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The Crimean War

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  • edited March 2014
    Someone already made the scenario (and updating it http://baloogancampaign.com/ ) for this game (Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations):


    He's even doing a live stream! http://baloogancampaign.com/2014/03/05/upcoming-ukraine-2014-stream/
    Post edited by Andrew on
  • Burnt bodies weren't on TV during Vietnam. You had to go to Newspapers for that. TV coverage during Vietnam consisted mostly of Kronkite (or whoever) talking about things. No coverage from the field. Television journalism has definitely improved, the problem is that newspaper journalism has declined, and that was where war coverage shined.
  • muppet said:

    Lou we went from burnt bodies and casualty counts on TV to basically feel good stories about the All American football star hero military, with the rare "unfortunate but superficial effect of war" introspective. A lot more has changed than adding some stations.

    Perhaps, but you're blaming it on mega-corps owning all the media channels when I illustrated that there are actually more corps (albeit still "mega" ones) owning major TV news outlets at present than during Vietnam.

    Whatever the reasons are for not showing the horrors of war on the TV news, mega-corp ownership isn't one of them.
  • Why watch news footage when you watch the combat footage directly?
  • muppet said:

    Lou we went from burnt bodies and casualty counts on TV to basically feel good stories about the All American football star hero military, with the rare "unfortunate but superficial effect of war" introspective. A lot more has changed than adding some stations.

    Perhaps, but you're blaming it on mega-corps owning all the media channels when I illustrated that there are actually more corps (albeit still "mega" ones) owning major TV news outlets at present than during Vietnam.

    Whatever the reasons are for not showing the horrors of war on the TV news, mega-corp ownership isn't one of them.
    OK, but that's entirely tangential to the point I was making in the first place.
  • Andrew said:

    Why watch news footage when you watch the combat footage directly?

    Because you can't. Except for what's either leaked (rare) or allowed (tame).
  • What you don't seem to realize, Muppet, is that the vast majority of war isn't in combat, and the vast majority of combat is (if you're not in it, but only watching it) tame.
  • Greg, dude, I wasn't born yesterday. I'm not stupid. I understand that war is quiet quiet quiet OH MY FUCKING GOD quiet quiet quiet quiet.

    The trouble is that an awful lot of the OH MY FUCKING GOD, particularly when it involves the mass killing of dark skinned people in places that an awful lot of Americans couldn't label on a map, just never makes it into any coverage that the majority of Americans pay any attention to.
  • Andrew said:

    Someone already made the scenario (and updating it http://baloogancampaign.com/ ) for this game (Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations):


    He's even doing a live stream! http://baloogancampaign.com/2014/03/05/upcoming-ukraine-2014-stream/

    Lol jfc
  • I wonder at what point you'll have live satellite feeds watching combat zones as if it was a spectator sport, with POV cameras on the players/soldiers and the ability to livestream any part of the battlefield complete with former generals' commentary on the events.
  • At the rate apathy about atrocities committed to anyone not one's self is spreading, it'll be any day now.
  • That seems unlikely, since it's in the participants' best interest that people don't know where any of their stuff is.
  • muppet said:

    The trouble is that an awful lot of the OH MY FUCKING GOD, particularly when it involves the mass killing of dark skinned people in places that an awful lot of Americans couldn't label on a map, just never makes it into any coverage that the majority of Americans pay any attention to.

    I'm curious what exactly you are referring to when you mean "OH MY FUCKING GOD". Also, please refrain from using the phrase mass killing when the number of deaths is relatively low compared to most armed conflicts.

  • That doesnt mean its not mass killing lol
  • edited March 2014
    johndis said:

    That doesnt mean its not mass killing lol

    Mass killings are Rwanda, the Holocaust, Nanjing, Dresden, etc. They are events where lots of people were killed quickly over a short period of time.

    20k civilian deaths over 14 years of war (in Afghanistan here) don't really qualify as mass killings. Just a really shitty outcome from war.
    Post edited by Andrew on
  • Sorry but I utterly and vehemently disagree with minimizing 20000 deaths. Using the holocaust as a baseline is farce.
  • And there's credible evidence that WAY more than 20K civilians died in Iraq part 2, but you won't hear that on mainstream media.
  • I'm not minimizing their deaths, but you need some historical perspective if you think 20k dead in 14 years of continuous war is a mass killing. Otherwise we are just arguing semantics in which case there is no point in arguing.
  • muppet said:

    And there's credible evidence that WAY more than 20K civilians died in Iraq part 2, but you won't hear that on mainstream media.

    You were saying?

  • Andrew said:

    I'm not minimizing their deaths, but you need some historical perspective if you think 20k dead in 14 years of continuous war is a mass killing. Otherwise we are just arguing semantics in which case there is no point in arguing.

    Each drone attack in and of itself typically kills enough people to be a "mass killing." It only takes like 5 or so to really couint. I would consider it one of the easier achievements to unlock. Also semantics are really important w.r.t. war and its cultural impact imo!!!
  • Yep especially since propaganda and conditioning, particularly online, are BUILT on semantics. And yeah 20 thousand pointless deaths is a mass killing.
  • muppet said:

    Yep especially since propaganda and conditioning, particularly online, are BUILT on semantics. And yeah 20 thousand pointless deaths is a mass killing.

    All deaths in war are pointless. Also, don't forget to double layer your foil when folding.

  • edited March 2014
    If you seriously think that the discussion on major internet forums doesn't include government (and corporate) shills, you're delusional. That's not tinfoil hat territory, it's reality and something that is actually prudent for them to do (at least, from their point of view, which has a lot more to do with their own interests than ours.)

    Next you're going to tell me that there's no bribery in Congress.
    Post edited by muppet on
  • edited March 2014
    http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/02/british-spy-agency.html

    Well I'll be, using semantics to discredit troublesome posters with inconvenient knowledge or analyses and/or steer conversations (or derail them entirely.)

    So yes, how you define "silly" things like what a mass killing comprises is actually pretty fucking relevant.

    Source of leech-like blog post linked above:

    https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/

    But Glen Greenwald, who the heck is that crackpot anyway, right?
    Post edited by muppet on
  • muppet said:

    It may not be overt, but there's a big difference between a journalist independently reporting in a war zone, a la Vietnam, and a guy who works, eats, sleeps, shits, laughs, cries, etc, with a bunch of soldiers and then reports on them.

    That's also not what you said. You said they were groomed and filtered, not that they developed empathy for the people around them.

    IF you want to go back on your point, feel free, but if you're going to try and tell me how different parts of journalism work, at least try to be internally consistent.
  • So you don't think that embedded journalists are selected carefully, and you don't think that the guys they basically become coworkers in the extreme with (surviving a war together tends to make for some pretty strong bonds I'd imagine) pretty much de facto groom them? No, not going back on my point.
  • I'd change my opinion if truly controversial stuff ever came from embedded journalism, but I've never seen an example. Sure, there's stuff that people will object to and find disturbing, but there's never been any sort of a smoking gun or scandal revealed by American embedded war journalism. It's sanitized in the extreme, in my opinion. I allow for the possibility that I'm wrong, but I'm extremely skeptical.
  • You seem to know an awful lot about what it's like in a combat zone for having never been in one.
  • What's that, an ad hominem?
  • muppet said:

    I'd change my opinion if truly controversial stuff ever came from embedded journalism, but I've never seen an example. Sure, there's stuff that people will object to and find disturbing, but there's never been any sort of a smoking gun or scandal revealed by American embedded war journalism. It's sanitized in the extreme, in my opinion. I allow for the possibility that I'm wrong, but I'm extremely skeptical.

    Uh well there could also be no smoking gun for them to discover haha. I think mass journalism is pretty frigged up but I'd figure its relative "lightness" has more to do w/ the nature of maintaining profitability and not ostracizing advertisers than a direct conspiracy to serve up propaganda.
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