Mars Attacks has a lesson for us? Maybe...

Just watching "Mars Attacks" again, not a great film but it's Saturday night and I felt like watching a Hollywood parody with a message. Two bits really hit home, when the Martians first land their leader says "We come in peace" and then he and his entourage kill the Army general and the bystanders. Then when the Martians apologise the President and his "experts" are relieved and invite him to address Congress but the Martian ambassador kills the Assembled politicians and others. As one of the IMDB reviews puts it most succinctly, in part "Anybody who hated this movie missed the point. This is a fun little satire on the American culture of assimilation, the great cultural melting pot. It dares to ask the question: What if another group of people doesn't want to be adopted into the American consumerist culture?"

Just because people say they come in peace and seem reasonable it does not mean they are telling the truth. Adolph Hitler signed the Munich Agreement, "the settlement gave Germany the Sudetenland starting October 10, and de facto control over the rest of Czechoslovakia as long as Hitler promised to go no further" The British Prime Minister "received an ecstatic reception upon his return to Britain...he made the now famous "Peace for our time" speech and waved the agreement to a delighted crowd." "On 15 March 1939...Nazi armies entered Prague and proceeded to occupy the remainder of Bohemia and Moravia, which was transformed into a protectorate of the Reich. The eastern half of the country, Slovakia, became a separate pro-Nazi state. Prime Minister Chamberlain felt betrayed by the Nazi seizure of Czechoslovakia, realising his policy of appeasement towards Hitler had failed, and immediately began to mobilize the British Empire's armed forces on a war footing. France did the same. Although no immediate action followed, Hitler's move on Poland in September started World War II in Europe."

Do bear this in mind when people say they mean us no harm. Playing Slim Whitman music and Tom Jones may not be enough to save us in the future.