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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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I don't think it's intellectually fair to use the word "genocide" (which most people associate with the physical extermination of people) in relation to a situation where children from an orphanage in Mariupol are sent to an orphanage in Russia.

If you don't think it's fair to apply the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, a convention of over 70 years of establishment international law, which even Russia is a a party to, for international standards of genocide, I question your standards of intellectual fairness.

Do you consider restrictions on the study of the Russian language in eastern Ukraine a genocide?

No, nor do they meet the international standard of it. Per Article II of the convention-

Article II

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with

intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as

such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its

physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The Russians will be brutal regardless, and will continue to be brutal over any Ukrainian territory they control both now and potentially in the future.

Probably the exact opposite is true. Russians will not be cruel to the local population no matter what, because they consider the local population to be Russian.

Black Comedy can be found in thinking the Russian state wouldn't be cruel to Russians. Evidence of Russian cruelty to Ukrainians under Russian occupation can be found from Bucha to Kherson.

If you don't think it's fair to apply the Convention on the Prevention and

Get rid of bureaucratic nonsense. I think that this word in everyday use has a completely different meaning.

can be found from Bucha to Kherson.

Both Russians and Ukrainians constantly claim that they find torture chambers in the occupied territories, this is probably just information garbage.

If we talk about Bucha, then we are talking about the alleged incident with the execution of men mistaken for artillery spotters, a guy on a bicycle who unsuccessfully rode onto a convoy preparing for battle and many civilians killed by Ukrainian artillery.

Get rid of bureaucratic nonsense. I think that this word in everyday use has a completely different meaning.

No, I decline to defer to your appeal for definition gerrymandering.

Many people use words wrong, but this is one whose context was specified, and whose definition for the scope of genocide has been an established part of international law longer than you've been alive.

And, you know, was refered to via the reference of international standards, to prevent confusion.

Both Russians and Ukrainians constantly claim that they find torture chambers in the occupied territories, this is probably just information garbage.

Well, that's one way to describe inconvenient UN investigations.

https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N22/637/72/PDF/N2263772.pdf?OpenElement

If we talk about Bucha, then we are talking about the alleged incident with the execution of men mistaken for artillery spotters, a guy on a bicycle who unsuccessfully rode onto a convoy preparing for battle and many civilians killed by Ukrainian artillery.

No, we're talking about the one involving torture and summary executions of civilians, as well as bodies being left in the streets for over a week as identified by commercial imagery despite Russian claims that the bodies were staged by Ukrainian forces as part of false allegations.

Soldiers who shoot at any moving target during battle - yes. The massacre of combatants, whom the soldiers consider to be combatants (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haditha_massacre) - yes.

But when a party that clearly has a conflict of interest and uses the statements of the Ukrainian government, which is quite often lying, starts telling stories that are clearly designed for an emotional reaction and are implausible from the point of view of hypothetical actors - I show a lot of skepticism.

Soldiers who shoot at any moving target during battle - yes. The massacre of combatants, whom the soldiers consider to be combatants (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haditha_massacre) - yes.

And in the Bucha case, the shooting of people bound in basements and in other places and forms of captivity.

But when a party that clearly has a conflict of interest and uses the statements of the Ukrainian government, which is quite often lying, starts telling stories that are clearly designed for an emotional reaction and are implausible from the point of view of hypothetical actors - I show a lot of skepticism.

Fortunately, the UN is not a party of the conflict, and used the statements of people they themselves interviewed along with sites they were granted access to, including sites and personnel that incriminated Ukrainians.