v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

Non-violence and peace

From  Joseph Dana's blog:

The entire Israeli-Palestinian peace process — predicated on the fact that both sides are striving for peace — has allowed Israel to portray any Palestinian attempts to challenge the status quo through unarmed resistance as antithetical to equitable settlement between the two sides.

This approach ignores the Israeli intransigence of endless settlement construction and the military infrastructure required to control Palestinian life. Night raids, mass arrests and lack of freedom of movement are all too often ignored when the international community envisions the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. In fact, the word “occupation” seldom enters mainstream discourse at all.

Palestinians are now coalescing around unarmed resistance as a way of highlighting what occupation means for them. Although peace is clearly desired among Palestinians, their immediate concern is one of human rights.

In the wake of the Arab Spring, Israel is starting to lose its edge in convincing the international community that the conflict is simply about peace and not rights. Palestinian demonstrations on Israel’s borders and checkpoints have highlighted the sea change taking place.

It would seem that Israel’s only course of action in explaining its heavy-handed military response to unarmed demonstrators is to describe the demonstrators as violent rioters. In practice, unarmed resistance to the status quo of occupation meets extreme violence from the Israeli army.

Historic episodes of human-rights struggles, such as the American civil-rights movement and the anti-apartheid struggle, underwent similar narrative reformulations. Unarmed demonstrations went from “violent rioters” to respected displays of people power in the face of repression. The Palestinian struggle for human rights will be no different when the history of the conflict is written.

Social media is having a transformative effect on Israel’s ability to define Palestinian violence. The internet provides concerned members of international civil society with an intimate and immediate view of unarmed demonstrations in the West Bank. Hours after the demonstration ended in Qalandia, dramatic YouTube clips circulated around the world challenging Israel’s portrayal of the demonstrators as violent rioters.

The overall acceptance of the Israeli analytical framework in the collective Western perception of the conflict is changing as a result of the Palestinian reappropriation of unarmed resistance in the new media age. While pundits argue whether a stone-throwing Palestinian teenager is violent or not, Israel is killing protesters armed with nothing but stones in plain sight of the international community.

As such observers begin to understand that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is based on human rights, Israel is going to find it increasingly difficult to muster support in the international community for its on-going military occupation of the West Bank and its blockade of Gaza.

Palestinians are going to maintain the pressure with non-violent measures such as the international boycott, divestment and sanction campaign and the Gaza aid flotilla, which highlight Israeli violation of international law and reaffirm the rights-based nature of the conflict.

Now, more than ever, Israel must devise a strategy to confront non-violent Palestinian resistance in a way that does not rely on semantics but addresses the deprivation of Palestinian human rights.

Six Palms

 
Vallejo Nocturno 2011- Miraflores

Blanca Varela

Professional Resume

Let's say that you won the race
and the prize was another race
that you didn't drink victory's win
but your own salt
that you never heard the cheers
but dogs' barking
and that your shadow
was your sole
and unfair competitor

 

Translated by Michael L. Smith

Larry Cwik

Larry Cwik is a Portland, Oregon based fine art photographer who travels widely and sometimes internationally for his work.  Notable projects to date include: The Visitor: 28 Years Photographing Mexico, for which Cwik has spent a total of six months in Mexico to date, walking 900 miles through the streets of dozens of large Mexican cities, capturing their magic in color photographs, and letting his subconscious influence where and when he photographs; Totems, poetic and contemporary stacked triptychs of black and white photographs, gelatin silver prints inspired by the imagery, stories, and legends of the Totem Poles of the Pacific Northwest Coast First Peoples; Morocco; Antarctica/Greenland; and Industrial Districts, inspired by Cwik’s life-long fascination with industry, developed as a child growing up in Pittsburgh.

Tom Wudl

Sea of Lotus Blossom Jewels, 2011

From Art Week:

Wudl intends his new paintings to reflect -- rather than directly represent -- the rich content and powerful imagery of the Sutra. At the heart of Immensities and Infinities are four paintings on vellum, each depicting flower blos­soms. These works are modest in size (no more than 16 x 12 inches), but highly complex and richly detailed in their composition. A series of intimate flower studies (each less than 4 x 4 inches) accompany the larger compo­sitions. Wudl paints roses, columbines and dahlias in oil, pencil, and gold and silver leaf on vellum with acuity and intricacy. Each flower is the vehicle for more complex iconography, and compositions include eyes, jewels and clubs. Indeed, the club motif, miniscule in scale and often barely visible to the naked eye, is present throughout all Wudl’s paintings. For Wudl, this motif represents the elaborate descriptions of phenomena that are character­istic of the Avatamsaka Sutra’s literary style, and its repetitious form reflects the Sutra’s primary purpose as an exhortation to meditation. As such, the motif becomes a visual mantra.

Tom Wudl immigrated to the United States from Cochabamba, Bolivia in 1958. Beginning life in a new country at age ten, Wudl already knew that he wanted to become a painter. He attended Chouinard Art Institute, Los Ange­les, but gained most of his skills and insight by his own study of late Medieval and early Renaissance paintings, and through independent travel to the art centers of Europe. Wudl has balanced his painting with a long career teaching art, and has held positions at Art Center College of Design, Pasadena; UCLA; UC Irvine; UC Santa Barbara; Claremont College; and Otis College of Art and Design, in addition to an extensive private teaching practice.

My Mother's Room

Vallejo Nocturno 2011- in Lima

Go-Dard

from Godard

Murder American (style)

From The Guardian:

Rennie Gibbs is accused of murder, but the crime she is alleged to have committed does not sound like an ordinary killing. Yet she faces life in prison in Mississippi over the death of her unborn child.

Gibbs became pregnant aged 15, but lost the baby in December 2006 in a stillbirth when she was 36 weeks into the pregnancy. When prosecutors discovered that she had a cocaine habit – though there is no evidence that drug abuse had anything to do with the baby's death – they charged her with the "depraved-heart murder" of her child, which carries a mandatory life sentence.

Gibbs is the first woman in Mississippi to be charged with murder relating to the loss of her unborn baby. But her case is by no means isolated. Across the US more and more prosecutions are being brought that seek to turn pregnant women into criminals.

More

 

From My Cousin's Apartment

Vallejo Nocturno 2011- In lima

Ana Maria

my cousin's art work