Movie title: Drunken & Dead At the Midnight in Paris

 

The singer, rather than finding himself going back to 1920s’ Paris, becomes increasingly disenchanted with his fellow partners, his producers, his manager, then the whole Parisian society, and eventually, of his own identity and self-existence.

Okay, it would be a bit unthinkable if Woody Allen directed this plot instead.

Movie title: The German Connection

 

How the plot can be improved: the best time setting might be somewhere around 1960s or 1970s, during Cold War’s heightened tensions between United States and Soviet Union. The ‘hitman’, as I want to suggest, might be an illegal immigrant from East Germany, who, being penniless and illiterate in English, struggled to stay alive throughout his time in US, and how he ended up, in a downward spiral, reluctantly joined a White-supremacy organized crime group in Las Vegas (okay, this city might be a bit too mainstream; give me some other possible suggestions please).

Movie title: One Hundred Years of Jealousy

 

 

It somehow reminded me, slightly, of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’. The parallelism, I think, could be like this: this plot may focus about inter-generational conflicts between the racist officer’s family and the colonel’s, and it may even be more interesting when ‘magical realism’ is added as an element of surprise: consider that one of the racist officer’s relatives, unexpectedly, has a monkey’s tail.

But, I’m feared this could be unfilmable though.

Diffen: compare (almost) anything

 

Why you should visit this website: you can compare almost everything, with extensive details, highlights of similarities and differences among the two things compared in numerous aspects, and even detailed backgrounds of the stuff mentioned. Only, and if only, you keep the scope of comparison realistic and relevant (say, when you input two objects you want to compare, for example, don’t expect any results when you enter ‘democracy’ versus ‘antibiotics’, or ‘Han Solo’ versus ‘Barack Obama’).

But, as this website is relatively new, you may not expect this website to be your personal genie. There are a lot of things – with relevant topic for comparison – by which you find no results (they may simply ask you to refer to Wikipedia, while sorting out some important phrases related to the things you want to compare). The best suggestion, still, is to keep browsing other similar websites to get your desired results.

Personally, though, it is still a great website for you to discover new knowledge and expand your horizon.

Link: http://www.diffen.com/

 

People’s Republic of Offshore

 

An in-depth report about one of China’s most notorious, ongoing trends nowadays, as a by-product of its combined decades-old economic growth, the growing social inequality, political rivalries, and corruption: the capital flight, mainly led by government officials, their close relatives, and their surrounding cronies, which ends up in numerous offshore financial centers worldwide.

Read the full coverage in International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

 

Excerpt:

 

China’s Politburo Standing Committee is the all-powerful group of seven (formerly nine) men who run the Communist Party and the country. The records obtained by ICIJ show that relatives of at least five current or former members of this small circle have incorporated companies in the Cook Islands or British Virgin Islands.

China’s “red nobility” — elites tied by blood or marriage to the current leadership or Party elders — are also popularly known as “princelings.” Ordinary Chinese have grown increasingly angry over their vast wealth and what many see as the hypocrisy of officials who tout “people-first” ideals but look the other way while their families peddle power and influence for personal gain.

The leaked offshore records include details of a BVI company 50 percent owned by President Xi’s brother-in-law Deng Jiagui. The husband of Xi’s older sister, Deng is a multimillionaire real estate developer and an investor in metals used in cell phones and other electronics. The records show the other half of Excellence Effort Property Development was owned by yet another BVI company belonging to Li Wa and Li Xiaoping, property tycoons who made news in July bywinning a $2 billion bid to purchase commercial real estate in Shenzhen.

Since taking over as the Communist Party’s top official in 2012, Xi has sought to burnish his image with an aggressive anti-graft campaign, promising to go after official corruption involving both low-level “flies” and high-level “tigers.” Yet he has crushed a grassroots movement that called for government officials to publicly declare their assets. Wen Jiabao, who stepped down as premier in 2013 after a decade-long tenure, also styled himself as a reformer, cultivating an image of grandfatherly concern for China’s poor.

The Islamic Sex Cult Supporting Turkey’s Prime Minister

 

Inside the country’s bizarre Islamic sect, led by Adnan Oktar, a.k.a. ‘Harun Yahya’, with followers dressed in drag-queen suits, promoting weird messages about consumerism, advocating for creationism, making use of soft-core pornography to spread its messages to a wider scope of audience by its chain of televangelist networks either on cable or on Internet, and most controversially, aggressively supporting Turkey’s incumbent, and scandal-laden, prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Read the in-depth article in Balkanist.

 

Excerpt:

 

The group’s theology has been described as a “sexed-up Disney version of Islam” by anthropologist Daniel Martin Varisco, and the show can even get a little homoerotic. A pair of hunky twins named Onder and Ender make the occasional appearance, usually wearing matching muscle t-shirts and excessive bronzer. The camera ogles the two decorative sphinxes while Oktar praises them for their muscular beauty. The women — referred to as Oktar’s “kittens” or “harem” — pose for promo photos together in overtly sexual positions, often coupled with slogans like “I read the Qu’ran” printed across the pictures like postcards.

It all looks cartoonish, but the show has still managed to draw numerous noteworthy professors, politicians, and other prominent people who should probably know better. Since Oktar embraces his own form of neo-Ottomanism, and sees himself as something of a Sultan, many of his interviewees have been from the Balkan region. Not all of them travelled to the Istanbul studio to witness the weird sex cult atmosphere, but each of the following people will remain on one or more of Harun Yahya’s “hundreds of websites” forever: former Serbian Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic, Serbia’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Sladjana Prica, and University of Prizren Rector Mazllum Baraliu. Besides the Balkan figures, he’s also met with Madonna, and claims his Atlas of Creation made rapper Busta Rhymes convert to Islam.

One of Adnan Oktar’s plans is to preside over the creation of something he calls the “Turkish-Islamic Union”, which preliminary maps indicate would only cover about half of the Eastern hemisphere. Like members of Turkey’s current conservative government (especially Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu) and the international religious community known as the Gulen movement with whom the the Turkish leadership is engaged in a very public power struggle, Oktar believes Turkey should be at the center of a new global Islam, and often indulges expansionist fantasies about the resurrection of the Ottoman Empire. Bulent Aras, Professor of International Relations at Isik University, described their aim to “Islamize Turkish nationalism and to Turkify Islam”. The Armani-clad Adnan Oktar shares other values with the current Turkish leadership: relentless consumerism, evidenced in Prime Minister Erdogan’s obsession with bulldozing parks and public spaces to build shopping malls, coupled with a renewed embrace of religion.

 

‘The Turkish-Islamic Union’, an absurd, messianic Muslim hegemony Harun Yahya envisions through his army of televangelists.

 

“Left”, by Eamonn O’Neill

 

A brilliant Irish animation about friendship, conflict, teenage life, and different paths of life that eventually separate lives that were one close – with one going upwards, and the other spiraling downwards.

Hope this short film bring us to reflect back our lives, and how unexpected occurrences can alter the direction of each of our lives forever.

About age, and achieving dreams

 

It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams. – Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927-2014), a Nobel Prize-winning Colombian novelist.

 

Adios, Gabo.  

A song from my friends

 

An original song from my senior, my friend, and also a greatly talented singer-songwriter, Aurelia (left). It’s sung altogether with another friend of mine, and also herself a highly gifted singer, Jennifer. Enjoy 🙂

 

PS: Aurelia got the inspiration for this song after having watched My Sister’s Keeper.

Bonus: follow Aurelia’s channel to listen more to her other self-written songs. And here is another one for Jennifer.

Jakarta, a new perspective

 

Jakarta now emerges not only as Indonesia’s largest city, but also one of the world’s fastest growing megacities, now containing a population approximately 10 million strong in an area barely larger than Singapore (the latter by which has ‘merely’ 5.4 million). As the epicenter of the emerging market, with strong economic boom and vibrant dynamism, this metropolis is currently being faced with numerous challenges, ranging from yearly flooding seasons, en masse traffic breakdown in nearly all important highways stretching across the city, overpopulation, and a lackadaisical of sanitary and hygiene management, the main cause of many infectious, but easily curable, diseases. Worse, it is now being faced with threats resulting from global warming, with its surface level gradually decreasing, placing more areas around the capital at higher stakes.

Nevertheless, last year, Jakarta’s authorities, led by Joko Widodo and Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, had eventually stricken a massive long-term joint investment deal with Dutch government, and some of the country’s major corporations, in order to build a series of megaprojects intended to support its so-called ‘Coastal Defense Strategy’, ranging from giant sea walls, new bridges and highways, and lastly, a wholly new planned city intended to house hundred thousands of people. These series of massive-scale public work projects are expected to significantly reduce the problems the capital is being faced at this moment.

Okay, despite Indonesia’s reputation as one of the world’s highly corrupt countries, let us put some assurance, at least, that this program will be implemented with complete transparency and public accountability.

Watch it, and support it in a new perspective.