Robert Mackey, writing in the Lede:

(Note, Mackey is defending Soros)

“The Open Society Institute spokeswoman, Ms. Silber, told The Lede that Mr. Soros did provide financial support to both the Czech pro-democracy group Charter 77 and Poland’s Solidarity movement, which eventually brought democracy to that country too, in the early 1980s. During the same period, Mr. Soros also, “set up foundations in Communist Hungary and the Soviet Union that worked to undermine the repressive regimes there,” Ms. Silber added.

Last year Mr. Soros himself explained, in an article on his work published on CNN’s Web site, what his aim was:

I set up my first foundation in Hungary in 1984. The idea behind it was simple. The state dogma, promoted by the ruling communists, was false and by providing an alternative we could expose its falsehood. Accordingly we supported every cultural initiative that was not an expression of the established dogma.

I was guided by the concept of the “open society,” which I adopted from the philosopher Karl Popper. I saw the open society as a more sophisticated form of social organization than the totalitarian closed societies of the Soviet bloc.”

Comment:

Julian Assange’s theory of  busting open systems that are based on conspiracies through revealing the conspiracies that motivate them fits right into Soros’ own thinking.

Of course, since it’s pretty much the thinking behind my own weblog, I don’t think I can point a finger just on that score.  Changing people’s thinking does involve revealing aspects of the current ideology that have been hidden from them “in plain view” .

But there’s a difference between subverting ideology and fraudulently or forcibly subverting institutions or harming people, and that difference can only be observed by taking care to respect other people’s rights to form their own groups and think their own thoughts free of propaganda and mind control. For that, you need to adhere more strictly to property rights, not subvert them, and you need to have a stricter standard of objective truth, not debates in which partisanship and ideology take precedence.

Pat Buchanan succumbs to a severe case of white man blues, often found among people who don’t get out enough:

“Can Western civilization survive the passing of the European peoples whose ancestors created it and their replacement by Third World immigrants? Probably not, for the new arrivals seem uninterested in preserving the old culture they have found.

Those who hold the white race responsible for the mortal sins of mankind – slavery, racism, imperialism, genocide – may welcome its departure from history. Those who believe that the civilization that came out of Jerusalem, Athens, Rome and London to be the crowning achievement of mankind will mourn its passing.”

Comment:

Of course, those dreadful changes that so frighten Buchanan are laid at the door of colored immigrants who actually had very little to do with bringing them about.

You thought the changes in society today reflect the efforts of  militant atheists (white), anti-Christian activists (usually and originally white), Darwinists and atheists (white), atheist Marxists (whites), modern gender feminists ( white), the gay liberation activists (white), communists (white), global pornographers (the most powerful groups of which are white), the Cold Warriors (white), Hollywood (white), the Wall Street criminal cabal (white), the military-industrial-intelligence leviathan (white); university and establishment liberal activism (white)?

No, no.

The colored folk did it all.

Of course, if we really wanted to be picky, we’d ask Buchanan if he thought Jesus Christ was “white” and “European,” or Middle Eastern.

And we’d ask whether a large part of Christ’s teaching derives originally from Greece or from the Near East, which is not white.

And we’d like to add too that without Muslim civilization (non-white) and Byzantine (half-white), we doubt if the Greco-Roman heritage, which owed much to the Egyptians (half-white?) would ever have passed on to the Europeans in the first place.

And without the Jewish (which Buchanan appropriates as white, whereas it is Middle Eastern genetically), we doubt modern Europe would have ever come into being.

White Judeo-Christian and humanist civilization are something I greatly admire, have studied for a life time, and have benefited from.

But having had the privilege of living in two countries, one ruined by (white) Fabian socialism but enduring because of (brown) religious and holistic traditions, I am amazed and saddened by the small horizons of a man I have long respected for his unabashed love for his traditions and people.

Indeed, we think the West is only kept alive at all by the misplaced adulation and semi-slavery of its global mercantilist plantation.  The problem is actually philo-Americanism of the wrong kind.

Recently, I thought about this when I had the good fortune to walk through the mansion of one of the richest men in America in the 1920s. I spent a day enjoying his art collection, amassed from Europe during the years before the collapse of the stock market.

Europe’s glory, at least measured in terms of art, was five centuries. Rising with the Gothic and setting in the nineteenth century, where, already, the forces of decline were evident.

That would be a long time before those barbarians Buchanan deplores came upon the scene. If Europe is dying, and it is, don’t blame the crowd gathered around the corpse.

Blame the children of the house, who in broad daylight, with weapons forged under their own roof, rose up   and slew their own father.

Only to find they had not yet learned to live without him.

Slavoj Zizek, the Slavonian Marxist Ideologue, addressing the OWS.

Some points from his presentation:

There is a need to reinvent Communism

The OWS should radicalize the Marxist notion of the proletariat
In the background of all anarchist efforts, the state should remain

A limited amount of state terror is justified (Note: he is advocating state terror in reaction to imperialist efforts to subvert or stop it through coups or CIA infiltration)

OWS should be a real movement

Inquisitr.com

“It’s not quite the ringing endorsement they were hoping for but Occupy Wall Street protesters on Monday received the support of the American Nazi Party, more commonly referred to as the ANP.

Also known as the National Socialist Party the group released the following statement on their website:

“[Occupy Wall Street] is TAYLOR [sic] MADE for National Socialists,” while they urge their members to “Produce some flyers EXPLAINING the ‘JEW BANKER’ influence—DON’T wear anything marking you as an ‘evil racist’—and GET OUT THERE and SPREAD the WORD!”

The ANP isn’t the first communist movement to back Occupy Wall Street, the Communist Party USA has also backed protesters and during a board member speech on Saturday in Chicago they told the crowd:

“I bring greetings and solidarity from the Communist Party. We are here, marching side-by-side. We’ll sleep here. We’ll be with this movement ’til the very—’til we make all the changes that we know we have to make.”

While many protesters don’t agree with the parties overall message they did meet the show of support with hoots and applause.

I don’t believe in the overall messages that are routinely being delivered by the ANP or the Communist Party USA however it’s still nice to see so many groups of varying political backgrounds joining in the movement to raise awareness about economic distrust around the world.”

Comment:

Communists and Nazis are backing OWS.  I’m not going to use that against them, though. because a lot of Nazis supported the Tea Party too. Not too many, of course, because the Tea Party was filled with Austrians, none of whom believe that banking and the charging of interest is evil.

Unfortunately, too many of the OWS supporters entertain such ideas.

What’s more, economic nationalism was just the path that the German Nazi party took….

On the positive side, America is not Germany, the 21st century is not the 20th, and we are not determinists.

Landdestroyer.blogspot.com:

“In fact, almost all military strategy comes not from a large mahogany desk with maps strewn across it with a calculating general hovering above, but rather from institutions like AEI and other corporate-funded think-tanks including the Brookings Institution or the RAND Corporation. Frederick Kagan, along with other “resident scholars” at AEI, have also developed the current strategies being employed in Afghanistan and soon in Pakistan [6]. One might say that Petraeus, and many other lack-luster officers in the United States military are nothing more than empty vessels with administrative and operational capabilities merely carrying corporate-funded, crafted, and serving policies onto the battlefield, while equally empty vessels for politicians sell the policies and their tremendous costs back at home to the American people.
AEI’s board of trustees represents a wide variety of corporate-financier interests including those of the notorious Carlyle Group, State Farm, American Express, and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co (also of the CFR). Dick Cheney also acts as a trustee. Joining policy wonk Frederick Kagan as members of AEI’s “research staff” are warmongers Newt Gingrich, John Bolton, Richard Perle, John Yoo, and Paul Wolfowitz. AEI’s work is done entirely with the concept of “American exceptionalism” in mind, or in other words, American global hegemony. The AEI’s own annual report is rife with talk of US strategic preeminence and its assertion over the sovereignty of foreign nations in the form of sanctions, military operations, invasions, and occupations. The AEI, in tandem with the Heritage Foundation, Foreign Policy Initiative, and many others, all with interconnecting memberships and corporate-financier sponsors, are literally the “Project for a New American Century (PNAC)” in motion.

If a general commanding the summation of America’s military might and now America’s immense, omnipresent intelligence network, being bent to the will of corporate-financier interests who literally write the script from which he acts isn’t frightening enough, then maybe is the fact that these same apparently “Neo-Conservative,” “right-wing” organizations are also engineering and executing the latest “liberal-humanitarian” war in Libya.

In fact, as notorious “Neo-Con” Paul Wolfowitz, an AEI “visiting scholar,” expounded the merits of “Obama’s war” in Libya [7] and the desirable effect it could have on helping topple regimes in Syria and Iran, one might recall Wolfowitz’ aspirations back in 1991 where he spoke with General Wesley Clark about an opportunity to clean up the old Soviet “client regimes” before the next super power rose up and challenged western hegemony [8]. Amongst these “client regimes” were Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, and Iran. It would appear than one linear agenda serving these corporate-financier interests unfolds regardless of who is in office.

With this in mind, we see that Petraeus is in no shape, form, or way a “political” or “establishment” outsider, or by any means a hero capable of saving America from its decline. He is amongst one of the most entrenched “insiders” there are, with his position in the CIA digging him in even deeper. His, or others like him, potentially entering into the political fray will be nothing more than a dangerous new ploy used to manipulate the American public. As Republican hopefuls flounder in front of an increasingly skeptical and angry public and the path for real political outsiders is being opened, the American people must be ever vigilant against pretenders like Petraeus, or other “military men” who might attempt to cross the proverbial Rubicon and pose as “reformers,” or “saviors” here to rescue us from our flawed form of government.”

Video: The indispensable Dr. Webster Tarpley discusses Libya, the global economy, and the prospect of General Petraeus’ potential role in bringing Bonapartism openly to America’s shores. Via Tarpley.net.

….

Notes

[1] The Telegraph, “David Petraeus for President: Run General, run,” April 3, 2010
[2] The Guardian, “Petraeus in profile: the man who could be president,” April 27, 2011
[3] Council on Foreign Relations, Membership Roster, letter ‘P’ for “Petraeus,” as of September 30, 2011
[4] Council on Foreign Relations, Company Membership, as of September 29, 2011
[5] AEI Speeches & Testimony, “The Surge of Ideals,” May 6, 2010
[6] The Stanley Foundation, “The Case for Larger Ground Forces,” by Frederick Kagan & Michael O’Hanlon, April 2007
[7] AEI via the Wall Street Journal, “Why Gadhafi’s Fall is in America’s Interests,” by Paul Wolfowitz, June 23, 2011
[8] FORA.tv Conference Channel, “Wesley Clark: A Time to Lead,” October 3, 2007
[9] Foreign Policy Magazine, “Rick Perry, the “hawk internationalist,” August 10, 2011

Politico:

He’ll  {Ron Paul will] propose immediately freezing spending by numerous government agencies at 2006 levels, the last time Republicans had complete control of the federal budget, and drastically reducing spending elsewhere. The EPA would see a 30 percent cut, the Food and Drug Administration would see one of 40 percent and foreign aid would be zeroed out immediately. He’d also take an ax to Pentagon funding for wars.

Medicaid, the children’s health insurance program, food stamps, family support programs and the children’s nutrition program would all be block-granted to the states and removed from the mandatory spending column of the federal budget. Some functions of eliminated departments, such as Pell Grants, would be continued elsewhere in the federal bureaucracy.

And in a noticeable nod to seniors during an election year when Social Security’s become an issue within the Republican primary, the campaign says that plan “honors our promise to our seniors and veterans, while allowing young workers to opt out.”

The federal workforce would be reduced by 10 percent, and the president’s pay would be cut to $39,336 — a level that the Paul document notes is “approximately equal to the median personal income of the American worker.”

Comment

OK. This is the first serious cutting I’ve seen and I’m glad to see conservatives recognizing it.  One can’t start off too savagely, but there needs to be more than the pusillanimous tinkering that usually constitutes budget cuts.

For an idea of the range and dollar value of NGO activity funded by Ford Foundation (only one of many foreign foundations funding civil society in India):

Contrast the Occupy Wall Street protests with the beginnings of the Tea Party.

While the Tea Party was rife with discussion of 9-11, the NWO, Rothschilds, and the Federal Reserve (in fact, those conspiracy theories are what created the Tea Party), none of that is present at the OWS protests.

The anger has been directed at the 1% at the top and the arguments are broadly anti-capitalist in a revolutionary sounding way, but as far as I can tell, not in substance.

Matt Taibbi (who came by OWS to give advice on specific proposals), has proposed some five reforms that are actually strangely lame and misplaced.

A small tax on all stock and bond trading, for instance, is highly unlikely to hamper the largest high frequency traders. It will burden small day-traders (mostly the middle-class) and smaller professionals. And from the point of view of fairness or morality, it’s completely misdirected, since these people were some of the main victims of the casino markets of the last couple of decades. The big fish were literally living off the losses of the small fry, whom they shook out of the market with each sudden movement up or down.

Changing compensation at Wall Street is also a curiously modest demand for a movement that tries to cast itself as a ground-shaking revolution.

It looks like the rhetoric and imagery are intended to scare.

The ideology is communist, or at least collectivist, but the proposals are reformist. Which makes me still more convinced that the whole movement has come out of the ruling classes to begin with.

It is likely intended to create a groundswell of approval for various kinds of insider generated regulations and redistributions of wealth, as well as for an increase in central power, masquerading as “decentralized direct democracy.”

The New Republic:

“The mystery that will launch a thousand media seminars is: How did a modest encampment in Zuccotti Park morph in less than a month into a global news story?

“At the beginning, this protest seemed fairly small,” said Blair Taylor, a 35-year-old, working on his Ph.D. in political science at the New School, who has been visiting Zuccotti Park since the onset of the protest. “Originally, there was a lot of right-wing sentiment—9/11 Truthers and Ron Paul supporters. Now it’s much more left-wing.” That was certainly my impression at Zuccotti Park as I interviewed at random an herbal beverage brewer from North Carolina; a 55-year-old historian of feminist art and magic who lives three blocks away; a sculptor from suburban Westchester County; and an unemployed construction worker from Staten Island who acknowledged, “These problems are going to take years to fix. It won’t happen overnight.” Maybe I would have come up with something different if I had not conspicuously avoided everyone with large, visible tattoos or a manic glint in their eyes.

My very tentative theory about the media success of Occupy Wall Street begins with the cleverness of the initial concept. Even if no one whom I interviewed at the protests had seen anyone even remotely responsible for the economic meltdown, it is easy to imagine that the demonstrators were confronting Goldman Sachs partners and hedge-fund managers daily on their way to work. Occupy Wall Street has a much more dramatic ring than Camp-Out in Lower Manhattan. Another major factor was the way that the normally astute New York Police Department fanned the movement with their indefensible use of pepper spray and their initial penchant for mass arrests. When you are trying to create a mass movement, it is way better to be martyrs than ignored.

The final aspect is that the Occupy Wall Street protests filled in a missing piece in the political puzzle. Mark Schmitt shrewdly suggested that liberals had long been fantasizing about a Tea Party of the left. But I also think serious journalists had been waiting for some bellow of outrage over the way that Wall Street plutocrats had been laughing all the way to their annual bonuses. Why in popular culture is Bernie Madoff a more notorious symbol of greed than AIG or the bankers who packaged sub-prime mortgages? Someone in America had to get mad other than Elizabeth Warren. So when the demonstrators with their amorphous sense of injustice arrived in Zuccotti Park, media stars were born.”

Éliphas Lévi’s (Bonœ Memoriœ) creed, and that of his disciples.

“We believe in a God-Principle, the essence of all existence, of all good and of all justice, inseparable from nature which is its law and which reveals itself through intelligence and love.

We believe in Humanity, daughter of God, of which all the members are indissolubly connected one with the other so that all must co-operate in the salvation of each, and each in the salvation of all.

We believe that to serve the Divine essence it is necessary to serve Humanity.

We believe in the reparation of evil, and in the triumph of good in the life eternal.”

“To practice magic is to be a quack; to know magic is to be a sage.”-from The Threshold of Magical Science

My Comment

Some believe these teachings to be pure evil, since they deny the divinity of Christ, but then, so do Islam and Hinduism.

But Jesus said “Other sheep have I that are not of this flock” and “In my house there are many mansions”, so at least, from the promise of those words,  I don’t think the denial of the unique salvation of Christ damns a teaching.

Hinduism also denies it. Islam only calls Jesus a great prophet.

There’s error in the Bible, except in the eyes of the most fanatical fundamentalists, or for people whose interpretations are so elastic they can read anything into anything.

To those people who say that many of the theosophists were unscrupulous, I say perhaps they were. So were many in orthodox faiths.  And many occultists were not unscrupulous.

Many of the great problems in modernity have arisen because of its tendency to see “evil” everywhere. Where the eastern mind sees human error, the modern mind sees devilry. By looking for too many devils in nature, the mind itself becomes devilish

Nothing in Levi’s credo contradicts anything in the gospel, if one reads both of them with an open mind.

Who is not against me is for me, said the protagonist of the gospel. It is not the belief that damns anyone. It is the practice.

Christians have used the words of the gospel to castrate themselves (Origen) and enslave others (Conquistadors). Should we blame Jesus for that?

Everyone receives according to his capacity. Jesus himself spoke in parables so he would reach the most artless peasant and the most learned rabbi, both spiritual novices and the tried and tested.

Just as man’ s technological prowess has outstripped his spiritual development, making every technological advance an equal advance in the science of death, so also religious dogmas in the hands of selfish and immature people have been more destructive than life-giving.

Intellectual studies have to keep pace with personal growth.

Knowledge itself is not evil, any more than nuclear fission or guns. What is evil is the ends to which knowledge is used.

[Note: I added a good bit of explanation to the original post, because of the danger that someone unfamiliar with these texts would think I was endorsing “devil worship” as most people understand it.  Not so. But the figure of the devil varies from tradition to tradition, and even within a tradition. And one needs to have an understanding of the context of the quotation I cited.]