12/04/2016
11/04/2016
Calais : "Nulle part en France" de Yolande Moreau
Cette entrée ces flaques de pluies, cet unique point d'accès à l'eau, sale. Exactement et totalement Grande-Synthe et Calais.
Excellent travail filmique de Yoland Moreau. "Du désastre finit par naître le réveil", espère-t-elle en échos aux bénévoles.
Quant à la situation, un crève-coeur. Et toujours, une si vaste indifférence... Et une semaine de plus de bruit sur l'évasion fiscale.
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A voir et revoir sur le site d'Arte :
"Nulle part en France" de Yolande Moreau
Cinquième cinéaste invitée de la série multimédia d’Arte Reportage « Réfugiés », Yolande Moreau a passé une dizaine de jours dans les jungles de Calais et de Grande-Synthe en janvier 2016.
Elle en revient avec un film témoignage dans lequel alternent les interviews réalisées sur le « terrain » avec les textes écrits par Laurent Gaudé et lu par l’actrice et réalisatrice. Après Régis Wargnier au Népal, Pierre Schoeller en Irak, Agnès Merlet au Liban et Claire Denis au Tchad, Yolande Moreau propose une œuvre personnelle. Ni reportage ni documentaire, dans cet entre-deux assumé, elle nous emmène pendant 30 minutes « Nulle part, en France ».
De Yolande Moreau, Elsa Kleinschmager, Sébastien Guisset, Fred Grimm, Hania Osta et Laurent Gaudé - ARTE GEIE – France 2016
10/04/2016
On Music and Writing
A website I read almost every Sunday. Wise and inspired quotes and texts from immense writers on music, art and writing.
Today:
Aldous Huxley on the Transcendent Power of Music and Why It Sings to Our Souls
“There is, at least there sometimes seems to be, a certain blessedness lying at the heart of things, a mysterious blessedness.”
BY MARIA POPOVA
Extracts:
Huxley considers music’s singular capacity for expressing the inexpressible:
In a different mode, or another plane of being, music is the equivalent of some of man’s most significant and most inexpressible experiences. By mysterious analogy it evokes in the mind of the listener, sometimes the phantom of these experiences, sometimes even the experiences themselves in their full force of life — it is a question of intensity; the phantom is dim, the reality, near and burning. Music may call up either; it is chance or providence which decides. The intermittences of the heart are subject to no known law.
But the most complete experience of all, the only one superior to music, is silence:
When the inexpressible had to be expressed, Shakespeare laid down his pen and called for music. And if the music should also fail? Well, there was always silence to fall back on. For always, always and everywhere, the rest is silence.
In a different piece from the same collection, the uncommonly breathtaking title essay “Music at Night,” Huxley revisits the subject of humanity’s most powerful medium of expression:
Moonless, this June night is all the more alive with stars. Its darkness is perfumed with faint gusts from the blossoming lime trees, with the smell of wetted earth and the invisible greenness of the vines. There is silence; but a silence that breathes with the soft breathing of the sea and, in the thin shrill noise of a cricket, insistently, incessantly harps on the fact of its own deep perfection. Far away, the passage of a train is like a long caress, moving gently, with an inexorable gentleness, across the warm living body of the night.[…]Suddenly, by some miraculously appropriate confidence (for I had selected the record in the dark, without knowing what music the machine would play), suddenly the introduction to the Benedictusin Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis begins to trace patterns on the moonless sky.
Huxley exhales:
The Benedictus. Blessed and blessing, this music is in some sort the equivalent of the night, of the deep and living darkness, into which, now in a single jet, now in a fine interweaving of melodies, now in pulsing and almost solid clots of harmonious sound, it pours itself, stanchlessly pours itself, like time, like the rising and falling, falling trajectories of a life. It is the equivalent of the night in another mode of being, as an essence is the equivalent of the flowers, from which it is distilled.--
This inspired a quote from a text by Patti Smith:
“Blessedness is within us all,” Patti Smith wrote in her beautiful elegy for her soul mate, and it is the revelation of this blessedness that Huxley celebrates as music’s highest power:
There is, at least there sometimes seems to be, a certain blessedness lying at the heart of things, a mysterious blessedness, of whose existence occasional accidents or providences (for me, this night is one of them) make us obscurely, or it may be intensely, but always fleetingly, alas, always only for a few brief moments aware. In the Benedictus Beethoven gives expression to this awareness of blessedness. His music is the equivalent of this Mediterranean night, or rather of the blessedness at the heart of the night, of the blessedness as it would be if it could be sifted clear of irrelevance and accident, refined and separated out into its quintessential purity.--
Read the whole article here:
https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/04/05/aldous-huxley-music-at-night/?mc_cid=8c122121c6&mc_eid=cd5a6845cc
09/04/2016
Woman's Essence, Milan, April 1st
Beautiful exhibition in Milan's Hernandez Gallery, dedicated to women's art.
Woman's Essence
Painting by Anne Cazaubon, artist, performer and journalist from Paris. This piece was produced in January 2015, after the attack on Charlie Hebdo and is named 'La Réponse', 'The Answer'.
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More paintings and photographs:
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The gallery opening and introduction speech by Anne:
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Discovering Anne Cazaubon's website:
http://www.annecazaubonart.com
Her exhibitions:
http://www.annecazaubonart.com/#!exhibitions/cxwp
Her performances:
http://www.annecazaubonart.com/#!flyingproject/cyuk
And drawings:
http://www.annecazaubonart.com/#!illustrations/c20xm
Milan in pictures
Stazione centrale:
Dolce la mattina :
Brera :
Graffiti da Blu, murale de PAC :
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L'artista en il giardino...
Duomo:
Piazza del Duomo
La galleria Vittorio Emmanuele II
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A la prossima, Italia amore mio...
08/04/2016
'Take It There' - Live
Must see.
Hope and beauty.
The most wonderful song of 'sweet 16' so far.
Extraordinary visuals!
Spiritual atmosphere...
Massive Attack - 'Take It There'
(feat. Martina Topley-Bird)
Live @ O2 Brixton 04/02/2016
06/04/2016
Signs of the time... Wisdom of the hour
"Nothing that is worthwhile or important will come easily. We are guaranteed to be challenged, to doubt, to fear—yet those are the qualities that tell us that what we are about to face matters deeply".
31/03/2016
"Put the refugee 'crisis' in context" — UNHCR
Quote of the day
| "If the world came together now to step up efforts to stop the war in Syria, and in the meantime meaningfully helped the people who fled from it, there would be no need to erect new borders and turn people back on boats. Refugees would no longer represent a crisis, but a group of people who have been given access to a safe and dignified life in exile." – Melissa Fleming, UNHCR Spokesperson. More here: |
Put the refugee 'crisis' in context — UNHCR
As the war in Syria enters its sixth year, blocked borders and folded arms now greet people trying to escape bombs and bullets.
Neighboring countries have taken in almost 5 million refugees and are close to capacity. Lebanon and Jordan have told the world they can manage no more unless recent pledges of massive new infrastructure and development support are met.
Turkey, host to 2.7 million Syrians, has agreed to take on even more of a refugee hosting role in exchange for $6 billion and the lifting of visa restrictions for its own citizens. This deal with the European Union is intended to cut off smuggler-run sea routes to Europe in exchange for resettlement of Syrian refugees from Turkey.
Aid organizations have voiced concern over the humanitarian implications of Friday’s agreement between the European Union and Turkey, aimed at stopping the flow of refugees and migrants entering Europe via Greece’s Aegean islands.
In theory, and only if missing human rights safeguards are swiftly putinto place in Greece and Turkey, this pact might herald the end of dangerous boat crossings for some refugees — and a fairer sharing of Syrian refugees among EU member states.
But the jury is also still out on whether desperate people — including the second two largest groups of people, Iraqis and Afghans, for whom no special resettlement scheme is foreseen — will find access to asylum and the basic survival services closer to home. If not, experience shows that alternative routes will be quickly created by cunning and ruthless people smugglers. Inevitably, these routes will be as, if not more, dangerous and deadly.
For those who do make it to Europe, reception will be fraught with rejection. Here, refugees, once greeted with remarkable sympathy, are finding themselves linked through fear to the same terrorist groups they fled. They are, too often, falsely labelled “irregular migrants,” implying that the trouble they left at home was poverty, not war.
‘Crisis’ in context and meaningful solutions
This is a crisis for refugees, not a crisis for Europeans. The 1 million that have arrived since August 2015 represent a mere 0.2 percent of Europe's population of 500 million. Over 90 percent came from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Almost all of them said they left because of violence and war. Those who had been living as refugees in neighboring countries said they did not have the means to educate and feed their children.
22/03/2016
Greece and migrants - torn in between Europe and Turkey...
UNHCR says won't work in Greek 'detention centres' in swipe at EU-Turkey deal
By Stephanie Nebehay and Karolina Tagaris
GENEVA/LESBOS (Reuters) - The United Nations refugee agency dealt a blow to EU efforts to stem the biggest humanitarian crisis in generations on Tuesday, saying it would no longer assist in the transfer of migrants and refugees arriving in Greece to "detention centres".
The European Union reached a deal with Turkey just four days ago aimed at halting the flow of migrants across the sea to Greece, but the UNHCR said the deal was being prematurely implemented without the required safeguards in place.
It said migrants were being held against their will at reception facilities in Greece, and it would not transport people there from the beaches. It will continue to provide other services including counselling to refugees, it said.
The accord crafted by EU leaders and Turkey specifically mentions the UNHCR's involvement, although UN officials in Geneva said they were not consulted on that.
The deal, which took effect on Sunday, is aimed at putting new arrivals in Greece who seek asylum on a fast-track for processing. But it also means those migrants and refugees are kept in detention until their claims are assessed.
"Under the new provisions, these so-called hotspots have now become detention centres," said the UNHCR's Melissa Fleming.
"Accordingly, and in line with UNHCR policy of opposing mandatory detention, we have suspended some of our activities at all closed centres on the island."
Those considered ineligible for asylum are to be sent back to Turkey from April 4. For every Syrian returned, another still in Turkey will be resettled directly in Europe, effectively penalising those who have in many cases spent their life savings trying to flee conflict.
At least two EU officials said they hoped this shock therapy might work in ebbing the flow of migrants and refugees into Europe. One EU official said "ugly images" of forced detentions and deportations were something the EU would have to accept if it was to regain control of its own borders.
"Ethically we might have doubts. But legally we have no doubts," another EU official said. Both made the remarks before the UNHCR said it was partially withdrawing its support.
DETENTION CENTRES
Until Sunday, arrivals to Lesbos had been free to leave the Moria migrant camp and head for ferries to the Greek mainland from where they would mostly head north via the Balkans in a bid to reach western Europe, particularly Germany.
Now, they are meant to be held in Moria or one of four other centres set up on the Aegean islands of Samos, Chios, Leros and Kos, pending the outcome of their asylum applications.
As of Sunday, just two buses were available to transport the arrivals to Moria, one belonging to the coast guard and one to the police, a senior port police official said.
Early on Tuesday, 129 refugees and migrants who had been rescued at sea by a coast guard patrol boat and taken to the port waited for some 40 minutes for the buses to arrive.
They sat on the dock shivering, men dressed in thin trousers and jackets and women wrapped up with scarves. Many were barefoot and soaked to their knees.
One, a young man named Zalmai, said he had left Afghanistan with his five-member family.
"(There are) a lot of problems in our country. We're coming for a better life," he said, putting on a jumper given to him by volunteers and wrapping a thick grey blanket around his waist.
Using his finger to imitate a knife across his throat, he said: "I'm not going back to Turkey, to Afghanistan. Please, I'll stay here."
CHILDREN NEED PROTECTION, UN SAYS
More than 147,000 people, many fleeing conflict in the Middle East and Asia, have arrived in Greece by sea this year, 59 percent of them women and children, according to UNHCR.
On Monday, Turkish monitors arrived on Lesbos to help put the deal into practise. On Tuesday, the Czech Republic offered 10 asylum experts and 30 police officers plus humanitarian aid to Greece, its state secretary for EU affairs said.
Under a timetable agreed with the EU last week, a task force of 4,000 people from asylum case workers and experts to arbitrators, interpreters and security staff should be in place by March 28. Of those, 2,300 should be deployed by other EU states.
A spokeswoman for the U.N. children's fund UNICEF told a briefing in Geneva on Tuesday the fund was concerned about this new agreement and the implications for children.
"We see no mention of children despite the fact that children make up 40 percent of those currently stranded in Greece," she said, adding 19,000 children are stranded in Greece and about 10 percent are unaccompanied.
(Additional reporting by Jan Lopatka in Prague and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
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