Status Updates From Regarding the Pain of Others

"how much easier, from one's chair, far from danger, to claim the position of superiority."

"it is because a war, any war, doesn't seem as if it can be stopped that people become less responsive to the horrors. compassion is an unstable emotion. it needs to be translated into action, or it withers."

"the problem is not that people remember through photographs, but that they remember only the photographs."

"leonardo is suggesting that the artist's gaze [on war] be, literally, pitiless. [...] that a gory battlescape could be beautiful - in the sublime or awesome or tragic register of the beautiful - is a commonplace about images of war made by artists."

"With time, many staged photographs turn back into historical evidence, albeit of an impure kind - like most historical evidence."

"... it remains as true as ever that most people will not question the rationalizations offered by their government for starting or continuing a war. It takes some very peculiar circumstances for a war to become genuinely unpopular. (The prospect of being killed is not necessarily one of them.)"