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Re: Who's behind the Wall St. protests?
Who's behind the Wall Street protests?
by Mark Egan and Michelle Nichols / Reuters
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Anti-Wall Street protesters say the rich are getting richer while average Americans suffer, but the group that started it all may have benefited indirectly from the largesse of one of the world's richest men.
There has been much speculation over who is financing the disparate protest, which has spread to cities across America and lasted nearly four weeks. One name that keeps coming up is investor George Soros, who in September debuted in the top 10 list of wealthiest Americans. Conservative critics contend the movement is a Trojan horse for a secret Soros agenda.
Soros and the protesters deny any connection. But Reuters did find indirect financial links between Soros and Adbusters, an anti-capitalist group in Canada which started the protests with an inventive marketing campaign aimed at sparking an Arab Spring type uprising against Wall Street. Moreover, Soros and the protesters share some ideological ground.
"I can understand their sentiment," Soros told reporters last week at the United Nations about the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, which are expected to spur solidarity marches globally on Saturday.
Pressed further for his views on the movement and the protesters, Soros refused to be drawn in. But conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh summed up the speculation when he told his listeners last week, "George Soros money is behind this."
Soros, 81, is No. 7 on the Forbes 400 list with a fortune of $22 billion, which has ballooned in recent years as he deftly responded to financial market turmoil. He has pledged to give away all his wealth, half of it while he earns it and the rest when he dies.
Like the protesters, Soros is no fan of the 2008 bank bailouts and subsequent government purchase of the toxic sub-prime mortgage assets they amassed in the property bubble.
The protesters say the Wall Street bank bailouts in 2008 left banks enjoying huge profits while average Americans suffered under high unemployment and job insecurity with little help from Washington. They contend that the richest 1 percent of Americans have amassed vast fortunes while being taxed at a lower rate than most people.
BANKING LIFE SUPPORT
Soros in 2009 wrote in an editorial that the purchase of toxic bank assets would, "provide artificial life support for the banks at considerable expense to the taxpayer."
He urged the Obama administration to take bolder action, either by recapitalizing or nationalizing the banks and forcing them to lend at attractive rates. His advice went unheeded.
The Hungarian-American was an early supporter of the 2008 election campaign of Barack Obama, who will seek a second term as president in the November, 2012, election. He has long backed liberal causes - the Open Society Institute, the foreign policy think tank Council on Foreign Relations and Human Rights Watch.
According to disclosure documents from 2007-2009, Soros' Open Society gave grants of $3.5 million to the Tides Center, a San Francisco-based group that acts almost like a clearing house for other donors, directing their contributions to liberal non-profit groups. Among others the Tides Center has partnered with are the Ford Foundation and the Gates Foundation.
Disclosure documents also show Tides, which declined comment, gave Adbusters grants of $185,000 from 2001-2010, including nearly $26,000 between 2007-2009.
Aides to Soros say any connection is tenuous and that Soros has never heard of Adbusters. Soros himself declined comment.
The Vancouver-based group, which publishes a magazine and runs such campaigns as "Digital Detox Week" and "Buy Nothing Day," says it wants to "change the way corporations wield power" and its goal is "to topple existing power structures."
SLOW START
Adbusters, whose magazine has a circulation of 120,000 and which is known for its spoofs of popular advertisements, came up with the Occupy Wall Street idea after Arab Spring protests toppled governments in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, said Kalle Lasn, 69, Adbusters co-founder.
"It came out of these brainstorming sessions we have at Adbusters," Lasn told Reuters, adding they began promoting it online on July 13. "We were inspired by what happened in Tunisia and Egypt and we had this feeling that America was ripe for a Tahrir moment."
"We felt there was a real rage building up in America, and we thought that we would like to create a spark which would give expression for this rage."
Lasn said Adbusters is 95 percent funded by subscribers paying for the magazine. "George Soros's ideas are quite good, many of them. I wish he would give Adbusters some money, we sorely need it," he said. "He's never given us a penny."
Other support for Occupy Wall Street has come from online funding website Kickstarter, where more than $75,000 has been pledged, deliveries of food and from cash dropped in a bucket at the park. Liberal film maker Michael Moore has also pledged to donate money.
The protests began in earnest on September 17, triggered by an Adbusters campaign featuring a provocative poster showing a ballerina dancing atop the famous bronze bull in New York's financial district as a crowd of protesters wearing gas masks approach behind her.
Dressed in anarchist black, the battle-ready mob is shrouded in a fog suggestive of tear gas or fires burning. Some are wearing gas masks, others wielding sticks. The poster's message seems to be a heady combination of sexuality, violence, excitement and adventure.
Former carpenter Robert Daros, 23, saw that poster in a cafe in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Having lost his work as a carpenter after Florida's speculative construction boom collapsed in a heap of sub-prime mortgage foreclosures, he quit his job as a bartender and traveled to New York City with just a sleeping bag and the hope of joining the protest movement.
Daros was one of the first people to arrive on Wall Street for the so-called occupation on September 17, when protesters marched and tried to camp on Wall Street only to be driven off by police to Zuccotti Park - two acres of concrete without a blade of grass near the rising One World Trade Center.
"When I was a carpenter, I lost my job because the financier of my project was arrested for corporate fraud," said Daros, who was wearing a red arm band to show he was helping out in the medic section of the Occupy Wall Street camp.
Since its obscure beginnings, the campaign has drawn global media attention in places as far-flung as Iran and China. The Times of London, however, was not alone when it called the protests "Passionate but Pointless."
Adbusters' co-founder Lasn dismisses that, reeling off specific demands: a tax on the richest 1 percent, a tax on currency trades and a tax on all financial transactions.
"Down the road, there will be crystal clear demands coming out of this movement," he said. "But this first phase of the movement is messy and leaderless and demandless."
"I think it was perfect the way it happened."
(Additional reporting by Cezary Podkul in New York and Cameron French in Toronto, writing by Mark Egan, editing by Claudia Parsons)
(This story was corrected to fix reference to Kalle Lasn)
Re: Who's behind the Wall St. protests?
He has pledged to give away all his wealth, half of it while he earns it and the rest when he dies.
To Rockefella'.
Yes, the head of the Rockefeller family is "giving away" his wealth when he dies and has gotten a bunch of other crooks to do the same.
He has long backed liberal causes - the Open Society Institute, the foreign policy think tank Council on Foreign Relations and Human Rights Watch.
Yep. They're all friends and they all go to the same fancy clubs. But really, when we're not fleecing you we're really looking out for your interests!
Lol!
Control the revolution.
Re: Who's behind the Wall St. protests?
So basically theyre saying that this protest is funded by Soros to delegitimize it.
This cant be normal people who are simply mad at the way Wall Street as conducted over the last decade or so, noooooo, this must the liberals trying push their agenda on the US.
Re: Who's behind the Wall St. protests?
It's funny, conservative will fiercely attack you if you start brining up how the Tea Party is helped with both financing and direction by right wing groups and corporations. Say what you want about the Tea Party, it wouldn't have got off the ground if it weren't for real grass roots anger by real people. I don't agree with them, but I'm not going to try and delegitamize their stance, no matter how misplaced I believe a lot of their ideas are.
Also, FOX NEWS and other conservative outlets will not show the more fringe, racists, radical, crazy parts of the Tea Party as to not taint the entire movement, yet they are directly trying to do this with the 99%ers. Look at Erin Burnett, who's had her (pretty fine) ass handed to her over her slanted, biased covereage of the protestors. It should also be noted that her husband is a big wig at CitiBank and she was a part of the corporate conservatives of CNBC.
The problem with the 99%ers is their lack of direction and goals, only a basic ideological stance about the unfair, unAmerican and dangerous Wall Street mentality and their reckless, greed driven actions and the unfairness of the tax structure.
They actually had (at least at one time) Tea Partiers protesting WITH them, which is when the consevative, right wing propogandists really starting going into overdrive about this movement.
Re: Who's behind the Wall St. protests?
The Tea Partiers originally started out as a modern day Populist movement that actually didn't have bad ideas, and were asking the right questions. Questioning both overgrown government and also the extreme ties to corporate greed that has swallowed up this country.
But then the neo-cons, who no longer feel welcome in the growing "pro goverment" Republican movement started by Bush, suddenly infiltrated the Tea Party.
Once it became a front for "Vote Sarah Palin in 2012" Fox News took it on in full force, and made a full attempt to absolutely BURY the almost CONSTANT video feeds of Tea Partiers basically protesting "Vote the Nigger Out!" at these rally's, something that almost certaintly would bury the Tea Party's credibility.
The irony?
Herman Cain's popularity right now can be totally credited to the Tea Party.
YET
Like Mister ID stated, Fox News is going out of their way to make sure all you see of the Occupy Wall Street movement is the tree hugging, no bath in 10 weeks, on a rag, "I missed the Vietnam War protests", hippies, intentionally doing everything they can to kill a REAL movement with just as much credibility as the Tea Party, if not MORE. If Occupy is a cover for Socialism, then the Tea Party has got to be a cover for a Banker-run police state.
So basically theyre saying that this protest is funded by Soros to delegitimize it.
This cant be normal people who are simply mad at the way Wall Street as conducted over the last decade or so, noooooo, this must the liberals trying push their agenda on the US.
Exactly. And that's precisely what the capitalists want you to think. To bury their legitimacy.
Re: Who's behind the Wall St. protests?
He urged the Obama administration to take bolder action, either by recapitalizing or nationalizing the banks and forcing them to lend at attractive rates.
Fuck yes! And, don't stop at banks-- nationalize transportation, energy, insurance, education, and any other institution that pervades public institutions.
Re: Who's behind the Wall St. protests?
Exactly. And that's precisely what the capitalists want you to think. To bury their legitimacy.
Not only that. Once the cash starts flowing you can start making demands too. Oh, don't push that isssue.
Yes master.
Re: Who's behind the Wall St. protests?
In a capitalist society like ours, any time a large even happens, such as the wall street protests, you can be 100% sure there is money being made off it.
From simple things like the gas bought to drive to the protest sites to paint for fucking signs, all anyone really needs to do is position themselves to somehow service the "anti-capitalist rally" and the cash is going to roll in.
It's not possible to have an non-capitalist demonstration within a capitalist system, and anti capitalism when it feeds those it protests.... is fucking retarded.
The best way to fight the system, the only way at this point, is mass emigration to China. Sad but true.
Re: Who's behind the Wall St. protests?
The problem with that, is just like Russians and the Soviet Union.... countrymen still have pride in their country. I still love America. It's in my blood, and there's nothing to be ashamed about being an American. "You've got blood on your hands", every country does, so my point stands.
But at the same time, you don't want to have to flee your country to change your situation. You want to fix it within. Which means you might have to play the game for a little while just like a rattlesnake waiting to know just the right time to strike (nationalization).
- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: Who's behind the Wall St. protests?
I know nothing about the Tea Party or any of this stuff....but I will say in the late 1990s I read a book by Soros called "The crisis of global capitalism" that was an interesting discussion of currancy markets and so on.
At the time I thought it seemed odd that the man who famously broke the bank of england would write a book critising capital markets...but I must say the subsequent decade or so seems to have underlined exactly what he was complaing about even then.
