putting on a red dress

I am quite excited about Cuetlaxachitl's rebirth into red! Cuetlaxachitl came to my house Dec. 2007, a gift from my mother, who, as I told you before, calls her joulukukka. After Cuetlaxachitl dropped all of her red last summer, I put her outside in my garden. She was quite happy out there amongst her much more northerly sisters, whose roots reach deep into the earth to survive the claw of winter. As the summer days shortened and before the nights brought a frosty mantle onto the earth, I carried Cuetlaxachitl indoors into the back sun room. She was quite happy there in the chill of that room as the nights lengthened. After Winter Solstice, I carried her upstairs to look out a little window, southwards, towards the winter sun. She seemed quite happy there in her quiet green way. So, you can imagine my surprise when I went to check on her recently and saw that she had taken up red again! She's tired of winter! She's putting on her red dress again!

Farewell Wild Woman (I), by one of my favorite poets, Lorna Goodison


I seemed to have put distance
between me and the wild woman
she being certified bad company.
Always inviting me to drink
bloody wine from clay cups
and succumb to false promise
in the yes of slim dark men.
Sometimes though when I'm
closing the house down early
and feeling virtuous for living
one more day without falling too low
I think I see her behind the hibiscus
in dresses competing with their red,
and she's spinning a key hung on a
cat's eye ring
and inviting me to go low riding.

a northern nine heavens

I drove through a haunted, magical forest today listening to some haunting, magical music: Nine Heavens by Niyaz. (thanks to my friend, Gerry, for sending me this CD!) At first I couldn't figure out what sort of music it is. Is it Iranian? Is it Indian? There were some other Eastern influences suggested but I couldn't put my finger on it--or should I say ear? The music is maddeningly magical in its elusiveness, in its strange but familiar calling. Niyaz, it turns out, is an Iranian trio which includes one of my favorite singers: Azam Ali, whose music my friend, Fataneh, introduced me to a few springs ago in Stockholm. Niyaz is a mix of Sufi mysticism and electronic trance, blending Iranian, Turkish, and Indian music with poetry by Rumi and other lyrical messages.

In the northern nine heavens that I traveled through, spruce trees and aspens were bent over with the weight of ice, some were lying with their tips curving onto the ground as if they were doing a graceful yoga asana in the boreal forest, other trees were tilting this way and that seeking support against each other, yet other trees less fortunate had snapped cleanly in half, with the top parts lying in confusion on the forest floor, and still others looked like sentinels of white branching coral or white multi-limbed skeletons standing in mute colonies along the roadside.

This entombment in ice is a result of an ice storm that recently visited our region and covered all trees, streets, steps, sidewalks, shrubs, driveways, cars, and whatever is outside with a thick layer of glazed ice. Driveways turned into skating rinks. To get into your car, you first had to get to your car! A feat in itself. Not a day for fashionable shoes or boots, now was a time for sensibles. After inching your way carefully to your car, you then had to hack away at the hard shell of ice encasing it.

After the ice storm, we've had sunshine, snow squalls, and more ice and more snow. And more snow. Winter does not want to quit. So, the landscape has become encased in ice and snow. It looks heavenly but it is not heavenly if you have to drive somewhere.

So, I wasn't really looking forward to driving to Fort Frances today, which is about 350k west of Thunder Bay, down Hwy. 11.

I had to drive down Hwy 11 today to teach my class on writing, which is at the 7 Generations Institute on the Couchiching Reserve. I usually have taken a Bearskin Air flight to Fort Frances (the planes are such in size that you have to stay ducked and walk bent over to get to your seat--and if you feel queasy or frightened when there is air turbulence, do not get on these flights). But because there is no flight out of Fort Frances after my last class is done, I usually have taken the bus back. There is no lack of stories you get told when you take the bus from Fort Frances to Thunder Bay, even if there are only 4 passengers on the full-sized Greyhound Bus. Who knows? Maybe you get more stories told to you because there are only 4 passengers? But, a couple of weeks ago, the bus schedule changed so now there is no way to get out of Fort Frances after 2:30 pm on Friday other than car.

So, take the car it was.

To get to the Hwy 11 turn-off to get to Fort Frances, first go to Shabaqua corners on Hwy 17; then turn left.

As I drove down this near-empty highway, I had been thinking how beautiful and magical the forests around me looked. That is, until I saw the red flashing police car lights ahead. A car had flipped onto its side after sailing off the road into the forest. There were a few police cars and an ambulance; the police officer waved me through. I slowed down my speed after seeing the underbelly of that car. I hope the driver and passengers are o.k.

Highway 11, because of last night's snow, was snow covered on the edges, so cars had to drive in the middle of the road. So, when there was an oncoming car or truck (rare), you had to slow down because then you'd have to drive over the slippery icy slush--which is why, I assume, that car flew off the road.

Hasbaraniks in space

You know those pro-Zionist Jews, the ones who can't argue themselves out of a paper bag, who hit my blog now-and-then to tell me in rude words how hate-filled my site is, yet they do not read what I write? Well, there's a whole bunch of these internet sleuths for the protection of Israel out there. Randa Abu Shakra explains:

"Israel launched a campaign after the end of the Gaza war (January 18) to counter negative blog postings about Israel. “The Absorption Ministry is recruiting new immigrants and Jews living abroad who have access to a computer and who speak a second language to a volunteer effort to improve public relations for Israel on the internet,” Saranga said.

The ministry said over 1,000 multi-lingual internet users have invaded blogs, posted comments on news sites, joined social networking, opinion and polling websites, and posted videos on Youtube. “Some 60% of the applicants are immigrants, old and new. The rest are Jews living in the Diaspora, Israelis living abroad, and even non-Jews who support Israel and want to help out,” Saranga wrote.

In The Guardian online, Richard Silverstein has also written an article discussing Israel's new media propaganda strategy. Silverstein's article is called: "Hasbara spam alert. With Israel's foreign ministry organising volunteers to flood news websites with pro-Israeli comments, Propaganda 2.0 is here." He writes:

"The [Israeli] foreign ministry shouldn't get a pass on this one. It may view such hasbara as maximising its efforts to "explain" Israel's position in the world media. I view it as a cynical attempt to flood the web and news media with favorable flackery in a vain attempt to tilt public opinion toward Israel. Not only does it do Israel a disservice, it stains every legitimate effort that the ministry might make to explain Israel to the world, since no one will believe a word it says knowing it engages in such outright propaganda.

Not to mention that this is such cheap pennyante stuff. What do they gain by this? How effective can it be and how many can be convinced? By the way, I've even noticed the hasbaraniks in my own blog. You can see them a mile away because they've never published a comment before yet write something like: "I've enjoyed your blog for a long time, but anyone with a brain in their head knows that Hamas is out to destroy Israel blah, blah blah." Pretty formulaic stuff. Also, you can Google a few phrases of the comment and if you find it appears elsewhere on the web you know you either have a hasbaranik or someone who has repetition compulsion."

There are numerous hasbara (pro-Israel information)sites and groups, from Israel Citizens Information Council Hasbara and Hasbara at York University, to The Jewish Agency for Israel's The Department for Jewish Zionist Education Hasbara Israel Advocacy Your Guide to the Middle East Conflict site.

The article by Randa Abu Shakra that I linked to at the beginning discusses in particular the joint media campaign that Israel and the Israeli Consulate General of New York have recently undertaken to freshen up the image of Israel, that is, to wipe out the ugly, violent images of their military actions and the occupation of Palestinians and replace that with, what else? images of nature:

"Israel has launched an unprecedented number of public image campaigns in the last year to help present a unified narrative of the Jewish state to the world.
....
The [Israeli] consulate [General in New York] has long been spearheading various innovative PR projects and now it stands to fly seven media experts to Israel, including video and stills photographers, who will be tasked with capturing the country's more beautiful and unfamiliar sides, on film,” Eichner said.

The article states that an online search for “Israel” reveals horrible pictures of the Israeli bombing of civilians in Gaza, or of the Dimona nuclear plants, it is a blight on Israel's public image.

The new [Israeli] Foreign Ministry media project that Eichner describes will attempt to divert these internet searches to Israeli websites that include photographs of Israel's natural heritage sites, one of the Negev's cowboy ranches, Sde Boker, Caesarea, Akko and the Galilee, as well Israel's beaches, parks, cafés etc.

The Foreign Ministry is also trying to organize an aerial tour of Israel for the mission, so it may have a bird's-eye view of the country's sights. The photos are to be loaded up to prominent websites the likes of Wikipedia, Wikimedia, Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, as well as to be featured in several blogs."

I wonder if on these sites there will acknowledgment about the confiscation, appropriation and theft of these nature sites and beaches? Of the Palestinian blood shed to make them pristine? to make them the playgrounds of leisure for Israelis and Western tourists who are non-Arab?

blitz of films to cleanse memories of Gaza

All visual representations exist within complex contexts; they are never isolatos devoid of cultural, political, social, historical, or economic power relations; they must be viewed intertextually for their making and viewing are mediated by the social world.

In a thought-provoking article on JewishJournal online where he explains the difference between films about the Holocaust and Holocaust-related films, Tom Teicholz states that

"Holocaust-related movies so crowded the end-of-year releases that at one point it seemed that on any given weekend you had to choose which Holocaust movie to see."

Teicholz begins his critique of what he calls Holocaust-related films by asking "Are Holocaust movies good for the Jews? Or even, for that matter, for society at large?," and then listing some of last year's films:

"This year’s offerings include “Defiance,” a story of a group of Jews who were heroic resistance fighters; “The Reader,” a story of post-war revelation about a Nazi woman who beds down with a German boy; “Good,” about the moral compromises of a German university professor in the Nazi era; “Adam Resurrected,” based on Yoram Kaniuk’s novel about a demented Holocaust survivor living in Israel; “Valkyrie,” about the Nazi plot to murder Hitler; and “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,” about the friendship between a German officer’s son and a Jewish child in a concentration camp. The lineup even includes a horror movie, “The Unborn,” which features a Mengele-Auschwitz plot point. And then there’s Roberta Grossman’s documentary, “Blessed Is the Match,” about Hannah Senesh, which was on the early lists as an Oscar contender."

His article is worth a read for he discusses whether truthfulness can be accessed or represented in films "about" the Holocaust. He argues that the films are fictions that selectively re-present constructions which are narratives, that the films are inventions constructed by particular narrators:

"But herein lies the conflict: Films tell stories, and they can move and educate people and sometimes even change them. But the Holocaust is a reality and not a teaching story or an action adventure. The reasons a film does or does not work and the reasons we find it a credible rendering of some aspect of the Holocaust exist on separate tracks that of necessity must overlap to make a successful film.

And there’s the rub. Because good filmmaking is not about historical accuracy; it depends upon fakery and invention.

A movie, even a documentary, generally conforms to what audiences have come to know. A film has a certain length and a certain narrative structure. There are heroes and villains, often played by movie stars. There is conflict; there is drama; there are love stories; and there is often a point to be made. A work that “breaks the rules” still does so in the context of a set of expectations — and that format doesn’t by its nature fit the facts of the Holocaust.
....
There always will be winners and losers among Holocaust films. Some may be memorable and may indeed have a large impact on how history is perceived. Nevertheless, we must also acknowledge that these films, by their very nature, are — like the shadows in Plato’s cave — mere projections, personalized recantations or reinventions of an epic series of events.

So, there cannot be a “good” Holocaust film, only a good film about Holocaust-related events."

Teicholz's article helps reminds us that films, whatever their subject matter, with the Holocaust being no exception as in his piece it is an exemplary example to draw on to show the impossibility of accessing "the truth", are selective, partial constructions. Films are representations and not "the truth", yet this truthfulness is however how they are perceived.

Brad Pitt is also joining the rush to make a Holocaust-related film: “now Brad Pitt can add a completely new role to his repertoire: an American-Jewish hillbilly from Tennessee.

Pitt has signed on to play Aldo, aka "Aldo the Apache," in Quentin Tarantino's upcoming World War II film, "Inglorious Bastards," about a handpicked group of American-Jewish soldiers who kill Nazis in brutal and violent ways in order to undermine the Third Reich. Pitt's character has "the Apache" moniker due to his signature move of scalping Nazi soldiers.”

Also, Helen Mirren. Mirren went to Israel recently (so much for any support from her of BDS) to film the final scenes of a film where she will take up a role as a femme fatale Nazi hunter who, with 2 others, goes on a 30 year hunt of Nazis:

"Helen Mirren, Oscar-winning star of "The Queen", has swapped crown and sceptre for cloak and dagger in her new role as a Nazi-hunter.

The 63-year-old British actress is in Israel this week shooting final scenes for "The Debt", about a retired Mossad femme fatale forced to make amends after bungling the capture of a German war criminal, a production source said."

Both Tom Teicholz's critical review of Holocaust-related films and the article about Brad Pitt's new role as Jewish scalper of Nazis, refer to "Defiance", a film released late last year:

"Jewish fighters in the Holocaust is the subject of another upcoming blockbuster, Defiance, which stars the current James Bond, Daniel Craig, as Jewish partisan Tuviel Bielski."

Now, while the patriarch of the Jewish Israeli/American/European family that this movie is based on states that becoming a soldier and going to war is genetic in his family, "It's just genetic," Yakow said. We're warrior Jews."

other documents dispute the narrative that is told in the film "Defiance":

“A new movie about a band of Jewish partisans who fought the Nazis during the Holocaust has led some in Poland to suggest that the group may also have been murderers.

In anticipation of the December release of "Defiance" starring Daniel Craig, aka James Bond, a Polish newspaper ran an article headlined, "A Hollywood Movie About Heroes or Murderers?"

The article in Gazeta Wyborcza contrasts the film's portrayal of Tuvia Bielski as a Moses figure leading frightened women and children through the forest, with a recently released report from a Polish government investigative body. The government report suggests that Bielski and his followers may have participated in a massacre of civilians in the eastern Polish town of Naliboki.”

However, those involved in telling the story of the genetically-disposed to war Jewish brothers state in the above article that the Polish report on possible war crimes committed by this band of brothers is anti-Semitic.

I also came across another film called "Infiltration" by Dover Koshashvili, director and screenwriter, but this film looks like it tackles Jewish and/or Israeli soldiering from a critical perspective. It is not a Holocaust-related film, but a film that looks at the racialization processes in Israeli society as they play out in the Israeli military:

"Koshashvili immigrated to Israel from Georgia when he was six years old, and his engagement with the community of immigrants from his native country has already become his cinematic trademark (along with his lack of inhibition about showing stark nudity and direct, unsanctimonious sex scenes in his films). Although "Infiltration" diverts him from this familiar environment to new realms, this time, too, Koshashvili continues to deal with characters who are trying to fit into the Israeli environment where they are still considered foreign and different.

"Infiltration" will try to outline the Israeli "melting pot" that is forced on immigrants who come to this country, and the demand directed at them to leave behind any sign of weakness or "diaspora mentality" in favor of adopting the values of the local society, with it's bullying and macho characteristics. He himself is able to identify in a certain way with the characters in his new film, says Koshashvili, because he, too, went through boot camp at Training Base 4. Although this happened much later than the 1950s, and although he did not undergo training for recruits with a low fitness profile but rather regular boot camp, after which he went to a squad commanders' course and commanded rookies, most of the experiences the characters in the film encounter are familiar to him.

"The whole military atmosphere that pervades the film," he says, "reminds me a bit of those days. The harassment of the rookies, the infinite power in the hands of the staff - these are things that I definitely remember. The soldiers in the film do undergo experiences that are a little different, but we too were made to crawl under barbed wire and go though all kinds of bullying."

your turn next

A news clip of George Galloway debating the director of the Jewish Defense League of Canada, Meir Weinsten. It begins with Canadian Minister of Immigration Kenney's director of communication, Alykhan Velshi, explaining why Galloway is "infandous" and a security threat. Bear in mind, Velshi, following the Gaza massacre, told the Canadian Arab Federation on Feb 9, 2009 to stop sending press releases to his office because he is not interested in reading them and in fact finds them HILARIOUS. On this news clip, Weinsten threatens that the Jewish Defense League of Canada is "extremely determined" to "uncover agents" (like Galloway!) and will "look into" and will be "seeing to it that the Canadian government" will monitor any individual or group that is planning to help Galloway talk in Canada. This means that Stop the War, church groups, and any individual who helps Galloway will be monitored and "looked into."

Watch out. The Canadian government, on behest of the Jewish Defense League of Canada, will look into YOU.

As a Finnish-Canadian, this history of the government monitoring individuals is not new. In the early 1900s in Canada, Finnish-Canadians were "looked into", too. More than 800 were deported as undesirables, for suspicion of "being red".

And, of course, we have the history of putting Japanese Canadians into internment camps in the 1940s and confiscating all their properties, money, and possession. Many, too, were deported as "undesirables."

Is this where we are headed back? Each time with a new targeted group? When will they come for you?