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Liberty
Forum Energizes, Inspires
If you were at the Atlas Liberty Forum and Freedom Dinner, you
could not help but feel the buzz of positive energy and ideas being
exchanged among friends in the freedom movement. The two-day event
held over November 9-10 in Washington D.C. brought together more
than 340 individuals, representing more than 30
countries.
At
the Freedom Dinner, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist George Will
offered encouraging words about the prospects for returning to a
path of limited government, and saluted those in the audience. Will
said, "What Atlas understands is the connection between free
markets, liberty, and the creation of a character that makes a free
society work."
The Dinner was capped by four inspired "Toasts to Freedom" from
Alvaro Vargas Llosa, Giancarlo Ibarguen, Kris Mauren and Linda
Whetstone -- all of whom also used the occasion to toast Atlas
President Alex Chafuen. The Atlas team and friends in the worldwide
network surprised Alex with a gift in his honor, as he passed the
milestone of 25 years working to advance the Atlas mission. Read "25 Years and
Counting: A Tribute to Alejandro Chafuen."
The
Liberty Forum itself kicked off with a fun "speed networking"
session that helps attendees get to know their peers advancing the
cause of liberty, and then featured 14 different sessions which
covered policy topics (reigning in government spending, achieving
sound money, promoting educational freedom, expanding energy
options) and strategies for think tank success (communications
messaging, doing more with less, effective student outreach,
applying business principles to think tank work). The sessions also
showcased inspiring freedom champions who have had a real impact on
the climate of ideas, as well as others beginning to make progress
under very difficult circumstances.
There
were two exciting luncheon programs within the Liberty Forum. The
first honored the winners of the 2010 Templeton Freedom Awards, and
featured Gabriel Calzada of Instituto Juan de
Mariana in Spain, who told the amazing story of
how his small think tank in Madrid changed the debate over U.S.
green energy policy. The next day, Atlas delivered a special
luncheon conversation featuring luminaries of the think tank world
-- Ed Crane (Cato Institute),
Giancarlo Ibarguen (Universidad Francisco
Marroquín), Kris Mauren (Acton Institute), and
Chip Mellor (Institute for Justice).
Atlas board member John Blundell led an insightful conversation
with this distinguished panel about the ingredients that fuel
successful think tanks. Between these luncheons, on the night of
November 9, Atlas celebrated the anniversary of the fall of the
Berlin Wall by viewing a film, Rockin' the Wall, and
listening to performances by talented musicians who also happen to
run think tanks in the Atlas network.
Some
of the attendees at Liberty Forum also participated in Atlas's Think Tank 101
training program, which was held in the days leading up
the major event. Some stayed on to participate in additional
programs separately organized afterward by the Ayn Rand Institute and the Cato Institute. The
combined program provided opportunities for discovering new ideas,
new strategies, and new partners for advancing the ideas of a free
society.
2010 Liberty Forum
and Freedom Dinner in Photos
The
next Liberty Forum will take place November 8-10, 2011, with Nobel
Prize-winner Mario Vargas Llosa as the keynote speaker at the
Freedom Dinner. Atlas's next major networking conference will be
The Atlas
Experience held in Dallas on April 27-28, 2011,
featuring author of In Defense of Global Capitalism and
Financial Fiasco, Johan Norberg.
Read
below to learn more about Atlas's Sound Money Project, India's
Freedom Champion and Europe's debt crises. But first, some
important deadlines for Atlas training programs and some quick
headlines from your allies in the Atlas network.
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Upcoming Deadlines
Deadline for the 2010 Fisher Awards, December
1st!
In 1990 Atlas established the Sir Antony Fisher
International Memorial Awards to commemorate Atlas's founder's
ideals and achievements. The Fisher Award recognizes institutes
that have published a book, magazine, report, monograph or study
that, in the opinion of the judges, made the greatest contribution
to public understanding of the free society in the past two years.
The deadline to enter is December 1. The winning
institute receives a US$10,000. The award ceremony will take place
in April 2011 at The Atlas
Experience in Dallas, Texas. Contact Antonie Hodge at Antonie.Hodge@AtlasNetwork.org for more
information.
Think Tank MBA Deadline is December 15!
Think Tank MBA is
the most comprehensive training program available for think tank
leaders. Held over a two-week period in the suburbs of Washington
DC, the TTMBA, as it's known, immerses participants in the task of
developing and refining a strategic plan that could be used for
their institute or program back home. The course involves
interactive discussions, classroom exercises, a challenging
day-long group project, and lectures from distinguished outside
speakers. The deadline to apply is December 15! Click here to
apply...
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Network News from Around
the World
Africa
mPedigree wins Global Security
Award for start-up enterprises, the mobile technology
firm that allows consumers to ensure drugs aren't counterfeit was
founded by IMANI (Ghana) Director of Development, Bright
Simons
"Exchange controls
are an apartheid relic," Jasson Urbach of the Free Market Foundation (South
Africa) argues for abolishing foreign exchange controls
Asia
"Cultivating minds with fresh
ideas," an article in the Malaysian online New
Straits Times on the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affiairs
(Malaysia) which runs Atlas's Bahasa Indonesia-language platform,
AkademiMerdeka.org
Europe
Cuban blogger wins $50,000 freedom
prize, the Danish think tank CEPOS, a recipient of
Atlas's Fisher Venture Grant, awarded Yoani Sánchez with its
Freedom Award. Sánchez is author of the blog Generación Y and was nominated by Human
Rights Foundation President Thor Halvorssen
Small Government = Good Government,
the title of a conference held in Bratislava on November 2 by the
Institute for Economic and Social Studies
(Slovakia) in cooperation with the Slovak Association for Knowledge
Society. The event attracted over 200 attendees and featured
speakers such as Slovak Finance Minister Ivan Miklos, Mercatus
Center's Maurice McTigue and Jan Oravek of the Hayek
Foundation
And the winners
are..., the International Policy Network (UK)
has awarded Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal and
James Delingpole of Telegraph.co.uk the 2010 Bastiat Prize
for Journalism
Italian debt clock, launched by
Istituto Bruno Leoni (Italy), the counter will provide a
minute-by-minute estimate of the
public debt which as of
June was €1,838,296,063,250 or €30,724 for every
Italian (€80,327 for every working Italian).
Middle
East
Kareem freed!,
Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil Soliman, who spent four years
in prison for insulting Islam and defaming President Mubarak, has
been released
Latin America
Celebrating 20 years of Libertad y
Desarrollo, the Chilean think tank will hold its 20th
anniversary event on December 18-19 in Santiago and will feature
Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, former Spanish President José
María Aznar, former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe and current
Chilean President Sebastián Piñera. Also, LyD is holding a liberty
workshop, Universidad de Verano
El Cato-Lyd, in conjunction with the Cato Institute, in Santiago
from December 14-16
Virtue and Civil
Participation in Latin America, Instituto Democracia y
Mercado (Chile) in collaboration with the Leadership Institute (US) will
hold a program in Arlington, Virginia from November 28-December 3
on public policy, technology, leadership and public
participation
Liberty and security in Peru,
Instituto Político para la Libertad is holding a conference titled
"Freedom: A perspective on security" in Lima on December 8
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Atlas Publishes A
Guide to Sound Money
Discord at the G-20 Summit has pushed the topic of Sound Money onto
the front pages, making the release of A Guide to Sound
Money (written by Atlas fellow Judy Shelton, and co-published
by Atlas and FreedomWorks) particularly timely. The Guide
is available here as a PDF download on
Atlas's SoundMoneyProject.org website, and will be
formally launched as part of an event on Capitol Hill on December
7. The growing interest in the topic of Sound Money was evident at
the Atlas Liberty Forum, which featured a policy session which is
summarized by Atlas fellow Tom Duncan in the article, "Getting On Track." Atlas is interested
in learning what other organizations are doing to introduce new
ideas or raise awareness of mounting problems in regard to monetary
policy. Contact Priscilla.Tacujan@AtlasNetwork.org to update us
and explore possible synergies.
Atlas's Leonard Liggio on "The Politics of the Irish
Financial Crisis"
"The current economic crisis in Ireland has a political dimension
... [The country] has been able to attract foreign investment in
production in Ireland with a low corporation tax. It had drawn
revenue strongly from a tax on real estate transactions which now
have disappeared. The EU powers want Ireland to increase its
corporation tax so as not to be competitive with the continental
states." Keep reading...
Freedom Champions Video Series, This Month: Gurcharan
Das
The first edition of Atlas's latest video series "Freedom
Champions" featured Africa's Adedayo Thomas and was spotlighted in
the non-profit section of YouTube and received almost
12,000 views. See it here. This month's
edition interviews Gurcharan Das, author of the best-selling India Unbound and his
most recent book, The Difficulty of Being
Good, is on the subtle art of "dharma," or doing what's
right. Das examines the epic poem, Mahabharata, asking the
question "Why be good?" He is also a historian and public
intellectual that champions school choice and classical liberal
reforms in India. As chairman of the Centre for Civil Society (India), Das has been
a pioneer of India's school voucher program. In 2009, the Indian
government adopted many of the education reforms that CSS was
advocating. Watch this video in Atlas's
"Freedom Champions" series on Gurcharan Das.
Think Tank 101 Trains 19 Leaders from 14
Countries
Atlas's 2010 Think Tank 101 program was held
November 6-8 in Washington D.C. Nineteen participants from 14
different countries in North and South America, Europe, Asia and
the Middle East came together to re-charge their batteries and
re-visit the ideas of liberty that motivate their work. After a
welcome dinner, the participants took part in an Ideas Colloquium
moderated by Liberty Fund's Jennifer Thompson. Articles by F.A.
Hayek and James M. Buchanan generated questions about the precise
definition of intellectuals influencing the climate of opinion in
today's blogosphere. Attendees participated in sessions ranging
from planning, the principles of leadership, and outcomes
measurement. Montreal Economic Institute
president Michel Kelly-Gagnon led three critical sessions on
positioning one's think tank, the key aspects of relational
fundraising and working successfully with boards. Yarden Gazit of
the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies said of
the program, "While there are no simple or easy answers to the
challenges my institute faces, the guidance provided at Think Tank
101 helped me think more clearly about the steps we must take to
address them. By posing the right questions, the program may have
saved us from inefficient use of our limited resources." See pictures here. Click here
to read more about this year's
program. To be considered for next year's Think Tank 101, email
Cindy.Cerquitella@AtlasNetwork.org
Europe's Economic Armageddon and Frank Dikötteron on
Mao's Great Famine
Emmanuel Martin, director of Atlas's French-language platform,
UnMondeLibre.org, was interviewed in a
Christian Broadcasting Network article online about the
consequences of the European welfare state and the current debt
crises in the European Union. "[The big problem with the French is]
they've been brainwashed by politicians that the welfare state is
like Santa Claus when in fact it's not," Martin said. "Half the
population in France does not pay income tax." Read the full
article, "The Welfare State: Europe's
Economic Armageddon" here. Also, Martin recently interviewed
Professor Frank Dikötteron, author of Mao's Great Famine: The
History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, on the
consequences of collectivism. Listen in English here, or read French excerpts
here.
Atlas Fellow Deroy Murdock on "Stossel" discussing Political
Correctness and in NRO on China-bashing
Deroy Murdock appeared on the Fox Business Channel show
"Stossel" discussing "Being Politically Correct: Have we gone too
far?" on November 11th. View the segment
here. Also, read Murdock's recent article in the
National Review Online, "Stop Slamming
China." Murdock says, "Beijing's exports should be no more
surprising than a home delivery of wonton soup ordered from a local
Chinese restaurant. Chinese-made goods are here because Americans
demand them." Read it
here...
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Contact
Information
phone: 202.449.8449
fax: 202.280.1259
address: 1201 L St. NW, Washington, DC 20005
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