1331 réponses à ce sujet

[DeinonSlayer]

You don't miss Silverexile's special contribution to debate here?

Ah, that takes me back.

[Jorji Costava]

According to wobbly, the material from the game universe is wrong.

But you're right, I probably shouldn't be invoking real-life examples to counter his argument either.

 

Some real life examples, like Godwinning and Israel/Palestine, just get too incendiary to be productive; still, it'd be a shame to put a moratorium on their use altogether. Heck, you could make the case that circa ME1, what happened to the Quarians was intended to be loosely patterned on the Rwandan genocide of 1994. One previously marginalized group of people rises up against the dominant group and kills members of that group at an unheard-of rate (the one-year time frame of the Morning war mirroring the three-month time frame of the Rwandan genocide, which was the fastest-progressing genocide in human history). Meanwhile, the international community (the Council/the UN) sits back and does nothing to stop the violence despite having full knowledge of it at the time it's taking place. Obviously, the eventual outcomes were quite different, but the initial parallels seem to be in place.

[shodiswe]

So, how 'bout them Krogan?

They were given a Genophage when they got uppity and agressive like the Quarians.
Quarian Genophage maybe? A light sneeze might be enough I would think, every few years or so.

[Mrs_Stick]

They were given a Genophage when they got uppity and agressive like the Quarians.Quarian Genophage maybe?

Difference being they only attacked Geth. Krogan attacked every spieces.

[shodiswe]

Difference being they only attacked Geth. Krogan attacked every spieces.

I think there were two Council species at the beginning of the war, then the council discovered the Turians and asked them for help. It was very long ago and the Galactic civilisation was a lot smaller back then than it is now.

[wolfhowwl]

They were given a Genophage when they got uppity and agressive like the Quarians.
Quarian Genophage maybe? A light sneeze might be enough I would think, every few years or so.

 

C'mon now, at least put more effort than that into disruptive drive-by comments. You're not even trying.

[shodiswe]

C'mon now, at least put more effort than that into disruptive drive-by comments. You're not even trying.

Sorry, I'm getting a little tired!

[Ryriena]

Some real life examples, like Godwinning and Israel/Palestine, just get too incendiary to be productive; still, it'd be a shame to put a moratorium on their use altogether. Heck, you could make the case that circa ME1, what happened to the Quarians was intended to be loosely patterned on the Rwandan genocide of 1994. One previously marginalized group of people rises up against the dominant group and kills members of that group at an unheard-of rate (the one-year time frame of the Morning war mirroring the three-month time frame of the Rwandan genocide, which was the fastest-progressing genocide in human history). Meanwhile, the international community (the Council/the UN) sits back and does nothing to stop the violence despite having full knowledge of it at the time it's taking place. Obviously, the eventual outcomes were quite different, but the initial parallels seem to be in place.

I tend to agree that Rawanda fits the bill a lot more than the Iseral/Palanstine wars. I was just backing up my claims of such with that article that civilians building even when used by the military arent viable targets. I could also provide the hotel bombing done by the IRA. They are consider terrorist act by Ireland police and the British.

[Aimi]

Some real life examples, like Godwinning and Israel/Palestine, just get too incendiary to be productive; still, it'd be a shame to put a moratorium on their use altogether. Heck, you could make the case that circa ME1, what happened to the Quarians was intended to be loosely patterned on the Rwandan genocide of 1994. One previously marginalized group of people rises up against the dominant group and kills members of that group at an unheard-of rate (the one-year time frame of the Morning war mirroring the three-month time frame of the Rwandan genocide, which was the fastest-progressing genocide in human history). Meanwhile, the international community (the Council/the UN) sits back and does nothing to stop the violence despite having full knowledge of it at the time it's taking place. Obviously, the eventual outcomes were quite different, but the initial parallels seem to be in place.

It's a shame that parallel can't be followed through past Interahamwe to the Great Lakes conflicts. Many gamers have difficulty grasping the complexity of a war with only two morally ambiguous sides; imagine what would happen if they had to deal with the Mass Effect version of the Congo Wars.

It'd be like Scanners.

[DeinonSlayer]

I tend to agree that Rawanda fits the bill a lot more than the Iseral/Palanstine wars. I was just backing up my claims of such with that article that civilians building even when used by the military arent viable targets. I could also provide the hotel bombing done by the IRA. They are consider terrorist act by Ireland police and the British.

The codex on Quarian religion talks about an ancestor VI archive they maintained which the Geth destroyed during the war. Not sure if it held the same importance to them as, say, Mecca or the Vatican, but I guess it's another parallel.

The ancient quarians practiced ancestor worship. Even after abandoning faith for secularism, quarians continued to revere the wisdom of elders. As time passed and technology advanced, they inevitably turned their knowledge to preserving the personalities and memories of the elderly as computer virtual intelligences. These recordings became a repository of knowledge and wisdom, stored in a central databank and available through any extranet connection.

They held no illusions that this was like a form of immortality; like all virtual intelligences, their electronically-preserved ancestors were not truly sapient. This was considered a surmountable problem; sapience could surely be reduced to simple mathematics.

The quarians began exhaustive research into creating artificial intelligence so they could learn to escape the bounds of mortality and give their ancestral records true awareness. Unfortunately, the life the quarians created did not accept the same truths they did. The geth destroyed the ancestor databanks when they took over.

In the centuries since they evacuated their homeworld, most quarians have returned to religion in various forms. Many believe the rise of the geth and the destruction of their 'ancestors' were chastisement for arrogantly forsaking the old ways and venerating self-made idols.

Others have a more philosophical outlook, believing their race was indeed arrogant, but no supernatural agency lay behind the geth revolt. Rather, the quarians' actions wrought their own doom. Either way, every quarian would agree that their own hubris cost them their homeworld.

[78stonewobble]

Good God, you're as bad as Auld Wulf.

Notwithstanding the Americans then were technically British subjects in rebellion, hell yes it would be genocide! "Oh, I'm going to kill every [insert group here] in my country, but I'm not going to go to [neighboring country] and get in a war with [neighboring country] in the process to sweep up the [insert group here] who got away." Genocide does not require the killing of (or intent to kill) every single member of a specific group. I doubt Slobodan Milosevic thought he could kill all muslims everywhere.

I hate to Godwin my own thread after chastizing Shodiswe about it, but that's like saying that just because efforts were made to deport the "undesirables" (to Palestine and elsewhere) prior to the extermination, the holocaust itself can't be considered a genocide. To de-Godwinify it, it would be like saying that if America decided to exterminate every Mexican in its borders, it wouldn't be genocide if they tried deporting them first and then didn't launch a war of extermination into Mexico after killing everyone here.

I think I'm done talking to you.

 

It requires:

 

"In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
a. Killing members of the group;
b. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
d. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

 

It requires the intent to kill all people, even if it is practically impossible leading to the loss of only some, of a grouping, like the above mentioned, because they belong to that group. 

 

It is not genocide to kill ie. an invader or oppressor, even if it is 100 percent of them, that just so happens to consist solely of one such grouping. Such a killing would be motivated by the opponents actions rather than them belonging to one arbitrarily selected grouping. 

 

The act of invading or oppressing and thus forcing a selfdefence reaction supercedes intent from the defending side. 

 

If I get attacked and in the act of selfdefence I kill the person attacking me. It is selfdefence. It doesn't matter, If I found the person huggable before hand or I hated his guts or even if I hated his guts for belonging to some arbitrary grouping of people. Even if all persons of that group attacked me and they all wound up dead, it would still not be genocide. Because my intention was selfdefence, which is well within the rights of any individual, group, nation, race, species and what not. 

 

...

 

You have failed to prove, that the geth had the intent to kill all quarians during the morning war, if they could, because they were quarians, rather than stopping an attack on themselves and oppression. Ie. acts that excuse reactions of selfdefence. 

 

Instead trying to elicit emotional responses, by painting gruesome mental pictures and quoting irrelevant casualty numbers. Irrelevant, because neither have anything to do with the definition of genocide and to include them would only invite speculation of: "not genocide, because it was done mercifully" or "not genocide, because we only killed 4781 people and the limit is 5000". 

[DeinonSlayer]

*snip*

Every single sapient organic in Quarian space is dead - regardless of age, armament or affiliation. That the Geth succeeded in doing this (and continue to kill any organics who approached afterwards) seems proof enough they intended to do it. Unless you're really that desperate to believe the Geth "self-defensed" their way through entire populations on one world after the next when the books (and the codex, and map descriptions) call it a genocide and tell us the Quarians lacked the means to defend themselves, the Codex talks of the Geth assaulting Quarian positions with zerg tactics (not the other way around), and an announcement heard in the Spectre office in ME3 calls the Morning War an "unthinkable slaughter."

The Quarians didn't throw themselves at the Geth until there were none of them left in the Morning War; that's headcanon in contradiction to lore which hard-core Geth apologists cling to. Those who were unable to "escape the genocide" (as Karpyshyn described it) were systematically exterminated.

I've already said I'm done talking to you. Puke another wall of text on this thread and I'll ignore it.

[Ryriena]

The codex on Quarian religion talks about an ancestor VI archive they maintained which the Geth destroyed during the war. Not sure if it held the same importance to them as, say, Mecca or the Vatican, but I guess it's another parallel.

I tend to agree it's another parallel I just never saw that part in the codex. So I used that parallel and my apoglizes again.

[MassivelyEffective0730]

78, you're using the Convention out of context and applying it to a situation that it is categorically and fundamentally inapplicable. You have failed to take this into consideration as a charter and writ established under liberal terms by Western states to ensure the ethical and humane treatment of EPW, CPW, and Occupying forces.

 

That said, the Convention is meaningless to any party that doesn't agree to abide by it (which any party can). Hell, you can commit a thousand and one war crimes you want - if you're highly ranked on the winning side, you get called a hero for it. Or if you're on the losing side but prove to be enough of a utility that the victors actually embrace your methods provided they get viable results.

[DeinonSlayer]

78, you're using the Convention out of context and applying it to a situation that it is categorically and fundamentally inapplicable. That said, the Convention is meaningless to any party that doesn't agree to abide by it (which any party can). Hell, you can commit a thousand and one war crimes you want - if you're highly ranked on the winning side, you get called a hero for it. Or if you're on the losing side but prove to be enough of a utility that the victors actually embrace your methods provided they get viable results.

 

[78stonewobble]

Every single sapient organic in Quarian space is dead - regardless of age, armament or affiliation. That the Geth succeeded in doing this seems proof enough they intended to do it. Unless you're really that desperate to believe the Geth "self-defensed" their way through entire populations on one world after the next when the books (and the codex, and map descriptions) tell us the Quarians lacked the means to defend themselves, the Codex talks of the Geth assaulting Quarian positions with zerg tactics (not the other way around), and an announcement in ME3 calls the Morning War an "unthinkable slaughter."

I've already said I'm done talking to you. Puke another wall of text on this thread and I'll ignore it.

 

I've never said that every single killing the Geth did during the morning war was selfdefence. They certainly committed mass murder, just like the Quarians, but mass murder does not necessarily equal genocide. 

 

The efficiency of the killings are irrelevent, the casualty numbers are irrelevant and the tactics used is irrelevant. No widely accepted definition of the word genocide, defines the word in percentages of deaths, number of deaths or military tactics and I dare you to find one that does. 

 

To fit the definition the Geth concensus have to exclaim: "We wanna kill all the quarians, just because they are quarians." 

 

And if they ever thought that, they would most definately have followed the Quarians either instantly or as soon as possible. Not sit at home, twiddling their virtual thumbs. 

 

If the geth concensus instead says: "We want to kill all quarians, who are or can be a threat to us, but don't really care about quarians, we don't see as a threat." It might be selfdefence in some cases, mass murder in others, but not genocide.

 

Because it's not about them being Quarians or some such grouping, that people might not even have a choice in, it's about the action that the Quarians can do or potentially do, being behind "enemy lines" as it were. 

[ImaginaryMatter]

I've never said that every single killing the Geth did during the morning war was selfdefence. They certainly committed mass murder, just like the Quarians, but mass murder does not necessarily equal genocide. 

 

The efficiency of the killings are irrelevent, the casualty numbers are irrelevant and the tactics used is irrelevant. No widely accepted definition of the word genocide, defines the word in percentages of deaths, number of deaths or military tactics and I dare you to find one that does. 

 

To fit the definition the Geth concensus have to exclaim: "We wanna kill all the quarians, just because they are quarians." 

 

And if they ever thought that, they would most definately have followed the Quarians either instantly or as soon as possible. Not sit at home, twiddling their virtual thumbs. 

 

If the geth concensus instead says: "We want to kill all quarians, who are or can be a threat to us, but don't really care about quarians, we don't see as a threat." It might be selfdefence in some cases, mass murder in others, but not genocide.

 

Because it's not about them being Quarians or some such grouping, that people might not even have a choice in, it's about the action that the Quarians can do or potentially do, being behind "enemy lines" as it were. 

 

Perhaps the definition of genocide changes in the future. The word genocide is literally used in the games and books.

[78stonewobble]

78, you're using the Convention out of context and applying it to a situation that it is categorically and fundamentally inapplicable. You have failed to take this into consideration as a charter and writ established under liberal terms by Western states to ensure the ethical and humane treatment of EPW, CPW, and Occupying forces.

 

That said, the Convention is meaningless to any party that doesn't agree to abide by it (which any party can). Hell, you can commit a thousand and one war crimes you want - if you're highly ranked on the winning side, you get called a hero for it. Or if you're on the losing side but prove to be enough of a utility that the victors actually embrace your methods provided they get viable results.

 

Are you referring to the bits about defining genocide or are you referring to the bits about what constitutes "civilian" during times of war? 

[MassivelyEffective0730]

 

 

The Nazi's were damn technological savants in my opinion.

 

Granted, there's a lot more misses they had than hits that are both known and utterly unknown; the 262 comes to mind as one of their most glaring failures with resources, and a lot of the philosophy, history, and mythology they created for themselves was pretty cracked (for instance, they had expeditions sent to the Himalaya's and the North and South Pole searching for the entrance to the Center of the Earth where there existed a great Aryan civilization living under a crust of the Earth.

 

Or the actual horrendous flaws of the Vergeltungswaffen. It's hard to read about the V-weapons program without picturing an Aryan version of Wile E. Coyote engineering the whole thing behind the scenes. Especially when rockets routinely failed for such hilarious reasons as "too steep," "fell on airport" and "steam generator misbehaved."

 

According to one disgruntled engineer whose V-2 exploded only three seconds after ignition, "We have just wasted a million marks in order to guess what could have been reported accurately by an instrument probably worth the price of a small motorcycle." Of the nearly 6,000 V-2 rockets constructed, only 3,170 were actually launched. Of the 1,403 lobbed at England, nearly 300 somehow missed.

 

And I mean they missed England completely, a 50,000-square-mile target. The V-2s aimed at London fared no better, with only 517 hits out of 1,359 attempts. It seems like you could consistently do better with a huge, cartoon catapult. 

 

Still, that's not bad as far as experimental weapons programs go... unless you compare its price tag of 3 billion wartime dollars to, say, the $1.9 billion the U.S. spent to create a significantly more effective weapon called "the atomic bomb." Even when they reached their targets, they couldn't do all that much damage - the famous V-2 rocket only had a 2,200-pound warhead. In comparison, one allied B-29 bomber could drop 10 times as much, on a target 2,667 miles away, all while displaying sexy paintings of naked ladies on its fuselage. Guess who won that war for global military supremacy?

 

Those wacky Nazi's...

[MassivelyEffective0730]

Are you referring to the bits about defining genocide or are you referring to the bits about what constitutes "civilian" during times of war? 

 

I'm referring to the part where you're defeating your own position by even bothering to mention the Convention in relation to a fictional, alien event completely divorced from the reality of the Earth at the time and the Convention.

[Obadiah]

Every single sapient organic in Quarian space is dead - regardless of age, armament or affiliation.
...

Yeah, but that's because the live ones all left.
 

...
the Codex talks of the Geth assaulting Quarian positions with zerg tactics (not the other way around), and an announcement heard in the Spectre office in ME3 calls the Morning War an "unthinkable slaughter."
...

I'm curious. How would you describe a Quarian assault on the Geth during the Morning War? How would you characterize a Quarian destruction of, say, a Geth server (which probably happened at least once)?

I'm referring to the part where you're defeating your own position by even bothering to mention the Convention in relation to a fictional, alien event completely divorced from the reality of the Earth at the time and the Convention.

That doesn't actually defeat his position. The definition of Genocide usually references or is derived from that.

[MassivelyEffective0730]

That doesn't actually defeat his position. The definition of Genocide usually references or is derived from that.

 

What's genocide? Would we perhaps hold a different view of it compared to some other species? It might be the same in principle. But in definition? He's referencing an event that is completely outside of the scope of the Convention's intended constituency. 

[DeinonSlayer]

Yeah, but that's because the live ones all left.

As we're told, the Geth killed the ones who didn't.

I'm curious. How would you describe a Quarian assault on the Geth during the Morning War? How would you characterize a Quarian destruction of, say, a Geth server (which probably happened at least once)?

I can quote my canon Shepard. "This is like destroying a city, isn't it?"

I've said before that I understand why the Quarians tried to shut down the Geth, but I acknowledge the Geth as alive.

Thing is, the Geth quickly became the aggressors in the conflict and remained as such until the "threat" ceased to be a threat (because they were dead or fleeing where they couldn't follow).

[jtav]

Genocide: the deliberate and systematic destruction of an ethnic, religious, or cultural group. I'd say the Morning War qualifies. The geth meant to kill all those quarians.

I would say, however, that the geth lacked the capacity to make any kind of moral calculus since even specially built Legion is a bit off there.

[Deathsaurer]

The difference between mass murder on the scale we're talking and genocide is semantics. Both sides are guilty of it so neither can really claim to be the victims. Just one side was much better at it.