Perhaps Joseph Heller or some other master of dark comedy would have enjoyed this. I just received email notice from Google that it has suspended an online ad for my new book, which raises questions about the atomic bombing of Japan in 1945, killing over 200,000 people -- claiming that it "promotes violence."
Of course, quite the opposite is true, but no matter. And there's a deeper irony.
The book and e-book, Atomic Cover-Up: Two U.S. Soldiers, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, and The Greatest Movie Never Made probes the U.S. suppression of unique color film footage, shot by a U.S. military unit, in the atomic cities for decades. The two-minute trailer, posted at You Tube last Friday, describes this and shows brief excerpts from the hidden footage, at its start and finish.
Yet the letter from Google's "ad words team" explains: "Thank you for using Promoted Videos. Unfortunately, one or more of your promotions has been suspended." And: "At this time, Google policy does not permit the advertisement of websites that contain the promotion of violence. As noted in our advertising terms and conditions, Google may refuse any ads or terminate any of your ad campaigns at any time, for any reason."
As for policy: "Promotion of Violence: Unacceptable Content: Google strongly believes in the freedom of expression and therefore offers broad access to content across the web without censoring search results."
The video itself has not yet been pulled from YouTube, but one wonders if that's next.
Of course, the irony is that the very subject of the book, and trailer, is the U.S. hiding content that revealed the full effects of the new weapon, helping pave the way for a costly nuclear arms race and a proliferation of other nuclear dangers. That was the ultimate "promotion of violence."
Greg Mitchell writes daily at The Nation. "Atomic Cover-Up" is available in print and e-book editions.
Follow Greg Mitchell on Twitter: www.twitter.com/GregMitch
As the child of someone who worked on the Manhattan Project, if only as a low-level employee for a short time, the atomic bombings of 1945 have hung over my life like a dark cloud. Thank you for your work.
I also doubt that any horrific pictures of war casualties would have had any effect on politics since the overwhelming majority of the electorate had close personal experience of the cost of war. Even though most of the US was spared wars actual ravages of bombings, everybody had a radio, newspapers, magazines and family members who fought, died, or were wounded.
It is also not the job of the military to produce movies for the general public, and there are thousands of miles of flim that the military still has and has not released. THAT does NOT constitute a "cover-up". The aftermath of the A bombs were very well covered, in books, film and print, so I think we will learn little from this book.
We're so desperately in need of accurate historic perspectives of such pivotal events as the first use of atomic weapons. How ironic indeed, that your informative work, created to help steer away from violence, is flagged as violent and banned.
Modern publishing technologies have the power to invigorate thought and enlighten us all. But as we're moving ahead, implementing these 'tools' and methods, we need to be careful to protect ourselves from our 'intelligent' software. Especially this kind of gate-watcher, responsible for Google's failed decision-making.
Is there no-one in the driver's seat at Google?