Who is George Soros?
the velvet glove around the fist of empire
update for the age of Trump: it is surreal that the image of Mr. Soros go from being a concern of leftists upset at capitalism and its manipulations, to become the boogeyman of far right wing racists. Here is an excellent profile of this transformation:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hnsgrassegger/george-soros-conspiracy-finkelstein-birnbaum-orban-netanyahu
The Unbelievable Story Of The Plot Against George Soros
How two Jewish American political consultants helped create the world's largest anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.
Hannes Grassegger
BuzzFeed Contributor
Posted on January 20, 2019, at 9:57 a.m. ET
Beyond Bush II, by Michael Ruppert www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/102003_beyond_bush_2.html
Major power brokers like international financier George Soros are backing moves to remove Bush, and Soros is opening his sizeable checkbook to do it. I was dismayed recently to see that a board member of the ostensibly independent Pacifica radio network advocated direct solicitation of funds from both Soros and the CIA-connected Ford Foundation. Soros, who has or had business ties with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger, the Carlyle Group, the CIA's Radio Free Europe, Wesley Clark, Richard Allen and George W. Bush (through Harken Energy), is not a friendly, tree-hugging, progressive out to save the world. He is the fist in a velvet glove to the Neocons' baseball bat across the nose.
Soros, a member of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderberger Group, also sits on the World Economic Forum with many Rockefeller interests. [Two excellent biographies of Soros are "George Soros: Imperial Wizard by Heather Cottin" (Covert Action Quarterly, Fall 2002) and "George Soros: Prophet of an Open Society" by Karen Talbot at http://globalresearch.ca/articles/TAL307A.html.]
An investor in the notorious Carlyle Group
(an investment fund that the Bush and Bin Laden clans
were simultaneously invested in)
The collection of influential characters who now work, have worked, or have invested in the group would make the most convinced conspiracy theorists incredulous. They include among others, John Major, former British Prime Minister; Fidel Ramos, former Philippines President; Park Tae Joon, former South Korean Prime Minister; Saudi Prince Al-Walid; Colin Powell, the present Secretary of State; James Baker III, former Secretary of State; Caspar Weinberger, former Defense Secretary; Richard Darman, former White House Budget Director; the billionaire George Soros, and even some bin Laden family members. You can add Alice Albright, daughter of Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State; Arthur Lewitt, former SEC head; William Kennard, former head of the FCC, to this list. Finally, add in the Europeans: Karl Otto Poehl, former Bundesbank president; the now-deceased Henri Martre, who was president of Aerospatiale; and Etienne Davignon, former president of the Belgian Generale Holding Company. ....
Carlyle emerged from the shadows in spite of itself on September 11, 2001. That day, the group had organized a meeting at Washington's Ritz Carlton Hotel with five hundred of its largest investors. Frank Carlucci and James Baker III played masters of ceremony. George Bush senior made a lightning appearance at the beginning of the day. The presentation was quickly interrupted, but one detail escaped no one. One of the guests wore the name bin Laden on his badge. It was Shafiq bin Laden, one of Osama's many brothers. The American media discovered Carlyle. One journalist, Dan Briody, wrote a book about the group's hidden side, "The Iron Triangle", and takes an interest in the close relations between the Bush clan and the Saudi leadership.
Carlyle Empire
by Eric Leser
Le Monde
April 29, 2004
archived at www.culturechange.org/CarlyleEmpire.html
Soros funded "Human Rights Watch" whitewashes US invasion of Iraq
http://hrw.org/reports/2003/usa1203/3.htm
“Off Target: The Conduct of the War and Civilian Casualties in Iraq” (a HRW report)
[excerpts ...]
U.S.-led Coalition forces took precautions to spare civilians and, for the most part, made efforts to uphold their legal obligations. Human Rights Watch nevertheless identified practices that led to civilian casualties in the air war, ground war, and post-conflict period. ....
There should be no use of air- or ground-delivered cluster munitions until the humanitarian problems associated with these weapons are resolved. In particular, their use should be suspended until the dud rate can be reduced dramatically. If cluster munitions are employed, they should not be used in or near populated areas.Stocks of older, highly unreliable and unguided cluster bombs should not be used under any circumstances.
Precision-guided munitions (PGMs) should be used whenever possible, especially on targets in populated areas.
Extreme caution must be used in the targeting of electrical power facilities. In particular, electrical generation facilities should not be attacked at all. If electrical distribution facilities are attacked, it should be done in such a way as to cause only temporarily incapacitation.
Media installations should not be attacked unless it is clear that they make an effective contribution to military action and their destruction offers a definite military advantage.[emphases added[
There is ample testimony (and video footage) that some US troops committed indiscriminate war crimes. There is no real dispute the invasion was illegal under international law. HRW’s claim that the US military respected legal obligations is a lie. (HRW’s “Senior Military Analyst” is cited in their report as a former Defense Intelligence Agency specialist on Iraq issues.)
HRW’s recommendations assume that these types of wars can be waged in a relatively humanitarian manner. Dropping any sort of bomb into the middle of a large urban area is going to kill lots of people - their recommendations are reminiscent of Pentagon propaganda, not a human rights group. Their rationalization that electrical generation should only be attacked in a way that causes temporary incapacitation is ridiculous. Cutting off the flow of power to a modern city attacks sanitation, health care, water delivery and other “critical infrastructure” needed to sustain the population. It verges on violation of the Genocide convention, which specifically prevents attacks that deprive a population of the means of survival.
Worse, their tacit support for certain types of attacks on media institutions covers up the fact that the US military has assassinated journalists in Iraq. Several articles about this are linked at www.oilempire.us/mediawar.html
Human Rights Watch Report Leaves Much To Be Desired
http://dc.indymedia.org/feature/display/86546/index.php
The 2,000-pound Mark-84 JDAM bomb was the primary weapon used on Baghdad in the first week of warfare (along with the cruise missiles). This bomb sends 1,000 pounds of white-hot steel fragments about three-quarters of a mile from the impact zone, at 6,000 feet per second. Pieces of the nose cone and other heavy fragments will fly about a mile and a half, and 10,000 pounds of dirt and debris is hurled at supersonic speeds from the blast zone. A fireball is produced, with temperatures of 8,500 degrees Fahrenheit.
How can such weapons be used without inflicting large-scale civilian casualties? Of course, they can't.The U.S. denials regarding the market strikes were eventually proven false, after the remains of the U.S. missile were found with serial numbers identifying them, allowing them to be tracked right back to the actual plants that manufactured them.
These facts undercut any claims by HRW that the U.S. generally tried to comply with international humanitarian laws, or that the U.S. avoided targeting that would destroy or damage infrastructure, or that the targeting of fixed sites was not responsible for many civilian casualties. The claim, in face of the evidence regarding U.S. targeting decisions and the rampant destruction of civilian sites and lives, is utterly without merit.With the U.S. proclaiming openly that targets in civilian centers will be hit, using the types of weapons already described, there can be no doubt that U.S. forces showed contempt for international humanitarian laws in almost every way imaginable. In the precise example noted above, small batteries of anti-aircraft were situated in overwhelmingly civilian areas, yet the fact that the vast majority of damage and casualties from U.S. attacks would be civilian had no effect whatsoever on Pentagon decisions to target those areas with horribly destructive weapons.
One final point about the HRW report. HRW offers praise for the "relative restraint" of the U.S. Air Force regarding its use of cluster munitions. This is based on HRW's claim that the use of these weapons has "progressively" decreased since the bombings in Kosovo and the invasion of Afghanistan. That the Air Force reduced its use of cluster bombs while the other branches of the military significantly increased the employment of such weapons is hardly grounds for praise.
First of all, the military effort is a coordinated one, so one branch of the service using less cluster bombs while their use is stepped up elsewhere (and, in Iraq, significantly targeted large areas of civilian populations) isn't very significant. Moreover, the fact that less cluster bombs were used by the Air Force might be somewhat overshadowed by the fact they made massive use of multi-thousand-pound bombs against civilian population centers, as noted above. Taken together, the overwhelming weight of evidence suggests it was rather dubious for HRW to offer any sort of praise whatsoever to the U.S.A.F.
There is much more evidence of other widespread illegal conduct by U.S. forces in Iraq. Such illegality continues even now, the most recent example being the video of U.S. Marines executing an Iraqi prisoner while laughing and cheering. Human Rights Watch does good work all over the world. The recent report on Iraq, however, deserves some criticism---both for what it says and even more for what it doesn't say.
www.leftgatekeepers.com/articles/SorosHasAHunchBushCaBeBeatByJeanneCummings.htm
Soros Has a Hunch Bush Can Be Beat
Billionaire Puts His Weight, Money Behind Democratic Effort to Oust President
in '04
By JEANNE CUMMINGS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
.... Mr. Soros -- whose estimated fortune of $7 billion puts him 28th on the Forbes 400 list of the world's richest people -- is one big reason new channels for political money have become such a hot subject this year. He doesn't sit on the boards of the groups he supports, or weigh in on day-to-day strategy. Still, his opinion matters, and the group organizers give him early warning of any brewing controversies -- such as the time when one mistakenly posted on the Web a proposed anti-Bush commercial that compared the president to Adolf Hitler. The ad was never broadcast commercially.
Of course, Mr. Soros doesn't always enjoy the golden touch. His two early Democratic presidential primary picks -- Howard Dean and Wesley Clark -- are struggling. But that may not matter to Mr. Soros, who said in an interview that Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry's foreign policy best reflects his own global thinking.
[Kerry wants to continue the Iraq occupation. Kerry is “regime rotation” - replace Bush but keep most of the policies.]
www.leftgatekeepers.com/articles/MoveOnPacRockefferConnectionByBobFeldman.htm
MoveOn PAC's Rockefeller Connection
By Bob Feldman
George Soros' "Parallel Anti-War Media/Movement"
by bob feldman www.leftgatekeepers.com/articles/georgesoros.htm
Billionaire Soros's War Stock Investments
Like the former Corporation for Public Broadcasting Chairperson who owns a major chunk of the Columbia University-linked Nation magazine, Clinton-Gore Campaign Fundraiser Alan Sagner, the global speculator whose Open Society Institute gave KPFA a $40,000 grant in 1995 has some interesting special economic interests.
In his 1990 book The New Money Masters, John Train has a chapter entitled "George Soros: Global Speculator" in which he indicated how Soros obtained his surplus wealth:
"Soros...has always had partners on the management side, such as Jim Rogers...In 1969, aged 39, he [Soros] ...joined with Jim Rogers to found Quantum Fund... "It is not registered with the SEC...so the shareholders are foreigners, mostly Europeans...It engages in multidirectional international speculation in commodities, stock, and bonds...Thanks to Rogers, the fund was one of the first to recognize the investment merits of defense stocks."
According to The New Money Masters book, Soros's business partner in the 1970s and early 1980s, Jim Rogers, "became the largest outside shareholder of Lockheed in 1974."
As of 1989, the portfolio of Soros Fund Management Equity Holdings included $27 million worth of Boeing stock, $106 million worth of RJR Nabisco tobacco company stock, $3.5 million worth of Lockheed stock, $2.2 million worth of CBS stock, $2.3 million of Time Inc. stock, $12.8 million worth of Warner Communications stock and $6.5 million worth of Wal-Mart stock.
MoveOn, Kucinich and other alternative Left election deceptions
By Larry Chin
Associate Editor
Online Journal
www.onlinejournal.com
www.leftgatekeepers.com/articles/larrychinmoveon1.htm
The objective of the alternative Left, as detailed by a number of media analysts and researchers, and in books on the subject (such as Frances Stonor Saunders’ “The Cultural Cold War”, is keeping potential opposition in a perpetual state of weakness, living in a carefully-managed and neutered “counter/activist” subculture/life style in which followers can spend their lifetimes in intellectual servitude --- told by their icons and media handlers what to believe and what to do, what issues are important, what issues to avoid, how to become wealthy within “socially responsible” capitalism, and which icons and idols to follow.
Elite progressive/liberal groups in this country---from the activist groups (Global Exchange, MoveOn, Working Assets) to the media (ZNet, The Nation, Salon, Common Dreams, Pacifica Radio, etc) to the liberal think tanks (such as Institute for Policy Studies) and its major intellectual gods (Chomsky, etc.) have done their best to limit and control true criticism of the system that (regardless of their denials) feeds them.
Much of the funding of the Left is directly traced to elite foundations with ties to the highest levels of political and corporate power---the Democratic Party leadership, George Soros, Rockefeller, the Institute for Policy Studies, and the CIA-connected Ford Foundation. Yet other portions of the Left (university programs, for example) are financed directly by the U.S. government.
Meanwhile, this alternative Left has attacked whistleblowers, investigators, journalists, academics and concerned citizens who have attempted to expose the criminal roots of the system, and push for genuine reform, while co-opting and steering optimistic followers into “safe” intellectual zero-sum games -- false/limited environmentalism, false/limited race, sex and gender issues, limited civil rights, false/limited “investigations” (that never name the right names, and never bring the true criminals to justice), and red herrings such as the “war on terrorism” and “homeland security”.
MoveOn represents one of the most insidious fronts of this parallel structure. Given its roots (MoveOn was a defender of Bill Clinton during the Clinton scandals), MoveOn is a recipient of major Democratic Party money, Hollywood celebrities and elite foundations, which themselves have with ties to other foundations.No group or individual that has failed to address the unsolved 9/11 (its central role in everything that has happened since) is truly "anti-war".
The Democrats are the system. They have supported (stridently) the Bush war agenda, the "war on terrorism", and neoliberal corporate globalization. You won't find more muscular proponents of war in the Middle East than some of the 2004 Democratic candidates (many of whom helped plan the Iraq takeover, notably Joe Lieberman), who promise no "end" to US terrorism, but an “improved” operation, and an even more aggressive police state ("Bush didn't keep us safe from crazed Islamic hordes. We will").
The Democrats and Greens were virtually silent in the wake of the stolen 2000 election (they accepted it with barely a whimper), silent on Bush’s criminality throughout his presidency, silent on 9/11, silent on Enron’s ties to the White House and Washington, and hopeless facilitators on just about everything post-9/11, including the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq. Silent on Peak Oil---the unfolding world energy depletion that is driving the U.S. imperial war of conquest all over the world.
Is getting rid of the dangerous George W. Bush a high priority? That goes without saying. Will it happen?
In just the past few days, the corrupt Supreme Court has issued two decisions, one targeted at appeasing the ethnic vote, the other the gay vote---both core constituencies for the liberal wing of the Democrats. This signal of things to come is blatantly clear.
The timing of these decisions, and modestly bolder anti-Bush rhetoric from within Congress (that had been silent for the better part of two years) suggest that some sort of top-down approved “reface” could occur in 2004. But this rearranging of deck chairs, while potentially removing the Bush junta, will leave the New World Order fully intact no matter which friendly faces appear on “Saturday Night Live” and “The Tonight Show” minstreling for votes (that are probably not counted anyway).
Isn’t it time to face this stark reality, this paradigm, with honesty rather than ignorance?
www.counterpunch.org/levich12062003.html
December 6 / 7, 2003
When NGOs Attack
Implications of the Coup in Georgia
By JACOB LEVICH
Nongovernmental organizations--the notionally independent, reputedly humanitarian groups known as NGOs--are now being openly integrated into Washington's overall strategy for consolidating global supremacy.
Events surrounding last month's coup in post-Soviet Georgia, read in light of recent State Department documents, suggest that seemingly innocuous NGOs now play a central role in the policy of US-engineered "regime change" set forth in the notorious National Security Strategy of the United States.
The November 24 Wall Street Journal explicitly credited the toppling of Eduard Shevardnadze's regime to the operations of "a raft of non-governmental organizations . . . supported by American and other Western foundations." These NGOs, said the Journal, had "spawned a class of young, English-speaking intellectuals hungry for pro-Western reforms" who were instrumental laying the groundwork for a bloodless coup.
Astute commentators have correctly noted connections between these provocateur NGOs and mega-philanthropist George Soros, but the billionaire speculator did not act independently. Georgia's so-called "Velvet Revolution" appears to have been a textbook case of regime change by stealth, carefully planned and centrally coordinated by the US government.
Thanks to first-rate reporting by Mark McKinnon in the Toronto Globe & Mail and Mark Ames in the Moscow-based online journal The Exile <www.exile.ru>, the Georgian coup can be understood as a virtual scene-for-scene rerun of the overthrow of Yugoslavia's Slobodan Milosevic--right down to the role of US Ambassador, played in both cases by spooky career diplomat Richard Miles.
But while foreign-funded NGOs played a significant minor part in the Yugoslavian operation, in Georgia they were granted star billing. This bold, all but overt, deployment of NGOs in service of US imperialism represents a new wrinkle in regime change, reflecting adjusted post-9/11 priorities at State and in the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
Illuminating background is available in a watershed USAID report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest: Promoting Freedom, Security and Opportunity, released in January 2003 but ignored by a press swept up in pre-invasion hysteria. In the report, USAID vows that development programs will no longer be directed primarily toward alleviating human misery, but will be committed to "encouraging democratic [i.e., US-friendly] reforms." This policy shift is explicitly linked to the National Security Strategy of the United States, the 2002 White House blueprint for a new, openly aggressive phase of US imperialism.
Henceforward, the report promises, only friendly regimes will be rewarded with development money, while hostile (or merely independent) states will be punished by NGO-driven "reform" programs that sound suspiciously like old-fashioned destabilization ops.
The document notes with approval the explosive growth of NGOs worldwide and points to the NGO network as an attractive conduit for the strategic distribution of dollars. Of course, not every NGO is controlled by the US foreign policy establishment, and many rank-and-file aid workers continue to perform thankless but essential relief work in countries decimated by capitalism and war. But there's no mistaking which way the wind is blowing in the development community: "NGOs used to work at arm's length from donor governments," the USAID report smugly observes, "but over time the relationship has become more intimate."
To be sure, the vast global network of privately-funded foundations and NGOs has done enormous damage in its own right over the past two decades. With or without direct US assistance, NGOs continue to prop up immiserating neoliberal reforms, abet the schemes of transnational finance and agribusiness, and thwart the struggles of Third World people to claim better lives as of right. (The broader case against NGOs has been exhaustively set forth by James Petras, among others, and is powerfully advanced in the current issue of Aspects of India's Economy.)
But USAID's new emphasis on "building strategic partnerships" with humanitarian groups promises far worse to come. In thinly coded language, Foreign Aid in the National Interest touts NGOs and other private donors for their ability to lay groundwork for coups d' état: "Assistance can be provided to reformers to help identify key winners and losers, develop coalition building and mobilization strategies, and design publicity campaigns. . . . Such assistance may represent an investment in the future, when a political shift gives reformers real power."
As summarized by Hoover Institute fellow Larry Diamond, a self-described "specialist on democratic development and regime change" who contributed to the report: "Where governments are truly rotten, the report suggests channeling assistance primarily through nongovernmental sources, working with other bilateral aid donors and multilateral aid agencies to . . . coordinat[e] pressure on bad, recalcitrant governments."
Shevardnadze, for many years a reliable US client, seems to have become truly rotten at around the time of his perceived tilt toward Russia, a development which potentially threatened US military access to the region and control of the $2.7 billion Baku-Ceyhan pipeline.
Per script, coordinated pressure began immediately. An interlocking network of development-oriented foundations, think tanks, and NGOs was mobilized to disseminate propaganda, recruit opposition leaders, and fund an ex nihilo "student resistance movement" modeled on Yugoslavia's CIA-connected Otpor. Meanwhile, NGOs like the Liberty Institute--a USAID subcontractor managed by Mikhail Saakashvili, the US-approved candidate for Georgian leadership--worked hand-in-glove with the US Embassy (and presumably the CIA) to destabilize civil society.
Even the coup's immediate pretext--allegations of electoral fraud -- conveniently emerged from an "election support" operation run by USAID in consort with a Soros-connected NGO, Open Society Georgia Foundation. TV-friendly street demos and orchestrated international outcry followed in due course. Shevardnadze accepted the inevitable and agreed to go quietly. Within two weeks, Donald Rumsfeld was in Tbilsi as guest of the coup leaders, discussing a timetable for Russian troop withdrawals.
In the near future, the smashing success of the Georgia operation may be expected to lead to similarly coordinated attempts on independent-minded governments worldwide--Cuba, now doing its best to cope with an invasion of foreign-sponsored "reform" organizations, is an especially likely candidate.
Meanwhile, as the US continues to assimilate worldwide humanitarian endeavors to its imperial ambitions, the heavy hitters of the NGO establishment are preening for another round of mediagenic self-celebration at the upcoming World Social Forum. Suggested new slogan: "Another Coup is Possible."
Jacob Levich, a frequent contributor to Counterpunch.com, lives in Queens, N.Y. He can be reached at: jlevich @earthlink.net
www.leftgatekeepers.com/articles/
GeorgeSoros&TheRiseOfTheNeoCentricsByWaltSheasby.htm
GEORGE SOROS AND THE RISE OF THE NEO-CENTRICS
By Walt Contreras Sheasby
Funding for a some of the Neo-Centrics comes from George Soros, who gives away $400m a year through his Foundation and thus subsidizes many of the activist groups, luminaries and publications of the American left, probably dwarfing the sums that once trickled out of Langley or Moscow. Soros does not control the left, as right-wingers imagine, but his monetary influence is one of those hushed secrets inside the left usually dismissed as conspiracy-thinking. ....
All his gifts to the radical left are penny ante compared to his high stakes, his dispensations to the liberal democrats, however. On Tuesday, Nov. 11 Soros told the Washington Post that the day before he had given five million dollars to MoveOn.org to benefit Howard Dean. He has donated more modest sums to other Democratic candidates and had already given 10 million dollars in August to "America Coming Together." ACT is one of the pseudo-parties created (often referred to as 527's, after their section of the new tax code) to get around the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law that made it illegal for Fat Cats to give huge sums directly to a political party. By refusing to adhere to the limit imposed by public funding, Dean is now free to accept large contributions through this loophole.
X-Sender: wsb2001 @mail.adelphia.net
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 08:01:11
Soros is a rather complicated man. He has definitely come out on the
side of sanity recently - in this article, his books, and his recent pledge
of - what was it - $15 million to defeat George W. Bush.?
However, he has amassed his wealth by contributing greatly to international
financial instability. His Quantum Fund is the largest hedge fund - which
specializes in highly leveraged,* high-risk, short-term speculation -
making money based on nothing productive at all, but by gambling on whether
prices will rise or fall.. When an investor bets that a price will rise,
and it falls, he must protect himself by selling, thus accelerating the
price drop and market volatility. If everyone rushes to sell at the same
time, there can be catastrophic losses. For the speculator, volatility
is a source of profit. For the average person, it means money is being
used unproductively instead of for things people need - housing, business
loans, etc.
In 1992, Soros sold $10 billion worth of British pounds in a bet against
PM Major's efforts to maintain the pound's value, forcing the devaluation
of the pound and contributing to preventing the EU from establishing fixed
exchange rates, which eliminate the volatility on which investors such
as Soros depend. He gained about $1 billion on the deal.
Historically, the 'robber barons' are remembered for their philanthropy
and good works, like Andrew Carnegie, who made his fortune on the backs
of labor, breaking unions, fights in which some worker were killed, but
he is remembered for his generous contributions to libraries. It's good
these men finally make some repayments, but what would the world be like
if they hadn't used the means they did to amass their fortunes???
* leveraging - use of a small investment, credit, or borrowed funds to
gain a very high return in relation to the investment, or to control a
much larger investment, or to reduce one's liability for loss.
George Soros: “The billionaire trader has become eastern Europe’s
uncrowned king and the prophet of “the open society”. But
open to what? by Neil Clark, New Statesman, June 2, 2003
A review by Karen Talbot Centre for Research on Globalisation
July 4, 2003
George Soros, is known as a Hungarian émigré philanthropist,
a proponent of human rights and the “open society,” and, just
incidentally, a financier—one of the richest men in the world. Soros
recently criticized George W. Bush saying in an article in the Financial
Times of London that his administration’s Iraq policies were “fundamentally
wrong” and that they are premised on the “false ideology that
U.S. might gave it the right to impose its will on the world.” Many
of us in the peace movement would say: “he got that right!”
We might be inclined to praise him and to believe that this confirms that
he really is a “do-gooder” -- an image, by the way, that he
carefully cultivates, especially through various NGOs. In fact numerous
non-profit organizations have received funds from his foundation because
they have bought into that perception.
But let’s take a closer look to see what is motivating Soros. Neil
Clark, writing in an incisive article the New Statesman (June 2, 2003),
points out that Soros “made billions out of the Eastern currency
crash of 1997,” and that he was fined last year “for insider
trading by a court in France.” In fact currency speculation is his
modus operandi and if this contradicts his pronouncements against “market
fundamentalism” and in favor of “civil society, ” well,
so be it. In fact, Clark reported that when queried about the turmoil
his speculation caused to Far Eastern economies in 1997, Soros replied:
“As a market participant, I don’t need to be concerned with
the consequences of my actions.”
But all of this is just the tip of the iceberg. What of the NGOs Soros
established and finances? Who are the other leaders of these groups? Clark
informs us that at Human Rights Watch, for example, there is Morton Abramowitz,
U.S. assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research from 1985-1989`
and now a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations; Warren Zimmerman
former ambassador “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).”
According to Clark, Soros’ International Crisis Group “boasts
such ‘independent’ luminaries as the former national security
advisers Zbigniew Brzezinki 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 brining
down Saddam and his regime’.”
So much for Soros’ opposition to Bush’s Iraq policies.
There’s more! Who are Soros’s business partners at the Carlyle
Group---one of the world’s largest private equity funds, which makes
most of this profit from defense contracts? They include the former secretary
of state James Baker and Frank Carlucci, former defense secretary, George
Bush, Sr, and “until recently, the estranged relatives of Osama
Bin Laden.” Soros has invested more than $100 million in Carlyle,
Clark tells us.
He also points out that “Soros may not, as sometimes suggested,
be a fully paid-up CIA agent. But that his corporations and NGOS are closely
wrapped up in U.S. expansionism cannot seriously be doubted.”
This brings us back to the question; “why has Soros lambasted Bush?”
The answer lies in understanding that, more than ever, within the Wall
Street power elite there may be differences in tactics but seldom are
there significant differences in the end goal---opening the way for the
maximization of corporate profits everywhere around the world. Today,
there is basically a oneness of purpose in promoting U.S. imperial dominance,
and in the process, attempting to solve a deepening global economic crisis
by controlling diminishing petroleum and energy resources.
How does this play out where Soros is concerned? As Clark points out,
“Soros is angry not at Bush’s aims---of expanding 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 U.S.
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 skillfully
that hardly anyone noticed. Now a Texan redneck and a gang of overzealous
neo-cons have blown it” Soros’ way is to use a few billion
dollars, some NGOs and a “nod and wink from the U.S. State department”
to bring down foreign governments that are “bad for business”
to seize a nation’s assets, and even get thanked for your ‘benevolence,’”
according to Clark. This method has worked for Soros and his cohorts.
Take the collapse of the Soviet Union, for example. Clark points out that
“Soros’ role was crucial: “From 1979, he distributed
$3 million 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 exploitation by global capital.
Soros now claims with characteristic immodesty, that he was responsible
for the “Americanization” of eastern Europe.”
More recently, there is the case of Yugoslavia. As Clark puts it:
“ TheYugoslavs remained stubbornly resistant and repeatedly returned
Slobodan Milosevic’s reformed Socialist Party to government. Soros
was equal to the challenge. From 1991, his Open Society Institute channeled
more than $100 million 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 b 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 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 guessed it) Human Rights Watch.”
Clark points out that “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” This has been so
blatant that it was condemned by the UN Commission on Human Rights and
the British Helsinki Group“Soros has made money in every country
he has helped to prise ‘open’. In Kosovo, for example, he
has invested $50 million 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 $5 billion. He thus copied
a pattern he has deployed to great effect over the whole of eastern Europe
of advocating ‘shocking therapy’ and ‘economic reform’,
then swooping in with his associate to buy valuable state assets at knock-down
prices,” according to Clark.*
In Hungary, Soros is the benefactor of the Free Democrats party “which
has pursued the classic Soros agenda of privatization and economic liberalization---leading
to a widening gap between rich and poor,” says Clark.
“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,” Clark concludes.
Of course, in the case of Yugoslavia, ultimately the Soros approach was
not enough so the overwhelming might of the U.S. military was brought
into play.*
For background information on the former Yugoslavia, see “The Real
Reasons for the War in Yugoslavia: Backing up Globalization with Military
Might,” by Karen Talbot, http://icpj.org/military_build.html
source: www.globalresearch.ca/articles/TAL307A.html 3jul03
George Soros: Imperial Wizard/Double Agent
by Heather Cottin
December 9, 2003
www.leftgatekeepers.com/articles/
SorosImperialWizardDoubleAgentByHeatherCottin.htm
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. ....
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. ....
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. ....
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. ....
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.....
http://www.leftgatekeepers.com
/articles/Soros%27PetProjectIncluldeOverthrowingAGovernment.htm
Soros' Pet Projects Include Overthrowing a Government
Financier's Radical Social Programs Aim at Changing Society
By Zenit.org
NEW YORK, DEC. 6, 2003 (Zenit.org).- The recent overthrow of Georgia's
President Eduard Shevardnadze put billionaire financier George Soros back
in the headlines. Voices soon circulated that the Open Society Institute,
the philanthropic foundation established by George Soros, was one of the
major players in the power changeover in the former Soviet republic. In
an interview with the Italian newspaper La Stampa on Wednesday, Shevardnadze
himself accused Soros of being behind his fall from power.
Indeed, the Open Society Institute financed trips for Georgian political
activists to learn from the experience of the Otpor movement that helped
topple Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic.
Georgia’s "rose revolution": a made-in-America coup
Oil intrigue and US Realpolitik heighten tensions in the Caucasus
By Barry Grey and Vladimir Volkov
World Socialist Web Site, Dec. 5, 2003
The United States has followed its successful regime change in the strategic Caucasian nation of Georgia with a series of moves aimed at pressing its advantage over its major rival in the region, Russia. ....
The US-backed coup in Georgia and Washington’s subsequent diplomatic
saber-rattling have nothing to do with the spread of democracy or similar
clichés. Georgia, strategically situated between the Black Sea
and the oil-rich Caspian, has long been a focus of intrigue and conflict
between the great powers. Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, the
goal of weakening Russian influence and achieving US domination of Georgia
and the rest of the Caucasus became a central preoccupation of US imperialist
policy.
From the early days of the Clinton administration, Washington invested
enormous political and diplomatic capital in the construction of a pipeline
that would connect the oil fields of Baku, in Azerbaijan, to Western markets,
while skirting the territory of both Russia and Iran. This made Georgia
all the more critical, since such a pipeline would have to run through
that volatile, backward and ethnically torn country.
The pipeline -- running from Baku to the Turkish Mediterranean port of
Ceyhan -- is slated to open in 2005. For Washington, the maintenance of
relative stability in a Georgia run by an unambiguously pro-US regime
is a matter of the greatest urgency. The interests of US energy giants
and the global military and the strategic aims of American imperialism
as a whole converge on this question. Herein lie the roots of the so-called
"rose revolution" that toppled Shevardnadze last month.
As the Wall Street Journal reported on November 24: "The three politicians
[Saakashvili, Burdzhanadze and Zhvania] are backed by a raft of nongovernmental
organizations that have sprung up since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Many of the NGOs have been supported by American and other Western foundations,
spawning a class of young, English-speaking intellectuals hungry for pro-Western
reforms."
Chief among these NGOs is the Liberty Institute, which is funded by the
United States Agency for International Development’s Eurasia Foundation
as well as financier George Soros’s Open Society Institute. The
Liberty Institute’s 31-year-old co-founder, Giga Bokeria, took a
Soros Foundation-funded tour last February of Serbia to learn how the
Otpor, or "Resistance," student opposition had ousted Milosevic
following a disputed election in the autumn of 2000.
In the summer of this year, Otpor activists visited Georgia, running courses
that trained 1,000 students from all over the country in the tactics of
Serbian-style "revolution." The result was the student group
"Kmara," which only months later would provide the manpower
for Saakashvili’s successful putsch of November 22-23.
Another US government outfit involved in the ouster of Shevardnadze is
the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a center of international
intrigue and subversion set up under the Reagan administration and relying
heavily on the services of the AFL-CIO trade union bureaucracy. The Democratic
Party wing of the NED, known as the National Democratic Institute, in
the words of Wall Street Journal columnist George Melloan, "helped
introduce Mr. Saakashvili to the methods insurgents in Serbia used to
depose dictator Slobodan Milosevic." ....
Some commentators outside of the US have pointed out the hypocrisy of
Washington’s democratic pretensions in the Caucasus. The Financial
Times on November 27 carried an article noting the contradiction between
the Bush administration’s condemnation of the Georgian parliamentary
elections and its withdrawal of support for Shevardnadze, on the one hand,
and its silence on the no less fraudulent election held only days earlier
in the neighboring Caucasian nation of Azerbaijan, on the other hand.
Wrote the Financial Times, "Yet in Azerbaijan the Bush administration
ignored the outcry of independent monitors and backed the founding of
the first post-Soviet dynasty ... quickly congratulating Ilham Aliyev
[the son of the outgoing president] as the new president, even as his
security forces were arresting the opposition, and after independent observers
had criticized the polls."
The difference, the newspaper explained, was "what Washington saw
as [Georgia’s] tilt toward Russia." Azerbaijan’s Aliyev
family, by contrast, "was seen as firmly pro-US." In a sober
assessment of US policy, the article went on the say:
" Analysts in Washington doubt, however, that US foreign policy is suddenly being guided by higher moral principles. Instead they see events in the Caucasus as another example of clumsily executed US Realpolitik being played out across central Asia, where the Bush administration courts autocratic regimes that share an interest combating Islamic militants."
Not only is US policy in the Caucasus predatory, it is reckless in the
extreme. The Bush administration is challenging Russian interests in a
highly provocative manner, openly working to split away the former Soviet
republics from Moscow and virtually surrounding Russia with American military
installations. Just last month, the Russian defense minister, Sergei Ivanov,
said Moscow would oppose the permanent presence of US military bases in
two former Soviet republics -- Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan -- where American
forces set up installations in connection with the Afghan war.
At the same time, Washington’s aggressive moves threaten to unleash
explosive ethnic and religious tensions throughout the Caucasus and beyond.
Billionaire Soros, Independent Groups Target Bush
Dec 24, 7:10 AM (ET)
By Randall Mikkelsen
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush's most-feared political opponents
for now may not be any Democratic presidential candidate, but a billionaire
financier and anti-Bush advocacy groups with big-spending plans.
"Liberal special interests, led by billionaire currency trader George
Soros, are raising millions in soft, unregulated money to defeat President
Bush," the Bush campaign says in an Internet posting.
Bush has already raised more than $110 million for his primary campaign,
in which he has no challenger, far outstripping any Democratic rival.
Campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel said anti-Bush groups threaten to spend
as much as $400 million, justifying the Bush's primary-season goal of
raising a record $170 million, largely through a network of major supporters
who funnel donations to the campaign.
But campaign finance experts say there is little chance of Bush being
outspent. "The Bush campaign is raising money hand-over-fist. He
has the aura of the incumbency and the power of the presidency. He's in
the catbird seat," said Celia Wexler, research director of the Common
Cause good-government group.
Along with Soros, the Hungarian-born financier who has pledged $12.5 million
to ensure "we can write off the Bush doctrine as a temporary aberration,"
another chief target of Republican ire are independent political groups
such as the Internet-based MoveOn.org.
The group has raised nearly $7 million to run ads attacking Bush, and
launched an anti-Bush television ad contest which has drawn more than
1,000 submissions from the public.
Groups such as MoveOn.org are banned from coordinating activities with
any party or candidate. But they have gained prominence under last year's
McCain-Feingold campaign finance act which ended unregulated "soft
money" donations. Democrats had relied on soft money to help claw
back a Republican advantage in individual donations.
"They have the potential to do an incredible amount of damage,"
said Scott Reed, a Republican consultant with close ties to the White
House. He said the independent groups could run "over the top"
ads attacking Bush with political impunity, and there was little financial
accountability.
He suggested Soros may be seeking "payback" for the Iraq war,
reflecting business interests in France and Germany.
INDEPENDENT GROUPS
Soros pledged his money to two independent political groups -- MoveOn.org
and America Coming Together. "My contributions help to ensure that
the money spent on trying to re-elect President Bush doesn't overwhelm
the process," he said in a Washington Post opinion piece earlier
this month.
Soros said he was "deeply concerned with the direction in which the
Bush administration is taking the United States and the world."
The Bush team's fund-raising appeals sharply criticize such efforts and
accuse the independent groups of raising money overseas. "To beat
these billionaire liberals and the flood of foreign money they're encouraging,
we need your help today," an e-mail solicitation read.
MoveOn.org founder Wes Boyd said the groups accepts no foreign donations
and defended the group's methods. He said its donors have no expectation
of access to a successful candidate, unlike those who donate directly
to a campaign. "There's no strings attached," he said.
The Center for Public Integrity government watchdog group said independent
committees from across the political spectrum have raised $32 million
this year, although the Soros-backed America Coming Together had yet to
report.
Wexler said it was too early to judge how effective the groups would be.
The Federal Election Commission is expected to issue guidelines in February
on their political activity.