Don't ask me why, but as a kid i've always been a World War-II reader. It's just fascinating to see a war fought across so many continents, a war with so many casualties and yet today the world doesn't know any better.
Was on Banksys website and read the following excerpt from the Imperial War museum there...very very depressing...
An extract from the diary of Lieutenant Colonel Mervin Willett Gonin DSO who was among the first British soldiers to liberate Bergen-Belsen in 1945.
Camp
I can give no adequate description of the Horror Camp in which my men and myself were to spend the next month of our lives. It was just a barren wilderness, as bare as a chicken run. Corpses lay everywhere, some in huge piles, sometimes they lay singly or in pairs where they had fallen. It took a little time to get used to seeing men women and childen collapse as you walked by them and to restrain oneself from going to their assistance. One had to get used early to the idea that the individual just did not count. One knew that five hundred a day were dying and that five hundred a day were going on dying for weeks before anything we could do would have the slightest effect. It was, however, not easy to watch a child choking to death from diptheria when you knew a tracheotomy and nursing would save it, one saw women drowning in their own vomit because they were too weak to turn over, and men eating worms as they clutched a half loaf of bread purely because they had to eat worms to live and now could scarcely tell the difference. Piles of corpses, naked and obscene, with a woman too weak to stand proping herself against them as she cooked the food we had given her over an open fire; men and women crouching down just anywhere in the open relieving themselves of the dysentary which was scouring their bowels, a woman standing stark naked washing herself with some issue soap in water from a tank in which the remains of a child floated. It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don't know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the post mortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tatooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity
Got this email...the usual Nigerian scams now it seems have moved their bases to singapore..YAWN...or as Napolean Dynamite would say "IDIOT!!!"
MR.MARK D. ANDERSON AFC MERCHANT BANK # 17-01,BANGKOK BANK BUILDING, SINGAPORE 069546. Email:admark00@yahoo.com.sg Dear Sir, Compliments of the day! I got your contact on my private search for a reliable and trusted person to handle a transaction of this nature. I know that the contents of this mail might sound so strange, but I want to assure you that every word of it is true.I am Mr.Mark D.Anderson, credit officer of the AFC Merchant Bank.I have a concealed business suggestion for you.Before the plane crash of macedonian's president and his cabinet members on February 26, 2004 , our client Mile Krstevsk from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,macedonia and also business man made a numbered fixed deposit for 18 calendar months, with a value of Nine Million,Six Hundred Thousand United State Dollars only in my branch.
You can visit this website: http://antiwar.com/deliso/?articleid=2043
After his death it was also discovered that Mile Krstevsk did not declare any next of kin in his official papers including the paper work of his bank deposit. And he also confided in me the last time he was at my office that no one except me knew of his deposit in my bank.So, Nine Million,Six Hundred Thousand United State Dollars is still lying in my bank and no one will ever come forward to claim it.
What bothers me most is that according to the to the laws of my country at the expiration two years the funds will revert to the ownership of the Singapore Government if nobody applies to claim the funds.Against this backdrop, my suggestion to you is that I will like you as a foreigner to stand as the next of kin to Mile Krstevsk so that you will be able to receive his funds.
WHAT IS TO BE DONE: I want you to know that I have had everything planned out so that we shall come out successful.I have contacted an attorney that will prepare the necessary document that will back you up as the next of kin to Mile Krstevsk,all that is required from you at this stage is for you to provide me with your Full Names and Address so that the attorney can commence his job.After you have been made the next of kin,the attorney will also file in for claims on your behalf and secure the necessary approval and letter of probate in your favor for the move of the funds to an account that will be provided by you.There is no risk involved at all in the matter as we are going to adopt a legalized method and the attorney will prepare all the necessary documents.
Please endeavor to observe utmost discretion in all matters concerning this issue.Once the funds have been transferred to your nominated bank account we shall share in the ratio of 70% for me, 25% for you and 5% for any expenses incurred during the course of this operation.Should you be interested please send me your private phone and fax numbers for easy communication, you can write me via my private box thus(admark00@yahoo.com.sg) and i will provide you with more details of this operation.
Your earliest response to this letter will be appreciated. Kind Regards, Mr.Mark D.Anderson.
Been volunteering with my friends at The Enterprise Center that supports minority businesses and is located in West Philly. Had a harrowing drive from my client site in NJ down to Philly last evening and an equally challenging task of resolving an Exchange server problem. Thanks to Mike & Hector (you know who you are), its all done now. Came back to the apartment to watch the MNF game and fell asleep before the 2nd quarter even started...gonna check the scores in a bit
Uhm its been a rainy week and very boring outside. I did wish my wife Shubo Bijoya and her family too . was kinda happy that I did rememebr. Moments like this make me realize that I sometimes get caught up in life and need to do way way more for people that I love and care for from the bottom of my heart.
For some reason my dads been on my mind today. I saw the movie "Crash" and it made me think of human interactions. The way my father made me feel in life, someone capable, someone who was my rock of gibraltar. Of course my wife has taken that role as a companion, i miss my dad boatloads though. Right now, I'm riding thru this journey hoping to see him again.
