Why Are So Many Facebook Profile Pictures A Solid Red Square?

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Imagine, for a moment, a standard 55-gallon oil drum. You’ve seen these everywhere; action heroes crash through them in movies, video games scatter them around levels as explosive set dressing, they’re used as the banner image for news articles on oil prices. That’s what it means to us in America: Oil, chemicals, a container for stuff. In Syria, they fall from the sky, and they’re filled with explosives and shrapnel, to be turned into TNT barrel bombs. And they’re being dropped, indiscriminately, on anybody the government has decided is expendable as it fights to keep control.

Since 2011, Syria has been embroiled in a bloody civil war that began as Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad began cracking down on protests against his government. It quickly escalated into enormous violence, triggering a massive refugee crisis as nearly a quarter of the Syrian population has fled the country of their birth.

If you’re on Facebook, you’ve likely seen a friend or two, or more, replace their Facebook profile photo with a solid red square. It’s to symbolize solidarity with Aleppo, which on Thursday, became the target of possibly the single worst attack by a government on its own citizens in recent memory, including an attack on a pediatric hospital.

No bomb is truly “civil” in who it kills, but TNT barrel bombs are specifically created to kill anyone in the radius with shrapnel and blast force, and destroy buildings into the bargain. In Syria, they’re often supported, and sometimes even executed, by Russian air strikes, which the State Department has criticized as targeting moderate opposition, not ISIS operations.

Unfortunately, for all the destruction, it hasn’t drawn the attention that it should. So, many are turning their Facebook profile pictures into a solid red square, to symbolize the destruction and call for a ceasefire. The U.S. State Department is attempting to intervene. As of this writing, however, the shelling of Aleppo continues.

(via Fusion)

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