The Unreasonable Man

…my “a teaching post a day” photography blog?

If not, it is here:

http://blog.michaelwillems.ca

Just drove by this. Waiting for the coffin bringing home another 23-year old dead soldier, killed by stupid, intolerant, medieval people who are kept stupid and medieval by their belief in an imaginary space god. Another kid who will never have a family.

And why do we tolerate this? Believing in space gods is wacko but OK. But killing in the imaginary deity’s name is not. Blasphemy should be made mandatory.

I mean, I don’t get it. Criticizing people who believe in “Homeopathy” or “Magnetic healing” (or magnetic bracelets) is OK, but criticizing those who believe in their right to tell me what to do because of their imaginary space gods is not?

Born here: Loeffstraat 58, Sciedeam, the Netherlands

Overste den Oudenstraat 27, Schoonhoven, the Netherlands

Kerkweg 1, Berkenwoude, the Netherlands

High Cedars, Firfields, Weybridge, Surrey KT13, UK

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Marlborough, Golf Links Rd, Buckland Monachorum, Yelverton, Devon PL20, UK

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Many more to come. Wow, there must be a word for this.

…at the religious idiots who carried out the 9/11 attacks, when you look at the terrible images. As usual, The Big Image has excellent -big- images.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/09/remembering_september_11th.html

You all know I think religion is the greatest evil in the world. I’ll stand by that. Name me a bigger one, that makes people suspend all feeling and kill-kill-kill, and “know” that they are right and I am wrong. Becasue of some imaginary 5000-year old space God.

Nationalism is number two evil.

Both these are used by cynical leaders, of course, for their own purposes. And it’s easy: invoke God or “your country” and people will willingly go kill other people at your command. Gross.

My hit of the day - I love discovering new stuff. Old, no doubt, but new for me. “Zion land” by Ras Michael and the sons of  Negus. Haunting. Beautiful. Isn’t life great.

Install Frostwire - download - ten minutes.

Or You tube it here [link].

Street hooker in Madrid: link (while it lasts)

Google street view is amazing.

61% of Americans will not “admit” to “believing in” evolution: Gallup poll

Perhaps that’s why a Darwin film cannot yet find a US distributor: link.

Laughably primitive.

I realised yesterday that with my father and his sisters and their spouses and, of course, their parents, all having died, no-one would ever remember the history of their time in the Dutch East Indies in the 1940s, in Japanese concentration camps. And that is a very sad thought. All that history gone.

But amazingly, I retrieved some of it. Some of it is online and I now know:

• In early 1942, my grandfather, who was a school principal in Batavia (now Jakarta), was transported out of Java to Burma to work on the infamous railroad. I remember being told as a child that he found a red cross armband and put that on to get away.
• As of some time between August and December 1942, my grandmother and the three children, my father Eddy Wilelms and his two sisters, Marjan and Chris, were interned in Tjideng camp, Java. They were in the streets named Ampasiet A-E.
• Camp commanders were Kondo (until 01.04.44), Sonei (01.04.44 - 23.06.45), and Sakai (from 23.06.45). Commander captain Kenichi Sonei, who was a sadist especially at full moon, was executed by the Dutch in 1946. Another resource: http://members.iinet.net.au/~vanderkp/tjideng.html (”Hell on earth”).
• In April 1944, my grandmother and her three children were still in Tjideng (http://www.japanseburgerkampen.nl/Tjideng%20Register%20april%201944%20alf.htm (see her name Willems-Van den Berg, and I had to check her passport for her initials to be sure). “Willems, G.B.H. - ages 43, 13, 11, 9 - camp number 3853″
• My father was transported from Tjideng camp to Grogol camp most likely on 29.08.44, with 264 other boys and old men. He was then 14. (Reference: http://www.japanseburgerkampen.nl/Grogol.htm). Grogol’s camp commanders were Japanese (Miyakawa, Ogata, Shijo, Tanaka, Matsuyama) and Korean (Senda, Ohara, Nakahara).
• In August 1945, my grandmother was still in Tjideng with the girls. (http://www.japanseburgerkampen.nl/Tjideng%20Register%20aug%201945%20alf.htm) - now instead of four people there are three (my father having been transported earlier to Grogol).
• And now, after the war, the British kept the prisoners in the camps, citing “Security”. My father escaped (the irony, having to escape from the British) and walked from his camp to Tjideng on his own (he was 15).

I am so glad this terrible history will be preserved for a while longer.

It is a shame there are so few pictures. Photography is essential to make all this ‘real’. That is one reason I am such a fan of photojournalism.

Postscript, 2010:

Some pictures on http://deoorlog.nps.nl/ if you search for “Tjideng”.

Way too much… for cell phone service.

And the industry likes that. They make it very difficult to identify low-cost options. Ever tried to identify the lowest-cost plan? Impossible.

So Industry Canada created a calculator to help people choose.

So the industry did not like that.

So they complained to the minister.

So the minister killed the calculator.

Clear? Here’s the story: http://thestar.com/article/688547

My revised web sites are up.

Me the photographer:

http://www.michaelwillems.ca

The training business:

http://www.cameratraining.ca

The photography blog:

http://blog.michaelwillems.ca

Enjoy,

Michael