Wild Night.

When I was a kid, history became one of the more fascinating subjects that I loved to learn. The idea that great things had happened before you were born was a big revelation. Not only did it made me think that many people had lived and died before my grandparents, it also made me think of how people could significantly change the course of the world.

One of the many standout moments I learned then was the day Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins launched themselves to the moon. Far more scientific and definitely more exciting than reaching the top of Mount Everest, the Apollo missions and the entire space race ignited people's imagination about space and the possibilities beyond it. What primed up our feelings about the Apollo 11 mission was that most of it was televised. It was a worldwide television event. While it was the Americans who were up there spinning around in the tin can, it was the Australians who helped NASA get the video feed everyone wanted to see. 

That is the premise of The Dish. A relatively modest budget for an Australian film, the movie is based on a true story about the men who operated the radio telescope at Parkes in 1969. Parkes was vital to the Apollo 11 mission because not only it is used to relay operational signals when the spacecraft is on the blind sight of Houston, it was also used to relay the video feeds from the lunar module during the extra vehicular activity — the moonwalk. 

To keep things running smoothly, it is up to scientists Cliff Buxton (Sam Neill), Ross "Mitch" Mitchell (Kevin Harrington), Glenn Latham (Tom Long) and Al Burnett (Patrick Warburton), an American from NASA, to point the telescope across the Australian sky to keep the radio signals going both ways. As usual, an operation this big were bound to have problems and it is up to these four men and one big dish to rough it through.

I received The Dish on DVD on the night of September 11th, 2001. A group of friends and I had just finished chatting over coffee and were ready to head home when a friend got a call from his wife telling him that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. We were astounded but dismissed it as a trivial tabloid news. Then moments later, another short call from the wife came through, telling us that another plane had hit Pentagon. All I could think of was something outlandish was going on. 

A lot of weird things have happened in America and this seems to be one of them. So I decided to tune out the news when I got back. And instead of going online, I put the DVD on my PC and watched The Dish. I was so moved by the excitement the world felt over the moon landing that I stayed up and listened to the first audio commentary track on the DVD. When I woke up in the morning and logged on to the net, I got a clearer and more devastating news about the attack.
 

What's So Funny About (Peace, Love And Understanding)

What strike me at first about the event was not the casualties nor the amount of devastation it caused. What stunned me was the sheer audacity of the planning, the conviction to the mission and the brainwashing of the men who died for their cause. 

There have been suicide bombings before and some still occurred after September 11th, but this was perhaps the first attack on such a magnitude. In terms of the art of war, the mission was a brilliant one — converting a global transport machine into a lethal controllable projectile. This is not unlike the Japanese Zero pilots during World War II. The fact that four planes were hijacked to complete the one-day mission is astounding, an idea for a movie that Hollywood surely had heard the pitch.

All of this could not have happened without the purest of all intention — these men had conviction. We are all aware of the idea of conviction but these men brought the meaning of conviction to a higher level. Nobody is more focused and more dangerous than a man who believes that if he dies in the name of god, he gets to go to heaven. These are the kind of men army intelligence could not predict. When you have nothing to lose and the promise of heavenly bliss, you go for the glorious way out.

You could say that these men were brainwashed and to do what they did, they certainly would have to be. But if you look at the world through their eyes, then you would know that they simply believed in a faith so blindly. Underestimating the power of faith, belief and conviction had never had a more devastating impact as this.

I try not to call these men terrorists because the word implies cold hearted and violent men. Simply painting them with those words would be a mistake. These men were not born with hate in their hearts. They too have histories that could be told. Why else could they see themselves as matters?
 

Dear God.

The pessimists would see 2001 as a bad start in the first year of the new century, a marker of things to come. The optimists could only hope that things would get better. As hard and corny as it may sound, good things can come out of bad things.

Following the September 11th attacks, few Americans were quick to judge who were behind the attacks. The world was united in grief and disbelief. We were too upset, angered and confused to think. When the news started to clear up on the racial profile of the men, the pointing fingers were still too few. People were just too consumed to try to understand the reason behind it all. Many who did not understand Islam searched for some answers in their libraries, the local mosques and their Muslim neighbors. 

Even the Muslim world was split right in the middle. Most said that the attack was too horrendous to be called jihad. Few said that America got what they deserved. Many others lent support to the hunt for the organizers of the attack. What was intended to be a call to arms to the Muslim world turned completely the opposite.

Faith found new converts and new apostates. There were those whose belief in god were strengthened while some others found theirs considerably shaken. Some found comfort in the words "Only God knows the reason why" while others rebel against it. More than a few even lost faith in god, in any god. Their reactions were completely ordinary. Atheists and agnostics like I am could sympathize. 

Religion was borne out of the need to fill in the gaps of knowledge we have not gained. People turn to religion to understand what was going on but you can't force them to believe in something they know doesn't make sense. You can only help them see the big picture and let them interpret it the way that is most comfortable to them. 
 

What's Going On?

Depending on how this may end, those who hijacked the planes can be either called terrorists or martyrs. But that's the painful truth about time and history : the ruler of the day will paint the events as he sees it. You could be the king for a century yet when the day your enemies are victorious, all that you have done would be rewritten in reverse. If human beings could survive to see another century, we would probably still kill each other in the name of religion, tradition or dogma.

It seems that most of our enemies are inherited from the previous generation. We are just the dutiful torch bearers keeping the flames burning. So why should we hate our enemies when some of them were only categorized as such barely fifty years ago? The sins of our ancestors darkens too much with our present when it really should not determine how we live our future. Until we recognize this, nothing will change. 

Yet we asked ourselves why we can't have peace when everybody wants it. To really change, we have to forgive but not forget of the brutal things we have done to each other. Still, nobody wants to forgive the past. Nobody wants to put the effort in bringing that in to the peace process. Hence peace couldn't come before love of humanity and the human race. Once we can, we might just understand each other better. Only then might we have peace.
 

The One Thing.

At the end of The Dish, Cliff, Mitch, Glenn and Al succeeded in helping the world to be there when Armstrong and Aldrin stepped off the lunar module and onto the desolate desert of the moon. These four scientists played their part in bringing the world together for the briefest of ten-days of the Apollo 11 mission. We ventured forth into space borne out of our desire to know our place in the universe. We finally had a glimpse of how insignificant we really are.

Those exciting July days of 1969 was the last time the world came together over something good. A lot of the other world events since then had all came from wars, disasters, injustices or the plight of a ravaged Earth. That day in September last year was no different.

I was not yet even a twinkle in my mother's eyes on July 20th, 1969. And on September 11th, 2001, I was too jaded to be bothered. So now I hope that I won't miss the next big thing comes around. I hope that the next big thing will originate from some thing or some place good.

WetWetWet

PS — If I was forced at gunpoint to profess my personal belief, I would say that I believe in the good in us all.