Maldives president may be nominated for Best Actor for THE ISLAND PRESIDENT

By David Rose / The Telegraph, UK

A storm is brewing over the otherwise tranquil and turquoise lagoons of sinking Maldives after a Wiki cable leak last night revealed political horse-trading at the upcoming next year’s Oscars over whether Maldives president and the United Nations’ current environment champion of the earth Mohamed Nasheed is eligible for a Best Actor award for Academy Award-winner Jon Shenks’ ambitious and biting docudrama THE ISLAND PRESIDENT in the wake of the documentary last week winning the People’s Choice award at the international Toronto film festival in the state of Canada, North America.

AfterImage’s realistic look into behind- the-scenes of the failed Copenhagen earth summit in 2009, in the context of Nasheed’s first year in office after toppling over a 30-year-dictatorship, was previously not eligible for a run at the 2012 Oscars to be held in March at the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles -- the seat of Hollywood -- when its producers decided to give its official release only early next year in North America. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences require each feature, documentary, short film and animation to be screened for the public at any theater in Los Angeles for a running 10 days before the 19th of December each year in order to qualify for the next year’s Academy Awards ™.

Traditionally the Best Actor category was nominated only from a selection of the fictional categories such as feature films and short films and never from the realistic section which includes feature documentaries and documentary shorts. The fact that former US Vice President and environmental fighter Al Gore’s Microsoft PowerPoint presentation, AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, won the Oscar for best documentary was a precedent that proved that the traditionally liberal and green Hollywood has a “personal bias in favor of anything to do with the environment” according to Hollywood critic Variety and watchdog The Hollywood Reporter. In addition to Gore, only two other political leaders have won international entertainment awards – former US President Bill Clinton for the audio rendition of his biography MY LIFE, and his wife and current US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s IT TAKES A VILLAGE which both won in the audio book category of the Grammy awards, the US’s most prestigious awards in music.

Responding to the mind-plumbing reactions to the Wiki leaked cable, Nasheed’s foreign press secretary Paul Roberts told The Telegraph that “while we are deeply humbled” by what “such a prestigious artificial Wonder could additionally do for the poster boy image of Nasheed”, he was concerned that ordinary Maldivians -- who were only recently found out not to be really literate at all in contrast to the 98-percent-literacy statistical claim of former president Gayoom -- “may once again misunderstand the implications and complications” of such an award.

“Ever since Harper and Collins Unlimited announced that it would omit the Maldives from its Times Atlas edition that is to be comprehensively published next decade, we are being misunderstood. For instance, we are baffled as to why opposition MP and Gayoom’s spokesman Ahmed Mahlouf, who earlier said that everything this MDP government tells is a lie, now suddenly overnight claims that Nasheed’s underwater Cabinet meeting was not actually a publicity stunt and has therefore now usurped Lynas’ traditional role in the fight against climate changer denier James Delingpole," said Roberts, adding that Delingpole "will definitely stand to lose" as he has only a single PhD in sinking islands while President Nasheed's environment adviser and climate change believer Mark Lynas -- who also makes a courtesy cameo guest role in THE ISLAND PRESIDENT --  has a double Masters in emerging islands.

“We couldn’t believe when Mahloof texted his followers and supporters that no government can lie over something this big. While this is a small relief, and now opens the possibility of buying Mahloof too for another cool 9 million pounds, I mean Rufiya, and bring him to our side, Nasheed at this time remains apprehensive that if he is nominated for a Best Actor award, however sincere the American Academy is over this, such a nomination in the ‘best actor’ category would be misconstrued by not only the opposition but the large percentage of illiterate Maldivians as Nasheed having deceived the Maldivian people over the environment by faking everything including his eternally carefree and brutally honest infectious personality.”

Nasheed’s domestic press secretary Mohamed Zuhair insisted to The Telegraph in no blunt terms that “the President never acts.”

“And I don’t mean that with regard to our current morbid state of economic affairs,” he said. “What I mean is he is always being himself, his real self. He is always candid and what you see is what you get -- like they say in the tired old cliché ‘seeing is believing.’ Everything you see in THE ISLAND PRESIDENT is real and we don’t mind if the Academy honors him by bestowing a Lifetime Achievement Award rather than a best actor nomination because even a Maldivian child knows what it means by to ‘act’.”

A BBC journalist, who claims to have seen THE ISLAND PRESIDENT from a pirated copy although such copies are not legal to be stored in the hard drives of Britain’s state broadcaster, told The Telegraph that if anyone deserves to be nominated from the documentary, it was Maldives “cool environment secretary” Mohamed Aslam.

“While Nasheed’s candidness will definitely strike home the message that sea level rise is very much real for sinking islands like the Maldives, thereby throwing cold water over environment skeptics such as Delingpole who is the mortal enemy of Nasheed’s environmental advisor Mark Lynas, what makes THE ISLAND PRESIDENT’s long 101 running minutes bearable is the gripping screen presence and personality of Mr. Aslam. If anyone should succeed Mr. Nasheed, then Mr. Aslam is definitely our bloke.”

The Maldives Media Council, which is currently tasked with verifying erroneous reporting in the local media, including the clarification of whether Maldives will not be included in any world map that will be published after 10 years due to Nasheed's fake publicity stunts such as an underwater Cabinet meeting, refused to comment on the leaks.

However, an opposition-leaning board member of the Council told The Telegraph on condition of anonymity that the Council "wouldn't refuse any Best Actor accolades" for the President.

"Ever since I saw Nasheed utter the ominous words 'If we don't act now' in a PSA (public service advertisement) called SEAL THE DEAL, I knew the President was not happy just with acting up on both the local and international stage and that therefore, he would take his acting to new heights of deception in order to win sympathy for Maldives' fledling economy and failing democracy. So I am not surprised that he is now trying to dupe everybody by trying to pass off falsehoods in the disguise of such a credible and non-fictional genre such as a documentary."

500 Maldivians' Muslim status thrown into doubt

Forget Nazim.

Now 500 Maldivians stand to be "counseled" behind closed doors by the Islamic Ministry to be "voluntarily" reconverted to Islam after flamboyant Transport Minister Adil Saleem -- who is also Maldives' first unintentional male porn "star" -- revealed that they had blasphemously traveled to Israel, dubbed a "Zionist" state by Adhaalath Party which controls the Islamic Ministry, according to a Minivan News item run today.

However, it is not clear whether these 500 Maldivians will be flogged publicly at the morally corrupt Justice Building or pelted by coconuts upon their arrival back to Maldives at Ibrahim Nasir International Airport, which is being refurbished by GMR, a company of India, a secular state.

It was also not clear whether the Adhaalath Party -- which at its second Congress ignorantly kept repeatedly referring to the irritating phrase that Maldives is still "a 100 percent Islamic country" -- will resort to its old tactics of mischief by suing these 500 Maldivians in the Criminal Court for being "not Sunni Muslim", a trick they earlier tried too, albeit unsuccessfully, on ex-dictator Gayoom. As Maldivians largely do not believe or accept that a non-Sunni Muslim can be a real Muslim, if a court of law proves that these 500 Maldivians, like Gayoom, was not Sunni Muslim, it will effectively declare them Kafir (unbelievers) and under the current Constitution, are liable to lose citizenship - a paradox that was also highlighted by a former Cabinet member of current President Nasheed.

At this time, no foreign country has expressed any interest in taking the 500 Maldivians who may soon lose their citizenship if their purported unbelief in Islam is proven by the Criminal Court upon their willful arrival back to the Maldives to be voluntarily punished by the state.

Quiet interestingly, Adhaalath Party, which during its second Congress aired a video in which former British MP George Galloway declares that Israel is putting a Trojan horse into the Maldives by trying to commence flights of its national airline to the Maldives, seem not to be aware that the mindfucked Galloway is also, quite mindbafflingly, a vocal and aggressive supporter of gay rights!

What is this world coming to? We may not have to wait for 2012 even if opposition Z-DRP MP Mahloof has no more brawls left to fight with the MDP government.

Mayor to outlaw bedrooms with walls

The exposed Maafannu cemetery as currently seen with the naked eye

In a move that is sure not only to raise many eyebrows but also upset the knickers of many a Conservative, Male’ City Council has announced that it is set to outlaw all bedrooms which currently have walls built around them.

“Too much sex and drugs have been going on behind closed walls and this is why we had no choice but to tear down the walls of Maafannu cemetery recently as well,” the always media accessible Mayor Sarangu Adam Manik told Turquoise Lagoon in an exclusive interview without any prior appointments.

Asked whether he really meant “behind closed doors” instead, the benevolent Mayor replied: “There would be no need for doors if there are no walls, right?”

The groundbreaking or rather wallbreaking move comes in the wake of protests by Adhaalath Party - the town prostitute which is now courting the ruling MDP’s bed without which the MDP is believed would not have been able to climb into the presidential bed at all - which claims that “fornication is rising in popularity.”

“Maldivians didn’t know about the twin evils Sex and Democracy before Gayoom, who after pondering for over 30 years, decided to play his final card to utterly ruin the Maldives by cunningly introducing these two basic evils through his so-called Reform Agenda of June 2004,” Adhaalath Party’s presidential hopeful Imran Abdulla told TL.

The party, before it came to power along with the MDP, earlier tried to prove in court that Gayoom was not a Sunni Muslim, but a Gayoom-friendly judge saw through the façade, and knowing full well that what the Adhaalath Party was trying was in fact to prove that Gayoom was non-Muslim and not just a non-Sunni, the judge shrewdly threw out the case, knowing full well that if Gayoom was declared an apostate, it would force Maldives to change its Constitution and laws to allow in the much dreaded Secularism in order to allow the beloved Gayoom to fully enjoy his citizenship rights whilst remaining in the Maldives.

The majority of Maldivians interviewed by TL are showing mixed reactions to the Mayor’s recent unilateral decision to tear down all bedroom walls.

“I guess the government is coming out of the closet now, what with no real opposition being there anymore. So my thinking is that the secretly secular government now wants us to take the next step and carry out the liberal agenda -- like sex -- out in the open,” said Ali Manik, a vendor at the Local Market who identifies himself as Conservative. “This is kind of confusing since traditionally Maldivians treated things like sex as very private and was only conducted behind closed doors and closed walls.”

But another neighboring vendor, who seemed Liberal, said he welcomed the Mayor’s move. “So far every policy the government is adopting is according to the line I voted for them. If the government wants us now to have sex out in the open, I don’t mind. I’ve waited all my life for this moment. My only hope is that the perverts who come to video me having sex with my girlfriend in my room at least video it in High Definition so that we both wouldn’t look ugly as me and my girlfriend have the smoothest skin on earth and being videoed in 1080p would pose no danger to us as we don’t have pimples and other goosebumps type of stuff ruining our looks.”

Only one individual and one organization so far have officially endorsed the Male’ City Council and the Adhaalath Party’s move.

“That was the original idea behind tearing down the walls of Sultan Park,” said Health Minister Dr. Aminath Jameel, who was opposed by religious Conservatives when President Nasheed initially wanted to declare her his running mate. “I mean CHSE students were secretly having sex there and now that we have brought down the walls of the Sultan Park they have no choice but to come out in the open. Our MDP government’s policy is to make all aspects of Maldivian life as transparent and uncorrupt as possible. So if anybody needs to have sex, they don’t need to be hypocritical or shy or abui about it. So go ahead. Just do it. But make sure no children are around.”

As an afterthought, she added: “Well, there’s also the other reason which is quite trivial and unimportant. What I mean is the health factor. When there are no walls in parks and cemeteries, people are exposed to greenery and fresh air and we all know how healthy that makes people.”

The Islamic Foundation of Maldives, which is the other party in agreement with the Male’ City Council’s decision, said that it wholeheartedly supported the move. “An open view of the cemetery and a daily doze of views of graves will surely remind all Maldivians of the close proximity of death and that they could die at any moment. The Universe is unpredictable and chaotic and that's a fact. Hopefully such reminders of our own mortality would always remind the faithful to always behave morally because they will always be reminded that death could come for them at any time, like what happened to the poor fellows who are now currently lying under those beautiful white tombstones,” said IFM spokesman Dust bin Dust.

In concluding the interview with TL, the Mayor, who was accompanied by Imran Abdulla, said that the Internet is their next target.

“My fellow Imran here is right,” the Mayor said. “The Internet is leading to fornication and infanticides. So this project will be carried out simultaneously as we strive to build more stronger walls around the Internet to make it at least 100 percent inaccessible to Maldivians in order to preserve our pure way of life for the past 4,000 years.”

Meanwhile, many rational minority extremists are protesting that the Male’ City Council’s move is a Jewish and Christian collaborated conspiracy to wipe out the real Islam from Maldives.

“Next the Mayor will come tearing down the walls of Ibraheemee Mosque, on the excuse to break up the harmless discrete bromances taking place inside our mosque,” an Ibraheemee Mosque permanent resident told TL on condition of anonymity.

“What they should really be doing instead is remove that highly offensive Coca Cola poster with the girl in a sexy pose placed in front of our mosque which is currently distracting our imam while in the midst of prayers and we suspect it will soon erode our secret gay values and turn us all into heterosexuals, thus forcing us to conform to society’s majority values.

Multinational Coca Cola company's conspiracy to convert Gay Muslim Maldivians into abhorrent secular heterosexuals

“We are against this herd mentality. President Nasheed should understand that democracy is all about diversity and already we Wahhabis being a minority, we are an endangered race and if the government does not do anything to give us special protection as minorities, our invaluable and rich contribution to Maldives’ civilization will disappear overnight like the many species which are becoming extinct every day due to Man’s arrogance as he is the only lucky one to evolve to the level of top predator.”

Maldivians didn't know about sex before 2004: Gayoom

Maldivians were as ignorant to sex as medieval British maidens were during the Marie Stopes era, the aged dictator of Maldives, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom said recently.

"Before my Reform Agenda of June 2004, they were jaahilu (uneducated) and illiterate raajjethere (rural) simpletons who didn't know a thing -- let alone such sophisticated and urbane issues like sex and other basic human rights," Gayoom said bitterly at a ceremony to mark the 7th year since Maldivians came to know about sex -- thanks largely to him as he claims.

"Even 30 years was not enough to enlighten these people on what we civilized liberal intellectuals take for granted and would otherwise regard as basic -- like sex and other human rights," he said while addressing a largely middle-aged but adoringly buruga-clad audience of housewives.

"So I am royally pissed off that the current dictator Mohamed Nasheed is taking all the credit, what with him dancing and his minions singing and whispering the 'hiykaafaru' ('aroused') word on public forums," Gayoom said flaccidly but defiantly.

The Other DRP faction's leader Thasmeen Ali said he had no comment apart from the fact that he definitely "didn't want to get drowned in Gayoom's philosophical muck."

New cockroach species discovered in Male' restaurants

Maldives has re-entered international history after a British team of scientists managed to isolate a new species of cockroaches inside the capital’s many restaurants and cafes.

The recent topsecret MFDA investigations into restaurants located in Male’ City spurred interest in its thriving insect populations and the team of entomologists were able to identify two new species of cockroaches, each indigenous to the restaurant in which it was found.

"We were quite astonished to see huge populations of new species living harmoniously with the food we eat," said Dr. Brian Fletcher, who heads the research, and who thinks he’s Maldivian.

According to the research paper to be published in the latest issue of Nature, the cockroaches split from its original species rapidly over generations of gradual genetic mutations.

“The restaurant buildings served as a confined and safe ecosystem where large insect populations could be sustained, and left alone to fester for decades, to make way for the evolution of unique features," said Dr. Fletcher.

However, he added that his team was still baffled as to how a more complicated organism like a goat came into existence from within the confines of a toilet of one of the restaurants.

“Cockroaches can create new colonies by crawling through small spaces and getting themselves to new pastures. But a goat emerging from a toilet? It defies every law of Evolution that we currently know.”

Government not taking 2012 seriously: Mahloof

Photo: Haveeru.com.mv

The opposition DRP Parliamentary Minority Leader Ahmed Mahloof today lashed out at the Government for not taking 2012 seriously.

“The Government’s sole focus is only on winning 2013 which shows that the current Leadership cannot see beyond his nose as 2013 will never come to pass unless we ready ourselves to tackle the Doomsday scenario of 2012,” Mahloof told an auspicious press gathering at Hall 25 at Dharubaaruge, the Maldives international convention center located on the scenic Boduthakurufaanu Magu which is lined with imported wintry coniferous trees in this otherwise sunny paradise.

“If need be, we will launch a longer protest than the youth protest we launched a few days back because soaring food prices and starvation will pale in comparison to the utter destruction that will come on 31 December 2012 because, come on, one could never disagree with Mayan mathematics because all their predictions have come true so far,” Mahloof said in answer to a question posed by TL.

“Yes, Maldivians will definitely starve,” potential future President of the religious conservative Adhaalath Party Sheikh Imran Abdulla echoed at the joint press conference. The Adhaalath Party is presently officially married to the ruling MDP but due to the traditionally promiscuous nature of Maldivian men and Maldivian politics, is now playing both host and mistress at the same time to any party which can assist the Adhaalath in promoting its agenda.

Mahloof further elaborated that all attempts to meet President Mohamed Nasheed and directly appeal to him to take 2012 seriously have so far failed.

“We gathered near the Presidential private residence Muleeaage but could not secure an audience. We also gathered near the Presidential official residence The President’s Office but no luck either. It is quite frustrating when the President, with the new arrogance he recently achieved after acquiring the Parliamentary Majority, has stopped listening to everybody but himself. The fool is on his way to become another dictator,” Mahloof said, which Haveeru columnists claimed were the wisest words the quite-spoken MP had spoken so far.

Asked whether the DRP has its own solutions and recommendations -- in order to prevent the US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Mr. Robert Blake from indirectly criticizing the DRP again -- on how Maldives and Maldivians can be saved in 2012 in order to prepare for the more-important Presidential elections of 2013, Mahloof, who is said to be quite a dish among the womenfolk of his Galolhu South constituency, said that “one way would be to construct a modern ark-cruise which can accommodate good-looking women of ripe age mature for sex and reproduction in order to save the Maldivian race.”

Gayoom himself to defect to MDP: rumors

Following key political figures like Ali Waheed and Abdul Raheem recently and quite unceremoniously leaving the opposition DRP, former president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom has also finally got fed up and, over the weekend, decided to quit the party he had helped form, according to powerful rumors now being circulated in the political corridors of the Maldives - an exquisite paradise vacation of 1,200 islands in the Indian Ocean for the well-heeled Western traveler.

“He will be signing for the MDP over the next weekend, and a special ceremony will be held by the MDP the weekend after that at the Artificial Beach in the sleepy and sprawling capital Male’ in order to welcome him and introduce him to MDP’s members because Zedey is not well-known by most MDP members who will soon reach 100,000 in number under Alhan Fahmy’s stewardship, who defected himself from the DRP earlier,” a spokesperson for Gayoom told TL on condition of anonymity.

“Like his former apprentices such as Dr. Mohamed Munavvar and Ibrahim Hussein Zaki, Zaeem has also now realized that the best would be to repent and enter the MDP in order to be forgiven by the Maldivian people for his former crimes against humanity,” the spokesperson elaborated to TL.

“Further, Gayoom will also be contesting the Presidential elections of 2013 on an MDP ticket and if you observe the recent trends, chances of Maldivian politicians making it big and successful is now mostly through MDP tickets and alliances with the MDP. So, Gayoom being no less than a genius than current president Mohamed Nasheed himself, it was the only logical choice left for him too - that should he strive to survive in Maldives without emigrating, he must also join the MDP like good old Ali Waheed and bring the much needed national reforms through the reformist MDP government.”

An independent Maldivian politician, also requesting anonymity, told TL that Gayoom’s defection from the DRP to the MDP will “further muddy up an already clouded and chaotic political environment in the Maldives” in that “the point of a Reform Movement existing in Maldives will now not be there” and therefore “unpleasant things like confrontations and violent protests will not occur from here onwards because all Maldivians will then become One Unified People under a Single Authority whose face will be the MDP, which also currently serves as the face of the Maldivian Reform Movement.”

“This will be such a pioneering thing – something that has never come to pass since the first sentient human started walking the earth six million years ago,” the politician admitted, somewhat reluctantly. “People used to say that in politics there is no such thing as permanent friendships, marriages or alliances but this will be the only one single instance where, at least in the case of the Maldives, a political fairy tale can be ensured to last forever. The final piece of the puzzle was Gayoom and with the former dictator giving up his dictatorial ways and now becoming a champion of democracy, ever-lasting peace and harmony will come to paradise - finally.”