Come L'Occidente ha Provocato la Guerra in Ucraina by Benjamin Abelow

 Blessed by Noam Chomsky the biggest thinker of our age, Come L'Occidente ha Provocato la Guerra in Ucraina

by Benjamin Abelow is a little but informative book released by Fazi on the current conflict between Ukraine and NATO versus Russia the invader of Ukraine.

Everything started in 1990, when James Baker promised to a loyal Gorbacev that the NATO wouldn't never have searched for an expansionism at East. It happened when the Varsavia Act was over.

Unfortunately we all know what happened: most of the States close to Russia became members of the NATO and the only remaining State left alone was Ukraine. Ukraine has always been the door of Russia in the Western States of Europe for commerce. Putin tried all his best for avoiding also the involvement of Ukraine, with the treats of Minsk, that unfortunately were not respected by Ukrainians. There is in Ukraine a minority of people looking at the Russian Federation for protection: a war started in 2014, and the arrival of Zelenski close friend of the American current president Joe Biden proposed an accelleration to the process of annexation in the NATO and UE of Ukraine.

Lucio Caracciolo had told in 2015 that a probable entrance of Ukraine in the UE and NATO would have been a declaration of war against Russia but that it would have been improbable. Wise men are over. Unfortunately nightmares exist.

Putin lost his patience, but it was the best alibi for the western part of the world for considering the president of Russia someone horrible attacking him passing arms to Ukraine. 

The story is different.

What did Putin? He gave trust, when trust didn't exist in the western part of Europe, writes the author and in the USA. NATO didn't respect what Russia would have wanted continuing an expansion at east that was seeing dangerously by Russians: for sure Russians didn't want the annexation of Ukraine in the UE or NATO. So, Putin invaded Ukraine but look, surprisingly there was in act another war long 8 years but not reported by Western medias till at the invasion of Ukraine: also in that case supported by Americans. 

Common people didn't know anything of it...

Carlo De Benedetti told in an interview that Europe hadn't to follow Biden in this adventure because we didn't have any interest in this fight against Putin.

Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University said openly that it was better to make peace with Putin than  sending to death all the men of Ukraine. And what for?

It is clear, thanks to the doctrine Monroe 1823 that the USA don't want close competitors. They want to stay safe, but....

In the Western part of the world happened the opposite and we are seeing the conclusions.

It's indispensible an escapism, because a war doesn't have winners and the supposed proposal of the USA, the one of a defenestration of Vladimir Putin for putting there someone close to Boris Eltsin doesn't appear a great choice. 

American ambassador in Russia Burns understood through a  conversation with eminent russians esponents that they wouldn't have tolerated enemies close to their borders. "Nyet means nyet" they said him.

Russians entered in Georgia because they wanted to let know to the NATO and western part of the world that they wouldn't have tolerated a member of NATO close to their borders.

More or less in 2013, 2014 new agitations wanted by the USA tells Ben started to increase at Maidan, Kiev.

The government collapsed and members of the extreme right took power.

It's a long long time that NATO, writes the author sells guns of offence to Ukraine. With Trump this fact increased tremendously. Plus in Romania there is an important missilistic base that can't make happy Putin.

Other countries as well participated during these years at arming Ukraine and it is surprising how exercitations also in the past involved a possible conflict with Russia.

The arrest of diplomacy started when Biden entered in power and put always more soldiers close to the russian borders. Russia pretended since 1997 the end of mobilitation of troups in Eastern Europe and the promise of never, never permit the entrance of Ukraine in the NATO.

Blinken unfortunately confirmed all the opposite: that Ukraine would have entered in the NATO. 

Saints loses patience. Jesus Christ destroyed also the stalls in the temple: you can imagine a politician. Putin wanted to be respected: when he understood that he wasn't respected, he decided to enter in Ukraine.

Let's see, writes the author, if the USA would be protagonist of a stress like the one lived by Russians: potential enemies close to their borders. Missiles put in Mexico direction the USA or in Canada.

No one in the USA, and in the medias, treats the genesis of the arrival of this war and few politicians, considered traitors because of their ideas, admit that this one is a serious problem, confirms the author.

It's impossible to discover in the media the reality of the facts: there is real censorship so that people, viewers, readers understand just what the official mainstream wants to present them: Zelenski is a great guy, Putin is a horrible man. Reality is quiet different and the story more complicated...

False narrations are dangerous, that's why it is important to understand the reality of the facts, insists Ben.

It was sad that per years Americans created a profound hate in the Ukrainian society against Russian population so that any dialogue with Russia was altered because of that bad influences: and it is a real shame that a president, Zelenski, who won very largely the presidential elections didn't try his best for saving his country and his population from the arrival of the Russians, considered that he promised PEACE!!! to his population and could have obtained it.

If let alone, insists Abelow probably now Ukraine would have been a peaceful neutral nation collaborating with Russia. 

But, after all, writes Benjamin for the American citizens Ukraine is irrilevant. Most of them don't know anything of this State, and they don't know where it is located: they don't know its history, they haven't met in all their existence an Ukrainian, and, mainly they don't know in which brothel, let me adds, fell Europe because of this war.

Inspiring book that I hope will be largely read by that people who want to have an idea of what it means a war against Russia, using a State like Ukraine.

I thought that Biden would have brought a new season of calm in the world after the turbulent years of Donald Trump, but if, maybe internally, this President for the US citizens hasn't been bad, externally created a mess that we still don't know how to arrest.

It is more than clear that Europe must be again with the USA in this crusade against Russia, when we haven't never perceived Russia like an enemy, but always as a friend in grade of enriching our culture, with its superb representatives in every possible field: sweet, compassionate, tender people who make the difference.

Now world is divided: Russians because of sanctions can't afford anymore in our countries: commerce is interrupted.

Everything for this dirty war.

This one is an enourmous problem that we hope will be resolved pretty soon. If a nuclear bomb will touch the european soil we would be the one effected by radiations: not Americans: Europeans. It happened also with Cernobyl, in 1986 and our land is still radiactive. Every year I prayed for less radiations: now I must think that somewhere someone could one day launch a nuclear weapon in grade to put Europe in a big danger? What will we do then? Americans will open their houses to us, people plenty of radiations for 6 month per year as it happened in our case with the Ukrainian children devastated by radiations?

Is this one the end that Americans want for Europe, a place they love a lot? A radioactive land?

I thank Fazi for the copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

 

Autoritratto di un Reporter by Ryszard Kapuscinski

 I have finished to read two books by Ryszard Kapuscinski these days. This one I have close to me is Autoritratto di un Reporter

. I hadn't previously read any books by him. I remember him as one of the biggest reporters of our times and when months ago he was mentioned in a book I was reading, I asked to a dear contact I have in Poland, in love for books something of his works. "Oh, she said me immediately: go for them. He is simply splendid." 

And it is true. 

What maybe is more remarkable and shocking, in positive sense, in Kapuscinski is compassion, humanity, an amicable approach with the existence and the other ones he met along his way. A tender touch that it is uncommon in many journalists.

He was born poor, starved, he suffered a lot during his childhood, so that life and a good, positive, gentle character, helped him a lot during his existence.

Living in Poland during the Soviet era, and having started a career as journalist, Ryszard tells in In Viaggio con Erodoto that to him it would have been exotic to visit just Czekoslovakia. 

That borders attracted him so badly, because he didn't know what he would have met there. Under many ways it was our same approach when we visited Prague and there was still the Communism. 

We knew that it would have been a different atmosphere, and that we entered in a different condition of life, and feelings.

In this book to me absolutely modern, there are many reflections on journalism, the profession of reporter and the state of the medias.

Kapuscinski thinks that the work of a reporter is peaceless: it is necessary a lot of cultural preparation, and concentration. That kind of areas where a reporter goes maybe will be visited just once in a lifetime and it is important to try to understand  people, a culture in a few hours. Sure, if a person returns, at a certain distance of years in the same country and places, he will find the same places completely different, but this one is life, writes the beloved reporter: world is so alive and changes continuously.

It is fascinating to Kapuscinski to trying to see the precise moment in which the human development enters in a new phase, describing, defining it. The importance of an event, and reporting this event is crucial for the understanding of THAT moment, historically as well.

Kapuscinski insists that it is not for money that he is a reporter. It's a mission and like every mission this work is important for the other people, for the collectivity, for readers, viewers: a reporter tells to his viewers, readers the reality touched with his hands and for being a good journalists, is important to be good people affirms with decision. Bad people won't never be good journalists, because it is crucial the understanding of the other, what he wants to communicate, being part of his destiny.

It will be important, writes Ryszard to build relationships between various cultures, based not on subordination but collaboration, and crucial is to speak of the gap that there is in the world: the industrialized one, and the other one, the Third World, where people are starved, and young men of 30 years demonstrate 70 years, because of the critical conditions in which they live. 

At that time it was still real the impossibility to understand the complexity of the world and how, distant countries, other parts of the Planet, affected, influenced our own world. Each of us is strongly connected with the rest of the world, in every direction, says Kapuscinski.

Travelling has been a mission to him for the understanding of the complexity of the world and the surprise of seeing  places so different from his own one.

Kapuscinski didn't mind of putting in order names and last names of ministers and people, or exact dates, or the events as they happened chronologically: he writes that for this exigency there are public libraries.

It's not simple to be a war reporter, no: it's indispensibile to have a good body, a great health, and a good psichic system. It's not just a story of curiosity but of various components that permits to the reporter of working well and at long,

Not everyone can resists at long. Reporters are not cinics. They couldn't be because there is behind too much sacrifice.   

Reporting a war implies a certain partigianery although it would be better not to be blind or fanatics.

Reporters won't never report in the same way a fact, because of their past, their experiences. Our way to see the world is influenced by our past, experiences, schools, culture.

It's not necessary to bring a lot of things with us during a trip remarks Ryszard. A notebook, a pen, some clothes: a light luggage. Kapuscinski remembers with irony when at the Polish customs arrived his luggage after a trip: a box of books and just other two items. More light is the luggage more distant we can go, I think also metaphorically, thinking better.

Books are a remarkable part of the existence of Kapuscinski, and I understand him very well. He didn't have any book at home when little, because his family was too poor, but he bought them during his existence in every corner of the world where he went for work.

Kapuscinski thinks that it is indispensible to spend a lot of time with locals of foreign countries. He prefers to interview locals, for trying to understand their point of view. And every story remains in his soul. 

Ryszard tells the anecdocts of a young russian boy. He sent a tale to Gorki. Gorki replied him that he had appreciated his work, and that he thought he had talent. Just, he added: now stop to write, and live. Visit every possible corner of Russia, without writing anything and then re-start to do that. You'll see, the mind is selective, you will remember everything and the things you have forgotten, oh well, you'll understand that they weren't so important.

Not just a great reporter, but also great photographer, Ryszard felt the necessity of taking pictures paying attention at what people were saying through their expressions.

Nationalisms is increasing reports Kapuscinski and it is a big danger also linguistically because in that countries people will want to use just their tongue for expressing themselves. A big limit. 

It is important for a good journalist to report the entire story of an event. "We are more informed than common people, so we musn't lose the occasion to inform people on the state of things."

The real reporter spends time with locals, sleeping, eating, with them, not at the hotel Hilton, where reality is falsified.

Biggest hotels are plenty of rich people, insists Kapuscinskin but it is in the littlest hotels that you meet the real life. It's like when you catch a train in first class, spending a lot of boring time (I experienced it: people are so snob!) and in the second one, where you will live an electrified time because you will meet people of the most different genre.

Responsibility, seriety, importance: this ones are indispensible characteristics for a good journalist. They are conquered, adds Kapuscinski with the destiny and the behavior of a reporter.

A reporter must be emphatic and humble and spending time with people.

In the Third World, the arrival of a person in a little village is like the arrival of a god. Yes, because explains Kapuscinski, it is impossible to understand if the new person is a God, someone sent by the divinities or a man, so there is a lot of respect.

Having a lot of culture in that countries won't help without the locals: they have a different education but it is that one in grade of saving the existence, making the difference.

Kapuscinski doesn't love writing long books, and choose carefully what to say, rereading, adjusting phrases, words, and no adjectives.

An avid reader, Kapuscinski had a library divided in three sectors: plus he left books in several part of the world. When he started a new job, it meant to him reading as many books as possible on the thematic, and place he would have treated. 

It's important when travelling being anonymous because people speaks with more freedom if not under the pressure of having close to them a reporter.

The fifth chapter of this book is absolutely interesting. Kapuscinski speaks of the power of the new medias, not anymore here to inform but to create the reality, a sort of fairyland or a land of horror, it depends, but, the role of the TV is not so intense, it is not so absolute: it is superficial and can't present to people the real complexity of reality.

The alteration of the reality is also caused by what a TV wants to communicate to people. In general, says Ryszard it wants to present to viewers a big dramatization when, in most cases this message is completely wrong.

Plurality of medias means plurality of commitments. Work changes as well, passing from a hand to another one. And when work becomes anonymous, when there is not anymore the problem of responsibility, the possibility of nazionalisms, racisms, and fundamentalisms is big. Man can't understand the fall of all borders, writes Kapuscinki. 

The medias for masses will become an industry of entertainment, thanks also to the end of the Cold War.

If, CNN ABC, CBS are considered arrogant and indifferent by Ryszard, there are good magazines like Harper's, Foreign Affairs in grade to make the difference, but there are not too many realities like these ones.

Kapuscinski then treats also another topic that it is crucial in information: the massive news we receive from every corner of the world: the sense of the time is gone, because we receive them all during the evening or the morning and plus the viewer has another problem: how to order these informations locating them somewhere in his mind for an elaboration.

News is treated like a merchandise, not like a vector of truth and the western world try to defend itself putting in bad shape all the rest of the world seeing it as a menace: so, what we know of the rest of the world at the moment is what that important American TV stations are telling us, adds Kapuscinski. But...Isn't it reductive? There is no more censorship maybe, explains, but there is manipulation. Media development writes Kapunscki has meant with the time another ethical problem: the one of the truth and lie. Kapuscinski speaks of the lies of the past: writing a letter, you told a lie to a person: then a man, Hitler told lies to 40 million people and Stalin  to 200 million. But now, when a lie is reported in the entire world many more people are deceived.

What was the first Persian Gulf War if not the spectacularization online of the consumistic philosophy? War became aesthetic, so that it didn't ruin, writes sadly Kapuscinski, our lunches and dinners. 

Journalism at the same time is changing. Once journalism meant responsibility, qualification, culture, maturity, and who became someone was known everywhere  Now, ethically, journalism changed a lot. It is possible to see a journalist asking to a widow of someone passed away just 2 hours before because of a terrible incident: "How are you feeling?"

The camera becomes a vulture spying possible tears, desperation of the person . And, adds Kapucisnki, there is nothing that can be done because there is competition and competition is a mechanism of market that it is the base of democracy. So, if a journalist refuses to do that he will be immediately replaced by another one.

In Polland as well journalism was elitarian, becoming a phaenomen of mass, sometimes without the proper preparation and first of all ethicity.

The journalist became not a life-style but a reason for making money.

The problem of our journalism is that because of the camera past doesn't exist anymore, everything starts today. There is not anymore an emotive relationship with the past, and this fact is terrible says the beloved writer.

There were just few people for example, says Kapucisnki that were in grade to explain historically why in NYC that 11 september, happened what happened. The first islamic sect was born in 1060, but to the media this terrorist attack was lived like a revelation.

Weakness of schools of journalism is that they prepare well the technical aspects of the job ignoring the ethical preparation, but a journalist must have an ethical preparation in particular if he must takes quick decisions and he is on air: a  solid ethical preparation is indispensible.

Being changed the people that there are in the industry of journalism, in the past people who fought for the truth, now  businessmen, the biggest worry is not anymore to give to the viewers, or readers a good, important and solid product, of value, but an attracting one.

Once, when a journalist started the profession was followed by someone more old than him for advices: at the moment who could follow a new journalist when big televisions are in the hands of businessmen that probably don't read nwsmagazines or watch TV? The example of Kapuscinski the one of Ted Turner that was the founder of the CNN.

These people, adds Kapuscinski want to make money: they are not interested at living the existence of the common people.

They are not journalists, they are capable to make money.

Kapuscinski says that he refused to follow the first Persian Gulf War because it was only a story of American propaganda and nothing involved real journalism.

There are big journalists: Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Gabriel Garcia Marquez people who intended to report intentionally news.

It was a long time that I hadn't read such a vivid and clear account of the state of this profession and in particular with such   compassionate, calm, vibrant words. These words, also if this book has been translated and published here in 2006 are extremely modern. 

Anna Maria Polidori 

 

 

La Magnifica porta Un Paese chiamato Afghanistan by Duilio Giammaria

 La Magnifica porta

Un Paese chiamato Afghanistan by Duilio Giammaria is a stunning new book published by Marsilio. Duilio Giammaria is a war reporter and in this book focuses the attention on a country he knows very well: Afghanistan. A place that has been conquered by many countries the UK, Russia, United States, the recent dominators. The tale starts remembering Maria Grazia Cutuli an italian reporter dead in a territory between Peshawar and Kabul, Surobi, but there is also the account of a video filmed during the capture of Mastrogiacomo, obtained by the reporter for a good amount of money from two Talibans. The story of the discovery of this video is an adventure!

Gino Strada and its Emergency largely mentioned. Strada created hospitals where everyone are taken under the wings of nurses and doctors without any kind of distinction.

The arrival of Americans, if meant to the Afghanistan after 20 years, yes, a different freedom, gone, once they left, didn't resolve the problematics of a country too complicated for the american vision, muscular and sometimes approssimative. 

The commerce of poppy increased pretty rapidly and without any kind of real temptative of interrupting it. Afghanistan at the moment is the main producer of opium.

A country, this one, where archeological sites are remarkables, as you'll read, and where the past seems to whisper to everyone. Locals are nice, kind, and they love to interact with strangers. It's important to be polite, to be interested to the facts of the people of little villages, participating to sad or happy events, because they simply want and desire it. 

Duilio one day decided to pass for the corridor of Wakhan, the same road done by Marco Polo. Oh, what wonderful anedocts, with Giammaria telling to the reader that observed the most beautiful and magnificient sky plenty of stars one night, but I found fascinating also the food that they consumed. It was impossible to complete that travel and, anyway, maybe it wouldn't have been possible: a new big terroristic attack in Kabul meant to Giammaria a quick return to the capital for reporting. A place, that one, that he found dilaniated and unrecognizable once arrived.

I found hilarious the interview of Rolling Stone with the general McChrystal. Barack Obama removed him immediately after the publication of that piece.

This book is a full immersion in: history past and recent, conflicts and invasions of other countries in this one, archeology, modern history, from the terrorist attack of NYC to the war started by the Americans, for not resolving too much, there is to add, but mainly there is the testimony of one of the most beloved italian war reporters. I didn't know, I confess the multiformity of this country, his population. Everytime I heard the word Afghanistan to me it meant sufferance because I associated the word to war and to me war is the biggest stress existing in this world: a sad country, I thought. Thanks to Giammaria I discovered a mixture of cultures, folk, populations, beautiful fascinating corners and affectionated people with, yes without doubts, a complicated destiny.  

Highly recommended.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Se esiste un Perdono di Fabiano Massimi

Stavo guardando Billy  la rubrica di libri del TG1 come ogni domenica, quando all'improvviso illustrano Se Esiste un Perdono

di Fabiano Massimi. Faccio un salto dalla sedia: oh cielo, la storia di Nicky Winton.

Ho subito contattato l'autore e poi la casa editrice, la Longanesi che ringrazio di cuore per avermi inviato una copia.

Avevo conosciuto quello che era stato fatto da Nick, leggendo un libro per bambini edito da Grasset, chiamato Nicky&Vera,

illustrato da Peter Sis autore ceco. Se conoscete la Grasset saprete quanto sia cruciale per loro la testimonianza di gente che ha passato l'nferno ad Auschwitz e altri campi di sterminio. La testimonianza, il ricordo.

La storia di Nicky per me è stata una lezione che continuo a perpetuare: ne ho parlato anche durante delle ripetizioni a una bambina, per tentare di capire assieme questa fusione di benevolenza, altruismo e orrore che contraddistingue i tempi più difficili, quelli scanditi dall'arrivo di una guerra. Il bene gratuito, che non vuole nulla in cambio.

È stato tremendo quello che è successo più di 70 anni fa perché un uomo, con molti collaboratori, parlo di Hitler, aveva deciso l'eliminazione scientifica, sistematica, di tutti gli ebrei e di quelle persone considerate strane o malate o facenti parti di gruppi etnici, come i rom, non graditi al Fuhrer. 

Non c'è stata approssimazione, non c'è stato un disegno vago di quel che voleva essere fatto. No: c'è stato un metodo feroce di eliminazione, di creazione di campi, di ricerca sui corpi e sulle persone. Questa è stata l'atrocità peggiore: la premeditazione. Per questa non ci sarà mai perdono.

I sentori di quel che sarebbe successo erano prevedibili.

Nicholas Winton, comunque, non pensa a tutto questo quel lontano giorno del 1938, no. Lavora alla Borsa di Londra, è un giovane felice, appagato, molto benestante di origini ebraiche. Con un suo amico ha deciso di staccare ed andare una settimana a sciare. Sta già godendosi l'idea quando riceve proprio da lui una chiamata: meglio andare a Praga. "Più che una vacanza c'è da fare qualcosa con urgenza Nicky", precisa l'amico. Nicky si mette a disposizione. Arriva nella bella e misteriosa capitale dell'allora Cecoslovacchia.

Quello che urge fare, è mettere in salvo quanti più bambini possibili, portarli in Regno Unito, affidarli a nuove famiglie. All'inizio c'è scetticismo, ma Nicky è scaltro, furbo nel senso sano del termine, crea un'organizzazione sua di cui prima non c'era esistenza, spinge la gente a farsi viva. Ha adesso in mano centinaia, migliaia di nomi, fotografie, di piccini cui trovare nuove case. Sarà un addio? Sarà un arrivederci? Difficile fare previsioni, ma i tempi non sono belli e conviene spicciarsi. Visto che via aereo la faccenda è poco pratica perché partono pochi piccini, Nicky inventa l'idea dei treni, che in questo caso sono treni di vita. Così sarà possibile salvarne tantissimi.

Praga è sempre stata una città misteriosa, con personaggi sfuggenti..ln questo libro troviamo la storia della Bambina del Sale. Una creatura scaltra, di una bellezza quasi surreale, con una storia dietro commovente, inarrivabile, che vende una bustina di sale per un soldo. Una Piccola Fiammiferaia, con tutti i distinguo del caso (lì, la favola finisce tragicamente.) 

È grazie a lei che questo libro si chiama: Se Esiste un Perdono. Accadrà infatti qualcosa che altererà per sempre il suo destino e quello dei suoi cari. Però rimarchiamo questa frase, chiediamoci se possa esistere un perdono. Dilatiamo le parole. 

Vorrei mettere nel grande calderone della Storia anche gli altri ragazzini strappati per sempre dalle loro famiglie. A guerra conclusa non hanno più ritrovato i loro genitori, i loro parenti. La loro vita è cambiata irrimediabilmente. 

È possibile, dunque, perdonare qualcuno quando accade questo? Non può esistere perdono quando c'è stata consapevolezza di fare del male per me, però voi che ne pensate? 

Il perdono ha le sue sfumature: non inserisco qui gli episodi di leggerezza che senza volerlo fanno del male a terze persone, modificandone l'esistenza ma quando, volutamente viene alterato il normale corso dell'esistenza.

Vedrete, comunque, cari lettori che la risposta non sarà semplice, non almeno per la vicenda della Bambina del Sale. Niente è semplice, niente è scontato, niente è come la gente avrebbe voluto che fosse.

La storia di Petra, una signora dello staff è emblematica. Ha subìto certe cose e è stata portata a fare certe scelte: quando fai certe scelte, quando conosci certa gente, cadi in un vortice dal quale non puoi più uscire senza conseguenze dirette per la tua stessa vita, come l'eliminazione.

Forse la Bambina del Sale, che è stata coinvolta in questo turbinìo alla fine ha capito e ha perdonato, comprendendo quanto la vita non sia per nulla una passeggiata per nessuno.

I bambini salvati da Nicky Winton, Doreen Warriner e Trevor Chadwick sono stati 669. Doveva partire un altro treno ancor più carico di bimbi il primo settembre del 1939 ma di fatto alle 4:48 scoppiava la seconda guerra mondiale. Quel treno venne cancellato quando già sul binario. Inutile dire che nessuno ha idea di che cosa possa essere successo a tutti quei bambini.

La particolarità di questa storia è che è tornata in superficie grazie alla moglie di Winton che, una volta in soffitta ha ritrovato le liste chiedendo spiegazioni al marito e al tempo stesso grazie a Vera, un'ex bambina a cui suo padre donò un diario dove annotare la sua esperienza londinese per poi ricondividarla insieme una volta tornata a casa. Vera non ha mai dimenticato la bontà di Nicky e ha così contattato altri ex bambini, Tutti insieme hanno preparato uno speciale per ringraziare Winton alla BBC. Era il 1988. Nicky è morto alla veneranda età di 106 anni e non dubito un secondo che sia subito volato in Paradiso. 

Ho poi adorato del libro di Massimi  la compassione, la benevolenza, lo humor, la descrizione di Praga, dei suoi tanti angoli caratteristici e tipici, delle persone, sfuggenti ma di cuore, sospettose e affabili insieme, un equilibrismo questo, tipico dei praghesi durante i periodi di stress politico. Inoltre non sapevo che ci fosse una chiesa di Loreto con la casa della Madonna al suo interno.

Un libro toccante che dovete leggere tutti! Una storia che non potrete più dimenticare, che anzi, va condivisa e che spero possa diventare un film!

Anna Maria Polidori 

What World is This? A Pandemic Phenomenology by Judith Butler

 What World is This? A Pandemic Phenomenology by Judith Butler is a short, but dense and erudite essay on our world and the realit

y where we live in published by Columbia University Press. A world that it is becoming thanks to us not anymore good for living a great existence: so the urgence to rethink our life-style, our way of living, being less egoist and more projected to the creation of a best world in grade to protect us and vice-versa. 

But the pandemic created also other conditions: isolation first of all, impossibility of hugging, touching other people, impossibility to stay close to strangers like also family members or friends in a social situation, in a bus, in a train, because of the fear of a virus in grade of killing and also because of lockdowns as well. If isolation has brought all of it, there is a psychological aspect also: responsibility. The possibility of being the vector for other people of a virus in grade of killing them of course induced all of us at paying attention during our daily gestures and acts. Superficialities in these cases can be synonime of death.

And what happened socially or politically? 

The reopening has meant some people back to work with an elevated risk of dying, catching the virus, more important than not for other ones: and considering that a pandemic is global, mourning for unknown people, was another aspect. Mourning for example for the people dead in Northern Italy, writes Judith. We didn't know them but we mourn for an existence that passed away. 

It's up to us remembering and sharing with others what happened during the pandemic times.

Highly recommended book.

I thank Columbia for the physical copy.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Cahier Colette Herne

 I thank so much les Editions de L'Herne for the Cahier Colette

edited by Gérard Bonal and Fréderic Maget accompanied by Paris, Je t'aime for the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Colette, a super-woman and the first modern influencer considering that she created a brand of beauty products and that, with the time thanks to the fame she had, a lot of magazines searched for her for writing on the most diversified themes involving the world of women.

But...Who was Colette? 

A lady pretty researched terminologically in particular when she wrote a piece for a magazine, while, differently, someone incredibly warm and close and friendly, adorably intense and participant when she corresponded with someone she loved, plenty of attentions and advices. 

Colette was born in Provence but later left for Paris, without never forget the place where she was born in. 

In a series of articles she wrote on her past Christmases we can see melancholy and at the same time beauty memories of her homeland. And it is not wrong to write this, Colette became Colette also thanks to the place where she was born.

Journalist, writer, but also promoters of beauty products, modern in the way she saw sexuality, and feminism as well. Her idea wasn't the one of common feminists. She thought that feminism had to be lived in a daily base.

Colette appreciated actors and actresses a lot: there is a special chapter in the book, dedicated to her impressions on them. I pick up what she wrote on Bette Davis. Colette thought that she was the biggest actress: she didn't have any kind of competitors in grade to surpass her talent and her magic.

Colette has been a reporter as well for daily magazines dedicated to women or prestigious magazine for women like Vogue. She became a good reporter and during the war afforded  in Italy, it was 1915, where she interviewed prince of Hohenzollern and after the war she went to New York. Remarkable her pieces on judiciary cases. 

Colette didn't love to travel, or better, she complained in particular when she spent a lot of time in Italy and she missed her daily routine and her objects, and home. 

When the illness blocked her and she found peace and joy at Palays-Royal, she continued to write, observing nature, people, flowers, life in a word, spending time looking outside the window of her home. After all it's the idea that she has of a reporter: someone who lives motionless, observing the reality close to him/her. 

It was simple to find for Colette curiosities and beauty in a daily life: the joy of children, blooming flowers, good weather, animals: the miracle of beauty that we can see in everyday life. Under many ways we could write that what did Colette was taking pictures written of a microcosm in these cases.

Beautiful cahier, please read my review of Paris, Je t'Aime, here:

https://alfemminile.blogspot.com/2022/02/paris-je-taime-by-colette.html 

Anna Maria Polidori