"The Desperate Kingdom Of Love"

PJ Harvey

'Desperate Kingdom of Love'

"The Desperate Kingdom Of Love"

Oh love, you were a sickly child
And how the wind knocked you down
Put on your spurs, swagger around
In the desperate kingdom of love

Holy water cannot help you now
Your mysterious eyes cannot help you
Selling your reason will not bring you through
The desperate kingdom of love

There's another who looks from behind your eyes
I learn from you how to hide
From the desperate kingdom of love

At the end of this burning world
You'll stand proud, face upheld
And I'll follow you, into Heaven or Hell
And I'll become, as a girl
In the desperate kingdom of love

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Album version:

Nina Simone's Tribute to Martin Luther King

"Why?" was written for Martin Luther King.

Born in January 15, 1929.

And he's celebrated every third Monday of January on Martin Luther King Day.

Nina Simone 

'Why? 

(The King of Love Is Dead)' 

live

Toni Morrison on Trump's America

In the New Yorker:

MOURNING FOR WHITENESS

By Toni Morrison

This is a serious project. All immigrants to the United States know (and knew) that if they want to become real, authentic Americans they must reduce their fealty to their native country and regard it as secondary, subordinate, in order to emphasize their whiteness. Unlike any nation in Europe, the United States holds whiteness as the unifying force. Here, for many people, the definition of “Americanness” is color.

Under slave laws, the necessity for color rankings was obvious, but in America today, post-civil-rights legislation, white people’s conviction of their natural superiority is being lost. Rapidly lost. There are “people of color” everywhere, threatening to erase this long-understood definition of America. And what then? Another black President? A predominantly black Senate? Three black Supreme Court Justices? The threat is frightening.

In order to limit the possibility of this untenable change, and restore whiteness to its former status as a marker of national identity, a number of white Americans are sacrificing themselves. They have begun to do things they clearly don’t really want to be doing, and, to do so, they are (1) abandoning their sense of human dignity and (2) risking the appearance of cowardice. Much as they may hate their behavior, and know full well how craven it is, they are willing to kill small children attending Sunday school and slaughter churchgoers who invite a white boy to pray. Embarrassing as the obvious display of cowardice must be, they are willing to set fire to churches, and to start firing in them while the members are at prayer. And, shameful as such demonstrations of weakness are, they are willing to shoot black children in the street.

To keep alive the perception of white superiority, these white Americans tuck their heads under cone-shaped hats and American flags and deny themselves the dignity of face-to-face confrontation, training their guns on the unarmed, the innocent, the scared, on subjects who are running away, exposing their unthreatening backs to bullets. Surely, shooting a fleeing man in the back hurts the presumption of white strength? The sad plight of grown white men, crouching beneath their (better) selves, to slaughter the innocent during traffic stops, to push black women’s faces into the dirt, to handcuff black children. Only the frightened would do that. Right?

These sacrifices, made by supposedly tough white men, who are prepared to abandon their humanity out of fear of black men and women, suggest the true horror of lost status.

It may be hard to feel pity for the men who are making these bizarre sacrifices in the name of white power and supremacy. Personal debasement is not easy for white people (especially for white men), but to retain the conviction of their superiority to others—especially to black people—they are willing to risk contempt, and to be reviled by the mature, the sophisticated, and the strong. If it weren’t so ignorant and pitiful, one could mourn this collapse of dignity in service to an evil cause.

The comfort of being “naturally better than,” of not having to struggle or demand civil treatment, is hard to give up. The confidence that you will not be watched in a department store, that you are the preferred customer in high-end restaurants—these social inflections, belonging to whiteness, are greedily relished.

So scary are the consequences of a collapse of white privilege that many Americans have flocked to a political platform that supports and translates violence against the defenseless as strength. These people are not so much angry as terrified, with the kind of terror that makes knees tremble.

On Election Day, how eagerly so many white voters—both the poorly educated and the well educated—embraced the shame and fear sowed by Donald Trump. The candidate whose company has been sued by the Justice Department for not renting apartments to black people. The candidate who questioned whether Barack Obama was born in the United States, and who seemed to condone the beating of a Black Lives Matter protester at a campaign rally. The candidate who kept black workers off the floors of his casinos. The candidate who is beloved by David Duke and endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan.

William Faulkner understood this better than almost any other American writer. In “Absalom, Absalom,” incest is less of a taboo for an upper-class Southern family than acknowledging the one drop of black blood that would clearly soil the family line. Rather than lose its “whiteness” (once again), the family chooses murder.

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Massive Attack - On helping refugees

 I can't believe it's been almost a year... A year since this interview, this call to help, the peak of this cruel crisis. And the problem, my friends, has not disappeared.

It's never too late to help and host the ones in need.

Photograph taken by myself in Grande Synthe, near Calais, North of France, in a now-destroyed informal refugee camp, during a report mission in Feb. 2016

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Here is Massive Attack's message and interview about their tour focusing on the state of Europe and refugees and their work with photographer Giles Duley.

Below, more of the news on the issue...

Massive Attack on refugees 

- in one of their rare TV interviews 

Feb. 2016

Published on 4 Feb 2016

They rarely give interviews, but Massive Attack have put images of refugees centre stage in their latest shows and the band believes we "will be judged in history" by how we respond.

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Photograph taken by myself at Massive Attack's show in Hyde Park's BST Festival, in London, on July 1st, 2016

See for yourself...

Massive Attack Give a Glimpse into the Refugee Crisis:

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Photographer Giles Duley and Massive Attack team up to stand with refugees

In September 2016, photographer Giles Duley joined forces with the band Massive Attack to show their support for refugees.

Watch the interview:

Massive Attack calls for solidarity with refugees

Published on 3 Nov 2016

British group Massive Attack has included images of refugees, taken by photographer, Giles Duley, in their concerts. Together the artists are collaborating to encourage people to support refugees.

“These are people just like you, and me. By doing it against a white background and making it very clean it is taking them out of that context, so you can just see them as people," said photographer Giles Duley.

“People feel afraid to be sympathetic. It is if that by supporting a humanitarian cause and by being in solidarity with people that need you, that you are somehow endangering the security of your own nation - which is crazy," said Massive Attack frontman Rob del Naja. “We are in this together, all of us.”


Find out more:  https://donate.unhcr.org/int-en/massi...

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Stories only have power when people listen. As a photographer, taking a photograph is only part of my work – I also have to make sure people see the images. And that has never felt more important to me than when covering the refugee crisis for UNHCR.

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By: Giles Duley   |  3 November 2016

In recent years I’ve been collaborating with poets, writers and musicians, seeking opportunities to reach new audiences and tell stories in innovative ways. Massive Attack were one of the bands I’d been talking to, and working together to highlight the refugee crisis seemed like a perfect and timely collaboration.

“I was deeply moved by the pictures he was sending me,” recalls Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja. “What’s really shocking is that you could be looking at photographs from any time in the last 100 years of a crisis involving refugee migration and war. And what’s terrifying is you think ‘Nothing’s changed,’ and that is what we have to engage with because this is not the past. This is now.”

In early September 2016, I made my way down to Bristol to see the final outcome of the collaboration. While the rain fell, I sat on the side of the stage waiting for the final track, ‘Unfinished Sympathy’. As it played, the portraits appeared behind the band – projected 30 feet high, dominating the stage, onto vast screens with the words “In This Together” written across them.

Link to the video and article here: 

http://www.unhcr.org/news/stories/2016/11/57e92bee4/photographer-giles-duley-massive-attack-team-refugees.html

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In the news:

Influx of refugees leaves Belgrade at risk of becoming 'new Calais'

Up to 2,000 people stranded in Serbia in -16C temperatures with no water or sanitation, warn Médecins Sans Frontières

Andrew MacDowall and Emma Graham-Harrison

Saturday 14 January 2017 19.43 GMT - The Guardian 

Afreezing and squalid Belgrade railway depot where up to 2,000 people are seeking shelter from the bitter Serbian winter risks becoming a “new Calais” for refugees and migrants abandoned by European authorities, the humanitarian group Médecins Sans Frontières has warned.

Children as young as eight are struggling to survive temperatures that have plunged to -16C this week, with no running water or sanitation. 

At a Belgrade clinic set up by the charity, doctors have seen frostbite and burns resulting from the inhalation of toxic smoke, as people burn anything they can find to stay warm, among dozens of other medical problems.

MSF estimates that up to 2,000 people are living in a cluster of warehouses and other buildings around the city’s main station. It estimates that nearly half the patients they have treated are under 18.

“Serbia risks becoming a dumping zone, a new Calais where people are stranded and stuck,” warned Andrea Contenta, humanitarian affairs officer for MSF in Serbia.

The country is not part of the European Union, but it borders several countries that are part of the bloc, including Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, and has become a key transit point for those hoping to start a new life in western Europe.

Serbia won praise for its treatment of migrants, but increasing numbers have become stranded there as the EU tried to shut down the Balkan route and tightened border controls. Processing camps are now badly overcrowded and more people are arriving every day. Although they ultimately hope to move on from Serbia, many are spending months there, making repeated failed attempts to cross into the EU.

“We cannot continue avoiding talking about reality, which is that the Balkan route is still open but people are getting stuck because there is no safe way to travel,” Contenta said. He added that unofficial estimates were that up to 8,000 refugees and migrants were stranded in Serbia.

The grim conditions endured by thousands outside the government camps were highlighted at the start of this week when a freezing cold snap put lives at risk. MSF was given permission to try to heat the derelict shelters, where there is no glass and walls and roofs are full of holes.

More here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/14/influx-of-refugees-means-belgrade-risks-becoming-new-calais

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Scores feared dead after migrant ship capsizes in Mediterranean

Aid workers say only four survivors recovered so far after vessel containing about 110 people overturned near Libya

Associated Press

Saturday 14 January 2017 23.05 GMT

A migrant ship carrying around 100 people capsized in the frigid waters off Libya on Saturday and only four survivors had been rescued after hours of searching, aid groups have said.

Eight bodies were recovered, but poor conditions hampered the search, which was conducted 30 miles (50km) off Libya’s coast, Italy’s ANSA news agency reported.

Flavio di Giacomo, Rome spokesman for the International Organisation of Migration, said four of the estimated 110 people on board had been rescued. He said more details would become available after the four were brought to shore.

The majority of migrant ships set off from Libya’s lawless coasts where smugglers operate with impunity, charging desperate migrants hundreds of dollars apiece to make the dangerous Mediterranean crossing.

Last year saw a record high number – 181,000 people – heading to Italy by sea, the EU rescue operation Frontex reported. West Africans, most of them hailing from Nigeria, accounted for most of the migrants in 2016, with a reported tenfold increase in their numbers since 2010.

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UK urged to transfer child refugees from freezing Europe camps

Calls for children housed in flimsy tents to be transferred as soon as possible as temperatures plummet across continent

Jessica Elgot Political reporter - The Guardian - Thursday 12 January 2017 15.18 GMT

he British government has been urged to step up efforts to transfer lone child refugees from other parts of Europe, as temperatures plunged below freezing across the south of the continent.

Thousands of refugees are still housed in flimsy tents, without proper flooring, at risk of freezing to death from the arctic blast across Europe that has brought temperatures to -15C (5F) in Greece and as low as -20C in Serbia and Hungary.

The Home Office minister Lady Williams said this week that although the UK had taken hundreds of child refugees after the dismantling of the Calais jungle camp, none had been taken from elsewhere in Europe. 

“The government has transferred more than 750 children to the UK in support of the French operation to clear the Calais camp under both the family reunification provisions of the Dublin regulation and the terms of section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016,” she said, in answer to a question from the Liberal Democrat peer Lord Roberts.

“More eligible children will be transferred from Europe, in line with the terms of the Immigration Act, in the coming months and we will continue to meet our obligations under the Dublin regulation.”

The Lib Dem leader, Tim Farron, said the government must start transferring children from freezing camps in southern Europe as soon as possible.

“May might not have been prime minister when the government pledged to take in accompanied child refugees from across Europe, but she was home secretary and the consequence of her blatant disregard of this pledge can now be seen all too clearly on freezing streets in Greece and central Europe,” he said.

“No child should be subjected to the conditions these refugees are surviving in, yet May is happy to turn her back on what is a serious humanitarian crisis.”

Lone children with families already living in the UK have the right to come to Britain under the Dublin regulation, but those who do not have relatives here can be transferred under the Dubs amendment to the Immigration Act, proposed by the Labour peer Lord Dubs, a former Kindertransport refugee.

That amendment committed the government to relocate lone child refugees in Europe “as soon as possible”. Ministers in David Cameron’s administration later briefed that several thousand were expected to come to Britain.

Last week, an Afghan refugee is reported to have died of hypothermia in Greece, and at least two Iraqis died in south-east Bulgaria, also believed to be linked to cold weather.

Speaking from Thessaloniki in northern Greece, Josie Naughton, the co-founder of Help Refugees, said: “We are devastated to hear reports of people losing their lives and coming close to hypothermia due to what we view as avoidable exposure to the freezing conditions in south-east Europe.

“We call on governments, large organisations and international agencies to reassess their bureaucratic procedures and spend money where it’s needed to prevent further loss of life.”

The charity said it was working to install heaters and flooring in hundreds of tents, as well as building warm accommodation in Filoxenia, where it houses 60 people, 40 of whom are children.

Greece’s migration policy minister, Yannis Mouzalas, said on Tuesday the conditions for refugees on the Greek islands were awful, with refugees housed in tents weighed down with snow. “Efforts are under way to move people as quickly as possible into hotels,” the island’s mayor, Spyros Galinos, told the Guardian on Wednesday.

“I’ve not seen so much snow, ever. Electricity supplies have been knocked out. There are villages that are isolated, without light or heating or running water. It’s difficult for everyone.”

Official figures released on Tuesday showed 5,491 refugees on Lesbos alone, with facilities built to house under half that number. About 1,000 are believed to be in tents.

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More about 'I Am Not Your Negro', a film by Raoul Peck

 In life, there are moments when you know you're blessed. And one of the signs is when you get to work with your total heroes. What can I say, I feel so lucky and grateful... Because it happened to me a couple of times!

One of them - I only worked with him as a little help, 10 years ago in 2005/06, and a few other months on 2009, as a researcher - but his films have changed me, my life, and my view on the world. As they have for thousands of people.

Raoul Peck is releasing soon one of his best films and it's not a little thing to say: I Am Not Your Negro, his deep and stylish personal documentary about James Baldwin will be out in the U.S. on Feb. 3rd. It will soon be on television on ARTE in France and in cinemas in the UK in May.

I had the honour to see the film at a premiere in Paris' School of Cinema in November, (La FEMIS, of which Raoul is currently President). It so moving and grabbing that my words won't mean much...

Here's an recent article on the film:

James Baldwin Shines 30 Years After His Death In Trailer For ‘I Am Not Your Negro’

Vibe
January 12, 2017 - 4:06 pm


Three decades after his death, James Baldwin’s thoughts about race in America unfortunately still ring true, and while Baldwin took his last breath on Dec. 1, 1987 in France, his words are coming to the silver screen in a new documentary that he wrote titled I Am Not Your Negro.

Directed by Raoul Peck, the doc is the unfinished work of Baldwin’s last piece Remember This House. The manuscript, which was intended to examine the deaths of Malcolm X, Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr., never saw the light of day. Yet Peck dove through Baldwin’s notes to create the stirring new film.

With Samuel L. Jackson acting as narrator, the film examines race relations today while using Baldwin’s words from decades past to accent the current climate. Archival footage of a young Baldwin on the Dick Cavett Show open the trailer, along with images of police brutality all throughout history all the way to the uprisings that shook up the nation in Ferguson.

“If any white man in the world says ‘give me liberty or give me death,’ the entire world applauds. When a black man says exactly the same thing, he is judged a criminal and treated like one everything possible is done to make an example of this bad n****r so there won’t be anymore like him.”

I Am Not Your Negro premiered at last year’s Toronto Film Festival to rave reviews and will hit select theaters Feb. 3 Watch the trailer below.

Link: http://www.vibe.com/2017/01/james-baldwin-iam-not-your-negro-trailer/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=jamesbaldwin


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Trailer :

Writing about Massive Attack...

'Out of the Comfort Zone' - From Paris to England...

Hello everyone.

I'm currently working on the English version of my book on Massive Attack and Bristol...
The aim is to get the book to be out in the UK / US next year. 

And I'll be back in England mid-January 2017 to talk about the book a bit more, first on the BBC.

This fascinating story takes us from the jazz and reggae scenes born in the 60s in the West Country to the incredible show Massive Attack gave in their hometown last September, for the first time in a decade.

Massive Attack on stage for the very own festival in Bristol, on The Downs, in September 2016

From The Pop Group and Black roots to The Wild Bunch, the years 1977-87 have been incredibly formative for those who would come to define the sound of the nineties and beyond.

Named in the French version 'En dehors de la zone de confort' ('Out of the Comfort Zone'), my book tells the story behind the rare group of politically aware bands in the UK, bands who produced a revolutionary sound and always tried to also bring a form of consciousness in their discourse.

The book cover has been created from an astonishing and mesmerizing artwork by Robert Del Naja himself, originally designed in 2009 for the E.P. named 'Atlas Air'. Deep recognition for his generous agreement to use it for this book.

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 The book starts with Massive Attack's first album, the remarkable and inimitable Blue Lines, and goes back to their first influences. This includes their very own hometown, Bristol, a port city that has been enriched by the colonies in America, the sugar and the slave trade in the eighteenth century. That very history also provoked a counter reaction and a sense of rebellion in its inhabitants, who fought against slavery a few decades later and rioted against unfair political decisions, inequalities, big corporations, etc.

This sense of rebellion materialized in the city's culture from the 1960s and mainly the 1970s, when the Caribbean population imported their very onw reggae music in the city's homes and clubs just before Bristol gave birth to its own punk and post-punk movement.

Then started Bristol's homegrown sound with the unforgettable band The Pop Group - and friends like Nick Sheppard and his band, The Cortinas, Maximum Joy, the Glaxo Babies, etc.

From then started a new movement.

A few years later, hip hop and electronic music started to pour into Bristol's records shops and nightclubs and a new generation of DJs started to bloom. From that trend came to life the now legendary Wild Bunch, a collective that changed the game and gave to Bristol its gateway into the history of music. The Wild Bunch was originally an informal posse composed of the joined efforts of two young Black DJs, Miles Johnson, known as DJ Milo, and Grantley Marshall, nicknamed Daddy G. They were quickly joined by Nellee Hooper, a massive fan of punk music, who acted as a sort of producer / manager.

The Wild Bunch was enriched in 1983 by a couple of MCs and by the first blooming and generally admired graffiti artist in the city, nicknamed 3D, aka in real life Robert Del Naja, an 18 year-old music junkie.

After years of adventures that this book retells, Grant and 3D formed Massive Attack in 1988 with their young friend DJ Mushroom and their talent soon outburst everywhere else in the UK when they released their first album in 1991.

In their path came to form a large number of other bands, producers and DJs, including the well-known Tricky and Portishead. A few years later, the graffiti movement 3D invigorated and revolutioned also took off in a wider scale.

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I wanted to write about Massive Attack's relationship with their city, Bristol, to show the roots of their greatness & mention their predecessors. To demonstrate how the city's history had a major influence on these self-taught and conscious, rebellious artists.

I then realized it would also be fascinating to retell the band's links with the artists and musicians who followed them, with their many brilliant collaborators and with those they inspired, from UNKLE to Gorillaz.

The book follows Massive Attack's journey in the UK and further away around the world, via their tours and collaborations, in America and in the Middle East notably.

Therefore, this book becomes a form of parallel history of British culture, from an underground and unorthodox point of view. Bristol epitomizes another side of England, less known and much more humorous and rebellious!

It's now been almost two years that I'm coming regularly to Bristol, interviewing musicians, artists and other local actors - and first and foremost the brilliant, intelligent, overtalented Robert Del Naja, a real artist, an incredibly open, curious and cultivated mind, too discrete and so humble it was hard to believe so much modesty could match his bubbling and unstoppable creativity. He is also deeply aware of world affairs and engaged into holding a discourse though his music and his art; and for that rare boldness we should all be thankful.

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I also travelled to Dublin, Sicily, London and Belfast - to see them on stage, witness their creations or meet some of their collaborators or musicians and artists they inspired, also following the evolution of the UK, from the last general election to the referendum on the so-called "Brexit"... Meanwhile, they came twice to Paris for three wonderful shows.

Massive Attack in Paris' Le Zénith, in Feb. 2016 (pictures by myself)

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I hope to get this book out in the UK and the US next year. 

Feel free to get in touch for more details...

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Book's Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/frombristoltomassiveattack/ 

NYT column on humans' humanity in the time of technology

Hello everyone.

This morning fascinating's read: world-renowned columnist Thomas Friedman discusses what still makes us human in the age of super technologies and machines more skilled than ourselves...
Very moving.

"Love in the time of technology"... I'd say.

OP-ED COLUMNIST

From Hands to Heads to Hearts

The New York Times

Opinion

By Thomas L. Friedman

JANUARY 4, 2017



Extracts:

- In short: If machines can compete with people in thinking, what makes us humans unique? And what will enable us to continue to create social and economic value? The answer, said Seidman, is the one thing machines will never have: “a heart.”

- (...) our highest self-conception needs to be redefined from “I think, therefore I am” to “I care, therefore I am; I hope, therefore I am; I imagine, therefore I am. I am ethical, therefore I am. I have a purpose, therefore I am. I pause and reflect, therefore I am.”

- Seidman (Friedman's my teacher and friend Dov Seidman, C.E.O. of LRN, which advises companies on leadership and how to build ethical cultures, for his take) is simply arguing that the tech revolution will force humans to create more value with hearts and between hearts. I agree.

- When machines and software control more and more of our lives, people will seek out more human-to-human connections — all the things you can’t download but have to upload the old-fashioned way, one human to another.

-  “Machines can be programmed to do the next thing right. But only humans can do the next right thing,” insisted Seidman.



Whole article: 

A room set up to experience the IBM Watson computer.

MICHAEL NAGLE / BLOOMBERG

Software has started writing poetry, sports stories and business news. IBM’s Watson is co-writing pop hits. Uber has begun deploying self-driving taxis on real city streets and, last month, Amazon delivered its first package by drone to a customer in rural England.

Add it all up and you quickly realize that Donald Trump’s election isn’t the only thing disrupting society today. The far more profound disruption is happening in the workplace and in the economy at large, as the relentless march of technology has brought us to a point where machines and software are not just outworking us but starting to outthink us in more and more realms.

To reflect on this rapid change, I sat down with my teacher and friend Dov Seidman, C.E.O. of LRN, which advises companies on leadership and how to build ethical cultures, for his take. “What we are experiencing today bears striking similarities in size and implications to the scientific revolution that began in the 16th century,” said Seidman. “The discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo, which spurred that scientific revolution, challenged our whole understanding of the world around and beyond us — and forced us as humans to rethink our place within it.”

Once scientific methods became enshrined, we used science and reason to navigate our way forward, he added, so much so that “the French philosopher René Descartes crystallized this age of reason in one phrase: ‘I think, therefore I am.’” Descartes’s point, said Seidman, “was that it was our ability to ‘think’ that most distinguished humans from all other animals on earth.”

The technological revolution of the 21st century is as consequential as the scientific revolution, argued Seidman, and it is “forcing us to answer a most profound question — one we’ve never had to ask before: ‘What does it mean to be human in the age of intelligent machines?’”

In short: If machines can compete with people in thinking, what makes us humans unique? And what will enable us to continue to create social and economic value? The answer, said Seidman, is the one thing machines will never have: “a heart.”

“It will be all the things that the heart can do,” he explained. “Humans can love, they can have compassion, they can dream. While humans can act from fear and anger, and be harmful, at their most elevated, they can inspire and be virtuous. And while machines can reliably interoperate, humans, uniquely, can build deep relationships of trust.”

Therefore, Seidman added, our highest self-conception needs to be redefined from “I think, therefore I am” to “I care, therefore I am; I hope, therefore I am; I imagine, therefore I am. I am ethical, therefore I am. I have a purpose, therefore I am. I pause and reflect, therefore I am.”

We will still need manual labor, and people will continue working with machines to do extraordinary things. Seidman is simply arguing that the tech revolution will force humans to create more value with hearts and between hearts. I agree. When machines and software control more and more of our lives, people will seek out more human-to-human connections — all the things you can’t download but have to upload the old-fashioned way, one human to another.

Seidman reminded me of a Talmudic adage: “What comes from the heart, enters the heart.” Which is why even jobs that still have a large technical component will benefit from more heart. I call these STEMpathy jobs — jobs that combine STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) skills with human empathy, like the doctor who can extract the best diagnosis from IBM’s Watson on cancer and then best relate it to a patient.

No wonder one of the fastest-growing U.S. franchises today is Paint Nite, which runs paint-while-drinking classes for adults. Bloomberg Businessweek explained in a 2015 story that Paint Nite “throws after-work parties for patrons who are largely lawyers, teachers and tech workers eager for a creative hobby.” The artist-teachers who work five nights a week can make $50,000 a year connecting people to their hearts.

Economies get labeled according to the predominant way people create value, pointed out Seidman, also author of the book “How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything.” So, the industrial economy, he noted, “was about hired hands. The knowledge economy was about hired heads. The technology revolution is thrusting us into ‘the human economy,’ which will be more about creating value with hired hearts — all the attributes that can’t be programmed into software, like passion, character and collaborative spirit.”

It’s no surprise that the French government began requiring French companies on Jan. 1 to guarantee their employees a “right to disconnect” from technology — when they are not at work — trying to combat the “always on” work culture.

Leaders, businesses and communities will still leverage technology to gain advantage, but those that put human connection at the center of everything they do — and how they do it — will be the enduring winners, insisted Seidman: “Machines can be programmed to do the next thing right. But only humans can do the next right thing.”

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter. 

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Link: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/01/04/opinion/from-hands-to-heads-to-hearts.html?smid=tw-tomfriedman&smtyp=cur&_r=0&referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.co.uk%2F

James Baldwin in Raoul Peck's vision

So proud to have worked with this unique filmmaker...

Raoul Peck has taken ten years to foresee and write his documentary film on James Baldwin, but also on Martin Luther King, on Malcom X and on America in the twentieth century. 

Based on an unfinished text by the incomparable writer, the film is a real journey into his mind and fights.

Masterpiece. And a must see 

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I Am Not Your Negro - Official Trailer

Summary presentation:

In his new film, director Raoul Peck envisions the book James Baldwin never finished - a radical narration about race in America, using the writer's original words. 

He draws upon James Baldwin's notes on the lives and assassinations of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. to explore and bring a fresh and radical perspective to the current racial narrative in America.


"One of the best movies you are likely to see this year."
- Manohla Dargis, The New York Times


In theatres in the U.S. on February 3rd
http://www.IAmNotYourNegroFilm.com

Published on 5 Jan 2017

Like on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jamesbaldwin...