Posted on 11/16/2003 10:53:51 PM PST by RussianConservative
About 20 masked men carrying clubs swooped down on the disputed headquarters of George Soros' Open Society Institute on Friday night in an attack that injured 10, including the building's owner.
The raid was a failed attempt to retake the building and organized by the Open Society Institute's lawyers in New York, a source close to the institute said Sunday.
Institute employees were kicked out of their headquarters Nov. 6 when a group of about 50 gunmen acting on orders from building owner Kantemir Karamzin seized the building in a rent dispute.
A security camera recording aired on NTV television Saturday showed a group of men in black scaling the fence around the building on 8 Ozerkovskaya Naberezhnaya the night before and running toward the security office.
The Soros source said lawyers at Open Society's main headquarters in New York had orchestrated the attack behind the backs of both Soros and the Open Society Institute Russia in an effort to force Karamzin to cede the building "the hard way."
"Open Society's employees were asked to come to the offices on Friday night. We were told that court marshals would show up and force Karamzin to vacate the building and that we could make a list of missing personal belongings on the spot," the source said.
"We waited until half past 10 like complete fools and no one came. And then, when the attack started, we were called by lawyers and told to get out of there."
Yekaterina Geniyeva, the president of Open Society Institute Russia, said Sunday that she had spoken with Soros the day before and his feelings about the latest raid were "extremely negative."
"I do not know who sanctioned this attack," she said by telephone. "It came as a complete shock to me. The only thing I can tell you is that it wasn't us and it wasn't George Soros."
Open Society Institute Russia's lawyer, Pavel Kuzmin, said the chances that the rent dispute could be resolved "in a civilized manner" have now been lost. "It looks like mafia infighting now. This is no different from what Karamzin's people did to us," he said.
"It is impossible to say what will happen next. Karamzin has already hinted that he will retaliate."
Karamzin told NTV that he was sure that the Soros foundation was behind Friday night's attack.
Karamzin said he and five of his employees suffered minor injuries, while four others were briefly hospitalized with injuries including a broken nose and a concussion.
The long-running dispute stems from a 1999 agreement under which Open Society gets to rent the building for $10,500 per month for 10 years. Open Society says it has spent $2.5 million renovating the building.
Karamzin says the building is worth $100,000 per month and Open Society owes several million dollars in back rent and unpaid utility bills.
A Moscow court upheld the 1999 agreement earlier this year.
Billionaire philanthropist George Soros has called for an end to the Bush administration ahead of next year's presidential elections.
Mr Soros - whose Foundations Network has given $1bn around the world to various causes to help tackle poverty and disease - told BBC Radio 4's United Nations Or Not? programme that the US would only stop pursuing "extremist" policies if there was a change at the White House. "It is only possible if you have a regime change in the United States - in other words if President Bush is voted out of power.
"I am very hopeful that people will wake up and realise that they have been led down the garden path, that actually 11 September has been hijacked by a bunch of extremists to put into effect policies that they were advocating before such as the invasion of Iraq."
Imposing power
Mr Soros added that there was a "false ideology" behind the policies of the Bush administration.
"There is a group of - I would call them extremists - who have the following belief: that international relations are relations of power, not of law, that international law will always follow what power has achieved," he said. "And therefore [they believe] the United States being the most powerful nation on earth should impose its power, impose its will and its interests on the world and it should do it looking after itself.
"I think this is a very dangerous ideology. It is very dangerous because America is in fact very powerful."
He added that he felt US actions in the build-up to the war on Iraq was evidence of an extremist element in the Bush administration.
....
I would not be surprised at anything that Soros has done to harm America and would do to harm America.
Putie has been a different guy since Soros left Russia. Putie's cryptic comments this past week at Camp David rang bells in my head about Soros and the Russian Mafia. GW had a very serious look on his face when Putie was making those cryptic comments. Like GW knew what he meant, and both of them let Putie start the cryptic ball rolling.
117 posted on 09/30/2003 11:16 PM PDT by Grampa Dave
$15.5 million, actually.
I got a new $20 bill in my pocket that says they get it in Euros...
$oro$ is in love with himself, firstly, but fancies himself the water-carrier for the Open Society conceptualized by philosopher Karl Popper. He has dedicated his life and fortune to foundations that will, in his view, foster the Open Society worldwide.
There are dozens of conspiracy theories out there suggesting there are money men who are pulling strings in the world. Those are mere speculations; $oro$ freely and openly admits aspiring to be one of those guys.
Soros was recently convicted of insider trading in France. So the money he's forking over to the Democrats is more than likely ill-gotten foreign gains. (Which is kinda illegal.)
As it goes, France is part of the European Union; an organization that issues its own currency in "Euros."
As for feeling dense...I promise not to breath a word to dense's spouse about it. ; )
Beats Hillary's cattle futures.
The man's a Democrat. Asking him to avoid breaking the law is like asking a bee to not collect nectar.
Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Altavista works better for phrases longer than three words in quotation marks, and Altavistsa or *Alltheweb* often delivers better results on searches for photos, audio files, or video clips.
There's nothing terribly wrong with Google [go Google that* has become a recognizable phrase meaning to look it up or research it more fully] but it helps to have a backup plan, just in case.
-archy-/-
In my experience those ar far worse than liberal Democrats.
Yet he supports Wesley Clark- which you would think is odd for a guy who doesn't care for aggressive cowboys and compares them to Nazis.
Soros' is a free trader and that you would think is great; but his free trade interest seems to be focused on the free flow of drugs at market prices, IMHO.
Which explains his preference for in Clinton, and deep interest in specific parts of the world.
Soros appears to have funneled lots of cash into the Balkans, with US government approval; but I suspect a lot of the "grassroots" orgnizations he was propping up were - whether he knew it or not- fronts for Islamic terrorists backed by al Qaeda, or certainly organizations infiltrated by them. I would not be surprised if they were fronts for drug traffic from opium rich Afghanistan, as well.
If anything, to understand Soros, who is all over the map idealogically, I believe you would have to understand the lllegal drug trade. It appears to be the common thread which binds all of his thinking. And it explains his dislike of the currentsituation in that the War on Terror has been very detrimental to the illegal drug trade.
I never got the impression that Soros is about democracy! Only mammon rules with Soros and he buys whats he wants. No lawyer (who wants to continue in Soros' employee) would act without his authorization! Soros is a philanthropist like the Ford Foundation is a philanthropist!
Soros is a "change agent" like Hillary Clinton!
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