Recent news and views.

So, I ended up watching Nick Cage in 'Lord of War'. Now there is nothing remarkable about Cage's performance.. in fact this role was remarkably reminiscent of his role in 'Weatherman'. He is competent and does a first person narrator role quite well. But nothing great. The script was pretty nice, however. Some really nice cinematography, or rather good editing. Pretty face Ethan Hawke has brought nothing new to his Interpol agent character.. there are shades of Precinct 13 as well as Training Day in his acting. The real star of the movie is Jared Leto, who plays Cage's troubled and cocaine addled brother; the only person with something resembling a decent character, which he brings a lot of life to. See this movie: quite an eye opener about the worldwide gun running business.

Stage photography, more cribs.

I love my Olympus. It is an excellent camera, and it works fast and smooth... having had it for almost a year, I can work almost intuitively, without looking at a menu option ever. And, of course, the battery lasts forever. I was at the Indian Classical Music and Dance group concert yesterday at the Michigan League. These guys are a really talented bunch of performers.

The setting: the Hussey room, of the League was also pretty nice. This room seats about a hundred (packed, as I noticed);
and has a very somber walnut wood paneling. Now with two curtains open, I had enough ambient light to shoot at halfway decent shutter speeds... like 1/80 sec.
Remember that I use a 40-150 mm lens for close shots.

Hence.. tripod. But then, they decided to close the curtains... ambient light helps me... but distracts the performers.. and then you can see the results: noise!!!!! Shooting at anything like ISO 800 and above is going to fill you up with noise. A leetil bit of despeckling helps, but that is of limited use.

Leopard.. alomost here.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article2671384.ece

512 MB RAM is way too little.

And let me tell you why. First things first: I run a MacBook with Intel Core Duo 2.0 GHz, a 55GB HD and 512 RAM. Pretty decent. Except that Tiger, or Mac OS X.4.something is a fairly heavy load OS to run. Native OS X applications are totally stable. Stuff that runs on top of the X11 layer, such as Sparky and GIMP 2.2 are also stable, if sometimes a leetil slow. The problem is Firefox. Someone told me that Firefox has an undocumented memory leak which makes it further unstable the longer it stays active. Now Firefox stays on ALL the time. Consequence, my whole system is slowed down. And when I try running something like MS Office, everything comes to a standstill. I tried doing things to trim the basic load, like reducing my dock to a bare minimum of 7 items. I never use iPhoto, or any heavy load graphics package (I have Illustrator CS2). I have most of the dashboard widgets disabled. I even have the funneling effect disabled (less graphics: less CPU). I don't run Eudora or Thunderbird... I use Pine to check mail. Most of my work is at the command prompt. Still slow. This week, my sys-ad was nice enough to do a limited reinstall, without scrubbing the HD. Home directory intact. Not too much help. I need 2 GB of RAM.

The 'best' spy novels in the world and what I think about some of them.

Here is the Link:

And here is my opinion, along with the individual rankings:

Top 15 Spy Novels

Publishers Weekly prints a list of 15 top spy novels (Best spy novels? It doesn't really say.), compiled by Peter Cannon.

1. THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD by John le Carre (1963)

This is a high work of art. There are few authors writing in any field who have the capacity to delve into method and character to the exact depth of detail required to allow the reader to complete the picture himself. That makes Le Carre one of the best writers around. This particular book is the foremost of those novels which brought very close to mind the bleakness of the Cold War and all that it stood for. In the end, the spies on both sides had more in common with each other than with their political masters.

2. THE BOURNE IDENTITY by Robert Ludlum (1980)

This is a piece of sh**.

3. THE DAY OF THE JACKAL by Frederick Forsyth (1971)

An amazing work by the master of method. To be honest, this is hardly a spy novel: this novel deals with a political assassination. But I like it for its precise attention to detail. Hercule Poirot would have approved of Mr. Forsyth. Too bad he turned into a raving right-winger in his latter years.

4. THE SPY WHO LOVED ME by Ian Fleming (1962)

Wha? Mr. Fleming wrote action thrillers. These are not spy novels. Puhr-lease!

5. THE QUIET AMERICAN by Graham Greene (1955)

Haven't read.

6. THE IPCRESS FILE by Len Deighton (1962)

Another classic. Harry Palmer (our unnamed protagonist) cannot pass through an East European town without stashing cash, a couple of passports and a Browning at a railway station locker. And with good reason too: a fairly large number of people want to do him in. Dawlish, his boss and the head of the WOOC(P) isn't much help. The 'P' in WOOC(P) stands for 'provisional', which the Army hates. The Army hates most things professional.

7. THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE by Ken Follett (1978)

I tried to read this. Ken Follet writes absolute cr**. Avoid this.

8. MASQUERADE by Gayle Lynds (1996)

Haven't read.

9. THE MOSCOW CLUB by Joseph Finder (1991)

Haven't read.

10. ABOVE SUSPICION by Helen MacInnes (1939)

Haven't read. Now again, Helen MacInnes was really a romantic novelist who should have never ventured into espionage. Try reading 'Friends and Lovers'.

11. THE 39 STEPS by John Buchan (1915)

Haven't read.

12. HARLOT'S GHOST by Norman Mailer (1991)

Haven't read.

13. THE UNLIKELY SPY by Daniel Silva (1996)

Haven't read.

14. THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS by Erskine Childers (1903)

Haven't read.

15. MORNING SPY, EVENING SPY by Colin MacKinnon (2006)

Haven't read.

So, here we are.. at the end of the list, with a bunch of recent novels of dubious worth, some pieces of undiluted poison and quite a few worthy contenders missing. The list needs to be remade. That, I will do, when I have some more time.

Desi's Coming Home.

Having spent a couple of years in the US of A, I suppose I can say that I have grown somewhat accustomed to a high speed internet line, continuous power, etc, etc. But having said that, a graduate student lifestyle, or rather, a frugal, careful graduate student lifestyle is barely a few notches from what one would describe as 'poverty' in this country. But then again, I do believe that it is to a huge extent, merely a matter of perception: this country does something strange to you.. it turns you into a recluse. Backhome, waking up to the doodhwalla, the paperwalla, and the garbage collector doing the rounds was normal. hearing your neighbour yell at her delinquent kid for not doing his homework was also normal, as was listening to them turn the volume up on yet another Sonu Nigam hosted singing talent show. These are the sounds of India, and after a while, they are no longer intrusive, but merely an ever-present backdrop which you are only aware of by its absence. These are the sounds of home.

Cut to the West. Empty streets, silence and more silence. The only sounds are the noisy cheers of some frat boys on Saturday. Rich Americans, where possible have chosen to live in walled, secluded places where the cares of the world do not reach them. This country, where there are supposed to be no barriers, has chosen to erect impassible walls and create a new social class system.. or perhaps they have taken the oldest class system in the world and merely given it new shape.

For what it is worth, if you are wealthy and have the right skin colour, and presumably the right associations, you too, can live in their country clubs and wake up to the sounds of birds chirping. The inner cities are slowly cycling into ruin, fuelled by guns and drugs. The urban disenfranchised have nowehere to go, for they have been discarded as a bum job. They will never wake up to birdsongs, or walk on neatly manicured lawns. The leaders of the world have promised people freedom, and this is what it looks like. Scratch the surface of wealth and prosperity and you will feel seething veins of anger running deep.

But the eventual fate of this country does not concern this author. I am an passerby, an interested observer, at the most. My own beautiful India has suddenly woken up from several decades of socialist somnolence and wants a share of the pie. The middle class has decided that it is time to be upper class, and the upper class has decided that it is time to stop merely visiting the West; the West should now be brought here. So, we have CrossRoads, an exclusive shopping malll in Bombay which rather inadvisedly decided to only allow people with cellphones or credit cards to enter. This was in 2001, remember, a time when both items were not common amongst the 'riffraff'. The resulting outrage was interesting to watch.

And these days we have gated communities in our own cities, where the rich can sit back and soak in India, sans the stink coming from the nearby slums. To be at the centre of a potentially violent social transformation is quite edifying: resources are being diverted to these palaces which municipalties can ill afford to squander. But who's listening to reason? We all want in, and we want in now! Add to this the dilution of the meritocracy by the rather stupid decision of the Central Government to introduce large scale reservations at all levels of work and study; and we have a rather potent combination.

This was a rather long winded article which I started writing because I read this article:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2156352,00.html#article_conti%3E%20nue

Immigrants create a better England?

An excerpt from the Statesman today.

Migrants Score Over Natives

Nigel Morris

LONDON, Oct. 17: Migrant workers contributed (pounds sterling) 6 billion to the country’s economic growth last year and earned higher wages than their British counterparts, Home Office figures revealed yesterday. The study concluded that new arrivals were harder-working, brought sought-after skills and paid more in tax than they used in public services. The population rose by 189,000 last year, with 574,000 migrants arriving and 385,000 people leaving. The government figures suggested migration was throwing a life-line to an economy suffering skills shortages and struggling to support a growing bill for pensions.
It was calculated that new migration accounted for about one-sixth of Britain’s economic growth. The home office said the newcomers had “high levels of skills than the average UK natives” and that employers found migrant workers “reliable and hard-working”. It reported that migrants earned on an average (pounds sterling) 424 per week last year, and as a result paid more per head in tax and VAT than Britons.
~ The Independent

Tibetan woes.

Tibet is under Chinese rule... has been since since (I think 1959). That was when a combination of military force and some nasty diplomatic arm twisting forced the spiritual and political leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama into exile in Dharmasala in North India. These events where followed shortly by the Sino-Indian way of 1962 in which we had our noses thoroughly ground into the dust by our Chinese brethren. Those five years, I tend to think were the defining years of the decline of the Indian polity. Pandit Nehru, for all his wisdom and charisma was at heart a wide eyed romantic and he was thoroughly taken in by the Chinese cant of 'Hindu Chini bhai bhai'.. which translates to 'Hindus and Chinese are brothers'..... of course backing that up with a lot of firepower. Nehru died a disillusioned and heartbroken man. The Tibetans, the unhappy buffers between two local superpowers have lived in exile in India. The Indian government turns a blind eye to Dharmasala and does not negotiate with the Tibetan government in exile.

Bush has recently decided to honour the Dalai Lama with the Congressional Medal of Honour. This is almost two decades after the Nobel Committee decided to give the man the Nobel Prize. And quite predictably, the Chinese are very unhappy- to the extent that they have told the Prez to his face that he must not award the Dalai Lama.

Now let us do a bit of analysis: firstly, the Tibetans are in exactly the same dispossessed position as millions of refugees after partition: their homes have been taken away and they were made almost destitute. They have not assimilated with India, their host nation. They have, for the most part viewed India as a waystation and nothing more. They have contributed little, if anything to the national polity, economy and culture. One can argue that had these Tibetans ended up somewhere in the Western hemisphere, they might show greater alacrity in joining the mainstream.

Secondly, it is not in India's economic interest to piss China off. We can ill afford a confrontation with the PLA. If a few Tibetans have to live in India, they just have to suck it up. Having said that, the Arunachal is a highly disputed territory.. it would not be bad for an Indian protectorate to buffer the North East from PLA aggression.

Thirdly, this immediate event is indicative that the US has cards which it is not showing: the Chinese have been very aggressive at any talks of Taiwanese or Tibetan autonomy. It won't hurt to think about the appalling trade deficit that the US has with China.. money which flows largely into PLA coffers, thanks to slave labour factories. This trade deficit ties these two nations together in many different ways.... right now the Indian response should be to wait and watch.

Back in town.

I was at Cambridge, MA over the weekend and had a lot of work. Went on a whale watching cruise in the Boston Harbour area.... the pics should be up here and on Flickr shortly. Right now I have a bunch of spectra to process and look at.

Clarice loves Lector!

Yes, this was a conclusion long known to people who have read Thomas Harris, but it is only recently that someone put a recut trailer of Silence of the Lambs where it appears as a louvv story on Youtube. Find it here.

Also did Maverick finally get together with his instructor, Charlotte... ? or was he actually falling for Iceman (played by Val Kilmer)? See this recut Top Gun trailor here.

The Shining was a metaphor for the malaise gripping the American nation, and how redemption comes from love and basic family values. People who thought that it was a horror story should see this.

And finally.... Taxi Driver as a romantic comedy.. think Robert de Niro trying to make like Matthew McConaughey.

Apocrap-lypto.

One fine day Mel Gibson woke up and decided its time to remake the Terminator. Except that instead of Linda Hamilton playing the terrified woman, we have a random bloke playing Jaguar Paw, and he is running. Yes, this is the greater part of the film, if it can be called as such. And instead of an implacable Arnold chasing him, we have a bunch of bad arse Mayans. And that ridiculous 'this is my jungle, so now I am going to kill ya on me own ground' reminded me more of the kid in Home Alone 3 swearing revenge on North Korean spies, than anything else. Which makes me think, why didn't this man put in North Korean spies in this movie, I mean they are everyone's favourite bad arses right now. And Mel, I know, that you are one sadomasochistic git. Stop trying to remake Caligula with each film. Someone put this in the top 10 films of 2007. Yes, if you watched 300 nine times and have an IQ of 300/9.

The Dogs of .. WHAT?!?!?!??!?!!!!!!!??????

So I just started watching the 1981 production of Freddy Forsyth's best novel (open to argument, but I will argue fiercely for this one): The Dogs of War. The plot in the novel is simple: Wealthy mining company discovers high concentrations on platinum ore in a remote African banana republic, enlists a British mercenary to initially reconnoitre, and then plan what is politely called a 'regime change' by today's Great Powers. The mercenary recruits his old buddies in arms and pulls off the operation, at some cost. Then he pulls a kicker. Turns out that he knew about the platinum angle all along (yeah, he slept with the mining boss's nubile and rather naive daughter). So he hands over the keys of the country, so to speak, to this other bloke who represents a wandering tribe in Africa.. the 'Jews of Africa'. These nice people now have the job of rebuilding a nation from scratch.. their Palestine. Of course, with the help of platinum mining revenue... but lets not go into that. So now, maybe 22 minutes into the fillum, just on a lark, I looked at the IMDB review. And it said what is below.. which made my head spin.

Author: Bogey Man from Finland

John Irvin directed this film, starring Christopher Walken as war veteran mercenary who gets a job by government to travel to Africa and inform the situation that is pretty hot in there. He does it, and sees the violence that takes place there, and when he returns to US and tells about the evil dictator that dominates there, the new job for him is to travel there again and wipe out the incarnation of evil..

This film isn't any action film as many seem to have expected - me included - but this is pretty sophisticated, but still also little slow moving (dir. cut. 15mins longer than the US version) portrait about the state of some countries in the world, and what these dictators can do to people and country. I'm mostly fascinated by the film's atmosphere and calmness as there isn't stupid gunplay or other usual flaws often found in these films. Walken acts greatly in his role of retired war veteran who takes the job only because of money offered to him. At the end, a twist in plot is coming and all the greediness and betrayal in the film gets a new face.

The end is little stupid as it tries to imitate Apocalypse Now a little, by depicting Walken's face and "the horror" as Francis Ford Coppola did, and the gun fights at the end are also little unnecessary, especially when the film managed to be without them for so long. Still the result is satisfying, yet little too long and occasionally may make the viewer feel little tired, but this film isn't meant to be watched when tired. The US distributor cut the original version by over ten minutes, and I saw the original director's cut which includes many important bits of dialogue and things that add to the film. So I recommend the director's cut of the film as it is the directors original version.

Dogs of War is pretty intelligent and interesting depiction of power and dictatorship, and also very nostalgic in its atmosphere and scenery. The gun battle at the end of the film is great looking and also gripping, but as mentioned, also little unnecessary and too traditional finale. 7/10

Was the above comment useful to you?


Nope. This comment made me think that you missed the whole point!

Anti-Science.

I just love this kind of writing! There are people out there who can't solve a linear equation to save their lives, and make up for this in myriad ways. One of these is to write stupid critiques of works of Science Fiction masters, such as 2001, A Space Odyssey, and to pepper it with preposterous judgments on why 'science as tool of human progress is bound to fail as it is bereft of wisdom'. Wisdom, of course is something that only the mathematically challenged amongst us can aspire to: the slightest predisposition to understanding and explaining the empirical nature of the world is 'knowledge, not wisdom', and dooms us to an incomplete existence. Aah, these fools, with the wisdom to discuss Plato and Thoreau but without the skills to add up their grocery bills! Anyway, read on and rejoice, for such idiots will pass into the world with their fancy degrees and perpetuate their hatred and fear of science, and replace it with something that can they cannot even begin to define. And such people will influence public policy and public spending.

Corruption at the core: the seamy side of a resurgant India.

From today's Statesman editorial.

Canker at the core
How Corruption Permeates The Critical Sectors

By YP Gupta

Corruption has been spreading at all levels of society. It has permeated academic institutions, public personalities, high-ranking officials, doctors, scientists, engineers, and academics. Transparency International’s global corruption report (2007) has revealed that bribes amounting to Rs 2,630 crore are being paid every year to officials of the lower Indian judiciary. Its earlier report had described India as one of the most corrupt nations in the world, with a dubious distinction of ranking among the top 55 nations in terms of corruption.
The unethical practices and the decline in moral values have corrupted a greed-based society. A number of IAS, IPS, MCD, DDA and bank officials have been arrested on charges of corruption. Also, illegal gratification by some judges has had a damaging effect on the judiciary.
The Central Information Commission recently came across a case of forgery, impersonation and falsification of documents against the holder of a fake MBBS degree from Sri Venkateswara University in Tirupati. He had managed to obtain the MD degree in paediatrics from AIIMS by submitting false documents. He also duped the University of Maryland Medicine Centre (USA) and the American Board of Paediatrics. This alleged doctor was exposed when he was experimenting with viagra on children, resulting in some deaths.

Medical admission

A medical admission racket through a coaching centre has been recently unearthed in Kolkata. Earlier, a verdict by a Delhi court convicted an individual of selling fake “medical degrees”. It was detected that around 40,000 such fake degrees were issued by him across the country. The Indian Medical Association had described such doctors as quacks. A principal of a public school was arrested for selling fake CBSE marksheets to failed students in connivance with board officials.
There is a fool-proof racket in the leakage of questions. It operates like a professionally-run business with a nationwide criminal network. The leakage of an MCA question paper of IGNOU, that of the AIIMS entrance examination paper and that of the pre-medical paper of the central board form only the tip of the iceberg. The leakage of question papers for the Common Admission Test (CAT) for the premier management institutes has undermined the credibility of our centres of excellence.
A chairman of the Maharashtra Public Service Commission along with former UPSC members and the controller of examinations were arrested and chargesheeted for taking bribes and replacing the answer papers of unsuccessful examinees. A chairman of the Orissa Public Service Commission was once suspended for irregularities. And the Bihar State University Service Commission’s office was sealed because of irregularities in the selection of lecturers. Also, a former president of the Medical Council of India was held guilty of corruption by Delhi High Court.
A former vice-chancellor of Himachal Pradesh University was arrested for corruption. A former vice-chancellor of Utkal University was indicted for financial irregularities. The former Kerala chief secretary and ex-vice-chancellor of Sree Sankara University of Sanskrit was sentenced to two years’ rigorous imprisonment on corruption charges. A senior computer programmer of Delhi University along with her husband and the candidate’s father were held guilty of criminal conspiracy and forgery by a Delhi court for increasing the candidate’s marks in the MBBS entrance test.
A former vice-chancellor and registrar of Visva-Bharati University were arrested in a fake marksheet case. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) had sought a probe into the omissions and commissions in respect of financial irregularities by the ayurvedic colleges in Bihar. The CBI had chargesheeted a former Meerut University vice-chancellor, his daughter and two officials for forging certificates to get her a job.
Bihar universities have the dubious distinction of issuing fake degrees. BR Ambedkar Bihar University (Muzaffarpur) is notorious. Many of its degrees, including medical, have been found to be fake. The two vice-chancellors of BN Mandal and LNM Mithila Universities (Bihar) were arrested in the fake BEd degree racket. The BN Mandal University is reported to have been selling post-graduate degrees in science for Rs 50,000 each even to those who were not admitted to any of the colleges. The vigilance department has estimated that more than 10,000 persons from Bihar, West Bengal, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh obtained such post-graduate degrees.
Professional ethics are brazenly violated in certain institutions of learning. There are serious allegations of corruption and financial bungling against the vice-chancellors of UP universities, and that of Rajasthan and Pondicherry universities. Marks or admissions are often manipulated. The credibility of Delhi University’s examination system has been under a cloud because three senior professors were removed from service for grave misconduct. One of them was indicted for manipulating the admission of his son to the MBA course.
An inquiry into admissions to the post-graduate medical courses in the seven state-run medical colleges of UP exposed a huge racket. Indeed, the examination system has become defective and is open to manipulation.
At least 30,000 quacks are thriving in Delhi. They claim to be practitioners of alternative medicine, and have been prescribing spurious drugs as indigenous medicines. The Delhi government is contemplating suitable action and an anti-quackery bill is on the anvil. The Medical Council of India has revoked the licences of 12 fake doctors with forged certificates. The Karnataka government has initiated action to prosecute quacks who claim miraculous cures for chronic illnesses.

Armed forces

The armed forces have also lost credibility owing to widespread corruption in their ranks. Twelve senior defence officers have been chargesheeted for corruption, going by a reply to a query in the Rajya Sabha. There has been an erosion of values and conduct within the defence services.
It is unfortunate that there is hardly any deterrent effect on corrupt officials as the process of conviction is slow, and has not made an impact. Consequently, corruption has been flourishing with more and more instances coming to light. It is difficult to visualise a corruption-free society because those who profess probity in public life and proclaim to curb corruption are not serious in introducing reforms.
Drastic changes and reforms are imperative to weed out unethical professional and corrupt practices from our academic and public institutions. The process of conviction needs to be speeded up. Apart from recommending legislation to protect whistle-blowers, the Administrative Reforms Commission has suggested a new piece of legislation ~ Corrupt Public Servants (forfeiture of a property) Bill, to curb corruption. The recent landmark ruling by the Supreme Court that public servants can be prosecuted without mandatory government sanction should have a deterrent effect on corrupt officials and politicians. There is need for transparency and accountability in our academic and public institutions, including the judiciary.

(The writer is ex-Principal Scientist, IARI, New Delhi)

Red Dragon/Manhunter.

I recently happened to see Michael Mann's movie Manhunter, which is based on Thomas Harris' novel 'Red Dragon.' Any comparison with the latter movie is a foregone conclusion for three good reasons:
1. Ralph Fiennes.
2. Edward Norton.
3. Anthony Hopkins.

I mention this list in the order they were important to the film. To give Mann his due, he probably had a much harder job on his hands than Brett Ratner. Mann's best point is also his worst: the soundtrack. An excessive on the soundtrack to create a palpable atmosphere of tension works, but it does so all too well. The background music distracts from the actual movie and that dooms the film. Having said that, Red Dragon benefits immensely from the acting skills of the protagonist (also Harvey Keitel, lets not forget him).

The larger question, which I shall explore later is the following: why does great cinema always chronicle events of a harsh and brutal nature. Why don't feel-good movies also become great movies? I also happened to see another Thomas Harris adaptation: Black Sunday some time ago. This has an Israeli Mossad agent desperately hunting down a Palestinian terrorist who is planning some kind of truly horrific attack on US citizens with the help of someone in the US. Such a movie could perhaps only be made properly by John Frankenheimer. Bruce Dern is very convincing as Lander, the brilliant, but insane Vietnam war vet who will have his vengeance no matter what. The best performance, by far is Robert Shaw (yes, him! remember him from Jaws.. the slowly rocking Orca in the ocean, waiting for the great white..?). Understated, but strong, it is a true please to watch him as he closes in slowly, but relentlessly on his target.

Tyler Durden as Calvin?!

Yes, someone has spend a lot of time speculating that the nameless narrator of Chuck Palahniuk's masterwork 'Fight Club' is simply a grown up Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes. Susie Derkins has metamorphosed into an incredibly sexy Marla Singer with whom Tyler/narrator/Calvin shares a love-hate relationship taken to its farthest point. Add characters from Dave Fincher's film and the image of Susie Derkins growing up to become Helena Bonham Carter fills one with.... ur... mixed feelings. At this point I haven't read the article yet.. but I suspect that Get Rid Of Slimy gurleS ie GROSS has turned into Project Mayhem. Read on here.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Now it is immediately obvious to most people that if we could all get long nice and proper then the world would be a much better place. I have periodically waxed eloquent on how we should disarm, etc etc. But reality tells us something quite different.. that people will always settle differences with fisticuffs and so will nations. We have been relatively lucky in that the last fifty years has not seen the great powers go to war (at least against each other... yeah I am being horribly cynical here). They have, however fought a silent war which has been waged in the darkness of total obscurity. The only time when this silent world intersects the overt one is when something goes frighteningly wrong down there. Of course, this war has been fought because our political masters have deemed it expedient to do so. It may occur to us to blame the pettiness of current leaders.. but note that the necessity of an intelligence network was first advocated by Chanakya, the Prime Minister of Chandragupta Maurya in the fourth century BC.

So these people whom we have mandated to fight a war silently and obtrusively, but viciously, nonetheless; have done so and we have all called their preoccupation- the 'Game'. The Game, like every one of our creations has taken on a life and purpose of its own, one sometimes, perhaps inevitably viewed as malignant to its political masters. That was always meant to be, because we have asked these men to pass judgment and dispense justice within the shadows, and not let anyone pass through the murky, suspicious night; least of all, ourselves. They have done so. They have pursued monsters down labyrinthine pathways and found the masters of these monsters to be men like them. Sometimes they have introspected, and found horrifying beasts of their own creation straining at the leash. They have played the Game in all its subtlety and its dark grandeur; and in the end they have all been played by the Game itself.

Harry Palmer is never actually mentioned by name in any of the books. He simply is: a smart alecky and somewhat unprepossessing exterior concealing a very capable agent. For one who deals in lies, the borders frequently become hazy. The few loyalties that exist are those from person to person.. and our protagonist shares much more with his opposite number, Colonel Stok, the Red Army chief of security for East Berlin. Johnny Vulkan is the other person trying to navigate the quagmire of broken loyalties and forgotten alliances that his life is. Berlin is the only city where darkness is safer than light. The city shifts in its sleep, throwing up human flotsam in a manner so uncaring that one wants to cry out in protest. A rush of feet in the sand followed by a quick burst of machine gun fire.. in the morning, a corpse lies tangled in the wire before the wall. For Palmer, negotiating the treacherous line between Vulkan and Stok, the Game has to be played out till the last stroke. Len Deighton crafts an amazing book with layered complexity, each layer peeled away to reveal one below, infinitely rich and subtle. This is a style markedly different from the moody darkness of the Bernard Samson novels and equally far from the lyricism of Bomber. This is the Game at its best.

A little late in the day, but Miss Teen South Carolina said the following...

Yes, this post is a week late, but hey, at least it got here.. for posterity.. or as long as google backs up the blogger servers.. this post will stand witness to the fact that stupidity rules.....

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/thebigblog/archives/121145.asp

Gavin Menzies and why we should not rewrite history.

The study of world history is one of the most important occupations of scholars. There is much to be said for the contemplation and chronicling of the works and thoughts of our fathers. There are two major approaches one can think of (I write here as a complete layman, but one interested in fact and approach). First: history is studied in broad brushstrokes, and is considered to be in dynamic equilibrium with colossal forces of economics and environment. Thus, we study timelines and economics in conjunction with historical developments and try to place them side by side so that they make sense. For instance, the construction of splendid temples in South India during the rise of the Muslim influence in North India in the 15th century coincided with increased patronage of architecture by the ruling Hindu kings. This was also met with an influx of Hindu refugees from the North, amongst them men of skill and knowledge, who, in turn needed employment.

The other approach is that history is the story of human life, and is composed of the stories of individual humans. This personal approach involved the researcher to look back through time and ascribe emotions and aspirations to his subject. This is readily possible if there are enough supporting documents and artifacts. Thus, we have the beautifully researched works of Dominique Lapierre. However, such works are inevitably tinged with the personality of the writer. Such is the nature of the approach. It is my belief that history must be studied in a manner which incorporated elements of both approaches.

Gavin Menzies, a former submariner with the Royal Navy has authored a book called '1421: The Year China Discovered the World'. This can be classified as 'pop history'. It smacks of well researched scholarship. But this impression is rather short lived. Quite soon, the reader discovers that Mr. Menzies is drawing conclusions out of the flimsiest data. He is, in fact writing his own history. What blew me away was the point when he described Malayalam as a dead language. Try telling that to the several million people of Kerala who speak and write it daily. Several scholars have spoken out against Menzies' outrageous interpretation and his unscientific approach. That does not, however do anything to reduce the popularity of the book, I suspect. It appears now, that pop-history, and hideously inaccurate pop-history, at that is worth good money. The wiki entry is here.

Almost done.

Our move in is almost done... this was a long and painful weekend... i usually take some pride in not being tied to the internet all the time.. unlike a lot of people.. turns out that I am not that different.. our internet link is still down.. and that bugs me. Also our TV is on the blink.. no sound.. looks like we are going to need a new one... so there...

Also read, against my better judgment, a Ken Follet book. I was right, he is a truly trashy writer with really mediocre ideas and even worse narration skills. And then saw Fail-Safe, based on the book I have reviewed recently (The end of everything)... an excellent piece of work.. brings out the tension and mounting agony beautifully. My favourite scene was was General Bogan is talking to his opposite officer General Koniev who was in charge of air defenses in the USSR and at the moment they realise that the impending catastrophe is actually upon them, and that there is no way out, none at all, they also realise that they are not soldiers on opposite sides of the fence, they are not capitalist and communist opponents, they are simply men overwhelmed by the complexity of their own fears. And at that moment, Koniev says to Bogan, 'goodbye, my friend', an acknowledgement that they had both fought with tenacity and courage against almost impossible odds, but tinged with infinite sorrow, for they had fought in vain, and in spite of their best efforts, men would die in screaming agony, die in the false dawn of the mushroom cloud. Transistors and computers had replaced brave men, because we had deemed it expedient. And the price for such folly would be terrible.