New details have emerged revealing that George Soros helped prop-up democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s political career in an attempt to put 400 Bernie Sanders-like politicians in Congress.
A former organizer for Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s under-dog win in the democratic primary was undoubtedly helped by far-left organizations linked George Soros — specifically, online media which played a crucial role in her campaign.
Members linked to Soros-funded digital media asked Ocasio-Cortez to run for office which guaranteed she would get favorable coverage by a media network that reaches almost 300 million people monthly.
One member of the Soros-funded media, Cenk Uygur, also founded one of the two political groups responsible for asking Ocasio-Cortez to run, Justice Democrats — whose goal is to get Sanders-like politicians elected to Congress.
Uygur, a former Armenian genocide denier, was eventually forced out of the organization after old articles revealed some of his previous sexist comments, often referring to women in a derogatory way.
Incumbent Joseph Crowley — whose footprint in the Democratic establishment led to speculation that he would succeed Nancy Pelosi as Democratic leader of the House — greatly outspent Ocasio-Cortez.
However, her strong online presence — thanks to the coverage of the Soros-linked digital media — she was able to gain traction and defeat Crowley in the primary June 26. She is expected to win New York’s 14th congressional district handedly, given the district’s Democratic history.
After Ocasio-Cortez’s website, Ocasio2018.com, was first registered May 3, 2017, it redirected to Ocasio-Cortez’s now-deleted page on BrandNewCongress.Org, according to an Internet archive captured June 29, 2017.
Brand New Congress is another organization, just like Justice Democrats, that aims to get socialists elected to Congress in the 2018 mid-terms. It has close ties to Justice Democrats.
In a June 27 interview with Uygur on his YouTube channel “The Young Turks,” Ocasio-Cortez thanked Uygur and other media platforms for covering her before the primaries, which she says “in no small part” helped her win.
“I wouldn’t be running if it wasn’t for the support of Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress,” Ocasio-Cortez told Uygur. “In fact it was, it was JD (Justice Democrats) and it was Brand New Congress that asked me to run in the first place.”
The Young Turks is a member of The Media Consortium — a network of far left media publications which includes Mother Jones, Democracy Now!, and dozens of other outlets, funded by Soros.
The Media Consortium is a Soros a media empire that, according to Media Research Center (MRC), reaches nearly 300 million people a month.
“Soros funds nearly every major left-wing media source in the United States,” MRC stated. “Forty-five of those are financed through his support of the Media Consortium. That organization ‘is a network of the country’s leading, progressive, independent media outlets.’ The list is predictable – everything from Alternet to the Young Turks.”
The MRC report goes on to detail the progressive echo chamber Soros intentionally created with the Media Consortium with the intention of shaping public opinion.
November 19th, 2019, 07:09
vector7
Re: Soros's Progressive Cabal with Democrats to Weaken America
The list is long, and her anti-Semitic slurs are significant. Nevertheless, Congress supports Israel because the American people support Israel; both nations share democratic values and strategic interests.
November 18, 2019
Rep. Ilhan Omar is funded by Israel-hating BDS promoters and PACs
The list is long, and her anti-Semitic slurs are significant. Nevertheless, Congress supports Israel because the American people support Israel; both nations share democratic values and strategic interests.
(February 15, 2019 / JNS) Israel-hating Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) has repeatedly displayed deep-seated, dangerous anti-Semitism and hatred towards the Jewish people.
Rep. Omar falsely called Israel “evil” and an “apartheid regime.” She promotes anti-Israel boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS)—the delegitimization and economic destruction of Israel—after lying to voters about her BDS position while running for Congress. Rep. Omar sought reduced sentences for ISIS terrorists, a position that endangers every American. And she’s never apologized for any of these issues.
The Democratic House leadership’s recent condemnations of Rep. Omar are an important first step, but they are not enough, especially because she immediately backtracked on her phony “non-apologies” by again defaming Jews and Israel.
From the outset, the Zionist Organization of America urged that Ilhan Rep. Omar must be removed from the House Foreign Relations Committee, which is a position that enables her to harm U.S.-Israel relations and mainstream her virulent anti-Semitism. We are thankful that this week, U.S. President Trump called for Rep. Omar’s ouster from the committee, at a minimum.
Rep. Omar’s most recent anti-Semitic tweets—that a Jewish lobby organization (AIPAC) and money cause Congress to support Israel—are woefully wrong. Congress supports Israel because the American people, Jewish and non-Jewish, support Israel; it’s the moral thing to do, and both nations share democratic values and strategic interests.
Rep. Omar’s anti-Semitic “Jewish money” tweets prompted us to examine her own funders. ZOA’s analysis of Rep. Her Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings found that her financial supporters include a veritable “Who’s Who” of anti-Israel propagandists and haters and anti-Israel PACs. For instance:
BDS leader Hatem Bazian, who founded the virulent and sometimes violent anti-Israel organizations Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), gave Rep. Omar three contributions. Bazian’s agenda is Israel’s destruction. He is a leader of the anti-Israel boycott movement on college campuses and throughout the world; has called for “intifada” in the United States; and persistently spreads classic anti-Semitic falsehoods against Israel.
CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) is one of Rep. Omar’s top 20 contributors. CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror financing trial, for funneling money to Hamas. FBI testimony reportedly indicated that CAIR is a Hamas front group. IPT detailed CAIR leaders’ statements supporting Hamas, and the HLF trial judge’s ruling that the government’s evidence created “at least a prima facie case as to CAIR’s involvement in a conspiracy to support Hamas.” CAIR-CA PAC gave her $5,000.
In addition, CAIR-CA’s executive director, Hussam Ayloush, who called for Israel’s “termination,” gave Ilhan Omar $1,200. A CAIR Florida employee gave Rep. Omar another $500.
James Zogby, president of the anti-Israel Arab-American Institute (AAI), chairman of the anti-Israel Palestine Human Rights Campaign, and a major anti-Israel propagandist, gave Rep. Omar $2,700. Zogby falsely accused Israel of committing a “Holocaust” against Palestinians; called Israelis “Nazis”; campaigned to prevent the extradition to Israel of a Fatah terrorist who killed two Israeli teenagers and wounded 36 other Israelis; called Cuban-American Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen an “Israel-firster” (an anti-Semitic trope implying dual loyalty); praised the intifada as a “good story”; and was a leading architect of propaganda themes used to pry progressive Jews away from supporting Israel.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who wrapped herself in the flag of Mahmoud Abbas’s murderous, hostile, Palestinian-Arab regime to celebrate her election win, sent Rep. Omar three contributions. Tlaib also supports replacing Israel with a Palestinian Arab state, repeatedly hurls false accusations at Israel, says that Israel doesn’t deserve human rights, and invoked anti-Semitic disloyalty-to-America smears against U.S. senators who sponsored an anti-BDS bill.
A professor from California Islamic University, which “arm[s] [students] with tools needed to spread Islam wherever they go,” donated to Rep. Omar.
The Soros-funded MoveOn.Org, which attempted to kill the pro-Israel anti-BDS bill and essentially blackmailed congresspersons to support the disastrous Iran deal, gave Rep. Omar $5,000 and was one of hers top 20 contributors. MoveOn.org also co-founded Avaaz, which initiates extremely offensive, falsehood-filled anti-Israel campaigns, including campaigns to release Palestinian Arab terrorist Ahed Tamimi, and for Ireland’s dangerous BDS Bill.
A $500 donor to Rep. Omar showed his wife wearing Hamas scarves and put on his Facebook profile, stating in Arabic: “Jerusalem is ours, WE ARE COMING!” and include maps in the shape of Israel over-written with the words: “Palestine” and “From the river to the sea!” (the well-known phrase calling for Israel’s extinction).
OneVoice gave Rep. Omar $1,000. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations’ 2016 bipartisan staff report found that OneVoice used campaign infrastructure built with $350,000 of taxpayer money, granted by President Obama’s State Department, to interfere with Israel’s election and fund efforts to oust Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Bend the Arc Jewish Action Inc. PAC, founded and chaired by anti-Zionist George Soros’s son, Alex Soros, gave Rep. Omar $1,000. Blogger Victor Rosenthal explained that Bend the Arc funnels Jewish contributions to left-wing politicians who support anti-Israel policies, without mentioning Israel, to enable left-leaning Jewish contributors to donate to anti-Israel politicians (such as Ilhan Omar) without feeling guilty about betraying their people.
Debbie (Dhabah) Almontaser, who defended an Arab Women’s group for hawking “Intifada NYC” T-shirts that glorify Palestinian-Arab terror, gave Omar $500.
Rep. Omar’s most recent non-apology added: “At the same time, I reaffirm the problematic role of lobbyists in our politics, whether it be AIPAC, the NRA or the fossil fuel industry.” Hypocritically however, Rep. Omar accepted oil money from Beowulf Energy’s principal Nazar Khan ($2,000); Giant Oil president Basem Ali ($2,000); and an ExxonMobil specialist.
She also hypocritically accepted approximately $190,000 of PAC money.
Disappointingly, “Nancy Pelosi for Congress,” previously gave Rep. Omar $2,000. Now that Rep. Omar has repeatedly displayed her deep-seated anti-Semitism, Speaker Pelosi has condemned those comments, saying “Omar’s use of anti-Semitic tropes and prejudicial accusations about Israel’s supporters is deeply offensive.” We hope Speaker Pelosi will discontinue financially supporting Rep. Omar and immediately remove her from the House Foreign Relations Committee.
Rep. Omar must be isolated, defunded and removed from positions—meaning from every committee where she can carry out the extremist anti-Israel anti-American agenda of those who are backing her financially.
Morton A. Klein is the national president of the Zionist Organization of America. Elizabeth A. Berney is ZOA’s director of special projects. Rashida Tlaib Misrepresented Soros Stipend in Financial Disclosures
Congresswoman-elect did not disclose name of source and wrote a lesser amount than given
Joe Schoffstall - DECEMBER 6, 2018 5:00 AM
Congresswoman-elect Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) did not disclose the name of the source of funds for a fellowship that was paid by liberal billionaire George Soros—as required by the House ethics committee—and also disclosed a lesser amount than she received, according to a review of tax and financial disclosure forms.
The Washington Free Beacon obtained the most recent copies of tax forms for a number of Soros's organizations, including the Open Society Institute, the legal name for the Open Society Foundations, the entity in which Soros pushes millions in funding to a number of liberal causes and organizations.
An expenditure of $85,307 to Rashida Tlaib in Detroit, Mich., from 2017 is shown on page 97 of the 321-page report to "to increase involvement of disenfranchised urban communities of color with their local governance process by creating a community benefits strategy for equitable development and creating a leadership training for impacted residents focused on negotiation skills and identifying leverage at the local level."
Tlaib did not report any income in the amount of $85,307 on financial disclosure forms submitted as she was running for office, which identified the names of the sources that provided her income in three of four cases. Tlaib received compensation from the Maurice & Jane Sugar Law Center, Wayne State University, and Metro Solutions, the forms show.
However, the fourth reported source of earned income is marked as a "Leadership in Government Fellowship," but does not identify who provided the payment.
A press release from 2016 shows that Tlaib was chosen for a "leadership in government" fellowship by Soros's Open Society Foundations along with seven other individuals.
"The eight fellows, chosen from the senior ranks of federal, state, and local government, will work on a wide variety of issue areas: devising new ways to bring criminal justice reform to local prosecutors' offices; developing new strategies for helping school children exposed to trauma; improving life outcomes for low-wage workers, immigrants, and boys and men of color; and closing the digital divide, and more," the release reads.
A spokesman for Soros's Open Society Foundations said Tlaib's fellowship was terminated earlier this year when she informed the group she would be running for Congress..
Kendra Arnold, executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group, said that Tlaib's failure to report the source of her income is "problematic" due to rules requiring that the income source be identified.
Candidates are required to disclose the name of groups and organizations that provide their source of income, according to the manual on financial disclosure statements from the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ethics.
"Identify the source by naming the organization, corporation, or other entity making the payment. It is not necessary that individual clients of a business be named, only the business itself," the manual states on page 31. "For example, on Schedule C, an editor would report the name of the publishing firm as the source of earned income, not the clients for whom the work was performed. Describe the type of income as salary, commissions, fees, pension, etc., as appropriate."
The $68,307 income marked for the "Leadership in Government Fellowship" on the financial disclosure forms is also $17,000 less than the $85,307 that was marked as being paid out by Soros's group.
Arnold said this discrepancy is not as clear and could be the result of hard costs associated with the program.
"Filers must report the exact amount of income earned by them," the ethics manual reads. "Filers are not required to report an amount for their spouse’s income; rather they should report "N/A" in the "Amount" column. Filers, however, are required to report the exact amount of an honorarium received by their spouse."
Tlaib was paid $139,873 by Soros's group in 2016, tax forms show. Between 2016 and 2017, Tlaib received a total of $225,180.
Tlaib did receive any income from the Open Society Foundations in 2018, Soros's spokesman said.
Tlaib's campaign acknowledged receiving the Washington Free Beacon's inquiry but did not explain why the source of funding was excluded from her financial disclosure forms and why the amount is lower than what she actually received by press time.
UPDATE 11:45 A.M.: Jonathan Kaplan, the communications officer for the Open Society Foundations, sent the following quote after publication:
"Rashida Tlaib was awarded a Leadership in Government fellowship from the Open Society Foundations in the fall of 2016. Her project: to focus on increasing the civic participation of disenfranchised urban communities of color. When Ms. Tlaib informed us that she was planning to run for Congress, we mutually agreed to suspend her fellowship and no further payments were made."
This post has been updated to reflect Kaplan's comment.
NEW YORK — Billionaire George Soros is a financial contributor to The Collective, a little-known but increasingly influential political organization that says it is seeking to build a “black political power” movement in the U.S., Federal Election Commission records show.
The Collective was one of the primary donors central to funding Andrew Gillum’s recent meteoric rise in the Tallahassee mayor’s successful primary fight for Florida’s Democratic gubernatorial nomination. It reportedly injected nearly $2 million into Gillum’s campaign, funding television and radio ads, get-out-the-vote drives, and playing a key role in helping Gillum defeat his Democratic opponents, some of whom were better-funded and had more statewide name recognition. The group announced plans to continue backing Gillum during the current general election campaign.
A closer look at The Collective’s individual donor list for the 2017-2018 cycle finds that Soros provided $70,000 in December 2017. Planned Parenthood, also financed by Soros, is listed as providing $12,500.
The clear majority of The Collective’s large donations came from a single entity, Collective Future, which is the 501c4 arm of The Collective and as such does not need to legally disclose the sources of its own funding.
FEC records show that between May and July, during the heat of Gillum’s primary race, Collective Future pumped a total of $1,624,772 into The Collective.
The Collective’s co-founder, Quentin James, declined to comment to a Breitbart News request seeking clarification on Collective Future’s donor list.
James was asked by email to comment on “the source(s) of the funding to Collective Future.” He was also asked whether Soros or billionaire Tom Steyer, both of whom separately backed groups promoting Gillum, were donors to Collective Future, particularly considering Soros’s direct $70,000 donation to The Collective group.
“We’re gonna decline here but thank you for reaching out,” James replied.
James himself has previously worked for Soros-funded organizations. He formerly served as the National Director for the student coalition of the Soros-funded Sierra Club. He also served as a National Board Member for the NAACP, which is heavily financed by Soros.
James co-founded Vestige Strategies, a consulting firm that he runs with his wife, Stefanie Brown James, who held national roles in campaigns for both Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama. Brown James is also The Collective’s co-founder and senior adviser. Vestige Strategies’ website boasts “experience” and “recognitions,” including work for the Soros-financed groups NAACP and the Sierra Club. Other listed groups include the super PAC Ready for Hillary, as well as Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns.
The refusal of Collective Future to disclose its donors is instructive given Gillum’s warning in February about the influence of “dark money” in the race, referring to entities that obscure their donors.
During the primary, The Collective’s efforts focused on opposing Gillum’s main opponent, Gwen Graham, including attempting to brand her as a fake liberal. Now the group is expected to turn its efforts against Ron DeSantis, the Republican nominee.
Speaking recently to the Tampa Bay Times, James confirmed that Gillum could expect “far” more support from his Collective group. “We have plans to far exceed that amount before the primary and the general election,” he wrote in an email to the newspaper.
The newspaper reported that The Collective’s support for Gillum “appears to be wildly disproportionate to the other Collective-endorsed candidates running for governor.”
Asked why his group singled out Gillum, James noted the centrality of Florida to national politics, including the possibility of putting the Democrats in charge of the Senate and House.
James stated:
Florida presents unique opportunities in 2018, including the possibility of electing the state’s first African American governor and attorney general, flipping some congressional seats including in Florida 18 and 27, re-electing Senator Nelson to the United States Senate and returning voting rights to to its citizens who have served their time.
The Collective’s support for Gillum came alongside donations to aid the politician by other progressive groups, including one run by Steyer, who spent $1.4 million on Gillum’s race. Days before the Aug. 28 primary, Soros joined with Steyer to lead a group of donors making a $650,000 infusion into Gillum’s coffers.
James: Too Many ‘White Men’ Hold Office
The Collective is a race-centric organization that says on its website it is “working to fix the challenge of African American underrepresentation in elected seats of power throughout our nation.” The aim of the organization is to “reach political equity — a place where African American elected officials represent the community’s population statistically.”
The Collective boasts it has been “building black political power since 2016.”
The Collective runs a “Black Campaign School” where James says they train people on how to build a political movement in America’s “heightened, almost racist environment.” He charged that this environment has spiraled into “white supremacy” under the tenure of President Trump.
In a profile last year, James complained that “white men” hold too many elected positions.
He stated:
Why is it that white men, who are 31 percent of our population, hold over 65 percent of all elected positions? We have a situation where the people who write the law, defend the law and fund the law don’t represent the demographics of the American population. If this continues, we will be stuck in a position of continually asking those from outside our communities to save our communities. I don’t want that future and I bet most people in our community don’t either.
Since 2016, the group has been holding weekend retreats called the “Black Campaign School,” where James says the training focuses on building a political movement amid what he claims is America’s “heightened, almost racist environment,” one that he says exploded into “white supremacy” in the era of Trump.
“Unfortunately, a lot of our progressive trainings and Democratic trainings don’t center the experience of racism in this country,” said James, speaking to thegrio.com.
“He’s really inspired a heightened level of white supremacy and white nationalism in our country,” James claimed about Trump. “If we aren’t preparing people on how to run in a heightened, almost racist, environment, then we’re doing them a disservice.”
November 19th, 2019, 07:10
vector7
Re: Soros's Progressive Cabal with Democrats to Weaken America
Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain in 2012 turned over nearly $9 million in unspent funds from his failed 2008 presidential campaign to a new foundation bearing his name, the McCain Institute for International Leadership.
The institute is intended to serve as a “legacy” for McCain and “is dedicated to advancing human rights, dignity, democracy and freedom.” It is a tax-exempt non-profit foundation with assets valued at $8.1 million and associated with Arizona State University.
Conservative and liberal critics, however, believe the institute constitutes a major conflict of interest for McCain, The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group has learned.
McCain, a former Navy pilot who was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967 and was then a prisoner of war in the infamous Hanoi Hilton until 1973, is a major political force in Washington, D.C. He is presently chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services.
Critics worry that the institute’s donors and McCain’s personal leadership in the organization’s exclusive “Sedona Forum” bear an uncanny resemblance to the glitzy Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) that annually co-mingled special interests and powerful political players in alleged pay-to-play schemes.
The institute has accepted contributions of as much as $100,000 from billionaire liberal activist-funder George Soros and from Teneo, a for-profit company co-founded by Doug Band, former President Bill Clinton’s “bag man.” Teneo has long helped enrich Clinton through lucrative speaking and business deals.
And Bloomberg reported in 2016 on a $1 million Saudi Arabian donation to the institute, a contribution the McCain group has refused to explain publicly.
In addition, the institute has taken at least $100,000 from a Moroccan state-run company tied to repeated charges of worker abuse and exploitation. The McCain group has also accepted at least $100,000 from the Pivotal Foundation, which was created by Francis Najafi who owns the Pivotal Group, a private equity and real estate firm.
The Pivotal Foundation has in the last three years given $205,000 to the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), which has been a vocal advocate for the Iranian nuclear deal the Obama administration negotiated.
The NIAC web site claims the group “is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to strengthening the voice of Iranian Americans and promoting greater understanding between the American and Iranian people.”
But NIAC President Trita Parsi has long been an advocate for Iran, including demanding in May 2017 that President Donald Trump and officials in his administration “cease questioning the integrity of a (nuclear) deal.”
The NIAC is “Iran’s lobbyists in Washington,” charged Aresh Salih, the Washington representative of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan. “People inside of Iran know them as their lobbyists in Washington, D.C.,” Salih told TheDCNF.
The NIAC does not file as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, nor does it register as a lobbyist with Congress.
Yet in May 2013, Parsi spoke to a packed Capitol Hill meeting sponsored by Minnesota Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison to argue in favor of the nuclear deal. Ellison was the first Muslim elected to Congress and is also deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
“This is a very real conflict of interest,” Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist at Public Citizen, told TheDCNF. “This is the similar type of pattern we received with the Clinton Foundation in which foreign governments and foreign interests were throwing a lot of money in the hopes of trying to buy influence.”
Liberal consumer advocate Ralph Nader founded Public Citizen.
Lawrence Noble, general counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, told the DCNF that accepting contributions in the name of a sitting senator like McCain raises troubling issues.
“In terms of the ethics of it, it does raise a broad question of people trying to get good will with the elected official,” he said. “From a personal standpoint, I’d rather not see these entities exist.”
Charles Ortel, a retired Wall Street investment banker and philanthropy law expert, told TheDCNF that “high government officials such as John McCain, [former Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama should not get involved with vehicles like these where substantial sums can be funneled over time in ways that at best, reeks of impropriety and at worse are public corruption.”
The institute’s donations not only suggest special pleading before the senator, but also in some instances appear to contradict McCain’s vision of human rights and national security.
It accepted more than $100,000 from OCP, S.A., a Moroccan state-owned phosphate company operating in the Western Sahara, territory which Morocco seized in 1975. The North African country has since occupied the region by force in defiance of U.N. resolutions and legal declarations by other international bodies.
Morocco has come under criticism from human rights groups that the government violates basic human rights and that its state-owned companies subject its workforce to gruesome conditions while exploiting the disputed territory’s natural resources.
The Western Sahara holds half of the world’s phosphate reserves. Used to make fertilizer, phosphate is called Morocco’s “white gold.”
Last week, a South African court ruled in favor of the seizure of an OCP ship charged with illegally carrying 50,000 tons of phosphate from the Western Sahara. The country’s independence movement, which calls the territory the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, succeeded in convincing the court to keep the ship in port until the case is resolved.
The King of Morocco was a major donor to the Clinton Foundation. Hillary Clinton personally accepted $12 million from the King in return for holding a CGI regional meeting in the country.
OCP also was a major sponsor of the CGI meeting, and Bill Clinton was the featured speaker.
The Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice has charged OCP with “serious human rights violations,” including exploitation of workers by not “adequately compensating the impoverished people who live there.”
McCain has lavished effusive praise on the King of Morocco, saying in 2011, that the country was a “positive example to governments across the Middle East and North Africa.”
McCain and Soros reportedly became friends after the senator was exposed as a member of the “Keating Five” during the savings and loan (S&L) industry scandal during former President George H.W. Bush’s administration. As the S&L bank chairman, Charles Keating paid $1.3 million to bribe five members of Congress to interfere with government regulators on behalf of the savings bank.
The experience so scarred McCain that he became a vigorous advocate of campaign finance reform and in the process reportedly became friends with Soros.
McCain recently claimed no involvement with the institute, saying “I’m proud that the institute is named after me, but I have nothing to do with it.”
The institute did not respond to requests for the dollar amounts of its high donors, when the donations were made and if there were strings attached to the contributions, claiming it did not have any of the information. Late Monday, the institute’s spokesman referred The DCNF to Arizona State University.
November 19th, 2019, 23:33
vector7
Re: Soros's Progressive Cabal with Democrats to Weaken America
Soros, Ukrainian parliamentarians discuss national economic recovery
Soros, Ukrainian parliamentarians discuss national economic recovery
During his visit to Ukraine, billionaire and investor George Soros met with a number of the country's parliamentarians to discuss the creation of a National Anti-Corruption Bureau, the fight against corruption and the creation of an insurance fund for direct foreign investment, said Hanna Hopko (Samopomich Party), who chairs the Ukrainian parliamentary committee for foreign affairs.
"A meeting was held with Mr. Soros. Here is a brief of what was discussed: the election of a chairperson of an anti-corruption bureau and the efficiency of fighting corruption in Ukraine, cooperation among the presidential administration, the government, the cabinet and the parliament," she wrote on her Facebook page on Monday.
The meeting also focused on the work of the National council for reform and the public participation in it, the importance of the judicial reform and the registered bills, how to restore the economy (into one of innovative type) and create a fund for insurance of direct foreign investment in Ukraine; cooperation with international organizations, Hopko said.
The meeting with Soros was attended by parliamentarians Oleksiy Riabchyn (Batkivschyna), Viktoria Siumar (People's Front) and Mustafa Nayyem (Petro Poroshenko Bloc), Hopko said.
Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire
Kiev officials are scrambling to make amends with the president-elect after quietly working to boost Clinton.
By KENNETH P. VOGEL and DAVID STERN 01/11/2017 05:05 AM EST
Donald Trump wasn’t the only presidential candidate whose campaign was boosted by officials of a former Soviet bloc country.
Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.
A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.
The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manafort’s resignation and advancing the narrative that Trump’s campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine’s foe to the east, Russia. But they were far less concerted or centrally directed than Russia’s alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails.
Russia’s effort was personally directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, involved the country’s military and foreign intelligence services, according to U.S. intelligence officials. They reportedly briefed Trump last week on the possibility that Russian operatives might have compromising information on the president-elect. And at a Senate hearing last week on the hacking, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said “I don't think we've ever encountered a more aggressive or direct campaign to interfere in our election process than we've seen in this case.”
There’s little evidence of such a top-down effort by Ukraine. Longtime observers suggest that the rampant corruption, factionalism and economic struggles plaguing the country — not to mention its ongoing strife with Russia — would render it unable to pull off an ambitious covert interference campaign in another country’s election. And President Petro Poroshenko’s administration, along with the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, insists that Ukraine stayed neutral in the race.
Lawmakers broach possible Trump campaign coordination with Russia
By AUSTIN WRIGHT and MARTIN MATISHAK
Yet Politico’s investigation found evidence of Ukrainian government involvement in the race that appears to strain diplomatic protocol dictating that governments refrain from engaging in one another’s elections.
Russia’s meddling has sparked outrage from the American body politic. The U.S. intelligence community undertook the rare move of publicizing its findings on the matter, and President Barack Obama took several steps to officially retaliate, while members of Congress continue pushing for more investigations into the hacking and a harder line against Russia, which was already viewed in Washington as America’s leading foreign adversary.
Ukraine, on the other hand, has traditionally enjoyed strong relations with U.S. administrations. Its officials worry that could change under Trump, whose team has privately expressed sentiments ranging from ambivalence to deep skepticism about Poroshenko’s regime, while sounding unusually friendly notes about Putin’s regime.
Poroshenko is scrambling to alter that dynamic, recently signing a $50,000-a-month contract with a well-connected GOP-linked Washington lobbying firm to set up meetings with U.S. government officials “to strengthen U.S.-Ukrainian relations.”
A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort (pictured) and Russia, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.
Revelations about Ukraine’s anti-Trump efforts could further set back those efforts.
“Things seem to be going from bad to worse for Ukraine,” said David A. Merkel, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who helped oversee U.S. relations with Russia and Ukraine while working in George W. Bush’s State Department and National Security Council.
Merkel, who has served as an election observer in Ukrainian presidential elections dating back to 1993, noted there’s some irony in Ukraine and Russia taking opposite sides in the 2016 presidential race, given that past Ukrainian elections were widely viewed in Washington’s foreign policy community as proxy wars between the U.S. and Russia.
“Now, it seems that a U.S. election may have been seen as a surrogate battle by those in Kiev and Moscow,” Merkel said.
•••
The Ukrainian antipathy for Trump’s team — and alignment with Clinton’s — can be traced back to late 2013. That’s when the country’s president, Viktor Yanukovych, whom Manafort had been advising, abruptly backed out of a European Union pact linked to anti-corruption reforms. Instead, Yanukovych entered into a multibillion-dollar bailout agreement with Russia, sparking protests across Ukraine and prompting Yanukovych to flee the country to Russia under Putin’s protection.
In the ensuing crisis, Russian troops moved into the Ukrainian territory of Crimea, and Manafort dropped off the radar.
Manafort’s work for Yanukovych caught the attention of a veteran Democratic operative named Alexandra Chalupa, who had worked in the White House Office of Public Liaison during the Clinton administration. Chalupa went on to work as a staffer, then as a consultant, for Democratic National Committee. The DNC paid her $412,000 from 2004 to June 2016, according to Federal Election Commission records, though she also was paid by other clients during that time, including Democratic campaigns and the DNC’s arm for engaging expatriate Democrats around the world.
A daughter of Ukrainian immigrants who maintains strong ties to the Ukrainian-American diaspora and the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, Chalupa, a lawyer by training, in 2014 was doing pro bono work for another client interested in the Ukrainian crisis and began researching Manafort’s role in Yanukovych’s rise, as well as his ties to the pro-Russian oligarchs who funded Yanukovych’s political party.
In an interview this month, Chalupa told Politico she had developed a network of sources in Kiev and Washington, including investigative journalists, government officials and private intelligence operatives. While her consulting work at the DNC this past election cycle centered on mobilizing ethnic communities — including Ukrainian-Americans — she said that, when Trump’s unlikely presidential campaign began surging in late 2015, she began focusing more on the research, and expanded it to include Trump’s ties to Russia, as well.
She occasionally shared her findings with officials from the DNC and Clinton’s campaign, Chalupa said. In January 2016 — months before Manafort had taken any role in Trump’s campaign — Chalupa told a senior DNC official that, when it came to Trump’s campaign, “I felt there was a Russia connection,” Chalupa recalled. “And that, if there was, that we can expect Paul Manafort to be involved in this election,” said Chalupa, who at the time also was warning leaders in the Ukrainian-American community that Manafort was “Putin’s political brain for manipulating U.S. foreign policy and elections.”
PRESIDENTIAL TRANSITION
Trump confronts firestorm over Russia allegations
By ELI STOKOLS, SHANE GOLDMACHER, JOSH DAWSEY and MICHAEL CROWLEY
She said she shared her concern with Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S., Valeriy Chaly, and one of his top aides, Oksana Shulyar, during a March 2016 meeting at the Ukrainian Embassy. According to someone briefed on the meeting, Chaly said that Manafort was very much on his radar, but that he wasn’t particularly concerned about the operative’s ties to Trump since he didn’t believe Trump stood much of a chance of winning the GOP nomination, let alone the presidency.
That was not an uncommon view at the time, and, perhaps as a result, Trump’s ties to Russia — let alone Manafort’s — were not the subject of much attention.
That all started to change just four days after Chalupa’s meeting at the embassy, when it was reported that Trump had in fact hired Manafort, suggesting that Chalupa may have been on to something. She quickly found herself in high demand. The day after Manafort’s hiring was revealed, she briefed the DNC’s communications staff on Manafort, Trump and their ties to Russia, according to an operative familiar with the situation.
A former DNC staffer described the exchange as an “informal conversation,” saying “‘briefing’ makes it sound way too formal,” and adding, “We were not directing or driving her work on this.” Yet, the former DNC staffer and the operative familiar with the situation agreed that with the DNC’s encouragement, Chalupa asked embassy staff to try to arrange an interview in which Poroshenko might discuss Manafort’s ties to Yanukovych.
While the embassy declined that request, officials there became “helpful” in Chalupa’s efforts, she said, explaining that she traded information and leads with them. “If I asked a question, they would provide guidance, or if there was someone I needed to follow up with.” But she stressed, “There were no documents given, nothing like that.”
Chalupa said the embassy also worked directly with reporters researching Trump, Manafort and Russia to point them in the right directions. She added, though, “they were being very protective and not speaking to the press as much as they should have. I think they were being careful because their situation was that they had to be very, very careful because they could not pick sides. It’s a political issue, and they didn’t want to get involved politically because they couldn’t.”
Shulyar vehemently denied working with reporters or with Chalupa on anything related to Trump or Manafort, explaining “we were stormed by many reporters to comment on this subject, but our clear and adamant position was not to give any comment [and] not to interfere into the campaign affairs.”
Russia’s effort to influence the 2016 race was personally directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin (pictured), and involved the country’s military and foreign intelligence services, according to U.S. intelligence officials. | Getty
Both Shulyar and Chalupa said the purpose of their initial meeting was to organize a June reception at the embassy to promote Ukraine. According to the embassy’s website, the event highlighted female Ukrainian leaders, featuring speeches by Ukrainian parliamentarian Hanna Hopko, who discussed “Ukraine’s fight against the Russian aggression in Donbas,” and longtime Hillary Clinton confidante Melanne Verveer, who worked for Clinton in the State Department and was a vocal surrogate during the presidential campaign.
Shulyar said her work with Chalupa “didn’t involve the campaign,” and she specifically stressed that “We have never worked to research and disseminate damaging information about Donald Trump and Paul Manafort.”
But Andrii Telizhenko, who worked as a political officer in the Ukrainian Embassy under Shulyar, said she instructed him to help Chalupa research connections between Trump, Manafort and Russia. “Oksana said that if I had any information, or knew other people who did, then I should contact Chalupa,” recalled Telizhenko, who is now a political consultant in Kiev. “They were coordinating an investigation with the Hillary team on Paul Manafort with Alexandra Chalupa,” he said, adding “Oksana was keeping it all quiet,” but “the embassy worked very closely with” Chalupa.
In fact, sources familiar with the effort say that Shulyar specifically called Telizhenko into a meeting with Chalupa to provide an update on an American media outlet’s ongoing investigation into Manafort.
Telizhenko recalled that Chalupa told him and Shulyar that, “If we can get enough information on Paul [Manafort] or Trump’s involvement with Russia, she can get a hearing in Congress by September.”
Chalupa confirmed that, a week after Manafort’s hiring was announced, she discussed the possibility of a congressional investigation with a foreign policy legislative assistant in the office of Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), who co-chairs the Congressional Ukrainian Caucus. But, Chalupa said, “It didn’t go anywhere.”
Asked about the effort, the Kaptur legislative assistant called it a “touchy subject” in an internal email to colleagues that was accidentally forwarded to Politico.
Kaptur’s office later emailed an official statement explaining that the lawmaker is backing a bill to create an independent commission to investigate “possible outside interference in our elections.” The office added “at this time, the evidence related to this matter points to Russia, but Congresswoman Kaptur is concerned with any evidence of foreign entities interfering in our elections.”
•••
Almost as quickly as Chalupa’s efforts attracted the attention of the Ukrainian Embassy and Democrats, she also found herself the subject of some unwanted attention from overseas.
Within a few weeks of her initial meeting at the embassy with Shulyar and Chaly, Chalupa on April 20 received the first of what became a series of messages from the administrators of her private Yahoo email account, warning her that “state-sponsored actors” were trying to hack into her emails.
She kept up her crusade, appearing on a panel a week after the initial hacking message to discuss her research on Manafort with a group of Ukrainian investigative journalists gathered at the Library of Congress for a program sponsored by a U.S. congressional agency called the Open World Leadership Center.
Center spokeswoman Maura Shelden stressed that her group is nonpartisan and ensures “that our delegations hear from both sides of the aisle, receiving bipartisan information.” She said the Ukrainian journalists in subsequent days met with Republican officials in North Carolina and elsewhere. And she said that, before the Library of Congress event, “Open World’s program manager for Ukraine did contact Chalupa to advise her that Open World is a nonpartisan agency of the Congress.”
Chalupa, though, indicated in an email that was later hacked and released by WikiLeaks that the Open World Leadership Center “put me on the program to speak specifically about Paul Manafort.”
Republicans pile on Russia for hacking, get details on GOP targets
By MARTIN MATISHAK and AUSTIN WRIGHT
In the email, which was sent in early May to then-DNC communications director Luis Miranda, Chalupa noted that she had extended an invitation to the Library of Congress forum to veteran Washington investigative reporter Michael Isikoff. Two days before the event, he had published a story for Yahoo News revealing the unraveling of a $26 million deal between Manafort and a Russian oligarch related to a telecommunications venture in Ukraine. And Chalupa wrote in the email she’d been “working with for the past few weeks” with Isikoff “and connected him to the Ukrainians” at the event.
Isikoff, who accompanied Chalupa to a reception at the Ukrainian Embassy immediately after the Library of Congress event, declined to comment.
Chalupa further indicated in her hacked May email to the DNC that she had additional sensitive information about Manafort that she intended to share “offline” with Miranda and DNC research director Lauren Dillon, including “a big Trump component you and Lauren need to be aware of that will hit in next few weeks and something I’m working on you should be aware of.” Explaining that she didn’t feel comfortable sharing the intel over email, Chalupa attached a screenshot of a warning from Yahoo administrators about “state-sponsored” hacking on her account, explaining, “Since I started digging into Manafort these messages have been a daily occurrence on my yahoo account despite changing my password often.”
Dillon and Miranda declined to comment.
A DNC official stressed that Chalupa was a consultant paid to do outreach for the party’s political department, not a researcher. She undertook her investigations into Trump, Manafort and Russia on her own, and the party did not incorporate her findings in its dossiers on the subjects, the official said, stressing that the DNC had been building robust research books on Trump and his ties to Russia long before Chalupa began sounding alarms.
Nonetheless, Chalupa’s hacked email reportedly escalated concerns among top party officials, hardening their conclusion that Russia likely was behind the cyber intrusions with which the party was only then beginning to grapple.
Chalupa left the DNC after the Democratic convention in late July to focus fulltime on her research into Manafort, Trump and Russia. She said she provided off-the-record information and guidance to “a lot of journalists” working on stories related to Manafort and Trump’s Russia connections, despite what she described as escalating harassment.
About a month-and-a-half after Chalupa first started receiving hacking alerts, someone broke into her car outside the Northwest Washington home where she lives with her husband and three young daughters, she said. They “rampaged it, basically, but didn’t take anything valuable — left money, sunglasses, $1,200 worth of golf clubs,” she said, explaining she didn’t file a police report after that incident because she didn’t connect it to her research and the hacking.
But by the time a similar vehicle break-in occurred involving two family cars, she was convinced that it was a Russia-linked intimidation campaign. The police report on the latter break-in noted that “both vehicles were unlocked by an unknown person and the interior was ransacked, with papers and the garage openers scattered throughout the cars. Nothing was taken from the vehicles.”
Then, early in the morning on another day, a woman “wearing white flowers in her hair” tried to break into her family’s home at 1:30 a.m., Chalupa said. Shulyar told Chalupa that the mysterious incident bore some of the hallmarks of intimidation campaigns used against foreigners in Russia, according to Chalupa.
“This is something that they do to U.S. diplomats, they do it to Ukrainians. Like, this is how they operate. They break into people’s homes. They harass people. They’re theatrical about it,” Chalupa said. “They must have seen when I was writing to the DNC staff, outlining who Manafort was, pulling articles, saying why it was significant, and painting the bigger picture.”
In a Yahoo News story naming Chalupa as one of 16 “ordinary people” who “shaped the 2016 election,” Isikoff wrote that after Chalupa left the DNC, FBI agents investigating the hacking questioned her and examined her laptop and smartphone.
Chalupa this month told Politico that, as her research and role in the election started becoming more public, she began receiving death threats, along with continued alerts of state-sponsored hacking. But she said, “None of this has scared me off.”
•••
While it’s not uncommon for outside operatives to serve as intermediaries between governments and reporters, one of the more damaging Russia-related stories for the Trump campaign — and certainly for Manafort — can be traced more directly to the Ukrainian government.
Documents released by an independent Ukrainian government agency — and publicized by a parliamentarian — appeared to show $12.7 million in cash payments that were earmarked for Manafort by the Russia-aligned party of the deposed former president, Yanukovych.
The New York Times, in the August story revealing the ledgers’ existence, reported that the payments earmarked for Manafort were “a focus” of an investigation by Ukrainian anti-corruption officials, while CNN reported days later that the FBI was pursuing an overlapping inquiry.
One of the most damaging Russia-related stories during Donald Trump's campaign can be traced to the Ukrainian government. | AP Photo
Clinton’s campaign seized on the story to advance Democrats’ argument that Trump’s campaign was closely linked to Russia. The ledger represented “more troubling connections between Donald Trump’s team and pro-Kremlin elements in Ukraine,” Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, said in a statement. He demanded that Trump “disclose campaign chair Paul Manafort’s and all other campaign employees’ and advisers’ ties to Russian or pro-Kremlin entities, including whether any of Trump’s employees or advisers are currently representing and or being paid by them.”
A former Ukrainian investigative journalist and current parliamentarian named Serhiy Leshchenko, who was elected in 2014 as part of Poroshenko’s party, held a news conference to highlight the ledgers, and to urge Ukrainian and American law enforcement to aggressively investigate Manafort.
“I believe and understand the basis of these payments are totally against the law — we have the proof from these books,” Leshchenko said during the news conference, which attracted international media coverage. “If Mr. Manafort denies any allegations, I think he has to be interrogated into this case and prove his position that he was not involved in any misconduct on the territory of Ukraine,” Leshchenko added.
Manafort denied receiving any off-books cash from Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, and said that he had never been contacted about the ledger by Ukrainian or American investigators, later telling POLITICO “I was just caught in the crossfire.”
According to a series of memos reportedly compiled for Trump’s opponents by a former British intelligence agent, Yanukovych, in a secret meeting with Putin on the day after the Times published its report, admitted that he had authorized “substantial kickback payments to Manafort.” But according to the report, which was published Tuesday by BuzzFeed but remains unverified. Yanukovych assured Putin “that there was no documentary trail left behind which could provide clear evidence of this” — an alleged statement that seemed to implicitly question the authenticity of the ledger.
Inside the fall of Paul Manafort
By KENNETH P. VOGEL and MARC CAPUTO
The scrutiny around the ledgers — combined with that from other stories about his Ukraine work — proved too much, and he stepped down from the Trump campaign less than a week after the Times story.
At the time, Leshchenko suggested that his motivation was partly to undermine Trump. “For me, it was important to show not only the corruption aspect, but that he is [a] pro-Russian candidate who can break the geopolitical balance in the world,” Leshchenko told the Financial Times about two weeks after his news conference. The newspaper noted that Trump’s candidacy had spurred “Kiev’s wider political leadership to do something they would never have attempted before: intervene, however indirectly, in a U.S. election,” and the story quoted Leshchenko asserting that the majority of Ukraine’s politicians are “on Hillary Clinton’s side.”
But by this month, Leshchenko was seeking to recast his motivation, telling Politico, “I didn’t care who won the U.S. elections. This was a decision for the American voters to decide.” His goal in highlighting the ledgers, he said was “to raise these issues on a political level and emphasize the importance of the investigation.”
In a series of answers provided to Politico, a spokesman for Poroshenko distanced his administration from both Leshchenko’s efforts and those of the agency that reLeshchenko Leshchenko leased the ledgers, The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine. It was created in 2014 as a condition for Ukraine to receive aid from the U.S. and the European Union, and it signed an evidence-sharing agreement with the FBI in late June — less than a month and a half before it released the ledgers.
The bureau is “fully independent,” the Poroshenko spokesman said, adding that when it came to the presidential administration there was “no targeted action against Manafort.” He added “as to Serhiy Leshchenko, he positions himself as a representative of internal opposition in the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko’s faction, despite [the fact that] he belongs to the faction,” the spokesman said, adding, “it was about him personally who pushed [the anti-corruption bureau] to proceed with investigation on Manafort.”
But an operative who has worked extensively in Ukraine, including as an adviser to Poroshenko, said it was highly unlikely that either Leshchenko or the anti-corruption bureau would have pushed the issue without at least tacit approval from Poroshenko or his closest allies.
“It was something that Poroshenko was probably aware of and could have stopped if he wanted to,” said the operative.
And, almost immediately after Trump’s stunning victory over Clinton, questions began mounting about the investigations into the ledgers — and the ledgers themselves.
An official with the anti-corruption bureau told a Ukrainian newspaper, “Mr. Manafort does not have a role in this case.”
Ukrainian member of parliament Serhiy Leshchenko has sought to recast his investigation after the election. | Getty
And, while the anti-corruption bureau told Politico late last month that a “general investigation [is] still ongoing” of the ledger, it said Manafort is not a target of the investigation. “As he is not the Ukrainian citizen, [the anti-corruption bureau] by the law couldn’t investigate him personally,” the bureau said in a statement.
Some Poroshenko critics have gone further, suggesting that the bureau is backing away from investigating because the ledgers might have been doctored or even forged.
Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, a Ukrainian former diplomat who served as the country’s head of security under Poroshenko but is now affiliated with a leading opponent of Poroshenko, said it was fishy that “only one part of the black ledger appeared.” He asked, “Where is the handwriting analysis?” and said it was “crazy” to announce an investigation based on the ledgers. He met last month in Washington with Trump allies, and said, “of course they all recognize that our [anti-corruption bureau] intervened in the presidential campaign.”
And in an interview this week, Manafort, who re-emerged as an informal advisor to Trump after Election Day, suggested that the ledgers were inauthentic and called their publication “a politically motivated false attack on me. My role as a paid consultant was public. There was nothing off the books, but the way that this was presented tried to make it look shady.”
He added that he felt particularly wronged by efforts to cast his work in Ukraine as pro-Russian, arguing “all my efforts were focused on helping Ukraine move into Europe and the West.” He specifically cited his work on denuclearizing the country and on the European Union trade and political pact that Yanukovych spurned before fleeing to Russia. “In no case was I ever involved in anything that would be contrary to U.S. interests,” Manafort said.
Yet Russia seemed to come to the defense of Manafort and Trump last month, when a spokeswoman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry charged that the Ukrainian government used the ledgers as a political weapon.
“Ukraine seriously complicated the work of Trump’s election campaign headquarters by planting information according to which Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman, allegedly accepted money from Ukrainian oligarchs,” Maria Zakharova said at a news briefing, according to a transcript of her remarks posted on the Foreign Ministry’s website. “All of you have heard this remarkable story,” she told assembled reporters.
•••
Beyond any efforts to sabotage Trump, Ukrainian officials didn’t exactly extend a hand of friendship to the GOP nominee during the campaign.
The ambassador, Chaly, penned an op-ed for The Hill, in which he chastised Trump for a confusing series of statements in which the GOP candidate at one point expressed a willingness to consider recognizing Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea as legitimate. The op-ed made some in the embassy uneasy, sources said.
“That was like too close for comfort, even for them,” said Chalupa. “That was something that was as risky as they were going to be.”
Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk warned on Facebook that Trump had “challenged the very values of the free world.”
Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs, Arsen Avakov, piled on, trashing Trump on Twitter in July as a “clown” and asserting that Trump is “an even bigger danger to the US than terrorism.”
Avakov, in a Facebook post, lashed out at Trump for his confusing Crimea comments, calling the assessment the “diagnosis of a dangerous misfit,” according to a translated screenshot featured in one media report, though he later deleted the post. He called Trump “dangerous for Ukraine and the US” and noted that Manafort worked with Yanukovych when the former Ukrainian leader “fled to Russia through Crimea. Where would Manafort lead Trump?”
Paul Manafort is hired to help lead Donald Trump's delegate-gathering efforts.
INVESTIGATIONS
Manafort’s man in Kiev
By KENNETH P. VOGEL
The Trump-Ukraine relationship grew even more fraught in September with reports that the GOP nominee had snubbed Poroshenko on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where the Ukrainian president tried to meet both major party candidates, but scored only a meeting with Clinton.
Telizhenko, the former embassy staffer, said that, during the primaries, Chaly, the country’s ambassador in Washington, had actually instructed the embassy not to reach out to Trump’s campaign, even as it was engaging with those of Clinton and Trump’s leading GOP rival, Ted Cruz.
“We had an order not to talk to the Trump team, because he was critical of Ukraine and the government and his critical position on Crimea and the conflict,” said Telizhenko. “I was yelled at when I proposed to talk to Trump,” he said, adding, “The ambassador said not to get involved — Hillary is going to win.”
This account was confirmed by Nalyvaichenko, the former diplomat and security chief now affiliated with a Poroshenko opponent, who said, “The Ukrainian authorities closed all doors and windows — this is from the Ukrainian side.” He called the strategy “bad and short-sighted.”
Andriy Artemenko, a Ukrainian parliamentarian associated with a conservative opposition party, did meet with Trump’s team during the campaign and said he personally offered to set up similar meetings for Chaly but was rebuffed.
“It was clear that they were supporting Hillary Clinton’s candidacy,” Artemenko said. “They did everything from organizing meetings with the Clinton team, to publicly supporting her, to criticizing Trump. … I think that they simply didn’t meet because they thought that Hillary would win.”
Shulyar rejected the characterizations that the embassy had a ban on interacting with Trump, instead explaining that it “had different diplomats assigned for dealing with different teams tailoring the content and messaging. So it was not an instruction to abstain from the engagement but rather an internal discipline for diplomats not to get involved into a field she or he was not assigned to, but where another colleague was involved.”
And she pointed out that Chaly traveled to the GOP convention in Cleveland in late July and met with members of Trump’s foreign policy team “to highlight the importance of Ukraine and the support of it by the U.S.”
November 26th, 2019, 03:43
vector7
Re: Soros's Progressive Cabal with Democrats to Weaken America
BOMBSHELL: Exclusive interview: Rudy Giuliani responds to Sondland impeachment testimony
President Trump's personal lawyer sits down with Glenn Beck to talk about the Dems' quid pro quo claims
During the House impeachment hearings Wednesday, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified that President Donald Trump directed him "to work with Mr. Rudy Giuliani" — the president's personal attorney — in an effort to pressure Ukraine officials to investigate Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian natural gas company that employed Hunter Biden.
"Secretary [Rick] Perry, Ambassador [Kurt] Volker and I worked with Mr. Rudy Giuliani on Ukraine matters at the express direction of the President of the United States," Sondland said in his opening statement. "Simply put, we played the hand we were dealt. We all understood that if we refused to work with Mr. Giuliani, we would lose an important opportunity to cement relations between the United States and Ukraine. So we followed the president's orders."
Sondland told the House Intelligence Committee that Giuliani pressured Ukraine to announce the investigations in exchange for a White House meeting for Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, and that the pressure campaign did constitute as a quid pro quo.
"Mr. Giuliani's requests were a quid pro quo for arranging a White House visit for President Zelensky," Sondland said. "Mr. Giuliani demanded that Ukraine make a public statement announcing investigations of the 2016 election/DNC server and Burisma. Mr. Giuliani was expressing the desires of the President of the United States, and we knew that these investigations were important to the President."
Giuliani joins Glenn Beck in an exclusive interview Wednesday to respond to Sondland's incriminating testimony and expose the facts behind the Democrats' impeachment inquiry the mainstream media doesn't want you to know.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMNK...ature=youtu.be 25:28 min
__________________________
Giuliani talks about the Ukraine, collusion with the DNC, Glenn Simpson's involvement (Fusion GPS,)
His mission:
Gather exculpatory information on Russian collusion and Manafort involement
Follow up on Ukrainian collusion and Biden's involvement in it
Ambassador
FBI Greenaway's involvement (subsequently works for Soros.)
Anti Corruption Bureau Soros NGO ANTAC shielded (embezzled money, developed info on Republicans to be transferred to Chalupa)
Whistleblower - he believes it is a 4 part plan to prevent Trump from winning election and from governing afterwards.
Several prosecutors/Parliamentarians in Kiev who want to bring info/testimony forward being blocked from getting VISAs (massive pay to pay $ multi-million scheme)
His 2 Ukrainian clients: - he asked them to locate Shokin and Lutsenko facilitated finding them for info. Went to John Solomon to interview. He put it in newspaper to follow up on Biden bribe (quid pro quo)
He has 5 witnesses, a confession and proof of $3million in money-laundering (transferred from Ukrain to Latvia to Cyprus to PA and the Biden account.
Rest of interview behind pay wall.
Obama Admin. Gave Ukraine “List” Of People Not To Prosecute In 2016
This is huge! The corruption and control wielded by George Soros under the Obama regime is unbelievable.
Many people wonder if the full extent of the criminal corruption that ran rampant in the Obama regime will ever be fully exposed… and they think there’s no way it can be.
Mainly because there is so much illegal activity to investigate.
In fact, new evidence shows that while the 2016 presidential election was underway, Obama and Soros were busy protecting their interests by shutting down investigations in the Ukraine.
Prosecutors in that country found themselves being pushed to ignore massive corruption. In fact, the country was given a list of people who they should not prosecute.
John Solomon wrote for the Hill concerning the strange and diabolical activity by the Obama administration:
While the 2016 presidential race was raging in America, Ukrainian prosecutors ran into some unexpectedly strong headwinds as they pursued an investigation into the activities of a nonprofit in their homeland known as the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC).
The focus on AntAC — whose youthful street activists famously wore “Ukraine F*&k Corruption” T-shirts — was part of a larger probe by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office into whether $4.4 million in U.S. funds to fight corruption inside the former Soviet republic had been improperly diverted.
The prosecutors soon would learn the resistance they faced was blowing directly from the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, where the Obama administration took the rare step of trying to press the Ukrainian government to back off its investigation of both the U.S. aid and the group.
“The investigation into the Anti-Corruption Action Center (sic), based on the assistance they have received from us, is similarly misplaced,” then-embassy Charge d’ Affaires George Kent wrote the prosecutor’s office in April 2016 in a letter that also argued U.S. officials had no concerns about how the U.S. aid had been spent.
At the time, the nation’s prosecutor general had just been fired, under pressure from the United States, and a permanent replacement had not been named.
A few months later, Yuri Lutsenko, widely regarded as a hero in the West for spending two years in prison after fighting Russian aggression in his country, was named prosecutor general and invited to meet new U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.
Lutsenko told me he was stunned when the ambassador “gave me a list of people whom we should not prosecute.” The list included a founder of the AntAC group and two members of Parliament who vocally supported the group’s anti-corruption reform agenda, according to a source directly familiar with the meeting.
It turns out the group that Ukrainian law enforcement was probing was co-funded by the Obama administration and liberal mega-donor George Soros. And it was collaborating with the FBI agents investigating then-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s business activities with pro-Russian figures in Ukraine.
The implied message to Ukraine’s prosecutors was clear: Don’t target AntAC in the middle of an America presidential election in which Soros was backing Hillary Clinton to succeed another Soros favorite, Barack Obama, Ukrainian officials said.
“We ran right into a buzzsaw and we got bloodied,” a senior Ukrainian official told me.
Lutsenko suggested the embassy applied pressure because it did not want Americans to see who was being funded with its tax dollars. “At the time, Ms. Ambassador thought our interviews of the Ukrainian citizens, of the Ukrainian civil servants who were frequent visitors in the U.S. Embassy, could cast a shadow on that anti-corruption policy,” he said.
State officials told me privately they wanted Ukraine prosecutors to back off AntAC because they feared the investigation was simply retribution for the group’s high-profile efforts to force anti-corruption reforms inside Ukraine, some of which took authorities and prestige from the Prosecutor General’s Office.
But it was an unusual intervention, the officials acknowledged. “We’re not normally in the business of telling a country’s police force who they can and can’t pursue, unless it involves an American citizen we think is wrongly accused,” one official said.
In the end, no action was taken against AntAC and it remains thriving today. Nonetheless, the anecdote is taking on new significance.
First, it conflicts with the State Department’s official statement last week after Lutsenko first mentioned the do-not-prosecute list. The embassy responded that the claim was a fabrication and a sign that corruption is alive and well inside Ukraine.
But Kent’s letter unequivocally shows the embassy did press Ukrainian prosecutors to back off what normally would be considered an internal law enforcement matter inside a sovereign country. And more than a half-dozen U.S. and Ukrainian sources confirmed to me the AntAC case wasn’t the only one in which American officials exerted pressure on Ukrainian investigators in 2016.
When I asked State to explain the letter and inclusion of the Soros-connected names during the meeting, it demurred. “As a general rule, we don’t read out private diplomatic meetings,” it responded. “Ambassador Yovanovitch represents the President of the United States in Ukraine, and America stands behind her and her statements.”
Second, the AntAC anecdote highlights a little-known fact that the pursuit of foreign corruption has resulted in an unusual alliance between the U.S. government and a political mega-donor.
After the Obama Justice Department launched its Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative a decade ago to prosecute corruption in other countries, the State Department, Justice Department and FBI outsourced some of its work in Ukraine to groups funded by Soros.
The Hungarian-American businessman is one of the largest donors to American liberal causes, a champion of the U.S. kleptocracy crackdown and a man with extensive business interests in Ukraine.
One key U.S. partner was AntAC, which received 59 percent (or $1 million) of its nearly $1.7 million budget since 2012 from U.S. budgets tied to State and Justice, and nearly $290,000 from Soros’s International Renaissance Foundation, according to the group’s donor disclosure records.
The U.S.-Soros collaboration was visible in Kiev. Several senior Department of Justice (DOJ) officials and FBI agents appeared in pictures as participants or attendees at Soros-sponsored events and conferences.
One attendee was Karen Greenaway, then the FBI supervisor in charge of international fraud cases and one of the lead agents in the Manafort investigation in Ukraine. She attended multiple such events and won glowing praise in a social media post from AntAC’s executive director.
In one event during 2016, Greenaway and Ambassador Yovanovitch participated alongside AntAC’s executive director, Daria Kaleniuk, and Lutsenko was present. The message was clear: The embassy supported AntAC.
The FBI confirmed Greenaway’s contacts with the Soros group, saying they were part of her investigative work: “In furtherance of the FBI’s mission and in the course of their duties, FBI employees routinely travel and participated in public forums in an official capacity. At a minimum, all such travel and speaking engagements are authorized by the employee’s direct supervisor and can receive further authorization all the way up to the relevant division head, along with an ethics official determination.”
Greenaway recently retired, and Soros’s AntAC soon after announced she was joining its supervisory board.
Internal memos from Soros’s umbrella charity organization, Open Society Foundations, describe a concerted strategy of creating friendships inside key government agencies such as State, DOJ and the FBI that can be leveraged inside the countries Soros was targeting for anti-corruption activism.
“We have broadly recognized the importance of developing supportive constituencies in order to make headway in tightening the global web of anti-corruption accountability,” a Feb. 21, 2014, memo states. “We first conceived of this in terms of fostering and helping to build a political environment favorable to high-level anti-corruption cases.”
That same memo shows Soros’s organization wanted to make Ukraine a top priority, starting in 2014, and planned to use the Anti-Corruption Action Centre as its lead.
“Ukraine: Behind the scenes advice and support to Ukrainian partner Anti-Corruption Action Centre’s efforts to generate corruption litigation in Europe and the U.S. respecting state assets stolen by senior Ukrainian leaders,” the memo states.
The memo included a chart of Ukrainians the Soros team wanted to have pursued, including some with ties to Manafort.
Senior U.S. law enforcement officials confirmed to me that the early kleptocracy collaborations inside Ukraine led to highly visible U.S. actions against the oligarch Dmitri Firtash, a major target of the Soros group, and Manafort. Firtash is now represented by former Hillary Clinton lawyer Lanny Davis and former U.S. Attorney Dan Webb.
Documents posted online by Open Society Foundations show that after U.S. officials scored some early successes in corruption cases in Ukraine, such as asset forfeitures, AntAC requested to receive some of the seized money.
“Ukrainian NGO Anticorruption Action Centre (AntAC) petitioned the United States Justice Department on behalf of Ukrainian civil society to dedicate the nearly $3 million in forfeited and seized assets allegedly laundered by former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, to creating an anti-corruption training facility,” a 2015 foundation document stated.
Spokespersons for AntAC and Open Society Foundations did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Michael Vachon, a spokesman for Soros, deferred any comment about AntAC to the group. But he did he confirm his boss supported the continued investigation of Russia collusion allegations against Trump well past 2016.
Vachon said Soros wrote a sizable check from his personal funds in fall 2017 to a new group, Democracy Integrity Project, started by a former FBI agent and Senate staffer Daniel Jones to continue “investigation and research into foreign interference in American elections and European elections.”
Vachon said the group asked Soros not to divulge the size of his contribution, and Soros later learned the group hired Fusion GPS, the same firm that was paid by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic Party to create the infamous “Steele dossier” alleging Trump-Russia collusion.
The he said-she said battle playing out between Ukraine’s chief prosecutor and the American ambassador doesn’t benefit either side, but an honest, complete and transparent account of what the embassy communicated to Ukraine’s law enforcement does.
And the tale of AntAC raises some cogent questions:
Why would the U.S. Embassy intervene on a Ukrainian internal investigation and later deny it exerted such pressure?
Did Soros’s role as a major political funder have any impact?
Do Americans want U.S. tax dollars commingled with activists’ private funds when it comes to anti-corruption probes?
Someone in State and Congress should try to get the answers.
NEWS NOVEMBER 20, 2019 by Aaron Colen
Hunter Biden and partners got $16.5M in illegal money, Ukraine MP alleges
More revelations about the BIdens in Ukraine
A Ukrainian member of parliament said Wednesday that Hunter Biden and his partners with Burisma received $16.5 million in illegal funds obtained by a Ukrainian crime family and laundered through another country, according to Interfax.
Ukrainian MP Andriy Derkach said at a news conference that Biden and his colleagues took millions of dollars that really belonged to the Ukrainian people.
"The [prosecutor general's office] document once again confirms the data I had previously published on Burisma and international corruption," Derkach said. "According to Zlochevsky's suspicion notice, Biden and partners received their $16.5 million for their services to Burisma. Biden received funds not due to the successful activity of Burisma or for brilliant business decisions or recommendations. This is the money of Ukrainian citizens. The funds were obtained by criminal means. That's what they say in the PGO."
Derkach said the new information came from a suspicion notice to former Ukraine ecology minister and owner of the Burisma Group, Mykola Zlochevsky.
"According to the investigation, Zlochevsky was directly involved in the withdrawal of funds by the Yanukovych 'family'," Derkach said. "They laundered the funds of Yanukovych through three companies in Latvia."
The money was then allegedly paid to Hunter Biden, Aleksander Kwasniewski, Alan Apter, and Devon Archer.
Burisma has been the subject of suspicion and investigation for years for corrupt business dealings. Hunter Biden was named to the board of the company in 2014, and just recently stepped down. His appointment to the board is controversial because it came while his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, was the Obama administration's point man for Ukraine issues.
Joe Biden has boasted about his role in ousting a Ukrainian prosecutor who had been pursuing criminal investigations into Burisma in 2016. Biden used a $1 billion loan guarantee as leverage to pressure the government into firing the prosecutor.
House Democrats are attempting to impeach President Donald Trump in part for allegedly withholding security aid to Ukraine in order to pressure the government to investigate Burisma and the involvement of the Bidens. House Republicans have attempted to subpoena Hunter Biden to testify, but it is unlikely that the Democrats, who control the process, will allow it.
NOVEMBER 20, 2019 / 12:42 PM / UPDATED 5 HOURS AGO
Ukraine widens probe against Burisma founder to embezzlement of state funds
Ilya Zhegulev
KIEV (Reuters) - Ukraine has widened its investigation into the founder of energy company Burisma to include suspicion of embezzling state funds, Prosecutor General Ruslan Ryaboshapka said on Wednesday.
Allegations of wrongdoing at Burisma go to the heart of a U.S. impeachment inquiry into whether President Donald Trump improperly pressured Ukraine’s leadership to investigate his main rival in the 2020 presidential race.
Trump wants Ukraine to launch an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who was a board member at Burisma from 2014-2019.
The prosecutor who has investigated Burisma is Kostiantyn Kulyk, who previously met Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to discuss accusations against the Bidens.
After he took office in late August, Ryaboshapka launched a wide-ranging audit of criminal cases to see whether they had been conducted properly. Thirteen of them relate to Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky, Ryaboshapka told reporters at a briefing on Wednesday.
Burisma did not respond to a request for comment.
Ryaboshapka’s predecessors oversaw a series of investigations into Zlochevsky, a multimillionaire former minister of ecology and natural resources. The allegations concern tax violations, money-laundering and licences given to Burisma during the period where Zlochevsky was a minister.
Ryaboshapka said Zlochevsky was now suspected of the “theft of government funds on an especially large scale,” but did not provide evidence or details.
Ryaboshapka was speaking after being asked about a document from the general prosecutor’s office that was leaked at a separate press conference by three lawmakers earlier on Wednesday.
The document, only part of which was visible, showed Kulyk suspected Zlochevsky of offences including using his official position to embezzle 800 million hryvnias ($33 million) of money belonging to the central bank.
The investigation is effectively on hold, however, because the Ukrainian authorities cannot determine Zlochevsky’s whereabouts.
The central bank did not respond to a request for comment.
Giuliani has previously told Reuters he met Kulyk in Paris. He said at that meeting Kulyk echoed allegations that in 2016 Joe Biden as Vice President had tried to have Ukraine’s then-chief prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, fired to stop him investigating Burisma. Biden has accused Giuliani of peddling “false, debunked conspiracy theories” for repeating these allegations.
Kulyk told Reuters in October that he had been investigating Zlochevsky for around two years.
Reuters could not independently verify the extent of Kulyk’s involvement, but a source close to the energy company saw a spike in activity by Kulyk in regards to Burisma after Giuliani’s interest in the company and the Bidens had been conveyed to Kulyk’s then superior, Yuriy Lutsenko.
In late January, Kulyk sent Zlochevsky the first of several summons for questioning, documents seen by Reuters showed.
Zlochevsky has not commented on the summons or an announcement by Ryaboshapka in October that his office was reviewing a series of investigations linked to Zlochevsky.
KYIV. Nov 20 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Ukrainian members of parliament have demanded the presidents of Ukraine and the United States, Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump, investigate suspicions of the legalization of $7.4 billion by the "family" of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych through the American investment fund Franklin Templeton Investments, which they said has ties to the U.S. Democratic Party.
At a press conference at the Interfax-Ukraine agency on Wednesday, MP Andriy Derkach announced that deputies have received new materials from investigative journalists about international corruption and the participation of Ukrainian officials in it.
"Last week, November 14, the Prosecutor General's Office (PGO), unnoticed by the media, announced a new suspicion to the notorious owner of Burisma, ex-Ecology Minister Zlochevsky. According to the suspicion, the Yanukovych family is suspected, in particular, with legalizing (laundering) of criminally obtained income through Franklin Templeton Investments, an investment fund carrying out purchases of external government loan bonds totaling $7.4 billion," Derkach said.
With reference to the investigation, he emphasized: it was money criminally obtained by the "family" of Yanukovych and invested in the purchase of Ukrainian debt in 2013-2014.
For his part, MP Oleksandr Dubinsky from the Servant of the People faction said that according to investigators, "the Yanukovych 'family' illegally obtained $7.4 billion and laundered the funds through an investment fund close to some representatives of the U.S. Democratic Party in the form of external government loan bonds."
Meanwhile, Derkach said that several facts indicate Franklin Templeton Investments' relationship with the U.S. Democratic Party.
"The son of Templeton's founder, John Templeton Jr., was one of President Obama's major campaign donors. Another fund-related character is Thomas Donilon. Managing Director of BlackRock Investment Institute, shareholder Franklin Templeton Investments, which has the largest share in the fund. It is noteworthy that he previously was Obama's national security advisor," Derkach said.
The MP said that the presidents of Ukraine and the United States should combine the efforts of the two countries to establish facts of corruption and money laundering with the participation of citizens of both countries.
"President Zelensky must pick up the phone, dial Trump, ask for help and cooperation in the fight against corruption and fly to Washington. The issue of combating international corruption in Ukraine with the participation of citizens, businessmen and U.S. officials should become a key during the meeting of the two presidents," he said.
Derkach said as a result of the meeting, it is necessary to build interaction between the Ukrainian investigating authorities and the U.S. Department of Justice to obtain information about the organizers of the bond issue, clients and beneficiaries of investment funds for each purchase, interrogate fund officials, etc.
As reported, on October 9, 2019, Derkach published official correspondence between NABU and the U.S. Embassy, according to which the first deputy of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), Gizo Uglava, through his assistant Polina Chyzh, for a long time provided the U.S. Embassy with information that negatively affected the course of events in Ukraine and the United States.
Derkach said Chyzh received instructions from the representative of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine Hanna Emelyanova to provide information on the case involving Zlochevsky.
Derkach also announced the amount of money transferred to representatives of the Burisma Group, including Hunter Biden. According to documents, in general, in favor of Hunter Biden, Alexander Kwasniewski, Alan Apter and Devon Archer, Burisma paid about $16.5 million.
According to Derkach, ex-Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin repeatedly appealed to the NABU Director Artem Sytnyk in the framework of criminal proceedings for Burisma, but constantly received formal responses. The activities of Shokin, according to the MP, irritated then U.S. Vice President Joe Biden during his fifth visit to Kyiv in two years. The visit on December 7-8, 2015, was devoted to solving the issue of Shokin's resignation for the affairs of Zlochevsky and Burisma, he said.
"The subject of pressure was the $1 billion credit guarantee that the United States should have provided to Ukraine: Biden himself acknowledged the pressure in his speech to the U.S. Foreign Relations Council in January 2018," Derkach said.
Ukrainian MP Claims $7.4 Billion Obama-Linked Laundering, Puts Biden Group Take At $16.5 Million
Thu, 11/21/2019 - 05:05
Update 2: Dobinsky, the MP, says there is a "signed suspicion" at 1:19 in the video below. This has been described in Ukrainian media as an investigative step which documents allegations against an individual or individuals, similar to a criminal referral. While Donibsky says during the press conference that "Zlochevsky was charged," we have updated our headline and report accordingly.
A transcription of key portions of the press conference can found here, via Tanya Tay Posobiec.
Update: Reuters sheds additional light on the press conference, noting that the document from the Prosecutor General's office was leaked and not officially released.
***
A Ukrainian MP says a document leaked from the Ukraine's Office of the Prosecutor General contains claims against Burisma owner Nikolai Zlochevsky, as well as Hunter Biden and his partners - who allegedly received $16.5 million for their 'services' - according to Alexander Dubinsky of the ruling Servant of the People Party.
Dubinsky made the claim in a Wednesday press conference, citing materials from an investigation into Zlochevsky and Burisma.
"Zlochevsky was charged with this new accusation by the Office of the Prosecutor General but the press ignored it," said the MP. "It was issued on November 14."
"The son of Vice-President Joe Biden was receiving payment for his services, with money raised through criminal means and money laundering," he then said, adding "Biden received money that did not come from the company’s successful operation but rather from money stolen from citizens."
According to Dubinsky, Hunter Biden's income from Burisma is a "link that reveals how money is siphoned [from Ukraine]," and how Biden is just one link in the chain of Zlochevsky's money laundering operation which included politicians from the previous Yanukovich administration who continued their schemes under his successor, President Pyotr Poroshenko.
"We will reveal the information about the financial pyramid scheme that was created in Ukraine and developed by everyone beginning with Yanukovich and later by Poroshenko. This system is still working under the guidance of the current managerial board of the National Bank, ensuring that money flows in the interest of people who stole millions of dollars, took it offshore and bought Ukrainian public bonds turning them into the Ukrainian sovereign debt," said Dubinsky, adding that "in both cases of Yanukovich and Poroshenko, Ms. Gontareva and companies she controls were investing the stolen funds."
Franklin Templeton named
According to Interfax-Ukraine, MP Andriy Derkach announced at the same press conference that deputies have received new materials from investigative journalists alleging that the 'family' of ex-President Yanukovych funneled $7.4 billion through American investment firm Franklin Templeton Investments, which they claim have connections to the US Democratic party."
"Last week, November 14, the Prosecutor General's Office (PGO), unnoticed by the media, announced a new suspicion to the notorious owner of Burisma, ex-Ecology Minister Zlochevsky. According to the suspicion, the Yanukovych family is suspected, in particular, with legalizing (laundering) of criminally obtained income through Franklin Templeton Investments, an investment fund carrying out purchases of external government loan bonds totaling $7.4 billion," said Derkach, adding that the money was criminally obtained and invested in the purchase of Ukrainian debt in 2013 - 2014.
"The son of Templeton's founder, John Templeton Jr., was one of President Obama's major campaign donors. Another fund-related character is Thomas Donilon. Managing Director of BlackRock Investment Institute, shareholder Franklin Templeton Investments, which has the largest share in the fund. It is noteworthy that he previously was Obama's national security advisor," Derkach added.
Derkach then demanded "President Zelensky must pick up the phone, dial Trump, ask for help and cooperation in the fight against corruption and fly to Washington. The issue of combating international corruption in Ukraine with the participation of citizens, businessmen and U.S. officials should become a key during the meeting of the two presidents."
MP Andriy Derkach: 'NABU Leaks' is the key for salvaging Ukraine-U.S. relations
Interview with MP Andriy Derkach for Interfax-Ukraine
Q: Earlier you were the initiator of the case on the interference of senior officials of Ukraine in the U.S. elections, in particular on the Regions Party's "black ledger." Now comes National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), the U.S. Embassy and Biden. Why do you need this?
A: Since 2016, Ukraine has been at the center of domestic politics and the political confrontation of its strategic partner, the United States. Today the situation has become threatening: in the United States, the impeachment process of incumbent President Donald Trump has begun. We hear, "Ukraine's influence will not lead to nothing good." This negatively affects Ukraine's reputation, both within the United States and on the international stage.
Therefore, the key task of my publication of the documents is restoring of trusting relations between strategic partners: the United States and Ukraine. Here, only an open and public investigation can put an end to the series of international scandals and corruption, in which some representatives of law enforcement and diplomatic bodies of the two countries are mired.
Q: How will the publication of these scandalous documents help Ukraine?
A: We must show the United States and other countries that we are interested in punishing those responsible so that the situation does not happen again. Figuratively speaking, today the key to improving relations between Ukraine and the United States and correcting the international image of our country is in the hands of law enforcement officers of Ukraine and its president.
You mentioned that I was the initiator of a criminal case on meddling in U.S. elections. Investigative journalists who are in possession of certain information passed it on to me. We are talking about correspondence between NABU employees and officials of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, the FBI, and others. And this data is not from the Internet. All this constitutes materials of criminal proceedings No. 42188000000002952 (Article 111 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, which is 'high treason').
Q: What is the value of this information? Does it shed some new light on already known facts?
A: Today I unveiled an important part of the puzzle of interference in the U.S. elections and the facts of international corruption. It is correspondence of NABU employees and employees of the U.S. embassy.
According to the documents, the first deputy director of NABU, Gizo Uglava, through his assistant, provided the U.S. Embassy with information that influenced the course of events in Ukraine and the United States. In other words, NABU "leaked" information to the U.S. embassy staff and coordinated its actions in a number of high-profile cases.
Correspondence between NABU employees and employees of the U.S. Embassy has been available for several years within the criminal case file No. 42018000000002952 (Article 111 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, High Treason). According to the information received from investigative journalists, which I rechecked, it was obtained absolutely legally, as part of the investigative actions.
As for the documents I published regarding ex-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, these documents and information are contained in six criminal proceedings against the Burisma Group, as well as Mykola Zlochevsky No. 42014000000000181, 42015000000001142 , 42014000000000805, 42014000000000999, 42014000000001095, 42018000000000407.
There are also five more criminal proceedings for affiliation with the Burisma Group and Zlochevsky structures (contractors): No. 42015000000001283, 42014000000000375, 12017160000000208, 32014000000000074, 52018000000000748.
Once again I want to emphasize that it is important to keep the materials in the criminal proceedings.
Q: Can you give some examples?
A: One of the letters from Hanna Emelianova, the Legal Affairs Specialist in the Anti-Corruption Program of the U.S. Department of Justice at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, instructed Chyzh to provide information on the case of Mykola Zlochevsky, former Ecology Minister and Burisma Group owner.
Why is the Zlochevsky case so important? To answer this question, you need to go a little deeper into history.
In March 2014, the UK and Northern Ireland Serious Fraud Bureau launched an investigation into the Zlochevsky criminal case, suspecting him of laundering $35 million. At the same time, Zlochevsky, according to Ukrainian investigators and journalists, contacted U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry and suggested they share the profits of the Ukrainian gas producer Burisma Group.
British investigative journalist Oliver claimed that at about the same time (in March 2014) that Biden's son Hunter received an offer to take the position of board member of Burisma. Biden Jr. was appointed Member of the Board of Burisma on May 12, 2014. In addition to him, Alexander Kwasniewski, Alan Apter and Devon Archer were appointed.
In total, according to our data from the report of the financial investigation unit of Latvia, in favor of two shell companies, as well as Alexander Kwasniewski, Alan Apter, Devon Archer and Hunter Biden, Burisma paid at least $16.5 million.
Q:So far, you have listed people who are not directly related to the highest echelon of power in the United States. Biden can only be blamed for the fact that his adult son is involved here ...
A: Firstly, according to investigators, the son was "built into" the structure, which was headed by Biden Sr. I will return to this later.
And secondly, in the case file that was handed to me, there is evidence that Joe Biden probably received the money personally through a lobbying company. According to the investigation, he received a hidden fee from the Burisma Group for lobbying activities.
Money in the amount of more than $900,000 was transferred to the account of the American company Rosemont Seneca Partners, associated with Biden Jr. - Hunter. Reason for payment was consulting services.
In addition, Ukrainian investigators and journalists believe that Joe Biden, using existing levers of influence on the Ukrainian authorities and manipulating the issue of providing financial assistance to Ukraine, actively helped to close criminal cases against Zlochevsky and the Burisma Group.
Q: Okay, it is clear with Biden. And what does Ukraine have to do with it - it is a violation of U.S. law?
A: In general, this case would not concern Ukraine, if not for the pressure on the leaders of Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office (PGO).
On August 5, 2014, PGO's Directorate of Investigation of Especially Important Cases opened a criminal proceeding against Zlochevsky. He was suspected of illegal enrichment on an especially large scale and in tax evasion in the amount of about UAH 1 billion.
Last week, notes of U.S. Presidential Attorney Rudy Giuliani were published, suggesting that the investigation was terminated "because of fear of the United States." It also alleged that the then Attorney General Shokin was told that in the process of the investigation, Vice President Biden ordered to delay providing American assistance to Ukraine.
According to Viktor Shokin, he had a plan to investigate the activities of Hunter Biden, including interrogations and other procedures for all members of the board of the Burisma Group. Moreover, Shokin repeatedly appealed to the head of NABU Sytnik as part of the criminal proceedings against the company, but constantly received formal replies.
Shokin's activity caused Joe Biden's undisguised irritation. His fifth visit to Kyiv on December 7–8, 2015 was dedicated to resolving the issue of the resignation of Shokin due to the Zlochevsky case. The subject of pressure was $1 billion of loan guarantees that the United States was to provide to Ukraine.
Biden himself admitted the fact of pressure in his speech at the United States Council on Foreign Relations in January 2018, calling Shokin "the son of a bitch who should have been fired".
The chronology of events also attests to the linking of the Zlochevsky case to credit guarantees by the United States. Judge for yourself.
In December 2015, Biden visited Kyiv. On February 19, 2016 the President of Ukraine asks the parliament to agree to dismiss Shokin. On March 29, the parliament agrees and on April 3, the President of Ukraine signed a decree dismissing Shokin.
On June 3, the U.S. and Ukrainian governments signed a $1 billion loan guarantee agreement.
Q: Let's go back to NABU – is it somehow involved in this story?
A: According to the investigation, NABU under the supervision of the United States continued the persecution of Viktor Shokin. Starting from September 6, 2016, the assistant to the first deputy director of NABU Polina Chyzh sent to her manager documents proving that data was collected on the former Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin and his family.
Also, Polina Chyzh agreed on with the U.S. Embassy in the person of Olena Kustova the content of responses to requests from MPs regarding the audit of NABU.
There is evidence that the assistant to the first deputy director of NABU sent for approval to the U.S. embassy a draft suspicion of Roman Nasirov, who was reportedly close to Trump's team. By the way, it is noteworthy that the suspicion of Nasirov was formed just after he attended the inauguration ceremony of Donald Trump, and the arrest of Nasirov was supervised at that time by the U.S. Embassy personally.
Also, an employee of NABU provided a list of problem proceedings, which are being on aligning by the embassy.
I can't imagine the situation for, for example, if Ukraine's Embassy in the United States instructed the FBI how to generate reports and responses to requests from Congressmen. I also cannot imagine that the FBI leaked high-profile criminal cases to our embassy.
Q: Is that everything that you have at the moment?”
A: You can't embrace everything at one press conference and in one interview. This is just the tip of the iceberg. The remaining materials I will gradually post on my Facebook page.
Q: In your opinion, why did we find ourselves in such a difficult situation in relations with the United States?
A: First of all, it is fault of the former President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko. As a result of his actions, our country and the new President Zelensky were drawn into the scandal involving interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the fact that Ukraine is accused of international corruption. I emphasize that international corruption of this magnitude could not take place without the participation of Petro Poroshenko.
Since Ukraine is a parliamentary republic, it parliament, in my opinion, that should evaluate these facts.
Today, maintaining good and trusting relations with the United States is a matter of national security for our state, regardless of who wins the election there.
In order to restore trust between Ukraine and the United States, an urgent public investigation of the facts of interference in the U.S. elections is needed. It is necessary to investigate all possible facts of corruption by senior officials of Ukraine and the United States with the involvement of law enforcement agencies and representatives of diplomatic services.
Q: You made the facts public and expect that everything will happen by its own later on?
A: Of course not. Firstly, I appealed to the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) and the PGO, relaying the facts with a request to conduct an investigation and demanding that the case files not disappear, as the case of international corruption in the gas sector was lost. I also initiated the removal of Gizo Uglava and his assistant from duties during the investigation.
By the way, if the Prosecutor General does not initiate an investigation on the fact of media coverage of information about pressure on Shokin, as an employee of a law enforcement agency, then I myself will write a request for signs of offenses under Article 343 of the Criminal Code "Interference with the activities of a law enforcement officer" (influence in any form on a law enforcement officer).
Secondly, in the near future I will send parliament leaders a draft resolution on the creation of a Temporary Investigation Commission of parliament to investigate the facts regarding the illegal interference of the leadership of law enforcement agencies of Ukraine in the U.S. election process, as well as the facts of international corruption of government officials, which jeopardized U.S.-Ukraine relations.
Once again, I want to emphasize that the former President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko is personally responsible for the situation when Ukraine was drawn into corruption scandals in the international level, was accused of interference in the U.S. Presidential election process. Volodymyr Zelensky inherited a corrupt and difficult legacy for Ukraine…
Q: What can President Zelensky do in connection with all this?
A: In my opinion, the only right solution for our country and for the president is to take a number of steps. The first is to immediately transfer, within the framework of legal cooperation, all available documents to the U.S. Justice Department. The second is to prohibit bidding and contacts at the level of lawyers-lobbyists-assistants. And the third is to create an Investigation Commission in parliament, the findings of which should be provided to Ukrainian society and the international community.
Q: And how's it going with the case about the intervention in the U.S. elections initiated by you?
A: On July 24, 2017, I filed an appeal with the General Prosecutor Office on illegal interference in the election of the President of the United States. Because of the appeal, the PGO registered a criminal proceeding.
In the course of investigative actions in this criminal case, I handed over part of the documents, and told the investigator the possible direction and methods of the investigation. Unfortunately, in January 2019, in the midst of the election campaign in Ukraine, criminal case No. 42017000000002470 was closed. I appealed the closure decision in March in the Pechersk court. The trial is scheduled for October 21.
NABU-Leaks is the key to saving Ukraine's relations with the United States. I hope that publicity will help overcome existing resistance. Nevertheless, this must be done because how Ukraine will be treated in the near future depends on it.
AFTER DECADES OF COVERT SUPPORT FOR TERRORISTS, SOROS REVEALS HIMSELF IN COLOMBIA
3 años ago Lia Fowler
Under the guise of promoting Human Rights, in 1978 Soros co-founded Human Rights Watch (originally Helsinki Watch). Corporacion Nuevo Arcoiris lists Open Society as one of its benefactors. Created by amnestied ELN terrorist Leon Valencia, the “think tank” produces propaganda for the Santos-FARC deal. Could it be that Colombia’s 2018 election is shaping up to be a repeat of 2010 — a win-win contest between two Soros-groomed candidates?
By Lia Fowler*
January 13/2017
@lia_fowler
On January 9, Colombian daily El Espectador, published a column by New York hedge fund manager George Soros titled “The Abnormal Times of Trump” (Los Tiempos Anormales de Trump), in which the Hungarian-American billionaire opened with, “I must tell you who I am and what I believe in.” It would seem through this piece, written “especially for El Espectador”, that the founder of the Open Society Foundations was attempting to introduce himself to Colombians. He’s a few decades too late.
In fact, Soros has been a key player in shaping both U.S. policy toward Colombia and the country’s internal politics since at least the 1990s. Through his own network of NGOs and those he sponsors, Soros has waged a decades-long assault on the country’s institutions designed to legitimize Colombia’s narco-terrorist groups – a goal he is very close to achieving. (1)
Last December, the Colombian Congress ratified a “peace deal” between the government of President Juan Manuel Santos and the narco-terrorist group known as the FARC– despite the deal having been rejected by a national plebiscite on October 2. As such, the world’s leading drug-trafficking Cartel has guaranteed unelected seats in Congress, Santos has rule-by-decree powers, and Colombia is quickly devolving into a narco-failed State. The road to this end was paved and funded by George Soros, and achieved through a three-pronged approach: weakening of the State and its institutions, blocking drug eradication efforts, and promoting drug legalization and decriminalization.
Human Rights Watch, co-founded by Soros, recieves hundred of millons of dollars from him
Under the guise of promoting Human Rights, in 1978 Soros co-founded Human Rights Watch (originally Helsinki Watch). Not only did he pour hundreds of millions of dollars into it, through the Open Society Foundation (3), he also sits on its Advisory Council for the Americas. In the 1990s, HRW, along with Amnesty International (4), the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) (5), and the International Peace Brigades (6)– all sponsored by Open Society — began characterizing the Colombian military as a systematic violator of human rights. Indeed, during the presidency of Ernesto Samper (1994-98), accused by the U.S. of financing his presidential campaign with drug Cartel money, and Andres Pastrana (1998-2002) the combined efforts of Soros-sponsored NGOs managed to defund the Army, hinder its operations, and remove its top leaders through fabricated human rights abuse accusations.
In the mid and late 90s, there was a battle within the U.S. government between the State Department and the Pentagon regarding the nature of the terrorist groups FARC and ELN. Myles Frechette, former U.S. Ambassador to Colombia, insisted that there was no evidence of any link between these terrorist organizations and drug trafficking – a claim repeated by the FARC in various communications, including a 1998 “Open Letter to the American People.”(7) Frechette currently serves with Soros on the HRW Advisory Council.
U.S. Drug Policy Adviser Gen. Barry McCaffrey stated in 1996 that the FARC and ELN were a narco-guerrilla force.” The Pentagon’s view proved true, as the FARC is now recognized as the world’s leading cocaine Cartel.
HRW and other Soros-funded NGOs, led a relentless campaign against the Colombian Armed Forces and its members. In a 1996 report titled “Colombia’s Assassin Networks: the military-paramilitary alliance and the United States,” (8) HRW wrote “With the objective of declaring a war on drugs, the United States has armed, trained and advised the Colombian Armed Forces, despite their disastrous record on human rights issues.” The report went on to accuse retired General Farouk Yanine Diaz and General Harold Bedoya, among others, of colluding with paramilitary groups to commit or cover up atrocities.
These constant allegations were amplified by Soros-linked U.S. media outlets. Chief among them was the Washington Post. It is no surprise that Len Downie, Washington Post Executive Editor between 1991-2008, and current Vice-President, is also a member of the board at The Center for Investigative Reporting, which has received more than $1 million from Soros’ Open Society.
In a 1997 Washington Post article titled “As its civil war intensifies, Colombia emerges as the Bosnia of South America” by Ana Carrigan and Robert O. Weiner, the authors called the alleged collusion between the military and drug-traffickers a “dirty war” and compared it to Bosnia’s ethnic cleansing. “The paramilitaries massacre [civilians], fulfilling the military’s desire for high body counts and enabling their sponsors to consolidate and expand their land holdings,” they added, providing no basis for these statements.
Ana Carrigan, who co-authored the 1997 article, is a writer with OpenDemocracy, an organization funded primarily by Open Society and the Open Society Initiative for Europe. (9) Soros himself is a columnist at OpenDemocracy. Her ongoing coverage of the Colombian conflict has remained pro-terrorist through the years. She is also the author of “The Palace of Justice: A Colombian Tragedy,” in which she falsely claimed that it was the military, and not M-19 terrorists, who murdered most of the victims during the M-19 terrorist attack of the Palace of Justice in 1985. A critique of her book by Rex A. Hudson, pointed out the many fallacies of her work, including her reliance on anonymous sources and disregarding the testimony of credible survivors. The book remains one of the few accounts of the M-19 massacre in the English language. (10)
In a May 1998 column in the Washington Post, Bernard Aronson, a former Secretary of State official, promoted HRW’s false military-paramilitary narrative, writing that by aiding the Colombian military, the U.S. risked “allying ourselves with paramilitary forces that recently massacred 21 civilians, including a 4-year-old child, in a remote village in guerrilla-controlled territory.” Aronson proposed instead that the FARC and ELN could help eradicate coca fields in return for U.S. Aid and a share of power in Colombia. (11)
Aronson was and still is a member of the Inter-American Dialogue, which is indirectly funded by Soros, via the Avina Foundation. The latter is listed by the Dialogue’s as one of its top donors and it is funded by Open Society. Furthermore, Dialogue Director Michael Schifter serves on the HRW Advisory Council with Soros. With the recent ratification of the Santos-FARC deal, Aronson not only saw his 1998 proposal realized, he helped craft it, as President Obama’s U.S. Envoy to the Santos-FARC peace talks since 2015.
Open Society Foundations
By 1998, Soros’ strong influence in the State Department was complete, with the appointment of Harold Koh as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. In a glaring conflict of interest, Koh was also a member of the HRW board of directors.(12)
Miguel Posada
“The principal mechanism for the defamation campaign against the Colombian military is the Human Rights Report that the State Department presents to the U.S. Congress every year,” wrote Miguel Posada, founder of the Center for Analytical Studies and Verdad Colombia – and my father – in a March 2000 article for the Inter-American Economic Press Association. (13) For many years, the State Department report was almost an exact copy of Soros’ HRW report.
Soros’ achievements through his influence in the State Department included the following: The dismantling of the 20th Intelligence Brigade (14) in 1998 (accused by the State Department – according to the Washington Post – “of promoting death squad activities”); the blocking of millions of dollars in U.S. assistance, as described in HRW reports for all the pertinent years; and the dismissal of hundreds of officers. (15)
The result of the Soros-funded U.S. policy toward Colombia was disastrous for Colombia. According to statistics from the Nueva Granada Military
General Harold Bedoya Pizarro
University, between 1990 and 2000, the number of FARC terrorists rose from some 8,000 to more than 20,000; ELN terrorists rose from 2,000 to 4,500 terrorists, and paramilitaries quintupled in force, from 1,800 terrorists to more than 10,000. In that time, about 7,000 child soldiers were recruited into these terrorist groups.
Among the officers removed due to HRW and State Department pressure was Gen. Bedoya, Commander of the Armed Forces, who was forced to retire in 1997. A 1998 HRW report, titled “All-Out War: Colombia and International Humanitarian Law” (Guerra Sin Cuartel: Colombia y el derecho internacional humanitario) (16) states: “In 1997, the government of Colombia forced the retirement of General Harold Bedoya, whose hostility toward human rights and whose association throughout his entire career with the dramatic increase in joint operations between the Army and the paramilitaries are well-known.”
In fact, there was never any credible evidence that Gen. Bedoya had any links to paramilitaries at all. As a great majority of the information alleged by HRW and spread through its media partners, the accusations were unsubstantiated. According to NGO Monitor, HRW’s publications “reflect the absence of professional standards, research methodologies, and military and legal expertise.” (17)
So where did they get this information? While HRW reports do not identify the organizations that provide the information in their acknowledgements, claiming security reasons, a review of the content of their reports suggests who they might be, among them: the Colombian Commission of Jurists (CCJ), The Inter-Eclesial Commission on Justice and Peace (CIJP), Center of Popular Investigation and Education (CINEP), and Corporacion Colectivo de Abogados Jose Alvear Restrepo (CCAJAR). Interestingly, these are all NGOs supported by International Peace Brigades, which receives funding directly from Soros’ Open Society.
Alirio Uribe Muñoz, presidente del Colectivo Alvear Restrepo. Terrorista del M-19
Alirio Uribe Muñoz (Terrorist from M19) was president of Colectivo Alvear Restrepo
After Gen. Bedoya’s forced retirement, he launched a presidential campaign for the 1998 elections. His platforms consisted of opposing the appeasement policies of the Samper government, and combating narco-terrorism directly. In the months leading up to the election, three of Bedoya’s campaign offices were bombed, and in May, Bedoya’s campaign advisor, former minister Fernando Landazabal, was murdered. Despite being defeated in the election, Gen. Bedoya continued his efforts to combat Soros-sponsored pro-FARC propaganda in the U.S., including speaking engagements at the Schiller Institute, and the National Press Club.
He was met, at every turn, with intense defamation campaigns both in the U.S. and in Colombia. In the U.S., pro-FARC groups pounced on his use of the word “patria” in Spanish, which they translated as “fatherland” (instead of the more appropriate “country”) in order to make comparisons to Hitler. From there, U.S. outlets and NGOs began to refer to Gen. Bedoya as a fascist. In 1999, for example, an email from the Colombian Labor Monitor, an NGO whose funding is not known, stated, “Colombian fascist General Bedoya will be speaking at the National Press Club.” (18) The Equipo Nizcor and Derechos Human Rights, members of Soros-funded GILC, (19) included Gen. Bedoya in a list of “Notorious Colombian Graduates of the School of the Americas,” and accused him of organizing death squads, (20) allegations lifted directly from HRW reports and FARC communiqués. (21)
“It is lacking in seriousness and disagreeable to hear that fascist narrative at the end of the 20th century.”: Ivan Duque
The allegations were echoed in Colombia. Referring to Gen. Bedoya in a February 1998 article in El Tiempo, Ivan Duque, now a Senator for the Democratic Center (CD) party, wrote: “It is lacking in seriousness and disagreeable to hear that fascist narrative at the end of the 20th century.” It isn’t surprising. In an April 2010 column in Portafolio titled “Soros’ Lessons,” Duque wrote about Soros’ “intellectual richness” and promoted his ideas. (22) Whether through ignorance or by design, Duque did not make any mention to the role Soros had played in Colombia’s politics in the previous 15 years.
Let’s skip to the present. The “peace deal” ratified last year, was initiated by Santos – whose links to Soros are well-documented – and helped along by an intense Soros-sponsored propaganda campaign at home and abroad.
Specifically, the lobbying for Santos in the United States was primarily done through the Inter-American Dialogue, whose ties to Soros are detailed above, and the Atlantic Council, which includes Open Society in its list of contributors. (23) The negotiations were thoroughly endorsed by the Obama Administration, which brought back the Soros-linked key players from the 1990s era to help cement the deal: Harold Koh, one-time member of the HRW board of directors, was appointed Legal Adviser of the Department of State in 2009; and Bernard Aronson was tapped to be the Special Envoy to the negotiations in 2015. Aronson’s dubious role in the negotiations was the subject of my April 2016 column: “Bernard Aronson: The Conflicting Interests of ‘Our Man in Havana’. (24)
Bernard Aronson and FARC
The coverage of the peace negotiations in the U.S. was predominantly pro-Santos-FARC, which implicitly meant pro-Cuba, as the FARC has long been sponsored and trained by Cuba, and Cuba was a sponsor and the host of the deal. Leading the U.S. coverage was, again, the Soros-linked Washington Post, through the many columns by reporter Nick Miroff. (25) His bias was encapsulated in an appalling Jan. 6 tweet. In response to photographs of U.N Peace verifiers dancing with FARC girls – whose very presence among the FARC ranks constitutes a War Crime – he wrote: “For the sake of peace in Colombia, someone should prob take away all the cellphone cameras in El Conejo.” The problem, for Miroff, was not that UN obsevers were dancing with victims of Child Soldiering, but rather that they got caught.
The fact is, Miroff is not unbiased at all. Miroff’s wife is Camila Pineiro, the daughter of the notorious Cuban intelligence officer Manuel Pineiro. Pineiro served as the Castro regime’s head of the DGLN, in charge of organizing and supporting guerrillas in the Americas, among them, the FARC. Camila Pineiro works for the Cuban State-sponsored Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy at the University of Havana.
In Colombia, many of the NGOs that promoted and helped orchestrate the Santos-FARC deal – and those that led defamation campaigns against its opponents — were funded by Open Society. Among them:
León Valencia and Alvaro Leyva Durán
Corporacion Nuevo Arcoiris (26) lists Open Society as one of its benefactors. Created by amnestied ELN terrorist Leon Valencia, the “think tank” produces propaganda for the Santos-FARC deal. Additionally, Soros is linked to Valencia and promotes him through diverse projects. In 2015, for example, Alerta Democratica – an organization founded by Open Society Foundation, the Soros-sponsored Avina Foundation and the Ford Foundation – held a an eight-month exercise to “Map the Future of Democracy in Latin America.” The representative from Colombia was Leon Valencia, listed as the Executive Director of his other NGO, La Fundacion Paz y Reconciliacion. (27)
Funded by Open Society Foundations, DeJusticia is headed by Rodrigo Uprimny. (28) Uprimny has been a key player in crafting the peace deal and silencing any opposition within the government. As one of the “architects” of the Santos-FARC deal’s Transitional Justice System, Uprimny helped design the system that will offer no jail time for FARC terrorists. He was also the sponsor of a complaint before a high court that challenged then-Inspector General Alejandro Ordoñez’ post. Ordoñez headed the only government agency that opposed the Santos-FARC deal. As a result of Uprimny’s suit, Ordoñez was deposed. (29)
Uprimny also has a running blog in another Soros-sponsored organization, La Silla Vacia, a so-called “independent” web news portal created by Open Society Foundation Fellow Juanita Leon. (30) Dejusticia’s Catalina Botero has been a speaker at Open Society-sponsored events.
Rodrigo Uprimny. From DeJusticia
DeJusticia also lobbies for the decriminalization and legalization of drugs, which is a key Soros initiative, carried out by many Soros-funded NGOs, including The Drug Policy Alliance, where Soros himself serves on the Board of Directors. In April 2016, State-funded El Tiempo published an article titled “Various NGO’s announce support for the Government’s position on drugs.” The groups argue drugs should be addressed as a public health problem, rather than a criminal matter. Some entities listed were Dejusticia, and Cesed, both funded by Soros, and the Open Society Foundation itself.
Shaping the narrative of the narco-terrorist history in Colombia, now referred to by all the above organizations and others as “the conflict,” is the Open Society project Verdad Abierta. The editor-in-chief of this web-based news magazine is Maria Teresa Ronderos, Director of the Open Society Foundation’s Program on Independent Journalism. Prior to that, she worked at Semana magazine, a Colombian state-funded magazine that promotes the Santos-FARC agenda and is a partner in the Verdad Abierta venture. (31)
Helping to ensure that opposition to the peace deal is silenced, Open Society also funded Colombia Check, a web-based portal that purports to expose “fake news.”(32) The site attempts to “debunk” negative news about the Santos administration and the peace deal and often attacks its opponents, including ex-President Alvaro Uribe, deposed Inspector General Alejandro Ordoñez, and even – full disclosure – this writer, specifically an article I authored in 2016 titled “Peace for Oil?” (33)
With Soros-sponsored U.S. and Colombian think tanks, news organizations, and NGOs, and with U.S. State Department officials all aligned with the Santos-FARC peace peddlers, it seemed a miracle that the underfunded promoters of the vote against the deal achieved a victory on Oct. 2. Not that it mattered. The plebiscite result was set aside without a word from Soros’ “democracy-building” organizations and affiliates.
Ivan Duque lauds Soros
The most visible entity promoting the No vote, was ex-President Uribe’s Center Democratic Party (CD). As such, it is troubling that Ivan Duque, who in 1998 helped promote the defamation campaign against Gen. Bedoya, and a believer in Soros’ philosophy, should be one of the front-runners for the CD’s presidential nomination for 2018. Certainly, Sen. Duque has some ties to Soros and his philosophy. According to his biography, he was, at some point, the recipient of a scholarship from the National Democratic Institute (NDI), a Soros-funded organization. As a member of the Inter-American Development Bank, he drafted, along with Felipe Buitrago, a document called “The Orange Economy.” In 2013, Buitrago promoted the “Orange Economy” in the Salzburg Global Seminar, an organization sponsored by Open Society. (34) (35)
It is possible, of course, that the Senator’s views have changed. I wrote to the Senator and to the head of the CD, giving Duque an opportunity to clarify the context of his 1998 and 2010 articles and describe the nature of the NDI scholarship. I also requested a copy of his University thesis, which he explained in an interview (36) with the Sergio Arboleda University was on the subject of “human rights.” Given the timing of when he might have written his thesis, it would be interesting for the public to know how much of his information relied on Soros-funded organizations and whether he echoed their propaganda. But the Senator never responded. In fact, Duque himself has not responded directly to any of the recent criticism of his positions and any possible links to Soros, other than to complain about a “dirty war” being waged against him.
Duque himself has not responded directly to any of the recent criticism of his positions and any possible links to Soros
His supporters, however, have not remained quiet, publishing numerous columns on the matter. Curiously, aside from his campaign organizers, the most fervent defense has not come from his fellow party members, but from the above named Leon Valencia, Rodrigo Uprimny, La Silla Vacia, and Semana magazine – all of Soros’ main propagandists in Colombia.
It is important that Senator Duque address these concerns. Soros’ self-promoting piece in El Espectador suggests that all his chips are in place, and he is ready to come out of the shadows – from which he has caused so much damage to Colombia for more than 20 years. Such a bold move suggests he is confident that the 2018 presidential election results will be favorable to his agenda. With the CD winning the latest popular vote – the plebiscite – and with about 80 percent of the population opposed to the main points of the deal with the FARC, one wonders how he can be so certain. Could it be that Colombia’s 2018 election is shaping up to be a repeat of 2010 — a win-win contest between two Soros-groomed candidates?
*Lia Fowler is an American journalist and former FBI Special Agent.
Whistleblower’s Complaint Against Trump Cites George Soros-Funded NGO
BY TOM OZIMEK
September 27, 2019 Updated: September 27, 2019
The anonymous CIA official’s complaint accusing President Donald Trump of “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country” in the 2020 presidential race has been linked to an investigative journalism organization partially-funded by billionaire activist George Soros.
The whistleblower’s complaint makes reference multiple times to a report published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), titled “Meet the Florida Duo Helping Giuliani Investigate for Trump in Ukraine.”
George Soros’s Open Society is listed as among the top donor in most of the annual financial records posted on OCCRP’s website.
In 2017, OCCRP penned an article broadly critical of the work of opponents of Soros’s work in Macedonia. In an article titled, “How Macedonia’s Scandal-plagued Nationalists Lobbied America’s Right and Pulled Them Into an Anti-Soros Crusade,” the organization wrote that “America’s right has become fervently interested in what one writer termed a ‘battle royale’ within the tiny Balkan country. On one side is Macedonia’s conservative former ruling party, portrayed by its newfound U.S. supporters as a staunch defender of free markets and traditional morality. On the other, they say, are nefarious left-wing opponents backed by billionaire financier George Soros.”
“The campaign is part of a wider anti-Soros movement promoted by authoritarian governments in Europe and right-wing populists in the United States. The Hungarian and Polish governments have gone after Soros-funded groups and institutions. In Macedonia’s neighbor, Serbia, nationalist media outlets have attacked Soros as being behind a plan to destabilize the country.”
The report referenced a meeting of “populist activists” at a March conference in Budapest, where they “adopted the name of the Macedonian group ‘Stop Operation Soros.'”
The report cited Macedonian journalists Ljupcho Zlatev, who told OCCRP that “Soros was picked as a target because he personifies a liberal, globalist threat to traditional nationalism.”
“George Soros is not the only one, but he is a symbol,” Zlatev said in the report. “You can’t go and protest against the British Council or the Swiss development agency, you know.”
OCCRP describes itself as a “non-profit media organization providing an investigative reporting platform” which links “45 non-profit investigative centers in 34 countries, scores of journalists and several major regional news organizations across Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.”
“We work to turn the tables on corruption and build greater accountability through exposing the abuse of power at the expense of the people,” OCCRP states. “We serve all people whose lives are affected by organized crime and corruption.”
Besides Soros-linked funding, OCCRP also receives support from the U.S. government, which has made sizeable contributions to the organization via the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), providing over $2 million in revenue in 2017, according to a financial report (pdf).
Private institutions in the same year contributed just over $2.3 million combined.
‘Not a Direct Witness’
The whistleblower, who in the complaint admits, “I was not a direct witness to most of the events described,” relied onsecond-hand information from numerous sources to allege that Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
The transcript of the call shows no evidence of pressure, however, nor does it show that Trump’s requested investigation of the Bidens was floated as a quid pro quo condition of releasing a tranche of military aid to Ukraine, as has been alleged in some media reports.
Trump has denied putting pressure on Zelensky and has called the allegations the work of a partisan operative. The Ukrainian president has also dismissed suggestions of pressure, saying that “nobody pushed me” nor that he had pressured Ukrainian prosecutors to investigate the Bidens.
The complaint claims several key members of the State Department either listened in on Trump’s July 25 call with Zelensky or interacted with Ukrainian officials to “contain the damage” to U.S. national security, and that “senior White House officials had intervened to ‘lock down’ all records of the phone call.”
Despite not having first-hand knowledge of the call, the whistleblower said in the complaint that he or she found “accounts of these events to be credible because, in almost all cases, multiple officials recounted fact patterns that were consistent with one another.”
The whistleblower notes in one part of the complaint that “multiple U.S. officials told me that Mr. Giuliani had reportedly privately reached out to a variety of other Zelensky advisers, including Chief of Staff Andriy Bohdan and Acting Chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine Ivan Bakanov.”
It is in the context of Giuliani’s alleged efforts to investigate Biden that the OCCRP report is referenced in the whistleblower’s complaint.
Footnote #4 of the complaint reads: “In a report published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) on 22 July, two associates of Mr. Giuliani reportedly traveled to Kyiv in May 2019 and met with Mr. Bakanov and another close Zelensky adviser, Mr. Serhiy Shefir.”
Footnote #9 reads: “In May, Attorney General Barr announced that he was initiating a probe into the ‘origins’ of the Russia investigation. According to the above-referenced OCCRP report (22 July), two associates of Mr. Giuliani claimed to be working with Ukrainian officials to uncover information that would become part of this inquiry.”
Footnote #10 reads: “See, for example, the above-referenced articles in Bloomberg (16 May) and OCCRP (22 July).” This footnote relates to the claim in the report that “Mr. Giuliani had met on at least two occasions with Mr. Lutsenko: once in New York in late January and again in Warsaw in mid-February. In addition, it was publicly reported that Mr. Giuliani had spoken in late 2018 to former Prosecutor General Shokin, in a Skype call arranged by two associates of Mr. Giuliani.”
Footnote #11 reads: “I do not know whether these associates of Mr. Giuliani were the same individuals named in the 22 July report by OCCRP, referenced above.”
Hannity Guests Link OCCRP to Soros
Guests on Fox News’ Hannity show have also pointed out that the whistleblower relied on information provided by a Soros-linked organization.
On a Sept. 26 episode of Hannity, attorneys Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing criticized the whistleblower, saying the person “doesn’t need to be feted, he needs to go to prison.”
Toensing then claimed, “The whistle-blower sprinkles throughout his document’s footnotes referring to a publication with the initials ‘OCCRP.’ One guess, Sean, who funds OOCRP? George Soros.”
“That was George Soros-funded NGOs who were also in bed with the State Department,” Toensing said. “They were in bed with each other during that time, in the name of anti-corruption and it really means that Soros goes after his competitors.”
DiGenova added: “Soros’ dirty money is all over this story from day one.”
The former attorney for the District of Columbia also claimed that the whistleblower complaint was a scheme devised by the Democrats to deflect attention away from the Bidens’ alleged corruption.
In 2016, Biden pressured then Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to fire Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who had led a criminal probe into Bursima Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company on whose board his son, Hunter Biden, sat. Bloomberg reported that the prosecutor’s termination was prompted by foot-dragging on unrelated corruption probes and that no evidence has been found of any connection to Biden’s son. Ukraine’s new prosecutor general told Bloomberg the investigation into tax evasion at Bursima had been dormant for over a year before Biden pushed for Shokin to be fired.
However, in a newly published sworn affidavit, obtained by The Hill, Shokin said he was told the reason he was forced out: Biden wasn’t pleased with the investigations into Burisma.
at while the official reason for his dismissal was failing to secure the public trust, the actual reason had to do with the Burisma probe.
“The truth is that I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holdings, a natural gas firm active in Ukraine, and Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was a member of the Board of Directors,” Shokin wrote.
“I assume Burisma, which was connected with gas extraction, had the support of the of the US Vice-President Joe Biden because his son was on the Board of Directors.”
Shokin said Poroshenko, Ukraine’s president at the time, came to him multiple times and asked him to close down the probe into Burisma but the prosecutor refused.
“In my conversations with Poroshenko at the time, he was emphatic that I should cease my investigations regarding Burisma. When I did not, he said that the U.S. (via Biden) were refusing to release the USD$1 billion promised to Ukraine. He said that he had no choice.”
Declassified and Released Complaint About Trump
The complaint made against Trump that spurred Democrats to launch an impeachment inquiry has been declassified and released.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, released the complaint to the public on Sept. 26.
Soros gave $90M to feminist anti-Trump protest groups
January 17, 2017 Admin 93 Comments
(LifeSiteNews) Pro-abortion billionaire George Soros has donated nearly $90 million to feminist groups behind a January 21 protest of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.
In a new report, Alatheia Nielsen at NewsBusters revealed that more than a quarter of the groups listed as “partners” on the Women’s March on Washington website are funded by Soros. These include Planned Parenthood, to whom Soros has given over $21 million since 2000, and the Center for Reproductive Rights, to whom Soros has given over $3 million since 2000. Other Soros-funded groups participating include the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, Catholics for Choice, Equality Now, NARAL, the National Abortion Federation, the Human Rights Campaign, and Amnesty International.
The feminist anti-Trump march, which the media have touted as a massive upcoming protest has been marred by disagreements over gender, class, and race.
Some women have withdrawn their participation because of the lack of minority women in the protest’s leadership roles, the New York Times reported. Others have disagreed on whether the march – or its offshoot local marches – should focus more on race or gender.
Democratic Socialists of America, a group called “Lady Parts Justice,” and numerous environmentalist groups are partners with the march as well.
According to the Capital Research Center, Soros is also connected to some the leftist groups that say they plan to “shut down” the nation’s capital protesting the inauguration on January 20. These groups are part of a coalition called DisrputJ20, which is “planning to paralyze the city [of Washington, D.C.] itself, using blockades and marches to stop traffic and even public transit” the day of Trump’s inauguration.
Undercover journalist James O’Keefe released a video on Monday showing members of the DisruptJ20 affiliate D.C. Anti-Fascist Coalition planning to unleash stink bombs and set off sprinklers at the “Deploraball,” a party at the National Press Club celebrating Trump’s inauguration….
Soros Linked to 'Dark Money' Group Trying To Pit Republicans Against Trump
By Andrew Kerr
Published November 22, 2019 at 1:03pm
A liberal “dark money” group that has received millions of dollars from George Soros’s advocacy network is behind a seven-figure ad blitz urging vulnerable Republicans in swing districts to support the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.
The ads were scheduled to air this week on “Fox and Friends” in the Washington, D.C., market and in 13 GOP-held congressional districts.
They feature military veterans urging Republican representatives to “put country over politics” by holding Trump accountable for “abusing his office and risking national security for his own gain.”
Each of the ads contains a disclosure stating they’re paid for by “Defend American Democracy.”
But D.C. business registration documents reveal the group is just one of the many projects of the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a dark money nonprofit that pumped $141 million into liberal causes in 2018 alone, Open Secrets reported.
The Sixteen Thirty Fund reported receiving $52 million from a single anonymous donor in 2018, but as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization, it is not required to disclose the identity of its donors.
But other nonprofit organizations are required to disclose if they gave money to the Sixteen Thirty Fund.
One of Soros’s primary donation vehicles, the Open Society Policy Center, has given $4.5 million to the fund between 2012 and 2017, according to their Form 990 annual disclosures.
“Defend American Democracy” does not disclose its affiliation to the Sixteen Thirty Fund on its website, however it does state its a project of “Protect The Investigation,” which is another such project of the Fund.
“Defend American Democracy” did not immediately return a request for comment.
The Sixteen Thirty Fund raised an unprecedented amount of money in 2018 as a liberal dark money group, Robert Maguire, a research director for the liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told Politico.
“In terms of the size of dark money networks, there are only a few that have gone into the $100 million-plus range,” Maguire said.
“These kinds of totals aren’t unheard of … I do think they’re unheard of on the liberal side. I think that’s what’s so striking about this.”
“Defend American Democracy” is just one of the dozens of projects operated by the Sixteen Thirty Fund.
Its most well-known project is “Demand Justice,” which spearheaded the effort to stop Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation in 2018.
In addition to operating dozens of projects, the Sixteen Thirty Fund is also a major source of funding for liberal nonprofit groups nationwide that push for reforms at the state and national level, Politico reported.
The Fund disbursed $91 million to 95 separate groups in 2018, according to its most recent Form 990.
“The Sixteen Thirty Fund provides support to advocates and social welfare organizations around the country, and we are pleased with the growth we had in 2018,” Sixteen Thirty Fund executive director Amy Kurtz told Open Secrets.
Soros Spends Over $48 Million Funding Media Organizations
Second of Four Parts
It's a scene journalists dream about - a group of coworkers toasting a Pulitzer Prize. For the team at investigative start-up ProPublica, it was the second time their fellow professionals recognized their work for journalism's top honor.
For George Soros and ProPublica's other liberal backers, it was again proof that a strategy of funding journalism was a powerful way to influence the American public.
It's a strategy that Soros has been deploying extensively in media both in the United States and abroad. Since 2003, Soros has spent more than $48 million funding media properties, including the infrastructure of news - journalism schools, investigative journalism and even industry organizations.
And that number is an understatement. It is gleaned from tax forms, news stories and reporting. But Soros funds foundations that fund other foundations in turn, like the Tides Foundation, which then make their own donations. A complete accounting is almost impossible because a media component is part of so many Soros-funded operations.
This information is part of an upcoming report by the Media Research Centers Business & Media Institute which has been looking into George Soros and his influence on the media.
It turns out that Soros' influence doesn't just include connections to top mainstream news organizations such as NBC, ABC, The New York Times and Washington Post. It's bought him connections to the underpinnings of the news business. The Columbia Journalism Review, which bills itself as "a watchdog and a friend of the press in all its forms," lists several investigative reporting projects funded by one of Soros foundations.
The "News Frontier Database" includes seven different investigative reporting projects funded by Soros' Open Society Institute. Along with ProPublica, there are the Center for Public Integrity, the Center for Investigative Reporting and New Orleans' The Lens. The Columbia School of Journalism, which operates CJR, has received at least $600,000 from Soros, as well.
Imagine if conservative media punching bags David and Charles Koch had this many connections to journalists. Even if the Kochs could find journalists willing to support conservative media (doubtful), they would be skewered by the left.
For Soros, it's news, but it nothing new. According to "Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire," he has been fascinated by media from when he was a boy where early career interests included "history or journalism or some form of writing." He served as "editor-in-chief, publisher, and news vendor of" his own paper, "The Lupa News" and wrote a wall newspaper in his native Hungary before leaving, wrote author Michael T. Kaufman, a 40-year New York Times veteran. The Communist Party "encouraged" such papers.
Now as one of the world's richest men (No. 46 on Forbes' list), he gets to indulge his dreams. Since those dreams seem to involve controlling media from the ground up, Soros naturally started with Columbia University's School of Journalism. Columbia is headed by President Lee Bollinger, who also sits on the Pulitzer Prize board and the board of directors of The Washington Post.
Bollinger, like some of Soros' other funding recipients, is pushing for journalism to find a new sugar daddy or at least an uncle - Uncle Sam. Bollinger wrote in his book "Uninhibited, Robust, and Wide-Open: A Free Press for a New Century" that government should fund media. A 2009 study by Columbia's journalism program came to the same conclusion, calling for "a national fund for local news." Conveniently, Len Downie, the lead author of that piece, is on both the Post's board and the board of the Center for Investigative Reporting, also funded by Soros.
Soros funds more than just the most famous journalism school in the nation. There's journalism industry associations like:
The National Federation of Community Broadcasters;
The National Association of Hispanic Journalists;
And the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Readers unhappy with Soros' media influence might be tempted to voice concerns to the Organization of News Ombudsmen - a professional group devoted to "monitoring accuracy, fairness and balance." Perhaps a direct complaint to one such as NPR's Alicia Shepard or PBS's Michael Getler, both directors of the organization. Unfortunately, that group is also funded by Soros. At the bottom of the Organization of News Ombudsmen's website front page is the line: "Supported by the Open Society Institute," a Soros foundation. It is the only organization so listed.
The group's membership page lists 57 members from around globe and features:
Deirdre Edgar, readers' representative of The Los Angeles Times;
Brent Jones, standards editor, USA Today;
Kelly McBride, ombudsman, ESPN;
Patrick Pexton, ombudsman, The Washington Post.
The site doesn't address whether the OSI money creates a conflict of interest. But then, who could readers complain to anyway?
There's more. The Open Society Institute is one of several foundations funding the Investigative News Network (INN), a collaboration of 32 non-profit news organizations producing what they claim is "non-partisan investigative news." The James L. Knight Foundation also backs the network and is possibly the most-well-known journalism foundation. Knight President and CEO Alberto Ibargüen is on the board of directors for ProPublica.
INN includes the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, the liberal web start-up MinnPost, National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, National Public Radio, and the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. The network had included the liberal Huffington Post investigative operation among its grants, but HuffPo investigations merged with the possibly even more left-wing Center for Public Integrity, on whose board Arianna Huffington sits.
Liberal academic programs, left-wing investigative journalism and even supposedly neutral news organizations paid for by a man who spends tens of millions of dollars openly attacking the right. George Soros is teaching journalists that their industry has a future as long as he opens his wallet.
November 26th, 2019, 03:43
vector7
Re: Soros's Progressive Cabal with Democrats to Weaken America
individual "...Soros views himself as a missionary with something of a divine mandate to transform the world and its institutions into something better—as he sees it."
"Over the years, Soros has given voice to this sense of grandiosity many times and in a variety of different ways. In his 1987 book The Alchemy of Finance, for instance, he wrote: “I admit that I have always harbored an exaggerated view of self-importance—to put it bluntly, I fancied myself as some kind of god or an economic reformer like Keynes or, even better, a scientist like Einstein.”3 Expanding on this theme in his 1991 book Underwriting Democracy, Soros said: “If truth be known, I carried some rather potent messianic fantasies with me from childhood,” fantasies which “I wanted to indulge … to the extent that I could afford.”4 In a June 1993 interview with The Independent, Soros, who is an atheist,5 said he saw himself as “some kind of god, the creator of everything.”6 In an interview two years later, he portrayed himself as someone who shared numerous attributes with “God in the Old Testament” — “[Y]ou know, like invisible. I was pretty invisible. Benevolent. I was pretty benevolent. All-seeing. I tried to be all-seeing.”7 Soros told his biographer Michael Kaufman that his “goal” was nothing less ambitious than “to become the conscience of the world” by using his charitable foundations,8 which will be discussed at length in this pamphlet, to bankroll organizations and causes that he deems worthwhile."
“I realized [as a young man] that it’s money that makes the world go round,” says Soros, “so I might as well make money.… But having made it, I could then indulge my social concerns.”9 Invariably, those concerns center around a desire to change the world generally—and America particularly—into something new, something consistent with his vision of “social justice.” Claiming to be “driven” by “illusions, or perhaps delusions, of grandeur,”10 Soros has humorously described himself as “a kind of nut who wants to have an impact” on the workings of the world.11 The billionaire’s longtime friend Byron Wien, currently the vice chairman of Blackstone Advisory Services, offers this insight: “You must understand [Soros] thinks he’s been anointed by God to solve insoluble problems. The proof is that he has been so successful at making so much [money]. He therefore thinks he has a responsibility to give money away”—to causes that are consistent with his values and agendas.12"
..."In 1947 the Soros family relocated from Hungary to England, where George attended the London School of Economics (LSE). There, he was exposed to the works of the Viennese-born philosopher Karl Popper, who taught at LSE and whom Soros would later call his “spiritual mentor.”17 Though Soros never studied directly under Popper, he read the latter’s works and submitted some essays to him for review and comment. Most notably, Popper’s 1945 book The Open Society and Its Enemies introduced Soros to the concept of an “open society,” a theme that would play a central role in Soros’s thought and activities for the rest of his life.18"
"The term “open society” was originally coined in 1932 by the French philosopher Henri Louis Bergson, to describe societies whose moral codes were founded upon “universal” principles seeking to enhance the welfare of all mankind—as opposed to “closed” societies that placed self-interest above any concern for other nations and cultures.19 Popper readily embraced this concept and expanded upon it. In his view, the open society was a place that permitted its citizens the right to criticize and change its institutions as they saw fit; he rejected the imposed intellectual conformity, central planning, and historical determinism of Marxist doctrine.20 By Popper’s reckoning, a society was “closed”—and thus undesirable—if it assumed that it was in any way superior to other societies. Likewise, any belief system or individual claiming to be in possession of “ultimate truth” was an “enemy” of the open society as well. Popper viewed all knowledge as conjectural rather than certain, as evolving rather than fixed."
"Thus, by logical extension, Popper did not share the American founders’ confident assertion that certain truths were “self-evident,” and that certain rights—such as the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” as referenced in the Declaration of Independence—were “unalienable” and thus not subject to doubt, because they had been granted to mankind by the ultimate authority, the “Creator.”21 We shall see that George Soros, as he grew to maturity, would likewise reject the founders’ premise. Indeed Soros would harbor great disdain for modern-day American political figures who displayed unshakable confidence in their own culture’s nobility, and who embraced the tenets of the Declaration and the U.S. Constitution as timeless, immutable truths. To Soros, “Popper’s greatest contribution to philosophy” was his teaching that “the ultimate truth remains permanently beyond our reach.”22"
..."In 1959 Soros moved to Greenwich Village, New York, where early stirrings of the Sixties counterculture were already being felt. In September 1960 he married Annaliese Witschak, who would be his wife until the couple divorced 23 years later.25 In 1961 Soros became a U.S. citizen, and two years later he and Annaliese had their first child, a son. In the Village, it is likely that Soros was exposed to the ideas of the prominent socialist Michael Harrington, who mingled with fellow radicals and socialists almost nightly at a tavern situated barely a stone’s throw from Soros’s residence.26 In 1962 Harrington wrote The Other America, a book lamenting the fact that a substantial “invisible” underclass continued to exist even as the country at large prospered, and suggesting that a “war on poverty” was needed to rectify this. President Lyndon Johnson read and admired the book, and its ideas greatly influenced his Great Society policies of government-imposed redistribution of wealth."
SOROS THE PHILANTHROPIST**
"It was in 1979 that Soros began testing the proverbial waters of philanthropy. Five years later he launched, in the country of his birth, the first of his many Open Society Foundations—named after the concept advanced by Karl Popper—to help “build vibrant and tolerant democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens.”29 But it was not until 1987, the year he opened his Moscow office, that Soros began to disseminate truly large amounts of money to various groups and causes. “My spending rose from $3 million in 1987 to more than $300 million a year by 1992,” he said.30 During this period, Soros established a series of foundations throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia.31 He happily observed that because of his extraordinary wealth, major political figures “suddenly became very interested in seeing me…. [M]y influence increased.”32 Today Soros’s Open Society Foundations are active in more than 70 countries around the world.33"
"In 1993 Soros established the flagship of the Soros foundation network—the New York City-based Open Society Foundations (OSF), which went by the name of the Open Society Institute until 2010. While OSF’s philanthropy extends to a number of nations around the world, it is chiefly devoted to injecting capital into American groups and causes. In his book Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism, Soros explains that the “open society” which he seeks to advance by means of philanthropy, “stands for freedom, democracy, rule of law, human rights, social justice, and social responsibility as a universal idea.”34 But of course, abstract concepts like these, draped in vestments of lofty rhetoric, can mean radically different things to different people."
"Entrusted with the task of defining the foregoing terms for the OSF, and for articulating OSF’s agendas from the outset, was Aryeh Neier, whom Soros appointed to serve as president not only of OSF, but of the entire Soros Foundation Network. Thirty-four years earlier, Neier had created the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which became the largest and most important radical group of the 1960s. SDS aspired to overthrow America’s democratic institutions, remake its government in a Marxist image, and undermine the nation’s war efforts in Vietnam. (A particularly militant faction of SDS would later break away to form the Weather Underground, a notorious domestic terror organization with a Marxist-Leninist agenda.) Following his stint with SDS, Neier worked fifteen years for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)—including eight years as its national executive director. After that, he spent twelve years as executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), an organization he founded in 1978.**35
THE SOROS AGENDAS**
"Both the ACLU and HRW have long promoted one of the central contentions of Soros’s Open Society Foundations: the notion that America is institutionally an oppressive nation and a habitual violator of human rights both at home and abroad—indeed, the very antithesis of the type of “open society” Soros reveres. Consider first the ACLU, whose advisory board once included the former Weather Underground terrorist Bernardine Dohrn.36 The ACLU has opposed virtually all post-9/11 national security measures enacted by the U.S. government, depicting those measures not only as excessively harsh and invasive generally, but also as discriminatory against Muslims in particular.37 Moreover, the organization has filed numerous lawsuits seeking to limit the government’s ability to locate, monitor, and apprehend terrorist operatives. It consistently depicts American society as one that is rife with intractable racial injustice. And it works tirelessly to protect illegal immigrants against “governmental abuse and discrimination.”38 These (and many other) ACLU activities and policy positions are entirely consistent with those of Aryeh Neier and George Soros, as evidenced by the fact that between 1999 and 2008, OSF awarded $8.69 million in grants to the ACLU Foundation.39"
"Neier’s other training ground, Human Rights Watch, has a long history of pointing an accusatory finger at America’s allegedly numerous transgressions. Most notably, HRW has derided the U.S. war on terror as a foolhardy endeavor rooted in blindness to the realization that terrorism stems, in large measure, from America’s failure “to promote fundamental rights around the world.”40 In a March 2007 speech, HRW executive director Kenneth Roth charged that the United States, by routinely “using torture and inhumane treatment” to deal with its foes, had “severely damaged its credibility when it comes to promoting human rights” in other nations.41 Between 2000 and 2008, the Open Society Foundations awarded grants and other contributions to HRW that collectively totaled $6,386,477.42 Then, in September 2010, Soros announced that he would soon be giving HRW another $100 million.43 Notably, Soros himself once served on HRW’s Europe and Central Asia Advisory Committee.44"
"OSF’s total assets today exceed $1.9 billion. Each year, the Foundations award scores of millions of dollars in grants to organizations that—like the ACLU and HRW—promote worldviews and objectives accordant with those of George Soros.45 Following is a sampling of the major agendas advanced by groups that Soros and OSF support financially. Listed under each category heading are a few OSF donees fitting that description.Organizations that accuse America of violating the civil rights and liberties of many of its residents:".......
...Organizations that depict America as a nation whose enduring racism must be counterbalanced by racial and ethnic preferences in favor of nonwhites:"...
...Organizations that specifically portray the American criminal-justice system as racist and inequitable:...
...Organizations that call for massive social change, and for the recruitment and training of activist leaders to help foment that change:...
...[BOrganizations that disparage capitalism while promoting a dramatic expansion of social-welfare programs funded by ever-escalating taxes:][/B]...
...Organizations that support socialized medicine in the United States:...
...Organizations that strive to move American politics to the left by promoting the election of progressive political candidates:...
...Organizations that promote leftist ideals and worldviews in the media and the arts:...
...Organizations that seek to inject the American judicial system with leftist values:...
...Organizations that advance leftist agendas by infiltrating churches and religious congregations:...
...Think tanks that promote leftist policies:...
...Organizations that promote open borders, mass immigration, a watering down of current immigration laws, increased rights and benefits for illegal aliens, and ultimately amnesty:...
...Organizations that oppose virtually all post-9/11 national-security measures enacted by the U.S. government:...
...Organizations that defend suspected anti-American terrorists and their abetters:...
...Organizations that depict virtually all American military actions as unwarranted and immoral:...
...Organizations that advocate America’s unilateral disarmament and/or a steep reduction in its military spending:...
...Organizations that promote radical environmentalism: [including global warming]...
...Organizations that oppose the death penalty in all circumstances:...
...Organizations that promote modern-day feminism’s core tenet—that America is fundamentally a sexist society where discrimination and violence against women have reached epidemic proportions:...
...Organizations that promote not only women’s right to taxpayer-funded abortion on demand,128 but also political candidates who take that same position:...
...Organizations that favor global government which would bring American foreign policy under the control of the United Nations or other international bodies:...
...Organizations that support drug legalization:...
...Organizations that support euthanasia for the terminally ill:...
...Organizations that have pressured mortgage lenders to make loans to undercapitalized borrowers, a practice that helped spark the subprime mortgage crisis and housing-market collapse of 2008:...
...Organizations that exhort the U.S. and Israel to negotiate with, and to make concessions to, Arab terrorist groups and regimes that have pledged to destroy America and Israel alike:"...
SOROS MEETS THE CLINTONS
"Around the time that George Soros initially launched his Manhattan-based Open Society Foundations, he established what would prove to be a warm and enduring relationship with Bill and Hillary Clinton, the new American President and First Lady. When the Clintons took office in early 1993,...
Soros, in turn, had connections with a young economist whom he had been funding—Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Harvard Institute for International Development. The U.S. Agency for International Development assigned Sachs’ Institute to oversee Russia’s transformation to a market economy after more than seven decades of communism. As a consequence of this assignment, Sachs and his team essentially represented the United States as official economic advisors to Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Soros worked closely with Sachs on this project, and the pair held enormous sway over Yeltsin.152 So great was their influence, in fact, that on one occasion Soros quipped that “the former Soviet Empire is now called the Soros Empire.”153 But before long, members of Sachs’s team became involved in massive corruption, exploiting for personal gain their access to Russia’s political and economic leaders. Their actions contributed to the collapse of the Russian economy and to the diversion of some $100 billion out of the country.154 Though Sachs himself was not accused of profiting personally from these activities, he resigned as director of the Harvard Institute in May 1999, under a dark cloud of scandal.155 The U.S. House Banking Committee investigated the matter and called Soros to testify. The billionaire denied culpability but admitted that he had used insider access in an illegal deal to acquire a large portion of Sidanko Oil.156 Soros further acknowledged in Congressional testimony that some of the missing Russian assets had made their way into his personal investment portfolio.157 House Banking Committee chairman Jim Leach characterized the entire sordid affair as “one of the greatest social robberies in human history.”158...
..."As the Nineties progressed, it became increasingly evident that Bill and Hillary Clinton embraced virtually all of the values and agendas that George Soros was funding through his Open Society Foundations. “I do now have great access in [the Clinton] administration,” said Soros in 1995. “There is no question about this. We actually work together as a team.”159"
...He described Hillary as someone who had been “more effective than most of our statesmen in propagating democracy, freedom, and open society.”162...
...Soros—while conceding that the retaliatory U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was justifiable163—maintained that the proper long-term response to 9/11 would be for America to launch a global war on poverty. Such an undertaking would be modeled on the Great Society programs which the Johnson administration had instituted in the 1960s—on the theory that by pouring rivers of taxpayer dollars into the nation’s violence-torn ghettos, the presumably justified rage of the rioters could be quelled. In a similar vein, Soros now held that the best way to fight international terrorism would be for the affluent USA to send massive amounts of aid to impoverished regions around the world where the phenomenon tended to originate. Indeed, he had long maintained that the “root causes” of terrorism were “poverty” and “ignorance.”164 Just eight days after 9/11, Soros gave a speech where he said that the “cornerstone” of his “plan” was to “address the social conditions that provide a fertile ground from which [terrorist] volunteers who are willing to sacrifice their lives can be recruited.” This plan would call on “rich countries” to boost their levels of “international assistance,” which—while unlikely to “prevent people like bin Laden from exercising their evil genius”—would “help to alleviate the grievances on which extremism of all kinds feeds.”165
..."On subsequent occasions, Soros would reiterate his belief that terrorism was caused by a dearth of “international income redistribution” and a “growing inequality between rich and poor, both within countries and among countries.”166 “A global open society,” Soros stressed, “requires affirmative action on a global scale.”...
...“The United States cannot do whatever it wants,” he scolded. “… Our nation must concern itself with the well-being of the world.”169...
..."Soros appointed former Clinton administration official Morton Halperin to the post of Open Society Foundations director. Halperin, whom some State Department officials suspected of being a communist agent,173 had been instrumental in derailing America’s war effort during the Vietnam era, when President Johnson put him in charge of compiling a classified history of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. Halperin’s labor ultimately bore fruit—in June 1971—with the publication of the notorious “Pentagon Papers.”174 Thereafter, Halperin went on to serve (from 1975-1992) as director of an ACLU project called the Center for National Security Studies, which sought to slash U.S. defense expenditures and undermine the nation’s intelligence capabilities.175 ...
...By the time the U.S. invaded Iraq in early 2003, Soros’s contempt for President Bush’s “imperialist vision” had reached a fever pitch...
...As Soros saw things, the President’s arrogance and corruption had filtered down perceptibly into the ranks of the military personnel who were carrying out Bush’s mission. Thus Soros likened the conduct of American troops to that of communist and fascist thugs, asserting that “the picture of torture in Abu Ghraib” was proof that “the way President Bush conducted the war on terror converted us from victims into perpetrators.”194 Soros charged that not only had America “violated international law” by “invading Iraq … without a second UN Resolution,” but that it had “violated the Geneva Conventions” by “mistreating and even torturing prisoners.”195...
“Who would have thought sixty years ago,” asked Soros, “when Karl Popper wrote The Open Society and Its Enemies, that the United States itself could pose a threat to open society? Yet that is what is happening, both internally and internationally.”199...
...In a September 29, 2003 interview with BBC radio, Soros said it was imperative that there be “a regime change in the United States”—meaning that President Bush must be “voted out of power.”...
The types of changes America needed were crystal clear to Soros. Above all else, he wished to steer the country, politically and ideologically, in a direction that was consistent with the agendas of the groups that he had been funding for a decade through his Open Society Foundations. Those agendas could essentially be distilled down to three overriding themes: the diminution of American power, the subjugation of American sovereignty in favor of global governance, and the implementation of redistributive economic policies—both within the U.S. and across national borders. Toward these ends, Soros saw “the forthcoming elections” as “an excellent opportunity to deflate the bubble of American supremacy.”203...
SOROS’S PREVIOUS POLITICAL INTERVENTIONS AROUND THE WORLD*
..."On several previous occasions, he had used his extraordinary wealth to bankroll popular movements seeking to undermine communist and authoritarian regimes in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Specifically, Soros had funded the training, organization and mobilization of many millions of demonstrators who took part in a series of bloodless political revolutions—commonly known as “velvet revolutions” or “color revolutions”205—that ultimately brought down governments in those regions. Typically, these mobilizations consisted of massive street rallies (sometimes with hundreds of thousands of participants) and carefully coordinated acts of civil disobedience such as sit-ins and general strikes. In several instances, such Soros-funded protesters challenged the results of popular elections and accused incumbent leaders of election fraud—charges which were then echoed by Soros-funded exit pollsters and Soros-funded media outlets, thereby greatly amplifying the effect of the accusations. A brief survey of Soros’s most noteworthy foreign interventions will be useful at this point....
...the velvet revolution that brought down Czechoslovakia’s Communist regime in late 1989...
...Democratic regime change in Slovakia in 1998, Croatia in 1999, and Yugoslavia in 2000, mobilizing civil society to get rid of Vladimir Meciar, Franjo Tudjman, and Slobodan Milosevic, respectively.”...
...Franjo Tudjman offered a profound insight into how Soros typically injected his influence into the political workings of a given nation by patiently and systematically infiltrating strategic organizations and governmental agencies:
“[Soros and his allies] have spread their tentacles throughout the whole of our society. Soros … had approval to … gather and distribute humanitarian aid.… However, we … allowed them to do almost whatever they wanted.… They have involved in their network … people of all ages and classes … trying to win them over by financial aid.… [Their aim is] control of all spheres of life … setting up a state within a state.…”212...
...Soros also funded Soviet Georgia’s “Rose Revolution,”213...
...Soros thereafter would go on to fund the “Orange Revolution,” a series of protests and political events that took place in Ukraine from late November 2004 to January 2005,...
... Also in early 2005, Soros helped finance the “Tulip Revolution”—a massive protest movement that led to the overthrow of President Askar Akayev and his government in the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan.222...
NEW TARGET FOR “REGIME CHANGE”: AMERICA
...in 2003-04, Soros’s primary focus was on the United States, whose government he considered to be at least as dangerous and oppressive as those of the aforementioned communist and authoritarian regimes. “I believe deeply in the values of an open society,” Soros said. “For the past 15 years I have focused my energies on fighting for these values abroad. Now I am doing it in the United States.”[223] Asserting that he could “do a lot more about the issues I care about by changing the government than by pushing the issues,”[224] Soros set out to “puncture the bubble of American supremacy.”[225] To accomplish this, he would create a political apparatus of extraordinary influence....
..."Three weeks after the 1994 elections, Soros announced that he intended to “do something” about “the distortion of our electoral process by the excessive use of TV advertising.”[227] That “something” would be campaign-finance reform." [McCain-Feingold]...
..."Starting in 1994, Soros’s Open Society Foundations and a few other leftist foundations began bankrolling front groups and so-called “experts” whose aim was to persuade Congress to swallow the fiction that millions of Americans were clamoring for “campaign-finance reform.” This deceptive strategy was the brainchild of Sean Treglia, a former program officer with the Pew Charitable Trusts.[228] Between 1994 and 2004, some $140 million of foundation cash was used to promote campaign-finance reform. Nearly 90 percent of this amount derived from just eight foundations, one of which was the Open Society Foundations, which contributed $12.6 million to the cause.[229]..."
...The “research” which these groups produced in order to make a case on behalf of campaign-finance reform was largely bogus and contrived. For instance, Brennan Center political scientist Jonathan Krasno had clearly admitted in his February 19, 1999 grant proposal to the Pew Charitable Trusts that the purpose of the proposed study was political, not scholarly, and that the project would be axed if it failed to yield the desired results:...
..."the types of organizations whose fundraising activities were left unaffected by McCain-Feingold. These were “527 committees”—nonprofits named after Section 527 of the IRS code—which, unlike ordinary PACS, were not required to register with the FEC. Run mostly by special-interest groups, these 527s were technically supposed to be independent of, and unaffiliated with, any party or candidate. As such, they were permitted to raise soft money—in amounts unbound by any legal limits—for all manner of political activities other than express advocacy...
..."Once McCain-Feingold was in place, Soros and his political allies collaborated to set up a network of “527 committees” ready to receive the soft money that individual donors and big labor unions normally would have given directly to the Democratic Party. "
..."As Byron York observed, “[T]he new campaign finance rules had actually increased the influence of big money in politics. By giving directly to ‘independent’ groups rather than to the party itself, big-ticket donors could influence campaign strategy and tactics more directly than they ever had previously…. And the power was concentrated in very few hands”—most notably Soros’s.[236]..."
SOROS’S “SHADOW PARTY” TAKES SHAPE*
..."George Soros set in motion the wheels of this Shadow Party when he gathered a team of political strategists, activists, and Democrat donors at his Long Island beach house on July 17, 2003, to discuss how President Bush could be defeated in the 2004 election...
..." By early 2004, the administrative core of George Soros’s Shadow Party was in place. It consisted of seven ostensibly “independent” nonprofit groups—all but one of which were headquartered in Washington, DC. In a number of cases, these groups shared one another’s finances, directors, and corporate officers; occasionally they even shared office space.[242] The seven groups were: America Coming Together (ACT); Center For American Progress (CAP); America Votes; Media Fund; Joint Victory Campaign 2004 (JVC); Thunder Road Group (TRG); and MoveOn.org; ...Harold Ickes, who served as White House deputy chief of staff in the Clinton White House, had a hand in creating every Shadow Party core group except MoveOn. He was also entrusted with the vital task of making these organizations function as a cohesive entity.
..."In addition to its seven core members, the Shadow Party also came to include at least another 30 well-established leftwing activist groups and labor unions that participated in the America Votes coalition."...George Soros, who contributed $27,080,105 to pro-Democrat 527s during the 2004 election cycle....
FAILURE AND RESILIENCY: BIRTH OF THE DEMOCRACY ALLIANCE
..."Democrat political operative Rob Stein, former chief of staff to Commerce Secretary Ron Brown during the Clinton administration....After a year of analysis, he concluded that a few influential, wealthy family foundations—most notably Scaife, Bradley, Olin, and Coors—had spearheaded the creation of a $300 million network of politically influential organizations. Stein featured these facts in a comprehensive PowerPoint presentation—titled “The Conservative Message Machine Money Matrix”—which mapped out, in painstaking detail, the conservative movement’s networking strategies and funding sources.[265]..."
..."build a new organization—a financial clearinghouse to be called the Democracy Alliance (DA)—dedicated to offsetting the efforts of conservative funders and injecting new life into the progressive movement. ...
..."In April 2005, Soros brought together 70 likeminded, carefully vetted, fellow millionaires and billionaires in Phoenix, Arizona, to discuss Stein’s ideas and expeditiously implement a plan of action.[270] Most of those in attendance agreed that the conservative movement represented “a fundamental threat to the American way of life.” [271] And, like Soros, a considerable number of them looked favorably on Stein’s analysis and concept. Thus was born the Democracy Alliance...
..."Donors metaphorically “pour” these requisite donations into one or more of what Rob Stein refers to as DA’s “four buckets” of fundraising: ideas, media, leadership training, and civic engagement. The money is then apportioned to approved left-wing groups from each respective category.[273]..."
RADICALIZING AMERICA, ONE STATE AT A TIME: “PLAN” AND THE SECRETARY OF STATE PROJECT**
..."In August 2005, when the Democracy Alliance was just getting off the ground, George Soros’s Open Society Foundations helped establish yet another new organization—the Progressive Legislative Action Network, or PLAN. Furnishing state legislatures with prewritten “model” legislation reflecting leftist agendas, this group was part and parcel of Soros’s methodical campaign to shift American politics and public attitudes toward the left—by gaining a foothold inside the corridors of power on a state-by-state basis.[311]..."
...July 2006, ...the Secretary of State Project (SoSP). This “527 committee” was devoted to helping Democrats win secretary-of-state elections in crucial “swing” states...One of the principal duties of the secretary of state is to serve as the chief election officer who certifies candidates as well as election results in his or her state.[313] ...
SOROS HELPS CREATE TWO NEW PRO-DEMOCRAT GROUPS**
..."SEIU president Andrew Stern created Working For Us (WFU), a pro-Democrat PAC. This group does not, however, look favorably upon Democratic centrists. Rather, it aims “to elect lawmakers who support a progressive political agenda.” ...WFU advocates policies that would narrow the economic gulf between the rich and poor..."
..."Fund for America (FFA), a “527 committee” designed to work on what Roll Call characterized as “media buys and voter outreach in the run-up to the 2008 elections.”..."
SOROS AND OBAMA: QUIET PARTNERSHIP AND SHARED AGENDAS
..."In December of 2006, Soros, who had previously hosted a fundraiser for Obama during the latter’s 2004 Senate campaign, met with Obama in Soros’s New York office. Just a few weeks later—on January 16, 2007—Obama announced that he would form a presidential exploratory committee and was contemplating a run for the White House. Within hours, Soros sent the senator a contribution of $2,100, the maximum amount allowable under campaign-finance laws. Later that week, the New York Daily News reported that Soros would support Obama rather than Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination...
SOROS PURSUES A NEW ‘ECONOMIC PARADIGM”
“the unique opportunity to reshape economics in the wake of the financial crisis.” ...Soros assembled 25 economists, financiers, and journalists in Bedford, New York to brainstorm the idea. This “Bedford Summit” resulted in a “unanimous agreement that our economic paradigm must change,” and a “recognition of the importance of empowering the young generation of economists to rethink” the field of economics. Toward that end, the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) was created as a nonprofit foundation"...
SOROS AND THE ARAB SPRING
...“Arab Spring,” which began in late 2010, was a momentous series of popular uprisings that swept—in rapid succession and with varying degrees of intensity and effect—through a host of countries in the Middle East and North Africa: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen....where regimes had fallen... rising influence of the Muslim Brotherhood—the ideological forebear of both al Qaeda and Hamas, and the spearhead of a movement aiming to establish a worldwide Islamic caliphate] (or kingdom) ruled by strict Islamic Law (Sharia).... In short, the Arab Spring evolved into a Muslim Winter."...
SOROS AND OCCUPY WALL STREET
..."In the fall of 2011, Soros denied any connection to the anti-capitalist Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement which was then in high gear, though he said: “I can understand their sentiment.” An October 2011 Reuters report noted that from 2007-09, Soros’ Open Society Foundations had given grants totaling $3.5 million to the Tides Center, which in turn gave more than $309,000 to the Adbusters Media Foundation — a key organizer of OWS — between 2001 and 2011. "...
SOROS GIVES MONEY TO HELP NAACP FIGHT VOTER ID LAWS*
..." 2013, Soros pledged to give, through his Open Society Foundations, $1 million to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund....The purpose of the grant was to help the NAACP fight challenges to the Voting Rights Act and oppose the implementation of Voter ID laws.
SUPPORTING HILLARY CLINTON
..."Ready For Hillary, a political action committee established ... to lead a nationwide grassroots movement encouraging Hillary Clinton to run for U.S. President in 2016..."
SUPPORTING BILL DE BLASIO for Mayor
SUPPORTING GROUPS THAT HELPED LEAD & PROMOTE THE ANTI-POLICE PROTESTS OF 2014 (IN FERGUSON, MISSOURI, ETC.)*
..."Through his Open Society Foundations, Soros in 2014 gave at least $33 million to support already-established groups that, as The Washington Times puts it, “emboldened the grass-roots, on-the-ground activists in Ferguson” and helped lead the anti-police protests... not only shared Mr. Soros’ funding, but they also fed off each other, using content and buzzwords developed by one organization on another’s website, referencing each other’s news columns and by creating a social media echo chamber of Facebook ‘likes’ and Twitter hashtags that dominated the mainstream media and personal online newsfeeds.”...
SOROS AGAIN FIGHTS VOTER ID LAWS
..."In June 2015, the New York Times reported that “a Democratic legal fight against restrictive voting laws enacted in recent years [since 2010] by Republican-controlled state governments is being largely paid for by a single liberal benefactor: the billionaire philanthropist George Soros.”...
SOROS SUPPORTS MASS MIGRATION OF MIDDLE EASTERNERS INTO EUROPE*
...Soros issued an email statement to Bloomberg Business, claiming that his foundations helped “uphold European values” while [Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor] Orban (according to Soros) aimed to “undermine those values.” “His [Orban’s] plan treats the protection of national borders as the objective and the refugees as an obstacle,” said Soros. “Our plan treats the protection of refugees as the objective and national borders as the obstacle.” Orban...
EMAIL LEAK REVEALS SOROS’S SUPPORT FOR ANTI-ISRAEL, PRO-ISLAMIST GROUPS*
EMAIL LEAK REVEALS SOROS’S SUPPORT FOR OPEN BORDERS AND HIS DESIRE TO INFLUENCE FOREIGN POLITICS
..."Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF) asserted that the refugee crisis which was causing countless thousands of people from war- and terrorism-ravaged nations in the Middle East and North Africa to relocate to Europe and the United States, should be accepted as “the new normal.”...the Program Officer of OSF’s International Migration Initiative, praised efforts to “take advantage of momentum created by the current crisis to shape conversations about rethinking migration governance.” They had in mind “institutional reforms to global migration governance.” ...
,,,"their International Migration Initiative helped fund the work of the Columbia Global Policy Initiative, host of the secretariat for Peter Sutherland, the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative on International Migration.... Sutherland derided the very notion of national sovereignty, saying that governments must “recognize that sovereignty is an illusion … that has to be put behind us,” and that “the days of hiding behind borders and fences are long gone.”)...
..."September 2016 summits on migrants and refugees at the United Nations, one of which was to be led by President Obama"...
UKRAINE
..."Soros advocated that “Ukraine’s allies should treat Ukraine as a defense priority.” He also pushed for a “radical reform program,” offering very specific political and economic prescriptions, backed by “the Ukrainian branch of the Soros Foundations.” This Ukrainian branch, known as the Renaissance Foundation, was reportedly paying headhunters to find suitable individuals to work in the Ukrainian government, even if they came from Ukrainian communities as far away as the U.S. and Canada. Soros’s foundation may also have been helping to pay the salaries of some Ukrainian ministers....
...Soros was also looking for the U.S. and the European Union to help bail out Ukraine’s financial system. In a letter dated December 23, 2014 to Ukraine’s president and prime minister, Soros discussed the need to pull together a multibillion dollar commitment from the European Council, which could then be used to persuade the Federal Reserve to extend a three-month swap arrangement with the National Bank of Ukraine. “I am ready to call Jack Lew of the US Treasury to sound him out about the swap agreement,” Soros wrote....
...In the meantime, Soros was making sure that he would be in a position to profit from a more stabilized Ukraine. In November 2015, it was announced that Soros’s Ukrainian Redevelopment Fund would be investing in a fund sponsored by Dragon Capital to invest in Ukraine. Through that vehicle, Soros’s Ukrainian Redevelopment Fund invested in Ukrainian software developer Ciklum Holding Ltd. It acquired the stake from Horizon Capital, an investment firm founded by Natalie Jaresko, who was serving at the time as Ukraine’s finance minister. Jaresko was a U.S. citizen of Ukrainian descent who had once worked in the U.S. State Department. She became a Ukrainian citizen in December 2014, the same time she became finance minister. ...
EMAIL LEAK REVEALS SOROS’S DESIRE TO REGULATE THE INTERNET IN A MANNER THAT FAVORED HIS POLITICAL AGENDAS
..."2016, the The Daily Caller reported: “An internal proposed strategy from George Soros’s Open Society Justice Initiative calls for international regulation of private actors’ decisions on ‘what information is taken off the Internet and what may remain.’Those regulations, the document notes, should favor ‘those most supportive of open society.'” According to the OSF website, “The Open Society Justice Initiative uses law to protect and empower people around the world, supporting the values and work of the Open Society Foundations.” The proposal cited by The Daily Caller was part of a 34-page document titled “2014 Proposed strategy,” which spelled out the Initiative’s goals for 2014-17"...
SOROS PLAYS KEY ROLE IN SUPPORTING “WOMEN’S MARCH ON WASHINGTON”
..."significant role in funding the “Women’s March on Washington” which was held on January 21, 2017 to protest the agendas and policies of the newly elected president, Donald Trump... reporter Asra Q. Nomani calculated that some 420+ groups were identifiable as “partners” of the Women’s March, and that Soros has funded, or had cultivated “close relationships” with, at least 64 of them"...
SOROS’S EFFORT TO INSTALL DEMOCRATIC ATTORNEYS GENERAL
...2017, journalist Matthew Vadum reported the following: 'George Soros’s push to radically reshape the judiciary and elect extremist district attorneys across the country to weaken law enforcement and protect lawless sanctuary cities is bearing fruit....Soros has been pouring money into local elections because he supports local efforts to resist U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and wants to cripple police in order to advance the neo-Marxist abstraction known as social justice that simplistically breaks the world down into race, class, and sex or gender….Soros wants prosecutors to empty prisons and coddle the prisoners who remain, scale back drug prosecutions, lower bail, and eliminate alleged racial disparities in sentencing, among other things"....
SOROS TRANSFERS $18 BILLION TO HIS FOUNDATIONS
..."2017, it was reported that over the preceding few years, Soros had quietly transferred $18 billion of his $24.6 billion in personal assets to OSF, thereby making OSF the second-largest U.S.-based philanthropy (behind only the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation)..."
November 26th, 2019, 03:45
vector7
Re: Soros's Progressive Cabal with Democrats to Weaken America
Soros hand picked and recruited Natalie Jaresko, an American born Accountant, Public Policy and State Dept. employee of Ukrainian descent, to become Ukraine's finance minister. Then went on to become Executive Director of the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico in March 2017
Executive Director Natalie A. Jaresko was designated Executive Director of the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico on March 2017. She has a distinguished international career in public service and the private industry, with over 25 years of successful management experience in strategy and negotiation development and implementation of public policy and business objectives, especially during crisis periods.
As Minister of Finance of Ukraine (2014-16) she served at one of the most critical times in Ukraine’s history, when the country was affected by a deep recession, foreign occupation, and war on part of its territory. During her tenure she led the successful negotiation and implementation of the largest IMF program in the institution’s history, as well as a complex sovereign and sovereign guaranteed debt restructuring.
Prior to this ministerial position, she spent two decades investing in small and medium-sized business in the region, as co-founder and CEO of Horizon Capital, a fund manager with over $600 million under management, and as President and CEO of the Western NIS Enterprise Fund, creating a platform for private equity investment in the region.
She began her career in public service serving in the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C. from 1989-92, and as Chief of the Economic Section of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine from 1992-95, where she was responsible for building a new economic relationship between the United States and newly-independent Ukraine.
Ms. Jaresko is a Certified Public Accountant. She received her Master’s Degree in Public Policy from the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, and her Bachelor of Science Degree in Accounting from DePaul University in Illinois.
Who’s Behind the Green New Deal? Big Money Backs Ocasio-Cortez Socialist Dream Project
AARON KLEIN19 Feb 20199644
The Green New Deal blueprint introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was crafted by three far-left organizations and is being pushed by a coalition of well-funded professional progressive groups and known leftist agitators.
Some of the organizations helping to promote the Green New Deal have ties to financing from billionaire George Soros and trace their roots to such radical groups as Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter.
Earlier this month, Ocasio-Cortez posted an 11-page Google document in the form of a nonbinding legislative resolution that has become the most authoritative version of the Green New Deal, a broad outline for the current conception of the socialist-style plan.
Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal resolution, introduced along with Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), has already been endorsed by more than 45 Democratic representatives. The deal received high-profile endorsements from Senators Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker and Bernie Sanders.
The Green New Deal seeks, as the New Yorker recently put it, “nothing less than a total overhaul of our national infrastructure.”
The utopian deal demands 100 percent of all buildings in the U.S. convert to clean energy, calls for the removal of all greenhouse gases from the entire atmosphere, and includes such non-“green” clauses as a federal jobs guarantee while protecting the right of all workers to organize and unionize.
It also pledges “affordable, safe and adequate housing” for “all people of the United States.”
The wealth-spreading deal aims to “virtually eliminate poverty in the United States and to make prosperity, wealth and economic security available to everyone participating in the transformation.”
Radical groups, Soros ties
The Green New Deal was crafted by Ocasio-Cortez along with three groups — the Sunrise Movement, Justice Democrats and a group calling itself New Consensus.
The New Yorker reported:
The document was written over a single December weekend by the staff of the freshman representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and three like-minded progressive groups, none of which existed two years ago: the Sunrise Movement, a grassroots climate organization; the Justice Democrats, which recruits and supports progressive candidates; and an upstart policy shop called the New Consensus.
Besides helping to write the deal text, the Sunrise Movement has been the central progressive organization lobbying the Democratic Party to implement the Green New Deal.
Sunrise markets itself as an “army of young people” seeking to “make climate change an urgent priority across America, end the corrupting influence of fossil fuel executives on our politics, and elect leaders who stand up for the health and wellbeing of all people.”
Sunrise co-founder Varshini Prakash described his organization’s expansive goals for 2020: “We, along with our partners, are going to be attempting to build the largest youth political force this country has ever seen.” Markey invited Prakash to be his guest at President Trump’s State of the Union address two weeks ago.
Sunrise was in part inspired by the activism of Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter and the radical immigration group United We Dream.
Sunrise took the national spotlight last month when Ocasio-Cortez joined some two-hundred of the movement’s protesters to temporarily occupy Nancy Pelosi’s office to peddle the Green New Deal. Sunrise engaged in that direct action campaign alongside Justice Democrats.
In December, Sunrise said that it raised less than one million dollars, mostly from foundations and grassroots donors. It is not known how much Sunrise has since raised.
Inside Philanthropy reported on donations to Sunrise from the Rockefeller Family Fund:
The group raised just under $1 million in 2018 between its 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) entities, and received early support from a set of core funders that have since stuck with it. Wallace Global Fund, which was instrumental in the fossil fuel divestment campaign, funds Sunrise, as do the Rockefeller Family Fund (one of the smaller foundations associated with the oil family), and the Winslow Foundation, run by Wren Winslow Wirth, who is married to former politician Tim Wirth. Institutional funders made up about 55 percent of its 2018 budget, with 35 percent coming from individual donors, and the rest from nonprofit partners.
To promote the deal, Sunrise sponsored an activist campaign called “Operation Green New Deal Blitz.” Co-sponsors with Sunrise include 350.org, Organic Consumers Association, People’s Action, CPD Action and Justice Democrats.
CPD Action is led by Ana Maria Archila, one of the two women who infamously confronted Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake in an elevator prior to the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Archila was a guest of Ocasio-Cortez for Trump’s State of the Union.
Archila serves as co-executive director at the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) and maintains the same position as the group’s activist arm, the Center for Popular Democracy Action.
CPD, which is advocating the Green New Deal, is heavily financed by billionaire George Soros. In October 2014, literature that was part of a CPD event listed Soros’s Open Society Foundations as one of CPD’s “three biggest funders.” The Foundations provided the CPD with $130,000 in 2014 and $1,164,500 in 2015, tax documents show. In 2016, Soros’s Open Society Policy Center provided $705,000 to the Center for Popular Democracy’s Action Fund.
CPD is highly involved in anti-Trump activism. In May 2017, CNN reported that the Center for Popular Democracy Action fund unveiled an “$80 million effort to coordinate the work of dozens of smaller progressive groups from around the country” as part of what the news network characterized as the anti-Trump “resistance” movement.
People’s Action, another Sunrise partner pushing the Green New Deal, is a merger of a group that previously went by the name of National People’s Action. National People’s Action was also funded by Soros to the tune of $1.2 million and reportedly helped to train protesters for the Occupy Movement, which was also close to Soros funding. The Washington Times previously reported that Soros donated to People’s Action itself.
350.org, which is aiding Sunrise in pushing the Green New Deal, has disclosed a donation from the Tides Foundation. Tides, in turn, has been financed by Soros and has been a donor partner of Soros’s Open Society Foundations.
Also forming the backbone of advocacy for the Green New Deal are the Sierra Club and Greenpeace. Sierra has received funding from Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Greenpeace has been funded by the Soros-financed Tides Foundation. Tides also funds the Sierra Club.
The Green New Deal, meanwhile, is viewed in progressive activist circles as taking the mantle from something called the Leap Manifesto, a so-called clean energy plan co-authored by radical activist and author Naomi Klein.
Leap was initiated by the Tides-funded 350.org as well as Black Lives Matter-Toronto. Leaked documents from Soros’s Open Society Foundations previously disclosed donations to Black Lives Matter.
‘Democratic socialist party-within-a-party’
On its website, meanwhile, Sunrise advertises its partnership with Justice Democrats, with the two groups working together with Ocasio-Cortez to craft the Green New Deal.
Justice Democrats backed the Congressional campaign of Ocasio-Cortez when she was largely unknown and the two are closely linked. According to reports, it was Justice Democrats that originally recruited Ocasio-Cortez to run in the first place.
Waleed Shahid, Justice Democrats’ communications director, reportedly worked on Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign prior to joining the group. Justice Democrats was co-founded by Saikat Chakrabarti, who serves as Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff.
Justice Democrats does not hide its socialist ideology, with Shahid telling Vox.com the organization seeks to nudge the Democratic Party toward democratic socialism:
Shahid describes it as a “social democratic or democratic socialist party-within-a-party,” arguing that the vicissitudes of the US party system force people like him to share a party with people like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer who, in a European-style proportional system, would simply inhabit different political blocs. The point, however, is not to displace the Democrats but to change them.
Justice Democrats is looking to push far-left candidates in largely uncompetitive local races, and it plans to use support for the Green New Deal as a bellwether for possible Democratic primary challenges from the far-left.
“We’re going to recruit Democratic primary challengers for House races in 2020 who will fight with us,” stated Alexandra Rojas, executive director of Justice Democrats. “And we’ll keep putting pressure on Democrats in Congress and those running for President in 2020 to support the Green New Deal.”
One Justice Democrats founder was Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks. He resigned from the group after old blog posts surfaced that were out of step with Justice Democrats’ ideology, with some of the posts appearing to be sexist.
Uygur’s The Young Turks is a member of The Media Consortium, a network of far-left media organizations that is reportedly funded by Soros.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.
Joshua Klein contributed research to this article.
Soros Gave Global Climate Strike Partners More than $24M
Listen to the Article!
By Joseph Vazquez | September 26, 2019 4:55 PM EDT
While 16-year-old Greta Thunberg has become the face of the climate strike movement, it's no longer gatherings of children. A litany of well-funded, left-wing activist groups have partnered to generate a week of climate protests known as the “Global Climate Strike:” Sept 20, through 27, bookending the U.N. climate conference.
At least 22 of those partners have been funded by liberal billionaire George Soros who spends nearly $1 billion a year on groups pushing a variety of left-wing causes. Together, 22 organizations listed as international or North American partners of the Global Climate Strike received at least $24,854,592 from Soros’ Open Society Network between 2000-2017.
The liberal media celebrated Thunberg’s arrival in New York and the global protests held Sept. 20, and will likely to do the same for the second round. ABC’s Maggi Rulli shrieked, “Now, look at what her movement has become!” MSNBC even promoted grotesque gestures such as German protesters “simulated hangings.” calling it a “striking visual message to push for action.” Berliners stood on ‘ice blocks with nooses around their necks. A stark call for change before it's too late,” reported MSNBC’s Yasmin Vossoughian on Sept. 20.
Strikes are scheduled in 150 countries for Sept. 27. Undoubtedly, the promotion and partnership of hundreds of liberal groups including 350.org (which hosts the Global Climate Strike website), EarthJustice and Friends of the Earth helped the strikes balloon in size. The Sept. 20, strikes drew around 4 million activists, with 2,500 protests scheduled in 163 countries around the globe, according to Vox. Democratic candidate Tom Steyer’s NextGen America was also a partner, along with the Sierra Club which has gotten millions from former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
In recent years, Soros funding went to at least 22 of those partnering groups including 350.org, Amnesty International, Avaaz, Color of Change and People’s Action. Those groups had various climate-related agendas from reducing global carbon emissions to less than 350 parts per million, campaigning for 100 percent “clean energy,” banning new fossil fuel projects to a “green civil rights movement.”
Eco-doomsayer Bill McKibben founded 350 in 2008. The name of the organization comes from its desired carbon emissions goal of less than 350 parts per million — current emissions levels are already at 415 ppm. McKibben’s past climate predictions were so extreme even Scientific American called him out in 2011, for being “overheated” and”fear-mongering.” The group fought against coal power in India, tried to stop the Keystone XL pipeline in the U.S. and has promoted fossil fuel divestment.
Known more for its pro-abortion, pro-gun control, LGBTQ rights advocacy and opposition to Israel, Amnesty International was another Soros-funded strike partner. Its website confirmed it “will be taking part in the climate strikes,” because “Human rights are intimately linked with climate change because of its devastating effect on not just the environment but our own wellbeing.”
Lesser-known group, Avaaz is a “global ‘e-advocacy’ nonprofit organization whose chief function is to promote leftwing political agendas through Web-based movement-building and campaigns,” according to Discover The Networks. One Avaaz campaign gathered petition signatures to bring the world’s societies and economies to 100 percent clean energy by 2050.
It warned, “one top scientist just warned that we are all ‘f*cked’ if global warming releases gigantic amounts of methane gas from the arctic tundra.” The group hoped to make it the “largest Avaaz petition ever.”
Online organizing group Color of Change was founded by liberal CNN host and former “green jobs czar” for the Obama Administration Van Jones and James Rucker, former director of grassroots mobilization for MoveOn.org.
According to Influence Watch, Color of Change “run campaigns that seek to attack conservative individuals, silence conservative media pundits, and defund conservative organizations.” But it’s also active on climate issues, advocating for “race-based environmentalist legislation.”
According to its own website, “Black communities and other communities of color are left vulnerable to the worst effects of climate change and environmental racism.” It also accused the Republican Party of “standing in the way of progress.”
In a 2017 op-ed written by Andy Murdock for the University of California’s Carbon Neutrality Initiative, Jones argued that “a 21st century civil rights movement has to be a green civil rights movement.”
People’s Action is a liberal 501(c)(4) lobbying arm that advocates for healthcare for all, free college for all, and extreme environmentalist policies like “banning all new fossil fuel and extractive energy projects.”
It also wants a “good Green Jobs program that would target communities of color, low-income communities, environmental justice communities, fossil fuel communities, returning citizens and other communities that would benefit from green jobs most for integrated jobs training and placement.”
Methodology:
MRC Business relied on funding details and donation information from Soros’ Open Society Network (Foundation to Promote Open Society, Open Society Foundations, Open Society Institute, Alliance for Open Society International Inc. and Open Society Policy Center) on organization websites, Influence Watch and records in Foundation Directory for this analysis.
MRC Business Reader,
Every day it becomes more evident that the liberal news media are no longer simply a megaphone for liberals in Washington, New York, and Hollywood. The media are now leading the radical Left and using their platform to push a socialist agenda.
S.N.U.B.: Spygate-Netanyahu-Ukraine-Brexit — It’s Time for the West to Outlaw George Soros’ Open Society
Jim Hoft by Jim Hoft November 24, 2019 307
What used to be shrugged off as just another crazy conspiracy theory has become too overwhelmingly evident to deny: Billionaire investor George Soros and his Open Society Foundation have become a supranational non-state power that topples governments and threatens the workings of democracy. Open Society must be declared a hostile foreign agent.
by Collin McMahon
Former National Security Council member Fiona Hill raised eyebrows on Capitol Hill this week by calling the investigations into Ukrainian interference in the 2016 elections “a fictional narrative”. George Soros’ favorite newspaper The Guardian chimed in that “Some Republicans on the intelligence committee have pushed a discredited conspiracy theory, embraced by Trump and amplified by conservative media, that Ukraine, rather than Russia, meddled in the last election.”
The fact that Ukrainians like MP Serhiy Leschenko and Ukrainian-American DNC operative Alexandra Chalupa sought to influence the 2016 elections is well-documented by reporting by John Solomon, Politico and even a Ukrainian court verdict. Gateway Pundit unveiled the connection to George Soros’ Open Society and the Democratic National Committee in April. Naturally, neither The Guardian nor Fiona Hill offered any evidence for their claims.
Independent conservative media quickly revealed a possible explanation for Fiona Hill’s outrageous act of contempt of Congress: Hill was a member of the board of Soros’s Open Society Institute from 2000-2006 on Russian and European affairs, as her CV at the Brookings Institute shows, and also admitted to having worked with the author of the Russia “dossier” Christopher Steele, commissioned by opposition research firm Fusion GPS and paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
Speaking to Alex Jones in 2017, former Trump adviser Roger Stone said: “George Soros has penetrated the Trump White House. Soros has planted a mole infiltrating the national security apparatus – a woman named Fiona Hill, who has a Harvard background, has been on the Soros payroll and the payroll of the Open Society Institute”.
Naturally, Stone and Jones were dismissed as “conspiracy theorists” at the time. Presumably, it will take generations of historians to unravel exactly how the Soros machine contrived the Spygate attack on Trump and American Democracy.
The Open Society network is by no means confined to the USA, however: Overseas, Soros NGOs engage in actual coups and regime change, such as in Ukraine and Macedonia. Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán has even charged Soros with being responsible for the murder of Slovak journalist Jan Kuciak.
When the British people voted to regain their sovereignty, George Soros was “proud” to fund the anti-Leave campaign Best for Britain, as The Guardian writes. Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr made up a wild conspiracy theory around Steven Bannon and Cambridge Analytica to explain the Brexit vote, which was completely debunked by the British Information Commissioner’s report but is still cited as fact around the world.
When the center-right Austrian government was brought down in May 2019 over a scandal involving secret video recordings, the story was broken by two journalists who belong to the Soros-funded International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Bastian Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has called Soros “openly set on capturing European institutions”. According to Orbán, EU proceedings against Hungary indicate “the huge influence of Mr. Soros, who wants to gain even more.” This must be prevented in the elections to the European Parliament, Orb*n told Kossuth Radio Jan 25, 2019, because “we want pro-immigration MEPs to be reduced to a minority in the European Parliament”.
Speaking in the EU Parliament in Strasbourg, Nigel Farage has called George Soros “the biggest danger to the entire western world”: “His influence here and in Brussels is extraordinary. I fear we could be looking at the biggest level of international, political collusion in history.” Open Society “since 1984 has given away $32 billion” to left-wing political causes, the Foundation acknowledges on its website. Writing in “Secret Empires”, corruption researcher Peter Schweizer has shown how Soros uses “fomenting chaos” and government ties as a lucrative investment tool: The ultimate insider trader.
And now, the government of Israel, a state fighting for its very survival on many fronts and facing the threat of nuclear annihilation, has been paralyzed by a lawfare campaign that originates with the Soros-funded New Israel Fund and its left-wing NGOs Human Rights Defenders Fund (HRDF) and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI).
As both Alan Dershowitz and Caroline Glick noted last week, like in Trump’s case, the charges against Benjamin Netanyahu are entirely trumped-up and completely without merit: “From beginning to end, (the) criminal persecution of Netanyahu has been a travesty of every norm in democratic societies governed by the rule of law. Carefully edited and wholly distorted recordings and transcripts of police interrogations of Netanyahu, his wife, son, and advisors were systematically leaked to the media. The fact that every such leak was a felony offense was of no matter. Netanyahu’s attorneys submitted request after request for Mandelblit to order an investigation of the criminal leaks. All were summarily and scornfully rejected”, writes Glick.
“I think we’re seeing the weaponization of criminal justice for political purposes,” Dershowitz told JNS. “In Israel, the attorney general is supposed to be outside of politics.”
Given the antipathy Soros has for the State of Israel, it’s little surprise to find these corruption charges originate with the New Israel Fund, whose ties to Soros were only revealed by a Wikileaks hack. Edwin Black documented the anti-Israel Activities sponsored by NIF in his book “Financing the Flames” 2013, and NGO Monitor documented the anti-Israel activities of Open Society in their report “Bad Investment” 2013.
The campaign to pressure Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit to pursue the elected Prime Minister goes back at least to 2017, as NIF writes: “The Human Rights Defenders Fund (HRDF) and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) fought this month for the rights of demonstrators to protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after police used excessive force at a demonstration. The two NIF grantees worked to defend protestors near the home of Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit in Petah Tikva. Protestors demanded that he fully and quickly investigate allegations of bribery against Netanyahu. Police had declared the demonstration illegal, saying it was too close to Mandelblit’s home.”
However, the campaign to put pressure on Mandelblit predates the current campaign by at least 9 years, as Wikileaks revealed 2010. According to an article by Noak Pollak in Commentary, Jessica Montell, the head of Soros NGO B’Tselem “wanted the highest level decision-makers held accountable for the decisions they made on how to prosecute the (Gaza) conflict, including Military Advocate General (MAG) Mandelblit… Her aim, she said, was to make Israel weigh world opinion and consider whether it could “afford another operation like this (Operation Cast Lead 2008-9).”
Apparently, the Soros NGOs realized as early as 2010 they would not be able to get rid of Netanyahu and the Likud government by democratic means, which led to their campaign of “lawfare”, waging war on the State of Israel by legalistic means.
“New Israel Fund (NIF) Associate Director in Israel Hedva Radovanitz, who manages grants to 350 NGOs totaling about 18 million dollars per year, [said] that the campaign against the NGOs was due to the “disappearance of the political left wing” in Israel and the lack of domestic constituency for the NGOs”, writes Pollak. “She noted that when she headed ACRI’s Tel Aviv office, ACRI had 5,000 members, while today it has less than 800, and it was only able to muster about 5,000 people to its December human rights march by relying on the active staff of the 120 NGOs that participated. She commented that she believed that in 100 years Israel would be majority Arab and that the disappearance of a Jewish state would not be the tragedy that Israelis fear since it would become more democratic.”
According to this version of events, NIF and the Soros NGOs have been plotting the “disappearance of a Jewish State” for almost 10 years. Given the fact that B’Tselem director Jessica Montel “estimated her 9 million NIS ($2.4 million) budget is 95 percent funded from abroad, mostly from European countries”, it is high time for the democratic countries of the West to consider whether Vladimir Putin did not have an excellent point when he banned Open Society from Russia.
December 3rd, 2019, 01:56
vector7
Re: Soros's Progressive Cabal with Democrats to Weaken America
AUTHOR IANE L. GRUBER PUBLISHED DATE:NOVEMBER 25, 2019
Where the hell were Trump’s advisors? Didn’t they research and vet individuals before hiring them for positions in his administration? If THIS writer can find THIS information, surely those who work for Trump can, too. Are they working FOR Trump or AGAINST him?
If there was ANY vetting, how in the world did Soros’ buddy, Fiona Hill, become Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs on his National Security Council staff? She worked for Soros for six years. THAT tells you all you need to know about Hill’s political leanings.
SCHIFF CALLED DR. FIONA HILL TO TESTIFY ON DAY #5
Schiff first interviewed Hill behind closed doors (excluded GOP House members) and expected her to provide damning testimony against Trump at the televised show trial. It turns our she may have hurt this impeachment charade more than she helped it. Nevertheless, Liberals are praising her as courageous, a hero and a true patriot.
Hill was appointed to her position in the White House in the first quarter of 2017 and resigned on July 18, 2019 after she help set the Ukraine Hoax in full motion. [This scheme started no later than March 2019.] That’s over two years of spying on and damage of our populist president and his plans for improving America’s foreign policy.
America’s foreign policy was in shambles after eight years of the Obama Administration’s cow towing to our enemies and literally giving billions of Americans’ money to Iran so they could build nuclear weapons.*
FIONA HILL’S RESUME IS CLEAR: SHE WORKED FOR SOROS
George Soros is founder and chair of the Open Society Institute, where Fiona Hill worked from 2000-2006. The sickly-sweet website portrays Open Society as just trying to help people. Ha!
Make no mistake about it. Anything and everything that Soros funds is designed to weaken the United State of America, destroy our Bill of Rights and the US Constitution, to pave the way for Globalism where no individual will have any autonomy.
Soros-Funded ACLU to Illegal Aliens: ‘Speak Up’ Against Border Patrol for Thanksgiving
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), partially funded by billionaire George Soros, has issued a public service announcement for illegal aliens to “speak up” against Border Patrol agents for Thanksgiving.
In a post to social media, the ACLU tells illegal aliens traveling throughout the United States for the Thanksgiving holiday, “If Border Patrol boards your bus or train, you can speak up for yourself and your fellow passengers.”
The announcement reads that illegal aliens can tell Border Patrol — if the bus they are traveling on is searched — that “this is a violation” of their “Constitutional rights” and that they have the “right to remain silent” and do not “have to consent to a search.”
The ACLU also asks that illegal aliens record their encounters with Border Patrol agents and send them directly to the open borders organization.
“Send your photos, videos, and stories of Border Patrol encounters on buses and train to nonmigraonbuses@aclu.org,” the announcement reads.
As Breitbart News has chronicled, the ACLU is the leading open borders organization that fights in federal court to ensure that national immigration laws are not enforced and that deportations for illegal aliens are halted. One of the group’s recent lawsuits demanded that American taxpayers provide “mental health services” for border crossers.
Today, there are anywhere between 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living across the U.S. American taxpayers are forced to subsidize at least $132 billion every year to pay for housing, medical services, and public welfare for illegal aliens.
Friday, 14 March 2014
George Soros’ Giant Globalist Footprint in Ukraine’s Turmoil [Emphasis mine]
Written by William F. Jasper
Billionaire investor/activist George Soros has a giant footprint in Ukraine. Similar to his operations in dozens of other nations, he has, over the past couple of decades, poured tens of millions of dollars into Ukrainian non-governmental organizations (NGOs), ostensibly to assist them in transforming their country into a more “open” and “democratic” society.
Many of the participants in Kiev’s “EuroMaidan” demonstrations were members of Soros-funded NGOs and/or were trained by the same NGOs in the many workshops and conferences sponsored by Soros’ International Renaissance Foundation (IRF), and his various Open Society institutes and foundations. The IRF, founded and funded by Soros, boasts that it has given “more than any other donor organization” to “democratic transformation” of Ukraine.
The International Renaissance Foundation’s Annual Report for 2012, the latest available, states that, “IRF provided UAH 63 million in funding to civil society organizations — more than any other donor organization working in this field in Ukraine.” The “UAH” reference used above refers to the Ukraine Hryvnia, Ukraine’s currency, which is worth about 0.11 $US, or 11 cents in U.S. currency. That translates into roughly $6.7 million that IRF provided to Ukrainian groups in 2012; not a huge sum, by comparison to many other political and social campaigns, but more than merely “significant.” In the cash-starved Ukraine, Soros’s dollars go a long way toward seducing and co-opting all legitimate political opposition into the Soros-approved “progressive” camp.
According to the IRF’s own website, this one Soros conduit has funneled over $100 million into Ukrainian NGOs over the years:
Over the period from 1990 to 2010 the International Renaissance Foundation provided more than $100 million in support to numerous Ukrainian non-government organizations (NGOs), community groups, academic and cultural institutions, publishing houses, etc.
The IRF website and annual reports make clear that the Soros funds are targeted at promoting Ukrainian “partnership” with, and “integration” into, the EU. Soros has provided many millions more through his other “philanthropic” spigots. However, Soros’ influence in Ukraine extends far beyond the traceable funding he provides to activist Ukrainian NGOs, academics and think tanks. Equally, if not more, important is the influence he exerts on global opinion through his massive propaganda network (including Project Syndicate and other Soros megaphones) and his direct personal contacts with presidents, prime ministers, parliamentarians, central bankers, media executives, and Wall Street titans.
In a February 26 column he penned for Project Syndicate that was carried by hundreds of newspapers and websites, Soros argued that the EU and the IMF must initiate a new Marshall Plan for Ukraine, meaning, of course, transfers of money from EU and U.S. taxpayers to the politicians, organizations, and institutions approved by the globalist/socialist/corporatist operatives running the EU and IMF. Perhaps the key point in Soros’ essay, entitled, “Sustaining Ukraine’s Breakthrough,” is this: “Ukraine will need outside assistance that only the EU can provide: management expertise.”
George Soros is all about management by “experts,” i.e., central planning, the hallmark of every socialist, fascist, or communist regime. In fact, he is one of the planet’s premier advocates of global central planning and control. Hence, he is a longtime fervent supporter of the United Nations, the IMF/World Bank, the WTO, global population control through the WHO and UNFPA, and virtually every other internationalist endeavor to subvert national sovereignty and advance the building of an omnipotent world government.
His fetish with internationalism includes, especially, further enlarging and empowering the EU, which has been the prime subject of concern in books and essays by Soros, as well as many of his speeches and media interviews. Soros is a full-blown proponent of total political and economic “integration” of the EU, meaning a complete annihilation of any residual independence of the EU member states and the transfer of all substantive legislative, executive, and judicial powers to EU politicians and administrators in Brussels.
Over the past several years Soros has been particularly emphatic in pushing for a central EU Treasury, or European Fiscal Authority (EFA), which he says is “the missing ingredient that is needed to make the euro a full-fledged currency with a genuine lender of last resort.” The European Central Bank (ECB), says Soros, has insufficient powers to do what is needed, even though he admits it has illegally usurped powers — which he applauds.
When European Central Bank President Mario Draghi (a former Goldman Sachs vice chairman and managing director) announced on August 1, 2012 that the ECB would “do whatever it takes to preserve the euro as a stable currency,” German Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann objected, pointing out that the ECB’s powers are limited by statute. Nevertheless, Draghi forged ahead, promising that the ECB would make unlimited purchases of government bonds of indebted EU members — provided they put their countries under the control of executors from “the Troika” — the EU Commission, ECB and IMF. This is the same Troika that devastated the citizens of Cyprus last year, raiding their bank accounts to pay off the bonds that socialist politicians and Goldman Sachs had saddled them with. But Soros, whose many “human rights” fronts extol the “rule of law,” "accountability," and “transparency,” says that the lawless and unaccountable Troika does not have enough power! It must be complemented by an EFA, says he, which should exercise power over all fiscal matters.
The IMF’s Managing Director Christine Lagarde and EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso (a “former” Maoist Communist) have already lined up a multi-billion package for Ukraine. However, many Ukrainians, all across the political spectrum, are leery of coming under the Troika’s control, and rightfully so. They do not want to trade the corruption and oppression of Yanukovych’s pro-Kremlin regime for another dictated by the EU and IMF. As we pointed out recently, even the poll commissioned by the U.S. State Department found that only 37 percent of Ukrainians favored joining the EU.
Economist Michael Roberts describes himself on his blogsite as “a Marxist economist.” Nevertheless, Roberts is on the mark in his February 27 column in stating: “The people of Ukraine are left with Hobson’s choice: either go with KGB-led crony capitalism from Russia or go with equally corrupt pro-European ‘democrats’.” He is also correct in asserting that Ukraine’s foreign debt will soon double, if it takes IMF loans, and that the Ukrainian people will burdened with crushing debt for a generation. He writes:
Ukraine could still stage a financial meltdown and a banking collapse. More likely, the new government will be helped over the next few months with bridging loans until the IMF deal is struck. Then the hardship for the people will really begin in earnest. Ukraine’s foreign debt is about to double as it takes on new debt from the IMF and the cost of existing dollar and euro debt jumps as the hyrvnia is devalued. This burden will be on shoulders of Ukrainians for a generation.
Only it could double several times over, and it could burden Ukrainians for much longer than a generation; it could fasten them with debt bondage in perpetuity. Bosnian writer Andrej Nikolaidis warns Ukrainians that massive debt and grinding poverty under Troika-managed regime are to be expected. “It hardly comes as a surprise to us in former Yugoslavia,” writes Nikolaidis. “At the beginning of its dissolution, the Yugoslav foreign debt was £9.5bn; today, after all the ‘help’ we got from the troika, it's more than £107bn.” He continues:
Bosnia today is a poor and divided country, even more so than it was back in 1992. Former soldiers, hungry and sick, are gathering and protesting. "While we were bleeding, they were stealing," says one… Some Bosnians saw their future under the Bosnian and EU flag, others under the Croatian and EU flag, and others still under the flag of The Great Serbia. Lots of flags, but only one poverty for all.
But why must Ukraine formally join either the EU or the Kremlin-sponsored Customs Union? Are those the only options? Is it not possible for Ukraine to adopt a neutral position of independence and peaceful trade with both sides? Would not such a position be best for all concerned? From the available polling, it seems that may be the view of a plurality, if not a majority, of Ukrainians.
Ukraine’s huge network of natural gas pipelines not only supplies much-needed Russian-produced gas to EU countries, but also is the source of vital revenues to Russia from that energy delivery system. The peoples of Russia, Ukraine, and the EU benefit from a stable, peaceful, neutral Ukraine; forcing Ukrainians into choosing one or the other camp benefits no one — except the power-mad rulers of Russia and the EU, and their globalist confreres.
Why then, should Americans take direction from George Soros, Barack Obama, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, John McCain and other internationalist voices who insist it is Ukraine that must “choose” … but the only choice considered acceptable and legitimate to the globalist choir is for Ukraine to join the EU? Soros and his huge stable of “public intellectuals” at Project Syndicate have been flooding the global media with propaganda to that purpose. As we’ve reported previously, Project Syndicate is a project of George Soros’ Open Society Foundation that has sprouted into a network of nearly 500 newspapers in more than 150 countries with worldwide circulation of over 70 million copies. According to the syndicate’s web site, it is the largest syndication of independent commentators in the world.
However, his great wealth, foundations, media presence, and network of activist NGOs notwithstanding, George Soros’ power and influence — in Ukraine and elsewhere — stem not so much from these oft-cited trappings of power, but from the fact that he is a player, an Insider, in the top rank of globalists who are pushing and shoving “global governance” upon the entire planet. This was formally recognized in November 2010 when Soros received the “Globalist of the Year Award” from the Canadian International Council (CIC).
Soros' real heft derives from the fact that he is a member of the globalist power elite. First and foremost, he is a member of (and leader in and major financial supporter of) the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the premier globalist brain trust that has become the de facto governing force within the executive branch of the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve System, as well as Democrat and Republican parties, for most of the past century. His Soros Fund Management is a President’s Circle Corporate Member of the CFR and Soros himself served as a director of the CFR for a decade (1995-2004). In addition, he has been a key participant in many CFR events, including serving as presider at the CFR’s 2000 conference, “Latin America: Sustaining Economic & Political Reform,” a major sendoff promoting the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).
Further, he has been an activist participant with, and sometime funder of, important globalist organizations such as the Brookings Institution, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the World Policy Conference, the World Economic Forum, the International Crisis Group, the Clinton Global Initiative, the Bilderberg Group, the U.S. State Department, the Gorbachev Foundation, the United Nations, and The Good Club (an exclusive billionaire club — whose members include Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, David Rockefeller, Ted Turner, Michael Bloomberg, and Oprah Winfrey — with the singular purpose of pushing global population control). Per the UN, Soros has served on a number of boards and advisory groups promoting a global “Tobin Tax” on financial transactions, global controls on CO2 to stop “Climate Change,” dramatically expanding the powers and funding of the International Monetary Fund, and massive global wealth redistribution through the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.
Many of Soros’ critics on both the Left and the Right ignore these facts and treat Soros as if he is a singular earthshaking force all on his own. Focusing solely on his grant distributions, political donations, NGO networks, etc., they greatly exaggerate his importance, which can act as a diversion to distract liberty-minded advocates from focusing on the bigger picture. Taken in isolation, without his tie-ins to the CFR-globalist network of power, Soros’ global impact would be, not insignificant, but marginal. It is precisely because he is one of many super-wealthy globalists (albeit, he is far more visible and vocal than most) acting in concert that his impact is so remarkable.
Especially noteworthy in relation to Ukraine is his key involvement in the American-Ukrainian Advisory Committee (AUAC). The Ukrainian Weekly of December 10, 1995, reported:
The American-Ukrainian Advisory Committee met in New York on November 17-18 [1995] and reiterated its strong conviction that a resilient Ukraine is in the interest of European stability and thus also American security.
Among other things, the AUAC called upon the U.S. Congress, USAID, the IMF, the World Bank, and the EU to shower the Ukrainian government (then run by “former” Communist Leonid Kuchma). It also encouraged the Ukrainian government to hasten “privatization” by selling “blocks of equity to private investors.” Kuchma followed their advice and, as in the former Soviet Union, his false “privatization” scheme transferred enormous state assets into the hands of select Communist Party members, creating instant billionaire oligarchs, who have dominated Ukraine ever since. Sitting on the UAUC with Soros were one-world CFR heavyweights Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger, Frank Carlucci, and Richard Burt. The same one-worlders are pushing the same agenda today, two decades later.
Oligarchs R Us
One of the billionaire oligarchs who benefitted from the Ukraine’s crony privatization program is Victor Pinchuk, with whom Soros has been very active. Soros’s foundations and The Victor Pinchuk Foundation collaborate on funding many NGOs and projects, in Ukraine and elsewhere. And Soros is a participant in Pinchuk’s Yalta European Strategy (YES) conferences, annual extravaganzas held in the Crimea at Livadia Palace, a summer retreat of Russian czars on the Black Sea. The YES confabs feature current and former presidents, prime ministers, potentates, financiers, corporate execs and celebrities.
Besides Soros, U.S. participants have included Bill Clinton, William Daley (Obama’s White House chief of staff), Robert Zoellick (Bush’s trade representative, then president of the World Bank), Newt Gingrich, and Condoleezza Rice, to name a few — Democrats and Republicans, CFR globalists all.
Pinchuk, a pal and funder of both Bill and Hillary Clinton, not only has generously supported Bill’s Clinton Global Initiative, but also has poured more than $13 million into the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. Another close tie is Douglas E. Schoen (CFR), a longtime Clinton operative and political consultant, whom, according to the New York Times, Mr. Pinchuk hired as an adviser in 2000 — and to whom the oligarch has been paying a tidy retainer of $40,000 per month ever since.
One of the important ventures that Soros and Pinchuk are financing is the Ukrainian Crisis Media Center (CMC), a collaboration of Ukrainian public relations corporations and journalists that is headquartered in Kiev’s Hotel Ukraine. Ostensibly, it was created to counter the propaganda onslaught of Putin’s Russian media cartel. Much of the “independent news” we receive from Ukraine is produced by the CMC and stamped with the Pinchuk/Soros-approved brand of propaganda. That includes cheering on or papering over the fact that the “new” government in Kiev is simply the latest rotation of musical chairs, and it has ended with Pinchuk’s fellow oligarchs (virtually all of which are “former” communists) and their parliamentary blocs and political parties occupying the most important chairs (as we reported here).
Pinchuk is a member of the Board of the Peterson Institute for International Economics and sits on the International Advisory Council of the Brookings Institution, both of which Soros has long been associated with. Another very important Soros-Pinchuk tie is their mutual connection to the famous (or infamous, as you prefer) Rothschild banking dynasty.
In 2011, George C. Karlweis, adviser to Baron Edmond de Rothschild and his Banque Privee, revealed that it was Rothschild who provided Soros with the startup money — and, undoubtedly much (illegal) insider trading intelligence — for Soros' fabulously successful Quantum Fund.
The full extent of Pinchuk’s connections to the Rothschild’s global private empire would require a similar revelation from an insider. That could be Jean-Pierre Saltiel, who sits on the board of Pinchuk’s Yalta European Strategy, as well as the oligarch’s global steel and metallurgy conglomerate, Interpipe, Inc. He is also a longtime adviser to the Rothschilds and the past president of Rothschild Conseil International, one of the fabled family’s major bank holding companies. Interestingly (but not so surprising), Rothschild agent Saltiel also sits on the board of PIK Group, Russia’s largest residential real estate developer, founded by Russian oligarchs Yuri Zhukov and Kirill Pisarev (and still run by Pisarev).
Like Soros and the Rothschilds, Ukrainian oligarch Pinchuk works with and partners with a number of Russian oligarchs. And his YES summits regularly feature Putin-allied Russian oligarchs, as well as Putin-appointed Russian politicians and apparatchiks. Alfa Bank, Russia’s largest private bank, for example, is a YES sponsor. And Alfa Bank chairman, Mikhail Fridman, a Putin ally and one of Russia’s richest billionaires, sits on the CFR’s International Advisory Board and provided the funds to create the CFR’s “Russia and Russian-American Relations Lecture” program. Similarly, Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest oligarch, a former Putin-Yanukovych supporter and ally, is now a member of the new government. He is also, along with Fridman and Soros, a YES sponsor and a business partner with Russian, EU and U.S. Insiders. What these and dozens of other similar examples indicate is that there is much more to all of the Sturm und Drang over the Ukraine-Russia-EU “crisis” than meets the eye.
Soros gave a strong clue as to what the scripted outcome of the scenario would likely be. His solution would see Russia as a “partner,” and Angela Merkel (the "former" Communist from East Germany who now runs the unified Germany) would be the broker.
“Germany should take the lead,” Soros said, in his February 26 Project Syndicate column cited above. “Chancellor Angela Merkel must reach out to President Vladimir Putin to ensure that Russia is a partner, not an opponent, in the Ukrainian renaissance.”
Putin as Prod for "Convergence"
Merkel appears to be doing just the opposite, threatening Putin with sanctions, including freezing of Russian bank accounts and restrictions on travel in the EU, unless Putin “deescalates” the situation and comes to the bargaining table. But, in reality, she is “reaching out” to Putin, and he, after providing what is deemed an appropriate level of drama, will likely come to the table and deescalate. Contrary to Russia’s current bellicose posturing, it is in the Kremlin’s interests to offload Ukraine onto the taxpayers of the EU and the United States, and it fits perfectly with their long-term strategy of “convergence” with the EU and the United States.
Anatoliy Golitsyn, arguably the most important KGB defector to escape to the West, exposed the top-secret Soviet convergence strategy in his books New Lies for Old and The Perestroika Deception. (See here, here, and here.) Mikhail Gorbachev was making oblique reference to the ongoing reality of the convergence process when he described the EU as “the new European Soviet.” As in the transmutation described in Orwell’s Animal Farm, when it became almost impossible to tell the pigs from the men, it is now becoming all but impossible to detect any substantive differences between the ruling elites of Russia, China, the EU, and the United States. And, as the EU and the United States adopt more socialist policies and police-state measures, there is less and less distinction between our societies and the one ruled over by Putin and his Kremlin cronies. Soros, Pinchuk, Putin, Rockefeller, Rothschild, Fridman, Zhukov, Pisaerev, Akhmetov, and their ilk see themselves as the Caesars or Pharaohs in their long-schemed-for “new world order,” a term that Soros used several times in a television interview (see here) to describe his vision for the future.
Employing the indispensible insight and analysis provided by Golitsyn and the detailed information in his books, it is difficult to view the orchestrated chaos that has been unfolding in Ukraine without recognizing unmistakable evidence that it is being directed along a pre-planned path toward EU-U.S.-Ukraine-Russian convergence. Putin’s role is to rattle the sabers menacingly enough to frighten reluctant Ukraine to join the EU, while also convincing American and EU taxpayers to be forthcoming with the foreign aid and IMF funding that will “rescue” Ukraine and avert a war. And, after things settle down, we will look around to find Putin and his oligarchs carrying on business as usual with the new Ukraine government and its oligarchs, as well as with the Obama administration and “our” oligarchs, including, of course, George Soros.
We have seen this play many times before. In their book, The Wise Men, a hagiographic portrait of six CFR luminaries, authors Walter Isaacson (CFR) and Evan Thomas record a conversation in which top CFR insider and Marshall Plan architect John J. McCloy explained how he and fellow internationalists sold the scheme to Americans by pretending it was needed to fight Soviet Communism. Isaacson and Thomas quote McCloy:
"People sat up and listened when the Soviet threat was mentioned," he later said. It taught him a valuable lesson: One way to assure that a viewpoint gets noticed is to cast it in terms of resisting the spread of Communism."
And McCloy was far from the only one. Dean Acheson, another of the CFR “Wise Men,” did likewise. "Acheson," Isaacson and Thomas note, "concluded that the anti-Communist rhetoric was necessary to win support for the British package."
Now, the point is not that there was no Soviet Communist threat at the time; the threat was definitely real. The point is that McCloy, Acheson, and their CFR cohorts had no intention of fighting communism and they knew that the Marshall Plan was certainly no anti-Communist program. In fact, it transferred billions of dollars from American taxpayers into the coffers of Europe’s socialist parties and politicians, and especially into the movements to create the European Coal and Steel Community, the nascent seed of the European Union.
Far from being anti-Communists, McCloy, Acheson, Averill Harriman, Charles Bohlen, Robert Lovett, and other CFR engineers of the Marshall Plan were ardent anti-anti-Communists who orchestrated vicious campaigns against genuine anti-Communists such as Chiang Kai-shek, Gen. George S. Patton, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Sen. Joseph McCarthy, Sen. Robert Taft, and Robert Welch. And, all the while McCloy and company were promoting and deploying the Marshall Plan — ostensibly to combat Communism — they were also continuing the longstanding policies of previous CFR-dominated administrations of providing enormous financial and technological aid to the Soviet Union, as this publication and the detailed books of Prof. Antony Sutton (The Best Enemy Money Can Buy, National Suicide, and his three-volume Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development) thoroughly exposed. But, no matter, the CFR “Wise Men” knew that the vast majority of Americans were anti-Communist and if they wanted to sell their program to Americans they’d have to fraudulently package it as an anti-Communist one.
It is not mere coincidence that George Soros and other globalists are invoking the Marshall Plan and Cold War rhetoric today, and citing Putin’s revived Soviet-style militarism, to sell their latest EU-IMF convergence gambit. It has worked for them many times in the past. So, for weeks we have been treated to the incredibly odd spectacle of George Soros, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Ivo Daalder, et al, and the denizens of the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and PBS vying for the honor of claiming Joe McCarthy’s mantle.
Will we fall for it again? Americans would be wise to call a halt to this orchestrated rush to push Ukraine into the arms of Manuel Barroso, Mario Draghi, and Christine Lagarde — and to stick us, and the Ukrainian people, with the bill.
December 3rd, 2019, 01:58
vector7
Re: Soros's Progressive Cabal with Democrats to Weaken America
Soros-Funded Lefty Media Reach More Than 300 Million Every Month
Third of Four Parts
Books, newspapers, radio stations, TV stations, websites and cutting edge videos. The pieces of the George Soros media empire are as diverse as the nations of the world and just as widespread. From nakedly partisan left-wing media like Think Progress, the blog for the Center for American Progress, and a TV show on MSNBC, to the supposedly impartial National Public Radio, Soros has impact on the flow of information worldwide.
It gives him incredible influence. Every month, reporters, writers and bloggers at the many outlets he funds easily reach more than 330 million people around the globe. The U.S. Census estimates the population of the entire United States to be just less than 310 million.
That's roughly the entire population of the United States with the population of Australia thrown in for good measure - every single month.
This information is part of an upcoming report by the Media Research Center's Business & Media Institute which has been looking into George Soros and his influence on the media.
Just counting 13 prominent operations of the 180 media organizations he has funded equals 332 million people each month. Included in that total are big players like NPR, which received $1.8 million from Soros, as well as the little known Project Syndicate and Public News Service, both of which also claim to reach millions of readers.
And that's really just the beginning. That tally takes into account only a few of the bigger Soros-funded media operations. Many numbers simply aren't available."Democracy Now!" - "a daily TV/radio news program, hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez" - is known for its left-wing take on global news. Its vitriol ranges from attacks on Blackwater founder Erik Prince and supporters of Andrew Breitbart (whom it calls 'Electronic Brownshirts'), to claims the U.S. is opposed to Arab democracy. Just that one Soros-funded operation is heard "on over 900 stations, pioneering the largest community media collaboration in the United States." But it posts no formal audience numbers. Phone calls to "Democracy Now!" were not returned.
Laughably, Soros denies he has a media empire, despite spending easily more than $48 million on that empire and having top journalists from more than 30 major news organizations serving on the boards of groups he funds. "Another trick is to accuse your opponent of the behavior of which you are guilty, like Fox News accusing me of being the puppet master of a media empire," wrote Soros in the introduction to his new self-promotional book "The Philanthropy of George Soros." That book, appropriately, was written by former New York Times reporter Chuck Sudetic who now works for Soros' Open Society Foundations. It is the second such Soros promotional book written by a Times staffer.
But Soros wildly understates his own impact. On April 8, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi headlined a Boston conference on "media reform." She was joined by four other congressmen, a senator, two FCC commissioners, a Nobel laureate and numerous liberal journalists.
The event was sponsored by a group called Free Press, which has received $1.4 million from Soros. Free Press has two major agenda items - undermining Internet freedom by pushing so-called "net neutrality," and advocating for government-funded media to the tune of $35 billion a year. Many of those attending or speaking were affiliated with Soros-funded operations.
Free Press is just one of the better funded Soros groups. They also include the Center for American Progress ($7.3 million), which operates the heavily staffed Think Progress blog. That blog "now has 30 writers and researchers," according to Politico. Other well-funded operations include the investigative reporting operations at the Center for Public Integrity ($3.7 million) and Center for Investigative Reporting ($1.1 million), as well as Media Matters ($1.1 million) and the Sundance Institute ($1 million).
That's not all. "Soros' foundations gave 34 grants from 1997 to 2010 to local NPR member stations and specific programs that have totaled nearly $3.4-million, said the foundations' [spokesperson Maria] Archuleta. Recipients included WNYC and Minnesota Public Radio," wrote outgoing NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard.
In fact, Soros funds nearly every major left-wing media source in the United States. Forty-five of those are financed through his support of the Media Consortium. That organization 'is a network of the country's leading, progressive, independent media outlets.' The list is predictable - everything from Alternet to the Young Turks.
A report by the Media Consortium detailed how progressives had created an "echo chamber" of outlets "in which a message pushes the larger public or the mainstream media to acknowledge, respond, and give airtime to progressive ideas because it is repeated many times." According to the report called "The Big Thaw," "if done well, the message within the echo chamber can become the accepted meme, impact political dynamics, shift public opinion and change public policy."
That mindset plays out in much of what the consortium's members do. Alternet describes itself as an "award-winning news magazine and online community that creates original journalism and amplifies the best of hundreds of other independent media sources." It hates Tea Parties and complains about "hatemongering" as the "ugly side of Evangelical Christianity." The site gets 1.5 million unique visitors to its unique view of the world.
Brave New Films, also funded by the Media Consortium, is run by the same people who run Brave New Foundation. Robert Greenwald and Jim Miller produce and distribute videos attacking businesses and conservatives. The site brags about a 2008 election video "that exposes John McCain's double talk, for instance, and receive 9 million views around the world." Their latest effort is yet another attack on Koch Industries, attempting to halt a much-needed pipeline from the Canada to the U.S.
Then there's the Young Turks and MSNBC host Cenk Uygur. In 2010, he was welcomed to the network with a press release detailing his web impact. "One of YouTube's Top 100 Partners, the irreverent talk show averages over 18 million views per month and has over 320 million views overall on its YouTube Channel.'"
The list goes on and on. Project Syndicate calls itself "the world's pre-eminent source of original op-ed commentaries." It has wide reach. "As of May 2011, Project Syndicate membership included 462 leading newspapers in 150 countries." Its monthly circulation is 72,815,528. Naturally, "support comes from the Open Society Institute," the primary Soros foundation.
Project Syndicate's columnist line-up, spread to 462 newspapers, is impressively left-leaning or globalist: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, former President Jimmy Carter, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as lefty economists Jeffrey Sachs and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz.
Public News Service describes itself as "a member-supported news service that advocates journalism in the public interest." It is a "network of state-based news services' in 33 states. It claims it reaches 'a combined national weekly audience of 24 million." PNS is proud of its 2010 success. "Last year the Public News Service produced over 4,000 stories featuring public interest content that were redistributed several hundred thousand times on 6,114 radio stations, 928 print outlets, 133 TV stations and 100s of websites. Nationally, an average of 60 outlets used each story."
The Soros 'echo chamber' is even larger. Many of his organizations have a media component - from New Orleans, where he funds The Lens, to nations that were once part of the former Soviet Union. But he doesn't have a media empire.
Dan Gainor is the Boone Pickens Fellow and the Media Research Center's Vice President for Business and Culture. His column appears each week on The Fox Forum. He can also be contacted on Facebook and Twitter as dangainor.
Christiane Amanpour - Anchor of 'This Week with Christiane Amanpour,' ABC's Sunday morning political affairs program
Sheila Coronel - Director of The Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism
Charles Eisendrath - Director of the Knight-Wallace Fellows and the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists at the University of Michigan
Arianna Huffington - President and Editor-in-Chief of Huffington Post Media Group, including: The Huffington Post, AOL Media and AOL Local properties
Jennifer 8. Lee - Author and nine-year veteran of The New York Times. She also serves on the Nieman Foundation advisory board
Charles Lewis -Founding executive editor of the new Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University's School of Communication
Olivia Ma - News manager and part of the news and politics team at YouTube
Paula Williams Madison - Chairman and CEO of Madison Media Management LLC, recently retired from NBC Universal
Geneva Overholser - Director of the School of Journalism at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication
Matt Thompson - Editorial product manager at National Public Radio and adjunct faculty member at the Poynter Institute
Advisory Council
Gustavo Godoy - Executive editor and publisher of Vista, a monthly magazine for Hispanic Americans
Kathleen Hall Jamieson - Walter H. Annenberg Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication of the University of Pennsylvania
Michele Norris - Host of NPR's newsmagazine All Things Considered
Charles Piller - Senior investigative reporter for the Sacramento Bee
Ben Sherwood - ABC News president and former 'Good Morning America' executive producer
Center for Investigative Reporting
Board of Directors
Phil Bronstein - Director of Content Development & Editor-at-Large Hearst Newspapers
David Boardman - Executive Editor and Senior Vice President, The Seattle Times
Jon Funabiki - Professor of journalism at San Francisco State University
George Osterkamp - Producer for CBS News
Board of Advisers
Lowell Bergman - Producer/correspondent for PBS series 'Frontline' and professor of Investigative Reporting at University of California Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism
Sarah Cohen - Knight Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy. She is on the board of directors for Investigative Reporters and Editors
Len Downie - Vice president and former executive editor for The Washington Post
Elizabeth Farnsworth - Special correspondent for PBS 'Newshour'
Seymour Hersh - Staff writer, The New Yorker
Dori Maynard - President, Maynard Institute
Bill Moyers - Host of 'Bill Moyers Journal' on PBS
Raul Ramirez - Executive Director, News and Public Affairs, KQED San Francisco
Orville Schell - Former dean of University of California Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism
Susan Stamberg - Special correspondent, National Public Radio
Mike Wallace - Recently retired from his work as a CBS '60 Minutes' correspondent, is now a correspondent emeritus for CBS
Judy Woodruff - Co-anchor PBS 'NewsHour'
ProPublica
Board of Directors
Alberto Ibargüen - President and CEO of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and former publisher of The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald
Journalism Advisory Board
Jill Abramson - New executive editor of The New York Times
David Boardman - Executive editor of the Seattle Times
John S. Carroll - Former editor of the Los Angeles Times and Baltimore Sun
L. Gordon Crovitz - Former publisher of The Wall Street Journal
David Gergen - Senior political analyst for CNN
Shawn McIntosh - Director of culture and change at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ellen Miller - Executive director of The Sunlight Foundation
Priscilla Painton - Editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster
Allan Sloan - Senior editor-at-large for Fortune magazine
Kerry Smith - Senior vice president for editorial quality of ABC News
Cynthia A. Tucker - Editorial page editor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Business Advisory Council
William Pollak - CEO, ALM Media LLC
Free Press
Board of Directors
Maxie C. Jackson III - President and CEO for the National Federation of Community Broadcasters
Organization of News Ombudsmen
Officers and Directors
Jacob Möllerup - Danish Broadcasting Corporation and president of ONO
Debbie Kornmiller - Reader advocate of the Arizona Daily Star
Julie Miville-Dechene - Radio-Canada
Judi Whetstine - Gazette Communications
Investigative News Network
Board of Directors
Brant Houston - Chair of the Board & Knight Chair of Investigative Reporting, University of Illinois Journalism Dept.
Charles Lewis - Board Member & Executive Editor, The American University School of Communication Investigative Reporting Workshop
Robert Rosenthal - Center for Investigative Reporting Board Member & Executive Director
William Buzenberg - Executive Director, The Center for Public Integrity
Laura Frank - Executive Director, I-News, the Rocky Mountain Investigative News Network
Margaret Freivogel - Board Member & Editor, St. Louis Beacon
Soros-related organizations
This is a partial list of the media organizations that have staffers on the boards of Soros-funded media outlets.
Radio
KQED
NPR
Radio-Canada
Print
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Arizona Daily Star
Associated Press
El Nuevo Herald
Fortune
Gazette Communications
Hearst Newspapers
Houston Chronicle
New York Times
The New Yorker
Sacramento Bee
Seattle Times
Simon & Schuster
Toronto Star
USA Today
Vista
Washington Post
Online
AOL/Huffington Post
St. Louis Beacon
Voiceofsandiego.org
YouTube
TV
ABC
CBS
CNN
Danish Broadcasting Corporation
PBS
WTVF-TV
Education
American University School of Communication Investigative Reporting Workshop
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism's Columbia Journalism Review
Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy
Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism
University of Illinois
University of Michigan
University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School for Communication
University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication School of Journalism
Other
ALM Media LLC
Investigative Reporters and EditorsJames L. Knight Foundation
Madison Media Management LLC
Maynard Institute
National Federation of Community Broadcasters
Nieman Foundation
Poynter Institute
Sunlight Foundation
Tides Foundation
December 3rd, 2019, 02:02
vector7
Re: Soros's Progressive Cabal with Democrats to Weaken America
George Soros just loves to meddle in American politics - especially if it's in support of liberal causes.
Soros's Open Society Foundation proudly claimed to have given $100 million dollars to "immigrant rights" projects in the United States. Of the $16.7 million of this money that BMI identified, at least $5,300,755, nearly a third, went to organizations that also supported other liberal causes, including abortion, gay marriage and Obamacare.
With $38.9 million in revenue in 2010 alone, the National Council on La Raza ($2,410,000 in Soros funding) calls itself "the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States." It's also one of the most blatantly liberal. La Raza focused heavily on promoting the Affordable Care Act, as well supporting same-sex marriage. It has also been outspoken critic of the Tea Party.
Amnesty International ($844,088 in Soros Funding) has been decidedly anti-Israel, pro-abortion, anti-traditional marriage and campaigned for clemency for Bradley Manning (referring to him by his new female moniker, "Chelsea"). According to Amnesty, the "right" to marry someone of any gender you choose is "enshrined in international human rights standards." Throughout its website, Amnesty International refers to LGBT issues as "LGBT Human Rights," thus by default labeling traditional marriage supporters as suppressors of human rights. The Immigrant Resource Center has a strong emphasis on LGBT Immigrants, as does the group Immigration Equality.
The National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health focuses more on Obamacare and abortion "rights" than it does on immigration, but still gets $100,000 from Soros. A press release for this group called the "Conscience Clause" negotiations, which were aimed to keep those morally opposed to contraception and abortifacients from having to pay for them, "a political play that will hurt Latina health."
Soros has aided hundreds of left-wing groups in America since 2000 under the auspices of his Open Society Foundations. In just 10 years, he gave more than $550 million to liberal organizations in the United States. This has included money going to fund liberal agenda topics like Earth Day, gun control, government funding of student loans and even the IRS targeting of conservatives.
Only a fraction of the records for the $8 billion that Soros claims to give to charities around the world is accessible through the Open Society Foundations' American 990 tax forms. Because of this, the list below is partial, and reflects only part of the $100 million that the Open Society Foundations claim to have given to U.S. immigration groups.
National Council on La Raza
Soros funding: $2,410,000
Immigrant Legal Resource Center
Soros funding: $1,645,000
Amnesty International
Soros funding: $844,088
Immigration Equality
Soros funding: $301,667
National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health
Soros funding: $100,000
Five U.S. gun control groups have received almost $7 million combined from liberal billionaire George Soros, including the most prominent one, the Brady Campaign.
The Soros contributions to these five groups total an astounding $6,727,966 between 2000 and 2011.
The American Bar Association, a liberal group of lawyers, received $4,093,946 from Soros. According to their site, “the ABA believes that lawyers share a special responsibility to help create a just and secure society in which firearms are well-regulated.” President Laurel Bellows urged for more than just background checks back in January, including “full integration of state and local mental heal records into the National Instant Check System” and supported an assault weapons ban.
The most renowned gun control group, The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the legal arm of the better know Brady Campaign, received $50,000 in Soros funding. The Brady Center helps those involved in legal matters through their separate 501c(3) organization, as opposed to The Brady Campaign that deals at the grassroots level.
The Children’s Defense Fund, whose mission is “to ensure every child a Health Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start, and a Moral Start,” received $550,000 from Soros. In their “Protect Children, Not Guns” campaign, CDF links back to gun control partners, including The Brady Campaign.”
The League of Women Voters received a staggering $2,028,020. LWV is not concerned solely with gun control. On their website, they also show to be against the XL Pipeline, Voter ID laws, and encourage their members to “tell your Senators to pass sensible gun laws.”
And finally, Physicians for Social Responsibility received $5,000 from Soros. PSR is the “medical and public health voice” against nuclear power and weapons and for supposed “safe” energy. They push for “the strongest possible legislative and regulatory approaches” in regards to firearms.
Since the Newtown massacre in Dec. 2012, there have been a few new gun control groups formed. Most notably, former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords formed the new PAC Americans for Responsible Solutions. Another group, Moms Demand Action, was also formed for “gun sense” in America. It’s too soon to know whether these new groups are getting Soros funding, as well.
Soros has made his support of gun control clear. In “The Bubble of American Supremacy: The Costs of Bush’s War in Iraq,” Soros complained about the Bush presidency hindering gun control. “He has aggressively infringed the rights of states to legislate and enforce provisions on issues such as gun control and medical marijuana,” Soros wrote.
Soros's donations go to fund an extensive network of liberal media outlets, which have received more than $52 million. Those operations include a wide range of liberal news operations as well as the infrastructure of news - journalism schools, investigative journalism and even industry organizations. Since 2000, Soros has given away more than $550 million to liberal organizations in the United States through his Open Society Foundations.
Unreported Soros Event Aims to Remake Entire Global Economy
Two years ago, George Soros said he wanted to reorganize the entire global economic system. In two short weeks, he is going to start - and no one seems to have noticed.
On April 8, a group he's funded with $50 million is holding a major economic conference and Soros's goal for such an event is to "establish new international rules" and "reform the currency system." It's all according to a plan laid out in a Nov. 4, 2009, Soros op-ed calling for "a grand bargain that rearranges the entire financial order."
The event is bringing together "more than 200 academic, business and government policy thought leaders' to repeat the famed 1944 Bretton Woods gathering that helped create the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Soros wants a new 'multilateral system," or an economic system where America isn't so dominant.
More than two-thirds of the slated speakers have direct ties to Soros. The billionaire who thinks "the main enemy of the open society, I believe, is no longer the communist but the capitalist threat" is taking no chances.
Thus far, this global gathering has generated less publicity than a spelling bee. And that's with at least four journalists on the speakers list, including a managing editor for the Financial Times and editors for both Reuters and The Times. Given Soros's warnings of what might happen without an agreement, this should be a big deal. But it's not.
What is a big deal is that Soros is doing exactly what he wanted to do. His 2009 commentary pushed for "a new Bretton Woods conference, like the one that established the post-WWII international financial architecture." And he had already set the wheels in motion.
Just a week before that op-ed was published, Soros had founded the New York City-based Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), the group hosting the conference set at the Mount Washington Resort, the very same hotel that hosted the first gathering. The most recent INET conference was held at Central European University, in Budapest. CEU received $206 million from Soros in 2005 and has $880 million in its endowment now, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.
This, too, is a gathering of Soros supporters. INET is bringing together prominent people like former U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker and Soros, to produce "a lot of high-quality, breakthrough thinking."
While INET claims more than 200 will attend, only 79 speakers are listed on its site - and it already looks like a Soros convention. Twenty-two are on Soros-funded INET's board and three more are INET grantees. Nineteen are listed as contributors for another Soros operation - Project Syndicate, which calls itself "the world's pre-eminent source of original op-ed commentaries" reaching "456 leading newspapers in 150 countries." It's financed by Soros's Open Society Institute. That's just the beginning.
The speakers include:
Volcker is chairman of President Obama's Economic Advisory Board. He wrote the forward for Soros's best-known book, 'The Alchemy of Finance' and praised Soros as "an enormously successful speculator" who wrote "with insight and passion" about the problems of globalization.
Economist Jeffrey Sachs, director of The Earth Institute and longtime recipient of Soros charity cash. Sachs received $50 million from Soros for the U.N. Millennium Project, which he also directs. Sachs is world-renown for his liberal economics. In 2009, for example, he complained about low U.S. taxes, saying the "U.S. will have to raise taxes in order to pay for new spending initiatives, especially in the areas of sustainable energy, climate change, education, and relief for the poor."
Soros friend Joseph E. Stiglitz, a former senior vice president and chief economist for the World Bank and Nobel Prize winner in Economics. Stiglitz shares similar views to Soros and has criticized free-market economists whom he calls "free market fundamentalists." Naturally, he's on the INET board and is a contributor to Project Syndicate.
INET Executive Director Rob Johnson, a former managing director at Soros Fund Management, who is on the Board of Directors for the Soros-funded Economic Policy Institute. Johnson has complained that government intervention in the fiscal crisis hasn't been enough and wanted "restructuring," including asking "for letters of resignation from the top executives of all the major banks."
Have no doubt about it: This is a Soros event from top to bottom. Even Soros admits his ties to INET are a problem, saying, "there is a conflict there which I fully recognize." He claims he stays out of operations. That's impossible. The whole event is his operation.
INET isn't subtle about its aims for the conference. Johnson interviewed fellow INET board member Robert Skidelsky about "The Need for a New Bretton Woods" in a recent video. The introductory slide to the video is subtitled: "How currency issues and tension between the US and China are renewing calls for a global financial overhaul." Skidelsky called for a new agreement and said in the video that the conflict between the United States and China was "at the center of any monetary deal that may be struck, that needs to be struck."
Soros described in the 2009 op-ed that U.S.-China conflict as "another stark choice between two fundamentally different forms of organization: international capitalism and state capitalism." He concluded that "a new multilateral system based on sounder principles must be invented." As he explained it in 2010, "we need a global sheriff."
In the 2000 version of his book "Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism," Soros wrote how the Bretton Woods institutions "failed spectacularly" during the economic crisis of the late 1990s. When he called for a new Bretton Woods in 2009, he wanted it to "reconstitute the International Monetary Fund," and while he's at it, restructure the United Nations, too, boosting China and other countries at our expense.
"Reorganizing the world order will need to extend beyond the financial system and involve the United Nations, especially membership of the Security Council,' he wrote. 'That process needs to be initiated by the US, but China and other developing countries ought to participate as equals."
Soros emphasized that point, that this needs to be a global solution, making America one among many. "The rising powers must be present at the creation of this new system in order to ensure that they will be active supporters."
And that's exactly the kind of event INET is delivering, with the event website emphasizing "today's reconstruction must engage the larger European Union, as well as the emerging economies of Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Asia." China figures prominently, including a senior economist for the World Bank in Beijing, the director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the chief adviser for the China Banking Regulatory Commission and the Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations.
This is all easy to do when you have the reach of George Soros who funds more than 1,200 organizations. Except, any one of those 1,200 would shout such an event from the highest mountain. Groups like MoveOn.org or the Center for American Progress didn't make their names being quiet. The same holds true globally, where Soros has given more than $7 billion to Open Society Foundations - including many media-savvy organizations just a phone call away. Why hasn't the Soros network spread the word?
Especially since Soros warns, all this needs to happen because "the alternative is frightening." The Bush-hating billionaire says America is scary "because a declining superpower losing both political and economic dominance but still preserving military supremacy is a dangerous mix."
The Soros empire is silent about this new Bretton Woods conference because it isn't just designed to change global economic rules. It also is designed to put America in its place - part of a multilateral world the way Soros wants it. He wrote that the U.S. "could lead a cooperative effort to involve both the developed and the developing world, thereby reestablishing American leadership in an acceptable form."
That's what this conference is all about - changing the global economy and the United States to make them "acceptable" to George Soros.
- Iris Somberg contributed to this commentary
Dan Gainor is the Boone Pickens Fellow and the Media Research Center's Vice President for Business and Culture. His column appears each week on The Fox Forum. He can also be contacted on FaceBook and Twitter as dangainor.
Nobel Laureates to Co-Chair Independent Commission on Global Economy
OCT 22, 2017
Joseph Stiglitz, Michael Spence and a global team of leading thinkers are calling for new thinking & new rules for the world economy
EDINBURGH, U.K.—Following the dramatic political shocks to the industrialized world in 2016, worsening global poverty and inequality, and inadequate public and private sector responses to the challenges that continue to plague the world’s economy 10 years after the financial crisis, the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) has initiated a Commission on Global Economic Transformation (CGET), with support from the Center for International Governance Innovation (CIGI). The effort will be led by Nobel Prize-winning economists Joseph Stiglitz and Michael Spence.
As an independent entity, the Commission on Global Economic Transformation (CGET) is the first commission of its kind, initiated at a critical moment for the global economy. As political distrust and xenophobia are rising in the developed world in response to an economic system that serves only a very few wealthy people, developing countries continue to search for paths to prosperity, and people everywhere in the world are struggling with the challenges posed by widening inequality, technological disruption, and climate change. These problems are compounded by the ineffectiveness of current policy tools in many contexts, raising questions about the role of the state, of civil society, and of individuals along with national and international governance frameworks.
The CGET’s work—commissioning papers, synthesizing existing research and convening international working sessions in China, India, and other locations—will result in a final report in 2019 summarizing its findings and recommendations. Reflecting the consensus view of the Commissioners, the report will include an examination of problems and emerging crises in the world economy and apply the research findings and conclusions reached at CGET meetings to concrete policy challenges in specific countries and regions of the world.
The Commission will strive to ensure its report informs national governments and international organizations about the profound challenges facing us and outline a path forward to inclusive and sustainable global prosperity. To that end, CGET will convene meetings with elected officials and policymakers in countries around the world to share the report’s recommendations.
The Commission will tackle issues from macroeconomic balances to rethinking globalization, and from climate change to technology and the future of work. Among these core areas, it will focus on:
Slow and stagnant growth in advanced economies;
Continuing inadequacies with the international financial system;
Disruptions to work, especially from new technology;
Widening income and wealth inequality in the face of globalization and technological disruption;
Political and social polarization resulting from economic and governmental failures to deliver inclusive prosperity;
Trade and the ineffectiveness of traditional development strategies for emerging economies, given the changes in technology and global supply chains;
Climate change;
Increased migration, often driven by despair caused by economic and political disruption in developing countries, unresponsive governments, slow job growth, and climate change.
Joining the Commission are some of the world’s leading economists, policy experts and thought leaders. They include:
Robert Johnson, President of INET and Former Chief Economist of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee;
Lord Adair Turner, Chairman of INET and former chairman of the UK Financial Services Authority;
Nelson Barbosa, Professor of Economics at the São Paulo School of Economics of the Getulio Vargas Foundation, Adjunct Professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and former Brazilian Minister of Finance;
Kaushik Basu, Professor of Economics at Cornell University and former Senior Vice-President and Chief Economist of the World Bank;
Peter Bofinger, Professor of Monetary and International Economics at Würzburg University and a member of the German Council of Economic Experts;
Winnie Byanyima, Oxfam International executive director; former member of the Ugandan Parliament, African Commission and Director of Gender and Development at the United Nations Development Program;
Mohamed El-Erian, Chief Economic Advisor, Allianz, and former chair of U.S. President Obama’s Global Development Council;
Dr Gaël Giraud, Economist and senior researcher at C.N.R.S. (French national center for scientific research);
James Manyika, Director of the McKinsey Global Institute;
Rohinton Medhora, President of the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI);
Mari Pangestu, Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy, Republic of Indonesia;
Danny Quah, Professor of Economics at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore;
Dani Rodrik, Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and President-Elect of the International Economic Association;
Eisuke Sakakibara, Professor of Economics at Keio University and former Japanese Vice Minister of Finance for International Affairs;
Andrew Sheng, Distinguished Fellow of Fung Global Institute, chief adviser to China Banking Regulatory Commission, and former deputy chief executive of Hong Kong Monetary Authority;
Beatrice Weder di Mauro, Distinguished Fellow in Residence at Emerging Markets Institute of INSEAD Singapore, Professor of Economics, Chair of Economic Policy and International Macroeconomics at the University of Mainz, Germany and former member of the German Council of Economic Experts;
Yu Yongding, former president of the China Society of World Economics and director of the Institute of World Economics and Politics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; former member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the People’s Bank of China.
Commenting on the Commission’s launch, Robert Johnson, President of INET said:
“We are establishing the Commission because the existing paradigm can’t meet the challenges we face. That paradigm romanticizes unfettered markets while it overestimates the capacity of national governments to address human problems—at a time when the domain of the sovereign is smaller than the scope of the market. Bringing together some of the world’s leading economic experts and thinkers, we will dig deeply into pressing issues societies around the world are struggling with. The Commission for Global Economic Transformation will strive to offer not only new analytical frameworks to understand these problems, but also sustainable paths forward for governments and societies around the world.”
Commission Co-Chair Professor Joseph Stiglitz, commenting on the focus areas of the commission said:
“We need new rules and coordinated governance to address destructive tendencies rapidly emerging in the global economy, and to protect human communities subject to them. Whether it comes to reckoning with widening inequality, climate change or stagnating growth, it’s clear that our international governance frameworks are outdated and need to be reconceived in a globally interdependent world. The Commission looks forward to sharing our work with governments around the world to aid them in tackling these challenges to economies and our social fabric.”
Commission Co-Chair Professor Michael Spence added:
“The Commission has come together to address a number of challenges. One is rising inequality in growth patterns and increasing social, political, and economic upheaval. We suspect this has contributed to centrifugal forces within societies and across national boundaries. Political polarization in the U.S. and across Europe, coupled with widespread global poverty and inequality, may undermine our ability to address these challenges in a vigorous and pragmatic manner. A second set of challenges relates to the impact of rapidly evolving digital technologies on economies, jobs, and needed skills. We hope the Commission’s research and findings will help guide governments, international institutions, businesses, and CSO’s in coming together to address these challenges.”
Commissioner Winnie Byanyima added:
“Nothing short of a ‘Global Economic Transformation’ is needed to urgently reverse a long-term global inequality crisis and build a more human economy that benefits everyone, not the privileged few. It is my honor to join this esteemed Commission on behalf of Oxfam and to amplify the voices of those people we work with facing poverty—most of all women across the South. We must advance the ideas that lead to fairer societies in which work is dignified, taxation is fair, where businesses work in the interests of workers and producers, and in which governments are truly accountable to their people.”
Commissioner Rohinton Medhora added:
“The challenges this Commission will take on are central to the course of human welfare. These complex topics are exactly what INET and CIGI were created to tackle, and I look forward to working alongside this powerful group of commissioners.”
Pope Francis Joins Joe Stiglitz and Rob Johnson in Creating New Economic Thinking
MAY 13, 2019
INET Global Commission to collaborate with Pope Francis and Scholas Occurrentes on bringing the voices of young people into the economics profession
Vatican May 11, 2019. Pope Francis and American economists Robert Johnson and Joseph Stiglitz pledged to work together with the Pontifical foundation Scholas Occurrentes to develop a series of projects to bring the voices of young people into the economics profession and to also respond to the challenges of growing inequality and despair throughout the world.
In a private meeting with the Pope and Scholas Occurrentes directors José Mar*a del Corral and Enrique Palmeyro, Johnson—president of the Institute for New Economic Thinking—and Stiglitz—a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics—discussed the need to promote on a global level, a “social economy” that “looks towards the future with the voice of young people in mind”.
During the summit, which served for the signing of a memorandum of understanding between Scholas and INET, Pope Francis and Professor Stiglitz both warned about “the problems of certain forms of market economies that encourage individualistic behavior and in which markets do not end up serving the people but rather the people end up serving the markets.”
“It is fundamental to work on the education of alternative systems that do not worship money. We have to try to develop programs and studies around the concept of a circular economy, that contributes to an education that is aware of the environment’s boundaries and that teaches to return to the environment what is taken from it”, Stiglitz suggested during the meeting. “If not, humanity turns to suicide,” Pope Francis agreed.
At the meeting, which concluded a day of work that had begun at the headquarters of Scholas Occurrentes at the Palace of St. Calisto, Johnson and Stiglitz also proposed to the Foundation to contribute to a series of reports being written by the Commission on Global Economic Transformation (CGET), an initiative of INET with support from the Center for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and co-chaired by Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Michael Spence. The CGET is the first commission of its kind, convened at a critical moment for the global economy. As political distrust and xenophobia sweeps the developed world, developing countries search for paths to prosperity, and people around the world struggle with the challenges posed by widening inequality, technological disruption, and climate change. Recognizing the need of new paradigms and new solutions, CGET will chart alternative reforms that will support a more sustainable, prosperous course for the world economy. These ideas will be presented in a series of reports that are currently being drafted and will eventually be discussed at various international economic forums.
“We are deeply interested in working with Scholas to deepen discussions on social issues and the changes generated by globalization in societies, as well as to think about concrete ideas on what we should do to make technology and markets serve humanity and not the other way around,” Stiglitz said. “Society needs a vision of the future that derives from listening intensely and combines the insights of the mind with what is seen through the eye of the heart,” Johnson added. There will be a follow up discussion about the joint projects at the V International Congress organized by Scholas at the University of Fordham in New York, from 2 to 5 June 2019.
On behalf of Scholas, Del Corral and Palmeyro thanked Stiglitz and Johnson for being chosen to represent the youth and give voice to their pains and discontents, and for committing to jointly organize a future meeting in the Vatican between economists and young people from different countries.
During the working day, a select group of economists and researchers from Scholas Chairs, headed by Professor Angelo Paletta, from the University of Bologna, Italy also participated along with members from INET’s Commission on Global Economic Transformation, Peter Bofinger (Professor of Monetary and International Economics at Würzburg University and a member of the German Council of Economic Experts) and Eisuke Sakakibara (Professor of Economics at Keio University and former Japanese Vice Minister of Finance for International Affairs), as well as Columbia University economist Martin Guzman.
Models for Platform Governance https://www.cigionline.org/platforms
An essay series on the emerging economic and social power of global platforms
(There are several papers on this including big data and governance platforms)
Models for Platform Governance https://www.cigionline.org/platforms
An essay series on the emerging economic and social power of global platforms
(There are several papers on this including big data and governance platforms)
$12 Million Buys Soros, Steyer White House Meeting; Media Ignore
Money may not buy happiness, but it certainly buys access. Liberal billionaires George Soros and Tom Steyer met with John Podesta, the counselor to the president, to advise him on environmental policy.
Both Soros and Steyer have donated millions to the Center for American Progress, a liberal group Podesta founded and led until December 2013. Steyer has given $3,850,000 to CAP since 2008, while Soros more than doubled that at $8,067,186.
Despite repeatedly hyping liberal fears about conservative donors influencing politics, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN and major newspapers all ignored the meeting. Soros’ spokesperson and advisor Michael Vachon, who was also in attendance, told E&E News that the men “discussed a variety of topics,” according to the Washington Free Beacon.
Since 2012, ABC, CBS and NBC have covered the libertarian Koch brothers nine times more than they covered George Soros and Tom Steyer combined. Media is home turf for Soros. He has poured more than $65 million into media and journalism groups through his Open Society Foundations since 2000.
“The three met to discuss global climate change negotiations, and the process of the 2015 United Nations climate change convention to be held in Paris,” according to The Hill, which cited a White House Official. The Hill also noted that Steyer met with Podesta again in March.
The meeting occurred in February, but details are just now being published.
Podesta was the founder and president of the liberal Center for American Progress (CAP), before being tapped by the White House to focus on health care law and climate change issues.
CAP is a policy writing and advocating organization, complete with its own media outlet, Think Progress. Podesta previously co-chaired the transition team when Obama first came into office, and was White House chief of staff under Clinton. Neera Tanden, who has worked for both Obama and Hillary Clinton, currently runs CAP.
$3.6 Million from Soros Aids Groups That Support, Promote Occupy Wall Street
Left-wing financier George Soros is at it again. While he may claim he's not behind the Occupy Wall Street protests, funding from his foundations says otherwise. Soros threw his support behind the movement at a United Nations panel on Oct. 3, 'I can sympathize with their grievances.' But he does more than just sympathize, his foundations funded groups that back the protests and steer their 'progressive' message.
Reuters even posed the question 'Who's behind the Wall St. protests?' on Oct. 13, but downplayed Soros's actual financial involvement. Even though 'Soros and the protesters share some ideological ground,' the story added. But Reuters undersold the connection significantly.
The protesters stand by their claim that theirs is purely a grassroots movement. But it is hard to ignore the concerted effort by liberal groups, unions, and other Soros-funded entities that prop-up and fuel the Occupy movement. An echo-chamber of left-wing blogs and news sites that receive Soros cash continues to push the anti-capitalist protest story. Articles repeatedly praise labor and climate activists for their support while denigrating police for their efforts to keep the peace.
Organizations that joined the protesters were granted more than $3.6 million from Soros's Open Society Foundations. On Oct. 5 there was a 'march in solidarity with #occupywallstreet' that listed seven such groups out of the 16 overall supporting the protest. Those seven organizations received $3,614,690 from Soros' Open Society Foundations since the year 2000, with more than $2 million going to Common Cause Education Fund, part of Common Cause, and another $1.1 million to MoveOn.org.
Even the protesters admit the hypocrisy of having billionaire Soros and MoveOn.org 'joining forces to voice their 'support' for an anti-Wall Street movement' and that it 'should set alarm bells ringing.' Additional funding went to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Community Voices Heard, Coalition for the Homeless, Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project (NEDAP), and 350.org.
Those left-wing organizations were joined by their friends in the progressive media. A publication for the protesters, the 'Occupy Wall Street Journal,' is supported by the Independent Media Center which received more than $70,000 from two parts of the Tides organization. This group donates millions of dollars to liberal causes and is partially funded by Soros. Since 2000, Tides received $25,991,845 from his Open Society Foundations. Reuters only noted the $3.5 million from 2007-2009 but failed to mention the long history of funding and the other $20 million.
Tides is made up of the Tides Center, which received $7,537,482, and the Tides Foundation, which got an additional nearly $18,454,363. Adbusters, which Reuters called 'an anti-capitalist group in Canada which started the protests,' received $184,721 in Tides money.
Soros-funded progressive media also championed the protest. The liberal echo-chamber that reaches more than 300 million people every month has been hard at work promoting the protests. The Media Consortium received $425,000 from Soros's Open Society Foundations, and affiliates have been busy promoting Occupy Wall Street. These sites promoted stories about big labor support, climate activists' support, and police brutality.
Media Consortium member AlterNet, which is part of the Independent Media Institute that got an extra $495,000 from Soros, has a section of their website for 'Special Coverage: Occupy Wall Street.' Here it has articles that bust '5 conservative economic myths' such as 'regulations kill jobs' and 'business does everything better than government.' It also lauds big labor for joining the protests. AlterNet's Kristen Gwynne was even arrested during a protest.
The Center for American Progress received $7.3 million from Soros's Open Society Foundations. CAP is also where former Green Jobs Czar Van Jones, now a senior fellow, landed after being forced out of the Obama Administration,. Two of their blogs, that also happen to be part of the Media Consortium, helped promote the protest, Campus Progress and Think Progress. They also wrote about climate activists that support the movement. Campus Progress described 'police brutality' at the protests while Think Progress thinks there is a 'double standard on occupy wall street and the tea party.' They criticized how conservative pundits vilify the 99 Percent Movement as 'misguided, irrelevant, or even dangerous' while embracing the Tea Party as part of the 'conservative echo chamber.'
As the Business & Media Institute has reported, a study by the Media Consortium detailed how progressives had created an "echo chamber" of outlets "in which a message pushes the larger public or the mainstream media to acknowledge, respond, and give airtime to progressive ideas because it is repeated many times." Ironic how Think Progress used the same 'echo chamber' term to write-off the so-called conservative 'double standard'. According to the report called "The Big Thaw," "if done well, the message within the echo chamber can become the accepted meme, impact political dynamics, shift public opinion and change public policy."
Consortium members used this methodology once again when they covered the protests. One common theme was the celebration of big labor when they joined the Occupy movement. Left-wing magazine Mother Jones praised plans to offer manpower and resources, stage marches, and add 'organizing muscle' to the protests. A similar article by In These Times quoted AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka that they will support the protest 'in every way.'
Climate activists were also hailed for their support while police efforts were sharply criticized. Grist celebrated climate activists for getting involved. A coalition led by 350.org founder Bill McKibben embraced the movement, which Soros gave $8,900. However, Democracy Now's Amy Goodman went down to the protests for a closer look and proceeded to write how the protest expanded 'despite police effort to 'silence' demonstrations.' More examples of 'police brutality' were covered by Alternet while Think Progress posted an update on the Transport Workers Union refusal to bus protesters that the police arrested to show support.
Extinction Rebellion Climate Activists Paid Over $500 Per Week by George Soros to ‘Shut Down’ Britain
October 16, 2019
Extinction Rebellion protestors are paid up to £400 per week to “shut down” Britain, according to documents revealed by a British newspaper.
Documents revealed to The Mail on Sunday show that the far-left climate change alarmist group has paid activists over £70,000 during a four-month span and more than £200,000 since the founding of the group.
The list of financial backers of ‘XR’ is not made fully public, but some high profile elite donors include ‘master of puppets’ billionaire activist George Soros, the son of British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, the granddaughter of oil magnate John Paul Getty, and the rock band Radiohead, amongst others.
Extinction Rebellion’s finances have come under scrutiny as the group has paid no taxes on the money it has paid to its activist members. A document seen by The Mail on Sunday showed that even members of the group have become concerned, saying that HMRC would “crawl all over us” and that they expected fines from the government in the range of £150,000 to £200,000.
Metropolitan Police
✔
@metpoliceuk
As of 12:00hrs on Sunday, 13 October, there have been 1,309 arrests in connection with the ongoing Extinction Rebellion protests across London.
4:39 AM - Oct 13, 2019
Conservative MP David Davies called for an investigation into the group’s finances, telling The Mail: “It is utterly outrageous if Extinction Rebellion is not paying its fair share of tax. These self-appointed, holier-than-thou guardians of the planet may think they are somehow above the law but they are not. What’s needed now is a root-and-branch investigation of how this organisation operates, starting with an immediate inquiry into its tax affairs. I shall be writing to HMRC tomorrow to demand nothing less.”
The news comes in the wake of over 1,300 arrests of Extinction Rebellion protestors in the last week alone. Nearly 500 protestors were arrested removed from their Trafalgar Square encampment on Tuesday, and more arrested after the group attempted to “occupy” London City Airport.
Extinction Rebellion will conclude its ‘Autumn Uprising’ protests on Saturday, October 19th.
George Soros Emerges as Major Funder of ‘Global Climate Strike’ Groups
George Soros financed radical environmental groups partnering in this week’s “Global Climate Strike” to the tune of nearly $25 million, according to a new report.
At least 22 of the left-wing activist groups listed as partners in the Global Climate Strike received $24,854,592 in funding from liberal billionaire George Soros between 2000-2017 through his Open Society Network, Joseph Vazquez reported Thursday for the Media Research Center.
Though ostensibly ignited by the protests of 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, the Global Climate Strike has borne from the outset the indelible fingerprints of well-funded, radical environmental activists. As it turns out, much of the funding has been coming from professional disrupter George Soros.
Among the organizations receiving Soros funding were Fund for Global Human Rights, Global Greengrants Fund, 350.org, Amnesty International, Avaaz, Color of Change, and People’s Action. Each of these groups has climate-related agendas and goals spanning from reducing global carbon emissions to less than 350 parts per million and 100 percent “clean energy,” to the elimination of new fossil fuel projects and a “green civil rights movement.”
Other major donors have included Democrat presidential candidate Tom Steyer’s NextGen America as well as the Sierra Club, which has reportedly received millions from former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
The group 350.org, founded by Bill McKibben in 2008, has fought against coal power in India as well as tried to stop the Keystone XL pipeline in the U.S.
While kids were marching, singing, and twerking for the Global Climate Strike, a group of more than 500 scientists and professionals appealed to the United Nations for a long overdue, open debate on climate change.
“Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific,” the scientists stated in their declaration sent to the U.N. secretary general.
“Scientists should openly address the uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real benefits as well as the imagined costs of adaptation to global warming, and the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of mitigation,” they said.
The signers also insisted that public policy must respect scientific and economic realities and not just reflect the most fashionable trend of the day.
“There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm,” they noted. “We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050.”
“If better approaches emerge, and they certainly will, we have ample time to reflect and adapt. The aim of international policy should be to provide reliable and affordable energy at all times, and throughout the world,” they said.
Soros Gave Global Climate Strike Partners More than $24M
Listen to the Article!
By Joseph Vazquez | September 26, 2019 4:55 PM EDT
While 16-year-old Greta Thunberg has become the face of the climate strike movement, it's no longer gatherings of children. A litany of well-funded, left-wing activist groups have partnered to generate a week of climate protests known as the “Global Climate Strike:” Sept 20, through 27, bookending the U.N. climate conference.
At least 22 of those partners have been funded by liberal billionaire George Soros who spends nearly $1 billion a year on groups pushing a variety of left-wing causes. Together, 22 organizations listed as international or North American partners of the Global Climate Strike received at least $24,854,592 from Soros’ Open Society Network between 2000-2017.
The liberal media celebrated Thunberg’s arrival in New York and the global protests held Sept. 20, and will likely to do the same for the second round. ABC’s Maggi Rulli shrieked, “Now, look at what her movement has become!” MSNBC even promoted grotesque gestures such as German protesters “simulated hangings.” calling it a “striking visual message to push for action.” Berliners stood on ‘ice blocks with nooses around their necks. A stark call for change before it's too late,” reported MSNBC’s Yasmin Vossoughian on Sept. 20.
Strikes are scheduled in 150 countries for Sept. 27. Undoubtedly, the promotion and partnership of hundreds of liberal groups including 350.org (which hosts the Global Climate Strike website), EarthJustice and Friends of the Earth helped the strikes balloon in size. The Sept. 20, strikes drew around 4 million activists, with 2,500 protests scheduled in 163 countries around the globe, according to Vox. Democratic candidate Tom Steyer’s NextGen America was also a partner, along with the Sierra Club which has gotten millions from former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
In recent years, Soros funding went to at least 22 of those partnering groups including 350.org, Amnesty International, Avaaz, Color of Change and People’s Action. Those groups had various climate-related agendas from reducing global carbon emissions to less than 350 parts per million, campaigning for 100 percent “clean energy,” banning new fossil fuel projects to a “green civil rights movement.”
Eco-doomsayer Bill McKibben founded 350 in 2008. The name of the organization comes from its desired carbon emissions goal of less than 350 parts per million — current emissions levels are already at 415 ppm. McKibben’s past climate predictions were so extreme even Scientific American called him out in 2011, for being “overheated” and”fear-mongering.” The group fought against coal power in India, tried to stop the Keystone XL pipeline in the U.S. and has promoted fossil fuel divestment.
Known more for its pro-abortion, pro-gun control, LGBTQ rights advocacy and opposition to Israel, Amnesty International was another Soros-funded strike partner. Its website confirmed it “will be taking part in the climate strikes,” because “Human rights are intimately linked with climate change because of its devastating effect on not just the environment but our own wellbeing.”
Lesser-known group, Avaaz is a “global ‘e-advocacy’ nonprofit organization whose chief function is to promote leftwing political agendas through Web-based movement-building and campaigns,” according to Discover The Networks. One Avaaz campaign gathered petition signatures to bring the world’s societies and economies to 100 percent clean energy by 2050.
It warned, “one top scientist just warned that we are all ‘f*cked’ if global warming releases gigantic amounts of methane gas from the arctic tundra.” The group hoped to make it the “largest Avaaz petition ever.”
Online organizing group Color of Change was founded by liberal CNN host and former “green jobs czar” for the Obama Administration Van Jones and James Rucker, former director of grassroots mobilization for MoveOn.org.
According to Influence Watch, Color of Change “run campaigns that seek to attack conservative individuals, silence conservative media pundits, and defund conservative organizations.” But it’s also active on climate issues, advocating for “race-based environmentalist legislation.”
According to its own website, “Black communities and other communities of color are left vulnerable to the worst effects of climate change and environmental racism.” It also accused the Republican Party of “standing in the way of progress.”
In a 2017 op-ed written by Andy Murdock for the University of California’s Carbon Neutrality Initiative, Jones argued that “a 21st century civil rights movement has to be a green civil rights movement.”
People’s Action is a liberal 501(c)(4) lobbying arm that advocates for healthcare for all, free college for all, and extreme environmentalist policies like “banning all new fossil fuel and extractive energy projects.”
It also wants a “good Green Jobs program that would target communities of color, low-income communities, environmental justice communities, fossil fuel communities, returning citizens and other communities that would benefit from green jobs most for integrated jobs training and placement.”
Methodology:
MRC Business relied on funding details and donation information from Soros’ Open Society Network (Foundation to Promote Open Society, Open Society Foundations, Open Society Institute, Alliance for Open Society International Inc. and Open Society Policy Center) on organization websites, Influence Watch and records in Foundation Directory for this analysis.
Shocking memo reveals George Soros behind Google, Facebook censorship
Joseph Farah
August 27, 2018 (WorldNetDaily.com) - You can't make this stuff up.
Never, even in my fertile imagination, would I have guessed that we would find a smoking-gun 49-page memo revealing how George Soros operatives, including David Brock, were there at the genesis, the planning stages, with their hands on the ignition key, of the most concerted, well-funded, diabolical attack on free speech in the history of America.
But there it is.
Millions saw it on the DrudgeReport – including, no doubt, President Trump, Vice President Pence and Republican congressional leaders. But most Americans still know nothing of its existence – because it was not reported among the Big Media. They don't want you to know about it. They would be embarrassed if America found out how they have been used and manipulated – from their focus on "Russian collusion" to other wild conspiracy theories targeting their No. 1 villain, President Trump.
It was nothing short of a plan to turn Google, Facebook and other social media into hyper-partisan Democratic Party activists, promoters, cheerleaders, and off-the-books donors in an effort to turn the country into a one-party state.
And they're getting away with it, even though the beans have been spilled publicly. That's partly because, as I have pointed out before, Google-Facebook control the media. They use the media. They manipulate the media. They choose winners and losers among the media. That's real power that we have never seen before in American life.
The timing of this insidious plot is key. When did it begin? Right after Trump was inaugurated. That's when the attacks on the independent, alternative media — WND, Breitbart, et al. — began. We've been feeling the squeeze ever since — through politically skewed algorithms and speech codes.
The Google-Facebook-YouTube-Twitter-Amazon-Apple cabal is trying to ensure that we never have a free and fair election again in America. The "Russia-collusion" hoax is meant to take your eye off the real collusion by un-American, anti-free speech radical political activists.
Do you get it now?
Do you understand what I have been warning about furiously since January of this year?
Read the whole memo, if you have the stomach for it.
These people are crazed, shameless and hell-bent on fundamentally transforming America from a free and open society to one that is dominated by mega-corporations who want to control everything – mostly you and how you think and behave.
Now, what do we do about it?
Recognize the battle the Trump administration finds itself in. This plot was designed to stop him. It's as close to a coup attempt as anything devised by the Deep State rear guard. So, they devised a scheme to attack those in the independent, alternative media that helped get him elected by countering their lies. They determined to do that by killing the messengers – and they are very close to accomplishing that objective.
Pray that the president, the vice president and Republican congressional leaders challenge the "Speech Code Cartel" while they still can or else America will find itself in a cultural and political endgame, on the verge of tyranny.
Support those being hurt most right now, those fighting for survival, in the independent, alternative media with your prayers and financial support. Their traffic and revenues have been stolen from them by the powerful leftist social media cabal and their speech-code cops in the Southern Poverty Law Center.
This article first appeared on WorldNetDaily and is re-published with permission.
__________________________________________________ _________________
Mask off! Social-media censor king revealed
Plotted with Google, Facebook to eliminate 'right wing propaganda'
Art Moore Published August 20, 2018 at 8:41pm
The recent wave of censorship of conservative voices on the internet by tech giants Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Apple mirrors a plan concocted by a coalition of George Soros-funded, progressive groups to take back power in Washington from President Trump's administration.
A confidential, 49-page memo for defeating Trump by working with the major social-media platforms to eliminate "right wing propaganda and fake news" was presented in January 2017 by Media Matters founder David Brock at a retreat in Florida with about 100 donors, the Washington Free Beacon reported at the time.
On Monday, the Gateway Pundit blog noted the memo's relationship with recent moves by Silicon Valley tech giants to "shadow ban" conservative political candidates and pundits and remove content.
The Free Beacon obtained a copy of the memo, "Democracy Matters: Strategic Plan for Action," by attending the retreat.
The memo spells out a four-year agenda that deployed Media Matters along with American Bridge, Shareblue and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) to attack Trump and Republicans.
The strategies are impeachment, expanding Media Matters' mission to combat "government misinformation," ensuring Democratic control of the Senate in the 2018 midterm elections, filing lawsuits against the Trump administration, monetizing political advocacy, using a "digital attacker" to delegitimize Trump's presidency and damage Republicans, and partnering with Facebook to combat "fake news."
Quashing 'fake news' with 'mathematical precision'
The Free Beacon in its January 2017 story said Brock sought to raise $40 million in 2017 for his organizations.
The document claims Media Matters and far-left groups have "access to raw data from Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites" so they can "systemically monitor and analyze this unfiltered data."
"The earlier we can identify a fake news story, the more effectively we can quash it," the memo states. "With this new technology at our fingertips, researchers monitoring news in real time will be able to identify the origins of a lie with mathematical precision, creating an early warning system for fake news and disinformation."
Media Matters met with Facebook, which boasts some 2 billion members worldwide, to discuss how to crack down on fake news, according to the memo.
The social media giant was provided with "a detailed map of the constellation of right-wing Facebook pages that had been the biggest purveyors of fake news."
Brock's memo also says Media Matters gave Google "the information necessary to identify 40 of the worst fake new sites" so they could be banned from Google's advertising network.
The Gateway Pundit pointed out that in 2016, Google carried out that plan on the Gateway Pundit blog and other conservative sites, including Breitbart, the Drudge Report, ********, Zero Hedge and Conservative Treehouse.
Facebook, meanwhile has changed its newsfeed algorithm, ostensibly to combat "fake news," causing a precipitous decline in traffic for many conservative sites.
President Donald Trump himself was affected, with his engagement on Facebook dropping by 45 percent.
A study in June by Gateway Pundit found Facebook had eliminated 93 percent of the traffic of top conservative news outlets.
Western Journal, in its own study, found that while left-wing publishers saw a roughly 2 percent increase in web traffic from Facebook following the algorithm changes, conservative sites saw a loss of traffic averaging around 14 percent.
'Totalitarian impulse' of the left
President Trump's 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, charged last week the giants of Silicon Valley are stifling free speech, particularly conservative speech, manifesting the "inherent totalitarian impulse" of the left.
On Friday, Facebook appeared to be "shadow banning" the non-profit education site PragerU, founded by talk-host Dennis Prager, causing a drop in engagement of 99.9999 percent while removing two videos regarded as "hate speech."
After Facebook rejected a highly inspirational ad for a Republican congressional candidate that included images depicting her parents' persecution under the Khmer Rouge communist regime in Cambodia, Twitter followed up with its own ban.
WND reported earlier this month Facebook banned a pro-life video ad by a judicial candidate, giving the same explanation.
On Aug. 6, WND reported, Facebook, YouTube and Apple banned commentator Alex Jones and his ******** website within hours of each other.
Last month, WND reported moderate Muslims and counter-terrorist activists were increasingly being restricted by Silicon Valley, while terrorist content remains on social-media platforms, according to researchers.
Trump campaign chief Parscale said last week the banning of Jones "will inevitably lead to the silencing of those with far less controversial opinions."
"What we are seeing in Big Tech is the inherent totalitarian impulse of the Left come into full focus," Parscale said.
Read the Confidential David Brock Memo Outlining Plans to Attack Trump
Memo was handed out to big money liberal donors at posh Florida retreat
Joe Schoffstall - JANUARY 26, 2017 1:31 PM
David Brock, the seasoned liberal operative and Clinton loyalist who founded Media Matters, huddled with more than 100 donors last weekend at the swanky Turnberry Isle Resort in Aventura, Fla. to map out how Democrats will "kick Donald Trump's ass."
The Washington Free Beacon attended the retreat and obtained David Brock's private and confidential memorandum from the meeting. The memo, "Democracy Matters: Strategic Plan for Action," outlines Brock's four-year agenda to attack Trump and Republicans using Media Matters, American Bridge, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), and Shareblue.
Brock sought to raise $40 million in 2017 for his organizations, and hoped the retreat would lead to the creation of a liberal donor network to rival the network of the conservative Koch brothers.
Extinction Rebellion's true target is not climate: It's idea that heterosexuality is 'normal'
'We need to cure the causes of the infection, not just alleviate the symptoms'
WND Staff By WND Staff
Published October 20, 2019 at 4:03pm
A founder of a radical group pushing the theory that mankind is causing catastrophic global warming has confessed the true objective of his movement.
It's not about drastically curbing carbon emissions to save the planet.
It is about destroying the "delusion" of "heteronormativity," the idea that heterosexuality is normal.
And the "delusion" of "white supremacy," "eurocentrism," "patriarchy" and "class hierarchy."
Stuart Basden, a founder of the Extinction Rebellion movement, boasts he was one of 15 people in 2018 who launched the "rebellion."
"I was a coordinator of one of the original five working groups, and I've been organizing with XR day-and-night since then (frugally living off my savings so I don’t have to work, having quit an industry that paid me £1000/week)," he said.
The organization claims to be a nonviolent global environmental movement with the stated aim of using "civil disobedience to compel government action."
It has delivered a list of "demands" to the United Kingdom, including to "declare" a climate emergency, eliminate all greenhouse gas emissions and let a "Citizens' Assembly" impose "ecological justice" on society.
First, Basden admits that the climate is "breaking down" but it won't be fixed.
"We're facing imminent societal collapse (whatever that means), both around the world and in the UK. All of our lives are soon going to radically change," he said. "None of this is particularly controversial. When a bus is driving with a certain momentum towards a person, it gets clearer and clearer that it will hit the person. After a certain point, it's inevitable. And that’s where we stand now, with regards to the momentum of climatic change."
But he said his "rebellion" movement isn't about climate, because that's a symptom of a system he believes has to be destroyed.
Then he lists the "delusions" he says are at fault:
"The delusion of white-supremacy centers whiteness and the experience of white people, constructing and perpetuating the myth that white people and their lives are somehow inherently better and more valuable than people of color," he writes.
"The delusion of patriarchy centers the male experience, and excludes/hinders female assigned people from public life (reducing them to a possession or object for ownership or consumption). Patriarchy teaches dominating and competitive behaviors, and emphasizes the idea that the world is a place of scarcity, separation and powerlessness.
"The delusions of Eurocentrism include the notion that Europeans know what is best for the world," he writes.
And, he said, "The delusions of hetero-sexism/heteronormativity propagate the idea that heterosexuality is ‘normal’ and that other expressions of sexuality are deviant. The delusions of class hierarchy uphold the theory that the rich elite are better/smarter/nobler than the rest of us, and make therefore better decisions."
Summit News reported his ideas drew a reaction.
"Wait, what?" the commentary said. "Basden asserts that whatever climate problems exist can’t be fixed and that the movement should instead be focused on tearing down the entire system of western capitalism (China, the world's biggest polluter, isn't mentioned once)."
"So it's not about climate change, it's about ending the idea that heterosexuality is the default biological breeding setting for humankind," the commentary said. "Ok, then."
Explains Basden: "We need to cure the causes of the infection, not just alleviate the symptoms. To focus on the climate’s breakdown (the symptom) without focusing attention on these toxic delusions (the causes) is a form a denialism. Worse, it’s a racist and sexist form of denialism, that takes away from the necessary focus of the need for all of us to de-colonise our selves."
He warns the "insanity" of colonizers continues today, and then explains he means no disrespect to those "who have been labeled 'insane' by a normative system, nor who identify as being 'insane.'"
He said he was issuing a "call to the XR community to never say we’re a climate movement. Because we’re not. We’re a Rebellion. And we’re rebelling to highlight and heal from the insanity that is leading to our extinction. Now tell the truth and act like it."
December 3rd, 2019, 02:07
vector7
Re: Soros's Progressive Cabal with Democrats to Weaken America
Media Matters Expands Mission to Combat Government ‘Misinformation’
Dark money group to target administration officials in significant shift
Lachlan Markay - JANUARY 20, 2017 11:30 AM
AVENTURA, Fla.—The left-wing Media Matters for America plans to expand its opposition research operation beyond its traditional focus on media to directly combat statements from the incoming Trump administration, according to internal documents.
The dark money group will continue to attack conservatives in the press, but it will also take on what it calls "misinformation" emanating from public officials, a significant expansion of the 12-year-old group's mission.
"Media Matters must be fully prepared to identify misinformation coming from government and fight it at every turn—both directly and indirectly by prodding journalists to scrutinize federal claims," the group wrote in a briefing book provided to current and prospective donors and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The donor pitch was handed out at an ongoing conference in Aventura, Fla., this weekend, where Media Matters founder David Brock has assembled deep-pocketed allies to plot strategy under a Donald Trump administration.
According to the briefing materials, Media Matters is seeking $13.4 million in funding in 2017 to support a staff of 81, including a new "dedicated team of media analysts" devoted to tracking statements by Trump and members of his administration.
The donor pitch portrays the newly sworn-in president as a uniquely malignant source of misinformation.
"What happens when the most dangerous source of misinformation is no longer right-wing radio hosts or Fox News, but the federal government itself?" the group asks.
"The notion that the United States government under Donald Trump could become a source of misinformation is not far-fetched—and in fact seems all but inevitable," it warns. "Media Matters is prepared to confront the United States government under a proven and dangerous dissembler."
In addition to directly challenging the administration, the group will work to affect White House policy governing media treatment and access. The donor pitch mentions efforts to "defend standard practices" in areas such as the presidential press pool and White House media credentialing.
Those issues recently caused tensions between Trump and the White House press corps, after his transition team suggested that it might relocate the press briefing room to a larger area.
Media Matters senior fellow Matt Gertz called the move an "insidious" effort "to flood White House press briefings with sycophants and propagandists."
After a media backlash, Trump reversed that decision, but said that he will "just have to pick the people to go into the room."
As it works to affect White House policy towards the press, Media Matters also hopes to ensure that reporters remain hostile to the new president.
"Media Matters will be vigilant in holding news media accountable for even the slightest bit of normalization of Trump," the donor pitch states.
Free Beacon reporter Joe Schoffstall contributed to this report.
Top Far Left Organizations Bragged About Working with Facebook and Twitter to Censor and Eliminate Conservative Content
Jim Hoft by Jim Hoft August 20, 2018 246 Comments
In January 2017 after Hillary Clinton was shellacked in the November 2016 election top Democrat operatives at Media Matters, Share Blue, American Bridge, and CREW came together and released their two-year plan to take back power in Washington DC.
Share Blue is a far left website that works with the Democrat party and claims to reach 140 million people a month.
The Washington Free Beacon obtained a copy of this document
The Free Beacon published this lengthy document by David Brock, the founder of Soros-funded Media Matters website, from a January donor retreat.
The 49 page memo outlined how the George Soros-funded groups Media Matters, American Bridge, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and Shareblue planned to undermine President Trump’s agenda and help Democrats win control of Congress and the White House by 2020.
On page two of the plan these top far left organizations announced their strategy.
They will work with the tech giants to eliminate “right wing propaganda and fake news.”
It is right there on page 2: (see image)
The document then claims that Media Matters and far left groups have “access to raw data from Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites” so they can “systemically monitor and analyze this unfiltered data.”
According to their report these far left groups have been working with Facebook and Twitter to eliminate conservative content.
Via The Daily Wire:
“The earlier we can identify a fake news story, the more effectively we can quash it,” the memo states. “With this new technology at our fingertips, researchers monitoring news in real time will be able to identify the origins of a lie with mathematical precision, creating an early warning system for fake news and disinformation.”
The memo went on to state that Media Matters had a discussion with Facebook on how to crack down on fake news, including Media Matters providing the social media giant with “a detailed map of the constellation of right-wing Facebook pages that had been the biggest purveyors of fake news.” The memo also bragged that Media Matters provided Google with “the information necessary to identify 40 of the worst fake new sites” that would be prevented from using Google’s advertising network.
And this is exactly what happened.
In 2016 The Gateway Pundit was one of the few conservative sites that supported candidate Trump – along with Breitbart, The Drudge Report, ********, Zero Hedge, Conservative Treehouse and several others.
In 2017 Harvard and Columbia Journalism Review found that The Gateway Pundit was the 4th most influential conservative news source in the 2016 election.
Because of this we were targeted and have seen our numbers related to Facebook and Twitter decline dramatically.
This had nothing to do with the quality of our posts as we have proof that our generic numbers are up and and continue to increase.
In February Facebook launched another algorithm change to their platform. With the changes we saw our traffic dwindle even further.
We weren’t the only ones to be affected. The algorithmic change caused President Donald Trump’s engagement on Facebook posts to plummet a whopping 45%.
In contrast, according to Breitbart’s Allum Bokhari, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) do not appear to have suffered a comparable decline in Facebook engagement.
Facebook took our money for advertising and promised a fair playing field. Facebook lied to us and every conservative group in America. And, according to far left groups, Facebook is working with liberal organizations to eliminate conservative content.
A recent Pew Study found that 71% of Americans see how tech giants are censoring political content.
And they are. (see image)
A Gateway Pundit June study of top conservative news outlets found that Facebook has eliminated 93% of traffic to top conservative websites.
Facebook began eliminating conservative content after the 2016 election.
Monday, December 02, 2019
New Koch-Soros foreign policy think tank headed by Iran deal advocates
D.C.’s newest foreign policy think tank, funded by libertarian Charles Koch and left-wing George Soros, was co-founded by a nonprofit leader who was integral to the passage of the controversial Iran nuclear deal.
Trita Parsi and the group's other four co-founders, Andrew Bacevich, Stephen Wertheim, Eli Clifton, and Suzanne DiMaggio, are all pro-Iran deal advocates, as well as harsh critics of U.S. foreign policy and of Israel.
Parsi, the founder of the National Iranian American Council and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, was a prominent and instrumental go-between for the governments of Iran and the U.S. during the nuclear deal negotiations.
The U.S. entered the controversial nuclear deal with the Iranian regime under the Obama administration in 2015, and President Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018, calling it “defective at its core.”
Proponents of the deal pointed to the limitations that it put on Iranian uranium enrichment in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. Opponents of the agreement said that it gave billions to the Iranian regime without addressing problems such as Iran’s support for international terrorism.
Parsi wrote in 2017 that he was consulted by the U.S. government during the Iran deal negotiations while in close communication with the Iranian regime, too.
“It wasn’t unusual for me to attend a briefing at the White House a few days before a round of negotiations and then have a two-hour conversation with the Iranian foreign minister in his private hotel room in the midst of negotiations a few days later,” Parsi said, referring to Javad Zarif.
The new Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, funded with $500,000 each from the libertarian and left-wing billionaires, says it is named for President John Quincy Adams, who said that America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.”
The new think tank was announced earlier this week in an op-ed which said the new group “is one of the most remarkable partnerships in modern American political history” and that Koch and Soros believe “the United States must end its ‘forever war’ and adopt an entirely new foreign policy.”
Koch has given millions to right-leaning causes through the Charles Koch Institute, which also advocates a noninterventionist foreign policy. Soros, a strident critic of U.S. foreign policy, has given billions to left-wing causes around the world through his Open Society Foundations.
Soros also helped bankroll pro-Iran deal lobbying efforts, donating tens of thousands of dollars in an effort to promote the agreement. Soros' organizations donated to the Ploughshares Fund, which Obama foreign policy adviser Ben Rhodes credited as part of the "echo chamber" the administration created to convince Congress and the press to back the deal. Ploughshares has also funded Parsi's nonprofit organization.
Zarif, one of the most influential advocates for the Iran deal, has also reportedly spoken about his long-time relationship working with some Soros groups. Parsi slammed “Trump's sabotage of the Iran deal” earlier this year and has praised Zarif’s political acumen, painting him as a moderate alternative to extremists within the Iranian regime.
Parsi has long been dogged by claims that he and NIAC are working on behalf of Iran, accusations which he has denied. Parsi and NIAC filed a libel lawsuit, later thrown out by a federal judge, against writer Seid Hassan Daioleslam over his claims that Parsi and NIAC were agents of the Iranian regime.
Parsi's co-founders also have ties to the controversial agreement.
Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army colonel and professor at Boston University, was a signatory to a 2016 report prepared by Parsi’s group, which advocated for the Iran deal as a way to resolve tensions with Iran and stabilize the Middle East.
Stephen Wertheim, a professor at Columbia University, believes the Iran nuclear deal was "a major diplomatic achievement" and critiqued "neoconservative" groups who "trashed" the agreement.
Eli Clifton, a contributing editor at the left-wing foreign policy website Lobe Log and a fellow at liberal magazine The Nation, was harshly critical of Trump’s decision to withdraw from the deal, and suggested last year that Trump withdrew at the behest of three wealthy Jewish donors, Sheldon Adelson, Bernard Marcus, and Paul Singer.
Clifton has come under criticism from conservatives for his work appearing on the pro-Palestinian Electronic Intifada website, although the site said that Clifton had not submitted articles to them. Since then, Clifton has approvingly shared links to the Electronic Intifada’s promotion of Al-Jazeera’s controversial anti-Israel documentary The Lobby.
Suzanne DiMaggio, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is a foreign policy adviser for Vermont senator and Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders. DiMaggio directed New America’s U.S.-Iran Initiative, which published articles in favor of the Iran deal.
DiMaggio was a featured speaker at a pro-Iran deal town hall put on by Sanders in May 2018, along with Ploughshares Fund President Joe Cirincione.
And DiMaggio recently defended Iran’s decision to breach the limits on nuclear fuel placed on it by the Iran deal.
“If you keep poking a bear, eventually it is going to hit back,” DiMaggio tweeted. “The nuclear deal was so thorough that it left Tehran with practically no bargaining chips if talks were to begin again. This move is a first step in creating leverage.”
December 17th, 2019, 16:38
vector7
Re: Soros's Progressive Cabal with Democrats to Weaken America
Peeling back the Deep State Veneer: Over $5Billion in State Department US Tax $ gets funneled to Leftist Soros NGO's, Giuliani admits to forcing out Yovanovitch, 'She's corrupt' (9:22)
Rudy Giuliani is grinning like the Cheshire cat. His standard smile.
For the past several weeks, the personal attorney to President Trump has been in Ukraine, interviewing witnesses and gathering evidence to shed light on what the Bidens were up to during the Obama years, and get to the bottom of claims that Kiev interfered in the 2016 US election in favor of Hillary Clinton. He has enlisted the help of former Ukrainian diplomat, Andriy Telizhenko, to gather information from politicians and ask them to participate in a documentary series in partnership with One America News Network (OANN) - which will make the case for investigating the Bidens as well as Burisma Holdings - the natural gas firm which employed the son of a sitting US Vice President in a case which reeks of textbook corruption.
According to the Journal, Giuliani will present findings from his self-described "secret assignment" in a 20-page report.
(Note the Wall Street Journal's use of a straw man when they write: "The allegations of Ukrainian election interference are at odds with findings by the U.S. intelligence community that Russia was behind the election interference."
Apparently the three journalists who collaborated on the article didn't get the memo that two countries can meddle at the same time, nor did any of them read the January, 2017 Politico article: Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire - which outlines how Ukrainian government officials conspired with a DNC operative to hurt the Trump campaign during the 2016 election - a move which led to the disruptive ouster of campaign chairman Paul Manafort).
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...rudy%20and.jpg Rudy Giuliani’s trip to Kyiv this month, which he described as a “secret assignment,” included a meeting with Ukrainian lawmaker Andriy Derkach. PHOTO: PRESS OFFICE OF ANDRIY DERKACH/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Telizhenko, the former diplomat, tells the Journal that the plan for the series was conceived during the impeachment hearings as a way for Giuliani to tell his side of the story. The former Ukrainian diplomat flew to Washington on November 20 to film with Giuliani, while in early December he accompanied America's Mayor on the Kiev trip - stopping in Budapest, Vienna and Rome.
Rudy comes home
Upon his return to New York on Saturday, Giuliani says he took a call from President Trump while his plane was still taxiing down the runway, according to the Wall Street Journal.
"What did you get?" Trump asked. "More than you can imagine," answered the former New York mayor who gained notoriety in the 1980s for taking down the mob as a then-federal prosecutor.
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b...and%20rudy.jpg
According to the 77-year-old Giuliani, Trump instructed him to brief Attorney General William Barr and GOP lawmakers on his findings. Soon after, the president then told reporters at the White House, "I hear he has found plenty."
Rudy has been working on this project for a while. In late January, he conducted phone interviews with former Ukrainian prosecutors Viktor Shokin and Yiury Lutsenko. On the call was George Boyle - Giuliani's Chief Operating Officer and Director of Investigations. Boyle started as a NYPD beat cop in 1987, and was promoted to detective - eventually joining the Special Victims Squad. In short, the ever-grinning Giuliani has some serious professionals working on this.
"When he believes he’s right, he loves taking on fights," said longtime Giuliani friend, Tony Carbonetti.
That said, Giuliani's efforts have not gone off without a hitch. In October, two associates - Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, both of whom assisted with his Ukraine investigation, were related in October on campaign-finance charges. Both men have pleaded not guilty, while Giuliani denies wrongdoing and says they did not lobby him. Parnas, notably, was also on the January call with Shokin and Lutsenko as a translator.
In pressing ahead on Ukraine, Mr. Giuliani has replaced the translation skills of Messrs. Parnas and Fruman with an app he downloaded that allows him to read Russian documents by holding his phone over them. But on his recent trip, he said, “despite whatever else you can say, I missed them.” -Wall Street Journal
Trump opponents insist Giuliani is conducting shadow foreign policy and orchestrated the ouster of former US Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch - who Ukraine's new president Volodomyr Zelensky complained on a now-famous July 25 phone call accused of not recognizing his authority.
"Just having fun while Dems and friends try to destroy my brilliant career," Giuliani wrote in a text message while
conducting his investigation overseas.
Recent comments made by the acting Ukrainian Prosecutor during Yovonovitch’s Appointment to Ukraine signal that she may have requested him to avoid investigating Biden and the Ukraine-based Soros Group AntAc, a known financial supporter of the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign. Did the Obama Appointed Ambassador attempt to influence Ukraine’s independent investigations? Judicial Watch is determined to find out exactly what happened, read below to discover how this new investigation is inspiring the media to fight corruption too.
Ukraine Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko told The New York Times that Yovanovitch “pressed him not to prosecute anti-corruption activists.” Lutsenko previously reportedly said the do-not-prosecute list included a founder of the Ukraine group Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC), which was funded by George Soros foundations and the U.S. federal government.
Read More Here.
Consider that former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch asked the State Department to compile a watchlist of American citizens and monitor them on social media and other means. Solomon and Giuliani were on that list, too, as were Fox anchors Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, according to a Judicial Watch lawsuit that said the State Department deemed Yovanovitch’s request illegal.
Government oversight group Judicial Watch is suing the State Department for documents related to former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information lawsuit to obtain a list of corrupt Ukrainian officials allegedly protected by Yovanovitch.
The implied message to Ukraine’s prosecutors was clear: Don’t target AntAC in the middle of an American presidential election in which Soros was backing Hillary Clinton to succeed another Soros favorite, Barack Obama, Ukrainian officials said. Recently, Rudy Giuliani stated that AntAC “was co-funded by the Obama administration and far-left billionaire financier George Soros,” and “was ironically under investigation for alleged corruption.
Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch testifies before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Nov. 15, 2019, during the second public impeachment hearing of President Donald Trump's efforts to tie U.S. aid for Ukraine to investigations of his political opponents. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)'s efforts to tie U.S. aid for Ukraine to investigations of his political opponents. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)"]https://media.breitbart.com/media/2019/11/AP_19319612733471-1-640x480.jpg[/IMG]Alex Brandon/AP PhotoTOM FITTON9 Dec 2019
3:00
As the coup abuse against President Trump accelerates, Judicial Watch focuses on the real Ukraine collusion scandal.
We just sued the State Department for documents related to a reported “untouchables list” given by former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch to Ukraine Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko in late 2016 (Judicial Watch vs. U.S. Department of State) (No. 1:19-cv-03563).
Lutsenko recently toldThe New York Times that Yovanovitch “pressed him not to prosecute anti-corruption activists.” Lutsenko previously reportedly said the do-not-prosecute list included a founder of the Ukraine group Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC), which was funded by George Soros foundations and the U.S. federal government, and two members of the Ukrainian Parliament who vocally supported the Soros group’s agenda:
The implied message to Ukraine’s prosecutors was clear: Don’t target AntAC in the middle of an American presidential election in which Soros was backing Hillary Clinton to succeed another Soros favorite, Barack Obama, Ukrainian officials said.
Recently, Rudy Giuliani stated that AntAC “was co-funded by the Obama administration and far-left billionaire financier George Soros,” and “was ironically under investigation for alleged corruption, namely a ‘misplaced’ $4.4 million in U.S. funds designated to ‘fight corruption inside the former Soviet republic,’ during the 2016 presidential election in America.”
Amb. Yovanovitch, who was recalled from her Ukraine post in May of this year by President Donald Trump, was a key witness for Democrats last month in their public impeachment hearings. Yovanovitch denied providing any do-not-prosecute “list.”
We filed our FOIA lawsuit here in DC after the State Department failed to respond to our September 24, 2019, FOIA request for:
All records of communication between the Department of State and any representative of the Ukrainian government regarding any actual or proposed investigation or prosecution of the AntAC; the International Renaissance Foundation [Open Society Foundations’ office in Ukraine]; and/or Transparency International.
All records concerning any meeting or telephonic conversation between former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko.
All records related to the list of individuals and entities provided to Lutsenko by Yovanovitch in late 2016.
Amb. Yovanovitch is on our radar for a number of issues. On October 9, 2019, we filed a FOIA request for State Department records related to the possibly illegal collection of information by Yovanovitch on prominent conservative figures, journalists and persons with ties to President Donald Trump.
Reports suggest that the Ukrainian Embassy was a hotbed of anti-Trump, Deep State activism and tried to promote and protect leftist allies in Ukraine and the United States. As the coup attack on President Trump continues, this new federal lawsuit is designed to get to the real truth of the Deep State’s games in Ukraine.
Senator Lindsey Graham, Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, has announced a hearing on Ukraine featuring former New York Mayor and President Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani.
In announcing the proposed, but not yet scheduled, hearing Senator Graham said, “I have heard on numerous occasions disturbing allegations by Rudy Giuliani about corruption in Ukraine and the many improprieties surrounding the firing of former Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.
“Given the House of Representatives’ behavior, it is time for the Senate to inquire about corruption and other improprieties involving Ukraine.
“Therefore, I will offer to Mr. Giuliani the opportunity to come before the Senate Judiciary Committee to inform the Committee of his concerns.”
What we hope Mr. Giuliani will do is reiterate before the Senate Judiciary Committee what he told John Roberts of Fox News back on September 22, 2019.
For a refresher, or eye opener if you haven’t it before, here is a partial transcript:
…what I'm talking about, this, it's Ukrainian collusion, which was large, significant, and proven with Hillary Clinton, with the Democratic National Committee, a woman named Chalupa, with the ambassador, with an FBI agent who's now been hired by George Soros who was funding a lot of it.
When Biden got the prosecutor fired, the new prosecutor, who Biden approved -- you don't get to approve a prosecutor in a foreign country, unless something fishy is going on.
The new prosecutor dropped the case, not just on Biden's kid and the crooked company that Biden's kid work for, Burisma. That was done as a matter of record in October of 2016, after the guy got tanked.
He also dropped the case on George Soros' company called AntAC. AntAC is the company where there's documentary evidence that they were producing false information about Trump, about Biden. Fusion GPS was there.
Go back and listen to Nellie Ohr's testimony. Nellie Ohr says that there was a lot of contract between Democrats and the Ukraine.
Well, I have all the contacts. And, John, when the rest of this comes out, and when you look at China and the $1.5 billion that the -- that the Biden family took out of China while that guy was negotiating for us, this will be a lot bigger than Spiro Agnew.
They have fallen into a trap.
Later in the interview Mayor Giuliani clarifies how the whole Biden influence peddling operation works:
…This began with someone coming to me saying, this information can clear your client about the corruption in Ukraine between the Ukraine, the Democratic Party, the ambassador, and the FBI agent who investigated the case.
ROBERTS: But it then -- but then it morphs into Biden.
GIULIANI: And -- inextricably combined, because Biden had the guy fired, Shokin.
By the way, his statement is on record. The lazy press could go read it. They don't have to listen to me. There are three videotapes of prosecutors on record, available on here, that nobody has covered for five months, because this town protects Joe Biden.
His family has been taking money from his public office for years, $1.5 billion from China, when our vice president is supposed to be impartially and independently negotiating for us? And the kid, he takes him on Air Force Two to China, and the kid...
ROBERTS: That was in 2013.
GIULIANI: Yes.
And the kid, unfortunately, is a drug addict. China didn't give $1.5 billion to his kid, Biden's kid, a recovering drug addict, Kerry's stepson, and Whitey Bulger's nephew.
Ladies and gentlemen, go look at what the press has been covering up on you.
The set of facts that Giuliani laid out are very much in line with those documented by FactCheck.org which we analyzed in our article, “Where’s Hunter?”
The same year that Barack Obama and Joe Biden took over the White House in 2009, a general partnership formed that brought together Hunter Biden, son of then-Vice President Joe Biden, Christopher Heinz, stepson of then-Sen. John Kerry (later to be Secretary of State), and Devon Archer, a classmate of Heinz’s from Yale.
As conservative author Peter Schweizer details in his book “Secret Empires,” Biden and Archer, along with James Bulger of the consultancy firm the Thornton Group, took several meetings in 2010 with high-profile business and government interests in China. As Rudy Giuliani has pointed out, James Bulger is the nephew of mobster Whitey Bulger and the son of former Massachusetts state Sen. Billy Bulger.
Schweizer came across an account of the meetings posted by the Thornton Group — in Chinese — in which Chinese executives expressed their “warm welcome” to the “Thornton Group, with its US partner Rosemont Seneca chairman Hunter Biden (second son of the now Vice President Joe Biden).” According to the Thornton Group’s account — a copy of which Schweizer emailed to FactCheck.org — the purpose of the meetings was to “explore the possibility of commercial cooperation and opportunity.”
So, Joe Biden becomes Obama’s “point man” on Ukraine and suddenly Hunter gets a $50,000 a month seat on the board of a controversial Ukrainian energy company. Then Biden takes his son Hunter to China and Hunter’s company later inks a billion-dollar deal with China, but there’s nothing illegal going on say, Biden and his attorneys.
We can understand how and why someone in China might want to do business with Christopher Heinz, he’s the son of the late Senator John Heinz and an heir to the multi-billion-dollar Heinz ketchup money – he can put skin in the game. But Hunter Biden? The only thing he could put in the game is his father’s name and access to his father’s influence. That may or may not be illegal, but it sure stinks of at least the appearance of corruption.
We hope the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with Rudy Giuliani comes off, but what we hope for even more fervently is a hearing with Hunter Biden that will give him the opportunity to explain what, beside his father’s name, he put into these foreign business ventures.
The toll-free Capitol Switchboard number (1-866-220-0044), we invite CHQ readers and friends to call Senator Lindsey Graham and urge him to subpoena Hunter Biden once he completes the Rudy Giuliani hearing.
One America News Investigates: Ukrainian Witnesses Destroy Schiff's Case (Part 3) RT- 56:00
In this special edition of One America News Investigates, Chanel Rion interviews several witnesses who destroy Adam Schiff's baseless impeachment case against President Trump. In a three part EXCLUSIVE report, Rudy Giuliani debunks the impeachment hoax and exposes Biden family corruption in Ukraine.
One America News Investigates: Ukrainian Witnesses Destroy Schiff's Case (Part 2) RT- 50:45
In this special edition of One America News Investigates, Chanel Rion interviews several witnesses who destroy Adam Schiff's baseless impeachment case against President Trump. In a three part EXCLUSIVE report, Rudy Giuliani debunks the impeachment hoax and exposes Biden family corruption in Ukraine.
One America News Investigates: Ukrainian Witnesses Destroy Schiff's Case (Part 1) RT- 52:15
In this special edition of One America News Investigates, Chanel Rion interviews several witnesses who destroy Adam Schiff's baseless impeachment case against President Trump. In a three part EXCLUSIVE report, Rudy Giuliani debunks the impeachment hoax and exposes Biden family corruption in Ukraine.
As the U.S. presidential race began roaring to life in 2016, authorities in the former Soviet republic of Latvia flagged a series of “ suspicious” financial transactions to Hunter Biden and other colleagues at a Ukrainian natural gas company and sought Kiev’s help investigating, according to documents and interviews.
The Feb. 18, 2016 alert to Ukraine came from the Latvian prosecutorial agency responsible for investigating money laundering, and it specifically questioned whether Vice President Joe Biden’s younger son and three other officials at Burisma Holdings were the potential beneficiaries of suspect funds.
“The Office for Prevention of Laundering of Proceeds Derived from Criminal Activity … is currently investigating suspicious activity of Burisma Holdings Limited,” the Latvian agency also known as the FIU wrote Ukraine’s financial authorities.
The memo was released to me by the Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s Office and confirmed by the Latvian embassy to the United States.
Latvian authorities said they did not get any incriminating information back from Ukraine to warrant further investigation and did not take additional action in 2016.
But the memo adds to the mounting evidence that there was ongoing investigative activity surrounding Burisma Holdings and Hunter Biden’s compensation as a board member in the weeks just before Joe Biden forced the firing of the Ukraine prosecutor overseeing the Burisma investigation in spring 2016.
The Latvian law enforcement memo identified a series of loan payments totaling about $16.6 million that were routed from companies in Beliz and the United Kingdom to Burisma through Ukraine’s PrivatBank between 2012 and 2015.
The flagged funds were “partially transferred” to Hunter Biden, a board member at Burisma since May 2014, and three other officials working for the Ukrainian natural gas company, the Latvian memo said.
The letter asked Ukrainian officials for any evidence about whether the funds were involved in corruption and whether Ukrainian officials were investigating Burisma and the recipients of the money.
“On the grounds of possible legalization of proceeds derived from criminal activity and corruption, please grant us permission to share the information included in the reply to this request with Latvian law enforcement entities for intelligence purposes only,” the letter said.
Arturs Saburovs, the Third Secretary at the Latvian embassy in Washington, confirmed his country flagged the transactions in February 2016 after seeing public reports that Burisma was under investigation in Ukraine and that Hunter Biden served on the company’s board. He said Latvia did not receive any evidence back from Ukraine to further its investigation.
“The Latvian FIU (Financial Intelligence Unit) is the institution which receives, processes, and analyses reports on banking transactions as well as conducts information exchange with foreign FIUs,” he explained. “If a matter comes to public attention as it did here, the FIU processes that information.
“In this case, the Latvian FIU reached out to its Ukrainian counterpart seeking additional clarifications,” he added. “Information was received, yet no incriminatory evidence for further analysis was provided by the Ukrainian authorities.”
Saburovs said authorities in his country could find no evidence they flagged the same transactions to U.S. authorities even though Hunter Biden and two others named in the letter were Americans and the U.S. firm, Rosemont Seneca Bohais that was connected to Hunter Biden, routinely received monthly payments totaling more than $166,600 from Burisma.
“We do not possess such information,” he said when asked about contacts with U.S. officials.
A lawyer for Hunter Biden and Joe Biden’s campaign did not respond to requests Monday seeking comment.
The Latvian correspondence adds to a growing body of evidence that questions and investigations of Burisma were swirling in early 2016 just before Joe Biden used his authority as vice president to force the firing of Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin in March 2016 by threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid.
Shokin was overseeing a wide-ranging Ukrainian investigation of Burisma and has said he was making plans to interview Hunter Biden when he was fired by Ukraine’s president and parliament in March 2016 under pressure from Joe Biden.
Biden and his defenders have said he forced the firing of Shokin because the Ukraine prosecutor was an ineffective corruption fighter; Shokin alleges he was dismissed because he wouldn’t end the Burisma probe.
The Biden family has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, with Jill Biden offering the latest defense of her son this past weekend. “I know my son. I know my son’s character. Hunter did nothing wrong. And that’s the bottom line,” she told MSNBC.
But recently, multiple State Department witnesses testified during the impeachment hearings against President Trump that Hunter Biden’s role at Burisma while his father oversaw U.S.-Ukraine policy as vice president created the appearance of a conflict of interest. One testified e even blocked a project with Burisma because State was concerned about allegations of corruption.
When I first divulged Joe Biden’s role in Shokin’s firing last year, Democrats and their allies in the media and Ukrainian civil society organizations claimed it was no big deal because the Burisma investigation in Ukraine was dormant at the time Biden took action.
But since that time, significant evidence has emerged that the investigation was, in fact, active and that Burisma itself had concerns about the corruption allegations swirling around it.
For instance, Ukrainian prosecutors confirmed in December 2015 they transferred their investigative files to detectives at the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine to pursue several leads.
On Feb. 2, 2016, the Ukraine prosecutor general’s office secured a court order to re-seize the assets of Burisma Holdings founder Mykola Zlochevsky. Officers went to the home, placed seizure notices and took items from the home that included a luxury car, officials said.
About two weeks later, the Latvian suspicious financial transactions memo was transmitted to Ukrainian authorities.
And then in late February, according to U.S. documents recently released under the Freedom of Information Act, Burisma’s American representatives pressed the U.S. State Department to try to help end the corruption allegations against the company. You can read those documents here.
A summary of an April 6, 2016 meeting between Burisma representatives and Ukraine prosecutors – released by the Prosecutor General’s Office – states “false information” was used to justify Shokin’s firing.
But early in 2019, NABU and the Ukraine prosecutor general’s office announced they were reopening the investigation into Burisma, specifically to revisit the allegations about money laundering, according to the notice of suspicion released by prosecutors in that country. You can read NABU’s request to reopen the probe here.
That probe is ongoing and recently was expanded to look at other issues. And the entire Burisma episode is now part of the larger impeachment proceedings playing out in America against President Donald Trump.
December 17th, 2019, 16:50
vector7
Re: Soros's Progressive Cabal with Democrats to Weaken America
Hackers believed to be backed by Russia this weekend publicly released more than 2,000 documents connected to billionaire Democratic donor George Soros and his Open Society Foundations.
The documents detail the ins and outs of Soros’s groups, which have funded a slew of public health, human rights and education programs around the globe, while also mounting opposition to hard-right conservatives in the U.S.
“Soros is an oligarch sponsoring the Democratic party, Hillary Clinton, hundreds of politicians all over the world,” the hackers posted on the website DCLeaks this Saturday when they released the documents.
“This website is designed to let everyone inside George Soros’ Open Society Foundation and related organisations,” they said. “These documents shed light on one of the most influential network operating worldwide.”
The hackers, who describe themselves as “American hacktivists who respect and appreciate freedom of speech, human rights and government of the people,” have been linked to the same group that exposed emails from Democratic Party leaders in the days before that party’s national convention last month. The group this weekend also posted messages from Republican state officials and national politicians, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
Cybersecurity firm ThreatConnect has called DCLeaks “another Russian-backed influence outlet” based on similarities with the previously identified Russian hackers, nicknamed Fancy Bear.
The documents released over the weekend are grouped into sections relating to the U.S., Europe, Asia, the World Bank and other topics.
The material offers a look behind the curtain of one of the nation’s preeminent nonprofit groups. Soros’s staunch focus on electoral processes around the globe has been a target of critics, and the wide net of activities is likely to inspire their outrage.
Included in the trove are drafts of fact sheets, calendars, memos, funding reports and similar materials, as one might expect from a major nonprofit group.
Some documents in particular are likely to stir ire on the right, where Soros is regarded as something of a nefarious mastermind trying to exert his influence across the globe.
A 2011 document, highlighted by The Daily Caller, details the foundations’ efforts to encourage criticism of hard-line opponents to Muslim radicalism, such as controversial personalities Frank Gaffney and Pamela Geller, who memorably organized a “Draw Muhammad” event last year.
Another document details the multiple organizations that have received millions in funding to challenge “Israeli laws and discriminatory practices against Israel’s Palestinian minority." Opponents claim those activities undermine Israel's democratic government and security.
Soros and the influence he wields among American liberal organizations have long been a target of scorn from conservatives, much as the billionaire Koch brothers are on the political left.
He has reportedly committed to giving more than $25 million to Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, and other Democrats, including a $6 million contribution to pro-Clinton super-PAC Priorities USA.
Site connected to Russian hackers posts Republican emails
BY JOE UCHILL - 08/12/16 06:20 PM EDT
A website tied to the hacking scandal of the Democratic Party has now posted a small batch of leaked emails from Republican campaigns and state GOP staffers.
The emails on the site, known as DCLeaks, appear to be from state party officials and campaign staff, including that of former presidential candidate Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). The messages range from June to October of 2015.
The DNC hacker or hackers known as Guccifer 2.0 used DC Leaks to promote leaks from a Clinton staffer's email to The Smoking Gun, though the hacker claimed not to have been involved with the theft of the messages.
Most of the messages coordinate campaign activities, solicit funds, or invite or RSVP to events. The archive is largely the procedural minutia of running campaigns or state parties.
The emails include a wide array of constituent email addresses. Many appear to be responses to mass-emails from concerned party supporters writing in to their delegates. One reply to a Stop Hillary PAC fundraising email targeting Democrats lack of support for the Benghazi commission reads, "Don’t the Republicans have a majority in Congress? Isn’t John Boehner a Republican? What is the problem that you need my $36 to help you fight back."
The archive appears to be incomplete, with replies to emails that don't appear to be included on their own. That could mean the emails were deleted before being retrieved, or that the leaker or site decided to scrub certain items from the record.
But that there was a leak at all runs counter to a Republican narrative that the DNC is particularly susceptible to data breaches (“What is it with Democrats that they can't maintain basic email security?” Mike Huckabee asked on Facebook).
Guccifer 2.0 is thought to be a front name for Russian intelligence, and the site has strong circumstantial ties to the Russian group believed to be behind the hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
DCLeaks claims to be the work of patriotic American activists but is written in a way that suggests non-native English speakers. Much of the leaks are email archives from critics of Russia.
The site hosts a trove of leaked emails from Gen. Philip Breedlove, who was heavily in favor of fending off Russia during its Ukraine incursion, and George Soros, whose DC Leaks emails were promoted by the site on twitter as “Check George Soros's [Open Society Foundation] plans to counter Russian policy and traditional values.”
DC Leaks site was initially registered by THCServers, a company that has only been the initial registrar for 14 sites since 2013. Including DC Leaks, three of those sites have been connected to the Russian hackers believed to be behind the DNC hack, including a site identified by the German government.
The Russian hackers, nicknamed Fancy Bear, have a pattern of using domain registrars outside of United States that accept bitcoin and the Romanian THCServers fit the mold. It is registered to an email account from europe.com, which, like most of the emails connected to FancyBear, is a free web service based in Europe.
A representative from ThreatConnect, the company that linked Fancy Bear to DCLeaks, noted that the obscure Romanian THCServer and Europe.com would be abnormal for an American hacktivist collective, and believes the sum-total is a strong circumstantial case.
At publication time, the Republican National Convention was not yet able to authenticate the emails.
On 12 September 2015 Jeremy Corbyn, as his first act as the new leader of the British Labour Party, addressed a protest in support of refugees, called Solidarity with Refugees. Corbyn stood next to Abdulaziz Alhashemi of Syria Solidarity UK (SSUK), who was draped in a flag representing UK-backed Syrian extremists, on a platform from which Clara Connolly, also of SSUK, had urged a Libya-style no-fly zone.
Syrian Solidarity UK describes itself as ‘a network of activists committed to solidarity with the Syrian Revolution’. In practice this means making the case for greater UK involvement in Syria, above all a no-fly zone. SSUK claimed a large part of the credit for the March:
More at link....
Quote:
Originally Posted by vector7
Not a fan of this venue but it's interesting out of Wesley Clark's own mouth 4 years ago he states some of what's happening now.
Strange how the Left's now on board with this activity.
Interview of Amy Goodman on March 2, 2007 - Middle East Agenda
In an interview with Amy Goodman on March 2, 2007, U.S. General Wesley Clark (Ret.), explains that the Bush Administration planned to take out 7 countries in 5 years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Lybia, Somalia, Sudan, Iran.
Quote:
Originally Posted by vector7
I think this is a continuation of what has been planned by some group.
So if Zbigniew Brzezingski has been a long time foreign policy adviser for the Left of Carter, Clinton, Berger, Ayers, Obama and Soros...
No coincidence the CIA Document: Key Uncertainties: Technology Will Alter Outcomes contains some of the same goals outlined in Brzezingski's writings generated during the Clinton Administration being carried out today.
More on Wesley's use of deadly military force in Waco against Christians while supporting Islamic Terrorist in Kosovo then turning around and criticizing Bush's handling of Iraq, likening it to a Crusade.
Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, a key military adviser for Obama, dismissed John McCain’s war record as a qualification for readiness to be president.
Appearing on CBS' "Face the Nation," Clark downplayed the plane crash that led to McCain’s captivity during the Vietnam War, and said the squadron McCain commanded "wasn’t a wartime squadron leader."
Unlike Clark's heroic command of the military forces at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas -- 76 Branch Davidians, 21 of whom were children, were killed in the blaze.
"He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee. And he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn’t held executive responsibility," Clark said.
Clark had helped drag the U.S. into a near-fiasco at the end of the Kosovo conflict, that led to such ill-feeling toward Clark in the Pentagon thathe was firedat war's end.
Update: 7/3/08 -- Now watch the hypocrite Clark attempt to defend his support for John Kerry. This man is a damned liar and a disgrace to the uniform -- and he's a lousy tap-dancer!
Wesley Clark on 10/10/02: 'Let's Wait to Attack' Iraq 26-Jan-04
Wesley Clark "Saddam Hussein is a cunning, stubborn and potentially irrational opponent of the United States... But there is a confusion and uncertainty among the American people about the need for war with Iraq, and especially about its urgency. This is understandable. The primary threat to American lives and interests around the world remains the terrorists of al-Qaeda... The answer to all these questions is yes, if we have the time. Well, we do. The key issue about Iraq has never been whether we should act if Saddam doesn't comply with U.N. resolutions and disarm. Rather, the problems are how we should act, and when. As for the how, the answer is clear--multilaterally, with friends and allies, with every possible effort to avoid the appearance of yet another Christian and Jewish stab at an Islamic country, with force as a last resort, and with a post-conflict plan in place to assure that the consequences of our action do not supercharge the al-Qaeda recruiting machine."
Bill Clinton: Wesley Clark Would Make Good President 30-Jun-03
Wesley ClarkAP reports: "While he's making no endorsements, former President Clinton says fellow Arkansan Wesley Clark would make a good president if he should decide to run. Clinton says he has been impressed by the retired Army general's career from its inception, as a cadet at the U.S. Military Academy, where Clark finished first in his class. 'He has always exceeded in every endeavor,' Clinton told The Associated Press on Friday, noting in particular Clark's major role as NATO commander, when he ran the 1999 Kosovo air war that drove Serb forces out of the embattled Serbian province."
By Madeline K. Albright - Anthony Lake and Lieutenant General Wesley Clark
THE FUTURE OF U.S. AND UN PEACE KEEPING...
Interesting how the Left was initially good with air strikes and invading Iraq to topple Saddam after 9/11. However when Bush's team got bogged down there and tried to nation build Iraq for stability, the Left turned on him.
Then anti-war rhetoric began drumming against the Bush Administration highlighting how senseless intervening in the region is.
I believe they were only looking to quickly topple the regimes, not focused on stability in the Region. Look at how this Administrations handling of the region.
Ben Rhodes, former President Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser, once referred to Washington’s foreign-policy establishment as “the Blob.” He was making a reference to the consensus that has become standard in U.S. foreign policy over the past several decades: that intervention is necessary and that there is no alternative to American global leadership. The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a new D.C. think tank launching in November, improbably funded by by George Soros and Charles Koch, hopes to challenge the influence and power wielded by the Blob. Named for the sixth president of the United States, the tank’s stated aim is to “lay a foundation for a new foreign policy centered on diplomatic engagement and military restraint.”
Speaking with The American Spectator, Andrew Bacevich, one of the co-founders of the think tank, lamented the rise of the interventionist establishment. He claimed that it “buys into a set of faulty propositions,” including the notion of the United States as an “indispensable nation,” and an “emphasis on military power.” Since the end of the Cold War, Bacevich noted, the United States has acted unilaterally rather than multilaterally, a doctrine which has led it into unnecessarily protracted conflicts.
The think tank has garneredmuch attention because of its backers Charles Koch and George Soros are viewed as opposites on the ideological spectrum. The two billionaires, who are almost universally vilified by the Left and the Right respectively, represent the Institute’s “trans-partisan” spirit, in Bacevich’s words. The other co-founders of the organization span the political spectrum: Eli Clifton, an editor at the left-leaning LobeLog; Stephen Wertheim, a professor at Columbia University; Suzanne DiMaggio, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; and Trita Parsi, the president of the National Iranian American Council.
Reception to the think tank has not been all positive. In a tweet, neoconservative pundit Bill Kristol claimed the Quincy Institute wants to regress to a time before the emergence of a “US-led liberal international order.” Bacevich called such accusations of isolationism “absurd.” He emphasized that the think tank is neither isolationist nor pacifist: it hopes to advocated for a foreign policy that is “smart, not weak.”
Asked about Donald Trump’s unconventional approach to foreign policy, Bacevich responded that the president’s administration, while perhaps not the most prudent, has made it “impossible not to ignore defects” in the establishment interventionist perspective. He added that Trump’s presidency has inadvertently brought attention to the numerous conflicts and wars in which the U.S. is engaged.
Bacevich highlighted the think tank’s primary areas of focus as it nears its launch in November. First, the Middle East, a region where the U.S. has become increasingly entangled since the attacks of September 11. He also pointed to East Asia as an area of interest, commenting that the rise of China represents a possible threat to the United States, going so far as to warn that it could be the site of a new Cold War.
December 17th, 2019, 16:58
vector7
Re: Soros's Progressive Cabal with Democrats to Weaken America
The ousting of Bill O’Reilly from Fox News is generating major headlines. Radio host Glenn Beck shared an email he received upon request from O’Reilly’s attorneys that suggests George Soros and Media Matters might be the reason advertisers stopped sponsoring The O’Reilly Factor.
Beck received this email from Mary Pat Boomer from The Bonner Group.
One of the countless reasons Clinton lost the election was the strength of the conservative media in shooting down liberal “fake news”. Clinton is widely reported to be festering with rage following her brutal, humiliating defeat to a man she loathed and hated. If the Clinton connections insinuated in the Broomer email prove to be true, it would pave the way to start many more investigations into how heinous and deep Clinton’s vendetta against the right runs. It also further illustrates how George Soros should be high up on Interpol’s list of Most Wanted.
Bill O'Reilly: George Soros behind FBI collusion against Trump, FISA abuse This should terrify ALL America
George Soros (GEORG HOCHMUTH /Getty)
THEBLAZE STAFF
On the radio program Friday, Glenn Beck and guest Bill O'Reilly highlighted the most important takeaways from Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz's report, which reveals the depth of corruption involved in the FBI's efforts to derail Donald Trump's presidential campaign in 2016.
O'Reilly emphasized that all Americans should be focused on the "very unsettling" and undeniable discovery that the FBI, "the most powerful investigative agency in the world, not just in the country," colluded to target Donald Trump "before and after the 2016 election."
Glenn and O'Reilly also discussed the Bonner Group, a Washington, D.C.-based Democratic fundraising group, backed by George Soros, whose primary agenda in 2016 was to keep Trump out of the Oval Office, and their connections with former FBI Director James Comey and former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe.
A globalist gathering that runs alongside the United Nations General Assembly every September has as part of its agenda a plan in partnership with George Soros to use the local governing bodies of major cities to flood Western countries with Third World immigrants and refugees. What does the successful implementation of this policy mean for the nation state?
Nothing good, as the following makes clear.
Concordiabills itself as a “nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to actively fostering, elevating, and sustaining cross-sector partnerships for social impact.” Its Annual Summit is designed to run “alongside” the UN General Assembly in New York each year. “Bringing together decision-makers and opinion-formers in the public, private and nonprofit sectors, as well as the next generation of partnership-builders, the Annual Summit advanced critical global discussions and transformed conversations into action,” Concordia said of its 2018 session.
On page 43 of the group’s 2018 summit report can be found a summation of an astonishing panel titled “Cities & the Private Sector Take the Lead for Refugees & Migrants.” Patrick Gaspard, president of progressive globalist billionaire Soros’s Open Society Foundations, personally served as a featured member of this program. The panel “laid the foundation for Open Society Foundations‘ co-hosted strategic dialogues focused on refugee sponsorship, private sector investment and advocacy, and city-level policies designed to improve human migration,” the report states.
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms was another of the “four leaders” on this panel, and her moves to end the Georgia megacity’s cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were specifically praised in the report.
A second “strategic dialogue” session titled “Cities & Global Migration: Innovation, Partnership & Leadership, was “chaired by Dr. Colleen Thouez, Director of Welcoming & Integrated Societies Division at Open Society Foundations.” This second panel was much more forthright on the goal of using cities to thwart and even overcome the will of national governments on immigration policy. The report states that this panel “brought together city leadership from around the world to share learnings on what can be done at the municipal level, particularly when federal policies fail.”
The passage that follows that sentence is crucial:
“The session made clear that cities, as global centers of migration, have started to look to each other for support in the face of restrictive national policies, and there is a call for increased collaboration.”
The theme of defying national governance is repeated often on this “dialogue” panel. “Many cities represented in the dialogue (and around the world) have refused to differentiate between legal and illegal migrants, despite federal policies,” the report boasts.
If you thought the rise of so-called “sanctuary cities” in the U.S. was merely a case of progressive urbanites virtue signaling their wokeness on a local level, this report proves otherwise. It is all part of a coordinated global-scale plan.
Concordia posted the video of this second panel on its official YouTube page. During the discussion, Atlanta Mayor Bottoms utters a shocking quote that reveals the true goals of the foreign invasion of our cities.
At the 5:40 mark of the video, Bottoms declares:
“As we spoke this morning there is a quote from one of my favorite writers Audre Lord that kept playing in my mind, and it was that revolution is not a one-time event. And I think of that often, especially in the work that we are doing throughout our various cities in ways that may seem to be small in scale but really are a part of a larger conversation and a larger revolution, if you will, as it relates to how we address our issues of immigration and migration.”
Following the trail of this admitted urban insurgency movement, one can see that it is rapidly becoming multi-dimensional. Soros is now funding a new group called the Mayors Migration Council. Its Leadership Board includes Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. “The Mayors Migration Council (MMC) is a new initiative to help cities have their voices and interests reflected in international deliberations and policies concerning refugees and migrants,” the organization states on its website. The logo of Soros’s Open Society Foundations is prominently featured at the bottom of the front page of the site.
“Cities and city networks carry out urban diplomacy at the global level on a range of issues and are increasingly involved in migration policy,” the Council declares. “The MMC’s distinguishing feature and added value will be to act as a focal point of expertise to support cities and city networks so as to enhance their voice, action and influence on migration and refugee issues.”
An Oct. 30 tweet by the Council goes so far as to brazenly state that empowering cities on immigration policy is part of a move toward a “new world order”:
CityLab is pulling no punches when it comes to promoting this bold new governing agenda. “Cities, in particular, are taking the lead in ushering in an organically evolving new ‘networked’ world order, where NGOs, community activists, private corporations, non-national states, and other stakeholders all collaborate and offer their unique perspective to locate solutions to our common problems,” the “Perspective” article written by two Georgetown University scholars proclaims.
“No longer can our global problems be solved by just one actor — nation states. Our world has moved beyond the days when this arrangement made practical and political sense.”Of course it should not be surprising that a platform tied to Bloomberg would take such an aggressive urban supremacy stance. After all, Bloomberg himself wrote in a 2015 piece for Foreign Affairs magazine of the dawning of a new age of ascendancy for the major cities of the world, terming it the time of the “Metropolitan Generation.”“As those in the Metropolitan Generation assume leadership positions, cities will become not just more culturally significant but also more politically powerful,” Bloomberg wrote. “Influence will shift gradually away from national governments and toward cities, especially in countries that suffer from bureaucratic paralysis and political gridlock.”
But Concordia seems especially close to George Soros. It was at the 2016 Concordia Annual Summit where Soros first publicly discussed his infamous pledge to “invest” $500 million in refugees. It has now become clear that fostering an inflated power for cities so they can facilitate the foreign invasion of their home nations is a key facet of this investment.
Concordia lists numerous other curious foundations, institutes and corporations as supporters. The 2019 summit reveals the cheap labor-addicted U.S. Chamber of Commerce as a “Programming Partner.” USA Today and Yahoo Finance are listed as “Media Partners.” Among “Lead” and “Principal” programming sponsors are noted companies such as AT&T, Coca Cola, Merck and Uber. “Corporate Programming Sponsors” include Barbie (featured in the 2019 summit report for its association with Concordia), Cargill, Comcast NBCUniversal, Mary Kay cosmetics, Trane heating and air conditioning and Walmart.
“Concordia Patron Members” are detailed at the end of the report. They include Bayer, Exxon Mobil, Hewlett-Packard, McDonald’s and Philip Morris International. Joining the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in the globalist faux-conservative ranks is the George W. Bush Institute, also listed as a patron member. Joining Barbie in the globalism-for-kids ranks is the Sesame Workshop, i.e., Sesame Street.
Washington, D.C. Swamp organizations the Atlantic Council and the Wilson Center are listed alongside the George W. Bush Institute as “Programming Partners” for the 2018 summit. The laughably compromised international news service Thomson Reuters is listed as a “Lead Programming Sponsor” for the event.
“A call was made from multiple participants for more collaboration among cities for a pro-immigrant agenda,” the report on the 2018 Concordia strategy session reads. Thanks to the financial largesse and networked influence of George Soros and the unflinching support of numerous private foundations and well-known corporations, the drive to create an urban Trojan Horse to turn the swelling size of cities against their own nations is well underway.
Only in self-defeating, sovereignty-eroding America is the idea of asking whether people living in America are American citizens for the American census a matter of controversy.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on whether the Trump administration can include a citizenship question on the high-stakes 2020 Census questionnaire. Thank goodness, the conservative majority indicated support for allowing it. There’s already such a question on the annual American Community Survey administered by the Census Bureau. It was asked in long-form questionnaires sent to a sample of households in 2000. And it was regularly asked in historical census forms from 1820-1950.
But we live in a Trump-deranged age, so now it’s tantamount to an international human rights crime to ask anyone about citizenship status at any time for any reason. Heaven forbid we inconvenience or discomfit legal noncitizens or illegal immigrants with a question!
Open borders activists, left-wing immigration lawyers and identity politics radicals exploded on cue:
–Former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder decried the “unconstitutional and irresponsible action” to “suppress the count in minority communities.”
–The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee fumed about the “political stunt that unfairly targets immigrant communities throughout our country in an attempt to SILENCE immigrants and benefit Republicans.”
–Histrionic social justice actress Alyssa Milano called it an “attack on immigrant communities and our democracy itself.”
–Jorge Luis Vasquez Jr. of LatinoJustice, funded by George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, vented that a citizenship question would “damage all our daily lives for decades.”
–Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, another Soros-funded outfit, which sued over the citizenship question, blasted the “scheme to hijack the 2020 Census.”
–The Soros-funded Asian Americans Advancing Justice lobbying group condemned Trump as “racially and politically motivated.”
Let’s all practice our deep pranayama breathing and ground ourselves in reality. It’s the radical left, much of it fueled with Soros’ money, that has hijacked the U.S. Census, not President Donald Trump. “No Illegal Alien Left Behind” is crucial to their strategy. Why?
Remember: The Census is used to divvy up seats in the House as a proportion of their population based on the head count. The redistribution of power extends to presidential elections because the Electoral College is pegged to the size of congressional delegations. More people equal more seats. More illegal immigrants equal more power. Indeed, the Center for Immigration Studies determined that in the 2000 election cycle, the presence of noncitizens (illegal immigrants, temporary visitors and green card holders) caused nine seats in the House to switch hands. California added six seats it would not have had otherwise. Texas, New York and Florida each gained a seat. Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin each lost a seat. Montana, Kentucky and Utah each failed to secure a seat they would otherwise have gained.
Our Founding Fathers explicitly warned against the perils of foreigners manipulating representation by overwhelming the country. Immigration scholar and author Daniel Horowitz points to Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story’s prophetic admonition: “If aliens might be admitted indiscriminately to enjoy all the rights of citizens at the will of a single state, the Union might itself be endangered by an influx of foreigners, hostile to its institutions, ignorant of its powers, and incapable of a due estimate of its privileges.”
Statesman Roger Sherman similarly emphasized the need to “guard against an improper mode of naturalization” by states adopting “easier terms.”
Too late. Multiple illegal immigrant amnesties, coupled with massive legal immigration, failure to deport visa overstayers and the metastasis of sanctuary policies, have taken their toll. Moreover, our constitutionally mandated decennial count has become a full-employment program for ideologically driven liberal interest groups cashing in on the census-gathering process and reshaping the electoral landscape. During the last census under President Barack Obama, with $300 billion in federal funding at stake, social justice groups from Soros-funded ACORN to Soros-funded Voto Latino to the Soros-allied SEIU were enlisted to count heads and help noncitizens feel “safe.”
The Census boondoggle has become a tax-subsidized national future Democratic voter outreach drive. Soros’ operations, along with 77 other liberal foundations, have invested $30 million to make illegal immigrants count. The Open Society Institute’s grantees and partners on coopting the Census for Democrat gains include the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, Miami Workers Center, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Southwest Workers Union, New York Community Trust, New York Foundation, Center for American Progress, People for the American Way and the Funders Census Initiative. A recently leaked internal board document revealed that the Soros network has coordinated efforts for the past four years to “influence appropriations for the Census Bureau” and add new racial and ethnic categories.
The Census Bureau will need 500,000 temporary workers to conduct the count in what will already be a hyperpolarized election year. However the Supreme Court rules on the citizenship question, the Trump administration must ensure that Open Borders Inc. does not co-opt the enumerator corps. As SorosWorld well understands:
Power lies not just with who is being counted, but who’s doing the counting.
The Democracy Alliance, a secretive group of donors on the left who collectively spend hundreds of millions of dollars on politics, is spending this week revving up members to pour money into the 2020 election, warning that inaction could extend President Donald Trump’s time in office.
In opening remarks to donors at a Washington hotel, Democracy Alliance President Gara LaMarche cautioned that “we can’t afford one iota of complacency” during the upcoming election.
“Donald Trump is competitive in key battleground states and could very well win reelection,” LaMarche said, according to written remarks viewed by POLITICO. “Does this scare the hell out of you? If so, good! Stay scared! We have 51 weeks to work our asses off to make sure that Donald Trump is repudiated and removed from office next November.”
Former President Barack Obama and 2018 Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams headlined the event, which runs from Wednesday through Saturday, and a slew of current and former lawmakers and officials will appear, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Party leaders will outline their road map for Democrats in the 2020 election and strategize over everything from voter registration to combating online disinformation.
One panel this week, billed as a “power 2020 breakfast,” featured Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Rep. Cheri Bustos in a “frank, off-the-record conversation about the challenges and opportunities next year’s election brings,” according to an agenda reviewed by POLITICO.
Other prominent Democrats made unofficial appearances: Former Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota gabbed with attendees on a couch in the lobby on Wednesday evening, before the opening reception for the conference. Franken resigned from his seat in 2018 amid multiple sexual misconduct allegations, but he has recently begun making more public appearances and was the subject of a profile in The New Yorker.
Members of the Democracy Alliance, which has included billionaire George Soros and current presidential candidate Tom Steyer pledge to give a minimum of $200,000 to causes approved by the group each year, though some give significantly more.
Representatives from the Democratic Governors Association, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee and a host of other key organizations were among those on hand for the event. Democracy Alliance donors attended sessions focused on elections in the Great Lakes region, and there were multiple panels on building power in the South and Southwest, a focus for the donor group.
While most of the conference is focused on the 2020 election, one panel turned to foreign policy and the recent partnership between billionaire George Soros and Charles Koch on foreign policy: a new think tank called The Quincy Institute. California Rep. Ro Khanna and a Quincy Institute leader headlined the session, titled “Ending America’s Endless Wars: A new path forward for foreign policy.”
Some donors to the Democracy Alliance, such as San Francisco activist Steve Phillips, a Cory Booker supporter, chose 2020 candidates early in the primary. But others interviewed by POLITICO, though still committed to defeating Trump, were largely ambivalent about the contenders vying to take on the president.
And for the most part, they did not express relief or significant enthusiasm at the headline-making late entry of Deval Patrick or the potential addition of Michael Bloomberg to the 2020 primary field.
“I’m down on all the frontrunners,” said David desJardins, a Silicon Valley investor and former board member of the Democracy Alliance, who expressed a longing for a candidate capable of “bringing people together” to play a leading role. Politics, desJardins added, “is all about picking fights.”