811: photo by Sotiris Lamprou, 19 July 2018
811: photo by Sotiris Lamprou, 19 July 2018
811: photo by Sotiris Lamprou, 19 July 2018
816: photo by Sotiris Lamprou, 20 July 2018
816: photo by Sotiris Lamprou, 20 July 2018
816: photo by Sotiris Lamprou, 20 July 2018
20150708-193548SW [Barsaner, Maramures, Romania]: photo by AlexM., 8 July 2015
20150708-193548SW [Barsaner, Maramures, Romania]: photo by AlexM., 8 July 2015
20150708-193548SW [Barsaner, Maramures, Romania]: photo by AlexM., 8 July 2015
2458: photo by Petros Kotzabasis, 2 August 2014
812: photo by Sotiris Lamprou, 18 July 2018
812: photo by Sotiris Lamprou, 18 July 2018
812: photo by Sotiris Lamprou, 18 July 2018
81009515: photo by Sotiris Lamprou, 17 July 2018
Joseph Ceravolo: O Heart Uncovered: the darkness beneath the snow range
Iztaccihuatl - as seen from the Sacromonte mountain in Amecameca, Mexico State: photo by Alejandro Linares Garcia, 21 February 2010
We lived in province snow range
and something that we uncover
is like living
in one Arizona room
when we discover all we owe
to darkness
we never really know.
Tomorrow is the national holiday for independence --
no more left.
For the first time
we see the mountains
with snow on them pulling away
from the mountains and clouds.
"Iztaccíhuatl" = Nahuatl: "White woman", indicating the four individual snow-capped peaks which depict the head, chest, knees and feet of a sleeping female when seen from east or west. Iztaccíhuatl is to the north of Popocatépetl, to which it is connected by the high altitude Paso de Cortés. Depending on atmospheric conditions Iztaccíhuatl, the nation's third largest peak (5,230 m = 17,160 ft) and the lowest peak containing permanent snow and glaciers in Mexico. is visible much of the year from Mexico City, some 70 km (43 mi) to the northwest, where this poem was written.
Popocatépetl and Iztaccihuatl | An
exceptional view to the east of Mexico City from Polanco District.
Viewing the two volcanos: Popo and Iztla. Taken early in the morning
before pollution sets. [San Alvaro, Mexico City, Distrito Federal]: photo by Jorge Altamirano, 8 January 2008
15 de Septiembre 2009 04050 | El Grito de la Independencia Mexicana, 15 de Septiembre, Centro Historico, México DF: photo by Omar Bárcena, 15 September 2009
Wall mural of Trump and Putin kissing, New York City.: photo by AFP/Getty Images, 21 July 2018
Officials
record and examine cygnets and swans during the annual census of the
Queen's swans, known as 'Swan Upping', along the River Thames. Photo @tobymelville: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 21 July 2018
#Nicaragua Hundreds of protesters marched in Managua in defiance of an iron-fisted crackdown on dissent by President Daniel Ortega @AFPphoto: image via AFP Photo @AFPphoto, 21 July 2018
#Nicaragua Hundreds of protesters marched in Managua in defiance of an iron-fisted crackdown on dissent by President Daniel Ortega @AFPphoto: image via AFP Photo @AFPphoto, 21 July 2018
#Nicaragua Hundreds of protesters marched in Managua in defiance of an iron-fisted crackdown on dissent by President Daniel Ortega @AFPphoto: image via AFP Photo @AFPphoto, 21 July 2018
#Nicaragua Hundreds of protesters marched in Managua in defiance of an iron-fisted crackdown on dissent by President Daniel Ortega @AFPphoto: image via AFP Photo @AFPphoto, 21 July 2018
#Nicaragua Hundreds of protesters marched in Managua in defiance of an iron-fisted crackdown on dissent by President Daniel Ortega @AFPphoto: image via AFP Photo @AFPphoto, 21 July 2018
#Nicaragua Hundreds of protesters marched in Managua in defiance of an iron-fisted crackdown on dissent by President Daniel Ortega @AFPphoto: image via AFP Photo @AFPphoto, 21 July 2018
#Nicaragua Hundreds of protesters marched in Managua in defiance of an iron-fisted crackdown on dissent by President Daniel Ortega @AFPphoto: image via AFP Photo @AFPphoto, 21 July 2018
#Nicaragua Hundreds of protesters marched in Managua in defiance of an iron-fisted crackdown on dissent by President Daniel Ortega @AFPphoto: image via AFP Photo @AFPphoto, 21 July 2018
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, seen here in New York, is campaigning in Kansas and other Republican states.: photo by Peter Foley/EPA via The Guardian, 21 July 1018
Ocasio-Cortez has stumbled. She wrongly claimed the cause of low unemployment in the US was "because everyone had two jobs". She also sparked fierce criticism for referring to Israel’s “occupation of Palestine”, then admitted she was “not the expert on geopolitics on this issue”.
-- "'Just what the party needs': Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders woo Kansas progressives: The rising New York star and the Vermont senator think leftwing politics can help Democrats win in the wheat fields", The Guardian, 21 July 2018
Behind closed inner party doors
Bernie: "'Occupation of Palestine' - You can't say that."
Ocasio-Cortez: Why not?
Bernie: Because if you say that, we can't win. (Getting red in face.) Grow up! Think about your political future! Think about who is going to be paying for all this!
Ocasio-Cortez: ok
O-C: the re-education of
Congressional nominee
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stands with Zephyr Teachout after endorsing
her for New York City Public Advocate on July 12, 2018 in New York City.: photo by Spencer Platt / Getty via Jacobin, 16 July 2018
Ocasio-Cortez,
the Left, and the Future of Palestine: Ocasio-Cortez missed an
opportunity to push a left position on Israel. But it's not too late to
change that.: Corey Robin, Jacobin, 16 July 2018 (extracts)
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had a bad moment late last week.
Appearing on the reboot of Firing Line,
Ocasio-Cortez was asked by conservative host Margaret Hoover to explain
her stance on Israel. The question left Ocasio-Cortez tongue-tied and
equivocating. Here was the exchange:
MH: You, in the campaign, made one tweet, or made one statement, that referred to a killing by Israeli soldiers of civilians in Gaza and called it a “massacre,” which became a little bit controversial. But I haven’t seen anywhere — what is your position on Israel?
AOC: Well, I believe absolutely in Israel’s right to exist. I am a proponent of a two-state solution. And for me, it’s not — this is not a referendum, I think, on the state of Israel. For me, the lens through which I saw this incident, as an activist, as an organizer, if sixty people were killed in Ferguson, Missouri, if sixty people were killed in the South Bronx — unarmed — if sixty people were killed in Puerto Rico — I just looked at that incident more through . . . through just, as an incident, and to me, it would just be completely unacceptable if that happened on our shores. But I am —
MH: Of course the dynamic there in terms of geopolitics —
AOC: Of course.
MH: And the war in the Middle East is very different than people expressing their First Amendment right to protest.
AOC: Well, yes. But I also think that what people are starting to see at least in the occupation of Palestine is just an increasing crisis of humanitarian condition, and that to me is just where I tend to come from on this issue.
MH: You use the term “the occupation of Palestine”? What did you mean by that?
AOC: Oh, um [pause] I think it, what I meant is the settlements that are increasing in some of these areas and places where Palestinians are experiencing difficulty in access to their housing and homes.
MH: Do you think you can expand on that?
AOC: Yeah, I mean, I think I’d also just [waves hands and laughs] I am not the expert on geopolitics on this issue. You know, for me, I’m a firm believer in finding a two-state solution on this issue, and I’m happy to sit down with leaders on both of these. For me, I just look at things through a human rights lens, and I may not use the right words [laughs] I know this is a very intense issue.
MH: That’s very honest, that’s very honest. It’s very honest, and when, you, you know, get to Washington and you’re an elected member of Congress you’ll have the opportunity to talk to people on all sides and visit Israel and visit the West Bank and —
AOC: Absolutely, absolutely. And I think that that’s one of those things that’s important too is that, you know, especially with the district that I represent — I come from the South Bronx, I come from a Puerto Rican background, and Middle Eastern politics was not exactly at my kitchen table every night. But, I also recognize that this is an intensely important issue for people in my district, for Americans across the country, and I think what’s at least important to communicate is that I’m willing to listen and that I’m willing to learn and evolve on this issue like I think many Americans are.
Let’s
be clear. This is not good. Prompted about her use of the word
“massacre,” Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t stay with the experience of the
Palestinians. Instead, she goes immediately to an affirmation of
Israel’s right to exist, as if Israelis were the first order of concern
here, and affirming that right were the necessary ticket to saying
anything about Palestine. Asked about her use of the phrase “occupation
of Palestine,” Ocasio-Cortez wanders into a thicket of abstractions
about access to housing and “settlements that are increasing in some of
these areas.” She apologizes for not being an expert on a major
geopolitical issue. She proffers liberal platitudes about a two-state
solution that everyone familiar with the subject knows are just words
and
clichés designed to defer any genuine reckoning with the situation at
hand, with no concrete discussion of anything the US could or should do
to intervene.
*
This is not just about Palestine. This is about US foreign policy as a whole. It used to be that US foreign policy was the Left’s strong suit. Back in the 1970s, when it seemed as if the Left’s confidence in its economic policies and positions was flagging, its critiques of US imperialism, military spending, and the national security state were in ascendancy. Some of these positions even made it into the left wing of the Democratic Party. Since then, the Left has gotten very weak on this stuff. Not in terms of its moralism on foreign policy, or the antiwar rallies it will show up at, but in terms of being able to advance a position that would begin to command national assent, form public opinion, and then be translated into policy.
*
This is not just about Palestine. This is about US foreign policy as a whole. It used to be that US foreign policy was the Left’s strong suit. Back in the 1970s, when it seemed as if the Left’s confidence in its economic policies and positions was flagging, its critiques of US imperialism, military spending, and the national security state were in ascendancy. Some of these positions even made it into the left wing of the Democratic Party. Since then, the Left has gotten very weak on this stuff. Not in terms of its moralism on foreign policy, or the antiwar rallies it will show up at, but in terms of being able to advance a position that would begin to command national assent, form public opinion, and then be translated into policy.
This is a problem: it should be the easiest thing in the world right now, for example, to go after runaway military spending.
Yet there’s hardly a credible or potent left voice that is pushing that
agenda, much less getting a hearing within even progressive circles of
the Democratic Party. Indeed, in this age of alleged partisan
polarization, authorizations of massive increases in spending for the
Pentagon and the CIA pass both houses of Congress with hefty Democratic
majorities — with scarcely anyone noticing, much less protesting.
So, again, this isn’t about Palestine only. Or I should say,
Palestine is the proverbial canary in a coal mine. From Palestine you
get into the question of the Middle East as a whole, which leads to US
foreign policy as a whole, and issues of budgets, spending, war, peace,
and all the rest. All the more reason for Ocasio-Cortez to get up to
speed on it.
Like it or not, Ocasio-Cortez has been elevated to a national
position of leadership and visibility on the Left. If she wins in the
general election, as everyone believes she will, every single thing she
says and does will be watched and scrutinized. It simply will not do to
say, oh, she’s only twenty-eight, oh, the media is so nasty, oh, let’s
not have circular firing squads. The media is always nasty, the Left
will always be critical of its leaders, and one day, soon, Ocasio-Cortez
will no longer be twenty-eight. To complain about any of these things
is like shaking your fist at the weather (weather in the old-fashioned
sense; before climate change).
People
have turned to Ocasio-Cortez not simply because she won but
because she’s good at what she does: she’s smart, fast, funny, and
principled. Because she’s shown leadership. I understand the pressures
she’s under. But as her star rises, the pressures will only increase.
Ocasio-Cortez needs to be not only strong but also clear on this issue.
She needs to be as subtle, dexterous, and sharp as she is on other
issues, virtually every night on Twitter. This isn’t a game, especially
when it comes to Israel. Or, if it is a game, she needs to be a better
player.
Untitled: photo by Johan Jehibo, 20 July 2018
Earthlings: Habitat | Lisboa, 2011: photo by Teresa's Place, 28 December 2011
Earthlings: Habitat | Lisboa, 2011: photo by Teresa's Place, 28 December 2011
Earthlings: Habitat | Lisboa, 2011: photo by Teresa's Place, 28 December 2011
2 comments:
when we discover all we owe
to darkness
we never really know
There's Joe at the heart again.
All this empty chat on Palestine is leaving me nauseous. The Gaza border is where the World draws the limits of its meagre empathy.
Duncan,
I think this one shows how good Joe already was.
The cynicism that colours his several ironic mentions of the national day of independence in the Mexico poems (here he's writing on the eve of the public celebrations, a matter of much public ado and shoutings of the Gritos - "cries" - as well as the sort of street chaos depicted in the 2009 Omar Bárcena photo) reveals his sense that the govt corruption he was seeing all around him (not to mention the deep poverty) was a definitive indication of a failing or failed society; doubtless in many ways an accurate perception, yet accompanied by no evident concurrent sense that the actuality of his own country and society might be less than ideal. But in this he was of course like virtually every other intelligent American of that epoch of grandiose assumptions concerning the global reach of democracy. At the time JC was writing this poem, JFK was campaigning just across the border in TX. In the same time period Israel was busily producing nuclear material at Dimona and undertaking nuclear weapons production at Beersheba, cloakt under the official explanation - sold by Ben Gurion, soon to be eagerly bought by a (complicit? ingenuous?) JFK - that what was underway out there in the wastelands was "research in problems of arid zones and desert flora and fauna." This at the birthing moment of what Golda Meir would call a "special relationship".
No one who writes in time ever knows how the writing is going to look when temporality turns into history.
The O-C bit here wasn't meant to show her as callow - well, it does, but that wasn't the sole intent - and the author of the article is like her a NYC "progressive" politico, so the piece has to be read in terms of the local politics, which in NYC would mean only slightly to the left of the Knesset (or the right, in certain boroughs).
The embarrassing ignorance about the larger world outside the US is not a privileged possession of this candidate, it has become a trademark of these new Progressives.
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