..SINGAPORE ELECTIONS 2011: Media changing Singapore election

..SINGAPORE ELECTIONS 2011: Media changing Singapore election
By Lim Mun Fah in Kuala Lumpur/Sin Chew Daily | ANN – Sat, May 7, 2011
...

Kuala Lumpur (Sin Chew Daily/ANN) - The Singapore general election has been heating up in recent days. In addition to mass rallies, new media have also played their roles. They have added more unpredictable variables to the election and made it more significant.

Some people even said that the relaxed control on new media allowing videos captured during campaign activities to be used in their advertisements is indeed a major historical turning point for long-suppressed Singapore.

As an onlooker, I observed that Singapore's print media have indeed increased coverage for the opposition this time. However, most of the young people still believe that there is no so-called freedom of the press in Singapore and therefore, they do not trust traditional media.

Singapore was ranked 150 out of 196 countries surveyed worldwide in the latest media freedom study conducted by the US-based Freedom House. Its ranking was even worse than Malaysia which was ranked 143. The report has accurately reflected the perception of young people in Singapore.

It is a global phenomenon that the younger generation advocates the new media. However, it has worried the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) when young Singaporeans started to rush to obtain electoral and political information from the new media.

In fact, the opposition's website is more popular than the one of the ruling party. One of the examples is, as of 10am 3 May 2011, the number of Singaporeans who joined the Facebook of 24-year-old Nicole Seah, a fresh woman candidate of the National Solidarity Party (NSP), has hit 60, 244 people. Her popularity is even higher than Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, who has been joining politics for over half of a century.

Another example would be Chen Show-Mao, who is considered as the "trump card" of the Worker's Party (WP). He has 14,266 of Facebook fans. Although he has fewer fans compared to Lee Kuan Yew (57,469) and Foreign Minister George Yeo (22,753), he still has more fans than Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (11,046).

In addition, the top 10 candidates with most Facebook fans also include WP Secretary-General Low Thia Khiang (6), WP Chairman Sylvia Lim Swee Lian (7), PAP Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan (8) and woman rookie Tin Pei Ling (9).

Of course, the high numbers of fans do not guarantee a victory. However, it is observed that with the "help" of the Internet, the opposition's rallies have attracted more young people and at the same time, caused a pressure for the PAP.

Undeniably, the rapid politicisation on the Internet has caused a wind of change in Singapore. However, would it be reflected on votes? It is believed to be the greatest expectation of the opposition and the greatest worry of the ruling party.

Translated by Soong Phui Jee
...

PAP delegation to the UN makes a farce of Gay agenda

PAP 1959



PAP RALLY 2011



WORKERS PARTY RALLY 2011


PAP delegation to the UN makes a farce of Gay agenda Please watch this short video on the Singapore delegation to the UN's recent speech on gay rights in Singapore: ( see link - http://youtu.be/qke8yDBYugs )

This farce of a Singapore delegation said:
"Recognition and success is based on merit and not on factors such as sexual orientation. In the area of employment, the Tripartite Alliance for fair employment practises promotes and educates employers and the general public on fair and responsible employment practises."
Well, a couple of weeks before, just prior to the recent elections campaign, then caretaker Minister of Community, Youth and Sports, Vivian "Rainbow Coalition" Balakrishnan and his GRC team issued a statement that was basically a bid to thwart Singapore's first openly gay politician, Dr Vincent Wijeysinghe, in his attempts for political office.

If the seeking of political office is seen, correctly I would think, to be a seeking of employment, how is it that a government that claims to already have had in place a 'Tipartite Alliance for fair employment practises promotes and educates employers and the general public on fair and responsible employment practises' managed to be the same ones to try and derail Dr Wijeysinghe's bid for office?

All because Dr Wijeysinghe is gay.

Futher, this delegation claims that:

"In recent time, we had robust debates in Parliamentary debates on
whether to decriminalize certain homosexual acts."
Yet, it was Vivian Balakrishnan and his team who posed the question on whether Dr Wijeysinghe was harbouring a "Gay Agenda" that he or the Singapore Democratic Party were planning to pursue in Parliament if elected.

All this while 4 straight men, three of Vivian Balakhrishnan's PAP colleagues - Hri Krishnan Nair, Charles Chong and Baey Yam Keng - as well as PAP-appointed NMP, Siew Kum Hong, who spoke up in support of gay rights in 2007. It would seem that only straight men are allowed to pursue a "Gay Agenda" in Parliament but not gay ones; gays get our rights under the auspices of straight charity.

Vivian Balakhrishnan is of course a Christian; he attends the Barker Road Methodist Church which, along with the Wesley Methodist Church along with many other Christian churches, are known as Christian Taliban Central, and a headhunting grounds for the ruling PAP

Oscar Winners 2011

The full list of winners at the 2011 Academy Awards ...
Best Picture

* Black Swan
* The Fighter
* Inception
* The Kids Are All Right
* The King's Speech - WINNER
* 127 Hours
* The Social Network
* Toy Story 3
* True Grit
* Winter's Bone

Best Actor

* Javier Bardem, Biutiful
* Jeff Bridges, True Grit
* Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network
* Colin Firth, The King's Speech - WINNER
* James Franco, 127 Hours

Best Actress

* Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right
* Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole
* Jennifer Lawrence, Winter's Bone
* Natalie Portman, Black Swan - WINNER
* Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine

Best Supporting Actor

* Christian Bale, The Fighter - WINNER
* John Hawkes, Winter's Bone
* Jeremy Renner, The Town
* Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right
* Geoffrey Rush, The King's Speech

Best Supporting Actress

* Amy Adams, The Fighter
* Helena Bonham Carter, The King's Speech
* Melissa Leo, The Fighter - WINNER
* Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit
* Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom

Best Director

* Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan
* David O. Russell, The Fighter
* Tom Hooper, The King's Speech - WINNER
* David Fincher, The Social Network
* Joel & Ethan Coen, True Grit

Best Original Screenplay

* Another Year
* The Fighter
* Inception
* The Kids Are All Right
* The King's Speech - WINNER

Best Adapted Screenplay

* 127 Hours
* The Social Network - WINNER
* Toy Story 3
* True Grit
* Winter's Bone

Best Animated Film

* How to Train Your Dragon
* The Illusionist
* Toy Story 3 - WINNER

Best Foreign Language Film

* Biutiful
* Dogtooth
* In A Better World - WINNER
* Incendies
* Outside the Law

Best Art Direction

* Alice in Wonderland - WINNER
* Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1
* Inception
* The King's Speech
* True Grit

Cinematography

* Black Swan
* Inception - WINNER
* The King's Speech
* The Social Network
* True Grit

Costume Design

* Alice in Wonderland - WINNER
* I Am Love
* The King's Speech
* The Tempest
* True Grit

Editing

* Black Swan
* The Fighter
* The King's Speech
* 127 Hours
* The Social Network - WINNER

Sound Mixing

* Inception - WINNER
* The King's Speech
* Salt
* The Social Network
* True Grit

Sound Editing

* Inception - WINNER
* Toy Story 3
* Tron: Legacy
* True Grit
* Unstoppable

Original Score

* How to Train Your Dragon
* Inception
* The King's Speech
* 127 Hours
* The Social Network - WINNER

Original Song

* "Coming Home" from Country Strong
* "I See the Light" from Tangled
* "If I Rise" from 127 Hours
* "We Belong Together" from Toy Story 3 - WINNER

Documentary Feature

* Exit through the Gift Shop
* Gasland
* Inside Job - WINNER
* Restrepo
* Waste Land

Documentary (short subject)

* Killing in the Name
* Poster Girl
* Strangers No More - WINNER
* Sun Come Up
* The Warriors of Qiugang

Makeup

* Barney's Version
* The Way Back
* The Wolfman - WINNER

Animated Short Film

* Day & Night
* The Gruffalo
* Let's Pollute
* The Lost Thing - WINNER
* Madagascar, a Journey Diary

Live Action Short Film

* The Confession
* The Crush
* God of Love - WINNER
* Na Wewe
* Wish 143

Visual Effects

* Alice in Wonderland
* Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1
* Hereafter
* Inception - WINNER
* Iron Man 2

Music exec slams Grammys in full-page NY Times ad

Music exec slams Grammys in full-page NY Times ad
Reuters - 2 hours 35 minutes ago


NEW YORK - A veteran music executive has lambasted the Grammy Awards as "a series of hypocrisies and contradictions," in a full-page New York Times advertisement that ran a week after last Sunday's annual ceremony.

Steve Stoute's open letter to Grammy organizers ripped the organization and its 12,000-odd voters for snubbing Eminem and Justin Bieber at this year's ceremony, as well as Eminem and Kanye West at past events.

"Over the course of my 20-year history as an executive in the music business and as the owner of a firm that specializes in in-culture advertising, I have come to the conclusion that the Grammy Awards have clearly lost touch with contemporary popular culture," wrote Stoute, who is currently CEO of the marketing company Translation.

"Unfortunately, the awards show has become a series of hypocrisies and contradictions, leaving me to question why any contemporary popular artist would even participate."

Eminem, this year's leading contender, lost in most of the major categories for which he was nominated. Two-time nominee Bieber went home empty-handed and disappointed. Both West and Eminem have lost the coveted album of the year race multiple times.

"We must acknowledge the massive cultural impact of Eminem and Kanye West and how their music is shaping, influencing and defining the voice of a generation," Stoute wrote.

As for Bieber, he wrote, "How is it that Justin Bieber, an artist that defines what it means to be a modern artist, did not win Best New Artist?"

Stoute noted a connection between performers and winners, citing Arcade Fire's surprise album of the year win just after they had finished their performance.

"Does the Grammys intentionally use artists for their celebrity, popularity and cultural appeal when they already know the winners and then program a show against this expectation?"

There was no immediate reaction from the Recording Academy. Last Sunday's show, despite or because of the shocks, was the highest rated in a decade.

From the grave - By Imran Garda in Middle East ( Excerpt from AlJazeera)

Exactly 41 years ago to the day the great British philosopher Bertrand Russell died. Among the countless works that will continue to bring him posthumous recognition, are his various treatises on human psychology and the one thing he considered the principle driving force in social life - power.

As Hosni Mubarak addressed the millions of Egyptian people, marching, protesting, bursting with revolutionary fervour intent on seeing him vacate a Presidential seat he's occupied for 30 years, I pondered over what Russell would think of Mubarak, and his address, wherein he promised to step down - eventually.

Below are extracts from Russell's articles on political power and the book, "The Conquest of Happiness", offset with extracts of Mubarak's latest speech:




BR: The statesman who has gradually concentrated all power within himself in order that he may be able to carry out the high and noble aims which have led him to eschew comfort and enter the arena of public life, is amazed at the ingratitude of the people when they turn against him.


HM: "Those protests were transformed from a noble and civilised phenomenon of practising freedom of expression to unfortunate clashes, mobilised and controlled by political forces that wanted to escalate and worsen the situation. They targeted the nation's security and stability through acts of provocation theft and looting and setting fires and blocking roads and attacking vital installations and public and private properties and storming some diplomatic missions."

BR: It never occurs to him that his work may have had anything but a public motive, or that the pleasure of controlling affairs may have in any degree inspired his activities. The phrases which are customary on the platform and in the Party Press have gradually come to him to seem to express truths, and he mistakes the rhetoric of partisanship for a genuine analysis of motives.


HM: "I have never, ever been seeking power and the people know the difficult circumstances that I shouldered my responsibility and what I offered this country in war and peace, just as I am a man from the armed forces and it is not in my nature to betray the trust or give up my responsibilities and duties...Hosni Mubarak who speaks to you today is proud of the long years he spent in the service of Egypt and its people. This dear nation is my country, it is the country of all Egyptians, here I have lived and fought for its sake and I defended its land, its sovereignty and interests and on this land I will die and history will judge me and others for our merits and faults.




BR: Power, like vanity, is insatiable. Nothing short of omnipotence could satisfy it completely. And as it is especially the vice of energetic men, the causal efficacy of love of power is out of all proportion to its frequency. It is, indeed, by far the strongest motive in the lives of important men.


HM: "My primary responsibility now is security and independence of the nation to ensure a peaceful transfer of power in circumstances that protect Egypt and the Egyptians and allow handing over responsibility to whoever the people choose in the coming presidential election.”

BR: In any autocratic regime, the holders of power become increasingly tyrannical with experience of the delights that power can afford. Since power over human beings is shown in making them do what they would rather not do, the man who is actuated by love of power is more apt to inflict pain than to permit pleasure. If you ask your boss for leave of absence from the office on some legitimate occasion, his love of power will derive more satisfaction from a refusal than from a consent. If you require a building permit, the petty official concerned will obviously get more pleasure from saying 'No' than from saying 'Yes'. It is this sort of thing which makes the love of power such a dangerous motive.


HM: "I am now absolutely determined to finish my work for the nation in a way that ensures handing over its safe-keeping and banner ... preserving its legitimacy and respecting the constitution.

"I will work in the remaining months of my term to take the steps to ensure a peaceful transfer of power

"I will entrust the new government to perform in ways that will achieve the legitimate rights of the people and that its performance should express the people and their aspirations of political, social and economic reform and to allow job opportunities and combating poverty, realising social justice.

"I also demand the judicial and supervisory authorities to take immediately the necessary measures to continue pursuing outlaws and to investigate those who caused the security disarray and those who undertook acts of theft, looting and setting fires and terrorising citizens.

"This is my pledge to the people during the last remaining months of my current term: I ask God to help me to honour this pledge to complete my vocation to Egypt and its people in what satisfies God, the nation and its people”

BR: Disgusted and disillusioned, he retires from the world after the world has retired from him, and regrets that he ever attempted so thankless a task as the pursuit of the public good.




HM: "I say in all honesty and regardless of the current situation that I did not intend to nominate myself for a new presidential term. I have spent enough years of my life in the service of Egypt and its people.”

The Cinematic State of Things - Best Movies of 2010 - An Excerpt

The Cinematic State of Things
By A. O. SCOTT - Published: December 16, 2010

IN any given year, if you see enough movies — out of habit, ardor or obligation — you will start to notice patterns and clusters. By December the temptation will be nearly overwhelming to generalize from this data, to turn coincidences into trends and trends into matters of world-historical significance. The ad hoc, arbitrary, week-in-week-out sampling of stories and pictures must add up to something, right? Otherwise why bother?

One reason you do bother, of course, is precisely to find experiences that defy expectations and break patterns: movies that challenge your assumptions or alter your habits of perception. How often does that happen? Just enough. (At the end of this article you’ll find 30 examples — 10 best and 20 runners-up — selected from more than 600 movies reviewed in The New York Times in 2010.)

The ritual of year-end list making is a way of sifting through scattered, memorable moments and forcing them briefly into focus. A handful of movies from 2010 will still be interesting in the future, in which case the date of their first appearance will be little more than the answer to a trivia question. Was it a good year for movies? A great year? Hard to say, and finally, who cares? The movies — good and bad alike — shed a blinking, blurry light on the times, illuminating our collective fears, fantasies and failures of will. An attempt at synthesis can only fail, so in lieu of a comprehensive theory of Cinema Now, I offer a handful of postulates on the Cinematic State of Things. I trust they will stimulate sober discussion and principled argument as well as outright ridicule.

1. We are all figments of Leonardo DiCaprio’s imagination. Or Natalie Portman’s. Or Mark Zuckerberg’s. Or Banksy’s. The lines between reality and appearance, reason and madness, truth and fiction have always been blurry, but this was an especially fertile year for dreams, hoaxes and puzzles, many of them playing with fundamental questions of identity. Was Mr. DiCaprio, in “Shutter Island,” a duly appointed federal marshal or loony-bin resident? Awake or asleep in “Inception?” Was “Exit Through the Gift Shop” an elaborate conceptual-art prank by Banksy or an exposé of art-world fraud? And what about “Catfish”? Do our real selves live on Facebook? Or just our real friends?

2. It’s all mom’s fault. 2010 was a very good year for female directors, and for actresses, but also a bad year for mothers. In the maternal monster category — surely Mo’Nique, who broke the mold in “Precious,” should present this award — Melissa Leo from “The Fighter” and Barbara Hershey in “Black Swan” will face stiff competition from the cartoon villainess Mother Gothel (Donna Murphy) in “Tangled” and Jacki Weaver’s criminal matriarch in the Australian film “Animal Kingdom.”

3. But mom is miserable. There was plenty of maternal suffering to counteract such demonization. Rodrigo García’s “Mother and Child” was about nothing else, with Annette Bening, Kerry Washington and Naomi Watts acting out a braided melodrama of longing and loss. But no one suffered as grandly as Tilda Swinton in the operatic “I Am Love,” or as pathetically as Paprika Steen in the unsparing “Applause.”

4. Still, the kids are all right. The daughters in particular. It was a year of brave, tough, adventurous and sometimes reckless girls and young women, including the fearless Rapunzel in “Tangled,” who was also a pretty good singer (thanks to the voice of Mandy Moore and the songs of Alan Menken), and both Fanning sisters: Dakota in Floria Sigismondi’s underrated “Runaways,” and Elle in Sofia Coppola’s haunting, clear-sighted “Somewhere.” Not to mention Jennifer Lawrence’s fearless Ozark teenager in “Winter’s Bone,” Hailee Steinfeld’s plucky Old West avenger in “True Grit” and Chloë Grace Moretz’s lonely vampire in “Let Me In.” Perhaps the bravest of all was the sullen, chain-smoking Lisbeth Salander, incarnated (in the Swedish film versions of Stieg Larsson’s best sellers) by Noomi Rapace.

5. And the kids grow up. Not just Harry Potter. Yes, the general wallowing in male arrested development continued, with the usual comic suspects (Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, Zach Galifianakis) appearing in the usual puerile comedies (one of them called “Grown Ups”). But at least two films — “Somewhere” and “Greenberg” — took a tough-love attitude toward their immature male protagonists, reckoning the emotional costs of delayed maturity and extended adolescence. (The same might be said of “The Social Network.”) And the experience of sending a child off to college, hardly a common theme in movies before now, seems to have become a touchstone. Or at least an official three-film, cross-genre trend, thanks to “Toy Story 3,” “The Kids Are All Right” and “The Kids Grow Up”: a cartoon, a comedy and a documentary. (Meanwhile the drift and ambivalence of the mid- and post-collegiate young was minutely captured in “The Exploding Girl” and “Tiny Furniture.”)

6. Superheroes take a break. Yes, there was “Iron Man 2,” but even that offered a respite from the glowering, pretentious action allegories that have dominated screens for most of the past decade. The battle between good and evil rages on in some quarters, but mostly in self-conscious, self-parodic form. In the strangely similar animated kiddie comedies “Despicable Me” and “Megamind” the heroes and villains are self-conscious role players, and the villains are actually nice as well as more interesting than their occasional square-jawed nemeses. This may reflect genre exhaustion (though another round of superhero blockbusters is already on the horizon), or a measure of real-world cynicism. The investigative documentaries that proliferated this year ("Inside Job," “Client 9,” “Casino Jack and “The United States of Money”) suggest that corruption and criminality exist virtually beyond the reach of justice.

7. The Bush era is not over. “Green Zone,” “Fair Game,” “Casino Jack” (both the documentary version and the Kevin Spacey comeback vehicle), “Inside Job,” “Client 9,” “The Ghost Writer.” So many scores left to settle.

8. But can’t the ’90s come back, or the ’80s, or some era more appealing than the one we’re in? “Love and Other Drugs,” “Greenberg,” “Hot Tub Time Machine,” “The Runaways,” “Howl,” any music documentary you can name.

9. Only a great director can make a great movie, but a good actor can make a bad or mediocre or not-quite-great movie much better. For instance: Helen Mirren in “The Tempest,” Ms. Mirren in “RED,” Paul Giamatti in “Barney’s Version,” Mr. Spacey in “Casino Jack,” Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal in “Love and Other Drugs,” Javier Bardem in “Biutiful,” everyone in “True Grit,” Vanessa Redgrave in “Letters to Juliet,” Liam Neeson in anything he was in, Rachel McAdams in “Morning Glory,” Anthony Mackie in “Night Catches Us.”

10. The discussion of movies is frequently more interesting than the movies themselves. It was more fun to read the impassioned, geeky arguments about “Inception” than to endure a second viewing of that film. Early arguments about the accuracy of “The Social Network” and whether that even mattered gave way to a series of reviews, essays and debates about Facebook, digital entrepreneurship, friendship, business, meritocracy and the Ivy League far richer and more relevant to contemporary life than Aaron Sorkin’s glib script or David Fincher’s elegant atmospherics. And as intellectually lazy and emotionally manipulative as it was, Davis Guggenheim’s “Waiting for Superman” nonetheless focused serious polemical attention on the problems facing American education.

The 10 Best Movies of 2010

1. INSIDE JOB (Charles Ferguson) The crisis of finance capitalism as a great crime story.

2. TOY STORY 3 (Lee Unkrich) The triumph of consumer capitalism as an epic love story.

3. CARLOS (Olivier Assayas) The failure of global revolution as farce, melodrama, erotic thriller and music video.

4. SOMEWHERE (Sofia Coppola) An eccentric, perfect poem about fame, loneliness and cross-generational need.

5. THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT (Lisa Cholodenko) An eccentric, perfect comedy about love, betrayal and cross-generational confusion.

6. GREENBERG (Noah Baumbach) A deliberately imperfect comedy about an eccentric fleeing from love, running from betrayal and wallowing in cross-generational confusion.

7. 127 HOURS (Danny Boyle) It’s all fun until someone loses an arm. And then, strangely enough, it’s even more fun.

8. LAST TRAIN HOME (Lixin Fan) The future of global capitalism, in China and elsewhere: a family tragedy in the form of a documentary, as full of anger, dignity and pathos as a play by Arthur Miller.

9. SECRET SUNSHINE (Lee Chang-dong) A family tragedy from South Korea, in the form of a melodramatic crime story. As dense and gripping as a great novel.

10. EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP (Banksy) All of the above. None of the above. Everything and nothing. An elaborate art-world stunt in the form of a documentary. Or vice versa.

RUNNERS-UP “And Everything Is Going Fine,” “Another Year,” “Black Swan,” “Boxing Gym,” “The Father of My Children,” “The Fighter,” “A Film Unfinished,” “Fish Tank,” “Four Lions,” “The Ghost Writer,” “Howl,” “I Am Love,” “Let Me In,” “Please Give,” “Solitary Man,” “Tangled,” “Tiny Furniture,” “Vincere,; “White Material,” “Winter’s Bone.”

AT&T Video Shows Texting and Driving Don’t Mix - An Excerpt

December 27, 2010, 7:00 am AT&T Video Shows Texting and Driving Don’t Mix
By MATT RICHTEL

“Where u at”

That was the last text message by Mariah West, who died at 18 when she skidded in traffic and flipped into the oncoming lane. She was texting at the time.

She is among the people who appear in a nearly 11-minute documentary developed by AT&T to warn young people about the dangers of texting and driving.

The wireless company planned to release the video today, before New Year’s Eve. The timing is aimed, the company says, at showing that texting and driving deserves to be considered as dangerous as drunken driving. The documentary includes intense, sometimes disturbing, images, including that of Ms. West, as she spent her last minutes alive on a breathing tube.

“Our goal is to help make texting while driving as socially unacceptable as drinking and driving,” said Gail Torreano, a senior vice president with AT&T. “We want this to be in every school in the country and for teenagers to know a text message is not worth a life.”

Research from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute shows that motorists who text face a 23 times greater risk of crash or near crash. Other wireless carriers, like Verizon Wireless, in the last year have increased efforts to warn about the risks of texting and driving.

AT&T says it plans to distribute the documentary to schools, safety organizations and government agencies, and is urging people to take a pledge on its Facebook page not to text and drive.

David Teater, senior director of transportation initiatives at the National Safety Council, a nonprofit safety advocacy organization, said AT&T deserved credit. At the same time, he says, texting can be so hard to resist that teenagers aren’t likely to stop just by hearing such a message.

“The activity is too compelling,” he said, describing texting as having addicting properties. “What they need to do is start deploying technology that will prevent people from being able to text while driving.”

Still, he said: “The wireless industry is very sincere about getting kids to stop texting and driving. I applaud what they’re doing.”