The right-wing in America likes to demonize George Soros, calling him a “commie, socialist and climate fraud” (no clear how one can be a communist and a socialist, but . . . ), is the left’s equivalent of the Koch Brothers, the Bradleys, the Sciafe’s, the Olins, i.e., the big donors to right-wing think tanks and media.
Soros indeed supports many liberal organizations because he is a liberal. He has also been one of the world’s biggest private donors to efforts to end Russian communism, end the USSR and help former communist nations creat open democratic governments. Activities, I must admit, easily confused with being an actual communist. To be fair, here’s a link to a Free Republic blog that lists where the money goes (no dollar amounts – that’s hard); they only list American organizations.
Big time funders, right and left, have that in common – they are big time donors. There’s a very important distinction between Soros and the Kochs – motive is discernibly different. I cannot identify how any of George Soros’ donations promote, protect, or add to, his personal wealth. Something that absolutely cannot be said about the Kochs. I can’t find, even in Free Republic’s incomplete Soros list, any evidence of self-interest.
Between 1979 and 2011, Soros gave away over $8 billion to human rights, public health, and education causes. He played a significant role in the peaceful transition from communism to capitalism in Hungary (1984–89),[7] and provided Europe’s largest-ever higher education endowment to Central European University in Budapest.[9] Soros is also the chairman of the Open Society Institute.
Soros seems to be putting hiis money behind voting rights, free speech (the real kind), democracy, human rights, open societies, . . . where’s the connection to a friendlier environment for him to increase his wealth?
You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or democracy. But you cannot have both.
Whatever Works 
Yeah, Soros is also the one who forced England out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) by heavily shorting the UK Pound on the forex market because he didn’t like how it was affecting the newly reunified Germany.
He’s got an agenda and it doesn’t seem to be in line with America’s interests, though I have to say that we don’t seem to be his primary theater of operations.
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I won’t judge how Soros made his money. I’m more intereseted in how he spends it. He’s European by birth, lived WWII as a Jew and is deeply committed to human rights and freedom. Whatever you think about him jonolan, my point is I can find nothing in his philanthropic life that is designed to enrich himself.
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In that limited, materialistic context I agree with you. He seems more interested in power than in increasing his already gargantuan wealth.
Then again, I’m the sort to be much more worried about men with causes and money than about men with greed and money.
What he did to England is an example of why I feel that way. It wasn’t, from all reports, about Soros wanting more money. It was about him being willing to tank one nation’s economy and currency to protect another nation’s and the dream of a unified Europe.
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I just plucked this comment out of WP’s spam folder. Wonder what that happened?
Indeed his role in the devaluation was pretty cold. It feels like he did it just to feel the power of his power. Don’t think i would like the man. But he’s not picking my pocket or polluting my water or enriching those who devalue my life.
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It happened because the people at WordPress don’t care for me or my blog and have marked just about all my posts as spam. I’ve seen this with other Conservative and Christian bloggers as well, though not in large enough numbers to actually state as fact that WordPress has begun censoring based upon ideology.
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I subscribe to your blog and posts drop into my mailbox all the time. Of course, I can’t say that they all do, but I never saw any interrruption in announcments from ‘Reflections’. Just thought it odd that that particular comment – how benign can a comment be! – was spammed.
WP Censoring Christian / convservative? Christian blogs are huge on WP. Really?
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How does Jonolan feel about the way China is artificially propping up its currency?
You have to wonder just how much wealth some of the 1% feels they have to amass, don’t you?!
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Yes one does marylee! Another point on the subject is that amongst these three mega-rich,both Gates and Buffet will leave a miniumum to each of their kids and the rest goes to ‘good works’. Wonder what the Kochs’ estate planning looks like?
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How do I feel about it? I consider it an act of war, actually and worthy of a direct military response designed to cripple China’s economy and ability to be a threat.
Blowing the series of dams leading down to Three Gorges would be my preferred response. The flood would take out Three Gorges as well, destroy the bulk of China’s farmlands, wipe out several commercial / industrial cities and cripple all of China’s energy production.
The best part is that they couldn’t even respond because they’d need our mercy just to feed themselves for the next generation.
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And that would assure us a rosy future, wouldn’t it. Just rosy. Killing is always best. Most efficient. Reallly delivers the old message. Especially the kids – they’ll really stand up and take notice when we kill the kids.And nothin’ kills the kids faster than a crippled country that can’t feed them.
And those generations down the road – the next billion Chinese? They won’t be holding any grudges or anything. So we’re cool.
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What makes you think that they’d ever again reach a billion people, Moe? Do you really think the rest of the world would let them do so?
Break China once and it won’t regrow into what it is now. Resources and general sentiment won’t allow for that and may well in the next couple of generations solve the problem “naturally” even without our intervention.
But yes, Moe. It delivers the old message, Don’t Tread On Me, in clear and certain terms.
And hey, we’d get the added benefit of destroying Wal-Mart and the entire hyperconsumerism based upon cheap, quasi-slave-labor produced, Chinese import and cut down on all those nasty greenhouse gasses China is spewing as well…
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You sir, insist on presenting complex arguents which is most annoying, as I prefer to save my “precious mind” from any hard lifting. So nice try, but not good enough jonolan.
‘Breaking’ a nation for whatever reason would surely make others afraid of you – if that helps you sleep at night, so be it. Countries used to go to war over trade policies but it got pretty messy and lots of people died and it cost a lot of money – although it did make the monarchs who sent out the armies quite wealthy. As well as the plutocrats who attended their every utterance.
It was not, however, very good for other living things. ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ is for history or perhaps an apocyliptic future. In the current world, the modern world, it sounds to me like a cartoon bubble.
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And now you see why the modern world is in such poor straits. We balk at doing what is necessary when those actions are uncomfortable or “dirty” in that they don’t present a win-win or, at least, don’t cost us much that we value.
We take half measures and wonder why we never succeed and why things never get better. Worse even, we end up fighting the same wars again and again, spreading the misery out across the generations.
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Pingback: British Operative Billionaire And Convicted Felon George Soros: Warns Sovereign American Citizens, Against Resisting The British Monarchy’s International Banking System – Nicknamed “Open Society”. « Political Vel Craft
“not clear how one can be a communist and a socialist, but . . . )”
Because communism is a form of socialism? (I don’t think Soros is either, by the way.)
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Hello gcallah, welcome. You must have gone a-googlin’ to come accross this two plus year old message! But hey, glad it got you here.
I don’t equate communism and socialism, even as a matter of degrees. After all, our government structure includes many socialistic elements that aren’t likely to lead to communism.
I’d call socialism is an economic practice that co-exists with democracy in free societies. Look at the Scandanavian countries – very socialist – and so many European countries that practice a form of socialism, while communism is an economic system so extreme that it has only ever survived under dictators.
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