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The Ghosts That Scare Putin - The Lost Political Conscience Of Europe by Daniel Arrhakis (2022)
The Invasion of Ukraine took much of the Western World by surprise and unprepared to face a Russia that had studied and planned this military operation for years.
From the study of international treaties to the study of annual weather forecasts, through to the improvement of the military arsenal or the reduction of western economic dependence, everything was carefully planned or else Putin is a military strategist and a deep knowledge of information, counter-intelligence services and foreign intelligence.
Laws were adapted to concentrate power in state institutions, which were attributed to figures of economic, political, internal security, judicial and military confidence.
The security of information and its total control led to repression, closure, imprisonment and even the murder of all those who opposed it or who may be able to oppose it in future.
Blackmail and fear is another of the great powers for those who have privileged access to information and Putin has never excluded himself from using it whenever necessary.
As he himself tells of a young child growing up in the tenements of Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, chasing rats with a stick.
One day he cornered one of the creatures. With nowhere to turn, the rat responded by attacking the young Vladimir, a frightening moment that would be indelibly etched in his memory of him. In his later recounting of the incident, he said it taught him that when one is alone and isolated in such a way, the best thing to do is charge at your foe.
And no doubt that this childhood lesson served him to shape his recent domestic and foreign policy.
Even because of the fact that he felt small, he also developed an inferiority complex that he always tried to overcome with the conquest of professional and political successes.
The alteration of consecutive electoral laws ended up perpetuating him in power, culminating in his unquestionable dominance over Russia, his people and his powerful army.
A power that he always aspired to, inspired by nationalist and ultra-nationalist sentiments of the former Imperial Russia and Napoleonic inspiration; in this last case in reverse geographical sense.
The fall of the Berlin Wall takes place when Putin was in Germany because from 1985 to 1990 he worked in Dresden; heading the border department.
The dismantling of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact while NATO remains active with objectives different from those initially defined was always a kind of dishonor or humiliation for him and that Putin never forgot; much in the light of the "Century of National Humiliation" used by some Chinese scholars and politicians to describe the history of China from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century, during the Opium Wars by the Western powers , and which partly explains its influence on the rise of Chinese Nationalism and, consequently, on the construction of the national identity of China and the Anti- Western and Anti-Japanese sentiment.
To try to counter this loss of influence Putin turned to Sergey Karaganov's theories that Russian-speakers, who live in non-Russian territories, can be used as an asset in foreign policy.
The implementation of the doctrine can be observed on the Russia’s near abroad policy stretching from Georgia, Moldova to Ukraine and other near abroad states. In addition to his Doctrine, Karaganov has advocated for a united Sino-Russian strategy to unify a Eurasian bloc ; hence also the approximation of positions in recent times between Russia and China.
However, the Invasion of Ukraine, despite being well planned and disguised over time, did not take into account three factors that escaped Putin's Machiavellian plan: the feeling of nationalism and independence that in the meantime grew among the Ukrainians after the invasion of Crimea in 2014 , the resistance of the military led by President Zelensky, whom Putin wrongly despised, and the unity of NATO, which in the meantime has strengthened despite efforts in previous years by Putin and Trump to condition it; in fact the role and relationship between the two will still be in the future to be better understood and revealed.
This unity on the part of Western countries then led Putin to use again his well-known power of blackmail with the threat of Russian nuclear power in order to be able to contain and paralyze any and all actions they might plan against him.
But despite this veiled threat, the truth is that Putin is afraid that the West will unite militarily and that it will overcome the loss of its Political Consciousness after the Second World War.
Because one thing is certain, the spirits of the great western leaders such as Churchill, Roosevelt or De Gaulle are increasingly present in the soul of the European people accustomed to long years of Democracy and Freedom and who are revolted by the images of a bloody war that crushes a innocent people and an army that fights alone against a tyrant dominated by imperialist impulses and subjugation of democratic peoples who just want to be free.
In his vision of the world, Putin thinks that his autocratic regime should serve as a model of success for the world and all means serve because it is his own survival and ideals that are at stake!
Just as humanity lived close to the apocalypse more than 70 years ago, so now we have the future of Europe and the world in the hands, hearts and souls of peoples who love freedom!
And do not have any doubts that the spirits of those who united and inspired the free world and the resisters of the time like Churchill, Roosevelt or De Gaulle are once again the key to our victory, because Putin does not recognize defeats, does not suffer from human suffering or respects the values of Democracy or Freedom, all are mere pieces of his strategic game to control the World, just like someone else before him tried!
It's time for us to go hunting this big mouse too!
Text and Image by Daniel Arrhakis
I've been told that my work is too dark these days, which I agree with. The thing is, I love it when my work is dark — it usually means that I'm happy, that I'm joyful enough to do these things and laugh while I do them; to find the gruesome stuff as cool as a five year old boy does; to have the time of my life with skulls and fake blood and darkish items. It means I'm okay. Really.
This was mostly a try out of my new ND filter. I've been wanting to do shallow-DOF photos in studio for a while, but I only got the cash to buy a filter now. I love it. It gives the photos such a different tone, such a softness. I really do love it.
There are two more in the comments. My love wanted me to post ths first one, but I didn't like the stare. What do you guys think?
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Don't forget I'm selling prints to fund a photo project that I can't afford right now! Help me out? Check out the info
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Front view down the pipe, five by five. Pilot in the front of course, Captain's chair in the middle up the platform, navigation starboard side, communication port side. I have to say that I'm not a fan of the nougat color, but with the flat tan it really looks nice. Again, gives it that 70s sci-fi vibe like it's straight outta something from Gerry Anderson.
On a side note: Fuck you, LEGO! Granted, you probably weren't expecting some insane buffoon like me to come along and go build something like this; however, I noticed that your profile bricks when stacked, or side by side next to standard bricks in SNOT work like this, are a half plate off over about thirty bricks. You can see the gap at the leading edge of the nougat profiles behind the pilot's pit. For that glaring inconvenience, I salute you with both middle fingers! asshats.
New addition to my Dream Chapter series! www.deviantart.com/users/outgoing?https://www.facebook.co...
We grow with years more fragile in body, but morally stouter, and can throw off the chill of a bad conscience almost at once. ~Logan Pearsall Smith
Sorry guys for being absence lately. I had a lot on my plate: projects, finals, study. But form now on I will try my best to take photos when ever I can. grin emoticon
This work is under copyright law. You CANNOT save, download, use the picture for websites or anything else WITHOUT my written permission!
“In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.- Mahatma Gandhi”
It’s up to you…
Macro Monday project – 03/17/14
"Green”
Disputed Theological Answers A Voyage Of Conscience.
Mystères philosophiques conformes perspectives inimaginables juxtapositions étrangeté connaissance,
Bildliche Schriften inspirierten Akzeptanzunterricht Kommentare verdrehen konforme Doktrinen falsch,
traduzioni latine secoli di educazione monastica intellettuali verità ambivalenti divieti teologi seguiti,
αφόρισε απαγορεύσεις καταδίκη που ακολούθησε σύγκρουση ανοησίες ετεροδόξων προμήθειες ασέβεια,
localización inmaterial ataques separados publicando distorsiones respuestas dominicanas mendicantes textos,
בני משפיעים למקף שאלות עצמאיות חניכות ביקורת חששות ישויות,
العوامل المقلقة يعتقد التطورية نهج طبيعي العوائق شظايا وجهات نظر متوافقة,
Аналогичные комментарии грозные ученые вымысл творческие различные пункты формулы изобретения руководящие доктрины,
エキゾチックな理論を解離する劇的な偶発的な危険な仮定を受け入れる.
Steve.D.Hammond.
In downtown Elora, stands a very tall statue that towers over the viewer with a finger pointed accusingly down at them. Those of us with children have probably all adopted this pose at one time or another, or as in my case, been on the receiving end of it from an angry parent. I'll reluctantly admit I was no choir boy.
The work was created by Scott McNicol and is titled, "Who's The Boss." To photograph it, I angled the camera up with a best guess while holding it below my waist at arms length. Looking at it again in post, I can't get the question of "what were you thinking" out of my head. Must be my guilty conscience emerging.
Conscience: Now reflect on what got you here.
Big Domo: Why should I listen to you? You're a pineapple. What goes on in YOUR head?
Conscience: Spongebob.
"Follow Your Conscience Without Losing Your Shirt" by TIM GRAY via NYT t.co/haC9bh6tn8 (via Twitter twitter.com/felipemassone/status/688094669947944964)
I was immediately impressed by the remarkable diversity of the crowd that gathered in London's Parliament Square on 6 September 2025 to protest the proscription of Palestine Action. The protesters included the elderly and disabled activists, many of whom had never been arrested before.
The elegantly dressed woman's handmade sign displays the precise words that, under the Terrorism Act 2000, constituted a criminal offence carrying a potentially lengthy prison sentence. She is part of a cross-section of society who felt a moral imperative to act in response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Protest and the Price of Dissent: Palestine Action and the Criminalisation of Conscience
Parliament Square on Saturday, 6 September 2025 was a scene of quiet, almost solemn defiance. The air, usually thick with the noise of London traffic and crowds of tourists, was instead filled with a palpable tension, a shared gravity that emanated from the quiet determination of hundreds of protesters, many of them over 60 years old, some sitting on steps or stools and others lying on the grass.
They held not professionally printed banners, but handwritten cardboard signs, their messages stark against the historic grandeur of their surroundings. This was not a march of chants and slogans, but a silent vigil of civil disobedience, a deliberate and calculated act of defiance against the state.
On that day, my task was to photograph the protest against the proscription of the direct-action group Palestine Action. While not always agreeing entirely with the group’s methods, I could not help but be struck by the profound dedication etched on the faces of the individual protesters.
As they sat in silence, contemplating both the horrific gravity of the situation in Gaza and the enormity of the personal risk they were taking — courting arrest under terror laws for holding a simple placard — their expressions took on a quality not dissimilar to what war photographers once called the “thousand-yard stare.” It was a look of weary but deep and determined resolve, a silent testament to their readiness to face life-changing prosecution in the name of a principle.
This scene poses a profound and unsettling question for modern Britain. How did the United Kingdom, a nation that prides itself on its democratic traditions and the right to protest, arrive at a point where hundreds of its citizens — clergy, doctors, veterans, and the elderly — could be arrested under counter-terrorism legislation for an act of silent, peaceful protest?
The events of that September afternoon were the culmination of a complex and contentious series of developments, but their significance extends far beyond a single organisation or demonstration. The proscription of Palestine Action has become a critical juncture in the nation’s relationship with dissent, a test of the elasticity of free expression, and a stark examination of its obligations under international law in the face of Israel deliberately engineering a catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
To understand what is at stake, one must unravel the threads that led to that moment: the identity of the movement, the state’s legal machinery of proscription, the confrontation in Parliament Square, and the political context that compelled so many to risk their liberty.
Direct Action and the State’s Response
Palestine Action, established in 2020, has never hidden its approach. Unlike traditional lobbying groups, it rejected appeals to political elites in favour of disrupting the physical infrastructure of complicity: factories producing parts for Israeli weapons systems, offices of arms manufacturers, and — eventually — military installations themselves.
Its tactics, while non-violent, were disruptive and confrontational. Red paint sprayed across buildings to symbolise blood, occupations that halted production, chains and locks on factory gates. For supporters, these were acts of conscience against a system enabling atrocities in Gaza. For the state, they were criminal disruptions of commerce.
That clash escalated steadily. In Oldham, a persistent campaign against Elbit Systems, a key manufacturer in the Israeli arms supply chain, culminated in the company abandoning its Ferranti site. Later actions targeted suppliers for F-35 fighter jets and other arms manufacturers. These were no random acts of mindless vandalism but part of a deliberate strategy: to impose costs high enough that complicity in Israel’s war effort would become unsustainable.
The decisive rupture came in June 2025, when activists infiltrated RAF Brize Norton, Britain’s largest airbase, and sprayed red paint into the engines of refuelling aircraft linked to operations over Gaza. For the activists, it was a desperate attempt to interrupt a supply chain of surveillance and logistical support to a state commiting genocide. For the government, it crossed a line: military assets had been attacked.
Within days, the Home Secretary announced Palestine Action would be proscribed as a terrorist organisation.
Proscription and the Expansion of “Terrorism”
Here lies the heart of the controversy. The Terrorism Act 2000 defines terrorism with unusual breadth, encompassing not only threats to life but also “serious damage to property” carried out for political or ideological aims.
In this capacious definition, breaking a factory window or disabling a machine can be legally assimilated to mass murder. By invoking this law, the government placed Palestine Action on the same legal footing as al-Qaeda or ISIS. Supporting it — even symbolically — became a serious offence.
Since July 2025, merely expressing support for the organization can carry a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. This is based on Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The specific offense is "recklessly expressing support for a proscribed organisation". However, according to Section 13 of the Act, a lower-level offence for actions like displaying hand held placards in support of a proscribed group carries a maximum sentence of six months imprisonment or a fine of five thousand pounds or both.
Civil liberties groups and human rights bodies have denounced the proscription move as disproportionate. Their concern was not primarily whether Palestine Action’s tactics might violate existing criminal law. One might reasonably argue that they did unless they might sometimes be justified in the name of preventing a greater crime.
But reframing those actions as “terrorism” represented a dangerous category error. As many pointed out, terrorism has historically referred to violence against civilians. Expanding it to cover property damage risks draining the term of meaning. Worse, it arms the state with a stigma so powerful that it can delegitimise entire political positions without debate.
The implications go further. Proscription does not simply criminalise acts. It criminalises expressions of allegiance, conscience and even speech. To say “I support Palestine Action” is no longer an opinion but technically a serious crime.
The state has moved from punishing deeds to punishing expressions of solidarity — a move with chilling consequences for democratic life.
Parliament Square: Civil Disobedience on Trial
It was this transformation that brought nearly 1,500 people into Parliament Square on 6 September. They knew what awaited them. Organisers announced in advance that protesters would hold signs reading: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” In doing so, they openly declared their intent to break the law.
The crowd was strikingly diverse. Retired doctors, clergy, war veterans, even an 83-year-old Anglican priest. Disabled activists came in wheelchairs; descendants of Holocaust survivors stood beside young students. This was not a hardened cadre of militants but a cross-section of society, many of whom had never before faced arrest.
At precisely 1 pm, the protesters all sat or lay down silently, cardboard signs raised. There was no chanting, no aggression — only a quiet insistence that they would not accept the criminalisation of conscience.The police response was equally predictable. Hundreds of officers moved systematically through the crowd, arresting anyone displaying a sign.
By the end of the day, nearly 900 people were detained under counter-terrorism law. It was one of the largest mass arrests in modern British history. Official statements later alleged police were met with violence — officers punched, spat on, objects thrown. Yet independent observers, including Amnesty International, contradicted this. They reported a peaceful assembly disrupted by aggressive policing: batons drawn, protesters shoved, some bloodied.
www.amnesty.org/zh-hans/documents/eur45/0273/2025/en/
Video footage supported at least some of Amnesty's report.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZQGFrqCf5U&t=1283s
The two narratives were irreconcilable, but only one carried the weight and authority of the state.The entire event unfolded as political theatre. The government proscribed a group, thereby creating a new crime. Protesters, convinced the law was unjust, announced their intent to commit that crime peacefully.
The police, forewarned, staged a vast operation. Each side acted out its script. The spectacle allowed the state to present itself as defending order against extremism — while in reality silencing dissent.
The Humanitarian Context: Why Protesters Risked All
To see the Parliament Square protest as a parochial dispute over free speech is to miss its driving force. The demonstrators were not there merely to defend abstract principles. They were responding to what they, and a growing body of international experts, describe as a genocide in Gaza.
By September 2025, Gaza had descended into almost total collapse. Over 63,000 Palestinians had been killed, the majority of them women and children. More than 150,000 had been injured, many maimed for life. Entire neighbourhoods had been flattened. Famine was confirmed in August, with Israel continuing to impose and even tighten deliberate restrictions on food, water, and fuel, a strategy condemned by human rights groups as a major war crime. Hospitals lay in ruins. Ninety percent of the population had been displaced.
It is in this context that the term genocide has been applied. Legal scholars point not only to mass killings but also to the deliberate infliction of life-destroying conditions, accompanied by rhetoric from Israeli officials dehumanising Palestinians as “human animals.” In September 2025, the International Association of Genocide Scholars declared that Israel’s actions met the legal definition of genocide.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cde3eyzdr63o
Major NGOs, UN experts, and even Israeli human rights groups such as B’Tselem echoed that conclusion. For the protesters, then, the question was not abstract but immediate: faced with what they saw as a genocide, could they in good conscience remain silent while their own government criminalised resistance to it? Their answer was to risk arrest, their placards making the moral connection explicit: opposing genocide meant supporting those who sought to stop it.
The Price of Dissent
The mass arrests in Parliament Square were not an isolated incident of law enforcement. They were the product of a broader trajectory: escalating tactics by a direct-action movement, a humanitarian catastrophe abroad, and a government determined to suppress dissent at home through the bluntest of instruments.
The official line insists that Palestine Action’s campaign constituted terrorism and thus warranted proscription. On this view, the arrests were simple enforcement of the law. Yet this account obscures the deeper reality: a precedent in which the state redefined non-lethal protest as terrorism, shifting from punishing actions to criminalising expressions of solidarity.
The cost is profound. Once speech and conscience themselves become suspect, dissent is no longer tolerated but pathologised. The chilling effect is already evident: individuals weigh not just whether to join a protest, but whether uttering support might expose them to years in prison. Terror laws, originally justified as a shield against mass violence, are recast as tools of political management.
The protesters understood this. That “thousand-yard stare” captured in their faces was not only the weight of potential arrest, but the knowledge of Gaza’s devastation, the famine and rubble, the deaths mounting daily. It was also the recognition that their own government had chosen to silence them rather than address its complicity.
In a functioning democracy, the question is not why citizens risk arrest for holding a handwritten cardboard sign. It is why a state finds it necessary to treat that act as a terror offence. The answer reveals a narrowing of democratic space, where conscience itself is deemed subversive. And that narrowing, history teaches, carries consequences not just for those arrested, but for the society that allows it.
lucborell est un photophone artiste
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Kathe Simbhu Stupa/Nepal (The Buddha, a symbol of peace, harmony, wisdom and conscience.
There´s been different styles and variations of Buddhist arts, the symbols and meanings of these Buddhist art remained somewhat similar for all of the Buddha statues and Buddha images from these region.
In stupas, there are giant pairs of eyes looking out from the four sides of the main tower of the stupa. These are also known as Buddha eyes and wisdom eyes. The eyes of the Buddha in the stupa symbolize the all-seeing ability of the Buddha.
Hence, according to Buddhism, we can say that if we are wise, we can see beyond material things. What we then see can is the truth. The world is in a muddle now because people don’t use their eye of Wisdom to see things. People are distracted and deluded by greed, hatred and ignorance. These desires mix them up, or bring them down and then lead us to suffering. People become distressed, depressed, anxious and suffer. These things can be called the darkness of life. Only wisdom will lead the world out of the darkness....)
Copyright © 2016 by inigolai/Photography.
No part of this picture may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means , on websites, blogs, without prior permission.
“Our consciences are littered like an old attic with the junk of sheer conviction.” - Wilford O. Cross
[I found this barn on the way to pick up Erin for a shoot, and we swung back over there, had her climb up, and shot this image, which was a *nightmare* to edit and expand. I also had a heck of a time naming it, even though I really feel it tells so many stories. I'm sure I'll come back to it and polish it further, but for now, here it be!]
...C'est comme faire face au coté obscure de soi même!
Référence musicale où tout le monde devrait trouver son compte:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=H46KRMzfj5s
Conscience is the mirror of our souls, which represents the errors of our lives in their full shape.
George Bancroft
Pisa, Italy, long exposure shot with 10 stop ND filter to demonstrate the passage of time and to make the sky and water more smooth with no distortion.
Situated in the Trinity Chapel (located in the east end of Salisbury Cathedral) this is the Prisoners of Conscience stained glass window, designed in 1980 by Gabrielle Loire from Chartres, France, remembering all prisoners of conscience held in captivity around the world. Unlike all the other stained glass windows in Salisbury Cathedral, which adhere to the classical style of art, these stained glass windows are very "modern" in style.
Viewing these stained glass windows really is a magnificent sight and when you view them for the very first time their beauty literally takes your breath away. Even from a distance they are impressive and eye catching. For example when you stand a considerable distance away in the west end, looking down Salisbury Cathedral's Nave and Quire, their bright blue stands in sharp contrast to the Cathedral's other muted tones.
Note: this is NOT an HDR image, it comes from a single RAW exposure. When I produced some HDR images of this scene last year I was not happy about them and wanted an image which concentrated upon these magnificent windows themselves. This image was taken from right below the windows in my power chair with my Canon 5D and the lens set at around 24mm. The resulting RAW image was processed in Lightroom 1.3 and Photoshop CS3.
Copyright © 2008 f2 Photography
Please Note: This image may not be used for any purpose without written permission from F-2 Photography. You are NOT allowed to download, blog, print, broadcast, publish, use in a mosaic, use on a forum, distribute, change and/or manipulate this image for commercial, private or non-commercial reasons.
Copyright © 2007 Tatiana Cardeal. All rights reserved.
Reprodução proibida. © Todos os direitos reservados.
> David, in another day at the Humminbird Cultural Center, CARF
Diadema, São Paulo.
For the Black Conscience National Day.
Nada É Impossível De Mudar
"Não aceiteis o que é de hábito como coisa natural,
pois em tempo de desordem sangrenta,
de confusão organizada,
de arbitrariedade consciente,
de humanidade desumanizada,
nada deve parecer natural
nada deve parecer impossível de mudar."
Bertolt Brecht
Prendre conscience, c'est transformer le voile qui recouvre la lumière en miroir.
[Lao-Tseu]- Extrait de Tao Te King
To become aware, it is to transform the veil which covers the light into a mirror.
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Christine Lebrasseur - Photographe
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