Brazil in WW2

I was reading an article this morning and wondered what part South America played in WW2 (beyond certain countries well known role in providing 'sanctuary' to various unsavoury characters after the war ended).

On the Wikipedia page I brought up the WW2 article and did some CTRL-F searches. South America is not mentioned once. Brazil, the only South American combatant nation, got two hits. One in the list of the combatants and another for the category page - 'wars involving Brazil'. Not much use.

However, scrolling through the Brazil history pages I found out about the Brazilian expeditionary force. They fought in Italy and (if the slightly shoddily constructed page is to be believed) took over 20,000 prisoners for the loss of only 948 soldiers. They also had awesome badges and uniform insignia. More armies should adopt the pipe-smoking-snake logo.

-Army shoulder pad (left) and Air force badge (below)

WW2 - an ecological nightmare?

So I was walking to the shops this morning and a thought struck me. I'm just starting 'Post War' by Tony Judt. It opens with a description of the large scale effects of the Second World War; dwelling on displaced refugees, demographic changes, mortality rates, destruction of cities and the national responses to the psychological shock of occupation and collaboration. This was all familiar stuff, although Judt manages to really illustrate the catastrophic nature of a war that we are indoctrinated from a young age to view with rose-tinted spectacles. However, there was no examination of what effects the war may have had on the ecology of the affected countries and I can't recall ever seeing such an analysis. Obviously environmental damage was not the top priority of post-war rebuilders but it seems likely that it was just as serious as the destruction of human life and infrastructure caused by the conflict.

This thought was backed up by something I remember reading in (of all things) a travel guide. The link between war and environmental damage is often easier to see in Africa due to the presence of large, endangered animals that are closely monitored and to a certain degree reliant on stable governance to protect them from poachers. Anyway this travel guide referred to the South African government's use of Namibia's lush Caprivi strip as a base for their intervention in Angola during the civil war. It noted that due to the break down of law and order, the presence of armed factions and the easy availability of weapons during this period there was a rise in poaching and a fall in the populations of endangered animals that many areas have still not completely recovered from today. War obviously has its environmental effects even if they often go unnoticed amid the general chaos.

So I think I'm going to do some internet research and see if I can find out anything about the effects of total war on European ecology. I'll confine my focus to Europe as it is a huge question already and I don't fancy getting into the environmental effects of dropping nuclear bomb (although that might be a fun project for another time!). Lacking University-level journal access and time it will probably be a bit patchy and unspecific but hopefully I'll discover some interesting things.

Initial thoughts for things to look into -

1) Rare animals in European zoos – I remember a possibly apocryphal story that bombing wiped out all of the elephants kept in captivity in Berlin. Zoo animals were high profile and had a better chance of making it into eyewitness testimony than wild animals.

2) Horses – Despite increased mechanisation the armies of WW2 were almost as reliant on horse drawn transport for logistics and the movement of troops as in WW1. Tank and truck numbers were limited and railways wouldn't get you everywhere. A large number of these horses will inevitably have been killed by bullets or bombing.

3) Feeding of large armies – How far did the various armies in Europe live off the land? Modern films generally portray them as eating army rations and buying/stealing from civilian farmers. However, this is an American-centric view of the war and wouldn't have been as easy for (for example) Russian partisans based in deep forests without logistic support. Quite conceivably there were some soldiers who were forced to hunt for their food or did so to supplement rations.

Sherlock vs the dastardly Mobile phone advertisers

I've been on a bit of a marathon of the 2010 Sherlock TV series recently, impressed by its strong performance in recent awards ceremonies. As usual for a BBC production the quality was excellent. There was some great acting, especially from Benedict Cumberbatch (awesome name) and Martin Freeman. The structure was just right with long, eighty-minute episodes but a short series run of only three programs. This allowed the directors to fully develop their plot lines but the series ended before the charm of the characters wore off and left the viewer eager for more. The interesting artistic style, notably the appearance of thoughts and electronic messages as words on the screen, and witty dialogue helped to set it apart from other crime dramas. However, it didn't quite achieve perfection, due mainly to some overly obvious foreshadowing, a weak finale and an unconvincing Moriarty. Below are some general musings on how the relationship between Holmes and Watson was portrayed followed by individual reviews of the three episodes.

Starting with the positive, I think the best thing about this series is the way it presented the relationship between Holmes and Watson. In some ways it remains very true to the books, with Holmes dragging Watson along through sheer force of character. The repeated joke of Holmes being too preoccupied to carry out trivial, menial tasks and stubbornly waiting for Watson to do them for him is funny every time. Also familiar from the novels is the director's use of Watson as a character that the viewer can relate to. Holmes may go off on wild tangents of feverish deduction but we can always rely on his explaining his thought processes to Watson at some point. Other aspects of the relationship, specifically the humour derived from other characters assuming they are a gay couple, are more modern concerns but still familiar from other TV drama and comedy.

However, these prosaic and humourous features of their relationship act as a cover for a darker, more gothic need that Holmes has for Watson. In the first episode, Donovan warns the Doctor to stay away from Holmes. She thinks his enthusiasm for death and mystery shows him to be a functioning psychopath who will inevitably eventually cross the line and turn from detective to murderer. From this perspective the loyal Watson can be seen as a link to humanity for the potentially unbalanced Holmes. He calls the genius detective to order when he is at his most alien and uncaring but his unfailing loyalty means that this criticism is always constructive and never petty or self serving. All of the jokes about them being gay or playing up Holmes' eccentricities obscure the deathly serious role that Watson plays as a surrogate conscience for Holmes.

Anyway here are my thoughts on the three episodes:

1) A Study in Pink
Intellectual Heritage - 'A Study in Scarlet', 'Saw I'

While it still diverged significantly from the book this was the episode which stuck closest to Arthur Conan Doyle's novels. This was ideal for the first episode as it quickly established that they hadn't just stuck the 'Sherlock Holmes' brand on an otherwise unrelated crime drama. It also allowed those of us who had read the book to sit back a bit and enjoy getting to know the characters as we already knew the broad aspects of the plot. However, I doubt it would have been too taxing even for viewers who hadn't read the novel. The foreshadowing that the killer was a taxi driver was, if anything, too blatant.

2) The Blind Banker
Intellectual Heritage - Snippets of some Sherlock Holmes stories, William Gibson's cyberpunk, Neal Stephenson's cryptography themes

This was definitely my favourite of the series. If 'A Study in Pink' was mainly an updating to the modern day of a Victorian story, this episode aimed to be indisputably modern and cutting edge. The use of graffiti as a medium for cryptography and the Triad assassin hunting for the smuggler's stolen property were great ideas that kept the plot moving quickly and wonderfully evoked a murky underground world of smuggling and intrigue. The awkwardness of the relationship between Sarah and Watson added a lot of humour. It began to feel a bit like the more cringe-worthy bits of 'Being Human' as they tried to enjoy their date despite Sherlock's gate crashing and the eventual fight with Chinese smugglers. The final show down between Holmes and the criminals didn't live up to the rest of the episode but the cliffhanger ending set things up well for the series finale.

3) The Great Game
Intellectual Heritage - Snippets of some Sherlock Holmes stories, 'Phonebooth', 'Saw I'

The finale of the series was a let down for me. For one thing it got very silly, with Moriarty deciding to play elaborate games with Sherlock rather than simply killing him and the presence of a Jaws-style giant Czech assassin. The plot whizzed between different cases as Holmes solved Moriarty's challenges, meaning that the bodies piled up too quickly for me to really care about any of them. When we finally met Moriarty he seemed to be aiming for a kind of Joker-like creepy insanity, with just a hint that it is an act to disguise a vicious stability underneath. This didn't really work and just made him come across as mentally unstable. I mean it's fair enough that a mass murderer might have some issues but one wonders how he holds together his massive criminal empire when he is so obviously cracked.

The only way to understand this one is as a further illustration that 'Genius needs an audience', a maxim uttered by Holmes in an earlier episode. Just as Holmes needs Watson to call his deductions brilliant occasionally, Moriarty needs someone to appreciate how clever his work as a 'contracting criminal' is. His camouflage is too perfect. By making himself invisible to the police he achieves security but also makes himself invisible to the appreciating yet horror-stricken audience that he believes he deserves. Therefore rather than doing the sensible thing and shooting Holmes he has to make him appreciate his work first. While plausible I found this too weak as a unifying theme for such an eclectic and fast moving episode.

Scott Pilgrim and Neil Gaiman

In view of my love of the 'Scott Pilgrim vs the World' film I must get around to reading the comic books series at some point. I think I'm just putting it off because I like the film so much that I don't want to risk spoiling it.

Maybe I'll have the time to apply myself to them them when I finish hunting down copies of 'The Sandman' comic. I'm currently 4/10 and have hit a road block as Dorset libraries don't stock collections 5-9. However, I've tracked down the rest in Bristol and will be making the most of my upcoming holidays to finish reading them. Neil Gaiman is a secular god among writers and having read 'American Gods', 'The Graveyard Book', 'Stardust' and 'Fragile Things' in the last few months I'm desperate to plough through the rest of his books (especially 'Coraline' which I have heard good things about and seen many trailers for the film of).

Insomnia and social networking.

Can't sleep. The cup of black tea before bed on top of the coffee and jelly babies earlier may have been a bad idea as my caffeine and sugar levels are now haywire. Hopefully I'm not keeping the whole house up with my typing.

Anyway, sleeplessness means I have time to type out some of my thoughts on 'The Social Network', which I recently got out of the wonderful Blandford Forum library for the princely sum of 50p. I had an inkling it was going to be a good film before I started watching it. While I hadn't seen any reviews, the general conversational buzz I've heard about it has all been positive. This was fairly extraordinary considering that at first glance it has the dullest premise in the world - students invent Facebook and get rich. However, they managed to make it infinitely more engaging than watching a group of Harvard entrepeneurs sit around coding and eating pizza in their free time.

The main strength of the film was the characterisation. From the first scene where Mark Zuckerberg is dumped by his girlfriend and retaliates by hacking the entire Harvard computer network, you are gripped by the characters and really care about what happens to them. Zuckerberg's arrogance and single mindedness make him obnoxious but simultaneously and intersting character to watch as you want to see what he does next. The structure of the movie helps with this process of identification and audience attention grabbing. You know from the beginning that Zuckerberg ends up founding Facebook and being sued by both his best friend and the Winklevoss. This helps sustain the tension at the beginning of the film as you want to know how his childish initial actions lead to these monumental outcomes.

Jesse Eisenberg puts in a stellar performance as Zuckerberg and Andrew Garfield is equally good as the unfortunate Eduardo. The Winklevoss brothers add some much needed comedy to a film that could have been a bit dry and business-minded-y. Their upper-class hatred of the much smarter Zuckenberg becomes increasingly obvious as the film goes on. Their pristine mask slips further and further into violence and incomprehension as they become convinced that Zuckenburg has stolen their idea and is snubbing them deliberately. Hilariously their clone-like physical similarities are compounded when they start using the first-person singular to describe themselves ("We can [beat him up] ourselves. I'm 6'5, 220 and there's two of me" made me chortle a lot). Justin Timberlake is better than I thought he'd be as the cool Napster founder who intrigues against Eduardo.

All in all a very good film with an extremely satisfying if slightly over emphasised ending. Zuckerberg is left mechanically refreshing his Facebook page to see if the girlfriend from the beginning of the film has accepted his friend request. This wraps up the theme that has been running through the movie, that, while he is a genius who achieves great things he is constantly let down in social relationships by his naked ambition and clear disdain for others less able than himself. The indications that underneath it all he really wants to be liked turn him into a much more likable character than he originally appears to be. A minor character sums it up perfectly by telling him that he isn't an asshole but he's trying damn hard to act like one.

Factual accuracy is highly questionable but as a morality tale for the driven and ambitious it works exceedingly well. If I had one problem with it it would be something that was mentioned in a Rotten Tomatoes review. Like a Facebook relationship the film is ultimately shallow and vacuous at everything above the personal level. Zuckerberg takes a few choice digs at his prosecutors but these are based mainly on the weakness of their claim that he has stolen their idea. There is no broader critique of the way a couple of rich kids can use their family lawyers to extort money on false grounds from a successful entrepeneur. The conflicts in the film are all scaled down to the personal level and there is little consideration of what this story can tell us about the vagaries of copyright law or the ability of vested interests in capitalist society to appropriate the work of others. However, it would have been very difficult for the film to keep its abundant charm had it ventured into these tricky intellectual concerns about technology and society.

Dr Who finale (for now...)

I had not realised that this series of Dr Who is going to have a break in the middle so it was a bit of a shock when after a rip-roaring finale, complete with exploding Cybermen fleets, headless monks and a comic Sontaran nurse, they announced that it was on hiatus until September. I'm not sure I approve. Sure it allowed them to set up an excellent cliffhanger but I was just getting into this series and now it's off again. Reversing the usual pattern I've enjoyed the main plotline far more than the one off 'fun' episodes in the series so far, partly because they've hardly done any historical or 'famous person' ones which I generally enjoy.

Anyway, my favourite bit in this episode was when the Cleric's commander announced that he had permission from the Papal Mainframe, herself, to remove the monk's hoods. Naughty Dr Who producers - not only signalling a Catholic reversal on the contemporary debate on women priests (or even pontiffs) but also alluding to a surprising outcome in an imagined discourse, common in near future sci-fi. Namely whether machine intelligence should be accorded the same rights and respect as human intelligence. It is standard for sceptical authors to present religion characters blindly asserting that machines have no souls and thus rejecting functionalist views on machine rights. Obviously in the future of the Cleric armies this debate has been resolved in a manner very favourable to AI by a strongly religious political regime.

Another interesting detail was the presence of the gay, Anglican couple in what I'd previously imagined was meant to be a futuristic Roman Catholic organisation (Mostly due to names such as Octavian and Angelo in their previous appearance). Like the reference to the female pope, the presence of gay soldiers obviously ties directly into present day debates in the Catholic church and beyond. However, I'm more interested in the presence of other denominations in the Cleric armies and what this means about their entry requirements. Does one have to be Christian? Are the headless monks themselves a Christian sect or did the directors just want to up the creepiness factor by giving the Clerics some unsavoury allies from another religion? If other denominations are allowed to join the Clerics is there a hierarchy that puts Catholics in command (as suggested by the presence of a papal mainframe as ultimate commander) or is promotion by merit (as suggested by the fact that the Clerics actually seem fairly competent soldiers)? Needless to say I'm loving the way they are drip feeding us with information about this future time period in the Whoniverse rather than just answering all the awkward questions outright.

History repeating itself

Who says history is always repeating itself?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_von_Falkenhausen