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The left-wingl activist group, GetUp claims it is “an independent
grass-roots community advocacy organisation.”
GetUp’s founders David Madden and Jeremey Heimans are
heavily involved in a number of
similar US and global left-wing
activist groups, each of which is tied to the shadowy billionaire, George Soros.
GetUp was
inspired by, and modelled on similar US groups, such as MoveOn.org and Win Back
Respect. Madden and Heniman were co-founders of Win Back Respect. According to
public records published on CampaignDonations.com, when they were drawing
expenses from the group in 2004, the major donor that year, with a contribution
of $150,000 was George Soros.
Madden and Heimans are also involved with another Soros-financed
left-wing activist group, MoveOn.org. Public
records reveal that between January 2003 and December 2004, Soros contributed
$2,500,999 to MoveOn.org.
Madden and Heimans are co-founders
of the global activist group, Avaaz.org, an organization that the Canadian
Minister John Baird in 2008 labelled as “shadowy foreign organization tied to
billionaire activist George Soros.”
Madden and Heimans can hardly claim that GetUp is non-partisan when
its original board members included Australian Workers Union secretary Bill
Shorten, Australian Fabian Society secretary Evan Thornley, green activist Cate
Faehrmann, and left-wing trade union researcher and “community organiser”
Amanda Tattersall. The largest donor to GetUp in 2010 with a donation of $1.1
million is the CFMEU.
GetUp’s benefactor, George Soros is clearly partisan. Of
the $3.5 million in recent campaign
donations made by Soros, 99.84% was donated to Democrat candidates and
organisations.
The $3.5 million is just the amount declared as political
donations. Soros has poured untold millions into numerous political, activist
and media front groups. In 1973 in an attempt to defeat George Bush at the
forthcoming election, Soros gathered a group of left-wing activists and
Democrats at his mansion and helped found, with a donation of $10 million,
America Coming Together (ACT), a grassroots activist group designed to
co-ordinate all his other front groups.
When the US brought in laws limiting political donations,
Soros used his considerable clout to circumvent
the laws by inspiring new legislation allowing the so-called “527”
organisations to raise funds without breaching the laws. Hence the myriad of
Soros activist groups can raise funds without limitation on the basis that they
are not political groups. So while they may not donate to political parties they
can run very effective advertising campaigns and stunts that clearly target one
party and favour another.
It is clear that GetUp follows the Soros model in
Australia. It is set up as a “non-partisan” activist group to harvest
donations that are exempt from Australia’s political donations laws. The
corporate entity, Getup Limited does not appear on the Australian Electoral
Commission’s list of “associated
entities”, even though it claims on its website that is legally obliged to
disclose donations over $11,200 to the AEC.
The group utilises the funds together with the energy of
its well-meaning activist members to target the conservative parties with stunts
and advertising campaigns whilst pushing left-wing agendas such as global
warming scaemongering, the carbon tax, same- sex marriage and the release of
illegal refugees from detention.
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