Corbis, DMCA, And John Kerry Photos

Phronesis writes "Photo District News is running a story reporting that three historic photos of John Kerry from the early 1970s, including the one used for the Jane Fonda forgery, were pirated from Corbis. The photographers who own the copyright on the photos are asking Corbis to use its fancy watermarking technology to find the culprit. Corbis hopes either to track the responsible people down using watermarks, or to invoke DMCA if the watermarks were removed."

Comments

Evil, evil Jane

[fm6]

Unless this is an attempt by a right wing organization to discredit Kerry, why waste your time? Especially when you are lying?

Well, it certainly is a right-wing attempt to discredit Kerry. No one else would think that associating Kerry with Jane Fonda would discredit him. To the Right, Fonda is that Bitch Traitor Who Went to Hanoi. But to mainstream America, she's just a has-been-actress who made some fitness videos.

And from that point of view, the photo isn't really a lie. True, Fonda and Kerry never actually stood on the same platform. But they both opposed the war, and that makes them both traitor-liberal-bleedingheart-(add your own insult here). It's a rhetoric based on stereotyping people you disagree with. Stupid, but standard political practice these days.

Re:Evil, evil Jane

[mesocyclone]

Kerry didn't broadcast speaches designed to harm soldier's moral,

False. Kerry did indeed broadcast a major speech to harm soldiers' morale. And it was played to the POW's at the Hanoi Hilton by their captors.

In fact, the worse thing Kerry did, and the only reason many of us consider him to be dishonorable is that speech.

Here are some quotes (although hearing the audio is much stronger, as he makes his accusations in the same snearing voice that today is more often heard saying "Do you know who I am?" as he butts into lines):

"we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia. These were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command"

This is a falsehood. Subsequent investigations were unable to substantiate a single allegation from that investigation. Many of the speakers were not actual Vietnam Veterans or had not ever been to where they claimed to have witnessed atrocities.

There were, of course, atrocities committed by Americans in Vietnam, and several hundred American servicemen were punished for them, but they were never policy. The Viet Cong had a policy of atrocities - mostly against other Vietnamese - which Kerry never mentioned even once.

They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks,

Can you imagine how Vietnam Vets and serving soldiers felt hearing this? Is it any wonder that many were mistreated when they returned home?

We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them.

This particular lie became one of the longest lasting memes of Vietnam War revisionist history.

We fought using weapons against those people which I do not believe this country would dream of using were we fighting in the European theater.

He attempts to paint Americans as anti-Asian racists. This assertion is absurd. The same weapons were in Europe at the time and were ready to go if the Soviets invaded. And Kerry knew this.

Now we are told that the men who fought there must watch quietly while American lives are lost so that we can exercise the incredible arrogance of Vietnamizing the Vietnamese.

"Vietnamizing the Vietnamese" is a phrase totally made up for this speech, and a total distortion of what was actually going on.

"we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions;"

Totally false. The Viet Cong/Viet Minh used atrocities as a matter of policy. It was common to kill the entire family of a village chieftan if the village did not support the Viet Cong. This was done tens of thousands of times. And it is but one of the many atrocities done by the VC.

When the Viet Cong captured and held Hue during the 1968 Tet Offensive, they executed 3,000 civilians and threw the bodies in mass graves.

But to Kerry, the US was more guilty than any other body?

blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties.

This is utterly false. Blacks served and died in very close to the percentages of blacks in the general population. Volunteers had a higher death rate overall than draftees.

Two more important facts about this speech:

1) Kerry, who behaved as if it was a spontaneous speech, actually didn't even write it. It was written by Adam Walinskey.

2) This was given under oath. He committed a felony giving it.

The text of the speech can be found here

Kerry in on the TCPA bill

[DigiShaman]

It's very well known that Kerry has very close ties to "Fritz" Hollings.

And remember when he basically told Dean that in order to get a bill passed, you do NOT put your name on it. Gee, what a fucking snake!!! I'm not a democrat, but I would rather vote for Dean over Kerry any day if I had to choose between the two.

Re:Not a bad forgery.....

[Dun Malg]

Fonda's actions may have been a little over the top in going to North Vietnam but she didn't wage an illegal war that killed millions including 50,000 Americans while the U.S. government did. I think I would take Fonda over LBJ, McNamara, Nixon and Kissinger any day. If you were really an American patriot you wouldn't blindly support the proposition that its OK for the U.S. to kill anyone it feels like, whenever it feels like it.

Shut your pie-hole, fuckwit. Somebody asked what the big deal about Jane Fonda was, and he explained. He didn't voice a single word of support for the vietnam war, he just said it Fonda's actions were despicable. An opinion against Fonda is only that-- an opinion against Fonda. Personally, I think the Vietnam war war a load of crap like you do, but I also think Jane Fonda was a pig-headed lefty idealist moron (perhaps she still is-- she's at least less obvious now). One doesn't have to be a warmonger to find her actions disgusting. Quote:

"They, however, had time and devised a plan to get word to the world that they still survived. Each man secreted a tiny piece of paper, with his Social Security number on it, in the palm of his hand. When paraded before Ms. Fonda and a cameraman, she walked the line, shaking each man's hand and asking little encouraging snippets like, 'Aren't you sorry you bombed babies?' and, 'Are you grateful for the humane treatment from your benevolent captors?'"

"Believing this HAD to be an act, they each palmed her their sliver of paper. She took them all without missing a beat. At the end of the line and once the camera stopped rolling, to the shocked disbelief of the POWs, she turned to the officer in charge ... and handed him the little pile of notes.

"Three men died from the subsequent beatings. Col. Carrigan was almost number four.

Jane Fonda is a pile of crap no better than the piles of crap that are/were Johnson, McNamara, Nixon, Kissinger, etc.