Watching an academic discussion about how the Atlas Network has chosen to use Aotearoa NZ into a petri dish for developing pseudo-independent right-wing, neoliberal institutional influence by gaming human nature. Wow. I've always known the Atlas Network and Heritage Foundation were very bad news but this is stone cold, relentless, heavily funded, rational unadulterated evil at a global scale.
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@SteveFoerster Interesting. Yesterday was the first I'd heard of Nancy MacLean, so unaware of any reputation she might have. Are you saying the Atlas Network is a bogus conspiracy theory? Or the Mont Pelerin Society? The picture in NZ of its affiliates' machinations and the fact the Atlas Network was founded by NZer Alan Gibbs (and is currently run by his daughter Debbie) is damning. They're clever, impossibly well resourced, and quite evil. They're an actual, verifiable conspiracy.
@SteveFoerster having looked over that article, I can't help get the feeling that Farrell might be trying to justify his own conservative/libertarian positions (and defend the current conservative political landscape in the US that most of us looking on around the world think is entirely ethically bankrupt) rather than making a legitimate case to discredit MacLean. Will read in more depth.
@SteveFoerster having read a bit more, I think Farrell is more dobbing himself in than discrediting MacLean. He's saying that researchers she labels as 'evil' aren't. They're just researchers. But they're capitalist researchers, going where the funding is. Then they're willing to do increasingly ethically questionable things with growing ramifications. Though she might jump to value judgements, I think she's definitely onto something. It's not a 'conspiracy theory'... if it *is* a conspiracy.
@lightweight Turns out, all the evil mad scientists are *social* scientists.
@harmoniousanger certainly most of those whose names live in infamy... although at least couple chemists leap to mind: Thomas Midgley Jr. (invented leaded petrol) and Wilhelm Lommel and Wilhelm Steinkopf (who invented volume production of mustard gas). There're many others deserving of infamy.
@lightweight @harmoniousanger The cemetery where Wernher von Braun is buried isn't far from where I live, and I sing the Tom Lehrer song whenever I drive by.
@lightweight People (and politicians?) are catching on that democracy is in existential danger. Discussions about resistance are happening within some
nations. Trouble is - the billionaire attack has been transnational for decades. Nations are easily played off against each other. Politicians with a real interest in democracy have to figure out how to reach beyond the border and work to create new rules to protect democracy globally.
@davidarnell yup. Luckily, we're legion, and collectively we're way better with available dealing with data then those institutions are, regardless of their funding.
I recently picked up this book from the early 2000s, Forces for Good https://dn720006.ca.archive.org/0/items/kathryn-a.-ann-agard-leadership-in-nonprofit-o-book-zz.org/%5BLeslie_R._Crutchfield%2C_Heather_McLeod_Grant%5D_Forc%28BookFi.org%29.pdf
It’s a Good to Great style book with case studies of “high impact nonprofits.” I was surprised to see Heritage Foundation as one of the cases. But in terms of having impact, well, no lies detected. Like an asteroid.
What horrifies and disgusts me is that our Mainstream Media has played along the whole way, including our publicly funded media. That is absolutely beyond the pale. The requires a substantial reset focused on sunlight and transparency.
And they've fully dropped David Seymour in it for baldly lying to Mihirangi Forbes in an interview when she asked him if he or the ACT party were connected to the Atlas Network in any way. He said no. Very shamefully, NZ's civil society closed ranks around Seymour & has expelled Forbes. She need to be reinstated by the state's media with extreme haste. And all NZ Media need to disclose Atlas Network affiliation for all 'experts' they trot out. Anything less is holding the door for these pricks.
I think they might have compelling evidence that Seymour was lying. We need to rake that rat over the coals.
We've got 'the whole architecture' of the Atlas Network 'in miniature', now exposed, rigorously by Prof Mohan Dutta and his co-authors, and we have the evidence required to blow this wide open for the benefit of the globe. And we have the moral obligation to do so.
Note: Project 2025, created by a founding Atlas Network Member, has been half-implemented by Trump's Administration in the US. This stuff if freakin' terrifying. They are evil, institutionalised.
I see you there in the meeting.
@lightweight You lost me at "Nancy MacLean". She's a conspiracy theorist who's telling progressives what they want to hear. I mean, she even got shot down in Vox, so you know it's bad.
There are plenty of people on the right—especially the "dark enlightenment" right that runs the Trump administration and has captured much of Silicon Valley—who are enemies of humankind and must be opposed. Today is Election Day here, and I voted against them an hour ago.
But jamming puzzle pieces together that don't really fit to try to make the picture one expects isn't just intellectually dishonest, it leads to a lack of understanding of what's happening that makes those who want a different world less effective at building one.
https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/7/14/15967788/democracy-shackles-james-buchanan-intellectual-history-maclean
(Or: https://archive.ph/Nf88g )
Even the intellectual left is drawn to conspiracy theories about the right. Resist them.