Stories and News

Stories and News No. 999 I waited, re-read the news and patiently waited, thinking and observing articles, comments, opinions and reactions. Now, in not very suspicious times - or maybe yes, it always depends on the points of view, I am about to face the facts, which maybe some of you have lost. Last Friday, Jeremy Joseph Christian killed two men with a knife on a train to Portland, USA, while another was seriously injured. The three had intervened in defense of two young girls, insulted with anti-Islamic invectives by Christian. Symbolic last name, don’t you think? " You call it terrorism ," the assassin exclaimed yesterday at the first court hearing. " I call it patriotism ." And how do you call it? Once upon a time there was a story. One of those sadly common and bitterly neglected. An advice for often frustrated authors and dissatisfied and disappointed, hopeful writers. The synopsis , my friends. Synopsis is all. It's the key to the wish...

Stories and News No. 998 The video at the G7 when Trump sharply pushed at side Duško Marković , Montenegro's premier, is already viral around the world. Well, the movie with a leader who stands out among his international colleagues for embarrassing actions or statements seems no new to me. In any case, what stands out this time is the peculiarity of the improper gesture. While the old Mister B. interpreted the role of the clown, in the same days when the Republican Greg Gianforte assaulted a Guardian reporter, the American president acts the bully character, doing the same with those who dare to stand between him and the best shot . Ladies and gentlemen, here they are, the bullying people. They snarl and drool, scream and flush with anger, if they are not there . On the front row, where the armchairs are more comfortable, where you and only you can put questions, enjoying the privilege of not answering. He is trendy, the man from the brain with biceps , the anab...

Stories and News No. 997 More than 30 people have drowned beyond Libya, among them many children. About 200 have fallen from a boat carrying 500 to 700 passengers. Rescue ships are still looking for survivors. It’s a disgrace that has become a habitual anecdote, confused and confusable in the global, media storytelling, which has its own personal rules. Perhaps the negligible and neglected victims of this disturbing movie we are witnessing should also benefit from the modern, and especially viral, narrative formula. Maybe, it will help us understand how much tragedies are connected one other and that the distance we ingenuously build within us, such as the one between heart and mind, is the main reason for our impotence... Attack. There was another attack , ladies and gentlemen. Once again terrorism hit us. Once again, the good people's enemies have smashed our peace. There were dead, otherwise we would not be here, now. Some very young, further reason to be. To j...

Stories and News No. 996 According to yet another international research , the world is robbing Africa 's riches of billions of dollars a year. The main factors contributing to this inequality include, above all, the unfair payment of the debts by foreign corporations , which hide their income through tax evasion and corruption . Aisha Dodwell , a Global Justice Now ’s activist, said: "There’s such a powerful narrative in western societies that Africa is poor and that it needs our help. This research shows that what African countries really need is for the rest of the world to stop systematically looting them." Once upon a time there was a robber . One of the old kind, who are born so and never cease to exist. By vocation, or just following History’s order. I’m talking about the great Story with the capital ‘s’, of course, that differently from the modest initial letter's ones, where it tells lies, always does for a specific reason. The robber was a rob...

Stories and News No. 995 "Dad?" "Yes?" "Are you bad?" "No, I'm not, why do you say that?" "Because at school the teacher read us a story where bad kids were taken away by the Bogeyman and he is a black man. Why do you get them, Daddy, if you're not bad?" "I do not get anyone, son, that's just a fairy tale..." "But you have always told me that there are often more truths in the fables than in reality, right?" "Yes, sure... you remember everything, huh?" "I try. Am I bad too?" "Not even for a dream, son, why do you ask that?" "Dad, if bad children are taken away by the Bogeyman, the latter must be even worse than them. And if I am his son, that is, yours..." "Listen to me now carefully. Your teacher has told you a story of one Boogeyman who takes away bad children, not everyone. Are the children all bad?" "No…" "Not even ...

Stories and News No. 994 Javier Valdez was murdered Monday at noon, near the Ríodoce (Twelfth River) headquarters, the newspaper he co-founded in 2003. Valdez has been hit 12 times, in what his colleagues believe is a premeditated aggression because of their common and courageous commitment against drug cartels. A few weeks ago, he had been terrifying premonitory of his fate, when, after the murder of yet another journalist, Miroslava Breach , he had said: " Let them kill us all, if that is the death sentence for reporting this hell. No to silence ." According to an organization for the press freedom, Article 19 , at least 104 journalists have been assassinated in Mexico since 2000 to date. When a journalist is killed. When a journalist is killed, with him, some words die. The ingenuous ones and those who focus on the target. But the sound of each single letter moves apart from the end of the speech and rises even higher when the wind feeds on the bravery of li...

Stories and News No. 993 Composition : Describe your feelings and your thoughts on the International Day Against Homophobia . Dear professor, well… I don’t want to seem disrespectful, that's clear, especially not from the first lines, you know. The fact is you put me in trouble, with this homework, since the subject itself. I mean how it is written, you know. I am aware that you will say that I use too many “you know’s”, pointing them in red... You are right, but why don’t we remain on the spot, for once? Let's leave the simple form and concentrate on the contents, the real meaning of things, it’s okay for you? So let's start with homophobia . According to Oxford Dictionary , it means dislike of or prejudice against homosexual people . Well, now things change, right? I would not disregard you, Professor, but in the light of the above explanations, we should start again. Describe your feelings and your thoughts on the International Day against dislike of or...

Stories and News No. 992 Miriam Rodriguez , activist and mother searching of missing persons in the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico, was murdered last Wednesday. On the mexican Mother's Day celebration ( Día de la Madre). This is the story of her last and all the others... Greetings, Mother. To you, dear, on your last day, and those to come, especially the latter. Because the thought that truly pleases someone's name and story is made up of unique and special matter. You will find the vibrating echo of a voice that excites by exclaiming the right words, where a moderate and accurate silence is the most in-demand dress. The reverberation of the light from a careful and curious look, ready to illuminate the ignored traits by our fake dignity, though they are often on the surface. More than anything else, the deep grooves on the common way impressed by those who are willing to risk every step below to give meaning to those same traces. After all, what else is life if you...

Stories and News No. 991 The $ 3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline , that has sparked worldwide protests last year, is not yet fully operational and has already suffered a leak . Exactly what was particularly feared by Standing Rock’s Sioux , among the first to report the risk of contaminating and thus devastating the environment. Now, the usual, bitter and frustrated litany could come on stage, titled " I told you ". However, I like to think that the people of earth, proud to belong to the latter more than anything else, do not live in bitterness and frustration, waiting to enjoy the futile privilege of being able to boast some prophecy. On the contrary, I imagine a strenuous, noble, dignified struggle till the end that nobody should want... We do not want to be right. We do not want to be able to say, tomorrow, that we were on the right side. We would, rather, wish that you and us, together, could say it today and forever. We do not want to be right about the ab...

Stories and News No. 990 Fire killed three sisters, respectively 4, 8 and 20, in a parked caravan on the outskirts of Rome. After discovered residual flammable liquid , Italy prosecutors are investigating with the accusation of voluntary homicide . Up till now, many reactions from those who learn this horrible news may be relatively identical or very similar, unless we specify that we are talking about Roma people … Once upon a time there was a substance. A liquid , but do not figure anything light or transparent comparable to its perfection the water. Imagine an abnormal amount of such a mixture, a smelly mud, as a sea. Indeed, an ocean. Or, if you might visualize a greater and uglier mass, choose it, paint it in your mind. In order that you fear it as what it is, so that you start to worry and work since the final word of this nasty story. As an unspoken mass, ocean, sea, it also feeds on his cursed, more or less conscious, branches. Damned rivers, which continuously f...

Stories and News No. 989 From July 1 in Georgia , US, it seems that students will be able to enter the Campus with guns, as long as they hide them. At the same time, in Italy, politicians are debating these days about possible amendments to the norm that legitimizes defense . By synthesizing, the most important clash is between who want to extend the right to shoot at any alleged aggressor in conditions of justified fear or night, and who instead desire to further facilitate the firing against their nightmares up to the absolute freedom, typical wish of the screaming right-wing hordes. Once again what we do not see, or must not see, dictate the route, see producers and sellers of weapons, the real directors and authors of this farce called security. Maybe we should really start defending us... Once upon a time there was the legitimate defense . A sacred law, where danger requires it. In the form of a comprehensible reaction. Proportional to the offense . But what if the...

Stories and News No. 988 When Paradzai Nkomo applied for asylum in Britain, she was refused. And when she asked to go home, in Zimbabwe, her application was rejected . This absurd story goes on for fifteen years. Or maybe it’s a lot more… Once upon a time, at the beginning of everything, a world. The world was like a sphere. The spheres roll, change position and orientation, swing and rebounds. Especially if they are alive . In that case they dance and vibrate, grow and sooner or later they die. However, the evocative and continuous movement that makes the world something breathing and dreaming, like all living things, told stories and made it live as much. It defines horizons and causes encounters. More than anything, it generates travels, from one cardinal point to another. Most of them are inevitable, like the snow of the glass ball, which cannot help but fall, if Her Majesty the Gravity demands it. So, it often happened that the inhabitants of one part of the worl...

Stories and News No. 987 The exact amount of unregistered children worldwide is unknown but corresponds to millions , which are not considered in the statistics or, in general, the most concrete reasoning and analysis, those based on numbers. So, that means less true facts in the war against pre and post-lies. Now, through the All Children Count campaign, more than 250 NGO s have invited the UN to include forgotten infants in their statistical map. They are the alien series children, the offspring of the excluded from the table, the unwanted world’s progeny, who is daily assimilated into the informal and convenient target by the sitting home caretaker with the quick as light finger... My name is nobody . My name is nobody , and as much I might be an ingenious hero, this will not save me from the third millennium Cyclops. A Dhaka City Corporation sewer cleaner at work. Photos : Zakir Chowdhury/ Barcroft Images  Because the modern one-eyed creature is also deprived of ...