A day late on this unless you want to be picky about time zones... it's still the night of the 20th where i'm situated, and in the sad saga of Azerbaijan vs. Armenia vs. Nagorno-Karabakh vs. ineffective third party negotiators, it's sort of always world refugee day. i still haven't been able to figure out what UNHCR's involvement in the Nogorno-Karabakh refugee situation is - possibly nil - but i'm not going to get into that now for various reasons.
i was surpised to read in this article from the UN News Center that "Pakistan, Iran, and Syria have the largest refugee populations at 1.9 million, 1.07 million, and 1.005 million respectively." America's and Israel's big terrorist bulldogs are also more willing than any other country to take in the people being displaced by, uh, yeah, American-Israeli aggression. Of course, Syria at this point is also generating an onslaught of refugees into Turkey (10,000 have reportedly crossed the border, another 10,000 are within fleeing distance on the Syrian side) and who can say how many of these people were already refugees who have now been displaced a second time? a third? Babylon redux for any Palestinians and Iraqis among them. At this point, we have to hope Bashir Assad gets a grip on his humanity (i know it's there somewhere in his opthalmologist's bag of tricks) before Turkey pushes back and 20,000+ refugees get caught in the crossfire.
World Refugee Day: an opportunity to look at photographic exhibitions of people forcibly displaced by violence and lament man's inhumanity to man, to read about those displaced by economic meltdowns or natural catastrophes and lament the unbridled power of disaster capitalists to profit from that misery. At this point in our planetary history, we can't keep expecting people to park themselves somewhere else, because there are no more empty spaces available. Sadly, the trend in European countries and many of their former colonies, e.g. Australia, the US, Canada, to (1) prevent more 'aliens' from entering, and (2) push out as many immigrants as possible, would indicate that SHARING is not high on the collective list of moral imperatives these days.
i firmly believe people have an innate right to live and slave away wherever our ambitions, daring and/or needs take us. Likewise, refugees' Right of Return should never be comprised in the interests of political expediency or profit margins. How we're supposed to balance those two often conflicting values is something i certainly don't have the answer for. i'm not even sure where exactly i belong, but hopefully the universe can still cough up the patience to let me figure that out in my waning years (a small house on an Andalucian hillside, not far from the sea sounds just about right). The questions Peter Eszterhazy (in an entirely different context) posed about space really resonated with me, but when we talk about refugees, they suddenly seem to create a serious conundrum. World Refugee Day. World Refuge Day. World Free Space Day. The potential overlap i sense between these concepts still eludes absolute clarity, but i'm sure it's there if we can just find the yellow brick road.
PABLO NERUDA
World Refugee Day: an opportunity to look at photographic exhibitions of people forcibly displaced by violence and lament man's inhumanity to man, to read about those displaced by economic meltdowns or natural catastrophes and lament the unbridled power of disaster capitalists to profit from that misery. At this point in our planetary history, we can't keep expecting people to park themselves somewhere else, because there are no more empty spaces available. Sadly, the trend in European countries and many of their former colonies, e.g. Australia, the US, Canada, to (1) prevent more 'aliens' from entering, and (2) push out as many immigrants as possible, would indicate that SHARING is not high on the collective list of moral imperatives these days.
i firmly believe people have an innate right to live and slave away wherever our ambitions, daring and/or needs take us. Likewise, refugees' Right of Return should never be comprised in the interests of political expediency or profit margins. How we're supposed to balance those two often conflicting values is something i certainly don't have the answer for. i'm not even sure where exactly i belong, but hopefully the universe can still cough up the patience to let me figure that out in my waning years (a small house on an Andalucian hillside, not far from the sea sounds just about right). The questions Peter Eszterhazy (in an entirely different context) posed about space really resonated with me, but when we talk about refugees, they suddenly seem to create a serious conundrum. World Refugee Day. World Refuge Day. World Free Space Day. The potential overlap i sense between these concepts still eludes absolute clarity, but i'm sure it's there if we can just find the yellow brick road.
EL futuro es espacio,
espacio color de tierra,
color de nube,
color de agua, de aire,
espacio negro para muchos sueños,
espacio blanco para toda la nieve,
para toda la música.
Atrás quedó el amor desesperado
que no tenía sitio para un beso,
hay lugar para todos en el bosque,
en la calle, en la casa,
hay sitio subterráneo y submarino,
qué placer es hallar por fin,
subiendo
un planeta vacío,
grandes estrellas claras como el vodka
tan transparentes y deshabitadas,
y allí llegar con el primer teléfono
para que hablen más tarde tantos hombres
de sus enfermedades.
Lo importante es apenas divisarse,
gritar desde una dura cordillera
y ver en la otra punta
los pies de una mujer recién llegada.
Adelante, salgamos
del río sofocante
en que con otros peces navegamos
desde el alba a la noche migratoria
y ahora en este espacio descubierto
volemos a la pura soledad.
color de nube,
color de agua, de aire,
espacio negro para muchos sueños,
espacio blanco para toda la nieve,
para toda la música.
Atrás quedó el amor desesperado
que no tenía sitio para un beso,
hay lugar para todos en el bosque,
en la calle, en la casa,
hay sitio subterráneo y submarino,
qué placer es hallar por fin,
subiendo
un planeta vacío,
grandes estrellas claras como el vodka
tan transparentes y deshabitadas,
y allí llegar con el primer teléfono
para que hablen más tarde tantos hombres
de sus enfermedades.
Lo importante es apenas divisarse,
gritar desde una dura cordillera
y ver en la otra punta
los pies de una mujer recién llegada.
Adelante, salgamos
del río sofocante
en que con otros peces navegamos
desde el alba a la noche migratoria
y ahora en este espacio descubierto
volemos a la pura soledad.
PABLO NERUDA
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