Book Review: Friday Night Lights (1990)
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Author Archives: Brian Wright
Movie Review: Bad Lieutenant, Port of Call New Orleans (2009)
Nicholas Cage excels in film noir w/ a twist __ 8/10
Aside from the fabulous featured performance by Nicolas Cage (Terence McDonagh: the ‘bad lieutenant’) this movie is an object lesson on how drug prohibition corrupts entire governments—from the sidewalks, to city hall, to the state capital. And the root corruptees are always the police, where the the day-to-day human contact comes into play, the laws must be enforced (or bought off), and the rubber meets the road. The buying-off is an essential part of the process… in reality, and in the movie. Continue reading
Guest Column: Thoughts from Prison, Awaiting my Appeal
by Don Siegelman
c/o Friends of Don Siegelman | 1827 1st Ave North, Birmingham, AL 35203
I am waiting with great anticipation for my own appeal for a new trial, but today I would like to turn my attention to the plight of my fellow inmates. To those of you who have done so much to help me, I am asking you to give a hand to these other unfairly treated prisoners.
We recently got good news! The US Sentencing Commission just voted to reduce sentences for some low level, drug offenders! This is important progress, but I would like them to go farther. Fairness dictates that they apply the reductions retroactively as well. Continue reading
Brian’s Column: The Howell Statement (2014)
Sandbox Exit-Plan Strategy for the Libertarian Party, by Brian Wright
… in an Era of Wanton US Federal Crimes and Terror. A proposed new strategy for the LP and LP of Michigan, at the latter’s state convention in Howell, Michigan, May 17, 2014. Chief contribution from that convention a resolution on grand juries as follows:
The LPM supports the reinvigoration and reassertion of the people’s ultimate authority—at local, state, and federal levels—to investigate and bring indictments of government corruption and crimes through statutory empanelment of grand juries. Continue reading
Book Review: The Age of American Unreason (2008)
Disturbing analysis of the roots of antithought in America (and elsewhere)
by Susan Jacoby
2008, Random House , 318 pages
Reviewed by Brian Wright
“I raise no objections to television’s junk. The best things on television are its junk, and no one and nothing is seriously threatened by it. Besides, we do not measure a culture by its output of undisguised trivialities but by what it claims as significant. Therein is our problem, for television is at its most trivial and, therefore, most dangerous when its aspirations are high, when it presents itself as a carrier of important cultural conversations.” — Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985) Continue reading
Movie Review: Crude (2009)
The essence of global corporatism? __ 9/10
Chevron Spokesperson (paraphrasing): The sanitation in that region is poor and probably accounts for the contaminated water and other health problems reported by the plaintiffs.
Chevron Spokesperson (paraphrasing): We are not responsible for the environmental damage, because operations for the Lago Agrio oil field have been conducted by Petroecuador, the state oil company, since 1993.
Guest Column: New Evidence in the Siegelman Case
On 9.11.2012, with New Orleans in the background, Don said good-bye to his wife and children (daughter pictured) before entering prison in Louisiana. Don Siegelman is the former governor of Alabama who was railroaded by friends of the Rove-led justice department at the time… and whose unjust hounding, prosecution, and imprisonment is a living proof that any of us can be subjected to arbitrary federal power—not solely thru Homeland Security, the NSA, the CIA, the TSA, or (via the NDAA 2012) indefinite detention, torture, and murder without trial (and without notice) at the king’s pleasure (or any of the king’s men). Lend the good governor a hand if you possibly can. — ed. Continue reading