SOROS INFILTRATES CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT
By Cliff Kincaid (02/07/06)
Calvina Fay of the Drug Free America Foundation has pulled out as a speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which begins in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, because a “mini-debate” she was scheduled to appear in had been stacked against her. As it now stands, the event will feature two advocates of drug legalization, both of them funded by leftist billionaire and anti-Bush activist George Soros.
Having put most of the left-wing political movement and many liberal Democrats on his payroll, it is apparent that Soros is now working to manipulate the conservative movement. It is surprising that CPAC is facilitating his scheme.
A convicted inside trader who specializes in manipulating the currencies of the nations of the world, Soros is usually depicted as a “philanthropist” who believes in an “Open Society.” Hence, the name of his major funding mechanism, the Open Society Institute. In the Soros view, of course, an “open society” means encouraging behavior that undermines the traditional values and culture of America. This is hardly “conservative.”
In addition to promoting drug legalization, his causes include open borders, gay rights, abortion rights, opposition to the death penalty, lighter sentences for criminals, and assisted suicide. He tried almost single-handedly to buy the White House for Democrat John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election by spending over $20 million on controversial “527” organizations promoting his candidacy. On foreign policy issues, Soros is a big backer of the U.N. and opposes the Bush Administration’s war in Iraq and handling of the war on terrorism.
The scheduled Friday CPAC event on “A Conservative Drug Policy” was to feature a mini-debate between Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) and Calvina Fay. The “moderator,” hardly unbiased, was scheduled to be Rob Kampia of the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP). The Soros Open Society Institute has given the DPA millions of dollars, including $2.5 million in 2004 alone. MPP has been funded by Soros as well as Peter Lewis, chairman of the Progressive Corporation, who was arrested in New Zealand several years ago after customs officers found marijuana in his luggage. Lewis, who gave $340,000 to MPP in 2004, is also a major funder of the ACLU.
Court documents show that Kampia himself was convicted in 1989 and sentenced to prison for possessing and intending to distribute marijuana.
While paying thousands of dollars to appear at a conservative conference, MPP is selling $500 tickets to a March 30 fundraising “party” at the Playboy Mansion. Playboy founder Hugh Hefner provided the seed money for the drug legalization movement, which is now underwritten mostly by Soros and Lewis.
“Playmates will be available to give tours of the mansion grounds as you enjoy great music and comedy in one of America’s most renowned settings,” says MPP’s website. A member of the “host committee” for the Playboy event is Tommy Chong, who participated in pro-marijuana movies as part of the “Cheech and Chong” team and served nine months in prison for selling drug paraphernalia. You won’t need an NSA surveillance program to know what’s going on in the Playboy Mansion on March 30.
When Calvina Fay saw that the CPAC “debate” had been stacked against her, she pulled out. However, her group will still have a booth at CPAC. So will the Drug Policy Alliance. Later in the day, after the “debate,” Kampia’s MPP will host an event for all CPAC attendees and guests on why the war on drugs should not target marijuana users. It is not known if Playmates will appear.
The Drug Policy Alliance also participated in CPAC last year, boasting that Executive Director Nadelmann was “well-received” and “appeared on several conservative radio shows coinciding with the conference.”
This is troubling because DPA and MPP are part of a major deception campaign to convince people that marijuana is harmless or even has medical benefits. Accuracy in Media last year disclosed the existence of documentary evidence that the “medical marijuana” movement is a fraud that exploits sick people. Video footage of a pro-marijuana event showed Ed Rosenthal, formerly of High Times magazine, speaking to dozens of marijuana activists. “With all the talk about medical marijuana, I have to tell you that I also use marijuana medically (laughter),” he says. “I have a latent glaucoma, which has never been diagnosed (more laughter). And the reason why it has never been diagnosed is because I’ve been treating it (laughter)…But there is a reason why I do use it. And that is because I like to get high. (cheers, applause). Marijuana is fun.”
Another video excerpt showed Richard Cowan, former director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, saying that “The key to it [legalization] is medical access because once you have hundreds of thousands of people using marijuana medically under medical supervision the whole scam is going to be blown…Once there’s medical access and if we continue to do what we have to do―and we will―then we’ll get full legalization.” Not surprisingly, a federal investigation of “medical marijuana” clubs and dispensaries in California has found they had been used as a cover for drug dealing and money laundering.
At the same time, evidence of a connection between marijuana and mental illness continues to mount. The influence of marijuana figures in the sensational murder case of Colin Roger Cotting, a 16-year-old in Alaska who allegedly raped his stepmother, beat her to death with a baseball bat, and stuffed her in a freezer. The murder resulted from a dispute when Cotting was confronted by his stepmother about his marijuana use. Cotting told police that he was too stoned on marijuana to remember what had happened.
In a case that received national attention, Joseph Smith, the convicted killer of 11-year-old Carlie Brucia, tried to blame his criminal behavior on using drugs, including cocaine and marijuana.
British newspapers are now covering a sensational case of “cannabis psychosis,” involving a music producer, Lisa Voice, who “was viciously assaulted in her home by a family friend who had been made psychotic by the drug,” as the London Sunday Times noted. She suffered a broken jaw, broken nose, collapsed lung, and eye injuries, and has already had 11 medical operations to rebuild her face and head. The attacker had been smoking marijuana since the age of 15 and believed he was getting subliminal messages from television.
In Britain, penalties for the use and possession of marijuana had been lowered after the drug had been reclassified. But Dr. Shahrokh Mireskandari, lawyer for Lisa Voice, was quoted in the Sunday Times as saying, “Let government ministers who say cannabis is a harmless drug come and explain that decision to Mrs. Voice and her many doctors. Cannabis should never have been reclassified and people such as Mrs. Voice now face a lifetime of pain because of the dangers of this drug.”
So why is CPAC giving Nadelmann, Kampia and their ilk a platform?
(Printer friendly version) Email: Cliff Kincaid
