According to USA Today, the Writers Guild of America has gone on strike today. The 14,000 member union of writers is responsible for creating the content of most of the entertainment industry's production of television shows and films.
Negotiations apparently broke down over the issue of new media compensation -- a few pennies per internet download or DVD sale.
The last time that the Writers Guild of America went on strike was in 1988. The strike lasted almost six months and devastated many small businesses in the entertainment industry. All of those hundreds of people you see listed in the end credits of a film are negatively affected by the WGA strike.
"This is ultimately about money, but it's also about respecting writers as the primary creative artists who create content that earns billions of dollars for these companies," says Lost executive producer Carlton Cuse, a member of the guild's negotiating committee.
When Carlton Cuse says billions of dollars, he's not exaggerating. A handful of mega corporations are raking in billions in profits each year from their media holdings. For your information, here are the companies and their 2006 profits:
The mega corporations own radio, TV, movie, internet, print and other holdings. General Electric could literally be called the engine of the U.S. war machine as they actually build the engines for most of the combat aircraft and the Abrams tank.
Unhealthy Democracy
When only a handful of companies own the media you consume, you have very little choice. When the government allows media to consolidate even further, gobbling up smaller independent companies and each other, it moves media toward a monopolistic capitalist version of a dictatorial state-run model.
A society without independent news is not a healthy democracy. We already know that the Bush administration's illegal wiretapping was facilitated by the large communications companies. We already know that the news media failed us and acted as propaganda entities before the Iraq war. We can see now how they don't challenge and simply supportingly parrot the Bush administration's continual drumbeat for war with Iran.
We already know Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez shut down opposition media in his country to further consolidate power and kill any dissent. This weekend, the Musharraf regime in Pakistan shut down all television media except state-run television in order to kill any dissent for his state of emergency, which is simply a political coup. How hard do you think it would be for the Bush administration (or any administration) to make a handful of phone calls and control the content, or shut down U.S. media in a so-called state of emergency here in the United States?
You Can Fight Back!
This is not conspiracy theory to people who follow the machinations of those in power. Corporations just want to make more money. Government officials always want to help support the growth of the economy. However, when profit is the sole motive, other cherished values of our society are the victims.
Truth is the first casualty. Individual liberty is easily compromised. People in power want to stay in power. Political dissent gets a jackboot to the head. Technological innovation is stagnated without the venture capital for researching and developing new ideas.
The Federal Communications Commmission (FCC) -- which sets the rules and regulations for media in the United States -- is about to hold the last public meeting in Seattle, Washington on November 9th to take public comment concerning the further consolidation of our media (PDF). Anyone that can, should attend, and voice your opposition to the Bush administration proposal to allow big media companies to further consolidate in our country.
30 Days of Night film trailer and exclusive scene (rated R)
Caution: the movie trailer and scene in the above video are both very violent and bloody. Click zoom if you want your gore fullscreen.
"30 Days of Night" (in theaters now) and "I am Legend" (December premiere) both offer a slightly different take on the subject of vampires than the popular Anne Rice style of sexy vampires.
In 30 Days, the vampires are vicious and more animal-like. In Legend, the vampires have been created by a virus pandemic, like a bio-weapon bird flu. Both vampires simply want your blood, of course.
30 Days is based upon the graphic novel series by Steven Niles and Ben Templesmith. They published a hardcover trilogy this month.
I am Legend was written in 1954 by Richard Matheson and was considered science fiction more than horror because the story takes place in a dystopian future. It has been adapted to film several times, according to wikipedia.
The 2007 film starring Will Smith (trailer below) looks very cool. Matheson also released a new version of his novel for this film with Will Smith on the cover.
Even cooler -- the filmakers partnered up with Second Life to create a 3-D roleplaying first person shooter game. It just went live this month on Second Life. It's called "I am Legend: Survival."
Things are heating up with Iran again. The above video deftly describes the situation with and the neocon origins of the Kyl-Lieberman "sense of the Senate" legislation introduced last month. Presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton voted for it. Many observers are worried that some type of military action against Iran is becoming more and more likely before the Bush/Cheney administration leaves.
This past week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson held a joint news conference to announce that the Bush administration had designated the Iranian military as a terrorist organization. This terrorist designation allows the further designation of banks and corporations within Iran to be blacklisted in world financial systems.
The Bush administration repeatedly claims that they are pursuing diplomacy with Iran. If that is the case, why then is "regime change" in Iran the official foreign policy goal of the United States? That policy is not going to change if Hillary Clinton is elected president a year from now.
I have to be honest, hearing Hillary Clinton laugh about this scares the shit out of me on so many levels.
Off we go down the neocon rabbit hole, again.
Treasury Secretary Paulson is going to India this week. One of the pressure points will be convincing the Indian government that they shouldn't use the Iran-to-India natural gas pipeline even though it is already built. Notably, Russia and China are also balking on sanctions with Iran.
Within the next year, the Bush administration will say that economic sanctions aren't working and we desperately need to bomb Iran. Iran's missiles, even if they had a nuclear bomb, can't reach the United States. However, the Shahab-3 missile system can reach Israel, so we will wage another illegal, pre-emptive war because Israel is paranoid and scared.
When Iran retaliates against our forces in Iraq, and in Israel, I predict that someone will start tossing nukes on the Iranian population to demonstrate the power of nuclear weapons. Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the neocon Christians in the U.S. have only contempt for the Persians.
When the nutjob neocons start bombing Iran, we here in the U.S. will likely experience a number of terrorist attacks as well. The government will clamp down. The people will protest. The government won't know who is friend or foe, develop a Cheney bunker mentality, and many people will be killed in the streets.
The economy will stall completely because people will be afraid to go shopping as we were told to do by Bush after the September 11th attack. The Homeland Security Department will completely halt Chinese imports for fear of a dirty bomb in a transnational shipping container going off in one of our port of entry cities.
As Gore Vidal succinctly mused, "I was born in the United States, but now I live in a homeland." That kind of social language hasn't been around since Hitler's Germany.
The crazy, delusional, schizophrenic, sociopathic, paranoid people aren't living in Tehran. They are in fact living in our nation's capitol of what was the United States.
Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die, sayeth the fool.
Happy Halloween. Be on guard for Iranian razor blades in your kid's candy.
Weather permitting, Space Shuttle Discovery will launch tomorrow at 11:38 A.M. local time. The planned STS-120 mission to the International Space Station (ISS) is one of the most interesting and challenging to date.
It's going to be the first time that a female will be commander of the ISS when a female commander of the space shuttle will dock. [Insert female driver joke here.] More seriously, STS-120 will deliver the Harmony Node 2 to the ISS and continue construction during four very demanding space walks (EVA). Installation of the Harmony Node 2 facilitates the addition of two more modules from the other international partners, ESA's Columbus module and Japan's Kibo module.
Four EVAs
Everyone loves to watch the launch of a space shuttle. I suggest that you might be amazed at the activities taking place during the four planned space walks. From the astronaut interviews I watched on NASA TV the other night, those spacewalks are going to be the most challenging ever attempted during the construction of the ISS.
Since the Transformers DVD has been flying off the shelves, let me share some non-fiction robotics about to happen. The space shuttle has a robotic arm. The ISS also has a robotic arm.
One construction task for STS-120 mission is to disconnect the original solar array (a major task) then grapple it with the ISS robotic arm and hand it off to the shuttle arm. Then, the ISS robotic arm will move down the length of the station, reach out and grab the solar array from the shuttle arm, and maneuver the solar array into its new home on the iSS. This is like changing a flat tire while your car is driving down the highway, if your car could go 17,000 mph and you had to wear a scuba suit while doing the work.
Tani is going up with STS-120 and staying onboard the ISS while Anderson is ending his tour of duty and returning home when STS-120 leaves the ISS. Soyuz brought the Expedition 15 crew and Angkasawan Shokur back to Earth yesterday.
Daveman had a fun idea to publish a photo and allow his readers to write the caption for it recently. Then he made all of us vote on the best one. Inexplicably, enough people thought my caption of the above photo was most ... humorous, or applicable, or something.
I still can't believe it. I'm hoping that TMZ will talk about it.
Then, I could get famous and get a date with some rich and famous Hollywood starlette hottie or something.
Suck on that, you smug, high school reunion, JfZ-haters!
You may have a nice, secure, cubicle job, but I still have my hair, and you don't! Hah! ... I even have more hair on my back than you could ever get from the Hair Club from Men, you bald cubicle cretins! And guess what? I make my hollywood actress hottie friend wax my back hair and I'm going to Fedex it to you bastards.
I'm just riffin' -- I've never been to a high school reunion -- but Grosse Pointe Blank has a special place on my favorite movies shelf. But, if you've been judgemental, you've been forewarned. The Fedex package is on its way, baldy boy.
I thought my day started out with a really bad omen when some (unnamed) person in the hood ran over my Garden Jesus sentencing him to a trip back to the garbage dumpster in pieces. But, then I won this contest! And, my baby pineapple plants are still safe.
