Le Jacquelope
Loves Spam
- Joined
- Apr 9, 2003
- Posts
- 76,445
I'm shocked and awed that this isn't more common. I used to get the dirt on opposing political organizations all the time. I communicated with organization insiders (I wouldn't call them spies - spies imply a much more sophisticated thing) solely by telephone, and then in the later years, by email - practically no activist group in America would ever be able to nail you if you only talked to an insider by phone, and communications by email were utterly impossible to crack unless they actually had someone illegally tapping you in the ISP (and I had insiders at my ISP Calweb to fix that at the time).
So this is what we would do. We would find out what arguments they were using at the local college debates, find out what events they were holding and what they were using and doing at the time, and work out all legal ways of disrupting the fuck out of them.
Of course, turnabout was always fair game, and we fielded a lot of hecklers, but we knew all about heckling so we played along with their jokes and they inevitably went General Board-level crazy with their name-calling and got booed by the crowd. I'll never forget the "Friends don't let friends know Jesus" joke and how quickly the Birkenstocks-wearing liberal college news reporter pointed this out in the following day's article as an unfortunate example of a liberal "acting like Republicans" by making bigoted remarks about Christians.
And absolutely no one could get inside on us to know what we were saying at political debates. We'd trounce their arguments before they were spoken and debunk their so-called documentation ahead of time, forcing them totally off-course right at the opening arguments. It helped that the opposition almost always had the usual canned arguments and we were almost all born improvisers with a knack for bringing up the hard hitting, rarely thought of questions. I think they "spied" on us once during a speech in the Student Union against HillaryCare (specifically, we were bashing of Hillary Clinton's top secret nationalized health care meetings and not her top secret nationalized health care plans itself) and they sputtered badly trying to predict our anti-HillaryCare arguments. This was a good chance to kick us in the ass and they epic failed - they tried to attack our arguments against nationalized health care and we only came to talk about the secretive nature of Hillary Clinton's activities. Good stuff, good stuff. I knew we'd been spied on because of their blazing confidence and sense of impending victory when they came to heckle us. They were itching to tell the world what they knew and were out playing the CROWD before we took the microphone.
I didn't care about their insiders among us. We were solid and unstoppable with or without their presence. Aside from our insiders, we left our agenda out in the open. We planned events and left it open to the public to come in and talk to us during the process. Of course, not many people LIKED Republicans back in 1992-1993, but by 1994, the wind was at our back and we had crowds of students HELPING us plan events. Of course, the GOP swept Congress later that year.
By the time I graduated, they'd figured out basic email, and were using it to communicate with a dozen insiders across 4 liberal groups, and the lady who succeeded me practically deflated what was left of the Young Democrats' membership. She also had insiders at State conventions doing go-fer duties for statewide officers and getting the low-down on them, and was working on getting someone into position to go to the DNC conventions, too.
I'm sure they got lazy and dropped the insider system as the GOP steamrolled its way to one-party GOP domination by 2001.
That said, I say this as a fan of activist organization insider infiltration and not as a member of the NRA... you go, NRA. But if you get infiltrated by insiders, too, guess what, tough luck, it's all about survival of the fittest when it comes to the battle of ideas and whose ideas are going to run this country.
Sen. Frank Lautenberg, I vote Democrat nowadays and wouldn't lift a finger to save a drowning Republican (well, not most, anyway), but dude, give it up. Spying is fair game. And can someone show me the law that gives CeaseFirePA cause to sue?
Please. Survival of the fittest, it's what the ideological contest of ideas is all about.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080809/ap_on_re_us/nra_mole&printer=1;_ylt=AikAymhCPwaooujD9c259yRH2ocA
Pa. gun control group kicks out alleged NRA spy
By SARA GANIM, Associated Press WriterSat Aug 9, 12:36 AM ET
A group advocating stricter gun laws is kicking out a woman who has been accused of being a spy for the National Rifle Association.
The CeaseFirePA board of directors voted unanimously Friday to remove fellow board member Mary Lou McFate. The group also is exploring possible legal action against her, though spokesman Joe Grace declined to elaborate.
McFate, an unpaid member of the CeaseFirePA board for seven years, is accused of portraying herself as a gun-control activist while being paid by the NRA to gather intelligence. A Chicago-based group, the Freedom States Alliance, expelled her from its board last week.
The spying accusations were first raised in Mother Jones magazine.
The NRA has declined to discuss the accusation and a message left for its representatives Friday was not immediately returned. Messages left this week for McFate, 62, of Sarasota, Fla., have not been returned.
CeaseFirePA said it sought to get McFate's side of the story, but that she didn't respond to the group's correspondence.
New Jersey Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg asked the NRA on Thursday to respond to the accusations and to stop the snooping.
So this is what we would do. We would find out what arguments they were using at the local college debates, find out what events they were holding and what they were using and doing at the time, and work out all legal ways of disrupting the fuck out of them.
Of course, turnabout was always fair game, and we fielded a lot of hecklers, but we knew all about heckling so we played along with their jokes and they inevitably went General Board-level crazy with their name-calling and got booed by the crowd. I'll never forget the "Friends don't let friends know Jesus" joke and how quickly the Birkenstocks-wearing liberal college news reporter pointed this out in the following day's article as an unfortunate example of a liberal "acting like Republicans" by making bigoted remarks about Christians.
And absolutely no one could get inside on us to know what we were saying at political debates. We'd trounce their arguments before they were spoken and debunk their so-called documentation ahead of time, forcing them totally off-course right at the opening arguments. It helped that the opposition almost always had the usual canned arguments and we were almost all born improvisers with a knack for bringing up the hard hitting, rarely thought of questions. I think they "spied" on us once during a speech in the Student Union against HillaryCare (specifically, we were bashing of Hillary Clinton's top secret nationalized health care meetings and not her top secret nationalized health care plans itself) and they sputtered badly trying to predict our anti-HillaryCare arguments. This was a good chance to kick us in the ass and they epic failed - they tried to attack our arguments against nationalized health care and we only came to talk about the secretive nature of Hillary Clinton's activities. Good stuff, good stuff. I knew we'd been spied on because of their blazing confidence and sense of impending victory when they came to heckle us. They were itching to tell the world what they knew and were out playing the CROWD before we took the microphone.
I didn't care about their insiders among us. We were solid and unstoppable with or without their presence. Aside from our insiders, we left our agenda out in the open. We planned events and left it open to the public to come in and talk to us during the process. Of course, not many people LIKED Republicans back in 1992-1993, but by 1994, the wind was at our back and we had crowds of students HELPING us plan events. Of course, the GOP swept Congress later that year.
By the time I graduated, they'd figured out basic email, and were using it to communicate with a dozen insiders across 4 liberal groups, and the lady who succeeded me practically deflated what was left of the Young Democrats' membership. She also had insiders at State conventions doing go-fer duties for statewide officers and getting the low-down on them, and was working on getting someone into position to go to the DNC conventions, too.
I'm sure they got lazy and dropped the insider system as the GOP steamrolled its way to one-party GOP domination by 2001.
That said, I say this as a fan of activist organization insider infiltration and not as a member of the NRA... you go, NRA. But if you get infiltrated by insiders, too, guess what, tough luck, it's all about survival of the fittest when it comes to the battle of ideas and whose ideas are going to run this country.
Sen. Frank Lautenberg, I vote Democrat nowadays and wouldn't lift a finger to save a drowning Republican (well, not most, anyway), but dude, give it up. Spying is fair game. And can someone show me the law that gives CeaseFirePA cause to sue?
Please. Survival of the fittest, it's what the ideological contest of ideas is all about.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080809/ap_on_re_us/nra_mole&printer=1;_ylt=AikAymhCPwaooujD9c259yRH2ocA
Pa. gun control group kicks out alleged NRA spy
By SARA GANIM, Associated Press WriterSat Aug 9, 12:36 AM ET
A group advocating stricter gun laws is kicking out a woman who has been accused of being a spy for the National Rifle Association.
The CeaseFirePA board of directors voted unanimously Friday to remove fellow board member Mary Lou McFate. The group also is exploring possible legal action against her, though spokesman Joe Grace declined to elaborate.
McFate, an unpaid member of the CeaseFirePA board for seven years, is accused of portraying herself as a gun-control activist while being paid by the NRA to gather intelligence. A Chicago-based group, the Freedom States Alliance, expelled her from its board last week.
The spying accusations were first raised in Mother Jones magazine.
The NRA has declined to discuss the accusation and a message left for its representatives Friday was not immediately returned. Messages left this week for McFate, 62, of Sarasota, Fla., have not been returned.
CeaseFirePA said it sought to get McFate's side of the story, but that she didn't respond to the group's correspondence.
New Jersey Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg asked the NRA on Thursday to respond to the accusations and to stop the snooping.
