George Soros hits back at Viktor Medvedchuk

[a560]

George Soros hits back at Viktor Medvedchuk

US financier and philanthropist George Soros has been disappointed with Ukraine's TV coverage of his visit and said that some TV channels were waging a smear campaign against him.

The allegation was voiced by the philanthropist himself on 30 March. He said some of the channels, including One Plus One, were spreading lies about him. He also accused the head of the Ukrainian presidential administration, Viktor Medvedchuk, of orchestrating the alleged media campaign against him, and said Medvedchuk was behind the difficulties of obtaining a public venue to be used suring his visit.

A number of Ukraine's TV channels carried statements by Communist MP Leonid Hrach, who said that Soros had “caused the explosion in Yugoslavia and in the Balkans, and sparked the conflict between the Serbs and the Muslims”. Hrach was speaking shortly after violent clashes between groups of the Muslim Crimean Tatars and local Slavs in Crimea - one of Soros’s destinations during his Ukrainian visit.

ICTV offered sympathetic coverage on the incident where Soros was pelted with mayonnaise in Kyiv, and showed Soros himself commenting on the attack. A political group called Bratsvo and led by the presenter of a talk show on One Plus One has assumed responsibility for the attack. Neither One Plus One, nor Inter nor UT1 mentioned the incident in their main news bulletins yesterday.

[mobuto]

1. If a man is defined by his enemies

then George Soros is a very good man.

[a560]

2. i like defining people by the company they keep

look at the leaders of his foundations. You'll see most of the big names from the human rights movements of the last 30+years. And thats saying nothing of his teacher Karl Popper, whos philosphy maybe the most diametrically opposed to that of Leo Strauss.

[ThatPoetGuy]

7. Popper? Seriously?

Karl Popper's main contributions have been in philosophy of science, most especially his notion of falsifiability as the criterion that makes a question scientific. When he's gone out on a more social limb, he's been a little... juvenile? Calling Plato a "proto-Fascist" and such.

I'm sorry, but if we're trying to find a true hero for liberal philosophy, we can do a lot better than Popper.

[w4rma]

3. I agree. (nt)

[chookie]

4. You're not in "Old Europe" anymore, Mr Soros

Welcome to "New Europe." I think it's down to, um, Ukraine, Albania and Estonia now, or have they dropped out in the last day or so?

These charming people -- the slavic counterparts to our freepers and ditto heads -- kinda remind me of the "Old USSR" and its charming mobs of bolshies and village re-education committees, etc

Does anyone wish to speculate on why these people are targeting George Soros? I can't see why, unless they are being sponsored by the Bush administration to make it look like he is not as popular as George W Bush on overseas visits. :eyes:

Ha ha -- George W may be laughing now that his new little friends in Ukraine have carried off these little pranks on his behalf -- but it's Soros that is going to have the BIG laughs when His Chimperial Highness visits Ireland in June. They will have to lock up the whole country in order to present an image of Europeans embracing the boy chimp.

[mobuto]

5. Sure

George Soros' Open Society Institute has been promoting liberal democracy and market reforms across the former Soviet Union. It hasn't really worked, and he's made enemies of just about every establishment politician from Vilnius to Vladivostok. That's really not surprising considering how he's challenging their bread and butter. Vladimir Putin, especially, seems to despise Soros.

[a560]

6. some of it has worked

the OSI funded the democratice opponents in Yugoslavia that ousted Milosevic, and in Georgia which ousted some other old tyrant that tried to rig an election.