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Is the Occupy Wall Street movement being funded by the same capitalists against whom the movement is being targeted? If so, what is the purpose of funding the movement? A simple internet investigation raises a very curious question - is the multi-billionaire George Soros funding the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement? Reuters had earlier reported an indirect link between Soros and OWS. This article is a revisit to the controversial discovery and the subsequent chatter in the netsphere.
The George Soros – OWS connection
The Occupy Wall Street movement was originally called on by a foundation called the Adbusters in a blog post dated July 13, 2011. Wikipedia writes:
Adbusters proposed a peaceful occupation of Wall Street to protest corporate influence on democracy, a growing disparity in wealth, and the absence of legal repercussions behind the recent global financial crisis. They sought to combine the symbolic location of the 2011 protests in Tahrir Square with the consensus decision making of the 2011 Spanish protests.
Adbusters' senior editor Micah White said they had suggested the protest via their email list and it "was spontaneously taken up by all the people of the world.”Adbusters' website said that from their "one simple demand, a presidential commission to separate money from politics," they would "start setting the agenda for a new America." They promoted the protest with a poster featuring a dancer atop Wall Street's iconic Charging Bull. (shown below)
As per the data from activistcash.com, Adbusters foundation received a major fund from the Tides foundation. In fact, Tides contributed $334,217 during 1996-2003, one of the largest contributions mentioned in the site.
So who funds the Tides foundation? discoverthenetworks.org in 2004 writes about the foundation :
The Tides Foundation is a tax-exempt charity established in 1976 by antiwar activist Drummond Pike. It distributes millions of dollars in grants every year to political organizations identified with leftwing causes. Along with George Soros and the Ford Foundation, Tides has also funneled tens of thousands of dollars to the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), an organization established by Sixties radicals William Kunstler and Arthur Kinoy.
Immediately after 9/11, Tides formed a “9/11 Fund” to advocate a “peaceful national response” to the opening salvos of war. The Foundation replaced the 9/11 Fund with the “Democratic Justice Fund,” which was established with the aid of George Soros’ Open Society Institute. (Soros, a currency speculator and drug legalization advocate, is a major contributor to Tides, having donated more than $7 million.)
The Truth in the story
After the story had been published on the internet and headlines grabbed, Michael Vachon, spokesman for Soros was quoted by National Post as saying that Soros has not “funded the protests directly or indirectly”, adding that “assertions to the contrary are an attempt by those who oppose the protesters to cast doubt on the authenticity of the movement”
So even though, we may trace the OWS funding to Adbusters, Tides foundation and ultimately the Open Society set up by George Soros, to accuse him of personally funding the movement is like accusing a shopkeeper of murder just because he sold the knife to a murderer. It doesn't make any sense.
