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johnanthony55
Reviews
Hunters of the South Seas (2015)
E1 has promise, but the documentarian is lost
Here's the deal. This guy, who's obviously bright, goes to this Indonesian village where they have a unique way of feeding their village with sperm whales along with whatever else they can harpoon. The harpooners are tough, old, sinewy men, because all their kids have gone off to Indonesian colleges. Can you blame them? 50 or 60 percent of salaried jobs are with the government (I made that up but I bet it's close to true). So they kill some sperm whale (and these guys use a Brad Pitt/Achilles approach to implanting the harpoon, and the narrator is happy the village of 2,000 will be fed for a while. Then, teary-eyed, he learns they kill another 15 or 16 manta rays for the cash they bring in (particularly from parts of the Ray used in (so effective) Chinese Traditional Medicine. So he cries crocodile tears. He never mentions once that the traditional boats they use to hunt with are powered by 200 HP outboards, and their homes are filled with bottled water, and their homes are connected with concrete paths. All this takes a cash crop, and if Xi Jinping keeps prompting the virtue of Chinese Traditional Medicine, well I guess these people will keep supplying it in exchange for cash to buy gas or an engine overhaul, or a bunch of bottled water (did I mention it doesn't rain much there?)
Not sure what the point was other than to see the narrator weep at his internal conflict. I think he should stay there about 15 more years and see how conflicted he is after a few lean years. Will he be crying for the rays, or crying for himself?
The Cold Blue (2018)
Correcting the comments above
The US Air Corps did not carpet bomb German cities in WWII. The US flew dangerous daylight missions from Briton, as mentioned at the beginning of the show. However the show does not mention why. We, the US, flew bombers against industrial targets. These raids were as precise as possible, therefore the far more dangerous daylight raids. The Brits flew night raids against the population. Why? Likely as vengeance for the the Battle of Britain. The Germans flying against London, the Brits flying against German cities, neither succeeded in breaking the will of the citizens and likely hardened their commitment. So you are right in a sense, that burning a country to the ground doesn't end a war and should be considered inappropriate for war; look no further than our firebombing of targets in Japan. More Japanese civilians were killed in the bombing campaign against Japan than the two atom bombs that brought the war to an end.
So get your facts straight. Condemn the Pacific campaign, unless you feel the same racism that allowed us to burn the Japanese night after night. But don't spew nonsense about the men who flew daylight raids against German industry so that they could be as precise as possible given the technology of the era.