Soros Open Society + "Anti-fascists" = Globalist propaganda

[American Dream]

I've always been deeply critical of the fascists in the Maidan coalition. Two wrongs still don't make a right.

[seemslikeadream]

hey where's the 10 OP's on fascists in Ukraine then

Go Team Putin!???

[American Dream]

hey where's the 10 OP's on fascists in Ukraine then

Go Team Putin!???

I actually posted quite a bit on this.

[seemslikeadream]

It must have gotten lost with all the name calling

[American Dream]

It must have gotten lost with all the name calling

Great way of taking responsibility for your false assumptions/accusations.

[seemslikeadream]

is the word irony lost on you?

sincerely

TEAM PUTIN

[Wombaticus Rex]

AD: C'mon. Enjoy a week off, you know why.

SLAD: Thanks for reporting that post. However, reporting + proceeding to engage in back-n-forth flames = you're still just (a completely central) part of the problem. Enjoy a week off.

[conniption]

AD: C'mon. Enjoy a week off, you know why.

SLAD: Thanks for reporting that post. However, reporting + proceeding to engage in back-n-forth flames = you're still just (a completely central) part of the problem. Enjoy a week off.

NOOOO...not slad. Now we'll have to work twice as hard to keep up with the news around here.

[stefano]

With that out of the way - I'm generally sympathetic to Soros and his initiatives, even though he's well to the right of where I stand on economics. The last time I paid attention to him was in 2011, when he held a conference about the financial crisis and its roots. I wrote about that here - he was very clear that the corrupt removal of regulations by politicans working for banks' interests was the main problem, and that he wanted more regulation.

[Nicolas Guilhot] argues that despite critiques of malfunctioning free markets, Soros is actually a neoliberal who believes that competitive markets are the best way to organize society. According to this view, the apparent radicalism of Soros' "open society" serves as cover for the capitalist order, the basic rules of which are never actually questioned or "opened".

This is broadly true, depending on how you define "basic rules." The most basic rule, I guess, is that private owners of the means of production are entitled to a share of the profits resulting from production. Soros certainly agrees with that. But that opinion in no way implies support for the current capitalist order, in which dominant capitalists protect their privilege by buying political support and so limiting the competition that would tend to drive down their profits. He is clearly against that. Nor does it have anything to say about governments' obligations towards the needy, which I don't know Soros's views on but I would guess he recognises, given that he got the fairly leftish Jean-Paul Fitoussi (who I really like as an economist) to open his conference. I know a lot of people who think the same, who think that the crimes of the ruling class are enabled by too little competition and by collusion with governments. I certainly agree on the second point, and sometimes but not always on the former.

All of this to say that while Soros certainly supports gloablised capitalism in a way that I don't, that in no way means that his support for anti-fascist talk shops is cynical, and I don't think it is. Nor do I think it's unrelated to his views on economics. He's from a time and place in which anti-capitalists all supported the empowering of the State to dispossess 'the rich' at gunpoint, and knows how States so empowered always and soon begin to lock up dissidents and police opinions.

Could you say more about the Israeli links, Searcher? Is it that bit about IDC Herzliya?

Edit- IDC Herzliya, not Herzliya college.

[Luther Blissett]

I wish that this university were more progressive. I'd take lip service to an anti-fascist cause over training programs for engineering students to build better terminators, drones, and frack wells any day. The culture here would vastly improve. Though the leadership are the ones lacking in real moral courage, the average person here is pretty good, well in-tune with the realities on the ground, but they are for the most part followers.

Penn, mentioned upthread, is even more conservative but with pockets of really smart rigor scattered around.

[JackRiddler]

Indeed Luther, there's doubtless Soros money at your university. This totally makes you CIA and completely and forever discredits any and all arguments you and all persons associated with said university have ever made, and makes you a supporter of fascists in the Ukraine and escalating the bombing of Gaza.

There will certainly be no need ever again to read your posts or contend with them on presented contentions or evidence. In fact, your every post will be as a capital offense unto Man and God.

At least this thread serves for the Real McCarthyites of RI to announce their membership in the Freedom Witchhunt. Pretty small crew, actually. But prolific!

[coffin_dodger]

You have an amazing skill, Jack - the ability to embarass and belittle anyone who doesn't see things your way. Well done.

[solace]

You have an amazing skill, Jack - the ability to embarass and belittle anyone who doesn't see things your way. Well done.

Don't you wish you had such skill when you try and do the same to AD? Little hypocrisy, what?

[Searcher08]

Hi Stefano, thanks for your reply amidst the ongoing noise and distraction and derailment attempts - my long reply has disappeared (I got a Forum message that said "You are now unable to edit that post" when I tried to save it - and all my post had vanished ) I will try again tomorrow as I was getting some interesting information!

[Sounder]

Ah the ole reliable Jack, ever ready to create fallacious arguments assigned to the voice of your ‘opponents’. You do others voices so well; maybe you could get some side work as a ventriloquist.

The following was written this morning, before being assaulted by Jacks hateful display.

I'm generally sympathetic to Soros and his initiatives.

So am I and probably most of the posters on this site. And that makes it all the more difficult to analyze or realize the long game that Soros is playing.

There is much more to the following story, but in simple terms it illustrates how ‘good’ is used to do ‘bad’.

"Thy Will Be Done", The Conquest of the Amazon:
by Gerard Colby with Charlotte Dennett
Harper Collins, 1995. 960 pages
reviewed by Carmelo Ruiz

Carmelo Ruiz is a Puerto Rican journalist and research associate at the institute for Social Ecology, email ise@ igc.apc.org at Goddard College, Vermont. Connect: ernail: carrneloruiz@hotmailcom

In 1976, reporters Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett traveled to Brazil as part of a journalistic team to write stories about the work of Christian missionaries in the Amazon basin. High on Colby and Dennett's list of priorities was to learn about a mysterious missionary organization called the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL). This outfit, also known as the Wycliffe Bible Translators, had gotten kudos from both conservatives and liberals for translating the Bible into hundreds of indigenous languages in Central and South America and helping native peoples cope with the intrusion of Western civilization into their lives.

However, Colby and Dennett had heard of a darker side to SIL…….


If Colby and Dennett had limited themselves to just exposing SIL, Thy Will be Done would still have been a formidable journalistic achievement. But the authors went on to research the American institutions, private and governmental, that provided support for SIL's mission. These included Standard Oil of New Jersey; the Pew family, creators of the Sun Oil Company (Sunoco) and the Pew Charitable Trusts, the US Agency for International Development, and the US military through its donations of surplus military equipment. Although they could find no smoking gun directly linking the CIA to SIL, they did find several circumstantial and indirect links, such as financial support from a foundation that was later exposed as a CIA front and the fact that JAARS's top pilot, Lawrence Montgomery, was on the Agency's payroll.

Man, wouldn't it be great if this were a discussion board rather than a message board.

I suppose it might be worth it to develop the theme, knowing that Jack will get really pissed.