NPR cans leftist newsman at behest of CAIR
October 21st, 2010 http://www.examiner.com/public-safety-in-national/npr-cans-leftist-newsman-at-behest-of-cair
At the behest of a group known as apologists for radical Islam and terrorists, the taxpayer-funded National Public Radio fired a well-respected NPR newsman and host over alleged derogatory comments he made regarding Muslims and terrorism on the Fox News Channel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T45_GIuENbM
NPR canned longtime “Talk of the Nation” host Juan Williams after the Council of Islamic Relations (CAIR) complained about remarks Williams made while appearing on The O’Reilly Factor Monday. Here's how this writer's friends and colleagues described the shocking story:
NPR has fired news analyst Juan Williams for comments he made on Fox News Channel earlier this week. Williams, who has been a Fox News contributor for 13 years, was on “The O’Reilly Factor” Monday night talking about the comments O’Reilly made last week on “The View” about Muslims and 9/11. On “The Factor”, Williams said, “[W]hen I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”
According to a statement obtained by Accuracy in Media, NPR wrote: “Tonight we gave Juan Williams notice that we are terminating his contract as a Senior News Analyst for NPR News. Juan has been a valuable contributor to NPR and public radio for many years and we did not make this decision lightly or without regret. However, his remarks on The O’Reilly Factor this past Monday were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR.”
“We regret these circumstances and thank Juan Williams for his many years of service to NPR and public radio.”
"In other words NPR’s editorial standards require employees to be politically correct at all times and making any statement that might cast Muslims in a negative light is strictly taboo even if it may be true," said Don Irvine of Accuracy in Media.
"NPR might have ignored Williams’ remarks except for the fact that CAIR, which spends its time looking for what it perceives as anti-Muslim bias, called on the network to address the situation. Their mission isn’t really to prevent anti-Muslim bias as much as it is to prevent anyone from offering an opinion of Muslims that is less than favorable, regardless of the truth," said Irvine.
CAIR, America's largest Islamic civil liberties group, has 32 offices and chapters nationwide and in Canada. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.
While CAIR continues to portray itself as a moderate organization, its history is filled with red flags that are ignored by the mainstream news media. According to a report from the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security:
"The Council on American-Islamic Relations and its employees have combined, conspired, and agreed with third parties, including, but not limited to, the Islamic Association for Palestine , the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, the Global Relief Foundation, and foreign nationals hostile to the interests of the United States, to provide material support to known terrorist organizations, to advance the Hamas agenda, and to propagate radical Islam."
"The Council on American-Islamic Relations, and certain of its officers, directors, and employees, have acted in support of, and in furtherance of, this conspiracy," said the Senate report.
Dr. Daniel Pipes, a foremost expert on radical Islam and terrorism cites several criminal cases involving CAIR officials:
A senior staff member, Randall Royer a/k/a "Ismail" Royer, pled guilty and was sentenced to twenty years in prison for participating in a network of militant jihadists centered in Northern Virginia. He admitted to aiding and abetting three persons who sought training in a terrorist camp in Pakistan for the purpose of waging jihad against American troops in Afghanistan. Royer's illegal actions occurred while he was employed by CAIR.
Their Director of Public Affairs, Bassem Kafagi was arrested by the US due to his ties with a terror-financing front group. Khafagi pled guilty to charges of visa and bank fraud, and agreed to be deported to Egypt. Khafagi's illegal actions occurred while he was employed by CAIR.
Ghassan Elashi, a founder of CAIR Texas chapter and founder of the Holy Land Foundation was arrested by the United States and charged with, making false statements on export declarations, dealing in the property of a designated terrorist organization, conspiracy and money laundering. Ghassan Elashi committed his crimes while working at CAIR, and was found guilty.
CAIR Board Member Imam Siraj Wahaj, an un-indicted co-conspirator in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, has called for replacing the American government with an Islamic caliphate, and warned that America will crumble unless it accepts Islam.
Whenever CAIR is accused of wrongdoing, their spokesmen are quick to tell Americans that its leadership have been guests at President Bush's White House and that they are regularly consulted by US officials on matters involving homeland security.
This year, CAIR and other groups had called for an independent investigation of the shooting. On January 13, 2010, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder to request that the civil rights division investigate both the shooting death of Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah, a Detroit Muslim cleric, who was shot during an October 28, 2009, arrest by FBI agents in Dearborn, Michigan. and whether the FBI violated the Constitution by using informants in mosques.
House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Conyers (D-MI) announced the Justice Department review at a news conference in Detroit sponsored by CAIR's Michigan chapter (CAIR-MI) and attended by a coalition of civil rights groups.
According to a Jim Kouri report for The Examiner, agents working on a counterterrorism task force in Detroit, Michigan reported that during a gun battle they shot and killed the Imam of a radical Islamic group. Agents say the gunfight began after Luqman Ameen Abdullah refused to surrender and face various criminal charges.
Abdullah is the spiritual leader of a group that is alleged to have engaged in violent activity over a period of many years, and known to be armed. According to the report obtained by the National Association of Chiefs of Police, the FBI was in the midst of arresting Abdullah and 10 of his followers on charges that included conspiracy to sell stolen goods and illegal possession and sale of firearms.
According to a preliminary report obtained by NACOP, Abdullah was killed while exchanging gunfire with Federal Bureau of Investigation agents on Wednesday at a warehouse in Dearborn, a suburb of Detroit.
------------------------------
With Grant, NPR to Step Up State Government Reporting
By ELIZABETH JENSEN
Published: October 17, 2010
NPR has received a $1.8 million grant from the Open Society Foundations to begin a project called Impact of Government that is intended to add at least 100 journalists at NPR member radio stations in all 50 states over the next three years.
The reporters, editors and analysts will cover state governments and how their actions affect people.
The project “creates capacity for local stations to hire reporters and to cover issues that matter that other places aren’t doing,” said Vivian Schiller, NPR’s president and chief executive. “Everything that we’re doing as relates to member stations comes down to two things: building local news capacity and making sure the content we create is available to all people across all platforms.”
Ms. Schiller said the journalists would not be part of typical statehouse coverage, but instead would work on enterprise journalism that looks at how state government decisions play out over years, and extend beyond a single state’s borders.
The program, one of a number of new public media reporting projects meant to counter some of the cutbacks in profit-making journalism, will begin with an eight-state pilot phase in March 2011. Eventually, NPR and local stations hope to raise about $17 million to expand the program, and $18 million to $19 million annually to sustain it, said Ron Schiller, president of the NPR Foundation and NPR’s senior vice president for development (and no relation to Ms. Schiller.)
The project is also intended to help the public radio network raise more money. Although NPR stations attract millions of small donors, and NPR itself received a $230 million grant from the Joan B. Kroc estate in 2003, NPR and its stations want to attract more major philanthropists, Mr. Schiller said.
“We felt there could be a really powerful case in talking collectively,” he said, adding that the Impact of Government project would allow NPR and its stations “to raise the philanthropic profile of public radio” among a range of donors by emphasizing the network’s special local-national structure.
Ann Beeson, executive director of U.S. Programs at the Open Society Foundations, said her organization had become concerned about the decline in coverage of state capitals and was attracted to NPR’s plan to share the coverage that is generated across states and on NPR’s national shows.
“We’re looking for opportunities to support new models to fill the gap in coverage,” she said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/business/media/18npr.html?_r=2
In recent weeks the White House has been preparing to "ramp up" its war on Fox
•George Soros' Open Society Foundation (OSF) is donating $1.8 million to NPR for a project planned to add at least 100 reporters across the country to cover local state house politics to fill the holes left by the firing of so many local reporters due to the contraction in the field of journalism over the last decade. Soros is not only the Chairman of the OSF but their 2008 tax return reflected Soros donation of over $400 million.
•Yesterday, Media Matters announced that George Soros is giving them $1,000,000 specifically to target Fox News.
When you put it all together it becomes very clear. The Obama administration one of the biggest funders of NPR declared war on Fox News. NPR tries to strong-arm a reporter from appearing on Fox and asked Juan Williams not to mention NPR when he appears on O'Reilly. George Soros, the man who bankrolls the progressive movement (and Obama's political arms like MoveOn...etc.) announces a huge donation to NPR just a few weeks ago and announces his own war with Fox using Media Matters as a tool. NPR gets a complaint from CAIR about an organization the FBI wont deal with because of their terrorist connections (on top of WH/Soros pressure to "handle" Williams and sees it as an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.
yidwithlid.blogspot.com/.../juan-williams-wasnt-fired-for-muslim.html
Savage fights back, sues CAIR
Posted by Robert on November 30, 2007 5:07 PM
The [1] truth-challenged [2] unindicted co-conspirators of the Council on American Islamic Relations have been targeting radio host Michael Savage, as they have targeted so many others before him. They've been pressuring advertisers to stop advertising on his show, and they've been succeeding. Background [3] here.
But Savage, unlike [4] Fox, unlike [5] National Review, unlike so many others, is unwilling to play the dhimmi and kowtow to these lying Islamic supremacist thugs in their continued assaults on the freedom of speech. It's about time that somebody with the resources to do so has fought back.
The text of Savage's suit can be found [6] here. A few highlights:
The conduct of CAIR (in addition to raising money) in violating the copyright interests of Michael Savage was to gain media attention and control so that CAIR would be seen as the moderate voice in the media. In fact CAIR is a radical voice that deliberately attempts to be seen as centrist so that media time goes to CAIR and once on the air, CAIR directs its rhetoric to the benefit of its extremist clients. This is a deliberate tactic and the theft of the copyright material was part of a pattern and practice advancing this tactic.
30. As set forth herein, CAIR is not a civil rights organization but is instead a political organization designed to advance a political agenda that is directly opposed to the existence of a free society that includes respect and dignity for all people and all religions.
The copyright infringement herein is part of this plan. CAIR's fundamental purpose is to be a lobbyist for foreign interests.
[...] 34. CAIR while claiming in its paperwork to be a civil rights organization was in fact co-founded in 1994 by Ibrahim Hooper, Nihad Awad, and Omar Ahmad, all of whom had close ties to the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), which was established by senior Hamas operative Mousa Abu Marzook.
35. The director of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation counter-terrorism unit has stated that IAP is a Hamas front (that is) controlled by Hamas, it brings Hamas leaders to the US, it does propaganda for Hamas.
36. CAIR opened its first office in Washington, DC, with the help of a $5,000 donation from the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), a self-described charity founded by Hamas operative, Mousa Abu Marzook.
37. At a 1994 meeting at Barry University, CAIR co-founder Nihad Awad stated that:
"I am a supporter of the Hamas movement." Awad wrote in the Muslim World Monitor that the 1994 trial which had resulted in the conviction of four Islamic fundamentalist terrorists who had perpetrated the previous year's World Trade Center bombing was "a travesty of justice."
38. Hamas is listed as a terrorist organization by Canada, the European Union, Israel, Japan, and the United States. Hamas is banned in the Muslim nation of Jordan, Australia and the United Kingdom.
39. Plaintiff contends that CAIR is still associated with foreign groups as set forth more fully herein and that the wrongful intent in violating the copyright as set forth herein was based in part upon a desire to silence a vocal critic of Hamas.
40. The involvement of CAIR's founders in illegal conduct was addressed on February 2, 1995, when U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White named CAIR Advisory Board member and New York Imam Siraj Wahhaj as one of the "unindicted persons who may be alleged as co-conspirators" in Islamic Group leader Omar Abdel Rahman's foiled plot to blow up numerous New York City monuments.
41. On May 7, 1996, CAIR coordinated a press conference to protest the decision of the U.S. government to extradite Marzook for his connection to terrorist acts performed by Hamas. CAIR characterized the extradition as "anti-Islamic" and "anti-American."
42. Prior to 9/11, CAIR continued in its claim that it was a civil rights organization. They made this claim when in October 1998, CAIR demanded the removal of a Los Angeles billboard describing Osama bin Laden as "the sworn enemy," asserting that this depiction "offensive to Muslims."
43. Also in 1998, CAIR denied bin Laden's responsibility for the two al Qaeda bombings of American embassies in Africa. CAIR's leader Ibrahim Hooper, claimed the bombings resulted from "misunderstandings of both sides."
44. In a July 1998 news article CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad is quoted speaking to a group of California Muslims expressing his hope of seeing an America under the domination of Islam. In that article, Ahmad is quoted as saying,
Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran ... should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.
45. On October 5, 2001, just weeks after 9/11, CAIR's New York office sent a letter to The New York Times arguing that the paper had misidentified three of the hijackers and suggesting that the attacks may have been committed by people who were impersonating Arab Muslims.
46. CAIR further exploited 9/11 as it put on its website a picture of the World Trade Center in flames and below it a call for donations that was linked to the Holy Land Foundation website.
47. The HLF is the Holy Land Foundation. On December 4, 2001, the Attorney General of the United States stated that “the Holy Land Foundation, received much of its early money from Mousa Abu Marzuq, a top Hamas official who, the U.S. courts have determined, was directly involved in terrorism."
48.The use CAIR's website to misappropriate the spirit of 9/11 charity to raise money for a terror organization is a pattern of conduct of CAIR that has been repeated with the appropriation of Michael Savage's material for CAIR's own purpose. While the outrage of diverting 9/11 charity is unmatched in its callousness, the success of that enterprise may well have emboldened CAIR in its present conduct.
49. When the President of the United States closed the Holy Land Foundation in December 2001 for collecting money "to support the Hamas terror organization," CAIR decried his action as "unjust" and "disturbing."
50. On April 20, 2002, CAIR's director spoke at a rally in Washington D.C. He spoke from a podium next to a Hezbollah flag.
51. On December 29, 2004 Wagdy Ghoneim, an extremist Egyptian cleric known for his advocacy in support of violence and hatred for Jews, decided to voluntarily leave the country after being accused of immigration violation, CAIR's director in California, Hussam Ayloush, told The Los Angeles Times that the case demonstrated the selective application of laws on Muslims. CAIR has never publicly criticized the radical statements made by Ghoneim.
52. In a July 7, 2004 interview with BBC, Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR's spokesman, defended Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi, a Qatar-based Muslim cleric known for his support for terrorism, as respectable, adding: I don't think there's any incitement of violence on his part. Qaradawi was an open supporter of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, as well as groups targeting U.S. forces in Iraq. Qaradawi is barred from entering the U.S. because of his advocacy of violence.
53. On April 13, 2005: Ghassan Elashi, a founding board member of CAIR's Texas chapter, and two of his brothers, were found guilty of supporting terrorism by funneling money to the leader of Hamas. They were convicted in a federal court in Texas of handling and trying to conceal an investment by senior Hamas leader Musa Abu Marzuq. In July 2004, Ghassan Elashi was convicted on separate charges of illegally exporting goods to Syria and of money laundering. At that time, a representative of CAIR's Dallas-Fort Worth chapter, Khalil Meek, argued that the only thing the Elashis were guilty of was the crime of being Muslims in America.
54. On February 21, 2006, CAIR National Legal Director Arsalan Iftikhar appeared on MSNBC's Scarborough Country debating the Dubai side of the U.S. ports story. Michael Savage was the leader of the public opposition to the purchase of major U.S. ports by Dubai and Savage herein alleges that the misappropriation and misuse of his content as set forth herein was done in part in retaliation for Savage's opposition to overseas ownership of such a strategic asset.
55. Such political conduct in favor of foreign organizations supporting violence has continued to the present up to and including the time of the copyright infringement and during all times known to plaintiff up to the date of the filing of this lawsuit.
56. At 8:00 pm on June 6, 2006, the Ohio affiliate of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-OH) honored one of the unindicted conspirators in that 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Siraj Wahhaj. Wahhaj had also served as a defense witness at the trial of one of the men convicted for that terrorist attack, the Blind Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman (a conviction that CAIR has labeled a travesty of justice. More than 400 CAIR-OH supporters gathered at this fund-raising banquet.
57. On August 7, 2006: Altaf Ali, executive director of CAIR-Florida, published an opinion piece in the Sun-Sentinel, in which he compared Israel and the U.S. government to Al Qaeda.
58. On August 12, 2006: CAIR participated in and endorsed several rallies in support of Hezbollah and the resistance fighting American forces in Iraq.
59. In October, 2006 a CAIR affiliated publication, InFocus, printed an article supporting Hezbollah. The commentary claimed that the war was part of an American-British conspiracy, a “phase of the larger plans of the colonialist superpowers. It also praised the epic heroism of the resistance fighters.
60. In May 2007 CAIR was identified by the government as an unindicted co-conspirator in a case involving a charity that was allegedly affiliated with Hamas. Federal prosecutors in the case of the Holy Land Foundation listed CAIR under the category: Individuals/entities who are and/or were members of the US Muslim Brotherhood's Palestine Committee and/or its organizations. The government also listed Omar Ahmad, CAIR's founder and chairman emeritus, under the same category.
61. In August 2-7, 2007 during the Holy Land Foundation trial in Texas, FBI agent Lara Burns testified about evidence connecting CAIR and two of its founders to the Holy Land Foundation as well as to the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood movement that established Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank. The agent identified CAIR executive director Nihad Awad as one of the scheduled participants at a meeting of Hamas officials in a hotel in Philadelphia in 1993. At the time, Awad was a representative of IAP. Burns also identified CAIR co-founders Awad and Omar Ahmed as members of the Palestine Committee set up by the Muslim Brotherhood.
62. Attacks on other public figures have included an attack on Presidential candidate, Rudy Guiliani for using the phrase Islamic Terrorism and for accepting the endorsement of Pat Robertson whose endorsement of Guiliani included a reference to the bloodlust of Islamic terrorists.
63. CAIR also attacked Guiliani's choice of Daniel Pipes as foreign policy advisor. Pipes is the person who first published (in 1998) the quotation from CAIR's cofounder that:
Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran ... should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.
64. CAIR has a pattern and practice of attacking critics. On or about January 6, 2004, an attorney and agent for CAIR wrote a cease and desist letter to Andrew Whitehead who runs a website www.anti-cair-net.org. In this letter, CAIR attacked Mr. Whitehead's exposure of CAIR's foreign ties deeming those facts as being sociopathic and xenophobic. When Whitehead would not yield to CAIR's demands they filed a $ 1.3 million dollar libel lawsuit against him.
65. Whitehead countersued and in his allegations made assertions similar to those of Daniel Pipes where he asserted that Douglas Hooper, a/k/a Ibrahim Hooper (Hooper), CAIR's Director of Communications, also worked for the IAP before joining CAIR. He has stated: I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future Hooper has defended payments of bounties to the families of suicide bombers who kill Jews.
66. CAIR later dismissed that lawsuit at a time when Whitehead's attorneys started demanding information relating to CAIR's sources of funding.
67. The theft of Michael Savage's copyrighted material and the destruction of the proper context of that material is yet another tactic to silence critics of CAIR. CAIR was specifically and by name attacked by Michael Savage in his October 29, 2007 statement but CAIR did not contest the truth of Savage's attack on CAIR but instead sought to steal and sully his copyrighted work. Clearly CAIR did not wish to defend themselves and lose in the same manner that they failed in the lawsuit against Andrew Whitehead, therefore this new tactic was employed.
68. Based upon these facts and further facts to be produced at trial, plaintiff alleges that CAIR is not a civil rights organization but instead is a political vehicle of international terrorism and that the copyright infringement itself and the manner in which the material was used, was part of a deliberate practice and pattern to do material harm to those voices who speak against the violent agenda of CAIR's clients. The attack on Rudy Guiliani, Daniel Pipes, Andrew Whitehead and Michael Savage are part of a pattern and practice to silence critics of CAIR and critics of CAIR's foreign agenda under the false guise of civil rights.
69. In the summer of 2007, CAIR supported international terror when, in response to renewed fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon and Palestinian terror organizations in Gaza , CAIR did not condemn the terror organizations that provoked the fighting but instead launched an anti-Israel media campaign. This has nothing to do with the civil rights of Muslim Americans. When CAIR is criticized for these tactics, it unleashes campaigns against these critics under the guise of civil rights as set forth above and as will be further proven at trial.
70. Therefore CAIR seeks to silence its critics including those who use strong language but do not advocate violence while CAIR itself supports people who use even stronger language and advocate and urge actual violence against innocent civilians; all this under the guise of being a civil rights organization.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article printed from Jihad Watch: http://www.jihadwatch.org/2007/11/savage-fights-back-sues-cair.html
URLs in this post:
[1] http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/017601.php
[2] http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/016754.php
[3] http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58915
[4] http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID={809737A5-F8E5-46C6-8777-4DF3C5F888F8}
[5] http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID={3B661091-9C07-4DEB-A900-18DBF04591E1}
[6] http://www.savage-productions.com/Savage_CAIR_suit.html
-----------------------------------
Huckabee calls on Congress to cut NPR funding
CNN Peter Hamby
Posted on Thursday, October 21, 2010
(CNN) – In the wake of NPR's firing of contributor Juan Williams over comments about Muslims, Mike Huckabee is calling on the next Congress to cut the radio network's funding when it convenes next year.
"NPR has discredited itself as a forum for free speech and a protection of the First Amendment rights of all and has solidified itself as the purveyor of politically correct pabulum and protector of views that lean left," Huckabee said in a statement provided to CNN.
Williams told Fox News host Bill O'Reilly on Monday that he gets "worried" and "nervous" on flights when he sees people wearing "Muslim garb." NPR terminated Williams' contract on Wednesday evening.
"It is time for the taxpayers to start making cuts to federal spending, and I encourage the new Congress to start with NPR," he said.
NPR says federal funding comprises less than 2 percent of its budget, with most of its financial support coming from station fees, sponsorships and grants.
Excerpt: Read more at politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com ...
====================
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/46954/
Beck connects the dots between the Apollo Alliance, SEIU, ACORN, the Tides Foundation and Soros.
Multi-billionaire funder of leftwing causes and groups
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=977
Founder of the Open Society Institute
Stated that defeating President Bush in the 2004 election "is the central focus of my life"
George Soros was born on August 12, 1930 in Budapest, Hungary. His father, Teodoro Schwartz, was a successful attorney and an Orthodox Jew who, in 1936, changed the family surname from Schwartz to Soros in order to enable his family to conceal its Jewish identity and thus to survive the Nazi Holocaust. When the Nazis occupied Budapest in 1944, Soros' fathe
r decided to split up his family, so as to minimize the chance that all its members would be killed together. He purchased forged papers for each of them, and then bribed a government official to claim George as his Christian godson and to let the boy live with him. "While hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were being transported to death camps," reports the Sweetness and Light website, "George Soros accompanied his phony godfather on his appointed rounds, confiscating property from the Jews." (Many years later -- in December 1998 -- a CBS interviewer would ask Soros whether he had ever felt any guilt about those circumstances. Soros replied: "[T]here was no sense that I shouldn't be there, because that was–well, actually, in a funny way, it's just like in markets -- that if I weren't there -- of course, I wasn't doing it, but somebody else would -- would -- would be taking it away anyhow. And it was the -- whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away. So the -- I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt.")In 1947 Soros' family relocated from Hungary to England. Five years later, George graduated from the London School of Economics. He subsequently worked for a London stockbroker.
In 1956 Soros, with meager personal assets, emigrated to the United States. He would go on to become one of the world's leading hedge fund investors and currency traders. In 1969 he started his enormously successful Quantum Fund, which, over the ensuing three decades, yielded its long-term investors a four thousand-fold gain on their initial 1969 investments.
In a $10 billion 1992 deal whose success was contingent upon the devaluation of the British Pound, Soros earned himself a $1 billion profit and the title, "the man who broke the Bank of England." To date, he has amassed a personal fortune exceeding $7 billion. In addition, his management company controls billions of dollars more in investor assets.
In 1979 Soros established the Open Society Institute (OSI), which serves as the flagship of a network of Soros foundations that donate tens of millions of dollars each year to a wide array of individuals and organizations that share the founder's agendas. Those agendas can be summarized as follows:
promoting the view that America is institutionally an oppressive nation
promoting the election of leftist political candidates throughout the United States
opposing virtually all post-9/11 national security measures enacted by U.S. government, particularly the Patriot Act
depicting American military actions as unjust, unwarranted, and immoral
promoting open borders, mass immigration, and a watering down of current immigration laws
promoting a dramatic expansion of social welfare programs funded by ever-escalating taxes
promoting social welfare benefits and amnesty for illegal aliens
defending the civil rights and liberties of suspected anti-American terrorists and their abetters
financing the recruitment and training of future activist leaders of the political Left
advocating America's unilateral disarmament and/or a steep reduction in its military spending
opposing the death penalty in all circumstances
promoting socialized medicine in the United States
promoting the tenets of radical environmentalism, whose ultimate goal, as writer Michael Berliner has explained, is "not clean air and clean water, [but] rather ... the demolition of technological/industrial civilization"
bringing American foreign policy under the control of the United Nations
promoting racial and ethnic preferences in academia and the business world alike
promoting taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand
advocating stricter gun-control measures
advocating the legalization of marijuana
To view a list of many of the more important Soros donees that support the foregoing agendas, click here.
Moreover, there are numerous "secondary" or "indirect" affiliates of the Soros network. These include organizations which do not receive direct funding from Soros and OSI, but which are funded by one or more organizations that do. These secondary affiliates also include groups that work collaboratively or synergistically with Soros-funded entities. To view a list of some of these organizations, click here.
All told, Soros' foundation network made an estimated $5 billion worth of grants between 1979 and 2007.
PBS broadcaster and Schumann Center for Media and Democracy President Bill Moyers is a trustee of the Open Society Institute's Board of Directors.
In 1996 Soros launched the Soros Documentary Fund with a mission to "spur awareness, action and social change." Over the ensuing decade, this Fund would help finance the production of several hundred documentaries. In 2001, the Fund's leadership was turned over to Robert Redford's Sundance Institute with a continuing mission: "to support the production of documentaries on social justice, human rights, civil liberties, and freedom of expression issues around the world."
According to journalist Rondi Adamson, most of the documentaries that that the Fund supports "are highly critical of some aspect of American life, capitalism or Western culture," and generally share Soros' worldview that "America is a troubling if not sinister influence in the world, that the War on Terror is a fraud and terrorists are misunderstood freedom fighters, and that markets are fundamentally unjust." Films which have been produced with the aid of Soros' funding include Soldiers of Conscience (2007), An American Soldier (2008), and My Baghdad Family (in production as of late 2008).
In 1998 Soros was a signatory to a public letter addressed to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, declaring that "the global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse itself." The letter blamed the war on drugs for impeding such public health efforts as stemming the spread of HIV, hepatitis, and other infectious diseases, as well as human rights violations and the perpetration of environmental assaults. Other notable signers included Peter Lewis, Tammy Baldwin, Rev. William Sloan Coffin, Jr., Walter Cronkite, Morton H. Halperin, Kweisi Mfume, and Cornel West.
In 2000, Soros was a signatory to a letter titled "Appeal for Responsible Security" that appeared in the New York Times. "We call upon the United States government," said the letter, "to commit itself unequivocally to negotiate the worldwide reduction and elimination of nuclear weapons, in a series of well-defined stages accompanied by increasing verification and control." Other signers included Jimmy Carter, Martin Sheen, Marian Wright Edelman, John Sweeney, and Ted Turner.
Also in 2000, Soros signed a letter addressed to President Bill Clinton, asking him to place a moratorium on federal death penalty executions. The letter maintained that the "death penalty system" was "distorted by bias and arbitrariness." Other signatories included Mary Frances Berry, Julian Bond, Wade Henderson, Jesse Jackson, Norman Lear, Jim Wallis, Robert Reich, and Barbra Streisand.
During the 2000 presidential election season, Soros first experimented with the idea of raising campaign funds through "Section 527" groups. Such organizations are used for raising "soft money" which is not intended for "express advocacy" of any particular candidate, but rather for "voter education," "issue-oriented" political advertising, and other such nebulous enterprises. As such, there are no limits on how much money they may receive from any given donor. In practice, however, 527s can exert -- through public statements, press releases, media citations, research reports, and direct action campaigns -- immense influence on the political views and voting decisions of the American public.
Soros assembled a team of wealthy Democrat donors to help him push two of his pet issues -- gun control and marijuana legalization -- by funneling large amounts of cash to some 527s that were committed to those particular objectives. The financial contributions that Soros and his fellow donors made to these 527s greatly exceeded the sums which campaign finance laws would have permitted them to give to any political candidate, political party, or Political Action Committee (PAC). By funding the 527s, Soros et al were helping them promote messages and worldviews that were consistent with those of leftist politicos; as such, the funders were indirectly but quite substantially helping candidates of the left. In a sense, Soros and his fellow donors effectively laundered their political contributions through Section 527 groups, which were dubbed "stealth PACs" by the media of that time.
Having experienced this success in 2000, Soros moved to exploit the power of 527s on a much larger scale during the 2004 election cycle. Toward that end, he was a key force in the creation of the so-called "Shadow Party" in 2003. This term refers to a nationwide network of unions, non-profit activist groups, and think tanks whose agendas are ideologically to the left, and which are engaged in campaigning for the Democrats. This network's activities include fundraising, get-out-the-vote drives, political advertising, opposition research, and media manipulation.
According to Richard Poe, co-author (with David Horowitz) of the book The Shadow Party:
"The Shadow Party is the real power driving the Democrat machine. It is a network of radicals dedicated to transforming our constitutional republic into a socialist hive. The leader of these radicals is ... George Soros. He has essentially privatized the Democratic Party, bringing it under his personal control. The Shadow Party is the instrument through which he exerts that control.... It works by siphoning off hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions that would have gone to the Democratic Party in normal times, and putting those contributions at the personal disposal of Mr. Soros. He then uses that money to buy influence and loyalty where he sees fit. In 2003, Soros set up a network of privately-owned groups which acts as a shadow or mirror image of the Party. It performs all the functions we would normally expect the real Democratic Party to perform, such as shaping the Party platform, fielding candidates, running campaigns, and so forth. However, it performs these functions under the private supervision of Mr. Soros and his associates. The Shadow Party derives its power from its ability to raise huge sums of money. By controlling the Democrat purse strings, the Shadow Party can make or break any Democrat candidate by deciding whether or not to fund him. During the 2004 election cycle, the Shadow Party raised more than $300 million for Democrat candidates, prompting one of its operatives, MoveOn PAC director Eli Pariser, to declare, 'Now it's our party. We bought it, we own it.…'"
In a November 11, 2003 interview with Laura Blumenfeld of the Washington Post, Soros described how he had jump-started the Shadow Party during the summer of 2002 by summoning a team of political strategists, activists, and Democrat donors to his Southampton beach house in Long Island. The attendees included: Morton H. Halperin (Director of Soros' Open Society Institute); John Podesta (Democrat strategist and former Bill Clinton chief of staff); Jeremy Rosner (Democrat strategist and pollster, and ex-foreign policy speechwriter for Bill Clinton); Robert Boorstin (Democrat strategist and pollster); Carl Pope (America Coming Together co-founder, Democrat strategist, and Sierra Club Executive Director); Steve Rosenthal (Labor leader, CEO of America Coming Together, and former advisor to Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich); Peter Lewis (major Democrat donor and insurance entrepreneur); Rob Glaser (major Democrat donor and Silicon Valley pioneer); Ellen Malcolm (co-founder and President of America Coming Together and founder of Emily's List); Rob McKay (major Democrat donor); and Lewis and Dorothy Cullman (major Democrat donors).
At that meeting, Soros laid out his plan to unseat incumbent President George W. Bush.
Profoundly contemptuous of Bush, Soros blamed the President not only for many of the ills that plagued the United States, but for a host of problems afflicting other nations as well. Speaking at a conference of the Jewish Funders Network in November 2003, for example, Soros said:
"There is a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe. The policies of the Bush administration and the [Israeli prime minister Ariel] Sharon administration contribute to that.... I'm critical of those policies.... If we change that direction, then anti-Semitism also will diminish."
Asserting that America needed "a regime change" to oust Bush, Soros declared that derailing the President's reelection bid in 2004 "is the central focus of my life ... a matter of life and death." "America under Bush," he said, "is a danger to the world, and I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is."
Soros had previously experienced considerable success in effecting "regime change" elsewhere in the world. For instance, he helped fund the 1989 "Velvet Revolution" that brought Vaclav Havel to power in the Czech Republic. And by his own admission, he helped engineer coups in Slovakia, Croatia, Georgia, and Yugoslavia.
When Soros targets a country for "regime change," he begins by creating a shadow government -- a fully formed government-in-exile, ready to assume power when the opportunity arises. The Shadow Party he has built in America greatly resembles those he has created in other countries prior to instigating a coup.
Claiming that "the Republican party has been captured by a bunch of extremists," Soros accused the Bush administration of following a "supremacist ideology" in whose rhetoric he claimed to hear echoes from his childhood in occupied Hungary. "When I hear Bush say, 'You're either with us or against us,'" Soros explained, "it reminds me of the Germans. It conjures up memories of Nazi slogans on the walls, Der Feind Hort mit (The enemy is listening). My experiences under Nazi and Soviet rule have sensitized me."
Soros likened Republicans generally, and the Bush administration in particular, to "the Nazi and communist regimes" in the sense that they are "all engaged in the politics of fear." "Indeed," he wrote in 2006, "the Bush administration has been able to improve on the techniques used by the Nazi and Communist propaganda machines by drawing on the innovations of the advertising and marketing industries." Soros would elaborate on this theme at the January 2007 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he told reporters: "America needs to ... go through a certain de-Nazification process."
In 2004 Soros spent some $26 million of his own money in an effort to drive Bush from office. That sum included a $5 million donation to MoveOn.org, a $10 million grant to a Democratic Party 2004 get-out-the-vote initiative called America Coming Together, and $3 million to the Center for American Progress (CAP), a think-tank headed by former Clinton chief-of-staff John Podesta. (Soros himself was instrumental in establishing CAP in 2003 as "a nonpartisan research and educational institute" aimed at "developing a long-term vision of a progressive America.")
Though Soros and his Shadow Party failed to bring about "regime change" in 2004, the vast network of interrelated Shadow Party groups would prove to be key players in the 2006 midterm elections that saw Democrats seize control of Congress. Of particular significance was Democracy Alliance, a non-tax-exempt nonprofit entity registered in the District of Columbia, which Soros had founded in 2005, and whose long-term objective was to develop a funding clearinghouse for leftist groups.
In 2008, Soros' Shadow Party was again a major force in the movement that not only expanded the Democratic Party's congressional majorities, but also delivered the presidency to Barack Obama.
Soros' ties to Obama date back to 2004, when the multi-billionaire hosted a fundraiser for Obama during the latter's 2004 campaign for the U.S. Senate. In December of 2006, as Obama contemplated making a run for the presidency in 2008, Soros met in his New York office with the Illinois senator. Then, on January 16, 2007, Obama announced the creation of a presidential exploratory committee. 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 back Obama over the Democrat he had previously favored for the presidency, Hillary Clinton. Soros averred, however, that he would support Mrs. Clinton if she (rather than Obama) were ultimately to win the Democratic Party's nomination.
In 2008, Obama announced that upon his election to the office of President, he would create a "Social Investment Fund Network," which would provide federal money to "social entrepreneurs and leading nonprofit organizations [that] are assisting schools, lifting families out of poverty, filling health care gaps, and inspiring others to lead change in their own communities." According to columnist Michelle Malkin, "this Barack Obama brainchild would serve as a permanent, taxpayer-backed pipeline to Democratic partisan outfits masquerading as public-interest do-gooders," and would serve as a "George Soros Slush Fund" by continuing to bolster numerous Soros-founded and funded organizations.
Soros has been a vocal critic of America's military endeavors and foreign policies in recent years. He also has rejected the very notion that a war on terror needs to be fought. In August 2006 he wrote a Wall Street Journal piece titled "A Self-Defeating War," whose premise was that "the war on terror is a false metaphor that has led to counterproductive and self-defeating policies." "Five years after 9/11," Soros elaborated, "a misleading figure of speech applied literally has unleashed a real war fought on several fronts -- Iraq, Gaza, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Somalia -- a war that has killed thousands of innocent civilians and enraged millions around the world. Yet al Qaeda has not been subdued."
According to Soros:
"[T]errorism is an abstraction. It lumps together all political movements that use terrorist tactics. Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Sunni insurrection and the Mahdi army in Iraq are very different forces, but President Bush's global war on terror prevents us from differentiating between them and dealing with them accordingly. It inhibits much-needed negotiations with Iran and Syria because they are states that support terrorist groups.... The war on terror emphasizes military action while most territorial conflicts require political solutions.... [It] drives a wedge between 'us' and 'them.' We are [supposedly] innocent victims. They are [supposedly] perpetrators. But we fail to notice that we also become perpetrators in the process; the rest of the world, however, does notice. That is how such a wide gap has arisen between America and much of the world. Taken together, these ... factors ensure that the war on terror cannot be won. An endless war waged against an unseen enemy is doing great damage to our power and prestige abroad and to our open society at home."
In the April 12, 2007 issue of the New York Review of Books, Soros penned an article titled "On Israel, America and AIPAC," wherein he derided the Bush administration for "committing a major policy blunder in the Middle East" by "supporting the Israeli government in its refusal to recognize a Palestinian unity government that includes Hamas, which the U.S. State Department considers a terrorist organization." In Soros' calculus, "This precludes any progress toward a peace settlement at a time when progress on the Palestinian problem could help avert a conflagration in the greater Middle East." Added Soros:
"Israel, "with the strong backing of the United States, refused to recognize the democratically elected Hamas government and withheld payment of the millions in taxes collected by the Israelis on its behalf. This caused great economic hardship and undermined the ability of the government to function. But it did not reduce popular support for Hamas among Palestinians, and it reinforced the position of Islamic and other extremists who oppose negotiations with Israel.… [Hamas] was not willing to go so far as to recognize the existence of Israel but it was prepared to enter into a government of national unity which would have abided by the existing agreements with Israel.… But both Israel and the United States seem to be frozen in their unwillingness to negotiate with a Palestinian Authority that includes Hamas. The sticking point is Hamas's unwillingness to recognize the existence of Israel; but that [recognition] could be made a condition for an eventual settlement rather than a precondition for negotiations.… The current policy of not seeking a political solution but pursuing military escalation—not just an eye for an eye but roughly speaking ten Palestinian lives for every Israeli one—has reached a particularly dangerous point."
In a November 2008 interview with Spiegel, Soros made some comments that accurately outlined precisely the course that President Obama's administration would eventually pursue in 2009:
"I think we need a large stimulus package which will provide funds for state and local government to maintain their budgets -- because they are not allowed by the constitution to run a deficit. For such a program to be successful, the federal government would need to provide hundreds of billions of dollars. In addition, another infrastructure program is necessary. In total, the cost would be in the 300 to 600 billion dollar range [in addition to the $700 billion bailout which the government already had given to the financial industry]…. I think this is a great opportunity to finally deal with global warming and energy dependence. The U.S. needs a cap and trade system with auctioning of licenses for emissions rights. I would use the revenues from these auctions to launch a new, environmentally friendly energy policy. That would be yet another federal program that could help us to overcome the current stagnation."
The interviewer then said: "Your proposal would be dismissed on Wall Street as 'big government.' Republicans might call it European-style 'socialism.'" Soros replied:
"That is exactly what we need now. I am against market fundamentalism. I think this propaganda that government involvement is always bad has been very successful -- but also very harmful to our society…. I think it is better to have a government that wants to provide good government than a government that doesn't believe in government…. At times of recession, running a budget deficit is highly desirable. Once the economy begins to recover, you have to balance the budget. In 2010, the Bush tax cuts will expire and we should not extend them. But we will also need additional revenues."
Soros and his foundations have had a hand in funding such noteworthy leftist organizations as the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy; the Tides Foundation; the Tides Center; the National Organization for Women; Feminist Majority; the American Civil Liberties Union; People for the American Way; Alliance for Justice; NARAL Pro-Choice America; America Coming Together; the Center for American Progress; Campaign for America's Future; Amnesty International; the Sentencing Project; the Center for Community Change; the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense and Educational Fund; Human Rights Watch; the Prison Moratorium Project; the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement; the National Lawyers Guild; the Center for Constitutional Rights; the Coalition for an International Criminal Court; The American Prospect; MoveOn.org; Planned Parenthood; the Nation Institute; the Brennan Center for Justice; the Ms. Foundation for Women; the National Security Archive Fund; the Pacifica Foundation; Physicians for Human Rights; the Proteus Fund; the Public Citizen Foundation; the Urban Institute; the American Friends Service Committee; Catholics for a Free Choice; Human Rights First; the Independent Media Institute; MADRE; the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund; the Immigrant Legal Resource Center; the National Immigration Law Center; the National Immigration Forum; the National Council of La Raza; the American Immigration Law Foundation; the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee; and the Peace and Security Funders Group.
In October 2010, Soros announced that he was donating $1 million to Media Matters for America, which would use the money to hold “Fox [Nes] host Glenn Beck and others on the cable news channel accountable for their reporting.”
Apart from the more than $5 billion that Soros' foundation network has donated to leftist groups like those listed above, Soros personally has made campaign contributions to such notable political candidates as Charles Rangel, Al Franken, Tom Udall, Joe Sestak, and Sherrod Brown.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=977
The words of Patrick Henry are apropos: “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”
These days, Patrick Henry’s sentiment is more than just some quaint hyperbole from long ago—it’s a slow burning, but intense, glow that fires our courage and heart.
No comments:
Post a Comment