Thursday 9 February 2012
SingaporeHottests: 120208 Music Bank in Paris
SingaporeHottests: 120208 Music Bank in Paris: [Fancam] Music Bank in Paris - 2PM Medley (Heartbeat, Hate You and I'll Be Back) [Fancam] Music Bank in Paris - 2PM Introduction [Fancam]...
SingaporeHottests: 120208 Music Bank in Paris
SingaporeHottests: 120208 Music Bank in Paris: [Fancam] Music Bank in Paris - 2PM Medley (Heartbeat, Hate You and I'll Be Back) [Fancam] Music Bank in Paris - 2PM Introduction [Fancam]...
Thursday 2 February 2012
Step by Step..
When my existance seems to disappear
I will look for the place where I can do the best I can
From now on I'll deliberate slowly
I won't be impatient
I won't be greedy
I won't give up
Because everyone takes things step by step
Sunday 29 January 2012
First Assignment - Blood and Oil 2010
Well, as told by our beloved lecturer, we shall find a movie that portrays politics, economy and social.
It's all about the close relationship between oil, inequality and corruption.
The story begin ~~
Mark Unwin is one of four employees of Krielsen International oil company captured by militant group MEND whilst they are working in Nigeria. His wife Claire flies out with Alice Onuko, Nigerian-born,British-raised P.R. for Krielsen. When the women arrive in Port Harcourt they are told a ransom has been agreed - as is the norm since MEND depends on ransoms to fund itself. However when civil rights worker Keme, acting as go-between, escorts the women to the handover place they find only the corpses of Mark and his co-workers. Next day Claire meets a journalist who tells her the men were killed by the Nigerian government after their release by MEND and he is himself later found dead. She also learns that he was having an affair with Angel, a prostitute,whom she confronts but who is whisked away in a car before she can say anything. Alice is equally shocked to find that her father has made his money less than scrupulously from oil. Keme is jailed but Alice levers Tunde, the police chief, into releasing him despite Tunde's efforts to silence her. Keme takes Alice and Claire deep into the jungle to meet MEND leader Ebi who swears that Mark's murderers were Nigerian officers under Tunde,who staged the massacre to blame MEND. Mark and his dead colleagues were being recruited as mercenaries against the government, a fact Claire does not reveal in her press statement when she returns to England. Keme continues to canvass for equality in Nigeria,with a new recruit - Alice.
The cast :
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Scene 1 : This scene is the first scene in Blood and Oil where the MEND attacked the employees of Krielsen International Oil Company. Four of the employees which not from Nigeria has been captured by MEND together with their bodyguard. The MEND captured this four foreign employees as they claimed that this people try to steal their country main resources which is oil. The MEND wanted to claim a ransom money from the government.
As we can see, Nigerian who live in a rural area are poor compare to Nigerian who live in urban area. As in this scene, most of rural area citizen in Nigeria is a farmer. They live in a village and they are far from development even though Nigeria can be consider as a one of rich country in the world.
As seen in scene 2 and scene 3, the government has done negotiated with MEND and agreed to release the hostages as long as they (government) willing to pay them ( MEND ) a ransom money. Unfortunately, when the time they want to fetch the hostages, the three foreign employees are released but not alive. This conflict however a bit confusing because the government already negotiated but they wonder why MEND didn't release the hostage alive.
This negotiated between MEND and government, however can be consider as a failed negotiate as the MEND did not release the foreign oil workers alive.
As a P.R consultant of Krielsen, Alice Onuko has to face the press to clear up the mess about three foreign workers who died in Port Harcourt.
Scene 5 and scene 6 showed that a freelance journalist try to convince Alice, the representative for Krielsen Oil Company that the MEND did not kill the three foreign workers. They was actually been released alive but someone who wanted to show the bad side of MEND killed the foreign workers.
This can be happened due to the sleek politic in Nigeria where people can do anything they want as long as they have money to pay it.
Keme says his own father was part of those who brokered the deal with the Oil companies and the natives, and he(Keme) was educated on the proceeds of those deals. He later discovered his father was part of the problem, so he decided he wanted to be part of the solution. She asked about the hostages who had been killed. Keme assured her they were released alive, however the government troops might have wiped them out in order to put the blame on MEND and its troops, thereby gaining the sympathy of the international community.
As what i said earlier, the rural are and urban area are living in a different way of life. The urban people will get everything while the rural people are left far behind. The facilities that they promised is never build as the money fall to a wrong hand. This corruption between the businessman. They took the money for development purpose and use it their own.
In Nigeria today, oil companies produce sleek annual reports that boast of their community initiatives but there isn't a real interest in sustainability; they spend to keep their freedom to operate, rather than to invest in life-improving program. And, with the government's continued unwillingness to deal properly with the insurgency, there is widespread expectation that oil companies will withdraw from on-shore operations and hand over to the Chinese. Oil bunkering is a major loss of revenue for them, but it isn't really about villagers bursting pipes to scoop oil with buckets. It is instead, well-organized large-scale heists that most people know about but very few acknowledge. Most of all, the Nigerian government can make real change if there is the political will. Surely, the Navy could seal off the major creeks where bunker ships go? Surely, the root causes of the insurgency - poverty and neglect of ordinary citizens in the Niger Delta - can be reversed? But there are too many people who benefit from the status quo and who have invested in keeping things unchanged.
Corruption are everywhere. In order to see the civil right worker Keme Tobodo, Alice Onuko has to bribe every guards for every entries.
Alice goes to the local prison to see Tobodo: unwritten laws in Nigeria about how one pays his way through to get what he/she wants in Nigeria, she drops something “money” just to pass through the gates. In a mean time, when she able to see Keme, she brought fried chicken for him as souvenir. He, straight away asked a permission to eat it right away as he said that the warden will take it away from him.
The life as a prisoner can be seen in this scene where the warden treat a prisoner badly even though they did not confirm yet whether the prisoner is guilty or not. Alice, once again use her power as a P.R consultant to release Keme or else she will not speak on behalf of the company.
Last scene, where Alice, Keme and Claire went to see MEND in the creeks and tried to convince both Alice and Claire that they actually released the hostages alive but the government try to frame them. They even took care and fed them well (the hostage).
On the way back, the body guard tells the truth about why Claires husband was recruited by Charles Meribe: to blow up their own company’s oil rig, but he didn’t know why. The body guard asks for help from Alice to have someone protect him once they get back to Port-Harcourt, he believed the government wanted to get rid of him because of what he knows.
However as far as I know, MEND, the best known of the insurgent groups in the Niger Delta, detonated two car bombs at an Amnesty conference. There was a third bomb, which was not detonated because as MEND said in its press release, it "would have resulted in great loss of lives". Their aim was not to kill people but to send a message about the Nigerian government's unacceptable policy of too many conferences and too little action.
MEND have certainly killed innocent people - a few died in the most recent blasts - but for an armed group fighting its government, they have managed to cultivate a curious humaneness. They kidnap foreign oil workers, but treat them well and release them unharmed. They detonate bombs, but only away from crowds. Perhaps, this is why in ‘Blood and Oil,' a film that pits the Nigerian government's Joint Task Force against MEND, MEND emerges with a saintly halo, its leader a man camped out with his armed boys in the swamp, slightly crazed but only by his own idealism, and brimming with angry integrity. There is something naïve about this portrayal, because it makes MEND in particular and insurgent groups in general, seem incidental to the Niger Delta story.
Set in Nigeria’s oil-producing Delta region, it centres on the activities of the multinationals, the corruption of politicians, and the way the rich and powerful destroy people’s lives.
It begins with the kidnapping of a group of white men working in the oil industry by an organisation dedicated to using oil wealth for the benefit of the area’s people. It may sound like just another story about the brutality of Africa and its people, but it isn’t.
Claire Unwin, the wife of a kidnapped British man, travels to Nigeria and is plunged into a brutal series of events that begin to reveal the true price of oil profits.
Alice Omuka is the other focus of the programme. She is a young PR executive raised and educated in London—the daughter of a wealthy Nigerian businessman.
Question
She is forced to question the ideas she previously held about the positive role of business and the honesty of government officials in Nigeria.
As the two team up to discover the truth, they are pitched against the forces that have sucked Nigeria dry, from the days of British colonialism to the present.
Refreshingly, the militants of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend—a real group active in Nigeria), are not portrayed as bloodthirsty thugs out for their own enrichment.
Even the Nigerians who work for the multinationals—and therefore might get hurt in Mend’s attacks—call them “The Boys”, and their violence is shown as carefully targeted.
Although it didn’t question why the bombing happened, it certainly showed the lies and cover-ups by the police and government.
Blood and Oil suffers occasionally from its excessively pared down “introduction to Africa” approach like many dramas of this nature.
The viewer tends to be presented with a very one-dimensional view of what life is like.
Poverty
And I found it hard to believe that Alice would be shocked to discover that Nigeria has quite a lot of poverty.
Above all it’s view from outside Nigeria, not a view by and from Nigerians. Even Alice is a Nigerian from outside.
But this drama will at least make people think twice about accepting the usual accounts they hear about Africa.
It strikes at the heart of the issue: why in such a potentially rich country only 1 percent of the population benefit from oil revenues, and more than 70 percent of the population live on less than $1 a day.
credit: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1337578/ and http://mypenmypaper.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/movie-review-blood-and-oil-2010/
credit to http://www.youtube.com/user/ahmedhauwa for the video that you cut for me, the time you spent to watch the movie with me and even the explanation of the movie! love ya!! :p
Thursday 15 December 2011
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