So right, can someone please explain to me

how the fuck shit like this makes sense.

From MercNet btw.


Reason I'm even asking you all is 'cause some of you aren't completely fucktarded and the thread got locked 'bout an hour ago after it started tanking the servers after that post.

So uh

yeah.

Anybody gonna take a crack at this?

Yes, the System's Alliance has never committed war crimes. On, say, Bahak.

Or Torfan.

Never. Not once. No mad, out of control soldiers there, no-one killing for the joy of it.

Nope, just, you know, serving your people.

By murdering surrendered criminals and civilians.

Bahak was a regrettably necessary action to stop the Reapers, you know the ones that slaughtered a large portion of your population and then ours? The people on Bahak were already dead. And in any case, that was the action of a single individual who was not at the time affiliated with the Systems Alliance. And yeah, we gave her back her rank and ship once the Reapers arrived because she was right. She forged the Pact and helped create the fleet that took back our homeworld and stopped the war. Without her, I'd be dead and so would you.

Bahak was no more immoral than was us leaving millions of our people to die in horrible ways so that the military could live to fight another day.

As for Torfan I will not offer any excuses or justifications. Torfan was wrong and should never have happened. It was a disgrace on both a moral and pragmatic level. Those individuals who took part in the war crimes that took place there are murderers who disgraced the uniform I wear and are indirectly responsible for the deaths of other Alliance personnel and citizens. Also I have never heard of any participant in Torfan getting a medal for what took place there (and do know someone who was given an NJP)-it shames us enough that they weren't court martialled.

But there is a reason we were at Torfan in the first place, a reason we conducted the Theshaca Raids. The Skyllian Blitz. Mindoir. What about Terra Nova huh? Throwing an asteroid at a planet of four million people. Civilians executed while we could only watch, killed in horrible ways to dent our morale, children implanted with control chips.

The Alliance isn't innocent, but neither was the other side. We can go in circles about who started the cycle of revenge between the Alliance and batarian people, but people like you make a living taking from the helpless and I'll never understand that.

You wanna go politically? We hunt pirates because they disrupt the economy, kill people and take hostages. Stuff like that is why a Navy exists in the first place.

What did those three months get us, exactly? Three months where Cerberus built its power and influence? Three months where the Hegemony and Alliance maneuvered into a position where both were effectively crippled in the opening days of the war? Three months where Gruul put bioweapon production into overdrive? Three months of warring with each other?

No-one put anything in motion, no-one started drafting, no-one distributed the fleets, no-one made information nets, no-one banded together.

What did we fucking gain from Bahak?

Bahak, was never about curving Cerberus' influence, or moving the fleets. We had not the time, nor the political capital. However, they were not wasted.

Those days it took them to cripple us, would have been hours without Bahak. Palaven would risked fallen before we could involve the krogan, where it not for some believers inside the hierarchy pushing for passive defenses like hardened communication lines, and Bahak giving them the time to do it. These things cascaded, giving us just enough time to finish the Crucible and having enough firepower to deploy it.

In this war every second counted, and Bahak gave us 7,776,000 of them and we used them. Lives, 300,000 of them, were bought and sold, some might even say cheaply, but they were not needlessly spent. The fact we are still here proves that.

Well, we can now completely ignore everything this woman says.

Seriously, the curer-of-plagues, she who beat Rannoch into reasonableness, who turned back a billion-year army...You suggesting she hated batarians, like in particular? That'd be a knock against batarians...

...Calypso, You realize all of you got a huge pass when it turned out your leaders were indoctrinated? Don't waste it. You are the frigging worst cliche of your people.

Ooh ooh! I bet she takes 'slave contracts' as payments for 'debts'.


What I'm getting from this conversation right now is "I rob and steal because I'm a pragmatic badass! I can do anything my power lets me do! What do you mean they don't like me? They're trying to stop me!!! It's not fair!!!!! Waaaaah!"

Everyone's got you pegged for exactly what you are.

If you drew a Venn diagram of "batarians" and "war crimes", the result would indeed be a wheel.

Oh, please. The Hegemony put about 300,000 batarians into the ground every week. In fact, your civilisation is the only one that will probably experience a net population increase in the long-run from the Reaper Wars.

I am shocked, shocked that the normal procession of justice was suspended due to an unanticipated invasion of xenocidal machines from beyond known space. I'm sure StateSec was still putting the thumbscrews to people right up until the husks were at the door, ammirite?

Torfan was a dead moon inhabited by slavers and criminals. The idea that it was some sort of peaceful commune crushed under the Alliance jackboot is pure fantasy. If said criminals chose to take their own families into their den of operations, then the onus of responsibility rests with them, not the Alliance.

So you have cited exactly two incidents to substantiate this claim, one of which had nothing to do with the Alliance.

Meanwhile, a thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters writing for a thousand years would struggle to index every incident of piracy since interplanetary travel was pioneered, never mind the costs - human and economic - thereof.

Ah, yes. Pirates have been so helpful, what with suppressing trade and commerce, stifling immigration, remaining a perennial menace to colonial development and expansion and even triggering intragalactic wars. Where would we be without you? I mean, aside from in a galaxy that was a great deal more peaceful and prosperous.

Emphasis mine.

Talking about piracy is talking about morale and the way we want to live together in general. Do we want to prosper in common efforts or do we want to deteriorate in egoistic anarchy?

There are laws and common sense about living together in a society. Something like pirating is contradicting every value a functioning society has. Defenders of this trade, drop the romantic crap, it is about egoism. It is about wanting things for personal gain and prying it from the hands of others by violence.

Pirates are parasites to any economy and society, they are not contributing anything, they are only deteriorating things. They could not exist without the hard work of others, producing the goods they just leech on instead of using their own creativity and own hands to actually create something instead of just tearing other people’s stuff down out of frustration or just motivated by all the credits. A pirate is about destruction only, there is nothing creative about it no matter how you spin the romantic wheel.

Well, no, it's not cheapening language at all. I'm just putting it in simpler terms so that we're all on the same page. You're under the impression that exonerating myself is somehow my goal here; it isn't. In fact, we're well past that point even being relevant to the discussion.


Most gangs tend to follow very basic common-sense 'laws.' Any codification becomes meaningless as long as the core ground rules are laid down, whatever those ground rules may be. For example, even if Omega doesn't have laws, there are rules. 'Rule 1: Don't fuck with Aria.' Simple, straightforward, Omega functions because of it. Codification and having this shit laid out in flowery language doesn't make it any more or less legitimate. It's still 'the rule.' Don't kill each-other, don't steal from each-other, etc., we can agree those are some pretty basic 'ground rules' that everyone follows (except when they don't).


And? This doesn't somehow make the codification or 'legitimacy' of a given law or rule somehow morally superior or better than the de-facto execution of the same basic rule somewhere that doesn't have it down on paper. Guy doesn't pay taxes? He's arrested for tax evasion. Guy kills someone? He's arrested for murder. Whereas in T-Space, where this is all just common rule-of-thumb, if you kill a guy under a gang's protection or don't pay your protection fee, chances are you're gonna get punished for it somehow. It really boils down to 'who has the numbers, firepower and resources to maintain their own authority, and through that authority, their own rules.' In the case of Earth, it's the Systems Alliance, and on Omega, it's your local gang of friendly drug dealers.


Uh-huh. There's reasons for that.


Good. Because that's all it is. Work.


Well, maybe not a break (nobody gets one), but definitely some sympathy. And before you call me out for saying that, yeah, ya do. Think about it. What other marketable skills do you have? What's going to put food on the table? Is it within your capability to learn more skills so you can do anything else besides that one thing you don't want to do, even if you can do it? If it's possible, do something besides that one thing, and if not, then grab your gun and take a look at MercNet when you have a chance. Because you're not getting another one.


No, you're not. But you are, in essence, stuck in the same spot as any of those guys.


are we really rehashing the fucking bahak argument people goddammit

Okay, I'll start by saying I have no love or affiliation for the former Batarian Hegemony. The entity was a brutal totalitarian government that encouraged the policy of slavery with a cultural justification, calling anyone who would even suggest that it's a fucked up practice a bigot.

Now back to the subject of Bahak, what proof did the Commander have that the reapers were inbound on the Bahak relay? Yes she was correct that the Reapers were a threat, but she had not managed to produce any evidence of their existence until after their arrival in the Kite's Nest. For all we know the Reapers were a scapegoat for the incident, a redirection of the blame for a threat she believed would absolve her of her crimes.

And as the person below you said, even if Bahak was a "Noble Sacrifice" to delay the Reapers, she caused even more damage then if they had arrived early. On top of what he or she has said, the quarians went to war and were almost completely wiped out if not for completely miraculous circumstances.

And yes, while she was instrumental in the defense against the Reapers, it sure as hell doesn't mean I'm going to like it, or justify the atrocities she has committed on my people.

As for Torfan, the whole point that I'm trying to make is that the Alliance has committed warcrimes. I cannot speak for the monsters who committed atrocities against the SA, and caused the retaliation of the Theshaca Raids, but you can't justify even more crimes against sapient completely innocent people because their government started it. What's that phrase you humans use? "Two wrongs don't make a right"?

So please, don't try to pretend your organization is above mine


Please see my previous statement about "The Shepard" For all the good in the galaxy she's caused, there's still the blood of 300,000 of my people on her hands.

And the galaxy just fucking watched.


.... did you just imply that Batarians have sinned against the galaxy universally because our government was indoctrinated?

Like

We're all bad people, because we suffered under a terrible state that was controlled by the Reapers. I literally cannot even go into this because it'd take another 15 minutes to tell you how terrible that sentiment is.


Oh no, you have it all wrong. I'm not a slaver. Former slave actually. I free slaves. Those slaver ships that pass through the smuggling routes in the Abyss and Terminus?

I raid those. And then free the cargo. Some go home, if they have one. Some find work at the station we drop them. Some even work for me. It's a very nice employment opportunity, really.


Hah, implying anything in this Galaxy is geared towards fairness. I know I'm not liked by The Powers That Be, and anything that implies I'm trying to gain the favor of them is the blind optimism of a child.


You'd all be dead or husks, because the pirate crews of the Terminus and Abyss were crucial in aiding the efforts of the Reaper War. Without the assistance of those like the infamous Vevedix, the entire galaxy would have been starved of supplies and ships.

Bullshit, nothing was done by the SA with the time brought with Bahak, and you were just as blindsided despite Bahak as you would have been without it.


While hardening lines of communications is nice, don't pretend it was at all necessary to deploy the crucible or justified the murder of three hundred thousand people. In addition, I don't think it outweighed Cerberus' extra months of preparation time with which they recruited, worked on their husking technology, etc.


Bahak wasn't necessary to win the war. At all.

Just because you helped once doesn't make you suddenly legit citizens of the galaxy when you still, you know, raid our commerce and ransom people. IF you want to be actually respected, do something to earn it instead of holding people at gunpoint and tell them to kowtow to you.

Uh just saying, you're assuming anybody in the Terminus gives a shit about what you think about them or what they do.

Hint: nobody fucking does.

An pretty much everyone in the Terminus

aka

everyone who deals with people like that battie chick day to day

is kinda used to it.

What does Shepard have to do with the bucket's leaders thinking that the invasion of the god-squids made for a perfect backdrop to them starting a fight with the geth?

This is why no-one likes C-Space.

Honestly, you people. Going on about being 'legit citizens of the galaxy'.

Because had she not destroyed the entire Bahak system, then the claims of the Alliance man that the Reapers would have arrived 3 months early and therefore, the quarians would not have been involved in the Evening War.

No matter if Shepard was telling the truth about Bahak or not:

It still did completely nothing about the war effort on one side and served to it's detriment on the other.

I don't think imminent threat of horrible death would've stopped the Fleeters from trying to get themselves killed.

We don't like you either with your crime spilling and worming its way into our society, which you don't bother to contain.

'Cause T-Space is just one fuckhuge bloc of govs and exactly like C-Space an everyone answers to a couple of guys.

You know what you maybe could try? Just, you know, maybe something that might work better than bitching about how mean everyone is?

Protecting your fucking colonies.

Hint hint.

Blindsided, you say? Did nothing, you say? I would think a self-appointed 'information services' provider would know how to reevaluate past information when new facts to light, and, for that matter, accept that sometimes there are things you do not know for sure, but can assume to a large degree of certainty to be the case because otherwise it would not make sense.

Let me show you how it is done.
Some time before the war, there was news post on this same site that "Systems Alliance reverses stance on turian dreadnought construction".


Now at the time it was a 'big surprise' but with hindsight it is pretty obvious why the Alliance would take such a stance, does it not. Rest assure that the Alliance and other parties, were busy behind the curtains. Do you think the massive rollout of the Thanix cannon was a coincidence? The above are but the most obvious things they did, the things that are so plainly visible nobody could hide. After all a pilot or gunner will notice when they change the guns of their ships. I am quite sure they did more things we will never know, or at least not in the next fifty years or so.

To consider that they would not have used those three months Bahak gave us seems preposterous. To think that those three months did not help seems idiotic.


Every little bit helps, the nature of the war was thus that 300,000 people were worth the price. I dare say in some people minds ten billion people for a couple of months more would have been worth it.

Three months is enough to do something, we might argue about whether or not it was needed to win the war, but you act as if it was without benefit.

Here is a final thing for you to think about, suppose Shepard had not destroyed Bahak, what would have happened? What a hell would the inhabitants have suffered those few pitiful weeks they would have survived under Reaper occupation, as those things turned them into husks, and folder. And that is assuming the Reapers wouldn't just have bombed the planet from orbit. Either way they were death, but at least now they bought us some time.

oh my god

Mummy must have told you were the most shiniest star in the firmament every night.

The pirate fleets were not crucial during the Reaper War. They were a cog in the greater machine, but not a decisive one. If there was any crucial asset in the war, it was the Crucible - which was designed and constructed by we civilised hypocrites, and deployed by (you guessed it) the Systems Alliance, Galactic Menace™. The pirates provided ships and supplies, but so did everyone besides the frogs. Oh, and for every vessel lending its support to the war effort, there was another shamelessly profiteering off the struggle to preserve the galaxy by continuing to raid and extort. Gold stars all around.

But here's the kicker, so I'd decouple your monocle in preparation: if you had just been normal spacers, instead of blood-letting boils on the arse of civilisation, you would have provided exactly as much value during the war. Piracy was not necessary to win the war. In fact, the colonies would have probably been a might more self-sufficient if they hadn't been pre-emptively drained of assets by you and your fellow larcenous raiders; and the Alliance, in particular, might have been swifter to mount a counter-attack if its fleets weren't scattered across the cosmos shielding its far-flung colonies from your ilk.

Aaaaand Lord Palmerstone's got it in one. You speak as if it wasn't for the Cannibal Commander, Bahak would currently be a utopa of milk and honey and moxie orphanages. The point is that the Reapers would have simply ploughed into it, anyway. In all your 'mercy', you would sooner see the people of Bahak hunted down, tortured and converted into husks rather than suffer the swift death of a relay explosion. And all so the Reapers could then get to practice on the rest of us three months earlier.