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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
NOTES
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,"
http://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."
http://ad.doubleclick.net/adi/N1684.TMP3/B103O723.3;sz=720x300;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,
http://www.latintrade.com/newsite/content/archives.cfm?StoryID=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/conferences/dublin/workingpapers/dezhina.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.philanthropyroundtable.org/magazines/2000-01/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,"
http://www.isop.ucla.edu/profmex/volume6/1winter01/01lazin1.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,"
http://www.eurasianet.org/resource/cenasia/hypermail/200102/0052.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/international/story/0,3604,551533,00.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,
http://www.pbs.org/weta/dictator/rock/serbiacalling.html
44. Milosevic in the Hague, Focus on Human Rights,
"In-Depth Report Documents Milosevic Crimes," April
2001,
http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/10/milocroat1029.htm.
45. "About ICG," May 2002,
http://www.intl-crisis-group.org/annual/2002/ICG2002.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.
http://archive.salon.com/tech/books/2002/02/28/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/GreenCrossPrograms/legacy/yugoslavia/Nadrljanski.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,
http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/americas/colombia-testimony0424.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,
http://www.zmag.org/content/Colombia/stokes_col-primer.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,"
http://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/CAH/civiDeaths.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,
http://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
ABOUT THE
AUTHOR
Heather Cottin is a
writer, lifelong political activist, and recently
retired high school history teacher She lives in
Free port, NY and was for many years married to the
late scholar and activist Sean Gervasi.
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