Hey,hey, LBJ! How many kids have you killed today?
Mao Tse Tung said “first the mountains, then the countryside, then the cities.” But he left out the fourth: the home front. If you can attack the enemy at their soft under-belly, their home front, using behavioural psychology, stirring up feelings against the immorality of war, then this is a very powerful weapon. The Vietnamese War was the first war that was waged in the lounge, on television. The Vietcong were very good at exploiting contradictions in the enemy camp. They launched their devastating Tet Offensive at the time of the... Read more »
Dulce et decorum est …..
Have you read ‘All quiet on the western front?’ I hadn’t until this week. It is a remarkable work, shocking, poignant but at the same time uplifting and hopeful. It’s a story of survival, but all war stories are of survival. Remarque’s novel tells it you feel it really was;... Read more »
Theo van Gogh; holding the lonely madness of genius.
Vincent van Gogh is all too often seen as the mad genius who created masterpieces while in a state of ecstacy and infatuation, the man who cut off his ear in despair and took his own life, but that is a distortion. He was more an intensely driven man, awkward... Read more »
Dido’s enduring grievance.
She was devastated. After all she had come through, how could the Gods allow it to happen? Wasn’t she still grieving for her husband, Sychaeus, killed for his money by her own brother, Pygmalion. Hadn’t she had to take the gold and leave her home in Phoenicia at the dead... Read more »
Cries and Whispers
I first experienced Cries and Whispers in 1973. I was, even then, drawn to the deeper, darker aspects of human psychology. It was no wonder, therefore, that I was into Bergman. I rated the Seventh Seal and Persona as the greatest films I had seen. Then came Cries and Whispers. And now,... Read more »
