Seymour & the Atlas network

[Lilith7]

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."

[Oh_hunnihunni]

Told ya so.

[Lilith7]

Told ya so.

Evil, devious bastards is being far too kind imo. These prickles want to remove as far as possible, any chance at a reasonably decent future our descendants might have.

We thought Ruthless& Jennycide were bad but they had nothing on this lot...

I can't comprehend how anyone can be like this.

[zqwerty]

Have you never heard of Z.A.P., Lilith7 they were based on Christchurch, Zenith Applied Philosophy.

They used to brain wash people using sophisticated techniques and then put people into work in businesses around town, paying low wages, one of them was a business cooking fried chicken, like KFC. I think it was at the bottom of Papanui Road by Bealy Avenue by the Carlton Hotel.

One of the ways to brain wash people is to destroy someones cherished heart felt beliefs once you find out what they are, since lots of beliefs are just that and not factual, core beliefs are central to maintaining ones essential personality. Hence the name ZAP, get it? Whilst they are in a breakdown state after being zapped they can be bent to someone else's will.

[Oh_hunnihunni]

I listened to a certain senior NZF politician scoff at a quote from their leader as being political hyperbole rather than deliberately divisive and intentionally cruel. We often see dishonesty waved off in a similar way.

Chloe is right, we have the power, politicians work for us. About time we ceased to accept this kind of rubbish from our employees.

[Lilith7]

Have you never heard of Z.A.P., Lilith7 they were based on Christchurch, Zenith Applied Philosophy.

They used to brain wash people using sophisticated techniques and then put people into work in businesses around town, paying low wages, one of them was a business cooking fried chicken, like KFC.  I think it was at the bottom of Papanui Road by Bealy Avenue by the Carlton Hotel.

One of the ways to brain wash people is to destroy someones cherished heart felt beliefs once you find out what they are, since lots of beliefs are just that and not factual, core beliefs are central to maintaining ones essential personality.  Hence the name ZAP, get it?  Whilst they are in a breakdown state after being zapped they can be bent to someone else's will.

I remember hearing about that lot back in the day; (word got around fairly quickly despite no internet then) that they were bad news & best avoided. There was another lot also best avoided, around the same time, The Divine Light Mission I think it was called but they were religious.

---

I listened to a certain senior NZF politician scoff at a quote from their leader as being political hyperbole rather than deliberately divisive and intentionally cruel. We often see dishonesty  waved off in a similar way.

Chloe is right, we have the power, politicians work for us. About time we ceased to accept this kind of rubbish from our employees.

Excellent point; perhaps they need a reminder far more often than each election - if indeed they do then - that that IS what they are, our employees, there to do the best for all voters rather than just the one section of them.

I think perhaps we need to establish basic things like education, health etc.etc. to as high a level as we can, accessible to ALL of us (having  removed private health first) & then put a ring of steel around them to avoid any possible future 'improvements' from meddling greedy politicians. Set in concrete, legally close off any possible future greed idiocy so that EVERY person can access them.
The thing is that, because our generation is older, we know that it wasn't always this way & we won't shut the hell up about that. We tend to make sure we tell as many people as possible, because we know that change is needed - & the sooner, the better. I suspect Neoliberals don't much like us. I can live with that...

Bryan Bruce had a bit to say on the greedy Neoliberal sytem today.

https://www.facebook.com/www.redsky.tv

"We don’t live in a fair and just society. It is much harder for today’s young people from our poorer homes to get the kind of start in life that I got, born as I was into a working-class immigrant family, or former Prime Minister John Key got as the son of a single mother growing up in a State house.

We both received the gift of a virtually free tertiary education from a Welfare State that was determined to give us the rights to good food, shelter and education our country had signed up for under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

That isn't the case today.

So.. what happened? How come today’s young people don’t get the same break in life that John Key and I got?

The answer is complex but one of the challenges of democracy is to balance the rights of the individual with the rights of the many and in the early 1980’s there was a swing away from electiing governments that promoted the Common Good to governments which promoted Individualism.

Neoliberal economics, championed by US President Ronald Regan, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Roger Douglas in New Zealand ,delivered a message of selfishness that fell on eager ears – that there should be less government in our lives and you should keep more of your tax money.

The result ?

A huge gap has developed between the rich and the poor in our country with diminished educational opportunities for kids who live in our poorer homes.

Why?

Because, for one thing, Treasury advised the Government in 1986 that free tertiary Education was not something that benefitted the nation but something that primarily benefitted the individual so the individual should pay for it.

So instead of getting the debt free start in adult life that John Key and I got, today’s generations are burdened by huge student loans that holds them back ,for eample, from getting into a home of their own.

Returning to a more Just Society isn’t going to be easy, but Step 1 is to make the moral decision that a fairer society is something we want.

I do. I want to live in a country where EVERY child is given the opportunity to be the best that they can be and so, as time permits I will be sharing, in upcoming posts , some thoughts about how we might achieve it."

[Oh_hunnihunni]

Higher education is transformational, but preparation for it needs to start much earlier if students aren't to drop out too soon. Thing is, higher education is not in the interest of those exploiting low paid workers, and they are the ones who support parties who promote the education as a product idea, instead of the reality that education and access to it is a human inheritance.

[Lilith7]

Higher education is transformational, but preparation for it needs to start much earlier if students aren't to drop out too soon. Thing is, higher education is not in the interest of those exploiting low paid workers, and they are the ones who support parties who promote the education as a product idea, instead of the reality that education and access to it is a human inheritance.

Complete & utter arseholes imo. Education makes such a difference to people's lives that it needs to be available to every last one of us throughout our entire lives. Free, as in paid for with our taxes & including all types of education ( people learn in different ways so that's important) on every conceivable subject.

If our entire planet was able to do that then  it would eventually make an enormous difference to us,the planet & our descendants.

That however, isn't in the interests of the greeders.

[zqwerty]

Well said and bravo to all the above Lilith7 and Oh_hunnihunni.

[Lilith7]

Well said and bravo to all the above Lilith7 and Oh_hunnihunni.

Cheers Zqwerty. I just don't get why anyone can be so callous & lacking in empathy towards their fellow humans to the extent that some are, & I think a lot of other people don't understand it either.

[Lilith7]

A letter to ACT leader David Seymour from Sir Ian Taylor.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/opin...IA1wJbawt8



Opinion: Sir Ian Taylor - a letter to Act leader David Seymour
OPINION
"Dear David,
I do have some sympathy for your views on the labels that people place on each other.
Obviously, this did rile you a little at the recent Waitangi Day celebrations where you were likened to a couple of insects – but I will come back to that later.
Perhaps, like you, I am not sure where in the Māori world I sit.

At one end I could be on Willie Jackson’s “useless Māori” list because I don’t have te reo or, at the other end, I could be one of Matua Winston Peters’ “elite Māori” list because I have, I admit, been late in my discovery and understanding of the power of Te Ao Māori.
The irony for me of this observation is that here we are – you, me, Willie and Winston, all of us who whakapapa Māori – all seemingly divided by those labels that we place on each other, to the delight of anyone looking to highlight those divisions.
And while I have been late coming to this understanding of the power of Te Ao Māori, it has highlighted for me that I have always understood who I was.
I am the son of a Pākehā father who came from Nightcaps in the South Island and a Māori mother from Mōhaka in Hawke’s Bay.
It has also highlighted the wonderful way my mother, Mangū Rose, together with my fabulous aunties, instilled in me, by example rather than words, what it meant to be Māori. Those powerful lessons they shared have served to enlighten me on this voyage of discovery that I am on.

Which brings me back to the divisive name-calling and the reference to “insects” to which you responded: “Today I have heard people say that we are spiders, that we are sandflies, well I am sorry to say folks not even Donald Trump is calling opponents insects.”
Now I know you have a huge passion for the education of our tamariki, our young people, of all cultures.

But you and I were both brought up in an education system that for decades failed to address the history of Aotearoa much beyond the arrival of Abel Tasman and Captain Cook, who landed here more than 700 years after Kupe, ending a journey of discovery by our Polynesian tupuna that began 3500 years ago.
A multi-generational journey that has been described as “the greatest voyage in the history of human migration”.
It’s a voyage across the largest expanse of open water on the planet, Te Moana-nui-a-kiwa, the Pacific Ocean, using advanced knowledge of the stars, sun and ocean currents to discover every piece of land in that great expanse of ocean, completing the history of human migration here in Aotearoa New Zealand and, shortly after, the Chatham Islands.
It’s an amazing story that needs to be told if we are to move our Pasifika and Māori tamariki, along with their friends from all other cultures, into those high-value jobs that are increasingly based on science and innovation and for which you are such a strong advocate.

But our Polynesian ancestors could not have crossed the largest expanse of open water on the planet without developing a deep knowledge of astronomy, astrology, science, maths and engineering.
They called it Mātauranga, an indigenous view of the world that includes all of those subjects we have lumped under the acronym Stem (Science, technology, engineering and maths) in our schools.
But we need to be telling these stories in our schools to inspire our young people that this thing we call Stem is in their DNA.
It is only now that I have come to understand how deeply that was ingrained in my DNA.
This has led me to understand that it is the combination of Mātauranga, alongside the maths, physics and science expertise that my Pākehā colleagues have brought with them, that can truly explain our company’s position as a global leader in the world of technology.

So, to those insects.
The reference that was made was not to actual insects. They were a reference to a eulogy that was given by the great chief Te Ruki Kawiti, almost certainly an ancestor of yours, who just a few years after the signing of the Te Tiriti o Waitangi, took on the British army at Ruapekapeka where, along with Hone Heke, they built one of the most advanced defensive structures the British Army had ever come up against.

It is a fascinating story that needs to be part of our science, engineering and maths curriculum (we are working on that) but the reference to sandflies comes from that eulogy made by Kawiti to his people after the battle was over in which he said: “I have battled the gods of the night and yet I did not die. Now is the time to trample our wrath beneath our feet. Now is the time to be confident in who we are. Now is the time to talk peace. But as we do, we must never turn our backs on the parchment [Te Tiriti] because if we do, we can be certain that the sandflies will nip at its edges.”
We are watching those sandflies gather and it is only right that we acknowledge that this was a threat that Kawiti recognised when he called for his people to talk peace almost two centuries ago.

It is context.
My hope is that all tamariki of Aotearoa New Zealand will grow up understanding the context in which so many of these important discussions should be taking place.
You and I were denied these powerful stories, but now is the opportunity to address that for our young people.

And one last observation if I may, David.
One could argue that there has already been a referendum on the Treaty.
That happened back in 1840 when the Māori population of the country was 125,000 whilst the colonists numbered just 2000.

That would of course mean that at the time te Tiriti was signed the colonists were outnumbered by Māori by more than 60:1 which would surely mean that the official language of the country would have been te reo Māori and that the Treaty that took precedence would have been the one written in the language of the majority.
Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Context perhaps?"

[Oh_hunnihunni]

My Dad, of whom I am immensely proud, was a British Army Officer before he emigrated to New Zealand. He was taught about the Maori Wars at Sandhurst, because the defences Maori built, were in the opinion of British Army strategists, the most sophisticated and possibly the first, military use of trenches...

Not bad for an oft called primitive stone age people.

I am also rather chuffed that Sir Ian picked up on the point I made too in response to WG, about the colonials not being the senior party when the Treaty was drafted. As he points out, they were the minority. Maybe that's why some are trying to rewrite it.

[Lilith7]

My Dad, of whom I am immensely proud, was a British Army Officer before he emigrated to New Zealand. He was taught about the Maori Wars at Sandhurst, because the defences Maori built, were in the opinion of British Army strategists, the most sophisticated and possibly the first, military use of trenches...

Not bad for an oft called primitive stone age people.

Indeed, not bad at all. I've heard it said that Gandhi learned the art of  peaceful resistence from Te Whiti & Tohu at Parihaka.

And I think too that for their time they may well have been the world's best navigators & sailors; you don't explore an ocean as big as the Pacific without learning a thing or two.

[Oh_hunnihunni]

I saw ancient star maps at the Auckland Museum one time. Made of knotted twine. The imagination and science behind such recording systems just left me gobsmacked.

[harm_less]

A letter to ACT leader David Seymour from Sir Ian Taylor.

.........

Thanks for bringing that out from behind NZ Herald's paywall. An interesting read.

[Zurdo]

All ancient cultures studied the stars, and they were all really good at it - it was there to see every night. Lyall Watson of Supernature fame (I'm sure all you hippies read it !) also wrote a book on winds, tides, currents, and other forces of nature. He told of how the Polynesians navigated by stars and currents, currents being different to waves caused by wind and tides. The navigator would lie in the bottom of the canoe to feel the currents, or stand up and find the current by the sway of his testicles....I guess women navigators didn't have this advantage....or perhaps used other swaying appendages.

[Lilith7]

A letter to ACT leader David Seymour from Sir Ian Taylor.

.........

Thanks for bringing that out from behind NZ Herald's paywall. An interesting read.

Someone on FB had done that, I just thought it needed sharing so you're all very welcome.

[king1]

just quietly,

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