Think Tank Watch

Atlas Economic Research Foundation

2020-10-10T10:10:00.000-07:00

The Atlas Economic Research Foundation was founded in 1981 by Antony Fisher.

For over two decades, a Virginia-based organization has been quietly working as the Johnny Appleseed of conservative think tanks. With a modest $4 million dollar budget in 2003 and a staff of eight, Atlas Economic Research Foundation is on a mission to populate the world with new "free market" voices.

In its 2003 review of activities, quaintly titled its "Investor Report," Atlas boasted that it worked with "70 new think-tank entrepreneurs from 37 foreign countries and several states of the U.S.," including Lithuania, Greece, Mongolia, Ghana, the Philippines, Brazil and Argentina.

Named after the Greek god condemned to bear the heavens on his shoulders, Atlas identifies, screens and offers initial support to individuals and groups who want to create local think tanks.

The mission of Atlas, according to John Blundell (president from 1987 to 1990), "is to litter the world with free-market think-tanks. Quoting Anthony Fisher"

Since its formation in 1981, Atlas has funnelled over $20 million in grants to think tanks that have passed its screening process. Atlas aims, it says, to "increase that amount tenfold in the next decade." In 2003, a little over $2 million of Atlas's 2003 budget was passed on to other think tanks. While the large conservative foundations take the approach of making large sustained and often untied grants, Atlas believes less is more, providing new think tanks with only small grants of $5,000 or less. Atlas weans their fledgling projects off this modest annual funding within five years, making exception only for specific innovative projects.

Atlas Economic Research Foundation
2000 North 14th Street, Suite 550, Arlington, VA 22201

Atlas have offices close to the Whitehouse and another close to the Pentagon, just across the Arlington cemetery.

Alejandro Antonio Chafuen has been president and CEO of Atlas Economic Research Foundation since 1991 and is president and founder of the Hispanic American Center of Economic Research also located next to the Whitehouse.

Chafuen also serves as a trustee of the Acton Institute of Religion and Liberty and the Chase Foundation of Virginia. Since 1980, he has been a member of the Mont Pelerin Society. He owns a small number of shares of both AES and ExxonMobil.

Quotes;

“Global companies are buying up think-tanks left, right and centre. Large cheques come attached to particular policy recommendations and senior corporate types sit on committees ready to ‘candle-snuff’ dangerous ideas.”

"Venture capital firms use specialized expertise to invest in startup companies with the goal of achieving very high returns. Atlas operates in a similar manner, putting resources into new and innovative institutes and programs, then monitoring those investments to improve their chances of success."

"In 1981, in his twilight years, Sir Antony then founded Atlas. His charge to Atlas was “to litter the world with free-market think tanks.” True to his wishes, we have been very busy litterbugs, indeed. Atlas has helped to launch or nurture some 275 free-market think tanks in 70 nations around the world."

"In 1984, many people considered Charles Murray’s ideas on welfare reform impractical, impolite, and, to some, even insensitive. But 12 years after he wrote Losing Ground — in which he outlined his blueprint for welfare reform — Democratic President Bill Clinton signed a Republican bill that ended welfare as we knew it. Charles Murray’s radical ideas became the law of the land."

"The war against terrorism is a war without end. Alejandro Chafuen"

Sources:
Sourcewatch
Exxonsecrets
Media Transparency
nndb
Charity Navigator

Related:
Atlas Offspring Used U.S. Funds to Oppose Chávez
Atlas Economic Research Foundation: the think-tank breeders
Unlocking One Think Tank's Oily Secrets
Pouring Gas Money on Fire
Put a Tiger In Your Think Tank
2002 Johan Norberg wins Sir Antony Fisher Award from Atlas
Stockholm Network Golden Umbrella Awards

By Alejandro Chaufen
War Without End
Alejandro A. Chafuen: Arlington firm learns hard truth in Chavez’s nationalism
Alejandro Chafuen´s website

International Policy Network

2019-10-10T10:10:00.000-07:00

The International Policy Network IPN (formerly called The Atlas Economic Research Foundation UK established by Trust Deed in 1971) is a corporate-funded campaigning group based in the UK set up in 2001. It originally had offices around the world in the USA, Chile and India By 2003 all of the offices had closed down apart from the London one.

Historically, the IPN can be seen as a UK-based version of the Atlas Foundation. It was founded by Antony Fisher in the UK as the International Institute for Economic Research (IIER) in 1971.

The IPN has addresses in London and Washington D.C. The Washington address is the same as that of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). Roger Bate who is an IPN Fellow, and a long-time associate of the IPN's Director Julian Morris, is an Adjunct Fellow of the CEI. Kendra Okonski who is the IPN's 'Project Director' in London was previously a CEI researcher.

Okonski and Morris appear to be the driving force behind another organisation, the Sustainable Development Network (SDN), while Morris and Bate connect to the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and the European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF).

The IPN is connected with the White House Writers Group, a for-profit corporate lobbying company (the senior director at the White House Writers Group is also a trustee of the IPN).

Nicole Gray Conchar of the London-based International Policy Network (IPN) and the Stockholm Network, presented the fundraising techniques used by US think tanks such as the Cato Institute and the Manhattan Institute.

In Europe, unlike the US, it is harder to raise money through individual donations, so she encouraged think tanks to "go for corporate money". The IPN, known for its aggressive campaign against the Kyoto Protocol, has started holding breakfast meetings with groups of 15-20 potential funders, mainly from the corporate world.

The think tank also raises funds in the US and has run into controversy due the financial support it receives from the Exxon Mobil Foundation for "Climate Change Outreach".

Gray Conchar did not mention these troubles and recommended to follow IPN's example and establish a US affiliate with 501(C)(3) charity status. This enables foundations to receive tax deductible donations. Kelly-Gagnon added that the Atlas Economic Research Foundation can help channel US funding to those European think tanks that do not have 501(C)(3) status.

Atlas Foundation, funded by US corporations and rightwing family foundations, works to export the neoliberal think tank model across the globe.

The great majority of the IPN's income from donations is from corporations: in both 2003 and 2004 the proportion was about 85%.

The IPN is currently running a technology campaign, apparently to promote the use of software patents in Europe.

It has also become involved in international pharmaceutical issues, seeking to defend the pharmaceutical industry from claims that it ignores the diseases of the developing world in favour of the more profitable lifestyle diseases of wealthy countries.

IPN is promoting privatization of water systems in third world countries, recently presenting their work at an American Enterprise Institute symposium on "Water Scarcity" in Washington DC on 3/22/06 broadcast on CSPAN.

In 2001, the IPN held a seminar on "Global warming - a European myth" by Philip Stott who says that global warming is a "lie".

IPN had received $50,000 from ExxonMobil, which "list[ed] the donation as part of its 'climate change outreach' programme." ExxonMobil also gave $115,000 to the IPN in 2004.

As well as supporting a variety of think-tanks, the IPN has particularly close links with the following groups:

* Atlas Economic Research Foundation
* Institute of Economic Affairs
* Stockholm Network
* Competitive Enterprise Institute

From Indymedia;

"The International Policy Network is a little-known lobby group set up in 2001 with drug company money. It works by setting up websites, which appear to the casual viewer as NGOs, to promote the interests of its corporate clients. It works closely with its clients' more traditional PR companies: it collaborates with corporate lobbyists DCI Group and the senior director from PR firm the White House Writers' Group even has a seat on the IPN's board.

The IPN is the bastard child of the Institute of Economic Affairs, a rightwing think-tank established in 1955. The IEA itself has published some peculiar reports including one calling for money to be "denationalised". But the IEA's rightwing agenda is at least able to claim some independence. The IEA says it limits any corporation's funding to 2 percent of its turnover and does not accept money tied to research areas. The International Policy Network's executive director Dr Julian Morris previously worked at the IEA but he has inherited none of his former employer's ethics.

The IPN is shameless: its activities directly correlate to the size of the cheque. Its main funders, Pfizer, Microsoft, ExxonMobil and Monsanto, get exactly what they pay for: their positions supported "independently" by IPN research. Pfizer gets reports defending its position on intellectual property and drug reimportation, Microsoft gets rabbid anti-Linux advocacy, Exxon gets global warming denial and Monsanto gets defences of gene patents and an anti-organic campaign.
"

Sources:
Sourcewatch
Exxon Secrets
Media Transparency
GMWatch
Political Friendster
Lobbywatch

Related:
IPN Network 2001
About IPN 2002
IPN 2005
Greenhouse effect 'may benefit man'
British Science Group Says Exxon Misrepresents Climate Issues
Royal Society Tells Exxon: Stop Funding Climate Change Denial
International Policy Network and Dr Julian Morris

The Brookings Institution

2008-01-14T14:13:00.000-08:00

The Brookings Institution, whose predecessor was founded in 1918 by Robert Brookings, was probably the first think tank in the USA.

On its website the organisation traces its origins "to 1916, when a group of leading reformers founded the Institute for Government Research (IGR), the first private organization devoted to analyzing public policy issues at the national level. In 1922 and 1924, one of IGR's backers, Robert Somers Brookings (1850-1932), established two supporting sister organizations: the Institute of Economics and a graduate school bearing his name. In 1927, the three groups merged to form the Brookings Institution, honoring the businessman from St. Louis whose leadership shaped the earlier organizations."

Of the 200 "most prominent" think tanks in the U.S., the Brookings Institution's studies are the most widely cited by the media.

Along with the more conservative American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation, Brookings is generally considered one of the three most influential policy institutes in the U.S.

Nelson Strobridge "Strobe" Talbott, a Rhodes Scholar, is president of the Brookings Institute. He William Jefferson Clinton's roommate at Oxford University. He is believed to be a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Talbott was Deputy Secretary of State in 1994.

He is a member of the Aspen Strategy Group and is a former Aid Coordinator for the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Sources:
Sourcewatch
Wikipedia

Related:
Brookings -The Establishment's Think Tank
Why AIPAC Took Over Brookings

Ludwig von Mises Institute

2008-01-13T03:58:00.000-08:00

The Ludwig von Mises Institute (LvMI), established in October 1982 in Auburn, Alabama, USA by Llewellyn (Lew) H. Rockwell, Jr., who remains its President, is a libertarian academic organization engaged in research and scholarship in the fields of economics, philosophy and political economy.

The Institute's economic theories depict any government intervention as destructive, whether through welfare, inflation, taxation, regulation, or war.

It generally advances a view of government and economics expressed by Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises. The Institute is funded entirely through private donations.

Some controversy surrounds its creation and the Koch Family Foundations throughout the 1980s. The ensuing ideology-driven drama created a rift between the Mises Institute and organizations like the Cato Institute, whose members had been staunch allies throughout the 1970s and early 1980s.

Quotes;

Lew Rockwell; "In the early eighties, Charles Koch monopolized the libertarian think-tank world by giving and promising millions. That's fine, but he was gradually edging away from radical thought, which included Austrian economics, and toward mainstreaming libertarian theory (as opposed to libertarianizing the mainstream) that attracted him in the first place.

I have never understood this type of thinking. If being mainstream is what you want, there are easier ways to go about it than attempting to remake an intellectual movement that is hostile to government, into a mildly dissenting subgroup within the ideological structure of the ruling class.

Murray and Charles broke at this point, and I won't go into the details. But it was clear that Koch saw their break as the beginning of a long war. Early on, I received a call from George Pearson, head of the Koch Foundation. He said that Mises was too radical and that I mustn't name the organization after him, or promote his ideas. I was told that Mises was "so extreme even Milton Friedman doesn't like him." If I insisted on going against their diktat, they would oppose me tooth and nail.

Later, I heard from other Koch men. One objected to the name of our monthly newsletter, The Free Market. The idea this time was that the word "free" was off-putting. Another said that the idea of an Austrian academic journal was wrong, since it implied we were a separate school, and mustn't be. All urged me to dump Murray and then shun him, if I expected any support."

Sources:
Wikipedia
Sourcewatch

Related:
Are Carbon Emissions the Cause of Global Warming?
I Was On the Global Warming Gravy Train
Angry White Man

Centre for Policy Studies

2008-01-12T07:54:00.000-08:00

The Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) is a UK think tank. It was set up in 1974 by Margaret Thatcher, Sir Keith Joseph and Alfred Sherman to champion economic liberalism in Britain and has since played a global role in the dissemination of free market economics along monetarist and what today would be called neoliberal lines.

Keith Joseph, who was head of policy at the Conservative Party between 1975 and its successful election in 1979, was strongly influenced by the Institute of Economic Affairs. He helped set up the CPS as a kind of politicized version of the IEA, with the aim of promulgating its ideals around the political establishment -- in particular, around the Conservative Party

During Margaret Thatcher's tenure as Prime Minister, the CPS enjoyed a considerable influence over policy, which declined rapidly following the departure of Keith Joseph from government in 1986, and Thatcher's removal in 1990.

Sources:
Sourcewatch

Council on Foreign Relations

2008-01-08T08:11:00.000-08:00

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an influential, independent, and nonpartisan foreign policy membership organization founded in 1921 and based at 58 East 68th Street (corner Park Avenue) in New York City, with an additional office in Washington, D.C. Through its membership, meetings, and studies, it has been called the most powerful agent of United States foreign policy outside the State Department.

The internal think tank is the The David Rockefeller Studies Program, which grants fellowships and whose programs are described as being integral to the goal of contributing to the ongoing debate on foreign policy; fellows in this program research and write on the most important challenges facing the United States and the world.

The Council on Foreign Relations attempts to influence official U.S. policy, and a number of its members have a history of working closely with the CIA.

The membership of the CFR includes past Presidents, Ambassadors, Secretaries of State, Wall Street investors, international bankers, foundation executives, think tank executives, lobbyist lawyers, NATO and Pentagon military leaders, wealthy industrialists, journalists, media owners and executives, university presidents and key professors, select Congressmen, Supreme Court Justices, Federal Judges, wealthy entrepreneurs, and as many as ten 9-11 Commission Members.

Today it has about 4,300 members (including five-year term members), which over its history have included senior serving politicians, more than a dozen Secretaries of State, former national security officers, bankers, lawyers, professors, former CIA members and senior media figures.

A study by two critics of the organization, Laurence Shoup and William Minter, found that of 502 government officials surveyed from 1945 to 1972, more than half were members of the Council.

Due perhaps more to its origins, associations, and history, than to its current composition and activities, the CFR does have a reputation as one of the "triumvirate of elite organizations" together with the Bilderberg and the Trilateral Commission.

Sources:
Wikipedia
Sourcewatch
Rightweb

International Institute for Strategic Studies

2008-01-02T04:27:00.001-08:00

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) is a British research institute (or think tank) in the area of international affairs. It describes itself as "the world’s leading authority on political-military conflict".

Based in London, it is both a limited company in UK law and a registered charity. It has branches in the U.S. and in Singapore, with charitable status in each jurisdiction.

The IISS was founded in 1958, with its original focus nuclear deterrence and arms control. The institute claims that it "was hugely influential in setting the intellectual structures for managing the Cold War

Dr John Chipman is Director-General and Chief Executive of the IISS in London.

He received his BA (Hons) in History from Harvard, an MA (Distinction) in International History from the London School of Economics, and his M.Phil and D.Phil in International Relations from Balliol College Oxford.

Following a year as Research Associate at the IISS in 1983-84, during which he was also a NATO Fellow, he worked in Paris as a Research Associate at the Atlantic Institute for International Affairs from 1985 to 1987.

Quotes;

"The Institute has 3,000 members drawn from the government, business and academic élites of over 100 countries. Its current roster of around 200 Corporate and Institutional Members includes some 55 research centres and institutes, 25 media organisations, 35 government ministries and agencies and 40 commercial organisations along with numerous military staff colleges and university departments. The wide range of business interests represented include finance and investment, international banking, insurance, computing, shipping, infrastructure development, automobile production, management consulting, gas and oil, power generation and transmission, aerospace and defence, major media outlets and telecommunications."

Sources:
Sourcewatch
Wikipedia

Related:

Progressive Policy Institute

2007-12-31T22:33:00.000-08:00

The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) was established in 1989 "and after the 1992 election gained notoriety as 'Bill Clinton's idea mill.'"

PPI is the think tank of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), founded in 1985 by PPI's President, Will Marshall,

PPI, founded in 1989 by PPI's President Will Marshall and Al From, is a project of the Third Way Foundation, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organizationand counts among its past chairs former President Bill Clinton, Congressman Richard Gephardt, and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman

PPI says its mission “arises from the belief that America is ill-served by an obsolete left-right debate that is out of step with the powerful forces reshaping our society and economy.

Marshall and From have long advocated for a “third way” in the political debate that consists of free-market principles that largely echo the right-wing platform, making their organization's name misleading. Indeed, one of PPI's five strategies includes “confronting global disorder by building enduring new international structures of economic and political freedom”

Quotes;
“Don't look now, but neoconservatism is making a comeback—and not among the Republicans who have made it famous, but in the Democratic Party,” declared writer Jacob Heilbrunn in a May 28, 2006 op-ed for the Los Angeles Times.

In “Neocons in the Democratic Party,” Heilbrunn argued that a new generation of Democratic “pundits and young national security experts” are trying to revive the Cold War precepts of President Harry S. Truman and apply them to the war on terror. “The fledgling neocons of the left are based at places such as the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), whose president, Will Marshall, has just released a volume of doctrine called With All Our Might: A Progressive Strategy for Defeating Jihadism and Defending Liberty

Sources:

Rightweb
Sourcewatch

Related:

The Brookings Institution

2007-12-31T22:23:00.001-08:00

The Brookings Institution, whose predecessor was founded in 1918 by Robert Brookings, was probably the first think tank in the USA.

Enjoying close ties with Rockerfeller and Carnegie, Brookings played an important role in the emergence of the political-lobbyist strand of philanthropy which funds much of the right-wing think-thank ecosystem today.

Sources:
Sourcewatch

Related:
Brookings - The Establishment's Think Tank
Schlepping to Moguldom" (This article is also available here.
IRmep, The Brookings Saban Center- Errors of Ommission

The Heartland Institute

2007-12-29T08:40:00.001-08:00

The Heartland Institute is a free-market oriented public policy think tank based in Chicago. The institute was founded in 1984 by David H. Padden and Joseph L. Bast.

Heartland Institute claims to apply "cutting-edge research to state and local public policy issues." Additionally, Heartland bills itself as "the marketing arm of the free-market movement.

It campaigns on what it calls "junk science", "common-sense environmentalism" (i.e. anti-Kyoto, pro-GM), the privatization of public services, smokers' rights (anti-tobacco tax, denial of problems from passive smoking), the introduction of school vouchers, and the deregulation of health care insurance. It also provides an online resource for finding right-wing think tank policy documents called PolicyBot.

Although Heartland calls itself "a genuinely independent source of research and commentary," its has been a frequent ally of the tobacco industry can be documented by searching the industry's internal document archives.

Roy E. Marden, a member of Heartland's board of directors, was until May 2003 the manager of industry affairs for the Philip Morris (PM) tobacco company, where his responsibilities included lobbying and "managing company responses to key public policy issues," which he accomplishes by "directing corporate involvement with industry, business, trade, and public policy organizations and determining philanthropic support thereto."
In a May 1991 document prepared for PM, Marden listed Heartland's "rapid response network" as a "potential spokesperson" among the "portfolio of organizations" that the company had cultivated to support its interests.

The Institute received over $150,000 from the Phillip Morris over three years from 1997 to 1999

he Heartland Institute created a website in the Spring of 2007, www.globalwarmingheartland.org, which asserts there is no scientific consensus on global warming and features a list of experts and a list of like-minded think tanks, many of whom have received funding from ExxonMobil and other polluters.

The Heartland Institute networks heavily with other conservative policy organizations, and is part of the State Policy Network, a member of the Cooler Heads Coalition (as of 4/04), and co-sponsored the 2001 Fly In for Freedom with the Wise Use umbrella group, Alliance for America. Heartland also co-sponsored a New York state Conference on Property Rights, hosted by the Property Rights Foundation of America. The Institute puts out several publications, including "Environment & Climate News" which frequently features anti-environmentalist and climate skeptic writing. They also published "Earth Day '96," a compilation of articles on environmental topics. The publication, distributed on college campuses, featured "Adventures in the Ozone Layer" by S. Fred Singer, and "the Cold Facts on Global Warming" by Sallie Baliunas. The articles denied the serious nature of ozone depletion and global warming.

Walter F. Buchholtz, an ExxonMobil executive, serves as Heartland's Government Relations Advisor, according to Heartland's 2005 IRS Form.

The Board of Directors for the Heartland Institute includes Thomas Walton, an executive of General Motors Corporation.

The Heartland Institute formerly sponsored and hosted www.climatesearch.org, a web page ostensibly dedicated to objective research on global warming, but at the same time presenting heavily biased research by organizations such as the American Petroleum Institute as an FAQ section.

In December 2006, the National Association of Tobacco Outlets (NATO) announced a multi-year partnership project with Heartland Institute to influence public opinion on tobacco issues. "The project is expected to be a multi-year effort beginning in 2007, and will include press releases, letters to editors and a campaign to win coverage in magazines and journals," according to NATO president Tom Briant in a press release.

Quotes;

"Warming is likely to be very modest relative to natural variation, benefits are likely to outweigh costs, and taking action now in the name of fighting “global warming” is unnecessary and would be very costly."

Sources:
Sourcewatch
Exxonsecrets
Wikipedia
ANR

Related:
Heritage Clones in the Heartland
Eudoxa / Heartland poop
Unlocking One Think Tank's Oily Secrets

Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs

2007-12-28T07:22:00.001-08:00

The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) is a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit think-tank focusing on issues of United States national security. JINSA's stated aim is threefold: to ensure a strong and effective U.S. national security policy; to educate American leaders on what it views as the vital strategic relationship between the United States and Israel; and to strengthen U.S. cooperation with democratic allies, including Taiwan, Jordan, Hungary, Turkey, India, and NATO member nations, amongst others.

JINSA's advisory board includes such notable figures as Michael Ledeen, Richard Perle, and R. James Woolsey, while Vice President Dick Cheney, former U.S. Representative to the United Nations John Bolton, and former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith were all on JINSA's Board of Advisors before they entered the Bush administration. JINSA is officially a non-partisan organization welcoming advisors from both sides of the aisle including Democrats such as former Congressman Dave McCurdy and current Congressman Steve Israel.

Social Market Foundation

2007-12-28T06:49:00.000-08:00

The Social Market Foundation is a Blairite pro-market think tank. According to its website "the SMF was established in 1989 to provide a source of innovative economic and social policy ideas. Steering an independent course between political parties and conflicting ideologies, the SMF has been an influential voice in recent health, education, welfare and pensions policy reform. Our current work reflects a commitment to understanding how individuals, society and the state can work together to achieve the common goal of creating a just and free society."

The Social Market Foundation organised a wide range of fringe talks at the 2004 Labour Party conference. Many of the discussions were sponsored by companies that have a direct business interest in the topic under discussion. Nearly all of the discussion panels feature a Labour minister. For example, the Mobile Operators Association(MOA) sponsored a discussion with the title "Listening to the public: does community consultation improve the planning process?", with environment minister Alun Michael MP on the panel. The MOA has been lobbying for some time to prevent stricter planning regulations on mobile phone masts. The MOA sponsored a similar talk at the 2003 conference.

The SMF shares its 11 Tufton St. address with the Adam Smith Institute. Dahrendorf argues in the SMF's 2003 - 2004 Annual Report that 'The Social Market Foundation is well placed to combine economic, social and political analysis. The three approaches are often separated, yet for policy decisions they have to be brought together. This makes the SMF uniquely relevant.' Given that the SMF line-up are familiar faces in the think tank circuit (Stevenson, d'Ancona and Haskins have ties to Demos) its difficult to percieve what is so unique about the Foundation.

Competitive Enterprise Institute

2007-12-28T05:47:00.000-08:00

Founded in 1984 by Fred Smith, CEI is a Washington - based conservative think tank "whose research on public policy reflects the principles of free enterprise, individual liberty and limited government." CEI is at the center of the global warming misinformation campaign.

CEI calls itself "a non-profit, non-partisan research and advocacy institute dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government." The Boston Globe has called it "one of Washington's feistiest think tanks." CEI's commentaries frequently appear in media venues such as ABC's 20/20, American Spectator, Christian Science Monitor, Consumers' Research, Crossfire, Forbes, Good Morning America, Larry King Live, MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, Moneyline, New York Times, Policy Review, PBS, Reader's Digest, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Washington Times.

It postures as an advocate of "sound science" in the development of public policy. In fact, it is an ideologically-driven, well-funded front for corporations opposed to safety and environmental regulations that affect the way they do business.

CEI, among many other statements denying the seriousness of global warming, has argued that climate change would create a "milder, greener, more prosperous world" and that "Kyoto was a power grab based on deception and fear" (R. Brunet, "It Just Ain't So, Say These Reputable Scientists" Alberta Report, 10 November, v.24(48) 1997 p20-21). In addition to leading the campaign to convince the public that global warming is uncertain, CEI has weighed in on pesticide risk and endocrine disrupting chemicals - both of which pose no threat to human health, in CEI's view - and has supported regulatory "takings" measures.

With more than a $3 million annual budget, CEI is supported by both conservative foundations and corporate funding. Known corporate funders in addition to ExxonMobil include the American Petroleum Institute, Cigna Corporation, Dow Chemical, EBCO Corp, General Motors, and IBM. One of CEI's prominent funders is conservative Richard Scaife who has provided money through the Carthage and Sara Scaife Foundations. CEI is also heavily supported by the various Koch brother foundations.

Nieman Watchdog:
My case in point is the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Merely between 2000 and 2003, Chris Mooney reported in Mother Jones magazine, ExxonMobil gave the CEI $1,380,000 (and several million dollars more to some 40 other opinion-influencing groups). Thanks to additional shrewd investments in CEI made by cigarette makers, drug companies and the rest, its annual budget had reached $3 million by 2002.

It's Journalism 101 to follow the money. In the case of think tanks, with few exceptions, the Post, Times and other mainstream news organizations have failed for years to do it. In the case of the CEI, they've repeatedly cringed from describing it as the industry-funded think tank it plainly is. Instead, they've applied such sanitizing labels as "libertarian," "business libertarian," "conservative," and "free-market."

Perhaps the most mealy-mouthed description of all appeared last November in a Washington Post story on new government drug-safety initiatives. The CEI, the article said, is "a nonprofit public policy organization dedicated to the principle of limited government." This is a classic entry in the annals of fact as the enemy of truth.

Sources:
Sourcewatch
Exxonsecrets
Mediatransparency
Wikipedia

Related:
PBS' Ifill failed to identify CEI as conservative, energy industry-funded
ExxonMobil Stops Funding Competitive Enterprise Institute

Market House International

2007-12-28T04:21:00.001-08:00

From their website:

Market House is a one-stop shop for organisations seeking to work with Europe's brightest policy makers and thinkers. We carry out consultancy in the public policy sphere, advising organisations on how to influence the media and the climate in which political ideas are debated. We also house the Stockholm Network, Europe's only dedicated service organisation for market-oriented think tanks with over 100 affiliates in Europe and further afield.

Our affiliates, combined with our pan-European structure, give us local capacity to deliver both local messages and locally-tailored global messages in a wide range of countries
Market House International Ltd is an ideas and public policy consultancy.

We exist to help those involved in devising public policy to expand their audience, define their brand and share ideas and best practice with like-minded people.

Via our unique European networking service, the Stockholm Network, we also help businesses and other organisations to liaise with think tanks and opinion formers. Our aim is to be a one-stop shop for finding and working with the brightest and most innovative European policymakers and opinion formers.

Market House's work is divided into three overlapping areas of expertise:

* Conferences
* Consultancy
* Media

For further information or to request an appointment or brochure, please contact our Director, Helen Disney on helen@market-house.co.uk or our Director of Development, Nicole Gray Conchar on nicole@market-house.co.uk.

Helen Disney is Director of Market House. She has a strong background in think tanks and the media. Formerly an editorial writer for The Times and an editorial writer and commentator for the Daily Express, she continues to write regularly on a range of public policy topics for newspapers, magazines and websites.

Cuttings include the Daily Express and Sunday Express, Public Finance, Public Service Magazine, and The Sprout, a satirical Brussels-based magazine, as well as regular weekly entries for the Centre for the New Europe's health weblog, CNE Health.

She also makes regular appearances on TV and in radio debates including 'Heart of the Matter', 'Kilroy', BBC News, BBC Radio Scotland , Radio 4's Talking Politics and the BBC World Service.

Since 1997, she has been Director of the Stockholm Network, a unique service organisation of over 100 European market-oriented think-tanks. The Network acts as a one stop shop for organisations seeking to work with Europe 's most innovative policy experts and thinkers.

Helen also undertakes consultancy work on public policy issues for corporate clients.

From 1996-2000, she worked at the Social Market Foundation, an independent pro-market think-tank in Westminster , where she was Deputy Director and Editor of The Review, a quarterly journal.

She has edited a number of think-tank publications including The Sex-Change Society by Melanie Phillips, published by the Social Market Foundation, and Europe's Welfare Burden , and Breaking Down the Barriers published by Civitas: The Institute for the Study of Civil Society for the Stockholm Network.

Helen is a member of the Chartered Institute of Journalists, Women in Journalism and the Women Writers Network. She holds a degree in French and Italian from Bristol University and speaks conversational Spanish.

Nicole Gray Conchar is Director of Development at Market House. Her career in public policy and think tank fundraising spans more than ten years. From 1992 to 1998, she was Director of Sponsor Services at the Cato Institute in Washington DC, responsible for raising high dollar contributions from individuals and for executing major donor events around the world. She moved to New York City in 1998 to become Development Director at School Choice Scholarships and, concurrently, Membership Director at the Manhattan Institute. In 2000, she became Director of Development at the Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington, New York and served as its interim President.

She took leave of absence from the public policy and think tank world on two occasions to work on Steve Forbes' 1996 and 2000 presidential campaigns, helping to raise over one million dollars of funding for each campaign.

Prior to relocating to the United Kingdom in 2003, Nicole was founding Executive Director of the Donald & Paula Smith Family Foundation. The mission of the Foundation is to defend free speech and a free society. This is achieved through the critical examination of ideas and the sponsoring of public policy debates and related activities in the New York City area.

Nicole has a B.A. in Communications, Legal Institutions, Economics & Government from the American University in Washington DC and currently resides in Chiswick, London.

Sacha Kumaria is Office Manager and Event Co-ordinator for Market House. He holds a Masters in Classics and a Degree in English and American Literature from Warwick University. He previously worked as a think tank researcher and for the University of Warwick's Alumni Fund. He speaks French and is learning to speak Farsi.

CONFERENCES

The staff at Market House have a proven track record in organising high-profile seminars, lectures and conferences.

Our events provide an excellent opportunity for networking with high-profile policy makers and opinion formers. Previous speakers and attendees have included:

Frits Bolkestein, EU Commissioner for the Internal Market
John Willman, Chief Leader Writer, Financial Times
Evan Davis, Economics Editor, BBC Newsnight
Clive Crook, Deputy Editor, The Economist
Hans Hoogervorst, then Dutch Social Security Minister, now Health Minister
Charlotte Cederschiöld, Vice President, European Parliament
Frank Heemskerk, MP for the Dutch Liberal party
Peter Robinson, Chief Economist, IPPR, the UK 's leading centre-left think tank.

We have also organised major think tank tours for a range of VIP guests such as Jason Turner, architect of Wisconsin and New York's welfare to work schemes and Johan Norberg, author of In Defence of Global Capitalism .

Jason Turner's trip has resulted in Wisconsin-style welfare reforms being piloted in the German state of Hesse. The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has since adopted a version of the Hesse plan, based on Wisconsin, as part of its national party legislative agenda.

Johan Norberg's trip has resulted in his book, In Defence of Global Capitalism, being translated into numerous European languages and in regular appearances in the European media including a recent, hour-long documentary on Channel 4.

CONSULTANCY

Market House works with a range of corporate and other clients, providing background research, advice and expertise in the public policy sphere. Clients benefit from our knowledge of European policy issues and the political context in which they are debated, as well as gaining access to our unique network of Europe 's brightest and most innovative policy experts and thinkers.

MEDIA

The Network's Director, Helen Disney, is an experienced writer and commentator for the media. Formerly an editorial writer for 2 British national newspapers, as well as an experienced speaker on policy issues in the broadcast media and at international conferences, Helen provides advice and assistance in working effectively with the media. Market House can help you to sharpen your messages as well as your strategy for getting those messages heard in national and international debates.

Related:
Sourcewatch Stockholm Network
Pfthink Tank Pfonies
Covert industry funding
Corporate Watch (Pdf)

European Policy Centre

2007-12-24T12:12:00.000-08:00

The European Policy Centre (EPC) is a Brussels-based, independent, not-for-profit think tank on European Union affairs.

The EPC’s General Assembly is chaired by Peter Sutherland President of its Advisory Council and former European Commissioner and World Trade Organisation Director-General.
Also;
Chairman, BP Amoco, London 1997+
Chairman and Managing Director, Goldman Sachs International 1995+
Non-Executive Director, Royal Bank of Scotland 2001+
Chairman of the Overseas Development Council, Washington
Advisory Board, Centre for European Reform 2006
Member of the Board, Investor AB, Royal Bank of Scotland and Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson
European Chairman, Trilateral Commission 2005
Member of The European Round Table of Industrialists 2005
Chairman, European Policy Center 2006
Foundation Board, World Economic Forum, March, 2005, 2006
Comite d'Honneur, Institute of European Affairs 2006

Quotes;
"The European Policy Centre (EPC) is an independent, not-for-profit think tank, committed to making European integration work. The EPC works at the ‘cutting edge’ of European and global policy-making providing its members and the wider public with rapid, high-quality information and analysis on the EU and global policy agenda. It aims to promote a balanced dialogue between the different constituencies of its membership, spanning all aspects of economic and social life."

Sources:
Globalelite
Wikipedia

Freedom House

2007-12-24T11:30:00.001-08:00

Freedom House, Inc. is a non-profit organization that relies upon tax-deductible grants and donations under Section 501(c)(3) of the IRS code. Corporate researcher Holly Sklar (1989) described it as a "conservative research, publishing, networking, and selective human rights organization." Freedom House's work is linked to the "democracy promotion" efforts of the National Endowment for Democracy.

The organization was founded by Wendell Willkie, Eleanor Roosevelt, George Field, Dorothy Thompson, Herbert Bayard Swope, and others in 1941.

Since the 9/11 attacks and the onset of the "war on terror," Freedom House has devoted considerable energy to assessing the impact of "radical Islam" both in and outside the United States and advocating policies in many countries that have been the focus of the George W. Bush administration's anti-terror campaign

Freedom House's March 2003 "Statement on the Iraq War" underscored this shift in looking at Islamic countries. The statement repeated a core claim of the Bush administration—that the Iraq War will help create democratic reform throughout the Middle East

While touting itself as having a "bipartisan character," Freedom House is often associated with hawkish and neoconservative factions within both major U.S. parties, a fact made clear by many of its current and past supporters and board members, which have included former CIA Director James Woolsey, ex-Reagan administration official Kenneth Adelman, the late UN Amb. Jeane Kirkpatrick, and former member of the Committee on the Present Danger, Max Kampelman.

Other board members have included the conservative Rolling Stone writer P.J. O'Rourke; Samuel Huntington, a Harvard professor who says the post-Cold War period will be dominated by a "clash of civilizations" between the Muslim and Christian worlds; Ruth Wedgwood, a right-leaning human rights lawyer; and Arthur Waldron, a longtime foreign policy hawk who has been a leading advocate for a hardline China policy.

Many of these individuals have also supported the work of a number of other conservative organizations, including the Project for the New American Century, the Center for Security Policy, and the American Enterprise Institute. Other Freedom House supporters and scholars have included Mark Falcoff, the late Penn Kemble, Nina Shea , and Daniel Pipes.

Observers have raised serious concerns about the group's fairness and objectivity for decades. During the Reagan administration, Freedom House was criticized for serving as a U.S. propaganda instrument, supporting the death squad-linked ARENA party in El Salvador while attacking the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, championing Contra leaders like Arturo Cruz, and serving as a conduit for funds from the National Endowment for Democracy

Freedom House is a nonprofit organization. It is predominantly funded by the United States government and is headquartered in Washington, D.C., It has field offices in about a dozen countries, including Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia, Jordan, Mexico, and a number of countries in Central Asia.

The group has also served as an umbrella organization for a number of more specialized groups, like the Center for Religious Freedom led by Carol Adelman (now based at the neoconservative Hudson Institute) and the now-defunct American Committee for Peace in Chechnya.

It is controlled by a Board of Trustees, which it describes as composed of 'business and labor leaders, former senior government officials, scholars, writers, and journalists'. While some board members were born outside the United States, and many have been affiliated with international groups, all are current residents of the United States. It does not identify itself with either of the American Republican or the Democratic parties.

The board is currently chaired by Peter Ackerman. Ackerman took over chairmanship of the board in September of 2005 from former CIA director James Woolsey.

Other current notable board members include Kenneth Adelman, Steve Forbes, Farooq Kathwari, Azar Nafisi, Mark Palmer, and P. J. O'Rourke while past notable board members have included Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Samuel Huntington, Mara Liasson, Otto Reich, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz.

Freedom House is funded by a number of foundations, including Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation and the Soros Foundation. It also receives funding from the US Government through the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID, and the State Department. Around 75% of its income is US federal grants.

Justin Raimundo, a libertarian who is editorial director of the popular website Antiwar.com, has written of the group's freedom reports: "The U.S. government-funded organization known as 'Freedom House' has recently delivered a Christmas present to Russian President Vladimir Putin: his country has been downgraded, from 'partially free' to 'not free.' Israel, of course, is deemed completely 'free,' in spite of treating its Arab subjects worse than Sparta ever treated its helots. Putin is no Jeffersonian democrat, but neither has he rounded up and imprisoned an entire people and sought to ethnically cleanse them from their homeland. Freedom House standards are elastic, bending to the dictates of American foreign policy"

Sources:
Sourcewatch
Rightweb
Wikipedia

Related:

The Project for the New American Century

2007-12-24T11:10:00.000-08:00

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) is a neo-conservative think tank with strong ties to the American Enterprise Institute. PNAC's web site says it was "established in the spring of 1997" as "a non-profit, educational organization whose goal is to promote American global leadership."

PNAC is an American neoconservative think tank based in Washington, D.C., co-founded as "a non-profit educational organization" by William Kristol and Robert Kagan in early 1997. The PNAC's stated goal is to promote American global leadership. Fundamental to the PNAC are the views that "American leadership is both good for America and good for the world" and support for "a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity." It has exerted strong influence on high-level U.S. government officials in the administration of U.S President George W. Bush and strongly affected the Bush administration's development of military and foreign policies, especially involving national security and the Iraq War

PNAC's policy document, "Rebuilding America's Defences," openly advocates for total global military domination. Many PNAC members hold highest-level positions in the George W. Bush administration.

Writing in the Sociological Quarterly, David Altheide and Jennifer Grimes argued that "PNAC, working with a compliant news media, developed, sold, enacted, and justified a war with Iraq."

Regardless of PNAC's actual role in shaping policy, the group was arguably the most effective proponent of neoconservative ideas during the period between President Bill Clinton's second administration and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. PNAC's 1997 "Statement of Principles" set forth an ambitious post-Cold War agenda for foreign and military policy that William Kristol and Robert Kagan, both founding members of the group, described as "neo-Reaganite."

Before establishing PNAC, neoconservatives and their allies among hardline nationalists, including Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, began aggressively promoting a number of ideas that could replace the militant anti-communism that had guided U.S. policy during the later part of the Cold War. A key step in this process was the founding in 1995 of the Weekly Standard by two scions of the neoconservative movement—William Kristol and John Podhoretz. Together with Fred Barnes, a former correspondent for the New Republic, they secured funding from media mogul Rupert Murdoch to support what would ultimately prove to be a highly successful enterprise. The magazine quickly replaced Commentary as the mouthpiece of the neoconservatives, and after George W. Bush's election was widely regarded as a must-read inside the Beltway.

Upset over the failure of the first President Bush to oust Saddam Hussein, neoconservatives had long been agitating for more aggressive U.S. action, penning numerous articles on the subject, creating pressure groups like the revived Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf (whose members included Abrams, Khalilzad, Perle, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, John Bolton, and David Wurmser), and attracting other factions on the Republican establishment to the cause.

Robert B. Zoellick the eleventh president of the World Bank is found among the signators as well as his predecessor Paul Wolfowitz, scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, who resign in return for softening the charge that he had engaged in misconduct.

PNAC's staff and directors as of mid-2007 included William Kristol (chairman), Robert Kagan, Bruce Jackson, Mark Gerson, Randy Scheunemann, Ellen Bork (deputy director), Gary Schmitt (senior fellow), Thomas Donnelly (senior fellow), Reuel Gerecht (director of the Middle East Initiative), Timothy Lehmann, (assistant director), and Michael Goldfarb (research associate).

An initiative of the New Garret Terrien Project, New Citizenship Project a 501(c)(3) organization headed by William Kristol (Chairman) and Gary Schmitt (President), the Project for the New American Century is funded in part by such organizations as the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation and the Bradley Foundation.

Some Swedish names found signing PNAC letters are Carl Bildt, Urban Ahlin, Anders Åslund, Gunilla Carlsson.

Quotes:

Sources:
Rightweb
Sourcewatch
Wikipedia

Related:
Carl Bildt: Neocon lobbyist?
Committee for the Liberation of Iraq
How Think Tanks Took Control of U.S. Government

RAND Corporation

2007-12-24T10:57:00.001-08:00

The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit global policy think tank first formed to offer research and analysis to the United States armed forces. The organization has since expanded to working with other governments, private foundations, international organizations, and commercial organizations.

On October 1, 1945, Commanding General of the Army Air Force H. H. "Hap" Arnold, Edward Bowles of M.I.T, Donald Douglas, President of Douglas Aircraft Company, Arthur Raymond, Chief Engineer at Douglas, and ranklin Collbohm, Raymond's assistant, met at Hamilton Field, California, to set up Project RAND under special contract to the Douglas Aircraft Company.

RAND was set up in 1946 by the United States Army Air Forces as Project RAND, under contract to the Douglas Aircraft Company, and in May 1946 they released the Preliminary Design of an Experimental World-Circling Spaceship. In May 1948, Project RAND was separated from Douglas and became an independent non-profit organization. Initial capital for the split came from the Ford Foundation.

With an annual budget of $160 million, the Rand Corporation is the most important private research center for military strategy and organization in the world. It is the prestigious voice of the American military-industrial lobby. Presided over by James Thomson, among its administrators are Ann McLaughlin Korologos (former president of the Aspen Institute) and Frank Carlucci (president of the Carlyle Group). Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld were formerly administrators, as much as their official functions permitted. Zalmay Khalilzad was an analyst there.

Dr. James A. Thomson has been RAND Corporation's president and chief executive officer since August 1989 and a member of the RAND staff since 1981.

Michael Rich is executive vice president of the RAND Corporation, the institution's second-ranking position.

RAND have seven offices worldwide;
Arlington, Virginia (Washington, D.C.)
Santa Monica, California
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Jackson, Mississippi
New Orleans, Louisiana

Doha, Qatar,
Cambridge, United Kingdom

Quotes:
"Covert foreign policy became the standard mode of operation after World War II, which was also when Ford Foundation became a major player for the first time. The institute most involved in classified research was Rand Corporation, set up by the Air Force in 1948. The interlocks between the trustees at Rand, and the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations were so numerous that the Reece Committee listed them in its report (two each for Carnegie and Rockefeller, and three for Ford). Ford gave one million dollars to Rand in 1952 alone, at a time when the chairman of Rand was simultaneously the president of Ford Foundation."

"From the beginnings of the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), think tanks have worked closely with both the civilian and military leadership on a wide range of issues, from new technologies to military planning and operations, to help better protect American interests from ever-evolving threats."

Sources:
Sourcewatch
Wikipedia

Related:
Rand Names Carl Bildt As Its First Trustee From Outside The US
How Think Tanks Interact With The Military
RAND History and Mission

Washington Institute for Near East Policy

2007-12-22T19:39:00.000-08:00

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) is a Washington, DC-based think tanks concerning US Middle East policy. It was founded in 1985 by Martin Indyk, an American diplomat who later became United States ambassador to Israel. Indyk has also been an executive at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

The establishment of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy' (WINEP) in 1985 greatly expanded the pro-Israel lobbys influence over policy as well. WINEP's founding director, Martin Indyk, had previously been research director of AIPAC which, then as now, focuses much of its efforts on Congress. Indyk developed WINEP into a highly effective think tank devoted to maintaining and strengthening the US-Israel alliance through advocacy in the media and lobbying the executive branch. Indyk is a major proponent of the two-state solution.

WINEP's mission statement declares the institute was founded to " advance a balanced and realistic understanding of American interests in the Middle East"; however, the institute's scholars have advocated policies that, while at times less partisan than other Washington-based outfits like the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), have been supportive of key aspects of the hardline Middle East agenda promoted by the George W. Bush administration after the 9/11 terror attacks.

In their controversial 2006 paper about the influence of the pro-Israel lobby on U.S. foreign policy, the respected realist scholars John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt wrote that part of the "Lobby's" success stems from its efforts to extend its reach beyond Beltway politics and into the domain of policy institutes. "The Israeli side also dominates the think tanks which play an important role in shaping public debate as well as actual policy.

Robert Satloff is WINEP's executive director; Patrick Clawson is deputy director for research. WINEP adjunct scholars include Joshua Muravchik, Daniel Pipes, Harvey Sicherman (of the Foreign Policy Research Institute), and Raymond Tanter.

WINEP's Board of Advisers includes: Warren Christopher, Lawrence S. Eagleburger, Alexander Haig, Max M. Kampelman, Samuel W. Lewis, Edward Luttwak, Michael Mandelbaum, Robert McFarlane, Martin Peretz, Richard Perle, James Roche, George P. Shultz, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey, and Mortimer Zuckerman. Wolfowitz and Roche resigned from the board when they entered the Bush administration in 2001, although WINEP still proudly lists them.

Sources:
Sourcewatch
Wikipedia
Rightweb
Mediatransparency

Related:
The Pro-Sharon Think Tank
The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy
Washington Institute for Near East Policy

National Center for Policy Analysis

2007-12-22T18:51:00.000-08:00

The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) is a think tank. It is a "communications and research foundation dedicated to providing free market solutions to today's public policy problems ... [and] prides itself on aggressively marketing its products for maximum impact by 'targeting key political leaders and special interest groups, establishing on-going ties with members of the print and electronic media, and testifying before Congress, federal agencies, state lawmakers, and national organizations.'" -- NCRP, The Strategic Philanthropy of Conservative Foundations

Founded in 2006 as a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit an affiliate, The Center for European Policy Analysis promotes "open markets, minimal government, and free trade" and "seeks to generate ideas and identify practical solutions for the policy dilemmas confronting the Central European community of nations, promote a more active Central European voice in Euro-Atlantic affairs, and reinvigorate U.S.-Central European relations.

Sources:
Sourcewatch

The Pacific Research Institute

2007-12-22T18:42:00.000-08:00

The Pacific Research Institute (PRI) or officially the 'Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy', is a think tank founded in 1979 whose stated vision is the promotion of "the principles of individual freedom and personal responsibility. The Institute believes these principles are best encouraged through policies that emphasize a free economy, private initiative, and limited government." The institute is a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation, and had $4.9M in revenue in 2005.

The Pacific Research Institute has associated with other think-tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute.

Quotes;

PRI head Sally Pipes, a Canadian residing in the United States, frequently speaks and writes against universal health care. Her bio lists as healthcare topics she had addressed "the false promise of a single-payer system as exists in Canada, pharmaceutical pricing, solving the problem of the uninsured, and strategies for consumer-driven health care." She also authored a 2004 book titled, "Miracle Cure: How to Solve America’s Health Care Crisis and Why Canada Isn’t the Answer."

On the FOX News show "The O'Reilly Factor" on January 10, 2007, Pipes spoke against California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to provide all state residents with healthcare. She warned that, "[I]f we provide health insurance, just like we provide welfare and education for illegal aliens, think about people that are illegal in other states. We're going to get a huge influx of illegal immigrants into California. And that's going to make it even more expensive [than the current system]."

"This Institute has done so much to further the idea of a law-governed liberty.”
— Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher

Sources:
Sourcewatch

The Foundation for Economic Education

2007-12-22T17:53:00.000-08:00

FEE was founded in 1946 by Leonard Read, general manager of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, for whom "the free-enterprise philosophy had already become almost a religion".

The William Volker Fund was instrumental in subsidizing FEE's establishment. FEE's initial officers included Read as president, Henry Hazlitt as vice-president, and B. F. Goodrich chairman David Goodrich as chairman.

Many libertarians have credited Read's effort as one of the bases for the international post-War libertarian movement. For instance, Friedrich Hayek was apparently inspired partly by FEE when he formed the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947.

Sources:
Wikipedia

The Institute for Humane Studies

2007-12-22T17:50:00.001-08:00

The Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) acts as a libertarian talent scout, identifying, developing, and supporting the brightest young libertarians it can find who are intent on a leveraged scholarly, or intellectual, career path.

Each year IHS awards over $400,000 in scholarships to students from universities around the world. The Institute receives funding from a number of large libertarian and right-wing foundations, including the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Koch Family Foundations, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation and the Carthage Foundation.

Sources:
Sourcewatch
MediaTransparency

Related:
William Volker Fund

The Social Affairs Unit

2007-12-22T17:01:00.000-08:00

The Social Affairs Unit is a registered charity in the United Kingdom. "Though always an independent institute, it was started with active encouragement from the Institute of Economic Affairs.

Founder Chairman was Professor Julius Gould, founder Dr Digby Anderson a political sociologist who also served as a participant in the tobacco industry-funded front group Associates for Research in the Science of Enjoyment, or ARISE. He was considered a "top-class expert" who helped reinforce the tobacco industry's messages. Dr Digby Anderson is the director of the Social Affairs Unit and also on the board of the Centre for the New Europe.

Michael Mosbacher is Director of the Social Affairs Unit, and sits on the Advisory council of the Tax Payers Alliance.

Dr. Alejandro Chafuen president of the Atlas Foundation of Economic Research is in the Advisory Council along with;

John O'Sullivan, Editor, United Press Inc., Washington D.C. , former Editor of National Review, speech writer to Margaret Thatcher, member of the board of Atlantic Partnership.

Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute also member of the Mont Pelerin Society and a director of the National Endowment for Democracy. Recent short works of his published by the American Enterprise Institute include apologetics for intellectual property laws and CEO compensation (funded in part by the drug company Pfizer), and arguments for the Christian roots of the United States.

Antonio Martino is an Italian politican, and founding member of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia. President 1988-90 of the Mont Pelerin Society. Adjunct Scholar since 1978 of the Heritage Foundation. The Cato Journal, Washington - Editorial Board since 1990
He is the current Defence Minister.

Leonard Liggio, Executive Vice President of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, and President of the Mont Pelerin Society (2002-2004).

'In its early years the Unit was concerned with the critical evaluation of the welfare state. Many of its authors' ideas then very controversial especially on schools and higher education - local autonomy, parental accountability, curricular rigour - have now found their way into the policy mainstream, so too has early work on adoption and social security.'

The Social Affairs Unit has accepted funding from British American Tobacco.

Quotes;
"The slave trade was vile. Everybody can agree on that. But was it unambiguously the fault of the Western powers of the time? Was it something for which we should today apologize?"

Sources:
Sourcewatch

Related:

The Globalisation Institute

2007-12-22T16:37:00.001-08:00

"The Globalisation Institute is a Brussels-based think tank that promotes ideas to help Europe thrive in the global economy. Located in the heart of Brussels' European quarter, close to the European Commission's Berlaymont headquarters, it works by researching, developing and promoting practical policy options that recognise political realities."

Alex Singleton is President of the Globalisation Institute

Mark Malloch Brown, then the head of the UN Development Programme (and subsequently UN Deputy Secretary-General), described Singleton as the 'High Priest of Globalisation'. He is a regular commentator on television and radio programmes such as Newsnight, the Today programme, Channel 4 News, CNBC Europe, and Sky News.

He was formerly Research Director of the Adam Smith Institute and an Institute for Humane Studies, Charles G. Koch Fellow in Washington DC.
Affiliated with; Adam Smith Institute, Fellow and former Research Director,International Policy Network, IPN Technology Project director (2003), Hayek Society and the Competitive Enterprise Institute – Koch Fellow, Washington DC, USA (2002)

Sources:
Sourcewatch
Wikipedia

Related:

The Philantropy Roundtable

2007-12-22T15:08:00.000-08:00

The Philanthropy Roundtable was established by the Bradley Foundation to help facilitate conservative grantmaking.

Adam Meyerson is the president the Philanthropy Roundtable. Meyerson is a member of the Adas Israel Congregation, co-editor of the Wall Street Journal on Management, former editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal, former executive of the Heritage Foundation, former managing editor of American Spectator, and husband to Nina Shea, the director of the Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House.

The Philanthropy Roundtable is a national association of more than 600 conservative individual donors, corporate giving representatives, foundation staff and trustees, and trust and estate officers. Its Associates include donors who are involved in philanthropy on a professional basis, as well as individual donors for whom giving is a serious avocation.

"The Roundtable is founded on the principle that voluntary private action offers the best means of addressing many of society's needs, and that a vibrant private sector is critical to generating the wealth that makes philanthropy possible. Its work is motivated by the belief that philanthropy is most likely to succeed when it focuses not on grand social designs, but on individual achievement, and where it rewards not dependence, but personal initiative, self-reliance, and private enterprise - in other words, they have very explicit ties to groups like The American Enterprise Institute (board member Kimberly Dennis) and the Council on Foreign Relations (Vice Chairman Heather Richardson Higgins). They even have a board member who co-authored a book with William J. Bennett, the former Education Secretary under Reagan and Bush.
New Citizenship Project (also New Citizenship Project, Inc.) is a non-profit organization funded by large right-wing foundations. Founded in 1994, NCP initiated the Project for the New American Century, one of the key behind-the-scenes architects of the Bush administration's foreign policy. According to his senate biography, John McCain served as a president of NCP, "an organization created to promote greater civic participation in our national life."

NCP shares the same address and suite as PNAC. According to NCP's listing in The Right Guide, NCP and the Philanthropy Roundtable share the same phone number. The Philanthropy Roundtable's office is on the same floor of the same office building as PNAC and NCP.

Sources:
Sourcewatch
Rightweb

Related:

The Fraser Institute

2007-12-22T02:23:00.000-08:00

The Fraser Institute is a libertarian think tank based in Vancouver, British Columbia.

In his book Thinking the unthinkable, Richard Cockett outlined that Antony Fisher, who founded the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) played a critical role in the development of the Fraser Institute. "On the strength of his reputation with the IEA, he was invited in 1975 to become co-director of the Fraser Institute in Vancouver, founded by the Canadian businessman Pat Boyle in 1974. Fisher let the young director of the Fraser Institute, Dr Michael Walker, get on with the intellectual output of the Institute (just as he had given free reign to Seldon and Harris at the IEA) while he himself concentrated on the fund-raising side," Cockett wrote.

The Fraser Institute has published material skeptical of climate change science since at least 2001, which marks the publication of Global Warming: A Guide to the Science by Willie Soon and Sallie L. Baliunas The abstract states: "There is no clear evidence, nor unique attribution, of the global effects of anthropogenic CO2 on climate."

Kenneth Green held the positions of Chief Scientist and Director of Centre for Studies in Risk, Regulation, and Environment at the Fraser Institute from 2002 to 2005. While at the Institute, Kenneth Green published many anti-Kyoto and climate change skeptical articles, notably the "Science Isn't Settled: The limitations of climate change models", together with Tim Ball and Steven Schroeder.

As reported in the Vancouver Sun : "The Fraser Institute received $120,000 US from ExxonMobil in 2003-'04, according to the company's annual report. [Fraser Institute President Michael] Walker said the funding paid for the work of researcher Ken Green."

Barry Cooper is former Senior Fellow at The Fraser Institute and a professor of political science at the University of Calgary. He is "affiliated" with the Friends of Science, an Alberta-based anti-Kyoto astroturf group.

Sources:
Sorcewatch
MediaTransparency

Related:

2007-12-18T22:27:00.001-08:00

The Aspen Institute is an international nonprofit organization founded in 1950 by Walter Paepeke, chair of the Container Corporation dedicated to "fostering enlightened leadership, the appreciation of timeless ideas and values, and open-minded dialogue on contemporary issues."

The institute and its international partners seek to promote the pursuit of common ground and deeper understanding in a nonpartisan and nonideological setting through regular seminars, policy programs, conferences, and leadership development initiatives.

The institute is headquartered in Washington, D.C. and has campuses in Aspen, Colorado (its original home) and near the shores of the Chesapeake Bay at the Wye River in Maryland. Its international network includes partner Aspen Institutes in Berlin, Rome, Lyon, Tokyo, New Delhi, and Bucharest, as well as leadership initiatives in the United States and in Africa, India, and Central America.

The Aspen Institute is largely funded by foundations such as the Carnegie Corporation, The Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Ford Foundation, by seminar fees, and by individual donations. Its board of trustees includes a wide range of leaders from the realms of politics, government, business, and academia who also contribute generously to its support; Walter Isaacson is currently President and CEO.

Sir Anthony Fisher

2007-12-17T13:54:00.000-08:00

Sir Antony Fisher (1915 - 1988) was one of the most influential background players in the global rise of libertarian think-tanks during the second half of the twentieth century, founding the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Atlas Economic Research Foundation.

Through Atlas, he helped establish up to 150 other think-tanks worldwide. The most promininent include:

* Fraser Institute
* Manhattan Institute
* Pacific Research Institute
* National Center for Policy Analysis
* Centre for Independent Studies
* Adam Smith Institute

Born in London in 1915, educated at Eton and Cambridge, Fisher was elected to the Mont Pelerin Society in 1954. The following year, he founded the Institute of Economic Affairs in London, as the first of dozens of front groups for Mont Pelerin that he would help launch.

With the help of the rightwing Liberal Oliver Smedley, he set up the IEA in 1955. Two years later, it was handed over to Harris and Seldon.

Other IEA founders included Friedrich von Hayek, who at this point was at the University of Chicago; Keith Joseph, and Ralph Harris, a fellow of the British Eugenics Society which had earlier helped draft Hitler's race laws.

(Ralph Harris, Baron Harris of High Cross (December 10, 1924 – October 19, 2006) was a British economist. He was head of the Institute of Economic Affairs from 1957 to 1987. The IEA's brand of free market liberal economics was deeply unpopular when it was founded, but, some 20 years later, by combining the classical liberalism of the 18th and 19th centuries with Conservative principles, Harris became one of the men who invented Thatcherism.
He was a director of Rupert Murdoch's Times Newspapers company from 1988 to 2001 and chairman of CIVITAS from 2000.)

They made their mark, particularly with Enoch Powell and other Tory rightwingers, by their series of easy-to-read pamphlets with snappy titles like Down With the Poor (1971) and The Challenge of the Radical Reactionary (1981), which helped shatter the Butskellite consensus at Westminster and create the intellectual climate for the emergence of Thatcher as the free-market successor to the interventionist Heath.

During Thatcher's 1979-90 reign at No 10, the IEA was one of the government's unofficial thinktanks. Another was the more restrained Centre for Policy Studies, set up by Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph.

After serving in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, Fisher moved to farming.
In 1952, he took a study trip to the United States, where he visited the still-new Foundation for Economic Education. F. A. Harper of the FEE introduced Fisher to former colleagues from the Agriculture Department of Cornell University, who showed him intensive chicken farming techniques with which Fisher was very impressed. Fisher returned home to start England's first battery chicken farm, Buxted Chickens, introducing broiler chickens in the UK, which eventually made him a millionaire.

Consequently, Fisher used his money to set up the hugely influential Institute of Economic Affairs with Ralph Harris in 1955. Despite losing his fortune in several ill-advised business ventures (including a turtle-farming operation), in 1971 he founded the International Institute for Economic Research, which went on spawn both the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in 1980 and the International Policy Network in 2001.

Through these operations, Fisher provided financial and operational support for a huge number of fledgeling think-tanks, most of which would not exist without his influence.

When Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister of Britain in 1979, the Mont Pelerin apparatus moved right into 10 Downing Street. In recognition of the Mont Pelerin Society's loyal service to the House of Windsor, Queen Elizabeth II appointed Ralph Harris a peer for life, as Lord Harris of High Cross, and knighted Antony Fisher and Allan Walters. Walters was given an office at 10 Downing Street as Thatcher's resident economic advisor.

By this time, Fisher had already furthered the Mont Pelerin subversion by establishing the Fraser Institute in Vancouver, Canada in 1974, the Manhattan Institute in New York City in 1977, and the Pacific Institute for Public Policy Research in San Francisco in 1978. In 1973, Mont Pelerin had also been instrumental in launching the Coors family think tank, the Heritage Foundation, in Washington, D.C. Following the Thatcher victory, Mont Pelerin launched an ambitious overhaul of Heritage, importing a half dozen British Mont Pelerinites in anticipation of the 1980 Presidential run by Ronald Reagan.

It was through the Atlas Economic Research Foundation that Fisher was able to extend his beliefs worldwide. By 1984, Fisher was watching over eighteen institutions in eleven countries.

Today, Atlas supports and works with around 150 libertarian think-tanks.

Following the Thatcher election in Britain, Fisher also contacted von Hayek, Milton Friedman, and other leading Mont Pelerin figures and spelled out an ambitious expansion effort; in effect, the launching of a new international.

On New Years Day 1980, von Hayek wrote back to Fisher:

"I entirely agree with you that the time has come when it has become desirable and almost a duty to extend the network of institutes of the kind of the London Institute of Economic Affairs. Though it took some time for its influence to become noticeable, it has by now far exceeded my most optimistic hopes....
What I argued thirty years ago, that we can beat the Socialist trend only if we can persuade the intellectuals, the makers of opinion, seems to me more than amply confirmed. Whether we can still win the race against the expanding Socialist tide depends on whether we can spread the insights, which prove much more acceptable to the young if rightly expounded than I had hoped, fast and wide enough... The future of civilization may really depend on whether we can catch the ear of a large enough part of the upcoming generation of intellectuals all over the world fast enough. And I am more convinced than ever that the method practiced by the IEA is the only one which promises any real results....

This ought to be used to create similar institutes all over the world and you have now acquired the special skill of doing it. It would be money well spent if large sums could be made available for such a concerted effort.''

On Feb. 20, 1980, Margaret Thatcher added her endorsement to the project in a letter to Fisher; and May 8, Milton Friedman threw his support behind the international effort: "Any extension of institutes of this kind around the world is certainly something ardently to be desired.''

To carry out this global effort, Fisher launched the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in 1981.

Originally based in San Francisco, Atlas is now headquartered on the campus of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia near Washington, D.C. In a strategy paper written in February 1985, Fisher wrote of the need to transform the "extremist, anti-government, radical free market policies of the von Hayek Mont Pelerin Society apparatus into the "new orthodoxy'' through the launching of hundreds of small think tanks on every continent.

In his book Thinking the unthinkable, Richard Cockett sketched Fisher's role in supporting other emerging think-tanks around the world. "On the strength of his reputation with the IEA, he was invited in 1975 to become co-director of the Fraser Institute in Vancouver, founded by the Canadian businessman Pat Boyle in 1974. Fisher let the young director of the Fraser Institute, Dr Michael Walker, get on with the intellectual output of the Institute (just as he had given free rein to Seldon and Harris at the IEA) while he himself concentrated on the fund-raising side," Cockett wrote.

Cockett explained that after his success at the Fraser Institute, Fisher went to New York where in 1977 he set up the International Center for Economic Policy Studies (ICEPS), later renamed the Manhattan Institute. "The incorporation documents for the ICEPS were signed by prominent attorney Bill Casey, later Director of the Central Intelligence Agency".

According to Loic Wacquant, both men wanted the Institute «to apply the principles of the market economy to social problems»

Casey was a Wall Street speculator who later became President Ronald Reagan's spymaster. He served as the first chairman of the International Center for Economic Policy Studies, was a longtime conservative, was the lawyer who drew up the founding papers for the National Review, and was a founding director of the National Strategy Information Center.

During his tenure at the CIA, Casey played a large part in the shaping of Reagan's foreign policy, particularly its approach to Soviet international activity. Based on a book, The Terror Network, Casey believed that the Soviet Union was the source of all terrorist activity in the world, in spite of his analysts providing evidence that this was in fact black propaganda by the CIA itself. Casey obtained a report from a professor that agreed with his view, which convinced Ronald Reagan that there was a threat.

During his tenure restrictions were lifted on the use of the CIA to directly, covertly influence the internal and foreign affairs of countries relevant to American policy.

Notably he oversaw covert assistance to the mujahadeen resistance in Afghanistan, with a budget of over $1 billion by working closely with Akhtar Abdur Rahman (the Director General of ISI in Pakistan), the Solidarity movement in Poland, and a number of coups and attempted coups in South- and Central America.

Casey was also the principal architect of the arms-for-hostages deal that became known as the Iran-Contra affair.

The Thatcher government relied heavily on the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA) in London, as well as The Centre for Policy Studies, a Conservative Party think tank, and several other independent public-policy institutes in the U.K. The Reagan administration drew heavily from ideas and experts in the Heritage and Hoover Foundations, as well as the American Enterprise, Cato Institutes and the ACCF Center for Policy Research.

In 1977 Fisher moved to San Francisco "with his second wife Dorian, who he had met through the Mont Pelerin Society, and founded the Pacific Institute for Public Policy in 1979," Cockett wrote. According to Cockett Fisher and Milton Friedman lived in the same apartment block in San Francisco during the 1980's.

"In 1981, to co-ordinate and establish a central focus for these institutes that Fisher found himself start up all over the world, he created the Atlas Economic Research Foundation which in 1987 joined up with the Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) founded by the Mont Pelerin member F.A. Harper in 1961) to provide a central institutional structure for what quickly became an ever-expanding number of international free-market think-tanks or research institutes," Cockett wrote.

According to Cokett, as the international think-tanks proliferated "Fisher used the local and international gatherings of the Mont Pelerin Society to find personnel, fund-raisers and donors for many of the Atlas Institutes".

Quote from the Manhattan Intitute´s website:
"As for how I came to the Manhattan Institute, I met Antony Fisher in the Taiwan airport in 1978 on the way to a meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society—an organization founded by the Noble Prize winning author of The Road to Serfdom, Frederick Von Hayek.

It turned out that Anthony, a former RAF-Battle-of-Britain pilot, had, after the war, made it good in business, and had read an abbreviated version the Hayeck’s book in the Readers Digest. His interest sparked, he sought out Hayek, and asked him how a newly minted rich man could prevent his country and western civilization from going any further down the statist road the Austrian economist had famously described. At the time, Fisher thought going into politics was the answer.

Hayek answer: “If you want to do something more for your country, DON’T go into politics, since politicians always lag behind public opinion. And public opinion always lags behind the tide of intellectual thought. So try to change elite intellectual opinion. Which, he added, is a 20-30 year process.

Buying into the idea, Anthony left the chicken business where he had made his fortune and went into the think tank business—where he changed history. Within a decade, he had seeded 30 think tanks 20 nations around the world—a 150 think tanks to date.

As I mentioned, I had met Anthony Fisher in 1978 in Taiwan. This was shortly after he and Bill Casey, one of Wild Bill Donovan’s key people in the OSS in WWII—had founded the Manhattan Institute—the third installment in this free-market franchise.

It should be noted that his first venture the Social Market Foundation (TK) developed Margaret Thatcher as candidate and Thatcherism as governing philosophy." Manhattan Institute 2003"

Fisher died in 1988, only four weeks after being knighted.

Sources:
Wikipedia
Sourcewatch
Rightweb

Related:
Sir Antony Fisher talks about the importance of think tanks
The Most Influential Person You never heard of (PDF)
Atlas Economic Research Foundation: the think-tank breeder
Lord Harris of High Cross
The Great and the Good
Arthur Seldon - Orbituary
Tory! Tory! Tory!
Adam Curtis Documentary - The Trap
Adam Curtis Documentary - The Mayfair Set
Commanding Heights - Ralph Harris Interview

Hispanic American Center for Economic Research

2007-12-14T09:06:00.001-08:00

The Hispanic American Center for Economic Research is a conservative 501(c)(3) organization focused primarily on conservative foreign policy in Latin America and a conservative economic policy in the United States. The Hispanic American Center for Economic Research (HACER - hacer means "to do" in Spanish) was created by the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in 1996.

Hacer has an office close to Atlas and the Whitehouse:

Hispanic American Center for Economic Research
910 17th Street NW Suite 422
Washington, DC 20006

Sources:
SourceWatch
MediaTransparency

Related:
Rumsfeld: The Smart Way to Beat Tyrants Like Chavez

The Reason Foundation

2007-12-13T01:10:00.000-08:00

The Reason Foundation describes itself as a "libertarian" think tank which challenges strict environmental regulations: "A national research and education organization that explores and promotes public policy based on rationality and freedom." The Reason Foundation's projects include NewEnvironmentalism.org and Privatization.org. It is part of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation network.

From the Reason Foundation web pages:

"For 22 years, Reason Foundation has led the fight for freedom in America. Our unique combination of a top-tier, well-respected think tank, Reason Public Policy Institute (RPPI), and a major political and cultural commentary magazine, Reason Magazine, gives us an unmatched pair of platforms from which to champion liberty and its essential role in human progress. Through Reason Public Policy Institute, with its emphasis on empirical results, practical innovation, and a burgeoning national reputation, we get new policy ideas implemented. Through Reason Magazine, with its growing and increasingly influential audience, we shape public opinion in favor of individual liberty in all areas of human activity."

Reason has an associated environment website (www.newenvironmentalism.org) which promotes conservative environmental policies. The page links to articles on websites for organizations such as CEI, the Heartland Institute and Tech Central Station. It also has a section praising the environmental stewardship of corporations such as ExxonMobil. Reason's Magazine also badmouths the environmental movement and promotes the interests of Reason's corporate contributers.

Sources:
Sourcewatch
ExxonSecrets

Related:

Eudoxa

2007-12-12T22:55:00.000-08:00

Eudoxa is a Swedish company affiliated to the Stockholm Network, that was incorporated in Stockholm in 2000 as a for-profit business, and is run by five people. As a for-profit organization, they apparently do not have to list their contributors. It is closely linked with the International Policy Network (IPN), a group based in the UK with an affiliate in Virginia.

The mission of IPN is to establish and support right-wing think tanks internationally, to organize conferences and campaigns, and to plant articles in the mainstream press. It primarily advocates against environmental regulations, but also campaigns on health, "sustainable development," free trade, and IP.

The think tank currently consists of: Waldemar Ingdahl, Lene Johansen, Alexander Sanchez, Anders Sandberg and Marcus Sjöberg.

Eudoxa lists on its web site an active collaboration with the Centre for a New Europe, an organization based in Brussels whose Web site was apparently first registered in St. Paul, Minnesota by Richard Miniter, a conservative American pundit. CNE has close ties with the Bush White House; FDA Chief Counsel Dan Troy spoke before them recently.

In sum, a careful examination reveals that Eudoxa is part of long-term, organized effort to establish "research institutes" for the purposes of corporate lobbying.

The Eudoxa press release on prequalification appears to reflect an effort by parties with a financial stake in the debate over ARV treatment access to influence its outcome.
Michael Chung

Eudoxa and American Enterprise Institute Invent “Scandal” at WHO
In August 2004, Swedish-based special interest advocacy organization Eudoxa issued a press release calling for WHO Director-General J.W. Lee to resign because of its de-listing of several prequalified generic medicines.

Eudoxa is a for-profit business that was incorporated in Stockholm in 2000 and is run by five people, none of whom are health care professionals.

Most international health experts agree that WHO’s de-listing of certain medicines pending proper documentation demonstrates that the WHO prequalification program has been successful in promptly handling data discrepancies posing potential public health risks. Yet the pharmaceutical industry sought to capitalize on WHO’s de-listing by characterizing it as a “scandal” through companies such as Eudoxa who unjustifiably urged the resignation of WHO Director-General Lee. If the industry had been consistent in the light of recent Vioxx “scandal” it had to demand US FDA Commissioner resign as well. Notably, US FDA did not take proactive actions in this case whereas WHO did.

Eudoxa claims to actively collaborate with the Brussels-based organization Centre for a New Europe, which maintains close ties to the Bush White House.

Eudoxa is also closely connected with the International Policy Network (IPN), who’s stated mission is to establish and support right-wing think tanks internationally, to organize policy conferences and campaigns, and to plant articles in the media. IPN mainly advocates against environmental protections, but also campaigns on health care, intellectual property rights (arguing against the parallel importation of patented medicines), free trade, and sustainable development policies.

The conservative American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research has also been active in perpetuating the misinformation campaign to discredit the WHO prequalification program and generic medicines.

Quotes;

"The fact of the matter is that health and healthcare is like any other commodity we as individuals consume." Lene Johansen

"Today, it is 100 years since the most uncompromising advocate of capitalism and selfishness was born. She died in 1984, before I was even introduced to her philosophy, but she lives on through her novels and philosophy books. Her name is Ayn Rand." Lene Johansen

"As an egoist, I can choose whom I extend my generosity towards." Lene Johansen

Eudoxa Science

Personerna bakom Eudoxa
Waldemar Ingdahl
Marcus Lind
Alexander Sanchez
Anders Sandberg
Marcus Sjöberg

Sources:
Wikipedia
Pipermail
IP Justice
Spinwatch
GM Watch
Blå Listan

Related:
Media Culpa
Läkare utan gränser: Verkligheten är långt från Eudoxas råa cynism
Döda konsumenter konsumerar inte
Eudoxa and American Enterprise Institute Invent “Scandal” at WHO

The National Endowment for Democracy

2007-12-12T07:35:00.001-08:00

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was created by the Reagan administration in the early 1980s to push democratic reform and roll back Soviet influence in various parts of the globe. In his 1983 speech inaugurating NED, President Ronald Reagan said: "I just decided that this nation, with its heritage of Yankee traders, ought to do a little selling of the principles of democracy."

The private, congressionally funded NED has been a controversial tool in U.S. foreign policy because of its support for groups that push an agenda closely in line with U.S. objectives and because of its association with efforts to overthrow foreign governments.

"The National Endowment for Democracy is a quasi-governmental foundation created by the Reagan Administration in 1983 to channel millions of Federal dollars into anti-Communist 'private diplomacy.'"

On its website, NED notes the criticism but responds that "over the years mainstream conservative activists have been among the most outspoken advocates on behalf of the Endowment. Endorsements of NED have been offered by the leadership of such stalwart conservative organizations as the Heritage Foundation and Empower America, and favorable editorials have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times and National Review."

Current and former directors of the Endowment's Board include Lee Hamilton of the 9/11 Commission, former Congressman Richard Gephardt, Richard Holbrooke, former U.S. Senator and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Frank Carlucci of the Carlyle Group, retired General Wesley Clark, Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Dr. Francis Fukuyama of Johns Hopkins SAIS, and U.S. Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, former chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council.

Several articles about the political process in Haiti, Iraq, and the Palestinian-occupied territories have appeared in The New York Times, NPR, and other mainstream US media. The impression is given that the articles are from bona fide journalists, but it transpires that several of them are paid by the NED or its affilated organizations.

Sources:
Rightweb
Sourcewatch
Wikipedia

Related:
The War On Democracy (Movie)
Reporters Without Borders Unmasked
Paying to Make Enemies of America
The National Endowment for Hypocrisy Democracy
US: overt and covert destabilisation

Committee for the Liberation of Iraq

2007-12-11T14:44:00.000-08:00

The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI) was set up in late 2002 by Bruce Jackson, a director of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and former Lockheed Martin vice president. Shortly after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, CLI closed shop, announcing on its website: “Following the successful liberation of Iraq, the committee has ceased its operations.”

Many CLI, PNAC and AEI members were previously involved with the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf (CPSG), a hard-right group created in 1990 prior to Operation Desert Storm.

The Washington Post reported in November 2002 that "the organization is modeled on a successful lobbying campaign to expand the NATO alliance. Members include former secretary of state George P. Shultz, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and former senator Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.). ... While the Iraq committee is an independent entity, committee officers said they expect to work closely with the administration. They already have met with Hadley and Bush political adviser Karl Rove. Committee officers and a White House spokesman said Rice, Hadley and Cheney will soon meet with the group."

Sources:
Wikipedia
Sourcewatch
Rightweb

Related:
Därför värvade vi Bildt

The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research

2007-12-08T19:28:00.000-08:00

The Manhattan Institute (MI) is a right-wing 501(c)(3) non-profit think tank founded in 1978 by William J. Casey and Sir Anthony Fisher, Casey later became President Ronald Reagan's CIA director.

Powerful and controversial director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1981 to 1987 during the Ronald Reagan administration.

While affiliated with the law firm Rogers & Wells (1976-81), Casey became Reagan's presidential campaign manager and was subsequently awarded the directorship of the CIA in 1981. Under his leadership, covert action increased in such places as Afghanistan, Central America, and Angola, and the agency stepped up its support for various anticommunist insurgent organizations.

He was viewed as a pivotal figure in the CIA's secret involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair, in which U.S. weapons were sold to Iran and in which money from the sale was funneled to Nicaraguan rebels, in possible violation of U.S. law.

The Manhattan Institute is "focused on promoting free-market principles whose mission is to 'develop and disseminate new ideas that foster greater economic choice and individual responsibility.'"

"The Manhattan Institute concerns itself with such things as 'welfare reform' (dismantling social programs), 'faith-based initiatives' (blurring the distinction between church and state), and 'education reform' (destroying public education),"

n 2001, David Frum left the Manhattan Institute "to join the Bush administration as a speechwriter. It was there that he coined the term 'axis of evil' to describe Iraq, Iran and North Korea. This became the signature phrase of President George W. Bush's 2002 State of the Union speech and shorthand for Bush's war on terrorism."

Perhaps no other think tank has been so assiduously dedicated to the “ideas have consequences” mantra of traditional conservatism. The Manhattan Institute's long history is testament to the truth of this political maxim and to its corollary: money and marketing are essential for ideas to have consequences in the post-modern world. The institute's slogan is: “Turning intellect into influence.”

The "financing of neoconservatism doesn't come from D.C.", Mark Gerson is quoted as saying in the April 27, 2003, New York Observer.

"Instead, said Mr. Gerson, it comes from New York moneymen like Bruce Kovner, chairman of the Caxton Corporation, and Roger Hertog, the vice chairman of Alliance Capital Management. Last year, both financiers helped fund a new newspaper, The New York Sun, now fighting its anti-liberal battle with its New York Times –counterprogrammed slogan, 'A Different Point of View.' Both Mr. Kovner and Mr. Hertog also chipped in to join neoliberal Martin Peretz as co-owners of The New Republic. Mr. Kovner and Mr. Hertog, as enlightened neoconservative businessmen-intellectuals, are also on the board [of trustees] of the Manhattan Institute, where Mr. Gerson and William Kristol are also trustees, as well as the Washington, D.C.–based American Enterprise Institute."

Manhattan Institute for Policy Research has received $205,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.

Quotes;

"For 25 years, the Manhattan Institute has been an important force in shaping American political culture. We have supported and publicized research on our era's most challenging public policy issues: taxes, welfare, crime, the legal system, urban life, race, education, and many other topics. We have won new respect for market-oriented policies and helped make reform a reality."

"As for how I came to the Manhattan Institute, I met Antony Fisher in the Taiwan airport in 1978 on the way to a meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society—an organization founded by the Noble Prize winning author of The Road to Serfdom, Frederick Von Hayek.

It turned out that Anthony, a former RAF-Battle-of-Britain pilot, had, after the war, made it good in business, and had read an abbreviated version the Hayeck’s book in the Readers Digest. His interest sparked, he sought out Hayek, and asked him how a newly minted rich man could prevent his country and western civilization from going any further down the statist road the Austrian economist had famously described. At the time, Fisher thought going into politics was the answer.

Hayek answer: “If you want to do something more for your country, DON’T go into politics, since politicians always lag behind public opinion. And public opinion always lags behind the tide of intellectual thought. So try to change elite intellectual opinion. Which, he added, is a 20-30 year process.

Buying into the idea, Anthony left the chicken business where he had made his fortune and went into the think tank business—where he changed history. Within a decade, he had seeded 30 think tanks 20 nations around the world—a 150 think tanks to date.

As I mentioned, I had met Anthony Fisher in 1978 in Taiwan. This was shortly after he and Bill Casey, one of Wild Bill Donovan’s key people in the OSS in WWII—had founded the Manhattan Institute—the third installment in this free-market franchise.

It should be noted that his first venture the Social Market Foundation (TK) developed Margaret Thatcher as candidate and Thatcherism as governing philosophy." Manhattan Institute 2003

Sources:
Exxonsecrets
Rightweb
Sourcewatch
Mediatransparency
Worldinformation

Related:
The Manhattan Institute, Neoconservatives’s Lab
Think tank helps Giuliani set his agenda
Conservative Thinkers Are Insiders
Buying a Movement
The Manhattan Institute: Launch Pad For Conservative Authors
Giuliani, the Manhattan Institute, and Eugenics
Behind the Conservative Curtain
William Volker Fund

Institute for the Study of Civil Society (CIVITAS)

2007-12-06T00:06:00.001-08:00

Civitas (the Institute for the Study of Civil Society) is a British think tank. Founded in 2000, it was formerly the Health and Welfare Unit of the Institute for Economic Affairs.

In 2001, Civitas began exploring the idea of launching an independent school, based upon a grant from Atlas's Health & Welfare Program, which paid for a feasibility study. The "New Model School" is set to open its doors in September 2004. still in the planning phases. The IEA has attempted this concept previously with Stuart Sexton's Warlingham Park School project.

Sources:
Sourcewatch

Acton Institute

2007-12-05T22:49:00.001-08:00

The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty (founded 1990) is a libertarian think tank, part of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation network, which promotes laissez-faire economics and public policy within a Christian framework. "Together, empowered by faith in God and belief in human freedom, we truly can make a difference."

he Institute organises seminars for religious leaders, academics and business leaders which aim to link economics and religion. It publishes books, journals, and opinion about related issues, and it runs a Center for Economic Personalism for producing academic literature.

Their policies include:

* strongly anti-Kyoto ("Religious leaders are right to remain skeptical of this effort to transform unsound science and policy into a moral crusade...Thus the market helps to see that the good environmental steward is properly rewarded for his efforts.")
* pro-biotech ("Agricultural biotechnology, in particular, is an exciting product of human creativity and ingenuity that holds great potential to add to the abundance of God's creation and to improve the human condition")
* against the Microsoft anti-trust case ("We must remember that the biblical theme of justice extols us from favoring one side over another unfairly, regardless of size or stature. Yet it appears that the government's case against Microsoft is the result of "knock down the successful" thinking.")
* pro-SUV ("Protesting car dealerships for selling vehicles that improve people's lives does nothing toward showing the way to transcendental truth. It is a temptation from which, I pray, the Lord will soon deliver his people.")
* generally anti-environmentalists ("A recent development that should be of some concern to Christians is the cozy relationship developing between radical environmental groups and Christian churches... Investing the anti-human environmental agenda with ecclesiastical authority is very dangerous, even when it is done unintentionally.")

Sources:
Sourcewatch

Related:
Atlas Economic Research Foundation - Alejandro Chafuen

European Enterprise Institute

2007-12-05T22:41:00.000-08:00

Peter Jungen, President of the European Enterprise Institute; Gunnar Hökmark, MEP, Co- President of the European Enterprise Institute. Gunnar Hökmark is also chairman European Friends of Israel, President Sweden-Israel Friendship Association and Vice Chairman of the EPP-ED group.

Mr. Stober serves as the Director of Policy at the European Enterprise Institute (EEI). Mr. Stober will be in charge of coordinating the overall policy and research work of the institute. Mr. Stober is the editor in chief of the EEI policy journal "Enterprise Europe".

Mr. Stober brings with him a thorough know-how of EU policies and of the corporate sector. He has professional experience from the EU institutions, a leading American policy institution and has been working in the financial sector in an internet start-up. Mr. Stober holds Master degrees in Business/Economics from the University of Uppsala (Sweden) and a degree in EU affairs from the Natolin (Warsaw) campus of the College of Europe.

"The emergence of new regional economic power-houses such as India and China has put the economic leadership of the US and Europe under strain. What used to be the undisputed leaders in economic growth and wealth creation is today not a given fact."

"..the EEI is seeking to be a place for an informed debate and discussion on what is important for European competitiveness. In this mission, merging the policy agendas of both sides of the Atlantic is a goal in itself. Peter Jungen

"The economic partnership between the US and Europe is the strongest and most important in the world."

"As an investor in several start-ups I have been an active part of the process which Schumpeter called “the process of creative destruction”." Peter Jungen

"I have during my business career, focused on re-shaping ideas and making sure that competitive ideas are put to the market. Sometimes this has meant new jobs, but occasionally it has implied that jobs are moved to other sectors or regions. " Peter Jungen

Hoover Institution

2007-12-05T15:41:00.000-08:00

Founded in 1919 by Herbert Hoover, the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, based on the campus of Stanford University, is one of the oldest research institutes in the United States. Funded largely by right-wing foundations and corporate donors, Hoover has been a mainstay of the Republican Party for decades, serving as a virtual revolving door for conservative figures involved in Republican administrations, including the George W. Bush administration, which employed several Hoover scholars.

Another major figure of the Iraq War, former U.S. Central Command chief John Abizaid, has also found a home at Hoover. Past Hoover fellows, including notably Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who were tagged to serve in the Bush administration, include Stephen Krasner at the State Department and John B. Taylor at the Treasury Department. The think tank's ties with the Reagan administration were similarly strong. Reagan advisers associated with Hoover included Secretary of State George Shultz, Attorney General Edwin Meese, and National Security Adviser Richard Allen. Margaret Thatcher and Newt Gingrich have also been Hoover fellows.

It has also been called the West's citadel of anticommunism, or Bush 'brain trust'.

The Mont Pelerin Society

2007-12-05T15:39:00.000-08:00

The Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) is an international organisation, consisting of "free-market" economists, business leaders and journalists with a declared objective of "reaffirming and preserving private property rights, a moral code for both public and private activity, intellectual freedom, state behaviour limited by the rule of law, and ‘the right of each individual to plan his own life’."

MPS's website warns of "danger in the expansion of government, not least in state welfare, in the power of trade unions and business monopoly, and in the continuing threat and reality of inflation."

MPS has close ties to the network of think tanks sponsored in part by the Atlas Economic Research Foundation.

In 1947, 39 scholars, mostly economists, with some historians and philosophers, were invited by Professor Friedrich Hayek to meet at Mont Pelerin, Switzerland, and discuss the state, and possible fate of classical liberalism and to combat the “state ascendancy and Marxist or Keynesian planning [that was] sweeping the globe”.

Invitees included Henry Simons (who would later train Milton Friedman, a future president of the society, at the University of Chicago); the American former-Fabian socialist Walter Lippmann; Viennese Aristotelian Society leader Karl Popper; fellow Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises; Sir John Clapham, a senior official of the Bank of England who from 1940–6 was the president of the British Royal Society; Otto von Habsburg, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne; and Max von Thurn und Taxis, Bavaria-based head of the 400-year-old Venetian Thurn und Taxis family.

Originally, it was to be named the Acton-Tocqueville Society. After Frank Knight protested against naming the group after two “Roman Catholic aristocrats” and Ludwig von Mises expressed concern that the mistakes made by Acton and Tocqueville would be connected with the society, the name of the Swiss resort where it convened was used instead.

The Society is named after the hotel near Montreux, Switzerland, where the first meeting was convened in 1947 by F. A. Hayek, to combat the “state ascendancy and Marxist or Keynesian planning [that was] sweeping the globe”. Since then, 32 General and 27 Regional Meetings have been held and its membership has risen from under 50 to over 500.

MPS founder F. A. Hayek stressed that the society was to be a scholarly community arguing ideas against collectivism while not engaging in public relations or propaganda. However, the society has always been a focal point for the international free market think-tank movement: Hayek himself used it as a forum to encourage members such as Antony Fisher to pursue the think-tank route in favour of politics.

Fisher went on the establish the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in London during 1971, the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. during 1973, and the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in 1981. In turn the Atlas Foundation supports a wide network of think-tanks, including the Fraser Institute and the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. All these organisations continue to share close ties with the MPS.

Eight MPS members, including F. A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, and George Stigler, won Nobel prizes in economics.

Of 76 economic advisers on Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign staff, 22 were MPS members, including Anderson himself.

The Society has continued to meet on a regular basis, usually in September. The current president of the Society is Greg Lindsay. Secretary is Carl-Johan Westholm formerly CEO of "Svensk Handel"

"When the Mont Pelerin Society first met, in 1947, its political project did not have a name. But it knew where it was going. The society's founder, Friedrich von Hayek, remarked that the battle for ideas would take at least a generation to win, but he knew that his intellectual army would attract powerful backers. Its philosophy, which later came to be known as neoliberalism, accorded with the interests of the ultra-rich, so the ultra-rich would pay for it."
Alternet

Sources:
Mediatransparency

Related:
The Road to Serfdom in Cartoons
William Volker Fund
Neoliberalism Dismantles Services to Make Elites Even Richer
Mont Pelerin Tokyo 2008
Tankesmedjans roll i samhället
”Mänsklig utveckling i sin rikaste mångfald”

Institute of Economic Affairs

2007-12-05T14:42:00.000-08:00

The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) is a London-based, influential, right-wing think tank. It is part of a very wide international network of similar organisations, offering financial, operational and strategic support to a large number of these. Among many other groups, via its founders Antony Fisher, Ralph Harris, and Arthur Seldon, it spawned the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, the University of Buckingham, and the International Policy Network, which the IEA appears to fund and run directly. The IEA manages the funding of the Centre for Research into Post-Communist Economies

The IEA enjoyed its highest influence during the right-wing Tory administration of Margaret Thatcher. Milton Friedman believes the IEA's intellectual influence was so strong that "the U-turn in British policy executed by Margaret Thatcher owes more to him (i.e., Fisher) than any other individual."

The IEA describe their mission as being "...to improve public understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society, with particular reference to the role of markets in solving economic and social problems."

The IEA website boasts that the organisation has played a major role in the proliferation of conservative think tanks around the world. "Since 1974 the IEA has played an active role in developing similar institutions across the globe. Today there exists a world-wide network of over one hundred institutions in nearly eighty countries. All are independent but share in the IEA's mission," its website states.

The European Resource Bank

2007-12-04T01:47:00.000-08:00

"Modelled after the Resource Bank organized every year by the Heritage Foundation in the United States and the Liberty Forum organized by Atlas Economic Research Foundation, Resource Bank Europe - the largest annual congress of free market think-tanks in Europe - gathers today representatives from over 100 European and American think tanks, academics, policy experts, elected officials and other parties interested in the debate over strategies and problems posed to the European free economies and interested in the future of individual liberty in Europe.
"They reunite European and American think-tanks, academics, political scientists, public figures, economists and other free-market thinkers from Europe and the United States, intellectuals and public personalities interested in free markets in order to define cooperative strategies for promoting (corporate*) freedom, property and capitalism in the European arena."

Organizer: CADI-Eleutheria

Sponsors: Atlas Economic Research Foundation, Cee Trust, Brd - Groupe Societe Generale, Cato Institute, Coca-cola Hbc Romania, Americans For Tax Reform Foundation, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Peter Jungen Holding Gmbh, European Enterprise Institute, Projekt Lodz, Stoica & Asociatii Law Firm, Taxpayers' Alliance, Institute For Global Economic Growth, Center For Freedom And Prosperity

Organizing Partners: Atlas Economic Research Foundation, The Heritage Foundation, Institute For Economic Studies Europe, Stockholm-network, Cato Institute, Acton Institute, Hayek Institute Vienna, Institute For Market Economics, Lithuanian Free Market Institute

RBE

The Stockholm Network

2007-11-25T03:34:00.000-08:00

The Stockholm Network is a corporate lobbying company and network of European "market-oriented" think tanks. Its clients include Pfizer, Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD) and Schering-Plough Corporation.

It was was founded in September 1997 by young British journalist Helen Disney in collaboration with six institutes:

1. Centre for the New Europe (CNE, Brussels),
2. Edmund Burke Foundation (Netherlands),
3. Timbro (Sweden),
4. Circulos de Empresarios (Spain),
5. Paradigmes (France)
6. Social Market Foundation (Great Britain).

The Stockholm Network describes itself as "Europe's only dedicated service organisation for market-oriented think tanks and thinkers" and employs seven people in its London office. Led by director Helen Disney, the Stockholm Network produces a weekly e-newsletter and a flow of expensive, glossy publications, such as the "State of the Union" report on "Market-oriented reform in the EU" and the newsletter 'Eye on Europe'.

The discourse of the Stockholm Network is far more strategic and media savvy than most radical neoliberal think tanks, whose ideological zeal often prevents them from reaching a larger audience. Layers of mainstream rhetoric conceal the Network's ideological agenda, where virtually every aspect of society is to be left to unregulated markets.
It is only during internal workshops that the undiluted free market fundamentalism of the Stockholm Network is revealed.

This means that the explicit agenda of the Network is not so obvious, and may explain why there appear to be some unlikely members. Another reason may be that the Stockholm Network uses a very flexible definition of "members".

For example, the European Policy Centre (EPC), one of the leading think tanks in Brussels, was listed as a member of the Stockholm Network, but without having given its consent. The same goes for Initiative Neue Soziale Marktwirtschaft (INSM), a German think tank advocating neoliberal reforms under the slogan "New Social Market Economy". INSM only agreed to an exchange of links but features as a member in Stockholm Network publications.

Fundraising to win the battle of ideas

A conference organised by the Stockholm Network earlier this year, provided an opportunity to see how think tanks perceive their own role within politics and their plans to increase their corporate funding. It highlighted the increasing confidence of these groups who see an expanding space for their ideas in the current political climate.

In February 2005, around 50 people from across Europe attended the Stockholm Network's "Workshop for European Think Tanks" entitled "Selling Yourself". In an up-market hotel in central Brussels, they heard Tim Evans of the Centre for the New Europe (CNE) explain that "free market conservatism" and "anarcho-capitalism" is a product of huge value to corporations and foundations that want to promote these ideas. In his opening pep talk, Evans called on the assembled think tanks to aim for nothing less than winning the "battle of ideas". The Brussels-based CNE, known for its annual Capitalist Ball (an invitation-only event held in a luxurious venue in central Brussels), plays a key role in the Stockholm Network.

As well as providing a network function, the Stockholm Network is a think tank itself. It regularly organises debates in Brussels, often under the title "the Amigo Society". These debates, held in Hotel Amigo in central Brussels, focus on issues like (the commercialisation of) health care and (the costliness of) social security, public pension systems and other features of the welfare state. The Stockholm Network also co-hosts events in London and other cities all around Europe. Debates in London, often held in association with the Economist magazine, have titles such as "An apology for capitalism?" (referring to corporate social responsibility, which the Stockholm Network finds unnecessary). Speakers and special guests at recent Stockholm Network events included pro-globalisation guru Johan Norberg, Dutch Social Security Minister Hans Hoogervorst and then European Commissioner Bolkestein.

Helen Disney is the private owner and Director of The Stockholm Network as well as Market House International. She has a strong background in think tanks and the media. Formerly an editorial writer for The Times and an editorial writer and commentator for the Daily Express, she continues to write regularly on a range of public policy topics for newspapers, magazines and websites.

Cuttings include the Daily Express and Sunday Express, Public Finance, Public Service Magazine, and The Sprout, a satirical Brussels-based magazine, as well as regular weekly entries for the Centre for the New Europe's health weblog, CNE Health.

She also makes regular appearances on TV and in radio debates including 'Heart of the Matter', 'Kilroy', BBC News, BBC Radio Scotland , Radio 4's Talking Politics and the BBC World Service.

Since 1997, she has been Director of the Stockholm Network, a unique service organisation of over 100 European market-oriented think-tanks. The Network acts as a one stop shop for organisations seeking to work with Europe 's most innovative policy experts and thinkers.

Helen also undertakes consultancy work on public policy issues for corporate clients.

From 1996-2000, she worked at the Social Market Foundation, an independent pro-market think-tank in Westminster , where she was Deputy Director and Editor of The Review, a quarterly journal.

She has edited a number of think-tank publications including The Sex-Change Society by Melanie Phillips, published by the Social Market Foundation, and Europe's Welfare Burden , and Breaking Down the Barriers published by Civitas: The Institute for the Study of Civil Society for the Stockholm Network.

Helen is a member of the Chartered Institute of Journalists, Women in Journalism and the Women Writers Network. She holds a degree in French and Italian from Bristol University and speaks conversational Spanish.

Nicole Gray Conchar is Director of Development at Market House. Her career in public policy and think tank fundraising spans more than ten years. From 1992 to 1998, she was Director of Sponsor Services at the Cato Institute in Washington DC, responsible for raising high dollar contributions from individuals and for executing major donor events around the world. She moved to New York City in 1998 to become Development Director at School Choice Scholarships and, concurrently, Membership Director at the Manhattan Institute. In 2000, she became Director of Development at the Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington, New York and served as its interim President.

She took leave of absence from the public policy and think tank world on two occasions to work on Steve Forbes' 1996 and 2000 presidential campaigns, helping to raise over one million dollars of funding for each campaign.

Prior to relocating to the United Kingdom in 2003, Nicole was founding Executive Director of the Donald & Paula Smith Family Foundation. The mission of the Foundation is to defend free speech and a free society. This is achieved through the critical examination of ideas and the sponsoring of public policy debates and related activities in the New York City area.

Nicole Gray Conchar is Development Director at the International Policy Network, and founder of the Donald & Paula Smith Family Foundation.

Members of the Network
The London-based think-tank Civitas, which also acts as the Network's administrative centre, Timbro a free market think-tank in Stockholm, Paradigmes a pro-market consultancy in Paris and The Centre for the New Europe (CNE), a pan-European think tank based in Brussels. Participants in Stockholm Network events are high-profile politicos and thinkers, including government officials, Ministers, MPs, policy experts, journalists, academics, philanthropists and business leaders.

In Sweden members include:
1. Timbro
2. Ratio Institute
3. Eudoxa
4. Captus

Quotes;

"The Stockholm Network is a cooperative group of European free-market think tanks which aims to create the preconditions for a "reform-minded" and "well-informed" debate on the European welfare state." 2000

On its website the groups states that it "brings together more than 131 market-oriented think tanks from across Europe, giving us the capacity to deliver local messages and locally-tailored global messages across the EU and beyond."

"The Stockholm Network is funded by a wide range of individuals, corporations and foundations. A mixture of for-profit and not-for-profit organisations, some SN supporters are the world's largest global enterprises."

"The Stockholm Network does not have a board. Privately owned by Helen Disney, the organisation is structured to avoid the bureaucracy and factionalism that sometimes comes from more complicated arrangements. Instead, we consult informally with other think tank leaders, patrons and supporters on a regular basis to receive feedback on our work and ideas for future development."

The Network is interested in ideas which stimulate economic growth and help people to help themselves. We promote policies which create the social and economic conditions for a free society. These include:
* Reforming European welfare states and creating a more flexible labour market.
* Creating competition and choice in healthcare, through reform of European health systems and markets.
* Creating a market in which world class education can flourish.
* Emphasising the benefits of globalisation and creating an understanding of free market ideas.

Publicising Think Tank Activities

We asked our members by what means they publicise their think tank activities. The results showed that 47% of our members publicise via blogs, and 23% use RSS Feeds and 7% stream their events live over the Internet.

"2007 our work is kindly supported by many sponsors, both corporate and private":

Amazon EU
Beacon Books
Bertrams Books
BGN Distributie
Blackwell’s Book Service UK
Blackwell’s Business & Law Bookshop
Bookshop J Story Scientia
BUPA
Burson Marsteller
Civita A/S
Coronet Books Inc
Daunt Books
Dawson Books
DEA S.p.A.
The Economist
Eli Lilly
Elisa Kangaskoski
Erasmus Booksellers
EU Bookshop
EU Observer
European Bookshop Ltd
Exxon Mobil Corporation
Fachbuchhandlung fur Sprachen
FSF Ltd - Public Finance Magazine
The Fund for American Studies
Gardners Books
General Healthcare Group
GlaxoSmithKline
GML
Hannay Booksellers
Heffers Booksellers
Hill & Knowlton
Holt Jackson Book Co.
IFPMA
Institute of Directors
IPN
KLIO Bookshop
Kueper International
Booksellers
LCS Consulting
Lehmann - Mulheim
Marsh Inc
Massman International
Booksellers
McDermott Will & Emery
Merck
The Merck Foundation
Merck Sharp and Dohme
Microsoft
Motion Picture Association
Muenstergass-Buchhandlung
Nuffield Hospitals
OLFZI
Patrick Barbour
Pfizer Inc.
Pfizer UK
PhRMA
Precise Public Affairs
Progress & Freedom
Foundation
Schering Plough AB
Schweitzer Sortiment Wien
Starkmann Ltd
Strassner GmbH
TSO Bookshop
Uitgevrerij Peeters
UST Public Affairs
VeriSign Inc
Verizon

Sources:
Wikipedia
Sourcewatch
AboutUs

Related:
Market House International
Money Spinner
Pfizer and Microsoft sponsored rightwing thinktank in the Netherlands
Covert industry funding fuels the expansion of radical rightwing EU think tanks
ExxonMobil covertly funds EU climate skeptics
EU think tank boom
Inaccuracies in Stockholm Network report
'Terrorism Studies' And The War On Dissent
Moderat politik lika grå som förr
Vem finansierar högerns nya nätverk?
Alexa Links

Timbro

2007-11-25T03:20:00.000-08:00

Timbro was founded in 1978 by Sture Eskilsson and the Swedish Employers' Association (Svenska Arbetsgivareföreningen) (which in 2001 merged with the Swedish Industrial Association to form the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise).

Timbro is a subsidiary of the Swedish Free Enterprise Foundation, which is financed by the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise (Svenskt Näringsliv).

Timbro is a subsidiary of the Swedish Free Enterprise Foundation, which is financed by the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise.

Chief executive officers of Timbro have been:

* Mats Svegfors, 1981–1983
* Mats Johansson,
* Odd Eiken,
* P. J. Anders Linder, 1996–2000
* Mattias Bengtsson, 2000–2004
* Cecilia Stegö Chilò, 2005–2006
* Maria Rankka, 2006–present

Other notable people currently or previously associated with Timbro include;
Johan Norberg
Fredrik Erixon
Johnny Munkhammar
Fredrik Segerfeldt
Erik Zsiga
Kristian Karlsson
Dick Kling
Dick Erixon
Mattias Svensson
Sven Otto Littorin
Ulf Kristersson
Henrik Landerholm
Christofer Fjellner
Johan Forssell
Carl Rudbeck

---
MEDIA CULPA: SvD editorial blog a sandbox for free market think-tank Timbro
Pfizer Forum

Center for the New Europe

2007-11-25T02:18:00.000-08:00

The Centre for the New Europe is a think tank based in Brussels whose Web site was apparently first registered in St. Paul, Minnesota by Richard Miniter, a conservative American pundit, WSJ editor, senior fellow at the Center for the New Europe and author of "Losing bin Laden: How Bill Clinton's Failures Unleashed Global Terror" articles like "Rabid Weasels - The sickness of "old Europe" is a danger to the world."

Its hosts events for policymakers, parliamentarians and journalists, and publishes reports and books on a range of free market topics.

Founded in 1993 by a Belgian lawyer and a Belgian journalist after a meeting in the Hilton Hotel on the Toison d'Or in Brussels, it is very strongly pro-free-market, with a particular focus on the privatisation of healthcare. It is a member of the International Policy Network and regularly collaborates with other members of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation network. It is also a member of the Stockholm Network of European free-market think tanks.

The funding of the CNE is intransparent. It failed to answer a think tank survey by the Corporate Europe Observatory in 2005. However, the annual reports of Exxon Mobil reveal that CNE in 2003 and 2004 received $40,000 and $80,000 respectively for its "Global Climate Change Education Efforts".

Tim Evans of the Centre for the New Europe (CNE) explain that "free market conservatism" and "anarcho-capitalism" is a product of huge value to corporations and foundations that want to promote these ideas.
On 11 August 2005, economics editor Dr. Karen Horn reported in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on the growing influence of European Think Thanks. She emphasized the pivotal role of Pierre Garello, Universität Aix-Marseille III, and Hardy Bouillon, Centre for the New Europe, in establishing the Annual European Resource Bank Meetings and described other important network activities in Europe: The free-marketeers rise up.

Sources:
Sourcewatch

Related:
Pfizer Forum
Here Comes the New Europe
Outrage at 'old Europe' remarks

By Richard Miniter:
The sickness of "old Europe" is a danger to the world.
The Iraqi Connection
European Firms Learn to Get Mean

By President of the Center for the New Europe Stephen Pollard:
The real antisemitism
The real threat is Iraq - as Bush's men have said for years
If Syria isn't next on America's hit list, it certainly should be
Why Israel is right to assassinate Hamas leaders
Britain's role is crucial in next stage of war on terror - Iran
Am I doubted because I'm a Jew?

Heritage Foundation

2007-11-25T02:16:00.001-08:00

The creation of the influential Heritage Foundation was probably the single most important event in the development of a national network of conservative policy-oriented institutions.

Heritage was founded in 1973 by the anti-labor, racist, homophobic brewery magnate Joseph Coors together with prominent right-wing activist Paul Weyrich and wealthy right-wingers Richard Scaife and Edward Noble.

Conservative activist Paul Weyrich was its first head. Since 1977, Heritage's president has been Edwin Feulner, Jr., previously the staff director of the House Republican Study Committee and a former staff assistant to U.S. Congressman Phil Crane

In 1989, Edwin Feulner was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal, the second highest civilian award in the United States awarded by Ronald Reagan. He is also past president and current Treasurer and Trustee of the Mont Pelerin Society.

In May of 2007 Feulner wrote an editorial titled "Our right to go to war"

The initial funding came from Coors ($250,000), Scaife ($900,000), and "significant sums" from Noble. Large corporations, including Gulf Oil, also made early contributions. In the early 1980s, Heritage reported that "87 top corporations" were supporters. By 1995, it had an annual budget of $25 million.

The Heritage Foundation is a New Right think tank. Its stated mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of "free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense." It is widely considered one of the world's most influential public policy research institutes.

The Foundation wields considerable influence in Washington, and enjoyed particular prominence during the Reagan administration. Its initial funding was provided by Joseph Coors, of the Coors beer empire, and Richard Mellon Scaife, heir of the Mellon industrial and banking fortune. The Foundation maintains strong ties with the London Institute of Economic Affairs and the Mont Pelerin Society.

With a long history of receiving large donations from overseas, Heritage continues to rake in a minimum of several hundred thousand dollars from Taiwan and South Korea each year.

In autumn of 1988, the South Korean National Assembly uncovered a document revealing that Korean intelligence gave $2.2 million to the Heritage Foundation on the sly during the early 1980s. Heritage officials "categorically deny" the accusation.

Heritage's latest annual report does acknowledge a $400,000 grant from the Korean conglomerate Samsung. Another donor, the Korea Foundation - which conduits money from the South Korean government - has given Heritage almost $1 million in the past three years.

The Heritage Foundation concerns itself with many issues, from missile defense to Europe to public administration, and about 20 other subject areas. It regularly publishes comprehensive articles, papers, journals, etc., expressing its strong neo-conservative opinions in these subject areas.

While the Foundation has contributed many ideas and positions on contemporary public policy, it is best known for the support generated by its foreign policy analysts in the 1980s and early 1990s to provide military and other support to anti-communist resistance movements in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Nicaragua and other nations, a policy that came to be known as the Reagan doctrine.

In a February 2003 paper, the ultra-right Heritage Foundation urged continuing pressure on Venezuela to restructure its economy to promote private enterprise and investment, and called on international organizations supported by the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to “continue to advise the full spectrum of Venezuela’s political parties, civic groups and unions.”(link)

The CIA also helped create the conservative think tank movement. Prior to the 70s, think tanks spanned the political spectrum, with moderate think tanks receiving three times as much funding as conservative ones. At these early think tanks, scholars typically brainstormed for creative solutions to policy problems. This would all change after the rise of conservative foundations in the early 70s.

The Heritage Foundation opened its doors in 1973, the recipient of $250,000 in seed money from the Coors Foundation. A flood of conservative think tanks followed shortly thereafter, and by 1980 they overwhelmed the scene. The new think tanks turned out to be little more than propaganda mills, rigging studies to "prove" that their corporate sponsors needed tax breaks, deregulation and other favors from government.

Heritage has received support from nearly 100 major corporations, including Chase Manhattan Bank, Dow Chemical Company, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, GlaxoSmithKline, Mobil, and Procter & Gamble

Sources:
Media Transparency
Sourcewatch
DKosopedia
Charity Navigator

Related:
Bill Maher YouTube
The Origins of the Overclass
Heritage Foundation on Hunger: Let Them Eat Broccoli
Heritage Foundation: Capitalizing on Hurricane Katrina
Foreign Interventions of the Reagan Administration
Battle of the Washington think tanks
Heritage New Media Partners
The Heritage Foundation Homeland Defense Project
CARR

The Adam Smith Institute

2007-11-25T01:57:00.000-08:00

Madsen Pirie, Eamonn Butler and Stuart Butler (the Butlers are brothers) were students together at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. In 1973, they left Scotland to work with Edwin Feulner, who became co-founder of the free-market think tank the Heritage Foundation, in 1973.

The Adam Smith Institute (ASI), based in London, has been a major force for the introduction of market-based policies in Britain. It operates as a UK think tank.

In the early 1990s, the Institute extensively licensed and sold its name around the world. IIR, the world's largest conference company, has the rights to the name Adam Smith Institute in Russia. In Western Europe, Marketforce Communications Ltd has the right to organise conferences under the ASI name. At one point Business Seminars International Ltd had a license to use the ASI name.

After their apprenticeship in the United States, Pirie and Eamonn Butler returned to Scotland in 1977 to found their own think tank, the Adam Smith Institute, set up with the help of Antony Fisher of the Institute of Economic Affairs. Stuart Butler is a conservative activist in Washington, D.C., remaining at the Heritage Foundation.

Sources:
Sourcewatch

Related:
THE INFLUENCE OF THE ADAM SMITH INSTITUTE
Dr Pirie Changes Trains

American Enterprise Institute

2007-11-25T01:56:00.000-08:00

The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) is an extremely influential, pro-business right-wing think tank founded in 1943 by Lewis H. Brown. It promotes the advancement of free enterprise capitalism, and succeeds in placing its people in influential governmental positions. It is the center base for many neo-conservatives.

More recently, it has emerged as one of the leading architects of the Bush administration's foreign policy. AEI rents office space to the Project for the New American Century , one of the leading voices that pushed the Bush administration's plan for "regime change" through war in Iraq. AEI reps have also aggressively denied that the war has anything to do with oil.

American Enterprise Institute (AEI) serves as home base for a long list of influential figures, including several former George W. Bush administration officials like John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, John Yoo, and David Frum. President Bush highlighted the institute's standing in the policy world during a January 2003 speech at an AEI dinner celebrating neoconservative forefather Irving Kristol. After commending AEI for having "some of the finest minds in our nation," the president said: "You do such good work that my administration has borrowed 20 such minds."

Having helped lead the effort to push public support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq—including by creating influential advocacy groups like the Project for the New American Century (PNAC)—AEI writers and scholars turned their attention to Iran and other Mideast hotspots during the final years of George W. Bush's administration.

The Guardian reported further that AEI "has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil, and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush administration. Lee Raymond, a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AEI's board of trustees"

Among AEI's more outspoken scholars on expanded U.S. intervention in the Middle East have been Michael Ledeen and Reuel Marc Gerecht.

Quotes:
"Introduction to 2005 Irving Kristol Lecture
Christopher DeMuth
President, AEI

Vice President and Mrs. Cheney, President Aznar, distinguished guests, welcome to the American Enterprise Institute(s 2005 Annual Dinner and Irving Kristol Lecture. My AEI colleagues and I are very gratified that such a large and accomplished congregation should be gathered here this evening. We are especially grateful for the generous support of our good friends at Pfizer and of the esteemed ladies and gentlemen of our Dinner Committee.

President Bush(s bold recasting of American foreign policy, and stirring recent developments in Iraq, Ukraine, Afghanistan, and now throughout the Middle East, maybe more this afternoon, maybe Iran is next, have given us what Michael Novak wrote of in a 2004 book--“some faint reason to believe that the narrative of liberty will not be finished until it has suffused every society on Earth.” (Link)

Sources:
Sourcewatch
Rightweb
ExxonSecrets
MediaTransparency
CharityNavigator
PFAW
CooperativeResearch

Related:
Bush-Aznar memo
Wolfowitz Returns Home
Office of Special Plans
Think-Tank Confidential
The Right’s "Race Desk"
Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study
The AEI, Iran and a Free Press
AEI Brookings Joint Center
Key Officials Used 9/11 As Pretext for Iraq War
Enemy of the Planet
Michael Ledeen Lies During FOX News/White House Iran War Push

By Michael Ledeen:
You Want Peace? Make War
Machiavelli on Our War
Machiavelli on Modern Leadership
Creative Destruction
Torah vs. Tyranny

The Cato Institute

2007-11-25T01:55:00.000-08:00

Founded in 1977 by Charles Koch and Edward H. Crane, the Cato Institute moved to Washington, D.C. in 1981 in a bid to become an influential player in Washington policy circles.

Today (1997), Cato is a multi-million dollar, multi-issue research and advocacy organization with a staff of 40-plus senior managers, policy analysts, and communications specialists. It is also assisted by the work of over 75 adjunct Cato scholars, including ultra-conservative law professors Richard Epstein (University of Chicago) and Henry G. Manne.

The Cato Institute is a non-profit public policy research foundation (think tank) with strong libertarian leanings, headquartered in Washington, D.C.

The Cato Institute is named after Cato's Letters, a series of libertarian pamphlets that Cato's founders say helped lay the philosophical foundation for the American Revolution.

Its stated mission is "to broaden the parameters of public policy debate to allow consideration of the traditional American principles of limited government, individual liberty, free markets, and peace" by seeking greater involvement of the "lay public in questions of public policy and the role of government." Despite its decidedly ideological agenda on many topics, members of the Cato Institute are often cited as non-partisan experts on news programs.

Following the November 1994 elections, the Institute published and delivered to every member of Congress The Cato Handbook, a 358-page, 39 chapter volume containing policy reforms and proposals in every vital public policy area, including budget and tax reduction, social security, Medicare, education, environmental reform, and foreign and defense policy.

One year later, the Institute launched its Project on Social Security Privatization, co-chaired by Jose Pinera, Chile's former minister of labor and welfare, and William Shipman, of State Street Global Advisors, which has been actively promoting private alternatives to social security, both financially and via an extensive public relations campaign.

Cato in 1983 published an article calling for privatization of the system. The article argued that companies that stand to profit from privatization -- 'the banks, insurance companies and other institutions that will gain' -- had to be brought into alliance. Second, the article called for initiation of 'guerrilla warfare against both the current Social Security system and the coalition that supports it.'"

The Cato Institute has been a tireless defender of the tobacco industry. Robert A. Levy, a Senior Fellow at the Institute, has published numerous editorials in support of the tobacco industry. In one 1999 piece written with Cato fellow Rosalind Marimont and published in the Cato magazine Regulation, Levy claimed that the public health estimate of over 400,000 Americans dying each year from smoking was a lie.

In line with the organization's libertarian principles, Cato scholars have been vocal in defense of civil liberties in the face of encroachments by the Bush administration.

However, one Cato scholar, Roger Pilon, has been known to set aside libertarian principles to endorse the Bush administration's moves to restrict civil liberties as part of the war on terror. In 2002, a Cato news release endorsed new Justice Department guidelines giving greater latitude to FBI agents to monitor Internet sites, libraries and religious institutions. "As reported in the press, the new FBI surveillance guidelines present no serious problems," declared Cato legal affairs analyst Roger Pilon, a former Reagan administration official who writes frequent Cato commentaries.

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch previously served on the board of directors of Cato, which has numerous ties to the Republican Party.

Quotes:
Cato Institute scholar Arnold Kling writing at TCS Daily:
"I believe that what we need going forward is a policy of disarming Muslims. I believe that we must keep devout Muslims away from weapons, and keep weapons away from devout Muslims. I can work with Muslims, send my children to school with Muslims, and be friends with Muslims. I do not have an issue with their religion, as long as they do not have weapons. However, the combination of weapons and Islam poses unacceptable danger to the rest of us."

Sources:
Pfaw
Sourcewatch

Related:
The Cato Hypocrisy
The Cato Institute: "Libertarian"In A Corporate Way
Cato: Happy Birthday, Milton Friedman
Rumsfeld: Tribute to Milton Friedman
Media Moguls on Board-Murdoch, Malone and the Cato Institute
The Cato Institute or Anarchism seen through the Multinationals’ Eyes
Criticisms of the Cato Institute.
Plotting Privatization?
Howie Rich Exposed
Et tu, Cato?
Et Tu, Cato? Pt. 2
The Beltway Loves Cato

Mission Statement

1988-12-12T19:36:00.000-08:00

The mission of this "not really a blog" is to map a phenomena well described in these quotes;

"Too Many Free-Market Think Tanks?
by Mark Skousen

Back in 1946, there was only one free-market organization in the United States: the Foundation for Economic Education, run by Leonard Read. If you were a classical liberal, you wrote for The Freeman (now Ideas for Liberty) and contributed to FEE.

But then along came a British chicken farmer, Sir Anthony Fisher (1915-1988), who established the Institute of Economic Affairs in London. Tony was so enamored with the idea of setting up free-market foundations that he created an organization for the very purpose of creating more institutes around the world: The Atlas Economic Research Foundation, based in Fairfax, Virginia.

Over 350 Institutes in over 50 Countries

By going to their web site, www.atlas-fdn.org, you'll discover its virtual directory, which contains the web site links of hundreds of public-policy institutes in 50 countries. Of course, the big names are there, such as Heritage, Cato and the American Enterprise Institute. But you'll also find dozens of smaller, lesser-known groups in Europe, Asia and Latin America.

Think tanks sometimes have an objective name, like the Independent Institute or the National Center for Policy Analysis, while others are purposeful and include in their title terms like reason, liberty, sound economy or free enterprise. Others are named after a location like Manhattan or Mont Pelerin. Many are linked to famous classical liberal philosophers like Adam Smith, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, James Madison, Alexis de Tocqueville, Lord Acton and Edmund Burke.

Atlas Leads the Charge

The Atlas Foundation doesn't think there are enough think tanks. It has a section of its web site devoted to showing you how to set up your own institute. In "The Need for More Institutes," Atlas quotes Milton Friedman. I noticed several free-market think tanks devoted to environmental issues. None of them are very big. Maybe if they combined forces, they could offer a countervailing power" to the Sierra Club or Earth First."
Source

“Global companies are buying up think-tanks left, right and centre. Large cheques come attached to particular policy recommendations and senior corporate types sit on committees ready to ‘candle-snuff’ dangerous ideas.” John Blundell

"In Europe, however, the think tank movement has become stagnant. Its business community appears to have forgotten the secret uncovered by Antony Fisher: think tanks can be the most effective, yet subtle, vehicles for influencing the development of public policy and the deliberations of governments." Leonard Liggio

Feedback

1971-12-31T01:47:00.000-08:00

Please post your views, tips and criticism here! Här kan in ge mig tips, kritik eller skäll!

Glossary

1971-12-08T21:06:00.000-08:00