Move On and George Soros - www.ezboard.com

SRF Walrus

Mt. Washington, Ca

Open discussions about SRF

SRF Walrus > Not the Main Stream > Move On and George Soros
Page 1 2	<< Prev Topic \| Next Topic >>

Author	Comment
dontknownothinbouthistory Registered User (7/9/05 12:56 pm) Reply	Move On and George Soros 6/27/05 by divine gypsy " Anyone who would like to help defeat Rick Santorum, Tom DeLay, etc., can contribute here: www.moveonpac.org/give/05.html?id=5712-2396112-VRwABafQTR9NkF.e.mZIVg&t=1 "
dontknownothinbouthistory Registered User (7/9/05 12:58 pm) Reply	Re: Move On and George Soros 6/27/05 by metheuse " Please check out the following link: www.ericblumrich.com/14.html Turns out, the USA is currently displaying all 14 characteristics of a Nazi regime. Supporting the MoveOn cause may be our best hope. Thanks for the link, Divine Gypsy. "
dontknownothinbouthistory Registered User (7/9/05 1:00 pm) Reply	Re: Move On and George Soros 6/28/05 by dontknownothinbouthistory " George Soros the good bad and ugly George Soros in some ways put move on ...on the map He gave them 10 million. {George Soros has pre empted some major progressive tendencies around the world and presented a "liberal" face in his pr campaigns, many times and with large budgets. All the while he has bilked people in more than just a couple countries out of billions by manipulating currencies..... The articles by indy media and others ( please use teoma.com or google search engines) show him to be, in his less publicized life, to be driven to accumulate massive wealth and to be working for the CIA or be one step better than that, successful in CIA pursuits, more so than the CIA might dream of. Think twice about move on, they channeled major commitments, of blood sweat, tears, moeny, time and sacrifice to what........a Democratic candidate The Republicans can't rule, they bankrupt the next generation with huge tax cuts for the rich and have made this country technically bankrupt The Democrats can't win, Clinton won in 92 because Perot siphoned off enough votes from his opponent. In '96 Clinton won as a "dream Republican candidate" in a Democratic package. It was a nightmare to good (i.e. the wealthiest among the Nasdaq and NYSE) Republicans in '96 that Clinton would not be re-elected.} Just saying think twice about move-on. And while we're at it let's be a little less critical of leaders who took this country into fascism, and find the honesty to criticize ourselves for letting them do it! Food for thought
dontknownothinbouthistory Registered User (7/9/05 1:02 pm) Reply	Re: Move On and George Soros 6/29/05 by divine gypsy " Republicans are corrupt fascists, Democrats can't win, and MoveOn = George Soros so think twice about it. Uh, OK... I've thought twice. Now, I think I'll go make that contribution that I've been putting off. Sure enjoyed GWB's riveting speech last night. "
dontknownothinbouthistory Registered User (7/9/05 1:03 pm) Reply	Re: Move On and George Soros 07/04/05 by Paramadas " I am loathe to make fun of someone's handle, but dontknownothinbouthistory is just asking for it. Dear sir or madam, I daresay you could not have chosen a more appropriate handle, and you might have added that you are ignorant of currency markets and politics, not that these blazingly obvious facts kept you from spouting off. I can at least concur with your final statement, but in a democracy, there is just so much one can do when the majority has gotten an idea into its head. That's the downside of democracy. Sometimes a majority will lead us in the wrong direction. For the record, George Soros did not bilk anyone of anything. It's called trading, and it is part of the natural flow of money around the world. It is not evil, or immoral, or anything of the sort. Trading in currencies, like any other type of trading, takes two to tango. Someone has to be a buyer and someone else has to be a seller, and both parties have to be willing to engage in the transaction. If Mr. Soros wanted to buy a currency, someone had to be willing to sell it to him. No coersion is possible, since the whole deal occurs electronically, and when you offer to buy, it is impossible to tell who the seller is. The fact that Mr. Soros is a savvy trader, and has a better idea when sellers will be interested in selling and buyers interested in buying does not in any way make him a bad person. In fact, from the few interviews I've seen of him, my impressions are that he is a very intelligent and caring person. For example, he criticized America's cowboy approach to foreign policy, suggesting that maybe it was time for America to grow up and adopt a more mature approach to solving problems than invading tiny foreign countries. There ARE alternative approaches to foreign policy, such as the diplomacy that Secretary of State Albright formulated for dealing with North Korea, a policy which was bearing fruit just when the Texas cowboys in the Bush administration came in and ruined everything. Bottom line, please try not to criticize stuff that you don't understand. "
dontknownothinbouthistory Registered User (7/9/05 1:04 pm) Reply	Re: Move On and George Soros 07/08/05 by dontknownothinbouthistory " "I am loathe to make fun of someone's handle, but dontknownothinbouthistory is just asking for it. Dear sir or madam, I daresay you could not have chosen a more appropriate handle, and you might have added that you are ignorant of currency markets and politics, not that these blazingly obvious facts kept you from spouting off" ....... Soros foundations and financial machinations are partly responsible for the destruction of socialism in Eastern Europe and the former USSR. He has set his sights on China. He was part of the full court press that dismantled Yugoslavia. Calling himself a philanthropist, billionaire George Soros' role is to tighten the ideological stranglehold of globalization and the New World Order while promoting his own financial gain. Soros' commercial and "philanthropic" operations are clandestine, contradictory and coactive. And as far as his economic activities are concerned, by his own admission, he is without conscience; a capitalist who functions with absolute amorality. ........ "
dontknownothinbouthistory Registered User (7/9/05 1:06 pm) Reply	Re: Move On and George Soros Today by divine gypsy " If you could reference anything remotely legitimate where these claims (especially the last and most unlikely) could be substantiated, it might help their credibility. But, if he was even partially responsible for creating MoveOn, he's OK in my book. "
dontknownothinbouthistory Registered User (7/9/05 1:07 pm) Reply	Re: Move On and George Soros Today by dontknownothinbouthistory " In regards to your last statement: Move On was an explosive organized grassroots creation. Four people and a laptop in Oakland California were mobilizing a million people in instant organizing on people centered issues. For months, there was no office, just one laptop computer. Then before long they were close to 100% serving the Democratic candidate. The Democratic party is not a grass roots organization dealing totally with people centered issues. Move On's dynamic energy became "right hand man" to very deep pocketed conservative Democratic money ---wanting Kerry, not Dean for their candidate--- Move On was no longer an explosive grass roots [i]people centered[/i] organization of four people and a laptop........ For the introduction to all of this and the hard specifics, you can go to any one of a hundred places. One book might be suggested. It's a book dedicated to participatory democracy. The book is by a veteran political campaigner, who describes the electronic explosions now seen, first in Dean's campaign and Move On ---before they became "part of the Democratic Party serving a rich conservative Democrat. The name of the book is The Revolution Won't Be Televised. Though not dealing with Move On's day to day life in the slightest, the above book deals with the explosion of Dean to becoming the leading candidate. The stories are similar. Dean's campaign went from shoe-string to about 200,000 committed folks, many of them like the 4 people move on operation. After that successful first step they became the leading candidate for the nomination. It had never happened before. By the way there were some funny unbelievable moments! Would you like a extensive bibliography of books that give background, introduction and hard specifics within each book's context, field and focus. The media is not just owned by Disney and GE, etc. The media [u]IS[/u] the neo-cons. By reading books such as the one above, one may be informed in this "Information Age." "
dontknownothinbouthistory Registered User (7/9/05 1:08 pm) Reply	Re: Move On and George Soros Today by dontknownothingbouthistory " Move On did not organize in Ohio immediately--- or ever --- after the selection of George Bush around the people centered issue that Ohio was stolen. And they were SO determined to get Kerry in. Kerry did win, but even Kerry didn't fight that EVERY vote be counted as he and his running mate hollered in so many speeches. It was the Green party---- and NO Democrat party, or Move On money------ and others who accomplished even the minimal recount that was done and over seen by Bush people. Ohio's "vote count," had been handed to Bush in numerous ways from the owner of the software and electronics of the election, from his home not that far from Columbus saying well in advance of Nov. that he would deliver Ohio to Bush, to the "Voter Apartheid" official-looking letter received by some African-Americans in Ohio that due to the expected huge turn-out, their precinct's voting place would be open for voting Tuesday AND Wednesday. There was a laundry list of other voter fraud between these two extremes of a bogus letter and the use of the biased software. "
dontknownothinbouthistory Registered User (7/9/05 1:10 pm) Reply	Re: Move On and George Soros Today by dontknownothinbouthistory " " (especially the last and most unlikely) could be substantiated, it might help their credibility." please, am I wrong or right? that you are referring to "by his own admission, he is without conscience; a capitalist who functions with absolute amorality. ........ " then I can post the details... "
dontknownothinbouthistory Registered User (7/9/05 1:20 pm) Reply	Re: What the Washington Times published by David N. Bossie David N. Bossie is president of Citizens United and a former chief investigator for the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight. George Soros exposed By David N. Bossie November 25, 2003 To most Americans, the name probably doesn't ring a bell. To the enlightened news media, his name probably conjures up images of a likable international financial tycoon. They portray him as a wealthy philanthropist who dabbles in public policy and international affairs by doling out billions of dollars to liberal causes and institutions on issues ranging from campaign finance reform to United Nations funding, and AIDS research to international economic development. Recently, however, the Hungarian native anointed himself a major player in American politics by declaring the electoral defeat of President George W. Bush in next year's presidential election as the new central focus of his life. According to Mr. Soros, defeating Mr. Bush is a matter of life and death. "America under Bush, is a danger to the world. And I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is," he declared in announcing that he would spend more than $15 million of his personal wealth to defeat the president. While Mr. Soros seeks to portray himself as a mainstream philanthropist who cares deeply about people, the record reveals him as an arch-typical limousine liberal who lives according to standards far different than those he seeks to impose on others. Having amassed a multi-billion dollar financial empire in true capitalist style (i.e. international currency speculation), Mr. Soros now contends that "capitalism and the spread of market values" is the No. 1 threat to "open and democratic society." Now that he's a billionaire, he says: "I consider the threat from the laissez-faire side more potent today than the threat from totalitarian ideologies." When it comes to military intervention, Mr. Soros has been far from consistent. He praises Bill Clinton's decision to use military force to topple the regime of Slobodan Milosevic despite the absence of United Nations backing. But when it comes to the Bush presidency, he declares himself profoundly opposed to the Bush administration's policies, not only in Iraq but altogether. Mr. Soros' denunciation of the president's foreign policy echoes the sentiments of European socialists. According to Mr. Soros, the Bush doctrine is built on two pillars: First, the United States will do everything in its power to maintain its unquestioned military supremacy; and second, the United States arrogates the right to preemptive action. Taken together, these two pillars support two classes of sovereignty: the sovereignty of the United States, which takes precedence over international treaties and obligation; and the sovereignty of all other nations, which is subject to the Bush doctrine. In Mr. Soros' mind, the sovereignty of the United States must be subordinated to international law and international institutions, such as the United Nations and its International Criminal Court. A world order based on the sovereignty of states, say Mr. Soros, cannot take care of our common human interests because the principle of sovereignty stands in the way. But nowhere is Mr. Soros' hypocrisy more transparent than his recent double take on campaign finance reform. Beginning in the mid-1990s and continuing through the enactment of the so-called Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, Mr. Soros was one of the leading proponents of the campaign finance reform. According to a report published by the American Conservative Union Foundation, he funneled millions in contributions to the reform movement. In 1998, for example, Mr. Soros funneled more than $600,000 to an outfit called Arizonans for Clean Elections, which was the main organization behind a drive to create public financing for Arizona state candidates. Mr. Soros support accounted for more than 70 percent of the group's funding. And that's just the beginning; Mr. Soros also donated $18 million to groups supporting campaign finance reform, including Common Cause and Democracy 21. "Soft money contributions taint our political system and taint our political leaders. They create, at a minimum, the appearance of undue access and influence and conflict of interest," he said. Now, however, Mr. Soros has apparently had a change of heart. Having succeeded in restricting the fund raising and spending activities of political candidates and political parties, Mr. Soros has found a way to skirt the very laws he helped enact in order to advance his personal political agenda. He has committed up to $5 million to MoveOn.org, an organization that airs ads and organizes rallies denouncing the president's policies at home and abroad. To date, Mr. Soros says he has spent upwards of $15.5 million to oust Mr. Bush, and he's prepared to spend even more. Of course, there's no outcry from the liberal establishment and media elites that worked so hard to impose the reforms that Mr. Soros once supported. To these so-called reformers, Mr. Soros' goal of defeating Mr. Bush is paramount to standing on principle. In George Soros' world, the ends always seem to justify the means. His blind hatred of Mr. Bush motivates him and the groups he supports.
dontknownothinbouthistory Registered User (7/9/05 1:35 pm) Reply	Re: I don't need to be concerned w/ the consequences~Soros [The last paragraph below: Asked about the havoc his currency speculation caused to Far Eastern economies in the crash of 1997, Soros replied: "As a market participant, I don't need to be concerned with the consequences of my actions." Strange words from a man who likes to be regarded as the saviour of civil society and who rails in print against "market fundamentalism". ] Fined $2 million for insider trading and so much more by Neil Clark what role did soros'open society' play in the collapse of commmunism? What is the 'open society' really 'open' to? Notice the resemblance between soros funding of dissidents in eastern europe and recent events in cuba The billionaire trader has become eastern Europe's uncrowned king and the prophet of ''the open society''. But open to what? George Soros profiled by Neil Clark George Soros is angry. In common with 90 per cent of the world's population, the Man Who Broke the Bank of England has had enough of President Bush and his foreign policy. In a recent article in the Financial Times, Soros condemned the Bush administration's policies on Iraq as "fundamentally wrong"�based as they were on a "false ideology that US might gave it the right to impose its will on the world". Wow! Has one of the world's richest men�the archetypal amoral capitalist who made billions out of the Far Eastern currency crash of 1997 and who last year was fined $2m for insider trading by a court in France�seen the light in his old age? (He is 72.) Should we pop the champagne corks and toast his conversion? Not before asking what really motivates him. Soros likes to portray himself as an outsider, an independent-minded Hungarian emigre and philosopher-pundit who stands detached from the US military-industrial complex. But take a look at the board members of the NGOs he organises and finances. At Human Rights Watch, for example, there is Morton Abramowitz, US assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research from 1985-89, and now a fellow at the interventionist Council on Foreign Relations; ex-ambassador Warren Zimmerman (whose spell in Yugoslavia coincided with the break-up of that country); and Paul Goble, director of communications at the CIA-created Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (which Soros also funds). Soros's International Crisis Group boasts such "independent" luminaries as the former national security advisers Zbigniew Brzezinski and Richard Allen, as well as General Wesley Clark, once Nato supreme allied commander for Europe. The group's vice-chairman is the former congressman Stephen Solarz, once described as "the Israel lobby's chief legislative tactician on Capitol Hill" and a signatory, along with the likes of Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, to a notorious letter to President Clinton in 1998 calling for a "comprehensive political and military strategy for bringing down Saddam and his regime". Take a look also at Soros's business partners. At the Carlyle Group, where he has invested more than $100m, they include the former secretary of state James Baker and the erstwhile defence secretary Frank Carlucci, George Bush Sr and, until recently, the estranged relatives of Osama Bin Laden. Carlyle, one of the world's largest private equity funds, makes most of its money from its work as a defence contractor. Soros may not, as some have suggested, be a fully paid-up CIA agent. But that his companies and NGOs are closely wrapped up in US expansionism cannot seriously be doubted. So why is he so upset with Bush? The answer is simple. Soros is angry not with Bush's aims�of extending Pax Americana and making the world safe for global capitalists like himself�but with the crass and blundering way Bush is going about it. By making US ambitions so clear, the Bush gang has committed the cardinal sin of giving the game away. For years, Soros and his NGOs have gone about their work extending the boundaries of the "free world" so skilfully that hardly anyone noticed. Now a Texan redneck and a gang of overzealous neo-cons have blown it. As a cultivated and educated man (a degree in philosophy from the London School of Economics, honorary degrees from the Universities of Oxford, Yale, Bologna and Budapest), Soros knows too well that empires perish when they overstep the mark and provoke the formation of counter-alliances. He understands that the Clintonian approach of multilateralism�whereby the US cajoles or bribes but never does anything so crude as to threaten�is the only one that will allow the empire to endure. Bush's policies have led to a divided Europe, Nato in disarray, the genesis of a new Franco-German-Russian alliance and the first meaningful steps towards Arab unity since Nasser. Soros knows a better way�armed with a few billion dollars, a handful of NGOs and a nod and a wink from the US State Department, it is perfectly possible to topple foreign governments that are bad for business, seize a country's assets, and even to get thanked for your benevolence afterwards. Soros has done it. The conventional view, shared by many on the left, is that socialism collapsed in eastern Europe because of its systemic weaknesses and the political elite's failure to build popular support. That may be partly true, but Soros's role was crucial. From 1979, he distributed $3m a year to dissidents including Poland's Solidarity movement, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia and Andrei Sakharov in the Soviet Union. In 1984, he founded his first Open Society Institute in Hungary and pumped millions of dollars into opposition movements and independent media. Ostensibly aimed at building up a "civil society", these initiatives were designed to weaken the existing political structures and pave the way for eastern Europe's eventual colonisation by global capital. Soros now claims, with characteristic immodesty, that he was responsible for the "Americanisation" of eastern Europe The Yugoslavs remained stubbornly resistant and repeatedly returned Slobodan Milosevic's unreformed Socialist Party to government. Soros was equal to the challenge. From 1991, his Open Society Institute channelled more than $100m to the coffers of the anti-Milosevic opposition, funding political parties, publishing houses and "independent" media such as Radio B92, the plucky little student radio station of western mythology which was in reality bankrolled by one of the world's richest men on behalf of the world's most powerful nation. With Slobo finally toppled in 2000 in a coup d'etat financed, planned and executed in Washington, all that was left was to cart the ex- Yugoslav leader to the Hague tribunal, co-financed by Soros along with those other custodians of human rights Time Warner Corporation and Disney. He faced charges of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide, based in the main on the largely anecdotal evidence of (you've guessed it) Human Rights Watch. Soros stresses his belief in the "open society" propounded by the philosopher Karl Popper, who taught him at the LSE in the early 1950s. Soros's definition of an "open society"�"an imperfect society that holds itself open to improvement"�sounds reasonable enough; few lovers of genuine liberty would take issue with its central tenet that "the open society is a more sophisticated form of social organisation than a totalitarian one". But Soros's "open societies" don't tend to be all that open in practice. Since the fall of Milosevic, Serbia, under the auspices of Soros-backed "reformers", has become less, not more, free. The recently lifted state of emergency saw more than 4,000 people arrested, many of them without charge, political parties threatened with bans, and critical newspapers closed down. It was condemned by the UN Commission on Human Rights and the British Helsinki Group. But there was not a murmur from the Open Society Institute or from Soros himself. In fairness, Soros has been far more critical of his former prot�g� Leonid Kuchma, president of the Ukraine, a country described by the former intelligence officer Mykola Melnychenko as "one big protection racket", and now possibly the most repressive police state in Europe. But generally the sad conclusion is that for all his liberal quoting of Popper, Soros deems a society "open" not if it respects human rights and basic freedoms, but if it is "open" for him and his associates to make money. And, indeed, Soros has made money in every country he has helped to prise "open". In Kosovo, for example, he has invested $50m in an attempt to gain control of the Trepca mine complex, where there are vast reserves of gold, silver, lead and other minerals estimated to be worth in the region of $5bn. He thus copied a pattern he has deployed to great effect over the whole of eastern Europe: of advocating "shock therapy" and "economic reform", then swooping in with his associates to buy valuable state assets at knock-down prices. More than a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Soros is the uncrowned king of eastern Europe. His Central European University, with campuses in Budapest, Warsaw and Prague and exchange programmes in the US, unashamedly propagates the ethos of neoliberal capitalism and clones the next pro-American generation of political leaders in the region. With his financial stranglehold over political parties, business, educational institutions and the arts, criticism of Soros in mainstream eastern European media is hard to find. Hagiography is not. The Budapest Sun reported in February how he had been made an honorary citizen of Budapest by the mayor, Gabor Demszky. "Few people have done to Budapest what George Soros has," gushed Demszky, saying that the billionaire had contributed to "structural and mental changes in the capital city and Hungary itself". The mayor failed to add that Soros is also a benefactor of Demszky's own party, the Free Democrats, which, governing with "reform" communists, has pursued the classic Soros agenda of privatisation and economic liberalisation�leading to a widening gap between rich and poor. The Soros strategy for extending Pax Americana differs from the Bush model, particularly in its subtlety. But it is just as ambitious and just as deadly. Left- liberals, admiring his support for some of their favourite issues such as gay rights and the legalisation of soft drugs, let him off lightly. Asked about the havoc his currency speculation caused to Far Eastern economies in the crash of 1997, Soros replied: "As a market participant, I don't need to be concerned with the consequences of my actions." Strange words from a man who likes to be regarded as the saviour of civil society and who rails in print against "market fundamentalism".
dontknownothinbouthistory Registered User (7/9/05 6:42 pm) Reply	Books Authored or co-authored by George Soros The Bubble of American Supremacy: Correcting the Misuse of American Power (PublicAffairs, 2003) ISBN 1586482173 (paperback; PublicAffairs, 2004; ISBN 1586482920) George Soros on Globalization (PublicAffairs, 2002) ISBN 1586481258 (paperback; PublicAffairs, 2004; ISBN 1586482785) Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism (PublicAffairs, 2000) ISBN 1586480197 Science and the Open Society: The Future of Karl Popper's Philosophy by Mark Amadeus Notturno, George Soros (Central European University Press, 2000) ISBN 9639116696 (paperback: Central European University Press, 2000; ISBN 963911670X) The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered (PublicAffairs, 199 ISBN 1891620274 Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve (John Wiley, 1995) ISBN 0471120146 (paperback; Wiley, 1995; ISBN 0471119776) Underwriting Democracy: Encouraging Free Enterprise and Democratic Reform Among the Soviets and in Eastern Europe (Free Press, 1991) ISBN 0029302854 (paperback; PublicAffairs, 2004; ISBN 1586482270) Opening the Soviet System (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1990) ISBN 0297820559 (paperback: Perseus Books, 1996; ISBN 0813312051) The Alchemy of Finance (Simon & Schuster, 198 ISBN 0671662384 (paperback: Wiley, 2003; ISBN 0471445495)
dontknownothinbouthistory Registered User (7/9/05 7:50 pm) Reply	Soros was the owner of Harken Energy Corporation Soros has actually stated that he considers his philanthropy moral and his money management business amoral. 47 47. Andrew Leonard. "The Man Who Bought the World," February 28, 2002, Salon.com. For these folks, the evil consequences of Soros' business activities (impoverishing people all over the world) are mitigated by his philanthropic activities. Similarly, liberal/left intellectuals, both in the U.S. and abroad, have been drawn in by the "Open Society" philosophy, not to mention the occasional funding plum. "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."32 Soros is operating exactly within the confines of the intelligence complex. He is little different from CIA drug runners in Laos in the 1960s, or the mujahedin who profited from the opium trade while carrying out CIA operations against socialist Afghanistan in the 1980s. He simply funnels (and takes home) a whole lot more money than those Soros was the owner of Harken Energy Corporation It was Soros who saved George W. Bush's bacon when his management of an oil exploration company was ending in failure. Soros was the owner of Harken Energy Corporation, and it was he who bought the rapidly depreciating stocks just prior to the company's collapse. Soros once made a billion dollars in one day by speculating (a word he abhors) on the British pound. Accused of taking "money from every British taxpayer when he speculated against sterling," he said, "When you speculate in the financial markets you are free of most of the moral concerns that confront an ordinary businessman.. .I did not have to concern myself with moral issues in the financial markets." 13 These are the sources: 1. Dan Seligman, "Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire," commentary, April 2002. 2. "Sir Karl Popper in Prague, Summary of Relevant Facts Without Comment," www.lf3.cuni.cz/aff/p1_e.html. 3. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Transcaucasia/Central Asia, www.rferl.org. 4. Seligman. 5. Lee Penn, "1999, A Year of Growth for the United Religions Initiative." ad.doubleclick.net/adi/N1...ord=6249?. 6. George Soros, Soros on Soros, Staying Ahead of the Curve (New York: John Wiley, 1995), p. 26. 7. "Hedge Funds Get Trimmed," Wall Street Journal, May 1, 2000. 8. Theodore Spencer, "Investors of the Century," Fortune, December 1999. 9. Jim Freer, "Most International Trader George Soros," Latin Tradecom, October 1998, www.latintrade.com/newsit...oryID=473. 10. Busaba Sivasomboon, "Soros Speech in Thailand Canceled," AP wire, January 28, 2001. 11. Sivasomboon. 12. George Soros, The Asia Society Hong Kong Center Speech, www.asiasociety.org/speeches/soros. 13. Soros on Soros, pill. 14. George Soros, Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism (New York: Public Affairs, 2000). 15. David Corn, "Bush and the Billionaire, How Insider Capitalism Benefited W," The Nation, July 17, 2002. 16. Soros on Soros, pp. 122-25. 17. Agence France-Presse, October 8,1993. 18. Marianne Yen, "Fund's Representatives Arrested in China," Washington Post, August 8, 1989, p. A4. 19. Los Angeles Times, November 24, 1994, p. ASS. 20. Chrystia Freeland, "Moscow Suspicion Grows: Kremlin Factions Are at Odds Over Policy," Financial Times (London), January 19, 1995. 21. Interfax Russian News, November 6,1999. 22. Irma Dezhina, "U.S. Non-profit Foundations in Russia, Impact on Research and Education" www.jhu.edu/~istr/confere...zhina.pdf. 23. "FSK Suspects Financing of Espionage on Russia's Territory," AP wire, January 18, 1995. 24. David Hoffman, "Proliferation of Parties Gives Russia a Fractured Democratic System," Washington Post, October 1, 1995, p. A27; Margaret Shapiro, "Russian Agency Said to Accuse Americans of Spying," Washington Post, January 14, 1995, p. A17. 25. Allan Turner, "Looking For Trouble," Houston chronicle, May 28, 1995, p. E1; Kim Masters, "Where Is Fred Cuny," Washington Post, June 19, 1995, p. D1; Patrick Anderson, "The Disaster Expert Who Met His Match," Washington Post, September 6, 1999, p. C9; Scott Anderson, "What Happened to Fred Cuny?" New York Times Magazine, February 25, 1996, p. 44. 26. Scott Anderson, "The Man Who Tried to Save the World: the Dangerous Life and Disappearance of Fred Cuny," Philanthropy Roundtable, March/April 2002, www.philanthropyroundtabl...01/hedges. 27. "U.S. Blocks $500M Aid Deal for Russians" Wall Street Journal, December 22, 1999. 28. Bob Djurdjevic, "Letters to the Editor," Wall Street Journal, December 22, 1999. 29. "Open Society Institute," www.soros.org/osi/newyork. 30. Connie Bruck, "The World According to Soros," New Yorker, January 23, 1995. 31. Olga M. Lazin, "The Rise of the U.S. Decentralized Model for Philanthropy, George Soros' Open Society and National Foundations in Europe," www.isop.ucla.edu/profmex...azin1.htm. 32. David Ignatius, "Innocence Abroad: The New World of Spyless Coups," Washington Post, September 22, 1991, p. C1. 33. Patrick McCartney, "Study Suggests Drug Laws Resemble Notorious Passbook Laws," www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n861/a06. 34. McCartney. 35. See Sean Gervasi, "Western Intervention in the USSR," CovertAction Information Bulletin, no. 39, Winter 1991-92. 36. "The Cenasia Discussion List," www.eurasianet.org/resour...0052.html. 37. Bogdan Denitch, "The Case Against Inaction," The Nation, April 26, 1999. 38. "Biographies, 2002 Socialist Scholars Conference," www.socialistscholar.org/biographies. 39. "Grants," www.soros.org/repro/grants. 40. "East and Central Europe Program," www.newschool.edu/centers/ecep. 41. Oxana Popovitch, "IREX Belarus Opens a New IATP Site in Molodechno." www.iatp.net/archive/belarus. 42. lan Traynor, "Belarussian Foils Dictator-buster...For Now," Guardian, September 14, 2001, www.guardian.co.uk/intern...33,00.html 43. Steven Erlanger, "Kostunica Says Some Backers 'Unconsciously Work for American Imperial Goals,"' New York Times, September 20, 2000; and "Bringing Down a Dictator, Serbia Calling." PBS, www.pbs.org/weta/dictator...lling.html 44. Milosevic in the Hague, Focus on Human Rights, "In-Depth Report Documents Milosevic Crimes," April 2001, www.hrw.org/press/2001/10...t1029.htm. 45. "About ICG," May 2002, www.intl-crisis-group.org...G2002.pdf. 46. Macedonia Crimes Against Civilians: Abuses by Macedonian Forces in Lluboten, August 10-12, 2001, 47. Andrew Leonard. "The Man Who Bought the World," February 28, 2002, Salon.com. archive.salon.com/tech/bo.../28/soros/ 48. James Petras, "Imperialism and NGOs in Latin America," Monthly Review, vol. 49, no. 7, December 1997. 49. International Security Studies, "Herbert Okun," www.yale.edu/iss/peopleadvisoryboard1. 50. Leonard. 51. Edward W. Miller, "Brigandage," Coastal Post Monthly, Mann County, CA, September 2000. 52. Mirjan Nadrljanski, "Eco-Disaster in Pancevo: Consequences on the Health of the Population," July 19, 1999, www.gci.ch/GreenCrossProg...anski.html 53. "Soros Fund Launches $150 MIn U.S.Backed Balkans Investment," Bloomberg Business News, July 26, 2000; Chris Hedges, "Below It All in Kosovo," New York limes, July 8,1998, p. A4. 54. Galina Sabeva, "Soros' Sofia IT Firm Gets $9 Million Equity Investment," Reuters, January 23, 2001. 55. On Plan Colombia see: Manuel Salgado Tamayo, "The Geostrategy of Plan Colombia CovertAction Quarterly no. 71, Winter 2001. 56. "Colombia: Human Rights Watch Testifies Before the Senate," Human Rights Watch Backgrounder, April 24, 2002, www.hrw.org/backgrounder/...y0424.htm. 57. "Colombia: Bush/Pastrana Meeting, HRW World Report 2001, Human Rights News" (New York, November 6, 2001). 58. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Action Alert," New York limes Covering for Colombian Death Squads," February 9, 2001. 59. Doug Stokes "Colombia Primer Q&A on the Conflict and U.S. Role," April 16, 2002. Znet, www.zmag.org/content/Colo...rimer.cfm. 60. Interpress Service, January 18, 1995. For additional background see Jane Regan, "AIDing U.S. Interests In Haiti," CovertAction Quarterly no. 51, Winter 1994-95; and Noam Chomsky, "Haiti, The Uncivil Society," CovertAction Quarterly no. 57, Summer 1996. 61. Sam Tucker, Human Rights Watch, www.webactive.com/webactive/sotw/hrw. 62. John Kenneth Knaus, Orphans of the Cold War (New York, BBS Public Affairs 1999), p. 236. 63. Elisabeth Rosenthal, "Defiant Chinese Muslims Keep Their Own Time," New York limes, November 19, 2000, p. 3. 64. Jonathan Reynolds (pseudonym), "The Clandestine Chef," New York Times Magazine, December 3, 2000. 65. "Lessons of War," Le Monde Diplomatique, March 2000; Peter Phillips, "Untold Stories of U.S./NATO's War and Media Complacency," www.converge.org.nz/pma/suntold.htm 66. Marc W. Herold, "A Dossier on Civilian Victims of United States' Aerial Bombing of Afghanistan: A Comprehensive Accounting," www.ratical.org/ratville/...eaths.html 67. "Rape as a crime against humanity," www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/rape.html 68. "Improving the Public Diplomacy Campaign in the War Against Terrorism," Independent Task Force on America's Response to Terrorism, Council on Foreign Relations, November 6, 2001. 69. William Greider, "Curious George Talks the Market, The Nation, February 15, 1999. 70. "Oppose John Bolton's Nomination as State Department's Arms Control Leader," Council for a Livable World , April 11, 2001, www.clw.org/bush/opposebolton.html 71. Ibid. 72. Greider. 73. "The Dictatorship of Financial Capital," Federation of Social and Educational Assistance (FASE), Brazil, 2002, www.fase.org.br Here's the information, the article: george soros: imperial wizar by heather coffin This is not a case of narcissistic personality disorder; this is how George Soros exercises the authority of United States hegemony in the world today. Soros foundations and financial machinations are partly responsible for the destruction of socialism in Eastern Europe and the former USSR. He has set his sights on China. He was part of the full court press that dismantled Yugoslavia. Calling himself a philanthropist, billionaire George Soros' role is to tighten the ideological stranglehold of globalization and the New World Order while promoting his own financial gain. Soros' commercial and "philanthropic" operations are clandestine, contradictory and coactive. And as far as his economic activities are concerned, by his own admission, he is without conscience; a capitalist who functions with absolute amorality. Master-builder of the new bribe sector systematically bilking the world He thrusts himself upon world statesmen and they respond. He has been close to Henry Kissinger, Vaclav Havel and Poland's General Wojciech Jaruzelski. 4 He supports the Dalai Lama, whose institute is housed in the Presidio in San Francisco, also home to the foundation run by Soros' friend, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. 5 Soros is a leading figure on the Council of Foreign Relations, the World Economic Forum, and Human Rights Watch (HRW). In 1994, after a meeting with his philosophical guru, Sir Karl Popper, Soros ordered his companies to start investing in Central and Eastern European communications. The Federal Radio Television Administration of the Czech Republic accepted his offer to take over and fund the archives of Radio Free Europe. Soros moved the archives to Prague and spent over $15 million on their maintenance. 2 A Soros foundation now runs CIA-created Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty jointly with the U.S. and RFE/RL, which has expanded into the Caucasus and Asia. 3 Soros is the founder and funder of the Open Society Institute. He created and maintains the International Crisis Group (ICG) which, among other things, has been active in the Balkans since the destruction of Yugoslavia. Soros works openly with the United States Institute of Peace-an overt arm of the CIA. He thrusts himself upon world statesmen and they respond. He has been close to Henry Kissinger, Vaclav Havel and Poland's General Wojciech Jaruzelski. 4 He supports the Dalai Lama, whose institute is housed in the Presidio in San Francisco, also home to the foundation run by Soros' friend, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. 5 When anti-globalization forces were freezing in the streets outside New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel in February 2002, George Soros was inside addressing the World Economic Forum. As the police forced protesters into metal cages on Park Avenue, Soros was extolling the virtues of the "Open Society" and joined Zbigniew Brzezinski, Samuel Huntington, Francis Fukuyama and others. WHO IS THIS GUY? George Soros was born in Hungary in 1930 to Jewish parents so removed from their roots that they once vacationed in Nazi Germany. 6 Soros lived under the Nazis, but with the triumph of the Communists moved to England in 1947. There, Soros came under the sway of the philosopher Karl Popper, at the London School of Economics. Popper was a lionized anti-communist ideologue and his teachings formed the basis for Soros' political tendencies. There is hardly a speech, book or article that Soros writes that does not pay obeisance to Popper's influence. Knighted in 1965, Popper coined the slogan "Open Society," which eventually manifested in Soros' Open Society Fund and Institute. Followers of Popper repeat his words like true believers. Popperian philosophy epitomizes Western individual ism. Soros left England in 1956, and found work on Wall Street where, in the 1960s, he invented the "hedge fund." "...hedge funds catered to very wealthy individuals... The largely secretive funds, usually trading in offshore locations. . produced astronomically superior results. The size of the "bets" often became self fulfilling prophecies: 'rumors of a position taken by the big hedge funds prompted other investors to follow suit,' which would in turn force up the price the hedgers were betting on to begin with." 7 Soros organized the Quantum Fund in 1969 and began to dabble in currency manipulation. In the 1970s, his financial activities turned to: "Alternating long and short positions... Soros won big both on the rise of real estate investment trusts and on their subsequent collapse. Under his 20-year stewardship, Quantum returned an amazing 34.5% a year. Soros is best known (and feared) for currency speculation.. . In 1997 he earned the rare distinction of being singled out as a villain by a head of state, Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamad, for taking part in a highly profitable attack on that nation's currency." 8 Through such clandestine financial scheming, Soros became a multibillionaire. His companies control real estate in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico; banking in Venezuela; and are some of the most profitable currency traders in the world, giving rise to the general belief that his highly placed friends assisted him in his financial endeavors, for political as well as financial gain. 9 George Soros has been blamed for the destruction of the Thai economy in 1997.10 One Thai activist said, "We regard George Soros as a kind of Dracula. He sucks the blood from the people." 11 The Chinese call him "the crocodile," because his economic and ideological efforts in China were so insatiate, and because his financial speculation created millions of dollars in profits as it ravished the Thai and Malaysian economies. 12 Soros once made a billion dollars in one day by speculating (a word he abhors) on the British pound. Accused of taking "money from every British taxpayer when he speculated against sterling," he said, "When you speculate in the financial markets you are free of most of the moral concerns that confront an ordinary businessman.. .I did not have to concern myself with moral issues in the financial markets." 13 Soros has a schizophrenic craving for unlimited personal wealth and a desire to be thought well of by others: "Currency traders sitting at their desks buy and sell currencies of Third World countries in large quantities. The effect of the currency fluctuations on the people who live in those countries is a matter that does not enter their minds. Nor should it; they have a job to do. Yet if we pause to think, we must ask ourselves whether currency traders.. .should regulate the lives of millions." 14 It was Soros who saved George W. Bush's bacon when his management of an oil exploration company was ending in failure. Soros was the owner of Harken Energy Corporation, and it was he who bought the rapidly depreciating stocks just prior to the company's collapse. The future president cashed out at almost one million dollars. Soros said he did it to buy "political influence." 15 Soros is also a partner in the infamous Carlyle Group. Organized in 1987, "the world's largest private equity firm" with over twelve billion dollars under management, is run by "a veritable who's who of former Republican leaders," from CIA man Frank Carlucci to CIA head George Bush, Sr. The Carlyle Group makes most of its money from weapons expenditures. THE PHILANTHROPIST SPOOK In 1980, Soros began to use his millions to attack socialism in Eastern Europe. He financed individuals who would cooperate with him. His first success was in Hungary. He took over the Hungarian educational and cultural establishment, incapacitating socialist institutions throughout the country. He made his way right inside the Hungarian government. Soros next moved on to Poland, aiding the CIA-funded Solidarity operation and in that same year, he became active in China. The USSR came next. It is not coincidental that the Central Intelligence Agency had operations in all of those countries. The goal of the Agency was exactly the same as that of the Open Society Fund: to dismantle socialism. In South Africa, the CIA sought out dissidents who were anticommunist. In Hungary, Poland and the USSR, the CIA, with overt intervention from the National Endowment for Democracy, the AFL-CIO, USAID and other institutions, supported and organized anticommunists, the very type of individuals recruited by Soros' Open Society Fund. The CIA would have called them "assets." As Soros said, "In each country I identified a group of people - some leading personalities, others less well known - who share my belief..."16 Soros' Open Society organized conferences with anticommunist Czechs, Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians, Croatians, Bosnians, Kosovars. 17 His ever-expanding influence gave rise to suspicions that he was operating as part of the U.S. intelligence complex. In 1989, the Washington Post reported charges first made in 1987 by the Chinese government officials that Soros' Fund for the Reform and Opening of China had CIA connections. 18 TAKING ON MOSCOW After 1990, Soros funds targeted the Russian educational system, providing the entire nation with textbooks. 19 In effect, Soros ensured the indoctrination of an entire generation of Russian youth with OSI propaganda. Soros foundations were accused of engineering a strategy to take control of the Russian financial system, privatization schemes, and the process of foreign investment in that country. Russians reacted angrily to Soros' legislative meddlings. Critics of Soros and other U.S. foundations said the goal of these maneuvers was to "thwart Russia as a state, which has the potential to compete with the world's only superpower." 20 Russians began to suspect Soros and the CIA were interconnected. Business tycoon Boris Berezovsky said, "I nearly fainted when I heard a couple of years ago that George Soros was a CIA agent." 21 Berezovsky's opinion was that Soros, and the West, were "afraid of Russian capital becoming strong." If the economic and political establishment in the United States fear an economic rivalry from Russia, what better way to control it than to dominate Russian media, education, research centers and science? After spending $250 million for the "transformation of education of humanities and economics at the high school and university levels," Soros created the International Science Foundation for another $100 million. 22 The Russian Federal Counterintelligence Service (FSK) accused Soros foundations in Russia of "espionage." They noted that Soros was not operating alone; he was part of a full court press that included financing from the Ford and Heritage Foundations; Harvard, Duke, and Columbia universities, and assistance from the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence services. 23 The FSK criticized Soros' payouts to 50,000 Russian scientists, saying that Soros advanced his own interests by gaining control of thousands of Russian scientific discoveries and new technologies to collect state and commercial secrets. 24 In 1995, Russians were infuriated by the insinuation of State Department operative Fred Cuny into the conflict in Chechnya. Cuny's cover was disaster relief, but his history of involvement in international conflict zones of interest to the U.S., plus FBI and CIA search parties, made clear his government connections. At the time of his disappearance, Cuny was working under contract to a Soros foundation. 25 It is not widely known in the U.S. that the violence in Chechnya, a province in the heart of Russia, is generally perceived as the result of a political destabilization campaign on which Washington looks favorably, and may actually be directing. This assessment of the situation is clear enough to writer Tom Clancy that he felt free to include it as an assertion of fact in his best-seller, The Sum of All Fears. The Russians accused Cuny of being a CIA operative, and part of an intelligence operation to support the Chechen uprising. 26 Soros' Open Society Institute is still active in Chechnya, as are other Soros-sponsored organizations. Russia was the site of at least one joint endeavor to enhance Soros' balance sheet, arranged with diplomatic assistance from the Clinton administration. In 1999, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright blocked a $500 million loan guarantee by the U.S. Export-Import Bank to the Russian company, Tyumen Oil, on the grounds that it was contrary to U.S. national interests. Tyumen wanted to buy American-made oil equipment and services from Dick Cheney's Halliburton Company and ABB Lummus Global of Bloomfield, New Jersey. 27 George Soros was an investor in a company that Tyumen had been trying to acquire. Both Soros and BP Amoco lobbied to prevent this transaction, and Albright obliged. 28 NURTURING LEFT ANTI-SOCIALISM Soros' Open Society Institute has a finger in every pot. Its board of directors reads like a "Who's Who" of Cold War and New World Order pundits. Paul Goble is Communications Director; 'he was the major political commentator at Radio Free Europe. Herbert Okun served in the Nixon State Department as an intelligence adviser to Henry Kissinger. Kati Marton is the wife of former Clinton administration UN ambassador and envoy to Yugoslavia, Richard Holbrooke. Marton lobbied for the Soros-funded radio station B-92, also a project of' the National Endowment for Democracy (another overt arm of the CIA), which was instrumental in bringing down the Yugoslav government. When Soros founded the Open Society Fund he picked liberal pundit Aryeh Neier to lead it. Neier was the head of Helsinki Watch, a putative human rights organization with an anticommunist bent. In 1993, the Open Society Fund became the Open Society Institute. Helsinki Watch became Human Rights Watch in 1975. Soros is currently on its Advisory Board, both for the Americas and the Eastern Europe-Central Asia Committees, and his Open Society Fund/Soros/OSI is listed as a funder. 29 Soros is intimately connected to HRW, and Neier wrote columns for The Nation magazine without mentioning that he was on Soros' payroll. 30 Soros is intimately involved in HRW, although he does his best to hide it. 31 He says he just funds and sets up these programs and lets them run. But they do not stray from the philosophy of the funder. HRW and OSI are close. Their views do not diverge. Of course, other foundations fund these institutions as well, but Soros' influence dominates their ideology. George Soros' activities fall into the construct developed in 1983 and enunciated by Allen Weinstein, founder of the National Endowment for Democracy. Weinstein said, "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."32 Soros is operating exactly within the confines of the intelligence complex. He is little different from CIA drug runners in Laos in the 1960s, or the mujahedin who profited from the opium trade while carrying out CIA operations against socialist Afghanistan in the 1980s. He simply funnels (and takes home) a whole lot more money than those pawns, and he does much of his business in the light of day. His candor insofar as he expresses it is a sort of spook damage control that serves to legitimize the strategies of U.S. foreign policy. The majority of people in the U.S. today who consider themselves politically left-of-center are undoubtedly pessimistic about the chances for a socialist transformation of society. Thus the Soros 'Decentralization" model, or the "piecemeal" approach to "negative utilitarianism, the attempt to minimize the amount of misery," which was Popper's philosophy, appeals to them. 33 Soros funded an HRW study that was used to back California and Arizona legislation relaxing drug laws. 34 Soros favors the legalization of drugs - one way of temporarily reducing awareness of one's misery. Soros is an equal-opportunity bribester. At a loftier rung of the socioeconomic ladder, one finds Social Democrats who accept Soros funding and believe in civil liberties within the context of capitalism. 35 For these folks, the evil consequences of Soros' business activities (impoverishing people all over the world) are mitigated by his philanthropic activities. Similarly, liberal/left intellectuals, both in the U.S. and abroad, have been drawn in by the "Open Society" philosophy, not to mention the occasional funding plum. The New Left in the United States was a social democratic movement. It was resolutely anti-Soviet, and when Eastern Europe and the USSR fell, few in the New Left opposed the destruction of the socialist systems. The New Left did not mourn or protest when the hundreds of millions in Eastern Europe and Central Asia lost their right to jobs, housing at reasonable and legally protected rents, free education through graduate school, health care and cultural enhancement. Most belittled any suggestion that the CIA and certain NGOs such as the National Endowment for Democracy or the Open Society Fund had actively participated in the annihilation of socialism. These people felt that the Western determination to destroy the USSR since 1917 was barely connected to the fall of the USSR. For them, socialism failed of its own accord, because it was flawed. As revolutions, such as the ones in Mozambique, Angola, Nicaragua or El Salvador were destroyed by proxy forces or were stalled by demonstration "elections," New Left pragmatists shrugged their shoulders and turned away. The New Left sometimes seemed to deliberately ignore the post-Soviet machinations of U.S. foreign policy. Bogdan Denitch, who had political aspirations in Croatia, was active within the Open Society Institute, and received OSI funding. 36 Denitch favored the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Croatia, NATO bombing of Bosnia and then Yugoslavia, and even a ground invasion of Yugoslavia. 37 Denitch was a founder and chair for many years of the Democratic Socialists of America, a leading liberal-left group in the U.S. He has also long chaired the prestigious Socialist Scholars Conference, through which he was key to manipulating the sympathies of many toward support for NATO expansion. 38 Other Soros targets for support include Refuse and Resist the ACLU, and a host of other liberal causes. 39 Soros added another unlikely trophy when he became involved in the New School for Social Research in New York, long an academy of choice for left intellectuals. He now funds the East and Central Europe Program there. 40 Many leftists who were inspired by the revolution in Nicaragua sadly accepted the election of Violetta Chamorro and the defeat of the Sandinistas in 1990. Most of the Nicaragua support network faded thereafter. Perhaps the New Left could have learned from the rising star of Michael Kozak. He was a veteran of Washington's campaigns to install sympathetic leaders in Nicaragua, Panama and Haiti, and to undermine Cuba - he headed the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. After organizing the Chamorro victory in Nicaragua, Kozak moved on to become U.S. Ambassador to Belarus. Kozak worked with the Soros-sponsored "Internet Access and Training Program" (IATP), which was busy "creating future leaders" in Belarus. 41 This program was simultaneously imposed upon Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. IATP operates openly with the support of the U.S. Department of State. To its credit, Belarus expelled Kozak and the Soros-Open Society/U.S. State Department crowd. The government of Aleksandr Lukashenko found that for four years before moving to Minsk, Kozak was instrumental in engineering the flow of tens of millions of dollars to the Belarus opposition. Kozak was creating a united opposition coalition, funding web-sites, newspapers and opinion polls, and tutoring a student resistance movement similar to Yugoslavia's Otpor. Kozak brought in Otpor leaders to instruct dissidents in Belarus. 42 Just before September 11, 2001, the U.S. was revving up a demonization campaign against President Aleksandr Lukashenko. Demonizing Lukashenko has temporarily taken a back burner to the "war on terrorism." Through OSI and HRW, Soros was a major supporter of the B-92 radio station in Belgrade. Soros funded Otpor, the organization that received those "suitcases of money" in support of the October 5, 2000 coup that toppled the Yugoslav government. 43 Human Rights Watch helped legitimize the subsequent kidnapping and show trial of Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague by saying nothing about his rights." 44 Louise Arbour, who served as judge at that illegal tribunal, is presently on the Board of Soros' International Crisis Group. 45 The Open Society/Human Rights Watch gang has been working on Macedonia, calling it part of their "civilizing mission." 46 Expect that republic to be "saved" to finish the total disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. DEPUTIES OF POWER Soros has actually stated that he considers his philanthropy moral and his money management business amoral. 47 Yet those in charge of Soros-funded NGOs have a clear and consistent agenda. One of Soros' most influential institutions is the International Crisis Group, founded in 1986. ICG is headed by individuals from the very center of political and corporate power. Its board includes Zbigniew Brzezinski, Morton Abramowitz, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State; Wesley Clark, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander for Europe; and Richard Allen, former U.S. National Security Adviser, Allen is noteworthy for quitting Nixon's National Security Council out of disgust with the liberal tendencies of Henry Kissinger; recruiting Oliver North to Reagan's National Security Council, and negotiating missiles for hostages in the Iran-Contra scandal. For these individuals, "containing conflict" boils down to U.S. control over the people and resources of the world. In the 1980s and 1990s, under the aegis of the Reagan Doctrine, U.S. covert and overt operations in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia were in the works. Soros was openly active in most of these places, working to buy off would-be revolutionaries, or subsidize politicians, intellectuals and anyone else who might come to power when the revolutionary moment had passed. According to James Petras: "By the early 1980s the more perceptive sectors of the neoliberal ruling classes realized that their policies were polarizing the society and provoking large-scale social discontent. Neoliberal politicians began to finance and promote a parallel strategy 'from below,' the promotion of 'grassroots' organizations with an 'anti-statist' ideology to intervene among potentially conflictory classes, to create a "social cushion." These organizations were financially dependent on neoliberal sources and were directly involved in competing with sociopolitical movements for the allegiance of local leaders and activist communities. By the 1 990s these organizations, described as "nongovernmental," numbered in the thousands and were receiving close to four billion dollars world-wide." 48 In Underwriting Democracy, Soros boasts about the "Americanization of Eastern Europe." According to his account, through his education programs he began to establish a young cadre of Sorosian leaders. These Soros Foundation-educated young men and women are prepared to fulfill the functions of so-called "influence agents." Thanks to their fluent knowledge of languages and their insertion into the emerging bureaucracies in target countries, these recruits would philosophically smooth the inroads for Western multinational corporations. Career diplomat Herbert Okun, on the Europe Committee of Human Rights Watch, along with George Soros, is connected to a host of State Department-linked institutions, from USAID to the Rockefeller-funded Trilateral Commission. From 1990 to 1997, Okun was executive director of something called the Financial Services Volunteer Corps, part of USAID, "to help establish free market financial systems in former communist countries." 49 George Soros is in complete accord with the capitalists who are in the process of taking control of the global economy. NON-PROFIT PROFITEERING Soros claims not to do philanthropy in the countries in which he is involved as a currency trader. 50 But Soros has often taken advantage of his connections to make key investments. Armed with a study by ICC, and with the support of Bernard Kouchner, chief of the UN Interim Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK), Soros attempted to acquire the most profitable mining complex in the Balkans. In September 2000, in a hurry to take the Trepca mines before the Yugoslavian election, Kouchner stated that pollution from the mining complex was raising lead levels in the environment. 51 This is incredible considering that he cheered when the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia rained depleted uranium on the country and released more than 100,000 tons of carcinogens into the air, water and soil. 52 But Kouchner had his way, and the mines were closed for "health reasons." Soros invested $150 million in an effort to gain control of Trepca's gold, silver, lead, zinc and cadmium, which make the property worth $5 billion. 53 As Bulgaria was imploding into "free-market" chaos, Soros was busy scavenging through the wreckage, as Reuters reported in early 2001: "The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) invested $3.0 million in [Bulgarian high-tech company] Rila, the first firm to benefit from a new $30 million facility set up by the EBRD to support IT firms in central and eastern Europe.... Another $3. 0 million came from U.S private investment fund Argus Capital Partners, sponsored by Prudential Insurance Company of America and opera ting in central and eastern Europe... Soros, who had invested around $3.0 million in Rila and in 2001 invested another $1.0 million...remained its majority owner. " 54 FRAMING THE ISSUES His pose as a philanthropist gives Soros the power to shape international public opinion when social conflict raises the question of who are the victims and who are the malefactors. Like other NGOs, Human Rights Watch, Soros' mouthpiece on human rights, avoids or ignores most organized and independent working class struggles. In Colombia, labor leaders are routinely killed by paramilitaries working in concert with the U.S.-sponsored government. Because those unions oppose neoliberal economics, HRW is relatively silent. In April of this year, HRW's Jose Vivanco testified before the U.S. Senate in favor of Plan Colombia: 55 "Colombians remain committed to human rights and democracy They need help. Human Rights Watch has no fundamental problem with the United States providing that help." 56 HRW equates the actions of the Colombian guerrilla fighters struggling to free themselves from the oppression of state terror, poverty and exploitation with the repression of the U.S-sponsored armed forces and paramilitary death squads, the AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia). HRW validated the Pastrana government and its military, whose role was to protect property rights and maintain the economic and political status quo. According to HRW, 50% of civilian deaths are the work of the government-tolerated death squads. 57 The correct number is 80%. 58 HRW essentially certified the election and ascendancy of the Uribe government in 2002 as well. Uribe is a throwback to the Latin American dictators the U.S. supported in the past, although he was "elected." HRW had no comment about the fact that the majority boycotted the election. 59 In the Caribbean Basin, Cuba is another opponent of neoliberalism that has been demonized by Human Rights Watch. In nearby Haiti, Soros-funded activities have worked to defeat popular aspirations following the end of the Duvalier dictatorship by undermining Haiti's first democratically elected leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. HRW's Ken Roth helpfully chimed in with U.S. denunciations of Aristide as "undemocratic." To demonstrate his idea of "democracy," Soros foundations were commencing operations in Haiti complimentary to such unseemly U.S. activities as USAID's promotion of persons associated with FRAPH, the notorious CIA-sponsored death squads which have terrorized the country since the fall of 'Baby Doc' Duvalier. 60 On HRW's web site, Director Roth criticized the U.S. for not opposing China more vigorously. Roth's activities include the creation of the Tibetan Freedom Concert, a traveling propaganda project that toured the U.S. with major rock musicians, urging young people to support Tibet against China. 61 Tibet has been a pet project of the CIA for many years. 62 Roth has recently pressed for opposition to Chinese control over its oil-rich western province of Xinjiang. With the colonialist "divide and conquer" approach, Roth has tried to convince some of the Uighur religious minority in Xinjiang that the U.S/NATO intervention in Kosovo holds promise as a model for them. As late as August 2002, the U.S. government has given some support in this endeavor as well. U.S. designs on this region were signaled clearly when a New York Times article on Xinjiang Province in western China described the Uighurs as a "Muslim majority, [which] lives restively under Chinese rule." They "are well versed in the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia last year which some celebrate for liberating the Muslims in Kosovo; they fantasize about a similar rescue' here." 63 The New York Times Magazine noted "Recent discoveries of oil have made Xinjiang extremely attractive to international trade," while comparing the conditions for its indigenous population to those in Tibet. 64 INNUMERACY When Sorosian organizations count, they seem to lose track of the truth. Human Rights Watch asserted that 500 people, not over 2,000, were killed by NATO bombers in the 1999 war in Yugoslavia. 65 They said only 350, not over 4,000, died as a result of U.S. attacks on Afghanistan. 66 When the U.S. bombed Panama in 1989, HRW prefaced its report by saying that the "ouster of Manuel Noriega.. and installation of the democratically-elected government of President Guillermo Endara brought high hopes in Panama..." The report neglected to mention the number of casualties. Human Rights Watch prepared the groundwork for the NATO attack on Bosnia in 1993 by the false rape-of-thousands and "genocide" stories. 67 This tactic of creating political hysteria was necessary for the United States to carry out its Balkan policy. It was repeated in 1999 when HRW functioned as the shock troops of indoctrination for the NATO attack on Yugoslavia. All of Soros' blather about the rule of law was forgotten. The U.S. and NATO made their own law, and the institutions of George Soros stood behind it. Massaging of numbers to provoke a response was a major part of a Council on Foreign Relations campaign after September 11,2001. This time it was the 2,801 killed in the World Trade Center. The CFR met on November 6, 2001, to plan a "major public diplomacy campaign." CFR created an "Independent Task Force on America's Response to Terrorism." Soros joined Richard C. Holbrooke, Newton L. Gingrich, John M. Shalikashvili (former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), and other powerful individuals on a campaign to make the Trade Center dead into tools for U.S. foreign policy. The CFR report set out to make the case for a war on terrorism. George Soros' fingerprints were all over the campaign: "Have senior-level U.S. officials press friendly Arab and other Muslim governments not only to publicly condemn the 9/11 attacks, but also to back the rationale and goals of the U.S. anti-terror campaign. We are never going to convince the publics in the Middle East and South Asia of the nghteousness of our cause if their governments remain silent. We need to help them to deflect any blow-hack from such statements, but we must have them vocally on board.... Encourage Bosnian, Albanian, and Turkish Muslims to educate foreign audiences regarding the U.S. role in saving the Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo in 1995-99, and our long-standing, close ties to Muslims around the world. Engage regional intellectuals and journalists across the board, regardless of their views. Routinely monitor the regional press in real time to enable prompt responses... Stress references to the victims (and ideally named victims to personalize them) whenever we discuss our cause and goals." 68 Sorosian innumeracy: counting to bolster and defend U.S. foreign policy. Soros is very worried about the decline in the world capitalist system and he wants to do something about it, now. He recently said: "I can already discern the makings of the final crisis.... Indigenous political movements are likely to arise that will seek to expropriate the multinational corporations and recapture the 'national' wealth." 69 Soros is seriously suggesting a plan to circumvent the United Nations. He proposes that the "democracies of the world ought to take the lead and forge a global network of alliances that could work with or without the United Nations." If he were psychotic, one might think he was having an episode. But the fact is, Soros' assertion that "The United Nations is constitutionally incapable of fulfilling the promises contained in the preamble of its charter," reflects the thinking of such reactionary institutions as the American Enterprise Institute. 70 Though many conservatives refer to the Soros network as left-wing, on the question of U.S. affiliation with the United Nations Soros is on the same page as the likes of John R. Bolton, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs, who, with "[M]any Republicans in Congress-believe that nothing more should be paid to the UN system." 71 There has been a decades-long rightwing campaign against the UN. Now Soros is leading it. On various Soros web sites one may read criticism of the United Nations as too rich, unwilling to share information, or flawed in ways that make it unfit for the way the world should run according to George Soros. Even writers at The Nation, writers who clearly ought to know better, have been influenced by Soros' ideas. William Greider, for instance, recently found some validity in Soros' criticism that the United Nations should not be a venue for "tin-pot dictators and totalitarians. . treated as equal partners." 72 This kind of Eurocentric racism is at the heart of Soros' hubris. His assumption that the United States can and should run the world is a prescription for fascism on a global scale. For much too long, Western "progressives" have been giving Soros a pass. Probably Greider and others will find the reference to fascism excessive, unjustified, even outrageous. But just listen closely to what Soros himself has to say: "In old Rome, the Romans only voted. In the modern global capitalism, the Americans only vote. The Brazilians do not vote." 73
dontknownothinbouthistory Registered User (7/9/05 7:50 pm) Reply	Re: Soros was the owner of Harken Energy Corporation Soros has actually stated that he considers his philanthropy moral and his money management business amoral. 47 47. Andrew Leonard. "The Man Who Bought the World," February 28, 2002, Salon.com. For these folks, the evil consequences of Soros' business activities (impoverishing people all over the world) are mitigated by his philanthropic activities. Similarly, liberal/left intellectuals, both in the U.S. and abroad, have been drawn in by the "Open Society" philosophy, not to mention the occasional funding plum. "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."32 Soros is operating exactly within the confines of the intelligence complex. He is little different from CIA drug runners in Laos in the 1960s, or the mujahedin who profited from the opium trade while carrying out CIA operations against socialist Afghanistan in the 1980s. He simply funnels (and takes home) a whole lot more money than those.... Soros was the owner of Harken Energy Corporation It was Soros who saved George W. Bush's bacon when his management of an oil exploration company was ending in failure. Soros was the owner of Harken Energy Corporation, and it was he who bought the rapidly depreciating stocks just prior to the company's collapse. Soros once made a billion dollars in one day by speculating (a word he abhors) on the British pound. Accused of taking "money from every British taxpayer when he speculated against sterling," he said, "When you speculate in the financial markets you are free of most of the moral concerns that confront an ordinary businessman.. .I did not have to concern myself with moral issues in the financial markets." 13 These are the sources: 1. Dan Seligman, "Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire," commentary, April 2002. 2. "Sir Karl Popper in Prague, Summary of Relevant Facts Without Comment," www.lf3.cuni.cz/aff/p1_e.html. 3. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Transcaucasia/Central Asia, www.rferl.org. 4. Seligman. 5. Lee Penn, "1999, A Year of Growth for the United Religions Initiative." ad.doubleclick.net/adi/N1...ord=6249?. 6. George Soros, Soros on Soros, Staying Ahead of the Curve (New York: John Wiley, 1995), p. 26. 7. "Hedge Funds Get Trimmed," Wall Street Journal, May 1, 2000. 8. Theodore Spencer, "Investors of the Century," Fortune, December 1999. 9. Jim Freer, "Most International Trader George Soros," Latin Tradecom, October 1998, www.latintrade.com/newsit...oryID=473. 10. Busaba Sivasomboon, "Soros Speech in Thailand Canceled," AP wire, January 28, 2001. 11. Sivasomboon. 12. George Soros, The Asia Society Hong Kong Center Speech, www.asiasociety.org/speeches/soros. 13. Soros on Soros, pill. 14. George Soros, Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism (New York: Public Affairs, 2000). 15. David Corn, "Bush and the Billionaire, How Insider Capitalism Benefited W," The Nation, July 17, 2002. 16. Soros on Soros, pp. 122-25. 17. Agence France-Presse, October 8,1993. 18. Marianne Yen, "Fund's Representatives Arrested in China," Washington Post, August 8, 1989, p. A4. 19. Los Angeles Times, November 24, 1994, p. ASS. 20. Chrystia Freeland, "Moscow Suspicion Grows: Kremlin Factions Are at Odds Over Policy," Financial Times (London), January 19, 1995. 21. Interfax Russian News, November 6,1999. 22. Irma Dezhina, "U.S. Non-profit Foundations in Russia, Impact on Research and Education" www.jhu.edu/~istr/confere...zhina.pdf. 23. "FSK Suspects Financing of Espionage on Russia's Territory," AP wire, January 18, 1995. 24. David Hoffman, "Proliferation of Parties Gives Russia a Fractured Democratic System," Washington Post, October 1, 1995, p. A27; Margaret Shapiro, "Russian Agency Said to Accuse Americans of Spying," Washington Post, January 14, 1995, p. A17. 25. Allan Turner, "Looking For Trouble," Houston chronicle, May 28, 1995, p. E1; Kim Masters, "Where Is Fred Cuny," Washington Post, June 19, 1995, p. D1; Patrick Anderson, "The Disaster Expert Who Met His Match," Washington Post, September 6, 1999, p. C9; Scott Anderson, "What Happened to Fred Cuny?" New York Times Magazine, February 25, 1996, p. 44. 26. Scott Anderson, "The Man Who Tried to Save the World: the Dangerous Life and Disappearance of Fred Cuny," Philanthropy Roundtable, March/April 2002, www.philanthropyroundtabl...01/hedges. 27. "U.S. Blocks $500M Aid Deal for Russians" Wall Street Journal, December 22, 1999. 28. Bob Djurdjevic, "Letters to the Editor," Wall Street Journal, December 22, 1999. 29. "Open Society Institute," www.soros.org/osi/newyork. 30. Connie Bruck, "The World According to Soros," New Yorker, January 23, 1995. 31. Olga M. Lazin, "The Rise of the U.S. Decentralized Model for Philanthropy, George Soros' Open Society and National Foundations in Europe," www.isop.ucla.edu/profmex...azin1.htm. 32. David Ignatius, "Innocence Abroad: The New World of Spyless Coups," Washington Post, September 22, 1991, p. C1. 33. Patrick McCartney, "Study Suggests Drug Laws Resemble Notorious Passbook Laws," www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n861/a06. 34. McCartney. 35. See Sean Gervasi, "Western Intervention in the USSR," CovertAction Information Bulletin, no. 39, Winter 1991-92. 36. "The Cenasia Discussion List," www.eurasianet.org/resour...0052.html. 37. Bogdan Denitch, "The Case Against Inaction," The Nation, April 26, 1999. 38. "Biographies, 2002 Socialist Scholars Conference," www.socialistscholar.org/biographies. 39. "Grants," www.soros.org/repro/grants. 40. "East and Central Europe Program," www.newschool.edu/centers/ecep. 41. Oxana Popovitch, "IREX Belarus Opens a New IATP Site in Molodechno." www.iatp.net/archive/belarus. 42. lan Traynor, "Belarussian Foils Dictator-buster...For Now," Guardian, September 14, 2001, www.guardian.co.uk/intern...33,00.html 43. Steven Erlanger, "Kostunica Says Some Backers 'Unconsciously Work for American Imperial Goals,"' New York Times, September 20, 2000; and "Bringing Down a Dictator, Serbia Calling." PBS, www.pbs.org/weta/dictator...lling.html 44. Milosevic in the Hague, Focus on Human Rights, "In-Depth Report Documents Milosevic Crimes," April 2001, www.hrw.org/press/2001/10...t1029.htm. 45. "About ICG," May 2002, www.intl-crisis-group.org...G2002.pdf. 46. Macedonia Crimes Against Civilians: Abuses by Macedonian Forces in Lluboten, August 10-12, 2001, 47. Andrew Leonard. "The Man Who Bought the World," February 28, 2002, Salon.com. archive.salon.com/tech/bo.../28/soros/ 48. James Petras, "Imperialism and NGOs in Latin America," Monthly Review, vol. 49, no. 7, December 1997. 49. International Security Studies, "Herbert Okun," www.yale.edu/iss/peopleadvisoryboard1. 50. Leonard. 51. Edward W. Miller, "Brigandage," Coastal Post Monthly, Mann County, CA, September 2000. 52. Mirjan Nadrljanski, "Eco-Disaster in Pancevo: Consequences on the Health of the Population," July 19, 1999, www.gci.ch/GreenCrossProg...anski.html 53. "Soros Fund Launches $150 MIn U.S.Backed Balkans Investment," Bloomberg Business News, July 26, 2000; Chris Hedges, "Below It All in Kosovo," New York limes, July 8,1998, p. A4. 54. Galina Sabeva, "Soros' Sofia IT Firm Gets $9 Million Equity Investment," Reuters, January 23, 2001. 55. On Plan Colombia see: Manuel Salgado Tamayo, "The Geostrategy of Plan Colombia CovertAction Quarterly no. 71, Winter 2001. 56. "Colombia: Human Rights Watch Testifies Before the Senate," Human Rights Watch Backgrounder, April 24, 2002, www.hrw.org/backgrounder/...y0424.htm. 57. "Colombia: Bush/Pastrana Meeting, HRW World Report 2001, Human Rights News" (New York, November 6, 2001). 58. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Action Alert," New York limes Covering for Colombian Death Squads," February 9, 2001. 59. Doug Stokes "Colombia Primer Q&A on the Conflict and U.S. Role," April 16, 2002. Znet, www.zmag.org/content/Colo...rimer.cfm. 60. Interpress Service, January 18, 1995. For additional background see Jane Regan, "AIDing U.S. Interests In Haiti," CovertAction Quarterly no. 51, Winter 1994-95; and Noam Chomsky, "Haiti, The Uncivil Society," CovertAction Quarterly no. 57, Summer 1996. 61. Sam Tucker, Human Rights Watch, www.webactive.com/webactive/sotw/hrw. 62. John Kenneth Knaus, Orphans of the Cold War (New York, BBS Public Affairs 1999), p. 236. 63. Elisabeth Rosenthal, "Defiant Chinese Muslims Keep Their Own Time," New York limes, November 19, 2000, p. 3. 64. Jonathan Reynolds (pseudonym), "The Clandestine Chef," New York Times Magazine, December 3, 2000. 65. "Lessons of War," Le Monde Diplomatique, March 2000; Peter Phillips, "Untold Stories of U.S./NATO's War and Media Complacency," www.converge.org.nz/pma/suntold.htm 66. Marc W. Herold, "A Dossier on Civilian Victims of United States' Aerial Bombing of Afghanistan: A Comprehensive Accounting," www.ratical.org/ratville/...eaths.html 67. "Rape as a crime against humanity," www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/rape.html 68. "Improving the Public Diplomacy Campaign in the War Against Terrorism," Independent Task Force on America's Response to Terrorism, Council on Foreign Relations, November 6, 2001. 69. William Greider, "Curious George Talks the Market, The Nation, February 15, 1999. 70. "Oppose John Bolton's Nomination as State Department's Arms Control Leader," Council for a Livable World , April 11, 2001, www.clw.org/bush/opposebolton.html 71. Ibid. 72. Greider. 73. "The Dictatorship of Financial Capital," Federation of Social and Educational Assistance (FASE), Brazil, 2002, www.fase.org.br Here's the information, the article: george soros: imperial wizar by heather coffin This is not a case of narcissistic personality disorder; this is how George Soros exercises the authority of United States hegemony in the world today. Soros foundations and financial machinations are partly responsible for the destruction of socialism in Eastern Europe and the former USSR. He has set his sights on China. He was part of the full court press that dismantled Yugoslavia. Calling himself a philanthropist, billionaire George Soros' role is to tighten the ideological stranglehold of globalization and the New World Order while promoting his own financial gain. Soros' commercial and "philanthropic" operations are clandestine, contradictory and coactive. And as far as his economic activities are concerned, by his own admission, he is without conscience; a capitalist who functions with absolute amorality. Master-builder of the new bribe sector systematically bilking the world He thrusts himself upon world statesmen and they respond. He has been close to Henry Kissinger, Vaclav Havel and Poland's General Wojciech Jaruzelski. 4 He supports the Dalai Lama, whose institute is housed in the Presidio in San Francisco, also home to the foundation run by Soros' friend, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. 5 Soros is a leading figure on the Council of Foreign Relations, the World Economic Forum, and Human Rights Watch (HRW). In 1994, after a meeting with his philosophical guru, Sir Karl Popper, Soros ordered his companies to start investing in Central and Eastern European communications. The Federal Radio Television Administration of the Czech Republic accepted his offer to take over and fund the archives of Radio Free Europe. Soros moved the archives to Prague and spent over $15 million on their maintenance. 2 A Soros foundation now runs CIA-created Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty jointly with the U.S. and RFE/RL, which has expanded into the Caucasus and Asia. 3 Soros is the founder and funder of the Open Society Institute. He created and maintains the International Crisis Group (ICG) which, among other things, has been active in the Balkans since the destruction of Yugoslavia. Soros works openly with the United States Institute of Peace-an overt arm of the CIA. He thrusts himself upon world statesmen and they respond. He has been close to Henry Kissinger, Vaclav Havel and Poland's General Wojciech Jaruzelski. 4 He supports the Dalai Lama, whose institute is housed in the Presidio in San Francisco, also home to the foundation run by Soros' friend, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. 5 When anti-globalization forces were freezing in the streets outside New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel in February 2002, George Soros was inside addressing the World Economic Forum. As the police forced protesters into metal cages on Park Avenue, Soros was extolling the virtues of the "Open Society" and joined Zbigniew Brzezinski, Samuel Huntington, Francis Fukuyama and others. WHO IS THIS GUY? George Soros was born in Hungary in 1930 to Jewish parents so removed from their roots that they once vacationed in Nazi Germany. 6 Soros lived under the Nazis, but with the triumph of the Communists moved to England in 1947. There, Soros came under the sway of the philosopher Karl Popper, at the London School of Economics. Popper was a lionized anti-communist ideologue and his teachings formed the basis for Soros' political tendencies. There is hardly a speech, book or article that Soros writes that does not pay obeisance to Popper's influence. Knighted in 1965, Popper coined the slogan "Open Society," which eventually manifested in Soros' Open Society Fund and Institute. Followers of Popper repeat his words like true believers. Popperian philosophy epitomizes Western individual ism. Soros left England in 1956, and found work on Wall Street where, in the 1960s, he invented the "hedge fund." "...hedge funds catered to very wealthy individuals... The largely secretive funds, usually trading in offshore locations. . produced astronomically superior results. The size of the "bets" often became self fulfilling prophecies: 'rumors of a position taken by the big hedge funds prompted other investors to follow suit,' which would in turn force up the price the hedgers were betting on to begin with." 7 Soros organized the Quantum Fund in 1969 and began to dabble in currency manipulation. In the 1970s, his financial activities turned to: "Alternating long and short positions... Soros won big both on the rise of real estate investment trusts and on their subsequent collapse. Under his 20-year stewardship, Quantum returned an amazing 34.5% a year. Soros is best known (and feared) for currency speculation.. . In 1997 he earned the rare distinction of being singled out as a villain by a head of state, Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamad, for taking part in a highly profitable attack on that nation's currency." 8 Through such clandestine financial scheming, Soros became a multibillionaire. His companies control real estate in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico; banking in Venezuela; and are some of the most profitable currency traders in the world, giving rise to the general belief that his highly placed friends assisted him in his financial endeavors, for political as well as financial gain. 9 George Soros has been blamed for the destruction of the Thai economy in 1997.10 One Thai activist said, "We regard George Soros as a kind of Dracula. He sucks the blood from the people." 11 The Chinese call him "the crocodile," because his economic and ideological efforts in China were so insatiate, and because his financial speculation created millions of dollars in profits as it ravished the Thai and Malaysian economies. 12 Soros once made a billion dollars in one day by speculating (a word he abhors) on the British pound. Accused of taking "money from every British taxpayer when he speculated against sterling," he said, "When you speculate in the financial markets you are free of most of the moral concerns that confront an ordinary businessman.. .I did not have to concern myself with moral issues in the financial markets." 13 Soros has a schizophrenic craving for unlimited personal wealth and a desire to be thought well of by others: "Currency traders sitting at their desks buy and sell currencies of Third World countries in large quantities. The effect of the currency fluctuations on the people who live in those countries is a matter that does not enter their minds. Nor should it; they have a job to do. Yet if we pause to think, we must ask ourselves whether currency traders.. .should regulate the lives of millions." 14 It was Soros who saved George W. Bush's bacon when his management of an oil exploration company was ending in failure. Soros was the owner of Harken Energy Corporation, and it was he who bought the rapidly depreciating stocks just prior to the company's collapse. The future president cashed out at almost one million dollars. Soros said he did it to buy "political influence." 15 Soros is also a partner in the infamous Carlyle Group. Organized in 1987, "the world's largest private equity firm" with over twelve billion dollars under management, is run by "a veritable who's who of former Republican leaders," from CIA man Frank Carlucci to CIA head George Bush, Sr. The Carlyle Group makes most of its money from weapons expenditures. THE PHILANTHROPIST SPOOK In 1980, Soros began to use his millions to attack socialism in Eastern Europe. He financed individuals who would cooperate with him. His first success was in Hungary. He took over the Hungarian educational and cultural establishment, incapacitating socialist institutions throughout the country. He made his way right inside the Hungarian government. Soros next moved on to Poland, aiding the CIA-funded Solidarity operation and in that same year, he became active in China. The USSR came next. It is not coincidental that the Central Intelligence Agency had operations in all of those countries. The goal of the Agency was exactly the same as that of the Open Society Fund: to dismantle socialism. In South Africa, the CIA sought out dissidents who were anticommunist. In Hungary, Poland and the USSR, the CIA, with overt intervention from the National Endowment for Democracy, the AFL-CIO, USAID and other institutions, supported and organized anticommunists, the very type of individuals recruited by Soros' Open Society Fund. The CIA would have called them "assets." As Soros said, "In each country I identified a group of people - some leading personalities, others less well known - who share my belief..."16 Soros' Open Society organized conferences with anticommunist Czechs, Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians, Croatians, Bosnians, Kosovars. 17 His ever-expanding influence gave rise to suspicions that he was operating as part of the U.S. intelligence complex. In 1989, the Washington Post reported charges first made in 1987 by the Chinese government officials that Soros' Fund for the Reform and Opening of China had CIA connections. 18 TAKING ON MOSCOW After 1990, Soros funds targeted the Russian educational system, providing the entire nation with textbooks. 19 In effect, Soros ensured the indoctrination of an entire generation of Russian youth with OSI propaganda. Soros foundations were accused of engineering a strategy to take control of the Russian financial system, privatization schemes, and the process of foreign investment in that country. Russians reacted angrily to Soros' legislative meddlings. Critics of Soros and other U.S. foundations said the goal of these maneuvers was to "thwart Russia as a state, which has the potential to compete with the world's only superpower." 20 Russians began to suspect Soros and the CIA were interconnected. Business tycoon Boris Berezovsky said, "I nearly fainted when I heard a couple of years ago that George Soros was a CIA agent." 21 Berezovsky's opinion was that Soros, and the West, were "afraid of Russian capital becoming strong." If the economic and political establishment in the United States fear an economic rivalry from Russia, what better way to control it than to dominate Russian media, education, research centers and science? After spending $250 million for the "transformation of education of humanities and economics at the high school and university levels," Soros created the International Science Foundation for another $100 million. 22 The Russian Federal Counterintelligence Service (FSK) accused Soros foundations in Russia of "espionage." They noted that Soros was not operating alone; he was part of a full court press that included financing from the Ford and Heritage Foundations; Harvard, Duke, and Columbia universities, and assistance from the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence services. 23 The FSK criticized Soros' payouts to 50,000 Russian scientists, saying that Soros advanced his own interests by gaining control of thousands of Russian scientific discoveries and new technologies to collect state and commercial secrets. 24 In 1995, Russians were infuriated by the insinuation of State Department operative Fred Cuny into the conflict in Chechnya. Cuny's cover was disaster relief, but his history of involvement in international conflict zones of interest to the U.S., plus FBI and CIA search parties, made clear his government connections. At the time of his disappearance, Cuny was working under contract to a Soros foundation. 25 It is not widely known in the U.S. that the violence in Chechnya, a province in the heart of Russia, is generally perceived as the result of a political destabilization campaign on which Washington looks favorably, and may actually be directing. This assessment of the situation is clear enough to writer Tom Clancy that he felt free to include it as an assertion of fact in his best-seller, The Sum of All Fears. The Russians accused Cuny of being a CIA operative, and part of an intelligence operation to support the Chechen uprising. 26 Soros' Open Society Institute is still active in Chechnya, as are other Soros-sponsored organizations. Russia was the site of at least one joint endeavor to enhance Soros' balance sheet, arranged with diplomatic assistance from the Clinton administration. In 1999, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright blocked a $500 million loan guarantee by the U.S. Export-Import Bank to the Russian company, Tyumen Oil, on the grounds that it was contrary to U.S. national interests. Tyumen wanted to buy American-made oil equipment and services from Dick Cheney's Halliburton Company and ABB Lummus Global of Bloomfield, New Jersey. 27 George Soros was an investor in a company that Tyumen had been trying to acquire. Both Soros and BP Amoco lobbied to prevent this transaction, and Albright obliged. 28 NURTURING LEFT ANTI-SOCIALISM Soros' Open Society Institute has a finger in every pot. Its board of directors reads like a "Who's Who" of Cold War and New World Order pundits. Paul Goble is Communications Director; 'he was the major political commentator at Radio Free Europe. Herbert Okun served in the Nixon State Department as an intelligence adviser to Henry Kissinger. Kati Marton is the wife of former Clinton administration UN ambassador and envoy to Yugoslavia, Richard Holbrooke. Marton lobbied for the Soros-funded radio station B-92, also a project of' the National Endowment for Democracy (another overt arm of the CIA), which was instrumental in bringing down the Yugoslav government. When Soros founded the Open Society Fund he picked liberal pundit Aryeh Neier to lead it. Neier was the head of Helsinki Watch, a putative human rights organization with an anticommunist bent. In 1993, the Open Society Fund became the Open Society Institute. Helsinki Watch became Human Rights Watch in 1975. Soros is currently on its Advisory Board, both for the Americas and the Eastern Europe-Central Asia Committees, and his Open Society Fund/Soros/OSI is listed as a funder. 29 Soros is intimately connected to HRW, and Neier wrote columns for The Nation magazine without mentioning that he was on Soros' payroll. 30 Soros is intimately involved in HRW, although he does his best to hide it. 31 He says he just funds and sets up these programs and lets them run. But they do not stray from the philosophy of the funder. HRW and OSI are close. Their views do not diverge. Of course, other foundations fund these institutions as well, but Soros' influence dominates their ideology. George Soros' activities fall into the construct developed in 1983 and enunciated by Allen Weinstein, founder of the National Endowment for Democracy. Weinstein said, "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."32 Soros is operating exactly within the confines of the intelligence complex. He is little different from CIA drug runners in Laos in the 1960s, or the mujahedin who profited from the opium trade while carrying out CIA operations against socialist Afghanistan in the 1980s. He simply funnels (and takes home) a whole lot more money than those pawns, and he does much of his business in the light of day. His candor insofar as he expresses it is a sort of spook damage control that serves to legitimize the strategies of U.S. foreign policy. The majority of people in the U.S. today who consider themselves politically left-of-center are undoubtedly pessimistic about the chances for a socialist transformation of society. Thus the Soros 'Decentralization" model, or the "piecemeal" approach to "negative utilitarianism, the attempt to minimize the amount of misery," which was Popper's philosophy, appeals to them. 33 Soros funded an HRW study that was used to back California and Arizona legislation relaxing drug laws. 34 Soros favors the legalization of drugs - one way of temporarily reducing awareness of one's misery. Soros is an equal-opportunity bribester. At a loftier rung of the socioeconomic ladder, one finds Social Democrats who accept Soros funding and believe in civil liberties within the context of capitalism. 35 For these folks, the evil consequences of Soros' business activities (impoverishing people all over the world) are mitigated by his philanthropic activities. Similarly, liberal/left intellectuals, both in the U.S. and abroad, have been drawn in by the "Open Society" philosophy, not to mention the occasional funding plum. The New Left in the United States was a social democratic movement. It was resolutely anti-Soviet, and when Eastern Europe and the USSR fell, few in the New Left opposed the destruction of the socialist systems. The New Left did not mourn or protest when the hundreds of millions in Eastern Europe and Central Asia lost their right to jobs, housing at reasonable and legally protected rents, free education through graduate school, health care and cultural enhancement. Most belittled any suggestion that the CIA and certain NGOs such as the National Endowment for Democracy or the Open Society Fund had actively participated in the annihilation of socialism. These people felt that the Western determination to destroy the USSR since 1917 was barely connected to the fall of the USSR. For them, socialism failed of its own accord, because it was flawed. As revolutions, such as the ones in Mozambique, Angola, Nicaragua or El Salvador were destroyed by proxy forces or were stalled by demonstration "elections," New Left pragmatists shrugged their shoulders and turned away. The New Left sometimes seemed to deliberately ignore the post-Soviet machinations of U.S. foreign policy. Bogdan Denitch, who had political aspirations in Croatia, was active within the Open Society Institute, and received OSI funding. 36 Denitch favored the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Croatia, NATO bombing of Bosnia and then Yugoslavia, and even a ground invasion of Yugoslavia. 37 Denitch was a founder and chair for many years of the Democratic Socialists of America, a leading liberal-left group in the U.S. He has also long chaired the prestigious Socialist Scholars Conference, through which he was key to manipulating the sympathies of many toward support for NATO expansion. 38 Other Soros targets for support include Refuse and Resist the ACLU, and a host of other liberal causes. 39 Soros added another unlikely trophy when he became involved in the New School for Social Research in New York, long an academy of choice for left intellectuals. He now funds the East and Central Europe Program there. 40 Many leftists who were inspired by the revolution in Nicaragua sadly accepted the election of Violetta Chamorro and the defeat of the Sandinistas in 1990. Most of the Nicaragua support network faded thereafter. Perhaps the New Left could have learned from the rising star of Michael Kozak. He was a veteran of Washington's campaigns to install sympathetic leaders in Nicaragua, Panama and Haiti, and to undermine Cuba - he headed the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. After organizing the Chamorro victory in Nicaragua, Kozak moved on to become U.S. Ambassador to Belarus. Kozak worked with the Soros-sponsored "Internet Access and Training Program" (IATP), which was busy "creating future leaders" in Belarus. 41 This program was simultaneously imposed upon Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. IATP operates openly with the support of the U.S. Department of State. To its credit, Belarus expelled Kozak and the Soros-Open Society/U.S. State Department crowd. The government of Aleksandr Lukashenko found that for four years before moving to Minsk, Kozak was instrumental in engineering the flow of tens of millions of dollars to the Belarus opposition. Kozak was creating a united opposition coalition, funding web-sites, newspapers and opinion polls, and tutoring a student resistance movement similar to Yugoslavia's Otpor. Kozak brought in Otpor leaders to instruct dissidents in Belarus. 42 Just before September 11, 2001, the U.S. was revving up a demonization campaign against President Aleksandr Lukashenko. Demonizing Lukashenko has temporarily taken a back burner to the "war on terrorism." Through OSI and HRW, Soros was a major supporter of the B-92 radio station in Belgrade. Soros funded Otpor, the organization that received those "suitcases of money" in support of the October 5, 2000 coup that toppled the Yugoslav government. 43 Human Rights Watch helped legitimize the subsequent kidnapping and show trial of Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague by saying nothing about his rights." 44 Louise Arbour, who served as judge at that illegal tribunal, is presently on the Board of Soros' International Crisis Group. 45 The Open Society/Human Rights Watch gang has been working on Macedonia, calling it part of their "civilizing mission." 46 Expect that republic to be "saved" to finish the total disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. DEPUTIES OF POWER Soros has actually stated that he considers his philanthropy moral and his money management business amoral. 47 Yet those in charge of Soros-funded NGOs have a clear and consistent agenda. One of Soros' most influential institutions is the International Crisis Group, founded in 1986. ICG is headed by individuals from the very center of political and corporate power. Its board includes Zbigniew Brzezinski, Morton Abramowitz, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State; Wesley Clark, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander for Europe; and Richard Allen, former U.S. National Security Adviser, Allen is noteworthy for quitting Nixon's National Security Council out of disgust with the liberal tendencies of Henry Kissinger; recruiting Oliver North to Reagan's National Security Council, and negotiating missiles for hostages in the Iran-Contra scandal. For these individuals, "containing conflict" boils down to U.S. control over the people and resources of the world. In the 1980s and 1990s, under the aegis of the Reagan Doctrine, U.S. covert and overt operations in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia were in the works. Soros was openly active in most of these places, working to buy off would-be revolutionaries, or subsidize politicians, intellectuals and anyone else who might come to power when the revolutionary moment had passed. According to James Petras: "By the early 1980s the more perceptive sectors of the neoliberal ruling classes realized that their policies were polarizing the society and provoking large-scale social discontent. Neoliberal politicians began to finance and promote a parallel strategy 'from below,' the promotion of 'grassroots' organizations with an 'anti-statist' ideology to intervene among potentially conflictory classes, to create a "social cushion." These organizations were financially dependent on neoliberal sources and were directly involved in competing with sociopolitical movements for the allegiance of local leaders and activist communities. By the 1 990s these organizations, described as "nongovernmental," numbered in the thousands and were receiving close to four billion dollars world-wide." 48 In Underwriting Democracy, Soros boasts about the "Americanization of Eastern Europe." According to his account, through his education programs he began to establish a young cadre of Sorosian leaders. These Soros Foundation-educated young men and women are prepared to fulfill the functions of so-called "influence agents." Thanks to their fluent knowledge of languages and their insertion into the emerging bureaucracies in target countries, these recruits would philosophically smooth the inroads for Western multinational corporations. Career diplomat Herbert Okun, on the Europe Committee of Human Rights Watch, along with George Soros, is connected to a host of State Department-linked institutions, from USAID to the Rockefeller-funded Trilateral Commission. From 1990 to 1997, Okun was executive director of something called the Financial Services Volunteer Corps, part of USAID, "to help establish free market financial systems in former communist countries." 49 George Soros is in complete accord with the capitalists who are in the process of taking control of the global economy. NON-PROFIT PROFITEERING Soros claims not to do philanthropy in the countries in which he is involved as a currency trader. 50 But Soros has often taken advantage of his connections to make key investments. Armed with a study by ICC, and with the support of Bernard Kouchner, chief of the UN Interim Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK), Soros attempted to acquire the most profitable mining complex in the Balkans. In September 2000, in a hurry to take the Trepca mines before the Yugoslavian election, Kouchner stated that pollution from the mining complex was raising lead levels in the environment. 51 This is incredible considering that he cheered when the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia rained depleted uranium on the country and released more than 100,000 tons of carcinogens into the air, water and soil. 52 But Kouchner had his way, and the mines were closed for "health reasons." Soros invested $150 million in an effort to gain control of Trepca's gold, silver, lead, zinc and cadmium, which make the property worth $5 billion. 53 As Bulgaria was imploding into "free-market" chaos, Soros was busy scavenging through the wreckage, as Reuters reported in early 2001: "The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) invested $3.0 million in [Bulgarian high-tech company] Rila, the first firm to benefit from a new $30 million facility set up by the EBRD to support IT firms in central and eastern Europe.... Another $3. 0 million came from U.S private investment fund Argus Capital Partners, sponsored by Prudential Insurance Company of America and opera ting in central and eastern Europe... Soros, who had invested around $3.0 million in Rila and in 2001 invested another $1.0 million...remained its majority owner. " 54 FRAMING THE ISSUES His pose as a philanthropist gives Soros the power to shape international public opinion when social conflict raises the question of who are the victims and who are the malefactors. Like other NGOs, Human Rights Watch, Soros' mouthpiece on human rights, avoids or ignores most organized and independent working class struggles. In Colombia, labor leaders are routinely killed by paramilitaries working in concert with the U.S.-sponsored government. Because those unions oppose neoliberal economics, HRW is relatively silent. In April of this year, HRW's Jose Vivanco testified before the U.S. Senate in favor of Plan Colombia: 55 "Colombians remain committed to human rights and democracy They need help. Human Rights Watch has no fundamental problem with the United States providing that help." 56 HRW equates the actions of the Colombian guerrilla fighters struggling to free themselves from the oppression of state terror, poverty and exploitation with the repression of the U.S-sponsored armed forces and paramilitary death squads, the AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia). HRW validated the Pastrana government and its military, whose role was to protect property rights and maintain the economic and political status quo. According to HRW, 50% of civilian deaths are the work of the government-tolerated death squads. 57 The correct number is 80%. 58 HRW essentially certified the election and ascendancy of the Uribe government in 2002 as well. Uribe is a throwback to the Latin American dictators the U.S. supported in the past, although he was "elected." HRW had no comment about the fact that the majority boycotted the election. 59 In the Caribbean Basin, Cuba is another opponent of neoliberalism that has been demonized by Human Rights Watch. In nearby Haiti, Soros-funded activities have worked to defeat popular aspirations following the end of the Duvalier dictatorship by undermining Haiti's first democratically elected leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. HRW's Ken Roth helpfully chimed in with U.S. denunciations of Aristide as "undemocratic." To demonstrate his idea of "democracy," Soros foundations were commencing operations in Haiti complimentary to such unseemly U.S. activities as USAID's promotion of persons associated with FRAPH, the notorious CIA-sponsored death squads which have terrorized the country since the fall of 'Baby Doc' Duvalier. 60 On HRW's web site, Director Roth criticized the U.S. for not opposing China more vigorously. Roth's activities include the creation of the Tibetan Freedom Concert, a traveling propaganda project that toured the U.S. with major rock musicians, urging young people to support Tibet against China. 61 Tibet has been a pet project of the CIA for many years. 62 Roth has recently pressed for opposition to Chinese control over its oil-rich western province of Xinjiang. With the colonialist "divide and conquer" approach, Roth has tried to convince some of the Uighur religious minority in Xinjiang that the U.S/NATO intervention in Kosovo holds promise as a model for them. As late as August 2002, the U.S. government has given some support in this endeavor as well. U.S. designs on this region were signaled clearly when a New York Times article on Xinjiang Province in western China described the Uighurs as a "Muslim majority, [which] lives restively under Chinese rule." They "are well versed in the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia last year which some celebrate for liberating the Muslims in Kosovo; they fantasize about a similar rescue' here." 63 The New York Times Magazine noted "Recent discoveries of oil have made Xinjiang extremely attractive to international trade," while comparing the conditions for its indigenous population to those in Tibet. 64 INNUMERACY When Sorosian organizations count, they seem to lose track of the truth. Human Rights Watch asserted that 500 people, not over 2,000, were killed by NATO bombers in the 1999 war in Yugoslavia. 65 They said only 350, not over 4,000, died as a result of U.S. attacks on Afghanistan. 66 When the U.S. bombed Panama in 1989, HRW prefaced its report by saying that the "ouster of Manuel Noriega.. and installation of the democratically-elected government of President Guillermo Endara brought high hopes in Panama..." The report neglected to mention the number of casualties. Human Rights Watch prepared the groundwork for the NATO attack on Bosnia in 1993 by the false rape-of-thousands and "genocide" stories. 67 This tactic of creating political hysteria was necessary for the United States to carry out its Balkan policy. It was repeated in 1999 when HRW functioned as the shock troops of indoctrination for the NATO attack on Yugoslavia. All of Soros' blather about the rule of law was forgotten. The U.S. and NATO made their own law, and the institutions of George Soros stood behind it. Massaging of numbers to provoke a response was a major part of a Council on Foreign Relations campaign after September 11,2001. This time it was the 2,801 killed in the World Trade Center. The CFR met on November 6, 2001, to plan a "major public diplomacy campaign." CFR created an "Independent Task Force on America's Response to Terrorism." Soros joined Richard C. Holbrooke, Newton L. Gingrich, John M. Shalikashvili (former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), and other powerful individuals on a campaign to make the Trade Center dead into tools for U.S. foreign policy. The CFR report set out to make the case for a war on terrorism. George Soros' fingerprints were all over the campaign: "Have senior-level U.S. officials press friendly Arab and other Muslim governments not only to publicly condemn the 9/11 attacks, but also to back the rationale and goals of the U.S. anti-terror campaign. We are never going to convince the publics in the Middle East and South Asia of the nghteousness of our cause if their governments remain silent. We need to help them to deflect any blow-hack from such statements, but we must have them vocally on board.... Encourage Bosnian, Albanian, and Turkish Muslims to educate foreign audiences regarding the U.S. role in saving the Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo in 1995-99, and our long-standing, close ties to Muslims around the world. Engage regional intellectuals and journalists across the board, regardless of their views. Routinely monitor the regional press in real time to enable prompt responses... Stress references to the victims (and ideally named victims to personalize them) whenever we discuss our cause and goals." 68 Sorosian innumeracy: counting to bolster and defend U.S. foreign policy. Soros is very worried about the decline in the world capitalist system and he wants to do something about it, now. He recently said: "I can already discern the makings of the final crisis.... Indigenous political movements are likely to arise that will seek to expropriate the multinational corporations and recapture the 'national' wealth." 69 Soros is seriously suggesting a plan to circumvent the United Nations. He proposes that the "democracies of the world ought to take the lead and forge a global network of alliances that could work with or without the United Nations." If he were psychotic, one might think he was having an episode. But the fact is, Soros' assertion that "The United Nations is constitutionally incapable of fulfilling the promises contained in the preamble of its charter," reflects the thinking of such reactionary institutions as the American Enterprise Institute. 70 Though many conservatives refer to the Soros network as left-wing, on the question of U.S. affiliation with the United Nations Soros is on the same page as the likes of John R. Bolton, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs, who, with "[M]any Republicans in Congress-believe that nothing more should be paid to the UN system." 71 There has been a decades-long rightwing campaign against the UN. Now Soros is leading it. On various Soros web sites one may read criticism of the United Nations as too rich, unwilling to share information, or flawed in ways that make it unfit for the way the world should run according to George Soros. Even writers at The Nation, writers who clearly ought to know better, have been influenced by Soros' ideas. William Greider, for instance, recently found some validity in Soros' criticism that the United Nations should not be a venue for "tin-pot dictators and totalitarians. . treated as equal partners." 72 This kind of Eurocentric racism is at the heart of Soros' hubris. His assumption that the United States can and should run the world is a prescription for fascism on a global scale. For much too long, Western "progressives" have been giving Soros a pass. Probably Greider and others will find the reference to fascism excessive, unjustified, even outrageous. But just listen closely to what Soros himself has to say: "In old Rome, the Romans only voted. In the modern global capitalism, the Americans only vote. The Brazilians do not vote." 73
divine gypsy Registered User (7/10/05 9:25 am) Reply	Re: Soros was the owner of Harken Energy Corporation Yikes, dontknownothinbouthistory... I'm sorry I asked, but if others want this much information on George Soros, that's fine. I, however, recently signed on MoveOn's petition's on Iraq that I agreed with, participated in their campaign to restore funding for public broadcasting, and contributed to their PAC to help replace Tom DeLay, etc. I don't have the time or inclination to read Soros-conspiracy theories, but 1) he doesn't sound absolutely amoral to me and 2) if even the Nation is too conservative for you then all I can say is I hope you don't turn the Walrus into your very own political rag.
stermejo Registered User (7/10/05 4:57 pm) Reply	Who? "WHO IS THIS GUY? George Soros was born in Hungary in 1930 to Jewish parents..." That's ALL you had to say, dog, He's part of that Jooish conspiracy. Period.
dontknownothinbouthistory Registered User (7/10/05 8:22 pm) Reply	Re: Let's try this Another option in addition to Move On is Code Pink and bringing our women and men home NOW www.codepink4peace.org/ Though formed originally by women, men are very active too with Code Pink, manning (pun intended) phones that are getting move and more calls from the armed service personnel who are awol or who want out.....and all the tasks of "people-oriented communtiy participation." CODEPINK Campaigns Our numbers are growing and the creativity and heart of CODEPINK is drawing more and more people into the Peace movement. We act collectively through International and National Priority Actions and Events. After Downing Street Indict President Bush We couldn't stop him from taking office, but we can ensure that his presidency ends as the public disgrace that it is. Local Cost of War Counter-Recruitment CODEPINK Denounces Bolton Win an Exit Strategy! Families For Peace Delegation The day our delegation left for the Middle East to take humanitarian aid to the refugees of the devastating US military attack on Fallujah �December 26�was the same day the tsunami devastated Southeast Asia. Help Send Humanitarian Aid to Iraq Thanks to your incredible generosity, we have now raised over $100,000 in humanitarian aid for the refugees from Falluja. Past Actions Action Alert Archive The California chapter has set the goal of getting the California National Guard home by Labor Day. They have started a mass movement to accomplish it.
metheuse Registered User (7/10/05 10:04 pm) Reply	Re: Let's try this---let't not and say we did Agree with divine gypsy on this one. The Walrus shouldn't really be focussed on politics. Unfortunately, I'm guilty of focussing on the subject in previous posts due to Yogananda's ill-advised praise of Adolph Hitler, and I fear I got the ball rolling by addressing the issue of Naziism in the United States, so I am definitely to blame, partially at least, for dragging politics into the Walrus. Admittedly I did it because there is a legitimate "issue" with Yogananda's politics, so at least to that extent, I feel my posts were appropriate. However, dontknownothin's voluminous posts on George Soros (who as far as I can tell has no clear connection whatever to SRF or Yogananda), seems signifiantly over the top and off the mark. On the other hand, the topic of this part of the Walrus is 'Not the Main Stream" so maybe it's OK to rag on about anything you want to. I guess.
dontknownothinbouthistory Registered User (7/11/05 9:27 am) Reply	Re: Maybe this is a "Core Issue" True this is all "Not in the Mainstream," hence we all "guess" that anything goes.... Reminds me of last November and what people say happened at Amma's week in San Ramon California. She was asked about community activism and she talked about spiritual bliss, sounding like a bliss bunny. The lady who asked the satsanga question, asked a follow-up question; Amma three times in English told her "stop" [hush], upon which some people commented that if they heard her right she was saying to turn a blind eye to the murderers and crooks, who sit in the presidency and other high offices. Those people walked out of the large overflowing hall. So for this reason, meditating while the earth garden is anhililated = playing the violin while Rome burns This is a core issue At what point is a life of kriya a life on opium At convocations the air is thick with this opium.
divine gypsy Registered User (7/11/05 4:20 pm) Reply	Re: Maybe this is a "Core Issue" So, are you saying that you would agree with whoever issued another bomb threat, or some such thing, for the Bonaventure Hotel for Convocation week? Actually, I tend to like that SRF stays more or less away from trying to tell its members how to think politically. I have lots of issues with them, but think that threats of violence against their gatherings are despicable.

Page 1 2

<< Prev Topic | Next Topic >>

Email This To a Friend
Topic Control Image

Topic Commands

Click to receive email notification of replies

Click to stop receiving email notification of replies

jump to:

- SRF Walrus - Not the Main Stream -

Powered By ezboard� Ver. 7.32
Copyright �1999-2005 ezboard, Inc.