Hey! I recorded a video showing both guitar parts to my new band Obey The Cat's new song I Am Atrocity. (Anyone ever read Tim O'Brien's book The Things They Carried?) It's an instrumental heavy metal track with thrashing, grooving, and some 7/8 bars. Hopefully you like it!
Apparently, my mother cheated on him...
The Covenant/Banished are notorious for their atrocities against humans, but I'm wondering if the UNSC has inflicted any of it own? For example, UNSC bombing Covenant civilian colonies after the Covenant war or ONI conducting experiments on captured aliens.
Edit: I'm aware that the matter of human rights for aliens is a debatable topic, but this is under the assumption if atrocities against aliens count as war crimes.
Born from a text exchange in my 40k WhatsApp group, that classic conversation of "there are no good guys, everyone is a bastard."
Then it got me thinking, what actually are the worst things each faction has done? Either to their own people or the enemy, what are the most 'grim dark' actions a faction has committed?
I'm not just talking about battles or war, it could also include general culture as well. Curious to see what your answers are.
The Context
Yesterday I made the mistake of engaging with a user in this thread in the "MilitaryPorn" subreddit. People were discussing atrocities and brutality committed by US soldiers in wartime and I posted the following comment regarding the Pacific theater of WWII:
>Agree. The Pacific War was a positive feedback loop of brutality where violence committed by the Japanese encouraged American violence and vice versa, but American racism and dehumanization played a large role in igniting such atrocities.
>
>I took a class on atrocities and war crimes under the historian Bruno Cabanes in college and we had an entire lecture on how American soldiers were far more zealous and motivated about fighting the Japanese than the Nazis. Unfortunately I don’t have exact sources for this claim, but basically Cabanes said that most US soldiers in Europe were just there to do their job as soldiers - they didn’t feel any extreme animosity or hatred towards the Nazis. Comparatively, US soldiers in the Pacific absolutely hated the Japanese as a people and were more likely to “want” to be there killing Japanese soldiers.
A user asked for some sources to support my claim that American racism was a factor in the escalation of violence and brutality in the Pacific, so I provided a JSTOR journal article on the topic from the International History Review. Evidently the user was not happy with either my arguments or my sources - take a look at some of these BadHistory^(TM) excerpts from his comments.
The Bad History
> Wtf is a cultural historian? Makes sense where you all get this bullshit from.
The Yale University Department of History defines cultural history as the study of "beliefs and ideas" and "the notions of the less privileged and less educated," as well as the "effort to inhabit the minds of the people of different worlds." Yale also believes that culture "shapes our understanding of the world."^(1) A simple google search of the term "cultural history" brings up results on the topic from universities like Chicago, Duke, and Edinburgh, as well as numerous JSTOR articles.
Given this, I think it's fair to claim that labeling cultural history, or the study of culture in history, as "bullshit" shows a complete lack of understanding of the method of historical research and purposefully
... keep reading on reddit ➡
I heard a podcast with Melanie Joy and found her approach fascinating, if not controversial. While she gave many good tips as to how to discuss veganism, she mentioned nothing of the most common excuse I hear.
She did say that we should acknowledge our own carnist past, if indeed we have one (my wife has never eaten meat in her life, but oy dropped dairy recently). I do remember a time when someone could have told me of the horrors of animal agriculture and I could have listened while eating a rare steak. I am not proud of this and wish I switched earlier, but I do think it is important to consider when trying to help others make the switch.
Just thought I'd ask...
I like to express this idea in the form of a thought experiment:
Let's say I lock Hitler in a jail cell, just before the Night of Long Knives in 1934. Let's also say that by doing this, the trajectory of events in Nazi Germany that would eventually lead to World War 2 stops, dead in its tracks. As long as I keep him in jail, everything is paused. As soon as I let him out, he goes right back to being Chancellor, and the series of events leading to war resumes right where it stopped.
The question is: would Hitler be less evil if I kept him in the jail cell forever?
If he's kept in the cell, World War 2 never occurs. That's some eighty million people whose lives will be saved. The negative impact Hitler has on the world shrinks a thousandfold if he's never released. But in that cell, Hitler still wants a World War to occur. Given the opportunity - i.e., being released from his jail cell - he would act to ensure World War 2 occurs.
It is this that makes me answer a strong no to my original question. Hitler is not any less evil if he's kept in the cell and his actions that make in the war occur are stopped. He's just as evil either way, because the thing that determines evil-ness, per se, is not the objective outcome of your actions, but the conscious intent of your actions. It's not what you do, it's what you want to do. It's what you would make happen, if you could.
If I go to shoot up a mall, but my gun jams, I'm still evil, despite the fact my actions have resulted in no deaths, because I wanted to kill. Likewise, if I bake someone a pie but they die of a bad allergic reaction I didn't know they had, I'm not evil, because I didn't want to hurt them.
Somewhere in the world right now, there's an incredibly anti-Semitic hobo living under a bridge that absolutely hates jews with every fibre of his being. If someone gave him a briefcase with a big red button inside that would kill all jews, he would press it instantly. To me, that makes him as evil as someone like Hitler ever was. The fact the hobo will never be in a position to commit genocide is irrelevant; the only difference between Hitler and the hobo is the objective impact they make, and that is a purely circumstantial distinction. Their intentions are as vile, and this means that all these reviled names we hear are in no way the most evil people to have existed.
I suppose I just dislike it when we refer to these people as the most evil peo
... keep reading on reddit ➡Idk if people even care about this, but I'm so tilted and angry rn that I felt the need to post this.
They are desperate, cornered, backed against the wall. They have been and will continue to come at retail with everything they can. Illegal means nothing to them at this point. Everyone is in on it.
When shit hits the fan you'll see them turn on each other. That's when the fun begins. That's when you know the end is near.
Like everybody keeps bringing up that every primarch would be considered a genocidal warlord during the crusade by our modern morals, yet the only example that comes to mind is Vulkan lighting that Eldar child on fire. What did the other primarchs know to be on the less violent side do?
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