Like Coyote and the Road Runner!

Pandora's box (1992)
(6 episodes documentary by Adam Curtis)

In the Greek mythology, Pandora's Box is said to be the wedding present given by Zeus to Pandora. There was strict instruction to keep it locked and the key was given to her husband, Epimetheus for safe keeping. Curiosity took the better of her. She stole the key when Epimetheus was asleep to unleash all the evils of the world. She quickly shut it but it was too late. When she and her husband opened it later, all the evils were out in world but they was still... HOPE!
In the same vein, it looks like all the manoeuvres done by man to improve mankind turns out to be a double edged sword. Like the contents of the Pandora's Box, all the evil effects of the scheme is unleashed but there is always hope.

#01 The Engineer's Plot. 
After the Czar is toppled, the Bolsheviks and the bourgeois engineers (the skilled engineers working with the Czar) thought the best way to liberate Russia is to use rational scientific methods. They wanted to makes its people science savvy and modern. And on went their plans. Engineering courses bloomed. Industrialization blossomed. Feeling that the politicians were left out in the rat race, the bourgeois engineers were arrested and executed.
The communists continued emphasizing on engineering, churning scientists who conformed to their agenda. America's achievement was emulated to the level of madness. They even created a copy cat American town (Gary in Indiana) in Siberia (Magnitogorsk), complete with metal trees!
Their plan succeeded. The USSR was technically advanced in the 50s and 60s. Then the central control started controlling nitty gritty things like quota of arrests, number of movies and novels, things started taking a downturn. The country could control people's needs and desires anymore. They could no longer sell the same design of toothbrush over the years. The mass production of shoes, for example, was already out of fashion by the time it hit the stores.
By 1978, the whole economy had collapsed.
"What had begun as a grand moral attempt to build a rational society ended by creating a bizarre, bewildering existence for millions of Soviet people".

#02 To The Brink of Eternity

The Cold War had begun. Suddenly, in 1957 USSR boasts of launch of a space capsule and later manned by a dog 'Luca'. The Americans became envy green and breath revenge. The paranoia of Russian domination and American annihilation became a national obsession. RAND (Research ANd Development) corporation became the think thank to put things in order. The scientists and strategists thought rational scientific theories and game theory could defeat the Russians. The mongering fear drew Americans into a frenzy. Strategies were thought how their enemies would think so that they could be one step ahead.
Unfortunately, time and time again the strategies were proven wrong. During the Cuba missile crisis in 1962, Kennedy took the non conventional approach. Rather than calculating the enemy's plan of action and dealing appropriately through scientific theories proposed by RAND, he just called  Khrushchev by threatening to blow Soviet to smithereens if a single bomb was to land in US soil and it worked.
During the Vietnam war, all the calculated mathematical analyses to hurt the Communists the most proved zielisch. It only brought more casualties and they lost the war. The proponents of scientific theories admitted at the end that even though situations are predictable, man and their reactions are irrational and  unpredictable. The scientists' vision remains science fantasy.

#03 The League of Gentlemen
This episode is a sort of a class for novice in the concept of world economics. It covers an era when Great  Britain started becoming not so great and started a path of economic deterioration. All the king's horses and all the king's men could not put the Empire together again!
One government after another tried to mend the fractured British economy as more and more of their colonies gained independence and their own citizens became unemployed. The value of the British pounds also plummeted. Keynesian theory of economics went out of the window when the Government control of monetary policies headed no where . Then emerged economists and politicians who thought they could use modern scientific methods to nurse the economy back to health. Some smart alecs thought they had a fool proof system for that. Friedman suggested a free market with minimal control and won a Nobel prize for it. After many failed approaches and riots amongst the people, Mrs Thatcher's reduction of interest rate seem to stimulate the British economy in the 80s.
At the end of the day, the experts agree that scientific theories and manoeuvres can only avert of economic disaster, not stimulate one. One economist even suggested that the motive behind all these plans is keep the working class always poor so as to ensure a constant supply of  'reserve army of labour'!

#4 Goodbye Mrs. Ant

In the 1940s, man thought that science had an answer to all of his problems. When the automobile engine started 'knocking' scientists told to add lead to his petrol. For refrigeration, he found CFCs. And when tried to mass produce DDT to control vector borne disease and save his crop for insects, he realized that perhaps, science is not the answer of everything.

There was a time when DDT was a saviour. It increased produce from the land and successfully treated man of louse which spread scrub typhus by directly spraying DDT on the skin. Some even ingested DDT powder to show its safety!

Slowly, suburbanites started noticing floating fish and dead robins. People started questioning the need to tamper with the equilibrium of nature. A successful trial outlawing DDT was started and it was shown that it can stored in brain of a newborn! Ecology, a new field in the 70s became the fashion statement. Darwin's philosophical outlook to maintain nature rather than modify it to the whims of a species was the mantra of the day.

"I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can." 

#5 Black Power

This episode shows how the building of a mammoth damned dam changed a country. It shows how a honest ambition to transform a nation to an industrialized nation meets failures along the way initiated by people with self interest. Some people have branded Kwame Nkrumah as just another corrupt megalomaniac despot from Africa while others call him a nationalist.
In the 50s, the British planned to build a dam over Volta river to smelt and generate hydroelectricity for Gold Coast (old name of Ghana). Nkrumah, a young politician, joined the bandwagon to claim independence from British. After Independence, he had big dreams for his new country through the dam with the help of his ex-colonial masters.
After the Suez crisis in 1956, the British lost interest in building the dam, fearing that the project might be nationalized once it is off the ground. A chance visit to the US by a cabinet minister brought in the US government and Kaiser Aluminium. Bargaining over bargaining met many resistance. The cocoa price took a plunge adding woes to their plan and economy. Corruption was also setting in as investors wanted to invest in the new country. The new country's economy was in tatters.
A state visit by Leonid Breznev pulled Ghana into the clutches of the Cold War. A military coup orchestrated by CIA sent Nkrumah into exile. Series of coups ensued.
The dam was finally completed before Nkrumah's departure but it failed to realise the benefits that it was supposed to provide to the people. Citizen living just miles from the dam which generated hydro-electricity were living without water and power.
The power (electricity) which was supposed to give people power (freedom) failed because of the people in power (control).

#5 A is for Atom
This episode shows how politicians and businessmen hijacked an idea which man knew very little about, packed with lies and half-truths to hoodwink the general public. The scientists and engineers just stood and watched while they promised the stars and created a need for something they were not capable of supplying.
After much advancement in nuclear sciences, 1945 was the year they realized the annihilatory property of atomic bombs. Like a redemption of their sin to mankind, scientists try to develop peaceful uses of nuclear energy. It was successfully used to power a submarine. The politicians got excited. They and the business vultures literally armed the scientists to design mammoth nuclear reactors without concern about the safety aspect. Frankly, the scientists themselves were ignorant of many of properties and hazard of the use of radioactive substance in reactor core.
The Russians were pioneer in building large reactors in the 50s but they realized that it was not cost effective. The return on investment was extremely slow. The Americans, with their General Electric and Westinghouse, succeeded where the Russians failed. The British joined the bandwagon with much fanfare but went into problems within a year when there was contamination and polluted their milk chain!
Concerns were voiced by scientists and engineers regarding the need for safety measures in the reactors but they were kept away from public knowledge. On the Russian side, Brezhnev and his corrupt regime steamrolled the building of new larger reactors, taking shortcuts and cutting corners on safety aspect. Everyone was told that a mishap in a nuclear was extremely rare till mishaps occurred in Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986).
Nobody knew what to expect and how to control a nuclear meltdown! It started a public display of discontentment and resentment.
Perhaps, rather than just following the technological aspect of science to develop a field, we should also concentrate on moral-centred development of a technology rather hide under the cloak of the conniving businessmen and politicians....

Looks like the human race is doomed to fail. Every angle of the achievement is hijacked by their own kind and be a stumbling block of their success. Like the Coyote who comes up with a new gadget every time to catch the elusive Road Runner, all his efforts just blows up in his face, every time.....Peeeetttt....Peeeetttt......

Dolls eat dolls world!

Valley of the Dolls (1967)
There was a time in secondary school when everybody was trying to lay their hands on this book in the library. Even though, it was not in 'red spot section' of the library, it sure was a hit. Nobody could reserve it as it was passed among librarians and after some it was considered lost!
This 1967 film was based on this book by Jacqueline Susann. Dolls here refer to sleeping pills (dolophines) and illustrates the dog eat dog world of showbiz. It revolves around the story of three young girls (Anne, Neely and Jennifer) and the involvement with people of the show business. Barbara Perkins acts as Anne, a green country girl who finds a job as a secretary in an attorney's office who deals with performing artiste in Broadway. People who lived through the 70s would remember her as Betty in Peyton Place on Malaysian TV. Neely is a small time actress who gets fired from her job with a mega-star, Helen Lawson. She manages to make it on her own but she gets into lots of trouble with substance abuse. The third girl, Jennifer, is played by Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski's young pregnant wife who was killed by the Charles Manson cult.
Anne gets into and out of relationship with her boss and finally returns home to New England to start life anew, disillusioned with the bright lights of the performing lights and her two timing partner.

R to L:
Barbara Parkins, Sharon Tate, Patty Duke.

Neely gets dragged into the spiral world of destruction, gets rehabilitation and gets into it again when the demand of performance got to her.
Jennifer, forever trying to keep her broke mother happy, fails to secure any stable jobs. She falls in love and marries a struggling singer who is diagnosed with Huntington's disease and is placed in a sanatorium. Jennifer acts in French pornographic films but gets shortchanged in the end. She returns home just to be diagnosed to have breast cancer. Frustrated, with no one to confide and the bottomless pit mother with her demands for money, commits suicide with overdose of sleeping pills.
A soapy story which excite those filled with romance or fancy a good evening with a copy of 'Mills and Boons' or like me who try to discover the things that I missed in the past, while I was trying hard to run away from RRF...

It finally happened...

So it finally happened. The guests on a radio talk show today went on a rampage bashing the legal eagles who were instrumental in the settlement of the case of a statutory rape of a 13 year old girl by a 40 year old married man with 4 children, 1 younger than the victim. The assailant was not even given a slap on the wrist. As he had made her his second wife, and both were in love each other, the case was made to rest.
We have moved away from the time when we really respected the people of the bench and those in power. Gone are the days, when judges and leaders were respected for the wisdom and virtues. With easy accessibility of information and perhaps because of our educational improvement, we are able to make our own assessments and judgements on situations.
Anyway part of the reason of the decline of respect to them is general decline in the standards in every field in this country.


http://www.trust.org/item/20130521123932-o09qu

Oh, Oprah!

From the time of civilisation, human beings have tried to make Man think in the same manner so that it is easy to control. Anyone thinking outside the box is considered deviant and a troublemaker out to disturb the tranquillity. A uniform way of thinking and values are imbibed to all. It is accepted that red is danger and it means 'look-out!' In the same manner, a certain response is to be invoked to a particular situation and is accepted as the norm. For example, if you find an envelope with an address written with a stamp pasted at its corner, the normal reaction expected of a person is to put the said envelope into the nearest letterbox. This is accepted as how a civilised individual is expected to react.

If I were to tear off the unused stamp to use for myself and just throw the envelope and its content into the nearest bin, though logical and rational, I may be labelled as barbaric uncultured, uneducated or under-developed mentally!

This is how the world subdivides its population. We always feel comfortable around people who act, respond and have the same values as we do.

First, they came out with a uniform scripture for all to follow. To give a divine authority to it, they said that it descended directly from God via hand-picked adversaries. To ensure conformance and uniformity in governance, they gave the fear of God of devastating consequences of after-life if His words were disobeyed. Then came the mass hysteria and mass hype of mass media. Repeated messages by various channels somehow sounded more convincing and people engulfed it as the gospel truth. A lie told repeatedly become the truth!

Fast forward to the time of telecommunication and obsession with daytime TV, reality and talk shows, now we have modern day evangelists who try to solve people's problems through public declaration, confessions and shame. People are all encouraged to think the TV talk show compere's values are the universal values accepted by the modern world. To disagree is to be uncultured or even barbaric. There is no shame in washing dirty linen in public. Bring it on, everybody has things stashed in their closet. Why wait for Boghi?

Om Santhi, Forever Peace?

In many religious salutations and prayers, we always emphasize that there be peace on Earth, tranquillity should prevail, sanity is restored, and justice is done. My nimble mind goes into sarcastic thinking mode again...

How can all these things prevail at the same time? Is it not all a balance? The good forces vs the evil? The yin and the yang? Order and anarchy?

For peace to occur on one side, there must be anarchy on the other side. For a tiger to have peace of mind and satiety, there must have chaos and tragedy in the goat family. For new generation to seamlessly continue life on Earth, there must be death and sorrow on the end of the oldies.

At one said time, there can never be complete peace on Earth. Every one is looking for an illusive utopia, a fictitious Garden of Eden which is as natural as a herd of unicorn running wild or grazing in the fields.
I suppose that peace on Earth can be achieved when all of us can accept that it is a balance. Peace of mind can be achieved when we accept that it is a cycle. Goats must accept that there were born to be sacrificial lamb for the dinner plate for the tiger family, just like there cannot be a valid reason chickens were sent to Earth other than to satisfy the appetite of meat eaters. And we just whither and fade along.... to dust for a new sapling to mushroom over...

One man's fight against a corrupt system

Serpico 1973
Soon after 'Godfather', Serpico became Al Pacino's stepping atone to stardom. I do not know if it is based on a true story but it had a biographical feel to its presentation. It tells the story of a cop who joined the force thinking that he could uphold justice but soon discovers that the whole policing force has rot to the core. To find an honest cop seems like an oxymoron which is more difficult to find than finding a proverbial needle in the haystack.
After finding dead-ends after dead-ends and lethargic feet dragging 'honest' cops, Serpico is shot in the face and meets a premature retirement. This disillusioned man leaves the country to live in Switzerland in the end of the film..
In midst of his turmoil at his work place, this frustrated man has to deal with the demands of his female companion/ girlfriend. Even though they (he had two at different times) were very patient with him, there was so much patience a person can have. They did not see a bright family life in this high strung undercover cop who was forever living off his edge. They all went separate ways.
Al Pacino, who won a few awards for his role in this blockbuster, appears good as a scruffy hirsute undercover cop who donned Indian type of kurta as his cover needed him to act like a junkie.