[P/I] American engineering is pierless

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [P/I] American engineering is pierless

(Thread IKs: Zodium, John Charity Spring, really queer Christmas)

DynamicSloth: Jul 30, 2006; "Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."

Al! posted:

honestly? they hosed up and did it on a Monday, typically a slow news day

The point was not to do it under the radar though, the point was to get all the aid organizations (and the aid itself) out of Gaza. They needed the story to register if it was really going to clear the ground.

# ? Apr 2, 2024 22:55

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# ? May 25, 2024 16:46

nomad2020: Jan 30, 2007

Dreylad posted:

also sorry if someone else asked this and I missed it but how come these aid workers are beyond the pale? haven't dozens if not hundreds of aid workers, and not just palestinians, been killed already?

Part of it was that this aid agency was the Israel approved good guys�, unlike the dastardly UNRWA.

# ? Apr 2, 2024 22:57

Raskolnikov38: Mar 3, 2007; We were somewhere around Manila when the drugs began to take hold

Dreylad posted:

when the gbs ukraine thread got shut down the cspam took wayward posters with open arms and it was actually good except for one goon who went full lusting for russian civilian deaths

it was a miserable experience and it was a blessing when they were given their own thread back

# ? Apr 2, 2024 22:58

DJJIB-DJDCT: Feb 1, 2024

Shageletic posted:

Lack of "discipline" to pretend mass murder events of civilians in foreign wars is justifiable has a long and bloody history,(free fire zones from North Korea to Vietnam to Afghanistan). We're just seeing it particularly and brutally utilized here in a way that is jarring to 21st C sensibilities. And with an obvious goal: the extermination of an entire people

I was just thinking that this is how, I suppose you would say liberal, historians have tried to make sense of Japanese War Crimes since the 2010's.

I'll try to explain the debate. The Tokyo Trials, as you may know, were not a success compared to Nuremberg. Neither was the prosecution of low level Japanese war criminals generally. I realize 90% of this was the result of anti-communism and needing Japan onboard, particularly after the Korean War started. It's still the case now, because the PRC is still there.

However, letting people skate also extended to soldiers who had killed Allied POWs and this caused a lot of postwar anger in the USA and Australia. Canada too because of Hong Kong, but Canadians were more mad that Kurt Meyer and 12th SS walked. The Japanese killed, I don't even know how many, Allied POWs, either taken during the "year of victory", 1942, or aircrew shot down throughout the war. They tortured, starved, abused many more. In the postwar imagination, the Japanese were gleeful and savage while committing crimes, as opposed to the buttoned down Nazis, befel ist befel and all. Also, because the Allies did pretty much everything the Japanese did, they were less willing to make these huge cases of international law like the German trials. Sort of like how Donitz skated on unrestricted submarine warfare, but applying to things like "take no prisoners" orders.

Anyway, a lot of the postwar understanding of the Japanese crimes was tied up in racism, and then after the 60's or so, a myth of bushido and the samurai code.

The problem is as history got more methodical in approaching Imperial Japan, explanations of their crimes as "oriental cruelty" and "the way of the samurai" were unsustainable. A key issue was, unlike the Nazis, the Japanese almost never had direct orders, or standing policy, for criminal behaviour. Yes, this interpretation was also useful for making sure the Emperor could stay in power. It was society wide though, because the Nuremberg Trials created the precedent of Criminal Organizations, yet we needed a lot of the Japanese state to carry over, both in the Home Islands and in South Korea. Part of the issue was also racial stereotype. The Germans must be organized, efficient, following orders, so evidence of that must be found, but there was less incentive to look for or interpret evidence that way when it came to Japan because they weren't perceived that way. It was unnatural for Germans to kill prisoners, whereas for Asiatics, well, what can you say? Life is cheap in the Orient.

Still, problems with the history aside, there is hardly any direct, written, evidence for Japanese officers ever ordering prisoners to be killed. Getting eyewitness testimony of verbal orders, or even just the crimes and establishing who was in charge, was useful for POW trials, so no paperwork required. There was no real interest in following up on Japanese crimes in China (the overwhelming majority of them) after the communists won the civil war, so no need to search for written orders there either. That "methodology" explained individual incidents, but without a smoking gun of policy papers, which the Germans left everywhere, it was harder to explain why criminal behaviour was not just widespread, but so common as if it had been policy. As I said, racial and cultural explanations were fine from 1945 to at least the 60's and 70's, but these were incompatible with studying the IJA and IJN as institutions filled with human beings and not bucktoothed bloodthirsty maniacs in straw hats or inscrutable products of an alien culture.

Institutional analysis of the Japanese military, hit a wall in the cultural explanation right off the bat. It had been modelled on European militaries during the Meiji Restoration, was universally agreed to be excellent until about 1930, and had won worldwide renown for how well it treated (Russian) prisoners in the Russo Japanese War. There were mountains and mountains of carefully detailed orders for the good treatment of prisoners from both the Russo-Japanese War and First World War (Japan had fought over Germany's far east possessions). There were detailed policy papers on the treatment of prisoners, construction and inspection of POW camps, etc etc. Clearly it didn't make sense for an institution to regress from a disciplined army that prepared and disseminated detailed orders for the care of prisoners to samurai in borrowed European clothes who had never heard of "prisoners", only the way of bushido.

There was another round of debate in the 90's where Japanese historians started floating the idea of "reverse racism",where shabby treatment by Europeans enraged the Japanese, and that's why they acted the way they did, but this has a lot of problems I don't really want to get into. It makes sense for that to be the Japanese historical establishment's position, and for Japanese historians to interpret evidence that way, it suits the Japanese government, but it doesn't track with the treatment of Malay, Indonesian, Indian, obviously Chinese, POWs. Also, there had been no real incident between 1919 and 1941 that would so aggrieve the average Japanese person that they went crazy with rage over national honour or European racism. Obviously there were issues in inter-war diplomacy, and 20th century Europeans, even diplomats, were racist, but this is more of a nation adopting a defence of "temporary insanity" than anything that has merit imo.

In the 2000's a bunch of western liberal historians, in my opinion, got suckered in and started defending Japanese actions using the language of decolonization and liberation struggle, white supremacy, racism etc. but again, unlike the Algerians or Vietnamese, they had never been on the receiving end of an escalating cycle of brutalization by Europeans, so this explanation is just as tied up with trends in the western academy as the Japanese school is in theirs.

To tie this all together, in the 2010's an explanation gained consensus that, so far as I know, is still the dominant one. The Japanese did not have a top down policy to commit war crimes. Neither were orders issued for war crimes. They were not predetermined to participate in them either by their race, or by being the victims of European racism. There was no cultural cause, and no institutional cause - per se. Rather, Japanese war crimes were the result of what didn't happen rather than what did.

The Japanese civilian government, after all of those assassinations in the 1920's, junior army officers starting their own wars in China etc. decided to stop exercising authority over the military. Senior, then mid-level, Japanese military officers selectively stopped exercising authority in certain areas as the 1930's went on. Japanese military discipline was fearsome with absolute savage beatings and humiliations over the smallest infractions. During the war in China, however, Japanese field grade officers stopped trying to rein their frustrated men in when it came to civilians and POWs. They didn't have to order any crimes to be committed, but they made it very obvious that they were not going to order that any not be. This went all the way up to army high command and cabinet.

So, Japanese soldiers were disciplined, I think anyone who has heard the stories of the IJA marching 30km through jungle on a cup of rice a day knows that, but the absence of discipline when it came to the treatment of civilians and POWs had an inevitable, predictable, result. Even though there was no smoking gun, or explicit and direct order to commit specific crimes, there didn't need to be. The absence of orders on the subject spoke loudly enough. Soldiers were left to their own initiative, which in a brutal, frustrating, war, was obviously going to be what it was.

I agree with the historical explanation, generally.

What I don't agree with, I'll try to tie this to my complaint about liberalism and Israel here, is that I don't think this is exculpatory, and I resent that in these debates it is often treated that way.

Not prohibiting soldiers under your command from doing something, which is well within your power to do is pretty much the same as ordering them to do it, right? The Japanese were enforcing grooming and uniform regulations while cut off in the jungle, but had a total breakdown of discipline whenever they happened to take prisoners? You can talk about poor discipline, but if you are turning on and off that tap, selectively, you can't treat it like a force of nature. If it's not a force of nature, someone is responsible. It does not let anyone off the hook, in my opinion, that there was a deliberate, conspicuous, absence of orders. Why the absence of orders is seen as morally exculpable is the crux of my problem with liberalism here, so I'll try to connect past and present.

If your subordinate captures 400 prisoners, and you provide rations for 200, or tell a patrol they need to travel over some great distance on a schedule, when they are responsible for stretcherborne POWs, without providing any transportation, what do you think is going to happen? If you know it is going to happen, and created circumstances where it will happen, why do you need to order it to happen to be morally responsible? Or, put another other way, using the logic of an "invisible hand" to evade guilt is a pretty big problem.

So when liberal historians say "actually, the Japanese were rational human beings and not Dr Seuss cartoons", they're correct.
When they say "the Japanese issued no orders to commit crime xyz", they're correct.
When they say "the Japanese military was efficient, organized, disciplined" they're correct too.
When they say "therefore nobody was really responsible", I have a problem.

and I think, basically, this is how liberals talk about all sorts of heinous things. If it isn't ordered, in plain language, explicitly, cause, effect, intention all spelled out, it doesn't register for them. A government choosing to do something can be clearly morally evaluated. Government policy was Y, so the consequences of Y were the government's fault. However, different forms of disaster and immiseration "just happen". There is no memo saying "by the way, we can enact Aktion T4 and exterminate undesirables". Instead, healthcare is cut, while "totally unrelated", MAiD becomes available. People choose, rationally, individually, given the circumstances, and the circumstances are outside anyone's control - after all, even if someone directly ordered that these circumstances be created, they didn't directly order the consequences, and are free from guilt.

Japanese soldiers, just were going to kill prisoners, so we shouldn't interpret the lack of orders preventing that as a state or military level choice. It was just individual soldiers being naughty boys. The state is therefore innocent, we don't have to make a fuss about the Yasukuni Shrine.

Liberalism, I hope I'm not abusing the term, seems to always play this little game. As Atwater said,

"Now, you�re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you�re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.� �We want to cut this,� is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than..."

Israel is always let off the hook because individual soldiers are not ordered to kill civilians, and units are not ordered to destroy hospitals. They simply don't receive orders not to, but to liberals, somehow, that makes the people responsible innocent.

# ? Apr 2, 2024 22:59

Honky Mao: Dec 26, 2012

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

I was just thinking that this is how, I suppose you would say liberal, historians have tried to make sense of Japanese War Crimes since the 2010's.

I'll try to explain the debate. The Tokyo Trials, as you may know, were not a success compared to Nuremberg. Neither was the prosecution of low level Japanese war criminals generally. I realize 90% of this was the result of anti-communism and needing Japan onboard, particularly after the Korean War started. It's still the case now, because the PRC is still there.

However, letting people skate also extended to soldiers who had killed Allied POWs and this caused a lot of postwar anger in the USA and Australia. Canada too because of Hong Kong, but Canadians were more mad that Kurt Meyer and 12th SS walked. The Japanese killed, I don't even know how many, Allied POWs, either taken during the "year of victory", 1942, or aircrew shot down throughout the war. They tortured, starved, abused many more. In the postwar imagination, the Japanese were gleeful and savage while committing crimes, as opposed to the buttoned down Nazis, befel ist befel and all. Also, because the Allies did pretty much everything the Japanese did, they were less willing to make these huge cases of international law like the German trials. Sort of like how Donitz skated on unrestricted submarine warfare, but applying to things like "take no prisoners" orders.

Anyway, a lot of the postwar understanding of the Japanese crimes was tied up in racism, and then after the 60's or so, a myth of bushido and the samurai code.

The problem is as history got more methodical in approaching Imperial Japan, explanations of their crimes as "oriental cruelty" and "the way of the samurai" were unsustainable. A key issue was, unlike the Nazis, the Japanese almost never had direct orders, or standing policy, for criminal behaviour. Yes, this interpretation was also useful for making sure the Emperor could stay in power. It was society wide though, because the Nuremberg Trials created the precedent of Criminal Organizations, yet we needed a lot of the Japanese state to carry over, both in the Home Islands and in South Korea. Part of the issue was also racial stereotype. The Germans must be organized, efficient, following orders, so evidence of that must be found, but there was less incentive to look for or interpret evidence that way when it came to Japan because they weren't perceived that way. It was unnatural for Germans to kill prisoners, whereas for Asiatics, well, what can you say? Life is cheap in the Orient.

Still, problems with the history aside, there is hardly any direct, written, evidence for Japanese officers ever ordering prisoners to be killed. Getting eyewitness testimony of verbal orders, or even just the crimes and establishing who was in charge, was useful for POW trials, so no paperwork required. There was no real interest in following up on Japanese crimes in China (the overwhelming majority of them) after the communists won the civil war, so no need to search for written orders there either. That "methodology" explained individual incidents, but without a smoking gun of policy papers, which the Germans left everywhere, it was harder to explain why criminal behaviour was not just widespread, but so common as if it had been policy. As I said, racial and cultural explanations were fine from 1945 to at least the 60's and 70's, but these were incompatible with studying the IJA and IJN as institutions filled with human beings and not bucktoothed bloodthirsty maniacs in straw hats or inscrutable products of an alien culture.

Institutional analysis of the Japanese military, hit a wall in the cultural explanation right off the bat. It had been modelled on European militaries during the Meiji Restoration, was universally agreed to be excellent until about 1930, and had won worldwide renown for how well it treated (Russian) prisoners in the Russo Japanese War. There were mountains and mountains of carefully detailed orders for the good treatment of prisoners from both the Russo-Japanese War and First World War (Japan had fought over Germany's far east possessions). There were detailed policy papers on the treatment of prisoners, construction and inspection of POW camps, etc etc. Clearly it didn't make sense for an institution to regress from a disciplined army that prepared and disseminated detailed orders for the care of prisoners to samurai in borrowed European clothes who had never heard of "prisoners", only the way of bushido.

There was another round of debate in the 90's where Japanese historians started floating the idea of "reverse racism",where shabby treatment by Europeans enraged the Japanese, and that's why they acted the way they did, but this has a lot of problems I don't really want to get into. It makes sense for that to be the Japanese historical establishment's position, and for Japanese historians to interpret evidence that way, it suits the Japanese government, but it doesn't track with the treatment of Malay, Indonesian, Indian, obviously Chinese, POWs. Also, there had been no real incident between 1919 and 1941 that would so aggrieve the average Japanese person that they went crazy with rage over national honour or European racism. Obviously there were issues in inter-war diplomacy, and 20th century Europeans, even diplomats, were racist, but this is more of a nation adopting a defence of "temporary insanity" than anything that has merit imo.

In the 2000's a bunch of western liberal historians, in my opinion, got suckered in and started defending Japanese actions using the language of decolonization and liberation struggle, white supremacy, racism etc. but again, unlike the Algerians or Vietnamese, they had never been on the receiving end of an escalating cycle of brutalization by Europeans, so this explanation is just as tied up with trends in the western academy as the Japanese school is in theirs.

To tie this all together, in the 2010's an explanation gained consensus that, so far as I know, is still the dominant one. The Japanese did not have a top down policy to commit war crimes. Neither were orders issued for war crimes. They were not predetermined to participate in them either by their race, or by being the victims of European racism. There was no cultural cause, and no institutional cause - per se. Rather, Japanese war crimes were the result of what didn't happen rather than what did.

The Japanese civilian government, after all of those assassinations in the 1920's, junior army officers starting their own wars in China etc. decided to stop exercising authority over the military. Senior, then mid-level, Japanese military officers selectively stopped exercising authority in certain areas as the 1930's went on. Japanese military discipline was fearsome with absolute savage beatings and humiliations over the smallest infractions. During the war in China, however, Japanese field grade officers stopped trying to rein their frustrated men in when it came to civilians and POWs. They didn't have to order any crimes to be committed, but they made it very obvious that they were not going to order that any not be. This went all the way up to army high command and cabinet.

So, Japanese soldiers were disciplined, I think anyone who has heard the stories of the IJA marching 30km through jungle on a cup of rice a day knows that, but the absence of discipline when it came to the treatment of civilians and POWs had an inevitable, predictable, result. Even though there was no smoking gun, or explicit and direct order to commit specific crimes, there didn't need to be. The absence of orders on the subject spoke loudly enough. Soldiers were left to their own initiative, which in a brutal, frustrating, war, was obviously going to be what it was.

I agree with the historical explanation, generally.

What I don't agree with, I'll try to tie this to my complaint about liberalism and Israel here, is that I don't think this is exculpatory, and I resent that in these debates it is often treated that way.

Not prohibiting soldiers under your command from doing something, which is well within your power to do is pretty much the same as ordering them to do it, right? The Japanese were enforcing grooming and uniform regulations while cut off in the jungle, but had a total breakdown of discipline whenever they happened to take prisoners? You can talk about poor discipline, but if you are turning on and off that tap, selectively, you can't treat it like a force of nature. If it's not a force of nature, someone is responsible. It does not let anyone off the hook, in my opinion, that there was a deliberate, conspicuous, absence of orders. Why the absence of orders is seen as morally exculpable is the crux of my problem with liberalism here, so I'll try to connect past and present.

If your subordinate captures 400 prisoners, and you provide rations for 200, or tell a patrol they need to travel over some great distance on a schedule, when they are responsible for stretcherborne POWs, without providing any transportation, what do you think is going to happen? If you know it is going to happen, and created circumstances where it will happen, why do you need to order it to happen to be morally responsible? Or, put another other way, using the logic of an "invisible hand" to evade guilt is a pretty big problem.

So when liberal historians say "actually, the Japanese were rational human beings and not Dr Seuss cartoons", they're correct.
When they say "the Japanese issued no orders to commit crime xyz", they're correct.
When they say "the Japanese military was efficient, organized, disciplined" they're correct too.
When they say "therefore nobody was really responsible", I have a problem.

and I think, basically, this is how liberals talk about all sorts of heinous things. If it isn't ordered, in plain language, explicitly, cause, effect, intention all spelled out, it doesn't register for them. A government choosing to do something can be clearly morally evaluated. Government policy was Y, so the consequences of Y were the government's fault. However, different forms of disaster and immiseration "just happen". There is no memo saying "by the way, we can enact Aktion T4 and exterminate undesirables". Instead, healthcare is cut, while "totally unrelated", MAiD becomes available. People choose, rationally, individually, given the circumstances, and the circumstances are outside anyone's control - after all, even if someone directly ordered that these circumstances be created, they didn't directly order the consequences, and are free from guilt.

Japanese soldiers, just were going to kill prisoners, so we shouldn't interpret the lack of orders preventing that as a state or military level choice. It was just individual soldiers being naughty boys. The state is therefore innocent, we don't have to make a fuss about the Yasukuni Shrine.

Liberalism, I hope I'm not abusing the term, seems to always play this little game. As Atwater said,

"Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than..."

Israel is always let off the hook because individual soldiers are not ordered to kill civilians, and units are not ordered to destroy hospitals. They simply don't receive orders not to, but to liberals, somehow, that makes the people responsible innocent.

Yeah I agree someone should nuke israel

# ? Apr 2, 2024 23:04

OctaMurk: Jun 21, 2013

The 3 dead uk aid workers are former uk commandos ? Hm

# ? Apr 2, 2024 23:05

DJJIB-DJDCT: Feb 1, 2024

OctaMurk posted:

The 3 dead uk aid workers are former uk commandos ? Hm

Oh for sure that organization is a cut-out for western intelligence, like all NGOs, but that's all the more reason why it would have been prudent for Israel not to have struck it.

# ? Apr 2, 2024 23:12

guidoanselmi: Feb 6, 2008; I thought my ideas were so clear. I wanted to make an honest post. No lies whatsoever.

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

Oh for sure that organization is a cut-out for western intelligence, like all NGOs, but that's all the more reason why it would have been prudent for Israel not to have struck it.

the mission objective is starvation and eradication. can't risk it.

# ? Apr 2, 2024 23:15

Atrocious Joe: Sep 2, 2011

https://twitter.com/AliAbunimah/status/1775269706905292829?t=YNyw2YwBBfoiteL1hn4Mrg&s=19

https://twitter.com/Lowkey0nline/status/1775262135716847896?t=ZKTX_hlOiVde7dHCiARTSg&s=19

USS Liberty 2.0

# ? Apr 2, 2024 23:15

Honky Mao: Dec 26, 2012

IDF bombed a van full of British spies

# ? Apr 2, 2024 23:16

Puppy Burner: Sep 9, 2011

Tarnop posted:

What is the "retaliation strategy of accumulation"?

Putting up with it to not get invaded by the western nazi psychos

# ? Apr 2, 2024 23:17

Raskolnikov38: Mar 3, 2007; We were somewhere around Manila when the drugs began to take hold

OctaMurk posted:

The 3 dead uk aid workers are former uk commandos ? Hm

my "jose andres runs the world" mania is becoming less and less ironic every day

# ? Apr 2, 2024 23:20

Harik: Sep 9, 2001; From the hard streets of Moscow
First dog to touch the stars; Plaster Town Cop

Weka posted:

I'm sure there were many good Germans in 1940.

i think history post 1945 has conclusively proven that to be not true. all those definitely not nazis left when the smoke cleared continued the eradication campaign and never returned any stolen property - because those "good germans" owned it now.

instead they funded a colonial project to expel the remaining jews to.

# ? Apr 2, 2024 23:23

Clip-On Fedora: Feb 20, 2011

Dreylad posted:

thought so. the strategy seems obvious: the 7 people they killed caused the aid organization to stop its operations and thus deny Palestinians another lifeline.

what I don't get is why the media seems to care about these 7 aid workers and not the other few hundred

I think part of it was everyone kind of recognized that WCK was a fig leaf sent by the United States to make it seem like the problem was being addressed without actually fixing it. Essentially, they were there to spin the situation in Israel�s favor. Everyone�s shocked because we basically sent Israel reinforcements and they killed them in a petulant fit of rage because they weren�t the reinforcements they wanted.

The whole situation just drives home what stupid lovely assholes they are, and what a stupid idea it would be to give them a ride across the river on your back.

Clip-On Fedora has issued a correction as of 23:28 on Apr 2, 2024

# ? Apr 2, 2024 23:25

Weka: May 5, 2019; That child totally had it coming. Nobody should be able to be out at dusk except cars.

Sancho Banana posted:

Netanyahu worked out an arrangement with Russia whereby the IAF would be (mostly) free to conduct operations against Hezbollah/Iranian positions in Syria in exchange for non-interference with regards to the SAA moving south, and I have to wonder how much Putin still values this weird entente he's entered with Israel over the course of the civil war. Surely any chances for further Israeli-Russian flirtation have been nuked by the past six months, no?

Russia is mostly focused on the Ukraine front so even the remains of this detente allow them to use less resources here. Getting sucked into a serious southern front is not in their interests.

StashAugustine posted:

I assume the US would prefer the Israelis not invade rafah but a) because it'd be a headache for them and probably a military failure, not out of genuine concern b) they're not gonna do anything serious if they do anyway

I think it's because Israel isn't ready to invade so Biden is scoring some cheap politricking points

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

Oh for sure that organization is a cut-out for western intelligence, like all NGOs, but that's all the more reason why it would have been prudent for Israel not to have struck it.

That's what makes it the perfect target. If they will hit these dudes they will hit anyone.

# ? Apr 2, 2024 23:27

SniperWoreConverse: Mar 20, 2010; Gun Saliva

Hatebag posted:

ah, interesting. the forum scrambles youtube live embeds now as well

If you paste it thru into the browser window the forum unscrambles it. If you use your phone keyboard to paste it, it stays scrambled (i think the keyboard "types" it to the forums?). Youtube loves cramming extra crap into its urls these days, all that poo poo gets stripped out by forums url parsing if it's operating normally. Dunno if it's the same problem or what but :shrug:

E: also "/live/" I think is loving up the parsing? Not a computer expert

# ? Apr 2, 2024 23:29

Weka: May 5, 2019; That child totally had it coming. Nobody should be able to be out at dusk except cars.

Wraith of J.O.I. posted:

it's easy to say "DTI" until you hear from israelis like the ones they interviewed

Nice work btw

Harik posted:

i think history post 1945 has conclusively proven that to be not true. all those definitely not nazis left when the smoke cleared continued the eradication campaign and never returned any stolen property - because those "good germans" owned it now.

instead they funded a colonial project to expel the remaining jews to.

I'm not suggesting some significant fraction but if you don't think there were any ok dudes out of a population of 70 million you should join the idf

# ? Apr 2, 2024 23:33

ContinuityNewTimes: Dec 30, 2010; Я выдуман напрочь

Honky Mao posted:

IDF bombed a van full of British spies

Now I don't know what to think

# ? Apr 2, 2024 23:33

I said come in!: Jun 22, 2004

XMNN posted:

https://x.com/LBC/status/1775214111590318505?s=20
https://x.com/LBC/status/1775209659697090825?s=20

every one of these cunts I find out about is somehow worse than the last, I hope very bad things happen to them

Here is the evidence of Hamas working with these aid agencies:

# ? Apr 2, 2024 23:34

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Why even lie a this point, nobody is going to do anything.

Just say you killed them as a warning to not interfere with the genocide.

# ? Apr 2, 2024 23:39

fuctifino: Jun 11, 2001

The Scum is reporting about the three British people:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/27076032/brit-special-forces-hero-aid-workers-killed-gaza-israel/amp/

quote:

The three men - a special forces hero, a former Royal Marine, and an Army veteran - died when their vehicles were blasted in a "triple tap" drone strike.

They were all working for the security company Solace Global, based in Poole, Dorset.

Special Boat Service (SBS) hero John Chapman, 57, who lived in Poole, and former Marine James Henderson, 33, were travelling in a clearly-marked car, operated by charity World Central Kitchen (WCK), when the convoy was struck with three missiles fired by an IDF drone.

Chapman, a married dad-of-two, had only been in Gaza a matter of weeks after previous stints working in the Middle East.

# ? Apr 2, 2024 23:43

Clip-On Fedora: Feb 20, 2011

Weka posted:

That's what makes it the perfect target. If they will hit these dudes they will hit anyone.

Oh yeah, I�m sure they think it�s a big dick power move. I don�t think it was very smart though.

# ? Apr 2, 2024 23:45

Death By The Blues: Oct 30, 2011

https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1775288934697665008

# ? Apr 2, 2024 23:53

Lustful Man Hugs: Jul 18, 2010

Sherbert Hoover posted:

western media screaming to the israelis that all they have to do is say sorry and everyone will keep on sending them missiles and they can't even do it

A lot of these interactions remind me of when Alex Jones was pleading with Kanye to not openly be a nazi.

# ? Apr 2, 2024 23:57

Shageletic: Jul 25, 2007

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

I was just thinking that this is how, I suppose you would say liberal, historians have tried to make sense of Japanese War Crimes since the 2010's.

I'll try to explain the debate. The Tokyo Trials, as you may know, were not a success compared to Nuremberg. Neither was the prosecution of low level Japanese war criminals generally. I realize 90% of this was the result of anti-communism and needing Japan onboard, particularly after the Korean War started. It's still the case now, because the PRC is still there.

However, letting people skate also extended to soldiers who had killed Allied POWs and this caused a lot of postwar anger in the USA and Australia. Canada too because of Hong Kong, but Canadians were more mad that Kurt Meyer and 12th SS walked. The Japanese killed, I don't even know how many, Allied POWs, either taken during the "year of victory", 1942, or aircrew shot down throughout the war. They tortured, starved, abused many more. In the postwar imagination, the Japanese were gleeful and savage while committing crimes, as opposed to the buttoned down Nazis, befel ist befel and all. Also, because the Allies did pretty much everything the Japanese did, they were less willing to make these huge cases of international law like the German trials. Sort of like how Donitz skated on unrestricted submarine warfare, but applying to things like "take no prisoners" orders.

Anyway, a lot of the postwar understanding of the Japanese crimes was tied up in racism, and then after the 60's or so, a myth of bushido and the samurai code.

The problem is as history got more methodical in approaching Imperial Japan, explanations of their crimes as "oriental cruelty" and "the way of the samurai" were unsustainable. A key issue was, unlike the Nazis, the Japanese almost never had direct orders, or standing policy, for criminal behaviour. Yes, this interpretation was also useful for making sure the Emperor could stay in power. It was society wide though, because the Nuremberg Trials created the precedent of Criminal Organizations, yet we needed a lot of the Japanese state to carry over, both in the Home Islands and in South Korea. Part of the issue was also racial stereotype. The Germans must be organized, efficient, following orders, so evidence of that must be found, but there was less incentive to look for or interpret evidence that way when it came to Japan because they weren't perceived that way. It was unnatural for Germans to kill prisoners, whereas for Asiatics, well, what can you say? Life is cheap in the Orient.

Still, problems with the history aside, there is hardly any direct, written, evidence for Japanese officers ever ordering prisoners to be killed. Getting eyewitness testimony of verbal orders, or even just the crimes and establishing who was in charge, was useful for POW trials, so no paperwork required. There was no real interest in following up on Japanese crimes in China (the overwhelming majority of them) after the communists won the civil war, so no need to search for written orders there either. That "methodology" explained individual incidents, but without a smoking gun of policy papers, which the Germans left everywhere, it was harder to explain why criminal behaviour was not just widespread, but so common as if it had been policy. As I said, racial and cultural explanations were fine from 1945 to at least the 60's and 70's, but these were incompatible with studying the IJA and IJN as institutions filled with human beings and not bucktoothed bloodthirsty maniacs in straw hats or inscrutable products of an alien culture.

Institutional analysis of the Japanese military, hit a wall in the cultural explanation right off the bat. It had been modelled on European militaries during the Meiji Restoration, was universally agreed to be excellent until about 1930, and had won worldwide renown for how well it treated (Russian) prisoners in the Russo Japanese War. There were mountains and mountains of carefully detailed orders for the good treatment of prisoners from both the Russo-Japanese War and First World War (Japan had fought over Germany's far east possessions). There were detailed policy papers on the treatment of prisoners, construction and inspection of POW camps, etc etc. Clearly it didn't make sense for an institution to regress from a disciplined army that prepared and disseminated detailed orders for the care of prisoners to samurai in borrowed European clothes who had never heard of "prisoners", only the way of bushido.

There was another round of debate in the 90's where Japanese historians started floating the idea of "reverse racism",where shabby treatment by Europeans enraged the Japanese, and that's why they acted the way they did, but this has a lot of problems I don't really want to get into. It makes sense for that to be the Japanese historical establishment's position, and for Japanese historians to interpret evidence that way, it suits the Japanese government, but it doesn't track with the treatment of Malay, Indonesian, Indian, obviously Chinese, POWs. Also, there had been no real incident between 1919 and 1941 that would so aggrieve the average Japanese person that they went crazy with rage over national honour or European racism. Obviously there were issues in inter-war diplomacy, and 20th century Europeans, even diplomats, were racist, but this is more of a nation adopting a defence of "temporary insanity" than anything that has merit imo.

In the 2000's a bunch of western liberal historians, in my opinion, got suckered in and started defending Japanese actions using the language of decolonization and liberation struggle, white supremacy, racism etc. but again, unlike the Algerians or Vietnamese, they had never been on the receiving end of an escalating cycle of brutalization by Europeans, so this explanation is just as tied up with trends in the western academy as the Japanese school is in theirs.

To tie this all together, in the 2010's an explanation gained consensus that, so far as I know, is still the dominant one. The Japanese did not have a top down policy to commit war crimes. Neither were orders issued for war crimes. They were not predetermined to participate in them either by their race, or by being the victims of European racism. There was no cultural cause, and no institutional cause - per se. Rather, Japanese war crimes were the result of what didn't happen rather than what did.

The Japanese civilian government, after all of those assassinations in the 1920's, junior army officers starting their own wars in China etc. decided to stop exercising authority over the military. Senior, then mid-level, Japanese military officers selectively stopped exercising authority in certain areas as the 1930's went on. Japanese military discipline was fearsome with absolute savage beatings and humiliations over the smallest infractions. During the war in China, however, Japanese field grade officers stopped trying to rein their frustrated men in when it came to civilians and POWs. They didn't have to order any crimes to be committed, but they made it very obvious that they were not going to order that any not be. This went all the way up to army high command and cabinet.

So, Japanese soldiers were disciplined, I think anyone who has heard the stories of the IJA marching 30km through jungle on a cup of rice a day knows that, but the absence of discipline when it came to the treatment of civilians and POWs had an inevitable, predictable, result. Even though there was no smoking gun, or explicit and direct order to commit specific crimes, there didn't need to be. The absence of orders on the subject spoke loudly enough. Soldiers were left to their own initiative, which in a brutal, frustrating, war, was obviously going to be what it was.

I agree with the historical explanation, generally.

What I don't agree with, I'll try to tie this to my complaint about liberalism and Israel here, is that I don't think this is exculpatory, and I resent that in these debates it is often treated that way.

Not prohibiting soldiers under your command from doing something, which is well within your power to do is pretty much the same as ordering them to do it, right? The Japanese were enforcing grooming and uniform regulations while cut off in the jungle, but had a total breakdown of discipline whenever they happened to take prisoners? You can talk about poor discipline, but if you are turning on and off that tap, selectively, you can't treat it like a force of nature. If it's not a force of nature, someone is responsible. It does not let anyone off the hook, in my opinion, that there was a deliberate, conspicuous, absence of orders. Why the absence of orders is seen as morally exculpable is the crux of my problem with liberalism here, so I'll try to connect past and present.

If your subordinate captures 400 prisoners, and you provide rations for 200, or tell a patrol they need to travel over some great distance on a schedule, when they are responsible for stretcherborne POWs, without providing any transportation, what do you think is going to happen? If you know it is going to happen, and created circumstances where it will happen, why do you need to order it to happen to be morally responsible? Or, put another other way, using the logic of an "invisible hand" to evade guilt is a pretty big problem.

So when liberal historians say "actually, the Japanese were rational human beings and not Dr Seuss cartoons", they're correct.
When they say "the Japanese issued no orders to commit crime xyz", they're correct.
When they say "the Japanese military was efficient, organized, disciplined" they're correct too.
When they say "therefore nobody was really responsible", I have a problem.

and I think, basically, this is how liberals talk about all sorts of heinous things. If it isn't ordered, in plain language, explicitly, cause, effect, intention all spelled out, it doesn't register for them. A government choosing to do something can be clearly morally evaluated. Government policy was Y, so the consequences of Y were the government's fault. However, different forms of disaster and immiseration "just happen". There is no memo saying "by the way, we can enact Aktion T4 and exterminate undesirables". Instead, healthcare is cut, while "totally unrelated", MAiD becomes available. People choose, rationally, individually, given the circumstances, and the circumstances are outside anyone's control - after all, even if someone directly ordered that these circumstances be created, they didn't directly order the consequences, and are free from guilt.

Japanese soldiers, just were going to kill prisoners, so we shouldn't interpret the lack of orders preventing that as a state or military level choice. It was just individual soldiers being naughty boys. The state is therefore innocent, we don't have to make a fuss about the Yasukuni Shrine.

Liberalism, I hope I'm not abusing the term, seems to always play this little game. As Atwater said,

"Now, you�re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you�re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.� �We want to cut this,� is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than..."

Israel is always let off the hook because individual soldiers are not ordered to kill civilians, and units are not ordered to destroy hospitals. They simply don't receive orders not to, but to liberals, somehow, that makes the people responsible innocent.

Yeah. You could also point all the way to Hirohito and Prince Asuka the guy who oversaw the rape of Nanking, a guy who was trained in France's Ecole Military academy, as people who knew how to wield discipline and what would happen when you essentially take off all reprecussions for whatever soldiers wanted to do, almost as a pressure valve for the frustratingly long battles and stalemate they ended up in. And then ofc the US doing the same letting MacArthur have his own chief domain and reversing course on any sort of consequences for their actions due to fear of the Soviet Union and their wanting to rearm Japan.

Lack of discipline is just the lie they throw around to justify horrific actions that at the end don't even work.

And don't forget famine in 1942-1943 was responsible for 2 million deaths in Henan province alone. Another well used weapon used by genocidal colonizers.

# ? Apr 2, 2024 23:58

4d3d3d: Mar 17, 2017

Jaxyon posted:

Why even lie a this point, nobody is going to do anything.

Just say you killed them as a warning to not interfere with the genocide.

Gotta do the usual low-effort obligatory 'plausible' denials for their drooling fanclub to point to even though no one believes it sincerely

# ? Apr 3, 2024 00:10

genericnick: Dec 26, 2012

Dreylad posted:

thought so. the strategy seems obvious: the 7 people they killed caused the aid organization to stop its operations and thus deny Palestinians another lifeline.

what I don't get is why the media seems to care about these 7 aid workers and not the other few hundred

They were the rethorical shield for loving with UNRA. The 100% trustworthy and morally pure aid agency that would have to take over distribution. Doesn't work if Israel blows them up too

# ? Apr 3, 2024 00:10

XMNN: Apr 26, 2008; I am incredibly stupid

https://x.com/LalehKhalili/status/1775247028618137827

I loving hate liberal zionists, it's bad enough they insist to themselves they're not genocidal racists, but the weepy demands that everyone else also believes that are something special

I've been reading a lot of their bullshit and every single one of their enormously wise and profound idols turns out to just be doing the same asinine "look I'm a nice guy, I hate genocide as much as anyone, but the thing you have to understand about Palestinians is they're wild animals and we have to kill them all"

one of the ones they always like to trot out as some ancient sage is Amos Oz and I quite like his insanely trite quote because it is actually true just not in the way he intended it

a genocidal racist posted:

Oz responded:

�Unlike European pacifists I never believed the ultimate evil in the world is war. In my view the ultimate evil in the world is aggression, and the only way to repel aggression is unfortunately by force. That is where the difference lies between a European pacifist and an Israeli peacenik like myself.�

the difference between a European pacifist and an Israeli peacenik is one opposes wars and the other loving loves them

e:omg I just remembered the genocidal freak in the tweet is his daughter lol

# ? Apr 3, 2024 00:12

OctaMurk: Jun 21, 2013

genericnick posted:

They were the rethorical shield for loving with UNRA. The 100% trustworthy and morally pure aid agency that would have to take over distribution. Doesn't work if Israel blows them up too

biden: Guess we wont be able to distribute any aid at all, that sucks :shrug:

# ? Apr 3, 2024 00:12

1stGear: Jan 16, 2010; Here's to the new us.

Atrocious Joe posted:

https://twitter.com/AliAbunimah/status/1775269706905292829?t=YNyw2YwBBfoiteL1hn4Mrg&s=19

So that confirms that even if WCK isn't an actual intelligence front itself, its the exact kind of charitable organization that intelligence agents get laundered through.

# ? Apr 3, 2024 00:15

moths: Aug 25, 2004; I would also still appreciate some danger.

Honky Mao posted:

IDF bombed a van full of British spies

I remember the US giving Israel info for specific aid trucks not to destroy. And then Israel bombed them anyway.

I'd be amazed if this doesn't recontextualize that exchange.

# ? Apr 3, 2024 00:16

ughhhh: Oct 17, 2012

1stGear posted:

So that confirms that even if WCK isn't an actual intelligence front itself, its the exact kind of charitable organization that intelligence agents get laundered through.

It's an attempt at creating white helmets in Palestine. Except that Gaza already has a functioning and popular civil government/society headed by Hamas.

# ? Apr 3, 2024 00:22

The Voice of Labor: Apr 8, 2020

Death By The Blues posted:

https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1775288934697665008

president biden remarked that it was a nice letter but that it should've been prefaced "following the hamas atrocities of october 7th"

# ? Apr 3, 2024 00:22

Harik: Sep 9, 2001; From the hard streets of Moscow
First dog to touch the stars; Plaster Town Cop

Weka posted:

Nice work btw

I'm not suggesting some significant fraction but if you don't think there were any ok dudes out of a population of 70 million you should join the idf

lmao

there were good germans in 1945 the way there's good cops now: they look the other way and don't say anything but they aren't directly mag-dumping the nearest black man.

it wasn't until the generation born after the war started growing up that there was a dawning horror that "holy gently caress I'm living in a house my parents got when they reported the jews living there and they're just pretending they did nothing wrong."

e: I don't think you understand just how much social pressure there was to sweep the whole thing under the rug.

# ? Apr 3, 2024 00:25

Atrocious Joe: Sep 2, 2011

genericnick posted:

They were the rethorical shield for loving with UNRA. The 100% trustworthy and morally pure aid agency that would have to take over distribution. Doesn't work if Israel blows them up too

From my understanding, to work at UNRWA a Palestinian needs to have no ties to the resistance movement, which is hosed in it's own way.

UNRWA is pretty strict about that policy, but Israel still lies about Hamas fighters having UNRWA jobs.

Every concession and capitulation to the apartheid state results in even more aggression. Israel must be defeated.

# ? Apr 3, 2024 00:29

Harik: Sep 9, 2001; From the hard streets of Moscow
First dog to touch the stars; Plaster Town Cop

this thread is about a modern genocidal state where the best possible position any citizen has adopted is "maybe we shouldn't be so wantonly cruel in our extermination campaign"

or "can you motherfuckers stop bombing long enough to rescue my husband? (then bomb them in retaliation for taking him kthx)"

# ? Apr 3, 2024 00:30

post hole digger: Mar 21, 2011

what does 'calm hitlers' mean please

# ? Apr 3, 2024 00:34

Rubellavator: Aug 16, 2007

post hole digger posted:

what does 'calm hitlers' mean please

# ? Apr 3, 2024 00:39

Al-Saqr: Nov 11, 2007; One Day I Will Return To Your Side.

post hole digger posted:

what does 'calm hitlers' mean please

https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/578682-adolf-hitler

# ? Apr 3, 2024 00:39

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 25, 2024 16:46

Rip Testes: Jan 29, 2004; I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception.

Hareez is reporting that commanders out in the field operate on their own and that's where the blameshift is presently going - some rogue commander interpreting the rules of war their own way. This seems to be moving towards trying to pin the strike on a single soldier, but this was a drone strike and I would imagine there is a a command structure involved in conducting a drone strike, that this is not something a single rogue drone operator could execute. Any drone operators want to weigh in?

# ? Apr 3, 2024 00:39

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