[Pants-of-dog]

Considering the factors previously mentioned, it stands to reason that cultures will have different rates of state sponsored atrocities.

Cultures like the British Empire are very high on the list while the Roma or Palestinians would be very low.

[Tainari88]

Considering the factors previously mentioned, it stands to reason that cultures will have different rates of state sponsored atrocities.

Cultures like the British Empire are very high on the list while the Roma or Palestinians would be very low.

POD. the reality is that occupied people who are poor and are struggling do not have the resources, the arms and the ability to be imposing anything on another group. In fact, the group causing the stress has the legal obligation to give humanitarian aid and assist them in rebuilding their homes, their society and their finances.

Cruelty often is based in needing to control either land, resources or labor production of a place or nation or people that should be considered sovereign and separate from the imposing group.

That is what international law recognizes as well.

[wat0n]

@wat0n wrote:



Well the first thing you learn in anthropology classes Wat0n is that humans never exist without a human culture. That is not possible. Though there are supposedly cases of people being raised by wolves or Guerillas or Chimps. Lol. But is that the majority?

No such thing as cultureless human beings Wat0n.

Even people living in comas for years are part of the culture of the hospital and the people in that cultural environment. And before they became comatose they had a culture. For sure.

My point is that, since animals can and do perform acts of cruelty (ever seen a domestic cat playing with its captured prey?), human cruelty doesn't originate from culture even if culture may affect cruel behavior and what constitutes "cruel behavior" in some way.

@wat0n wrote in response to my discussion on Puerto Rico's lack of political rights this:



I think the Marianas Islands and Puerto Rico and many others in the unincorporated territories clause of the codes that we just went over sort of rule out statehood Wat0n. All the US Congress has to do is revoke the unilateral right to make us or take us out of US citizenship based on statutory citizenship and make us Constitutionally guaranteed citizens. Why they do not do so is very clear Wat0n.

It means they have to make a legal precedent that then will apply to all Native American tribes, and African American slave labor and so on. Disenfranchised groups. You could legally sue them all for denying rights to land, property, right to refuse conscription for military service, and billions in damages. Legally that is what they would open themselves up to if they reversed that precedent from 1917 just in time for a military draft for WWI.

It is in direct violation of International Law wat0n. And it means serious money and loss of land and loss of legal rights for certain privileges the US counts on for being able to keep its hegemony. In other words, it goes against its national interests to give statehood and incorporate us. It means making a state of all those other places, two senators for tiny places like the US Virgin Islands, Solomon Islands, Mariana Islands, American Samoa, Guam, and then you have to consider the Phillipines. They were also under that Treaty from 1898 and the US abandoned the Phillipines to be attacked by the Japanese in WWII. They lost 6 million Filipinos in that WWII Japanese Invasion. They killed a lot of rebel soldiers and leaders from the Phillipines like Aguinaldo. So you are opening up a can of worms with that.

Imperialism is a dirty business Wat0n. It is not about justice. It is about interests and power and force.

If you reverse what the codes said about Puerto Rico not being 'ready' for incorporation or having to make us full constitutionally ratified citizens? You lose all the rest of those territories too. And open yourself up to law suits. By Indian tribes and so on. Reparations and the whole shebang.

Now, the only territory that was unincorporated and wanted to vote for a change of status was Palau in 1993-1994 they voted for independence. The US did not want to agree, but had to agree. The issue was about Palau wanting removal of Nuclear based weapons belonging to the US military. The local Palauans did not want them there and the US did.

The US said it would not grant Palau its independence despite a vote for it because it went against their interests.

So if statehood is voted on and it wins the popular vote? In Puerto Rico? In overwhelming numbers the US will do the same to us as they did to Palau. It is not in our interest to grant statehood. Ignore.

That is the issue Wat0n. The US Congress and the US senate refuse to pass a bill to make the vote from Puerto Rican legally binding and force the US government to change the status.

They always kill that proposal no matter what. How long will they ignore it? Probably until it gets so bad on the island that either 1) The US government cancels Puerto Rican debt and infuses a lot of Federal cash to build up roads, schools, infrastructure, electricity, etc and then ups Veteran's benefits, social security checks, food stamp allotments and goes for another Operation Bootstrap thing for present day Puerto Rico. With more self governance powers and then more sovereignty.

Statehood issue is the issue highlighted above. If they integrate Puerto Rico they will be open to a floodgate of occupied nation lawsuits that will go through the courts. That is the reason they never let binding votes happen and the US Congress continues to stonewall on legal issues.

Loss of the colonies.

What happens to colonies that get fed up with their colonial masters over time? Rebellion. And violence and protests.

Or the entire nation and the Natives get displaced. The island is reoccupied by foreign people not the native Puerto Ricans. Lol. We get replaced. Like the Native Hawaiians have gotten in Hawaii. The majority of them live marginalized in Hawaii. Not the majority and with a culture they try to preserve. Hawaiians live in poverty Wat0n. Not in wealth and with local power.

They become displaced in their own land. That is what happened to all Native American tribes who were in the way of the US government during its Manifest Destiny stage of development.

That is why Puerto Rico is categorized with the Indian Reservation system. The BIA. Bureau of Indian Affairs. All of the occupied land and the Native Tribal governments are in the Department of the Interior in DC. They have special rules because in legal fact they are not part of the Constitutional system of the USA because no one agreed to become US citizens. They were told they were or they were IMPOSED to become that. Without immigration procedures and oaths and etc. You can't do that with people who are already there before the US government arrived and said that they needed your land and you had to move or else, or you had to agree to be ruled by them or else. That is not legal. That is blackmail. That is how the International courts see that Wat0n.

The plan is the same.

Would you still go for statehood under those conditions Wat0n?

The reality is that more Puerto Ricans are living in the USA mainland than reside on the island. We bleed more people from the island than Cuba does or Dominican refugees in rafts from Santo Domingo.

But, unless the US government copes with changing our conditions soon? The cookie ain't gonna crumble in their favor over time. Stagnation is not a solution. Ever.

The US recognized Palau as an independent state in 1994, even if it's in a free association with the US. If PR was not admitted into the Union, I would demand independence if I was from there. Something like Palau could work.

[Tainari88]

My point is that, since animals can and do perform acts of cruelty (ever seen a domestic cat playing with its captured prey?), human cruelty doesn't originate from culture even if culture may affect cruel behavior and what constitutes "cruel behavior" in some way.



The US recognized Palau as an independent state in 1994, even if it's in a free association with the US. If PR was not admitted into the Union, I would demand independence if I was from there. Something like Palau could work.

The United Nations have had the Decolonization Committee deal with those issues and they organize the transitions between colonial territories and the colonial powers. They are there to make sure both parties follow the terms of the signed agreements.

You go and sit in those committees and most of the ones dealing with those issues Wat0n are international lawyers in human rights. International Law Lawyers.

You have all kinds of interesting scenarios. Like, habitual residents of the USA. Or 50 year transition. $250 Billion dollars in transitional funds. Usually for over 200,000 soldiers who died in wars protecting the Colonial Powers interests without having the right to vote at all. That comes with hefty reparations Wat0n. Recruiting people who never were asked to become citizens after a military invasion and fifty years of military dictatorship by the colonial power is heavily sanctioned in the tribunals of international law.

But, in general it does not work. Something forces the issue in some way.

You look at numbers. The trend is more votes for independence. It is four percentage points from equaling statehood votes at this point Wat0n. It means the younger ones want independence. Why? You ask them. They already lived in Chicago, NYC, Philly, Hartford, Kississimmee and so on and they went back home and want to have local control and local power to shape their own society, on their own land and in their own culture.

That is reality. Quieren su propia cultura Wat0n. Sor of like your novia, she has to decide if the Gringo Way is for her or not. If it is not? She has to have the right to go back to Chile and have control of her own society and her role in it without being imposed upon the place she decided not to pursue. That is a human right. Written in the Human Rights charter. Allowing people to live in a state of limbo and statelessness and no real political representation but being drafted into wars and paying taxes to a state that is claiming unilateral rights to determine if you are a part of the scene or not without any input on the other side? Is tyranny.

And illegal.

[albionfagan]

I think Nazism as an ideology stands out for its fundamental cruelty and nihilistic violent heart. It is the collision of all the most malevolent strands of European thought throughout the 19th Century. Colonialism/Eugenics/Racism/ the list goes on. I struggle to see anything that could draw me to Nazism apart from pure hatred of something else.

I'm aware of I am obviously euro-centric, and I do not deny the horror of other regimes (The USSR stands out for its totality), but I still can't quite see anything as on a par with Nazism. Even pure Fascism lacks the intrinsic cruelty that is so central to Nazism.

Then again, perhaps the most chilling thing about Nazism is that exposes humanity for what it really is (amongst other things). I tend to dismiss people like Ghengis Khan as living in an era when we couldn't really expect much more. But of course we could, if there is an inherent morality? If there is not, then the Nazis are no worse than anyone. That's the most troubling aspect for me.

[Tainari88]

I think Nazism as an ideology stands out for its fundamental cruelty and nihilistic violent heart. It is the collision of all the most malevolent strands of European thought throughout the 19th Century. Colonialism/Eugenics/Racism/ the list goes on. I struggle to see anything that could draw me to Nazism apart from pure hatred of something else.

I'm aware of I am obviously euro-centric, and I do not deny the horror of other regimes (The USSR stands out for its totality), but I still can't quite see anything as on a par with Nazism. Even pure Fascism lacks the intrinsic cruelty that is so central to Nazism.

Then again, perhaps the most chilling thing about Nazism is that exposes humanity for what it really is (amongst other things). I tend to dismiss people like Ghengis Khan as living in an era when we couldn't really expect much more. But of course we could, if there is an inherent morality? If there is not, then the Nazis are no worse than anyone. That's the most troubling aspect for me.

The interesting aspect about Nazism for me has to do with how the Nazis recorded everything meticulously. They kept great records of everything. In a documentary it was explained the reason why the documents were so orderly and well kept and filed was because they wanted to let the future generations of German Nazis to know that they were doing the job right!

For them it was not a series of crimes against human rights or humanity--it was recording for posterity the acts that were in keeping with their deepest held beliefs about the social order and their role in it.

Some of them would make lamp shades out of human skin. They did it for being efficient and not wasting a resource. The rights of that human being was never considered because they were not really human. They were a resource that had to serve the needs of the real humans. No real empathy there or identification with the enemy.

Can not waste valuable bullets on some of these people who are enemies of the state. So tie them together and throw them in a river and let them drown in a big row of drowning and save some valuable bullets.

Go and dig graves for the cadavers. Smelly, tough and highly unpleasant work. Once they did the work of digging the holes in big muddy ditches they would then shoot the gravediggers or hit them on the back of the head and have another one of the prisoners cover the hole up with dirt that the previous shot in the head prisoner would dig. Be efficient. Use labor to the very end.

Children hiding from counts for health. Too skinny to work. Sent off to be gassed. So the children in deep fear would throw themselves in the mass latrines swimming in waste and who knows how stinky and disgusting they had to stay in it for hours waiting for the coast to be clear and clean up and go to their cold beds to pretend they were not picked for execution.

The horrors of these actions taken by a state drunken with the idea of creating a perfect society and being dedicated in making sure the ones threatening it from manifesting is truly dreadful and horrific.

Yet, Germany was one of Europe's most sublime and elevated European cultured civilizations eh?

[wat0n]

The United Nations have had the Decolonization Committee deal with those issues and they organize the transitions between colonial territories and the colonial powers. They are there to make sure both parties follow the terms of the signed agreements.

You go and sit in those committees and most of the ones dealing with those issues Wat0n are international lawyers in human rights. International Law Lawyers.

You have all kinds of interesting scenarios. Like, habitual residents of the USA. Or 50 year transition. $250 Billion dollars in transitional funds. Usually for over 200,000 soldiers who died in wars protecting the Colonial Powers interests without having the right to vote at all. That comes with hefty reparations Wat0n. Recruiting people who never were asked to become citizens after a military invasion and fifty years of military dictatorship by the colonial power is heavily sanctioned in the tribunals of international law.

But, in general it does not work. Something forces the issue in some way.

You look at numbers. The trend is more votes for independence. It is four percentage points from equaling statehood votes at this point Wat0n. It means the younger ones want independence. Why? You ask them. They already lived in Chicago, NYC, Philly, Hartford, Kississimmee and so on and they went back home and want to have local control and local power to shape their own society, on their own land and in their own culture.

That is reality. Quieren su propia cultura Wat0n. Sor of like your novia, she has to decide if the Gringo Way is for her or not. If it is not? She has to have the right to go back to Chile and have control of her own society and her role in it without being imposed upon the place she decided not to pursue. That is a human right. Written in the Human Rights charter. Allowing people to live in a state of limbo and statelessness and no real political representation but being drafted into wars and paying taxes to a state that is claiming unilateral rights to determine if you are a part of the scene or not without any input on the other side? Is tyranny.

And illegal.

Well, if nothing's done on statehood people will go for independence, and for good reason.

I think it's clear the current status of Puerto Rico isn't sustainable, and needs to change one way or another.

[Unthinking Majority]

Hands down it has to be something before the modern era. No one gave a fuck about human rights back in the day.

You're wrong, it's America.

[Rich]

I think Nazism as an ideology stands out for its fundamental cruelty and nihilistic violent heart.

Really liberals do have the most absurd beliefs. This is what I mean by the narcissism of the liberal. The Iroquois were far more cruel than the Nazis and so were host of other primitive peoples. But because the Nazis figured so large in our history, so large in our consciousness, the Liberal has this emotional need for them to be the cruelist. Plenty of peoples had butchered Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, Romanians etc,but none of them needed to go to all the palava of building secret camps and gas chambers. When the Hutus wanted to genocide the Tutsi, they didn't fanny about for years on end like the Nazis did. They just got out their machetes and hacked them to death.

Gas chambers are not a particularly cruel way to kill people/ They're dead in a matter of minutes. If you want to be cruel what's wrong with crucifixion, its a tried and tested method and generally the suffering can be made to last for days. If the Germans had been a cruel people by historical standards, they would have crucified the Jews in public so as people could gloat over their suffering.

Now maybe you will say it was just the SS that were cruel. But again the SS compared to your Lakota, your Apache, your Commanche were a bunch of softies. Sure they had their hard core sadists, but you find those everywhere. A big part of the reason for gas chambers is because the straight forward killing traumatised so many of the Einsatzgruppen. Himmler I believe was physically sick. when he saw the executions and possibly Eichmann as well, Neither seemed to hav enjoyed the experience. Even Hitler wasn't a sadist. He may have watched some of the post July bomb plot executions, but theirs no evidence that I;ve seen that he used his position of power to watch people being tortured in general.

For some of the native American tribes, torturing prisoners of war was a proper communal event, lasting days, one that all the women and children could join in on.

[wat0n]

I think that's an issue to consider too, do only figures of people killed, tortured or raped count (be they raw or adjusted by population, technology or some other variables) or also the ways in which these were done count, which you can't simply adjust for numerically?

Do we consider this cruelty in regard to the standards in place when they happened or we do so under our contemporary standards (i.e. presentism)?

@Rich mentioned the cruelty of some Native American peoples, but Medieval Europe is also full of sadistic examples. E.g.:

The D’Aunay brothers were tortured and swiftly confessed. They were essentially guilty of treason, of causing great offence to the King, and so they had to die. Accounts of their execution in April 1314 vary, but it is known to have been horrendous. They were likely castrated, their genitals thrown to the dogs in front of their eyes in a highly symbolic gesture. Their skin was pulled from their body, their entrails cut from their torso, before they were finally given the sweet release of death by beheading. All of this happened in a public square in Paris, lest anyone else get any ideas about going against the King.

It seems joking about infidelity in European courts was common until that scandal, then the jokes stopped (or there are at least a lot less records of that after the scandal).

[albionfagan]

:lol: Really liberals do have the most absurd beliefs. This is what I mean by the narcissism of the liberal. The Iroquois were far more cruel than the Nazis and so were host of other primitive peoples. But because the Nazis figured so large in our history, so large in our consciousness, the Liberal has this emotional need for them to be the cruelist. Plenty of peoples had butchered Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, Romanians etc,but none of them needed to go to all the palava of building secret camps and gas chambers. When the Hutus wanted to genocide the Tutsi, they didn't fanny about for years on end like the Nazis did. They just got out their machetes and hacked them to death.

Gas chambers are not a particularly cruel way to kill people/ They're dead in a matter of minutes. If you want to be cruel what's wrong with crucifixion, its a tried and tested method and generally the suffering can be made to last for days. If the Germans had been a cruel people by historical standards, they would have crucified the Jews in public so as people could gloat over their suffering.

Now maybe you will say it was just the SS that were cruel. But again the SS compared to your Lakota, your Apache, your Commanche were a bunch of softies. Sure they had their hard core sadists, but you find those everywhere. A big part of the reason for gas chambers is because the straight forward killing traumatised so many of the Einsatzgruppen. Himmler I believe was physically sick. when he saw the executions and possibly Eichmann as well, Neither seemed to hav enjoyed the experience. Even Hitler wasn't a sadist. He may have watched some of the post July bomb plot executions, but theirs no evidence that I;ve seen that he used his position of power to watch people being tortured in general.

For some of the native American tribes, torturing prisoners of war was a proper communal event, lasting days, one that all the women and children could join in on.

The question was about regimes, which I take to mean a large state capable of dictating the lives of all that it oversees. I don't believe any of your examples fit in that criteria.

Your point about Eichmann/Hitler is bizarre and smacks of the usual Western, dare I say it, liberal, exceptionalism. 'they were sick because they were so civilised'. Bullshit. That only compounds the horror of it. Nazism was the methodical, systematic annihilation of people and it was its essence.

[albionfagan]

I think that's an issue to consider too, do only figures of people killed, tortured or raped count (be they raw or adjusted by population, technology or some other variables) or also the ways in which these were done count, which you can't simply adjust for numerically?

Do we consider this cruelty in regard to the standards in place when they happened or we do so under our contemporary standards (i.e. presentism)?

@Rich mentioned the cruelty of some Native American peoples, but Medieval Europe is also full of sadistic examples. E.g.:



It seems joking about infidelity in European courts was common until that scandal, then the jokes stopped (or there are at least a lot less records of that after the scandal).

Yes, history is essentially a long line of human cruelty with the occasional coincidental advancement. I took the question to be about a regime, i.e more than just the rule of a despotic monarch/tribe. You're looking at the ideology here and I think Nazism wins. It does have competition though.

[Pants-of-dog]

The British Empire killed more people than Nazism.

It continued into the modern era, so it is impossible to argue that the morality was different in the past.

It was an act by a regime, and this regime still exists.

And it was definitely ideological m since it purported to spread its ideals.

[late]

Ghenghis Khan killed about 11% of the worlds population. That beats everybody.

[Pants-of-dog]

That percentage is a function of low population at the time, and is therefore misleading as a comparison.

[wat0n]

The War of the Three Kingdoms (China, 220-280 AD) killed ~35-40 million. This was ~15% of the world's population at the time.

[Unthinking Majority]

The British Empire killed more people than Nazism.

It continued into the modern era, so it is impossible to argue that the morality was different in the past.

It was an act by a regime, and this regime still exists.

And it was definitely ideological m since it purported to spread its ideals.

The British Empire existed for 500 years. The Nazis were in power for 10-15 years. We're arguing about ideology and mindset, not body count totals.

The British could be brutal, but so could the Spanish, Portuguese, Belgians etc. Pol Pot and Stalin were brutal. Aztec empire was brutal. Hamas and ISIS want to murder innocent Jewish civilians, rape Jewish women, and want to kill or behead Palestinian homosexuals and apostates. Many brutal regimes over past 100 years.

[Pants-of-dog]

The British Empire existed for 500 years. The Nazis were in power for 10-15 years. We're arguing about ideology and mindset, not body count totals.

The British could be brutal, but so could the Spanish, Portuguese, Belgians etc. Pol Pot and Stalin were brutal. Aztec empire was brutal. Hamas and ISIS want to murder innocent Jewish civilians, rape Jewish women, and want to kill or behead Palestinian homosexuals and apostates. Many brutal regimes over past 100 years.

I already addressed the simplistic “everyone does it” argument.

And the British Empire (BE for short) had a clear and specific mindset and ideology: to bring civilization to the world.

It did so by buying and selling people into slavery, taking their lands, mass rape, putting people into concentration camps, and obliterating entire cultures, because these people were less civilized.

[wat0n]

The "everyone does it" claim is correct.

Even for the peoples you mention, you can find examples of cruelty at different points in time.

Again, this is not a purely cultural phenomenon. Even animals fight wars and act cruelly.

[Pants-of-dog]

Show how the Roma and the Eeyou Istchee committed atrocities.

And we are discussing state behaviour, not individual behavior.

Unless animals have states, the comparison is illogical and irrelevant.