Ajit Randeniya

The quietness of Colombo following the end of the war has been disturbed by the noise of a bombshell from the Colombo Stock Exchange. One Mr Channa de Silva, director general of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Sri Lanka has announced through the Bloomberg’s stock market newsletter that he is “waiting to see international investors like George Soros and Mark Mobius invest in the country .

In its naivety, Mr de Silva’s invitation to Soros matches that of the President of Indonesia from 1999 to 2001, Abdurrahman Wahid’s invitation to Henry Kissinger to become an unpaid adviser to the Indonesian government; more about Kissinger’s response later.

But first, there seems to be nothing inherently alarming about Mr de Silva’s keenness to attract investors, as a means of achieving his wish to ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”double’ capitalisation of the exchange to $14 billion in a year. His plans to rely on ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”derivatives trading’ as a key strategy to this end is worrying’; presumably Mr de Silva is familiar with how the ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”derivatives’ (really meaning sealed envelopes with debtor notes from people who have no capacity to pay) caused the current Global Financial Crisis.

What is troubling about the invitation to Soros however, is Mr de Silva’s apparent lack of appreciation of George Soros’ real ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”colours’ and his impact in the past on various stock markets and banks where he had been a major player: the invitation seems to demonstrate ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”a deficit’ in terms of the high level of sophistication in decision making required amongst public officials who are going to be in charge of the future economic development of the country.

Here is some information about Soros that might hopefully, assist Mr de Silva rethink his invitation.

George Soros is a Hungarian Jew, who migrated to the UK in 1947 and graduated from the London School of Economics in 1952. In 1956 he moved to the US (where else, but New York) where he started the so-called “hedge funds” (basically licenses to cabals with spare billions to make more money by any means they wish to). Soros established the famous Quantum Fund in 1973.

Soros has been variously described as a “perceptual manipulator” who invent facts, run with them and cause millions to believe in them. True to form, commenting about the current global recession to the London Daily Mail, Soros recently said, “I am having a very good crisis.”

Soros has a declared interest and proven form in bringing nations to their knees using tactics that are not very subtle; he uses money and NGO type groups created with his money, either to control national currencies and stock markets by purchasing large volumes (with the objective of dumping them to cause a ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”crash’), or to destabilise them ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”from within’ through NGO activism, respectively.

In 1992, Soros earned the epithet “the man who broke the Bank of England” by demanding the Bank to raise its interest rates or to float the currency (so that he could make more money). The Bank did neither. He retaliated by selling “short” more than $10 billion worth of pound sterling, forcing the Bank of England to depreciate the pound: Soros amassed an estimated US$ 1.1 billion in the process.

His role in the 1997 Asian crisis was similar. According to the former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamed, in the three years leading to the crash, Soros made short-term speculative investment in East Asian stock markets and real estate, then divested them with ‘indecent haste’ citing signs of currency devaluation. Thailand and Indonesia went nearly bankrupt and Dr Mahathir saved Malaysia through strict controls on divestment and currency transfers.

The even more dangerous aspect of the glaringly unethical and illegal money making of Soros (he has been convicted in France for insider trading) is the intended use of the money he makes: he has openly said that his intent was to earn enough money on Wall Street “to support himself as an author and philosopher”, descriptions which, in the light of his activities really mean “undermining the world”.

In keeping with this objective, he founded the “Open Society Institute” and became a board member of the New York based “Foreign Policy Council” (the real place where American foreign policy is made), and funded the shady “Center for American Progress”.

It is a well known fact that Soros, together with the CIA front the Ford Foundation are the chief sources of finance for the much-hated “Human Rights Watch” and the “International Crisis Group”. Soros uses these and other “pro-transparency NGOs” as his main tools of destabilisation, under the pretext that they are promoting Human Rights and Democracy.

Soros’ main focus so far has been in destabilising the former Soviet Union territories; from 1979, he has distributed $3m a year to dissidents including Poland’s Solidarity movement, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia and Andrei Sakharov in the Soviet Union; in 1984, he founded his “Open Society Institute” in Hungary and pumped millions of dollars into opposition movements and media cronies.

More recently he started funding the ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”colour revolutions’ including Georgia’s Rose Revolution and Ukraine’s Pink Revolution. Following these minority sit-in ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”revolutions’, the Soros Foundation and the associated NGOs were integrated into the groups who grabbed power. Georgia’s so-called democratic government and the Ukranian government have become immensely unpopular since the war against Russia of the former, and the aggressive dispute over payments for Russian gas by the latter. The Georgian government is currently one of the most oppressive regimes in the region.

The region is hitting back: In 1997, Soros had to close his foundation in Belarus after it was fined $3 million by the government for “tax and currency violations”. As a reaction to Soros conspiracy, Russia passed special laws prohibiting NGOs from receiving money from foreigners. Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan banned Soros-backed initiatives in their countries.

Outside of Russia and the Balkans, he takes a special interest in China, Burma and the small central Asian countries that “surround” China. The activities of his NGOs are most noticeable in this strategically important region: his eye is on destabilise China in the long run. In 1997, during the Asian financial crisis, then Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed accused Soros of using the wealth under his control to punish ASEAN for welcoming Myanmar as a member.

The Open Society animal is also active in Africa, with special emphasis on Zimbabwe. It was behind the founding of the “Movement for Democratic Change” under the leadership of that Western agent Morgan Tsvangirai that unsuccessfully attempted regime change in Zimbabwe.

What this brief history of George Soros shows is that if we invite people like him, their injection of money is likely to temporarily boost the stock market and allow the usual ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”benefits’ capitalism can offer to us temporarily. But we will be surrendering the country’s political and financial independence through such dealings. When they decide to take their money back, our stock market will crash and all the other benefits will dry-out much faster than the speed at which they came. In fact, the current global crisis is a good example of this same phenomenon, affecting the ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”rich’ countries.

Sri Lanka will be much better-off implementing a locally developed economic model aimed at housing, feeding and educating, and providing decent health services to our people, rather than ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”performing’ up to the IMF and World Bank indices. If people like Soros are ‘invited’, Sri Lanka will become their playground within a relatively short period.The independence won over the lives of thousands of poor rural youth is too precious to be subjected to the mercies ofƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚  George Soros.

Going back to the invitation of Abdurrahman Wahid, Kissinger probably couldn’t believe his luck, and he publicly accepted the invitation feigning reluctance. He said: “I accept the invitation out of friendship for the Indonesian people and the importance I attach to the Indonesian nation”.

Little did Wahid know that, Kissinger was also a board member of Freeport McMoran Copper and Gold Inc, a US company that owned one of the world’s largest open-cut mines in West Papua province in eastern Indonesia (WP).

Freeport was in trouble with the Indonesian government at the time, mainly due to its environmental vandalism towards the rivers in WP; they were dumping 220,000 tons of tailings/day directly in to the Aghawagon River, poisoning fish and shellfish, and the people who eat them. Freeport was seeking to continue the practice because the local hunter gatherers have “failed to provide scientific studies” to back up their claims! The government was threatening to cancel its copper and gold mining contract.

Kissinger’s first piece of ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”advice’ to Wahid and the Indonesian government was to honor Indonesia’s contract with Freeport. Kissinger told reporters at the State Palace after a meeting with President Wahid “The contract should be respected because it is in the interests of Indonesia since you want investment from all over the world”. Kissinger’s advice prompted Amien Rais, chairman of the People’s Consultative Assembly (the parliament) to declare that “Kissinger fully represented Freeport and not the US government, because he holds no government posts at all”.

Fortunately the comic character Wahid was out of power not long after, and saner leaders took over. Now there is a lesson in that for Sri Lanka!