Russ Kick - Abuse Your Illusions. The Disinformation Guide to Media Mirages and Establishment Lies

This collection Copyright 2003 The Disinformation Company Ltd.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks of a personal nature are due to Anne, Ruthanne, Jennifer,
and (as always) my parents, who give me support in many ways.
The same goes for that unholy trinity of Billy, Darrell, and Terry, who
let me vent and make me laugh.
I'd like to thank Richard Metzger and Gary Baddeley for letting me
edit the anthology series and taking a laissez-faire approach. Also,
many thanks go to Leen Al-Bassam, who turned a bunch of com
puter files into the beautiful object you now hold in your hands. And
thanks also head out to the many other people involved in the cre
ation and distribution of this book, including everyone at
Disinformation, Consortium, Turnaround, Bookspan, the printers,
the retailers, and elsewhere. It takes a lot of people to make a book
and get it into your hands!
Many more people played a role in helping me locate and secure
material for this book: Kristina Borjesson, Mads Brgger, Alex
Burns, Michael Ellsberg, Edward Hammond, Ina Howard, Kalle
Lasn, John Oakes, Preston Peet, Marcia Rogers, Fredda Weinberg,
Penmarin Press, the Globe and Mail, and many others I'm unfortu
nately forgetting as the deadline looms.
I also greatly appreciate all the readers out there who buy, borrow,
or steal my books. Your direct and indirect feedback keeps me
going. And to the person who spray-painted the titles of the first two
Disinformation Guides on the student center at the University of
New Hampshirekeep spreading the meme!
Last but definitely not least, I express my gratitude toward all the con
tributors, without whom there would be no Abuse Your Illusions. None
of you will be able to retire early because of appearing in these pages,
so I know you contributed because you believe so strongly in what
you're doing. And you believed in me, which I deeply appreciate.
R.K.

PREFACE

RICHARD METZGER

Welcome to another Disinformation anthology, again edited by Russ
Kick. A lot has happened since the publication of the first two books
in this series, You Are Being Lied To and Everything You Know is
Wrong, and once again, we at The Disinformation Company, are
pleased to be publishing a book that we feel is an important and vital
contribution to help make sense of the swirling media space of
these, as the famous Chinese curse goes, interesting times.
_SOUND AND FURY SIGNIFYING NOTHING
To be corrupted by totalitarianism one does not have to live in a
totalitarian country.
-George Orwell
For a variety of reasons, including the desire to avoid charges of lib
eral bias, most reporting is carefully hedged. And the public, reading
only praise or he-said-she-said discussions, never grasps the fun
damental disconnect between problem and policy.
Paul Krugman, New York Times
One of the things I find most satisfying about these anthologies is
how ably Russ steers clear of falling too much into this camp or that.
I am often left open-mouthed in astonishment at the notion that any
one would want to label themselves as conservative or liberal
and consider this a ridiculous non-issue. I can understand why
someone might feel pride of race or religion, but to identify oneself
as a Democrat or as a Republican to me seems utterly ridiculous
and worthy of contempt. It's just plain stupid. There are good ideas
and there are bad ideas. Some of them might be conservative and
some of them might be liberalbut if a good idea is a conserva
tive idea or birthed by the conservative camp, does this mean that
this good idea must be rejected out of hand by people who have
decided that they are liberals, or vice versa?
The two major political parties are proving grounds from which all
political ambitions must be realized and channeled, so in other
words, if you want to rise up from within them, you have to toe the