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These three individuals are part of a crowd of an estimated 1,500 people who gathered for what was mostly a silent vigil of civil disobedience against the proscription of Palestine Action in London's Parliament Square on 6 September 2025. Their hand written signs express support for a proscribed group, the specific act for which 857 people were arrested under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act. This carefully planned act of mass civil disobedience drew a remarkably diverse group of citizens, including vicars and priests, war veterans and descendants of Holocaust survivors.
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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.
will those who helped you become what you are now
— will history — judge that you passed that test?
one does not become a success by betraying
the ideals that brought you to the point of success
your future hangs in the balance on what you do now
think, stewart
think, caterina
think, yahoo!
think, flickr, think
(If your Yahoo! ID is based in Singapore, Germany, Hong Kong or Korea you will only be able to view safe content based on your local Terms of Service so won’t be able to turn SafeSearch off. In other words that means, that german users can not access photos on flickr that are not flagged "safe" ... only flowers and landscapes for germans ...Copy and upload this picture to your account - show flickr who we are!)
Participating in the silent vigil of 6 September 2025 in London's Parliament Square against the proscription of Palestine Action, this protestor embodies the quiet defiance that characterised the day. Her participation, like that of many other disabled activists , shows the profound depth of conviction that drove a cross-section of British society to risk arrest.
The simple placard she holds had been deemed an act of terrorism by the state, an expression of support punishable by a potentially lengthy prison sentence. Her resolve reflects a conscious choice to defy this law, motivated by the unfolding genocide in Gaza.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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 offense 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.
I was immediately impressed by the remarkable diversity of the crowd that gathered in London's Parliament Square on 6 September 2025 to protest the proscription of Palestine Action. The protesters included the elderly and disabled activists, many of whom had never been arrested before.
The elegantly dressed woman's handmade sign displays the precise words that, under the Terrorism Act 2000, constituted a criminal offence carrying a potentially lengthy prison sentence. She is part of a cross-section of society who felt a moral imperative to act in response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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 offense 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.
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Le panneau indique que l'on peut prendre des bains.
Le voisinage est très accueillant et, de l'autre côté, il y a vue sur la mer
If you want an hotel in Innsmouth, it is now possible at a very affordable price
You have all the commodities : it is written on the pannel that you can take bath
You have rooms with view on the sea on the other side of the house
reader`s letter: she writes that she does not understand that freedom of press allows to joke about things that are holy for others and she wants constitutional penalties for satire about religion.
Leserbrief: " ... verstehe ich nicht wieso Pressefreiheit das Recht bedeutet, konsequenzenlos zu verhöhnen was für andere Menschen heilig ist. Hierfür sollten rechtsstaatliche Strafen eingeführt werden"
Haderer: "Wenn die Aufklärer vor 250 Jahren Grenzen akzeptiert hätten, würden noch heute Scheiterhaufen brennen."
Part of: "an apple a day keeps the doctor away - An ENSO (Japanese: circle, Japanisch: Kreis) a day .... " Aktion Kreis Tagebuch A circle diary - Start of the 365-days Project: 1. September / 9. Jänner 2015: Leserbrief: heute,/ Gerhard Haderer: Österreich.
DMC-G2 - P1870861 - 2015-01-09
#CharlieHebdo #charlie #hebdo #JeSuisCharlie #jesuischarlie #ParisShooting
I couldn't find two turtledoves, or get the partridge to sit in the pear tree, so these three ladies will have to do! They're not French, just Silver-Laced Wyandottes from my flock. Sadie, on the right, is the only one I have left, as Charlotte and Lucy have gone to the big free-range pasture in the sky. Two textures from Kim Klassen's The Benjamin Texture Collection.
A Very Merry Christmas to all my flickr friends! Thanks so much for your encouragement and kind words throughout the year!
This photograph needs to be interpreted with caution and this caption should also be understood as an inevitably subjective interpretation.
As I was photographing police arrests during the protest against the proscription of Palestine Action on 6 September 2025, I noticed a woman wearing a keffiyeh being arrested at approximately 8 pm, though I should stress that I don't know whether she had actually committed any crime or what exactly she was being arrested on suspicion of.
The photograph has not been edited in any way from the original standard jpg, except that the woman's face has been blurred to protect her identity, as well as the name tag showing on the uniform of one of the arresting officers.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
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 offense 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 whether 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.T
he 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.
A mounted U.S. Park Police officer surveys the scene as participants in the March for Life gather on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
Orange et verte... Orange and green ...
Je ne connais pas le nom de cette fleur ! Une variété de Gaillarde (Gaillardia) ?
Si quelqu'un peut l'identifier... merci :))
I do not know the name of this flower! A variety of Gaillarde (Gaillardia) ?
If anyone can identify it ... thank you :))
No sé el nombre de esta flor! Una variedad de Gaillarde (Gaillardia) ?
Si alguien puede identificar ... muchas gracias :))
Non conosco il nome di questo fiore! Una varieta di Gaillarde (Gaillardia) ?
Se qualcuno può identificare ... grazie :))
Eu não sei o nome desta flor! Uma variedade de Gaillarde (Gaillardia) ?
Se alguém puder identificá-lo ... obrigado :))
Ich weiß nicht, den Namen dieser Blume! Eine Vielzahl von Gaillarde (Gaillardia) ?
Wenn jemand damit identifizieren kann, ich danke Ihnen :))
Ik weet niet de naam van deze bloem! Een verscheidenheid van Gaillarde (Gaillardia) ?
Als iemand kan identificeren ... dank je :))
© Ben Heine || Facebook || Twitter || www.benheine.com
_______________________________________________
Full digital painting, several days of work (please see the making below).
It's kind of unfinished, but I like it this way :D
Mika is a London-based, Grammy-nominated and BRIT Award-winning singer-songwriter.
_______________________________________________
For more information about my art: info@benheine.com
_______________________________________________
flickr sperrt uns aus! Und auch dich!
Seit gestern werden für deutsche Nutzer keine Bilder mehr angezeigt, die als 'moderate' oder 'restricted' markiert sind! Es gibt keine Moeglichkeit dies umzustellen - auf welcher Basis dies geschieht, ist unklar - es ist jedenfalls ein bemerkenswerter Umstand, dass ein US-Konzern Zensur in Deutschland ausübt.
Lade dieses Bild runter und poste es in deinem Account! Lass uns das Bild überall auf flickr verteilen und es in 'Interestingness' heben!! So geht es nicht!
Italiano:
se il tuo ID yahoo è localizzato a Singapore, in Germania oppure ad Hong Kong o in Korea potrai vedere solo foto dal contenuto che è in accordo con il locale
accordo dei termini di servizio per cui gli utenti flickr di quelle nazioni non potranno cambiare da SafeSearch on in SafeSearch off.
In altre parole ciò significa che gli utenti tedeschi e delle altre nazioni citate non potranno accedere a foto su flickr che non sono flaggate "safe" e quindi solo fiori e paesaggi per i tedeschi.
Copia e uploada quest' immagine sul tuo account - mostra a flickr chi siamo!
English:
If your Yahoo! ID is based in Singapore, Germany, Hong Kong or Korea you will only be able to view safe content based on your local Terms of Service so won’t be able to turn SafeSearch off.
In other words that means, that German users can not access photos on flickr that are not flagged "safe" ... only flowers and landscapes for the germans ...
We will not let this happen! Copy and upload this picture to your account - show flickr that they went too far!
Francais:
Si votre compte Yahoo! est basé à Singapour, à Hong Kong, en Corée ou en Allemagne, vous ne pourrez voir que les photos qui n'ont pas été marquées comme ayant un contenu qui peut choquer. Toutes les autres ne vous seront pas accessibles. Vous serez donc condamnés à ne voir que des paysages et des fleurs. Il ne faut pas laisser faire ça. Envoyez cette photo sur votre compte pour montrer à Flickr que nous savons nous mobiliser contre la censure !
Español:
Si tu Yahoo! ID está basada en Singapor, Alemania, Hong Kong o Corea sólamente verás contenido llamado seguro basándose en nuestros términos de servicio locales y no podrás deshabilitar el modo de búsqueda segura..
En otras palabras esto significa, que usuarios alemanes p.ej. ya no podrán acceder a fotos en flickr que hayan sido "flagged", es decir marcadas como no seguras y para todo público... solamente flores y paisajes para los alemanes ...
No permitiremos que ésto suceda! Copia y carga esta foto a tu cuenta de yahoo por favor para mostrar a flickr quienes somos!
Original Version: farm2.static.flickr.com/1299/543864623_7aadef1e69_o.jpg
Weitere Infos: Further infos: Plus d'infos: Altre informazioni:
- www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/91085
- www.flickr.com/groups/404938@N23/discuss/72157600347681500/
Back of the T-shirt, blue selfportrait drawn on transparent paper, newspaper clips, cotton self dyed
Auf dem blauen Boden in der blauen Spiegelküche: Rückseite Baumwoll T-Shirt, blaues Selbstporträt auf Transparentpapier gezeichnet, Baumwolle selbstgefärbt rot, Nähnadel, Kreuzstich, Zeitungsausschnitte TAZ Die Tageszeitung 10./11. Jänner. Stofffarben
#CharlieHebdo #charlie #hebdo #JeSuisCharlie #jesuischarlie #ParisShooting #NousSommesCharlie
Part of: "an apple a day keeps the doctor away - An ENSO (Japanese: circle, Japanisch: Kreis) a day .... " Aktion Kreis Tagebuch A circle diary - Start of the 365-days Project: 1. September / 11. Jänner 2015 - Tag 2 der 6 Tage Aktion mit einem getragenen T-Shirt // Prokrustes
DMC-G2 - P1870877 - 2015-01-11
#CharlieHebdo #charlie #hebdo #JeSuisCharlie #jesuischarlie #ParisShooting
auf dem blauen Boden in der blauen Spiegelk Küche: recycling eines Baumwoll Leiberls weiß, Stofffarben: blau rot schwarz, Schuhabdrücke, Etikett: Crown TAZ 10./11. Jänner
Part of: "an apple a day keeps the doctor away - An ENSO (Japanese: circle, Japanisch: Kreis) a day .... " Aktion Kreis Tagebuch A circle diary - Start of the 365-days Project: 1. September / 10. Jänner 2015 - Tag 1 der 6 Tage Aktion mit einem getragenen T-Shirt // Prokrustes
DMC-G2 - P1870864 - 2015-01-10
Teach 'em young, teach 'em to stand up for their rights, teach 'em that politicians can't be trusted to do the right thing, and that it takes informed and activist citizens to hold their feet to the fire...
Taken at an anti-bigotry rally in Federal Plaza only two months...but oh so long ago.
An unique character of Canada's Parliament Hill is that the ground is open to public and freely accessible. Demonstrator(s) can freely voice their opinion.
There are couple of unique characters who regularly demonstrate on the Parliament Hill. This is one of them. The lady and the man were in a debate.
DISCLAIMER -- The views expressed in this photo does not reflect the views of the photographer. The photograph is a reportage of an event.
Rolleiflex Automat MX Zeiss Tessar 75mm f/3,5
Kodak TMAX 400 (EI 800), XTOL (1:1), minimal agitation
CanoScan 9000F
Please, below read my comment added on Feb. 13 2021, on a serious abusive case of images & identity steal, plus my most recent comment added yesterday at the end of the post,
thanks for your attention! Stefano
Photo credits: photo & styling by our working colleague and friend ©Alice Anfuso with period accessories from our Vintage_Workshop® Accessories Archives, Italy (except legs belonging to her, the photographer). Old photo shot 10 years ago, so, will you understand there is by all means no adv intent, lol, but instead, a communication aim.
Poem. Advised music to be listened while you watch & read:
.........mmm, thinking about right now...
I have it: Talking Heads "Burning Down the House"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3eC35LoF4U
Amongst the Flickr groups guidelines:
- NO people or animals (or body parts)
- No kids
- No murals, no graffiti
- NO surface with lettering or writing
- NO textured compos
- NO landscapes
- NO cloudscapes
- NO sunrises, no sunsets
- NO blurred light effects
- No low keys
- No overexposed photos
- NO overly digitalized photos
- NO computer generated abstracts (fractals, kaleidoscopes,
collages etc)
- No heavily saturated pics
- No flowers nor plants
- No SOOCS
- No portraits
- No street-style
- No homeless
- No politics
- No religions
- No nudes
- No HDR
- No glamour models nor boudoir starlets
- NO Watermarks (gosh, 4 a pro photographer it's the signature!)
- No adverts (even if a manifest to support peace & love)
- NO videos (...)
- No comic or hilarious imagery
- No automotive (trains or airplains etc.)
- No man-made objects
- No dark themes
- No masks (1 group stupidly interpreted masks as sadomaso!! These are the damages of ignorance...)
- No dumping (never understood what the buck it is since every group has a daily/weekly limit in posting, so damp what?)
oK up to now it could be somehow, sometimes, understandable, even partially sharable, although the avant-gardists will sure have something to say about.
Notice,many grps prescribe up to 8of the above commandaments BUT now comes the scoop:
- NO painting or drawing or sculpture (!!!)
(Basically no artworks...No the pure true fine arts made by hands where an artist, independently from his discipline, can really prove & show his unmistakable talent with incontrovertible evidence).
And, remember, you don't enter in the group neither with pets, nor with ice cream :-P
Where is the experimental part of photography???
Is this, was this, will be this Flicgrrrrrrrr? LOL
Thank you.
P.S.: will add additional NO guidelines when I'll recall them while landing on some groups.
Ref. 1540-2030-11-8 (released on August 2020 and revamped in other groups on Aug. 2021, totally groups shared so far 30, + mailed privatelly at a priviledged list of trustworthy contacts).
#FreedomofExpression #LibertàdiEspressione #LibertàdiParola #FreedomofSpeech 7270>
In english:
If your Yahoo! ID is based in Singapore, Germany, Hong Kong or Korea you will only be able to view safe content based on your local Terms of Service so won’t be able to turn SafeSearch off.
In other words that means, that german users can not access photos on flickr that are not flaged "safe" ... only flowers and landscapes for the germans ...
We will not let this happen! Copy and upload this picture to your account - show flickr who we are!
Favoritiza fotos relacionadas y difunde el mensaje!
En español:
Si tu ID de Yahoo está localizada en Singapur, Alemania, Hong Kong o Corea sólo podrás ver ‘contenido seguro’ (safe search) basado en las condiciones de servicio locales. O sea que no puedes desconectar el filtro Safe Search.
En otras palabras, eso significa que los usuarios alemanes no pueden acceder a las fotos de Flickr a las que no se haya añadido la ‘bandera’ (flag) de ‘segura’... Sólo flores y paisajes para los alemanes.
¡No permitamos que suceda esto! Copia y sube esta imagen a tu cuenta. Haz saber a Flickr quienes somos.
Favoritiza fotos relacionadas y difunde el mensaje!
En alemán:
Lade dieses Bild runter und poste es in deinem Account! Lass uns das Bild überall auf flickr verteilen und es in 'Interestingness' heben!! So geht es nicht!
Original Version: farm2.static.flickr.com/1299/543864623_7aadef1e69_o.jpg
flickr sperrt uns aus! Und auch dich!
Seit gestern werden für deutsche Nutzer keine Bilder mehr angezeigt, die als 'moderate' oder 'restricted' markiert sind! Es gibt keine Moeglichkeit das umzustellen - das ist eine grobe Unverschämtheit und Frechheit von flickr!
Füge das Bild zu deinen Favoriten hinzu und poste es!
Favoritiza fotos relacionadas y difunde el mensaje!
Francais:
Si votre compte Yahoo! est basé à Singapour, à Hong Kong, en Corée ou en Allemagne, vous ne pourrez voir que les photos qui n'ont pas été marquées comme ayant un contenu qui peut choquer. Toutes les autres ne vous seront pas accessibles. Vous serez donc condamnés à ne voir que des paysages et des fleurs. Il ne faut pas laisser faire ça.
Favoritiza fotos relacionadas y difunde el mensaje!
En català:
Si la teva ID de Yahoo està localitzada a Singapur, Alemanya, Hong Kong o Corea només podràs veure el que Flickr anomena ‘contingut segur’ (safe search) basat en les condicions de serveis locals. O sigui que no pots desconnectar el fitre famós Safe Search.
Dit d’una altra manera, això significa que els usuaris alemanys no poden accedir a les fotos de Flickr a les quals no s’ha afegit l’etiqueta (flag) de ‘segura’. Només flors i paisatges per als alemanys.
Dóna suport als usuaris! Per la llibertat d’expressió!
Favoritiza fotos relacionadas y difunde el mensaje!
Favorititza imatges relacionades i difon el missatge de manera creativa!!
Em português:
Se o seu Yahoo ID tem base em Cingapura, Alemanha, Hong Kong ou Korea, você apenas poderá visualizar conteúdos seguros com base nos seus Termos de Serviço locais, e não poderá, portanto, desligar o "SafeSearch". Em outras palavras, isso significa que os usuários alemães [por exemplo - e que estão fazendo essa campanha] não poderão acessar fotos que não forem assinaladas como "seguras"... apenas flores e paisagens para os alemães!! Copiem e façam upload nas suas contas dessa foto - mostremos ao Flickr quem somos!
Favoritiza fotos relacionadas y difunde el mensaje!
Dear mates, I highly encourage to read the whole comments but especially my comment added here below today Saturday, February 13 2021 (it is the 7th one from top).
Dear Artists Friends, we had a kinda diatribe in a Flickr group trying to advise the quality of the uploads posted in there had highly decreased, abrupting & banalizing the concept for which the group was born. You know us, we speak very rarelly but,if we do, it's in the aim of giving our little contribution to improve things.
Here, for your attention & up for your consideration you'll find the thread we wrote. Enjoy &, eventually, have fun in reading what was answered to us. www.flickr.com/groups/1531500@N24/discuss/72157717700862926/
Eventually, this situation could be mapped & observed in a huge number of other groups, so, it's not our intention to make a constructive critique only about this group which professes to be an online art museum: the same could be written in fact about many others, although, will you notice that it's, at least, peculiar, the ambition to host art & art in a Net museum, on Flickr...
I personally think that, for a true artist, it's becoming very tough, up to frustration to post in certain groups where art is more & more frequently flanked by nearby mediocre or even outragious trash images...
Photo description: WonderAlice, artist & photographer, former assistant of White Angel, part of the crew of Vintage Workshop®, expressing visually her disagreement. We think it's an ironic way to introduce this serious problem with a little bit of hilarity & fairplay ;-)
Ref. DSCF4201 Ph. by #WhiteANGEL . All rights reserved.
An unique character of Canada's Parliament Hill is that the ground is open to public and freely accessible. Demonstrator(s) can freely voice their opinion.
There are couple of unique characters who regularly demonstrate on the Parliament Hill. Here is another one. He is certainly brave and I have seen many heated arguments of him with tourists from China - even the RCMP has to step in one time. For some reason I hesitated to swing my camera around and take pictures ...
DISCLAIMER -- The views expressed in this photo does not reflect the views of the photographer. The photograph is a reportage of an event.
Rolleiflex Automat MX Zeiss Tessar 75mm f/3,5
Kodak TMAX 400 (EI 800), XTOL (1:1), minimal agitation
CanoScan 9000F
Please use a tiny pinch of your time
if you still haven't;
then use another tiny pinch and:
a) go here and create an account: del.icio.us/
it's easy, will take two seconds and NO effort at all;
b) use your new del.icio.us/ account
to post a link to the petition page:
use the suggested and relevant tags
i.e: flickr protest censorship freedom UAE Etisalat petition ban block
Your tiny effort will be appreciated. Thanks in advance. And have a nice day.
The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) is a parody religion following the principles of Russells Celestial Teapot.
It is putting into practice what Russell did write about
They use the flying spaghetti monster instead of a teapot
If you don`t know this religion,please ask wikipedia, or ask google (keywords: "spaghetti monster" "pastafarian") and you will find informations in your language.
Part of: "an apple a day keeps the doctor away - An ENSO (Japanese: circle, Japanisch: Kreis) a day .... " Aktion Kreis Tagebuch A circle diary - Start of the 365-days Project: 1. September - Tag 6 der 6-Tage Aktion mit einem getragenen T-Shirt // Prokrustes
#CharlieHebdo #charlie #hebdo #JeSuisCharlie #jesuischarlie #ParisShooting #atheism #freethinker #SpaghettiMonster #russell #teapot #teekanne
DMC-G2 - P1870925 - 2015-01-15
Audrey Hepburn (1929 - 1993) had an impeccable sense of fashion and style, and she was flawless as an actress and a human being.
For those friends who don't know her
please find the tribute film by sundroid at youtube www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds5fyBLKVp0
Audrey Hepburn is one of my favorite movie star , there is one of painting box with Audrey Hepburn image at Taipei movie theater street, so everytime when I went to see the movie, I can always see her image over there. Therefore I try to create new image of Audrey Hepburn through the overlayering skill and take this bunch of artwork as a tribute to Miss Audrey Hepburn.
I am against any form of violence and terrorism.
I'm very sad for what happened in Paris. :-(
This photo is for all those people who lost their lives for freedom of expression.
__________________________
The graffiti artists always make me think about these questions.
Should the artworks be installed and displayed inside a building with admission?
Or they should be shown outside the building and have them in open space for public access?
And whether we shall consider the walls of buildings and other structures as open spaces?
Is arts meant for public appraisal or part of a private collection?
This is the graffiti seen in the back alley of Parker Street Studios when I visited Eastside Culture Crawl last weekend.
Have a great Wednesday!
I've changed the content of the museum wall, putting my own drawing into the frame: visit PhotoFunia to do the same:
I was struck by the the weary but deep and determined resolve seen on the faces of many protesters in Parliament Square on 6 September 2025 protesting the proscription of Palestine Action. In this photo, an older woman, one of the many citizens over 60 who attended the protest , sits in a silent vigil of civil disobedience.
Her hand written cardboard sign declares —"I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action" It is a direct challenge to an unjust law. Her expression presumably reflects both her comprehension of the daily horror of the ongoing genocide in Gaza as well as the gravity of the personal risk she was taking in this act of conscience.
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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 offense 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.
photo rights reserved by B℮n
The Museum of Soviet Occupation in Tbilisi offers an in-depth overview of Georgia’s history under Soviet rule, focusing on repression and the struggle for independence. The exhibition features documents, photographs, and videos covering the period from Georgia’s short-lived independence in 1918-1921 to Soviet repression and the eventual declaration of independence in 1991. Visitors can view interrogation protocols of dissidents, orders for deportation or execution, and personal files of victims of Soviet repression, as well as artifacts from Soviet-era prisons and archives of the KGB and Communist Party. However, the museum’s opening also caused controversy, especially in Russia, with Russian politicians condemning it as nationalist propaganda. Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his displeasure during a meeting with then Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in 2006. Putin pointed out that many prominent Soviet leaders, such as Joseph Stalin and Lavrentiy Beria, were of Georgian origin. Saakashvili responded with a tongue-in-cheek offer to provide funds for a Museum of the Georgian Occupation in Moscow. Saakashvili later stated that the museum would not focus on Russia, but on the Soviet occupation of Georgia 😄.
The KGB desk in the Museum of Soviet Occupation in Tbilisi provides a haunting glimpse into the tools of oppression during the Soviet era. On the desk lies the personal file of Victim 3512, a tragic symbol of the thousands who were persecuted and monitored by the regime. Next to the file are an old-fashioned telephone and a desk lamp, both emblematic of the daily workings of Soviet bureaucracy and the KGB's control. Also noteworthy is the medal featuring the likeness of Vladimir Lenin, which serves as a reminder of the revolutionary leader and the ideology that underpinned Soviet policy. Together, these objects create a powerful representation of the repression and authority exercised during the Soviet period.
Het Museum van de Sovjetbezetting in Tbilisi biedt een diepgaand overzicht van Georgië's geschiedenis onder de Sovjetheerschappij, met een focus op repressie en de strijd voor onafhankelijkheid. De tentoonstelling bevat documenten, foto's en video's die de periode bestrijkt van de kortstondige onafhankelijkheid van Georgië in 1918-1921 tot de Sovjetonderdrukking en de uiteindelijke onafhankelijkheidsverklaring in 1991. Bezoekers kunnen ondervragingsprotocollen van dissidenten, bevelen tot deportatie of executie, en persoonlijke dossiers van slachtoffers van de Sovjetrepressie bekijken, naast artefacten uit gevangenissen van het Sovjettijdperk en archieven van de KGB en Communistische Partij. De opening van het museum veroorzaakte echter ook controverse, vooral in Rusland. Russische politici veroordeelden het als nationalistische propaganda. De Russische president Vladimir Poetin uitte zijn ongenoegen tijdens een ontmoeting met de toenmalige Georgische president Mikheil Saakasjvili in 2006. Poetin benadrukte dat veel prominente Sovjetleiders, zoals Jozef Stalin en Lavrentiy Beria, van Georgische afkomst waren. Saakasjvili reageerde hierop met een ironisch aanbod om fondsen te verstrekken voor een Museum van de Georgische Bezetting in Moskou. Later verklaarde Saakasjvili dat het museum zich niet richtte op Rusland, maar op de Sovjetbezetting van Georgië 😄.
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"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves". ~Abraham Lincoln
"Freedom is the oxygen of the soul." ~Moshe Dayan
"We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home." ~Edward R. Murrow
"Liberty is the possibility of doubting, of making a mistake,... of searching and experimenting,... of saying No to any authority - literary, artistic, philosophical, religious, social, and even political." ~Ignazio Silone
This Jewish man’s simple protest sign is a powerful statement, effectively reclaiming the star of David for compassion and solidarity. This "reclamation" is NOT from Judaism itself, but from a specific, modern political nationalism (Zionism) which, in the view of many, has co-opted the star as a symbol of the state and its military actions. Instead the star on the man's placard now properly represents the universal Jewish values of compassion for and solidarity with all peoples facing oppression, and at this particular moment with Palestinians in Gaza.
His protest continues a proud Jewish history of fighting for the oppressed everywhere, and one which goes back long before prominent Jewish Americans were instrumental in co-founding the NAACP, America's foremost civil rights organization, in 1909.
His presence directly challenges any attempt to conflate support for Palestinian rights with antisemitism. The protest in London's Parliament Square on 6 September 2025 was strikingly diverse, with descendants of Holocaust survivors standing alongside other demonstrators. It underscores a key theme: that opposing the actions of the Israeli state and the unfolding genocide in Gaza is a position of conscience and, for Jewish protesters, a moral imperative central to their Jewish identity.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4221538.stm
Flickr blocked in the UAE! Please sign:
"Thousands of anti-government protesters marched in Malaysia’s capital on Saturday demanding the resignation of the prime minister, Najib Razak, over his alleged involvement in a multibillion-dollar misappropriation scandal.
Clad in yellow shirts and unfazed by arrests of activists and opposition leaders just hours before the rally, protesters marched from various spots towards the heart of Kuala Lumpur amid tight security."
www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/19/thousands-call-for-...
www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/world/asia/tens-of-thousands-o...
More of the 5 "zombies" arrested outside Starbucks down Oxford Street for "potential breach of the peace" during the Royal Wedding in London.
Orange and green ...
Je ne connais pas le nom de cette fleur ! Une variété de Gaillarde (Gaillardia) ?
Si quelqu'un peut l'identifier... merci :))
I do not know the name of this flower! A variety of Gaillarde (Gaillardia) ?
If anyone can identify it ... thank you :))
No sé el nombre de esta flor! Una variedad de Gaillarde (Gaillardia) ?
Si alguien puede identificar ... muchas gracias :))
Non conosco il nome di questo fiore! Una varieta di Gaillarde (Gaillardia) ?
Se qualcuno può identificare ... grazie :))
Eu não sei o nome desta flor! Uma variedade de Gaillarde (Gaillardia) ?
Se alguém puder identificá-lo ... obrigado :))
Ich weiß nicht, den Namen dieser Blume! Eine Vielzahl von Gaillarde (Gaillardia)?
Wenn jemand damit identifizieren kann, ich danke Ihnen :))
Ik weet niet de naam van deze bloem! Een verscheidenheid van Gaillarde (Gaillardia) ?
Als iemand kan identificeren ... dank je :))
Human society's progressed leaps and bounds beyond their projected evolutionary patterns..men have set their proud feet on the moon, send omnipotent (almost) machines to Mars, we've transgressed perhaps even God's craziest of imaginations. A human child of vulnerable birth can grown up to be a world leader, pushing buttons and razing entire colonies into dust....in our wild, sensational romp we've also given birth to borderline sexism. Despite all claims against it, the term "Female emancipation" is still highly overrated. Behind closed doors, women are still being treated like cattle, to be kept in bounds, sometimes for their undeniable physical weakness, sometimes for the social stigma that follows their upheaval if any. Womenfolks are ostracized, by their very owns, let alone the hypocritical society of men. The same effeminate emotion that has kept the race of hominids growing and going often becomes the bane of their existence, the cause of their incarceration. It's a paradox they know is embedded in their genetics, almost selfishly, but despite all the twists and turbulence, they can't seem to inch out a way.
Perhaps it's time for an evolutionary leap?
Taken in Farashganj, Old Dhaka...makes you feel how we are still sort of "Hunter Gatherers", only wearing clothes.
AI creation with Nightcafe, model HiDream I1 Fast
My text to this (in German):
Die Gedanken sind frei ---- ja, aber, sollte man aussprechen was man denkt kann man heutzutage angeklagt und eingesperrt werden. Denn die 'demokratischen Werte' müssen verteidigt werden. Das Lied habe ich in der Schule gelernt und gesungen:
de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Gedanken_sind_frei
Revised Prompt was used:
A person, dressed in tattered clothing, tied to a worn wooden chair with ropes and metal cuffs, mouth taped shut, eyes wide open in terror, set against a dark, ominous background, with the phrase 'DIE GEDANKEN SIND FREI' emblazoned in a bold, Gothic Germanic script font above, reminiscent of the styles of typography artists like Jessica Hische, Erik Spiekermann, and Martin O'Neill.
Subsequently, I had a conversation about this with Microsoft Copilot. The answer to it was:
Exactly — *Die Gedanken sind frei* is one of those deceptively simple folk songs with a surprisingly deep and layered history.
It’s a **German Volkslied** about the freedom of thought, with roots that likely stretch back to the late 18th century. The earliest known printed versions appeared on **fliegende Blätter** (song sheets) between about 1780 and 1800. The melody most people know today emerged around 1810, and in 1842 August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben included a polished version in his *Schlesische Volkslieder* collection.
The song’s core idea — that no one can bind or capture your thoughts — actually echoes medieval poetry. For example, the 13th‑century poet Freidank wrote lines meaning *“No one can find the bonds that bind my thoughts”*, and Walther von der Vogelweide also expressed that *thoughts are free*.
Over time, the lyrics have appeared in **multiple versions**:
- **Around 1800** — a shorter, four‑stanza form.
- **1842 Hoffmann von Fallersleben version** — the most widely sung today.
- **Later 19th‑century variants** — sometimes adding a fifth stanza or altering imagery.
It’s been used in many political contexts — from the 1848 revolutions to anti‑Nazi resistance — and remains a cultural shorthand for defiance against censorship or oppression.