Heather Cottin (*) :
© CovertAction
Number 74 Fall 2002
George Soros, Imperial Wizard : MASTER-BUILDER OF THE NEW BRIBE SECTOR, SYSTEMATICALLY BILKING THE WORLD
"Yes, I do have a foreign policy...
my goal is to become the conscience of the world."1
This is not a case of narcissistic
personality disorder; this is how George
Soros exercises the authority of
United States hegemony in the world today.
Soros foundations and financial
machinations are partly responsible for the
destruction of socialism in Eastern
Europe and the former USSR. He has set
his sights on China. He was pad
of the full court press that dismantled
Yugoslavia. Calling himself a philanthropist,
billionaire George Soros'
role is to tighten the ideological
stranglehold of globalization and the
New World Order while promoting
his own financial gain. Soros' commercial
and 'philanthropic" operations
are clandestine, contradictory and
coactive. And as far as his economic
activities are concerned, by his own
admission, he is without conscience;
a capitarist who functions with
absolute amorality.
Soros is a leading figure on the
Council of Foreign Relations, the World
Economic Forum, and Human
Rights Watch (HRW). In 1994, after a meeting with
his philosophical guru, Sir Karl
Popper, Soros ordered his companies to
start investing in Central and Eastern
European communications. The Federal Radio
Television Administration of
the Czech Republic
accepted his offer to take over
and fund the archives of Radio
Free Europe. Soros moved the archives to Prague and
spent over $15 million on their
maintenance.2 A Soros foundation now runs ClA-created
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
jointly with the U.S. and RFEIRL, which has
expanded into the Caucasus and Asia.3
Soros is the founder and funder of
the Open Society Institute. He created
and maintains the International
Crisis Group (ICG) which, among
other things, has been active in the
Balkans since the
destruction of Yugoslavia. Soros works openly with
the United States Institute of Peac
-an overt arm of the CIA.
He thrusts himself upon world statesmen
and they respond. He has been close
to Henry Kissinger, Vaclav
Havel and Poland's General Wojciech Jaruzelski.4
He supports the Dalal Lama,
whose institute is housed in the Presidio in
San Francisco, also home to the
foundation run by Soros' friend, former
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.5
When anti-globalization forces were
freezing in the streets outside New York's
Waldorf-Astoria hotel in February
2002, George Soros was inside addressing
the World Economic Forum.
As the police forced protesters into metal cages
on Park Avenue, Soros was extolling
the virtues of the "Open Society" and
joined Zbigniew Brzezinski, Samuel
Huntington, Francis Fukuyama and others.
WHO IS THIS GUY?
George Soros was born in Hungary
in 1930 to Jewish parents so removed from
their roots that they once vacationed
in Nazi Germany.6 Soros lived under
the Nazis, but with the triumph
of the Communists moved to England in 1947.
There, Soros came under the sway
of the philosopher Karl Popper, at the
London School of Economics. Popper
was a lionized anti-communist ideologue
and his teachings formed the basis
for Soros' political tendencies. There
is hardly a speech, book or article
that Soros writes that does not pay
obeisance to Popper's influence.
Knighted in 1965, Popper coined the
slogan "Open Society," which eventually
manifested in Soros' Open Society
Fund and Institute. Followers of Popper
repeat his words like true believers.
Popperian philosophy epitomizes
Western individualism. Soros left
England in 1956, and
found work on Walt Street where,
in the 1960s, he invented the "hedge fund."
… hedge funds catered to very wealthy
individuals... The largely secretive
funds, usually trading in offshore
locations.. produced astronomically
superior results. The size of the
"bets" often became self fulfilling
prophecies: 'rumors of a position
taken by the big hedge funds prompted
other investors to follow suit,'
which would in turn force up the price the
hedgers were betting on to begin
with.7
Soros organized the Quantum Fund
in 1969 and began to dabble in currency
manipulation. In the 1970s, his
financial activities turned to:
Alternating long and short positions...
Soros won big' both on the rise of
real estate investment trusts and
on their subsequent collapse. Under his
20-year stewardship, Quantum returned
an amazing 34.5% a year. Soros is
best known (and feared) for currency
speculation...In 199/ he earned the
rare distinction of being singled
out as a villain by a head of state,
Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamad, for
taking part in a highly profitable attack
on that nation's currency8
Through such clandestine financial
scheming, Soros became a
multibillionaire. His companies
control real estate in Argentina, Brazil,
and Mexico; banking in Venezuela;
and are some of the most profitable
currency traders in the world, giving
rise to the general belief that his
highly placed friends assisted him
in his financial endeavors, for
political as well as financial gain
9
George Soros has been blamed for
the destruction of the Thai economy in
1997.10 One Thai activist said,
"We regard George Soros as a kind of
Dracula. He sucks the blood from
the people."11 The Chinese call him "the
crocodile," because his economic
and ideological efforts in China were so
insatiate, and because his financial
speculation created millions of
dollars in profits as it ravished
the Thai and Malaysian economies.12
Soros once made a billion dollars
in one day by speculating (a word he
abhors) on the British pound. Accused
of taking "money from every British
taxpayer when he speculated against
sterling," he said, "When you speculate
in the financial markets you are
free of most of the moral concerns that
confront an ordinary businessman..
did not have to concern myself with
moral issues in the financial markets."13
Soros has a schizophrenic craving
for unlimited personal wealth and a desire to
be thought well of by others:
Currency traders sitting at their
desks buy and sell currencies of Third
World countries in large quantities.
The effect of the currency
fluctuations on the people who live
in those countries is a matter that
does not enter their minds. Nor
should it; they have a job to do. Yet if we
pause to think, we must ask ourselves
whether currency traders... should
regulate the lives of millions.14
It was Soros who saved George
W. Bush's bacon when his management of an oil
exploration company was ending in
failure. Soros was the owner of Harken
Energy Corporation, and it was he
who bought the rapidly depreciating
stocks just prior to the company's
collapse. The future president cashed
out at almost one million dollars.
Soros said he did it to buy "political
influence."15 Soros is also a partner
in the infamous Carlyle Group.
Organized in 1987, "the world's
largest private equity firm" with over
twelve billion dollars under management,
is run by "a veritable who's who
of former Republican leaders," from
CIA man Frank Carlucci to CIA head
George Bush, Sr. The Carlyle Group
makes most of its money from weapons
expenditures.
THE PHILANTHROPIST SPOOK
In 1980, Soros began to use his
millions to attack socialism in Eastern
Europe. He financed individuals
who would cooperate with him. His first
success was in Hungary. He took
over the Hungarian educational and cultural
establishment, incapacitating socialist
institutions throughout the
country. He made his way right inside
the Hungarian government. Soros next
moved on to Poland, aiding the CIA-funded
Solidarity operation and in that
same year, he became active in China.
The USSR came next.
It is not coincidental that the Central
Intelligence Agency had operations
in all of those countries. The goal
of the Agency was exactly the same as
that of the Open Society Fund:
to dismantle socialism. In South Africa, the
CIA sought out dissidents who were
anticommunist. In Hungary. Poland and
the USSR, the CIA, with overt intervention
from the National Endowment for
Democracy, the AFL-CIO,
USAID and other institutions, supported and
organized anticommunists, the very
type of individuals recruited by Soros'
Open Society Fund. The CIA would
have called them "assets." As Soros said,
"In each country I identified a
group of people -some leading personal
ties, others less well known- who
shared my belief…"16 Soros' Open Society
organized conferences with
anticommunist Czechs, Serbs, Romanians,
Hyngarians, Croatians, Bosnians,
Kosovans.17 His ever-expanding influence
gave rise to suspicions that he
was operating as part of the U.S.
intelligence complex.
In 1989, the Washington Post reported charges
first made in 1987 by the Chinese
government officials that Soros' Fund for
the Reform and Opening of China
had CIA connections.18
TAKING ON MOSCOW
After 1990, Soros funds targeted
the Russian educational system, providing
the entire nation with textbooks.19
In effect, Soros ensured the
indoctrination of an entire generation
of Russian youth with OS propaganda.
Soros foundations were accused of
engineering a strategy to take control of
the Russian financial system, privatization
schemes, and the process of
foreign investment in
that country. Russians reacted angrily to Soros'
legislative meddlings. Critics of
Soros and other U.S. foundations said the
goal of these maneuvers was to "thwart
Russia as a state, which has the
potential to compete with the world's
only superpower."20 Russians began to
suspect Soros and the CIA were interconnected.
Business tycoon Boris
Berezovsky said, "I nearly
fainted when I heard a couple of years ago that
George Soros was a
CIA agent."21 Berezovsky's opinion was that Soros,
and the West, were "afraid of Russian
capital becoming strong."
If the economic and political establishment
in the United States fear an
economic rivalry from Russia, what
better way to control it than to
dominate Russian media, education,
research centers and science? After
spending $250 million for the "transformation
of education of humanities
and economics at the high school
and university levels," Soros created the
International Science Foundation
for another $100 million.22 The Russian
Federal Counterintelligence Service
(FSK) accused Soros foundations in
Russia of "espionage." They noted
that Soros was not operating alone; he
was part of a full court press that
included financing from the Ford and
Heritage Foundations; Harvard, Duke,
and Columbia universities, and
assistance from the Pentagon and
U.S. intelligence services.23 The FSK
criticized Soros' payouts to 50,000
Russian scientists, saying that Soros
advanced his own interests by gaining
control of thousands of Russian
scientific discoveries and new technologies
to collect state and commercial
secrets.24
In 1995, Russians were infuriated
by the insinuation of State Department opera-
tive Fred Cuny into the conflict
in Chechnya. Cuny's cover was disaster
relief, but his history of involvement
in international conflict zones of
interest to the U.S., plus FBI and
CIA search parties, made clear his
government connections. At the time
of his disappearance, Cuny was working
under contract to a Soros foundation.25
It is not widely known in the U.S.
that the violence in Chechnya, a
province in the heart of Russia, is
generally perceived as the result
of a political destabilization campaign
on which Washington looks favorably,
and may actually be directing. This
assessment of the situation is clear
enough to writer Tom Clancy that he
felt free to include it as an assertion
of fact in his best-seller, The Sum
of All Fear. The Russians
accused Cuny of being a CIA operative, and part
of an intelligence operation to
support the Chechen uprising.26 Soros' Open
Society Institute is still
active in Chechnya, as are other Soros-sponsored
organizations.
Russia was the site of at least one
joint endeavor to enhance Soros'
balance sheet, arranged with diplomatic
assistance from the Clinton
administration. ln 1999, Secretary
of State Madeleine Albright blocked a
$500 million loan guarantee by the
U.S. Export-Import Bank to the Russian
company, Tyumen Oil, on the grounds
that it was contrary to U.S. national
interests. Tyumen wanted to buy
American-made oil equipment and services
from Dick Cheney's Halliburton Company
and ABB Lummus Global of Bloomfield,
New Jersey.27 George Soros was an
investor in a company that Tyumen had
been trying to acquire. Both Soros
and BP Amoco lobbied to prevent this
transaction, and Albright obliged.
28
NURTURING LEFT ANTI-SOCIALISM
Soros' Open Society Institute has
a finger in every pot. Its board of
directors reads like a "Who's Who"
of Cold War and New World Order
pundits. Paul Goble is Communications
Director; he was the major political
commentator at Radio Free Europe.
Herbert Okun served in the Nixon State
Department as an intelligence adviser
to Henry Kissinger. Kati Marton is
the wife of former Clinton administration
UN ambassador and envoy to
Yugoslavia, Richard Hoibrooke. Marton
lobbied for the Soros-funded radio
station B-92, also a project of
the National Endowment for Democracy
(another overt arm of the CIA),
which was instrumental in bringing down the
Yugoslav government.
When Soros founded the Open Society
Fund he picked iberal pundit Aryeh
Neier to lead it. Neier was the
head of Helsinki Watch, a putative human
rights organization with an anticommunist
bent. ln 1993, the Open Society
Fund became the Open Society Institute.
Helsinki Watch became Human
Rights Watch in 1975. Soros is currently on its
Advisory Board, both for the Americas
and the Eastern Europe-Central Asia
Committees, and
his Open Society Fund. Soros is listed as a funder.29 Soros
is intimately connected to HRW,
and Neier wrote columns for The Nation magazine
without mentioning that he was on
Soros' payroll.30
Soros is intimately involved in HRW,
although he does his best to hide
it.31 He says he just funds and
sets up these pr~ grams and lets them run.
But they do not stray from the philosophy
of the funder. HRW and OSI are
close. Their views do not diverge.
Of course, other foundations fund these
institutions as well, but Soros'
influence dominates their ideology.
George Soros' activities fall into
the construct developed in 1983 and
enunciated by Allen Weinstein, founder
of the National Endowment for
Democracy. Weinstein said,
"A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25
years ago by the CIA."32 Soros is
operating exactly within the confines of
the intelligence complex. He is
little different from CIA drug runners in
Laos in the 1960s, or the mujahedin
who profited from the opium trade while
carrying out CIA operations against
socialist Afghanistan in the 1980s. He
simply funnels (and takes home)
a whole lot more money than those pawns,
and he does much of his business
in the light of day. His candor insofar as
he expresses it is a sort of spook
damage control that serves to legitimize
the strategies of U.S. foreign policy.
The majority of people in the U.S.
today who consider themselves
politically left of center are undoubtedly
pessimistic about the chances
for a socialist transformation of
society. Thus the Soros
"Decentralization" model, or the
"piecemeal" approach to "negative
utilitarianism, the attempt to minimize
the amount of misery," which was
Popper's philosophy, appeals to
them. 33 Soros funded an HRW study that was
used to back California and Arizona
legislation relaxing drug laws. 34
Soros favors the legalization of
drugs -one way of temporarily reducing
awareness of one's misery. Soros
is an equal-opportunity bribester. At a
loftier rung of the socioeconomic
ladder, one finds Social Democrats who
accept Soros funding and believe
in civil liberties within the con-text of
capitalism.35 For these folks, the
evil consequences of Soros' business
activities (impoverishing people
all over the world) are mitigated by his
philanthropic activities. Similarly,
liberal/left intellectuals, both in
the U.S. and abroad, have been drawn
in by the "Open Society" philosophy,
not to mention the occasional funding
plum.
The New Left in the United
States was a social democratic movement. It was
resolutely anti-Soviet, and when
Eastern Europe and the USSR fell, few in
the New Left opposed the destruction
of the socialist systems. The New Left
did not mourn or protest when the
hundreds of millions in Eastern Europe
and Central Asia lost their right
to jobs, housing at reasonable and
legally protected rents, free education
through graduate school, health
care and cultural enhancement. Most
belittled any suggestion that the CIA
and certain NGOs such as the National
Endowment for Democracy or the Open
Society Fund had actively participated
in the annihilation of socialism.
These people felt that the Western
determination to destroy the USSR since
1917 was barely connected to the
fall of the USSR. For them, socialism
failed of its own accord, because
it was flawed.
As revolutions, such as the ones
in Mozambique, Angola, Nicaragua or El
Salvador were destroyed by proxy
forces or were stalled by demonstration
"elections," New Left pragmatists
shrugged their shoulders and turned away.
The New Left sometimes seemed to
deliberately ignore the post-Soviet
machinations of U.S. foreign policy.
Bogdan Denitch, who had political
aspirations in Croatia, was active within
the Open Society Institute, and
received OSI funding.36 Denitch favored the
ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Croatia,
NATO bombing of Bosnia and then
Yugoslavia, and even a ground invasion
of Yugoslavia.37 Denitch was a
founder and chair for many years
of the Democratic Socialists of America, a
leading liberal-left group in the
U.S. He has also long chaired the
prestigious Socialist Scholars Conference,
through which he was key to
manipulating the sympathies of many
toward support for NATO expansion. 38
Other Soros targets for support
include Refuse and Resist the ACLU, and a
host of other liberal causes.39
Soros added another unlikely trophy when he
became involved in the New School
for Social Research in New York, long an
academy of choice for left intellectuals.
He now funds the East and Central
Europe Program there. 40
Many leftists who were inspired by
the revolution in Nicaragua sadly
accepted the election of Violetta
Chamorro and the defeat of the
Sandinistas in 1990. Most of the
Nicaragua support network faded
thereafter. Perhaps the New Left
could have learned from the rising star of
Michael Kozak. He was a veteran
of Washington's campaigns to install
sympathetic leaders in Nicaragua,
Panama and Haiti, and to undermine Cuba
-he headed the U.S. Interests Section
in Havana.
After organizing the Chamorro victory
in Nicaragua, Kozak moved on to
become U.S. Ambassador to Belarus.
Kozak worked with the Soros-sponsored
"Internet Access and Training
Program" (IATP), which was busy "creating
future leaders" in Belarus.41 This
program was simultaneously imposed upon
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgystan, Turkmenistan, and
Uzbekistan. IATP operates openly
with the support of the U.S. Department of
State. To its credit, Belarus expelled
Kozak and the Soros-Open
Society/U.S. State Department crowd.
The government of Aleksandr Lukashenko
found that for four years before
moving to Minsk, Kozak was instrumental in
engineering the flow of tens of
millions of dollars to the Belarus
opposition. Kozak was creating a
united opposition coalition, funding
web-sites, newspapers and opinion
polls, and tutoring a student resistance
movement similar to Yugoslavia's
Otpor. Kozak brought in Otpor leaders to
instruct dissidents in Belarus.42
Just before September 11, 2001, the U.S.
was revving up a demonization campaign
against President Aleksander
Lukashenko. Demonizing Lukashenko
has temporarily taken a back burner to
the "war on terrorism."
Through OSI and HRW, Soros was a
major supporter of the B-92 radio station
in Belgrade. Soros funded Otpor,
the organization that received those
"suitcases of money" in support
of the October 5, 2000 coup that toppled
the Yugoslav government. 43 Human
Rights Watch helped legitimize the
subsequent kidnapping and show trial
of Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague by
saying nothing about his rights.
44 Louise Arbour, who served as judge at
that illegal tribunal, is presently
on the Board of Soros' International
Crisis Group. 45 The Open Society/Human
Rights
Watch gang has
been working on Macedonia, calling it part of their
"civilizing mission."46 Expect that
republic to be "saved" to finish the
total disintegration of the former
Yugoslavia.
DEPUTIES OF POWER
Soros has actually stated that he
considers his philanthropy moral and his
money management business amoral.47
Yet those in charge of Soros-funded
NGOs have a clear and consistent
agenda. One of Soros'
most influential institutions
is the International Crisis Group,
founded in 1986. ICG is headed by
individuals from the very center of
political and corporate power.
Its board includes Zbigniew Brzezinski,
Morton Abramowitz, former
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State; Wesley Clark,
former NATO Supreme Allied Commander
for Europe; and Richard Allen, former
U.S. National Security Adviser.
Allen is noteworthy for quitting Nixon's
National Security Council out of
disgust with the liberal tendencies of
Henry Kissinger; recruiting
Oliver North to Reagan's National Security
Council, and negotiating missiles
for hostages in the Iran-Contra scandal.
For these individuals, "containing
conflict" boils down to U.S. control
over the people and resources of
the world.
In the 1980s and 1990s, under the
aegis of the Reagan Doctrine, U.S. covert
and overt operations in Africa,
Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia were
in the works. Soros was openly active
in most of these places, working to
buy off would-be revolutionaries,
or subsidize politicians, intellectuals
and anyone else who might come to
power when the revolutionary moment had
passed. According to James
Petras:
By the early 1980s the more perceptive
sectors of the neoliberal ruling
classes realized that their policies
were polarizing the society and
provoking large-scale social discontent
Neoliberal politicians began to
finance and promote a parallel strategy
'from below;' the promotion of
'grassroots' organizations with
an 'anti-statist' ideology to intervene
among potentially conflictory classes,
to create a "social cushion." These
organizations were financially dependent
on neoliberal sources and were
directly involved in competing with
sociopolitical movements for the
allegiance of local leaders and
activist communities. By the 1990s these
organizations, described as "nongovernmental,"
numbered in the thousands
and were receiving close to four
billion dollars world-wide. 48
In Underwriting Democracy, Soros
boasts about the "Americanization of
Eastern Europe." According to his
account, through his education programs
he began to establish a young cadre
of Sorosian leaders. These Soros
Foundation-educated young men and
women are prepared to fulfill the
functions of so-called "influence
agents." Thanks to their fluent knowledge
of languages and their insertion
into the emerging bureaucracies in target
countries, these recruits would
philosophically smooth the inroads for
Western multinational corporations.
Career diplomat Herbert Okun,
on the Europe Committee of Human Rights
Watch, along with George
Soros, is connected to a host of State
Department-linked institutions,
from USAID to the Rockefeller-funded
Trilateral Commission. From 1990
to 1997, Okun was executive director of
something called the Financial Services
Volunteer Corps, part of USAID, "to
help establish free market financial
systems in former communist countries.
"49 George Soros is in complete
accord with the capitalists who are in the
process of taking control of the
global economy.
NON-PROFIT PROFITEERING
Soros claims not to do philanthropy
in the countries in which he is
involved as a currency trader.50
But Soros has often taken advantage of his
connections to make key investments.
Armed with a study by ICG, and with
the support of Bernard Kouchner,
chief of the UN Interim Administration in
Kosovo (UNMIK), Soros attempted
to acquire the most profitable mining
complex in the Balkans.
In September 2000, in a hurry to
take the Trepca mines before the
Yugoslavian election, Kouchner stated
that pollution from the mining
complex was raising lead levels
in the environment.51 This is incredible
considering that he cheered when
the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia rained
depleted uranium on the country
and released more than 100,000 tons of
carcinogens into the air, water
and soil.52 But Kouchner had his way, and
the mines were closed for "health
reasons." Soros invested $150 million in
an effort to gain control of Trepca's
gold, silver, lead, zinc and cadmium,
which make the property worth $5
billion.53
As Bulgaria was imploding into "free-market"
chaos, Soros was busy
scavenging through the wreckage,
as Reuters reported in early 2001:
The European Bank for Reconstruction
and Development (EBRO) invested $3.0
million in [Bulgarian high-tech
company] Rila, the first firm to benefit
from a new $30 million facility
set up by the EBRO to support IT firms in
central and eastern Europe.... Another
$3.0 million came from U.S private
investment fund Argus Capital
Partners, sponsored by Prudential Insurance
Company of America and operating
in central and eastern Europe... Soros,
who had invested around $3.0 million
in Rila and in 2001 invested another
$1.0 million... remained its majority
owner. 54
FRAMING THE ISSUES
His pose as a philanthropist gives
Soros the power to shape international
public opinion when social conflict
raises the question of who are the
victims and who are the malefactors.
Like other NGOs, Human Rights Watch,
Soros' mouthpiece on human rights,
avoids or ignores most organized apd
independent working class struggles.
In Colombia, labor leaders are routinely
killed by paramilitaries working
in concert with the U.S.-sponsored
government. Because those unions oppose
neoliberal economics, HRW is relatively
silent. In April of this year,
HRW's Jose Vivanco testified before
the U.S. Senate in favor of Plan
Colombia.55
Colombians remain committed to human
nkhts and democracy They need help.
Human Rights Watch has no fundamental
problem with the United States
providing that help.56
HRW equates the actions of the Colombian
guerrilla fighters struggling to
free themselves from the oppression
of state terror, poverty and
exploitation with the repression
of the U.S.-sponsored armed forces and
paramilitary death squads, the AUC
(United Self-Defense Forces of
Colombia). HRW validated
the Pastrana government and its military, whose
role was to protect property rights
and maintain the economic and political
status quo. According to HRW, 50%
of civilian deaths are the work of the
government-tolerated death squads.57
The correct number is 80%.58
HRW essentially certified the election
and ascendancy of the Uribe
government in 2002 as welt. Uribe
is a throwback to the Latin American
dictators the U.S. supported in
the past, although he was "elected." HRW
had no comment about the fact that
the majority boycotted the election . 59
In the Caribbean Basin, Cuba is another
opponent of neoliberalism that has
been demonized by Human Rights
Watch. In nearby Haiti, Soros-funded
activities have worked to defeat
popular aspirations following the end of
the Duvalier dictatorship by undermining
Haiti's first democratically
elected leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
HRW's Ken Roth helpfully chimed in
with U.S. denunciations of Aristide
as "undemocratic." To demonstrate his
idea of "democracy," Soros foundations
were commencing operations in Haiti
complimentary to such unseemly U.S.
activities as USAID's promotion of
persons associated with FRAPH,
the notorious CIA-sponsored death squads
which have terrorized the country
since the fall of 'Baby Doc' Duvalier.60
On HRW's web site, Director Roth
criticized the U.S. for not opposing China
more vigorously. Roth's activities
include the creation of the Tbetan
Freedom Concert, a traveling
propaganda project that toured the U.S. with
major rock musicians, urging young
people to support ~bet against China.61
Tbet has been a pet project of the
CIA for many years.62
Roth has recently pressed for opposition
to Chinese control over its
oil-rich western province of Xinjiang.
With the colonialist "divide and
conquer" approach, Roth has tried
to convince some of the Uighur
religious minority in
Xinjiang that the U.S./NATO intervention in Kosovo
holds promise as a model for them.
As late as August 2002. the U.S.
government has given some support
in this endeavor as well.
U.S. designs on this region were
signaled clearly when a New York Times
article on Xinjiang Province in
western China described the Uighurs as a
"Muslim majority, [which] lives
restively under Chinese rule." They "are
well versed in the NATO bombing
of Yugoslavia last year which
some celebrate for liberating the
Muslims in Kosovo; they fantasize about a
similar rescue' here."63 The
New York Times Magazine noted "Recent
discoveries of oil have made Xinjiang
extremely attractive to international
trade," while comparing the conditions
for its indigenous population to
those in Tibet. 64
INNUMERACY
When Sorosian organizations count,
they seem to lose track of the truth.
Human Rights Watch asserted
that 500 people, not over 2,000, were killed by
NATO bombers in the 1999 war in
Yugoslavia.65 They said only 350, not over
4,000, died as a result of U.S.
attacks on Afghanistan.66 When the U.S.
bombed Panama in 1989, HRW prefaced
its report by saying that the "ouster
of Manuel Noriega … and installation
of the democratically-elected government
of President Guillermo Endara brought
high hopes in Panama..." The report neglected
to mention the number of casualties.
Human Rights Watch prepared the groundwork
for the NATO attack on Bosnia in
1993 by the false rape-of-thousands
and "genocide" stories.67 This tactic
of creating political hysteria was
necessary for the United States to carry
out its Balkan policy. It was repeated
in 1999 when HRW functioned as the
shock troops of indoctrination for
the NATO attack on Yugoslavia. All of
Soros' blather about the rule of
law was forgotten. The U.S. and NATO made
their own law, and the institutions
of George Soros stood behind it.
Massaging of numbers to provoke a
response was a major part of a Council on
Foreign Relations campaign after
September 11, 2001. This time it was the
2,801 killed in the World Trade
Center. The CFR met on November 6, 2001, to
plan a "major public diplomacy campaign."
CFR created an "Independent Task
Force on America's Response to Terrorism."
Soros joined Richard C.
Holbrooke, Newton L. Gingrich,
John M. Shalikashvili (former Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff), and
other powerful individuals on a campaign to
make the Trade Center dead into
tools for U.S. foreign policy. The CFR
report set out to make the case
for a war on terrorism. George Soros'
fingerprints were all over the campaign:
Have senior-level U.S. officials
press friendly Arab and other Muslim
governments not only to publicly
condemn the 9/11 attacks, but also to back
the rationale and goals of the U.S.
anti-terror campaign. We are never
going to convince the publics in
the Middle East and South Asia of the
righteousness of our cause if their
governments remain silent We need to
help them to deflect any blow-back
from such statements, but we must have
them vocally on board.... Encourage
Bosnian, Albanian, and Turkish Muslims
to educate foreign audiences regarding
the U.S. role in saving the Muslims
of Bosnia and Kosovo in 2995-99,
and our long-standing, close ties to
Muslims around the world.! Engage
regional intellectuals and journalists
across the board, regardless of
their views. Routinely monitor the regional
press in real time to enable prompt
responses... Stress references to the
victims (and ideally named
victims to personalize them) whenever
we discuss our cause and goals. 68
Sorosian innumeracy: counting to bolster and defend U.S. foreign policy.
Soros is very worried about the decline
in the world capitalist system and
he wants to do something about it,
now. He recently said: "I can already
discern the makings oft the final
crisis.... Indigenous political move (
ments are likely to arise that will
seek to expropriate the multinational
corporations ( and recapture the
'national' wealth."69
Soros is seriously suggesting a plan
to circumvent the United Nations. He
proposes that the "democracies of
the world ought to take the lead and
forge a global network of alliances
that could work with or without the
United Nations." If he were psychotic,
one might think he was having an
episode. But the fact is, Soros'
assertion that "The United Nations is
constitutionally incapable of fulfilling
the promises contained in the
preamble of its charter," reflects
the thinking of such reactionary
institutions as the American
Enterprise Institute.70 Though many
conservatives refer to the Soros
network as left-wing, on the question of
U.S. affiliation with the United
Nations Sores is on the same page as the
likes of John R. Bolton, Undersecretary
of State for Arms Control and
International Security Affairs,
who, with "[M]any Republicans in Congress
believe that nothing more should
be paid to the UN system."71 There has
been a decades-long rightwing campaign
against the UN. Now Soros is leading
it. On various Soros web sites one
may read criticism of the United Nations
as too rich, unwilling to share
information, or flawed in ways that make it
unfit for the way the world should
run according to George Soros.
Even writers at The Nation,
writers who clearly ought to know better, have
been influenced by Soros'
ideas. William Greider, for instance,
recently found some validity in
Soros' criticism that the United Nations
should not be a venue for "tin-pot
dictators and totalitarians. . treated
as equal partners."72 This kind
of Eurocentric racism is at the heart of
Soros' hubris. His assumption that
the United States can and should run the
world is a prescription for fascism
on a global scale. For much too long.
Western "progressives" have been
giving Soros a pass. Probably Greider and
others will find the reference to
fascism excessive, unjustified, even
outrageous.
But just listen closely to what Soros
himself has to say: "In old Rome, the
Romans only voted. In the modern
global capitalism, the Americans only
vote. The Brazilians do not vote."73
_________________
[PHOTO CAPTION]
October 21,1996, Presidential Palace,
Tbilisi, Georgia. President Eduard
Shevardnadze, right, greets George
Soros. Both played key roles in the
downfall of the USSR. Both are now
playing key roles in the destabilization
of Russia through the instrument
of Chechnya.
****************
NOTES
1. Dan Seligman, "Life and Times
of a Messianic Billionaire," Commentary,
April 2002.
2. "Sir Karl Popper in Prague, Summary
of Relevant Facts Without Comment,"
<www.lf3.
cuni.cz/aff/p1_e>.
3. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty,
Transcaucasia/Central Asia, <www.rferl
org>.
4. Seligman.
5. Lee Penn, "1999, A Year of Growth
for the United Religions Initiative,"
<http://ad.doubleclick.net/adi/N1684.TMP3/B1030723.3;sz=720x300;ord=6249?>.
6. George Soros, Soros on Soros,
Staying Ahead of the Curve (New York: John
Wiley, 1995), p.26.
7. "Hedge Funds Get Trimmed," Wall
Street Journa4 May 1, 2000.
8. Theodore Spencer, "Investors
of the Century," Fortune, December 1999.
9. Jim Freer, "Most International
Trader George
Soros," tatinTrade.com,
October 1998,
<www.latintrade.com/newsite/content/archives.cfm?Story!D=473>.
10. Busaba Sivasomboon, "Soros Speech
in Thailand Canceled," AP wire, January 28, 2001.
11. Sivasomboon.
12. George Soros, The Asia Society
Hong Kong Center Speech,
<www.asiasociety.org/speeches/soros>.
13. Soros on Soros, p.111.
14. George Soros, Open Society:
Reforming Global Capitalism (New York:
Public Affairs, 2000).
15. David Corn, "Bush and the Billionaire,
How Insider Capitalism Benefited
W," The Nation,
July 17,2002.
16. Soros on Soros, pp.122-25.
17. Agence France-Presse, October
8,1993.
16. Marianne Yen, "Fund's Representatives
Arrested in China," Washington
Post, August 8,
1989, p. A4.
19. Los Angeles Tinees, November
24,1994, p. ASS.
20. Chrystia Freeland, "Moscow Suspicion
Grows: Kremlin Factions Are at
Odds Over Policy,"
Financial limes (London), January
19, 1995.
21. Interfax Russian News, November
6, 1999.
22. Irma Dezhina, "U.S. Non-profit
Foundations in Russia, lmpact on
Research and Education,"
<http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:StjlnD8SZHYC:www.jhu.edu/-istr/confere
nces/dublin/
workingpapers/dezhina>.
23. "FSK Suspects Financing of Espionage
on Russia's Territory," AP wire,
January 18,1995.
24. David Hoffman, "Proliferation
of Parties Gives Russia a Fractured
Democratic System,"
Washington Post, October 1, 1995,
p. A27; Margaret Shapiro, "Russian Agency
Said to
Accuse Americans of Spying," Washington
Post, January 14,1995, p. A17.
25. Allan Turner, "Looking For Trouble,"
Houston Chronicle, May 28, 1995,
p. El; Kim Masters, "Where Is Fred
Cuny," Washington Post, June 19, 1995,
p. Dl; Patrick Anderson, "The
Disaster Expert Who Met His Match,"
Washington Post, September 6, 1999,
p.09; Scott Anderson, "What Happened
to Fred Cuny?" New York limes
Magazine, February 25,1996, p.44.
26. Scott Anderson, "The Man Who
Tried to Save the World: the Dangerous
Life and disappearance of Fred Cuny,"
Philanthropy Roundtable, March/April
2002, <www.philanthropyroundtable.org/magazines/2OO0-01/hedges>.
27. "U.S. Blocks $500M Aid Deal
for Russians" Wall Street Journal, December
22,1999.
26. Bob Djurdjevic, "Letters to
the Editor," Wall Street Journat
December22, 1999.
29. "Open Society Institute," <www.soros.org/osi/newyork>.
30. Connie Bruck, "The World According
to Soros," New Yorker, January 23, 1995.
31. Olga M. Lazin, "The Rise of
the U.S. Decentralized Model for
Philanthropy, George Soros' Open
Society and National Foundations in Europe,"
<www.isop.ucla.edu/profmex/volume6/lwinter01/011azin1>.
32. David Ignatius, "Innocence Abroad:
The New World of Spyless Coups,"
Washington Post, September 22,1993,
p.01.
33. Patrick McCartney, "Study Suggests
Drug Laws Resemble Notorious
Passbook Laws,"
<www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n861/a06>.
34. Mocadney.
35. See Sean Gervasi, "Western Intervention
in the USSR," CovertAction
Information Bulletin, no.39, Winter
1993-92.
36. "The Cenasia Discussion List,"
<www.eura sianet.org/resource/cenasia/hypermaill/200102/0052>.
37. Bogdan Denitch, "The Case Against
Inaction," The Nation, April 26, 1999.
38. "Biographies, 2002 Socialist
Scholars Conference,"
<www.socialistscholar.org/biographies>.
39. "Grants," <www.soros.org/repro/grants>.
40. "East and Central Europe Program,"
<www.newschool.edu/centers/ecep>.
41. Oxana Popovitch, "IREX Belarus
Opens a New IATP Site in Molodechno,"
<www.iatp.net/archive/belarus>.
42. Ian Traynor, "Belarussian Foils
Dictatorbuster... For Now," Moscow
Guardian, September 14, 2001,
<www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4256816,00>.
43. Steven Erlanger, "Kostunica
Says Some Backers 'Unconsciously Work for
American Imperial Goals,"' New York
Times, September 20, 2000; and
"Bringing Down a Dictator, Serbia
Calling," PBS,
<www.pbs.org/weta/dictator/rock/serbiacalling>.
44. Milosevic in the Hague, Focus
on Human Rights, "In-Depth Report
Documents Milosevic Crimes," April
2001,
<www.hrw.org/press/2001/10/kosov01026.htm.org/about/board.cfm>.
45. "About ICG," May 2002, <www.garethevans.dynamite.com.au/ge_icg_finalpr>.
46. Macedonia Crimes Against Civilians:
Abuses by Macedonian Forces in
Ljuboten, August 10-12, 2001. <www.hrw.org>.
47. Andrew Leonard, "The Man Who
Bought the World," February 28, 2002,
Salon.com,
<www.salon.com/tech/books/2002/O2/28/soros>.
48. James Petras, "Imperialism and
NGOs in Latin America," Monthly Review,
vol.49, no.7, December 1997.
49. International Security Studies,
"Herbert Okun,"
<wwww.yale.edu/iss/people_advisoryboard1>.
50. Leonard.
51. Edward W. Miller, "Brigandage,"
Coastal Post Monthly, Mann County, CA,
September 2000.
52. Mirjan Nadrljanski, "Eco-Disaster
in Pancevo: Consequences on the
Health of the
Population," July 19,1999,
<www.gci.ch/GreenCrossPrograms/legacy/yugoslavia/Nadrljanski>.
53. "Soros Fund Launches $150 Mln
U.S.-Backed Balkans investment,"
Bloomberg Business News, July 26,
2000; Chris Hedges, "Below It All in
Kosovo," New York Times, July 8,1998,
p. A4.
54. Galina Sabeva, "Soros' Sofia
IT Firm Gets $9 Million Equity
Investment," Reuters, January 23,
2001.
55. On Plan Colombia see: Manuel
Salgado Tamayo, "The Geostrategy of Plan
Colombia,"
CovertAction Quarterly no.71, Winter
2001.
56. "Colombia: Human Rights Watch
Testifies Before the Senate," Human
Rights Watch Backgrounder, April
24, 2002,
<www.hrw.org/backgrounder/americas/colombia-testimo
ny0424>.
57. "Colombia: Bush/Pastrana Meeting,
HRW World Report 2001, Human Rights
News" (New York, November 6, 2001).
58. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting,
Action Alert, "New York Times
Covering for Colombian Death Squads,"
February 9, 2001.
59. Doug Stokes "Colombia Primer
Q&A on the Conflict and U.S. Role," April
16, 2002, ZneI, <www.zmag.org/content/Colombia/podur_rozental-uribemodel>.
60. Interpress Service, January
18, 1995. For
additional background
see Jane Regan, "A.I.D.ing U.S. Interests In
Haiti," CovertAction Quarterly no.51,
Winter 1994-95; and Noam
Chomsky, "Haiti, The
Uncivil Society," CovertAction Quarterly no.57,
Summer 1996.
61. Sam Tucker, Human Rights Watch,
<www.webactive.com/webactive/sotw/hrw>.
62. John Kenneth Knaus, Orphans
of the Gold War (New York, BBS Public
Affairs 1999), p.236.
63. Elisabeth Rosenthal, "Defiant
Chinese Muslims Keep Their Own Time," New
York Times, November 19, 2000, p.3.
64. Jonathan Reynolds (pseudonym),
"The Clandestine Chef," New York Times
Magazine, December 3, 2000.
65. "Lessons of War," Le Monde Diplomatique,
March 2000; Peter Phillips,
"Untold Stories of U.S/NATO's War
and Media Complacency,"
<www.converge.org.nz/pma/suntold>.
66. Marc W. Herold, "A Dossier on
Civilian Victims of United States' Aerial
Bombing of Afghanistan: A Comprehensive
Accounting,"
<www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/civiDeaths>.
67. "Rape as a crime against humanity,"
<www.haverford.edu/reig/sells/rape/rape>.
68. "Improving the Public Diplomacy
Campaign in the War Against Terrorism,"
Independent Task Force on America's
Response to Terrorism, Council on
Foreign Relations, November 6, 2001.
69. William Greider, "Curious George
Talks the Market, The Nation, February
15,1999.
70."Oppose John Bolton's Nomination
as State Department's Arms Control
Leader," Council for a Livable World
,April 11, 2001,
<www.clw.org/bush/opposebolton>.
71. Ibid.
72. Greider.
73. "The Dictatorship of Financial
Capital," Federation of Social and
Educational Assistance (FASE), Brazil,
2002, <www.fase.org.br>.
___________________
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(*)
Heather Cottin is a writer;
lifelong political activist and recenry" retired h~gh school history teacher
She liVes in Freeporr; NY, and was for many years married to the late scholar
and activist Sean Gervasi.