Tommy Peters' Bicycles

In Se7en, Andrew Kevin Walker elevated the thriller genre by removing the Judas character from the script. Spacey played the role of the protagonist's arresting officer, judge, and executioner for his Seven Deadly Sins, leaving Pitt and Freeman on the edge of their seats as they struggled with the moral implications of the killer's actions. Expertly dispatching Paltrow at the film's climax showcased Walker's mastery of the genre. However, when it comes to a script for Altantuyaa's Se7en, Walker faces different challenges. The story of a murdered woman with no apparent motive and two convicted killers without a clear connection to the victim is less compelling than Se7en. To make the script work, Walker must identify the Judas in the story, not the one who committed the crime but the one who orchestrated the exposure of it. The true Judas in this story is a powerful Machiavellian at the material time who subverted attempts to quash the investigation into Altantuyaa...

Guard the children . Someone said, “the trouble with having an open mind is that people will insist on coming along to put things in it.” But at the least, Mr Tee is consistent, if not amusing. He always entertained, original, unscripted, and from the soul. A candidate for Memri, he abandoned a doctrine that embodies dharma (of which he still looks the part) for one that personifies drama. If his eruptions do not make The Onion, Jihad Watch usually picks up the slack, and we can all scapegoat Malay Mail for putting Malaysia on the map again. He has a counterpart in Egypt – Mr Hegazy – a fiery cleric who found himself on the other side of Sisi’s political fence. Similarly blustered, Mr Hegazy starts slow and reaches a crescendo that has everyone in stitches. In his ‘boycott Starbucks’ campaign, his beef was that Esther of Persia is depicted on Howard’s logo, claiming, albeit accurately, that the ‘Jewish woman’ of the Purim fame was instrumental in influencing her husb...

Cyrus & Tunku was published by Tommy Peters Bicycles on January 24, 2016 “A good design is obvious. A great design is transparent.”  The maxim holds for King Cyrus of Persia and Tunku Abdul Rahman of Malaysia, who promoted a great design in a multicultural fabric working ‘transparently’ in the background.  In 500 B.C. King Cyrus, who wrote the first human rights charter, kept religions private and ethnicities distinct, enabling the ‘racehorse’ and ‘plough-horse’ to co-exist seamlessly. Generally, the Persians represented racehorses and Arabs, the plough-horses working in tandem to better the empire and down the pike; in modern times, they perform similar roles where the former is as an ‘entrepreneur’ and the latter a ‘consumer.’  Cyrus recognised that the pursuit of ethnic integration is the destruction of excellence, in that “for a plough-horse to keep up with a racehorse he would have to cripple the racehorse and conversely, for a racehorse to pull as much as a plou...

Preamble: Malaysia's contradictory position is that it kneels for the servant, not the master, as demonstrated by its anti-Israel stance, juxtaposed with its willingness to serve the U.S., which the Jewish nation commands. "Long-time" is an integral part of the pick-up line of the grammar-challenged Saigon prostitute in Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket. Her one-liner refers to serving her clients well and for more extended periods if the price is right. The thing is, Ms Saigon does not come across as a hypocrite in that she 'loves all and serves all' with equal fervour. She serves the American soldier as well as his Viet Cong adversary. She does not discern when imparting 'passion' and 'love,' and because of her impartiality, she earns their respect in a skewered way. Over the years, the metaphor has become an entertaining euphemism in coffee shops to describe a range of emotions and actions of its political actors, particularly the infamous r...

2100: The Museum of Past Doctrines Preamble It's the dawn of the 22nd century, 50 years after the religious holocaust, and peace has taken hold. Eziqa is five years old and visiting the Museum of Past Doctrines in Putrajaya with her grandma. The New World Order is in flux, driven strictly by secular values. Malaysia, a former Sharia-based nation, is 'comfortably numbed' in the matrix. It has flowered into a 'developed status' morally and economically. While it has matured into a vibrant financial centre, it is the region's most 'introverted' nation. Quiet, yet powerful. Indoctrination of religion from birth is discouraged, but from the age of sixteen, teenagers schooled in moral studies, creationism, and science are allowed to make informed decisions to subscribe to the religions of their choice. Given the day's flavour, little Iqa has developed an effervescent mind, and her questions to granny are equally challenging. She observes the artefacts with...

Salman: - Erdogan has gall. He just inked a gas deal with Iran, our archenemy, and to twist the knife, the Turk agreed to pay the Shiites higher than our GCC boys are offering. Shall I organize another 'eruption' at Gezi Park? He has not learned his lesson from the earlier episode. Personally, Mr Netanyahu, I prefer the old scarf and dagger to finish him off. Bibi: - Take a seat, Sal. My Turkish serf has no gall, nor are the Persians playing hardball. I green-lighted the deal behind your back and asked Iran to increase the price. Salman: - What! Are you in the tank with Iran? How long has this 'affair' been going on? And how can I explain this to the council in God's name? We take pride in our all-Sunni GCC, our' coalition of the willing' set up to serve the interest of the Zionist and explicitly configured to exclude the Shiites, which Iran represents.   Bibi: - I prefer the term 'coalition of the billing' uttered privately in successfu...