Soros fingerprints all over protests here, too

Sordid ties of architect who specializes in crisis
By Aaron Klein, © 2011 WND

TEL AVIV – The Democrat strategist identified as an architect of the social protests currently rocking Israel previously ran the campaign of Bolivia’s former president, who was ushered into office amid escalating social protests in that country.

After Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada took power in Bolivia in 1985, he quickly implemented an economic “shock therapy” crafted by Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University professor who sits on the board of an organization literally seeking to reorganize the entire global economic system.

That group is the Institute for New Economic Thinking, or INET.

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Philanthropist George Soros is INET’s founding sponsor, with the billionaire having provided a reported $25 million over five years to support INET activities.

Last weekend saw the largest protests in Israel’s history. Four hundred thousand people hit the streets in cities across the country purportedly to protest against the rising cost of living while demanding sweeping economic reforms.

That massive protest was the culmination of weeks of similar social demonstrations and protest tent cities that organized in various Israeli municipalities, principally in Tel Aviv.

WND has reported how similar tent cities are being planned by a slew of U.S. radicals calling for a “Day of Rage” targeting Wall Street and U.S. capitalism.

‘Our brand is crisis’

According to an investigative report in Israel’s Maariv’s newspaper, the country’s protests were engineered by a group of media strategists directed by prominent Democratic strategist Stanley Greenberg, a former adviser to Bill Clinton, John Kerry and others.

Greenberg reportedly is working with Israeli strategists who were behind left-wing leader Ehud Barak’s successful race for prime minister in 1999. Greenberg himself helped to run Barak’s campaign.

Greenberg founded the Democratic strategy firm Democracy Corps with Clinton advisers James Carville and Bob Shrum. Earlier, the trio ran a strategizing outfit called Greenberg Carville Shrum.

That firm in 2002 was behind a sophisticated campaign in Bolivia that helped de Lozada win his country’s elections amid ongoing social protests. It was the second time de Lozada served as Bolivia’s president.

In 1985, after de Lozada came to office the first time, he quickly implemented Sachs’ “shock therapy.” De Lozada attempted to engineer the restructuring of the Bolivian economy and the dismantling of the country’s state-capitalist model that had prevailed there since the 1952 Bolivian Revolution.

Sachs is a renowned international economist best known for his work as an economic adviser to governments in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union

His “shock therapy” calls for drastically cutting inflation by scrapping all subsidies, price controls, restrictions on exports, imports and private business activity. The scheme also calls for linking each restructured country’s economy with a more global currency.

Sachs’ remedy for Bolivia, however, had dire consequences.

The Sachs plan did beat the country’s inflation, but the price was continuing high unemployment, economic stagnation, labor revolt, a state of siege and a deepening involvement in the international drug market, reports noted.

To beat the hyperinflation under Sachs’ plan, Bolivia ensured a large number of workers were laid off while others’ salaries were slashed, leading to widespread worker strikes.

The Bolivian government imposed a state of siege in response to a wave of strikes.

Similar protests engulfed Bolivia when Greenberg’s firm helped to orchestrate de Lozada’s 2002 win. De Lozada had announced that he planned to once again implement Sachs’ “shock therapy” for Bolivia.

A 2005 documentary, entitled, “Our Brand is Crisis: Exporting neoliberal spin,” followed Greenberg’s and Carville’s electioneering in Bolivia on behalf of de Lozada.

The film noted Greenberg’s team saw no need to recraft de Lozada’s economic policy approach based on Sachs “shock therapy” plan.

De Lozada was victorious in the 2002 elections, but was run out of office one year later amid massive opposition to his economic policies. Protesters demanded a return to the capitalist system.

Bretton Woods and ‘shocking’ world economy

Sachs, meanwhile, sits on the board of the Soros-funded Institute for New Economic Thinking.

This past April, Sachs keynoted INET’s annual meeting, which took place in the mountains of Bretton Woods, N.H.

The gathering took place at Mount Washington Hotel, famous for hosting the original Bretton Woods economic agreements drafted in 1944. That conference’s goal was to rebuild a post-World War II international monetary system. The April gathering had a similar stated goal – a global economic restructuring.

A Business Insider report on last year’s event related, “George Soros has brought together a crack team of the world’s top economists and financial thinkers.”

“Its aim,” continued the business newspaper, “to remake the world’s economy as they see fit.”

More than two-thirds of the speakers at this year’s conference had direct ties to Soros.

Besides his role at INET, Sachs, a special adviser to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, is founder and co-president of the Soros-funded Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization that says it is dedicated to ending extreme poverty and hunger.

Global taxes

With $50 million in capital from Soros, Millennium promotes a global economy while urging cooperation and investment from international banks and the United Nations Development Program.

The group helped to found the United Nations Millennium Development Goal, a move that was advanced by Sachs. He served as director from 2002 to 2006.

The U.N. Millennium Development Goal has demanded the imposition of international taxes as part of a stated effort of “eradicating extreme poverty, reducing child mortality rates, fighting disease epidemics such as AIDS, and developing a global partnership for development.”

Investor’s Business Daily reported the Millennium goal called for a “currency transfer tax,” a “tax on the rental value of land and natural resources,” a “royalty on worldwide fossil energy projection – oil, natural gas, coal,” “fees for the commercial use of the oceans, fees for airplane use of the skies, fees for use of the electromagnetic spectrum, fees on foreign exchange transactions, and a tax on the carbon content of fuels.”

Indeed, last September, a group of 60 nations, including France, Britain and Japan, propose at the U.N. summit on the Millennium Development Goals that a tax be introduced on international currency transactions to raise funds for development aid.

The proposed 0.005 percent tax on currency transactions would raise as much as $35 billion a year in development aid, claimed the proponents.

More Soros ties

Greenberg, meanwhile, also runs his own polling and strategy firm, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner.

A partner in the firm is Jeremy D. Rosner, who was special assistant to Clinton during his first term in office, serving as counselor and senior director for legislative affairs on the staff of the National Security Council.

Rosner’s current client list, according to Greenberg’s website, includes Soros’ Open Society Institute.