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Bekijk Volledige Versie : George Soros organiseert Anti-Bush campagne



lennart
09-08-03, 01:33
Billionaire launches get-out-the-vote effort against Bush

By THOMAS HARGROVE
Scripps Howard News Service
August 08, 2003

- New York billionaire George Soros, an internationally prominent financier, has launched a Democratic get-out-the-vote effort in a bid to defeat President Bush.

Soros said Friday he has donated $10 million to start Americans Coming Together, or ACT, an organization intended to rally voters in 17 battleground states, against Bush's re-election. The group expects to raise at least $75 million and employ hundreds of election organizers by November 2004.

"I believe deeply in the values of an open society. For the past 15 years I have focused my energies on fighting for these values abroad," said Soros, who donated $1 billion to pro-democracy efforts in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. "Now I am doing it in the United States."

"The fate of the world depends on the United States and President Bush is leading us in the wrong direction," he said in a statement from his New York investment office. "The Bush doctrine is both false and dangerous. The rest of the world is having an allergic reaction to it, as we have seen in Iraq. We need to change direction."

The group will focus on direct-voter-contact programs similar to efforts used by organized labor, according to Ellen Malcolm, ACT executive director.

"In fact, we are not doing any media. This is all a ground operation," said Malcolm, who directed the Emily's List organization to support pro-choice Democratic women candidates. "This is a voter-contact program that is going to use personal contact, mail and the phones. But no electronic media."

Malcolm said ACT will style itself on successful voter-turnout campaigns run by the AFL-CIO during the late 1990s.

"Between 1996 and the 2000 election, they did a tremendous amount of work talking to union members, convincing them to vote Democratic. Union voter turnout increased by almost 5 million votes during that time, while nonunion votes declined by almost 15 million," Malcolm said.

"We think that strategy will have the same kind of effect on a broader range of voters."

She said the group will target key states next year: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin. These are states where the 2000 presidential election was extremely close or where Democrats historically have had political strength, Malcolm said.


en ook hier:

http://reuters.com/financeNewsArticle.jhtml?type=usFundsNews&storyID=3248397

Soros pledges $10 million to help defeat Bush
Fri August 8, 2003 04:06 PM ET

BOSTON, Aug 8 (Reuters) - Billionaire hedge fund investor and philanthropist George Soros this week pledged to donate $10 million to a political action group working to defeat U.S. President George W. Bush in next year's election.

Soros, whose $11.5 billion Soros Fund Management is one of the world's
biggest hedge funds, has long been critical of Bush administration policies and pledged his personal money to a new political action committee named America Coming Together, his spokesman said.

In a statement, Soros said "The fate of the world depends on the United States and President Bush is leading us in the wrong direction."

The group will use the money to educate and register voters in 17 key states.

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Flinke ruzie daar bij de Bilderberg.
http://www.maroc.nl/nieuws/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=63802&highlight=George+Soros

Simon
30-09-03, 13:48
Soros calls for 'regime change' in US

Billionaire philanthropist George Soros has called for an end to the Bush administration ahead of next year's presidential elections.
Mr Soros - whose Foundations Network has given $1bn around the world to various causes to help tackle poverty and disease - told BBC Radio 4's United Nations Or Not? programme that the US would only stop pursuing "extremist" policies if there was a change at the White House.

"It is only possible if you have a regime change in the United States - in other words if President Bush is voted out of power.

"I am very hopeful that people will wake up and realise that they have been led down the garden path, that actually 11 September has been hijacked by a bunch of extremists to put into effect policies that they were advocating before such as the invasion of Iraq."

Imposing power

Mr Soros added that there was a "false ideology" behind the policies of the Bush administration.


The US is now discovering that it is extremely painful and certainly costly to go it alone
George Soros
"There is a group of - I would call them extremists - who have the following belief: that international relations are relations of power, not of law, that international law will always follow what power has achieved," he said.
"And therefore [they believe] the United States being the most powerful nation on earth should impose its power, impose its will and its interests on the world and it should do it looking after itself.

"I think this is a very dangerous ideology. It is very dangerous because America is in fact very powerful."

He added that he felt US actions in the build-up to the war on Iraq was evidence of an extremist element in the Bush administration.

"Probably President Chirac would not disagree with this philosophy but he is not so powerful - so I am not so worried about what France is doing," Mr Soros said, referring to France's opposition to the war.

"But America being really the dominant power to be in the grips of such an extremist ideology is very dangerous for the world and that is my major concern."

However, he added that he felt the rift between the US and the United Nations over the war - which President Bush referred to as a "difficult and defining moment" for the UN - had in fact strengthened the UN, rather than weakened it.

"I think that the United States has over-reached," he said.

"What happens to extremists is that they go to extremes and the falsehood in their ideology becomes apparent.

"In a democracy the electorate - which is not extremist - will punish them and they know it, so they have to retreat.

"I think there is a good chance that the US will yet turn to a greater extent to the United Nations because they are now discovering that it is extremely painful and certainly costly to go it alone so in the end the outcome may be to strengthen the United Nations."

State interests

Mr Soros was, however, critical of the UN for what it sees as its inability to function well as a collective of states.


"The United Nations is not an organisation that is terribly effective in promoting open society because it is an association of states... states always put their national interests ahead of the common interest.
"So it is not a very effective organisation for changing conditions inside states."

Mr Soros has a history of donating great sums of money to areas in need around the world - but only once has he done this through the UN.

"In Bosnia we gave it to UNHCR - but that was really quite the exception.

"We do interfere in the internal affairs of states, but based on supporting people inside the country who take a certain stance.

"We have actually been quite effective in bringing about democratisation, democratic regime change in Slovakia, Croatia and Yugoslavia, but that's by helping civil society in those countries to mobilise."

Positive response

Mr Soros is highly critical of much government bureaucracy, preferring to make his donations directly to those in need as much as possible.

In June this year he announced he would be drastically cutting back the money he gave to Russia.

And he said that money his fund was pledging to the fight against HIV/Aids would be "more effective" because it was going "only through a governmental organisation."

He conceded too that President Bush's policies on the HIV/Aids pandemic were positive.

"There is some response in America, in the Bush administration, to pressure from some of their constituencies - so there is the Millennium Challenge account, the contribution on fighting HIV/Aids," Mr Soros said.

"Those are positive aspects of the Bush administration. I am very supportive of the Millennium Challenge account - this is the new development aid that they are putting in - and I am very supportive and delighted that President Bush is willing to contribute to the global fund on Aids.

"So I am critical on some aspects of the Bush administration but not every aspect - and here I am actually very supportive."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/3201631.stm