Rated PG, directed by Danis Tanovic with Branko Djuric (Ciki), Rene Bitorajac (Nino), Filip Sovagovic (Cera), Simon Callow (Colonel Soft) and Katrin Cartlidge (Jane Livingstone), running time: 97 minutes in Bosnian, Serbian, French and English with Chinese subtitles.
Uniformly high praise has greeted this film about the Bosnian war where the absurd is what is so truly tragic. Tanovic, the director has won several awards for his documentaries and has filmed more than 300 hours of material on the front line at Sarajevo for a Bosnian army film archive. This accounts for the gut-wrenching realness that pervades the film, which observes the naked application of power to human lives and the fear of bureaucracy, represented by the UN, to get its hands dirty. While the film is able to elicit laughter, it is the laughter of choked back shock at how horrific human beings are able to be. But the saddest thing for foreign residents is that unless you are either fairly proficient in either Bosnian or Chinese you probably won't understand much of the dialogue.
PHOTO: SPRING INTERNATIONAL
In Taiwan’s politics the party chair is an extremely influential position. Typically this person is the presumed presidential candidate or serving president. In the last presidential election, two of the three candidates were also leaders of their party. Only one party chair race had been planned for this year, but with the Jan. 1 resignation by the currently indicted Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) two parties are now in play. If a challenger to acting Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) appears we will examine that race in more depth. Currently their election is set for Feb. 15. EXTREMELY
China’s military launched a record number of warplane incursions around Taiwan last year as it builds its ability to launch full-scale invasion, something a former chief of Taiwan’s armed forces said Beijing could be capable of within a decade. Analysts said China’s relentless harassment had taken a toll on Taiwan’s resources, but had failed to convince them to capitulate, largely because the threat of invasion was still an empty one, for now. Xi Jinping’s (習近平) determination to annex Taiwan under what the president terms “reunification” is no secret. He has publicly and stridently promised to bring it under Communist party (CCP) control,
Jan. 20 to Jan. 26 Taipei was in a jubilant, patriotic mood on the morning of Jan. 25, 1954. Flags hung outside shops and residences, people chanted anti-communist slogans and rousing music blared from loudspeakers. The occasion was the arrival of about 14,000 Chinese prisoners from the Korean War, who had elected to head to Taiwan instead of being repatriated to China. The majority landed in Keelung over three days and were paraded through the capital to great fanfare. Air Force planes dropped colorful flyers, one of which read, “You’re back, you’re finally back. You finally overcame the evil communist bandits and
They increasingly own everything from access to space to how we get news on Earth and now outgoing President Joe Biden warns America’s new breed of Donald Trump-allied oligarchs could gobble up US democracy itself. Biden used his farewell speech to the nation to deliver a shockingly dark message: that a nation which has always revered its entrepreneurs may now be at their mercy. “An oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms,” Biden said. He named no names, but his targets were clear: men like Elon Musk
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