Bekas

Bekas is a Kurdish word that's variously translated as orphans, complete loneliness, parentless. It's all of those things. It's also the title of a slightly odd but quite engaging movie about two brothers who, after seeing part of the film Superman in their home village, decide to go to America and meet Superman. Perhaps even ask him to come back to their home country and kill Saddam Hussein (who at the time of the movie's story, was causing havoc in Kurdistan).

The orphaned brothers are not very old. Ten-year-old Dana (Sarwar Fazil) has a bit of a romance going on with a girl who is somewhat ambivalent towards him (it's never going to work, but he doesn't know that), and is the ideas man. The younger one, Zana (Zamand Taha), is six or seven, strident, energetic, optimistic, seldom put down for more than a moment - a considerable feat in Kurdistan, where any adult male (in fact, any older male, including your brother) is likely to beat you at the drop of a hat, often with the least provocation. It's not a place for wimps.

The boys shine shoes for a living, and naturally struggle to make ends meet. In their attempts to walk or ride to America (which in their minds is only a few inches across the map and therefore can't be far away) they run into various troubles, are separated, joined up again and nearly killed. It's a grim life made bearable only by keeping your own spirits up. No one else will do it for you.

The film has some humour, but in general there's little understatement of the stark poverty the boys live in. They wear the same clothes day in and out, don't appear to eat very often, and even have to berate customers to get them to pay the proper price for their shoeshining. A few older people help them at times, but for the most part they're on their own. And at journey's end, things don't seem to have made a lot of progress, though at least they're out of Saddam's clutches, for the time being.

The cast is mostly amateur, which means that people turn up here who would never appear on screen otherwise, their faces marked in many cases with the sheer difficulties of life. The two boys are good-looking, and convey all the emotion needed in their roles. Taha has a voice that would kill a goat a twenty paces - some viewers have felt he has only one vocal mode: full-bore shouting. He may be excused in this because of the sheer need his character has to be heard when so many ears around him are deaf to his cries.

The film was written and directed by Karzan Kader, and is based on his own story of escape from Kurdistan. He had previously made a short film version of it; this full-length one has no feeling of being expanded for the sake of it.

The end of the Iraq War?

Some extracts from Jim Wallis' article (an article that's worth reading in full) on the end of the Iraqi War - as far as the US's involvement in it is concerned.

The war in Iraq was fundamentally a war of choice, and it was the wrong choice.

From the outset, this war was fought on false pretenses, with false information, and for false purposes. And the official decisions to argue for this war and then carry it out were made at the height of political and moral irresponsibility — especially when we see the failed results and consider both the human and financial costs.

This week, U.S. Rep. Walter Jones, a nine-term Republican from eastern North Carolina and long-time member of the House Armed Services Committee....called his decision to give President George W. Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq “a sin.”   

Jones has had a change of heart towards the War through having personal encounters with families who lost their precious loved ones, and by the convictions of his own Christian faith.  He says 'we were lied to and “misled” into war by the “previous administration.”

Wallis lists some of the costs of this unjust war:
* 4,499 U.S. military killed
* 32,200 wounded
* 110,000 estimated Iraqi civilian deaths
* 2.5 million internally displaced Iraqis
* $800 billion in federal funding for the Iraq War through FY2011
* An estimated $3-5 trillion total economic cost to the United States of the war in Iraq.
* As many as 300,000 U.S. troops returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder.
* 320,000 troops returning from Afghanistan and Iraq with traumatic brain injuries
* The number of suicide attempts by veterans could exceed an earlier official estimate of 1,000 a month.

Wallis adds: Such a list takes my breath away and should drive each of us to pray for lives that have been so painfully and irreparably changed.

And note that for every US soldier killed, nearly 25 Iraqi civilians were killed.   Admittedly, there has been much internal bloodshed, not entirely related to the War.  

Bullets in the air

You have to wonder if the Hamas and Fatah sects in Gaza will ever make any progress towards peace with each other. They’re the same in essence in terms of aggression towards each other as the two Muslim sects in Iraq. These people appear to have no idea how to come to peace with each other, and no desire for it either.
When you see them on tv in the news, they don’t seem to have any organisation; they’re just bullies or little boys in men’s bodies running round with oversized guns. They destroy and burn and loot. And, as always, they shoot their bullets in the air as some sort of celebration. None of them ever seen to consider that bullets sent up in the air will eventually come down. It always looks as though the think the bullets go up indefinitely!

Prince Harry

In yesterday’s Otago Daily Times (Dunedin’s only major daily newspaper), there was a very neat letter to the editor, written by one Keith Clifford.
It went as follows:

If Prince Harry goes to Iraq and becomes the Mother of all Targets, it will at least give him some respite from being the Target of all Mothers back in the UK.

I’d love to write something as nifty as that!