YEP

I think sjw really needs to be considered for defed. Maybe I'm just reading the room wrong but lemmee and ml seems to have chilled since the first week idk. I've yet to see a good take from programmer one outside of niche focused discussions on non political things (tech support, piracy ect.)

Edit: there is someone from the programmer one being chill and nice in this thread

I think darkest hour is the peak of the hoi series. I wasn't a huge fan of hoi 3 but I yearn for its supply system compared to hoi4s oversimplified mess

Hearts of iron 4 and Victoria 3 are far worse then their predecessors and deeply flawed because of the extremely boring tactics gameplay(frontlines). Victoria 3 economy is also extremely bland and feels like a auto clicker game. But, I only enjoyed vic 2 with pop demand mod which current vic 2 modders/players don't like.

I think it really was a product of the times. The looter shooter was fairly novel and you can see how that affect of banter w/e you wanna call it really aged badly in bl2 and 3

I have heard of it that is why I referenced it, this argument has been raging for decades. The idea of a terror famine has been pushed in popular media even though it is not the common view held by experts in the field of study. I'll link one of the funnier exchanges on the subject in Getty's review of Conquest's harvest of sorrow (one of the more more widely cited sources in popular culture of the intentional famine narrative) in the London review of books.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v09/n02/j.-arch-getty/starving-the-ukraine

For context this was also written before western academics has access to the Soviet archives which further served to vindicate the Getty's criticism of the narrative.

No one denies that there was death and hardship. When you call something genocide you are saying there was a deliberate effort to eradicate a peoples, there isn't sufficient evidence of intentionality or malice to come to the conclusion of genocide. You can say there was a poorly planned and executed state policy(I personally think it could have been better handled) but it also ignores the global context of wide spread crop failures at the time, for example in the north American dust bowl or the West African famines (I'd argue you can make a much more substantiated claim of genocide in West Africa). It also ignores the material conditions that Soviet agriculture at the time was underdeveloped because of the serfdom under the tsars.

I don't expect us to reconcile but when your response is just my grandma says so you come off as unserious and that's why you are getting dunked on. In America a popular boomer conspiracy that people will attest to is that there were Jews celebrating when 9/11 happened it doesn't mean it's correct or should be taken seriously.

I mean just getting on a major role in a largish show means you've achieved more success then most actors.

He sourcing from a book fairly widely discredited by academics. Adding on to the wildly discredited notion that the Soviet famine was intentional. Like this is literally cold war propaganda people were paroting in the 80s. Embarrassing

I don't understand are you saying these videos are fake? I understand there is propaganda I'm saying in this instance it seems pretty cut and dry.

I never changed my stance as you suggesting. With

And then we went from "Russia didn't commit the Bucha massacre" to "oh but they did kill civilians even if it wasn't a massacre" which I don't know what the goal of this reframing is :/

My second comment is addressing this from your 1st response

Even worse, they're just that: stories. They have no dates attached, just a name, age, and "was never seen again". I don't doubt these people were in Bucha in March, but beyond that the NYT is not tying them to the massacre itself.

The video ties many of these people to specific videos of their deaths, their phones to specific calls made to Russia by soldiers who took their phones along with eyewitness accounts. Your assertion that its just stories is not accurate. It would be valid to say the article does not account for every death (I don't think that is what you are trying to say?) but I do feel like that line of discussion is really bad faith and gets away from the core of what we are discussing by moving the goalposts.

My second reply I made in good faith, maybe nyt was fucking with the ad blocker or you simply missed the embedded media accompanying the article. The article clearly shows more evidence than:

They have no dates attached, just a name, age, and "was never seen again". It often identifies multiple cctv shots of a killing and contemporaneous photos taken by hidden residents in the neighboring buildings. It doesn't just list their name, it states the circumstances of each death and accompanies many of them with photographic and video proof to corroborate testimony and phone records.

In my personal view of the event as a whole, the evidence doesn't show a picture of genocide that libs like editorialists at the nyt would attribute to it. It does show a specific military reprisal against civilians done by a military unit that would constitute a war crime. War crimes committed by Russia and Ukraine are not unique and a consequence of the wests utter genocidal (in this case it's genocidal bc slavs historically and today are viewed as lesser, see "asiatic horde" portrayals online) meddling.

It feels really disheartening the way in which you have mischaracterized not only the article but what I'm trying to say. By accusing me of reframing the conversation for some unnamed "goal" it feels like you are basically calling me a fed or ignorant.

Overall im contesting that it is not correct to claim "These civilians were killed by Ukraine" As you did in your original comment. I think the proper analysis of the event is that it was a crime but it as not endemic as evidenced by comparing this conflict with one like Iraq or Vietnam.

I'm sorry in advance if I was clear or am missing the point your trying to make.

There are literally videos of Russian bmps shooting people in the article I linked, maybe the ad block is blocking it. The video done with the article maybe presents it in a more digestible format.

Again nsfl bc dead bodies ect https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/europe/100000008299178/ukraine-bucha-russia-massacre-video.html

The nyt(yea I know) deep dive convinced me at least a large part of killings were carried out by Russian soldiers. Tying phones, street cameras and other evidence to specific deaths was fairly exhaustive. It seems a case of revenge killing and is still a war crime. Massacres do happen and soldiers who commit them should be prosecuted, although I doubt the nyt would spend the hours to do this and call for the prosecutions on Americans for the millions who died in the middle east. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/21/world/europe/bucha-ukraine-massacre-victims.html

You can say well the Ukrainian push for regular people to fight back or whatever leads to things like this and you can be right. I don't think that gets these soldiers off the hook.

One thing I never can really grasp my head around is the framing of the Hungarian uprising or tiananmen square protests. There were much larger acts of state violence committed at the same time elsewhere. Like the French killing a million Algerians or the us proping up iraq in the Iran iraq war while they genocide kurds and launched chemical weapons at Iranian cities. There has to be some dissonance or just ignorance there. It's the emphasis vs lies propaganda at its finest.

Too real 😔