Soros in Kosovo joint venture with World Bank

Chris Burford cburford at gn.apc.org
Wed Nov 17 15:37:04 PST 1999


At 12:41 17/11/99 -0500, you wrote:
>[If the name includes "Open Society," it must be Soros. From the
>World Bank's daily clipping service.]
>
>KOSOVO SECURES COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT FUNDS.
>The World Bank and the Kosovo Foundation for Open Society (KFOS) yesterday

etc.

To say that Soros has a dual character is an understatement.

On the positive side he genuinely wants to use his speculative wealth to shift resources back to eastern Europe. The proposals as summarised here for his particular fund do sound small and locally relevant.

However it is highly likely that the main funds, supplied by the EU, will not concentrate on regenerating from the bottom up the economic social life process of the people. Instead they will concentrate on "rationalisations" to clear the terrain for big capitalist initiatives that involve sudden massive rural depopulation almost as effective as the Serbs cleansing. The test will be how rapidly the population can get back to economically relevant full employment. I suspect it will not come for many years. That can only exacerbate the tensions that are leading to the terrorisation of minority groups, as Albanian victims turn perpetrator themselves.

Chris Burford

London



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