Movie Review: Sicko (2007)

Posted on June 24, 2015 by Brian Wright

Typical slicko Michael Moore fare still strikes nerve (7/10)
Written and Directed by Michael Moore

Michael Moore: So there was actually one place on American soil with free, universal healthcare.
[cut to aerial picture of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba]
Michael Moore: That’s all I needed to know.

To say that Sicko tugs at your heart strings is like saying an aircraft carrier leaves a wake. Moore is a master of both sob-story revelation and factual selectivity in the service of powerful messages, whether it’s corporate perfidy (Roger and Me), national politics (Fahrenheit 911)[1], gun policy (Bowling for Columbine), or health care issues (Sicko). Sometimes, as with the Charlton Heston footage in Columbine[2] the selectivity is outright fraudulent. But even when he crosses the line, Moore excels at generating sympathy for real people.

The primary technique for creating misimpressions that I’ve seen, however, in Moore’s movies and other mockumentaries from left or right, is to trick the emotional-perceptual mechanism. For example, the movie The Corporation I reviewed had a sequence describing a plant that was generating toxic waste… then during the narration we’re shown video images of white sludge coasting on dirty water. No attempt is made to connect this water to that specific plant, and most viewers see the vile image (perception) and have the immediate emotional reaction of righteous anger toward the owners of the plant… for which no actual evidence has demonstrated its culpability. It’s just pictures and feelings. Continue reading →

Guest Post: Down Under to be First Plowed Under?

Posted on June 22, 2015 by Brian Wright

June 22, 2015

Red flag: grand experiment: the plan for a future Australia
by Jon Rappoport (original here)

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Power Outside The Matrix, click here.)

A new report, undoubtedly overblown in its predictions, but still important, states that up to 40% of Australian jobs could be transferred to machines in the next several decades, with a projected loss of five million human jobs by 2030.

See “Australia’s Future Workforce,” issued by CEDA, the Committee for Economic Development of Australia. Stephen Martin, the head of CEDA, states: Continue reading →

Brian’s Column: The Snowden-Manning Campaign

Posted on June 21, 2015 by Brian Wright

… is a symbolic assertion of consensus by millions of Americans on how their country can be fixed… especially in light of the federal government’s attacks on NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and Army Wikileaker Bradley/Chelsea Manning.

The plan is to develop a Website and facilities for blanketing the country in ‘signage’—bumper stickers, t-shirts, coffee cups, lapel pins, banners, brochures, etc.—that will be suggestive of a Snowden-Manning 2016 presidential campaign. Continue reading →

Book Review: Dewey (2008)

Posted on June 19, 2015 by Brian Wright

The small-town library cat who touched the world
Vicki Myron

Time for some ‘sloppy sentimentality,’ a story I had not been aware of… but in the latter part of the 20th century came to be a symbol of hope for humanity worldwide. “Dewey Readmore Books,” showed up one minus-15° January 1988 morning in the book deposit box of the public library of the small town of Spencer, Iowa. The author discovered the kitten, just a few weeks old barely clinging to life under the returns. [The narrative of how the staff managed to save the poor cat’s life is a thoroughly amazing achievement in itself, putting flesh and blood (or fur and blood) into the observation that where there’s life there’s hope. Honestly, it borders on the miraculous.] Continue reading →

Movie Review: The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

Posted on June 17, 2015 by Brian Wright

Powerful humanitarian film in a challenging time

Ma Joad: You’re not aimin’ to kill nobody.
Tom Joad: No, Ma, not that. That ain’t it. It’s just, well as long as I’m an outlaw anyways… maybe I can do somethin’… maybe I can just find out somethin’, just scrounge around and maybe find out what it is that’s wrong and see if they ain’t somethin’ that can be done about it. I ain’t thought it out all clear, Ma. I can’t. I don’t know enough.
Ma Joad: How am I gonna know about ya, Tommy? Why they could kill ya and I’d never know.
Tom Joad: Well, maybe it’s like Casy says. A fellow ain’t got a soul of his own, just little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody, then…
Ma Joad: Then what, Tom?
Tom Joad: Then it don’t matter. I’ll be all around in the dark—I’ll be everywhere. Wherever you can look—wherever there’s a fight, so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready, and when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they build—I’ll be there, too. Continue reading →

Guest Column: The Devious Matrix Called Psychiatry

Posted on June 15, 2015 by Brian Wright

The war on free consciousness
by Jon Rappoport (full original column here)

“Psychiatry does more than define mental disorders. It purports to describe actual states of mind, and it coalesces and freezes those descriptions in such a way that people believe these states of mind exist. They don’t. They’re fictions. Fantasies. This is an enormous landscape of consciousness-programming. It’s actually reduction. Like many systems before it, psychiatry tries to reduce the possibilities of wide-ranging free consciousness. Throughout history, people have always been afraid of mind freedom. ‘What will people with free minds do?’ ‘What will society become if people’s minds are free?’ I can tell you: society would change radically, right down to its foundations.” (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)

Over the past 30 years, my work has always returned to freedom of the individual.

Not only Constitutional freedom and Bill-of-Rights freedom, but liberation of the power of individual thought and imagination and invention. Because those qualities are unpredictable, open-ended, and limitless. This is where long-term revolution begins. Continue reading →

Brian’s Column: Snowden-Manning Nation

Posted on June 14, 2015 by Brian Wright

Catharsis and Catalyst to the New Paradigm?

Roughly a year ago someone or something raised the notion to me of a symbolic Ed Snowden and Bradley/Chelsea Manning presidential ticket. And I thought to myself, “Wow, such a campaign would be like giving the finger to the powers that be for their multiple high-crime assaults on the people… while they always get off scot-free. The gesture being a milder, more thoughtful version of Howard Beale’s passionate appeal in the movie Network, ‘We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore!'”

So I promptly went to my BuildASign.com account and designed the bumper sticker you see above right. [If you click on the image—and then on the ‘Check out This Design…’ link on the page that comes up—you can order them directly.] I had in mind a trial balloon for an actual write-in campaign for the two persons… though a real write-in campaign would need to find two legally qualified individuals to be the bona fide candidates manifesting for the expelled Snowden and incarcerated Manning. Continue reading →