How the U.S. betrayed the Marshall Islands, kindling the next nuclear disaster
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Re: How the U.S. betrayed the Marshall Islands, kindling the next nuclear disaster
#2Why is it, when reading this article, all I can picture is that meme of the SS officer saying "Wait a minute... Are WE the baddies?".
I am starting to interpret a lot of things I took for granted in my younger years with a different viewpoint, and I am increasingly horrified when I do, as the perceptions I've always had that most Western countries are the benevolent benefactors is tainted by stories such as this, which shows a brutal, callous disregard for other sovereign nations.
Re: How the U.S. betrayed the Marshall Islands, kindling the next nuclear disaster
#3Why is it, when reading this article, all I can picture is that meme of the SS officer saying "Wait a minute... Are WE the baddies?". I am starting to interpret a lot of things I took for granted in my younger years with a different viewpoint, and I am increasingly horrified when I do, as the perceptions I've always had that most Western countries are the benevolent benefactors is tainted by stories such as this, whi…
Recall that as they say, "history is written by the victors." The victors tend to whitewash what they do.
Re: How the U.S. betrayed the Marshall Islands, kindling the next nuclear disaster
#4Why is it, when reading this article, all I can picture is that meme of the SS officer saying "Wait a minute... Are WE the baddies?". I am starting to interpret a lot of things I took for granted in my younger years with a different viewpoint, and I am increasingly horrified when I do, as the perceptions I've always had that most Western countries are the benevolent benefactors is tainted by stories such as this, whi…
You don’t win the war by being good. But if you win the war you get to write the history.
Re: How the U.S. betrayed the Marshall Islands, kindling the next nuclear disaster
#5Is there a list of similar or bigger issues than this nuclear disaster?
Re: How the U.S. betrayed the Marshall Islands, kindling the next nuclear disaster
#6Why is it, when reading this article, all I can picture is that meme of the SS officer saying "Wait a minute... Are WE the baddies?". I am starting to interpret a lot of things I took for granted in my younger years with a different viewpoint, and I am increasingly horrified when I do, as the perceptions I've always had that most Western countries are the benevolent benefactors is tainted by stories such as this, whi…
It took me a long time to realize this, but now I recognize that which I think most of my fellow Europeans already know: yes, you're the baddies (I knew that already), but you're the best baddies of the baddies available. Our other options are to associate with eg China or Russia, and between those the US, even with people like Trump at the wheel, is splendid.
Naturally, I think that the US should do a much bigger effort to be less evil. But at least in the US, people can wonder what you're wondering. There's a chance that one day the US will be less bad, while staying a superpower. There's freedom of speech and a generally functioning democracy.
Yes, you're the baddies, ish, and you can help make it better. That's super cool.
EDIT: obviously we (NL, EU, etc, are evil in many ways too. This bothers the shit out of me and I try to do my part to fix it)
Re: How the U.S. betrayed the Marshall Islands, kindling the next nuclear disaster
#7Why is it, when reading this article, all I can picture is that meme of the SS officer saying "Wait a minute... Are WE the baddies?". I am starting to interpret a lot of things I took for granted in my younger years with a different viewpoint, and I am increasingly horrified when I do, as the perceptions I've always had that most Western countries are the benevolent benefactors is tainted by stories such as this, whi…
>Western countries are the benevolent benefactors is tainted by stories such as this, which shows a brutal, callous disregard for other sovereign nations.
The US took control of the Marshall Islands in 1944. From Japan. After Pearl Harbor. There was no sovereign nation.
Re: How the U.S. betrayed the Marshall Islands, kindling the next nuclear disaster
#8Why is it, when reading this article, all I can picture is that meme of the SS officer saying "Wait a minute... Are WE the baddies?". I am starting to interpret a lot of things I took for granted in my younger years with a different viewpoint, and I am increasingly horrified when I do, as the perceptions I've always had that most Western countries are the benevolent benefactors is tainted by stories such as this, whi…
You don’t win the war by being good. But if you win the war you get to write the history.
True that. Both my parents grew up near a POW camp in Malaysia during WWII. They said that yes, when the Japanese occupied Malaya, the treatment of the allied prisoners by the Japanese guards was brutal and cruel. But they also said when the tables turned later in the war, and the Japanese were prisoners in the same camps under British and US guards, the treatment dished out was every way just as bad.
Re: How the U.S. betrayed the Marshall Islands, kindling the next nuclear disaster
#9This is terrifying and so sad. Here they're talking about plans to resettle the displaced local population back to the location of a nuclear bomb test:
""" U.S. government documents from the time show that officials weighed the potential hazards of radiation exposure against “the current low morale of the natives” and a “risk of an onset of indolence.” Ultimately they decided to go forward with the resettlement so researchers could study the effects of lingering radiation on human beings.
“Data of this type has never been available,” Merrill Eisenbud, a U.S official with the Atomic Energy Commission, said at a January 1956 meeting of the agency’s Biology and Medicine Committee. “While it is true that these people do not live the way that Westerners do, civilized people, it is nonetheless also true that they are more like us than the mice. """
Re: How the U.S. betrayed the Marshall Islands, kindling the next nuclear disaster
#10Why is it, when reading this article, all I can picture is that meme of the SS officer saying "Wait a minute... Are WE the baddies?". I am starting to interpret a lot of things I took for granted in my younger years with a different viewpoint, and I am increasingly horrified when I do, as the perceptions I've always had that most Western countries are the benevolent benefactors is tainted by stories such as this, whi…
> most Western countries are the benevolent benefactors
Did you miss out on the world events of the past 500 years? It has been 500 years of war, genocide, rape and theft by the west on the rest of the world. I don't recall anyone using benevolence to describe what happened in the past 500 years.
There isn't an ounce of benevolence in the west or east or south or north or wherever. Human beings are brutes. This isn't really a western trait, it's a human trait. When one group gets the upper hand, you get brutish behavior. For one reason or a another, the west got the upper hand for 500 years. And it's been a relentless and horrific series of genocides, slavery, conquest, mass rapes, nukes, etc - not benevolence.