Brian’s Column: “Project Toto”

Posted on April 26, 2015 by Brian Wright

Leveraging the A911T Truth-Letter campaign toward a Billion+ Points of Light

This column is a condensation of a two-sided sheet prospectus and recruitment tool that I composed after coming up with a key idea for implementing the project phase of my After 9/11 Truth book of action. [The sheet may be accessed here: after911truth.org/Toto.doc.]

In mid-April 2015 I realized a magnificent promotional enhancement to my A911T ‘Truth-Letter Closure (TLC)’ campaign—which sends coordinated appeal messages, one-by-one, to targeted ‘Respected Deniers’ (RDs) from a participant’s address book. I changed the name of the campaign to Project Toto (after Dorothy’s little dog that pulls back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz), then generalized the effort to all ‘truth and justice’ causes.

[Note: I now have a Gofundme page for Project Toto here. Mini-donations very welcome.]

Continue reading →

Book Review: Terminator and Philosophy (2009)

Posted on April 24, 2015 by Brian Wright

I’ll be back therefore I am
by William Irwin et al

This book was purchased for me by a friend who thought it looked like “the sort of material I’d be into.” And she was right. Actually, I had never heard of the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series of books, much less this particular item—which poses age-old questions of free will, personhood, the man-machine relationship, and so on. Very cool concept to merge such deep discussions with the characters and actions in a major movie like James Cameron’s Terminator series.

The overall quality of the writing is first class, and one is struck immediately by the depth of academic knowledge of each of the writers. Which makes sense, because many of them are gentlemen and ladies with professorial credentials: meaning they’ve read all the classics from authors we college students in the humanities were assigned to read: Descartes, Kant, Hobbes, Mill, Bentham, and a host of others. Continue reading →

Movie Review: The International (2009)

Posted on April 22, 2015 by Brian Wright

Like a Bourne movie only with too much “reality”

Umberto Calvini: [In explaining the “true” nature of banking in the world] The IBBC is a bank. Their objective isn’t to control the conflict, it’s to control the debt that the conflict produces. You see, the real value of a conflict, the true value, is in the debt that it creates. You control the debt, you control everything. You find this upsetting, yes? But this is the very essence of the banking industry, to make us all, whether we be nations or individuals, slaves to debt.

Written by Eric Singer
Directed by Tom Tykwer

Clive Owen … Louis Salinger
Naomi Watts … Eleanor Whitman
Armin Mueller-Stahl … Wilhelm Wexler
Ulrich Thomsen … Jonas Skarssen
Brian F. O’Byrne … The Consultant
Michel Voletti … Viktor Haas Continue reading →

Guest Column: Prop 1 as an Insult to Intelligence

Posted on April 20, 2015 by Brian Wright

Be nice to your grandmother by raising her taxes
by John Worster

Hey Brian. Sorry I have been off the grid lately. Survival has been tough recently and I have found the depression of both jobs keeping me in a catatonic recluse state. However,I had to open the curtains to share this with you. Continue reading →

Brian’s Column: The Doreen Freedom Files

Posted on April 19, 2015 by Brian Wright

Ongoing efforts to free Doreen Hendrickson from the clutches of Leviathan

Today I want lay out a set of documents and activities that Pete and many others in the educated tax and general liberty movements are putting together. We earnestly hope they do the job, that is lead to the exoneration and liberation of Doreen Hendrickson from the recent sentence of a malevolent prosecutocracy that is running amok nationwide. First the appeal is in progress. Second the attorney has sent a motion to the district court to modify Doreen’s sentencing on exclusively 5th Amendment grounds, which I’ve uploaded here. Third, led by Pete, we have been constructing a petition for submittal to high Michigan officials—chiefly the head law enforcement official in Michigan, Attorney General Bill Schuette; this will be accompanied by a background description, which Pete has composed and is uploaded here. And fourth, individuals are sending their own letters of appeal to Michigan officials to interpose on Constitutional grounds, such as the missive by former Troy mayor, Janice Daniels, which I’ve uploaded here. Continue reading →

Book Review: The God Delusion (2006)

Posted on April 17, 2015 by Brian Wright

by Richard Dawkins
2006, Houghton Mifflin Co., 374 pgs.

Dawkins is a celebrated evolutionary biologist who, along with Sam Harris (The End of Faith), has emerged as one of the better known proponents of atheism in contemporary literature. Both books have been New York Times best sellers.

In my own work, New Pilgrim Chronicles, I have likewise argued for the critical need of the species to evolve from faith to reason:

“Faith, as the antithesis of reason, is a barbarous relic that must be discarded if civilization, much less any prospect for freedom, is to emerge.”— from Chapter 5

Dawkins’ main thesis is the natural world and even sentient beings such as ourselves are accounted for by natural explanations. Thus, God is not a requirement for and has a vanishingly small probability of existence. Continue reading →

Movie Review: Love Song for Bobby Long (2004)

Posted on April 15, 2015 by Brian Wright

Lush tribute to the soul (and body) of New Orleans

Lawson Pines: Some people reach a place in time where they’ve gone as far as they can. A place where wives and jobs collide with desire. That which is unknowable and those who remain out of sight. See what it is invisible and you will see what to write. That’s how Bobby used to put it. It was the invisible people he wanted to live with. The ones that we walk past everyday, the ones we sometimes become. The ones in books who live only in someone’s mind’s eye. He was a man who was destined to go through life and not around it. A man who was sure the shortest path to Heaven was straight through Hell. But the truth of his handicap lay only in a mind both exalted and crippled by too many stories and the path he chose to become one. Bobby Long’s tragic flaw was his romance with all that he saw. And I guess if people want to believe in some form of justice, then Bobby Long got his for a song. Continue reading →