Sceenplay or a novel?

Friends ask me: when will you write a screenplay based on The Fifth Internationale? The question is tiring, and laced with guilt because I promised a role of Asia, the evil secretary, to CC (mainly so she can show off her evil side...)

Why won’t I write a screenplay? Well, however tiring the question, my answer remains the same...

My childhood and teenage years, up until my escape from home, were spent in a neighborhood close to the huge TV complex and movie studios. The neighborhood was not an artist’s colony, just a regular residential district, but because of the location it attracted a large number of people from the biz. At the time, my good friend’s father was a prominent moviemaker, with a well equipped darkroom that he let me use at will. He was often visited by other folks who lived around - writers, news anchors, and a whole lot of actors. I had an opportunity to watch the creative process of screenplay writing. It was quite the show: plenty of collaborative work accompanied by glass clinking, reading of the scenes, and so on. It turned me off for good. I am not saying, that a screenwriter does not have creative control, but only that, at some point, this process involves additional people, and I am a loner when it comes to creative work. I’m one of those recluses who is unknown to his neighbors. My ideal working environment is a deep forest, and ear plugs.

And that’s why, my friends you will not find me working on a screenplay.

MSG conspiracy

Sneaky sources of MSG:

Glutamate
Glutamic acid
Gelatin
Monosodium glutamate
Calcium caseinate
Textured protein
Monopotassium glutamate
Sodium caseinate
Yeast nutrient
Yeast extract
Yeast food
Autolyzed yeast
Hydrolyzed protein any protein that is hydrolyzed)
Hydrolyzed corn gluten
Natrium glutamate (natrium is Latin/German for sodium)

The new game is to label hydrolyzed proteins as pea protein, whey protein, corn protein, etc. If a pea, for example, were whole, it would be identified as a pea. Calling an ingredient pea protein indicates that the pea has been hydrolyzed, at least in part, and that processed free glutamic acid (MSG) is present. Relatively new to the list are wheat protein and soy protein. READ MORE

Oscar Romero

An interesting website about the assassinated Bishop Oscar Romero.

Bishop Romero died because he spoke out:

Brothers, you come from our own people. You are killing your own brother peasants when any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God which says, "Thou shalt not kill." No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you recovered your consciences and obeyed your consciences rather than a sinful order. The church, the defender of the rights of God, of the law of God, of human dignity, of the person, cannot remain silent before such an abomination. We want the government to face the fact that reforms are valueless if they are to be carried out at the cost of so much blood. In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cries rise to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you in the name of God: stop the repression. Archbishop Oscar Romero to the troops.

Read Bishop Romero’s last sermon in full.

Psychological Torture

Psychological torture (henceforth PT) is a set of practices that are used worldwide to inflict pain or suffering without resorting to direct physical violence. PT includes the use of sleep deprivation, sensory disorientation, forced self-induced pain, solitary confinement, mock execution, severe humiliation, mind-altering drugs and threats of violence—as well as the exploitation of personal or cultural phobias. The psychiatric sequelae of PT are severe. They include delirium, psychosis, regression, self-mutilation, cognitive impairment, and anxiety disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder. Neuroscience research on these and related mental disorders continues to establish their neurobiological underpinnings, thus challenging the popular view that PT is not physical, not serious, and perhaps not even torture at all. READ MORE

UN: US administration of criminals

The controversial interrogation technique known as waterboarding and used by the United States qualifies as torture, the U.N. human rights chief said on Friday.

"I would have no problems with describing this practice as falling under the prohibition of torture," the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, told a news conference in Mexico City.

Violators of the U.N. Convention against Torture should be prosecuted under the principle of ’universal jurisdiction’ which allows countries to try accused war criminals from other nations, Arbour said.

"There are several precedents worldwide of states exercising their universal jurisdiction ... to enforce the torture convention and we can only hope that we will see more and more of these avenues of redress," Arbour said. SOURCE

Ultimately it will be up to the people to show up at the airport prior to the arrival of this or that criminal and arrest them because no government on Earth has clean enough hands to preach justice.

CIA on YouTube

In keeping with its mandate to gather intelligence, the CIA is watching YouTube.

U.S. spies, now under the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), are looking increasingly online for intelligence; they have become major consumers of social media.

"We’re looking at YouTube, which carries some unique and honest-to-goodness intelligence," said Doug Naquin, director of the DNI Open Source Center (OSC), in remarks to the Central Intelligence Retirees’ Association last October. "We’re looking at chat rooms and things that didn’t exist five years ago, and trying to stay ahead. We have groups looking at what they call ’Citizens Media’: people taking pictures with their cell phones and posting them on the Internet." MORE

The one surprising thing is that the CIA was not involved in the creation of YouTube. Or, was it?

Citizens' Dividend

The following from The $30,000 solution, by Robert R. Schutz, 1996:

A new concept is emerging, that the modern world’s inherited wealth can eliminate poverty. In Europe it is called the Citizens’ Income. In New Zealand it is called the Universal Income. In South Africa is is called the Basic Income Grant. In Canada the Guaranteed Annual Income. In the US it is the Citizens’ Dividend.

The change would be dramatic. The dividend would give income to millions that at present have no purchasing power. There would be an explosion of local economic activity, and the crippling stress of modern life would be removed.

A Citizens’ Divident would free people to improve their lives. It would provide them with a financial platform from which they can choose the life they want to lead. They could get out of work they find unsatisfying making way for others that want the job. They can avoid work that harms the environment. There would be no need to produce unnecessary or short-lived products just in order to generate employment. And people would not need to amass excessive wealth for their old age.

A Citizens’ Income would do more than anything else to give us a humane and civilized society.