The progressive billionaire speculator George Soros has said he will ‘fight back’ against the “dominant ideology” of nationalism, whilst admitting that favoured globalist project the European Union is “on the verge of a breakdown”.
Wistfully writing that Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF) once ‘epitomised the optimism about the spread of Western-style democracy’ after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Financial Times described the scrutiny the global progressive body is experiencing amidst a wave of patriotism and populism and the ‘wilting’ attraction of the leftist agenda.
Soros, alluding to the collapse of the USSR, told the left-liberal newspaper: “It’s déjà vu all over again with one big change — the dominant ideology in the world now is nationalism… It’s the EU that’s the institution that’s on the verge of a breakdown.
“And Russia is now the resurgent power, based on nationalism,” Soros said.
The open borders financier blames Russian hackers for attacks against him in 2016, and the country’s government blacklisted the OSF in 2015 for allegedly “endangering Russia’s constitutional system and national security”.
The 87-year-old had considered winding down the OSF before his death but seeing the rise of the world’s citizenry against globalism and progressive interests, transferred $18 billion of his own wealth into the fund in October 2017 and pledges to stay on as chairman for another five years – or longer.
“I think you can say I’m quite lucky with my enemies,” Soros said. “It makes me feel more than ready to fight back and stand up for what is right.”
The concept of “what is right” is fluid for the billionaire, depending on his financial stake. The speculator, who ‘broke the Bank of England’ by short selling sterling in 1992, described himself as “one person who at one time engages in amoral activity and the rest of the time tries to be moral” in a 1998 60 Minutes interview where he attempted to rationalise his waves of destruction on sovereign nations through his speculating with his ‘philanthropy’.
Soros has denied accusations his organisations were directly involved in toppling governments in Ukraine, Macedonia, and Georgia, though admitted to the Financial Times that his grantees were involved in the 2014 Maidan protests in Ukraine, saying: “We were not involved in the actual fighting — that’s against our guidelines and principles. But we were supporters of the fighters and that was also during Maidan.”
In Macedonia, vice president of the Stop Operation Soros organisation Cvetin Chilimanov accused OSF of organising protests in the Balkans.
Central European nations have been vocal opponents of Soros’s interventions, and the billionaire is believed by the Hungarian government to be behind the EU’s plans to open the bloc’s borders to millions of Middle Eastern and African people through the institutionalisation of mass migration
Last week at a European Parliament hearing, Soros–backed migrant rights group the Hungarian Helsinki Committee and the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights in Poland urged the European Parliament to establish a “European Values Instrument” which would financially support NGOs that are ‘protecting European values’ in member states.
The hearing was organised by European lawmakers Sophie in’t Veld and Frank Engel – both of whom are named as two of the 226 “reliable allies” of Soros’s Open Society European Policy Institute in the European Parliament.
Canada and the US are hosting a meeting on the Korean peninsula deadlock, gathering diplomats from 20 nations. Moscow and Beijing, however, are not invited, and will only be “briefed” on the outcome, Russia’s FM Lavrov said.
The meeting, held January 15-17, seeks to achieve the goal of a “secure, prosperous and denuclearized Korean peninsula,” according to its organizers.
“The Vancouver group of foreign ministers from across the globe will meet to demonstrate solidarity in opposition to North Korea’s dangerous and illegal actions,”reads the statement on the event issued by the Canadian government.
There are 18 countries in the “Vancouver group” besides the US and Canada, including Denmark, Greece, Norway, New Zealand and others. The two major players – China and Russia – who are the immediate neighbors of North Korea and are definitely not keen on the prospect of a nuclear conflict on their borders, were not invited to the gathering for some reason. The choice of participating countries, a large part of which are at the periphery of the Korean standoff, has reportedly raised eyebrows even among diplomats of one of the closest US allies – Japan.
Moscow and Beijing officials, however, were “welcomed” to attend the end of the meeting – basically just to check out its results. The proposal was turned down and criticized by both Russia and China.
“We and the Chinese have not been invited, but we’ve been told ‘The meeting will be today in the evening, the main meeting on [January] 16, come alongside with the Chinese on 16 in the evening, we’ll tell you what we’ve agreed upon,’” Lavrov told a press conference on Monday.“It’s obviously unacceptable.”
The result of such a gathering would be rather negligible for untangling the North Korean issue, the Russian diplomat said.
“With all due respect towards those who came up with such an initiative, I don’t expect anything productive. Hopefully, nothing counterproductive will happen. It’ll be a great result already, while it’s hardly believable,” Lavrov said.
A similar attitude towards the Vancouver event has been expressed by Beijing, which warned the US and Canada against perpetuating “Cold War” thinking. The meeting without the major mediators in the North Korean crisis “will only create divisions within the international community and harm joint efforts to appropriately resolve the Korean peninsula nuclear issue,” said China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang.
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