237 réponses à ce sujet

[fongiel24]

Nightwriter wrote...

I want to see a batarian named Stan sitting on the street corner in Omega with an accoustic guitar, going,

"WAR - HUH! - good God, y'all -
What is it good for?
Absolutely NOTHING - "

He plays it over and over until someone throws a shoe at his head (likely the Mad Prophet, Stan's arch nemesis). "Shut up, Stan!"

He starts to play another one.

"What the world
Needs now
Is love
Sweet love
It's the only thing - "

*Another shoe hits him in the face*

"Why can't we be friends
Why can we be friends
Why can't we be friends - "

*Shoe number three*

"All we are saying
Is give peace a chance - "

*Shoe number four, with an accompanying "Would you shut the f*ck UP, Stan!"*

"Let your love flow
Like a mountain stream
And let your love grow
With the smallest of dreams - "

Then Stan's guitar is taken and smashed, and he is beaten with its pieces for singing human music.

Yet Stan goes on, singing slurrily through a swollen lip and black and blue face:

"You say I'm just a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one - "

Campaign to buy Stan the Singing Batarian a new guitar for ME3.

I support this. Is there a petition I can sign?

[Christmas Ape]

PrimalEden wrote...

Grand Admiral Cheesecake wrote...

PrimalEden wrote...
"You have not defeated the enemy if you have adopted their methods."

First Punic War?
Second Punic War?
any of those ring a bell?You do what the Romans did, take theyr method and better it against them!

Sorry, was looking at the events of Auschwitz and the reasoning that led up to it.

I suppose we've all forgotten about the long Jewish history of raiding Germany for slave labor.

Wait.....this doesn't make any sense at all....it's almost the exact opposite of what's going on. Weird, right? I mean, you couldn't just be bringing up the Holocaust to play some kind of emotional blackmail card, it must be relevant to the discussion somehow.
Am I misapplying your references, and you're actually in favor of a more aggressive foreign policy regarding the batarians?

[Nightwriter]

Christmas seems to be opposed to bringing up the Holocaust in regard to this debate. I say we either stop mentioning it or bombard him with Holocaust references. Whichever.

fongiel, sadly Stan the Singing Batarian is one peace-loving dreamer people will just never accept.

[Christmas Ape]

Nightwriter wrote...
Christmas seems to be opposed to bringing up the Holocaust in regard to this debate. I say we either stop mentioning it or bombard him with Holocaust references. Whichever.
fongiel, sadly Stan the Singing Batarian is one peace-loving dreamer people will just never accept.

It's a cheap emotional gambit intended to be inarguable. "The Holocaust was bad, I can compare this in a very vague way to the Holocaust, therefore if you have a counter-argument you're in favor of historical atrocity". I'm perfectly willing to entertain the argument if it's applicable or defensible, but it's just thrown down like a red card debate-stopper, and almost invariably without regard for the fact that twisted and indefensible as it actually was, there was method to the madness beyond "Different! Therefore bad! Therefore murder now!"

Modifié par Christmas Ape, 29 octobre 2010 - 07:21 .

[fongiel24]

Nightwriter wrote...

Christmas seems to be opposed to bringing up the Holocaust in regard to this debate. I say we either stop mentioning it or bombard him with Holocaust references. Whichever.

fongiel, sadly Stan the Singing Batarian is one peace-loving dreamer people will just never accept.

Stan has a noble dream but no sense. Omega is a terrible place for someone like him to be performing. Someone needs to buy him a new guitar and put him on a stage where his gifts can be appreciated by likeminded individuals with more refined tastes in music.

Christmas Ape wrote...

It's a cheap emotional gambit intended to be inarguable. "The Holocaust was bad, I can compare this in a very vague way to the Holocaust, therefore if you have a counter-argument you're in favor of historical atrocity". I'm perfectly willing to entertain the argument if it's applicable or defensible, but it's just thrown down like a red card debate-stopper, and almost invariably without regard for the fact that twisted and indefensible as it actually was, there was method to the madness beyond "Different! Therefore bad! Therefore murder now!"

If we're going to talk about inflicting genocide on race, why wouldn't it be natural to link the discussion to the most famous case of genocide in human history? It's not like we're bringing up the Holocaust in a discussion about something completely unrelated.

What made the Holocaust horrific isn't that the N*zis picked on people whose only crime was to be born Jewish in occupied Europe. The Jews could have been ruthless slavers that preyed on innocent Germans and the Holocaust would have still been considered an atrocity. What made the Holocaust horrific was that human beings could treat other human beings with such cruelty on such a large scale.

Modifié par fongiel24, 29 octobre 2010 - 07:32 .

[Christmas Ape]

fongiel24 wrote...
If we're going to talk about inflicting genocide on race, why wouldn't it be natural to link the discussion to the most famous case of genocide in human history? It's not like we're bringing up the Holocaust in a discussion about something completely unrelated.

What made the Holocaust horrific isn't that the N*zis picked on people whose only crime was to be born Jewish in occupied Europe. The Jews could have been ruthless slavers that preyed on innocent Germans and the Holocaust would have still been considered an atrocity. What made the Holocaust horrific was that human beings could treat other human beings with such cruelty on such a large scale.

And a run-of-the-mill batarian slave labor camp makes it all look like a tea party, which makes it a pretty terrible case to make in their defense.

But I have a feeling actually discussing the historical issue without reference to the batarians is off-topic.

[rinter_degan]

ME1: I hated batarians. It was fun. Hey you, yeah, you with the four-eyes, wrinkles, and nasty penchant for slave trading? Eat a grenade.



Bring Down the Sky: Oh yes, all my hatred culminates into one tasty DLC. (Though that whole bit where you can negotiate with a certain Batarian did add a little depth - he was scum, but less scummy.)



ME2: ...Damn you Bioware. You gave them depth.



Examples:



-the ill and grateful Batarian - reasonable if you go Paragon



-the Batarians w/ Daniel - sure they're jerks, but they make a comment about humans having honor, and I was like "wait...what?" Apparently they have their own code of ethics that we didn't realize.



-Some of the Blue Suns were nice, right up till you killed them.



-Finally, Garrus and his dead Batarian squaddie. Not a nice guy, but if he was one of Garrus's non-traitor vigilantes, he had some ideals/good points.



Of course, there are plenty of opportunities to meet bad batarians. So I think Bioware is striving to give some balance.



My Renegade Shepard still shoots them on sight.

[Nightwriter]

Stan goes where he is needed most, fongiel. Wherever there is a surplus of gunfire and a shortage of hugs... wherever there are people holding grudges instead of holding hands... wherever weed is legal and sells for two credits a barrel...

Christmas Ape wrote...

And a run-of-the-mill batarian slave labor camp makes it all look like a tea party, which makes it a pretty terrible case to make in their defense.

But I have a feeling actually discussing the historical issue without reference to the batarians is off-topic.

I don't think even a batarian slave camp could make a concentration camp look like a tea party. I don't think anything could make the Holocaust look like a tea party.

But this is all purely beside the point imo. The point is that genocide is a simple response to something that is incredibly complex.

[Collider]

Batarians are still one sided. Basically all of them you encounter are either:

a) Racist

Not very friendly

c) Mercs

d) Slavers or slavery supporters

e) Another kind of criminal

f) two or more of the above

[Nightwriter]

Stan weeps.

[Christmas Ape]

Nightwriter wrote...
I don't think even a batarian slave camp could make a concentration camp look like a tea party. I don't think anything could make the Holocaust look like a tea party.

- The Korar raid of 2047, which took every single child.
- Logasiri; a mining world whose average temperature is 56 Celsius, and the whole compost story.
- The intentional crippling bone loss on Sobek's low-G moons.
- The use of Maji, with the pretty binary skybox, as a radiation-bathed slave bloodsport arena.
- Install cranial implants in the ones they can work to death - via a surgery that's two steps above "pound it into their skull with a hammer" in terms of regard for the patient - and shoot the rest.
Without attempting to diminish the human suffering that genuinely occured, the batarians have more varied resources and they seem committed to using every single one of them to generate maximum human misery.

But this is all purely beside the point imo. The point is that genocide is a simple response to something that is incredibly complex.

At least once a year, a fleet from Terminus invades the nearby Attican Traverse.

That's not complex in the slightest. It is a clear and present threat that requires a response.
If you must hurt a man, do it so thoroughly and so brutally that you need not fear his revenge.

[Nightwriter]

Yep. Doesn't top the Holocaust stories. It's awful, but it doesn't make the Holocaust into a tea party.

[marshalleck]

The Council sterilized the wrong race.

[GuardianAngel470]

So you all are arguing to kill all the Batarians because slavery is an inextricable part of their caste system correct? I have a question for you.

Do you believe that the Geth should be eradicated because of their actions against the quarians?

And another one:

Do you think the Rachni should be destroyed because of their ancestor's actions?

Like it or not, we don't know a whole lot about the Batarians beyond a news broadcast and the Codex, which has a tendency to be wrong. Would you judge humanity fit for extermination if you heard about one of the despicable court cases that we have argued? I think the more relevant N*zi connection would be the Nuremberg trials. The lawyers for those men must have made similar arguments for their clients as the ones made on the news for the Batarians.

But you know, technically that News broadcast shouldn't have happened at all, since the Batarians stopped answering to the Council when they seceded, so a very large part of this discussion is pretty meaningless.

Modifié par GuardianAngel470, 29 octobre 2010 - 09:44 .

[Christmas Ape]

Nightwriter wrote...

Yep. Doesn't top the Holocaust stories. It's awful, but it doesn't make the Holocaust into a tea party.

I have this feeling you're going to worry that expression to death regardless of the content of any other argument. Is it the mass killings? Slave raids are more profitable, so no, those aren't going to happen. But I'm willing to bet, based on the evidence available of batarian conduct towards humanity, that they don't put their slaves up in nice hotel rooms between shifts, as opposed to cramming them into brutally overcrowded and unhygenic barracks in the hopes that feeding them gets a little cheaper by the morning. We also have a very thorough historical record, thanks to traditional Teutonic meticulousness, while as you're fond of pointing out the Hegemony lets very little information out. We don't know what the exact conditions and potential ends are for human slaves taken from batarians, but there's nothing in evidence to suggest they receive anything but the worst possible treatment.

GuardianAngel470 wrote...
Do you believe that the Geth should be eradicated because of their actions against the quarians?
And another one:
Do you think the Rachni should be destroyed because of their ancestor's actions?

Sorry, which of these is an ongoing problem occuring at least once a year and motivated entirely by petulant malice again? Is it neither? It feels like these are things that happened 300 and 1,000 years ago, respectively, and that it's not particularly relevant because entering into a state of total war with the geth or the rachni wouldn't have as a goal preventing them from inflicting further harm in the future. The geth are not still hounding the quarians. If they were, this might have a case.

Though I've never quite advocated a complete genocide. If they have owned a human slave, or have raised a weapon in the defense of slavery, they are my enemy. I'm just not exactly hopeful that there will be batarians who will not make themselves my enemy.

Modifié par Christmas Ape, 29 octobre 2010 - 09:59 .

[marshalleck]

GuardianAngel470 wrote...

So you all are arguing to kill all the Batarians because slavery is an inextricable part of their caste system correct? I have a question for you.

Do you believe that the Geth should be eradicated because of their actions against the quarians?

And another one:

Do you think the Rachni should be destroyed because of their ancestor's actions?

Like it or not, we don't know a whole lot about the Batarians beyond a news broadcast and the Codex, which has a tendency to be wrong. Would you judge humanity fit for extermination if you heard about one of the despicable court cases that we have argued? I think the more relevant N*zi connection would be the Nuremberg trials. The lawyers for those men must have made similar arguments for their clients as the ones made on the news for the Batarians.

But you know, technically that News broadcast shouldn't have happened at all, since the Batarians stopped answering to the Council when they seceded, so a very large part of this discussion is pretty meaningless.

The difference is that the geth and the rachni may yet prove their worth. The batarians have only shown themselves to be consistently beyond redemption. 

I wouldn't say all batarians should be killed, but I certainly don't hesitate to pull the trigger on the ones causing problems. Which just so happens to be every batarian Shepard encounters. 

Modifié par marshalleck, 29 octobre 2010 - 10:02 .

[Nightwriter]

Christmas listen. No one. Is saying. The batarians. Are princes. Why are we so angry! Have the care bears taught you nothing?

The most I am saying is you should not commit uninformed genocide. The most.

[Christmas Ape]

Who's angry? You misread me so much. We're just talking, batarian apologists and persecutors alike.



I merely contend that we are in fact pretty well informed, at least sufficiently so to be able to infer much. Batarian society presents itself as an airtight casus belli, and while I'm willing to be pleasantly surprised I feel there's every indication here that appearances are truth.

[DPSSOC]

GuardianAngel470 wrote...
So you all are arguing to kill all the Batarians because slavery is an inextricable part of their caste system correct? I have a question for you.

Do you believe that the Geth should be eradicated because of their actions against the quarians?

And another one:

Do you think the Rachni should be destroyed because of their ancestor's actions?

No and no.  Because, as Christmas pointed out, their actions are all in the past not happening every day.  The Geth haven't attacked the Quarians in 300 years and the Rachni haven't attacked anyone in over 1,000; Batarians on the other hand regularly attack civillians.  This is an important distinction to make, the Batarians never attack military targets, they go after remote colonies and civillian vessels.  They clearly aren't freedom fighters battling oppression they're cowardly despots attacking people they know can't fight back.

GuardianAngel470 wrote...
Like it or not, we don't know a whole lot about the Batarians beyond a news broadcast and the Codex, which has a tendency to be wrong. Would you judge humanity fit for extermination if you heard about one of the despicable court cases that we have argued? I think the more relevant N*zi connection would be the Nuremberg trials. The lawyers for those men must have made similar arguments for their clients as the ones made on the news for the Batarians.

We know enough, we know they're a problem.  The Batarian problem needs to be dealt with and the only question is how.  As I proposed earlier in the thread I'd be content with rounding them up and confining them to their homeworld until they learn to act right, but killing the lot of them is a far more effective solution so I could go either way.

[Nightwriter]

Well come on, you do come across as a little angry. I mean not bad angry, more like Lewis Black angry. It's a good thing, you should be proud.



And I am of the mind that we should not punish an entire people for their oppressive government.

[Christmas Ape]

Nightwriter wrote...
Well come on, you do come across as a little angry. I mean not bad angry, more like Lewis Black angry. It's a good thing, you should be proud.

Well okay, that's different. That's cultivated.

And I am of the mind that we should not punish an entire people for their oppressive government.

It might also be a very popular government, dedicated to upholding their traditional cultural values and lauded for its unflinching resistance to the Human Menace. I suggest Alliance Marines go find out.

[General User]

I’m still waiting for someone, ANYONE, to suggest a potential course of action regarding the batarians that a) brings an immediate and absolute end to slavery, and 2) doesn’t involve large scale civilian deaths. I legitimately cannot think of one.



The death of civilians in war is a tragedy, but an unavoidable one. If the cause of the war is just (as a war to end batarian slavery would be), and war truly is the only realistic option (as past batarian actions have shown it is) then, I contend, it would be fundamentally immoral NOT to prosecute such a war and, by extension, cause the deaths of those civilians.

[Nightwriter]

I told you, provoke an enormous revolution. I'll bet the lower castes represent the majority of the batarian population. Convince them it's time for a revolt and the Hegemony will collapse from within. Where there are slaves, there is a revolution waiting to happen.

[Christmas Ape]

Nightwriter wrote...
I told you, provoke an enormous revolution. I'll bet the lower castes represent the majority of the batarian population. Convince them it's time for a revolt and the Hegemony will collapse from within. Where there are slaves, there is a revolution waiting to happen.

Yet somehow the Hegemony has been going strong for long enough that they were actively colonizing the Verge when we got there. Somehow the "revolution waiting to happen" never takes more than a few generations on Earth, and yet the batarians have evidently always been slavers. Perhaps not interspecies slavers before they went rogue state, but slavers nonetheless.
And if they're brave enough to rebel, wouldn't they simply leave and establish themselves somewhere else outside the reach of the Hegemony? Somehow every batarian colony is exactly the same - as loathsome and torturous an existence for its slaves as the world will make possible.
'Own slaves' might just be the batarian 'die for the cause'.

[Nightwriter]

Yeah, and I find it pretty far fetched that none of the Council races have invented something like medigel in the thousands of years they've been around. To some extent we must allow that the writing cannot give us a perfectly accurate example of what an alien race's history would be like.

And they haven't rebelled because no one has ever told them they deserve to, or that they have the power to. They're under the influence of their culture's teachings. Someone must stand up and contradict those teachings, and no one's going to while batarian space is still under quarantine.