Friday, October 24, 2008

How To Disarm Weapons of Mass Deception

The phrase "weapons of mass deception" is a well recognized play on "weapons of mass destruction," and is well understood to refer to the corporate media. As a fascist state, it is really the corporate/military/government/media juggernaut that bombards and assaults freedoms and liberties, dumbing-down, propagandizing, manipulating, and feeding us The Big Lie. We have to protect ourselves, not only from our government's lawlessness, but also from weapons of mass deception. Kill your television, yes, a good place to start. Now we are going further...

Yesterday I appeared as a guest on the Peter B. Collins syndicated talk radio show (part 1, part 2). We talked about an open letter, published yesterday at We Do Not Consent, New Zealand's Scoop, as well as other progressive news sites (known list of x-posts below). PBC added his name to Mark Crispin Miller, David Swanson, Lynn Landes, Rob Kall, and more than 15 other media truth-tellers so far who have begun to disarm the weapons of mass deception.

George Orwell: "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."

My rally cry has long been "Peaceful revolution is necessary, NOW!"

Put the two together and we have media telling the truth to their colleagues and industry, questioning how federal election results can be reported as fact when they can not be independently verified or even proven, and come from only one conflicted source, the very government whose grip on power is at stake.

The power of weapons of mass deception emanates at full strength unless we challenge the phony narrative and distracting drama portrayed as the important stories of the day. But the challenge alone is not enough. To disarm weapons of mass deception we must also supplant its fabricated reality with what is really going on.

The letter itself is only a first step. The list of signers, while meaningful, is static even as it grows longer. The impact of this truth-telling comes in telling it repeatedly and seeing those who encounter it begin to tell it yet again.

The default response of the weapons will be to ignore. The truth-tellers challenge will be mostly won merely by engaging with the weapon, insisting on not being ignored. Members of the reading and thinking public can and hopefully will self-identify as truth-tellers, rather than externalizing that label onto the courageous early adopters of the letter.

Confronting The Big Lie means calling out simple truths hiding in plain site. Consider it converting unconventional wisdom to conventional wisdom. That implies enormous reach and explicitly calls us all to action. How hard can it be to call a talk show host or e-mail an opinion writer and have them address this, from the open letter:

There are three very simple basic facts about the way US federal elections are conducted now, and we think they lead to an inescapable conclusion that must be addressed.

See if you agree:

1. We have secret corporate vote counting computers counting more than 95% of the votes cast in the United States;

2. The absence of paper ballots, and in some cases state's law, prevents meaningful re-counts throughout much of the country;

3. These electronic voting machines frequently produce results impossible in a legitimate election, such as John Kerry's negative 25 million votes in Youngstown, OH (Nov. 2004), or Palm Beach County's 12,000 votes in excess of the number of voters (Aug. 2008).

To us this suggests the conclusion that federal election results are unprovable, even though the media reports them as fact.

Can you draw any other conclusion?
Weapons of mass deception are a powerful force working against We The People. This common phrase is so well known, yet rarely considered in a way I would call ruthlessly honest. Ruthless honesty requires that we match up the way we see something with the way we act about it. We already see the corporate media as a weapon of mass deception. Ruthless honesty calls for disarmament.
* * *

Known cross-posts of the open letter as of now:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/We-Do-Not-Consent--Open-L-by-Press-Release-081024-862.html

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/37087

http://usacoup.scoop.co.nz/?p=835

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0810/S00360.htm

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/24/202910/15/310/641419

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x509838

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4304200

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) also has a blurb about the letter here.

Permalink:
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2008/10/how-to-disarm-weapons-of-mass-deception.html


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Posted by Dave Berman - 5:46 PM | Permalink
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Great work, Dave. OpEdNews posted it tonight at http://www.opednews.com/articles/We-Do-Not-Consent--Open-L-by-Rady-Ananda-081024-385.html

Posted by Blogger Rady Ananda @ Oct 24, 2008, 9:16:00 PM
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We Do Not Consent, Volume 1 (left) and Volume 2 (right), feature essays from Dave Berman's previous blogs, GuvWurld and We Do Not Consent, respectively. Click the covers for FREE e-book versions (.pdf). As of April 2010, paperbacks are temporarily out of print. Click here for the author's bio.

Back Page Quotes

"Give a damn about the world you live in? Give a damn about what you and I both know is one of the most shameful and destructive periods in American history? If so, do something about it. You can start by reading We Do Not Consent."

— Brad Friedman, Creator/Editor, BradBlog.com; Co-Founder, VelvetRevolution.us

"If in the future we have vital elections, the "no basis for confidence" formulation that GuvWurld is popularizing will have been a historically important development. This is true because by implicitly insisting on verification and checks and balances instead of faith or trust in elections officials or machines as a basis for legitimacy, it encourages healthy transparent elections. It’s also rare that a political formulation approaches scientific certainty, but this formulation is backed up by scientific principles that teach that if you can’t repeat something (such as an election) and verify it by independent means, it doesn’t exist within the realm of what science will accept as established or proven truth."

— Paul Lehto, Attorney at Law, Everett, WA

"Dave Berman has been candid and confrontational in challenging all of us to be "ruthlessly honest" in answering his question, "What would be better?" He encourages us to build consensus definitions of "better," and to match our words with actions every day, even if we do only "the least we can do." Cumulatively and collectively, our actions will bring truth to light."

— Nezzie Wade, Sociology Professor, Humboldt State University and College of the Redwoods

"Dave Berman's work is quietly brilliant and powerfully utilitarian. His Voter Confidence Resolution provides a fine, flexible tool whereby any community can reclaim and affirm a right relation to its franchise as a community of voters."

— Elizabeth Ferrari, San Francisco, Green Party of California

"This is an important collection of essays with a strong unitary theme: if you can't prove that you were elected, we can't take you seriously as elected officials. Simple, logical, comprehensive. 'Management' (aka, the 'powers that be') needs to get the message. 'The machines' are not legitimizers, they're an artful dodge and a path to deception. We've had enough...and we most certainly DO NOT consent."

— Michael Collins covers the election fraud beat for "Scoop" Independent Media

"What's special about this book (and it fits because there's nothing more fundamental to Democracy than our vote) is the raising of consciousness. Someone recognizing they have no basis for trusting elections may well ask what else is being taken for granted."

— Eddie Ajamian, Los Angeles, CA

"I urge everyone to read "We Do Not Consent", and distribute it as widely as possible."

— B Robert Franza MD, author of We the People ... Have No Clothes: A Pamphlet for every American