In an article posted in July 2012 at Etico Capital, Robert Fallah discussed the JOBS Act and its 
effect on capital markets.
In this film on CareerFuel, Tom Szaky discusses how the JOBS Act will make it substantially easier for small businesses to get off the ground and/or take their business to the next level. Szaky is a 30-year-old successful entrepreneur with a high growth, $15 million business.
AnnMarie McIlwain, Founder and CEO of CareerFuel, is a Board member of CFIRA, a leading advocacy group working with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Financial Industry Regulatory Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and other affected governmental entities to help establish industry standards and best practices for equity based crowdfunding.
Please find their petition to the Securities and Exchange Commission here: http://signon.org/sign/keep-crowdfunding-for.
At Film Annex, we distribute and produce videos that are often topical to current events of the 
world. In the modern world that often means things get political or we deal with politics directly. One example of this was our series AAA Country which was created when President Obama announced that the United States received a downgrade by a credit rating agency. While markets still believe in the US, there seems to be a doubt about the political system and its ability to act to solve the debt problems. Here is a film from that series:
Watch more on Film Annex
Recently, The Washington Post ran a story titled "Social media's role in politics":
"We have entered an entirely new and exciting era of politics. Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev), the Senate Majority Leader, postponed a vote on the PROTECT IP Act and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) stopped consideration of the Stop Online Piracy Act. PIPA and SOPA are designed to combat piracy and protect intellectual property with a particular focus on IP that can be transmitted over or pirated on the Internet. Key supporters of the bills included the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which represents record labels and the music industry, and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which represents the movie industry and is headed by Christopher Dodd, the former U.S. Senator turned lobbyist.
The proposed bills would have given law enforcement sweeping powers to shut down entire Internet domains if those domains were deemed to be infringing on copyrights or violating IP strictures. Reid and Alexander pulled back after a tremendous cyberprotest erupted. Phone lines and email inboxes at the U.S. Congress were jammed with messages. The onslaught included nearly 200,000 phone calls (made via Craigslist and Tumblr), 7 million online signatures (the Google petition), and over 2.4 million tweets via Twitter. Over 1,000 protesters showed up in person, as well.
Ambassador Sacirbey of Diplomatically Incorrect posted an interesting article social media/activism platforms in 
international politics:
"Would Gandhi do Social Media Rather than Social Disobedience?"
He states:
"Protest still happens on the streets, see “Occupy Wall Street.” Increasingly it is online though. Most of us saw how it catalyzed and organized Arab Spring protests. That got the people, particularly the young to show up on the streets in a mass physical manifestation of dissent. However, the protest and the march are ever more frequently online, Twitter, Facebook and G+."
Tyler Trimbath is President of UpGraded Strategies in Pittsburgh, PA. Tyler comes from a 
political family in Pennsylvania and he ran and won a seat on his local school board at the age of nineteen. Tyler represents the younger generation in politics and his thoughts included:
"The ability to share a message and reach the masses in a cost effective manner makes social media even more attractive to a political campaign. Office holders need to utilize social media the way businesses do, by sharing and engaging. Most importantly, once social media is created, it must also be constantly managed. Creating an audience can be extremely impactful but also detrimental if mistakes are made. Online platforms for matching a candidate with a voter are only going to grow. See http://electnext.com, as social media is what makes that system work effectively."
The Washington Post article went on to say:
"The significance of this event was captured best in the RIAA’s response to the demise of those bills. "It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users and arm them with misinformation," said the RIAA in a statement, “it’s very difficult to counter the misinformation when the disseminators also own the platform."
A sleeping giant — the technology world — finally rose. Google, Mozilla, Reddit, O’Reilly Radar, Wikipedia, and thousands of other Websites rose up to protest PIPA and SOPA. They argued that the two bills were too draconian and could, in fact, inhibit commerce while simultaneously threatening free speech and innovation. The famous Google doodle that day showed a large black rectangle aping censorship. Wikipedia was literally darkened entirely (at least the first page – you could work around this with a set of keystrokes if you so chose). To frame this battle properly, a loosely organized group of Internet leaders outwitted a well-funded lobbying organization. And they did so in grand style, convincing dozens of lawmakers to reverse their votes virtually overnight."
Francesco Rulli the C.E.O. of Film Annex stated in response:
"The Internet allows billions of people to have a voice, interact, influence and generate revenues regardless of their geo-location. The only hurdle is the Internet connection as they need a way to access the Internet. This is why we started the Afghan Development Initiative, which is installing 40 Internet class-rooms to connect 160,000 Afghan students to the global community of the World Wide Web.
No Politics, just Internet."
More to come for sure in the Presidential election year.
Earlier this week, we announced G.I.V.E. (Global Initiative for Veteran Entrepreneurship), which is a new initiative by Film Annex to re-introduce war veterans to society and help them make their business ideas a reality.
While the Film Annex initiative is focused on Entrepreneurship, we fully support our friends at GE and their new initiative.
General Electric says it will hire 5,000 military veterans over the next five years and invest $580 million to expand its aviation business.
The announcements are part of a four-day event that the global conglomerate is hosting with partners in Washington DC, that focuses on issues like manufacturing and job creation in America.
GE said Monday that its "Hire Our Heroes" partnership will help match veterans with jobs, while its aviation unit will add more than 400 manufacturing jobs and open three new plants next year.
International companies, relief agencies, and governments may be interested in Film Annex's work in Afghanistan. Film Annex's Afghan Development Project allowed Francesco Rulli to collaborate with Citadel's Roya Mahboob to establish Film Annex Afghanistan and create a web channel called the Afghan Development Web TV. The mission is to show the world the new face of Afghanistan by broadcasting current event videos, interviews, and news clips as well as archival material directly from Afghan Youth Development. In the interview below, Francesco Rulli answers questions about the project and the future of Afghanistan. Film Annex plans to open a virtual office in Afghanistan to provide the following services:
- Direct Investment in Afghan "technology grid" by Film Annex;
- Direct Investment in Herat, Afghanistan school infrastructure by Film Annex;
- Film Production - Focused on positive and corporate stories;
- Online Film Network with over 30,000 professional videos and Films (we work to add Afghan quality content);
- Video Web Hosting on our existing platform in USA);
- Film Annex Video Ad Networks integrated to monetize advertising in USA, Europe, and many other countries around the world;
- Traffic - 280,000 registered users and traffic of 10+ million unique viewers per month;
- Film Annex Studios in NYC,
- Kabul Innovation Lab- Film Annex is working directly with this projec that is sponsored by Internews, with the support of USAID, and in consultation with both the Ministry of Information Communication Technology (MoICT) and INSY Group. The goal is to facilitate future development of technical entrepreneurialism and innovation in Afghanistan.
Watch more on Afghan Development WebTV
Ambassador Muhamed ("Mo") Sacirbey is the Director/Producer of Diplomatically Incorrect, which is a WebTV and VBlog on Film Annex. Functioning as the “voice of the global citizen” and DI reports and analyzes from the diplomatic, media, finance, and arts center of the world, New York City. From rapidly developing debates at the United Nations to events moving global financial markets to the increasing contribution of artists and culture to global dialogue on hunger to human rights, Diplomatically Incorrect informs, involves, and empowers.
Mo’s career spans from attorney and investment banker on Wall Street (including SVP at Standard & Poor’s in key development period in 1980’s), to Foreign Minister, Agent before the International Court of Justice, Co-Chair of International Criminal Court Prep Committee, and UN Ambassador for Bosnia & Herzegovina. He has fought the odds and won more battles than lost and his influence impacts musicians (he brought U2 to Sarajevo to signal hoped for new peace in Bosnia & Herzegovina), and filmmakers. He is guest lecturer at universities (Columbia School of International & Public Affairs), and is frequent guest/commentator on broadcast Television from BBC, CNN, Aljezeera etc. Mo is graduate of Tulane University, Tulane School of Law and has MBA from Columbia.
In the film, Mo comments on Film Annex:
“It is both demanding and rewarding – cannot envision a more effective way than to employ a professional platform combining Film Annex and Diplomatically Incorrect, a true new and multi-media platform, to open the door and enable the reach of the global citizen.”
Watch more on Film Annex
Film Annex is looking for writers and Bloggers who are able to influence, inspire, and inform 
our readers and watchers.
Why Blog on Film Annex? Simple, we pay you!
By Blogging with Film Annex, you will:
- Be paid on a per Blog and/or revenue share model,
- The Film Annex revenue model is 50% to content creator, 50% to Film Annex,
- Have a personal WebTV where you can build your Brand with film,
- Have every Blog translated into Chinese for no charge, thus extending your reach through Film Annex China,
- Benefit from Film Annex traffic which is currently ranked #172 by Quantcast in the United States and has 10.2+ million uniques visitors per month.
- Other potential benefits:
- Free studio time at our office, where you can do video interviews and talk about your work, passion, anything that will interest your audience.
- Other sponsorship opportunities to financially support your work.
It had been documented by existing Bloggers on Film Annex that using films from the Film Annex Open Film Library to support your writing, revenues are estimated to increase 200% or more.
Film Annex is different from YouTube and many other publishers out there. First and foremost, we are one of the leading video platforms visited by 1.5 million users every day. Our content includes feature and short films by acclaimed filmmakers like Abel Ferrara, videos by leading organizations like NATO and the White House, political commentary, sports videos, animations, you name it.
We want your voice added to our platform!
At Film Annex:
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We only show/promote professional content;
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You will work and get paid by the best advertising networks;
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We do not, under any circumstance, endorse amateur user-generated content;
At Film Annex, we recognize that writers are the most valuable content providers on the web and that written content is priceless. We simply pay our contributors more than our competitors do because we have low overhead, no debt and no outside investors. We'd like to invite you to our platform where you can have your own blog and share our wealth with you. How?
All your blogs will be published on your free Web TV channel that is given to you upon signing up. This gives you the following:
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You will be able to match your blog content to the videos in our film library that contains over 5000 titles.
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You will receive 50% of the advertising revenues generated on your Web TV. 10 times more than YouTube and much much more than what you'd get paid on Huffington Post as they do not pay most of their contributors.
Don't forget: Videos are forever, and they will be a great addition to your valuable text. Visit our Web TV page to see what kind of revenues are contributors are making: www.filmannex.com/webtvs/revenue.
The Film Annex Philsophy = $$$
Watch more on Film Annex
For additional information on our business model, please see:
The HBO series Entourage costs $120,000 per minute. The average Hollywood movie cost is 
$722,000 per minute. What should you spend on YOU?
Film Annex has developed a film product for you. that has a variety of formats to document the lives of Politicians, Entertainers, Sports Celebrities, Reality TV personalities, Diplomats, CEO's and other individuals that want to present their lives in an entertaining and glamorous film.
In this video, Francesco Rulli of Film Annex explains 4 different styles of videos. They are:
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Interview Style - Filmmaker Abel Ferrara discusses with Francesco Rulli the relationship with NATO. This a good example of a business and opinions interview style with a Film Annex twist;
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Passion - Everyone has a passion. In the second example, Film Annex features Model Chris Collins driving his Harley Davidson;
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Sports - Boxer Rob Evans explains how boxing is a very important part of his life;
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Lifestyle - Bouncer Chronicles is a detailed description of unbelievably true stories told through the eyes of New York City bouncers. It takes you behind the velvet rope into club life and lifestyles of Bouncers and Club Goers. Topics range from Madonna to Mobsters!
Watch more on Film Annex