“George Soros, the multimillionaire Jew” (video link restored)

Radio and TV Marti, the U.S. government’s Miami-based broadcast operation to Cuba, joined the anti-George Soros gang with a series of broadcasts last June.

A 15-minute program is here (original video was pulled from the government site; this is an inferior recording.) It was edited into two segments and presented on the TV Marti newscast, where the anchor began his lead-in to Part I with the phrase, “George Soros, the multimillionaire Jew of Hungarian origin…”

The program repeatedly mentions the U.S. organization Judicial Watch, but it doesn’t clearly cite any of its work. If you search, you see that Judicial Watch is concerned about U.S. aid agencies funding foreign organizations that are also supported by Soros, in Colombia and elsewhere.

Throughout, the program’s cheesy sound effects are like those used in horror movies when the villain begins reaching for the knife.

Some notes on the 15-minute program:

0:20 –Narrator Isabel Cuervo makes her first reference to Judicial Watch: “George Soros has his eye on Latin America. But Judicial Watch, a legal research group in the United States, has its eye on Soros, and on what it views as his lethal influence in undermining democracies.”

0:40 – The narrator says that Soros uses his business profits “to finance anti-system [political] groups that fill his pockets.”

1:10 – The narrator makes a reference to Soros’ infamous, lucrative 1992 bet against the British pound, and continues: “It is said that Soros made billions of dollars manipulating the fall of Asian currencies in 1997. And he was the architect of the financial collapse of 2008.”

1:40 – The narrator calls Soros a “generous philanthropist” active in more than 100 countries, then cuts to Lia Fowler, described on the screen as a “former FBI agent,” who says: “And the things that he finances around the world do nothing more than to destabilize countries, cultures…”

2:10 – The narrator calls Soros a “non-practicing Jew of flexible morals.”

3:30 – The narrator discusses the work of Soros’ Open Society Foundation, noting that “some” – she doesn’t say who – describe it as “a façade for investing and looting countries.”

3:50 – The narrator describes some of the principles behind Soros’ work (human rights, free press, etc.) and notes his “key role” in movements that ended communist rule in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and other eastern European countries. However, his work on several continents today, she says, “raises intense contradictions over what are his true objectives,” and she goes on to note that his activities in Latin America are being investigated by Judicial Watch.

5:20 – Here, a clip from Lia Fowler saying it is “undeniable” that the impact of Soros’ work in Colombia has amounted to “legitimizing the narcoterrorists and destroying Colombian institutions.”

5:30 – Soros’ support for drug decriminalization is noted in a clip that shows comments by Michele Steinberg of Executive Intelligence Review, a magazine founded and edited by Lyndon LaRouche.

6:05 – The narrator cites Lia Fowler’s view that the peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC insurgency “hides an ulterior objective that Soros is also behind.” Then Fowler explains on camera: “What they want is that Colombia, like Venezuela, like El Salvador, like Ecuador, be another satellite of Cuba…This has been Cuba’s objective, this is Soros’ objective.”

8:30 – The narrator notes that Cuba’s government views Soros as a “reactionary” supporter of movements that seek to “destabilize” the “progressive” government in Venezuela.

8:50 – The narrator says that Soros is viewed – again, she doesn’t say by whom – as

“maintaining clandestine operations that led to the dismantling of the Soviet Union.” She continues: “According to Wayne Madsen, ex-agent of the NSA, declassified CIA documents show that Soros financed Mikhail Gorbachev to promote perestroika and glasnost, with the sole objective of accelerating the disappearance of the Soviet Union.” No information from these documents is presented. [Elsewhere, Mr. Madsen can be found calling Soros a “frontman” for the de Rothschild family and saying they are the “true puppet masters of the world.”] The narrator goes on to note Soros’ later support for the “color revolutions” in eastern Europe.

13:00 – Lia Fowler returns to allege that there was fraud in the Venezuelan election of 2004, and Soros was behind it because he knows one of the directors of the company that makes the electronic voting machines used there. She goes on to say that Colombia’s election would likely be fraudulent too because Soros’ foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development were spending millions on the electoral observation mission with the goal of “imposing” electronic voting. No evidence, no contrary view is presented. [The election was held last summer and was won by the right-of-center presidential candidate.]

13:50 – Fowler concludes the program by saying that Cuba wants Colombia to have a communist government with which it can do business. After her comments, there is ominous music and a still photo of Soros over background footage of street violence.

What to make of this?

First, the program presents incendiary allegations about an American citizen without evidence to support them, and without any expression of editorial judgment as to whether Radio/TV Marti finds them credible. Nor does it provide a rebuttal by Soros or his associates, or any indication that they were offered such an opportunity. That’s a 15-minute smear, not journalism.

Second, there is no effort to address a glaring incoherence at the heart of the program. Like Soros or not for his business and political activities, he is an anti-communist. In part, the program acknowledges this because it’s unavoidable. But if we are to believe the program, or the series of people whose statements are presented for us to take at face value, then we are to believe that Soros promoted democratic movements in the face of pro-Soviet and, later, pro-Russian opposition in Europe; he supports Venezuela’s opposition today; and he is working in cahoots with Havana to foment communist takeovers throughout the Andes. And on top of all that: pushing 90 with billions in the bank, he’s doing all this because it somehow makes him money. Ridiculous.

Finally, the program puts none of its accusations in the voice of Radio/TV Marti. That’s too cute by half. The words and images make clear what Radio/TV Marti wants its Cuban and Latin American audience to think about Soros: that he is a Jew who caused the 2008 financial crisis; that he talks about democracy and open societies but his real motive is to make money and to “loot” countries or to pursue other concealed objectives; that he is a man of “lethal influence” who spreads chaos and instability wherever he works.

Inside the U.S. government, Radio/TV Marti is termed a “surrogate” broadcaster; its purpose is to demonstrate how a free press would cover the news in Cuba if it were permitted to exist. Heaven help Cuba if its media ever emulate the crew in Miami that produced this slime, or the editors who gave it the green light.

Another question is how the idea came about in the first place, because while the reporters and executives in the Miami newsroom of Radio/TV Marti executed it, it’s inconceivable that they cooked it up. The idea surely came from elsewhere, and it had to be carefully taught.

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