When there is no governance!

Bure Baruta @ Cabaret Balkan (Буре барута @ Powder Keg, Serbian; 1998)
Director: Goran Paskaljević

I learned about this director when I watched 2016 'Dev Bhumi, Land of the Gods'. This film is another of his many highly acclaimed directed movies.

Made in the heady times of the 1990s when the Balkan country, Yugoslavia, was on the cusp of disintegrating, and every ethnic group was embroiled in conserving their dominance. Slobodan Milosevic's Army was terrorising, and the economy was in the pits.

This era even brought a new English word - 'Balkanisation'. Like Yugoslavia, which was synthetically united by the winning political powers of the Second World War and their own as six sovereign nations, Balkanisation is the term given when a few provinces want to gain autonomy from a country.

The film's first dialogue reminded me of a recent conversation at a dinner table with a friend. "This is a goddamned lousy country; why would anyone want to come back?" That was reminiscent of what someone uttered when the father of a young lawyer who excelled in his studies at a prestigious university overseas announced his intentions to return home to serve the country. *

Taman Sri Muda, Shah Alam

The movie is a composite of many loosely interlinked stories that show what happens when the rule of law collapses. People are only courteous to each other when they going is good. When the element of security is threatened, or when economic opportunities dwindle, our society suppressed animalistic behaviours surface. Gone are chivalry, respecting the weaker community members, respect for private property, concern for human dignity, regard for human life and sanctity of human bodies.

Human beings are considered civilised when they transfer their security duties to a third party, i.e., governing bodies and not getting their hands dirty. As long as these governments continue their control and legitimacy, law and order are maintained. When governance fails, and Man has to resort to his primordial ways of dispensing justice, the outcome is ugly. The dormant reptilian brain awakens. 

* What started off as an Asian tiger with lots of hopes for the future, with the sound administrative background left by their colonial master, all the new nation of Malaysia had to do was to maintain its brain and head for more unexplored frontiers with the sky as their limit. But instead, the elected leaders opted for a self-defeating myopic path sacrificing meritocracy for supremacy of a certain race and religion. People say to coup de grace came when the elected government of GE14 was sabotaged by their own leaders in the name of race and religion again.

** Just after writing this post came the story of residents looting a convenience store after the massive floods in Shah Alam. Rather than emphasising the lack of rescue missions provided by the powers that be, the police seem to be more concerned that a crime has happened. They had forgotten that people were stranded on the roofs for more than 48 hours!

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Yada yada, blah blah!

 Joker (ஜோகார், Tamil; 2016)

Before Joaquin Phoenix came out in the 2019 DC comic film as the legendary Joker, there was already an award-winning Tamil movie with the same name. Unlike the DC version, this one is a low-budget production. And like the former, both are political and social satires of the system that we are living. More often than not, in our societies, we give people the liberty to speak a little bit too much. Some talk just because they want to be heard. Others vocalise just because God gave them a mouth. We tolerate many because we pity them; we know it is unkind to be cruel against the mentally challenged. We let them just blabber, but the problem is that mental illness can be contagious sometimes. 

With the advent of social media, there is no limit to how much stupidity can spread like wildfire and profound wisdom.

Unfortunately, life is not so straight forward. Muddled somewhere inside the pile of insanity is what is supposed to be the truth. Because of all the murmur of uncertainty and the noise of distortion, real facts remain buried in the rubble.

There was a time when only the learned would be allowed to speak, and the rest would listen. One needed a certain amount of intelligence to put forward their opinion. With the democratisation of speech and empowerment to express thoughts, everyone gets the opportunity to get their 2-cents worth of view across. Do we call this giving the oppressed a voice to speak? Is the converse the rule of elitist? Is the former pushing for chaos and the latter a precursor to leftist's wet dream of creating unthinking automatons?

This bizarre movie starts with a man who is living in a debilitated hut. Starting his day answering calls on his cheap mobile phone answering to the name of President of India, rubber-stamping his letter with the Republic's emblem and pushing his weight around his neighbourhood. Slowly we realise that he is delusional. He has a comatose wife at home who became so after a freak accident caused by the government machinery's corruption. He tries to obtain a court order to allow euthanasia on his wife but repeatedly fails. The whole film just shows the vulture of politicians and his sycophant businessmen and hyena henchmen who hawk on Government projects to maximise profit and pay back the minimum to the gullible public.

Without a cerebral matter, imagine even ants can organise such complicated colonies, complete with armed forces, reserves for a rainy day, and even sick bays to care for the infirm. Why do we need politicians to guide us through? Seriously, mankind should have stopped at the oldest profession of all time, not start the second oldest, which is close to the first! 

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Nippon Antisemitism?

The Russian Protocols of Zion in Japan (2009)
Author: Jacob Kovalio

One assumes that Japan, being a homogenous country practising Shintoism and Buddhism, would not have issues with Judaism. Surprisingly, Jewish Peril (Yudayaka) has had its roots in Japan's late 19th and 20th-century history.

Only when the Japanese aristocrats landed their eyes on Commander Perry's navy fleet in 1858 did they awake from their slumber. At first, the Japanese thought that the American ships were the mythical celestial dragon that they had heard so much in their legends. This became their wake-up call as they realised that the world had passed them by. Emperor Meiji opened the floodgates for modernisation. For a start, his army was no longer hostile to damaged American whaling boats. Business flourished. Cultural exchanges took place. Loans from American banks (owned by Jews) started trickling in.

The Japanese noblemen and intellectual's first exposure to the Jews must have been Shylock in Shakespeare's play 'The Merchant of Venice'. He is portrayed as the miserly, greedy and vengeful moneylender who would charge exorbitant interest and stop at nothing to collect his dues.

The Japanese and the Russians had been perennial enemies fighting at their borders for aeons. In 1918, however, the Japanese Imperial Army was sent to support the Russian White Army to fight the Bolshevik Reds. It is said that here, the elusive Protocols of the Elderly of Zions was distributed to the Japanese soldiers. The Protocol is a notorious document that purportedly outlines the Jewish plan of world domination. Some quarters argue that such a book never existed in the first place. At the closest, there was just a figment of imagination from a fictional novel about cemetery, spirits and Satan. It was a ploy by Europeans who had been persecuting Jews since AD 73 when Emperor Titus ransacked Jerusalem and expelled them.


The ember of suspicion and Yudayaka (Jewish Peril) grew stronger as echoes of their ill-intent were fanned by the academia and media after 1919. The Red movement, the Communists, were mostly run by Jews. Karl Marx was a Jew. So was Leo Trotsky. The Jews alleged run their work by proxy, through the work of the banks, the Masons and the Illuminati.

The alleged modus operandi was by breaking family values, increasing individualism, early sexual activity, spiritual rupture of the parental-children bond, non-arranged marriages, replacement of monarchies and domination of media. These social changes were already apparent in Japanese society as the ruling class (emperor and samurais) lost their grip on society and the people became more assertive.

Commodore Matthew C Perry
(not of 'Friends' fame)

Around that time too, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison started distributing pamphlets about the Jew takeover of the world. Their conniving pursuits go back as early as the French Revolution, it seems. We all know about the 1869 gathering in Lviv, which eventually led to the Balfour Declaration in 1929 and the birth of Israel in 1948.

The bashing goes on even in the 21st century in the likes of Tun Dr Mahathir who still preaches about this grand scheme. He gets a mention in this book.

In the Jews' defence, throughout history, they have always been marginalised by the mainstream. It could be because of the peculiar practices or their conviction that they are the Chosen One. In the fringes, for survival, they had to resort to trades that were shunned by the mainstream. They indulged in moneylending, for usury was prohibited by other religions in their vicinity. They prospered in craftsmanship like diamond trade, photography and publishing. Their exile state of existence not only made them resilient. It became a fertile ground for conspiracy theories.

Antisemitism was debated in the 1930s. Some looked at the Jews favourably as they were of 'Asiatic' stock. During the industrialisation era of Japan in the 20th century, bankers, predominantly Jews, were there to finance them. The military, however, clang upon this Yudayaka. They entered an allegiance with Hitler on his anti-Jews stance. In the South-East Asian countries that they overran in WW2, they perpetuated their idea of the Allied forces (through their association with the Jews) a sure proof of world hegemony, to garner support from their subjects.

The Japanese, in wanting to protect their country, society, economy and way of life, immersed themselves studying and debating the contents of the Protocol. In contemporary times, they are doing the same to ward themselves off the 'side effects' of an unabashed open invitation to foreigners who could possibly derail the progress they have made after being flattened out in 1945. 

The debate on the Protocol amongst the members of academia, civil societies and the elite generated keener awareness that hostile, predatory ideologies from abroad were out there to sway the Japanese culture and to derail their national aspirations. 

Thanks to AqSS for input.

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