George Soros Part 2

THE SOROS AGENDAS

Both the ACLU and HRW have long promoted one of the central contentions of Soros's Open Society Institute: the notion that America is institutionally an oppressive nation and a habitual violator of human rights both at home and abroad—indeed, the very antithesis of the type of “open society” Soros reveres. Consider first the ACLU, whose advisory board once included the former Weather Underground terrorist Bernardine Dohrn.36 The ACLU has opposed virtually all post-9/11 national security measures enacted by the U.S. government, depicting those measures not only as excessively harsh and invasive generally, but also as discriminatory against Muslims in particular.37 Moreover, the organization has filed numerous lawsuits seeking to limit the government's ability to locate, monitor, and apprehend terrorist operatives. It consistently depicts American society as one that is rife with intractable racial injustice. And it works tirelessly to protect illegal immigrants against “governmental abuse and discrimination.”38 These (and many other) ACLU activities and policy positions are entirely consistent with those of Aryeh Neier and George Soros, as evidenced by the fact that between 1999 and 2008, OSI awarded $8.69 million in grants to the ACLU Foundation.39

Neier's other training ground, Human Rights Watch, has a long history of pointing an accusatory finger at America's allegedly numerous transgressions. Most notably, HRW has derided the U.S. war on terror as a foolhardy endeavor rooted in blindness to the realization that terrorism stems, in large measure, from America's failure “to promote fundamental rights around the world.”40 In a March 2007 speech, HRW executive director Kenneth Roth charged that the United States, by routinely “using torture and inhumane treatment” to deal with its foes, had “severely damaged its credibility when it comes to promoting human rights” in other nations.41 Between 2000 and 2008, the Open Society Institute awarded grants and other contributions to HRW that collectively totaled $6,386,477.42 Then, in September 2010, Soros announced that he would soon be giving HRW another $100 million.43 Notably, Soros himself once servedon HRW's Europe and Central Asia Advisory Committee.44

OSI's total assets today exceed $1.9 billion. Each year, the Institute awards scores of millions of dollars in grants to organizations that—like the ACLU and HRW—promote worldviews and objectives accordant with those of George Soros.45 Following is a sampling of the major agendas advanced by groups that Soros and OSI support financially. Listed under each category heading are a few OSI donees fitting that description.
Organizations that accuse America of violating the civil rights and liberties of many of its residents:
  • The Arab American Institute impugns many of the “sweeping” and “unreasonable” post-9/11 counterterrorism measures that have unfairly “targeted Arab Americans.”46
  • The Bill of Rights Defense Committee has persuaded the political leadership in more than 400 American cities and counties to pledge noncompliance with the anti-terrorism measure known as the Patriot Act, on grounds that the legislation tramples on people's civil liberties.47
Organizations that depict America as a nation whose enduring racism must be counterbalanced by racial and ethnic preferences in favor of nonwhites:
Organizations that specifically portray the American criminal-justice system as racist and inequitable:
  • The Sentencing Project asserts that prison-sentencing patterns discriminate against nonwhites, and seeks “to reduce the reliance on incarceration.”52
  • Critical Resistance contends that crime stems from “inequality and powerlessness,” which can be rectified through wholesale redistribution of wealth.53
  • The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights charges that criminal laws “are enforced in a manner that is massively and pervasively biased.”54
Organizations that call for massive social change, and for the recruitment and training of activist leaders to help foment that change:
Organizations that disparage capitalism while promoting a dramatic expansion of social-welfare programs funded by ever-escalating taxes:
  • The Center for Economic and Policy Research asserts that “the welfare state has softened the impact” of “the worst excesses and irrationalities of a market system” and its “injustices.”63
  • The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities advocates greater tax expenditures on such assistance programs as Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, food stamps, and low-income housing initiatives.64  
  • The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights was founded by the revolutionary communist Van Jones. This anti-poverty organization claims that “decades of disinvestment in our cities,” coupled with America's allegedly imperishable racism, have “led to despair and homelessness.”65
  • The Emma Lazarus Fund: In 1996 George Soros said he was “appalled” by the recently signed welfare-reform law that empowered states to limit legal immigrants' access to public assistance. In response to this “mean-spirited attack on immigrants,” he launched an Open Society Institute project known as the Emma Lazarus Fund and endowed it with $50 million.66 
Organizations that support socialized medicine in the United States:
  • Health Care for America Now (HCAN) is a vast network of organizations supporting, ideally, a “single-payer” model where the federal government would be in charge of financing and administering the entire U.S. healthcare system.67 During the political debate over “Obamacare” in 2009 and 2010, HCAN’s strategy was to try to achieve such a system incrementally, first by implementing a “public option”—i.e., a government insurance agency to “compete” with private insurers, so that Americans would be “no longer at the mercy of the private insurance industry.”68 Because such an agency would not need to show a profit in order to remain in business, and because it could tax and regulate its private competitors in whatever fashion it pleased, this “public option” would inevitably force private insurers out of the industry. In August 2009, Soros pledged to give HCAN $5 million to promote its campaign for reform.69
Organizations that strive to move American politics to the left by promoting the election of progressive political candidates:
  • Project Vote is the voter-mobilization arm of the notoriously corrupt ACORN, whose voter-registration drives and get-out-the-vote initiatives have been marred by massive levels of fraud and corruption.70 
  • Catalist seeks “to help progressive organizations realize … electoral success by building and operating a robust national voter database.”71
  • The Brennan Center for Justice aims to “fully restore voting rights following criminal conviction”72—significant because research shows that ex-felons are far likelier to vote for Democratic political candidates than for Republicans.73 
  • The Progressive States Network seeks to “pass progressive legislation in all fifty states by providing coordinated research and strategic advocacy tools to forward-thinking state legislators.”74
  • The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, to which George Soros personally donated $8,000 in 2010, works“to elect bold progressive candidates to federal office … more often.”75
Organizations that promote leftist ideals and worldviews in the media and the arts:
In May 2011, the Media Research Center reported that from 2003-2001, Soros had spent more than $48 million "funding media properties, including the infrastructure of news -- journalism schools, investigative journalism and even industry organizations." Among the beneficiaries of Soros's money were such entities as: NBC, ABC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Columbia Journalism Review, ProPublica, the Center for Public Integrity, the Center for Investigative Reporting, The Lens, the Columbia School of Journalism, the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Organization of News Ombudsmen, National Public Radio, the Pacifica Foundation, The American Prospect Inc. (the owner and publisher of The American Prospect magazine), the Nation Institute, the Media Fund, the Independent Media Center, the Independent Media Institute, Media Matters For America, and Free Press. Below are some brief descriptions of a few of these organizations:
  • The American Prospect, Inc. is the owner and publisher of The American Prospect magazine, which tries to “counteract the growing influence of conservative media.”76
  • Free Press is a “media reform” organization co-founded by Robert McChesney, who calls for “a revolutionary program to overthrow the capitalist system” and to “rebuil[d] the entire society on socialist principles.”77  
  • The Independent Media Institute aims to “change the world”78 via projects like AlterNet, an online news magazine calling itself “a key player in the echo chamber of progressive ideas and vision.”79
  • The Nation Institute operates synergistically with the far-left Nation magazine, which works “to extend the reach of progressive ideas” into the American mainstream.80  
  • The Pacifica Foundation owns and operates Pacifica Radio, awash from its birth with the socialist-Marxist rhetoric of class warfare and anti-capitalism.
  • Media Matters For America: For a number of years, the Open Society Institute gave indirect funding—filtering its grants first through other Soros-backed operations81—to this “progressive research and information center” which “monitor[s]” and “correct[s] conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.”82 In October 2010, Sorosannounced that he would soon donate $1 million directly to Media Matters.83
  • Sundance Institute: In 1996, Soros launched his Soros Documentary Fund to produce “social justice” films that would “spur awareness, action and social change.” In 2001, this Fund became part of actor-director Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute. Between 1996 and 2008, OSI earmarked at least $5.2 million for the production of several hundred documentaries, many of which were highly critical of capitalism, American society, or Western culture generally.84 In 2009, Soros pledged another $5 million to the Sundance Institute.85
Organizations that seek to inject the American judicial system with leftist values:
  • The Alliance for Justice consistently depicts Republican judicial nominees as “radical right-wing[ers]” and “extremists” whose views range far outside the boundaries of mainstream public opinion.86
  • The American Constitution Society for Law and Policy seeks to indoctrinate young law students to view the Constitution as an evolving or “living” document,87 and to reject “conservative buzzwords such as 'originalism' and 'strict construction.'”88  
  • Justice at Stake89 promotes legislation that would replace judicial elections with a “merit-selection” system where a small committee of legal elites, unaccountable to the public, would pick those most “qualified” to serve as judges. OSI has spent at least $45.4 million on efforts to change the way judges are chosen in many American states.90
Organizations that advance leftist agendas by infiltrating churches and religious congregations:
Think tanks that promote leftist policies:
  • The Institute for Policy Studies has long supported Communist and anti-American causes around the world. It seeks to provide a corrective to the “unrestrained greed” of “markets and individualism.”96
  • The New America Foundation tries to influence public opinion on such topics as healthcare, environmentalism, energy policy, and global governance.97  
  • The Urban Institute favors socialized medicine, expansion of the federal welfare bureaucracy, and tax hikes for higher income-earners.98
Organizations that promote open borders, mass immigration, a watering down of current immigration laws, increased rights and benefits for illegal aliens, and ultimately amnesty:
  • The American Immigration Council—formerly known as the the American Immigration Law Foundation—supports “birthright citizenship” for children born to illegal immigrants in the U.S.99
  • Casa de Maryland periodically sponsors “know your rights” training sessions to teach illegals how to evade punishment in the event that they are apprehended in an immigration raid.100  
  • The Immigrant Legal Resource Center belongs to the sanctuary movement that tries to shield illegal aliens from the law.101
  • The Migration Policy Institute advocates a more permissive U.S. refugee admissions and resettlement policy, as well as more social-welfare benefits for illegals residing in the U.S.102 
  • LatinoJustice PRLDF is a legal advocacy group that “protects opportunities for all Latinos … especially the most vulnerable—new immigrants and the poor.”103
  • The Immigration Policy Center states that “[r]equiring the 10-11 million unauthorized immigrants residing in the U.S. to register with the government and meet eligibility criteria in order to gain legal status is a key element of comprehensive immigration reform.”104
  • The National Immigration Forum opposes the enhancement of the U.S. Border Patrol and the construction of a border fence to prevent illegal immigration.105  
  • The National Immigration Law Center works to help low-income immigrants gain access to government-funded welfare programs on the same basis as legal American citizens.106
Organizations that oppose virtually all post-9/11 national-security measures enacted by the U.S. government:
  • The Center for Constitutional Rights, founded by four longtime supporters of communist causes,107 hascondemned the “immigration sweeps, ghost detentions, extraordinary rendition, and every other illegal program the government has devised” in response to “the so-called War on Terror.”108
  • The National Security Archive Fund collects and publishes declassified documents (obtained through the Freedom of Information Act) to a degree that compromises American national security and the safety of intelligence agents.109
Organizations that defend suspected anti-American terrorists and their abetters:
  • The Constitution Project has supported such notorious figures as Salim Ahmed Hamdan (Osama bin Laden's bodyguard and chauffeur) and Jose Padilla (an American Islamic convert and terrorist plotter). Moreover, the Project contends that it is illegal for the U.S. government to detain terror suspects if the evidence against them was obtained through “torture.”110
  • The Lynne Stewart Defense Committee was established to support Lynne Stewart, who is a criminal-defense attorney and an America-hating Maoist. Stewart was convicted of illegally helping her incarcerated client, the “blind sheik” Omar Abdel Rahman, pass messages to an Egypt-based Islamic terrorist organization. In September 2002, the Open Society Institute gave $20,000111 to this committee; OSI vice president Gara LaMarche characterized Ms. Stewart as a “human rights defender.”112
Organizations that depict virtually all American military actions as unwarranted and immoral:
  • Amnesty International: In 2005, this group's then-executive director William Schulz alleged that the United States had become “a leading purveyor and practitioner” of torture.113 Schulz’s remarks were echoed by Amnesty's then-secretary general Irene Khan, who charged that the Guantanamo Bay detention center, where the U.S. was housing several hundred captured terror suspects, “has become the gulag of our time.”114
  • Global Exchange was founded by Medea Benjamin, a pro-Castro radical who helped establish a project known asIraq Occupation Watch for the purpose of encouraging widespread desertion by “conscientious objectors” in the U.S. military.115 In December 2004, Benjamin announced that Global Exchange would be sending aid to the families of terrorist insurgents who were fighting American troops in Iraq.116
Organizations that advocate America’s unilateral disarmament and/or a steep reduction in its military spending:
  • The American Friends Service Committee, which views America as the world's chief source of international strife, has long had a friendly relationship with the Communist Party USA.117 Lamenting that “the United States spends 59% of the discretionary federal budget on military-related expenses,” the Committee seeks to “realig[n] national spending priorities and to increase the portion of the budget that is spent on housing, quality education for all, medical care, and fair wages.”118 In 2000, George Soros himself was a signatory to a letter titled “Appeal for Responsible Security” that appeared in The New York Times. The letter called upon the U.S. government “to commit itself unequivocally to negotiate the worldwide reduction and elimination of nuclear weapons,” and to participate in “the global de-alerting of nuclear weapons and deep reduction of nuclear stockpiles.”119

    (NOTE: OSI is a member of the Peace and Security Funders Group.)
Organizations that promote radical environmentalism:
Groups in this category typically oppose mining and logging initiatives, commercial fishing enterprises, development and construction in wilderness areas, the use of coal, the use of pesticides, and oil and gas exploration in “environmentally sensitive” locations. Moreover, they claim that human industrial activity leads to excessive carbon-dioxide emissions which, in turn, cause a potentially cataclysmic phenomenon called “global warming.” Examples of such Soros donees include Earthjustice, Green For All, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Alliance for Climate Protection, Friends of the Earth, and the Earth Island Institute.

Another major recipient of Soros money is the Tides Foundation, which receives cash from all manner of donors—individuals, groups, and other foundations—and then funnels it to designated left-wing recipients. Having given more than $400 million to “progressive nonprofit organizations” since 2000,120 Tides is a heavy backer of environmental organizations, though its philanthropy extends also into many other areas.

George Soros presents himself as an environmentalist of the first order and is quick to condemn industrial corporations for allegedly trampling recklessly over the earth's ecosystems in pursuit of the almighty dollar. But in fact, Soros himself has proven to be quite willing to despoil Mother Nature in exchange for profits of his own. Consider, for example, his involvement in the Argentine beef industry, which environmentalists claim is responsible for massive levels of water pollution and deforestation. Argentina's biggest landowner is none other than George Soros, with some 500,000 hectares of land and 150,000 head of cattle to his name.121 Moreover, Soros is a part owner of Apex Silver Mines, which operates in a remote and ecologically sensitive region of Bolivia.122
Organizations that oppose the death penalty in all circumstances:
In 2000 George Soros co-signed a letter to President Bill Clinton asking for a moratorium on the death penalty, on grounds that it tended to be implemented disproportionately against black and Hispanic offenders.123

Consistent with the billionaire's opposition to capital punishment, his Open Society Institute has given millions of dollars to anti-death penalty organizations such as New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty, Witness to Innocence, Equal Justice USA, the Death Penalty Information Center, People of Faith against the Death Penalty, and the Fair Trial Initiative. 
Organizations that promote modern-day feminism's core tenet—that America is fundamentally a sexist society where discrimination and violence against women have reached epidemic proportions:
Organizations that promote not only women's right to taxpayer-funded abortion on demand,128 but also political candidates who take that same position:

Organizations that favor global government which would bring American foreign policy under the control of the United Nations or other international bodies:
According to George Soros, “[W]e need some global system of political decision-making. In short, we need a global society to support our global economy.”129 Consistent with this perspective, the Open Society Institute in 2008 gave $150,000 to the United Nations Foundation, which “works to broaden support for the UN through advocacy and public outreach.”130 Moreover, OSI is considered a “major” funder of the Coalition for an International Criminal Court,131 which aims to subordinate American criminal-justice procedures in certain cases to an international prosecutor who could initiate capricious or politically motivated prosecutions of U.S. officials and military officers.132
Organizations that support drug legalization:
Dismissing the notion of “a drug-free America” as nothing more than “a utopian dream,” George Soros says that “the war on drugs” is “insane” and, “like the Vietnam War,” simply “cannot be won.”133 “I'll tell you what I would do if it were up to me,” says Soros. “I would establish a strictly controlled distribution network through which I would make most drugs, excluding the most dangerous ones like crack, legally available.”134 In 1998 Soros was a signatory to a public letter addressed to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, declaring that "the global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse itself."135 The letter blamed the war on drugs for impeding such public health efforts as stemming the spread of HIV, hepatitis, and other infectious diseases, as well as human rights violations and the perpetration of environmental assaults. Other notable signers included Peter Lewis, Tammy Baldwin, Rev. William Sloan Coffin, Jr., Walter Cronkite, Morton H. Halperin, Kweisi Mfume, and Cornel West.

Soros and his Open Society Institute have given many millions of dollars to groups supporting drug-legalization and needle-exchange programs. In 1996, former Carter administration official Joseph Califano called Soros “the Daddy Warbucks of drug legalization.”136 According to a Capital Research Centerpublication, “It’s no exaggeration to say that without Soros there would be no serious lobby against the drug war.”137

A leading recipient of Soros funding is the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), which seeks to loosen narcotics laws, promotes “treatment-not-incarceration” policies for non-violent drug offenders, and advocates syringe-access programs “to help prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.”138 Soros himself formerly sat on the DPA board of directors.139 As recently as 2010, Soros contributed $1 million to support a California ballot measure known as Proposition 19, which would have legalized personal marijuana use in the state; the measure, however, was rejected by voters on election day.140

Peter Schweizer, author of Do As I Say (Not As I Do), speculates on the possible reasons underlying Soros's support for drug legalization:
“One very possible answer is that he hopes to profit from them [drugs] once they become legal. He has been particularly active in South America, buying up large tracts of land and forging alliances with those in a position to mass-produce narcotics should they become legalized in the United States. He has also helped fund the Andean Council of Coca Leaf producers. Needless to say, this organization would stand to benefit enormously from the legalization of cocaine. He has also taken a 9 percent stake in Banco de Colombia, located in the Colombian drug capital of Cali. The Drug Enforcement Administration has speculated that the bank is being used to launder money and that Soros's fellow shareholders may be members of a major drug cartel.”141
Organizations that support euthanasia for the terminally ill:
Soros has long promoted the cause of physician-assisted suicide in an effort to change public attitudes about death. Toward that end, in 1994 he began giving money to the (now defunct) Project on Death in America (PDA), whose purpose was to provide “end-of-life” assistance for ailing people and to enact public policy that will “transform the culture and experience of dying and bereavement.”142 Over a 9-year period, the Open Society Institute gave $45 million to PDA.143

Notably, PDA's mission was congruent with the goals of those who support government-run health care, which invariably features bureaucracies tasked with allocating scarce resources and thus determining who will, and who will not, be eligible for particular medications and treatments. Such bureaucracies generally make their calculations based upon cost-benefit analyses of a variety of possible treatments. Ultimately these decisions tend to disfavor the very old and the very sick, because whatever benefits they might gain from expensive interventions are likely to be of short duration, and thus are not judged to be worth the costs. Soros himself has suggested that “[a]ggressive, life-prolonging interventions, which may at times go against the patient's wishes, are much more expensive than proper care for the dying.”144 Additional pro-euthanasia groups funded by Soros and OSI are the following:
  • The Death with Dignity National Center seeks to allow “terminally ill individuals meeting stringent safeguards to hasten their own deaths” by way of lethal drug prescriptions.145
  • The Compassion in Dying Federation of America advocates “aid-in-dying for terminally ill, mentally competent adults.”146
Organizations that have pressured mortgage lenders to make loans to undercapitalized borrowers, a practice that helped spark the subprime mortgage crisis and housing-market collapse of 2008:
  • The Greenlining Institute147—by threatening to publicly accuse banks of racially discriminatory lending practices—has successfully negotiated loan commitments of more than $2.4 trillion from America's financial institutions.148
  • The Center for Responsible Lending, according to Americans for Prosperity vice president Phil Kerpen, has “shak[en] down and harass[ed] banks into making bad loans to unqualified borrowers.”149
Organizations that exhort the U.S. and Israel to negotiate with, and to make concessions to, Arab terrorist groups and regimes that have pledged to destroy America and Israel alike:
  • The International Crisis Group's Mideast director, Robert Malley, has penned numerous articles and op-eds condemning Israel, exonerating Palestinians, urging the U.S. to disengage from Israel to some degree, and recommending that America reach out to negotiate with its traditional Arab enemies such as Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas.
  • J Streetรข€¨ has cautioned Israel not to be too combative against Hamas, on grounds that the latter “has been the government, law and order, and service provider since it won the [Palestinian] elections in January 2006 and especially since June 2007 when it took complete control.” In the final analysis, J Street traces the Mideast conflict chiefly to the notion that “Israel’s settlements in the occupied territories have, for over forty years, been an obstacle to peace.”


SOROS'S POLITICAL CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS

Apart from the more than $5 billion that Soros' foundation network has donated to leftist groups like those cited above, Soros personally has 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, Richard Durbin, Lane Evans, Dennis Kucinich, Maurice Hinchey, and Al Gore. He also has given large sums of money to theDemocratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and the Democratic National Committee Services Corporation.

Continued in Part 3

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