Mark Henson
Mark Henson’s prolific body of visionary work is appreciated by people everywhere.
Oil on Canvas
48 inches x 108 inches
©2010
Buy a print here.
“The epic drama of life, death, war, peace and the inalienable right to choose is depicted in a huge panorama. Refugees climb out of a war zone, a pioneer comes to a graffiti wall where the choices are scratched out. We all want to live in peace but somehow many are attracted to values that are so dissimilar, war seems to be the only option for a humanity gone berserk. The pioneers and refugees make it to a new world of awakened consciousness.”
Snowden is asking for asluym in a rather weird collection of 20 countries:https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bw6EUppxi5S1T2R5ZGIwaGJOMTA/edit?usp=sharingI have to say, I have no sympathy at all. People who have committed treason against evil regimes are my greatest heroes: Hans Oster (chief of staff of German military intelligence) in 1939, after the failure of several plots to overthrow Hitler and prevent war, decided to pass the German war plans to the allies (via a Dutch military attache whom he knew) even though he knew this action would probably cost the lives of many thousands of German soldiers. He thought that a military defeat was the only way to bring down Hitler. Afterwards he told his driver than he was ready to be hanged for what he had done but thought he was a better German patriot that those who blindly followed Hitler. Oster was hanged in 1945, just weeks before Germany’s surrender.Ryszard Kukliński, a colonel of the Polish (communist) Army passed top secret Warsaw Pact plans to the CIA between 1971 and 1981. His motives were purely patriotic: he was motivated by the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the crushing of the Polish workers rebellion in 1970 and what he knew of Soviet war plans. Both his sons died in mysterious circumstances after his escape to the US. After the fall of communism a Polish court revoked Kuklinski’s death sentence. He is buried n the row of honour in the Powiązki Military Cemetary in Warsaw, and has been given honorary citizenship of several Polish cities.Oleg Gordievsky was a KGB colonel and resident designate and bureau chief in London. He was also turned against the Soviets by the invasion of Czechoslovakia. The information Gordievsky provided to the British is considered the most important intelligence information obtained by the West during the cold War. The Soviet era death sentence against Gordievsky has never been revoked but he has received the highest British honours. (Gordievsky also provided convincing evidence that the former Labour Party Leader Michael Foot, a hero of the Left, was a KGB agent of influence under the code name “Boot”. Which shows, not for the first time, that the KGB had a sense of humour). As I wrote, I consider all these three “traitors” as great heroes. They “betrayed” evil regimes (in Oster’s case a “satanic regime” – in his own words). All three took huge risks and paid a terrible price. Snowden, on the other hand, betrayed a highly imperfect but far from evil government and in trying to save his own skin provided significant help to vastly worse ones. A person like this deserves nothing more than contempt, whatever his initial motives might have been.