<\/p>\n
Clinton’s worldview: part two
By Lara Wozniak 14 September 2005 <\/p>\n
The second part of former US President Clinton’s keynote address to CLSA’s Investor Forum in Hong Kong this Monday<\/p>\n
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[Excerpt]<\/p>\n
From president to president, do you pass along a list of secrets –
\nyou know like where’s Jimmy Hoffa? What really happened at Roswell?
\nWithout giving away any state secrets, is there something that we can
\nall look forward to in the future to read about that you know that we
\ndon’t know that will make reading the National Enquirer required
\nreading?<\/p>\n
(Laughing and blushing) Well I don’t know if you all heard this,
\nbut, there was actually, when I was president in my second term, there
\nwas an anniversary observance of Roswell. Remember that? People came to
\nRoswell, New Mexico from all over the world. And there was also a site
\nin Nevada where people were convinced that the government had buried a
\nUFO and perhaps an alien deep underground because we wouldn’t allow
\nanybody to go there. And uhm\u2026 I can say now, ’cause it’s now been
\nreleased into the public domain. I had so many people in my own
\nadministration that were convinced that Roswell was a fraud but this
\nplace in Nevada was really serious, that there was an alien artefact
\nthere. So I actually sent somebody there to figure it out. And it was
\nactually just a secret defence installation, alas, doing boring work
\nthat we didn’t want anybody to else see.<\/p>\n
So let me give you a serious thing, though. In 2000, I was able to
\nparticipate with Tony Blair and representatives of the French, German
\nand Japanese and Canadian governments in announcing that we had
\nsucceeded in sequencing the human genome. Perhaps some of you have
\ninvestments in all these bio-development companies and now you know
\nthat we cloned Dolly the sheep and apparently they may have cloned a
\ndog. And my own view is that assuming we don’t do something stupid like
\nburn ourselves up with the global warming or blow ourselves up with a
\nmilitary conflict that we could have just as easily avoid, I think a
\nlot of these bio-technology issues will be the dominant sort of
\nintellectual and ethical challenges of the lives of those of you who
\nare 10, 20, 30 years younger than I am.<\/p>\n
Because I think that we are going to be able to save peoples’ lives
\nthat, you know, in my generation couldn’t be saved. And we are going to
\ncome up against the limits of our own mortality in a way we never could
\nbefore. And a lot of the things that happen – good and bad – will be
\nstranger than anything ever written in science fiction. But I don’t
\nknow the answers, which is one reason I would like to live to be 100
\njust to see what happens. (Laughter)<\/p>\n
So that means there’s a list? Or no list? (More laughter – that drowns out his question.)<\/p>\n
What? What did you say? I don’t know what you said, but you should
\nhave said, ‘There’s absolutely no risk of that. Given my misspent
\nyouth, I’m lucky to be here now.’<\/p>\n
What I did say was, is there really no list? Or is there a list?<\/p>\n
If there is one, I don’t know it. The Roswell thing, I think, really
\nwas an illusion. I don’t think it happened. I mean I think there are
\nrational explanations and I did attempt to find out if there were any
\nsecret government documents that revealed things. If there were, they
\nwere concealed from me too. And if there were, well I wouldn’t be the
\nfirst American president that underlings have lied to, or that career
\nbureaucrats have waited out. But there may be some career person
\nsitting around somewhere, hiding these dark secrets, even from elected
\npresidents. But if so, they successfully eluded me\u2026and I’m almost
\nembarrassed to tell you I did (chuckling) try to find out.<\/p>\n
(Laughter and applause.)<\/p>\n
I do believe, by the way – one more flaky thing – you can also be
\nflaky when you’re out of office. I believe that now that we know that
\nthere are not hundreds, not millions but billions of other solar
\nsystems out there, thanks to the Hubble telescope and what we know
\nabout black holes of the universe, and all of that, the dimensions of
\nphysics are such that I would be quite surprised if in the lifetimes of
\npeople that are no older than 30 years old, we don’t discover some form
\nof life in another universe.<\/p>\n
It’s pretty clear that there was something approaching elemental
\nlife on Mars at one time in the past, based on what we discovered
\nthere. So I say that, only to say this: I hope all of you, wherever you
\nlive, will continue to support space exploration, whether manned or
\nunmanned, it’s not so important, but that we keep doing it. And I’m
\nafraid that there will be a waning interest in it, in the future. I
\nthink that’s a great mistake. I think we should continue to explore the
\nboundaries of our existence, both into the earth and beyond the skies.<\/p>\n
When I was president we discovered in the bottom of the Amazon
\nRiver, (we were just a small part of this, but we discovered) two
\npreviously undiscovered forms of marine life so deep in the Amazon that
\nthey had never been found, in all the efforts of marine biologists.<\/p>\n
So I think that there are a lot of interesting discoveries –
\nbiological, on earth and other discoveries in the heavens that those of
\nyou who are younger will get to see unfold. You’ll have all kinds of
\nproblems with them, but on balance it’ll be a plus. And it’ll make life
\nmuch more interesting.<\/p>\n