LittleCamels.com

Yes, I know, this is a weird entry. But, living in the middle of the nature (as anywhere you might live here in Finland), sometimets I happen to forget which tree is which, so I’ve decided to write down a table of the most common trees. Clicking on the Finnish name you can also see a picture of them! Isn’t that gorgeous?

And here is my film of the week:

• The Fog of War (2003): a documentary about the United States at war (and of the other countries involved) through the account of Robert McNamara, who has been in the US Army Air Forces during WWII and later served as the United States Secretary of Defense during part of the Vietnam war (1961-1968).

No matter you do good or bad things, and even assuming good faith, power is very dangerous:

[...] In the Cuban Missile Crisis, at the end, I think we did put ourselves in the skin of the Soviets.

In the case of Vietnam, we didn’t know them well enough to empathize. And there was total misundersunding as a result.

They believed that we had simply replaced the French as a colonial power and we were seeking to subject South and North Vietnam to our colonial interests, which was absolutely absurd.

And we, we saw Vietnam as an element of the Cold War. Nor what they saw it as, a civil war.

Robert McNamara

Here’s another good film I just found by chance in a video rental shop (marked as "documentary"!). Why is it so hard to see these films on TV?

• Osama: during the Taliban domination in Afghanistan, a 12-year-old girl, daugher of a widowed mother, has to cut her hair and dress as a boy to find a job to survive. Amazing recitation, woderful shooting. First full-length film shot in Afghanistan after the Taliban rule.

From left to right: Vitto, Mau, Roby, Raffa, Dani, Frustino (above Dani), Pierpi (magically added, since he was in Mexico at that time). Photo by Mau, unartistically modified by me.