Conflict - Matthew Aslett - Humanitarian Communications and Logistics

Optics is a term often used to define the public’s opinion and understanding of a situation after seeing it as the media shows it, and the possible political effects of this. Without a reliable objective ground truth there is often dissidence between what we know happened and what we are told to perceive visually. We are looking though a subjective lens, our optics are manipulated via political agendas. How is it then possible to obtain a truthful account of events? Using remote sensing technology, in this instance publicly available satellite images we are able to obtain an objective view of topographies which have seen war crimes, massacres and human atrocities as the result of failed UN resolutions. Despite these images being of exteremly high magnification their resolutions are legally restricted and artificially blurred to conceal any detail.