Yves Rees: 'Let’s have the courage to know less and listen more', On Courage event - 2024

16 June 2024, Brunswick Ballroom, Melbourne, Australia

Clementine Ford presented this event at which five speakers gave their views on courage. Dr Yves Rees is the author of ‘All About Yves’, a timely and thought-provoking memoir about the trans experience.

Back when I was a kid, I read a lot of fact books. You know the type—those hardcover books from the 90s that had oversized font and bright illustrations attached to quirky little factoids. ‘1001 Facts about the Amazon’ or ‘Discover the Human Body’.

My mum gave me a new fact book every Christmas and birthday, and I read and reread them until I knew the contents by heart. From them, I learnt about the world. I learnt about dungeons in Medieval castles (grim), the mating habits of King Penguins (serially monogamous), and the fashions of ancient Rome (wonderfully camp).

But more importantly, these fact books taught me something about knowledge itself. They taught me that the world was knowable. It could be seen, understood, and served up on a platter for my delectation. In their pages, I learnt that rational minds could study people and places and uncover all their secrets. If you tried hard enough, the unruly world would submit itself to the knowers’ gaze.

This was a seductive feeling. In a lonely childhood in which I was the third wheel in my parents’ failing marriage, a childhood coloured by unspeakable feelings about wanting to kiss girls and look like my brother, it felt wonderfully comforting to have facts to lean on. They were sturdy, they were reliable. They gave order and structure to an unruly world. Knowledge became my safe space, my favourite way to self-soothe.

Fast forward three decades. That anxious kid who sought security in knowledge became the academic with three degrees who’d spent their entire adult life hiding inside universities. Universities were kind of like a three-dimensional fact book – an ordered world with clear rules that allowed me to disassociate into a realm of pure abstraction. Hmmm, bliss.

There was only one small problem. This tidy world, this world of knowing and ordering, was not so abstract after all. Turns out, it had blood on its hands. The crisp white pages of the fact books were in fact sharp knives that had left deep wounds on the world.

The late great Palestinian thinker Edward Said was one of the first to help us see how knowledge can harm. In his classic book Orientalism, Said showed how Western knowledge of the so-called ‘Orient’ was essential to colonial conquest and rule. He showed us that to claim to know is to objectify, to control. In Said’s words, “To have such knowledge of such a thing is to dominate it, to have authority over it.”

The fact books taught me to think that knowledge is objective. Just plain facts, just how it is. But in truth knowledge is always embedded in culture—and Western knowledge systems, as Said and other showed us, are structured around hierarchy and classification and objectification. Everything is separate, everything is ranked.

Far from being neutral, these ways of knowing quite literally made a world of empire, capitalism and white male supremacy. They allowed colonisers to bend the rest of the world to our will. They’ve allowed us to centre our own humanity at the expense of others.

We can see this in the ongoing violence of settler Australia, where our fantasies of terra nullius and settler progress mean we still refuse to countenance that First Nations people could and should be in charge of their own lives and their own land.

We can see this in our bloody-minded extraction of fossil fuels from a dying planet, a planet we insist on viewing as a resource to be exploited rather than an extension of ourselves and our only home.

And we see this with the genocide in Gaza, as the ‘sensible’ Western media use calm facts and orderly paragraphs to create a dystopian reality in which the mass slaughter of children is allowed to continue before our eyes.

It is not easy let go of the safety net of knowledge. Western knowledge, for all its undeniable violence, has been the scaffold that has constructed the world for me and so many of us. It’s hard—even inconceivable— to imagine a world without it.

But when I think about what courage means here and now, for someone like me—a white settler on stolen land—this surrender into not-knowing is the one idea that rings true. Real courage is not repeating old scripts of leading, dominating, taking charge. Real courage is not cosplaying narratives of individual heroism that keep us believing a messiah is coming to save us.

Real courage, for someone like me, is to finally acknowledge our hubris and admit we have no fucking idea. Western knowledge, the knowledge we’ve been hoodwinked into thinking is universal, has enabled centuries of imperialism, slavery and genocide. It’s destroying human connection. It’s actively devasting the planet. It’s killing us and everything we love. Our knowledge sucks.

We need to have the courage to admit this and let go of the reigns. We need to have the courage to step aside and make space for other ways of knowing and being. To concede that we don’t have all the answers and never did.

For starters, we could start taking seriously the wisdom of the cultures that thrived on this continent for tens of thousands of years – a continent that we settlers took only a few centuries to trash beyond repair. If only we were brave enough to give these other knowledges a chance, we have nothing of value to lose and everything to gain.

As I was thinking about tonight, I kept returning to a song by Jen Cloher, who says it better than I ever could. In their song Being Human, Jen tells us: ‘Being human is learning how to let go of what you think you know. Staying human is listening, listening, listening.’

Tonight, as I speak to you on stolen and unceded Wurundjeri land, I want to leave you with this message: let’s have the courage to know less and listen more. Let’s have the courage to step out into the unknown and trust that something will be there to catch us. Let’s have the courage to divest from hierarchy and domination, and instead be humans together.

Speakers ‘On Courage’: Nasser Mashni, Clementine Ford, Sissy Eileen Austin, Catherine Deveny, Dr Yves Rees, Jen Cloher,

Matt Taibbi: 'We Americans once cherished independence!', Freedom Fest - 2023

You can find speech at 3.56.06 on video above

13 July 2023, Memphis, Tennessee, USA

A brief story sums up my theory of journalism:

In 1991 I was trying to work as a freelance reporter in newly ex-communist St. Petersburg, Russia. I heard a hot rumor. After decades of deprivation, gorillas at the city zoo were to be given bananas.

I thought Western editors would go crazy. I’d been rejected for more negative stories about the arrival of heroin, or gun violence. Bananas were positive!

I went to the zoo, and interviewed a zookeeper. Then I did what journalists do: I hovered around the gorilla cage looking creepy before mustering the courage to ask a few strangers in broken Russian what they thought about gorillas and bananas. (The newly ex-Soviet Russians had funny answers, like, “How come nobody’s given me bananas?”) When this man on the street portion was done, I stood wondering what to do next. I remember having the thought, “Well, I can’t interview the gorilla.”

I shrugged, went home, wrote it up, and got rejected, but that’s not the point. The point is, journalism isn’t rocket science. You show up, talk to a few people, give your best guess at what you’re looking at, and when you get to the “there’s no one left to interview but the gorilla” moment, you move on.

Thirty years later — at the end of last year — I was in San Francisco looking at content moderation requests sent to Twitter by the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force. Obviously, the degree of difficulty had gone up a bit, but the job was more or less the same: “Tech Company Gets Unpleasant Bananas.”

I’d learned a trick over the years. If something about a story doesn’t make sense, you probably got something wrong. Something about the Twitter Files story was off.

It wasn’t hard to understand why the FBI was organizing a censorship scheme, or why companies like Twitter and Facebook that lived off lucrative regulatory subsidies were going along with one. The motives of the powerful actors in all this were never mysterious. The part that didn’t compute was why so many in the general public were accepting of the situation. This included people I knew. Many people in America are not just accepting of digital censorship, they believe it to be vitally necessary.

Growing up I was very influenced by organizations like Nadine Strossen’s ACLU. Liberals I knew were as proud of having fought to let Nazis march in Skokie as they were ashamed of the FBI and police in cities like Memphis having spied on Martin Luther King.

Suddenly the same political contingent in America was okay with the government running both mass surveillance programs of the type uncovered by Edward Snowden, and a sophisticated censorship operation in partnership with 25 of the biggest tech firms in America?

It didn’t make sense. What changed?

A few weeks ago I read a draft of a new book by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott, called The Cancelling of the American Mind. They quoted Judge Learned Hand, who wrote in 1944, “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.”

Justice Hand had a hard time defining this thing that “lies in the hearts of men and women.” But, as an American, I believe I experienced it growing up. As Nadine said, it’s that “right not to remain silent,” something in which I believed almost religiously. It was something fiery and motivational, which I felt gave me an advantage over people from other parts of the world.

Later, I was fortunate as a reporter to be able to travel all over the world, and I met people from less free societies who weren’t taught to stand up for themselves or their rights as I had been. They also couldn’t shake the deference they’d been trained to feel toward people with money or celebrity or power. I felt sorry for those people. I was also proud that I’d been taught not to be impressed by kings or princes.

This reflexive way of thinking is disappearing.

Many in this room this week are rightly celebrating Judge Terry Doughty’s decision in the Missouri v. Biden lawsuit, striking down government censorship on the internet.

But if that spirit of liberty Justice Hand talked about dies, no amount of lawsuits or congressional hearings will revive it. In their book, Lukianoff and Schlott suggest that just as a person’s natural instinct is to slouch, society’s natural instinct is to censor. Is that true?

If so, that would make the last few hundred years of our history, a history of defiant political movements, astounding scientific invention, and vast outpourings of great music, art, literature, movies, even standup comedy — it would all be an aberration. But why?

I spent months thinking about this. It troubled me from the beginning of the Twitter Files story. Now, I believe Americans are not just being censored. I believe there’s an equivalent effort on the front end of Internet culture to rob people of their will to be free. I believe this is the hardest part of the Internet censorship story to understand, but also the most crucial and most dangerous.

Here I would like everyone to pause for a moment and indulge a corny exercise. If you could, please close their eyes. Imagine that instead of Google, we invent in the near future an internalized search engine, one in which our thoughts can move a cursor. A thought occurs to you: what was the name of that road-trip movie you watched ages ago with Dom Deluise, Burt Reynolds, and Farrah Fawcett?

You ask yourself the question, and mixed in with your own organic memories come machine-aided search results. In a second as it would with Alexa at home, the answer flashes behind your eyes: it was Cannonball Run! Right up there with Citizen Kane.

You can open your eyes now.

Now imagine that instead of trying to remember a silly movie, it’s something more serious. You’re walking down the streets of Washington and you visibly encounter a demonstration in front of the White House.

It’s a gang of Boogaloo Bois, or maybe people from the Green Party, or campaigners for someone like RFK, Jr. It could be anyone. Instead of flashing labels for “harm” or “age inappropriate” content, this new app tinges certain images it finds dangerous with the same warning colors animals use in nature to warn others to stay away, like yellow or red. These protesters therefore look a bit like poisonous insects to you, bathed ever so slightly in visual menace.

Then, when you try mentally to remember what you know about the group you’re looking at, you again get the search engine, which calls up a string of condemnatory headlines and words like “fascist” or “extremist” or “antivax,” which are just the verbal equivalents of black and yellow stripes, transparent code for “threat.”

With this app you’ll also have internalized access to communications services like texting, Zoom, Signal etc. Do you silently capture an image and forward it on social media to tell people what you’ve seen? Likely as not, you won’t, unless it’s to attach a negative comment, which you may do instinctively, in search of the dopamine hit of return affirmation the Internet has already proven so effective at delivering.

This is what Napster inventor Sean Parker once said about Facebook: “We need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while.”

This seemingly far-out situation I’m describing that would go on entirely inside your head is not different from what people already experience. As we found in the Twitter Files, we lean more and more on machines to do our thinking for us. However, the worst part is, we often do not distinguish between thinking that is ours, and thinking that is someone else’s.

We Americans once cherished independence, and lived off folk tales about going off on one’s own, on the open road. Think about Ishmael, or Huck and Jim, or Chuck Berry, who picked up a guitar and sang about setting out with “no particular place to go,” creating a dazzling sound that touched a nerve with the whole world.

That was then. Now instead of giving the world something invigorating and freeing like rock n’ roll, we’re exporting mass neurosis. At home we’ve become afraid to walk even a few steps without our electronic helpers. Our sense of self is now inextricably tied to a huge global entourage of prying commentators who live in those phones of ours that are always in our pockets and whose good opinion we never stop seeking, whether we admit it or not.

This was never us before. We long celebrated the individual, even if the individual was crazy. One of my heroes growing up was a man named Plennie Wingo, who tried to walk around the earth backwards. He made it from Santa Monica to Istanbul.

I mentioned this once to a friend who asked me, “Why would he do that?” I scrunched up my nose. “What do you mean, why? Because!” That’s what we Americans do. It’s why for every fifty idiots who leaped to their deaths off cliffs flapping homemade wings, we had one Wright Brothers. That’s how this country has always worked. The line between outpatient and inventor here is and always has been thin, as is the line between con artist and marketing genius, as PT Barnum discovered. Outlandishness, difference, boldness. We’ve celebrated that from Patrick Henry to Hunter Thompson to Liberace. The freethinker was always a cherished archetype.

But thinking for yourself is hard work, and political interests in the Internet age have preyed on another very American instinct: laziness. Their sophisticated programs begin with the premise that the Internet always punishes difference and rewards conformity. This is the core principle at work in shadow-banning and de-amplification algorithms. These automated surveillance tools look for phrases like “Open-minded” or “I like to do my own research” or “I’m generally apolitical” and don’t score the people saying such things as tolerant, creative freethinkers.

What the algorithm instead detects is someone harboring a dangerous willingness to embrace unorthodox ideas, or look at a forbidden thing and not flee.

It was once a virtue for Americans to say, when asked about their politics, “None of your damn business.”

Nobody thinks that way anymore, either. Young people especially are worried to the point of mental illness about their likes and ratios. We not only want people to know what we think, we’re terrified of people not knowing what we think, lest we be suspected of harboring something unsavory underneath.

This is how it is for Americans trying to be themselves now. First they became addicted to the Internet as a tool of convenience. Then it became a cheap substitute for real-life interaction. Finally they learned to submit to the wisdom of crowds, which on the Internet, as we also found out, is really an artificial representation of a crowd, generated by political and social engineers from the FBI, DHS, the Pentagon, Meta, Google, and other bureaucracies. These groups are letting loose algorithms on that “Spirit of liberty” Justice Hand talked about. The results have not been good.

If they can preemptively extinguish that fire in us, formal censorship will become unnecessary. The population will become too fearful of difference to ever risk punishment in the first place. That moment is close at hand. This is why I’m so grateful for events like this and to people like yourselves. I believe you all know the patriotic importance of preserving that spirit.

Meanwhile, these people who would have us glued to our phones, perennially afraid of electronic whispers, they’re as American as redcoats. We need to find a way to send them home, for good, before it’s too late.

Thank you.

Amy Poehler: 'Every child should believe they are the centre of the universe,' Wordwide Orphans fundraiser, Variety - 2013

October 2013, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA

Dr Jane Aronson: I've known Amy almost four years. At seven months pregnant she was huge. And I was scared to see her in that state. Now, mind you, I'm a paediatrician and shouldn't have been afraid since I've delivered many babies, actually, but there was a lot at stake at that night, and she was resting carefully in the back, with Abel inside of her uterus. And she's now right here by my side, as she usually is, laughing appropriately so that I can continue to be inspired in my work.

Amy Poehler: Thank you,. Dr. Jane, I had asked Dr. Jane to mention my uterus early on in her speech. And I appreciate that she did.

I was gonna say, it's hard to follow Dr. Jane Aaronson, but it's actually very easy to follow you, Jane. I'd follow you anywhere. And from the minute I met you, I knew we, we would be lifelong friends and we've gone from being colleagues to being real close friends. And that is a part of the work that people haven't really spoke of tonight, which is the idea of meeting like-minded people who become your travellers in life.

And yes, [applause] sure. Many who are here tonight. And it also proves my theory that you meet most of your closest friends over the age of 40. This award is shared obviously with Dr. Jane and every staff member, board member, person who's donated sponsor WWO staff member, and Orphan Rangers, who've changed the lives of children.

As an actress, sometimes people care about what I care about. If you don't believe that I'm an actress, just take note of the fact that this speech is written on the back of sides. But we are here in Beverly Hills, which let's face it is the moon, Is the weirdest place in the world. And for some reason I have some currency here, and the best thing I've done so far with it is to decide to join the wonderful people at WWO. And I am incredibly honoured to be included in this afternoon. There are so many incredibly talented, compassionate, curious open-hearted, and open-minded people in the room, women and men, and I'm thrilled to be a part of them. And so I'm going to I'm going to steal something that Jane did to me, which is, which is to speak from the heart and ask you all to close your eyes, just for a second.

So just take a minute, close your eyes and think about your children, right? So if you have children picture them, and if you don't have children, think about yourself as a child, and think about the things that made you feel warm and happy and protected. And think about what made you feel okay, and what makes your children feel okay. And take that warm feeling and put it into your heart, and I bet a lot of you are smiling and thinking about the beautiful faces of your children and the beautiful face of yourself as a child.

And now I ask you to open your eyes, realise that there are so many children in the world who have nothing. They have nothing. They have no one who lights up when they walk into a room and they have no clothes and safety and food. They have nothing. And so who are we to be in this room and, and to be living this life without helping them, you know, that's, that's it, that's the simple truth. And I'm sorry.

People don't talk enough about how good it feels to be of service. It selfishly makes you feel really good. It's good for your ego. And we should tell more people that, that it makes you feel really good. You should do it because it makes you feel good. And Jane's taught me that nothing is too big. All the stuff we're talking about today, and people will talk about feels really huge. And Jane is an example of nothing can't be tackled or approached in small ways.

So as I get older, I realise that I am old. But I, I also realise I don't know very much and all I have is the present moment. And I wanna be around people that do things. I don't wanna be around people anymore that judge or talk or talk about what people do. I wanna be around people who dream and support and do things. And I feel like I'm around those people today.

Every child should believe they are the centre of the universe. If your child believes that right now, you're doing a good job. We should teach children all over the world that they're beautiful and loved and deserve the simple, basic things in life. And our goal, I would say Jane's goal and mine is that someday an orphan who was helped by WWO, who was supported and encouraged and lifted up by WWO receives this award, because that is the goal, that what we're doing now lives on, that life continues, and that love wins.

So thank you very much for, including me. Thank you to all the beautiful, bossy, right amount of crazy women that are in this room. Thank you to my parents, who I'm lucky to have had and who inspire me. And if you thank you to Variety and Lifetime and NBC Universal, who are supporting me here today.

And if you take one thing from this event, please remember that giving to charity is good for your skin. And it makes your ass smaller. Thank you.

Nigel Marsh: ' It's particularly important that you never put the quality of your life in the hands of a commercial corporation', TEDx Sydney, How to make work-life balance work

May 2010 , Sydney, Australia

What I thought I would do is I would start with a simple request. I'd like all of you to pause for a moment, you wretched weaklings, and take stock of your miserable existence. (Laughter)

Now that was the advice that St. Benedict gave his rather startled followers in the fifth century. It was the advice that I decided to follow myself when I turned 40. Up until that moment, I had been that classic corporate warrior -- I was eating too much, I was drinking too much, I was working too hard and I was neglecting the family. And I decided that I would try and turn my life around. In particular, I decided I would try to address the thorny issue of work-life balance. So I stepped back from the workforce, and I spent a year at home with my wife and four young children. But all I learned about work-life balance from that year was that I found it quite easy to balance work and life when I didn't have any work. (Laughter) Not a very useful skill, especially when the money runs out.

So I went back to work, and I've spent these seven years since struggling with, studying and writing about work-life balance. And I have four observations I'd like to share with you today. The first is: if society's to make any progress on this issue, we need an honest debate. But the trouble is so many people talk so much rubbish about work-life balance. All the discussions about flexi-time or dress-down Fridays or paternity leave only serve to mask the core issue, which is that certain job and career choices are fundamentally incompatible with being meaningfully engaged on a day-to-day basis with a young family. Now the first step in solving any problem is acknowledging the reality of the situation you're in. And the reality of the society that we're in is there are thousands and thousands of people out there leading lives of quiet, screaming desperation, where they work long, hard hours at jobs they hate to enable them to buy things they don't need to impress people they don't like. (Laughter) (Applause) It's my contention that going to work on Friday in jeans and [a] T-shirt isn't really getting to the nub of the issue.

(Laughter)

The second observation I'd like to make is we need to face the truth that governments and corporations aren't going to solve this issue for us. We should stop looking outside. It's up to us as individuals to take control and responsibility for the type of lives that we want to lead. If you don't design your life, someone else will design it for you, and you may just not like their idea of balance. It's particularly important -- this isn't on the World Wide Web, is it? I'm about to get fired -- it's particularly important that you never put the quality of your life in the hands of a commercial corporation. Now I'm not talking here just about the bad companies -- the "abattoirs of the human soul," as I call them. (Laughter) I'm talking about all companies. Because commercial companies are inherently designed to get as much out of you [as] they can get away with. It's in their nature; it's in their DNA; it's what they do -- even the good, well-intentioned companies. On the one hand, putting childcare facilities in the workplace is wonderful and enlightened. On the other hand, it's a nightmare -- it just means you spend more time at the bloody office. We have to be responsible for setting and enforcing the boundaries that we want in our life.

The third observation is we have to be careful with the time frame that we choose upon which to judge our balance. Before I went back to work after my year at home, I sat down and I wrote out a detailed, step-by-step description of the ideal balanced day that I aspired to. And it went like this: wake up well rested after a good night's sleep. Have sex. Walk the dog. Have breakfast with my wife and children. Have sex again. (Laughter) Drive the kids to school on the way to the office. Do three hours' work. Play a sport with a friend at lunchtime. Do another three hours' work. Meet some mates in the pub for an early evening drink. Drive home for dinner with my wife and kids. Meditate for half an hour. Have sex. Walk the dog. Have sex again. Go to bed. (Applause) How often do you think I have that day? (Laughter) We need to be realistic. You can't do it all in one day. We need to elongate the time frame upon which we judge the balance in our life, but we need to elongate it without falling into the trap of the "I'll have a life when I retire, when my kids have left home, when my wife has divorced me, my health is failing, I've got no mates or interests left." (Laughter) A day is too short; "after I retire" is too long. There's got to be a middle way.

A fourth observation: We need to approach balance in a balanced way. A friend came to see me last year -- and she doesn't mind me telling this story -- a friend came to see me last year and said, "Nigel, I've read your book. And I realize that my life is completely out of balance. It's totally dominated by work. I work 10 hours a day; I commute two hours a day. All of my relationships have failed. There's nothing in my life apart from my work. So I've decided to get a grip and sort it out. So I joined a gym." (Laughter) Now I don't mean to mock, but being a fit 10-hour-a-day office rat isn't more balanced; it's more fit. (Laughter) Lovely though physical exercise may be, there are other parts to life -- there's the intellectual side; there's the emotional side; there's the spiritual side. And to be balanced, I believe we have to attend to all of those areas -- not just do 50 stomach crunches.

Now that can be daunting. Because people say, "Bloody hell mate, I haven't got time to get fit. You want me to go to church and call my mother." And I understand. I truly understand how that can be daunting. But an incident that happened a couple of years ago gave me a new perspective. My wife, who is somewhere in the audience today, called me up at the office and said, "Nigel, you need to pick our youngest son" -- Harry -- "up from school." Because she had to be somewhere else with the other three children for that evening. So I left work an hour early that afternoon and picked Harry up at the school gates. We walked down to the local park, messed around on the swings, played some silly games. I then walked him up the hill to the local cafe, and we shared a pizza for two, then walked down the hill to our home, and I gave him his bath and put him in his Batman pajamas. I then read him a chapter of Roald Dahl's "James and the Giant Peach." I then put him to bed, tucked him in, gave him a kiss on his forehead and said, "Goodnight, mate," and walked out of his bedroom. As I was walking out of his bedroom, he said, "Dad?" I went, "Yes, mate?" He went, "Dad, this has been the best day of my life, ever." I hadn't done anything, hadn't taken him to Disney World or bought him a Playstation.

Now my point is the small things matter. Being more balanced doesn't mean dramatic upheaval in your life. With the smallest investment in the right places, you can radically transform the quality of your relationships and the quality of your life. Moreover, I think, it can transform society. Because if enough people do it, we can change society's definition of success away from the moronically simplistic notion that the person with the most money when he dies wins, to a more thoughtful and balanced definition of what a life well lived looks like. And that, I think, is an idea worth spreading.

Nigel Marsh wrote 'the bestselling ‘Fat, Forty and Fired’. He’s also the host of the ‘5 of My Life’ podcast for Podcast 1 Network. Tony Wilson from a Speakola is a guest on the podcast in early 2021.

Katie Hopkins: 'I am not used to receiving awards', Campaign to Unify the Nation Trophy, Prank Ceremony - 2020

27 January 2020, Prague, Czech Republic

This was a fake award presentation made by YouTuber Josh Pieters to Katie Hopkins, who is a controversial figure in the United Kingdom for her racist views and inlflammatory commentary.. Pieters invented an organisation and flew Hopkins to Prague for a fake awards ceremony. See full video.

Josh Pieters voiceover: I had to make a speech to really convince her that we were real.

Welcome again. It's been a brilliant evening so far. Thank you, obviously, Katie for joining us. Now, I wish I could take credit for the speech, but it was actually written by my father, Leslie, who is our chairman. He's asked me to say just a few words on his behalf.

“We need freedom of speech from politicians to journalists, campaign groups to creatives, YouTubers to you in this room. Without being able to say what we think, without being able to mock other people, without being able to attack people, we are not free. Which brings me to Katie Hopkins, the recipient of the inaugural Campaign to Unify the Nation trophy. I cannot think of a more worthy recipient, for the tide is changing. The intellectual battle against the woke brigade is being won. The snowflakes are melting and Katie Hopkins and the United Kingdom and far beyond should take a great deal of credit, for the ice caps of political correctness are starting to collapse. Katie has experienced a huge amount of online hate. Some people on the internet really seem to want to bring her down.

[Crowd]: Shame!

There are people out there wanting to ridicule her, wanting to mock her. It is not at all possible to properly outline just what an inspiration you are to us all, Katie. It is an absolute pleasure on behalf of all of the members of the Cape Town Collective for the Freedom of Speech to announce that the recipient for the 2020 Campaign to Unify the Nation trophy is Katie Hopkins.

[Crowd] Woo, Katie.

[Voice over] We had succeeded. We made Katie Hopkins fly 1600 miles to pick up a fake award and put the word (beep) behind her without her noticing. You might wonder if this is a bit mean. For a moment, I did too, but then she made her speech and told us what she really thought.

Katie Hopkins : This is by far the most fun I've had in a very long time.

I am not used to receiving awards. It is strange and it's strange to hear nice things being said about yourself. You sit there and you think, wait a minute, they're saying that about me. Whereas normally, it is kind of an incoming deluge of fireballs coming my way. So it's kind of an odd thing for that to be tipped on its head, but I really do appreciate it.
[Fast cuts]
If you call Muhammad in a school playground in the UK, 2000 kids come running and you don't want any of them.
Epileptics are all weirdos. They're up there with the Asians.
The Eastland is fairly shitty in the best of times.
82% Muslim. What can I say? Most people are raping their own mother. I guess Muslims are different.
So she, I believe her name was [offensive mock Arabic babble], her fiance, I believe his name was [more mock Arabic babble] and where they practise, because they're such retards, other places where people get stabbed a lot or try and rape their own mother or have five wives.
[About Greta Thunberg] How dare you? Autistic (beep) wench.

Thank you very much!

[Drinking games]
.
[Vocieover Josh Pieters] You might ask what the whole point of this thing is. Why did Archie and I fly Katie Hopkins to Prague and give her a stupid fake award? The truth is there's an awful lot of hate in this world and people like Katie Hopkins spread that hate and make money from it, and she can do that because she has freedom of speech.

But so do I. So I used it to combat her spreading of hatred by playing on her ego and making her look a little bit silly. Anyway, to finish off, here's a message from our chairman:

Leslie Pieters: Hi everyone. Leslie Pieters here, the chairman of the Cape Town Collective for the Freedom of Speech. It's with great sadness that I have to report that Katie has been banned on Twitter and as a result there of, she can no longer be a member of this society. Goodbye.

Jacob Bronowski: 'This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods', The Ascent of Man - 1975

Episode aired 18 March 1975

It's said that science will dehumanise people and turn them into numbers. That's false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers.

Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.

Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken."

I owe it as a scientist to my friend Leo Szilard, I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died here, to stand here as a survivor and a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.

Francesca Martinez: 'They have blood on their hands' BBC Question Time, austerity remarks - 2019

13 June 2019, London, United Kingdom

Austerity has caused the death of over 130,000 human beings in Britain, that's absolutely outragous

That's 130,000 mums, dads, daughters, sons, uncles and aunts who have died because the Tories and the Lib Dems decided to make ordinary people pay for a crash that was caused by bankers, who we bailed out.

My final point, as a 'wobbly woman', I really have to highlight the tens of thousands of disabled and sick people who have died after being found fit for work.

We are one of the richest countries in the world and this is absolutely outrageous. Even the UN has called Tory welfare reform a violation of disabled people's rights.

I want to remind everyone here, anyone can become disabled or sick at any time and right now this government is taking away the safety net that we have fought for collectively over decades to help those in need.

And I think whatever your politics, you can agree that punishing disabled people and sick people for falling on hard times is absolutely morally wrong and they have blood on their hands.’ .

Tracee Ellis Ross: 'It’s really interesting to be a woman and to get to 45 and not be married and not have kids', Glamour Woman of the Year - 2017

13 November 2017, King’s Theatre, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA

It’s really interesting to be a woman and to get to 45 and not be married and not have kids. Especially when you have just pushed out your fifth kid on TV. You start hearing crazy shit like: “Oh, you just haven’t found the right guy yet,” “What are you going to DO?” “Oh, you poor thing,” “why is someone like you still single,” “have you ever thought of having kids?” “why don’t you just have a kid on your own.” It’s never ending and not helpful.

I grew up planning a wedding. My dress was going to be corseted with multiple antique Victorian camisoles spilling off my shoulders and I would change into a white double-breasted suit, wide leg trouser (with an exaggerated cuff) for the reception. I dreamed about being chosen by a powerful, sexy, kind man who had full lips and gave good hugs and having baby boy named Lauren.

But…I also dreamed of winning an Oscar and being on the cover of magazines and making a difference in the world, helping women find our voices. And from that dreaming, I have built an incredible life. I have become a woman that I am proud to be.

And then someone tells me about their friend who adopted a child at 52 and how “it’s never too late for your life to have meaning,” and my worth gets diminished as I am reminded that I have “failed” on the marriage and carriage counts. Me! This bold, liberated, independent woman. I mean, I work out, eat well, I mostly show up to work on time, I’m a good friend, a solid daughter, a hard worker, my credit is good, I take out the garbage before it gets smelly, I recycle, and I won a Golden Globe! I’m killing it! So, why? Why do I get snagged this way? As if all that I have done and who I am doesn’t matter.

I look back and think about all the ways we’re told that those two #goals: being chosen and having kids, are what makes you worthy. I mean: Nursery Rhymes. Fairytales. Books. Movies. Sixteen Candles, every love song, and even Black-ish—all reiterating this narrow story of “husband plus child equals woman”. And the patriarchy—the patriarchy is not pleased with me right now. I’m failing at my function. Let me tell you, Mike Pence is fucking confused by me right now.

Frankly, I often get a little confused. So, here is something I have done way more than I care to admit: Trying to gather the courage to tell my ex (whom I love by the way) that I want to date other people even though we were no longer together—we are broken up and have been! And during this last bout of doing just that, I did what enlightened ladies do and I got out my journal. I’m sitting there free writing, maybe conversing with my inner child, and I write down: MY LIFE IS MINE. My life is mine.

Those words stopped me in my tracks and honestly brought so many tears to my eyes.
so many tears to my eyes. Seems so obvious, but obviously it wasn’t. Because I have NOT been living my life as if it was my own. I mean to a certain extent yes but on a deep level no.
So, if my life is actually mine…then I have to really live it for myself. I have to put myself first and not be looking for permission to do so.

But, when I put myself first, what comes back at me from well-meaning people—most men, social media, random ladies at the gym, Mike Pence, whoever—they tell me in all sorts of ways that I am being selfish, pushy, aggressive, controlling, relentless, stubborn, a slut, a nag, oh, and my favorite, a ball breaker, because god forbid a few balls get broken along the way.

When we put ourselves first by doing things like saying no, speaking up, sleeping with who we want, eating what our bodies intuitively tell us to eat, wearing training bra’s instead of push up bras, posting a picture without using Facetune...we are condemned for thinking for ourselves and being ourselves, and being ourselves, for owning our experiences, our bodies, and our lives.

That kind of stuff is seen as threatening and scary and it’s certainly not what the patriarchy had in mind. Join me for a moment and imagine: What would it be like for women to completely own our own power, to have agency over our own glory and our sexuality, not in order to create a product or to sell it, or to feel worthy of love, or use it as a tool for safety, but instead as a WAY OF BEING? Imagine that…truly owning our own power, agency, and sexuality.

Especially at this moment, in all its volatility, with all that is happening as the “Pussy Grab” tree is being shaken and grabbers are dropping like rotten fruit. And at the same time, with the surge of empowerment: Black Lives Matter. Black Girl Magic! The Women’s March! Me Too! I mean me too…you too?

I am trying to gather all this energy around me, step into it, and match it with my realization that my life is mine. My “I am the chooser, 45-year-old life” ...is MINE. It’s no coincidence that these two forces are meeting at the same time. So here I am sorting out what MY LIFE looks like when it’s fully mine. It takes a certain bravery to do that. It means risking being misunderstood, perceived as alone and broken, having no one to focus on, fall into or hide behind, having to be my own support and having to stretch and find family love and connection outside of the traditional places. But, I want to do it. I want to be the Brave Me, the real me, the one whose life is my own.

It means I'm going to have to break an agreement that I didn’t really officially agree to sign in the first place, a document drawn up by a bunch of old white guys in a back room, the same group of old white guys who like to pass laws about our reproductive health and choices without us being there. That agreement says: We are here to be of service to others, that our destiny is to live in the shadow of men, that we are simply objects of desire, and that we are willing to live with having our voices stifled again and again by the misogyny of our culture.

Well listen here, ladies: I’m tearing it up. It’s going bye-bye and I’m drawing up a new one, and my terms are this: I am going to own my experiences. I'm going to pay attention to the reality of my life and the audacity of my dreams instead of the expectation I was raised with. I'm going to make space for the good and the bad of it, even the yucky scary fear-inducing parts, and embrace all the bits and all the questions. I know that’s how I go from being Tracee to being the Brave Tracee.

Here’s some good news: you too can go from being You, to being The Brave You. And you should definitely try it if you haven’t already!
Because Brave You is so beautiful! Not beautiful like your hair all did, or your brows all clean. When I think of what is beautiful, I think of a tree; I think of seeing a bird soar. I think of an embodied woman; I think of my mom in her ‘this is me’ glory stance, arms up, heart open, hair big, sexual, powerful, and full of agency.

Beings at the height of their own resonance, their own selfness. Fully in bloom. That’s what bravery and beauty looks like. But most of all because The Brave Me reminds me that I am complete just as me. Not in relation to anyone or anything else, just wholly, fully me.

The Brave You gives you the courage to hold your own agency, your own choice, your own desire, your own longings, your own fear, your own grief, your own future. She’s just one aspect of your soul that helps you become your fully embodied and completely integrated real, true self. She’s in you right now, in your journal, in the back of your mind, in your Netflix queue, waiting for your invitation. So let her out, let her have her glory. This beautiful, powerful part of you is just waiting for your invitation.

Bill Gates: 'This small amount of feces could contain as many as 200 trillion rotavirus cell', Toilet Expo - 2018

8 November 2018, Beijing, China

Good morning, and thank you, Ms. Tian, for that kind introduction. I’d like to thank Mr. Chen Zhou, the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, and the China Chamber of International Commerce for co-hosting this event.

It’s great to be in China again, and it’s fitting that we are meeting here for the Reinvented Toilet Expo. In recent decades, China has made great progress improving health and sanitation for hundreds of millions of people. President Xi’s Toilet Revolution underscores China’s commitment to accelerating progress on safe sanitation. And China has an opportunity to help launch a new category of innovative, decentralized sanitation solutions that will benefit millions of people worldwide.

Although the people in this room come from varied backgrounds—government, the private sector, development banks, academia, and philanthropy—we are all here for one reason: because more than half the world’s population doesn’t have the safe sanitation they need to lead healthy and productive lives.

Those of you in government are here because you want to find a way to solve the large and growing problem of what to do about human waste, especially in urban areas.

Those of you in the private sector are here because—with new advances in technology—you see a market opportunity to meet the needs of 4.5 billion people worldwide. Opportunities of that scale don’t come along very often.

You might guess what’s in this beaker—and you’d be right. Human feces. This small amount of feces could contain as many as 200 trillion rotavirus particles, 20 billion Shigella bacteria, and 100,000 parasitic worm eggs.

In places without safe sanitation, there is much more than one small beaker’s worth in the environment. These and other pathogens cause diseases like diarrhea, cholera, and typhoid that kill nearly 500,000 children under the age of five every year.

Unsafe sanitation also puts a huge economic burden on countries that can least afford it. Globally, it costs an estimated $223 billion a year in the form of higher health costs and lost productivity and wages.

And the problem will get worse if we don’t do something about it. Population growth, urbanization, and water scarcity over the next few decades will make it even more difficult for cities in Africa and Asia—cities that are already struggling with inadequate sanitation systems—to break the cycle of disease and poverty associated with unsafe sanitation.

I became interested in sanitation about a decade ago when I stopped working full time at Microsoft, and Melinda and I began traveling more frequently to poor countries.

We visited communities where children were playing in lanes filled with human waste, where pit latrines were emptied by hand, where the stench of community toilets was so bad that people didn’t want to use them, and where families drank water contaminated with human waste.

This was a dimension of poverty we hadn’t seen before, and it motivated us to try to do something about it. It wasn’t just the degradation and suffering that people face every day doing something that’s essential and natural for all human beings. It was also because so much of what Melinda and I seek to achieve in saving and improving lives can’t be accomplished unless people everywhere have safe sanitation.

It became clear to us that if the world was going to continue making progress against the diseases of poverty, we’d have to create a new way of looking at—and eventually solving—the global sanitation crisis.

In 2009, I posed a question to a group of scientists and engineers: was it possible to leapfrog the long-accepted “gold standard” of sanitation: flush toilets, sewers, and treatment plants?

Could we come up with a more affordable approach that could kill pathogens and keep pace with the needs of fast-growing urban areas—without requiring sewer infrastructure or reliance on scarce water resources or continuous electricity to operate?

Some people were skeptical that this was achievable. I get it. it’s hard to envision a totally different way of doing something that is so deeply rooted; that just feels like “the way things are.”

Early in my own life and career, there was a time when “the way things were” in computing was a big mainframe computer that only large corporations and governments could afford. Some of us had another idea. We dreamed about personal computers that anyone could use. A lot of people told us we were crazy. But we believed in it and found other people who shared our vision. Now, people can’t imagine the world the way it was back in the day of the mainframe.

I believe it is possible to achieve something like this in sanitation, and that’s why we have invested more than $200 million over the last seven years working with partners to develop a new generation of non-sewered sanitation technologies.

There were two main things we knew we had to accomplish. The first was to make it easier and cheaper to effectively manage fecal sludge across the sanitation service chain.

This diagram shows the scale of this problem. In the Global South, 62% of fecal sludge is not safely managed. In some cities, the problem is much worse. In one city in South Asia, 97% of human waste is untreated. And many countries are not yet even reporting how much of their waste is getting treated.

Some of the untreated human waste is in unlined pit latrines that contaminates groundwater around people’s homes. Some is collected manually, or by trucks, and is dumped into nearby fields or bodies of water. And some is collected in sewers but never gets treated. The point is that we are far from the goal the world set in 2015 of everyone using a safely-managed toilet.

To help address this problem, we worked with partners to develop a small-scale treatment plant to process fecal sludge and biosolids from pit latrines, septic tanks, and sewers. The self-powered technology—which can be located almost anywhere—is called the Omni-Processor. It takes in human waste, kills dangerous pathogens, and converts the resulting materials into products with potential commercial value—like clean water, electricity, and fertilizer.

The second challenge was to invent a pathogen-killing toilet that is also self-contained—with a tiny treatment plant built in. We call this the Reinvented Toilet, which is actually a collection of innovative technologies that use different approaches to break down human waste and destroy germs—leaving behind clean water and solids that can be used as fertilizer . . . or that can be disposed of safely outdoors without further treatment.

The initial demand for the Reinvented Toilet will be in places like schools, apartment buildings, and community toilet facilities.

As adoption of these multi-unit toilets increases—and the cost continues to drop—a new category of reinvented toilets will become available for use in people’s homes—in developing countries where people have limited resources and in developed countries for people who want or need an off-grid household toilet.

Let me show you one example of what the reinvented toilet could look like for household use—designed by the Swiss engineering firm, Helbling.

In addition, partners have made great progress developing other breakthrough technologies to control malodors, separate urine from solids, manage menstrual hygiene, and treat liquids.

I have to say, a decade ago I never imagined that I’d know so much about poop. And I definitely never thought that Melinda would have to tell me to stop talking about toilets and fecal sludge at the dinner table.

But I’m quite enthusiastic about what has been accomplished in just seven years. This expo showcases, for the first time, radically new and pilot-tested approaches to sanitation that will provide effective alternatives for collecting, managing, and treating human waste. The technologies you’ll see here are the most significant advances in sanitation in nearly 200 years.

None of this would have been possible without an exceptional worldwide team of engineers, scientists, companies, and universities committed to reinventing the urban sanitation system.

It’s exciting that solving the problem of unsafe sanitation will also create a new multi-billion-dollar business opportunity.

One of the things we’re able to do as a foundation is invest in the early stage R&D needed to create a path forward for the private sector to commercialize technologies and products that also help us achieve our goals. It’s a real win-win.

Consider just the new generation of reinvented toilets. We estimate that by 2030, this will be a $6 billion a year global business opportunity. If you add the Omni-Processor and related products and services, the market potential for decentralized sanitation solutions is likely much larger.

Like all transformative technologies, the next step is to scale these advances in collaboration with all of you.

Today, I’m pleased to say that a growing number of companies are ready to take orders for Reinvented Toilets and for the Omni-Processor. Companies like Clear, Eco-San, SCG Chemicals, and Eram Scientific Solutions are announcing their first reinvented toilet products. And CRRC, Sedron Technologies, Ankur Scientific, and Tide Technocrats are announcing their Omni-Processors.

Other commercial partners will be announcing the availability of products based on Firmenich’s innovative solution for malodor control.

In total, more than 20 companies are business-ready with innovative, non-sewered sanitation products. And I understand that Lixil, a new partner, will be telling us more about their involvement later this morning. This is the first wave of new sanitation solutions and technologies—with more to come.

But it’s not enough for companies to be interested in making and selling new products. It’s also important for national and local governments to create an enabling environment with policies and regulations that encourage innovative sanitation service models, including with the private sector.

I’m encouraged by the leadership of a growing number of countries that are embracing a smart approach to safe sanitation, such as India, South Africa, Senegal, Bangladesh, and Nepal.

China’s Toilet Revolution and its action plan for accelerating progress on safe sanitation underscores its potential as a launch market for non-sewered sanitation solutions. It’s notable that three of the partners making announcements here—Clear, Ecosan, and CRRC – are based in China. This highlights China’s interest in commercialization of off-grid sanitation solutions to meet not only the demands of China’s domestic market but also the needs of a global market ready for change.

We look forward to China adopting a high-level standard [ISO30500] for the non-sewered sanitation industry, which will further accelerate its leadership of a new commercial sanitation sector.

There is also positive momentum among finance and development institutions. The World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the African Development Bank are announcing commitments with the potential to unlock $2.5 billion in financing for City-Wide Inclusive Sanitation projects.

These commitments will help provide people in all parts of a city—including the poorest neighborhoods—with safely-managed sanitation services. And the banks’ pledges could help accelerate adoption of off-grid sanitation solutions—like the ones exhibited here—in low- and middle-income countries.

In addition, UNICEF and the French Development Agency will announce new strategies and commitments to accelerate deployment of innovative sanitation solutions. This is all great news.

We try to be thoughtful about the role of philanthropy—and one of the things we’re best placed to do is lower barriers and risk for the private sector and for governments to adopt new solutions to solve big problems.

That’s what we’ve tried to do with our investment so far in sanitation—so others can further develop, pilot, market, and sell these new solutions. We’re committed to supporting these efforts with an additional $200 million for continued R&D to help bring down the costs of new products for the poor, and to support market development in regions where new, non-sewered sanitation solutions can have the greatest impact.

Today, we are on the cusp of a sanitation revolution. It’s no longer a question of if we can do it. It’s a question of how quickly this new category of off-grid solutions will scale. We don’t know exactly how long that will take, but we do know it can’t happen fast enough.

Thank you.

Mother Teresa: 'I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion', US Prayer Breakfast - 1994

3 February 1994, Washington DC, USA

Make us worthy, Lord, to serve our fellow man throughout the world who live and die in poverty and hunger. Give them through our hands this day their daily bread, and by our understanding love, give peace and joy.

Jesus came to give us the good news that God loves us, and that He wants us to love one another as he loves each one of us. And to make it easy for us to love one another, Jesus said, "Whatever you do to the least, you do it to me."1 "If you give a glass of water, you give it to me."2 "If you receive a little child in my name, you receive me."3 So, whatever you do to the least, you do it to me.4

And where does this love begin? In our own family.

How does it begin? By praying together.

Family that prays together, stays together. And if you stay together, you will love each other as God loves each one of you. So teach your children to pray, and pray with them; and you will have the joy and the peace and the unity of Christ's own love living in you.

As we have gathered together here, I think it will be beautiful if you begin with a prayer that expresses very well what Jesus wants us to do for the least. St. Francis of Assisi understood very well these words of Jesus and in his life very well expressed by prayer. And this prayer, which we say every day after Holy Communion, always surprises me very much, because it is very fitting for each one of us. And [I] always wonder whether 800 years ago, when St. Francis lived, they had the same difficulties that we have today. I think that some of you already have this prayer of peace -- so we will pray it together.

Let us pray.

"Lord, make me a channel of your peace" --

Do you have the prayer book? [to audience].

We will say it together?

[audience in unison, though Mother Teresa initial words are slightly different than those recited from the prayer book]

Lord, make me a channel of Your peace,
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.

O, Divine Master, grant that I may Lord, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
it is in dying that we are born again to Eternal Life.

Let us thank God for the opportunity He has given us today to have come here to pray together. We have come here especially to pray for peace, for joy, and for love. We are reminded that Jesus came to bring the good news to the poor. He had told us what is that good news when He said: my "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you."5 He came not to give the peace of the world, which is only that we don't bother each other. He came to give the peace of heart which comes from loving, from doing good to others.

And God loved the world so much that He gave His Son -- it was a giving. God gave His son to the Virgin Mary, and what did she do with Him? As soon as Jesus came into Mary's life, immediately she went in haste to give that good news. And as she came into the house of her cousin, Elizabeth, Scripture tells us that the unborn child -- the child in the womb of Elizabeth -- leapt with joy. While still in the womb of Mary, Jesus brought peace to John the Baptist who leapt for joy in the womb of Elizabeth. The unborn was the first one to proclaim the coming of Christ.

And as if that were not enough, as if it were not enough that God the Son should become one of us and bring peace and joy while still in the womb of Mary, Jesus also died on the Cross to show that greater love. He died for you and for me, and for that leper, and for that man dying of hunger, and that naked person lying in the street, not only of Calcutta, but of Africa, and all over the world.

Our Sisters serve these poor people in 105 countries throughout the world. Jesus insisted that we love one another as He loves each one of us. Jesus gave His life to love us and He tells us that we also have to give whatever it takes to do good to one another. And in the Gospel Jesus says very clearly: "Love as I have loved you."6

Jesus died on the Cross because that is what it took for Him to do good to us -- to save us from our selfishness and sin. He gave up everything to do the Father's will, to show us that we too must willing -- must be willing to give up everything to do God's will -- to love one another as He loves each one of us.

If we are not willing to give whatever it takes to do good to one another, sin is still in us. That is why we too must give to each other until it hurts. It is not enough to say -- for us to say: "I love God." But I also have to love my neighbor. St. John says that you are a liar if you say you love God and you don't love your neighbor.7 How can you love God whom you do not see, if you do not love your neighbor whom you see,8 whom you touch, with whom you live? And so it is very important for us to realize that love, to be true, has to hurt. I must be willing to give whatever it takes not to harm other people and, in fact, to do good to them. This requires that I be willing to give until it hurts. Otherwise, there is no true love in me; and I bring injustice, not peace, to those around me.

It hurt Jesus to love us. We have been created in His image for greater things, to love and to be loved. We must "put on Christ," as Scripture tells us. And so, we have been created to love as He loves us. Jesus makes Himself the hungry one, the naked one, the homeless one, the unwanted one, and He says, "You did it to Me." On the last day He will say to those on His right, "Whatever you did to the least of these, you did to Me." And He will also say to those on His left, "Whatever you neglected to do for the least of these, you neglected to do it for Me."

When He was dying on the Cross, Jesus said, "I thirst." Jesus is thirsting for our love, and this is the thirst of everyone, poor and rich alike. We all thirst for love of others, that they go out of their way to avoid harming us and to do good to us. This is the meaning of true love, to give until it hurts.

I can never forget the experience I had in visiting a home where they kept all these old parents of sons and daughters who had just put them into an institution and forgotten them. Maybe. I saw that in that home these old people had everything -- good food, comfortable place, television, everything, but everyone was looking toward the door. And I did not see a single one with a smile on the face. I turned to the Sister and I asked: "Why do these people, who have every -- every comfort here, they are there looking toward the door? Why are they not smiling? I am so used to seeing the smiles on our people, even the dying ones smile." And Sister said: "This is the way it is nearly everyday. They are expecting -- they are hoping that a son or a daughter will come to visit them. They are hurt because they are forgotten."

And see, this neglect to love brings spiritual poverty. Maybe in our own family we have somebody who is feeling lonely, who is feeling sick, who is feeling worried. Are we there? Are we willing to give until it hurts in order to be with our family, or do we put our interests first? These are the questions we must ask ourselves, especially as we begin this year of the family. We must remember that love begins at home. And we must also remember that: The future of humanity passes through the family.

I was surprised in the West to see so many young boys and girls given to drugs. And I tried to find out why. Why is it like that, when those in the West have so many more things than those in the East? And the answer was: because there is no one in the family to receive them. Our children depend on us for everything -- their health, their nutrition, their security, their coming to know and love God. For all of this, they look to us with trust, hope, and expectation. But often father and mother are so busy they have no time for their children, or perhaps they are not even married or have given up on their marriage. So their children go to the streets and get involved in drugs or other things. We are talking of love of the child, which is where love and peace must begin -- there, in our own family.

But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because Jesus said, "If you receive a little child, you receive me."9 So, every abortion is the denial of receiving Jesus -- is the neglect of receiving Jesus.

It is really a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts.

Jesus gave even His life to love us. So, the mother who is thinking of abortion should be helped to love -- that is, to give until it hurts her plans, her free time, to respect the life of her child. For the child is the greatest gift of God to the family because they have been created to love and be loved.

The father of that child, however, must also give until it hurts.

By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And, by abortion, the father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. That -- So that father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So, abortion just leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love one another, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.

The beautiful gift God has given our congregation is to fight abortion by adoption. We have given already -- We have given already from one house in Calcutta, over 3,000 children in adoption. And I can't tell you what joy, what love, what peace those children have brought into those families. It has been a real gift of God for them and for us. I remember one of the little ones got very sick, so I sent for the father and the mother and I asked them: "Please give me back the sick child. I will give you a healthy one." And the father looked at me and said, "Mother Teresa, take my life first -- then take the child." So beautiful to see it. So much love, so much joy that little one has brought into that family. So pray for us that we continue this beautiful gift. And also I offer you, since our Sisters are here, anybody who doesn't want the child, please give it to me. I -- I want the child.

I will tell you something beautiful. As I already told you, the abortion by adoption -- by care of the mother and adoption for her baby. We have saved thousands of lives. We have sent word to the clinics, to the hospitals and police stations: "Please don't destroy the child. We will take the child." So we always have someone tell the mothers in trouble: "Come, we will take -- take care of you. We will get a home for your child." And we have a tremendous demand from couples who cannot have a child. But I never give a child to a couple who have done something not to have a child. Jesus said, "Anyone who receives a child in my name, receives me." By adopting a child, these couples receive Jesus but, by aborting a child, a couple refuses to receive Jesus.

Please don't kill the child. I want the child. Please give me the child. I am willing to accept any child who would be aborted and to give that child to [a] married couple who will love the child and be loved by the child.

I know that couples have to plan their family and for that there is natural family planning. The way to plan the family is natural family planning, not contraception. In destroying the power of giving life, of loving, through contraception, a husband or wife is doing something to self. This turns the attention to self, and so it destroys the gifts of love in him and her.

In loving, the husband and wife must turn the attention to each other, as happen[s] in natural family planning, and not to self, as happens in contraception. Once that living love is destroyed by contraception, abortion follows very easily. That's why I never give a child to a family that has used contraception -- because if the mother has destroyed the power of loving, how will she love my child?

I also know that there are great problems in the world -- that many spouses do not love each other enough to practice [natural family planning]. We cannot solve [all] the problems in the world, but let us never bring in the worst problem of all -- to destroy love, to destroy life.

The poor are very great people. They can teach us so many beautiful things. Once, one of them came to thank us for teaching her natural family planning and said: "You people who have practiced chastity, you are the best people to teach us natural family planning because it is nothing more than self-control out of love for each other." And what this poor person said is very true. These poor people maybe have nothing to eat, maybe -- maybe they have not a home to live in, but they can still be great people when they are spiritually rich and love one another as God loves each one of them.

When I pick up a person from the streets, hungry, I give him a plate of rice, a piece of bread. But a person who is shut out, who feels unwanted, unloved, terrified, the person who has been thrown out of society -- that spiritual poverty is much harder to be overcome. And abortion, which often follows from contraception, brings a people to be spiritually poor, and that is the worst poverty and the most difficult to overcome.

Those who are materially poor can be very wonderful people. One evening we went out and we picked up four people from the street. And one of them was in a most terrible condition. I told the Sisters: "You take care of the other three; I will take care of the one who looks are worse." So I did for her all that my love can do. I put her in bed, and there was such a beautiful smile on her face. She took hold of my hand, as she said one word only: "Thank you." And she died.

I couldn't help but examine my conscience before her. And I asked: "What would I say if I were in her place?" And my answer was very simple. I would have tried to draw a little attention to myself. I would have said: "I am hungry. I am dying. I am cold. I am in pain." But she gave me much more: She gave me her grateful love. She died with a big smile on her face.

Then there was the man we picked up from the drain, half eaten with worms. And after we had brought him to the home, he only said, "I have lived like an animal in the street, but I am going to die as an angel, loved and cared." Then, after we had removed all the worms from his body, all he said, with a big smile: "Sister, I am going home to God." And he died. I[t] was -- was so wonderful to see the greatness of that man who could speak like that without blaming anybody, without comparing anything, kike an angel. This is the greatness of people who are spiritually rich even when they are materially poor.

We are not social workers. We may be doing social work in the eyes of some people, but we must be contemplatives in the heart of the world. For we must bring that presence of God into your family. For the family that prays together, stays together. There is so much hatred, so much misery, and we with our prayer, with our sacrifice, are beginning at home. Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do, but how much love we put into what we do.

If we are contemplatives in the heart of the world with all its problem[s], these problems can never...discourage us. We must always remember that God tells us in Scripture: "Even if a mother could forget the child in her womb" -- something impossible, but even if she could forget -- "I will never forget you."10

And so, here I am talking with you. I want you to find the poor here, right in your own home first. And begin love there. Be that good news to your own people first. And find out about your next-door neighbor. Do you know who they are?

I had the most extraordinary experience of love of neighbor with a Hindu family. A gentleman came to our house and said: "Mother Teresa, there is a family who have not eaten for so long. Do something." So I took some rice and went there immediately. And I saw the children, their eyes shining with hunger. I don't know if you have ever seen hunger. But I have seen it very often. And the mother of the family took the rice I gave her and went out. When she came back, I asked her: "Where did you go? What did you do?" And she gave me a very simple answer: "They are hungry also."

What struck me was that she knew. And who [were they]? A Muslim family. And she knew that they were hungry. And I did not bring any more rice that evening because I wanted them, Hindus and family -- and Muslim family, to enjoy the joy of loving each others. She just left her own children, who were hungry; her first thought was her neighbor. But there were those children, radiating joy, sharing the joy and peace of their mother because she had the love to give until it hurts. And you see this is where love begins -- at home in the family.

So, as the example of this family shows, God will never forget us, and there is something you and I can always do. We can keep the joy of loving Jesus in our hearts, and share that joy with all we come in contact with. Let us make that one point -- that no child will be unwanted, unloved, uncared for, or killed and thrown away. And give until it hurts -- with a smile.

As you know, we have homes -- a number of homes here in the United States, where people need tender love and care. This is the joy of sharing. Come and share. We have the young people suffering with AIDS. They need that tender love and care. But such beautiful -- I've never yet seen a young man or anybody...displeased or angry or frightened, really going home to God. Such a beautiful smile, always. So let us pray that we have the gift of sharing the joy with others and loving until it hurts.

Because I talk so much of giving with a smile, once a professor from the United States asked me: "Are you married?" And I said: "Yes, and I find it sometimes very difficult to smile at my spouse, Jesus, because He can be -- He can be very demanding sometimes." This is really something true. And [this] is where love comes in: when it is demanding, and yet we can give it with joy.

One of the most demanding things for me is travelling everywhere -- and with publicity. I have said to Jesus that if I don't go to heaven for anything else, I will be going to heaven for all the travelling with all the publicity, because it has purified me and sacrificed me and made me really ready to go home to God.

If we remember that God loves us, and that we can love others as He loves us, then America can become a sign of peace for the whole world, be a sign of joy. From here, a sign of care for the weakest [of] the weak, the unborn child, must go out to the world. If you become a burning light of justice and peace in the world, then really you will be true to what the founders -- founders of this country stood for.

Let us love one another as God loves each one of us.

And where does this love begin? In our own home.

How does it begin? By praying together.

Pray for us that we continue God's work with great love. The sisters, the brothers, and the fathers, lay missionaries of Charity, and coworkers: We are all one heart full of love, that we may bring that joy of loving everywhere we go.

And my -- my prayer for you is that through this love for one another, for this peace and joy in the family, that you may grow in holiness. Holiness is not the luxury of the few; it is a simply duty, for you and for me, because Jesus has very clearly said, "Be ye holy as the father in heaven is holy."11 So let us pray for each other that we grow in love for each other, and through this love become holy, as Jesus wants us to be, for he died out of love for us.

One day, I met a lady who was dying of cancer in a most terrible condition. And I told her, I say, "You know, this terrible pain is only the kiss of Jesus, a sign that you have come so close to Jesus on the cross that he can kiss you." And she joined her hands together and said, "Mother Teresa, please tell Jesus to stop kissing me."

So pray for us that we continue God's work with great love. And I will pray for you -- for all your -- all your families.

And also I want to thank the families who have been so generous in giving their daughters to us to -- to consecrate their life to Jesus by the vow of poverty, chastity, obedience, and by giving wholehearted, free service to the poorest of the poor. This is our fourth vow in our congregation. And we have a novitiate in San Francisco where we have many beautiful vocations who are wanting to give their whole life to Jesus in the service of the poorest of the poor.

So, once more, I thank you for giving you children to God. And pray for us that we continue God's work with great love.

God bless you all.

Narayana Murthy: 'Let us work towards maximum welfare of the maximum people', Learning from the West, Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Management - 2002

2 October 2002, Lal Bahadur Institute of Management, Dwarka, Delhi

Ladies and gentlemen:

It is a pleasure to be here at the Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Management. Lal Bahadur Shastri was a man of strong values and he epitomized simple living. He was a freedom fighter and innovative administrator who contributed to nation building in full measure. It is indeed a matter of pride for me to be chosen for the Lal Bahadur Shastri Award for Public Administration and Management Sciences. I thank the jury for this honor.

When I got the invitation to speak here, I decided to speak on an important topic on which I have pondered for years - the role of Western values in contemporary Indian society. Coming from a company that is built on strong values, the topic is close to my heart. Moreover, an organization is representative of society, and some of the lessons that I have learnt are applicable in the national context. In fact, values drive progress and define quality of life in society.

The word community joins two Latin words com ("together" or "with") and unus ("one"). A community, then, is both one and many. It is a unified multitude and not a mere group of people. As it is said in the Vedas: Man can live individually, but can survive only collectively. Hence, the challenge is to form a progressive community by balancing the interests of the individual and that of the society. To meet this, we need to develop a value system where people accept modest sacrifices for the common good.

What is a value system? It is the protocol for behavior that enhances the trust, confidence and commitment of members of the community. It goes beyond the domain of legality - it is about decent and desirable behavior. Further, it includes putting the community interests ahead of your own. Thus, our collective survival and progress is predicated on sound values.

There are two pillars of the cultural value system - loyalty to family and loyalty to community. One should not be in isolation to the other, because, successful societies are those which combine both harmoniously. It is in this context that I will discuss the role of Western values in contemporary Indian society.

Some of you here might say that most of what I am going to discuss are actually Indian values in old ages, and not Western values. I live in the present, not in the bygone era. Therefore, I have seen these values practiced primarily in the West and not in India.

Hence, the title of the topic.

I am happy as long as we practice these values - whether we call it Western or old Indian values. As an Indian, I am proud to be part of a culture, which has deep-rooted family values. We have tremendous loyalty to the family. For instance, parents make enormous sacrifices for their children. They support them until they can stand on their own feet. On the other side, children consider it their duty to take care of aged parents.We believe: Mathru devo bhava - mother is God, and pithru devo bhava - father is God. Further, brothers and sisters sacrifice for each other. In fact, the eldest brother or sister is respected by all the other siblings. As for marriage, it is held to be a sacred union - husband and wife are bonded, most often, for life. In joint families, the entire family works towards the welfare of the family. There is so much love and affection in our family life.

This is the essence of Indian values and one of our key strengths. Our families act as a critical support mechanism for us. In fact, the credit to the success of Infosys goes, as much to the founders as to their families, for supporting them through the tough times.

Unfortunately, our attitude towards family life is not reflected in our attitude towards community behavior. From littering the streets to corruption to breaking of contractual obligations, we are apathetic to the common good. In the West - the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand - individuals understand that they have to be responsible towards their community.

The primary difference between the West and us is that, there, people have a much better societal orientation. They care more for the society than we do. Further, they generally sacrifice more for the society than us. Quality of life is enhanced because of this. This is where we need to learn from the West. I will talk about some of the lessons that we, Indians, can learn from the West.

In the West, there is respect for the public good. For instance, parks free of litter, clean streets, public toilets free of graffiti - all these are instances of care for the public good. On the contrary, in India, we keep our houses clean and water our gardens everyday - but, when we go to a park, we do not think twice before littering the place.

Corruption, as we see in India, is another example of putting the interest of oneself, and at best that of one's family, above that of the society. Society is relatively corruption free in the West. For instance, it is very difficult to bribe a police officer into avoiding a speeding ticket.

This is because of the individual's responsible behavior towards the community as a whole On the contrary, in India, corruption, tax evasion, cheating and bribery have eaten into our vitals. For instance, contractors bribe officials, and construct low-quality roads and bridges. The result is that society loses in the form of substandard defence equipment and infrastructure, and low-quality recruitment, just to name a few impediments. Unfortunately, this behavior is condoned by almost everyone.

Apathy in solving community matters has held us back from making progress, which is otherwise within our reach. We see serious problems around us but do not try to solve them. We behave as if the problems do not exist or is somebody else's. On the other hand, in the West, people solve societal problems proactively. There are several examples of our apathetic attitude. For instance, all of us are aware of the problem of drought in India.

More than 40 years ago, Dr. K. L. Rao - an irrigation expert, suggested creation of a water grid connecting all the rivers in North and South India, to solve this problem. Unfortunately, nothing has been done about this. The story of power shortage in Bangalore is another instance. In 1983, it was decided to build a thermal power plant to meet Bangalore's power requirements. Unfortunately, we have still not started it. Further, the Milan subway in Bombay is in a deplorable state for the last 40 years, and no action has been taken.

To quote another example, considering the constant travel required in the software industry; five years ago, I had suggested a 240-page passport. This would eliminate frequent visits to the passport office. In fact, we are ready to pay for it. However, I am yet to hear from the Ministry of External Affairs on this.

We, Indians, would do well to remember Thomas Hunter's words:

Idleness travels very slowly, and poverty soon overtakes it. What could be the reason for all this? We were ruled by foreigners for over thousand years. Thus, we have always believed that public issues belonged to some foreign ruler and that we have no role in solving them.

Moreover, we have lost the will to proactively solve our own problems. Thus, we have got used to just executing someone else's orders. Borrowing Aristotle's words: We are what we repeatedly do.

Thus, having done this over the years, the decision-makers in our society are not trained for solving problems. Our decision-makers look to somebody else to take decisions. Unfortunately, there is nobody to look up to, and this is the tragedy.

Our intellectual arrogance has also not helped our society. I have traveled extensively, and in my experience, have not come across another society where people are as contemptuous of better societies as we are, with as little progress as we have achieved. Remember that arrogance breeds hypocrisy. No other society gloats so much about the past as we do, with as little current accomplishment.

Friends, this is not a new phenomenon, but at least a thousand years old. For instance, Al Barouni, the famous Arabic logician and traveler of the 10th century, who spent about 30 years in India from 997 AD to around 1027 AD, referred to this trait of Indians.

According to him, during his visit, most Indian pundits considered it below their dignity even to hold arguments with him. In fact, on a few occasions when a pundit was willing to listen to him, and found his arguments to be very sound, he invariably asked Barouni: which Indian pundit taught these smart things

The most important attribute of a progressive society is respect for others who have accomplished more than they themselves have, and learn from them. Contrary to this, our leaders make us believe that other societies do not know anything! At the same time, everyday, in the newspapers, you will find numerous claims from our leaders that ours is the greatest nation. These people would do well to remember Thomas Carlyle's words: The greatest of faults is to be conscious of none.

If we have to progress, we have to change this attitude, listen to people who have performed better than us, learn from them and perform better than them. Infosys is a good example of such an attitude. We continue to rationalize our failures. No other society has mastered this part as well as we have. Obviously, this is an excuse to justify our incompetence, corruption, and apathy. This attitude has to change. As Sir Josiah Stamp has said: It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities.

Another interesting attribute, which we Indians can learn from the West, is their accountability. Irrespective of your position, in the West, you are held accountable for what you do. However, in India, the more 'important' you are, the less answerable you are.

For instance, a senior politician once declared that he 'forgot' to file his tax returns for 10 consecutive years - and he got away with it. To quote another instance, there are over 100 loss making public sector units (central) in India. Nevertheless, I have not seen action taken for bad performance against top managers in these organizations.

Dignity of labor is an integral part of the Western value system. In the West, each person is proud about his or her labor that raises honest sweat. On the other hand, in India, we tend to overlook the significance of those who are not in professional jobs. We have a mind set that reveres only supposedly intellectual work.

For instance, I have seen many engineers, fresh from college, who only want to do cutting-edge work and not work that is of relevance to business and the country. However, be it an organization or society, there are different people performing different roles. For success, all these people are required to discharge their duties. This includes everyone from the CEO to the person who serves tea - every role is important. Hence, we need a mind set that reveres everyone who puts in honest work.

Indians become intimate even without being friendly. They ask favors of strangers without any hesitation. For instance, the other day, while I was traveling from Bangalore to Mantralaya, I met a fellow traveler on the train. Hardly 5 minutes into the conversation, he requested me to speak to his MD about removing him from the bottom 10% list in his company, earmarked for disciplinary action. I was reminded of what Rudyard Kipling once said:

A westerner can be friendly without being intimate while an easterner tends to be intimate without being friendly.

Yet another lesson to be learnt from the West, is about their professionalism in dealings. The common good being more important than personal equations, people do not let personal relations interfere with their professional dealings. For instance, they don't hesitate to chastise a colleague, even if he is a personal friend, for incompetent work.

In India, I have seen that we tend to view even work interactions from a personal perspective. Further, we are the most 'thin-skinned' society in the world - we see insults where none is meant. This may be because we were not free for most of the last thousand years. Further, we seem to extend this lack of professionalism to our sense of punctuality. We do not seem to respect the other person's time. The Indian Standard Time somehow seems to be always running late. Moreover, deadlines are typically not met. How many public projects are completed on time? The disheartening aspect is that we have accepted this as the norm rather than the exception. In the West, they show professionalism by embracing meritocracy. Meritocracy by definition means that we cannot let personal prejudices affect our evaluation of an individual's performance. As we increasingly start to benchmark ourselves with global standards, we have to embrace meritocracy.

In the West, right from a very young age, parents teach their children to be independent in thinking. Thus, they grow up to be strong, confident individuals. In India, we still suffer from feudal thinking. I have seen people, who are otherwise bright, refusing to show independence and preferring to be told what to do by their boss. We need to overcome this attitude if we have to succeed globally.

The Western value system teaches respect to contractual obligation. In the West, contractual obligations are seldom dishonored. This is important - enforceability of legal rights and contracts is the most important factor in the enhancement of credibility of our people and nation.

In India, we consider our marriage vows as sacred. We are willing to sacrifice in order to respect our marriage vows. However, we do not extend this to the public domain. For instance, India had an unfavorable contract with Enron. Instead of punishing the people responsible for negotiating this, we reneged on the contract - this was much before we came to know about the illegal activities at Enron.

To quote another instance, I had given recommendations to several students for the national scholarship for higher studies in US universities. Most of them did not return to India even though contractually they were obliged to spend five years after their degree in India.

In fact, according to a professor at a reputed US university, the maximum default rate for student loans is among Indians - all of these students pass out in flying colors and land lucrative jobs, yet they refuse to pay back their loans. Thus, their action has made it difficult for the students after them, from India, to obtain loans. We have to change this attitude.

Further, we Indians do not display intellectual honesty. For example, our political leaders use mobile phones to tell journalists on the other side that they do not believe in technology! If we want our youngsters to progress, such hypocrisy must be stopped. We are all aware of our rights as citizens. Nevertheless, we often fail to acknowledge the duty that accompanies every right. To borrow Dwight Eisenhower's words:

People that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both. Our duty is towards the community as a whole, as much as it is towards our families.

We have to remember that fundamental social problems grow out of a lack of commitment to the common good. To quote Henry Beecher: Culture is that which helps us to work for the betterment of all. Hence, friends, I do believe that we can make our society even better by assimilating these Western values into our own culture - we will be stronger for it.

Most of our behavior comes from greed, lack of self-confidence, lack of confidence in the nation, and lack of respect for the society. To borrow Gandhi's words: There is enough in this world for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed. Let us work towards a society where we would do unto others what we would have others do unto us. Let us all be responsible citizens who make our country a great place to live. In the words of Churchill: Responsibility is the price of greatness. We have to extend our family values beyond the boundaries of our home. Finally, let us work towards maximum welfare of the maximum people - Samasta janaanaam sukhino bhavantu. Thus, let us - people of this generation, conduct ourselves as great citizens rather than just good people so that we can serve as good examples for our younger generation.

Amina J. Mohammed: 'In the Midst of Unprecedented, Unpredictable Technological Change', Mobile World Congress - 2019

25 February 2019, Barcelona, Spain
Address by Amina J. Mohammed, Deputy Secretary-General, United Nations

We are in the midst of technological change unprecedented in pace and scope and we cannot predict where it will lead.

What we do know, is that we need to start working much better together if we are to steer change for the good of all.

Within our lifetime, we’ve gone from digital technology being virtually unknown to now more than half of all humanity being connected to one another through the internet and mobile carriers.

Never before has a new technology spread so quickly. It took about fifty years in America for just a quarter of all households to adopt electricity. Access to the internet reached the same proportion of households in just seven years.

What will accelerating technological change mean for our children and our grandchildren?

Will they live in a world made more equitable, peaceful and just by technology or will they live in a world where technology has enabled the loss of privacy, increased autocratic control and fueled conflict and inequality?

How do we ensure that technology empowers us and doesn’t over-power us?

These are the critical questions of our time.

There are many reasons to be hopeful:

Past industrial revolutions have brought technological advances that improved living conditions for many and this digital age has great promise.

In agriculture with precision farming and the use of big data in weather forecasting, farmers are now more resilient against climate hazards.

In the health sector, we see frontier technologies related to genetics, vaccines, diagnosis aided by artificial intelligence and faster drug delivery saving thousands of lives, improving health outcomes and extending life expectancy.

Public services can grow more accessible, more accountable and inclusive thanks to digital identity powered by blockchain, facial recognition and other authentication technologies.

And while technology has been among the contributors to climate change, new and increasingly efficient technologies can now help us reduce net emission and create a cleaner world.

If we can work together to responsibly develop and implement such technologies, I believe we stand a better chance of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 and passing on to the next generation a more equitable and prosperous planet.

But this future is not guaranteed.

Much with regard to our current path gives rise for concern:

The digital realm which we are embracing, and which increasingly also embraces us, reflects and exacerbates existing inequalities.

Today in the 21st century, in 2019, the proportion of women using the internet is 12 per cent lower than the proportion of men; this gender gap widens to 33 per cent in the least developed countries according to the ITU.

And it is not just access, women also have less opportunity: At the three major digital platforms, women make up less than 25 per cent of the technology staff.

And if they are looking for venture capital funding, women entrepreneurs can expect just two dollars for every 98 dollars given to male-founded start-ups.

While digital access and opportunity are critical issues, for millions of people in developing countries, technologies that were invented decades ago remain a dream.

I am talking about basic technology like modern sanitation or electricity. In many developing countries more people have access to mobile networks than to clean water.

Related to the issue of addressing inequality, there are ongoing concerns about how new technology will affect jobs. How can we prepare workers for an economy where accelerating technology adoption will disrupt tens of millions of jobs in a matter of years?

If there is a break-through in self-driving vehicles, what will happen to truck and taxi and car hire drivers? Is it likely that they can be absorbed by new jobs in coding or in e-commerce?

The reality is that these disruptions, if not well managed threaten to leave large proportions of our societies further behind, exacerbating inequality and polarization.

Beyond disruption to job markets, there are other emerging threats.

A significant increase in cyberattacks and cybercrimes are posing multiple challenges for governments, citizens and entrepreneurs.

Digital technology has introduced a whole new realm for inter-state conflict and for attacks by non-state actors be they privateers, terrorists or political activists.

Existing law, including international law applies to the digital domain but exactly how it is to be applied and how violators are to be reliably identified and held to account is not yet so clear.

Capacities among states to protect their citizens and companies against these threats, which by their nature have international reach, also differs enormously.

A related concern is that digital technology and the ubiquity of social media platforms, while doing so much to bring people together, can provide new scope for undermining democratic processes, for spreading toxic disinformation and disseminating hate speech.

The collection of data that fuels so much progress also poses critical new governance challenges on where the dividing line is to be drawn between the greater public good and the right to privacy, between the fundamental tenet of state sovereignty and the desirability of a free flow of information across borders.

Moreover, digital surveillance combined with artificial intelligence can help law enforcement but can also be used to violate privacy and persecute dissenting voices.

If we don’t better address these challenges, if we leave current negative trends inadequately attended to, we risk heading into a world where the convenience brought to many by technological progress, will be accompanied by societies that are more polarized, less democratic and with widening inequalities.

So, ladies and gentlemen, what can we do?

Let me propose four areas where I believe we need to focus efforts if we are to steer change and not just be victims of it.

First, we need to create the multi stakeholder, decentralized, cooperation mechanisms that will steer technological change for good.

The formulation of standards, of policies and norms at national, regional and at the international levels has not kept pace with the speed of new inventions and their applications.

In the past, new technology was largely government sponsored or quickly adopted and steered by governments. Today, industry and private enterprise are driving the changes. No direction can be set without them in a prominent seat at the table.

New approaches to governance need to be not only driven by all concerned stakeholders but also need to be faster and more nimble to keep up with the pace of change. Hence the need for decentralized networks rather than heavy, slow, top down approaches.

The difficulty of setting policy, of determining standards and where necessary, of creating norms for the digital realm should not distract us from its fundamental necessity. We can already see how our values, how our human rights, how our ethical standards can be undermined both through malicious use and unintended consequences. We cannot simply rely on the invisible hand of market dynamics to steer the way for us.

What would cooperative or governance frameworks look like that would measure up to the task?

The Secretary General convoked a high-level panel precisely to respond to this question. It is co led by a Melinda Gates and Jack Ma and made up of a group of distinguished entrepreneurs, academics, civil society representatives and senior members of government all working in the digital domain. They come from across the globe and the group is both gender-balanced and age diverse. It will present its report in June of this year.

A second area where we need to redouble our efforts is to ensure that the spread of digital technology is inclusive.

New technologies must be equally available within and among countries.

We must ensure that there are high quality networks for the poorest people and the poorest countries.

Inclusion also requires a recognition that the rights people have offline must also be protected online.

It is also critical for us to support leading innovators—including the many young entrepreneurs and women—who are demonstrating how intelligent connectivity can further development and well-being for all.

The companies that recognize the benefits of driving social good will be rewarded in the market place—many in the next generation of customers expect it and our planet desperately needs it.

A good example in this respect is the mobile industry’s Big Data for Social Good. It allows insights collected from mobile data to be used to support humanitarian action and promote peace. I encourage those of you who are not familiar with it to learn more about it and see how you can contribute to it.

A third area we need to focus on is education.

We need to repurpose our current education systems.

We need to invest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Where it does not exist, we need to add software coding to grade-school curricula.

We also need to teach much more about the interface of ethics and science, of human rights and technology, of sustainable development and technology.

But that is not enough: We need to repurpose our education systems for lifelong learning, for resilience and for emotional and social intelligence in the face of uncertainty and change.

Whatever skills are required at the beginning of a career are likely to be obsolete ten years later.

And careers that exist today may well no longer exist five or ten years from now.

The labour market will continue to increase in uncertainty and we must be prepared for that.

With the arrival of deep fakes and AI generated writing we will also need to educate ourselves and the next generation to better differentiate real from fake information.

This relates to the fourth area I want to highlight and that this event exemplifies: The need for greater reflection across disciplines.

As individuals, as parents, as societies, it is so easy, almost inevitable to get carried away by the current pace of change. Which one of us has not adapted to the 24/7 work environment made possible by our hand-held devices?

Which one of us has not used a mobile device to distract or entertain a small child as an alternative to human interaction?

Now I think we are beginning to learn we need to take a step back. We need to ask what excessive screen exposure does for the development of the young brain, what it does to our own mental health and well-being and what it does for the cohesion of our societies.

We need to reflect together across academic disciplines and across stakeholder groups. In the UN, the Secretary-General has challenged us all to get more tech savvy.

Likewise, I would argue business needs to grow more savvy about the social, ethical, political and development implications of the wave of technological change driving us on.

And we need to talk more to one another in events like the one today.

Ladies and gentlemen in conclusion,

The world we leave for those who come after us has to be a matter of our choice not a consequence of our neglect.

Do we want to have technology that enables an equitable, peaceful and just society, or will we live in a world where technology has enabled the loss of privacy, more autocratic control, more conflict, and more inequality?

My hope is that we will find new ways to bring governments, industry and civil society together to boost the opportunities and better manage the unintended and negative consequences.

In this era of accelerating change, technology can help us move from hope to reality. Let us embrace it and shape it for the betterment of all people, in particular those whom past and present generations have left behind.

Thank you.

Martin Flanagan: 'Staying Sane, keeping your balance, in the Post-truth era', Leadership + Complexity Conference - 2019

6 September 2019, Launceston, Tasmania, Australia

1.
I am a Tasmanian who has lived for the past 35 years in Victoria. What has become apparent to me over that time is this major difference between the two places: Tasmania, in its origins, is Georgian, and Victoria, in its origins, is Victorian.

The difference between the Georgian and Victorian eras is about vastly more than different tastes in architecture and furniture. The two historical eras had profoundly different ways of thinking about human society & what we owe our fellow human beings.

In 1803, when Tasmania was founded as Van Diemen’s Land, Britain was the biggest trafficker of human slaves in the world. The financial interests behind this horrific practice forged the most powerful political lobby group in the country - they owned a block of seats in the British parliament and had high-profile public champions like the future monarch William IV and the great military hero of the day, Horatio Nelson The slave trade had insinuated itself deeply into the British political system in the same way that, in our own time, the NRA has insinuated its way into the American political system, throttling gun law reform.

By the time Victoria was declared an independent colony in 1850, the slave trade had been outlawed by the British parliament. A huge battle had been fought, a huge victory won. For the first time in British political history, people had campaigned politically for the rights of people other than themselves. That’s a huge shift in public consciousness and one that confounded the conservatives of the day. Lord Abingdon, one of slavery’s defenders, had declared, “Feelings of humanity are a private matter and not the basis of public policy”. In the Victorian age, feelings of humanity did indeed become the basis of public policy. And that was another huge shift in the public consciousness.

During the Victorian Age, Britain saw reforms across a whole range of areas - prisons, education, child labour, extending the vote.... It was the Victorians who invented the idea of “progress”. In our own time, that idea has been diminished to mean only economic progress, but, originally, to the Victorians, it also meant social and moral progress. Hence we get the phrase “Victorian morality” which was, among other things, prudish about sex. No-one ever accused the Georgians of being prudish about sex.

So how does any of this impact on Tasmania and Victoria? Well, to begin with, there is a whole chapter of history that Tasmania possesses that Victoria does not. There are characters in Tasmanian history who have no equivalent in Victorian history like one of my journalistic heroes Henry Melville, who wrote “The History of Van Diemen’s Land 1816-36” from the condemned cell in Hobart prison where Governor Arthur had placed him.

But that first chapter in this island’s colonial history came at a price. In the words of historian Ros Haynes “The imagery associated with Van Diemen's Land was too deeply rooted in the history and the literary culture of the island. It lingered on as a malaise, as a sense of inferiority to 'the mainland' “. This was compounded by a corresponding sense of superiority among a certain sort of Victorians. Tasmania, I once wrote, was colonised twice, once by England and once by Victoria.

2.
My subject today is living with the complexity of our times, so why am I talking about history? Because we are all part of a continuum that started long before we were born and will continue long after we are dead. To put it another way: I best understand life through understanding, or seeking to understand, the bigger story that is history. A Jewish man I knew who sold shoes at South Melbourne market used to talk to me about history. I thought he had an opinion worth listening to, having survived the Nazi occupation of his home country, Hungary, during World War 2, and then escaped from the Communist regime which followed. The shoe-seller told me history is like a river. Sometimes it moves so slowly it feels like it’s not moving at all, then it speeds up and suddenly it’s rushing and you’re going over a waterfall. I think we are about to go over a waterfall – if, in fact, we have not already gone over it.

My fear is that we are entering, or have entered, a new technologically enhanced Dark Age, one that currently finds its lead actor in Donald Trump whose depth of character was best summed up, I think, in a story which appeared last Sunday week in the Washington Post about a reluctant visit Trump made in 2017 to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. Having paused at a display on the Dutch role in the global slave trade, Trump turned and, by way of a response, remarked to the museum’s founding director, “You know, they love me in the Netherlands.”

This is a man with more than 20 allegations of sexual abuse against him, including one by a woman saying she was procured for Trump by Jeffrey Epstein as a 13-year-old. It is a measure of the strangeness of our times that, not only do these allegations have about as much lasting consequence as sports scores, there are Christian evangelists in the United States who see Trump, literally, as an agent of God.

So what has this to do with Australia? Everything. Sky News in Australia has adopted the lead of Fox News in America where it has been described – fairly, in my opinion – as the propaganda wing of the Trump-era Republican Party. Both organizations are owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp which also dominates the Australian newspaper market. When Pauline Hanson advised the voters of Western Australia prior to the last State election that Vladimir Putin was “a man of vision”, it was because she saw an idea that was working for Donald Trump and thought she’d try it here. More recently, during the George Pell trial, I was surprised to see one tweeter describe Pell as a Christian saint. I went to the tweeter’s home page. He is – or, at least, sees himself as - a highly devout English Catholic. In addition to Pell, the two other causes dear to his heart were Donald Trump and Brexit. What historical forces unite George Pell, Donald Trump and Brexit? I think I know what a feminist, particularly a feminist of colour, would say.


3.
How did we end up in this weird place? Clearly, technology has simultaneously both empowered and disempowered us. From my perspective as a journalist with an eye on the public realm, there are four obvious dynamics at work. One is the internet and social media – again, both carry and disperse a wealth of knowledge and a wealth of ignorance. Connected to this is a loss of faith in education, particularly public education. One hundred years ago, people working for a better world proceeded in the faith that government education would, as a matter of course, produce more enlightened societies. Now we are dropping back to the view that education is a means to the end of individual advancement and, following from this, something only the better-off can afford. The result? Greater public ignorance. A third factor is that we now have a whole new level of sophistication in political propaganda using – or, rather, manipulating - platforms like Facebook. Cambridge Analytica worked in this way with both the Trump election campaign in 2016 and the Brexit Leave campaign. I saw an interview with one of the Cambridge Analytica directors in which he said that politics is essentially a matter of feeling, not thought. That is, by appealing directly to feeling – and, in many cases, by feeling we actually mean prejudice and fear – a person or political organization can circumvent the need for thought, for reason and knowledge, for rational debate.

The fourth factor that I see at work is the 24-hour news cycle. In the 24-hour news cycle, a story is replaced as soon as its loses its value as a sensation, the sensation that makes you go, “I want to look at that”, like you do with an ad in a brochure. What this means that serious political stories never catch up with those who stand accused by them.. Someone like Trump is a master at playing the 24 hour news cycle, spinning it like a chocolate wheel. I want to buy Greenland, he declares - Greenland doesn’t want to be bought, Trump is insulted and says America’s been insulted. He’s led the news for three days with a complete non-story that serves as camouflage. Meanwhile, income inequality rates are surging both in the US and here back to levels not seen for 100 years or more.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has said recently that the era of what he called “western liberalism” is over. He may be right. That may be the best description of the historic change we’re seeing. The Russian media portray American democracy as “a circus”, thereby making Putin’s regime look to have the virtue of sober good order. How better to make that metaphor come true than by helping to install Donald Trump as the ringmaster. Recently, I saw a clip of Steve Bannon – a common link between Trump and Brexit and Cambridge Analytica – tell a crowd of French ultra-right followers of Marine Le Pen, “We are winning”. Bannon may be right. Last year, I did a public interview with Richard Branson at the National Gallery of Victoria. He said he believed democracy was under attack around the globe. So do I. Putin’s Russia is a fake democracy. Donald Trump has no problem with that. The Prime Ministers of Great Britain and Australia have expressed their eagerness to work with Trump.

The world is in a turmoil of change. Traditionally, Australia has been relatively protected from global forces. That may be about to change. Last year, as a shack owner at Dolphin Sands on the east coast of Tasmania, I was taken aback to learn that a giant megadevelopment at the Cambria Green estate on Dolphin Sands had been announced in the Chinese media as a fait accompli, before mention of it even being a possibility had appeared in the Tasmanian press. A number of the local councillors knew nothing of it until four days before the council meeting approved the 1st stage and what we still don’t is the relationship between the Chinese investors and the government of the People’s Republic of China. Investigating this matter, I learned many things. One was that 24 % of agricultural land in Tasmania is leased or owned by foreigners. Last week, a UN committee said food security and water security are going to be two of the major issues of the 21st century.

Most Australians seem not to give a thought to the fact that we are committed to supporting Japan and the United States against China militarily in the event of hostilities in the South China sea. That is, we will be at war with our major trading partner, a recipe, I would have thought, for chaos. This is one of the many things we really should be talking about. But are not. Instead, as I write, we’re talking about Boris Johnson, the comedy actor who could have stepped out of a Bertie Wooster novel and can tell as many lies as Donald Trump, only a lot more eloquently.

4.

So how do I steady myself? How do I respond to the dizzy complexity of our times? I reach for what’s timeless. I will seek to explain by telling a story. A football story. From the time I was 11 and found myself in a not very happy place, a Catholic boarding school on the north-west coast of Tasmania that has been much in the news of late, sport has been an escape for me, a beautiful distraction, one I happen to understand because my family’s been involved with it for generations.
Two years ago, I interviewed an AFL player, a fine young man called Jordan Roughead, for a book I wrote on the 2016 Bulldogs premiership. Jordan has a social conscience and is determined to stand up for the powerless but when I asked him about politics, he recoiled as if he’d seen a snake and said with passion, “I don’t have anything to do with politics!”. I immediately thought of something that was said 2500 years ago by a Greek statesman and soldier called Pericles: “Just because you don’t have an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t have an interest in you”. If you asked anyone in Hong Kong right now what Pericles meant, I think they could tell you in a few short, sharp sentences.

It is said Trump has led us into the post-truth era. That’s a truly frightening idea – a world without any truth would be a very dark place where random attacks could happen at any moment and go unpunished. But I would argue the term “the post-truth era” is too absolute because there are truths that endure. There is a reason we are still repeating something Pericles said 500 years before the birth of Christ, and the reason is that when ideas are expressed accurately and with precision, they become like tools people carry through the generations proving their worth through use over and over and over again. To quote Pericles once more, “Time is the wisest counsellor”.

I never cease to be amazed by what people thought and said in other times, sometimes thousands of years ago. We think we’re “modern”, that we exist in a time apart. My book on the Western Bulldogs’ premiership naturally dealt with the philosophy of coach Luke Beveridge. What was remarkable to me about that premiership was that everyone at the club from the doormen to the women doing secretarial duties thought they played a part in winning it. The players thought that, too. They were a team that existed as a part of a mass movement and thought it odd when I asked questions which suggested otherwise. In the end, I remembered something Lao Tszu, the Chinese sage said, again around 2500 years ago. “When the best leader's work is done the people say, "We did it ourselves." “

The Romans had a quality they prized called “gravitas” from which the word gravity later came. A person with gravitas was someone whose views were given weight by his listeners. Aristotle said this respect was a function of the character of the speaker. The person with the greatest gravitas in Australian public life right now that I have encountered is Aboriginal leader and Labor Senator Patrick Dodson. An example of an Australian political utterance of recent times with gravitas is the Uluru statement. It was swept to one side at the last election but that doesn’t mean it’s gone away. It never will.

One of my favourite Tasmanian stories occurred in the early 1820s on the east coast. A major character in the history of this island called George Augustus Robinson met some members of the Great Oyster Bay tribe who told him their ancestors had come to the island we now call Tasmania via a land bridge across what we now call Bass Strait and that the sea had closed behind them, cutting them off. No-one believed them. We now know it’s true. That means they carried that story accurately within their culture for something like 8000 year or four times the length of the entire history of the Christian religion.

Earlier this year, I was invited to give a speech during Reconciliation Week at Melbourne Grammar which is on the traditional lands of the Bunurong people. I told the boys that the Bunurong people, to this day, carry a story about Port Phillip Bay when it was dry, when it was a grass plain with trees and a river running through it. The reason the Bunurong remember this story is because it was their land and they lost it through this prehistoric act of climate change.

The Aboriginal spirit who presides over Melbourne, together with Waa the crow, is Bunjil the eagle. The Bunurong story says that when the people asked Bunjil why they had lost their land, he gave them two reasons – one, they were getting involved in needless wars with their neighbours, two, because they were killing female fish before they spawned. That is, they were sinning against the future. The common factor in indigenous law-making around the globe has always involved asking the question: how will this effect the generations of our people still to come? I get that. I’m a grandfather. I look at extinction rates for animal and insect species over the past 40 years and wonder, yet again, what is going to be left for my grandchildren and their children. I also wonder how the collapse of various species is going to impact on the eco-systems they inhabit. This is where we encounter another complexity that is relative to our times. The complexity of nature.

It’s commonly said that those who don’t understand the mistakes of the past are condemned to repeat them. That’s true. But it’s also true that those who don’t learn about history are also denied the strength, the courage, the inspiration, to be had from the victories of the past. No tyrant, no despot, no monarch, ever wanted democracy. Somehow it was won. The British political system did not want to end the slave trade, being deeply implicated in its profits. Somehow that was won. There was entrenched opposition to extending the vote, initially to all men, and later to women. Somehow both causes were won....the only strength we have is the strength we have in coming together and it’s got to start generating from meetings like this.

Last year, I MCed a protest rally against the Cambria Green megadevelopment in the Hobart Town Hall which saw me labelled as a left-wing greenie but which I saw as an issue of democracy. Two weeks later, I MC’d a function titled Capitalism With A Conscience at the National Gallery of Victoria which was hosted by Melbourne entrepreneur Radek Sali for the benefit of an organization called Igniting Change which is run by a remarkable woman called Jane Tewson. Fifteen hundred people attended and, in the course of the night, I interviewed entrepreneur Richard Branson on stage.

Branson believes climate change represents the biggest threat to the world since World War 2, in which 60 million people died. That may sound outlandish but if climate change catastrophes start kicking in we could have hundreds of millions of people on the move around the globe. Branson believes if governments cannot, or will not, take action on climate change, business will have to. Not long after we spoke, Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Kashogghi was brutally murdered and dismembered in a Saudi consulate in Turkey. Trump, who has business interests in Saudi Arabia, avoided comment. Richard Branson issued a statement saying that if the details of the murder were proved true, western businesses would have to reconsider doing business with Saudi Arabia. That’s leadership.

Do I agree with everything Richard Branson says and does? No. But I’m open to dialogue with him and people like him. As is evidenced by the Brexit crisis in Britain, which is going to split the Conservative Party and possibly lead to the disintegration of the United Kingdom, we are in a period when the political definitions which have sustained us for half a century are breaking apart and political forces are re-aligning. Would it bother me if women took the balance of leadership roles? No. I think we’ve got bigger problems than gender disputes. I want to hear from people with gravitas.


Martin Flanagan was speaking at a conference organised by Tasmanian Leaders.

Mario Savio: 'You have to put your bodies upon the gears!', University of Berkeley protest - 1964

2 December 1964, Sproul Hall, Berkeley., California, USA

You know, I just wanna say one brief thing about something the previous speaker said. I didn't wanna spend too much time on that 'cause I don't think it's important enough. But one thing is worth considering.

He's the -- He's the nominal head of an organization supposedly representative of the undergraduates. Whereas in fact under the current director it derives -- its authority is delegated power from the Administration. It's totally unrepresentative of the graduate students and TAs.

But he made the following statement (I quote): "I would ask all those who are not definitely committed to the FSM cause to stay away from demonstration." Alright, now listen to this: "For all upper division students who are interested in alleviating the TA shortage problem, I would encourage you to offer your services to Department Chairmen and Advisors." That has two things: A strike breaker and a fink.

I'd like to say -- like to say one other thing about a union problem. Upstairs you may have noticed they're ready on the 2nd floor of Sproul Hall, Locals 40 and 127 of the Painters Union are painting the inside of the 2nd floor of Sproul Hall. Now, apparently that action had been planned some time in the past. I've tried to contact those unions. Unfortunately -- and [it] tears my heart out -- they're as bureaucratized as the Administration. It's difficult to get through to anyone in authority there. Very sad. We're still -- We're still making an attempt. Those people up there have no desire to interfere with what we're doing. I would ask that they be considered and that they not be heckled in any way. And I think that -- you know -- while there's unfortunately no sense of -- no sense of solidarity at this point between unions and students, there at least need be no -- you know -- excessively hard feelings between the two groups.

Now, there are at least two ways in which sit-ins and civil disobedience and whatever -- least two major ways in which it can occur. One, when a law exists, is promulgated, which is totally unacceptable to people and they violate it again and again and again till it's rescinded, appealed. Alright, but there's another way. There's another way. Sometimes, the form of the law is such as to render impossible its effective violation -- as a method to have it repealed. Sometimes, the grievances of people are more -- extend more -- to more than just the law, extend to a whole mode of arbitrary power, a whole mode of arbitrary exercise of arbitrary power.

And that's what we have here. We have an autocracy which -- which runs this university. It's managed. We were told the following: If President Kerr actually tried to get something more liberal out of the Regents in his telephone conversation, why didn't he make some public statement to that effect? And the answer we received -- from a well-meaning liberal -- was the following: He said, "Would you ever imagine the manager of a firm making a statement publicly in opposition to his Board of Directors?" That's the answer.

Well I ask you to consider -- if this is a firm, and if the Board of Regents are the Board of Directors, and if President Kerr in fact is the manager, then I tell you something -- the faculty are a bunch of employees and we're the raw material! But we're a bunch of raw materials that don't mean to be -- have any process upon us. Don't mean to be made into any product! Don't mean -- Don't mean to end up being bought by some clients of the University, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone! We're human beings!

And that -- that brings me to the second mode of civil disobedience. There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus -- and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it -- that unless you're free the machine will be prevented from working at all!!

That doesn't mean -- I know it will be interpreted to mean, unfortunately, by the bigots who run The Examiner, for example -- That doesn't mean that you have to break anything. One thousand people sitting down some place, not letting anybody by, not [letting] anything happen, can stop any machine, including this machine! And it will stop!!

We're gonna do the following -- and the greater the number of people, the safer they'll be and the more effective it will be. We're going, once again, to march up to the 2nd floor of Sproul Hall. And we're gonna conduct our lives for awhile in the 2nd floor of Sproul Hall. We'll show movies, for example. We tried to get Un Chant d'Amour and [they] shut them off. Unfortunately, that's tied up in the court because of a lot of squeamish moral mothers for a moral America and other people on the outside. The same people who get all their ideas out of the San Francisco Examiner. Sad, sad. But, Mr. Landau -- Mr. Landau has gotten us some other films.

Likewise, we'll do something -- we'll do something which hasn't occurred at this University in a good long time! We're going to have real classes up there! They're gonna be freedom schools conducted up there! We're going to have classes on [the] 1st and 14th amendments!! We're gonna spend our time learning about the things this University is afraid that we know! We're going to learn about freedom up there, and we're going to learn by doing!!

Now, we've had some good, long rallies.

Just one moment. We've had some good, long rallies. And I think I'm sicker of rallies than anyone else here. She's not going to be long. I'd like to introduce one last person -- one last person before we enter Sproul Hall. Yeah. And the person is Joan Baez.

Harry Smith: 'Mr Cameron, keep your mitts off my NHS!', Labour Conference - 2014

24 September, Manchester, United Kingdom

As you can see I’m not athletic.

I came into this world in the rough and ready year of 1923. I am from Barnsley and I can tell you, that my childhood like so many others from that era was not an episode from Downton Abbey. Instead, it was a barbarous time, it was a bleak time, and it was an uncivilized time because public healthcare didn't exist.

Back then Hospitals, doctors and medicine were for the privilege few because they were run for profit rather than as vital state service that keeps a nations citizens and workers fit and healthy.

My memories stretch back almost a hundred years and if I close my eyes I can smell the poverty that oozed from the dusky tenement streets of my boyhood.

I can taste on my lips the bread and drippings I was served for my tea. I can remember extreme hunger, and my parent's undying love for me. In my heart I can still feel my mum and dad's desperation as they tried to keep our family save and healthy in the slum we called home.

Poor mum and dad, no matter how hard they tried to protect me and my sisters the cards were stacked against them because common diseases trolled our neighbourhoods and snuffed out life like a cold breath on a warm candle flame.

I still remember hearing while I played as a child on my street the anguished cries that floated from a window on my boyhood street. They were the screams from a woman dying from cancer who couldn't afford morphine to ease her passage from this life.

No one in our community was safe from poor health, sickness and disease. In our home, TB came for my oldest sister Marion who was the apple of my dad's eye. It is why her sickness and his inability to pay for her medicine or the best care broke his heart.

Tuberculosis tortured my sister and left her an invalid that had to be restrained with ropes tied to her bed. My parents did everything in their power to keep Marion alive and comfortable but they just didn't have the dosh to get her to the best clinics, doctors or medicines. Instead she wasted away before our eyes until my mother could no longer handle her care and she was dispatched to our Work House infirmary where she died 87 years ago. Mum and dad couldn't afford to bury their darling daughter so, like the rest of our country's indigent she was dumped nameless into a pauper's pit.

My family's story isn't unique; sadly, rampant poverty, and no health care were the norm for the Britain of my youth. That injustice galvanized my generation to become after the Second World War the tide that raised all boats.

It is why for me in 1945, after a long hard Great Depression and a savage and brutal war, at the age of 22 and still in the RAF I voted for the first time.

Election Day 1945 was one of the was of the proudest days in my life I felt that I was finally getting a chance to grab destiny by the shirt collar and that is why I voted for Labour and the creation of the NHS.

As I stand here today, my heart is with all of those people from my generation who didn't make it past childhood, didn't get an education, grow as individuals, marry, raise a family and enjoy the fruits of retirement because they died needlessly and too early in another era of austerity. But my heart is also with the people of the present, who, because of welfare cuts and austerity measures, are struggling once more to make ends meet, and whose futures I fear for.

Today, we must be vigilant, we must be vocal, we must demand that the NHS will always remain an institution for the people and by the people. We must never ever let the NHS free from our grasp because if we do your future will be my past. I am not a politician, a member of the elite or a financial guru, but my life is your history - and we should keep it that way. So say it loud and say it clear in this hall and across this country:

Mr. Cameron, keep your mitts off my NHS.

Robert Reich: the best way of learning anything is to talk to somebody who disagrees with you', Why Common Good Disappeared and How We Get it Back, UC Berkeley - 2018

14 October 2018, UC Berkeley, California, USA

Well, as you can see, the state of public debate in the United States right now has worn me down. No, it’s true. When I came to Berkeley 15 years ago, I was six foot two. So it’s been a hard time. It does make me think though that I first came to Berkeley as a sort of a graduate student. I was working for a professor of architecture here in the summer of 1968. You remember that summer. Some of you remember that summer. And I have a very, very distinct recollection. I had gone, as Dan said, and thank you Dan for that introduction and thank you for everything you do by the way.

But as Dan said, I had the less fortunate experience of going to Dartmouth college and when I went to Dartmouth college before I came to Berkeley that summer of ’68, Dartmouth college was all male you should understand. And it also, when I went there, it was before the interstate highway system was completely finished, so it was hard to leave. And it is in Hanover, New Hampshire. So as it was like being in a monastery in Siberia. And I came to Berkeley the summer of 1968 and you know that scene in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy opens the door and it suddenly technicolor.

I remember going up university avenue. I’ve been for the first time in my, my, my iconic beat up beetle and Volkswagen and I remember that first, that first aroma of, of Eucalyptus and marijuana and tear gas. I thought I had, I had reached Nirvana. And then I made a terrible mistake and I have to confess this to you, I, I left Berkeley for 35 years and then I came back.

But what I’d like to talk to you about in the brief time we have before your questions is what has happened to civic debate and this country in terms of what seems to be to be a crisis of incivility and although we can come up with many, many potential causes, I want to. I want to try out three with you that I think that not only accurate but also potentially within our power to do something about.

Now we have as a culture, as a nation, we’ve always disagreed. I mean, you remember many of you, class of 1968 for particularly you remember the disagreements during the Civil Rights Movement. You remember the disagreements over Vietnam. You remember disagreements on and some of you younger people you remember disagreements over women’s rights and women’s rights to choose and the fights over abortion and everything else.

I mean we fight all the time. Incivility is not about not fighting. Civility is not about agreeing. The issue is how we disagree. And for most of my life, most of my memory and I expect yours, we have had an agreement, although we disagree on the substance. We have had an agreement on how we disagree. And those need to be distinguished.

And how we disagree is not only with a certain degree of respect, although sometimes things can get pretty heated and a certain degree of tolerance and openness, although there two things can get heated and I’m talking about over the last 50 years. But we also trust or used to trust our institutions of government.

In 1964, there was a survey done by Gallup and it has been repeated that survey since then, every two or three years. And the question is, do you trust government to do the right thing all or most of the time? In 1964, 72 percent of Americans said yes. Today, fewer than 20 percent say yes.

So it’s not just that we disagree and it’s not just that we disagree sometimes very angrily and sometimes with a huge amount of nastiness, but it’s also that we no longer trust the institutions of government that we used to trust to handle our disagreements. And that is part of the problem, I believe.

We also have much more of what might be called geographic tribalism than ever before in my memory. What do I mean by geographic tribalism? I simply mean that the people around us, our neighbors, our friends, tend to be people who agree with us and the people who disagree with us and agree with themselves tend to live geographically in different places.

Now, sociologists understand that the most influences on public opinion under European, on my opinion, on our values are the people we see every day, the people we talked to. Yes. Even you. And so if the people around us we talk with and we see every day are of the same view that we are, we entrench ourselves in those views.

The best way, the best way, and this is what I tell my students all the time, the best way of learning anything is to talk to somebody who disagrees with you. If you’re only talking to people who agree with you, if everybody around you is mirroring your own values, then you’re not going to learn anything. And if you’re dug in and you don’t want to listen to anybody else who has a different value, then you’re never going to learn anything.

This is what concerns me a little bit about what’s happening in some universities because some people, some professors, some faculty, some of you, some students say, we don’t want to listen to anything that’s going to make us unhappy or provoke us. But my response back is, if you’re not provoked, you’re not going to learn. The essence of learning is to be provoked.

And so we need different views. We need different voices. Fifteen years ago when I came, I was in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I was teaching at a, an institution there that shall go unnamed. And 15 years ago when I came to Berkeley, I drove no longer a beetle, no longer Volkswagen. I had a Mini Cooper. Now 15 years ago, there were not many Mini Coopers in the middle of America. I drove from Cambridge, Massachusetts 3,000 miles to Berkeley.

I love driving across this country. I’ve driven across the country four or five times and 15 years ago I drove in my little, my little Mini Cooper and I noticed that as I left the east coast, there were no Mini Coopers. And I, and I got to Oklahoma and I was in a gas line, I was waiting for gas and, and some truckers came over and they knocked on my window and I lowered the window and I said, Can I help you? They said, What is this? I said, this is a Mini Cooper. They said, how does anybody fit in there?

Now at that point I had a strategic decision to make. You understand what I’m saying? And I decided what the APP I, I opened the door and I stood and I said, no problem. And they looked very puzzled and a little bit, well, let’s say they were befuddled and, and I, and I said, well, I’m from Massachusetts and we’re all under five feet tall. And they nodded and walked off.

And then I got to Berkeley and I thought Berkeley was 3,000 miles away from Cambridge and it took me a little bit of time to realize that I had not moved at all. It was the same town, the same city. I had moved from Cambridge to Cambridge, from Berkeley to Berkeley, but it was the, a lot of the territory that I covered in between the non-Mini Cooper land that was of a different, let’s say, tribe.

Have you ever seen those maps of America where you can actually find out where Starbucks are located. Do you know that there are such maps and my children and I, oh, not that many years ago we took a road trip around in middle America and we stopped in places where there were Starbucks. Not because we wanted Starbucks, but because Starbucks is a genius company in terms of finding geographically tribal oases in Red America, where you, if you are a blue America kind of person can feel at home, usually college campuses.

Now, how do we get out of our bubbles? How do we actually start talking to people who disagree with us? I think it’s not all that hard. We start with our own families. I daresay there are people in your families who you disagree with politically. In fact, I dare say there are many of you who are people in your families who you don’t even like to talk politics with. Am I right? They’re usually named Uncle Bob.

Now, here’s what I, what I urge you to do this. There’s a little bit of an advance in our current incivility. Instead of avoiding conflict and I completely understand conflict avoidance, particularly inside families. What I urge you to do is seek out uncle Bob at the next, well maybe this Thanksgiving and sit down with uncle Bob and don’t start with labels. Don’t start with Republican, Democrat, Donald Trump. Don’t mention Trump. Don’t start with any labels at all. Conservative, liberal. Forget them, labels. Just talking and asking your uncle Bob about his work. What do you know? How is the job? How were the benefits? Do you see where I’m going?

In other words, have your uncle Bob tell you his story about kitchen table economics. If you want to use that term. Sort of, you know how is how’s the, how’s the company, how’s it dealing with healthcare, health insurance, pensions — all the things that most people talk about at least with family over the kitchen table and are worried about and you can tell your story. And before long you may discover that you have a lot in common and he has a lot in common with you. And then you might talk about solutions. But you see you never are getting up to labels.

You’re talking about the common kitchen table economic issues that you and your uncle Bob are dealing with and that story or those stories are the foundation stones for the kind of stories that most Americans are actually telling each other. But it’s in those stories and in the commonality of those stories that you begin to understand something much larger: that it’s not about Republicans versus Democrats. Conservative versus liberal. Donald Trump or people who don’t like Donald Trump, it really is about what’s happening to average people.

Which gets me to the second reason I think we have engaged in or found ourselves and the incivility pickle we’re in. The first one is geographic tribalism. The second has to do with what has happened to incomes over the last 40 years. Now, if I had a chart behind me or a slide behind me, I would show you that from 1946. How many of you were born in… I don’t want to ask you. I know the class of 1968. Most of you were born in 1946. I was born in 1946. Bill Clinton was born in 1946. George W dot Bush was born in 1946. Donald Trump was born in 1946. Cher was born in 1946. I mean anybody who was anybody was born in 1946. Demographers, demographers. They scratch their heads. They want to know. Well, why? Why, why? Why so many people were born in 1946. It’s not rocket science.

My father was in the Second World War and he came home and there was my mother. This is not complicated, but since 1946, if I had a chart behind me, you’d see that for starting in 1946 and extending up to about 1978, 79, 80. The economy grew and the median wage not the average, the median wage that is half above, half below median wage grew exactly in tandem with economic growth.

Everybody, no matter whether they were in the top 10 percent, top five percent, top one percent, bottom 20 percent, bottom 10 percent, everybody grew together. In fact, interestingly, if you were in the bottom fifth, the bottom 20 percent you, your income grew faster than if you were in the top 10 percent or top 20 percent in those years. Three decades from 1946 up until 1976, 1977, 78, 79. What happens starting in the late seventies is that median wage begins to flatten.

Now the economy keeps on growing. Now, granted, there are recessions and recoveries. There’s the business cycle, but behind the business cycle you can see the economy continues to grow at, you know, two or three or four percent a year on average, and yet the median wage begins to flatten and something is going on because the median wage flattens for the next 40 years. I mean, the economists kill continues to grow and it’s not that people are not getting benefits from that economy. The gains from the economy are going someplace. It’s just that they’re not going to the middle class.

I feel that way too about all of this. So. So then the question becomes what do you as a typical family do? As a typical family beginning in late seventies, we now can see this in hindsight. We didn’t know it then because we were in the middle of it. It’s like a fish in water. The typical family starting in the late seventies, the first coping mechanism. I’m using the term coping mechanism advisedly to mean this is how people cope with the fact that their wages are under a huge amount of stress.

Well, the first coping mechanism is women, middle class women and many working class women going into paid work. Now middle class women and working class women and we’re already working obviously, but they went into paid work in large large numbers beginning of the late 1970s. And I wish I could tell you it was because all the wonderful opportunities open to women. No. That was part of it, but the major reason women that went into paid work starting in the late seventies was to prop up family incomes that were starting to drop.

Now that worked for a while. That coping mechanism kept family incomes going up until the mid nineties and then there’s a limit to how many hours families can put in and women can work. And what I remember seeing when I was Secretary of Labor. I’d look at the data and I’d be amazed at the number of hours both men and women were putting in. I mean it was almost as if we had about a third of the country. Husbands and wives were working on shifts. They were taking care of the kids, while the other one was was working and then the other one would come back and the other one would go take care of the kids. It was amazing what I was seeing in the data and I was hearing when I’d go out into the country.

We had an expression, an acronym for these families. I don’t know if you remember them. DINS. Double income, no sex. Because how could there be any procreation? I think that they.

Well, there was a third coping mechanism. When you couldn’t put in any more hours. The third coping mechanism for American families faced with stagnant wages was to use their homes as piggy banks and get home equity loans or refinance their mortgages and this worked. It worked pretty well because everybody thought, as you remember, home prices were going to continue to rise, and then of course we had the housing bubble. The debt bubble exploded, and then something very important happened.

At the time. All of us, particularly those of us who were in government or around government or doing economic policy, all we were thinking about was how to get out of this spiral, this downward spiral. How to save Wall Street, how to make sure that the economy didn’t go down to the tube like it did in 1929 and the 1930s.

But in hindsight something very important also happened during the ensuing great recession, millions of Americans lost their savings. Some lost there jobs, millions did. Millions also lost their homes and the banks got bailed out. Homeowners did not. Not a single Wall Street executive went to jail. And a different story began to be told whether you were Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal didn’t matter.

In fact, interestingly, remember you remember the tea party movement emerged from those years and the tea party movement was basically a response, an angry response to both Wall Street and government. More of an angry response to government, but it emerged from that era, that financial crisis, that set of what seemed to be scandals.

And then you also had a very brief movement called the occupy movement emerging almost at the same time, almost around the same issues, although the blame was shifted to Wall Street and to the big corporations, but it was the same set of problems. And then what happened? We began to hear from candidates that the game is rigged against average working people and the reason we began to hear that is because the people who were advising the candidates, the pollsters and also other consultants, were picking that up all around the country. And the reason they were picking that up around the country is because that’s the way people felt. The game was rigged. There was something fundamentally wrong about an economy that continued to grow, but everybody’s wages were flat and now everybody knew everybody’s wages were flat or at least the median wage was flat because there were no longer any coping mechanisms left.

And Wall Street got bailed out. Nobody went to jail. And the rest of us seem to be left holding the bag somehow. Even Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election started out her campaign saying the deck is stacked in favor of those at the top. But even before Hillary started, in 2015, I was doing research for the book, “The Common Good,” and I was out in Wisconsin and Minnesota and Michigan and I went down to Arkansas and in southern Ohio, wherever I went, I heard the same things. Regardless of whether people describe themselves as conservatives or Liberals or Republicans or Democrats, they all were saying the same thing. The game is rigged, it’s rigged.

And I would ask people in the middle of 20 15, I’d ask them, well, tell me who you are supporting for president and most in this kind of free floating focus group that I held in 2015 told me they weren’t sure, but they were most attracted to two candidates: Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. And I remember when I first heard that I said, what? I mean, I can understand one or the other, but how can you use their two names in the same sentence? They’re on different planets, if different galaxies.

And what people in Michigan or Wisconsin or wherever I was would say to me back, Well, they’re both, they will both shake up the system. They’re not politics as usual. They’re not even typical politicians. They’ll unrig the system. They’ll make it work for me. I don’t want a politician. I don’t trust politicians. Well, that was the first indication to me that what had started really in the late seventies in terms of stagnant median wages and then three coping mechanisms that were eventually exhausted and then a big bail out and everybody else feeling that they were shafted somehow was resulting in politics, a political reality of a sort that I hadn’t come across before.

Now, of course Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders were at are very different. But to the typical person out there angry about what’s happened, they were not all that different and by the way, that anger, that sense of being manipulated, cheated, being shafted by the system, that’s still there.

And in your questions if you have them, I could talk about Donald Trump. I don’t want to particularly right now, but I would just want to bring your attention to the fact that there are now politicians out there on both sides, including Trump, who are using that anger and living off of that anger and building their political base off that anger. And the vitriol and anger in our system is a direct result in response to all of that.

Now, I said that there were three, in my view, three core reasons for the kind of lack of civility and disrespect and everything else that we’re seeing right now in politics. The third I want to suggest to you, and it can’t be avoided, is the media. But instead of just simply doing what a lot of people do and saying, oh, I’m going to be more in social media, it’s awful. People that can attack other people anonymously. It’s just all social media. It’s not. It’s not just social media and it’s not just Fox News.

I want to remind you that Leslie Moonves, who was the CEO until recently of CBS, was delighted by the politics of 2016. He said, bring it on. We’ve never done this well before. You see what we have in the media, in communications right now is extraordinary competition for people’s ears and eyes. Attention spans are short because attention is being pulled in every possible direction and when you have to get attention, one of the ways of getting attention is to be mean, to be angry.

Not too long ago I was on a television program and I was debating somebody who is of a different political party and we actually had a very good discussion. It turned out we agreed more than we disagreed. It was quite extraordinary and it got to the station break and I said to the producer, the producer, you know when you’re, when you’re on television, you’re, you’re hooked up through your ear to a producer, and I said to the producer, pretty good. I was really impressed with how well that discussion went, don’t you think? And she said, no.

I said, what’s wrong? She said, you’ve got to be angrier when when we get back on the air, I want you to be angry. I said, I don’t want to be angry. We were having a good discussion. We’re modeling for the public at a time when the public needs models of people from different, different ideas, different political persuasions. We were modeling actually the possibility of agreement. She said, it doesn’t matter. Be Angrier. I said, I don’t want to. She said, we’re going to be back on in 10 seconds, be angrier, and at that point I lost my temper.

Now the press has always, at least to some extent, even the so called elite press has always been looking for stories that will capture attention. I remember that in the 2008 presidential election, I got a call from the New York Times for a political reporter who said, we’ve gone through, we found a a whole, a whole cache of Hillary Clinton’s letters from college and she mentioned in those letters that she went out on a date with you and I said, really? I didn’t remember it, but I didn’t want to say I didn’t remember it. That would itself make a headline. I said, well, what can I do? What can I help you with?

And he said, well, I’d like you to tell me, is there anything from that date you had with Hillary Rodham at that time, Hillary Rodham that might, that might give us and our readers some sense of how she would perform as president? Well, I, with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek. I said, uh, well we went to a movie and she wanted an inordinate amount of butter on her popcorn, and then there was silence. I thought he had hung up. I said, are you still there? He said, I’m just writing all this down and then it appeared next week and the New York Times.

But we’ve got to the point where the competition for attention is so intense that those competitive forces are now generating and helping generate a nastiness that we have not heard and experienced before. Even reporting on the nastiness is itself exciting for some people. But I dare say that here too, we all and everybody else in this country, can register our dismay with negativism. That is we can reward media that are giving us information and also doing it in a way that is not nasty.

There is no reason we have got to watch or listen to or read nothing but angry, brutal kinds of exchanges. We have it in our power. In other words, to change the discourse in this country. And I think we will because I keep on coming across people in my free floating focus group who are so turned off by the negativism right now and are beginning to reward politicians who are actually coming up with positive agendas and not being brutal to their opponents.

I heard it the other day. I was in Texas and I was in an airport. You know, I, I’m, I’m so conspicuous. I guess it’s because I’m conspicuous. People come up to me, I have no idea who they are. And they say things like, what are we going to do? I say, I don’t know. But this person, she came up to me and she said, you know, I am. So after she said, what are we going to do? And I said, I don’t know. She said, I am so impressed with Beto O’Rourke. Well, it’s interesting that, I mean, here we are in Berkeley, California and some of you reacted positively.

I don’t know that much about him. I’ve been researching him, but that what they said about him was that it wasn’t just his values they liked the, like the way he presented them. They liked his personality, they liked him and they liked the way he treated. If you can believe it, Ted Cruz. Well, you see, that’s what I’m getting at.

So we are not entirely powerless. I mean even here at the University of California, Berkeley, I have tried and I think you in your own ways can try to make sure that this is not a sanctuary for just one kind of view and that people are invited here as professors and as speakers who have different views and that are provocative and provoke. Even if people don’t like to be provoked, they should be provoked. In other words, we can all do our parts in all sorts of ways to change the dialogue, to change the temperature, to change the quality of discourse in America.

The founding fathers talked about civic virtue a great deal. If you read the federalist, you see again and again, they mentioned this, Hamilton and Madison especially. They talk about civic virtue. What this country has got to rely on his civic virtue. It can’t simply rely on the constitution. We need people who evince and practice civic virtue. What did they mean by civic virtue? They did not mean simply being nice to each other.

No. They meant people who are willing as part of their sense of citizenship to engage with others in public deliberation and they use the term deliberation. In public deliberation around the events of the day, around the future of the country. Deliberation was so critical to democracy? It wasn’t just free speech. It was not simply a matter of people voting. Deliberation meant actually talking with other people. Understanding and listening.

And part of deliberation. In my view, I call eloquent listening and eloquent listening is when your uncle Bob says something, you don’t just stop him or cut them off. You asked him what he means. You repeat what he says. You try to understand what he is getting at. Eloquent listening means being willing to open your mind to the possibility that your uncle Bob might be right or it might be even persuasive. Can you imagine how different this country could be if we engaged in that kind of civic virtue? Thank you all.

And now we have some time. I hope we have some time for your questions.

Audience member 1: Professor Reich, you failed to address identity politics. Surely. That’s another thing that’s poisoning the discord today. Could you comment on that?

Reich: I failed to address identity politics and surely that’s something that is poisoning the discourse today. Well, I don’t know that it’s spoiling the discourse. I mean we are not just people, but we’re also black people or white people or men or women or were people. I mean, we can’t ignore the fact that we have in this country, for example, a history of racial discrimination and we have in this country a history of sexual harassment and brutality. We do. Does somebody want to disagree with that?

But that doesn’t mean that everybody else becomes an enemy. In other words, identity politics doesn’t have to be a politics of negativity. It can simply be a politics in which we acknowledge and respect the different perspectives and histories that people have given who they are. I mean I am if you haven’t noticed, very short. And that shortness is part of my identity and if I didn’t share it with you. In fact, the first thing I said to you are, the first thing when I came out was I made a joke about my height because I knew that you were aware of it and I was aware of it. I wanted you to know that I knew that you knew that I knew.

Audience member 2: I’ve joked with people that I was a member of a basketball team with you and I was the center, but what I wanted to say was eloquent listening. I’m going to go here,Tucker Carlson, who someone I don’t agree with at the Commonwealth Club on Wednesday. What question would you ask him?

Reich: Well, if I were in the audience talking to Tucker Carlson and I’d say, why don’t you have Robert Reich on your show more often? I think that again, we have CNBC, people, Rachel Maddow people, and we have Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity people, but why don’t we mix it up a little bit? How are we ever going to talk to each other when we don’t?

Audience member 3: How do you feel the sentiments that you’re talking about fit in with the recent Cavanagh hearing?

Reich: Well, I’ll tell you. My first job in government was working for Robert Bork. And I liked Robert Bork. I mean I was assistant to the solicitor general when he was solicitor general. He just fired Archibald Cox. He was not terribly popular. I didn’t like what he was doing, but I had had him as a law professor and I liked him personally. We disagreed on the second, fourth, fifth, eighth, and ninth amendments to the constitution, but I, but I liked him personally and when he went through what he went through in his Supreme Court hearing, and some of you remember may remember the Robert Bork hearings. In fact, there was even an expression called “to Bork,” which meant to be somebody who had been character assassinated. I was very upset by that. I predicted that the time that that would undermine civility in Supreme Court nominations and I unfortunately was proven right.

I think that we’ve got to be aware in politics and every other institution and position of leadership we’re in or even non-position of leadership. We’ve got to be aware of the effect of what we are having, the effects of what we are doing, to the institutions in which we are, that we are inhabiting. It’s not just a matter of winning. It’s a matter of winning and strengthening an institution. The Supreme Court is now weaker, substantially weaker as an institution than it was before Bork and Thomas, and certainly the Cavanaugh hearings.

Audience member 4: You talked a lot about using, or improving dialogue. How do we use that dialogue to improve the condition of our, of our country? So moving from just talking about it to doing it outside, of leaving it to the politicians and the people in charge?

Reich: One of the themes I was trying to push was that we don’t leave it to the politicians. We also do it personally. We seek out people who are different and who might disagree with us and we’re not intimidated and we don’t avoid conflict. It’s not the conflict we should avoid. It’s a certain form of conflict that is pretty undermining of our civility, but we’ve got to personally try to overcome that. Now it’s hard, easy to say, hard to do. And I provided you, I hope, some ideas of how to do that, but we’ve got to try to do it in our personal life.

I’ve also suggested, now this may be a little bit hokey, but I think it’s maybe a way to do it, that we go back to the old idea of sister cities, remember where we used to have sister cities, but the sister cities really should be across the red, blue political divide. So for example, what would happen if Berkeley had Oklahoma City as its sister city? I mean, can you imagine? You probably can’t imagine. That’s the problem. It’s so hard to imagine, but you. I mean, I mean taken to its logical and I don’t want to. I don’t want to overstate something like this but, but, but we could actually have pen pals. We could, we could have families who our family and their family of different political persuasions got together with.

One of my best friends in the world is a man named Alan Simpson, Alan Kay Simpson, former Republican, very senior Republican senator from Wyoming. Alan Simpson is about six foot eight feet tall. He and I see eye to eye on nothing literally or physically, but I love the guy and I disagree with them. A lot of things. But I, I spend when I can, you know, time out in Cody, Wyoming with them and we, we laugh. I want to emphasize to you, humor is one of the greatest disinfectants. Always use humor.

Audience member 5: Professor Reich, some economists and historians would argue that the growth of the American economy between 1940 and 1980 is an historic anomaly that cannot be duplicated and that even with free markets around the world, the only way to do reintroduce fairness across the planet might be through the kind of democratic socialism which the Europeans adopted after World War Two. I’d like to hear you comment on that.

Reich: Well let me just repeat the question is, was the growth of the American economy between the end of the Second World War and the late seventies, a historic anomaly and that can’t be repeated. And to some extent there is evidence that it wasn’t almost that is watch the rest of the competitors of the world had been devastated by World War Two, but it’s not a zero sum contest. That is we rebuilt Europe. We rebuilt Japan at huge expense. And why did we do that? Not just to contain the Soviets, but we also did it because we understood that a rich and prosperous Europe and a rich and prosperous Japan would buy our goods and services and we could buy their goods and services and we could do better. All of us together. This is kind of a a non-zero sum attitude that the current administration seems to have forgotten.

My point being that we’ve had in history some periods of extraordinary growth actually from 1929 to 1938 was a period of extraordinary growth. People forget that during the depression up there was also a, there was a period of extraordinary growth that started right after 2009. I mean we’ve been in a huge growth spurt in a way.

So the issue is not growth or non growth. I think the issue is you put your finger on it. How do the fruits of that growth, how are they managed? How do we organize the economy so that more people get the benefits of that growth. And you mentioned democratic socialism and I in the spirit of trying to avoid labels, I’m going to translate that is thicker social safety nets and more public investment in education and healthcare and infrastructure and basic r and d. So everybody has more of a chance to get ahead. And I would say yes.

Well, you see my point is that if that is labeled democratic socialism, it has all the baggage associated with communism, socialism. Everybody gets starts talking about socialism. They don’t talk about what’s really at issue.

Audience member 6: The question is how do you organize and convince the Democratic Party that people have to get out there and talk to groups and tell people what the issues are? Because most people I’ve found in talking to them don’t know the issues. They don’t even know the policies. They don’t know that this is going to get cut and that’s going to get cut.

Reich: Here’s the thing. You’re very, very right. In the last midterm election in 2014, only 16 percent of young people between the ages of 18 and 29 bothered to vote. Only 16 percent. Now why only 16 percent? Well, you were young once and some of you voted, but I remember being 16 to 29 and you have your starting families and you’re starting businesses and you’re starting work and you’re out in the world and you don’t even know where to register and you don’t even know where your home is and it’s complicated and it’s not always your highest priority, but here’s the thing.

I have been teaching now for 35 years. The current generation of students, not just at Berkeley but all over the country because I do occasional guest lecturing, is the most committed, dedicated, involved, engaged generation of young people I have ever experienced.

Now they are cynical about politics. There’s no question about it, but I understand why they’re cynical about politics, but they want to improve the country. They want to improve their communities, and what I say to them is you can’t even begin to improve your communities or the country unless you have people in positions of power who you trust to do the right thing and you have an obligation. It’s a citizenship obligation. And I think all of us have to say that to our children and our grandchildren. Everybody in this room has to repeat that over and over to our children and grandchildren, and if you don’t have children, grandchildren find them.

Audience member 7: I’m, I’m just going to cut to my second question. Many of us grew up with this idea of an American creed and that more unites us than divides us. Do you still believe that?

Reich: Do I still believe the American creed that more unites us than divides us? Absolutely. Absolutely. I think once you get under the level of the talking heads and the politicians and the crazy, you know, the kind of yelling people and get out in the country. People agree more, much more than they disagree.

For example, one thing that I asked in my kind of free floating focus group, the last time I did this was just this week in Texas, earlier this week, near San Antonio and I was up in Dallas and I just find people and I’d say, I’m just curious. I’m just curious. Do you think that we should have a country in which if everybody who works full time should be out of poverty and you know, 95 percent of the people I asked that question to say yes, if you work full time, you should not be in poverty.

And there are many other principles that we all agree on. We don’t want an aristocracy. We don’t want a permanent group of people who have so much wealth and power that they can overwhelm our government with their money. We want big money out of politics. Actually, most people on both sides of the aisle in terms of average people want big money out of politics. And I could go on, but we don’t have time.

Audience member 8: I’ve been laughed out of several rooms for asking this question.

Reich: You will not be laughed out of this room.

Audience member 8: Oh wait till you hear the question. Okay. What would you think about random seating in the houses of Congress to mix it up, as you say and alleviate geographical tribalism?

Reich: Well, I think you just heard there was no laughter. You’re talking about random seating, not with random citizens, but random seating in terms of Democrats and Republicans. No aisles to cross. I like that. I, I can just a, and maybe this will be my last comment, the first State of the Union address that I actually attended officially when Bill Clinton was president.

I remember sitting there and the cabinet is in the front row and I looked at both sides of the aisle and as you know, in the state of the union, you’ve got the Senate and the House together in the House well. And I said to myself, why exactly what you’re asking, why is it that we take these sort of radical, radical sides? And one thing that was very clear to me, and I don’t mean to sound in any way partisan, this is a reflection of what actually was the case and is the case. When I looked over to the Republican side, almost every single person was white and male. When I went over to the Democratic side, there were at least some who weren’t. And I think that your idea is a good idea, but we also have got to make sure that all of us keep fighting for a congress and for an administration and for courts that look and not just look, but reflect the values of most of us. Thank you all.

Michael Sheen: 'But first of all – by God, believe in something', Hay Festival - 2015

2 March 2015, St David's Day, Port Talbot, Wales, United Kingdom

In 1945 Aneurin Bevan said: ‘We have been the dreamers, we have been the sufferers, and now, we are the builders.’ And my God, how they built. And what they built. Every bit as much a wonder of the world as any architectural marvel, or any natural miracle … The National Health Service. A truly monumental vision. The result of true representation. Of real advocacy. A symbol of equality, of fairness, and of compassion.

The nation that swept the postwar Labour government into power was made up of people who had faced the horrors and the hardships of the second world war. And had bound together as one community to overcome them. They had been sustained and inspired by their feeling of comradeship, and their sense of responsibility for their fellow man and woman. Compelled to help those in need and those struggling in the face of hardship.

These were the experiences that shaped them, and this was the vision of life that the welfare state was born out of. Faced with an enemy that sought only to divide, the National Health Service strove for unity. Where they traded in fear-mongering, and blame, and exploitation of the vulnerable, the NHS represented compassion, and generosity, and acceptance. Where they slavered with voracious self-interest, the NHS symbolised courageous self-sacrifice for the good of all.

In his book In Place of Fear, Bevan said: ‘The collective principle asserts that no society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means.’

‘No society can legitimately call itself civilised’: now that begs the question, what sort of society do we want to be? What is our vision for ourselves? What are the qualities and the principles that we aspire towards, and choose to defend?

Because it is a choice. Do we want to be a society that is fractured, divided, disconnected? Do we want to be a society that is suspicious and mistrustful of its own people? A society that is exploitative, that sees people as commodities, as numbers. Mere instruments of profit, to be used while they have use, drained of whatever they can offer, and when they are seen as no longer useful, just abandoned, cut adrift. Preferably unseen and never again heard from.

Or … or … do we want to be a society where each person is recognised? Where all are equal in worth and value. And where that value is not purely a monetary one. A society that is supportive, that is inclusive and compassionate. Where it is acknowledged that not all can prosper. Where those who are most vulnerable, most in need of help, are not seen as lazy, or scrounging, or robbing the rest of us for whatever they can get. Where we … we do not turn our backs on those facing hard times. We do not abandon them or exploit their weakness. Because they are us. If not now, then at some point, and inevitably, they are us.

We are not afraid to acknowledge that we can be ailing, that we can find ourselves weak, that we can be infirm, and that we all at some point need help. We don’t shy away from this hard truth, we embrace it. Because in that way, together, we are always strong. We leave no one behind. We only say we’ve crossed the finish line when the last of us does. Because no one is alone. And there is such a thing as society.

This is what I believe to be Aneurin Bevan’s vision of a living tapestry of a mixed community, as he said.

At a time now, when people mistrust politicians as being too professional, too disconnected, no longer representing the voice of the people they have been elected to serve but more likely to represent the voice of wherever the money is. No longer standing for anything meaningful, or inspired by strongly held beliefs.

At a time like this a man like Aneurin Bevan seems like a mythical creature. Like a unicorn perhaps. Or perhaps more fittingly, a dragon. He didn’t care what the polls were saying. He didn’t worry about his PR, or what the current popular trends might be. His vision was long term. It was far-reaching, visionary in its scope and revolutionary in its effects. He had cast iron integrity and a raging passion.

This was a man who had no fear in standing up for what he believed in. And he made no bones about how he felt. This was a man who publicly stated: ‘No amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical, or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep, burning hatred for the Tory party.’

In today’s political climate, where politicians are careful, tentative, scared of saying what they feel for fear of alienating a part of the electorate; where under the excuse of trying to appear electable, all parties drift into a morass of bland neutrality; and the real deals, the real values we suspect, are kept behind closed doors – is it any wonder that people feel there is very little to choose between? Bevan said: ‘We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down.’

So when people are too scared to say what they really mean, when they’re too careful to speak from their hearts, when integrity is too much of a risk, it’s no surprise that people feel disengaged with politics.

There is never an excuse to not speak up for what you think is right. You must stand up for what you believe. But first of all – by God, believe in something.

Because there are plenty out there who believe in grabbing as much as they can for themselves. Constantly sniffing around for markets to exploit, for weakness to expose. They won’t say it, of course – they’re too smart for that.

No one says they want to get rid of the NHS. Everyone praises it, across all parties. It is about as powerful a symbol of goodness that we have, so it would be too dangerous not to. But for decades now, there has nevertheless been a systematic undermining of its core values.

This is beyond party politics. The Labour government arguably did as much damage to the NHS as any Tory or coalition-led one.

This is about who we want to be as a nation, and what we believe is worth fighting for. Too many people have given too much, and fought too hard, for us to give away what they achieved and to be left with so very little.

To those across the whole party political spectrum, and to anyone in any position of power or authority, I ask you to search your heart, and look at who and what you serve.

To those who have discarded all principles, save that of profit before all else; to those who have turned their backs on the very idea of a truly democratic society, and aligned themselves to nothing but self-interest; to those who have betrayed the vision of equality, and justice, and compassion for all – that vision that provided the crucible from which came forth the National Health Service – I say to you, as Aneurin Bevan said in Trafalgar Square in 1956: you have besmirched the name of Britain; you have made us ashamed of the things of which formerly we were proud; you have offended against every principle of decency and there is only way in which you can even begin to restore your tarnished reputation. Get out. Get out! Get ... out!

Catherine Quinlan: 'So take a second and save your life', The End of Time, RMIT Speechwriting Task - 2017

23 October 2017, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

Catherine is part of the professional writing and editing course at RMIT. This was a speechwriting exercise for end of year presentation. One of the supervisors sent it to Speakola as an outstanding piece. .

There’s no time like the present.

There is no time like the present because now is all we have. So if you want to change, NOW is the time. 

As Aristotle said, ‘now does not coexist with any other moment. It does not even inhabit itself, but annuls itself the moment it comes to be.’

In other words, time is a succession of nows.

But even the word succession is problematic because it implies that one moment follows another in a line,  a temporal line.

The passing of time, second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour is merely a convention.  It is based on an economic imperative that declares: ‘There is no time to waste because time is money.’

And time is money; but only if we buy into the current economic theory that drives our society. In economics speak, time decay even has a formula:

“Time decay is the ratio of change in an option’s price to the decrease in time to expiration.”

No wonder we are driven: everything we love and value – including ourselves – is supposedly losing value over time.

The word success is even a measure of time? Since the word success originates from the Latin word succedere – to come close after.

One thing leads to another. A single rain drop on the window is not capable of sustaining itself apart from the rain.

But, by this definition, we are all harnessed to time and on and on the treadmill turns.

The renowned economic theorist John Maynard Keynes wrote in the 1930s

‘that in future people would have more leisure time because of mechanisation and compound interest’.

But where is this extra time?  It is illusory – based on projections from the past to future and bypassing the present, a mechanism that doesn’t bring us joy or make us more productive.

We use phrases like: 'time poor', 'time is not my own' and 'stealing time' because we believe that time is a scarce commodity and moments need to be stolen in order to preserve some of it for ourselves.  

We relate to the character of the White Rabbit from Alice In Wonderland when he runs past saying: “I’m late, I’m late, I’m late” .

But paradoxically, when Alice asks the White Rabbit:“How long is forever?” He replies: “Sometimes just one second.”

So take a second and save your life.

It would be truly tragic if, in reality, we were simply propelled from what was to what will be with nothing in between.

But this time-poor existence is a choice.

So why are we choosing to live apart from the one place we naturally abide –  the here and now. What T.S Elliot called ‘The still point of a turning world’.

If we lived on the constant point of creation, ‘in my beginning is my end’ we would view life’s vicissitudes with equanimity.

We wouldn’t be crippled by fear and far from being unproductive, we would always be on the cusp of discovery.

Rumi, the 13th century Sunni poet wrote:

‘You were born with wings why prefer to crawl through life?’

Telling people to strive for an indefinite future is robbing them of their inheritance. 

Everything we need is here now.

There is time enough in one grain of sand in the hourglass.

When are we intending to marvel at the majesty of a swooping bird or the brilliance of the sunset?

Tomorrow or next week?

Oh, but there isn’t time.  Tempus Fugit. Time Flies.

Another writer who used the conundrum of time in his writings was Oscar Wilde. ‘If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.’

Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of Great Britain during World War Two, unravels time and refashions it into a pattern that will bring comfort to the people of England during this the darkest hours of the war.

“Now this is not the end.
It is not even the beginning of the end.
But it is, perhaps,
the end of the beginning.”

Rather than being indefinitely afraid, the people of England now had a space in which to breath and go about their daily lives. The only thing that had changed was their concept of time.

I would like to leave you with the words of another renowned philosopher, Pooh Bear:

“What day is it?” asked Pooh.
“It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.
“My favourite day,” said Pooh.

Susan Rennie: 'Woolworths the pokies people. It doesn't quite have the same ring', Woolworths AGM - 2017

23 November 2017, Sydney, Australia

Susan Rennie is a Councillor in Darebin, Melbourne.

Thank you Mr Chairman. I'd like to start by acknowledging that we're meeting today on the lands of the [Wurundjeri] people of the [Kulin] nation and pay my respects to elders of the past, present and emerging and any Aboriginal and Torres-Strait Islander people here today.

Woolworths, the pokies people. It doesn't quite have the same ring as Woolworths the fresh food people does it? But Woolworths is Australia's largest operator of pokie machines and if you judge the money that they manage to extract from vulnerable people as a measure of their success then they're extremely successful in that business. But pokie machines are doing extraordinary harm in our community. Harm from gambling in fact is almost on a par in terms of the health impact with harm from alcohol or harm from depression and most of that harm is related to pokie machines.

Did you know that postcodes with 7.5 pokie machines per thousand adults have 20% more family violence that postcodes with no pokie machines. It raises a question about how much family violence is an acceptable outcome to Woolworths for the operation of their pokie machines. A question I put to every director who is elected today, how much family violence do you think is an acceptable trade-off for the operation of your pokie machines? Woolworths, the family violence people doesn't have a good ring either does it? There were 400 gambling related suicides in Australia every year. Woolworths, the suicide people, not really what you want to be known for.

But you can actually have your cake and eat it too. You can have your pokie machines and operate them more safely and despite what the Chairman has said, Woolworths has done nothing to achieve this outcome. It is as a Company the most aggressive and predatory pokie machine operator in this country, actively lobbying against changes that might make machines safer.

I spoke earlier of being able to withdraw cash from gaming venues. Imagine 10 years of cash withdrawals from a vulnerable person in a state of chronic ill health who was gambling with money that really wasn't hers to gamble with. She was getting it off her elderly mother who had early stage dementia. Woolworths in receipt of money that really didn't belong to the person who was gambling and any level of due diligence across the four venues that Sarah lost money at would have found that she was not in a position to lose with a lower job. Not in a position to lose well over $1 million.

As I said, you can have your cake and eat it too. You could actually as a company support a limit on the amount of cash that people can get out in a gaming venue every day. You don't need further research to do this. The evidence is already there and in fact I have shared some of that evidence with the Chairman and with Richard Dammery yesterday. Solid research that's been undertaken rigorously and academically. You could decide that it wasn't appropriate for these venues to be open 20 hours a day because nothing good comes from being on a pokie machine at four in the morning. Most Woolworths venues are only closed between 5:00am and 9:00am. It kind of puts a different meaning on nine to five doesn't it?

You could do what Coles has done and support $1 bets because at the moment every time you push the button and you can do that every three seconds, at the moment you can lose $5 every time you push a button and that can be well over $1000 an hour. You could relieve a huge amount of harm and suffering. You could be part of the solution to family violence in this country instead of part of the problem.

There are a number of other evidence based measures that could actually make the pokie machine industry safer. What we know from research is that for those people who gamble on a pokie machine every week, one third to a half of them are experiencing very significant harm. Don't believe it when they say this is a small problem in a small number of people.

Weekly gambling on a pokie machine is harmful in a very significant proportion of cases. So I think we all know that with recommendations to vote against me it's highly unlikely I'll be elected today. I would ask you then to use your vote as a powerful statement to this Company and to all of the directors that they each, each and every one of them, has a personal responsibility to get involved in the ALH business, to step up to the Board of that business and to make sure that they are taking action to reduce harm from gambling. Because that action is possible and it doesn't need to wait for further research or information or international experts to come from overseas. You have that action in your hands with your vote today and I hope that you will demonstrate that to the Company and save the lives of people like Sarah who died tragically at the age of 54.

Just finally, I would ask that it might be possible to see the results from today's vote, not just mixed in with the previous results. Thank you.

Anita Roddick: 'If you think morality is a luxury business can’t afford, try living in a world without it', International Forum On Globalisation - 1999

27 November 1999, Seattle, Washington, USA

This is sometimes called the 'Trading with Principles' speech. Roddick founded The Body Shop which was an early champion of fair trade. She died on 10 September 2007. 

We can ask the same question of the gleaming towers of Wall Street or the City of London - and the powerful men and women who tinker with the money system which drives world trade. Who is this system for?

Let's look more closely. Every day, the gleaming towers of high finance oversees a global flow of two trillion dollars through their computer screens. And the terrifying thing is that only three per cent of that - that's, three hundredths - has anything to do with trade at all. Let alone free trade between equal communities.

It has everything to do with money. The great global myth being that the current world trade system is for anything but money.

The other 97 per cent of the two trillion is speculation. It is froth - but froth with terrifying power over people's lives. Reducing powerless communities access to basic human rights can make money, but not for them. But then the system isn't designed for them.

It isn't designed for you and me either. We all of us, rich and poor, have to live with the insecurity caused by an out of control global casino with a built-in bias towards instability. Because it is instability that makes money for the money-traders.

"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived and dishonest," said John F Kennedy, "- but the myth - persistent, persuasive and unrealistic." Asking questions can puncture these powerful myths.

I spend much of every year travelling around the world, talking to people in the front line of globalisation: women, community farmers, children. I know how unrealistic these myths are. Not just in developing countries but right under our noses.

Like the small farmers of the USA, 500 of which go out of business every week.

Half a century ago there were a million black farmers in the US. Now there are 1800. Globalisation means that the subsidies go to the big farms, while the small family farms - the heart of so many American communities - go to the wall.

Or the dark, cramped factories where people work for a pittance for 12 hour days without a day off. "The workers are not allowed to talk to each other and they didn't allow us to go to the bathroom," says one Asian worker in that garment factory. Not in Seoul. Not in Sao Paulo. But in San Francisco.

We have a world trading system that is blind to this kind of injustice. And as the powers of governments shrink this system is, in effect, our new unelected, uncontrollable world government. One that outlaws our attempts to >make things better.

According to the WTO, we don't have the right to discriminate between tuna caught without killing dolphins and tuna caught by those who don't care, don't worry and don't try.

According to the WTO, we have no right to hoard patented seeds from one harvest to plant the following year.

According to the WTO, we have no right to discriminate against beef with growth hormones.

According to the WTO, the livelihoods of the small-scale banana farmers of the Windward Islands are worthless - now facing ruin as the WTO favours the big US exporters

The truth is that the WTO, and the group of unelected trade officials who run it, are now the world's highest court, with the right to overturn local laws and safety regulations wherever they say it 'interferes with trade'.

This is world government by default, but it is a blind government. It looks at the measurements of money, but it can't see anything else. It can recognise profits and losses, but it deliberately turns its face away from human rights, child labour or keeping the environment viable for future generations.

It is government without heart, and without heart you find the creativity of the human spirit starts to dwindle too.

Now there will be commentators and politicians by the truckload over the next week accusing us of wanting to turn the clock back. They will say we are parochial, inward-looking, xenophobic and dangerous.

But we must remind them what free trade really is. The truth is that 'free trade' was originally about the freedom of communities to trade equally with each other. It was never intended to be what it is today. A licence for the big, the powerful and the rich, to ride roughshod over the small, the weak and the poor.

And while we're about it, let's nail another myth.

Nobody could be more in favour of a global outlook than I am. Internationalism means that we can see into the dark corners of the world, and hold those companies to account when they are devastating forests or employing children as bonded labour. Globalisation is the complete opposite, its rules pit country against country and workers against workers in the blinkered pursuit of international competitiveness.

Internationalism means we can link together at local level across the world, and use our power as consumers. Working together, across all sectors, we can turn businesses from private greed to public good.

It means, even more important, that we can start understanding each other in a way that no generation has managed before.

Let's be clear about this. It's not trade we're against, it's exploitation and unchecked power.

I don't pretend for a moment that we're perfect at The Body Shop. Or that every one of our experiments work out - especially when it comes to building trading relationships that actually strengthen poor communities.

We are absolutely committed to increasing our trade with communities around the world, because this is the key - not just for our future, but the planet's. It means that they trade to strengthen their local economy for profit, but not because their very survival depends on it.

Community trade will make us not a multi-national, but a multi-local. I hope we can measure our success in terms of our ability to show just what's possible if a company genuinely opens a dialogue with communities.

Heaven knows, we're not there yet. But this is real life, and all any of us can do is to make sure we are going in the right direction, and never lose our determination to improve.

The trouble is that the current trading system undermines anybody who tries.

Businesses which forego profits to build communities, or keep production local rather than employing semi-slaves in distant sweatshops, risk losing business to cheaper competitors without such commitments, and being targeted for take-over by the slash-and-burn corporate raiders. Reinforced by the weight of the WTO.

It's difficult for all of us. But if we are going to change the world then nobody - not governments, not the media, not individuals - are going to get a free ride. And certainly not business, because business is now faster, more creative and far wealthier than governments ever were.

Business has to be a force for social change. It is not enough to avoid hideous evil - it must, we must, actively do good. If business stays parochial, without moral energy or codes of behaviour, claiming there are no such thing as values, then God help us all. If you think morality is a luxury business can't afford, try living in a world without it.

So what should we do at this critical moment in world history? First, we must make sure this week that we lay the foundations for humanising world trade.

We must learn from our experience of what really works for poor countries, poor communities around the world. The negotiators this week must listen to these communities and allow these countries full participation and contribution to trade negotiations.

The rules have got to change. We need a radical alternative that puts people before profit. And that brings us to my second prescription. We must start measuring our success differently.

If politicians, businesses and analysts only measure the bottom line - the growth in money - then it's not surprising the world is skewed.

It's not surprising that the WTO is half-blind, recognising slash-and-burn corporations but not the people they destroy.

It's not surprising that it values flipping hamburgers or making sweaters at 50 cents an hour as a valuable activity, but takes no account of those other jobs - the caring, educating and loving work that we all know needs doing if we're going to turn the world into a place we want to live.

Let's measure the success of places and corporations against how much they enhance human well-being. Body Shop was one of the first companies to submit itself to a social audit, and many others are now doing so.

Measuring what really matters can give us the revolution in kindness we so desperately need. That's the real bottom line.

And finally, we must remember we already have power as consumers and as organisations forming strategic and increasingly influential alliances for change. They can insist on open markets as much as they like, but if consumers won't buy, nothing on earth can make them. Just look at how European consumers have forced the biotech industry's back up against the wall.

We have to be political consumers, vigilante consumers. With the barrage of propaganda served up to us every day, we have to be. We must be wise enough so that - whatever they may decide at the trade talks - we know where to put our energy and our money. No matter what we're told or cajoled to do, we must work together to get the truth out in co-operation for the best, not competition for the cheapest.

By putting our money where our heart is, refusing to buy the products which exploit, by forming powerful strategic alliances, we will mould the world into a kinder more loving shape. And we will do so no matter what you decide this week.

Human progress is on our side.