I noticed that several of the films vying for awards in Europe right now are about terrorism, detention and secret police:

But The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen ) managed to come on strong, winning the top prize and capturing two others: best actor for Ulrich Muehe and best screenwriter for director Florian Henckle von Donnersmark.

“It means a lot to me to get this award here, since my father was born in this country,” said von Donnersmarck.

The Lives of Others, set in 1984, explores the system of control imposed by the East German secret police, the Stasi, and the lives it destroyed. It follows a policeman who becomes immersed in the lives of a playwright and his girlfriend whom he is spying on.

Other films in contention included the British movie Road to Guantanamo directed by Michael Winterbottom and The Wind That Shakes the Barley, a film about the IRA directed by Ken Loach.

But will they play in the US?

Many countries have women in their armed forces, including the US, but this AP story tries to make the point that they are at significant risk even if they are not in front-line ground-combat positions:

Lynch’s job — Army supply clerk in a maintenance company — illustrates one of the realities of the war: No place is safe. As the insurgency took hold, that grew even more apparent. Front lines don’t exist. Combat troops still face the heaviest losses and while women are mostly in support roles, a mortar or bomb can strike anywhere from a mess hall to a supply convoy.

“My dad has friends who constantly tell him, ‘Oh, your daughter’s fine in Iraq. She’s not in harm’s way or she’s not involved in combat,'” says Capt. Mary Caruso, who served two tours in Iraq, one as a platoon leader in the 194th Military Police Company.

“I don’t think the general public really sees what females are doing over there,” she says. “We don’t have a linear battlefield anymore. The enemy’s everywhere.”

I think that is true to a degree, but find it most interesting how a shift in perception of equal risk is being used to argue for equal rights for women. That is to say even if they do not serve in combat roles to avoid death or capture, they may just as easily face death or capture. So the reason for the ban requires re-evaluation.

In terms of physical differences, another shift in combat seems to be from the back-breaking physical tasks of traditional American ground forces (and their huge inefficiencies) to the light-and-nimble or technology-assisted guerrila tactics. In that sense, women again may find themselves well-suited for the newly emerging combat positions, just as they have served in many successful guerrila and rebel armies such as in the Middle-East, Horn of Africa and south-eastern Asia.

Australia has already announced they will allow women to serve in ground combat units in Iraq, but they bring up another set of reasons:

[Veterans’ Affairs Minister De-Anne Kelly said] “This gives women a better career path, it improves our capability, and makes defence and army a much more attractive career option, particularly for women.”

In other words:

[defence spokesman] Mr McClelland said the real reason the government supported the army’s submission to allow women to serve in combat support units was because the Australian Defence Force (ADF) had failed to reach its target number of recruits for the past six years.

“Under this government’s watch a serious economic problem has become a serious national security problem,” he said.

The BBC has posted a set of survey responses that show different opinions on migration and integration:

The results show the desire of young people to be highly mobile, with very little difference between developed and developing countries.

Borders will have an increasingly tough time exsiting if the world’s youth desire to move freely. In addition, the survey had some questions about the war for borders. Er, sorry, I mean the war on terror:

And an overwhelming majority, 71%, said that the so-called US war on terror was not making the world a safer place. Just 14% of respondents disagreed.

Ninety-eight percent of Baghdadi respondents said the war on terror was not making the world a safer place.

This negative attitude was echoed in Rio de Janeiro where 92% felt the same.

Perhaps the most telling information is that apparently only people in London refused to answer the question “Would you emigrate to another country to secure a better future?”.

Speaking of securing a better future, the BBC also posted a first-person account of people who try to emigrate for a better life:

“So,” I asked. “Is Europe really that attractive that it’s worth risking your life for?”

“Not at all,” Ndiro shot back. “Why would a man want to leave what he knows for something he doesn’t?

“Why would he want to abandon his family, his wife, or his children, and possibly leave them to starve?

“Why would he turn his back on the land where his blood is buried?”

Then Ndiro answered his own questions.

“The greatest danger a man can face,” he said, “is to wake up to find his children are hungry and he has no food to offer them.

“Measured against that, the hazards of a long sea voyage to Europe are nothing.”

The amazing thing about this first-person reporting style is that it uncovers more about the causes of emigration and dispenses with the common arguments about how to deal with the symptoms. Many economists and historians discuss the effect of economic catastrophe on emigration (the Scottish emigration to America and Australia after the 1830s depression being a good example), so it is nice to see this reporter acknowledge that a change in fishing practices could have more impact on emigration than any border law or control technology:

But now, the fisheries have collapsed.

And instead of struggling and failing to make a living at sea, the fishermen say they are much better off by loading their boats with paying passengers, for a one-way trip for Europe.

And here is the irony.

Waving his hand over the horizon, Pape blamed Europeans for the crisis.

“The only thing that has changed in recent years,” he said, “is the arrival of big foreign trawlers just off shore, that sweep up far more from the sea than the Senegalese fleet has ever done.

“If Europeans take our fish they can take our people too.”

What Pape and Ndiro and others made clear is that higher walls and tougher border controls might look good to voters inside Europe, but they are just irritants to migrants who are prepared to risk their lives, and that any attempt to stem migration will ultimately fail without tackling the reasons that people leave their homes in the first place.

“After all,” said Pape, “how do you stop those whose slogan is Barca ou Barsakh [Barcelona or death]?”

That’s a fresh perspective. Imagine if the money earmarked by the Bush administration to move a bunch of dirt around was spent on economic re-development and environmental protection programs instead of destroying the environment.

In other words, would you rather try to find a cure for a cold or take something for the symptoms that not only is ineffective but does permanent damage to your health?

Serge Dedina, executive director of Wildcoast, a San Diego based coastal conservation group, said the fencing would do nothing to deter illegal immigration and would only worsen the fragile Tijuana Estuary.

“This project is just basically pork barrel and national security hysteria at its worst,” Dedina said.