Michael Moore posts Cindy Sheehan’s accusation that MoveOn.org “fabricated” a member poll, while George Soros buys Halliburton stock

by Bill Levinson

The producer depends for his prosperity upon serving the people. He may get by for a while serving himself, but, if he does, it will be purely accidental, and when the people wake up to the fact that they are not being served, the end of that producer is in sight. –Henry Ford, My Life and Work

The end of MoveOn.org is now within visible sight as well, because it has become obvious that the organization exists to serve the interests, not of its rank and file members, but of (to use Cindy Sheehan’s words) “elitist wannabe power-brokers” like Eli Pariser and Namrita Chaudhary, along with the agenda of international financier George Soros.

On March 26, Michael Moore posted the following Cindy Sheehan article as a “must read” opinion piece at MichaelMoore.com. (We have changed @ in E-mail addresses to “at” to prevent harvesting by spam software.)

A month ago I wrote that MoveOn began efforts to support “slow bleed” while antiwar forces actively opposed it. Recently, MoveOn fabricated a biased push-poll in which “85%” of respondents supported “slow bleed”; however, the 96% of the MoveOn members who favor withdrawal, and who were not offered a vote on that option, refused to participate in a sham. Congressional sources report that the spurious MoveOn poll, together with intensive bullying and bribing, was used to erode the principled opposition of congressional progressives.

MoveOn is now raising funds from antiwar supporters to attack Senate opposition to the supplemental, but the activist community is now aware that MoveOn is not the catharsis needed to address Democratic Party constipation. There is at least one Democratic senator, Russ Feingold, who could oppose the funding farce. MoveOn is an autocratic organization run by a small group of elitist wannabe power-brokers; it cannot be reformed, but you can let their politburo know your feelings (eli “at” moveon.org, Namrita.Chaudhary “at” gmail.com, tom “at” moveon.org), and you can unsubscribe!

Eli = Eli Pariser, the head of MoveOn.org, whom antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan has denounced, along with Namirta Chaudhary and the individual referred to as “Tom,” as “elitist wannabe power-brokers” who are part of a “politburo.” There is no question that Pariser has advanced himself personally by leading MoveOn.org, but whether he has served his members or just his own personal interests is another question entirely. When deciding whether to believe Sheehan’s or Pariser’s side of this story, MoveOn’s members should note that Eli Pariser signed the mendacious press release of September 2, 2006, in which MoveOn tried to disclaim responsibility for the anti-Semitic, racist, and anti-Catholic hate speech at its Action Forum. Furthermore, Michael Moore, who is hardly in our camp, also finds Sheehan’s side of the story credible.

HEROES OF IRAQ CARD DECK

The next question that obviously comes to mind is whether MoveOn.org is soliciting money and volunteer time from its members to serve, not the interests of the members, but those of MoveOn’s leaders and international financier George Soros, who has given the organization millions of dollars. This is commonly known as exploiting people and using people, and no one needs to put up with it. Here is a Web page on which MoveOn.org asks its supporters to contribute money to “expose Halliburton,” of which Vice President Dick Cheney is a former CEO.

AUDIO
ANNOUNCER (VO): George Bush gave Dick Cheney’s old company, Halliburton, no-bid contracts for Iraq on a silver platter.

VIDEO
CUT TO A “HALLIBURTON” SIGN IN FRONT OF A BUILDING WITH THESE WORDS SUPERED OVER THE PICTURE: “OVER $6 BILLION IN PROFIT”. THEN CUT TO AN OIL FIELD WITH THE SUPER: “CAUGHT OVERCHARGING”. THEN CUT TO A LINE OF SOLDIERS IN FULL COMBAT GEAR LINED UP WAITING TO BE SERVED A MEAL, WITH THIS SUPER: “DIDN’T DELIVER MEALS”.

AUDIO
ANNOUNCER (VO): But Halliburton wanted more. They overcharged millions for gasoline. Worse, they charged hundreds of millions of dollars for meals for our troops that they never delivered.

VIDEO
CUT BACK TO THE DOMED SILVER TRAY. THE BUTLER RAISES IT AGAIN, BUT THIS TIME WE SEE STACKS OF MONEY.

AUDIO
ANNOUNCER (VO): And George Bush is still doing business with them.

Although Dick Cheney is no longer a corporate officer of Halliburton, George Soros is now a major stockholder. Per Reuters, ” Soros also added 1.9 million shares of Halliburton.”

For some reason, though–maybe it has to do with those millions of dollars Soros is giving them–you don’t see MoveOn.org or the Center for American Progress chanting “No Blood for George Soros!” as they ought to be doing if their leaders really believed that the Iraq war’s purpose is to create business for Halliburton. Soros’ purchase of Halliburton, meanwhile, shows that he has no commitment whatsoever to the ideas that MoveOn.org has been propagating, or to the ideals of MoveOn’s rank and file members.

We predict that, like an abused spouse who finally accepts the fact that her husband has:

1. Been taking her money under spurious pretenses (e.g. MoveOn’s solicitations for donations of up to $2000 to trash Halliburton, while the power behind MoveOn, George Soros, was planning to buy Halliburton stock)
2. Cheated on her (Soros’ purchase of Halliburton)
3. Lied to the community about her opinions (the fabricated poll, misrepresenting the members’ position on the Iraq war to Congress), and
4. Gone to Ku Klux Klan meetings (the well-documented Action Forum hate speech scandal),

MoveOn.org’s rank-and-file will soon be filing for a very ugly divorce.

MoveOn.org is a dead organization walking. Our background in organizational behavior and organizational science includes what the Chinese call the Mandate of Heaven (t’ien ming), which involves unwritten laws mandating the principles of utility and mutual benefit that are common to all human systems. People join and serve organizations, whether they be businesses, countries, clubs, professional groups, armies, or sports teams because they expect the organizations to serve them in turn. When business leaders enrich themselves at the expense of their workers (e.g. taking bonuses for themselves while cutting the workers’ pay or laying them off), generals try to lead armies from safe and comfortable chateuaus (as many did during the First World War), or government officials line their pockets at the expense of the people, the organization in question is not long for this world. Henry Ford elaborated on this as follows:

Many men have escaped man-made law, they have escaped economic law—so far, at least (nobody need be too cocksure about this, for the end of the test has not come), but no man ever lived without receiving sentence in himself upon every violation of the moral law. It gets us all, for sentence or reward. High or low, none escape. It is godlike in its impartial operation. It cannot be postponed, nor fought to a higher court, nor bribed. …It has the final word, and its word is final

“Moral Law”–the term also used in a translation of Sun Tzu’s Art of War–refers to the natural laws of human behavior, which Hindus call Dharma (The Right Way), Chinese Tao (The Way), Christians the Gospel (The Good News), and Buddhists Bodi-Dharma (The Good Way or the Good Law). The Ford Motor Company’s phenomenal success, in which it created as much wealth as existed in something like 36 of the 48 existing states, is easily understandable when Henry Ford combined what Dr. Stephen Covey would later call “Principle Centered Leadership” with what is now known as the Toyota production system. Only when Ford’s successors forgot these things did the company go into a rapid decline. This example alone illustrates the enormous power of the Mandate of Heaven, by which all human organizations stand or fall.

Hindus warn that, while Dharma preserves and defends those who uphold Dharma, it crushes mercilessly those who go against it. MoveOn.org’s so-called leaders, along with its financier George Soros, have done exactly this by serving themselves at the expense of their followers. We predict that MoveOn.org will not be a viable force in American politics by the end of summer, and it will probably exist only as a shell or figurehead by 2008.

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Related: Pure Politics

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