Georgia revolt carried mark of Soros: a coup?

"TBILISI -- It was back in February that billionaire financier George Soros began laying the brickwork for the toppling of Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze.

That month, funds from his Open Society Institute sent a 31-year-old Tbilisi activist named Giga Bokeria to Serbia to meet with members of the Otpor (Resistance) movement and learn how they used street demonstrations to topple dictator Slobodan Milosevic. Then, in the summer, Mr. Soros's foundation paid for a return trip to Georgia by Otpor activists, who ran three-day courses teaching more than 1,000 students how to stage a peaceful revolution."

the globe and mail
By MARK MacKINNON
Wednesday, November 26, 2003
whole article

Another article shows, that James Baker was involved in the preparation of the election:

"James Baker? This is the same guy who Bush Jr. hired in 2000 to steal the Florida vote, handing the U.S. presidency over to a tool who lost by half a million votes. The way Baker railroaded Bush into the presidency has done more damage to American democracy than anything since Nixon and Watergate. Sending him into corrupt Georgia to demand that they have "free and fair elections" is like sending Yegor Gaidar into Iraq in order to advise them on privatization and the transition to a market economy – which Bush also did."
whole article

Was this really just a coup and not the "velvet revolution", our media claimed it to be?

Hello from Germany,
Dirk

Basically the idea of real Democracy in Georgia was a lie. The President was selected by the Russian Government, ran unopposed, and was controlled by the criminal organisations (Mafia).

So, what happened was good.

if a billionaire from a foreign country, whose intentions are highly questionable, would pump lots of money into organizing a revolt, would hire protestors from another country to manipulate people and let it look like a "revolt"? Soros has made his fortune with highly corrupt transactions that might have destroyed the existence of uncountable people and that have destabilized whole countries.
And what about the role of James Baker?
It seems to me that this was done not to serve the people of Georgia, but to support the silkroad-stategy of the ruling class in the USA. Georgia plays a very important geostrategical role in the oil buiz. And maybe Shevardnaze just started to refuse to play the role of an american whore any longer and now they've replaced him.
Dirk

I remember the "students" in Yugoslavia also.

Soros' fingerprints are all over Georgia. How many more countries does he need to destabilize?

Currently he's speculating against the US dollar- shall we too go the way of Indonesia and all the Asian and Eastern European countries he destablized, economically devastated and plundered?

Soros, Bush, Baker, Carlucci = Carlyle

The only difference between Soros and Bush is that Soros prefers to clothe the fist in a velvet glove- it's the same theft, same plunder and same misery. Putin is not taking kindly to Soros' "benevolence" and I can't say I blame him.

Soros wanting to buy the Democratic Presidentials is machiavellic to the extreme. My heart is so heavy at what I see coming for us.

I have a penpal who was a Uni student during the fall of Milosevic, she couldn't stand her government. I'm going to have to dig up the email she sent me a few weeks after Milosevic went into exile.

and wanting to see your country pulverized, subjugated and plundered. Talk to John Kleeb about his friend who left DU over this issue, he can fill you in a little with first hand stories from another point of view.

They spun the hell out of the Yugoslavia war, so much so that at the end you don't even know if you're coming or going anymore and that's what Soros specializes in- murky overthrows where you can never quite put your finger on anything.

I'm sure we'll end up taking his money and working with his organizations (Americans Coming Together & Center for American Progress) because we want Bush out that badly but our hate is being exploited and I am really weary of the price.

(the fall of Milosevic, not the war) seems to me to have been a good thing. Milosevic was bad for the serbs and he was bad for the Kosovars. What he did to the innocent Kosovars was despicable and inexcusable, and his fall was legitimate and good.

Georgia I have not yet researched.

There's no way you can call that a good thing Darranar.

Vietnam was originally spun as a good thing too. So was Venezuela. So was Iraq. War is never ever a good thing. Forgive my cynicism about any altruism on our part.

I'm talking about the overthrow of Milosevic - a different matter.

He was a butcher.

I just came back to edit thinking my tone was too snarky and you had already answered!

Milosevic was definitely no saint but he wasn't the demon we painted him out to be either. There were other ways to overthrow him and besides, honestly, what business is it of ours to go overthrow another country's leader? Check that entire region, the US has made mince meat out of it and for what?

The butchers of Bosnia, Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic should have been arrested and tried for crimes against humanity. To this day they're wanted war criminals by the World Court but for years they lived in Bosnia, under the protection of NATO troops.

The UN, just like with Bush, begged us to use diplomacy but we immediately flouted international law, intentionally avoided the Security Council and sent in the bombers. My five heroes at that time were the ones who spoke clearly against this

Barbara Lee
Russ Feingold
Fritz Hollings
Jeff Bingaman
Dennis Kucinich (don't remember who else in the House right now).

Our media did a brilliant job on this one. I watched the war from Europe and once again, it was a different war than the one I read about here. You should just google this and stick to Left-wing sources. Veterans for Peace had quite a bit of info on their site because they protested the war against Yugoslavia vigourously.

Peace Darranar

from what I've read on the topic, he acknowledged and condemned the ethnic cleansing but did not think that the best means of stopping it was war.

I'm well aware that some of my views on regime change are a little out of sync with some parts of the radical left to which I belong. My opinion is that regime change in the case of a brutal dictator is good, but instigating it with war is bad.

If Bush canceled elections in '04 and started going after us "anti-american commies", I would hope that there would be someone willing to "regime change" our nation without the bombs and the tanks and the death, even if it was a foreign force.

and a little out of sync, too. Not to mention, that I was liberated by US and soviet troops. O.k., I'm 39, but I'm still a beneficiary :-)

If it would really be about justice or human rights or democrazy. If some people would really investigate, because the election in Georgia was corrupt, and they are concerned about the people in Georgia and the future of democrazy: I'm 100% with you.
But if words and values that are already as empty and misused as no other ones, are used, to just replace one puppet-government with another, count me out.
And the more words and values as democrazy are just empty words, meaning nothing but to defend global capitalism and defend it AGAINST any democratic controll, the more dangerous it gets.
The people, who are the victims of this mess, will fight back someday, and we can just hope, that they don't follow the next Hitler, being tired of the lies of a formal democrazy.

Hello from Germany and be proud of Kucinich: he can liberate me everyday!
Dirk

and that is why I'm trying to get as much info as I can about this, to see if this was a legitimate campaign for human rights or simply a ploy to spread global capitalism.

my fear is no one will

... economically maybe ... maybe ...

O.K., it was multilateral, 'cause Germany had the major role and our corporations and banks had a big interest to control Europe. But that's all. The IMF and the Worlbank did destabilize Yuguslavia for about 10 years. Sometimes the prices for bread were about 4 times as high as days before during that period, while millions lost their jobs. It was a war about the privatization off the former state-owned coroporations.
Europe and the USA did provoke the ethnic diversities in a way that is hard to believe looking back. Milosovic was about the only one to resist the IMF, as the Serbs were the only ones, who did resist Hitler during WWII, if that matters. The amount of lies told to us, during the war in former Yuguslavia is unbelievable.
Did you follow the trial against Milosovic and did you even wonder, why we hardly hear anything about that trial anymore?
Dirk

nor is it deniable. He deserved to be toppled.

He is not a hero in any way.

Whatever the motivation ws for Soros's support of his toppling, it does not change the fact that it was the right thing to do.

or bad against evil or the other way round. We're not Bush or Bin Ladden, I guess. I'm still not sure about what really happened in Kosova and from studying the protocols of the trial against Milosovic, I have even more doubts.
At least here in Germany, the lies we were told are incredible.
I don't know, what did happen there, but I know 100% that what we were told was lies. The most prominent lie was the "Hufeisenplan" that was used to force Germany into the war.
Dirk

My understanding is that the Bush Administration sent Baker, not Soros. You are saying another thread has something on Baker, where is that article? Soros sent agitators who would organize the public in an uprising if the election results were invalid.

And to be honest with you, I don't think Georgia was any kind of respectable government anyways. Keep in mind that Georgians, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, took to the streets in protest at the election results. Everyone knew the election was a fraud. If Shevardnaze had any kind of case on his behalf, he wouldn't have resigned. Keep in mind his name had a lot of value to the Russian Government... that's why they installed him.

that he intentionally, instead of making sure that the elections are "correct" made sure, that they are not correct, making the "velvet coup" possible.
Hey, this is the same guy, who was behind the Florida-coup.


And you're not correct about 100.000s in the streets. Georgia is a small country with about 5 million inhabitants. There were always just about 20.000 people in the streets.
Seems to me, this kind of coups have a new quality, it's as if they've studied grassroots revolutions now and copy their methods.


Did you read the article?
link
"So Saakashvili has been courted and financed by Soros and the American government eh?

"George Soros is set against the President of Georgia," he said during a news conference in Tbilisi a week before his resignation -- it was at least the third time during the protests that he had complained about Mr. Soros. He threatened to shut down Open Society's Georgia offices, saying it was not Mr. Soros's business "to get involved in the political processes."

Mr. Bokeria, whose Liberty Institute received money from both Open Society and the U.S. government-backed Eurasia Institute, says three other organizations played key roles in Mr. Shevardnadze's downfall: Mr. Saakashvili's National Movement party, the Rustavi-2 television station and Kmara! (Georgian for Enough!), a youth group that declared war on Mr. Shevardnadze last April and began a poster and graffiti campaign attacking government corruption.

All three have ties to Mr. Soros. According to Georgian press reports, Kmara received a 0,000 (U.S.) start-up grant in April, some of which may have been used during the three weeks of street protests when it bused demonstrators in from the countryside and set up loudspeakers and a giant television screen amid the crowds surrounding the parliament building."

Otherwise pretty soon we'd hear they had a coup in Russia...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=214046

Moscow- Fifteen years since it started work in post-Soviet Russia, US billionaire George Soros's foundation has been "paralysed" after 50 camouflage-clad men seized its Moscow offices and removed computer records and archives.

<snip>

The raid, at about midnight on Thursday, came just days after Soros publicly criticized the jailing of Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky as "persecution" that would force business to submit to the state.

The organisation had lost all information on its 1,000 grant recipients.

source: http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=565&fArticleId=282302


President Vladimir Putin is facing one of the biggest political crises of his four-year administration after police detained Khodorkovsky, Russia's richest man, at gunpoint on October 25 in Siberia and flew him to Moscow to be jailed.

The campaign against Khodorkovsky and Yukos, which has faced a series of criminal probes since July, is widely seen as Kremlin revenge for the billionaire tycoon's funding of opposition political parties and has alarmed foreign investors.

Hungarian-born Soros, who has long had difficult relations with Moscow, in a Russian newspaper interview early this week denounced the arrest of Khodorkovsky as "persecution" that would force business to submit to the state.

http://www.news.lt/Default.aspx?DL=E&ArticleID=62551


<snip>

The assault on Khodorkovsky and some of his associates, who make up a group of core shareholders in the company, is widely believed to have been orchestrated by Kremlin hardliners apparently alarmed by Khodorkovsky's political ambitions.

"I believe that he acted within the contraints of the law in supporting political parties. I am doing the same in the United States," said Soros.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/031104/137/292zw.html

It was the day before Russia's parliamentary election campaign began that masked gunmen burst into the Moscow office of George Soros's Open Society Institute and carried away documents and computers belonging to the democracy-building organization.

The incident last week, coming on the heels of the imprisonment of billionaire tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, raised yet another outcry in the West about the political direction the country is taking.

Foreign Russia-watchers saw the raid as an attack on Mr. Soros, who had poured more than $1-billion (U.S.) into building civil society in Russia during the past decade, and as yet more proof that the country is drifting back toward authoritarianism under President Vladimir Putin.

<snip>

As the parliamentary election campaign begins, Mr. Putin's popularity in Russia remains unassailable, and both his personal approval rating and support for the pro-Putin United Russia party have gone up since the Khodorkovsky affair began.

Most ordinary Russians harbour a deep dislike for Mr. Khodorkovsky and the other so-called "oligarchs," the handful of men who became super rich by snapping up state assets during a sell-off in the early 1990s. "We are not afraid of the old times, because then we had free hospitals, free schools, free summer camps for children. We lived well, better than this," said Tatiana Sablina, a 40-year-old selling her nephew's artwork on the Arbat, Moscow's historic pedestrian mall.


http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20031115.wputin1115/BNStory/Front/

Soros Foundation attacked again

Saturday 15 November 2003, 6:23 Makka Time, 3:23 GMT

<snip>

Friday's attack was the second such raid in barely a week against US billionnaire George Soros' charity's headquarters, police said.

<snip>

The campaign against Yukos is seen as a Kremlin warning to big business to stay out of politics, and a bid to restore state control over the nation's energy resources.

<snip>

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/541389F8-1058-4673-93E0-F71086A298AE.htm

<snip>

George Soros, the richest of the liberal philanthropists, has publicly declared that his good work on behalf of building "open societies" worldwide is at risk because of George W. Bush's assaults on an open society at home. So Soros will spend about $100 million trying to oust Bush.

<snip>
http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2003/11/kuttner-r-11-13.html

Investor firm puts off Russian deal
Bloomberg News Thursday, November 6, 2003
Carlyle Group, a Washington-based private equities firm, has put off plans to start a Russian buyout fund after Mikhail Khodorkovsky became the company's second adviser in the country to be jailed, its potential partner said.
.
Carlyle planned to start a fund with the Moscow-based Alfa Group. "Talks are on hold," Mark Bond, a managing director of Alfa Group's private equity unit, said by telephone. "The events of the last two weeks haven't helped." A Carlyle partner, Christopher Finn, declined to comment.
.
Carlyle has a close business relationship with Khodorkovsky, the 40-year-old chief of the oil giant Yukos who was arrested on Oct. 25 on suspicion of fraud and tax evasion. Platon Lebedev, a Carlyle advisor and the chairman of Group Menatep, a Yukos holding company, was arrested in July on similar accusations. Both deny the allegations.
.
Carlyle, which manages $16.4 billion, appoints senior political and business figures to help raise funds and identify takeover targets. Former U.S. President George H.W. Bush retired as a Carlyle adviser last month.
.
<snip>
.
Bond at Alfa said talks with Carlyle had also stalled because the American firm was less about entering into a joint venture. Carlyle operates its own buyout and real estate funds in America, Europe and Asia, though it has a joint venture with Riverstone Holdings to operate a $222 million energy and power fund. Khodorkovsky is an adviser to the energy and power fund, according to Carlyle's 2002 annual report. Lebedev is an adviser to Carlyle's European operations, which are headed by former Prime Minister John Major of Britain.
.
<snip>

http://www.iht.com/articles/116501.html


Putin does have something to be nervous about. His trip to Europe has failed. In Europe Russian president was given a cold reception and he was told straightforward that his policies concerning Chechnya and Russian business are unacceptable. Massive anti-Putin campaign started in the world’s press and was provoked by the arrest of Russian tycoon Khodorkovsky. Another warplane crash, and finally the refusal to extradite Zakayev, which the Kremlin regarded as betrayal of the British-Russian friendship.

Putin’s chief spokesman of anti-Chechen propaganda Sergei Yastrzhembsky announced Putin’s offence:

«British justice has a strange and, speaking frankly, slightly selective approach to fairness», Yastrzhembsky complained.

<snip>
As far as the culprit of Putin’s rage goes, he left the courtroom as a sort of a symbol of Moscow’s most disgraceful failure to impose its totally cheeky thesis that Russia is allegedly fighting against some «international terrorism» in Chechnya.

<snip>

http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/article.php?id=1959


Houston executives question future of Russian energy deals

Stunning political developments in Russia last week could threaten millions of dollars of oil deal negotiations between Russian and U.S. companies, including companies in Houston, say two local experts who spend much of their time in Russia.

Economides said in a phone interview from Moscow that many people in Russia believe the government has "effectively re-nationalized Russia's largest oil company."

<snip>

He believes the timing of the arrest and the stock seizure was significant, coming as Yukos was believed to be nearing a merger deal with ExxonMobil.

"They were negotiating furiously here until this happened. This was a preemptive move by the government," Economides says. "They wouldn't dare go after properties owned by a big U.S. multinational company."

<snip>

Now, Stinemetz says, Khodorkovsky has let it be known that he wants to run for president and has started backing opposition political parties. (( Just like in the US!))

<snip>

Russian oil production could reach 12 million barrels a day by the end of the decade, and in the next two to five years Russian oil exports to the U.S. could begin to displace Middle East oil, according to a recent report by Wood Mackenzie Inc., a global energy research firm.

<snip>

http://houston.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/2003/11/10/story6.html
http://houston.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/2003/11/10/story6.html?page=2

I just start to study this all. I have to admit that I'm really confused about the situation in Russia. Not so much about Georgia: after finding a lot more documents, at least I'm convinced that this velvet revolt wasn't one. Soros did even pay the buss drivers to carry the "revolting citizens" - I wish someone would do this for us. It's not about Shevardnaze being better or worse, it's just about how it was managed.

But I don't know, what to think of Putin at all, he was a KGB-agent in the old Soviet Union. I did just read an interview with him, where he was so proud to tell that what fascinated him about becoming a KGB-agent was that he could do with little effort what armees can only do, killing millions.
If he would not be the president of Russia, I'm pretty sure, the german police would ask for his extradition. As the governor of St. Petersburg, he was highly involved into organized crime during the privatisation of St. Petersburg. The german police did a kind of house search in 8 different places just a few month ago and found out that Putin was in the executive board of the St. Petersburg A.G., a criminal organisation that is mostly engaged in the sex market - selling hijacked easteuropean women to european brothels and the drug market. They didn't expect to find what they found and after just a few times mentioning this in the german news, I did never hear about this again.

If you understand german, here's a link:
manager magazine
english link


Seems to me as if it is all about, using local mafias as the only tool left, to fight the more official "mafias" a la IMF, Worldbank etc. ppp.

I'm really confused,
Dirk

(laughing as I say that) Wie geht es dir heute? Es geht mir ganz gut :hi:

They are all so dirty. I swear, you don't even know where to turn anymore and the dirtier they are, the more money they have to buy the media. Wow.

I knew Putin had some skeletons in his backyard but wasn't aware of all those details. Juicy!

What concerns me though is the ease with which certain people attempt to re-arrange boundaries and replace governments with others more to their liking.

I don't personally care for ex-KGB Putin one way or another but I do think he's better for Russia than say, Yeltsin, who would have sold his entire country down the river for a few cases of premium Cognac.

My problem with Soros is that I consider him part of the world mafia. I don't even know who the local mafia is anymore! They've been locking those little guys up for years now. I too don't know what to think at times and find the entire situation bewildering. All I know is that it's dirty and it stinks. I think there's going to be a split in the Democratic Party soon and that makes me very afraid.

You know where I'm really trying to keep an eye these days? It's Venezuela because the National Endowment for Democracy (another one of Soros' partners) is rather keen to get Chavez out. Seems there's oil down there too ;) ((Have you seen "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"? OH BITTE BITTE, see it!))


Thanks for the links! I'll read it before going to bed because my German is too rusty! Peace :)

I'm gentle, I did post an english link, too!
I did see the film, it was shown by one of the two major german t.v. stations a few month ago on a sunday night at about 10 p.m. I didn't even know, what I was watching. We don't see stuff like this everyday without leaving the house. I was so happy that they did what they did and let us all know.
Now, just wait for Soros investing some dollars and presenting us the televised revolution in Georgia...
Tired in a closed society,
Dirk

both are crooks big time, but Putin's handling of Chechnya is simply butchery. He is seizing power for himself by going after Khabadorsky and Soros, with no intention whatsoever of helping the Russian people.

Though this whole affair with Soros is interesting; last time he came up I believe it was when he said that Sharon and Bush's policies contributed to anti-semitism. He was immediately attacked for it viciously by the right-wing, and that puts a few points in his favor.

He seems to hold some progressive viewpoints. I'll have to do more research on all of this before I can make an opinion.

Hello! And this just looks as the gentleman way of doing, what the Bush-gang is doing in Iraq:

article

"This brings us back to the question; “why has Soros lambasted Bush?” The answer lies in understanding that, more than ever, within the Wall Street power elite there may be differences in tactics but seldom are there significant differences in the end goal---opening the way for the maximization of corporate profits everywhere around the world. Today, there is basically a oneness of purpose in promoting U.S. imperial dominance, and in the process, attempting to solve a deepening global economic crisis by controlling diminishing petroleum and energy resources.

How does this play out where Soros is concerned? As Clark points out, “Soros is angry not at Bush’s aims---of expanding Pax Americana and making the world safe for global capitalists like himself—but with the crass and blundering way Bush is going about it. By making U.S. ambitions so clear, the Bush gang has committed the cardinal sin of giving the game away. For years, Soros and his NGOs have gone about their work extending the boundaries of the ‘free world’ so skillfully that hardly anyone noticed. Now a Texan redneck and a gang of overzealous neo-cons have blown it”

Soros’ way is to use a few billion dollars, some NGOs and a “nod and wink from the U.S. State department” to bring down foreign governments that are “bad for business” to seize a nation’s assets, and even get thanked for your ‘benevolence,’” according to Clark. This method has worked for Soros and his cohorts.

Take the collapse of the Soviet Union, for example. Clark points out that “Soros’ role was crucial: “From 1979, he distributed $3 million a year to dissidents including Poland’s solidarity movement, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia and Andrei Sakharov in the Soviet Union. In 1984, he founded his first Open Society Institute in Hungary and pumped millions of dollars into opposition movements and independent media. Ostensibly aimed at building up a ‘civil society”, these initiatives were designed to weaken the existing political structures and pave the way for eastern Europe’s eventual exploitation by global capital. Soros now claims with characteristic immodesty, that he was responsible for the “Americanization” of eastern Europe.”

Dirk

though I have several problems with that article, namely:

1. Regime change in Iraq was a worthy goal; however, using military means to acheive it was stupid and inhumane.

2. Eastern Europe needed to be "Americanized" quite a bit in the free speech arena; he seems to have been promoting dissent, not a bad thing.

3. Milosevic's ethnic cleansing of the Kosovars was simply inexcusable. I doubt that military force helped the situation, however.

Not everything done by rich people is bad, nor is everything done by them meant to benefit themselves. Power corrupts, but it does not always corrupt. Soros seems to be a holdout.

He also told the magazine that Putin had sat on the company's advisory board since 1992. He said this was an "honorary" position only and Putin had never visited the company's premises.

<snip>

SPAG was singled out in the German foreign intelligence investigation as a company suspected of laundering funds for Russian criminal gangs and Colombian drug lords, according to reports in Newsweek and France's Le Monde in 2001 and 2000. The probe found that Russian crime lords transferred money through Ritter into correspondent accounts at a Romanian bank and then used it to buy St. Petersburg real estate via SPAG, Le Monde reported, citing German intelligence documents.
====

It doesn't really surprise me but the details are great to know. The digger we deep, the more it all stinks!

Dirk, can I come live with you in Germany? Bitte, bitte! :)

But don't complain to me about Schröder and Fischer, then. I told you before...
Liebe Grüsse,
Dirk

But be careful. Very, very careful. I was quite enamoured of Germany and regret having left so much (it was despite my will) that I am quite capable of just showing up one day and saying "Hi, I'm here" and you would have a difficult time getting rid of me ;)

Peace

is that the Right seems to hate him, too. He holds (or maybe pretends to hold?) many progressive views and has stood for many progressive policies

I'd agree that there are lots of loose ends, however...

can only chose between different thieves, liars and deceivers. The disgusting thing is that this coup - and I'm more and more convinced that it was a coup - was masked as a kind of grassroots movement, as a kind of democratic revolution from citizens.
How more cynical can it gets? It's as if after manipulating financial markets and becoming a pro-regulation kind of guy after he succeded, Soros is doing the same now with the "political market".

Dirk

I never bought the Serbia thing either. From the attitudes of Serbs I knew at the time it seemed like they were just trying to have Milosevic be the scapegoat and continue the same policies.

showing how the revolt supported "the silkroad-stategy of the ruling class in the USA"?

If the people are given monetary aid to defeat a dictator, is that not good? What does it matter what the source was?

My instinct here is to side with Soros, but once again, I'll have to read more about this, which I why I asked you for the link...

I did first read about this in Michel Chossudovskys' book: "The Globalisation of Poverty".
It was decided by the US-congress on march, 19, 1999. 5 days before the first bombs were falling on Yuguslavia.
Just do a research on this. It's mainly about the geostrategical significance of Georgia in the energy market and pipeline plans.


"The proposed Eurasia natural gas pipeline would transport gas from Turkmenistan directly across the Caspian Sea through Azerbaijan and Georgia to Turkey. Of course the demarcation of the Caspian remains an issue."

Just do your own research and don't believe Soros or me!
Dirk

We need some support if we're going to have a peaceful revolution.

Then again, with the freepers having no compunctions about running over Dems with their pickup trucks (as they did in the D.C. protests), it would be a trick to pull off a peaceful ANYTHING in this country.

:toast::beer:I love you, Mr. Soros!!!:hi::pals:
:kick:

He has said that the world's future depends on getting Bush out.

I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with someone like Soros wishing to oust Bush based on his investment portfolio.

I have often wondered why someone like Bill Gates' father did not make such an arguement during the war to repeal the Lucky Sperm Tax. It would have went a lot further to gain credibility with many more people if they had said that they were against the repeal of the Inheritance Tax because of the long-term ramifications to the US budget picture, interest rates, and, thus, their portfolios NOT because they were such great humanitarians (this would also shut the pie-holes of those Ayn Rand'ian f**ks).

This is the same situation. I think it would be of far greater value if people like Buffett and Soros came right out and said the absolute truth: another George Bush administration would be toxic to the long-term health of the US economy.

help me reconcile this ...

I mean, I suppose it's possible

http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.thecarlylegroup.com/

of course, the Mellon-Scaifes have invested in The Carlyle Group, too ... Amer. Intern. Group is Maurice "head of the Nixon Center Board" Greenberg ... the University of Texas investing in this soire is interesting as well (UTIMCO.org) ... how many "leading families" can one find in the Middle East? the bin Ladens for one, yes ...

The Global Network

The sophisticated nature of Carlyle's over 100 global investors yields many non-competitive and strategic corporate acquisitions. Many of our transactions flow through a pipeline of global investors, each with a local geographic perspective. Carlyle considers the following premier private equity investors, among others, as investment partners with longstanding relationships:

American International Group ("AIG") Bank of America
Bank Austria Bank Indosuez
Bank of New York Bankers Trust
Boeing CalPERS
Champion International Chase Manhattan
Citicorp Credit Lyonnais
Credit Suisse Dresdner Bank
Equitable Companies Florida State Board of Administration
Gannett Company General Motors Investment Management Corp.
Government of Singapore Investment Corp. IKEA
Kuwait Investment Authority Los Angeles County Retirement Association
Michigan Department of Treasury NYNEX
NationsBank Northrop Grumman Corp.
Northwestern Mutual Life Pacific Telesis Group
Soros Capital Swiss Reassurance Corp.
University of Chicago University of Texas

In addition to the investors listed above, Carlyle's principals have established longstanding relationships with the leading families, endowments and individuals around the world including Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America.

Carlyle is growing to meet the challenges of the opportunities it faces each day. The members of Carlyle, including over 50 investment professionals conducting the review, analysis and completion of each transaction, provide Carlyle's investment partners with an in-depth and comprehensive view of each opportunity.

http://web.archive.org/web/19981212033359/http://www.thecarlylegroup.com/

R. K. Mellon Family
In addition to its own unique network of relationships, Carlyle directly benefits from the equally unique network of its minority owner, the Richard King Mellon Family. The R. K. Mellon Family is one of the nation's oldest and most respected investors and allows Carlyle to share in its substantial deal generating capacity. Among the companies which the R. K. Mellon Family helped found are The Mellon Bank, Gulf Oil, Alcoa, and First Boston. Currently the R. K. Mellon Family has extensive investments throughout the U.S. and international markets, as does the Richard King Mellon Foundation

The Hatfields and McCoys, Hapsburg style.

Soros is dirty money.

One DUer posted a link to that article about Baker and I couldn't believe my eyes, reading it.
And this source sounds very credible to me.
As many others, I did believe the story reported to us here in Germany. My first reaction was something like: this should have happened, when the election of Bush jr. did happen.
Besides one small left daily news magazine here in Germany that at least asked some questions, I didn't find any information about Baker, Soros or Richard Miles in any german magazin or newspaper, not to mention our TV-news.
Dirk

((I know you already know about this but for those who don't))

Not content with exporting "democracy" to Iraq, elements in the U.S. government, in their infinite hypocrisy, self-righteousness and busy-bodyness, have decided to push for "democracy" in Russia. The General Prosecutor's Office's attack on Yukos' now-defrocked CEO is being read on the other side of the Atlantic, apparently, as a heinous attack on "democracy" that must be punished by Russia's being thrown out of the G8.

Former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Richard "Prince of Darkness" Perle, his democratic credentials well attested-for by his having helped toss hundreds of people into prison sans charge, Sen. John McCain and Sen. Joseph Lieberman are all calling for Russia's expulsion from the G8 because the General Prosecutor's Office has not been sufficiently "democratic" in its handling of their Golden Boy, former Yukos CEO and now jailbird Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Representatives Tom Lantos and Chris Kox are also preparing to chime in, adding their voices to the chorus of people who know next to nothing about Russia lambasting it. Perhaps most importantly, international financier George Soros endorsed the expulsion, perhaps feeling some special bond of sympathy with Khodorkovsky that only billionaires can share.

Truly, it is an amazing thing to behold — then-President Boris Yeltsin can shell parliament in 1993, thousands of ordinary Russian citizens can rot in prison under horrendous conditions on sometimes trumped-up charges and environmentalists can be persecuted, and nary a word of protest is heard. The one thing that draws the ire of these people, who seem to have a rather elitist notion of "democracy," is an attack on a multibillionaire who, incidentally, is very likely guilty as sin. Some may have forgotten how Khodorkovsky made his money in the 1990s and what it led to, but we have not. For all his slick PR machine, generous "endowments" and genuine clean-up of his former company, Khodorkovsky in reality has been only the most successful of the gangsters who commandeered the Russian economy, and rushing to the defense of their favorite bandit and trying to portray him as some Moscow version of Nelson Mandela does not cast his foreign friends in a positive light. Money does indeed talk, in the halls of power as well as on the tawdriest of criminal streetcorners.

<snip>

When faced by something so utterly hypocritical and morally rancid wafting its way across the ocean, the best Russia can do is hold its nose, walk away — and let the General Prosecutor's Office do its job.
http://www.russiajournal.com/news/cnews-article.shtml?nd=41487

and he and another man have written a book called Wealth and Commonwealth, which talks about the devastating effect that the repeal of taxes on the richest of the rich have on government for and by (more) of the people rather than less.

I don't know about this Georgia issue, except that I heard that they guy there met with others in former Yugo about non-violent tactics.

Schevernadze, if I remember correctly, didn't seem to hold the fairest election, and has he been a good governing power?

This could also be a case in which something good coincides with something the Bushwazie also wants, and it's in their interests to help out.

I don't know.

As far as the rich having undue influence...well, I don't think that's going to change in this world. I really don't. People who gain access to power use that power for what they think is good or not.

If Louis XVI hadn't interfered in the squabble between Britain and the Colonies, we would probably be called new brittainia or something.

I don't want money to have the power that it does. But it does.

So what is the best way to use that power to create a better world for the majority?

At least that's how I get by in the world. Again, maybe I'm just too uninformed.

supposedly to get Bush out because Bush has exposed their game ubt I feel this is more of an insurance policy for Carlyle to ensure that any administration in power remains friendly to their wheeling and dealings.

That money isn't really a gift, it's an investment.

I really wish I could join you in your joy- you have no idea how much.

known as "Soros". Ah yes, the famous "Mark of Soros"! Oh, no, wait, that was "Zorro", the "Mark of Zorro".

Sorry.

I fall for these subject lines with "Georgia" in them thinking they're talking about OUR Georgia. It's become a coup victim, too.

that I will spend huge amounts of money destabilizing governments in the Southern and Western parts of the USA

Perhaps you could just max out on donations to every county and state Democratic Party, as well as candidates in either the Democratic Party or a third party of your choice.

Unfortunately, money is power.

He should have let the SOBs secede from the Union!

We should have pulled a Stalin and deported the Southern population in small groups to the far corners of the country. Separate them from each other. A complete diaspora.
;-)

and, you're spot on ... Georgia USA has already experienced the new voting -- coming soon across America in 2004

could Soros be? So what if Pootie Poot and Malzysia don't like him. He also wants to decriminalize drugs and gives money to kids to stay in school. Soros wants to give money for grass roots organizing in the USA to help beat Bush. Once again, I implore: "How bad can Soros be?" Sounds like saint to me.

and he might have killed more people than the war against Iraq, being the velvet killer he is.
Dirk

If we are in Iraq right now, you can thank people like George Soros.
After pushing for the war in Yugoslavia, Soros swooped down and appropriated the valuable Trepca mines for himself. One need not wonder what's in Iraq that he wants so badly.

When poor Cynthia McKinney claimed that "persons close to this administration are poised to make huge profits off America's new war" she specifically mentioned Carlyle. Had she listed off the names of the people in Carlyle, Soros' name would have been right there.

Buyer beware. 2004 must be more than the changing of the guard, we need an entire regime change and we're not going to get that if we sell the Democratic Party to Carlyle.

-----------------
The goal for the fund was $500 million, a relatively modest sum in private equity circles, but five times as much as Carlyle had ever raised. After rounding up almost $150 million from banks and pension funds, the company went after an investor that could contribute both money and fame and get them over the hump. They went after George Soros.

The Hungarian-American Soros already had a reputation as the most prescient and successful investor in the world. So when he agreed to become a limited partner in Carlyle's new fund he was bringing far more than just $100 million. With his reputation for making gobs of money, Soros was also jump-starting a fund that would go on to be the most successful in Carlyle's history. By the time Carlyle Partners II closed in September 1996, the fund had raised more than $1.3 billion. From this massive fund, the company would spread its investments all over the defence world. Names like Aerostructures Corp., United Defence, United States Marine Repair, and US Investigations Services dominated the list of investments. And most of them had one thing in common: they depended on government contracts to make a living.

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/CarlyleHead1.html


For some more fun research Soros, George Bush and Harken Energy

... and, the cause is saving America ... and, I know, that sometimes in politics, there are often strange bedfellows ... but, in the final analysis, I'm tired of the system which leads us further from our Founding and potential ...

... and, Soros is a clever dude ... with "humanitarian" things as camouflage ...

Cab Calloway:

Transcribed from Cab Calloway and His Orchestra, recorded October 21, 1931.


I don't want you,
But I hate to lose you,
You've got me inbetween the devil and the deep blue sea.

I forgive you,
'Cause I can't forget you,
You've got me inbetween the devil and the deep blue sea.

I ought to cross you off my list,
But when you come knocking at my door,
Fate seems to give my heart a twist,
And I come running back for more.

I should hate you,
But I guess I love you,
You've got me inbetween the devil and the deep blue sea.

hold on ~ the seas are going to be rough the next year

the "devil" being the hull plank closest to the waterline where barnacles and marine growth gather the heaviest ... Understandably, being caught - between the devil and the deep blue sea was never a good position in which to find ones self.



buyer beware ~ caveat emptor


Billionaire Soros aims fortune at Bush (good length article on Soros)

~snip~

Fresh from victory in the former Soviet republic of Georgia last weekend, Soros is a force to be reckoned with. The independent TV station that satirized the ousted Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze, the street protesters in Tbilisi carefully trained in peaceful agitation, and the leading opposition party now poised to replace the fallen regime were all, in some degree, financed by Soros.

Soros is still best known in financial circles as the Man Who Broke the Bank of England with a 1992 bet on sterling by which he reaped a one-day profit of $1 billion. But Soros is better-known — and practically worshipped — by thousands of pro-democracy advocates who draw sustenance from the dozens of Open Society Foundations promoting democracy in about 50 countries around the world. The foundations are financed out of Soros's lifetime donations of some $4 billion.

~snip~

Soros's mastery of a profession that exploits chaos and legal shades of gray has twice found him accused of impropriety. He settled a case of alleged stock manipulation brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in the late 1970s. And he is appealing a conviction last year of insider trading in the shares of a French bank.

~snip~

Bush established his political bona fides by pointing to his business success in pocketing a handsome sum from the 1986 sale of his Texas oil exploration outfit, Spectrum 7, to a firm called Harken Energy. But the attraction to Harken of Spectrum 7, an inch away from insolvency at the time, was that it was run by a son of the then U.S. vice-president.

Harken, as it happens, was owned in part by George Soros. No stranger to crony capitalism, Soros recalled for U.S. investigative reporter David Corn last year the genesis of the Harken-Spectrum 7 transaction.

"Bush," Soros recalled, "was supposed to bring in the (Persian) Gulf connection. But it didn't come to anything. We were buying political influence. That was it. (Bush) was not much of a businessman."


http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1070061305119&call_pageid=968350072197&col=969048863851

Another perspective...

http://www.rense.com/general45/bet.htm

If playing plutocratic devils off against each other can result in free elections, then i don't much care about how much a few of the zillionaires make, as long as their hearts are mostly in the right place.

and, outside The Dept. of State

this org could be 'the meeting point' for the Caspian Sea basin

who knows

United States-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce

http://www.usacc.org/chamber/prof-officers.htm

The USACC Honorary Council of Advisors is comprised of individuals of high distinction. Council members serve in advisory capacity.

James Baker III

Lloyd Bentsen

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Dick Cheney
(Resigned in November, 2000)

Henry Kissinger

Brent Scowcroft

John Sununu


CHAIRMAN EMERITUS

T. Don Stacy


CO-CHAIRMEN OF THE BOARD

Tim Cejka
Executive Vice President, ExxonMobil Exploration Co.

Reza Vaziri
President, R.V. Investment Group


VICE-CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD

James A. Baker, IV
Partner, Baker Botts, L.L.P.


BOARD OF DIRECTORS



The business affairs of USACC are managed by its Board of Directors which is composed of distinguished individuals with an interest in the U.S.-Azerbaijan relationship.

Ambassador Richard Armitage
President, Armitage Associates
(Resigned in February, 2001)

Farhad Azima
Chairman & CEO, Aviation Leasing Group

Betty Blair
Editor, Azerbaijan International

Howard Chase
Director, International Affairs, BP

Don Condon
President & General Manager, Conoco

Stanley Escudero
Consultant, Moncrief Oil International

Nader Fahm
President, Alfacom

Andrew Fawthrop
Vice President, Unocal International Energy Ventures

Mike Kostiw
General Manager, International Government Relations, ChevronTexaco

David Sambrooks
Vice President & General Manager, Devon Energy

Gregory K. Williams
Strategic Security Manager, Coca Cola


BOARD OF TRUSTEES


The USACC Board of Trustees is a group of Americans and Azerbaijanis interested in promoting friendship, cooperation and commerce between the American people and the people of Azerbaijan. The Board of Trustees offers its recommendations to the USACC Board of Directors on all matters related to the Chambers programs and activities.

Abdullah Akyuz
President, TUSIAD-US Inc.

Ilham Aliyev
First Vice President, SOCAR

Graham Allison
Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

Sam Brownback (R-KS)
US Senator

Frank Henke
Chairman, American Bank & Trust Company

Richard Moncrief
Chairman, Moncrief Oil International

Hafiz Pashayev
Ambassador of Azerbaijan in the U.S.

Richard Perle
American Enterprize Institute, former Assistant Secretary of Defense

Joseph R. Pitts (R-PA)
US Congressman

John Roberts
Senior Advisor, American International Group

Stephen Robertson
President, Bertling Logistics

Nancy Tuomey
Vice President, First Union Bank

Frank Verrastro
Senior Policy Advisor, Vinson & Elkins


OFFICERS

Legal Counsel & Secretary
Ted Jonas - Counsel, Baker Botts, L.L.P.

Treasurer
Karl Mattison - V.P. Riggs Bank, N.A.


Executive Director
Seymour Khalilov

The former solviet union isn't even covered well in the European press.

I don't really know enough about this to give my opinion.

The Gray Fox got a taste of power and, once upon a time, a taste of popular backing in the early 1990s.

I and others I know who follow events in the Caucuses and Central Asia closely had hoped that Shev would bow out gracefully when the time came for him to move along. It appears and is entirely consistent with information from reliable news sources over the last three years that Shev was turning into the kind of bandit-king that Georgia in particular and the Caucuses in general seem to produce better than any other area in the world. He got a liking to one of the few semi-legitimate power sources in Georgia (leadership in government) and he didn't want to leave.

Most likely it was time for Shev to go...past time, as a matter of fact. It's too bad he had to go out like he did instead of being remembered as independent Georgia's first post-Soviet Prime Minister.

looking at the globe and, during two cups of coffee, deciding with your pencil, when the time is coming for whomever to move along, after he did his job. But I hope, it's just your phantasy going nuts.
Dirk