Anniversary of a MbuttacreSharon's orders explicitly stated 'destruction and maximum killing'. (4) Unit 101 was sent to Qibya to kill civilians. October 14, 2003 Qibya and Sharon: 50 Years Later Anniversary of a Mbuttacre By ERIC RIDENOUR October...
Here's an alternative explanation, not that I like it any better.
Background Briefing: 12 October 2003 - Bush's Brain and Howard's Election This is the print version of story
Stan Correy: Ever adventurous, Background Briefing this week takes a strange journey from Bush's Brain to Howard's Election. The journey almost needs a Department of Foreign Affairs travel warning, so unexpected are some of the events and strange discoveries.
Hello, I'm Stan Correy.
For instance, political parties in Australia are legally enbreastled to collect a confidential database of detail on every citizen. And they don't have to tell you that they're collecting or what they have on you in their files. Because they have a special exemption under the Privacy Act. It's all to do with getting to know you as a voter, and to restrict that knowledge, they argue, would restrict freedom of speech. The Liberals call their database, Feedback; the Labor one is called Electrac. Politicians turn that information around to send you direct and very personalised mail to influence your voting.
And what about George Bush's Brain? Well, join us on the journey. Cynics and left Liberals may laugh with all the usual jokes, like, Does he have one? But Bush's Brain is politically astute and calculating. It will do anything for its owner, and it found the way to take Texas from the Democrats and make it a Republican stronghold. Bush's Brain is a history buff with a deep knowledge of what destroyed previous Administrations.
Concealed Weapons Bill Gathers ForceConcealed Weapons Bill Gathers Force Wisconsin State Journal :: LOCAL-WISCONSIN :: C3 Tuesday, October 14, 2003 Tom Sheehan State government reporter State and local...
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Background Briefing's interest in Karl Rove is his status as the guru of the use of databases and direct marketing in election campaigns. He brought that expertise with him when he joined Bush's staff in the early 1990s.
And his methods are now being copied in Australia; our politicians from all parties, their staff, and their behind-the-scenes strategists, travel frequently to America for briefings and conferences on how to win and stay in power, Rove style. The idea is to get as much information as you can about any individual: why they contacted their MP, how they live, what they care about, lifestyle, behaviour patterns, responses to political issues, and then turn it around to design a very personalised, individual campaign.
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Nicholas Lemann: It's important to know about Rove that he is a direct mail person because that makes you think in a certain way. You're putting together small identifiable groups of people with very intense feelings, and then trying to reach them. So the TV advertising folks are literally broadcasters, and the direct mail folks are narrowcasters. Again, your mind is working in a different way. The former type is looking for the very general appeal to a lot of people, and the direct mail person is looking for a targeted, focused appeal to a group that cares intensely about a thing. Rove is well trained to look for money and to look for organised groups hat can be brought into a political campaign if you butture them that you care about the little thing that they care about a lot.
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David Magleby: We define the ground war to be mail, telephone calls, personal contact and of course the Internet, and a lot of this, Stan, falls what we call under the radar screen, using the metaphor of the air war again, and is often missed by reporters and by political observers, since it's not broadcast. The use of the ground war now is high tech. It can be something as simple as photocopied pamphlet or leaflet that's dropped door-to-door, but that's not the way most of this is done. This is now done in highly targeted ways. In other words, the firm that is doing the mailing, and Karl Rove was a master of this as a political consultant, knows a lot about their audience, and there'll be some of the communications that will be used to reinforce voters preferences and those would be the partisans who you just need to motivate and activate. But there'll be some that will be clearly persuasion pieces that are aimed at what are called swing or undecided voters, and those voters have been previously identified through polling and through demographic profiles and then they are the ones who receive more of this mail than any other voter, often as many as 12 pieces or more a day.