CIA & global astroturf? Soros funds scores of 'Women's March' partners

Tony Gosling tony at cultureshop.org.uk
Mon Jan 23 13:37:06 GMT 2017 

Emacs!



<http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2017/01/20/billionaire-george-soros-has-ties-to-more-than-50-partners-of-the-womens-march-on-washington/>Billionaire 
George Soros has ties to more than 50 ‘partners’ 
of the Women’s March on Washington

What is the link between one of Hillary Clinton’s 
largest donors and the Women’s March? Turns out, it’s quite significant
ASRA Q. NOMANI
http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2017/01/20/billionaire-george-soros-has-ties-to-more-than-50-partners-of-the-womens-march-on-washington/

In the pre-dawn darkness of today’s presidential 
inauguration day, I faced a choice, as a lifelong 
liberal feminist 
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2016/11/10/im-a-muslim-a-woman-and-an-immigrant-i-voted-for-trump/?utm_term=.c3f7b9693680>who 
voted for Donald Trump for president: lace up my 
pink Nike sneakers to step forward and take the 
DC Metro into the nation’s capital for the 
inauguration of America’s new president, or wait 
and go tomorrow to the after-party, dubbed the “Women’s March on Washington”?

  <https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/14/womens-march-on-washington-protest-size-donald-trump>The 
Guardian has touted the “Women’s March on 
Washington” as a “spontaneous” action for women’s 
rights. Another liberal media outlet, 
<http://www.vox.com/identities/2016/11/21/13651804/women-march-washington-trump-inauguration>Vox, 
talks about the “huge, spontaneous groundswell” 
behind the march. On its website, organizers of 
the march are promoting their work as 
<https://www.womensmarch.com/event-details/>“a 
grassroots effort” with “independent” organizers. 
Even my local yoga studio, Beloved Yoga, is 
renting a bus and offering seats for $35. The 
march’s manifesto says magnificently, “The Rise 
of the Woman = The Rise of the Nation.”

It’s an idea that I, a liberal feminist, would 
embrace. But I know ­ and most of America knows ­ 
that the organizers of the march haven’t put into 
their manifesto: the march really isn’t a 
“women’s march.” It’s a march for women who are anti-Trump.

As someone who voted for Trump, I don’t feel 
welcome, nor do many other women who reject the 
liberal identity-politics that is the core 
underpinnings of the march, so far, making 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/09/us/womens-march-on-washington-opens-contentious-dialogues-about-race.html?_r=0>white 
women feel unwelcome, 
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/im-an-anti-abortion-feminist-ill-walk-at-the-womens-march-whether-organizers-like-it-or-not/2017/01/18/453275a6-dd97-11e6-ad42-f3375f271c9c_story.html?utm_term=.66c911fb8551>nixing 
women who oppose abortion and 
<http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2017/01/19/agenda-for-womens-march-on-washington-has-been-hijacked-by-organizers-bent-on-highlighting-womens-differences/>hijacking 
the agenda.

To understand the march better, I stayed up 
through the nights this week, studying the 
<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zYoQoffWRAHrECq2PDshlPvNpNDSLtdmNjtW-gUuhqw/edit?usp=sharing>funding, 
politics and talking points of the some 403 
groups that are “partners” of the march. Is this 
a non-partisan “Women’s March”?

Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the 
American Humanist Association, a march “partner,” 
told me his organization was “nonpartisan” but 
has “many concerns about the incoming Trump 
administration that include what we see as a 
misogynist approach to women.” Nick Fish, 
national program director of the American 
Atheists, another march partner, told me, “This 
is not a ‘partisan’ event.” Dennis Wiley, pastor 
of Covenant Baptist United Church of Christ, 
another march “partner,” returned my call and 
said, “This is not a partisan march.”

Really? UniteWomen.org, another partner, features 
videos with the hashtags #ImWithHer, #DemsInPhily 
and #ThanksObama. Following the money, I pored 
through documents of billionaire George Soros and 
his Open Society philanthropy, because I 
wondered: What is the link between one of Hillary 
Clinton’s largest donors and the “Women’s March”?

I found out: plenty.

By my draft research, which 
<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zYoQoffWRAHrECq2PDshlPvNpNDSLtdmNjtW-gUuhqw/edit?usp=sharing>I’m 
opening up for crowd-sourcing on GoogleDocs, 
Soros has funded, or has close relationships 
with, at least 56 of the march’s “partners,” 
including “key partners” Planned Parenthood, 
which opposes Trump’s anti-abortion policy, and 
the National Resource Defense Council, which 
opposes Trump’s environmental policies. The other 
Soros ties with “Women’s March” organizations 
include the partisan MoveOn.org (which was 
fiercely pro-Clinton), the National Action 
Network (which has a former executive director 
lauded by Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett as 
“a leader of tomorrow” as a march co-chair and 
another official as “the head of logistics”). 
Other Soros grantees who are “partners” in the 
march are the American Civil Liberties Union, 
Center for Constitutional Rights, Amnesty 
International and Human Rights Watch. March 
organizers and the organizations identified here 
haven’t yet returned queries for comment.

On the issues I care about as a Muslim, the 
“Women’s March,” unfortunately, has taken a stand 
on the side of partisan politics that has 
obfuscated the issues of Islamic extremism over 
the eight years of the Obama administration. 
“Women’s March” partners include the Council on 
American-Islamic Relations, which has not only 
deflected on issues of Islamic extremism 
post-9/11, but opposes Muslim reforms that would 
allow women to be prayer leaders and pray in the 
front of mosques, without wearing headscarves as 
symbols of chastity. Partners also include the 
Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which wrongly 
designated Maajid Nawaz, a Muslim reformer, an 
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/29/i-m-a-muslim-reformer-why-am-i-being-smeared-as-an-anti-muslim-extremist.html>“anti-Muslim 
extremist” in a biased report released before the 
election. The SPLC confirmed to me that Soros 
funded its “anti-Muslim extremists” report 
targeting Nawaz. (Ironically, CAIR also opposes 
abortions, but its leader still has a 
<http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2017/01/19/the_women_s_march_has_announced_its_official_route_and_list_of_speakers.html>key 
speaking role.)

Another Soros grantee and march “partner” is the 
Arab-American Association of New York, whose 
executive director, Linda Sarsour, is a march 
co-chair. When I co-wrote a piece, arguing that 
Muslim women don’t have to wear headscarves as a 
symbol of “modesty,” she attacked the coauthor and me as “fringe.”

Earlier, at least 33 of the 100 “women of color,” 
who initially protested the Trump election in 
street protests, worked at organizations that 
receive Soros funding, in part for “black-brown” 
activism. Of course, Soros is an “ideological 
philanthropist,” whose interests align with many 
of these groups, but he is also a significant 
political donor. In Davos, he told reporters that 
Trump is a 
<http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/19/george-soros-calls-donald-trump-a-would-be-dictator-who-is-going-to-fail.html>“would-be 
dictator.”

A spokeswoman for Soros’s Open Society 
Foundations, said in a statement, “There have 
been many false reports about George Soros and 
the Open Society Foundations funding protests in 
the wake of the U.S. presidential elections. 
There is no truth to these reports.” She added, 
“We support a wide range of organizations ­ 
including those that support women and minorities 
who have historically been denied equal rights. 
Many of whom are concerned about what policy 
changes may lie ahead. We are proud of their 
work. We of course support the right of all 
Americans to peaceably assemble and petition 
their government­a vital, and constitutionally 
safeguarded, pillar of a functioning democracy.”

Much like post-election protests, which included 
a sign, “Kill Trump,” were not  “spontaneous,” as 
reported by some media outlets, the “Women’s 
March” is an extension of strategic identity 
politics that has so fractured America today, 
from campuses to communities. On the left or the 
right, it’s wrong. But, with the inauguration, we 
know the politics. With the march, “women” have 
been appropriated for a clearly anti-Trump day. 
When I shared my thoughts with her, my yoga 
studio owner said it was “sad” the march’s 
organizers masked their politics. “I want love for everyone,” she said.

The left’s fierce identity politics and its 
failure on Islamic extremism lost my vote this 
past election, and so, as the dawn’s first light 
breaks through the darkness of the morning as I 
write, I make my decision: I’ll lace up my pink 
Nikes and head to the inauguration, skipping the 
“Women’s March” that doesn’t have a place for women like me.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been updated to 
include a statement from the Open Society Foundations.

Asra Q. Nomani is a former Wall Street Journal 
reporter. She can be reached at 
<mailto:asra at asranomani.com>asra at asranomani.com 
or on <https://twitter.com/AsraNomani>Twitter.


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So much emphasis is placed on select Jewish participation in Bormann 
companies that when Adolf Eichmann was seized and taken to Tel Aviv 
to stand trial, it produced a shock wave in the Jewish and German 
communities of Buenos Aires. Jewish leaders informed the Israeli 
authorities in no uncertain terms that this must never happen again 
because a repetition would permanently rupture relations with the 
Germans of Latin America, as well as with the Bormann organization, 
and cut off the flow of Jewish money to Israel. It never happened 
again, and the pursuit of Bormann quieted down at the request of 
these Jewish leaders. He is residing in an Argentinian safe haven, 
protected by the most efficient German infrastructure in history as 
well as by all those whose prosperity depends on his well-being.
<http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fspitfirelist.com%2Fbooks%2Fmartin-bormann-nazi-in-exile%2F&h=eAQErj17O>http://spitfirelist.com/books/martin-bormann-nazi-in-exile/   
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