Following the release of today’s article about news organizations junking the “Pentagon Papers Principle,” reader Ben O’Neill made a good observation that should have been in the piece. In the newly-found summary emailed by an Aspen Institute figure in September 2020, “Partnership for a Healthy Digital Public Sphere,” the section about “hack-and-dump” exercises asks [emphasis mine]: “What happens when fabricated documents are released alongside genuine (stolen) content? How can social feeds avoid serving as promoters of foreign or other adversarial entities?”
First of all, this notion that there may be fabrications mixed in with real content is a suggestion that pops up somewhere in nearly every one of these leak stories, even if all the material proves to be real (old friend Malcolm Nance did the job in 2016 in suggesting the Podesta leaks were “riddled with forgeries”). More importantly however, that last line is a great example of what former cybersecurity official and Foundation for Freedom Online head Mike Benz calls the “foreign-domestic switcheroo.”
It’s the basic rhetorical trick of the censorship age: raise a fuss about a foreign threat, using it as a battering ram to get everyone from congress to the tech companies to submit to increased regulation and surveillance. Then, slowly, adjust your aim to domestic targets. You can see the subtlety: the original Stanford piece tries to stick to railing against “disinformation” and information from “foreign adversaries,” but the later paper circulated by Aspen slips in, ever so slightly, a new category of dubious source: “foreign or other adversarial entities.”
These rhetorical devices are essential. It would be preposterous to form (as Stanford did) an “Information Warfare Working Group” if readers knew the “war” being contemplated was against domestic voices. It would likewise seem outrageous to suggest, as Stanford did, that journalists respond to a domestic threat by taking a step as drastic as eliminating intra-title competition, and “forming partnerships with other organizations to pool resources.” But if you start by focusing on Russians and only later mention as an afterthought “other adversarial entities,” you can frame things however you want, from espionage to warfare. As reader O’Neill correctly pointed out, “they are now getting close to being explicit about the fact that their motivation for suppressing news is to fight domestic political adversaries.”
One other small note I left out for space reasons. The “Information Warfare Working Group” that produced the original paper by Janine Zacharia proposing the end of the “Pentagon Papers Principle” includes such anti-disinformation luminaries as Renee DiResta and Michael McFaul. In that summer of 2019, the working group also put out a paper by Dr. Amy Zegart, titled, “Spies, Lies, and Algorithms.” Her co-author? Michael Morell.
This story stinks, folks. There are almost too many angles to count. In any case, thanks to one of this site’s many attentive readers for a key observation.
This is exactly what 'crazy people' like Ron Paul said would happen with the Global War on Terror in general and with the USA PATRIOT Act in particular.
Or, my personal opposite-day favorite, 'Citizens United', which should have been called "Citizen-Crushing Cabal Empowerment Act", or "The 'Citizens, Get Fucked!' Act"
Citizens United is and was correct, imo, because all it says is that you and I, individual and private citizens, may pool our resources toward mutual and freely decided upon political ends, completely and utterly, did I say *necessarily*? yes I did, independent of any group, especially and most importantly that most dangerous of all groups, Society, and its mindless, vicious, anti-human pit bull, the State.
Biden's new rule on Title IX to allow guys to rape girls in school bathrooms. Without any consequences written in. How in the world did the President of the United States allow this and put these previous young girls in harms way?
The formal name of the statute is the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act of 2001. ...February 27, 2010, Obama signed into law legislation that would temporarily extend, for one year, three controversial provisions of the Patriot Act that had been set to expire: 1)Authorize court-approved roving wiretaps that permit surveillance on multiple phones.; 2)Allow court-approved seizure of records and property in anti-terrorism operations.3)Permit surveillance against a so-called lone wolf (a non-U.S. citizen engaged in terrorism who may not be part of a recognized terrorist group). February 8, 2011, the House of Representatives considered a further extension of the Act through the end of 2011.Without an extension, the Act was set to expire on February 28, 2011. However, it eventually passed, 275–144.
On May 26, 2011, President Barack Obama used an Autopen to sign the PATRIOT Sunsets Extension Act of 2011, a four-year extension of three key provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act while he was in France.
The significance of difference is relative. Given that the subtopic here is the PATRIOT Act and who is responsible for it, your separation between fools and statists strikes me as more trivial than huge. This is because they did the deed and the damage was done (do we really care about their motives long after the fact?).
My view is that our political system needs more pluralism and less 'two wings of the same grisly gang' (h/t Bill). And the tendency to lump the opposition into a homogenous group is likely a bad call... on multiple levels that makes a huge difference in your ability to make accurate calls, plus differentiate yourself from the fools.
To me, the most appropriate response is often *both* substantive and mocking.
We are told he was a community organizer, whatever that means.
Then he wrote a book, and served a term where Joe Lieberman was his mentor, and then BOOM, there he was, President of the World, the candidate from Langley.
Given the rapidity that this Act of 300 pages was enacted, it is obvious to me that it was pre-written and pre-planned. All that was required was proper crisis.
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”
What's astonishing for me is that 'biden' is proven liar who actually had to abandon his campaign for the presidency. Yet, somehow, it's all forgotten.
The system works.
As former Vice President Joe Biden prepares to take the Democratic debate stage on Wednesday, the pressure is on the front runner for the party’s 2020 nomination for the presidency — especially after the June debate, after which he admitted he was unprepared for fellow candidate Sen. Kamala Harris to call him out on his past positions on busing.
But for at least one veteran political reporter, that moment is just part of a decades-long history that goes all the way back to the first time Biden made an official run for the White House — and to the scandal that ended that campaign.
I do know the generalities regarding the lies and plagiarism surrounding our “ high hallowed” president but this article brings to light many of his specific deeds ,that as you point out have been “ forgotten “ by many……
Forty years ago I was sitting cross-legged on a dirty Oriental rug getting drunk on Gallo jug wine and listening to Murray Rothbard talk about Ron Paul, among other things (the other things being a tour de force of the history of the Great Depression, the perfidy of Ayn Rand, a history of metal currency, and complaints about the then-current management of the Cato Institute). His opinion was that "Ron is as good as it gets, he just doesn't go far enough."
40 years ago I was probably still in my Randroid phase. When I learned of Rand’s loyalty to the Republican Party, it started to open my eyes. I still voted Libertarian for a long time, but now I think the party was always a kind of controlled opposition--a term I didn't know at the time. I should have been wary of rebranding the pejorativized “A-word”, anarchy, with the dressed up and watered-down “libertarian” moniker. Now that libertarianism is almost entirely captured by the Republican Party, I wonder what Rothbard would say.
In addition to the numerous philosophical issues Rothbard had with Objectivism, he also had a very personal gripe with Rand dating from the early 1960s when he was briefly part of her inner circle. She was a famously belligerent atheist, who believed that any religious belief, which she named "mysticism," was incompatible with the use of reason. Rothbard himself was a completely secularized Jew, but his wife was a believing Christian. Rand gave him an ultimatum -- divorce your wife or be cast out. To his everlasting credit he chose Joey.
I would suggest it's the other way 'round, as the GOP was essentially purchased by the Koch network via the Tea Party movement it paid to provide broad coverage for, and the Kochs were lifelong Libertarians. David ran for VP on the Libertarian ticket.
I am as libertarian (political system of the founding, another word for Capitalism, true not crony) as anyone on the planet.
I am just as anti-Libertarian, and you all should stop living in the last century.
Just like the Greens on the left, the Libertarian Party, and its myopic supporters/enablers (like the Statist neo-liberal psuedo-free-marketer Koch-cons), allow the Fascist Democrat Party to operate *with crippled political opposition* in their almost-completed take-over of a free People.
"How to Win Friends and Influence People" : Matter = Murray Rothbard : Antimatter. I did not know him at all well (I only met him a few times, very late in his life) but we had a mutual friend to whom we were both very close, and I heard *plenty.* I'm sure Ayn Rand was a gigantic pain in the ass, but Murray managed to alienate almost everyone at one time or another too. The obituary National Review ran when he died was a monument to pettiness.
Thanks, M. Gathering. I read about all this so long ago that you make me realize I must go research to learn it all again!
Edit: Really, I should have added to this indent long before that my strong opinion is that this old and ageless Objectivist/Libertarian feud is moot, pointless, beside the point, non-substantive, self-destructive....you know, all the things we *knew* then, eh?
The government counts on stupid and apathetic people to allow them total control over all citizens. And AI will be used in a similar manner if it's not being used already.
I would like to humbly suggest that we subscribers here to Matt's Racket be officially christened as Other Adversarial Entities. I bet it would even look good stitched on the back of a bowling shirt or velvet jacket.
OK...in the folk music community there is a well known song (not old...it was written by Stan Rogers in 1976, but it's in the style of an 18th C sea shanty) called "Barrett's Privateers." I propose we re-purpose it as "Taibbi's Racketters." Anyone with me?
I grew up in socialist former East Germany and know exactly what a state controlled media is and what it does. I’m familiar with the tools to keep the populous uneducated, dived and spying on each other for government handouts. It’s all about domestic control and nothing else. I came to the US almost 30 years ago and it’s shocking to see such familiar tactics used today in the so called Land of the Free.
And Renee DiResta worked with American Engagement Technologies, which, the Washington Free Beacon reported, is a “tech company that created fake online personas to stifle the Republican vote in the 2017 special Senate election in Alabama.” Yet she's a "disinformation" expert despite having engaged in an actual disinformation campaign.
She worked for the CIA, then for New Knowledge (now called Yonder), an "election integrity company" which claimed it was running a "secret experiment" by pretending to be Russians backing Judge Roy Moore (R) against Doug Jones (D). Jones won. As far as I know, there were no repercussions for New Knowledge; possibly that led indirectly to the Aspen Institute exercises?
No, no consequences. And in the campaign against Moore they literally “imitated Russian tactics”—this, despite DiResta and her team working with Democrats in the U.S. Senate to pen a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. If Russia interferes with an election, it’s Extremely Dangerous to Our Democracy™; but when Democratic disinformation experts do it to defeat Republicans, it’s totally cool.
Yes, no scare quotes. She really is an expert at disseminating falsehoods disguised as truth, having spent a career perfecting the "art," a perversion of art.
Now they get to investigate "human trafficking" by getting handjobs for a month while "gathering evidence" -- then they save the "victims" by charging them with prostitution.
The hawks are both Republican and Democrat, with the later being more united than the former. There are cracks in the hawkish GOP, but unity for Democrats. Democrats are united to keep the US southern border open while spending billions to protect Ukraine's.
Great post script, Matt! “ There are almost too many angles to count. “... however many years ago, the now over used expression “ into the weeds” appeared in political lingo... almost always inferring a “ heads up folks, this might be above your IQ level”... from the first time I heard that expression, I immediately thought... “and that is completely intentional and their goal”...make the sequence of events so crazy and convoluted that connecting the dots takes way too much effort and attention. Well played and shame on all of you willing participants! And kudos to your reader who did indeed go into the weeds!
I’ve always ‘heard’ about the book but thought I should actually read it. Need to order that and 1984 together from Amazon. That’ll mess up their algorithm
The method is "con(fidence) game." Gain the confidence of enough foolish Peoples, use the rest as scapegoat, and shazzam! The left endpoint (100% State control, 0% individual freedom) is within reach.
Alinsky channels Machiavelli, of course. Same purpose, same game, different target, same result.
This is exactly what 'crazy people' like Ron Paul said would happen with the Global War on Terror in general and with the USA PATRIOT Act in particular.
And here we are.
Any legislation in this country with the word Patriot in its title is always the diametric opposite of patriotic.
The Iron Law of Bill Names! (See: Inflation Reduction Act, which has very very little to do with reducing inflation.)
Or, my personal opposite-day favorite, 'Citizens United', which should have been called "Citizen-Crushing Cabal Empowerment Act", or "The 'Citizens, Get Fucked!' Act"
Wrong. 180 degrees.
you're going to need to do better than that. This is a tough crowd.
Oh, very well...
Citizens United is and was correct, imo, because all it says is that you and I, individual and private citizens, may pool our resources toward mutual and freely decided upon political ends, completely and utterly, did I say *necessarily*? yes I did, independent of any group, especially and most importantly that most dangerous of all groups, Society, and its mindless, vicious, anti-human pit bull, the State.
No doubt!
But in my defense, I only claim to exercise my First Amendment right to utter pure opinion, free of charge no less!
The crowd is getting a bargain, says I.
“See Civil Rights Act “ she said in a low voice... LBJ, not a nice person...
Biden's new rule on Title IX to allow guys to rape girls in school bathrooms. Without any consequences written in. How in the world did the President of the United States allow this and put these previous young girls in harms way?
Symbolic wish fulfillment.
It’s so much fun to sniff hair --why not more?
CARES Act - largest single upward transfer of wealth in human history
Yes in fact I just learned that the IRA is another ploy just to privatize more public infrastructure.
Guys, don't lump the PELOSI Act into this. Though maybe it's the exception that proves the rule.
Also Kirk's Law:
"Any law named after a victim, or whose title forms a cutesy acronym, is certain to be a bad law."
Always remember!
The formal name of the statute is the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act of 2001. ...February 27, 2010, Obama signed into law legislation that would temporarily extend, for one year, three controversial provisions of the Patriot Act that had been set to expire: 1)Authorize court-approved roving wiretaps that permit surveillance on multiple phones.; 2)Allow court-approved seizure of records and property in anti-terrorism operations.3)Permit surveillance against a so-called lone wolf (a non-U.S. citizen engaged in terrorism who may not be part of a recognized terrorist group). February 8, 2011, the House of Representatives considered a further extension of the Act through the end of 2011.Without an extension, the Act was set to expire on February 28, 2011. However, it eventually passed, 275–144.
On May 26, 2011, President Barack Obama used an Autopen to sign the PATRIOT Sunsets Extension Act of 2011, a four-year extension of three key provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act while he was in France.
I had no idea and every Democrat blames Bush for this but Obama extended it. Wow
Its funny anyone thinks there's a difference.
Two wings of the same grisly gang.
There is still a huge difference:
At least *some* of the Republicans supporting the extensions were *not* neo-cons and neo-libs. (Fools, yes, but *not* Statists *using* the issue.)
*All* of the Democrats were and are.
The significance of difference is relative. Given that the subtopic here is the PATRIOT Act and who is responsible for it, your separation between fools and statists strikes me as more trivial than huge. This is because they did the deed and the damage was done (do we really care about their motives long after the fact?).
My view is that our political system needs more pluralism and less 'two wings of the same grisly gang' (h/t Bill). And the tendency to lump the opposition into a homogenous group is likely a bad call... on multiple levels that makes a huge difference in your ability to make accurate calls, plus differentiate yourself from the fools.
To me, the most appropriate response is often *both* substantive and mocking.
The autopen--from FRANCE.
NPR thought it was very cool:
Obama Wields His ... Autopen?
https://www.npr.org/2011/05/27/136717719/obama-wields-his-autopen
Obama came literally from nowhere.
We are told he was a community organizer, whatever that means.
Then he wrote a book, and served a term where Joe Lieberman was his mentor, and then BOOM, there he was, President of the World, the candidate from Langley.
Kathleen- nice find !
I actually never heard of this though I have toured Monticello 🤷♂️
PS - NPR would have found constitutional problems and the use of it not so cool had the president been Trump ! Very sad state of double standards…….
They are still raising $$ to build it but if you are ever in Medora, ND check it out.
It takes a village.
Given the rapidity that this Act of 300 pages was enacted, it is obvious to me that it was pre-written and pre-planned. All that was required was proper crisis.
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”
― Rahm Emanuel
Obama? Scourge!!
Yep. Because there's no crisis so big the government can't come up with a catchy acronym for the bill.
Who runs the department of clever acronyms in this country?
Biden proudly proclaims that he wrote the Patriot Act (but it took 9/11 to go into effect).
But Biden also proudly proclaimed that he is Neil Kinnock.
And he graduated top of his class
What's astonishing for me is that 'biden' is proven liar who actually had to abandon his campaign for the presidency. Yet, somehow, it's all forgotten.
The system works.
As former Vice President Joe Biden prepares to take the Democratic debate stage on Wednesday, the pressure is on the front runner for the party’s 2020 nomination for the presidency — especially after the June debate, after which he admitted he was unprepared for fellow candidate Sen. Kamala Harris to call him out on his past positions on busing.
But for at least one veteran political reporter, that moment is just part of a decades-long history that goes all the way back to the first time Biden made an official run for the White House — and to the scandal that ended that campaign.
https://time.com/5636715/biden-1988-presidential-campaign/
Excellent find Bill !
I do know the generalities regarding the lies and plagiarism surrounding our “ high hallowed” president but this article brings to light many of his specific deeds ,that as you point out have been “ forgotten “ by many……
Nutz!
'biden' pees hisself most days.
Forty years ago I was sitting cross-legged on a dirty Oriental rug getting drunk on Gallo jug wine and listening to Murray Rothbard talk about Ron Paul, among other things (the other things being a tour de force of the history of the Great Depression, the perfidy of Ayn Rand, a history of metal currency, and complaints about the then-current management of the Cato Institute). His opinion was that "Ron is as good as it gets, he just doesn't go far enough."
40 years ago I was probably still in my Randroid phase. When I learned of Rand’s loyalty to the Republican Party, it started to open my eyes. I still voted Libertarian for a long time, but now I think the party was always a kind of controlled opposition--a term I didn't know at the time. I should have been wary of rebranding the pejorativized “A-word”, anarchy, with the dressed up and watered-down “libertarian” moniker. Now that libertarianism is almost entirely captured by the Republican Party, I wonder what Rothbard would say.
In addition to the numerous philosophical issues Rothbard had with Objectivism, he also had a very personal gripe with Rand dating from the early 1960s when he was briefly part of her inner circle. She was a famously belligerent atheist, who believed that any religious belief, which she named "mysticism," was incompatible with the use of reason. Rothbard himself was a completely secularized Jew, but his wife was a believing Christian. Rand gave him an ultimatum -- divorce your wife or be cast out. To his everlasting credit he chose Joey.
Yes. Ayn Rand was wrong, too.
"Now that libertarianism is almost entirely captured by the Republican Party, I wonder what Rothbard would say."
He would say, "Hmm...I was wrong."
I would suggest it's the other way 'round, as the GOP was essentially purchased by the Koch network via the Tea Party movement it paid to provide broad coverage for, and the Kochs were lifelong Libertarians. David ran for VP on the Libertarian ticket.
Nope.
I am as libertarian (political system of the founding, another word for Capitalism, true not crony) as anyone on the planet.
I am just as anti-Libertarian, and you all should stop living in the last century.
Just like the Greens on the left, the Libertarian Party, and its myopic supporters/enablers (like the Statist neo-liberal psuedo-free-marketer Koch-cons), allow the Fascist Democrat Party to operate *with crippled political opposition* in their almost-completed take-over of a free People.
You are at best a fool, M. Liz Burton.
Hmmm not MD2020
A little Thunderbird with a Boones Farm chaser.
I had one swallow of that crap 20 yrs ago and can still taste it!
Rothbard always did have it in for Rand, unreasonably so imo.
"How to Win Friends and Influence People" : Matter = Murray Rothbard : Antimatter. I did not know him at all well (I only met him a few times, very late in his life) but we had a mutual friend to whom we were both very close, and I heard *plenty.* I'm sure Ayn Rand was a gigantic pain in the ass, but Murray managed to alienate almost everyone at one time or another too. The obituary National Review ran when he died was a monument to pettiness.
Thanks, M. Gathering. I read about all this so long ago that you make me realize I must go research to learn it all again!
Edit: Really, I should have added to this indent long before that my strong opinion is that this old and ageless Objectivist/Libertarian feud is moot, pointless, beside the point, non-substantive, self-destructive....you know, all the things we *knew* then, eh?
The government counts on stupid and apathetic people to allow them total control over all citizens. And AI will be used in a similar manner if it's not being used already.
Ron Paul is suffering without a verb to his name... I think you forgot "said."
They have gone way past the patriot act
I would like to humbly suggest that we subscribers here to Matt's Racket be officially christened as Other Adversarial Entities. I bet it would even look good stitched on the back of a bowling shirt or velvet jacket.
I'll say we're definitely all in this together---paraphrasing Ben Franklin's "hang together, or hang separately."
How about this septuagenarian needlepoint it?!?! 😂
I'm getting a patch for my Harley vest!
yes! i want one
Other Adversarial Entities...RIDE OR DIE!
Username checks
lol thx
Or, if you prefer. A T-shirt with this on the back. "If you can read this the other adversarial bitch fell off"
I thought we were already Racketeers, isn't that deplorable enough?
OK...in the folk music community there is a well known song (not old...it was written by Stan Rogers in 1976, but it's in the style of an 18th C sea shanty) called "Barrett's Privateers." I propose we re-purpose it as "Taibbi's Racketters." Anyone with me?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMV34CwNMY0
Goddamn them all!
Free Julian Assange in the front, UltraMAGA on the back. Though vice versa works too
I want that shirt!
we need to get some enterprising etsy crafter involved
is it me or is Matt resembling the guy screaming on his way to his execution "but I was for the revolution!" Or "Someone tell stalin!"
I grew up in socialist former East Germany and know exactly what a state controlled media is and what it does. I’m familiar with the tools to keep the populous uneducated, dived and spying on each other for government handouts. It’s all about domestic control and nothing else. I came to the US almost 30 years ago and it’s shocking to see such familiar tactics used today in the so called Land of the Free.
And Renee DiResta worked with American Engagement Technologies, which, the Washington Free Beacon reported, is a “tech company that created fake online personas to stifle the Republican vote in the 2017 special Senate election in Alabama.” Yet she's a "disinformation" expert despite having engaged in an actual disinformation campaign.
She worked for the CIA, then for New Knowledge (now called Yonder), an "election integrity company" which claimed it was running a "secret experiment" by pretending to be Russians backing Judge Roy Moore (R) against Doug Jones (D). Jones won. As far as I know, there were no repercussions for New Knowledge; possibly that led indirectly to the Aspen Institute exercises?
No, no consequences. And in the campaign against Moore they literally “imitated Russian tactics”—this, despite DiResta and her team working with Democrats in the U.S. Senate to pen a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. If Russia interferes with an election, it’s Extremely Dangerous to Our Democracy™; but when Democratic disinformation experts do it to defeat Republicans, it’s totally cool.
https://euphoricrecall.substack.com/p/big-disinfo
These subhumans are pure evil. Especially types like this traitor.
Sounds like an expert to me......
Yes, no scare quotes. She really is an expert at disseminating falsehoods disguised as truth, having spent a career perfecting the "art," a perversion of art.
Practice makes perfect.
She's a "disinformation" expert **as proved by** having engaged in an actual disinformation campaign.
By hyping imaginary threats, hawks create real threats. Since hawks need threats (or else they'd have to get real jobs), this is treated as a win-win.
Now they get to investigate "human trafficking" by getting handjobs for a month while "gathering evidence" -- then they save the "victims" by charging them with prostitution.
AMERICA! FUCK YEAH!
https://reason.com/2016/09/09/the-truth-about-us-sex-trafficking/
And on that note, Jeffrey Toobin re emerged today.....
Re emerging, eh? Sort of like this?? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuWo_kWMihs
🤣🤣. I can’t look at a drying puddle now without wondering who will emerge eventually to croak some sort of garbage. No disrespect to the noble frog 🐸
Wanker in hand?
Like a turtle out of his shell?
The hawks are both Republican and Democrat, with the later being more united than the former. There are cracks in the hawkish GOP, but unity for Democrats. Democrats are united to keep the US southern border open while spending billions to protect Ukraine's.
Great post script, Matt! “ There are almost too many angles to count. “... however many years ago, the now over used expression “ into the weeds” appeared in political lingo... almost always inferring a “ heads up folks, this might be above your IQ level”... from the first time I heard that expression, I immediately thought... “and that is completely intentional and their goal”...make the sequence of events so crazy and convoluted that connecting the dots takes way too much effort and attention. Well played and shame on all of you willing participants! And kudos to your reader who did indeed go into the weeds!
Like "Inside Baseball."
Sounds like you've been doing your own research?
The sky gods know all, remember that they learn the Latin so you don't have to....
Lucky us!
Absolutely the Nazi playbook on display here.
Tell the the people we're under attack. Attack anyone who criticizes as working with the enemy. Keep the people in line from all sides.
Saul Alinsky- RULES FOR RADICALS? The politicians handbook.
lol - I tried to read that once. Got through the intro and was so disgusted I literally shredded the book with my bare hands.
Alinsky was a fucking prick.
Alinsky was Obama's bible when he was a "community organizer." He learned it all and hasn't forgotten a word.
There is a pic of him while Senator boarding a plane holding a copy.
Alinsky *is* "community organizing." What a successful euphamism!
I’ve always ‘heard’ about the book but thought I should actually read it. Need to order that and 1984 together from Amazon. That’ll mess up their algorithm
And The Prince by Machiavelli... I think Hillary has it under her pillow!
Machiavelli. The modern version of his motto now is “ just whatever “.
Well, to be accurate not *just* "just whatever."
The purpose *is* public power.
The method is "con(fidence) game." Gain the confidence of enough foolish Peoples, use the rest as scapegoat, and shazzam! The left endpoint (100% State control, 0% individual freedom) is within reach.
Alinsky channels Machiavelli, of course. Same purpose, same game, different target, same result.