The Future of Europe: An Interview with George Soros

Staying with physics analogies, this book is like a photon. It is illuminating. Proper absorption leads to a higher state and the world will look a bit darker afterwards.

you must have missed the news. because that is exactly the rhetoric the eu politicians keep using. [1] "if the euro fails there will be war". for the nitpickers amongst you with the choice of the mirror was the quickest google link. sarkozy has used the same rhetoric. i've watched merkel say that in the bundestag. if you know german watch that instead.

edit 2: can't find the whole speech, but here's parts of it [2]

a lot of greeks have seen the europe as the fourth german reich. so far any attempt at self determination of the population has had threats of economic sanctions in return. you may call that whatever you like, but if you risk starving your population, that's economic warfare.

> criticised from inside and outside by the likes of Soros, who will never understand that finance is a tool and not an end. I hope Merkel and other Eurocrats will firmly continue to not listen to his "well-intentioned free advices".

don't worry. merkel and the other eurocrats have proven to be immune to any kind of criticism or facts. merkels favorite answer to any of that sort is:

"the euro is alternative less".

to me the whole euro is a smart backdoor from the us. everything that the european population has protested against in the past is now getting written into law through laws that you can't even read (yeah, there's actually some opinions that they share). well you can, but usually either after the fact or because someone leaked the draft to the public.

my prediction is that for another 10-20 maybe even more years, people will become more and more miserable, giving even more rise to the extreme right, and at some point the whole thing will just blow up. but boy i can tell you i don't want to be here when it does.

conflict is the natural law of things. if you keep suppressing it for too long, the backlash will get even bigger. yes, i do mean that. suppressing conflicts until they're too big is imho what caused the first world war, and countless other unfinished/ongoing civil wars that became way more bloody than they should have been.

it's also what causes this ongoing discomfort in bigger organization structures where people know exactly that there's something wrong, but the company structure does not allow for open conflict. it's also precisely what made so many open source projects, and their forks successful.

that said the euro is still way more stable than that fiat usd. and soros probably went on shorting right after his interview, why people up vote that douche talking is beyond me.

[1] http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/europe-could-be-plunged...

[2] http://www.welt.de/finanzen/article10943242/Fuer-Merkel-best...

From the article:

> Ms Merkel had even warned European countries could end up warring with each other if the euro collapses.

What Merkel actually said:

> She told the German parliament: “No one should think that a further half century of peace and prosperity is assured. If the euro fails, Europe will fail.”

Taking your news from the Mirror is a surefire hit to general cynicism and anti European rhetoric.

> a lot of greeks have seen the europe as the fourth german reich.

This is just inflammatory hyperbole, firstly because it is not backed up with any data, but also, which may be as anecdotal as what you say, a lot of Greeks are actually happy with the outside pressure to force changes to their public sector and governmental system.

European Constitution (2005) France - 54.9% against (29 May 2005) Netherlands - 61.5% against (1 June 2005). No one else in Europe was offered a choice.

Lisbon Treaty (2008): Only Ireland asked people to ratify it. No one else was offered a choice. Initially Ireland voted - 53.2% against but then when told to vote again and get it right - 60.3% in favour.

Several member states used or intended to use referendums to ratify the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (TCE).

The results were as follows:

     Spain - 76.7% in favour (20 February 2005)
     France - 54.9% against (29 May 2005)
     Netherlands - 61.5% against (1 June 2005)
     Luxembourg - 56.5% in favour (10 July 2005)

    Czech European Constitution referendum
    Danish European Constitution referendum
    Irish European Constitution referendum
    Polish European Constitution referendum
    Portuguese European Constitution referendum
    United Kingdom European Constitution referendum