Not unrelated. One of the reasons it became clear we couldn’t win was that Americans gradually realized that the locals didn’t want us there. Nixon would have been happy to keep the war going for years more if he’d had the support and resources to do so.
Imagine how much faster the American populace would have turned against the invasion of Iraq if one of the early defining images of the invasion had been disturbing stuff like this:
Again, the nudity is the issue, but that is because it falls under the broad category. The ONLY reason we are defending it is because it has important historical significance. If it was just some young child naked, no one would be defending that it should be allowed to stay.
No entity as big as FB can police a billion or hundreds of millions of images and be able to make contextual decisions.
There have been complaints that some women showing her boobs is banned, but terrorists executing people is not. So sure, there is some double standard. But it isn’t like Boobs aren’t readily available elsewhere, and it isn’t exactly news worthy.
And again - there are ways to display and link to said historic images and keep within their guidelines (see above). FB is for keeping up with friends and family, inane memes, drama, ads we don’t want, and videos of cute animals. Is that really the battle ground for pushing the issue to publish a 40+ year old photo most people are already aware of?
I used to moderate a 15K member forum and that alone was exhausting. The limits are there for good reason, but with any rules, there will be cases where exceptions should maybe be made, but you can’t always do so due to the time and manpower that takes.
Fun fact - they also made a policy to delete any groups for BST fire arms. While I think that is total BS, it is their site, they pay the servers, I am entitled to nothing. So I live within their rules and use something else.
I have no answer. But I don’t see publicizing such photos as necessarily exploiting the subjects, and I reject any suggestion that I’m some popcorn-munching “consumer” of these images. They horrify me, but I don’t want anyone deciding that I shouldn’t worry my pretty head about them. And if many of the images are of POC, maybe it’s because they are the ones suffering disproportionately in our name.
The picture of Kim Phuc was published at a time when images of nudity were rare in mainstream news, but the importance of the story overrode editorial policy. It would be nice if Facebook had the same sort of courage.
They can do what they want and people can complain. They can put in place a “No cargo shorts” policy and take down any picture of anyone wearing cargo shorts. Have at it. I’m close to dropping my account altogether, mostly because I want to defriend half my friends but I don’t want to offend anyone. Hiding them just leads to me looking stupid when I see them and don’t know they got divorced or whatever.
As someone who’s spent probably far too much time hanging out with ancaps, it’s not that they don’t think monopolies are unreasonable, it’s that they believe monopolies are only made possible by market intervention, and thus can not exist in a truly free market.
Her words, not mine. I’m certainly deep in the atheist camp, but I am also aware that there are those who find solace in religions and that’s her call.
I think it’s less music to white liberals than it is music to those who argued for the war in the first place that “everything worked out well in the end!”
I don’t think it worked out well in the end. Religious forgiveness is not what I believe and certainly not music to my ears, but I’m not the one who needs to forgive anyone for horrific war crimes committed against me when I was nine. If I was her I’d still be fucking furious. But it’s her call.
Just to be clear, I don’t agree with what Facebook has done, especially since the point wasn’t about the violence of the image, but because of the nudity. I remember that story when it aired and I think her wishes should be respected on this.
But I do think we should think about the effects of seeing endless suffering on POC, especially from other countries. I’m not sure that seeing that has made people more sensitive or made them care more. I think that many people already predisposed to worrying about these conflicts (and the American relationship to them, through our foreign policy) didn’t need images like this to be empathetic and to push for positive change. Did the images help? Maybe. But it’s clear that there are plenty of people who don’t care and wouldn’t care, even when they see these images.
I seem to remember a pretty strong anti-war sentiment even before the invasion which got ignored. I also remember talk about how the second image was staged. And I remember how there were some who dismissed the torture in abu ghraib and continue to dismiss Gitmo as being a problem… or for that matter, they dismiss problems in our OWN prisons, which is why there is that strike today.
Look, I get it… these images can be helpful at revealing unnecessary violence and I don’t think it’s helpful to ban them anywhere. I, too, when teaching the US survey employ distributing images (pictures from lynchings, the Buddhist monk self-immolating, etc), and such like. But the people upset by it likely were already aware of such things and the people who dismiss it by noting that “maybe those people deserved it” are pretty set on either side of that divide.
Agreed. Do you think that people who find police violence general justified saw a problem with almost any of the videos of black men and women getting shot by the cops?
Again, at what point does it just become another layer of torture porn, versus awareness raising?
She apparently chooses not to be miserable. Instead she’s making her own life better by having a more enlightened mindset than fury. Thus, she wins, and those who would profit or advance their own agendas through her fury and misery can go suck eggs.
That being said, I’d probably still be furious too. Being able to see the benefits of enlightenment does not equate to being able to achieve it under all circumstances.
And to not feel forgiven means to steel yourself in “what’s done is done”. Or maybe not, because the point you’re making is basically “you liberals are subconsciously evil and this will let you ignore it” … and that’s a point mostly made to establish that you have, unlike the liberals, seen the light.
Honestly I don’t think we’d even be having a national discussion about police violence against POC if it weren’t for all the widely distributed footage of officers brutalizing unarmed black people. True, little tangible progress has been made by having that discussion—but our chances of fixing the problem are still better than if it had simply been ignored.
Just because someone forgives you doesn’t mean you get to feel absolved. She might have forgiven the actions of others before I was born but that doesn’t mean that I am of the opinion that as a result we don’t have to look at what we, the United States, did during war and resolve to prevent further similar acts.
While this happened long before I was born I don’t feel forgiven. Hers is but one story in a long book of tales of horrible actions towards civilians in the name of my country. I’m responsible for Gitmo and am committed to closing it through my actions, my voice, my votes and my fiscal support. Just because it feels like there’s nothing I can do and even if the prisoners come out with butterflies in their hair and forgiveness flowing like honey doesn’t mean I get to be absolved of anything.
This is before my time (as in before I was born and when I was a baby) but did we really get no pictures like this out of the genocides coming from the disintegration of Yugoslavia?
The “We don’t see pictures like this of POC” bit I mean. I’m no expert in anything even remotely close to this area.
