RIFLE RANGE BOY

Argentina 1985 ( Spanish, 2022) Written and directed:  Santiago Mitre After years of lawlessness in Argentina, after Peron and many ineffective military leaders, the people managed to democratically elect a government in 1983 after the disastrous Falkland Wars. The memory of the extreme torture, planned disappearances, complete lack of dignity and rape in the Dirty War just before peace could not be written off. For the first time after Nüremberg, a court tried military leaders for crimes they carried out as military personnel. The country was split is whether to persecute the perpetrators. The people decided they should not be persecuted amongst their peers, i.e. court marshalled, as the whole machinery was complicit in the crimes. A group of the population benefitted from the army leaders' action; hence, they objected to prosecuting the junta members. Against this background, Prosecutor Julio César Strassera and Luis Moreno Ocampo are chosen for the unenviable task. The trouble i...

Parliament, Unexpected Tan Sri Ariff Yusof This book is more like a report card on the activities of the Speaker who was appointed to the helm when the new Pakatan Harapan coalition government was elected. The government was short-lived with its own appointment premier sabotaging his own partners in what came to be known as the Sheraton move. Mahathir Mohammad was never happy with the unsettlingly high participation of opposition members in the new government. A bigoted racist by mindset, from the get-go, he had been devising a way to get his former party UMNO back to power without Najib and his band of thieves. Maybe by design or double-crossing, Mahathir got ousted instead. What remains now is a sleuth of incompetent clowns who dance around in their self aggrandising Emperor's New Clothes. Hyenas and jackals have all come out to play in a system that borders on lawlessness day by day. He gives a brief account of his childhood days, his alma mater, his family, and his career and d...

I always wondered what is it that maintains order in our lives. What ensures total silence in the cinema when the movie is starting? What is it that assures that the viewers in an art gallery do not go around touching their exhibits with their dirty stubby fingers? What forces a patient to pay at a clinic after a consultation and the customer settle his bill after enjoying (or hating) his meal? They can jolly well just scoot off, now that their mission is accomplished.  Well, it can happen with the occasional client who refuses to pay, but that is not the norm. Perhaps he is dissatisfied with the service or just because he can. Rather than creating a scene and draw unwanted publicity, the service provider would probably write it off as miscellaneous loss of doing business. To the rest, they know the long arm of the law would get them. They know that as the majority support orderly running of life transactions, they would not garner support against a sea of law-abiding supporters no...

  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 al...

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: 2020 Cultural Learnings of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Yes, that is the final name to Borat's 2006 follow-up mockumentary. The title went through many name changes; the previous ones were equally ridiculous and ridiculously long. It also has the dubious reputation of incurring the wrath of many Americans (and Kazhaks) and attracting many legal suits. The Kazaks were just as pissed for depicting them as a bunch of village fools ruled by a despotic regime. If one is looking for a Wodehousian type of humour in this offering, look elsewhere. It is a lowbrow comedy through and through with toilet humour, genitals, menstruation and all. It was strategically released before the US Presidential elections and contains some not so savoury depiction of Trump's lawyer and former Mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, in a hotel room kerfuffle with a young journalist. It is all a prank, and the film is full of it. Borat holds a mirror to th...

Panel discussion in Georgetown Literary Festival 2018 on Indian Democracy. From the fringe, from the outside, from one who views the drama as a third person, the political scene in India is quite confusing. It all depends on where one consumes the information. If you were to follow Twitter feeds, the dedicated and erudite 'spin doctors' will make you believe that India is indeed in the midst of a sort of 'Renaissance' that Europe went through in the 15th century. Reels of her successes are flashed upon your very eyes. Discoveries are made on a daily basis of newfound explanations on old Indian (Hindu) wisdom. It is as though they are not only catching the bus of the Industrial Revolution but indeed overtaking it. They would like us to believe that they are just re-claiming their standings in the old world as it was four centuries ago when a quarter of the world's wealth was under their thumbs. They are in a quest to re-dust of their old scriptures which they ...

Probably the most iconic picture of the times.  The hands that were to protect the people  are used to prevent the rights of the  member  of the public to exercise  his  democratic rights.  Dr Streram  Sinnasamy  being prevented from  submitting his  nomination papers for failing to  display  the commission's identity tag (which  was  not given to him in the first place).  This image and many like this must  have  evoked emotions so  compelling to  move 61  years of a single rule party.   Credit: Free Malaysia A commonly uttered colloquial Tamil proverb goes, "you cannot hide a whole wax gourd under your serving of rice!" Once you start eating your rice, your deliciously spiced gourd will undoubtedly reveal itself. A lie cannot be hidden from public knowledge forever. Eventually, the truth will tell itself, sooner or later. When the whole world was h...

Somehow we got a good deal. The maker was in a good mood he made us, our country. The lush of greenery, the evergreen trees, the stable tectonic plates, the absence of major catastrophes, the strategic location was our selling point. Our quaint lazy ambience with rich natural resources must have earned our nickname comparing it to a golden land. Ah, people were always lousy... But there was a world, once. This same trait must have been the pulling factor that drew unsavoury visitors who wanted all for themselves. The early settlers, with no malice on their mind, ushered them in with open arms, typical of how they would honour their weary guests as described by most of the holy scriptures that they knew. The conniving guests, with evil exuding through their eyes and souls plot devious mischiefs to create pandemonium just to appear of as peacemaker at the same time. The host started fragmenting. The guests suddenly appeared more composed, more cultured and wiser. With th...

After the demise of Singapore's founding father, LKY, the question of personal liberty and freedom versus the need for Big Bro to oversee things for the nation's greater good made its rounds.  Proponents of human rights and individual freedom would argue that the Government has no business barging into personal lives and tapping into our telephone calls. After gruelling all the wrong decisions in the past and paying dearly, the West could no longer trust their governments. Instead, they would let their elected leaders mess up all people's (Third World) future than their own. The leaders are elected servants, and they are there to serve. On the other end, paternalistic leaders feel that human beings are just brainless blind invertebrates with a herd mentality. They just follow their peers without much thinking or analysing! This was proposed by Sayyid Kutb, the Egyptian school inspector who earned a scholarship to the USA. In his daily dealings, he discovered that people ar...

MALAYSIAN BIBLE: THE JOURNEY OF THE AL   KITAB BERITA BAIK UPDATES, RECOLLECTIONS & REFLECTIONS  BY LEE MIN CHOON IN MEMORY: KARPAL SINGH, TRUE HUMANITARIAN This has nothing to do with the Malay Bible. But I can’t help but feel a sense of loss with the passing of colleague at the Bar and friend, Karpal Singh. So, here’s how I remember him. It must have been around 1985 when I was helping a convict on death row who had become a Christian while in prison. Liew Weng Seng was sentenced to death under the Internal Security Act for possession of a firearm. At the Federal Court, Liew was unrepresented and proceeded to tell the court that he was guilty and did not wish to appeal his death sentence. When court was adjourned, his family tried to pass him a bible but was prevented from doing so by the prison warders. A commotion ensued and made the news the next day. When I read the report, I thought, “Hey, this guy is a Christian and he had just told the court to go ahead to...