Showing posts with label web. Show all posts
Showing posts with label web. Show all posts

Tuesday, 13 February 2024

An open file?

The Stranger (Miniseries, S1,E1-8; 2020)


A cleric politician in the Malaysian Parliament once called for the ruling country to impose stricter control on what children can access on their digital devices. He said that he currently kept on receiving X-rated messages on his phone and went on to rant about how easy it is to access porn online. He went on to say he shuddered to think what the inquisitive minds be up to.

Another politician from the opposite side saw this as a low-hanging fruit and decided to capitalise on it for brownie points. He seized the moment. The second politician tried to educate the first one that what appears on our digital devices is determined by our usage. The algorithm suggests what we should watch based on our previous consumption. In other words, the first politician must be an avid consumer of smut to be inundated with so many invitations to adult sites.

That is it. We think we know everything about the person sitting beside us or under the same roof. Wait for a rude awakening. The person you think you know may actually be a total stranger, managing an alternative life in an alternative universe with an alternative identity!

It may be true that it is pretty easy to lead a double life in this time and age. With so much emphasis and demand for privacy, even among close family members, one can get away with planning, executing and getting away with even murder. Everything is hidden under the cloak of secrecy and the Data Protection Act. So we think!

That is, until someone with the know-how, the access to and data of information, sounds and visuals. That, too, will depend on whose hands these data fall on. Fall into rogue hands, and it could be a source of a lucrative income to them.

This miniseries tells an exciting story involving three seemingly unrelated incidents. A schoolboy is found unconscious in the woods. A well-liked schoolteacher goes missing. She is later accused of mishandling her school football team's finances. And periodically, a stranger appears in places that would least expect her to be, to pass sensitive, deep secrets to people. Interesting 4/5.


Wednesday, 9 September 2020

Nothing is what it seems!

C U Soon (Malayalam; 2020)


The human imagination has no boundaries. Even at a time when all of the movie-making industry has come to a grinding halt, storytellers still managed to squeeze out a full-length feature film.

Who cares if there is a lockdown or a need for social distancing? There are smartphones and all the drama online in social media. Why look far? Necessity is the mother of all inventions and desperate times spur innovations.


This Malayalam offering was made utilising the i-phone and screens of the computer. The whole film was shot in two rooms and with minimal human contact. The storytelling involves a lot of reading off WhatsApp messages, Facebook posts and emails as well as eavesdropping on video calls.


Kudos to the director who managed to keep the attention of the audience. At the same time, they maintained the suspense of the story.


Jimmy, a bank executive in Dubai, hooks with Anu on Tinder. They get along quite well and even contemplate marriage in such a short time. Jimmy gets his cousin, Kevin, to do a background on her. Everything is okay, and so is Jimmy's mother. Just then, Anu makes a frantic call for help after being beaten up. Slowly things become bizarre as she is given asylum with the Emirates police hot on Jimmy's trail. Like an onion peel, the story slowly unveils, showing us the vulnerability of our identities in cyberspace and the complicated web of deceit that humans are masterminds. Even though a lot of the story is told in texts and acting merely involves facial expressions, not once does the audience feel bored.


A few learning points from the movie. It is no secret anymore that many educated Indian girls are duped into working as maids in the Arab countries but end up as call girls. These type of shenanigans not only in Godless nations but even in states that proclaim to upholds God's law on Earth.


Proponents of Islamic Law insist that Islamic brand of justice and jurisprudence will not affect the Non-Believer way of life. Apparently not as seen in this film of the legal system in the Emirates. Co-habitation of an unwed couple, even of non-Muslims, it seems is a serious crime. The enforcers of the law would say this is the law of our land, the others have to just oblige. On the other hand, it does not work the other way around. Immigrants and refugees to Non-Muslim lands (Dar al Harb) are hellbent on implementing sharia law in the newfound land that gave them a helping hand out of their self-created pit of hopelessness.  


Maybe it is just this particular movie, but I get the vibe that the police in Dubai creates the element of fear in the eyes of the public, particularly the foreigners/expatriates. Perhaps, the director is generalising policemen as the Indian population's perception of the police. If indeed, justice is carried out to the true calling of the religion, should the citizens be empowered, not being fearful of getting embroiled with police?

The final take-home message is that despite all the adversities that the human race may be exposed to, we will rise to the occasion to stamp our dominance. No matter what the nihilistic naysayers may say about the dystopian future that they paint, we will never perish. We will always find a way to stay relevant.




Friday, 26 July 2019

Beware the deep and dark webs!

Irumbu Thirai (இரும்புத்திரை, Iron Curtain, Tamil; 2018)

Every now and then, one can get a fresh new idea popping up in Tamil movies and this is one. As usual, most often the filmmakers, in their best wisdom, would decide that the storyline should be so frivolous that the whole film will end up making not much for an impact, especially to those outside the purview of Kollywood fans. 

This film acts more like a PSA (public service announcement) highlighting the general public the dangers of freely divulging personal particular and private data to social media and to people of authority. 

The gist of the story is how loans supposedly released for purchases end up with third parties via interception at a digital level. In the greater scheme of things, these wastages are mere paper losses. To the poor debtors, it is a question of life or death; of loss of livelihood. As far the bank is concerned, the transaction is done and the borrower has to pay, no matter what. 

In the movie, the audience is also introduced to the Darknet, perhaps in a completely one-dimensional manner. It gives the impression that the Dark Web is interchangeable with the Deep Web (where private data is stored) and is owned by a single person and everything bad that happens in the world can be traced to it. A little clarification is warranted. Perhaps the two Youtube snippets below can shed some light into this.



The Dark Web or Darknet provides an authority control-free environment for people to conduct their activities. Unfortunately, it also became an avenue for drug pushers, pimps and smugglers to conduct their clandestine activities and launder their monies through the help of cryptocurrency.

Two disturbing things that appear in this film involve the main two characters. The hero, an Indian Army Major is seeing wooing foreign tourist in the hope of marrying them and migrating away from India. It does not speak much of an Army Officer who has so much disdain over the nation that he is supposed to be defending.

In another scene where this Major is assigned to a psychiatrist for anger management issues, it appears to me that their (the Major and the psychiatrist) interaction is anything but a physician-patient one. No one seems to realise that something is wrong in the manner their business is handled. 

And again it is the lesson of poetic justice and the unbelievable success story of a lone wolf against the powerful and intricate web of baddies of international proportions. This formula works for some.





Friday, 22 February 2019

Debt is money; Money is debt!

The Web of Debt
(The Shocking Truth About Our Money System And We Can Break Free)
Ellen Hodgson Brown, JD.

I grew up confused. On one hand, I was told to live within my means, to balance my income to my expenditure and to ensure that there is always something for savings. Being in debt was frowned upon. On the other hand, on the other side of my family, living on credit was a way of life. Nothing wrong to borrow, they would say. Even nations take huge loans.

In the modern world, it seems that one is deemed to be rich by his assets but the properties are leveraged by debts. In other words, he is only as rich as much as he can pay the interest on his debt. Money begets money and the poor get poorer. The divide between the haves and the have nots becomes more apparent as the days go by. One small hiccup in this set-up and the house of cards comes down crumbling.


 Nations that have secured high amounts of loans apparently have a higher credit rating on their credibility. Even our former premier was gung-ho in announcing that credit rating was so good that we can go on borrowing and borrowing; he did not talk about paying back!

That is what the world has come to. It is deeply intertwined in a web of debt. Money was initially utilised in change for goods, services and creativity when barter exchange proved problematic. It was working fine until international trade and imperialism came to the picture. P
aper money used to be redeemable for gold, hence its value was the value placed by the people on the amount of gold it was backed with. 

The British Colonial masters decided on the value of money as the King printed it, deciding on its inherent value. The American colonies started printing their own money, which irked the British and that eventually led to the American Revolution. The Boston Tea Party and American Independence were all about money and taxes.

Over the years, there have been numerous attempts to control the value of money. In ancient times, tally sticks were used as a way to record money borrowed. Later, gold and silver were used to fix its value. Banks in past actually cheated by circulating more paper money than the gold they had to back them. Basically, the political game was who gets to control this issuance of money. Problems started creeping in when bankers started owning gold. They fixed the value of gold. Speculators who trade gold encourage transborder movements of this precious metal which then devalues the currency of a country. Its buying power then declines.

By the end of the 19th century, there was a call to take charge of the supply of money in the country. Bankers were usurping all the nation's wealth and were keeping the hard working general public in poverty. There were calls to clip the wings of these giant conglomerates. Unfortunately, things only got worse in 1913 with the establishment of the Federal Reserve Act.  The issuance of currency became the responsibility of a select group of bankers whose sole purpose of existence is not national interest but the profit of its shareholders. These bankers, with their tentacles of bankers across the Atlantic, were profiteers who had no qualms in profiting from both sides of the warring factions. In fact, war is essential for their existence as it generates income. 

The Federal Reserve is not quite 'federal' in its role. It is owned by an exclusive club whose activity is anybody's guess. Neither do they have any 'reserves' to save the nation from catastrophes. Its President decides the direction of the monetary system of the nation.

Over generations, the unholy unions of unscrupulous businesses and corrupt politicians have been balanced by the nationalistic spirit and the desire to do the right thing. Traditionally, printing of money has been viewed as dangerous which could lead to inflation. In practice, however, many US Presidents have shown that judicious issuance of Greenback has saved the nation from collapse. Lincoln did it to pay debt and win the Civil War. 

As it stands now, the world lives on credit. The Federal Reserve prints fiat money with nothing backing its value. They do not need to do it as the US dollar is backed no longer by gold or silver but by a piece of paper printed by them. Fractional banking, venture (vulture) capitalism, currency attack, off-shore banking, derivatives trading have brought populations to its knees. Nations' currencies are devalued and interests need to be paid in US Dollars. If they default, more loans are given. Citizens are taxed to pay for this.  People are enslaved through compound interests. They have to resort to double incomes and find means to tighten their belt further.

One of the founding fathers of the USA, John Adams, said that there are two ways to conquer a nation. One is through the sword and the other is through debt. This second option seems to be the modus operandi of the Cabal these days. The unholy union of political leaders and bankers spells danger to the country but resistance is just futile. A socialist minded, people-centric troublemaker leader would just be replaced easily. There is enough wealth to satisfy the needs of the people but not its greed. There is always another person anytime ready to sell his soul to the hydra-headed monster.

Traditional economics suggest that the market forces will balance up the supply and demand conundrum. Modern economists, however, posit that the state needs to meddle to put things straight. In the post 1929-depression period, timely intervention by Roosevelt through infrastructure development and de-pegging of the dollar.

Conventional teaching tells us, from the experiences of Japanese Banana Notes, the post-WW1 Weimar Republic and Sokarno's Indonesia, that printing of money can bring about hyperinflation. There are instances too of countries who temporarily solved their monetary woes through this manner. It makes perfect sense for the state to print money for services. Instead of raising prices, it would increase productivity especially when employment opportunities are available.

The web of debt is made up of petrol, bonds, bankers and corrupt politicians. They create enticing Ponzi schemes to lure promising leaders of the rich nations to loans and investment plans. They would also rush to open up their currency markets to enable speculated manipulations. These countries, in time to come, would be strapped of cash. These same vultures will send their own agents via IMF and World Bank to further impoverish them with one-sided recovery packages to get the debtors to sink further into the quicksand of helplessness.

The author, through the 500 over pages of the book, highlights how the monetary mafia creates havoc in many countries around the world. She also discusses how many nations, including Dr Mahathir of Malaysia, have come up with ways to reduce the dependence on using US Dollars in international trade. One of the suggestions includes fixing currencies to particular 'basket of commodities'.

Word of appreciation to Prof Dr Ahamed Kameel Mydin Meera





https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

“Be afraid. Be very afraid.”*