America is not just advocating for stability and the absence of conflict at any cost. We stand for a stronger world that can only be achieved by giving peace and freedom to people around the world ... I believe in American exceptionalism ... What makes us exceptional is not only our ability to circumvent international norms and laws, but our desire to assert it through action.

(c) Barak Obama, 2014

If money, according to Ogier, "is born with a bloody spot on one cheek," then the newborn capital oozes blood and dirt from all its pores, from head to toe.

K. Marx

Words —
even the finest —
turn into litter,
wearing threadbare
with use and barter.
Today
I want to infuse
new glitter
into the most glorious of words:
PARTY.
Individual—
what can he mean
in life?
His voice
sounds fainter
than a needle dropping.
Who hears him?
Only, perhaps,
his wife,
and then if she's near
and not out shopping.
A Party's
a raging
single-voiced storm
compressed
out of voices
weak and thin.
The enemy strongholds
burst with its roar
like eardrums
when cannon
begin their din.
One man alone
feels down and out.
One man alone
won't make weather.
Any old bully
can knock him about—
even weaklings
if two together.
But when
we midgets
in a Party stand—
surrender,
enemy,
fade
out of sight!
A Party's
a million-fingered hand
clenched
into one fist
of shattering might.
What's an individual?
No earthly good.
One man,
even the most important of all,
can't raise a ten-yard log of wood,
to say nothing
of a house
ten stories tall.
A Party means millions
of arms,
brains
eyes
linked
and acting together.
In a Party
we'll rear our projects to the skies,
upholding and helping
one another.
The Party's
the compass
that keeps us on course,
the backbone
of the whole working class.
The Party
embodies
the immortality of our cause,
our faith
that will never
fail or pass.
Yesterday an underling,
today
whole empires I'm uncharting.
The brain,
the strength,
the glory of its class,
that's what it is,
our Party.
Lenin
and the Party
are brother-twins.
Who'll say
which means more
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
to History, their mother?
Lenin
and the Party
are the closest kin;
name one
and you can't but imply
the other.

V. Mayakovsky

English version from https://mayday.leftword.com/attachments/Lenin-150-1.pdf

There is a tremendous reluctance among the American people to let go of the notion that we sent men to the Moon. There are a couple of reasons for that, one of them being that there is a romanticized notion that those were great years – years when one was proud to be an American. And in this day and age, people need that kind of romanticized nostalgia to cling to.

But that is not the main reason that people cling so tenaciously, often even angrily, to what is essentially the adult version of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. What primarily motivates them is fear. But it is not the lie itself that scares people; it is what that lie says about the world around us and how it really functions. For if NASA was able to pull off such an outrageous hoax before the entire world, and then keep that lie in place for four decades, what does that say about the control of the information we receive? What does that say about the media, and the scientific community, and the educational community, and all the other institutions we depend on to tell us the truth? What does that say about the very nature of the world we live in?

That is what scares the hell out of people and prevents them from even considering the possibility that they could have been so thoroughly duped. It’s not being lied to about the Moon landings that people have a problem with, it is the realization that comes with that revelation: if they could lie about that, they could lie about anything.

David McGowan

Very interesting how we personally witnessed tremendous mass media power and corruption of science during COVID.

Я не ищу гармонии в природе.
Разумной соразмерности начал
Ни в недрах скал, ни в ясном небосводе
Я до сих пор, увы, не различал.

Как своенравен мир её дремучий!
В ожесточённом пении ветров
Не слышит сердце правильных созвучий,
Душа не чует стройных голосов.

Но в тихий час осеннего заката,
Когда умолкнет ветер вдалеке.
Когда, сияньем немощным объята,
Слепая ночь опустится к реке,

Когда, устав от буйного движенья,
От бесполезно тяжкого труда,
В тревожном полусне изнеможенья
Затихнет потемневшая вода,

Когда огромный мир противоречий
Насытится бесплодною игрой,—
Как бы прообраз боли человечьей
Из бездны вод встаёт передо мной.

И в этот час печальная природа
Лежит вокруг, вздыхая тяжело,
И не мила ей дикая свобода,
Где от добра неотделимо зло.

И снится ей блестящий вал турбины,
И мерный звук разумного труда,
И пенье труб, и зарево плотины,
И налитые током провода.

Так, засыпая на своей кровати,
Безумная, но любящая мать
Таит в себе высокий мир дитяти,
Чтоб вместе с сыном солнце увидать.

N. Zabalotsky 1947

Adopted GT:

I am not looking for harmony in nature.
For reasonable proportions of things
Not in the depths of the rocks, not in the clear sky
I still, alas, did not not find them.

How capricious is this dense world!
And in the fierce singing of the winds
The heart still does not hear the correct accords,
The soul does not feel harmonious voices.

But in the quiet hour of the autumn sunset,
When the wind in the distance dies down
When, enveloped in the weak radiance
The blind night will sink to the river

When, tired of the violent movement,
From useless toil
In an anxious half-sleep of exhaustion
The darkened water will subside

When a vast world of contradictions
Satisfied with the fruitless game, -
As if the prototype of human pain
From the abyss of waters it rises before me.

And at this hour sad nature
Lies around, sighing heavily,
And wild freedom was not dear to her,
Where evil is inseparable from good.

And she dreams of a brilliant turbine shaft,
And the measured sound of reasonable labor,
And the singing of pipes and the glow of the dam,
And trembling electrified wires.

So, falling asleep on her bed,
Mad but loving mother
Contains in itself a high world of a child,
To see the sun with her son.

Kde jsou ty chvíle nádherné,
kdy jsem měl všechny údy ohebné,
jen jeden ne!!!
Ty doby dávno minuly
a všechny údy ztuhnuly,
jen jeden ne!!!

Where are those wonderful moments,
when I had all my limbs flexible,
just one not !!!
That is a long time ago
and all the limbs stiffened,
just one not !!!

Jaroslav Vrchlický

As script is a bit difficult especially at the end and possibly left over footage, while seemingly a mixture of drama and road movie conventional. It is a very intimate film, very slow with many long still shots, but in a plastic stunningly beautiful, I love the night shots in it, are a delight to behold.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan is the director of it, while cinematography is by Gökhan Tiryaki. It was shot with a Sony F35. Winner of Cannes 2011.

Forrest Gump. The movie is legitimately great, but isn't remotely like the book. Part of what makes a good adaptation is how close they stay to the original source material. The novel Forrest Gump is basically a pure wacky comedy with little to no drama or pathos or the heart of the movie. Stick to the source material or GTFO! :P

The biggest offender is Jurassic Park. Hands down, the worst adaptations of ALL TIME. Massive changes from the book to screen. Biggest change was in the book, the lawyer character was one of the good guys, while in the movie he was the typical sleazy lawyer. I guess, in a movie with DINOSAURS, having a lawyer that's actually a hero was too fantastical for Spielberg. This was officially when I started to turn away from Spielberg.

Other bad adaptations: Any Tom Clancy novel, minus Hunt for Red October. Most Steven King books, with the exception of Shawshank Redemption and Misery.

Now some good adaptations. First Tarantino's Jackie Brown. Despite changing the main characters race from white to black, and adding his own spin on the dialogue, it's a very mature adaptation for such a young director. Especially when you compare it to Steven Soderbergs adaptation of another novel from the same author released in the same year with one of the same actors playing the same role in a unique cross studio crossover. You almost never see the same actor from one studio's film play the same character in another studio's film, even a cameo, but since it was in the book, Tarantino said go for it, and did it free.

And the best adaptation to date...Sin City. Rodriquez's main weakness has been his writing. When you do as many jobs as he does, something has to suffer, and in his case, it's his writing. So when you start with something that's already well written and you decide to film it AS WRITTEN...that's as good as it gets. The dialogue in the movie is nearly word for word from the comic. The comic panels are storyboards for the film with many looking almost exactly the same. He even shot all the comics in full and then released the full edit later. The more faithful you are to the source material, the better a movie you will make, and this is as faithful as it could possibly get.