Syndicate: SOROS AND CONTROL OF ACTIVISM

["Mihajlo Acimovic" <prijatelj@angelfire.com>]

Getting Soros and/or USAID funding for socially involved projects is nothing new in Yugoslavia. The government has done everything to prevent local funding. If you don't take money from people like Soros, your project doesn't get funding. The Soros try to abuse it in any way they can. The sad fact is that they do have media control. I don't mean Soros alone, but, usually in combination with USAID, Medianhilfe and others. Over half the ANEM is/was financially dependent on them. Probably the entire ANEM. Also the Antiwar Campaign in Serbia, 1998., was funded from Soros, USAID and Foundation For Peace and Non-violent Conflict Resolution, which is owned by Serb buisinessman from the U$A (Boris Vukobrat, I think). 
I was at a camp called Ecotopia this summer and Soros gave 20% of the money. 
I was/am a member of the XXL Creative Youth Group. It lived off Soros money. I'm not saying that the control always comes with the money. That is one big difference between the Soros people and Milosevic's people. Even though these people go to the same parties together and are in very good relations, to get money from Milosevic's people, you must either have a relative in the right place or have sex with somebody (they have both homos and heteros). With the Soros, you can actually get money for a project with a good content, as long as you know what you are not supposed to criticise when the Soros people are watching. A big difference to a lot of people.
The Soros people aren't humanists. 
I think two examples can illustrate this well.
One: The ATTACK group in Zagreb was one of the major Soros-funded projects in Croatia in '98. They are really nice people. When they went to present the same kind of project in '99, so they could get the money, the Soros people told them they couldn't get it for that, but they could if they completely changed their entire program to concentrate on the elections in Croatia. Normally, there is no other way of getting funding accept Soros. What they really said is "You either do what we tell you, or you do not exist." 
The ATTACK people had a conseling and decided they would not go along with this. They found a small foundation from Sweden to cover a part of their expenses. They went to the Soros office again, with the same project and got the money. The Soros checks what they do, but has no control over them.
It was similar with Ecotopia.
The second example is "The Questionaire". The Soros foundation has a network of "Open Clubs", which is intended for young people to learn how to become slimy hypocrytes and all under the disguise of democracy, human rights and caring for people. In other words, training for future Soros employees. The questionaire was one of the tests. It contained a very high number of private questions, including enough information to make a full social and economic analysis of your family and a psychological analysis of your relationship towards The Club. There are probably 200 000 kids who have participated in the Open Clubs.
They tried to confuse, persuade, bore, intimidate and force EVERYONE to fill in this questionaire. 12-year-old kids, who were told they were in a safe place, with full respect for everyone's privacy and personality were told they MUST fill it in. It was mandatory. Of course, this was only after normal persuasions didn't work. I heard there was a scandal about this in Hungaria, when some parents rebelled against it. That was not long before the C3 in Budapest finally got free of Soros funding and almost immediately removed their director, who was also a Soros employee. Working on Soros money is really hard, if you want to do something good, but it is possible. Unlike living off government money in Serbia and doing something good. 

Mihajlo Acimovic
 


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