this should be under the current events heading
have you ever heard of George Soros?... I hadn't..but boy am I seeing a lot about him lately
this is verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry interesting
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jan/14/george-soros-funds-ferguson-protests-hopes-to-spur/#ixzz3PKoaABhM
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
George Soros funds Ferguson protests, hopes to spur civil action
Liberal billionaire gave at least $33 million in one year to groups that emboldened activists
By Kelly Riddell - The Washington Times - Wednesday, January 14, 2015
There's a solitary man at the financial center of the Ferguson protest movement. No, it's not victim Michael Brown or Officer Darren Wilson. It's not even the Rev. Al Sharpton, despite his ubiquitous campaign on TV and the streets.
Rather, it's liberal billionaire George Soros, who has built a business empire that dominates across the ocean in Europe while forging a political machine powered by nonprofit foundations that impacts American politics and policy, not unlike what he did with MoveOn.org.
Mr. Soros spurred the Ferguson protest movement through years of funding and mobilizing groups across the U.S., according to interviews with key players and financial records reviewed by The Washington Times.
In all, Mr. Soros gave at least $33 million in one year to support already-established groups that emboldened the grass-roots, on-the-ground activists in Ferguson, according to the most recent tax filings of his nonprofit Open Society Foundations.
The financial tether from Mr. Soros to the activist groups gave rise to a combustible protest movement that transformed a one-day criminal event in Missouri into a 24-hour-a-day national cause celebre.
George Soros, chairman, Soros Fund Management, speaks during a forum "Charting A New Growth Path for the Euro Zone" at the IMF/World Bank annual meetings in Washington, Saturday, Sept. 24, 2011. (AP Photo Manuel Balce Ceneta)
George Soros, chairman, Soros Fund Management, speaks during a forum "Charting A ... more >
"Our DNA includes a belief that having people participate in government is indispensable to living in a more just, inclusive, democratic society," said Kenneth Zimmerman, director of Mr. Soros' Open Society Foundations' U.S. programs, in an interview with The Washington Times. "Helping groups combine policy, research [and] data collection with community organizing feels very much the way our society becomes more accountable."
No strings attached
Mr. Zimmerman said OSF has been giving to these types of groups since its inception in the early '90s, and that, although groups involved in the protests have been recipients of Mr. Soros' grants, they were in no way directed to protest at the behest of Open Society.
"The incidents, whether in Staten Island, Cleveland or Ferguson, were spontaneous protests — we don't have the ability to control or dictate what others say or choose to say," Mr. Zimmerman said. "But these circumstances focused people's attention — and it became increasingly evident to the social justice groups involved that what a particular incident like Ferguson represents is a lack of accountability and a lack of democratic participation."
Soros-sponsored organizations helped mobilize protests in Ferguson, building grass-roots coalitions on the ground backed by a nationwide online and social media campaign.
Other Soros-funded groups made it their job to remotely monitor and exploit anything related to the incident that they could portray as a conservative misstep, and to develop academic research and editorials to disseminate to the news media to keep the story alive.
The plethora of organizations involved not only shared Mr. Soros' funding, but they also fed off each other, using content and buzzwords developed by one organization on another's website, referencing each other's news columns and by creating a social media echo chamber of Facebook "likes" and Twitter hashtags that dominated the mainstream media and personal online newsfeeds.
Buses of activists from the Samuel Dewitt Proctor Conference in Chicago; from the Drug Policy Alliance, Make the Road New York and Equal Justice USA from New York; from Sojourners, the Advancement Project and Center for Community Change in Washington; and networks from the Gamaliel Foundation — all funded in part by Mr. Soros — descended on Ferguson starting in August and later organized protests and gatherings in the city until late last month.
Story Continues ?
Broaden issue focus
All were aimed at keeping the media's attention on the city and to widen the scope of the incident to focus on interrelated causes — not just the overpolicing and racial discrimination narratives that were highlighted by the news media in August.
"I went to Ferguson in a quest to be in solidarity and stand with the young organizers and affirm their leadership," said Kassandra Frederique, policy manager at the Drug Policy Alliance, which was founded by Mr. Soros, and which receives $4 million annually from his foundation. She traveled to Ferguson in October.
"We recognized this movement is similar to the work we're doing at DPA," said Ms. Frederique. "The war on drugs has always been to operationalize, institutionalize and criminalize people of color. Protecting personal sovereignty is a cornerstone of the work we do and what this movement is all about."
Ms. Frederique works with Opal Tometi, co-creator of #BlackLivesMatter — a hashtag that was developed after the killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida — and helped promote it on DPA's news feeds. Ms. Tometi runs the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, a group to which Mr. Soros gave $100,000 in 2011, according to the most recent of his foundation's tax filings.
"I think #BlackLivesMatter's success is because of organizing. This was created after Trayvon Martin, and there has been sustained organizing and conversations about police violence since then," said Ms. Frederique. "Its explosion into the mainstream recently is because it connects all the dots at a time when everyone was lost for words. 'Black Lives Matter' is liberating, unapologetic and leaves no room for confusion."
#BlackLivesMatter
With the backing of national civil rights organizations and Mr. Soros' funding, "Black Lives Matter" grew from a hashtag into a social media phenomenon, including a #BlackLivesMatter bus tour and march in September.
"More than 500 of us have traveled from Boston, Chicago, Columbus, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Nashville, Portland, Tucson, Washington, D.C., Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and other cities to support the people of Ferguson and help turn a local moment into a national movement," wrote Akiba Solomon, a journalist at Colorlines, describing the event.
Colorlines is an online news site that focuses on race issues and is published by Race Forward, a group that received $200,000 from Mr. Soros's foundation in 2011. Colorlines has published tirelessly on the activities in Ferguson and heavily promoted the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag and activities.
At the end of the #BlackLivesMatter march, organizers met with civil rights groups like the Organization for Black Struggle and Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment to strategize their operations moving forward, Ms. Solomon wrote. OBS and MORE are also funded by Mr. Soros.
Mr. Soros gave $5.4 million to Ferguson and Staten Island grass-roots efforts last year to help "further police reform, accountability and public transparency," the Open Society Foundations said in a blog post in December. About half of those funds were earmarked to Ferguson, with the money primarily going to OBS and MORE, the foundation said.
OBS and MORE, along with the Dream Defenders, established the "Hands Up Coalition" — another so-called "grass-roots" organization in Missouri, whose name was based on now-known-to-be-false claims that Brown had his hands up before being shot. The Defenders were built to rally support and awareness for the Trayvon Martin case and were funded by the Tides Foundation, another recipient of Soros cash.
Hands Up Coalition has made it its mission to recruit and organize youth nationwide to start local events in their communities — trying to take Ferguson nationwide.
Years and weekends of 'resistance'
Hands Up Coalition has dubbed 2015 as "The Year of Resistance," and its outreach program strongly resembles how President Obama's political action committee — Organizing for Action — rallies youth for its causes, complete with a similarly designed Web page and call to action.
Mr. Soros, who made his fortune betting against the British pound during the currency crisis in the early '90s, is a well-known supporter of progressive-liberal causes and is a political donor to Mr. Obama's campaigns. He committed $1 million to Mr. Obama's super PAC in 2012.
Story Continues ?
Continued from page 2
Mr. Soros' two largest foundations manage almost $3 billion in assets per year, according to their most recent respective tax returns. The Foundation to Promote Open Society managed $2.2 billion in assets in 2011, and his Open Society Institute managed $685.9 million in 2012.
In comparison, David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers whom liberals often call a threat to democracy — and worse — for their conservative influence, had $308 million tied up in their foundation and institute in 2011.
One of the organizations that Mr. Soros funds, and which fueled the demonstrations in Ferguson, is the Gamaliel Foundation, a network of grass-roots, interreligious and interracial organizations. Mr. Obama started his career as a community organizer at a Gamaliel affiliate in Chicago.
The Rev. Traci Blackmon of Christ the King United Church of Christ in Florissant, Missouri, which is part of the Gamaliel network, said in one of the group's webinars that clergy involved with Gamaliel must be "protectors of the narrative" of what happened in Ferguson.
The Gamaliel affiliate in St. Louis — Metropolitan Congregations United — organized the "Weekend of Resistance" in October, in which clergy members from around the nation were called to come to Ferguson to protest.
Clergy involvement
Representatives of Sojourners, a national evangelical Christian organization committed "to faith in action for social justice," attended the weekend. The group received $150,000 from Mr. Soros in 2011.
Clergy representatives from the Samuel Dewitt Proctor Conference, where the Rev. Jeremiah Wright serves as a trustee, also showed up. Mr. Wright was Mr. Obama's pastor in Chicago before some of his racially charged sermons, including the phrase "God damn America," forced Mr. Obama to distance himself. SDPC received $250,000 from Mr. Soros in 2011.
During Gamaliel's weekend protest event, Sunday was deemed "Hands Up Sabbath," where clergy were asked to speak out about racial issues, using packets and talking points prepared for them by another religion-based community organizing group, PICO.
PICO is also supported by the Open Society Foundations, according to its website.
The weekend concluded Monday, when clergy members were asked to lead in acts of civil disobedience, prompting many of them to go to jail in the hopes of gaining media attention.
It worked, as imagery of clergy members down on their hands and knees in front of police dominated the mainstream news cycle that day — two months after Brown's shooting.
"After the initial shooting, we were all hit in the face with how blatant racism really is," said the Rev. Susan Sneed, a Gamaliel organizer who helped stage the October weekend event. "We began quickly hearing from our other affiliates offering support."
At the end of August, Gamaliel had a large organizational meeting to discuss its Ferguson strategy, Ms. Sneed said.
It had its affiliates in New York and California handling the St. Louis Twitter feed and Facebook page, helped in correcting any inaccurate stories in the press and promoted their events, she said.
Story Continues ?
"When we started marching down the street, saying, 'hands up, don't shoot,' those images reached all over the world," said Ms. Sneed, referring to the moment she realized Ferguson was going to become a movement. "The Twitter images, Facebook posts of burning buildings — it's everywhere, and the imagery is powerful. And the youth — the youth is so engaged. They've found a voice in Ferguson."
National activists descend
Larry Fellows III, 29, a Missouri native, did find his voice in the chaos of Ferguson with the help of outside assistance backed by Mr. Soros.
Mr. Fellows is co-founder of the Millennial Activists United, a key source of video and stories developed in Ferguson by youth activists used to inspire other groups nationally.
Mr. Fellows explained how he started his organization in an interview with the American Civil Liberties Union (another Soros-backed entity that sent national representatives to Missouri) in November.
"Initially, it would just be that we would show up for protests, and the next day we'd clean up the streets. A lot of the same people were out at the protests and going out to lunch and talking about what was happening. That became a cycle until a lot of us figured out we needed to have a strategy," Mr. Fellows explained to the ACLU, which posted the interview in its blog.
"Then a lot of organizers from across the country started to come in to help us do the planning and do the strategizing. That helped us start doing it on our own and planning out actions and what our narratives were going to be," he said.
MAU has listed on its website that it has partnered with Gamaliel network churches. They've also received training on civil disobedience from the Advancement Project — which was given a $500,000 grant from Mr. Soros in 2013 "to build a fair and just, multi-racial democracy in America through litigation, community organizing support, public policy reform, and strategic communications," according to the Foundation's website.
The Advancement Project, based in Washington, also arranged the meeting between community organizers in Ferguson and Mr. Obama last month to brief him on the situation in Ferguson and to set up a task force that examines trust between police and minority communities.
In addition, the Advancement Project has also dedicated some of its staff to lead organizations in Ferguson, like the Don't Shoot Coalition, another grass-roots group that preaches the same message, links to the same Facebook posts and "likes" the same articles as DPA, ACLU, Hands Up Coalition, OBS, MORE and others.
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jan/14/george-soros-funds-ferguson-protests-hopes-to-spur/?page=4#ixzz3PKq4Nxrl
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
...................................................
http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/sorosferguson.asp
Claim: George Soros donated $33 million to fund rioting Ferguson protest groups.
TRUE: A grantmaking network founded by George Soros provided funding to some groups that engaged in Ferguson-related protest activities.
FALSE: George Soros gave money to various groups for the express purpose of promoting Ferguson-related protests and riots.
Examples: [Collected via e-mail, January 2015]
Read more at http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/sorosferguson.asp#KPbLjsmL6uV7VZqX.99
Origins: The Hungarian-born multi-billionaire business magnate and philanthropist George Soros has in recent years acquired a mythos rivaling that of the Rosicrucians, the Illuminati, and the Trilateral Commission: a shadowy mastermind who wields tremendous wealth and influence to furtively manipulate events worldwide in furtherance of a conspiracy for establishing a New World Order. Various rumors have claimed Soros controls everything from the international illegal drug trade to gun manufacturers to this very web site (snopes.com) itself. Added to that list in January 2015 was a rumor that Soros had "sponsored" or "bankrolled," to the tune of some $33 million, protesters who rioted after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, on 9 August 2014.
The rumor stemmed from Soros' connection with the Open Society Foundations (OSF), a progressive-liberal grantmaking network he founded (as the Open Society Institute) in 1993 to fund civil society groups around the world. The OSF's Mission & Values statement describes the network's purpose thusly:
Read more at http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/sorosferguson.asp#KPbLjsmL6uV7VZqX.99
.........................................
too long ..sorry to be continued
just a search with his name gives you hours of readin.. go for it
More news for george soros
George Soros
www.georgesoros.com/
GEORGE SOROS has been a prominent international supporter of democratic ideals and causes for more than 30 years. His philanthropic organization, the ...
George Soros - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros
George Soros is a Hungarian-born American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He is the chairman of Soros Fund Management. He is known as ...
?Black Wednesday - ?George Soros conspiracy ... - ?Alexander Soros - ?Reflexivity
George Soros - Forbes
www.forbes.com/profile/george-soros/
George Soros, the billionaire investor and philanthropist known for his successful attack on the British Pound and, more recently, for his generous support of ...
George Soros | Open Society Foundations (OSF)
www.opensocietyfoundations.org/.../george-so...
Open Society Foundations
George Soros is the founder and chairman of Open Society—a network of foundations, partners, and projects in more than 100 countries. His commitment to the ...
http://humanevents.com/2011/04/02/top-10-reasons-george-soros-is-dangerous/
Top 10 Reasons George Soros Is Dangerous - Human Events
Human Events
Apr 2, 2011 - Influence on U.S. elections: Soros once said that removing President George W. Bush from office in 2004 was the "central focus of my life.
George Soros - Discover the Networks
www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualprofile.asp?indid=977
The Shared Agendas of George Soros and Barack Obama · Open Society Institute Democracy Alliance Shadow Party INTRODUCING GEORGE SOROS
http://topics.bloomberg.com/george-soros/
George Soros News - Bloomberg
topics.bloomberg.com/george-soros/
Bloomberg L.P.
Breaking news about George Soros. Find the latest articles, videos, photos and blogs about George Soros.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/nov/20/wake-up-europe/
Toward a Global Open Society - 98.01
?Explore: right wing
Wake Up, Europe
nybooks.com
George Soros · November 20, 2014 Issue. The following article will appear in The New York Review's November 20 issue. Petro Poroshenko and Vladimir Putin; drawing by James Ferguson. Europe is ...
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/98jan/opensoc.htm
theatlantic.com
by George Soros. Discuss this article in the Global Views forum of Post & Riposte. From the archives: "The Capitalist Threat," by George Soros (May, 1995) "What kind of society do we want? 'Let the free ...
?Explore: global economy
whatever you think of his politics.. his life reads like a novel
this link deserves a good read
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros
copy of some of it.. it's long
George Soros (/?s?ro?s/[3] or /?s?r?s/; Hungarian: Soros György; Hungarian: [??oro?]; born August 12, 1930, as Schwartz György) is a Hungarian-born American[4] business magnate,[5][6] investor, and philanthropist. He is the chairman of Soros Fund Management. He is known as "The Man Who Broke the Bank of England" because of his short sale of US$10 billion worth of pounds, giving him a profit of $1 billion during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crisis.[7][8][9]
Soros is a well-known supporter of progressive-liberal political causes.[10] Between 1979 and 2011, Soros gave away over $8 billion to human rights, public health, and education causes.[11] He played a significant role in the peaceful transition from communism to capitalism in Hungary (1984–89)[8] and provided one of Europe's largest higher education endowments to Central European University in Budapest.[12] Soros is also the chairman of the Open Society Foundations
Early life[edit]
Soros was born in Budapest, Hungary, to a non-observant Jewish family. His mother Elizabeth (also known as Erzsebet) came from a family that owned a thriving silk shop. His father Tivadar (also known as Teodoro) was a lawyer[13] and had been a prisoner of war during and after World War I until he escaped from Russia and rejoined his family in Budapest.[14][15] The two married in 1924. Tivadar was an Esperantist writer and taught Soros to speak Esperanto in his childhood.[16] Soros later said that he grew up in a Jewish home and that his parents were cautious with their religious roots.[17] In 1936 his father changed family name from Schwartz ("black" in German) into Soros (a successor in Hungarian or will soar in Esperanto).
Soros was thirteen years old in March 1944 when Nazi Germany occupied Hungary.[18] When Jewish children were barred from attending school by the Nazis, Soros and the other schoolchildren were made to report to the Jewish Council, which had been established during the occupation. Soros later described this time to writer Michael Lewis:
The Jewish Council asked the little kids to hand out the deportation notices. I was told to go to the Jewish Council. And there I was given these small slips of paper ... It said report to the rabbi seminary at 9 am ... And I was given this list of names. I took this piece of paper to my father. He instantly recognized it. This was a list of Hungarian Jewish lawyers. He said, "You deliver the slips of paper and tell the people that if they report they will be deported."[19]
Soros did not return to that job, but instead went into hiding the next day. Later that year, at age 14, Soros lived with and posed as the godson of an employee of the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture. The official was at one point ordered to inventory the remaining contents of the estate of a wealthy Jewish family that had fled the country; rather than leave the young Soros alone in the city, the official brought him along.[20] The next year, 1945, Soros survived the Battle of Budapest, in which Soviet and German forces fought house-to-house through the city.
Soros emigrated to England in 1947 and became an impoverished student at the London School of Economics.[21] While a student of the philosopher Karl Popper, Soros worked as a railway porter and as a waiter. A university tutor requested aid for Soros, and he received £40 from a Religious Society of Friends (Quaker) charity.[22] In a discussion at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council in 2006, Alvin Shuster, former foreign editor of the Los Angeles Times, asked Soros, "How does one go from an immigrant to a financier? ... When did you realize that you knew how to make money?" Soros replied, "Well, I had a variety of jobs and I ended up selling fancy goods on the sea side, souvenir shops, and I thought, that's really not what I was cut out to do. So, I wrote to every managing director in every merchant bank in London, got just one or two replies, and eventually that's how I got a job in a merchant bank."[23] That job was an entry-level position in Singer & Friedlander.
Soros earned a BSc in philosophy in 1951 and a PhD in philosophy in 1954, both from the London School of Economics.[24]
Career[edit]
In 1956, Soros moved to New York City where he worked as an arbitrage trader for F. M. Mayer (1956–59) and as an analyst for Wertheim & Co. (1959–63). He planned to stay for five years, enough time to save $500,000, after which he intended to return to England to study philosophy.[25] During this period, Soros developed the theory of reflexivity based on the ideas of Karl Popper. Reflexivity posited that the valuation of any market produces a procyclical "virtuous or vicious" circle that further affects the market.[26]
Soros' experience from 1963 to 1973 as a vice-president at Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder resulted in little enthusiasm for the job and a desire to assert himself as an investor to make reflexivity profitable. In 1967, First Eagle Funds created an opportunity for Soros to run an offshore investment fund as well as the Double Eagle hedge fund in 1969.[26]
In 1970, Soros founded Soros Fund Management and became its chairman. Among those who held senior positions there at various times were Jim Rogers, Stanley Druckenmiller, Mark Schwartz, Keith Anderson, and Soros' two sons.[27][28][29]
In 1973, due to regulatory restrictions limiting his ability to run the funds, Soros resigned from his First Eagle funds. He then established the Quantum Fund.[26]
In August 2010, Soros acquired a 4 percent stake in the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) for about $35 million.[30]
Soros announced in July 2011 that he had returned funds from outside investors' money (valued at $1 billion) and instead invested funds from his $24.5 billion family fortune due to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure rules.[31]
In 2013 the Quantum fund made $5.5 billion, making it again the most successful hedge fund in history. The fund has generated $40 billion since its inception in 1973.
Currency speculation[edit]
...............
Public predictions[edit]
Soros' book, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets (May 2008), described a "superbubble" that had built up over the past 25 years and was ready to collapse. This was the third in a series of books he has written that have predicted disaster. As he states:
I have a record of crying wolf ... I did it first in The Alchemy of Finance (in 1987), then in The Crisis of Global Capitalism (in 1998) and now in this book. So it's three books predicting disaster. (After) the boy cried wolf three times ... the wolf really came.[41]
He ascribes his own success to being able to recognize when his predictions are wrong.
I'm only rich because I know when I'm wrong ... I basically have survived by recognizing my mistakes. I very often used to get backaches due to the fact that I was wrong. Whenever you are wrong you have to fight or [take] flight. When make the decision, the backache goes away.[41]
In February 2009, Soros said the world financial system had effectively disintegrated, adding that there was no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis.[42] "We witnessed the collapse of the financial system ... It was placed on life support, and it's still on life support. There's no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom."
Insider trading conviction[edit]
..............................
Philanthropy[edit]
Main article: List of projects supported by George Soros
George Soros (left) and James H. Billington at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. on January 22, 2001 to discuss the views expressed in Soros' new book, Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism.
Soros has been active as a philanthropist since the 1970s, when he began providing funds to help black students attend the University of Cape Town in apartheid South Africa,[53] and began funding dissident movements behind the iron curtain.
Soros' philanthropic funding includes efforts to promote non-violent democratization in the post-Soviet states. These efforts, mostly in Central and Eastern Europe, occur primarily through the Open Society Foundations (originally Open Society Institute or OSI) and national Soros Foundations, which sometimes go under other names (such as the Stefan Batory Foundation in Poland). As of 2003, PBS estimated that he had given away a total of $4 billion.[46] The OSI says it has spent about $500 million annually in recent years.
..............................
Wealth[edit]
As of July 22, 2014 Forbes listed Soros, at 83, as the 27th richest person in the world, the world's richest hedge-fund manager, and number 7 on its list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, with a net worth estimated at $23 billion.[
........................
Personal life[edit]
Soros' family changed their name from Schwartz to Soros in 1936, in response to growing anti-semitism with the rise of fascism. Tivadar liked the new name because it is a palindrome and because of its meaning. Although the specific meaning is left unstated in Kaufman's biography, in Hungarian, soros means "next in line", or "designated successor"; and, in Esperanto, it means "will soar".[110]
Soros has been married three times and divorced twice:
Soros is an atheist
..............................
See also[edit]
George Soros conspiracy theories
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros_conspiracy_theories
Scott Bessent, chief investment officer of Soros Fund Management
there's always more to the story
:o
The Phoenix Journals from the 80's featured running info's on George Soros, safe to say he is friends with a whole bunch of spooks.