Lockdown urban London photos with people

Well here we go again, only this time things are a bit different.

In London, there are noticeably less people out after dark, but shopping malls and cafes are still serving take outs and grocery essentials.

This means the earlier photos from the lockdown in spring bear a significant difference to the way urban landscapes look now.

For example, there are a fair amount of labourers and cleaning staff going out and about their business as usual. Spaces look less derelict and more like Sundays before London got crowded millennium onwards.

In urban green spaces, people don’t consider being in fairly crowded conditions, a threat from covid anymore. Benches are open and cyclists have equal access to parks.

The level of interaction with larger crowds is a personal preference.

On a recent cycle with Simon around trendy Hackney Wick and guardian reader pretentious Hackney on Victoria Park, the crowds were heavily dense in many public play areas and entrances.

Away from the long queues outside to pick up coffees and take outs in places where some think it’s important to be at, our was certaintly picking a fish and chips from a good old reliable affordable local chippy just east of Victoria Park to the Wick.

No queues, no wait, no hassle. After a five minute walk, we were enjoying dinner on a bench in the park.

In my next blog I will write about meaningful ways to spend preparing for Christmas holidays and Christmas day itself.

Many get carried away with meaningless cultural traditions, missing the point. Culture can be as oppressive as American culture’s cultural non existence, when it adds no experiental reflection or mindful rest.

In a time of self reflection I couldn’t be luckier having met four days after landing back from a two month trip away early August 2019. And here we are still are today.

Back in the park, we sat watching the lowering sun introducing the mist, the temperature drop, the sensation of colours struggling to define themselves in this new reality.

I suppose this time, it is also the first time of the year’s season under covid for our urban neighbourhoods too. Well I say, we can only pay homage to this another new reality for the family albums to come.

Really, what’s there to complain about? And why not to?

Welcome to the Evidence & Policy blog: Our reflections on the field

Kat Smith and Paul Cairney This new blog helps make the insights within Evidence & Policy accessible to all. In this opening post, the current Editors reflect on what they feel are some of the key insights about the interplay between evidence and policy:
Welcome to the Evidence & Policy blog: Our reflections on the field

by athinaf
Posted on December 10, 2019December 10, 2019
Gallery

Short and sweet lessons of benevolence.

Don’t you deserve being happier for the remaining years you have on this world?

When words are said, they have the possibility to do two things; to destroy or to create.

We do our best to avoid arguments, yet watch out those people who will do anything to avoid confrontation. I’m not going to rub butter on your buttcheeks if we have to go there. You know them, these are people pleasers, the most dishonest, manipulative, sneaky little fuck faces on the face of the earth. (quoted from anonymous)

There’s very little you are in control of. Let go of control.

Someone who was unhappy in their relationship only a couple of months ago, shut it down and a few weeks later met someone new, and now live together. Clear love and intentions prevail.

Be careful who you try to rescue; you may be interrupting their karma.

Burn more in group activities so you don’t burn your coins.

Watch out for people who don’t know when to shut their mouth. Stay silent when you don’t have anything to give, don’t try to distract or disrupt the flow of things as they are.

Not everyone wants to read your shit. Ultimately “None of us wants to hear your self-centered, ego-driven, unrefined demands for attention. Why should we? It’s boring. There’s nothing in it for us.” (quoted too)

Get your spirit and your ego working in harmony. Do you really think your ego is a bad thing for your spirit?

Nurture the grass you stand on, the grass often appears greener over the fence. Jumping fences doesn’t work.

People with several intimate relationships carry themselves differently. They know how to treat others and think themselves in relation to them. They ask specific questions that most people don’t even think of asking themselves.

Accept not all people are capable of love, surround yourself with those who are, and don’t necessarily get it always right (if there is such thing as getting it right all the time).

People who love themselves are authentic, they know who they really are and they stay true to themselves. They get honest about what they want and do not want. They are not afraid to say no to something they don’t want to do. They don’t stay stuck in situations that they don’t want to be in. They know what they really want and they make constant shifts and changes from a place of love to follow their dreams and live their best life as their truest self. (quoted too)

Everything has to work in perfect harmony to get from point A to point B. You control about 5% of that process.

Hold onto your reality.

The history presented, a narrative of Oregonian development

Just visited the Oregon Historical Society, where the disappointment turned into contempt and anger.

A state with around 200 years of history.

The first thing that I noticed is how everything was presented as a story of ‘doing’ instead of a series of histories emerging in equal importance on the narrative of what is new America.

The natives, the African Americans, the Asians presented as sharing the same space in an assumptive scenario that puts them in the otherness of America’s existence.

No narrative of their histories, just the acknowledgment they exist.

The pioneers who made this land in the forefront. The dislocations of indigenous people to securitize vast areas of land. The securitization agenda in its earliest form.

Securitise from what? This word serves the interests of those who are pursuing the agenda without equitable considerations for those marginalized in the process.

A history of half-hearted stories, incomplete narratives, equalization said but not existing in any form or story in real life.

The marketization of ideas, becoming ideas in themselves and accepted as currency fueling development, without any fundamental structure for emerging cooperation.

Forcibly changing a world that doesn’t want to change and presenting it as de facto.

I can dig a thousand words to describe the disappointment in American history. Mostly, because whoever took the lead in making this the common reality, had not thought through all they lost in the process of focusing on the small detail of the multiplicity the size of land has offered them.

Agrarian change for who, and to feed who?

The land of the amble, producing less for less.

The establishment of fake stories as a level of understanding of what might have been better imaginable.

Curatorial proposal

From the Contemporary Art in the Global (MSc School of Oriental and African Studies)

WE.LIVE.INDARKTIMES

Artists: Derek Walcott, Mark Rothko, Frank Bowling, Atsuho Tanaka, Sammi Baloji

The project visits the theme of darkness as it is approached by the selected artists through painting, poetry, installation art and photography. Dark times have for centuries been associated with the Dark Ages, the victorian times, the plague, III Reich, and the Crusades. Is darkness created in the name of God to entice a journey in reflection?
Darkness in this exhibition will be visited through the artists’ own periods and reflections of darkness. Starting with the more recent Baloji’s photographs have a strong post-environmental sentiment, yet all artists reflect on humanity’s over-consuming framework of aimless societal misappropriations maintained by irrelevance.
The artworks date from post-war period, aligned with the more recent works of Baloji’s diptych, for the provision of a bridging point on perpetual concerns about the loss of communities, citizenship and human rights that have been exaggerated, yet feel less visual, for the absence of blood.
The art on show reflects as much today, as they did at the time of making, that we are entering an autumn of social conscience exasperated by the informality and misappropriation of technology coercing the psyches onto a temporal loss and inaction.
Yet there must be resistance. Art is also a mirror up to the society, ourselves, in hope each individual visiting this exhibition will reflect a little and make a small step of resistance that translates into a big change.
When we don’t speak, we maintain darkness. Northwest indigenous communities have talked of ‘silence’ as a skill. ‘Silence’ used in diplomacy can present a show of arrogance or absence as in demonstration against what I’d said. Against that theory, words presented hide the things that happen in silence, including their potential to tell a different story.
Bringing artworks made by Rothko, Bowling, Tanaka, Walcott, and Baloji together distinctively plays to the audience responses, being of equal therapeutic importance as they were to the artists at the time of making. The five artworks have incredible ‘enlightening’ power’, offering a quiet introspective space for soul searching.
We would like visitors to individual notice which one artwork they are drawn to on their individual experiential pattern route, free from want and free from fear.

ARTWORK SELECTION

Rothko. M, ‘Orange and Yellow’, 1956:

Rothko “Silence is so accurate.”
Yellow and orange make green; green the colour signifying life, renewal, growth, fertility, harmony, nature, freshness, energy, and safety. Rothko never wanted association with any art movement however he was pigeonholed as an abstract expressionist. The simplicity of Orange and Yellow cannot go without noting the technical challenge of keeping the colours separate so they don’t produce green. Is the artist pointing out that we are in the process of exploring our spirituality, and have not reached a harmonious existence yet?
A quest for ascension, Orange and Yellow has a ritualistic quality to the universe framed within the shuttle golden Buddhist orange outline. His work has often been described for its meditative qualities whilst remaining large, and non representational.
Barney Newman, the man inspired title of Frank Bowling’s work in the exhibition, saw himself as a political artist who has also shown his work outside Rothko’s Chapel in Houston, Texas.

Bowling. F, ‘Who’s afraid of Barney Newman’, 1968

The painting is another major African flag colour representation Bowling is known for. Bowling is of Guyanese descent, a descendant of a slave, still surrounded by racism and race assumptions with participation in the First World Festival of Negro Arts, whilst being the first black artist elected in the Royal Academy of Arts with the artist recently receiving an OBE, continuing the colonial mode of tradition. His work was also shown at Afro Modern exhibition at Tate Liverpool in 2010’s, for significance the port of Liverpool having hosted the largest number of slave trade shipments in England.
The question is does Bowling rebel or commercialise further the idea of Africa in a place of exoticism and colonial frames? ‘Who’s afraid of Barney Newman’ was made in 1968, placed two years after the Guyanese independence from the British. Was Bowling raising awareness at a time when slave trade destinations were gaining independence from colonial rule?

Tanaka, A. ‘Electric dress’ 1956

Atsuko Tanaka had one said “I wanted to shatter stable beauty with my work,” highlighting how domestic objects are but beautiful and disruptive from the lack of presence, yet plethora of being.
Tanaka’s silence covered by the bulbs in the original artwork, from a position of an emerging arts movement, could have represented silence as an imposition for a projection of power. In international relations frameworks, silence is mostly imposed by psychological violence, affecting the corporal of the most vulnerable, women, people of colour and those not integrated in the functionality of post Colonialism, and neoliberalism in the global and constitute political discourses and practice. (Dingli, Bhambra and Shilliam, 2009)

Walcott, D. ‘Love after Love’, 1948–1984

Undoubtedly there is a pause in Walcott’s ‘Love after Love’ poem. Who inspired the poet to write this? Is it advice, or as I have always read this, as a love poem to oneself?
Derek Walcott passed away two years ago and his sea breeze of poetry is a timeless reminder to leave the insecurities we all carry, behind, and just be.
The meditative quality in the thought of spending time with oneself is not unlike Rothko’s iconographical ‘Orange and Yellow’.
Does it really matter who’s heart is broken or who broke whose heart? If anything, the world would become a better place if each and everyone reflected on the poem a little every day. After all, through love there’s light and the light lost in things that don’t work, is light lost.

Baloji, S. ‘Kumbuka’, 2003

Stylistically ethnographical, the photographer has removed the orientalism and exoticism of indigenous communities, removed the smiles and colours and yellow grey toned the landscape, to represent Congolese as the Congolese see themselves. In this diptych he has interestingly kept women seperate to men. He plays with the Primitivist Theory of the artist as an ethnographer, whilst placing it in a contemporary context.
Artwork Labels

Image from eu.art.com
Rothko’s goal was “the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea, and between the idea and the observer.” Rothko was known to suffer depression, reflected by the frame as a limit to happiness. Rothko was Latvian and Russian who went to primary and high school in Portland, Oregon – the ‘weird’ US city because of its rebel inquisitive population. His work invites the viewer to explore ‘metaphysical realities of their own consciousness’. The red a reflection emotional forces fighting nature a sea of blood at sunset, framed in limitation, stopping time, a photograph. The mesmerising quality of this work, is attracting attention even for non believers. The quality of light and Rothko’s interest in creating light reflects his religious iconographic approach to his frames.

Image from https://www.wikiart.org/en/frank-bowling/who-s-afraid-of-barney-newman-1968
Bowling has expressed his frustration in an interview with Laura Barnett for the Guardian: “It seemed that everyone was expecting me to paint some kind of protest art out of postcolonial discussion. For a while I fell for it.”
The Rastafarian flag of green yellow and orange, signifying the displaced africans living in exile as a result of the slave trade. Unlike Rothko’s clearly defined frames, Bowling’s use of colours is blending into one, another around the edges and without affecting or altering the core of the three colours. Could the merging of colours also point to different ethnicities merging into one in the Caribbean and South America, as a result of colonial rule. Think of the children of Chinese, Indian, Syrian and Spanish immigrants on post-colonial lands, the ‘dougla’, the ‘koolie’, the ‘red skin spanish’.
Or did he attempt to define frayed around the edges, maybe from wear and tear?
The impact of slavery remains as unaddressed as it was in 1968 as it is today. Microaggressions are all apparent. The artist, a slave descendant, opposed the idea of representing Caribbean art.

Image from youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUV-v3xI7Lw
Atsuho Tanaka’s electric dress, still lighting gallery spaces and discussions across the world, even after the artist’s death, in a timeless manner, originally the bulbs laid to cover her body, now exhibited without it.
In the West, a Christmas tree is something beautiful, pretty and a tacky representation of a happy time.
Tanaka was one of the more influential Gutai art movement artists, believed by many to deserve the leadership position within the rebellious post-war Japanese artist group, a but hindered from it due to her being a woman.
Tanaka’s work is symbolic to false light, untruth, prettiness by misrepresentation, a wonderful objectification of many beliefs changing and evolving in the years the work was created.
When the artist wore the artwork, around 200 light bulbs flickered every two and half minutes, like a pulsating body, inviting the viewer to view it a ‘living’ being without consideration of the being inside. Gutai translates as ‘concreteness’ born from a society that advocated for the loss of individualism.

Image from https://www.christystich.com/blog/2016/2/4/my-most-treasured-poem
Derek Walcott passed away less than two years ago, a Caribbean child of a slave, lived most of his life in Trinidad and St Lucia, and was awarded with the Nobel Prize in 1990’s.
Walcott’s poem is a reminder of being one with ourselves, salvaging ourselves with acts of faith ‘Give wine. Give Bread’ playacting Jesus proclamation of memory in the act of sharing love towards a progression towards oneself to a place where our reflection in the mirror doesn’t feel ugly or drained anymore, but celebratory.
Walcott’s exploration of European and African cultural adaptations within the Caribbean, and the multiculturality of the West Indies is reflected throughout his work. Walcott’s poem has a nostalgia about the mistake of trying to fit in other people’s shoes, and when ‘The time will come’ as in the time we will be ready or will be forced upon us to reflect in being at peace with oneself reminding us it is entirely achievable as ‘Sit. Feast on your life.’ is one of the few things in life left we have entire freedom to do on our own.

Images from #sammybaloji instagram page
Sammy Baloji is a Democratic Republic of Congo born photographer working internationally, with photographs represented in a wide range high profile african art fairs and collective exhibitions.
Born in a country known for the inherent political fragility, threat to human life, animal habitat and near extinction of species. His work is very much representing a colour code for how DRC is seen abroad and how it feels to Congolese people from within the country.
Baloji having participated in Venice Bienalle in an exhibition on Belgium’s colonial rule, he notes sharing and learning about a specific time period “To talk about our reality, and also to dream.”

Checklist:

Mark Rothko, (b. 1903, Daugavpils, Latvia), Orange and Yellow, 1956, 231.1 x 180.3 cm, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, US
Frank Bowling, (b. 1934 , Bartica, Guyana), Who’s Afraid of Barney Newman, 1968, acrylic paint on canvas, 236.4 x 129.5 cm, Tate
Atsuho Tanaka, (b. 1932, Osaka, Osaka Prefecture, Japan), Electric Dress, 1956, 165 X 80 X 80 cm, courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo
Derek Walcott (b. 1930, Castries, Saint Lucia), Love After Love, Collected Poems, 1948–1984
Sammy Baloji (b.1978, Lumumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo), Kumbuka!, 2006, Photo collage, various venues)

Bibliography:

Foster, H., Marcus, G. and Myers, F. (1995). The Traffic in Culture. California: University of California Press, pp.302-309.
Bishop, C. (2006). The Social Turn; Collaboration and its Discontents. Artforum International.
Project, S., Bourn, J. and Bourn, J. (2019). Meaning of The Color Green |. [online] Bourn Creative. Available at: https://www.bourncreative.com/meaning-of-the-color-green/ [Accessed 9 Jan. 2019].
New.diaspora-artists.net. (2019). Diaspora-artists: View details. [online] Available at: http://new.diaspora-artists.net/display_item.php?id=928&table=artefacts [Accessed 9 Jan. 2019].
En.m.wikipedia.org. (2019). Frank Bowling. [online] Available at: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Bowling [Accessed 9 Jan. 2019].
Artnet.com. (2019). Atsuko Tanaka | artnet. [online] Available at: http://www.artnet.com/artists/atsuko-tanaka/ [Accessed 9 Jan. 2019].
Dingli, S. (2015). We need to talk about silence: Re-examining silence in International Relations theory. European Journal of International Relations, 21(4), pp.721-742.
Haus Der Kunst. (2019). Electric Dress. [online] Available at: https://postwar.hausderkunst.de/en/artworks-artists/artworks/electric-dress [Accessed 9 Jan. 2019].
Liverpoolmuseums.org.uk. (2019). Ports of the Transatlantic slave trade – International Slavery Museum, Liverpool museums. [online] Available at: http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ism/resources/slave_trade_ports.aspx [Accessed 9 Jan. 2019].
visibleproject. (2019). Kumbuka!. [online] Available at: https://www.visibleproject.org/blog/project/kumbuka/ [Accessed 9 Jan. 2019].
Barcio, P. (2018). Achieving Luminescence – Mark Rothko’s Orange and Yellow. [online] IdeelArt.com. Available at: https://www.ideelart.com/magazine/mark-rothko-orange-and-yellow [Accessed 9 Jan. 2019].

Robert Bosch Stiftung Academy Fellowships (Russia and Eurasia) opportunity

The Queen Elizabeth II Academy for Leadership in International Affairs is now inviting applications for Robert Bosch Stiftung Academy Fellowships (Russia and Eurasia). The fellowships are designed for future thought leaders from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine. They will run from September 2019 to July 2020.

The Academy is seeking candidates who would like to contribute to Chatham House’s work on the promise and challenge of global governance in the 21st century.

The Fellowships have three main elements:

Work on a personal research project (with the aim of producing a peer-reviewed publication)
Participation in the Academy’s leadership programme and activities
Opportunity to contribute to the wider work of the Russia and Eurasia Programme

Each candidate’s research proposal should consider how their country or region has been affected – positively or negatively – by aspects of global governance.

For more information visit the Academy webpages.

The application window closes on 29 April 2019 at 9:00am UK time.

Please forward this email to anyone you believe may be a suitable candidate.

The Fellowship is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Robert Bosch Stiftung.

Contact:
Rachel Taylor
Academy Coordinator
academy@chathamhouse.org

Post Graduate funding

Open Society Foundation’s Civil Society Leadership Awards for postgrad studies open for applications now https://osf.to/1eHqBOh via @opensociety Check the list of eligible countries.

SEE FULL DESCRIPTION BELOW

The Civil Society Leadership Awards (CSLA) provide fully-funded scholarships for master’s degree study to individuals who clearly demonstrate academic and professional excellence and a deep commitment to leading positive social change in their communities.

Eligibility Criteria

Applicants must meet all of the following criteria:

be a citizen of an eligible country;
demonstrate maturity, flexibility, and civil society leadership potential
have an earned bachelor’s degree as of May 15, 2019 with an excellent academic record;
demonstrate professional experience related to your chosen field of study;
demonstrate proficiency in the language of instruction (English, German or French) at a level required for admission by host universities;
be able to participate in an intensive pre-academic summer school in July or August 2020 and start their degree program in August or September 2020;
be able to receive and maintain a visa or study permit as required by the host country; and
demonstrate a clear commitment to their home country or region to strengthen open society development.

The awards are available to citizens of the following countries:

Afghanistan
Azerbaijan
Belarus
Cambodia
Democratic Republic of Congo
Egypt
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Ethiopia
Laos
Libya
Myanmar/Burma
Republic of Congo
South Sudan
Sudan
Syria
Tajikistan
Turkmenistan
Uzbekistan

Awards are available for study in the following areas:

Communications, Journalism & Media
Culture, History & Society
Development Studies
Economics
Education Management & Leadership
Environment & Natural Resource Management
Gender Studies
Human Rights
Law (including Human Rights law)
Politics & International Studies
Public Health Policy & Health Management
Public Administration
Public Policy
Social Policy
Social Work

The Open Society Foundations and Scholarship Programs are committed to equal opportunity, and exercise that policy in relation to all admissions processes. CSLA does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, color, sex, religion, sexual orientation, or disability.

Purpose and Priorities

Competition for the Civil Society Leadership Awards is open and merit-based. Selection is based on an applicant’s fit with the program’s objectives as well as the graduate admissions criteria of the participating universities. Academic excellence, professional aptitude, leadership potential in the field of specialization, proven commitment to open society values, and appropriate language proficiency are all important factors in evaluation.

All eligible applicants will be reviewed by an international selection committee. The proposed field of study should be logical for the goals expressed, and the application itself should be well-organized and complete. Compelling candidates will be interviewed by a selection committee comprised of university representatives, CSLA staff, and partner organization representatives, such as the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

Guidelines

Selection and Notification Cycle

Applications must be submitted by midnight, May 15, 2019, Eastern Daylight Time.
Uncompetitive and/or ineligible applicants will be notified in late August.
Applicants who pass external review become semi-finalists and will be invited to an interview to be scheduled in late September or October.
Semi-finalists are required to secure two (2) letters of recommendation which must be submitted directly to CSLA by referees by October 1, 2019.
Semi-finalists will be required to take an official language test by the end of October 2019; all candidates invited to an interview are entitled to one (1) language test, arranged and paid for by CSLA.
Final selection will be held in November; results will be sent via email by January 2020.
Successful semi-finalists are now CSLA finalists, and CSLA staff will initiate their host university placement process.
The CSLA university placement process takes time; CSLA will strive to confirm placements for finalists by late April 2020.
Once placement is secured, CSLA finalists will be notified that they are now CSLA grantees, and will be asked to sign and return a formal grant document before any further actions can be taken.

Interested applicants must complete an online or paper CSLA application and submit along with supporting documentation to be considered for CSLA support.

Online Application

All candidates are strongly encouraged to apply online if possible using the Open Society Foundations grant portal, an online platform. To apply online, please register on the portal and then follow instructions.

Paper Application

Paper applications may be accessed in the Download Files section of this page. Please download the application form before completing or printing, and review the accompanying materials before submitting your application.

If you are applying in French, you must download and email or mail in an application form. Please consult How to Apply for further information.

If you have further questions, please consult the Frequently Asked Questions.

All application materials in French will be available on this page from March 21, 2019.

https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/grants/civil-society-leadership-award

by athinaf
Posted on November 18, 2018November 18, 2018
Gallery

Facebook smearing the Open Society Foundations

Friday evening arrived with this in my inbox. I will likely be revisiting tactics used by Facebook to test our patience further. The next question is how to stop Zuckerberg from exerting so much uncontrolled energy into current affairs.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Patrick Gaspard <contact@opensocietyfoundations.org>
Date: 16 Nov 2018 11:48 am
Subject: Our Response to Facebook’s Smear Tactics
To:
Cc:

Dear friends,

Earlier this week, in response to a New York Times storydetailing how Facebook had used a PR firm to smear the Open Society Foundations and George Soros, I sent a letter to Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg, which you can read below.

She followed up with a phone call yesterday and I appreciated the chance to speak with her and tell her that we need a thorough and independent inquiry on Facebook’s lobbying and PR work, and that the results should be made public within three months.

Our hope is to turn this disappointing moment into an opportunity for debate about how Facebook can be used to push out fake news and hate and the threat disinformation campaigns pose to democracy more broadly.

At this time of upheaval, uncertainty, and fear, it is imperative that the stewards of the world’s most powerful information platform act responsibly. We’re honored to stand with our grantees, partners, and friends—and we’re dedicated to making sure that the kind of destructive behavior outlined by the New York Times does not go unaddressed.

Sincerely,

Patrick Gaspard
President
Open Society Foundations

11/14/18

Sheryl Sandberg
Chief Operating Officer
Facebook
1 Hacker Way
Menlo Park, CA 94025

Dear Ms. Sandberg:

I was shocked to learn from the New York Times that you and your colleagues at Facebook hired a Republican opposition research firm to stir up animus toward George Soros.

As you know, there is a concerted right-wing effort the world over to demonize Mr. Soros and his foundations, which I lead—an effort which has contributed to death threats and the delivery of a pipe bomb to Mr. Soros’s home. You are no doubt also aware that much of this hateful and blatantly false and anti-Semitic information is spread via Facebook.

The notion that your company, at your direction, actively engaged in the same behavior to try to discredit people exercising their First Amendment rights to protest Facebook’s role in disseminating vile propaganda is frankly astonishing to me.

It’s been disappointing to see how you have failed to monitor hate and misinformation on Facebook’s platform. To now learn that you are active in promoting these distortions is beyond the pale.

These efforts appear to have been part of a deliberate strategy to distract from the very real accountability problems your company continues to grapple with. This is reprehensible, and an offense to the core values Open Society seeks to advance. But at bottom, this is not about George Soros or the foundations. Your methods threaten the very values underpinning our democracy.

I would appreciate the opportunity to discuss this matter with you in person, and to hear what steps you might take to help remediate the damage done by this deeply misguided—and dangerous—effort carried out at Facebook’s behest.

Sincerely,

Patrick Gaspard
President
Open Society Foundations