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It all began over a century ago when a druggist from Waco, Texas Ed Dismuke at the age of 40 was given a death sentence from his doctors. Mr. Dismuke was advised that there was no remedy for his ailing stomach and was told to prepare himself for his journey beyond his life. Being the state-of-the-art apothecary, he refused to believe this and began a search for a cure.
Ed Dismuke did not have to go far. He headed northwest about 100 miles to an acclaimed health resort town tucked away in the beautiful Palo Pinto Mountains. In the town of Mineral Wells, the pharmacist went on a drinking binge of mineral water and his ailments disappeared. He quickly sold his 25 year old pharmacy in Waco and moved lock, stock and ambition to Mineral Wells.
It was in 1904 that Ed Dismuke founded the Famous Mineral Water Company establishing himself as one of the town’s premier purveyors of the health-giving elixir. The Famous Pavilion was built in 1914, complete with a game parlor and a fortune telling booth. Drawing from his background, the successful pharmacist and author of “Dismuke’s Handy Formulas”, his book which sold nation wide, developed products from the curative waters. The nationally sought after products Pronto-lax, Residuum, Dismuke’s Famous Crystals and Dismuke’s Eyebath were an outstanding success.
Dismuke’s timing was perfect. Mineral Wells already had a worldwide reputation for its “Crazy Water” after curing a woman suffering from a nervous condition drank from a mineral well in the late 1800’s. Health seekers from all over the globe flooded to this tiny mountain community by the thousands every year. Mineral Wells, from the 1900’s to the 1950’s, was known to be the premier Spa Resort Town in Southern United States. People came to drink and bathe in the healing mineral waters.
Nearly 6 decades later, shortly before his death, Dismuke noted that his Waco doctors had been dead for a long time. “The only thing wrong with me is old age”, he told reporters after his 97th birthday. Claiming he was never again treated by doctors after beginning his daily regimen of Famous mineral water and Proto-Lax, Dismuke devotedly promoted the mineral waters’ health giving properties. Mr. Dismuke was born March 6, 1860 in Louisiana, MO and died November 6, 1957 at age 97 after falling and breaking his hip. He is buried in Elmwood cemetery in Mineral Wells.
Not a life sentence he said....
Bad experience, Bad feelings, Bad memories,
all swept under the carpet, forget, keep busy, move on,
they taught us all.
=
Child hurting, child abused, Child not wanting to except parent is to blame. Shame and name themselves they have been taught hide the truth pretend it didn't happen, dance my dance if you want my warmth back completely controlled by lower natures.
=
NOT A LIFE SENTENCE, escape, as soon as pos from any bad feelings. Escape the prison of self, condemnation, hate, self judgement and criticism ready to hand on to next generation and the next and the next designed for eternity of ancestral trauma handed on 7 generations we are told. IT'S YOUR LOT. The sins of the fathers may have been our shackles, ball and chains, Prison and housing our hearts and minds.
=
NO MORE...STOP...SHAKE IT OFF
learn from it all then step up,
Grow, evolve,
move on be free fly the cup of sorrow has been drained to its dregs
Fly sweet hearts Fly free as you have been designed to do.
I am going to risk putting myself out on a limb here (oh god, not even beyond the first sentence without a pun, bodes ill this does), but I want to discuss a bit about what makes photography...worthwhile, at least on a personal level. It is often a bit awkward for me to tackle such subjects in a forum such as Flickr, much easier to discuss things like this in a more personal nature, I often worry that tone or intent will be misconstrued. A small worry, but a bit of one nonetheless. Mainly because I don't want to sound like a know-it-all. I don't, in case you wondered. And as I often say, I don't even necessarily believe much of what I write to be true. I am perfectly capable of being wrong as well. But it is not really the being wrong or right, for which I write, it is the attempt to make myself more aware of how I think and act in regards to photography that is a valuable exercise in and of itself. Hence these "essays".
But moving on now. I get a fair number of e-mails, of which I try to answer most every one. My photography does a fair amount of inspiring ( a good thing, which always flatters me) but it also does a fair amount of impressing ( less of a good thing). I get a lot of e-mails asking for advice, which I happily give even if I never really feel like I know exactly what to say. Seems like such a simple question, but each time I wonder if I managed to say just the right thing to fan the flame of their creative spark, or if I missed the target altogether.
Anyway, I was laying on the couch just now, trying to drift off and take a nap and my brain had other ideas, some of them good enough that I decided to get up and make a post of them regarding the value we assign our photography, because this is an important concept when it comes to becoming a better photographer, in my opinion.
First off: Your photography is not limited by your camera, nor your lens. It is not limited by shutter speeds, aperture, film, focus, flash, white balance, color, black and white, grain, noise, etc. It is not limited by your budget nor your education. It is not, and I repeat, not, limited by light. It is certainly not limited by where you live or where you go. Your photography is limited simply and quite importantly, only by your own imagination and vision. All those factors I mentioned (and more) can certainly affect your photography, but ultimately you make of it what you will. Photography begins and ends with the photographer, the best light in the world, or most advanced metering system will not change that.
Second: Getting published is great. So is selling photographs. Making explorer can be flattering. So is getting hundreds of comments and favorites. Being profiled with a book or on TV is impressive. A long resume of accomplishments always looks nice. So does a polished portfolio of stunning images that draws oohs and aahs. But when it comes down to it, all this stuff is icing on the cake. Sweet but not too fulfilling. Whether you are just starting out in photography or not, but particularly if you are, don't approach it thinking one or more of things these have to be accomplished before you become a worthwhile photographer. As I said above, all your photography begins and ends with you, not with Popular Photography Magazine or MOMA or contest prizes or Explorer hits.
Your photography will never be more valuable than the value you place in it that split second before you hit the shutter button.
What matters most happens before the picture is even taken, not after. The worth of your photography is in what gets you up at 4 am in the morning to brave freezing conditions in hopes of a sunrise. It is what makes you follow your children around all day long patiently snapping frame after frame. It is what causes you to drive for miles, or walk them, in search of that moment, be it in the middle of a sprawling urban landscape or a natural one. It is significantly in what keeps you picking up that camera as the fractions of seconds become days, the days months, the months pool into years, and beyond. It is in this desire to see, to experience, to feel, to celebrate, to remember, to be a part of, to be amazed or amused, that you will find what makes your photography worthwhile. Everything that comes after the snap of the shutter is merely added drama, and it is never as important as you think it is.
If you can take this to heart, and mind, to shoot more freely from so many of these false limitations that we impose on ourselves way too often, the most common of which is to model your photography off of other people's expectations of it. Then you will also discover that the most important thing is to pursue your photography in a way that is your own. Make your photography yours, it will show.
And I will be honest, regardless of how lucid I described what I am hoping I described, or how easy I made it sound, the process is neither to go through, at least for me it wasn't. It does not happen overnight. Sometimes the proverbial lightbulb will switch on, but count yourself lucky if you experience this. I think most people reach that point by stumbling through murky gray areas feeling out their own creative nature. And this is something important to remember too. All those really good photographers you look up to and wish to emulate? They were all awkward novices at one point too. Stumbling along lost at times themselves. If a photographer tries to tell you otherwise, he is either full of himself (or herself) or has an awful memory. Really, one of the most important traits to adopt in your photography is not actually creativity, but dedication. You know, long term patience. Passion helps too. Passion is fuel for dedication.
Hmm, this is about the part where I finally decided to get up and start typing, so this is kind of the end of this train of thought (sorry another bad pun to close this out). I do hope some of this helps. I sometimes think photography is all about vision, but not always in terms of how well we see what is in front of us, quite often it involves how we see ourselves too. We each come with all the truly essential tools we need to be good photographers, but make no mistake, we can still do quite a bit to sabotage our own abilities if we aren't aware of the subversive ways in which we do it.
In terms of this photo, I took this one night a month or so ago out shooting the St. Johns Bridge with Aaron. In fact you can see his shot taken right beside me here. I figured the bridge would make a good subject to accompany what I wanted (to try) to say today.
Thanks again for reading along this far.
It was infamous once for its cheap beer, strippers, motorcycle gangs, drug deals and exchanges of stolen property.
In 2003, after a two-year investigation, Vancouver police arrested 11 people and charged them with multiple crimes, including drug trafficking, under new anti-gang legislation. At the sentencing for the man considered to be the leader of the operation, Anthony Terazakis, the judge noted that the American Hotel was the epicentre of all that criminal activity
Some of you will recall that awhile ago I did page poems with my siblings. Well we had fun and wanted to do more! :)
left to right: 8 year-old, Me, 9 year-old
Here's what they say
8 year-old: She puts red poppies and green poppies near little gentlemen.
Me: Splendid skyline. Advancing and towering. Picture that skyline. Imagine the morning, the sound, and the feeling of being in space. At liberty to have her story, her words, face-to-face.
9 year-old: My father realized that the stairs up had been my alarm clocks. I don't like to nap too long. Don't I struggle. The clock on my wall. Would you go for a walk? Father whenever I visited we go walk out Duck Lane. My mother sat up to put on my shoes. I heard my father make his way back holding the railing, no doubt I was thankful. I couldn't help remembering the breakfast office. We walked slowly on his head. I see a crow in front of the gates.
P.S: I don't pick favorites.....butttttttt......I like my 8 year-old sibling's best.
Stay Safe, Eat Doughnuts (╭☞ ⌐■ ◞ ■ )╭☞
Challenge -Complete the Sentence 2
Owner : Gibby Frogett
Art work by me. |Hugs,1Westie xxx
Link to challenge :
www.flickr.com/groups/3940040@N21/discuss/721577219212839...
Badawi is a blogger from Saudi Arabia currently serving a 10 year prison sentence for insulting Islam on his website promoting social, political and religious debate.
The Sakharov award ceremony will be held in Strasbourg on 16 December. “The conference of Presidents decided that the Sakharov Prize will go to Saudi blogger Raif Badawi”, said President Schulz announcing the 2015 Sakharov Prize in plenary. “This man, who is an extremely good man, and exemplary good man, has had imposed on him one of the most gruesome penalties that exist in this country which can only be described as brutal torture”, said Schulz. “I call on King of Saudi Arabia to stop the execution of this sentence, to release Mr Badawi, to allow him to back to his wife and to allow him to travel here for the December session to receive this prize”, he added.
Alaa Abd El-Fattah has endured much of the last twelve years in some of the worst prison conditions anywhere for his brave work in promoting democracy in Egypt. He was last arrested in September 2019 while attending Cairo's Dokki Police Station and in December last year was sentenced to five years imprisonment for "spreading false news undermining state security." More precisely, he had shared social media posts explaining the hell-hole reality of Egyptian prison conditions.
PROTEST OUTSIDE THE FOREIGN OFFICE
When this photo was taken, Alaa's two sisters, Mona and Sana'a Seif, were staging a protest in London's King Charles Street outside the British Foreign Office in the hope that the Egyptian government can be pressured to release him, as media attention began to focus on the upcoming COP27 conference at Sharm El Sheikh on Egypt's Red Sea coast.
UPDATE AS OF WEDNESDAY 9 NOVEMBER 2022
Starting from Sunday 6 November, Alaa escalated his hunger strike, and stopped taking water. His sister Sanaa Seif took a flight the same weekend to attend the COP27 conference at Sharm El Sheikh in a last-minute effort to save Alaa's life.
For the latest on Alaa's situation listen to his sister's Sanaa Seif's speech to journalists attending the conference on Tuesday 8 November - "They are very happy for him to die. The only thing they care about is that it doesn't happen while the world is watching."
www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqXibJ7PUTY
TORA PRISON - "A DAY HERE, IS LIKE A YEAR IN BELMARSH"
In April, Alaa began his hunger strike in a cell in one of the most secure sections of Cairo's sprawling and notorious Tora Prison - a maze of grim high concrete walls and watch towers, which strike fear into even the thousands of commuters who have to pass daily.
In 2012, one young Londoner confined to one of the least uncomfortable and most survivable wings of Tora prison, contrasted it with his own previous experience at Britain's high security Belmarsh. I can never forget his exact words. "A day here, is like a year at Belmarsh!" A little over 12 months later, he died of TB - the prison authorities had refused to listen to the pleas of his aunt, who fell on her knees during a rare visit, begging that he be admitted to the prison hospital.
ALAA'S HUNGER STRIKE CONTINUES AT WADI EL NATRUN PRISON
More than 200 days have passed since Alaa started his hunger strike. He has now been moved to the Wadi El Natrun prison complex in the desert north of Cairo, dubbed by inmates as the "Valley of Hell."
He may not survive much longer. However, as he holds British-Egyptian nationality, one would hope that the British government would be doing everything they could to secure his immediate release and it would be reasonable to suppose that the Foreign Office could get an immediate pledge in this regard, especially given that the British companies, including the likes of British Petroleum and BP, are the biggest investors in Egypt.
NO CONSULAR ACCESS
However, the British government have failed even to get him any consular access - think about that. That's an outrage. Even a convicted mass murderer, if British, would be entitled to consular access while in prison. That meeting would obviously not take place in his cell - but in a designated room in the prison or the highly supervised prison visiting area.
British men and women convicted of drug smuggling and other crimes in Egypt have received consular visits, so why not Alaa? The answer is because Alaa's crime is that he dared to tell the truth about Egypt, and the injustice both inside and outside its many prison walls. Nobody knows exactly how many political prisoners Egypt now has, but the number is estimated to be at least 60,000.
ALAA WAS ONE OF THE LEADERS OF THE MOST INSPIRATIONAL DEMOCRATIC REVOLT THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN
Alaa Abd El-Fattah was one of the leaders of arguably the most inspirational democratic revolt the world has seen in the last hundred years. Although the first phase of the 2011 uprising in Egypt lasted just 18 days, and although it followed the toppling of the dictator Ben Ali in Tunisia - the streets and bridges around Tahrir Square became a deadly stage watched by the world, where protesters from every walk of life were pitted against Egypt's feared state security forces. Against all the odds, and at the cost of many lives, Egyptians refused to leave the square, sleeping in front of the tanks and fending off attacks from government militia.
The Egyptian people's initial success in toppling the dictator Mubarak led to further revolts not just across the Middle East (most notably in Libya, Bahrain, Yemen and Syria) - the highly organised Tahrir-Square sit-in provided the inspiration for strikes and workplace sit-ins against austerity across the United States and Europe and to the Occupy Movement of the same year. The people of Egypt showed that it does not matter how brutal, feared and authoritarian a government is, it can be toppled if people act collectively.
THE MILITARY BACKLASH
It's true that Egypt's flirtation with the path to greater freedom seemed to be only temporary - the Egyptian authorities deployed the usual divide and rule tactics - encouraging the less committed protesters to return home - and then rushed to elections without allowing time for genuinely democratic opposition parties to develop.
Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood won the presidential election in 2012 - the Brotherhood (contrary to the perception many people have here in the West) had genuinely progressive elements within it, but the chance for any transformative radical programme was prevented partly by the corruption and self-interest of some of the main political actors and partly by opposition to its democratic mandate from the deep state (the military, the Interior Ministry, State Security, the police etc.)
The army, seeing its chance, seized power in 2013, superficially in the name of the people, but in reality, to advance the interests of the generals. The new president, Abdel Fattah El-Sissi, moved quickly to crush all opposition, and ordering his security forces to attack Muslim Brotherhood supporters who had gathered in eastern Cairo at Rabaa al-Adaweya Square, killing at least 800 people - the bloodiest massacre of civilians in Egypt's modern history.
DON'T ALLOW EGYPT TO USE COP27 TO GREENWASH ITS REGIME - AND PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION TO SAVE ALAA
Now COP27 is scheduled to take place in Sharm El-Sheikh and Sisi has been given a golden opportunity to greenwash his murderous regime, which has also seen ever increasing levels inequality and corruption. While British representatives at COP27 will be given accommodation in the most luxurious five star hotels in Sharm El-Sheikh and fall asleep listening to the sound of the waves, another British citizen, Alaa Abdel El-Fatah is near death, on a painful hunger strike in the darkest of places - his dimly lit cell. The only thing he might hear at night is the desperate cry from some prisoner in another cell appealing for medical help which most likely never comes.
If we care for freedom, real democracy and justice, we can't allow the British Foreign Office to forget Alaa - especially if it's simply not to upset the highly profitable relationship British multinationals have with one of the world's most authoritarian and corrupt regimes - a relationship which only benefits the wealthiest of Egyptians.
If you live in London, please show your support at the protest at King Charles Street - and wherever you live please sign the petition -
www.change.org/p/help-free-my-brother-before-it-s-too-lat...
Hades
Sentenced to find their true Self
And some of the "Hell-Drivers" return - wise... :-)
HKD
Zur Selbsterkenntnis Verurteilte
Man kommt nicht nach dem Tod in die Hölle, die Erde, das Leben unter bestimmten äußeren oder psychischen Bedingungen ist die Hölle. Die glühenden Emotionen, die nicht ausgelebt werden dürfen und unterdrückt werden müssen, das ist die Hölle. Selbstverurteilung, Selbstunterdrückung und Selbstkasteiung, das ist die innere Hölle.
Die äußere Hölle erleben jene, die von Krieg oder Katastrophen heimgesucht werden. Menschen, die an ihrer Psyche leiden, die Psychopathen, sie erleben die Hölle. Manche vergessen in ihrem Leid, dass es einen Wiederaufstieg gibt. Die Auferstehung als Metapher ist eine psychisch erfahrbare Möglichkeit. Die griechische Göttin Persephone (Hades’ Gattin) zeigt in ihrem Mythos, dass man die eine Hälfte des Jahres in der Unter- und die andere Hälfte in der Oberwelt verbringen kann. Das ergibt die Weisheit der Tiefe mit den Freuden und Festen des Olymp. Gute Aussichten für Psychonauten und Unterweltreisende. Der unangenehme Spaß hat einen Sinn…
HKD
I've paid my dues
Time after time
I've done my sentence
But committed no crime
And bad mistakes
I've made a few
I've had my share of sand
Kicked in my face
But I've come through
And we mean to go on and on and on and on
We are the champions, my friends
And we'll keep on fighting till the end
We are the champions
We are the champions
No time for losers
'Cause we are the champions of the World
- We Are The Champions, Queen
HER
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HIM
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Just as she finished her sentence, Myth saw something rather unnerving happening right behind the cat. The peculiar pink man was trying to hide himself behind a cushion and make a break for the door.
She cleared her throat loudly to draw the cats attention. "Ahem, um, are you sure that he came this way?", she said, stealing a glance towards the pink man edging towards the door.
Candid street shot, Hoi An Vietnam.
----------
Candid shots don't give your subject time to compose themselves. So sometimes you get this sort of Mid-sentence look.
There is great mystery in the writing of poetry.
It is a beginning without an end---
Or an end that desperately seeks its beginning, as a tail chasing its dog might do.
We travel through the not-yet-known to bring the two together.
It is a jumble of words and thoughts and half sentences that seem to make themselves known at all hours of the night or day, urging us to jot them down on paper or within some electronic application, lest we forget them.
We dump them into a pan and place it over a creative fire, waiting to be sautéed and seasoned just right; left to simmer a bit while an ingredient or two is added for flavor.
It is a journey of enjoyment and enlightenment as we work to join all the pieces of the puzzle. We don’t always know where it’s going, and that’s the fun.
With the heart and the mind as instruments, it is the job of the poet to evoke emotion by arranging these scramblings into a cohesive and hopefully coherent train that might provide an insight into the recesses of our very being.
It is the mind working to provide a voice to the soul; each soul being a unique creation of the universe.
At rest, the soul is a benevolent entity, yet it has a tendency to, at its will, scream out with a desire to be heard.
My heart, as it is known to do, wandered to the High Plains.
My body and mind necessarily followed.
In search of…?
---RAM
*
"For whom the grasses sway"
The walls of a soul touch the stars
And lay upon the land
To walk the lonely places
And welcome the echoes of silence
We are the sentient ones
The broken
And healed
And broken again
The tears to fall
And never know the earth
There to die as dust
And drift upon the lonely wind
Grain by grain
Cast to oblivion
To rest among the thistles
And float as cottonwood down
Confine us not to the firmament
But to the horizon
The wren’s feather
And the sweet summer’s cloud
Let us know this place
Beyond today
To fall quiet in the long solstice night
As a thousand snows
Let the wind be our breath upon your face
A sigh of contentment
Cast o’er the land
The smile of memories
It is our soul cleaved open
Invisible
Yet, we are everything
And nothing
Energy without mass
Intangible without evidence
Formless
Indomitable of spirit
Weep with joy
And pity not
For we are home
It is us
For whom the grasses sway
--
Rick Malo©2024
Photo---
There is little left in tiny Conway, Texas to show that a railroad once ran here.
But for more than 70 years the Rock Island 'Choctaw Route' passed through town, motorists along parallel US Highway 66 waving at the crew aboard R-67b Northerns as they highballed westbound freight over the horizon to Amarillo.
For the adventurous and the observant, there are still tiny trinkets and traces of this once-great carrier.
Just west of town an old line pole still stands along the roadbed, its form burned through by prairie wildfires, its crossarm laying in the yellow bluestem grasses of the Llano Estacado.
July 17th, 2024.
Led by the children of those imprisoned for speaking out against World War I and the draft, marchers , Members and supporters of the Children’s Crusade for Amnesty march in Washington, D.C. sometime between April 29 and August 3, 1922
Picket signs include "A little child shall lead them," "Childrens Crusade for Amnesty" "Debs is free, why not my daddy?," “Shall free speech be a crime?,” “Four years since I saw my daddy,” and “We are innocent victims.”
The U.S. passed the sedition, espionage and conscription acts during World War I that were in turn used to suppress dissent against the war. Any public opposition to the war could result in imprisonment and thousands received long prison sentences and/or were deported and/or had citizenship revoked for violating different provisions of the laws.
Among the most famous was Eugene Debs, the Socialist Party leader who campaigned for president from his jail cell and received nearly one million votes. Debs had been jailed for an antiwar speech in Canton, Ohio. He was released in December 1921 after a campaign to free him though his citizenship was not restored until 1976 when it was done posthumously.
Another well-known prisoner was Emma Goldman, a prominent anarchist who was jailed and deported to the Soviet Union for her views, despite being a naturalized citizen.
The “Children’s Crusade” was organized in St. Louis, Mo. during March and April 1922 by Kate Richards O’Hare who was herself imprisoned for fourteen months for war opposition and eventually involved relatives of the 132 political prisoners still jailed for federal crimes. An unknown number of others had been jailed on state charges.
The crusade traveled by train to rallies in Chicago, Cleveland, Rochester, New York City and Philadelphia before arriving in the District of Columbia April 29th.
Over the next two months they would meet with various members of Congress and the U.S. Attorney General to plead their case. On May 3rd, the delegation presented formal petitions on behalf of the imprisoned to the White House.
The group also attended church services at Calvary Baptist Church at the same time as President Harding.
On June 1st the group began picketing the White House as Harding refused to meet with them and continued daily until August 3rd when the group suspended their picketing and issued a statement:
“We have been picketing the White House for almost two months because the President refused to receive our plea in person, and there was no other method open to us to call it to his attention. On July 19th he received a delegation of citizens representing appeals signed by over a million persons, and to them he gave assurance that the cases in which reconsideration had been applied for would be decided in sixty days. We are confident that an examination of the records will convince him that not a single man should be held any longer.”
Harding would release some additional prisoners just prior to Christmas that year, but others still remained imprisoned.
Background and outcomes
The U.S. First Amendment protecting free speech was abandoned during World War I as several thousand people were arrested for speaking out against the war or conscription into the armed forces and these jailings in turn spurred an amnesty movement.
U.S. involvement in the war only lasted from April 2, 1917 until the armistice in November 1918.
An amnesty movement for all war resisters gained strength, particularly after the war was ended and after President Woodrow Wilson left office in January 1921.
Leading up to 1917 and the declaration of war against Germany, many labor unions, socialists, members of the so-called Old Right, and pacifist groups in the United States publicly denounced participation. However when the U.S. entered the war, most segments of American society rallied around the war.
However, left wing socialists, anarchists and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) denounced the war as an imperialist squabble between the wealthy of different nations over how to divide up the world. Quakers and other pacifists opposed the war on moral grounds
The military draft was introduced shortly after the U.S joined the war, which the anti-war movement bitterly opposed.
The Espionage Act of 1917 was passed to address spying but also contained a section which criminalized inciting or attempting to incite any mutiny, desertion, or refusal of duty in the armed forces, punishable with a fine of not more than $10,000, not more than twenty years in federal prison, or both.
Thousands of Wobblies (IWW members) and anti-war activists were prosecuted on authority of this and the Sedition Act of 1918, which tightened restrictions even more. Among the most famous was Eugene Debs, chairman of the Socialist Party of the USA for giving an anti-draft speech in Ohio. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld these prosecutions in a series of decisions.
An unknown additional number of people were prosecuted under state laws and jailed.
Conscientious objectors were punished as well, most of them Christian pacifist inductees into the armed services. They were placed directly in the armed forces and court-martialed, receiving log sentences and brutal treatment. A number of them died in Alcatraz Prison, then a military facility.
Vigilante groups were formed which suppressed dissent as well, such as by rounding up draft-age men and checking if they were in possession of draft cards or not.
Around 300,000 American men evaded or refused conscription in World War I. Immigrants, including naturalized citizens such as leading anarchist Emma Goldman, were deported, while native-born citizens, including Debs, lost their citizenship for their activities.
Perhaps 2,000 civilians convicted of sedition or under the Espionage law were held in military prisons at Fort Oglethorpe in Tennessee and Fort Douglas in Utah. They were mostly ordinary workers, including unemployed, and many whose only "crime" was to have been involved in radical politics or labor unrest. They were held along with German nationals suspected of disloyalty to the U.S. and German prisoners of war. Others convicted of political crimes were dispersed to the regular federal prison system.
After the war ended, other nations began to issue amnesty or commute the sentences of those convicted of political crimes during the war and pressure began to build in the U.S.
Delegations visited the White House in the ensuing years, including a 1920 group that included Basil M. Manly, former joint chair of the War Labor Board who said, “Washington pardoned the Tories and Lincoln pardoned the rebels. We believe President Wilson will not hesitate to grant general amnesty to the political prisoners of the world war.” Wilson, however, was unmoved.
The Sedition Act was repealed in 1921, but the Espionage Act remained, though U.S. Supreme Court decisions since then have substantially, but not explicitly, gutted the provisions used to squelch dissent.
Another delegation called on the White House April 18, 1921, along with meeting other top officials, marching by threes along the sidewalks and holding a mass meeting that evening at the Masonic Temple.
Among the delegation that met with President Warren Harding were Morris Hillquit of the Socialist Party; Rev. Norman Thomas, a later Socialist Party standard bearer; Jackson Ralston, attorney for the American Federation of Labor; and Albert DeSilver of the American Civil Liberties Union. A special appeal was made for Debs.
Debs, serving a 10-year sentence for sedition for his speech, had his sentenced commuted in December 1921 by President Warren Harding who had succeeded Wilson that year. Some 17 other prisoners also had their sentences commuted by Harding at that time.
The movement for amnesty began to gain steam as dozens of others remained imprisoned.
As 1922 began individuals and organizations around the country began to join the call for amnesty: the Georgia American Federation of Labor issued an appeal for amnesty, 50 member of Congress signed a petition for the same, socialist meetings demanding amnesty were held across the country while Quakers and other pacifists and socialists held public demonstrations.
In April 1922, the American Civil Liberties Union leader Roger Baldwin organized the Joint Amnesty Committee to coordinate activities across the country.
That same month, a million signatures on a massive petition gathered by the General Defense Committee of Chicago were delivered to the White House by Hillquit, who had also been an Socialist Party antiwar candidate for mayor of New York during the war in 1917 and drew 100,000 votes; the wife of Robert LaFollette, senator from Wisconsin; and James H. Maurer, president of the Pennsylvania Federation of Labor.
A Children’s Crusade comprised of the wives and children of some of those imprisoned and their supporters staged a well-publicized train trip across the country ending in Washington, D.C. where they picketed the White House and held meetings with government officials for a four-month period from April through August of 1922.
In August, Harding issued a statement refusing general amnesty, but committing to an expedited case-by-case review of anti-war prisoners.
The White House statement said in part, “he would never, as long as he was President, pardon any criminal who preached the destruction of the government by force.”
The idea that people were permitted free speech unless they committed or advocated “overt acts” would not be accepted as law until the late-1950s through the mid-1960s U.S. Supreme Court decisions on the imprisonment of Communist Party members during the second red scare.
The Children’s Crusade suspended their demonstrations after Harding’s statement feeling they had won as much as they would win at that time. However, other protest continued.
In December 1922, Harding issued another series of pardons and commutations, but many contained conditions of deportation and loss of citizenship.
In December 1923, President Calvin Coolidge commuted the sentences of all prisoners who had been convicted for opposing the government and Selective Service during World War I. By this point that commutation affected only 31 prisoners.
In March 1924, Coolidge restored the citizenship to those who had been convicted of desertion between the time of the Armistice of November 1918 and the war’s official end by the U.S. in 1921.
Coolidge’s successor Herbert Hoover refused to pardon or commute the sentences of any remaining prisoners or restore former prisoners citizenship in a 1929 letter to social activist Jane Adams, saying that any such decision would result in “acrimonious discussion” within the country.
It wouldn’t be until 1933 when President Franklin Roosevelt, 15 years after the end of fighting, issued a proclamation restoring civil rights to about 1,500 war resisters. The proclamation applied only to those convicted of violating the draft and espionage acts. There was no reduction in prison sentences, however, because all had already been released by that time and no restoration of rights for those convicted under the Sedition Act.
After a nationwide campaign involving petitions and resolutions, Debs’ citizenship was restored posthumously in 1976.
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHBqjzCcJd
This image is a National Photo Company photograph courtesy of the Library of Congress, Call Number: LC-F8- 18641 [P&P]
Mr. Janusz
Waisted his life, with some breaks, from 1966 until 1985. Did sentences at AŚ Białołęka, ZK Czarne, ZK Kamińsk, ZK Sztum, ZK Wołów & ZK Wronki. Tattoos done using 1 to 3 needles, Chinese ink or burned rubber from shoe sole.
Charles Burns was sentenced to 3 months at Newcastle City Gaol for the crime - false pretences.
Age (on discharge): 19
Height: 5.5
Hair: Dark
Eyes: Hazel
Place of Birth: Liverpool
Status: Single
Occupation: Miner
These photographs are of convicted criminals in Newcastle between 1871 - 1873.
Reference:TWAS: PR.NC/6/1/1253
(Copyright) We're happy for you to share this digital image within the spirit of The Commons. Please cite 'Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums' when reusing. Certain restrictions on high quality reproductions and commercial use of the original physical version apply though; if you're unsure please email archives@twmuseums.org.uk.
To purchase a hi-res copy please email archives@twmuseums.org.uk quoting the title and reference number.
Shot through thick, cloudy glass. Played with it in photoshop. The face came out decent There is noise on shoulder area. I just thought he looked so sad in his confined living quarters.
(Ref: PH/13/32).
SHOCKING MURDER OF AN OLD HUSBAND BY A YOUNG WIFE AT CAERWYS, 1842
In the Staffordshire Advertiser, 6th August 1842:
“FLINTSHIRE ASSIZES - MURDER AT CAERWYS
Hannah Roberts, aged 19, was indicted for the murder of her husband, Robert Roberts, an old man [aged 75 years], at Caerwys, by administering to him a quantity of white arsenic. The prisoner was convicted. The evidence against her, proving the facts, was the same as stated shortly after the perpetration of the crime. The Jury recommended the criminal to mercy, but, in passing sentence, Mr Baron Gurney said he did not well understand upon what grounds. He said “you stand convicted of the crime of murder – that murder committed by means of poison – the person murdered, your own husband. You stand there a melancholy example of the fatal consequences of the first lapse from virtue; for when a young woman once yields to temptation, she little knows in what it may result. If your story be true, you had formed an illicit connection with another man, and you say that when your husband died, he had promised to marry you. By your own confession, at his instigation, you thought to hasten the completion of your wishes. It is absolutely impossible to frame a doubt of your guilt.” The learned Judge, in the usual way, then passed sentence on the unfortunate culprit.
Mr Townsend then applied for a postponement of the execution, on the ground of the convict’s pregnancy.
A jury of matrons was immediately sworn to examine the prisoner, and enquire as to her pregnancy. They retired out of court for a short time, and after having the assistance of a medical gentleman, they returned with a verdict, that Hannah Roberts was quick with child.
The execution was of course ordered to be deferred until after the prisoner’s delivery.”
According to the Chester Chronicle of 16th December 1842, Hannah was “safely delivered of a fine healthy male child….with which the mother is doing well.” Her sentence was commuted to transportation for life, and she avoided execution.
Read the full story at Flintshire Record Office - Historic newspapers have now been digitised and are available to view on Find My Past. To find out more fascinating facts about Flintshire, visit Flintshire Record Office (appointments needed) and look at the collection for free!
LLOFRUDDIAEITH Y “GŴR HEN” GAN WRAIG IFANC, CAERWYS, 1842
Yn y papur newydd ‘Staffordshire Advertiser’, 6ed Awst 1842:
“FLINTSHIRE ASSIZES - MURDER AT CAERWYS
Hannah Roberts, aged 19, was indicted for the murder of her husband, Robert Roberts, an old man [aged 75 years], at Caerwys, by administering to him a quantity of white arsenic. The prisoner was convicted. The evidence against her, proving the facts, was the same as stated shortly after the perpetration of the crime. The Jury recommended the criminal to mercy, but, in passing sentence, Mr Baron Gurney said he did not well understand upon what grounds. He said “you stand convicted of the crime of murder – that murder committed by means of poison – the person murdered, your own husband. You stand there a melancholy example of the fatal consequences of the first lapse from virtue; for when a young woman once yields to temptation, she little knows in what it may result. If your story be true, you had formed an illicit connection with another man, and you say that when your husband died, he had promised to marry you. By your own confession, at his instigation, you thought to hasten the completion of your wishes. It is absolutely impossible to frame a doubt of your guilt.” The learned Judge, in the usual way, then passed sentence on the unfortunate culprit.
Mr Townsend then applied for a postponement of the execution, on the ground of the convict’s pregnancy.
A jury of matrons was immediately sworn to examine the prisoner, and enquire as to her pregnancy. They retired out of court for a short time, and after having the assistance of a medical gentleman, they returned with a verdict, that Hannah Roberts was quick with child.
The execution was of course ordered to be deferred until after the prisoner’s delivery.”
Yn y papur newydd 'Chester Chronicle', 16 Rhagfyr 1842, roedd Hannah yn “safely delivered of a fine healthy male child….with which the mother is doing well.” Dedfrydwyd hi i drafnidiaeth ar gyfer bywyd, roedd hi'n osgoi cosb marwolaeth.
Darllenwch y stori llawn yn Archifdy Sir y Fflint - mae papurau newydd hanesyddol bellach wedi eu digido ac maent ar gael i'w gweld ar Find My Past. I gael gwybod mwy o ffeithiau difyr am Sir y Fflint, ewch i Archifdy Sir y Fflint (mae angen gwneud apwyntiadau) ac edrychwch ar y casgliad am ddim!
Warning: Nonsense and intentional use of run-on sentences below!
Oh and please remember... English: It's like a second language to me!
That's a joke. It's my only language.
Join the resurgence. This means you!
If you have ever had any inkling of toying with film, if you've been considering it for some time or even have had the briefest, slightest notion that maybe, just maybe there is a world outside of the discrete cosine transform used in JPeg compression. If you've even ever been a little bored with digital, now might be the time. You can do both you know, I do. As do many, many others who know a hell of alot more about it than me. My stronghold here as an amateur is enthusiasm and if you work with film you're going to need it. Because it will...
Piss...
You...
Off....
But it's worth it. Trust me.
Both work in different ways, film and digital. You don't have to be exclusive! Your digital camera won't lash out and slap you and then storm out of the house taking the kids and the Duran Duran albums with it. O.K. Yours might but mine didn't.
Perhaps as of late you find yourself researching (also known as shopping) for the latest and greatest High Megapixel, Super Duper Multiadjustable, Fast Returning, Finely Alternating, Double Jointed, with Nicely Burled Fleece Lined Twin Frequency Drives and Twirling Fosinators of a Dreamy Delight of An SLR Point and Spray camera. If you find yourself tinkering post production for endless hours at the computer screen adding various filters and effects until your bloodshot eyes vibrate then cross, and your nose flares then drips onto your keyboard whilst your other hand that has fallen asleep holding that chocolate milk relaxes just enough to slip from your fingers hitting the cat who growls and screams and jumps from your lap scratching both your thighs causing you to hemorrhage profusely and the heightened ability to create and combine like never before new four letter words until the climactic point it where it sounds like a disgruntled Romulan who just lost an eye in a game of Lawn Jarts - trying desperately to refine that capture you made - that capture that took all of 13 seconds as you sprayed the 360 degree horizon with the shutter button held at 3 foot pounds at 5 frames per second - filling that 32Gb SD card with juicy juice Raw Files we all so love (No offence- I've done this) - as you drop to one knee with hand on heart and pray to the Lord above and All THAT IS HOLY for a shot worthy of all your wishes and dreams and worthy of an upload then ---
NOW IS THE TIME TO DO IT.
Perhaps anyway. Or not, who knows? What? Me panic?
I say this NOT ONLY because I have just imbibed two , sorry, three vodka lemonades, but also because today I read that another of my favorite film manufacturers is CEASING PRODUCTION!!! I won't say who... But You Know Who You Are! Look, I like profit as much as the next guy but come on! Man! Dammit! I immediately got online and dropped 175 bucks on film. Just in cases. I am willing to bet whoever the CFO of this outfit is, is somewhere tropical and fancy, with a yellow or pink Polo shirt tucked into his khaki shorts and wearing black socks and docksider shoes, taking pics of his kids, and his mistress, on his yacht, with a 200$ Point and Shoot, while he snickers to himself... "Film is dead, film is dead! This is where it's at. Digital! Digital is the way and the light!". Look, if you don't like it and use it, for Gods' sake man, sell the company to someone that does! There are people out there who need film and lot's of it! Hungry, cold, tired people who just want a sandwich, I mean film. More film! That's right, It's an "artsy" thing. I can't completely define it. It's a "hurt so good" thing. Last week... When nothing came out and this was over exposed and that was under exposed and the other one was covered in dust, did I quit? No. I didn't, I said give me more please. Hit me again. Next time might be better.
And it was. Cause this week every single negative came out great, like never before, and I held them up to the bathroom light, cause it's unusually bright, and I was mesmerized. Mesmerized by the light that painted 12 moderately sized 6 cm squared images in a negative state of being onto my eyeballs, past my brain stem and down into my very soul. Beauty does exist! I exclaimed aloud to no one for I was alone.
And I had to wait to see if all the hard work that film requires paid off, I had to see, cause instant gratification and film don't mix see! One takes a picture and one waits. One doesn't view it on a 3 inch screen at 960,000 dots per square inch. One takes it and keeps it safe like Gollum would until he gets home to develop it. My precious. And I took them and scanned them and now they rotate one by one deep into the night on my computer screen for no one to see but me - or you - if I choose to upload them - which I may, soon.
So, I'm not expecting all film to instantly become a thing of the past, yet, but a reduction in makers and availability is clearly a symptom of the digital age and I do understand. Digital is easy. Digital is the cash cow. Kind of like cell phones. Every year there's a new one. Instant gratification. More, more, more. How many car companies, drug stores, do it yourself home improvement stores and banks do we need on any given corner? Yes I know, I know, online it's a global economy. Although locally - urban sprawl nearly follows me home at night. Convenient but ridiculous. The more successful company should eventually win out and our misfortune is a lack of choice and competitiveness which leads to higher prices and fewer options. Do we need 137 different makers of film? I don't know, probably not. Maybe we need only 20, maybe we can make do with fewer. But I would pay more for my favorite films, I would pay more for any film if the medium becomes so anorexic that there is little to no choice of style or selection. Camera makers only make money if we continue to buy whatever is their newest, latest release. Eventually the market will saturate, sales will drop, employees will be laid off. What then? Lens sales? Storage card sales? Not likely. I have a nice digital camera with the twin cams and the fancy center and I have a boat load of film gear, both are available online for never before prices. But the pendulum swings, the resurgence is here and time may be short. The pursuit of beauty doesn't go away, it's out there, it's always been out there, waiting for you, unattainable yet within reach. The impossible is happening even now as instant film struggles for a foothold. Color film, black and white, slide, negative, positive, paper, plastic, pinhole, 35mm, 6x6cm, 4x5 or 8x10. Sharp, dull, expensive, fast, slow, cheap, exciting? Yup. Always. Unexpected? Yup, that too.
So join in the excitement, join in the frustration, join in the resurgence, the more that do, the longer we have options. And more options means good.
Check out kickstarter!
tech:
1 minute 23 seconds at f45 which is pretty small but not as small as f64 which is really, really small (and kind of cool when you think of it), but that I didn't choose because I'm afraid too. There, I said it.
Graflex Crown Graphic with Schneider-Kreuznach Super Angulon 90mm lens
Arista EDU Ultra Black and White 4x5 film.
Developed in HC-110 at 1:150, stand for 1 hours.
A very slight levels tweak with Elements.
Negative scan.
This portrait is representative of the spirit of the many older protesters who participated in the demonstration in Parliament Square against the proscription of Palestine Action on 6 September 2025. The state had deployed terror laws carrying prison sentences of up to 14 years, perhaps expecting to silence dissent. So it's not surprising that there were looks of understandable astonishment from officers who, after being ordered to make arrests, were confronted with the unflinching resolve of older protesters.
The woman's gaze is most certainly not one of apprehension or fear, but rather it is based on a profound and sobering knowledge. It is the expression of someone who has comprehended the daily horror of a plausible genocide in Gaza, where over 63,000 Palestinians have been killed. It is a silent, powerful testament to the conviction that when the state uses the law to enforce complicity, a citizen's highest duty is to break it.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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.
The Commissariat Store was constructed of local stone in 1828 - 1829 by Moreton Bay penal settlement convicts as a two-storey provisions store near the Brisbane River and what was to become Queen's Wharf. A third storey of rendered brick was added in 1913 to accommodate its continuing use as a government store and providing an address to William Street.
In 1823 Moreton Bay was chosen as a penal settlement for secondary offenders or those who had re-offended while serving their sentence of transportation in Australia. It was intended to better control these convicts and affect a reform in them through isolation, hard labour, strict discipline and harsh living conditions. In 1824 Lieutenant Miller arrived at Redcliffe with 30 convicts. As this location proved unsuitable, the settlement was moved in 1825 inland to a ridge overlooking and bounded on three sides by the Brisbane River, and simple buildings were constructed to serve it.
Penal colonies were run on a military system and so a commissariat directed the procurement, supply and distribution of essential goods, as well as serving as a custom house and bank. The first building used for this purpose in what would become Brisbane Town at Moreton Bay was a slab structure in the vicinity of the current intersection of Albert and Elizabeth streets. There were two other store structures at Amity Point and Dunwich on Stradbroke Island. In 1826 Captain Logan arrived as Commandant and began a works program that replaced key buildings with more substantial structures made of stone and brick. One of these was the Commissariat Store. Along with houses for the Commandant, Commissariat officer and chaplain, it was erected on the ridge running parallel to William and George Street that remains the focus of government to the present day.
A position near the river bank was selected for the new store, following recommended procedure, to allow goods to be conveniently loaded and unloaded from a wharf. This also provided a single point for the entry and distribution of tools, weapons, clothing and food rations to permit secure control of such vital supplies. The design was by William John Dumaresq (1793-1868) whose plans arrived from Sydney in April 1828; work on the foundations commencing some months later. Dumaresq was also responsible for the design of the store at Dunwich completed in 1828.
The original river bank in this area was quite steep and the underlying rock was quarried to create a relatively level building platform. The excavation work was heavy and carried out by the Gaol Gang of convicts as a specific punishment, but the masonry and other construction work required skilled labour and was most likely supervised by Lieutenant Thomas Bainbrigge, sent especially from Sydney with suitable workmen in 1827 and made Superintendent of Works for the colony the following year. Some time after retaining walls were constructed around three sides of the store building; the one to William Street appearing in an 1838 cross-section and the two at each side in Petrie's front elevation of the building also dated to that year.
In common with the settlement's other new buildings, the Commissariat Store followed a simple design suitable for everyday use in a penal colony and was well constructed from local materials.
The first outpost of the convict colony in Australia had been established in New South Wales in 1788, the settlement being almost immediately extended to Norfolk Island (abandoned in 1814 and re-established 1825), and then to Tasmania, to Newcastle (later to Port Macquarie), Moreton Bay and then to Western Australia (WA). The only convict-built Commissariat Stores that survive today, aside from that in Brisbane, number seven. Two remain in WA in Fremantle (1852) and Guildford (1853-4) [both entered in the WA state Heritage Register]. Four remain in Tasmania and are listed in its state register: on Maria Island (1825, part of the Darlington Probation Station also nominated to the World Heritage List in 2008), in Hobart (1808-10), Launceston (1828, Commonwealth Heritage List as Paterson Barracks Commissariat Store) and Oatlands (1827). And one remains as part of the Kingston and Arthur's Vale Historic Area on Norfolk Island [1835, also nominated to the World Heritage List in 2008].
Two of the earliest store buildings in New South Wales, both at Sydney Cove (1812) and Parramatta, have been demolished. Only three of the surviving buildings, all of which have been quite changed over time, are older than the store in Brisbane. All built during a similar period and for the same purpose, the surviving store buildings exhibit a number of similar characteristics, which include: proximity to both a point of entry for goods and the settlement served, robust and utilitarian form communicating authority, and incorporating aspects of Georgian and Regency architectural styles such as symmetrical elevations with windows decreasing in size from lower to upper levels, and restrained, classically inspired decoration.
The importance of the Brisbane store and its river frontage as a portal to the colony was emphasised by the addition of the royal cypher of King George IV and the date to the front, river-facing gable; features retained when the third storey was added later. The clear orientation towards the river (and what is now Queens Wharf Road) is also reflected in the stonework itself, which is evenly coursed at the front, but more random at the rear (William Street) and sides (Miller Park to the north-west). The Commissariat Store was built of Brisbane Tuff from the quarry at Kangaroo Point with sandstone from Oxley Creek used for footings, the base course, quoins, sills and lintels. The windows were small, unglazed and barred for security and the roof was clad with ironbark shingles. It was completed in 1829.
The only entry point into the penal settlement was via the adjacent wharf on the Brisbane River. Initially known as the King's Wharf or Jetty, it was constructed by 1827 when the boat crew's hut and boat builder's shed were first occupied. A crane was constructed on the end of the wharf in order to transfer goods from the arriving ships to the shore. The main roadway into the settlement was up along the steep river bank following the present day alignment of Queens Wharf Road. A pedestrian path developed along the slope from the wharf to the ridge of present-day William Street passing to the north-west of the Commissariat Store, through what is now Miller Park. A retaining wall along the Queens Wharf Road frontage of Miller Park had been constructed by convicts before 1831. A wall, with an opening leading to stairs in a position corresponding to this path, appears in an 1838 plan. A pencil sketch by Henry Boucher Bowerman dated c1835 shows a wall here with an arched opening a few metres up the hill from the store yard wall.
The penal colony closed in 1839 and Moreton Bay was declared open for free settlement in 1842. Other government buildings were soon sold or demolished but the Commissariat Store was retained for continued government use as a store. This did not require all the space available and allowed the upper floor to serve the government in a number of other capacities, being used for land sales in 1848 and intermittently to house immigrants during the 1850s. During this time a door was cut through to the first floor on the north-western side of the building. This enabled immigrants to enter the building through what is now Miller Park without the need to access the ground floor store. Proximity to the immigration barracks of the time (on the site of the Treasury Building), the former military barracks and guard house fitted out to receive immigrants in 1848, made the store a convenient place to accommodate overflow numbers. This use continued even after a purpose-built immigration barracks was constructed on land immediately to the south-east of the store in 1865-66 (95 William Street) and is likely to have only stopped when the new depot opened at Kangaroo Point in 1887.
In 1860, following the creation of the colony of Queensland, the store was renamed the Colonial Store. It was repaired and the upper floor was converted for use as police barracks. Eighteen new hardwood sash windows were added. Internally, six pine batten doors and a partition were constructed to provide married men's quarters and single men's barracks on the first floor. At this time a fireplace, new ironbark shingle roof, wall, window and door were added to the kitchen building in the yard (constructed there c1857). On the ground floor of the store, a raised timber floor was installed and the windows enlarged and glazed.
The storekeeper and a staff of twelve handled everything from oil for lighthouses to blankets for distribution to the Aborigines. A cottage for the storekeeper was constructed in the southern corner of the yard between 1861 and 1872, with a gabled extension to it completed in 1873.[21] During the ‘Bread and Blood' riots of 1866 an attempt was made to force entry to the store, possibly because it was seen as a symbol of government and its control of essentials.
Further north-west along William Street, the first purpose-built home of the Queensland Museum was constructed between 1876 and 1879 to a design by Francis Drummond Grenville Stanley [State Library (former)]. Over three storeys, it was intended this building comprise later stages. It created an area of open ground between its south-eastern side and the store that continued to be used as a pathway from the wharf area on the river and centre of town, and to provide access to the store's side door.
The Colonial Store was repaired and added to as the colony grew. In 1886 a single-storey brick wing was added at right angles to the original building on its southern corner running out to the boundary of the yard to the Queens Wharf Road. The wing was used as a stationery annexe, and received an extra storey in 1900. It is unclear what changes to other structures in the yard were occasioned by the erection of this annexe. It is possible the c1857 kitchen building was moved to the adjacent land (now Miller Park) at this time and the storekeepers cottage moved or demolished.
The yard also contained a number of ancillary buildings for storage and other purposes. The stables (and shed) which were said to have stood in the western corner of the yard were destroyed by fire in 1888 and then rebuilt. The old saddlery were destroyed in 1895 and replaced with a new building constructed between the store and the William Street retaining wall.
In October 1886, the Colonial Storekeeper had written to the Under Secretary of Works drawing his attention to the bad state of the wooden fence erected in William Street to back up the footpath in front of the store. A timber embankment was erected in 1887-89 (above and about 1.5 metres away from the earlier retaining wall) and fill was used to even out the land surface. In 1890 the timber embankment was replaced by a concrete retaining wall that cut through the existing land fill.
A strong room was built in the Commissariat Store for record books in 1888 and in 1889 William Street was lowered necessitating some underpinning of the existing retaining wall The roof shingles were replaced with corrugated iron about this time. In 1898, as Federation approached, the store building was renamed the Government Stores.
In time, and as the city developed, the river location became less convenient. By 1907 it was deemed by the storekeeper to be too far from the steamer wharf and railway station. In 1911 he suggested that if relocation was not possible, the addition of a lightweight upper storey with access to William Street would be helpful, providing increased floor space and improving lighting and summer cooling conditions. This suggestion was adopted and the work was commenced by contractor William Kitchen at a cost of £2194 pounds in late 1912.
The new storey was constructed of rendered brick in a Georgian Revival style sympathetic to the existing building. To keep costs down, as many as possible of the old roof timbers were reused and clad with new corrugated iron. A ventilation fleche and dormer windows were inserted to allow the attic space to be used and timber columns were added to the lower floors to help support the extra weight. A gantry and new main entrance to William Street with a semicircular hood effectively changed the orientation of the building towards the city. A new concrete retaining wall was constructed along part of the Miller Park frontage on William Street. The timber paling fence extended the full width of both lots was refurbished. Work was completed in 1913 and an electric goods lift added the following year.
In 1923, the State Stores Board was created as an initiative of the Labor government to facilitate efficient and economical purchase and distribution of goods used by government departments. This system ran with little change until the 1980s and it was administered from the former Commissariat Store, now renamed the States Stores Building. As storage needs increased, some sections moved to other buildings and in 1960 Stores vacated the building. Queensland State Archives then occupied the ground floor until 1968 and various government departments used the upper floors. Some alterations were made to accommodate their use, including installation of a new lift, which necessitated the removal of the penthouse of the 1914 lift, and probable removal of the fleche.
A plan from 1944 indicates that a number of ancillary buildings stood in the yard surrounding the Commissariat Store at that time, including: the two-story brick annexe in the southern corner (1886 and 1900); a packing case shed in the western corner; storage sheds along the northern part of the eastern elevation and the north and south-eastern walls of the building; a saddlery store along the entire north-eastern wall of the building (almost filling the gap between the building and the retaining wall to William Street); and a toilet block in the northern corner of the site.
During World War II (WWII), occupants of the store utilised a stair and walkway constructed at the top of the William Street retaining wall to access an air raid shelter associated with the adjacent Agriculture and Stock Building (95 William Street). It has been suggested that in 1945 an air raid trench constructed in the open land adjacent to the Commissariat Store (now Miller Park) was filled in.
One of the sheds in the yard was demolished and rebuilt in 1952-53. A few years later the timber fence running along the store and park lots on William Street was replaced in chain wire. In the 1960s the saddlery store and another timber shed were demolished. The pedestrian bridges leading into the store from William Street and the open ground to the north-east (now Miller Park) were rebuilt in concrete, with the original iron balustrades and gate being reused.
The 1870s museum building on William Street had become the free Public Library of Queensland by 1902. Having housed the John Oxley Library from 1931, the building's name was changed to the State Library of Queensland in 1971. In 1958 major extensions were designed to commemorate the centenary of Queensland's creation as a separate colony from New South Wales. This work was complete by 1959 and involved the construction of a large loading dock in the north-western corner of the adjacent block (where Miller Park would be established in 1980). This dock stands within easement K/CP892185 (outside the heritage boundary) and destroyed part of the convict-built retaining wall along Queens Wharf Road and extinguished the archaeological potential of that area of land.
The heritage value of the Commissariat Store has long been recognised and in 1959 it was included on the first shortlist of places recommended for preservation by the Queensland government. Extensive repairs were carried out to the stonework over a number of years and in 1970 a mason's workshop was set up in the yard to facilitate this work. In 1976 the building was vacated and the Royal Historical Society of Queensland (RHSQ) was granted occupation. The two-storey brick annexe was demolished at this time. Extensive renovations were completed to the Commissariat Store building between 1978 and 1979 including removal of the staircase, lift and strongroom and replacement of the 1861 flooring on the ground floor with masonry. The roof was tiled over new steel framework.
An archaeological investigation of the ground floor and ceiling spaces of the Commissariat Store was also undertaken in 1978 as part of the restoration works. An underfloor U-shaped brick drain was revealed during excavations (running under the centre of the building and appearing to drain from William Street toward the river). A wide range of artefacts were recovered in deposits below the floorboards, in the drain and in the ceiling spaces dating from the entire period of occupation and use of the building. The level of disturbance in the yard areas around the store – occasioned by the demolition of a range of yard buildings founded on concrete slabs - suggests it is unlikely that further archaeological evidence will be found under these areas. There is some potential to find artefacts in the land now occupied by Miller Park.
The land adjacent to the north-west of the Commissariat Store was officially gazetted as a park reserve in 1980 and named Miller Park after Captain Henry Miller, the first Commandant of the Moreton Bay penal settlement. The Store was officially opened as the headquarters of the RHSQ at this time. In 1982 in the Store's yard a paved driveway, grassed area and work shed for the stonemasons (later demolished in 1997) were installed. At this time a new stone wall and metal gates were also constructed to the Queens Wharf Road boundary of Miller Park, leaving a short section of convict-built stone wall. The park was also landscaped including construction of new ramps, staircases, retaining walls, rails and brick paths, the installation of lighting, seats, rubbish bins and new turf and plantings. None of these features are considered to be of cultural heritage significance.
A conservation plan was prepared for the Department of Public Works in 1998 and work began to reverse or modify inappropriate changes made during the renovations of the 1970s. The store's roof was re-sheeted in wide pan galvanised steel and the fleche reconstructed to recall its appearance in 1913. New pointing was completed both inside and out. The stair to the walkway on Miller Park was rebuilt. A new plywood floor was installed on the ground level, as were new steel tension members to the adzed beams there. A new lift, toilets and services, glass partitions and balustrades, and suspended ceiling on the top level were also installed at this time. This work was completed in late 2000, after which the building also housed the collection and library of the RHSQ, which continues to occupy the building in 2012.
The store was damaged by a burst water main during the flood of January 2011. Half of the William Street retaining wall between Miller Park and the walkway into the Store collapsed, sending over 75 cubic metres of sediment and debris into the yard and ground floor areas. A large concrete slab pierced the ground floor wall on the northern corner of the building. Emergency works were undertaken to stabilise the damaged section. The store's wall was repaired by Queensland Government stonemasons using original pieces of building stone salvaged from the debris.
An archaeological salvage project recovered 8579 artefacts from the debris. Artefacts included ceramic, glass and faunal materials dating from the 1850s through to the 1880s. The artefacts derive from a single depositional unit of land fill within the stratigraphy of the site that dates to the construction of the timber retaining wall in 1887.
Source: Queensland Heritage Register.
"Sentences" is a new project with Triplets (photo-philosophy.net/triplets/ )
Av. Mª Cristina - Barcelona (Spain).
Barcelona Harley Days: 18-19-20 Jun 2010.
Better seen in Fluidr.
Se ve mejor en Fluidr.
Love finished. The Spanish State finally does not accept the wish of the Catalan people approved by General Court and authenticated by himself in the ballot boxes.
Se acabó el amor. El Estado Español finalmente no acepta la voluntad del pueblo catalán aprobada por las Cortes Generales y refrendada por él mismo en las urnas.
ENGLISH
The Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia provides Catalonia's basic institutional regulations. It defines the rights and obligations of the citizens of Catalonia (Spain), the political institutions of the Catalan nationality, their competences and relations with the rest of Spain and the financing of the Government of Catalonia.
This Law was approved by referendum 18 June 2006 and supplants the Statute of Sau, which dated from 1979.
Catalonia is an Autonomous Community within the Kingdom of Spain, with the status of historical region in the Spanish Constitution of 1978. In September 2005, the Parliament of Catalonia approved the definition of Catalonia as a 'nation' in the preamble[4] of the new Statute of Autonomy (autonomous basic law). The 120 delegates of all parties (CiU, PSC, ERC, ICV-EA) with the exception of the 15 delegates of the Partido Popular approved this definition. In the opinion of the Spanish Government this has a 'declaratory' but not a 'legal' value, since the Spanish Constitution recognises the indissoluble "unity of the Spanish Nation".
The Generalitat de Catalunya is the institution in which the self-government of Catalonia is politically organised. It consists of the Parliament, the President of the Generalitat and the Executive Council or Government of Catalonia.
The Statute of Autonomy gives the Generalitat of Catalonia the powers which enable it to carry out the functions of self-government. These can be exclusive, concurrent and shared with the Spanish State or executives. The Generalitat holds jurisdiction in various matters of culture, education, health, justice, environment, communications, transportation, commerce, public safety and local governments. Catalonia has its own police force, the Mossos d'Esquadra, although the Spanish government keep agents in the region for matters relating to border control, terrorism and immigration.
Most of the justice system is administered by Spanish judicial institutions. The legal system is uniform throughout Spain, with the exception of so-called "civil law", which is administered separately within Catalonia.
The Statute has been legally contested by the surrounding Autonomous Communities of Aragon, Balearic Islands and the Valencian Community, as well as by the Partido Popular (the main opposition party at the Spanish Parliament). The objections are based on various topics such as disputed cultural heritage but, especially, on the Statute's alleged breaches of the "solidarity between regions" principle enshrined by the Constitution in fiscal and educational matters. The Constitutional Court of Spain is currently assessing the constitutionality of the challenged articles and its binding assessment is expected sometime in 2010.
The Catalan political arena has largely viewed this debate as a sort of cultural war waged by "Spanish nationalists" (espanyolistes in Catalan). In response, four of the six political parties represented at the Catalan parliament--Convergence and Union, the Catalan Socialists, Republican Left of Catalonia, and Catalan green party--reached an agreement to fight together at the Spanish Senate to reform the Constitutional Court of Spain, and hopefully nullify the possibility of an overturn of the Catalan Statute of Autonomy. This pact is particularly interesting because, aside from the fact that they all pertain to various degrees of Catalan nationalism, the four parties differ greatly in political ideology, and together, they form nearly 80% of the Catalan Parliament.
The June 28 of 2010, the Constitutional Court, in view of the resource of unconstitutionality presented by deputies of the Popular Party, and after 4 years of controversial deliberations, solved by 6 votes to favor and 4 against the constitutionality of most of the text, doing to observe the “legal inefficiency” of the Introduction (where the term consisted nation when talking about Catalonia) although the failure it maintains the definition of Catalonia like nation, and declared 14 inconstitucionales articles.
These articles treat about the language, the managing organs and judicial organs of the Generalitat of Catalonia, on competences in the matter of bank, savings banks and insurance and on the level and calculation of the participation of Catalonia in the yield of the state tributes and equilibrators and solidarity, that is, the basic axis of the self-government of Catalonia.
More info: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Autonomy_of_Catalonia
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CASTELLANO
El "Estatuto de Autonomía de Cataluña" es la norma institucional básica de Cataluña que las Cortes Generales de España han aprobado en 1932, 1979 y 2006 para otorgar la autonomía y fijar los márgenes del autogobierno de este territorio. El Estatuto de autonomía de 2006 fue aprobado por las Cortes Generales y posteriormente refrendado por los ciudadanos de Cataluña el 18 de junio de 2006. Incluye, entre otros aspectos, el sistema institucional en que se organiza la Generalidad de Cataluña, las competencias que le corresponden y su tipología, derechos y deberes de los ciudadanos, el régimen lingüístico, las relaciones institucionales de la Generalitat y la financiación de la Generalidad.
El 21 de enero de 2006, el Presidente del Gobierno de España, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero y el jefe de la oposición de Cataluña, Artur Mas llegaron a un preacuerdo sobre la definición de Cataluña en el nuevo Estatuto y sobre el modelo de financiación. El nuevo Estatuto de Cataluña fue aprobado en el Congreso de los Diputados el 30 de marzo de 2006, tras lo cual fue remitido al Senado, que lo aprobó en la Comisión General de Comunidades Autónomas el 5 de mayo de 2006 y en el pleno el 10 de mayo de 2006. En la votación final, el texto contó con el apoyo de todos los grupos políticos, salvo del PP, que votó en contra, y con la abstención de ERC.
Tras entrar en vigor el 18 de junio de 2006, el Estatuto fue recurrido por considerarlo inconstitucional en siete ocasiones por siete instancias distintas: el Partido Popular a través de la firma de sus diputados y senadores contra 187 artículos y disposiciones ; el Defensor del Pueblo contra 112 artículos y cuatro disposiciones adicionales, y cinco comunidades autónomas (Comunidad de Murcia, contra el artículo 117, La Rioja contra 12 artículos y siete disposiciones adicionales, Gobierno de Aragón contra una disposición adicional, Generalidad Valenciana contra ocho artículos y cuatro disposiciones transitorias, Gobierno de las Islas Baleares contra lo que establece el Estatuto sobre el Archivo de la Corona de Aragón).
El 28 de junio de 2010, el Tribunal Constitucional, ante el recurso de inconstitucionalidad presentado por diputados del Partido Popular, resolvió por 6 votos a favor y cuatro en contra la constitucionalidad de la mayor parte del texto, haciendo observar la "ineficacia jurídica" del Preámbulo (donde constaba el término nación al referirse a Cataluña) aunque el fallo mantiene la definición de Cataluña como nación, y declaró 14 artículos inconstitucionales.
La ponencia fue redactada finalmente por la Presidenta, María Emilia Casas, y la votación se realizó por bloques: el primero respecto al Preámbulo, en la que se resolvió por 6 votos a favor y 4 en contra mantener el término nación, si bien se advirtío de su falta de eficacia jurídica, ya que no forma parte del texto normativo; el segundo bloque afecto a los artículos a declarar inconstitucionales, siendo una mayoría de 8 magistrados contra 2 los que han votado por la inconstitucionalidad de 14 de ellos; los otros dos bloques, que eran los preceptos ajustados a la Constitución y la interpretación de los artículos sobre los que existía conformidad, fueron avalados por 6 votos a cuatro. Cuatro de los magistrados, pertenecientes al denominado sector conservador, manifestaron que presentarían un voto particular: Ramón Rodríguez Arribas, Jorge Rodríguez Zapata, Vicente Conde y Javier Delgado.
El Tribunal Constitucional declaró 14 artículos inconstitucionales: el artículo 6 sobre lengua y nombres cooficiales, el 76 sobre el carácter vinculante de los dictámenes del Consejo de Garantías Estatutarias, el 78 sobre algunas funciones del Síndico de Agravios de Cataluña, el 95.5 sobre el Presidente del Tribunal Superior de Justicia de Cataluña, el 97, 98, 99, 100 y 101 sobre el Consejo de Justicia de Cataluña, el 111 sobre las competencias compartidas entre el Estado y la Generalidad de Cataluña, el 120.2 sobre competencias de la Generalidad en cajas de ahorro, el 126.2 sobre competencia compartida en materia de crédito, banca, seguros y mutualidades no integradas en el sistema de seguridad social y el 206.3 sobre el nivel y cálculo de la participación de Cataluña en el rendimiento de los tributos estatales y mecanismos de nivelación y solidaridad.
Más info: es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estatuto_de_autonom%c3%ada_de_Catal...
As I was going through my 2006 San Francisco photos, I came across this one and thought it perfect for the sixteen random things thing, as I was tagged by kaz_tripoli.
1. I love baseball. Love it. As a kid, I didn't give much thought to whether or not I would be a fireman or a policeman. I'm sure I thought at the time that I would be a baseball player since that's about all I ever did whenever I could find at least one other person to play. ("Strike out" as we called it, required a rubber ball, a bat of choice and a wall upon which to draw a strike zone.) The Natural is one of my favourite films. I choked up in the theatre when Robert Redford's Roy Hobbs stops mid-sentence while saying something about his father to say, "God, I love baseball!" From this film comes one of the few movie lines I've memorized: "I believe we have two lives... the one we learn from and the one we live after that." (Spoken by Glenn Close's Iris Gaines.)
I was crushed... CRUSHED when I didn't make the junior knothole team I'd tried out for when I was 14 or 15. It meant the end of whatever plans I might have had for the Major Leagues. Making the varsity team in high school my senior year (the only year I tried out) didn't come close to making up for it.
2. I can still recite the phone numbers of two of my childhood friends and a girl I "liked" in grade school. (Their phone numbers at the time, of course.)
3. I will eat most anything edible (and unfortunately, I do!). I don't like peas or corned beef, although I'll eat peas if they are part of a mixed vegetable dish or some other combination. I'm also not a fan of sushi, although if I took the time to explore it more, it'd probably do me some good. The non-uncooked fish portions anyway.
4. I'm really bad at throwing things out. Memories are important to me, so those things which have memories attached to them rarely find their ways to the trash. Sometimes I save things for the kids because I don't want them to not have things from their past to share with their children or someone else who might be interested.
5. I'm a city boy. I grew up with the sounds of trains chugging and semis rumbling and tugboats groaning their sounds through the night. I have no trouble getting to sleep in loud or noisy environments most of the time. Loud drunks and thumping music hip-hop are occasional exceptions.
6. I can't smell. (Except when I don't shower, of course! Haha!) My sense of smell has never really developed. Most times, I can smell the coffee when I first open the can, or peanut butter when I crack open the jar, but other than that, I'm screwed olfactory-wise. This can be beneficial when walking into recently be-fouled bathrooms, but not so good when fires burn in the kitchen or when nuzzling up to a woman's neck. I have never walked into a house or restaurant and gotten a hint of what was to come. I couldn't begin to describe what a rose smells like. A woman will never hear me tell her that she smells nice.
7. I generally am very respectful of life, with the exceptions of mosquitoes and fruit flies.
8. I used to have one of the foremost collections in the world of rare Bob Dylan recordings. Many of the recently-made-official Bootleg CD collections are made up of recordings that I've had since the mid-70s. I had large portions of Dylan's tours from 1974, 1975, 1976, 1978 and 1979 (mostly audience tapes) before packing it in after college, marriage and children. I still have a number of these recordings on reel-to-reel tape boxed away in the basement. I saw Dylan for the first time in Toledo in 1978 (I saw him the next night in Dayton as well) and for the last time in East Lansing in 1990 and I expect I won't see him again. The 1990 show was one of the worst concerts I've ever attended and I've not heard or seen anything since that would make me want to see him again.
For those who say that Dylan can't sing or that he doesn't have a good voice (actually, I think his voice and singing have gone to hell since the late-80s; I've listened to Time Out Of Mind, his much ballyhooed Grammy-winning 1997 record, maybe twice), I point people to the original recorded version of "Love Minus Zero/No Limit", my first favourite song of his. One of my all-time favourite discoveries (prior to its official release) was "I'll Keep It With Mine". Two of my favourite audience recordings are "Abandoned Love" from 1975 in a small club in New York (The Other End, I believe) and "Tangled Up In Blue" from 1978 in Carbondale, Illinois, both of which I hope to one day digitize. The former is amazing in its raw intensity, the latter is an incredible bluesy rendition with Dylan backed by piano and saxophone.
I believe that one of the finest moments in all of music is the piano/harmonica crescendo at the end of "One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later)".
9. I have worked as a paperboy (from 9 to 17), a gas station/car wash attendant, factory worker (aluminum cookware), lab technician, ad layout artist, photo lab supervisor, lab technician (aerial survey), music coordinator and photographer.
10. I am the only one of my parents' sons to have graduated from college. Two never attended and one dropped out after a term or two. I made the Dean's list one time (as a freshman). I didn't enroll until two-and-a-half years after I'd graduated from high school after deciding that I wasn't going to work in a factory the rest of my life. I initially planned on majoring in "commercial art" but because "commercial art" per se wasn't in the course schedule (oh... there are counselors to ask, you say?), I chose journalism. I didn't like the professor in my writing class who picked on me for splitting infinitives (sorry, Jamelah!) and as fate would have it, Intro to Visual Communications Technology was amongst the core Journalism courses. My roommate was in VCT as was my then-girlfriend. I loved the instructor who remains (however remotely and loosely and tangentially) my mentor to this day.
11. I had my first bagel and my first sex at 21. Not at the same time.
12. I named both of my children. I wanted to name Zachary "Zachary Isaac" thinking that "Zip" or "Zipper" might be decent nicknames (this from someone who still suffers from the emotional scars of "PP"!). It was overruled. I'd liked the name Lyndon since seeing trailers for the film Barry Lyndon (a pretty miserable film, by the way), so Zachary Lyndon it was. Oh... Zip did become one of his high school nicknames anyway.
Allison's name came from one of the lead characters in the daytime soap Peyton Place, Allison MacKenzie, as played by Carol Lynley. I'd loved the name Kathleen since high school, and, well, after almost twenty-four hours post-birth without a name, Penny relented.
13. I have been playing guitar since I was 18 or 19... my first guitar was an Ovation, mostly because Pete Townshend played one (I thought it was a piece of crap and eventually sold it to my then sister-in-law's then-husband). I thought I would begin writing songs immediately upon learning a few chords but it wasn't to be. I wrote perhaps one or two songs that were worthy of being called songs from that time until I was almost 40. Then, my father died, one of our cats died, I put our dog down, I quit my job, my wife dumped me and all of a sudden songs came flying out of me. Since I've become so immersed in photography, I've not written a song in almost two years. I have begun to work on one in French, however, and hope to have it done in a few months.
I bought a Martin the spring before my divorce became final... as someone who rarely bought things for myself, it was a gift I felt I deserved. I was given a CFox guitar about ten years ago as payment for a photo of mine the company used in ad ad campaign they were running at the time. The company went under, but I got a nice guitar out of the deal. I gave my Martin to my son for Christmas this year as he has been in need of a good one and I could think of no better use of mine, really.
14. My grandfather was involved in show business and at one (I was told) point did bookkeeping for Guy Lombardo. Audrey and Jane Meadows reportedly were distant cousins of mine, although I don't believe my brother, who has been doing our family history, has yet to find evidence.
15. My medical emergencies have been few. The only surgery I've had was to correct for pyloric stenosis when I was an infant. It was during one of my regular check-ups shortly after birth that I "threw up across the room" at the doctor's office and it was diagnosed on the spot (or splotches you might say). The scar on my stomach is still somewhat visible. I also had to have my stomach pumped as a child after drinking turpentine my mother was using while painting the kitchen. I thought it was water, apparently.
I've had stitches as a result of two bike falls (knee and chin), with a second set of stitches applied to the knee the day after I'd had the first set removed. A friend threw a baseball at a pitch-back net and missed — the net, that is. The chin injury came while bike riding with the woman involved with both items referred to in #11.
I severely bruised a finger getting it caught in a lathe at the aluminum cookware factory... the removal of the fingernail caused more pain than the initial crushing accident.
I broke my right wrist trying to punch someone in grade school who was pushing several of us around (he put his arm up to block it). I didn't say anything to anyone for almost two weeks when I finally said something to my mother about the persistent swelling and difficulty I had with raising my arm above my waist (which the sign of the cross required).
16. I can be verbose.