Once you’re at the point that you’re having a navel gazing debate about whether a particular atrocity technically meets the definition of genocide, it kind of doesn’t matter anymore. If its debatable then it’s almost certainly bad enough to treat like a genocide.
5 Likes
I guess, but how would treating it like colonialism or treating it like conquest differ from genocide? In all three you’re going to get some pretty ugly shit going on. I mean the Iraq War wasn’t genocide, but did it produce tens to hundreds of thousands of dead and leveled whole cities? Should it have been stopped? Yes.
The moral calculus is a lot greyer when the side you’re backing doesn’t have a moral bright line. Should people have been sending arms to Sadam Hussain to defeat the Americans? That makes it a lot harder to call. But a democratically elected government with what seems like a strong mandate from its population to resist? Makes the calculus to support the defense in all three situations a lot easier.
2 Likes
I’m glad somebody else is saying this, because everything I read is super vague and conflicting.
https://twitter.com/SpencerGuard/status/1526573009145802753?cxt=HHwWgsCt3YmEva8qAAAA
Biden is pushing for an additional round of sanctions that would replace all McDonald’s restaurants in Russia with a Jack in the Box.
1 Like
https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1526627529842429952
The movie about this is going to be incredible.
4 Likes
Russia said it is quitting the Council of the Baltic Sea States amid raging tensions with the West over Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine.
The organization is a political forum for regional cooperation that groups together 11 member states such as Germany, Finland and Norway as well as the European Union.
The Foreign Ministry in Moscow said that the organization was becoming “an instrument of anti-Russian policy” and “increasingly mired in Russophobia and lies.”
https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1526621482792665088?s=20&t=Z9pKxLtEi4Y1EUICsmdnqw
Russia has lost 20 T-90 so far.
60 Minutes piece on bellingcat. Goes into a lot of Russian assassinations and MH-17.
how much does russia 2022 resemble ussr 1937?
it doesn’t even feel like ukraine has taken anything back, and yet they’ve reclaimed half of territory since feb 24
https://twitter.com/astroehlein/status/1526794182957879297?s=21&t=gE9htMYQji37I3GtscUakA
These are grave and terrible crimes, but they’re not showing a widespread pattern of killing all military-aged men everywhere Russia had control.
I don’t put a lot of stock in what that guy says, his estimate of 21,000 was circa April 12, that seems way too high, and he is also the same guy alleging “mobile crematoria” which seems like out and out bullshit. He has every incentive to exaggerate the death toll. The UN count of civilians killed in the whole of Ukraine is still only 3,600, that is obviously a huge undercount but you can increase it by an order of magnitude and the Mariupol claim still looks extremely dubious.
I don’t really enjoy arguing about whether what are obviously horrific crimes do or don’t meet the definition of genocide but I enjoy even less this rhetorical technique where I’m asked to agree that something is genocide, and if I say no I’m a callous asshole and if I say yes the discussion then proceeds as though we have established that a deliberate extermination campaign is underway.
1 Like
2 Likes
