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These three individuals are part of a crowd of an estimated 1,500 people who gathered for what was mostly a silent vigil of civil disobedience against the proscription of Palestine Action in London's Parliament Square on 6 September 2025. Their hand written signs express support for a proscribed group, the specific act for which 857 people were arrested under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act. This carefully planned act of mass civil disobedience drew a remarkably diverse group of citizens, including vicars and priests, war veterans and descendants of Holocaust survivors.
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Protest and the Price of Dissent: Palestine Action and the Criminalisation of Conscience
Parliament Square on Saturday, 6 September 2025 was a scene of quiet, almost solemn defiance. The air, usually thick with the noise of London traffic and crowds of tourists, was instead filled with a palpable tension, a shared gravity that emanated from the quiet determination of hundreds of protesters, many of them over 60 years old, some sitting on steps or stools and others lying on the grass.
They held not professionally printed banners, but handwritten cardboard signs, their messages stark against the historic grandeur of their surroundings. This was not a march of chants and slogans, but a silent vigil of civil disobedience, a deliberate and calculated act of defiance against the state.
On that day, my task was to photograph the protest against the proscription of the direct-action group Palestine Action. While not always agreeing entirely with the group’s methods, I could not help but be struck by the profound dedication etched on the faces of the individual protesters.
As they sat in silence, contemplating both the horrific gravity of the situation in Gaza and the enormity of the personal risk they were taking — courting arrest under terror laws for holding a simple placard — their expressions took on a quality not dissimilar to what war photographers once called the “thousand-yard stare.” It was a look of weary but deep and determined resolve, a silent testament to their readiness to face life-changing prosecution in the name of a principle.
This scene poses a profound and unsettling question for modern Britain. How did the United Kingdom, a nation that prides itself on its democratic traditions and the right to protest, arrive at a point where hundreds of its citizens — clergy, doctors, veterans, and the elderly — could be arrested under counter-terrorism legislation for an act of silent, peaceful protest?
The events of that September afternoon were the culmination of a complex and contentious series of developments, but their significance extends far beyond a single organisation or demonstration. The proscription of Palestine Action has become a critical juncture in the nation’s relationship with dissent, a test of the elasticity of free expression, and a stark examination of its obligations under international law in the face of Israel deliberately engineering a catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
To understand what is at stake, one must unravel the threads that led to that moment: the identity of the movement, the state’s legal machinery of proscription, the confrontation in Parliament Square, and the political context that compelled so many to risk their liberty.
Direct Action and the State’s Response
Palestine Action, established in 2020, has never hidden its approach. Unlike traditional lobbying groups, it rejected appeals to political elites in favour of disrupting the physical infrastructure of complicity: factories producing parts for Israeli weapons systems, offices of arms manufacturers, and — eventually — military installations themselves.
Its tactics, while non-violent, were disruptive and confrontational. Red paint sprayed across buildings to symbolise blood, occupations that halted production, chains and locks on factory gates. For supporters, these were acts of conscience against a system enabling atrocities in Gaza. For the state, they were criminal disruptions of commerce.
That clash escalated steadily. In Oldham, a persistent campaign against Elbit Systems, a key manufacturer in the Israeli arms supply chain, culminated in the company abandoning its Ferranti site. Later actions targeted suppliers for F-35 fighter jets and other arms manufacturers. These were no random acts of mindless vandalism but part of a deliberate strategy: to impose costs high enough that complicity in Israel’s war effort would become unsustainable.
The decisive rupture came in June 2025, when activists infiltrated RAF Brize Norton, Britain’s largest airbase, and sprayed red paint into the engines of refuelling aircraft linked to operations over Gaza. For the activists, it was a desperate attempt to interrupt a supply chain of surveillance and logistical support to a state commiting genocide.
For the government, it crossed a line: military assets had been attacked. Within days, the Home Secretary announced Palestine Action would be proscribed as a terrorist organisation.
Proscription and the Expansion of “Terrorism”
Here lies the heart of the controversy. The Terrorism Act 2000 defines terrorism with unusual breadth, encompassing not only threats to life but also “serious damage to property” carried out for political or ideological aims. In this capacious definition, breaking a factory window or disabling a machine can be legally assimilated to mass murder.
By invoking this law, the government placed Palestine Action on the same legal footing as al-Qaeda or ISIS. Supporting it — even symbolically — became a serious offence. Since July 2025, merely expressing support for the organization can carry a maximum prison sentence of 14 years.
This is based on Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The specific offence is "recklessly expressing support for a proscribed organisation". However, according to Section 13 of the Act, a lower-level offence for actions like displaying hand held placards in support of a proscribed group carries a maximum sentence of six months imprisonment or a fine of five thousand pounds or both.
Civil liberties groups and human rights bodies have denounced the proscription move as disproportionate. Their concern was not primarily whether Palestine Action’s tactics might violate existing criminal law. One might reasonably argue that they did unless they might sometimes be justified in the name of preventing a greater crime.
But reframing those actions as “terrorism” represented a dangerous category error. As many pointed out, terrorism has historically referred to violence against civilians. Expanding it to cover property damage risks draining the term of meaning. Worse, it arms the state with a stigma so powerful that it can delegitimise entire political positions without debate.
The implications go further. Proscription does not simply criminalise acts. It criminalises expressions of allegiance, conscience and even speech. To say “I support Palestine Action” is no longer an opinion but technically a serious crime. The state has moved from punishing deeds to punishing expressions of solidarity — a move with chilling consequences for democratic life.
Parliament Square: Civil Disobedience on Trial
It was this transformation that brought nearly 1,500 people into Parliament Square on 6 September. They knew what awaited them. Organisers announced in advance that protesters would hold signs reading: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”
In doing so, they openly declared their intent to break the law.The crowd was strikingly diverse. Retired doctors, clergy, war veterans, even an 83-year-old Anglican priest. Disabled activists came in wheelchairs; descendants of Holocaust survivors stood beside young students. This was not a hardened cadre of militants but a cross-section of society, many of whom had never before faced arrest.
At precisely 1 pm, the protesters all sat or lay down silently, cardboard signs raised. There was no chanting, no aggression — only a quiet insistence that they would not accept the criminalisation of conscience.
The police response was equally predictable. Hundreds of officers moved systematically through the crowd, arresting anyone displaying a sign. By the end of the day, nearly 900 people were detained under counter-terrorism law. It was one of the largest mass arrests in modern British history.
Official statements later alleged police were met with violence — officers punched, spat on, objects thrown. Yet independent observers, including Amnesty International, contradicted this. They reported a peaceful assembly disrupted by aggressive policing: batons drawn, protesters shoved, some bloodied.
www.amnesty.org/zh-hans/documents/eur45/0273/2025/en/
Video footage supported at least some of Amnesty's report.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZQGFrqCf5U&t=1283s
The two narratives were irreconcilable, but only one carried the weight and authority of the state.The entire event unfolded as political theatre. The government proscribed a group, thereby creating a new crime. Protesters, convinced the law was unjust, announced their intent to commit that crime peacefully.
The police, forewarned, staged a vast operation. Each side acted out its script. The spectacle allowed the state to present itself as defending order against extremism — while in reality silencing dissent.
The Humanitarian Context: Why Protesters Risked All
To see the Parliament Square protest as a parochial dispute over free speech is to miss its driving force. The demonstrators were not there merely to defend abstract principles. They were responding to what they, and a growing body of international experts, describe as a genocide in Gaza.
By September 2025, Gaza had descended into almost total collapse. Over 63,000 Palestinians had been killed, the majority of them women and children. More than 150,000 had been injured, many maimed for life. Entire neighbourhoods had been flattened. Famine was confirmed in August, with Israel continuing to impose and even tighten deliberate restrictions on food, water, and fuel, a strategy condemned by human rights groups as a major war crime. Hospitals lay in ruins. Ninety percent of the population had been displaced.
It is in this context that the term genocide has been applied. Legal scholars point not only to mass killings but also to the deliberate infliction of life-destroying conditions, accompanied by rhetoric from Israeli officials dehumanising Palestinians as “human animals.” In September 2025, the International Association of Genocide Scholars declared that Israel’s actions met the legal definition of genocide.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cde3eyzdr63o
Major NGOs, UN experts, and even Israeli human rights groups such as B’Tselem echoed that conclusion.For the protesters, then, the question was not abstract but immediate: faced with what they saw as a genocide, could they in good conscience remain silent while their own government criminalised resistance to it? Their answer was to risk arrest, their placards making the moral connection explicit: opposing genocide meant supporting those who sought to stop it.
The Price of Dissent
The mass arrests in Parliament Square were not an isolated incident of law enforcement. They were the product of a broader trajectory: escalating tactics by a direct-action movement, a humanitarian catastrophe abroad, and a government determined to suppress dissent at home through the bluntest of instruments.
The official line insists that Palestine Action’s campaign constituted terrorism and thus warranted proscription. On this view, the arrests were simple enforcement of the law. Yet this account obscures the deeper reality: a precedent in which the state redefined non-lethal protest as terrorism, shifting from punishing actions to criminalising expressions of solidarity.
The cost is profound. Once speech and conscience themselves become suspect, dissent is no longer tolerated but pathologised. The chilling effect is already evident: individuals weigh not just whether to join a protest, but whether uttering support might expose them to years in prison. Terror laws, originally justified as a shield against mass violence, are recast as tools of political management.The protesters understood this.
That “thousand-yard stare” captured in their faces was not only the weight of potential arrest, but the knowledge of Gaza’s devastation, the famine and rubble, the deaths mounting daily. It was also the recognition that their own government had chosen to silence them rather than address its complicity.
In a functioning democracy, the question is not why citizens risk arrest for holding a handwritten cardboard sign. It is why a state finds it necessary to treat that act as a terror offence. The answer reveals a narrowing of democratic space, where conscience itself is deemed subversive. And that narrowing, history teaches, carries consequences not just for those arrested, but for the society that allows it.
=== DE ===
„Ein reines Gewissen ist ein sanftes Ruhekissen“ lautet ein bekanntes Sprichwort. Franz Jägerstätter aus St. Radegund im oberösterreichischen Mühlviertel war ein religiöser Familienvater und Bauer zur Zeit des zweiten Weltkriegs. Er konnte mit seinem Gewissen nicht vereinbaren, dem mörderischen Nazi-System zu dienen und verweigerte daher den Eintritt in die Wehrmacht. Er wurde von den Nazis daher 1943 getötet und so zum Märtyrer, der inzwischen selig gesprochen wurde. Ihm wurde das im Foto gezeigte Fenster in einer Seitenkapelle der Wiener Votivkirche gewidmet, wo auch seine sterblichen Überreste bestattet wurden.
Seine dramatische Geschichte wurde bereits 1971 vom österreichischen Regisseur Axel Corti unter dem Titel "Der Fall Jägerstätter" für das TV verfilmt.
Nun hat der amerikanische Regisseur Terrence Malick das Drama von Franz Jägerstätter unter dem Titel „A hidden life“ ("Ein verborgenes Leben") für das Kino verfilmt. Dabei hat er zwar die Handlung in die Südtiroler Bergwelt versetzt, blieb aber ansonsten der Historie treu. Die Premiere erlebte der Film 2019 bei den Filmfestspielen in Cannes.
Mein Tipp: Einen der beiden Filme bei Gelegenheit ansehen, nachwirken lassen, und anschliessend darüber nachdenken was Du selbst in dieser Zeit hättest tun können um ein reines Gewissen zu bewahren.
=== EN ===
„A clean conscience is a good pillow“ is a wellknown saying. Franz Jaegerstaetter from the village St. Radegund in the Upper Austrian region Muehlviertel was a religious family father and farmer at the time of World War II. He couldn‘t reconcile with his conscience to serve the deathful Nazi system and therefore he denied the entrance into the Wehrmacht. Therefore he was killed in 1943 by the Nazis and became so a martyr, who became beatified in the meantime. The shown photo with a window in a side chapel of Vienna‘s Votive Church is dedicated to him, and there are also interred his mortal remains.
His dramatical story became already in 1971 filmed by the Austrian director Axel Corti under the title "Der Fall Jaegerstaetter" ("The cause Jaegerstaetter") for TV.
Now filmed the American director Terrence Malick the drama of Franz Jaegerstaetter as movie for cinemas under the title „A hidden life“. Thereby he moved the setting to the mountain world of South Tyrol, but sticked faithful with the rest of the history. Its premier experienced the movie 2019 at the film festival at Cannes.
My tip: Watch on occasion one of the two films, be open of the effects to yourself, and afterwards think about the possibilities what you yourself could have done at this time to preserve a clean conscience.
This physiotherapist was one of many professionals, including doctors and veterans, who joined the protest in Parliament Square against the proscription of Palestine Action on 6 September 2025, demonstrating that the crowd was a cross-section of society, not as depicted in the media a group of ideological militants.
His presence underscores the moral imperative that drove the demonstration. By displaying this sign, he knowingly risked a potential lengthy prison sentence in response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, where over 150,000 people had been injured and the healthcare system had collapsed.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Protest and the Price of Dissent: Palestine Action and the Criminalisation of Conscience
Parliament Square on Saturday, 6 September 2025 was a scene of quiet, almost solemn defiance. The air, usually thick with the noise of London traffic and crowds of tourists, was instead filled with a palpable tension, a shared gravity that emanated from the quiet determination of hundreds of protesters, many of them over 60 years old, some sitting on steps or stools and others lying on the grass.
They held not professionally printed banners, but handwritten cardboard signs, their messages stark against the historic grandeur of their surroundings. This was not a march of chants and slogans, but a silent vigil of civil disobedience, a deliberate and calculated act of defiance against the state.
On that day, my task was to photograph the protest against the proscription of the direct-action group Palestine Action. While not always agreeing entirely with the group’s methods, I could not help but be struck by the profound dedication etched on the faces of the individual protesters.
As they sat in silence, contemplating both the horrific gravity of the situation in Gaza and the enormity of the personal risk they were taking — courting arrest under terror laws for holding a simple placard — their expressions took on a quality not dissimilar to what war photographers once called the “thousand-yard stare.” It was a look of weary but deep and determined resolve, a silent testament to their readiness to face life-changing prosecution in the name of a principle.
This scene poses a profound and unsettling question for modern Britain. How did the United Kingdom, a nation that prides itself on its democratic traditions and the right to protest, arrive at a point where hundreds of its citizens — clergy, doctors, veterans, and the elderly — could be arrested under counter-terrorism legislation for an act of silent, peaceful protest?
The events of that September afternoon were the culmination of a complex and contentious series of developments, but their significance extends far beyond a single organisation or demonstration. The proscription of Palestine Action has become a critical juncture in the nation’s relationship with dissent, a test of the elasticity of free expression, and a stark examination of its obligations under international law in the face of Israel deliberately engineering a catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
To understand what is at stake, one must unravel the threads that led to that moment: the identity of the movement, the state’s legal machinery of proscription, the confrontation in Parliament Square, and the political context that compelled so many to risk their liberty.
Direct Action and the State’s Response
Palestine Action, established in 2020, has never hidden its approach. Unlike traditional lobbying groups, it rejected appeals to political elites in favour of disrupting the physical infrastructure of complicity: factories producing parts for Israeli weapons systems, offices of arms manufacturers, and — eventually — military installations themselves.
Its tactics, while non-violent, were disruptive and confrontational. Red paint sprayed across buildings to symbolise blood, occupations that halted production, chains and locks on factory gates. For supporters, these were acts of conscience against a system enabling atrocities in Gaza. For the state, they were criminal disruptions of commerce.
That clash escalated steadily. In Oldham, a persistent campaign against Elbit Systems, a key manufacturer in the Israeli arms supply chain, culminated in the company abandoning its Ferranti site. Later actions targeted suppliers for F-35 fighter jets and other arms manufacturers. These were no random acts of mindless vandalism but part of a deliberate strategy: to impose costs high enough that complicity in Israel’s war effort would become unsustainable.
The decisive rupture came in June 2025, when activists infiltrated RAF Brize Norton, Britain’s largest airbase, and sprayed red paint into the engines of refuelling aircraft linked to operations over Gaza. For the activists, it was a desperate attempt to interrupt a supply chain of surveillance and logistical support to a state commiting genocide. For the government, it crossed a line: military assets had been attacked. Within days, the Home Secretary announced Palestine Action would be proscribed as a terrorist organisation.
Proscription and the Expansion of “Terrorism”
Here lies the heart of the controversy. The Terrorism Act 2000 defines terrorism with unusual breadth, encompassing not only threats to life but also “serious damage to property” carried out for political or ideological aims. In this capacious definition, breaking a factory window or disabling a machine can be legally assimilated to mass murder.
By invoking this law, the government placed Palestine Action on the same legal footing as al-Qaeda or ISIS. Supporting it — even symbolically — became a serious offence. Since July 2025, merely expressing support for the organization can carry a maximum prison sentence of 14 years.
This is based on Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The specific offence is "recklessly expressing support for a proscribed organisation". However, according to Section 13 of the Act, a lower-level offence for actions like displaying hand held placards in support of a proscribed group carries a maximum sentence of six months imprisonment or a fine of five thousand pounds or both.
Civil liberties groups and human rights bodies have denounced the proscription move as disproportionate. Their concern was not primarily whether Palestine Action’s tactics might violate existing criminal law. One might reasonably argue that they did unless they might sometimes be justified in the name of preventing a greater crime.
But reframing those actions as “terrorism” represented a dangerous category error. As many pointed out, terrorism has historically referred to violence against civilians. Expanding it to cover property damage risks draining the term of meaning. Worse, it arms the state with a stigma so powerful that it can delegitimise entire political positions without debate.
The implications go further. Proscription does not simply criminalise acts. It criminalises expressions of allegiance, conscience and even speech. To say “I support Palestine Action” is no longer an opinion but technically a serious crime. The state has moved from punishing deeds to punishing expressions of solidarity — a move with chilling consequences for democratic life.
Parliament Square: Civil Disobedience on Trial
It was this transformation that brought nearly 1,500 people into Parliament Square on 6 September. They knew what awaited them. Organisers announced in advance that protesters would hold signs reading: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” In doing so, they openly declared their intent to break the law.
The crowd was strikingly diverse. Retired doctors, clergy, war veterans, even an 83-year-old Anglican priest. Disabled activists came in wheelchairs; descendants of Holocaust survivors stood beside young students. This was not a hardened cadre of militants but a cross-section of society, many of whom had never before faced arrest.
At precisely 1 pm, the protesters all sat or lay down silently, cardboard signs raised. There was no chanting, no aggression — only a quiet insistence that they would not accept the criminalisation of conscience.
The police response was equally predictable. Hundreds of officers moved systematically through the crowd, arresting anyone displaying a sign. By the end of the day, nearly 900 people were detained under counter-terrorism law. It was one of the largest mass arrests in modern British history.
Official statements later alleged police were met with violence — officers punched, spat on, objects thrown. Yet independent observers, including Amnesty International, contradicted this. They reported a peaceful assembly disrupted by aggressive policing: batons drawn, protesters shoved, some bloodied.
www.amnesty.org/zh-hans/documents/eur45/0273/2025/en/
Video footage supported at least some of Amnesty's report.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZQGFrqCf5U&t=1283s
The two narratives were irreconcilable, but only one carried the weight and authority of the state.
The entire event unfolded as political theatre. The government proscribed a group, thereby creating a new crime. Protesters, convinced the law was unjust, announced their intent to commit that crime peacefully. The police, forewarned, staged a vast operation. Each side acted out its script. The spectacle allowed the state to present itself as defending order against extremism — while in reality silencing dissent.
The Humanitarian Context: Why Protesters Risked All
To see the Parliament Square protest as a parochial dispute over free speech is to miss its driving force. The demonstrators were not there merely to defend abstract principles. They were responding to what they, and a growing body of international experts, describe as a genocide in Gaza.
By September 2025, Gaza had descended into almost total collapse. Over 63,000 Palestinians had been killed, the majority of them women and children. More than 150,000 had been injured, many maimed for life. Entire neighbourhoods had been flattened. Famine was confirmed in August, with Israel continuing to impose and even tighten deliberate restrictions on food, water, and fuel, a strategy condemned by human rights groups as a major war crime. Hospitals lay in ruins. Ninety percent of the population had been displaced.
It is in this context that the term genocide has been applied. Legal scholars point not only to mass killings but also to the deliberate infliction of life-destroying conditions, accompanied by rhetoric from Israeli officials dehumanising Palestinians as “human animals.” In September 2025, the International Association of Genocide Scholars declared that Israel’s actions met the legal definition of genocide.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cde3eyzdr63o
Major NGOs, UN experts, and even Israeli human rights groups such as B’Tselem echoed that conclusion.
For the protesters, then, the question was not abstract but immediate: faced with what they saw as a genocide, could they in good conscience remain silent while their own government criminalised resistance to it? Their answer was to risk arrest, their placards making the moral connection explicit: opposing genocide meant supporting those who sought to stop it.
The Price of Dissent
The mass arrests in Parliament Square were not an isolated incident of law enforcement. They were the product of a broader trajectory: escalating tactics by a direct-action movement, a humanitarian catastrophe abroad, and a government determined to suppress dissent at home through the bluntest of instruments.
The official line insists that Palestine Action’s campaign constituted terrorism and thus warranted proscription. On this view, the arrests were simple enforcement of the law. Yet this account obscures the deeper reality: a precedent in which the state redefined non-lethal protest as terrorism, shifting from punishing actions to criminalising expressions of solidarity.
The cost is profound. Once speech and conscience themselves become suspect, dissent is no longer tolerated but pathologised. The chilling effect is already evident: individuals weigh not just whether to join a protest, but whether uttering support might expose them to years in prison. Terror laws, originally justified as a shield against mass violence, are recast as tools of political management.
The protesters understood this. That “thousand-yard stare” captured in their faces was not only the weight of potential arrest, but the knowledge of Gaza’s devastation, the famine and rubble, the deaths mounting daily. It was also the recognition that their own government had chosen to silence them rather than address its complicity.
In a functioning democracy, the question is not why citizens risk arrest for holding a handwritten cardboard sign. It is why a state finds it necessary to treat that act as a terror offence. The answer reveals a narrowing of democratic space, where conscience itself is deemed subversive. And that narrowing, history teaches, carries consequences not just for those arrested, but for the society that allows it.
Flow with whatever may happen and let your mind be free. Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.
~Zhuangzi
Henri or Hendrik Conscience (3 December 1812 – 10 September 1883) was a Belgian author. He is considered as the pioneer of Dutch-language literature in Flanders, writing at a time when Belgium was dominated by French among the upper classes, in literature and government. Conscience fought as a Belgian revolutionary in 1830 and was a notable writer in the Romanticist style popular in the early 19th century. He is best known for his romantic nationalist novel, De Leeuw van Vlaenderen (1838), inspired by the victory of a Flemish peasant militia over French knights at the 1302 Battle of the Golden Spurs during the Franco-Flemish War.
Over the course of his career, he published over 100 novels and novellas and achieved considerable popularity. After his death, with the decline of romanticism, his work became less fashionable but are still considered as classics of Flemish literature.
This is the only time the observation deck, shown during the artificial night time, was used as a location, from the first season episode Conscience of the King. I have read the theory that the doorway shown at the rear of this shot was repurposed from the bridge of the bird of prey used during the filming of Balance of Terror. While the shape is correct it is hard to say. In this clapper the edge of the ceiling of the set and the relatively small area of the entire space are evident. Not sure exactly where on the Enterprise this is meant to have been, I always though perhaps above the hangar deck. Thanks to Dave T. for helping me with the restoration of this shot, these shadowed clips always challenge me.
To sit alone with my conscience will be judgment enough for me.
The face wasn't supposed to look smiley. It was supposed to be a =| face, but I had to draw it on myself, so it didn't come out exactly according to plan, hah.
Title is thanks to Billy Joel, haha. Thanks Billy.
So yeah, last night I had three separate dreams that I could remember. The last two were kind of blended together. The first was... I was in school, and getting ready to swim. I don't swim. I'm not kidding. I have a sever phobia of swimming in pools, lakes, oceans, etc. It's a long story as to why. I only started swimming last summer because I was with "Bob" and "Jerry" and I trust them with my life. But anyway, "Dan" was there, and I jumped in the pool in my bathing suit and did some laps. Got out in front of "Dan" and put my pants on hah. That was that.
The second and third were... I was driving somewhere, and going fast. I saw a car flip and blood spray, but then I was back in the car I was driving in and we drove to where the accident was. It looked like... A Marine... I knew him. He was a friend, and I was crying. His car was a wreck and he died. He was bloody and messed up, so I carried him to a... store-looking place with a friend. Next thing I knew, the Marine was on the roof and his blood was dripping onto the ground. Then I followed my friend, who was in a white suit, into the store, but it became a church... The church that we held my aunt's funeral at... I was handed a photo album of her and sitting in the front row, I started looking at it. I was crying and looking at it and my grandmother said, "She looks different, she's... Smiling."
Then I woke up. In tears. I miss her so much. I need her. I wish I had one more day. Just one. I relive her funeral and death everyday and I blame it all on me. I wish I could tell her everything I didn't before she died.
Seems like I can't do anything right, can I? I'm not even that great of a photographer. Why would I succeed at being a photojournalist? I wouldn't.
"Hello there, the angel from my nightmare,
The shadow in the background of the morgue,
The unsuspecting victim of darkness in the valley
We can live like Jack and Sally if we want
Where you can always find me
And we'll have Halloween on Christmas
And in the night we'll wish this never ends
We'll wish this never ends
(I miss you, miss you)
(I miss you, miss you)
Where are you and I'm so sorry
I cannot sleep, I cannot dream tonight
I need somebody and always
This sick strange darkness
Comes creeping on so haunting every time
And as I stared I counted
The webs from all the spiders
Catching things and eating their insides
Like indecision to call you
And hear your voice of treason
Will you come home and stop this pain tonight
Stop this pain tonight
Don't waste your time on me you're already
The voice inside my head (I miss you, miss you)
Don't waste your time on me you're already
The voice inside my head (I miss you, miss you)"
("I Miss You" by Blink-182) I've always liked this song. I thought it was appropriate.
300 more days to go.
STEELERS WIN! HELL YES!
Our acts are always judged by an inner eye. Telling us the good from the bad, the light from the dark, it sometimes can be perceived as a guide, sometimes as a burden. I believe it is important to never close that eye.
this will be the last cloud shot for a while--like three other recent shots in my stream, this was taken from the back of my hotel 04/18/09--a storm drenched much of north Texas that day--this catches the rain as it begins to fall
Tonight the fog is really impressive and scary. I went to school for a meeting with my colleagues and driving back home really you couldn't see two meters aways from the car. I got used to drive with the fog and plus I know the road very well, but really it took me a while to arrive home!
So a shot of a compass it's perfect tonight :)))
I've got this compass in my bedroom. The shot was taken with no flash, only the bedside lamp and the light from tv. Actually, I took 2 shots, but I can't say which one I prefer: the other shot is inside, please tell me what you think!
Ciao :)))
Explore: Mar 3, 2008 #283. Will, a student at Magdalene College, Cambridge, is behind bars but looks suprisingly happy for someone in this position! Well, that's because he's only acting that role:-) For many years now Cambridge students have built this cardboard "prison" infront of King's College Chapel and locked themselves in. Why? As a part of the Amnesty International's "Prisoners of Conscience" campaign. AI is at: www.amnesty.org/ .
😁 Un teselado para rememorar viejos tiempos :)
Conscience es uno de mis diseños que me hacía falta teselar hace un buen tiempo
Ultimamente he tratado de animar a las personas que me rodean a ver el plegado de teselados como algo no muy complicado, el conjunto de fotografìas en el archivo permite saber la secuencia de plegado de este singular pero fàcil patròn, espero lo disfruten y me hagan saber cuando lo plieguen:
Instrucciones:
1.- Iniciar con un Hexágono
2.-Plegar en una grilla de 1/16
3.-Marcar el Hexágono interior como se indica
4.-Hacer un giro y colapsar
5.-Centro colapsado
6.-plegar en montaña, fijarse 1 triángulo sobre el hexágono
7.-Colapsar hacia atrás
8.-Ángulo colapsado
9.-Reprtir en otras puntas
10.-Abrir modelo por los pliegues en montaña
11.-Modelo abierto, colapsar hacia atrás
12.-Modelo colapsado, repetir en otras puntas
13.-Fijese, se forma un roseton o hexágono un triágulo mas grande que el interior
14.-Bajar la pestaña como se muestra, pelliscar, vease paso siguuiente
15.-El modelo queda con una especie de cubo en el extremo inferior
16.-Hundir como se muestra en la fotografìa
17.-Levantar la pestaña y aplastar parecido al paso 13 manteniendo los dobleces
18.-Terminar de colapsar como se indica el rombo
19.-Rombo colapsado
20.-Repetir en otras puntas
21.-Abrir un poco la pestaña del centro
22-24.-Plegar en valle girando el hexágono interior
25-27.-Llevar al centro las pestañas del hexágono interior
26.-Levantar las puntas dando volumen
27.-Modelo terminado...
Diseño y plegado:
David Martínez
Old village, Khajurâho, Madhya Pradesh, India
All rights reserved - Tous droits réservés
Imposturous Ones Their Consciences Burning Their Souls.
Reflections dhorchaigh ndlísheomraí mainistreach enlightened féastaí aonair,
Tonalità del demonio luna piramidi preoccupanti problemi obbligatorie caccia,
περιφρονητική Άδη προσοχή προβλήματα, τόσο με αποκορύφωμα τα συναισθήματα αβυσσαλέα θανάτους,
ужасно эго действует риторических средств лживые официальным участием страшные злые глаза,
instigando animas sanctorum noscendis explorandisque odiosum malum vexilla interpretandi versus infernum active antecessores exercitus tui vespas,
sündige Reisende abtrünnige versteckten Pläne allegorischen Kurse kreisen Bedeutungen bestrafen Versuchungen,
التحويرات غير النظامية شل القوافي المترجمين الإيامبي المزاجية التوترات مرونة حرق,
nervösa tal du symptomatisk rotvälska beslag hysteriska sinnessjukdom störningar motstridiga historier,
meddyliau camddefnyddio ysgwyd rhithweledigaethau nonsens lunatics dychymyg mad seicopathig,
統合失調症の精神医学ヒステリックな行動の自己重要忌まわしい叫びの笑い狂人は耐えるのろい.
Steve.D.Hammond.
New Yorkers Protest the US$850 BILLION (US$3 TRILLION) Wall Street BAILOUT: Wall Street, NYC - September 25, 2008
VOTE YOUR CONSCIENCE on 04 NOVEMBER 2008!
Photographer: a. golden, eyewash design - c. 2008.
This is actually a GOOD guy. See: billionairesforbush.com/index.php for more information.
Friends,
The richest 400 Americans -- that's right, just four-hundred people -- own MORE than the bottom 150 million Americans COMBINED! 400 of the wealthiest Americans have got more stashed away than half the entire country! Their combined net worth is $1.6 trillion. During the eight years of the Bush Administration, their wealth has increased by nearly $700 billion -- the same amount that they were demanding We give to them for the "bailout." Why don't they just spend the money they made under Bush to bail themselves out? They'd still have nearly a trillion dollars left over to spread amongst themselves!
Of course, they are not going to do that -- at least not voluntarily. George W. Bush was handed a $127 billion surplus when Bill Clinton left office. Because that money was OUR money and not HIS, he did what the rich prefer to do -- spend it and never look back. Now we have a $9.5 trillion debt that will take seven generations from which to recover. Why -- on --earth – did -- our -- "representatives" -- give -- these -- robber -- barons -- $US850 BILLION -- of – OUR -- money?
Last week, proposed my own bailout plan. My suggestions, listed below, were predicated on the singular and simple belief that the rich must pull themselves up by their own platinum bootstraps. Sorry, fellows, but you drilled it into our heads one too many times: THERE...IS...NO…FREE... LUNCH ~ PERIOD! And thank you for encouraging us to hate people on welfare! So, there should have been NO HANDOUTS FROM US TO YOU! Last Friday, after voting AGAINST this BAILOUT, in an unprecedented turn of events, the House FLIP-FLOPPED their "No" Vote & said "Yes", in a rush version of a "bailout" bill vote. IN SPITE OF THE PEOPLE'S OVERWHELMING DISAPPROVAL OF THIS BAILOUT BILL... IN SPITE OF MILLIONS OF CALLS FROM THE PEOPLE CRASHING WASHINGTON "representatives'" PHONE LINES...IN SPITE OF CRASHING OUR POLITICIAN'S WEBSITES...IN SPITE OF HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE PROTESTING AROUND THE COUNTRY... THEY VOTED FOR THIS BAILOUT! The People first succeeded on Monday with the House, but failed do it with the Senate and then THE HOUSE TURNED ON US TOO!
It is clear, though, we cannot simply continue protesting without proposing exactly what it is we think THESE IDIOTS should/'ve do/one. So, after consulting with a number of people smarter than Phil Gramm, here’s the proposal, now known as "Mike's Rescue Plan." (From Michael Moore's Bailout Plan) It has 10 simple, straightforward points. They are that you DIDN'T, BUT SHOULD'VE:
1. APPOINTED A SPECIAL PROSECUTOR TO CRIMINALLY INDICT ANYONE ON WALL STREET WHO KNOWINGLY CONTRIBUTED TO THIS COLLAPSE. Before any new money was expended, Congress should have committed, by resolution, to CRIMINALLY PROSECUTE ANYONE who had ANYTHING to do with the attempted SACKING OF OUR ECONOMY. This means that anyone who committed insider trading, securities fraud or any action that helped bring about this collapse should have and MUST GO TO JAIL! This Congress SHOULD HAVE called for a Special Prosecutor who would vigorously go after everyone who created the mess, and anyone else who attempts to scam the public in future. (I like Elliot Spitzer ~ so, he played a little hanky-panky...Wall Street hates him & this is a GOOD thing.)
2. THE RICH SHOULD HAVE PAID FOR THEIR OWN BAILOUT! They may have to live in 5 houses instead of 7. They may have to drive 9 cars instead of 13. The chef for their mini-terriers may have to be reassigned. But there is no way in hell, after forcing family incomes to go down more than $2,000 dollars during the Bush years, that working people and the middle class should have to fork over one dime to underwrite the next yacht purchase.
If they truly needed the $850 billion they say they needed, well, here is an easy way they could have raised it:
a) Every couple makeing over a million dollars a year and every single taxpayer who makes over $500,000 a year should pay a 10% surcharge tax for five years. (It's the Senator Sanders plan. He's like Colonel Sanders, only he's out to fry the right chickens.) That means the rich would have still been paying less income tax than when Carter was president. That would have raise a total of $300 billion.
b) Like nearly every other democracy, they should have charged a 0.25% tax on every stock transaction. This would have raised more than $200 billion in a year.
c) Because every stockholder is a patriotic American, stockholders should have forgone receiving a dividend check for ONE quarter and instead this money would have gone the treasury to help pay for the bullsh*t bailout.
d) 25% of major U.S. corporations currently pay NO federal income tax. Federal corporate tax revenues currently amount to 1.7% of the GDP compared to 5% in the 1950s. If we raised the corporate income tax BACK to the levels of the 1950s, this would give us an extra $500 billion.
All of this combined should have been enough to end the calamity. The rich would have gotten to keep their mansions and their servants and our United States government ("COUNTRY FIRST!") would've have a little leftover to repair some roads, bridges and schools...
3. YOU SHOULD HAVE BAIL OUT THE PEOPLE LOSING THEIR HOMES, NOT THE PEOPLE WHO WILL BUILD AN EIGHTH HOME! There are 1.3 million homes in foreclosure right now. That is what is at the heart of this problem. So, instead of giving the money to the banks as a gift, they should have paid down each of these mortgages by $100,000. They should have forced the banks to renegotiate the mortgage so the homeowner could pay on its current value. To insure that this help wouldn't go to speculators and those who tried to making money by flipping houses, the bailout should have only been for people's primary residences. And, in return for the $100K pay-down on the existing mortgage, the government would have gotten to share in the holding of the mortgage so it could get some of its money back. Thus, the total initial cost of fixing the mortgage crisis at its roots (instead of with the greedy lenders) is $150 billion, not $850 BILLION.
And let's set the record straight. People who have defaulted on their mortgages are not "bad risks." They are our fellow Americans, and all they wanted was what we all want: a home to call their own. But, during the Bush years, millions of the People lost the decent paying jobs they had. SIX MILLION fell into poverty! SEVEN MILLION lost their health insurance! And, every one of them saw their real wages go DOWN by $2,000! Those who DARE look down on these Americans who got hit with one bad break after another should be ASHAMED.! We are a better, stronger, safer and happier society when all of our citizens can afford to live in a home they own.
4. THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN A STIPULATION THAT IF YOUR BANK OR COMPANY GOT ANY OF OUR MONEY IN A "BAILOUT," THEN WE OWN YOU. Sorry, that's how it's done. If the bank gives me money so I can buy a house, the bank "owns" that house until I pay it all back -- with interest. Same deal for Wall Street. Whatever money you need to stay afloat, if our government considers you a safe risk -- and necessary for the good of the country -- then you can get a loan, but WE SHOULD OWN YOU. If you default, we will sell you. This is how the Swedish government did it and it worked.
5. ALL REGULATIONS SHOULD HAVE BEEN BE RESTORED. THE REAGAN REVOLUTION IS DEAD! This catastrophe happened because we let the fox have the keys to the hen-house. In 1999, Phil Gramm authored a bill to remove all the regulations that governed Wall Street and our banking system. The bill passed and Clinton signed it. Here's what Sen.Phil Gramm, McCain's chief economic advisor, said at the bill signing:
"In the 1930s ... it was believed that government was the answer. It was believed that stability and growth came from government overriding the functioning of free markets.
"We are here today to repeal [that] because we have learned that government is not the answer. We have learned that freedom and competition are the answers. We have learned that we promote economic growth and we promote stability by having competition and freedom.
"I am proud to be here because this is an important bill; it is a deregulatory bill. I believe that that is the wave of the future, and I am awfully proud to have been a part of making it a reality."
FOR THIS NOT TO REOCCUR, This BILL SHOULD HAVE BEEN REPEALED! Bill Clinton could have helped by leading the effort for the repeal of the Gramm bill and the reinstating of even tougher regulations regarding our financial institutions. And when they were done with that, they should have restored the regulations for the airlines, the inspection of our food, the oil industry, OSHA, and every other entity that affects our daily lives. All oversight provisions for any "bailout" should have had enforcement monies attached to them and criminal penalties for all offenders.
6. IF IT'S TOO BIG TO FAIL, THEN THAT MEANS IT'S TOO BIG TO EXIST! Allowing the creation of these mega-mergers and not enforcing the monopoly and anti-trust laws has allowed a number of financial institutions and corporations to become so large, the very thought of their collapse means an even bigger collapse across the entire economy. No ONE or TWO companies should EVER have this kind of power! The so-called "economic Pearl Harbor" can't happen when you have hundreds -- thousands -- of institutions where people have their money. When we have a dozen auto companies, if one goes belly-up, we DON'T FACE A NATIONAL DISASTER! If we have three separately-owned daily newspapers in your town, then one media company can't call all the shots (I know... What am I thinking?! Who reads a paper anymore? Sure glad all those mergers and buyouts left us with a STRONG and "FREE" press!). Laws Should have been enacted to prevent companies from being so large and dominant that with one slingshot to the eye, the GIANT FALLS and DIES. And no institution should be allowed to set up money schemes that NO ONE understands. If you can't explain it in two sentences, you shouldn't be taking anyone's money!
7. NO EXECUTIVE SHOULD EVER BE PAID MORE THAN 40 TIMES THEIR AVERAGE EMPLOYEE, AND NO EXECUTIVE SHOULD RECEIVE ANY KIND OF "PARACHUTE" OTHER THAN THE VERY GENEROUS SALARY HE OR SHE MADE WHILE WORKING FOR THE COMPANY. In 1980, the average American CEO made 45 times what their employees made. By 2003, they were making 254 times what their workers made. After 8 years of Bush, they now make over 400 times what their average employee makes. How We have allowed this to happen at publicly held companies is beyond reason. In Britain, the average CEO makes 28 times what their average employee makes. In Japan, it's only 17 times! The last I heard, the CEO of Toyota was living the high life in Tokyo. How does he do it on so little money? Seriously, this is an OUTRAGE! We have created the mess we're in by letting the people at the top become bloated beyond belief with millions of dollars. THIS HAS TO STOP! Not only should no executive who receives help out of this mess profit from it, but any executive who was in charge of running his company into the ground should be FIRED before the company receives ANY help.
8. CONGRESS SHOULD HAVE STRENGTHENED THE FDIC AND MADE IT A MODEL FOR PROTECTING NOT ONLY PEOPLE'S SAVINGS, BUT ALSO THEIR PENSIONS AND THEIR HOMES. Obama was correct to propose expanding FDIC protection of people's savings in their banks to $250,000. But, this same sort of government insurance must be given to our NEVER have to worry about whether or not the money they've put away for their old age will be there. This should have meant strict government oversight of companies who manage their employees' funds -- or perhaps it means the companies should have been forced to turn over those funds and their management to the government? People's private retirement funds must also be protected, but perhaps it's time to consider not having one's retirement invested in the casino known as the stock market??? Our government should have a solemn duty to guarantee that no one who grows old in this country has to worry about becoming destitute.
9. EVERYBODY NEEDS TO TAKE A DEEP BREATH, CALM DOWN, AND NOT LET FEAR RULE THE DAY. Turn off your TVs! We are NOT in the Second Great Depression. The sky is NOT falling, Chicken Little! Pundits and politicians have lied to us so FAST and FURIOUS it's hard not to be affected by all the fear mongering. Even I wrote to and repeated what I heard on the news last week, that the Dow had the biggest one day drop in its history. Well, that was true in terms of points, but its 7% drop came nowhere close to Black Monday in 1987 when the stock market in one day lost 23% of its value. In the '80s, 3,000 banks closed, but America didn't go out of business. These institutions have always had their ups and downs and eventually it works out. It has to, because the rich do not like their wealth being disrupted! They have a vested interest in calming things down and getting back into their Jacuzzis before they slip into their million thread-count sheets to drift off to a peaceful, Vodka tonic and Ambien-induced slumber.
As crazy as things are right now, tens of thousands of people got a car loan last week. Thousands went to the bank and got a mortgage to buy a home. Students just back to college found banks more than happy to put them into hock for the next 15 years with a student loan. I was even pre-approved for a US$5K personal loan. Yes, life has gone on with little-or-no-change (other than the whopping 6.1% umeployment rate, but that happened last month). Not a single person lost any of his/her monies in bank, or a treasury note, or in a CD. And, the perhaps the most amazing thing is that the American public FINALLY didn't buy the scare campaign. The citizens didn't blink, instead telling Congress to take that bailout and shove it. THAT was impressive. Why didn't the population succumb to the fright-filled warnings from their president and his cronies? Well, you can only say 'Saddam has the bomb' so many times before the people realize you're a lying sack of shit. After eight long years, the nation is worn out and simply can't take it any longer. The WORLD is fed up & I don't blame them.
10. THEY SHOULD HAVE CREATED A NATIONAL BANK, A "PEOPLE'S BANK." Since they're really itching to print up a trillion dollars, instead of giving it to a few rich people, why don't We give it to ourselves? Now that We own Freddie and Fannie, why not set up a People's bank? One that can provide low-interest loans for all sorts of people who want to own a home, start a small business, go to school, come up with the cure for cancer or create the next great invention. And, now that we own AIG - the country's largest insurance company - let's take the next step and PROVIDE HEALTH INSURANCE FOR EVERYONE. MEDICARE FOR ALL! It will SAVE us SO MUCH MONEY in the LONG RUN (not to mention bring peace of mind to all). And, America won't be 12th on the life expectancy list! We'll be able to have a longer lifespan, enjoying our government-protected pension and will live to see the day when the corporate criminals who caused this much misery are let out of prison so that We can help re-acclimate them to plain old ordinary, civilian life -- a life with ONE nice home and ONE gas-free car invented with help from the People's Bank.
P.S. Call your Senators NOW !!! ---> www.visi.com/juan/congress/
Since they voted against passing the extension of unemployment benefits and skipped out to "campaign" to us to be re-elected...call them and tell them you will vote for the other "guy" if they don't get their act together!
UPDATE:
The Bailout Is A Truly Evil Disaster And Enabler Pelosi Must Go
We are hearing more and more reports of how badly the ill-advised banker's bailout is being handled, multi-million dollar bonuses for Paulson's old cronies at Goldman Sachs, billions going to finance the takeover of rival banks, making the "too big to fail" even bigger, and the taxpayer getting an otherwise rotten deal for their investment. We even heard a Republic senator asking how fast they could blow the money.
NONE of this could have happened without the fawning complicity of Nancy Pelosi, who infamously said it was Bush's proposal, INSTEAD of coming forward with a robust alternative plan. Just like Bush, she believes she is immune, she believes she is unaccountable, and shame on us if we don't do everything we can to defeat her this Tuesday, and replace her with Cindy Sheehan.
Here is Cindy's last TV spot. Please make whatever donation you can to put this ad on the air in these critical final days.
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The one thing we know is that we must continue to speak out. We must continue to challenge. Surrendering is what our current so-called representatives in Congress are so prone to, NOT what we do. Ultimate victory is not only possible, it is assured if we work as hard as we can for real change, not just the rebranding of the same old boys'
network.
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It’s beautiful when you find someone that is in love with your mind. Someone that wants to undress your conscience and make love to your thoughts. Someone that wants to watch you slowly take down all the walls you’ve built up around your mind and let them inside. (Author Unknown)
It's the first self-portrait after my holidays in Crete. Actually, I was busy posting my holiday photos to Instagram feed, and left my Flickr account so neglected. I hope someone remembers me :)
Photograph: Hateful Kid
Model: Me
Edition by me
_______________________
Escúchame cuando te haga ver la realidad,
cuando falles y no perdones o cuando huyas sin mirar atrás.
¿Por qué no hablar en alto y dejar las cosas claras?
De nada servirá llorar de impotencia, lamentar tus errores.
Ahora es hora de que te enfrentes a tus temores.
·Es esta conciencia la que no me deja dormir·
_______________________
FR: Jiminy Criquet, décoré par la Fée Bleue, la plus précieuse des consciences pour Pinocchio. Cette statuette se trouve dans la Maison de Gepetto dans Les Voyages de Pinocchio à Fantasyland, Disneyland Paris.
EN: Jiminy Cricket, honored by the Blue Fairy, the most precious conscience for Pinocchio. This statuette is in the House of Gepetto in Les Voyages de Pinocchio (known as Pinocchio's Daring Journey for US people) in Fantasyland, Disneyland Paris.
Info:
- Pictures made from 3 exp (-1EV, 0Ev, +1EV)
- If you want to use my pics with(out) the "Pics E Dust copyright", just ask...
Cute Little Dee Blythe wearing her stock
Thrift store vintage Napco angels
Scrap paper background
Clouds and smoke added in BeFunky
😁 Un teselado para rememorar viejos tiempos :)
Conscience es uno de mis diseños que me hacía falta teselar hace un buen tiempo
In the Trinity Chapel at the east end of the cathedral is the 'Prisoners of Conscience' Window by Gabriel Loire. "Chartres Blue" or "Romanesque Blue" glass has been used here. It was installed in 1980.
The three central panels depict Jesus as a prisoner of conscience. At left is Jesus with Pontius Pilate, the Crucifixion with Mary at Christ's feet is at centre, and Jesus with the Crown of Thorns is at right.
The two panels on the sides represents modern prisoners of conscience.
Salisbury Cathedral; July 2005
the making of this photo involved:
- mid-morning bathtub scrubbing that left my parents very perplexed
- the destruction of the only eyeshadow i actually use (perhaps it would have been smart to destroy a different one?)
- flooding on the bathroom floor
- streaks of brown all over the bathtub
- a stained remote
- a stained counter
- furious scrubbing at the counter while freaking out internally
- an unstained counter
- a still-stained remote
i think it was a morning well spent.