Who's behind the Wall St. protests?

[Guest guest]

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/whos-behind-wall-st-protests-110834998.html

Who's behind the Wall St. protests?

By Mark Egan and Nichols | Reuters – 21 minutes ago

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 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, " 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.

" 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 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 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 Parsons)

(This story was corrected to fix reference to Kalle Lasn)

[Guest guest]

This is a real demon of a man. There is a video interview of him bragging about selling Jews to the Nazis when he was young. He said he had no regrets because they were Jews who still practiced their religion whereas he, a Jew who didn't practice, was above them.

He's also suspected to have broken the Bank of England, to have had a hand in the violence in the nation of Georgia, and likes to think of himself as the "Conscience of the World" and that only he is wise enough to create a new world order utopia, with himself in charge and with the most money of course.

He is behind several groups in the US, MoveOn being just one of them. No telling what else he is doing behind the scenes.

Just remember that he is also on record as saying that the US is the only thing standing in the way of his new world order and that it would have to be destroyed in order for him to have his superbank and all the money.

In a message dated 10/13/2011 11:37:15 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, no_reply writes:

Who's behind the Wall St. protests?