[R-G] Soros’ double-dealing in the Caucasus oil market

[Anthony Fenton]

Soros’ double-dealing in the Caucasus oil market
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3614.shtml

Aug 13, 2008, 00:18

(WMR) -- WMR has learned details of so-called “progressive” cause  
donor George Soros in the underlying turmoil between Russia and  
Georgia in the Caucasus.

In 1994, Soros set up shop in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, to  
engineer what would become known as the “Rose Revolution,” carried out  
ten years later. Soros’ Open Society Institute (OSI) jointly pumped  
tons of money into programs designed to propel Georgia’s neocon  
president, Mikheil Saakashvili, to power in a November 2003 coup that  
toppled Georgia’s President Eduard Shevardnadze, the last Foreign  
Minister of the Soviet Union, from power. The OSI money was mostly  
spent on training neocon political operatives loyal to Saakashvili and  
his party and influencing the Georgian media. Media manipulation is a  
favorite tactic of Soros, one that he has used effectively to curb the  
power of the American progressive liberal movement.

After the Rose Revolution, Soros and United Nations Development  
Program (UNDP) director Mark Malloch Brown launched the Georgia  
Development and Reform Fund that was designed to curb corruption in  
Georgia. However, the fund was actually used to pay increased salaries  
for employees of the Georgian President’s office and the National  
Police. The $40 million pumped into the fund was matched dollar-for- 
dollar between OSI and the UNDP. The salaries for Georgia government  
apparatchiks and police bought loyalty for Saakashvili and Soros in  
the country.

The Tbilisi daily newspaper, 24 Saati (“24 Hours”), discovered the  
source of the fund was a Cyprus-registered “charity” called “Golden  
Fleece.” The Development and Reform fund was managed by an old  
Saakashvili crony, former Deputy Justice Minister Konstantine  
Kublashvili, who served under then-Justice Minister Saakashvili during  
the Shevardnadze presidency. Kublashvili told Radio Free Europe/Radio  
Liberty’s Georgia Service that there was no “dirty money” involved in  
the Golden Fleece charity. However, WMR has learned that was not what  
was discovered by the “Georgia shop” at the National Security Agency’s  
(NSA) Medina Regional Security Operations Center (MRSOC) in San  
Antonio, Texas. A special and highly secure unit at the MRSOC that  
monitored financial flows to the region discovered the links between  
Golden Fleece in Cyprus -- Cyprus is a center for Russian-Israeli mob  
activities -- and Russian-Israeli oligarchs who were trying to oust  
Russian President Vladimir Putin from power.

After leaving the UN, Malloch Brown became vice chairman of Soros’  
Quantum Fund, Soros’ flagship hedge fund, as well as vice president of  
Soros’ OSI.

In 2004, Soros, using his “Democracy Alliance,” which represented  
nothing more than a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party by  
globalist forces represented by Soros and his friends, pooled and  
bundled campaign contributions for a number of Democratic candidates,  
earning him the same loyalty that similar bribes bought him in  
Georgia. Soros reportedly convinced organizations and web sites he  
funded, including MoveOn.org, DailyKos, Democratic Underground, and  
others to launch an anti-Halliburton campaign. Halliburton was engaged  
in the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline that pumped  
oil from Azerbaijan through Georgia to the Turkish deep water port at  
Ceyhan on the Mediterranean coast.

The campaign by Soros against Halliburton worked. The firm began  
divesting itself of its Kellogg, Brown & Root subsidiary in early  
2006. As the result of the Soros effort against Halliburton, the  
company’s stock plummeted from $40 a share to $26 a share. Soros, a  
longtime hedge fund and currency speculator who profits from crises  
and financial collapses, bought 2 million shares of Halliburton at its  
low share price of $26 per share. He then, according to WMR’s  
financial industry sources, ordered his “progressive” recipients of  
funding to ease off on their criticism of Halliburton. The result was  
that Halliburton shares increased to $50 a share. Soros earned a cool  
$40 million from his manipulation of the politics and finances  
surrounding Vice President Dick Cheney’s old firm.

Soros’ manipulation of the progressive media is highlighted in an  
article by Michael Barker, a doctoral student at Griffith University  
in Australia, titled “The Soros Media ‘Empire.’” Soros’ role in  
“democracy manipulation” is cited in the article: “The Soros  
Foundations’ most recent annual report shows that Soros still remains  
a force to be reckoned with among democracy manipulators, as the  
entire Soros Foundations Network distributed over $400 million worth  
of grants in 2006.”

Saakashvili’s own ties with “progressive journalists” linked to Soros  
are highlighted by his friendship with Scott Horton, a journalist with  
Harper’s. Horton hired Saakashvili in 1994 to work for him at the New  
York law firm of Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler after the Georgian  
graduated from Columbia Law School. Other Patterson, Belknap et al.  
alumni include former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and current  
Attorney General Michael Mukasey. Saakashvili referred to Horton as  
his “colleague” at a July 2006 seminar at the neocon citadel, the  
American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington, DC.

In January of this year, Saakashvili won the presidential election  
amid opposition charges of fraud. Opposition Labor Party officials  
charged that Saakashvili supporters voted more than once at multiple  
polling places. The verdict from Florida Democratic Representative  
Alcee Hastings, an impeached former federal judge, was that he saw no  
evidence of election fraud. Hastings was heading an election observer  
delegation from the Organization for Security and Cooperation on  
Europe (OSCE), an organization that his been co-opted by Soros.

In 2006, when Saakashvili’s police arrested opposition leaders,  
Konstantin Zatulin, an exiled former Georgian security chief and  
leader of the opposition Justice Party, told Moscow’s Ekho Moskvy  
radio station that one of those arrested in Georgia was the head of  
the “Anti-Soros Movement.”

Russia is taking intense heat from not only the neocon media in its  
reprisal against Georgian aggression against South Ossetia, but also  
from the usual Soros-funded “progressive” media outlets, print,  
broadcast, and web-based.

WMR has taken quite a beating over the years from parties funded by  
Soros. However, we are working on a major initiative that will throw a  
significant monkey wrench into the manipulation of the media by Soros  
and his partners-in-crime.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright © 2008 WayneMadenReport.com
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and  
nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of  
the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal
Email Online Journal Editor