SOROS FUNDS PLAN TO BLOCK BUSH

(Inter Press Service: Sep 12, 2003)

UNITED NATIONS – Mr. George Soros, most often described as a billionaire philanthropist, once shared some of the same political values with U.S. President George W. Bush, such as both wanting a ''regime change'' in Iraq.

But Soros went further: he has also been gunning for Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, Libya's Muammar el-Qaddafi, Burma's Gen. Than Shwe and Turkmenistan's president-for-life Saparmurat Niyazov.

And now Soros has made a full political circle: he wants to see a ''regime change'' in the United States.

A long-time pro-democracy advocate and a sometimes currency speculator, Soros is openly backing a non-governmental initiative called 'Americans Coming Together' (ACT) aimed at stopping Bush in his bid for a second term as president of the United States.

ACT is planning to spend about 75 million dollars to mobilize U.S. voters to defeat Bush in the next presidential elections in November 2004.

Described as a counter-cultural investor whose net worth is more than five billion dollars, Soros has already contributed about 10 million dollars to the anti-Bush campaign.

Six other philanthropists have chipped in a total of about 12 million dollars, while eight million dollars have been contributed by trade unions.

Soros, who is chairman of the Open Society Institute (OSI) which promotes multi-party democracy worldwide, thinks that Bush and his aggressive unilateral foreign policy is doing more harm than good to the United States.

He also believes the president has neither the intellectual capacity nor the political prowess to guide the United States on a sound foreign policy course.

Bush's policies are bound to be wrong ''because they are based on a false ideology'', he told students last month in a commencement address at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.

He sees striking similarities between the U.S. president and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, both of who believe in military power to achieve their political objectives.

The idea that might is right, advocated by both leaders, cannot be reconciled with the idea of an open society, Soros told the students.

A strong advocate of the concept of an ''open society'', he argues that neo-conservatives in the Bush administration have made a mockery of the values of freedom and democracy -- all in the name of fighting terrorism.

The battle against terrorism, he says, cannot be accepted as the guiding principle of U.S. foreign policy, and Soros wants Washington to play a more constructive role in the progress of humanity.

''What will happen to the world if the most powerful country on earth -- the one that sets the agenda -- is solely preoccupied with self-preservation?'' he asked.

''Acting as the leader of a global open society will not protect the United States from terrorist attacks,'' he warned, ''but by playing a constructive role, we can regain the respect and support of the world, and this will make the task of fighting terrorism easier.''

While he favoured the removal of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, Soros thinks that one of Bush's biggest foreign policy debacles is the war on Iraq.

He has pooh-poohed the idea that the Bush administration is fostering democracy by invading and occupying the Middle East nation.

''Democracy cannot be imposed from the outside,'' he argued. ''I have been actively involved in building open societies in a number of countries through my network of foundations. Speaking from experience, I would never choose Iraq for nation building,'' he added.

Soros says his primary aim in getting involved with ACT is to mobilize civil society and convince people to go to the polls next year, ''and vote for candidates who will reassert the values of the greatest open society in the world''.

The anti-Bush campaign is gathering support from anti-war groups, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and academics.

''The Soros initiative should gain support as the situation in Iraq worsens, and as the public becomes more aware that President Bush took us to war based on false information about Iraq's weaponry and about its connection to terrorist groups,'' John Quigley, professor of law at Ohio State University, told IPS.

''A president who initiates war on such (false) premises should not be re-elected,'' said Quigley.

''There is no question that if you really look at the deeper situation (about the Bush administration), George Soros is right,'' says Rob Wheeler, organiser of the Uniting for Peace Coalition and U.N. Representative of the Association of World Citizens.

''The president and his administration is surely leading the country in a 'false and dangerous situation' and they must be stopped,'' he told IPS.

''The question is, really, what issues ACT will focus on and how tough they will be on the president,'' he added.

The Hungarian-born Soros says he is not backing any candidate for the U.S. presidency.

Besides Bush, Soros also targets U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, author of the Patriot Act, a highly controversial law that has restricted civil liberties in the guise of fighting terrorism.

Anyone who opposes the Patriot Act, says Ashcroft, is giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Ashcroft's remarks have prompted a rejoinder from Soros: ‘‘these are views of extremists, not adherents to an open society.''

A graduate of the London School of Economics, Soros says one of his political pursuits was to defeat communism and transform former closed societies in the Soviet Union into open societies.

Last week, he closed down his operations in Russia, where he spent over one billion dollars promoting democracy in a country that was the cradle of communism. Russia, he said, had weathered all its crises, and needs no outside support to survive.

Still, the OSI is known to spend over 450 million dollars annually to create open societies in several developing nations and Eastern European countries.

Ironically, although his anti-Bush campaign has strong supporters in the current U.S. anti-war movement, Soros is still vilified by anti-globalisation groups, who criticise him for his strong advocacy of free market economies and the global capitalist system.

As a currency trader, he is accused of making his fortune by manipulating markets, mostly in developing countries. He is known to have made a billion dollars on a single day by speculating on the British pound.

In an article in 'Covert Action Quarterly' last year, Heather Cotton said that Soros' foundations and financial machinations are partly responsible for the destruction of socialism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

''He has set his sights on China. He was part of the full court press that dismantled Yugoslavia,'' she writes.

Soros' role, she said, is to tighten the stranglehold of globalisation and the ''New World Order'' while promoting his own financial gain.

Cotton writes that while anti-globalisation forces were freezing in the streets outside New York's Waldorf Astoria Hotel in February 2002, Soros was inside addressing the World Economic Forum, the traditional platform for the world's economic elites.

''As the police forced protesters into metal cages on Park Avenue, Soros was extolling the virtues of the 'open society'."

As chairman of Soros Fund Management, Soros built a huge fortune doubling as a speculator in international currency and financial markets.

He has been accused of profiting unfairly in foreign markets, including developing country markets such as Thailand, and was lambasted by Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad for currency speculation that contributed to the 1997 Asian economic crisis.

At a meeting at the University of Pennsylvania, Soros was asked how he reconciles his two roles in life: philanthropist and ruthless speculator.

Pleading innocence, he said the cash crises he has been blamed for were really caused by government policies, not his speculative actions. ''I was used as a scapegoat for government actions,'' he added, pointing out that he is known in China as ''the crocodile''.