A Dutch Life

This is a great movie about the role of North African soldiers who fought for France in World War II, its a topic that I was reminded of recently. My parents and I visited the grave of a great Uncle on my fathers side in Ypres, Belgium, who most likely dies in the World War I battle of Passchendaele. It was an experience that affected me, and I think all of us, more deeply than we expected. 

In the huge war memorial at Menin Gate there were dozens and dozens of names which were clearly not European. They were those of the Indian sub continent, Indians, Pakistanis and the famous Ghurkas. While was strange to see the Australian graves there, for some reason it felt even stranger that these young men would fall so far from home.

Anyway, this movie follows the men from recruitment until the last throes of the war, and it was clearly aimed at raising awareness of the sacrifices such men made despite the discrimination they faced. I’m sure it was an experience common to all those who enlisted from the “Colonies”.

If anything let the film down it was the final sequence, where the men were sent to hold a bridge until the Americans could arrive. Along the way a mine cut through their ranks, leaving just 5 of them behind. I found it hard to believe that, even with the mine incident aside, such a small number of men would have been sent for such a task. It did allow for the inevitable ”fight to the last” against enormous odds and to focus on the lead characters.

In the end, probably like all soldiers, they were fighting for no more than the man standing next to them.

The final frame of the movie is poignant, and in fact made a real difference. It made people aware of the policy of successive French governments to freeze the war pensions of the Indigenes. It was only after the film’s release that the government policy was changed so that their pensions were brought into line with what French veterans are paid. Of course too late for many.

The Ghurkas faced similar discrimination.

Technorati tags: World War I, indigenes, movie Review

Tonights movie was Zwartboek (yup, I’m watching a stack of movies with Petra away). Its a movie that I had heard lots about, naturally because it’s Dutch. Set at the end of World War II, it follows a Jewish women (Rachel Stein / Ellis de Vries) who has managed to hide from the Nazis until almost the very end. Losing her hide out, and then her family, she finds herself at the centre of the Dutch Resistance.

It is a really good movie, one of those that starts well, perhaps goes on a little too long, but then picks up for a great finish. The plot of the movie is one you have seen before, but there are eventually enough twists to keep you guessing right through.

I was a little disturbed about the humanisation of the character Müntze, the Captain of the SD (intelligence service of the SS), whom I’m sure was responsible for his share of occupier inflicted misery. Ellis falls in love with him while spying for the resistance, possible of course, but for me a little shallow and a bit of a distraction. He eventually dies in a way that makes you feel sorry for him, though I think justice would have caught up with him eventually.

The final final scene is also interesting, finishing in Israel in 1956, where there are Israeli soldiers surrounding the Kibbutz she now lives in. Gunfire and explosions are going off in the background. I’m not sure what the intention of this finale was, whether we are meant to feel sorry for her for not being able to escape war, of if we are to feel sorry for the region thrust into it as a result of European conflict. I think it was the former, but not for me.

Started with My First Time
Continued from My First Time Part II

The Crown is an excellent pub, old looking, but with all the modern conveniences you expect, like pokies <grin>. We strode toward to dining room, as we had done many times before, looking eagerly for our table. As we entered the room, I noticed an old bloke at the bar, he was looking out the window with a gaze so strong I felt I would be sliced in half as I passed through his line of sight. I guessed he was in his seventies, he wore a denim jacket and still had the purposeful posture of a young man full of testosterone. I knew the other guys had noticed him too, but we didn’t say anything.

We ordered our standard lunch and then Scotty reminded me the round was mine, it always seemed to be. Borrowing some money from him, I stepped off the bar stools used in the dining room and approached the bar. There was something wrong, I knew that, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
The barmen had a solemn look on his face, he was obviously very serious about his job today. He was there to serve beer. I had a casual glace at the small fridges you find at ground level behind bars, today, instead of the variety of bottles decorated with supposedly enticing colours and gold foil, there were just two, Red and Green. The colours were uniform, crisp, and you knew they were placed in that fridge with great care and respect. The beer had a presence that made time slow down proportionally to the distance I was from the bar. Nervously, hesitantly I asked for four bottles of Carlton Cold.

There was complete silence.

To be continued…

First I read this, a little late I know, I had it filed for a quiet Sunday afternoon read:

BBC NEWS | Europe | Vatican’s ‘driving commandments’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6768395.stm

I tracked down an official translation here:

In any case, with the request for motorists to exercise virtue, we have drawn up a special “decalogue” for them, in analogy with the Lord’s Ten Commandments. These are stated here below, as indications, considering that they may also be formulated differently.

 

I. You shall not kill.

II. The road shall be for you a means of communion between people and not of mortal harm.

III. Courtesy, uprightness and prudence will help you deal with unforeseen events.

IV. Be charitable and help your neighbour in need, especially victims of accidents.

V. Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination, and an occasion of sin.

VI. Charitably convince the young and not so young not to drive when they are not in a fitting condition to do so.

VII. Support the families of accident victims.

VIII. Bring guilty motorists and their victims together, at the appropriate time, so that they can undergo the liberating experience of forgiveness.

IX. On the road, protect the more vulnerable party.

X. Feel responsible towards others.

Firstly, this is deadly serious. In some ways this is actually better than the original 10 commandments, at least these are all concerned with the well being of people, instead of being about god himself (3-4 of the original 10 are). I think number 9 is my favourite, I can just imagine all these well meaning Catholic 4-wheel drives gathering around a Smartcar to ensure the 16 wheelers are kept at bay. I’m not convinced about number 10, it feels a little like it’s just making up the numbers, seriously, its not really all that specific to driving now is it?

But then, it got better, I had also filed this on away for Sunday reading:

A fatwa free-for-all in the Islamic world – International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/11/news/fatwa.php

First came the breast-feeding fatwa: It declared that the Islamic restriction on unmarried men and women being together could be lifted at work if the woman breast-fed her male colleagues five times. Then came the urine fatwa: It said that drinking the urine of the Prophet Muhammad was deemed a blessing.

Now, I’m going to have to look this up, but I think at Microsoft this would have been called a HR violation. So while it might be ok in the eyes of Allah, I think being fired, likely well before the fifth sip, would probably mean this is not really going to solve the problem.

The whole article is a pretty good read, seems there is an escalating “arms race” concerning the issuing of Fatwas, I’m all in favour if it continues to produce cracking guidance like this. Sadly, as the article only touches upon later, there is another side that is not so funny.

Some of these are pretty funny. Many people have a whole lot more reason to complain than those who are concerned about their cats making in onto the web. 

The guy “Guy stumbling falling over” is my favourite, just because of the numbers involved in working out just how likely it is that that exact moment would have ever been captured on camera.

I only wish some of my ”more than a 3-pointer, throwing rubbish into a rubbish bin as if it were a basketball shot” shots were caught mid flight.  

Threat Level – Wired Blogs

Love it….

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flkgNn50k14]

The Breach is based on a true story, that of the worst case of espionage ever experienced by the US. Robert Hanssen sold secrets to the soviets for years from the safety of his high level job in the FBI. Overall it wasn’t a bad movie, historically it was interesting, though of course I’m sure Hollywood had its way with the truth, and it was generally pretty believable. Of course I had a massive chuckle at the scene where Robert Hanssen went through the FBI datacentre sprouting all sorts of tech related terms and acronyms in sentences that made as much sense as a teletubby episode.

A common weakness in this sort of movie, and one that for me left me feeling pretty frustrated, is of course the weakness of the main leads girlfriend. Far from being supportive they always seem to find it difficult to accept that as an FBI (or secret) agent there are things about his day job that he just cant talk about. This whole aspect of the movie just went too far, with the girlfriend going to the point of deception to try and find out what her boyfriend was up to. Maybe its just because this seems to ruin nearly every movie involving a dedicated, patriotic, all round American good guy secret agent, but it just never feels like the girlfriends reaction is reasonable, like if you were in that position that YOU would feel that way too….

But maybe that is just me….any girlfriends of secret agent out there care to comment?

My father is of course an incredibly wise man. Throughout the years since he and my mother brought me into this world I have often turned to him for advice and guidance as I navigate through the wilds of life. His talent has always been to be able to distill the challenges faced to just a simple phase, a phrase of such beauty that it’s likely Confucius would have been proud.

In this blog series I plan to capture some of these sound bytes of wisdom, much as I tried to when I was younger in a small book we kept in the cupboard. The book I suspect has long been lost, with the words on the Internet, it is my hope, that they will live forever.

If anyone out there has any contributions I would love to hear them.

“Sometimes you just have to bite the bull on the horns”

- Wayne McPherson, 20/6/07

Dad, I know exactly what you mean.

I have been using Firefox a lot more lately, mainly because I’m not accessing internal Microsoft web sites anymore. It’s quite a nice browser, now doubt, but I do fail to see what all the fuss is about.

The primary thing I like about it is not the browsing experience, but all the cool add-ons. Of course these come at a price with a negative effect on stability. I’m getting around 2-3 crashes per week.

I have to say that I find the IE7 UI much nicer, much cleaner, makes better use of screen real estate. The Firefox UI strikes me as being a little old school.

The thing though that is really starting to make me think about switching back to IE as my default browser is this:

Both browsers have been open for around the same time, with roughly the same number of tabs, and I have been doing roughly the same type of stuff. This really has an impact on the performance of my machine, slowing what is a pretty modest spec’d laptop.

I have been hearing about this problem on Firefox for what feels like years, is there nothing that can be done about it?