IanPolaris wrote...
In short, WHY you are killing matters when you raise the issue of genocide.
-Polaris
phaonica wrote...
The Ethereal Writer Redux wrote...
He is. His pro-mage views are different from other Templars'. Most Templar pro-mage views are more "be nice to the mages" rather than try and give them better lives.
King Alistair showed us that. And even then he was never a real Templar at any point in his life. He never took the vows and whatever else is required beyond the training, so calling him a Templar isn't quite right. He's a Templar in training, but not in mindset or name. He was recruited by Duncan before he could become one.
He tells the Warden that the training was the only reason why he tried to become a Templar. Reason being because he was good at it and found solace in it.
True. He's not a Templar any more, but the whole point is that he didn't join by choice. I don't see in any of his dialog where he says he chose to join the order. He says he took to the training, but "took to" also means he was good at it, not that he chose it. And if not for Duncan's intervention, he could still be a Templar, again not by choice.
lol. Okay, technically no, he wasn't quite a Templar, but he would have been and would probably still be if Duncan hadn't conscripted him.The Ethereal Writer Redux wrote...
Well, he was never actually a Templar to begin with is what I was saying. He tells this to Leliana and Wynne will even remark on it.
Where, specifically, is the dialog or codex that says Alistair chose the path of the Templar?Anyway, he had choices within the Chantry, however limited they may have been. He could either be a brother or a Templar, and he chose to be a Templar because he was good at it. He wasn't forced to be one.
Modifié par The Ethereal Writer Redux, 30 septembre 2011 - 07:10 .
The Ethereal Writer Redux wrote...
from the Chantry hierarchy codex regarding initiates (which is what Alistair was):
Only those folk who take vows become initiates. These are men and women in training, whether in academic knowledge or the martial skills of a warrior. All initiates receive an academic education, although only those who seek to become templars learn how to fight in addition.
phaonica wrote...
esper wrote...
All the other anti-chantry posters I have seen have made the same distiction in their posts as me.Between the institution The Chantry and the people working in it. Just because you want to destroy an instituition because you think it is doing a lot of harm, it doesn't mean that you have to line up every chantry priest and killing them for every daring to join the religion. I am pretty sure you have misunderstood some of us.
Fair enough, wanting to dismantle the institution peacefully is fine, but if one believes in dismantling the institution enough that one would do so by force (i.e. the religion is the enemy) then those killings are genocidal.
Jedi Master of Orion wrote...
IanPolaris wrote...
In short, WHY you are killing matters when you raise the issue of genocide.
-Polaris
Why? The end result is identical, what difference would the reason make? Since you're insisting that the Right of Annulment is genocide, why would Meredith having different motives make it no longer such?
phaonica wrote...
esper wrote...
All the other anti-chantry posters I have seen have made the same distiction in their posts as me.Between the institution The Chantry and the people working in it. Just because you want to destroy an instituition because you think it is doing a lot of harm, it doesn't mean that you have to line up every chantry priest and killing them for every daring to join the religion. I am pretty sure you have misunderstood some of us.
Fair enough, wanting to dismantle the institution peacefully is fine, but if one believes in dismantling the institution enough that one would do so by force (i.e. the religion is the enemy) then those killings are genocidal.
IanPolaris wrote...
No it doesn't. If the goal is to kill (or imprison, remove, 'contain') all those of a different religion, then it's genocide. If the goal is to break the political and military structure of a Church it is not.
Again there is a difference.
phaonica wrote...
IanPolaris wrote...
No it doesn't. If the goal is to kill (or imprison, remove, 'contain') all those of a different religion, then it's genocide. If the goal is to break the political and military structure of a Church it is not.
Again there is a difference.
Again, I am having trouble getting your point because not enough of it is bolded and italicized.
The church's political and military structure wouldn't matter if the chantry didn't practice an anti-mage dogma. That dogma is what is targeted for destruction.
That is to say that once the political and military structure of the Chantry is broken, if one was to continue to attempt to break down what was left of Chantry dogma by imprisoning/removing/containing it's members, or rather if you kill/imprison/whatever people to target a dogma(even a militarily based dogma), that's genocide.
phaonica wrote...
IanPolaris wrote...
No it doesn't. If the goal is to kill (or imprison, remove, 'contain') all those of a different religion, then it's genocide. If the goal is to break the political and military structure of a Church it is not.
Again there is a difference.
Again, I am having trouble getting your point because not enough of it is bolded and italicized.
The church's political and military structure wouldn't matter if the chantry didn't practice an anti-mage dogma. That dogma is what is targeted for destruction.
That is to say that once the political and military structure of the Chantry is broken, if one was to continue to attempt to break down what was left of Chantry dogma by imprisoning/removing/containing it's members, or rather if you kill/imprison/whatever people to target a dogma(even a militarily based dogma), that's genocide.
IanPolaris wrote...
Actually the Baatan Death March was an act of genocide and surviving Japanese officers were subject to war crimes trials after the war on those charges. I say surviving because most Japanese officers committed suicide rather than facing the charges. In fact it was exactly these sorts of abuses that gave our society the impetus to define the word "genocide" in our langauge.
-Polaris
thank you everyone!!! you made me happy!
Sidney wrote...
IanPolaris wrote...
Actually the Baatan Death March was an act of genocide and surviving Japanese officers were subject to war crimes trials after the war on those charges. I say surviving because most Japanese officers committed suicide rather than facing the charges. In fact it was exactly these sorts of abuses that gave our society the impetus to define the word "genocide" in our langauge.
-Polaris
LOL, ok. You are wrong. I see the problem. Not all war crimes are genocide which you have issues with - specifically the concept of Crimes Against Humanity includes acts that fall outside the realm of genocide. The Battan commander was charged with Crimes Against Humanity but never was the word genocide used in relation to what he did - the SS commander at Malmedy was similarly charged. Genocide is a very specific offense for the concept of killing the whole or part of a group. You may be trying to use the "part" bit as an out for your position but the "part" concept is in there to stop any "but we didn't get them all" type defenses and assumes a larger "part" than the isolated destruction of a single group. Even the worst of the Japanese mass murderers in China (Rape of Nanking and others) were never charged with genocide because while the localized killing was awful it wasn't designed to be exterminationst to the group. Killing prisoners is still mass murder and very bad but it isn't genocide.
Modifié par IanPolaris, 30 septembre 2011 - 12:46 .
IanPolaris wrote...
The "reason" the Rape of Nanking and others weren't genocide was because as awful as the Japanese were, they didn't kill Chinese merely because they were Chinese. By contrast Templars DO confine and kill mages just for being mages and that is genocide.
-Polaris
Killjoy Cutter wrote...
IanPolaris wrote...
The "reason" the Rape of Nanking and others weren't genocide was because as awful as the Japanese were, they didn't kill Chinese merely because they were Chinese. By contrast Templars DO confine and kill mages just for being mages and that is genocide.
-Polaris
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide
While the Right/Rite of Annulment could be seen as an act of local genocide in the broadest sense, the everday nominal activities of the Templars are not genocide as it is defined. Nor is simple imprisonment an act of genocide.
What the Templars do could be seen as deeply wrong, without it being genocide. Throwing in words for emotional effect just cheapens and dilutes the language.
Wulfram wrote...
Alistair does say that "becoming a templar was a decision made for me a long time ago". And that Duncan was forced to conscript him because the Grand Cleric didn't want to let him go.
Though Samson in DA2 does say that they don't stop you from leaving, except through Lyrium addiction, so maybe they've changed that.
In Origins he didn't seem all that much at variance with Chantry policy on mages to me. He was very disturbed by the Harrowing he witnessed, but otherwise his reactions seem pretty much as expected for a Templar. Hostile to apostates and blood mages, understanding of the need for the right of annullment when talking to Greagoir
IanPolaris wrote...
Killjoy Cutter wrote...
IanPolaris wrote...
The "reason" the Rape of Nanking and others weren't genocide was because as awful as the Japanese were, they didn't kill Chinese merely because they were Chinese. By contrast Templars DO confine and kill mages just for being mages and that is genocide.
-Polaris
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide
While the Right/Rite of Annulment could be seen as an act of local genocide in the broadest sense, the everday nominal activities of the Templars are not genocide as it is defined. Nor is simple imprisonment an act of genocide.
What the Templars do could be seen as deeply wrong, without it being genocide. Throwing in words for emotional effect just cheapens and dilutes the language.
Read your own link. The Right of Annulment is an Act of Genocide. It fits the definition to a tee. It's not necessary that you try to elminate a group entirely, doing so "in part" is enough and doing so in a local is enough (see Sebreninca). Also collective punishment for a group falls under genocide as does concentration camps for a specific group. It's not just mass killing.
So no, I am not cheapening the word at all. I am calling a Spade a Spade, or an Act of Genocide (The Right of Annulment) for what it really is. Too bad a lot of people don't have the cojones to face it and recognize it for what it is.
-Polaris
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group",[1] though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars.[2] While a precise definition varies among genocide scholars, a legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG). Article 2 of this convention defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."[3]
IanPolaris wrote...
A true hardened Templar would insist on killing Conner no matter what. Alistair does not. Alistair loaths Morrigan, but Morrigan is a pretty unlikeable person. Certainly in the Fereldan tower, Alistair does not exhibit the Templar attitude towards annulment and is willing to take risks to show the mages mercy...not typical Templar traits. The one character in DAO that has the typical Templar attitude is Sten.
-Polaris
IanPolaris wrote...
No, you are the one that is wrong. It is true that Genocide is one type of War Crime, but the actual legal term of "genocide" didn't exist until the UN invented it and that was after the WWII War Crimes trials. The fact is that killing a group of people because of their religion, nationality, ethnicity, etc is genocide and the Right of Annulment fits. The only reason some war criminates weren't charged with "genocide" after WWII was because the legal term hadn't been invented yet.
-Polaris
Edit PS: On rereading the statutes on Genocide I will concede the point w/r/t Bataan, but it's still a warcrime. HOWEVER, the Right of Annulment clearly fits within the legal definition and what I said about the WWII War Crimes trials happening before the legalities of Genocide were finalized is perfectly correct.
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