Archive for the ‘Soros – Responsibility to Protect – Intl. Crisis Group’ Category

by AARON KLEIN

Prior to her appointment yesterday as the next director of President Obama’s Domestic Policy Council, longtime immigration reform advocate Cecilia Munoz served on the board of George Soros’ Open Society Institute.

Munoz also chaired the board of directors of the Center for Community Change, or CCC, a Soros-funded community organizing initiative whose board boasts activists from ACORN, MoveOn.org and other radical groups.

Munoz is currently the head of the White House office of intergovernmental affairs. She most recently worked for the National Council of La Raza, an open-borders group that lobbies for mass immigration and amnesty for illegal aliens.

The official White House statement announcing her new appointment yesterday noted Munoz’s previous work for both the CCC and Soros’ Institute.

“Over the past three years, Cecilia has been a trusted advisor who has demonstrated sound judgment day in and day out,” Obama said in the statement. “Cecilia has done an extraordinary job working on behalf of middle class families, and I’m confident she’ll bring the same unwavering dedication to her new position.”

Munoz’s new duties will include coordinating the policy-making process and supervising the execution of domestic policy in the White House.

While the White House release documented Munoz’s work for the CCC, the statement did not further define the CCC, which recruits and trains activists to spearhead “political issue campaigns” while advocating for more citizen involvement in community organizations.

Munoz worked at the CCC until late November 2008, when then-President-elect Obama announced Munoz had been selected for the position of director of intergovernmental affairs at the White House

The CCC bases its training programs on the techniques taught by radical organizer Saul Alinsky, with several prominent Alinskyites on the board that Munoz directed.

One such activist on CCC’s board is Heather Booth, founder of the Midwest Academy, which openly trains activists in Alinsky tactics.

Citizen Action of Wisconsin, an arm of Booth’s Midwest Academy, is part of the Moving Wisconsin Forward movement, one of the main organizers of the major Wisconsin protests last February. The protests were in opposition to Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal for most state workers to pay 12 percent of their health care premiums and 5.8 percent of their salary toward their own pensions.

The Woods Fund, a Chicago nonprofit on which Obama served as paid director alongside Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers, provided money to the Midwest Academy.

As WND previously reported, the executive director of Midwest Academy was part of the team that developed and delivered a group of volunteers for Obama’s 2008 campaign.

The CCC board, meanwhile, includes Arlene Holt Baker, executive vice president of the AFL-CIO; Tom Chabolla, assistant to SEIU president Mary Kay Henry; and Justin Ruben, executive director of MoveOn.org.

CCC’s executive director is Deepak Bhargava, a strong supporter of Obama, who for 10 years worked his way around ACORN before leading the CCC starting in 2002.

Bhargava is an editorial board member for the Nation magazine and a National Advisory Board member of Soros’ Open Society Institute.

That same Open Society Institute has provided funding to the CCC, as has the Tides Center, which is heavily financed by Soros.

The CCC, in conjunction with the Tides Advocacy Fund, also operates the website of Campaign to Reform Immigration for America.

Tides functions as a money tunnel in which major leftist donors provide large sums that are channeled to hundreds of radical groups.

Tides recently has been closely linked to Occupy since the anti-Wall Street movement’s inception. The Tides-funded Adbusters magazine is reported to have come up with the Occupy Wall Street idea after Arab Spring protests toppled governments in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. The Adbusters website serves as a central hub for Occupy’s planning.

The Tides-funded Ruckus Society has been providing direct-action training to Occupy protesters as well as official training resources, including manuals, to Occupy training groups. Ruckus, which helped spark the 1999 World Trade Organization riots in Seattle, was also listed as a “friend and partner” of the Occupy Days of Action in October.

Another grantee of Tides is MoveOn.org, which has joined Occupy.

Tides also funds hundreds of other far-left causes. It was a primary financier of ACORN.

 

George Soros – 15 Commandments for his puppet Barak Obama

Soros’s answer to America’s transformation involve more regulation and more government intervention in the marketplace. Soros pours billions of dollars into the following and commands Obama to perform.
1.) Promoting the view that America is institutionally an oppressive nation
2.) Promoting the election of leftist political candidates throughout the United States
3.) Opposing virtually all post-9/11 national security measures enacted by U.S. government, particularly the Patriot Act
4.) Depicting American military actions as unjust, unwarranted, and immoral
5.) Promoting open borders, mass immigration, and a watering down of current immigration laws
6.) Promoting a dramatic expansion of social welfare programs funded by ever-escalating taxes
7.) Promoting social welfare benefits and amnesty for illegal aliens
8.) Defending suspected anti-American terrorists and their abettors
9.) Financing the recruitment and training of future activist leaders of the political Left
10.) Advocating America’s unilateral disarmament and/or a steep reduction in its military spending
11.) Opposing the death penalty in all circumstances
12.) Promoting socialized medicine in the United States
13.) Promoting the tenets of radical environmentalism, whose ultimate goal, as writer Michael Berliner has explained, is “not clean air and clean water, [but] rather … the demolition of technological/industrial civilization”
14.) Bringing American foreign policy under the control of the United Nations
15.) Promoting racial and ethnic preferences in academia and the business world alike
Financial Crisis
While the rest of the world financial markets were losing billions of dollars, Soros made billions of dollars for which he said, [he's] “having a very good crisis.” Some people speculate that Soros was responsible for the crisis by removing his large sums of money from institutions and betting against currency valuations.

George Soros Goal for the United States;
Creating a monetary crisis by uncontrolled spending by the Government to devalue the dollar thereby creating an opportunity for Soros to buy cheap dollars and when recovery comes – cashing out with multiple trillions. Leaving the rest of us to pay for the loss.

 

George Soros – 15 Commandments for his puppet Barak Obama

July 9th, 2010 |  Author: The Meister                 

Soros’s answer to America’s transformation involve more regulation and more government intervention in the marketplace. Soros pours billions of dollars into the following and commands Obama to perform.
1.) Promoting the view that America is institutionally an oppressive nation
2.) Promoting the election of leftist political candidates throughout the United States
3.) Opposing virtually all post-9/11 national security measures enacted by U.S. government, particularly the Patriot Act
4.) Depicting American military actions as unjust, unwarranted, and immoral
5.) Promoting open borders, mass immigration, and a watering down of current immigration laws
6.) Promoting a dramatic expansion of social welfare programs funded by ever-escalating taxes
7.) Promoting social welfare benefits and amnesty for illegal aliens
8.) Defending suspected anti-American terrorists and their abetters
9.) Financing the recruitment and training of future activist leaders of the political Left
10.) Advocating America’s unilateral disarmament and/or a steep reduction in its military spending
11.) Opposing the death penalty in all circumstances
12.) Promoting socialized medicine in the United States
13.) Promoting the tenets of radical environmentalism, whose ultimate goal, as writer Michael Berliner has explained, is “not clean air and clean water, [but] rather … the demolition of technological/industrial civilization”
14.) Bringing American foreign policy under the control of the United Nations
15.) Promoting racial and ethnic preferences in academia and the business world alike
Financial Crisis
While the rest of the world financial markets were losing billions of dollars, Soros made billions of dollars for which he said, [he's] “having a very good crisis.” Some people speculate that Soros was responsible for the crisis by removing his large sums of money from institutions and betting against currency valuations.

George Soros Goal for the United States;
Creating a monetary crisis by uncontrolled spending by the Government to devalue the dollar thereby creating an opportunity for Soros to buy cheap dollars and when recovery comes – cashing out with multiple trillions. Leaving the rest of us to pay for the loss.

 

By Maria Golovnina

Rebels waging a drawn-out war to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi have run out of money, their oil chief said on Saturday, and he accused the West of failing to keep its promises of urgent financial aid.

His comments came as cracks were appearing in the NATO alliance over its 3-month bombing campaign against Gaddafi, with some allies showing mission fatigue and the United States accusing some European allies of failing to pull their weight.

The rebels have made several gains in the past few weeks, but remain far from seizing their ultimate prize — Gaddafi’s powerbase of Tripoli and its hinterland — despite air support from the world’s most powerful military alliance.

“We are running out of everything. It’s a complete failure. Either they (Western nations) don’t understand or they don’t care. Nothing has materialized yet. And I really mean nothing,” rebel oil chief Ali Tarhouni said in an interview with Reuters.

At least eight rebels were killed in fighting near the northwestern town of Nalut, a rebel source said, as insurgents sought to press an advance into Gaddafi’s heartland that has proven slow despite weeks of NATO air strikes on their behalf.

The gun battles in the village of Takut, just outside Nalut, on Saturday followed exchanges of heavy artillery fire near the city of Zlitan, on the other side of Tripoli, as the insurgents tried to take government-held territory to the east of the city.

Tarhouni’s remarks highlight the insurgents’ struggle to make ends meet, with war damage to energy infrastructure in their eastern territory having knocked out oil production there.

Western powers have pledged to expand aid by tapping into Libyan assets frozen abroad. But Tarhouni, also the insurgents’ finance minister, said they had not followed through.

“All of these people we talk to, all of these countries, at all these conferences, with their great grand speeches — we appreciate (them) … but in terms of finances they are a complete failure. Our people are dying,” he said.

SHAMBLES

The economy in eastern Libya, where much of the oil that once made Libya a major OPEC exporter came from, is in a shambles. Rebel leaders struggle to pay for military operations and salaries in a society where, thanks to the legacy of Gaddafi’s centralized rule, most people rely on state wages.

The European Union has pledged financial infusions and the United States, which took a leading role in securing a U.N.-backed no-fly zone over Libya, has promised more aid.

The U.S. government said in a press release late on Saturday that it had “delivered a second shipment of non-lethal aid to Benghazi” which was requested by the rebels, including body armor, uniforms and first aid kits, two days ago.

Tarhouni has estimated the rebels were spending up to 100 million Libyan dinars ($86 million) per day.

“I don’t expect us to produce oil any time soon. The refineries have no crude oil, so they are not working,” he said.

The president of the rebels’ transitional council, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, was in the Tunisian capital on Saturday for talks with Tunisian government officials.

Tunisian Prime Minister Beji Caid Sebsi’s government has made welcoming overtures to the rebels but has stopped short of officially recognizing them.

“We’ve gone past that stage,” Jalil told Reuters after a news conference. “The fact that we are received here is implicit recognition. Tunisia will play a big role in the future.”

BATTLES

The rebels are trying to seal off coastal Tripoli from the east, west and south but their advances have been halting and weeks of NATO strikes pounding Gaddafi’s compound and other targets have failed to bring down his 41-year-old rule.

“The battles started yesterday and are continuing today in Takut,” a fighter, Abou Saa, told Reuters from Nalut, in arid hills some 200 km (125 miles) southwest of Tripoli.

“The revolutionaries destroyed six armored vehicles and killed more than 45 enemy soldiers. The rebels surrounded Gaddafi’s forces, who are holed up in a compound (in Takut).”

He added that 13 rebels were wounded in the fighting.

The report could not be immediately verified due to a lack of independent media access to the area, and there was no immediate comment from Gaddafi’s side.

On the other side of Tripoli, rebels are advancing toward Zlitan, 160 km (100 miles) to the east and the next major town on the Mediterranean coastal road to the capital from the rebel stronghold of Misrata. Capturing it would greatly advance the rebels’ strategy of cutting off Tripoli from all sides.

Gaddafi’s forces periodically fired rockets into the port and refinery area of Misrata on Saturday, killing one woman, her neighbor Ali Salah told Reuters in the city.

The rebels have said they will not attack Zlitan because of local tribal sensitivities, but are recruiting fighters from the town and waiting for the residents to rise up against Gaddafi.

Rebels are also fighting on another front, in the east near the oil port of Brega, 800 km (500 miles) east of Tripoli.

NATO planes resumed bombardments of Tripoli on Friday and there were more explosions on Saturday. State news agency Jana said another bombing had struck the Karama district of Tripoli.

Libyan TV said another bombardment hit the Khallat al-Farjan area of Tripoli and Al Ghayran, 100 km to the south of the capital. Neither claim could be independently verified.

“The alliance will be defeated,” Gaddafi said in an audio speech on Libyan television on Friday. “We are in our country and we are determined to stay and defend it.”

Libyan Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi Ali Al-Mahmoudi told a news conference that Libya would appeal to the U.N. Security Council for a halt to NATO’s aerial bombings, which he said were increasingly hitting civilian buildings.

A NATO spokeswoman called Libyan reports of civilian casualties caused by air strikes “pure propaganda.”

“It is Gaddafi and his regime that have been …, shelling cities, mining ports and using mosques and children’s parks as shields,” said alliance spokeswoman Oana Lungescu.

A statement from NATO acknowledged that its aircraft had mistakenly bombed a column of rebel vehicles in eastern Libya on Thursday and said it regretted any casualties. The opposition has said 16 of its fighters were wounded in the incident.

(Additional reporting by Tarek Amara in Tunis, Nick Carey in Tripoli, Matt Robinson in Dafniyah, Joseph Nasr in Berlin, and Sylvia Westall in Vienna; writing by Tim Cocks; editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Because George Soros told him to though his surrogate Samantha Power who is Soros’s policy advisor In the White House. There was no discussions, no lawyer opinions; I doubt that Obama was even involved.

Follow these tea leaves. There is one influential group that has been in the forefront of efforts to promote the idea that the international community is obligated to take measures (including military ones) to protect civilians. That group is the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect. Lo and behold! George Soros’s Open Society Institute is one of the two foundations that bankroll this advocacy group (the other, the John D. and Catherine MacArthur Foundation – a group that has, over the years, become known not just for its Genius Awards but also for its funding of left-leaning groups. It is headed by a former State Department official and we know how many of those diplomats think).

Soros, instructed Barack Obama to adopt the “Responsibility to Protect” justification for bombing Libya. Soros’s theory is that this will lead — and has led to attacks against Israel and calls for international intervention in the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis — but it also has the potential of being applied in a form of lawfare against America to bring down America.

Soros has his person in the White House – Samantha Power-Obama’s influential foreign policy adviser and one of the key people responsible for Obama’s decision to attack Libya under the Responsibility to Protect rationale.

President Obama sought the approval of the Arab League and the international community before launching military attacks on Libya. He did not seek Congressional approval. This chronology illustrates his pattern of outsourcing our foreign policy to other nations and multilateral groups (as if the bowing, the abject apology for America’s past actions, his praise for Europe, and other actions had not already indicated his ideology and likely future policies).

Soros, as always, is trying to weaken American sovereignty, harm Israel, and empower the so-called international community (as if the Arab League is not filled with tyrants).

WRITTEN BY JOE WOLVERTON, II

In 1987, as a freshman in college, I walked into the university library and took down a tome entitled the House of Rothschild. The book told a story of a humble Jewish family from Frankfurt that began as money lenders to the German aristocracy and expanded its wealth exponentially and geographically until its interests extended into the ruling houses of Austria, France, Italy, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The Austrian branch was endowed with titles and lands by the Hapsburg emperor and the British branch was similarly ennobled by Queen Victoria.

To my wonderment, the Rothschild family controlled billions of dollars and literally had not only their fingers in every pie, but owned the bakeries, as well.

The influence wielded by the fecund Rothschild family was unrivaled. Through their grip on the purse strings of the governments of the world, they were able to manipulate peace and war to their own aggrandizement. As historian Niall Ferguson wrote in his book, The World’s Banker: The History of the House of Rothschild:

As we have seen, however, wars tended to hit the price of existing bonds by increasing the risk that a debtor state would fail to meet its interest payments in the event of defeat and losses of territory. By the middle of the 19th century, the Rothschilds had evolved from traders into fund managers, carefully tending to their own vast portfolio of government bonds. Now having made their money, they stood to lose more than they gained from conflict. The Rothschilds had decided the outcome of the Napoleonic Wars by putting their financial weight behind Britain. Now they would sit on the sidelines.

Remarkably, a recent article published in the Washington Times reveals that the power and influence of the Rothschilds has not diminished over the past 200 years. In the piece, it is asserted that the various programs promoted and established by George Soros are ultimately funded by the global wealth of this notorious family of financiers, the Rothschilds.

In a story entitled “Geneva Gnome’s Global Dread,” Arnaud de Borchgrave, the editor at large of the Washington Times and United Press International, identified the various golden Rothschild threads woven into the globalist tapestry held up as an ensign by George Soros.

The Gnomes of Zurich were derogatory caricatures of secretive, greedy, stiff Swiss-German bankers, pince-nez aquiver, who ruled over the land of secret numbered accounts for tax dodgers the world over. With the world’s best financial intelligence service, they knew their stuff and seldom spoke, even in retirement.

Their Geneva counterparts in French-speaking Switzerland were more sophisticated, relaxed in the company of global wheeler-dealers, and weren’t afraid to speak their minds, albeit off the record. Such was George C. Karlweis, the brain behind Banque Privee, owned by the late Baron Edmond de Rothschild. His biggest claim to fame: George Soros and the launch of his Quantum Fund in 1969.

An original $100,000 stake in Mr. Soros’ fund was worth $150 million by 1994. Between 1970 and 2000, the return was 3,365 percent. (For 10 consecutive years, it did 42.6 percent per year.) In 1992, Mr. Soros bet billions against the British pound — and broke the Bank of England (“Black Wednesday”).

Although himself a neocon of the first order and one to neither foment nor foster any Rothschild-centered conspiracy theory, de Borchgrave’s analysis of the relationship between Soros and the Rothschilds is worthwhile and illustrative of the well-established growth of the mushroom of globalists conspirators in the accommodating lengthy shadow of the Rothschilds.

The value of this tale to friends of liberty is found in the innumerable points of common purpose visible when one lays the story printed in the Washington Times over the story of the history of the founding of a one-world government through the efforts of socialist/communist/globalist operatives inside and outside the halls of government.

Furthermore, this same cadre of conspirators were ultimately responsible for the recent worldwide economic collapse as they were the creators of the central banking structure that enables such booms and busts through the manipulation of the world’s currencies.

As one writer explained the cooperation between these monied interests:

That is not to say that every single person involved with the corruptions of central banking must intentionally be fomenting Marxism; no more than to say every Marxist is excited about finance.  But there is mounting evidence of close associations over not only decades but centuries, associations not only of people but of their intentions.

Whether intentional or not, the de Borchgrave article painted the scene of world-wide financial distress in the following very broad strokes:

The financial crises that have been blowing up for years are speeding up, Mr. Karlweis says, because of expenditure exceeding income, “borrowing hand-over-fist, even for no good reason, on ever shakier fundamentals.”

In a display of openness not likely appreciated by his Rothschild patrons, Karlweis attached the name of Hitler to the current currency collapse:

After turning their countries into Weimar Republics by printing more and more money “they will all need a currency commissioner like Hjalmar Schacht,” a German banker who headed Reichsbank and became an early Hitler supporter, “to save them from hyperinflation. Let’s just hope they don’t turn their regimes into Third Reichs in the meantime.”

Next, Karlweis mixes his metaphors and uses the demand for bread and circuses that bankrupted the Roman Empire as an analogy for the potential of similar reactions in the empires that cover the earth today.

“No one wants to predict the reactions of voters who constantly clamor for more bread and games to forget the looming disappointments that could give rise to black swans,” adds the former giant gnome of Geneva.

Black swans are an aspect of the theory of the same name that was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Basically, the theory “refers only to unexpected events of large magnitude and consequence and their dominant role in history. Such events, considered extreme outliers, collectively play vastly larger roles than regular occurrences.”

Naturally, no observer can resist placing the lion’s share of blame for the world’s financial distress at the feet of the government of the United States. Sadly, the placement is well and rightly placed there.

“Governments, public corporations, financial institutions, consumers — everyone is over their head in debt,” Mr. Karlweis says. And “a huge part of the blame for the debacle of the past three years lies squarely with the U.S. By more or less shoving free trade down everyone’s throat, America paved the way for globalization. This is what has destroyed jobs and driven down wages in the developed countries, hobbling economic growth and gouging tax revenues”‘

Given the stretch and strength of the Rothschild web and the bottomless treasure chest at their disposal, George Soros and others determined to obliterate the Constitution are likely to continue their efforts for decades to come until the job is finished

By Maidhc Ó Cathail*

In a February 3 Washington Post op-ed piece titled “Why Obama has to get Egypt right,” George Soros wrote that the U.S. president had “much to gain by moving out in front and siding with the public demand for dignity and democracy.” Notwithstanding the reasonableness of his advice, past experience suggests that the Hungarian-born hedge fund manager has something to gain himself from regime change in Cairo.

In his public memo to the president he helped elect, Soros noted that it was a “hopeful sign” that the Muslim Brotherhood was cooperating with Mohamed ElBaradei, whom he disinterestedly described as “the Nobel laureate who is seeking to run for president.” He neglected to mention, however, that up to ElBaradei’s January 27 return to crisis-torn Egypt, the former IAEA chief had been a member of the Board of Trustees of the International Crisis Group, which Soros, the thirty-fifth richest person in the world, helped create and finance.

The International Crisis Group describes itself as “an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict,” but self-descriptions can often be misleading. “The ICG is a fascinating case study of the way human rights organizations, governments and international corporations work hand in glove these days,” George Szamuely wrote of the influential think tank’s role in the Balkans. “‘Independent’ figures like Soros identify a ‘crisis’ demanding urgent government attention. Governments act on them and then parcel out the lucrative contracts to Soros and his pals.”

One of Soros’s more notorious “pals” is Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed former head of Yukos Oil, who by the age of 32 had amassed assets worth more than $30 billion in the rigged post-Soviet “privatisation” of state-owned property. When the Jewish oligarch was arrested for tax evasion, embezzlement and fraud in 2003, Soros denounced the charges as “political persecution,” called for the expulsion of Russia from the G-8, and urged the West to intervene. Khodorkovsky’s partner in crime, Leonid Nevzlin, fled to Israel before he was found guilty in absentia of ordering the murders of several politicians and businesspeople that got in the way of Yukos’s expansion plans. Like Soros and Khodorkovsky, Nevzlin has since attempted to rebrand himself as a “philanthropist.”

Tel Aviv’s concerns about the loss of a friendly dictator next door, however, should be assuaged somewhat by the fact that ElBaradei could collaborate with the considerable number of Israel partisans at ICG. Former U.S. Congressman Stephen Solarz, who helped start the group, was once dubbed “the Israel lobby’s chief legislative tactician on Capitol Hill,” and in 1998 led a group of neoconservatives who urged President Clinton to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Fellow neocon Kenneth Adelman assured Americans in a 2002 Washington Post op-ed that the Israeli-induced invasion of Iraq would be a “cakewalk.” Even more reassuring for nervous Israelis must be the presence of Nahum Barnea, the prominent Israeli columnist who sharply criticised fellow journalists Gideon Levy, Amira Hass and Akiva Eldar for their “mission” of support for the Palestinians.

And among ICG’s elite international list of senior advisers—defined as “former Board Members (to the extent consistent with any other office they may be holding at the time) who maintain an association with Crisis Group, and whose advice and support are called on from time to time”—we find Shlomo Ben-Ami, former foreign minister of Israel; Stanley Fischer, governor of the Bank of Israel; and Shimon Peres, current president of Israel.

On the face of it, it seems hard to reconcile the substantial pro-Israel presence at ICG with Soros’s claims to be a “non-Zionist.” But things are seldom what they seem with Soros. Two years after the founding of J Street, it emerged that he had given substantial donations to the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobby. Not everyone is convinced by J Street’s claims to be a genuine alternative to AIPAC either. As one astute commentator put it, J Street is “little more than a spin-off of the existing Israel Lobby to make it more palatable to the liberal Democrats that make up the Obama Administration.”

Moreover, some of Israel’s most fervent advocates on Capitol Hill have received donations from Soros, who has become “one of the largest political-campaign contributors in American history.” In an interview with a conservative Jewish radio talk show, Senator Charles Schumer said he believed that HaShem (Orthodox Jewish term for “God”) gave him his name—which means “guardian”—so that he could fulfill his “very important” role in the U.S. Senate as a “guardian of Israel.”

Essentially filling the same role in the House of Representatives until 2008 was the late Congressman Tom Lantos, whom a former U.S. diplomat referred to as “the Hungarian-American guardian of Israel’s interests in Congress.” As co-chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, Lantos knowingly deceived his co-chairman and the public about the identity of “Nayirah,” whose incubator atrocity story helped justify American intervention in the 1991 Gulf War. Lantos, who is said to have “shared a common drive for promoting democracy and human rights” with his close friend Soros, also championed the fugitive Nevzlin as an innocent victim of anti-Semitism.

“I hope President Obama will expeditiously support the people of Egypt,” Soros wrote in his Post op-ed. “My foundations are prepared to contribute what they can.” If the Egyptian people have as much sense as they have courage and determination, however, they will tell this self-described “committed advocate of democracy and open society” what to do with his “philanthropy”—and his Nobel laureate.

* Maidhc Ó Cathail writes extensively on U.S. foreign policy and the Middle East. He also edits The Passionate Attachment blog.

How can anyone honestly say that Obama is not THE most radical, far-Left, anti-American president that America has ever had? Look at who he surrounds himself with…. people who talk about crashing the system, revolutions, calling dictators their heroes.

 

The normalcy bias refers to a mental state (head in the sand) people enter when facing a potential disaster.
It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster occurring and its possible effects.

This often results in situations where people fail to adequately prepare for a disaster, and on a larger scale, the failure of the government to include the populace in its disaster preparations.

The assumption that is made in the case of the normalcy bias is that since a disaster never has occurred that it never will occur. America will always be America – yeah right.

It also results in the inability of people to cope with a disaster once it occurs. People with a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before. People also tend to interpret warnings in the most optimistic way possible, seizing on any ambiguities to infer a less serious situation.
Possible causes

The normalcy bias may be caused in part by the way the brain processes new data. Research suggests that even when the brain is calm, it takes 8–10 seconds to process new information. Stress slows the process, and when the brain cannot find an acceptable response to a situation, it fixates on a single solution that may or may not be correct. An evolutionary reason for this response could be that paralysis gives an animal a better chance of surviving an attack; predators are less likely to eat prey that isn’t struggling.

Effects
The normalcy bias causes people to drastically underestimate the effects of the disaster.
Therefore, they think that everything will be all right, while information from the radio, television, or neighbors gives them reason to believe there is a risk.
This creates a cognitive dissonance that they then must work to eliminate.
Some manage to eliminate it by refusing to believe new warnings coming in and refusing to evaluate (maintaining the normalcy bias), while others eliminate the dissonance by escaping the danger.

The possibility that some may refuse to evaluate causes significant problems in planning for the future.

Our present disaster is the Obama – Soros (Fabian Socialists) dumbing down of America, Making America a third world country. They are presently behind all the uprising in the middle East. The Fabian Socialists believe the smashing apart the World and rebuilding it in their elite One World Order image. It is easy to pick up their agenda. We write about it every day at our website – www.itmakessenseblog.com It is time to wake up your neighbors and your children.

Sad to say my grown children get their news from the comedy channel, the food channel, the travel channel and believe that somehow the world will stay the same.
Let’s try to get their heads out of Normalcy bias. – The Meister

Glen Beck says UNCLE (I give up) and The Soros Organizations Cheer.

 

The Soros financed (communistic groups with the good sounding names) Jewish Funds for Justice, color of change, media matters, (Media Matters vowed to “sabotage” FOX News), the daily beast, and 400 other Soros financed communistic, Fabian socialist groups.

 

On Glenn’s radio show today he said now Fox can get regular sponsors and regular ads.

 

When are we going to get out of our Normalcy Bias and stop George Soros and his One World Order?

We prisoners had an unwritten rule, steal another man’s clothes and you’d get a hiding, steal a man’s bread and you’d die: The chilling testimony from the Gulags’ forgotten victims
The word Gulag is a actually an acronym, derived from the Russian for Main Camp Administration. Over the years, however, it has come to signify the whole Soviet slave labour camp system, a regime that reached its deadly peak under Josef Stalin’s despotic rule and saw millions of men and women transported to camps in Siberia and other outposts of the Red empire.

There, they had to endure sub-Arctic temperatures, undertake heavy labour at gunpoint and try to avoid starving to death. Between 1929 and 1953, the year of Stalin’s death, 18 million people passed through this Gulag system — many of them never to return.

Now a new book, Gulag Voices, edited by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum, tells the stories of some of the survivors; harrowing reminders, told in their own heart-rending

ALEXANDER DOLGUN was an American, born in the Bronx in 1926. But in 1933 his father moved the family to the Soviet Union to take a job at the Moscow Automotive Works. When the family tried to return home, Soviet bureaucrats stopped them. Alexander’s parents never left the Soviet Union again. He grew up and started work as a clerk at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. In 1948 he was arrested on suspicion of being a spy, with the violent interrogation he underwent in Moscow’s Lefortovo Prison marking the beginning of a gruelling eight years in the Gulag.

IT WAS 3am and Sidorov, my interrogator, was angrier than ever. He had been showing me the same photographs over and over again, face after face of strangers. But he didn’t believe what I was saying.

‘I’m giving you another chance. Point out the ones you know! Why do you deny you know them?’

After almost a month of surviving on less than an hour’s sleep a day and already experiencing hallucinations, my fear was that I was going out of my mind. ‘It’s no use,’ I said, ‘we’ve done this over and over. I don’t recognise anyone. Not one!’

His fist came in hard and caught me on the side of the face with enough force to spin me out of my chair and onto the floor. I was dizzy with the shock. ‘Liar, liar, liar!’ he barked furiously.

Suddenly, I felt as if my right shin had been cracked open. I sat up and grabbed it, almost screaming, just as the toe of his hard high boot landed on the other shin.

The pain was terrible; I felt sick and my stomach began to heave. Determined to avoid another blow, I clambered back to the chair, slowly composing myself.

‘I’ll try,’ I muttered.

The next night was even worse. This time Sidorov didn’t even wait for a denial, wading into me with both fists, yelling that if I did not tell him everything he would kill me with his bare hands.

I hit the wall hard after a punch, and went down on my knees. I must protect my shins, I thought, I must protect my shins. He picked me up and dragged me to the chair, screaming obscenities and slapping my cheeks hard. I held my eyes closed against the shattering pain of the lights in the room.

‘Are you going to identify this man?’ he asked, thrusting another photograph under my nose and with a sudden quiet in his voice.

I couldn’t trust my voice, so mouthed the words: ‘I can’t.’

The shock when his boot hit my shin on top of the first bruise made me gasp. The next kick made me yell out loud.

‘Please! I’ll tell you any name. Boris, Andrei, I don’t know. Anything. Only don’t kick me again.’

The fist lashed out again and my consciousness swam away.

KAZIMIERZ ZAROD was a young Polish civil servant and army reservist who, with many others, fled east from Poland’s capital Warsaw when the Nazis attacked on September 1, 1939. But when the Soviets invaded Poland on September 17, he was arrested. After interrogation, he was sent to a Siberian forestry camp, which he knew only as Labour Corrective Camp No 21.

AT 3AM each morning, an alarm was beaten out on a triangle. Dressing was unnecessary as we slept in our clothes.

Tumbling off the hard wooden shelf on which I slept, I joined the queue for the one water bucket, where I filled a small soup container and splashed my face with a few handfuls. Soap, a tiny scrap of which we were issued with once a month, we kept for the evenings when we returned filthy from work.

By 3.30am, we were supposed to be in the square to be counted. On snowy mornings, this could be a long, cold, agonising business. Assuming the right number of bodies were present, the foreman of each working party was then dispatched to collect the bread for the day.

How much bread you got depended on how much timber you had cut the day before, a tally that really could be the difference between life and death. Those who met 100 per cent of the punishing targets — a physical impossibility for most men — earned 900g of bread (about 2lb), while those returning only 50 per cent of their targets got 300g.

Made from rye which had not been thoroughly cleaned, this black bread was the source of Gulag life and carefully hoarded throughout the day. A little with the breakfast soup; a few bites during the short dinner break at midday; more with the soup in the evening to stave off the inevitable pangs of hunger after 12 hours of cutting and stacking logs.

If a prisoner stole clothes or tobacco and was discovered, he could expect a good beating from his fellow inmates. But the unwritten law of this camp was that anyone caught stealing another man’s bread earned a death sentence. An ‘accident’ was not difficult to arrange in the forest.

ELENA GLINKA, a 29-year-old engineering student, was arrested on false charges of treason, and spent six years in the Gulag. She was sent to one of the camps on the dreaded Kolyma Peninsula, where winter temperatures hover between -19C to -38C. Having disembarked at a small fishing village, she witnessed one of the mass rapes, nicknamed the ‘Kolyma tram’ because of the brutal manner in which they were carried out. As the youngest of the prisoners, Elena was ‘chosen’ for the exclusive use of the local miners’ Party boss — and thus spared the worst of an ordeal that still left her so traumatised she could write about it only in the third person.

‘WOMEN in Burgurchan!’ The news spread like wildfire and within an hour men began flocking to the town hall — first the locals, then men from farther afield, some on foot,

Cigarettes, bread, even lumps of cured salmon were tossed to the corralled women prisoners who, after two days at sea, swallowed the food without chewing.

Then bottles began to clink and the men, as if on command, retreated to one side to drink vodka with the guards. There were songs and toasts, but there was also a clear purpose to this debauch as, one by one, the women’s guards passed out, dead-drunk.

whooping and hollering, the men rushed the women and began to haul them into the building, twisting their arms, dragging them through the grass, brutally beating any who resisted. They knew their business; it was co-ordinated and confident. Benches were removed, planks nailed over the windows, kegs of water hauled in.

That done, whatever rags or blankets they had at hand — padded vests, bedrolls, mats — were spread out and the women thrown to the floor. A line of about 12 men formed by each woman and the Kolyma tram began.

When it was over, the dead women were dragged away by their feet; the survivors were doused with water from the buckets and revived. Then the lines formed up again.

LEV RAZGON was a Russian journalist whose marriage to the daughter of one of the founders of the Soviet secret police had helped him work his way to the heart of the Bolshevik elite in the 1930s. But in 1937, when Stalin’s Great Purge began, Razgon saw his extended family arrested one by one. They came for him and his wife Oksana in 1938. Oksana died in a transit prison. Razgon spent 18 years in the Gulag, where he became grimly fascinated by his jailers, the men and women who, one way or another, decided who lived and who died.

OUR transport had been walking for a week and as we finally neared our destination, Camp No 1 in Ustvymlag, my first camp boss was outside waiting for us. A tall man in a well-made overcoat with a blue NKVD [the Stalin-era forerunner of the KGB] cap and boots polished to an unbelievable shine, Senior Lieutenant Ivan Zaliva, surveyed us with a severe and condescending gaze — his hand placed firmly on the wooden butt of his Mauser pistol. Over the forthcoming months, I would learn that he was a man of astounding ignorance and rare stupidity, who stuck devotedly to his official instructions, regardless of the cost in human lives.

To curry favour with his superiors, he always bought the cheapest food, the poorest clothing and, after three days, always switched new arrivals — many of them weakened by months in prison and weeks in transit — to a diet that related to their output.

There were 517 of us in the Moscow transport when we arrived in August 1938. By spring, after some 20 to 30 had been transferred to other camps, only 27 remained. All the rest had died that first winter.

In November 1938, 270 nomadic Chinese had arrived, having inadvertently strayed over the invisible Russian border. Zaliva set them to hauling timber by hand — a job that none of us could endure for more than a week.

The Chinese, however, worked steadily and calmly day after day, and when they had finished their punishing days, returned to the barracks, which they kept scrupulously clean and where they spent their evenings repairing their ripped clothing.

By February 1939, just three months after their arrival, 269 of these Chinese had died. Only one remained alive, working in the kitchen.

HAVA VOLOVICH was a newspaper sub-editor who was arrested in 1937, aged 21, for being publicly critical of the damage done to Ukrainian peasants by the new collective system, which grouped together dozens of farms to make one giant super-farm. She remained in the Gulag for 16 years, where she became one of the tens of thousands of young prisoners to become pregnant and have a baby. Prison nurseries did exist, but malnutrition, restrictive breast-feeding schedules and astonishing cruelty often resulted in the child suffering an early death.

A number of men offered their ‘services’ — and I did not choose the best by any means. But the result of my choice was an angelic little girl with golden curls. I called her Eleanor.

There were three mothers in our barracks and we were given a tiny little room of our own. By night, we brushed from our babies the bedbugs that fell from the ceiling like sand. By day, we left them with any old woman who had been let off work, knowing these women would calmly help themselves to the food we left for the children.

Every night for a year, I stood at my child’s cot, picking off the bedbugs and praying, begging God to prolong my torment by 100 years if it meant I wouldn’t be parted from my daughter.

But God did not answer my prayer. Eleanor had barely started walking and had just uttered her first, heart-warming word — ‘Mama’ — when we were dressed in rags, despite the winter’s chill, bundled into a freight car and transferred to the ‘mother’s camp’.

Here, I was expected to work in the forest, felling trees as normal during the day — while my pudgy little angel with the golden curls, back at the camp’s infant shelter, soon turned into a pale ghost with blue shadows under her eyes and sores all over her lips.

I caught a chill on the bladder, terrible lumbago and shaved my hair off to avoid getting lice. My appearance could not have been more miserable and wretched. But in return for bribes of firewood, the guards let me see my daughter outside normal hours. But the things I saw!

I saw nurses shoving and kicking children out of bed before washing them in ice-cold water. I saw a nurse grab the nearest baby, tie back its arms and then cram spoonful after spoonful of hot porridge down its throat.

My little Eleanor began to fade faster. ‘Mama, want home,’ she cried one evening, her little body covered with mysterious bruises.

On the last day of her life, when I picked her up to breast-feed her, she stared wide-eyed into the distance, clawing and biting at my breast, begging to be put down.

In the evening, when I came back with my little bundle of firewood, her cot was empty. I found her lying naked in the morgue among the corpses of the adult prisoners. She had spent one year and four months in this world and died on March 3, 1944.

- Gulag Voices, edited by Anne Applebaum, is published by Yale University

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1371768/Testimony-Gulags-forgotten-victims-Steal-mans-bread-die-.html#ixzz1IP6wjINa

By Kenneth Schortgen Jr

Financier and progressive activist George Soros is formulating a move to control food and grain production by purchasing grain elevators in late March in several parts of the United States through his Soros Managment Fund’s backed Gavilon Grain.  With purchases made in March, Gavilon Grain will become the third largest grain company behind Cargill, and Archer-Daniels Midland.

With strong ties to the Obama administration, Soros now has both the economic, and political clout to begin consolidation of purchasing and shipping domestic agriculture around the world.

U.S. grain firm Gavilon Grain said on Thursday it will buy Union Elevator and Warehouse’s 16 grain elevators in the Pacific Northwest , the company’s second big purchase of U.S. grain facilities in the last six months.

The purchase of 16 elevators at 12 locations in eastern Washington will expand Gavilon’s grain capacity by 8.4 mbu.

“The addition of Union Elevator’s grain facilities and origination capabilities position us well to support the growing Pacific Northwest export wheat market and serve the Columbian Basin feed grain market,” Greg Konsor, VP and GM of Gavilon Grain, said in a statement. The PNW is the No. 1 wheat export terminal in the United States.

When food brokers consolidate into just a few large companies controlling the majority of a market, then prices can be set not by supply and demand, but by corporate decisions and manipulation of supply.  If the price for food is too low in the United States, then grain can be shipped to other markets for sale, causing then an artifical supply problem in the country that produced the grain itself.

With George Soros’s making this move in backing Gavilon Grain’s purchases to control food and grain distribution in the United States, and becoming the third largest grain company in the country, it will lead to the same results that we see in the energy markets as oil is controlled by a small group of corporations, and the price can be dictated by an artificial control over its supply.

Congress Go Home You are Worthless. Soros Commands, Obama Decrees and We Pay

The U.S. Should Reject the U.N. George Soros “Responsibility to Protect” Doctrine and Stop The WAR IN LIBYA

The “responsibility to protect” (R2P) doctrine outlines the conditions in which a communistic idea in which the the international community is obligated to intervene in another country, militarily if necessary, to prevent genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other atrocities. Despite its noble goals, the United States should treat the R2P doctrine with extreme caution.

Adopting a George Soros doctrine that compels the United States to act to prevent atrocities occurring in other countries would be risky and imprudent. U.S. independence — hard won by the Founders and successive generations of Americans — would be compromised if the United States consented to be legally bound by the R2P doctrine. The United States needs to preserve its national sovereignty by maintaining a monopoly on the decision to deploy diplomatic pressure, economic sanctions, political coercion, and especially its military forces.

There are ongoing efforts to legitimize the R2P George Soros one world doctrine within the United Nations and other international forums. The R2P doctrine is being advocated by certain wonderful sounding, but evil organizations that do not necessarily consider the best interests of the United States as a priority. International organizations such as the United Nations and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as the World Federalist Movement and the Open Society Institute promote R2P in the interest of a nebulous “international community,” not in the interests of the United States or its citizens.

If the United States intervenes in the affairs of another nation, that decision should be based on U.S. national interest, not on any other criteria such as those set forth by the R2P doctrine or any other international “test.”

Origins of the R2P Doctrine
Military intervention by one sovereign nation into another for humanitarian purposes has long been a controversial topic. In the wake of the tragedies in Rwanda and Srebrenica during the mid-1990s, the Canadian government — at the urging of then-U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan — launched an initiative to set forth principles for when and under what conditions such an intervention would be justified. To this end, Canada announced in September 2000 the formation of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) to “foster a global political consensus” for preventing and responding to future incidents of mass killing and ethnic cleansing.

The ICISS Report. In December 2001, the ICISS issued a comprehensive report, The Responsibility to Protect.[1] Its two key provisions may be summarized as follows:
1. National governments are responsible for preventing large-scale losses of life and ethnic cleansing in their own populations.
2. In the event that a national government is unable or unwilling to prevent such atrocities, the international community, acting through the United Nations, has a responsibility to act and protect the suffering population, with or without the consent of the recalcitrant government.
The first of these provisions is already widely accepted. To date, 140 nations have pledged to protect their respective populations from genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: “The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.” If a national government fails to protect its own population from genocide or other atrocities, the R2P doctrine holds that the government effectively forfeits its sovereignty and negates its ability to raise the principle of nonintervention to prevent other nations from intervening to protect the vulnerable population.

The second key provision of the ICISS report purports to create an obligation for nations to act to prevent atrocities not only within their own borders, but also in other nations. Specifically, the report states that the international community has a responsibility to intervene in another country with military force to stop:
1. “large scale loss of life, actual or apprehended, with genocidal intent or not, which is the product either of deliberate state action, or state neglect or inability to act, or a failed state situation” or
2. “large scale ‘ethnic cleansing,’ actual or apprehended, whether carried out by killing, forced expulsion, acts of terror or rape.”
3.
A New “International Norm.” The R2P doctrine is the latest example of an attempt by certain actors in the international community to create new “international norms” to comport with their particular view of how nations should behave. Often, when there is a perceived need for a new international norm, certain members of the international community — usually international NGOs, government representatives, U.N. officials, and other activists — will gather at a conference for the purpose of “discovering” and/or developing the new norm. These groupings meet to determine what the new norm should entail, write reports, convene conferences, and build networks. They may ultimately call for a convention of national governments to draft a multilateral treaty to memorialize the new norm.

The activities of the ICISS and certain NGOs clearly fit this pattern of norm-creating behavior. The ICISS report announces the discovery of a new “emerging guiding principle” that military intervention to thwart humanitarian atrocities should be recognized as an obligation of the international community:
While there is not yet a sufficiently strong basis to claim the emergence of a new principle of customary international law, growing state and regional organization practice as well as Security Council precedent suggest an emerging guiding principle — which in the Commission’s view could properly be termed “the responsibility to protect.”
The report continues:
[F]or present purposes the point is simply that there is a large and accumulating body of law and practice which supports the notion that, whatever form the exercise of that responsibility may properly take, members of the broad international community of states do have a responsibility to protect both their own citizens and those of other states as well.

Proponents of the R2P doctrine will likely not be satisfied if the international community merely recognizes R2P as a “guiding principle.” The long-term effort is to build consensus within the international community that the guiding principle is worthy of official recognition as a norm that should be memorialized in a multilateral treaty. Proponents may posit that the new norm should be anointed by the “international legal community” as recognized customary international law — a status that would legally bind the nations of the world to behave in a certain manner even in the absence of a treaty.
Indeed, R2P advocates point to existing international law as the basis for creating the R2P doctrine. Specifically, the ICISS report claims that the R2P norm is contemplated — if not already recognized and legitimized — by several existing international agreements and treaties, including:
fundamental natural law principles; the human rights provisions of the UN Charter; the Universal Declaration of Human Rights together with the Genocide Conventions and Additional Protocols on international humanitarian law; the statute of the International Criminal Court [ICC]; and a number of other international human rights and human protection agreements and covenants.
Ironically, the fact that many nations have not ratified these particular agreements appears unimportant to the ICISS. For example, the United States has ratified neither the statute of the International Criminal Court nor the Additional Protocols on international humanitarian law. Yet R2P advocates apparently expect the United States to recognize and adopt a new international norm that is partially based on these treaties and protocols that it has already rejected

Legitimizing R2P Within the International Community
Once activists have agreed on the proper framework and content for a “new” norm, they often set about to legitimize the norm throughout the international community. In the years since December 2001, when the ICISS report was released, R2P proponents have successfully integrated the doctrine into key U.N. documentation and have established coalitions and networks of international NGOs to pursue recognition of the doctrine.

Recognition of R2P at the United Nations. In September 2005, the world’s leaders met at the United Nations for a “world summit” to make commitments to one another in the fields of development, collective security, human rights, and U.N. reform. The principles agreed upon by the world leaders, including the United States, were set forth in the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document.

R2P advocates successfully inserted the two key provisions of the ICISS report into the text of the Outcome Document. Thus, by accepting the Outcome Document, the international community has made the following commitments regarding the R2P doctrine:
Each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This responsibility entails the prevention of such crimes, including their incitement, through appropriate and necessary means. We accept that responsibility and will act in accordance with it….
The international community, through the United Nations, also has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means…to help protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. In this context, we are prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the [U.N.]Charter, including Chapter VII [the basis for the use of military force]…should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

In sum, the international community’s current position, as set forth in the Outcome Document, is that all nations have a collective responsibility to protect the populations of other nations against acts of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other atrocities. Moreover, the international community, especially the nations that sit on the U.N. Security Council, “are prepared” to use military force, pursuant to Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, to end those atrocities. For its part, the Security Council subsequently reaffirmed the R2P principles set forth in the Outcome Document in a 2006 resolution dealing with the protection of civilian populations during armed conflict.

Advancing new norms at the United Nations is also accomplished by creating special U.N. working groups and offices dedicated to the development of the norm. U.N. special advisers, special envoys, and other “special” offices have been created in the past to develop issues and norms ranging from climate change to “sport for development and peace.”

The R2P doctrine is traveling along the same path. On December 12, 2007, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon created a new assistant secretary-general position, Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect, and appointed Professor Edward Luck of Columbia University to fill it. As the special adviser, Luck’s primary responsibility “will be conceptual development and consensus building, to assist the General Assembly to continue consideration” of the R2P doctrine. Luck will help the Secretary-General “develop proposals, through a broad consultative process, to be considered by the United Nations membership.”

Notably, only three paragraphs of almost 180 paragraphs and 40 pages of the Outcome Document address the R2P doctrine. Yet it was deemed necessary to create a new assistant secretary-general position for the sole purpose of promoting the R2P doctrine.

Advocacy in the International NGO Community. R2P advocates have launched a worldwide effort to convince the international community to recognize and accept R2P as a universally accepted doctrine.
For example, in February 2008, a coalition of international NGOs that includes Human Rights Watch and the World Federalist Movement teamed with such sponsors as George Soros’s Open Society Institute and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to launch the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect at the City University of New York. The Global Centre will “serve [as] a catalyst for moving the responsibility to protect from principle to practice.” It “will conduct, coordinate, and publish research on refining and applying the R2P concept” and “serve as an information clearing house and resource for governments, international institutions, and non-governmental organizations leading the fight against mass atrocities.”

Several other international groups have networked with the Global Centre to advocate for R2P around the world, including the Asia–Pacific Centre for Responsibility to Protect in Thailand, the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre in Ghana, the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs, and the Fundación para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Diálogo Exterior in Spain.
Another group — the R2P Coalition — focuses on advocating R2P in the United States. Based in Illinois, the coalition’s mission is:
 “To convince the American people and its leaders to embrace the norm of the responsibility to protect as a domestic and foreign policy priority,”
 “To convince our political leadership that the U.S. must join the ICC,” and
 “To convince our political leadership to empower the UN and the ICC with a legitimate and effective deterrent and enforcement mechanism — an International Marshals Service — a standing international police force to arrest atrocity crimes indictees.”
The R2P Coalition hosted a series of conferences in 2007 and convinced several local governmental entities — such as the City and County of San Francisco — to pass resolutions endorsing the R2P doctrine.

The World Federalist Movement. Perhaps the most active R2P proponent on an international scale is the World Federalist Movement (WFM). The WFM is an international NGO that “seek[s] to invest legal and political authority in world institutions to deal with problems which can only be treated adequately at the global level.” The WFM launched Responsibility to Protect– Engaging Civil Society (R2PCS) to “raise awareness of [the ICISS report] and to build a network of non-governmental organizations…that support these principles and subsequently seek their adoption by governments and regional and international organizations.”

The WFM devotes a Web site to describing its efforts — supposedly taken at the request of the Canadian government — to reach out to the global NGO community to promote the R2P doctrine. For instance, the WFM promoted the R2P doctrine at the 2003 meeting of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The World Social Forum is a summit of tens of thousands of anti–free market and anti-globalization NGOs that are collectively “opposed to neoliberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a planetary society directed towards fruitful relationships among Humankind and between it and the Earth.” Its annual meetings are scheduled specifically to counter the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
At the 2003 World Social Forum, the WFM “held a seminar on the Responsibility to Protect, distributed thousands of copies of basic information materials and the ICISS Report, took advantage of speaking opportunities on other panels to discuss the Report, and mentioned it from the floor of many seminars.”

U.S. Policy and the R2P Doctrine
If wholly accepted as official U.S. policy, the R2P doctrine would greatly expand U.S. obligations to prevent acts of genocide around the world. More important, adoption of R2P would effectively cede U.S. national sovereignty and decision-making power over key components of national security and foreign policy and subject them to the whims of the international community.
The U.S. government, as a party to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention), is currently obligated to prevent acts of genocide that occur within U.S. territory. The Genocide Convention Implementation Act of 1987 (the Proxmire Act), the legislation implementing the Genocide Convention, was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1988. The Proxmire Act defined the crime of genocide as an act committed “with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in substantial part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.” The new law even criminalized the act of inciting another person to commit an act of genocide. Importantly, U.S. enforcement of these criminal offenses was limited to acts committed in the United States.

However, adoption of the R2P norm would obligate the United States to prevent all acts of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes even if they occur outside of the U.S. Such an obligation would impose unique responsibilities. As the world’s preeminent military force, the United States would have to bear a disproportionate share of the R2P international commitment. In the event that acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing occur, the vast majority of nations in the international community could reasonably plead military inferiority on each such occasion, leaving the United States to bear the brunt of any intervention. Most members of the international community could also plead poverty, again leaving the United States to fund the intervention. Even if the intervention is funded through the United Nations system, the United States would still pay an unequal share of the cost.

Current U.S. Policy. The current U.S. position on the R2P doctrine was set forth in a letter from former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton to other members of the international community in the run-up to the 2005 World Summit. Ambassador Bolton’s letter made it clear that the United States was skeptical of creating a legal obligation requiring one nation to intervene in another:
[W]e note that the [U.N.] Charter has never been interpreted as creating a legal obligation for Security Council members to support enforcement action in various cases involving serious breaches of international peace. Accordingly, we believe just as strongly that a determination as to what particular measures to adopt in specific cases cannot be predetermined in the abstract but should remain a decision within the purview of the Security Council.

With reference to the R2P text that was included in the Outcome Document, Ambassador Bolton stated:
[W]e would like to make changes to make clear that the obligation/responsibility discussed in the text is not of a legal character…. We do not accept that either the United Nations as a whole, or the Security Council, or individual states, have an obligation to intervene under international law.
Notwithstanding that position, Ambassador Bolton’s letter made the following statement regarding what the United States was willing to commit to in relation to the R2P doctrine:
For its part, the United States stands ready to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council under Chapter VII of the UN Charter and, as appropriate, in co-operation with relevant regional organizations, should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities be unwilling or unable to protect their populations.

The current position of the United States, therefore, is that, while it “stands ready” to take collective action to prevent genocide and ethnic cleansing in another nation, it rejects the notion that it is legally obligated to intervene to prevent such atrocities. This position is in harmony with the U.S. commitment in the Outcome Document in which the United States, as a member of the world community, agreed that it was “prepared to take collective action” to protect vulnerable populations. While hardly a renunciation of the R2P doctrine, the current U.S. position falls well short of committing to a legal obligation to act.
Future U.S. Policy. Of course, this is no guarantee that the U.S. position will not change when a new Administration comes to power in January 2009. Of the three remaining presidential candidates, all have made statements in favor of humanitarian intervention in general or the R2P doctrine specifically.

For example, when asked in a presidential candidate questionnaire about R2P, Senator Hillary Clinton responded that the United Nations should take steps to “operationalize” the R2P doctrine and stated:
As President I will adopt a policy that recognizes the prevention of mass atrocities as an important national security interest of the United States, not just a humanitarian goal. I will develop a government-wide strategy to support this policy, including a strategy for working with other leading democracies, the United Nations, and regional organizations.
Senator Barack Obama was more circumspect in his answer to the same questionnaire, stating only that “[t]he Responsibility to Protect is an important and developing concept in international affairs and one which my Administration will closely monitor.”
Senator John McCain , while not specifically mentioning R2P, has repeatedly stated a willingness to use military force to prevent atrocities in other countries:

I supported humanitarian intervention in order to stop genocide in Kosovo. I wish that the U.S. had acted — with force if necessary — to stop genocide in Rwanda. In neither of these places were America’s vital national security interests at stake, though our national values were. Murder in Kosovo and genocide in Rwanda demanded intervention.
Senator McCain also stated:
Africa continues to offer the most compelling case for humanitarian intervention. With respect to the Darfur region of Sudan, I fear that the United States is once again repeating the mistakes it made in Bosnia and Rwanda…. My administration will consider the use of all elements of American power to stop the outrageous acts of human destruction that have unfolded there.

While neither Senator McCain nor Senator Clinton has explicitly recognized the existence of a legal obligation to intervene in another country where atrocities are occurring, both have characterized the prevention of genocide as a U.S. national interest, although they apparently disagree on whether or not it constitutes a national security interest.
While genocide, war crimes, and other atrocities will always be incompatible with American values, the McCain and Clinton statements raise the issue of whether preventing genocide and ethnic cleansing would necessarily constitute a vital U.S. national interest. In some situations, acts of large-scale ethnic cleansing in some remote nation may indeed affect U.S. national interests.
However, the real question is whether or not the United States should obligate itself through an international compact to use its military forces as the rest of the world sees fit in cases of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Accepting such an obligation would arguably empower other nations to judge whether U.S. national interests or national values are at stake. That begs the question of who will decide whether the United States must commit its limited resources — including its military forces — to prevent atrocities occurring in a foreign land. The R2P doctrine is designed to take decision making on these crucial issues out of the hands of the United States and place it in the hands of the international community, operating through the United Nations.
If the United States consented to such a doctrine, it would effectively surrender its authority to exercise an essential, sovereign power.

First Principles and National Sovereignty
The United States must not surrender its independence and sovereignty cavalierly. The Founding Fathers and subsequent generations of Americans paid a high price to achieve America’s sovereignty and secure the unalienable rights of U.S. citizens. The government formed by the Founders to safeguard American independence and protect individual rights derives its powers from the consent of the governed, not from any other nation or group of nations.
Having achieved its independence by fighting a costly war, America’s Founders approached permanent alliances and foreign entanglements with a fair degree of skepticism. President George Washington, in his 1796 farewell address, favored extending America’s commercial relations with other nations but warned against extensive political connections. Washington well understood that legitimate governments are formed only through gaining the consent of the people. He therefore placed a high value on the independence that the United States had achieved and was rightfully dubious about involvement in European intrigues.

Integral to national sovereignty is the right to make authoritative decisions on foreign policy and national resources, particularly the use of the nation’s military forces. Many of the reasons why America fought the War of Independence against Great Britain revolved around Britain’s taxation of the American people without their consent and its practice of “declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.” Once America gained control of its revenue, natural resources, and industry and had formed a government separate and apart from any other, the Founders would not have compromised or delegated its prerogatives to any other nation or group of nations. Washington rightly warned his countrymen to “steer clear” of such foreign influence and instead to rely on “temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.”

The R2P doctrine strikes at the heart of the Founders’ notion of national sovereignty. The Founders would have deplored the idea that the United States would cede control — any control — of its armed forces to the caprice of the world community without the consent of the American people. Washington stated that the decision to go to war is a key element of national sovereignty that should be exercised at the discretion of the American government:
Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government, the period is not far off…when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel

The U.S. interest, guided by justice and exercised with the consent of the American people, must remain the standard for making decisions of war and peace. The interest of the international community, which is guided by its own collective notion of justice and without the consent of the American people, should not serve as America’s barometer, especially when placing the lives of U.S. military men and women in jeopardy. The United States cannot rely on world opinion, as expressed through an emerging international norm such as R2P, to set the proper criteria for the use of U.S. military force. The commitment to use force must be made exclusively by the U.S. government acting as an independent, sovereign nation based on its own criteria for military intervention.
In sum, the R2P doctrine does not harmonize with the first principles of the United States. Adopting a doctrine that binds the United States to scores of other nations and dictates how it must act to prevent atrocities is the very sort of foreign entanglement against which Washington warned us. The United States would betray the Founding Fathers’ achievement of independence and sovereignty if it wholly acceded to the R2P doctrine.

Additional R2P Impracticalities
In addition to the corrosive effect that the R2P norm, if wholly adopted, would have on U.S. national sovereignty, other aspects of R2P are impractical and collectively fatal to the doctrine.
Under the R2P doctrine, if the United States decides on its own that acts of genocide or ethnic cleansing require intervention, the procedural hoops set forth by the R2P doctrine would prevent the U.S. from acting expeditiously. Additionally, the “precautionary principles” scattered throughout the R2P doctrine would significantly hinder the combat operations of any U.S. armed force ultimately committed to such a mission.
Assignment of Authority to the United Nations. When a crisis or other major world event endangers a U.S. national interest, the United States must have the ability to take action as it sees fit. In the event that the United States determines that atrocities in a foreign land must be stopped, the R2P doctrine would restrict the ability of U.S. armed forces to respond swiftly by requiring the United States to clear a series of barriers and defer to the judgment of multilateral bodies.
Specifically, the R2P doctrine requires the United States or any other nation seeking to end genocide to ask the U.N. Security Council for permission to intervene. Indeed, the ICISS report states that the Security Council should be the “first port of call” and that there is “absolutely no doubt that there is no better or more appropriate body than the Security Council to deal with military intervention issues for human protection purposes.”[49] The Security Council’s failure to act in Rwanda and Srebrenica — the very situations that gave rise to the ICISS effort — is apparently of little consequence.
Moreover, even if the Security Council fails to act, the R2P doctrine does not free the United States or any other nation to act. Instead, it suggests that authority for military intervention must be sought either from the U.N. General Assembly or from regional or sub-regional organizations.

The U.S. national interest — not the U.N. Security Council, the U.N. General Assembly, or any other regional organization — should dictate the use of U.S. military force as well as the imposition of economic, political, and diplomatic sanctions. Whether that interest is best pursued through the U.N. Security Council, through NATO, in ad hoc “coalitions of the willing,” or completely alone is for the President, the Congress, and the American people to decide. History shows that most nations decide to use their military forces based, first, on their own interests; second, on the interests of their close allies; and last, if at all, on the interests of an undefined “international community.” The United States should not submit to a doctrine that would make it the perennial exception to that historical trend.

Operational Flexibility vs. Precautionary Principles. Even if surrendering control of America’s armed forces to the will of the world community were acceptable, the U.S. military could not operate effectively under the R2P doctrine.
Once committed to a military operation with all of its attendant risks, U.S. armed forces must be allowed the operational freedom to create the conditions to succeed. However, the R2P doctrine espouses a “proportional means” limitation to the rules of engagement that would likely hinder the success of a military intervention. Specifically, the ICISS report suggests that the “scale, duration and intensity of the planned military intervention should be the minimum necessary to secure the humanitarian objective in question.” In other words, any intervening armed force may act only to end genocidal acts and ethnic cleansing — and go no further.
However, a combat environment is rarely so predictable. Some situations would require the total destruction of the forces perpetrating the genocide or the overthrow of the government providing command and control. Yet the ICISS report states that “[t]he effect on the political system of the country targeted should be limited…to what is strictly necessary to accomplish the purpose of the intervention.” Several instances of genocide and ethnic cleansing in recent history have occurred with the complicity and active involvement of a national government and its armed forces. It is unrealistic to mandate that a military intervention limit its effect on the political system and its leadership while stopping genocidal crimes. It is likewise naïve to believe that government forces that are complicit in genocidal acts would cease and desist from committing atrocities after a military intervention has ended and the intervening troops are withdrawn.
In addition, the R2P doctrine demands that “all the rules of international humanitarian law should be strictly observed” in the event of a military intervention. There is, however, widespread debate over certain crucial aspects of that law. For example, there are major differences of opinion regarding the classification, treatment, confinement, and trial of certain classes of enemy combatants. The use of certain weapons, such as cluster bombs and land mines, is also disputed. The R2P’s requirement of strict observance of the law of armed conflict is therefore unachievable because there is broad disagreement on what “strict observance” would entail.

Protecting American Sovereignty
Given the recognition of the responsibility to protect doctrine in the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document, as well as the continuing efforts by certain actors in the international community to promote and operationalize R2P, the United States should clarify its position on its national sovereignty and the criteria for the use of its armed forces.
To that end, the United States should:
 Maintain its current official position, as set forth in Ambassador Bolton’s letter regarding the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document, that the R2P doctrine does not create a binding legal obligation on the United States to intervene in another nation for any purpose.
 Affirm that the United States need not seek authorization from the U.N. Security Council, the U.N. General Assembly, the international community, or any other international organization to use its military forces to prevent acts of genocide, ethnic cleansing, or other atrocities occurring in another country.
 Base its decisions to intervene in the affairs of other nations — including punitive economic, diplomatic, political, and military measures — on U.S. national interests, not on criteria set forth by the R2P doctrine or any other international “test.”
 Scrutinize ongoing efforts by certain actors within the international community to operationalize and otherwise promote the R2P doctrine in the United States, the United Nations, the international NGO community, and other international forums.
 Reject the notion that the R2P doctrine is an established international norm.
Conclusion
The United States should take no comfort from the fact that, as a party to the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document, it has committed itself only to being “prepared to take collective action” to end atrocities or that the ICISS report represents the obligation to prevent atrocities as a mere “responsibility.” R2P advocates are attempting to achieve worldwide consensus that the international community has an obligation to intervene, with military force if necessary, in another country to prevent acts of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other atrocities. R2P proponents may not be satisfied with anything less than a multilateral treaty — a United Nations Convention on the Responsibility to Protect — that creates binding legal obligations on its signatories.
The United States should therefore continue to treat the responsibility to protect doctrine with grave skepticism. The independence won by the Founders and defended by subsequent generations of Americans should not be squandered, but rather should be safeguarded from furtive encroachments by the international community.
Only by maintaining a monopoly on the deployment of diplomatic pressure, economic sanctions, political coercion, and military forces will the United States preserve its national sovereignty. Acceding to a set of criteria such as those set forth by the R2P doctrine would be a dangerous and unnecessary step toward bolstering the authority of the United Nations and the international community and would compromise the consent of the American people.

Steven Groves is Bernard and Barbara Lomas Fellow in the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation.

By Trevor Loudon

Why Did U.S. President Barack Obama order a military attack on Libya? Why did he seek the permission of the United Nations Security Council, but not that of the U.S. Congress – as he is constitutionally obliged to do? Glenn Beck has explained President Obama’s decision to attack Libya in terms of the United Nations’ “Responsibility to Protect Doctrine”
Mr Beck is right.

According to Radio Free Europe
Those who justify the Libyan intervention on humanitarian grounds draw much of their logic from a concept which has dramatically gained ground over recent decades. The concept is known as “R2P,” shorthand for the world’s “Responsibility to Protect” civilians.
But what does this catchy little phrase mean? Where did it come from? What are its implications?

The United Nations reported in July 2009;
The Obama administration is supporting moves to implement a U.N. doctrine calling for collective military action to halt genocide. In a week-long debate on implementing theResponsibility to Protect Doctrine, the U.S. joined a majority of U.N. countries, including Russia and China, in supporting implementation of the policy. The doctrine itself was approved in 2005 by more than 150 states including the U.S.

The doctrine specifies that diplomatic options such as internal conflict resolution, sanctions and prosecution by the International Criminal Court, should be used first. If they don’t work, then a multi-national force approved by the Security Council would be deployed.
In other words, if the United Nations does not approve of a certain government’s behavior, and that government’s leaders will not respond to sanctions and the threat of prosecution, they will be attacked militarily.

The U.S. organization supporting this concept, named unsurprisingly Responsibility to Protect is affiliated to a financial planning firm, General Welfare Group LLC, based in Oak Brook Illinois.
According to the Responsibility to Protect website:
The doctrine of the responsibility to protect was first elaborated in 2001 by a group of prominent international human rights leaders comprising the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. Under their mandate, the Commission sought to undertake the two-fold challenge of reconciling the international community’s responsibility to address massive violations of humanitarian norms and ensuring respect for the sovereign rights of nation states.

Led by Gareth Evans, former Foreign Minister of Australia, and Mohamed Sahnoun, Special Advisor to the UN Secretary-General, the Commission issued its report in December 2001. Focusing on the “right of humanitarian intervention,” this report examined when, if ever, it is appropriate for states to take coercive – and in particular military – action, against another state for the purpose of protecting populations at risk. In essence, the group concluded that when a group (or groups) of people is suffering from egregious acts of violence resulting from internal war, insurgency, repression or state failure, and the state where these crimes are taking place is unable or unwilling to act to prevent or protect its peoples, the international community has a moral duty to intervene to avert or halt these atrocities from occurring.Gareth Evans, an Australian Fabian Socialist and Mohamed Sahnoun both worked with leftist financier George Soros in the highly influential International Crisis Group.

The “responsibility to protect” doctrine received renewed emphasis in 2004 when the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan created the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. The Panel was established to “identify major threats facing the international community in the broad field of peace and security and to generate new ideas about policies and institutions aimed at preventing or confronting these challenges.”

Barack Obama’s adoption of the “Responsibility to Protect” justification for bombing Libya will create problems. Not only will this lead — and has led to attacks against Israel and calls for international intervention in the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis — but it also has the potential of being applied in a form of lawfare against America.
When we engage militarily in other nations, civilian casualties are inevitable, especially since terrorists hide among civilian populations. There is one influential group that has been in the forefront of efforts to promote the idea that the international community is obligated to take measures (including military ones) to protect civilians. That group is the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect. Lo and behold! George Soros’s Open Society Institute is one of the two foundations that bankroll this advocacy group (the other, the John D. and Catherine MacArthur Foundation – a group that has, over the years, become known not just for its Genius Awards but also for its funding of left-leaning groups. It is headed by a former State Department official and we know how many of those diplomats think).
Soros, as I have also pointed out , has ties to Samantha Power-Obama’s influential foreign policy adviser and one of the key people responsible for Obama’s decision to attack Libya under the Responsibility to Protect rationale.
President Obama sought the approval of the Arab League and the international community before launching military attacks on Libya. He did not seek Congressional approval. This chronology illustrates his pattern of outsourcing our foreign policy to other nations and multilateral groups (as if the bowing, the abject apology for America’s past actions, his praise for Europe, and other actions had not already indicated his ideology and likely future policies).
Soros, as always, is trying to weaken American sovereignty, harm Israel, and empower the so-called international community (as if the Arab League is not filled with tyrants).
And he has friends in the White House.

If you want to know more about what we are really doing in Libya, read about the International Crisis Group, from Discover the Networks. ICG co-founded the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. Recognize the term?
These groups advocate sweeping change in the Middle East a la revolution and usurpation of state sovereignty. They favor an Islamic state, oppose Israel, and are heavily funded by George Soros. Surprise. Surprise.
They believe that state sovereignty is not a right, but a responsibility, that can be superseded by the international community, under the doctrine, Responsibility to Protect. Libya is the test run for this policy.
Former Obama senior foreign policy advisor Robert Malley is the Middle East and North Africa Program Director for ICG. He is sympathetic to Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood, Fatah and Hezbollah, and has repeatedly condemned Israel. He has urged the U.S. to disengage with Israel, and to reach out and negotiate with traditional Arab enemies, such as Syria and Iran.
And alongside another Obama senior foreign policy advisor and likeminded thinker, Samantha Power, is Gareth Evans, the biggest proponent of the ICG’s Responsibility to Protect doctrine… aka The Obama Doctrine.
Wait for it. Evans is a Fabian Socialist.
In fact, the ICG is riddled with socialists, communists, marxists, transnationalists, anti-Israel-ists, and anarchists. And they are determining U.S. foreign and military policy.
Remember the Fabian window?
The Fabians believe in hammering out their new world order from above… imposing their will on the people below them.

Their goal is to “set the world on fire and remould it nearer to the heart’s desire.” Little by little, they convince all of the people to kneel to the god of socialist thought. It is telling that their crest is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
The Obama Doctrine indeed.