Guide to the George Soros Network

Council On Foreign Relations

Also read: George Soros Funded: The Center for American Progress’ Jihad Against the Free World

GUIDE TO THE GEORGE SOROS NETWORK

Discoverthenetworks.org – h/t to MJ:

George Soros is one of the most powerful men on earth. A New York hedge fund manager, he has amassed a personal fortune estimated at about $13 billion (as of 2009). His company, Soros Fund Management, controls at least another $25 billion in investor assets. Since 1979, Soros's foundation network -- whose flagship is the Open Society Institute (OSI) -- has dispensed more than $5 billion to a multitude of organizations whose objectives are consistent with those of Soros. With assets of $1.93 billion as of 2008, OSI alone donates scores of millions of dollars annually to these various groups. 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.”
• 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.

Organizations that depict America as a nation whose enduring racism must be counterbalanced by racial and ethnic preferences in favor of nonwhites:

• The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fundcalls itself “the nation’s leading Latino legal civil rights organization.”
• The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law provides “legal services to address racial discrimination.”
• The NAACP and its Legal Defense and Educational Fund uses “litigation, advocacy, and public education” to promote “structural changes” and “achieve racial justice in the United States”
• The National Council of La Raza charges that “discrimination severely limits the economic and social opportunities available to Hispanic Americans.”

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.”
• Critical Resistance contends that crime stems from “inequality and powerlessness,” which can be rectified through wholesale redistribution of wealth.
• The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights charges that criminal laws “are enforced in a manner that is massively and pervasively biased.”

Organizations that call for massive social change, and for the recruitment and training of activist leaders to help foment that change:

• The Center for Community Change is “dedicated to finding the [progressive] stars of tomorrow and preparing them to lead.”
• The Gamaliel Foundation teaches social-change “techniques and methodologies.”
• The Ruckus Society promotes “nonviolent direct action against unjust institutions and policies.”
• The American Institute for Social Justice aims to “transform poor communities” by agitating for increased government spending on social-welfare programs.
• The Institute for America's Future “regularly convenes and educates progressive leaders, organizations, candidates, opinion makers, and activists.”
• People for the American Way, founded by television producer Norman Lear to oppose the allegedly growing influence of the “religious right,” seeks “to cultivate new generations of leaders and activists” who will promote “progressive values.”
• Democracy For America operates an academy that has taught more than 10,000 recruits nationwide how to “focus, network, and train grassroots activists in the skills and strategies to take back our country.”
• The Midwest Academy trains radical activists in the tactics of direct action, confrontation, and intimidation. Author Stanley Kurtz has described this academy as a “crypto-socialist organization” that was “arguably the most influential force in community organizing from the seventies through the nineties.”

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.”
• 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.
• The Economic Policy Institute believes that “government must play an active role in protecting the economically vulnerable, ensuring equal opportunity, and improving the well-being of all Americans.”
• 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.”
• 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.

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. 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.” 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.

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.
• Catalist seeks “to help progressive organizations realize … electoral success by building and operating a robust national voter database.”
• The Brennan Center for Justice aims to “fully restore voting rights following criminal conviction”―significant because research shows that ex-felons are far likelier to vote for Democratic political candidates than for Republicans.
• 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.”
• 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.”

Organizations that promote leftist ideals and worldviews in the media and the arts:

• The American Prospect, Inc. is the owner and publisher of The American Prospect magazine, which tries to “counteract the growing influence of conservative media.”
• 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.”
• The Independent Media Institute aims to “change the world” via projects like AlterNet, an online news magazine calling itself “a key player in the echo chamber of progressive ideas and vision.”
• The Nation Institute operates synergistically with the far-left Nation magazine, which works “to extend the reach of progressive ideas” into the American mainstream.
• 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 operations―to this “progressive research and information center” which “monitor[s]” and “correct[s] conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.” In October 2010, Soros announced that he would soon donate $1 million directly to Media Matters.
• 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. In 2009, Soros pledged another $5 million to the Sundance Institute.

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.
• The American Constitution Society for Law and Policy seeks to indoctrinate young law students to view the Constitution as an evolving or “living” document, and to reject “conservative buzzwords such as 'originalism' and 'strict construction.'”
• Justice at Stake 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.

Organizations that advance leftist agendas by infiltrating churches and religious congregations:

• Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good advocates a brand of “social justice” that would counteract the “greed, materialism, and excessive individualism” that are allegedly inherent in capitalism.
• Sojourners characterizes wealth redistribution as the fulfillment of a biblical mandate. Jim Wallis, the founder of this evangelical Christian ministry, has expressed his hope that “more Christians will come to view the world through Marxist eyes.”
• People Improving Communities through Organizing uses “people of faith” as foot soldiers in its crusade for the “transformation” of “people, institutions, and … our larger culture.”
• Catholics for Choice―formerly known as Catholics for a Free Choice―is a nominally Catholic organization that “believes in a world where everyone has equal access to … safe and legal abortion services.”

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.”
• The New America Foundation tries to influence public opinion on such topics as healthcare, environmentalism, energy policy, and global governance.
• The Urban Institute favors socialized medicine, expansion of the federal welfare bureaucracy, and tax hikes for higher income-earners.

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.
• 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.
• The Immigrant Legal Resource Center belongs to the sanctuary movement that tries to shield illegal aliens from the law.
• 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.
• LatinoJustice PRLDF is a legal advocacy group that “protects opportunities for all Latinos … especially the most vulnerable―new immigrants and the poor.”
• 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.”
• The National Immigration Forum opposes the enhancement of the U.S. Border Patrol and the construction of a border fence to prevent illegal immigration.
• 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.

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, has condemned 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.”
• 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.
• The American Civil Liberties Union has depicted the U.S. government's post-9/11 national-security measures as excessively harsh and invasive generally, and also as discriminatory against Muslims in particular. Moreover, the organization has filed numerous lawsuits seeking to limit the government's ability to locate, monitor, and apprehend terrorist operatives.
• Human Rights Watch 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.”

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.”
• 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 $20,000 to this committee; OSI vice president Gara LaMarche characterized Ms. Stewart as a “human rights defender.”

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. 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.” Schulz’s remarks were echoed by Amnesty's then-secretary general
• Global Exchange was founded by Medea Benjamin, a pro-Castro radical who helped establish a project known as Iraq Occupation Watch for the purpose of encouraging widespread desertion by “conscientious objectors” in the U.S. military. 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.

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. 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.” 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.”

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, Tides is a heavy backer of environmental organizations, though its philanthropy extends also into many other areas.

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.
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:

• The Feminist Majority Foundation “focus[es] on advancing the legal, social and political equality of women with men, countering the backlash to women's advancement, and recruiting and training young feminists...”
• The Ms. Foundation for Women laments that although “women are more than half the [U.S.] population … they don’t have equal opportunity, voice or power.”
• The National Partnership for Women and Families asserts that “women today are still paid only $0.77 to a man’s dollar”―an assertion that is grossly misleading and substantively untrue.

Organizations that promote not only women's right to taxpayer-funded abortion on demand, but also political candidates who take that same position:

• Soros donees in this category include the Center for Reproductive Rights, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the National Abortion Federation, Planned Parenthood, and Choice USA.

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.” 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.” Moreover, OSI is considered a “major” funder of the Coalition for an International Criminal Court, 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.

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.” “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.” In 1998 Soros was a signatory to a public letter addressed to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, declaring that "the global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse itself." The letter blamed the war on drugs for impeding such public-health efforts as stemming the spread of HIV, hepatitis, and other infectious diseases, as well as human-rights violations and the perpetration of environmental assaults. Other notable signers included Peter Lewis, Tammy Baldwin, Rev. William Sloan Coffin, Jr., Walter Cronkite, Morton H. Halperin, Kweisi Mfume, and Cornel West.
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.” According to a Capital Research Center publication, “It’s no exaggeration to say that without Soros there would be no serious lobby against the drug war.”
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.” Soros himself formerly sat on the DPA board of directors. 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.
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.”

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.” In 2000, the Open Society Institute pledged $15 million to PDA over a three-year period.
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.” 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.
• The Compassion in Dying Federation of America advocates “aid-in-dying for terminally ill, mentally competent adults.”

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 Institute―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.
• 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.”

The Open Society Institute is not the only vehicle by which George Soros works to reshape America's political landscape. Indeed, Soros was the prime mover in the creation of the so-called "Shadow Democratic Party," or "Shadow Party," in 2003. This term refers to a nationwide network of labor unions, non-profit activist groups, and think tanks whose agendas are ideologically to the left, and which are engaged in campaigning for the Democrats. This network's activities include fundraising, get-out-the-vote drives, political advertising, opposition research, and media manipulation.
The Shadow Party was conceived and organized principally by George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Harold McEwan Ickes -- all identified with the Democratic Party left. Other key players included:

• Morton H. Halperin: Director of Soros' Open Society Institute
• John Podesta: Democrat strategist and former chief of staff for Bill Clinton
• Jeremy Rosner: Democrat strategist and pollster, ex-foreign policy speechwriter for Bill Clinton
• Robert Boorstin: Democrat strategist and pollster, ex-national security speechwriter for Bill Clinton
• Carl Pope: Co-founder of America Coming Together, Democrat strategist, and Sierra Club Executive Director
• Steve Rosenthal: Labor leader, CEO of America Coming Together, and former chief advisor on union matters to Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich
• Peter Lewis: Major Democrat donor and insurance entrepreneur
• Rob Glaser: Major Democrat donor and Silicon Valley pioneer
• Ellen Malcolm: Co-founder and President of America Coming Together, and founder of EMILY’s List
• Rob McKay: Major Democrat donor, Taco Bell heir, and McKay Family Foundation President
• Lewis and Dorothy Cullman: Major Democrat donors

To develop the Shadow Party as a cohesive entity, Harold Ickes undertook the task of building a 21st-century version of the Left's traditional alliance of the "oppressed" and "disenfranchised." By the time Ickes was done, he had created or helped to create six new groups, and had co-opted a seventh called MoveOn.org. Together, these seven groups constituted the administrative core of the newly formed Shadow Party:

• America Coming Together
• America Votes
• Center for American Progress
• Joint Victory Campaign 2004
• Media Fund
• MoveOn.org
• Thunder Road Group

These organizations, along with the many leftist groups with which they collaborate, have played a major role in helping Soros advance his political and social agendas.
According to Richard Poe, co-author (with David Horowitz) of the 2006 book The Shadow Party :

"The Shadow Party is the real power driving the Democrat machine. It is a network of radicals dedicated to transforming our constitutional republic into a socialist hive. The leader of these radicals is ... George Soros. He has essentially privatized the Democratic Party, bringing it under his personal control. The Shadow Party is the instrument through which he exerts that control.... It works by siphoning off hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions that would have gone to the Democratic Party in normal times, and putting those contributions at the personal disposal of Mr. Soros. He then uses that money to buy influence and loyalty where he sees fit. In 2003, Soros set up a network of privately-owned groups which acts as a shadow or mirror image of the Party. It performs all the functions we would normally expect the real Democratic Party to perform, such as shaping the Party platform, fielding candidates, running campaigns, and so forth. However, it performs these functions under the private supervision of Mr. Soros and his associates. The Shadow Party derives its power from its ability to raise huge sums of money. By controlling the Democrat purse strings, the Shadow Party can make or break any Democrat candidate by deciding whether or not to fund him. During the 2004 election cycle, the Shadow Party raised more than $300 million for Democrat candidates, prompting one of its operatives, MoveOn PAC director Eli Pariser, to declare, 'Now it’s our party. We bought it, we own it…'"

Memories of Hillary and Obama disappearing during 2008 campaign to attend Bilderberger meeting… perhaps when the decision to go with Obama instead of Hillary was made?!?

If you haven’t read: The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party, I suggest you do!

Because of a combination of the dumbing down of America, the unchecked growth of Progressivism, political correctness, and the manipulation of the public through media and indoctrination we are now fighting battles against a global ruling class which includes people like George Soros and groups like the Bilderbergers, Trilateralists, and the CFR looking to take us to a New World Order as well as ideological movements including Progressivism, Communism and the goal of an Islamic Global Caliphate; all of which hate the American way of life and the opportunities for the individual, the Great American Experiment, given us by the Founding Fathers through the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution. See: Notes From Dr. Charles Krauthammer’s Speech to the Center for the American Experiment

Related:

SOROS REMAKES AMERICA INTO NARCO NATION

Obama’s Pal George Soros and the Fall of Egypt

GEORGE SOROS AND HIS EVIL EMPIRE – part 5

Snared in the Soros Web

Sunlight Down the Spider Hole

BP Oil Spill –> Soros Connection –> Obama Connection –> Crime Inc Continued…

Technorati Tags: George Soros,Soros,watch the other hand,George Soros Network,puppetmaster,CFR,Bilderberger,Council on Foreign Relations,Open Society Institute,wake-up America,Shadow Party,Shadow Government,David Horowitz,MoveOn.org,global elite

Obama's October Surprise: Will He Use the Military To Sway the Electorate?

American Thinker:

President Obama loves distractions. From the phony War on Women to gay marriage to attacks on Romney's Bain career, Obama has engaged in a "look over there" campaign to take the focus off of his dreadful record on the economy. But these manufactured issues seem minor relative to chronic joblessness and serial incompetence, and most have a short shelf life, even in the hands of the sympathetic MSM.

If his poll numbers continue to be tepid into October, Obama will need a big distraction to take him through Election Day -- something that will have strong appeal beyond his swooning acolytes.

Military action against Iran would fill the bill. I'm not suggesting Obama will make the "gutsy call" to take out Tehran's nuclear facilities; anything that would overtly help Israel is probably off the table. Besides, I think he'd want to try a much softer action, one from which he could extricate himself easily when his purposes had been served.

One possibility would be to gin up a kerfuffle over, say, "threatening" actions by the Iranian navy in the Persian Gulf, and mobilize our ships in the area to "protect the world's oil supply." Iran would bluster and threaten, but do little else, saving its apocalyptic chips for a bigger, nuclear play. Meanwhile, back at home, Obama would be portrayed as courageous and resolute, and his surrogates would remind voters that it's not prudent to change leaders in mid-crisis. Romney, as the candidate of the loyal opposition, will have to be at least tacitly supportive. And quiet.

After a few weeks, and post-11/6, Obama can declare the crisis to have eased, and unilaterally withdraw most of the ships. Then, Iran would bluster some more, claiming that America blinked first, and both sides would claim victory.

In the spirit of Obama's philosophy of never letting a crisis go to waste, he will have manufactured a crisis, benefited from it, and then defused it. Indeed, this scenario is totally in line with the down-and-dirty politics Obama and his crew have practiced for years.

Romney needs to be ready in October with some sort of strategy to counter such a Machiavellian ploy. I'm just stumped as to what that could be.

Monday, 04 June 2012 00:00

CFR & U.S. Army Chief of Staff: Use Army for Domestic Enforcement

Written by Joe Wolverton, II  - The New American -  Monday, 04 June 2012 00:00

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) proposes that the U.S. Army be used to plan, command, and carry out (with the help of civilian law enforcement) domestic police missions. So says a story appearing in the May/June issue of the influential organization’s official journal, Foreign Affairs. The article lacks a single reference to the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits such actions.

In an article penned by Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, General Raymond T. Odierno, the CFR would see the Army used to address “challenges in the United States itself” in order to keep the homeland safe from domestic disasters, including terrorist attacks. Odierno writes:

Where appropriate we will also dedicate active-duty forces, especially those with niche skills and equipment, to provide civilian officials with a robust set of reliable and rapid response options.

That’s right. Should the sheriff suspect that a particular citizen in his county poses a threat to security and feels he doesn’t have the proper “skills and equipment” to deal with the situation, he can just call out the U.S. Army and bring a “rapid response” force that is robust enough to eliminate the problem.

These are not the musings of an unknown academic written in an obscure journal of little importance. These are the black-and-white plans for “building a flexible force” as laid out by the man in charge and published for all the world to read by the people who may have put him there.

In order to justify this new (and illegal) mission for the Army, General Odierno points to three “major changes” that have precipitated the re-tasking of the troops: First, “declining budgets due to the country’s worsened fiscal situation; second, “a shift in emphasis to the Asia-Pacific region; and third, a “broadening of focus from counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, and training of partners to shaping the strategic environment, preventing the outbreak of dangerous regional conflicts, and improving the army’s readiness to respond in force to a range of complex contingencies worldwide.”

There are so many things wrong with every one of these points that each deserves its own article focused solely on its deconstruction. Unfortunately, there is only so much space and each of these considerations has one critical flaw in common: no constitutional authority for any of it.

Start with the woeful economic state of American affairs. Odierno lists this first among his unholy trinity of reasons the army must “transition” from its traditional role to one with a wider domestic and international scope.

Perhaps it has escaped General Odierno’s attention, but the decline of America’s economic fortunes may be in some significant part tied to the illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that siphon about $13 billion per month from the U.S. Treasury. Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, estimates are that Congress has approved a total of $1.283 trillion in military operations, base security, reconstruction, foreign aid, embassy costs, and veterans’ health care spread over three operations: Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) Afghanistan and other counter terror operations; Operation Noble Eagle (ONE), providing enhanced security at military bases; and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF).

There is a certain macabre irony to the claim by a military leader that his troops are forced to adapt to stringent budget considerations partially brought about by the use of his troops as the tip of America’s sword of empire.

General Odierno’s third “major change” is the need to use the Army to solve complex international conflicts. Again, these conflicts and the solutions to them are made more complex by the fact that there is not a single syllable in the Constitution that grants the President or Congress the authority to deploy American armed forces to work out the world’s difficult dilemmas.

On this point, regarding the rules to govern the creation and governing of a federal army, the Constitution says very little. In Article I, Section 8, Congress is authorized to “raise and support Armies” and to “make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces.” That’s it. That paucity of information has been magnified by the Council on Foreign Relations and their members in positions of power to include the use of the Army in ways and means that would seem unimaginable even to the most martial of our Founding Fathers.

One of the unconstitutional missions advocated by Odierno and the CFR is the use of the U.S. Army as “a critical guarantor of stability in the Asia-Pacific region.” This is one of the many new “assigned missions” promoted by Odierno in his Foreign Affairs article.

This echoes the pronouncement by his Commander-in-Chief made in Australia last November:

This is the future we seek for the Asia-Pacific — security, prosperity and dignity for all. That’s what we stand for. That’s who we are. That’s the future we will pursue in partnership with allies and friends and with every element of American power.

That is to say, General Odierno and President Obama believe that deterring aggression against our allies in Asia and the Pacific trumps any constitutional stricture on the appropriate use of the Army. There is nothing it seems that will stand in the way of our Army being placed at the disposal of foreign princes and presidents, provided they appreciate their resulting status as satraps of the American Emperor.

Not to worry; other provinces of the emerging American empire are accounted for in the Odierno/CFR plan.

“The posture of the U.S. military in the Middle East is critical to maintaining regional stability there,” writes Odierno, again without any noticeable sense of irony.

Is the general privy to some reports of stability in the Middle East kept secret from the rest of us? There is no end to the media’s reminders of the instability in the Middle East. In fact, it is this very unsettled foundation upon which the need for ongoing American military presence there is built.

In other words, the Middle East is stable because of the Army, the Middle East will remain stable only so long as the Army remains on permanent patrol, and if we were to completely abandon our posts, the region would devolve into outright — instability. Thus is the quality of the reasoning demonstrated by those with command and control of the armed forces of the United States.

One of the timeliest tenets of the Odierno/CFR proposal is the integration of “cyberspace capabilities into our tactical and operational units.” According to an article published last Friday in the New York Times:

From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyber weapons, according to participants in the program.

For the CFR it seems the message from the Obama administration is ask and ye shall receive.

Lest there remain any doubt as to America’s resolve, Odierno wants our nation’s enemies (foreign and domestic) to understand that we are not afraid to “compel capitulation.” Should those “potential adversaries” be American, moreover, Odierno promises that the Army will “be ready to decisively achieve American ends, whatever they may be.”

Finally, we will, Odierno declares, demonstrate “our country’s commitment to global security.”

Sadly, Americans know this too well, as there are rows and rows of white headstones and flag-draped coffins already demonstrating the seriousness of that commitment.

Photo of Gen. Raymond T. Odierno: AP Images

Posse Comitatus is now Irrelevant: US Military Allegedly assisting Police by using Drones

John Galt:

See PDF document of a declassified Air Force intelligence report obtained by CBS News Radio KNX-1070 spells warning:  HERE

The report from KNX-1070 a CBS affiliate in Los Angeles by Charles Feldman (Click here for full story and audio report) has one extract which is particularly disturbing:

Under U.S. Air Force rules, drones are not allowed to conduct “non-consensual surveillance” on U.S. citizens or property, though there are some apparent exceptions.

What has critics alarmed is that data collected by drones accidentally, under the guidelines, can be kept by the military up to three months before being purged and can also be turned over to “another Department of Defense or government agency to whose function it pertains.”

The Air Force guidelines permit using drones domestically to assist law enforcement in “investigating or preventing clandestine intelligence activities by foreign powers, international narcotics activities , or international terrorist activities.” More vague is language that also allows military cooperation with local law enforcement for the purposes of “preventing, detecting, or investigating other violations of law.”

The bottom line is that the government and law enforcement at the local level has a complete disregard for the U.S. Constitution and the Fourth Amendment protections each citizen is entitled to. This is verified by a report in Wired Magazine last week on May 31st:

Feds Want Warrantless Spying Loss Overturned, Saying the Law Can’t Touch Them

Excuse me? Now those producing intelligence reports, be it viable, false, or real now feel they can not be “touched” by the Constitution nor the rule of law? This excerpt says it all:

Despite that, the government appealed, hoping to re-establish that citizens spied on by the government in the name of national security have no recourse in the courts, even if the government flagrantly violates the laws and the Constitution.

Wir sind alle Ostdeutschen nun.

(h/t Judge Napolitano for the link to the KNX story)

This is just the beginning of the scary treatment we can look forward to:  Police handcuff and hold at gunpoint every adult at an intersection for hours in front of their children ...

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THE GLOBALISTS’ TAKEOVER OF AMERICA: Part 3 – WEAKEN MILITARY & CIVILIAN DEFENSE

The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878

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Technorati Tags: CFR,Posse Comitatus Act,educate yourself,military,Sheriff Joe Arpaio,sheriffs,localism,Council on Foreign Relations,Obama's Civilian Army,U.N. agenda,globalists,UN Small Arms Treaty,Tea Party Activists,Henry Kissinger

China, the United States, and Global Governance: Shifting Foundations of World Order

First is a pdf file, with an excerpt then the article with the title in the subject line.

“China, the United States, and Global Governance: Shifting Foundations of World Order”

Workshop in Beijing, China  March 15 – 17, 2010

http://www.cfr.org/content/thinktank/CFR_CICIR_MeetingNote.pdf

Excerpt:

Prospects for effective multilateral cooperation on global and transnational problems in the twenty-first century will inevitably reflect the distinct national interests and international visions of the great powers. But the identity and number of the world’s leading states is changing, creating new challenges and opportunities for global governance. The world order that ultimately results from this transition period will reflect difficult negotiations between established powers—including the United States, European Union, and Japan—and emerging ones—including China, India, and Brazil.

Common World Order Visions?

Any discussion of divergences between American and Chinese global visions must begin with some historical perspective. Over the past four decades, China has shifted its foreign policy in a breathtak-ing fashion. Once a revolutionary power bent on overturning world order, China has become a prin-cipal beneficiary of globalization and a responsible member of most international regimes, from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) to the World Trade Organization (WTO). Possessing a per-manent seat in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and, since November 2008, a spot in the Group of 20 (G20), it is increasingly part of the global establishment. On balance, its aims tend to be modestly revisionist, focused on securing growing weight within international institutions (such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund) and peacefully expanding its economic and politi-cal influence, particularly within Asia. Consistent with Chinese president Hu Jintao’s concept of a “harmonious world,” China places heavy emphasis on multilateralism—and especially the United Na-tions—as a necessary approach to the exercise of power. In some areas, particularly when it comes to national sovereignty and nonintervention, China has emerged as a more conservative power than the United States. This was especially clear during the administration of George W. Bush (20012009), when the United States—far from being a status quo power—embraced a doctrine of contingent sove-reignty.

Workshop participants perceived an ongoing, impressive shift of global power toward Asia (including China), particularly in the wake of the global financial crisis, and stressed the importance of navigating this delicate power transition in a smooth and peaceful manner.

The United States, meanwhile, enters the second decade of the new millennium with its continued global leadership role increasingly in doubt, thanks to the nation’s fiscal strains, U.S. public fatigue with fighting two large wars, and the evaporation of the bipartisan Cold War internationalist consen-sus. Given these domestic constraints, some U.S. participants anticipated a period of diminished U.S. global ambition, perhaps even retrenchment. Notwithstanding President Barack Obama’s commit-ment to international institutional reform, most anticipated that the United States would continue to pursue a mixed strategy of reliance on formal, treaty-based institutions and more ad hoc, flexible coali-tions composed of a smaller number of capable states to pursue its global agenda.

Much, much more at link.

CFR Convenes “Council of Councils” Linking Leading Foreign Policy Institutes From Around the World

http://www.cfr.org/global-governance/cfr-convenes-council-councils-linking-leading-foreign-policy-institutes-around-world/p27612

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has launched an international initiative to connect leading foreign policy institutes from around the world in a common conversation on issues of global governance and multilateral cooperation. The mission of the Council of Councils is to find common ground on shared threats, build support for innovative ideas, and inject remedies into the public debate and policymaking processes of member countries.

The founding membership of the Council of Councils includes leading institutions from nineteen countries, roughly tracking the composition of the Group of Twenty (G20). The network will facilitate candid, not-for-attribution dialogue and consensus building among influential opinion leaders from established and emerging nations.

CFR will convene the inaugural Council of Councils conference on March 12-13 in Washington, DC. Participants will tackle four major themes at this first gathering:

—the overall state of global governance and multilateral cooperation

—the status of the nuclear nonproliferation regime (with a focus on Iran)

—the dollar's future as the world's reserve currency

—the criteria for humanitarian intervention, in the wake of regime change in Libya and the ongoing crisis in Syria

Transcripts from two on-the-record sessions of the conference, featuring President of the World Bank Robert B. Zoellick and Undersecretary of State Robert D. Hormats, will be available on CFR.org after the event.

In addition to an annual conference, the Council of Councils will provide an ongoing exchange for research and policy collaboration among its members. CFR and its international partners will experiment with new technology, using state-of-the-art videoconferencing, wikis, and mobile platforms to collectively communicate and respond to breaking crises. The group will also consider long-term structural reforms that would enhance the global governance capacity of leading international institutions.

CFR President Richard N. Haass said, "The defining foreign policy challenges of the twenty-first century are global in nature. The Council of Councils draws on the best thinking from around the world to assess emerging threats and opportunities and formulate responses to them."

The Council of Councils initiative is funded by a generous grant from the Robina Foundation, as part of its ongoing support for CFR's International Institutions and Global Governance program.

Founding Council of Councils Member Organizations:
Australia: Lowy Institute for International Policy
Belgium: Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
Brazil: Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV)
Canada: Center for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)
China: Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (SIIS)
France: French Institute of International Relations (IFRI)
Germany: German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP)
Indonesia: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Israel: Institute for National Security Studies (INSS)
Italy: Institute of International Affairs (IAI)

Japan: Genron NPO
Mexico: Mexican Council on Foreign Relations (COMEXI)
Russia: Institute of Contemporary Development (INSOR)
Singapore: S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS)
South Africa: South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA)
South Korea: East Asia Institute (EAI)
Turkey: Global Relations Forum (GIF)

United Kingdom: Chatham House (The Royal Institute of International Affairs);
International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS)
United States: Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)

***

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher dedicated to being a resource for its members, government officials, business executives, journalists, educators and students, civic and religious leaders, and other interested citizens in order to help them better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries. CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

CFR's International Institutions and Global Governance (IIGG) program aims to identify the institutional requirements for effective multilateral cooperation in the twenty-first century.

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Leftwingers Outraged By Being Associated With Leftwingers

Nazis (and by implication all “right- wingers,” past and present) were inherently wicked. Their agenda was evil from A to Z, their methods along with their goals.

Communists (and by implication left-wingers) at least mean well. Oh, they might get a tad overzealous at times (killing more people than the Nazis and the Bubonic Plague combined, as documented in the The Black Book of Communism, for instance) but at least their hearts were in the right place. Even Barry Goldwater might get it. “Extremism in the defense of socialism is no vice!”

In a one hour special titled “Revolutionary Holocaust; Live Free or Die” run on January 22nd Glenn Beck mounted a full-frontal attack against the above notion—and left it a smoking cinder. First off, by sourcing Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism, Beck swept aside a premise that often handicaps conservatives from the get-go: the premise that Nazis belong on the right. Bombarded by relentless documentation to the contrary, this liberal bromide quickly blew up, and the program proceeded to report on the notoriously under-reported Communist holocaust.

As a participant in the program, I’ll go on the record and report that the care given by the producers to proper documentation for all Communist crimes and Communist quotes amounted to a fetish. This care, of course, accounts for the program’s devastating effectiveness—and thus the anguished reaction by liberals.

“The Liberal cannot strike wholeheartedly at the communist for fear of wounding himself in the process," wrote James Burnham in his classic Suicide of the West. This little gem did much to explain the theme in the opening lines of this article. But so vividly did Revolutionary Holocaust document Communist butcheries—from Stalin’s to Mao’s to Fidel Castro and Che Guevara’s-- that now some liberals are trying to weasel away from their years of alibis and rationalizations for the mass-murder.

The Glenn Beck special is now catching heat from “mainstream” liberal sources who claim no “mainstream” media or academic sources in fact herald the Communist icons as claimed on the special. To this end an article in Politico quotes Clemson professor and Harvard PHD, Steven Marks: "No one in their right mind is going to defend Stalin or Mao or Che Guevara,"

Oh?

Exhibit A: Time Magazine honors Che Guevara among "The 100 Most Important People of the Century." Not satisfied with such a paltry accolade they list him in the "Heroes and Icons" section, alongside Anne Frank, Andrei Sakharov, Rosa Parks and Mother Theresa.

Exhibit B: “Innocent people were not executed in significant numbers, (by Che and Castro.) Che presented a Christlike image, with his mortuary gaze it is as if Guevara looks upon his killers and forgives them." (Jorge Castaneda. Global Distinguished Professor of Politics and Latin American Studies. Visiting professor at Princeton and Berkeley, columnist for The Los Angeles Times, and Newsweek.)

Exhibit C: the cover of this very month’s GQ magazine (not exactly a “fringe” publication) features Che Guevara iconography on a smiling Johnny Depp.

Exhibit D: During last year’s presidential campaign, Obama campaign offices prominently displayed Che Guevara posters.
(Note: Che Guevara’s butcheries and Stalinist schemes were all orders from above, namely from his Stalinist boss, Fidel Castro, who appointed Guevara as his regime’s chief hangman.)

Exhibit E: “Fidel Castro is very shy and sensitive, a man I regard as a friend." Democratic Senator and Presidential Candidate, George Mc Govern:

* “Viva Fidel! Viva Che!” bellowed while arm in arm with Fidel Castro himself. (Democratic Presidential candidate, Jesse Jackson.)

* “Fidel Castro first and foremost is and always has been a committed egalitarian. He wanted a system that provided the basic needs to all -- enough to eat, health care, adequate housing and education. Cuba has superb systems of health care and universal education” (Democratic President James Earl Carter)

* “Fidel Castro is Cuba’s Elvis!” (former ABC anchorman Dan Rather)

* “Fidel Castro is an absolutely fascinating figure!” (NBC’s Andrea Mitchell)

* “Fidel Castro is one helluva guy!” (Ted Turner)

* “Fidel Castro has done good things for Cuba.” (Colin Powell)

Time and space restraints do not allow a listing of accolades to Castro/Stalinism from Hollywood folks.

The Toast of Manhattan!" crowed Time magazine about Fidel Castro's reception by Manhattan's Beautiful People on his visit to address the U.N. General assembly in 1996, upon the U.N.'s 50th anniversary celebrations.

"The Hottest Ticket in Manhattan!" read a Newsweek story that week, referring to the social swirl that engulfed Castro. After Fidel's whooping, hollering, foot-stomping ovation in the General Assembly, he was fêted by New York's best and brightest, hobnobbing with dozens of Manhattan's glitterati, pundits and power brokers.

First, there was dinner at the Council on Foreign Relations, (CFR). After holding court there for a rapt David Rockefeller, along with Robert McNamara, Dwayne Andreas and Random House's Harold Evans, Castro flashed over to Mort Zuckerman's Fifth Avenue pad, where a throng of Beltway glitterati, including a breathless Mike Wallace, Peter Jennings, Tina Brown, Bernard Shaw and Barbara Walters, all jostled for a brief tryst, cooing and gurgling to Castro's every comment.

All clamored for autographs and photo ops. Diane Sawyer was so overcome in the mass killer's presence that she rushed up, broke into that toothy smile of hers, wrapped her arms around Castro and smooched him warmly on the cheek.

"You people are the cream of the crop!" beamed the mass-murderer to the smiling throng that surrounded him.

"Hear, hear!" chirped the delighted guests while tinkling their wine glasses in appreciation and glee.

But the mass-murderer had barely scratched the surface of his fan club. According to the U.S. Cuba Trade and Economic Council, on that visit Castro received 250 dinner invitations from Manhattan celebrities and power brokers.

By: Humberto Fontova - the author of four books including: Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who idolize Him and Fidel; Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant

Source: Townhall.com

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

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***All colleges should require a course on the Constitution as part of their curriculum and Law Schools must go back to reaching Constitutional Law instead of Case Law***