Tag: WWII

Two Sides to Every Story.

Here’s some interesting news: Clint Eastwood is coming out with two films about the Battle of Iwo Jima simultaneously next year, Flags of our Fathers (the US perspective) and Lamps Before the Wind (from the Japanese viewpoint.) “Typically, Eastwood is not able to articulate fully his rationale for this ambitious enterprise: ‘I don’t know — sometimes you get a feeling about something. You have a premonition that you can get something decent out of it,’ he says. ‘You just have to trust your gut.’” Well, that and your sources.

I’ll see you on the beach.

Also (finally) emerging this evening: The very long-awaited Day of Defeat Source. I haven’t played much in the past year or so, but if DoD-S has managed to merge 1.0‘s already-excellent WWII FPS gameplay with HL2‘s immersive physics and graphics engine as rumored, this could get real ugly. So, DSSG‘ers, other long-time DoD’ers, and Robin Williams, best keep an eye out for the return of Liberty Lad, a freeborn man of the USA.

Down Dives Dubya.

Bush’s poll numbers, low since early summer, just keep on plummeting and might soon reach Carter-like proportions. Somehow, I don’t think calling the Iraq War the moral equivalent of WWII is going to stem the tide. Nor, I’ll hazard, will his making it easier for his corporate cronies to pollute at will. But hey, keep trying, guys. Update: Slate‘s Fred Kaplan blows further holes in the WWII analogy.

Destroyer of Worlds.

“We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark.” Have your perambulators and origami cranes at the ready…I missed this ten days ago amid the Half-Blood hullabaloo and drive south, but it’s very well-done: 20/20 Hindsight takes a trip in the Wayback Machine to blog the 60th anniversary of the Trinity Test in real-time.

Harry Potter and the Angry Rottweiler.

On the eve of the Half-Blood Prince, letters are unearthed in which Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, decries the Harry Potter books. “It is good, that you enlighten people about Harry Potter, because those are subtle seductions, which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly.” Well, if the future pope could handle the Hitler Youth, I think most kids’ eternal souls should be able to weather the Harry Potter tomes just fine.

Don’t Mention the War.

“Taken in context, Durbin’s premise — that the techniques characterized in the FBI memo are consistent with those deployed by ‘mad regimes’ — is worth debating. But of course, such invocations are never debated in their precise context.” In light of Senator Dick Durbin’s recent apology for bringing up Nazis to discuss Gitmo, the WP discovers Godwin’s Law.