<story><title>Facebook takes down (and restores) official page for French town of Bitche</title><url>https://www.politico.eu/article/facebook-unpublishes-official-page-for-french-town-of-bitche/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>4oh9do</author><text>This is the anecdote that is most egregious to me in this article:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; This is not the first time Bitche has been caught up in a censorship crossfire. In 1881, U.S. Ambassador to France Levi Parsons Morton took issue with the location of the American embassy on the Place de Bitche in Paris, named in honor of the town&amp;#x27;s wartime effort. Morton, embarrassed by the embassy&amp;#x27;s letterhead, asked Parisian authorities to rename the square — they obliged, changing it to Place des États-Unis.&lt;p&gt;As long as other countries continue to willingly comply and bend to the will of the US, the US will continue being the bully that it is.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cm2187</author><text>The US of 1881 wasn’t in a position to bully France. That came after the two world wars.</text></comment>
<story><title>Facebook takes down (and restores) official page for French town of Bitche</title><url>https://www.politico.eu/article/facebook-unpublishes-official-page-for-french-town-of-bitche/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>4oh9do</author><text>This is the anecdote that is most egregious to me in this article:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; This is not the first time Bitche has been caught up in a censorship crossfire. In 1881, U.S. Ambassador to France Levi Parsons Morton took issue with the location of the American embassy on the Place de Bitche in Paris, named in honor of the town&amp;#x27;s wartime effort. Morton, embarrassed by the embassy&amp;#x27;s letterhead, asked Parisian authorities to rename the square — they obliged, changing it to Place des États-Unis.&lt;p&gt;As long as other countries continue to willingly comply and bend to the will of the US, the US will continue being the bully that it is.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>logicchains</author><text>To me it sounds like the name was mocking the Americans, by renaming what the Americans considered &amp;quot;bitch&amp;quot; to United States, implying the US was the bitch.</text></comment>