Tanya Pilbersek: 'Australia said yes', Marriage Equality Results Announcement - 2017

15 November 2017, Prince Alfred Park, 2017

And today I want to say how fantastic it is, with so many friends, so many activists, so many who joined the cause recently, and importantly, so many who have been fighting for equality for decades.

And I want to send a special shout out to the 78ers, because really it all started, not so far from here, a long time ago, with people who were prepared to fight for equality, when no one in the Australian community backed them.

People who were prepared to be arrested, to lose their jobs, to come out to family that were unsupportive, who started that fight decades ago for equality that we are reaping the rewards of today.

Today is about all of you, and it’s about everybody who’s stepped up. Who stepped up to ask a question that no Australian should have to ask - am I equal?

 It’s to all the supporters, the brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, grandparents, allies, who stood beside you, who doorknocked, who phoned, who wrote to their neighbours to ask a question that no Australian should have to ask - is my brother/sister/mum/dad/grandchild/friend/colleague equal in your eyes?

We should not have had to ask that question.

But we did ... and guess what the answer is a resounding yes.

And I hope, if there is one thing that never changes from today, is the feeling that you have in your hearts, that when we asked the question, ‘is all love equal’, Australia said yes.

And particularly, I’m particularly talking now to the young people in the crowd. Because many people have struggled for many decades for equality, but during these last few months, there have been a lot of young people who have come out for the first time, who have told their friends or their family that they are same sex attracted, and they’ve got a less than positive response in some cases.

I want every single on of those young people to feel today the love and acceptance of the Australian community, and I hope that feeling lasts a lifetime because it should.

Today is for them, it’s for the young people,  who have struggled recently. Who have told me recently about how they feel about their parents turning their backs or voting against them - it’s for them.

It’s for John and Arthur, who have been together for 50 years, who live in Elizabeth Bay, who can’t wait to show the world, their love.

It’s for people who have stood up in big workplaces, the firefighters, the nurses, the trade unionists across Australia, who’ve stood up and come out colleagues. None of their business, but they’ve come out to say ‘please support my right to be treated just like you’. And guess what, Australia said yes.

But again, today is for the 78ers, because without them, this journey would never have started. We wouldn’t have taken this last fantastic step.

The only thing now to do,  is to say to the Senators who are sitting this week in Canberra, when this consensus bill is introduced, back it, vote for it, don’t delay it. Don’t argue about the details, back it. Because if the Senators back this bill, we can have marriage equality by Christmas. The House of Reps can vote, when we return to Canberra, and we can have marriage equality by Christmas.

Jacqui Lambie: 'That's what it's like to be the bottom of the crap pile', Social Services Amendment speech - 2017

23 March 2017, Canberra, Australia

I want to tell you a little bit about my story. I want to tell you very quickly what happened to me when I was medically discharged from the armed forces in 2000. When I was medically discharged, I thought, 'No worries—the Department of Veterans' Affairs will help me get back on my feet and they will look after me.' That did not happen to me. So for me to be able to survive as a single mum with two kids I had no other choice but to go to Centrelink.

I had worked. I had been serving at Rotary tables from the time I was 10. I was working at the speedway at 12 and I had my first job at Kmart when I was 14 years and nine months. I worked in nightclubs and I worked in a supermarket during that time. I took a gap year and went and worked in the real world. That is what I did. So you can imagine what it was like to me, how shameful it felt and how demeaning it was for me, to work my whole life to become a single mum living with two kids and to try to support them on a disability support pension.

During that period, times were tough. There were times when I had to say no to my son, who was great at football, great at athletics and great at basketball, and who had the vantage of being able to represent his state. I told him on two occasions, 'I'm sorry, mate, but you can't go because I can't afford for you to go.' At one stage there he was wearing football boots that were too small for him, from the winter beforehand, because I could not afford to get him some. He had to wait. There were times when I would sit in a corner and cry because I felt so ashamed. For two days, I did not know how I was going to put bread and milk on the table. There was a time when my fridge broke and for three weeks we lived out of an esky. I put the esky under the house, so the ice would last longer. That is what my life was like. There were three occasions where I could not afford my rego—for four weeks one time, six weeks another time and 10 weeks another time—and I drove around without a registered car. On two separate occasions, I drove around without a licence because I could not renew it.

In 2006, I was going bankrupt and I would have lost my family home. I struggled for another 12 months until I went into Nick Sherry's office and begged him to help me to get my super released. Nick Sherry was very good to me—former Senator the Hon. Nick Sherry. He got that money for me within three weeks. But I paid dividends for that, because there are no clauses in there to cover when you are sick or injured or in dire straits. You will still get taxed because you are taking it out early. I lost a great deal of my super. But in the meantime, at least it saved my house. It gave us a little bit more breathing space. Had it not been for the honourable Senator Sherry, then I can assure you, Madam Deputy President Lines, I would have gone bankrupt. That is what my life was like for seven years.

I had to beg and borrow to fight a government bureaucracy in the court system until I won and paid that money back. But I can tell you that I was so far behind by the time that I won that case—and my money was backdated—that my bills had piled up. Seven years on a disability support pension; I sure as hell did not come out in front. This is what it is like. It is not a choice for many of us to be on welfare. It is shameful and it is embarrassing and it is bloody tough. But we do it not because we want to but because circumstances put us there.

This is what it is like, it is not a choice for many of us to be on welfare. It is shameful and it is embarrassing and it is bloody tough. But we do it not because we want to, but because circumstances put us there. For you to take more money off those people, you have no idea how bloody tough it is. Every little cent counts to those people. What you are doing is shameful. If you really realise the damage that you are continually doing to that part of society, you’d stop doing it. I am just asking you, I know you haven’t been through that but there are some of us in here that have and it was difficult during our lives and we’ve paid the price for that through no fault of our own. I just wish you’d reconsider what you’re doing because you know, we’re not living when we’re like that, we’re surviving, we’re in a bloody war zone and we’re surviving. That’s all we are doing, each day we are surviving. We are surviving to put bread on the table. We are surviving to make sure our kids can get the basics in life. We are trying to make sure our kids are better, so our kids can go to decent schools if we want that choice. I was really lucky in some areas and I thank St Brendan-Shaw College who allowed me to, when I got in very difficult situations for three years, to not pay school fees for my children. But they let them stay there. So I want you to know that’s what it’s like to be at the bottom of the crap pile through no fault of our own.

Jeff Flake: 'Anger and resentment are not a governing philosophy', Senate leaving speech - 2017

24 October 2017, Washington DC, USA

At a moment when it seems that our democracy is more defined by our discord and our dysfunction than by our own values and principles, let me begin by noting the somewhat obvious point that these offices that we hold are not ours indefinitely. We are not here simply to mark time. Sustained incumbency is certainly not the point of seeking office and there are times when we must risk our careers in favor of our principles. Now is such a time.

It must also be said that I rise today with no small measure of regret. Regret because of the state of our disunion. Regret because of the disrepair and destructiveness of our politics. Regret because of the indecency of our discourse. Regret because of the coarseness of our leadership.

Regret for the compromise of our moral authority, and by our, I mean all of our complicity in this alarming and dangerous state of affairs. It is time for our complicity and our accommodation of the unacceptable to end. In this century, a new phrase has entered the language to describe the accommodation of a new and undesirable order, that phrase being the “new normal”.

That we must never adjust to the present coarseness of our national dialogue with the tone set up at the top. We must never regard as normal the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals. We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country. The personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms and institution, the flagrant disregard for truth and decency.

The reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have been elected to serve. None of these appalling features of our current politics should ever be regarded as normal. We must never allow ourselves to lapse into thinking that that is just the way things are now.

1:24

If we simply become inured to this condition, thinking that it is just politics as usual, then heaven help us. Without fear of the consequences and without consideration of the rules of what is politically safe or palatable, we must stop pretending that the degradation of our politics and the conduct of some in our executive branch are normal. They are not normal. Reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior has become excused and countenanced as telling it like it is when it is actually just reckless, outrageous and undignified.

And when such behavior emanates from the top of our government, it is something else. It is dangerous to a democracy. Such behavior does not project strength because our strength comes from our values. It instead projects a corruption of the spirit and weakness. It is often said that children are watching. Well, they are. And what are we going to do about that? When the next generation asks us, why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you speak up? What are we going to say?

Mr President, I rise today to say: enough. We must dedicate ourselves to making sure that the anomalous never becomes the normal. With respect and humility, I must say that we have fooled ourselves for long enough that a pivot to governing is right around the corner, a return to civility and stability right behind it.

We know better than that. By now, we all know better than that. Here today I stand to say that we would be better served – we would better serve the country – by better fulfilling our obligations under the constitution by adhering to our Article 1 – “old normal”, Mr Madison’s doctrine of separation of powers. This genius innovation which affirms Madison’s status as a true visionary – and for which Madison argued in Federalist 51 – held that the equal branches of our government would balance and counteract with each other, if necessary.

“Ambition counteracts ambition,” he wrote. But what happens if ambition fails to counteract ambition? What happens if stability fails to assert itself in the face of chaos and instability? If decency fails to call out indecency? Were the shoe on the other foot, we Republicans – would we Republicans meekly accept such behavior on display from dominant Democrats?

Of course, we wouldn’t, and we would be wrong if we did. When we remain silent and fail to act, when we know that silence and inaction is the wrong thing to do because of political considerations, because we might make enemies, because we might alienate the base, because we might provoke a primary challenge, because ad infinitum, ad nauseam, when we succumb to those considerations in spite of what should be greater considerations and imperatives in defense of our institutions and our liberty, we dishonor our principles and forsake our obligations. Those things are far more important than politics.

Now, I’m aware that more politically savvy people than I will caution against such talk. I’m aware that there’s a segment of my party that believes that anything short of complete and unquestioning loyalty to a president who belongs to my party is unacceptable and suspect. If I have been critical, it is not because I relish criticizing the behavior of the president of the United States.

If I have been critical, it is because I believe it is my obligation to do so. And as a matter and duty of conscience, the notion that one should stay silent – and as the norms and values that keep America strong are undermined and as the alliances and agreements that ensure the stability of the entire world are routinely threatened by the level of thought that goes into 140 characters – the notion that we should say or do nothing in the face of such mercurial behavior is ahistoric and, I believe, profoundly misguided.

A president, a Republican president named Roosevelt, had this to say about the president and a citizen’s relationship to the office: “The president is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able and disinterested service to the nation as a whole.”

He continued: “Therefore, it is absolutely necessary that there should be – that there should be a full liberty to tell the truth about his acts and this means that it is exactly as necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile.” President Roosevelt continued, “To announce that there must be no criticism of the president or that we are to stand by a president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”

Acting on conscience and principle is a manner – is the manner – in which we express our moral selves and as such, loyalty to conscience and principle should supersede loyalty to any man or party. We can all be forgiven for failing in that measure from time to time. I certainly put myself at the top of the list of those who fall short in this regard. I am holier than none.

But too often we rush to salvage principle – not to salvage principle, but to forgive and excuse our failures so that we might accommodate them and go right on failing until the accommodation itself becomes our principle. In that way and over time, we can justify almost any behavior and sacrifice any principle. I am afraid that this is where we now find ourselves.

When a leader correctly identifies real hurt and insecurity in our country, and instead of addressing it, goes to look for someone to blame, there is perhaps nothing more devastating to a pluralistic society. Leadership knows that most often a good place to start in assigning blame is to look somewhat closer to home. Leadership knows where the buck stops.

Humility helps, character counts. Leadership does not knowingly encourage or feed ugly or debased appetites in us. Leadership lives by the American creed, “E pluribus unum”. From many one. American leadership looks to the world and just as Lincoln did, sees the family of man. Humanity is not a zero sum game. When we have been at our most prosperous, we have been at our most principled, and when we do well, the rest of the world does well.

These articles of civic faith have been critical to the American identity for as long as we have been alive. They are our birthright and our obligation. We must guard them jealously and pass them on for as long as the calendar has days. To betray them or to be unserious in their defense is a betrayal of the fundamental obligations of American leadership and to behave as if they don’t matter is simply not who we are.

Now the efficacy of American leadership around the globe has come into question. When the United States emerged from World War II, we contributed about half of the world’s economic activity. It would have been easy to secure our dominance keeping those countries who had been defeated or greatly weakened during the war in their place. We didn’t do that. It would have been easy to focus inward.

We resisted those impulses. Instead, we financed reconstruction of shattered countries and created international organizations and institutions that have helped provide security and foster prosperity around the world for more than 70 years.

Now it seems that we, the architects of this visionary rules-based world order that has brought so much freedom and prosperity, are the ones most eager to abandon it. The implications of this abandonment are profound and the beneficiaries of this rather radical departure in the American approach to the world are the ideological enemies of our values. Despotism loves a vacuum and our allies are now looking elsewhere for leadership. Why are they doing this? None of this is normal.

And what do we, as United States senators, have to say about it? The principles that underlie our politics, the values of our founding, are too vital to our identity and to our survival to allow them to be compromised by the requirements of politics because politics can make us silent when we should speak and silence can equal complicity. I have children and grandchildren to answer to.

And so, Mr President, I will not be complicit or silent. I’ve decided that I would be better able to represent the people of Arizona and to better serve my country and my conscience by freeing myself of the political consideration that consumed far too much bandwidth and would cause me to compromise far too many principles.

To that end, I’m announcing today that my service in the Senate will conclude at the end of my term in early January 2019. It is clear at this moment that a traditional conservative, who believes in limited government and free markets, who is devoted to free trade, who is pro-immigration, has a narrower and narrower path to nomination in the Republican party, the party that has so long defined itself by its belief in those things.

It is also clear to me for the moment that we have given in or given up on the core principles in favor of a more viscerally satisfying anger and resentment. To be clear, the anger and resentment that the people feel at the royal mess that we’ve created are justified. But anger and resentment are not a governing philosophy.

There is an undeniable potency to a populist appeal by mischaracterizing or misunderstanding our problems and giving in to the impulse to scapegoat and belittle – the impulse to scapegoat and belittle threatens to turn us into a fearful, backward-looking people. In the case of the Republican party, those things also threaten to turn us into a fearful, backward-looking minority party.

We were not made great as a country by indulging in or even exalting our worst impulses, turning against ourselves, glorifying in the things that divide us, and calling fake things true and true things fake. And we did not become the beacon of freedom in the darkest corners of the world by flouting our institutions and failing to understand just how hard-won and vulnerable they are.

This spell will eventually break. That is my belief. We will return to ourselves once more, and I say the sooner the better. Because we have a healthy government, we must also have healthy and functioning parties. We must respect each other again in an atmosphere of shared facts and shared values, comity and good faith. We must argue our positions fervently and never be afraid to compromise. We must assume the best of our fellow man, and always look for the good.

Until that day comes, we must be unafraid to stand up and speak out as if our country depends on it, because it does. I plan to spend the remaining 14 months of my Senate term doing just that.

Mr President, the graveyard is full of indispensable men and women. None of us here is indispensable nor were even the great figures of history who toiled at these very desks, in this very chamber, to shape the country that we have inherited. What is indispensable are the values that they consecrated in Philadelphia and in this place, values which have endured and will endure for so long as men and women wish to remain free.

What is indispensable is what we do here in defense of those values. A political career does not mean much if we are complicit in undermining these values. I thank my colleagues for indulging me here today.

I will close by borrowing the words of President Lincoln, who knew more about healthy enmity and preserving our founding values than any other American who has ever lived. His words from his first inaugural were a prayer in his time and are now no less in ours.

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break the bonds of our affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely as they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Thank you, Mr President. I yield the floor.

John McCain: 'We live in a land made of ideals, not blood and soil', Liberty Medal acceptance speech - 2017

16 October 2017, National Constitution Center, Washington DC, USA

Thank you, Joe, my old, dear friend, for those mostly undeserved kind words. Vice President Biden and I have known each other for a lot of years now, more than forty, if you’re counting. We knew each other back when we were young and handsome and smarter than everyone else but were too modest to say so.

Joe was already a senator, and I was the Navy’s liaison to the Senate. My duties included escorting senate delegations on overseas trips, and in that capacity, I supervised the disposition of the delegation’s luggage, which could require – now and again – when no one of lower rank was available for the job – that I carry someone worthy’s bag. Once or twice that worthy turned out to be the young senator from Delaware. I’ve resented it ever since.

Joe has heard me joke about that before. I hope he has heard, too, my profession of gratitude for his friendship these many years. It has meant a lot to me. We served in the Senate together for over twenty years, during some eventful times, as we passed from young men to the fossils who appear before you this evening.

We didn’t always agree on the issues. We often argued – sometimes passionately. But we believed in each other’s patriotism and the sincerity of each other’s convictions. We believed in the institution we were privileged to serve in. We believed in our mutual responsibility to help make the place work and to cooperate in finding solutions to our country’s problems. We believed in our country and in our country’s indispensability to international peace and stability and to the progress of humanity. And through it all, whether we argued or agreed, Joe was good company. Thank you, old friend, for your company and your service to America.

Thank you, too, to the National Constitution Center, and everyone associated with it for this award. Thank you for that video, and for the all too generous compliments paid to me this evening. I’m aware of the prestigious company the Liberty Medal places me in. I’m humbled by it, and I’ll try my best not to prove too unworthy of it.

Some years ago, I was present at an event where an earlier Liberty Medal recipient spoke about America’s values and the sacrifices made for them. It was 1991, and I was attending the ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The World War II veteran, estimable patriot and good man, President George H.W. Bush, gave a moving speech at the USS Arizona memorial. I remember it very well. His voice was thick with emotion as he neared the end of his address. I imagine he was thinking not only of the brave Americans who lost their lives on December 7, 1941, but of the friends he had served with and lost in the Pacific where he had been the Navy’s youngest aviator.

‘Look at the water here, clear and quiet …’ he directed, ‘One day, in what now seems another lifetime, it wrapped its arms around the finest sons any nation could ever have, and it carried them to a better world.’

He could barely get out the last line, ‘May God bless them, and may God bless America, the most wondrous land on earth.’

The most wondrous land on earth, indeed. I’ve had the good fortune to spend sixty years in service to this wondrous land. It has not been perfect service, to be sure, and there were probably times when the country might have benefited from a little less of my help. But I’ve tried to deserve the privilege as best I can, and I’ve been repaid a thousand times over with adventures, with good company, and with the satisfaction of serving something more important than myself, of being a bit player in the extraordinary story of America. And I am so very grateful.

What a privilege it is to serve this big, boisterous, brawling, intemperate, striving, daring, beautiful, bountiful, brave, magnificent country. With all our flaws, all our mistakes, with all the frailties of human nature as much on display as our virtues, with all the rancor and anger of our politics, we are blessed.

We are living in the land of the free, the land where anything is possible, the land of the immigrant’s dream, the land with the storied past forgotten in the rush to the imagined future, the land that repairs and reinvents itself, the land where a person can escape the consequences of a self-centered youth and know the satisfaction of sacrificing for an ideal, the land where you can go from aimless rebellion to a noble cause, and from the bottom of your class to your party’s nomination for president.

We are blessed, and we have been a blessing to humanity in turn. The international order we helped build from the ashes of world war, and that we defend to this day, has liberated more people from tyranny and poverty than ever before in history. This wondrous land has shared its treasures and ideals and shed the blood of its finest patriots to help make another, better world. And as we did so, we made our own civilization more just, freer, more accomplished and prosperous than the America that existed when I watched my father go off to war on December 7, 1941.

To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain 'the last best hope of earth' for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.

We live in a land made of ideals, not blood and soil. We are the custodians of those ideals at home, and their champion abroad. We have done great good in the world. That leadership has had its costs, but we have become incomparably powerful and wealthy as we did. We have a moral obligation to continue in our just cause, and we would bring more than shame on ourselves if we don’t. We will not thrive in a world where our leadership and ideals are absent. We wouldn’t deserve to.

I am the luckiest guy on earth. I have served America’s cause – the cause of our security and the security of our friends, the cause of freedom and equal justice – all my adult life. I haven’t always served it well. I haven’t even always appreciated what I was serving. But among the few compensations of old age is the acuity of hindsight. I see now that I was part of something important that drew me along in its wake even when I was diverted by other interests. I was, knowingly or not, along for the ride as America made the future better than the past.

And I have enjoyed it, every single day of it, the good ones and the not so good ones. I’ve been inspired by the service of better patriots than me. I’ve seen Americans make sacrifices for our country and her causes and for people who were strangers to them but for our common humanity, sacrifices that were much harder than the service asked of me. And I’ve seen the good they have done, the lives they freed from tyranny and injustice, the hope they encouraged, the dreams they made achievable.

May God bless them. May God bless America, and give us the strength and wisdom, the generosity and compassion, to do our duty for this wondrous land, and for the world that counts on us. With all its suffering and dangers, the world still looks to the example and leadership of America to become, another, better place. What greater cause could anyone ever serve.

Thank you again for this honor. I’ll treasure it.

Julia Gillard: 'Thanks Mick. Thanks for what you did for me', Mick Young Scholarship Trust, Fundraising Dinner - 2011

11 February 2011, Sydney, Australia

Thanks Swanny.

I couldn’t ask for a better Deputy and Treasurer.

Mary Young and the Young family.

Thank you for all that you still do for Australia.

I want to especially acknowledge your Patron Margaret Whitlam and I know Tony Whitlam is here too.

[Margaret, I reckon in a different Australia, Mick Young might have been remembered as the man who ran the campaign that made you Australia’s first female prime minister.]

Dr Ray Wilson, Chairman of the Mick Young Scholarship Trust, your fellow Trustees and Trust ambassadors.

The brilliant Dr Charlie Teo [TEE-oh]. 

Congratulations on your Order of Australia.  Wonderfully deserved for your outstanding services to medicine.

Bob Hawke.  [Our greatest peacetime Prime Minister ... so far!]

John Dawkins.  [Was our best Education Minister ... until recently!]

I see my parliamentary colleagues Stephen Conroy, Peter Garrett, Penny Wong, Craig Emerson, Rob McClelland, Nick Sherry, Brendan O’Connor, Kate Ellis, Mark Butler, Stephen Jones.

Terry Bracks and my friends from Western Chances!

Friends.

Tonight we honour the life and memory of a very great Australian.

Recorded in official documents as the Honourable Michael Jerome Young AO.

But never known as anything other than “Mick”.

To some of you, Mick Young as a colleague.

A friend.

A mentor.

A beloved father and husband.

To all of us he is an inspiration still.

Mick Young was a leader in a great Labor generation.

A generation that healed the wounds of a fractured party. 

That showed such courage after so long to fight its way into office.

That showed such discipline to rebuild after 1975 and fight back into office.

A generation that built two great Labor Governments.

And it began with Mick’s greatest campaign.

It’s Time.

No one deserves more credit than Mick ... but he didn’t do it alone.

Those of a more mature television vintage would remember a kids’ show called Adventure Island, produced by a noted TV producer, Godfrey Phillips.

It ran from 1967 to 1972, when the ABC decided to axe it.

There was a huge public outcry and plenty of heartbroken kids but, as Gough might have said ... nothing could save Adventure Island.

-      Not much has changed at the ABC.

But if nothing could save Adventure Island, Mick Young could save Godfrey Phillips.

And the ABC’s loss was the ALP’s gain.

-      Not much has changed there either.

The ABC’s cut allowed Mick to secure the services of Godfrey Phillips to produce It’s Time.

[And if the Whitlam Government at times had a few Adventure Island moments ... well we’ll remember the best days.]

The rest, as they say, is history.

We all know the way some people would tell the Mick Young story and use it against Labor today.

The larrikin ex-shearer who liked a feed, a fight, a few beers.

Back breaking work, just 15 when he started, like something out of Henry Lawson.

The representative of the real old Labor Party which would rather lose for the right reasons than win for the wrong ones.

An era which if only we could recapture we’d be better today.

But Mick Young is part of our story and we know what his legacy means.

We love the larrikin legends but we aren’t misled by them.

We know Mick was a tough, gutsy political professional.

A man who knew what was wrong in our country, who knew whose side he was on, who knew change was hard.

Mick Young was about the future, not the past.

Mick Young was a doer, not a dreamer.

Mick Young believed in the new creed of education and social mobility and jobs, not in the old romance of class conflict and “the sons of toil”.

Mick Young was about the future.

In the 1960s he was thinking about the 1970s.

In the 1970s he was thinking about the 1980s.

And in the 1980s was thinking about the 1990s.

And if he were here tonight, he’d say, what about the future?

Education as the driver of equality and opportunity was a dangerous new idea for Labor in the 1960s.

“A desk with a lamp and room to study in” was a powerful word picture for Labor in its time.

Not just because it demonstrated that Labor understood that education was the new key to our dream of a fair go for all.

But because it demonstrated that the Labor understood the way Australians were living, the new life of the suburbs that Australian prosperity of the 1960s and 70s was creating.

Getting Labor to understand that new Australian life – which was so important to the victory of 1972 – didn’t just happen. 

It had to be fought for.

And that understanding was so important in Mick’s work.  A man who didn’t just love Australia, he loved Australians.

A man with a deep and sympathetic understanding of the way Australians lived in his time and a tremendous intuition for what that meant for politics in the future.

Mick Young was a doer.

A fighter, a winner.

A bloke who knew there’s nothing you can do for the people we represent when you sit on the left hand side of the Speaker.

Who never accepted a false choice between achieving Labor’s objectives and winning support from the people we seek to serve.

And who knew that our ideas, for social change, for a fair go, for a better life for all, they have to be fought for.  Fought for in politics against determined conservative opposition.

Reg Withers, a tough Tory, used to say there’s two sides in Australian politics, there has been since the First Fleet, since the first bloke in a redcoat put his boot in the backside of the first bloke with arrows on his suit.

I don’t think Mick would have argued with that.

And Michael Jerome Young was never on the redcoats’ side.

He knew that politics is a fight between us and them, a fight where we can never accept a false choice between cunning and courage.

Because our courage gives us our great goal and our cunning gets us there.

Did then.  Does now.

And Mick Young was about education and social mobility and jobs.

A man who worked in sheds from his childhood had the best education in the demands and principles of labour politics you could hope to have.

But Mick knew there was more to know.

That is why Mick’s memory is honoured through this Trust.

We could put up a statue or a plaque.

We could christen a building or name a street.

We could do all those things.

But how much more important, 15 years after Mick’s death, to send an Australian to TAFE or university...

...  to give an Australian that extra chance in life that only a great education can bring.

That way, each of these scholarship holders takes something of Mick into the lecture hall and the workshop ...

... and into a more successful life beyond.

This is how we best remember Mick Young.

Not just in this Trust dinner tonight, but in every Cabinet meeting, in every Budget committee, in every Government decision.

By putting education first.

And I know we do this and I know we will keep doing this.

Not just because of Mick’s legacy of ideas lives in this Government.

But because Mick’s personal legacy lives in this Government.

Wayne Swan is not an emotional man and I don’t want to embarrass him tonight.  I just want to say this.

Mick would have been so proud of you during the GFC, Wayne.

Sure, proud of the whole Government, but especially proud of his mate.  When the fight was on, you fought for jobs.

Because you know Australians still think in Mick’s words

I want to work.

Ben Chifley once said that he’d have given a million pounds to have Bert Evatt’s education.

Mick Young believe in an Australia where Ben Chifley’s education should have been free.

Mick was a bright working class boy from South Australia.

He went from school to the sheds when he was fifteen.

He missed out on great opportunities in life.

And because he fought in politics with courage and cunning, and because when he fought, Labor won ...

This working class girl from South Australia went from school to university.

To every opportunity Australia has to offer.

To the law. 

To the Lodge.

Thanks Mick. Thanks for what you did for me.

And thank you to the Young family, for giving me a chance to say so.

Thank you to Labor speechwriter Micahel Cooney for sharing this speech with Speakola. There is no other copy of the speech on the public record.

Michael Cooney who wrote speeches for Prime Minister Gillard, including parts of this one, was a guest on episode 45 or the podcast.

John McCain: 'I will not vote for the bill as it is today', speech on Senate floor, Trumpcare - 2017

25 July 2017, Washington DC, USA

Mr. President:
 
I’ve stood in this place many times and addressed as president many presiding officers. I have been so addressed when I have sat in that chair, as close as I will ever be to a presidency.
 
It is an honorific we’re almost indifferent to, isn’t it. In truth, presiding over the Senate can be a nuisance, a bit of a ceremonial bore, and it is usually relegated to the more junior members of the majority.
 
But as I stand here today – looking a little worse for wear I’m sure – I have a refreshed appreciation for the protocols and customs of this body, and for the other ninety-nine privileged souls who have been elected to this Senate.
 
I have been a member of the United States Senate for thirty years. I had another long, if not as long, career before I arrived here, another profession that was profoundly rewarding, and in which I had experiences and friendships that I revere. But make no mistake, my service here is the most important job I have had in my life. And I am so grateful to the people of Arizona for the privilege – for the honor – of serving here and the opportunities it gives me to play a small role in the history of the country I love.
 
I’ve known and admired men and women in the Senate who played much more than a small role in our history, true statesmen, giants of American politics. They came from both parties, and from various backgrounds. Their ambitions were frequently in conflict. They held different views on the issues of the day. And they often had very serious disagreements about how best to serve the national interest.
 
But they knew that however sharp and heartfelt their disputes, however keen their ambitions, they had an obligation to work collaboratively to ensure the Senate discharged its constitutional responsibilities effectively. Our responsibilities are important, vitally important, to the continued success of our Republic. And our arcane rules and customs are deliberately intended to require broad cooperation to function well at all. The most revered members of this institution accepted the necessity of compromise in order to make incremental progress on solving America’s problems and to defend her from her adversaries.
 
That principled mindset, and the service of our predecessors who possessed it, come to mind when I hear the Senate referred to as the world’s greatest deliberative body. I’m not sure we can claim that distinction with a straight face today.
 
I’m sure it wasn’t always deserved in previous eras either. But I’m sure there have been times when it was, and I was privileged to witness some of those occasions.
 
Our deliberations today – not just our debates, but the exercise of all our responsibilities – authorizing government policies, appropriating the funds to implement them, exercising our advice and consent role – are often lively and interesting. They can be sincere and principled. But they are more partisan, more tribal more of the time than any other time I remember. Our deliberations can still be important and useful, but I think we’d all agree they haven’t been overburdened by greatness lately. And right now they aren’t producing much for the American people.
 
Both sides have let this happen. Let’s leave the history of who shot first to the historians. I suspect they’ll find we all conspired in our decline – either by deliberate actions or neglect. We’ve all played some role in it. Certainly I have. Sometimes, I’ve let my passion rule my reason. Sometimes, I made it harder to find common ground because of something harsh I said to a colleague. Sometimes, I wanted to win more for the sake of winning than to achieve a contested policy.
 

Incremental progress, compromises that each side criticize but also accept, just plain muddling through to chip away at problems and keep our enemies from doing their worst isn’t glamorous or exciting. It doesn’t feel like a political triumph. But it’s usually the most we can expect from our system of government, operating in a country as diverse and quarrelsome and free as ours. 
 
Considering the injustice and cruelties inflicted by autocratic governments, and how corruptible human nature can be, the problem solving our system does make possible, the fitful progress it produces, and the liberty and justice it preserves, is a magnificent achievement.
 
Our system doesn’t depend on our nobility. It accounts for our imperfections, and gives an order to our individual strivings that has helped make ours the most powerful and prosperous society on earth.  It is our responsibility to preserve that, even when it requires us to do something less satisfying than ‘winning.’ Even when we must give a little to get a little. Even when our efforts manage just three yards and a cloud of dust, while critics on both sides denounce us for timidity, for our failure to ‘triumph.’ 
 
I hope we can again rely on humility, on our need to cooperate, on our dependence on each other to learn how to trust each other again and by so doing better serve the people who elected us. Stop listening to the bombastic loudmouths on the radio and television and the Internet. To hell with them. They don’t want anything done for the public good. Our incapacity is their livelihood.
 
Let’s trust each other. Let’s return to regular order. We’ve been spinning our wheels on too many important issues because we keep trying to find a way to win without help from across the aisle. That’s an approach that’s been employed by both sides, mandating legislation from the top down, without any support from the other side, with all the parliamentary maneuvers that requires.
 
We’re getting nothing done. All we’ve really done this year is confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Our healthcare insurance system is a mess. We all know it, those who support Obamacare and those who oppose it. Something has to be done. We Republicans have looked for a way to end it and replace it with something else without paying a terrible political price. We haven’t found it yet, and I’m not sure we will. All we’ve managed to do is make more popular a policy that wasn’t very popular when we started trying to get rid of it.
 
I voted for the motion to proceed to allow debate to continue and amendments to be offered. I will not vote for the bill as it is today. It’s a shell of a bill right now. We all know that. I have changes urged by my state’s governor that will have to be included to earn my support for final passage of any bill. I know many of you will have to see the bill changed substantially for you to support it.
 
We’ve tried to do this by coming up with a proposal behind closed doors in consultation with the administration, then springing it on skeptical members, trying to convince them it’s better than nothing, asking us to swallow our doubts and force it past a unified opposition. I don’t think that is going to work in the end. And it probably shouldn’t.
 
The Obama administration and congressional Democrats shouldn’t have forced through Congress without any opposition support a social and economic change as massive as Obamacare. And we shouldn’t do the same with ours.
 
Why don’t we try the old way of legislating in the Senate, the way our rules and customs encourage us to act. If this process ends in failure, which seem likely, then let’s return to regular order. 
 
Let the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee under Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray hold hearings, try to report a bill out of committee with contributions from both sides. Then bring it to the floor for amendment and debate, and see if we can pass something that will be imperfect, full of compromises, and not very pleasing to implacable partisans on either side, but that might provide workable solutions to problems Americans are struggling with today.
 
What have we to lose by trying to work together to find those solutions? We’re not getting much done apart. I don’t think any of us feels very proud of our incapacity. Merely preventing your political opponents from doing what they want isn’t the most inspiring work. There’s greater satisfaction in respecting our differences, but not letting them prevent agreements that don’t require abandonment of core principles, agreements made in good faith that help improve lives and protect the American people.
 
The Senate is capable of that. We know that. We’ve seen it before. I’ve seen it happen many times. And the times when I was involved even in a modest way with working out a bipartisan response to a national problem or threat are the proudest moments of my career, and by far the most satisfying.
 
This place is important. The work we do is important. Our strange rules and seemingly eccentric practices that slow our proceedings and insist on our cooperation are important. Our founders envisioned the Senate as the more deliberative, careful body that operates at a greater distance than the other body from the public passions of the hour.
 
We are an important check on the powers of the Executive. Our consent is necessary for the President to appoint jurists and powerful government officials and in many respects to conduct foreign policy. Whether or not we are of the same party, we are not the President’s subordinates. We are his equal!
 
As his responsibilities are onerous, many and powerful, so are ours.  And we play a vital role in shaping and directing the judiciary, the military, and the cabinet, in planning and supporting foreign and domestic policies. Our success in meeting all these awesome constitutional obligations depends on cooperation among ourselves. 
 

The success of the Senate is important to the continued success of America. This country – this big, boisterous, brawling, intemperate, restless, striving, daring, beautiful, bountiful, brave, good and magnificent country – needs us to help it thrive. That responsibility is more important than any of our personal interests or political affiliations.
 
We are the servants of a great nation, ‘a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.’ More people have lived free and prosperous lives here than in any other nation. We have acquired unprecedented wealth and power because of our governing principles, and because our government defended those principles.
 
America has made a greater contribution than any other nation to an international order that has liberated more people from tyranny and poverty than ever before in history. We have been the greatest example, the greatest supporter and the greatest defender of that order. We aren’t afraid. “We don’t covet other people’s land and wealth. We don’t hide behind walls. We breach them. We are a blessing to humanity.
 
What greater cause could we hope to serve than helping keep America the strong, aspiring, inspirational beacon of liberty and defender of the dignity of all human beings and their right to freedom and equal justice? That is the cause that binds us and is so much more powerful and worthy than the small differences that divide us.
 
What a great honor and extraordinary opportunity it is to serve in this body.
 
It’s a privilege to serve with all of you. I mean it. Many of you have reached out in the last few days with your concern and your prayers, and it means a lot to me. It really does. I’ve had so many people say such nice things about me recently that I think some of you must have me confused with someone else. I appreciate it though, every word, even if much of it isn’t deserved. 
 
I’ll be here for a few days, I hope managing the floor debate on the defense authorization bill, which, I’m proud to say is again a product of bipartisan cooperation and trust among the members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
 
After that, I’m going home for a while to treat my illness. I have every intention of returning here and giving many of you cause to regret all the nice things you said about me. And, I hope, to impress on you again that it is an honor to serve the American people in your company.
 
Thank you, fellow senators.
 
Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Deval Patrick: 'Just words', gubernatorial campaign speech - 2006

15 October 2006, Boston Common, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Deval Patrick is the only African American to have served as Governor of Massachusetts. 2007-15.

I will not engage in the politics of fear. Because fear is poisonous. All through history it has been used to hold back progress and limit fairness. Only hope defeats fear. It always has. At a candidates forum last week, the moderator asked each of us to say something nice about the other candidates. Kerry Healey rather grudgingly said, Well, he can give a good speech. She would know this not because she has ever attended a speech of mine but because she has them filmed by this fine fellow here. But her dismissive point, and I hear it from her staff, is that all I have to offer is words. Just words.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

Just words.

We have nothing to fear but fear itself.

Just words. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Just words.

I have a dream.

Just words.

Let me say it before you do: I am no Dr. King, no President Kennedy, no FDR, no Thomas Jefferson. But I do know that the right words, spoken from the heart with conviction, with a vision of a better place and a faith in the unseen, are a call to action.

Full speech is below.

Giuseppe Garibaldi: 'To arms, then, all of you! all of you!' - 1860

1860, speech to soldiers, Sicily, Italy

We must now consider the period which is just drawing to a close as almost the last stage of our national resurrection, and prepare ourselves to finish worthily the marvelous design of the elect of twenty generations, the completion of which Providence has reserved for this fortunate age.

Yes, young men, Italy owes to you an undertaking which has merited the applause of the universe. You have conquered and you will conquer still, because you are prepared for the tactics that decide the fate of battles. You are not unworthy of the men who entered the ranks of a Macedonian phalanx, and who contended not in vain with the proud conquerors of Asia. To this wonderful page in our country's history another more glorious still will be added, and the slave shall show at last to his free brothers a sharpened sword forged from the links of his fetters.

To arms, then, all of you! all of you! And the oppressors and the mighty shall disappear like dust. You, too, women, cast away all the cowards from your embraces; they will give you only cowards for children, and you who are the daughters of the land of beauty must bear children who are noble and brave. Let timid doctrinaires depart from among us to carry their servility and their miserable fears elsewhere. This people is its own master. It wishes to be the brother of other peoples, but to look on the insolent with a proud glance, not to grovel before them imploring its own freedom. It will no longer follow in the trail of men whose hearts are foul. No! No! No!

Providence has presented Italy with Victor Emmanuel. Every Italian should rally round him. By the side of Victor Emmanuel every quarrel should be forgotten, all rancor depart. Once more I repeat my battle-cry: "To arms, all-all of you!" If March, 1861, does not find one million of Italians in arms, then alas for liberty, alas for the life of Italy. Ah, no, far be from me a thought which I loathe like poison. March of 1861, or if need be February, will find us all at our post-Italians of Calatafimi, Palermo, Ancona, the Volturno, Castelfidardo, and Isernia, and with us every man of this land who is not a coward or a slave. Let all of us rally round the glorious hero of Palestro and give the last blow to the crumbling edifice of tyranny. Receive, then, my gallant young volunteers, at the honored conclusion of ten battles, one word of farewell from me.

I utter this word with deepest affection and from the very bottom of my heart. Today I am obliged to retire, but for a few days only. The hour of battle will find me with you again, by the side of the champions of Italian liberty. Let those only return to their homes who are called by the imperative duties which they owe to their families, and those who by their glorious wounds have deserved the credit of their country. These, indeed, will serve Italy in their homes by their counsel, by the very aspect of the scars which adorn their youthful brows. Apart from these, let all others remain to guard our glorious banners. We shall meet again before long to march together to the redemption of our brothers who are still slaves of the stranger. We shall meet again before long to march to new triumphs.

Georges Jacques Danton: 'Dare, dare again, always dare!', National Assembly - 1792

2 September 1792., National Assembly, Paris, France

It is gratifying to the ministers of a free people to have to announce to them that their country will be saved. All are stirred, all are excited, all burn to fight. You know that Verdun is not yet in the power of our enemies. You know that its garrison swears to immolate the first who breathes a proposition of surrender. 

 One portion of our people will proceed to the frontiers, another will throw up intrenchments, and the third with pikes will defend the hearts of our cities. Paris will second these great efforts. The commissioners of the Commune will solemnly proclaim to the citizens the invitation to arm and march to the defense of the country. At such a moment you can proclaim that the capital deserves well of all France. 

 At such a moment this National Assembly becomes a veritable committee of war. We ask that you concur with us in directing this sublime movement of the people, by naming commissioners who will second us in these great measures. We ask that any one refusing to give personal service or to furnish arms shall be punished with death. We ask that a set of instructions be drawn up for the citizens to direct their movements. We ask that couriers be sent to all the departments to notify them of the decrees that you proclaim here. The tocsin we are about to ring is not an alarm signal; it sounds the charge on the enemies of our country. To conquer them we must dare, dare again, always dare, and France is saved!

Woodrow Wilson: 'You will say, “Is the league an absolute guaranty against war?”', the Pueblo speech, lobbying for Treaty of Versailles and League of Nations - 1919

25 September 1919, Pueblo, Colorado, USA

President Wilson attended Versailles and was desperate to have the USA ratify treaty and be part of League of Nations. It didn't happen. This was his stump speech on a tour of nation lobbying for League of Nations.

Mr. Chairman and fellow countrymen, it is with a great deal of genuine pleasure that I find myself in Pueblo, and I feel it a compliment that I should be permitted to be the first speaker in this beautiful hall. One of the advantages of this hall, as I look about, is that you are not too far away from me, because there is nothing so reassuring to men who are trying to express the public sentiment as getting into real personal contact with their fellow citizens. I have gained a renewed impression as I have crossed the continent this time of the homogeneity of this great people to whom we belong. They come from many stocks, but they are all of one kind. They come from many origins, but they are all shot through with the same principles and desire the same righteous and honest things. I have received a more inspiring impression this time of the public opinion of the United States than it was ever my privilege to receive before.

The chief pleasure of my trip has been that it has nothing to do with my personal fortunes, that it has nothing to do with my personal reputation, that it has nothing to do with anything except the great principles uttered by Americans of all sorts and of all parties which we are now trying to realize at this crisis of the affairs of the world. But there have been unpleasant impressions as well as pleasant impressions, my fellow citizens, as I have crossed the continent. I have perceived more and more that men have been busy creating an absolutely false impression of what the treaty of peace and the covenant of the league of nations contain and mean. I find, more-over, that there is an organized propaganda against the league of nations and against the treaty proceeding from exactly the same sources that the organized propaganda proceeded from which threatened this country here and there with disloyalty. And I want to say–I cannot say it too often–any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready. If I can catch any man with a hyphen in this great contest, I will know that I have caught an enemy of the Republic. My fellow citizens, it is only certain bodies of foreign sympathies, certain bodies of sympathy with foreign nations that are organized against this great document which the American representatives have brought back from Paris. Therefore, in order to clear away the mists, in order to remove the impressions, in order to check the falsehoods that have clustered around this great subject, I want to tell you a few very simple things about the treaty and the covenant.

Do not think of this treaty of peace as merely a settlement with Germany. It is that. It is a very severe settlement with Germany, but there is not anything in it that she did not earn. Indeed, she earned more than she can ever be able to pay for, and the punishment exacted of her is not a punishment greater than she can bear, and it is absolutely necessary in order that no other nation may ever plot such a thing against humanity and civilization. But the treaty is so much more than that. It is not merely a settlement with Germany; it is a readjustment of those great injustices which underlie the whole structure of European and Asiatic society. This is only the first of several treaties. They are all constructed upon the same plan. The Austrian treaty follows the same lines. The treaty with Hungary follows the same lines. The treaty with Bulgaria follows the same lines. The treaty with Turkey, when it is formulated, will follow the same lines. What are those lines? They are based upon the purpose to see that every government dealt with in this great settlement is put in the hands of the people and taken out of the hands of coteries and of sovereigns who had no right to rule over the people. It is a people’s treaty, that accomplishes by a great sweep of practical justice the liberation of men who never could have liberated themselves, and the power of the most powerful nations has been devoted not to their aggrandizement but to the liberation of people whom they could have put under their control if they had chosen to do so. Not one foot of territory is demanded by the conquerors, not one single item of submission to their authority is demanded by them. The men who sat around that table in Paris knew that the time had come when the people were no longer going to consent to live under masters, but were going to live the lives that they chose themselves, to live under such governments as they chose to erect. That is the fundamental principle of this great settlement.

And we did not stop with that. We added a great international charter for the rights of labor. Reject this treaty, impair it, and this is the consequence to the laboring men of the world, that there is no international tribunal which can bring the moral judgments of the world to bear upon the great labor questions of the day. What we need to do with regard to the labor questions of the day, my fellow countrymen, is to lift them into the light, is to lift them out of the haze and distraction of passion, of hostility, into the calm spaces where men look at things without passion. The more men you get into a great discussion the more you exclude passion. Just so soon as the calm judgment of the world is directed upon the question of justice to labor, labor is going to have a forum such as it never was supplied with before, and men everywhere are going to see that the problem of labor is nothing more nor less than the problem of the elevation of humanity. We must see that all the questions which have disturbed the world, all the questions which have eaten into the confidence of men toward their governments, all the questions which have disturbed the processes of industry, shall be brought out where men of all points of view, men of all attitudes of mind, men of all kinds of experience, may contribute their part to the settlement of the great questions which we must settle and cannot ignore.

At the front of this great treaty is put the covenant of the league of nations. It will also be at the front of the Austrian treaty and the Hungarian treaty and the Bulgarian treaty and the treaty with Turkey. Every one of them will contain the covenant of the league of nations, because you cannot work any of them without the covenant of the league of nations. Unless you get the united, concerted purpose and power of the great Governments of the world behind this settlement, it will fall down like a house of cards. There is only one power to put behind the liberation of mankind, and that is the power of mankind. It is the power of the united moral forces of the world, and in the covenant of the league of nations, the moral forces of the world are mobilized. For what purpose? Reflect, my fellow citizens, that the membership of this great league is going to include all the great fighting nations of the world, as well as the weak ones. It is not for the present going to include Germany, but for the time being Germany is not a great fighting country. All the nations that have power that can be mobilized are going to be members of this League, including the United States. And what do they unite for? They enter into a solemn promise to one another that they will never use their power against one another for aggression; that they never will impair the territorial integrity of a neighbor; that they never will interfere with the political independence of a neighbor; that they will abide by the principle that great populations are entitled to determine their own destiny and that they will not interfere with that destiny; and that no matter what differences arise amongst them they will never resort to war without first having done one or other of two things–either submitted the matter of controversy to arbitration, in which case they agree to abide by the result without question, or submitted it to the consideration of the council of the league of nations, laying before that council all the documents, all the facts, agreeing that the council can publish the documents and the facts to the whole world, agreeing that there shall be six months allowed for the mature consideration of those facts by the council, and agreeing that at the expiration of these six months, even if they are not then ready to accept the advice of the council with regard to the settlement of the dispute, they will still not go to war for another three months. In other words, they consent, no matter what happens, to submit every matter of difference between them to the judgment of mankind, and just so certainly as they do that, my fellow citizens, war will be in the far background, war will be pushed out of that foreground of terror in which it has kept the world for generation after generation, and men will know that there will be a calm time of deliberate counsel. The most dangerous thing for a bad cause is to expose it to the opinion of the world. The most certain way that you can prove that a man is mistaken is by letting all his neighbors know what he thinks, by letting all his neighbors discuss what he thinks, and if he is in the wrong, you will notice that he will stay at home, he will not walk on the street. He will be afraid of the eyes of his neighbors. He will be afraid of their judgment of his character. He will know that his cause is lost unless he can sustain it by the arguments of right and of justice. The same law that applies to individuals applies to nations.

But you say, “We have heard that we might be at a disadvantage in the league of nations.” Well, whoever told you that either was deliberately falsifying or he had not read the covenant of the league of nations. I leave him the choice. I want to give you a very simple account of the organization of the league of nations and let you judge for yourselves. It is a very simple organization. The power of the league, or rather the activities of the league, lie in two bodies. There is the council, which consists of one representative from each of the principal allied and associated powers–that is to say, the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan, along with four other representatives of the smaller powers chosen out of the general body of the membership of the league. The council is the source of every active policy of the league, and no active policy of the league can be adopted without a unanimous vote of the council. That is explicitly stated in the covenant itself. Does it not evidently follow that the league of nations can adopt no policy whatever without the consent of the United States? The affirmative vote of the representative of the United States is necessary in every case. Now, you have heard of six votes belonging to the British Empire. Those six votes are not in the council. They are in the assembly, and the interesting thing is that the assembly does not vote. I must qualify that statement a little, but essentially it is absolutely true. In every matter in which the assembly is given a voice, and there are only four or five, its vote does not count unless concurred in by the representatives of all the nations represented on the council, so that there is no validity to any vote of the assembly unless in that vote also the representative of the United States concurs. That one vote of the United States is as big as the six votes of the British Empire. I am not jealous for advantage, my fellow citizens, but I think that is a perfectly safe situation. There is no validity in a vote, either by the council or the assembly, in which we do not concur. So much for the statements about the six votes of the British Empire.

Look at it in another aspect. The assembly is the talking body. The assembly was created in order that anybody that purposed anything wrong would be subjected to the awkward circumstance that everybody could talk about it. This is the great assembly in which all the things that are likely to disturb the peace of the world or the good understanding between nations are to be exposed to the general view, and I want to ask you if you think it was unjust, unjust to the United States, that speaking parts should be assigned to the several portions of the British Empire? Do you think it unjust that there should be some spokesman in debate for that fine little stout Republic down in the Pacific, New Zealand? Do you think it unjust that Australia should be allowed to stand up and take part in the debate–Australia, from which we have learned some of the most useful progressive policies of modern time, a little nation only five million in a great continent, but counting for several times five in its activities and in its interest in liberal reform? Do you think it unjust that that little Republic down in South Africa, whose gallant resistance to being subjected to any outside authority at all we admired for so many months and whose fortunes we followed with such interest, should have a speaking part? Great Britain obliged South Africa to submit to her sovereignty, but she immediately after that felt that it was convenient and right to hand the whole self-government of that colony over to the very men whom she had beaten. The representatives of South Africa in Paris were two of the most distinguished generals of the Boer Army, two of the realest men I ever met, two men that could talk sober counsel and wise advice, along with the best statesmen in Europe. To exclude Gen. Botha and Gen. Smuts from the right to stand up in the parliament of the world and say something concerning the affairs of mankind would be absurd. And what about Canada? Is not Canada a good neighbor? I ask you. Is not Canada more likely to agree with the United States than with Great Britain? Canada has a speaking part. And then, for the first time in the history of the world, that great voiceless multitude, that throng hundreds of millions strong in India, has a voice, and I want to testily that some of the wisest and most dignified figures in the peace conference at Paris came from India, men who seemed to carry in their minds an older wisdom than the rest of us had, whose traditions ran back into so many of the unhappy fortunes of mankind that they seemed very useful counselors as to how some ray of hope and some prospect of happiness could be opened to its people. I for my part have no jealousy whatever of those five speaking parts in the assembly. Those speaking parts cannot translate themselves into five votes that can in any matter override the voice and purpose of the United States.

Let us sweep aside all this language of jealousy. Let us be big enough to know the facts and to welcome the facts, because the facts are based upon the principle that America has always fought for, namely, the equality of self-governing peoples, whether they were big or little–not counting men, but counting rights, not counting representation, but counting the purpose of that representation. When you hear an opinion quoted you do not count the number of persons who hold it; you ask, “Who said that?” You weigh opinions, you do not count them, and the beauty of all democracies is that every voice can be heard, every voice can have its effect, every voice can contribute to the general judgment that is finally arrived at. That is the object of democracy. Let us accept what America has always fought for, and accept it with pride that America showed the way and made the proposal. I do not mean that America made the proposal in this particular instance; I mean that the principle was an American principle, proposed by America.

When you come to the heart of the covenant, my fellow citizens, you will find it in article 10, and I am very much interested to know that the other things have been blown away like bubbles. There is nothing in the other contentions with regard to the league of nations, but there is something in article 10 that you ought to realize and ought to accept or reject. Article 10 is the heart of the whole matter. What is article 10? I never am certain that I can from memory give a literal repetition of its language, but I am sure that I can give an exact interpretation of its meaning. Article 10 provides that every member of the league covenants to respect and preserve the territorial integrity and existing political independence of every other member of the league as against external aggression. Not against internal disturbance. There was not a man at that table who did not admit the sacredness of the right of self-determination, the sacredness of the right of any body of people to say that they would not continue to live under the Government they were then living under, and under article 11 of the covenant, they are given a place to say whether they will live under it or not. For following article 10 is article 11, which makes it the right of any member of the league at any time to call attention to anything, anywhere, that is likely to disturb the peace of the world or the good understanding between nations upon which the peace of the world depends. I want to give you an illustration of what that would mean.

You have heard a great deal–something that was true and a great deal that was false–about that provision of the treaty which hands over to Japan the rights which Germany enjoyed in the Province of Shantung in China. In the first place, Germany did not enjoy any rights there that other nations had not already claimed. For my part, my judgment, my moral judgment, is against the whole set of concessions. They were all of them unjust to China, they ought never to have been exacted, they were all exacted by duress from a great body of thoughtful and ancient and helpless people. There never was any right in any of them. Thank God, America never asked for any, never dreamed of asking for any. But when Germany got this concession in 1898, the Government of the United States made no protest whatsoever. That was not because the Government of the United States was not in the hands of high-minded and conscientious men. It was. William McKinley was President and John Hay was Secretary of State–as safe hands to leave the honor of the United States in as any that you can cite. They made no protest because the state of international law at that time was that it was none of their business unless they could show that the interests of the United States were affected, and the only thing that they could show with regard to the interests of the United States was that Germany might close the doors of Shantung Province against the trade of the United States. They, therefore, demanded and obtained promises that we could continue to sell merchandise in Shantung. Immediately following that concession to Germany there was a concession to Russia of the same sort, of Port Arthur, and Port Arthur was handed over subsequently to Japan on the very territory of the United States. Don’t you remember that, when Russia and Japan got into war with one another the war was brought to a conclusion by a treaty written at Portsmouth, N.H., and in that treaty, without the slightest intimation from any authoritative sources in America that the Government of the United States had any objection, Port Arthur, Chinese territory, was turned over to Japan? I want you distinctly to understand that there is no thought of criticism in my mind. I am expounding to you a state of international law. Now, read articles 10 and 11. You will see that international law is revolutionized by putting morals into it. Article 10 says that no member of the league, and that includes all these nations that have done these things unjustly to China, shall impair the territorial integrity or the political independence of any other member of the league. China is going to be a member of the league. Article 11 says that any member of the League can call attention to anything that is likely to disturb the peace of the world or the good understanding between nations, and China is for the first time in the history of mankind afforded a standing before the jury of the world. I, for my part, have a profound sympathy for China, and I am proud to have taken part in an arrangement which promises the protection of the world to the rights of China. The whole atmosphere of the world is changed by a thing like that, my fellow citizens. The whole international practice of the world is revolutionized.

But, you will say, “What is the second sentence of article 10? That is what gives very disturbing thoughts.” The second sentence is that the council of the league shall advise what steps, if any, are necessary to carry out the guaranty of the first sentence, namely, that the members will respect and preserve the territorial integrity and political independence of the other members. I do not know any other meaning for the word “advise” except “advise.” The council advises, and it cannot advise without the vote of the United States. Why gentlemen should fear that the Congress of the United States would be advised to do something that it did not want to do I frankly cannot imagine, because they cannot even be advised to do anything unless their own representative has participated in the advice. It may be that that will impair somewhat the vigor of the league, but, nevertheless, the fact is so, that we are not obliged to take any advice except our own, which to any man who wants to go his own course is a very satisfactory state of affairs. Every man regards his own advice as best, and I dare say every man mixes his own advice with some thought of his own interest. Whether we use it wisely or unwisely, we can use the vote of the United States to make impossible drawing the United States into any enterprise that she does not care to be drawn into.

Yet article 10 strikes at the taproot of war. Article 10 is a statement that the very things that have always been sought in imperialistic wars are henceforth forgone by every ambitious nation in the world. I would have felt very lonely, my fellow countrymen, and I would have felt very much disturbed if, sitting at the peace table in Paris, I had supposed that I was expounding my own ideas. Whether you believe it or not, I know the relative size of my own ideas; I know how they stand related in bulk and proportion to the moral judgments of my fellow countrymen, and I proposed nothing whatever at the peace table at Paris that I had not sufficiently certain knowledge embodied the moral judgment of the citizens of the United States. I had gone over there with, so to say, explicit instructions. Don’t you remember that we laid down 14 points which should contain the principles of the settlement? They were not my points. In every one of them I was conscientiously trying to read the thought of the people of the United States, and after I uttered those points, I had every assurance given me that could be given me that they did speak the moral judgment of the United States and not my single judgment. Then, when it came to that critical period just a little less than a year ago, when it was evident that the war was coming to its critical end, all the nations engaged in the war accepted those 14 principles explicitly as the basis of the armistice and the basis of the peace. In those circumstances I crossed the ocean under bond to my own people and to the other governments with which I was dealing. The whole specification of the method of settlement was written down and accepted beforehand, and we were architects building on those specifications. It reassures me and fortifies my position to find how, before I went over men whose judgment the United States has often trusted were of exactly the same opinion that I went abroad to express. Here is something I want to read from Theodore Roosevelt:

“The one effective move for obtaining peace is by an agreement among all the great powers in which each should pledge itself not only to abide by the decisions of a common tribunal but to back its decisions by force. The great civilized nations should combine by solemn agreement in a great world league for the peace of righteousness; a court should be established. A changed and amplified Hague court would meet the requirements, composed of representatives from each nation, whose representatives are sworn to act as judges in each case and not in a representative capacity.” Now, there is article 10. He goes on and says this: “The nations should agree on certain rights that should not be questioned, such as territorial integrity, their right to deal with their domestic affairs, and with such matters as whom they should admit to citizenship. All such guarantee each of their number in possession of these rights.”

Now, the other specification is in the covenant. The covenant in another portion guarantees to the members the independent control of their domestic question. There is not a leg for these gentlemen to stand on when they say that the interests of the United States are not safeguarded in the very points where we are most sensitive. You do not need to be told again that the covenant expressly says that nothing in this covenant shall be construed as affecting the validity of the Monroe doctrine, for example. You could not be more explicit than that. And every point of interest is covered, partly for one very interesting reason. This is not the first time that the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate of the United States has read and considered this covenant. I brought it to this country in March last in a tentative, provisional form, in practically the form that it now has, with the exception of certain additions which I shall mention immediately. I asked the foreign relations committees of both houses to come to the White House, and we spent a long evening in the frankest discussion of every portion that they wished to discuss. They made certain specific suggestions as to what should be contained in this document when it was to be revised. I carried those suggestions to Paris, and every one of them was adopted. What more could I have done? What more could have been obtained? The very matters upon which these gentlemen were most concerned were the right of withdrawal, which is now expressly stated; the safeguarding of the Monroe doctrine, which is now accomplished; the exclusion from action by the league of domestic questions, which is now accomplished. All along the line, every suggestion of the United States was adopted after the covenant had been drawn up in its first form and had been published for the criticism of the world. There is a very true sense in which I can say this is a tested American document.

I am dwelling upon these points, my fellow citizens, in spite of the fact that I dare say to most of you they are perfectly well known, because in order to meet the present situation we have got to know what we are dealing with. We are not dealing with the kind of document which this is represented by some gentlemen to be; and inasmuch as we are dealing with a document simon-pure in respect of the very principles we have professed and lived up to, we have got to do one or other of two things–we have got to adopt it or reject it. There is no middle course. You can not go in on a special-privilege basis of your own. I take it that you are too proud to ask to be exempted from responsibilities which the other members of the league will carry. We go in upon equal terms or we do not go in at all; and if we do not go in, my fellow citizens, think of the tragedy of that result–the only sufficient guaranty of the peace of the world withheld! Ourselves drawn apart with that dangerous pride which means that we shall be ready to take care of ourselves, and that means that we shall maintain great standing armies and an irresistible navy; that means we shall have the organization of a military nation; that means we shall have a general staff, with the kind of power that the general staff of Germany had; to mobilize this great manhood of the Nation when it pleases, all the energy of our young men drawn into the thought and preparation for war. What of our pledges to the men that lie dead in France? We said that they went over there, not to prove the prowess of America or her readiness for another war, but to see to it that there never was such a war again. It always seems to make it difficult for me to say anything, my fellow citizens, when I think of my clients in this case. My clients are the children; my clients are the next generation. They do not know what promises and bonds I undertook when I ordered the armies of the United States to the soil of France, but I know, and I intend to redeem my pledges to the children; they shall not be sent upon a similar errand.

Again and again, my fellow citizens, mothers who lost their sons in France have come to me and, taking my hand, have shed tears upon it not only, but they have added, “God bless you, Mr. President!” Why, my fellow citizens, should they pray God to bless me? I advised the Congress of the United States to create the situation that led to the death of their sons. I ordered their sons oversea. I consented to their sons being put in the most difficult parts of the battle line, where death was certain, as in the impenetrable difficulties of the forest of Argonne. Why should they weep upon my hand and call down the blessings of God upon me? Because they believe that their boys died for something that vastly transcends any of the immediate and palpable objects of the war. They believe, and they rightly believe, that their sons saved the liberty of the world. They believe that wrapped up with the liberty of the world is the continuous protection of that liberty by the concerted powers of all civilized people. They believe that this sacrifice was made in order that other sons should not be called upon for a similar gift–the gift of life, the gift of all that died–and if we did not see this thing through, if we fulfilled the dearest present wish of Germany and now dissociated ourselves from those alongside whom we fought in the war, would not something of the halo go away from the gun over the mantelpiece, or the sword? Would not the old uniform lose something of its significance? These men were crusaders. They were not going forth to prove the might of the United States. They were going forth to prove the might of justice and right, and all the world accepted them as crusaders, and their transcendent achievement has made all the world believe in America as it believes in no other nation organized in the modern world. There seems to me to stand between us and the rejection or qualification of this treaty the serried ranks of those boys in khaki, not only those boys who came home, but those dear ghosts that still deploy upon the fields of France.

My friends, on last Decoration Day, I went to a beautiful hillside near Paris, where was located the cemetery of Suresnes, a cemetery given over to the burial of the American dead. Behind me on the slopes was rank upon rank of living American soldiers, and lying before me upon the levels of the plain was rank upon rank of departed American soldiers. Right by the side of the stand where I spoke there was a little group of French women who had adopted those graves, had made themselves mothers of those dear ghosts by putting flowers every day upon those graves, taking them as their own sons, their own beloved, because they had died in the same cause–France was free and the world was free because America had come! I wish that some men in public life who are now opposing the settlement for which these men died could visit such a spot as that. I wish that the thought that comes out of those graves could penetrate their consciousness. I wish that they could feel the moral obligation that rests upon us not to go back on those boys, but to see the thing through, to see it through to the end and make good their redemption of the world. For nothing less depends upon this decision, nothing less than the liberation and salvation of the world.

You will say, “Is the league an absolute guaranty against war?” No; I do not know any absolute guaranty against the errors of human judgment or the violence of human passion, but I tell you this: With a cooling space of nine months for human passion, not much of it will keep hot. I had a couple of friends who were in the habit of losing their tempers, and when they lost their tempers they were in the habit of using very unparliamentary language. Some of their friends induced them to make a promise that they never swear inside the town limits. When the impulse next came upon them, they took a streetcar to go out of town to swear, and by the time they got out of town they did not want to swear. They came back convinced that they were just what they were, a couple of unspeakable fools, and the habit of getting angry and of swearing suffered great inroads upon it by that experience. Now, illustrating the great by the small, that is true of the passions of nations. It is true of the passions of men however you combine them. Give them space to cool off. I ask you this: If this is not an absolute insurance against war, do you want no insurance at all? Do you want nothing? Do you want not only no probability that war will not recur, but the probability that it will recur? The arrangements of justice do not stand of themselves, my fellow citizens. The arrangements of this treaty are just, but they need the support of the combined power of the great nations of the world. And they will have that support. Now that the mists of this great question have cleared away, I believe that men will see the truth, eye to eye and face to face. There is one thing that the American people always rise to and extend their hand to, and that is the truth of justice and of liberty and of peace. We have accepted that truth and we are going to be led by it, and it is going to lead us, and, through us the world, out into pastures of quietness and peace such as the world never dreamed of before.

Frederick Edwin Smith: 'I myself am a perfectly unrepentant member of the Tariff Reform League', maiden speech - 1906

11 March 1906, House of Commons, United Kingdom

FE Smith was a Conservative elected in Tory defeat by PM Lloyd George. He targeted the PM in this famous and eloquent speech, for exaggerating what would happen if tariffs were removed (slavery returning to Wales)

Mr. Speaker, sir,

in whatever section of the House hon. members may sit, or however profoundly they may differ from the economic views which underlie the remarks of the hon. member for Blackburn [Mr. Snowden], they will all, at least, desire to join in a tribute to the sincerity and ability displayed in the speech he has just delivered. Speaking for myself, I confess that I have been struck by the admissions which have been made by those hon. members who have spoken in favor of this resolution.

I venture to ask hon. members on the ministerial side, at the height of their triumph, to consider for a moment what is implicitly involved in their concessions. The hon. member for Blackburn has just told the House that sixty years of free trade have absolutely failed to ameliorate the condition of the working classes. That is a statement upon which the Opposition have reached some degree of agreement with the hon. member.

Where, however, we part company with him, is not upon the great and growing importance of still further ameliorating the condition of the working classes, but upon the feasibility of effectively assisting thirteen million people on the verge of starvation by a revision of railway rates, by unexplained dealings with mine-owners, or by loose, mischievous, and predatory proposals affecting those who happen to own land.

The hon. gentleman spoke with bitterness almost with contempt of persons possessing large incomes. I would entreat hon. members to make quite sure that they have cleared their minds of cant upon this question. When I hear vague and general proposals put forward at the expense of large incomes, without any precise explanation as to the principle upon which, or the extent to which those incomes are to be appropriated or tapped for the service of those who are less fortunate, I should like to make an elementary observation, that there are very few members in this House, whether in Opposition or on the benches opposite or below the gangway, whose principal business occupation it is not to provide themselves with as large an income as they honestly can.

If there is one profession to which that charge cannot be applied, it is, perhaps, the profession to which I myself belong. I, therefore, attach little importance to disparaging observations upon the rich, either from the hon. gentleman or from anyone else. Nor do I believe that the policy of unduly burdening the rich will be found on a just consideration of the action and interaction of economic forces to be of real advantage to the poor. Labour, after all, is immobile, whereas capital is always fugitive.

What other remedies has the hon. gentleman for the evils which he so clearly appreciates? He and his friends are alike barren in suggestion. Unemployment yearly grows chronic over a larger area, while a Parliament of Free Importers celebrates in academic resolutions the economic system which has depopulated rural England, has filled the emigrant steamers with fugitives from these happy shores, and has aggravated the evils of the most revolting slums in Christendom.

The progress of tonight's debate makes one profoundly conscious of the constructive shortcomings of the Cobdenism of today. I myself am a perfectly unrepentant member of the Tariff Reform League. I do not know how many members of the league there may be in the House; it may be that a division would show that they are not more numerous than the representatives of the Liberal League. I have, at least, the satisfaction of reflecting that, if tariff reform is found not to be a winning horse, I have not necessarily compromised my political future. I have in hon. and right hon. gentlemen opposite an admirable example of how to cut the painter of a similar league, with the maximum of political advancement, and the minimum of fidelity to a founder. Such a model of chivalrous loyalty is of great value to a young member of Parliament.

I suppose the resolution has been charitably designed to call attention to differences existing or supposed to exist in the Opposition. I should have thought that we might have looked to hon. gentlemen opposite for a little more charity. Hon. gentlemen opposite have had analogous difficulties. The question of when a tariff becomes protective is no doubt difficult, but not more so than the conundrum "When is a slave not a slave?" or the problem when, if ever, preferential treatment should be given to Roman Catholic schools.

All great political parties have skeletons in the cupboard, some with manacles on, and some with only their hands behind their backs. The quarrel I have with hon. gentlemen opposite is that they show an astonishing indelicacy in attempting to drag our skeleton into the open. Not satisfied with tomahawking our colleagues in the country, they ask the scanty remnant in the House to join in the scalp dance.

I do not think we can complain of the tone of a single speech which has been made from the opposite side of the House. We were particularly pleased with the remarks which fell from the hon. member for East Toxteth [Mr. Austin Taylor], for he entered the House, not like his new colleagues, on the crest of the wave, but rather by means of an opportune dive. Every one in the House will appreciate his presence, because there can be no greater compliment paid to the House by a member, than that he should be in our midst, when his heart is far away, and it must be clear to all who know the hon. member's scrupulous sense of honor, that his desire must be at the present moment to be amongst his constituents, who are understood to be at least as anxious to meet him.

The resolution before the House consists of two parts. In the first, we are asked to recognize the merits of what is described on an obscure prescriptive principle as free trade, and, in the second, we are invited to register the proposition that the country gave an unqualified verdict in its favor.

The word "unqualified" is in itself ambiguous, and may have more than one meaning. If we say that a man is an unqualified slave, we mean that his condition can be honestly described as completely servile, and not, merely, as semi-servile. If, on the other hand, we say that a man is an unqualified medical practitioner, or an unqualified Under-Secretary, we mean that he is not entitled to any particular respect, because he has not passed through the normal period of training, or preparation. It is, on the whole, probable that the word is used in the first sense in the present motion.

But, perhaps, it is necessary to distinguish even further. When hon. gentlemen opposite are successful at the polls, it is probably used in the first sense. In the comparatively few cases in which I and my friends were successful, it is used in the second. Birmingham, under circumstances which will never be effaced from the memory of hon. gentlemen, on whichever side of the House they sit, displayed the rare and beautiful quality of political constancy, and voted in all its divisions for tariff reform. [Laughter.] The result is sneered at, in the spirit of the laughter which we have just heard, as a triumph for Tammanyism, or, more profoundly analyzed by an eminent Nonconformist divine, as an instance of that mysterious dispensation, which occasionally permits the ungodly to triumph.

Hon. gentlemen opposite are, in fact, very much more successful controversialists than hon. members on this side of the House. It is far easier, if one is a master of scholarly irony, and of a charming literary style, to describe protection as a "stinking rotten carcass" than to discuss scientifically whether certain limited proposals are likely to prove protective in their incidence. It is far easier, if one has a strong stomach, to suggest to simple rustics, as the President of the Board of Trade [Mr. Lloyd-George] did, that, if the Tories came into power, they would introduce slavery on the hills of Wales.

Mr. Lloyd-George: I did not say that.

Mr. F.E. Smith: The right hon. gentleman would, no doubt, be extremely anxious to forget it, if he could. But, anticipating a temporary lapse of memory, I have in my hand the Manchester Guardian of January 16, 1906, which contains a report of his speech. The right hon. gentleman said:

"What would they say to introducing Chinamen at 1s. a day into the Welsh quarries? Slavery on the hills of Wales! Heaven forgive me for the suggestion!"

I have no means of judging how Heaven will deal with persons, who think it decent to make such suggestions. The distinction drawn by the right hon. gentleman is more worthy of the county court than of the Treasury Bench. I express a doubt whether any honest politician will ever acquit the right hon. gentleman of having deliberately given the impression to those he thus addressed that, if the Conservative party were returned, the hills of Wales would be polluted by conditions of industrial slavery.

The alternative construction is that the right hon. gentleman thought it worth his while, in addressing ignorant men [Cries of " No"] — In relation to the right hon. gentleman they are ignorant. Is that disputed? — to put before ignorant men an abstract and academic statement as to Chinese labor on the hills of Wales. If he did not mean his hearers to draw the false but natural inference, why make any reference to Chinese slavery as a conceivable prospect on the hills of Wales?

Was even Manchester won on the free trade issue? [Cries of " Yes."] I hear hon. gentlemen opposite say "Yes." I think they must be from the south of England. If Manchester was won on the free trade issue, perhaps hon. gentlemen will explain why repeated meetings were devoted to the less effective and attractive cry, and why specialist speakers like Mr. Creswell were brought down to discourse to the electors on the evils of Chinese slavery.

Mr. Speaker, I am not unaware that, owing to the eccentricities of municipal geography, Salford is not, technically, a part of Manchester, but a Salford member is near enough to wear the green turban of a pilgrimage to Cobden's Mecca. The hon. member for Salford [Mr. Hilaire Belloc] has stated that he was returned to the House, pledged to urge insistently on the Government, which profited by a false cry, the immediate repatriation of the coolies now on the Rand. Shall I be told that in that case the electors were giving an unqualified verdict for Cobdenism, or for what is called in this resolution free trade?

I do not think that the hon. and learned gentleman, who fought so strenuously in East Manchester [Mr. T. G. Horridge], will get up and tell the House that in his constituency the verdict was an unqualified one for free trade. I have some choice specimens of the bread that he threw on the waters in order, I suppose, to elicit this unqualified verdict.

He is reported, in the Manchester Guardian of 13th January, to have said that the Chinese had not been the means of bringing one single piece of white labor to South Africa. The hon. and learned gentleman appears to think that white labor is introduced in slabs. He said:

"You are voting, if you vote for Mr. Balfour, for the exclusion of white labor from South Africa"

— not for Cobdenism. The hon. gentleman continued: "Where was that thing going to stop?"

Mr. Speaker, this is precisely what we should like to know today. "Were they going to have Chinamen working in the mills at Bradford? Let the people of this division show by their votes" — what? Their devotion to free imports? No — "That they would have none of this wretched coolie labor in South Africa, and strike a blow for freedom tomorrow at the polls."

There is an interesting point of analogy between the hon. and learned gentleman and the "wretched coolies," of whom he has so low an opinion. Today he is in, and they are in, and it rather looks as if they are going to remain in as long as he and his friends.

It was in this way that the poorer districts of Manchester were captured — Cobden's Manchester. Did the hon. member, the Under-Secretary for the Colonies [Mr. Winston Churchill], use his great and growing local influence on behalf of what in his heart and conscience he knew to be the truth? I say "on behalf of what he knew to be the truth," because the hon. member is reported in the Manchester Guardian, as having said on June 12, 1903, that he was quite sure that supplies of native or Chinese labor would have to be obtained, and ought to be obtained for the mines in the interests of South Africa as a whole.

I will not weary the House with the whole of the Under-Secretary's peroration. I rather think it has been at the disposal of both parties in the House before undertaking a provincial tour.

Mr. Speaker, it is easy for the Under-Secretary to come to the House and state in the debate on the Address that he attempted to confine the issue at the election to the single point of Cobdenism, to the single merits of free trade, and that he had therefore no responsibility for an incendiary campaign. To that I reply, proximus ucalegon ardebat, which I may venture to construe proximus, in an adjacent constituency; ucalegon, the hon. and learned gentleman [Mr. T. G. Horridge]; ardebat, was letting off Chinese crackers.

The Under-Secretary did not then explain that the coolie processions, which his learned friend was so forward in organizing, were merely contributions to the problem of the unemployed, or that slavery was a terminological inexactitude. He profited by the storm of generous anger which these falsehoods, being believed, excited among the Lancashire democracy. He took what he could get, and thanked God for it. Mr. Speaker, the role of the receiver of stolen reputations is rather less respectable in the eyes of the man of spirit, than that of the principal thief.

I must, however, in candor admit that the question of cheap food was brought forward in many constituencies with great persistency and ingenuity. The hon. member for North Paddington [Mr. Chiozza Money], with an infinitely just appreciation of his own controversial limitations, relied chiefly on an intermittent exhibition of horse sausages as a witty, graceful, and truthful sally at the expense of the great German nation.

I do not understand what the Secretary of State for War means by saying that the Liberal Party has no ideas. The Liberal League always was a drag upon the holy wheel of progress. In Wales, apparently, they like it strong, and the President of the Board of Trade [Mr. Lloyd-George] informed one favored audience how large a part horse-flesh plays in the simple diet of the German home. The same speaker is never tired of maintaining that protection has tainted and corrupted German public life. I understand that any trade negotiations which may become necessary with Germany must be conducted through the right hon. gentleman. I am not sanguine of the outcome. If you have a difficult business transaction to carry through with a competitor, a prudent reflection would perhaps suggest that it is unwise to describe him publicly as a corrupt scoundrel, subsisting principally upon the flesh of horses.

I do not suppose that, now the fight is over, now that the strategy has been so brilliantly successful, away from the license of the platform, in the House, where their statements can be met and dealt with, hon. gentlemen will deny that the immediate effect of a 2s. duty on corn will be an illimitable development of colonial acreage suitable for the growth of wheat. [Cries of " Oh, oh," and loud derisive laughter.] I am astonished to hear sounds of derisive dissent, for I rather thought that at the time when Lord Rosebery, from whom I was quoting with verbal precision, made that prediction to frighten the English farmer from tariff reform, hon. gentlemen were in the same tabernacle, or furrow, or whatever was the momentary rendezvous of the Liberal party.

At the moment, hon. gentlemen will recollect, the other ship looked like sinking; there was a temporary slump in the "methods of barbarism " section. I venture to ask hon. gentlemen, to tell us in the candor of victory, whether any one really doubts that Canada would, in a few years, be able, under judicious stimulation, to supply the whole English consumption of wheat? [Cries of " No, no."] Sir Wilfrid Laurier says it can, and hon. gentlemen say it cannot. Perhaps the Under-Secretary for the Colonies [Mr. Winston Churchill], whom I am sorry not to see in his place, will put Sir Wilfrid Laurier on the black list with Lord Milner, [Mr. Churchill had recently stated in the House of Commons that he did not feel called upon to protect Lord Milner in the future.] and refuse to protect him any longer.

Does the House recollect La Fontaine's insect, the species is immaterial, which expired under the impression that it had afforded a lifelong protection to the lion, in whose carcass its life was spent?

There is hardly a Canadian statesman who does not go further than Sir Wilfrid Laurier in the direction of tariff reform. Earlier in the debate some reference was made to Mr. Fisher, and I desire to speak of Mr. Fisher's views and ability with great respect; it is not necessary to vilify any colonial politician with whom you disagree. But, in Canada, Mr. Fisher and Mr. Goldwin Smith are in a minority of two, and Canada has almost reached the stage one day, I hope, to be attained in England of exhibiting Free Importers in her museums.

An official report, ordered by the United States Government in 1902, found the district contributory to Winnipeg capable, within the lives of persons still living, of supplying enough wheat to provide for the consumption of the world. If this be true, or half true, what becomes of the nightmare of apprehension, which has made hon. gentlemen opposite so infinitely tedious for the last few years? If an illimitable supply of Canadian corn is coming in untaxed, what becomes of the little loaf? Once again, I recognize in hon. gentlemen opposite our electioneering masters, and I compliment them, if not on an unqualified verdict, at any rate, upon an unqualified inexactitude.

Some hon. gentleman ventured upon a more ambitious line of argument, and, in doing so, permanently enriched the economic knowledge of the country. We were told that it is not a disadvantage, but rather an advantage, that English factories should be removed abroad. Perhaps some consistent logician will shortly introduce a Bill offering bounties to capitalists who remove their works abroad. Let us by all means drive from the country everybody who has work to give, and then wave banners, like the hon. member for Merthyr Tydvil [Mr. Keir Hardie], in the "Right to Work Committee."

A fortnight ago hon. gentlemen opposite, calling in aid every resource of pathos, indulged in beautiful sentiments about the feeding of starving children. If the matter had been pressed to a division, I should have voted with them, but I should have done so without prejudice to my convictions as to the economic system which gave rise to the necessity. I should like to know how hon. gentlemen opposite explain the growing poverty of the poor. [Ministerial cries of " The War."]

Since this House of Commons met, we have heard a great deal about the war. I would suggest to hon. gentlemen, as a humble admirer of their methods, that, if they wish for targets in that matter, they ought to aim, not at the Opposition Benches, but at right hon. gentlemen who sit on the Front Government Bench.

Hon. gentle men opposite should remember that the present Secretary of State for War [Mr. Haldane] justly observed that the Boers waged the war, not only with the object of maintaining their independence, but also to undermine our authority in South Africa. And the present Attorney-General [Sir John Lawson Walton] said that the war could be shown to be as just, as it was inevitable, and to have been defensible on the grounds of freedom.

The circumstances of which you complain were anterior to the war. While the only panacea which hon. gentlemen opposite can suggest is the employment of broken-down artisans in planting trees, and constructing dams against the encroachment of the sea, the Unionist party need not be discouraged by their reverses at the polls. We will say of the goddess who presides over the polls, as Dryden said of Fortune in general:

I can enjoy her while she's kind;
But when she dances in the wind,
And shakes her wings, and will not stay,
I puff the prostitute away.

Was the verdict unqualified, having regard to the aggregate number of votes polled on behalf of Liberal members? The votes polled at the last election for Liberal, Labour, and Nationalist candidates were 3,300,000, while those polled for tariff reform candidates and other gentlemen sitting around me were 2,500,000. [Cries of " No ! Not true ! "] I gather that it is suggested that my figures are wrong. [Cries of " Yes."] They very probably are. I took them from the Liberal Magazine.

Perhaps the Minister of Education [Mr. Birrell, formerly Chairman of the Liberal Publications Department] was responsible for them, before he gave up the hecatomb line of business for the Christian toleration and charity department. I venture to suggest to hon. gentlemen opposite, that the figures I have quoted, so far as they are accurate, are not altogether discouraging to those who, for the first time after so many years of blind dogma, have challenged the verdict of the country on the issue of tariff reform.

What would hon. gentlemen who represent Ireland say, if it was suggested that they were Cobdenites? Will one of them get up to say that Cobdenism has brought prosperity or success to Ireland, or to guarantee that a representative Irish Parliament would not introduce a general tariff on foreign manufactured articles? The jury who gave this unqualified verdict are unaccountably silent. The spectacle of the Cobdenite hen cackling over a protectionist duckling of her own hatching in Ireland would add a partially compensating element of humor even to the prospect of Home Rule.

The Irish, and I may add, the Indian case for tariff reform were both once and for all conceded by the " infant community " admission of Adam Smith. Why do we force upon India and Ireland alike a system, of which every honest man knows that whether it be good or bad for us it denies to them the right to develop and mature their nascent industries upon the lines in which they themselves most earnestly believe, and in which every country in the world except Great Britain believes?

The answer is as short, as it is discreditable. We perpetuate this tyranny, in order that our Indian and Irish fellow-subjects may be forced to buy from our manufacturers articles which they would otherwise attempt to manufacture for themselves. In other words, we perpetuate in these two cases a compulsory and unilateral trade preference demonstrably the fruit of selfishness at the sacrifice of a voluntary and bilateral preference, based deep and strong upon mutual interest and mutual affection.

I have heard the majority on the other side of the House described as the pure fruit of the Cobdenite tree. I should rather say that they were begotten by Chinese slavery out of passive resistance, by a rogue sire out of a dam that roared. I read a short time ago that the Free Church Council claimed among its members as many as two hundred of hon. gentlemen opposite. [Ministerial cries of " Oh ! "]

The Free Church Council gave thanks publicly for the fact that Providence had inspired the electors with the desire and the discrimination to vote on the right side.

Mr. Speaker, I do not, more than another man, mind being cheated at cards. But I find it a little nauseating if my opponent then proceeds to ascribe his success to the favor of the Most High. What the future of this Parliament has in store for right hon. and hon. gentlemen opposite I do not know, but I hear that the Government propose to deny to the Colonial Conference of 1907 free discussion on the subject which the House is now debating, so as to prevent the statement of unpalatable truths.

I know that I am the insignificant representative of an insignificant numerical minority in this House, but I venture to warn the Government that the people of this country will neither forget nor forgive a party which, in the heyday of its triumph, denies to the infant Parliament of the Empire one jot or tittle of that ancient liberty of speech, which our predecessors in this House vindicated for themselves at the point of the sword.

Nick McKim: 'If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention', response to Charllotesville - 2017

15 August 2017, Canberra, Australia

I want to speak about the appalling acts of violence by Nazis in Charlottesville in the US on the weekend and to speak about the death of Ms Heather Heyer, a brave 32-year-old who lost her life while protesting against hatred. She was run down by a car driven by a Nazi. Many other people were injured.

What happened in Charlottesville on the weekend was an act of terrorism. This conclusion is absolutely inescapable. What's happened in the United States has been the clearest demonstration—if we needed one—of how easily hateful words can become hateful deeds. If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.

In response to Charlottesville, what did we get from Donald Trump? A mealy-mouthed statement about the violence that, in his words, 'many sides' had committed. Donald Trump has not only embraced but encouraged extremist elements within the US society. He's brought many of them, in fact, right into the heart of his administration. So perhaps his timid, mealy-mouthed response shouldn't surprise, but it is in any event an abject failure of leadership.

But tonight I warn that parts of our political class here in Australia are sleepwalking us in the same direction that the United States is going. Frighteningly, we risk the same consequences. In response to the atrocity at Charlottesville, what we got from our Prime Minister was radio silence—no emergency meetings of important-sounding committees, no condemnation of the attack at all, no urgent review of the terror warning, no flag-clad press conferences, not even actually a press release. If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.

Of course, our Prime Minister's political career has been defined by his coddling of and his compromising with extremists in his own party. He's allowed those people to set his government's agenda, and he's refused to hold them to account for their words and their actions. He didn't offer a syllable of protest when a member of his government, Mr Christensen, spoke at a Reclaim Australia rally. Reclaim Australia is a group that has at least one of its members facing terrorism charges. Nor did Mr Turnbull lift a finger to prevent Mr Christensen going onto a white supremacist podcast, where he laughed it up with anti-Semites and Nazis. This is despite the ASIO head, Duncan Lewis, warning about the threat posed by radical right-wing groups and telling a Senate committee that that threat is increasing. Mr Turnbull has done nothing to reprimand Mr Christensen. If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.

Mr Turnbull has allowed the ongoing torture and the deliberate causing of harm to people seeking asylum in our country on Manus Island and Nauru under the watch of his immigration minister, Mr Dutton. Our Prime Minister has appeased Mr Dutton—if you like, rewarded him—for the harm he's deliberately causing to some of our fellow human beings by giving him greatly increased ministerial powers and supporting him in the introduction of citizenship laws that passed through the House this week that have got throwbacks to the White Australia policy. At a time when racism in this country is on the rise, Mr Turnbull ignored multicultural Australia and the interests of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in this country to try and gut the protections against hate speech contained in the Racial Discrimination Act. If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.

But the extremism in this country is not contained to this building. There's also an increasingly radical element to the media, with obvious but frightening parallels to the United States. It's of course difficult to think of a more egregious example than Quadrant's Roger Franklin, who called for the ABC to be bombed. We shouldn't overlook the consistent racism of people like Andrew Bolt and people like his News Corp stablemates, Gary Johns and Jennifer Oriol, whose writing contains horrific elements that range from racist dog whistling to downright racist foghorning. Look at the disgraceful campaign against Yassmin Abdel-Magied, who was basically run out of the country for a seven-word Facebook post. She was run out of the country, I might add, by the very people who claim to support freedom of speech in Australia. This was a vindictive effort by some of the worst elements of this parliament and the press—notably, Prue MacSween, who said she'd like to run Yassmin over. If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.

Whilst Sky News has in its employ a good deal of credible journalists, by night that channel becomes a fiesta of the far right, where people who should be unemployable spew vitriol and whip up hatred against minorities in this country. Even triple j had a neo-Nazi on this week to argue his case. We shouldn't dismiss the threats that hate speech pose just because they come from mainstream outlets. Nor can false balance be used to justify giving airtime to Nazis. It's extraordinary that someone even needs to say this in our country today. What's happening in Australia, driven by elements in this parliament and in the media, is nothing less than the continued normalisation of extremism.

We cannot continue sleepwalking in this country until we see a repeat of Charlottesville on our own lands. We cannot allow the continued attacks on multicultural communities and on minority groups in this country and the continued setting of one group of Australians against another. We cannot allow our Prime Minister to continue to appease and give succour to extremists, whether they be in his own party or in the media or in the wider community. We cannot and we must not sit silently by as our rights are eroded and our harmony undermined.

Heather Heyer's last Facebook post before she was murdered in an act of terror by a Nazi in Charlottesville on the weekend was this:

If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.

Let's honour her memory. Let's pay attention, let's get outraged and let's fight back.

Jimmy Kimmel: 'The President is completely unhinged', Monologue to Trump supporters - 2017

16 August 2017, Hollywood, California, USA

I want to apologize in advance, because we had so much fun stuff planned for you tonight. We worked on it all day, we had Bachelor in Paradise, kids going back to school, there was a horrible new pair of Uggs we were gonna discuss—I even thought, “Hey, maybe we won’t talk about Donald Trump much tonight.” And then he opened his mouth and all manner of stupid came out. And I’m not joking when I say I would feel more comfortable if Cersei Lannister was running the country at this point.

This press conference today, I don’t know if you saw this, I know a lot of you are here on vacation. It started—it was supposed to be a conference about infrastructure, and it ended with our president making an angry and passionate defense of white supremacists. It was like if your book club meeting turned into a cockfight—it really was remarkable. I don’t know who decided it would be a good idea to send him out there to talk to reporters today, but whoever did obviously misread his state of mind and the mood in this country right now.

The president—I feel like I can say this with reasonable certainty—the president is completely unhinged. The wheels are off the wagon and hurtling towards the moon right now. I have some clips to show you, and before I do, I want to say, clips are one thing—they’re edited down, we choose them for content, but if you get a chance, go online and watch the whole press conference from beginning to end, it’s astonishing. The only thing I can compare it to is, remember when Mike Tyson bit Evander Holyfield’s ear off? And then he bit his other ear off? This was the presidential equivalent of that. Trump wasn’t even scheduled to take questions today. He was supposed to give a brief update on an executive order he signed to boost infrastructure, but reporters wanted to ask about his weak response to what happened in Charlottesville, and things went infra-struckin’ nuts from there.

Trump: Honestly, if the press were not fake, and if it was honest, the press would have said what I said was very nice, but unlike you and unlike—excuse me—unlike you and unlike the media, before I make a statement, I like to know the facts.

That’s right. He’s very careful about that. Like the fact that Ted Cruz’s father killed JFK and Obama was born in Kenya—he’s a stickler for the facts. OK, so when they got to his statement about putting the blame for the murder and the hate crimes in Charlottesville on “many sides,” not just the Nazis and Klan members—a statement he tried to soften yesterday by specifically denouncing those groups—not only did he go back to his original statement, he doubled down and actually defended their actions:

Trump: When you say the alt-right, define alt-right to me, you define it, go ahead.

Reporter: Well, I’m saying, as Senator—

Trump: No, define it for me, come on, let’s go, define it for me.

Reporter: Senator McCain defined them as the same groups behind—

Trump: Ok, what about the alt-left that came charging in—excuse me—what about the alt-left that came charging at the, as you say, the alt-right. Do they have any semblance of guilt? What—let me ask you this—what about the fact that they came charging, with clubs in their hands, swinging clubs, do they have any problem? I think they do.

I think we do. I think we might need an alt-president right now.

Trump: I will tell you something. I watched this very closely, much more closely than you people watched it, and you have, you had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. And nobody wants to say that, but I’ll say it right now.

Don’t say it right now, don’t ever. So he put blame on both sides, but he also had kind words for both sides:

Reporters: Neo-Nazis started this thing. They showed up in Charlottesville to protest—

Trump: Excuse me. Excuse me. They didn’t put themselves down as—and you had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides.

“Very fine people on both sides.” Let’s look at some of the very fine people on the Trump side there. This is from the rally on Friday:

Marchers: Jews will not replace us!

Yeah. So here’s the thing. If you’re with a group of people and they’re chanting things like “Jews will not replace us,” and you don’t immediately leave that group, you are not a “very fine person.” And by the way, today, David Duke, who is a very fine former Grand Wizard of the KKK tweeted, “Thank you, President Trump for your honesty and courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville.” When David Duke thanks you for your honesty and courage, something has gone awry.

And then after all this, after fifteen minutes of unprecedented insanity—and you really should watch the whole thing—our president, as he left the podium, said this:

Trump: Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you.

Reporter 1: What about the Nazis who support you?

Reporter 2: Do you plan to go to Charlottesville, Mr. President?

Jake Tapper: Good afternoon, and welcome to The Lead, and—wow, that was something else. Oh, he’s still talking, let’s stay listening.

Trump: I own a house in Charlottesville. Does everyone know I own a house in Charlottesville? Oh boy, it’s gonna be—it’s in Charlottesville, you’ll see.

Reporter 2: Is it near the winery or something?

Trump: It’s a—it is the winery. I mean I know a lot about Charlottesville. Charlottesville is a great place that’s been very badly hurt over the last couple of days. I own, I own actually one of the largest wineries in the United States, it’s in Charlottesville.

He can’t resist the plug, he just can’t! “My wine is fantastic, especially the white. There are some very fine bottles.” This is so crazy. You know, everyone’s asking if Trump’s gonna last four years. I’m wondering if any of us are going to last four years. I haven’t screamed at my TV this much since McDreamy died, I mean, really is the last time. The only person who’s happy right now is Sean Spicer, he’s doing backflips wherever the hell he is.

I’ve been thinking about this, and I want to speak to those of you who voted for Donald Trump. And first of all, I want to say I get it, I actually do. You were unhappy with the way things were going, you wanted someone to come in and shake things up, you didn’t want business as usual, nothing ever seems to get done, it’s always the same, these candidates make a lot of promises that go nowhere, it happens over and over again, and you’re sick of it. And so this guy shows up, riding down a golden escalator. He’s not part of the political establishment. In fact, he’s the opposite of that. He’s a billionaire—maybe—he’s written books, he’s not politically correct—he’s not even correct, usually—he talks tough, he wants to drain the swamp, sometimes he can be funny, he rips into his opponents in a way politicians never do, have never done before, and you thought, “You know what? This guy’s different, and that’s what I want: different. Let’s roll the dice, let’s get him in there, have him run the country like a business, cut the dead weight, toughen everyone up. Let’s shake the Etch-A-Sketch hard and start over.”

So you vote for him, you pick him over Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz and John Kasich, and a dozen other Republicans whose names we forgot, and ultimately he beats them. He strolls in, he beats all of these guys, these guys who’ve been in politics forever. And then he beats the ultimate political insider, Hillary Clinton. A woman who’s been running for office—a woman who ran for president of her mother’s uterus in the womb—forever. He beats her. Everyone said he couldn’t, everyone said he wouldn’t, but he did, and it’s exciting, cause this is your guy. You picked a horse at like 35 to one and somehow it paid off.

So now he’s the president. And it starts off ok, he meets with President Obama and they seem to have a nice conversation, then he moves into the White House. Right off the bat, he’s angry at the media for reporting that the crowd at his inauguration was smaller than he thought it was, which was weird, but not important really. And he claimed it stopped raining when he was speaking at his inaugural address, which, everyone could see it was raining, but okay, it was his first week, you give him a break.

So he gets in there, hires his daughter, hires his son-in-law, demands an investigation of voter fraud even though he won the election. He calls the Prime Minister of Australia and hangs up on him. He won’t shake Angela Merkel’s hand. He doesn’t know Frederick Douglass isn’t alive. He claims he can’t release his tax returns ’cause they’re under audit, then says he’s not gonna release them at all. He signs a ban on Muslims that he claims isn’t a ban on Muslims. He compliments the president of the Philippines for murdering drug addicts. Hours after a terror attack in London, he starts a fight with their mayor. After criticizing Obama for playing golf, he plays golf every weekend. He accidentally shares classified intelligence with the Russians. He tweets a typo at midnight, then wakes up and claims it was a secret message. He praises Jim Comey in October, calls him a coward in June, he fires him. He lashes out at his own attorney general for recusing himself from an investigation. He hires the Mooch. He fires the Mooch. He bans the transgendered in the military without telling anyone in the military he’s doing it. He plays chicken with Kim Jong-Un. And that’s just some of the list—if I went through all of it, it’d be longer than the menu at the Cheesecake Factory, it would be huge.

So he is, by every reasonable account, and I’m using his own words here, he is a total disaster. He screws up royally every day, sometimes two or three times a day. We can’t keep up with it. Things come out of nowhere. Every day, there’s something nuts. But you’ve been trying to ignore it, because you don’t want to admit to these smug, annoying liberals that they were right. That’s the last thing you want to do. But the truth is, deep down inside, you know you made a mistake. You know you picked the wrong guy. And it isn’t getting better, it’s getting worse.

So you can do one of two things. You can dig in like Chris Christie at a Hometown Buffet, or you can treat the situation like you’d put Star Wars wallpaper up in the kitchen. “All right, I got caught up, I was excited, I made a mistake. And now it needs to go.”  Well, now he does need to go. So it’s time for, especially you, who voted for him, to tell him to go. Please think about it. He doesn’t even want to be president! He’s miserable! But he won’t resign ’cause his ego is too big, he can’t do it.

So either we impeach him, which could happen, but it might not, or we do what he would do in this situation: We negotiate. We make a deal. And I know this is gonna sound nuts, but I have a deal, so hear me out on this. I think this could solve all our problems. We’re all gonna have to be on board with this.

Instead of president, we make Donald Trump king. OK? We make him the first King of America. Think about it: England has a queen. She lives in a palace. Everyone makes a big deal when she shows up. She has no power at all. In the morning they put a crown on her head, she stands there and waves, she goes back to bed, that’s it. If the queen were to walk out on her balcony and open her shirt, nothing over there would change. The queen could be completely bonkers, it would make no difference at all. She’d still be queen, it would still be fine. That’s what we need to do with Donald Trump: We need to set him up in a castle, maybe in Florida, lead him to the top, and then lock the door to that castle. Forever. Everyone can call him Your Highness. Maybe we give him a scepter that he can hold. He can sit there watching Fox and Friends, maybe chip golf balls out of the window of his tower. There’s no way he turns that deal down, if we tell him he’s going to be the king.

We gotta get creative here, because enough is enough. Desperate times call for desperate measures. And I’m asking you, the people who supported Donald Trump, to step in and help for the good of this country. Mike Pence is ready. He’s boring. He’s relatively sane. He looks like a neighbor you might borrow a lawnmower from—let’s get him in there before it’s too late. Let’s Make America Great Britain Again.

Trump (with a crown Photoshopped on his head): There has never been a greater division, just about, than what we have right now. The hatred, the animosity. I will bring people together. I’m gonna bring people together. You watch. We’re gonna bring people together.

Well, we are watching.

Maurice Williamson: 'Be ye not afraid', Big Gay Rainbow speech - 2013

16 April 2013, Parliament House, Wellington, New Zealand

I've had a reverend in my local electorate say that the 'gay onslaught will start the day this bill is passed.' So we are struggling to know what the gay onslaught will look like. We don't know if it will come down the Pakaranga highway as a series of troops or whether it will be a gas that flows the electorate and blocks us all in.

I also had a Catholic priest tell me that I was supporting an unnatural act. I found that interesting coming from someone who has taken an oath of celibacy for his whole life. Celibacy... I haven't done it so I don't know what it's about.

I also had a leader tell me I would burn in the fires of hell for eternity and that was a bad mistake because I've got a degree in physics. I used the thermodynamic laws of physics. I put in my body weight and my humidity and so on. I assumed the furnace to be at 5000 degrees and I will last for just on 2.1 seconds. It's hardly eternity. What do you think?

I also head some more disgusting claims about adoption. Well, I have got three fantastic adopted kids. I know how good adoption is, and I have found some of the claims just disgraceful. I found some of the bullying tactics really evil. I gave up being scared of bullies when I was at primary school.

However, a huge amount of the opposition was from moderates, from people who were concerned, who were seriously worried, about what this bill might do to the fabric of our society. I respect their concern. I respect their worry. They were worried about what it might do to their families and so on.

Let me repeat to them now that all we are doing with this bill is allowing two people who love each other to have that love recognised by way of marriage. That is all we are doing. We are not declaring nuclear war on a foreign State. We are not bringing a virus in that could wipe out our agricultural sector forever.

We are allowing two people who love each other to have that recognised, and I cannot see what is wrong with that for neither love nor money. I just cannot. I cannot understand why someone would be opposed. I understand why people do not like what it is that others do. That is fine. We are all in that category.

But I give a promise to those people who are opposed to this bill right now. I give you a watertight guaranteed promise.

The sun will still rise tomorrow. Your teenage daughter will still argue back to you as if she knows everything. Your mortgage will not grow. You will not have skin diseases or rashes or toads in your bed. The world will just carry on.

So do not make this into a big deal.

This bill is fantastic for the people it affects, but for the rest of us, life will go on.

Finally, can I say that one of the messages I had was this bill was the cause of our drought. Well, if any one you follow my Twitter account, you will see that in the Pakuranga electorate this morning, it was pouring with rain. We had the most enormous big gay rainbow across my electorate. It has to be a sign. If you are a believer, it is certainly a sign.

Can I finish, for all those who are concerned about this, with a quote from the bible. It is Deuteronomy. I thought Deuteronomy was a cat out of the musical 'Cats,' but never mind. The quote is Deuteronomy 1:29. 'Be ye not afraid.'"

Penny Wong: 'We love our children', Opposing plebiscite on same sex marriage - 2017

9 August 2017, Parliament House, Canberra, Australia

Penny Wong is an openly gayshadow minister for the Labor opposition, opposing the government's legislation to conduct a plebiscite on same sex marraige.

This motion is not about giving Australians a say. This motion is about weakness and division on that side of the Parliament. This motion is about a government so divided that they have to handball a hard decision to the community to make it because they can't make it in their party room. That is what this is about. No amount of words can hide from the fact that this is one big massive handball, because this is a government without a leader, utterly divided on this issue. That is what this vote is about.

The reality is this is all a stunt and everybody knows that. Now, I have a lot of regard for Senator Mathias Cormann. He is generally a very decent person to deal with and he is trying valiantly to create some logic over what is an utterly ridiculous position. It is a stunt and an expensive stunt. There are a lot of things you could do with $120 million: GP visits, more teachers. I am sure we can go through a whole range of things that $122 million can be spent on far better than a vote that is not going to be binding.

We talk a lot about democracy and Australians having their say. But Eric Abetz is not going to change his vote if this is successful. Senator [Cory] Bernardi is not going to change his position. It is like one big opinion survey to get over the fact the Liberal party room can't make a decision because they are so divided on the issue and because Malcolm Turnbull, regrettably, has not had the courage of his conviction. This is a vote whose sole aim is to stop the members of this Parliament being given a chance to do their job and vote. This is a vote because some in the Coalition can never countenance equality and they are never going to change their minds. They simply cannot countenance people like me and others being equal. Simple as that. They are not going to change their minds on this issue. If you just bring on a vote, we can save the country $120 million and frankly, put us all out of our misery of having to keep talking about this issue, because, frankly, the country has moved on.

I would also make this point – we do live in a parliamentary democracy. We are elected to do a job. Sometimes we do it well, sometimes we do it less well. We are elected to come here and vote, to make decisions. This country didn't have a plebiscite or a postal ballot on the Racial Discrimination Act, the Sex Discrimination Act, native title legislation, scrapping of the white Australia policy, whether women should get equal pay. I don't think Tony Abbott took to a people's vote cutting billions out of health and education. I don't think the government took to a people's vote whether corporations should get a big tax cut, but on this they want us to have our say. 

I want to comment on the comment by Senator Cormann this could be a unifying moment and that people could be respectful. I hope that people watching me in this debate would not think I am a shrinking violet. I know what a hard debate is like. But I tell you, have a read of some of the things which are said about us and our families and then come back here and tell us this is a unifying moment. The Australian Christian lobby described our children as the stolen generation. We love our children. And I object, as do every person who cares about children, and as do all those couples in this country, same-sex couples who have kids, to be told our children are a stolen generation. You talk about unifying moments? It is not a unifying moment. It is exposing our children to that kind of hatred.

I wouldn't mind so much if you were prepared to speak out on it. If the Prime Minister was prepared to stand up and say "that is wrong". Maybe he can stand up for some people who don't have a voice. Because we know the sort of debate that is already there. Let me say, for many children in same-sex couple families and for many young LGBTI kids, this ain't a respectful debate already.

Labor will be opposing this motion and we do so because of our long-standing position, which has been considered by the party, and our opposition to a plebiscite. What I would say to the crossbench is you made the right decision last time. Please make the same decision on this occasion.

Narendra Modi: 'We will be 100% successful', Madison Square Garden speech - 2014

28 September 2014, Madison Square Garden, New York City, New York, USA

Bharat Mata ki... [the crowd cheers and completes the slogan: “... Jai!”.

To my dear brothers and sisters settled in America. To all the distinguished and strong members of the American democracy present here, to all the brothers and sisters in India watching today’s event via Internet and TV, and those who couldn’t make it inside the event and are outside; I welcome and acknowledge them.

And a very, very happy Navratri to all of you. Navratri’s festival is a festival to worship power. It is a festival of purging evil. It is a festival to increase your dedication and strength.

On such a pious occasion, I’ve had the chance to meet all of you, and for that I’m very privileged. That my countrymen who having settled here, thousands of miles away from India, have increased India’s honor and pride. Because there was a time when India was known as the land of snakes and snake charmers.

If it wasn’t for you, if it wasn’t for India’s youth today, it wasn’t for what you did in the IT sector, then perhaps even today, India would have been perceived as the land of snakes and snake charmers.

A few years ago I was in Taiwan. Back then I wasn’t a chief minister and I had an interpreter with me. After a few days, we got acquainted and he asked me one day, “If you don’t mind, may I ask you a question?” I said, “Yes, I won’t mind, please go ahead.” He asked again, “Are you sure you won’t mind?” I said, “No, I won’t. Please go ahead.” He was still hesitant. And then he said, “I’ve heard that India is a land of black magic, snakes and snake charmers, that people play around with snakes; Is this all true?’

I replied, “No, not anymore. Our nation has developed a lot since then. Our ancestors used to play with the snake, but today we play with the mouse.” And our youth today move the world with their mouse!

All of you, through your behavior, through your heritage, through your capability, have earned a lot of respect in America. Through your medium, you’ve presented a unique, powerful image of India to not just America, but also to the people of the rest of the world who are settled in America, and in other parts of the world.

India recently had elections. Many of you didn’t get the opportunity to participate in the elections, but all of you probably didn’t sleep when the results were declared. Not a single one of you would have been able to sleep that night. The celebrations that followed in India were nothing compared to the celebrations by Indians around the world.

And many of you did participate in these elections. People gave their time. I couldn’t even meet them and say thanks. But today, I thank you all personally. I thank you that you came and stayed in the villages of India for months, and made a large contribution to a historic election victory in India.

After 30 years, for the first time, a government was formed with a full majority. These election results couldn’t be believed by any political pundit in India. All opinion-makers were unsuccessful in their opinions. The poor, uneducated people in the villages of India made the opinion for the opinion-makers. The poorest of the poor’s belief in Indian democracy and its democratic system was proven by this election result.

But to win the election is not the ultimate goal. It’s not a program to sit on the top. To win the election is a responsibility. And since I’ve taken charge, I haven’t taken a vacation for even 15 minutes. And I assure you, that the responsibility and the mandate you and the Indians have given me, we will never do anything that will make you look down.

Optimism and Hope

In our country today, there is an atmosphere of optimism and hope. The people of India want change. The way the world is going through various economic crises, every poor person looking at this asks, “How long will we live like this?” He wants change.

And my dear countrymen, I assure you, to change India’s economic situation, to create a competent public system, to increase every person’s quality of life, the government you’ve chosen will leave no stone unturned. I know this very well, that in the hearts of all of you sitting here, you have a lot of expectations from India. Even in the hearts of Indian citizens, there are a lot of expectations from the existing government. But, I can assure you that this government will be 100% successful in meeting your hopes and expectations.

When I was the CM [Chief Minister] of Gujarat, I said once publicly that whoever wants to come to India, come to India soon. Don’t be late! Back then, I didn’t know how I was to be responsible for making this actually happen. But look today: Every Indian settled in America for however long a time feels that one foot should be kept in India always.

My dear countrymen, all of the world is convinced that the 21st Century is the Asian century. Many world leaders have said so. Some say it’s the Asian century; some say it’s the Indian century. And it’s not just lightly said. India has the potential. It has the credibility. And now, it has a unique combination. Imagine, today India is the world’s youngest nation. And also the nation with the world’s most ancient civilization. It’s a unique combination! Sixty-five percent of the population today in India is less than 35 years of age. Any nation with that capability, with that kind of resource, whose fingers have the capability to connect to the world through computers, a nation whose youth through its capabilities is able to determine its future, that nation doesn’t need to look back.

There is no reason to be disappointed, friends! I can say with full confidence, say that this nation will move ahead at a very high speed, with the strength of its youth!

India has three things today which are not possessed by any other nation. Our responsibility is to recognize these three strengths and to present it to the world, to unite these strengths and mobilize them and move ahead.

When 1.25 billion people give their blessings, that is the blessings of God himself. The face of the public is the face of God.

Those three strengths that India can feel proud of, and on the basis of which India can move forward, are:

Number one, democracy: This is our biggest strength. I was watching when, during these elections, in the peak heat of May, a poor person with almost no clothes on would come to listen to the election speeches, with the hope that this is the democratic system through which he will be able to fulfill his dreams and hopes. In India, democracy isn’t just a convenience or system; it is a strong belief!

The second strength is the “demographic dividend.” A country which has greater than 65% of its population as youth, what more does such a nation need or require?

The third strength that we have is demand. The whole world’s eyes are on India, because they know that India is a nation of 1.25 billion people and therefore has big demand.

No other nation has these three strengths. And on the basis of these strengths, India will conquer new heights; this is my firm belief. America is the oldest democracy in the world; India is the world’s largest democracy. People from all over the world are settled in USA. And Indians are settled throughout the world!

Make Development a Mass Revolution

There is no corner of the world where you won’t find an Indian, and there is no city in USA where people of other parts of the world aren’t settled. These are such similar things! And that’s why, my brothers and sisters, India in the coming days—.

It has been my firm belief that governments aren’t able to drive progress. Governments are capable of issuing laws and schemes like building roads, hospitals, schools. They have budget limitations. There is progress only when there is public participation. By sad fate till now, governments have taken sole charge of development. This government will work with the 1.25 billion people of the nation for its progress.

We have another problem in the nation: If the nation wishes to progress, then it’s the responsibility of the government to push for good governance. And even you. You all have complaints, like, “Sir, such-and-such happened when I got off at the airport...” “We went to get a visa, but I don’t know...” I may live thousands of miles away from you, but I still know your pain! I know your pain. And that’s why, my brothers and sisters, it’s our job that we have to make development a mass revolution.

And when I talk about a mass revolution, we know the history of our nation. The British used to rule India. Before that, India was ruled by others. For around 1,200 years, India was a slave. But if you look at our history, at every point, there was some or the other great soul who came and sacrificed his life for the nation.

Take the names of all the Sikh gurus; all of them made such sacrifices for the nation. Such sacrifices! Look at Bhagat Singh’s sacrifice! Even today, the Sikh soldiers at our border are ready to lay down their lives for this nation. In every generation, great men have made sacrifices for this nation. But they would sacrifice themselves, be led to the gallows, or become a target of the bullets of foreign invaders, and perish. But then another would come and do something and perish again. And then a third would come. The numbers of those who died would never decrease. But each would come alone, fight with all he had for his nation, and die in the process. He would get his few friends and start the revolution.

But what did Mahatma Gandhi do? He made freedom a mass revolution! If someone wears khadi,[2] he wears it for freedom. If someone teaches a young kid, it’s also for freedom. If someone feeds somebody who’s hungry, it’s for freedom. If someone sweeps or cleans, it’s for freedom. He gave every person a direction and a mission based on his own capabilities. And every Indian started feeling that they too are fighting for freedom. This was the biggest contribution of Mahatma Gandhi. In the fight for freedom, to give to all of India and in every Indian’s heart, the pride of contributing to the nation; he gave a new strength to India’s revolution by doing this.

Brothers and sisters, freedom was a mass revolution; just like that, development has to be a mass revolution. India’s 1.25 billion people should feel that if they are teaching children, they are actually serving the nation and doing a job better than the PM of India. A public worker, while cleaning, does a good job. Why? Because he is working for the pride of his nation and feels that there shouldn’t be garbage and pollution around; and that is a service to the nation. A doctor who serves a poor, sick family does so with full dedication, because even that poor family’s life is valuable to the nation. So that doctor too is serving the nation.

My work is to make development a mass revolution and to make 1.25 billion citizen a part of this mass revolution. And whoever does whatever for work, does so for the nation and with the nation’s pride, and never does anything that will hurt the nation. This feeling awakens me!

And I’m confident that once more, that day will come when every Indian in every corner will feel that we have to take the country forward. And the strength of the 1.25 billion people is my strength and confidence on which we will make 21st Century the century for India.

Our Youth Will Lead the World

By 2020, there will be a global demand for a large workforce, because in other nations by then, they won’t have any youth, just old people. They won’t have anyone available for work! We will by then be able to supply a workforce for the whole world. Today there is a high demand in the nursing sector globally, so if we send trained nurses to work in those nations; it’s a big help for them. Today there is a high demand for teachers globally. It’s hard to find math and science teachers. Can’t India export a teacher? A country with such a quantity of youth, by increasing their quality and employing them worldwide, India has the capability of influencing and leading the world.

The world will have to acknowledge India’s youth talent, my brothers and sisters! All of you have done the same since you came to America, you’ve made such progress! And don’t we eat the same grain and drink the same water as you all? So if you can do it, why can’t we do it? Of course we can.

Look at the nation’s talent! In Ahmedabad, if you wish to travel one kilometer in an auto-rickshaw, it costs around 10 rupees. Look at India’s talent: We travelled 650 million kilometers to Mars! And it was all with indigenous technology, made in small workshops, which was assimilated to make this happen. In Ahmedabad, if you wish to travel one kilometer in an auto-rickshaw, it costs around 10 rupees. In our journey to Mars, we only spent 7 rupees per km! If this doesn’t show the talent and strength of our youth, then what does?

Not only this: India is the world’s first nation that succeeded in reaching Mars on its first attempt. So America and India are not only talking with each other on Earth, but also on Mars now. On Sept. 22, America reached Mars. On Sept. 24, India was there too. Not only this: India reached Mars at a budget less than a Hollywood film’s budget!

A nation with such strength and talent can achieve new heights, and for that purpose, we have taken up a task which is skill development. If our youth has the talent and has the opportunity to work, then it has the power to create a modern India.

So that’s why we have given skill development a priority. We have even created a separate ministry for it, since we formed the new government. And we are going to involve other nations and their experiences in this project too. We are going to invite them to join us in skill development. We are going to invite the world’s leading universities involved in skill development to join us. We want a specific kind of skill development, which produces two kinds of results: 1) skill development that creates people who can become job creators; 2) to create a highly skilled youth, which matches all expectations for such a job.

A few years back in India, we nationalized our banking system. This was done with the purpose that every poor and backward person should benefit from India’s large financial and economic system. But despite that, there are today more than 50% people in India who don’t have a bank account; and because of that, they are forced to take a loan from a money lender. And we all know how these loan sharks rob such poor people. My friends from the Bohra Samaj[3] sitting here know it well. The poor person, not being able to pay back the loan, comes to a point where under the heavy debt burden, he commits suicide.

Shouldn’t the nation’s money benefit these poor? Is the national currency only for the rich?

So that’s why we launched the “PM Jan Dhan” [public banking] plan as soon as we came into office. And I can say with great pride today: What’s the proof of a government working? In just two weeks, the bank employees went house to house to open bank accounts for around 40 million people. Have you ever thought a bank employee would be coming to your home? A postal worker comes, but a bank employee never does.

Things can change, people can be motivated! And results can be obtained. And we had said that you could open a bank account with a zero balance—but look at our citizens’ confidence and honesty, they deposited 15 million rupees in the bank, despite what Modi said! This is living proof of how even a poor person can participate and wants to participate in his country’s progress.

‘Make in India’

India has great potential. I have just launched another program and invite the world and all of you sitting here to join me. And my program is “Make in India.” If today you need human resources, effective governance, and low-cost production, then there is no better place than India. People would earlier come to make in India, but used to say, “There is so much red tape and bureaucracy.” So today, I tell you: Those days are over. Everything will be accessible online, with an online “Make in India” campaign, which will allow you to stay in touch with your government. You can now share your application, opinions, suggestions, and thoughts with the Indian government online. And the youth here who want to do something for their country, the older people who were the first Indian generation to settle in America, I request them to go to my website—mygov.in—and share their suggestions and thoughts with me there. Come join me!

We all wish to change India’s destiny. Using technology, we can display and preach our strength to everyone. And we can also use technology to make contributions to our progress.

The governments before us used to boast about the many, many laws they made. You know, that’s all you heard in the elections. I’ve started a different line of work. I’ve taken up the mandate of eliminating all the useless laws that were made in the past. If any common man would enter this web of old, archaic laws, he would never be able to get out. I’ve established a special committee of people who are tasked with removing such laws. And if even one law can be eliminated, I’ll be the happiest man. Good governance should be easy, effective, and should be for the benefit and progress of the people of the country.

You must have read in the newspapers that these days in Delhi, government officials get to work on time. Now tell me, is this news? But this was the news in our country, as if it was a big deal! Such news items would get me very upset. Isn’t going to work on time a responsibility? Is this news? But such was the situation.

I’ve started a program: a program of cleanliness. I know all of you must love it. People usually think a PM should do big things, and not be involved in such petty things as cleanliness, but I’ve decided to do this. I’ve decided to build toilets. Sometimes people ask me, “Modiji, tell us about a big vision.” I tell them, “Look brother, I’ve come here by selling tea.”

I am a very small man. a very common man. My childhood was an average one. And since I’m a common man, that’s why I enjoy doing common things for the common people. But since I’m common, I also wish to do great things for the common man.

Now look at the state of the Ganges. Don’t all of you here desire to take your parents one day to the Ganges for the holy bath? It’s everyone’s desire. But then when you read how polluted the Ganges is, you think otherwise. Tell me brothers, shouldn’t our Ganges be pure and clean? [The crowd cheers, “Yes!”] Shouldn’t every Indian participate in cleaning up the Ganges? [“Yes!”]. Won’t you people here help me clean the Ganges? [“Yes!”] You promise? [“Yes!”]

Brothers and sisters, we have spent tens of millions of rupees so far on this issue. When I took up this task, people used to chide me and say, “Modiji, why are you bothering with such unsolvable issues?” If my job was to only solve easy problems, people would never have elected me the PM of India. They have elected me to solve difficult problems. And I share the devotion my 1.25 billion people have towards the Ganges.

And cleaning the Ganges isn’t just a matter of devotion and faith. It’s fully related to the global climate and environmental crisis. More than that, if you look along the banks of the Ganges in states like Uttarakhand or Uttar Pradesh or Bihar or West Bengal, around 40% of the population there depends on the Mother Ganga for their livelihood. If the Ganges becomes clean and pure again, then those 40% people, which include farmers, small manufacturers, will benefit from it. So from that standpoint, it’s a big economic agenda.

Repay Our Debt to Mahatma Gandhi

In 2019, it will be 150 years to Mahatma Gandhi’s birth. Mahatma Gandhi gave us freedom. What did we give Mahatma Gandhi? Tell me, shouldn’t every Indian ask that question to himself or not? [“Yes!”] The Gandhi that gave us freedom, what did we give back to that Gandhi? If you happen to meet Gandhi one day, will you be able to answer him?

And that’s why, by 2019, let all Indians imagine that by then, [we will have] all the things that were dear to Gandhi. Which were, first, India’s freedom; and second, cleanliness. Gandhiji never compromised on cleanliness. He was very stubborn about it.

Again, Gandhiji gave us freedom. He freed Mother India from the chains of slavery. Can’t we free Mother India from pollution? In 2019, when we celebrate 150 years since Gandhiji’s birth, can’t we give a gift of a clean India for the feet of Gandhi? The great soul that gave us freedom, can’t we give that great soul this in return? [“Yes!”] Yes or no? [“Yes!”] If 1.25 billion people of India decide not to cause pollution, then no external force in the world can make India dirty and filthy.

In 2022, we will celebrate 75 years of Indian Independence. In Indian culture, a 75th birthday is a big deal and an occasion to celebrate. So how should we celebrate India’s 75th birthday? Why don’t we start preparing for it now?

I have a dream. And with your blessings, that dream will be fulfilled: that by 2022, when India celebrates 75 years of independence, by then there shouldn’t be a single family in India that doesn’t have its own home to live in. These are small things and issues I’m sharing with you, but it’s these small issues that are going to change India’s destiny. And let’s work together in changing its destiny.

Next year, 2015, is an important year. All of you here are non-resident Indians. Just like you, there was a M.K. Gandhi who was a non-resident Indian. Mahatma Gandhi came back to India in January 1915. January 2015 will be 100 years since Gandhi returned to India. The 8th and 9th of January in India are celebrated to commemorate non-resident Indians. Many of you come to participate in that. This time, in 2015, it will be celebrated in Ahmedabad, because it’s going to be a century since Mahatma Gandhi returned to India. Mahatma Gandhi went abroad, became a barrister, became financially affluent, but chose instead to live and work for India. So my prayer to all of you is to come and pay back the debt you owe to your motherland and country by helping it progress.

Addressed to Indians in America

There are some things I want to share with you. Since I’ve become a PM, there are a few things that I’ve come to hear, and keeping those in mind, I want to say a few things.

First, PIO [Person of Indian Origin] card holders have lots of visa issues. I’ve decided that all PIO card holders will be given lifetime visas. Happy? [“Yes!”]

Second, those non-resident Indians who stay in India for a long time have to go to the police station often. We have decided that they will no longer have to go to the police station. I’ve also come to hear that because of the difference in the PIO and OCI [Overseas Citizenship of India] schemes, there are many difficulties that Indians abroad have to face. Especially, when the spouse isn’t of Indian origin, there are added difficulties. If anyone gets married here, he’s in deep trouble! My friends, I have some good news for you. Within a few months, we will merge the PIO and OCI schemes into a single scheme. We will introduce a new, simplified scheme within a few months.

The third thing is.... U.S. Nationals who want to come work in India will get long-term visa.

Fourth, we will provide Electronic Travel Authorization and Visa on Arrival for American tourists coming to India, to make it easier for them. To facilitate these things quickly—because there is a large number of Indians in the USA who travel very frequently to India, causing a load on the small outsourcing visa services—we have decided to increase the number of outsourcing services, to make it easier and faster for you to obtain a visa.

So these are the things I’ve decided on, after long-term contemplation on your problems, before coming here.

For you to come here in such large numbers on the pious festival of Navrati—and I [looking at his watch] am talking and talking—I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

You’ve given me a lot of love. Perhaps... I’ve noticed at least since the past 15 years. perhaps no other Indian leader has received such affection. I’m very grateful to you all, and I promise to repay this debt. I will repay this debt by creating the India of your dreams. Let’s work together to serve Mother India. Let’s do what we can for our fellow Indians, for our country. The country where we were born and raised, the country that taught us to be what we are today. With this desire, I want to once again thank you all, from the bottom of my heart.

Bharat Mata Ki... [The crowd yells, “... Jai!’]
Bharat Mata Ki... [“... Jai!”]
Clench both your fists and repeat again! I’m the one on fasts ... not you!
Bharat Mata Ki... [“... Jai!”]
Bharat Mata Ki... [“... Jai!”]
Bharat Mata Ki... [“... Jai!”]

Thank you!

Translated from Hindi by Avneet Thapar. “Jai Hind.”

भारत माता की 'जय'!

अमेरिका में बसे हुए मेरे प्‍यारे भाईयों और बहनों!

आज इस समारोह में विशेष रूप से उपस्थित अमेरिका की राजनीति के सभी श्रेष्‍ठ महानुभाव और भारत में भी टीवी और इंटरनेट के माध्‍यम से कार्यक्रम को देख रहे सभी भाईयों-बहनों!

आज कई लोग इस सभागृह में पहुंच नहीं पाएं है, वो बाहर खड़े हैं, उनका भी मैं स्‍मरण करता हूं। आप सब को नवरात्रि की बहुत-बहुत शुभकामनाएं!

नवरात्रि का पर्व, ये शक्ति उपासना का पर्व है। नवरात्रि का पर्व शुद्धिकरण का पर्व है। नवरात्रि का पर्व समर्पण भाव को अधिक तीव्र बनाने का पर्व है। ऐसे पावन पर्व पर मुझे आप सबसे मिलने का अवसर मिला है, मैं बहुत भाग्‍यशाली हूं कि मेरे देशवासी, जिन्‍होंने हजारों मील दूर यहां रहकर के भारत की इज्‍जत को बढ़ाया है। भारत की आन-बान-शान को बढ़ाया है। वरना एक जमाना था, हमारे देश को सांप-सपेरों वालों का देश माना जाता था। अगर आप न होते, हमारे देश की युवा पीढ़ी न होती, Information Technology के क्षेत्र में आप लोगों ने जो कमाल करके दिखाया है, वो न होता तो आज भी दुनिया शायद हमें सांप-सपेरों का ही देश मानती।

मैं कुछ वर्ष पहले ताइवान गया, तब तो मैं मुख्‍यमंत्री नहीं था, प्रधानमंत्री नहीं था। एक Interpreter मेरे साथ था। कुछ दिन साथ रहने के बाद परिचय हो गया। एक दिन वो मुझे पूछता है कि आपको अगर बुरा न लगे तो मैं आपको एक सवाल पूछना चाहता हूं। मैंने कहा मुझे बुरा नहीं लगेगा, पूछिए क्‍या पूछना चाहते हैं। उसने बोला, आपको बुरा नहीं लगेगा न! मैंने कहा नहीं लगेगा, पूछिए क्‍या पूछना चाहते हैं। फिर भी वो झिझक रहा था। फिर उसने कहा कि मैंने सुना है कि भारत में तो काला जादू होता है, Black Magic होता है। सांप-सपेरे का देश है। लोग सांप को ही खेल करते रहते हैं, यही है क्‍या? मैंने कहा नहीं! हमारे देश का अब बहुत Devaluation हो गया है। मैंने कहा हमारे पूर्वज तो सांप के साथ खेलते थे, लेकिन हम Mouse के साथ खेलते हैं। हमारे नौजवान Mouse को घुमाते हैं, सारी दुनिया को डुलाते हैं।

आप सबने अपने व्‍यवहार के द्वारा, अपने संस्‍कारों के द्वारा, अपनी क्षमता के द्वारा अमेरिका के अंदर बहुत इज्‍जत कमाई है। आपके माध्‍यम से, न सिर्फ अमेरिका में, बल्कि अमेरिका में बसने वाले और देशों के लोगों के कारण भी, दुनिया में भी भारत के लिए एक सकारात्‍मक पहचान बनाने में आपकी बहुत बड़ी अहम भूमिका रही है। भारत में अभी-अभी चुनाव हुए। आपमें से बहुत लोग होंगे जिनको चुनाव में मतदान करने का सौभाग्‍य नहीं मिला। लेकिन आप सभी होंगे, जिस दिन नतीजे आए होंगे, आप सोये नहीं होंगे।

यहां एक भी व्‍यक्ति ऐसा नहीं होगा जो उस रात सो पाया होगा। जितना जश्‍न हिन्‍दुस्‍तान मना रहा था, उससे भी कई गुणा ज्‍यादा जश्‍न दुनिया भर में फैला हुआ भारतीय समाज मना रहा था। आपमें से बहुत सारे लोग भारत के चुनाव अभियान के साथ जुड़े थे, वो आए थे, अपना समय दिया था। मैं उनको मिल कर Thanks भी नहीं कह पाया था। आज, मैं सबको Thanks कहता हूं, रूबरू आकर कहता हूं कि आप आए, हिन्‍दुस्‍तान के गांवों में महीनों तक रहे। भारत के लोकतंत्र में एक अभूतपूर्व विजय की घटना घटी। इसे चरितार्थ करने में आपका योगदान रहा।

30 साल के बाद! आप लोग 30 साल के बाद से परिचित हैं। 30 साल के बाद भारत में पूर्ण बहुमत के साथ सरकार बनी। ये चुनाव नतीजे, हिन्‍दुस्‍तान के किसी Political पंडित के गले ये परिणाम नहीं उतरते थे। Opinion Makers भी Opinion बनाने में असफल रहे। हिन्‍दुस्‍तान के गांव, गरीब, अनपढ़ लोगों ने Opinion Maker का Opinion बना दिया। गरीब से गरीब व्‍यक्ति की भी लोकतंत्र में कितनी निष्‍ठा है, लोकतंत्र में उसकी कितनी अहमियत है, इसका उदाहरण, ये भारत के चुनाव ने बताया है। लेकिन चुनाव जीतना, वो सिर्फ पद ग्रहण नहीं होता। चुनाव जीतना, वो किसी कुर्सी पर विराजने का कार्यक्रम नहीं होता। चुनाव जीतना, एक जिम्‍मेदारी होती है।

जब से मैंने इस कार्य का दायित्‍व संभाला है, 15 मिनट भी vacation नहीं लिया। हम एक भी vacation नहीं लेंगे और मैं आपको विश्‍वास दिलाता हूं। हिंदुस्‍तान में आपने मुझे जो दायित्‍व दिया है, देशवासियों ने जो दायित्‍व दिया है, हम ऐसा कभी कुछ भी नहीं करेंगे, जिनके कारण आपको नीचा देखने की नौबत आए। हमारे देश में एक ऐसा उमंग और उत्‍साह का माहौल है। देश के लोग बदलाव चाहते हैं। देश बदलाव चाहता है। विश्‍व जिस प्रकार से आर्थिक गतिविधियों से आगे बढ़ रहा है, भारत का गरीब से गरीब व्‍यक्ति भी कहने लगा है, कब तक ऐसे जियेंगे। बदलाव चाहता है, और मेरे सारे देशवासियों, मैं आपको विश्‍वास दिलाता हूं, भारत की आर्थिक स्थिति को बदलने में, भारत के सामाजिक जीवन में सामर्थ देने में, भारत के व्‍यक्तिगत जीवन में quality of life के लिए आपने जिस सरकार को चुनाव है, वह कोई कमी रखेगी।

मैं इस बात को भली-भांति जानता हूं कि यहां बैठे हुए आप सब के मन में भी भारत के लिए वर्तमान सरकार से अनेक-अनेक अपेक्षाएं हैं। भारत के नागरिकों के मन में भी भारत के लिए वर्तमान सरकार से अनेक-अनेक अपेक्षाएं हैं। लेकिन मैं विश्‍वास से कह सकता हूं, ये सरकार अपने कार्यकाल के दरम्यान जन सामान्‍य की आशा-आकांक्षाओं को पूर्ण करने में शत-प्रतिशत सफल होगी।

जब मैं गुजरात का मुख्‍यमंत्री था तो एक बार मैंने एक कार्यक्रम में कहा था, मैंने कहा- जिसको हिंदुस्‍तान वापस आना है, जल्‍दी आइए, देर मत कीजिए।तब मुझे पता नहीं था कि ये दायित्‍व मेरे जिम्‍मे आपने वाला है लेकिन अब यहां रहने वाला हर व्‍यक्ति, कितने ही सालों से अमेरिका में बसा हो अब उसको भी लगने लगा है, एक पैर तो हिंदुस्‍तान में रखना ही चाहिए। मेरे प्‍यारे देशवासियों, सारा विश्‍व इस बात में convince है कि 21वीं सदी एशिया की सदी हैं। अमेरिका के भी गणमान्‍य राजनेताओं ने पब्लिकली ये कहा है कि 21वीं सदी, कोई कहता है एशिया की सदी है, कोई कहता है हिंदुस्‍तान की सदी है।

ऐसे ही नहीं कहा जाता है, भारत के पास वो सामर्थ्‍य है, वो संभावनाएं है, और अब संजोग भी है। इसलिए आप कल्‍पना कीजिए, आज हिंदुस्‍तान दुनिया का सबसे नौजवान देश है। दुनिया की सबसे पुरातन संस्‍कृति वाला देश और दुनिया का सबसे नौजवान देश। एक ऐसा अद्भुत मिलन है, ऐसा अद्भुत संयोग पैदा हुआ है, आज भारत में 65% population 35 age group से नीचे है। 35 से कम आयु के 65% जिस देश के पास नौजवान हो, जिसके पास ऐसी सामर्थ्‍यवान भुजाएं हों, जिसकी अंगुलियों में कंप्‍यूटर के माध्‍यम से दुनिया से जुड़ने की ताकत पड़ी हो, जिस देश का नौजवान अपने सामर्थ से अपना भविष्‍य बनाने के लिए कृत संकल्‍प हो, उस देश को पीछे मुड़कर के देखने की आवश्‍यकता नहीं है।

निराशा का कोई काम नहीं है साथियों। मैं बहुत विश्‍वास के साथ कहता हूं, ये देश बहुत तेज गति से आगे बढ़ने वाला है। इन नौजवानों के सामर्थ से आगे बढ़ने वाला है। भारत के पास तीन ऐसी चीजें हैं आज जो दुनिया के किसी भी देश के पास नहीं है। लेकिन हमारा दायित्‍व बनता है कि हमारी इन तीन शक्तियों को हम पहचानें। हमारी इन तीन शक्तियों को विश्‍व के सामने प्रस्‍तुत करें। हमारी इन तीन शक्तियों को एक-दूसरे के साथ जोड़कर के mobilise करें, तीव्र गति से आगे बढ़े।

वो तीन चीजें हैं, जब सवा सौ करोड़ देशवासियों ने आर्शीवाद दे दिया तो वो ईश्‍वर का ही आर्शीवाद होता है। जनता जनार्दन ईश्‍वर का रूप होता है। जनता जनार्दन वो भगवान का रूप होता है और जब जनता जनार्दन का आर्शीवाद होता है तो वह स्‍वयं परमात्‍मा का आर्शीवाद होता है। वो तीन चीजें, जिसके लिए भारत गर्व कर सकता है और जिसके आधार पर भारत आगे बढ़ सकता है।

एक डेमोक्रेसी, लोकतंत्र। ये हमारी सबसे बड़ी ताकत है, सबसे बड़ी पूंजी है। मैं देख रहा था, जब चुनाव अभियान, मई महीने की भयंकर गर्मी। बदन पर कपड़े ना हो, ऐसा गरीब व्‍यक्ति भी जनसभाओं में सुनने के लिए पहुंचाता था, उस आशा के साथ पहुंचता था। यही लोकतंत्र है, जिस लोकतंत्र के माध्‍यम से आशा आकाक्षाओं को पूर्व करता है। भारत में लोकतंत्र सिर्फ व्‍यवस्‍था नहीं है। भारत में लोकतंत्र आस्‍था है। आस्‍था है, विश्‍वास है।

दूसरी ताकत है Demographic Dividend. जिस देश के पास 35 से कम उम्र के 65 प्रतिशत नौजवान हों, इससे बड़ा इस देश को और क्‍या चाहिए! इससे बड़ी क्‍या सम्‍पदा हो सकती है! और तीसरी बात, demand. पूरा विश्‍व भारत की तरफ नज़र कर रहा है। क्‍यों! क्‍योंकि उसे मालूम है सवा सौ करोड़ का देश है, बहुत बड़ा बाजार है, बहुत ज्‍यादा demand है। ये तीनों चीज़ें किसी एक देश के पास हो, ऐसा आज दुनिया में कहीं नहीं है। इसी सामर्थ्‍य के आधार पर, इसी शक्ति के भरोसे भारत नई ऊंचाईयों को पार करेगा, ये मेरा विश्‍वास है।

अमेरिका दुनिया का सबसे पुराना लोकतंत्र है। भारत दुनिया का सबसे बड़ा लोकतंत्र है। सारी दुनिया के लोग अमेरिका में आ करके बसे हैं और भारत के लोग सारी दुनिया में जा करके बसे हैं। दुनिया का कोई कोना नहीं होगा जहां आपको भारतीय न मिले। अमेरिका का कोई शहर ऐसा नहीं है जहां दुनिया का कोई नागरिक न मिले। कितनी मिली-जुली बातें हैं! और इसलिए भाईयों-बहनों! भारत आने वाले दिनों में ……मेरा स्‍पष्‍ट मत रहा है कि सरकारें विकास नहीं कर पाती है। सरकार ज्‍यादा से ज्‍यादा अपनी स्‍कीम लागू कर सकती है। रोड बना लेगी, अस्‍पताल बना लेगी, स्‍कूल बना लेगी। उसकी बजट की सीमाएं होती हैं। विकास तब होता है जब जन-भागीदारी होती है। दुर्भाग्‍य से अब तक हमारे देश में सरकारों ने development का ठेका लिया था। हमने, development की जिम्‍मेदारी, मिलजुल कर सवा सौ करोड़ देशवासी और सरकार मिल करके करेंगे, ये रास्‍ता हमने अपनाया।

हमारे देश में एक और दिक्‍कत है.. और अगर देश को प्रगति करनी है तो सरकार का दायित्‍व बनता है- Good Governance. आप लोग भी.. आपकी क्‍या शिकायत होती होगी- यही न कि साहब, airport पर उतरे थे.. ऐसा हुआ; Visa लेने गए थे.. पता नहीं । भले ही मैं हज़ारों मील दूर रहता हूं आपसे, लेकिन आपके दर्द को भी भलीभांति जानता हूं। आपकी पीड़ा को मैं भलीभांति जानता हूं और इसलिए भाईयो-बहनों! हमारी ये कोशिश है कि हम विकास को एक जन-आंदोलन बनाएं और जब मैं विकास को जन-आंदोलन बनाने की बात कहता हूं….!

हम लोग आज़ादी के इतिहास से भलीभांति परिचित हैं। अंग्रेज़ लोग हमारे देश में शासन करते थे, उसके पहले कई लोगों ने हमारे देश पर शासन किया। करीब हज़ार 12 सौ साल तक हम गुलाम रहे, लेकिन अगर इतिहास देखेंगे, हर समय कोई न कोई ऐसा महापुरूष मिला है, जिसने देश के लिए बलिदान दिया है। आप सिक्‍ख परम्‍परा के सभी गुरूओं के नाम लो, एक के बाद एक! देश के लिए कितना बलिदान! भगत सिंह त‍क उस परम्‍परा को देखिए। आज भी सीमा पर हमारे सरदार देश के लिए जीने-मरने को तैयार होते हैं।

हर युग में, हर युग में महापुरूषों ने देश के लिए बलिदान दिए हैं। लेकिन! वो बलिदान देते थे, फांसी पर चढ़ जाते थे, विदेशियों की गोलियों का शिकार हो जाते थे। फिर कोई नया पैदा होता था, फिर वो कुछ करता था, फिर वो खत्‍म होता था, फिर कोई तीसरा पैदा होता था। मरने वालों की संख्‍या कम नहीं थी, लेकिन वो अकेला आता था देश के लिए जी-जान से लड़ जाता था, शहीद हो जाता था। पांच-पचास अपने यार-दोस्‍तों की टोली ले करके लड़ पड़ता था। लेकिन महात्‍मा गांधी जी ने क्‍या किया!

महात्‍मा गांधी जी ने आज़ादी को जन-आंदोलन बना दिया। कोई खादी पहनता है, तो आज़ादी के लिए पहनता है, कोई किसी बच्‍चे को पढ़ाता है तो आज़ादी के लिए पढ़ाता है, कोई किसी भूखे को खाना खिलाता है तो आज़ादी के लिए खिलाता है, कोई सफाई करता है, झाडू लगाता है तो आज़ादी के लिए। उन्‍होंने हर व्‍यक्ति को उसकी क्षमता के अनुसार, ये दिशा दी, ये सामर्थ्‍य दिया और हर हिन्‍दुस्‍तानी को लगने लगा कि मैं भी आज़ादी की लड़ाई लड़ रहा हूं। ये महात्‍मा गांधी का सबसे बड़ा contribution था।

आज़ादी की जंग में पूरे हिन्‍दुस्‍तान को, हर नागरिक को अपने काम के माध्‍यम से ही.. ये मैं देश के लिए करता हूं ये भाव जगा करके आज़ादी के आंदोलन को एक नई ताकत दी थी। भाईयों-बहनों! जिस प्रकार से आज़ादी का आंदोलन एक जन-आंदोलन था, वैसे ही विकास.. ये जन-आंदोलन बनना जरूरी है। हिन्‍दुस्‍तान के सवा सौ करोड़ देशवासियों को लगना चाहिए कि मैं बच्‍चों को अच्‍छी तरह शिक्षा देता हूं, मैं भले ही शिक्षक हूं, मैं देश की सेवा कर रहा हूं, मैं प्रधानमंत्री से भी अच्‍छा काम कर रहा हूं। एक सफाई करने वाला सफाई कर्मचारी होगा, वो अच्‍छी सफाई करता है, क्‍यों! क्योंकि मेरे देश के शान बान के लिए काम करता हूं। यहां गंदगी नहीं होनी चाहिए। यह देश सेवा होगी। एक डाक्‍टर भी गरीब परिवार के मरीज की सेवा करेगा, और सेवाभाव से करेगा। गरीब की जिंदगी भी मूल्‍यवान होती है और वह डॉक्‍टर भी राष्‍ट्रभक्ति के लिए काम करता है।

मेरी कोशिश यह है कि विकास एक जन आंदोलन बने। सवा सौ करोड़ देशवासी, ये विकास के जन आंदोलन का हिस्‍सा बने। और हर कोई, जो भी करता है, मैं देश के लिए करूं। मैं ऐसा कोई काम नहीं करूंगा, जिसके कारण मेरे देश को नुकसान हो, ये भाव मुझे जगाना है। और मुझे विश्‍वास है और मुझे विश्‍वास है कि फिर एक बार वो दिन आए। फिर एक बार माहौल बना है, हर कोने में हिन्दुस्तानी को लगता है कि अब देश को आगे ले जाना है। इसी सवा सौ करोड़ देशवासियों की इच्‍छाशक्ति, यही मेरा संबल है, यही मेरी ताकत है। इसी पर मेरा भरोसा है, जिसके कारण 21वीं सदी का नेतृत्‍व हिंदुस्‍तान के करने की पूरी संभावना है।

हमारे नौजवान, आने वाले दिनों में, आप लोग जो पढ़ते होंगे, उनको पता होगा, 2020 के समय आते-आते दुनिया में इतनी बड़ी मात्रा में वर्ककोर्स की जरूरत पड़ने वाली है। इनके यहां सब बूढ़े-बूढ़े सब लोग होंगे। दुनिया के पास काम करने वाले लोग नहीं होंगे। हम पूरी दुनिया को workforce supply कर पाएंगे। आज पूरे विश्‍व को नर्सिंग क्षेत्र में इतनी मांग है। अगर भारत से हम नर्सिंग की training करके दुनिया में भेजें तो उनके लिए बहुत बड़ा उपकार है। आज विश्‍व को teachers की मांग है। Maths और Science के teachers नहीं मिलते। क्‍या भारत ये teachers export नहीं कर सकता है। जिस देश के पास नौजवान हो, वह नौजवानों की क्षमता बढ़ा करके, विश्‍व में जिस प्रकार के manpower की जरूरत है, भारत अपनी युवा शक्ति के माध्‍यम से दुनिया में छा जाने की ताकत रखता है। दुनिया में जगह बनाने की ताकत रखता है।

भारत के नौजवानों का talent, दुनिया को उसका लोहा मानना पड़ेगा मेरे भाइयों-बहनों। आप लोगों ने यहां आकर के क्‍या कमाल नहीं किया है। आखिरकर जो अनाज खाकर के आप आए हैं, जो पानी पीकर के आप आए हैं, वही तो अनाज-पानी हम भी तो खा रहे हैं। अगर आप कर सकते हैं तो हम क्‍यों नहीं कर सकते? हम भी कर सकते हैं। talent देखिए इस देश की।

आपको अहमदाबाद में अगर एक किलोमीटर ऑटो रिक्‍शा में जाना है तो करीब 10 रुपये खर्च होते हैं। एक किलोमीटर अगर ऑटो रिक्‍शा में जाना है तो 10 रुपए खर्च होते हैं। भारत के talent का कमाल देखिए 650 million किलोमीटर, 65 करोड़ किलोमीटर Mars की यात्रा की हमने और सारा Indigenous, छोटे-छोटे कारखानों में पुर्जें बने थे, उसको इकट्ठा करके Mars का प्रयोग किया गया। अहमदाबाद में 1 किलोमीटर ऑटो रिक्‍शा में जाना है तो 10 रुपये लगते हैं, हमें मार्स पर पहुंचने में सिर्फ 7 रुपये लगे एक किलोमीटर पर। 7 रुपये में 1 किलोमीटर, यह हमारी talent नहीं है तो क्‍या है। यह हमारे नौजवानों का सामर्थ्‍य नहीं है तो क्‍या है? इतना ही नहीं, दुनिया में हिंदुस्‍तान पहला देश है जो पहले ही प्रयास में Mars पर पहुंचने में सफल हुआ है।

अमेरिका और भारत सिर्फ नीचे ही बात कर रहे हैं, ऐसा नहीं है, Mars में भी बात कर रहे हैं। 22 तारीख को अमेरिका पहुंचा, 24 को हम पहुंच गए और इतना ही नहीं, हॉलीवुड की फिल्‍म बनाने का जितना बजट होता है, उससे कम बजट में Mars पर पहुंच गया।

जिसके पास ये talent हो, जिस देश के पास ये सामर्थ्‍य हो, वह देश कई नई ऊंचाइयों को पार कर सकता है और उसको पार करने के लिए हमने एक बीड़ा उठाया है, Skill Development। हमारे नौजवानों में, उसके हाथ में हुनर हो, काम करने का अवसर हो, तो एक आधुनिक हिंदुस्‍तान खड़ा करने की उसकी ताकत होती है। इसलिए Skill Development पर हमने बल दिया है। नई सरकार बनने के बाद Skill Development के लिए अलग ministry बना दी गई है। और पूरी शक्ति और हम इसमें दुनिया के देशों के अनुभव को भी share करने वाले हैं। हम उनको निमंत्रण देने वाले है, आइए, Skill Development में हमारे साथ जुडि़ये। विश्‍व की Skill Universities हैं, आए, हमारे साथ जुड़े। हम इस प्रकार का Skill Development करना चाहते हैं, जिसमें हमारे दो इरादे है। एक वो Skill Development जो लोग तैयार होकर के Job Creator बने, दूसरा वो जिनकी Job Creator बनने की संभावना नहीं है, पर Job पाने के लिए पहली पसंद में पसंद हो जाए, उस प्रकार का वो नौजवान तैयार हो।

हमारे यहां कुछ वर्षों पहले बैंकों का राष्‍ट्रीयकरण हुआ था, Nationalisation हुआ था बैंकों का। इस इरादे से हुआ था कि गरीब से गरीब व्‍यक्ति को, भारत की जो मुख्‍य धारा है आर्थिक, बैंकिंग क्षेत्र, Financial क्षेत्र, उसका उन्‍हें सदभाग्‍य मिला और बहुत बड़ा राजनीतिक एजेंडा बन गया था। जो लोग 70’s के इतिहास के कालखंड को जानते होंगे, उनको मालूम होगा। देखिए हुआ क्‍या, इतनी सारी बैंक होने के बाद भी भारत में 50% परिवार ऐसे हैं, जिनका बेचारों को बैंक में खाता ही नहीं है और उसके कारण वह साहूकार से ब्‍याज पर पैसे लेता है। गरीब आदमी को साहूकार कैसे लूटता है, आपको मालूम है।

मेरे गौरा समाज के लोग यहां बैठे है, उनको पता है। क्‍या सरकारी खजाना गरीबों की भलाई के लिए नहीं उपयोग होना चाहिए? क्‍या सरकारी खजाना सिर्फ अमीरों के लिए होना चाहिए। इसलिए हमने एक आते ही प्रधानमंत्री जनधन योजना को लांच किया और मैं आज बड़े गर्व के साथ कहता हूं। सरकार चलती है, इसका सबूत क्‍या है? सिर्फ दो सप्‍ताह के भीतर भीतर 4 करोड़ परिवारों के खाते खोलने में ये बैंक वाले घर-घर गए थे। आपने कभी सोचा है कि बैंक वाला आपके घर आए। पोस्‍ट वाला तो आता है बेचारा, बैंक वाला कभी नहीं आता है। स्थिति बदली जा सकती है, लोगों को Motivate किया जा सकता है और परिणाम प्राप्‍त किया जा सकता है।

हमने यह कहा था कि zero-balance से account खोला जाएगा। लेकिन मेरे देश के नागरिकों की ईमानदारी देखिए! मोदी ने भले ही कहा कि जीरो बैलेंस से अकांउट खोलूंगा लेकिन इन नागरिकों ने 15 सौ करोड़ रुपया बैंक में जमा करवाया। अब मुद्दा इस बात का है कि गरीब से गरीब व्‍यक्ति भी देश के विकास में अपनी भागीदारी को किस प्रकार से करता है उसका ये जीता-जागता उदाहरण है। यही चीज़ें हैं जो बदलाव लाती है।

भारत के पास बहुत संभावनाएं हैं। मैंने अभी एक कार्यक्रम launch किया है और पूरे विश्‍व को निमंत्रण देता हूं, मैं यहां बैठे हुए आपको भी निमंत्रण देता हूं। मेरा निमंत्रण इस बात के लिए है- Make In India. अगर आज, आपको Human Recourses चाहिए, आपको Effective Governance चाहिए, अगर आपको Low Cost Production चाहिए तो भारत से बड़ी कोई अवसर की जगह नहीं हो सकती भाईयों! हम इस पर बल दे रहे हैं और ‘Make in India’ के लिए…..!

आखिरकार बाहर से आते समय लोग क्‍या कहते है.. कि साहब, आते तो हैं लेकिन सरकार में इतने धक्‍के खाने पड़ते हैं, इधर जाएं, उधर जाएं। अब मैं आपको कहता हूं- वो दिन चले गए। Online सारी व्‍यवस्‍था है और इस ‘Make In India’ Campaign से तो आप अपने मोबाइल फोन से सरकार के साथ जुड़ सकते हैं, यहां तक उसको Develop किया है। आप अपना application, अपनी बातें, अपनी requirement मोबाइल फोन के जरिए भारत सरकार को दे सकते है।

यहां जो नौजवान हैं, जो देश के लिए कुछ करना चाहते हैं, यहां जो पहली पीढ़ी के लोग हैं, जो बुर्जुग लोग हैं, जिनके मन में है कि देश के लिए कुछ करना है उनसे मैं आग्रह करता हूं कि मेरी एक Website है- www.mygov.in उसमें मैंने आपके सुझावों के लिए, आप अगर जुड़ना चाहते हैं, उसके लिए बहुत अच्‍छी व्‍यवस्‍था रखी है। मैं चाहता हूं कि आज इसको आज, यहां से जाने के बाद आप चेक किजिए और देखिए कि आप कहां मेरे साथ जुड़ सकते हैं। आप आईये। भारत का भाग्‍य बदलने के लिए हम सब की इच्‍छा है। आप उसके साथ जुडि़ए। Technology का सर्वाधिक प्रयोग करके हम अपनी ताकत का परिचय कर सकते हैं, हम अपनी ताकत का Contribution भी कर सकते हैं।

‘Make in India’, ease of business. हमारे यहां पहली जो सरकारें थी वे इस बात का गर्व करती थीं कि हमने ये कानून बनाया, हमने वो कानून बनाया, हमने फलाना कानून बनाया, हमने ढिकाना कानून बनाया। आपने पूरे चुनाव के Campaign में देखा होगा, यही बातें चलती थीं। हमने ये कानून बनाया, हमने वो कानून बनाया। मैंने काम दूसरा शुरू किया है। मैंने, कानून जितने पुराने हैं, बेकार कानून हैं, सबको खत्‍म करने का काम शुरू किया है। इतने out-dated कानून! ऐसा कानूनों का जाल! कोई भी व्‍यक्ति बेचारा एक बार अंदर गया तो बाहर नहीं निकल सकता। मैंने Specially Expert लोगों की कमेटी बनाई है, उनको कहा है- निकालो! अगर हर दिन एक कानून मैं खत्‍म कर सकता हू्ं तो मुझे सबसे ज्‍यादा आनंद होगा।

अगर Good Governance की बात मैं बात करता हूं तो Governance easy हो, effective हो और Governance जन-सामान्‍य की आशाओं, आकांक्षाओं की पूर्ति लिए होना चाहिए, उस पर हम बल दे रहे हैं।

आपने अखबारों में पढ़ा होगा। अखबारों में छपता था कि आजकल दिल्‍ली में सरकारी अफसर समय पर दफ्तर पहुंचते हैं। अब मुझे बताइये भइया, कि ये कोई न्‍यूज़ है क्‍या! लेकिन हमारे देश में ये खबर थी सरकारी अफसर समय पर दफ्तर जाते हैं। ये समाचार मुझे इतनी पीड़ा देते थे कि क्‍या समय पर जाना जिम्‍मेदारी नहीं है क्‍या? ये कोई खबर होती है क्‍या! लेकिन हालात ऐसे बने हुए थे।

इन दिनों मैंने एक अभियान चलाया है- सफाई का अभियान। मैं जानता हूं आपको, सबको ये प्रिय होगा। लोगों को लगेगा कि प्रधानमंत्री को तो कितने बड़े-बड़े काम करने चाहिए। ये काम कोई प्रधानमंत्री के करने के काम हैं! भाईयों मैं नहीं जानता कि करने वाले काम हैं या नहीं लेकिन मैंने तय किया है कि टॉयलेट बनाने का काम करुंगा।

कभी-कभी लोग मुझसे पूछते हैं- मोदी जी बड़ा vision बताओ ना! बड़ा vision! मैंने उनको कहा देखिए, मैं चाय बेचते-बेचते यहां आया हूं। मैं एक बहुत ही छोटा इंसान हूं। मैं बहुत ही सामान्य इंसान हूं। मेरा बचपन भी ऐसा ही बीता है और छोटा हूं इसलिए मेरा मन भी छोटे-छोटे काम करने में लगता है। छोटे-छोटे लोगों के लिए काम करने में मेरा मन लगता है। लेकिन छोटा हूं इसलिए छोटे-छोटे लोगों के लिए बड़े-बड़े काम करने का इरादा रखता हूं।

अब देखिए हमारे देश में, गंगा.. आप मुझे बताइए आप में से कोई ऐसा होगा जिसके मन की यह इच्छा नहीं होगी कि अपने मां-बाप को कभी न कभी तो गंगा स्नान के लिए ले जाए। हर एक के मन की यह इच्छा रही होगी। लेकिन जब पढ़ता है कि गंगा इतनी मैली हो गई है, उसको लगता है कि……!

आप मुझे बताइए भैया, हमारी गंगा शुद्ध होनी चाहिए कि नहीं होनी चाहिए गंगा? गंगा साफ होनी चाहिए कि नहीं होनी चाहिए। सफाई में सारे देशवासियों को मदद करनी चाहिए कि नहीं करनी चाहिए। आप लोगों के भी गंगा सफाई में मेरी मदद करनी है कि नहीं करनी है। पक्का करोगो?

भाइयों-बहनों, हजारों करोड़ रुपए अब तक खर्च हो चुके हैं। मैंने जब ये बात उठाई तो लोग कहते हैं मोदी जी आप अपने आप को मार रहे हो। ऐसी चीजों को क्यों हाथ लगाते हो? अगर सरल चीजों को हाथ लगाना होता तो लोग मुझे प्रधानमंत्री नहीं बनाते। मुश्किल कार्यों को तो हाथ लगाने के लिए ही तो मुझे बनाया है। मेरी सवा सौ करोड़ देशवासियों की गंगा के प्रति जो आस्था है, उस आस्था में मेरी भी आस्था है और गंगा की सफाई, ये आस्था से जुड़ा हुआ विषय तक सीमित नहीं है।

आज दुनिया में climate को लेकर जितनी चिंता होती है, पर्यावरण को लेकर के जितनी चिंता होती है, उस दृष्टि से भी गंगा की सफाई आवश्यक है। इतना ही नहीं, गंगा के किनारे की जो आवस्था है, उत्तराखंड हो, उत्तर प्रदेश है, बिहार हो, बंगाल हो। करीब-करीब भारत की 40 प्रतिशत जनसंख्या की आर्थिक गतिविधि ये गंगा मैया पर निर्भर है। अगर वह गंगा फिर से प्राणवान बनती है, सामर्थवान बनती है, तो मेरे सारे 40 प्रतिशत जनसंख्या वहां का किसान होगा, वहां का कारीगर होगा, उनकी जिदंगी में बदलाव आएगा और इसलिए यह एक बहुत बड़ा economic agenda भी है ये।

150 वर्ष हो रहे हैं महात्मा गांधी को, 2019 में महात्मा गांधी की 150वीं जयंती आ रही है। महात्मा गांधी ने हमें आजादी दी, हमने महात्मा गांधी क्या दिया। मुझे बताइए, ये सवाल हमें, हर हिंदुस्तानी को पूछना चाहिए कि नहीं पूछना चाहिए। जिस गांधी ने हमें आजादी दी, उस गांधी को हमने क्या दिया। कभी गांधी मिल जाएंगे, जब पूछेंगे तो जवाब कुछ दे पाएंगे क्या? और इसलिए 2019 में जब महात्मा गांधी के 150 वर्ष पूरे हों, तब पूरा भारत ये संकल्प करे, हम महात्मा गांधी को जो सबसे प्रिय जो चीजें थी, वह दें।

एक उनको प्रिय था हिंदुस्तान की आजादी और दूसरा उनको प्रिय था सफाई। गांधी जी स्वच्छता में कभी Compromise नहीं करते थे। बड़े अडिग रहते थे। गांधीजी ने हमें आजादी दिलाई थी। भारत मां को गुलामी की जंजीरों से मुक्त किया। क्या भारत मां को गंदगी से मुक्त करना, यह हमारी जिम्मेवारी है या नहीं है। क्या हम 2019 में जब गांधीजी की 150 वीं जयंती आए, तब महात्मा गांधी के चरणों में स्वच्छ-साफ हिंदुस्तान उनके चरणों में दे सकते हैं कि नहीं दे सकते हैं? जिस महापुरुष ने हमें आजादी दी, उस महापुरुष को हम ये दे सकते हैं कि नहीं दे सकते हैं? देना चाहिए कि नहीं देना चाहिए? ये जिम्मेदारी उठानी चाहिए कि नहीं उठानी चाहिए? अगर एक बार सवा सौ करोड़ देशवासी तय कर लें कि मैं गंदगी नहीं करुंगा, तो दुनिया की कोई ताकत नहीं है जो हिंदुस्तान को गंदा कर सकती है।

सन 2022 में हमारी आजादी के 75 साल होंगे। हमारे यहां जब 75 साल होते हैं जीवन में, बड़ा महत्व होता है। भारत की परंपरा में 75 साल बड़े महत्वपूर्ण माने जाते हैं। आजादी के 75 साल कैसे मनाएं जाए। अभी से तैयारी क्यों न करें? हमारे मन में एक सपना है और आप सबके आशीर्वाद से वह सपना पूरा होगा। मेरे मन में सपना है, मेरे मन में सपना है कि 2022 में, जब भारत के 75 साल हो तब तक हमारे देश में कोई परिवार ऐसा न हो, जिसके पास रहने के लिए अपना घर न हो। ये ऐसी छोटी-छोटी बातें मैं आपसे बता रहा हूं, लेकिन यही छोटी-छोटी बातें हैं, जो भारत का भाग्य बदलने वाली हैं और भाग्य बदलने के काम में हम सब मिल कर के जुड़े हैं।

2015, अगला वर्ष, बड़ा महत्वपूर्ण वर्ष है। आप सब प्रवासी भारतीय हैं, क्योंकि आप भारत से बाहर आए हैं, आपकी तरह एक M K Gandhi भी थे, मोहनदास करमचंद गांधी। ये भी प्रवासी भारतीय थे। महात्मा गांधी जनवरी 1915 में भारत वापस आए थे। जनवरी 2015 गांधी के भारत आने के 100 साल हो रहे हैं। 8-9 जनवरी, हिंदुस्तान में प्रवासी भारतीय दिवस मनाया जाता है। आप में से कई लोग उसमें आते हैं। इस बार प्रवासी भारतीय दिवस अहमदाबाद में होने वाला है। महात्मा गांधी के भारत आने को शताब्दी हो रही है, इसलिए हर प्रवासी भारतीय, जो कि हिंदुस्तान से बाहर गया है…… महात्मा गांधी, विदेश गए, बैरिस्टर बने, सुख-वैभव की पूरी संभावनाएं थीं। लेकिन देश के लिए जीना पसंद किया।

मैं आपसे अनुरोध करता हूं, उन सबसे प्रेरणा लेकर के आइए, हम भी अपने वतन का, अपनी मातृभूमि का, जिस धरती पर जन्म लिया, उसका कर्ज चुकाने के लिए अपनी तरफ से कोई न कोई प्रयास करें। अपने हिसाब से कोई न कोई कोशिश करें।

कुछ बातें मुझे कहनी हैं आप लोगों से , प्रधानमंत्री बनने के बाद कुछ बातें मेरे मन में आई हैं, उसको ध्यान में रखते हुए कुछ बातें मैं कहना चाहता हूं। एक तो PIO card holder जो हैं, उनकी visa की कुछ समस्याएं हैं। हमने निर्णय लिया है, PIO card holder को आजीवन visa दिया जाएगा। खुश?

उससे भी आगे जो लंबे समय तक हिंदुस्तान रहते हैं, उनको पुलिस थाने जाना पड़ता है। अब उनको पुलिस थाने जाना नहीं पड़ेगा। उसी प्रकार से मुझे बताया गया कि PIO तथा OCI स्कीमों के प्रावधानों में फर्क होने के कारण भारतीय मूल के लोगों को कठिनाइयों का सामना करना पड़ता है। विशेषकर Spouse के भारतीय मूल के न होने पर, कठिनाई और बढ़ जाती है। किसी ने यहां शादी कर ली बेचारा मुसीबत में फंस जाता है। मेरे साथियों मैं आपको खुशखबरी देता हूं कि कुछ ही महीनों में हम PIO तथा OCI schemes मिलाकर के एक बना देते हैं। एक नई scheme, जो कठिनाइयां हैं उनको दूर करके एक नई स्‍कीम आने वाले कुछ ही महीनों में, उसको हम तैयार कर देंगे।

तीसरी बात है.. अभी इंतजार कीजिए, मैं बोल रहा हूं। अमेरिका में हमारे दूतावास और consulate, भारत में पर्यटन की इच्‍छा से आने वाले US Nationals के लिए हम long term visa प्रदान करेंगे। चौथी बात, बिना किसी कठिनाई के अमेरिकी टूरिस्‍ट भारत की यात्रा कर सके, इसके लिए हमने ‘Electronic Travel authorisation’ तथा ‘Visa on arrival’ की सुविधा को बहुत ही निकट भविष्‍य में इसको भी लागू कर देंगे।

इन चीजों को सुनिश्चित करने के लिए सेवाओं की speed भी बढ़े। यहां भारतीयों की संख्या भी बहुत है। अब धन की इतनी मात्रा है कि हर छोटे-मोटे काम में लोग आते जाते रहते हैं। और जो outsourcing service है, वह कम पड़ जाती है, और इसलिए हमने कहा है कि जो outsourcing services हैं, उसका दायरा बढ़ाया जाएगा ताकि आपका ज्यादा समय न जाए, ज्यादा कठिनाइयां न हों और सरलता से आपको visa प्राप्त हो। यह साफ-साफ हमने कहा है। और मुझे विश्वास है कि आपकी जो कठिनाइयां मेरे ध्यान में आई थी, मैंने यहां से आने से पहले ही इस विषय में विस्तार से निर्णय करके इन चीजों को पूरा किया है।

आप इतनी बड़ी संख्या में आए, नवरात्रि के पवित्र त्योहार पर आए। और मैं भी बोलता ही चला जा रहा हूं। घड़ी की ओर नहीं देख रहा हूं।

मैं हृदय से आप सबका बहुत आभारी हूं। आपने मुझे बहुत प्यार दिया है। शायद, शायद मैं पिछले 15 साल से देख रहा हूं, शायद इतना प्यार हिन्दुस्तान के किसी राजनेता को नहीं मिला। मैं आपका बहुत आभारी हूं। मैं, मैं ये कर्ज चुकाउंगा। ये कर्ज चुकाउंगा। आपके सपनों का भारत बना करके कर्ज चुकाउंगा।

हम मिल कर के, हम सब मिल कर के भारत मां की सेवा करें, हमसे जो हो सके, हमारे देशवासियों के लिए करें। अपने वतन के लिए करें। जिस धरती पर जन्म लिया, जिस स्कूल में हमने शिक्षा पाई, इसमें जो हो सकता है, करें। इसी एक अपेक्षा के साथ फिर एक बार हृदय से बहुत बहुत धन्यवाद।

भारत माता की जय, भारत माता की जय, भारत माता की जय

बहुत बहुत धन्यवाद।

Al Franken: 'First you have to have the boots', Why I am a Democrat, Commonwealth Club -2017

6 July 2017 Commonwealth Club of California, California, USA

You know, in my book I write, I start off basically saying why I'm a Democrat, that's my first chapter. I'm a Democrat because I grew up in Minnesota, in Saint Louis Park, Minnesota, and my dad didn't graduate high school, he's was a printing salesman.

I grew up, my brother and I and my parents grew up in, we grew up in a two bedroom, one bathroom house. I felt like the luckiest kid in the world because - I was! I was growing up middle class, at the height of the middle class, in America, in Minnesota, in Saint Louis Park,

I thought I could do anything, and I think that people don't feel like that any more and for very good reason. I think that's why we lost this election because there's so many people angry about 40 years of that.

My wife, who I met my freshman year of college, she grew up very differently. Her father, a decorated World War II vet, died in a car accident when she was 18 months old. She had a three month old sister then and three older siblings, and her mom was 29 years old and widowed with five kids. She had a high school education and they barely made it.

They made it because of Social Security survivor benefits. Sometimes they were hungry, sometimes they turned the heat off in the winter, this is Portland, Maine, but they made it. Every one of the girls in the family, the four girls when to college. They went to college on combinations of scholarships and Pell Grants.

At that time a full Pell Grant paid 80% of a public college education, today it pays about 35%.

I know kids, one of the big issues in my first campaign was the affordability of college and it still continues. We fight, I mean, we fight on that, but we're not in the majority, and that's a lot to do with the states, how much the states kick in on public education.

They made it. When the baby, when Bootsie went to high school, my mother-in-law got a GI loan, $300 to go to college. She got three moreloans, graduated from college, became a grade school teacher and because she taught Title One kids, poor kids, she had all her loans forgiven. My brother-in-law went in the Coast Guard. Every member of that family became a contributing member of our society, middle class, and that's why I'm a Democrat.

They tell you in this country you have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, but first you have to have the boots.

The government gave my wife's family the boots, and that's why I'm a Democrat.

Mahmoud Abbas: 'It is a moment of truth and my people are waiting to hear the answer of the world', Address to United Nations - 2016

22 September 2016, United Nations, New York, USA

Speech delivered after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas submitted application to UN for Palestine to be recognised as a state.

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Question Palestine is intricately linked with the United Nations via the resolutions adopted by its various organs and agencies and via the essential and lauded role of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East - UNRWA - which embodies the international responsibility towards the plight of Palestine refugees, who are the victims of Al-Nakba (Catastrophe) that occurred in 1948. We aspire for and seek a greater and more effective role for the United Nations in working to achieve a just and comprehensive peace in our region that ensures the inalienable, legitimate national rights of the Palestinian people as defined by the resolutions of international legitimacy of the United Nations.

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

A year ago, at this same time, distinguished leaders in this hall addressed the stalled peace efforts in our region. Everyone had high hopes for a new round of final status negotiations, which had begun in early September in Washington under the direct auspices of President Barack Obama and with participation of the Quartet, and with Egyptian and Jordanian participation, to reach a peace agreement within one year. We entered those negotiations with open hearts and attentive ears and sincere intentions, and we were ready with our documents, papers and proposals. But the negotiations broke down just weeks after their launch.

After this, we did not give up and did not cease our efforts for initiatives and contacts. Over the past year we did not leave a door to be knocked or channel to be tested or path to be taken and we did not ignore any formal or informal party of influence and stature to be addressed. We positively considered the various ideas and proposals and initiatives presented from many countries and parties. But all of these sincere efforts and endeavors undertaken by international parties were repeatedly wrecked by the positions of the Israeli government, which quickly dashed the hopes raised by the launch of negotiations last September.

The core issue here is that the Israeli government refuses to commit to terms of reference for the negotiations that are based on international law and United Nations resolutions, and that it frantically continues to intensify building of settlements on the territory of the State of Palestine.

Settlement activities embody the core of the policy of colonial military occupation of the land of the Palestinian people and all of the brutality of aggression and racial discrimination against our people that this policy entails. This policy, which constitutes a breach of international humanitarian law and United Nations resolutions, is the primary cause for the failure of the peace process, the collapse of dozens of opportunities, and the burial of the great hopes that arose from the signing of the Declaration of Principles in 1993 between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel to achieve a just peace that would begin a new era for our region.

The reports of United Nations missions as well as by several Israeli institutions and civil societies convey a horrific picture about the size of the settlement campaign, which the Israeli government does not hesitate to boast about and which it continues to execute through the systematic confiscation of the Palestinian lands and the construction of thousands of new settlement units in various areas of the West Bank, particularly in East Jerusalem, and accelerated construction of the annexation Wall that is eating up large tracts of our land, dividing it into separate and isolated islands and cantons, destroying family life and communities and the livelihoods of tens of thousands of families. The occupying Power also continues to refuse permits for our people to build in Occupied East Jerusalem, at the same time that it intensifies its decades-long campaign of demolition and confiscation of homes, displacing Palestinian owners and residents under a multi-pronged policy of ethnic cleansing aimed at pushing them away from their ancestral homeland. In addition, orders have been issued to deport elected representatives from the city of Jerusalem. The occupying Power also continues to undertake excavations that threaten our holy places, and its military checkpoints prevent our citizens from getting access to their mosques and churches, and it continues to besiege the Holy City with a ring of settlements imposed to separate the Holy City from the rest of the Palestinian cities.

The occupation is racing against time to redraw the borders on our land according to what it wants and to impose a fait accompli on the ground that changes the realities and that is undermining the realistic potential for the existence of the State of Palestine.

At the same time, the occupying Power continues to impose its blockade on the Gaza Strip and to target Palestinian civilians by assassinations, air strikes and artillery shelling, persisting with its war of aggression of three years ago on Gaza, which resulted in massive destruction of homes, schools, hospitals, and mosques, and the thousands of martyrs and wounded.

The occupying Power also continues its incursions in areas of the Palestinian National Authority through raids, arrests and killings at the checkpoints. In recent years, the criminal actions of armed settler militias, who enjoy the special protection of the occupation army, has intensified with the perpetration of frequent attacks against our people, targeting their homes, schools, universities, mosques, fields, crops and trees. Despite our repeated warnings, the occupying Power has not acted to curb these attacks and we hold them fully responsible for the crimes of the settlers.

These are just a few examples of the policy of the Israeli colonial settlement occupation, and this policy is responsible for the continued failure of the successive international attempts to salvage the peace process.

This policy will destroy the chances of achieving a two-State solution upon which there is an international consensus, and here I caution aloud: This settlement policy threatens to also undermine the structure of the Palestinian National Authority and even end its existence.

In addition, we now face the imposition new conditions not previously raised, conditions that will transform the raging conflict in our inflamed region into a religious conflict and a threat to the future of a million and a half Christian and Muslim Palestinians, citizens of Israel, a matter which we reject and which is impossible for us to accept being dragged into.

All of these actions taken by Israel in our country are unilateral actions and are not based on any earlier agreements. Indeed, what we witness is a selective application of the agreements aimed at perpetuating the occupation. Israel reoccupied the cities of the West Bank by a unilateral action, and reestablished the civil and military occupation by a unilateral action, and it is the one that determines whether or not a Palestinian citizen has the right to reside in any part of the Palestinian Territory. And it is confiscating our land and our water and obstructing our movement as well as the movement of goods. And it is the one obstructing our whole destiny. All of this is unilateral.

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

In 1974, our deceased leader Yasser Arafat came to this hall and assured the Members of the General Assembly of our affirmative pursuit for peace, urging the United Nations to realize the inalienable national rights of the Palestinian people, stating: “Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand”.

In 1988, President Arafat again addressed the General Assembly, which convened in Geneva to hear him, where he submitted the Palestinian peace program adopted by the Palestine National Council at its session held that year in Algeria.

When we adopted this program, we were taking a painful and very difficult step for all of us, especially those, including myself, who were forced to leave their homes and their towns and villages, carrying only some of our belongings and our grief and our memories and the keys of our homes to the camps of exile and the Diaspora in the 1948 Al-Nakba, one of the worst operations of uprooting, destruction and removal of a vibrant and cohesive society that had been contributing in a pioneering and leading way in the cultural, educational and economic renaissance of the Arab Middle East.

Yet, because we believe in peace and because of our conviction in international legitimacy, and because we had the courage to make difficult decisions for our people, and in the absence of absolute justice, we decided to adopt the path of relative justice - justice that is possible and could correct part of the grave historical injustice committed against our people. Thus, we agreed to establish the State of Palestine on only 22% of the territory of historical Palestine - on all the Palestinian Territory occupied by Israel in 1967.

We, by taking that historic step, which was welcomed by the States of the world, made a major concession in order to achieve a historic compromise that would allow peace to be made in the land of peace.

In the years that followed - from the Madrid Conference and the Washington negotiations leading to the Oslo agreement, which was signed 18 years ago in the garden of the White House and was linked with the letters of mutual recognition between the PLO and Israel, we persevered and dealt positively and responsibly with all efforts aimed at the achievement of a lasting peace agreement. Yet, as we said earlier, every initiative and every conference and every new round of negotiations and every movement was shattered on the rock of the Israeli settlement expansion project.

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I confirm, on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, which will remain so until the end of the conflict in all its aspects and until the resolution of all final status issues, the following:

1. The goal of the Palestinian people is the realization of their inalienable national rights in their independent State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital, on all the land of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, which Israel occupied in the June 1967 war, in conformity with the resolutions of international legitimacy and with the achievement of a just and agreed upon solution to the Palestine refugee issue in accordance with resolution 194, as stipulated in the Arab Peace Initiative which presented the consensus Arab vision to resolve the core the Arab-Israeli conflict and to achieve a just and comprehensive peace. To this we adhere and this is what we are working to achieve. Achieving this desired peace also requires the release of political prisoners and detainees in Israeli prisons without delay.

2. The PLO and the Palestinian people adhere to the renouncement of violence and rejection and condemning of terrorism in all its forms, especially State terrorism, and adhere to all agreements signed between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel.

3. We adhere to the option of negotiating a lasting solution to the conflict in accordance with resolutions of international legitimacy. Here, I declare that the Palestine Liberation Organization is ready to return immediately to the negotiating table on the basis of the adopted terms of reference based on international legitimacy and a complete cessation of settlement activities.

4. Our people will continue their popular peaceful resistance to the Israeli occupation and its settlement and apartheid policies and its construction of the racist annexation Wall, and they receive support for their resistance, which is consistent with international humanitarian law and international conventions and has the support of peace activists from Israel and around the world, reflecting an impressive, inspiring and courageous example of the strength of this defenseless people, armed only with their dreams, courage, hope and slogans in the face of bullets, tanks, tear gas and bulldozers.

5. When we bring our plight and our case to this international podium, it is a confirmation of our reliance on the political and diplomatic option and is a confirmation that we do not undertake unilateral steps. Our efforts are not aimed at isolating Israel or de-legitimizing it; rather we want to gain legitimacy for the cause of the people of Palestine. We only aim to de-legitimize the settlement activities and the occupation and apartheid and the logic of ruthless force, and we believe that all the countries of the world stand with us in this regard.

I am here to say on behalf of the Palestinian people and the Palestine Liberation Organization: We extend our hands to the Israeli government and the Israeli people for peace-making. I say to them: Let us urgently build together a future for our children where they can enjoy freedom, security and prosperity. Let us build the bridges of dialogue instead of checkpoints and walls of separation, and build cooperative relations based on parity and equity between two neighboring States - Palestine and Israel - instead of policies of occupation, settlement, war and eliminating the other.

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Despite the unquestionable right of our people to self-determination and to the independence of our State as stipulated in international resolutions, we have accepted in the past few years to engage in what appeared to be a test of our worthiness, entitlement and eligibility. During the last two years our national authority has implemented a program to build our State institutions. Despite the extraordinary situation and the Israeli obstacles imposed, a serious extensive project was launched that has included the implementation of plans to enhance and advance the judiciary and the apparatus for maintenance of order and security, to develop the administrative, financial, and oversight systems, to upgrade the performance of institutions, and to enhance self-reliance to reduce the need for foreign aid. With the thankful support of Arab countries and donors from friendly countries, a number of large infrastructure projects have been implemented, focused on various aspects of service, with special attention to rural and marginalized areas.

In the midst of this massive national project, we have been strengthening what we seeking to be the features of our State: from the preservation of security for the citizen and public order; to the promotion of judicial authority and rule of law; to strengthening the role of women via legislation, laws and participation; to ensuring the protection of public freedoms and strengthening the role of civil society institutions; to institutionalizing rules and regulations for ensuring accountability and transparency in the work of our Ministries and departments; to entrenching the pillars of democracy as the basis for the Palestinian political life.

When division struck the unity of our homeland, people and institutions, we were determined to adopt dialogue for restoration of our unity. We succeeded months ago in achieving national reconciliation and we hope that its implementation will be accelerated in the coming weeks. The core pillar of this reconciliation was to turn to the people through legislative and presidential elections within a year, because the State we want will be a State characterized by the rule of law, democratic exercise and protection of the freedoms and equality of all citizens without any discrimination and the transfer of power through the ballot box.

The reports issued recently by the United Nations, the World Bank, the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee (AHLC) and the International Monetary Fund confirm and laud what has been accomplished, considering it a remarkable and unprecedented model. The consensus conclusion by the AHLC a few days ago here described what has been accomplished as a “remarkable international success story” and confirmed the readiness of the Palestinian people and their institutions for the immediate independence of the State of Palestine.

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is no longer possible to redress the issue of the blockage of the horizon of the peace talks with the same means and methods that have been repeatedly tried and proven unsuccessful over the past years. The crisis is far too deep to be neglected, and what is more dangerous are attempts to simply circumvent it or postpone its explosion.

It is neither possible, nor practical, nor acceptable to return to conducting business as usual, as if everything is fine. It is futile to go into negotiations without clear parameters and in the absence of credibility and a specific timetable. Negotiations will be meaningless as long as the occupation army on the ground continues to entrench its occupation, instead of rolling it back, and continues to change the demography of our country in order to create a new basis on which to alter the borders.

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a moment of truth and my people are waiting to hear the answer of the world. Will it allow Israel to continue its occupation, the only occupation in the world? Will it allow Israel to remain a State above the law and accountability? Will it allow Israel to continue rejecting the resolutions of the Security Council and the General Assembly of the United Nations and the International Court of Justice and the positions of the overwhelming majority of countries in the world?

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I come before you today from the Holy Land, the land of Palestine, the land of divine messages, ascension of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and the birthplace of Jesus Christ (peace be upon him), to speak on behalf of the Palestinian people in the homeland and in the the Diaspora, to say, after 63 years of suffering of the ongoing Nakba: Enough. It is time for the Palestinian people to gain their freedom and independence.

The time has come to end the suffering and the plight of millions of Palestine refugees in the homeland and the Diaspora, to end their displacement and to realize their rights, some of them forced to take refuge more than once in different places of the world.

At a time when the Arab peoples affirm their quest for democracy - the Arab Spring - the time is now for the Palestinian Spring, the time for independence.

The time has come for our men, women and children to live normal lives, for them to be able to sleep without waiting for the worst that the next day will bring; for mothers to be assured that their children will return home without fear of suffering killing, arrest or humiliation; for students to be able to go to their schools and universities without checkpoints obstructing them. The time has come for sick people to be able to reach hospitals normally, and for our farmers to be able to take care of their good land without fear of the occupation seizing the land and its water, which the wall prevents access to, or fear of the settlers, for whom settlements are being built on our land and who are uprooting and burning the olive trees that have existed for hundreds of years. The time has come for the thousands of prisoners to be released from the prisons to return to their families and their children to become a part of building their homeland, for the freedom of which they have sacrificed.

My people desire to exercise their right to enjoy a normal life like the rest of humanity. They believe what the great poet Mahmoud Darwish said: Standing here, staying here, permanent here, eternal here, and we have one goal, one, one: to be.

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We profoundly appreciate and value the positions of all States that have supported our struggle and our rights and recognized the State of Palestine following the Declaration of Independence in 1988, as well as the countries that have recently recognized the State of Palestine and those that have upgraded the level of Palestine’s representation in their capitals. I also salute the Secretary-General, who said a few days ago that the Palestinian State should have been established years ago.

Be assured that this support for our people is more valuable to them than you can imagine, for it makes them feel that someone is listening to their narrative and that their tragedy and the horrors of Al-Nakba and the occupation, from which they have so suffered, are not being ignored. And, it reinforces their hope that stems from the belief that justice is possible in this in this world. The loss of hope is the most ferocious enemy of peace and despair is the strongest ally of extremism.

I say: The time has come for my courageous and proud people, after decades of displacement and colonial occupation and ceaseless suffering, to live like other peoples of the earth, free in a sovereign and independent homeland.

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I would like to inform you that, before delivering this statement, I submitted, in my capacity as the President of the State of Palestine and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, to H.E. Mr. Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, an application for the admission of Palestine on the basis of the 4 June 1967 borders, with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital, as a full member of the United Nations.

I call upon Mr. Secretary-General to expedite transmittal of our request to the Security Council, and I call upon the distinguished members of the Security Council to vote in favor of our full membership. I also call upon the States that did not recognized the State of Palestine as yet to do so.

Excellencies,Ladies and Gentlemen,

The support of the countries of the world for our endeavor is a victory for truth,freedom, justice, law and international legitimacy, and it provides tremendous support for the peace option and enhances the chances of success of the negotiations.

Excellencies,Ladies and Gentlemen,

Your support for the establishment of the State of Palestine and for its admission to the United Nations as a full member is the greatest contribution to peacemaking in the Holy Land.

I thank you.
 

Melissa Hortman: “I hate to break up the 100 percent white male card game in the retiring room, but I think this is an important debate' - 2017

3 April 2017, Minnesota House, Minneapolis, USA

The previous day, DFL House Minority Melissa Hortman (Dem) noticed that several of her male colleagues were not on the floor listening to the speech and made a “call of the House”, a motion that brings members back to the floor. “I hate to break up the 100 percent white male card game in the retiring room, but I think this is an important debate.”

Rep. Bob Dettmer (R-Forest Lake): I'm a white male. I respect everybody. But I really believe the comments made by the Minosrity Leader were really not approprriate. Minority Leader, would you apologise to the body.

Hortman: Representative Dettmer, I'm glad you asked me to yield. I have no intention of apologizing. I am so tired of watching Rep. Susan Allen give an amazing speech, Rep. Peggy Flanagan give an amazing speech, watching Rep. Jamie Becker-Finn give an amazing speech, Rep. Rena Moran give the most heartfelt, incredible speech I've heard on this House floor, as long as I can remember, watching Rep. Ilhan Omar give an amazing speech... and looking around, to see, where are my colleagues? And I went in the retiring room, and I saw where a bunch of my colleagues were. And I'm really tired of watching women of color, in particular, being ignored. So, I'm not sorry.

Lyndon B. Johnson: 'We believe that all men are created equal. Yet many are denied equal treatment', remarks on signing of Civil Rights Act - 1964

2 July 1964, White House, Washington DC, USA

My fellow Americans: I am about to sign into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I want to take this occasion to talk to you about what that law means to every American. One hundred and eighty-eight years ago this week a small band of valiant men began a long struggle for freedom. They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor not only to found a nation, but to forge an ideal of freedom—not only for political independence, but for personal liberty—not only to eliminate foreign rule, but to establish the rule of justice in the affairs of men. That struggle was a turning point in our history. Today in far corners of distant continents, the ideals of those American patriots still shape the struggles of men who hunger for freedom. This is a proud triumph. Yet those who founded our country knew that freedom would be secure only if each generation fought to renew and enlarge its meaning. From the minutemen at Concord to the soldiers in Viet-Nam, each generation has been equal to that trust. Americans of every race and color have died in battle to protect our freedom. Americans of every race and color have worked to build a nation of widening opportunities. Now our generation of Americans has been called on to continue the unending search for justice within our own borders. We believe that all men are created equal. Yet many are denied equal treatment. We believe that all men have certain unalienable rights. Yet many Americans do not enjoy those rights. We believe that all men are entitled to the blessings of liberty. Yet millions are being deprived of those blessings—not because of their own failures, but because of the color of their skin. The reasons are deeply imbedded in history and tradition and the nature of man. We can understand—without rancor or hatred—how this all happened. But it cannot continue. Our Constitution, the foundation of our Republic, forbids it. The principles of our freedom forbid it. Morality forbids it. And the law I will sign tonight forbids it. That law is the product of months of the most careful debate and discussion. It was proposed more than one year ago by our late and beloved President John F. Kennedy. It received the bipartisan support of more than two-thirds of the Members of both the House and the Senate. An overwhelming majority of Republicans as well as Democrats voted for it. It has received the thoughtful support of tens of thousands of civic and religious leaders in all parts of this Nation. And it is supported by the great majority of the American people. The purpose of the law is simple. It does not restrict the freedom of any American, so long as he respects the rights of others. It does not give special treatment to any citizen. It does say the only limit to a man's hope for happiness, and for the future of his children, shall be his own ability. It does say that there are those who are equal before God shall now also be equal in the polling booths, in the classrooms, in the factories, and in hotels, restaurants, movie theaters, and other places that provide service to the public. I am taking steps to implement the law under my constitutional obligation to "take care that the laws are faithfully executed." First, I will send to the Senate my nomination of LeRoy Collins to be Director of the Community Relations Service. Governor Collins will bring the experience of a long career of distinguished public service to the task of helping communities solve problems of human relations through reason and commonsense. Second, I shall appoint an advisory committee of distinguished Americans to assist Governor Collins in his assignment. Third, I am sending Congress a request for supplemental appropriations to pay for necessary costs of implementing the law, and asking for immediate action. Fourth, already today in a meeting of my Cabinet this afternoon I directed the agencies of this Government to fully discharge the new responsibilities imposed upon them by the law and to do it without delay, and to keep me personally informed of their progress. Fifth, I am asking appropriate officials to meet with representative groups to promote greater understanding of the law and to achieve a spirit of compliance. We must not approach the observance and enforcement of this law in a vengeful spirit. Its purpose is not to punish. Its purpose is not to divide, but to end divisions—divisions which have all lasted too long. Its purpose is national, not regional. Its purpose is to promote a more abiding commitment to freedom, a more constant pursuit of justice, and a deeper respect for human dignity. We will achieve these goals because most Americans are law-abiding citizens who want to do what is right. This is why the Civil Rights Act relies first on voluntary compliance, then on the efforts of local communities and States to secure the rights of citizens. It provides for the national authority to step in only when others cannot or will not do the job. This Civil Rights Act is a challenge to all of us to go to work in our communities and our States, in our homes and in our hearts, to eliminate the last vestiges of injustice in our beloved country. So tonight I urge every public official, every religious leader, every business and professional man, every workingman, every housewife—I urge every American—to join in this effort to bring justice and hope to all our people—and to bring peace to our land. My fellow citizens, we have come now to a time of testing. We must not fail. Let us close the springs of racial poison. Let us pray for wise and understanding hearts. Let us lay aside irrelevant differences and make our Nation whole. Let us hasten that day when our unmeasured strength and our unbounded spirit will be free to do the great works ordained for this Nation by the just and wise God who is the Father of us all. Thank you and good night.