Metal Reviews

Latest news: the Russian army is building fortified positions in Georgia, even though president Medvedev had promised they would have evacuated by Friday. Russia also announced they froze the military cooperation with NATO. US replied that NATO had already frozen the cooperation, which is actually true. A classic case of:

"You're fired!"
"No, I quit!"

Oooh well that told me, it turns out there are "reports"! Who would have thought it?!

Nobody is saying you should ignore these reports, and in actual fact what is going on may well be even worse than what is in them. However, where do I even start with your post?

- this is the kind of willful obtuseness that I hate and normally expect only from very right-wing dunderheads. We should neither portray soldiers as a homogenous mass of heroes, as national medias tend to do to their own armies, or as a homogenous mass of devils, as national medias tend to do with anyone in conflict with their own armies. How hard is that to do? Extremely, so it would seem, judging by your postings.

- wow, we have graduated from just Russian soldiers now to all soldiers... so let me ask, have you met any British soldiers? It is possible to be both against the war, despise events such as Abu Ghraib, even support Iraqi resistance to some degree, whilst still maintaining respect for UK servicemen.

- wtf who told you to ignore them? I told you not to make generalisations about Russian soldiers based on them... you jump to impossible conclusions.

You may be a Napalm Death fanboy, but I suggest you search out the DKs version, because you can actually hear what the lyrics are, and the lyrics are very important. They aren't directing it specifically against actual political Nazis in the punk scene, they are directing it against people that have a narrow-minded and inward-looking view the culture they are in. ie, what we might call "Scene Nazis". IMO plenty of liberals have their own "scene", whereby if you are green and PC you are in, and if you are a nasty mean rough person like a soldier, you are out... especially if you are from a primitive country full of baddies like Russia... in fact, you are "scum", "bred to kill" etc...

Now, the song to me is advocating anarchist political philosophy. Look at the last verse.



i.e. the real enemy is authority itself, be it exercised by Bush, Putin, or businessmen.

An anarchist interpretation of the events in Georgia consistent with the philosophy of the song means regarding Russian soldiers as victims of their own government, and forced through political and socio-economic systems into a position whereby they are brutalised by their surroundings. Not saying I agree 100%, but I'm afraid the song doesn't back you up on this one at all.

So what you're saying is that it is like that movie Harsh Times?

I agree with the socioeconomic structure and an army's training forcing soldiers to become what they are but acts of rape and general barbarity can't be blamed on their training except for in the case of special forces where they are forced to pillage and butcher mercilessly.

And treating an army has a homogeneous group is a failure of language attempting to describe something we are unsure of. I know of examples of barbarity but I don't have the exact statistic of how much of the army is made up of barbarians so it is easier to just stereotype.

IMO it is more than a failure of language, it is an attempt to re-enforce the idea of "the other"- i.e. the negative force compared to which we can make ourselves the positive one. It is a failure of empathy and a failure of nuance, rather than a failure of language.

If anyone said that their own army was so much better than the Russians then you'd be right. You could claim that the idea of our army being morally better was implied but it wasn't. All armies murder and pillage, but occupying forces of Russia and the military personnel within prisons are more brutal by all accounts, which doesn't absolve other armies of brutality. I know that Americans massacred and raped the Vietnamese in an unjust military conflict but Russia still beats them in my book. Not all American or Russian soldiers but it's just my experience-based opinion.

Have you read Aleksander Solzhenitsyn? I recommend it as great literature and it makes you lose any compassion for the U.S.S.R with a great insight into gulags.

I'm slightly confused what you mean by the bolded part- do you mean in society at large? If so I would disagree strongly that that's never been implied. If you mean within this particular discussion, you go on to explicitly say exactly that about two sentences later.

By what criteria do Russians beat the Americans in Vietnam for brutality? You may well be right that they do, but there's no way at all to measure that. Especially when you consider that our media is very likely to be much more enthusiastic about reporting Russian atrocities than Western ones.

So, we have to fall back on generalisations, and of course in this sense you are entirely right that this is a failure of language primarily. IMO there is a lot more than this at work, like I said in my last post, but I meant in terms of the media and within society in a broader sense. I don't mean to imply that you personally in this thread are conspiring to demonise the Russians etc, in case there is any confusion. It is more Zad I am trying to wind up...

I actually haven't read Solzhenitsyn, although I keep meaning to. Just too much to read first, dammit

The Israelis take the cake, in my opinion. The video where the kid who got shot and died in his dad's arms still disturbs me until now.

How'd I miss this? Why take a complex interpretation of the lyrics like that when reading through it's fairly goddamn obvious that he's talking to actual Nazis in the scene - not scene nazis! - and saying that if Nazis ever did come to power Punk would be the first thing to go. Yes, there is advocation of anarchism with the whole nazi authority, but not to that extent!

My probem is that soldiers do these things. They're trained to be brutal. So by saying that soldiers are brutal, I'm kind of skipping the 'OMFG GOVERNMENT DOES IT' step - who hasn't seen Full Metal Jacket?

I'm quite surprised how naive some of you are. Soldiers do bad things, I thought that was common knowledge. And I'm sorry, but the media coverage of Israeli soldiers killing children is unbalanced and unfair, considering how many children el Coalition has killed in Iraq.

Well I haven't watched Full Metal Jacket yet although I do have the DVD lying somewhere. Should give it a run soon.

Soldiers are brutal, because they were trained to do war and war is brutal.
But we cannot judge them. We are not in the position to do so.

Agreed.

They go through a lot of mental pressure and torture apart from physical ones while on duty, and these pressures often fuck up their thinking and that's why they do stupid stuff. And I'm sure most of them are against war and the only reason they do it is because they were ordered so.

Just following orders, were they?

Well they were ordered to go to war, that is. But then when it takes place and time goes by I guess they really get fucked up in the head and start doing shit.




P.S. What a fucked up picture you've got there, Zad. What the hell is that?!

The face of an Iraqi after being struck with depleted uranium!



















Actually, a tree.

Nice try