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Battlestar Galactica's Last Days
bowman9991 writes "If your country was invaded and occupied by a foreign power, would you blow yourself up to fight back? If someone pointed a gun at your head and threatened to pull the trigger if you refused to sign a document you knew would lead to a hundred deaths (and you signed!), would that make you ultimately responsible? Does superior technology give you the moral right to impose your will on a technologically inferior culture? You wouldn't expect a mainstream television show to tackle such philosophically loaded questions, certainly not a show based on cheesy science fiction from the '70s, but if you've watched Battlestar Galactica since it was re-imagined in 2003, there has been no escape. The final fourth season is nearly over, and when the final episode airs, television will never be the same again. SFFMedia illustrates how Battlestar Galactica exposes the moral dilemmas, outrages, and questionable believes of the present as effectively (but more entertainingly) than any documentary or news program. It's not hard to see parallels in the CIA and US military's use of interrogation techniques in Bush's War on Terror, the effects of labeling one race as 'the enemy,' the crackdown on free speech, or the use of suicide bombers in Iraq."
Being spoon-fed more propaganda is not exactly an advantageous counter balance.
Al-Jazeera is the Fox News of the Middle East, specifically where the US or Israel are concerned. A good 1/2 of all Americans consider Fox to be "reputable", but that doesn't make it particularly so.
Just because some news network in a different part of the world reports on things differently from yours doesn't mean it's "better" or "right". It's just different.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
If it's an add, how do we subtract?
Except that Germany and the UK are not third world countries, ergo he didn't(i.e. Germany and the UK are NOT examples of third world countries).
"However, the last few seasons have been fairly "meh" for me because it has turned almost completely into a soap opera."
Personally I thought the first episode was a soap opera; that's why I never watched anything beyond it. Didn't realise it was even still going.
Except that the Japanese did not surrender after the first nuke was dropped. We gave them three days and got no answer. The emperor made the decision to surrender the day after the second bomb was dropped.
First talks were started almost month before the surrender. The talks between Japan, US and Russia spent a month bickering about calling the surrender "unconditional", and in fact Japan ended up keeping everything it tried to keep. It boggles my mind how splitting diplomatic hairs could be considered worth two cities being nuked.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
We didn't literally hand them paper money, you ignorant fool.
No one actually worked for free -- US issued more of its currency backed by foreign goods and labor. This allowed US to establish the use of dollar in international trade, what subsequently allowed to manipulate that trade (in particular oil/energy), and in the end switch to obtaining foreign goods "for free" by racking up trade deficit and paying with its own government's debt and other forms of debt. Current "mortgage crisis" is actually the first instance when this scheme started falling apart -- US ran out of its own consumers who could be used as a reliable conduit in a debt-to-goods scheme.
Materials and services were provided for free.
"Free" goods were only provided DURING the war. Most of them were of questionable quality, though it's completely irrelevant to post-WWII arrangements.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Well, as the title indicates, this is a debate. There are points and counterpoints by multiple historians. Please show me evidence (not a debate) that the Japanese were indeed going to sign by a certain date and not pulling for delay tactics.
As long as US propaganda workers are busy creating excuses, everything is a "debate".
Very small percentage of Japanese were involved in this (or willing to be involved in this). Americans made themselves believe that there will be a suicide bomber at every corner.
To ensure that they actually signed it and acted in accordance to it. Hostilities were still occurring while they were still "preparing". You seem to think that war is some sort of gentlemen agreement- it's not.
Nothing says "We are going to let you keep your stupid Emperor" like dropping two nukes on cities with no direct military value.
I was simply responding to your statement, "US already had a very successful firebombing campaign targeted at civilian population." You seem to think it's unfair. It was a tool in the arsenal, and the atomic weapons were a different tool.
While I indeed see that campaign as unnecessarily cruel, my point is that whatever nuclear bombings could accomplish, firebombing accomplished already.
My point indicates that we entered the war after an act of aggression, and after losing a significant potion of our pacific fleet. This is quite the opposite of your statement.
Being forced into the war does not make US military any less cowardly. Not latching onto each and every opportunity, real or imaginary, necessary or pointless, to kill with impunity, would.
No, this is indication that the US stepped up to the plate and freely provided resources after the war to assist in helping the world recover. The US didn't have to- it would have been easier to go back to it's isolationist policy. Instead, it liberated much of Europe and part of Asia from occupation then gave significant resources to recovery.
Blah-blah-blah. US seized the opportunity to create worldwide dependency on its currency while all major countries/regions' economies were in ruins. US milked all advantages of that up to this moment (and now it has credit crisis because it got accustomed to issuing debt/currency like crazy).
War sucks, and it's always easy to say you could have done a better job. In your case, you are trying to demonize an entire society who has contributed greatly to the rest of the world in recent history.
Cry me a river.
You try to paint Americans as cowards and aggressors during perhaps the most difficult and sad sagas in living memory. Frankly it's a damn shame that your bias over more recent events attempts to project this bias over history.
Americans (or at least their beloved government officials) have tendency to act like cowards and aggressors whenever faced with anything difficult or sad.
You come across as quite a hateful person, which is unfortunate as you seem quite intelligent. There's not much that any nation at that time has to be proud of, on any side. To single out the Americans as the bad guys is really putting things in an out of reality perspective.
15 years ago when I have moved to US, I had a much better opinion of Americans -- I thought, they had an improvement over the last half a century comparable to improvement in other developed societies. Now, after seeing you for a decade and a half, I can at most recognize that some people are relatively sane given the circumstances, however the society as a whole is just as thoroughly rotten as it was in the times of WWI, Great Depression, WWII, Vietnam, etc.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
You look at the government as liars out to get you. Your forgetting that there are honest people working for it and the only reason you know about the bad things the government has done is because they spoke up
Yes, but it's the scumbags you keep defending that keep doing the bad things, and the very few honest people who you keep attacking as mindless crybabies and chicken littles who are the ones speaking up in spite of the rabid attacks by anti-American scum like yourself.
You don't get to keep talking shit about patriots and then act like their defiance of your cowardice is a point in favor of your deluded positions, you ignorant piece of shit.