AFRICA, COLOMBIA, LATIN AMERICA, NGOS, USA, USAID

Who Does Francia Márquez Work For?

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Misión Verdad
Following her tour in Africa, the vice president of Colombia, Francia Márquez, publicly thanked tycoon George Soros’ Open Society Foundations for the funding and logistical support of her high-level diplomatic visit to South Africa, Kenya, and Ethiopia.

Over the last few days, controversy has grown around Márquez’s remarks, which, in the Colombian political storm, have been seized upon by the opposition to Gustavo Petro’s government; it is unusual, even in Colombia, for a financial speculator to be directly involved in the diplomatic issues of a government.

Colombian media reports claim that Soros’ foundation provided around $60,000 for Márquez’s tour. The vice president confirmed that this money was earmarked for the delegation accompanying her during the trip, which consisted of 26 members of “civil society,” including artists, social leaders, and academics.

Márquez emphasized that the money was used exclusively for the living expenses of the large delegation that accompanied her, and not for her own travel expenses. However, the fact remains that for a couple of decades now, she has been in the financial orbit of the worlds of various private institutional organisations, either holding ideological affinity or directly associated with the foundation of the Hungarian-born mega-speculator Soros, in the form of prizes, scholarships, and other incentives.

Co-opted career?

In 2015, Francia Márquez received the National Award for the Defense of Human Rights in Colombia, granted by Diakonia, an organization of the Swedish State and the Church of Sweden. The Church of Sweden is part of the European Forum of LGBT Christian Groups, a network of liberal-progressive Christian entities, or “inclusive churches,” and has received funding from the Open Society, among other public and private institutions.

Perhaps the most significant distinction won by Márquez is the Goldman Prize in 2018, better known as “the environmental Nobel,” awarded by the billionaire Goldman family, proxy of insurance companies and the manufacturer of Levi Strauss clothing. Members of this family are in US politics (Congress, governorships, the White House), and the current president of the group, John D. Goldman, was part of Barack Obama’s government during his second term.

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the UK state-funded media network, named Márquez as one of the 100 most influential women in the world in 2019, a distinction also received by María Corina Machado (Venezuelan extreme-right politician), Svetlana Tikhanovskaya (Belarusian political leader and opponent of the Lukashenko administration), and several other women leaders from different fields whose profile the British government is happy to raise, ensuring that they ignore other distinguished women who are not aligned to the US-European orbit of influence.

Francia Márquez got work as a consultant—in 2020, the same year she graduated as a lawyer—for the USAID-funded project Construction for Prevention and Self-Care of the Association of Community Councils of Northern Cauca. The USAID Human Rights Program provided a platform to the Colombian activist to amplify her social objectives, which coincided with the objectives of USAID.

It is true that her association with the US foreign interference entity ended in 2020; however, her government is subject to the agreements that USAID has with a number of social programs of the Colombian State. In Colombia, USAID claims to promote economic programs in the agricultural sector and human rights, maintain a pro-Afro and pro-indigenous agenda, and uphold the fight against climate change and biodiversity; all of which are issues shared politically and ideologically by the current Colombian vice president and, of course, President Gustavo Petro.

Colombia: Niche for corporate politics

Márquez, in her Twitter tale, recognized the “contribution” of Open Society “to the strengthening of democracies in Latin America and the Caribbean” and “the role of ethnic communities combating the climate crisis.” Later, in a press conference on Wednesday, May 24, she said, “Open Society, like many of the agencies that work in our country, has a cooperation agenda [with our government] in terms of racial justice, and decided to support the vice president’s proposal of facilitating the conditions of mobility for artists, social leaders, and civil society, given the internal displacement due to land disputes.”

Márquez was asked about the conditions that Soros’ foundation demands for the logistical and financial support provided to her agenda in Africa. “What are they asking me in return? To continue what we are doing,” she responded, “[which is] a policy that contributes to peace and racial justice in this country; and for us to go on fulfilling the promises that the president and I made in our campaign.”

Translation: Márquez’s interests are Open Society’s interests.

The Open Society has its second largest office in Colombia, behind only Brazil. Its latest audit dates from 2021, when it reported on its activities in Colombia: its interests are in the areas of health (COVID-19 pandemic), agriculture, domestic work, racial justice programs, Venezuelan migration, social-armed conflict, climate change, and ecological activism. The foundation invested $15.6 million in Colombia in 2021.

In Colombia, some of the aforementioned topics are ignored by most establishment political parties, and are promoted by various organizations (some of which supported Petro and Márquez during last year’s presidential election campaign). The current administration of Colombia is committed to an agenda that combines the typical factors of contemporary progressivism with a political and ideological cut very similar to that proposed by the US Democratic Party and European social-democratic parties, who propose reforms (neither structural nor systemic) in the purposefully vague fields of the so-called ethnic and cultural minorities, human rights, and the “green economy.”

Petro’s life was characterized by the M-19 armed movement in his youth, and thereafter by a successful political career. Márquez’s political career has barely started; however, her trajectory as a social and ecological activist in northern Cauca elevated her profile, leading to awards and ties with institutions well inserted in the governmental dynamics of Colombia. Before both personalities took on greater political prominence, their trajectories had nothing to do with these organizations; or, at least, there was no public evidence of it.

Taking into account Colombia’s close association with the United States, and the remarkable affinity between US President Joe Biden and Gustavo Petro, it is plausible that the political objectives of the current Colombian government overlap with the agenda of the USAID (currently managed by a US Democrat), Open Society, and other institutions that drink from the Davos (an alternative term for the World Economic Forum) fountainhead.

The Colombian president himself participated in Davos this year, advocating for “energy transition” towards the “green economy,” a flagship approach of the World Economic Forum, a platform that brings together the business and political elites of North America, Europe, and their partners in all corners of the planet. It is this same Western corporate crème de la crème that directs this “transition” that allegedly chooses ecology and economics as saviour mechanisms against the catastrophes that the capitalist system itself produces and reproduces. No change is proposed in the production model, only in vague terms of the management of the resources of the prevailing system.

Since at least 2010, Soros has been at the forefront of ecological plans made by the world of finance. In a report published in March 2022, the Soros Fund Management LLC explained its “Climate Action Strategy”: among its proposed measures is to reduce investments in its corporate portfolio that contribute to an increased carbon footprint. The declared aim is to “eliminate exposure to fossil fuels,” as preached by Petro’s government program, which has put an end to oil exploration and new drilling in Colombia.

It is worth noting that, during her tour in the African continent, Márquez signed a total of 17 cooperation documents: eight in South Africa, seven in Kenya, and two in Ethiopia, consisting of memorandums of understanding and letters of intent. In addition, the vice president reported that Colombia joins Kenya, France, and Barbados to work on a new financial architecture, to achieve progress in the mechanisms of “debt for climate action swaps and in the reform of the international financial architecture;” a modality in tune with Soros’ financial engineering, in light of the “energy transition.”

Thus, it becomes evident that there is a political, ideological, and financial nexus between the current government of Colombia and the corporate brokerage of Davos, with the Open Society as a protagonist of the moment, facilitated through the office of the vice president. This nexus is carrying out the work of Petro’s government, infiltrated to the bone of its structure by the mechanisms of private global and US institutions oriented towards interference and plundering in sovereign countries. So, who does Francia Márquez work for?

Translation by Orinoco Tribune

The Architecture of Open Society Foundation’s Interference and Looting (+Francia Marquez)

Misión Verdad

In an unprecedented event in Colombian politics, the vice president of Colombia, Francia Márquez, publicly thanked the Open Society Foundations of speculator and financial hit man George Soros for financing her recent tour to Africa, an occurence that invites us to reflect on the mechanisms that his foundation uses to achieve his political and economic goals.

It is well known that Soros owns a vast conglomerate of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and foundations around the world, but Francia Márquez’s message is a reminder that this is not the only tool he uses to achieve his goals.

George Soros is an US-Hungarian billionaire who uses “philanthropy” as a front to fuel color revolutions and privatize economies in Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. In 1993, he founded the Open Society Institute, which later changed its name to Open Society Foundations (OSF), in order to achieve his goals. According to its website, the organization is present in more than 120 countries and has provided $19 billion in funding over the past three decades.

It is important to thoroughly examine how this entity works, in order to be aware of the scope and consequences of its influence on world politics.
The budget of the Open Society Foundation for Latin America and the Caribbean in 2021 was $111.2 million. Photo: Open Society Foundations.

NGO support

Soros and his foundation have used their wealth to provide grants and funding to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) with the goal of influencing the foreign policy of the United States and its allies.

The NGOs that receive financing from Soros and the OSF operate in almost all countries of the world, mainly for political ends in countries targeted by the governments of the United States and the European Union. This is the case in Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela. In these countries, one of the most used tools is that of the supposed defense of human rights, where organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) have played a leading role.

These NGOs adopt a biased and subjective approach in their assessment of the human rights situation in these countries, exaggerating or even making up the violations that, according to their complaints, have been committed. They are motivated by a political agenda that seeks to justify actions against these countries such as the imposition of financial and economic sanctions or regime change operations.

In their reports, these NGOs omit sources and facts that contradict their conclusions, particularly discrediting those that come from official government sources. They rely exclusively on local media, NGOs, and activists with similar political affinities. An exemplary case is that of the Venezuelan NGO Provea, which in addition to having links with HRW, also receives money from OSF.

Meanwhile, serious human rights violations in other countries, whether by the state, by criminal and paramilitary organizations, or jointly, as has occurred in Mexico and Colombia before the arrival of progressive governments (to mention only two examples from the region), have been minimized by these organizations because they do not interfere with the interests of the neoliberal business elites that provide them with financing.

The sky is the limit when it comes to the possibilities for infiltrating the national politics of a country through NGOs. In the extensive record of the “philanthropist” Soros, the collaboration of one of the foundations connected to his financing network, Insight Crime, helped Juan Guaidó to cover his tracks when he was photographed with narcoterrorists from the Colombian criminal group Los Rastrojos on his way out of Venezuela through Cúcuta in 2019.

Mainstream media support

Soros and OSF have financed existing media outlets and established new media outlets in various parts of the world under the pretext of promoting “free and independent” information; however, these media outlets are actually under the influence of their financiers.

For example, Soros financed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), an international radio station that broadcasts to countries in Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East, and is often involved in propaganda operations against governments in those countries.

In Ukraine, Soros helped finance the television channel Hromadske TV, which allowed a journalist to broadcast a statement encouraging the exploitation of the resources of the former Ukrainian region of Donbass, and saying that part of that population should be “exterminated.”

RFE/RL remains very active today thanks to a grant from the US Congress through the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) as a private licensee. The USAGM supervises the work of RFE/RL and that of other subsidized media such as Voice of America, Radio and TV Martí, Radio Free Asia, and Middle East Broadcasting Networks.

According to US President Joe Biden’s budget request for fiscal year 2024, which was sent to Congress on March 13, 2023, a budget allocation of $944 million is planed for the USAGM.

An MRC Business report highlights that Soros has established and financed a vast media network (at least 253 media groups worldwide, including at least 54 prominent figures in the newspaper industry) that allows him to wield massive power over information in international politics and shape public opinion in many countries and on virtually all continents.

One of the main beneficiaries of Soros’s funds is Project Syndicate, which bills itself as “the world’s talk page” and has a global “audience” that includes prominent politicians, academics, business leaders, and civic activists. In addition, Soros has backed the Poynter Institute, which is dedicated to fact-finding news, posing as a global “Ministry of Truth.”

Media personalities who are associated with Soros include prominent personalities such as Lester Holt, NBC Nightly News anchor, and Sally Buzbee, executive writer for The Washington Post. Journalists and businessmen from CNN , CBS, NBC, NPR, The Washington Post, ABC, and other mainstream outlets are also beneficiaries of Soros’s funding.

According to the report, Soros disbursed at least $131 million between 2016 and 2020 through different organizations to influence these media groups.

“Civil Society” promotion

Through the use of his influence and financing, the tycoon has managed to manipulate sectors of civil society to participate in color revolutions in numerous countries. American author F. William Engdahl writes, in an article published in New Eastern Outlook, that in Ukraine, in order to profit from its energy resources, the local branch of the Soros Foundation, the International Renaissance Foundation (IRF), provided more than $100 million to Ukrainian NGOs between 1990 and 2008. This investment played a prominent role in the process that led to Ukraine’s independence from Russia in 1991.

In addition, Soros acknowledged having financed the riots that took place in Maidan Square during 2013 and 2014, which contributed to the coup against President Viktor Yanukovych and the subsequent establishment of the government of Petro Poroshenko in Ukraine. Furthermore, the foundations that Soros runs became involved in the 2004 Orange Revolution which brought President Viktor Yushchenko to power.

In June 2019, unprecedented protests broke out in Hong Kong over a proposed extradition bill. Despite the fact that the project was later shelved, the demonstrations continued and turned into increasingly violent riots, putting the lives and property of citizens at risk. The protestors have demanded Hong Kong’s complete secession ever since. Beijing accused the United States and Britain of fanning the flames of unrest in that region by supporting separatists.

Once again, Open Society funds were at the disposal of “civil society.” This was stated in an article published in the Global Times, in September 2021:

According to Hong Kong-based Ta Kung Pao, Soros’s OSF kept close contact with some representatives of the street protests in the city. ‘Occupy Central’ leader Tai Yiu-ting, for example, worked at the Hong Kong-based Centre for Comparative and Public Law at the University of Hong Kong, where the OSF was active in 2015. Brian Patrick Kern, a fixture in the Hong Kong protests, taught young Hong Kongers how to organize protests, attack the police, and destroy the institutional order. No wonder the funds on which all activities depended came from the OSF. The Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents Club, not recognized by the Chinese government, applied to the OSF for financial assistance and submitted reports to it.

The article notes that Soros’s biggest concern with China is that it has chosen its own successful path that is beyond its control, which hampers his goal of neoliberal theft of the country and poses a threat to other developing countries that wish to follow the Chinese model.

Training and/or cooptation of political leaders

The training, identification, and incorporation of political leaders is another of the infiltration mechanisms used by George Soros and his organization to promote their interests and objectives. This brings us back to the occurrence mentioned at the beginning of this article, Francia Márquez’s public thanks to Open Society.

An outstanding example is that which F. William Engdahl referred to in his article about Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a former employee of the OSF who was supported by Soros and promoted internationally during her candidacy for president of Liberia. She eventually won. Soros even arranged a Nobel Peace Prize for her in 2011. Before her presidential position, she had been trained in economics at Harvard and worked for the World Bank and Citibank (of the Rockefeller family), institutions related to economic policies and neoliberal ideology.

Once in power, President Sirleaf allowed Soros and his associate Nathaniel Rothschild to obtain significant gold and base metal mining assets in Liberia. Further investigation revealed that Sirleaf had also invited the Pentagon’s new Africa Command, AFRICOM, to protect Soros and Rothschild mining operations in West Africa.

This practice dates back to before OSF was founded. In 1992, Soros founded the Central European University, an institution that has been used to promote his neoliberal ideas, training young leaders in the region with a “new, international, and pluralistic” perspective. More than 14,000 students have graduated from the university, reports US author Scott Howard in his book The Open Society Playbook. Among them are the former president of Georgia, Giorgi Margvelashvili, two former justice ministers from Croatia and Romania, a Hungarian deputy, and several officials from Open Society itself.

In 2018, the administration of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán expelled Soros University from Budapest, the capital of that country, and the institution relocated to Vienna, Austria.

Implications of Soros’ infiltration

We return to Ukraine. A little over a year after the coup and the installation of a government backed by the United States and the European Union [in 2014], a correspondence apparently written by George Soros revealed how he was pulling the strings of the Ukrainian regime.

The billionaire was conniving with senior officials of the US government and the European Union to make billions of dollars at the expense of the situation in Ukraine, according to letters from late 2014 and early 2015 published by the hacker group CyberBerkut.

A Sputnik article describes Soros’s proposal for such a business opportunity. It concerns “using the European Union’s credit rating to finance risk insurance for its investments in Ukraine through its own budget and debt. The plan would effectively have the EU support Ukraine’s political situation at a cost of up to 11.12 million euros.” From there, “up to 1 billion euros would be invested in Ukrainian companies” to attract the interest of the investment community.

Soros offered to “contribute the proceeds to my foundations” as a way to allay suspicions that his policies would be for personal gain, but clarified that they are actually for profit. In that sense, Soros’s first priorities would be the privatization of the Ukrainian state oil company Naftogaz and an increase in gas prices. He adds that, in order to obtain investment guarantees from the European Union, the government had to “produce a temporary visible demonstration” that Ukraine is fighting corruption.

F. William Engdahl reports that, in one of the letters, Soros says that he advocates the delivery of lethal weapons to Ukraine and the training of Ukrainian military personnel in Romania to avoid the direct presence of NATO. This piece of information provides us additional evidence that the war against Russia had been manufactured for a long time by the Western bloc.

The letters also reveal that Soros played a key role in the selection of three non-Ukrainian ministers. Natalia Jaresko, a former US State Department official, was appointed finance minister, while Lithuania’s Aivras Abromavicius became economy minister. Soros also participated in the election of a Minister of Health from Georgia.

Throughout the last decades, George Soros and his Open Society organization have been active in providing moral and financial support to groups seeking regime change and color revolutions in different countries, carrying out various subversive actions. The result of these Soros-driven operations has been the looting and economic degradation of the affected countries, as we have seen in Ukraine. These are notorious actions, impossible to go unnoticed, which makes it inevitable to question any issue related to Soros, such as the case of Francia Márquez.

Translation by Orinoco Tribune

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