Judicial Watch: State Department Records Show Obama Administration Helped Fund George Soros’s Left-Wing Political Activities in Albania

Obama USAID Used U.S. Taxpayers’ Funds to Back Soros Group’s Effort to Give Albania’s Socialist Government ‘Full Control Over Judiciary’

 
(Washington, DC) -- Judicial Watch obtained 32 pages of records showing the Obama administration sent millions in U.S. taxpayers’ funds to a group backed by billionaire George Soros, which used the money to fund left-wing political activities in Albania, including working with the country’s socialist government to push for highly controversial judicial “reform.” 

The records also detail how the Soros operation helped the State Department review grant applications from other groups for taxpayer funding.
 
The records were obtained in a May 26, 2017, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) after both the State Department and USAID failed to respond to March 31, 2017 FOIA requests (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State the U.S. Agency for International Development (No. 1:17-cv-01012)). Judicial Watch agreed to dismiss the lawsuit after it received the documents.
 
The new documents show USAID funds were funneled through that agency’s Civil Society Project to back Soros’s left-wing Open Society Foundations in Albania, particularly the Soros operation efforts to give the socialist government greater control of the judiciary. USAID reportedly gave $9 million in 2016 to the “Justice for All” campaign, which is overseen by Soros’s “East West Management Institute.”
 
In March 2017, a group of six U.S. Senators led by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) sent a letter to then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson asking that he investigate charges that the U.S. government was using taxpayer funds to assist Soros in Albania. The letter said, “Foundation Open society-Albania and its experts, with funding from USAID, have created the controversial Strategy Document for Albanian Judicial Reform. Some leaders believe that these ‘reforms’ are ultimately aimed to give the Prime Minister and left-of-center government full control over the judiciary.” In the Albanian parliament, opposition leaders have labeled the Strategy “a Soros-sponsored reform.”
 
The new records released by Judicial Watch include an April 2016 memo from the U.S. Embassy in Tirana that reveals that the embassy “sponsored” a survey along with Soros’s Open Society Foundation to measure Albanian citizens’ “knowledge, support, and expectations on justice reform.” The Soros group survey reported that “91% of respondents either ‘fully support’ or ‘somewhat support’ the need for judicial reform.” The poll did not specify the type of reform the Soros group was seeking.
 
Also, records dated February 2017 show that the State Department used taxpayer funds to co-sponsor a second poll with the Open Society Foundation on judicial reforms that would essentially solidify the left’s control of the Albanian government. The report notes that the U.S. Embassy’s Public Affairs Section and the Open Society Foundation “each provided funding to a local organization to conduct a public opinion poll on attitudes towards the Judicial Reform effort.”
 
The records also reveal that the State Department gave the Soros organization direct input for its own program funding reviews in Albania. The February 10, 2017, report on “Engagement with the Open Society Foundation for Albania” notes that “As one of the major assistance providers in Albania, representatives from the Open Society Foundation are frequently asked to participate in technical reviews of application [sic] that we receive for funding.”
 
The U.S. Ambassador to Albania Donald Lu, a holdover from the Obama administration, has been closely linked to Soros and the socialist government in Albania. In May 2017, Lu helped undermine Albanian opposition party plans to protest the upcoming parliamentary election by declaring that the U.S. would recognize the election results even if opposition parties refused to participate. Lu has been described in the U.S. press as “a driving force behind Albania's judicial reforms.”
 
"The Obama administration quietly spent at least $9 million in U.S. taxpayer dollars in direct collusion with left-wing billionaire George Soros’ to back a socialist government in Albania,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “George Soros is a billionaire and he shouldn’t be receiving taxpayer support to advance his radical left agenda to undermine freedom here at home and abroad.” 
 
In related cases, Judicial Watch is seeking information regarding Soros’ activities in Macedonia, Romania and Colombia.

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Arthur Pichler invites readers to historic time travel adventure

‘The Journey Begins’ follows story of Arthur, Maggie as they travel back in time, pushed into life, death situation

PRESCOTT, Ariz. – When Arthur Pichler relocated to Sparks and Reno, Nevada, he developed an interest in the old gold mines and ghost towns throughout the west. Wanting to investigate the old days and research into a time travel years of 1880-1910 inspired him to write “The Journey Begins” (published by Xlibris).

During a time travel visit to Searchlight, a town along the Colorado River, Maggie and Arthur are pushed into a life or death situation. Two men from the future find a way to venture back to the same location through a door in the Spirit Valley. These men are hunters and a threat to the survival of the people in the old period due to their modern weapons and unknown consequences. Arthur makes a life or death decision on what he must do. This decision puts a tremendous mental strain on his relationship with Maggie.

Spirit Valley, over the many years, is a sacred valley where the past and present Indian spirits live. Joe White Feather, a spirit man of the local Shoshone Indians, becomes close friends with Maggie and Arthur, who eventually settle in the valley. As a spirit man, he is a strong force in the lives and events that Arthur and Maggie will have to endure now in the future and the past.

“I would like readers to learn about the real hardships of working in the mines, the events with the dangers for the stone crushers,” Pichler says. “The well explained history, location and paddle wheel trip up the Colorado River in1890 will be interesting for them as well.”

“The Journey Begins”

By Arthur Pichler

Hardcover | 6 x 9in | 422 pages | ISBN 9781543462807

Softcover | 6 x 9in | 422 pages | ISBN 9781543462791

E-Book | 422 pages | ISBN 9781543462784

Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

About the Author

Arthur Pichler was born in 1940. He travelled the U.S. and Europe on a BMW motorcycle. He was through life a machinist and inventor. He spent his years in high school and junior college in Canoga Park, California.

Xlibris Publishing, an Author Solutions, LLC imprint, is a self-publishing services provider created in 1997 by authors, for authors. By focusing on the needs of creative writers and artists and adopting the latest print-on-demand publishing technology and strategies, we provide expert publishing services with direct and personal access to quality publication in hardcover, trade paperback, custom leather-bound and full-color formats. To date, Xlibris has helped to publish more than 60,000 titles. For more information, visit xlibris.com or call 1-888-795-4274 to receive a free publishing guide. Follow us @XlibrisPub on Twitter for the latest news.

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3 Ways To Build Better Teams

& Kill A Toxic Culture 

A toxic business culture can bring down the whole company, driving good employees away and draining productivity.

Such a negative atmosphere is fairly common in U.S. companies. A survey by The Creative Group showed nearly a third of executive-level employees said that a colleague had tried to make them look bad in a variety of ways. A study by the Harvard Business School reported that weeding out toxic employees could save a company over $12,000 per employee.

But before a team is driven apart or toxic employees are shown the door, some business culture-change experts say there are ways to preserve and build better teams.

“When faced with organizational disarray, it’s sometimes helpful to introduce different team-development concepts,” says Andi Simon, a corporate anthropologist and author of On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights (www.andisimon.com). “Interestingly, the one the CEO or division manager chooses is usually the one that resonates best with him or her.

“Often, though, that’s not the one that rings most true with team members who, more often than not, are a group of great players who just need a better way to collaborate, coordinate and communicate – and not compete.”

Simon provides three ways company leaders can build teams that work well together towards a common goal:

• Navigate the negatives. Simon suggests getting the team to play a game called Speed Boat, created by Luke Hohmann. “Speed Boat is based on the concept that something is holding the team back, similar to anchors or rough waters,” Simon says. “To determine what that impediment might be, individuals write down what they think is holding their boat (team) back, then post their reasons on a wall over a picture of a speed boat. It’s fascinating how a metaphor—a boat—and the image of an anchor help people uncover the toxic issues that are damaging their interactions.”
• Discuss sad, mad, glad. The purpose is to encourage team members to redesign their interpersonal relationships so that the toxic environment can be relieved, if not resolved. “Participants each have a set amount of time to tell a story about what they are glad about, sad about, and mad about in their daily work,” Simon says. “Then they talk about what they would do to increase, reduce and eliminate in order to create a new story that addresses the sad and mad, and builds on the glad.”
• Pair up. There is a growing realization in business today that solo work styles are not as effective as when people work in pairs. “In this approach, pairs of staff members are responsible to each other to make sure their jobs are done on time and to specs,” Simon says. “The pairs are rotated every two to three weeks. The watershed moment occurs when the pairs realize that their success only comes from results that both of them achieve.”

“Metaphors and games allow people to express their pain points in a more neutral, emotionally secure manner,” Simon says. “It gets their boat moving again and pulls them together as a team.”

About Andi Simon, Ph.D.

Andi Simon, author of On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights, is a corporate anthropologist and award-winning author (www.simonassociates.net). She is the founder and CEO of Simon Associates Management Consultants, designed over a decade ago to help companies use the tools of anthropology to better adapt to changing times. Simon also is a public speaker and an Innovation Games facilitator and trainer. She served as a tenured professor of anthropology and American studies at Ramapo College of New Jersey, and was a visiting professor teaching entrepreneurship at Washington University in St. Louis. Simon has appeared on “Good Morning America” and has been featured in the Washington Post, Business Week and Forbes, and on Bloomberg Radio.