102
From a European perspective:
The U.S. has a great deal of influence in the world, so the presidency of the U.S. is quite likely to affect your own country in some way.
For example: In the last 20 years the U.S. invaded Afghanistan & Iraq, wrecked Libya and tried (and is still trying?) to topple Assad in Syria, which at least in part facilitated the ...
96
The answer is right in the Wikipedia page you cited (emphasis added):
War reparations are compensation payments made after a war by the vanquished to the victors.
The United States has not been vanquished in a war, so it has not been in a situation where it would make a payment to a victor of a war.
Being “vanquished” implies not merely “losing” a war, ...
86
Kill versus capture
If they had captured Osama bin Laden, what would they have done with him? Barack Obama opposed the Guantanamo Bay facility, so they would have had to keep him on United States soil. Where?
If captured, he would have been tried, convicted, and executed. So not kill versus capture but kill then versus later.
His trial would have ...
66
Specifically with reference to the UK, an article in the Guardian reports that
Experts have warned about the risk that if tough measures are taken too soon, “fatigue” may set in, prompting the public to disregard the advice just as the virus reaches its peak.
Effectively the argument is that, absent some sort of enforcement squad if people are told to ...
66
Many countries are seeking to move to a system of 100% voluntary (unpaid) blood donations, and many others already have; according to the World Health Organization's Global Status Report on Blood Safety and Availability 2016, fifty-seven countries reported collecting 100% (or more
than 99%) of their blood supply from voluntary non-remunerated donations. The ...
63
They cannot. It's an exclusive competence of the EU. So much so that the point played a major role in the Brexit negotiations. The reason there are two phases in the Brexit deal (leave first, then negotiate a trade deal) is that the EU cannot legally negotiate a trade deal with one of its own members.
That being said, China's Belt and Road in itself is not ...
54
I am Canadian. I would challenge your opinion that American Politics "don't have much of an effect on day-to-day life in Canada".
Canada and the United States enjoy the largest trading relationship in the world. A lot of the Canadian economy is dependent on trade with America; a leader that has a habit of throwing tariffs left and right can ...
50
The agreement to pay war reparations is usually part of a peace treaty. It is usually a demand the superior party makes from the inferior party in exchange for peace.
In any wars where the United States "lost" in the past 100 years, the United States simply gave up on occupying the other parties' territory and withdrew their troops. The "winning" side was ...
50
Your question is slightly at odds with reality.
First off, with the important exception of the US government, nobody sensible is quibbling over the mounting amount of evidence that Agent Orange had short and long lasting side effects.
As you've noted already, the US government is not accepting any guilt or responsibility. So the real question is whether ...
41
There are movements for gender-inclusive language in almost every language that has grammatical gender, though the extent and favored solutions differ in each.
Wikipedia has a long document discussing gender-inclusive language choices in many languages. Obviously, it's hard to know how prevalent or accepted these are as a foreigner, and as you can see, the ...
41
Another possibility, ignoring fears of infection, is that the country doesn't want their citizens to become stranded in another country if flights are suspended at a later date. For example, on Monday, March 30th, the UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab announced a £75m plan to charter flights to repatriate stranded Britons, and also advised any citizens still ...
36
Shutting down schools, banning large gatherings and pushing people to do home office has a massive economic cost. Of course you never get the exact numbers on either death or cost but essentially you have to answer questions like: How many death does one need to prevent to make a 10% reduction of annual GDP worth it? This is a complicated ethical question ...
34
In very general terms, abortion is not a "top of the mind" issue for voters in Europe. It's certainly a contentious social issue, as is everywhere, and different countries follow different approaches, but other than very specific examples it's not a frontline issue in European politics.
I might be stating the obvious here, but abortion laws are not ...
31
An important factor here is the treaties a country has signed up to. In this case, a relevant one is the 1951 Refugee Convention. From UNHCR:
The 1951 Refugee Convention is the key legal document that forms the basis of our work. Ratified by 145 State parties, it defines the term ‘refugee’ and outlines the rights of the displaced, as well as the legal ...
31
"Obsessed" is rather too strong a term. "Interested in" or "concerned about" might be closer.
The big reason is "money", or perhaps "power". The two are closely related. The USA is big, rich and powerful. Decisions of the President will have direct consequences for people around the world. So Canadians ...
28
Yes
The first and most obvious method is based on the UN charter, Article VI, which says in its entirety:
A Member of the United Nations which has persistently violated the
Principles contained in the present Charter may be expelled from the
Organization by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the
Security Council.
Obviously, if ...
27
Countries are not usually prosecuted, only the individuals responsible in the command structure.
There is an international criminal court; not only has the US not signed up to obey its judgements, it has a specific law ("Hague Invasion Act") preventing the international court's judgements being enforced against US military staff.
"international court" ...
26
Not all nukes are the same. Nuclear weapons are designed for specific purposes. There are different launch systems like ships, submarines, intercontinental missiles, ground-based mobile launch systems, large bombers, small fighter-jets and even systems which can be carried by infantry. Each of these systems needs their own nukes when you want all of them to ...
25
The key convention is the 1951 refugee convention.
The key points to this instrument is that refugees should not be returned to a country where they are under threat. Technically a person only becomes a refugee when they cross a border. "Under threat" means "having a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, ...
24
As far as I know there also isn't an international treaty formalizing what constitutes an "act of war," so it would be up to China whether or not to use the action to justify a declaration of war on the United States. With that said, I don't believe that incursion into an embassy has been used as a justification for war, at least since the Vienna Convention ...
23
George Soros's activity seems to be mostly related to promoting transparency, free elections, free speech and a free press.
George Soros has other things that he supports. For example, he supports switching from oil and coal to natural gas and renewables, which those supporting oil and coal find annoying. Soros also owns natural gas reserves and ...
22
Really the compulsion is a moral and practical one, rather than something enforced by international law: refugees tend to arrive in large numbers, turning them away is both difficult and tends to get them killed. It may be difficult to deport people to a war zone, e.g. if there are no functioning airports.
The shadow of the Holocaust hangs over 20th-century ...
22
The other answers were about general problems with having a market for blood, but the specific context of your question adds even more problems.
If viral antibodies being present in blood elevates its market value, what's to prevent someone from attempting to deliberately infect themselves in the hopes of recovering and then selling their now very expensive ...
21
Of your countries:
Cape Verde
Chad
Eritrea
Niger
Togo
Gambia
These are all very poor African countries. Establishing an embassy is expensive, and frankly Chilean commerce isn't so large a portion of the economy that it makes sense to do so. Now, say, China - yeah - they are investing heavily in these countries, and you want to promote trade, defense, and ...
20
Per the official SWIFT website, SWIFT voluntarily complies with all legal sanctions and regulations: SWIFT
SWIFT is an international society which is owned by every financial institution connected to the network (thousands of banks around the world). The SWIFT network essentially just provides messaging for financial institutions to make payments between ...
20
While it has clearly been shown by the virility of the virus so far that travel restrictions will not stop the inevitable community spread of the illness, and that their effectiveness as impeding the spread of the virus is small, the aim of the policy is no longer to stop the virus, but to delay it. This was confirmed as current policy in the UK's response ...
20
In my country (Bulgaria), paid blood donorship is forbidden. What the donor gets is a pack of food/drinks/snacks and 2 paid days off (days off are at the expense of the employer, as the law is from communist times, but most employers don't oppose).
Then again, there is a stable black market of donor blood because voluntary donorship is simply not enough. It'...
18
Why is this voting system used in so many countries?
Because it is simple and easy to count. Each person votes for one candidate. The candidate with the most votes wins. Contrast it with the fairer single representative alternatives. Ranked voting (IRV/Instant Runoff Voting, Condorcet-compliant methods) requires listing out all the candidates in ...
18
Is it meaningful to talk about a median GDP/capita, or GDP/household for a country, and does anyone assemble such statistics?
Simply put: no, it isn't meaningful. GDP is a property of the whole economy, it's not equivalent to individual wealth or income. GDP/capita is not the mean of some household property, it's a way to scale the GDP to compare countries ...
17
Originally, the main reason for the Soviet Union and the US to stockpile so many weapons was to maintain what was called “mutually assured destruction”. The idea is that you need many weapons to ensure that enough of them survive a nuclear “first strike” to launch a “second strike” and obliterate your enemy. Both opponents thus know they would not gain ...
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