N
NewGuy
Guest
This guy is the biggest financier of socialism known to the public (as far as I know) with heavy ties to international interests with the same agenda. He financed and steered moveon.org, and is the fuel behined the Democrats.
Any one calling themselves Americans would do well to read his yuck to know who he is and what he does. HERE he criticises Bush, and tells you what is wrong with the world....and how to fix it.
Dig up all you can on the guy, it ain't pretty.
http://www.state.gov/s/p/of/proc/24381.htm
Any one calling themselves Americans would do well to read his yuck to know who he is and what he does. HERE he criticises Bush, and tells you what is wrong with the world....and how to fix it.
Dig up all you can on the guy, it ain't pretty.
http://www.state.gov/s/p/of/proc/24381.htm
America in the Global Community: Building Long-Term Security
George Soros, International Philanthropist, Financier, Author, Sage. Founder of the "Open Society Fund."
Presentation at the Secretary's Open Forum, Washington, DC
September 16, 2003
Opening Remarks and Introduction
The views and opinions expressed in this presentation are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect Administration views of policy.
MR. SOROS: Thank you. First of all, I'd like to express my appreciation for being invited to address you. "Open Forum" sounds like "open
society"--it's something that I really appreciate, and I want to support. I think that a discussion about America's role in the world is very much
needed, and I hope to contribute to that.
I recently finished my next book called The Bubble of American Supremacy. It basically has two parts. One is a constructive view, vision, for America's role, and the
other is a critique of the Bush Administration. I shall focus on first part in this discussion. I think I'll do the other part elsewhere. [Laughter.]
What we are confronted with as a result of globalization is an increased interdependence, because we now have global markets, particularly global financial markets
that make our economies increasingly interdependent. But the political arrangements that prevail currently are still based on the sovereignty of the states. And that
creates a disparity. It is very agreeable for making markets sort of less dependent on the interference from the states, but there are many--but markets are basically
designed only to assure the provision of private goods--free exchange of private goods. There are needs for global goods--public goods like maintaining peace,
protecting the environment, maintaining the market mechanism itself, which cannot be left to the markets.
Now within this global capitalist system, the United States occupies a dominant position, and I don't need to go into the details of it- of how dominant it is, both
militarily, economically, financially, and even culturally. Now this dominant position, I think--and I would argue--imposes the unique responsibility on the United States,
because we can't do anything we want. We can't impose our will on the world, as we are currently learning about, at our great expense. But actually very little can be
done in the way of international cooperation without the leadership of the United States, or at least its participation. So this is this unique responsibility that I think the
United States has to live up to.
Now the globalization and this political arrangement which is still based on sovereignty of states, creates some real difficulties, and they are basically of two kinds.
One, it's very difficult to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign states, and the second is it's very difficult to have international arrangements, international law, and
very difficult to get international institutions to function well. I think this is really the great unsolved problem of our current world order. How do you--and on what basis
do you intervene, do you interfere in the internal affairs of other countries? Because clearly given our increased interdependence, what goes on inside countries is of
vital interest to us and to all the other members of the international community. After September 11, I have the need to make this point, that Bin Laden could have a
base in Afghanistan, and so on.
So what do we do about the likes of Saddam? We can't invade every country. There has to be some mechanism for improving internal conditions in other countries.
My friend Jeffrey Sachs says there are two major causes for poverty in the world: bad location and bad government. Now there is very little you can do about bad
location, but you can do something about bad government. And that I think has to be an objective of the international community.
Now what to do about it? How to interfere? I think the first major point is to offer affirmative, positive intervention, because if you bring aid, support, reinforcement for
countries moving toward democracy, open society, that does not interfere with their sovereignty, because they can take it or leave it, and there is not enough of that
kind of intervention in the world today. And foreign aid generally as it is currently provided suffers from many deficiencies. I would just briefly mention five.