10-02-2024, 10:25 AM
Just now came across this organisation. This isn't democracy; these people are seeking to destroy democracy & apparently want a return to the days of workhouses & orpahanages, or perhaps their intention is to take us even further back, to the days of serfdom.
https://www.badnewsletter.com/david-seym...TAi_1fKluo
To say "politicians lie" is like saying "fish swim." It's such an obvious truism that it's become a cliche – and yet, the sheer audacity of some political lies can still be breathtaking.
Such is the scope of David Seymour's denial of his connection to the Atlas Network.
To recap, quickly: The Atlas Network is a "think tank that creates think tanks"; a global network of more than 500 right-wing think tanks and lobby groups. New Zealand members of Atlas include the Taxpayers' Union and the New Zealand Initiative (formed from a merger of two think tanks, one of which was the infamous Business Roundtable.)
Seymour's extraordinary denial came during a recording of Mata with Mihingarangi Forbes on RNZ, recorded and released on Waitangi Day, February 6 2024. The relevant parts of the transcript are excerpted below.
Forbes: And those indigenous Australians are now warning Māori that the same groups are behind this referendum. Are they, do you think?
Seymour: Well, if you're about to go into the new Pizzagate of the left conspiracy theory, then I'll be real disappointed.
Forbes: What's that, the Pizzagate?
Seymour: That's some crazy conspiracy theory that Trump has had in the US.
Forbes: The campaign in Australia had links to the Atlas network.
Seymour: Oh, here we go.
Forbes: A network of think tanks, which promote individual liberty and free enterprise. And it said that the network pushes opinion pieces in favour of free speech. Do the ACT Party have any links or connections to the Atlas group?
Seymour, very quietly: No.
That is a lie. David Seymour and the ACT Party have numerous links to the Atlas Network. Here are some of them.
After a 10 month stint as an electrical engineer – his sole non-political, non-think tank job – David Seymour worked for a Canadian think tank called the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, from 2007 to 2011. From January 2013 to February 2014, he worked for The Manning Foundation (now called the Canada Strong and Free Network). Both these think tanks were members of the Atlas Network at the time. (They possibly still are: the Atlas Network no longer discloses member organisations on its website.) Just in case there's any doubt, here is David Seymour in the Atlas Year in Review, 2008. He is pictured composing a song about school choice to celebrate Milton Friedman Legacy Day, which is one of those sentences you never expect to find yourself writing."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...as-network
"There are elements of fascism, elements borrowed from the Chinese state and elements that reflect Argentina’s history of dictatorship. But most of the programme for government announced by Javier Milei, the demagogic new Argentinian president, feels eerily familiar, here in the northern hemisphere.
A crash programme of massive cuts; demolishing public services; privatising public assets; centralising political power; sacking civil servants; sweeping away constraints on corporations and oligarchs; destroying regulations that protect workers, vulnerable people and the living world; supporting landlords against tenants; criminalising peaceful protest; restricting the right to strike. Anything ring a bell?
Milei is attempting, with a vast “emergency” decree and a monster “reform bill”, what the Conservatives have done in the UK over 45 years. The crash programme bears striking similarities to Liz Truss’s “mini” (maxi) budget, which trashed the prospects of many poor and middle-class people and exacerbated the turmoil that now dominates public life.
Coincidence? Not at all. Milei’s programme was heavily influenced by Argentinian neoliberal thinktanks belonging to something called the Atlas Network, a global coordinating body that promotes broadly the same political and economic package everywhere it operates. It was founded in 1981 by a UK citizen, Antony Fisher. Fisher was also the founder of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), one of the first members of the Atlas Network.
The dark-money junktanks, and the Atlas Network, are a highly effective means of disguising and aggregating power. They are the channel through which billionaires and corporations influence politics without showing their hands, learn the most effective policies and tactics for overcoming resistance to their agenda, and then spread these policies and tactics around the world. This is how nominal democracies become new aristocracies.
They also seem to be adept at shaping public opinion. For example, around the world, neoliberal junktanks have not only lobbied for extreme anti-protest measures, but have successfully demonised environmental protesters as “extremists” and “terrorists”. This might help to explain why peaceful environmental campaigners blocking a road are routinely punched, kicked and spat upon, and in some places run over or threatened with guns, by other citizens, while farmers or truckers blocking a road are not. It might also explain why there is scarcely a murmur of media coverage or public concern when extreme penalties are imposed: such as the six-month prison sentence handed in December to the climate campaigner Stephen Gingell for slow-marching along a London street."
https://www.badnewsletter.com/david-seym...TAi_1fKluo
To say "politicians lie" is like saying "fish swim." It's such an obvious truism that it's become a cliche – and yet, the sheer audacity of some political lies can still be breathtaking.
Such is the scope of David Seymour's denial of his connection to the Atlas Network.
To recap, quickly: The Atlas Network is a "think tank that creates think tanks"; a global network of more than 500 right-wing think tanks and lobby groups. New Zealand members of Atlas include the Taxpayers' Union and the New Zealand Initiative (formed from a merger of two think tanks, one of which was the infamous Business Roundtable.)
Seymour's extraordinary denial came during a recording of Mata with Mihingarangi Forbes on RNZ, recorded and released on Waitangi Day, February 6 2024. The relevant parts of the transcript are excerpted below.
Forbes: And those indigenous Australians are now warning Māori that the same groups are behind this referendum. Are they, do you think?
Seymour: Well, if you're about to go into the new Pizzagate of the left conspiracy theory, then I'll be real disappointed.
Forbes: What's that, the Pizzagate?
Seymour: That's some crazy conspiracy theory that Trump has had in the US.
Forbes: The campaign in Australia had links to the Atlas network.
Seymour: Oh, here we go.
Forbes: A network of think tanks, which promote individual liberty and free enterprise. And it said that the network pushes opinion pieces in favour of free speech. Do the ACT Party have any links or connections to the Atlas group?
Seymour, very quietly: No.
That is a lie. David Seymour and the ACT Party have numerous links to the Atlas Network. Here are some of them.
After a 10 month stint as an electrical engineer – his sole non-political, non-think tank job – David Seymour worked for a Canadian think tank called the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, from 2007 to 2011. From January 2013 to February 2014, he worked for The Manning Foundation (now called the Canada Strong and Free Network). Both these think tanks were members of the Atlas Network at the time. (They possibly still are: the Atlas Network no longer discloses member organisations on its website.) Just in case there's any doubt, here is David Seymour in the Atlas Year in Review, 2008. He is pictured composing a song about school choice to celebrate Milton Friedman Legacy Day, which is one of those sentences you never expect to find yourself writing."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...as-network
"There are elements of fascism, elements borrowed from the Chinese state and elements that reflect Argentina’s history of dictatorship. But most of the programme for government announced by Javier Milei, the demagogic new Argentinian president, feels eerily familiar, here in the northern hemisphere.
A crash programme of massive cuts; demolishing public services; privatising public assets; centralising political power; sacking civil servants; sweeping away constraints on corporations and oligarchs; destroying regulations that protect workers, vulnerable people and the living world; supporting landlords against tenants; criminalising peaceful protest; restricting the right to strike. Anything ring a bell?
Milei is attempting, with a vast “emergency” decree and a monster “reform bill”, what the Conservatives have done in the UK over 45 years. The crash programme bears striking similarities to Liz Truss’s “mini” (maxi) budget, which trashed the prospects of many poor and middle-class people and exacerbated the turmoil that now dominates public life.
Coincidence? Not at all. Milei’s programme was heavily influenced by Argentinian neoliberal thinktanks belonging to something called the Atlas Network, a global coordinating body that promotes broadly the same political and economic package everywhere it operates. It was founded in 1981 by a UK citizen, Antony Fisher. Fisher was also the founder of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), one of the first members of the Atlas Network.
The dark-money junktanks, and the Atlas Network, are a highly effective means of disguising and aggregating power. They are the channel through which billionaires and corporations influence politics without showing their hands, learn the most effective policies and tactics for overcoming resistance to their agenda, and then spread these policies and tactics around the world. This is how nominal democracies become new aristocracies.
They also seem to be adept at shaping public opinion. For example, around the world, neoliberal junktanks have not only lobbied for extreme anti-protest measures, but have successfully demonised environmental protesters as “extremists” and “terrorists”. This might help to explain why peaceful environmental campaigners blocking a road are routinely punched, kicked and spat upon, and in some places run over or threatened with guns, by other citizens, while farmers or truckers blocking a road are not. It might also explain why there is scarcely a murmur of media coverage or public concern when extreme penalties are imposed: such as the six-month prison sentence handed in December to the climate campaigner Stephen Gingell for slow-marching along a London street."
in order to be old & wise, you must first be young & stupid. (I'm still working on that.)