A Message from Ferdinand the Jedi (repost)

My dear friend,

You are needed in this tumultuous time. There is suffering, tragedy, and despair all around you, but you must see past it all. When you do, you will realize that we are winning.

Do not think that there is not enough time, that there simply aren't enough of us, or that "they" are just too powerful. This is all rubbish. The rulers control the banking system, but their "money" is printed on cotton and created out of thin air; it means nothing. They control the media, but once you have learned the truth, you become immune to falsehoods, distortions, and propaganda. There really is no going back to a life of ignorance. Every bit of information you have assimilated has changed you forever.


You know the path is difficult and fraught with danger. You should never underestimate the power of the Dark Side, especially in times like these. The practitioners of black magic are working tirelessly to push you toward fear, hatred, jealousy, anger, aggression and any emotion that brings you into lower states of being, away from the love of the universe. Be not attached to the material world around you, as it all falls to dust in the end. If you desire nothing and love all, then you cannot be corrupted by the Dark Side.

There is no reason to be afraid. The "powerful" people of this world have no power over you. You are a sovereign being shining brightly, illuminating the darkness that tries to creep in around you. "Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter." You cede your power to others when you fear death, which drives all other fears. However, it is completely illogical and counterintuitive as death is the only certainty there is in life.

"Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them do not. Miss them do not." Thus spake the Master Yoda.

Part of your power is your infectiousness. Every word you utter and every action you take affects the world around you. Even though there are many closed minds, there are still many open souls receptive to the waves of truth that emanate forth from your very presence. You can never be fully conscious of the full impact of the light you absorb, transform, and create, but you should know that your ripples extend in all directions into the waters of time further than you can possibly imagine.

Understand that you are the only you. There has never been, and will never be, another you. You are unique. And the entire world and all that you consider "reality" exists within you just as you exist within the world. You are connected with everything that exists and are one in the same. Your power and extent are limited only by your ego. Take from this what you will, but take only what you need.

Amazingly, there are others like you. Although it might seem like it sometimes, you are not alone in this world. There are currently more enlightened, spiritually evolved people on this planet than there have been for quite some time, if ever. And the numbers are continuously increasing despite the rampant materialism and consumerism of our culture, the poisoning of our food and water, and an educational system and media that discourage real critical thinking.

It is also hard to see the reality because the awakened ones are spread out across the globe in a thin layer. This distribution is in direct opposition to the centralization of power that is occurring with the Dark Side of the Force.

So whenever you start feeling pessimistic, realize that you have allies all over, the most powerful of which is the Force itself.* You know there is hope. But this hope lies not within any man, group, or ideology. It lies within you. This is the turning of the tide and humanity needs you. "Always in motion is the future."

Go and create your reality, and may the Force be with you!

Ferdinand the Jedi
9 October 2008

-----
* And we don't mean the PDRM!

[First posted 25 October 2008. Reposted 3 April 2016]

Let Them Eat Ketupat! Selamat Hari Raya! (repost)

Originally posted on 10 January 2009, I'm reposting this mainly because it opens with a nice picture of ketupats... and also because little has changed after seven years!

Life will never again be the same after March 8th, 2008. Not for any of the political parties whose fortunes have seen unprecedented reversals, nor for the quiet-living, tax-paying citizen. And certainly not for those of us who contribute to the nation by writing, reporting, performing on stage, or conjuring images in our studios.

What's so different about life after the political tsunami?

Obviously, the status quo is no longer static. Change is in the air and what seemed like an immovable object (the Umno/BN regime) has now encountered an irresistible force (the rapidly rising tide of an awakened and empowered rakyat).


In the aftermath of the March 8th tsunami, the "immovable" object was seen to have been swept half-a-mile downstream and turned upside down with its backside exposed for all to see and snigger at. Like the "unsinkable" Titanic that ignominiously sank, the "immovable" Umno/BN not only has undeniably been moved, it's in imminent danger of being forcibly removed altogether.

For more than half a century UMNO and its chief concubines MCA and MIC represented the vested interests of the propertied classes: the Malay aristocracy, the upper echelons of well-heeled Malayans and, of course, the foreign industrialists. It was a distinctly rightwing administration whose greatest fear and worst enemy was the bogus bogeyman called Communism. It tolerated a limited amount of pinkness in the form of strictly regulated trade unions and a feeble though stoical socialist party which for years featured the head of an ox against an industrial cog as its symbol (thereby defining itself as the political voice of no-longer-mute beasts of burden).

After the 13 May 1969 coup d'etat which saw the first prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman deposed by a military-style National Operations Council led by Abdul Razak bin Haji Hussein, the electoral map was redrawn to ensure that there wasn't the remotest possibility of any opposition party becoming so strong it could serve as a viable alternative to what was now ill-advisedly called Barisan Nasional or the National Front (which immediately brings to mind the British Neo-Nazi Party of the same name).


So it was pretty much business-as-usual for BN for more than four decades. As happened in the United States, business began to merge with politics until the demarcation between public and private interests became invisible. Entrepreneurs and bureaucrats hopped into bed together and gleefully screwed the comatose public for all it was worth.

Mahathir's 22-year reign as prime minister saw the rise of Rupert Murdoch wannabes like Robert Kuok, Ananda Krishnan, Vincent Tan, Yeoh Tiong Lay, Lim Goh Tong and Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary. These card-carrying capitalists were empire-builders driven by their unstoppable ambition to be listed in Forbes Top 100. It's impossible not to tip one's hat in recognition of their vision, perseverance and sheer stamina. Yet they could never have amassed their vast fortunes without becoming intimate buddies with whosoever held the reins of political power.

And, of course, hobnobbing with power has unwholesome ramifications. More often than not. it's well-nigh impossible to draw a line between fair and foul practice. An old Greek saying cynically advises:

If you want to sleep well, make friends with your wife.
If you want to get fat, make friends with your mother-in-law.
If you want to get rich, make friends with the chief of police.


Nor could these go-getters have become billionaires by being overly sensitive to environmental and social issues. Many successful entrepreneurs find it advantageous to their public image to be seen as philanthropists - and many subscribe to "corporate social responsibility" programs whereby a tiny portion of their unimaginable profits is plowed back to the community in various ways.

A giant property consortium turned a verdant valley once populated by an Orang Asli community into a commercial-industrial wasteland. In exchange for their ancestral land each Orang Asli family was given a double-story link house plus a shophouse for them to rent out. A couple dozen kids were offered scholarships to study modern construction methods.

It all made for good PR, no doubt: spending RM335,000 of public funds on a special ceremony officiated by the PM to which all the Orang Asli headmen were invited and treated to one night's stay in a 3-star hotel, with a pair of leather shoes and a smart jacket thrown in. Nevertheless, what the developer had really done was erase the culture and memory of this Orang Asli community. Severed from their emotional links to the land, indigenous people soon cease to exist as such and become assimilated with the dominant culture.

Making a pile of money from ecocide and ethnocide is hardly laudable. I call these ill-gotten gains - like getting rich from turning youngsters into drug addicts and prostitutes. What if you're not directly involved with such unsavory activities - but happen to serve some big-shot wheeler-dealer as, let's say, his legal advisor or advertising and PR consultant? Does that make the money you earn any cleaner?

Looking at it from the strictly professional viewpoint, should a tailor refuse to make a suit for an underworld kingpin with blood on his hands? Should a dentist turn away a sex maniac minister who has been known to commit statutory rape? Not if the dentist happens to be a rapacious former chief minister, I suppose...

It would be practically impossible to do business if value judgments had to be applied to every situation. What if you happen to be chief legal advisor to Umno and have just been roped in to oversee a particularly shady operation? Or if you were a PR consultant whose professional services have been recruited to reverse the negative spin on the PM's public image?

Supposing you were married to a high-powered banker and your hubby was invited to dinner at the finance minister's residence. Would you dress up in all your finery and make small talk with a woman everybody believes is capable of cold-blooded murder?

These are very real dilemmas plaguing a few of my former friends. I say "former" because a couple of them recently dropped me from their guest list as a result of my trenchant political views. It saddens me, to be sure, that in these times of tumultuous sea and sky changes, friends and even families are being split down the middle by polarized political affiliations.

I can imagine a similar situation playing out in America shortly after Bush ordered the bombing of Baghdad. What if you were at a family Christmas dinner and one of your brothers-in-law just happened to be a senior executive at Raytheon Enterprises - one of the top-earning defense contractors in America - and he thought extremely highly of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice? Would you, for the sake of diplomacy, stick to remarks about the weather and concentrate on the food?

Popular legend has it that Marie Antoinette, when informed that the peasants were rioting, wanted to know what it was all about. One of her attendants informed her that it was because the poor could no longer afford to buy bread. "Then let them eat cake!" Marie allegedly responded.*

I can already picture a similar scenario developing in Malaysia as the effects of the financial meltdown and widespread joblessness begin to be felt. As always it's the working class with low cash reserves that feels the pinch first. We're not far from the day half a million hungry poor will be on the streets demanding an increase in their weekly rice ration. And some Toh Puan daintily ensconced in a 26-million-ringgit mansion will turn to her maidservant and huff, "So let them eat ketupat!"
_______

*I plead artistic licence with this well-worn and totally spurious anecdote. Marie Antoinette was much maligned in France simply because she happened to be Austrian. In truth she never actually made such a crass remark. My apologies to the memory of this hapless Hapsburg princess who suffered much and was grievously misunderstood. Reposted 30 August 2011, 28 July 2014, 15 July 2015 & 6 July 2016]

FLASHBACK TO MAY 2011: Intense US diplomatic interest in Altantuya murder trial revealed by Wikileaks (reprise)

The US Embassy in Kuala Lumpur closely followed the trial of the accused killers of Mongolian interpreter Altantuya Shaariibuu and frequently discussed whether current Prime Minister Najib Razak was involved in the killing, according to diplomatic cables supplied to Asia Sentinel by the WikiLeaks website.

The diplomats, like much of the public, also speculated that the trial was being deliberately delayed and feared what one cable calls "prosecutorial misconduct" that was being politically manipulated. The embassy officials based their concerns on sources within the prosecution, government and the political opposition.

The cables also draw attention to an intriguing allegation that then Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi may have attempted to use the proceedings to implicate Najib, a claim that was quickly hushed up in the Malaysian press.

Sirul Azhar & Azilah Hadri, Najib's bodyguards

Altantuya was murdered in October 2006 by two of Najib's bodyguards, chief inspector Azilah Hadri, 30 and corporal Sirul Azhar Umar, 35, who stood trial and were pronounced guilty in April 2009.

Abdul Razak Baginda, one of Najib's best friends and Altantuya's lover, was accused of participating in the murder but was freed without having to put on a defence.

The murder has been tied closely to the US$1 billion acquisition of French submarines by the Malaysian Defence Ministry, which Najib headed during the acquisitions. Altantuya reportedly acted as a translator on the transaction, which netted Razak Baginda's company a 114 million euros (RM534.8 million) "commission" on the purchase.

Reportedly she had been offered US$500,000 for her part in translating. After she was jilted, she vainly demanded payment. A letter she had written was made public after her death saying she regretted attempting to "blackmail" Razak Baginda.

French lawyers are investigating whether some of the 114 million euros was kicked back to French or Malaysian politicians. Despite the scandal, the US government has not publicly backed away from Najib.

In April 2010, Najib visited the White House and was praised by President Barack Obama for the Parliament's passage of an act allowing Malaysian authorities to take action against individuals and entities engaged in proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The cables are replete with accounts of a long series of meetings with opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, who repeatedly told the Americans that Najib was connected to corrupt practices in the acquisition of the submarines as well as the purchase of Sukhoi Su-MCM-30 Flanker fighter jets from Russia. Anwar also called attention to Najib's connection to the Altantuya case.

Prosecution ineptitude by design?

A Jan 24, 2007 cable, marked ‘secret', wrote that "Perceived irregularities on the part of prosecutors and the court, and the alleged destruction of some evidence, suggested to many that the case was subject to strong political pressure intended to protect Najib."

Altantuya with her son

In a Feb 1, 2008 cable, embassy's political section chief Mark D Clark wrote that a deputy prosecutor had told him "there was almost no chance of winning guilty verdicts in the on-going trial of defendants Razak Baginda (left), a close advisor to Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak, and two police officers. She described the trial as interminably long." (That, of course, turned out to be wrong. Sirul (below, right) and Azilah (below, left) were ultimately convicted and have appealed their sentence).

Clark called the trial a "a prosecutorial embarrassment from its inception, leading many to speculate that the ineptitude was by design. On the eve of the trial, attorney-general Abdul Gani Patail dropped his lead prosecutors and replaced them with less experienced attorneys.

Similarly, a lead counsel for one of the defendants abruptly resigned before the trial 'because of (political) attempts to interfere with a defence he had proposed, in particular to protect an unnamed third party.'"

The protracted nature of the case, Clark continued, led "at least one regional newspaper to speculate that ‘the case is being deliberately delayed to drive it from public view'. Malaysia's daily newspapers rarely mention the case's latest developments, and it is unprecedented in Malaysian judicial history that a murder trial could drag on for seven months and still not give the defence an opportunity to present its case.

"Such an environment has led many to conclude that the case was too politically sensitive to yield a verdict before the anticipated general elections."

Musa Safri.
Najib's aide-de-camp

A January 2007 cable called attention to Razak Baginda's affidavit confirming that he sought the help of Musa Safri, later identified by reporters as Najib's aide-de-camp, in ridding him of the jilted woman, and in other cables pointed out that Musa had never been called for questioning.

In another cable, dated May 16, 2007, Wan Ahmad Farid Wan Salleh, a then aide to former prime minister Ahmad Abdullah Badawi, told US Embassy officials that he was "certain that government prosecutors would limit their trial activities to the murder itself and the three defendants; prosecutors would not follow up on allegations of related corruption or other suspects."

In a Jan 27, 2007 cable, marked ‘Secret', embassy officials wrote that "In December we heard from one of (Anwar's) lawyers that Razak Baginda's wife was in contact with Anwar and Wan Azizah, suggesting one possible source for Anwar's information."

Razak Baginda's wife (right), during one of his first appearances in court, screamed that her husband "doesn't want to be prime minister." That was taken by observers as a reference to the fact that Najib reportedly had been having an affair with Altantuya, but passed her on to Razak Baginda because it would be unseemly to have a mistress when he succeeded Abdullah as premier. Najib has offered to swear on the Quran that he had never met the woman.

Perumal Balasubramaniam,
private investigator

However, in July 2008, P Balasubramaniam, a former police officer and private detective who had been hired by Razak Baginda to protect him from Altantuya, filed a sworn statement saying he had been told by the accused man that Najib not only knew the murdered woman but had an affair with her and introduced her to him.

In a telephone interview on May 9, Anwar, however, told Asia Sentinel that Razak Baginda's wife was not the source of his knowledge of Najib's connection and that instead he had been told of the connection by Setev Shaariibuu (seated right in photo), Altantuya's father, who said he had wished to present evidence of Najib's involvement, but was not allowed to do so. Multiple attempts to contact Setev by Asia Sentinel have been unsuccessful.

Almost immediately after he made the statement, Balasubramaniam was picked up and driven to a police station, where he was forced to withdraw the statement and write a new one saying Razak Baginda had told him nothing of the sort. Balasubramaniam fled Malaysia for India.

He later said Najib's brother, Nazim, and wife, Rosmah Mansor, had met with him and that he was offered RM5 million to forget his statement connecting Najib to Altantuya.

Balasubramaniam displayed a flock of checks drawn on the account of an associate of Najib's wife. The former private detective has made a series of statements from outside the country about Najib's involvement.

'You can die, Pak Lah'

A February 2008 cable from political section chief Clark gives a hint that Abdullah Badawi himself may have been trying to get rid of Najib by forcing Razak Baginda to implicate him in the murder.

Razak Baginda, wife & daughter

"In the latest turn of the ongoing Altantuya murder trial, accused political insider Abdul Razak Baginda, who has remained calm and composed through most of the proceedings, unleashed an emotional tirade shortly after the Feb 20 noon recess on the trial's 90th day," Clark wrote.

"Referring to the prime minister by his nick-name 'Pak Lah', Razak reportedly exclaimed: ‘You can die, Pak Lah! (in Malaysian - Matilah kau, Pak Lah!) I'm innocent!' according to unpublished journalist accounts.

"Local newspapers and the government news service Bernama reported the fact of the outburst, but did not print Razak's statements. The short-lived exception was the English language newspaper The Sun, which included the quotations from Razak in its early morning Feb 21 edition.

"Sources at newspaper confirmed to us in confidence that the Ministry of Internal Security compelled The Sun to withdraw and recall thousands of copies of their first run paper in which the original quote was included. Prime Minister Abdullah serves concurrently as Minister of Internal Security."

During the trial, Clark wrote, Razak Baginda, "appeared uneasy throughout the morning session of court on Feb 20. Razak's father, Abdullah Malim Baginda, had whispered something to him shortly before the trial had begun for the morning and apparently upset the accused.

Razak had remained quiet throughout the morning hearings, but just after the noon recess was called and as he was leaving the courtroom he kicked and banged the door and yelled, ‘You can die, Pak Lah! Die, Pak Lah! I am innocent. I am innocent.' He was later seen crying before his lawyer while his mother attempted to comfort him.

Shaariibuu Setev, the murdered woman's father

"Speculation is rife in Malaysia's online community concerning what it was that set off Razak Baginda outburst, including conspiracy theories alleging the Prime Minister's Office had urged Razak to implicate Deputy Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak ... in return for sparing Razak a guilty verdict and its mandatory death sentence," officials wrote.

The cable goes on to write, "Regardless, the Internal Security Ministry would want to limit any possibly inflammatory reference to the prime minister at the trial, and particularly at this juncture due to the proximity of Malaysia's general election to be held on March 8. Any connection between the prime minister and the murder trial would be scandalous.

"The GOM (government of Malaysia) reportedly has worked hard to ‘drive (the case) from public view' ... and is not about to allow the case to influence the coming elections."

- Asia Sentinel

[Posted 14 April 2015]

Unity Consciousness & Bi-Polar Politics (reposted)

Some of us feel drawn to the noble notion of Unity Consciousness - which I define as a transcendent perspective wherein one is increasingly aware of a greater, more inclusive context of our existence. Indeed, Unity Consciousness implies a pluralistic view of reality that reconciles, redeems and integrates apparent conflicts and contradictions.

Fashionable phrases like "unconditional love," "non-judgment," "loving allowance" and "oneness" get bandied about in New Age circles, making some of us feel unworthy every time we experience a bad hair day and find ourselves using foul language on people or situations that irk us and impinge on our sense of justice.

Meanwhile, within the 3D Matrix, atavistic and recalcitrant egos descended from fallen angel bloodlines with pronounced criminal tendencies continue to call the shots in economics and politics by setting themselves up as the misruling elite. It's all very well to acknowledge that these destructive and diabolical elements are ultimately an aspect of our greater self - but does this mean we remain passive in the face of their virulent abuse of power and tyrannical exploitation of the semi-conscious masses?

Fortunately I've learned how to dance between the third and fifth dimensions, occasionally venturing beyond to catch a glimpse of existence beyond the semantic universe. This frees me from being overly attached to outcomes on the 3rd dimension and allows me to build energetic links between these realities. In the third, we are conditioned to think in terms of either/or, win or lose - but in the fifth we begin to intuit the beauty of both/and situations and the possibility of win-win scenarios.

The 3rd dimension creates a great divide between hero and villain, white hat and black hat. Looking at events from the 5th dimension, we easily perceive the transitional effect of various behaviors. For instance, what appears to be a vile and vicious act on the 3rd dimension reveals itself as a catalytic incident with positive precessional effects (90-degree spin-offs that trigger evolutionary transformations).

Expressed in simple terms, no matter how evil one's intentions may be, the outcome of one's misdeeds invariably results in some unexpected good - the silver lining that offsets even the darkest cloud.

What good came out of Mahathir's megalomaniacal 22-year misrule? Firstly, he politicized and activated a few million previously apathetic citizens like myself with his excesses. Secondly, he equated the Internet with accelerated progress and installed the very mechanism that would soon reveal Umno/BN to be a monster of Dr M's own miscreation.

And, thirdly, his ruthless, vindictive and violent retaliation against his erstwhile deputy Anwar Ibrahim's rebellion effectively planted the seeds of a two-party parliamentary system that would germinate ten years later as the 8 March 2008 political tsunami.

Similarly, Najib Razak's inevitable rise to power in accordance with the Umno Agenda would fulfil the "RAHMAN prophecy" and mark the end of Umno misrule. And since Umno has always equated itself with Malay vested interests, the warlords can only spin the end of their era as an unbearable loss of political power to the pendatang or "immigrant races."

Ali Tinju & Jamal Yunos stirring up racial shit 
at the Red Shirt rally on 16 September 2015 

The more xenophobic fear the bigots whip up among the ignorant and illiterate, the stronger the desire for radical transformation will grow in the hearts and minds of the intelligent, the young and free-spirited. Indeed, the crude and imbecilic rantings of political troglodytes like Ali Tinju and Jamal Yunos only serve to enhance the appeal of enlightened cosmopolitanism and universal, rather than local, values.

It took an Adolf Hitler and his Third Reich to liberate the German people forever from narrow-minded racism and cultural insularity. I'm counting on Ali Tinju and his ilk to force the more intelligent and honest Malays from under their monolingual, monocultural coconut shells... and into the light of a far greater vision of unity that totally transcends race and religion.

Perhaps we will emerge as a nation of truth-speaking justice-lovers from our collective nightmare of being saddled for more than a decade with moral anomalies like Abdul Gani Patail as Attorney-General and Musa Hassan as Inspector-General of Police. [Shortly after this was first posted in August 2010, Musa Hassan stepped down as IGP and was replaced by another dubious character who would swiftly prove to be even denser and darker. In July 2015 Abdul Gani Patail was unceremoniously sacked for daring to draw up a charge sheet against the crime minister Najib Razak, and replaced with an even less credible Attorney General named Apandi Ali].

Bear in mind, nevertheless, that all those who have tacitly or overtly endorsed this obscene state of affairs - from the despatch rider to the Yang Di Pertuan Agong himself - bear equal responsibility for allowing the nation to be dragged into the depths of depravity.

In 1998, at the height of Dr M's vicious campaign to destroy Anwar Ibrahim (his No. 1 political threat), Gani Patail (then a senior prosecutor with the AG's Chambers) was exposed by veteran lawyer Manjeet Singh Dhillon as a blackmailer who attempted to force a false statement from Nallakaruppan (an erstwhile Anwar ally arrested and charged with possession of live ammunition) who was offered a token sentence in lieu of death by hanging if he agreed to testify to having procured the services of prostitutes on Anwar's behalf.

Now that is indeed a very serious offence punishable by at least 10 years' jail - particularly so when the blackmailer is doing so in his formal capacity as a senior officer in the Attorney-General's department. That is a clear-cut case of betrayal of the public interest and gross abuse of power. And yet, Gani Patail was never indicted for this dastardly act. Instead, he was promoted to Attorney-General after Mohtar Abdullah suffered a stroke. This was undoubtedly on Dr Mahathir's recommendation, with the Agong's silent acquiescence.

Can we simply shrug and say, "Let bygones be bygones"? Most certainly not when self-serving, morally compromised flunkeys like Gani Patail, Musa Hassan, Apandi Ali, and Khalid Abu Bakar are put in charge of law enforcement in this country.

We might as well appoint a cold-blooded murderer as prime minister!

No amount of Unity Consciousness can ameliorate the absurdity and utter insanity of such a situation. We have to surgically remove the bullets from our gunshot wounds before we can begin to speak about healing from acute trauma.



[First published 7 August 2010, then reposted 9 June 2012, 9 January 2013, November 2014, 31 March 2016 & 9 April 2020]

55 years after Apollo 11 moon landing... mystery shadow explained! (repost)

On 20 July 1969, NASA's Apollo 11 mission landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon. It was Armstrong who uttered the famous words: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." 

Nobody noticed in the initial excitement of what was purportedly the first manned lunar expedition that a few photos revealed a mysterious shadow near Buzz Aldrin.

For decades there have been heated discussions within the scientific community as to what might have cast that strange shadow on the lunar surface. There have even been suggestions that the Apollo 11 mission was actually just a public relations exercise to conceal the fact that humans had already been on the moon long before July 1969. Indeed, in 1977 a sci-fi thriller called Capricorn One was released with a fake Mars landing as its central theme. Conspiracy buffs say the movie was inspired by insider talk that NASA was trying to cover up secret lunar operations dating back to the 1950s, including underground bases on the dark side of the moon.

Finally, after 55 years, we now know what object actually cast that mystery shadow on the moon... and who Buzz Aldrin was waving at...

"Hey there, young fella, what's your name... 

and what have you got, besides bananas?"

"My name is Mooniandy, sir, I come from Kerala.  

Would you like your bananas split, fried or blended 
with vanilla ice cream?"

Eat your heart out, Mamak Kutty.

[Photos courtesy of Shanghai Fish. First posted 6 October 2011, reposted 13 July 2014 & 8 April 2016]