Soon, the meetings will resume (I hear that phrase as “soon, the beatings will resume”). I do believe meetings at the university level have been infiltrated by CIA moles, because these instructions sure look familiar.
I think every leftist should pass this around once or twice a year just so we're all on the same page: from recently WW-II era CIA "Simple Sabotage Field Manual", guidelines for how to disrupt organizations. pic.twitter.com/xflDagwpIr
— Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò (@OlufemiOTaiwo) January 20, 2022
Our biology discipline meetings aren’t bad — we’re a small department, I don’t think we’ve been given our CIA plant yet, so they usually get down to business reasonably efficiently. As soon as we get into larger groupings, though, all of the above kicks into action, especially #2 and #5. Meanwhile, I tend to just sit quietly, thinking more productively about the work I need to get done.
I do wonder what the CIA’s intent with poisoning academia with these tedious bores might be, though.
Interesting that the CIA issued guidance before they ever existed. The CIA was created in 1947 from a seed group established in 1946.
Now, even after checking my New Math workbook, 1946 and definitely 1947 are decidedly after 1945, when WWII ended (other than in the movies, where it still occasionally roars on).
Now, for times after that, well, a lot of CIA are former military and those in the military have had to suffer through incessant command and staff meetings. So, they assume all organizations torture their mid-level leadership and junior management with similar exercises in frustration, along with assorted, useless committees.
I always volunteered to be on the escape committee. Senior management turned the most fetching shade of purple every time.
OSS.
Anyway, they (and other security agencies) definitely recruit from campuses. Campuses and other places are also trawled by those with all sorts of agendas. Maybe more than you think.
While the compilation is interesting, there’s no need to plumb 70 year old field manuals to stir up dark imaginings. The practices listed are SOP and in your face, probably intuitively, for all sorts of idiots on a daily basis. Turn on your TV.
Sober, solid info beats distracting, paranoid flights of fantasy that are also no doubt encouraged by an alphabet soup of parties foreign and domestic. Plenty enough to be concerned about without them.
I trust CIA moles far more than I trust libertarian moles, or their financiers/handlers.
My chemistry department faculty meetings are a perfect mirror of those. To get through the long speeches, I started doodling the periodic table, which looks somewhat professional.
Such is the frequency of long speeches that I ended up able to write the entire periodic table from memory, a very unusual accomplishment that I didn’t even try to do. Now I have to find some other way to sit through the speeches.
It reminds me a little of bikeshedding, which I don’t think was invented by the CIA but maybe they have found ways of weaponizing it.
For more background: Cloak and Gown: Scholars in the Secret War, 1939-1961 by Robin W. Winks; and The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America by Hugh Wilford.
Updates urgently needed!
garnetstar@4
I’d suggest putting it to music but that’s already been done.
Plot twist: PZ is the CIA mole.
Paul @7, LOL! But, I could hum it under my breath during the long speeches. Thanks for the suggestion!
I’m glad someone decided to update the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
The CIA (and other western spy agencies) always hate even vaguely left wing groups as being some kind of a threat to capitalism (which is their duty to protect). Meanwhile the real threats to democracy, which always come from the right (religious, ideologues, and corporations) go unseen and unchecked.