[Firestarter]

Atlas, Mont Pelerin, NED

The Atlas Network works with 450 foundations, NGOs, think tanks and advocacy groups, with an operating budget of $5 million in 2016, coming from charitable and non-profit foundations from the US.
Atlas helped to alter the political landscape in various countries in Latin America and is effectively an extension of Anglo-American foreign policy. The think tanks associated with Atlas are financed by the Koch billionaire brothers, State Department and National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

The libertarian Atlas Network has "reshaped political power in country after country", operating as an extension of U.S. foreign policy.
Atlas’ methods include providing grants for new think tanks and education on how to run a think tank and manipulate opinion through social media and online videos.
In 2014, Atlas provided $4,340,000 in funding to 177 partners in 68 different countries.

In 1981, Atlas was founded by Sir Antony Fisher.
In 1955, Fisher had founded the Institute of Economic Affairs (IAE) in London and helped to create the Fraser Institute, the Manhattan Institute and the Pacific Research Institute in the 1970s.
The basis for Fisher’s ideals came from Friedrich Hayek, who helped to found Otto von Habsburg’s Mont Pelerin Society. Member of Mont Pelerin, Ed Feulner, helped found the Washington Heritage Foundation. Another Mont Pelerin member, Ed Crane, founded the Libertarian Cato Institute.

None other than Milton Friedman said about the Institute of Economic Affairs:

It made possible Margaret Thatcher. It made possible not her election as prime minister but the policies that she was able to follow. And the same thing in this country, the developing thought along these lines made possible Ronald Reagan and the policies he was able to follow.

In 1981, Fisher sent his proposal on the Atlas Network to a list of prominent executives, including Richard Mellon Scaife, and soon money began to pour in from corporate coffers like Pfizer, Procter & Gamble and Royal Dutch Shell.
But Fisher knew that his financers needed to remain secret (like for the IAE), because:

To influence public opinion, it is necessary to avoid any suggestion of vested interest or intent to indoctrinate.

Atlas was funded over the years by Koch family foundations and by 2005 had received $440,000 from ExxonMobil and at least $825,000 from the tobacco company Philip Morris. MasterCard was also an Atlas donor.
In 1986, Atlas scheduled meetings with business executives so its network of think tanks could be funded from the US. An official from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) once recommended that the head of Coca-Cola’s subsidiary in Panama work with Atlas to set up an IEA-style Atlas think tank.
Atlas’ partners were also funded by CIA-front National Endowment for Democracy (NED, founded in 1983), which is funded largely by the State Department and USAID. The NED also controls Wikileaks…

In 1980, at age 26, the Argentinean born Alejandro Chafuen was invited to become the youngest member of the Mont Pelerin Society. He travelled to Stanford and within 5 years married an American.
Chafuen, like Fisher, noted that donors cannot appear to pay for polls because they would lose credibility:

Pfizer Inc. would not sponsor surveys on health issues nor would Exxon pay for surveys on environmental issues.

In 1991, 3 years after Fisher died, Chafuen became chairman of Atlas. Chafuen got the support of leading Libertarians, like investor John Templeton and the billionaire Koch brothers.

The Atlas network has funded hundreds of free-market think tanks in Latin America, including groups that supported the Free Brazil Movement.
Numerous Atlas-affiliated leaders are now in power:
Atlas funded a think tank that merged with the political party formed by Mauricio Macri, who became the president of Argentina and is connected to several ministers in Argentina;
Atlas has also supported protests in Venezuela and the campaign of Sebastián Pinera, the president of Chile;
Several senators in Bolivia.

Gerardo Bongiovanni, the president of Atlas think tank Fundación Libertad (Argentina), admitted that the first needed money came from NED’s grant partner, the Center for International Private Enterprise, $1 million between 1985 and 1987.
In 1998, Cedice Libertad, Atlas’s flagship in Caracas (Venezuela) received financial support from the Center for International Private Enterprise. Records leaked from Eva Golinger and Bradley Manning were used to insinuate that Atlas think tanks were trying to destabilise the Venezuelan of Hugo Chavez, a sophisticated effort to support Chavez…

The Trump administration is filled with alumni of Atlas-related groups and friends.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos (sister of Erik Prince) and Alejandro Chafuen both were leaders at Michigan think tank the Acton Institute, which now has an affiliate in Brazil (the Centro Interdisciplinar de Ética e Economia Personalista).
Vice President Mike Pence has attended an Atlas event and spoken highly of the group.
Trump’s counterterrorism adviser, Sebastian Gorka, once led an Atlas think tank in Hungary.
Senior fellow at the Atlas Network, Judy Shelton, was previously an adviser to the Trump campaign and transition and is now chairperson of the NED: https://theintercept.com/2017/08/09/atla...ca-brazil/
(http://archive.is/158TQ)