Stories and News

Stories and News No. 1269 Ladies and gentlemen, good evening and welcome to the famous talk show: Guess who's coming to the microphone. Today's episode we shoot in France, precisely the area overlooking the Channel between Calais and Dunkirk, and it is one of those that will make people talk, so don't get up from your seat even to pee. They will make a movie about this, they told me. Indeed, a TV series in the form of docudrama, those with the writing ‘inspired by a true story’, which is never really like that, but this is different, I swear. The protagonist of this episode is nothing less – because it would be impossible otherwise, than a migrant. Although he prefers be named as a person, or a guest like everyone else, or even a human being, this is our home and here we do as we please, right? Unleash the recorded cheers and giggles and let's go live: "The first question I ask you, dear migrant, is the following one: did you hear about our Majesty's governm...

Stories and News No. 1199   Hello, planet earth. We call you from the Limbo, but you may also think about it as a seemingly far away place. So, we are here, but also there, among the invisible cracks within human decency; over there, down there, or if you prefer sideways to the more convenient horizons - and we are still alive. We are, despite everything and everyone. Although over time the perception of existence has deteriorated so much that the detestable meaning of a mere survival is now only a memory. That is why we rely on the only certainties that remain: the beating heart, although at each toll it wonders whether it is appropriate to continue knocking on the world’s doors; the air that invades our lungs, although - conscious of how little clean oxygen it contains – it feels compassion for the rest of us; and our torn but indomitable imagination that persists in scrutinizing the surrounding universe in search of that phantom star called humanity. Marveled by thi...

Stories and News No. 1101 Welcome. They are, yes they do. In places where you least expect that, if you stopped here, a handful of words from completeness and, above all, thought basis. But on the other hand, is not avoiding such nuisances that today the fiercely populist citizen draws his indisputable conclusions? Is it not with the same approximation that he judges and then votes? In short, is not it enough reading the article’s title to delegate the fate of one or more generations? Nevertheless, if you found time and curiosity to go further, I tell you that ten thousand immigrants from all over the world moved last year to Australia , a record country for the classification. In the total absence of protests, on the traditional as digital public square. With just as much easiness, in the United States nine thousand illegal persons have magically become citizens with a sudden, unusual wand’s blow, the blinding and silent type’s, which shines and resonates only in excl...

Stories and News No. 1099 The Orbán government has proposed a series of laws to the Hungarian parliament that will justify the detention of individuals and organizations deemed to be in favour of illegal immigration, being accountable for providing legal, medical or any kind of support to people without citizenship. Dear Hungarian patriots, And all of you too, inhabitants of the world, who boldly defend the sacred borders from pure blood’s polluters . The mathematics of the unlikely theorems is enriched with a further fundamental axiom. That is a new subject, in fact, and it therefore needs continuous paradoxical updates. As you all well know, the old, as well as radical chic, science of numbers , based its formulas on a now overrated scheme: the good-hearted hypothesis, demonstration and thesis sequence. On the contrary, thanks to the diligent assiduousness of social networks, the arithmetic of delirium writes its principles through popular approval. In fact, as the fi...

Stories and News No. 1098 According to a grotesquely contingency the most intolerant governments on the issue of immigration used to declare themselves as the most religious ones, including the nascent Italian administration and its possible prime minister . A few days ago, I entered the Sanctuary of Rivotorto , in Umbria, and inside the so-called Hovel of Saint Francis of Assisi , despite knowing it, I found myself reading again the Canticle of the Creatures , but with my present eyes. I am not a believer, I say it immediately, but those words seemed to me further holy, when adapted to the need of many, that is, too many systematically forgotten human beings... Be praised, my Lord, and likewise all human creatures, especially the stranger , who is our brother in the light of the day as the night, and through him you may enrich us. So, he is precious and bearer of a great gift: it symbolizes the value of not being the only favorites of an extraordinarily unjust father. Praised...

Stories and News No. 956 Hundreds of whales died during the night on the New Zealand’s shores after a mass stranding considered the largest in decades. The news is now viral around the world, images are everywhere and so the participation for the tragedy, while the staff of the Department of Conservation and about 500 volunteers are focused on how to save the survived whales until the next high tide. However, as always, not all react to the news the same way... At night, in a crowded room, somewhere in Africa... "Guys, I have a dream for you," says Babatunde , only five years old, but a lot of crazy ideas, rarely liked by his brothers. "Another one?" asks with sarcasm one of them, the closest among those who try to fall asleep. "Do you never get tired?" "This time is a good one." "So the last time," says another kid. "Then, fortunately, you did understand that building a submarine is science fiction." "N...

Stories and News No. 940 The far-right Dutch leader Geert Wilders has been found guilty of inciting discrimination against nationals Moroccan people in his country in a verdict that plans to intensify the debate on migration in the Netherlands. Wilders is not the first and will not even be the last one to 'leverage' the migrants for purely elective purposes and achievement of power. To be clear, he and his friends are using refugees’ image that every day is falsely built by politicians themselves, with the collaboration of servants, cowards or just clicks catchers journalists. However, the story comes from afar... Plop. A drop in the ground. The living world is now a small thing. Just an ice island, surrounded by frozen, greedy and unscrupulous waves. The Stegosaurus still screams with deafening verses, but it seems to hurt more his vocal cords than the others. In the middle of the goner, white fragment, a Tyrannosaurus rotates wearily the neck and watches him j...

Stories and News No. 931 One hundred people are probably drowned, following the sinking of a boat off the coast of Libya, bringing the death toll to three hundred and forty in the Mediterranean this week. Doctors Without Borders says that only twenty-seven have survived. Twenty-seven stories, twenty-seven lives. Like a boat capsizing for twenty-seven times, but the journey continues... One , the boat capsizes and everyone is still on board, because the wife’s magic glue worked. Two , the boat capsizes, but also the world did, and then we are all safe, bar none. Three , the boat capsizes and I wake up, we did not sail at all, because we never needed to do so. Four , the boat capsizes and nets are full. We were just trying a new way of fishing, what did you think? Five , the boat capsizes, then I am hiding and you start counting to ten, twenty, indeed, twenty-seven, but did not find me, please, because it means that this time I really won. Six , the boat capsizes and I...

Stories and News No. 877 The clashes in Idomeni between police and refugees, including thousands of children , are becoming more violent. A story of monsters... Monsters. Real monsters, now, we are no more afraid of. We have learned to fear the others. The mistaken ones. Among the most improbable, I have to mention fires spitting dragons and blood donor mosquitoes . Tsunami that return villages and landscapes even refurbished. Earthquakes that offer just likable syncopation to those who have already danced enough, until now. Seas wrecking in the finally safe hearts of the children on the barges. Hunters who dismantle guns while reassembling animals, fragment after fragment, as a puzzle. But also ghosts who tell bedtime stories and a happy ending nightmares. Lethal injections of syrup for cough and cough syrups that treat vengeance sickness. Civilians who blow their life up in the public square. And some of the most extraordinary examples of the blind in this w...

Stories and News No. 844 Warren Richardson, Australia, won the first prize (Spot News, singles) of the 59th edition of the World press photo with "Hope for a New Life". You may see a man and a child attempting to cross the border between Hungary and Serbia in the night of 28 August 2015, when the infamous wall was not yet finished. Consistent with the famous painting by Magritte, " La Trahison des images " (The treachery of images), a pipe accompanied by the caption "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" (This is not a pipe), here's the true story of the image.. Well, let us start from here: the people in the photo are not the winners. No one is in such great defeats. There are no refugees, no, they are not. Because to have refugees, there should be a shelter waiting for them. Those who offer it. And, at least, those who are ashamed of denying them. There are no survivors. Wait, let us wait, do not delude ourselves. Do not delude them. The jou...

Stories and News No. 808 Recent news says that off the Greek island of Kos a man had to throw overboard the body of his six year old son to save the rest of his family. This is the story in brief. At the same time. A loud cry and a feeble prayer. Please, Dad, do not . Throw me into the sea, Father, so that everything makes sense . Where there should not be any one. Where there should be none. With your own flesh in your hands. Ready to move without it. In the arms of that same flesh. Ready to do without. Of yourself. There is a mistake, there must be a serious one in this film. If not, what writer would have been so blind? Which director could have to stage such outrage? Which producer would dare to finance this abomination? But, more than anything else, what kind of viewers could remain silent on his comfortable chair before a so alien movie? Yeah, it's all a matter of words, in the final analysis. Because the protagonists, the different skin or different wa...

Stories and News No. 799 After decided to cross the Eurotunnel and reach the UK, four men climbed onto a truck in Calais, France, and found a polar bear in a cage. One of them escaped, while the three remaining were then arrested. The animal, named Nissan, arrived later at its destination, a Yorkshire park, to join two other bears, Victor and Pixel. This is the story that Nissan told them… Once upon a time there were three migrants. The three migrants were actually four. In fact, to be honest, I have no idea if they were migrants . Or in any other way humans love calling each other. Distinguishing. At worst, estranging. Four of them have got on board. And only three are left. Too bad, I thought. Who knows what the fourth could have said. Well, as you know, we bulky souls, who travel from pole to pole of the planet only reluctantly, we are always there with our mind. On the empty chair in the classroom and the blank place in the crowd. On the lacking horizon. Any...