RIFLE RANGE BOY

Hunt for Red October (1990) Many keyboard warriors are so convinced by what they see online. They fail to understand why others are so dumb (in their eyes, of course). To them, truth our there is as clear as day. And everyone else just ought to follow, no questions asked. What these modern warriors or influencers, as they are referred to these days, need to know is that sometimes we become too blinded with our beliefs that we fail to practice mindfulness. They should wear another hat and maybe a different colour lens, other than rose, to get a different perspective on things. A revolution cannot be started by an army of one. It begins with the revolution of the collective minds and hearts of the people. This change is difficult, more so in modern times, as we are so divided by ideologies, cultures, faiths and identity. This film is based on Tom Clancy's 1984 novel which in turn was loosely based on Soviet Union's 1975 attempted mutiny aboard a warship. In the 1975 revol...

Chernobyl (2019) Netflix miniseries I could not help it but compare the disaster at Chernobyl to the fall of the Malaysian ruling party of 61 years in the last general elections.  Everything was going wrong in 1986, Russia. In 1917, when the peasants were starving, and the Romanov family was perched in their castles oblivious to the people's sufferings, it seemed like the best thing to do. Singlehandedly, the people defended their Motherland from external aggressors. The propaganda news suggested that they had the best leader in the world. In the field of science and technology, they were beyond compare. Proof of their achievements was evident in the area of space travels. Communism took care of everybody, they were told. But happy hours do not last forever. Communism never lived to its promise. Somehow, from the word go, the lure of human desires always superseded the need to do the just thing. Under the cloak of grandiosity, lay beneath a corrupt system which was hellb...

The Mitrokhin Archive II (2005) It all sounds like a plot of an espionage paperback set in the Cold War era. The only thing that makes it interesting is that it is said to have happened in the real world - that a KGB employee, disillusioned with the direction that Communist Russia was taking, should decide to painstakingly make short notes, via his handwriting, of secret documents as the KGB headquarters was relocated and the archives, in the pre-internet days, were transferred. Vasili Mitrokhin, the low-level official, after the collapse of Soviet Union, in 1992, decided to take his 10 years worth of handwritten documents and to defect to the West. He had apparently shown up at the American Embassy in Latvia with his papers but was turned down. At the British Embassy, however, he was cordially offered a cup of tea and the rest, as they say, is history.     The papers were a damning account of the clandestine activities of Soviet Russia in many countries of the world....