Re: Dystopian Fearmongers Strike Again

From: GBurch1@aol.com
Date: Mon Sep 04 2000 - 08:35:37 MDT


Regarding who "The Turning Point Project" really is, Mike found this:

In a message dated 8/29/00 2:13:34 PM Central Daylight Time,
retroman@turbont.net writes:

> From the CTA website at http://www.icta.org
> Executive Director
> Andrew Kimbrell is a public interest attorney, activist and author. He has
> been
> involved in public interest legal activity in numerous areas of technology,
> human health and the environment. After working eight years as the Policy
> Director at the Foundation for Economic Trends,

The Foundation for Economic Trends is, of course, Jeremy Rifkin's
organization. Looking into the bios of the people at the Turning Point
website, there are LOTS of connections to Rifkin.

As Mike points out, the great irony here is the extent to which this
well-organized group of people use funding from their "corporate enemies" to
get their message across, when the Rifkinite ideology is premised in part on
the notion that "corproations" control the world. The luddites are becoming
masters of playing one single-issue special interest group off another in the
pursuit of their much more unified goal.

I'll say it again: The opponents of science and reason are much better
organized, with a much more unified ideological framework than the disparate
groups working toward a continuation of the goals of the Enlightenment. If
real progressives don't get better organized and funded, there's an
increasing chance of a significant anti-technology and anti-science backlash
that could begin to have real impact on the kinds of timelines we've all come
to accept as more or less "inevitable". Folks like Kurzweil and Moravec are
increasingly "preaching to the choir", while others, like Joy and Rifkin, are
crafting messages that reach far beyond core anti-progress constituencies.

       Greg Burch <GBurch1@aol.com>----<gburch@lockeliddell.com>
      Attorney ::: Vice President, Extropy Institute ::: Wilderness Guide
      http://users.aol.com/gburch1 -or- http://members.aol.com/gburch1
                                           ICQ # 61112550
        "We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know
        enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another
       question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species."
                                          -- Desmond Morris



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