Thursday, 3 September 2015

Boundary Issues

Migrants storm into a train at the Keleti train station in Budapest...Migrants storm into a train at the Keleti train station in Budapest, Hungary, September 3, 2015 as Hungarian police withdrew from the gates after two days of blocking their entry. REUTERS/Laszlo Balogh

Migrants storm into a train at the Keleti train station in Budapest. Hungarian police withdrew from the gates after two days of blocking their entry: photo by Laszlo Balogh/Reuters, 3 September 2015

#humanitywashedashore

This image of the body of a Syrian boy drowned today on a Turkish beach is emblematic of the world's failure in Syria: image via Liz Sly @LizSly, 2 September 2015

Photo of drowned boy a reminder of human toll of migrant crisis (WARNING: Disturbing Images): image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 2 September 2015

@GulwaliP #humanitywashedashore new tag for #migrantcrisis child died in the hope of safety. #refugeeswelcome: image via Aneela Ahmed @ahmed_aneela, 2 September 2015

Family of children found on Turkish beach were trying to come to Canada: Terry Glavin. Ottawa Citizen, 2 September 2015

The two small boys whose bodies washed up on a Turkish beach Wednesday were Kurdish refugees from Kobane, Syria, whose family had been desperately trying to emigrate to Canada.

Galip Kurdi, five, and his three-year-old brother Aylan died along with their mother Rehan and eight other refugees when their boat overturned in a desperate flight from Turkey to the Greek island of Kos.

The boys’ father, Abdullah, survived. His family says his only wish now is to return to Kobane with his dead wife and children, bury them, and be buried alongside them.

“I heard the news at five o’clock in this morning,” Teema Kurdi, Abdullah’s sister, said Wednesday. The telephone call came from Ghuson Kurdi, the wife of another brother, Mohammad. “She had got a call from Abdullah, and all he said was, my wife and two boys are dead.”

Teema, a Vancouver hairdresser who emigrated to Canada more than 20 years ago, said Abdullah and Rehan Kurdi and their two boys were the subject of a “G5” privately sponsored refugee application that was rejected by Citizenship and Immigration in June, owing to the complexities involved in refugee applications from Turkey.

The family had two strikes against them –- like thousands of other Syrian Kurdish refugees in Turkey, the UN would not register them as refugees, and the Turkish government would not grant them exit visas.

“I was trying to sponsor them, and I have my friends and my neighbours who helped me with the bank deposits, but we couldn’t get them out, and that is why they went in the boat. I was even paying rent for them in Turkey, but it is horrible the way they treat Syrians there,” Teema said.

Fin Donnelly, the MP for Port Moody-Coquitlam, said he’d hand-delivered the Kurdis’ file to Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander earlier this year. Alexander said he would look into it, Donnelly said, but the Kurdis’ application was rejected in June. Alexander could not be reached for comment.

“This is horrific and heartbreaking news,” Donnelly said. “The frustration of waiting and the inaction has been terrible.”

Canada and Turkey have long been at loggerheads over the bottleneck blocking Syrian refugees in Turkey from finding their way to Canada. It is not uncommon for Kurds in Syria to be arbitrarily denied passports, and to have great difficulty registering as refugees with the UNHCR.

The Turkish government refuses to issue exit visas to unregistered refugees not holding valid passports.

Refugee child's body on beach shocks the world #KiyiyaVuraninsanlik: image via dw news @dwnews, 3 September 2015

A Turkish police officer carries the lifeless body of Aylan Kurdi off the shores in Bodrum, southern Turkey, on September 2, 2015 after a boat carrying refugees sank while reaching the Greek island of Kos. Thousands of refugees and migrants arrived in Athens on September 2, as Greek ministers held talks on the crisis, with Europe struggling to cope with the huge influx fleeing war and repression in the Middle East and Africa.

A Turkish police officer carries the lifeless body of Aylan Kurdi off the shores in Bodrum, southern Turkey, after a boat carrying refugees sank while reaching the Greek island of Kos. Thousands of refugees and migrants arrived in Athens on September 2, as Greek ministers held talks on the crisis, with Europe struggling to cope with the huge influx fleeing war and repression in the Middle East and Africa: photo by AFP, 2 September 2015

The world must find a way to end the suffering of so many in War. Syrian baby washed up on the shore #migrantcrisis: image via Jargalsaikhan @SJJargalsaikhan, 2 September 2015

Attempts to deter migrants don’t work. Why Europe should embrace them instead: image via Reuters Opinion @ Reuters Opinion, 2 September 2015

Leap of Faith

Zebra thinking about crossing. @AFPPhoto by @CarldeSouza1, currently shooting the migration in #Kenya's Masai Mara: image via Stefan Smith @StefanASmith, 2 September 2015

Awful images #migrantcrisis in Europe, man [from Guinea] wrapped up inside engine of car [at Spanish border]. Utterly heartbreaking, awful: image via Yalda Hakim @BBCYaldaHakim, 2 September 2015

Des migrants tentent de traverser la frontière entre la Serbie et la Hongrie #AFP via @AureliaBAILLY: image via AFP Photo Department @AFP, 31 August 2015

Sakir Khader on Twitter: @Hungary-#Serbia: I don't think words can describe her feelings." #migrant crisis: image via Refugee Studies Bot @RefugeeStudyBot, 2 September 2015

Station to Station

Des réfugiés débarquent par milliers au Pirée, pression accrue sur le nord de l’Europe #AFP: image via Agence France-Presse @afpfr, 2 September 2015

#migrants Hungary Protest rally to demand to travel to Germany today in Budapest. #AFP photo by Ferenc Isza: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 2 September 2015

#migrantcrisis Hungarian police officers face a group migrants in Kispest station, Budapest. #AFP Photo by @afpattila: image via aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAIlLY, 2 September 2015

#MigrantCrisis Chaos in Hungary as Europe migrant crisis escalates. Photo @afpattila #AFP #Hungary via SBeaugeAFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFP, 1 September 2015

#migrantcrisis Migrants rest on a platform at Vienna's Westbahnhof train station on September 1. #AFP by Joe Klamar: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 1 September 2015

#Migrants rest on train from Budapest to Munich at Austrian-Hungarian border in Hegyeshalom. By @vladimirsmicek #AFP: image via Sophie Chauveau @s_chauveauAFP, 1 September 2015

Hundreds of migrants protest in Budapest, demanding they be allowed to travel to Germany: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 1 September 2015

Hundreds of migrants protest in front of Budapest train station for second straight day: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 2 September 2015

Angry protests erupt as #Hungary again blocks path of refugees. #migrantcrisis: image via CBC News Alerts @CBCAlerts, 2 September 2015

#MigrantCrisis Migrants burst into Budapest station. Photo by Peter Kohalmi #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 3 September 2015

Migrants coming from Budapest arrested by police in Bicske. #AFP photo by Istvan Bielik: image via Aurelia BAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 3 September 2015

Hungarian police watch over migrants outside Keleti station in Budapest, Hungary: photo by Bernadett Szabo/Reuters, 2 September 2015

Following the Tracks

In #Iceland, 13,000 ask the government to take in more #refugees from #Syria #migrantcrisis: image via The Age @theage, 2 September 2015

Syrian refugees and migrants on their way from Serbia to Hungary as they walk on a railway line: photo by Aris Messinis @ArisMessinis, 2 September 2015

#MigrantCrisis Syrian refugees and migrants try to cross from Serbia into Hungary near Horgos. By @ArisMessinis #AFP: image via Stephanie Beauge @sbeaugeAFP, 2 September 2015

#migrantcrisis Along a railway line to cross Serbia into Hungary near Horgos on September 1 #AFP @ArisMessinis: image via AureliaBAILLY @AureliaBAILLY, 2 September 2015

The refugee crisis is polarizing the European Union.: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 2 September 2015

ATTENTION EDITORS - REUTERS PICTURE HIGHLIGHT...ATTENTION EDITORS - REUTERS PICTURE HIGHLIGHTMDJ200A migrant, hoping to cross into Hungary, plays with a child along a railway track outside the village of Horgos in Serbia, towards the border it shares with Hungary, August 31, 2015. REUTERS/Marko Djurica TPX IMAGES OF THE DAYREUTERS NEWS PICTURES HAS NOW MADE IT EASIER TO FIND THE BEST PHOTOS FROM THE MOST IMPORTANT STORIES AND TOP STANDALONES EACH DAY. Search for "TPX" in the IPTC Supplemental Category field or "IMAGES OF THE DAY" in the Caption field and you will find a selection of 80-100 of our daily Top Pictures.REUTERS NEWS PICTURES.

A migrant, hoping to cross into Hungary, plays with a child along a railway track outside the village of Horgos in Serbia: photo by Marko Djurica/Reuters, 1 September 2015

Boundary Issues: My Personal Robotic Spider Dress

Robotic Spider Dress by Anouk Wipprecht: photo via Intel iQ, 2015

My little white 3-D printed personal robotic spider dress marks out, establishes and defends my personal animatronic arachnidal boundaries

mapping the perimeters and suggesting the dangers that lie in store for those who attempt to cross

over the border into my personal space -- the zones of prohibition are protected

by the nine retractable tentacular plates in

the assistive adaptive autonomous environment of

My Personal Robotic Spider Dress, which,

guided by emotional monitoring, body temperature readout, brain scan

and hormonal disturbance early warning

systems implanted, sewn on my CNC mill, and soldered into chips,

snap out to capture any intruder in the moment

of transgression, stun, disarm and instantly kill

and so now I can couple my body with an EEG

to protect me from

........................YOU

I can record my respiration

I can calibrate each beat of my heart

I can make a 3-D holographic simulation

I can continually cartographically display my biosignals and store them in the computer brain of

My Personal Robotic Spider Dress

where all the data gets transferred so that I can create an interface

allowing me to be here in Silicon Valley in my little white badass

personal robotic animatronic spider dress

...................................................while YOU

remain always on the other side of the border maintained and guarded with vigilance by

My Personal Robotic Spider Dress

I can use my emotions

as a weapon

as a tool

as a barrier

as a menu for methods of torture

I wouldn't get caught dead without my little white 3-D printed

personal robotic spider dress

...................................and if YOU

come too close

the penetration

of my personal space

will be immediately detected and

set off my personal alarm system

and my personal robotic spider dress will automatically extend its tentacular plates toward

..............................YOU

but don't think you're the first capture

but don't think you're the first to be consumed by

My Personal Robotic Spider Dress

Robotic Spider Dress by Anouk Wipprecht modeled at Las Vegas International Computer Electronics Show: photo via Intel iQ, 2015

Robotic Spider Dress by Anouk Wipprecht (close-up detail): photo via Intel iQ, 2015

Robotic Spider Dress by Anouk Wipprecht: photo via Intel iQ, 2015

Robotic Spider Dress by Anouk Wipprecht: photo via Intel iQ, 2015

A young child waits in line at a migrant reception center in Brussels on Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2015. Hundreds of migrants are arriving every day in Belgium, some making perilous journeys through Europe

A young child waits in line at a migrant reception centre in Brussels on Tuesday. Hundreds of migrants are arriving every day in Belgium, some making perilous journeys through Europe: photo by Virginia Mayo/AP, 1 September 2015

_SD_DSC5384_smallweb

Robotic Spider Dress by Anouk Wipprecht: photo via Intel iQ, 2015

Robotic Spider Dress by Anouk Wipprecht (detail showing retractable "protection" plates, r.): photo via Intel iQ, 2015

Robotic Spider Dress by Anouk Wipprecht: photo via Intel iQ, 2015

Robotic Spider Dress by Anouk Wipprecht, seen metamorphosing for the industry: photo via Intel iQ, 2015

7 comments:

TC3 September 2015 at 15:07
The way the world's been wobbling on its axis and spilling over its borders lately I can't get out of my head the 1961 Woody Guthrie song Deportee, inspired by a news story about a plane full of Mexican migrant fieldworkers going down in Los Gatos Canyon, Santa Clara County... not too far, small world that it is, from the birth nest of My Personal Robotic Dress.

The current misnomer "migrant", for refugees, of course provides sad context.

Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)

The crops are all in and the peaches are rott'ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They're flying 'em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees"

My father's own father, he waded that river,
They took all the money he made in his life;
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees,
And they rode the truck till they took down and died.

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract's out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,
We died in your valleys and died on your plains.
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes,
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, "They are just deportees"

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except "deportees"?

words by Woody Guthrie, music by Martin Hoffman, 1961

There are many terrific versions, Pete Seeger's, the Byrds'... my favourite still probably the first really well-known one from back in that earnest folk/protest era:

Odetta: Deportee, from Odetta Sings of Many Things, 1964

Tried that again just now and surprised how well it has aged and real it sounds, Odetta not pushing it too hard, and appreciating the help of Bruce Langhorne, subtle (therefore under-recognized) ace string player, from back in the day...

Remembering that this is a song about nameless humanity washed ashore on alien ground all over every time you turn around.

This also great more recent version's richer, but the feeling for the meaning maybe a little less fresh (on-deck exit link activity zero lately, still you never know):

Woody Guthrie's "Deportee", covered by Nanci Griffith, with Tish Hinojosa, John Stewart, Emmy Lou Harris, Lucinda Williams, John Prine, Richard Thompson et al.
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tpw3 September 2015 at 17:26
Dear TC: This post, as is always the case with your posts, seems to be pressed fast to the pulse of the planet. It is hard to witness, even from afar & via a computer screen, all that pain and misery. I am thankful you have juxtaposed it with the brilliant robotic spider dress poem and Woody Guthrie's great song, which I have loved forever. I think the song must have inspired, maybe unconsciously, Peter Rowan's song, "The Free Mexican Airforce." It's a song of lighter import, of course, but similarly wonderful in its music & lyric. Rowan came into the Dubliner one night in the late '70s or early '80s after a show somewhere in DC, and joined us (Celtic Thunder) on stage for a few songs. Can't remember if he did "FMA," but I do recall how powerful his voice and presence were. He yodeled too, and I love yodeling. Here's two Youtube versions, one from back when we were all young and another more recent version that features a great button accordion break: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9WT5e4bPRk and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKQwamBGbw8.
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Hilton3 September 2015 at 20:50
The photo of the drowned boy on the beach has already become an icon arousing a world's anguish and hopefully action. All of it unbearable.
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manik sharma4 September 2015 at 03:45
Tom,

The world works better if disarmed of its own conscience. That is how we've been taught to live - look the other way.I can't be more horrified. We are all refugees of a certain kind of deportation. The street has become a road, and we are chasing a new kind of chariot wheel. If it takes a child....for hope to surface, we should well assume, where the chariot is headed.
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TC4 September 2015 at 10:10
"The world works better if disarmed of its own conscience."... "All of it unbearable".

Grateful to friends for attempting to put words on the unspeakable.

That small drowned Syrian boy's life will not have been totally wasted if his death causes a single Syrian refugee to find refuge somewhere.

None of the news is good.

The worst coming out of Hungary. This morning I heard the Hungarian PM state emphatically that no Muslim person is welcome in Hungary, period. He grimly warns Europeans will soon be a minority in Europe. As though that were a bad thing.

The disheartening news piles on the disheartening news.

Hungary looking to reinforce its already brutal border barriers. Poland and Slovakia considering construction of "Israeli"-style border walls. Balkan countries adopting an impromptu "Christians only shall pass through" border "policy".

The illusory false-front façade of modern technological civilization is seen disappearing much as a cheap car-wax patina in a New Weather hailstorm.

Ten thousand Icelanders have offered to open their homes to Syrian refugees. A glimmer of light, suggesting "humanity" may still have a meaning?

Meanwhile the useless shirt stuffing Brit PM now forced by circumstance into suggesting Britain accept, what was it again, five model Syrian families, for publicity purposes?

"Over here," that great global thinker Don Trump cruises on toward the Casa Blanca like some terrifying B-movie oozed-from-a-special-effects-toothpaste-tube horror-blob, brushing aside annoying journalistic questions like, Do you know the difference between Hezbollah, Hamas and Hash Browns?

Amid the present swirling world humanitarian crisis, America will be helpfully opening its big bulked-up weight-room arms... and reaching out... to the Arctic, to resume drilling... and hasn't the POTUS been up there outdoors-ing it just now, keeping man-bromantic company with the noted TV adventurer Bare Girlz?
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TC4 September 2015 at 10:25
On a totally other note but not really, bringing things back home to the border(s).... Max thanks to eminent living legend TPW for pertinent-as-always musicological knowledge, a gift to us every time.

Terry's links, made easy:

Peter Rowan: Free Mexican Air Force, w/ the Kaustinen Kowboys aka Aragorn's Army, feat. Veli-Matti Järvenpää on button squeezebox, Kaustinen, Finland, 2011

Peter Rowan: Free Mexican Army, 1979

There are probably as many great live performances of this justifiably popular neo-folk border ballad as there are Peter Rowan concerts, over the years... that is, a lot.

Terry, you might enjoy this latter day (OG) version, with a supportive country crowd and PR's picking and vocal in top form:

Peter Rowan: Free Mexican Air Force, Whispering Beard Folk Festival, Morning View, Kentucky, 29 August 2009

Another one I like:

Peter Rowan: Free Mexican Air Force, Cain Park, Cleveland Heights, Ohio, 9 July 1988

And finally, for the ultimate FMAF squeezeboxing licks, this classic rendition with Flaco Jimenez popping the buttons:

Peter Rowan / Flaco Jimenez: Free Mexican Air Force, unscheduled flight

.... all of which prevents me from forgetting to remember to mention, while we're (well, I'm) on the subject, another grand border ballad, this one darker in tone, from a great gone balladeer...

Townes Van Zandt: Pancho and Lefty, "private concert", Holiday Inn, Houston 1988 ("...only let him hang around / out of kindness I suppose...")

(The noted Brummagen philosophe D. Jones once suggested TVZ was a theologian -- "There's a great theologian in Van Zandt" -- an insight not forgot here.)
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TC4 September 2015 at 12:41
Oh, the world, turning inside out every two hours. A friend writes, after the globally witnessed spectacle of the dead boy in the water, things have to turn around.

But Hungary is a very bad bottleneck right now, the stranded refugees, harassed and terrorized in Budapest, who knows how many thousands, attempting to march along the tracks... to Munich. Over 400 miles, boiling sun, no shade, predatory mafia thugs and local pinhead rightwing nuts and skinhead punks and blackshirt cops all along the way making the whole caravan something out of a medieval vision of Hell, Bosch...

An Egyptian telecoms billionaire has just tweeted that if either Italy or Greece will sell him a small island, he'll turn it into into a city to host hundreds of thousands of refugees.

Nobody so far has wanted any part of the Syrians in particular, as if they were all carriers of some deadly contagion not yet catalogued. The disease of being Muslim while alive. Ironically the dead boys on the beach were Kurds. Repressed and oppressed forever by everybody.

The dad had wife and two boys in his arms in high seas in darkness, 500 metres from shore, struggling to stay afloat, they slipped away.

In the face of all this, everything we thought we knew slips away....
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