll get a return to low level border skirmishing between IDF and Hezbollah for another decade, more likely Isreal will just re-invade and resume their occupation within the year, and potentially if the LAF actually does try to kick Hezbollah out of the south then Lebanon falls into bloody civil war.

Whichever way I slice it this deal doesn't solve anything.

Indeed this is a problem that basically all rapidly developing countries have/will/are facing. Japan is famously struggling with their aging demographic right now, China is coming in 10-20 years, Russia is gonna have a particularly nasty time in about 30 years, Italy quite a bad one in just a decade. Plenty of emerging economies like Egypt, Philippines, and Rwanda are likely having their booms right now. At the same time many western countries have benefited greatly from immigration smoothing out their age demographic brackets since immigrants tend younger.

Here is India's population pyramid.

There is a clear swell in the population aged around 20 years old which will be fantastic for the country in the next few decades as they will have a surplus of people in the most productive years of their lives, growing the economy massively. However, right after this glut of workers there is a rather sharp decline in population which means that once these boom time people start retiring, and therefore no longer producing economic output, they will then have to be supported by the suddenly much less numerous younger generation. Meaning there will be more people living off of the work of fewer, that won't be comfortable.

That's why they want more babies, to lessen the blow of an aging population.

My dude you are Dutch, if the russians make it to the Netherlands for you to shoot at then the west will already be ashes.

I really wonder how Hezbollah are going to take effectively ceding territory to the Lebanese Armed Forces(LAF). The agreement apparently mandates that after the 60 day transfer process that LAF, alongside UN forces, become the sole military presence in southern Lebanon, an area previously held by Hezbollah. While the two forces are "friendly" at the moment it also wasn't all too long ago that they fought on opposite sides of the Lebanese Civil War, and to me it's looking a lot like this agreement will push them closer to resuming that conflict.