Thread: Bill Clinton touts global citizenship in wide-ranging speech

Bill Clinton touts global citizenship in wide-ranging speech at UC Berkeley
By Matt Krupnick

Posted: 02/24/2010 06:35:09 PM PST
Updated: 02/24/2010 07:22:49 PM PST


BERKELEY — Former President Bill Clinton urged UC Berkeley students Wednesday to practice "communitarianism" by helping improve the lives of impoverished people around the world.

Speaking in front of more than 2,000 students and university employees in Zellerbach Auditorium, the 42nd president talked about global citizenship in his first speech on the Berkeley campus since 2002.

Barely glancing at the notes in front of him, Clinton touched on a wide range of topics: health care, education, sanitation, energy and climate change. He spoke at length about the importance of nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, in changing the world.

"There will always be some gaps in the social fabric," Clinton said. "The traditional role of the NGO has been to fill that space."

Clinton, who arrived and left to standing ovations, was brought to the campus by the university's Blum Center for Developing Economies, founded by University of California Regent Richard Blum. Blum is married to U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and introduced Clinton on Wednesday.

The event also was a showcase for UC Berkeley's global poverty and practice minor, which has in just two years become the school's largest minor with 350 students. Most of those students took up the first few rows of the auditorium.

"It's a tremendous enthusiasm they have for social justice on a global level," said the department's chairwoman, Professor Ananya Roy. "President Clinton is a wonderful embodiment of those values."

Clinton highlighted the global topics that have been the focus of his Clinton Global Initiative, which has sponsored projects around the world to solve medical and social problems. The key to solving problems, he told students, is to answer the "how" question by finding ways to overcome obstacles.

"The future is in your hands," he said. "You have to be willing to put yourselves on the line."

The former president also told students they could help the United States by advocating for health care reforms — "We need to get it done," he said — "and by improving the higher-education system, which has fallen behind those in other countries.

In California, student fees are rising too quickly, he said, and community college students are unable to transfer to universities.

"I wouldn't have become president if I hadn't had a chance to go to college, and law school, and get a government-backed loan," Clinton said. "Never begrudge another nation's success. But we should be a leading force, and we should be a beacon of opportunity and change."



http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_14465371?source=rss

Bill Clinton began the globalist agenda, the New World Order with NAFTA... tax breaks to corporations that move to Mexico.

I actually thought he was a decent President at the time; but in retrospect I now see he was the first MAGGOT to begin our country's jump off the cliff.

Et tu, Brutus

Let me tout a little on you Bill... How's that Monica thing working for you... or the fact your wife had to hire a multi million dollar staff in her Presidential bid to cover up your affairs? Not just the Monica affair, but all the subsequent affairs?

Only for the grace of God or the same globalist network that saw promise in a silver tongue devil, would Bill Clinton have achieved a position anywhere in excess of a $4.00 per hour shoe salesman.

Originally Posted by Dianne

Bill Clinton began the globalist agenda, the New World Order with NAFTA... tax breaks to corporations that move to Mexico.

I actually thought he was a decent President at the time; but in retrospect I now see he was the first MAGGOT to begin our country's jump off the cliff.

Et tu, Brutus

Sadly, it was his predecessor George H W Bush who signed the 3-way agreement for NAFTA with Mexico and Canadain the last few months of his last year in office, lobbied its passage through the Congress before Clinton was inaugurated and told Clinton he already had enough votes to over-ride a veto. Clinton tried to veto it, but decided instead to delay it and negotiate some better environmental and labor terms and when he got those changes, he signed it into law. He should have called Bush's bluff and vetoed it straight out, and gone on the radio and TV and informed the American People about it.

They're both to blame and I'm so outraged that 2 Republican Presidents would deceive my party this way, and both from the same family, a father and son, New World Order Nuts, Open Borders Fanatics, and Globalists to the core. Clinton sold out after he was President. He initiated no free trade agreement, not one, while he was President. He also enforced US immigration law vigorously against employers but signed several small amnesties at the same time. Bush II comes in, and does nothing his first term, but roars out of the gate in his second term with FTAA, CAFTA and at least 14 other free trade agreements he's been secretly negotiating unbeknownst to us until after he won his second term.

We've been so set up. Republicans need to throw every single free trade traitor out of the US Congress and do so as quickly as possible. If a candidate says they support free trade, scratch 'em off your list of candidates that care about the present and future of the United States.

Wasn't there something Unconstitutional about when Billary was Senator and then Sec. of State and they had to lower the wage to accomodate her???
I can't think off hand where it it written about that.

Ross Perot mentioned with NAFTA there would be a huge sucking sound sucking out all the jobs.

Bill's a maggot.. For some odd reason I felt comfortable with him as President.

As I mentioned in several earlier posts; I have been a die hard Democrat since I campaigned for George McGovern back in the (don't want to admit) decade.

I have always been an anti war hippie... But now there is a war occurring in my own country.. something I have never been faced with before. A war designed by our Presidents, past and present.

When the security of my children and yours' is at stake for a Congress and White House that is totally "on the take" felons and frauds; you bet.. I am ready to put up a fight to save what I have worked for these past 42 years.

Like I said... don't get your news from CNN/FOX/MSNBC .... the government owned media outlets.. Rely on the internet, before that is taken away from us as well.

Originally Posted by Dianne

Bill's a maggot.. For some odd reason I felt comfortable with him as President.

As I mentioned in several earlier posts; I have been a die hard Democrat since I campaigned for George McGovern back in the (don't want to admit) decade.

I have always been an anti war hippie... But now there is a war occurring in my own country.. something I have never been faced with before. A war designed by our Presidents, past and present.

When the security of my children and yours' is at stake for a Congress and White House that is totally "on the take" felons and frauds; you bet.. I am ready to put up a fight to save what I have worked for these past 42 years.

Like I said... don't get your news from CNN/FOX/MSNBC .... the government owned media outlets.. Rely on the internet, before that is taken away from us as well.

Today they're all maggots. They really are. It's revolting how many of these low grade insects we've unwittingly put in power.

Bush41 kickstarted it, especially with his Outer Limits speech where he says we can see a new world order coming into vision. And when we're successful, and we will be.

That speech from the oval office still 19 years later still sends an icy chill down my spine, and my hair stands up on the back of my neck.