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.