TO BARRETT BROWN #45047-177
Federal Correctional Institution
Seagoville
P.O. Box 9000
Seagoville, TX 75159-9000
3rd October 2014
Dear Barrett,
As far as I recall I have only ever
sent you a typed letter one other time in the last two years, and if you have
been struggling with my handwriting over these long months then today’s good
wishes will come to you as legible relief.
I am writing in OpenOffice today
however, because I plan to post this letter straight on to my blog, probably
because I have been unable in all that time to compose what I consider a
satisfactory journalistic article about your case.
You said in one of your own Barrett Brown Review of Arts Letters and Jail articles that you had no talent for creative writing, but I should tell you now that, if anything,
I must be the opposite. I have worked as
a journalist but now write fiction books for the most part, and although I
still write the odd factual or opinion-based piece, these take me a long
time. In fact, I have written two pieces
of journalism this year, and the second took me from June until September to
complete, so panicked was I about being concise and correct — not issues that
anybody has within the sphere of literary fiction, believe me.
In truth, I don’t think there’s
much of an antagonism here although I am unable to forget a tweet of yours from
3 September 2012 — as follows —
For good measure I retweeted that
this morning, and had another look back through your tweets, those messages
that supposedly got you into trouble all those years ago. These were not auspicious times, and the
tweets from around the end of your timeline seem to be your deflecting abuse
from @asherresearch and @rabite, but there is nothing that I could see could in
earnest get a person arrested — I’ve always felt that.
I’ve tried to pitch articles about
your case to news outlets here in Scotland, but Texas is very far away, and
its prisons are full of deserving cases, and I don’t think that small circulation
Scottish newspapers are that interested in covering each one individually. ‘But this is a case that affects us all!’ I
complain, but for that to matter, you would need to have a Scottish connection,
Barrett, and I don’t think you can unearth one.
If you DID have a Scots connection,
then we could pitch something like:
JOURNALIER WHO ONCE WATCHED ‘BRAVEHEART’ IN PRISON IN
TX FOR JACK SHIT—THE WORLD AWAITS THE OUTCOME.
or
BARRETT BROON OF THE AUCHENSHOOGLE BROONS IN THE SNIB
FOR STOSHUS TWITTER SQUARE-GO
Like I say, I have tried to pitch articles to the press, but there were no takers, although I’m
pleased to say people across the world are still reporting on you, even as you
commence your third year away from us. I
have tried handing out FREE BARRETT BROWN leaflets in Scotland recently, but
because you are not anything to do with Scottish Independence, people are
confused.
“Where does this fit in?” they
say. “Is he YES or NO?” There has only been one
public talking point in Scotland this year and people are having difficulty, in some
cases, grasping certain pressing issues from elsewhere.
This is still the case even now that the Referendum is over — for your interest, the result of the
question SHOULD SCOTLAND BE AN INDEPENDENT COUNTRY? was NO — but it wasn’t a
victory for Unionism or anything else.
It was a victory for Capitalism — a victory for money — and that is a
hard lesson, because the YES campaigners achieved great things, and gave so much, only to learn just how difficult it is to challenge capitalist structures. These institutions do not tolerate such affronts as our quest for independence represented. So just as money will be the
victor in our newest war in Iraq — it was the winner in the Scottish
independence referendum.
Back to Twitter though, and as I was delving among your old
tweets, I found that Jake Davis phone call again — it’s pretty interesting,
even if you can barely hear Jake and you keep interrupting with your banter about
UK 20 pence pieces which you found so funny.
I wonder if you ever got the 20 pence piece I sent to you in
Mansfield? I doubt it — contraband you
know. But I did send you one about two
years ago.
As I told you last time, there’s a
play featuring the stories of Topiary and T-Flow on in London just now. I haven’t seen the play yet, but I hope to
see it in the next fortnight. Despite
Jake Davis and Mustafa Al-Bassam being photographed with the actors ‘playing
them’, the blurb from the theatre states this:
This play is a fictional account which has been
inspired by a true story. Some of the incidents, characters and time lines have
been changed for dramatic purposes. In some cases fictitious characters and
incidents have been added to the plot, and the words are those imagined by the
author. The play should not be understood as a biography or factual account.
It is a strange license that has us
dramatists, poetasters and fictionalists simply changing history to suit the
demands of drama. If your story is not
interesting enough, we will simply make up some more lurid aspects. Hollywood does it, the theatre does it, and cartoonists and novelists do it too. When I come to write the film script for LOL—THE STORY OF BARRETT BROWN I will
be sure to have you chibbing a few guards, engineering a Shawshank style escape
behind a THE CURE poster, and making an impassioned Steve Biko style speech in
court before jumping into a hang-glider and floating to the Socialist Paradise
of Scotland.
I have sent you some enclosures today. The first is the article by Alex Cox. Back in June I told you I’d seen the film
REPO MAN, and I had been wanting to write about that, because although I
didn’t enjoy the movie that much, it did point me to Alex Cox’s blog, where I
found a very interesting article about Tony Scott’s suicide note. That article is printed and enclosed.
While speculating on Scott’s death, Alex Cox
points to some informative reading about the CIA in Hollywood, something
everybody should know about, especially with IRON MAN III looming large on our
collective goggles. I particularly like:
“For your edification, here follow the actors,
directors, writers, producers and studio execs who the author links to the CIA,
usually found 1) visiting CIA
headquarters to party with the spooks, 2) taking instructions from CIA, or 3) actively helping to encourage CIA recruitment. Tony Scott heads the
list: Jenkins reports that CIA was particularly fond of his masterpiece TOP
GUN, "the single best recruiting tool the navy - and specifically naval
aviation - ever had" and "was looking for a project that could help
them do something similar."
“Tony Scott, RIP; John Ford; John Wayne; Cecil B.
DeMille; Darryl Zanuck; Luigi Luraschi (head of domestic and foreign censorship
at Paramount in the 1950s); Joseph Mankiewicz; John Chambers and Bob Sidell
(studio makeup men); Jack Myers; David Houle; Scott Valentine (VP of Sony
Pictures); Jack Gilardi (ICM agency); Rick Nicita (CAA agency); Ron Meyer (COO
of Universal); Matt Corman; Chris Ord; Kristy Swanson; Tim Matheson; Roger and
Robert Towne; Tom Berenger; Ron Silver; Michael Frost Beckner; Jennifer Garner;
Jeff Apple; Roger Birnbaum; Colin Farrell; Ben Affleck; Phil Alden Robinson;
Lawrence Lasker; Mark Bowden; Mike Myers; Kevin and Michael Bacon; Mace
Neufeld; J.J. Abrams; Paul Attanasio; Doug Liman; David Arata; Kiefer
Sutherland; Tom Cruise.
No surprise to see JJ Abrams on
there!
I also enclose the Guardian
puff piece for the trullzsec play TEH INTERNET IS SERIOUS BUSINESS from Charles Arthur, wittily
titled ‘Trolling in the Aisles’ (Ha ha
ha ha ha ha ha ha. Ha) — and the same paper’s review of the same theatrical
show.
As you’ll see when you read it, The Guardian feels
the need to point out that the misspelling in the title of the show is
DELIBERATE. If you knew anything about
British journalism you’d see how funny that is, coming from The Guardian as it
does.
I know what you are thinking. As you lie there in your damp camp,
desperately trying to rehabilitate yourself, why would you want to see The Guardian, which was last seen
refusing to return your calls — at least according to your timeline in 2012 —
and worse — lulzsec — which is news that is older than old, and extremely old
at that?
Well perhaps it will indicate
to you that while you have been away, we haven’t moved on, and are still peddling
the same stuff, and it should remind you that of course — in classic Robin Hood
fashion — the criminals of yesterday become the heroes of today. Bad news for you, maybe, because you were in
my mind, never a criminal. <<INSERT SMILEY HERE, I GUESS >>
One last thing I have enclosed is
an article titled THE SERACH FOR THE MIND OF GOD, a trifling item of
philosophy, which will only strengthen your belief that the motives of the
greatest part of mankind, which flow from the heated imaginations of those who
use the powers of religion to incite actions, can easily be countered with
recourse to science in this instance in combination with the most ancient
thought systems we know of. Indeed!
Stay strong, and remember that we
are thinking of you, and hoping for a good result in November. I already told you about the relationship
between the blood sugar levels of a judge and their attitude to sentencing —
but you have more than served your time Barrett and I trust that soon, you will
be ready to get on with your work again — work which has always been in the
public interest.
Aside from people’s constant
confusion between Kevin Gallagher and Ryan Gallagher, there is nothing else to
report.
My best wishes,
