Tim Winton: 'We used to be better than this. I still believe we're better than this', Palm Sunday, Justice4Refugees rally - 2015

29 March 2015, Perth, Western Australia

Palm Sunday. On such a sacred day maybe it's worth us remembering a kind of odd question that Jesus once asked of his followers. 'If a child asks you for bread,' he said, 'will you give him a stone?' And on the face of it, a question like that's a bit of a no brainer, but it troubled his followers, I think. And it continues to trouble us now.

When children arrive on our shores, pleading for bread, for mercy, for safety, for refuge, do we give them what they desperately need or do we avert our gaze and turn them away and send them packing with nothing but a stone to weigh them down?

We're here, my friends, to call a spade a spade — to declare that what has become political common sense in Australia in the last 15 years is actually nonsense. And it's not just harmless nonsense. It's vicious, despicable nonsense. For something is festering in the heart of our community. Something shameful and rotten. It's born of a secret, I think. Something we don't like to acknowledge and something that we hide at terrible cost. You see, this is our secret. We're afraid. We're afraid of strangers. We're even scared of their traumatised children. Yes, this big, brash, rich nation, it trembles when people arrive with nothing but the sweat on their backs and a need, a crying need for safe refuge.

We're terrified. Especially if they arrive on a boat, we can no longer see victims of war and persecution as people like us. This fear has deranged us. It overturns all our moral standards, our pity, our tradition of decency, to the extent that we do everything in our power to deny these people their legal right to seek asylum. They're vilified as 'illegals', they're suffering is scoffed at or obscured, and our moral and legal obligations to help them are minimised or contested or traduced entirely.

Our leaders have taught us that we need to harden our hearts against these people. We can sleep at night, we tell ourselves, because these creatures, these objects are gone. We didn't just turn them away. We made them disappear. We weren't always this scared. We used to be better than this. And I remember this because I was a young man when this nation opened its arms, we opened our arms and our hearts to tens and thousands of fleeing Vietnamese. Back then we took pity on suffering humans. We had these people in our homes and our halls and our community centres. They became our neighbours, our schoolmates, our colleagues at work, and the calm, humane reception that we gave them reflected the decency of this country.

Now it's different. 15 years ago, our leaders began to pander to our fears. And now whether they like it or not, they are at the mercy of those fears.

In our own time, we have seen what is plainly wrong, what is demonstrably immoral, celebrated as not simply pragmatic, but right and fair. Both mainstream parties, as we've heard today, pursue asylum seeker policies based on cruelty and secrecy. A hardhearted response to the suffering of others is the 'common sense' of our day. But in the days of Charles Dickens, child labour was common sense. So was the routine degradation of impoverished women. The poor of Victorian England were human garbage, 'common sense' saw them exported offshore in chains to a gulag a long way out of sight. And these despised objects are our forebears. I have a forebear like that, my convict ancestor was a little boy. What's now known as an 'unaccompanied minor'. I've been thinking of him lately, and after reading of the degradation of defenceless women on Nauru and Manus island, I've been wondering how it could be that these things could happen in our time, on our watch, with our taxes, and in our name.

Until recently, we thought it was low and cowardly to avert our gaze from somebody who was in need. But that's where our tradition of mateship comes from, not from closing ranks against the outsider, but from lifting somebody else up, resisting the cowardly urge to walk on by. And when the first boat people arrived here in the seventies from Vietnam, we looked into their traumatised faces and we took pity.

Now we don't see faces at all. And that's no accident. The government hides them from us in case we should feel pity. Pity is no longer a virtue in this country. It's seen as a form of weakness. Asylum seekers are turned into cargo, contraband, criminals. And so, quite deliberately, the old common sense of human decency is supplanted by a new consensus — one that's built on suffering, maintained by secrecy, cordoned at every turn by institutional deception. This my friends is the new common sense.

But to live as hostages to our lowest fears, we surrender things that are sacred. Our human decency, our moral, right, our self respect, our inner peace. Jesus said, 'what shall it profit a man to gain the whole world only to lose his soul'. My friends, children have asked us for bread and we gave them stones.

Turn back my country, turn back while there's still time. Truly, we are still better than this.

Thank you

Recorded by Mark Tan and played on the ABC's Religion and Ethics report.

Natalie Portman: 'Step by step guide to toppling the patriachy', Variety Power of Women - 2018

12 October 2018, California, USA

We’ve had an incredible week at Time’s Up, the organization I am here to talk about. Because this week, we welcomed our first President and CEO, Lisa Borders, who comes to us after heading the WNBA. Lisa is a brilliant, compassionate and strategic leader with vast experience in business, activism and government, and we are so lucky and grateful to have her come guide our path.

I came to the first Time’s Up meeting, almost exactly one year ago, after the shattering reports by Megan Twohey, Jodi Kantor and Ronan Farrow were published about Harvey Weinstein. I had heard the stories but was horrified to learn the extent of his abuse. However, a part of the story I had never considered before was how many women were forcibly removed from our industry because of his retaliatory behavior.

The articles in the New York Times and the New Yorker, as you all know, detailed his active character assassination of the women he assaulted — telling directors the actresses he had abused, were difficult or crazy and not to work with them. Harvey’s lawyer, David Boies, signed contracts with spy firms to surveil the women who reported his crime — to try to make them out as whores, and track their movements.

He did this, as many harassers and assaulters do, to take power away from their victims, because if they have less work, they have less money, and then they have less power, and eventually they have less credibility and less reputation, and again, less power to get him in trouble for the crimes he committed. And it’s working! Harvey is STILL on the loose and the NY County DA Cy Vance just dismissed one of the cases against him yesterday. Harvey Weinstein, the man whose name has become synonymous with serial rapist, might not ever suffer any legal consequences because our legal system and our culture protect the perpetrators of sexual violence, not its victims.

As Jodi Kantor noted, Weinstein’s abuse was so pervasive, that a whole generation of actresses had been pushed out of our industry and had been deprived of decades of work and the payment that accompanies it. What other women in our industry and in other industries had been silenced and shut out in this way?

I had always wondered why there was still unequal representation in nearly every industry, and particularly in positions of leadership and power, when graduate schools have been consciously enrolling equal amounts of men and women. I wondered why do women graduate 50/50 from law schools and yet make up only 20% of law firm equity partnerships? Why do women graduate 50/50 from all business schools and yet make up only 10.6% of Fortune 500 boards and 4.8% of fortune 500 CEOs? Or that in our industry, women graduate 50/50 from film schools yet only 11% of the top 250 films last year were directed by women?

There’s a theory that’s often cited that women drop out of the workforce to focus on motherhood, or because the workplace isn’t conducive enough to rearing children. And I used to believe that too. But it always seemed suspicious as a reason — like a woman would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on law school, and all the time and hard work to graduate, and all the hours and stress to pass the bar, and then work for years at a law firm, and then give up her 6 or 7-figure job that she loves and has invested so much into, because she didn’t ever consider she might have to find childcare for her kid? A woman who can probably easily afford childcare? It was confusing, but I bought it, cause, well, I don’t know. I’m a sheep.

Now, I would like to dispel that myth.

First of all, there are too many women who either don’t choose to have children, do not yet have children, or who have grown children, to account for the gaping lack of women in leadership positions in almost every industry, if it was really due to incompatibility with motherhood.

Second, there are many professions that might be considered incompatible with motherhood that are nearly all female. Think about gynecology. Gynecology is one of the most time-consuming, emotionally intensive fields of medicine, and they are on call around the clock. Today, almost all gynecologists are women. And many of them have kids. So what is this oft-repeated rumor about women not being able to do hard jobs with kids at the same time?

In gynecology, there is uniquely a demand for females. Women are asking for other women to be doing the job — so that affects hiring. Also, women are the primary people the doctors have to deal with, so you have to assume that harassment and assault goes way down. If there’s a lesson to be learned from our vagina doctors, it’s that with increased demand for women, and increased physical and emotional safety on the job, women will flock to a field that is emotionally and intellectually intense, and also that is incredibly time-consuming.

Similarly, in our business, people make the argument that we see so few female directors, DPs, camera departments, VFX supervisors, stunt coordinators — wait almost every job — because set life isn’t conducive to family life. Well, what about the hair and makeup and wardrobe departments? They’re almost entirely female. They figure out how to work on movies and take care of their families, if they have chosen to have families.

It’s much more likely for a woman to stay in a job for her children than to leave it. Consider all of the women in the restaurant or domestic industries sometimes work many jobs at once, in order to support their kids. So let’s please stop saying that women are choosing to drop out of the workforce because of their families.

The rumor is wrong.

Of course, many women simply have a personal preference for being full-time parents, and that’s a beautiful and admirable choice — but not ALL of them. Sure, sets and offices and every workplace can improve A LOT when it comes to helping working parents, both male and female — allowing more family leave, creating spaces at work for daycares or preschools, creating reasonable work hours and post-work expectations so people can live their lives. But gynecologists don’t have longer maternity leave or daycare at work, and they’re a nearly all-female profession now. These are not the reasons women are leaving the workforce. Let’s be clear.

The reason women in nearly every industry are not represented in powerful positions is because women are being discriminated against or retaliated against for hiring and promotion. When they do get jobs, they are often being harassed and assaulted, and they are being paid less than their male counterparts — all of which coerce self-preserving women into finding safer options for themselves and different ways to feel valued. Many women are further oppressed by intersections with other marginalized identities — whether by sexual orientation, race, age, class, religion, physical ability — and are subject to multiple avenues of discrimination and harassment at work at once. If they try to report it, there is often a second harassment — their reputations are smeared, their future hiring is jeopardized and they are further harassed.

So that’s part of why our first action at Time’s Up was to start the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund with the National Women’s Law Center. Because women need to put food on the table. And in order to do so, they need to be able to do their work in a safe, equitable and dignified environment.

In its first year, our Time’s Up legal defense fund has served more than 3500 people from workers at McDonalds, to prison guards, to military personnel, to women in our own industry, who have faced gender-based harassment, discrimination, coercion and assault. Recently, our lawyers helped Melanie Kohler triumph against Brett Ratner and his lawyer, Marty Singer, who tried to use Brett’s enormous financial advantage over her to legally bully her into silence. Melanie did not have to retract her claims of assault against him. And he dropped his case of defamation because he saw that she could not be bullied legally just because he has hundreds of millions of dollars and she does not.

At Time’s Up we want ALL people — men, women and those who identify as neither and both, to lead the charge to make hiring more fair, make wages more equitable, and make the workplace environment safe and dignified for all. We now have Time’s Up chapters in tech, finance, advertising, journalism, medicine, and we have sister organizations among restaurant workers, domestic workers, and farmworkers — we are thousands of women across multiple industries internationally joining together to make the same demands of the world.

What can YOU do?

First, MONEY: You can give or raise money for the Legal Defense Fund.

Second, GATHER: Meet with other women and see what changes you want to make. Through Time’s up, or on your own, gathering has been the central principle of what we do that has created every action we’ve taken.

Third, LISTEN: If any group you’re in has people who only look like you — change that group. It’s an awakening to hear from women who have different experiences of marginalization.

Fourth, DEMAND: The women in this room are the most powerful women in our industry. All you in this room have the power to negotiate for equal pay, or grant equal pay, or popularize equal pay in the culture. Be embarrassed if everyone in your workplace looks like you. Pay attention to physical ability, age, race, sexual orientation, gender identity and make sure you’ve got all kinds of experiences represented.

Fifth, GOSSIP WELL: Stop the rhetoric that a woman is crazy or difficult. If a man says a woman is crazy or difficult, ask him: What bad thing did you do to her? It’s code that he is trying to discredit her reputation. Make efforts to hire people who’ve had their reputations smeared in retaliation.

Sixth, DON’T BE SHY: Don’t shy away from Consequences for those who abuse their power. Those who abuse power are not going to have a change of behavior out of the goodness of their hearts — they are motivated by self-interest and will only change their behavior if they have to worry they will lose what they care about.

Seventh, and this is a united challenge to everyone in this room: TELL A NEW STORY: What if we took a year off from violence against women? What if for one year, everyone in this room does everything in their power to make sure that all entertainment produced just this year will not depict a rape or murder of a woman. In the projects you write, produce, direct, act in, package, market, do not harm women this year, and let’s see how that goes.

I want to leave off with a reminder that our family of animals — mammals — is named after us, women, because of our mammary glands. Yes, the most remarkable thing about our whole type of animal is our boobs. We know that. Men know that. Babies definitely know that. In fact, at our first Time’s Up meeting, I was breastfeeding my daughter during the meeting, in a room that not only allowed it, but welcomed and applauded it. Anyway, our boobs are amazing. But there’s a message in our mammary glands:

Many men are behaving like we live in a zero-sum game. That if women get the respect, access and value they deserve, that men will lose theirs. But we know the message of the mammaries: the more milk you give, the more milk you make. The more love you give, the more love you have. And the same can be said of fire — when you light someone else’s torch with your own, you don’t lose your fire, you just make more light and more heat.

So my last challenge to everyone in this room, is to spread your fire. Use your fire to light other women’s torches and make more light and more heat for all of us. If every powerful woman in this room pledges to hire at least three women in jobs this year that women don’t usually get — directors, cinematographers, VFX supervisors, composers, stunt coordinators, board members — I mean almost all of the jobs are jobs women don’t get. Just pick three jobs you get to choose, and light a woman’s torch. The light will multiply and the heat will intensify for all of us.

Do all of you pledge with me?

Gabrielle Jackson: 'I was not weak, I was not a hypochondriac. I was a woman with endometriosis', Address to the Pelvic Pain Victoria Symposium - 2019

23 November 2019, Royal Melbourne Hospital, Melbourne, Australia

When I was 19, I had a skiing accident and suffered a compound fracture of my sacrum. Orthopaedic surgeons seemed fascinated by this injury, each doctor in turn from the Thredbo clinic to Canberra hospital to Sydney telling me they’d never seen a compound fracture of the sacrum like this on a young person. They did lots of tests and x-rays and crowded in my room to talk about it. No one doubted I was in pain and I received lots of attention and sympathy. Cards crowded my room in the rehab hospital.

When I was 35, I was run over by a train in India. I had a broken shoulder, some sprains and torn ligaments and lots of cuts and bruises. It was very painful and everybody around me infinite supplies of sympathy.

I had also lived with severe period pain since my early teens and had been diagnosed with endometriosis at age 23. Sure, there was sympathy after my two laparoscopies but it’s not a pain I talked about much and was not always noticeable to people around me.

Despite these serious injuries and significant pain, I didn’t really pay much attention to different kinds of pain until I was recovering from my second laparoscopy to remove endometriosis when I was 38. The surgery was successful – I’d be warned there was a risk I would have to have a bowel resection and maybe lose an ovary, none of those occurred. But I was also told I’d be better the next day – if not, the day after. I wasn’t. I was in tremendous pain, had uncontrollable nausea and I was frightened. I felt so unwell but I couldn’t account for why – my caring, understanding doctor thought I should be well and I was ashamed to admit how terrible I felt.

Only a few months earlier, I’d had a life-changing moment. It was at a conference run by EndoActive – an advocacy group formed by mother and daughter powerhouse Lesley and Sylvia Freedman, who were demanding better information for people with endometriosis. I went to the conference as a journalist and a patient - but as a patient who believed she knew everything there was to know about endometriosis. I did not.

I shed my first tear when a researcher told the audience that women with endo are 180 times more likely to have chronic fatigue. I had been diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome when I was 16. A man I met at uni told me chronic fatigue syndrome was a made-up illness and I felt so ashamed at my weakness I never admitted that diagnosis to anyone ever again. Maybe I had made the whole thing up, I thought? Was I really that sick, that tired? I could no longer remember. Now I recognise that bout of fatigue as just something I live with – and here I was finding out it was a typical symptom of endo.

Not longer after that revelation at the conference, there was a presentation on how endo affects the bowel. I also believed I had irritable bowel syndrome.

Doctors and researchers talked about back pain that sounded a lot like mine, which I thought was due to the skiing accident, they talked about nausea, poor sleep, headaches and dizziness – all common features of my life.

All my adult life, I had thought of myself as a weak person, someone a bit second rate, someone who couldn’t cope with life very well. I wanted to be stronger, I wanted to do more but I always seemed to pay for my periodic bouts of energy in ways I didn’t see happening to my friends - who I believed must have been simply stronger, better, more capable. Routines were good but so hard to keep – I’d make some progress, then be knocked over for a week by incredible pain, or fatigue or stomach upsets. And it took weeks to regain my strength afterwards.

But then, there I was, this May day at Sydney university, learning that all these things that were wrong with me were not at all random but each very common symptoms of this disease I had, this disease I thought amounted to quite bad period pain, but in reality was so much more – was in fact, me.

I was not weak, I was not a hypochondriac. I was a woman with endometriosis. I tried to call my mother when I left the conference to tell her this but I couldn’t get the words out. I was sobbing and I couldn’t stop. I got on the bus and still I couldn’t stop. People slyly and subtly stared at me but still I couldn’t stop sobbing. ‘Mum, I’m not a hypochrondriac, all these things wrong with me are real” I tried to say, over and over again. How do you cope with a lifetime of thinking you’re a hypochondriac only to discover you’re not?

I’ve heard doctors talk about how women love to get an endometriosis diagnosis. It’s often discussed in quite patronising tones – “see how women love to be sick”, is the implication. What is more rarely discussed is that the joy of diagnosis comes from a place of self doubt, from a realisation you aren’t crazy, or weak or a hypochondriac. That the pain you felt was real. This is especially powerful when you have been told by other doctors that the pain is in your head or that it’s normal, or you’ve waited for years for a diagnosis.

Reimagining yourself isn’t easy but legitimacy is a good first step. The knowledge that conference gave me and the research I’ve done since on understanding this disease I have gave me more strength than I could ever have imagined. I would never have dreamed I could write a book while working full time but this knowledge let me dream that dream and here I am today.

But what does this have to do with my recovery from laparoscopy?

I had worked for months on letting myself believe I was stronger than I thought only to be confronted again with these thoughts: maybe I am a hypochondriac? Why don’t I feel better when all the doctors and nurses think I should be? Why do I feel so bad? Why is this pain and nausea and fogginess so scary? I’ve lived in New York, London, Barcelona and Sydney. I’ve travelled through the Middle East alone. I’m not easy to scare, am i? Am I making it up? Do I want to be sick?

After about a week, I was still in pain. The scars had started to heal and my insides no longer felt like knives were scoring through them every time I moved but I had intense digestive troubles. I couldn’t sleep more than an hour or two without waking up from the sensations. I paced up and down to try to alleviate it but as soon as I lay down the pain would return. But I was tired and weak, I needed to lie down.

I went to see my GP. I was trying to describe the feeling to her, telling her the pain was better but this other feeling wouldn’t go away. She did a physical examination. “Why are you telling you’re not in pain when you are?” she asked. I didn’t know why I was telling her I wasn’t in pain, why couldn’t I admit to myself that this was pain I was feeling? My guts hurt like hell. Yes, that’s pain too. She talked me through what she thought was happening, prescribed a new drug and told me why she chose that drug over another. Told me what to eat and drink and sent me for an x-ray, urging me to come back if I was still IN PAIN in another few days. (I love my GP)

It was after that consultation that I went home and thought about all the pain I’d had in my life. In my book, I write: “I relived every episode [of pain], playing it all out in my mind, obsessively. Felt the injuries, over and over. All this pain suddenly accumulated, and like a flooded dam, it washed over me. I was heavy from the burden of it. And choked on it. Every vessel felt constricted, harsh, and to breathe, eat, walk, move a limb, roll over in bed, all required effort. I started to see my body as separate, something apart from me, something cruel and devious and punishing. I came to hate my body and all the pain it had caused.”
So why am I telling you this, when I’m pretty sure I’m preaching to the converted? I decided to tell this story because I believe the people in this room can make change happen.

It was through my own journey of pain that I came to the conclusion I had to use the platform I had as a journalist and editor to share the knowledge I was lucky enough to have received. Because that knowledge really did give me power.

When I was first writing about endometriosis for the Guardian I met the filmmaker Shannon Cohn who made the EndoWhat? documentary and who is working on a second film now.

She told me that her motivation to make the film was because in the 20 years since she was diagnosed with endo, nothing had changed. Many doctors are still giving bad advice, it still takes an average of eight years to be diagnosed, women are still told periods are supposed to be painful, women are still being subjected to ineffective surgeries.

Having been through misdiagnoses and multiple surgeries, Cohn wanted to do something that would put pressure on the medical establishment to change things. She started researching successful social change movements and studied HIV and Aids campaigns.

There were three important lessons she learnt from her studies, she told me. “One, patients became experts in their disease; two, they organised incredibly well; and three, they weren’t afraid to make people in power uncomfortable.”

Aids went from an incurable, highly stigmatised death sentence to a medical miracle in less than half a century. A similar tale can be told about breast cancer.

I happen to think that in Australia, we’re very lucky. The doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, researchers and other professionals who got behind the EndoActive conference showed a willingness from within the medical community for change. And importantly, a willingness to share knowledge to help patients become experts in their disease. And here in this room right now, I see the same willingness, energy and enthusiasm.

We’re up against the odds – which these days favour Instagram heavily. At the same time that a small group of experts and patient advocates were lobbying the government here in Australia to make the national action plan for endometriosis happen, “influencers” were lining up online to glamorise multiple laparoscopies and take sick selfies from their hospital beds. I don’t blame them! Who doesn’t want some sympathy in such a dreadful time? But I do worry that surgery is seen as a badge of honour and the only treatment for endo. I also worry in becoming a fashionable disease, the awareness raising becomes shallow - ends with the sick selfies and fails to push boundaries or consider the full picture of women in pain.

Only last week, one so-called influencer who has almost 53,000 followers on Instagram proclaimed that taking the pill had caused her polycystic ovary syndrome and endometriosis and that both were curable by quitting all pharmaceuticals and changing one’s diet. She became incredulous when people demanded evidence for her claims of a cure. Just yesterday, I was sent a video from a Twitter account that promised me a natural and permanent cure for fibroids in just 21 days and all I had to do to learn the secrets of the simple 3-step miracle program was to click this link and provide my credit card details and I would feel better by the morning! It implied that the terrible drugs we’ve used to manage the fibroids have actually caused the fibroids. The sad fact about this short video was that it was mildly convincing, and I found myself wondering if I was desperate, if I didn’t know what I know, would I try it? I remember, after months of one cold sore after another, signing up for a miracle cold sore cure once in my younger years. It wasn’t a miracle.

This is where we are. Trust in institutions is shrinking and pseudo science is on the up – the wellness industry is growing and people are abandoning science. Which simply means the time for science is now - and has never been more important. We need people like you to help arm people like me with facts.
Together, we need to call policymakers, medical leaders and the people who allocate research funding to account – we need to make them very uncomfortable – and unfortunately they are not made uncomfortable by the sight of a beautiful woman in a hospital gown.

Say the word ‘period’ however and watch them run for the hills.

Journalists can’t do this alone and nor can doctors. And it’s beyond the reach of many chronic pain patients to do this themselves.

But I’m afraid it if we’re to succeed, we may have to make ourselves uncomfortable too.

Part of our campaign to make change must involve examining the ways in which we communicate. Am I part of the ‘fake news media’, an establishment that believes we know better than everyone else? How can I communicate my message in way that doesn’t look down on people? This is very close to home for me. I have had people I know object to the Guardian’s coverage of people like Pete Evans and the practice of chiropractors and naturopaths. They have called our coverage “biased” and “unfair” and think it’s sniggering to people who are desperate.

I think medicine has the same problem. I’ve met countless other people who have told me they turned to natural therapies because these practitioners listen to them, believe them, have time for them. Their treatments may not work but nor did the pharmaceuticals given to them by their doctors.

In a brilliant essay published in the UK’s New Statesman magazine this week reflecting on all the recent literature about women’s pain, the author Imogen West-Knights writes: “We all like to scoff at the wellness industry, with its crystals, potions and lotions, but for those suffering from conditions the medical establishment does not yet understand, it can seem like the only option available.”

We cannot lose the people who have flocked to wellness and together, we have to find a way to win them back.

Understanding my disease and seeking out knowledgeable doctors and physiotherapists has improved my life to no end. I now have a quality of life I couldn’t have dreamed of five years ago.

I have been overwhelmed by the support of doctors, researchers and physiotherapists, both when I was writing the book and since it has been published. Health professionals have shown up to every event I’ve had around Australia. But they have all been women who are already thinking about these issues. Not a single male doctor who I didn’t already know has been in touch with me about this book. It’s not that I think they don’t care. I’ve had very caring and generous male doctors in my life and a few terrible females ones. It’s more that men are not hearing these conversations. Men have been socialised to tune out women’s voices, to believe –subconsciously or not – that women’s voices don’t matter. Certainly, that women’s periods don’t matter to them. Others believe it’s all a bit of feminist claptrap. This is not unique to medicine nor the media.

There are many good news stories to tell from the men I do know. My partner is a male GP and he told me the book has changed the way he practices medicine. He now sees gross examples of colleagues belittling or disbelieving women on a weekly basis and eagerly reports them all to me. How had he not seen this before?

I’m sure each of you has thought about the impact your words can have on your patients. How the expectations of doctors and other health professionals can make or break their patients. How information rather than expectation is so powerful. But many doctors have never considered how their words, their language and their expectations have an effect on their patients. And not because they’re bad people. Many patients have never considered how the words they use to describe their pain affects what the doctor believes about them as people. And not because they’re stupid.

A male GP I know, who is a lovely, caring man, once told me: “I’ve never had a fibromyalgia patient who wasn’t batshit crazy”. After reading my book, he said he was seriously rethinking how and why he had labelled these women and the ways he’d been trained to think in such a way. He took my book to work and when he had a patient who was struggling with the correct words for her anatomy, he took out my book and showed her a diagram labelling the vulva. The consultation totally changed. My friend was also changed by this. “She trusted me” he said, and that trust enabled the two adults to have a conversation about sex free of awkwardness and embarrassment. A similar incident happened the following week. “I think my relationship with my female patients has totally changed”, he said. This was from a man who, in the nicest possible way, felt he had nothing to learn from my book – after all, what could a doctor possibly learn about medicine from a journalist? It’s a reasonable question.

Two women have written to me after reading my book who got from it the courage to challenge what their male doctors were telling them. On both occasions, the doctor really listened and changed their approach – they weren’t offended or put out but happy to be faced with more knowledgeable patients and ready to work together with them.

But I have heard countless other horror stories from women who are treated really badly, disrespected, disbelieved and given very questionable treatments or none at all.

A nurse I know told me that she felt so bad reading my book because she used to work in gynaecology clinic where they did a lot of laparoscopies on endo patients. She said she never had really sympathy for the patients or any understanding of what they’ve been through and all the staff talked about them as though they were difficult or whingers. She tried to give the book to a friend who still works there but she wouldn’t take it. ‘I already know about women’s health’, she told my friend.

How do we get these doctors, nurses and other health professionals to listen when we know that so often the simple act of reflection and perspective can lead to huge changes?

In the New Statesman, Imogen West-Knights concludes her essay like this: One of the questions I had in mind when I began reading these books was: “Do they make a difference to women in pain?” I did not expect to arrive at such a concrete answer. At some point during my reading, the penny dropped: the symptoms of endometriosis were my symptoms, too. I’m now making appointments that could (could!) lead to my finally being diagnosed. So it is almost too clear to me that the answer to my question is: yes. Whatever happens from here, for me and for all of the millions of other woman in pain, the fact that there is now such a breadth of insightful books about the subject is comforting proof that we are not alone. There is strength in numbers.”

These books can’t be written without the careful guidance of people like you. A journalist’s job is to tell the stories of others. Stories need facts, yes, but they also need to be relatable, include real people and real life in them too – and that’s why only the media, medicine and patients working together can really bring about the change we want to see.

I know it’s hard as a doctor to challenge your colleagues. I have found it hard enough to challenge my friends. I often find it hard to convince editors these stories are worth publishing. That’s why none of us can do it alone. But – as West-Knights so simply notes: there is strength in numbers.

Gabrielle Jackson’s book is called ‘Pain and Prejudice - A Call to Arms for Women and Their Bodies’

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.

Kerry O'Brien: 'Freedom is usually eroded gradually', Walkley Awards - 2019

28 November 2019, Sydney, Australia

This year, for a brief moment in the history of Australian journalism, every significant news organisation in this country put its competitive instincts and its differences to one side and united as one voice to stand against an unacceptable step down the road to authoritarianism.

Authoritarianism unchecked can lead to fascism. Fortunately in this country we’re a long way from that yet, but a study of history amply demonstrates how fascism begins. Freedom is usually eroded gradually. It might happen over years, even decades. Its loss is not necessarily felt day by day, but we will certainly know when it’s gone.

So far the Morrison government has resisted the industry’s appeal for fundamental protections of a free and robust press to be enshrined in legislation at the very least—not placing journalists above the law—but enshrining in a practical and meaningful way their special place as a crucial pillar of democracy.

Perhaps the government is intending to wait us out, waiting for the issue to go away in the hope that most people in this country are so consumed by bread and butter issues, so consumed by their own lives and personal struggles and challenges, that they won’t care enough when the chips are down to support something as abstract as the spirit of democracy or the spirit of freedom—because you can’t cash in the spirit of something at the bank, as you might a tax cut.

That is why we have to remain resolved to keep this campaign going, and not let it go, even after a few months, because those of us who have witnessed and experienced and reported on repression in other countries, some of them not too far from our own shores, understand the solid reality of democracy as well as the strength or weakness of its spirit. Some of our colleagues have paid the ultimate price for exposing abuses of democracy, and lost their lives.

Australia’s Foreign Minister, Marise Payne, recently chastised China on its human rights record, observing that “countries that respect and promote their citizens’ rights at home tend also to be better international citizens.”

I would add to that: countries that don’t respect and promote their citizens’ rights at home are living in glass houses and have diminished their right to be taken seriously when they try to preach to neighbours from a high moral ground they have surrendered. .

There’s another inconsistency that needs to be called out. This Government is fond of saying, as it did in seeking to distance itself from the decisions by Australian Federal Police to raid the ABC and the home of News Corp journalist, Annika Smethurst, that it can’t interfere in police operational matters. Yet, in seeking to assuage the concerns of media companies and journalists after the raids, the Attorney-General, Christian Porter, promised that he would actually be prepared to become involved in the process to the extent of insisting on the Director of Public Prosecutions getting his personal consent before seeking to prosecute a journalist.

Sorry Mr Porter, that is not reassuring. The judgements you might bring to bear will not be independent of the government’s own self-interest, and we all know that self-interest of any stripe, political or otherwise, can be a powerful deterrent from doing the right thing. That is not understanding the spirit or the concept of free speech, nor materially guaranteeing free speech or a free press.

But we have to practice what we preach. Our work across the breadth of all media and all communities should speak for our integrity—from the smallest story to the biggest. Individually and collectively. And if it doesn’t that should make us uncomfortable, in the very least. Because if we are going to stand on our dignity and defend press freedom as a fundamental pillar of democracy, then we have to be sure that our actions are defensible, that we practice what we preach, that we do what we say we do. And at the heart of the Walkley Foundation’s work is the protection and promotion of integrity in journalism.

There is one other issue I want to acknowledge tonight. In 2011 Walkley judges awarded a Walkley to Wikileaks with Julian Assange as its editor, for its outstanding contribution to journalism. The judgement was not lightly made that Julian Assange was acting as a journalist, applying new technology to “penetrate the inner workings of government to reveal an avalanche of inconvenient truths in a global publishing coup”. Those inconvenient truths were published far and wide in the mainstream media. As we sit here tonight, Julian Assange is mouldering in a British prison awaiting extradition to the United States where he may pay for their severe embarrassment with a life in prison. Again, this government could demonstrate its commitment to a free press by using its significant influence with its closest ally to gain his return to Australia.

Another challenge our industry faces is the trend towards the polarisation of our craft—the attempts by some to paint us as either of the left or of the right—has to be resisted, because I firmly believe that for the vast bulk of us, that is not how we practice our trade. We do not arrive in the nurseries of journalism as budding ideologues of left or right, nor do the vast bulk of us become that way as we develop.

I absolutely reject the Roger Ailes view of the world, that if you’re not on the right then you must be on the left.

Adele Ferguson was not reflecting some personal ideological hatred of capitalism when she called out corrupt behaviour within our banking and financial sector, forcing a royal commission on a reluctant government. And nor were the whistleblowers who helped her, being ideological. They saw a wrong and followed their conscience with great courage to reveal it, paying a heavy personal price in the process.

There was nothing ideological about Chris Masters’ determination to bring into the light of day, serious and deeply disturbing allegations of war crimes by elite Australian military forces in Afghanistan, first in his book, and then with Nick McKenzie in further sustained investigative reporting. It was strong, compelling journalism of integrity.

When Hedley Thomas gripped the world with his Teacher’s Pet podcast, forced the re-opening of the Lynette Dawson case, leading to the arrest of her husband, was he driven by ideology? Of course not.

Or when Anne Connolly forced another royal commission, into aged care with her exposes of the sickening abuses within that industry?

Joanne McCarthy wasn’t under instruction from some secret socialist cell or driven by a hatred of Christianity when she exposed the pattern of endemic sexual abuse and attempted cover-ups perpetrated from within the Catholic Church in the Hunter region.

Kate McClymont wasn’t acting as a servant of either the conservative right or the Labor left when she doggedly and courageously exposed the entrenched corrupt practices of Eddie Obeid.

The Walkley Foundation grew from the creation of the awards themselves more than 60 years ago. And like the awards, the foundation is here to promote and help safeguard the integrity of quality journalism in all its forms, without fear or favour. And the judges of these awards, drawn from all corners of our craft and across the spectrum of our industry, deliver that same integrity in their judging. It couldn’t be otherwise, or these 60 years of awards could not have been sustained, and would have long since collapsed.

It has been a great privilege to chair the Foundation this year and see close up the super efforts of Louisa Graham and her small but dedicated team delivering the important and expanding Walkley program of grants, scholarships and mentorship, as the industry struggles. I would also like to acknowledge the voluntary efforts of my fellow directors, Marcus Strom, Marina Go, Karen Percy, Lenore Taylor and Michael Janda, all of whom give up significant time in busy lives to guide the foundation in its work.

This is a time of serious challenge for our craft across a broad front, at a time when democratic societies like ours are losing their trust in institutions pretty much across the board. The integrity reflected in the work we’re about to celebrate tonight is our bulwark against that erosion of trust and a reminder not only to the citizens of this country, but importantly to ourselves, of what we’re capable of, and of what we aspire to be. Thank you.

Sacha Baron Cohen: 'Just think what Goebbels might have done with Facebook', Anti Defamation League Leadership Award - 2019

22 November 2019,

Thank you, ADL, for this recognition and your work in fighting racism, hate and bigotry. And to be clear, when I say “racism, hate and bigotry” I’m not referring to the names of Stephen Miller’s Labradoodles.

Now, I realize that some of you may be thinking, what the hell is a comedian doing speaking at a conference like this! I certainly am. I’ve spent most of the past two decades in character. In fact, this is the first time that I have ever stood up and given a speech as my least popular character, Sacha Baron Cohen. And I have to confess, it is terrifying.

I realize that my presence here may also be unexpected for another reason. At times, some critics have said my comedy risks reinforcing old stereotypes.

The truth is, I’ve been passionate about challenging bigotry and intolerance throughout my life. As a teenager in the UK, I marched against the fascist National Front and to abolish apartheid. As an undergraduate, I traveled around America and wrote my thesis about the civil rights movement, with the help of the archives of the ADL. And as a comedian, I’ve tried to use my characters to get people to let down their guard and reveal what they actually believe, including their own prejudice.

Now, I’m not going to claim that everything I’ve done has been for a higher purpose. Yes, some of my comedy, OK probably half my comedy, has been absolutely juvenile and the other half completely puerile. I admit, there was nothing particularly enlightening about me – as Borat from Kazakhstan, the first fake news journalist – running through a conference of mortgage brokers when I was completely naked.

But when Borat was able to get an entire bar in Arizona to sing “Throw the Jew down the well,” it did reveal people’s indifference to antisemitism. When – as Bruno, the gay fashion reporter from Austria – I started kissing a man in a cage fight in Arkansas, nearly starting a riot, it showed the violent potential of homophobia. And when – disguised as an ultra-woke developer – I proposed building a mosque in one rural community, prompting a resident to proudly admit, “I am racist, against Muslims” – it showed the acceptance of Islamophobia.

That’s why I appreciate the opportunity to be here with you. Today around the world, demagogues appeal to our worst instincts. Conspiracy theories once confined to the fringe are going mainstream. It’s as if the Age of Reason – the era of evidential argument – is ending, and now knowledge is delegitimized and scientific consensus is dismissed. Democracy, which depends on shared truths, is in retreat, and autocracy, which depends on shared lies, is on the march. Hate crimes are surging, as are murderous attacks on religious and ethnic minorities.

What do all these dangerous trends have in common? I’m just a comedian and an actor, not a scholar. But one thing is pretty clear to me. All this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history.

Think about it. Facebook, YouTube and Google, Twitter and others – they reach billions of people. The algorithms these platforms depend on deliberately amplify the type of content that keeps users engaged – stories that appeal to our baser instincts and that trigger outrage and fear. It’s why YouTube recommended videos by the conspiracist Alex Jones billions of times. It’s why fake news outperforms real news, because studies show that lies spread faster than truth. And it’s no surprise that the greatest propaganda machine in history has spread the oldest conspiracy theory in history – the lie that Jews are somehow dangerous. As one headline put it, “Just Think What Goebbels Could Have Done with Facebook.”

On the internet, everything can appear equally legitimate. Breitbart resembles the BBC. The fictitious Protocols of the Elders of Zion look as valid as an ADL report. And the rantings of a lunatic seem as credible as the findings of a Nobel prize winner. We have lost, it seems, a shared sense of the basic facts upon which democracy depends.

When I, as the wannabe gangsta Ali G, asked the astronaut Buzz Aldrin “what woz it like to walk on de sun?” the joke worked, because we, the audience, shared the same facts. If you believe the moon landing was a hoax, the joke was not funny.

When Borat got that bar in Arizona to agree that “Jews control everybody’s money and never give it back,” the joke worked because the audience shared the fact that the depiction of Jews as miserly is a conspiracy theory originating in the Middle Ages.

But when, thanks to social media, conspiracies take hold, it’s easier for hate groups to recruit, easier for foreign intelligence agencies to interfere in our elections, and easier for a country like Myanmar to commit genocide against the Rohingya.

It’s actually quite shocking how easy it is to turn conspiracy thinking into violence. In my last show Who is America?, I found an educated, normal guy who had held down a good job, but who, on social media, repeated many of the conspiracy theories that President Trump, using Twitter, has spread more than 1,700 times to his 67 million followers. The president even tweeted that he was considering designating Antifa – anti-fascists who march against the far right – as a terror organization.

So, disguised as an Israel anti-terrorism expert, Colonel Erran Morad, I told my interviewee that, at the Women’s March in San Francisco, Antifa were plotting to put hormones into babies’ diapers in order to “make them transgender”. And he believed it.

I instructed him to plant small devices on three innocent people at the march and explained that when he pushed a button, he’d trigger an explosion that would kill them all. They weren’t real explosives, of course, but he thought they were. I wanted to see – would he actually do it?

The answer was yes. He pushed the button and thought he had actually killed three human beings. Voltaire was right: “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” And social media lets authoritarians push absurdities to billions of people.

In their defense, these social media companies have taken some steps to reduce hate and conspiracies on their platforms, but these steps have been mostly superficial.

I’m speaking up today because I believe that our pluralistic democracies are on a precipice and that the next 12 months, and the role of social media, could be determinant. British voters will go to the polls while online conspiracists promote the despicable theory of “great replacement” that white Christians are being deliberately replaced by Muslim immigrants. Americans will vote for president while trolls and bots perpetuate the disgusting lie of a “Hispanic invasion”. And after years of YouTube videos calling climate change a “hoax”, the United States is on track, a year from now, to formally withdraw from the Paris accords. A sewer of bigotry and vile conspiracy theories that threatens democracy and our planet – this cannot possibly be what the creators of the internet had in mind.

I believe it’s time for a fundamental rethink of social media and how it spreads hate, conspiracies and lies. Last month, however, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook delivered a major speech that, not surprisingly, warned against new laws and regulations on companies like his. Well, some of these arguments are simply absurd. Let’s count the ways.

First, Zuckerberg tried to portray this whole issue as “choices … around free expression”. That is ludicrous. This is not about limiting anyone’s free speech. This is about giving people, including some of the most reprehensible people on earth, the biggest platform in history to reach a third of the planet. Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach. Sadly, there will always be racists, misogynists, antisemites and child abusers. But I think we could all agree that we should not be giving bigots and pedophiles a free platform to amplify their views and target their victims.

Second, Zuckerberg claimed that new limits on what’s posted on social media would be to “pull back on free expression”. This is utter nonsense. The first amendment says that “Congress shall make no law” abridging freedom of speech, however, this does not apply to private businesses like Facebook. We’re not asking these companies to determine the boundaries of free speech across society. We just want them to be responsible on their platforms.

If a neo-Nazi comes goose-stepping into a restaurant and starts threatening other customers and saying he wants kill Jews, would the owner of the restaurant be required to serve him an elegant eight-course meal? Of course not! The restaurant owner has every legal right and a moral obligation to kick the Nazi out, and so do these internet companies.

Third, Zuckerberg seemed to equate regulation of companies like his to the actions of “the most repressive societies”. Incredible. This, from one of the six people who decide what information so much of the world sees. Zuckerberg at Facebook, Sundar Pichai at Google, at its parent company Alphabet, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Brin’s ex-sister-in-law, Susan Wojcicki at YouTube and Jack Dorsey at Twitter.

The Silicon Six – all billionaires, all Americans – who care more about boosting their share price than about protecting democracy. This is ideological imperialism – six unelected individuals in Silicon Valley imposing their vision on the rest of the world, unaccountable to any government and acting like they’re above the reach of law. It’s like we’re living in the Roman Empire, and Mark Zuckerberg is Caesar. At least that would explain his haircut.

Here’s an idea. Instead of letting the Silicon Six decide the fate of the world, let our elected representatives, voted for by the people, of every democracy in the world, have at least some say.

Fourth, Zuckerberg speaks of welcoming a “diversity of ideas”, and last year he gave us an example. He said that he found posts denying the Holocaust “deeply offensive”, but he didn’t think Facebook should take them down “because I think there are things that different people get wrong”. At this very moment, there are still Holocaust deniers on Facebook, and Google still takes you to the most repulsive Holocaust denial sites with a simple click. One of the heads of Google once told me, incredibly, that these sites just show “both sides” of the issue. This is madness.

To quote Edward R Murrow, one “cannot accept that there are, on every story, two equal and logical sides to an argument”. We have millions of pieces of evidence for the Holocaust – it is an historical fact. And denying it is not some random opinion. Those who deny the Holocaust aim to encourage another one.

Still, Zuckerberg says that “people should decide what is credible, not tech companies.” But at a time when two-thirds of millennials say they haven’t even heard of Auschwitz, how are they supposed to know what’s “credible”? How are they supposed to know that the lie is a lie?

There is such a thing as objective truth. Facts do exist. And if these internet companies really want to make a difference, they should hire enough monitors to actually monitor, work closely with groups like the ADL, insist on facts and purge these lies and conspiracies from their platforms.

Fifth, when discussing the difficulty of removing content, Zuckerberg asked “where do you draw the line?” Yes, drawing the line can be difficult. But here’s what he’s really saying: removing more of these lies and conspiracies is just too expensive.

These are the richest companies in the world, and they have the best engineers in the world. They could fix these problems if they wanted to. Twitter could deploy an algorithm to remove more white supremacist hate speech, but they reportedly haven’t because it would eject some very prominent politicians from their platform. Maybe that’s not a bad thing! The truth is, these companies won’t fundamentally change because their entire business model relies on generating more engagement, and nothing generates more engagement than lies, fear and outrage.

It’s time to finally call these companies what they really are – the largest publishers in history. And here’s an idea for them: abide by basic standards and practices just like newspapers, magazines and TV news do every day. We have standards and practices in television and the movies; there are certain things we cannot say or do. In England, I was told that Ali G could not curse when he appeared before 9pm. Here in the US, the Motion Picture Association of America regulates and rates what we see. I’ve had scenes in my movies cut or reduced to abide by those standards. If there are standards and practices for what cinemas and television channels can show, then surely companies that publish material to billions of people should have to abide by basic standards and practices too.

Take the issue of political ads. Fortunately, Twitter finally banned them, and Google is making changes, too. But if you pay them, Facebook will run any “political” ad you want, even if it’s a lie. And they’ll even help you micro-target those lies to their users for maximum effect. Under this twisted logic, if Facebook were around in the 1930s, it would have allowed Hitler to post 30-second ads on his “solution” to the “Jewish problem”. So here’s a good standard and practice: Facebook, start factchecking political ads before you run them, stop micro-targeted lies immediately, and when the ads are false, give back the money and don’t publish them.

Here’s another good practice: slow down. Every single post doesn’t need to be published immediately. Oscar Wilde once said that “we live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.” But is having every thought or video posted instantly online, even if it is racist or criminal or murderous, really a necessity? Of course not!

The shooter who massacred Muslims in New Zealand live-streamed his atrocity on Facebook where it then spread across the internet and was viewed likely millions of times. It was a snuff film, brought to you by social media. Why can’t we have more of a delay so this trauma-inducing filth can be caught and stopped before it’s posted in the first place?

Finally, Zuckerberg said that social media companies should “live up to their responsibilities”, but he’s totally silent about what should happen when they don’t. By now it’s pretty clear, they cannot be trusted to regulate themselves. As with the Industrial Revolution, it’s time for regulation and legislation to curb the greed of these hi-tech robber barons.

In every other industry, a company can be held liable when their product is defective. When engines explode or seatbelts malfunction, car companies recall tens of thousands of vehicles, at a cost of billions of dollars. It only seems fair to say to Facebook, YouTube and Twitter: your product is defective, you are obliged to fix it, no matter how much it costs and no matter how many moderators you need to employ.

In every other industry, you can be sued for the harm you cause. Publishers can be sued for libel, people can be sued for defamation. I’ve been sued many times! I’m being sued right now by someone whose name I won’t mention because he might sue me again! But social media companies are largely protected from liability for the content their users post – no matter how indecent it is – by Section 230 of, get ready for it, the Communications Decency Act. Absurd!

Fortunately, internet companies can now be held responsible for pedophiles who use their sites to target children. I say, let’s also hold these companies responsible for those who use their sites to advocate for the mass murder of children because of their race or religion. And maybe fines are not enough. Maybe it’s time to tell Mark Zuckerberg and the CEOs of these companies: you already allowed one foreign power to interfere in our elections, you already facilitated one genocide in Myanmar, do it again and you go to jail.

In the end, it all comes down to what kind of world we want. In his speech, Zuckerberg said that one of his main goals is to “uphold as wide a definition of freedom of expression as possible”. Yet our freedoms are not only an end in themselves, they’re also the means to another end – as you say here in the US, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But today these rights are threatened by hate, conspiracies and lies.

Allow me to leave you with a suggestion for a different aim for society. The ultimate aim of society should be to make sure that people are not targeted, not harassed and not murdered because of who they are, where they come from, who they love or how they pray.

If we make that our aim – if we prioritize truth over lies, tolerance over prejudice, empathy over indifference and experts over ignoramuses – then maybe, just maybe, we can stop the greatest propaganda machine in history, we can save democracy, we can still have a place for free speech and free expression, and, most importantly, my jokes will still work.

Thank you all very much.

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.

Megan Rapinoe: 'Colin Kaepernick is still effectively banned from the NFL', Glamour Women of the Year Awards - 2019

Finally listened to full Megan Rapinoe speech citin Kaepernick. It’s beautiful. My God we need more Rapinoes pic.twitter.com/BifgMWOQd2

— ChuckModi (@ChuckModi1) November 13, 2019

12 November 2019, Lincoln Center, New York City, USA

I first want to thank Glamour for this incredible award, but more than that, for choosing to celebrate a particular kind of strong woman this year, redefining what a ‘glamorous’ woman really means, reflective in all the incredible honorees this year. So thank you so much to Glamour.

And just, like, shout-out to women this year. Every woman! We’re just killing it the the whole year. So shout-out to just women in general.

I feel like I have to take this opportunity to thank the person for whom I don’t feel like I would be here without. Someone whose courage and bravery was so bright and so bold. A person filled with conviction, unafraid of the consequences because he knew, it really wasn't about playing it safe: It was about doing what is necessary and backing down to exactly nobody.

Caring is cool. Lending your platform to others is cool.

So while I’m enjoying all of this unprecedented—and, frankly, a little bit uncomfortable—attention and personal success, in large part due to my activism off the field, Colin Kaepernick is still effectively banned from the NFL for kneeling during the national anthem in protest of known and systematic police brutality against people of color, known and systematic racial injustice, and known and systematic white supremacy. I see no clearer example of that system being alive and well than me standing before you right now. It would be a slap in the face to Colin, and to so many other faces, not to acknowledge, and for me personally, to work relentlessly to dismantle that system that benefits some over the detriment of others, and frankly is quite literally tearing us apart in this country.

While we all have injustices we are facing—for me personally, a very public fight with our [U.S. Soccer] Federation over why we don’t deserve to be paid equally; some people even say we do our job better. I don’t know! It’s crazy!—I still know in my heart of hearts and my bones that I can do more. And that we can do more. And I know that because we just have to. We must. It’s imperative that we do more.

My mom, who's here today, looking stunning, by the way—shout-out to mom—impressed upon me and my twin sister at a very young age, ‘You ain’t shit ’cause your good at sports. You ain’t shit ’cause you're popular. You’re gonna be a good person. You’re gonna be kind. And you’re gonna do the right thing. You’re gonna stand up for yourself, always. You’re gonna stand up for each other, always. And you’re damn sure going to stand up for other people. Always.

She taught us that in kindness and in caring and in giving a shit and sharing—that’s abundance. That’s the kind of culture we want to live in. I feel like we live in this scarcity type culture; one of my best friends always says that. That’s not the world I want to live in. I think we can move on from losing alone to the belief in winning together.

With that abundance in mind, I want to reimagine what it means to be successful, what it means to have influence, what it means to have power, and what that all looks like.

I’ve gained this incredible platform in such a short period of time, but I’m not going to stand on it alone. I refuse to do that. There’s going to be ladders on every side, all over the place. And I’m not going to act like it wasn’t Colin Kaepernick, Tarana Burke and the #MeToo Movement, Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi of Black Lives Matter, the women of Time’s Up, Harvey Milk, Gloria Steinem, Audre ‪Lorde, Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, and the injustices that so many others face that have put me in this very position. And I’m not going to act like my whiteness has nothing to do with me standing before you now. I don’t want to live in that kind of world. I don’t think that kind of world is the world that suits everybody and is going to move us forward in the direction that we need to go.

We’ve got to switch the game up.

Caring is cool.

Lending your platform to others is cool.

Sharing your knowledge and your success and your influence and your power is cool.

Giving all the fucks is cool. Doing more is cool.

I don’t need to say that to all the other women who are being honored tonight. Everyone is doing that. But to everyone else in this room, we have such an incredible opportunity to redefine what power and influence and success looks like. From the looks of it, this looks like a room full of powerful and influential and successful people. So share that platform. Throw your ladders down. It’s our time. We’re ready for this. And it needs to happen. This is such a pivotal movement for us. There’s so much momentum, but we have to move forward and we have to be better. So everybody: We have to do more. We’re here. We're ready. Everyone’s ready to do more? Good!

Thank you so much for this amazing award. Thank you, everyone.

David Suzuki: 'Our comfort is paid for by the suffering of millions', WOMAdelaide Planet Talks - 2016

12 March 2016, Adelaide, Australia

Thank you Robyn, thank you for that, it's so great to see you, and still up and running and kicking arse, good for you. It's always such a joy to return to Australia, but especially to Adelaide. I first want to say it's a privilege to stand on the traditional land of the Kaurna people who lived and cared for it over thousands of years. And I'm so overjoyed that Uncle Lewis O'Brien is here to welcome us this day.

Uncle Lewis conferred on me one of the greatest honours I've received which was a name, a Kaurna name, and I have carried it with a tremendous sense of honour but also responsibility to live up to that name, so thank you Lewis O'Brien.

I was also delighted to visit yesterday the Suzuki Forest. Do you know about that, Robyn? It's…I don't know, somewhere up in the hills, I don't know where in the heck we went, but it was degraded land that Mike Rann when he was Premier set aside to be restored and designated as a forest in the future. I was thrilled to see that it's flourishing, and to learn that it is right next to Schwarzenegger Forest, so I'm sure the terminator is going to be looking out after my little trees too.

These days I always begin my talks by saying that I'm not here to speak on behalf of any group or organisation, I don't speak for any political party or corporation, I'm here speaking as a grandfather and as an elder. And I believe this is the most important part of my life. You see, I don't have to play games anymore to get a job, a promotion or a raise, I can speak the truth from my heart. If that offends people, that's their problem, not mine.

Elders have that credibility, I believe, because we are no longer driven by the need for more money or power or celebrity or sex. Well, there are a few elders, they need help, they've got problems. But most elders are like me, those are long past in our lives, so we can speak with a great deal of credibility. And elders have something no other group in society has; we've lived an entire life. We've learned a lot. We've made mistakes, we've suffered failures, we've had a few successes. Those are hard-won life lessons. And I believe it's our job, it's our responsibility now to trawl through that life of experience for those nuggets that are lessons that are worth passing on to the generations to come. So I urge my fellow elders everywhere: Get the hell off the golf course or the couch and get on with the most important part of your life.

Now, before I begin, I must admit that ever since I arrived in Australia last Sunday I've been peppered by the press with questions about nuclear waste. I've only been in Australia for five days, the heavens sakes, I'm supposed to tell you what to do with nuclear waste? My family has only been in Canada for 120 years and Canada as a country has only existed for 150 years. I have lived all my life and my culture has never had to worry about something like sustainability. The only group with any credibility on sustainability over thousands of years are the indigenous people everywhere. So to South Australians, to all Australians, I say if you want to deal seriously with the issue of nuclear waste, let the Kaurna and the other Indigenous groups make the decisions, they are the only ones that provide the viewpoint and the perspective to do it.

You see, we stand at a unique moment in all of the history of life on this planet. That's 4 billion years of life. 99.9999% of all species that have ever existed in the 4 billion years are extinct. Extinction is the norm. But for the first time in those 4 billion years, one species that created the conditions for its own demise (that's us) recognises the possibility of extinction and has the tools to avoid a catastrophic end.

You know what we face. Human activity—burning fossil fuels, machines, agricultural practices, especially raising cattle, warfare—are altering the chemistry of the atmosphere that in turn is trapping heat on the planet. I first realised that we have to take climate change seriously when I came to your country. In 1988 I was a guest in Melbourne of the Commission for the Future, and at that time scientists showed me the evidence that they were gathering in climatology. And I went back to Canada saying this is no longer a slow-motion catastrophe, we've got to get going on it right away. Your leading scientists and the reality of life—drought, massive fires, reef degradation—show that you have a serious problem and that there are also solutions here for clean energy in abundance.

Australia should be leading the world. And I must say I've been so proud of South Australia, that Mike Rann set in motion a path towards a future of clean energy, you're at 40% renewable energy now, on the way to 50% and possibly 60%. South Australians should be boasting to the world about what you are doing here. I certainly intend to when I go home.

The failure of the federal governments of Canada and Australia to act in the face of the evidence and the enormous alternative opportunities to climate change is why many scientists and experts now declare the futility of simply eliminating the use of fossil fuels, and call for megaprojects like geo-engineering and the massive implementation of nuclear energy. It's crazy but we are at a desperate position.

Australia with vast deserts and sunlight Canadians would kill for, and you can't develop alternative solutions? Disgraceful! Japan, the most earthquake prone country on the planet brings nuclear plants to…what? To boil water. And this in a country that has boiling water in over 6,000 hot springs. We boast as a species that we are intelligent.

In Canada, First Nations, environmentalists, climatologists have now been labelled 'the forces of no' and 'eco-terrorists'. Of course climate is just one of the issues, there's a whole suite of ecological issues that are confronting us now. Oceans cover 70% of the planet's surface, and they are a mess. Overfishing, islands of plastic, dead zones from agricultural run-off, sea level rise by warming and expansion of water, and acidification from the dissolving of carbon dioxide in the ocean as carbonic acid.

80% of the forests on the land are gone. Hydrologic cycles are changing. We dread the disappearance of the monsoon reliability. Species are going extinct at a rate unparalleled since the last great extinction episode 65 million years ago. Toxic pollutants now have been poured into air, water and soil. I'm sorry, however well you live, every one of us here carries dozens of toxic chemicals because of what we've done to the rest of the planet.

We are species out of control. We are expanding our ecological footprint. The amount of air, water and land we require to live as we do is simply expanding. Climate change is just the most obviously pressing issue we confront now. But I have to say it has taken a hell of a long time before it's come to the level that it's at now.

The first international conference on climate was held in Toronto in 1988, and at that time the scientists were convinced the evidence was in, and were so alarmed by what they were seeing that they issued a call for a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in 15 years. That was the call, but we didn't take it seriously. And the record of political and corporate denial and monkeywrenching is why many scientists and experts despair and declare now openly that it's too late to turn things around.

When Sir Martin Rees, one of the eminent astronomers in Britain, was asked, 'What are the chances that there will be any human beings left by the year 2100?' His answer sent a chill up my spine: 50/50. James Lovelock, the inventor of the concept of Gaia, has written a book that declares 90% of humanity will be gone by the end of the century. And you all know Australia's eco-philosopher Clive Hamilton has written a book, Requiem for a Species. And guess what species it's a requiem for? It's for us. And now an American ecologist, Guy McPherson, is declaring human beings will be gone within decades in this century.

My response to all of that is why are you saying that it's too late? There's no point. Surely we're going to struggle and fight right to the end. Yes, it's urgent, and that's the message I get. But to say no, it's too late, that's ridiculous, that's simply too soul-destroying to hear that. But I think that the urgency is what we have to listen to. We have very little time to act. So I would suggest in your country and mine, do not offer your vote to a single candidate at any level of government unless they declare that climate change is an issue that they will devote a great deal of their lives to.

And it mustn't be a political football. It's not just the Green party that will say this, we must demand it of every candidate for political office. The signs are depressing, it's true, but I cling to hope, and that hope is based on more than just a Pollyanna-ish idea; ‘Oh, don't worry, good things will happen.’ My hope is based on the faith, one that love…and please, don't think I have suddenly become a dippy hippy…I believe that love is the driving force of our species, and it is love of our children and grandchildren that must override all of the economic, political and social pressures.

But more than that, we don't know enough to say it's too late. And let me give you an example of why I say that. The most prized species of salmon in the world is called the sockeye salmon. It's the salmon with the bright red flesh and lots of fat in it, it tastes great, especially when it's raw. Sockeye salmon are…the biggest run in the world is in British Columbia in the Fraser River. And ever since pre-contact levels of sockeye salmon, the runs were between 100- and 120 million fish each year, but after contact, when we damned rivers and had landslides that blocked the Fraser, we got a catastrophic decline. But the Fraser River in British Columbia has the largest sockeye run in the world, and we like to get 30–35 million animals coming back.

In 2009 we barely got a million sockeye returning to the Fraser. And I remember looking at Tara my wife and saying, that's it, there just isn't the biomass to get them to their spawning grounds, they're toast, they're gone. One year later in 2010 we got the biggest run of sockeye salmon in 100 years. I use that story not to show how stupid I am. Nobody knows what the hell happened. But nature shocked us with surprise. And I believe nature has got a lot more surprises up her sleeve. We just have to pull back and give her room and she will be far more generous than we deserve. That's my hope.

I was in the United States, I studied there for eight years, getting an education in the 1950s that we couldn't get in Canada at that time. And I was starting the last year in college in Massachusetts in 1957, and on October 4 the Soviet Union shocked the world by announcing they had launched Sputnik. And that was really a frightening time. The Soviet Union was a very powerful force at that time and every hour and a half we could hear the 'beep beep' of Sputnik thumbing its nose at us. The Americans immediately tried to launch their own satellites and every one blew up on the launch pad.

Meanwhile the Russians launched the first animal in space, a dog, Laika. The first man, Yuri Gagarin. The first team of cosmonauts, the first space walk, the first woman, Valentina Tereshkova. Americans didn't flinch. They didn't say, oh my God, they're so far ahead we can't afford to catch up, they said we've got to catch these guys. And it was a glorious time. Here I was, a Canadian living in the States, all you had to do was say 'I like science' and they threw money at us. It was glorious.

And in 1961 President Kennedy announced that Americans would get humans to the Moon and back within a decade. When he announced his plan he didn't have a clue how the hell he was going to do it. He just knew that they had to get to the Moon and beat the Russians. And look what happened. Not only are they the only country to land people on the Moon and get them back, but all of the unexpected benefits that have come out of making that commitment. Even today, 60 years later, when Nobel prizes are announced, believe me, Americans cop a huge number of those science Nobel prizes. Why? Because in 1958 Americans said we've got to beat the Russians in the space program. Every year NASA publishes a magazine called Spinoff. Hundreds of unanticipated spin-offs have come out of the space program, from laptop computers to GPS to cell phones to space blankets and ear thermometers, hundreds of these things have come simply by seizing the moment and the challenge and saying we've got to beat it. And I believe that's the moment we're at here. Climate change represents the ultimate crisis for our species that becomes a huge opportunity if we seize the moment and commit ourselves to beating it.

I returned to Canada in 1962 and had I studied for eight years in the States. I was a hotshot geneticist, I was going to make my name as a big scientist, and I got completely side-tracked by a woman. Not Tara, she is too young for that, but this has happened all through my life, usually with disastrous consequences, but in this case I've been ever grateful to her, and the great regret I have is that I never met her. But in 1962 a woman named Rachel Carson published a book called Silent Spring and it changed my life. We have to remember, in 1962 there wasn't a Department of the Environment in any government on Earth. The word 'environment' didn't mean in 1962 what it has come to mean today.

The discovery that DDT kills insects by Paul Müller won a Nobel Prize for him in 1947. We thought DDT pesticides were fantastic until Rachel Carson's book came out. And for me as a scientist what stunned me was the realisation that science can be very powerful, but we don't know enough to anticipate all of the unknown things in nature that we can't expect to be affected. When DDT began to be used on a wide scale, it was only when eagles in the United States began to disappear that scientists tracked it down and discovered a phenomenon called biomagnification. Up the food chain you concentrate DDT hundreds of thousands of times until you get to the shell glands of birds or the breasts of women. How could we have managed DDT properly when we only discovered biomagnification after eagles began to disappear? And that has happened over and over again.

When CFCs began to be used on a wide scale, we had no idea that high up in the atmosphere ultraviolet light would break chlorine free radicals off CFC that would scavenge ozone. When nuclear bombs were dropped over Japan we didn't know there was a phenomenon called radioactive fallout. And now we have such conceit we want to genetically engineer plants and animals for our use. We want to indeed engineer the planet with geo-engineering to deal with the issue of climate change. I believe it's a form of madness to have the hubris to think that we are capable of doing that.

For me, again as a scientist, the most profound message I got from Silent Spring was that in nature everything is connected to everything else. And I realised scientists look at things in bits and pieces, all on the assumption if we look at enough bits and pieces we will fit them back together to get a picture of the whole system. But we spray chemicals on farmers' fields to kill insects and end up discovering that fish and birds and human beings are affected. Everything is connected, and we can't determine all of those interconnections through science.

I just want to tell you a story that one of the programs that the David Suzuki Foundation undertook that I am so proud about was to try to illustrate this issue of inter-connectivity. One of the rarest ecosystems on the planet is called temperate rainforest, and in North America we have the largest temperate rainforest extending from Alaska down to the northern part of California, and it's that thin band pinched between the Pacific Ocean and the coastal mountain range, and it has the highest biomass, the weight of living things, of any ecosystem on Earth. And the reason for that is we've got big trees. But the dilemma for scientists was how can we have such big trees when the soil is nitrogen deficient? It rains a lot, that's why it's a rainforest. That rain washes nutrients, but especially nitrogen, out of the soil. So it was a real paradox for us. You've got these big trees and you've got not enough nitrogen in the soil to raise them. And it turned out the solution was the salmon.

You see, the salmon are born in thousands of rivers and creeks all up and down through the temperate rainforest, and they are born in fresh water. They go out to sea, there are five species of salmon that live, depending on the species, 2 to 5 years at sea, then they come back to spawn in the original rivers and waters where they were born.

Now, it turns out that almost all of the nitrogen you find on land is the normal isotope of nitrogen called nitrogen-14. But in the oceans there is a very large proportion…well, small, but still a very significant proportion of the nitrogen in the oceans is nitrogen-15. It's a slightly heavier atom isotope that we can detect the difference between N-15 and N-14. So the salmon go to sea for 2 to 5 years, they load up in nitrogen-15, and then they return to their spawning rivers and creeks by the tens of millions up and down the coast. So they are loaded with nitrogen now, and everyone celebrates. If you've ever gone to a spawning experience on the coast, you know the birds and the seals and the whales, everybody is making noise because now this mass of creatures is coming back. And they get to the river, and the major predators of the salmon are eagles, bears and wolves. So they will eat the salmon as they are coming up to spawn, and then of course they poop and pee nitrogen-15-loaded urine and faeces throughout the forest. So they are literally fertilising the forest.

Now, the bears are normally solitary animals, but during the salmon season they will fish in the same pool with literally dozens of others. But when they grab a salmon they take off into the forest up to 150 metres on either side of the river because they want to eat it by themselves. I mean, I understand that. They want to eat the best parts which, as you all know, are the brains, the belly and the eggs, and then they will dump the carcasses, lots more, they go back for another one. On average, a bear will take about 600 salmon in a season. So they are spreading the carcasses again through the forest. The carcasses left are eaten by ravens and salamanders and slugs. But the major exploiters of the carcasses are flies. So flies lay their eggs. Within a few days that carcass is a seething mass of maggots loading up with nitrogen-15 from the salmon, dropped to the forest floor over winter, and in the spring flies hatch by the trillions at the very time the birds from South America are coming through on their way to their nesting grounds in the Arctic. So, you see, those birds have been genetically programmed to come through at the very time those salmon, through the flies, are feeding them on their way to the Arctic.

If the salmon are not taken out of the river and sink to the bottom, within a week or so they are covered with a thick mat of fungus and bacteria, and the fungus and bacteria are eaten by copepods and insects and other invertebrates, so when the baby salmon emerge from the gravel four months later, the rivers are filled with nitrogen-15 containing invertebrates, so that the salmon can feast on their way down to the ocean. So in dying, the salmon prepare a feast for their offspring.

And then what we funded was scientists to go in and actually take the cores of trees in salmon bearing areas and non salmon bearing areas, and we showed that when you pull out the core and look at the fat rings, they are loaded with nitrogen-15. And the skinny rings when they've hardly grown, you find very little nitrogen-15. So the salmon are literally feeding the forest with their carcasses. So it's a magnificent story of the interconnection of the north and southern hemisphere and the oceans and land and the air.

Modern humans come along: oh, those indigenous people, they don't know anything, we're going to manage these resources. And so we say, well, we've got all these salmon there, that's the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, for the commercial fishery. Oh, but then there are all those indigenous people, that's the Ministry of Indian Affairs. Oh, what about the sports fishermen? Well, that the Department of Tourism.

So we divide the salmon into three areas. The trees, that's the Minister of Forests. And the rivers, well, that's the Minister of Energy and the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Urban Affairs. And then we have all the rocks and the mountains, that's the Minister of Mining. And oh yeah, what about the eagles, the wolves and bears? That's the Ministry of the Environment. Now let's manage everything.

I mean, it's absolutely absurd because the way we look at the world has shattered it into pieces that have no connection to each other, and we ensure we will never manage those incredible systems. So that was Rachel Carson's great contribution, to me at least, was that everything is interconnected.

Impelled by Rachel Carson's book, I joined millions of people around the world in what we now see was a modern environmental movement. And the action, activity, was enormous. In only 10 years we got the United Nations forming UNEP, the United Nations Environment Program, calling its first international conference on the environment in Stockholm. And we began to get committees on the environment at every level of governments, from domestic, municipal, to the provincial, to the national level. And we've got laws to protect air, we've got laws to protect water, endangered species, and millions of hectares of land were set aside as parks and reserves.

In British Columbia, Tara and I were part of that huge movement, and we celebrated successes that we'd been involved in as well in our areas. There was a proposal to build a dam at Site C on the Peace River and we stopped it. Another proposal that Tara was very active in raising money to stop a dam to be built at Altamira on the Xingu River in Brazil, and we stopped that. We stopped the American proposal to bring oil supertankers off the north slopes of Alaska through British Columbian waters to be refined in Seattle. We stopped drilling proposals in the Arctic and in Hecate Strait.

And those are great victories. But now 30 to 35 years later, guess what? We are fighting the same battles all over again. What we thought were victories were not victories. And as environmentalists we failed fundamentally to use those battles as a means of informing people and educating people to see our relationship with the world in a different way. We have to shift the paradigm.

Years ago I visited a small village in the Andes Mountains in Brazil, and I learned that children in the village are taught that that mountain is an apu. In their language, apu means God. And as long as that apu casts its shadow on their village, it will determine the destiny of everyone in that village. Now, imagine how those kids when they grow up will treat that mountain, compared to a Canadian kid growing up in the Rockies who is taught all their lives those mountains are full of gold and silver. You see, the way we see the world and our place in it shapes and determines the way we will act towards it. We humans are predators. We have to eat plants and animals in order to live. We alter ecosystems in order to serve our needs, thinking of the burning program that you have with your Indigenous people in Australia. We modify habitats so that we can survive in them. But the way that we do it and the sense of values that we hold determine how we are going to actually behave.

When a forest is a sacred grove, then lumber and pulp will be taken with great reverence. When the river is the circulatory system of the land, we will extract energy, fresh water and fish very carefully. When soil is seen as a complex community of life, we will no longer treat it just as dirt. When another species is our biological kin, sharing with us thousands of genes identical with each other, then it seems to me we treat our kin with greater gratitude and love. When a house is our home, that's very different from a piece of real estate or a starter house or a tear-down. When the planet is our mother, then who would treat our biological mother the way we treat the Earth? The way we see the world shapes and constrains the way that we act towards it.

Three years ago I received a call…you know that the big battle in Canada right now is over the future of the tar sands in Alberta. Three years ago I got a call from the CEO of one of the largest companies in the Alberta tar sands. I was shocked. But he said would it be possible for me to come and talk to you. I said absolutely, I would be thrilled. I said I'm not into fighting, I'm no longer fighting because we can't afford losers. We've all got to be winners.

So he came down to my office the next morning and he came to the door and I thanked him profusely, I told him what an honour it was to have him come to me, and I said, but please do me one favour, before you walk in the door, please leave your identity as a CEO of an oil company outside the door. I want to meet you as a human being to human being, because I don't want to talk about the tar sands or its future, I don't want to talk about the economy until you and I as human beings agree on what the most fundamental needs are for human beings on the planet.

I'll tell you, he was not very happy about leaving his identity. But to his credit, he walked through the door. So I took him to my office, I sat him down, I said, I know how difficult this is for you. But let me tell you where I'm starting from. I said, our world…you and I live in a world that is defined, that is shaped and constrained by laws of nature. Those are laws that we can't do anything about, we have to live within them.

I can see right away I was in danger of losing him. I said, you know, in physics they tell us you can't build a rocket that will travel faster than the speed of light. And nobody denies that or gets mad about it, that's a limit on what we can do. The laws of gravity tell us you can't build an antigravity machine here on Earth, we accept that. And the first and second laws of thermodynamics tell us you can't build a perpetual motion machine. And, except for a few hucksters, most of us agree that that is true and we live with that.

In chemistry it's the same. The atomic properties of the elements, diffusion constants and reaction rates all inform us of the kind of reactions that we can perform in a test tube and the types of molecules that we can or cannot synthesise, and we live with that, those are dictated by what nature, what chemistry tells us. And in biology it's the same. Every species has a maximum number that can live indefinitely that are defined by the carrying capacity of ecosystems or habitats. And you exceed that number, the ability of an ecosystem or habitat to support more, and that population will crash.

Humans, because of our brains, we are not confined to a specific habitat or ecosystem, we can live from the Arctic to the deserts to temperate and tropical rainforest to wetlands to mountains…I mean, we are a very adaptive organism. But our home is still the biosphere, the zone of air, water and land where all life exists, that's our home, and it's finite, it can grow. So guess what? It has a carrying capacity for our species. Of course the number of our species that can be supported is based on two things, that is our numbers but also our consumption per capita. When you add that together, Australia, Canada, the US, Europe are very overpopulated because of our high consumption. But most scientists I talk to agree, we've exceeded the carrying capacity of the biosphere for our species. Man, do people get mad at me when I say that! How dare you say that! Look at the beautiful city of Adelaide, look how we're living, we're healthier, we're happier. Yeah, we're creating the illusion of great success by using up what should be the rightful legacy of our children and grandchildren. Ask any elder.

And biology dictates that you and I are animals. I gave a talk in Austin Texas many years ago, and it was a big audience with lots of children in the front and I said, now kids, if you remember one thing from my lecture, remember we are animals. Man, did their parents get pissed off at me! 'Don't call my daughter an animal, we're human beings.' And my response was, listen madam, if you don't think we're animals…are you a plant? We are animals, and as animals, biology dictates our fundamental needs.

And so I said to Mr CEO, I said what do you think is the most important thing every human being on Earth needs? And I could see he was thinking money, a job. I said, look, if you don't have a breath of air for three minutes, you're dead. If you have to breathe polluted air, you're sick. So can you as a human being agree with me that one of the highest priorities of our species is to protect clean air? And then I said, you and I are 70% water by weight, we're just a big blob of water with enough thickener added we don't dribble away on the floor. But, you know, our bodies leak water, right, it comes out of our skin and our eyes and our mouth and our crotch and we lose water all the time. I said, Mr CEO, if you don't have water for 4 to 6 days, you're dead. If you have to drink contaminated water, you're sick. So can you agree with me that clean water, like clean air, has got to be the highest priority of our species?

And then I said, you and I could go maybe 4 to 6 weeks without food but then we would die. If we have to eat contaminated food we get sick, and most of our food is coming from the Earth. So will you agree with me that clean food and clean soil has got to be up there with clean air and clean water? And then I said, all of the energy in your body is provided to us through photosynthesis. That energy is captured by plants, converted into chemical energy and we get it by eating the plants or the animals that eat the plants, we store that energy in our bodies, and when we need it, when we have to move or whatever, we burn those molecules of energy and liberate the energy of the Sun back into our bodies. So photosynthesis should be up there with clean water, clean air and clean soil.

And finally I said, Mr CEO, the miraculous aspect for me of life on this Earth is that those four things that indigenous people call the four sacred elements—earth, air, fire and water—those things are cleansed, replenished, created by life. It's the web of living things that give us the four sacred elements. Before there were plants in the oceans and on land, the air was absolutely toxic for animals like us. Oxygen is a very reactive element. When you liberate oxygen it immediately oxidises things, it rusts iron, and it disappears. It was plants that converted carbon dioxide into oxygen and over millions of years, until the present time, it's all of the green things in the ocean and on land that are keeping our atmosphere at 19% oxygen.

And in Vancouver we get all of our water from three watersheds surrounded by old-growth rainforest, the tree roots, the other plant roots, soil, fungi and bacteria filter that water so that we can drink it. And it's life that creates the very soil that we grow our food on. All of our food, as you well know, was once alive. But in order to grow our food in soil, as anyone who read The Martian or saw the movie The Martian when Matt Damon gets stranded on Mars and he has to stretch his potatoes out to four years instead of one so he can be rescued, there is lots of sand and gravel and dust on Mars, there is absolutely no soil. And so in order to grow his potatoes he had to dig a hole in the sand, poop in it and then get more life. We need soil and that is created by life itself. And people that talk about terraforming the planet…my god! Anyway, don't let me get into that, it's the nuttiest idea I've ever heard.

Anyway, so those are the things that to me define our most fundamental needs that should be the foundation of the way we create an economy and get our jobs and live. I said, Mr CEO, earth, air, fire and water and other living things that are our relatives, can you agree with me, these are the basis on which we live and flourish? Will you shake hands with me and agree that we both believe that that must be protected before anything else? And I'm sorry to say that he couldn't bring himself to shake my hand. He left and I never heard from him again.

Now, it was an unfair situation, I sprung it on him. He didn't know that's what he was in for, and it was unfair because he had come down as a CEO of a company to negotiate with me. If he were to go back to his shareholders and say, 'Well, I had a discussion with Suzuki, I have to agree, anything that we do must not compromise the air, the water, the soil, photosynthesis or biodiversity,' he'd be fired in a flash. And so the system that we've created can't accept that as the foundation on which it operates.

There are other things I told the CEO. There are other things we call boundaries. We draw borders around our property and, boy, people will kill and die to protect those borders. We draw boundaries around our cities and our provinces, our states and our countries. We go to war and murder and kill to protect those boundaries. Those boundaries are absolutely meaningless to nature. I mean, you just had to see it at the COP meetings in Paris. 196 countries dealing with the atmosphere that belongs to no one through the lenses of 196 political boundaries. It's crazy because you can't do it.

And then there are other things—capitalism, communism, the economy, markets, corporations—these are not forces or laws of nature, we invented them, for Gods sake. But if you listen to the news about the economy every morning, my God, you'd swear they were a thing out there. Oh, the market is not looking too healthy today. And you think of this poor market sitting there with an ice pack on its head going, 'I feel really lousy today.' What the hell! We invented the damn thing! And yet we are constantly trying to shoehorn nature to fit our economic or corporate agenda. It can't work that way. We have to do it the other way and shoehorn our inventions into nature's needs.

So this is a challenge, and I'd like to end it by suggesting something the David Suzuki Foundation did for the Earth Summit meetings in 1992, to provide perhaps a different perspective on our place in nature. We call it a declaration of interdependence.

This we know: We are the Earth, through the plants and animals that nourish us. We are the rains and the oceans that flow through our veins. We are the breath of the forests of the land and the plants of the sea. We are human animals, related to all other life as descendants of that first born cell. We share with these kin a common history, written in our genes. We share a common present, filled with uncertainty. And we share a common future, as yet untold. We humans are but one of 30 million species weaving the thin layer of life enveloping the world. The stability of communities of living things depends upon this diversity. Linked in that web, we are interconnected; using, cleansing, sharing, and replenishing the fundamental elements of life. Our home, planet Earth, is finite, all life shares its resources and the energy from the Sun, and therefore has limits to growth. For the first time we have touched those limits. When we compromise the air, the water, the soil, and the variety of life, we steal from the endless future to serve the fleeting present.

This we believe: Humans have become so numerous and our tools so powerful that we have driven fellow creatures to extinction, dammed the great rivers, torn down ancient forests, poisoned the earth, rain, and wind, and ripped holes in the sky. Our science has brought pain as well as joy; our comfort is paid for by the suffering of millions. We are learning from our mistakes, we are mourning our vanished kin, and we now build a new politics of hope. We respect and uphold the absolute need for clean air, water, and soil. We see that economic activities that benefit the few while shrinking the inheritance of many are wrong. And since environmental degradation erodes biological capital forever, full ecological and social cost must enter all equations of development. We are one brief generation in the long march of time; the future is not ours to erase. So where knowledge is limited, we will remember all those who will walk after us, and err on the side of caution.

This we resolve: All this that we know and believe must now become the foundation of the way we live. At this turning point in our relationship with the Earth, we work for an evolution: from dominance to partnership, from fragmentation to connection, from insecurity to interdependence.

Thank you.

Kerry O'Brien: 'Failures of politics, failures of journalism, failures of society', Logie Awards Hall of Fame - 2019

30 June 2019, The Star, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia

Thank you, Waleed. Thank you, everyone. And can I just say how pleased I am not to be receiving this award posthumously.

Television was only six years old when I discovered journalism in a tiny television newsroom, Channel Nine, upon Mount Coot-Tha, overlooking Brisbane. I worked for every commercial network, had some great shared moments and made lasting friendships.

The ABC has never been the sole bastion of good television journalism but I was always in my natural home at the ABC because the pursuit of excellence wasn’t just permitted, it was expected.

As the importance of journalism became more and more obvious to me, absolutely fundamental to a healthy democracy despite its many imperfections — that’s the many imperfections of journalism as well as democracy — it also added more meaning to my life. And being paid to satisfy your curiosity and feed your imagination and have fun along the way didn’t hurt either. But the joy of it, the joy of it has been fed largely by my wonderfully collegiate culture that I experienced at all those terrific programs.

This Day Tonight, Four Corners, Lateline and 7.30, we all competed with each other vigorously but from a bedrock of mutual respect — even love. Those friendships have been incredibly important in my life. The other joy has been to watch new talent emerge and to feel that in some way, I’ve helped to nurture it. There have been the tough times, the budget cuts to the ABC again and again and again, driven more by a desire to punish and by an ideological obsession than because the public broadcaster was inefficient.

In my view, the day Jonathan Shier was appointed to run the ABC in the Howard years was the beginning of a dark time in that place. So, some of the best and the brightest were shown the door in that time. 7.30 was in the eye of the storm. I was described in headlines, as you saw a little while ago, as “dead man talking”. But on that program, we walked a straight line and allowed our work to speak for us. The program could have died in that era, but it’s still there — still going strong, still driven by good people, still accused of bias, but still walking a straight line. And the ABC is still forging its way through strong headwinds, probably never threatened more than it is today by a combination of forces, cash-strapped in a totally disrupted, digitally driven industry, and still confronting the same sad ideological prejudice.

And now, even the Federal Police — some of whom have themselves leaked to us in the past — have seen fit to raid the place. And yet as I sat here tonight and watched nomination after nomination after nomination for the ABC, including for most popular categories which rely on a public vote, I felt so much better about the place.

My message, my message to every person working in Aunty’s embrace today is simple: keep your heads held high and your eye firmly fixed on delivering programs of relevance, quality and integrity for people in every corner of Australia and those same people will repay your loyalty with theirs as they always have.

And to the rest of the country: don’t ever again allow politicians to diminish the public broadcaster. It is one of the most precious institutions we have. Along with reporting the bad news, my colleagues and I have told many stories of hope and inspiration, and mostly I’ve been proud to call my self a journalist. Yet, we the journalists have to share the responsibility for the great failures of our time. A time of enormous ferment and challenge, failures of politics, failures of journalism, failures of society in the end.

For instance 40 years after powerful evidence first kicked in that human-caused climate change threatened the world with an existential disaster, we’re still stuck in the mire of drab, dishonest arguments that will come at great cost to future generations and we the journalists have not cut through the fake news effectively. We have not properly held politicians to account.

But there is one big glaring gap in this nation’s otherwise great story that I want to spend a brief minute on tonight: the failure to reconcile Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia. When I started my career, First Australians were not even counted in the national census. On paper, they didn’t exist. I was first personally exposed to the awful racism this country is capable of when I visited Alice Springs more than 45 years ago, and sadly you don’t have to go too far to see it still today. A trip to any prison will do it.

We all have an opportunity together in this term of the federal parliament to understand and support what is embodied in the Uluru Statement From The Heart. A remarkable document, forged in unity by more than 250 Aboriginal and Torres-Strait Islander leaders, representing the oldest surviving culture on the face of the earth. [It’s] a culture that adds a richness that is unique to this continent and yet we other Australians are mostly ignorant of it.

The Uluru statement represents no threat to a single individual in any corner of this country, and certainly no threat to the integrity of parliament. And if you’re told that, don’t you believe it. On the contrary, it will add much to the integrity of our nation. We like to be seen as one nation made up of many parts. Now, it’s time to prove it.

The last and most important thing of all for me, personally tonight, is to acknowledge with gratitude and love the precious part family has played in my life and been so central to it. My children — and indulge me for 10 seconds here — Lara, Chris, Anthony, Jack, Ben and Meg; and my grandchildren, Joe, Gigi, Billy, Harrison, Tom and Mason have been at the centre of my life. Sue Javes, my wife and best friend for 40 years, warned me tonight not to say how much she’d helped me in my career — as Karl Stefanovic had said here at the Logies a few years ago, because it’d probably cost him a couple of million. Sorry darling, you’re going to have to lower your sights.

The truth is, I have been so lucky and so privileged to be able to call on Sue’s impeccable judgment, instinctive wisdom and good humour throughout our years together. She also told me to avoid using the word “journey” tonight. So I’ll close simply by saying: this has been a wonderful road to have been allowed to travel. Thanks to all of you, especially in the living rooms of Australia, who have travelled that road with me.

Mahatma Gandhi: 'There is an indefinable mysterious power that pervades everything', Spiritual statement, Kingsley Hall - 1931

Kingsley Hall, Oxford, United Kingdom

There is an indefinable mysterious power that pervades everything, I feel it though I do not see it. It is this unseen power which makes itself felt and yet defies all proof, because it is so unlike all that I perceive through my senses. It transcends the senses. But it is possible to reason out the existence of God to a limited extent. Even in ordinary affairs we know that people do not know who rules or why and how He rules and yet they know that there is a power that certainly rules.

In my tour last year in Mysore I met many poor villagers and I found upon inquiry that they did not know who ruled Mysore. They simply said some God ruled it. If the knowledge of these poor people was so limited about their ruler I who am infinitely lesser in respect to God than they to their ruler need not be surprised if I do not realize the presence of God - the King of Kings.

Nevertheless, I do feel, as the poor villagers felt about Mysore, that there is orderliness in the universe, there is an unalterable law governing everything and every being that exists or lives. It is not a blind law, for no blind law can govern the conduct of living being and thanks to the marvelous researches of Sir J. C. Bose it can now be proved that even matter is life. That law then which governs all life is God. Law and the law-giver are one. I may not deny the law or the law-giver because I know so little about it or Him.

Just as my denial or ignorance of the existence of an earthly power will avail me nothing even so my denial of God and His law will not liberate me from its operation, whereas humble and mute acceptance of divine authority makes life's journey easier even as the acceptance of earthly rule makes life under it easier. I do dimly perceive that whilst everything around me is ever changing, ever dying there is underlying all that change a living power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves and recreates. That informing power of spirit is God, and since nothing else that I see merely through the senses can or will persist, He alone is. And is this power benevolent or malevolent ? I see it as purely benevolent, for I can see that in the midst of death life persists, in the midst of untruth truth persists, in the midst of darkness light persists. Hence I gather that God is life, truth, light. He is love. He is the supreme Good. But He is no God who merely satisfies the intellect, if He ever does. God to be God must rule the heart and transform it. He must express himself in every smallest act of His votary. This can only be done through a definite realization, more real than the five senses can ever produce.

Sense perceptions can be and often are false and deceptive, however real they may appear to us. Where there is realization outside the senses it is infallible. It is proved not by extraneous evidence but in the transformed conduct and character of those who have felt the real presence of God within. Such testimony is to be found in the experiences of an unbroken line of prophets and sages in all countries and climes. To reject this evidence is to deny oneself. This realization is preceded by an immovable faith. He who would in his own person test the fact of God's presence can do so by a living faith and since faith itself cannot be proved by extraneous evidence the safest course is to believe in the moral government of the world and therefore in the supremacy of the moral law, the law of truth and love. Exercise of faith will be the safest where there is a clear determination summarily to reject all that is contrary to truth and love. I confess that I have no argument to convince through reason. Faith transcends reason. All that I can advise is not to attempt the impossible.

Bhagat Singh: 'Bombs and pistols do not make a revolution', Appeal statement - 1929

Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt threw two bombs from the visitors' gallery. in the Central Assembly Hall, Delhi. This statement was on appeal to Sessions court. Bhagat Singh was hanged in 1931.

MY LORDS,

We are neither lawyers nor masters of English language, nor holders of degrees. Therefore, please do not expect any oratorial speech from us. We therefore pray that instead of going into the language mistakes of our statement Your Lordships will try to understand the real sense of it.

Leaving other points to our lawyers, I will confine myself to one point only. The point is very important in this case. The point is as to what were our intentions and to what extent we are guilty. This is a very complicated question and no one will be able to express before you that height to mental elevation which inspired us to think and act in a particular manner. We want that this should be kept in mind while assessing our intentions our offence. According to the famous jurist Solomon, one should not be punished for his criminal offence if his aim is not against law.

We had submitted a written statement in the Sessions Court. That statement explains our aim and, as such, explains our intentions also. But the learned judge dismissed it with one stroke of pen, saying that “generally the operation of law is not affected by how or why one committed the offence. In this country the aim of the offence is very rarely mentioned in legal commentaries”.

My Lords, our contention is that under the circumstances the learned judge ought to have judged us either by the result of our action or on the basis of the psychological part of our statement. But he did not take any of these factors into consideration.

The point to be considered is that the two bombs we threw in the Assembly did not harm anybody physically or economically. As such the punishment awarded to us is not only very harsh but revengeful also. Moreover, the motive knowing his psychology. And no one can do justice to anybody without taking his motive into consideration. If we ignore the motive, the biggest generals of the world will appear like ordinary murderers; revenue officers will look like thieves and cheats. Even judges will be accused of murder. This way the entire social system and the civilisation will be reduced to murders, thefts and cheating. If we ignore the motive, the government will have no right to expect sacrifice from its people and its officials. Ignore the motive and every religious preacher will be dubbed as a preacher of falsehoods, and every prophet will be charged of misguiding crores of simple and ignorant people.

If we set aside the motive, then Jesus Christ will appear to be a man responsible for creating disturbances, breaking peace and preaching revolt, and will be considered to be a “dangerous personality” in the language of the law. But we worship him. He commands great respect in our hearts and his image creates vibrations of spiritualism amongst us. Why? Because the inspiration behind his actions was that of a high ideal. The rulers of that age could not recognise that high idealism. They only saw his outward actions. Nineteen centuries have passed since then. Have we not progressed during this period? Shall we repeat that mistake again? If that be so, then we shall have to admit that all the sacrifices of the mankind and all the efforts of the great martyrs were useless and it would appear as if we are still at the same place where we stood twenty centuries back.

From the legal point of view also, the question of motive is of special importance. Take the example of General Dyer. He resorted to firing and killed hundreds of innocent and unarmed people. But the military court did not order him to be shot. It gave him lakhs of rupees as award. Take another example. Shri Kharag Bahadur Singh, a young Gurkha, Killed a Marwari in Calcutta. If the motive be set aside, then Kharag Bahadur Singh ought to have been hanged. But he was awarded a mild sentence of a few years only. He was even released much before the expiry of his sentence. Was there any loophole in the law that he escaped capital punishment? Or, was the charge of murder not proved against him? Like us, he also accepted the full responsibility of his action, but he escaped death. He is free today. I ask Your Lordship, why was he not awarded capital punishment? His action was well calculated and well planned. From the motive end, his action was more serious and fatal than ours. He was awarded a mild punishment because his intentions were good. He saved the society from a dirty leech who had sucked the life-blood of so many pretty young girls. Kharag Singh was given a mild punishment just to uphold the formalities of the law.

This principle (that the law does not take motive into consideration - ed.) is quite absurd. This is against the basic principles of the law which declares that “the law is for man and not man for the law”. As such, why the same norms are not being applied to us also? It is quite clear that while convicting Kharag Singh his motive was kept in mind, otherwise a murderer can never escape the hangman’s noose. Are we being deprived of the ordinary advantage of the law because our offence is against the government, or because our action has a political importance?

My Lords, under these circumstances, please permit us to assert that a government which seeks shelter behind such mean methods has no right to exist. If it is exists, it is for the time being only, and that too with the blood of thousands of people on its head. If the law does not see the motive there can be no justice, nor can there be stable peace. Mixing of arsenic (poison) in the flour will not be considered to be a crime, provided its purpose is to kill rats. But if the purpose is to kill a man, it becomes a crime of murder. Therefore, such laws which do not stand the test of reason and which are against the principle of justice should be abolished. Because of such unjust laws, many great intellectuals had to adopt the path of revolt.

The facts regarding our case are very simple. We threw two bombs in the legislative Assembly on April 8, 1929. As a result of the explosion, a few persons received minor scratches. There was pandemonium in the chamber, hundreds of visitors and members of the Assembly ran out. Only my friend B.K. Dutt and myself remained seated in the visitors gallery and offered ourselves for arrest. We were tried for attempt to murder, and convicted for life. As mentioned above, as a result of the bomb explosion, only four or five persons were slightly injured and one bench got damaged. We offered ourselves for arrest without any resistance. The Sessions Judge admitted that we could have very easily escaped, had we had any intention like that. We accepted our offence and gave a statement explaining our position. We are not afraid of punishment. But we do not want that we should be wrongly understood. The judge removed a few paragraphs from our statement. This we consider to be harmful for our real position.

A proper study of the full text of our statement will make it clear that, according to us, our country is passing through a delicate phase. We saw the coming catastrophe and thought it proper to give a timely warning with a loud voice, and we gave the warning in the manner we thought proper. We may be wrong. Our line of thinking and that of the learned judge may be different, but that does not mean that we be deprived of the permission to express our ideas, and wrong things be propagated in our name.

In our statement we explained in detail what we mean by “Long Live Revolution” and “Down With Imperialism”. That formed the crux of our ideas. That portion was removed from our statement. Generally a wrong meaning is attributed to the word revolution. That is not our understanding. Bombs and pistols do not make revolution. That is not our understanding. The sword of revolution is sharpened on the whetting-stone of ideas. This is what we wanted to emphasise. By revolution we mean the end of the miseries of capitalist wars. It was not proper to pronounce judgement without understanding our aims and objects and the process of achieving them. To associate wrong ideas with our names is out and out injustice.

It was very necessary to give the timely warning that the unrest of the people is increasing and that the malady may take a serious turn, if not treated in time and properly. If our warning is not heeded, no human power will be able to stop it. We took this step to give proper direction to the storm. We are serious students of history. We believe that, had the ruling powers acted correctly at the proper time, there would have been no bloody revolutions in France and Russia. Several big power of the world tried to check the storm of ideas and were sunk in the atmosphere of bloodshed. The ruling people cannot change the flow of the current. We wanted to give the first warning. Had we aimed at killing some important personalities, we would have failed in the attainment of our aim.

My Lords, this was the aim and the spirit behind our action, and the result of the action corroborates our statement. There is one more point which needs elucidation, and that is regarding the strength of the bombs. Had we had no idea of the strength of the bombs, there would have been no question of our throwing them in the presence of our respected national leader like Pandit Motilal Nehru, Shri Kelkar, Shri Jayaker and Shri Jinnah. How could we have risked the lives of our leaders? After all we are not mad and, had we been so, we would have certainly been sent to the lunatic asylum, instead of being put in jail.

We had full knowledge about the strength of the bombs and that is why we acted with so much confidence. It was very easy to have thrown the bombs on the occupied benches, but it was difficult to have thrown them on unoccupied seats. Had we not of saner mind or had we been mentally unbalanced, the bombs would have fallen on occupied benches and not in empty places.

Therefore I would say that we should be rewarded for the courage we showed in carefully selecting the empty places. Under these conditions, My Lords, we think we have not been understood, My Lords, we think we have not been understood properly. We have not come before you to get our sentences reduced. We have come here to clarify our position. We want that we should not be given any unjust treatment, nor should any unjust opinion be pronounced about us. The question of punishment is of secondary importance before us.

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.

Bertrand Russell: 'Shall we choose death?' BBC Radio - 1954

30 December 1954, BBC Radio, London, United Kingdom

I am speaking not as a Briton, not as a European, not as a member of a western democracy, but as a human being, a member of the species Man, whose continued existence is in doubt. The world is full of conflicts: Jews and Arabs; Indians and Pakistanis; white men and Negroes in Africa; and, overshadowing all minor conflicts, the titanic struggle between communism and anti-communism.
Almost everybody who is politically conscious has strong feelings about one or more of these issues; but I want you, if you can, to set aside such feelings for the moment and consider yourself only as a member of a biological species which has had a remarkable history and whose disappearance none of us can desire. I shall try to say no single word which should appeal to one group rather than to another. All, equally, are in peril and, if the peril is understood, there is hope that they may collectively avert it. We have to learn to think in a new way. We have to learn to ask ourselves not what steps can be taken to give military victory to whatever group we prefer, for there no longer are such steps. The question we have to ask ourselves is: What steps can be taken to prevent a military contest of which the issue must be disastrous to all sides?
The general public, and even many men in positions of authority, have not realized what would be involved in a war with hydrogen bombs. The general public still thinks in terms of the obliteration of cities. It is understood that the new bombs are more powerful than the old and that, while one atomic bomb could obliterate Hiroshima, one hydrogen bomb could obliterate the largest cities such as London, New York, and Moscow. No doubt in a hydrogen-bomb war great cities would be obliterated. But this is one of the minor disasters that would have to be faced. If everybody in London, New York, and Moscow were exterminated, the world might, in the course of a few centuries, recover from the blow. But we now know, especially since the Bikini test, that hydrogen bombs can gradually spread destruction over a much wider area than had been supposed. It is stated on very good authority that a bomb can now be manufactured which will be 25,600 times as powerful as that which destroyed Hiroshima. Such a bomb, if exploded near the ground or underwater, sends radioactive particles into the upper air. They sink gradually and reach the surface of the earth in the form of a deadly dust or rain. It was this dust which infected the Japanese fishermen and their catch of fish although they were outside what American experts believed to be the danger zone. No one knows how widely such lethal radioactive particles might be diffused, but the best authorities are unanimous in saying that a war with hydrogen bombs is quite likely to put an end to the human race. It is feared that if many hydrogen bombs are used there will be universal death — sudden only for a fortunate minority, but for the majority a slow torture of disease and disintegration...
Here, then, is the problem which I present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war? People will not face this alternative because it is so difficult to abolish war. The abolition of war will demand distasteful limitations of national sovereignty. But what perhaps impedes understanding of the situation more than anything else is that the term ‘mankind’ feels vague and abstract. People scarcely realize in imagination that the danger is to themselves and their children and their grandchildren, and not only to a dimly apprehended humanity. And so they hope that perhaps war may be allowed to continue provided modern weapons ate prohibited. I am afraid this hope is illusory. Whatever agreements not to use hydrogen bombs had been reached in time of peace, they would no longer be considered binding in time of war, and both sides world set to work to manufacture hydrogen bombs as soon as war broke out, for if one side manufactured the bombs and the other did not, the side that manufactured them would inevitably be victorious.
As geological time is reckoned, Man has so far existed only for a very short period — one million years at the most. What he has achieved, especially during the last 6,006 years, is something utterly new In the history of the Cosmos, so far at least as we are acquainted with it. For countless ages the sun rose and set, the moon waxed and waned, the stars shone in the night, but it was only with the coming of Man that these things were understood. In the great world of astronomy and in the little world of the atom, Man has unveiled secrets which might have been thought undiscoverable. In art and literature and religion, some men have shown a sublimity of feeling which makes the species worth preserving. Is all this to end in trivial horror because so few are able to think of Man rather than of this or that group of men? Is our race so destitute of wisdom, so incapable of impartial love, so blind even to the simplest dictates of self-preservation, that the last proof of its silly cleverness is to be the extermination of all life on our planet? For it will be not only men who will perish, but also the animals, whom no one can accuse of communism or anti-communism,.
I cannot believe that this is to be the end. I would have men forget their quarrels for a moment and reflect that, if they will allow themselves to survive, there is every reason to expect the triumphs of the future to exceed immeasurably the triumphs of the past.
There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? I appeal, as a human being to human beings: remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, nothing lies before you but universal death.

George Bell: 'Obliteration is not a justifiable act of war', House of Lords, On bombing of German cities - 1944

9 February 1944, House of Lords, London, United Kingdom

My Lords, the question which I have to ask is beset with difficulties. It deals with an issue which must have [its] own anxieties for the Government, and certainly causes great searchings of heart amongst large numbers of people who are as resolute champions of the Allied cause as any member of your Lordships' House. If long-sustained and public opposition to Hitler and the Nazis since 1933 is any credential, I would humbly claim to be one of the most convinced and consistent Anti-Nazis in Great Britain. But I desire to challenge the Government on the policy which directs the bombing of enemy towns on the present scale, especially with reference to civilians, non-combatants, and non-military and non-industrial objectives. I also desire to make it plain that, in anything I say on this issue of policy, no criticism is intended of the pilots, the gunners, and the air crews who, in circumstances of tremendous danger, with supreme courage and skill, carry out the simple duty of obeying their superiors' orders.

Few will deny that there is a distinction in principle between attacks on military and industrial objectives and attacks on objectives which do not possess that character. At the outbreak of the war, in response to an appeal by President Roosevelt, the Governments of the United Kingdom and France issued a joint declaration of their intention to conduct hostilities with a firm desire to spare the civilian population and to preserve in every way possible those monuments of human achievement which are treasured in all civilized countries. At the same time explicit instructions were issued to the Commanders of the Armed Forces prohibiting the bombardment, whether from the air or from the sea or by artillery on land, of any except strictly military objectives in the narrowest sense of the word. Both sides accepted this agreement. It is true that the Government added that, ‘In the event of the enemy not observing any of the restrictions which the Governments of the United Kingdom and France have thus imposed on the operation of their Armed Forces, these Governments reserve the right to take all such action as they may consider appropriate.’ It is true that on May 10, 1940, the Government publicly proclaimed their intention to exercise this right in the event of bombing by the enemy of civilian populations. But the point which I wish to establish at this moment is that in entering the war there was no doubt in the Government's mind that the distinction between military and non-military objectives was real.

Further, that this distinction is based on fundamental principles accepted by civilized nations is clear from the authorities in International Law. I give one instance the weight of which will hardly be denied. The Washington Conference on Limitation of Armaments in 1922 appointed a Commission of Jurists to draw up a code of rules about aerial warfare. It did not become an international convention, yet great weight should be attached to that code on account of its authors. Article 22 reads: ‘Aerial bombardment for the purpose of terrorizing the civilian population, of destroying or damaging private property not of military character, or of injuring non-combatants is prohibited.’ Article 24 says: ‘ Aerial bombardment is legitimate only when directed at a military objective—that is to say, an objective of which the destruction or injury would constitute a distinct military advantage to the belligerent.’ Professor A. L. Goodhart, of Oxford, states: ‘Both these Articles are based on the fundamental assumption that direct attack on non-combatants is an unjustifiable act of war.’

The noble Viscount, Lord Halifax, at the beginning of this war, in reference to this very thing, described war as bloody and brutal. It is idle to suppose that it can be carried on without fearful injury and violence from which non-combatants as well as combatants suffer. It is still true, nevertheless, that there are recognized limits to what is permissible. The Hague Regulations of 1907 are explicit. "The right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited." M. Bonfils, a famous French jurist, says: ‘If it is permissible to drive inhabitants to desire peace by making them suffer, why not admit pillage, burning, torture, murder, violation? ’ I have recalled the joint declaration and these pronouncements because it is so easy in the process of a long and exhausting war to forget what they were once held without question to imply, and because it is a common experience in the history of warfare that not only war but actions taken in war as military necessities are often supported at the time by a class of arguments which, after the war is over, people find are arguments to which they never should have listened.

I turn to the situation in February, 1944, and the terrific devastation by Bomber Command of German towns. I do not forget the Luftwaffe, or its tremendous bombing of Belgrade, Warsaw, Rotterdam, London, Portsmouth, Coventry, Canterbury and many other places of military, industrial and cultural importance. Hitler is a barbarian. There is no decent person on the Allied side who is likely to suggest that we should make him our pattern or attempt to be competitors in that market. It is clear enough that large-scale bombing of enemy towns was begun by the Nazis. I am not arguing that point at all. The question with which I am concerned is this. Do the Government understand the full force of what area bombardment is doing and is destroying now? Are they alive not only to the vastness of the material damage, much of which is irreparable, but also to the harvest they are laying up for the future relationships of the peoples of Europe as well as to its moral implications? The aim of Allied bombing from the air, said the Secretary of State for Air at Plymouth on January 22, is to paralyze German war industry and transport. I recognize the legitimacy of concentrated attack on industrial and military objectives, on airfields and air bases, in view especially of the coming of the Second Front. I fully realize that in attacks on centres of war industry and transport the killing of civilians when it is the result of bona-fide military activity is inevitable. But there must be a fair balance between the means employed and the purpose achieved. To obliterate a whole town because certain portions contain military and industrial establishments is to reject the balance.

Let me take two crucial instances, Hamburg and Berlin. Hamburg has a population of between one and two million people. It contains targets of immense military and industrial importance. It also happens to be the most democratic town in Germany where the Anti-Nazi opposition was strongest. Injuries to civilians resulting from bona-fide attacks on particular objectives are legitimate according to International Law. But owing to the methods used the whole town is now a ruin. Unutterable destruction and devastation were wrought last autumn. On a very conservative estimate, according to the early German statistics, 28,000 persons were killed. Never before in the history of air warfare was an attack of such weight and persistence carried out against a single industrial concentration. Practically all the buildings, cultural, military, residential, industrial, religious—including the famous University Library with its 800,000 volumes, of which three-quarters have perished—were razed to the ground.

Berlin, the capital of the Reich, is four times the size of Hamburg. The offices of the Government, the military, industrial, war-making establishments in Berlin are a fair target. Injuries to civilians are inevitable. But up to date half Berlin has been destroyed, area by area, the residential and the industrial portions alike. Through the dropping of thousands of tons of bombs, including fire-phosphorus bombs, of extraordinary power, men and women have been lost, overwhelmed in the colossal tornado of smoke, blast and flame. It is said that 74,000 persons have been killed and that 3,000,000 are already homeless. The policy is obliteration, openly acknowledged. That is not a justifiable act of war. Again, Berlin is one of the great centres of art collections in the world. It has a large collection of Oriental and classical sculpture. It has one of the best picture galleries in Europe, comparable to the National Gallery. It has a gallery of modern art better than the Tate, a museum of ethnology without parallel in this country, one of the biggest and best organized libraries—State and university, containing two and a half million books—in the world. Almost all these non-industrial, non-military buildings are grouped together near the old Palace and in the Street of the Linden. The whole of that street, which has been constantly mentioned in the accounts of the raids, has been demolished. It is possible to replace flat houses by mass production. It is not possible so quickly to rebuild libraries or galleries or churches or museums. It is not very easy to rehouse those works of art which have been spared. Those works of art and those libraries will be wanted for the re-education of the Germans after the war. I wonder whether your Lordships realize the loss involved in that.

How is it, then, that this wholesale destruction has come about? The answer is that it is the method used, the method of area bombing. The first outstanding raid of area bombing was, I believe, in the spring of 1942, directed against Lubeck, then against Rostock, followed by the thousand-bomber raid against Cologne at the end of May, 1942. The point I want to bring home, because I doubt whether it is sufficiently realized, is that it is no longer definite military and industrial objectives which are the aim of the bombers, but the whole town, area by area, is plotted carefully out. This area is singled out and plastered on one night; that area is singled out and plastered on another night; a third, a fourth, a fifth area is similarly singled out and plastered night after night, till, to use the language of the Chief of Bomber Command with regard to Berlin, the heart of Nazi Germany ceases to beat. How can there be discrimination in such matters when civilians, monuments, military objectives and industrial objectives all together form the target? How can the bombers aim at anything more than a great space when they see nothing and the bombing is blind?

When the Nazis bombed France and Britain in 1940 it was denounced as "indiscriminate bombing." I recall this passage from a leader in The Times after the bombing of Paris on June 4, 1940: ‘No doubt in the case of raids on large cities the targets are always avowedly military or industrial establishments; but, when delivered from the great height which the raiders seem to have been forced to keep by the anti-aircraft defences, the bombing in fact is bound to be indiscriminate.’ And I recall two other more recent articles in The Times on our own policy. On January 10, 1944, the following was published: ‘It is the proclaimed intention of Bomber Command to proceed with the systematic obliteration one by one of the centres of German war production until the enemy's capacity to continue the fight is broken down.’ On January 31 the Aeronautical Correspondent wrote: ‘Some of the most successful attacks of recent times have been made when every inch of the target area was obscured by unbroken cloud, thousands of feet thick, and when the crews have hardly seen the ground from which they took off until they were back at their bases again.’ If your Lordships will weigh the implication, and observe not only the destruction of the war-production factories but the obliteration of the places in which they are and the complete invisibility of the target area, it must surely be admitted that the bombing is comprehensive and what would ordinarily be called indiscriminate.

The Government have announced their determination to continue this policy city by city. I give quotations. The Prime Minister, after the thousand-bomber raid on Cologne in 1942, said: ‘Proof of the growing power of the British bomber force is also the herald of what Germany will receive city by city from now on.’ Air Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, on July 28, 1942, said: ‘We are going to scourge the Third Reich from end to end. We are bombing Germany city by city and ever more terribly in order to make it impossible for her to go on with the war. That is our object; we shall pursue it relentlessly.’ A few days ago, as reported in the Sunday Express of January 23, an Air Marshal said: "One by one we shall pull out every town in Germany like teeth."

I shall offer reasons for questioning this policy as a whole, but what I wish immediately to urge is this. There are old German towns, away from the great centres, which may be subjected—which almost certainly will be subjected—to the raids of Bomber Command. Almost certainly they are on the long list. Dresden, Augsburg, Munich are among the larger towns, Regensburg, Hildesheim and Marburg are a few among the smaller beautiful cities. In all these towns the old centres, the historic and beautiful things, are well preserved, and the industrial establishments are on the outskirts. After the destruction of the ancient town centres of Cologne, with its unique Romanesque churches, and Lubeck, with its brick cathedral, and Mainz, with one of the most famous German cathedrals, and of the old Gothic towns, the inner towns, Nuremburg, Hamburg and others, it would seem to be indicated that an effort, a great effort should be made to try to save the remaining inner towns. In the fifth year of the war it must surely be apparent to any but the most complacent and reckless how far the destruction of European culture has already gone. We ought to think once, twice, and three times before destroying the rest. Something can still be saved if it is realized by the authorities that the industrial centres, generally speaking, lie outside the old inner parts where are the historical monuments.

I would especially stress the danger—outside Germany—to Rome. The principle is the same, but the destruction of the main Roman monuments would create such hatred that the misery would survive when all the military and political advantages that may have accrued may have long worn off. The history of Rome is our own history. Rome taught us, through the example of Christ, to abolish human sacrifice and taught us the Christian faith. The destruction would rankle in the memory of every good European as Rome's destruction by the Goths or the sack of Rome rankled. The blame simply must not fall on those who are professing to create a better world. The resentment which would, inevitably, follow would be too deep-seated to be forgotten. It would be the sort of crime which one day, even in the political field, would turn against the perpetrators.

I wish to offer a few concluding remarks on the policy as a whole. It will be said that this area bombing—for it is this area bombing which is the issue to-day—is definitely designed to diminish the sacrifice of British lives and to shorten the war. We all wish with all our hearts that these two objects could be achieved, but to justify methods inhumane in themselves by arguments of expediency smacks of the Nazi philosophy that Might is Right. In any case the idea that it will reduce the sacrifice is speculation. The Prime Minister, as far back as August, 1940, before either Russia or America entered the war, justified the continued bombardment of German industries and communications as one of the surest, if not the shortest, of all the roads to victory. We are still fighting. It is generally admitted that German aircraft and military production, though it has slowed down, is going forward; and your Lordships may have noticed signs in certain military quarters of a tendency to question the value of this area bombing policy on military grounds. The cost in sacrifice of human life when the Second Front begins has never been disguised either from the American or from the British public by our leaders.

It is also urged that area bombing will break down morale and the will to fight. On November 5, in a speech at Cheltenham, the Secretary of State for Air said that bombing in this way would continue until we had paralysed German war industries, disrupted their transport system and broken their will to war. Again leaving the ethical issue aside, it is pure speculation. Up to now the evidence received from neutral countries is to the opposite effect. It is said that the Berliners are taking it well. Let me quote from two Swedish papers. On November 30 last, the Svenska Dagbladet—this was during the first stage of our raids on Berlin—said: ‘Through their gigantic air raids the British have achieved what Hitler failed to achieve by means of decrees and regulations; they have put the majority of the German people on a war footing.’ On January 9 of this year, the Sydsvenska Dagbladet said: ‘The relative German strength on the home front is undoubtedly based on desperation, which increases and gets worse the longer the mass bombing lasts. It is understandable that the fewer the survivors and the more they lose the more the idea spreads 'We have everything to gain and nothing to lose, and we can only regain what is ours if Germany wins the final victory, so let us do everything in our power.'’ If there is one thing absolutely sure, it is that a combination of the policy of obliteration with a policy of complete negation as to the future of a Germany which has got free from Hitler is bound to prolong the war and make the period after the war more miserable.

I am not extenuating the crimes of the Nazis or the responsibility of Germany as a whole in tolerating them for so long, but I should like to add this. I do not believe that His Majesty's Government desire the annihilation of Germany. They have accepted the distinction between Germany and the Hitlerite State.

[Bell is interrupted here by shouts of "no" from several members.]

On March 10 of last year the Lord Chancellor, speaking officially for the Government, accepted that distinction quite clearly and precisely. Is it a matter for wonder that Anti-Nazis who long for help to overthrow Hitler are driven to despair? I have here a telegram, which I have communicated to the Foreign Office, sent to me on December 27 last by a well-known Anti-Nazi Christian leader who had to flee from Germany for his life long before the war. It was sent from Zurich, and puts what millions inside Germany must feel. He says: ‘Is it understood that present situation gives us no sincere opportunity for appeal to people because one cannot but suspect effect of promising words on practically powerless population convinced by bombs and phosphor that their annihilation is resolved?’ If we wish to shorten the war, as we must, then let the Government speak a word of hope and encouragement both to the tortured millions of Europe and to those enemies of Hitler to whom in 1939 Mr. Churchill referred as "millions who stand aloof from the seething mass of criminality and corruption constituted by the Nazi Party machine."

Why is there this blindness to the psychological side? Why is there this inability to reckon with the moral and spiritual facts? Why is there this forget-fulness of the ideals by which our cause is inspired? How can the War Cabinet fail to see that this progressive devastation of cities is threatening the roots of civilization? How can they be blind to the harvest of even fiercer warring and desolation, even in this country, to which the present destruction will inevitably lead when the members of the War Cabinet have long passed to their rest? How can they fail to realize that this is not the way to curb military aggression and end war? This is an extraordinarily solemn moment. What we do in war—which, after all, lasts a comparatively short time—affects the whole character of peace, which covers a much longer period. The sufferings of Europe, brought about by the demoniac cruelty of Hitler and his Nazis, and hardly imaginable to those in this country who for the last five years have not been out of this island or had intimate association with Hitler's victims, are not to be healed by the use of power only, power exclusive and unlimited. The Allies stand for something greater than power. The chief name inscribed on our banner is "Law." It is of supreme importance that we who, with our Allies, are the liberators of Europe should so use power that it is always under the control of law. It is because the bombing of enemy towns—this area bombing—raises this issue of power unlimited and exclusive that such immense importance is bound to attach to the policy and action of His Majesty's Government. I beg to move.

[Three more speakers, including Cosmo Lang, former Archbishop of Canterbury, and Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, intervene before Bell, exercising his right of reply, makes a concluding statement.]

My Lords, I should like to express my gratitude for the courtesy of the noble Viscount's reply.[2] I will not disguise the fact that the end of his speech was not exactly unexpected but was nevertheless a disappointment. I, of course, wish—no one more—for the liberation of the unfortunate peoples of Europe, and I know it is only by the conquest of Hitler and his associates that that can be achieved. I would very strongly press the noble Viscount to take great pains about the definition of legitimate objectives of a military and industrial kind and to avoid to the utmost extent possible any confusion of them with non-military and non-industrial objectives. I do not wish to trouble your Lordships further, but we have to think of the future as well as the present. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion. [1] [3]

General George Patton: 'Men, you are the first Negro tankers ever to fight in the American army', Welcome to 761st Black Panther Tank Bettalion - 1944

1944, England (exact date unknown)

I am not supposed to be commanding this Army – I am not even supposed to be in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the goddam Germans. Some day I want them to rise on their hind legs & howl: ‘Jesus Christ, it’s that goddam Third Army & that son of a bitch Patton again’...There’s one great thing that you men can say when it’s all over & you’re at home once more. You can thank God that twenty years from now when you’re sitting by the fireside with your grandson on your knee, & he asks you when you did in the war, you won’t have to shift him to the other knee, cough & say, ‘I shoveled crap in Louisiana,

Now, gentlemen, doubtless from time to time there will be some complaints that we are pushing people too hard. I don’t give a good Goddamn about such complaints. I believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce of sweat is worth a gallon of blood. The harder we push, the more Germans we’ll kill, and gentlemen, the more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing means fewer casualties. I want you to remember that.

There’s another thing I want you to remember. Forget this Goddamn business of worrying about our flanks. We must guard our flanks, but not to the extent that we don’t do anything else. Some Goddamned fool once said that flanks must be secured and since then sons of bitches all over the world have been going crazy guarding their flanks. We don’t want any of that in the Third Army. Flanks are something for the enemy to worry about, not us.

Also, I don’t want to get any messages saying. ‘I’m holding my position.’ We’re not holding anything! Let the Hun do that. We are advancing constantly and are not interested in holding anything, except the enemy. We’re going to hold on to him and kick the hell out of him all the time.

Our basic plan of operation is to advance & to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We have one motto, ‘L’audace, I’audace, toujours I’audace!’ Remember that, gentlemen. From here on out, until we win or die in the attempt, we willalways be audacious.

Men, you are the first Negro tankers ever to fight in the American army. I would never have asked for you if you were not good. I have nothing but the best in my army. I don’t care what color you are as long as you go up there and kill those Kraut sons-of-bitches. Everyone has their eyes on you and are expecting great things from you. Most of all, your race is looking forward to your success. Don’t let them down, &, damn you, don’t let me down! If you want me you can always fine min the lead tank.

Patton was killed in a road accident while commanding the US Fifth Army in occupied Germany in December 1945.

General Bernard Montgomery - Message to troops of 21st Army, D-Day landings - 1944

5 June 1944, Allied High Command, Southern UK

The time has come to deal the enemy a terrific blow in Western Europe.

The blow will be struck by the combined sea, land and air forces of the Allies together constituting one great Allied team, under the supreme command of General Eisenhower

On the eve of this great adventure, I send my best wishes to ever soldier in the Allied team. To us is given the honour of striking a blow for freedom, which will live in history. And in the bitter days that lie ahead, men will speak with pride of our doings. WE have a great and a righteous cause.

Let us pray that "The Lord Mighty in Battle " will go forth with our armies, and that His special providence will aid us in the struggle.

I want every soldier to know that I have complete confidence in the successful outcome of the operations that we are now about to begin.

With stout hearts, and with enthusiasm for the contest, let us go forward to victory.

And, as we enter the battle, let us recall the words of a famous soldier spoken many years ago :

"He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
Who dare not put it to the touch,
To win or lose it all. "

Good luck to each one of you. And good hunting on the mainland of Europe.

…

In the weeks approaching D-Day, General Montgomery also went on a speaking tour of the Briritsh Isles, inspecting and addressing troops. His goal was to speak to, and motivate as many soldiers as possible in this crucial pre D-Day period. Here is an account from journalist Alan Moorehead:

And then Montgomery’s speech would go like this: ‘I wanted to come here today so that we could get to know one another: so that I could have a look at you and you could have a look at me – if you think that’s worth doing.

We have got to go off and do a job together very soon now, you and I, and we must have confidence in one another. And now that I have seen you I have complete confidence… complete confidence… absolutely complete confidence. And you must have confidence in me.’

That was the beginning. For a hundred yards all round him row after row of young upturned faces, an atmosphere of adolescent innocence and simplicity. They sat on the grass keeping utterly still lest they should lose a word.

…

‘We have been fighting the Germans a long time now,’ Montgomery went on. ‘A very long time… a good deal too long. I expect like me you are beginning to get a bit tired of it… beginning to feel it’s about time we finished the thing off.

And we can do it. We can do it. No doubt about that. No doubt about that whatever. The well-trained British soldier will beat the German every time. We saw it in Africa. We chased him into the sea in Tunisia… then we went over to Sicily and chased him into the sea again… I don’t know if there are any more seas…’

This was the point where the soldiers relaxed and laughed. Well, it was true, wasn’t it? The Germans had been beaten in Africa. They weren’t so wonderful.

‘The newspapers keep calling it the Second Front,’ Montgomery continued. ‘I don’t know why they call it the Second Front. I myself have been fighting the Germans on a nunber of fronts, and I expect a good few of you have too.

They should call it Front Number Six or Front Number Seven. As long as they don’t want us to fight on Front Number Thirteen…’

Most of the tenseness had gone out of the soldiers now. Monty was all right. He didn’t talk a lot of cock about courage and liberty. He knew what it was like. And perhaps one had been taking the whole thing a bit too seriously. It wouldn’t be so bad.

Then – ‘We don’t want to forget the German is a good soldier… a very good soldier indeed. But when I look around this morning and see the magnificent soldiers here… some of the best soldiers I have seen in my lifetime… I have no doubt in my mind about the outcome… no doubt whatever. No doubt at all that you and I will see this thing through, together.’

Finally – ‘Now I can’t stay any longer. I expect some of you have come a long way to get here this morning and you want to get back.’ (Some of them had been travelling since 4 am.) ‘I just want to say good-bye and very good luck to each one of you.’

That was the speech, followed by three cheers for the general. I listened to it four and sometimes five times a day for nearly a week. We went from camp to camp over southern England, sometimes standing on wet hill-tops, sometimes surrounded by civilians in city parks, sometimes on a football field or under the shelter of a wood.

Always the same rush to the jeep, the same tense attention. It fascinated me every time. Long after one knew the words by heart and had ceased to listen to them one was swept into the contagious and breathless interest of each new audience.

I suppose I have heard fifty generals addressing their soldiers, most of them with much better speeches than this. Indeed I suppose this speech in print is just about as bad as one could hope to read, outside the hearty naiveté of the kindergarten. Spoken by Montgomery to the soldiers who were about to run into the Atlantic Wall it had magic.

General Bernard Montgomery: 'If we can't stay here alive, then let us stay here dead', Address to men of the Eighth Army - 1942

13 August 1942, Cairo, Egypt

I want first of all to introduce myself to you. You do not know me. I do not know you. But we have got to work together; therefore we must understand each other, and we must have confidence each in the other. I have only been here a few hours. But from what I have seen and heard since I arrived I am prepared to say, here and now, that I have confidence in you. We will then work together as a team; and together we will gain the confidence of this great Army and go forward to final victory in Africa.

I believe that one of the first duties of a commander is to create what I call ‘atmosphere’, and in that atmosphere his staff, subordinate commanders, and troops will live and work and fight.

I do not like the general atmosphere I find here. It is an atmosphere of doubt, of looking back to select the next place to which to withdraw, of loss of confidence in our ability to defeat Rommel, of desperate defence measures by reserves in preparing positions in Cairo and the Delta.

All that must cease. Let us have a new atmosphere.

The defence of Egypt lies here at Alamein and on the Ruweisat Ridge. What is the use of digging trenches in the Delta? It is quite useless; if we lose this position we lose Egypt; all the fighting troops now in the Delta must come here at once, and will. Here we will stand and fight; there will be no further withdrawal. I have ordered that all plans and instructions dealing with further withdrawal are to be burnt, and at once. We will stand and fight here.

If we can’t stay here alive, then let us stay here dead.

I want to impress on everyone that the bad times are over. Fresh divisions from the UK are now arriving in Egypt, together with ample reinforcements for our present Divisions. We have 300 to 400 Sherman new tanks coming and these are actually being unloaded at Suez now. Our mandate from the Prime Minister is to destroy the Axis forces in North Africa; I have seen it, written on half a sheet of notepaper. And it will be done. If anyone here thinks it can’t be done, let him go at once; I don’t want any doubters in this party. It can be done, and it will be done: beyond any possibility of doubt.

Now I understand that Rommel is expected to attack at any moment. Excellent. Let him attack.

I would sooner it didn’t come for a week, just give me time to sort things out. If we have two weeks to prepare we will be sitting pretty; Rommel can attack as soon as he likes, after that, and I hope he does.

Meanwhile, we ourselves will start to plan a great offensive; it will be the beginning of a campaign which will hit Rommel and his Army for six right out of Africa.

But first we must create a reserve Corps, mobile and strong in armour, which we -will train out of the line. Rommel has always had such a force in his Africa Corps, which is never used to hold the line but which is always in reserve, available for striking blows. Therein has been his great strength. We will create such a Corps ourselves, a British Panzer Corps; it will consist of two armoured Divisions and one motorized Division; I gave orders yesterday for it to begin to form, back in the Delta.

I have no intention of launching out great attack until we are completely ready; there will be pressure from many quarters to attack soon. I will not attack until we are ready and you can rest assured on that point.

Meanwhile, if Rommel attacks while we are preparing, let him do so with pleasure; we will merely continue with our own preparations and we will attack when we are ready, and not before.

I want to tell you that I always work on the Chief of Staff system. I have nominated Brigadier de Guingand as Chief of Staff Eighth Army. I will issue orders through him. Whatever he says will be taken as coming from me and will be acted on at once. I understand there has been a great deal of bellyaching out here. By bellyaching I mean inventing poor reasons for not doing what one has been told to do.

All this is to stop at once. I will tolerate no bellyaching.

If anyone objects to doing what he is told, then he can get out of it: and at once. I want that made very clear right down through the Eighth Army.

I have little more to say just at present. And some of you may think it is quite enough and may wonder if I am mad.

I assure you I am quite sane.

I understand there are people who often think I am slightly mad; so often that I now regard it as rather a compliment.

All I have to say to that is that if I am slightly mad, there are a large number of people I could name who are raving lunatics!

What I have done is to get over to you the ‘atmosphere’ in which we will now work and fight; you must see that that atmosphere permeates right through the Eighth Army to the most junior private soldier. All the soldiers must know what is wanted; when they see it coming to pass there will be a surge of confidence throughout the Army.
I ask you to give me your confidence and to have faith that what I have said will come to pass.

There is much work to be done.

The orders I have given about no farther withdrawal will mean a complete change in the layout of our dispositions; also, we must begin to prepare for our great offensive.
The first thing to do is to move our HQ to a decent place where we can live in reasonable comfort and where the Army Staff can be together and side by side with the HQ of the Desert Air Force. This is a frightful place here, depressing, unhealthy and a rendezvous for every fly in Africa; we shall do no good work here. Let us get over there by the sea where it is fresh and healthy. If officers are to do good work they must have decent messes, and be comfortable. So off we go on the new line.

​The Chief of Staff will be issuing orders on many points very shortly, and I am always available to be consulted by the senior officers of the staff. The great point to remember is that we are going to finish with this chap Rommel once and for all. It will be quite easy. There is no doubt about it.

He [Rommel] is definitely a nuisance. Therefore we will hit him a crack and finish with him..."

Radio Moscow: 'This satellite was today successfully launched in the USSR', Launch of Sputnik Satellite - 1957

5 October 1957, Moscow, USSR

As the result of a large, dedicated effort by scientific-research institutes and construction bureaus the world's first artificial satellite of the Earth has now been created. This satellite was today successfully launched in the USSR.

Calvin Coolidge: 'It remained for an unknown youth to tempt the elements and win', Charles Lindbergh Return to the United States - 1927

11 June 1927, Washington DC, USA

My Fellow Countrymen:

It was in America that the modern art of flying a heavier-than-air machines was first developed. As the experiments became successful, the airplane was devoted to practical purposes. It has been adapted to commerce in the transportation of passengers and mail and used for national defense by our land and sea forces. Beginning with a limited flying radius, its length has been gradually extended. We have made many flying records. Our Army flyers have circumnavigated the globe. One of our Navy men started from California and flew far enough to have reached Hawaii, but being off his course landed in the water. Another officer of the Navy has flown to the North Pole. Our own country has been traversed from shore to shore in a single flight.

It had been apparent for some time that the next great feat in the air would be a continuous flight from the mainland of America to the mainland of Europe. Two courageous Frenchmen made the reverse attempt and passed to a fate that is as yet unknown. Others were speeding their preparations to make the trial, but it remained for an unknown youth to tempt the elements and win. It is the same story of valor and victory by a son of the people that shines through every page of American history.

Twenty-five years ago there was born in Detroit, Mich., a boy, representing the best traditions of this country, of a stock known for its deeds of adventure and exploration. His father, moved with a desire for public service, was a Member of Congress for several terms. His mother, who dowered her son with her own modesty and charm, is with us to-day. Engaged in the vital profession of school-teaching, she has permitted neither money nor fame to interfere with her fidelity to her duties. Too young to have enlisted in the World War, her son became a student at one of the big State universities. His interest in aviation led him to an Army aviation school; and in 1925 he was graduated as an airplane pilot. In November, 1926, he had reached the rank of captain in the Officers’ Reserve Corps. Making his home in St. Louis, he had joined the One hundred and tenth Observation Squadron of the Missouri National Guard. Some of his qualities noted by the Army officers who examined him for promotion, as shown by reports in the files of the Militia Bureau of the War Department, are as follows: “Intelligent”, “industrious,” “energetic,” “dependable,” “purposeful,” “alert,” “quick of reaction,” “serious,” “deliberate,” “stable,” “efficient,” “frank,” “modest,” “congenial,” “a man of good moral habits and regular in all his business transactions.” One of the officers expressed his belief that the young man “would successfully complete everything he undertakes.” This reads like a prophecy.

Later he became connected with the United States Mail Service, where he exhibited marked ability, and from which he is now on leave of absence.

On a morning just three weeks ago yesterday, this wholesome, earnest, fearless, courageous product of America rose into the air from Long Island in a monoplane christened “The Spirit of St. Louis” in honor of his home and that of his supporters. It was no haphazard adventure. After months of most careful preparation, supported by a valiant character, driven by an unconquerable will and inspired by the imagination and the spirit of his Viking ancestors, this reserve officer set wing across the dangerous stretches of the North Atlantic. He was alone. His destination was Paris.

Thirty-three hours and thirty minutes later, in the evening of the second day, he landed at his destination on the French flying field at Le Bourget. He had traveled over 3,600 miles and established a new and remarkable record. The execution of his project was a perfect exhibition of art.

This country will always remember the way in which he was received by the people of France, by their President, and by their Government. It was the more remarkable because they were mourning the disappearance of their intrepid countrymen, who had tried to span the Atlantic on a western flight.

Our messenger of peace and good will had broken down another barrier of time and space and brought two great peoples into closer communion. In less than a day and a half he had crossed the ocean over which Columbus had traveled for 69 days, and the Pilgrim Fathers for 66 days, on their way to the New World. But, above all, in showering applause and honors upon this genial, modest, American youth, with the naturalness, the simplicity, and the poise of true greatness, France had the opportunity to show clearly her good will for America and our people. With like acclaim and evidences of cordial friendship our ambassador without portfolio was received by the rulers, the governments, and the peoples of England and Belgium. From other nations came hearty messages of admiration for him and for his country. For these manifold evidences of friendship we are profoundly grateful.

The absence of self-acclaim, the refusal to become commercialized, which has marked the conduct of this sincere and genuine exemplar of fine and noble virtues, has endeared him to everyone. He has returned unspoiled. Particularly has it been delightful to have him refer to his airplane as somehow possessing a personality and being equally entitled to credit with himself, for we are proud that in every particular this silent partner represented American genius and industry. I am told that more than 100 separate companies furnished materials, parts, or service in its construction.

And now, my fellow citizens, this young man has returned. He is here. He has brought his unsullied fame home. It is our great privilege to welcome back to his native land, on behalf of his own people, who have a deep affection for him and have been thrilled by this splendid achievement, a colonel of the United States Officers’ Reserve Corps, an illustrious citizen of our Republic, a conqueror of the air and strengthener of the ties which bind us to our sister nations across the sea, and, as President of the United States, I bestow of distinguished flying cross, as a symbol of appreciation for what he is and what he has done, upon Col. Charles A. Lindbergh.