I think that Kong lives there.
Well put.
Well, not application of criminal law as such, but there is always the option of a drone strike to bring them freedom and democracy.
Yeah sure, morally. But the govt could legitimately decide that “respekt mah authoritah!” was something the really wanted to enforce, rather than just leaving the islanders to it.
https://media.giphy.com/media/uQHtUvva9Qljy/giphy.gif
It’s happened plenty of times before.
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He was warned. Yet, still he persisted.
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Yup. I’ve been there - Although I still haven’t got around to visiting the East Island, which is actually pretty far away from the rest of NZ. But not quite as fasr as Easter Island.
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Reading about him, and looking at the photos, he reminds me of my students. I like my students.
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I think the 2004 tsunami might also have something to do with it.
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seems like; depending on his diary he was a truly religious nutjob with ego-problems, a martyr-complex and the classic seeing himself as “gods instrument”:
“Lord, is this island Satan’s last stronghold where none have heard or even had the chance to hear your name?”
“God Himself was hiding us from the Coast Guard and many patrols”
“I think I could be more useful alive . . . but to you, God, I give all the glory of whatever happens,”
fucking insane.
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An interesting thread:
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So the white man umm literally fucked them over. They decided no more white men can visit. Seems reasonable to me.
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Seriously - he could have wiped out most of the group if successful.
Apparently nearby tribes that were contacted (and not so long ago, necessarily) ended up being mostly wiped out by introduced diseases. Some then isolated themselves for survival.
In fact, it’s possible that this tribe was contacted previously. There was a late 19th century pervert-turned-anthropologist who would go around kidnapping people in this area, posing them for photographs (in recreations of homoerotic Greek art), minutely measuring every part of their bodies, then returning them with gifts. There’s one story that may or may involve this tribe (there are two versions of the story which conflict as to which group it was), where he managed to capture two old people and a kid. The old folks died in captivity (presumably exposed to diseases they had no defenses against) and who knows what he did with the kid before returning it. If it was this tribe, they certainly have some cultural memory of the event, and it’s a traumatic one.
It wasn’t just dumb, though - it was potentially genocidal.
“Have you heard the ‘good news’? No? Well, I’m sure you can find it on your own.”
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Ahem…
There’s a big difference between not feeling sorry for someone who needlessly brought his own death upon himself, and “taking glee” in the news of that death.
Call me heartless if you want, but life is too short and often too damn hard for me to waste even an iota of my time and energy futilely pitying someone who actively went seeking out a “Darwin Award.”
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One of the things I am oddly annoyed with in this incident is the fact that his family has said it forgives the inhabitants of the island.
Instead the family should be asking forgiveness for their son’s transgression.
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An extra angle:
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New Instagram page exposing people who die only for the “likes”: You Did Not Sleep Die There.
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At my uni there was an exchange student from the US who had the opposite experience. She was appalled at the sorry state of our supermarkets and could not get over the fact that they only sold one kind of chicken. No paprika chicken, no bbq chicken, no curry chicken… What kind of savages would want to add their own seasoning when you can have somebody else do it for you?
And then there was the student from Botswana who brought home a bread from the bakery, put it (in its paper bag) in the oven one night and went to bed. Expecting, I suppose, a warm loaf in the morning. Good thing he didn’t know how to turn on the oven, he could have burned down the dorm.
Cultural differences are fun. I wonder what I do and say that make people roll their eyes 
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Oh the irony
He should have read the Book of Job a little more carefully.
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