39 posts tagged with pow.
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Are the fires of Hell a-glowing?
More than two decades after the original film popularized the "fast zombie" craze, we finally have our first look at Danny Boyle's long-awaited return to horror, and one of the best trailers in years: 28 YEARS LATER. Though the trailer's terrifying, cultlike atmosphere and snatches of atavistic violence are intriguing, the real star is the soundtrack: a tinny, 110-year-old poetry reading whose hypnotically repetitive words tromp relentlessly from prim recitation to jangling nerves to a hysterical, nightmarish climax.
The poem, Rudyard Kipling's "Boots", was originally written to memorialize (and echo) the wretched forced marches of the Second Boer War (as former Navy SEAL Jocko Willink recites/explains), its grim refrain a verse from Ecclesiastes on the inevitability of death.
The howling rendition from the trailer, made by early film star Taylor Holmes in 1915, has long been used by elite SERE training schools to psychologically break recruits.
2spooky4u? There are plenty of alternatives:
pioneering composer Kay Swift at age 14 (1911) -
the sonorous Peter Dawson (1930) -
the melodramatic Eric Woodburn (1935) -
the operatic Leonard Warren (1951) -
folksy anarchist Leslie Fish (1991) -
or cleanse the palette with the goofy Red Skelton parody, "Frogs."
Oof! Pow!
Stuck at home and feeling a bit punchy? Stuntwoman Zoë Bell was. So she challenged a few friends to a little Boss Bitch Fight Challenge
No picnic on Mount Kenya
It was 1942, and Felice Benuzzi was bored out of his mind. A year in a POW camp in British Kenya had drained the Italian civil servant and amateur mountaineer’s sense of purpose. So, he hatched a plan that would become one of the purest adventure tales in history: break out of camp, climb Mt Kenya (Wikipedia), and break back in again. (BBC Travel) But first, he had to make the climbing equipment and plan the path (Internet Archive)* for himself and two other madmen, Giuàn Balletto and Enzo Barsotti. [more inside]
OVERKILL
The Forgotten Internment
"On June 3 and 4, 1942, Japanese military forces conducted air strikes on U.S. Army and Navy facilities at Dutch Harbor, in what is now the city of Unalaska. Several days later, they occupied Kiska and Attu islands, the latter the location of an Unangax village. Within a short time, the 42 Unangax residents of Attu and a non-Native teacher were taken to Japan, where they served as laborers for the Japanese for the duration of the war ... For the Unangax [or Aleut] of most other villages, World War II brought a different fate:" internment camps in the United States [more inside]
No man left behind
The Soviet POWs at Fort Dix
In 1945, the 153 Soviet POWs of Fort Dix disappeared into a void. Their ultimate fate is unknown. [more inside]
PowPOWPOWPOW!
Run away! Run away FARTHER! (SLYT) A malfunction at a fireworks show entertains the crowd.
"There was little we didn't know about Nazi Germany"
In a new book, a historian reveals that during WWII, the British kept three groups of Nazi prisoners captive under condititons that an outraged Churchill demanded be stopped. [more inside]
Coming home
"When the lights go out for good, my people will still be here. We have our ancient ways. We will remain."
In the Shadow of Wounded Knee. Along the southwestern border of South Dakota is one of the most poverty-stricken places in the United States—the Pine Ridge Reservation, home of the Oglala Lakota people. After 150 years of broken promises, they are still nurturing their tribal customs, language and beliefs. Via [more inside]
"they were never meant to be smoked in the first place."
Cigarettes: The Most Stable International Currency. In China, expensive cigarettes (not to be confused with counterfeits of popular brands) are sometimes used as bribes.
Cash can be difficult to handle, or outright illegal, in some places. Since a smoking ban (and subsequent black-market trade in cigarettes) in US prisons, canned mackerel (previously on MetaFilter) has become the exchange medium of choice. [more inside]
Katyn
Newly declassified documents show the United States had full knowledge of the Katyn massacre, the Soviet massacre of 22,000 Polish officers. The Soviets attempted to blame Nazi Germany.
The scars of Katyn remain on Poland, after the Russian State Duma admitted and condemned Stalin's role in Katyn, a delegation of 130 prominent Poles including the President on their way to commemorate the 70th anniversary at the site died in a plane crash.
Aye mere watan ke logo
Given how little thought India’s contribution to the World Wars gets in our collective historical memory, it is almost strange to think that in the First World War India made the largest contribution to the war effort out of all of Britain’s colonies and dominions. Close to 1,700,000 Indians – combatants and non-combatants – participated in WWI. My own area of interest is India’s role in the Mesopotamian theatre. [more inside]
Duty Status: Whereabouts Unknown
America's Last Prisoner of War by Michael Hastings (single page) - In the early-morning hours of June 30th, according to soldiers in the unit, Bowe approached his team leader not long after he got off guard duty and asked his superior a simple question: If I were to leave the base, would it cause problems if I took my sensitive equipment? [more inside]
BOOOF!
The Spudgun Technology Center, for all your spudgun needs. Many of us have probably built a spudgun (aka: potato cannon, spudchucker, potato launcher) before, most likely something along the lines of this basic model. Perhaps some of us have even built pneumatic cannons, or perhaps experimented with different fuels. The Spud Gun Technology center takes spudgun engineering to levels far beyond your wildest adolescent dreams. (Unless you went to this site as an adolescent. It's a true Web Classic.) Read on for a more about these tuber-launching funmakers and TSTC. [more inside]
Not Quite Stalag 13
Sandusky, Ohio is probably best known for its roller coasters (and maybe the wineries in the area), but one of the most interesting places--a tiny little island in the Sandusky Bay called Johnson's Island--is very often overlooked. Once the home of a prison camp for confederate soldiers, daring (and not so daring) escapes, convoluted espionage schemes, poetry, and eating rats. [more inside]
Nazis and Needlework
Tony Casdagli took on a passion for needlework from his father - a POW who learnt to sew as a means of smuggling out messages past German censors.
Minter's Ring
Smithsonian Magazine's new blog Past Imperfect has already told some interesting stories in its first weeks, but none more compelling than that of Lt. Commander Minter Dial's Annapolis class ring.
Tetsuro Ahiko will not go home to Japan.
The last Japanese man remaining in Kazakhstan: A Kafkian tale of the plight of a Japanese POW in the Soviet Union. This is the story of Tetsuro Ahiko, a Japanese national who was living on Sakhalin Island during WWII, and was sent to gulags after the war instead of being repatriated to Japan. Ahiko has turned down multiple offers to be resettled in Japan and has spent 60+ years in Kazakhstan (what was then the Soviet Union.)
Keep Thundering. Never Forget.
Rolling Thunder XXIII - A seemingly endless line of more than 250,000 motorcycles roared across Memorial Bridge into Washington, DC yesterday. The 23rd annual ride, drawing riders from all over the world, wound its way from the Pentagon parking lot near Arlington National Cemetery, around the National Mall, past the Lincoln Memorial to the Vietnam Memorial, culminating in an emotional gathering at the West end of the Reflecting Pool and the Lincoln Memorial. [more inside]
None of them ever came home.
In 2008, The Nation Institute published a lengthy expose (single page) by Sydney H. Schanberg about the role of John McCain in supressing evidence of American prisoners of war who never left Vietnam.
Despite the fact that John McCain based a significant part of his campaign on his military service, the story never attracted any significant media attention. [more inside]
Despite the fact that John McCain based a significant part of his campaign on his military service, the story never attracted any significant media attention. [more inside]
Maybe not getting out of jail for free, but certainly a big help.
The history of Monopoly has been a long one, but the game also helped change history through its participation in providing hidden maps and tools to help British POWs during WWII.
Construction of Radio Equipment in a Japanese POW Camp
Construction of Radio Equipment in a Japanese POW Camp: A tale of human ingenuity.
Rolex watches for Allied POWs
"This watch costs to-day in Switzerland Frs. 250 – but you must not even think of settlement during the war." Rolex's remarkable offer to British P.O.W.s in Nazi camps during WWII. [more inside]
John McCain, Prisoner of War
John McCain, Prisoner of War: A First-Person Account. Originally appeared in the May 14, 1973, issue of U.S.News & World Report. "My six years of hell" is a February 2008 extract from McCain's book Faith of My Fathers.
"So, you're saying you surrendered for a cigarette?"
They Chose China is a documentary about the 22 western POWs who chose to defect to China after the Korean War armistice.
The Notes of a Japanese prisoner in the USSR
Kiuchi Nobuo - a Japanese airman in World War II, was captured and sent to a prison camp in the Ukraine. He tells his story with drawings.
The real Great Escape
One man: one plan, one stove, hundreds of accomplices, 200 tonnes of sand, 4,000 bed boards, 600 feet of rope.
76 men: 50 murdered, 23 recaptured, only three got away.
The real story behind the Great Escape.
76 men: 50 murdered, 23 recaptured, only three got away.
The real story behind the Great Escape.
You must not even think of settlement during the war
A POW takes a Rolex on credit: an amazing story told by the original documents.
POW Camps in the US
I didn't know there were POW camps in the US during World War II, let alone so many of them. The list of camps is extensive, but not on any list I've seen so far is the former Wright Field (currently Wright-Patterson Air Force Base). The base is preserving the walls of the former mess hall where German POWs left a cool set of freaky demonic murals filled with old germanic folklore. The story behind them is a interesting read.
Kiss the Boys Goodbye
"I am Colonel Tom C. McKenney, You must know how to reach Bobby Garwood. I directed an official mission to assassinate him behind enemy lines, because I believed what they told me. Would you tell him that I will crawl on my hands and knees to beg his forgiveness?"
Torture and Truth and The Logic of Torture
Torture and Truth and The Logic of Torture--Mark Danner writes about Article 15-6 Investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade (The Taguba Report) and Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on the Treatment by the Coalition Forces of Prisoners of War and Other Protected Persons by the Geneva Conventions in Iraq During Arrest, Internment and Interrogation in the former and concludes thusly in the latter:
Behind the exotic brutality so painstakingly recorded in Abu Ghraib, and the multiple tangled plotlines that will be teased out in the coming weeks and months about responsibility, knowledge, and culpability, lies a simple truth, well known but not yet publicly admitted in Washington: that since the attacks of September 11, 2001, officials of the United States, at various locations around the world, from Bagram in Afghanistan to Guantanamo in Cuba to Abu Ghraib in Iraq, have been torturing prisoners. (More Within)
Behind the exotic brutality so painstakingly recorded in Abu Ghraib, and the multiple tangled plotlines that will be teased out in the coming weeks and months about responsibility, knowledge, and culpability, lies a simple truth, well known but not yet publicly admitted in Washington: that since the attacks of September 11, 2001, officials of the United States, at various locations around the world, from Bagram in Afghanistan to Guantanamo in Cuba to Abu Ghraib in Iraq, have been torturing prisoners. (More Within)
Ollie ollie oxen free!
The last World War Two Japanese soldier surrendered in the Philippines in 1980, ending a stream of holdouts. This is their story.
The Geneva Conventions in full
Since what is and is not a violation of the Geneva Conventions is a subject of some discussion as a result of today's news, this collection of the complete texts of the Geneva Conventions (as well as other treaties) should be a useful reference. Of particular relevance is the Third Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War.
POW/MIA's - Another Viet Nam War Fantasy
MIA Facts Site
Prisoners of Hope: Exploiting the POW-MIA Myth in America.
Let's Sell The Bones : The Marketing of America's Missing In Action (More Inside)
Prisoners of Hope: Exploiting the POW-MIA Myth in America.
Let's Sell The Bones : The Marketing of America's Missing In Action (More Inside)
US demands information on long forgotten downed pilot
US demands information on long forgotten downed pilot while insisting they not release the names or allow legal counsel to "enemy combatants" held within the US?
fate of detainees hangs on U.S. wording
fate of detainees hangs on U.S. wording Articoe discusses why the U.S. refuses to call prisoners sent to Cuba POWs instead of detainees...what a difference a word makes.
Kuwaitis Still Missing 11 Years After Invasion
Kuwaitis Still Missing 11 Years After Invasion "They go on about the suffering of the Iraqi people under sanctions and say we are doing this just to keep the embargo in place."
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