George Soros, March 2013 – (photo courtesy of GeorgeSoros.com)
About 6 years ago we started traveling the world nearly full time.
“How can you afford this?” they asked. “Where does the money come from?”
It was so easy to say we “retired early” and that we were “financially independent.” It seemed so credible, and it was safer and easier than admitting the truth… even my own wife believed it.
But it has been a heavy burden to carry. Recent calls for more transparency in the Financially Independent / Retire Early community, my own conscious, and perhaps the future of our country require that I come clean.
When I was working in technology I spent a lot of time on the dark web, the Mos Eisley Cantina of the Internet where smugglers, drug dealers, and modern pirates do their dastardly deeds. It was there I first met a person who went by the hacker alias George.
At first we just talked about things that were hard to discuss in public… concerns about the increasing overreach of governments, the erosion of democracy, how to promote freedom, equality, and justice… how the financial system is rigged in favor of the rich and connected… a few times I talked about my own interest in getting ahead financially.
A few months later I received an anonymous letter at my home offering hacker work for hire. How did they find out who I really was and where I lived?
At first the requests were simple innocuous things like canceling parking tickets for the poor. Once it was erasing the database at an overzealous debt collector. Over time, the responsibility (and dollars) grew. We were guilty of virtually every computer crime we have a law for. Most of what I know about taxes I learned through efforts to hack the IRS D-Base.
Travel opportunities arose… I would get paid flights and hotels for hacking jobs around the globe, often to promote some aspect of social justice. I was good at it, and it felt good to help people. Eventually, I was invited to the Meadows, a secret country mansion, to speak in person with a group known as the Pentaverate. I saw how they run everything in the world, including the newspapers.
Everybody in attendance was wearing masks and block shoes, so to this day I have no idea what anybody looks like or even how tall they are. But it was there that I met George in person, and he offered an opportunity that was perhaps too good to be true: full time paid world travel.
Who are you? (photo credit)
I flew into new countries and helped to organize the disenfranchised and overburdened. We helped shutter unsatisfactory publishing houses, and funneled cash into those who were supportive. We fought the rise of totalitarianism in Turkey, Poland, and the United States; we couldn’t help in China, they were too far gone.
Erdogan protestors (photo credit)
We were doing positive things for the world, but over time the organization started looking more and more like those we were fighting. We couldn’t risk the IRS questioning my income source, for example, so there was a false paper trail through front organizations. The Pentaverate were plugged into everything, so the checks were never signed by George but instead bore the symbol of a mysterious organization called Vanguard. How ironic…
There were forces at play where chaos was the goal. Volatility meant money. Fear meant power. We pushed back. But it seemed like the organization profited no matter which side won.
But now there are cracks in the resistance. Suspicions have been aroused, and pieces of the truth are floating out there that undermine the very people we seek to help. There is even a T-shirt. Most of these stories are wrong, of course, but the best lies always resemble the truth. Kinda like April Fool’s posts. ;)
I’ve now come to realize that this work can’t be successful from the shadows; we need to step into the light. Transparency and honesty are the only anesthetic for propaganda and intentional fake news.
I risk having our income stream cut off, but the world needs to know. George Soros pays our bills.
April fools!!!
I had to read a ways through to realize what was happening.
Hah, I knew you were really some kinda covert sjw!
This is much more believable than that whole line about saving all your money and making boring investments ;)
People seriously believe that stuff. Sheesh
The Truth is Out There
Love your annual April Fools posts!
Crowd testing movie script plots?
Best April Fools joke I’ve seen so far!
I knew this was an April fools joke just from the headline. He only pays the Clintons’ bills.
April 1st……April fool day!
Great April Fool’s Story! Carry is on target about George Soros. Thanks for a great start to April!
Fun fact: I went to high school with the Soros boys. George’s sons here in CT!
Hahah. Good one. April Fools.
Haha last year you did you bought a massive house and going back to living in the worker drone life. You are on point with your April fools posts!!
This was a fun one!
Awesome! I didn’t know where you were going with this until a couple paragraphs in. I always forget about April Fools Day. lol
Good one, however part of your own “conscious” conscience seems to have gone missing. An inside inside joke, perhaps?
Could be a spelling error. Or could be something more.
Very fun. I also read some of your older posts on San Miguel de Allende–wonderful. BTW–I had nooo idea George Soros looked like that. Money can’t buy everything! LOL!
Hard to believe!
I’ll check in with you tomorrow to see if you haven’t changed your story… ;-)
Did George teach you reflexivity to make a killing in the market?
I’m not at liberty to say.
Brilliant ya had me believing …..because all humor is based partly in fact. Everything you said about George Soros is true….
Haha! Very creative Gcc. Almost sounds believable! :)
Has this been picked up by conservative media yet?
I believe they are running it through a very rigorous fact checking review at this very moment.
ROFL!!!
Too funny! I love that you even included the known-to-be-fake claim of paid liberal protesters to pad the story (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/nov/17/blog-posting/no-someone-wasnt-paid-3500-protest-donald-trump-it/). This may have been my favorite April Fool’s post of the year!!
George Soros owns politifact and snopes. This is known.
I thought at first that this might be a strange day-after-April-Fool’s joke or sarcasm, but the I started to think that you might actually mean it. Which got me curious, so I dug around a little to look into this. To make an extraordinary claim like this so bluntly and matter-of-factly must mean that it is well-documented and not just the result of some fly-by-night set of internet memes, and as we all know with some paraphrasing, with great claims come great responsibility for accuracy :-).
You tend to like data, so you might appreciate this. Given it isn’t as easy as math (1+2=3) but relies on looking at conflicting claims and judging the quality of sources and statements, it is easy to insert disagreement and confusion to obfuscate truth. It is often useful to see if the even some of the claims being made are patently false. If so, one must consider the source of the claims to be poor. As soon as anything resembles politics things can get ugly, so I won’t post respond after this reply on this topic to anyone. I’ve laid out below what it would take to successfully refute my results, and will let them stand on their own.
To just say that certain topics like George Soros, Trump University, etc tend to ignite passions at the expense of underlying data. The concepts of facts and fundamental truths, often cut and dry in the world of math and IRS code (although less so at times when IRS code is unclear or confusing), are commonly the first things to get thrown out as the emotions take over. So I thought I’d look into this a little.
Snopes “is known” to be owned by Soros based on an article posted to the internet (so it must be true and held with equal esteem to all other sources regardless of merit) that used two generic photos of George Soros borrowed from Wikimedia Commons: one with a former Hungarian prime minister and one with Andrew Baron of RocketBoom. The article claimed that these were photos of Soros with the CEO of Snopes. Were they? No. Is it rationally debatable? No, unless one can prove that the former prime minister of Hungary and Andrew Baron are both the CEO of Snopes (hint – they aren’t). So short of showing that both of these men are the actual CEO (David Mikkelson), the Soros photo ‘evidence’ can be thrown out and the quality of the source shown to be poor. Given that these photos were at the foundation of all of the claims I could find for Soros owning Snopes, we can logically call that a dead end and false.
I didn’t find as much on Politifact, but I did find where they disclose all donations in excess of $1,000. I also did a quick check of the foundations and funds that donated. None are owned by Soros, so unless Soros’s total donation to Politifact was less than $1,000/year – which would make it negligible – he is not a donor to Politifact. This not only shows that he does not directly own Politifact, but that he does not indirectly or ‘effectively own’ it either. That would be for 2017 and prior. In 2018 it was purchased by the Poynter Institute, a Florida non-profit school for journalism that has no ties to Soros. They do link to their rather boring Form 990 that was filed with the IRS if you care to check. That’s the details on Politifact. Not owned by George Soros. You may disagree with them, that’s fine, but that doesn’t change the ownership, direct or indirect.
I make no claims for the accuracy of Snopes or Politifact in my response to you. I only address your comment of their ownership. If two different men with wildly different backgrounds and public lives are really a third man and they/he is CEO of Snopes, then I am proved wrong on one count. If Soros is shown to be the legitimate, documented owner of the Poynter Institute, etc, then I am proved wrong on two counts. If not, then he is not the owner of either. I can’t imagine that, short of this, that there is any further need to beat this dead horse ;-)
If it was sarcasm or a bonus April Fool’s comment, then the joke’s on me and you played it well! If not, then at least we can apply the tools of objective analysis we use for ERE to other areas of life as well.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3911834-Poynter-2015-990.html
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/blog/2011/oct/06/who-pays-for-politifact/
https://www.factcheck.org/2018/03/meme-falsely-claims-exposed-snopes-com/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snopes.com
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/was-snopes-busted-ties-to-soros/ – useful to allow ‘the accused’ to respond
You were spot on with your first thought. Sadly facts and the truth don’t help with the people who really believe this stuff.
Love your site and the value you bring, but April fools or not I would tread lightly discussing anything regarding politics. In this hypersensitive environment there will certainly be some who assume the April fools ploy is just a disguise for delivering a political message buried deep within your article. You certainly risk alienating some of your readers posting this. But again, love your site and the value you bring to society otherwise.
The purpose of this post was entertainment.
If it also delivers a political message and alienates the kind of person who would choose to be offended by said entertainment, I would probably just consider that a bonus.