You are in a maze of little twisting think-tanks, all different: Dobrý den!

cite as: F. Bi. 2009. You are in a maze of little twisting think-tanks, all different: Dobrý den! Intl. J. Inact., 2:91

It seems that Czech President Václav Klaus, in his effort to promote global warming inaction, has started a new (advocacy? policy study?) group called the Prague Network. [cached]

Now this isn’t very interesting in itself; what is interesting, well, is that there’s a web site praguenetwork.org owned by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a group which is — let’s put it this way — not based in Prague. [cached]

(Hmm. So how does the free-market think-tank-o-sphere work exactly? Does a new ‘free-market group’ undergo some sort of ‘incubation programme’ during which they live on some larger group’s web space, until they attract enough hack writers to get their own web site?)

We are going to be suppressed by the mainstream media

cite as: F. Bi. 2009. We are going to be suppressed by the mainstream media. Intl. J. Inact., 2:33–34

The poll to predict the take-home message of the upcoming ‘”2009 International Conference on Climate Change” is still running! Right now, the hottest predictions are “Fire James Hansen!” followed closely by “Japanese now dispute global warming!”

However, here’s a press release from the Heartland Institute web site which suggests that the conference’s centre of attention may turn out to be…

The Way of the Astroturf IV: easily send letters to local news media

cite as: F. Bi. 2008. The Way of the Astroturf IV: easily send letters to local news media. Intl. J. Inact., 1:188–189

Mitchell Anderson at DeSmogBlog recently uncovered a group of astroturf web sites aiming to derail climate change regulation, including the Partnership for America (“a broad-based alliance of people”) and Americans for American Energy (which has an unspecified number of “grassroots supporters”). Brian D also found that these groups share the same IP address (72.32.229.51) as a bunch of other ‘organizations’ such as the Consumers for Affordable Energy, and (a currently empty) Secure Energy Systems LLC.

But that’s not all. The company behind these sites, Policy Communications Inc. is apparently so proud of its astroturf efforts¹ that they actually have a web page talking about them. On this page they mention

The Caliph instead of the Caliph

cite as: F. Bi. 2008. The Caliph instead of the Caliph. Intl. J. Inact., 1:176–177

This isn’t new, but it turns out that the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Tennessee Centre for Policy Research, the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, and lots of other think-tanks are members or associate members of an organization called the State Policy Network. (I’ve updated the diagram of think-tanks accordingly.)

Now, on to the new stuff. On the SPN site there’s a document titled New Media Mania which gives advice on how free-market think-tanks should design their web sites in the, um, Web 2.0 era. It contains this:

The Way of the Astroturf II: we come from all political persuasions

cite as: F. Bi. 2008. The Way of the Astroturf II: we come from all political persuasions. Intl. J. Inact., 1:172–173

Guess what, my suspicions were right.

GoDaddy’s whois records show that the bureaucrash.com domain name — and thus, the Bureaucrash project — indeed comes under the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Well, certainly there should be some mention of this on the Bureaucrash front pages… :)

The best part of Bureaucrash’s blurb is this:

We provide relevant resources and connect an international network of activists, called crashers, so they can share their ideas and best-practices and work together to introduce others to the ideas of individual liberty, personal responsibility, and free markets. Crashers come from all political persuasions but are united by one goal: To decreasing the scope of government and increase individual freedom.

I guess they welcome people from all political persuasions as long as they’re not moderate liberals, or left-anarchists, or…

(And they’re perfectly grassroots. Really.)

Also, the Heartland Institute and the, um, “New Coalition for Economic and Social Change” share the exact same snail-mail address. No doubt, this is just a very very fortuitous coincidence.

You are in a twisty maze of little think-tanks, all different

cite as: F. Bi. 2008. You are in a twisty maze of little think-tanks, all different. Intl. J. Inact., 1:169–171

I wonder if the Competitive Enterprise Institute — the group behind the “Carbon dioxide. They call it pollution. We call it life.” ad — is staffed with magicians. The domain name situation around the CEI web site (cei.org) is filled with such wholesome weirdness that I don’t believe it to be the work of mere mortals.

Also, the Heartland Institute turns out to share the same IP address as the “New Coalition for Economic and Social Change”… whatever that is.

Here’s a spiffy diagram to confuse you.