As Congress considers payments to victims of Cold War-era nuclear contamination in the St. Louis region, people who were targeted for secret government testing from that same time period believe they’re due compensation, too.

  • Drusas@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    The government released documents in 1994 revealing details about the spraying. And St. Louis wasn’t alone in being subjected to secretive Cold War-era testing. Similar spraying occurred at nearly three dozen other locations.

    There were other types of secret testing. In a 2017 book, St. Louis sociologist Lisa Martino-Taylor cited documents obtained through a FOIA request to detail how pregnant women in several cities were given doses of radioactive iron during prenatal visits to determine how much was absorbed into the blood of the mothers and babies. The government also created radiation fields inside buildings, including a California high school.

    The area of the testing in St. Louis was described in Army documents as “a densely populated slum district.” About three-quarters of the residents were Black.

    Jesus christ, there’s always some new atrocity we’re learning about.

  • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
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    In the 1950s and 1960s, the Army used blowers on top of buildings and in the backs of station wagons to spray a potential carcinogen into the air surrounding a St. Louis housing project where most residents were Black. The government contends the zinc cadmium sulfide sprayed to simulate what would happen in a biological weapons attack was harmless.

  • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    Hey libs! Raise your hand if:

    1. you think the government has stopped doing things like this.
    2. you think all governments do this.
    3. even though this is bad what other countries are doing is worse and the USA needs to stop them
    • Madison_rogue@kbin.socialOP
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      1 year ago

      JHC, get out with the “libs” shit. Liberals (the Left) in the U.S. criticize this shit all the time, and constantly take shit from the Right for being anti-patriotic.

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        1 year ago

        They criticize it, but then immediately turn around and support war because everyone else is still worse than the USA. Yeah, they take shit from the fascists for not saying the right things, but they happily feed the US imperial war machine day in and day out, regurgitate the propaganda, and demonize and dehumanize pretty much anyone in the global majority that is anti-imperialist.

        So no, I’m not going to get out of here with the “libs” shit. The libs were here first and shat on everything, they think they’re different from the enlightment era liberals who invented liberalism to justify capitalism, who created race science to justify the slave trade, who invented manifest destiny and the concept of civilized peoples to justify genocide. No. Fuck the libs. They deserve to be reminded every fucking minute that they are just as much a part of the genocidal and ecocidal war machine as the right and the fascists. The libs vote for the Democrats who want a strong and capable Republican party and don’t think there’s anything wrong with the way the Democrats wield power despite all the evidence that the way they wield power is congruent with enabling fascism and maintaining genocide and ecocide (just not for “good” people).

        • Madison_rogue@kbin.socialOP
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          1 year ago

          You know, you’d have an ally with a liberal if you weren’t so narrow minded that you decide to shit on them and deride them when given the opportunity. So you can still GTFO with your “lib” shit.

          • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 year ago

            Why would I want liberals to be my allies when they have shown that every time they are forced to make a choice between fascism and communism they choose fascism?