Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts

Just got up about half an hour ago and I am sitting in front of my laptop browsing news and sipping my morning cuppa. One of the headlines stands out immediately, announcing the execution of the Japanese hostage, Shosei Koda. I try and read other news articles, reluctant to make this sad piece of information the first thing I read in the morning. The article, when I finally get to it, is a fairly short description of the incident with a small picture of Shosei kneeling in front of his captors. To have died this way perhaps must really be one of the worst ways to die. I hate to think of all that must have gone on in Shosei's head while he was held hostage. The murder astounds me with sheer scale of brutality. What is it that motivates these people to commit murders in cold blood ? To what cause and to what effect ?

I find it very hard to believe that the only motivation of the terror groups involved in these executions is to drive the coalition forces (read US and the British) out of the country. Behind the facade of the "jihad" to drive out the "infidels", there must be a more compelling reason. Any Pam, Pussy or Mary (R) would know it as a fact that Iraq sits on one of the world's largest oil fields and controlling them must mean a lot of money and great power. Could that be the motivator, the corruptor ? And would you believe Dubya is immune to these temptations too ? One of the real cool documentaries I saw off late was Fahrenheit 911, a must see that touches upon the politics of the Iraqi war. My guess is if Dubya's mommy sees it, she wouldnt vote for her own son. I also recommend a book, O Jerusalem, by Dominique Lappiere, about the Arab Israeli conflict.

I am kind of guy who barely remembers a movie that I watched a day or two ago. Yet, I remember this one cool movie I saw over the weekend, "The Insider", starring Russel Crowe and Al Pacino. The movie apparently is based on true story of Jeff Wigand, a former research executive at Brown & Williamsons tobacco firm. As the story goes Russel Crowe gets fired and seeks to tell all. Al Pacino plays a hot shot news producer for CBS' 60 minutes who is out to encourage Russel Crowe to tell his story to the world on the show. What follows is high drama and tension as Jeff Wigand deals with threats to him and his family, his break up with his wife and bouts of delirium and despair. Certainly worth a watch. It kind of reminded me of 1976 classic "All the President's Men" .

As it turned out, I had rented this DVD. The DVD was pirated from the looks of it, but the quality of the video however was as good as original. That got me thinking about piracy. I firmly believe that movie industry cannot just seek to end piracy by imposing their standards of morality on people. We have all heard about how piracy increases the costs of the product. But the fact of the matter is costs are increased for those who are willing and are able to pay for it, the rest buy the cheaper pirated stuff. The end to this vicious circle of finger pointing is not by imposing moral standards (because that never works on a larger scale) but rather by research and development of new technology that makes it virtually impossible make pirated copies in the first place. That way everybody would be forced to buy the original movies and the prices would automatically find their way down.