That might explain the piece the wire service ran today, under the headline, “Who’s Behind the Wall Street Protests?”
Reporters Mark Egan and Michelle Nichols suggest that Glenn Beck’s demented chalkboard scribbles might have actually been on the right track; the protests “may have benefited indirectly from the largesse of one of the world’s richest men”—George Soros.
They write:
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.
Readers learn than none other than Rush Limbaugh has been able to see the clear-as-day connection:
But conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh summed up the speculation when he told his listeners last week, “George Soros money is behind this.”
Indeed, when one thinks of the grassroots activists occupying Wall Street, the first question is how on Earth they are bankrolling such a costly project.
Reuters eventually gets to the heart of the critique, and sure enough it involves the Tides Center—another Glenn Beck obsession. They report:
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.
That’s actually a somewhat accurate description of what Tides does—which makes the connection to the demonstrations… what, exactly? Here we go:
Disclosure documents also show Tides, which declined comment, gave Adbusters grants of $185,000 from 2001–2010, including nearly $26,000 between 2007–2009.
So a philanthropic clearinghouse of sorts received money from a Soros charity. And Adbusters, over the years, has received money from that same clearinghouse. Couldn’t be clearer!
The Reuters piece has been picked apart by, among others, Salon‘s Alex Pareene and Noreen Malone at New York magazine. And a Huffington Post story points out that it’s been criticized by other Reuters journalists:
Several Reuters journalists also attacked the story. Business and media writer Felix Salmon called the article “ridiculous” and social media editor Anthony DeRosa said, “When I read ‘Rush Limbaugh summed up the speculation’ I wanted to crawl under a rock.”
UPDATE: According to the New York Observer, at some point Reuters switched to a story headlined “Soros: Not a Funder of Wall Street Protests.”
The original story unsurprisingly found its way to Fox News Channel— here’s an exchange from last night’s O’Reilly Factor with Margaret Hoover:
O’REILLY: I think these guys were organized by the George Soros–funded MoveOn operations. Reuters, by the way, has an article on that today that you have to read, Hoover, linking in the Soros money to these agitators.
HOOVER: And what that article actually said is that Soros money had funded the original group Adbusters.
O’REILLY: That’s right.
HOOVER: But the last time Soros directly funded it was seven years ago. Although a lot of Soros money — and this is the thing about Soros money, is that because it is…
O’REILLY: It’s everywhere.
HOOVER: It’s everywhere.
O’REILLY: It’s everywhere.
HOOVER: And small amounts to all these progressive groups that are progressive groups. There’s no way…
O’REILLY: You know what Soros money — did you see Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where if you went to sleep you became an alien? That’s like Soros money. You go to sleep and they come.
Two of the top ten richest Americans, George Soros and Warren Buffett, have recently taken positions that would suggest they are not greed-crazed misanthropes right out of Charles Dickens. So, naturally, the media puppets have started attacking them. Fox News’s Ann Coulter started it by claiming George Soros was a Nazi collaborator. Stay tuned, loonies, the worst is yet to come.
The Kochs and ALEC?
Eh.
Soros and Occupy?
Now THAT’S a conspiracy!
felix salmon, who DOES work for reuters, writes “Reuters cannot â┚¬” must not â┚¬” get a reputation as a right-wing media outlet. We have to report the news as impartially as we can. In this case, there was no story, and nothing to report. Inventing a tenuous and intellectually-dishonest link between Soros and OWS might get us traffic from Matt Drudge â┚¬” but that’s traffic which, frankly, we don’t particularly value or care for. Much more importantly, it serves to undermine the heart of what Reuters stands for. And we can never afford to do that.”
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/10/13/on-george-soros-occupy-wall-street-and-reuters/
When you want to know what is REALLY going on, listen to Lush Rimjob and then turn it completely backwards and you’re pretty close.
Egan and Nichols referred to Kalle Lasn (Adbusters) twice as “she” in their original posting. In a later version, this was added — “This story was corrected to change the reference to Kalle Lasn.” Reuters’ ace reporters!
Well, Reuters did also run this
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/13/us-wallstreet-protests-soros-idUSTRE79C1YN20111013?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=76
Well the truth is Mr Soroses money is everywhere.It run’s like blood through the lefts heart.Beck and Rush are 100% right on that.Roger Bloyce (above)is close to attributing altruistic motives.I would say slow down on that one.Every breath he(Soros) takes ,is an attempt to extend his power.That it neither here nor there.It just is.He may be old ,but I don’t think this is his come to Jesus moment.He continues to manipulate world markets for the sake of one.One…. George Soros
This is something FAIR should look at. The magazine Adbusters started this protest, but how many times has Adbusters been mentioned in the protest coverage in the big media? They’ve been around quite a while – and we in the zine community have known of them. I think it’s strange that there is so little mention of Adbusters in protest coverage.
We zinesters have had our golden age of publishing obliterated and banned from almost all coverage in the mainstream media for the two main decades of the middle 80’s on. It’s like the media refusing to talk about rock and roll from 1955-1970. There have been thousands and thousands of zines – a real golden age of publishing that has gone under the “Ministry of Truth” media denial of history. There is even a Zine Hall of Fame?
PS I’ve been protesting the consolidation of the arts and media into fewer and fewer corporate hands through my 19 year old zine Musea. I have never gotten any George Soros money. I go on the record saying that.
The abdication of Soros’ “Jesus moment” does not predicate Jesus’ “Soros moment(um)” ^..^
@michael e: So… George Soros is a James Bond villian? OK…
How in God’s holy name can you buy this crap?
And it’s “runs,” not “run’s,” Shakespeare. Your constant misuse of apostrophes is getting tedious. And don’t bother coming back with the “I gave up on grammar back in Harvard, and I get a kick outta making liberals point out my sytax errors, and I type fast and furious, blah, blah, blah…” It’s all just an excuse for why you write like an effin’ moron.
SOROS IS NO KOCH BROTHERS
Soros
1930: Born Budapest, Hungary
1936: Family changes name from Schwartz to Soros, in response to growing anti-semitism.
1944: Forced to leave home and separate from family after Nazis invade Hungar.
1947: Leaves for London, where he works his way through college as a waiter and a porter.
1956: Moves to New York to work as a Wall St. financial analyst.
1970: Starts his own investment fund.
1979: Sets up scholarships for black students in South Africa.
1980: Makes headlines by giving hundreds of millions to peacefully democratizing Communist countries.
1986: Soros’ Institute raided by Chinese secret police for promoting open societies.
1992: Donates $50 million to protect civilians caught in Bosnian conflict.
1993: Founds Open Society to promote democracy.
Koch Brothers
Koch Bros.
1930: Daddy Fred Kock builds first of 15 oil refineries for Soviet Dictator Joseph Stalin
1935: Charles born, Witchita, KS.( with a silver spoon in his mouth).
1940: David born, Witchita, KS. (with a silver spoon in his mouth).
1958: Father co-founds John Birch Society in order to â┚¬Ã…“purifyâ┚¬Ã‚ America. (JBS accused Eisenhower, Truman and Roosevelt of communism)
1960 & 1963: Both brothers graduate from Daddy’s Alma Mater MIT with chemical engineering degrees.
1967: Inherit a measly $300 million from their father. Parlay it into fortune worth Billions today.
1977: Charles co-founder of libertarian Cato Institute
1980: David runs for President on platform of eliminating Social Security, minimum wage and corporate taxes. Gets 1% of vote.
1980s: David moves to Southhampton, throws parties, describes as â┚¬Ã…“East Coast version of Hugh Hefner’s soirees at the Playboy Mansion.
1997-2008: Koch industries donates nearly $48 million to climate-change denial groups.
1998: Koch funded Mercatus Center hires economist who argues that smog helps prevent skin cancer.
I would call Adbusters many things but liberal would not be one of them
I have no problem with these pundits attacking Soros and others as the “money behind the movement” because I know its crap. Their belief that this movement is funded from the outside just takes the heat off of the real actors in the occupation and keeps the focus on some rich guys that I don’t really care about. Nothing O’Reilly or Beck or Limbaugh say or “do” will stop the protests.
@ Larry Siegal: Thanks for your informative, on-point comment.
@ John: Re. “I gave up on grammar back in Harvard, and I get a kick outta making liberals point out my syntax errors, and I type fast and furious.” The FAIR troll, despite his claim to have been to Harvard, makes oft-repeated mistakes in punctuation, grammar and spelling, and is profoundly, if not laughably, ignorant of current issues. When he makes multiple comments on a single posting, his off-point attacks on others tend to become more indecipherable and incomprehensible as he babbles along, suggesting that he somehow finds his way to the FAIR site while quite inebriated.
Nice try John, but if you feed the FAIR troll, you will very likely be called names. Since he called me a bastard on this site for some incomprehensible reason or other a while back, I have been skipping over his comments.
@ Roger: I’m not convinced that michael e is a troll. If he wants to call me names, so be it; I got some thick skin, and I think it’s worth it to point out the BS that’s being shoveled.
Call me crazy.
m
Well ive written this 2 x.FAIR has not accepted my comments
Missing from Larry Siegel’s chronology of George Soros was his $10 billion dollar bet against the British pound in 1992, which ‘broke the Bank of England’. It made him a lot of money at a lot of other peoples’ expense. Soros is no angel, even if the Kochs are worse…they all think they have a god given right to manipulate the course of human events & use their money, none of which is really earned, to do it.
Well, john, you’re wating your time. Myself and others have gone ’round and ’round with this troll–there is no point in trying to “convince” him of anything, and it’s beyond pointless to expect anything even remotely approaching clear writing or telling the truth. Take Roger’s clear advice; You Know Who is a troll indeed. He’s the guy who will be swingin’ a nightstick at the “family” camps coming soon to a former democracy near you–he’ll finally get the dream job he was born for, crackin’ the skulls of liberals and other troublemakers, young and old.
The real question is Obama.He sees the danger in all this Im sure.All the passion and anger that got him there….now flying without him.In fact angry at him.Seeing him as a corporatist(which he is).Now he walks the fence.
Roger and Tim ,I prescribe a nice cup of camimille tea.Relax , get lots of sleep,and listen to some new age soothing sounds.Breath out the anger, breath in the good vibes.Breath out the anger…..No charge