At Not Just The News, the privacy of our visitors is of extreme importance to us (See this article to learn more about Privacy Policies.). This privacy policy document outlines the types of personal information is received and collected by Not Just The News and how it is used.
Log Files
Like many other Web sites, Not Just The News makes use of log files. The information inside the log files includes internet protocol (IP) addresses, type of browser, Internet Service Provider (ISP), date/time stamp, referring/exit pages, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user"s movement around the site, and gather demographic information. IP addresses, and other such information are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable.
Cookies and Web Beacons
Not Just The News does use cookies to store information about visitors preferences, record user-specific information on which pages the user access or visit, customize Web page content based on visitors browser type or other information that the visitor sends via their browser.
DoubleClick DART Cookie
Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on Not Just The News.
Google"s use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to users based on their visit to Not Just The News and other sites on the Internet.
Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy at the following URL - http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html.
These third-party ad servers or ad networks use technology to the advertisements and links that appear on Not Just The News send directly to your browsers. They automatically receive your IP address when this occurs. Other technologies ( such as cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons ) may also be used by the third-party ad networks to measure the effectiveness of their advertisements and / or to personalize the advertising content that you see.
Not Just The News has no access to or control over these cookies that are used by third-party advertisers.
You should consult the respective privacy policies of these third-party ad servers for more detailed information on their practices as well as for instructions about how to opt-out of certain practices. Not Just The News"s privacy policy does not apply to, and we cannot control the activities of, such other advertisers or web sites.
If you wish to disable cookies, you may do so through your individual browser options. More detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers can be found at the browser"s respective websites.
Three “Johnnie Reb” prisoners, captured at Gettysburg (Library of Congress)
Graphic imagery has been an indelible feature of armed conflict from the days of Civil War daguerreotypes, when Matthew Brady and other early photographers captured the horrors of the battlefield. With each succeeding war, as cameras became more advanced, the role of photography has evolved to convey the realities of combat and the agonies inflicted, primarily on the soldiers in the field. There is a tragic artistry to the unforgettable pictures of the dead and wounded in twentieth-century wars.
Some photographs are heroic. Joe Rosenthal’s iconic snapshot of Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima in February 1945 is enshrined in national memory as a prelude to victory. Vietnam was called “The Television War” because it was the first conflict featured on news broadcasts, usually within a day or two of the events.
Joe Rosenthal’s photograph of soldiers at Iwo Jima (AP)
The imagery of today’s wars has moved beyond the relative formality of television coverage, then at its peak, to the output of digital cameras and mobile devices. They are visceral because they are so raw. Anyone with a smartphone and a YouTube account can post unfiltered videos from virtually any setting for audiences of incalculable size the world over.
As a result, our view of the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria is profoundly different. Civil unrest around the world – Egypt, Turkey, even Iran – is instantly available and shapes the perception of these events. Victimized civilians – who in the past were less visible in wars that had fixed front lines with armies engaged in classic settings – are now a dominant presence. It is the scenes of ordinary women and children, as well as fighters on both sides, in the worst of circumstances that symbolize so much of what we now perceive of chaotic war zones. There is undeniable power in this unending flow of visual brutality.
A still from the videos, distributed by the Senate Intelligence Committee, documenting the Syrian chemical weapons attacks
After the chemical weapons attacks of August 21, the Senate Intelligence Committee posted thirteen videos selected by the Open Source Center, a compilation of material provided by the intelligence community from YouTube content, posted by Syrian opposition groups with a warning: “These videos contain disturbing images of dead bodies including children. Viewer discretion is advised.”
Another excruciating example from the Syrian civil war was a front-page photo in the The New York Times, on September 5. It was a still from a video (which turned out to be more than a year old) provided “by a former rebel” showing seven terrified Syrian soldiers, their faces pressed to the dirt in the moments before they were executed.
Matthew Brady’s war photography equipment (Library of Congress)
The notion that social media has become a principal means of transmitting such ghastly portraits is a measure of how war photography has changed. There is far more to be seen than was possible before, and much of it comes from the prevalence of digital instruments in the hands of amateurs. Limits on images of dead American soldiers are still imposed by editors at traditional media outlets like the Times, “because it never wants to make public the news of a death that the family may not yet know about,” according to Joseph Kahn, the paper’s foreign editor. But such restraint is the exception when vast amounts of digital photography (and video) are intended to be directly accessible across multiple platforms.
There are, of course, still great professional photographers active in the mayhem of pervasive strife whose daring willingness to close in on the action of street fighting and unspeakable civilian suffering comes at great personal risk of injury, death, or capture. In this year’s Pulitzer Prizes, five photographers from the Associated Press won the breaking news award for their coverage of Syria. As reported in The National newspaper in the United Arab Emirates, AP’s director of photography, Santiago Lyon, said that members of the team — Rodrigo Abd, Manu Brabo, Narciso Contreras, Khalil Hamra, and Muhammed Muheisen — are “some of the bravest and most talented photographers in the world.” The AP’s pride in the work of its photographers now — and in the past — is well justified.
A six-pounder gun in Washington, D.C., photographed by Matthew Brady (Library of Congress)
And, in recognition of what was a long and losing conflict, notable among other reasons because there was no censorship of the press, the AP has gathered 300 photographs from its extraordinary collection in a book called Vietnam: The Real War (to be released by Abrams on October 1). An exhibition at the Steven Kasher galley will coincide with the book’s publication. An astute introduction by Pete Hamill, who reported from Vietnam in 1965, sets up the work of 50 photojournalists, including three who were Pulitzer Prize winners: Malcolm W. Browne, a brilliant reporter captured the self-immolation of a Buddhist monk in June of 1963, a protest that revealed the mounting level of internal unrest in the country; Eddie Adams’ shot of the chief of South Vietnam’s national police firing into the head of a suspected Viet Cong official on the street during the Tet offensive of 1968 showed unforgettable savagery; Nick Ut’s 1972 photo of a naked nine-year-old girl running down a road covered in napalm burns conveyed a depth of searing pain and added to the shame so many Americans felt about the war.
A lengthy appraisal of the book by Ralph Blumenthal, who covered Vietnam and Cambodia for The New York Times from 1969 to 1971, offered this tribute to the AP:
No single source did more to document the bitter and costly struggle against North Vietnamese Communist regular and Vietcong insurgents and to turn the home front against the war, than the AP.
From 1950 to 1975, this nonprofit news cooperative, founded during the Mexican war in 1846, fielded Saigon’s largest, most battle-hardened cadre of war correspondents and photographers, including several women. Four died.
Vietnam: The Real War is a masterful representation of the impact of photography and, decades after the end of the war, what was once news is now an invaluable historical record. The reporting of wars and the photography that accompanies the words are one of journalism’s most important roles and that is as true in this Internet era of instant and unedited imagery as it was when the coverage was carefully drawn and vetted by experienced editors and bureau chiefs.
(Image: Doctor waits via Shutterstock)This summer’s heated battles over the implementation of “Obamacare” are a microcosm of a much larger and longstanding ideological clash over the role of the government in society.
The hard-right is taking a scorched-earth approach, obstructing the law’s implementation by any means necessary and spinning the hiccups and glitches that are inevitable with any complex new system as an unmitigated disaster.
It’s a perfect example of a structural advantage enjoyed by politicians who rail against “big government”: they claim that government is, by definition, hopelessly inept and can’t do anything to improve people’s lives, and when they get into power they have the opportunity to obstruct, cause havoc and ultimately prove the claim.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration, officials in around half of the states and a network of the program’s supporters are desperate to get the new health insurance scheme up and running. It’s shaping up as a particularly ugly fight in an era that’s come to be defined by “crisis governance.”
What does no-hold-barred warfare against a law that’s been settled for three years look like? Some tea party activists are urging Republican lawmakers to shut down the government — or even default on the debt Congress itself ran up — in a quixotic effort to “defund” Obamacare. In refusing to expand Medicaid, legislators in 21 states, most of them “red,” are not only denying their poorest citizens coverage, but also turning away billions of dollars from the federal government. Some members of Congress are refusing to help their own constituents navigate the new exchanges to get the benefits available to them. According to the Washington Post, some state legislators are getting quite creative, “refusing to enforce consumer protections, for example, and restricting federally funded workers hired to help people enroll in coverage.” In Missouri, “officials have been barred from doing anything to help put the law into place.”
And Republicans are refusing to support any efforts to smooth out the law’s rough edges. Even a minor tweak that would fix a glitch in the law that will prevent many church employees from receiving tax credits to help buy coverage — and which may ultimately kill some churches’ insurance plans — is a non-starter. Jim Sargent, the health plan director for the Unitarian Universalist Association, told Religion News Service: “Republicans are trying to undermine it. While that’s going on, there isn’t much you can do to fix the bill.”
The latest strategy to undermine the law’s success is especially pernicious — a major campaign to persuade young people without insurance to pay a penalty, skip the cheap plans they could purchase in heavily subsidized Obamacare exchanges (a young, low-income worker in California will actually be able to get very basic coverage for nothing, according to Sarah Kliff at the Washington Post) and face the risk of a debilitating injury or illness on their own.
The idea is that if young, healthy people can be convinced to stay away from the exchanges, premiums will skyrocket for everyone else and the whole scheme will come crashing to the ground.
Freedomworks is urging people to burn fake “Obamacare draft cards” and post videos of the stunt to YouTube. Dean Clancy, vice president of the group, told the Washington Post, “We’re trying to make it socially acceptable to skip the exchange.” Twila Brase, a conservative health care activist with a group called the Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom, launched a campaign called “refuse to enroll” which likens participating in the exchanges to receiving welfare. The right-wing National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) released a report highlighting how much cash young people might save by paying the penalty instead of buying insurance (and predicting that they’ll stay away in droves).
Conservative columnist Ramesh Ponnuru argues that it’s no big deal to go without coverage. Those who are mangled in an accident or come down with some awful ailment “will be able to buy insurance once they’re sick at the same rate they could have gotten it for when they were well,” he writes. “That’s the part of the Obamacare law that its defenders are usually most keen to emphasize.”
That’s a common but inaccurate belief about the law’s requirement that insurers cover pre-existing conditions: you can just wait until you need insurance to purchase it. FreedomWorks said as much to an inquiring reporter from Bloomberg News. But the reality is that, after this year, you’ll only be able to enroll in the exchanges for a brief period in October and December. There are a few exceptions, like if you lose a job in the middle of the year, but as Adrianna McIntyre remarked, “I accidentally burned my Obamacare card” isn’t one of them.
David Hogberg, author of the NCPPR study says that’s not a problem. “A young person who gets a serious illness in June only has to wait until October to sign up for insurance and then wait until January 1 of the next year to receive coverage,” he writes. But you can’t exactly let a cancer metastasize for a few months or leave a bad injury untreated. And what about someone who gets that serious illness the day after the open enrollment period ends?
This is a strategy that comes with some risk, and not just for young people who might buy the spin. As any pollster can tell you, Americans tend to distrust of the idea of government in the abstract, but are quite fond of most of what it does in the real world. They like public education policemen and environmental protection and Social Security and just about everything else the government provides that makes their lives easier and safer.
That’s why the Republican establishment is so nervous about the prospect of another government shutdown. It’s not only because the effort wouldn’t halt Obamacare, or because polls show that even a majority of Republican voters think it’s an awful idea. It’s because a shutdown would be a vivid reminder that the government provides goods and services that most Americans value and like.
And the reason the right’s war on Obamacare is reaching such a fevered pitch today is that what has long been an abstraction is about to become concrete. Polls show that four years after its passage, many Americans aren’t really sure what the law will do. More oppose Obamacare than approve of it, but almost all of its individual provisions poll very well. And here’s a key finding: the most popular parts of the law are also the least well-known to the American public.
After years of demagoguery and disinformation by opponents, many Americans are fearful of a “government takeover” of the health care system, or death panels, or huge price shocks. But with most of the major benefits of Obamacare set to kick in, the realities of what the law really does are about to become undeniable. Almost 26 million people will be eligible for subsidized coverage, according to a recent analysis by Families USA, but as CNN notes, “most don’t know it.”
That represents an advantage for the law’s proponents. If they can manage to get the bulk of it implemented, even with the Affordable Care Act’s warts, it will provide solid evidence that the government can improve people’s lives. That possibility represents an existential threat to some on the right’s worldview, and it’s driving them into feverish levels of opposition.
