Archive for November, 2011

The Nobeus News Report — November 12, 2011

I’ve been busy getting my first movie out and prepping my second movie. Aside from blatantly promotional activities on these pages, I haven’t written any commentary on current events for a while. So taking a breath, here’s me playing catch-up on the last few months.

The Occupus vs. the Occuparty

Occupy Everything

The first indication I had that the Occupy movement had wings was sitting in a casino restaurant in Pahrump, Nevada, and hearing a man from one table ask a man at another table, “Are you part of the one percent or the ninety-nine percent?”

That idea — that we have two distinct classes, with a rich top and a poor bottom — isn’t anything new. It’s business as usual for the human race, which historically has divided between Aristocracy and Commoners, Patricians and Plebeians, Management and Workers, Patrones and peones, and Haves and Have Nots.

America — not as an actual place but as a Platonic ideal — is a rebellion against prior human history. The classical American story — the American Dream — is about a nobody who starts at the bottom and ends up a Somebody at the top. Upward mobility, it’s called, and the history of America — in its abolition of slavery and Jim Crow, in its embracing one immigrant ethnicity after another, in all attempts to allow innovators, the thrifty, and hard workers to raise themselves up along with their families — is the Human Revolutionary Virus, as true in Mumbai or Sofia as it was in New York City.

As a well-financed campaign organized to attain political ends, the Occupus is simply the latest attempt to ignite a class warfare that ultimately works to the benefit of the tops. Chaos in the streets of course demands a police presence, and we’ve seen that.

As a grassroots movement from people — especially the young — who know their future is being bought and sold, the Occuparty is simply more-media-correct language for the same impulse that generated the Tea Party.

When Occupy and Tea Party realize they’re the same movement with different rhetoric — and stop pissing each other off — the Occupus had better hide in inky waters.

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The Mark of Cain

Herman Cain

You’re not going to convince me that the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City — who doesn’t speak of gutting government but of hefty new taxes hard for poor people to evade — is anybody true conservatives, much less libertarians, should consider as their avatar.

But it’s certainly interesting to watch the same sort of people who during Bill Clinton’s impeachment endlessly repeated the mantra “It’s only sex!” now work to mark Herman Cain as a sexual harasser, with the latest Gloria Allred dog-and-pony show being a client who, if Herman Cain did to her what she claims he did over a decade ago, should have brought charges of sexual assault against Cain when the supposed molestation happened.

It will be enough for me if Herman Cain is stopped from further molesting the American taxpayer. But otherwise, political bimbo eruptions are so nineties, and we’re all so over it.

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I Ran from Iran When the A-Bombing Began

Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not someone whose word you can take to the bank, but he recently said something which is so logical on the face of it you have to wonder if he was accidentally telling the truth: “We will not build two (nuclear) bombs in the face of (America’s) 20,000.”

Ahmadinejad is probably lying in that Iran is probably building the two atomic bombs, along with testing missiles that could carry these atomic bombs to targets in Israel.

But Ahmadinejad is also admitting a greater truth. If Iran nuked Tel Aviv with the sort of atomic bomb that the United States first used in 1945 against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, U.S. Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles carrying thermonuclear warheads could respond within minutes and eliminate Persia from the face of the earth.

I’m willing to believe that individual Muslims can be nutter enough to strap themselves with suicide vests and blow up a cafe or a bus, but I don’t think any ruling class’s faith in Paradise is confident enough to launch an attack which stands a good chance of annihilating the attacking nation.

Is there anyone who really wants to argue that Iran with the possibility of getting its first A-bombs is more of a threat than a Soviet Union that for decades had thousands of thermonuclear bombs and pretty much a certainty of successfully deploying them against American and European cities?

Please. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has shown that he’s smart enough to understand the words “Assured Destruction” — and he also damned well knows if he orders the atomic bombing of Israel, what he can do to threaten the United States from killing his country in retaliation won’t be Mutual.

Ahmadinejad is engaging in typical primate behavior, jumping up and down and trying to look scary. But he has no poker face and he’s just shown us his tell. When Saddam Hussein tried this sort of bluff he ended up swinging on a rope. Hey, Mahmoud. Muammar Gaddafi had full diplomatic relations with the U.S. and that didn’t prevent him from being dragged out of a hole in the ground and shot. You really don’t want to make the whale raise you and call.

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“Alongside Night Must Be Made!”

Alongside Night


Cato the Elder ended every speech, “Carthago delenda est!” — “Carthage must be destroyed!” Recently I’ve been ending everything I’ve been writing:

Alongside Night Must Be Made!


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This article is Copyright © 2011 The J. Neil Schulman Living Trust. All rights reserved.


Winner of the Special Jury Prize for Libertarian Ideals from the 2011 Anthem Film Festival! My comic thriller Lady Magdalene’s — a movie I wrote, produced, directed, and acted in it — is now available free on the web linked from the official movie website and as a DVD on Amazon.com. If you like the way I think, I think you’ll like this movie. Check it out!

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Paul Rosenberg on Alongside Night

Speaking to Steven Michaels of InvisibleAssets.com in Steven’s weekly telephone conference call, guest Paul Rosenberg of Cryptohippie.com and author of A Lodging of Wayfaring Men spoke about Alongside Night and the upcoming movie.


Paul Rosenberg
Paul Rosenberg on Alongside Night
(MP3 audio, 42 seconds)



Alongside Night Movie Website Home Page

See also Alongside Night Movie to Premiere Spring 2012 at George Mason University and Alongside Night Approaches


Cato the Elder ended every speech, “Carthago delenda est!” — “Carthage must be destroyed!” Recently I’ve been ending everything I’ve been writing:

Alongside Night Must Be Made!


Winner of the Special Jury Prize for Libertarian Ideals from the 2011 Anthem Film Festival! My comic thriller Lady Magdalene’s — a movie I wrote, produced, directed, and acted in it — is now available free on the web linked from the official movie website and as a DVD on Amazon.com. If you like the way I think, I think you’ll like this movie. Check it out!

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J. Neil Schulman at Libertopia 2011: Brother Can You Spare A Million Bucks?



J. Neil Schulman at Libertopia 2011:
Brother, Can You Spare A Million Bucks?



J. Neil Schulman at Libertopia 2010:
Reloading the American Revolution





Kevin Sorbo talks about Alongside Night




Alongside Night Movie Website Home Page

See also Alongside Night Movie to Premiere Spring 2012 at George Mason University and Alongside Night Approaches


Cato the Elder ended every speech, “Carthago delenda est!” — “Carthage must be destroyed!” Recently I’ve been ending everything I’ve been writing:

Alongside Night Must Be Made!


Winner of the Special Jury Prize for Libertarian Ideals from the 2011 Anthem Film Festival! My comic thriller Lady Magdalene’s — a movie I wrote, produced, directed, and acted in it — is now available free on the web linked from the official movie website and as a DVD on Amazon.com. If you like the way I think, I think you’ll like this movie. Check it out!

Bookmark and Share

New Indie Film Distribution Model Pioneered by Nichelle Nichols Comic Thriller Lady Magdalene’s

Strategic business alliance between nutritional supplement company Life Enhancement Products and indie film company Jesulu Productions demonstrates a new distribution model for indie films, where a sponsor’s sales revenues are shared with a producer, repaying movie investors. First up: Lady Magdalene’s, a triple-film-festival-award-winning suspense comedy starring original Star Trek’s Lt. Uhura, Nichelle Nichols, released for free views both on web and TV, with Life Enhancement infomercial.

(OpenPress) November 8, 2011 — Most entertainment industry observers are confident that new-media distribution of movies to digital devices will become a major part of film distribution, but until now nobody has demonstrated a business model that creates a revenue stream sufficient to repay film investors. Now one indie film company is trying to create just such a digital-media revenue stream, making independent film-making once again attractive to investors by creating new profitable competition to traditional distribution channels monopolized by the interlocking cartels of movie studios, broadcast/cable/satellite systems & networks, and chain theatrical exhibitors.

Jesulu Productions has just released for free viewing on both YouTube and broadcast television its triple-film-festival-award-winning suspense comedy, Lady Magdalene’s, starring the original Star Trek‘s Lt. Uhura, Nichelle Nichols, including an up-front infomercial by the nutritional supplement company, Life Enhancement Products. The strategic business alliance between the independent film company and nutritional supplement company pioneers a new distribution model for independent films, whereby the new revenue stream created by the movie’s sponsored distribution is shared with a film’s producer, repaying movie investors for the costs of production.

This business model for infomercial-sponsored independent film distribution was conceived by Lady Magdalene’s writer/producer/director, J. Neil Schulman, also an award-winning novelist and journalist, who in the 1980’s and 1990’s founded and operated two eBook publishing companies, SoftServ Publishing and Pulpless.Com, which were the first companies to make books by bestselling authors available for download to personal computers, first as SoftServ in 1990 via the General Electric Network for Information Exchance (GEnie), then beginning in 1995 from the world wide web as Pulpless.Com.

“I believe movie watchers are already used to seeing commercial messages before a movie starts,” says Schulman, “on TV and even in movie theaters. I also think a well-done and entertaining infomercial is much more likely to produce results than traditional web banner advertising extraneous to the movie, which web surfers are much more used to ignoring.”

Lady Magdalene's Poster #2

In Jesulu Productions’ suspense comedy, Lady Magdalene’s, Nichelle Nichols plays Maggie, the colorful and determined madam of a legal Nevada brothel — relocated from New Orleans after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita — and in tax default to the IRS. However the talented but disgraced federal agent, Jack Goldwater (Ethan Keogh), sent as the federal receiver to manage the brothel, soon uncovers evidence that Lady Magdalene’s is being used by al-Qaeda operatives as a meetup for a plot leading to the tunnels under Hoover Dam. But Agent Goldwater and a female federal agent he soon meets up with (Susan Smythe) can’t figure out what al-Qaeda is really doing until they seek help from Lady Magdalene and the working women at the brothel.

Lady Magdalene’s: Free Web Edition was released on YouTube as a single high-definition video, available for web streaming or download, on October 22, 2011; and on Halloween, October 31, 2011, Lady Magdalene’s had its world television premiere on KPVM TV, Pahrump, Nevada, the town in which most of the movie’s principal photography was shot, using both familiar locations and many locals in the cast. The movie broadcast was preceded by the thirty-minute Lady Magdalene’s KPVM TV Halloween 2011 Premiere Pre-Show (also available on YouTube), hosted by cast member Mara Marini (“Nurse Gretchen”), and featuring interviews with star Nichelle Nichols, writer/director J. Neil Schulman, cast-member Mark Gilvary (who plays two different roles in the movie), and features on Pahrump local actors who were selected from a local casting call.

A second thirty-minute video,Lady Magdalene’s Pre-Show, intended for TV broadcasts elsewhere, is also available for viewing on YouTube.

Both the Life Enhancement infomercial and the two pre-shows were produced by Jesulu Productions.

Lady Magdalene's Film Festival Palm Leaves

Lady Magdalene’s has won three film-festival awards: “Best Cutting Edge Film” after its premiere at the 2008 San Diego Black Film Festival; ” Audience Choice” at the 2008 Cinema City International Film Festival shown on the Citywalk adjacent to Universal Studios Hollywood; and, most recently, “Special Jury Prize for Libertarian Ideals” at FreedomFest’s Anthem Film Festival at Bally’s Las Vegas in July 2011.

Life Enhancement Products is the exclusive distributor of the nutritional supplement formulations of New York Times bestselling authors, Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw, and the infomercial seen in both the movie and the pre-show features Mara Marini interviewing founder, president, CEO, and editor of Life Enhancement Magazine, Will Block.

J. Neil Schulman and Will Block have been friends since they met at a New York libertarian meeting in 1972. Block was the videographer at Schulman’s 1985 wedding to Schulman’s ex-wife, singer/songwriter, Kate O’Neal, two of whose songs are featured on the soundtrack of Lady Magdalene’s.


Alongside Night Poster #1
Alongside Night Poster #2

Schulman and Block are both executive producers on Schulman’s next film production, Alongside Night scheduled to begin principal photography in December, starring international TV and film star, Kevin Sorbo (also an executive producer on the film). Schulman has adapted the screenplay from his Prometheus-Hall-of-Fame 1979 novel, endorsed by Nobel-laureate Milton Friedman, A Clockwork Orange author Anthony Burgess, and presidential hopeful Congressman Ron Paul, and Schulman will be helming Alongside Night as his second feature. Schulman has referred to Alongside Night as his “1979 novel ripped from today’s headlines” as it follows the teenage son of a Nobel-prizewinning economist through a U.S. facing fall of the United States government due to the hyperinflationary collapse of the U.S. dollar. The movie is scheduled to premiere on the campus of George Mason University in Spring 2012, sponsored by campus organization Mason Liberty and AntiWar.Com.

Full information on Lady Magdalene’s is on the official movie website at http://www.ladymagdalenes.com. The official Lady Magdalene’s Facebook Page is at http://www.facebook.com/ladymagdalenes.

Full information on Alongside Night is on the official movie website at http://www.alongsidenightmovie.com. The official Alongside Night Facebook Page is at http://www.facebook.com/alongsidenightmovie.

Information about Life Enhancement Products can be found on the web at http://www.life-enhancement.com/movie.







Winner of the Special Jury Prize for Libertarian Ideals from the 2011 Anthem Film Festival! My comic thriller Lady Magdalene’s — a movie I wrote, produced, directed, and acted in it — is now available free on the web linked from the official movie website and as a DVD on Amazon.com. If you like the way I think, I think you’ll like this movie. Check it out!

Bookmark and Share

Nichelle Nichols Comedy Thriller Lady Magdalene’s Pioneers New Indie Film Distribution Model

Everybody knows that new-media distribution of movies to digital devices will become a major part of film distribution, but to this point nobody has demonstrated a business model that creates a revenue stream sufficient to repay film investors competitive to traditional distribution models that have already shut out all but a handful of independent films. If the cutting-edge Lady Magdalene’s/Life Enhancement business model of free distribution with infomercials works to create such a revenue stream, suddenly independent filmmaking becomes attractive to investors again and for the first time enables competition to traditional distribution channels monopolized by the interlocking cartels of movie studios, broadcast/cable/satellite systems & networks, and chain theatrical exhibitors.

(OpenPress) November 6, 2011 — The triple-film-festival-award-winning suspense comedy, Lady Magdalene’s, starring the original Star Trek‘s Lt. Uhura, Nichelle Nichols, has just been released for free viewing on both YouTube and broadcast television, including an up-front infomercial by the nutritional supplement company, Life Enhancement Products. The strategic business alliance between Life Enhancement Products and the independent film company, Jesulu Productions, demonstrates a new distribution model for independent films, whereby the new revenue stream created by the movie’s sponsored distribution is shared with a film’s producer, repaying movie investors for the costs of production.

This business model for sponsored independent film distribution was conceived by Lady Magdalene’s writer/producer/director, J. Neil Schulman, also an award-winning novelist and journalist, who in the 1980’s and 1990’s founded and operated two eBook publishing companies, SoftServ Publishing and Pulpless.Com, which were the first companies to make books by bestselling authors available for download to personal computers, first as SoftServ in 1990 via the General Electric Network for Information Exchance (GEnie), then beginning in 1995 from the world wide web as Pulpless.Com.

Lady Magdalene's Poster #2

In this suspense comedy, Lady Magdalene’s, Nichelle Nichols plays Lady Magdalene, the colorful and determined madam of a legal Nevada brothel — relocated from New Orleans after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita — and in tax default to the IRS. However the talented but disgraced federal agent, Jack Goldwater (Ethan Keogh), sent as the federal receiver to manage the brothel, soon uncovers evidence that Lady Magdalene’s is being used by al-Qaeda operatives as a meetup for a plot leading to the tunnels under Hoover Dam. But Agent Goldwater and a female federal agent he soon meets up with (Susan Smythe) can’t figure out what al-Qaeda is really doing until they seek help from Lady Magdalene and the working women at the brothel.

Lady Magdalene’s: Free Web Edition was released on YouTube as a single high-definition video, available for web streaming or download, on October 22, 2011; and on Halloween, October 31, 2011, Lady Magdalene’s had its world television premiere on KPVM TV, Pahrump, Nevada, the town in which most of the movie’s principal photography was shot, using both familiar locations and many locals in the cast. The movie broadcast was preceded by the thirty-minute Lady Magdalene’s KPVM TV Halloween 2011 Premiere Pre-Show (also available on YouTube), hosted by cast member Mara Marini (“Nurse Gretchen”), and featuring interviews with star Nichelle Nichols, writer/director J. Neil Schulman, cast-member Mark Gilvary (who plays two different roles in the movie), and features on Pahrump local actors who were selected from a local casting call.

A second thirty-minute video,Lady Magdalene’s Pre-Show, intended for TV broadcasts elsewhere, is also available for viewing on YouTube.

Lady Magdalene's Film Festival Palm Leaves

Lady Magdalene’s has won three film-festival awards: “Best Cutting Edge Film” after its premiere at the 2008 San Diego Black Film Festival; ” Audience Choice” at the 2008 Cinema City International Film Festival shown on the Citywalk adjacent to Universal Studios Hollywood; and, most recently, “Special Jury Prize for Libertarian Ideals” at FreedomFest’s Anthem Film Festival at Bally’s Las Vegas in July 2011.

Life Enhancement Products is the exclusive distributor of the nutritional supplement formulations of New York Times bestselling authors, Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw, and the infomercial seen in both the movie and the pre-show features Mara Marini interviewing founder, president, CEO, and editor of Life Enhancement Magazine, Will Block.

J. Neil Schulman and Will Block have been friends since they met at a New York libertarian meeting in 1972. Block was the videographer at Schulman’s 1985 wedding to Schulman’s ex-wife, singer/songwriter, Kate O’Neal, two of whose songs are featured on the soundtrack of Lady Magdalene’s.

Full information on Lady Magdalene’s is on the official movie website at http://www.ladymagdalene’s.com. The official Lady Magdalene’s Facebook Page is at http://www.facebook.com/ladymagdalenes.

Information about Life Enhancement Products can be found on the web at http://www.life-enhancement.com/movie.







Winner of the Special Jury Prize for Libertarian Ideals from the 2011 Anthem Film Festival! My comic thriller Lady Magdalene’s — a movie I wrote, produced, directed, and acted in it — is now available free on the web linked from the official movie website and as a DVD on Amazon.com. If you like the way I think, I think you’ll like this movie. Check it out!

Bookmark and Share