Archive for September, 2007

Alberi

Tuesday, September 25th, 2007 · english · suomeksi

Ricordarsi i nomi degli alberi è una piccola tragedia per me. Sarà perché non mi ricordo il loro nome in finlandese, o sarà anche perché manco so cosa sono in italiano. Difatti metto un link all’immagine in modo da capire qual è.

Finnish Italian English
mänty pino pine tree
paju salice willow
koivu betulla birch
tammi quercia
rovere
oak
saarni frassino ash
leppä ontano alder
kuusi peccio spruce
lehtikuusi larice larch
pihta abete fir

The Fog of War

Monday, September 17th, 2007

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

Osama

Tuesday, September 11th, 2007

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.

Good friends

Tuesday, September 4th, 2007

Friends

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.