Back to the USSR?

Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles (1965)
Rev. David A. Noebel

An Analysis of the Communist use of music - the Communist Master Plan.

This book predates John Lennon's infamous press statement in 1966, in which he was quoted as saying that the Beatles were, at that time, 'more popular than Jesus'. To his defence, the baby boomers were, in fact, losing interest in what the church had to say. 

In 1956, during a visit to Poland, Nikita Khrushchev was thought to have told the West that he would 'bury them'. Some say it was something that came out after being lost in translation. Again, during his state visit to the US, he may have said (again disputed) that he predicted the adoption of communism and the gradual creation of a 'socialist stare' in the US. 

David Noebel is said to be a fiery Christian evangelist who argues his claims with dubious scientific evidence. In this booklet, he used many Pavlovian animal behavioural study models to convince his congregation that music has a hypnotizing effect that can alter teenagers' responses to situations. He even goes to the extent of suggesting that music can be used as a brainwashing device. He quotes Khrushchev as saying that the Soviets did not have to do anything to turn Americans into commies. They will change in time. Through music? "Have they planted this through rock and roll?" he asks.

Looking at how the millennials and the woke generation behave, it seems like Khrushchev's dream may have materialized. Extremist leftist ideas have permeated all forms of life. All the institutions have been infiltrated. Posts on social media reeks of the communist ideas. They claim to champion the marginalized, but what they really want is the annihilation of our civilization as we know it. They even have opinions on theistic matters even though they are godless in their belief system.

After seeing their mesmerizing effect on their young audience, the author has a bone to pick with the Beatles. He cannot fathom what makes them go hysterical to the extent of peeling off their undergarments. 

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Which is more newsworthy?

Sometime last week, a submersible (a titanium-carbon fibre-made mini-submarine, christened Titan) commissioned to investigate the remains of the Titanic went into trouble. A catastrophic implosion is said to have instantaneously killed the five aboard. Each had sent about $250 000 to get 40,000 ft below sea level to catch a glimpse of the ill-fated ship. The dead ranged from wealthy businessmen to adventure explorers. A few days later, a Greek boat carrying hundreds of refugees from Pakistan, Syria, Egypt and Palestine submerged off the coast of Libya. 

The papers went agape with moving stories of economic refugees picking up the pieces and risking their lives for a better life in Europe. At the same time, the mass media has also been accused of paying more attention to the five victims of the Titanic sub rather than the refugee boat accident that swallowed more than a hundred lives. 

Critics assert that life is precious, whether the victim is rich or poor, educated or otherwise. Unfortunately, life does not work like that. It is pretty naive to insist that a homeless vagabond should be accorded the same level of treatment as the CEO of a multinational company. At the risk of sounding unkind, the reality is that the latter will contribute back to society, whereas the former will just sponge its resources. But hey, he could have a veteran, a professional who had fallen from grace or whatnot. But such is life. 

The communists and the religious will insist that all men are created equal, but in reality, some animals are more equal than others. When the shove comes to the push, hierarchy does exist. 

For example, when a destitute in Saint Theresa’s sanatorium has chest pain, she is offered prayers and paracetamol. When Mother Theresa herself has chest discomfort, an appointment at Harley Street Cardiology Clinic is made for her immediately. 

Looking at the two maritime mishaps above, one refers to the failure of mankind’s engineering marvel. All the years of research, experimentation and trial runs have led to this. The Titanic, another engineering, supposed proof of an unsinkable oceanliner, went down tamely on its maiden voyage. Just when the researchers thought they could have a peek into what could have gone wrong, now this. Naturally, a post-mortem of the failure of human endeavours excites many. 

Conversely, the refugee crisis denotes political failure. We deserve the government we choose. If millions of people within a vicinity cannot agree on how they want the country to be, they should not be playing victimhood. Politics is what people decide for themselves. Others cannot meddle. The rest of the world has enough problems, and now, the refugee crisis. The experience of many developed countries with the waves of immigrants over the last twenty years could have been anything but pleasing. Refugees, upon acceptance, have abused the system. Many of their siblings have yet to really integrate into the system. Some are hellbent on biting the hands that fed them. The host countries have never been the same since.

It is understandable why one news presides over the other in importance. 

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A utopia in a woke world?

Encanto (2021)

Director: Jared Bush and Byron Howard

Something is unsettling about this Disney animated musical. Sure the animation, the colour, and the music are spellbinding; it is the story that makes me think.

When I overanalyse the story, the more I feel it must surely be a wet dream for the proponents of the woke culture (or nightmare, depending on how you look at it). Colombians running from their motherland from atrocities (which they think were perpetrated by the US) were ushered in almost magically into a land of magic. In this magical land (the US, maybe), they were all given special powers (read special preference) to help each other in a Colombian only community. Perhaps others (non-Colombians) do not matter.

The next generation all grow up expecting to have special treatment - all the siblings and their siblings. They feel entitled to be treated differently. They deserve the magic that their predecessors received, even though their circumstances were different.

When these doors are not opened, they feel cheated and refuse to do their duty to the community. The community also needs to be blamed, for when someone reminds them of the rotten system and their imminent collapse, he is labelled as a traitor, an outcast, and put in cold storage. For a bit of semblance of sanity to prevail, the whole rot has to be purged away for new building blocks to be put in.

Maybe in not so your face manner, this musical tells the story of a matriarch who flees Colombia to be saved by a magic candle that builds a house for them and nurtures her children and grandchildren. The family and the rest of the community surrounding the shape-shifting mansion just make merry and dance all day through, unaware of the decay in the house's structure. The protagonist, a teenage girl who does not get her dues, goes on a crusade to find the real gift that she duly deserves.

Of course, it is not like that. Mind my wild imaginations! Did I mention the many biracial couples and the fleet of seemingly clueless and docile male characters? They form the woke narrative - payback time for all the toxic masculinity over the generations!

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A full circle

Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Documentary; 2019) 

 Based on the book written by Thomas Piketty.

We started in the pre-Industrial Revolution with a significant disparity between the haves and have nots. Under the feudal system, there were the extremely wealthy landowners and the dirt poor peasants. The inequality between the two was phenomenal. The poor simply cannot work their way to become rich. It is humanly impossible. One has to be born with a silver spoon to own capital. Alternatively, one has to be married into one, like in the many fairytales and novels of the yesteryears. 1% of the world population owned 70% of the world's wealth.

The divide between the affluent and the impoverished became more apparent. This triggered the exodus of people from Europe to newer lands like Australia and the USA and took them over. The emigrants replicated their master's strategy of wealth acquisition. They used slaves, a form of movable property, as collateral and capital to generate more land and wealth.

When machines rolled in during the Industrial Revolution, people were just replaced, creating the same kind of impoverished people as they had before. Businesses flourished. Mass production of goods by machines needed a market. Fashion designing, haute culture, gift-giving, splurging during festivities was popularised. Businessmen accumulate wealth.

Nationalism reeked in as inequality reared its ugly head. People forgot about their poverty and stood steadfast behind the banner of nationhood. Industries fanned this by churning out weapons and starting military competition amongst nations to start wars. Now the elites are also the one who controls the narrative at the international level. Again, the same schism morphed between the rich and the poor, the 1% owning 70% of the wealth.

The world wars that came about were actually equalisers that jolted the inequality. Capitalism was held accountable for the catastrophe. It seems that on the cusp of death, humanity appeared more critical. Everyone is equal in fear of death. In rolled in heavy State involvement in nation-building. Cradle-to-tomb benefits were handed out to societies. The working class and women demand their place in society. For the first time in human history, an individual could climb up the social ladder through education and hard work.

Anti-capitalist protesters - St Paul's Cathedral, London, 2011. 
Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images Europe

Actually, during the wars, capital was only marginally lost. Some were used to finance the war, whilst some were retrieved later. With the euphoria of peace and the push to spur economies, many manoeuvres were put into place to help big corporations be in the role of what the aristocrats used to fill.
Resentment grew again. Wage did not expand in proportion to the increased cost of living. The increase in union strikes and demand for entitlement did not help either. Labour was no longer an asset but the expense of doing business. The welfare state was just too costly.

We are now in a world where greed is good. The poor are handout loans for which they are not creditworthy. The lust for luxurious, opulent and decadent lifestyles lure the ill-prepared to dream of the impossible to plunge them into more misery than mired in. On the other hand, the wealthy has the four corners of the world to hide their treasures. Using creative accounting and the intelligent use of international off-shore banking, 85% of the world's wealth is just floating around without generating any benefit to the needy.
On the other hand, it generates more income for them. Tax evasion manoeuvres are helped via cash-strapped tax havens in banana republics. The problem with these havens is that their local populace does not benefit from these transactions. They remain poor. They do not have to fear economic downturns as history has shown that bail-outs can be arranged.

Relationship between per capita national income
 and the degree of inequality in income distribution

Capitalism started out unequal, flattened inequality 

for much of the 20th century, but is now headed back

towards Dickensian levels of inequality worldwide.

Only 15% of the world wealth is spent to create a beneficial trickle-down effect to the not-so-wealthy 99%. The 'baby boomers' had it good. With the post-war prosperity and ability to acquire wealth, they can enjoy the fruit of their labour in their twilight years if they had done so. Meanwhile, the Millenials has it bad. With the rung of the social ladder getting wider and having had to finance their own education, they may spend their whole life in debt. They may not afford to own a roof over their head like their predecessors. The gig economy that they find satisfying puts them in a precarious position. They are not provided with a safety net against accidents, sickness and opportunity for holidays.
The author suggests that there should be a comprehensive tax revision. The ultra-rich needed to be taxed progressively the more they earn. Invasion of taxes by clandestine methods needs to be looked into. As inherited wealth will dominate wealth made form a lifetime's labour by an exorbitant margin, he propose an inheritance tax. His argument is that one cannot start the game of life with different terms, the have and have nots. His analogy is a game of monopoly of two players where one player starts the game with more money and has the chance to play with two dices. He will pass 'Go' more times and buy more properties and earlier in the game, hence collecting more rent. Well, one can say this is a Marxist or leftist view of the distribution of wealth.

A friend once told me this. Even if all the world's wealth is equally divided among the world's inhabitants right to the last penny, creating an ideal egalitarian society, we just have to give ten years. After ten years, wealth distribution and inequality will revert to their previous pattern. Some people are just good with money. Others have different priorities. One glaring thing that is not taken into all these systems is the human innard qualities. As quoted by Gandhi, the Earth has everything to fill our needs, but not our greed.

History has shown that everything in life happens cyclically. Man will create an economic model. It will be a good, best thing since forever. Then slowly, one by one, its shortcomings will surface. Then more. Suddenly it will be the worst thing Man ever thought of. Then more calls for reform, a revolution maybe. A new system will be proposed - the best thing since sliced bread. And the cycle will continue.

Whatever said and done, the idea of utopia on Earth is a piped dream. The dream of eternal fairness and equality is as real as seeing a pink unicorn. Even the Universe is not kind to its dwellers. They have to endure thunders, typhoons, volcanic eruptions and asteroid collisions and their devastating effects. The presence of a large middle class is essential to form a buffer between the haves and have nots, to narrow the division in wealth inequality. Transformation and modification will happen, but we will keep on looking for the ideal elusive economic model.

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It had always been self-interest, not altruism.

Buddha in a Traffic Jam (2014)
Written and Directed by Vivek Agnihotri

What would Buddha, being a pacifist, would do when he is caught in a bad traffic jam? Instead of cussing and cursing explicitly or under His breath, He would probably, wait patiently, not to upset the already tense atmosphere, but instead deal the situation calmly. Mere mortals around him would probably jump at the chance to pounce on his non-aggressive way of handling his machine to squeeze to ahead by at least a few cars. For mere mortals that would mean a big deal, they would retaliate, but not Buddha. 

The storyteller is trying to equate the Adivasis (aborigines) to Buddha whilst the capitalists and the communists as mortals try to bribe their way to usurp the Adivasis' rightly owned lands for personal interests.

For a movie that Agnihotri had so much difficulty trying to secure financial backings from the movie stalwarts in the initial stage and abandonment by financiers later, it sure did fan a lot of excitement, protests and even riots. It is said to have popularised the term 'Urban Naxalites'. It was the academia where it hurts the most. For a long time, people in higher learning institutions have been looked upon as socialist, leftists or communists' sympathisers. Many have been accused of joining the breaking India forces to cripple the nation from within. Even during the Raj era, educated locals would wag their tails to the beck and call of their colonial masters. They continued as sepoys, and now as journalists, academics and God-men continue their dog and master relationship overseas and even in India.

Even though this film had repeatedly been dismissed as trash by mainstream media and online reviews, one wonders why it obtains raving reviews from others. It hits out at the leftists who have spread all over the institutions of higher learning. With their revolutionary and anti-establishment way of thinking, the young are the most suitable targets to lay their red agendas.

The capitalists are no different from the socialist in the way they expect the masses in their agenda of making money. Nobody actually cares for the underprivileged and the marginalised. It is just dollars and cents.

The films tell of a group of free-spirited MBA students challenged by their professor to develop a business model to help an NGO sell aboriginal pottery. It is allegedly to be siphoned back to the community for their upliftment. The protagonist realised that the setup is a sham to hoodwink the government subsidies for their private coffers. Helping the tribes is the last thing on their mind.

A refreshing look at the real world of philanthropy. It is filled with revelry, intoxication and hedonistic entertainment at the expense of the poor. It had always been self-interest, not altruism.

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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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Every birth should be wanted?

Capernaum (Capharnaüm, Arabic  کفرناحوم‎, Lebanon; 2018)
Story, Screenplay, Direction: Nadine Labaki

I remember a family in Penang which had so many children that even the family members never knew how many siblings they had. The mother had so many miscarriages, stillbirths and twins that she gave away that if she were in Stalin Russia, she would have been conferred the 'Order of Maternal Glory' award. The last time the siblings counted, the tally was 16. Despite growing like wildflowers on a shoestring budget provided by the single breadwinner of the family, they all achieved success in their own accord by adulthood. Nobody had arrested psychological development due to a lack of parental attention. 

It was a time when children were viewed as God's gift. Never mind if Man a lot to do with it to make it possible. The extended family concept of living ensured that everyone, especially the older ones, was cared. 

Soon with the changes in societal values, many realised that children were not God-sent but were Nature's way of revenge and testing your resilience. They were viewed as karma's gameplay.

This Oscar-nominated film is reminiscent of many of the ones churned out of Kollywood. Of hand, Pasi and Thulabaram come to mind. Not all God's gift is divine, prudent planning is essential. Restraint in overindulgence is a no-brainer.

In the Bible, Capernaum is the name of the village Jesus sojourned after his successful fight with the temptations of Satan in the Judean desert. People in Capernaum were the testimony to many of His teachings and witness to miraculous healings. In metaphysical terms, it refers to a place of comfort. Sarcastically, the filmmaker decided to name his flick such. The family is the place where most people find solace. In this movie, the family, specifically the heads of the family are depicted as the source of all evil, the propagator of problems. 

Order of Maternal Glory

Labaki, during one of her interviews, mentioned noticing many young children running around the streets of Beirut. Her prodding of these little people finally managed to showcase something alien to most of the net-serving First-World millennials. 

Zain, a 12-year-old boy, is in court suing his parents for his birth. In a flashback manner, his life story unfolds. Having no identification papers, no school to go to, staying in a debilitated rented room for a home, growing up with parents who had all the money for cigarettes and booze but not for the kids, Zain has to work odd jobs to support himself. He sometimes feels that he has to protect his younger sister who recently attained menarche. He tries to conceal her coming of age as he knows that his parents would quickly marry her to the shopkeeper who keeps eyeing her. Before he knows it, she is whizzed off by the shopkeeper, much to his resentment. He runs away from home to befriend an Ethiopian illegal immigrant, Rahil. She is a single mother with a lactating infant. The story progress with Zain babysitting for Rahil and caring for the child when she gets arrested. 

Zain later discovers that his sister died haemorrhaging due to complications of sexual intimacies. A raged Zain stabs the shopowner, his sister's husband, and ends in jail. Through a social worker, he sues his parents.  

I remember during our childhood religious classes, we were reminded to celebrate our birthdays not by blowing candles, cutting cakes and feeding the neighbourhood, but by prostrating at the feet of both parents to show gratitude for our existence. Unfortunately, not everybody looks at their life as a blessing. A failed contraception, a deceiving partner, failure to contraception access, societal coercion, ignorance and more may be the reason for somebody's birth being unwelcomed. The birth of a child is the beginning of the series of maladies. Not to forget children who are not born in the pinkest health, in the fairest of skin tone or the preferred gender. In economically challenging times, another mouth to feed is another strain on the family dynamics. God forbid, a sick child adds many added to the husband-wife relationship.For aeons, negative value has been placed on birth. Procreation has been viewed as dirty. Our presence, our leaving of carbon footprints have shown a detrimental effect on the environment. We have been said to be the product of the Original Sin. Many Christian sects and even Buddhism have expressed their anti-natalistic stance on this matter. Celibacy is viewed as a favourable path to achieve enlightenment. 

Economists, on the other hand, would accuse this of being a communist, a neo-conservative or a leftist agenda (pick your choice). There is a concerted effort by them to depopulate the Earth and replace people with complicated algorithms to create their perceived Utopia which is actually a living hell, lifeless planet only to cater for the few elitists. For economists, people are markets to sell their product to enrich themselves.

Raphael Samuel

Suing his lawyer parents for his birth.
Just to fulfil his parents' self-centred
individual needs, he has to endure
the stresses of living a life on Earth.
The parents are quite happy for him
to file a case. If the Courts deem that
his case has its merits, they would
be glad to fight for their defence.

anti-natalism - a philosophy that argues that life is so full of misery that people should stop procreating immediately.

https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

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