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Montaged image – montaged article. Photo: Screenshot – DCleaks

 

Although the attacks on the American mediatorship in our elections by the protagonists of the government’s interest are not directly referred to Washington D.C., we witness amplifying of the attacks on the foundations and the NGO sector, which are referred to as “CIA’s exponents”. In order to present softened impression, even the Americans in these articles are being “defended”from the Foundation Open Society – Macedonia, as if it wants to harm them. All the while, the omnipotent Yankee institutions, it seems, cannot perceive what’s noticed on our turf, more precisely from a café on Leninova Street

 

Author: Ljubomir Kostovski

 

Why the name of George Soros became a synonym for anti-state policy? This question was recently asked by Aleksandar Savanovich, associate professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Banja Luka, who promoted his book “George Soros – Open Society as an Idea, Ideology and Political Practice” at the Institute for European Studies in Belgrade.

In the interview with the Belgrade’s daily Politika, this political scientist does not deny the influence Soros has on the territory of former Yugoslavia, but adds that the public knows very little about this issue.

“Because of such interpretations (that Soros leads anti-state policy – our remark) separate, more or less oppressive, regimes, which do not tolerate criticism, are trying to discredit every opposition. They immediately link that with Soros or some other similar organization, even when there are no evidence at all”.

 

FEUILLETON FOR REPRINTING

Skopje’s daily Vecher came up with a kind of a political feuilleton with three sequels, which afterwards was “reprinted” by Vest, again without signature, which on the other hand, opened the subject about Soros and his detriment to the “legal government”, this time referring to some kind of hacked documents published worldwide and which disavow the policy of the philanthropist and businessman, with a clear attempt to link this revelation with the work of the Foundation Open Society Macedonia!

Briefly about the occasion – the hackers really published more than 2500 documents that allegedly unveil Soros’ strategy, priorities and other activities of his Foundation throughout the world. Part of the American colleagues believe that Russia Today and other similar media are behind these hackers. Blic states that FBI’s spokeswoman, Laura Silver, admitted that the hackers published the data in June, which were previously obtained by hacking the Foundation’s computers or computers of their business partners. This source in the US (which leads an investigation) claims that the attacks aim to reveal some secret details from the American-Russian relations and instructions for the attitude of the US towards Albania in the turbulent year of 2011.

But, let’s get back to the newspaper and the “trilogy” that starts with rather long title “Do you want grant? We pay for blood in the streets! Here’s what Soros has financed”.

The newspaper admits that “in these documents there is only one Macedonia-related article so far, for donating money to organizations of Roma people and to prostitutes”, which neither implies the occasion for such ground breaking title, nor for linking this country with the documents obtained by the hackers! Now, a normal question –  how can you write an article so big, pretty much a feuilleton (this article misses so many things so it cannot be called feuilleton – first of all systemization, chronological precision and links to the documents stated as alleged source) based on one sentence, which goes in favor of the Macedonian organization (FOSM)? Is there blood that flows in the streets?

Of course, fabricating such conditions and events require a lot of fantasy?

 

FUSION OF INFUSIBLE ELEMENTS

Here, the anonymous author has decided to fuse two infusible things and to give them – as to a new “compound” – seemingly a frightening message! It goes like this, believe or not, “when it comes to Europe, there are many materials related to the refugee crisis that refer to Macedonia. The migrants’ movement has been monitored in two-day reports, with numerous projects that assist their movement towards Europe”. This immediately draws conclusion without some additional arguments (namely, so far, everything is OK, we had refugee crisis, we still partly have it and everyone who had been helping is welcomed, I hope that won’t be disputed). Here comes the pivot in the refugee drama: “encouraged by NGO activists, migrants made a forcible inroad into Macedonia. The documents related to Macedonia, published by DCleaks.com, most often mention the sponsored Helsinki Committee for Human Rights and the Macedonian Young Lawyers Association, which are bounded to monitor the migrants’ situation in exchange of Soros’ grants. We remind that the non-governmental sector was main coordinator and initiator of this year’s migrants’ raids through the Greek border. We remind of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a press-release regarding the incident at the Macedonian-Greek border near Idomeni, which resulted with 23 injured members of the Macedonian security forces that prevented over 3000 migrants to forcibly enter Macedonia. Various reports show that when they attempted to cross the Greek-Macedonian border, by using violence, the migrants were encouraged, deceived and organized by activists, members of non-governmental organizations!”

 

WHO PRINTED THE LEAFLETS? REALLY, WHO?

If we return to reality, we’ll remind ourselves that our institutions mentioned nothing about our activists entering on the territory of the Republic of Greece, where the wave of migrants had been stopped and they also were given leaflets. On the contrary, the accusation (ours, and of some international factors) was that Greece, probably wanted to get rid of the ballast (sudden change of the migrants’ wave flow with harsh policy of non-accepting refugees in Central Europe). Multiple sources have written articles about this, but it says nowhere that somebody from this country has done it. Some leaflets contained the name of the German politician (former Social Affairs Minister) Norbert Blum, who had come to Idomeni and had solidarized with the refuges, but there is no evidence of his connection with the leaflets printing, which show wrong information regarding their movement near the border (some of them even drowned in the overflowed Suva Reka river!), which would not be the case if somebody from our side of the border helped them, because he would have known his own territory?! In fact, alongside with the refugees that raided our country via Suva Reka river, many Greeks have been arrested and convicted, and all of this implies that the help has come from – Athens.

But, let’s not drift away and let’s not enter in the logic of the article’s author/authors – helping the refugees, no matter where they are, is a humanitarian act, and not “bloodshed in the streets”. It is certainly familiar, so by using one proven tactic, some of the Macedonian media, when you have to finish with that one or with similar accusing story (to add at least a gram of evidence on the scale) – change the subject. The following sentence (yeah, you could’ve proven something about the refugees) says that Soros had spent huge amounts of money in our country and those money had ended at SDSM’s. Just like in those “philippics” delivered in the Roman Senate about the fate of Carthage, whatever you say, to open the American-Russian relations, to shake out the refugee crisis, all ends up that Soros gives money to SDSM.

 

PLENTY OF SUSPICIONS FOR PUBLIC BUDGET

Here, they use the fact that the budget of the Foundation Open Society – Macedonia is public, but it is odd how the budget is immediately and on the long run related (all of it!) with SDSM’s cashbox! Is there proof of this? If there was, does anyone think that this government wouldn’t have “scrutinized” it so far? How many other programs are supported by this Foundation? Vecher daily itself mentions that organizations related to our socially endangered citizens received assistance. Did they manage to get at least one statement from FOSM?

This subject was the food for thought for the Serbian daily Politika, which, so far, alongside with the authorities in Belgrade, weren’t fond of this Foundation. There were many articles about the yellow ducks, which as symbol (toys) are carried by the protestors because of the illegal, night demolition of objects in Sava neighborhood, for the benefit of the contractors of the project “Belgrade on water”. But what was the newspaper’s specific reaction to the news about the hack in Soros’ American headquarters?

Well, they responded with a huge interview with the director of this Foundation, Jadranka Jelinich. Just like in the case with Macedonia, Jelinich says that everything that’s written regarding the hack attack in the USA is correct, but she sees no reason for “creating fuss” here. From all the data about this country, and for the region as well, we notice that the donations are going down, i.e. they stagnate and Foundation’s interest about the Balkans is also going down. Somewhere rapidly. The person who wants to conduct a research, per say, to compare the number of employees in the Foundation (this datum is public too) in the past and now, he can see that this number has reduced. Of course, there are other ways, according to the structure of the awarded resources and their value too, which is most likely familiar to the author/authors of this article, and is definitely worth considering, but somebody has decided not to deal with specific numbers. The money that the Foundation works with are received by other sources (like in Belgrade), i.e. the Foundation applies for money from third parties.

But, at least some other foundations here can be put under the radar, which haven’t been victims of the questions neither how, nor to whom the resources are allocated, and the resources themselves are most likely bigger than the ones from Soros. In fact, the resources from Brussels were recently reduced because of poor, and sometimes criminal, usage!

 

CIA IN EVERY OPTION

Nevertheless, we see greater interference in this plan for conviction of the non-governmental sector, in which there is still some kind of order – Dnevnik daily for instance, attacks the American Foundation OTI (recent article is “What does CIA plan in Macedonia”) whereas Vecher daily sticks to Soros’ Foundation, but now has spotted the Civil NGO (“Soros’ money are fill-in for the peace”), and this article is a part of this daily’s trilogy. If you take a look at Civil’s homepage, you’ll see the resource sources and they are completely different, both “geographically” and according to their ideological background. We didn’t see Soros, and this Foundation’s rules require public presentation of the awarded resources.

Although the attacks on the American mediatorship in our elections by the protagonists of the government’s interest are not directly referred to Washington D.C., we witness amplifying of the attacks on the foundations and the NGO sector which are referred to as “CIA’s exponents”. In order to present softened impression, even the Americans in these articles are being “defended”from the Foundation Open Society – Macedonia, as if it wants to harm them. All the while, the omnipotent Yankee institutions, it seems, cannot perceive what’s noticed on our turf, more precisely from a café on Leninova Street.

 

 

 

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This journalistic lesson was created within the framework of the USAID Media Strengthening in Macedonia Project - Media Fact-Checking Service Component,, mplemented by Metamorphosis. The journalistic lesson is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The contents are the responsibility of its author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Metamorphosis, USAID or the United States Government. For more information on the work of USAID in Macedonia please visit its website (http://macedonia.usaid.gov) and Facebook page (www.facebook.com/USAIDMacedonia).

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