George Soros

George Soros

George Soros (born August 12, 1930, as György Schwartz, in Budapest, Hungary), is one of the wealthiest people in the world (rated number 35 in 2010) and is a leading funder and organizer for progressive organizations and progressive causes. He is a proclaimed atheist.

Soros is the Chairman of Soros Fund Management, LLC and founder of The Open Society Institute. Soros claims his political activities are separate from the Open Society Institute. He is a former member of the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Family

Soros has been married and divorced twice. He has had three children with Annaliese Witschak (Robert, Andrea and Jonathan) and two with Susan Weber Soros (Alexander Soros and Gregory Soros). His elder brother, Paul Soros, also a private investor and philanthropist, is an engineer, who headed Soros Associates and established the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans. George Soros' nephew Peter Soros, a son of Paul Soros, is married to the former Flora Fraser — a daughter of Lady Antonia Fraser and the late Sir Hugh Fraser, and a stepdaughter of the late 2005 Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter.

His son Alexander Soros is also gaining prominence for his donations to social and political causes. Alexander led the list of student political donors in the 2010 election cycle.

Early Life

George Soros' father was named Tivadar Schwartz, a successful attorney and an Orthodox Jew who, in 1936, changed the family surname from Schwartz to Soros in order to enable his family to conceal its Jewish identity and thus to survive the Nazi Holocaust. Soros sounded Hungarian, but was obscure. It means "soar" (in the future tense) in Esperanto, the made-up trans-European language promoted by those who dreamed of a world free of nationality. Tivadar was among its leading proponents.

When the Nazis occupied Budapest in 1944, Soros' father decided to split up his family, so as to minimize the chance that all its members would be killed together. He purchased forged papers for each of them and then bribed a government official to claim George as his Christian godson and to let the boy live with him.

"While hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were being transported to death camps," reports the Sweetness & Light website, "George Soros accompanied his phony godfather on his appointed rounds, confiscating property from the Jews." (Many years later -- in December 1998 -- a CBS interviewer would ask Soros whether he had ever felt any guilt about those circumstances. Soros replied: "[T]here was no sense that I shouldn't be there, because that was -- well, actually, in a funny way, it's just like in markets -- that if I weren't there -- of course, I wasn't doing it, but somebody else would -- would -- would be taking it away anyhow. And it was the -- whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away. So the -- I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt." Soros has repeatedly said that 1944 was the best year of his life.

From The New Yorker:

"I don't deny the Jews their right to a national existence - but I don't want to be part of it." That experience notwithstanding, Soros has chosen to exclude Israel and Jewish causes, by and large, from his massive philanthropy - a decision that has caused comment among one of his colleagues in the financial community, particularly those who are strong supporters of Israel. In Hungary, Soros has been subject to anti-Semitic attacks. Referring to being a target, Soros, in his book "Underwriting Democracy," wrote, "I am ready to stand up and be counted." When I mentioned that rather suggestive line to Soros during one of several extended interviews with him, he responded quickly, "Right. It took me a long time."

He continued, "My mother was quite anti-Semitic, and ashamed of being Jewish. Given the culture in which one lived, being Jewish was a clear-cut stigma, disadvantage, a handicap - and, therefore, there was always the desire to transcend it, to escape it." He confirmed what someone had told me - that his family name had long ago been changed from Schwartz. "So the assimilationist Jews of Hungary had a deep sense of inferiority and it took me a long time to work through that," he said, adding, however, that he succeeded in doing so many years ago... "I am escaping the particular. I think I am doing so many years espousing this universal concept of open society. In other words, I don't think that you can ever overcome anti-Semitism if you behave as a tribe... The only way you can overcome it is if you give up the tribalness."

In 1947, Soros' family relocated from Hungary to England. Five years later, Soros graduated from the London School of Economics. He subsequently worked for a London stockbroker. In 1956, he emigrated to the United States.

Biography

George Soros -- Obama's Boss -- America's Communist Leader -- CommieTunes 13, Nov. 29, 2010

Soros is a global financier, philanthropist and the founder and chairman of a network of foundations that promote the creation of democratic societies "based upon the rule of law, market economies, transparent and accountable governance, freedom of the press and respect for human rights."

Philosopher Karl Popper's ideas on an open society had a profound influence on his intellectual development while he was studying at the London School of Economics. After immigrating to the United States, he worked as a trader and an analyst until 1963. In 1967, he helped to establish an offshore investment fund and in 1973 he set up a private investment firm that eventually evolved into the Quantum Fund, one of the first hedge funds. This is where he developed his vast fortune.

Soros applied his wealth to help black students attend the University of Cape Town during apartheid in South Africa in 1979. He created a foundation in Hungary to support culture and education and the country’s transition to democracy. Soros also gave funds to the underground Solidarity movement in Poland, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia and the Soviet physicist-dissident Andrei Sakharov. In 1982, Soros named his philanthropic organization the Open Society Fund, in honor of philosopher Popper and granted scholarships to students from Eastern Europe. He created more programs to assist the free flow of information. He also supported educational radio programs in Mongolia and later contributed $100 million to provide Internet access to every regional university in Russia.

In 2003, Soros said that removing President George W. Bush from office was one of his main priorities. During the 2004 campaign, he donated significant funds to various groups that were dedicated to removing the president.

The Influence of Karl Popper

At the London School of Economics, Soros discovered the work of philosopher Karl Popper, whose ideas on open society had a profound influence on his thinking. He was attracted to Popper's critique of totalitarianism: The Open Society and its Enemies. Popper maintained that societies can only flourish when they allow democratic governance, freedom of expression, a diverse range of opinion and respect for individual rights. Later, working as a trader and analyst, Soros adapted Popper's theories to develop his own "theory of reflexivity," a set of ideas that seeks to explain the relationship between thought and reality, which he used to predict, among other things, the emergence of financial bubbles. Soros began to apply his theory to investing and concluded that he had more talent for trading than for philosophy. In 1967, he helped establish an offshore investment fund and in 1973, he set up a private investment firm that eventually evolved into the Quantum Fund, one of the first hedge funds.

Quotes from "The Open Society and Its Enemies: Hegel and Marx," (Vol.2) by Karl Popper:

• The development of capitalism has led to the elimination of all classes but two, a small bourgeoisie and a huge proletariat: and the increase of misery has forced the latter to revolt against its exploiters. The conclusions are, first, that the workers must win the struggle, secondly that, by eliminating bourgeoisie, they must establish a classless society, since only one class remains. (pg. 151-152)

• But all over the earth, organized political power has begun to perform far-reaching economic functions. Unrestrained capitalism has given way to a new historical period, to our own period of political interventionism, of the economic interference of the state. Interventionism has assumed various forms. There is the Russian variety; there is the fascist form of totalitarianism; and there is the domestic interventionism of England, of the United States and the "Smaller Democracies" led by Sweden where the technology of democratic intervention has reached the highest level so far. (pg. 155)

• Admittedly, increasing misery must produce resistance, and it is even likely to produce rebellious outbreaks. But the assumption of our argument is that the misery cannot be alleviated until victory has been won in the social revolution. (pg. 163)

• I am not in all cases and under all circumstances against a violent revolution. (pg. 166)

• ...the working of democracy rests largely upon the understanding that a government which attempts to misuse its powers and to establish itself as a tyranny (or which tolerates the establishment of a tyranny by anybody else) outlaws itself, and that the citizens have not only a right, but also a duty to consider the action of such government a crime, and its members as a dangerous gang of criminals. (pg. 167)

Karl Popper left his native Austria in the 1930s because of his Jewish ancestry. He was a fallibilist, one who perceives great error and danger in any theory of knowledge, or regime, that claimed to offer certain truth.

George Soros, who first encountered The Open Society as Popper's student at the London School of Economics, founded the Open Society Institute to propagate Popper's ideas, particularly in Eastern Europe. Thus, the political philosophy Popper first articulated before the start of the Cold War is now being studied and put into practice in countries newly emerging from behind the Iron Curtain.

Popper left school at age sixteen and began auditing lectures at the University of Vienna. Although a Marxist as a teenager, he was repelled in 1919 by the leftist-inspired street violence of postwar Vienna that resulted in the deaths of demonstrators. That same year, he studied Freud's psychoanalysis and worked for a time with psychiatrist Alfred Adler.

In 1922, he matriculated at the University of Vienna. To support himself, he apprenticed himself to a cabinetmaker and took up social work. Pursuing his goal of becoming a schoolteacher, Popper subsequently returned to the university. In 1928, he earned a Ph.D. in philosophy and, in 1929, a teacher's certificate. Beginning in the late 1920s, Popper began interacting with members of the famous Vienna Circle of Logical Positivists, a group of prominent intellectuals trying to articulate the importance of science for philosophy. Shortly after publishing a then little-noticed, but classic, work on the logical foundations of science in 1934, Popper left Austria under the threat of Nazi anti-Semitism. From New Zealand, where he had obtained a university teaching post, he returned to England after World War II as professor of philosophy of science at the London School of Economics, where he remained until his retirement.

Possible KGB Ties

Commentators have pointed out that in order for George Soros to have achieved what he did in his early days, he must have been favored by the communists. The following observations have been made by prominent Czech former dissident leader Petr Cibulka and Jani Allan, a former British Spectator correspondent.

George Soros as a young man traded currencies on the black market during the Nazi occupation of Hungary. Soros lived there until 1946 when he left the country as it was under Soviet occupation and he, without money and at age of 16, ended up in London, U.K. in 1947. According to claims Soros has made, he left his native Hungary because of the Soviet occupation.

Simply said, this must be explained to the American public because these facts are not possible to be true under any normal circumstances. Soros admits to trade currencies on the black market, but that was always punishable by death during the Nazi era in any occupied country. Also what is important is the allegation that the Soros family collaborated with the Hungarian Nazi regime during WW2.

That would make the whole family [no doubt] a target of reprisals from the victims of the Nazi regime and the occupying Soviet forces would treat Soros' family very harshly [most of the high level Nazi collaborators were hanged]. The only way out of this would be an agreement to co-operate with the GRU Soviet [Russian] military intelligence or perhaps also with the NKVD [later KGB] espionage.

Young George was able to leave the country, he was able to make it through countless Red Army check points, without a passport that would be valid, without a Soviet approved permit to leave the country, without money and without any outside help.

Soros was not only able to "pass through" these check points, but he was able to cross the border to Austria, where the Red Army was also present at the time, and Soros was able to get through the Red Army check points in Austria and "defect" to the West all the way to London, U.K. Un-parallel achievement and because of my personal experiences as a political refugee who had to go through some difficulties escaping the communist oppression, I know what I'm talking about.

I don't know how this Soros' "life story" sounds to anybody, but this is impossible to happen unless George had a permit and proper Soviet approved passport, because if he was so brave to try to run these check points, he would've been shot dead on the spot by the communists.

His stay in the U.K. and his 1947 enrollment to London School of Economics, and to be able financially to support himself during that time, with no mentioned substantial help or financial backing and to be able to graduate in 1952 at that young age, this all gives me chills where I missed my own opportunities and how come I wasn't able to be so "fortunate" and to have such "miraculous achievements" in my life.

Soros, after a brief period of working in financial services in Britain, was able to start his own financial institution. What an achievement again. No money at all from the beginning and after just a few years he's got his own financial company.

That requires starting capital, these expensive ventures don't come easy, these are not hamburger stands, but virtual banks with lots of money inside - who supplied the money to Soros or has he won a huge jackpot in Britain?

"Opening the Soviet System"

In his "Opening the Soviet System" Soros recollects about his 1989 Prague meeting with Marian Calfa and says the following:

Together with Prince Karel Schwartzenberg we went to see Marian Calfa, who was then acting president. It was meant to be a courtesy visit but it turned into a moving occasion. Calfa opened his heart. He said that the last three weeks had really shaken his view of the world. He had not realized how far out of touch his party was with reality.

He had had an intimate conversation with Jiri Dienstbier, the former political prisoner and newly-appointed Foreign Minister, and that is when he found out that dissidents' children had been regularly denied the right to be educated in Czechoslovakia. (Dienstbier's daughter had managed to get to Switzerland.)

He was deeply ashamed and determined to establish democracy in Czechoslovakia. We all agreed that it was imperative to have Vaclav Havel elected president by the present rubber-stamp parliament; to organize a plebiscite would delay matters and create uncertainties.

Havel as president would consolidate the "gentle revolution." Unfortunately, the leaders of the party do not agree with me but, as acting president, I have certain prerogatives and I intend to use them,' he said. He sounded genuine and we were impressed.

It was an unbelievable situation: the head of an apparatus of repression which only a few weeks ago hit students on the head voluntarily abdicating in favor of a dissident without an organization who would have trouble winning a plebiscite.

According to Cibulka and Allan, Calfa was never a president, but a Prime Minister. He changed positions after he was for some years the Deputy PM in communist Czechoslovakia. The authors also make some interesting claims about Dienstbier:

Jiri Dienstbier - during the 1950's and 1960's, alleged KGB or directly GRU cadre, as communist journalist he was able to travel around the World during the communist era in Czechoslovakia. Between 1958-69, he worked as foreign political commentator and editor for Czechoslovak [communist] Radio. Between 1964-67, Dienstbier was the CZ Radio correspondent for the Far East and was in Jakarta, Indonesia at the time when there was [thank God unsuccessful] a communist coup.

In 1968-69, he worked as foreign correspondent in the United States, possibly for communist party newspaper Red Right [Rude Pravo]. A CPCZ member since 1958 till 1970, Dienstbier is a founding member of Charter 77, a speaker of Charter 77 in 1979 and later in 1985. After the "collapse of communism" in Czechoslovakia, he became Czechoslovak Government's Deputy Prime Minister in a government of PM Marian Calfa and Dienstbier later became CZ Foreign Minister. While in his post as Foreign Minister, Dienstbier was involved in various scandals regarding appointing various "former" communists and STB agents [STB foreign espionage section mostly] as Czechoslovak Ambassadors around the World.

Later Communist Collaborations

Cibulka and Allan also commented on Soros' later ties to communist regimes and movements:

Circa 1978, Frantisek Janouch, "former" Czech communist and nuclear physicist, and George Soros were key financial backers of the Charter 77 Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden. It was asserted that the foundation was an "anti-communist" group, however it was sending funds to communist Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel and company. Janouch claims that Soros supplied 1/3 of the total amount of these funds.

On Dec. 14, 1989, Soros was present at the meeting in Prague on December 14, 1989 where he, Janouch, Karel Jan Schwartzenberg (later to become Vaclav Havel's Chief of Staff) met with Czechoslovak newly appointed Prime Minister, a communist and allegedly KGB and STB agent, Marian Calfa. Calfa thankedd Soros for everything he had done for Czechoslovakia.

Soros was also the main financial contributor to the Polish Labor Union called Solidarity. Its leadership had to be made up of members of the Communist Party, or of communist agents.

It is strange that Soros was allowed to set up his Open Society Institutions in the communist Hungary in 1984 and later in the Soviet Union in 1987. Such ventures were only possible for communists or communist agents and not for an American businessmen like Soros. The agreement between Soros and the communist government in Hungary had to be approved by the Communist Party General Secretary Janosz Kadar. Kadar was during the 1950s personally involved in torture and murders of anti-communist opposition members in Hungary.

South Africa

George Soros has been involved in financing organizations in South Africa since 1979, though most of the money he made came from his British Pound scheme in 1992. Much of the money went into communist dominated South African Unions and also to Cape Town University where Soros financed people who are today involved in the African National Congress/South African Communist Party government.

China

In 1986, Soros attempted to set up his Open Society Foundation in communist China.

I went to China [in 1986 - ed. note] with Liang Heng, who became my personal representative, and set up a foundation on the Hungarian model with Chen Yizi's institute as my partner.

Boo Tung, Communist party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang's principal secretary, cut through the red tape and approved the foundation on the spot.

Both he and the foundation got into a lot of trouble as a consequence because his political enemies tried to use the foundation as a vehicle for attacking him. They prepared an elaborate dossier which claimed that I was a CIA agent and anti-Communist conspirator.

Boo Tung counter-attacked and presented voluminous information about my other foundations to prove my good faith.

That was not too difficult because I had always been very open about my intentions and by 1987 I had also established a foundation in Moscow.

Nevertheless, some high party council decided to liquidate the foundation and refund the money.

It took the personal intervention of Zhao Ziyang to rescind the decision.

He arranged for Chen Yizi to resign as co-chairman and for the International Cultural Exchange Center, whose chairman turned out to be a high official in the security service, to take over as our host organization.

The authors ask exactly how George Soros, could prove, as an American citizen and therefore enemy of the communists, that he was NOT a CIA spy and anti-communist?

How is it possible, that the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party fixed the problem for Soros - "this wouldn't happen unless (UNLESS) Soros is a communist agent himself and is involved in communist operations - otherwise they would never allow Soros inside the country nor would they allow him to open as much as a hot dog stand in a Beijing (or Moscow)."

Currency/Regime Collapses and Market Manipulation

TIME Magazine: George Soros - Sep. 1, 1997 - Philanthropy

George Soros openly discusses New World Order, SDR's, Dollar Decline and World Currency, Nov. 29, 2009

The Seven Steps of Collapse

Soros is known as the man who broke the Bank of England. The prime minister of Malaysia called Soros an "unscrupulous profiteer." In Thailand, he was branded an "economic war criminal." They also said that he sucks the blood from people.

In 1994, George Soros stated: "Just right that the former Soviet Empire is now called the Soros Empire."

The following are George Soros' seven steps for bringing down a regime and causing a currency collapse:

• Step One: Form a shadow government using humanitarian aid as cover.
• Step Two: Control the airwaves. Fund existing radio and TV outlets and take control over them or start your own outlets.
• Step Three: Destabilize the state, weaken the government and build an anti-government kind of feeling in the country. You exploit an economic crisis or take advantage of an existing crisis — pressure from the top and the bottom. This will allow you to weaken the government and build anti-government public sentiment.
• Step Four: Sow unrest.
• Step Five: Provoke an election crisis. You wait for an election and during the election, you cry voter fraud.
• Step Six: Take power. You stage massive demonstrations, civil disobedience, sit-ins, general strikes and you encourage activism. You promote voter fraud and tell followers what to do through your radio and television stations. Incitement and violence are conducted at this stage.
• Step Seven: Outlast your opponent.

Currency/Financial Collapses

Europe

In Dec. of 2010, as Europe teetered on the edge of a complete financial and political breakdown with riots in the streets, Soros wrote an article in the Financial Times on the causes of this situation and possible remedies. From Europe should rescue banks before states, published in the Financial Times on Dec. 15, 2010:

...emergency funds ought to be used to recapitalize banking systems as well as to provide loans to states. The former would be more efficient than the latter. It would leave countries with smaller deficits, and they could regain market access sooner if the banking system were properly capitalized. It is better to inject equity now than later and it is better to do it on a Europe-wide basis than each country acting on its own. That would create a European regulatory regime. Europe-wide regulation of banks interferes with national sovereignty less than European control over fiscal policy.

It is evident that Soros is setting the stage to benefit monetarily as well as politically through the death throes of the European Union and the euro. A European regulatory regime takes the world one step closer to Soros' dreamed of open society with no borders. Once Europe is controlled totally by regulation, he simply waits for the United States to finish its regulatory capitulation and then combines the two. A New World Order will be all but complete at this point.

England

In an article Kyle-Anne Shiver wrote for “The American Thinker” she says, “Soros made his first billion in 1992 by shorting the British pound with leveraged billions in financial bets, and became known as the man who broke the Bank of England. He broke it on the backs of hard-working British citizens who immediately saw their homes severely devalued and their life savings cut drastically…almost overnight.” Soros made a reported $2 billion during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crises. Soros correctly anticipated that the British government would have to devalue the pound sterling.

From Richard Poe, author of Shadow Party:

He famously shorted the British pound in 1992, wagering $10 billion on a drop in its value. In a desperate bid to keep its currency afloat, the Bank of England tried to buy up pounds as fast as Soros could dump them. However, as more and more investors followed Soros’ lead and joined his efforts, the Bank of England eventually gave up.

The British pound was devalued, launching a tsunami of financial turmoil from Tokyo to Rome. When it was over, millions of hardworking Britons confronted their diminished savings, while Soros counted his gains. He had personally made nearly $2 billion on the catastrophe.

From Soros The Unauthorized Biography:

As September 15 wore on, George Soros' confidence that Britain would pull the pound out of the ERM was growing. It had been Stanley Druckenmiller who had thought the time ripe for making a bet against the sterling. He talked to Soros about doing something. Soros gave him the green light but urged his head trader to bet an even larger sum than Druckenmiller had in mind. And so Druckenmiller, acting for Soros, sold $10 billion worth of sterling... The next morning at 7:00, the phone rang at Soros' home. It was Stan Druckenmiller with news... While George Soros had slept, he racked a profit of $958 million. When Soros' gains from other positions he took during the ERM crisis were tallied, he racked up close to $2 billion... It was this bet, this single act of placing $10 billion on the fact that Britain would have to devalue the pound, that made George Soros world famous.

From Time Magazine:

Soros has said of this event: "I had no platform, so I deliberately [did] the sterling thing to create a platform. Obviously, people care about the man who made a lot of money... My influence has continued to grow and I do have access to most people I want to have access to.

France

In 1988, Soros was asked to join a takeover attempt of the French bank Société Générale. He declined to participate in the bid, but later bought a number of shares in the company. French authorities began an investigation in 1989 and in 2002, a French court ruled that it was insider trading, a felony conviction as defined under French securities laws, and fined him $2.9 million, which was the amount that he made using the insider information. France upheld the earlier conviction against Soros for felony insider trading.

Hungary

Recently, his native Hungary fined Soros 2.2 million dollars for “illegal market manipulation.” Elizabeth Crum writes that “The Hungarian economy has been in a state of transition as the country seeks to become more financially stable and westernized. [Soros’] deliberately driving down the share price of its largest bank put Hungary’s economy into a wicked tailspin, one from which it is still trying to recover.”

Russia

In 1994, Soros crowed in The New Republic, "Just write that the former Soviet Empire is now called the Soros Empire.” The Russia-gate scandal in 1999, which almost collapsed the Russian economy, was labeled by Rep. James Leach, then head of the House Banking Committee, to be “one of the greatest social robberies in human history.” The “Soros Empire” indeed.

Thailand/Malaysia

In 1997, Soros almost destroyed the economies of Thailand and Malaysia. At the time, Malaysia’s Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, called Soros “a villain and a moron.” Thai activist Weng Tojirakarn said, “We regard George Soros as a kind of Dracula. He sucks the blood from the people.” Soros was also branded an economic war criminal.

In 1998's The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered, Soros explained his role in the crisis as follows:

The financial crisis that originated in Thailand in 1997 was particularly unnerving because of its scope and severity.... By the beginning of 1997, it was clear to Soros Fund Management that the discrepancy between the trade account and the capital account was becoming untenable. We sold short the Thai baht and the Malaysian ringgit early in 1997 with maturities ranging from six months to a year. (That is, we entered into contracts to deliver at future dates Thai Baht and Malaysian ringgit that we did not currently hold.) Subsequently Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia accused me of causing the crisis, a wholly unfounded accusation. We were not sellers of the currency during or several months before the crisis; on the contrary, we were buyers when the currencies began to decline – we were purchasing ringgits to realize the profits on our earlier speculation. (Much too soon, as it turned out. We left most of the potential gain on the table because we were afraid that Mahathir would impose capital controls. He did so, but much later.

The nominal U.S. dollar Gross domestic product (GDP) of the ASEAN fell by $9.2 billion in 1997 and $218.2 billion (31.7%) in 1998.

Regime Collapses

Africa

The Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa is a Soros-affiliated organization. Its director for Zimbabwe is Godfrey Kanyenze, who also directs the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), which was the main force behind the founding of the Movement for Democratic Change, the principal indigenous organization promoting regime change in Zimbabwe.

Czech Republic

Soros through his Open Society Institute helped fund the 1989 "Velvet Revolution" that brought Vaclav Havel to power in the Czech Republic.

Egypt

Many are asking who started the riots in Egypt around Jan. 25, 2011, including Walid Phares on Fox News. Phares stated that he believed it was bloggers on Facebook who began the riots.

In April of 2010, a weekly magazine aiming to link Arab bloggers with politicians, the elderly and the elite was launched in Egypt. The weekly Wasla – or “The Link” – is being heralded as a first for the Arab world, with plans for articles by bloggers as a way of giving them a wider readership.

Wasla is published by the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information and is financially supported by the Open Society Institute created by none other than George Soros.

In the 1st edition of Wasla, the cover featured Mohamed ElBaradei. ElBaradei is Wasla's chosen candidate and he is also supported by the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran. George Soros and ElBaradei both sit on the Board of Trustees for the International Crisis Group. Radio talk show host Michael Savage lays out in detail the ICG's ties to the current Islamic uprising in Egypt. In a June 2008 report entitled, "Egypt's Muslim Brothers Confrontation or Integration," ICG urges the Egyptian regime to allow the Muslim Brotherhood to participate in political life.

Soros' Open Society also funded the main opposition voice in Tunisia, Radio Kalima, which championed the riots there that led to the ouster of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

More from WND:

In September, Soros' group was looking to expand its operations in Egypt by hiring a new project manager for its Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, which is run in partnership with the Open Society Justice Initiative. The group is seeking to develop a national network of legal empowerment actors for referral of public-interest law cases. Such organizations in the past have helped represent Muslim Brotherhood leaders seeking election or more authority in the country.

Soros made public statements that he supported the uprising in Egypt. He also tacitly supports the Muslim Brotherhood.

From WND:

In a Washington Post editorial entitled, "Why Obama Has to Get Egypt Right," Soros recognized that if free elections were held in Egypt, "the Brotherhood is bound to emerge as a major political force, though it is far from assured of a majority."

He stated the U.S. has "much to gain by moving out in front and siding with the public demand for dignity and democracy" in Egypt.

He claimed the "Muslim Brotherhood's cooperation with Mohamed ElBaradei … is a hopeful sign that it intends to play a constructive role in a democratic political system."

Soros did not mention his ties to ElBaradei.

Soros did, however, single out Israel as "the main stumbling block" in paving the way toward transition in the Middle East.

"In reality, Israel has as much to gain from the spread of democracy in the Middle East as the United States has. But Israel is unlikely to recognize its own best interests because the change is too sudden and carries too many risks," he wrote.

And there is more concerning Soros being behind lobbying efforts for Egypt on Capitol Hill. From Gulag Bound:

In attempting to explain how lobbyists get U.S. foreign aid for Egypt, journalist Pratap Chatterjee of the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress writes that Tony Podesta, “the brother of a former White House chief of staff,” joined with Toby Moffett, a former Democratic Congressman, and Bob Livingston, a former Republican Congressman, to create a lobbying organization, the PLM Group, to represent Egypt in Washington.

Tony Podesta is the brother of John Podesta. He is Chatterjee's boss at the Center for American Progress.

More from Gulag Bound:

Politico reported that Tony and John Podesta started Podesta Associates in the late 1980s and that it was later renamed the Podesta Group. So John Podesta was in on this money-making scheme from the start. Soros subsequently asked John Podesta to run the Center for American Progress, whose foreign policy expert, Brian Katulis, has been arguing on MSNBC that the U.S. ought to pull the plug on the Hosni Mubarak government in Egypt and deal with the Muslim Brotherhood.

In other words, the Podesta brothers are on both sides of this international crisis.

...

Politico has since reported that the lobbyists in the Podesta Group and the Livingston Group had lobbied on the issue of a Senate resolution calling for free elections in Egypt. The story didn’t mention that a former Politico editor, John Ward Anderson, now works for the Podesta Group.

Iran

Soros has stated that Iran’s ruling regime will topple within the year, although he warns the situation there could become “very ugly” before this happens.

From NewsMax:

In an interview with CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” program, Soros said: “Opposition leaders could easily be killed through a false judicial process because the regime is fighting for its survival, because they know that they have committed such crimes that it’s either them or the people,” he said. “But I don’t think that they will be able to succeed.

Libya

In March of 2011, the US, UK and France aligned themselves with the UN to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya. Supposedly this was to protect the rebel forces trying to overthrow Moammar Gadhafi. Whether the US will admit it or not, this would necessitate the dethroning of Gadhafi (who is currently worth about 40 billion dollars and is one of the wealthiest men in the world) or he would have to be eliminated, re: killed. This then clears the path for the Muslim Brotherhood to seize control just as they are doing in Egypt and in other places throughout the Middle East. It would appear that the US has chosen the 'wrong' side of this fight either intentionally or by incompetence. Barack Obama violated the Constitution of the United States by not consulting Congress before committing an act of war on another nation that did not pose an imminent threat to the US. He claims it is not an act of war, but bombing another country and restricting their 'fly zone' is the very definition of an act of war. It is also a violation of the War Powers Act. He simply went to the United Nations and proceeded as he saw fit. In the US, this is widely viewed as an impeachable offense.

It has been noted that Soros is one of the key people behind the Libya military move. He was a key adviser to Obama on the issue. This may be related to the fact that Gadhafi originally agreed to forming an "open society" in Libya and then reneged on that promise.

From American Thinker:

When we engage militarily in other nations, civilian casualties are inevitable, especially since terrorists hide among civilian populations. There is one influential group that has been in the forefront of efforts to promote the idea that the international community is obligated to take measures (including military ones) to protect civilians. That group is the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect. Lo and behold! George Soros' Open Society Institute is one of the two foundations that bankroll this advocacy group (the other, the John D. and Catherine MacArthur Foundation - a group that has, over the years, become known not just for its Genius Awards but also for its funding of left-leaning groups. It is headed by a former State Department official and we know how many of those diplomats think).

The Soros-funded global group that promotes Responsibility to Protect is closely tied to Samantha Power, the National Security Council special adviser to Obama on human rights.

From WND:

The joint U.S. and international air strikes targeting Libya are widely regarded as a test of Responsibility to Protect – which is a set of principles, now backed by the United Nations, based on the idea that sovereignty is not a privilege, but a responsibility.

According to the principle, any state's sovereignty can be overrun, including with the use of military force, if the international community decides it must act to halt what it determines to be genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity or ethnic cleansing.

The founder of the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect is Gareth Evans. He is also a board member. 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.

More from WND:

Soros himself outlined the fundamentals of Responsibility to Protect in a 2004 Foreign Policy magazine article entitled "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, 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."

Soros' Open Society Institute is one of only three nongovernmental funders of the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect. Government sponsors include Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, Rwanda and the U.K.

Serbia

The revolt in Serbia was called the "Bulldozer Revolution" and Soros as usual was involved. From Gulag Bound:

On October 5, 2000, in the “Bulldozer Revolution“, a movement funded partly by George Soros, swept Slobodan Milosevic from power. The LA Times reported on Soros’ role, noting the problems it would cause if he were to get too much credit for his activities. By providing lots of money to already existing but struggling groups that Soros believed to be “pro-democracy”, including the student group Otpor, Soros was able to topple that country’s government.

It’s an accomplishment that Hungarian-born financier George Soros doesn’t flaunt. Bragging about it, after all, could just make his global democracy-building mission more difficult.

But the multi-billionaire philanthropist quietly played a key role in the dramatic overthrow last year of President Slobodan Milosevic. His Soros Foundations Network helped finance several pro-democracy groups, including the student organization Otpor, which spearheaded grass-roots resistance to the authoritarian Yugoslav leader.

In a 2003 news conference, Soros owned up to his involvement, not only to the revolt in Yugoslavia but other countries, as well.

“It is necessary to mobilize civil society in order to assure free and fair elections because there are many forces that are determined to falsify or to prevent the elections being free and fair,” Mr. Soros said. “This is what we did in Slovakia at the time of Vladimir Meciar, in Croatia at the time of Franjo Tudjman and in Yugoslavia at the time of Milosevic.”

United States

Soros told Australia’s national newspaper “The Australian”: “America, as the center of the globalized financial markets, was sucking up the savings of the world. This is now over. The game is out,” he said, adding that the time has come for “a very serious adjustment” in American’s consumption habits.

Yugoslavia/Georgia/Ukraine/Myanmar

The website Greek National Pride reports, “[Soros] was part of the full court press that dismantled Yugoslavia and caused trouble in Georgia, Ukraine and Myanmar (Burma). Calling himself a philanthropist, Soros’ role is to tighten the ideological stranglehold of globalization and the New World Order, while promoting his own financial gain. He is without conscience; a capitalist who functions with absolute amorality.”

The "Revolution of Roses" was a change of power in Georgia in November 2003, which took place after widespread protests over the disputed parliamentary elections. As a result, President Eduard Shevardnadze was forced to resign on November 23, 2003.

A significant source of funding for the Rose Revolution was the network of foundations and NGOs associated with Hungarian-American billionaire financier George Soros. The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies reports the case of a former Georgian parliamentarian who alleges that in the three months prior to the Rose Revolution, "Soros spent $42 million ramping-up for the overthrow of Shevardnadze." Speaking in T'blisi in June 2005, Soros said, "I'm very pleased and proud of the work of the foundation in preparing Georgian society for what became a Rose Revolution, but the role of the foundation and my personnel has been greatly exaggerated."

Among the personalities who worked for Soros' organizations who later assumed positions in the Georgian government are:

• Alexander Lomaia, Secretary of the Georgian Security Council and former Minister of Education and Science, is a former Executive Director of the Open Society Georgia Foundation (Soros Foundation), overseeing a staff of 50 and a budget of $2,500,000.

• David Darchiashvili, presently the chairman of the Committee for Eurointegration in the Georgian parliament, is also a former Executive Director of the Open Society Georgia Foundation.

Former Georgian Foreign Minister Salomé Zourabichvili wrote:

These institutions were the cradle of democratization, notably the Soros Foundation … all the NGO’s which gravitate around the Soros Foundation undeniably carried the revolution. However, one cannot end one’s analysis with the revolution and one clearly sees that, afterwards, the Soros Foundation and the NGOs were integrated into power. – Salomé Zourabichvili, Herodote (magazine of the French Institute for Geopolitics), April, 2008

Many analysts believe the Orange Revolution was built on a pattern first developed in the ousting of Slobodan Milošević in Serbia four years earlier, and continuing with the Rose Revolution in Georgia. Each of these victories, though apparently spontaneous, was the result of extensive grassroots campaigning and coalition-building among the opposition. Each included election victories followed up by public demonstrations, after attempts by the incumbent to hold onto power through electoral fraud.

Every one of these social movements included extensive work by student activists. The most famous of these was Otpor, the youth movement that helped bring in Vojislav Koštunica. In Georgia the movement was called Kmara. In the Ukraine the movement has worked under the succinct slogan Pora ("It's Time"). The Chair of the Georgian Parliamentary Committee on Defense and Security Givi Targamadze, former member of the Georgian Liberty Institute, as well as some members of Kmara, were consulted by Ukrainian opposition leaders on techniques of nonviolent struggle. Georgian rock bands Zumba, Soft Eject and Green Room, which earlier had supported the Rose Revolution, organized a solidarity concert in central Kiev to support Yushchenko’s cause in November 2004.

Activists in each of these movements were funded and trained in tactics of political organization and nonviolent resistance by a coalition of Western pollsters and professional consultants funded by a range of Western government and non-government agencies. According to The Guardian, these include the U.S. State Department and USAID along with the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the International Republican Institute, the Bilderberg Group, the NGO Freedom House and George Soros's Open Society Institute. The National Endowment for Democracy, a foundation supported by the U.S. government, has supported non-governmental democracy-building efforts in Ukraine since 1988. Writings on nonviolent struggle by Gene Sharp formed the strategic basis of the student campaigns.

George Soros - Political/Financial Stances

Click here to view George Soros' Political and Financial Stances...

Personal Donations

Harvard's Center for Public Leadership, Interview with Soros, Oct. 9, 2008

Soros has personally donated $10,000 to the Secretary of State Project in 2008.

Soros has donated at least $150,000 to ACORN.

He has personally made campaign contributions to such notable political candidates as:

• Charles Rangel
• Al Franken
• Tom Udall
• Joe Sestak
• Sherrod Brown
• Harry Reid
• Barack Obama
• Hillary Clinton
• Barbara Boxer
• Ken Salazar
• Patrick Leahy
• John Kerry
• Charles Schumer
• Howard Dean
• Bill Clinton
• Tom Harkin
• Jon Corzine
• Joe Biden
• Dick Durbin
• Lane Evans
• Dennis Kucinich
• Maurice Hinchey
• Al Gore

Obama funder

Shortly after George Soros equated the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Obama joined him for a New York fund-raiser June 7, 2008, while running for the US Senate in Illinois.

The event, held at Soros' home, boosted Obama's campaign at a time he was still facing a challenge from Republican Jack Ryan. After news broke about information in Ryan's divorce records, the candidate was forced to drop out.

Little has been made of his connection to Soros, although it is quite unique. Not only did George Soros donate to Obama's campaign, but four other family members - Jennifer Soros, sons Jonathan Soros and Robert Soros and wife Susan Soros - did as well.

Because of a special provision campaign finance laws, the Soroses were able to give a collective $60,000 to Obama during his primary challenge. Obama faced millionaire Blair Hull, which allowed donors to give more than typically allowed.

Obama is one of only a handful of candidates to get a personal contribution from George Soros. The others include Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Bob Graham (D-Fla.), John Kerry (D-Mass.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos, and former Vermont governor Howard Dean.

"Why did George support Obama?" his spokesman, Michael Vachon, asked rhetorically. "Because when they met in Chicago a couple of months ago, it was apparent that Barack Obama was an emerging national leader, and he would be an important addition to the Senate."

Vachon said Obama is the only candidate this election cycle Soros has met personally, with the first powwow in March. Asked why Soros hasn't sought out a meeting with Kerry, the man he is pulling for to defeat President Bush on Nov. 2, Vachon said it was just a matter of Soros keeping his distance.

"George is a major funder of an independent 527 group, and it probably makes more sense for him and Kerry to keep each other at arm's length," Vachon said.

He also has given large sums of money to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic National Committee Services Corporation.

Organizations Funded Directly by George Soros and his Open Society Institute

Click here to view the organizations funded by Soros...

George Soros - Affiliations

Click here to view George Soros' Affiliations... This page contains a more in-depth look at the primary connections of George Soros.

Investments

For an in-depth snapshot of George Soros' investments visit here:

George Soros’ New Buys: Akamai Technologies, Newmont Mining, Arena Resources Inc., Vulcan Materials, Cabot Corp., Netflix Inc., Kraft Foods

DeBruce Grain

In October of 2010, a deal was made with Soros-backed Gavilon to purchase the privately owned and Kansas City based, DeBruce Grain.

The purchase includes DeBruce’s grain handling facilities, fertilizer distribution network, feed mills and a soybean crushing plant.

DeBruce Grain Inc. has grain elevators in Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Alabama, Indiana, Wisconsin and Mexico, with combined licensed storage capacity in excess of 140 million bushels.

The DeBruce purchase will raise Gavilon’s grain storage capacity to nearly 300 million bushels, making it the No. 3 U.S. grain handler after ADM Grain Co., a unit of Archer Daniels Midland Co. (ADM.N), and privately held Cargill Inc., according to data from Milling & Baking News, an industry publication.

According to the Wall Street Journal, DeBruce also owns feed-livestock mills – feed for beef and pork.

Gavilon

Gavilon is a Nebraska corporation that manufactures grain elevators. Soros has been purchasing these elevators in bulk. It’s the 3rd largest business in its field, now just behind ADM (Archer Daniels Midland) and Cargill.

In the Fall of 2010, he also purchased a huge amount of the grain business in Australia. This from Agrimoney.com in December:

AWB Austrailan Wheat was in talks to sell a stake in its domestic grains handling business to US-based Gavilon before the Australian group became a takeover target.

Gavilon, which is backed by George Soros’ Soros Fund Management has since unveiled its own expansion plans in Australia, the southern hemisphere’s top wheat-exporting target.

Gold

George Soros’s biggest buy is gold - $64 million in the last quarter of 2010. Many of those calling gold a bubble have done so simply on the basis of Soros’s recent comments regarding gold being the ultimate asset bubble or becoming the ultimate asset bubble. Soros’s comments were somewhat cryptic and had some commentators claim that Soros was saying gold is a bubble and others claiming that Soros was simply saying gold would become the ultimate bubble.

Soros said subsequently: “It’s all a question of where are you in that bubble ... The current conditions of actual deflationary pressures and fear of inflation is pretty ideal for gold to rise.” This would suggest that he is bullish on gold, contrary to much of the media headlines and commentary.

As ever with hedge fund managers and large investors, it is important to watch what they do rather than what they say. In the last quarter, Soros's biggest buy wasn't actually a stock. His firm spent $64 million on shares of the iShares Gold Trust (IAU).

Halliburton

In late 2006, Soros bought about 2 million shares of Halliburton.

Hedge Fund

In July of 2011, Soros announced he was "quitting" the hedge-fund industry. Headlines emphasized his decision to return about $750 million to outside investors (a drop in his $30 billion bucket of personal wealth). He's reconstituting the business that landed him on Forbes magazine's "wealthiest people" list as a "family" interest.

India

Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google, has teamed up with the Soros Economic Development Fund and Omidyar Network in a $17 million company that will invest in small and medium-size businesses in India.

The Soros Economic Development Fund, the Omidyar Network and Google.org stated that the venture would make investments of between $500,000 and $3.5 million in small and medium businesses in India that lacked access to formal funding options.

The venture will be called the Small to Medium Enterprise Investment Company.

The Soros Economic Development Fund is a part of billionaire investor George Soros’ charitable foundations and the Omidyar Network is a philanthropic investment firm of the founders of eBay.

Keith Meister

Soros Fund Management will invest about $250 million in Keith Meister's new event driven hedge fund.

Meister was known to be an indispensable part of Carl Icahn’s team and will apparently adopt the same notorious activist investing style that his former chief does.

Monsanto

Soros' hedge fund bought 897,813 shares (valued at $312.6 million) of Monsanto during the third quarter of 2010.

The Monsanto Company is a U.S.-based multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation. It is the world's leading producer of the herbicide glyphosate, marketed as "Roundup." Monsanto is also the leading producer of genetically engineered (GE) seed; it provides the technology in 90% of the world's GE seeds. It is headquartered in Creve Coeur, Missouri.

S510, the Food Safety Modernization Act, if and when it is passed, will create an investment windfall for Soros who is the second largest holder of Monsanto stock. S510 is not really about food safety, it is about government control over everything connected to food in the US including seed stock.

OSIS

Soros owned 11,300 shares of OSI Systems Inc., the company that owns Rapiscan. This is one of the primary companies who produce and market the full body scanners the TSA uses at airports across the nation.

Soros owned the OSIS stock at the end of the second quarter of 2010 and sold it during the third quarter. That puts the sale sometime between July 1 and September 30 of 2010, just prior to the uproar over TSA's violations of American's Fourth Amendment rights as guaranteed by the Constitution. It would appear that Soros possibly knew of the impending backlash from American citizens and a possible stock price plummet due to negative perceptions of the company.

Palestine

In partnership with a government fund initiated by Barack Obama, George Soros is investing in a private equity company that just launched in the Palestinian territories.

The company, Siraj Fund Management Company, says it was created "for the sole purpose of managing investment funds in Palestine." Although, SFMC and Soros constantly refer to a country named Palestine (which does not exist), it is safe to assume they are referring to the Palestinian territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority.

From WorldNetDaily:

This week, Siraj Fund Management Company, the first private equity fund in the Palestinian territories, officially launched in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Soros' Economic Development Fund invested in the new group alongside the U.S. government-owned Overseas Private Investment Corporation, or OPIC.

OPIC is an independent agency of the US government that mobilizes private sector investment in new and emerging markets overseas.

In 2009, OPIC created its Global Technology and Innovation Fund, which invested in Siraj, in response to an initiative by Obama to launch an investment group to support technological development in Muslim-majority countries.

More from WND:

Siraj Fund's initial closing was $60 million and is expected to close at $80 million in the coming months. The Fund's capital includes about half participation from foreign investors, the other half are Palestinians and Arabs.

Besides the U.S. government and Soros' organization, other foreign investors in Saraj include the Pension Boards of the United Church of Christ and Crescent Investments of the United Arab Emirates.

Petrobras

Soros' New York-based hedge-fund firm, Soros Fund Management LLC, sold 22 million U.S.-listed common shares of Petrobras, as the Brazilian oil company is known, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Soros bought 5.8 million of the company’s U.S.-traded preferred shares.

As of Aug. 17th, 2010, Soros’s fund management firm sold all of its Petroleo Brasileiro SA stock, dumping its biggest company holding ahead of a planned $25 billion offering by Brazil’s state-controlled oil producer.

Soros Fund Management LLC, which oversees $25 billion, sold 9.1 million American depositary receipts representing Petrobras common stock and 5.88 million ADRs corresponding to preferred shares in the second quarter of 2010, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Quantum Group of Funds

Soros launched the Quantum Fund after immigration to America from London in 1956. It was one of the wold's first private hedge funds.

The Quantum Group of Funds are privately owned hedge funds based on Curaçao (Netherlands Antilles) and the Cayman Islands. They are currently advised by George Soros through his company Soros Fund Management. Soros started the fund in the early 1970s along with Jim Rogers. The shareholders of the funds are not publicly disclosed although it is known that the Rothschild family and other wealthy Europeans put $6 million into the funds in 1969. The fund was worth 5 and a half billion dollars by 1999.

In 1992, the lead fund, Soros's Quantum Fund, became famous for "breaking" the Bank of England, forcing it to devalue the pound. Soros had bet his entire fund in a short sale on the ultimately fulfilled prediction that the British currency would drop in value, a coup that netted him a profit of a claimed $1 billion (see Black Wednesday), which after all the dust settled was closer to $2 billion. In 1997, Soros was blamed for forcing sharp devaluations in Southeast Asian currencies .

Today, the Quantum Group of Funds is reportedly worth $27 billion. Soros recently passed much of the fund's management to his two grown sons, Robert and Jonathan.

Silver Lake Kraftwerk

Soros is launching a new investment fund that plans to profit off of the "green energy" boom, which is entirely dependent on government subsidies supported by the groups Soros funds.

The press release for Silver Lake Kraftwerk says this fund will "leverage technology and business model innovation to improve energy efficiency, reduce waste and emissions, harness renewable energy, and more efficiently use natural resources, among other applications." It goes on to say: “Developing alternative sources of energy and achieving greater energy efficiency is both a significant global investment opportunity and an environmental imperative.”

Soros is hiring Cathy Zoi to run the new fund. Zoi was Barack Obama's "Acting Under Secretary for Energy and Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy." An Al Gore acolyte, Zoi was Obama's point-woman on subsidizing green tech. Now she's going to work for George Soros to profit off of subsidized green tech.

If you remember Zoi's name, it's because of another green-tech conflict of interest: Zoi's husband is an executive at a window company, Serious Windows, which the White House regularly held up as a "poster child of green industry."

Time Warner

Soros owns 2.6 million shares of Time Warner.

Wikimedia Foundation/Wikipedia

Goerge Soros' Open Society Institute is a primary benefactor providing monetary foundational support to the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is the world's largest and most popular online encyclopedia. Wikipedia contains more than 17 million volunteer-authored articles in over 265 languages, and is visited by more than 408 million people every month, making it the fifth most-popular site in the world at the time of this writing.

The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization that operates Wikipedia and other free knowledge projects. It is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit organization with offices in San Francisco, California.

Their stated mission is to empower a global volunteer community to collect and develop the world's knowledge and to make it available to everyone for free, for any purpose. They work together with a network of chapters in many different countries to achieve this goal.

Foundation Support:

• Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
• Omidyar Network
• Google Inc. Charitable Giving Fund of Tides Foundation
• Stanton Foundation
• The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
• Ford Foundation
• Arcadia
• Richard Lounsbery Foundation
• Open Society Institute

OSI/Soros Connections on the Advisory Board:

• Melissa Hagemann manages the Open Access Initiative within the Information Program of the Open Society Institute (OSI)/Soros Foundations.

• Ethan Zuckerman also works with Open Society Institute's Information Program, along with Melissa Hagemann.

• Trevor Neilson is a Partner in the Global Philanthropy Group, a company that advises philanthropists on the development and implementation of philanthropic strategies. Neilson formed DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa) with Bill Gates, Bono and George Soros and served as a founding board member. Neilson stays involved as a member of DATA's policy board.

Propaganda

Better This World - Documentary

George Soros and Open Society Institute: Building Vibrant and Tolerant Democracies, Nov. 9, 2010

In October of 2010, a journalist named Matthew Vadum reported that Soros was "bankrolling a documentary that celebrates left-wing terrorists who plotted to napalm Republicans at the 2008 GOP convention in Minnesota." A trailer for the film, titled Better This World, suggested that the terrorists in question - David Guy McKay and Bradley Neil Crowder - were merely idealistic activists who “set out to prove the strength of their political convictions to themselves and their mentor.”

Muckety.org Chart for George Soros

On December 15, 2010, World Public Opinion, who is funded by the Tides Foundation and therefore George Soros, came out with a study that says that Fox News viewers are misinformed:

Yet another study has been released proving that watching Fox News is detrimental to your intelligence. World Public Opinion, a project managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, conducted a survey of American voters that shows that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources. What’s more, the study shows that greater exposure to Fox News increases misinformation.

[...]

The body of evidence that Fox News is nothing but a propaganda machine dedicated to lies is growing by the day.

Claiming that Fox viewers are basically stupid and have the wrong idea about pretty much every major issue of importance in 2010, AlterNet has stated that the study conclusively shows that Americans have the following misconceptions:

• 91 percent believe the stimulus legislation lost jobs.
• 72 percent believe the health reform law will increase the deficit.
• 72 percent believe the economy is getting worse.
• 60 percent believe climate change is not occurring.
• 49 percent believe income taxes have gone up.
• 63 percent believe the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts.
• 56 percent believe Obama initiated the GM/Chrysler bailout.
• 38 percent believe that most Republicans opposed TARP.
• 63 percent believe Obama was not born in the U.S. (or that it is unclear).

This is a classic piece of propaganda paid for by Soros portraying correct information as misinformation/misconceptions in order to make the general public feel 'stupid' and to pressure them into thinking 'correctly.'

Supporters of World Public Opinion:

• Rockefeller Foundation
• Rockefeller Brothers Fund
• Tides Foundation
• Ford Foundation
• German Marshall Fund of the United States
• Compton Foundation
• Carnegie Corporation
• Benton Foundation
• Ben and Jerry's Foundation
• University of Maryland Foundation
• Circle Foundation
• JEHT Foundation
• Stanley Foundation
• Ploughshares Fund
• Calvert Foundation
• Secure World Foundation
• Oak Foundation
• United States Institute of Peace

Notice that the Tides Foundation is listed as number three on the list of supporters.

Soros Documentary Fund

In 1996, Soros launched the Soros Documentary Fund with a mission to "spur awareness, action and social change." Over the following decade, this Fund would help finance the production of several hundred documentaries. In 2001, the Fund's leadership was turned over to Robert Redford's Sundance Institute with a continuing mission: "to support the production of documentaries on social justice, human rights, civil liberties and freedom of expression issues around the world."

According to journalist Rondi Adamson, most of the documentaries that the Fund supports "are highly critical of some aspect of American life, capitalism or Western culture," and generally share Soros' worldview that "America is a troubling if not sinister influence in the world, that the War on Terror is a fraud and terrorists are misunderstood freedom fighters and that markets are fundamentally unjust." Films which have been produced with the aid of Soros' funding include Soldiers of Conscience (2007), An American Soldier (2008) and My Baghdad Family (in production as of late 2008).

George Soros - Quotes

Click here to view quotes from George Soros.

Awards

Soros has received honorary degrees from the New School for Social Research, Oxford University, the Budapest University of Economics and Yale University. In 1995, the University of Bologna awarded Soros its highest honor, the Laurea Honoris Causa, in recognition of his efforts to promote open societies throughout the world.

In 2010, Soros won the CIC Globalist of the Year award.

Publications

• "The Alchemy of Finance" (1987)
• "Opening the Soviet System" (1990)
• "Underwriting Democracy" (1991)
• "Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve" (1995)
• "The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered" (1998)
• "Science and the Open Society: The Future of Karl Popper's Philosophy" (2000) With Mark Amadeus Notturno
• "Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism" (2000)
• "George Soros on Globalization" (2002)
• "The Bubble of American Supremacy" (2005)
• "The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of The War on Terror" (Public Affairs, 2006)
• "The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What it Means" (2008)

Biographies

• "Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire" by Michael T. Kaufman (2002)
• "Soros: The World's Most Influential Investor" by Robert Slater (2009)

Journalism

Authored

• My Philanthropy, The New York Review of Books, June, 2011
• "Why I support legal marijuana", The Wall Street Journal, October 26, 2010
• "America needs stimulus not virtue", Financial Times, October 4, 2010
• "The Crisis and the Euro", The New York Review of Books, August 19, 2010
• "Paulson Cannot be Allowed a Blank Cheque", Financial Times, September 24, 2008
• "On Israel, America and AIPAC", The New York Review of Books, April 12, 2007
• "The Bubble of American Supremacy", The Atlantic, December 2003
• "Soros on Brazil", Financial Times, August 13, 2002
• "Bitter Thoughts with Faith in Russia", Moskovskiye Novosti (Moscow News), translated from the Russian by Olga Kryazheva, February 27, 2000
• "The Capitalist Threat", The Atlantic Monthly, February 1997

About

• John Authers, Book Review, "A successful prophet of the markets", Financial Times, May 19, 2008
• Connie Bruck, Abstract of New Yorker profile of Soros: "The World According to Soros", The New Yorker, January 23, 1995
• Neil Clark, Analysis of Soros' role in Eastern Europe, New Statesman
• Malcolm Gladwell, "Blowing Up," The New Yorker/gladwell.com, April 22 & 29, 2002
• John Horvath, The Soros Effect on Central and Eastern Europe, Telepolis, June 10, 1997
• Matt Welch, "Open Season on 'Open Society': Why an anti-communist Holocaust survivor is being demonized as a Socialist, Self-hating Jew", Reason Magazine, December 8, 2003
• TIME's 25 Most Influential Americans, TIME Magazine, April 21, 1997
• The TIME 100, The Power Givers, George Soros, TIME Magazine, May 14, 2007

Scholarly Perspectives

• Bryant, C. G. A. (2002). "George Soros's theory of reflexivity: a comparison with the theories of Giddens and Beck and a consideration of its practical value". Economy and Society 31 (1): 112–131. doi:10.1080/03085140120109277.
• Cross, R.; Strachan, D. (1997). "On George Soros and economic analysis". Kyklos 50: 561–574. doi:10.1111/1467-6435.00030.
• Kwong, C.P. (2008). "Mathematical analysis of Soros's theory of reflexivity". ArXiv: 0901.4447. http://arxiv.org/pdf/0901.4447.
• Pettis, Michael (2001). "The Volatility Machine: Emerging Economies and the Threat of Financial Collapse". Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195143302.
• Stone, Diane (2007). "Market Principles, Philanthropic Ideals and Public Service Values: The Public Policy Program at the Central European University". PS: Political Science and Politics: 545–551.

Speeches

• Testimony of George Soros to a congressional sub-committee, Sept. 15, 1998
• The Theory of Reflexivity, Delivered April 26, 1994 to the MIT Department of Economics World Economy

Interviews

• Fareed Zakaria discussing economic crisis with George Soros on GPS, CNN, Oct. 12, 2008
• "George Soros on Freedom", The Leonard Lopate Show (WNYC) - Audio Archive, June 12, 2006
• The Crisis of Global Capitalism, PBS, Spring, 1999
• George Soros Interview On 60 Minutes, Sweetness & Light, Apr. 4, 2010
• Wall $treet Week with FORTUNE - Dangers of an unfettered market PBS, Sept. 20, 2002
• The international financial crisis - International Solutions, BNET, March-Apr., 1999
• David Brancaccio interviews George Soros, PBS, Sept. 12, 2003
• Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google interviews George Soros, Google Video, 2006
• Exclusive Interview With George Soros, Fox News Interview with Neil Cavuto, October 11, 2006
• Interview with George Soros, IMYO, September 5, 2000

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Perkins Coie Gets Help from George Soros

Marc Elias with Sarah Gonski, left, and Amanda Callais.

A report from the Washington Post dated August 7, 2016 revealed that George Soros gave five million dollars to Perkins Coie to fight voter integrity legislation that Marc Elias believed would "diminish the impact of important Democratic Party constituencies of African Americans, Latinos and young people."

Verbatim:

PHOENIX — After a lopsided string of court victories knocking down state voting restrictions, Democratic superlawyer Marc E. Elias was literally flying high last week in his pursuit of other ­Republican-initiated voting laws he says hurt his party’s most loyal constituencies.

First up was the battleground of Ohio, where Elias told a federal appeals court that the state had unlawfully cut a few days of early voting disproportionately used by African Americans.

Less than 24 hours later, the lawyer whose firm counts Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee among its clients was in a federal courtroom 1,600 miles away. He charged that Arizona’s new law regarding the handling of absentee ballots was an unconstitutional effort to discourage Latino and Native American voters as well as those who assist them.

Elias, a go-to lawyer for Democrats in recount fights and redistricting battles, has now taken a prominent and somewhat controversial place among the coalition of groups challenging a wave of state election laws that were rewritten in recent years.

With a multimillion-dollar commitment from liberal mega-donor George Soros, Elias is challenging laws that, he argues, diminish the impact of important Democratic Party constituencies of African Americans, Latinos and young people.

“I don’t think people should think we’re done filing lawsuits for this election cycle,” Elias said in a taxicab interview after two flights and a two-hour weather delay delivered him to Phoenix.

It has been a heady few weeks for those challenging voting-law changes passed by Republican legislatures. Judges have either blocked or softened restrictions adopted in Texas, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Dakota and Kansas.

Those are among the 15 states that would have new and stricter laws in place for the coming presidential election, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. The states say they are seeking to combat voter fraud and protect confidence in the electoral process.

But in the past month, a long list of judges, appointed by both Democrats and Republicans, have found the threat either negligible or nonexistent. Instead, the judges said, there is evidence that the laws hinder minority participation in the process.

Wisconsin’s experience, for instance, “demonstrates that a preoccupation with mostly phantom election fraud leads to real incidents of disenfranchisement,” wrote U.S. District Judge James D. Peterson last month.

But North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) is asking the Supreme Court to review the appeals court ruling that said his state’s election-law overhaul was aimed at discouraging minority turnout, not protecting against fraud.

“Citing limited cases of recorded voter fraud begs the question: If your house has never been broken into, do you still lock the door?” McCrory wrote in a USA Today op-ed.

The legal battles against voting restrictions continue to be led by civil rights groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Advancement Project and others.

But Elias’s efforts explicitly on behalf of Democrats have made 2016 different. Besides joining the efforts of civil rights groups in several states, he has also struck out on his own, bringing additional claims in states that are especially important for Hillary Clinton’s campaign and future Democratic candidates. These include Ohio, Arizona and Virginia.

Some who have worked on voting issues for years are wary of the optics. "I love Marc, but I want to be very clear about who we are and who he represents," said Sherrilyn Ifill, president and general counsel of the NAACP LDF. "I don’t want what we have been doing for years [protecting minority voting rights] to be dismissed as partisan."

She adds that as a civil rights lawyer, "I sued plenty of Democrats."

Elias joined civil rights groups in some cases but said he also filed lawsuits in places where a favorable ruling will help the Democratic Party.

"We’re challenging the laws in the states in which we have the greatest concern,” he said. “Regardless of who the plaintiff is, protecting civil rights ought to be something that we all strive to do.”

Elias said he understands that civil rights groups fear that his involvement hinders their hope for bipartisan support for voting rights — for instance, strengthening the Voting Rights Act.

But he notes it has been three years since the Supreme Court struck down a key part of the law that required some states, mainly in the South, to get federal approval for changes to voting laws to make sure they did not harm minority voters. Republican leaders in Congress have done nothing to come up with standards that could lead to renewed federal oversight, he said.

“The way to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act is to make Nancy Pelosi the speaker of the House and Chuck Schumer the [Senate] majority leader and put Hillary Clinton in the White House,” he said.

Even if anyone tried, there would be no way to separate Elias the voting rights lawyer from Elias the political lawyer. Asked about the clients he and his colleagues at the law firm of Perkins Coie represent, Elias replies: “We represent the DNC, the DSCC, the DCCC, the DGA, the DLCC, House Majority PAC, Senate Majority PAC, Priorities USA, Emily's List, 40-plus Democratic senators, 100-plus Democratic House members.”

Translation in outside-the-Beltway English: the national Democratic Party, its governors, almost all of its members of Congress and its campaign and fundraising apparatus. And its presidential nominee.

Elias came to Washington as a new lawyer in 1993, when he said there was really no such thing as “political law.” The 2000 presidential recount in Florida and the McCain-Feingold campaign finance act of 2002 changed that.

Elias’s personal breakthrough came when he represented Al Franken in the recount of the 2008 Minnesota Senate race. It was the longest recount in history — eight months — and resulted in a 312-vote win for Franken. Since then, Elias has been the go-to lawyer for a string of Democrats in recounts and has never lost.

He is also a major player in campaign-finance law and redistricting disputes. He won at the Supreme Court last term when the justices upheld a court-imposed remapping of congressional districts in Virginia that could produce a second African American congressman from that state.

But Elias’s entrance into voting rights protection is something new. While Elias will not discuss the funding for his project, Soros’s spokesman Michael Vachon said Elias approached them with a set of proposals for challenging state restrictions that would be helpful “up and down the ballot.”

That was appealing to Soros, who began his political giving with voter mobilization efforts, Vachon said. And they agreed with Elias that there was work to be done beyond what the civil rights groups, to which Soros also contributes, were doing.

“The other groups have to be nonpartisan,” Vachon said. “We agreed there was a need to look at this from a partisan viewpoint.”

Soros has given $5 million to the trust that funds the litigation, Vachon said, and Elias said he has picked his shots with an eye toward “protecting the Obama coalition” of African Americans, Latinos and young people.

In Ohio, Elias challenged the state’s elimination of the “Golden Week,” a period of a few days before an election in which voters can both register and cast their ballots at the same time.

Elias won the first round. After a trial in federal district court, Judge Michael Watson, nominated to the court by President George W. Bush, said the elimination of the period was a minor burden on voters but one that disproportionately affected African Americans.

Watson said the law violated constitutional equal protections and the Voting Rights Act because the Republican legislature’s reasons for doing away with the Golden Week did not justify the action.

On appeal, Ohio Solicitor General Eric Murphy told a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit that Ohio has one of the most generous early voting periods in the nation, while some states offer none at all.

But Elias told the court that it didn’t matter. The issue, he said, “is what will the change do to burden minority voters in Ohio.” The judges said they would rule on the appeal soon.

Likewise in Arizona, Elias told U.S. District Judge Douglas L. Rayes that a new law making it a felony for anyone other than the voter or a family member or caregiver to turn in an absentee ballot was suspect.

The law upends a common Democratic practice of gathering ballots in minority communities or on reservations, and there has never been evidence that it has led to fraud, Elias said.

Sara J. Agne, representing the state Republican Party, said the legislature did not have to wait for fraud in order to take precautions. She noted that more than half of the states have restrictions on who can handle absentee ballots.

Rayes said he would rule before next week, when the law is scheduled to take effect.

Elias will be back in Phoenix next month anyway. He is challenging cuts in the number of polling places that led to long lines and the turning away of some voters during the state’s presidential primaries in March.

Early on, longtime voting rights activists worried that in Elias’s zeal for helping Democrats in 2016, he would file suits that would later come back to haunt them.

“Some in the voting rights community expressed concern when he came into these voting cases that he could establish some bad precedent,” said Richard Hasen, a professor at the University of California at Irvine, whose Election Law Blog serves as something of a bulletin board for election lawyers. “He’s done well so far, however, and with the changing balance of power on the courts, he may well have continuing success in at least some of his cases.”

Elias heard the criticism too.

“All I can tell you is we sued in Virginia and we got a consent decree on long lines” at the polls, he said. “We sued in North Carolina and obviously that’s worked out. We’ve sued in Wisconsin and we’ve won in the district court. We sued in Ohio and won before the district court and now have the argument in the 6th Circuit.”

He paused. “So those who were concerned we were going to make bad law so far don’t have much to point to. We’ve made a lot of good law.”