Monday, 21 October 2013
Tuesday, 15 October 2013
Monday, 7 October 2013
If you didn't know already, Emma Watson and Benedict Cumberbatch are "two white people"
"The two white people..."
What in the actual fuck?!?!??!?!
Anyway. I don't know anything about Benedict except that he's in Dr. Who and apparently women love him even though with his all white (hur) looks he could probably play a steely eyed Nazi pretty well.
Emma Watson on the other hand - if we are going to be shallow dicks like everyone who puts these lists together - I think she is average or at most, slightly above average. I think the biggest reason why guys find her extremely hot is because 1. they grew up with her on apparently everybody's (but not mine) favourite series evaaaaaaar, Harry Potter 2. she's cutesy, nice and looks approachable i.e. wifey material.
I don't think she's sexy, but yeah, I guess she's cute.
Really overrated in terms of hotness though.
Also, speaking of smart actresses, Natalie Portman >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Emma Watson any day.
Also, Kate Beckinsale went to Oxford. *INTERESTING FACT OF THE DAY*
Sunday, 6 October 2013
The douchebags who aren't willing to believe that celebrities can be rape victims
Today, shocking media reports surfaced which revealed that two of the world's richest, most recognised pop icons are victims of rape.
One of them at eight years old; the other when she was 20, trying to make it big in New York as a dancer. While their accounts were disturbing ( - being held at gunpoint and being raped on the roof of a building), the way that some articles and netizens have dismissed these experiences as fictional, self-aggrandising, attention-grabbing ploys, have been even more so. They go even further as to insinuate that pop stars who are 'fame-whores', who act arrogant, who have built their entire careers on being 'sex icons/gods'are people that just...can't possibly be rape victims because ahem - they're sluts and morally decrepit people.
So who are they? Madonna and Chris Brown.
Firstly, there's Madonna for the November issue of Harpers Bazaar, talking about the first year she moved to New York:
Despite the fact that some comments have provided links to articles as early as 1995 where she has talked about the rape incident, there was an initial barrage of really horrible, really hypocritical, slut-shaming comments left on Jezebel, a well known feminist gossip & news site that usually draws a commentariat of above average literacy and intelligence:
Exactly. The break-ins, absolutely I believe. The gunpoint robbery, maybe. The rape, no.
So, wait. Some of the comments here don't sit well with me.
I could imagine someone as she, who had begun her career as someone wanting to champion women as powerful and so forth, not feeling so psyched about sharing this with anyone, let alone the world, let alone at that time, and let alone when it's a benchmark of women's victimization.
One of them at eight years old; the other when she was 20, trying to make it big in New York as a dancer. While their accounts were disturbing ( - being held at gunpoint and being raped on the roof of a building), the way that some articles and netizens have dismissed these experiences as fictional, self-aggrandising, attention-grabbing ploys, have been even more so. They go even further as to insinuate that pop stars who are 'fame-whores', who act arrogant, who have built their entire careers on being 'sex icons/gods'are people that just...can't possibly be rape victims because ahem - they're sluts and morally decrepit people.
So who are they? Madonna and Chris Brown.
Firstly, there's Madonna for the November issue of Harpers Bazaar, talking about the first year she moved to New York:
New York wasn't everything I thought it would be. It did not welcome me with open arms. The first year, I was held up at gunpoint. Raped on the roof of a building I was dragged up to with a knife in my back, and had my apartment broken into three times. I don't know why; I had nothing of value after they took my radio the first time.
And all the homeless people on the street. This wasn't anything I prepared for in Rochester, Michigan. Trying to be a professional dancer, paying my rent by posing nude for art classes, staring at people staring at me naked. Daring them to think of me as anything but a form they were trying to capture with their pencils and charcoal. I was defiant. Hell-bent on surviving. On making it. But it was hard and it was lonely, and I had to dare myself every day to keep going.
Despite the fact that some comments have provided links to articles as early as 1995 where she has talked about the rape incident, there was an initial barrage of really horrible, really hypocritical, slut-shaming comments left on Jezebel, a well known feminist gossip & news site that usually draws a commentariat of above average literacy and intelligence:
Exactly. The break-ins, absolutely I believe. The gunpoint robbery, maybe. The rape, no.
She practically invited us inside her body with a speculum (in fact, for all I know, she may literally have done that). There's no way she would have kept quiet about this for so long. It's just a pathetic attempt to aggrandize herself - look what I've survived! How awesome I am!
No.
Are you fucking kidding me!??!?!? God, I just want to punch these people in the fucking face. Saying shit like that is like saying:
- If Lady Gaga (because she's probably the modern day equivalent) had been raped when she was young but only spoke about it publicly during an interregnum in her career or after retirement, then it's automatically 1. attention grabbing and fake 2. not possible because we have seen her 99% naked in her music videos and therefore, she should have been really comfortable talking about her experience of rape (RAPE!) at all times, to a potential audience of 7 billion people i.e. the fucking world. Because after all, it's LADY GAGA, INVINCIBLE 'FREE BITCH' & MULTI-MILLIONAIRE CHAMPION OF THE WEIRD. NOT LADY GAGA THE HUMAN BEING who can be JUST AS VULNERABLE to assaults as any of us plebs.
- A stripper, a prostitute or a porn star can't be raped because they flaunt or use their bodies in a sexual way anyway and they are absolutely the DEVIL'S HEATHENS - i.e. 100% SLUT SHAMING
After this initial onslaught of 'oh my god it's Madonna, she can't be raped', were at last, some comments from some sensible readers of the same site who have called out the slut-shamers:
So, wait. Some of the comments here don't sit well with me.
I could imagine someone as she, who had begun her career as someone wanting to champion women as powerful and so forth, not feeling so psyched about sharing this with anyone, let alone the world, let alone at that time, and let alone when it's a benchmark of women's victimization.
Most vindicating is this 1995 NME interview with Madonna:
Madonna grimaces and falls silent.
Would you rather stop talking about this?
“I don’t want to talk about it only in that…” she pauses, choosing her words carefully, “I don’t want to get into this Oprah Winfrey/Sinead O’Connor thing of, ‘Oh, everybody, all these horrible things have happened to me!’ I don’t want to make it an issue. I think that I’ve had what a lot of people would consider to be horrific experiences in my life. But I don’t want people to feel sorry for me because I don’t.
So there you go. Fucking hell.
I just can't believe that Jezebel - a site that's so infamous for its feminist readership, has come up with this shit storm of what is essentially victim-blaming; and for perpetuating this entrenched disadvantage/problem - that rape victims have to constantly deal with social judgments on their past sexual experiences, their past behaviour, their 'inclination' to get in bed with someone (things that have been banned from being taken into account in rape trials btw), and even be accused of making fake rape claims. UGH.
GET IT INTO YOUR BRAINS, slut-shaming is wrong because:
- a woman could be walking naked on the beach but that doesn't excuse a man from running over there and raping the heck out of her.
- I could be wearing a mini-skirt while taking pt but I'm not asking men to stick their hand up my skirt and feel me up.
- Even if a girl is at a club, in a barely-there dress, grinding up on you with flirty eyes on show, and a little bit tipsy, that's NEVER AN EXCUSE for you to assume, even if you guys have kissed, that she wants your penis inside her. Because rape is humiliating, violating, could impregnate the victim and is likely to stigmatise her forever depending on her values and cultural background. Not to mention that it could leave physical, and definitely mental scars. No woman asks for rape.
- Discussion about 'how a woman should dress' is a different fucking thing to 'how to prevent rape'. The former is about standards of propriety and freedom of choice and expression, while the latter is about stopping men from doing rape because it's goddamn fucking obvious that when a woman gets raped, it's the man who's in control. So stop the man, not the woman. ffs
But if I thought what people have said about Madonna was bad, holee furkin' crap... the Chris Brown article on Jezebel was 1000000000000000000000000000x worse.
Before I go on, I realise that a lot of people really hate CB as a person. He's bashed Rihanna and thrown chairs at people so he's not exactly a person that's easy to sympathise with.
But anyway, criticism where it is valid, and sympathy where it is necessary too. We can hold multiple opinions of Chris Brown at the same time, for he is probably as complex as the rest of us. - a Jezebel commenter
But people need to realise that this is a very different case. A male rape victim case. Meaning that if you take into account the overwhelming social expectations that are placed on male superstars (especially rappers and whatnot who explicitly channel masculinity into their art) as well as his childhood - watching his mother get beaten to a bloody pulp, having admitted that he once wanted to kill his stepfather - then it is really inappropriate for the writer to be glossing over his story (even if CB was uber cocky about it) with a nonchalant, yep haha CB trying to portray himeslf as 'some sort of mythical sex Jesus'... what a cunt.
The fact is that he lost his virginity when he was EIGHT to a 14/15 year old girl - WHAT????Can't Doug Barry (the writer of the Jezebel article) see that this is something extremely extremely ... disturbing and wrong???
I mean - that's statutory rape that he just accidentally admitted to. HE WAS EIGHT.
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| This is a kid who is eight. |
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| EIGHT. |
If a female actress/singer came out and said 'yeah haha I mean I was watching porn at a really young age, I lost my virginity when I was eight to a fifteen year old guy, so yeah I guess I was really mature ya know.'
THE WHOLE MEDIA WOULD BE ALL OVER THAT SHIT. LIKE 'OMG OMG YOU WERE EIGHT DID YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT YOU WERE DOING THEN?'
I feel like because CB is a guy, and because he's done some stupid shit in the past, and because he was vaunting about his first time like it was a huge achievement - that people just completely forget the fact that 1. that's statutory rape 2. there is a reason why he's kind of fucked up right now.
And of course, there is a good goddamn reason why laws are enacted to criminalise people who have sex with children below a certain age, or people who groom children for sex by supplying them with porn. Because they're CHILDREN. There is a huge power imbalance between them: being too young to understand what's happening, too weak to say no etc.
Comments from the original interview on The Guardian:
He lost his virginity when he was eight years old, to a local girl who was 14 or 15. Seriously? "Yeah, really. Uh-huh." He grins and chuckles. "It's different in the country."
Omfg, what did I just read???????? Bloody disturbing. I couldn't get passed that part. Eight year old with a 14/15 year old! WTF.
Excuse me?
He and his gang were addicted to porn. At eight. He was 'raring to go'.
You cannot apply only one analysis to every situation. This was not an innocent 8 year old who was seduced by his kindergarten teacher and went home crying to his mummy.
Try replacing what you wrote with 8 year old girl and think how disturbing what you wrote is
Can you hear yourself?
Sexual abuse is only sexual abuse if the victim is innocent? I'd consider it highly disturbing that 8 year old boys were accessing enough porn at that age to get addicted. That's just grooming by another name.
Blame Chris Brown for beating Rihanna and being so unrepentant about it. But it's beyond words to blame an 8 year old for their sexual abuse and perpetuate this hierarchy of victims where some are more deserving of sympathy than others.
On Jezebel:
Chris Brown has a singular talent for making it impossible to sympathize with him even if he’s recounting a vaguely traumatic incident from his childhood. You know, like that time he lost his virginity to teenage girl. When he was eight.
I need not say more.
Tuesday, 24 September 2013
Movie: Ace Attorney
Ace Attorney
Completely illogical. Hyper-unrealistic. Ridiculously bad acting. Horrific trials that have no juries, seemingly no rules and no judicial integrity.
Despite an apparently star-studded Japanese cast and great visuals, this is one of the worst movies I've ever seen.
I got sucked into watching this live action adaptation by a deluded friend who is a huge fan of the original detective-style Nintendo DS games. You play as the hawk-haired rookie lawyer, Phoenix Wright, who needs to find clues, gather evidence and then cross-examine witnesses with clinical precision - trials in their dystopic Japan are only allowed to run for a maximum of three days(!!!). What happens in the movie, however, is a major cluster-fuck of random revelations and new evidence popping up every three minutes DURING the trial - which basically fuels the entire direction of the movie. Moreover, there were countless of unbelievably stupid and illegitimate 'objections', lawyers not asking questions but making speculative statements during cross-examination, accused persons being found not guilty simply because it was proven someone else was at the scene at the same time, WTF supernatural spirits giving advice, anachronistic Minority Report-like technology being used in the courtroom, incessant Yu-Gi-Oh! style battle cries, summonsed witnesses just randomly walking in and out on a whim etc. etc. etc.
Maybe I'm just being a picky law student. Or maybe - this movie was totally fucked up and didn't make any sense whatsoever unless you actually played the game and understood that this was just one huge Mickey Mouse legal trial. It's not supposed to be taken seriously. That is made pretty clearly when they start using mentally ill amnesiacs and his parrot (it wasn't EVEN a parrot, but a cockatoo) as witnesses.
None of the characters were relatable because they were all weird and dumb and I have no idea how they passed law school. And of course, why do these Japanese people have white people names??? Why do some of them dress like normal people, some like Star Wars extras and others like Victorian era aristocrats??? WHAT???
Oh my god this movie. You should drink a shot every time there's a deus ex machina. It'll be more fun than watching the movie itself.
Completely illogical. Hyper-unrealistic. Ridiculously bad acting. Horrific trials that have no juries, seemingly no rules and no judicial integrity.
Despite an apparently star-studded Japanese cast and great visuals, this is one of the worst movies I've ever seen.
I got sucked into watching this live action adaptation by a deluded friend who is a huge fan of the original detective-style Nintendo DS games. You play as the hawk-haired rookie lawyer, Phoenix Wright, who needs to find clues, gather evidence and then cross-examine witnesses with clinical precision - trials in their dystopic Japan are only allowed to run for a maximum of three days(!!!). What happens in the movie, however, is a major cluster-fuck of random revelations and new evidence popping up every three minutes DURING the trial - which basically fuels the entire direction of the movie. Moreover, there were countless of unbelievably stupid and illegitimate 'objections', lawyers not asking questions but making speculative statements during cross-examination, accused persons being found not guilty simply because it was proven someone else was at the scene at the same time, WTF supernatural spirits giving advice, anachronistic Minority Report-like technology being used in the courtroom, incessant Yu-Gi-Oh! style battle cries, summonsed witnesses just randomly walking in and out on a whim etc. etc. etc.
Maybe I'm just being a picky law student. Or maybe - this movie was totally fucked up and didn't make any sense whatsoever unless you actually played the game and understood that this was just one huge Mickey Mouse legal trial. It's not supposed to be taken seriously. That is made pretty clearly when they start using mentally ill amnesiacs and his parrot (it wasn't EVEN a parrot, but a cockatoo) as witnesses.
None of the characters were relatable because they were all weird and dumb and I have no idea how they passed law school. And of course, why do these Japanese people have white people names??? Why do some of them dress like normal people, some like Star Wars extras and others like Victorian era aristocrats??? WHAT???
Oh my god this movie. You should drink a shot every time there's a deus ex machina. It'll be more fun than watching the movie itself.
Friday, 20 September 2013
Making porn stars wear condoms - well...duh?
Infected porn stars say the outbreak of HIV infections
shows the industry needs to get serious about condoms
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/hiv-positive-porn-stars-argue-condoms-article-1.1460438#ixzz2fR6HaOvT
Following the above controversy, a friend and I had a discussion about whether or not porn actors should be forced to wear condoms at work. My view was that this should definitely be an industry requirement (which common sense tells me it already is, just maybe not adhered to) - and perhaps even legislated at some level. Sure, the 'tactile pleasure', as he called it, wouldn't be as awesome, but it's better to sacrifice a bit of TP than to contract freaking HIV.
He went on about 'freedom of choice' and something about 'those who don't want to wear condoms are looked down upon by peers'....some weird shit like that... which is either:
1. something he just assumed cos lul iunno HE HAS A DICK THAT NEEDS TO BE LIBERATED FROM A HERMETIC RUBBER PRISON.
2. or something legit because he knows the porn industry like the back of his hand
Regardless, the peer pressure thing ultimately didn't make sense to me. Wouldn't producers want the actors and actresses to do it without a condom for better performances? If anything, I would have thought there would be more pressure on them to do it without protection. Feel free to rebut me on this... lel.
Anyway. The current outbreak clearly shows that despite certain health groups and organisations encouraging the use of condoms or setting a requirement for its use in pornography, and despite the growing awareness about the dangers of contracting HIV for the last decade, porn actors and actresses (well, they can request it) are not using condoms enough. Maybe they're in reckless denial about the risk they're taking. Maybe it's just pressure from producers or co-workers.
Whatever it is - the consequences are manifestly clear.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/hiv-positive-porn-stars-argue-condoms-article-1.1460438#ixzz2fR6HaOvT
Following the above controversy, a friend and I had a discussion about whether or not porn actors should be forced to wear condoms at work. My view was that this should definitely be an industry requirement (which common sense tells me it already is, just maybe not adhered to) - and perhaps even legislated at some level. Sure, the 'tactile pleasure', as he called it, wouldn't be as awesome, but it's better to sacrifice a bit of TP than to contract freaking HIV.
He went on about 'freedom of choice' and something about 'those who don't want to wear condoms are looked down upon by peers'....some weird shit like that... which is either:
1. something he just assumed cos lul iunno HE HAS A DICK THAT NEEDS TO BE LIBERATED FROM A HERMETIC RUBBER PRISON.
2. or something legit because he knows the porn industry like the back of his hand
Regardless, the peer pressure thing ultimately didn't make sense to me. Wouldn't producers want the actors and actresses to do it without a condom for better performances? If anything, I would have thought there would be more pressure on them to do it without protection. Feel free to rebut me on this... lel.
Anyway. The current outbreak clearly shows that despite certain health groups and organisations encouraging the use of condoms or setting a requirement for its use in pornography, and despite the growing awareness about the dangers of contracting HIV for the last decade, porn actors and actresses (well, they can request it) are not using condoms enough. Maybe they're in reckless denial about the risk they're taking. Maybe it's just pressure from producers or co-workers.
Whatever it is - the consequences are manifestly clear.
Thursday, 19 September 2013
My top 5 most shocking photographs that changed the course of history
WARNING: Graphic content below.
In 1911, an American journalist named Arthur Brisbane said: "Use a picture. It's worth a thousand words."
Although many previous and subsequent writers have undoubtedly written variations of that expression, it was not until the 30s when photojournalism, along with the film industry and an increasing desire for more effective wartime propaganda, flourished and people began to recognise the inherent power of a still visual. After The Great War, photojournalism began to develop into what I and many believe was the most important medium of the next few decades.
Between the 30s and the 70s, often regarded as the golden age of photojournalism, an incessant string of wars provided more than ample opportunity for photographers to capture the worst of humanity. The blood, the guts, the smiling faces of future war criminals, the agonising tears of dying civilians. For the first time, people sitting in their living rooms, sipping tea and reading the newspaper, could see what was happening miles away on a battlefield. They didn't just read words about this and that event - they could see the human faces behind it, and that made the brutality of what was happening around them extremely hard to ignore.
Ultimately, there were photos which left such shocking after-tastes in people's mouths that it eventually changed the course of history - rousing members of the public into protest, forcing governments to intervene in foreign wars and even playing a large part in ending the war itself.
Below, I have compiled a list of 10 photos that I believe did just that - photos so horrific and cut so deeply into people's memories that they became rallying points for change and reform, or at least - indelible icons of human cruelty and suffering.
1. Vietnamese Girl Running From Napalm Attack, 1972
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| Taken by Huyn Cong (Nick) Ut in 1972 near the South Vietnamese village of Ayod |
Many people say photojournalism reached its apogee in the 60s and 70s when the Vietnam War became the first war to 'play out in people's living rooms'. Televisions had just become popular and the US government, partly wanting to rouse public support for their own soldiers fighting in Vietnam, and partly due to inexperience with such new mediums, had pretty much allowed full and unfettered access for journalists to cover whatever they wanted on the ground.
But as the war raged on, this decision backfired enormously. More and more photos popped up in the media depicting the squalid deaths of Vietnamese civilians - collateral damage in a war that was not only going no where, but getting worse.
Most shockingly, rumours about US soldiers committing atrocities against innocent men, women and children were verified when photos surfaced of the notorious 1968 My Lai Massacre (if there's anything I remembered studying about the Vietnam War in high school, it was that); My Lai - a village that was only inhabited by the elderly, women and children, was nevertheless burnt to the ground by a company of US soldiers. Women were raped. Children were slaughtered. Bear in mind - we are talking about atrocities carried out by Americans.
| The My Lai Massacre 1968 |
Soon, pictures like the above made front page news in America. But in 1972, Kevin Ut's 'unbelievable' photo of a nine year old Vietnamese girl named Kim Phuc, screaming in agony (saying "It's too hot! Give me water!") and running away from Napalm bombs - her clothes having eviscerated upon contact by the US developed chemical weapon - the American public had had enough. While anti-War sentiment had been building up, it now reached a climax. President Nixon, who initially believed the photo was phony, had to answer the furious calls from hundreds of thousands of protesters around the country who were calling their own soldiers 'rapists' and 'baby-killers'. Some soldiers who came back were apparently spat upon and some had to sneak into the country at night.
Eventually, Nixon had no choice but to begin pulling out large numbers of troops. After two decades, the war finally came to an end, albeit ignominiously, in 1975.
2. The Brutality of European Colonialism in Congo, 1904
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| Taken by Alice Harris in May 1904 in Congo |
This photo was taken in 1904 by Alice Harris, a missionary who was working in Belgian Congo. At first, it may be hard to make out what exactly is being depicted in the photo, as it was for me, but next to Nsala Wala is his daughter's hand and foot, received in a mailed package from Belgian authorities.
Both his wife and daughter had been killed and mutilated by Belgian police in what was an accepted practice to deter theft. Alice and her husband were so appalled, they sent the photo back to Britain with the caption: “The photograph is most telling, and as a slide will rouse any audience to an outburst of rage.”
They later went on tours in other countries, giving lectures about atrocities in Congo and denouncing Belgian treatment of the Congolese. Remember this picture and remember its significance - it launched the first successful human rights campaign in history. It appeared widely in books and papers and eventually pressured King Leopold of Belgium to relinquish the colony in 1908.
3. The Famine in Sudan: Vulture Stalking a Child, 1993
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| Kevin Carter's 1993 photograph of an emaciated Sudanese toddler being stalked by a vulture |
Personally, this was THE photo. I'm not kidding when I say it, well, changed my life.
It was the start of year 11 when I came across this photo. Since year 7, after overcoming a very dark period, I had decided that I was going to dedicate my life to something that would make a difference.
But when I saw this picture, I had never felt so strong about my convictions. I was also shocked at myself. I was sitting in front of my laptop, having just read an extremely horrifying story about rape in Congo, and then was led to another link about Kevin Carter's 1993 Pulitzer prize winning photograph. It was of a Sudanese toddler so emaciated and on the brink of death, that it had been abandoned in an open field, vulnerable to....A VULTURE?!?!
After being published by The New York Times and many other agencies, an unprecedented number of people rung them up to ask about the fate of the child, some also condemning Carter for not rescuing her. But in all, the photo did what it was meant to do - cause a reaction.
In the same year, Carter won a Pulitzer for the photograph. The following year, he committed suicide.
It was just so fucking perverse. I had just been bombarded with 1. a really shocking story about women getting raped so seriously they had developed fistulas and 2. a really shocking picture of a vulture waiting for a little kid to die and then eat. And the photographer so affected by it and the reactions of the public that he killed himself.
God. My mind was reeling with thoughts like: I've been alive on this earth for 15 years, how could I not even have heard of Kevin Carter, the Sudanese famine or the brutal rapes of Congolese women?
It didn't matter that I was freaking thousands of miles away. The fact that I was living on the same planet as these people and didn't know a freaking shit about what they were going through really boggled my mind.
And then of course, the next day, I had to go and inform everyone in my high school politics class like an obnoxious activist. 'Guys, guys! Did you know that....'
And I will NEVER EVER forget this, but a girl in my class told me to not talk about it anymore because it was... 'gross'. And she didn't want to hear about 'gross' things.
I was like.
Holee. Shit.
I was so pissed off.
4. Genocide: The Killing of Bosnian Muslims, 1995
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| Taken by Darko Badic during the massacre of Bosnian Muslims 1995 (1995, that was after I was born, just thinking about that makes me feel....bleh) |
In a few days in July 1995, Bosnian Serb
forces massacred around 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in the town of
Srebrenica, which was supposedly under the UN aegis. We stood idly outside, our
rhetoric changed from ‘Never again’ to ‘Once More’.
Darko Bandic, a freelance Croat photographer working for AP,
recalled the above photograph he took near the annihilated town:
I had arrived at this massive makeshift refugee camp in Tuzla early in the morning, around 5.30am. Tens of thousands of distraught women and children had poured into the camp the previous day.Just as I was about to enter the camp, two or three young girls told me they had spotted a woman hanging from a tree in the woods. They took me to her. I was actually a bit confused. I didn’t know exactly what to do. From the direction I was walking I could see her face, but obviously I didn’t want to shoot that. I shot just a couple of frames, then went back to the UN guard. I remember he was a Swedish soldier and I told him what I had seen. He said: ‘For now, let’s take care of the ones who are alive.’
I saw so many really awful things in Bosnia’s war, that was just yet another of them. I did wonder what horrific things must have happened to her to drive herself to take her own life. But I never found out. I never even knew her name until a year later.”
Her name was Ferida Osmanovic and her photo soon appeared on
front pages all over the world. It was a metaphor for the Unknown Victim of the
Balkan wars: faceless, defenseless, humiliated.
At their Oval Office meeting,
Vice President Al Gore told President Clinton, “My 21-year-old daughter asked
about this picture. What am I supposed to tell her? Why is this happening and
we’re not doing anything? My daughter is surprised the world is allowing this
to happen. I am too.” His outrage was shared by many UN officials, NATO and US
Army’s top brass.
President Clinton, whose initial comments on Srebrenica were
lawyerly (‘the fall of Srebrenica undermined the UN’s peacekeeping mission’),
was pushed towards an intervention by Gore. On the Capitol Hill, Senator Diane
Feinstein was equally vehement; in a memorable speech, she used the photo to
underline the plight of raped and murdered civilians in the war zone.
By July, the UN had given its military forces the authority to
request airstrikes without consulting civilian UN officials. A comprehensive
air support for other safe zones and retaliatory air strikes by NATO were
launched against the Serbs. The bombing campaign finally brought the Serbs to
the negotiating table in November 1995, when the Dayton Accords put an end to
three and a half-year long Bosnian War.
[For details of Ferdia's surviving children, the Guardian
story here.]*
The most striking thing about the photo — and Srebrenica
massacre — was that it happened in 1995, exactly a year after the Rwandan
genocide. My memory of both events is vague, but I saw them on CNN daily
growing up. In fact, they were amongst my first memories of the world outside
my family. They have shaped who I am today. No one — but especially no children
— should see similar horrors unfolding, firsthand or otherwise.
Auschwitz. Srebrenica. Rwanda. Congo. Syria.
The list goes on.
 |
 |
| His mother specifically requested an open casket funeral so the world would be able to see the truth |
Again, this is a case I learnt in high school. I don't remember the teacher ever showing us the latter photograph, but we definitely came across it during online research.
Emmett Till was 14 years old when he apparently whistled at a white woman as he walked out of a small grocery shop with some candy he had bought with his friends. Nobody knows what that whistle really meant. A greeting? A goodbye? A leery wolf whistle? Whatever it was, Carolyn Bryant had told her husband about the 'incident', and he found it deeply offensive.
Since I can't be stuffed typing, the facts of the case, as outlined on Wiki:
Several nights later, Bryant's husband Roy and his half-brother J. W. Milam arrived at Till's great-uncle's house where they took Till, transported him to a barn, beat him and gouged out one of his eyes, before shooting him through the head and disposing of his body in the Tallahatchie River, weighting it with a 70-pound (32 kg) cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire. His body was discovered and retrieved from the river three days later.
The trial of Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam garnered huge attention from the press and you won't want to believe it - but there were newspapers (and almost all Mississippians) that defended them by exaggerating Carolyn's beauty and outright claiming that the whistle was indeed a wolf whistle (sexual connotations and all). But most egregious of all, an all white, all male jury acquitted the both of them:
Bryant and Milam were acquitted of Till's kidnapping and murder, but only months later, in a magazine interview, protected against double jeopardy, they admitted to killing him.
The case gave the Civil Rights Movement a huge push in momentum - so much coverage was given to Emmett Till's case that Mississippi became defined by his death. All around the nation, civic action groups were being formed to raise awareness of African American civil rights.
Three months later on December 1, a woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat for a white man. And the rest is history...
Controversy:
Little Wayne, an African-American rapper who doesn't know anything about US history, makes a dick move and references Emmett Till in a song, July 2013, forced to apologise by Emmett Till's family
WORTHY MENTION:
It was a media war that the United States lost in Somalia, ironic since its involvement was forced by the pictures of famine-stricken people there. In one of the clearest and earliest examples of the CNN effect, the war was repeatedly dogged by the dozens of press photographers. It is an anticipating media, not snipers or enemy combatants, that greeted the U.S landing forces in Mogadishu in December 9th 1992.
For a war that began with memorable images, it is both fitting and ironic that it ended because of another set of dramatic images. The photos taken by Canadian photographer Paul Watson, of a dead American soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu spelled the beginning of the end for U.S.-U.N. peacekeeping force. Domestic opinion turned hostile as horrified TV viewers watched images of the bloodshed—-including this Pulitzer-prize winning footage of Somali warlord Mohammed Aideed’s supporters dragging the body of U.S. Staff Sgt. William David Cleveland through the streets of Mogadishu, cheering. President Clinton immediately abandoned the pursuit of Aideed, the mission that cost Cleveland his life and gave the order for all American soldiers to withdraw from Somalia by March 31, 1994. Other Western nations followed suit.
When the last U.N. peacekeepers left in 1995, ending a mission that had cost more than $2 billion, Mogadishu still lacked a functioning government. The battle deaths, and the harrowing images prompted lingering U.S. reluctance to get involved in Africa’s crises, including the following year’s genocide in Rwanda. In 1996, Osama bin Laden cited the incident as proof that the U.S. was unable to stomach casualties: when “one American was dragged in the streets of Mogadishu you left; the extent of your impotence and weaknesses became very clear.” Never before or since had a photo altered a nation’s political destinies so much so.
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