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"The Nightingale" arranged from the story by Hans Andersen, and illustrated by Rene Cloke. Undated, Edmund Ward of Leicester, England.
Link to NowPublic.com article on Iceland
www.nowpublic.com/world/iceland-most-peaceful-nation-us-97th
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Press Release
YOKO ONO TO PRESENT CITYWIDE ART PROJECT FOR “STREET SCENES, DC” DURING THE MONTH OF APRIL 2007
Artist Yoko Ono will present a series of installations and audience participation works around Washington, D.C., as part of Street Scenes: Project for DC, a public art program curated by Nora Halpern and Welmoed Laanstra.
Ms. Ono will exhibit ten trees around the city, as part of her ongoing Wish Tree project, which she began in the 1990s as a way of encouraging the public to become participants in the art process. The trees will be installed at the steps of the Jefferson Memorial at the Tidal Basin as part of the National Cherry Blossom Festival, at THEARC in Anacostia, and at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden on the National Mall
“As a child in Japan, I used to go to a temple and write out a wish on a piece of thin paper and tie it around the branch of a tree,” Ms. Ono said. “Trees in temple courtyards were always filled with people’s wish knots, which looked like white flowers blossoming from afar.”
With her Wish Trees, which are part of a city-wide project called IMAGINE PEACE, Ms. Ono is invoking the intention of the initial 1912 gift of cherry blossom trees to the United States from the nation of Japan, and she asks that we contemplate all aspects that the words inspire. Ms. Ono invites people to write a wish (either a personal or a global-minded one) and tie it onto a Wish Tree. At the end of the installation, the Washington, DC, wishes will be collected and added to the other wishes generated by the Wish Tree projects she has mounted around the world and become part of her Imagine Peace Tower, which will be inaugurated in October 2007 in Reykjavik, Iceland. Following the Street Scenes installation, the trees from the Tidal Basin and the trees at THEARC will be planted in the Anacostia community. The Wish Tree installation at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden will become a permanent artwork, gifted to the museum by the artist.
In addition, Ms. Ono will visit the site at the Japanese Lantern Lawn, just west of the Kutz Bridge at Independence Avenue & 17th Street. SW, on the other side of the Tidal Basin, where the first cherry blossoms were planted in 1912. The artist will ask participants to "whisper a wish to the bark of the trees."
Ms. Ono will also present text pieces, including disseminating IMAGINE PEACE posters, and ribbons that read, “this line is a part of a very large circle.” These artworks will be free to the public and will be distributed at three locations: the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, THEARC and Provisions Library.
An IMAGINE PEACE billboard will be installed on the Verizon Center (at the intersection of 7th Street and G Street, NW) and will be on display through April 30. A poster page will be placed in the March 29 edition of The Washington Post Express (circulation almost 200,000), in the hopes that they will wind up hanging in offices and homes around the city and surrounding areas.
“This project,” say Street Scenes co-curators Nora Halpern and Welmoed Laanstra, “is part of our effort to turn the streets of Washington, DC, into a living art gallery. Ms. Ono's work celebrates the universal longing for peace: whether it is individual peace of mind, peace for a local community, or a more global aspiration. By installing components throughout the city, the project seeks to unite the varying neighborhoods of Washington and their residents and workers in the desire for progress and understanding--in matters large and small, at home and abroad."
IMAGINE PEACE is the third installation of Street Scenes: Projects for DC. The overarching concept of Yoko Ono’s project parallels the working philosophy of Street Scenes: Projects for DC: art and the ideas it generates can unify a city and all of its neighborhoods by creating an experience shared by those who are art aficionados and those who are not.
Street Scenes: Projects for DC was created in the spring of 2006 and is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Maria and Bill Bell, Stuart Mott Charitable Trust, the National Cherry Blossom Festival, The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Downtown BID, Bussolati and Associates, Americans for the Arts, The Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Barbara and Aaron Levine and several generous individuals.
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Washington Post
April 4, 2007
Yoko Ono (widow of Beatles singer John Lennon) wants Washington to give peace a chance
Tourists wandering by the Jefferson Memorial on Monday morning got a bit of a celebrity surprise, as Yoko Ono stopped by as part of her interactive Wish Tree art project.
“Hello, this is Yoko,” she said as she took the stage in front of the Tidal Basin, adding that the “cherry blossoms are even more beautiful than I ever heard about.”
Wearing black and a white pageboy cap with sunglasses, Ono asked everyone present to fill out a tag with a wish and tie it to one of six potted cherry tree saplings (not the actual cherry trees — touching them is illegal).
But first, she showed them how it was done. Her wish: “The cherry blossoms in Washington, D.C., will always bring beauty and peace to this city. So be it. 4-02-07.”
In addition to the throng of Japanese media, we even spotted a couple of Beatles enthusiasts in the crowd — one in a Beatlemania T-shirt and another in a Ringo T-shirt. Apparently, they’re not among the segment of fans who blame her for breaking up the band.
The installation is part of Ono’s citywide “Imagine Peace” project, which also includes a large billboard outside the Verizon Center.
“We’re going around the world trying to get the message of ‘imagine peace’ around the world,” she said.
After the Tidal Basin event, Ono traveled to THEARC cultural center in Anacostia, where three more Wish Trees were set up. All nine trees from the Tidal Basin and Anacostia will be permanently planted at THEARC. A 10th tree will be planted at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.
But what of the wishes themselves? Fear not, she said. They will not be destroyed, but rather will go to the Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland, where they’ll be kept for a “couple of centuries.”
Why trying to understand the motives behind human behavior is well nigh impossible
In my more than 25 years of writing an advice column I regularly get asked several different versions of “When a woman does Y, what does that mean?” or “My husband did X. What did he mean by ...
howdoidate.com/relationships/communication/need-mind-read...
Kayak fishing partnership .
Through out the years we have evolved in safety , understanding and sharing . We work in a team sharing and capturing every instant . Our adventures are simple , we get our kayaks on the water and go explore . We are the kayakers explorers in Scotland and this is once a week . Trust us , we all work very hard for all that , for the love of water and the great outdoors , fish are always a bonus but they do come fast and furious . Like our fishing channel , it's fresh air all the way ... youtu.be/em3WAhl4dFw
Where is that fine line,
Where a pixl becomes a focus,
And the image looses the honor of the photograph, but moves out of illustration because no artist held a brush?
For me it's about trying to find meaning in the visual world, about detecting what Rupert Sheldrake called 'morphic resonance' the evolving sha ping of time space.
A team of astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has measured the universe's expansion rate using a technique that is completely independent of any previous method.
Knowing the precise value for how fast the universe expands is important for determining the age, size and fate of the cosmos. Unraveling this mystery has been one of the greatest challenges in astrophysics in recent years. The new study adds evidence to the idea that new theories may be needed to explain what scientists are finding.
The researchers' result further strengthens a troubling discrepancy between the expansion rate, called the Hubble constant, calculated from measurements of the local universe and the rate as predicted from background radiation in the early universe, a time before galaxies and stars even existed.
This latest value represents the most precise measurement yet using the gravitational lensing method, where the gravity of a foreground galaxy acts like a giant magnifying lens, amplifying and distorting light from background objects. This latest study did not rely on the traditional "cosmic distance ladder" technique to measure accurate distances to galaxies by using various types of stars as "milepost markers." Instead, the researchers employed the exotic physics of gravitational lensing to calculate the universe's expansion rate.
The astronomy team that made the new Hubble constant measurements is dubbed H0LiCOW (H0 Lenses in COSMOGRAIL's Wellspring). COSMOGRAIL is the acronym for Cosmological Monitoring of Gravitational Lenses, a large international project whose goal is monitoring gravitational lenses. "Wellspring" refers to the abundant supply of quasar lensing systems.
The research team derived the H0LiCOW value for the Hubble constant through observing and analysis techniques that have been greatly refined over the past two decades.
H0LiCOW and other recent measurements suggest a faster expansion rate in the local universe than was expected based on observations by the European Space Agency's Planck satellite of how the cosmos behaved more than 13 billion years ago.
The gulf between the two values has important implications for understanding the universe's underlying physical parameters and may require new physics to account for the mismatch.
"If these results do not agree, it may be a hint that we do not yet fully understand how matter and energy evolved over time, particularly at early times," said H0LiCOW team leader Sherry Suyu of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany, the Technical University of Munich, and the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics in Taipei, Taiwan.
How They Did It
The H0LiCOW team used Hubble to observe the light from six faraway quasars, the brilliant searchlights from gas orbiting supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies. Quasars are ideal background objects for many reasons; for example, they are bright, extremely distant and scattered all over the sky. The telescope observed how the light from each quasar was multiplied into four images by the gravity of a massive foreground galaxy. The galaxies studied are 3 billion to 6.5 billion light-years away. The quasars' average distance is 5.5 billion light-years from Earth.
The light rays from each lensed quasar image take a slightly different path through space to reach Earth. The pathway's length depends on the amount of matter that is distorting space along the line of sight to the quasar. To trace each pathway, the astronomers monitor the flickering of the quasar's light as its black hole gobbles up material. When the light flickers, each lensed image brightens at a different time.
This flickering sequence allows researchers to measure the time delays between each image as the lensed light travels along its path to Earth. To fully understand these delays, the team first used Hubble to make accurate maps of the distribution of matter in each lensing galaxy. Astronomers could then reliably deduce the distances from the galaxy to the quasar, and from Earth to the galaxy and to the background quasar. By comparing these distance values, the researchers measured the universe's expansion rate.
"The length of each time delay indicates how fast the universe is expanding," said team member Kenneth Wong of the University of Tokyo's Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, lead author of the H0LiCOW collaboration's most recent paper. "If the time delays are shorter, then the universe is expanding at a faster rate. If they are longer, then the expansion rate is slower."
The time-delay process is analogous to four trains leaving the same station at exactly the same time and traveling at the same speed to reach the same destination. However, each of the trains arrives at the destination at a different time. That’s because each train takes a different route, and the distance for each route is not the same. Some trains travel over hills. Others go through valleys, and still others chug around mountains. From the varied arrival times, one can infer that each train traveled a different distance to reach the same stop. Similarly, the quasar flickering pattern does not appear at the same time because some of the light is delayed by traveling around bends created by the gravity of dense matter in the intervening galaxy.
How it Compares
The researchers calculated a Hubble constant value of 73 kilometers per second per megaparsec (with 2.4% uncertainty). This means that for every additional 3.3 million light-years away a galaxy is from Earth, it appears to be moving 73 kilometers per second faster, because of the universe's expansion.
The team's measurement also is close to the Hubble constant value of 74 calculated by the Supernova H0 for the Equation of State (SH0ES) team, which used the cosmic distance ladder technique. The SH0ES measurement is based on gauging the distances to galaxies near and far from Earth by using Cepheid variable stars and supernovas as measuring sticks to the galaxies.
The SH0ES and H0LiCOW values significantly differ from the Planck number of 67, strengthening the tension between Hubble constant measurements of the modern universe and the predicted value based on observations of the early universe.
"One of the challenges we overcame was having dedicated monitoring programs through COSMOGRAIL to get the time delays for several of these quasar lensing systems," said Frédéric Courbin of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, leader of the COSMOGRAIL project.
Suyu added: "At the same time, new mass modeling techniques were developed to measure a galaxy's matter distribution, including models we designed to make use of the high-resolution Hubble imaging. The images enabled us to reconstruct, for example, the quasars' host galaxies. These images, along with additional wider-field images taken from ground-based telescopes, also allow us to characterize the environment of the lens system, which affects the bending of light rays. The new mass modeling techniques, in combination with the time delays, help us to measure precise distances to the galaxies."
Begun in 2012, the H0LiCOW team now has Hubble images and time-delay information for 10 lensed quasars and intervening lensing galaxies. The team will continue to search for and follow up on new lensed quasars in collaboration with researchers from two new programs. One program, called STRIDES (STRong-lensing Insights into Dark Energy Survey), is searching for new lensed quasar systems. The second, called SHARP (Strong-lensing at High Angular Resolution Program), uses adaptive optics with the W.M. Keck telescopes to image the lensed systems. The team's goal is to observe 30 more lensed quasar systems to reduce their 2.4% percent uncertainty to 1%.
NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, expected to launch in 2021, may help them achieve their goal of 1% uncertainty much faster through Webb's ability to map the velocities of stars in a lensing galaxy, which will allow astronomers to develop more precise models of the galaxy's distribution of dark matter.
The H0LiCOW team's work also paves the way for studying hundreds of lensed quasars that astronomers are discovering through surveys such as the Dark Energy Survey and PanSTARRS (Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System), and the upcoming National Science Foundation's Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, which is expected to uncover thousands of additional sources.
In addition, NASA's Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) will help astronomers address the disagreement in the Hubble constant value by tracing the expansion history of the universe. The mission will also use multiple techniques, such as sampling thousands of supernovae and other objects at various distances, to help determine whether the discrepancy is a result of measurement errors, observational technique, or whether astronomers need to adjust the theory from which they derive their predictions.
The team will present its results at the 235th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Honolulu, Hawaii.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C.
For more information: www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/cosmic-magnifying-glass...
Credits: NASA, ESA, S.H. Suyu (Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Technical University of Munich, and Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics) and K.C. Wong (University of Tokyo’s Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe)
William Stone Images - Limited Edition Fine Art Prints
Fine Art Photography Prints & Luxury Wall Art:
Our presence on flickr is to showcase our catalogue, we have selected pictures on our website, but can always add more depending on the requests we receive:
We do wedding photography and videography:
We do once in a while have discounted luxury fine art, please do keep checking:
All prints though us is put through a rigorous set of quality control standards long before we ever ship it to your front door. We only create gallery-quality images, and you'll receive your print in perfect condition with a lifetime guarantee.
All images on Flickr have been specifically published in a lower grade quality to amber our copyright being infringed. We have 4096x pixel full sized quality on all our photos and any of them could be ordered in high grade museum quality grade and a discount applied if the voucher WS-100 is used. Any image seen on flickr can be printed in museum grade quality, use the unique reference at the bottom of the photo description when contacting us:
We do plan future trips and do catalogue our past ones:
In our galleries you will find some amazing fine art photography for sale as limited edition and open edition, gallery quality prints. Only the finest materials and archival methods are used to produce these stunning photographic works of art.
Some of the gear we use at William Stone Fine Art are listed here:
Some of our latest work & more!
Embedded galleries within a gallery on various aspects of Photography:
We celebrate light in our pictures. Understanding how light interacts with the camera is paramount to the work we do. The temperature, intensity and source of light can wield different photography effect on the same subject or scene; add ISO, aperture and speed, the camera, the lens type, focal length and filters…the combination is varied and multi-layered and if you know how to use them all, you will come to appreciate that all lights are useful, even those surrounded by a lot of darkness.
We are guided by three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, our longing to capture in print, that which is beautiful, the constant search for the one picture, and constant barrage of new equipment and style of photography. These passions, like great winds, have blown us across the globe in search of the one and we do understand the one we do look for might be this picture right here for someone else out there.
We want to thank you for your interest in our work and thanks for visiting our work on Flickr, we do appreciate you and the contributions you make in furthering our interest in photography and on social media in general.
There are other aspects closely related to photography that we do embark on:
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We do cloud/website development and hosting, startng from £1,500 we can design and host your website. Do justice to your photographs/videos and host them where they will be much valued by your clients. The quality will be in line with www.wsimages.com but designed by you and implemented by us. Contact us today.
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"An abstraction is one thing that represents several real things equally well."
– Edsger W. Dijkstra
"Without an understanding of causality there can be no theory of communication. What passes as information theory today is not communication at all, but merely transportation."
– Marshall McLuhan (1988) "Laws of Media: The New Science".
"General systems theory is a series of related definitions, assumptions, and postulates about all levels of systems from atomic particles through atoms, molecules, crystals, viruses, cells, organs, individuals, small groups, societies, planets, solar systems, and galaxies. General behavior systems theory is a subcategory of such theory, dealing with living systems, extending roughly from viruses through societies. A significant fact about living things is that they are open systems, with important inputs and outputs. Laws which apply to them differ from those applying to relatively closed systems."
– James Grier Miller, "General behavior systems theory and summary" (1956), Journal of Counseling Psychology 3 (2) 120-124.
Étretat Normandië-France.
Leica-CL , Summicron-C 1:2.0/40mm.
Ilford Delta 100asa, developer Kodak HC 110 1+31 (B)
Nikon super Coolscan 5000ed.
Sailing boats waiting at the beach.
🔴Leica my point of view.
Leica-CL 1974 Rangefinder
Leica-M 6 TTL 0.72 1998 Rangefinder
Leica-M6 TTL 0.85 2001 Rangefinder
Leipziger Buchmesse 2016 / Leipzig Book Fair 2016
2016-03-18 (Friday)
2016_015
2016#223
Emi (___) ___ as Faun from ___
Thank you for any group invites which I'd be glad to accept. However, if I can't check the content of such groups ("This group is not available to you") I'd rather not add any of my photos. Thanks for your understanding.
Understanding the needs of refugees in Ali Addeh camp, Djibouti. The priority of EU humanitarian aid in Djibouti is to provide life-saving assistance to refugees and look for durable solutions to their plight.
Djibouti hosts over 18 000 long-term refugees and asylum seekers mainly from Somalia whose basic needs such as shelter, water and protection need to be catered for.
Since the start of the Yemen crisis in March 2015, close to 80 000 people have fled to countries in the Horn of Africa including nearly 40 000 to Djibouti. This new influx is putting pressure on the country’s limited natural resources and services.
Djibouti imports 95% of its food. The number of people at risk of hunger has increased since the 2011 drought, accelerating the rural exodus to urban areas. A combination of high food prices, water scarcity, climate change and reduced pasture has increased food insecurity. This year’s El Niño has led to even dryer weather.
Humanitarian funding from the European Commission provides refugees with access to clean water and sanitation as well as shelter, protection, nutrition and health care. Food assistance is given in the form of cash transfers as a way of promoting refugees’ self-reliance. ©EU/ECHO/Massimo La Rosa
...to reveal the individual before his camera, to transfer the living quality of that individual to his finished print...Not to make road maps but to record the essential truth of the subject; not to show how this person looks, but to show what he is. - Edward Weston - Edward Weston's definition of the role of the portrait photographer. "The Portrait in Photography", Reaktion Books, London 1992, Mick Gidley, p136 - 137.
My understanding is that a ‘Brass Monkey’ should contain 30 Cannon Balls … the one in my photograph contains a lot more than thirty.
When I was young I was sent home from school because I used the expression “Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey” when complaining on behalf of the class that the classroom was cold.
My father was really annoyed with the school insisting that a brass monkey was something used to store cannon balls and that he could not understand why I had been suspended from class.
After my visit to Elizabeth Fort in Cork I decided to investigate further and came across two different stories that do not agree.
[FIRST EXPLANATION] According to the United States Navy Historical Center, this is a legend of the sea without historical justification. The center has researched this because of the questions it gets and says the term “brass monkey” and a vulgar reference to the effect of cold on the monkey’s extremities, appears to have originated in the book “Before the Mast” by C.A. Abbey. It was said that it was so cold that it would “freeze the tail off a brass monkey.” The Navy says there is no evidence that the phrase had anything to do with ships or ships with cannon balls.
[SECOND EXPLANATION]Every sailing ship had to have cannon for protection. Cannon of the times required round iron cannonballs. The master wanted to store the cannonballs such that they could be of instant use when needed, yet not roll around the gun deck. The solution was to stack them up in a square-based pyramid next to the cannon. The top level of the stack had one ball, the next level down had four, the next had nine, the next had sixteen, and so on. Four levels would provide a stack of 30 cannonballs. The only real problem was how to keep the bottom level from sliding out from under the weight of the higher levels. To do this, they devised a small brass plate ("brass monkey") with one rounded indentation for each cannonball in the bottom layer. Brass was used because the cannonballs wouldn't rust to the "brass monkey", but would rust to an iron one.
When temperature falls, brass contracts in size faster than iron. As it got cold on the gun decks, the indentations in the brass monkey would get smaller than the iron cannonballs they were holding. If the temperature got cold enough, the bottom layer would pop out of the indentations spilling the entire pyramid over the deck. Thus it was, quite literally, cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.
Kamera: Nikon F3 (1989)
Linse: Nikkor-S Auto 50mm f1.4 (1970)
Film: Cinestill BWXX (Kodak 5222) @ ISO 200
Kjemi: Xtol (stock / 8 min. @ 21°C)
I WILL NOT BE SILENT. NEVER AGAIN.
For those of you who want a better understanding of the ongoing genocidal Israel-Hamas war, it is imperative that you educate yourself on the current political situation inside Israel itself, and especially on how American extremist zionist jews to a large degree have been instrumental in exporting their extremism into Israel and radically transforming Israeli society ever since the start of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights after the Six-Day War in 1967.
For this very reason, you need to know about one very important key figure: American-born jewish fundamentalist fascist terrorist and extremist Meir Kahane (1934-1990), his legacy and his followers; past and present.
Mad 'rabbi' Kahane´s racist, fascist, ultranationalist, supremacist and religious theocratic ideology - Kahanism - lives on like never before and has grown immensely among his many supporters in Israel - not only among extremist illegal settlers any longer, not only among the odd ordinary Israeli citizen - No, today, this ideology permeates Israeli society itself.
Today, Kahane´s followers are even represented in the jewish fascist Benjamin Netanyahu government; many holding quite influential and powerful minister positions - like (and these are just a few of them):
1.) The infamous terrorist and so-called "Minister of Security" Itamar Ben-Gvir (b. 1976 and hailing from the extremist jewish fundamentalist and religious zionist settlement of Kiryat Arba in Hebron, Occupied Palestine)
2.) The terrorist and so-called "Finance Minister" Bezalel Smotrich (b. 1980 and hailing from the extremist jewish fundamentalist and religious zionist settlement of Kedumim, Occupied Palestine)
3.) The old-skool Moshe Levinger (1935-2015) follower and Gush Emunim settler extremist and so-called "Minister of Settlements" (!) Orit Strook (b. 1960 and hailing from the extremist jewish fundamentalist and religious zionist settlement of Kiryat Arba in Hebron, Occupied Palestine)
4.) Yitzhak Wasserlauf (b. 1992), so-called "Minister for the 'Development' of the Periphery, the Negev and the Galilee".
Therefore, here for your consideration I will present to you three important lectures held on the subject by what must be one of the bravest men in the world: David Sheen [his website is no longer available], an exceptional Israeli Canadian former journalist of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz; now an independent investigative journalist.
This is all very well researched and explained.
In his lecture ‘Kahanistan’ you will get a broader understanding of political thought and development in Israel and how in the past few decades it has become more and more deeply connected to the Kahane movement:
- David Sheen: Kahanistan (2022)
In the lecture ‘Messiah Mode’ you will become much more familiar with the history of Meir Kahane himself, the Jewish Defense League in the USA and the Kach party in Israel; in addition to several other influential kahanist religious figures and politicians:
- David Sheen: Messiah Mode (2019)
In his latest lecture, ‘False Messiah’s Donkey’, David Sheen delves deeper into the Kahane movement´s influence on U.S. society and politics in general and the Democratic party in particular:
- David Sheen: False Messiah’s Donkey (2022)
A TRULY SHAMEFUL LIST OF JUST A FEW PEOPLE MENTIONED:
- Baruch Goldstein (1956-1994), american-born jewish extremist physician and religious mass-murderer from Brooklyn, New York. Goldstein immigrated to Israel in 1982 and moved to the jewish extremist settler hub in Kiryat Arba / Hebron. In 1994 during Ramadan on the Jewish holiday of Purim he perpetrated the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre in Hebron. Wearing an IDF uniform and armed with an IMI Galil assault rifle, he opened fire on 800 Muslim worshippers inside the Ibrahimi Mosque, managing to kill 29 and wounding 129 before he was beaten to death by the survivors. Baruch Goldstein was a follower of Meir Kahane and a member of terrorist organization Jewish Defense League. Goldstein was number three in the Kach party after Meir Kahane (1932-1990) and Yisrael Ariel (b. 1939). Goldstein´s grave has become a site of pilgrimage and veneration for Jewish extremists, especially during Purim. The tomb of Baruch Goldstein is located in the Meir Kahane Memorial Park in the illegal extremist jewish fundamentalist and religious zionist settlement of Kiryat Arba in Hebron, West Bank, Occupied Palestine.
- Itamar Ben-Gvir (b. 1976), the current Minister of Security and party leader of Otzma Yehudit since 2022. Son of a mother active in the Irgun terrorist organization. Previously convicted of supporting the Kach terrorist organization. Exempted from service in the IDF due to extremist political background. Lawyer known for representing far-right Jewish activists suspected of terrorism and hate crimes; most notably representing the american-born extremist settler Baruch Marzel (b. 1956 in Boston, USA) in Hebron, the «right-hand man» of american-born rabbi Meir Kahane (1932-1990) and a fellow Otzma Yehudit party member. Known for displaying the portrait of american-born extremist settler and terrorist mass-murderer Dr. Baruch Goldstein (1956-1994) in his living-room. Itamar Ben-Gvir has 6 children and is a permanent resident of the illegal extremist jewish fundamentalist and religious zionist settlement of Kiryat Arba in Hebron, West Bank, Occupied Palestine.
- Baruch Marzel (b. 1959), american-born kahanist originally from Boston. His family immigrated to Israel when he was 6 weeks old, when he was 13 he joined the Jewish Defense League. At the age of 14 he was arrested for the first of many times, and when he was 17 he was imprisoned for the first time. An early member of the Kach party, he was Meir Kahane´s parliamentary aide in Knesset and the spokesperson for Kach for 10 years. Marzel is a physically violent man who has been harassing, threatening and assaulting countless Palestinians in Hebron for decades in addition to police officers, left-wing activists, peace activists and journalists. Marzel is known to have shot and killed a 15-year-old Palestinian boy and he has been arrested for conspiring to bomb a Palestinian school. He has also advocated violence against homosexuals in Israel and calling for religious war against them. Together with Bezalel Smotrich (b. 1980) - Israel´s Finance Minister - he arranged the «Beast Parade» in 2006, leading goats and donkeys through the streets in opposition to the Jerusalem gay pride parade.
Marzel is an important and instrumental figurehead for the extreme right in Israel. After the Kach party was banned in 1994, he founded the party Jewish National Front in 2004 and ran for Knesset. After not winning enough votes to enter Knesset, he joined the National Union party and served as fellow extremist and kahanist Michael Ben-Ari´s (b. 1963) parliamentary aide. Together with Bentzi Gopstein (b. 1969) he started Lehava in 2005, a jewish supremacist organization that stricly opposes jewish assimilation, objecting to any relationships between Jews and non-Jews - in 2010 he was urging Israeli model Bar Refaeli (b. 1985) not to marry her non-jewish boyfriend at the time, Leonardo DiCaprio (b. 1974). In 2013 he ran for Knesset again, this time for the Otzma Yehudit party, which had splintered from the National Union party; again not winning enough votes to enter Knesset. In 2015 he ran for Knesset again, but the Election Committee disqualified him from running in the election because of racism. Otzma Yehudit was not extreme enough for Marzel, so in 2022 together with Michael Ben-Ari he started the process of launching a new party to the right of Otzma Yehudit. Baruch Marzel has 9 children and is a permanent resident of the illegal extremist jewish fundamentalist and religious zionist settlement of Tel Rumeida in Hebron, West Bank, Occupied Palestine.
- Michael Ben-Ari (b. 1963); Ph.D. in Land of Israel and Archaeology studies. If you have ever heard about Gustaf Kossinna (1858-1931) and Nazi archaeology - that´s the kind of scholar Michael Ben-Ari is. Previous member of the Kach terrorist organization; Ben-Ari was banned from running in the 2019 elections due to his extremist political views. He was also a member of the Jewish National Front, a political party founded by american-born extremist settler Baruch Marzel (b. 1956 in Boston, USA) in Hebron, the «right-hand man» of american-born rabbi Meir Kahane (1932-1990). When Jewish National Front merged with the far-right religious Eretz Yisrael Shelanu, Ben-Ari gained a seat in the Knesset 2009-2012, electing Marzel and Ben-Gvir as his aides. Eretz Yishrael Shelanu was not extreme enough for Ben-Ari, so together with Marzel and Ben-Gvir he founded the Otzma Yehudit in 2012. Ben-Ari has been denied US visa several times for his extremism. After he was banned from Knesset in 2019, he has since found that Otzma Yehudit was not extreme enough for him, so he has recently started planning a new party together with Baruch Marzel. Ben-Ari has 9 children and is a permanent resident of the illegal extremist jewish fundamentalist and religious zionist settlement of Karnei Shomron, West Bank, Occupied Palestine.
- Baruch Ben-Yosef and Israel Fuchs, both of them american-born jewish Israeli kahanist settlers whose names are originally Andy Green and Keith Fuchs. Together with convicted murderer Robert Manning they are the suspected assassins of Alex Odeh (1944-1985), a Palestinian activist in the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. In Israel in 1980, Ben-Yosef was subjected to administrative detention for 6 months together with Meir Kahane for plotting to blow up the Dome of the Rock. In 1983, on the Jewish holiday of Purim, Fuchs sprayed a passing Palestinian car with bullets. Ben-Yosef later studied law and together with Fuchs he established the lawfare American Center for Civil Justice. Fuchs later mentored Simcha Rothman (b. 1980), a settler and religious zionist member who now serves as chairman of the Constitution, Law and Justice committee in the Knesset. Ben-Yosef mentored kahanist lawyer Itamar Ben-Gvir (b. 1976), current leader of the Otzma Yehudit party and Israel´s Minister of Security. In 2004, Ben-Yosef was one of 20 extremists who carried out the black magic kabbalistic curse of Pulsa diNura at the gravesite of Irgun terrorist Shlomo Ben-Yosef (1913-1938) in order to kill prime minister Ariel Sharon because of the 2005 Israeli disengagement from Gaza. Both Ben-Yosef Green and Keith «Israel» Fuchs are permanent residents of the illegal extremist jewish fundamentalist and religious zionist settlement of Kiryat Arba in Hebron, West Bank, Occupied Palestine.
- Mike Guzofsky, american-born jewish extremist from New York and a former member of Terror Against Terror, a militant organization that was active in Israel that openly espoused the ideology of perpetrating terrorism and committed several violent attacks directed at Palestinians, ranging from vandalism to mass shooting, bombing and murder. The group consisted of many Jewish-American settlers living in Hebron who considered themselves acolytes of ‘rabbi’ Meir Kahane. About mass-murderer Baruch Goldstein he said: «He was the sweetest jew who have ever lived.» Also known for, among other things, being a breeder of fierce patrol dogs with the purpose of instilling fear in the Palestinian population. Guzofsky is a permanent resident of the illegal extremist jewish fundamentalist and religious zionist settlement of Kfar Tapuach, West Bank, Occupied Palestine.
- Bentzi Gopstein (b. 1969), american-born jewish extremist who got away with murder in 1990, an ardent anti-christian and founder of the Lehava movement, a jewish supremacist organization that stricly opposes jewish assimilation, objecting to any relationships between Jews and non-Jews. Gopstein advocates the expulsion of Christians and the banning of celebrating Christmas. He is a member of the Otzma Yehudit party, has 8 children and is a permanent resident of the illegal extremist jewish fundamentalist and religious zionist settlement of Kiryat Arba in Hebron, West Bank, Occupied Palestine.
- David Ha'ivri (b. 1967), american-born extremist orthodox jew whose real name is Jason David Axelrod. About the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin he said: «It was not a jew who was murdered; it was a traitor who was liquidated. The liquidation of an enemy is a positive thing.» Today, David Ha'ivri acts as an Israeli diplomat and is a spokesperson for Israeli illegal settlements. He has 8 children and is a permanent resident of the illegal extremist jewish fundamentalist and religious zionist settlement of Kfar Tapuach, West Bank, Occupied Palestine.
- Ovadia Yosef (1920-2013) was the chief rabbi of Israel and spiritual leader of the religious orthodox Shas party. Ovadia Yosef had many controversial remarks; among them the following: «Gentiles were born only to serve us. Without that they have no place in the world, only to serve the jewish people. Why are gentiles needed? They´ll work, they´ll plow, they´ll reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat.» His son Yitzhak Yosef (b. 1952) is now the chief rabbi of Israel; a man who has likened people of black African descent to monkeys and has compared secular women to animals because they dressed immodestly.
- Ya'akov Yosef (1946-2013) was another son of Ovadia Yosef, also a rabbi and a Knesset representative for the Shas party 1984-1988. In the Knesset Ya'akov Yosef worked ardently on changing and doctoring the laws of Israel so that racism would be allowed so long as it was justified by religious arguments. Ya'akov Yosef openly endorsed rabbi Yitzhak Shapira´s book ’The King's Torah’ (2009) where it is argued that it is permissible for Jews to kill non-Jews, including children, under certain circumstances, and that there may be a reason to kill babies on the enemy side, even if they have not violated any laws, due to the potential future danger they might pose based on the assumption that they will grow up to be evil like their parents. ’The King's Torah’ also proposes that indirect killing of children could be justified as a means of exerting pressure on enemy leaders or if the children are obstructing a rescue operation and their presence contributes to murder.
- Yonatan Yosef, son of Ya'akov Yosef and also a rabbi, an illegal settler in East Jerusalem and former spokesman for the settlers in Sheikh Jarrah. He has been a Jerusalem City Council member since 2018, representing the ultra-orthodox religious zionist party Yachad. When he was 18 years old, he smuggled and collected caches of weapons from the army, plotting to murder Palestinians. He was arrested, but was tipped off by a government minister that the Shin Bet was coming for him; so he managed to get rid of much of the evidence and got off easy. In 2023, he was marching in Sheikh Jarrah with a group of supporters, chanting «We want Nakba, Nakba now!»
- Aryeh King (b. 1973) is the current Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, representing the ultra-orthodox religious zionist party Yachad. In 2014, he was inciting a group of hundreds of ultra-orthodox men by telling them "This Sabbath we will read about Zimri and Kosbi. Phineas committed the act; he was zealous for God. He got up and committed the act - It´s like that today. Every single person here is like a small Phineas. I call out to all the small Phineas's here! I call on all of us to make a great commotion, wake up! The Lubavitcher rebbe is here with us - I have no doubt he expects us all to commit acts of Phineas." Zimri and Kosbi is a story in the bible, and according to this legend there was a jewish man and a Midianite woman, in other words, it was an interracial relationship. And this priest, Phineas, was so incensed, so disgusted at this miscegenation, at this interracial love that he actually took a spear, according to legend, and he murdered them in the middle of the act of lovemaking. In fact, according to the Talmud it says exactly what that act was: "Miracles were done for Phineas... His aim was through the penis of the man and the vagina of the woman" - that is; he pierced them in their intertwined genitals. Hours later after Aryeh King's speech; religious jews went out and mutilated and murdered 16-year old Palestinian Mohammed Abu Khdeir. They kidnapped him outside his home, stuffed him into a car and drove him out to the forest, where they forced petrol down his throat and they burned him to death from the inside out. Aryeh King is the father of 6 and is a permanent resident of the illegal settlement of Ma'ale HaZeitim in East Jerusalem, West Bank, Occupied Palestine.
- Moshe Feiglin (b. 1962), a kahanist, Likud politician and former Deputy Speaker of the Knesset. As Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, during the 2014 Gaza war he said that «The IDF shall designate certain open areas […] in which the civilian population will be concentrated subsequent to the elimination […] Gaza […] will become part of […] Israel and will be populated by Jews.» Also in 2014, he was inciting for Jews to go and take over the Al-Aqsa mosque. Feiglin has made so many controversial statements that he was banned from entering the United Kingdom in 2008. Moshe Feiglin has 5 children and is a permanent resident of the illegal extremist jewish fundamentalist and religious zionist settlement of Karnei Shomron settlement, West Bank, Occupied Palestine.
- Yoel Lerner (1941-2014), american-born extremist from Brooklyn, New York who grew up in South Africa. In 1960 he immigrated to Israel where he became a linguist and translator. He became a student of Meir Kahane and a member of the Jewish Defense League; and later became an aide to Kahane. In 1973, Lerner was arrested in a case of arson involving a fire in a shop selling Christian missionary books. In 1975, he was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to harm Henry Kissinger (1923-2023). Newspaper reports said that Lerner «had expressed threats to assassinate Kissinger». In 1978 he was imprisoned for 3 years for conspiracy and illegal possession of weapons. He had founded an underground ring of militants called ‘Gal’ with the aim to overthrow the government and establish a state based on religious law, and kill Arabs. In 1982, Lerner had formed a small youth organization whose aim was to destroy the Dome of the Rock in order to rebuild the Temple Mount, and for this he was sentenced to 5 years in jail, but 2 ½ years of his sentence was suspended. Lerner was married and had eight children.
- Alan Goodman (b. 1945) american-born extremist who moved from Baltimore to Israel in 1977. On Easter morning 1982, wearing an IDF military uniform and armed with an M-16 automatic rifle, he shot his way into the Dome of the Rock, killing two and wounding 11 Palestinians. Sentenced to life imprisonment plus 40 years. Goodman was released after 15 years.
- Yisrael Ariel (b. 1939), number two in the Kach party after Meir Kahane; these days he is propagating the re-introduction of ancient Sanhedrin rabbinical courts in Israel. Arrested several times; in the early 80s for sedition because he was planning to dig a tunnel under the Al-Aqsa mosque in order to take it over and turn it into a jewish settlement. Today, he is the chief rabbi in the state-sponsored Temple Institute, which has a focus on educating children on jewish temples and the establishing of the Third Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
- Craig Leitner, american-born lawyer and former terrorist member of the JDL and Kach who served 30 months in jail for firebombing the Palestinian newspaper Al-Fajar and being involved in the shooting at an arab bus in Ramallah in 1984, injuring 6-7 Palestinians. Together with his lawyer wife Nitsana Darshan-Leitner (b. 1973) in the Shurat Hadin lawfare organization he is mostly involved with legal matters defending terrorists like for instance Yigal Amir (b. 1970); the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin (1922-1995), and Jonathan Pollard (b. 1954); an American-Israeli civilian-employed US Military intelligence analyst who in 1986 was sentenced to life in imprisonment for spying on the United States of America for the State of Israel. It is sickening to see that this man, who betrayed ALL of the NATO countries at the HEIGHT of the Cold War, not just the USA, but ALL WESTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES has been living as a free, war-mongering, obvious and public kahanist in Israel since 2021.
- Rafi Peretz (b. 1956), chief military rabbi of the IDF, Minister of Education 2019-2020 and Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Minister of Israel 2020-2021.
See also:
- Unpacking Israeli History: Baruch Goldstein - Legacy of a Massacre (Nov. 2020)
- David Sheen: «Three Decades After his Death, Kahane’s Message of Hate is More Popular Than Ever», Middle East Report Online, February 02, 2021.
- Jeff Halper: «How Israel Undermines International Law Through ‘Lawfare’», The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, August 18 2014.
- Wikipedia: 2021 ban of Palestinian human rights organizations
Mans understanding of Woman, the first step is to realize you know nothing, in knowing nothing you know everything,and now that you know everything the fact is you know nothing! steve.
Leipziger Buchmesse 2016 / Leipzig Book Fair 2016
2016-03-18 (Friday)
2016_002
2016#204
2016#205
Monta (Judith) 309417 as Princess Katyuu from Sailor Moon
Opticat (___) 583369 as Sailor Galaxia from Sailor Moon
Thank you for any group invites which I'd be glad to accept. However, if I can't check the content of such groups ("This group is not available to you") I'd rather not add any of my photos. Thanks for your understanding.
ONLY PERSONAL COMMENTS. NO LOGOS. THANK YO FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING.© RESPECT the copyright. Sculpture Horse with rider.
Leica-M6 TTL 0.72 Serial Number (2466527) Summicron-C 1:2.0/40mm.
Delta 100asa Developer HC 110 1+31 20º 6 1/2 min.
Nikon Coolscan 5000ED.
Photoshop CS 4
Het Kröller-Müller Museum is een museum voor moderne kunst, gelegen in het Nationaal Park De Hoge Veluwe te Otterlo in de Nederlandse provincie Gelderland. Het museum en het aangrenzende beeldenpark, samen ca. 25 ha, genieten internationale bekendheid. Jaarlijks komen er ruim 250.000 bezoekers uit binnen- en buitenland.
The Kröller-Müller Museum is a museum for modern art, located in the National Park De Hoge Veluwe in Otterlo in the Dutch province of Gelderland. The museum and the adjacent sculpture park, together around 25 ha, are internationally renowned. Every year more than 250,000 visitors come from home and abroad.
🔴Leica my point of view.
Wetzlar, Deutschland.
Leica-CL 1974 Rangefinder
Leica-M 6 TTL 0.72 1998 Rangefinder
Leica-M6 TTL 0.85 2001 Rangefinder
Understanding the size of pot sizes and cultural preferences is critical to the development of a successful cookstove and fuel intervention.
Leipziger Buchmesse 2016 / Leipzig Book Fair 2016
2016-03-19 (Saturday)
2016_040
2016#248
Lightning-Farron (Laura) 632675 as Maleficent from Maleficent (Disney)
Thank you for any group invites which I'd be glad to accept. However, if I can't check the content of such groups ("This group is not available to you") I'd rather not add any of my photos. Thanks for your understanding.
My understanding is that there is a new public park on Bridgefoot Street but I need to visit at a later date to confirm if that is in fact true.
Dublin Canvas is an idea, a community art project intended to bring flashes of colour and creativity to everyday objects within Dublin's streetscape. Less grey, more play. The project takes previously unused public space and transforms it into canvases to help brighten up each area. Making Dublin a more beautiful place to live, work and visit.
The project started in the Summer of 2015 with 15 boxes dotted along Rathmines, Camden Street and Baggot Street. Following on from this initial successful launch a further 31 locations were added in Autumn 2015. In 2016, Dublin Canvas expanded further taking in an additional 72 boxes and spreading out right across all five of Dublin City Council areas.
As of Spring 2019, there are now over 325 pieces completed - spread out right across County Dublin. Completed artwork brightens up and turns these once dull, heavily tagged boxes into beautiful works of art, transforming Dublin into a walking gallery of public art.
Varosha - Maras is the southern quarter of the Famagusta, a de jure territory of Cyprus, currently under the control of Northern Cyprus. Varosha has a population of 226 in the 2011 Northern Cyprus census. The area of Varosha is 6.19 km2 (2.39 sq mi).
The name of Varosha derives from the Turkish word varoş (Ottoman Turkish: واروش, 'suburb'). The place where Varosha is located now was empty fields in which animals grazed.
In the early 1970s, Famagusta was the number-one tourist destination in Cyprus. To cater to the increasing number of tourists, many new high-rise buildings and hotels were constructed. During its heyday, Varosha was not only the number-one tourist destination in Cyprus, but between 1970 and 1974, it was one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world and was a favorite destination of such celebrities as Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Raquel Welch, and Brigitte Bardot.
Before 1974, Varosha was the modern tourist area of the Famagusta city. Its Greek Cypriot inhabitants fled during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, when the city of Famagusta came under Turkish control, and it has remained abandoned ever since. In 1984 a U.N. resolution called for the handover of the city to UN control and said that only the original inhabitants, who were forced out, could resettle in the town.
Entry to part of Varosha was opened to civilians in 2017.
In August 1974, the Turkish Army advanced as far as the Green Line, a UN-patrolled demilitarized zone between the Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, and controlled and fenced Varosha. Just hours before the Greek Cypriot and Turkish armies met in combat on the streets of Famagusta, the entire Greek Cypriot population fled to Paralimni, Dherynia, and Larnaca, fearing a massacre. The evacuation was aided and orchestrated by the nearby British military base. Paralimni has since become the modern-day capital of the Famagusta province of Greek Cypriot-led Cyprus.
The Turkish Army has allowed the entry of only Turkish military and United Nations personnel since 2017.
One such settlement plan was the Annan Plan to reunify the island that provided for the return of Varosha to the original residents. But this was rejected by Greek Cypriots in a 2004 referendum. The UN Security Council Resolution 550 states that it "considers attempts to settle any part of Varosha by people other than its inhabitants as inadmissible and calls for the transfer of this area to the administration of the United Nations".
The European Court of Human Rights awarded between €100,000 and €8,000,000 to eight Greek Cypriots for being deprived of their homes and properties as a result of the 1974 invasion. The case was filed jointly by businessman Constantinos Lordos and others, with the principal judgement in the Lordos case dating back to November 2010. The court ruled that, in the case of eight of the applicants, Turkey had violated Article 1 of Protocol 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights on the right of peaceful enjoyment of one's possessions, and in the case of seven of the applicants, Turkey had violated Article 8 on the right to respect for private and family life.
In the absence of human habitation and maintenance, buildings continue to decay. Over time, parts of the city have begun to be reclaimed by nature as metal corrodes, windows are broken, and plants work their roots into the walls and pavement and grow wild in old window boxes. In 2014, the BBC reported that sea turtles were observed nesting on the beaches in the city.
During the Cyprus Missile Crisis (1997–1998), the Turkish Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktaş, threatened to take over Varosha if the Cypriot government did not back down.
The main features of Varosha included John F. Kennedy Avenue, a street which ran from close to the port of Famagusta, through Varosha and parallel to Glossa beach. Along JFK Avenue, there were many well known high rise hotels including the King George Hotel, The Asterias Hotel, The Grecian Hotel, The Florida Hotel, and The Argo Hotel which was the favourite hotel of Elizabeth Taylor. The Argo Hotel is located near the end of JFK Avenue, looking towards Protaras and Fig Tree Bay. Another major street in Varosha was Leonidas (Greek: Λεωνίδας), a major street that came off JFK Avenue and headed west towards Vienna Corner. Leonidas was a major shopping and leisure street in Varosha, consisting of bars, restaurants, nightclubs, and a Toyota car dealership.
According to Greek Cypriots, 425 plots exist on the Varosha beach front, which extends from the Contandia hotel to the Golden Sands hotel. The complete number of plots in Varosha are 6082.
There are 281 cases of Greek Cypriots who filed to the Immovable Property Commission (IPC) of Northern Cyprus for compensation.
In 2020, Greek Cypriot Demetrios Hadjihambis filed a lawsuit seeking state compensation for financial losses.
The population of Varosha was 226 in the 2011 Northern Cyprus census.
In 2017, Varosha's beach was opened for the exclusive use of Turks (both Turkish Cypriots and Turkish nationals).
In 2019, the Government of Northern Cyprus announced it would open Varosha to settlement. On 14 November 2019, Ersin Tatar, the prime minister of Northern Cyprus, announced that Northern Cyprus aims to open Varosha by the end of 2020.
On 25 July 2019, Varosha Inventory Commission of Northern Cyprus started its inventory analysis on the buildings and other infrastructure in Varosha.
On 9 December 2019, Ibrahim Benter, the Director-General of the Turkish Cypriot EVKAF religious foundation's administration, declared all of Maraş/Varosha to be the property of EVKAF. Benter said "EVKAF can sign renting contracts with Greek Cypriots if they accept that the fenced-off town belongs to the Evkaf."
In 2019–20, inventory studies of buildings by the Government of Northern Cyprus were concluded. On 15 February 2020, the Turkish Bar Association organised a round table meeting at the Sandy Beach Hotel in Varosha, which was attended by Turkish officials (Vice President Fuat Oktay and Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gül), Turkish Cypriot officials, representatives of the Turkish Cypriot religious foundation Evkaf, and Turkish and Turkish Cypriot lawyers.
On 22 February 2020, Cyprus declared it would veto European Union funds to Turkish Cypriots if Varosha were opened to settlement.
On 6 October 2020, Ersin Tatar, the Prime Minister of Northern Cyprus, announced that the beach area of Varosha would reopen to the public on 8 October 2020. Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said Turkey fully supported the decision. The move came ahead of the 2020 Northern Cypriot presidential election, in which Tatar was a candidate. Deputy Prime Minister Kudret Özersay, who had worked on the reopening previously, said that this was not a full reopening of the area, that this was just a unilateral election stunt by Tatar. His People's Party withdrew from the Tatar cabinet, leading to the collapse of the Turkish Cypriot government. The EU's diplomatic chief condemned the plan and described it as a "serious violation" of the U.N. ceasefire agreement. In addition, he asked Turkey to stop this activity. The U.N. Secretary-General expressed concern over Turkey's decision.
On 8 October 2020, some parts of Varosha were opened from the Officers' Club of Turkish and Turkish Cypriot Army to the Golden Sands Hotel.
In November 2020, the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Turkey's ambassador to Nicosia, visited Varosha. In addition, the main avenue in Varosha has been renamed after Semih Sancar, Chief of the General Staff of Turkey from 1973 to 1978, a period including the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus.
The European Parliament on 27 November, asked Turkey to reverse its decision to re-open part of Varosha and resume negotiations aimed at resolving the Cyprus problem on the basis of a bi-communal, bi-zonal federation and called on the European Union to impose sanctions against Turkey, if things do not change. Turkey rejected the resolution, adding that Turkey will continue to protect both its own rights and those of Turkish Cypriots. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus presidency also condemned the resolution.
On 20 July 2021, Tatar, the president of Northern Cyprus announced the start of the 2nd phase of the opening of Varosha. He encouraged Greek Cypriots to apply Immovable Property Commission of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus to claim their properties back if they have any such rights.
Bilal Aga Mosque, constructed in 1821 and taken out of service in 1974, was re-opened on 23 July 2021.
In response to a decision by the government of Turkish Cyprus, the presidential statement of the United Nations Security Council dated on 23 July said that settling any part of the abandoned Cypriot suburb of Varosha, "by people other than its inhabitants, is 'inadmissible'." The same day, Turkey rejected the presidential statement of the UNSC on Maras (Varosha), and said that these statements were based on Greek-Greek Cypriot propaganda, were groundless and unfounded claims, and inconsistent with the realities on the Island. On 24 July 2021, the presidency of Northern Cyprus condemned the presidential statement of the UNSC dated on 23 July, and stated that "We see and condemn it as an attempt to create an obstacle for the property-rights-holders in Varosha to achieve their rights".
By 1 January 2022, nearly 400,000 people had visited Varosha since its opening to civilians on 6 October 2020.
On 19 May 2022, Northern Cyprus opened a 600m long X 400m wide stretch of beach on the Golden Sands beach (from the King George Hotel to the Oceania Building) in Varosha for commercial use. Sun beds and umbrellas were installed.
UNFICYP said it would raise the decision taken by Turkish Cypriot authorities to open that stretch of beach in Varosha with the Security Council, spokesperson for the peacekeeping force Aleem Siddique said on Friday. The UN announced its "position on Varosha is unchanged and we are monitoring the situation closely".
In October 2022, the Turkish Cypriots announced that public institutions will be opened in the city.
In April 2023, Cleo Hotel, the 7-floor Golden Seaside Hotel, and the 3-star Aegean Hotel were purchased by a Turkish Cypriot businessman (from their Greek Cypriot owners) who will operate them within 2025.
On 10 August 2023, the Government of Northern Cyprus decided to construct a marina and tourist facility in Varosha.
Varosha was analyzed by Alan Weisman in his book The World Without Us as an example of the unstoppable power of nature.
Filmmaker Greek Cypriot Michael Cacoyannis described the city and interviewed its exiled citizens in the film Attilas '74, produced in 1975.
In 2021, the Belarusian group Main-De-Gloire dedicated a song to this city that has become a ghostly place.
Northern Cyprus, officially the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), is a de facto state that comprises the northeastern portion of the island of Cyprus. It is recognised only by Turkey, and its territory is considered by all other states to be part of the Republic of Cyprus.
Northern Cyprus extends from the tip of the Karpass Peninsula in the northeast to Morphou Bay, Cape Kormakitis and its westernmost point, the Kokkina exclave in the west. Its southernmost point is the village of Louroujina. A buffer zone under the control of the United Nations stretches between Northern Cyprus and the rest of the island and divides Nicosia, the island's largest city and capital of both sides.
A coup d'état in 1974, performed as part of an attempt to annex the island to Greece, prompted the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. This resulted in the eviction of much of the north's Greek Cypriot population, the flight of Turkish Cypriots from the south, and the partitioning of the island, leading to a unilateral declaration of independence by the north in 1983. Due to its lack of recognition, Northern Cyprus is heavily dependent on Turkey for economic, political and military support.
Attempts to reach a solution to the Cyprus dispute have been unsuccessful. The Turkish Army maintains a large force in Northern Cyprus with the support and approval of the TRNC government, while the Republic of Cyprus, the European Union as a whole, and the international community regard it as an occupation force. This military presence has been denounced in several United Nations Security Council resolutions.
Northern Cyprus is a semi-presidential, democratic republic with a cultural heritage incorporating various influences and an economy that is dominated by the services sector. The economy has seen growth through the 2000s and 2010s, with the GNP per capita more than tripling in the 2000s, but is held back by an international embargo due to the official closure of the ports in Northern Cyprus by the Republic of Cyprus. The official language is Turkish, with a distinct local dialect being spoken. The vast majority of the population consists of Sunni Muslims, while religious attitudes are mostly moderate and secular. Northern Cyprus is an observer state of ECO and OIC under the name "Turkish Cypriot State", PACE under the name "Turkish Cypriot Community", and Organization of Turkic States with its own name.
Several distinct periods of Cypriot intercommunal violence involving the two main ethnic communities, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, marked mid-20th century Cyprus. These included the Cyprus Emergency of 1955–59 during British rule, the post-independence Cyprus crisis of 1963–64, and the Cyprus crisis of 1967. Hostilities culminated in the 1974 de facto division of the island along the Green Line following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The region has been relatively peaceful since then, but the Cyprus dispute has continued, with various attempts to solve it diplomatically having been generally unsuccessful.
Cyprus, an island lying in the eastern Mediterranean, hosted a population of Greeks and Turks (four-fifths and one-fifth, respectively), who lived under British rule in the late nineteenth-century and the first half of the twentieth-century. Christian Orthodox Church of Cyprus played a prominent political role among the Greek Cypriot community, a privilege that it acquired during the Ottoman Empire with the employment of the millet system, which gave the archbishop an unofficial ethnarch status.
The repeated rejections by the British of Greek Cypriot demands for enosis, union with Greece, led to armed resistance, organised by the National Organization of Cypriot Struggle, or EOKA. EOKA, led by the Greek-Cypriot commander George Grivas, systematically targeted British colonial authorities. One of the effects of EOKA's campaign was to alter the Turkish position from demanding full reincorporation into Turkey to a demand for taksim (partition). EOKA's mission and activities caused a "Cretan syndrome" (see Turkish Resistance Organisation) within the Turkish Cypriot community, as its members feared that they would be forced to leave the island in such a case as had been the case with Cretan Turks. As such, they preferred the continuation of British colonial rule and then taksim, the division of the island. Due to the Turkish Cypriots' support for the British, EOKA's leader, Georgios Grivas, declared them to be enemies. The fact that the Turks were a minority was, according to Nihat Erim, to be addressed by the transfer of thousands of Turks from mainland Turkey so that Greek Cypriots would cease to be the majority. When Erim visited Cyprus as the Turkish representative, he was advised by Field Marshal Sir John Harding, the then Governor of Cyprus, that Turkey should send educated Turks to settle in Cyprus.
Turkey actively promoted the idea that on the island of Cyprus two distinctive communities existed, and sidestepped its former claim that "the people of Cyprus were all Turkish subjects". In doing so, Turkey's aim to have self-determination of two to-be equal communities in effect led to de jure partition of the island.[citation needed] This could be justified to the international community against the will of the majority Greek population of the island. Dr. Fazil Küçük in 1954 had already proposed Cyprus be divided in two at the 35° parallel.
Lindley Dan, from Notre Dame University, spotted the roots of intercommunal violence to different visions among the two communities of Cyprus (enosis for Greek Cypriots, taksim for Turkish Cypriots). Also, Lindlay wrote that "the merging of church, schools/education, and politics in divisive and nationalistic ways" had played a crucial role in creation of havoc in Cyprus' history. Attalides Michael also pointed to the opposing nationalisms as the cause of the Cyprus problem.
By the mid-1950's, the "Cyprus is Turkish" party, movement, and slogan gained force in both Cyprus and Turkey. In a 1954 editorial, Turkish Cypriot leader Dr. Fazil Kuchuk expressed the sentiment that the Turkish youth had grown up with the idea that "as soon as Great Britain leaves the island, it will be taken over by the Turks", and that "Turkey cannot tolerate otherwise". This perspective contributed to the willingness of Turkish Cypriots to align themselves with the British, who started recruiting Turkish Cypriots into the police force that patrolled Cyprus to fight EOKA, a Greek Cypriot nationalist organisation that sought to rid the island of British rule.
EOKA targeted colonial authorities, including police, but Georgios Grivas, the leader of EOKA, did not initially wish to open up a new front by fighting Turkish Cypriots and reassured them that EOKA would not harm their people. In 1956, some Turkish Cypriot policemen were killed by EOKA members and this provoked some intercommunal violence in the spring and summer, but these attacks on policemen were not motivated by the fact that they were Turkish Cypriots.
However, in January 1957, Grivas changed his policy as his forces in the mountains became increasingly pressured by the British Crown forces. In order to divert the attention of the Crown forces, EOKA members started to target Turkish Cypriot policemen intentionally in the towns, so that Turkish Cypriots would riot against the Greek Cypriots and the security forces would have to be diverted to the towns to restore order. The killing of a Turkish Cypriot policeman on 19 January, when a power station was bombed, and the injury of three others, provoked three days of intercommunal violence in Nicosia. The two communities targeted each other in reprisals, at least one Greek Cypriot was killed and the British Army was deployed in the streets. Greek Cypriot stores were burned and their neighbourhoods attacked. Following the events, the Greek Cypriot leadership spread the propaganda that the riots had merely been an act of Turkish Cypriot aggression. Such events created chaos and drove the communities apart both in Cyprus and in Turkey.
On 22 October 1957 Sir Hugh Mackintosh Foot replaced Sir John Harding as the British Governor of Cyprus. Foot suggested five to seven years of self-government before any final decision. His plan rejected both enosis and taksim. The Turkish Cypriot response to this plan was a series of anti-British demonstrations in Nicosia on 27 and 28 January 1958 rejecting the proposed plan because the plan did not include partition. The British then withdrew the plan.
In 1957, Black Gang, a Turkish Cypriot pro-taksim paramilitary organisation, was formed to patrol a Turkish Cypriot enclave, the Tahtakale district of Nicosia, against activities of EOKA. The organisation later attempted to grow into a national scale, but failed to gain public support.
By 1958, signs of dissatisfaction with the British increased on both sides, with a group of Turkish Cypriots forming Volkan (later renamed to the Turkish Resistance Organisation) paramilitary group to promote partition and the annexation of Cyprus to Turkey as dictated by the Menderes plan. Volkan initially consisted of roughly 100 members, with the stated aim of raising awareness in Turkey of the Cyprus issue and courting military training and support for Turkish Cypriot fighters from the Turkish government.
In June 1958, the British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, was expected to propose a plan to resolve the Cyprus issue. In light of the new development, the Turks rioted in Nicosia to promote the idea that Greek and Turkish Cypriots could not live together and therefore any plan that did not include partition would not be viable. This violence was soon followed by bombing, Greek Cypriot deaths and looting of Greek Cypriot-owned shops and houses. Greek and Turkish Cypriots started to flee mixed population villages where they were a minority in search of safety. This was effectively the beginning of the segregation of the two communities. On 7 June 1958, a bomb exploded at the entrance of the Turkish Embassy in Cyprus. Following the bombing, Turkish Cypriots looted Greek Cypriot properties. On 26 June 1984, the Turkish Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktaş, admitted on British channel ITV that the bomb was placed by the Turks themselves in order to create tension. On 9 January 1995, Rauf Denktaş repeated his claim to the famous Turkish newspaper Milliyet in Turkey.
The crisis reached a climax on 12 June 1958, when eight Greeks, out of an armed group of thirty five arrested by soldiers of the Royal Horse Guards on suspicion of preparing an attack on the Turkish quarter of Skylloura, were killed in a suspected attack by Turkish Cypriot locals, near the village of Geunyeli, having been ordered to walk back to their village of Kondemenos.
After the EOKA campaign had begun, the British government successfully began to turn the Cyprus issue from a British colonial problem into a Greek-Turkish issue. British diplomacy exerted backstage influence on the Adnan Menderes government, with the aim of making Turkey active in Cyprus. For the British, the attempt had a twofold objective. The EOKA campaign would be silenced as quickly as possible, and Turkish Cypriots would not side with Greek Cypriots against the British colonial claims over the island, which would thus remain under the British. The Turkish Cypriot leadership visited Menderes to discuss the Cyprus issue. When asked how the Turkish Cypriots should respond to the Greek Cypriot claim of enosis, Menderes replied: "You should go to the British foreign minister and request the status quo be prolonged, Cyprus to remain as a British colony". When the Turkish Cypriots visited the British Foreign Secretary and requested for Cyprus to remain a colony, he replied: "You should not be asking for colonialism at this day and age, you should be asking for Cyprus be returned to Turkey, its former owner".
As Turkish Cypriots began to look to Turkey for protection, Greek Cypriots soon understood that enosis was extremely unlikely. The Greek Cypriot leader, Archbishop Makarios III, now set independence for the island as his objective.
Britain resolved to solve the dispute by creating an independent Cyprus. In 1959, all involved parties signed the Zurich Agreements: Britain, Turkey, Greece, and the Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders, Makarios and Dr. Fazil Kucuk, respectively. The new constitution drew heavily on the ethnic composition of the island. The President would be a Greek Cypriot, and the Vice-President a Turkish Cypriot with an equal veto. The contribution to the public service would be set at a ratio of 70:30, and the Supreme Court would consist of an equal number of judges from both communities as well as an independent judge who was not Greek, Turkish or British. The Zurich Agreements were supplemented by a number of treaties. The Treaty of Guarantee stated that secession or union with any state was forbidden, and that Greece, Turkey and Britain would be given guarantor status to intervene if that was violated. The Treaty of Alliance allowed for two small Greek and Turkish military contingents to be stationed on the island, and the Treaty of Establishment gave Britain sovereignty over two bases in Akrotiri and Dhekelia.
On 15 August 1960, the Colony of Cyprus became fully independent as the Republic of Cyprus. The new republic remained within the Commonwealth of Nations.
The new constitution brought dissatisfaction to Greek Cypriots, who felt it to be highly unjust for them for historical, demographic and contributional reasons. Although 80% of the island's population were Greek Cypriots and these indigenous people had lived on the island for thousands of years and paid 94% of taxes, the new constitution was giving the 17% of the population that was Turkish Cypriots, who paid 6% of taxes, around 30% of government jobs and 40% of national security jobs.
Within three years tensions between the two communities in administrative affairs began to show. In particular disputes over separate municipalities and taxation created a deadlock in government. A constitutional court ruled in 1963 Makarios had failed to uphold article 173 of the constitution which called for the establishment of separate municipalities for Turkish Cypriots. Makarios subsequently declared his intention to ignore the judgement, resulting in the West German judge resigning from his position. Makarios proposed thirteen amendments to the constitution, which would have had the effect of resolving most of the issues in the Greek Cypriot favour. Under the proposals, the President and Vice-President would lose their veto, the separate municipalities as sought after by the Turkish Cypriots would be abandoned, the need for separate majorities by both communities in passing legislation would be discarded and the civil service contribution would be set at actual population ratios (82:18) instead of the slightly higher figure for Turkish Cypriots.
The intention behind the amendments has long been called into question. The Akritas plan, written in the height of the constitutional dispute by the Greek Cypriot interior minister Polycarpos Georkadjis, called for the removal of undesirable elements of the constitution so as to allow power-sharing to work. The plan envisaged a swift retaliatory attack on Turkish Cypriot strongholds should Turkish Cypriots resort to violence to resist the measures, stating "In the event of a planned or staged Turkish attack, it is imperative to overcome it by force in the shortest possible time, because if we succeed in gaining command of the situation (in one or two days), no outside, intervention would be either justified or possible." Whether Makarios's proposals were part of the Akritas plan is unclear, however it remains that sentiment towards enosis had not completely disappeared with independence. Makarios described independence as "a step on the road to enosis".[31] Preparations for conflict were not entirely absent from Turkish Cypriots either, with right wing elements still believing taksim (partition) the best safeguard against enosis.
Greek Cypriots however believe the amendments were a necessity stemming from a perceived attempt by Turkish Cypriots to frustrate the working of government. Turkish Cypriots saw it as a means to reduce their status within the state from one of co-founder to that of minority, seeing it as a first step towards enosis. The security situation deteriorated rapidly.
Main articles: Bloody Christmas (1963) and Battle of Tillyria
An armed conflict was triggered after December 21, 1963, a period remembered by Turkish Cypriots as Bloody Christmas, when a Greek Cypriot policemen that had been called to help deal with a taxi driver refusing officers already on the scene access to check the identification documents of his customers, took out his gun upon arrival and shot and killed the taxi driver and his partner. Eric Solsten summarised the events as follows: "a Greek Cypriot police patrol, ostensibly checking identification documents, stopped a Turkish Cypriot couple on the edge of the Turkish quarter. A hostile crowd gathered, shots were fired, and two Turkish Cypriots were killed."
In the morning after the shooting, crowds gathered in protest in Northern Nicosia, likely encouraged by the TMT, without incident. On the evening of the 22nd, gunfire broke out, communication lines to the Turkish neighbourhoods were cut, and the Greek Cypriot police occupied the nearby airport. On the 23rd, a ceasefire was negotiated, but did not hold. Fighting, including automatic weapons fire, between Greek and Turkish Cypriots and militias increased in Nicosia and Larnaca. A force of Greek Cypriot irregulars led by Nikos Sampson entered the Nicosia suburb of Omorphita and engaged in heavy firing on armed, as well as by some accounts unarmed, Turkish Cypriots. The Omorphita clash has been described by Turkish Cypriots as a massacre, while this view has generally not been acknowledged by Greek Cypriots.
Further ceasefires were arranged between the two sides, but also failed. By Christmas Eve, the 24th, Britain, Greece, and Turkey had joined talks, with all sides calling for a truce. On Christmas day, Turkish fighter jets overflew Nicosia in a show of support. Finally it was agreed to allow a force of 2,700 British soldiers to help enforce a ceasefire. In the next days, a "buffer zone" was created in Nicosia, and a British officer marked a line on a map with green ink, separating the two sides of the city, which was the beginning of the "Green Line". Fighting continued across the island for the next several weeks.
In total 364 Turkish Cypriots and 174 Greek Cypriots were killed during the violence. 25,000 Turkish Cypriots from 103-109 villages fled and were displaced into enclaves and thousands of Turkish Cypriot houses were ransacked or completely destroyed.
Contemporary newspapers also reported on the forceful exodus of the Turkish Cypriots from their homes. According to The Times in 1964, threats, shootings and attempts of arson were committed against the Turkish Cypriots to force them out of their homes. The Daily Express wrote that "25,000 Turks have already been forced to leave their homes". The Guardian reported a massacre of Turks at Limassol on 16 February 1964.
Turkey had by now readied its fleet and its fighter jets appeared over Nicosia. Turkey was dissuaded from direct involvement by the creation of a United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) in 1964. Despite the negotiated ceasefire in Nicosia, attacks on the Turkish Cypriot persisted, particularly in Limassol. Concerned about the possibility of a Turkish invasion, Makarios undertook the creation of a Greek Cypriot conscript-based army called the "National Guard". A general from Greece took charge of the army, whilst a further 20,000 well-equipped officers and men were smuggled from Greece into Cyprus. Turkey threatened to intervene once more, but was prevented by a strongly worded letter from the American President Lyndon B. Johnson, anxious to avoid a conflict between NATO allies Greece and Turkey at the height of the Cold War.
Turkish Cypriots had by now established an important bridgehead at Kokkina, provided with arms, volunteers and materials from Turkey and abroad. Seeing this incursion of foreign weapons and troops as a major threat, the Cypriot government invited George Grivas to return from Greece as commander of the Greek troops on the island and launch a major attack on the bridgehead. Turkey retaliated by dispatching its fighter jets to bomb Greek positions, causing Makarios to threaten an attack on every Turkish Cypriot village on the island if the bombings did not cease. The conflict had now drawn in Greece and Turkey, with both countries amassing troops on their Thracian borders. Efforts at mediation by Dean Acheson, a former U.S. Secretary of State, and UN-appointed mediator Galo Plaza had failed, all the while the division of the two communities becoming more apparent. Greek Cypriot forces were estimated at some 30,000, including the National Guard and the large contingent from Greece. Defending the Turkish Cypriot enclaves was a force of approximately 5,000 irregulars, led by a Turkish colonel, but lacking the equipment and organisation of the Greek forces.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1964, U Thant, reported the damage during the conflicts:
UNFICYP carried out a detailed survey of all damage to properties throughout the island during the disturbances; it shows that in 109 villages, most of them Turkish-Cypriot or mixed villages, 527 houses have been destroyed while 2,000 others have suffered damage from looting.
The situation worsened in 1967, when a military junta overthrew the democratically elected government of Greece, and began applying pressure on Makarios to achieve enosis. Makarios, not wishing to become part of a military dictatorship or trigger a Turkish invasion, began to distance himself from the goal of enosis. This caused tensions with the junta in Greece as well as George Grivas in Cyprus. Grivas's control over the National Guard and Greek contingent was seen as a threat to Makarios's position, who now feared a possible coup.[citation needed] The National Guard and Cyprus Police began patrolling the Turkish Cypriot enclaves of Ayios Theodoros and Kophinou, and on November 15 engaged in heavy fighting with the Turkish Cypriots.
By the time of his withdrawal 26 Turkish Cypriots had been killed. Turkey replied with an ultimatum demanding that Grivas be removed from the island, that the troops smuggled from Greece in excess of the limits of the Treaty of Alliance be removed, and that the economic blockades on the Turkish Cypriot enclaves be lifted. Grivas was recalled by the Athens Junta and the 12,000 Greek troops were withdrawn. Makarios now attempted to consolidate his position by reducing the number of National Guard troops, and by creating a paramilitary force loyal to Cypriot independence. In 1968, acknowledging that enosis was now all but impossible, Makarios stated, "A solution by necessity must be sought within the limits of what is feasible which does not always coincide with the limits of what is desirable."
After 1967 tensions between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots subsided. Instead, the main source of tension on the island came from factions within the Greek Cypriot community. Although Makarios had effectively abandoned enosis in favour of an 'attainable solution', many others continued to believe that the only legitimate political aspiration for Greek Cypriots was union with Greece.
On his arrival, Grivas began by establishing a nationalist paramilitary group known as the National Organization of Cypriot Fighters (Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston B or EOKA-B), drawing comparisons with the EOKA struggle for enosis under the British colonial administration of the 1950s.
The military junta in Athens saw Makarios as an obstacle. Makarios's failure to disband the National Guard, whose officer class was dominated by mainland Greeks, had meant the junta had practical control over the Cypriot military establishment, leaving Makarios isolated and a vulnerable target.
During the first Turkish invasion, Turkish troops invaded Cyprus territory on 20 July 1974, invoking its rights under the Treaty of Guarantee. This expansion of Turkish-occupied zone violated International Law as well as the Charter of the United Nations. Turkish troops managed to capture 3% of the island which was accompanied by the burning of the Turkish Cypriot quarter, as well as the raping and killing of women and children. A temporary cease-fire followed which was mitigated by the UN Security Council. Subsequently, the Greek military Junta collapsed on July 23, 1974, and peace talks commenced in which a democratic government was installed. The Resolution 353 was broken after Turkey attacked a second time and managed to get a hold of 37% of Cyprus territory. The Island of Cyprus was appointed a Buffer Zone by the United Nations, which divided the island into two zones through the 'Green Line' and put an end to the Turkish invasion. Although Turkey announced that the occupied areas of Cyprus to be called the Federated Turkish State in 1975, it is not legitimised on a worldwide political scale. The United Nations called for the international recognition of independence for the Republic of Cyprus in the Security Council Resolution 367.
In the years after the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus one can observe a history of failed talks between the two parties. The 1983 declaration of the independent Turkish Republic of Cyprus resulted in a rise of inter-communal tensions and made it increasingly hard to find mutual understanding. With Cyprus' interest of a possible EU membership and a new UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 1997 new hopes arose for a fresh start. International involvement from sides of the US and UK, wanting a solution to the Cyprus dispute prior to the EU accession led to political pressures for new talks. The believe that an accession without a solution would threaten Greek-Turkish relations and acknowledge the partition of the island would direct the coming negotiations.
Over the course of two years a concrete plan, the Annan plan was formulated. In 2004 the fifth version agreed upon from both sides and with the endorsement of Turkey, US, UK and EU then was presented to the public and was given a referendum in both Cypriot communities to assure the legitimisation of the resolution. The Turkish Cypriots voted with 65% for the plan, however the Greek Cypriots voted with a 76% majority against. The Annan plan contained multiple important topics. Firstly it established a confederation of two separate states called the United Cyprus Republic. Both communities would have autonomous states combined under one unified government. The members of parliament would be chosen according to the percentage in population numbers to ensure a just involvement from both communities. The paper proposed a demilitarisation of the island over the next years. Furthermore it agreed upon a number of 45000 Turkish settlers that could remain on the island. These settlers became a very important issue concerning peace talks. Originally the Turkish government encouraged Turks to settle in Cyprus providing transfer and property, to establish a counterpart to the Greek Cypriot population due to their 1 to 5 minority. With the economic situation many Turkish-Cypriot decided to leave the island, however their departure is made up by incoming Turkish settlers leaving the population ratio between Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots stable. However all these points where criticised and as seen in the vote rejected mainly by the Greek Cypriots. These name the dissolution of the „Republic of Cyprus", economic consequences of a reunion and the remaining Turkish settlers as reason. Many claim that the plan was indeed drawing more from Turkish-Cypriot demands then Greek-Cypriot interests. Taking in consideration that the US wanted to keep Turkey as a strategic partner in future Middle Eastern conflicts.
A week after the failed referendum the Republic of Cyprus joined the EU. In multiple instances the EU tried to promote trade with Northern Cyprus but without internationally recognised ports this spiked a grand debate. Both side endure their intention of negotiations, however without the prospect of any new compromises or agreements the UN is unwilling to start the process again. Since 2004 negotiations took place in numbers but without any results, both sides are strongly holding on to their position without an agreeable solution in sight that would suit both parties.
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|| YouTube: Kundun - Nechung oracle || Wikipedia: Kundun || Nechung Oracle || Tibetan Buddhism || Nyingma || Dakini ||
The Bardo Thödol [Tibetan Book of the Dead] began by being a closed book, and so it has remained, no matter what kind of commentaries may be written upon it. For it is a book that will only open itself to spiritual understanding, and this is a capacity which no man is born with, but which he can only acquire through special training and special experience. It is good that such to all intents and purposes useless books exist. They are meant for those queer folk who no longer set much store by the uses, aims, and meaning of present-day civilisation.
"For the religious or self-reflective person, regardless of religious tradition, an inner sense of God becomes the “true key” for understanding the way things “really” are in the world, for grasping the hidden harmony of “that maze of vast complicated disorder” coming to us through the senses."
-Sophia: The Hidden Christ of Thomas Merton by Christopher Pramuk
Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography.
~ George Eastman
I never particularly liked being male, it didn't bother me too much at the time but in a way I felt I had been cheated as I would have prefered to be female. The thing is I never really understood was how much it affected me as I was quite lost being in the wrong place and not quite me and especially when I was a teenager I didn't know what I wanted out of life I just lived on dreams and daydreams. I've always had a lot of sexual energy too to use up and thankfully I had art as an outlet because it wasn't talked about much in our family as my parents made a big mistake and it hung over them like a curse. Once my parents died I felt much more free and partied and with no restrictions my drawings became more erotic and surreal. It was through this and the introduction of transgendered porn in french porn comics like ND and on the web that a greater understanding came to the fore and something must have clicked as I grew a deep fascination and a kind of longing which at first I denied but then once I decided to create an alter-ego I realised there was another me. ..
As a child I loved looking at the covers and the illustrations within my dad's old science magazines. I didn't actually read any, just looked at the pictures. It's still absolutely inspirational stuff.
MAY YOU ALWAYS FEEL LOVED
May you find serenity and tranquillity in a world
You may not always understand.
May the pain you have known and conflict you have experienced
Give you the strength to walk through life,
Facing each new situation with courage and optimism.
Always know that there are those whose love and understanding
Will always be there, even when you feel most alone.
May you discover enough goodness in others
To believe in a world of peace.
May a kind word, a reassuring touch, a warm smile be yours
Every day of your life,
And may you give these gifts as well as receive them.
Remember the sunshine when the storm seems unending.
Teach love to those who know hate,
And let that love embrace you as you go into the world.
May the teaching of those you admire become part of you,
So that you may call upon them.
Remember, those whose lives you have touched
And who have touched yours are always a part of you,
Even if the encounters were less than you would have wished.
It is the content of the encounter that is more important than it's form.
May you not become too concerned with material matters,
But instead place immeasurable value on the goodness in your heart.
Find time in each day to see the beauty and love in the world around you.
Realize that each person has limitless abilities,
But each of us is different in our own way.
What you may feel you lack in one regard
May be more than compensated for in another.
What you feel you lack in the present
May become one of your strengths in the future.
May you see your future as one filled with promise and possibility.
Learn to view everything as a worthwhile experience.
May you find enough inner strength to determine your own worth by yourself,
And not be dependent on another’s judgments of your accomplishments.
May you always feel loved.
© Sandra Sturtz Hauss (1987)
I LOVE this poem because it expresses all my wishes for my family and friends so beautifully. It's a long but simple poem and it hopefully contains everything YOU might want to wish for yourself.
Have a wonderful, wild, calm, serene, exciting, fulfilled, healthy, but most importantly HAPPY New Year (not suitable wishes may be crossed out, e.g. wild…, others may be added to my and your joy!)
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Quote source: Learning and Understanding (2002) Principle 6