ProtestBarrick.Net: An Example of How Soros Could Profit From Activism

UPDATE: There was a mistake in this story, it turns out my sources were wrong, ProtesBarrick didn’t run their funding through TIDES (though Saunders has worked for a number of TIDES funded organizations). The money actually runs through the Mennonite Church of Canada.

Today I’m going take a momentary break from discussing the Robocall rallies and will shift into a different discussion about George Soros & the TIDES foundation–  a look into how Soros could make large profits from the activities of environmental activists!

Cashflow for Soros/TIDES Foundation Money Laundering

Organizations whose activities don’t qualify as ‘charitable’ for tax reasons are able to still issue tax receipts through one of the services provided by TIDES. Basically, this service is a money laundering operation that acts as a loophole to provide tax receipts.

Here’s how it works. A donor will give their money to TIDES but earmarked for StopBarrick. TIDES use their charitable status to give a tax receipt to the donor, and they then relay the money to StopBarrick. It’s a simple solution- if not a bit dishonest. Because, after all, the taxpayer ends up paying the bill!

ProtestBarrick uses this loophole to give tax receipts to their donors through TIDES. Interestingly, George Soros is also a major shareholder in Barrick Gold! So, if Soros is aware of this, and he has an influence on the TIDES Foundation, why would he allow this to happen?

How Soros could profit from funding ProtestBarrick.net

The explanation could be simple. Each time ProtestBarrick executes a successful demonstration against Barrick Gold the value of the company’s stock will reduce- perhaps only by a few percentage points, but this is enough to generate great savings for people who plan to buy Barrick stock.

Today’s price of Barrick Gold is $40.73 USD. Let’s say that ProtestBarrick conduct a successful demonstration against Barrick’s operations in the Dominican Republic that cause a 5% drop in the value of Barrick for that day, bringing the price down to $38.70. Then, Soros purchases 5 million shares of Barrick, and rather than paying the original price of $203,650,000 he now pays $193,500,000. In this case, Soros would save $10,150,000- that’s quite a lot of money!

This, of course, is a theoretical number. There are people right now who are actively researching the correlation between Soros’ investment/divestment in Barrick shares and the activities of ProtestBarrick- as soon as they announce their findings I will make sure you hear about them. That said, I think you can understand where the conflict-of-interest is here…

Considering this my dear readers, I’d like to hear your opinion on this issue. Has the activist community been duped by a more shrewd and sophisticated rival here? Is it okay for us to continue taking money and support from Soros? Or, is it time to MoveOn and finally free ourselves from the 1%?

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