Author Archives: Brian Wright

About Brian Wright

Hello, I'm Brian Wright, the proprietor and chief content provider to this Web opinion and review site. The Coffee Coaster (thecoffeecoaster.com) has been around since late 2006, and in early 2012 I finally decided to give the site a major makeover with this Wordpress implementation. My views are 'wholistic libertarian,' meaning focused on the spiritual--I like to use the word: essentual--evolution we will need, individually, in order to reach the New Paradigm of peace, freedom, and abundance. Let's help one another in the process.

Democracy Reaches the Kids! (2014)

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Rekindling the joy of learning
by George Meegan

Democracy Reaches the KidsDemocracy Reaches the Kids! is a tour de force, a blockbuster, and a game changer. It delivers a blow to the ‘education industrial complex’ from which it will not recover, and we are all the better for it. One of the higher density books of ideas-per-page you’ll ever read. Meegan’s pace is quick and energetic, a rich tapestry of facts from all over the world—pertaining to education, both how it has been and how it can be. Taking it all in is like reading Future Shock by Alvin Toffler, though Democracy! shines with genuine compassion and focus. Where Mr. Toffler tends to overwhelm the reader with technology ahead of its time, Mr. Meegan shows us how to liberate our souls and become humanely connected to one another through life-learning.

So who is this guy George Meegan, coming from out of the blue? Per Wikipedia:

George Meegan is a British long-distance walker best known for his unbroken walk of the entire Western Hemisphere from the southern tip of South America to the northernmost part of Alaska at Prudhoe Bay. This journey on foot was of 19,019 miles (30,608 km) in 2,425 days (1977-1983) and is documented in his book The Longest Walk (1988). He has appeared often in the press including the Today Show three times, CBS Morning News and on Larry King Live. Meegan lives Internationally and has a wife, Yoshiko, in Japan. They have two children. He ran as an Independent candidate for the Gillingham and Rainham constituency for the 2010 General Election.

Reading further in the Wiki article, which describes Democracy!, you’ll see George’s self-identified life mission since finishing the Longest Walk has been to preserve culture and language, what he saw so many of during that Herculean journey 35 years ago. The book sprang from notes George gathered during the thousands of miles he traversed and the hundreds of communities that he called home for days, weeks, sometimes months and years. Continue reading →

Movie Review: Bob Roberts (1992)

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Wrapping it in the flag and a folk song (9/10)
Directed by Tim Robbins

Original Review by Brian R. Wright, November 19, 2006

Bob Roberts is a timely movie about national political cynicism that was intended to satirize the Republican Revolution of 1994.  Others have contended the subject of the satire was the Reagan 80s, against the Gordon Gekko “Greed is Good” crowd.

But it could not be more appropriate to the rise and ascendancy of the Bush II clique.

Roberts, a Pennsylvania Senate candidate , is a rich, smarmy, guitar-strumming, media savvy corporate shill.  He sings folk songs about the joys of strip mining, stock-market success, and capital punish- ment for drug dealers.

The review on the IMDB site  states Roberts is eerily prescient of Rick Santorum, who won the 1994 Senate race in Pennsylvania by affecting the same style as Tim Robbins in the title role.  Like Bob Roberts, Santorum postured as a friend of the common man, yet was a front for powerful corporate interests (esp. the health insurance industry).

The cast is stellar, as writer-director Robbins skewers the lazy, posturing media—actors Fred Ward, Pamela Reed, and James Spader send up good roles—; malicious security hacks (Alan Rickman); and the gullible public itself. Continue reading →

Guest Column: Trump’s ‘Wag the Dog’ Moment

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Trump launches illegal lethal attack based on raft of obvious lies
By Robert Parry, 4/7/2017 [full original column in Consortium News]

Just two days after news broke of an alleged poison-gas attack in northern Syria, President Trump brushed aside advice from some U.S. intelligence analysts doubting the Syrian regime’s guilt and launched a lethal retaliatory missile strike against a Syrian airfield.

Trump immediately won plaudits from Official Washington, especially from neoconservatives who have been trying to wrestle control of his foreign policy away from his nationalist and personal advisers since the days after his surprise victory on Nov. 8.

There is also an internal dispute over the intelligence. On Thursday night, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. intelligence community assessed with a “high degree of confidence” that the Syrian government had dropped a poison gas bomb on civilians in Idlib province. Continue reading →

Brian’s Column: Paean to 911-Truth Advent Day (2/18/17)

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Open Letter to Humankind re: Advent Day for 9/11 Truth and Justice
Cobo Hall, Detroit, Michigan, 18 February 2017, Nation of Islam Founders’ Day
by Brian R. Wright

Here’s the whole enchilada: the best overall presentations and exposes of the 9/11 Big Lie (https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_647443107&feature=iv&src_vid=kIWBvg4AX2A&v=3xMkk359nd0), as well as who are the most likely perpetrators needing to be brought before an independent people’s federal grand jury… or (for suspects who are citizens of other countries) an international tribunal that functions as a people’s grand jury.

The above link shows a remarkable presentation that I attended in Detroit at the gathering of Nation of Islam (NOI). I covered in my Coffee Coaster column here (http://brianrwright.com/CoffeeCoasterBlog/?p=9108). You are in for a treat, though admittedly the eye-opening can be painful. The main video has been recomposed to correct some errors in the projection process toward the beginning. The correction makes it incredibly powerful from its wonderful introduction right from the beginning all the way through.

The speakers are a perfect selection of the absolute BEST of the 9/11 Truth movement. It is practically divine inspiration and providence that they were invited for the same program and were able to come to Detroit as special esteemed guests of the NOI. Their background and vital topics of presentation are identified in an earlier CC column here (http://brianrwright.com/CoffeeCoasterBlog/?p=9038). Continue reading →

Book Review: Solving 9-11 (2012)

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The deception that changed the world
by Christopher Bollyn (reviewed by Brian R. Wright)

“The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible…. It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world…. Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me fellow citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.” George Washington’s Farewell Address, 1796, from the foreword by Glen Stanish.

The false narrative of what happened on 9/11 can no longer be supported or sustained by any reasonable person. – See more at: http://www.bollyn.com/#article_14625

“The false narrative of what happened on 9/11 can no longer be supported or sustained by any reasonable person.”
— Christopher Bollyn in his open letter to Pope Francis, March 25, 2014

Braveheart Apotheosis of the 9/11 Truth Movement

Solving 9-11 constitutes the ultimate fearless treatment of the subject of the 9/11 attacks. Christopher Bollyn has performed the highest act of journalistic heroism—by calling out perhaps the most powerful and sadistic Mob masquerading as the most sacred of sacred cows in human history. Further, he has done so succinctly… with clear, passionate writing. [The Mob has struck back, too, attacking and tasering Bollyn on the lawn of his home near Chicago, shattering his elbow, and forcing him and his family into exile.] Continue reading →

Guest Column: Howard Roark and the Collective

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Why go to fiction to learn about power?
by Jon Rappoport [original column at nomorefakenews.com here]

Why go to fiction to learn about power?

Because in art we can see our visions. We can see ideals and archetypes. These fictional characters have the energy we strive for.

When Ayn Rand, the author of The Fountainhead (1943), was asked whether Howard Roark, the hero of her novel, could exist in real life, she answered, with annoyance, “Of course.”

Her implication was: don’t you have the desire to discover your own highest ideals and live them out?

Roark is an architect who creates buildings no one has imagined before. His refusal to compromise his vision is legendary. He suffers deprivation and poverty and rejection with an astonishing amount of indifference. He is the epitome of the creative individual living in a collective world.

For reasons no one can discover (must there always be reasons?), Roark has freed himself from The Group. Perhaps he was born free.

Roark’s hidden nemesis is a little man named Ellsworth Toohey, an architecture columnist for a New York newspaper, who is quietly building a consensus that has, as its ultimate goal, the destruction of all thought and action by the individual for the individual. Continue reading →

Brian’s Column: Here Comes the Neighborhood

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3: First steps into Brave New Homestead and Environs
Brian R. Wright

[Link to Episode 2]

Note: These columns are a series, I will make into a volume of my memoirs. You may follow the links at top and bottom of page to go to preceding or succeeding episodes. The series starts here. {If the [Link to Episode <next>] at the  bottom of the column does not show an active hyperlink, then the <next> column has yet to be written.}

From the staging flat in Kansas City, where brother Forrest’s abrupt, determined mission to to defy gravity ended badly, we moved into the new home in Overland Park in 1953ish. Understand that my dad was an early adopter in the vision for this particular development. You can see from the photo that our back yard ended at a stream behind which rose an open field on which you can still see the farm house. We’re looking eastward in the photo, so that whole area behind us hasn’t even been subdivided yet.

Now, thanks to Peeping Tom-worthy Google Maps, here’s what it looks like today:
A little more background on the parental units

Mom and Dad both were four-year graduates of Western Michigan University, which is where they met and fell in love—Dad from Chicago, only child, always loved flying, lied about his age (17) to get into the Air Force for WW2, rose to B24 bomber captain, several runs, shot down over Italy, parachuted, gathered his men, got to safety, thus a genuine war hero (though he NEVER talked about the war). Mom loved him lots more because he was one of the few men on campus with an actual car. Continue reading →