Good mooooooorning Vietnam!
Published December 29, 2010Hi poker fanatics and readers of all kinds of cruelty in the world. I wanted to see a movie the other day and my friends had told me a lot of times that I HAD to watch the movie ‘Platoon’ some time. So when I finally found the time for it, I decided to give it a go.
In fact I liked it very much and it got me starting to think about the way the American people tried to deal with the Vietnam trauma. I already saw movies like ‘Full Metal Jacket’ (duh^^) and ‘Apocalypse Now’ of course, and this one fits perfectly in that company. Hollywood seemed to play a very important role in processing the things that happened in that terrible war. They have all one thing in common: they represent the American soldiers as naïve, young guys who were fighting a war without knowing where’s it was all about. Besides: the ennemy is portraited as very cruel and being everywhere. In this way, Hollywood tried to clarify why soldiers went mad and commited the cruelties they did.
Of course Full Metal Jacket is the best example here, as it literally shows that it’s possible to create ruthless killers out of innocent young boys. But you can also take it too far: Rambo. Those movies are just trying to recover the wounded feeling of national pride by actually declaring that the US had in fact WON the war…
Posted in Movies, News Asia | 
apocalypse now, cruelties, full metal jacket, good morning vietnam, hollywood, platoon, rambo, vietnam war | 
Leave a commentThe Wall
Published March 18, 2010No, this isn’t about the Floyd-album, but about real walls. Wasn’t it only last year that we commemorated the fall of the Berlin Wall? Every person that’s a little older than 18 years will forever remember the pictures of that concrete structure with all the graffiti on it, either from seeing it in real life or from pictures and TV. It was generally assumed that walls like that are history now, belonging to other times where we tried to separate people by artificial structures like the Berlin Wall. But have a look at this picture:
This isn’t an historical picture, people are still building this wall in Israel. This is the wall that is being built all around the Westbank to ‘protect’ Israel from terrorist attacks. Israel has been condemned for building this wall by the International Court of Justice. But this doesn’t have ANY effect on the attitude of Israel towards the surrounding countries: they want ANOTHER WALL now, across the border with Egypt. Reason: they want to stop the influx of immigrants, mainly christian immigrants.
So after keeping out the Palestinians, they’ll concentrate on christians now. Kinda strange, no? After all, Israel does only exist because of all the jewish immigrants who arrived illegally over there and started to settle in Palestine. To not mention the boundaries of their territorry they established illegally in 1968. Curious how the US will react this time, they are kinda christian.
American-like elections in Afghanistan
Published August 19, 2009Elections are held in Afghanistan tomorrow and it looks like it won’t be a classic example of democracy like the United States always like to disseminate. However, there are certain similarities with the elections in the US. Florida 2000-wise.
The incumbent president Karzai, generally supported by the US, has basically only highlighted one issue during his ‘campaign’: peace with the Taliban. However, it looks like that won’t suffice to get 50 percent of the votes. But he has some tricks left.
For example, journalists are forbidden to write negatively about the government or its policy. There are also rumours about fraud at large extent: a staff member of the American commanding officer McChrystal was able to buy an amount of thousand registration cards for the elections on the market square of Kabul. Messages arrive from the uncontrolled rural areas that the Afghan men suddenly have a lot of women over there, deducted from the number of registrations which clearly deviates from the real amounts of women living in those areas.
So it isn’t a huge surprise that even the Representative for the UN in Afghanistan, the Norwegian Kai Eide, already takes the irregularities for granted and hopes that “it will be limited and in that way not damage the elections”. I think in the end it will be George W. Bush who wins! Surprise!
Posted in News, News Asia | Afghanistan, elections, florida 2000, kabul, kai eide, karzai, mcchrystal | Leave a comment