Coalitions for Anti-Capitalism - Left, Soros and Islamism


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William,

That's perfectly fine. I'm happy to let the reader look, listen and and judge for himself. (I will dig up some other facts later, though. Rather than sarcasm, let's look at different sources.)

Anyway, Soros is a real sweetheart. I like the way he keeps saying over and over that capitalism is in his way (i.e., the way of his "open society") and keeps quoting Marx as a source. See the video below. The best part is when he says that a fundamental part of the free market theory is that people know what is best for them, thus they should decide their own interests. And he thinks this is totally wrong.

Come to think of it, wouldn't the world be better off if he and his cronies decided for everybody?

There's an idea.

I wonder how I could apply for a gig later confiscating stuff from their rightful owners. All in the name of the "open society" of course.

I know I would feel bad about it, of course, but there would be no sense in burdening the world with my woes. Besides, there will probably be a lot of fun stuff along the way to give me the best memories of my life.

Anyway, here are some choice Soros statements on capitalism, the open society and our dear darling Karl Marx (the video is repeated from the other thread):

<embed src="http://blip.tv/play/hJNRgo3RGQI%2Em4v" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="480" height="360" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed>

I'll try to dig up more direct quotes from Soros--spoken by Soros--later so the reader can decide for himself while looking at facts, not just opinions.

What better fact is there than a video recording of a person saying his own worlds?

btw - Why did you present another video with same excerpt that Beck presented? One time wasn't enough? :)

(EDIT: I just reread the part concerning the second video more carefully. You wanted to emphasize that the tape had been edited.)

Michael

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William,

I just looked around for more information on the Nazi business. I have only found one main source for the version you presented: George Soros himself (see here on his own site: Childhood). On his site, he quotes from a bio by Michael T. Kaufman, Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire. It's kinda cute how the site text says: "This is how Michael Kaufman describes the events..." From what I can tell, Kaufman "described the events" based on his own personal interview with Soros. So it is actually Kaufman describing how Soros described the events.

Everyone else in the media who tells the same tale (that I can check online, being the ones I have seen so far) seems to rely on this source at root. And boy, is there a butt-load of info out there from Soros-funded news organizations--all saying the same thing, often with the same wording. I wonder how that happened?

:)

What's worse, right wing nuts seem to dominate any contrary probing of this--and most of those don't even mention that Soros is the source of information on Soros regarding this Nazi business..I suspect they don't know it.

Sourcing yourself--and throwing in an authorized biographer for good measure--is not a bad thing. You can control the message that way.

There's also a heroic story about Soros as a child in Nazi Germany on that page on his site. It tells how he delivered Jewish Council registration notices to Jewish lawyers and secretly warned them that the real purpose was deportation to Nazi death camps. At least it says he was told to warn them by his father. It doesn't really say whether he did or not.

Don't forget, this was when he was even younger--before he went to that one and only, single, sole, not ever done again, and isolated instance visit with Baumbach to inventory a place where there weren't even any more Jews around.

If you want to know if this is true or not, just ask Soros. He tells you so. He's the only source I can find, but why even mention that detail? We should believe everything George Soros says about himself because he says it. And he would never make anything up. There. I'm glad that's out of the way.

:)

But look again at that page. Soros (through Kaufman) gives an explanation for the 1998 60 Minutes interview on CBS:

The issue was raised in a bizarre television profile and interview of Soros aired on the CBS television program 60 Minutes in December of 1998. In the segment, Steve Kroft, the interviewed, noted with prosecutorial gusto that George's father had "bribed a government official to swear that you were his godson," and added that this survival strategy "carried a heavy price tag." For, he continued, "as hundreds of thousands of Jews were being shipped off to the Nazi death camps, a thirteen-year-old George Soros accompanied his phony godfather on his rounds, confiscating property from the Jews." Visibly dumbfounded by the line of questioning, Soros could only manage to say that he had no role in the seizure of property and was merely a spectator. To underscore Kroft's point, film footage showed masses of Hungarian Jews being led away at gunpoint.

So I guess he was dumbfounded and screwed up in public?

Possible. Let's look at the transcript that is all over the Internet.

Here's a partial transcript on The Soros Monitor site. I found this link on Snopes. (btw - Here's the Snopes link.) I don't know how objective The Soros Monitor is since it is obviously slanted against him. But the 60 Minutes transcript is among a bunch of other quotes and the entire compilation by one Judy Dinerstein gives sources that can be checked for each quote--unfortunately not all can be checked online. I have given the Snopes excerpt below since it has a good reputation and I do not know the reputation of the other. I bolded certain parts for easier reference.

KROFT: (Voiceover) To understand the complexities and contradictions in his personality, you have to go back to the very beginning: to Budapest, where George Soros was born 68 years ago to parents who were wealthy, well-educated and Jewish.

When the Nazis occupied Budapest in 1944, George Soros' father was a successful lawyer. He lived on an island in the Danube and liked to commute to work in a rowboat. But knowing there were problems ahead for the Jews, he decided to split his family up. He bought them forged papers and he bribed a government official to take 14-year-old George Soros in and swear that he was his Christian godson. But survival carried a heavy price tag. While hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were being shipped off to the death camps, George Soros accompanied his phony godfather on his appointed rounds, confiscating property from the Jews.

(Vintage footage of Jews walking in line; man dragging little boy in line)

KROFT: (Voiceover) These are pictures from 1944 of what happened to George Soros' friends and neighbors.

(Vintage footage of women and men with bags over their shoulders walking; crowd by a train)

KROFT: (Voiceover) You're a Hungarian Jew...

Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Mm-hmm.

KROFT: (Voiceover) ...who escaped the Holocaust...

(Vintage footage of women walking by train)

Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Mm-hmm.

(Vintage footage of people getting on train)

KROFT: (Voiceover) ... by -- by posing as a Christian.

Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Right.

(Vintage footage of women helping each other get on train; train door closing with people in boxcar)

KROFT: (Voiceover) And you watched lots of people get shipped off to the death camps.

Mr. SOROS: Right. I was 14 years old. And I would say that that's when my character was made.

KROFT: In what way?

Mr. SOROS: That one should think ahead. One should understand and -- and anticipate events and when -- when one is threatened. It was a tremendous threat of evil. I mean, it was a -- a very personal experience of evil.

KROFT: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson.

Mr. SOROS: Yes. Yes.

KROFT: Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.

Mr. SOROS: Yes. That's right. Yes.

KROFT: I mean, that's -- that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?

Mr. SOROS: Not -- not at all. Not at all. Maybe as a child you don't -- you don't see the connection. But it was -- it created no -- no problem at all.

KROFT: No feeling of guilt?

Mr. SOROS: No.

KROFT: For example that, 'I'm Jewish and here I am, watching these people go. I could just as easily be there. I should be there.' None of that?

Mr. SOROS: Well, of course I c -- I could be on the other side or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I shouldn't be there, because that was -- well, actually, in a funny way, it's just like in markets -- that if I weren't there -- of course, I wasn't doing it, but somebody else would -- would -- would be taking it away anyhow. And it was the -- whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away. So the -- I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt.

From this excerpt, I don't detect any dumbfounding. On the contrary, Soros seems to be saying,he doesn't feel guilty because if the folks he was with didn't do it, somebody else would. He was only a spectator anyway. And, if you add this to the taped comments Glenn Beck presented, it was all fun a game because of the danger. It gave him the happiest year of his life.

But maybe that's me. It would probably be easier to judge if he was dumbfounded or not if CBS would let the video out.

Incidentally, the alias of Soros when he was 14 and with Baumbach was "Sandor Kiss." That sounds cool enough. I might even use it one day in a story.

Here's another tidbit from another author who has researched and written a book on Soros, David Horowitz. (See the biographical article by Horowitz for the quote below here: Goerge Soros.) I don't know what Horowitz's source was for stating the following, and I disagree with some of his tactics, but Horowitz usually sources his facts quite thoroughly.

One of Baumbach's duties was to deliver deportation notices to Hungary's Jews, confiscating their property and turning it over to Germany. Young George Soros sometimes accompanied the official on his rounds.

Michael

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Correspondence

March 5, 2007

War Record

Martin Peretz falsely accused me of having been a "young cog in the Hitlerite wheel" ("Tyran-a-Soros," February 12). I need to set therecord straight. In 1944, when the Nazis occupied Hungary, my father arranged false identities for his family. He placed me with an official from the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture who claimed that I was his godson. In return, my father arranged a false identity for the official's Jewish wife. In my capacity as 14-year-old godson, I accompanied the official on a trip to inventory the estate of a wealthy Jewish family that had fled the country. That is the episode "60 Minutes" quizzed me about in the interview that Peretz quotes. In the same interview, I also said: "I had no role in taking away that property." The facts are documented in Michael Kaufman's biography, Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire. I have also described the events at length in my own books, and my father, Tivadar Soros, gives an account of our adventures in 1944 in his book, Masquerade.

George Soros

Edited by william.scherk
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"he had to go over and take the lands from the people, his Jewish friends and neighbors who were being sent to the gas chambers"

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"George Soros's father asked a Christian in Hungary to adopt his son, make him his godson. And George Soros used to go around with this anti-Semite and deliver papers to the Jews and confiscate their property and then ship them off. And George Soros was part of it. He would help confiscate the stuff. It's frightening. Here's a Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the death camps. You'd think there would be some remorse, as an eighty-year old, as a forty year-old man, or a twenty year-old man, when it was all over you would do some soul-searching and say 'What did I do? What did I do?"

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William,

Good.

I think enough research from both sides of the issue is present for readers to decide for themselves and know they have seen a reasonable amount of stuff. (I certainly don't want to keep delving into it as this is a time-sucker, you have to wade through a lot of hype-up spun garbage on the Internet, and there is no discernible gain at the end.)

But, if you feel the need to present more stuff, please feel free.

I stand by my conclusion, which is very similar to Beck's.

I see Soros saying one thing one moment and another later. I dislike people who knowingly talk out of both sides of their mouth. I don't trust the man. I will make sure I never knowingly accept money from this dude. But you are free to do so if you ever wish to and get the chance.

Michael

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Here's another tidbit from another author who has researched and written a book on Soros, David Horowitz. (See the biographical article by Horowitz for the quote below here: Goerge Soros.) I don't know what Horowitz's source was for stating the following, and I disagree with some of his tactics, but Horowitz usually sources his facts quite thoroughly.
One of Baumbach's duties was to deliver deportation notices to Hungary's Jews, confiscating their property and turning it over to Germany. Young George Soros sometimes accompanied the official on his rounds.

The book referred to is called "The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party," was written by Richard Poe and David Horowitz. Horowitz funds Jihadwatch.com and edits Frontpage Mag and also runs the website referenced above, "Discover The Networks." Poe is the author of several books, including "How to Profit from the Coming Russian Boom."

The 'tidbit' from the book cites a New Yorker profile by Connie Bruck, "The World According to Soros," from 1995. I will try to track it down -- it looks like a fascinating profile.

The meme that '[o]ne of Baumbach's duties was to deliver deportation notices to Hungary's Jews' is certainly repeated on the internets. Is it true?

Thank you, Michael, for giving a green light to chase down original sources and present what I find.

Edited by william.scherk
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The 'tidbit' from the book cites a New Yorker profile by Connie Bruck, "The World According to Soros," from 1995. I will try to track it down -- it looks like a fascinating profile.

William,

See here: The World According to Soros

(btw - This is courtesy of Glenn Beck's research, but I didn't find it by going to his site directly. Ironically, I found a document on Google that was a group of Beck sources on Soros, although I didn't realize this until I went to it, and the link to the article was in the middle of it.)

Michael

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The notable tidbit was "One of Baumbach's duties was to deliver deportation notices to Hungary's Jews, confiscating their property and turning it over to Germany. Young George Soros sometimes accompanied the official on his rounds."

The tidbit was originally referenced to Horowitz, of whom it is said that he "usually sources his facts quite thoroughly." The source of the 'fact' was traced to an article in the New Yorker, cited by Michael immediately above.

Is this a true fact? Michael, did you find support for the Horowitz/Poe tidbit in the Bruck profile?

You say that your conclusion "is very similar to Beck's." Here is Beck:

"George Soros's father asked a Christian in Hungary to adopt his son, make him his godson. And George Soros used to go around with this anti-Semite and deliver papers to the Jews and confiscate their property and then ship them off. And George Soros was part of it. He would help confiscate the stuff. It's frightening. Here's a Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the death camps."

Edited by william.scherk
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Fareed Zakaria's CNN programme GPS will feature George Soros, at 10 am and 1 pm (Pacific & Eastern).

Here's a blurb and a brief video excerpt of Soros.

This Week on GPS: An exclusive interview with billionaire banker and activist George Soros. The man who has given billions of dollars of his own money to support democracy and open societies around the world offers his take on the events sweeping across the Middle East and North Africa, and makes a bet that the Iranian regime will fall within a year. Soros, a big backer of Obama's presidential campaign, offers his opinion of how his candidate has fared in office. The answer might surprise you. And just what about those accusations by Glenn Beck, saying Soros is the "puppet master" trying to overthrown the American way of life? Soros fires back.

Fareed offers his take on Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, etc. He says we're at the start of a decade of great change in that part of the world, as the Middle East modernizes. So why is it happening? And why is it happening NOW? It has to do with youth and technology. Tune in to find out more.

Then, we'll separate the fact from the fiction on the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt? Are they just another political party or do they really want to impose Sharia law on all the world? Fareed talks to the man who is perhaps America's top expert on the group.

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William,

We have to use common sense, since the ONLY source of this information about Soros's duties as a 14 year old is Soros himself (and maybe a family member). And Soros has shown to be inconsistent in his own words.

So what kind of absolute fact do you want to draw from this? Where do you want to validate it?

We can either believe Soros's present version, that he was merely a spectator in ONE SINGLE INSTANCE and was more interested in peeing than in what was going on around him, or we can take his earlier statements, or at least agreement with statements like Kroft's "...went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews."

So what did a 14 year old do back in Hungary? Did he do as he was told, or did he drift off and daydream all the time around paternal authority? In that society, I believe he did as he was told. Common sense leads me to believe that, at times, if there were things to carry and so on and he was an extra pair of hands, Baumbach would have told him something like, "Take this and carry it over there," and stuff like that.

Of course, Baumbach might have had a heart more like modern-day liberals and worried whether this would psychologically damage the young teenager and made efforts to shield him from emotional scars on a single visit to an estate where he had previously ascertained that no Jews would be present. In pre-WWII Hungarian society, this might have been the case.

But it also might have been the case that young teenagers were supposed to do as they were told and not question paternal authority. And they were to be seen, not heard. That is, in pre-WWII Hungarian society.

The reader will just have to imagine which is more plausible.

:)

The only way we would be able to establish an absolute fact is to go back in a time machine and watch.

It is pretty clear that Soros's own statements are corrupted by his interests at the time he makes them since they tell different tales at different times. So we have to use common sense. That's all we've really got for that absolute fact you demand,

As to Horowitz's sourcing, I don't know what the sources were of the article by Bruck in The New Yorker. Once again, we have to use common sense at this point. I presume that this information came from actual interviews with Soros, or maybe his brother. We know Soros certainly gave interviews back then.

This kind of sourcing was in vogue for journalistic standards at that time (1995).

Sadly, nowadays, it no longer is. Nowadays, there are way too many cases of respectable journalists making stuff up and omitting stuff at their leisure and slant. This is one of the reasons, I believe, most of the mainstream news organizations are facing serious financial and audience problems. The only ones who seem to keep above water and grow either receive donations from billionaires or have a growing audience that they earn each day.

EDIT: I forgot to address a part of your inquiry. My view is similar to Beck's and continues to be. Beck's statement can be sourced to Soros's own words--just not the most recent words by Soros. I think Beck's view makes the most sense to me (using the common sense factor).

I will agree that Beck's delivery maybe contained a rhetorical excess. But not the facts in that delivery. Those ultimately came from Soros himself, although he has now changed his tune.

Michael

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William,

Here is a short remark on the Soros video.

I found it amusing to hear the guy who funds outfits like Media Matters talk about Orwell, but that's only my sense of humor. :)

Fact-wise, if a person makes a false public statement of fact about another that is damaging to that person's interests, this is called libel. I am pretty sure Soros knows what libel is and what lawyers do. And I am just as sure he has some top-notch lawyers on his team.

So let's look at Beck. Is he just a rigtht-wing kook and prophet wannabe in a Howard Beale manner who shoots off his mouth without knowing what he is talking about? Maybe he somehow taps into some Jungian archetype for the millions of ignorant chawbacons who make up his audience so he doesn't have to concern himself with facts?

Let's look at his structure.

Beck personally pays the salaries of a research team of 40 people--and these folks are in addition to the Fox research people. Beck also has his own legal counsel. But when he takes on an opponent as big and vicious as Soros, you can believe it that the Fox legal advisers have looked at his material before he goes on the air. Granted, his show is live, but the outline and facts to be presented are scripted.

So this isn't just a local yokel sticking his tongue out at a rich man.

Beck aside, I do find it interesting that Soros decided to badmouth Rupert Murdoch on that video. Now, that part is interesting since they are both in the same club (billionaires who run/fund media).

Michael

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5 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:

It would appear that one of Soros' hundreds of orgs is Billyboy's sugar daddy.

What's that about?  William's employer?  Or?

Last I heard - but that was a number of years ago - William was working for a lumbering company.

Ellen

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3 hours ago, Ellen Stuttle said:

What's that about?  William's employer?  Or?

Last I heard - but that was a number of years ago - William was working for a lumbering company.

Ellen

Just the way Billy defended Soros so staunchly in this thread, I don’t think I have seen it before. (Today he liked a post on this thread. It was Selene withdrawing something he said about Soros.)

I do wonder if Billy has benefited from One Foundation programs. There are so many foundations and so many programs within each, i don’t think it impossible they would pay, I don’t know, something, for maintaining the climate message at OL for a decade and a half. No one here likes him or defends him or apparently wants him here. The owner called him cancer. I’m trying to make sense of it.

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9 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:

No one here likes him or defends him or apparently wants him here. The owner called him cancer. I’m trying to make sense of it.

KFile.gif

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11 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:

I still don’t get how you’d be here fifteen years without being paid.

I don't get why you think he'd be paid.  For being ineffectual?  He doesn't persuade people here of anything except that he's a showcase dupe.

Ellen

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