Thursday, October 30, 2008

TV Humboldt Offers Election Integrity Videos and More

For at least the past two years or so Paul Benson has been working on an indy media project that is now TV Humboldt, currently allowing Humboldt County media makers to upload video shorts to be included in a one hour loop that refreshes each week. At least that's a part of it and just where this part happens to be at now. It is a fluid, evolving project with big ambitions I don't fully know yet.

Backstage TV Humboldt is a companion site that is more of an interactive environment for media makers and audience alike. I've only met Benson a few times, but I can see he's coming from the right place. This paragraph is currently on the the Backstage home page:

HELP CHANGE MEDIA AS WE KNOW IT

All of our projects, are in line with our long-term strategy to help move media away from bottom-line corporate economics and toward a media system where everyone has a chance to get their work out to the world, without selling their souls. Let the WORLD decide who gets recognized, not some C.E.O...
Yesterday I met up with Benson and his video camera to shoot this three minute video about the open letter to the media, from the media, challenging the industry to recognize "federal election results are unprovable, even though the media reports them as fact." You'll catch it in this week's hourly loop, plus here at YouTube:


For other recent posts related to the letter, see "How to Disarm Weapons of Mass Deception" and "Telling No Lies and Still Not Telling the Truth."

Five more truth-tellers signed the letter today including the influential Danny Schechter, who posted the letter at Media Channel and included it in his daily e-mail newsletter. Also the venerable Sam Smith of The Progressive Review, author Allene E. Swienckowski, Lisa Finerty, Chair, Democrats Abroad - Rome Chapter, and Dave Stancliff, freelance journalist whose writing has appeared in various Humboldt publications. He recently wrote "Your vote faces challenges like never before," (archive) which may have been the furthest the Eureka Times-Standard has ever gone in condemning electronic voting machines outside of guest columns they've let me publish.

Today I also found the letter posted on the website of the Progressive Democrats of Sonoma County, who once invited me to speak about my book, We Do Not Consent (free .pdf). The local Veterans For Peace Chapter 56 also published my "Disarm" piece in their November newsletter (.pdf).

Rounding out the link-fest here, I want to get back to TV Humboldt, which has posted "Stealing America - Vote by Vote" as an "election week bonus" video. According to Benson this plays in a "a specially-designed player that allows the whole movie to play continuously -- If you watch it on YouTube, you have to watch it in 10 separate parts, which are not always so easy to find and navigate to." It's great for the movie to have all the exposure it can get, though at the film's own site you can also watch it uninterrupted and grab the embed code as I've done below.


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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.

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"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."

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