RIFLE RANGE BOY

Stop, Look, Think! By Farouk Gulsara Here I am, waiting in my car, clutching my steering wheel. It has been a good five minutes, and I am at a standstill. There are no vehicles in front of me. It is a T-junction with traffic lights. There is no traffic on either road, but I have no choice. I have to wait. https://borderlessjournal.com/2024/07/15/stop-look-think/ This work is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License . google.com, pub-8936739298367050, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0

© Manuel Strehl What is in a font, you may think. The choice of a font could be a matter of personal picking. Some may be pertinent in a formal setting (e.g. Times Roman ); other in a jovial environment (e.g. Comic Sans in a birthday party).  Ever since printing became a reality in Europe in the 15th century, blackletter typeface like Fraktur and Antiqua were the mainstay chirography. Most publications were in Latin. Over time as people become more educated, local languages developed and the seed of nationalism was planted. Reformation works of Martin Luther and collection of fairy tales of Brothers Grimm created a need for the schism between Latin and German works. Antiqua was the default script for Latin and Fraktur for German.   All through till 20th Century, Fractur typesetting continued in Germany and many Scandinavian countries. Most of the Europeans had theirs set in Antiqua. The Fraktur-Antiqua difference   persisted till 1941 when the N...

Greatest Events in WW2 (Netflix, 2019) We all know almost everything about WW2 and how humanity showed its ugly face in annihilating each other. What makes this offering unique is that, beyond the colourisation of old films, it gives a somewhat good account of why both sides acted the way both the feuding parties did what they did.  It narrates the sequence of events of the Second World War in Europe, on the Western and Eastern Fronts as well as the Pacific Wars. It tries to shed light, or at least give a viewpoint to the many controversies of the day and the many questionable decisions made by the world powers of the day. In wars, they say, nobody wins. There is no doubt, however, that the act of war promotes technological advances and stimulates the economy while it lasts. The aftermath of war also is an advantage to the victors as they dictate terms of conquest and take the lion's share of re-development of the losers territories. In essence, WW2 is the cont...

Perception of Iran Ch 8. Iran and Aryan Myth David Motadel Enemies of my enemies are friends! Credit: historyisfascinating.com Just before the world went to war for the second time, there was a concerted effort by the ruling power to unite people along the lines of race and history. Hitler and his henchmen were going all out to describe a pure superior Aryan race. They were quick to vilify Jews as the vermin of society with the help of propaganda films. Pretty soon, the nation was hoodwinked to pursue what became a national agenda, anti-Semitism and eventually Holocaust. I was a little annoyed at the sight of a down-and-out politician who, without batting an eyelid ferociously claimed to the world that he is an unapologetic racist and is proud of it, to the thunderous applause of his supporters. What are they thinking or are they thinking at all? Do they not know history? It is intriguing how the Aryan race and its origin had been manipulated by leaders to carry out thei...

The Man in the High Castle (Seasons 1 and 2) They say that there is no entity as time. It is just a construct made by Man. Life works just fine when the purpose of your living is laid bare for you to follow, and Nature does not put obstacles in your path. It may work just fine if you live in a utopia, a paradise, a land of make-believe! In reality, Nature had to be tamed. The element of predictability needs to be made clear to avert eventualities. This is where time comes in handy, to put a perspective on the cyclical nature of things. Everything in Nature has a mathematic equation to put them in place and time is a denominator. We have heard of Manzanar, the concentration camp built to place American-Japanese after Pearl Harbour. And the American-German Bund movement which existed before WW2 to promote Nazi in a favourable light. That was it! After World War 2 ended, they were passé. Imagine an alternative universe where the Germans and the Japanese won World War 2! Well, t...

Triumph of Will ( Triumph des Willens, German; 1935) The Godfather of propaganda must have realised early in his career that visual representation of a lie, often repeated will eventually be the accepted truth. This, coming from a person who almost made it to the Academy of Fine Arts of Vienna, must be true. Thanks to a party member, a certain Elisabeth Nietzsche, he gained access to the mind of one the greatest 20th-century thinker, Frederich Nietzsche, her brother. His unpublished book, 'Will of Power', which Nietzsche thought was too controversial to man, was made available to him. Many of his ideas are starkly portrayed here in this propaganda film.   Like Zarathustra, in Nietzsche's book,  Hitler appears from the clouds and disembarks the plane to present his good news to the people. If Zarathustra brought in the news from the mountains, that God is dead, this time, it is at the Nuremberg, and it is the Social Democrat party assembly. He ...

Judgement at Nuremberg (1961) As our country comes to a crossroad, and many uncertainties have to be thrashed out so that history would not judge us in a bad light, it is always good to look back at history. Even though inevitable, we do not to want history to repeat itself. Many of the dialogues in this film cut through incisively like a knife. The topics argued here about race and masterly inactivity by the people in authority are relevant today as it were 80 years ago. It is worth a watch, albeit its 3 hour speech filled presentation. This film narrates the military trial in Nuremberg of 4 civilians who served in Nazi Germany. The accused are Emil Hahn (prosecutor), Frederich Hoffstetter, Warren Lemmpe and Ernst Janning (a reputable authority in law and Minister of Law, acted brilliantly by Burt Lancaster.) The trial is presided by a tribunal panel of 3 where the head is Judge Harewood (Spencer Tracy). He is actually given the job as nobody else wanted it and was just a small t...

The Eichmann trial had often been critiqued for being a witch hunt, looking for a scapegoat rather than trying to get to the root of the problem. A problem far more significant than Adolf Eichmann transporting prisoners to Auschwitz, more than just sending the lambs to the slaughter! Hannah Arendt, writing for the magazine New Yorker, herself a Jewess who suffered imprisonment by Nazi, was expecting to see a gruesome-looking mean dude at the trials. She was quite surprised at the simple-looking civil servant who was more interested in completing his given task at the dock. He was oblivious to the sequelae of his actions. Arendt coined the term 'banality of evil' and proposed that evil done unknowingly by an unthinking person is the worst kind. That got me thinking... Again and again, history has shown people choosing a leader and following his directions blindly. The Germans elected a monster through the legal means who rocked the whole world to realise his megalomaniac dre...

Hitler: The last 10 days (1973) The random distribution of proteins adenine, thymine, guanine, cytosine and uracil makes sure that in any organization, be it animal or human kingdom, 1% of the population will always conquer over the remaining 99% of the remaining subservient. There can only be 1 alpha male in the lion colony and 1% will control the economy of the world no matter how fair an economic system man proposes. This status quo is mandatory to maintain peace and order in any group. If everyone is learned, influential and possess excellent leading qualities, there is bound to be chaos, hence, nature has created this arrangement. Hence, in keeping with this background, history has shown again and again of leaders would bring a race to glory and then also to its downfall due to their greed. Hitler is such an example. It is amazing how the 99% follow blindly their leader and agree for horrendous terror against fellow kind which in retrospect would like to forget. Forgive thei...