Dissent page
"The modern susceptibility
to conformity and obedience to authority indicates that the truth
endorsed by authority is likely to be accepted as such by a majority
of people, who are innately obedient to authority. This obedience-truth
will then become a consensus-truth accepted by many individuals
unable to stand alone against the majority. In this way, the truth
promulgated by the propaganda system - however irrational - stands
a good chance of becoming the consensus, and may come to seem
self-evident common sense."
David Edwards, author of Burning
All Illusions
" We believe that the
government and the police have embarked on a strategy of repression
to stop, crush or marginalize the burgeoning progressive movement
that gained world attention in the protest against the WTO in
Seattle last year."
International Action Center attorneys
announcing the filing of a class-action lawsuit on behalf of protestors
at the WTO Ministerial meeting in Seattle, Washington, April 1999
"A lot of Americans still
recognize that dissenters are the real defenders of freedom."
Bill Keys, school board member,
Madison Wisconsin
Reports
Books
" The corporate grip on
opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western
world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so
entirely from its media all objectivity - much less dissent."
Gore Vidal, novelist and critic
Articles
" Every man of humane
convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions,
but we must all protest. "
Martin Luther King, Jr.
"If those in charge of
our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of
press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure
in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets.
We will control ourselves."
Howard Zinn, historian and author
" The most unpardonable
sin in society is independence of thought."
Emma Goldman, American anarchist
and feminist, 1869-1940
" The cost of being presented
as a " responsible and serious candidate" by the media
[is] usually to show fundamental agreement with the existing distribution
of wealth and power. "
Michael Lerner, philosopher, psychologist,
author
"The media serve the interests
of state and corporate power, which are closely interlinked, framing
their reporting and analysis in a manner supportive of established
privilege and limiting debate and discussion accordingly."
Noam Chomsky
Reference pages
Civil Liberties watch
Authors
and Books
Democracy
and Society
Home Page
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
- Henry David Thoreau
Points
of Rebellion - William O. Douglas
Palestine:
Peace Not Apartheid - excerpt of book by Pres. Jimmy Carter (11/06)