View allAll Photos Tagged Conscience
Standing to the left of the frame was one of over a thousand protesters who were participating in a peaceful assembly in Parliament Square on 6 September 2025 against the proscription of Palestine Action, many of whom deliberately chose to break the law, challenging the state’s power to criminalise expressions of conscience and solidarity.
The man's expression seems to reflect deep and weary but determined resolve, demonstrating deep contemplation of both the horrific situation in Gaza and the immense personal risk of being arrested under arbitrary terror laws.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Protest and the Price of Dissent: Palestine Action and the Criminalisation of Conscience
Parliament Square on Saturday, 6 September 2025 was a scene of quiet, almost solemn defiance. The air, usually thick with the noise of London traffic and crowds of tourists, was instead filled with a palpable tension, a shared gravity that emanated from the quiet determination of hundreds of protesters, many of them over 60 years old, some sitting on steps or stools and others lying on the grass.
They held not professionally printed banners, but handwritten cardboard signs, their messages stark against the historic grandeur of their surroundings. This was not a march of chants and slogans, but a silent vigil of civil disobedience, a deliberate and calculated act of defiance against the state.
On that day, my task was to photograph the protest against the proscription of the direct-action group Palestine Action. While not always agreeing entirely with the group’s methods, I could not help but be struck by the profound dedication etched on the faces of the individual protesters.
As they sat in silence, contemplating both the horrific gravity of the situation in Gaza and the enormity of the personal risk they were taking — courting arrest under terror laws for holding a simple placard — their expressions took on a quality not dissimilar to what war photographers once called the “thousand-yard stare.” It was a look of weary but deep and determined resolve, a silent testament to their readiness to face life-changing prosecution in the name of a principle.
This scene poses a profound and unsettling question for modern Britain. How did the United Kingdom, a nation that prides itself on its democratic traditions and the right to protest, arrive at a point where hundreds of its citizens — clergy, doctors, veterans, and the elderly — could be arrested under counter-terrorism legislation for an act of silent, peaceful protest?
The events of that September afternoon were the culmination of a complex and contentious series of developments, but their significance extends far beyond a single organisation or demonstration. The proscription of Palestine Action has become a critical juncture in the nation’s relationship with dissent, a test of the elasticity of free expression, and a stark examination of its obligations under international law in the face of Israel deliberately engineering a catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
To understand what is at stake, one must unravel the threads that led to that moment: the identity of the movement, the state’s legal machinery of proscription, the confrontation in Parliament Square, and the political context that compelled so many to risk their liberty.
Direct Action and the State’s Response
Palestine Action, established in 2020, has never hidden its approach. Unlike traditional lobbying groups, it rejected appeals to political elites in favour of disrupting the physical infrastructure of complicity: factories producing parts for Israeli weapons systems, offices of arms manufacturers, and — eventually — military installations themselves.
Its tactics, while non-violent, were disruptive and confrontational. Red paint sprayed across buildings to symbolise blood, occupations that halted production, chains and locks on factory gates. For supporters, these were acts of conscience against a system enabling atrocities in Gaza. For the state, they were criminal disruptions of commerce.
That clash escalated steadily. In Oldham, a persistent campaign against Elbit Systems, a key manufacturer in the Israeli arms supply chain, culminated in the company abandoning its Ferranti site. Later actions targeted suppliers for F-35 fighter jets and other arms manufacturers. These were no random acts of mindless vandalism but part of a deliberate strategy: to impose costs high enough that complicity in Israel’s war effort would become unsustainable.
The decisive rupture came in June 2025, when activists infiltrated RAF Brize Norton, Britain’s largest airbase, and sprayed red paint into the engines of refuelling aircraft linked to operations over Gaza. For the activists, it was a desperate attempt to interrupt a supply chain of surveillance and logistical support to a state commiting genocide. For the government, it crossed a line: military assets had been attacked. Within days, the Home Secretary announced Palestine Action would be proscribed as a terrorist organisation.
Proscription and the Expansion of “Terrorism”
Here lies the heart of the controversy. The Terrorism Act 2000 defines terrorism with unusual breadth, encompassing not only threats to life but also “serious damage to property” carried out for political or ideological aims. In this capacious definition, breaking a factory window or disabling a machine can be legally assimilated to mass murder.
By invoking this law, the government placed Palestine Action on the same legal footing as al-Qaeda or ISIS. Supporting it — even symbolically — became a serious offence.
Since July 2025, merely expressing support for the organization can carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years.
This is based on Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The specific offence is "recklessly expressing support for a proscribed organisation". However, according to Section 13 of the Act, a lower-level offence for actions like displaying hand held placards in support of a proscribed group carries a maximum sentence of six months imprisonment or a fine of five thousand pounds or both.
Civil liberties groups and human rights bodies have denounced the proscription move as disproportionate. Their concern was not primarily whether Palestine Action’s tactics might violate existing criminal law. One might reasonably argue that they did unless they might sometimes be justified in the name of preventing a greater crime.
But reframing those actions as “terrorism” represented a dangerous category error. As many pointed out, terrorism has historically referred to violence against civilians. Expanding it to cover property damage risks draining the term of meaning. Worse, it arms the state with a stigma so powerful that it can delegitimise entire political positions without debate.
The implications go further. Proscription does not simply criminalise acts. It criminalises expressions of allegiance, conscience and even speech. To say “I support Palestine Action” is no longer an opinion but technically a serious crime. The state has moved from punishing deeds to punishing expressions of solidarity — a move with chilling consequences for democratic life.
Parliament Square: Civil Disobedience on Trial
It was this transformation that brought nearly 1,500 people into Parliament Square on 6 September. They knew what awaited them. Organisers announced in advance that protesters would hold signs reading: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” In doing so, they openly declared their intent to break the law.
The crowd was strikingly diverse. Retired doctors, clergy, war veterans, even an 83-year-old Anglican priest. Disabled activists came in wheelchairs; descendants of Holocaust survivors stood beside young students. This was not a hardened cadre of militants but a cross-section of society, many of whom had never before faced arrest.
At precisely 1 pm, the protesters all sat or lay down silently, cardboard signs raised. There was no chanting, no aggression — only a quiet insistence that they would not accept the criminalisation of conscience.
The police response was equally predictable. Hundreds of officers moved systematically through the crowd, arresting anyone displaying a sign. By the end of the day, nearly 900 people were detained under counter-terrorism law. It was one of the largest mass arrests in modern British history.
Official statements later alleged police were met with violence — officers punched, spat on, objects thrown. Yet independent observers, including Amnesty International, contradicted this. They reported a peaceful assembly disrupted by aggressive policing: batons drawn, protesters shoved, some bloodied.
www.amnesty.org/zh-hans/documents/eur45/0273/2025/en/
Video footage supported at least some of Amnesty's report.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZQGFrqCf5U&t=1283s
The two narratives were irreconcilable, but only one carried the weight and authority of the state.
The entire event unfolded as political theatre. The government proscribed a group, thereby creating a new crime. Protesters, convinced the law was unjust, announced their intent to commit that crime peacefully. The police, forewarned, staged a vast operation. Each side acted out its script. The spectacle allowed the state to present itself as defending order against extremism — while in reality silencing dissent.
The Humanitarian Context: Why Protesters Risked All
To see the Parliament Square protest as a parochial dispute over free speech is to miss its driving force. The demonstrators were not there merely to defend abstract principles. They were responding to what they, and a growing body of international experts, describe as a genocide in Gaza.
By September 2025, Gaza had descended into almost total collapse. Over 63,000 Palestinians had been killed, the majority of them women and children. More than 150,000 had been injured, many maimed for life. Entire neighbourhoods had been flattened. Famine was confirmed in August, with Israel continuing to impose and even tighten deliberate restrictions on food, water, and fuel, a strategy condemned by human rights groups as a major war crime. Hospitals lay in ruins. Ninety percent of the population had been displaced.
It is in this context that the term genocide has been applied. Legal scholars point not only to mass killings but also to the deliberate infliction of life-destroying conditions, accompanied by rhetoric from Israeli officials dehumanising Palestinians as “human animals.” In September 2025, the International Association of Genocide Scholars declared that Israel’s actions met the legal definition of genocide.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cde3eyzdr63o
Major NGOs, UN experts, and even Israeli human rights groups such as B’Tselem echoed that conclusion.
For the protesters, then, the question was not abstract but immediate: faced with what they saw as a genocide, could they in good conscience remain silent while their own government criminalised resistance to it? Their answer was to risk arrest, their placards making the moral connection explicit: opposing genocide meant supporting those who sought to stop it.
The Price of Dissent
The mass arrests in Parliament Square were not an isolated incident of law enforcement. They were the product of a broader trajectory: escalating tactics by a direct-action movement, a humanitarian catastrophe abroad, and a government determined to suppress dissent at home through the bluntest of instruments.
The official line insists that Palestine Action’s campaign constituted terrorism and thus warranted proscription. On this view, the arrests were simple enforcement of the law. Yet this account obscures the deeper reality: a precedent in which the state redefined non-lethal protest as terrorism, shifting from punishing actions to criminalising expressions of solidarity.
The cost is profound. Once speech and conscience themselves become suspect, dissent is no longer tolerated but pathologised. The chilling effect is already evident: individuals weigh not just whether to join a protest, but whether uttering support might expose them to years in prison. Terror laws, originally justified as a shield against mass violence, are recast as tools of political management.
The protesters understood this. That “thousand-yard stare” captured in their faces was not only the weight of potential arrest, but the knowledge of Gaza’s devastation, the famine and rubble, the deaths mounting daily. It was also the recognition that their own government had chosen to silence them rather than address its complicity.
In a functioning democracy, the question is not why citizens risk arrest for holding a handwritten cardboard sign. It is why a state finds it necessary to treat that act as a terror offence. The answer reveals a narrowing of democratic space, where conscience itself is deemed subversive. And that narrowing, history teaches, carries consequences not just for those arrested, but for the society that allows it.
Hand written signs, as seen in this photograph, were the centrepiece of the protest against the proscripton of Palestine Action in Parliament Square on 6 September 2025, with most bearing the carefully chosen words: "I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action".
This slogan was a direct challenge to the law, explicitly linking support for the proscribed group with opposition to the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the UK's complicity. Under the Terrorism Act 2000, simply displaying these signs was a serious criminal offence. This act of civil disobedience was a response to the state criminalising not just actions, but expressions of conscience.
+++++++++++++++++++++++
Protest and the Price of Dissent: Palestine Action and the Criminalisation of Conscience
Parliament Square on Saturday, 6 September 2025 was a scene of quiet, almost solemn defiance. The air, usually thick with the noise of London traffic and crowds of tourists, was instead filled with a palpable tension, a shared gravity that emanated from the quiet determination of hundreds of protesters, many of them over 60 years old, some sitting on steps or stools and others lying on the grass.
They held not professionally printed banners, but handwritten cardboard signs, their messages stark against the historic grandeur of their surroundings. This was not a march of chants and slogans, but a silent vigil of civil disobedience, a deliberate and calculated act of defiance against the state.
On that day, my task was to photograph the protest against the proscription of the direct-action group Palestine Action.
While not always agreeing entirely with the group’s methods, I could not help but be struck by the profound dedication etched on the faces of the individual protesters. As they sat in silence, contemplating both the horrific gravity of the situation in Gaza and the enormity of the personal risk they were taking — courting arrest under terror laws for holding a simple placard — their expressions took on a quality not dissimilar to what war photographers once called the “thousand-yard stare.” It was a look of weary but deep and determined resolve, a silent testament to their readiness to face life-changing prosecution in the name of a principle.
This scene poses a profound and unsettling question for modern Britain. How did the United Kingdom, a nation that prides itself on its democratic traditions and the right to protest, arrive at a point where hundreds of its citizens — clergy, doctors, veterans, and the elderly — could be arrested under counter-terrorism legislation for an act of silent, peaceful protest?
The events of that September afternoon were the culmination of a complex and contentious series of developments, but their significance extends far beyond a single organisation or demonstration. The proscription of Palestine Action has become a critical juncture in the nation’s relationship with dissent, a test of the elasticity of free expression, and a stark examination of its obligations under international law in the face of Israel deliberately engineering a catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
To understand what is at stake, one must unravel the threads that led to that moment: the identity of the movement, the state’s legal machinery of proscription, the confrontation in Parliament Square, and the political context that compelled so many to risk their liberty.
Direct Action and the State’s Response
Palestine Action, established in 2020, has never hidden its approach. Unlike traditional lobbying groups, it rejected appeals to political elites in favour of disrupting the physical infrastructure of complicity: factories producing parts for Israeli weapons systems, offices of arms manufacturers, and — eventually — military installations themselves.
Its tactics, while non-violent, were disruptive and confrontational. Red paint sprayed across buildings to symbolise blood, occupations that halted production, chains and locks on factory gates. For supporters, these were acts of conscience against a system enabling atrocities in Gaza. For the state, they were criminal disruptions of commerce.
That clash escalated steadily. In Oldham, a persistent campaign against Elbit Systems, a key manufacturer in the Israeli arms supply chain, culminated in the company abandoning its Ferranti site. Later actions targeted suppliers for F-35 fighter jets and other arms manufacturers. These were no random acts of mindless vandalism but part of a deliberate strategy: to impose costs high enough that complicity in Israel’s war effort would become unsustainable.
The decisive rupture came in June 2025, when activists infiltrated RAF Brize Norton, Britain’s largest airbase, and sprayed red paint into the engines of refuelling aircraft linked to operations over Gaza. For the activists, it was a desperate attempt to interrupt a supply chain of surveillance and logistical support to a state commiting genocide. For the government, it crossed a line: military assets had been attacked. Within days, the Home Secretary announced Palestine Action would be proscribed as a terrorist organisation.
Proscription and the Expansion of “Terrorism”
Here lies the heart of the controversy. The Terrorism Act 2000 defines terrorism with unusual breadth, encompassing not only threats to life but also “serious damage to property” carried out for political or ideological aims. In this capacious definition, breaking a factory window or disabling a machine can be legally assimilated to mass murder.
By invoking this law, the government placed Palestine Action on the same legal footing as al-Qaeda or ISIS. Supporting it — even symbolically — became a serious offence.
Since July 2025, merely expressing support for the organization can carry a maximum prison sentence of 14 years.
This is based on Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The specific offence is "recklessly expressing support for a proscribed organisation". However, according to Section 13 of the Act, a lower-level offence for actions like displaying hand held placards in support of a proscribed group carries a maximum sentence of six months imprisonment or a fine of five thousand pounds or both.
Civil liberties groups and human rights bodies have denounced the proscription move as disproportionate. Their concern was not primarily whether Palestine Action’s tactics might violate existing criminal law. One might reasonably argue that they did unless they might sometimes be justified in the name of preventing a greater crime.
But reframing those actions as “terrorism” represented a dangerous category error. As many pointed out, terrorism has historically referred to violence against civilians. Expanding it to cover property damage risks draining the term of meaning. Worse, it arms the state with a stigma so powerful that it can delegitimise entire political positions without debate.
The implications go further. Proscription does not simply criminalise acts. It criminalises expressions of allegiance, conscience and even speech. To say “I support Palestine Action” is no longer an opinion but technically a serious crime. The state has moved from punishing deeds to punishing expressions of solidarity — a move with chilling consequences for democratic life.
Parliament Square: Civil Disobedience on Trial
It was this transformation that brought nearly 1,500 people into Parliament Square on 6 September. They knew what awaited them. Organisers announced in advance that protesters would hold signs reading: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” In doing so, they openly declared their intent to break the law.
The crowd was strikingly diverse. Retired doctors, clergy, war veterans, even an 83-year-old Anglican priest. Disabled activists came in wheelchairs; descendants of Holocaust survivors stood beside young students. This was not a hardened cadre of militants but a cross-section of society, many of whom had never before faced arrest.
At precisely 1 pm, the protesters all sat or lay down silently, cardboard signs raised. There was no chanting, no aggression — only a quiet insistence that they would not accept the criminalisation of conscience.
The police response was equally predictable. Hundreds of officers moved systematically through the crowd, arresting anyone displaying a sign. By the end of the day, nearly 900 people were detained under counter-terrorism law. It was one of the largest mass arrests in modern British history.
Official statements later alleged police were met with violence — officers punched, spat on, objects thrown. Yet independent observers, including Amnesty International, contradicted this. They reported a peaceful assembly disrupted by aggressive policing: batons drawn, protesters shoved, some bloodied.
www.amnesty.org/zh-hans/documents/eur45/0273/2025/en/
Video footage supported at least some of Amnesty's report.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZQGFrqCf5U&t=1283s
The two narratives were irreconcilable, but only one carried the weight and authority of the state.
The entire event unfolded as political theatre. The government proscribed a group, thereby creating a new crime. Protesters, convinced the law was unjust, announced their intent to commit that crime peacefully. The police, forewarned, staged a vast operation. Each side acted out its script. The spectacle allowed the state to present itself as defending order against extremism — while in reality silencing dissent.
The Humanitarian Context: Why Protesters Risked All
To see the Parliament Square protest as a parochial dispute over free speech is to miss its driving force. The demonstrators were not there merely to defend abstract principles. They were responding to what they, and a growing body of international experts, describe as a genocide in Gaza.
By September 2025, Gaza had descended into almost total collapse. Over 63,000 Palestinians had been killed, the majority of them women and children. More than 150,000 had been injured, many maimed for life. Entire neighbourhoods had been flattened. Famine was confirmed in August, with Israel continuing to impose and even tighten deliberate restrictions on food, water, and fuel, a strategy condemned by human rights groups as a major war crime. Hospitals lay in ruins. Ninety percent of the population had been displaced.
It is in this context that the term genocide has been applied.
Legal scholars point not only to mass killings but also to the deliberate infliction of life-destroying conditions, accompanied by rhetoric from Israeli officials dehumanising Palestinians as “human animals.” In September 2025, the International Association of Genocide Scholars declared that Israel’s actions met the legal definition of genocide.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cde3eyzdr63o
Major NGOs, UN experts, and even Israeli human rights groups such as B’Tselem echoed that conclusion.
For the protesters, then, the question was not abstract but immediate: faced with what they saw as a genocide, could they in good conscience remain silent while their own government criminalised resistance to it? Their answer was to risk arrest, their placards making the moral connection explicit: opposing genocide meant supporting those who sought to stop it.
The Price of Dissent
The mass arrests in Parliament Square were not an isolated incident of law enforcement. They were the product of a broader trajectory: escalating tactics by a direct-action movement, a humanitarian catastrophe abroad, and a government determined to suppress dissent at home through the bluntest of instruments.
The official line insists that Palestine Action’s campaign constituted terrorism and thus warranted proscription. On this view, the arrests were simple enforcement of the law. Yet this account obscures the deeper reality: a precedent in which the state redefined non-lethal protest as terrorism, shifting from punishing actions to criminalising expressions of solidarity.
The cost is profound. Once speech and conscience themselves become suspect, dissent is no longer tolerated but pathologised. The chilling effect is already evident: individuals weigh not just whether to join a protest, but whether uttering support might expose them to years in prison. Terror laws, originally justified as a shield against mass violence, are recast as tools of political management.
The protesters understood this. That “thousand-yard stare” captured in their faces was not only the weight of potential arrest, but the knowledge of Gaza’s devastation, the famine and rubble, the deaths mounting daily. It was also the recognition that their own government had chosen to silence them rather than address its complicity.
In a functioning democracy, the question is not why citizens risk arrest for holding a handwritten cardboard sign. It is why a state finds it necessary to treat that act as a terror offence. The answer reveals a narrowing of democratic space, where conscience itself is deemed subversive. And that narrowing, history teaches, carries consequences not just for those arrested, but for the society that allows it.
Conscience & Courage
Captain Silas S. Soule & Lieutenant Joseph A. Cramer of the 1st Colorado (U.S.) Volunteer Cavalry put their military career - & lives - at risk by refusing to fire during the attack against a peaceful Cheyenne & Arapaho village at Sand Creek, November 29, 1864.
With their companies backing them up, they purposely took little or no part in the massacre of people they knew. Afterward, both men wrote letters to their former commander Major Edward "Ned" Wynkoop, describing the horrors they had witnessed & condemning the leadership of Colonel John M. Chivington, the expedition's commander. These letters led to investigations by two congressional committees & an army commission, which changed history's judgment of Sand Creek from a battle to a massacre of men, women, & children.
Several weeks after Soule testified before the commission he was shot in the streets of Denver. His murderers, although known, were never brought to justice.
These graphic & disturbing letters disappeared, only to resurface in 2000 in time to help convince the U.S. Congress legislation establishing the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site.
The power of these letters, then & now, lies in their simply honesty, their moral courage & the determination of two soldiers to see justice done.
*No photos of Lt. Joseph Cramer is known to exist at this time.
**Major Edward "Ned" Wynkoop, recipient of the Soule & Cramer Letters.
(Examination of conscience - Examen de conciencia)
It seems there are still Palestinians alive, so the terror will continue this Christmas.
Meanwhile, we'll look the other way, seeking better prospects, forgetting that it's also our responsibility, and joyfully celebrate what consumerism has imposed on us.
Parece que aún quedan palestinos vivos, así que el terror continuará esta Navidad.
Mientras tanto, miraremos hacia otro lado, buscando mejores perspectivas, para olvidar que también es nuestra responsabilidad y celebrar con alegría lo que el consumismo nos ha impuesto.
THANK YOU ALL for your visits, comments and faves.
GRACIAS A TODOS por vuestras visitas, comentarios y favoritos.
Marina is like my guilty conscience around here now. I really really miss spending time with you, flickr friends, and my plastic girls.
maybe i should create some sort of ADAD challenge for myself for the summer months, to get more involved and force myself to catch up a little.
anyways, stay cool, people! (and don't forget us just yet)
Name: Conscience
Age: 13
Gender: Male
Species: ShadowShaker
Theme Song: Eyesore - Janus
Likes: The Dark,Silence,Blood,
Dislikes: Colours, Bright Things, Anything That Could Show His Refelction, Light
Conscience Was The Oddball Of His Family, His Whole Family Had Bright Green Eyes, He, Had Amber.He Was Outcasted From His House His Life His Being. His Family Said They Didnt Know Him And He Was Taken Away. Years Later He Returned With Scars And Half An Ear...His Colours Had Also All Faded He Was Black All Appart From His Dark Red Markings, And His Amber Eyes. He Had Gone From A LightSeeker To A ShadowShaker. He Killed His Family And Ran, When He Stopped He Was A Lake He Looked In And Saw His True Colours Brown Silver Red And Those Cursed Amber Eyes. Shocked He Ran But Now Sometimes He Lashes Out At Random People Because His Colours, His Guilt Tells Him To. He Hates Things That Glow Because If Hes In Too Much Light You Can See His Colours.
this evening Büyükada,October 8,2016
+
ya gözlerinden hiç geçmeseydim?
bu daha kötü değil mi,
ardında kanayıp duran
hüzünlü bir anı gibi kaldım,
ardından zamansız kapanan,bir yitik kapı gibi.
ya hiç sıyrılmasaydı kalbin ruhundan?
düşünmek zehirli
kimi zaman...
seni hatırlıyorum ,porselen güzelliğini,
dokunsam kırılacak bakışlarını
oysa acının hasını yaşamıştın?
'onmaz bir hikaye açıyordu ellerin'
ben kör karanlığım,
zamanın göğsünde, bir karanlık zihin
seni siyah bir gece denizinde yitirdim,
seni ayrılık kokan bir sabahın ayazında
seni yeni doğan bir yazın sıcağında...
hep kanayacak o yara
suskun sakin bir kıyısında
unuttuğun,
akdeniz'in...
seni yitirdim...
8 ekim 2016
Özlemin sözleri
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LEE big stopper
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LEE 0.9 Graduated Neutral Density Filter( HARD)
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200 sec
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EF 16-35MMF/2.8L II USM
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Canon 5d mark III
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Do not use my works without my written permission!!!
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''Fotoğraflarımın izin alınmadan kopyalanması ve kullanılması 5846 sayılı Fikir ve Sanat Eserleri Yasasına göre suçtur.!!'
The Ghosts That Scare Putin - The Lost Political Conscience Of Europe by Daniel Arrhakis (2022)
The Invasion of Ukraine took much of the Western World by surprise and unprepared to face a Russia that had studied and planned this military operation for years.
From the study of international treaties to the study of annual weather forecasts, through to the improvement of the military arsenal or the reduction of western economic dependence, everything was carefully planned or else Putin is a military strategist and a deep knowledge of information, counter-intelligence services and foreign intelligence.
Laws were adapted to concentrate power in state institutions, which were attributed to figures of economic, political, internal security, judicial and military confidence.
The security of information and its total control led to repression, closure, imprisonment and even the murder of all those who opposed it or who may be able to oppose it in future.
Blackmail and fear is another of the great powers for those who have privileged access to information and Putin has never excluded himself from using it whenever necessary.
As he himself tells of a young child growing up in the tenements of Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, chasing rats with a stick.
One day he cornered one of the creatures. With nowhere to turn, the rat responded by attacking the young Vladimir, a frightening moment that would be indelibly etched in his memory of him. In his later recounting of the incident, he said it taught him that when one is alone and isolated in such a way, the best thing to do is charge at your foe.
And no doubt that this childhood lesson served him to shape his recent domestic and foreign policy.
Even because of the fact that he felt small, he also developed an inferiority complex that he always tried to overcome with the conquest of professional and political successes.
The alteration of consecutive electoral laws ended up perpetuating him in power, culminating in his unquestionable dominance over Russia, his people and his powerful army.
A power that he always aspired to, inspired by nationalist and ultra-nationalist sentiments of the former Imperial Russia and Napoleonic inspiration; in this last case in reverse geographical sense.
The fall of the Berlin Wall takes place when Putin was in Germany because from 1985 to 1990 he worked in Dresden; heading the border department.
The dismantling of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact while NATO remains active with objectives different from those initially defined was always a kind of dishonor or humiliation for him and that Putin never forgot; much in the light of the "Century of National Humiliation" used by some Chinese scholars and politicians to describe the history of China from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century, during the Opium Wars by the Western powers , and which partly explains its influence on the rise of Chinese Nationalism and, consequently, on the construction of the national identity of China and the Anti- Western and Anti-Japanese sentiment.
To try to counter this loss of influence Putin turned to Sergey Karaganov's theories that Russian-speakers, who live in non-Russian territories, can be used as an asset in foreign policy.
The implementation of the doctrine can be observed on the Russia’s near abroad policy stretching from Georgia, Moldova to Ukraine and other near abroad states. In addition to his Doctrine, Karaganov has advocated for a united Sino-Russian strategy to unify a Eurasian bloc ; hence also the approximation of positions in recent times between Russia and China.
However, the Invasion of Ukraine, despite being well planned and disguised over time, did not take into account three factors that escaped Putin's Machiavellian plan: the feeling of nationalism and independence that in the meantime grew among the Ukrainians after the invasion of Crimea in 2014 , the resistance of the military led by President Zelensky, whom Putin wrongly despised, and the unity of NATO, which in the meantime has strengthened despite efforts in previous years by Putin and Trump to condition it; in fact the role and relationship between the two will still be in the future to be better understood and revealed.
This unity on the part of Western countries then led Putin to use again his well-known power of blackmail with the threat of Russian nuclear power in order to be able to contain and paralyze any and all actions they might plan against him.
But despite this veiled threat, the truth is that Putin is afraid that the West will unite militarily and that it will overcome the loss of its Political Consciousness after the Second World War.
Because one thing is certain, the spirits of the great western leaders such as Churchill, Roosevelt or De Gaulle are increasingly present in the soul of the European people accustomed to long years of Democracy and Freedom and who are revolted by the images of a bloody war that crushes a innocent people and an army that fights alone against a tyrant dominated by imperialist impulses and subjugation of democratic peoples who just want to be free.
In his vision of the world, Putin thinks that his autocratic regime should serve as a model of success for the world and all means serve because it is his own survival and ideals that are at stake!
Just as humanity lived close to the apocalypse more than 70 years ago, so now we have the future of Europe and the world in the hands, hearts and souls of peoples who love freedom!
And do not have any doubts that the spirits of those who united and inspired the free world and the resisters of the time like Churchill, Roosevelt or De Gaulle are once again the key to our victory, because Putin does not recognize defeats, does not suffer from human suffering or respects the values of Democracy or Freedom, all are mere pieces of his strategic game to control the World, just like someone else before him tried!
It's time for us to go hunting this big mouse too!
Text and Image by Daniel Arrhakis
I've been told that my work is too dark these days, which I agree with. The thing is, I love it when my work is dark — it usually means that I'm happy, that I'm joyful enough to do these things and laugh while I do them; to find the gruesome stuff as cool as a five year old boy does; to have the time of my life with skulls and fake blood and darkish items. It means I'm okay. Really.
This was mostly a try out of my new ND filter. I've been wanting to do shallow-DOF photos in studio for a while, but I only got the cash to buy a filter now. I love it. It gives the photos such a different tone, such a softness. I really do love it.
There are two more in the comments. My love wanted me to post ths first one, but I didn't like the stare. What do you guys think?
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Don't forget I'm selling prints to fund a photo project that I can't afford right now! Help me out? Check out the info
HERE.
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Front view down the pipe, five by five. Pilot in the front of course, Captain's chair in the middle up the platform, navigation starboard side, communication port side. I have to say that I'm not a fan of the nougat color, but with the flat tan it really looks nice. Again, gives it that 70s sci-fi vibe like it's straight outta something from Gerry Anderson.
On a side note: Fuck you, LEGO! Granted, you probably weren't expecting some insane buffoon like me to come along and go build something like this; however, I noticed that your profile bricks when stacked, or side by side next to standard bricks in SNOT work like this, are a half plate off over about thirty bricks. You can see the gap at the leading edge of the nougat profiles behind the pilot's pit. For that glaring inconvenience, I salute you with both middle fingers! asshats.
New addition to my Dream Chapter series! www.deviantart.com/users/outgoing?https://www.facebook.co...
We grow with years more fragile in body, but morally stouter, and can throw off the chill of a bad conscience almost at once. ~Logan Pearsall Smith
Sorry guys for being absence lately. I had a lot on my plate: projects, finals, study. But form now on I will try my best to take photos when ever I can. grin emoticon
This work is under copyright law. You CANNOT save, download, use the picture for websites or anything else WITHOUT my written permission!
“In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.- Mahatma Gandhi”
It’s up to you…
Macro Monday project – 03/17/14
"Green”
"The starry sky above me, the moral law within me" wrote Kant. "If man is nothing compared to the cosmos, the legislature has absolute morals, taking as its action is the universal interest, dictated by the voice of conscience."
Small actions, bring big changes.
Protect small sites of importance for nature and the environment won't save the great forests from over-exploitation yet, but I think it is increasing rapidly our moral interest and consequently the importance for the environmental status of the planet.
This place is Vincheto Nature Reserve, a site of international interest, including in the European network of biogenetic reserves, and became a special protection area within the Natura 2000 network.
Disputed Theological Answers A Voyage Of Conscience.
Mystères philosophiques conformes perspectives inimaginables juxtapositions étrangeté connaissance,
Bildliche Schriften inspirierten Akzeptanzunterricht Kommentare verdrehen konforme Doktrinen falsch,
traduzioni latine secoli di educazione monastica intellettuali verità ambivalenti divieti teologi seguiti,
αφόρισε απαγορεύσεις καταδίκη που ακολούθησε σύγκρουση ανοησίες ετεροδόξων προμήθειες ασέβεια,
localización inmaterial ataques separados publicando distorsiones respuestas dominicanas mendicantes textos,
בני משפיעים למקף שאלות עצמאיות חניכות ביקורת חששות ישויות,
العوامل المقلقة يعتقد التطورية نهج طبيعي العوائق شظايا وجهات نظر متوافقة,
Аналогичные комментарии грозные ученые вымысл творческие различные пункты формулы изобретения руководящие доктрины,
エキゾチックな理論を解離する劇的な偶発的な危険な仮定を受け入れる.
Steve.D.Hammond.
In downtown Elora, stands a very tall statue that towers over the viewer with a finger pointed accusingly down at them. Those of us with children have probably all adopted this pose at one time or another, or as in my case, been on the receiving end of it from an angry parent. I'll reluctantly admit I was no choir boy.
The work was created by Scott McNicol and is titled, "Who's The Boss." To photograph it, I angled the camera up with a best guess while holding it below my waist at arms length. Looking at it again in post, I can't get the question of "what were you thinking" out of my head. Must be my guilty conscience emerging.
Conscience: Now reflect on what got you here.
Big Domo: Why should I listen to you? You're a pineapple. What goes on in YOUR head?
Conscience: Spongebob.
Why was this picture taken? Was it the sexy legs of the lovely young lady which first attracted the attention or the dog with his curious glance around them or the whole situation.
I leave it all up to you folks.
"Follow Your Conscience Without Losing Your Shirt" by TIM GRAY via NYT t.co/haC9bh6tn8 (via Twitter twitter.com/felipemassone/status/688094669947944964)