Brian’s Column: 911 at 10

Posted on September 11, 2011 by Brian Wright

Thoughts on the 10th anniversary of the
worldchanging criminal terror operation, 9/11/01
by Brian Wright

Today, on the 10th anniversary, we Americans remember not only our countrymen who suffered and perished as a direct consequence of the criminal terror operation (CTO) of that 11th day of September 2001 (9/11)… we also mourn the suffering and loss of millions of victims worldwide created by the wars, war crimes, and military occupations that 9/11 was used to sanction. Continue reading →

Brian’s Column: He Who Has the Gold…

Posted on August 29, 2011 by Brian Wright

Golden Rule and its mechanics in Samland
by Brian Wright

It’s the old joke or phrase, I believe it was from the comic strip Pogo—but it may have been The Wizard of Id or Shoe (reader input welcome). One of the characters says in conversation about politics, “Just remember the Golden Rule.” “What do you mean?” “He who has the gold makes the rules.” This is so entirely apt when one discusses the central banking and money machinery of the United States: the Federal Reserve System (Fed).[1] For this week’s column I’m going to paraphrase Mr. G. Edward Griffin’s description, in The Creature from Jekyll Island, of how the Fed works, how it creates ‘money.’ Like turning lead into gold, the central bankers believe in magic… and would have us believe they’re Mandrake the Magician. Continue reading →

Brian’s Column: Robert Ettinger Takes a Nap

Posted on August 1, 2011 by Brian Wright

Cryonics founder begins his cold deep nap
by Brian Wright, w/comments by Pat Heller

Though we are not precisely contemporaries, Robert Ettinger—author of The Prospect of Immortality and Man into Superman, founder of the cryonics movement and the Cryonics Institute (CI)—and I inhabited the same milieu of SE Michigan in the days when liberty and life extension became primetime, iconic ideas in society (roughly the late 1960s and into the early 1980s).[1] Mr. Ettinger ‘deanimated’ a week ago at his home in Clinton Township, Michigan, where he was perfused and ‘frozen'[2] in a chamber of liquid nitrogen at the CI facility, also in Clinton Township. The Washington Post, and several other periodicals, mostly respectful, carried the story of his passing… passing from a state with heartbeat and respiration into essential biostasis.

So the leader of a great techno-philosophical movement takes his hoped-for temporary leave by practicing what he preaches: taking a prepared respite from life, until the time medical knowledge catches up to reanimate and rejuvenate him. That is the plan. The Wikipedia article on Robert Ettinger is accurate and, again, respectful, no doubt written by those with a personal knowledge of the man and the vastness of the ‘idea-prise’ he created.[3] Here are some comments from Pat Heller, one of the early adopters of cryonics, and a perennial officer of CI: Continue reading →

Brian’s Column: FLOW

Posted on June 20, 2011 by Brian Wright

Fellowship for the Liberation of our World
by Brian Wright

Taking this opportunity to plug my new ‘religion’ and ‘church.’ It’s all in a special three-fold brochure entitled FLOW, which can be accessed as a PDF file at this location. I’m presenting at the 2011 Free State Project Porcfest in Lancaster, New Hampshire, on June 24. The title of my presentation there is Liberty as a Spiritual Practice: Practical Lessons and Urgent Opportunities of the Sacred Nonaggression Principle (SNaP). I’m taking this opportunity to make it my June 20 column, then I’ll probably be taking a Coffee Coaster vacation until after the festival. Continue reading →

Brian’s Column: In Borg We Trust

Posted on June 6, 2011 by Brian Wright

Clearing the Barrier Cloud thru a good name
by Brian Wright

Yes, for my polite friends who resist the acknowledging the 900# Gorilla, here comes yet another column on noting and slaying the black beast. But it’s in a positive vein and I promise not to accuse you who deny the obvious—or at least readily apparent—of being immoral or stupid. In fact, the great majority of you are simply ‘tardy adopters:’ uncomfortable disagreeing with deep nationalistic conventions. Either that, or manifesting the archetypical American child-consciousness… as one writer puts it:

“We Americans are the ultimate innocents.
We are forever desperate to believe that this time
the government is telling us the truth.” Continue reading →

Brian’s Column: Atlas Shrugged Phenom

Posted on April 18, 2011 by Brian Wright

Comments on the cultural impact of the film
by Brian Wright

After more years than I can count, Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged reached the silver screen yesterday, Friday, April 15, 2011. A small group of my idea-interested friends and I attended the 7:15 showing at a cineplex in Lansing, Michigan. The show was not sold out. In fact, I estimate less than 1/4 of the 400 seats were filled… average age 40-something, with perhaps 40 30-somethings and below. Hardly any teens.

Regardless of the numbers—Atlas Shrugged the Movie (ASM) was not marketed like Harry Potter —the film is an important cultural milestone(s). My focus in today’s column is the cultural and ideological relevance of the film. On Wednesday next, I review the movie itself. — bw Continue reading →