Friday, 12 November 2010

Beck unsubstantiated? /
Anti-Semitism Arrows Fired at Glenn Beck Miss the Mark /
George Soros U.N. Panel Organizes $100 Billion Climate Change Shakedown Aimed Against U.S.

Date: Friday, 12 November, 2010,

If you watched the show, you know what Glenn Beck actually said.

If you didn't watch (I included links at the end), you might be seeing all kinds of stories of how racist and/or anti-Semitic Glenn Beck is (he isn't!!!!!)

Glenn Beck is totally pro Israel and a strong supporter of the Jews -

two things that can not be said of George Soros ......
Beck unsubstantiated?

I had the video of Glenn Beck's takedown of George Soros open all day on Thursday, but I just didn't have the hour to watch it. It doesn't matter. I know this story well and I know well enough how to answer it.

The American Jewish Left hates Glenn Beck so much that they will defend anyone against him. Even thedespicable George Soros.
Jewish leaders are expressing outrage that Fox News Channel provocateur Glenn Beck has revived an unfounded claim that billionaire businessman and philanthropist George Soros as a child in Nazi-collaborating Hungary helped ship Jews to death camps.

Beck is running a series this week on his radio and TV shows portraying Soros as attempting to control the U.S. economy, and on Wednesday he attacked Soros' childhood during World War II.

"And George Soros used to go around with this anti-Semite and deliver papers to the Jews and confiscate their property and then ship them off," Beck said. "And George Soros was part of it. He would help confiscate the stuff. It was frightening.

"Here's a Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the death camps. And I am certainly not saying that George Soros enjoyed that, even had a choice. I mean, he's 14 years old. He was surviving. So I'm not making a judgment. That's between him and God. As a 14-year-old boy, I don't know what you would do."

...

"This is the height of ignorance or insensitivity, or both," said Abraham Foxman, the director of the Anti-Defamation League, who noted that as a child, he was protected by non-Jews who had not revealed his background to him.

"As a kid, at 6, I spit at Jews -- does that make me part of the Nazi machine?" Foxman said. "There's an arrogance here for Glenn Beck, a non-Jew, to set the standards of what makes a good Jew."

Elan Steinberg, the vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, called Beck's attack "improper."

"When you make a particularly monstrous accusation such as this, you have to have proof," he said. "I have seen no proof."
Yes, but there's a difference between hiding among righteous gentiles and hiding the fact that you're a Jew, on the one hand, and what Soros is accused of doing on the other (in the article cited, Ron Kampeas goes on to justify it by claiming that Soros only did it once).

But why rely on hearsay? Soros himself has spoken about the issue. This is from a transcript of a 60 Minutes interview between Steve Kroft and Soros. It was done in 1998.
KROFT: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson.

Mr. SOROS: Yes. Yes.

KROFT: Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.

Mr. SOROS: Yes. That's right. Yes.

KROFT: I mean, that's–that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?

Mr. SOROS: Not–not at all. Not at all. Maybe as a child you don't–you don't see the connection. But it was–it created no–no problem at all.

KROFT: No feeling of guilt?

Mr. SOROS: No.

KROFT: For example that, 'I'm Jewish and here I am, watching these people go. I could just as easily be there. I should be there.' None of that?

Mr. SOROS: Well, of course I c–I could be on the other side or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I shouldn't be there, because that was–well, actually, in a funny way, it's just like in markets–that if I weren't there–of course, I wasn't doing it, but somebody else would–would–would be taking it away anyhow. And it was the–whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away. So the–I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt.
There's a consensus in the Jewish community to try not to put ourselves in the position of judging someone in whose shoes you have never walked. Our rabbis tell us, "do not judge a man until you have reached his place." We don't know whether Soros took away property, for example, from someone who had already been taken to a death camp, never to return, or whether he removed property from someone's home right in front of them. But we also know that there were Jews who were kapos during the Holocaust, and despite the edict not to judge people, they are severely frowned upon in the Jewish community, both during the Holocaust and thereafter. Clearly, there is a difference between someone who survived the camps by removing gold jewelry from dead bodies and someone who survived by turning in others. Was Soros a kapo? I don't know. But when someone says he feels 'no guilt' because 'someone else would have done it anyway,' that's enough to raise my hackles pretty high.

The Holocaust generations (my parents' and grandparents' generations) resent anyone judging their actions during the Holocaust, and that's why you're hearing the type of reaction you heard from Abe Foxman (I don't know much about the other people Kampeas quotes). But based on that transcript, Foxman is wrong to describe the accusations against Soros as 'unsubstantiated.' Perhaps, Beck should have criticized Soros for his lack of remorse or guilt over what he did, rather than for the actions themselves, but that's already nuanced. It's the lack of remorse or guilt that indicate (to me anyway) that Soros is a vicious man with no feelings of empathy for his own people.

In any event, the attacks on Beck seem (to me anyway) to be motivated by the fact that Beck regularly attacks Liberal icons and not from any fear of him besmirching Holocaust survivors.

In my book, I don't even need to go to the Holocaust period to condemn Soros. This is enough for me.
In a 2003 speech, he accused Jews and Israel of causing anti-Semitism.
It's not often that George Soros, the billionaire financier and philanthropist, makes an appearance before a Jewish audience.

It's even rarer for him to use such an occasion to talk about Israel, Jews and his own role in effecting political change.

So when Soros stepped to the podium Wednesday to address those issues at a conference of the Jewish Funders Network, audience members were listening carefully.

Many were surprised by what they heard.
When asked about anti-Semitism in Europe, Soros, who is Jewish, said European anti-Semitism is the result of the policies of Israel and the United States.
"There is a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe. The policies of the Bush administration and the Sharon administration contribute to that," Soros said. "It's not specifically anti-Semitism, but it does manifest itself in anti-Semitism as well. I'm critical of those policies."

"If we change that direction, then anti-Semitism also will diminish," he said. "I can't see how one could confront it directly."

That is a point made by Israel's most vociferous critics, whom some Jewish activists charge with using anti-Zionism as a guise for anti-Semitism.

ASSOCIATES said Soros' appearance Wednesday was the first they could ever recall in which the billionaire, a Hungarian-born U.S. Jew who escaped the Holocaust by fleeing to London as a child, had spoken in front of a Jewish group or attended a Jewish function.

The one-day meeting on funding in Israel, which took place at the Harvard Club in New York, was limited mostly to representatives of Jewish philanthropic foundations.
After Soros' speech, Michael Steinhardt, the real-estate magnate and Jewish philanthropist who arranged for Soros to address the group, said in an interview that Soros' views do not reflect those of most Jewish millionaires or philanthropists.
He also pointed out that this was Soros' first speech to a Jewish audience.

Steinhardt approached the lectern and interrupted Soros immediately after his remarks on anti-Semitism.

"George Soros does not think Jews should be hated any more than they deserve to be," Steinhardt said by way of clarification, eliciting chuckles from the audience.

Steinhardt then gave the lectern back to Soros, who said he had something to add to his remarks on the issue of anti-Semitism. Soros then paused to ask if there were any journalists in the room.

When he learned that there were, Soros withheld further comment.
Note - the first time Soros ever spoke to a Jewish audience. The Holocaust ended nearly 60 years before that speech. For 60 years he felt obliged to try to hide the fact that he's a Jew?

It's sad to see the leaders of the American Jewish community rushing out to defend someone who repeats anti-Semitic tripe that claims Israel is responsible for anti-Semitism in his first speech ever to the Jewish community. Sad, but unfortunately not surprising.

Anti-Semitism Arrows Fired at Glenn Beck Miss the Mark

Posted By Calvin Freiburger On November 11, 2010 http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/11/11/anti-semitism-arrows-fired-at-glenn-beck-miss-the-mark/print/

You haven’t really made it as a conservative until leftistsstart calling you either a raging bigot or functionally illiterate. Ideally both. It has nothing to do with whether or not you’ve actually done anything bigoted, and everything to do with whether or not they feel you pose a threat to their agenda. But once the slanderous arrows start flying, you know you’re doing it right.

Glenn Beck has been doing it right for years, and the intensity of the Left’s hatred for him can be felt in the vileness of their newest attack. Beck’s latest project has been exposing the radical activism of leftist financierGeorge Soros, but because Soros is of Jewish descent (never mind the fact that he’s irreligious and his agenda isanti-religious), there can be only one explanation: Glenn Beck is an anti-Semite. So says Michelle Goldberg in theDaily Beast:

The program, which aired Tuesday and Wednesday, was a symphony of anti-Semitic dog-whistles. Nothing like it has ever been on American television before.

“There is a crisis collapsing our economy—George Soros,” Beck said on Tuesday’s show. “When the administration and progressives look for a savior to step in and save the day—George Soros… He’s pulled no punches about the end game. It’s one world government, the end of America’s status as the prevailing world power—but why?” Because, Beck suggests, Soros wants to rule us all like a god: “Soros has admitted in the past he doesn’t believe in God, but that’s perhaps because he thinks he is.”

Soros, a billionaire financier and patron of liberal causes, has long been an object of hatred on the right. But Beck went beyond demonizing him; he cast him as the protagonist in an updated Protocols of the Elders of Zion. He described Soros as the most powerful man on earth, the creator of a “shadow government” that manipulates regimes and currencies for its own enrichment. Obama is his “puppet,” Beck says. Soros has even “infiltrated the churches.” He foments social unrest and economic distress so he can bring down governments, all for his own financial gain. “Four times before,” Beck warned. “We’ll be number five.”

Somehow, the author finds it in her generous liberal heart to give Beck’s motives the benefit of the doubt, speculating that he just might be too stupid to know he’s saying anti-Semitic things:

It’s entirely possible that Beck has waded into anti-Semitic waters inadvertently, that he picked up toxic ideas from his right-wing demimonde without realizing their anti-Jewish provenance […] “There’s a difference between first-degree murder and vehicular homicide, which is intentionality,” says J.J. Goldberg, a columnist and former editor in chief of The Forward, America’s leading Jewish newspaper. Goldberg wasn’t convinced that Beck meant to attack Jews. Nevertheless, he described the show as “as close as I’ve heard on mainstream television to fascism.”

Really? The act of criticizing George Soros resembles a “political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocraticgovernment headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition,” or a “tendency toward or actualexercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control”?

And come on—everybody knows that Beck can’t be an anti-Semite, because he’s really a Zionist shill media clown!

Seriously though, the case for Beck’s Jew-hatred is that he said some things about a single ex-Jew that are superficially comparable to what anti-Semites say about Jews as a whole. That’s pretty much it.

The closest she comes to anything damning is that at one point Beck cites Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who also said some genuinely anti-Semitic things. Okay, that’s embarrassing, and Beck deserves some criticism for carelessness, but he’s been careless before; it’s a Beck thing, not a bigot thing. And that’s still a long way from demonstrating that either Beck or his Soros coverage are bigoted.

The fact is, George Soros is a radical, and that he doeshold tremendous influence, which he wields in support of left-wing causes. To say this isn’t anti-Semitic a.) because it’s true, and b.) nowhere does Beck claim that Soros wields this power in the service of the forces at the heart of anti-Semitic mythology, Israel and Zionism. In fact, Sorosworks against them. Apparently Goldberg and her colleagues pushing this smear hope it never occurs to their readers to ask why one of Israel’s foes would be in on the Jewish plot for world domination.

Goldberg briefly acknowledges that Beck has condemned Soros’s anti-Israel stance, but does so by characterizing Beck as merely “inoculat[ing] himself against charges of anti-Semitism.” But anybody familiar with Glenn Beck should understand that it’s far more than that. Here he is on June 3:

Think of how amazing it is, that this little postage stamp of a country is able to remain the one beacon of freedom in a region filled with dictators, thugs and theocracies […] So why wouldn’t we stand up for a country more like us? And I’m not playing the world’s game that we’re all the same, everyone deserves a trophy and America is like everyone else. It’s not the truth.

Who are our friends in the Middle East?

Saudi Arabia? There’s no freedom of religion; the public practice of non-Muslim religions is prohibited. It’s even against the law to be something other than heterosexual, punishable by lashings, prison and, in some cases, execution. A few years ago, a Saudi girl was sentenced to six months in prison and 90 lashes after being gang-raped just for being alone with a non-relative man at the time of her kidnap.

How about Egypt? The police there don’t deal with domestic violence. Women are not treated as individuals, but rather as wives, mothers and daughters. You think we’re bad with torture and Guantanamo? Using torture is practically routine for Egyptian police officers […]

Which country doesn’t do these things? Which country allows women to drive and counts them as individuals? Which country actually cares about domestic violence and doesn’t give slack to “honor killings”?

Israel.

So you tell me: Who should we be standing with?

Indeed. And just as America should unwaveringly stand with liberty against barbarism, so too should we stand with liberty’s allies against those whose hypocritical venom recklessly serves to make language meaningless, gradually robbing society of its ability to recognize true bigotry when we see it.

_____

Hailing from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, Calvin Freiburger is a political science major at Hillsdale College. He also writes for the Hillsdale Forum and his personal website,Calvin Freiburger Online.

If you want to watch the show.....
George Soros U.N. Panel Organizes $100 Billion Climate Change Shakedown Aimed Against U.S.

George Soros, the radical, far-left billionaire, with a long history of antipathy toward American interests, now sits on a United Nations (UN) panel charged with organizing a $100 billion wealth transfer from the developed world to the underdeveloped world in the name of environmentalism. News of his involvement here is buried away in a New York Times report but it should be the lead sentence.

Developing countries must help combat the many challenges associated with global warming, according to a UN panel. That is assuming all concerned parties accept the premise of catastrophic human induced climate change and the New York Times certainly does. The price tag has been fixed at $100 billion and the villain here is of course the United States, which refuses to comply with anti-emissions regulations.

It’s a familiar script that is wearing thin. The alarmist rationale has been dealt serious setbacks in recent months thanks to updated research and the growing “climategate” scandal. But international bureaucrats and transnationalists opposed to America’s free market system remain undeterred in their course of action.

Last December, “international leaders” agreed that it would be necessary for the developed world to fork over $100 billion by 2020 during the Copenhagen climate summit. But the methodology and details of this transfer remain a point of consternation and contention. The U.N. panel has just released a report that offers up some suggestions.

“The attitude of the developing nations was that the industrialized world caused the pollution, so the richer states should cut a check for reparations and another check to help pursue clean development,” the Times report notes. “The richer nations balked at the prospect. Some of those differences remain in the report: the developing world thinks the financing should come in the form of public aid, whereas the developed world wants to rely heavily on private investment, for example. The differences were indeed on display during the release of the report.”

The nexus between environmentalism and anti-Americanism is not difficult to unravel. Van Jones, an avowed communist, who previously served as a czar for the Obama Administration, was forced to step down when far left history came to light. Buried deep in the NYT piece is a revealing nugget that should have been in the lead.

“The 21-member United Nations panel included Lawrence H. Summers, the White House’s departing national economics adviser; the billionaire financier George Soros; Ernesto Cordero Arroyo, the finance minister of Mexico; and Christine Lagarde, the French economic minister,” the Times reports.

That’s right, the same George Soros who has railed against American independence and sovereignty is now organization a massive wealth transfer to third world countries in the name of environmentalism.

The headline should read: George Soros Led United Nations Panel Organizes $100 Billion Anti-U.S. Shakedown Effort. But that it does not should surprise none.

Kevin Mooney is a contributing editor to Americans for Limited Government (ALG) News Bureau and the Executive Editor of TimesCheck.com.

Posted by Britannia Radio at 19:56