Miriam: On the next news item you get please be so good to copy it to me.
Thanks
Richard
Sent from my iPhone
On Jul 3, 2019, at 2:30 PM, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It's true that this new think tank, funded by these two people, is
happening. This is the second news item regarding it that I've encountered.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of R. E. Driscoll Sr
Sent: Wednesday, July 03, 2019 4:15 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Are America's Billionaires Turning Against
Forever War?
An interesting proposal if true.
Richard
Sent from my iPhone
On Jul 3, 2019, at 12:40 PM, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:
U.S.
Are America's Billionaires Turning Against Forever War?
Are America's Billionaires Turning Against Forever War?
Charles Koch. (Fortune Brainstorm TECH / Flickr)
A new think tank is coming to Washington, D.C., this September, a
development that might not elicit more than a shrug (or a groan) if
not for the unlikely duo behind it. Two billionaires, George Soros, a
liberal, and Charles Koch, a conservative, have teamed up to create
the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, which will advocate
for ending the United States' forever wars. Stephen Kinzer of The
Boston Globe, which first broke the story, calls the think tank "one
of the most remarkable partnerships in modern American political history."
A statement on the institute's website says, "The foreign policy of
the United States has become detached from any defensible conception of
interests and from a decent respect for the rights and dignity ofclimate policies."
humankind."
Aside from both being billionaires, at first glance Koch and Soros
seem to have little in common politically. As Kelsey Piper explains in
Vox, "Soros is, of course, widely hated on the right for his support
of liberalized immigration and is frequently the target of
anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Koch, meanwhile, has come under fire
for his contributions to the Republican Party and his opposition to
donors.
The institute, which will open in September before an official
inauguration later in the fall, is named for former U.S. President
John Quincy Adams who, Piper points out, "said in an 1821 speech that
America 'goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.' " Koch and
Soros contributed half a million dollars each to the institute, which
has received an additional $800,000 in contributions from individual
writes.
"This is big," Trita Parsi, former president of the National Iranian
American Council and a co-founder of the new think tank, told the
Globe. The institute will advocate for restraint and diplomacy instead
of military intervention, which Kinzer calls "a radical notion in
Washington, where every major think tank promotes some variant of
neocon militarism or liberal interventionism."
Kinzer believes that Soros and Koch's opposing political backgrounds
bring their new project credibility. "The street cred they bring from
both ends of the political spectrum - along with the money they are
providing - will make this new think tank an off-pitch voice for
statesmanship amid a Washington chorus that promotes brinksmanship," he
money.
The two have previously been vocal about their objections to foreign
intervention. In a 2015 MSNBC interview, Charles Koch told "Morning Joe,"
"To me, foreign policy is a form of insanity. . We keep kicking out
dictators and then we don't get anything better, and we mess up a lot
of people's lives in the process - spend fortunes and have Americans
killed and maimed. What do we have to show for it?"
Soros has also spoken out against war on multiple occasions, including
in HuffPost, where in 2006, he wrote of the war on terror:
"
An endless war waged against an unseen enemy is doing great damage to
our power and prestige abroad and to our open society at home. It has
led to a dangerous extension of executive powers; it has tarnished our
adherence to universal human rights; it has inhibited the critical
process that is at the heart of an open society; and it has cost a lot of
Koch and Soros plan to release reports and become involved in various
grassroots anti-war campaigns before eventually helping to place
allies on congressional staffs and in the executive branch, ac
