Book Review - Everything You Know is Wrong

Book Review

Everything You Know is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Secrets and Lies
The Disinformation Company

Review by Jaye C. Beldo

My only real qualm about The Disinformation Company's latest offering, Everything You Know is Wrong is that I'm now obligated to go out and buy a coffee table to put the thing on. Not to pretentiously display it as a kind of anti-establishment status symbol, but rather in hopes that the sequel to the ever popular You Are Being Lied To would instantly catalyze anyone who came near it into direct sociopolitical activism. It would sure save me a lot of effort to try and wake people up, not to mention myself as well.

One only has to page through this trenchant tome to be reminded of the dedication that editor Russ Kick and publisher Gary Baddeley have in terms of exposing the lies doled out to us by our government, corporations, schools and media conglomerates. They have brought together, in one downright sharp looking field guide for the marginalized, such alternative luminaries as Lucy Komisar, Howard Zinn, John Taylor Gatto, Arianna Huffington and Naomi Klein for our insurrectionary perusal.

Such a unique anthology is indeed heartening, especially at a time when the most compelling mainstream news item of the day is that of Ozzy Osbourne and George W. Bush mirroring back to one another their patented mediocrity, while Dan Quayle secretly salivates in the background of some White House dinner party, dreaming up his next PR stunt. Speaking of Dan Potato Quayle, Some Lessons of the Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto is recommended reading for anyone who wants to get a bead on the failure of the educational system in the USA over the last century. Gatto describes a planned obsolescence scheme sponsored by such asuric magnates as JP Morgan, the Rockefellers, et. al. who imported, wholesale, the Prussian style of education/indoctrination into America.

Gatto digs into US Army rather than old school records/files to gauge the devastating effects of illiteracy, making a very convincing argument indeed that enforced education as a means to create a downtrodden, nonresistant labor force ultimately serves the privileged few and no one else.

In Annie Laurie Gaylor's piece, Why Women Need Freedom from Religion, the author proves conclusively that the oppression of women, has been justified throughout history as being something divinely ordained. Citing examples primarily from the three delusional albeit Abhramanic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Gaylor reminds us of just how extreme these prohibitions have been and continue to be. One only need be reminded of the fact that a recent book Women in Islam contains tips on wife-beating for example.

Fortunately the author describes the dedication of such courageous people as Mary Wollstonecraft, Sarah and Angelina Grimke and others who dared to speak out against the oppression of women during the late 1700s and early 1800's, a time when such public travesties were quite unthinkable. Notable defiance such as this should no doubt inspire current equality activists to confront such 'infallible' bastions as the Mormon Church, Orthodox Judaism and the evangelical cretin otherwise known as Reverend Jerry Falwell.

Above all else, the plethora of vital polemics found in Everything You Know is Wrong can also serve to remind us that we are not isolated from one another as the powers that be would like us to believe. The Disinformation Guide to Secrets and Lies should naturally compel us to share these insights and inspiration with our friends and connect more substantially with the body politic. Check out www.disinfo.com for more information on how to order Everything You Know is Wrong.

Jaye C. Beldo writes for the Konformist, Paranoia Magazine, Gnostic Liberation Front, ViewZone and other venues on and off line. He can be reached at: netnous@aol.com.