Madeline / Erik - further quotes from John Reid, from the link posted by Steven Brust: http://wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/lond-a11.shtml
In the face of what he called “probably the most sustained period of severe threat since the end of the second world war,” Reid decried those who “don’t get it,” blaming them for the fact that “we remain unable to adapt our institutions and legal orthodoxy as fast as we need to.”
Making it clear that the required “adaptation” meant the gutting of traditional democratic rights, he added: “Sometimes we may have to modify some of our own freedoms in the short term in order to prevent their misuse and abuse by those who oppose our fundamental values and would destroy all of our freedoms in the modern world.”
So, we'll kill freedom to save freedom - ah, that classic cognitive dissonance.
A 2008 target for the introduction of ID cards is being dropped because the Home Office hasn't a clue how to make it all work properly
See:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/04/sci-tech_id_committee/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/09/st_id_cards_doomed_emails/
But the government still seem intent on going ahead with it in the long run. For example:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/07/brown_id_expansion/
Actually, I was thinking that the timing of the airline plot arrests is also convenient for the ID scheme. When pressed, ministers have to concede that ID cards aren't much use against terrorism, but a fearful public can make the connection all by themselves: we are told the threat level is 'critical' and we are shown that the terrorists are on our doorsteps, and a lot of people will leap to the conclusion that an ID register keeping track of everyone is a Good Idea. Not to mention detention without trial and all sorts of other measures.
Keir: "Blair is too canny an operator to risk it all for so little."
I think Blair cares more about his standing with the Bush administration than about his standing with the British people. He went to war for Bush in the face of huge public opposition. His lies and deceptions over Iraq have been uncovered, he's still there.
The more I see Teflon Tony ride all these scandals out, the more I can't help believing that he'll stay in power as long as it suits whoever or whatever is backing him. Though when Gordon Brown takes over we'll all think that a real change has happened, simply because Brown has kept his head down & nose clean.
Whenever Blair leaves office, he'll get a lucrative career in some Bechtel-like monster corporation and rake it in as an after-dinner speaker at elite functions over in the USA. He knows he's all set whatever happens. That's my gut feeling.
Plus, the backdrop of a foiled terrorist plot would make any leader look good. We caught the terrorists, yay! Look the terrorists are real, be afraid. He's good at looking all stern and serious.
He wouldn't be risking much. The reports about these arrests sound more substantial than alerts that have melted quietly away in the past (deploying tanks at Heathow in 2003, and more recently the ricin plot that never was), but it's still interesting to speculate about the timing of the arrests and publicity.
Ok, nipples are verboten in default user pics
That should of course read female nipples.
idontlikepeas said (a long while back now):
Just a small wording note - I'm not one of the people involved in setting policy for the site (except in the technical support area, and even then only in an advisory capacity). LJ isn't a you, it's a they.
Sorry, imprecise writing. Consider most of those “you”s addressed to LJ at large. I am aware that you are not officially speaking for LJ, and that you are speaking in a personal capacity informed by experience as an LJ volunteer.
But there's got to be a line somewhere, and a decision was made that people over 13 probably know swear words already (but may not have been exposed to naked breasts).
Aargh, those dangerous radioactive naked breasts! ;) Sorry, that was just the mental picture conjured up there.
I'm the eldest of my parents' four children. We were all breastfed. I saw my mother breastfeeding my other siblings when I was 3, when I was 5, and when I was 9. She didn't go around baring her breasts for the sake of it, the breasts came out as and when necessary for feeding the baby – it was no big deal.
It's an odd assumption to make, that a young person assumed to be unfazed by swear words that nearly all have sexual connotations, (and that are often used as harsh putdowns, insults and expressions of aggression), would be expected to find the image of a partly exposed breast in the non-sexual context of breastfeeding potentially offensive or upsetting (or perhaps corrupting – am trying to imagine the various ways in which someone might be thought to need protection from something).
Let's say my default icon is a picture of a naked woman. The Abuse Team contacts me and says "Sorry, got to drop it." So I photoshop in a baby with its mouth near the picture's right nipple. Is it now OK? How close does that mouth have to be? Ten pixels? Five?
No one is arguing that the mere presence of a baby, whether real or photoshopped, near to an exposed nipple (not feeding from or otherwise not obscuring nipple) in an otherwise nude icon should make that icon allowable as a default pic. Breastfeeding women don't need to flash the unused breast, the protestors are not arguing that they should be able to do that in their icons. If the breast without the baby is covered or not depicted, and the visible breast has a baby or other object - hand, twirling pasties, whatever - obscuring the nipple, the image is compliant .
Ok, nipples are verboten in default user pics, that seems a straightforward reasonable line to take. However LJ Abuse's working definition of 'nipple' seems to include areolae. An otherwise identical depiction of breastfeeding would see one default icon allowed and one banned because the latter nursing mother has a larger or darker areola that is more visible in the icon. A few pixels worth of pigmented skin is getting users suspended. I've read a lot of posts and comments among affected users making this point.
The bottom line of my polite protest letter to LJ/SixApart will be: police the nipples if you really must, lighten up about the areolae in breastfeeding pics.
For general edification (purely because I have just looked up & established the difference for myself):
areola - a small circular area, in particular the pigmented skin surrounding a nipple.
http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/areola?view=uk
aureola - 1 (in paintings) a radiant circle surrounding a person to represent holiness. 2 a circle of light around the sun or moon.
http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/aureole?view=uk
That's because they have a clear, firm line for that stuff; because it's all in individuals communities or journals, where content is less restricted than it is in the public spaces of LJ.
My point regarding LJ refusing to be thought police was not to do with comparing allowable types of content in public versus private LJ space. My point was that in the quoted example (sorry no idea why link didn't work) LJ firmly invokes both the ideal of free speech and the laws that protect it, and personally I would love to see LJ positively seize upon the existence of laws in the US and elsewhere regarding the normalcy of public breastfeeding to make equally confident affirmations about breasts visible in the context of breastfeeding not being inappropriate in default icons.
This thread just keeps going faster than I can keep up! So these are responses to posts way upthread.
idontlikepeas
I needed a break from telling people that, yes, it's just the default icon and, no, breastfeeding pictures are not banned. It's amazing how fuzzy the proponents of the inconsistent child-excepted nudity policy have made those particular things
No they haven't. I've been reading this discussion and discussion threads in LJ (in boob_nazis, in news, and on numerous personal journals) and elsewhere extensively and people understand fine that it's only the default icon that is subject to this policy enforcement, and explain the issue very clearly.
The people in question were warned that the icon was considered inappropriate and given plenty of time to change it. They elected not to do so as a means of protest, but the fact that someone is protesting cannot mean that they are made exempt from policy, if that policy is to have any effect. And the people involved can get their accounts back at any time by agreeing to change the default icon. So if it's purely a question of people not understanding the policy, I think that's been resolved at this point
The users are disputing LJ Abuse's judgements that their default icons depicting breastfeeding and which partly show areola or nipple are inappropriate for public view. They are pointing out that breastfeeding in public is normal, and that laws have been enacted in the USA and in many other countries in support of this protecting the rights of nursing mothers.
They would like LJ's policy on default icons to take account of this.
Now, I'm guessing that the people who were first threatened with suspension explained all this to LJ Abuse and optimistically hoped that the Abuse staff would maybe go away and check this out and think “hmm, I never realised that was the law and I never realised how much aggro & hassle breastfeeding mothers can sometimes face. Maybe we should consider if/how our policy might take account of this.”
They elected not to change their default icons because they did not consider them to be inappropriate as default icons and are trying to get LJ/Six Apart to understand this.
As I said before, the writers of the ToS relied on a shared understanding of what an inappropriate image was. That served them well for at least four years. Now that it's obvious that there isn't that shared understanding, at least in certain quarters, maybe they'll change the wording so it is more obvious what they were trying to say, but lack of vision is not immorality.
Or maybe the shared understanding among many users (not just the ones affected and others who are supporting them) is that breastfeeding in public is normal and unremarkable, breasts are inevitably partly visible in the process, and the LJ policy-makers may wish to incorporate that into their shared understanding.
We don't want you to clarify the wording, we want you to revisit the policy.
They clearly believed that the standard that bare breasts aren't all-age-appropriate was held commonly. I'm entirely willing to admit that was a mistake on their part, and that they should correct it (already have, in fact, by making that interpretation explicit in the FAQ, so I guess I don't need to admit that). But to claim that this represents a change of policy is another matter entirely. That claim means that LJ altered the way it does things specifically to attack breastfeeding mothers, and that's just plain not what happened.
The whole wilfully obtuse “The FAQ is not the TOS, the TOS is not the FAQ, the TOS is not the policy, the FAQ is not the policy” run-around has been more than adequately addressed by others. The FAQ guidelines changed from restricting “sexually graphic” default icons, which did could not realistically be interpreted to include breasts in the context of breastfeeding, to the much broader “nudity” which could. Why is so difficult to concede that users have a valid point in being pissed off about the goalposts being shifted like this?
Please stop misrepresenting them as “the pro-naked breast coalition”. They are not asking to be able show bare breasts full-stop in default icons and you know that. There is a baby latched onto and therefore concealing most of the nipple in these pictures. They are taking issue with the nitpicking interpretation of “no nudity” that sees some of them being suspended simply because the pics show a bit of areola.
Their point is that they consider that breasts depicted in the context of breastfeeding to be all-age-appropriate, and that in a picture of a child nursing at the breast the visibility of the areola, or, heaven forbid, part of the nipple itself does not make a fundamental difference to its appropriateness.
Restricting the default userpic and not the others is the way that LJ preserves free expression without making their entire service not kid-safe. Regardless of whether you believe they've drawn the nipple/no-nipple line in the right place (and I see can arguing that point), this is absolutely the right place to draw the line for restricting userpics.
Strong language is allowed in default icons. What's that all about? Won't many parents take issue with that?
This argument that default icons are the first line of protection for casual visitors and young or easily offended users is pretty silly. Before ever joining LJ, I've followed links from elsewhere that led straight into LJ journals or communities and their comment threads, where there must have been non-default icons aplenty. I can't remember seeing any offensive icons, but potentially there could have been some.
Anyhow, I understand and accept the stated reasons for restrictions on default icons. But I do not consider the breastfeeding icons that have got users suspended to be inappropriate for children or anyone else to view.
That's not "addressing the issue". That's "giving up and changing the policy". If you want LJ to give up and change the policy, that's something else and should not be referred to as "addressing the issue".
'Giving up'? That speaks volumes about your attitude to the users directly involved any and all of us who want to support them – you just want us to be quiet and not bother you any more.
Addressing the issue would be to acknowledge that the users concerned have a point: that breastfeeding in public is normal and that governments have laws and policies actively designed to encourage the acceptance of mothers breastfeeding in public.
Nowhere yet have I seen anyone who speaks for LJ in an official capacity acknowledge the shaming, ignorance and harassment that breastfeeding mothers can be confronted with simply for wanting to feed their babies. Or the fact that such negative attitudes have a real effect in discouraging women from starting or continuing with breastfeeding.
The other glaring omission is the failure to acknowledge the gender discrimination in the “no nudity” condition – is LJ going to suspend users whose default icons feature bare male chests? Unlikely. Ok, cultural standards dictate that – but at least have the backbone to acknowledge that the rule disproportionately restricts pictures of women.
I'm not even wholly against the idea of putting a special exception in for breastfeeding pictures, although I've set to see a version of it that wouldn't be abused six ways from Sunday by the trolls (my main reason for currently advocating against it, not that I actually have any influence on LJ policy at all).
Please explain, how could the trolls push the boundaries? If the “no areola or nipple” rule is excepted for pictures of breastfeeding, how would people be able to abuse that rule? If a photo features a baby nursing on a breast, then the picture genuinely depicts breastfeeding. Clear enough. If someone or something other than a baby is on the breast and not fully concealing it, then it's not an instance of breastfeeding.
If you run to LJ Abuse and say look, look, there's some people being racist, or, there are some people describing having sexual thoughts about children, then they'll politely and firmly say something like “As long as the content posted does not solicit illegal activity, it is considered allowable under both the Terms of Service and the ideal of free speech. LiveJournal is committed to preserving as much free speech as possible for its users, as long as that speech does not cross the line into invading other users’ privacy.”
So, if someone were to open a complaint about seeing a default user icon of a nursing child where the mother's breast including part of the areola is visible, there is no reason why LJ Abuse shouldn't politely but firmly state that their policy allows for such pictures, referencing those laws in the USA and elsewhere that specify that breastfeeding in public is not indecent, and affirming that LJ is fully supportive of efforts to promote and educate about breastfeeding.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2006 | 5 |
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