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Soros backs Egypt ANHRI’s “Wasla” to give Arab bloggers exposure
AFP, Saturday, 3 April 2010
A weekly magazine aiming to link Arab bloggers with politicians and the elderly was launched in Egypt on Thursday at the initiative of a women’s group backed by US billionaire George Soros.
The weekly Wasla – or “The Link” – is being touted as a first for the Arab world, with plans for articles by bloggers as a way of giving them a wider readership.
It is published by the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information and financially supported by the Open Society Institute created by Soros, said ANHRI director Gamal Eid.
“We want to challenge our audience, and open its eyes to the changes society is experiencing, particularly through youths and blogs in which they appear,” he said.
“The goal is to show the older generation that certain things exist,” he said, adding as an example: “Whether we agree or not, gay communities are a reality in Egyptian and Arab societies.”
The 16-page weekly will include two pages in English and will have an initial print run of 1,000 copies for distribution to political, academic, and literary circles. An electronic version will also be available.
Source: Independent.UK
View the complete SOROS FILES
George Soros gives $100 million to Human Rights Watch
Billionaire’s biggest single grant to an American organisation will allow HRW to expand its reach into developing nations.
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 7 September 2010
The billionaire financier George Soros is giving $100 million (£65 million) to America’s leading human rights organisation in a move that will enable the group to massively expand its operations around the world.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) will increase its staff of 300 by about a third on the back of the five-year Soros grant, using the new firepower to increase its advocacy in key emerging regions in the developing world. The donation, the largest in HRW’s history and bigger than any previous single grant from Soros to a US organisation, aims to help the group fulfil its ambition to boast a truly global reach.
The New York-based organisation, formed in 1978 as Helsinki Watch, has built its reputation as a leading watchdog on governmental abuses around the world. But it has tended to focus its energies on western capitals, believing the best way to improve human rights was to persuade developed countries to use their muscle to effect change.
Increasingly, though, the group has become aware of the strength of developing nations such as Brazil, South Africa and India, who may now hold more sway in their regions than Washington, London or Berlin. The Soros grant will be used to beef up operations in those countries.
“Think of Zimbabwe,” Kenneth Roth, HRW’s director, said. “The US and European Union all have great policies on Zimbabwe, but it’s not enough: the key to changing Mugabe is South Africa.”
Roth also gave the example of Sri Lanka, where both the United States and the European Union have strong human rights policies but have failed to prevent president Mahinda Rajapaksa “thumbing his nose at the West”. A HRW focus on India and other Asian countries, including China, could have more impact.
Announcing the grant, Soros said he was drawn to the idea of helping the group extend its global influence as part of his philanthropic mission to use his huge wealth, obtained through interventions in the money markets, to forward the cause of open societies.
“Human rights underpin our greatest aspirations: they’re at the heart of open societies,” he said. “Human Rights Watch must be present in capitals around the globe, addressing local issues, allied with local rights groups and engaging with local government officials.”
The grant, Soros said, would inspire a sea-change in the organisation that would result in its largely New York-based management having up to half its board members outside the US.
So far this year Soros has handed out about $800m through his Open Society Foundations. Despite the economic downturn, which has caused a dip in philanthropic giving, Soros has been increasing his largesse recently, partly, he has said, out of recognition of his age – he turned 80 last month – and a desire to distribute much of his wealth during his lifetime.
Soros was born in Hungary. He is a consummate player of international currencies, and is famous for having made about $1 billion during the Black Wednesday crisis in the UK in 1992.
His donation comes at an opportune moment for HRW. The group has had a turbulent year, sustaining criticism for its reporting on Gaza war crimes, which it said amounted to a disinformation campaign by the Israeli government. Its own co-founder, Robert Bernstein, has accused the group of bias against Israel in its handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Source: Guardian.UK
Is El-Baradei for the Egyptian people?
PressTV interviews Ralf Shoenman, author of the Hidden History of Zionism.
Mohamed el-Baradei, recognized by both the US and other foreign powers, who was absent from Egypt in the past 30 years, wants the top spot in the country.
But, do the Egyptian people want him and would he bring about change, which would go against the US agenda?
In this regard, Press TV interviews Ralph Shoenman, author of the Hidden History of Zionism and expert on Zionist impact on the Middle East.
Press TV: Referring to the statements made by US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, where she said it is important to support the transition process headed by new vice president Suleiman. In your opinion is the US finally showing their support for Suleiman by raising his profile?
Ralf Schoenman: Let’s be clear about this. What you are describing is a cruel deception and a complete hoax; a deception and a betrayal of the Egyptian people.
A map of Turkey was published in the New York Times as a model of what is intended for Egypt. You have to keep in mind that Egypt now under Mubarak and in the past 30 years has become a semi-colonial country – One hundred families own more than 90% of all property and wealth. And the map of Turkey that was published laid out what was intended in Egypt – an alliance between the senior military and the oligarchy to preserve the status quo, to deepen the privatization of the property and the wealth of the country and to intensify the exploitation of its workers. Read more…
Relation Maps: The Key Players
Diagrams showing the relations of Mohamed El Baradie, to International Crisis Group, George Soros & Zbigniew Brzezinski
International Crisis Group & Mohamed El Baradei
Zbigniew Brzezinski
George Soros
Relation maps via Muckety.com
Read more on Mohamed El Baradie connection to George Soros
Soros Connection to El Baradei & Egypt Revolution
Open Society Institute
In 1993, Soros created the Open Society Institute, which supports the Soros foundations working to develop democratic institutions throughout Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The “open society” basically refers to a “test and evaluate” approach to social engineering. The Open Society Institute has active programs in more than 60 countries around the world with total expenditures currently averaging approximately $600 million a year.
Regime Collapse in Egypt
Watch The Great Deception Addendum
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.[26] 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:
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- 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:
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- 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.”
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- 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.
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- 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.”
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- Soros did not mention his ties to ElBaradei.
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- Soros did, however, single out Israel as “the main stumbling block” in paving the way toward transition in the Middle East.
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- “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:[28]
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- 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:
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- 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.
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- In other words, the Podesta brothers are on both sides of this international crisis.
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- …
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- 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.
For more on the El Baradei – Soros Connection, Watch The Great Deception Addendum
Zbigniew Brzezinski: The man standing behind Obama & Osama!
Zbigniew Brzezinski (born March 28, 1928 in Warsaw, Poland) is a Polish American political scientist, geostrategist, and statesman who served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981.
Major foreign policy events during his term of office included the normalization of relations with the People’s Republic of China (and the severing of ties with the Republic of China), the signing of the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II), the brokering of the Camp David Accords, the transition of Iran from an important US client state to an anti-Western Islamic Republic, encouraging dissidents in Eastern Europe and emphasizing certain human rights in order to undermine the influence of the Soviet Union, the financing of the mujahideen in Afghanistan in response to the Soviet deployment of forces there (allegedly either to help deter a Russian invasion, or to deliberately increase the chance of such an intervention occurring—or for both contradictory reasons simultaneously being embraced by separate US officials) and the arming of these rebels to counter the Soviet invasion.
He was chosen by Barack Obama’s as top Foreign Policy Advisor on the Middle East, and is also a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a member of various boards and councils, including the International Crisis Group.
Soros fingerprints on Libya bombing
By Aaron Klein, March 23, 2011
© 2011 WorldNetDaily
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 term “war crimes” has at times been indiscriminately used by various U.N.-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.
Soros: Philanthropist? Spook? or Philanthropist spook?
by Heather Cottin, December 9, 2003
The tactic of creating political hysteria was necessary for the United States to carry out its Balkan policy. It was repeated in 1999 when HRW functioned as the shock troops of indoctrination for the NATO attack on Yugoslavia. The institutions of George Soros stood behind it.
This is not a case of narcissistic personality disorder; this is how George Soros exercises the authority of United States hegemony in the world today. Soros foundations and financial machinations are partly responsible for the destruction of socialism in Eastern Europe and the former USSR. He has set his sights on China. He was part of the full court press that dismantled Yugoslavia. Calling himself a philanthropist, billionaire George Soros’ role is to tighten the ideological stranglehold of globalization and the New World Order while promoting his own financial gain. Soros’ commercial and “philanthropic” operations are clandestine, contradictory and coactive. And as far as his economic activities are concerned, by his own admission, he is without conscience; a capitalist who functions with absolute amorality.
Master-builder of the new bribe sector systematically bilking the world He thrusts himself upon world statesmen and they respond. He has been close to Henry Kissinger, Vaclav Havel and Poland’s General Wojciech Jaruzelski. 4
He supports the Dalai Lama, whose institute is housed in the Presidio in San Francisco, also home to the foundation run by Soros’ friend, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. 5
Soros is a leading figure on the Council of Foreign Relations, the World Economic Forum, and Human Rights Watch (HRW). In 1994, after a meeting with his philosophical guru, Sir Karl Popper, Soros ordered his companies to start investing in Central and Eastern European communications.
The Federal Radio Television Administration of the Czech Republic accepted his offer to take over and fund the archives of Radio Free Europe. Soros moved the archives to Prague and spent over $15 million on their maintenance. 2 A Soros foundation now runs CIA-created Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty jointly with the U.S. and RFE/RL, which has expanded into the Caucasus and Asia. 3
Soros is the founder and funder of the Open Society Institute. He created and maintains the International Crisis Group (ICG) which, among other things, has been active in the Balkans since the destruction of Yugoslavia. Soros works openly with the United States Institute of Peace-an overt arm of the CIA…
“Yes, I do have a foreign policy…my goal is to become the conscience of the world.”
George Soros
He thrusts himself upon world statesmen and they respond. He has been close to Henry Kissinger, Vaclav Havel and Poland’s General Wojciech Jaruzelski. 4 He supports the Dalai Lama, whose institute is housed in the Presidio in San Francisco, also home to the foundation run by Soros’ friend, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. 5
When anti-globalization forces were freezing in the streets outside New York’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel in February 2002, George Soros was inside addressing the World Economic Forum. As the police forced protesters into metal cages on Park Avenue, Soros was extolling the virtues of the “Open Society” and joined Zbigniew Brzezinski, Samuel Huntington, Francis ***uyama and others.
WHO IS THIS GUY?
George Soros was born in Hungary in 1930 to Jewish parents so removed from their roots that they once vacationed in Nazi Germany. 6
Soros lived under the Nazis, but with the triumph of the Communists moved to England in 1947. There, Soros came under the sway of the philosopher Karl Popper, at the London School of Economics. Popper was a lionized anti-communist ideologue and his teachings formed the basis for Soros’ political tendencies. There is hardly a speech, book or article that Soros writes that does not pay obeisance to Popper’s influence.
Knighted in 1965, Popper coined the slogan “Open Society,” which eventually manifested in Soros’ Open Society Fund and Institute. Followers of Popper repeat his words like true believers. Popperian philosophy epitomizes Western individual ism. Soros left England in 1956, and found work on Wall Street where, in the 1960s, he invented the “hedge fund.”
“…hedge funds catered to very wealthy individuals… The largely secretive funds, usually trading in offshore locations. . produced astronomically superior results. The size of the “bets” often became self fulfilling prophecies: ‘rumors of a position taken by the big hedge funds prompted other investors to follow suit,’ which would in turn force up the price the hedgers were betting on to begin with.” 7
ElBaradei: Soros’s Man in Cairo
by Maidhc Ó Cathail, February 12, 2011
In a February 3 Washington Post op-ed piece titled “Why Obama has to get Egypt right,” George Soros wrote that the U.S. president had “much to gain by moving out in front and siding with the public demand for dignity and democracy.” Notwithstanding the reasonableness of his advice, past experience suggests that the Hungarian-born hedge fund manager has something to gain himself from regime change in Cairo.
In his public memo to the president he helped elect, Soros noted that it was a “hopeful sign” that the Muslim Brotherhood was cooperating with Mohamed ElBaradei, whom he disinterestedly described as “the Nobel laureate who is seeking to run for president.” He neglected to mention, however, that up to ElBaradei’s January 27 return to crisis-torn Egypt, the former IAEA chief had been a member of the Board of Trustees of the International Crisis Group, which Soros, the thirty-fifth richest person in the world, helped create and finance.
The International Crisis Group describes itself as “an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organization committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict,” but self-descriptions can often be misleading. “The ICG is a fascinating case study of the way human rights organizations, governments and international corporations work hand in glove these days,” George Szamuely wrote of the influential think tank’s role in the Balkans. “‘Independent’ figures like Soros identify a ‘crisis’ demanding urgent government attention. Governments act on them and then parcel out the lucrative contracts to Soros and his pals.”
Read more…
Meet George Soros
George Soros at a Glance:
Age: 81
Source: hedge funds, self-made
Residence: Katonah, NY
Country of Citizenship: United States
Education: Bachelor of Arts / Science, London School of Economics
Marital Status: Divorced
Children: 5
Forbes Ranking:
Net Worth $22 Bln as of September 2011
#7 Forbes 400
#46 Forbes Billionaires
#20 in United States
George Soros; born August 12, 1930, as Schwartz, George Soros is a notorious Hungarian-American financier, businessman and “philanthropist” focused on supporting liberal ideals and spreading “Democracy”.
He became known as “the Man Who Broke the Bank of England” after he made $1 billion during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crises.
Soros is the founder & Chairman of the Soros Foundation and the Open Society Institute, he is also one of 8 members of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees of the International Crisis Group and a former member of the Board of Directors of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations.
He played a significant role in the peaceful transition from communism to capitalism in Hungary (1984–89) and provided Europe’s largest-ever higher education endowment to Central European University in Budapest. Later, the Open Society Institute’s programs in Georgia were considered by Russian and Western observers to have been crucial in the success of the Rose Revolution.
The Open Society Institute has active programs in more than 60 countries around the world with total expenditures currently averaging approximately $600 million a year.
In 2003, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker wrote in the foreword of Soros’ book The Alchemy of Finance:
George Soros has made his mark as an enormously successful speculator, wise enough to largely withdraw when still way ahead of the game. The bulk of his enormous winnings is now devoted to encouraging transitional and emerging nations to become ‘open societies,’.
Read more…
