Bartholomew's Notes

The gang’s all here for this one; WND‘s Chelsea Schilling reports:

A former senior Pentagon official told radio talk-show host Glenn Beck where to find the shocking truth about billionaire George Soros’ influence on President Obama’s decision to deploy U.S. troops to Uganda – as he directed Beck’s listeners to WND.

On the March 9 GBTV show, retired Gen. Jerry Boykin, the former U.S. deputy under secretary of defense for intelligence – who has played a part in nearly every recent major U.S. military operation in the last four decades – said of WND’s Aaron Klein.

“He shows that there’s a more sinister side to this. And that is a George Soros connection to the whole influence on the administration of deploying U.S. military forces in there, certainly under the guise of going after Joseph Kony [leader of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army accused of major human rights atrocities], but I think there is some very good information in that article that shows there is a Soros connection to this whole thing. And, fundamentally, it’s about oil.”

Although a link to Beck’s programme is included, Schilling is discrete about the reason why Boykin and Beck were discussing Uganda: Beck was worried about the viral Kony 2012 video, and he suggested that it had perhaps been funded by Soros or created by “the White House”; Boykin implicitly concurred.

Alas, however, the two pundits appear to have been the last two individuals left on the planet to remain unaware that the video was of course created by Invisible Children, a group which has strong associations with conservative evangelical organisations. Right Wing Watch and Bruce Wilson have recently looked into these links, which include an appearance by Jason Russell at Liberty University last November; Boykin visited Liberty in the same month.

WND has a particular reason to downplay criticisms of Kony 2012, despite the site’s love of conspiracy theories; in 2010 Joseph Farah announced

the appointment of Megan Byrd, a young veteran wordsmith from Tennessee, as the new editor of WND Books, the subsidiary company that claims the highest percentage of best-sellers among all publishers in America.

Byrd comes to WND from a position as writer, editor and manuscript consultant with HighWire Ink… Prior to that, she served as staff writer and editor for Invisible Children, a media-driven, international nonprofit.

For more on this blog about Boykin, see here; for Beck, see here; and for Klein, see here. Klein’s 2011 article about Soros and Uganda is briefly discussed by Terry Krepel of ConWebWatch here.

UPDATE: Fark introduces the Boykin-Beck conflab thus:

One of the dumbest discussions you will ever witness: Glenn Beck and Jerry Boykin discuss how “Kony 2012” is a Soros-backed effort that will turn Kony into a Che Guevara-like figure

UPDATE 2: WND has now jumped on the bandwagon, with a piece from Molotov Mitchell on “Kony 2012: Soros’ Hipster War“.

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