Energy Department approved loan to build Electric Cars In FinlandOn top of all that, this car that cost nearly a hundred thousand dollars ends up getting less gas millage than an SUV. So why is American Taxpayer money going to build cars in Finland when the unemployment rate in the states is 9.1%? As The Obama Administration.
Obama's Dogma gets run over by a Finnish Karma - Photo- Fox News
The Department of Energy is standing by a $529 million loan guarantee to a company building an electric car line in Finland.
A department official, in a lengthy response posted on a government blog Thursday night, confirmed that the company Fisker is assembling its Karma electric car at its “overseas facility.”
The response comes after ABC News reported that the Obama administration gave the green light for the company to move the manufacturing to Finland two years after announcing the loan.
But Energy Department spokesman Dan Leistikow said none of the U.S. loan money contributed to the production work in Finland.
http://www.ironmill.com/2011/10/21/energy-department-approved-loan-to-build-electric-cars-in-finland/
Read more: Energy Department Defends Loan To Company Building Electric Cars In Finland
Friday, October 28, 2011
State Dept. Spends $70,000 on Obama Books Your taxpayer money at work
State Dept. Spends $70,000 on Obama Books
Your taxpayer money at work.
Published October 25, 2011 FoxNews.com
President Obama just soared to the top of the U.S. embassy bestseller list.
The U.S. Department of State forked over $70,000 to buy Obama’s best-selling book “Dreams From My Father,” The Washington Times reported Tuesday, noting that if Obama earned 10 percent of the purchase, he pocketed several thousand dollars.
Although the 1995 book is a bestseller that sold briskly when Obama’s popularity grew during his run for president, the department’s decision to buy copies is catching the eye of government spending watchdogs.
“It’s inappropriate for U.S. taxpayer dollars to be spent on this,” Leslie Paige, the spokesman for Citizens Agaisnt Governtment Waste, told the paper. “This sounds like propaganda.”
The report points out that there’s no indication that the White House was alerted about the purchase, and a spokesman from the State Department said book purchases are common and often used “to engage key audiences in discussions of foreign policy.”
“We also provide key library collections with books about the United States,” Noel Clay, the spokesman, told The Times. (The newspaper said a White House spokesman didn't respond to its messages.)
Obama reported between $1 million to $5 million in royalties in 2010 for “Dreams from My Father,” and between $100,001 and $1 million for “The Audacity of Hope.”
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/10/25/state-department-reportedly-spends-70000-on-obamas-dreams-from-my-father/print#ixzz1c4KcSipU
Your taxpayer money at work.
Published October 25, 2011 FoxNews.com
President Obama just soared to the top of the U.S. embassy bestseller list.
The U.S. Department of State forked over $70,000 to buy Obama’s best-selling book “Dreams From My Father,” The Washington Times reported Tuesday, noting that if Obama earned 10 percent of the purchase, he pocketed several thousand dollars.
Although the 1995 book is a bestseller that sold briskly when Obama’s popularity grew during his run for president, the department’s decision to buy copies is catching the eye of government spending watchdogs.
“It’s inappropriate for U.S. taxpayer dollars to be spent on this,” Leslie Paige, the spokesman for Citizens Agaisnt Governtment Waste, told the paper. “This sounds like propaganda.”
The report points out that there’s no indication that the White House was alerted about the purchase, and a spokesman from the State Department said book purchases are common and often used “to engage key audiences in discussions of foreign policy.”
“We also provide key library collections with books about the United States,” Noel Clay, the spokesman, told The Times. (The newspaper said a White House spokesman didn't respond to its messages.)
Obama reported between $1 million to $5 million in royalties in 2010 for “Dreams from My Father,” and between $100,001 and $1 million for “The Audacity of Hope.”
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/10/25/state-department-reportedly-spends-70000-on-obamas-dreams-from-my-father/print#ixzz1c4KcSipU
Thursday, October 20, 2011
The Woman Behind Obama's Power
Samantha Power’s Power
On the ideology of an Obama adviser
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE -- by Stanley Kurtz - April 5, 2011
A member of the president’s National Security Council who shares Noam Chomsky’s foreign-policy goals? An influential presidential adviser whom 1960s revolutionary Tom Hayden treats as a fellow radical? A White House official who wrote a book aiming to turn an anti-American, anti-Israel, Marxist-inspired, world-government-loving United Nations bureaucrat into a popular hero? Samantha Power, senior director of multilateral affairs for the National Security Council and perhaps the principal architect of our current intervention in Libya, is all of these things.
Samatha Power - special advisor on Human Rights
These scary-sounding tidbits might be dismissed as isolated “gotchas.” Unfortunately, when we view these radical outcroppings in the full sweep of her life’s work, Samantha Power emerges as a patriot’s nightmare — a woman determined to subordinate America’s national sovereignty to an international order largely controlled by leftist bureaucrats. Superficially, Power’s chief concern is to put a stop to genocide and “crimes against humanity.” More deeply, her goal is to use our shared horror at the worst that human beings can do in order to institute an ever-broadening regime of redistributive transnational governance.
Knowing what Samantha Power wants reveals a great deal about Barack Obama’s own ideological commitments. It’s not just a question of whether he shares Power’s long-term internationalist goals, although it’s highly likely that he does. Power’s thinking also represents a bridge of sorts between Obama’s domestic- and foreign-policy aspirations. Beyond that, Power embodies a style of pragmatic radicalism that Obama shares. Both Obama and Power are skilled at placing their ultimate ideological goals just out of sight, behind a screen of practical problem-solving.
THE MOTIVES BEHIND THE INTERVENTION
Critics of President Obama’s intervention in Libya — and there are many all across the political spectrum — have taken a variety of approaches to the novel characteristics of this military action. Some have lamented the president’s failure to establish a clear path to victory (i.e., the overthrow of Qaddafi), or indeed any unambiguous goal beyond the protection of civilian lives. By traditional war-fighting standards, the rationale given for Obama’s Libyan intervention amounts to incoherence and weakness.
Viewing the glass as half full, however, others have declared that the president secretly does want to oust Qaddafi and establish a democratic regime, or at least that the logic of events will inevitably force Obama in that direction. Still others have suggested that a quick overthrow of Qaddafi followed by withdrawal would establish a positive model for punitive expeditions, without the costly aftermath of nation-building. And some have simply christened Obama’s seemingly directionless strategy as an intentional program of pragmatic flexibility.
While there’s much to be said for each of these responses, more attention needs to be given to analyzing Obama’s intervention from the standpoint of his administration’s actual motives — which in this case, I believe, are largely coincidental with Samantha Power’s motives. Obama has told us that the action in Libya is a multilateral intervention, under United Nations auspices; that it is for fundamentally humanitarian purposes, but has strategic side benefits; and that it represents an opening for the United States to pursue its own goal of ousting Qaddafi, although via strictly non-military means. While Obama has in fact taken covert military steps against Qaddafi, and while our bombing campaign has been structured in such a way as to undermine Qaddafi when possible, we have indeed inhibited ourselves to a significant degree from pursuing regime change by military means.
Obama may not have been completely frank about the broader ideological goals behind this intervention, and yet the president’s address to the nation, as far as it went, was largely accurate. Fundamentally, our Libyan operation is a humanitarian action, with no clear or inevitable military-strategic purpose beyond that. There is enormous risk here, and no endgame. We might take strategic advantage of our restricted humanitarian action. But we might not, and, in any case, we are under no obligation to do so. For all we know, many of those we’re defending with American aircraft and missiles could be our dedicated terrorist enemies. From the standpoint of traditional calculations of national interest, this war is something akin to madness. Yet without fully articulating it (and that reticence is intentional), Obama and Power are attempting to accustom us to a whole new way of thinking about war, and about America’s place in the world.
Samantha Power has refused to give interviews of late, and the White House seems to be downplaying her influence on the intervention in Libya, and on the president generally. Yet numerous press reports indicate that Power “has Obama’s ear” and was in fact critical to his decision on Libya. Liberal foreign-policy expert Steve Clemons actually calls Power “the primary architect” of our Libyan intervention. The New York Times has gone so far as to characterize our humanitarian action as “something of a personal triumph” for Power.
If anything, these reports may underplay Power’s influence on Obama. The two met in 2005, when Obama contacted Power after reading her Pulitzer Prize–winning book on genocide, A Problem from Hell. Power quickly became then-senator Obama’s senior foreign-policy adviser, and so has a longer history with the president than do many others on his foreign-policy team.
A survey of Power’s writings indicates her long preoccupation with a series of issues now associated with Obama’s most controversial foreign-policy moves. In a 2003 piece for the New York Times, for example, Power bemoaned the reluctance of American policymakers to apologize to other countries for our supposed past mistakes. While Obama’s controversial (and so far unproductive) willingness to engage with the leaders of rogue states was initially attributed to a novice error during a 2007 debate with Hillary Clinton, the need to deal directly with even the worst rogue states is a major theme of Power’s second book, Chasing the Flame. That book was written in 2007, while Power was advising Obama’s presidential campaign. A 2007 piece by Power in The New York Times Book Review attacked the phrase “War on Terror,” which of course the Obama administration has since dropped.
In an appearance at Columbia University, just hours before the president’s Libya address, Power herself identified the protection of the citizens of Benghazi as the core purpose of our current intervention. Yet it should not be thought that Power’s shaping of Obama’s reasons and actions ends there. Almost a decade ago, Power laid out a series of secondary, interest-based justifications for humanitarian interventions — e.g., avoiding the creation of militarized refugees who might undermine regional stability, and flashing a discouraging signal to regional dictators — all of which were featured in Obama’s speech to the nation. To be sure, these “interest-based” justifications were largely rationalizations for an intervention driven overwhelmingly by humanitarian considerations. Yet Power’s broader and longstanding framing of the issue has been adopted wholesale by Obama.
In Power’s view, to be credible, humanitarian interventions must respond to immediate danger (thus Obama’s waiting until the militarily unpropitious moment when Benghazi itself was under imminent threat), must be supported by multilateral bodies (thus the resort to the U.N., NATO, and the Arab League in preference to the U.S. Congress), “must forswear up front . . . commercial or strategic interests in the region” (thus the disavowal of regime change as a goal of our multilateral action), and must “commit to remaining for a finite period” (as Obama has pledged to do in Libya). Even NATO’s threat to bomb the rebels if they kill civilians (which struck many as unrealistic, and at cross-purposes with our supposed military goals) is foreshadowed in Power’s writings, which highlight the need to police both sides in any humanitarian action.
PRAGMATIC RADICAL
The evident tension here is between Power’s desire to act, and to be seen to act, on strictly disinterested humanitarian grounds, and her need to sell humanitarian intervention to the public on grounds of national interest, conventionally defined. This leads to continual contradiction and dissembling in Power’s writings, as the ideology driving the action can neither fully disguise itself, nor fully announce itself either. So, too, with Barack Obama’s policies (and not just on Libya).
Nowhere is this pattern of disguise and contradiction more evident than on the topic of “American exceptionalism.” Supposedly, Obama’s address on Libya, with its invocation of America’s distinctive tradition of shouldering moral burdens throughout the world, gave the lie to those who have described the president as a critic of the concept. And Power’s work is filled with invocations of America’s unique leadership role in the world. But read carefully, her hymns of praise to American leadership all turn out to be calls for the United States to slowly devolve its power to international bodies. After all, the world’s foremost state would have to assume leadership of any process whereby its own power was gradually dismantled and handed off to others. This is essentially what Power is calling for, even as she frames the diminishment of America in superficially patriotic terms. Is Obama doing the same? I believe he is.
Power once promised that the stringent conditions she set out for intervention would make humanitarian military actions exceedingly rare. She has long admitted that, given that rarity, precisely what such interventions might achieve, as well as what they might cost, remains unclear. Now each day teaches us something new about the costs of her policies.
Arguments that Power developed to support past interventions are proving a poor fit for our Libyan operation. She dismissed claims that the Rwandan genocide was merely a case of “civil war” or “tribal violence.” Now her critics argue that Libya is not a Rwanda-style genocide, and that Power’s eagerness for a humanitarian showcase has led us to intervene in what really is a tribal civil war.
And what of her stringent conditions? In practice, she seems to have stretched her own standards of “large-scale crimes against humanity” to produce a specimen case, in an effort to entrench her favored doctrines in international law. Who knows if more people will now be casualties in the extended civil war enabled by our intervention than would have been killed in Benghazi last month?
Power worried just after 9/11 that an America soon to be militarily overstretched might give up on humanitarian interventions. Now she has helped to entangle us in an expensive and open-ended adventure at a time when we truly are at our limits — and at a time when dangers continue to spread in countries far more strategically significant than Libya. Power has long warned us that policies that alienate the rest of the world, such as detention at Guantanamo, make it tougher to assemble the multilateral coalitions that ultimately lighten our own security burdens. Yet now we find ourselves prevented from attacking our enemy Qaddafi, so as not to alienate our coalition partners (while Obama admits in practice that Guantanamo was in our interest all along).
Power might best be characterized as a pragmatic radical. Her outlook is “post-American,” an excellent example of what John Fonte has called “transnational progressivism.” Power means to slowly dismantle American sovereignty in favor of a constraining and ultimately redistributive regime of international law. It’s an odd position for a member of the president’s National Security Council, but then Power is no ordinary NSC staffer.
Power’s New York Times review of Noam Chomsky’s book Hegemony or Survival is an excellent example of what she’s about. Power is critical of Chomsky’s caustic tone, his failure to adequately back up his preaching-to-the-choir assertions, and his disregard of the complex tradeoffs inherent in foreign policy. But for all that, Power makes it clear that she largely shares Chomsky’s policy goals, above all the curbing of American power via the building up of international law and related doctrines of “human rights.” In other words, Power sees herself as the clever sort of radical who works from within established institutions, without ever really sacrificing her rebellious ideals.
FROM INTERVENTION TO WORLD GOVERNMENT
A long conversation with Power in 2003 convinced 1960s revolutionary Tom Hayden that she was a fellow-traveler of sorts, even if Power was not as systematically suspicious of American military force as a true Sixties-vintage radical would be. In Hayden’s assessment, Power’s originality was “to see war as an instrument to achieving her liberal, even radical, values.” Hayden was right. The important thing about Power is not that she favors humanitarian intervention, but that she seeks to use such military actions to transform America by undoing its sovereignty and immobilizing it, Gulliver-style, in an unfriendly international system.
Power’s aforementioned second book, Chasing the Flame, celebrates the life of a United Nations diplomat, Sergio Vieira de Mello, who died in a terrorist attack in Iraq in 2003. Vieira de Mello was a Sixties radical of international scope. Hailing from Brazil, he became a committed Marxist while studying at the Sorbonne. He was among the violent protesters arrested during the student uprising in Paris in 1968. His first published work was a defense of his actions.
Vieira de Mello went from student radicalism straight to a job with the U.N. in 1969, and brought his intense anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism with him. Later he became a bitter critic of Israel. A United Nations “patriot,” he carried around a well-worn copy of the U.N. Charter the way an American senator or Supreme Court justice might take a copy of the U.S. Constitution wherever he went. Vieira de Mello’s colleagues used to say that his blood ran U.N. blue. As the U.N.’s most charismatic and effective diplomat (said to be “a cross between James Bond and Bobby Kennedy”), Vieira de Mello is the hero around whom Power attempts to build a following for her ideals of global governance.
Power explains that Vieira de Mello never really surrendered his Sixties ideals, even as he transformed himself from a passionate ideologue into a “ruthless pragmatist.” The young America-hating Vieira de Mello grew into a mature diplomat who could charm Pres. George W. Bush, even while lecturing the commander-in-chief on the follies of Guantanamo Bay. In other words, Vieira de Mello learned to manage his public persona, appealing to American leaders with arguments (allegedly) based on American national interest.
This is clearly Power’s ideal for herself. In fact, she tells us in her acknowledgments that the point of the book is also “the point of my career.” Power even cites the uncanny resemblance between Vieira de Mello and Obama. Of course, Obama’s Alinskyite training stressed the need for community organizers to advance their quietly held leftist ideological goals through “pragmatic” appeals to the public’s “self-interest.” (For more on that, see my study of Obama.)
Samantha Power has a lot to teach us about Barack Obama. She herself draws analogies between the need to redistribute wealth via health-care coverage and the need to divide military and diplomatic power (and, implicitly, wealth) more evenly through the international system. Power regularly invokes arguments for international law derived from America’s Founders and the West’s great liberal thinkers, as if her goal were the founding of a government of the world. In truth, that is what Power is up to, even if she sees her project as a long-term collective effort necessarily extending beyond her own lifetime.
The novel doctrine of “responsibility to protect,” which Power means the Libyan action to enshrine in international law, could someday be used to justify military intervention to impose a “two-state solution” on Israel (apparently this is one of Power’s longstanding goals, although she now disavows it). The International Criminal Court, which Power has long defended, may someday enable the leftist Europeans who run it to place American soldiers and politicians on trial for supposed war crimes. The Obama administration’s troubling acquiescence in the development of sweeping international prohibitions on “aggression” may one day make virtually any use of force not pre-approved by the United Nations subject to international sanctions. These are the long-term goals of Power’s policies, although they are seldom confessed or discussed.
On rare occasions, Power comes straight out and admits that the sorts of interventions she favors constitute an almost pure cost to American national interest, traditionally defined. More often, she retreats into the language of “pragmatism” and “self-interest” to justify what she knows Americans will not support on its own terms. That is Samantha Power’s way and, not coincidentally, Barack Obama’s way as well.
At some point, after we’ve all done our best to fit the president’s puzzling Libyan adventure into our accustomed conceptual frameworks, we just might wake up and discover what has been going on behind the curtain. When we do, the answer will be found in the writings of Samantha Power.
Story above from: NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE
http://www.nationalreview.com/
— Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and the author of Radical-in-Chief. For more Please Read National Review OnLine
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Samantha Power -- http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/
Has a long record of antipathy toward Israel -- Said that America’s relationship with Israel “has often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer reflexively to Israeli security assessments, and to replicate Israeli tactics”
Was appointed as Director for Multilateral Affairs in the National Security Council by President Barack Obama in January 2009
Born in Ireland in September 1970, Samantha Power immigrated to the United States with her family in 1979. After graduating from Yale University, she worked as a journalist from 1993 to 1996, covering the Yugoslav wars for U.S. News & World Report, The Boston Globe, The Economist, and The New Republic.
Power then attended Harvard Law School, earning her Juris Doctorate in 1999. She is currently the Anna Lindh Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, where she is also affiliated with the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.
Power has a long record of antipathy towards Israel. In 2001 she attended the United Nations' World Conference Against Racism (in Durban, South Africa), even after the U.S. had withdrawn most of its diplomatic participation once it became apparent that the gathering would give prominence to anti-American, anti-Israel, and anti-Semitic perspectives.
Just months later, during a 2002 interview with Harry Kreisler, director of the Institute for International Studies at UC Berkeley, Power said that even if it meant “alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import” (i.e., Jewish Americans), the United States should stop investing “billions of dollars” in “servicing Israel’s military” and invest the money instead “in the new state of Palestine.” Moreover, she accused Israel of perpetrating "major human-rights abuses."
Power’s 2002 book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, grew out of a paper she had written in law school and won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 2003. This book examines the origin of the word “genocide,” the major genocides of the 20th century, and the reasons why governments -- most notably the U.S. -- have so often failed to collectively identify and forestall genocides before the crisis stage.
In her 2004 review of Noam Chomsky’s book Hegemony or Survival, Power agreed with many of Chomsky’s criticisms of U.S. foreign policy and expressed her own concerns about what she called the “sins of our allies in the war on terror,” lumping Israel together with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Russia, and Uzbekistan. She called Chomsky’s work “sobering and instructive.”
In 2005–06, Power worked as a foreign policy fellow in the office of U.S. Senator Barack Obama. In this role, she helped to spark and inform Obama’s interest in the deadly ethnic and tribal conflict of Darfur, Sudan.
In a 2007 interview, Power said that America’s relationship with Israel “has often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer reflexively to Israeli security assessments, and to replicate Israeli tactics...” The United States, she explained, had brought terrorist attacks upon itself by aping Israel’s violations of human rights.
In the fall of 2007, Power began writing a regular column for Time magazine. That same year, she appeared in Charles Ferguson's documentary, No End in Sight, which criticized the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq War.
In February 2008 Power released her second book, Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World. This book is about the eponymous United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, who was killed in a Baghdad hotel bombing on August 19, 2003.
In early 2008 Power served as a senior foreign-policy advisor to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. She was forced to resign from the campaign in March, however, after it was learned that she had referred to Obama’s Democrat rival, Hillary Clinton, as “a monster” whose modus operandi was “deceit.”
On July 4, 2008, Power married law professor Cass Sunstein, whom she had met while working on the Obama campaign.
In January 2009 President Obama appointed Power to serve as Director for Multilateral Affairs in the National Security Council, a post where she would serve as one of Obama’s closest advisors on foreign policy.
In March 2011, Power was instrumental in persuading Obama to authorize military intervention in Libya, to prevent President Moammar Qaddafi's forces from killing the rebels who were rising up against his regime at that time. Power's counsel in this matter was consistent with her longstanding advocacy of the doctrine known as the "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P), which encourages the international community to intervene in a sovereign country's internal affairs -- with military force if necessary -- in order to thwart genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, or ethnic cleansing. The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (GCRP), which is the world's leading advocate of this doctrine, is funded by George Soros's Open Society Institute. Power and GCRP advisory-board member Gareth Evans -- who is also also president emeritus of the International Crisis Group -- have been joint keynote speakers at a number of events where they have championed the R2P principle together.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2379
Why U.S. military in Uganda? Soros fingerprints all over it! Obama’s billionaire friend has interests in African country’s oil -- October 15, 2011 - By Aaron Klein
TEL AVIV — An influential “crisis management organization” that boasts billionaire George Soros as a member of its executive board recently recommended the U.S. deploy a special advisory military team to Uganda to help with operations and run an intelligence platform.
The president-emeritus of that organization, the International Crisis Group, is the principal author of Responsibility to Protect, the military doctrine used by Obama to justify the U.S.-led NATO campaign in Libya.
Soros’ own Open Society Institute is one of only three nongovernmental funders of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect, a doctrine that has been cited many times by activists urging intervention in Uganda.
Authors and advisers of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, including a center founded and led by Samantha Power, the National Security Council special adviser to Obama on human rights, also helped to found the International Criminal Court.
Several of the doctrine’s main founders also sit on boards with Soros, who is a major proponent of the doctrine.
Soros himself maintains close ties to oil interests in Uganda. His organizations have been the leading efforts purportedly to facilitate more transparency in Uganda’s oil industry, which is being tightly controlled by the country’s leadership.
U.S. troops to Uganda
Obama on Friday notified House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, that he plans to send about 100 military personnel, mostly Special Operations Forces, to central Africa. The first troops reportedly arrived in Uganda on Wednesday.
The U.S. mission will be to advise forces seeking to kill or capture Joseph Kony, the leader of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA. Kony is accused of major human rights atrocities. He is on the U.S. terrorist list and is wanted by the International Criminal Court.
In a letter on Friday, Obama announced the initial team of U.S. military personnel “with appropriate combat equipment” deployed to Uganda on Wednesday. Other forces deploying include “a second combat-equipped team and associated headquarters, communications and logistics personnel.”
“Our forces will provide information, advice and assistance to select partner nation forces,” he said.
Both conservatives and liberals have raised questions about whether military involvement in Uganda advances U.S. interests.
Writing in The Atlantic yesterday, Max Fisher noted the Obama administration last year approved special forces bases and operations across the Middle East, the Horn of Africa and Central Asia.
“But those operations, large and small, target terrorist groups and rogue states that threaten the U.S. — something the Lord’s Resistance Army could not possibly do,” he wrote.
“It’s difficult to find a U.S. interest at stake in the Lord’s Resistance Army’s campaign of violence,” continued Fisher. “It’s possible that there’s some immediate U.S. interest at stake we can’t obviously see.”
Bill Roggio, the managing editor of The Long War Journal, referred to the Obama administration’s stated rationale for sending troops “puzzling,” claiming the LRA does not present a national security threat to the U.S. — “despite what President Obama said.”
Tea Party-backed presidential candidate Michele Bachmann also questioned the wisdom of Obama’s move to send U.S. troops to Uganda.
“When it comes to sending our brave men and women into foreign nations we have to first demonstrate a vital American national interest before we send our troops in,” she said at a campaign stop yesterday in Iowa.
Soros group: Send military advisors to Uganda
In April 2010 Soros’ International Crisis Group, or ICG, released a report sent to the White House and key lawmakers advising the U.S. military to run special operations in Uganda to seek Kony’s capture.
Read the report: “To the U.S. government: Deploy a team to the theatre of operations to run an intelligence platform that centralizes all operational information from the Ugandan and other armies, as well as the UN and civilian networks, and provides analysis to the Ugandans to better target military operations.”
Since 2008 the U.S. has been providing financial aid in the form of military equipment to Uganda and the other regional countries to fight Kony’s LRA, but Obama’s new deployment escalates the direct U.S. involvement.
Soros sits in the ICG’s executive board along with Samuel Berger, Bill Clinton’s former national security advisor; George J. Mitchell, former U.S. Senate Majority Leader who served as a Mideast envoy to both Obama and President Bush; and Javier Solana, a socialist activist who is NATO’s former Secretary-General as well as the former Foreign Affairs Minister of Spain.
Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, is the ICG’s senior advisor.
The ICG’s president-emeritus is Gareth Evans, who, together with activist Ramesh Thakur, is the original founder of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, with the duo even coining the term “responsibility to protect.”
Both Evans and Thakur serve as advisory board members of the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect, the main group pushing the doctrine.
As WND first exposed, Soros is a primary funder and key proponent of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect.
Soros’ Open Society is one of only three non-governmental funders of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. Government sponsors include Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, Rwanda and the U.K.
Soros’ hand in Ugandan oil industry
Oil exploration began in Uganda’s northwestern Lake Albert basin nearly a decade ago, with initial strikes being made in 2006.
Uganda’s Energy Ministry estimates the country has over 2 billion barrels of oil, with some estimates going as high as 6 billion barrels. Production is set to begin in 2015, delayed from 2013 in part because the country has not put in place a regulatory framework for the oil industry.
A 2008 National Oil and Gas Policy, proposed with aid from a Soros-funded group, was supposed to be a general road map for the handling and use of the oil. However, the polcy’s recommendations have been largely ignored, with critics accusing Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni of corruption and of tightening his grip on the African country’s emerging oil sector.
Soros himself has been closely tied to oil and other interests in Uganda.
In 2008, the Soros-funded Revenue Watch Institute brought together stakeholders from Uganda and other East African countries to discuss critical governance issues, including the formation of what became Uganda’s National Oil and Gas Policy.
Also in 2008, the Africa Institute for Energy Governance, a grantee of the Soros-funded Revenue Watch, helped established the Publish What You Pay Coalition of Uganda, or PWYP, which was purportedly launched to coordinate and streamline the efforts of the government in promoting transparency and accountability in the oil sector.
Also, a steering committee was formed for PWYP Uganda to develop an agenda for implementing the oil advocacy initiatives and a constitution to guide PWYP’s oil work.
PWYP has since 2006 hosted a number of training workshops in Uganda purportedly to promote contract transparency in Uganda’s oil sector.
PWYP is directly funded by Soros’ Open Society as well as the Soros-funded Revenue Watch Institute. PWYP international is actually hosted by the Open Society Foundation in London.
The billionaire’s Open Society Institute, meanwhile, runs numerous offices in Uganda. It maintains a country manager in Uganda, as well as the Open Society Initiative for East Africa, which supports work in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.
The Open Society Institute runs a Ugandan Youth Action Fund, which states its mission is to “identify, inspire, and support small groups of dedicated young people who can mobilize and influence large numbers of their peers to promote open society ideals.”
Samantha Power, Arafat deputy
Meanwhile, a closer look at the Soros-funded Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect is telling. Board members of the group include former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former Ireland President Mary Robinson and South African activist Desmond Tutu. Robinson and Tutu have recently made solidarity visits to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip as members of a group called The Elders, which includes former President Jimmy Carter.
WND was first to report the committee that devised the Responsibility to Protect doctrine included Arab League Secretary General Amre Moussa as well as Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi, a staunch denier of the Holocaust who long served as the deputy of late Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat.
Also, the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy has a seat on the advisory board of the 2001 commission that originally founded Responsibility to Protect. The commission is called the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. It invented the term “responsibility to protect” while defining its guidelines.
The Carr Center is a research center concerned with human rights located at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Samantha Power, the National Security Council special adviser to Obama on human rights, was Carr’s founding executive director and headed the institute at the time it advised in the founding of Responsibility to Protect.
With Power’s center on the advisory board, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty first defined the Responsibility to Protect doctrine.
Power reportedly heavily influenced Obama in consultations leading to the decision to bomb Libya.
The Libya bombings have been widely regarded as a test of a military doctrine called “Responsibility to Protect.”
In his address to the nation in April explaining the NATO campaign in Libya, Obama cited the doctrine as the main justification for U.S. and international airstrikes against Libya.
Responsibility to Protect, or Responsibility to Act, as cited by Obama, is a set of principles, now backed by the United Nations, based on the idea that sovereignty is not a privilege but a responsibility that can be revoked if a country is accused of “war crimes,” “genocide,” “crimes against humanity” or “ethnic cleansing.”
The term “war crimes” has at times been indiscriminately used by various United Nations-backed international bodies, including the International Criminal Court, or ICC, which applied it to Israeli anti-terror operations in the Gaza Strip. There has been fear the ICC could be used to prosecute U.S. troops who commit alleged “war crimes” overseas.
Soros: Right to ‘penetrate nation-states’
Soros himself outlined the fundamentals of Responsibility to Protect in a 2004 Foreign Policy magazine article titled “The People’s Sovereignty: How a New Twist on an Old Idea Can Protect the World’s Most Vulnerable Populations.”
In the article Soros said, “True sovereignty belongs to the people, who in turn delegate it to their governments.”
“If governments abuse the authority entrusted to them and citizens have no opportunity to correct such abuses, outside interference is justified,” Soros wrote. “By specifying that sovereignty is based on the people, the international community can penetrate nation-states’ borders to protect the rights of citizens.
“In particular,” he continued, “the principle of the people’s sovereignty can help solve two modern challenges: the obstacles to delivering aid effectively to sovereign states, and the obstacles to global collective action dealing with states experiencing internal conflict.”
‘One World Order’
The Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect, meanwhile, works in partnership with the World Federalist Movement, a group that promotes democratized global institutions with plenary constitutional power. The Movement is a main coordinator and member of Responsibility to Protect Center.
WND reported that Responsibility doctrine founder Thakur recently advocated for a “global rebalancing” and “international redistribution” to create a “New World Order.”
In a piece last March in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, “Toward a new world order,” Thakur wrote, “Westerners must change lifestyles and support international redistribution.”
He was referring to a United Nations-brokered international climate treaty in which he argued, “Developing countries must reorient growth in cleaner and greener directions.”
In the opinion piece, Thakur then discussed recent military engagements and how the financial crisis has impacted the U.S.
“The West’s bullying approach to developing nations won’t work anymore – global power is shifting to Asia,” he wrote.
“A much-needed global moral rebalancing is in train,” he added.
Thakur continued: “Westerners have lost their previous capacity to set standards and rules of behavior for the world. Unless they recognize this reality, there is little prospect of making significant progress in deadlocked international negotiations.”
Thakur contended “the demonstration of the limits to U.S. and NATO power in Iraq and Afghanistan has left many less fearful of ‘superior’ Western power.”
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=356321
With research by Brenda J. Elliott
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October 18, 2011
Obama's Uganda Gambit to serve Soros
Ed Lasky
Journalist Aaron Klein has an interesting take on Barack Obama's surprising decision to send troops into Uganda to battle a rebel army. The genesis of the idea may have begun at the George Soros-funded International Crisis Group, one of the "think tanks" that Soros uses to promote policies that benefit him. In this case, the ICG recommended last year that America deploy military forces to Uganda. This move prompted questions since the rebel group did not pose a threat to American interests. But whose interests might be served by defeating the rebel group? George Soros -- a major Obama backer.
Klein writes: Soros himself has been closely tied to oil and other interests in Uganda.
In 2008, the Soros-funded Revenue Watch Institute brought together stakeholders from Uganda and other East African countries to discuss critical governance issues, including the formation of what became Uganda's National Oil and Gas Policy.
Also in 2008, the Africa Institute for Energy Governance, a grantee of the Soros-funded Revenue Watch, helped established the Publish What You Pay Coalition of Uganda, or PWYP, which was purportedly launched to coordinate and streamline the efforts of the government in promoting transparency and accountability in the oil sector.
Also, a steering committee was formed for PWYP Uganda to develop an agenda for implementing the oil advocacy initiatives and a constitution to guide PWYP's oil work.
PWYP has since 2006 hosted a number of training workshops in Uganda purportedly to promote contract transparency in Uganda's oil sector.
PWYP is directly funded by Soros' Open Society as well as the Soros-funded Revenue Watch Institute. PWYP international is actually hosted by the Open Society Foundation in London.
The billionaire's Open Society Institute, meanwhile, runs numerous offices in Uganda. It maintains a country manager in Uganda, as well as the Open Society Initiative for East Africa, which supports work in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.
Soros seems to have his hand in trying to guide the development of the oil and gas industry in Uganda. The Ugandan government would naturally be beholden to Soros if he could show he had enough influence with the White House to bring in American troops to take out a rebel group. Also, the defeat of the rebel group would make development of the energy industry that much more viable since operations would be much more secure.
This strategy bears similarity with the story of InterOil, a major holding of George Soros, that has been granted concessions for reportedly major natural gas reserves in Papua New Guinea. The government there has recently been arguing with InterOil regarding that company's ability to develop these reserves and build and operate a Liquefied Natural Gas port to export the gas.
What could friends of George Soros in the American government do to help him soothe the deal with the Papua New Guinea government? What the Obama administration did in fact do was send government experts all the way from here to there to help the nation develop its reserves. This was especially surprising since the Department of Interior has blamed its delay in issuing permits to develop our own domestic reserves on lack of manpower and funding -- yet the administration found the manpower and money to export our experts do help develop New Guinea's reserves. Or rather the reserves that InterOil and its major shareholder , George Soros, want developed courtesy of the American taxpayer.
Anyone see a pattern here? (1) In one case, Obama sends military forces to Uganda -- a nation where Soros has been active in trying to help it formulate a policy to tap its oil wealth. But before the policies could be put in place, a rebel group needs to be vanquished. (2) In the other case, Obama sends American government experts to help another nation to develop its natural gas wealth when the one company ideally positioned to benefit from this taxpayer-funded development has as its major shareholder none other than George Soros.
Soros declared his own modus operandi when he said in a 2004 New Yorker profile that there are "symbiotic moments between political and business interests." He is a master at finding these moments and promoting the political careers of those who will do his bidding.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/10/obamas_uganda_gambit_to_serve_soros.html
http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/africa/horn-of-africa/uganda/157-lra-a-regional-strategy-beyond-killing-kony.aspx
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PETROBRAS! Brazilian Oil Company owned by George Soros, Obama got deep water drill permits, but no US corp WHY?
by gosheven83 » Tue Mar 22, 2011
Petrobras got a 2 billion $ loan to deep drill compliments of Obama recently. Now they get to drill in OUR WATERS, while our companies don't and we will be buying oil from them. Who is president of Brazil right now? A communist revolutionary who did time for her involvement in the Communist movement in Brazil.
Mexico also got a 2 billion $ Loan to deep drill in the Gulf. Not sure of the ins and outs, but that's oil we should be drilling.
We are also just sitting by while China drills off Florida using Cuban permits, taking oil thats closer to the US waters than Cuban. The Chinese are unaccountable to our environmental standards. More chance of spill, no oil in US control which would bring down prices.
How clear does it have to be? We are being sold out. We are being deliberately torn down by an enemy from within.
Doesn't matter if you're a Republican, Democrat, or Independent. If you plan to live in this country you should be very concerned.
Also you should be concerned about the media covering this up. I mean politics is one thing, but to cover up a big sell out like this? Something may be rotten in Denmark, and it probably is, but there is no doubt something is stinking to high heaven right here at home.
If we don't pull our heads out our country will be sold out from under us while we squabble over issues that seem to be planted to smoke screen what is really doing our country grave damage.
If the Republicans were really on the people's side, they would be yelling bloody murder about this and shutting things down. I was hoping there was someone on our side, but sadly, I don't think there is. Maybe just the Tea Party, maybe not even all of those.
It's up to we the people, our government officials are selling us out.
http://www.grantmoneyadvisor.com/petrobras-brazilian-oil-company-owned-by-george-soros-obama-got-deep-water-drill-permits-but-no-us-corp-why-t92754.html
Check out this link: Lists Players and How the US shows its cards while the rest of the world holds their economic information to themselves.
www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/.../Africa/250810summary.pdf
On the ideology of an Obama adviser
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE -- by Stanley Kurtz - April 5, 2011
A member of the president’s National Security Council who shares Noam Chomsky’s foreign-policy goals? An influential presidential adviser whom 1960s revolutionary Tom Hayden treats as a fellow radical? A White House official who wrote a book aiming to turn an anti-American, anti-Israel, Marxist-inspired, world-government-loving United Nations bureaucrat into a popular hero? Samantha Power, senior director of multilateral affairs for the National Security Council and perhaps the principal architect of our current intervention in Libya, is all of these things.
Samatha Power - special advisor on Human Rights
These scary-sounding tidbits might be dismissed as isolated “gotchas.” Unfortunately, when we view these radical outcroppings in the full sweep of her life’s work, Samantha Power emerges as a patriot’s nightmare — a woman determined to subordinate America’s national sovereignty to an international order largely controlled by leftist bureaucrats. Superficially, Power’s chief concern is to put a stop to genocide and “crimes against humanity.” More deeply, her goal is to use our shared horror at the worst that human beings can do in order to institute an ever-broadening regime of redistributive transnational governance.
Knowing what Samantha Power wants reveals a great deal about Barack Obama’s own ideological commitments. It’s not just a question of whether he shares Power’s long-term internationalist goals, although it’s highly likely that he does. Power’s thinking also represents a bridge of sorts between Obama’s domestic- and foreign-policy aspirations. Beyond that, Power embodies a style of pragmatic radicalism that Obama shares. Both Obama and Power are skilled at placing their ultimate ideological goals just out of sight, behind a screen of practical problem-solving.
THE MOTIVES BEHIND THE INTERVENTION
Critics of President Obama’s intervention in Libya — and there are many all across the political spectrum — have taken a variety of approaches to the novel characteristics of this military action. Some have lamented the president’s failure to establish a clear path to victory (i.e., the overthrow of Qaddafi), or indeed any unambiguous goal beyond the protection of civilian lives. By traditional war-fighting standards, the rationale given for Obama’s Libyan intervention amounts to incoherence and weakness.
Viewing the glass as half full, however, others have declared that the president secretly does want to oust Qaddafi and establish a democratic regime, or at least that the logic of events will inevitably force Obama in that direction. Still others have suggested that a quick overthrow of Qaddafi followed by withdrawal would establish a positive model for punitive expeditions, without the costly aftermath of nation-building. And some have simply christened Obama’s seemingly directionless strategy as an intentional program of pragmatic flexibility.
While there’s much to be said for each of these responses, more attention needs to be given to analyzing Obama’s intervention from the standpoint of his administration’s actual motives — which in this case, I believe, are largely coincidental with Samantha Power’s motives. Obama has told us that the action in Libya is a multilateral intervention, under United Nations auspices; that it is for fundamentally humanitarian purposes, but has strategic side benefits; and that it represents an opening for the United States to pursue its own goal of ousting Qaddafi, although via strictly non-military means. While Obama has in fact taken covert military steps against Qaddafi, and while our bombing campaign has been structured in such a way as to undermine Qaddafi when possible, we have indeed inhibited ourselves to a significant degree from pursuing regime change by military means.
Obama may not have been completely frank about the broader ideological goals behind this intervention, and yet the president’s address to the nation, as far as it went, was largely accurate. Fundamentally, our Libyan operation is a humanitarian action, with no clear or inevitable military-strategic purpose beyond that. There is enormous risk here, and no endgame. We might take strategic advantage of our restricted humanitarian action. But we might not, and, in any case, we are under no obligation to do so. For all we know, many of those we’re defending with American aircraft and missiles could be our dedicated terrorist enemies. From the standpoint of traditional calculations of national interest, this war is something akin to madness. Yet without fully articulating it (and that reticence is intentional), Obama and Power are attempting to accustom us to a whole new way of thinking about war, and about America’s place in the world.
Samantha Power has refused to give interviews of late, and the White House seems to be downplaying her influence on the intervention in Libya, and on the president generally. Yet numerous press reports indicate that Power “has Obama’s ear” and was in fact critical to his decision on Libya. Liberal foreign-policy expert Steve Clemons actually calls Power “the primary architect” of our Libyan intervention. The New York Times has gone so far as to characterize our humanitarian action as “something of a personal triumph” for Power.
If anything, these reports may underplay Power’s influence on Obama. The two met in 2005, when Obama contacted Power after reading her Pulitzer Prize–winning book on genocide, A Problem from Hell. Power quickly became then-senator Obama’s senior foreign-policy adviser, and so has a longer history with the president than do many others on his foreign-policy team.
A survey of Power’s writings indicates her long preoccupation with a series of issues now associated with Obama’s most controversial foreign-policy moves. In a 2003 piece for the New York Times, for example, Power bemoaned the reluctance of American policymakers to apologize to other countries for our supposed past mistakes. While Obama’s controversial (and so far unproductive) willingness to engage with the leaders of rogue states was initially attributed to a novice error during a 2007 debate with Hillary Clinton, the need to deal directly with even the worst rogue states is a major theme of Power’s second book, Chasing the Flame. That book was written in 2007, while Power was advising Obama’s presidential campaign. A 2007 piece by Power in The New York Times Book Review attacked the phrase “War on Terror,” which of course the Obama administration has since dropped.
In an appearance at Columbia University, just hours before the president’s Libya address, Power herself identified the protection of the citizens of Benghazi as the core purpose of our current intervention. Yet it should not be thought that Power’s shaping of Obama’s reasons and actions ends there. Almost a decade ago, Power laid out a series of secondary, interest-based justifications for humanitarian interventions — e.g., avoiding the creation of militarized refugees who might undermine regional stability, and flashing a discouraging signal to regional dictators — all of which were featured in Obama’s speech to the nation. To be sure, these “interest-based” justifications were largely rationalizations for an intervention driven overwhelmingly by humanitarian considerations. Yet Power’s broader and longstanding framing of the issue has been adopted wholesale by Obama.
In Power’s view, to be credible, humanitarian interventions must respond to immediate danger (thus Obama’s waiting until the militarily unpropitious moment when Benghazi itself was under imminent threat), must be supported by multilateral bodies (thus the resort to the U.N., NATO, and the Arab League in preference to the U.S. Congress), “must forswear up front . . . commercial or strategic interests in the region” (thus the disavowal of regime change as a goal of our multilateral action), and must “commit to remaining for a finite period” (as Obama has pledged to do in Libya). Even NATO’s threat to bomb the rebels if they kill civilians (which struck many as unrealistic, and at cross-purposes with our supposed military goals) is foreshadowed in Power’s writings, which highlight the need to police both sides in any humanitarian action.
PRAGMATIC RADICAL
The evident tension here is between Power’s desire to act, and to be seen to act, on strictly disinterested humanitarian grounds, and her need to sell humanitarian intervention to the public on grounds of national interest, conventionally defined. This leads to continual contradiction and dissembling in Power’s writings, as the ideology driving the action can neither fully disguise itself, nor fully announce itself either. So, too, with Barack Obama’s policies (and not just on Libya).
Nowhere is this pattern of disguise and contradiction more evident than on the topic of “American exceptionalism.” Supposedly, Obama’s address on Libya, with its invocation of America’s distinctive tradition of shouldering moral burdens throughout the world, gave the lie to those who have described the president as a critic of the concept. And Power’s work is filled with invocations of America’s unique leadership role in the world. But read carefully, her hymns of praise to American leadership all turn out to be calls for the United States to slowly devolve its power to international bodies. After all, the world’s foremost state would have to assume leadership of any process whereby its own power was gradually dismantled and handed off to others. This is essentially what Power is calling for, even as she frames the diminishment of America in superficially patriotic terms. Is Obama doing the same? I believe he is.
Power once promised that the stringent conditions she set out for intervention would make humanitarian military actions exceedingly rare. She has long admitted that, given that rarity, precisely what such interventions might achieve, as well as what they might cost, remains unclear. Now each day teaches us something new about the costs of her policies.
Arguments that Power developed to support past interventions are proving a poor fit for our Libyan operation. She dismissed claims that the Rwandan genocide was merely a case of “civil war” or “tribal violence.” Now her critics argue that Libya is not a Rwanda-style genocide, and that Power’s eagerness for a humanitarian showcase has led us to intervene in what really is a tribal civil war.
And what of her stringent conditions? In practice, she seems to have stretched her own standards of “large-scale crimes against humanity” to produce a specimen case, in an effort to entrench her favored doctrines in international law. Who knows if more people will now be casualties in the extended civil war enabled by our intervention than would have been killed in Benghazi last month?
Power worried just after 9/11 that an America soon to be militarily overstretched might give up on humanitarian interventions. Now she has helped to entangle us in an expensive and open-ended adventure at a time when we truly are at our limits — and at a time when dangers continue to spread in countries far more strategically significant than Libya. Power has long warned us that policies that alienate the rest of the world, such as detention at Guantanamo, make it tougher to assemble the multilateral coalitions that ultimately lighten our own security burdens. Yet now we find ourselves prevented from attacking our enemy Qaddafi, so as not to alienate our coalition partners (while Obama admits in practice that Guantanamo was in our interest all along).
Power might best be characterized as a pragmatic radical. Her outlook is “post-American,” an excellent example of what John Fonte has called “transnational progressivism.” Power means to slowly dismantle American sovereignty in favor of a constraining and ultimately redistributive regime of international law. It’s an odd position for a member of the president’s National Security Council, but then Power is no ordinary NSC staffer.
Power’s New York Times review of Noam Chomsky’s book Hegemony or Survival is an excellent example of what she’s about. Power is critical of Chomsky’s caustic tone, his failure to adequately back up his preaching-to-the-choir assertions, and his disregard of the complex tradeoffs inherent in foreign policy. But for all that, Power makes it clear that she largely shares Chomsky’s policy goals, above all the curbing of American power via the building up of international law and related doctrines of “human rights.” In other words, Power sees herself as the clever sort of radical who works from within established institutions, without ever really sacrificing her rebellious ideals.
FROM INTERVENTION TO WORLD GOVERNMENT
A long conversation with Power in 2003 convinced 1960s revolutionary Tom Hayden that she was a fellow-traveler of sorts, even if Power was not as systematically suspicious of American military force as a true Sixties-vintage radical would be. In Hayden’s assessment, Power’s originality was “to see war as an instrument to achieving her liberal, even radical, values.” Hayden was right. The important thing about Power is not that she favors humanitarian intervention, but that she seeks to use such military actions to transform America by undoing its sovereignty and immobilizing it, Gulliver-style, in an unfriendly international system.
Power’s aforementioned second book, Chasing the Flame, celebrates the life of a United Nations diplomat, Sergio Vieira de Mello, who died in a terrorist attack in Iraq in 2003. Vieira de Mello was a Sixties radical of international scope. Hailing from Brazil, he became a committed Marxist while studying at the Sorbonne. He was among the violent protesters arrested during the student uprising in Paris in 1968. His first published work was a defense of his actions.
Vieira de Mello went from student radicalism straight to a job with the U.N. in 1969, and brought his intense anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism with him. Later he became a bitter critic of Israel. A United Nations “patriot,” he carried around a well-worn copy of the U.N. Charter the way an American senator or Supreme Court justice might take a copy of the U.S. Constitution wherever he went. Vieira de Mello’s colleagues used to say that his blood ran U.N. blue. As the U.N.’s most charismatic and effective diplomat (said to be “a cross between James Bond and Bobby Kennedy”), Vieira de Mello is the hero around whom Power attempts to build a following for her ideals of global governance.
Power explains that Vieira de Mello never really surrendered his Sixties ideals, even as he transformed himself from a passionate ideologue into a “ruthless pragmatist.” The young America-hating Vieira de Mello grew into a mature diplomat who could charm Pres. George W. Bush, even while lecturing the commander-in-chief on the follies of Guantanamo Bay. In other words, Vieira de Mello learned to manage his public persona, appealing to American leaders with arguments (allegedly) based on American national interest.
This is clearly Power’s ideal for herself. In fact, she tells us in her acknowledgments that the point of the book is also “the point of my career.” Power even cites the uncanny resemblance between Vieira de Mello and Obama. Of course, Obama’s Alinskyite training stressed the need for community organizers to advance their quietly held leftist ideological goals through “pragmatic” appeals to the public’s “self-interest.” (For more on that, see my study of Obama.)
Samantha Power has a lot to teach us about Barack Obama. She herself draws analogies between the need to redistribute wealth via health-care coverage and the need to divide military and diplomatic power (and, implicitly, wealth) more evenly through the international system. Power regularly invokes arguments for international law derived from America’s Founders and the West’s great liberal thinkers, as if her goal were the founding of a government of the world. In truth, that is what Power is up to, even if she sees her project as a long-term collective effort necessarily extending beyond her own lifetime.
The novel doctrine of “responsibility to protect,” which Power means the Libyan action to enshrine in international law, could someday be used to justify military intervention to impose a “two-state solution” on Israel (apparently this is one of Power’s longstanding goals, although she now disavows it). The International Criminal Court, which Power has long defended, may someday enable the leftist Europeans who run it to place American soldiers and politicians on trial for supposed war crimes. The Obama administration’s troubling acquiescence in the development of sweeping international prohibitions on “aggression” may one day make virtually any use of force not pre-approved by the United Nations subject to international sanctions. These are the long-term goals of Power’s policies, although they are seldom confessed or discussed.
On rare occasions, Power comes straight out and admits that the sorts of interventions she favors constitute an almost pure cost to American national interest, traditionally defined. More often, she retreats into the language of “pragmatism” and “self-interest” to justify what she knows Americans will not support on its own terms. That is Samantha Power’s way and, not coincidentally, Barack Obama’s way as well.
At some point, after we’ve all done our best to fit the president’s puzzling Libyan adventure into our accustomed conceptual frameworks, we just might wake up and discover what has been going on behind the curtain. When we do, the answer will be found in the writings of Samantha Power.
Story above from: NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE
http://www.nationalreview.com/
— Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and the author of Radical-in-Chief. For more Please Read National Review OnLine
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Samantha Power -- http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/
Has a long record of antipathy toward Israel -- Said that America’s relationship with Israel “has often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer reflexively to Israeli security assessments, and to replicate Israeli tactics”
Was appointed as Director for Multilateral Affairs in the National Security Council by President Barack Obama in January 2009
Born in Ireland in September 1970, Samantha Power immigrated to the United States with her family in 1979. After graduating from Yale University, she worked as a journalist from 1993 to 1996, covering the Yugoslav wars for U.S. News & World Report, The Boston Globe, The Economist, and The New Republic.
Power then attended Harvard Law School, earning her Juris Doctorate in 1999. She is currently the Anna Lindh Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, where she is also affiliated with the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.
Power has a long record of antipathy towards Israel. In 2001 she attended the United Nations' World Conference Against Racism (in Durban, South Africa), even after the U.S. had withdrawn most of its diplomatic participation once it became apparent that the gathering would give prominence to anti-American, anti-Israel, and anti-Semitic perspectives.
Just months later, during a 2002 interview with Harry Kreisler, director of the Institute for International Studies at UC Berkeley, Power said that even if it meant “alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import” (i.e., Jewish Americans), the United States should stop investing “billions of dollars” in “servicing Israel’s military” and invest the money instead “in the new state of Palestine.” Moreover, she accused Israel of perpetrating "major human-rights abuses."
Power’s 2002 book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, grew out of a paper she had written in law school and won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 2003. This book examines the origin of the word “genocide,” the major genocides of the 20th century, and the reasons why governments -- most notably the U.S. -- have so often failed to collectively identify and forestall genocides before the crisis stage.
In her 2004 review of Noam Chomsky’s book Hegemony or Survival, Power agreed with many of Chomsky’s criticisms of U.S. foreign policy and expressed her own concerns about what she called the “sins of our allies in the war on terror,” lumping Israel together with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Russia, and Uzbekistan. She called Chomsky’s work “sobering and instructive.”
In 2005–06, Power worked as a foreign policy fellow in the office of U.S. Senator Barack Obama. In this role, she helped to spark and inform Obama’s interest in the deadly ethnic and tribal conflict of Darfur, Sudan.
In a 2007 interview, Power said that America’s relationship with Israel “has often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer reflexively to Israeli security assessments, and to replicate Israeli tactics...” The United States, she explained, had brought terrorist attacks upon itself by aping Israel’s violations of human rights.
In the fall of 2007, Power began writing a regular column for Time magazine. That same year, she appeared in Charles Ferguson's documentary, No End in Sight, which criticized the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq War.
In February 2008 Power released her second book, Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World. This book is about the eponymous United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, who was killed in a Baghdad hotel bombing on August 19, 2003.
In early 2008 Power served as a senior foreign-policy advisor to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. She was forced to resign from the campaign in March, however, after it was learned that she had referred to Obama’s Democrat rival, Hillary Clinton, as “a monster” whose modus operandi was “deceit.”
On July 4, 2008, Power married law professor Cass Sunstein, whom she had met while working on the Obama campaign.
In January 2009 President Obama appointed Power to serve as Director for Multilateral Affairs in the National Security Council, a post where she would serve as one of Obama’s closest advisors on foreign policy.
In March 2011, Power was instrumental in persuading Obama to authorize military intervention in Libya, to prevent President Moammar Qaddafi's forces from killing the rebels who were rising up against his regime at that time. Power's counsel in this matter was consistent with her longstanding advocacy of the doctrine known as the "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P), which encourages the international community to intervene in a sovereign country's internal affairs -- with military force if necessary -- in order to thwart genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, or ethnic cleansing. The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (GCRP), which is the world's leading advocate of this doctrine, is funded by George Soros's Open Society Institute. Power and GCRP advisory-board member Gareth Evans -- who is also also president emeritus of the International Crisis Group -- have been joint keynote speakers at a number of events where they have championed the R2P principle together.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2379
Why U.S. military in Uganda? Soros fingerprints all over it! Obama’s billionaire friend has interests in African country’s oil -- October 15, 2011 - By Aaron Klein
TEL AVIV — An influential “crisis management organization” that boasts billionaire George Soros as a member of its executive board recently recommended the U.S. deploy a special advisory military team to Uganda to help with operations and run an intelligence platform.
The president-emeritus of that organization, the International Crisis Group, is the principal author of Responsibility to Protect, the military doctrine used by Obama to justify the U.S.-led NATO campaign in Libya.
Soros’ own Open Society Institute is one of only three nongovernmental funders of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect, a doctrine that has been cited many times by activists urging intervention in Uganda.
Authors and advisers of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, including a center founded and led by Samantha Power, the National Security Council special adviser to Obama on human rights, also helped to found the International Criminal Court.
Several of the doctrine’s main founders also sit on boards with Soros, who is a major proponent of the doctrine.
Soros himself maintains close ties to oil interests in Uganda. His organizations have been the leading efforts purportedly to facilitate more transparency in Uganda’s oil industry, which is being tightly controlled by the country’s leadership.
U.S. troops to Uganda
Obama on Friday notified House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, that he plans to send about 100 military personnel, mostly Special Operations Forces, to central Africa. The first troops reportedly arrived in Uganda on Wednesday.
The U.S. mission will be to advise forces seeking to kill or capture Joseph Kony, the leader of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA. Kony is accused of major human rights atrocities. He is on the U.S. terrorist list and is wanted by the International Criminal Court.
In a letter on Friday, Obama announced the initial team of U.S. military personnel “with appropriate combat equipment” deployed to Uganda on Wednesday. Other forces deploying include “a second combat-equipped team and associated headquarters, communications and logistics personnel.”
“Our forces will provide information, advice and assistance to select partner nation forces,” he said.
Both conservatives and liberals have raised questions about whether military involvement in Uganda advances U.S. interests.
Writing in The Atlantic yesterday, Max Fisher noted the Obama administration last year approved special forces bases and operations across the Middle East, the Horn of Africa and Central Asia.
“But those operations, large and small, target terrorist groups and rogue states that threaten the U.S. — something the Lord’s Resistance Army could not possibly do,” he wrote.
“It’s difficult to find a U.S. interest at stake in the Lord’s Resistance Army’s campaign of violence,” continued Fisher. “It’s possible that there’s some immediate U.S. interest at stake we can’t obviously see.”
Bill Roggio, the managing editor of The Long War Journal, referred to the Obama administration’s stated rationale for sending troops “puzzling,” claiming the LRA does not present a national security threat to the U.S. — “despite what President Obama said.”
Tea Party-backed presidential candidate Michele Bachmann also questioned the wisdom of Obama’s move to send U.S. troops to Uganda.
“When it comes to sending our brave men and women into foreign nations we have to first demonstrate a vital American national interest before we send our troops in,” she said at a campaign stop yesterday in Iowa.
Soros group: Send military advisors to Uganda
In April 2010 Soros’ International Crisis Group, or ICG, released a report sent to the White House and key lawmakers advising the U.S. military to run special operations in Uganda to seek Kony’s capture.
Read the report: “To the U.S. government: Deploy a team to the theatre of operations to run an intelligence platform that centralizes all operational information from the Ugandan and other armies, as well as the UN and civilian networks, and provides analysis to the Ugandans to better target military operations.”
Since 2008 the U.S. has been providing financial aid in the form of military equipment to Uganda and the other regional countries to fight Kony’s LRA, but Obama’s new deployment escalates the direct U.S. involvement.
Soros sits in the ICG’s executive board along with Samuel Berger, Bill Clinton’s former national security advisor; George J. Mitchell, former U.S. Senate Majority Leader who served as a Mideast envoy to both Obama and President Bush; and Javier Solana, a socialist activist who is NATO’s former Secretary-General as well as the former Foreign Affairs Minister of Spain.
Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, is the ICG’s senior advisor.
The ICG’s president-emeritus is Gareth Evans, who, together with activist Ramesh Thakur, is the original founder of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, with the duo even coining the term “responsibility to protect.”
Both Evans and Thakur serve as advisory board members of the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect, the main group pushing the doctrine.
As WND first exposed, Soros is a primary funder and key proponent of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect.
Soros’ Open Society is one of only three non-governmental funders of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. Government sponsors include Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, Rwanda and the U.K.
Soros’ hand in Ugandan oil industry
Oil exploration began in Uganda’s northwestern Lake Albert basin nearly a decade ago, with initial strikes being made in 2006.
Uganda’s Energy Ministry estimates the country has over 2 billion barrels of oil, with some estimates going as high as 6 billion barrels. Production is set to begin in 2015, delayed from 2013 in part because the country has not put in place a regulatory framework for the oil industry.
A 2008 National Oil and Gas Policy, proposed with aid from a Soros-funded group, was supposed to be a general road map for the handling and use of the oil. However, the polcy’s recommendations have been largely ignored, with critics accusing Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni of corruption and of tightening his grip on the African country’s emerging oil sector.
Soros himself has been closely tied to oil and other interests in Uganda.
In 2008, the Soros-funded Revenue Watch Institute brought together stakeholders from Uganda and other East African countries to discuss critical governance issues, including the formation of what became Uganda’s National Oil and Gas Policy.
Also in 2008, the Africa Institute for Energy Governance, a grantee of the Soros-funded Revenue Watch, helped established the Publish What You Pay Coalition of Uganda, or PWYP, which was purportedly launched to coordinate and streamline the efforts of the government in promoting transparency and accountability in the oil sector.
Also, a steering committee was formed for PWYP Uganda to develop an agenda for implementing the oil advocacy initiatives and a constitution to guide PWYP’s oil work.
PWYP has since 2006 hosted a number of training workshops in Uganda purportedly to promote contract transparency in Uganda’s oil sector.
PWYP is directly funded by Soros’ Open Society as well as the Soros-funded Revenue Watch Institute. PWYP international is actually hosted by the Open Society Foundation in London.
The billionaire’s Open Society Institute, meanwhile, runs numerous offices in Uganda. It maintains a country manager in Uganda, as well as the Open Society Initiative for East Africa, which supports work in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.
The Open Society Institute runs a Ugandan Youth Action Fund, which states its mission is to “identify, inspire, and support small groups of dedicated young people who can mobilize and influence large numbers of their peers to promote open society ideals.”
Samantha Power, Arafat deputy
Meanwhile, a closer look at the Soros-funded Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect is telling. Board members of the group include former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former Ireland President Mary Robinson and South African activist Desmond Tutu. Robinson and Tutu have recently made solidarity visits to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip as members of a group called The Elders, which includes former President Jimmy Carter.
WND was first to report the committee that devised the Responsibility to Protect doctrine included Arab League Secretary General Amre Moussa as well as Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi, a staunch denier of the Holocaust who long served as the deputy of late Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat.
Also, the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy has a seat on the advisory board of the 2001 commission that originally founded Responsibility to Protect. The commission is called the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. It invented the term “responsibility to protect” while defining its guidelines.
The Carr Center is a research center concerned with human rights located at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Samantha Power, the National Security Council special adviser to Obama on human rights, was Carr’s founding executive director and headed the institute at the time it advised in the founding of Responsibility to Protect.
With Power’s center on the advisory board, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty first defined the Responsibility to Protect doctrine.
Power reportedly heavily influenced Obama in consultations leading to the decision to bomb Libya.
The Libya bombings have been widely regarded as a test of a military doctrine called “Responsibility to Protect.”
In his address to the nation in April explaining the NATO campaign in Libya, Obama cited the doctrine as the main justification for U.S. and international airstrikes against Libya.
Responsibility to Protect, or Responsibility to Act, as cited by Obama, is a set of principles, now backed by the United Nations, based on the idea that sovereignty is not a privilege but a responsibility that can be revoked if a country is accused of “war crimes,” “genocide,” “crimes against humanity” or “ethnic cleansing.”
The term “war crimes” has at times been indiscriminately used by various United Nations-backed international bodies, including the International Criminal Court, or ICC, which applied it to Israeli anti-terror operations in the Gaza Strip. There has been fear the ICC could be used to prosecute U.S. troops who commit alleged “war crimes” overseas.
Soros: Right to ‘penetrate nation-states’
Soros himself outlined the fundamentals of Responsibility to Protect in a 2004 Foreign Policy magazine article titled “The People’s Sovereignty: How a New Twist on an Old Idea Can Protect the World’s Most Vulnerable Populations.”
In the article Soros said, “True sovereignty belongs to the people, who in turn delegate it to their governments.”
“If governments abuse the authority entrusted to them and citizens have no opportunity to correct such abuses, outside interference is justified,” Soros wrote. “By specifying that sovereignty is based on the people, the international community can penetrate nation-states’ borders to protect the rights of citizens.
“In particular,” he continued, “the principle of the people’s sovereignty can help solve two modern challenges: the obstacles to delivering aid effectively to sovereign states, and the obstacles to global collective action dealing with states experiencing internal conflict.”
‘One World Order’
The Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect, meanwhile, works in partnership with the World Federalist Movement, a group that promotes democratized global institutions with plenary constitutional power. The Movement is a main coordinator and member of Responsibility to Protect Center.
WND reported that Responsibility doctrine founder Thakur recently advocated for a “global rebalancing” and “international redistribution” to create a “New World Order.”
In a piece last March in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, “Toward a new world order,” Thakur wrote, “Westerners must change lifestyles and support international redistribution.”
He was referring to a United Nations-brokered international climate treaty in which he argued, “Developing countries must reorient growth in cleaner and greener directions.”
In the opinion piece, Thakur then discussed recent military engagements and how the financial crisis has impacted the U.S.
“The West’s bullying approach to developing nations won’t work anymore – global power is shifting to Asia,” he wrote.
“A much-needed global moral rebalancing is in train,” he added.
Thakur continued: “Westerners have lost their previous capacity to set standards and rules of behavior for the world. Unless they recognize this reality, there is little prospect of making significant progress in deadlocked international negotiations.”
Thakur contended “the demonstration of the limits to U.S. and NATO power in Iraq and Afghanistan has left many less fearful of ‘superior’ Western power.”
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=356321
With research by Brenda J. Elliott
-------------------------------------------------
October 18, 2011
Obama's Uganda Gambit to serve Soros
Ed Lasky
Journalist Aaron Klein has an interesting take on Barack Obama's surprising decision to send troops into Uganda to battle a rebel army. The genesis of the idea may have begun at the George Soros-funded International Crisis Group, one of the "think tanks" that Soros uses to promote policies that benefit him. In this case, the ICG recommended last year that America deploy military forces to Uganda. This move prompted questions since the rebel group did not pose a threat to American interests. But whose interests might be served by defeating the rebel group? George Soros -- a major Obama backer.
Klein writes: Soros himself has been closely tied to oil and other interests in Uganda.
In 2008, the Soros-funded Revenue Watch Institute brought together stakeholders from Uganda and other East African countries to discuss critical governance issues, including the formation of what became Uganda's National Oil and Gas Policy.
Also in 2008, the Africa Institute for Energy Governance, a grantee of the Soros-funded Revenue Watch, helped established the Publish What You Pay Coalition of Uganda, or PWYP, which was purportedly launched to coordinate and streamline the efforts of the government in promoting transparency and accountability in the oil sector.
Also, a steering committee was formed for PWYP Uganda to develop an agenda for implementing the oil advocacy initiatives and a constitution to guide PWYP's oil work.
PWYP has since 2006 hosted a number of training workshops in Uganda purportedly to promote contract transparency in Uganda's oil sector.
PWYP is directly funded by Soros' Open Society as well as the Soros-funded Revenue Watch Institute. PWYP international is actually hosted by the Open Society Foundation in London.
The billionaire's Open Society Institute, meanwhile, runs numerous offices in Uganda. It maintains a country manager in Uganda, as well as the Open Society Initiative for East Africa, which supports work in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.
Soros seems to have his hand in trying to guide the development of the oil and gas industry in Uganda. The Ugandan government would naturally be beholden to Soros if he could show he had enough influence with the White House to bring in American troops to take out a rebel group. Also, the defeat of the rebel group would make development of the energy industry that much more viable since operations would be much more secure.
This strategy bears similarity with the story of InterOil, a major holding of George Soros, that has been granted concessions for reportedly major natural gas reserves in Papua New Guinea. The government there has recently been arguing with InterOil regarding that company's ability to develop these reserves and build and operate a Liquefied Natural Gas port to export the gas.
What could friends of George Soros in the American government do to help him soothe the deal with the Papua New Guinea government? What the Obama administration did in fact do was send government experts all the way from here to there to help the nation develop its reserves. This was especially surprising since the Department of Interior has blamed its delay in issuing permits to develop our own domestic reserves on lack of manpower and funding -- yet the administration found the manpower and money to export our experts do help develop New Guinea's reserves. Or rather the reserves that InterOil and its major shareholder , George Soros, want developed courtesy of the American taxpayer.
Anyone see a pattern here? (1) In one case, Obama sends military forces to Uganda -- a nation where Soros has been active in trying to help it formulate a policy to tap its oil wealth. But before the policies could be put in place, a rebel group needs to be vanquished. (2) In the other case, Obama sends American government experts to help another nation to develop its natural gas wealth when the one company ideally positioned to benefit from this taxpayer-funded development has as its major shareholder none other than George Soros.
Soros declared his own modus operandi when he said in a 2004 New Yorker profile that there are "symbiotic moments between political and business interests." He is a master at finding these moments and promoting the political careers of those who will do his bidding.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/10/obamas_uganda_gambit_to_serve_soros.html
http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/africa/horn-of-africa/uganda/157-lra-a-regional-strategy-beyond-killing-kony.aspx
---------------------------------
PETROBRAS! Brazilian Oil Company owned by George Soros, Obama got deep water drill permits, but no US corp WHY?
by gosheven83 » Tue Mar 22, 2011
Petrobras got a 2 billion $ loan to deep drill compliments of Obama recently. Now they get to drill in OUR WATERS, while our companies don't and we will be buying oil from them. Who is president of Brazil right now? A communist revolutionary who did time for her involvement in the Communist movement in Brazil.
Mexico also got a 2 billion $ Loan to deep drill in the Gulf. Not sure of the ins and outs, but that's oil we should be drilling.
We are also just sitting by while China drills off Florida using Cuban permits, taking oil thats closer to the US waters than Cuban. The Chinese are unaccountable to our environmental standards. More chance of spill, no oil in US control which would bring down prices.
How clear does it have to be? We are being sold out. We are being deliberately torn down by an enemy from within.
Doesn't matter if you're a Republican, Democrat, or Independent. If you plan to live in this country you should be very concerned.
Also you should be concerned about the media covering this up. I mean politics is one thing, but to cover up a big sell out like this? Something may be rotten in Denmark, and it probably is, but there is no doubt something is stinking to high heaven right here at home.
If we don't pull our heads out our country will be sold out from under us while we squabble over issues that seem to be planted to smoke screen what is really doing our country grave damage.
If the Republicans were really on the people's side, they would be yelling bloody murder about this and shutting things down. I was hoping there was someone on our side, but sadly, I don't think there is. Maybe just the Tea Party, maybe not even all of those.
It's up to we the people, our government officials are selling us out.
http://www.grantmoneyadvisor.com/petrobras-brazilian-oil-company-owned-by-george-soros-obama-got-deep-water-drill-permits-but-no-us-corp-why-t92754.html
Check out this link: Lists Players and How the US shows its cards while the rest of the world holds their economic information to themselves.
www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/.../Africa/250810summary.pdf
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Communist are beginning to squeal as Andrew Breitbart shins the light of freedom on them and they scurry away to the dark places to hide
"We’re in this for the long haul. There are no “solutions” that can be presented quickly to make us go away. And so there will be moments where our presence is no longer an uncomfortable and unknown variable, but rather is normalized and integrated. It’s in those moments that we have to push the envelop [sic], pry open the space of possibility even farther. We go as far as we can to destabalize [sic], but maintain momentum. And when that’s the new “normal” then we go farther. That’s how change happens, how we shift the terrain and the terms of the game."
– Email in “Occupy” archive, “Re: Can OWS be turned into a Democratic Party Movement?”; Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Read these emails yourself at: biggovernment.com
Emails Expose #OccupyWallStreet Conspiracy to ‘Destabalize’ Global Markets, Governments
By Andrew Breitbart
October 14, 2011
In keeping with the new media notion of crowdsourcing–enthusiastically embraced [1] by the mainstream media when trawling through Sarah Palin’s emails–Big Government will be providing readers later today with links to a document drop consisting of thousands of emails.
The email archive, created by a private cyber security researcher, appears to contain messages shared by the left’s anarcho-socialist activists during the strategic and daily tactical planning of the “Occupy Wall Street” and broader “Occupy” campaign this fall.
Big Government received a tip about the existence of the archive, and we were able to contact the individual who compiled and posted it. He will describe the archive, and how he obtained the emails, later this morning exclusively on Big Government.
Through “crowdsourcing,” the media and the public will then be able to discover the truth behind the “Occupy” movement.
The archive includes emails, for example, from radical anarchist organizer Lisa Fithian, who was profiled earlier this week at Big Government [2], and who is one of the leading organizers behind the Occupy movement.
In one email, dated October 1, Fithian applauds the launch of “occupations” throughout the country. She also highlights an ACORN-style [3] illegal home occupation in California, linking to a television news stor [4]y that reveals the involvement of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), which is apparently the reconstituted version of ACORN in California [5].
OWSMailList_0001-3 [6] –
Per the 8800+ pages of emails (3900+ emails), the Occupy movement has been in the works for some time. Its leaders apparently intend for it to broaden out and intertwine with the Days of Rage global initiative, which is set to begin on Saturday, October 15th. They also intend the demonstrations to continue indefinitely, as suggested in the following email, dated Monday, October 10:
beka [7] –
The true purpose of the Occupy movement appears to be further economic and governmental destabilization, at a time when the world is already facing major financial and political challenges. By embracing the Occupy movement, President Barack Obama, the Democrat Party, and their union allies may be supporting an effort to harm both the domestic and global economies; to create social unrest throughout the democratic world; and to embrace other radical causes, including the anti-Israel movement. Ironically, the emails suggest that the President and the Democrat Party may soon find their friends in the Occupy movement to be a political burden. The email below calls for the Occupy movement to begin “executing higher-risk actions, civil disobedience and arrests,” and suggests: “We must draw a line, disavow the Democrats explicitly, make our messaging a little uncomfortable.”
DNC Go Further [8] -> The email exchanges in the archive begin on September 14th, 2011 and continue through this week.
Later this morning, readers will be able to read the emails for themselves–and the mainstream media will be forced to confront the truth behind the Occupy movement, including its links to socialist, anarchist, and possibly even jihadist organizations.
Brandon Darby, a former left-wing activist, will be following up in the coming days with his own analysis and interpretation of select email exchanges. After Hurricane Katrina, Darby became alienated by his former comrades’ anti-Americanism and propensity for violence, and became an FBI informant. In that role, he was essential to the prevention of a planned Molotov cocktail attack on the 2008 Republican National Convention. Darby is in a unique position to understand the key players and tactics behind the “Occupy” movement, and to help derail the left’s pursuit of broader global destabilization.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please go to: biggovernment.com Breitbart and Bigovernment -- have much more on this explosive coverage. It shows all the players and then you can decide how to cast your vote.
URL to article: http://biggovernment.com/abreitbart/2011/10/14/crowdsource-this-social-list-emails-expose-occupywallstreet-conspiracy-to-destablize-global-markets-governments/
URLs in this post:
[1] embraced: http://politicalwire.com/archives/2011/06/10/crowdsourcing_palin_emails.html
[2] profiled earlier this week at Big Government: http://biggovernment.com/lstranahan/2011/10/12/lisa-fithian-does-chicago-twenty-arrested-in-direct-action-protests/
[3] ACORN-style: http://michellemalkin.com/2009/02/20/this-is-our-house-now-acorn-mob-begins-breaking-into-homes/
[4] television news story: http://www.ktla.com/videobeta/bfc9a7f3-012c-403f-bb6f-ebe2f090514c/News/KTLA-Family-Prepares-for-Foreclosure-Showdown-in-La-Puente-Elizabeth-Espinosa-reports
[5] the reconstituted version of ACORN in California: http://spectator.org/archives/2010/01/21/acorns-california-makeover
[6] OWSMailList_0001-3: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/99246646/OWSMailList_0001-3
[7] beka: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/99249235/beka
[8] DNC Go Further: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/99248851/DNC%20Go%20Further
http://biggovernment.com/abreitbart/2011/10/14/crowdsource-this-social-list-emails-expose-occupywallstreet-conspiracy-to-destablize-global-markets-governments/
– Email in “Occupy” archive, “Re: Can OWS be turned into a Democratic Party Movement?”; Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Read these emails yourself at: biggovernment.com
Emails Expose #OccupyWallStreet Conspiracy to ‘Destabalize’ Global Markets, Governments
By Andrew Breitbart
October 14, 2011
In keeping with the new media notion of crowdsourcing–enthusiastically embraced [1] by the mainstream media when trawling through Sarah Palin’s emails–Big Government will be providing readers later today with links to a document drop consisting of thousands of emails.
The email archive, created by a private cyber security researcher, appears to contain messages shared by the left’s anarcho-socialist activists during the strategic and daily tactical planning of the “Occupy Wall Street” and broader “Occupy” campaign this fall.
Big Government received a tip about the existence of the archive, and we were able to contact the individual who compiled and posted it. He will describe the archive, and how he obtained the emails, later this morning exclusively on Big Government.
Through “crowdsourcing,” the media and the public will then be able to discover the truth behind the “Occupy” movement.
The archive includes emails, for example, from radical anarchist organizer Lisa Fithian, who was profiled earlier this week at Big Government [2], and who is one of the leading organizers behind the Occupy movement.
In one email, dated October 1, Fithian applauds the launch of “occupations” throughout the country. She also highlights an ACORN-style [3] illegal home occupation in California, linking to a television news stor [4]y that reveals the involvement of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), which is apparently the reconstituted version of ACORN in California [5].
OWSMailList_0001-3 [6] –
Per the 8800+ pages of emails (3900+ emails), the Occupy movement has been in the works for some time. Its leaders apparently intend for it to broaden out and intertwine with the Days of Rage global initiative, which is set to begin on Saturday, October 15th. They also intend the demonstrations to continue indefinitely, as suggested in the following email, dated Monday, October 10:
beka [7] –
The true purpose of the Occupy movement appears to be further economic and governmental destabilization, at a time when the world is already facing major financial and political challenges. By embracing the Occupy movement, President Barack Obama, the Democrat Party, and their union allies may be supporting an effort to harm both the domestic and global economies; to create social unrest throughout the democratic world; and to embrace other radical causes, including the anti-Israel movement. Ironically, the emails suggest that the President and the Democrat Party may soon find their friends in the Occupy movement to be a political burden. The email below calls for the Occupy movement to begin “executing higher-risk actions, civil disobedience and arrests,” and suggests: “We must draw a line, disavow the Democrats explicitly, make our messaging a little uncomfortable.”
DNC Go Further [8] -> The email exchanges in the archive begin on September 14th, 2011 and continue through this week.
Later this morning, readers will be able to read the emails for themselves–and the mainstream media will be forced to confront the truth behind the Occupy movement, including its links to socialist, anarchist, and possibly even jihadist organizations.
Brandon Darby, a former left-wing activist, will be following up in the coming days with his own analysis and interpretation of select email exchanges. After Hurricane Katrina, Darby became alienated by his former comrades’ anti-Americanism and propensity for violence, and became an FBI informant. In that role, he was essential to the prevention of a planned Molotov cocktail attack on the 2008 Republican National Convention. Darby is in a unique position to understand the key players and tactics behind the “Occupy” movement, and to help derail the left’s pursuit of broader global destabilization.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please go to: biggovernment.com Breitbart and Bigovernment -- have much more on this explosive coverage. It shows all the players and then you can decide how to cast your vote.
URL to article: http://biggovernment.com/abreitbart/2011/10/14/crowdsource-this-social-list-emails-expose-occupywallstreet-conspiracy-to-destablize-global-markets-governments/
URLs in this post:
[1] embraced: http://politicalwire.com/archives/2011/06/10/crowdsourcing_palin_emails.html
[2] profiled earlier this week at Big Government: http://biggovernment.com/lstranahan/2011/10/12/lisa-fithian-does-chicago-twenty-arrested-in-direct-action-protests/
[3] ACORN-style: http://michellemalkin.com/2009/02/20/this-is-our-house-now-acorn-mob-begins-breaking-into-homes/
[4] television news story: http://www.ktla.com/videobeta/bfc9a7f3-012c-403f-bb6f-ebe2f090514c/News/KTLA-Family-Prepares-for-Foreclosure-Showdown-in-La-Puente-Elizabeth-Espinosa-reports
[5] the reconstituted version of ACORN in California: http://spectator.org/archives/2010/01/21/acorns-california-makeover
[6] OWSMailList_0001-3: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/99246646/OWSMailList_0001-3
[7] beka: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/99249235/beka
[8] DNC Go Further: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/99248851/DNC%20Go%20Further
http://biggovernment.com/abreitbart/2011/10/14/crowdsource-this-social-list-emails-expose-occupywallstreet-conspiracy-to-destablize-global-markets-governments/
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Breitbart has Emails Showing ‘Organized’ left-wing Plan to Destabilize Government
Occupy Wall Street Fatwa Threatens Terror Against Ivy League Tech Workers
By Arthur Hu– October 10, 2011
By Arthur Hu– October 10, 2011
days of rage: [Hu's on First]
People say that the Occupy Wall Street folks don’t have a coherent message, but that’s because the “peaceful protests” are just as mask over what they really stand for. You have to research who is behind this movement and what else they have been promoting ....
Video: Breitbart has Emails Showing ‘Organized’ left-wing Plan to Destabilize Government
Updates
10/12: What they really want
•End to Islamaphobia
•End to capitalism
•End to (aid to AND nation of ) Israel
•US troops stop attacking Al Queda and Taliban in Afghanistan and Iraq
•US drones stop attacking Al-Qeda terrorists
•Greedy zionists/Jewish bankers out of Wall Street
•Freedom for Arabs and Muslims through Islamist Arab Spring
Can it be a coincidence that these are also positions of the militant Islamists in Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran?
Who Supports OWS --What do all these people have in common?
•Acorn
•Amiri Baraka: advocate of rape and violence towards women, gay people, white people, and Jews, racism, sexism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism
•Barak Obama
•Code Pink: “works with terrorist groups and anti-American governments to undermine America, free Iraq, Israel, Egypt and other governments allied against Code Pink’s Marxist, jihadist friends.”
•George Soros (Forbes 14th richest man and cheerleader for Palestinean Justice)
•Adbusters
•Moveon.org
•Open Society Institute
•democracy now
•working families party
•ruckus society
•People For The American Way,
•Planned Parenthood,
•Campaign For America’s Future,
•Democracy For America,
•Leadership Conference for Civil and Human Rights,
•Common Cause,
•Public Campaign,
•Michael Moore “9/11 could be an inside job”
•MSNBC
•Iran (World’s only true democracy)
•Tarek Mehanna Support Committee (provided “material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization,” and acted as a “media wing” for al-Qaeda.)
•Van Jones ...
Terrorist Threats
The Wall Street Journal and Forbes have noticed a chilling threat in a Politico article detailing what can only be described as a terrorist threat in Occupy Wall Street clothing.
Several influential New York state lawmakers have received threatening mails saying it is “time to kill the wealthy” if they don’t renew the state’s tax surcharge on millionaires, according to reports. “It’s time to tax the millionaires!” reads the email, according to WTEN in Albany. “If you don’t, I’m going to pay a visit with my carbine to one of those tech companies you are so proud of and shoot every spoiled Ivy League [expletive] I can find.” The email, with the threatening subject line of, “time to kill the wealthy,” was detailed and disturbing. “How hard is it for us to stake out one of the obvious access roads to some tech company, tail an employee home and toss a liquor bottle full of flaming gasoline through their nice picture window into their cute house” The email references terminology that has been used in the “Occupy Wall Street” movement — that the1 percent, the super rich, are exploiting the remaining 99 percent of Americans.
This should be especially alarming to Asian Americans such as Chinese and Indians who proudly drive their kids to get into Ivy League schools and major in high tech fields and medicine. Terrorists need no hijacked religion to justify torching high end houses in Seattle and high end cars in Germany to attack affluence.
Amy Chua on Killing the Rich
This is starting to look like an Americanized version of the anti-Chinese riots that Tiger Mother Amy Chua wrote about when her affluent relatives in the Phillipines were victims of people who were absolutely serious in staging a “day of rage” about “killing the rich”. This is what the “rage against the 1 percent” is all about, and in the global stage, guess who is the top 1%?? All Americans, even those on food stamaps and welfare are earning in the top 1%. ...
In 2003, Prof. Chua had also written a thoughtful book entitled “World on Fire,” which “explores the ethnic conflict caused in many societies by disproportionate economic and political influence of ‘market dominant minorities’ and the resulting resentment in the less affluent majority.”...
People say that the Occupy Wall Street folks don’t have a coherent message, but that’s because the “peaceful protests” are just as mask over what they really stand for. You have to research who is behind this movement and what else they have been promoting ....
Video: Breitbart has Emails Showing ‘Organized’ left-wing Plan to Destabilize Government
Updates
10/12: What they really want
•End to Islamaphobia
•End to capitalism
•End to (aid to AND nation of ) Israel
•US troops stop attacking Al Queda and Taliban in Afghanistan and Iraq
•US drones stop attacking Al-Qeda terrorists
•Greedy zionists/Jewish bankers out of Wall Street
•Freedom for Arabs and Muslims through Islamist Arab Spring
Can it be a coincidence that these are also positions of the militant Islamists in Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran?
Who Supports OWS --What do all these people have in common?
•Acorn
•Amiri Baraka: advocate of rape and violence towards women, gay people, white people, and Jews, racism, sexism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism
•Barak Obama
•Code Pink: “works with terrorist groups and anti-American governments to undermine America, free Iraq, Israel, Egypt and other governments allied against Code Pink’s Marxist, jihadist friends.”
•George Soros (Forbes 14th richest man and cheerleader for Palestinean Justice)
•Adbusters
•Moveon.org
•Open Society Institute
•democracy now
•working families party
•ruckus society
•People For The American Way,
•Planned Parenthood,
•Campaign For America’s Future,
•Democracy For America,
•Leadership Conference for Civil and Human Rights,
•Common Cause,
•Public Campaign,
•Michael Moore “9/11 could be an inside job”
•MSNBC
•Iran (World’s only true democracy)
•Tarek Mehanna Support Committee (provided “material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization,” and acted as a “media wing” for al-Qaeda.)
•Van Jones ...
Terrorist Threats
The Wall Street Journal and Forbes have noticed a chilling threat in a Politico article detailing what can only be described as a terrorist threat in Occupy Wall Street clothing.
Several influential New York state lawmakers have received threatening mails saying it is “time to kill the wealthy” if they don’t renew the state’s tax surcharge on millionaires, according to reports. “It’s time to tax the millionaires!” reads the email, according to WTEN in Albany. “If you don’t, I’m going to pay a visit with my carbine to one of those tech companies you are so proud of and shoot every spoiled Ivy League [expletive] I can find.” The email, with the threatening subject line of, “time to kill the wealthy,” was detailed and disturbing. “How hard is it for us to stake out one of the obvious access roads to some tech company, tail an employee home and toss a liquor bottle full of flaming gasoline through their nice picture window into their cute house” The email references terminology that has been used in the “Occupy Wall Street” movement — that the1 percent, the super rich, are exploiting the remaining 99 percent of Americans.
This should be especially alarming to Asian Americans such as Chinese and Indians who proudly drive their kids to get into Ivy League schools and major in high tech fields and medicine. Terrorists need no hijacked religion to justify torching high end houses in Seattle and high end cars in Germany to attack affluence.
Amy Chua on Killing the Rich
This is starting to look like an Americanized version of the anti-Chinese riots that Tiger Mother Amy Chua wrote about when her affluent relatives in the Phillipines were victims of people who were absolutely serious in staging a “day of rage” about “killing the rich”. This is what the “rage against the 1 percent” is all about, and in the global stage, guess who is the top 1%?? All Americans, even those on food stamaps and welfare are earning in the top 1%. ...
In 2003, Prof. Chua had also written a thoughtful book entitled “World on Fire,” which “explores the ethnic conflict caused in many societies by disproportionate economic and political influence of ‘market dominant minorities’ and the resulting resentment in the less affluent majority.”...
...If you search for “Kill the rich”, it came from William Ayers who you can remember Sarah Palin and her friends questioning why Obama was keeping ex-terrorists as pals. From the article Obama’s Pals- Kill the Rich Kill Your Parents” in 2008:
In 1970, Ayers encapsulated the Weathermen’s worldview: “Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home. Kill your parents.” In his 2001 memoir, “Fugitive Days,” Ayers brags that he helped blast NYPD headquarters in 1970, the U.S. Capitol in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972.
Glenn Beck’s Blaze uncovers the source of “Days of Rage”, a protest for “peace” to unify Vietnam under Communism just as there today’s major anti-US movement seeks to unite and “liberate” the Muslim world under one Caliphate
The term “Day of Rage” finds origin in “Days of Rage,“ a violent set of riots waged in Chicago in 1969 by the Weathermen’s Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. The Weather Underground terrorist organized his “Rage” in an attempt to bring troops back home from Vietnam. Similarly, this most recent US Day of Rage is co-organized by a group that calls itself “The War Resistance League.” Yet despite Ayers’ initial claim that his Day of Rage, too, would be “non-violent,” during the four day rampage that started in Chicago’s historic Lincoln Park, the Weathermen arrived in full-clad battle gear, helmets and weapons in tow, and called on activists to kill the rich and even their own parents. During an interview with Chicago Mag, Ayers, with no regrets, summed up his riot’s intended purpose, stating, ”kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents—that‘s where it’s really at.”
Talk show host Dave Wooten Radio notes that the “Days of Rage” organizers met with President Obama FOUR times in White House, and linked Weathermen co -founder Bill Ayers and Steven Lerner of the SEIU International Leader and Acorn Founder Wade Rathke to this “leaderless” movement. He believes they want Obama to declare Marshall law and onto “Fundamentally Transforming” America so that “Socialists, communists, Islamists, Unions and the Radical Left in America” can “Fundamentally Change” Western Culture to create “The One World Order” that Alynsky & Karl Marx would be proud of.
...Open Anti-Semitism in OWA
Amiri Baraka was featured as a speaker at OWA, and this gives real insight to those who invited him. According to Wikipedia, Baraka has “generated controversy over the years, particularly his advocacy of rape and violence towards (at various times) women, gay people, white people, and Jews…. to outright examples of the racism, sexism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism”
http://www.asianweek.com/2011/10/10/occupy-wall-street-fatwa-threatens-terror-against-ivy-league-tech-workers/
In 1970, Ayers encapsulated the Weathermen’s worldview: “Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home. Kill your parents.” In his 2001 memoir, “Fugitive Days,” Ayers brags that he helped blast NYPD headquarters in 1970, the U.S. Capitol in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972.
Glenn Beck’s Blaze uncovers the source of “Days of Rage”, a protest for “peace” to unify Vietnam under Communism just as there today’s major anti-US movement seeks to unite and “liberate” the Muslim world under one Caliphate
The term “Day of Rage” finds origin in “Days of Rage,“ a violent set of riots waged in Chicago in 1969 by the Weathermen’s Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. The Weather Underground terrorist organized his “Rage” in an attempt to bring troops back home from Vietnam. Similarly, this most recent US Day of Rage is co-organized by a group that calls itself “The War Resistance League.” Yet despite Ayers’ initial claim that his Day of Rage, too, would be “non-violent,” during the four day rampage that started in Chicago’s historic Lincoln Park, the Weathermen arrived in full-clad battle gear, helmets and weapons in tow, and called on activists to kill the rich and even their own parents. During an interview with Chicago Mag, Ayers, with no regrets, summed up his riot’s intended purpose, stating, ”kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents—that‘s where it’s really at.”
Talk show host Dave Wooten Radio notes that the “Days of Rage” organizers met with President Obama FOUR times in White House, and linked Weathermen co -founder Bill Ayers and Steven Lerner of the SEIU International Leader and Acorn Founder Wade Rathke to this “leaderless” movement. He believes they want Obama to declare Marshall law and onto “Fundamentally Transforming” America so that “Socialists, communists, Islamists, Unions and the Radical Left in America” can “Fundamentally Change” Western Culture to create “The One World Order” that Alynsky & Karl Marx would be proud of.
...Open Anti-Semitism in OWA
Amiri Baraka was featured as a speaker at OWA, and this gives real insight to those who invited him. According to Wikipedia, Baraka has “generated controversy over the years, particularly his advocacy of rape and violence towards (at various times) women, gay people, white people, and Jews…. to outright examples of the racism, sexism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism”
http://www.asianweek.com/2011/10/10/occupy-wall-street-fatwa-threatens-terror-against-ivy-league-tech-workers/
--------------------------
Shocker. Obama’s Top Political Advisor Directly Linked to Occupy Wall Street Protests
Posted by Jim Hoft on Monday, October 10, 2011, 11:45 AM
Obama’s ACORN operative in the White House Patrick Gaspard, a former Working Families Party associate, is helping shape domestic policy–
From left: CECILIA MUÑOZ, director, intergovernmental affairs; MICHAEL STRAUTMANIS, public liaison; CHRISTOPHER LU, Cabinet secretary; HEATHER HIGGINBOTTOM, deputy director, Domestic Policy Council; PATRICK GASPARD, political director; PHIL SCHILIRO, director of legislative affairs; MELODY BARNES, director, Domestic Policy Council. (New America Today Mag)
Obama political advisor Patrick Gaspard holds the same White House position his Bush-era predecessor, Karl Rove, did. But before he was the White House political czar he worked in several far left organizations as activist and agitator.
NLPC.org reported:
One of the more disturbing aspects of the Obama-ACORN connection is that the White House political affairs director is one Patrick Gaspard.
Gaspard doesn’t register on the media radar screen in the way that his immediate Bush-era predecessor, Karl Rove, did. But as the New Orleans-based ACORN has been implicated in a host of illegal schemes ranging from voter registration fraud to embezzlement to tax evasion, he may get there. That’s because prior to assuming his current job, Gaspard, at least according to ACORN founder Wade Rathke, had been political director for the New York City chapter of ACORN under Bertha Lewis, who last year replaced Rathke as the group’s chief organizer and CEO. What’s more, he’s worked closely with the ACORN-controlled Working Families Party and the largest local within the Service Employees International Union.
This weekend the Working Families Party of New York, Gaspard’s organization, placed an ad on Craig’s list for paid activists to fight Wall Street.
The Working Families Party (WFP) (www.workingfamiliesparty.org) is New York’s most energetic, independent and progressive political party. Formed in 1998 by a grassroots coalition of community organizations, neighborhood activists, and labor unions, we came together to build a society that works for all of us, not just Wall Street CEOs and the well-connected. WFP is independent from corporate and government funding and in-addition we are community based; community funded and equally uninfluenced by both major parties. Our agenda focuses on economic and social justice, corporate accountability, job creation, environmental protection, and investment in education and healthcare.
For the past twelve years the WFP has been at the fore front of progressive politics,
Leading the fight and helping to frame the debate. The WFP has a proud record of fighting for issues that matter and has been instrumental in implementing key pieces of legislation such as Raising New York’s Minimum Wage, Enacting Living Wage Laws, Creating Thousands of Jobs In the Green Economy, Passing Healthcare Reforms on the Local Level, Fighting for Affordable Housing, Keeping Tuition Costs Low, A Progressive Tax Code, Reliable/Cost Effective Public Transit System, Public Financing Of Elections and Corporate Accountability . In addition, we have an unapologetic stance on supporting and pushing good candidates to enact progressive legislation
The WFP is seeking immediate hires.
You must be an energetic communicator, with a passion for social and economic justice.
Only outgoing, articulate dedicated, determined candidates will be considered for the positions.
For those candidates that qualify WFP offers substantial paid-training provided by senior leadership, on varied issues such as: advocacy, public speaking, mobilizing, fundraising, networking and organizing. We invest in passionate people with excellent communication skills and a full benefits package is offered to those candidates that qualify. In addition, there is opportunity for advancement and travel to our satellite chapters and out of state affiliates.
This is not a policy job! Through direct action you will be shaping NY state politics for the next 20 years.
If you care about New York and want to help educate and mobilize around legislative campaigns-then we look forward to hearing from you!
What a coincidence! The organization run by current White House political director Patrick Gaspard is paying far left activists to continue the protests against Wall Street. No wonder Barack Obama supports the far left protest movement!
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2011/10/shocker-obamas-top-political-advisor-directly-linked-to-occupy-wall-street-protests/
Saturday, October 15, 2011
OccupyWallStreet email archive
Thank you Mike Flynn of BigGovernment
and Breitbart for looking out for the American People
The Email Archive of the #OccupyWallStreet Movement: Anarchists, Socialists, Unions, Democrats and Their Plans
by Thomas Ryan
At the end of this post, you will find links to download the #OccupyWallStreet email archive described earlier today by Andrew Breitbart.
On August 10, 2011, the hacker group “Anonymous” announced that it would join the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. That’s what sparked my interest in monitoring #OccupyWallStreet.
I reached out to a colleague and asked if he would be interested in studying the protest with me. At first, it seemed disorganized, and we believed it would only be a few hundred protestors.
As we engaged in monitoring its growth, we recruited other people to help us begin the collection of data available via social media. We began mapping out key players, and monitored Anonymous’s efforts to organize protests in the San Francisco Bay area public transportation system (#opBART) in order to detect patterns and key influencers.
Then, at the end of August, we were alerted by a fellow researcher that information about USDoR (U.S. Day of Rage, to which Occupy Wall Street is connected) had been posted on Shamuk and Al-Jahad, two Al-Qaeda recruitment sites. We began to take the “Occupy” protest more seriously, and dedicated more time to research and monitoring.
Days later, Anonymous announced that it would be releasing its new DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) tool. Because of the Al-Qaeda posting, we contacted the New York Field Office of the FBI so they could investigate the potential threat. From that point on, we decided we needed to include the Human Element of Intelligence (HUMINT), and to infiltrate the protestors to map their ties to Anonymous, and to the postings on Shamuk and Al-Jahad.
A few of us had attended several of the pre-protest meet-ups and training classes. The Civil Disobedience training was taught by Elliot “Smokey” Madison, a New York-based anarchist who is a member of the People’s Law Collective, a voluntary group that advises protesters on legal issues arising from their actions. The Media training was taught by Vlad Teichberg, a New York based anarchist who is a member of the Glass Bead Collective, an artistic activist group.
After attending these meetings and socializing with those present, several of our team members were added to all the mailing lists of the “Occupy” group. That is how we created the email archive that we are sharing with you (see below). In addition to the involvement of socialists, anarchists, and other radicals, the emails also reveal heavy union involvement from the beginning of the “Occupy” movement, as well as discussion about the role of the Democratic Party, and how the movement should respond to President Barack Obama.
The emails also reveal that the Occupation attempted to provoke the New York Police Department prior to some of the clashes that occurred with activists.
Additionally, the emails reveal the many failed efforts of the hacker collective Anonymous. If those efforts had succeeded, they may have damaged the global economy.
Email archive:
.pst format: primary
.csv format: primary
http://biggovernment.com/thomasryan/2011/10/14/the-email-archive-of-the-occupywallstreet-movement-anarchists-socialists-jihadists-unions-democrats/
and Breitbart for looking out for the American People
The Email Archive of the #OccupyWallStreet Movement: Anarchists, Socialists, Unions, Democrats and Their Plans
by Thomas Ryan
At the end of this post, you will find links to download the #OccupyWallStreet email archive described earlier today by Andrew Breitbart.
On August 10, 2011, the hacker group “Anonymous” announced that it would join the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. That’s what sparked my interest in monitoring #OccupyWallStreet.
I reached out to a colleague and asked if he would be interested in studying the protest with me. At first, it seemed disorganized, and we believed it would only be a few hundred protestors.
As we engaged in monitoring its growth, we recruited other people to help us begin the collection of data available via social media. We began mapping out key players, and monitored Anonymous’s efforts to organize protests in the San Francisco Bay area public transportation system (#opBART) in order to detect patterns and key influencers.
Then, at the end of August, we were alerted by a fellow researcher that information about USDoR (U.S. Day of Rage, to which Occupy Wall Street is connected) had been posted on Shamuk and Al-Jahad, two Al-Qaeda recruitment sites. We began to take the “Occupy” protest more seriously, and dedicated more time to research and monitoring.
Days later, Anonymous announced that it would be releasing its new DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) tool. Because of the Al-Qaeda posting, we contacted the New York Field Office of the FBI so they could investigate the potential threat. From that point on, we decided we needed to include the Human Element of Intelligence (HUMINT), and to infiltrate the protestors to map their ties to Anonymous, and to the postings on Shamuk and Al-Jahad.
A few of us had attended several of the pre-protest meet-ups and training classes. The Civil Disobedience training was taught by Elliot “Smokey” Madison, a New York-based anarchist who is a member of the People’s Law Collective, a voluntary group that advises protesters on legal issues arising from their actions. The Media training was taught by Vlad Teichberg, a New York based anarchist who is a member of the Glass Bead Collective, an artistic activist group.
After attending these meetings and socializing with those present, several of our team members were added to all the mailing lists of the “Occupy” group. That is how we created the email archive that we are sharing with you (see below). In addition to the involvement of socialists, anarchists, and other radicals, the emails also reveal heavy union involvement from the beginning of the “Occupy” movement, as well as discussion about the role of the Democratic Party, and how the movement should respond to President Barack Obama.
The emails also reveal that the Occupation attempted to provoke the New York Police Department prior to some of the clashes that occurred with activists.
Additionally, the emails reveal the many failed efforts of the hacker collective Anonymous. If those efforts had succeeded, they may have damaged the global economy.
Email archive:
.pst format: primary
.csv format: primary
http://biggovernment.com/thomasryan/2011/10/14/the-email-archive-of-the-occupywallstreet-movement-anarchists-socialists-jihadists-unions-democrats/
The 64,000 question for is “Who is really behind Occupy Wall Street?”
Conspiracy to ‘Destabalize’ Global Markets, Governments
by Andrew Breitbart
We’re in this for the long haul. There are no “solutions” that can be presented quickly to make us go away. And so there will be moments where our presence is no longer an uncomfortable and unknown variable, but rather is normalized and integrated. It’s in those moments that we have to push the envelop [sic], pry open the space of possibility even farther. We go as far as we can to destabalize [sic], but maintain momentum. And when that’s the new “normal” then we go farther. That’s how change happens, how we shift the terrain and the terms of the game.
- Email in “Occupy” archive, “Re: Can OWS be turned into a Democratic Party Movement?”; Wednesday, October 12, 2011
In keeping with the new media notion of crowdsourcing–enthusiastically embraced by the mainstream media when trawling through Sarah Palin’s emails–Big Government will be providing readers later today with links to a document drop consisting of thousands of emails.
The email archive, created by a private cyber security researcher, appears to contain messages shared by the left’s anarcho-socialist activists during the strategic and daily tactical planning of the “Occupy Wall Street” and broader “Occupy” campaign this fall.
Big Government received a tip about the existence of the archive, and we were able to contact the individual who compiled and posted it. He will describe the archive, and how he obtained the emails, later this morning exclusively on Big Government.
Through “crowdsourcing,” the media and the public will then be able to discover the truth behind the “Occupy” movement.
The archive includes emails, for example, from radical anarchist organizer Lisa Fithian, who was profiled earlier this week at Big Government, and who is one of the leading organizers behind the Occupy movement.
In one email, dated October 1, Fithian applauds the launch of “occupations” throughout the country. She also highlights an ACORN-style illegal home occupation in California, linking to a television news story that reveals the involvement of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), which is apparently the reconstituted version of ACORN in California.
Per the 8800+ pages of emails (3900+ emails), the Occupy movement has been in the works for some time. Its leaders apparently intend for it to broaden out and intertwine with the Days of Rage global initiative, which is set to begin on Saturday, October 15th. They also intend the demonstrations to continue indefinitely, as suggested in the following email, dated Monday, October 10:
The true purpose of the Occupy movement appears to be further economic and governmental destabilization, at a time when the world is already facing major financial and political challenges. By embracing the Occupy movement, President Barack Obama, the Democrat Party, and their union allies may be supporting an effort to harm both the domestic and global economies; to create social unrest throughout the democratic world; and to embrace other radical causes, including the anti-Israel movement. Ironically, the emails suggest that the President and the Democrat Party may soon find their friends in the Occupy movement to be a political burden. The email below calls for the Occupy movement to begin “executing higher-risk actions, civil disobedience and arrests,” and suggests: “We must draw a line, disavow the Democrats explicitly, make our messaging a little uncomfortable.”
DNC Go Further ->
The email exchanges in the archive begin on September 14th, 2011 and continue through this week.
Later this morning, readers will be able to read the emails for themselves–and the mainstream media will be forced to confront the truth behind the Occupy movement, including its links to socialist, anarchist, and possibly even jihadist organizations.
Brandon Darby, a former left-wing activist, will be following up in the coming days with his own analysis and interpretation of select email exchanges. After Hurricane Katrina, Darby became alienated by his former comrades’ anti-Americanism and propensity for violence, and became an FBI informant. In that role, he was essential to the prevention of a planned Molotov cocktail attack on the 2008 Republican National Convention. Darby is in a unique position to understand the key players and tactics behind the “Occupy” movement, and to help derail the left’s pursuit of broader global destabilization.
http://biggovernment.com/abreitbart/2011/10/14/crowdsource-this-social-list-emails-expose-occupywallstreet-conspiracy-to-destablize-global-markets-governments/
http://www.beaufortobserver.net/Articles-c-2011-09-25-255969.112112-Our-humble-apologies-for-exposing-SEIU-organizer-Stephen-Lerner.html
Video Exposing How ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Was Organized From Day One by SEIU/ACORN Front – The Working Family Party, and How They All Tie to the Obama Administration, DNC, Democratic Socialists of America, Tides and George Soros
Posted October 7, 2011 by Naked Emperor News
Breakdown of the Connections Between The Working Family Party, SEIU, ACORN, The New Party, The DNC, Democratic Socialists of America, Tides, George Soros and The Obama Administration:
•The Working Families Party was established in the 90s by key members of the the socialist organizations The New Party, ACORN, SEIU, and a coalition of other labor unions and community organizations.
•Patrick Gaspard, the current executive director of the DNC, former director of Obama’s Office of Political Affairs, was an organizer for the New Party, the executive vice president of the SEIU Local 1199, political director for Bertha Lewis (the former president of ACORN) and a co-chair of the Working Families Party.
•The New Party is a socialist political coalition co-founded in 1992 by academic and political activist Joel Rogers.
•The first strategic meetings to plan the New Party were held in Joel Rogers’ Madison, Wisconsin home; Wade Rathke, ACORN and SEIU founder and Gerry Hudson from Democratic Socialists of America and SEIU were in attendance at those meetings.
•The New Party’s influential Chicago chapter began to formed in January 1995. Its members consisted mainly of individuals from ACORN, SEIU and the Democratic Socialists of America. Obama attended a New Party function and received their endorsement in 1995.
•In 1994, a New Party newspaper listed more than 100 activists “who are building the NP;” some names among the list of 100 were Noam Chomsky, Frances
Fox Piven, Wade Rathke, Cornel West, Jon Barton of SEIU, Maude Hurd of ACORN and Margaret Shelleda of SEIU.
•Gerry Hudson, SEIU Executive Vice President and original New Party member, serves on the board of the Apollo Alliance organized by Joel Rogers’ group COWS Center on Wisconsin Strategy. The Alliance is a project of the Tides Center. Harry Reid credited the Apollo Alliance with helping to write the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
•George Soros’ Open Society Institute is a major source of money behind the Apollo Alliance and the Tides Foundation.
The 64,000 question for is “Who is really behind Occupy Wall Street?”
It is highly unlikely that a bunch of unemployed college kids could organize it.
The Blaze had posted a jaw dropping video of former SEIU executive Stephen Lerner coaching a room full of people in Seattle about how to “create a crisis” and how to “terrify Washington D.C.” He had also presented his ideas for how to create a crisis that would bring the banks to their knees.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/video-exposing-occupy-wall-street-was-organized-from-day-one-by-seiu-acorn-front-the-working-family-party-and-how-they-all-tie-to-the-obama-administration-dnc-democratic-socialists-of-america/
by Andrew Breitbart
We’re in this for the long haul. There are no “solutions” that can be presented quickly to make us go away. And so there will be moments where our presence is no longer an uncomfortable and unknown variable, but rather is normalized and integrated. It’s in those moments that we have to push the envelop [sic], pry open the space of possibility even farther. We go as far as we can to destabalize [sic], but maintain momentum. And when that’s the new “normal” then we go farther. That’s how change happens, how we shift the terrain and the terms of the game.
- Email in “Occupy” archive, “Re: Can OWS be turned into a Democratic Party Movement?”; Wednesday, October 12, 2011
In keeping with the new media notion of crowdsourcing–enthusiastically embraced by the mainstream media when trawling through Sarah Palin’s emails–Big Government will be providing readers later today with links to a document drop consisting of thousands of emails.
The email archive, created by a private cyber security researcher, appears to contain messages shared by the left’s anarcho-socialist activists during the strategic and daily tactical planning of the “Occupy Wall Street” and broader “Occupy” campaign this fall.
Big Government received a tip about the existence of the archive, and we were able to contact the individual who compiled and posted it. He will describe the archive, and how he obtained the emails, later this morning exclusively on Big Government.Through “crowdsourcing,” the media and the public will then be able to discover the truth behind the “Occupy” movement.
The archive includes emails, for example, from radical anarchist organizer Lisa Fithian, who was profiled earlier this week at Big Government, and who is one of the leading organizers behind the Occupy movement.
In one email, dated October 1, Fithian applauds the launch of “occupations” throughout the country. She also highlights an ACORN-style illegal home occupation in California, linking to a television news story that reveals the involvement of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), which is apparently the reconstituted version of ACORN in California.
Per the 8800+ pages of emails (3900+ emails), the Occupy movement has been in the works for some time. Its leaders apparently intend for it to broaden out and intertwine with the Days of Rage global initiative, which is set to begin on Saturday, October 15th. They also intend the demonstrations to continue indefinitely, as suggested in the following email, dated Monday, October 10:
The true purpose of the Occupy movement appears to be further economic and governmental destabilization, at a time when the world is already facing major financial and political challenges. By embracing the Occupy movement, President Barack Obama, the Democrat Party, and their union allies may be supporting an effort to harm both the domestic and global economies; to create social unrest throughout the democratic world; and to embrace other radical causes, including the anti-Israel movement. Ironically, the emails suggest that the President and the Democrat Party may soon find their friends in the Occupy movement to be a political burden. The email below calls for the Occupy movement to begin “executing higher-risk actions, civil disobedience and arrests,” and suggests: “We must draw a line, disavow the Democrats explicitly, make our messaging a little uncomfortable.”
DNC Go Further ->The email exchanges in the archive begin on September 14th, 2011 and continue through this week.
Later this morning, readers will be able to read the emails for themselves–and the mainstream media will be forced to confront the truth behind the Occupy movement, including its links to socialist, anarchist, and possibly even jihadist organizations.
Brandon Darby, a former left-wing activist, will be following up in the coming days with his own analysis and interpretation of select email exchanges. After Hurricane Katrina, Darby became alienated by his former comrades’ anti-Americanism and propensity for violence, and became an FBI informant. In that role, he was essential to the prevention of a planned Molotov cocktail attack on the 2008 Republican National Convention. Darby is in a unique position to understand the key players and tactics behind the “Occupy” movement, and to help derail the left’s pursuit of broader global destabilization.
http://biggovernment.com/abreitbart/2011/10/14/crowdsource-this-social-list-emails-expose-occupywallstreet-conspiracy-to-destablize-global-markets-governments/
http://www.beaufortobserver.net/Articles-c-2011-09-25-255969.112112-Our-humble-apologies-for-exposing-SEIU-organizer-Stephen-Lerner.html
Video Exposing How ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Was Organized From Day One by SEIU/ACORN Front – The Working Family Party, and How They All Tie to the Obama Administration, DNC, Democratic Socialists of America, Tides and George Soros
Posted October 7, 2011 by Naked Emperor News
Breakdown of the Connections Between The Working Family Party, SEIU, ACORN, The New Party, The DNC, Democratic Socialists of America, Tides, George Soros and The Obama Administration:
•The Working Families Party was established in the 90s by key members of the the socialist organizations The New Party, ACORN, SEIU, and a coalition of other labor unions and community organizations.
•Patrick Gaspard, the current executive director of the DNC, former director of Obama’s Office of Political Affairs, was an organizer for the New Party, the executive vice president of the SEIU Local 1199, political director for Bertha Lewis (the former president of ACORN) and a co-chair of the Working Families Party.
•The New Party is a socialist political coalition co-founded in 1992 by academic and political activist Joel Rogers.
•The first strategic meetings to plan the New Party were held in Joel Rogers’ Madison, Wisconsin home; Wade Rathke, ACORN and SEIU founder and Gerry Hudson from Democratic Socialists of America and SEIU were in attendance at those meetings.
•The New Party’s influential Chicago chapter began to formed in January 1995. Its members consisted mainly of individuals from ACORN, SEIU and the Democratic Socialists of America. Obama attended a New Party function and received their endorsement in 1995.
•In 1994, a New Party newspaper listed more than 100 activists “who are building the NP;” some names among the list of 100 were Noam Chomsky, Frances
Fox Piven, Wade Rathke, Cornel West, Jon Barton of SEIU, Maude Hurd of ACORN and Margaret Shelleda of SEIU.•Gerry Hudson, SEIU Executive Vice President and original New Party member, serves on the board of the Apollo Alliance organized by Joel Rogers’ group COWS Center on Wisconsin Strategy. The Alliance is a project of the Tides Center. Harry Reid credited the Apollo Alliance with helping to write the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
•George Soros’ Open Society Institute is a major source of money behind the Apollo Alliance and the Tides Foundation.
The 64,000 question for is “Who is really behind Occupy Wall Street?”
It is highly unlikely that a bunch of unemployed college kids could organize it.
The Blaze had posted a jaw dropping video of former SEIU executive Stephen Lerner coaching a room full of people in Seattle about how to “create a crisis” and how to “terrify Washington D.C.” He had also presented his ideas for how to create a crisis that would bring the banks to their knees.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/video-exposing-occupy-wall-street-was-organized-from-day-one-by-seiu-acorn-front-the-working-family-party-and-how-they-all-tie-to-the-obama-administration-dnc-democratic-socialists-of-america/
Occupy Protesters protestors are being led by the nose
Communists Lead “Occupy Los Angeles” Movement – Nationwide Takeover Planned
by Trevor -- October 10, 2011
Two prominent members of the Communist Party USA are leading the growing “Occupy Los Angeles” movement.
Further, the Communist Party is deliberately infiltrating the “Occupy” movement in other parts of the country, to ensure that revolutionary forces gain as much control as possible.
The two Southern California communists at the heart of Occupy Los Angeles movement are veteran party leader Arturo Cambron and his comrade, Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council member Mario Brito.
Arturo Cambron is a long time Party member and is the husband of Rossana Cambron, the Party’s Southern California coordinator. He is the president of the Party run Los Angeles Workers’ Center, situated in South Saint Andrews Place, which essentially serves as the Communist Party HQ for the area.
Cambron is active in the Occupy Los Angeles protests and has acted as a moderator for the organization’s nightly core group meetings.
Mario Brito is Labor Relations Rep. and Community Outreach organizer for the Laborers Union and a long time Communist Party supporter. In January 2003, Brito attended a meeting of the National Board of the Communist Party USA in South Chicago. He has also been a supporter of the Party front Latinos for Peace and active in the immigrant “rights” movement.
Mario Brito, is Occupy Los Angeles city liaison, tasked with dealing with the police and City officials. In a city lead by long time Communist Party affiliate, mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, this is probably not too difficult a job. Brito has also moderated at least one Occupy Los Angeles core croup meeting.
Earlier in October, Mario Brito summed up the occupation cause’s raison d’etre as “economic justice,” and told fellow Communist Party supporter Ed Rampell of Back Page Magazine: “This is an international movement – it’s not only happening in Wall Street, it’s happening in 170 cities in the U.S., and cities in Europe and Latin America.” Brito asserted: “The vast majority of Americans actually believe income inequality is a major problem. They only reason they haven’t acted upon it is because there hasn’t been a mass movement.”
Demonstrators in Los Angeles camped out in front of City Hall and said they would remain camped at the site ‘indefinitely.’ ” We have no time limit, this camp will remain until we achieve what we want: the population’s right to employment, education and health services; immigrants’ right to employment and no companies influence on politics,” Mario Brito declared.
The group also decided to work with the Los Angeles Police Department to obtain permits and cooperation, hoping to avoid altercations with police. “If we have an adversarial relationship with the cops, it’s not going to work,” said Brito, moderator of a September 25 meeting.
On September 26, Occupy Los Angeles made an appearance in West Hollywood for President Barack Obama’s fundraising visit. The plan was not to embarrass the Party’s long time “friend,” the President, but to reach out to other activist groups, to build the movement.
After a sometimes frustrating organizing process that is filled with many diverse points of view, Bitro said protesters are unified. “We agree on one thing, that the economic inequalities in this country have to stop,” he said. “We have to fight back on this issue. We have to hold corporate America responsible, and the politicians that support them.”
On Tuesday, October 11, 2011 8 pm, the Communist Party USA held a national teleconference to discuss the “Occupy Movement,” which the Party noted had already spread to more than 200 other cities. Arturo Cambron, “of the Communist Party and the Occupy L.A. Movement,” was the key speaker on the call. Wrote Illinois Party leader John Bachtell on the CPUSA website:
Southern California Party leader Arturo Cambron will share how the CPUSA and Young Communist League (YCL) are working in “Occupy Los Angeles.”
This movement, also known as the “99% movement,” is being hailed across the country. Movements and organizations are reaching out in solidarity. The AFL-CIO is opening union halls and offering other material assistance. Ordinary people are donating food, money and materials.
A big challenge for the CPUSA and left, progressive movements is to link these demonstrations with the labor led all-people’s coalition and help deepen understanding that the path to progress must be through electoral and political action including defeating Republican Tea Party reaction in 2012.
Of primary importance is linking it with the burgeoning fight for jobs and especially passage of the American Jobs Act.
We can also play a role in offering more advanced programmatic ideas like nationalizing the banks and socialism. To have a positive impact, the CPUSA and YCL must be a part of the “Occupy” movement, participating at every level and building greater local support for the actions among labor and progressive forces.
Doing its bit, the Southern California chapter of the Young Communist League has already produced a video in support of the “Occupy” movement.
Unlike the anarchists and lunatic leftists, who run the “Occupy” movement in most cities, the Communist Party USA is disciplined and highly focused on returning Barack Obama and the Democrats to complete power in 2012.
They will never allow the “Occupy” movement to become a threat to that goal. They will make sure that the movement becomes a vehicle for their demands and a weapon against what’s left of US capitalism and any force which legitimately threatens the re-election of their comrade President.
http://trevorloudon.com/2011/10/communists-lead-occupy-los-angeles-movement-nationwide-takeover-planned/
by Trevor -- October 10, 2011
Two prominent members of the Communist Party USA are leading the growing “Occupy Los Angeles” movement.
Further, the Communist Party is deliberately infiltrating the “Occupy” movement in other parts of the country, to ensure that revolutionary forces gain as much control as possible.
The two Southern California communists at the heart of Occupy Los Angeles movement are veteran party leader Arturo Cambron and his comrade, Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council member Mario Brito.
Arturo Cambron is a long time Party member and is the husband of Rossana Cambron, the Party’s Southern California coordinator. He is the president of the Party run Los Angeles Workers’ Center, situated in South Saint Andrews Place, which essentially serves as the Communist Party HQ for the area.
Cambron is active in the Occupy Los Angeles protests and has acted as a moderator for the organization’s nightly core group meetings.
Mario Brito is Labor Relations Rep. and Community Outreach organizer for the Laborers Union and a long time Communist Party supporter. In January 2003, Brito attended a meeting of the National Board of the Communist Party USA in South Chicago. He has also been a supporter of the Party front Latinos for Peace and active in the immigrant “rights” movement.
Mario Brito, is Occupy Los Angeles city liaison, tasked with dealing with the police and City officials. In a city lead by long time Communist Party affiliate, mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, this is probably not too difficult a job. Brito has also moderated at least one Occupy Los Angeles core croup meeting.
Earlier in October, Mario Brito summed up the occupation cause’s raison d’etre as “economic justice,” and told fellow Communist Party supporter Ed Rampell of Back Page Magazine: “This is an international movement – it’s not only happening in Wall Street, it’s happening in 170 cities in the U.S., and cities in Europe and Latin America.” Brito asserted: “The vast majority of Americans actually believe income inequality is a major problem. They only reason they haven’t acted upon it is because there hasn’t been a mass movement.”
Demonstrators in Los Angeles camped out in front of City Hall and said they would remain camped at the site ‘indefinitely.’ ” We have no time limit, this camp will remain until we achieve what we want: the population’s right to employment, education and health services; immigrants’ right to employment and no companies influence on politics,” Mario Brito declared.
The group also decided to work with the Los Angeles Police Department to obtain permits and cooperation, hoping to avoid altercations with police. “If we have an adversarial relationship with the cops, it’s not going to work,” said Brito, moderator of a September 25 meeting.
On September 26, Occupy Los Angeles made an appearance in West Hollywood for President Barack Obama’s fundraising visit. The plan was not to embarrass the Party’s long time “friend,” the President, but to reach out to other activist groups, to build the movement.
After a sometimes frustrating organizing process that is filled with many diverse points of view, Bitro said protesters are unified. “We agree on one thing, that the economic inequalities in this country have to stop,” he said. “We have to fight back on this issue. We have to hold corporate America responsible, and the politicians that support them.”
On Tuesday, October 11, 2011 8 pm, the Communist Party USA held a national teleconference to discuss the “Occupy Movement,” which the Party noted had already spread to more than 200 other cities. Arturo Cambron, “of the Communist Party and the Occupy L.A. Movement,” was the key speaker on the call. Wrote Illinois Party leader John Bachtell on the CPUSA website:
Southern California Party leader Arturo Cambron will share how the CPUSA and Young Communist League (YCL) are working in “Occupy Los Angeles.”
This movement, also known as the “99% movement,” is being hailed across the country. Movements and organizations are reaching out in solidarity. The AFL-CIO is opening union halls and offering other material assistance. Ordinary people are donating food, money and materials.
A big challenge for the CPUSA and left, progressive movements is to link these demonstrations with the labor led all-people’s coalition and help deepen understanding that the path to progress must be through electoral and political action including defeating Republican Tea Party reaction in 2012.
Of primary importance is linking it with the burgeoning fight for jobs and especially passage of the American Jobs Act.
We can also play a role in offering more advanced programmatic ideas like nationalizing the banks and socialism. To have a positive impact, the CPUSA and YCL must be a part of the “Occupy” movement, participating at every level and building greater local support for the actions among labor and progressive forces.
Doing its bit, the Southern California chapter of the Young Communist League has already produced a video in support of the “Occupy” movement.
Unlike the anarchists and lunatic leftists, who run the “Occupy” movement in most cities, the Communist Party USA is disciplined and highly focused on returning Barack Obama and the Democrats to complete power in 2012.
They will never allow the “Occupy” movement to become a threat to that goal. They will make sure that the movement becomes a vehicle for their demands and a weapon against what’s left of US capitalism and any force which legitimately threatens the re-election of their comrade President.
http://trevorloudon.com/2011/10/communists-lead-occupy-los-angeles-movement-nationwide-takeover-planned/
Look these protests just did not happen
Seems like everywhere these protests are the revolutionaries are there too. Out on the west coast, one protester revealed perhaps a little too much. He explained that peaceful revolutions don’t work, citing Ghandi (who he called a ‘tumor’) as a failure and instead telling people to model the glorious and bloody French revolution.
What happened when Ami Horowitz and his documentary crew headed down to Wall Street to get to know the protesters? Watch in the clip from GBTV below:
http://www.glennbeck.com/2011/10/11/gbtv-sends-documentary-crew-to-wall-street/
George Soros: Media Mogul (Lefty Businessman Spends Millions Funding Journalism)
Media Research Center
August 15, 2011 by Dan Gainor and Iris Somberg
Posted on Friday, August 19, 2011 10:23:22 AM by markomalley
On April 8, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi headlined a Boston conference on ''media reform.'' She was joined by four other congressmen, a senator, two FCC commissioners, a Nobel laureate and numerous liberal journalists.
The 2,500-person event was sponsored by a group called Free Press, one of more than 180 different media-related organizations that receives money from liberal billionaire George Soros.
Soros, who first made a name for himself in investing and currency trading, now makes his name in politics and policy. Since the 2004 election, the controversial financier has used his influence and billions to push a laundry list of left-wing causes. Pick an issue and his Open Society Foundations likely fund the liberal position - pro-abortion, pro-illegal immigration, pro-national health care, pro-drug legalization, pro-Big Government, anti-Israel and, ultimately, anti-America.
He spent $27 million trying to defeat President Bush just in 2004. That was a drop in the bucket compared to the $8 billion he has donated just to his Open Society Foundations. Soros followed that presidential failure by earning the well-deserved reputation as one of the top liberal contributors. Soon after the election, ''Soros headlined a meeting of 70 millionaires and billionaires in Scottsdale, Ariz., to discuss how to grow the left's ideological assets,'' explained the Aug. 18, 2005, Christian Science Monitor.
He continued to lead after the meeting was finished. Through his foundation network, Soros has helped numerous left-wing operations either be born or grow. Many of those are either associated with the media - such as Free Press which pushes for media regulation and government-funded journalism - or have media components to their operation.
That has given Soros far more influence than even many of his harshest critics realize. He has managed to insinuate himself and his money into the media culture, making connections with the nation's top publishing organizations. He has direct ties to more than 30 mainstream news outlets - including The New York Times, Washington Post, the Associated Press, CNN and ABC. Each one of those operations has employees, often high-level ones, on the boards of Soros-funded media operations.
It's a connection hard to deny. But Soros does so, blaming the claim on Fox News. ''Another trick is to accuse your opponent of the behavior of which you are guilty, like Fox News accusing me of being the puppet master of a media empire,'' wrote Soros in the introduction to the new book ''The Philanthropy of George Soros.'' That book was written by former New York Times reporter Chuck Sudetic who now works for Soros' Open Society Foundations. It is the second such Soros promotional book written by a Times staffer.
Ties That Bind: Soros and the Top Media Outlets
When Soros gave $1.8 million to National Public Radio, it became part of the firestorm of controversy that jeopardized NPR's federal funding. That gift only hinted at the widespread influence the controversial billionaire has on the mainstream media. Soros has ties to more than 30 mainstream news outlets.
Prominent journalists like ABC's Christiane Amanpour and former Washington Post editor and now Vice President Len Downie serve on boards of operations that take Soros cash. This despite the Society of Professional Journalists' ethical code stating: ''avoid all conflicts real or perceived.''
The investigative reporting start-up ProPublica is a prime example. ProPublica, which recently won its second Pulitzer Prize, initially was given millions of dollars from the Sandler Foundation to ''strengthen the progressive infrastructure'' - ''progressive'' being code for very liberal.
In 2010, it also received a two-year contribution of $125,000 each year from the Open Society Foundations. Open Society is Soros' primary foundation and uses the web address www.soros.org. It is a network of more than 30 international foundations, mostly funded by Soros, who has contributed more than $8 billion.
ProPublica stories are thoroughly researched by top-notch staffers who used to work at some of the biggest news outlets in the nation. But the topics are almost laughably left-wing. The site's proud list of ''Our Investigations'' includes attacks on oil companies, gas companies, the health care industry, for-profit schools and more. More than 100 stories on the latest lefty cause: opposition to drilling for natural gas by hydraulic fracking. Another 100 on the evils of the foreclosure industry.
Investigations making the military look bad and one about prisoners at Guantanamo Bay add up to almost the perfect journalism fantasy - a huge budget, lots of major media partners and a liberal agenda unconstrained by advertising.
The operation has one more thing: a 14-person Journalism Advisory Board, stacked with CNN's David Gergen and representatives from top newspapers, a former publisher of The Wall Street Journal and the editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster. Several are working journalists, including:
•Jill Abramson - New executive editor of The New York Times;
•Kerry Smith - The senior vice president for editorial quality of ABC News;
•Cynthia A. Tucker - The editor of the editorial page of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
ProPublica is far from the only Soros-funded organization that is stacked with members of the supposedly neutral press.
The Center for Public Integrity is another great example. Its board of directors is filled with working journalists like Amanpour from ABC, right along side blatant liberal media members like Arianna Huffington, of the Huffington Post and now AOL.
Like ProPublica, the CPI board is a veritable Who's Who of journalism and top media organizations, including:
•Christiane Amanpour - Anchor of ABC's Sunday morning political affairs program, ''This Week with Christiane Amanpour.'' A reliable lefty, she has called tax cuts ''giveaways,'' the Tea Party ''extreme,'' and Obama ''very Reaganesque;''
•Matt Thompson - Editorial product manager at National Public Radio and an adjunct faculty member at the prominent Poynter Institute.
The group's Advisory Council features:
•Ben Sherwood - ABC News president and former ''Good Morning America'' executive producer;
•Kathleen Hall Jamieson - Author and the Walter H. Annenberg Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication of the University of Pennsylvania;
•Michele Norris - Host of NPR's newsmagazine ''All Things Considered,'' public radio's longest-running national program.
Once again, like ProPublica, the Center for Public Integrity's investigations are mostly liberal - attacks on the coal industry, payday loans and conservatives like Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour. The center is also more open about its politics, including a detailed investigation into conservative funders David and Charles Koch and their ''web of influence.'' According to the center's own 990 tax forms, the Open Society Institute gave it $651,650 in 2009 alone.
The well-known Center for Investigative Reporting follows the same template - important journalists on the board and a liberal editorial agenda. Both the board of directors and the advisory board contain journalists from major news outlets. The board features:
•Phil Bronstein, director of content development and editor-at-large for Hearst Newspapers;
•David Boardman, The Seattle Times;
•Len Downie, former Executive Editor of the Washington Post, now VP;
•George Osterkamp, CBS News producer.
Readers of the site are greeted with numerous stories on climate change, illegal immigration and the evils of big companies. It counts among its media partners The Washington Post, Salon, CNN and ABC News. CIR received close to $1 million from Open Society from 2003 to 2009.
Why does it all matter? Journalists constantly claim to be neutral in their reporting. In almost the same breath, many bemoan the influence of money in politics. It is a maxim of both the left and many in the media that conservatives are bought and paid for by business interests. Yet where are the concerns about where their money comes from?
Fred Brown, who recently revised the book ''Journalism Ethics: A Casebook of Professional Conduct for News Media,'' argues journalists need to be ''transparent'' about their connections and ''be up front about your relationship'' with those who fund you.
Unfortunately, that rarely happens. While the nonprofits list who sits on their boards, the news outlets they work for make little or no effort to connect those dots. Amanpour's biography page, for instance, talks about her lengthy career, her time at CNN and her many awards. It makes no mention of her affiliation with the Center for Public Integrity.
$52 Million for Media Is Just the Beginning: It's a scene journalists dream about - a group of coworkers toasting a Pulitzer Prize. For the team at investigative start-up ProPublica, it was the second time their fellow professionals recognized their work for journalism's top honor.
For George Soros and ProPublica's other liberal backers, it was again proof that a strategy of funding journalism was a powerful way to influence the American public.
It's a strategy that Soros has been deploying extensively in media both in the United States and abroad. Since 2003, Soros has spent more than $52 million funding media properties, including the infrastructure of news - journalism schools, investigative journalism and even industry organizations.
And that number is an understatement. It is gleaned from tax forms, news stories and reporting. But Soros funds foundations that fund other foundations in turn, like the Tides Foundation, which then make their own donations. A complete accounting is almost impossible because a media component is part of so many Soros-funded operations.
It turns out that Soros' influence doesn't just include connections to top mainstream news organizations such as NBC, ABC, The New York Times and Washington Post. It's bought him connections to the underpinnings of the news business. The Columbia Journalism Review, which bills itself as ''a watchdog and a friend of the press in all its forms,'' lists several investigative reporting projects funded by one of Soros' foundations.
The ''News Frontier Database'' includes seven different investigative reporting projects funded by Soros' Open Society Institute. Along with ProPublica, there are the Center for Public Integrity, the Center for Investigative Reporting and New Orleans' The Lens. The Columbia School of Journalism, which operates CJR, has received at least $600,000 from Soros, as well.
Imagine if conservative media punching bags David and Charles Koch had this many connections to journalists. Even if the Kochs could find journalists willing to support conservative media, they would be skewered by the left.
For Soros, it's news, but nothing new. As one of the world's richest men (No. 46 on Forbes' list), he gets to indulge his dreams. Since those dreams seem to involve controlling media from the ground up, Soros naturally started supporting Columbia University's School of Journalism. Columbia is headed by President Lee Bollinger, who also sits on the Pulitzer Prize board and the board of directors of The Washington Post.
Bollinger, like some of Soros' other funding recipients, is pushing for journalism to find a new sugar daddy or at least an uncle - Uncle Sam. Bollinger wrote in his book ''Uninhibited, Robust, and Wide-Open: A Free Press for a New Century'' that government should fund media. A 2009 study by Columbia's journalism program came to the same conclusion, calling for ''a national fund for local news.''
Conveniently, Len Downie, the lead author of that piece, is on both the Post's board and the board of the Center for Investigative Reporting, also funded by Soros.
Soros funds more than just the most famous journalism school in the nation. There are journalism industry associations like:
•The National Federation of Community Broadcasters;
•The National Association of Hispanic Journalists;
•And the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Readers unhappy with Soros' media influence might be tempted to voice concerns to the Organization of News Ombudsmen - a professional group devoted to ''monitoring accuracy, fairness and balance.'' Perhaps they might consider a direct complaint to PBS's Michael Getler, a director of the organization. Unfortunately, that group is also funded by Soros. At the bottom of the Organization of News Ombudsmen's website front page is the line: ''Supported by the Open Society Institute,'' a Soros foundation. It is the only organization so listed.
The group's membership page lists 57 members from around globe and features:
•Deirdre Edgar, readers' representative of The Los Angeles Times;
•Brent Jones, standards editor, USA Today;
•Kelly McBride, ombudsman, ESPN;
•Patrick Pexton, ombudsman, The Washington Post.
The site doesn't address whether the OSI money creates a conflict of interest. But then, who could readers complain to anyway?
There's more. The Open Society Institute is one of several foundations funding the Investigative News Network (INN), a collaboration of 53 non-profit news organizations producing what they claim is ''non-partisan investigative news.'' The James L. Knight Foundation also backs the network and is possibly the most-well-known journalism foundation. Knight President and CEO Alberto Ibargüen is on the board of directors for ProPublica.
INN includes the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, the liberal web start-up MinnPost, National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, National Public Radio, and the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. The network had included the liberal Huffington Post investigative operation among its grants, but HuffPo investigations merged with the possibly even more left-wing Center for Public Integrity, on whose board Arianna Huffington sits. INN hasn't posted its tax forms yet, but in the meantime ''the Center for Public Integrity is graciously acting as our fiscal agent.''
Liberal academic programs, left-wing investigative journalism and even supposedly neutral news organizations all paid for by a man who spends tens of millions of dollars openly attacking the right. George Soros is teaching journalists that their industry has a future as long as he opens his wallet.
Soros' Lifelong Fascination with Journalism: Media has long been one of the billionaire's interests. According to ''Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire,'' he has been fascinated by media from when he was a boy where early career interests included ''history or journalism or some form of writing.'' He served as ''editor-in-chief, publisher, and news vendor of'' his own paper, ''The Lupa News'' and wrote a wall newspaper in his native Hungary before leaving, wrote author Michael T. Kaufman, a 40-year New York Times veteran. The Communist Party ''encouraged'' such papers.
But journalists weren't always interested in Soros. He avoided any form of publicity until 1981 when he was subject of a cover story in Institutional Investor called ''The World's Greatest Money Manager.'' Even in 1983 when he remarried, The New York Times refused to carry the wedding announcement. They were ''nobodies.'' All that changed when he made $1 billion speculating on the British pound. His profile rose a great deal. He was also criticized in the British tabloids including the Daily Mail in 1992 when he was sued by former house staff in England.
In subsequent years, the Soros connection to journalism has reached all facets of his empire - charity, politics and financial transactions. It might be as sweeping as investments in old media like Times Mirror, new media like AOL or charitable giving like NPR. Or it might be the global reach of Open Society funding journalistic events, awards, grants and travel. Former Times foreign correspondent Michael T. Kaufman, who was later the author of ''Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire,'' discovered Soros had ''paid for airfare'' for a European speaking engagement. He hadn't even known Soros was funding that trip.
Now, Soros underwrites journalists, blogs, books, news outlets, TV and radio stations, online operations, start-ups and investigative journalism. The list of media outlets that Soros has helped support reads like a Who's Who of the left. From 2003 to 2009, OSI gave $52 million to roughly 180 media organizations, including the National Federation of Community Broadcasters and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
A Worldwide Media Powerhouse: The Soros media empire truly spans the globe, but few even realize it because it's decentralized under numerous organizations, funded in turn by more than 30 Open Society Foundations.
Back in 1997, then-Times writer Judith Miller said much of his charity was focused on the media. ''For the past decade, George Soros, the Hungarian-born financier and philanthropist, has spent more than a billion dollars promoting a free press and political pluralism abroad,'' she wrote.
The donations have climbed to $8 billion, but he certainly has continued promoting the press, giving himself global influence in the process. Soros has financed bloggers, journalist travel or education, TV shows, Internet start-ups, investigative journalism and even blogs.
As early as 1994, that empire included ''40 independent radio and television stations and publications'' just in Eastern Europe, according to the March 10, 1994 Jerusalem Report. At the same time, Soros was backing a post-Communist publication called Transitions, but pulled the plug on it in 1999, according to The New York Times.
In 1998, Soros was spending money on Russian media. The Oct. 11, 1998 Times explained that ''Soros gave $10 million toward an $80 million fund he plans to create to help struggling, independent news organizations in Russia ride out the severe economic downturn in that country.''
Soros also made investments in Viacom, College Sports TV, journalism awards even backing events at the Frontline Club in London, what the Times called ''a popular way station for war correspondents.''
The charity work is almost impossible to track, but wherever the Open Society Foundations are, their involvement with journalism is not far behind. The foundation has an entire initiative devoted to the media. Its purported goal is ''to promote independent and viable media and professional, quality journalism in countries undergoing a process of democratization and building functioning media markets.'' The site lists 15 different media program coordinators in nations from Afghanistan to the Ukraine.
In one of its bigger efforts, OSI funded B-92, the Yugoslavia radio network that ''urged young Serbs to avoid the draft'' and spoke out against the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. But many operations are smaller. Journalists are chosen to study at Central European University, also funded by Soros. The foundations back the Czech newspaper Lidove Noviny or the Kabul Weekly in Afghanistan.
Soros-Funded Left-Wing Media Reach More Than 300 Million People Every Month
The global reach of the Soros media empire means it reaches millions of people. From nakedly partisan left-wing media like Think Progress, the blog for the Center for American Progress, and a TV show on MSNBC (recently canceled), to the supposedly impartial National Public Radio, Soros has impact on the flow of information worldwide.
It gives him incredible influence. Every month, reporters, writers and bloggers at the many outlets he funds easily reach more than 330 million people around the globe. The U.S. Census estimates the population of the entire United States to be just less than 310 million.
That's roughly the entire population of the United States with the population of Australia thrown in for good measure - every single month.
Just counting 13 prominent operations of the 180 media organizations he has funded equals 332 million people each month. Included in that total are big players like NPR, which received $1.8 million from Soros, as well as the little known Project Syndicate and Public News Service, both of which also claim to reach millions of readers.
And that's really just the beginning. That tally takes into account only a few of the bigger Soros-funded media operations. Many numbers simply aren't available. ''Democracy Now!'' - ''a daily TV/radio news program, hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez'' - is known for its left-wing take on global news. Its vitriol ranges from attacks on Blackwater founder Erik Prince and supporters of Andrew Breitbart (whom it calls ''Electronic Brownshirts''), to claims the U.S. is opposed to Arab democracy. Just that one Soros-funded operation is heard ''on over 900 stations, pioneering the largest community media collaboration in the United States.'' But it posts no formal audience numbers. Phone calls to ''Democracy Now!'' were not returned.
But Soros wildly understates his own impact. It might be through a ''media reform'' conference with congressmen, a senator, two FCC commissioners, a Nobel laureate and numerous liberal journalists. Or it might be through a radio station in Haiti, which he also supports.
The media reform event was sponsored by a group called Free Press, which has received $1.4 million from Soros. Free Press has two major agenda items - undermining Internet freedom by pushing so-called ''net neutrality,'' and advocating for government-funded media to the tune of $35 billion a year.
Many of those attending or speaking were affiliated with Soros-funded operations.
Free Press is just one of the better funded Soros groups. They also include the Center for American Progress ($7.3 million), which operates the heavily staffed Think Progress blog. That blog ''now has 30 writers and researchers,'' according to Politico. Other well-funded operations include the investigative reporting operations at the Center for Public Integrity ($3.7 million) and Center for Investigative Reporting ($1.1 million), as well as Media Matters ($1.1 million) and the Sundance Institute ($1 million).
That's not all. ''Soros' foundations gave 34 grants from 1997 to 2010 to local NPR member stations and specific programs that have totaled nearly $3.4-million, said the foundations' [spokesperson Maria] Archuleta. Recipients included WNYC and Minnesota Public Radio,'' wrote now former NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard.
In fact, Soros funds nearly every major left-wing media source in the United States. Forty-five of those are financed through his support of the Media Consortium. That organization ''is a network of the country's leading, progressive, independent media outlets.'' The list is predictable - everything from Alternet to the Young Turks, who have since lost their MSNBC show.
A report by the Media Consortium detailed how progressives had created an ''echo chamber'' of outlets ''in which a message pushes the larger public or the mainstream media to acknowledge, respond, and give airtime to progressive ideas because it is repeated many times.'' According to the report called ''The Big Thaw,'' ''if done well, the message within the echo chamber can become the accepted meme, impact political dynamics, shift public opinion and change public policy.''
That mindset plays out in much of what the consortium's members do. Alternet describes itself as an ''award-winning news magazine and online community that creates original journalism and amplifies the best of hundreds of other independent media sources.'' It hates Tea Parties and complains about ''hatemongering'' as the ''ugly side of Evangelical Christianity.'' Each month, the site gets 1.5 million unique visitors to its unique view of the world.
Brave New Films, also funded by the Media Consortium, is run by the same people who run Brave New Foundation. Robert Greenwald and Jim Miller produce and distribute videos attacking businesses and conservatives. The site brags about a 2008 election video ''that exposes John McCain's double talk, for instance, and received 9 million views around the world.'' Their latest effort is yet another attack on Koch Industries, attempting to halt a much-needed pipeline from the Canada to the U.S.
Then there's the Young Turks and MSNBC host Cenk Uygur. In 2010, he was welcomed to the network with a press release detailing his web impact. ''One of YouTube's Top 100 Partners, the irreverent talk show averages over 18 million views per month and has over 320 million views overall on its YouTube Channel.''
The list goes on and on. Project Syndicate calls itself ''the world's pre-eminent source of original op-ed commentaries.'' It has wide reach. ''As of May 2011, Project Syndicate membership included 462 leading newspapers in 150 countries.'' Its monthly circulation is 72,815,528. Naturally, ''support comes from the Open Society Institute,'' the primary Soros foundation.
Project Syndicate's columnist line-up, spread to 462 newspapers, is impressively left-leaning or globalist: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, former President Jimmy Carter, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as lefty economists Jeffrey Sachs and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz.
Public News Service describes itself as ''a member-supported news service that advocates journalism in the public interest.'' It is a ''network of state-based news services' in 33 states. It claims it reaches 'a combined national weekly audience of 24 million.'' PNS is proud of its 2010 success. ''Last year the Public News Service produced over 4,000 stories featuring public interest content that were redistributed several hundred thousand times on 6,114 radio stations, 928 print outlets, 133 TV stations and 100s of websites. Nationally, an average of 60 outlets used each story.'' Nearly 30 Soros-funded Media Operations Part of 'War on Fox'
To hear the left tell it, Fox News has a ''history of inciting Islamophobia and racial and ethic animosity'' and tries to ''race bait its viewers.'' One staffer is called a ''hit man,'' while his network is accused of ''attack politics.'' A highly questionable study is hyped by numerous outlets claiming that it ''confirms that Fox News makes you stupid.'' Fox is called simply: ''The Liars' Network.''
Sure, liberals have it in for Fox News, but that deep-seated, anti-Fox agenda isn't just an organic response from the left. It's a George Soros-funded ''echo chamber'' ''in which a message pushes the larger public or the mainstream media to acknowledge, respond, and give airtime to progressive ideas because it is repeated many times.''
The goal is ''Taking Down Fox News,'' as ''Mother Jones,'' a member of the Media Consortium, described it in a headline. That article, about another Soros-funded operation called Color of Change, explained how ''it successfully urged several advertisers, including Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and RadioShack, to pull their ads from Beck's show.'' Liberals even threw a party to celebrate Beck's departure from Fox News, ''drawing hundreds of activists, journalists and political strategists from the nation's capital,'' according to the Huffington Post.
It was all part of an organized effort against Fox. In all, nearly 30 organizations have attacked Fox News in the six months since the beginning of December, 2010.
Think Progress, the heavily Soros-funded blog for the Center for American Progress, slammed Fox more than 30 times in six months. AlterNet, an especially unhinged liberal outlet, went after the network at least 18 times in those months. It is one of 45 organizations aided by Soros' support of the Media Consortium ''a network of the country's leading, progressive, independent media outlets.''
These outlets are all part of Soros' web of media organizations that mirror his view of Fox as their enemy. That's the way he describes it in the new book, ''The Philanthropy of George Soros.'' ''Those in charge of Fox News, Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, have done well in identifying me as their adversary,'' he wrote. ''They have done less well in the methods they used to attack me: Their lies shall not stand and their techniques shall not endure.''
That anti-Fox agenda is reflected in plans by another group in Soros' pocket to target the network specifically. Media Matters founder David Brock said his Soros-funded operation ($1.1 million) will ''focus on [News Corp. CEO Rupert] Murdoch and trying to disrupt his commercial interests.''
The left hating Fox isn't new. But the efforts of the different groups take on an amazing similarity. Take the University of Maryland study that seemed so critical of Fox News. The study itself included this nugget: ''This suggests that misinformation cannot simply be attributed to news sources, but are part of the larger information environment that includes statements by candidates, political ads and so on.'' That didn't stop any of the groups from using it against Fox News. AlterNet, Washington Monthly, Think Progress and The Nation. It quickly moved into the mainstream media from there.
That's just part of Soros' influence. In the case of Robert Greenwald, he's turned attacking Fox into a mini-industry. Greenwald is founder and president of Brave New Films, also part of the Soros-funded Media Consortium. Greenwald was also behind ''OUTFOXED: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism,'' The site for the movie that argues: ''FOX News is on a witch hunt. Fight back.'' The Brave New Films site has an entire section going after Fox called: ''When Fox Attacks.'' It claims: ''Videos from this campaign have been viewed over 8 million times.''
When Soros was criticized by Fox, multiple pieces of the Soros Empire responded. In one case, Jonathan Schell, a fellow at The Nation Institute, another part of the Media Consortium, made Fox News out to be anti-Semitic for criticizing Soros. An opinion piece titled, ''The Protocols of Rupert Murdoch,'' a reference to the infamous anti-Semitic ''Protocols of The Elders of Zion,'' blasted Glenn Beck.
Schell claimed Beck's criticism of ''the financier and philanthropist George Soros'' in effect ''recycles, almost in carbon copy, the tropes of the most virulent anti-Semitic ideologues.'' The column was distributed by another Soros-funded entity, Project Syndicate, which reaches ''462 leading newspapers in 150 countries,'' with a monthly circulation of 72,815,528.
It's that sort of cooperation that makes the Soros-funded ''echo chamber'' successful. Go on AlterNet and find articles from The Nation, a rant by Robert Greenwald or an interview by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! Or go on New America Media's site and find an article from Color Lines.
The content from the 180 media sites that Soros helps support can be linked, cited or reposted, adding to the sense that there is strong interest in any particular ''progressive idea.'' It's just one more way George Soros influences the media.
Conclusion: George Soros is one of the most influential men in the world - in finance, in charity and, yes, in the media. Yet piecing together that influence is difficult because the media are so incurious about his actions.
When journalists become convinced an outlet is conservative, as they are with Fox News, they become enraged. Stories attacking Fox litter the media landscape. But an extensive and well-funded network of liberal media outlets with deep ties to mainstream news results in almost no coverage.
That's both unbelievable and unprofessional. Any individual funding more than 180 media outlets, with ties to dozens more through secondary sources, boards and the like, is the very definition of news. But journalists don't want to report this story. To do so would mean they would have to be honest about the nature of the profession. They would have to admit:
•Reporters and editors often jump from activist liberal media outlets to mainstream organizations and back again;
•Many of the new journalism start-ups celebrated by the industry from ProPublica to Huffington Post to dozens of investigative journalism operations are all part of a growing liberal news network;
•Prominent journalists at the top outlets in the United States are affiliated with left-wing media outlets and see nothing wrong with such ties.
The whole infrastructure of journalism - education, industry organizations and news organizations - is intertwined with liberal media outlets. Conservative media organizations have no such ties.
Any one of these points proves the argument conservatives have long made - that the mainstream media are liberal from top to bottom. Journalists know this and, as their ties to liberal news organizations show, they just don't care.
Recommendations
The Business & Media Institute has some recommendations for the media to better handle their obvious conflicts of interest when it comes to Soros:
•Just Say No to Soros Cash: No purportedly ''objective'' journalist should serve on a board or advise any outlet that is financed by Soros. If academics do so, they should be open about their affiliations. But working journalists like Downie, Amanpour and Abramson should divorce themselves from the conflict.
•Question Motivations of News Sources: Reporters and editors should be aware when a story is being deliberately hyped by a network of linked organizations. Such times should always have reporters questioning not just the motives, but the facts of the case - whether it's on the right or the left.
•Spend Time Investigating the Left: Journalists have no trouble finding incentive to do detailed analysis of conservatives, but spend little time questioning the motives or funding of liberal organizations. Reporters should do a more detailed investigation into the Open Society Foundations and their influence throughout the media.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2766101/posts
What happened when Ami Horowitz and his documentary crew headed down to Wall Street to get to know the protesters? Watch in the clip from GBTV below:
http://www.glennbeck.com/2011/10/11/gbtv-sends-documentary-crew-to-wall-street/
George Soros: Media Mogul (Lefty Businessman Spends Millions Funding Journalism)
Media Research Center
August 15, 2011 by Dan Gainor and Iris Somberg
Posted on Friday, August 19, 2011 10:23:22 AM by markomalley
On April 8, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi headlined a Boston conference on ''media reform.'' She was joined by four other congressmen, a senator, two FCC commissioners, a Nobel laureate and numerous liberal journalists.
The 2,500-person event was sponsored by a group called Free Press, one of more than 180 different media-related organizations that receives money from liberal billionaire George Soros.
Soros, who first made a name for himself in investing and currency trading, now makes his name in politics and policy. Since the 2004 election, the controversial financier has used his influence and billions to push a laundry list of left-wing causes. Pick an issue and his Open Society Foundations likely fund the liberal position - pro-abortion, pro-illegal immigration, pro-national health care, pro-drug legalization, pro-Big Government, anti-Israel and, ultimately, anti-America.
He spent $27 million trying to defeat President Bush just in 2004. That was a drop in the bucket compared to the $8 billion he has donated just to his Open Society Foundations. Soros followed that presidential failure by earning the well-deserved reputation as one of the top liberal contributors. Soon after the election, ''Soros headlined a meeting of 70 millionaires and billionaires in Scottsdale, Ariz., to discuss how to grow the left's ideological assets,'' explained the Aug. 18, 2005, Christian Science Monitor.
He continued to lead after the meeting was finished. Through his foundation network, Soros has helped numerous left-wing operations either be born or grow. Many of those are either associated with the media - such as Free Press which pushes for media regulation and government-funded journalism - or have media components to their operation.
That has given Soros far more influence than even many of his harshest critics realize. He has managed to insinuate himself and his money into the media culture, making connections with the nation's top publishing organizations. He has direct ties to more than 30 mainstream news outlets - including The New York Times, Washington Post, the Associated Press, CNN and ABC. Each one of those operations has employees, often high-level ones, on the boards of Soros-funded media operations.
It's a connection hard to deny. But Soros does so, blaming the claim on Fox News. ''Another trick is to accuse your opponent of the behavior of which you are guilty, like Fox News accusing me of being the puppet master of a media empire,'' wrote Soros in the introduction to the new book ''The Philanthropy of George Soros.'' That book was written by former New York Times reporter Chuck Sudetic who now works for Soros' Open Society Foundations. It is the second such Soros promotional book written by a Times staffer.
Ties That Bind: Soros and the Top Media Outlets
When Soros gave $1.8 million to National Public Radio, it became part of the firestorm of controversy that jeopardized NPR's federal funding. That gift only hinted at the widespread influence the controversial billionaire has on the mainstream media. Soros has ties to more than 30 mainstream news outlets.
Prominent journalists like ABC's Christiane Amanpour and former Washington Post editor and now Vice President Len Downie serve on boards of operations that take Soros cash. This despite the Society of Professional Journalists' ethical code stating: ''avoid all conflicts real or perceived.''
The investigative reporting start-up ProPublica is a prime example. ProPublica, which recently won its second Pulitzer Prize, initially was given millions of dollars from the Sandler Foundation to ''strengthen the progressive infrastructure'' - ''progressive'' being code for very liberal.
In 2010, it also received a two-year contribution of $125,000 each year from the Open Society Foundations. Open Society is Soros' primary foundation and uses the web address www.soros.org. It is a network of more than 30 international foundations, mostly funded by Soros, who has contributed more than $8 billion.
ProPublica stories are thoroughly researched by top-notch staffers who used to work at some of the biggest news outlets in the nation. But the topics are almost laughably left-wing. The site's proud list of ''Our Investigations'' includes attacks on oil companies, gas companies, the health care industry, for-profit schools and more. More than 100 stories on the latest lefty cause: opposition to drilling for natural gas by hydraulic fracking. Another 100 on the evils of the foreclosure industry.
Investigations making the military look bad and one about prisoners at Guantanamo Bay add up to almost the perfect journalism fantasy - a huge budget, lots of major media partners and a liberal agenda unconstrained by advertising.
The operation has one more thing: a 14-person Journalism Advisory Board, stacked with CNN's David Gergen and representatives from top newspapers, a former publisher of The Wall Street Journal and the editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster. Several are working journalists, including:
•Jill Abramson - New executive editor of The New York Times;
•Kerry Smith - The senior vice president for editorial quality of ABC News;
•Cynthia A. Tucker - The editor of the editorial page of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
ProPublica is far from the only Soros-funded organization that is stacked with members of the supposedly neutral press.
The Center for Public Integrity is another great example. Its board of directors is filled with working journalists like Amanpour from ABC, right along side blatant liberal media members like Arianna Huffington, of the Huffington Post and now AOL.
Like ProPublica, the CPI board is a veritable Who's Who of journalism and top media organizations, including:
•Christiane Amanpour - Anchor of ABC's Sunday morning political affairs program, ''This Week with Christiane Amanpour.'' A reliable lefty, she has called tax cuts ''giveaways,'' the Tea Party ''extreme,'' and Obama ''very Reaganesque;''
•Matt Thompson - Editorial product manager at National Public Radio and an adjunct faculty member at the prominent Poynter Institute.
The group's Advisory Council features:
•Ben Sherwood - ABC News president and former ''Good Morning America'' executive producer;
•Kathleen Hall Jamieson - Author and the Walter H. Annenberg Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication of the University of Pennsylvania;
•Michele Norris - Host of NPR's newsmagazine ''All Things Considered,'' public radio's longest-running national program.
Once again, like ProPublica, the Center for Public Integrity's investigations are mostly liberal - attacks on the coal industry, payday loans and conservatives like Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour. The center is also more open about its politics, including a detailed investigation into conservative funders David and Charles Koch and their ''web of influence.'' According to the center's own 990 tax forms, the Open Society Institute gave it $651,650 in 2009 alone.
The well-known Center for Investigative Reporting follows the same template - important journalists on the board and a liberal editorial agenda. Both the board of directors and the advisory board contain journalists from major news outlets. The board features:
•Phil Bronstein, director of content development and editor-at-large for Hearst Newspapers;
•David Boardman, The Seattle Times;
•Len Downie, former Executive Editor of the Washington Post, now VP;
•George Osterkamp, CBS News producer.
Readers of the site are greeted with numerous stories on climate change, illegal immigration and the evils of big companies. It counts among its media partners The Washington Post, Salon, CNN and ABC News. CIR received close to $1 million from Open Society from 2003 to 2009.
Why does it all matter? Journalists constantly claim to be neutral in their reporting. In almost the same breath, many bemoan the influence of money in politics. It is a maxim of both the left and many in the media that conservatives are bought and paid for by business interests. Yet where are the concerns about where their money comes from?
Fred Brown, who recently revised the book ''Journalism Ethics: A Casebook of Professional Conduct for News Media,'' argues journalists need to be ''transparent'' about their connections and ''be up front about your relationship'' with those who fund you.
Unfortunately, that rarely happens. While the nonprofits list who sits on their boards, the news outlets they work for make little or no effort to connect those dots. Amanpour's biography page, for instance, talks about her lengthy career, her time at CNN and her many awards. It makes no mention of her affiliation with the Center for Public Integrity.
$52 Million for Media Is Just the Beginning: It's a scene journalists dream about - a group of coworkers toasting a Pulitzer Prize. For the team at investigative start-up ProPublica, it was the second time their fellow professionals recognized their work for journalism's top honor.
For George Soros and ProPublica's other liberal backers, it was again proof that a strategy of funding journalism was a powerful way to influence the American public.
It's a strategy that Soros has been deploying extensively in media both in the United States and abroad. Since 2003, Soros has spent more than $52 million funding media properties, including the infrastructure of news - journalism schools, investigative journalism and even industry organizations.
And that number is an understatement. It is gleaned from tax forms, news stories and reporting. But Soros funds foundations that fund other foundations in turn, like the Tides Foundation, which then make their own donations. A complete accounting is almost impossible because a media component is part of so many Soros-funded operations.
It turns out that Soros' influence doesn't just include connections to top mainstream news organizations such as NBC, ABC, The New York Times and Washington Post. It's bought him connections to the underpinnings of the news business. The Columbia Journalism Review, which bills itself as ''a watchdog and a friend of the press in all its forms,'' lists several investigative reporting projects funded by one of Soros' foundations.
The ''News Frontier Database'' includes seven different investigative reporting projects funded by Soros' Open Society Institute. Along with ProPublica, there are the Center for Public Integrity, the Center for Investigative Reporting and New Orleans' The Lens. The Columbia School of Journalism, which operates CJR, has received at least $600,000 from Soros, as well.
Imagine if conservative media punching bags David and Charles Koch had this many connections to journalists. Even if the Kochs could find journalists willing to support conservative media, they would be skewered by the left.
For Soros, it's news, but nothing new. As one of the world's richest men (No. 46 on Forbes' list), he gets to indulge his dreams. Since those dreams seem to involve controlling media from the ground up, Soros naturally started supporting Columbia University's School of Journalism. Columbia is headed by President Lee Bollinger, who also sits on the Pulitzer Prize board and the board of directors of The Washington Post.
Bollinger, like some of Soros' other funding recipients, is pushing for journalism to find a new sugar daddy or at least an uncle - Uncle Sam. Bollinger wrote in his book ''Uninhibited, Robust, and Wide-Open: A Free Press for a New Century'' that government should fund media. A 2009 study by Columbia's journalism program came to the same conclusion, calling for ''a national fund for local news.''
Conveniently, Len Downie, the lead author of that piece, is on both the Post's board and the board of the Center for Investigative Reporting, also funded by Soros.
Soros funds more than just the most famous journalism school in the nation. There are journalism industry associations like:
•The National Federation of Community Broadcasters;
•The National Association of Hispanic Journalists;
•And the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Readers unhappy with Soros' media influence might be tempted to voice concerns to the Organization of News Ombudsmen - a professional group devoted to ''monitoring accuracy, fairness and balance.'' Perhaps they might consider a direct complaint to PBS's Michael Getler, a director of the organization. Unfortunately, that group is also funded by Soros. At the bottom of the Organization of News Ombudsmen's website front page is the line: ''Supported by the Open Society Institute,'' a Soros foundation. It is the only organization so listed.
The group's membership page lists 57 members from around globe and features:
•Deirdre Edgar, readers' representative of The Los Angeles Times;
•Brent Jones, standards editor, USA Today;
•Kelly McBride, ombudsman, ESPN;
•Patrick Pexton, ombudsman, The Washington Post.
The site doesn't address whether the OSI money creates a conflict of interest. But then, who could readers complain to anyway?
There's more. The Open Society Institute is one of several foundations funding the Investigative News Network (INN), a collaboration of 53 non-profit news organizations producing what they claim is ''non-partisan investigative news.'' The James L. Knight Foundation also backs the network and is possibly the most-well-known journalism foundation. Knight President and CEO Alberto Ibargüen is on the board of directors for ProPublica.
INN includes the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, the liberal web start-up MinnPost, National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, National Public Radio, and the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. The network had included the liberal Huffington Post investigative operation among its grants, but HuffPo investigations merged with the possibly even more left-wing Center for Public Integrity, on whose board Arianna Huffington sits. INN hasn't posted its tax forms yet, but in the meantime ''the Center for Public Integrity is graciously acting as our fiscal agent.''
Liberal academic programs, left-wing investigative journalism and even supposedly neutral news organizations all paid for by a man who spends tens of millions of dollars openly attacking the right. George Soros is teaching journalists that their industry has a future as long as he opens his wallet.
Soros' Lifelong Fascination with Journalism: Media has long been one of the billionaire's interests. According to ''Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire,'' he has been fascinated by media from when he was a boy where early career interests included ''history or journalism or some form of writing.'' He served as ''editor-in-chief, publisher, and news vendor of'' his own paper, ''The Lupa News'' and wrote a wall newspaper in his native Hungary before leaving, wrote author Michael T. Kaufman, a 40-year New York Times veteran. The Communist Party ''encouraged'' such papers.
But journalists weren't always interested in Soros. He avoided any form of publicity until 1981 when he was subject of a cover story in Institutional Investor called ''The World's Greatest Money Manager.'' Even in 1983 when he remarried, The New York Times refused to carry the wedding announcement. They were ''nobodies.'' All that changed when he made $1 billion speculating on the British pound. His profile rose a great deal. He was also criticized in the British tabloids including the Daily Mail in 1992 when he was sued by former house staff in England.
In subsequent years, the Soros connection to journalism has reached all facets of his empire - charity, politics and financial transactions. It might be as sweeping as investments in old media like Times Mirror, new media like AOL or charitable giving like NPR. Or it might be the global reach of Open Society funding journalistic events, awards, grants and travel. Former Times foreign correspondent Michael T. Kaufman, who was later the author of ''Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire,'' discovered Soros had ''paid for airfare'' for a European speaking engagement. He hadn't even known Soros was funding that trip.
Now, Soros underwrites journalists, blogs, books, news outlets, TV and radio stations, online operations, start-ups and investigative journalism. The list of media outlets that Soros has helped support reads like a Who's Who of the left. From 2003 to 2009, OSI gave $52 million to roughly 180 media organizations, including the National Federation of Community Broadcasters and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
A Worldwide Media Powerhouse: The Soros media empire truly spans the globe, but few even realize it because it's decentralized under numerous organizations, funded in turn by more than 30 Open Society Foundations.
Back in 1997, then-Times writer Judith Miller said much of his charity was focused on the media. ''For the past decade, George Soros, the Hungarian-born financier and philanthropist, has spent more than a billion dollars promoting a free press and political pluralism abroad,'' she wrote.
The donations have climbed to $8 billion, but he certainly has continued promoting the press, giving himself global influence in the process. Soros has financed bloggers, journalist travel or education, TV shows, Internet start-ups, investigative journalism and even blogs.
As early as 1994, that empire included ''40 independent radio and television stations and publications'' just in Eastern Europe, according to the March 10, 1994 Jerusalem Report. At the same time, Soros was backing a post-Communist publication called Transitions, but pulled the plug on it in 1999, according to The New York Times.
In 1998, Soros was spending money on Russian media. The Oct. 11, 1998 Times explained that ''Soros gave $10 million toward an $80 million fund he plans to create to help struggling, independent news organizations in Russia ride out the severe economic downturn in that country.''
Soros also made investments in Viacom, College Sports TV, journalism awards even backing events at the Frontline Club in London, what the Times called ''a popular way station for war correspondents.''
The charity work is almost impossible to track, but wherever the Open Society Foundations are, their involvement with journalism is not far behind. The foundation has an entire initiative devoted to the media. Its purported goal is ''to promote independent and viable media and professional, quality journalism in countries undergoing a process of democratization and building functioning media markets.'' The site lists 15 different media program coordinators in nations from Afghanistan to the Ukraine.
In one of its bigger efforts, OSI funded B-92, the Yugoslavia radio network that ''urged young Serbs to avoid the draft'' and spoke out against the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. But many operations are smaller. Journalists are chosen to study at Central European University, also funded by Soros. The foundations back the Czech newspaper Lidove Noviny or the Kabul Weekly in Afghanistan.
Soros-Funded Left-Wing Media Reach More Than 300 Million People Every Month
The global reach of the Soros media empire means it reaches millions of people. From nakedly partisan left-wing media like Think Progress, the blog for the Center for American Progress, and a TV show on MSNBC (recently canceled), to the supposedly impartial National Public Radio, Soros has impact on the flow of information worldwide.
It gives him incredible influence. Every month, reporters, writers and bloggers at the many outlets he funds easily reach more than 330 million people around the globe. The U.S. Census estimates the population of the entire United States to be just less than 310 million.
That's roughly the entire population of the United States with the population of Australia thrown in for good measure - every single month.
Just counting 13 prominent operations of the 180 media organizations he has funded equals 332 million people each month. Included in that total are big players like NPR, which received $1.8 million from Soros, as well as the little known Project Syndicate and Public News Service, both of which also claim to reach millions of readers.
And that's really just the beginning. That tally takes into account only a few of the bigger Soros-funded media operations. Many numbers simply aren't available. ''Democracy Now!'' - ''a daily TV/radio news program, hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez'' - is known for its left-wing take on global news. Its vitriol ranges from attacks on Blackwater founder Erik Prince and supporters of Andrew Breitbart (whom it calls ''Electronic Brownshirts''), to claims the U.S. is opposed to Arab democracy. Just that one Soros-funded operation is heard ''on over 900 stations, pioneering the largest community media collaboration in the United States.'' But it posts no formal audience numbers. Phone calls to ''Democracy Now!'' were not returned.
But Soros wildly understates his own impact. It might be through a ''media reform'' conference with congressmen, a senator, two FCC commissioners, a Nobel laureate and numerous liberal journalists. Or it might be through a radio station in Haiti, which he also supports.
The media reform event was sponsored by a group called Free Press, which has received $1.4 million from Soros. Free Press has two major agenda items - undermining Internet freedom by pushing so-called ''net neutrality,'' and advocating for government-funded media to the tune of $35 billion a year.
Many of those attending or speaking were affiliated with Soros-funded operations.
Free Press is just one of the better funded Soros groups. They also include the Center for American Progress ($7.3 million), which operates the heavily staffed Think Progress blog. That blog ''now has 30 writers and researchers,'' according to Politico. Other well-funded operations include the investigative reporting operations at the Center for Public Integrity ($3.7 million) and Center for Investigative Reporting ($1.1 million), as well as Media Matters ($1.1 million) and the Sundance Institute ($1 million).
That's not all. ''Soros' foundations gave 34 grants from 1997 to 2010 to local NPR member stations and specific programs that have totaled nearly $3.4-million, said the foundations' [spokesperson Maria] Archuleta. Recipients included WNYC and Minnesota Public Radio,'' wrote now former NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard.
In fact, Soros funds nearly every major left-wing media source in the United States. Forty-five of those are financed through his support of the Media Consortium. That organization ''is a network of the country's leading, progressive, independent media outlets.'' The list is predictable - everything from Alternet to the Young Turks, who have since lost their MSNBC show.
A report by the Media Consortium detailed how progressives had created an ''echo chamber'' of outlets ''in which a message pushes the larger public or the mainstream media to acknowledge, respond, and give airtime to progressive ideas because it is repeated many times.'' According to the report called ''The Big Thaw,'' ''if done well, the message within the echo chamber can become the accepted meme, impact political dynamics, shift public opinion and change public policy.''
That mindset plays out in much of what the consortium's members do. Alternet describes itself as an ''award-winning news magazine and online community that creates original journalism and amplifies the best of hundreds of other independent media sources.'' It hates Tea Parties and complains about ''hatemongering'' as the ''ugly side of Evangelical Christianity.'' Each month, the site gets 1.5 million unique visitors to its unique view of the world.
Brave New Films, also funded by the Media Consortium, is run by the same people who run Brave New Foundation. Robert Greenwald and Jim Miller produce and distribute videos attacking businesses and conservatives. The site brags about a 2008 election video ''that exposes John McCain's double talk, for instance, and received 9 million views around the world.'' Their latest effort is yet another attack on Koch Industries, attempting to halt a much-needed pipeline from the Canada to the U.S.
Then there's the Young Turks and MSNBC host Cenk Uygur. In 2010, he was welcomed to the network with a press release detailing his web impact. ''One of YouTube's Top 100 Partners, the irreverent talk show averages over 18 million views per month and has over 320 million views overall on its YouTube Channel.''
The list goes on and on. Project Syndicate calls itself ''the world's pre-eminent source of original op-ed commentaries.'' It has wide reach. ''As of May 2011, Project Syndicate membership included 462 leading newspapers in 150 countries.'' Its monthly circulation is 72,815,528. Naturally, ''support comes from the Open Society Institute,'' the primary Soros foundation.
Project Syndicate's columnist line-up, spread to 462 newspapers, is impressively left-leaning or globalist: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, former President Jimmy Carter, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as lefty economists Jeffrey Sachs and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz.
Public News Service describes itself as ''a member-supported news service that advocates journalism in the public interest.'' It is a ''network of state-based news services' in 33 states. It claims it reaches 'a combined national weekly audience of 24 million.'' PNS is proud of its 2010 success. ''Last year the Public News Service produced over 4,000 stories featuring public interest content that were redistributed several hundred thousand times on 6,114 radio stations, 928 print outlets, 133 TV stations and 100s of websites. Nationally, an average of 60 outlets used each story.'' Nearly 30 Soros-funded Media Operations Part of 'War on Fox'
To hear the left tell it, Fox News has a ''history of inciting Islamophobia and racial and ethic animosity'' and tries to ''race bait its viewers.'' One staffer is called a ''hit man,'' while his network is accused of ''attack politics.'' A highly questionable study is hyped by numerous outlets claiming that it ''confirms that Fox News makes you stupid.'' Fox is called simply: ''The Liars' Network.''
Sure, liberals have it in for Fox News, but that deep-seated, anti-Fox agenda isn't just an organic response from the left. It's a George Soros-funded ''echo chamber'' ''in which a message pushes the larger public or the mainstream media to acknowledge, respond, and give airtime to progressive ideas because it is repeated many times.''
The goal is ''Taking Down Fox News,'' as ''Mother Jones,'' a member of the Media Consortium, described it in a headline. That article, about another Soros-funded operation called Color of Change, explained how ''it successfully urged several advertisers, including Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and RadioShack, to pull their ads from Beck's show.'' Liberals even threw a party to celebrate Beck's departure from Fox News, ''drawing hundreds of activists, journalists and political strategists from the nation's capital,'' according to the Huffington Post.
It was all part of an organized effort against Fox. In all, nearly 30 organizations have attacked Fox News in the six months since the beginning of December, 2010.
Think Progress, the heavily Soros-funded blog for the Center for American Progress, slammed Fox more than 30 times in six months. AlterNet, an especially unhinged liberal outlet, went after the network at least 18 times in those months. It is one of 45 organizations aided by Soros' support of the Media Consortium ''a network of the country's leading, progressive, independent media outlets.''
These outlets are all part of Soros' web of media organizations that mirror his view of Fox as their enemy. That's the way he describes it in the new book, ''The Philanthropy of George Soros.'' ''Those in charge of Fox News, Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, have done well in identifying me as their adversary,'' he wrote. ''They have done less well in the methods they used to attack me: Their lies shall not stand and their techniques shall not endure.''
That anti-Fox agenda is reflected in plans by another group in Soros' pocket to target the network specifically. Media Matters founder David Brock said his Soros-funded operation ($1.1 million) will ''focus on [News Corp. CEO Rupert] Murdoch and trying to disrupt his commercial interests.''
The left hating Fox isn't new. But the efforts of the different groups take on an amazing similarity. Take the University of Maryland study that seemed so critical of Fox News. The study itself included this nugget: ''This suggests that misinformation cannot simply be attributed to news sources, but are part of the larger information environment that includes statements by candidates, political ads and so on.'' That didn't stop any of the groups from using it against Fox News. AlterNet, Washington Monthly, Think Progress and The Nation. It quickly moved into the mainstream media from there.
That's just part of Soros' influence. In the case of Robert Greenwald, he's turned attacking Fox into a mini-industry. Greenwald is founder and president of Brave New Films, also part of the Soros-funded Media Consortium. Greenwald was also behind ''OUTFOXED: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism,'' The site for the movie that argues: ''FOX News is on a witch hunt. Fight back.'' The Brave New Films site has an entire section going after Fox called: ''When Fox Attacks.'' It claims: ''Videos from this campaign have been viewed over 8 million times.''
When Soros was criticized by Fox, multiple pieces of the Soros Empire responded. In one case, Jonathan Schell, a fellow at The Nation Institute, another part of the Media Consortium, made Fox News out to be anti-Semitic for criticizing Soros. An opinion piece titled, ''The Protocols of Rupert Murdoch,'' a reference to the infamous anti-Semitic ''Protocols of The Elders of Zion,'' blasted Glenn Beck.
Schell claimed Beck's criticism of ''the financier and philanthropist George Soros'' in effect ''recycles, almost in carbon copy, the tropes of the most virulent anti-Semitic ideologues.'' The column was distributed by another Soros-funded entity, Project Syndicate, which reaches ''462 leading newspapers in 150 countries,'' with a monthly circulation of 72,815,528.
It's that sort of cooperation that makes the Soros-funded ''echo chamber'' successful. Go on AlterNet and find articles from The Nation, a rant by Robert Greenwald or an interview by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! Or go on New America Media's site and find an article from Color Lines.
The content from the 180 media sites that Soros helps support can be linked, cited or reposted, adding to the sense that there is strong interest in any particular ''progressive idea.'' It's just one more way George Soros influences the media.
Conclusion: George Soros is one of the most influential men in the world - in finance, in charity and, yes, in the media. Yet piecing together that influence is difficult because the media are so incurious about his actions.
When journalists become convinced an outlet is conservative, as they are with Fox News, they become enraged. Stories attacking Fox litter the media landscape. But an extensive and well-funded network of liberal media outlets with deep ties to mainstream news results in almost no coverage.
That's both unbelievable and unprofessional. Any individual funding more than 180 media outlets, with ties to dozens more through secondary sources, boards and the like, is the very definition of news. But journalists don't want to report this story. To do so would mean they would have to be honest about the nature of the profession. They would have to admit:
•Reporters and editors often jump from activist liberal media outlets to mainstream organizations and back again;
•Many of the new journalism start-ups celebrated by the industry from ProPublica to Huffington Post to dozens of investigative journalism operations are all part of a growing liberal news network;
•Prominent journalists at the top outlets in the United States are affiliated with left-wing media outlets and see nothing wrong with such ties.
The whole infrastructure of journalism - education, industry organizations and news organizations - is intertwined with liberal media outlets. Conservative media organizations have no such ties.
Any one of these points proves the argument conservatives have long made - that the mainstream media are liberal from top to bottom. Journalists know this and, as their ties to liberal news organizations show, they just don't care.
Recommendations
The Business & Media Institute has some recommendations for the media to better handle their obvious conflicts of interest when it comes to Soros:
•Just Say No to Soros Cash: No purportedly ''objective'' journalist should serve on a board or advise any outlet that is financed by Soros. If academics do so, they should be open about their affiliations. But working journalists like Downie, Amanpour and Abramson should divorce themselves from the conflict.
•Question Motivations of News Sources: Reporters and editors should be aware when a story is being deliberately hyped by a network of linked organizations. Such times should always have reporters questioning not just the motives, but the facts of the case - whether it's on the right or the left.
•Spend Time Investigating the Left: Journalists have no trouble finding incentive to do detailed analysis of conservatives, but spend little time questioning the motives or funding of liberal organizations. Reporters should do a more detailed investigation into the Open Society Foundations and their influence throughout the media.
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