6 August 1945, Washington DC, USA
A short time ago, an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of T.N.T.
The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold. And the end is not yet. With this bomb we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed forces. In their present form these bombs are now in production and even more powerful forms are in development.
It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.
Before 1939, it was the accepted belief of scientists that it was theoretically possible to release atomic energy. But no one knew any practical method of doing it. By 1942, however, we knew that the Germans were working feverishly to find a way to add atomic energy to the other engines of war with which they hoped to enslave the world. But they failed. We may be grateful to Providence that the Germans got the V-1's and V-2's late and in limited quantities and even more grateful that they did not get the atomic bomb at all.
The battle of the laboratories held fateful risks for us as well as the battles of the air, land and sea, and we have now won the battle of the laboratories as we have won the other battles.
Beginning in 1940, before Pearl Harbor, scientific knowledge useful in war was pooled between the United States and Great Britain, and many priceless helps to our victories have come from that arrangement. Under that general policy the research on the atomic bomb was begun. With American and British scientists working together we entered the race of discovery against the Germans.
The United States had available the large number of scientists of distinction in the many needed areas of knowledge. It had the tremendous industrial and financial resources necessary for the project and they could be devoted to it without undue impairment of other vital war work. In the United States the laboratory work and the production plants, on which a substantial start had already been made, would be out of reach of enemy bombing, while at that time Britain was exposed to constant air attack and was still threatened with the possibility of invasion. For these reasons Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt agreed that it was wise to carry on the project here. We now have two great plants and many lesser works devoted to the production of atomic power. Employment during peak construction numbered 125,000 and over 65,000 individuals are even now engaged in operating the plants. Many have worked there for two and a half years. Few know what they have been producing. They see great quantities of material going in and they see nothing coming out of these plants, for the physical size of the explosive charge is exceedingly small. We have spent two billion dollars on the greatest scientific gamble in history-and won.
But the greatest marvel is not the size of the enterprise, its secrecy, nor its cost, but the achievement of scientific brains in putting together infinitely complex pieces of knowledge held by many men in different fields of science into a workable plan. And hardly less marvelous has been the capacity of industry to design, and of labor to operate, the machines and methods to do things never done before so that the brain child of many minds came forth in physical shape and performed as it was supposed to do. Both science and industry worked under the direction of the United States Army, which achieved a unique success in managing so diverse a problem in the advancement of knowledge in an amazingly short time. It is doubtful if such another combination could be got together in the world. What has been done is the greatest achievement of organized science in history. It was done under high pressure and without failure.
We are now prepared to destroy more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war.
It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued at Potsdam. Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth. Behind this air attack will follow sea and land forces in such numbers and power as they have not yet seen and with the fighting skill of which they are already well aware.
The Secretary of War, who has kept in personal touch with all phases of the project, will immediately make public a statement giving further details.
His statement will give facts concerning the sites at Oak Ridge near Knoxville, Tennessee, and at Richland near Pasco, Washington, and an installation near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Although the workers at the sites have been making materials to be used in producing the greatest destructive force in history they have not themselves been in danger beyond that of many other occupations, for the utmost care has been taken of their safety.
The fact that we can release atomic energy ushers in a new era in man's understanding of nature's forces. Atomic energy may in the future supplement the power that now comes from coal, oil, and falling water, but at present it cannot be produced on a basis to compete with them commercially. Before that comes there must be a long period of intensive research.
It has never been the habit of the scientists of this country or the policy of this Government to withhold from the world scientific knowledge. Normally, therefore, everything about the work with atomic energy would be made public.
But under present circumstances it is not intended to divulge the technical processes of production or all the military applications, pending further examination of possible methods of protecting us and the rest of the world from the danger of sudden destruction.
I shall recommend that the Congress of the United States consider promptly the establishment of an appropriate commission to control the production and use of atomic power within the United States. I shall give further consideration and make further recommendations to the Congress as to how atomic power can become a powerful and forceful influence towards the maintenance of world peace.
Ted Bailieu: 'We could quell these fires with tears', Black Saturday, National Day of Mourning - 2009
22 February 2009, Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne, Australia
To each and every one of you sharing this quiet. To those in all the towns about. To those in homes, in prayers, in pubs, in hospitals, in city streets. To those in the relief centers, the staging points. To those who have assembled here. To those buried in each other's arms, holding each other's hands, wiping each other's tears. To those trembling still. To the children in wonder. To those who answer the call from far and wide, in yellow, in green, in orange, in blue, in khaki, in white, and under the cross of red. And those still dusted in black.
To those pitching the canvas, those under it, those who have lost homes, lost livelihoods. To family and friends of those who have perished. But most of all, to those who have seen the flames. To those who have been blinded by the darkness of the day, smelled the smoke, heard the roar, and then in turn, been deafened by the silence.
As simple message is, we are as one. Victoria is as one. You have our hearts, you have our hands. We could quell these fires with tears, but tell your stories. Tell your stories and let's lift the sadness together. Victoria at its most ferocious is now at its finest.
Mr Baillieu is a guest on the 39th episode of the Speakola podcast.
Bill Clinton: 'I don't think there is a fancy way to say that I have sinned', Prayer Breakfast - 1998
11 September 1998, White House, Washington DC, USA
Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the White House and to this day to which Hillary and the vice president and I look forward so much every year.
This is always an important day for our country for the reasons that the vice president said. It is an unusual -- and I think unusually important -- day today.
I may not be quite as easy with my words today as I have been in years past, and I was up rather late last night thinking about and praying about what I ought to say today.
And rather unusually for me, I actually tried to write it down.
So if you will forgive me, I will do my best to say what it is I want to say to you. And I may have to take my glasses out to read my own writing.
First, I want to say to all of you that, as you might imagine, I have been on quite a journey these last few weeks to get to the end of this, to the rock bottom truth of where I am and where we all are.
I agree with those who have said that, in my first statement after I testified, I was not contrite enough.
I don't think there is a fancy way to say that I have sinned. It is important to me that everybody who has been hurt know that the sorrow I feel is genuine -- first and most important, my family, also my friends, my staff, my Cabinet, Monica Lewinsky and her family, and the American people.
I have asked all for their forgiveness. But I believe that to be forgiven, more than sorrow is required. At least two more things: First, genuine repentance, a determination to change and to repair breaches of my own making. I have repented.
Second, what my Bible calls a broken spirit. An understanding that I must have God's help to be the person that I want to be. A willingness to give the very forgiveness I seek.
A renunciation of the pride and the anger, which cloud judgment, lead people to excuse and compare and to blame and complain. Now, what does all this mean for me and for us?
First, I will instruct my lawyers to mount a vigorous defense using all available, appropriate arguments. But legal language must not obscure the fact that I have done wrong.
Second, I will continue on the path of repentance seeking pastoral support and those of other -- and that of other caring people so that they can hold me accountable for my own commitment.
Third, I will intensify my efforts to lead our country and the world toward peace and freedom, prosperity and harmony. And in the hope that with a broken spirit and a still strong heart, I can be used for greater good for we have many blessings and many challenges and so much work to do.
In this, I ask for your prayers and for your help in healing our nation. And though I cannot move beyond or forget this, indeed I must always keep it as a caution light in my life. It is very important that our nation move forward.
I am very grateful for the many, many people -- clergy and ordinary citizens alike -- who have written me with wise counsel. I am profoundly grateful for the support of so many Americans who somehow, through it all, seem to still know that I care about them a great deal, that I care about their problems and their dreams.
I am grateful for those who have stood by me and who say that, in this case and many others, the bounds of privacy have been excessively and unwisely invaded. That may be. Nevertheless, in this case, it may be a blessing because I still sinned. And if my repentance is genuine and sustained, and if I can then maintain both a broken spirit and a strong heart, then good can come of this for our country, as well as for me and my family.
(APPLAUSE)
The children of this country can learn in a profound way that integrity is important and selfishness is wrong. But God can change us and make us strong at the broken places.
I want to embody those lessons for the children of this country; for that little boy in Florida who came up to me and said that he wanted to grow up and be president and to be just like me. I want the parents of all the children in America to be able to say that to their children.
A couple of days ago when I was in Florida, a Jewish friend of mine gave me this liturgy book called "Gates of Repentance." And there was this incredible passage from a Yom Kippur liturgy, and I would like to read it to you.
Now is the time for turning. The leaves are beginning to turn from green to red to orange. The birds are beginning to turn and are heading once more toward the south. The animals are beginning to turn to storing their food for the winter.
For leaves, birds and animals, turning comes instinctively.
But for us, turning does not come so easily.
It takes an act of will for us to make a turn. It means breaking old habits. It means admitting that we have been wrong, and this is never easy.
It means losing face. It means starting all over again. And this is always painful. It means saying I am sorry. It means recognizing that we have the ability to change. These things are terribly hard to do.
But unless we turn, we will be trapped forever in yesterday's ways. Lord help us to turn from callousness to sensitivity, from hostility to love, from pettiness to purpose, from envy to contentment, from carelessness to discipline, from fear to faith.
Turn us around, oh, Lord, and bring us back toward you. Revive our lives as at the beginning. And turn us toward each other, Lord, for in isolation, there is no life.
I thank my friend for that and I thank you for being here. I ask you to share my prayer that God will search me and know my heart, try me and know my anxious thoughts, see if there is any hurtfulness in me and lead me toward a life everlasting. I ask that God give me a clean heart, let me walk by faith and not sight.
I ask once again to be able to love my neighbor -- all my neighbors -- as myself, to be an instrument of God's peace, to let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart, and in the end, the work of my hands, be pleasing.
This is what I wanted to say to you today. Thank you, God bless you.
David Lammy: 'If you lay down with dogs, you get fleas', Windrush debate - 2018
16 April 2018, Westminster, London, United Kingdom
The relationship between this country and the West Indies and the Caribbean is inextricable. The first British ships arrived in the Caribbean in 1623, and despite slavery and colonisation, 25,000 Caribbeans served in the first and second world wars alongside British troops.
When my parents and others of their generation arrived in this country under the British Nationality Act 1948, they arrived here as British citizens. It is inhumane and cruel for so many of that Windrush generation to have suffered for so long in this condition and for the Secretary of State to be making a statement on the issue only today.
Can the Secretary of State tell us how many people have been deported? She suggested earlier that she would ask the high commissioners, but it is her Department that has deported those people. She should know the number.
Can she tell the House how many have been detained as prisoners in their own country? Can she tell us how many have been denied healthcare under the national health service, how many have been denied pensions and how many have lost their jobs?
This is a day of national shame, and it has come about because of a ‘hostile environment’ and a policy that was begun under her Prime Minister. Let us call it as it is: if you lay down with dogs, you get fleas, and that is what has happened with the far-right rhetoric in this country.
Will the Secretary of State apologise properly? Will she explain how quickly the team will act to ensure that the thousands of British men and women who have been denied their rights in this country on her watch in the Home Office are satisfied?”
Emmanuel Macron: 'But closing the door to the world will not stop the evolution of the world', speech to US Congress - 2018
25 April 2018, Joint sitting of Congress, Washington DC, USA
It is an honour for France, for the French people, and for me, to be received in this sanctuary of democracy, where so much of the history of the United States has been written.
We are surrounded today with images, portraits and symbols, which remind us that France has participated – with heart in hand – in the story of this great nation. From the very beginning.
We have fought shoulder-to-shoulder many battles, starting with those that gave birth to the United States of America.
Since then, we have shared a common vision for humanity. Our two nations are rooted in the same soil, grounded in the same ideals of the American and French Revolutions. We have worked together for the universal ideals of liberty, tolerance, and equal rights.
And yet, this is also about our human, gutsy, personal bonds throughout history.
In 1778, the French philosopher Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin met in Paris. John Adams tells the story that after they had shaken hands, “they embraced each other by hugging one another in their arms and kissing each other’s cheeks”.
It can remind you of something!
And this morning, I stand under the protective gaze of La Fayette, right behind me. As a brave young man, he fought alongside George Washington and forged a tight relationship, fuelled by respect and affection. La Fayette used to call himself a “son of the United States”. And, in 1792, George Washington became a son of America and France, when our First Republic awarded citizenship to him.
Here we stand, in your beautiful capital city, whose plans were conceived by a French architect, Charles L’Enfant.
The miracle of the relationship between the United States and France is that we have never lost this special bond deeply rooted not only in our history, but also in our flesh.
This is why I invited President Donald Trump for the first Bastille Day Parade of my presidency, on 14 July last year. Today, President Trump’s decision to offer France his first state visit to Washington has a particular resonance, because it represents the continuity of our shared history, in a troubled world. And let me thank your president and the First Lady for this wonderful invitation to my wife and myself.
I am also very grateful and I would like also to thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for welcoming me on this occasion.
And I would like to especially thank you, Mr Speaker, for your invitation. I want you to know how much I appreciate this unique gesture. Thank you, sir!
The strength of our bonds is the source of our shared ideals.
This is what united us in the struggle against imperialism during the First World War. Then in the fight against Nazism during the Second World War. This is what united us again during the era of the Stalinist threat, and now we lean on that strength to fight against terrorist groups.
Let us for a moment transport ourselves to the past. Imagine, this is 4 July 1916. Back then, the United States had not entered World War I. And yet, a young American poet enlisted in the ranks of our Foreign Legion, because he loved France and he loved the cause of freedom.
This young American would fight and die on Independence Day at Belloy-en-Santerre, not far from Amiens, my home town, after having written these words: “I have a rendez-vous with death.” The name of this young American was Alan Seeger. A statue stands in his honour in Paris.
Since 1776, we, the American and French people, have had a rendez-vous with freedom.
And with it come sacrifices.
That is why we are very honoured by the presence today of Robert Jackson Ewald, a World War II veteran. Robert Jackson Ewald took part in the D-Day landing. He fought for our freedom, 74 years ago. Sir, on behalf of France: thank you. I bow to your courage and your devotion.
In recent years, our nations have suffered wrenching losses simply because of our values and our taste for freedom. Because these values are the very ones those terrorists precisely hate.
Tragically, on 11 September 2001, many Americans had an unexpected rendez-vous with death. Over the last five years, my country and Europe also experienced terrible terrorist attacks.
And we shall never forget these innocent victims, nor the incredible resilience of our people in the aftermath. It is a horrific price to pay for freedom, for democracy.
That is why we stand together in Syria and in the Sahel today, to fight together against these terrorist groups who seek to destroy everything for which we stand.
We have encountered countless rendez-vous with death, because we have this constant attachment to freedom and democracy. As emblazoned on the flags of the French revolutionaries, “Vivre libre ou mourir”. Live free or die.
Thankfully, freedom is also the source of all that is worth living for. Freedom is a call to think and to love. It is a call to our will. That is why, in times of peace, France and the United States were able to forge unbreakable bonds, from the grist of painful memories.
The most indestructible, the most powerful, the most definitive knot between us is the one that ties the true purpose of our peoples to advance, as Abraham Lincoln said, the “unfinished business” of democracy.
Indeed, our two societies have stood up to advance human rights for all. They have engaged in a continual dialogue to unpack this “unfinished business”.
In this Capitol Rotunda, the bust of Martin Luther King, assassinated 50 years ago, reminds us of the spiration of African-American leaders, artists, writers who have become part of our common heritage. We celebrate among them James Baldwin and Richard Wright, whom France hosted on our soil.
We have shared the history of civil rights. France’s Simone de Beauvoir became a respected figure in the movement for gender equality in America in the 70s. Women’s rights have long been a fundamental driver for our societies on both sides of the Atlantic. This explains why the #MeToo movement has recently had such a deep resonance in France.
Democracy is made of day-to-day conversations and mutual understanding between citizens.
It is easier and deeper when we have the ability to speak each other’s language. The heart of Francophonie also beats here, in the United States, from New Orleans to Seattle. I want this heart to beat even harder in American schools all across the country.
Democracy relies also on the faculty of freely describing the present and the capacity to invent the future. This is what culture brings.
Thousands of examples come to mind when we think of the exchanges between our cultures across the centuries. From Thomas Jefferson, who was Ambassador to France and built his house in Monticello based on a building he loved in Paris, to Hemingway’s novel Moveable Feast celebrating the capital city of France. From our great 19th-century French writer Chateaubriand bringing to the French people the dream of America’s open spaces, forests and mountains to Faulkner’s novels crafted in the deep South, but first read in France where they quickly gained literary praise. From jazz coming from Louisiana and the blues from Mississippi finding in France an enthusiastic public to the American fascination for Impressionists, and the French modern and contemporary arts. These exchanges are vibrant in so many fields, from cinema to fashion, from design to high cuisine, from sports to visual arts.
Medicine and scientific research as well as business and innovation are also a significant part of our shared journey. The United States is France’s first scientific partner.
Our economic ties create hundreds of thousands of jobs, on both sides of the Atlantic.
The story of France and the United States is a story of an endless dialogue made of common dreams, of a common struggle for dignity and progress. It is the best achievement of our democratic principles and values.
This is this very special relationship.
But we must remember the warning of President Theodore Roosevelt: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, handed on for them to do the same”.
This is an urgent reminder indeed. Because now, going beyond our bilateral ties, beyond our very special relationship, Europe and the United States must face together the global challenges of this century. And we cannot take for granted our transatlantic history and bonds. At the core, our Western values themselves are at risk.
We have to succeed facing these challenges, and we cannot succeed forgetting our principles and our history.
In fact, the 21st century has brought a series of new threats and new challenges that our ancestors might not ever have imagined.
Our strongest beliefs are challenged by the rise of a yet unknown new world order. Our societies are concerned about the future of their children.
All of us gathered here in this noble Chamber, we - elected officials - all share the responsibility to demonstrate that democracy remains the best answer to the questions and doubts that arise today.
Even if the foundations of our progress are disrupted, we must stand firmly and fight to make our principles prevail.
But we bear another responsibility inherited from our collective history. Today, the international community needs to step up our game and build the 21st century world order, based on the perennial principles we established together after World War II.
The rule of law, the fundamental values on which we secured peace for 70 years are now questioned by urgent issues that require our joint action.
Together with our international allies and partners, we are facing inequalities created by globalization; threats to the planet, our common good; attacks on democracies through the rise of illiberalism; and the destabilization of our international community by new powers and criminal states.
All these risks aggrieve our citizens.
Both in the United States and in Europe we are living in a time of anger and fear, because of these current global threats.
But these feelings do not build anything. You can play with fears and anger for a time. But they do not construct anything. Anger only freezes and weakens us. And, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt said during his first inaugural speech, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”.
Therefore, let me say we have two possible ways ahead.
We can choose isolationism, withdrawal, and nationalism. This is an option.
It can be tempting to us as a temporary remedy to our fears.
But closing the door to the world will not stop the evolution of the world. It will not douse, but inflame, the fears of our citizens. We have to keep our eyes wide open to the new risks, right in front of us.
I am convinced that if we decide to open our eyes wider, we will be stronger. We will overcome the dangers. We will not let the rampaging work of extreme nationalism shake a world full of hopes for greater prosperity.
It is a critical moment. If we do not act with urgency as a global community, I am convinced that the international institutions, including the United Nations and NATO, will no longer be able to exercise their mandate and stabilizing influence. We would then inevitably and severely undermine the liberal order we built after World War II.
Other powers, with a stronger strategy and ambition, will then fill the void we would leave empty.
Other powers will not hesitate one second to advocate their own model, to shape the 21st century world order.
Personally, if you ask me, I do not share the fascination for new strong powers, the abandonment of freedom, and the illusion of nationalism.
Therefore, distinguished members of Congress, let us push them aside, write our own history and birth the future we want.
We have to shape our common answers to the global threats that we are facing.
The only option then is to strengthen our cooperation. We can build the 21st century world order, based on a new breed of multilateralism. Based on a more effective, accountable, and results-oriented multilateralism. A strong multilateralism.
This requires more than ever the United States’ involvement, as your role was decisive for creating and safeguarding today’s free world. The United States invented this multilateralism. You are the one now who has to help to preserve and reinvent it.
This strong multilateralism will not outshine our national cultures and national identities. It is exactly the other way around. A strong multilateralism will allow our cultures and identities to be respected, to be protected and to flourish freely together.
Why? Because precisely our own culture is based, on both sides of the Atlantic, on this unique taste for freedom, on this unique attachment to liberty and peace. This strong multilateralism is the unique option compatible with our nations, our cultures, our identities.
With the US President, with the support of every 535 members of this joint session, representing the whole American nation, we can actively contribute together to building the 21st-century world order, for our people.
The United States and Europe have a historical role in this respect, because it is the only way to defend what we believe in, to promote our universal values, to express strongly that human rights, the rights of minorities and shared liberty are the true answer to the disorders of the world.
I believe in these rights and values.
I believe that against ignorance, we have education. Against inequalities, development. Against cynicism, trust and good faith. Against fanaticism, culture. Against disease and epidemics, medicine. Against the threats on the planet, science.
I believe in concrete action. I believe the solutions are in our hands.
I believe in the liberation of the individual, and in the freedom and responsibility of everyone to build their own lives and pursue happiness.
I believe in the power of intelligently-regulated market economies. We are experiencing the positive impact of our current economic globalization, with innovation, with job creation. We see, however, the abuses of globalized capitalism, and digital disruptions, which jeopardize the stability of our economies and democracies.
I believe facing these challenges requires the opposite of massive deregulation and extreme nationalism. Commercial war is not the proper answer to these evolutions. We need free and fair trade, for sure. A commercial war opposing allies is not consistent with our mission, with our history, with our current commitments to global security. At the end of the day, it would destroy jobs, increase prices, and the middle class will have to pay for it.
I believe we can build the right answers to legitimate concerns regarding trade imbalances, excesses and overcapacities, by negotiating through the World Trade Organization and building cooperative solutions. We wrote these rules; we should follow them.
I believe we can address our citizens’ concerns regarding privacy and personal data. The recent Facebook hearings highlighted the necessity to preserve our citizens’ digital rights, all over the world, and protect their confidence in today’s digital tools of life.
The European Union passed a new regulation for data protection. I believe the United States and the European Union should cooperate to find the right balance between innovation and ethics, and harness the best of today’s revolutions in digital data and artificial intelligence.
I believe facing inequalities should push us to improve policy coordination within the G20 to reduce financial speculation, and create mechanisms to protect the middle class’s interest, because our middle classes are the backbone of our democracies.
I believe in building a better future for our children, which requires offering them a planet that is still habitable in 25 years.
Some people think that securing current industries - and their jobs - is more urgent than transforming our economies to meet the global challenge of climate change. I hear these concerns, but we must find a smooth transition to a low-carbon economy.
Because what is the meaning of our life, really, if we work and live destroying the planet, while sacrificing the future of our children?
What is the meaning of our life if our decision, our conscious decision, is to reduce the opportunities for our children and grandchildren?
By polluting the oceans, not mitigating CO2 emissions and destroying our biodiversity, we are killing our planet. Let us face it: there is no Planet B.
On this issue it may happen we have a disagreement between the United States and France. It may happen, like in all families. But that is, for me, a short-term disagreement. In the long run, we will have to face the same realities. We are citizens of the same planet.
We have to face it. Beyond some short-term disagreements, we have to work together.
With business leaders and local communities, in order to make our planet great again, and create new jobs and new opportunities, while safeguarding our Earth. And I am sure one day, the United States will come back and join the Paris agreement. And I am sure we can work together to fulfil with you the ambitions of the Global Compact on the environment.
Ladies and gentlemen,
I believe in democracy.
Many of our forebears were slain for the cause of freedom and human rights. With the great inheritance they gave us comes the responsibility to continue their mission in this new century and to preserve the perennial values handed to us and assure that today’s unprecedented innovations in science and technology remain in the service of liberty and in the preservation of our planet for the next generations.
To protect our democracies, we have to fight against the ever-growing virus of fake news, which exposes our people to irrational fear and imaginary risks. And let me attribute the fair copyright for this expression “fake news”, especially here.
Without reason, without truth, there is no real democracy — because democracy is about true choices and rational decisions. The corruption of information is an attempt to corrode the very spirit of our democracies.
We also have to fight against the terrorist propaganda that spreads out its fanaticism on the Internet. It has a gripping influence on some of our citizens and children. I want this fight to be part of our bilateral commitment, and we discussed with your President the importance of such an agenda.
I want this fight to be part of the G7 agenda because it deeply harms our rights and shared values.
The terrorist threat is even more dangerous when it is combined with the nuclear proliferation threat. We must therefore be stricter than ever with countries seeking to acquire the nuclear bomb.
That is why France supports fully the United States in its efforts to bring Pyongyang, through sanctions and negotiations, towards denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.
As for Iran, our objective is clear: Iran shall never possess any nuclear weapons. Not now, not in 5 years, not in 10 years. Never.
But this policy should never lead us to war in the Middle East. We must ensure stability, and respect sovereignty of the nations, including that one of Iran, which represents a great civilization.
Let us not replicate past mistakes in the region. Let us not be naïve on one side. Let us not create new walls ourselves on the other side.
There is an existing framework – called the JCPOA - to control the nuclear activity of Iran. We signed it at the initiative of the United States. We signed it, both the United States and France. That is why we cannot say we should get rid of it like that. But it is true to say that this agreement may not address all concerns, very important concerns. This is true. But we should not abandon it without having something substantial, more substantial, instead. That is my position. That is why France will not leave the JCPOA, because we signed it.
Your President and your country will have to take, in the current days and weeks, their responsibilities regarding this issue.
What I want to do, and what we decided together with your President, is that we can work on a more comprehensive deal addressing all these concerns. That is why we have to work on this more comprehensive deal based – as discussed with President Trump yesterday – on four pillars: the substance of the existing agreement, especially if you decide to leave it, the post-2025 period, in order to be sure that we will never have any military nuclear activity for Iran, the containment of the military influence of the Iranian regime in the region, and the monitoring of ballistic activity.
I think these four pillars, the ones I addressed before the General Assembly of the United Nations last September, are the ones which cover the legitimate fears of the United States and our allies in the region.
I think we have to start working now on these four pillars to build this new, comprehensive framework and to be sure that, whatever the decision of the United States will be, we will not leave the floor to the absence of rules.
We will not leave the floor to these conflicts of power in the Middle East, we will not fuel ourselves in increasing tensions and potential war.
That is my position, and I think we can work together to build this comprehensive deal for the whole region, for our people, because I think it fairly addresses our concerns. That is my position.
And this containment – I mentioned it one of these pillars – Is necessary in Yemen, in Lebanon, in Iraq and also in Syria.
Building a sustainable peace in a united and inclusive Syria requires, indeed, that all powers in the region respect the sovereignty of its people, and the diversity of its communities.
In Syria, we work very closely together. After prohibited weapons were used against the population by the regime of Bashar al-Assad two weeks ago, the United States and France, together with the United Kingdom, acted to destroy chemical facilities and to restore the credibility of the international community.
This action was one of the best evidences of this strong multilateralism. And I want to pay a special tribute for our soldiers, because they did a great job in this region and on this occasion.
Beyond this action, we will together work for a humanitarian solution in the short term, on the ground, and contribute actively to a lasting political solution to put an end to this tragic conflict. And I think one of the very important decisions we took together with President Trump was precisely to include Syria in this large framework for the overall region, and to decide to work together on this political roadmap for Syria, for Syrian people, even after our war against ISIS.
In the Sahel, where terrorist networks span a footprint as large as Europe, French and American soldiers are confronting the same enemy and risking their lives together.
Here, I would like to pay special tribute to the American soldiers who fell this past fall in the region, and to their French comrades who lost their lives early this year in Mali. Better than anyone, I think, our troops know what the alliance and friendship between our countries means.
I believe, facing all these challenges, all these fears, all this anger, our duty, our destiny is to work together and to build this new, strong multilateralism.
Distinguished members of Congress,
Ladies and gentlemen,
On 25 April 1960, General de Gaulle affirmed in this Chamber that nothing was as important to France as “the reason, the resolution, the friendship of the great people of the United States”.
Fifty-eight years later, to this very day, I come here to convey the warmest feelings of the French nation, and to tell you that our people cherish the friendship of the American people, with as much intensity as ever.
The United States and the American people are an essential part of our confidence in the future, in democracy, in what women and men can accomplish in this world when we are driven by high ideals and an unbreakable trust in humanity and progress.
Today the call we hear is the call of history. This is a time of determination and courage. What we cherish is at stake. What we love is in danger. We have no choice but to prevail.
And together, we shall prevail.
Vive les Etats-Unis d’Amérique!
Long live the friendship between France and the United States of America!
Vive la République!
Vive la France!
Vive notre amitié.
Merci.
Thank you.
Michelle Wolf: 'You helped create this monster, and now you're profiting off of him', White House Correspondents Dinner - 2018
28 April 2018, Washington DC, USA
Good evening. Good evening. Here we are, the White House correspondents' dinner: Like a porn star says when she's about to have sex with a Trump, let's get this over with.
Yup, kiddos, this is who you're getting tonight. I'm going to skip a lot of the normal pleasantries. We're at a Hilton; it's not nice. This is on C-SPAN; no one watches that. Trump is president; it's not ideal.
The White House Correspondents' Association, thank you for having me. The monkfish was fine.
And just a reminder to everyone, I'm here to make jokes. I have no agenda. I'm not trying to get anything accomplished. So everyone that's here from Congress, you should feel right at home.
Here's what you missed from comedian Michelle Wolf's routine at the 2018 White House correspondents' dinner. (Nicki DeMarco/The Washington Post)
Yeah, before we get too far, a little bit about me. A lot of you might not know who I am. I'm 32 years old, which is an odd age: 10 years too young to host this event and 20 years too old for Roy Moore.
I know, he almost got elected, yeah. It was fun. It was fun.
Honestly, I never really thought I'd be a comedian. But I did take an aptitude test in seventh grade — and this is 100 percent true — I took an aptitude test in seventh grade, and it said in my best profession was a clown or a mime.
Well, at first it said clown, and then it heard my voice and then was like, “Or maybe mime. Think about mime.”
And I know as much as some of you might want me to, it's 2018 and I am a woman, so you cannot shut me up — unless you have Michael Cohen wire me $130,000. Michael, you can find me on Venmo under my porn star name, Reince Priebus.
Reince just gave a thumbs up. Okay.
Now, people are saying America is more divided than ever, but I think no matter what you support politically, we can all agree that this is a great time for craft stores. Because of all the protests, poster board has been flying off the shelves faster than Robert Mueller can say, “You've been subpoenaed.”
Thanks to Trump, pink yarn sales are through the roof. After Trump got elected, women started knitting those p---y hats. When I first saw them, I was like, “That's a p---y?” I guess mine just has a lot more yarn on it.
Yeah, shoulda done more research before you got me to do this.
Now, there is a lot to cover tonight. There's a lot to go over. I can't get to everything. I know there's a lot of people that want me to talk about Russia and Putin and collusion, but I'm not going to do that because there's also a lot of liberal media here. And I've never really wanted to know what any of you look like when you orgasm.
Except for maybe you, Jake Tapper. I bet it's something like this: “Okay, that's all the time we have.”
It is kind of crazy that the Trump campaign was in contact with Russia when the Hillary campaign wasn't even in contact with Michigan. It's a direct flight; it's so close.
Of course, Trump isn't here, if you haven't noticed. He's not here. And I know, I know, I would drag him here myself. But it turns out the president of the United States is the one p---y you're not allowed to grab.
He said it first. Yeah, he did. Do you remember? Good.
Now, I know people really want me to go after Trump tonight, but I think we should give the president credit when he deserves it. Like, he pulled out the Paris agreement, and I think he should get credit for that because he said he was going to pull out and then he did. And that's a refreshing quality in a man. Most men are like, “I forgot. I'll get you next time.” Oh, there's going to be a next time? People say romance is dead.
People call Trump names all the time. And, look, I could call Trump a racist, a misogynist or xenophobic or unstable or incompetent or impotent. But he's heard all of those, and he doesn't care. So, tonight, I'm going to try to make fun of the president in a new way — in a way that I think will really get him. Mr. President, I don't think you're very rich.
Like, I think you might be rich in Idaho, but in New York, you're doing fine. Trump is the only person that still watches “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” and thinks, “Me.”
Although, I'm not sure you'd get very far. He'd get to, like, the third question and be, like, “I have to phone a 'Fox & Friend.'”
We're going to try a fun new thing, okay? I'm going to say, “Trump is so broke,” and you guys go, “How broke is he?” All right?
Trump is so broke.
[AUDIENCE: How broke is he?]
He has to fly failed business class.
Trump is so broke.
[AUDIENCE: How broke is he?]
He looked for foreign oil in Don Jr.'s hair.
Trump is so broke.
[AUDIENCE: How broke is he?]
He — Southwest used him as one of their engines.
I know, it's so soon. It's so soon for that joke. Why did she tell it? It's so soon.
Trump is so broke.
[AUDIENCE: How broke is he?]
He had to borrow money from the Russians, and now he's compromised and not susceptible to blackmail and possibly responsible for the collapse of the republic.
Yay. It's a fun game.
Trump is racist, though. He loves white nationalists, which is a weird term for a Nazi. Calling a Nazi a white nationalist is like calling a pedophile a kid friend or Harvey Weinstein a ladies' man — which isn't really fair; he also likes plants.
Trump's also an idea guy. He's got loads of ideas. You gotta love him for that. He wants to give teachers guns, and I support that, 'cause then they can sell them for things they need, like supplies. A lot of protractors.
A lot of people want Trump to be impeached. I do not. Because just when you think Trump is awful, you remember Mike Pence. Mike Pence is what happens when Anderson Cooper isn't gay.
Mike Pence is the kind of guy that brushes his teeth and then drinks orange juice and thinks, “Mmm.” Mike Pence is also very anti-choice. He thinks abortion is murder, which, first of all, don't knock it till you try it. And when you do try it, really knock it. You know, you got to get that baby out of there.
And, yes, sure, you can groan all you want. I know a lot of you are very antiabortion. You know, unless it's the one you got for your secret mistress. It's fun how values can waiver. But good for you.
Mike Pence is a weirdo, though. He's a weird little guy. He won't meet with other women without his wife present. When people first heard this, they were like, “That's crazy.” But now, in this current climate, they're like, “That's a good witness.”
Which, of course, brings me to the Me Too movement; it's probably the reason I'm here. They were like, “A woman's probably not going to jerk off in front of anyone, right?” And to that, I say, “Don't count your chickens.” There's a lot of party.
Now, I've worked in a lot of male-dominated fields. Before comedy, I worked at a tech company and, before that, I worked on Wall Street. And, honestly, I've never really been sexually harassed. That being said, I did work at Bear Stearns in 2008. So, although I haven't been sexually harassed, I've definitely been f---ed. Yeah, that whole company went down on me without my consent. And no men got in trouble for that one either.
No, things are changing. Men are being held accountable. You know, Al Franken was ousted. That one really hurt liberals. But I believe it was the great Ted Kennedy who said, “Wow, that's crazy; I murdered a woman.”
“Chappaquiddick” in theaters now.
I did have a lot of jokes — I had a lot of jokes about Cabinet members, but I had to scrap all of those because everyone has been fired. You guys are going through Cabinet members quicker than Starbucks throws out black people.
No, don't worry, they're having an afternoon. That'll solve it. We just needed an afternoon.
Mitch McConnell isn't here. He had a prior engagement. He's finally getting his neck circumcised. Mazel.
Paul Ryan couldn't make it. Of course, he's already been circumcised. Unfortunately, while they were down there, they also took his b---s.
Yeah, bye, Paul. Great acting, though, in that video.
Republicans are easy to make fun of. It's like shooting fish in a Chris Christie. But I also want to make fun of Democrats. Democrats are harder to make fun of because you guys don't do anything.
People think you might flip the House and Senate this November, but you guys always find a way to mess it up. You're somehow going to lose by 12 points to a guy named Jeff Pedophile Nazi Doctor. Oh, he's a doctor?
We should definitely talk about the women in the Trump administration. There's Kellyanne Conway. Man, she has the perfect last name for what she does: Conway. It's like if my name was Michelle Jokes Frizzy Hair Small T--s.
You guys gotta stop putting Kellyanne on your shows. All she does is lie. If you don't give her a platform, she has nowhere to lie. It's like that old saying: If a tree falls in the woods, how do we get Kellyanne under that tree?
I'm not suggesting she gets hurt; just stuck. Stuck under a tree.
Incidentally, a tree falls in the woods is Scott Pruitt's definition of porn. Yeah, we all have our kinks.
There's also, of course, Ivanka. She was supposed to be an advocate for women, but it turns out she's about as helpful to women as an empty box of tampons. She's done nothing to satisfy women. So, I guess, like father, like daughter.
Oh, you don't think he's good in bed. Come on.
She does clean up nice, though. Ivanka cleans up nice. She's the Diaper Genie of the administration. On the outside, she looks sleek but the inside — it's still full of s---.
And, of course, we have Sarah Huckabee Sanders. We're graced with Sarah's presence tonight. I have to say I'm a little star-struck. I love you as Aunt Lydia in “The Handmaid's Tale.”
Mike Pence, if you haven't seen it, you would love it.
Every time Sarah steps up to the podium, I get excited because I'm not really sure what we're going to get: you know, a press briefing, a bunch of lies or divided into softball teams. “It's shirts and skins, and this time, don't be such a little b----, Jim Acosta.”
I actually really like Sarah. I think she's very resourceful. Like, she burns facts, and then she uses the ash to create a perfect smoky eye. Like, maybe she's born with it; maybe it's lies.
It's probably lies.
And I'm never really sure what to call Sarah Huckabee Sanders. You know, is it Sarah Sanders? Is Sarah Huckabee Sanders? Is it Cousin Huckabee? Is it Auntie Huckabee Sanders? Like, what's Uncle Tom but for white women who disappoint other white women? Oh, I know: Aunt Coulter.
We've got our friends at CNN here. Welcome, guys, it's great to have you. You guys love breaking news, and you did it. You broke it. Good work.
The most useful information on CNN is when Anthony Bourdain tells me where to eat noodles.
Fox News is here. So, you know what that means, ladies: Cover your drinks. Seriously.
People want me to make fun of Sean Hannity tonight, but I cannot do that; this dinner is for journalists.
We've got MSNBC here. MSNBC's news slogan is, “This is who we are.” Guys, it's not a good slogan. “This is who we are” is what your mom thinks the sad show on NBC is called. “Did you watch 'This Is Who We Are' this week? Someone left on a Crockpot, and everyone died.”
I watch “Morning Joe” every morning. We now know that Mika and Joe are engaged. Congratulations, you guys. It's like when a Me Too works out.
We also have Rachel Maddow. We cannot forget about Rachel Maddow. She is the Peter Pan of MSNBC. But instead of never growing up, she never gets to the point. Watching Rachel Maddow is like going to Target. You went in for milk, but you left with shampoo, candles and the entire history of the Byzantine Empire. “I didn't need this.”
And, of course, Megyn Kelly. What would I do without Megyn Kelly? You know, probably be more proud of women.
Megyn Kelly got paid $23 million by NBC, then NBC didn't let Megyn go to the Winter Olympics. Why not? She's so white, cold and expensive, she might as well be the Winter Olympics.
And, by the way, Megyn, Santa's black. The weird old guy going through your chimney was Bill O'Reilly. You might want to put a flue on it or something.
There's a lot of print media here. There's a ton of you guys, but I'm not going to go after print media tonight because it's illegal to attack an endangered species.
Buy newspapers.
There's a ton of news right now; a lot is going on, and we have all these 24-hour news networks, and we could be covering everything. But, instead, we're covering like three topics. Every hour, it's Trump, Russia, Hillary and a panel of four people who remind you why you don't go home for Thanksgiving.
“Milk comes from nuts now, all 'cause of the gays.”
You guys are obsessed with Trump. Did you used to date him? Because you pretend like you hate him, but I think you love him. I think what no one in this room wants to admit is that Trump has helped all of you. He couldn't sell steaks or vodka or water or college or ties or Eric, but he has helped you.
He's helped you sell your papers and your books and your TV. You helped create this monster, and now you're profiting off of him. And if you're gonna profit off of Trump, you should at least give him some money because he doesn't have any.
Trump is so broke.
[AUDIENCE: How broke is he?]
He grabs p---ies 'cause he thinks there might be loose change in them. All right, like an immigrant who was brought here by his parents and didn't do anything wrong, I gotta get the f--- out of here. Good night.
Flint still doesn't have clean water.
Related speech: Hasan Minhaj at White House Correspondents Dinner 2017 - " Thank you. Wow. Oh my God. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the series finale of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Oh man! My name is Hasan Minhaj, or as I’ll be known in a few weeks, no. 830-287. "
Kaniela Ing: 'It's time to break the cycle', campaign for Congress - 2018
March 2018, Hawaii, USA
Many entrenched politicians like to brag about our unemployment rate. It’s like 2.5%.
But we know it’s because we have the lowest wages in America, and the highest costs.
So many of us are working two or three jobs and still not getting by.
31% of us don’t even meet our basic needs through our salaries, and over 80& of us are living paycheck to paycheck now, just one car crash or medical emergency away from going under.
So fighting Trump is important but it’s not enough.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been struggling before 2016. You know we pay $2000 for childcare, $700 a month for student loans.
It’s tough out here in Hawaii, and in a Democratic Primary, standing up to Trump - you get 80-90% support, that’s easy. What’s harder is standing up to people holding back change right here in Hawaii ... or corporations like Monsanto. Or luxury developers. Or the military industrial complex.
The same people who are funding Donald Trump are also funding Democratic opponents. It’s time to break that cycle of corruption here in Hawaii and across America,
That’s why we’re running a clean campaign.
If you walk outside now and you look at Kakaako, there’s these luxury condominiums going up to the sky, every couple of weeks popping up, going for twenty million dollars per condo. Right next to native Hawaiians and veterans living on the street.
Something’s profoundly wrong. Who are we building for? Who is the government representing? That’s why we need new voices, different voices, our voices. A new leadership for Hawaii’s future, and that’s what I’m offering you today,
Thank you so much.
Anderson Cooper: 'Not racial, not racially charged, racist', response to Trump's Haiti remarks
11 January 2018, CNN Studios, New York City, USA
Before we go tonight, I just want to take a moment to talk about Haiti, one of the place the president of United States referred to today as a shithole country. I was taught math in high school by a Haitian immigrant name Yves Volel who work hard, who dedicate themselves to teaching kids of America. He ultimately returned to his country in Haiti and was assassinated while running for president.
I spend a lot of time in Haiti, I first went there in the early 1990s, as a young reporter. In 2010, my team from CNN was the first international team of journalists on the ground after the earthquake struck. I spent more than a month there and have return many times on assignment and on vacation. Like all countries, Haiti is a collection of people, it's rich and poor, well-educated, not good and bad many. But I've never met a Haitian who isn't strong. You have to be to survive in a place where the government has often abandoned this people, where opportunities are few and where mother nature has punished the people far more than anyone should ever be published.
But let me be clear tonight, the people of Haiti have been through more, they've been through more, they've with stood more, they fought back against more injustice than our president ever has.
Tomorrow marks exactly eight years since the earthquake struck Haiti, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake killed between 220,000 and 300,000 people. The actual numbers will never be known, because they were buried in unmarked pits. One and a half million people were displaced. For days and weeks without help from their own government or police, the people of Haiti dug through rubble with their bare and bloodied hands to save complete strangers. Guided only by the cries of the wounded and the dying. I was there when a young girl name Bee (ph) who'd been trapped in rubble for nearly a day was rescued by people who had no heavy equipment, they just had their God given strength and their determination and their courage.
I was there when a 5-year-old boy name Mangly (ph) was rescued after being buried for more than seven days. Do you know what strength it takes to survive on rainwater buried under concrete, a 5-year-old boy buried for seven days. Haitians slap your hand hard when they shake it, they look you in the eye. They don't blink, they stand tall and they have a dignity. It's a dignity many in this White House could learn from. It's a dignity the president with all his money and all his power could learn from as well.
On the anniversary of the earthquake, on this day, when this president has said what he's said about Haitians, we hope the people on Haiti who are listening tonight, and (INAUDIBLE) L.A. and Miami and elsewhere, we hope they know that our thoughts are with them and our love is with them as well.
Robert Menzies: 'The battle for freedom', Thomas Jefferson Oration - 1963
4 July 1963, Monticello, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA
It is a rare privelege for the Prime Minister of a nation of something under eleven millions of people to be invited be invited to speak, in the United States of America, on a day which commemorates the Declaration of Independence and, 50 years later, the death of its draftsman, Thomas Jefferson.
Yet I take comfort from the fact that, when Thomas Jefferson became President of the United States, he presided over the destiny of a nation with only half of the present population of Australia. Yet he is immortal, and his work endures.
There is nothing more stimulating than to recall that the American Colonies, as they moved into independence through blood and revolution and much suffering, and encountered the immense practical problems of fashioning a system of self-government, had in their service a group of men so superbly talented as Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, John Marshall, and their great contemporaries. They did not all think the same way, but each was remarkable. These names, after a lapse of time of a century and a half, remain familiar to millions of people with even a superficial knowledge of political and constitutional ' history.
But it is important to recall that men of great talent who embark upon the stormy seas of public affairs, and particularly those who achieve posts of leadership and responsibility, will frequently be over-praised by their friends and overattacked by their opponents. For the arts of propaganda are not of modern invention. They were in a flourishing state in the United States of America and elsewhere in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and -have been practised ever since.
The great trouble about all contemporary propaganda is that it tends to create a false dichotomy. The people under discussion are, so we are -asked to believe, all pure and shining, or wicked and worthless. This is, of course, absurd. History, we hope, sorts these things out and finds an immense variety of shades of grey.
The art of politics, and the ' history of politicians illustrate this simple truth. For, in spite of people of allegedly superior and independent mind, politics derives its vigour from partisanship and partisans. The only non-party system of government is a dictatorship. But one by-product of the party system is that if we come into a long era of Tory domination, the names of former great
Whigs become dimmed. And vice versa. The great name of Thomas Jefferson has experienced these " whirligigs of time." Greatly admired in the formative years of the United States, draftsman of -the Declaration of Independence, George Washington's first Secretary of State, Vice-President, President for two terms, his career as a statesman was a formidable and glittering one.
Add to this his astonishing attainments as a scholar, a lawyer, a farmer, an architectural designer and you ' have a man not easily to -be surpassed in any country or at any time. I love the remark attributed to President Kennedy at a ' White House dinner for a notable group of guests. " I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House-with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."
Yet when his political opponents had achieved their turn of office, a turn which lasted a long time, the name of Jefferson appears to have suffered an eclipse. It was not until the twentieth century that a suitable memorial was erected to him in Washington, and Monticello re-purchased and preserved.
I do not profess to understand with any precision the philosophical differences between your Democrats and Republicans of today. I suspect that your party lines are not so sharply drawn as ours are in Australia, where, as Winston Churchill once said, we " conduct our political battles with a fine eighteenth century vigor." The currents of your history -have buffeted your parties so much that no outsider could hope to trace the ' history of one party and find in it complete consistency or continuity. I am convinced that you have had great leaders of one paty who, generations later, might have proved to be leaders of another.
This is, of course, inevitable in any changing world or progressive society. Yet certain beliefs have an enduring validity. This,. indeed, is the secret of Thomas Jefferson's immortality. He believed in the importance of the persistent search for truth, and therefore in the liberty of the mind. But the liberty of the mind which he sought was something which was to be enjoyed by the well-furnished mind. It has never occurred to me that he believed in the appeal from Philip Sober to Philip Drunk. He had disciplined his own mind by the most amazing intellectual training. He was equipped for freedom. Hewanted others to be so. His founding of the University of Virginia was in reality his testimony to this truth; a democracy, to be effective, must be educated. Looking at the matter in the light of my own extensive experience in my own country, I would be disposed ( if, in this famous place, this. is not a species of blasphemy!) to think that Alexander Hamilton and his " Federalist" colleagues were right in attaching great importance to the creation of a powerful national administration and authority.
I am even imprudent enough -to think that many of today's Democrats have a not dissimilar view. But Mr. Jefferson was strong against tyranny or the means of creating it. To him individual liberty was the vital essence. American history has reconciled both conceptions. For it has been your glorious destiny, notably in the turbulent years of the twentieth century, to evolve a system in which national power has grown on the basis of a passionate and Jeffersonian belief in individual
freedom.
The Communist powers, who have created a ruthless imperialism of their own, to the acute discomfort of their neighbours, have, for diversionary reasons of their own, painted a picture of " American imperialism." It is therefore important to recall, and to emphasise, that the interventions of the United States in world affairs have been directed, not to territorial expansion, but to the achievement and preservation of individual liberty in far-away countries where that liberty is threatened.
Throughout the whole of my adult life, the great ideological conflict in the world has been -between those who believe that the national power of governments is something granted by free people to their political rulers, and those who believe in the all-powerful State which concedes to its citizens such freedoms as it thinks fit.
Well before the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson himself had resolved the matter in classical terms:-' These are our grievances, which we have thus laid before His Majesty, with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people, claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate."
This truth is, of course to us " self-evident," so that we find it difficult to realise that so many hundreds of millions of people either reject it or are unaware of it. Yet it is important that we should arrive at a clear realisation of the facts.
We are all a little disposed, when interesting ourselves in the emerging independence of some former colony, to think that democracy can be successfully transplanted in a comparatively brief time.
We are so utterly familiar with what I will call " parliamentary self-government" that we somehow forget that it has been a thing of slow and sometimes painful growth; that it has come from below, and not from above. You cannot create a democracy as quickly as you can create independence.
There are still too many influential people who forget that the granting of political independence is not an end in itself. It is, indeed, a beginning, just as capable of producing a new tyranny as it is of producing an independent community of free men. Indeed, we all know of more than one case in which independence has been followed by either chaos or something singularly like dictatorship.
There are lessons here for all of us. You are Americans. You detest colonialism because, to you, it connotes subordination. Whenever you see some surviving colony, somewhere, you are eager to make it independent. But it is a mistake to underestimate two factors.
The first is that a modern and intelligent colonial powerlike Australia in respect of our Papua and New Guinea territory-while aiming at complete independence as the goal,realises that the process of fitting native inhabitants for self rule must be relatively slow if it is to be relatively sure. We
know a good deal about this territory, with its confusion of tribes and languages, its rugged mountains, its towns in which the Papuans are comparatively advanced in civilisation, its remote valleys and jungles in which sheer savagery survives.
When well-meaning people tell us that we should create complete political independence in one blow by the simple process of creating a popular Assembly and arming it with full powers, we marvel that they should think self-government so artificial and so easy.
This does not mean that we favour dilatory tactics; freedom is too precious a thing for mankind to be wantonly denied. But the best guarantee of individual freedom is the existence of a community so constructed that freedom is its daily guide. The building of such a structure, starting with the foundations and not with the roof, takes time and conscious effort. I repeat, in a slightly different way, that you cannot endow a country with democracy as simply as you can endow it with money or goods.
I am saying these things because I think that we are all in danger of considering our international relations in too limited a way. The great issues of peace or war, of armaments and alliances, remain paramount so long as we live in a world in which aggressors multiply and are strong.
The great issues of trade, to which we are all currently directing much attention, have all the complexities which are inevitable when legitimate national interests have to be reconciled with the clear need for growing markets and rising productionin a world whose population is increasing at an almost bewildering rate. But are we yet doing enough to increase our knowledge of other peoples, or their knowledge of us?
If, as Mr. Jefferson did, we believe that an informed democracy is the greatest and most humane system of government ever devised; that it elevates and enfranchises the individual citizen; that it reconciles some demagogery with much dignity; are we doing enough to make it understood by other nations and peoples? Are we, perhaps, too negative in our democratic faith, defending it against aggression from outside, but not doing enough -to preach its gospel abroad? What
would Mr. Jefferson do and say if he could revisit us and look out upon this new world? For freedom was his burning faith.
It was not something just for the study or for reflection. It was a faith to be practised, but it was also a faith to be preached. For Mr. Jefferson was a vastly civilised man, with the roots of his learning and philosophy deep in the soil of the old world. Virginia itself was a characteristically English community
in many essentials. The colonies themselves felt no sense of quarrel with the people of Britain. Yet, when the need arose, they took up arms and by declaration, severed their ties with their mother country. Here was no war for territory. Here, indeed, was no ideological war in the sense in which we now understand that expression. It was simply a battle for freedom, fought in fact against an unimaginative government in London and British soldiers and mercenaries in America, though in form, ( ironically enough) against -the people of Britain, whose record in the achievement and defence of freedom was and is so long and honourable.
This is one of the paradoxes of history, but, in the result, a happy one. For, just as ' the issue of the War of Independence was freedom, so was freedom the result, exalted in the minds of the colonists and destined to give character and direction to their later national history.
You are today doing great honour to an Australian. May I, therefore, say something about my own country and yours? Australia has, I need hardly say, many points of contact and understanding with the United States. It is the fashion among a few cynical observers to treat our friendly attachment to your country as a sort of " cupboard love," based upon self interest in a dangerous world. This is a superficial view, for at least three reasons.
When Britain's colonial adventure in America ended in 1782 with the birth of a new nation, Captain Cook had already explored and reported upon the East Coast of Australia, but there had been no white settlement. It -had been the practise in Britain in the 18th century to transport to -the colonies large numbers of persons convicted of offences (many of them very trivial) against the law. Between 1717 and the War of Independence the historian records that some 50,000 English convicts were received into America. But this had now ceased. Where could such people be sent in future? The choice ultimately fell on Australia, the particular site chosen being Botany Bay, just south of
Sydney. A fler under Captain Phillip arrived at Botany Bay in 1788, and the modern history of Australia began The first settlers were convicts and their custodians. In short, a colony began in my own country just after and because colonialism ended in America.
When people in England make jesting remarks to me about these lowly origins of our now thriving and law-abiding Commonwealth, I make the good-natured retort that, though many thousands of convicted persons were sent to America, and many thousands to Australia, -the records show -that the great majority of persons convicted in England during the transportation era remained in England.
The whole point I make is that, though nobody could have foreseen it at the rime, your War of Independence created as it turned out, two nations; one your own, the other Australia. When, at the close of the 19th century, the Australian colonies decided to federate and become one nation, it was to -the Constitution of the United States that the draftsmen of the Australian Constitution turned
for light and leading. During the months and years in which some of the best political and legal thinkers in Australia were engaged in the work of drafting, the Constitution of the United States of America was never far away from hand. In the great Convention Debates, the decisions of the United States Supreme Court were extensively cited. True, your Union had grown out of armed conflict; ours came more peacefully, by reason and argument, the gradual persuading of self-governing colonies, each with a well-defined local pride, that a national existence should be achieved. It came about that the Australian distribution of legislative powers between Commonwealth and States is much like your own. The separation of powers, legislative, executive and judicial, though not, perhaps, such a high matter of doctrifle as with you, still makes its impact upon judicial decisions.
Your founders were, of course, much influenced by the great French commentators upon a British C6nstitution which in a real sense had no existence. And so, for example, your Executive does not sir in Congress or, in a direct sense, answer -to it. But we inherited, and bad long practised, responsible Cabinet government, with Ministers sitting in Parliament and answering to it and, from time to time, being put out of office by it. It is this fact which gives a special colour to the Australian Constitution, and provides an underlying difference partly concealed by remarkable similarities of form.
In my hey-day at the Bar of -the High Court of Australia in constitutional cases, it was still the practise to make much reference to the currents of American judicial opinion, currents, may I say, in which backeddies have occasionally occurred, but the main stream of which, as in Australia, has moved towards an enlarging interpretation of national powers. We may not always like this if we believe in a federal and not a unitary system of government and see, as Mr. Jefferson did, some guarantee of individual liberty in a division of governmental powers. But there has been, particularly in times of national emergency or strain, a real value in a Constitution which can be applied to new circumstances without crippling rigidity.
But 1 grow tedious. All I really wanted to say was that, if the na-mes of your great founders and brilliant political philosophers are familiar in Australian minds and mouths, it is largely because our constinutional history -has been profoundly influenced by your own. A Jefferson memorial would not be out of place in Canberra.
My third reason has, I believe, a fine Jeffersonian ring. For I feel sure' that Mr. Jefferson, though he worked primarily for the liberty of Americans and felt no call to impose his views on an older world, would, confronted by the -problems of the modern world, have vastly approved the world defence of individual liberty, a defence in which the U. S. A. is playing such a splendid and vital part.
Australia has a deep feeling for your country, not just because your friendship contributes so greatly to our national security, but basically because, great or small, we work for the same kind of free world. The freedom of man is not a local perquisite and cannot be defended in isolation. There can be no better place than Monticello in which to remind ourselves of this great, though occasionally forgotten, truth.
Reinhard Heydrich: 'The Fuhrer has declared his determination to destroy European Jewry', Nazi Wansee Conference, outlining Final Solution - 1942
20 January 1942, Wannsee, Germany
This horrendous and genocidal speech was delivered by Reinhard Heydrich to 14 other top ranking Nazis at a villa at Wannsee, just outside of Berlin. It strategises the final solution and is extremely distressing to hear and read. In the recreation above, the speech starts at 28.40.
We have the means, the methods, the organisation, experience and people. And we have the will. This is a historic moment in the struggle against Jewry. The Fuhrer has declared his determination ... to destroy European Jewry. The Fuhrer sees himself ... as exterminating fatal bacteria to save the organism. It is them or us.
What has happened so far? Step by step we have forced the Jews out of all levels of German life ...
We have forced them out of the # of the people partly by transfers to concentration camps, and partly due to Obster -bannFuhrer Eichmann’s organisation by permitting 537,000 Jews to emigrate before the war, and finally ...
We have seen since the beginning of the war the liquidation of hundreds of thousands of Polish, Baltic and Russian Jews. You gentlemen from the Party Chancellory, the Riech Chancellory, the Foreign Office, General Govenment and ministry for the East have been kept informed by Gestapo reports of the Action groups’ activities ...
The Reichsfuhrer SS has forbidden any further emigration of Jews. The Jews remaining in the Reich and all European Jews in our present and future spheres of influence will be evacuated to the East for the final solution ...
We shall work effectively but silently. Total cooperation will be required in this matter of life or death for the Reich. So that we can all envisage what the Jewish question in the Reich involves (pointing to a map of Europe) the red area shows the Reich on the eve of war. This is the Eastern front. Behind in white conquered Eastern territories under Germany’s civilian rule. In pink territories subject to the Reich - in vertical and stripes occupied territories in the rest of Europe. Horiozontal red stripes our Allies or countries under our influence. The dots on the map like fly spots represents the density of the Jewish population. That is our problem the further we advance between Riga and Odessa.
We must deal with settlements of our Jewish opponents. They’ve made themselves comfortable for centuries. In my own home town of Odessa there are more than 70,000 Jewish inhabitants. There were, used to be (laugher). To sum up gentlemen, our Action groups following hard on the heels of our troops have virtually eliminated the Jewish concentrations. We have influenced the old anti-Semitism by certain procedural measures.
Now the rough work has been done we must begin the period of finer work. We need to work in harmony with the civil administration. We count on you gentlemen as far as the final solution is concerned. What is to be resolved will be resolved here (pointing to the East), at the world’s arse, as my men say. War and gunsmoke have made immense achievements possible. It is the Reichsfuhrer SS’s will that the Jewish question is settled there in one clean sweep. The total Jews concerned - 11,000,000.
This breaks down as follows:
In the old Reich - 130,000
In Austria - 43,000
In the Protectorate - 2,500,000
In the Balkans - 1,600,000
In Occupied France - 165,000
In Unoccupied France - 740,000 (quite a task!)
In the New Europe for which we shall be responsible, in foreign unoccupied countries like England - 350,000
In neutral countries like Switzerland - 18,000 of the Chosen People.
In the final solution we will use the Jews as labour in the East. They will be marched, both sexes segregated, in columns, building roads on the way, breaking rocks, draining marshes. We’ll give them every opportunity to find out what work means, on the extensive industrial plains now being constructed by Comrade Pohl of the SS’s Economic Office ...
Of course, most of these Jews will succumb to natural wastage: the remainder, the toughest , will have to be processed accordingly. Why? Because it is the survival of the fittest. Otherwise they’d seed a new Jewish resurrection. Look at history!
Don Chipp: 'May I say that I have become disenchanted with party politics', resignation from Liberal Party - 1977
24 March 1977, Canberra, Australia
By leave I wish to announce to the House that I have resigned from the Liberal Party of Australia as from today. I believe I have conformed with the courtesies demanded of such a decision. I have informed you,
Sir, the Leader of my Party, the Right Honourable the Prime Minister (Mr Malcolm Fraser), the Victorian State President of the Liberal Party of Australia and the Chairman of the Hotham Electorate Committee of the Liberal Party. It naturally follows that I shall not be presenting myself as a candidate for the Liberal Party of Australia in the division of Hotham at the next House of Representatives election.
I shall continue to represent the division of Hotham in this House for the duration of this Parliament or until such earlier rime as circumstances may demand. Although I am proud of the high personal vote I receive from the electors of Hotham, I recognise that I am here by virtue of my former membership of the Liberal Party and therefore believe it is proper that I should generally give my vote in support of the Government in the business before the House and in the conduct of the business of the House. However, I will exercise the right- which is already held by all members of the Liberal Party- to vote against the Government on any issue which a member believes to be not in the best interests of the country or his constituents. I extend my gratitude to the many friends and members of the Liberal Party in Hotham who have loyally supported me over the years and given me the privilege of serving in this House.
I hope that my friends and colleagues in the Parliamentary Liberal Party will understand my reasons in taking this decision and that the personal friendships and relationships that I have made and enjoyed over the years will not be impaired by my action. I note in passing that notwithstanding the tag of ‘rebel’ that some people have chosen to put upon me, I have never exercised that right of voting against my Party in my 16 years in this place. In fact, I think it is fair to me to place on record that during the 15-month term of this Government, I have been publicly critical of its decisions on only 5 occasions. These were:
- The 25 per cent cut in overseas aid;
- The abolition of the Australian Assistance Plan which I, with the full authority of the joint Parties had previously commended in this House as being one of the most exciting and progressive social reforms ever undertaken;
- The proposed abolition of the funeral benefits for pensioners;
- The original breach of the promise to index pensions; and
- The decision to devalue the currency and, once that decision was taken, the refusal to lower tariffs so as to contain the inflationary effects of that move.
When these 5 public criticisms are put against the dozens of times I have publicly supported the Government, even on occasions when I did not agree with it, I believe the tag of ‘rebel’ is palpably unfair. There have in fact been a great number of issues with which I have strongly disagreed and on most which I have been invited by the media to criticise my Party. I have refrained from that criticism in the interests of Party unity and with a view to assisting the Government in overcoming the massive problems it faces, many of which were inherited from the results of the gross maladministration of the Labor Party’s terms in office. However, the number of significant Government actions which conflict with my own views are now so many that I feel that my continued membership of the Liberal Party, as it is now led, managed and structured, would be incompatible with my beliefs and would constitute an act of hypocrisy. Inevitably some people will impugn my action and ascribe to it the motive that I am taking this course because I am not in the Cabinet. To that I simply state without argument that under no circumstances could I, or would I, serve as a Minister under the present leadership.
Members of the House would know that one reaches a decision such as this- after giving 16 years of one’s life to it- not without a great deal of deep thought and troubled deliberation; but as one who at least in latter years has tried to pursue a course of true liberalism, I find I can no longer do that within the confines of the Party. In these circumstances I believe the only honourable thing to do is to resign.
For the record I simply state my areas of contention without debating them. I cannot agree with the Government’s current economic policy. Particularly, I am concerned with its failure to honour the promise to the private sector to give it stable and definite future guidelines to allow it to plan and invest for the future. I believe the private businessman, especially the small businessman who employs the bulk of the work force of this country, is more confused, more in the dark about the future, and less confident than he was 15 months ago. This seems to be strange behaviour for a Party that champions the cause of free enterprise.
I am very critical of the lack of consultation between the Government and the trade union movement. It would be cruel and unfair to ask the worker to be the sole bearer of the cost of reducing inflation; but wages are too high and taxes are too high to provide incentive for increased productivity by both workers and management. Interest rates are devastating, especially to the young, and yet no attempt at real, sensible and sensitive discussions between the Prime Minister and the President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions has been made. In fact the Prime Minister has refused to enter such discussions. Instead, while the economy continues to slump, these 2 leaders seem to be continuing in a public slanging match while the economy continues to deteriorate and the responsible blue and white collar Australian workers and management suffer.
I confess to a very deep concern about the intrasigence of the Prime Minister in bringing in the Industrial Relations Bureau legislation at this time- a time of remarkable industrial peace and at a time when it is being vigorously opposed by both employees and employers alike. I have been grossly disappointed with the attitude of the Government on uranium mining. Notwithstanding the repeated requests by the Fox report for a full parliamentary debate we have had 2 hours only on it and it is now off the notice paper. I am grateful to the Leader of the House (Mr Sinclair) for giving me an undertaking this morning that that matter will be restored to the notice paper.
The last straw on this issue was the action of the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Anthony) in launching a pro-uranium book simultaneously with a statement by the Ambassador of Japan advocating the mining of Australian uranium. The breach of our promises to continue the Australian Assistance Plan, wage indexation, the value of the currency, the Social Welfare Commission, increased research on solar energy, are matters which have disturbed me greatly.
Further, our incredible attitude towards Timor; the overt and capricious provocation of Russia, an almost pathetic reliance on the nonproliferation treaty which the Fox report described as giving only ‘an illusion of protection’; the absence of strong Cabinet action to overcome the bureaucratic bungling and red tape affecting human beings seeking refuge from Indo-China are some other matters which have left me deeply concerned.
On the other hand I draw no comfort from the current attitudes and policies of the Australian Labor Party. Although the state of the world economy contributed in some way to Australia’s economic problems during its 3 years of office, its mismanagement of the economy resulting in the unique situation of causing unemployment to increase simultaneously with inflation was near catastrophic. I would be a little encouraged if I believed that it has learned some lessons from its errors but that does not seem to be the case. It is still motivated by events of the past, still obsessed with its socialist ideas and a hatred of private enterprise, and dominated by the shadowy faces in the trade union movement. In opposition its performance has been little short of ludicrous in questioning and probing the Government on the real issues that affect the country.
I draw no comfort at all from the public opinion polls which indicate a Labor Government is possible- if not probable- in the near future. I find it almost unbelievable that the Leader of the Opposition (Mr E. G. Whitlam)- a man who led his Party to its most humiliating defeat in history just 1 5 months ago- now ranks about equally in popularity and respect with the Prime Minister. Does this mean that the people of Australia hold both men and both parties in relatively low esteem?
In conclusion may I say that I have become disenchanted with party politics as they are practised in this country and with the pressure groups which have an undue influence on the major political parties. The National Country Party properly represents the interests of a small sectional group- some of the rural community- but improperly in my view, and unduly, influences national policies quite out of proportion to the small group it represents.
The Labor Party is dominated by the vested interests of trade unions. The Liberal Party, although properly concerned with the vital role of private enterprise, seems too pre-occupied with the wants of what is euphemistically known as ‘big business’ to the sacrifice and detriment of medium and small-size businessmen who form the backbone of our industrial and commercial sectors.
The parties seem to polarise on almost every issue, sometimes seemingly just for the sake of it, and I wonder whether the ordinary voter is not becoming sick and tired of the vested interests which unduly influence the present political parties and yearn for the emergence of a third political force, representing middle of the road policies which would owe allegiance to no outside pressure group.
Perhaps it may be the right time to test that proposition. That move will have to come from those people in Australia who believe in the encouragement of free enterprise, who believe it has not had a ‘fair go’ from interfering Governments who regularly change, without warning, the conditions under which they operate. It must come from people who believe in true justice for the work force and compassion for those in need, but who believe that actions must be taken to prevent social problems from occurring rather than trying to cure them and hide them once they have arrived. But above all, it must come from those people who are disgusted with those politicians and political parties who indulge mainly in cheap political point scoring in the endless pursuit of votes at any price and from people who want their Parliament to identify the real and significant problems of the future and to take action now which will make the country a good, safe and sound place for future generations.
Elizabeth Warren: 'Robert Kennedy understood that America's national economy is not the same as the economic well being of its people', RFK legacy, 50th anniversary of campaign - 2018
15 March 2018, Washington DC, USA
I am here today to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of Robert F. Kennedy's monumental campaign for President. Kennedy's brief, tragic run at the Presidency has had an enduring impact on so many generations of Americans. The reason, I think, is because Robert Kennedy had the courage to challenge a divided nation to face up to its failings. To challenge a divided people to acknowledge their own contributions to our nation's ills. To challenge us to step back from the stale, cheap politics of the moment. To challenge us to do better by each other.
History may not repeat, but it often rhymes. Conditions are different now, but a lot of the anxiety that swept through the country in 1968 echoes the anxiety of today -- especially the economic anxiety felt by millions of Americans who are working harder than ever but feel opportunity slipping away from themselves and their children.
Too often, our political and business leaders refuse to see this. Instead, they hide behind macroeconomic statistics, using them as a shield to dismiss the concerns of the American people as faulty, wrongheaded, or even nonexistent.
But Robert Kennedy understood that America's national economy is not the same as the economic well being of its people. In 1968, in a speech at the University of Kansas, he spoke eloquently about the differences between them. And here is what he said:
"Our Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country.
It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans."
Consider three stats: corporate profits, the stock market and unemployment.
Today, corporate profits are up -- corporate profits that count gun sales from manufacturers whose weapons are used to massacre children in our schools and our streets. Corporate profits that count revenues from drug companies when they quadruple prices for the sick and the desperate. Corporate profits that count revenues of banks like Wells Fargo as they rip off millions of American consumers.
The stock market is up as giant companies pocket trillions in taxpayer money stolen from middle class families. The market is up as CEOs shut down plants and factories here in the United States and move them overseas. The market is up as business leaders flush with cash turn their backs on workers while they plow millions and even billions into stock buybacks to goose investors' returns and CEOs bonuses
Unemployment is down, but wages have barely budged in a generation. Unemployment is down, but for millions of people the exploding costs for housing, for healthcare, for childcare mean that it now takes two jobs to do what one job covered a generation ago. And unemployment is down, but the numbers fail to count the millions living in rural and urban American communities alike that have given up the search for a job.
Corporate profits, the stock market, unemployment -- these statistics tell us everything about the American economy. But they tell us very little about the lived experience of today's Americans. They do not speak to the citizen who fears police violence or the police officer who fears gang violence, or the immigrant who cannot speak out about sexual assault at the hands of her boss, or the toxic rhetoric flowing through our politics and seeking to turn neighbor against neighbor. They do not account for our devotion to our communities, to our churches, to our children. They tell us virtually nothing about our trials, or our challenges, or our hopes, or our principles.
Robert Kennedy understood this. He knew that we cannot simply run our economy for those at the top and assume that it will solve America's problems. In the intervening years since his speech, America ran that experiment anyway -- and watched it fail miserably.
It's time to try something different. It's time to challenge each of us to do better by each other -- to see the dignity in one another -- to put our values first. I believe we can make that Robert Kennedy's legacy, and I am proud to fight for it.
Mhairi Black: 'She needs a kick in the c***', Misogyny as a hate crime debate - 2018
7 March 2018, House of Commons, London, United Kingdom
It is an absolute pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), who made a cracking speech. I agree with most of what she said, so I will not go over the same points.
I want to talk a wee bit about my own perspective and experience, so forgive me if my speech appears a little self-indulgent. To me, there are two main strands to this issue: the structural side and the cultural side. Let me deal first with the structural side, which brings me back to my first tutorial at university, when we were asked why women were still unequal. I said that the problem begins with how and when our society created the structures that we still use today. There was a time when we kidded ourselves that everything was as simple as a man marrying a woman, him going to work and her staying at home to look after anything domestic. It was on that foundation that we built and viewed everything as we know it today: the economy, our legal systems, our work environments and our Governments. Everything was owned and created by men, with the false assumption that the nuclear heterosexual family was normal.
Rightly, we slowly began to realise that there is no such thing as normal—that women can be different and yet just as capable as men, and that what they do with their lives should not be assumed for them. We have begun to address some of those barriers, but, fundamentally, we are trying to find ways almost to stuff women into that structure without fully reflecting on the fact that it was created at a very misogynistic time and from a very patriarchal perspective. There has been no recognition that our economy and our work life completely fail to address or even acknowledge the existence of things such as period poverty and cripplingly painful menstrual cycles, which are more common than most people think. Until we accept and change the fact that everything comes from a patriarchal perspective, we will always struggle.
That brings me to the cultural side of this issue. It feels like we are at a turning point with things such as the “Time’s Up” movement. Frankly, the bravery of the women who have come forward to talk about their experience of abuse, sexism and misogyny, no matter how small it may seem, is incredible. I cannot say it has been positive in terms of moving us forward, but if we have learned anything from all that, it is that these are not small occurrences. The downside to all this progress is being faced with the reality that the women in my life, whom I know and love, have been raped, beaten, assaulted, called sluts and whores, and groped throughout their lives, and they have been led to believe that that is normal and is just a given—that it is just something that happens and, like the hon. Member for Walthamstow said, something that women should somehow deal with or solve themselves.
Misogyny is absolutely everywhere in our society, to the point that we often miss it because it has been so normalised by being continually unchallenged. Some folk will be uncomfortable with the graphic language that I am about to use, but I am not going to dilute the reality of such an important issue. I am used to online abuse in particular. I am regularly called a wee boy, and told that I wear my dad’s suits and stuff. Me and my pals actually laugh about it. That is how I cope with it. We find the best insults, and that is how we have a laugh, but I struggle to see any joke in systematically being called a dyke, a rug muncher, a slut, a whore and a scruffy bint. I have been told, “You can’t put lipstick on a pig,” and:
“Let the dirty bitch eat shit and die”.
I could soften some of this by talking about “the C-word”, but the reality is that there is no softening when I am targeted by these words: I am left reading them on my screen day in, day out. Someone said:
“She needs a kick in the cunt”.
I have been called “guttural cunt”, “ugly cunt” and “wee animal cunt”. There is no softening just how sexualised and misogynistic the abuse is. Some guy called William Hannah—I have never heard of him in my life—commented:
“I’ve pumped some ugly burds in my time but I jist wouldn’t”.
I have been assured multiple times that I do not have to worry because I am so ugly that no one would want to rape me.
All those insults were tailored to me because I am a woman. We can kid ourselves that those are comments by a few bad, anonymous people on Twitter, but they are not: this is everyday language. I am aware that everyone here was uncomfortable hearing those insults—I felt uncomfortable reading them out—yet there are people who feel comfortable flinging those words around every day. When that language goes unchallenged, it becomes normalised, and that creates an environment that allows women to be subjected to a whole spectrum of abuse. I regularly see guys on Facebook talking about “getting pussy” and using other horrible words for women, but should we really expect any better given that the man sitting in the Oval Office thinks that it is okay to grab a woman by the pussy and faces no consequences?
Even in this place we need a bit of self-reflection. We are only starting to appreciate the full extent of the abuse and danger that women face on a daily basis, yet only a few weeks ago in the voting Lobby I was physically pressed up against a Member who has been accused of sexual misconduct, because there is so little room. That is not normal, and it is fair to say we should be looking at and talking about that. I am blessed in that I have the same right and influence as any elected man in this place, but what about all the female staff here who do not? Is that really the best example we can set for society? Surely it is something that we should at least be talking about.
As another personal example, I have been open in saying that I have been very unwell recently and was unable to travel and, therefore, vote. Like most people, I have no desire to disclose to the world the private, intimate and often embarrassing details that regularly come with illness. That is the business of my doctor, my Chief Whip and me—no one else—just as it would be in any other workplace with a line manager.
A fortnight ago, the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray), alongside the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Sweeney), suggested that I turn up for work more often, as I had a poor voting record. I responded to let them know I had been ill. I also pointed out the level of abuse and misinformation they were causing for me, but they stood by their comments. My Chief Whip wrote a letter to theirs, asking for an apology, retraction and correction, but there has been nothing, and still the abuse still comes my way daily. For two men to feel it is appropriate to chastise a female colleague publicly for a medical absence is bad enough, but knowingly to continue to misrepresent and cause abuse is frankly out of order. Judging by the House of Commons code of conduct, it qualifies as bullying, as it would in any other workplace.
Believe it or not, I have never lost sleep over the opinions of either of those hon. Gentleman, and I have no intention of starting now. However, I am in a position to say something about it. What about the woman out there who has had a hysterectomy and is getting the same rubbish at her work? Or what about the woman with post-natal depression who has extra stress added on by having to put up with this kind of nonsense in her work?
Last year, the Fawcett Society launched a sex discrimination law review. It said:
“The long-term aim is to nudge people towards a culture shift and to reframe misogynist behaviour as socially undesirable.”
Perhaps it is time we assessed the example that we set, because if we cannot get our own House in order, how can we expect anyone out there to?
Joseph Stalin: 'A grave danger hangs over our country', radio broadcast after Hitler invasion - 1941
3 July 1941, Moscow, USSR
Comrades! Citizens! Brothers and sisters! Men of our army and navy! I am addressing you, my friends!
The perfidious military attack on our Fatherland, begun on June 22nd by Hitler Germany, is continuing.
In spite of the heroic resistance of the Red Army, and although the enemy's finest divisions and finest airforce units have already been smashed and have met their doom on the field of battle, the enemy continues to push forward, hurling fresh forces into the attack.
Hitler's troops have succeeded in capturing Lithuania, a considerable part of Latvia, the western part of Byelo-Russia, part of Western Ukraine. The fascist airforce is extending the range of operations of its bombers, and is bombing Murmansk, Orsha, Mogilev, Smolensk, Kiev, Odessa and Sebastopol.
A grave danger hangs over our country.
How could it have happened that our glorious Red Army surrendered a number of our cities and districts to fascist armies? Is it really true that German fascist troops are invincible, as is ceaselessly trumpeted by the boastful fascist propagandists? Of course not!
History shows that there are no invincible armies and never have been. Napoleon's army was considered invincible but it was beaten successively by Russian, English and German armies. Kaiser Wilhelm's German Army in the period of the first imperialist war was also considered invincible, but it was beaten several times by the Russian and Anglo-French forces and was finally smashed by the Anglo-French forces.
The same must be said of Hitler's German fascist army today. This army had not yet met with serious resistance on the continent of Europe. Only on our territory has it met serious resistance. And if, as a result of this resistance, the finest divisions of Hitler's German fascist army have been defeated by our Red Army, it means that this army too can be smashed and will be smashed as were the armies of Napoleon and Wilhelm.
As to part of our territory having nevertheless been seized by Germany fascist troops, this is chiefly due to the fact that the war of fascist Germany on the USSR began under conditions favorable for the German forces and unfavorable for Soviet forces. The fact of the matter is that the troops of Germany, as a country at war, were already fully mobilized, and the 170 divisions hurled by Germany against the USSR and brought up to the Soviet frontiers, were in a state of complete readiness, only awaiting the signal to move into action, whereas Soviet troops had still to effect mobilization and move up to the frontier.
Of no little importance in this respect is the fact that fascist Germany suddenly and treacherously violated the Non-Aggression Pact she concluded in 1939 with the USSR, disregarding the fact that she would be regarded as the aggressor by the whole world.
Naturally, our peace-loving country, not wishing to take the initiative of breaking the pact, could not resort to perfidy.
It may be asked how could the Soviet Government have consented to conclude a Non-Aggression Pact with such treacherous fiends as Hitler and Ribbentrop? Was this not an error on the part of the Soviet Government? Of course not. Non-Aggression Pacts are pacts of peace between states. It was such a pact that Germany proposed to us in 1939.
Could the Soviet Government have declined such a proposal? I think that not a single peace-loving state could decline a peace treaty with a neighboring state, even though the latter was headed by such fiends and cannibals as Hitler and Ribbentrop. Of course only on one indispensable condition, namely, that this peace treaty does not infringe either directly or indirectly on the territorial integrity, independence and honor of the peace-loving state. As is well known, the Non-Aggression Pact between Germany and the USSR is precisely such a pact.
What did we gain by concluding the Non-Aggression Pact with Germany? We secured our country peace for a year and a half, and the opportunity of preparing its forces to repulse fascist Germany should she risk an attack on our country despite the Pact This was a definite advantage for us and a disadvantage for fascist Germany.
What has fascist Germany gained and what has she lost by treacherously tearing up the pact and attacking the USSR?
She has gained a certain advantageous position for her troops for a short period, but she has lost politically by exposing herself in the eyes of the entire world as a blood-thirsty aggressor.
There can be no doubt that this short-lived military gain for Germany is only an episode, while the tremendous political gain of the USSR is a serious lasting factor that is bound to form the basis for development of decisive military successes of the Red Army in the war with fascist Germany.
That is why our whole valiant Red Army, our whole valiant Navy, all our falcons of the air, all the peoples of our country, all the finest men and women of Europe, America and Asia, finally all the finest men and women of Germany--condemn the treacherous acts of German fascists and sympathize with the Soviet Government, approve the conduct of the Soviet Government, and see that ours is a just cause, that the enemy will be defeated, that we are bound to win.
By virtue of this war which has been forced upon us, our country has come to death-grips with its most malicious and most perfidious enemy--German fascism. Our troops are fighting heroically against an enemy armed to the teeth with tanks and aircraft.
Overcoming innumerable difficulties, the Red Army and Red Navy are self-sacrificingly disputing every inch of Soviet soil. The main forces of the Red Army are coming into action armed with thousands of tanks and airplanes. The men of the Red Army are displaying unexampled valor. Our resistance to the enemy is growing in strength and power.
Side by side with the Red Army, the entire Soviet people are rising in defense of our native land.
What is required to put an end to the danger hovering over our country, and what measures must be taken to smash the enemy?
Above all, it is essential that our people, the Soviet people, should understand the full immensity of the danger that threatens our country and should abandon all complacency, all heedlessness, all those moods of peaceful constructive work which were so natural before the war, but which are fatal today when war has fundamentally changed everything.
The enemy is cruel and implacable. He is out to seize our lands, watered with our sweat, to seize our grain and oil secured by our labor. He is out to restore the rule of landlords, to restore Tsarism, to destroy national culture and the national state existence of the Russians, Ukrainians, Byelo-Russians, Lithuanians, Letts, Esthonians, Uzbeks, Tatars, Moldavians, Georgians, Armenians, Azerbaidzhanians and the other free people of the Soviet Union, to Germanize them, to convert them into the slaves of German princes and barons.
Thus the issue is one of life or death for the Soviet State, for the peoples of the USSR; the issue is whether the peoples of the Soviet Union shall remain free or fall into slavery.
The Soviet people must realize this and abandon all heedlessness, they must mobilize themselves and reorganize all their work on new, wartime bases, when there can be no mercy to the enemy.
Further, there must be no room in our ranks for whimperers and cowards, for panic-mongers and deserters. Our people must know no fear in fight and must selflessly join our patriotic war of liberation, our war against the fascist enslavers.
Lenin, the great founder of our State, used to say that the chief virtue of the Bolshevik must be courage, valor, fearlessness in struggle, readiness to fight, together with the people, against the enemies of our country.
This splendid virtue of the Bolshevik must become the virtue of the millions of the Red Army, of the Red Navy, of all peoples of the Soviet Union.
All our work must be immediately reconstructed on a war footing, everything must be subordinated to the interests of the front and the task of organizing the demolition of the enemy.
The people of the Soviet Union now see that there is no taming of German fascism in its savage fury and hatred of our country which has ensured all working people labor in freedom and prosperity.
The peoples of the Soviet Union must rise against the enemy and defend their rights and their land. The Red Army, Red Navy and all citizens of the Soviet Union must defend every inch of Soviet soil, must fight to the last drop of blood for our towns and villages, must display the daring initiative and intelligence that are inherent in our people.
We must organize all-round assistance for the Red Army, ensure powerful reinforcements for its ranks and the supply of everything it requires, we must organize the rapid transport of troops and military freight and extensive aid to the wounded.
We must strengthen the Red Army's rear, subordinating all our work to this cause. All our industries must be got to work with greater intensity to produce more rifles, machine-guns, artillery, bullets, shells, airplanes; we must organize the guarding of factories, power-stations, telephonic and telegraphic communications and arrange effective air raid precautions in all localities.
We must wage a ruthless fight against all disorganizers of the rear, deserters, panic-mongers, rumor-mongers; we must exterminate spies, diversionists and enemy parachutists, rendering rapid aid in all this to our destroyer battalions.
We must bear in mind that the enemy is crafty, unscrupulous, experienced in deception and the dissemination of false rumors We must reckon with all this and not fall victim to provocation.
All who by their panic-mongering and cowardice hinder the work of defence, no matter who they are, must be immediately haled before the military tribunal. In case of forced retreat of Red Army units, all rolling stock must be evacuated, the enemy must not be left a single engine, a single railway car, not a single pound of grain or a gallon of fuel.
The collective farmers must drive off all their cattle, and turn over their grain to the safe-keeping of State authorities for transportation to the rear. All valuable property, including non-ferrous metals, grain and fuel which cannot be withdrawn, must without fail be destroyed.
In areas occupied by the enemy, guerrilla units, mounted and on foot, must be formed, diversionist groups must be organized to combat the enemy troops, to foment guerrilla warfare everywhere, to blow up bridges and roads, damage telephone and telegraph lines, set fire to forests, stores, transports.
In the occupied regions conditions must be made unbearable for the enemy and all his accomplices. They must be hounded and annihilated at every step, and all their measures frustrated.
This war with fascist Germany cannot be considered an ordinary war. It is not only a war between two armies, it is also a great war of the entire Soviet people against the German fascist forces.
The aim of this national war in defense of our country against the fascist oppressors is not only elimination of the danger hanging over our country, but also aid to all European peoples groaning under the yoke of German fascism.
In this war of liberation we shall not be alone. In this great war we shall have loyal allies in the peoples of Europe and America, including the German people who are enslaved by the Hitlerite despots.
Our war for the freedom of our country will merge with the struggle of the peoples of Europe and America for their independence, for democratic liberties.
It will be a united front of peoples standing for freedom and against enslavement and threats of enslavement by Hitler's fascist armies.
In this connection the historic utterance of the British Prime Minister Churchill regarding aid to the Soviet Union and the declaration of the United States Government signifying its readiness to render aid to our country, which can only evoke a feeling of gratitude in the hearts of the peoples of the Soviet Union, are fully comprehensible and symptomatic.
Comrades, our forces are numberless. The overweening enemy will soon learn this to his cost. Side by side with the Red Army many thousands of workers, collective farmers, intellectuals are rising to fight the enemy aggressor. The masses of our people will rise up in their millions.
The working people of Moscow and Leningrad have already commenced to form vast popular levies in support of the Red Army. Such popular levies must be raised in every city which is in danger of enemy invasion, all working people must be roused to defend our freedom, our honor, our country--in our patriotic war against German Fascism.
In order to ensure the rapid mobilization of all forces of the peoples of the U.S.S.R. and to repulse the enemy who treacherously attacked our country, a State Committee of Defense has been formed in whose hands the entire power of the State has been vested.
The State Committee of Defense has entered upon its functions and calls upon all people to rally around the Party of Lenin-Stalin and around the Soviet Government, so as to self-denyingly support the Red Army and Navy, demolish the enemy and secure victory.
All our forces for support of our heroic Red Army and our glorious Red Navy! All forces of the people--for the demolition of the enemy!
Forward, to our victory!
Franklin D, Roosevelt: 'We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms', State of the Union - 1941
6 January 1941, Washington DC, USA
I address you, the Members of the Seventy-seventh Congress, at a moment unprecedented in the history of the Union. I use the word "unprecedented," because at no previous time has American security been as seriously threatened from without as it is today.
Since the permanent formation of our Government under the Constitution, in 1789, most of the periods of crisis in our history have related to our domestic affairs. Fortunately, only one of these--the four-year War Between the States--ever threatened our national unity. Today, thank God, one hundred and thirty million Americans, in forty-eight States, have forgotten points of the compass in our national unity.
It is true that prior to 1914 the United States often had been disturbed by events in other Continents. We had even engaged in two wars with European nations and in a number of undeclared wars in the West Indies, in the Mediterranean and in the Pacific for the maintenance of American rights and for the principles of peaceful commerce. But in no case had a serious threat been raised against our national safety or our continued independence.
What I seek to convey is the historic truth that the United States as a nation has at all times maintained clear, definite opposition, to any attempt to lock us in behind an ancient Chinese wall while the procession of civilization went past. Today, thinking of our children and of their children, we oppose enforced isolation for ourselves or for any other part of the Americas.
That determination of ours, extending over all these years, was proved, for example, during the quarter century of wars following the French Revolution.
While the Napoleonic struggles did threaten interests of the United States because of the French foothold in the West Indies and in Louisiana, and while we engaged in the War of 1812 to vindicate our right to peaceful trade, it is nevertheless clear that neither France nor Great Britain, nor any other nation, was aiming at domination of the whole world.
In like fashion from 1815 to 1914-- ninety-nine years-- no single war in Europe or in Asia constituted a real threat against our future or against the future of any other American nation.
Except in the Maximilian interlude in Mexico, no foreign power sought to establish itself in this Hemisphere; and the strength of the British fleet in the Atlantic has been a friendly strength. It is still a friendly strength.
Even when the World War broke out in 1914, it seemed to contain only small threat of danger to our own American future. But, as time went on, the American people began to visualize what the downfall of democratic nations might mean to our own democracy.
We need not overemphasize imperfections in the Peace of Versailles. We need not harp on failure of the democracies to deal with problems of world reconstruction. We should remember that the Peace of 1919 was far less unjust than the kind of "pacification" which began even before Munich, and which is being carried on under the new order of tyranny that seeks to spread over every continent today. The American people have unalterably set their faces against that tyranny.
Every realist knows that the democratic way of life is at this moment being' directly assailed in every part of the world--assailed either by arms, or by secret spreading of poisonous propaganda by those who seek to destroy unity and promote discord in nations that are still at peace.
During sixteen long months this assault has blotted out the whole pattern of democratic life in an appalling number of independent nations, great and small. The assailants are still on the march, threatening other nations, great and small.
Therefore, as your President, performing my constitutional duty to "give to the Congress information of the state of the Union," I find it, unhappily, necessary to report that the future and the safety of our country and of our democracy are overwhelmingly involved in events far beyond our borders.
Armed defense of democratic existence is now being gallantly waged in four continents. If that defense fails, all the population and all the resources of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australasia will be dominated by the conquerors. Let us remember that the total of those populations and their resources in those four continents greatly exceeds the sum total of the population and the resources of the whole of the Western Hemisphere-many times over.
In times like these it is immature--and incidentally, untrue--for anybody to brag that an unprepared America, single-handed, and with one hand tied behind its back, can hold off the whole world.
No realistic American can expect from a dictator's peace international generosity, or return of true independence, or world disarmament, or freedom of expression, or freedom of religion -or even good business.
Such a peace would bring no security for us or for our neighbors. "Those, who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
As a nation, we may take pride in the fact that we are softhearted; but we cannot afford to be soft-headed.
We must always be wary of those who with sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal preach the "ism" of appeasement.
We must especially beware of that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American eagle in order to feather their own nests.
I have recently pointed out how quickly the tempo of modern warfare could bring into our very midst the physical attack which we must eventually expect if the dictator nations win this war.
There is much loose talk of our immunity from immediate and direct invasion from across the seas. Obviously, as long as the British Navy retains its power, no such danger exists. Even if there were no British Navy, it is not probable that any enemy would be stupid enough to attack us by landing troops in the United States from across thousands of miles of ocean, until it had acquired strategic bases from which to operate.
But we learn much from the lessons of the past years in Europe-particularly the lesson of Norway, whose essential seaports were captured by treachery and surprise built up over a series of years.
The first phase of the invasion of this Hemisphere would not be the landing of regular troops. The necessary strategic points would be occupied by secret agents and their dupes- and great numbers of them are already here, and in Latin America.
As long as the aggressor nations maintain the offensive, they-not we--will choose the time and the place and the method of their attack.
That is why the future of all the American Republics is today in serious danger.
That is why this Annual Message to the Congress is unique in our history.
That is why every member of the Executive Branch of the Government and every member of the Congress faces great responsibility and great accountability.
The need of the moment is that our actions and our policy should be devoted primarily-almost exclusively--to meeting this foreign peril. For all our domestic problems are now a part of the great emergency.
Just as our national policy in internal affairs has been based upon a decent respect for the rights and the dignity of all our fellow men within our gates, so our national policy in foreign affairs has been based on a decent respect for the rights and dignity of all nations, large and small. And the justice of morality must and will win in the end.
Our national policy is this:
First, by an impressive expression of the public will and without regard to partisanship, we are committed to all-inclusive national defense.
Second, by an impressive expression of the public will and without regard to partisanship, we are committed to full support of all those resolute peoples, everywhere, who are resisting aggression and are thereby keeping war away from our Hemisphere. By this support, we express our determination that the democratic cause shall prevail; and we strengthen the defense and the security of our own nation.
Third, by an impressive expression of the public will and without regard to partisanship, we are committed to the proposition that principles of morality and considerations for our own security will never permit us to acquiesce in a peace dictated by aggressors and sponsored by appeasers. We know that enduring peace cannot be bought at the cost of other people's freedom.
In the recent national election there was no substantial difference between the two great parties in respect to that national policy. No issue was fought out on this line before the American electorate. Today it is abundantly evident that American citizens everywhere are demanding and supporting speedy and complete action in recognition of obvious danger.
Therefore, the immediate need is a swift and driving increase in our armament production.
Leaders of industry and labor have responded to our summons. Goals of speed have been set. In some cases these goals are being reached ahead of time; in some cases we are on schedule; in other cases there are slight but not serious delays; and in some cases--and I am sorry to say very important cases--we are all concerned by the slowness of the accomplishment of our plans.
The Army and Navy, however, have made substantial progress during the past year. Actual experience is improving and speeding up our methods of production with every passing day. And today's best is not good enough for tomorrow.
I am not satisfied with the progress thus far made. The men in charge of the program represent the best in training, in ability, and in patriotism. They are not satisfied with the progress thus far made. None of us will be satisfied until the job is done.
No matter whether the original goal was set too high or too low, our objective is quicker and better results. To give you two illustrations:
We are behind schedule in turning out finished airplanes; we are working day and night to solve the innumerable problems and to catch up.
We are ahead of schedule in building warships but we are working to get even further ahead of that schedule.
To change a whole nation from a basis of peacetime production of implements of peace to a basis of wartime production of implements of war is no small task. And the greatest difficulty comes at the beginning of the program, when new tools, new plant facilities, new assembly lines, and new ship ways must first be constructed before the actual materiel begins to flow steadily and speedily from them.
The Congress, of course, must rightly keep itself informed at all times of the progress of the program. However, there is certain information, as the Congress itself will readily recognize, which, in the interests of our own security and those of the nations that we are supporting, must of needs be kept in confidence.
New circumstances are constantly begetting new needs for our safety. I shall ask this Congress for greatly increased new appropriations and authorizations to carry on what we have begun.
I also ask this Congress for authority and for funds sufficient to manufacture additional munitions and war supplies of many kinds, to be turned over to those nations which are now in actual war with aggressor nations.
Our most useful and immediate role is to act as an arsenal for them as well as for ourselves. They do not need man power, but they do need billions of dollars worth of the weapons of defense.
The time is near when they will not be able to pay for them all in ready cash. We cannot, and we will not, tell them that they must surrender, merely because of present inability to pay for the weapons which we know they must have.
I do not recommend that we make them a loan of dollars with which to pay for these weapons--a loan to be repaid in dollars.
I recommend that we make it possible for those nations to continue to obtain war materials in the United States, fitting their orders into our own program. Nearly all their materiel would, if the time ever came, be useful for our own defense.
Taking counsel of expert military and naval authorities, considering what is best for our own security, we are free to decide how much should be kept here and how much should be sent abroad to our friends who by their determined and heroic resistance are giving us time in which to make ready our own defense.
For what we send abroad, we shall be repaid within a reasonable time following the close of hostilities, in similar materials, or, at our option, in other goods of many kinds, which they can produce and which we need.
Let us say to the democracies: "We Americans are vitally concerned in your defense of freedom. We are putting forth our energies, our resources and our organizing powers to give you the strength to regain and maintain a free world. We shall send you, in ever-increasing numbers, ships, planes, tanks, guns. This is our purpose and our pledge."
In fulfillment of this purpose we will not be intimidated by the threats of dictators that they will regard as a breach of international law or as an act of war our aid to the democracies which dare to resist their aggression. Such aid is not an act of war, even if a dictator should unilaterally proclaim it so to be.
When the dictators, if the dictators, are ready to make war upon us, they will not wait for an act of war on our part. They did not wait for Norway or Belgium or the Netherlands to commit an act of war.
Their only interest is in a new one-way international law, which lacks mutuality in its observance, and, therefore, becomes an instrument of oppression.
The happiness of future generations of Americans may well depend upon how effective and how immediate we can make our aid felt. No one can tell the exact character of the emergency situations that we may be called upon to meet. The Nation's hands must not be tied when the Nation's life is in danger.
We must all prepare to make the sacrifices that the emergency-almost as serious as war itself--demands. Whatever stands in the way of speed and efficiency in defense preparations must give way to the national need.
A free nation has the right to expect full cooperation from all groups. A free nation has the right to look to the leaders of business, of labor, and of agriculture to take the lead in stimulating effort, not among other groups but within their own groups.
The best way of dealing with the few slackers or trouble makers in our midst is, first, to shame them by patriotic example, and, if that fails, to use the sovereignty of Government to save Government.
As men do not live by bread alone, they do not fight by armaments alone. Those who man our defenses, and those behind them who build our defenses, must have the stamina and the courage which come from unshakable belief in the manner of life which they are defending. The mighty action that we are calling for cannot be based on a disregard of all things worth fighting for.
The Nation takes great satisfaction and much strength from the things which have been done to make its people conscious of their individual stake in the preservation of democratic life in America. Those things have toughened the fibre of our people, have renewed their faith and strengthened their devotion to the institutions we make ready to protect.
Certainly this is no time for any of us to stop thinking about the social and economic problems which are the root cause of the social revolution which is today a supreme factor in the world.
For there is nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy. The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems are simple. They are:
Equality of opportunity for youth and for others.
Jobs for those who can work.
Security for those who need it.
The ending of special privilege for the few.
The preservation of civil liberties for all.
The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living.
These are the simple, basic things that must never be lost sight of in the turmoil and unbelievable complexity of our modern world. The inner and abiding strength of our economic and political systems is dependent upon the degree to which they fulfill these expectations.
Many subjects connected with our social economy call for immediate improvement.
As examples:
We should bring more citizens under the coverage of old-age pensions and unemployment insurance.
We should widen the opportunities for adequate medical care.
We should plan a better system by which persons deserving or needing gainful employment may obtain it.
I have called for personal sacrifice. I am assured of the willingness of almost all Americans to respond to that call.
A part of the sacrifice means the payment of more money in taxes. In my Budget Message I shall recommend that a greater portion of this great defense program be paid for from taxation than we are paying today. No person should try, or be allowed, to get rich out of this program; and the principle of tax payments in accordance with ability to pay should be constantly before our eyes to guide our legislation.
If the Congress maintains these principles, the voters, putting patriotism ahead of pocketbooks, will give you their applause.
In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression--everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way--everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want--which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear--which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor--anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
To that new order we oppose the greater conception--the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.
Since the beginning of our American history, we have been engaged in change -- in a perpetual peaceful revolution -- a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions--without the concentration camp or the quick-lime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.
This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women; and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose. To that high concept there can be no end save victory.
Franklin D Roosevelt: 'We must be the great arsenal of democracy', fireside chat broadcast - 1940
29 December 1940, Washington DC, USA
This is not a fireside chat on war. It is a talk on national security, because the nub of the whole purpose of your President is to keep you now, and your children later, and your grandchildren much later, out of a last-ditch war for the preservation of American independence and all of the things that American independence means to you and to me and to ours.
Tonight, in the presence of a world crisis, my mind goes back eight years to a night in the midst of a domestic crisis. It was a time when the wheels of American industry were grinding to a full stop, when the whole banking system of our country had ceased to function.
I well remember that while I sat in my study in the White House, preparing to talk with the people of the United States, I had before my eyes the picture of all those Americans with whom I was talking. I saw the workmen in the mills, the mines, the factories; the girl behind the counter; the small shopkeeper; the farmer doing his spring plowing; the widows and the old men wondering about their life's savings.
I tried to convey to the great mass of American people what the banking crisis meant to them in their daily lives.
Tonight, I want to do the same thing, with the same people, in this new crisis which faces America.
We met the issue of 1933 with courage and realism.
We face this new crisis -- this new threat to the security of our nation -- with the same courage and realism.
Never before since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock has our American civilization been in such danger as now.
For, on September 27th, 1940, this year, by an agreement signed in Berlin, three powerful nations, two in Europe and one in Asia, joined themselves together in the threat that if the United States of America interfered with or blocked the expansion program of these three nations -- a program aimed at world control -- they would unite in ultimate action against the United States.
The Nazi masters of Germany have made it clear that they intend not only to dominate all life and thought in their own country, but also to enslave the whole of Europe, and then to use the resources of Europe to dominate the rest of the world.
It was only three weeks ago their leader stated this: " There are two worlds that stand opposed to each other." And then in defiant reply to his opponents, he said this: "Others are correct when they say: With this world we cannot ever reconcile ourselves .... I can beat any other power in the world." So said the leader of the Nazis.
In other words, the Axis not merely admits but the Axis proclaims that there can be no ultimate peace between their philosophy of government and our philosophy of government.
In view of the nature of this undeniable threat, it can be asserted, properly and categorically, that the United States has no right or reason to encourage talk of peace, until the day shall come when there is a clear intention on the part of the aggressor nations to abandon all thought of dominating or conquering the world.
At this moment, the forces of the states that are leagued against all peoples who live in freedom are being held away from our shores. The Germans and the Italians are being blocked on the other side of the Atlantic by the British, and by the Greeks, and by thousands of soldiers and sailors who were able to escape from subjugated countries. In Asia the Japanese are being engaged by the Chinese nation in another great defense.
In the Pacific Ocean is our fleet.
Some of our people like to believe that wars in Europe and in Asia are of no concern to us. But it is a matter of most vital concern to us that European and Asiatic war-makers should not gain control of the oceans which lead to this hemisphere.
One hundred and seventeen years ago the Monroe Doctrine was conceived by our Government as a measure of defense in the face of a threat against this hemisphere by an alliance in Continental Europe. Thereafter, we stood (on) guard in the Atlantic, with the British as neighbors. There was no treaty. There was no "unwritten agreement."
And yet, there was the feeling, proven correct by history, that we as neighbors could settle any disputes in peaceful fashion. And the fact is that during the whole of this time the Western Hemisphere has remained free from aggression from Europe or from Asia.
Does anyone seriously believe that we need to fear attack anywhere in the Americas while a free Britain remains our most powerful naval neighbor in the Atlantic? And does anyone seriously believe, on the other hand, that we could rest easy if the Axis powers were our neighbors there?
If Great Britain goes down, the Axis powers will control the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and the high seas -- and they will be in a position to bring enormous military and naval resources against this hemisphere. It is no exaggeration to say that all of us, in all the Americas, would be living at the point of a gun -- a gun loaded with explosive bullets, economic as well as military.
We should enter upon a new and terrible era in which the whole world, our hemisphere included, would be run by threats of brute force. And to survive in such a world, we would have to convert ourselves permanently into a militaristic power on the basis of war economy.
Some of us like to believe that even if (Great) Britain falls, we are still safe, because of the broad expanse of the Atlantic and of the Pacific.
But the width of those (these) oceans is not what it was in the days of clipper ships. At one point between Africa and Brazil the distance is less from Washington than it is from Washington to Denver, Colorado -- five hours for the latest type of bomber. And at the North end of the Pacific Ocean America and Asia almost touch each other.
Why, even today we have planes that (which) could fly from the British Isles to New England and back again without refueling. And remember that the range of a (the) modern bomber is ever being increased.
During the past week many people in all parts of the nation have told me what they wanted me to say tonight. Almost all of them expressed a courageous desire to hear the plain truth about the gravity of the situation. One telegram, however, expressed the attitude of the small minority who want to see no evil and hear no evil, even though they know in their hearts that evil exists. That telegram begged me not to tell again of the ease with which our American cities could be bombed by any hostile power which had gained bases in this Western Hemisphere. The gist of that telegram was: "Please, Mr. President, don't frighten us by telling us the facts."
Frankly and definitely there is danger ahead -- danger against which we must prepare. But we well know that we cannot escape danger (it), or the fear of danger, by crawling into bed and pulling the covers over our heads.
Some nations of Europe were bound by solemn non-intervention pacts with Germany. Other nations were assured by Germany that they need never fear invasion. Non-intervention pact or not, the fact remains that they were attacked, overrun, (and) thrown into (the) modern (form of) slavery at an hour's notice, or even without any notice at all. As an exiled leader of one of these nations said to me the other day, "The notice was a minus quantity. It was given to my Government two hours after German troops had poured into my country in a hundred places."
The fate of these nations tells us what it means to live at the point of a Nazi gun.
The Nazis have justified such actions by various pious frauds. One of these frauds is the claim that they are occupying a nation for the purpose of "restoring order." Another is that they are occupying or controlling a nation on the excuse that they are "protecting it" against the aggression of somebody else.
For example, Germany has said that she was occupying Belgium to save the Belgians from the British. Would she then hesitate to say to any South American country, "We are occupying you to protect you from aggression by the United States?"
Belgium today is being used as an invasion base against Britain, now fighting for its life. And any South American country, in Nazi hands, would always constitute a jumping-off place for German attack on any one of the other republics of this hemisphere.
Analyze for yourselves the future of two other places even nearer to Germany if the Nazis won. Could Ireland hold out? Would Irish freedom be permitted as an amazing pet exception in an unfree world? Or the Islands of the Azores which still fly the flag of Portugal after five
centuries? You and I think of Hawaii as an outpost of defense in the Pacific. And yet, the Azores are closer to our shores in the Atlantic than Hawaii is on the other side.
There are those who say that the Axis powers would never have any desire to attack the Western Hemisphere. That (this) is the same dangerous form of wishful thinking which has destroyed the powers of resistance of so many conquered peoples. The plain facts are that the Nazis have proclaimed, time and again, that all other races are their inferiors and therefore subject to their orders. And most important of all, the vast resources and wealth of this American Hemisphere constitute the most tempting loot in all of the round world.
Let us no longer blind ourselves to the undeniable fact that the evil forces which have crushed and undermined and corrupted so many others are already within our own gates. Your Government knows much about them and every day is ferreting them out.
Their secret emissaries are active in our own and in neighboring countries. They seek to stir up suspicion and dissension to cause internal strife. They try to turn capital against labor, and vice versa. They try to reawaken long slumbering racist and religious enmities which should have no place in this country. They are active in every group that promotes intolerance. They exploit for their own ends our own natural abhorrence of war. These trouble-breeders have but one purpose. It is to divide our people, to divide them into hostile groups and to destroy our unity and shatter our will to defend ourselves.
There are also American citizens, many of then in high places, who, unwittingly in most cases, are aiding and abetting the work of these agents. I do not charge these American citizens with being foreign agents. But I do charge them with doing exactly the kind of work that the dictators want done in the United States.
These people not only believe that we can save our own skins by shutting our eyes to the fate of other nations. Some of them go much further than that. They say that we can and should become the friends and even the partners of the Axis powers. Some of them even suggest that we should imitate the methods of the dictatorships. But Americans never can and never will do that.
The experience of the past two years has proven beyond doubt that no nation can appease the Nazis. No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it. There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness. There can be no reasoning with an incendiary bomb. We know now that a nation can have peace with the Nazis only at the price of total surrender.
Even the people of Italy have been forced to become accomplices of the Nazis, but at this moment they do not know how soon they will be embraced to death by their allies.
The American appeasers ignore the warning to be found in the fate of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and France. They tell you that the Axis powers are going to win anyway; that all of this bloodshed in the world could be saved, that the United States might just as well throw its influence into the scale of a dictated peace, and get the best out of it that we can.
They call it a "negotiated peace." Nonsense! Is it a negotiated peace if a gang of outlaws surrounds your community and on threat of extermination makes you pay tribute to save your own skins?
Such a dictated peace would be no peace at all. It would be only another armistice, leading to the most gigantic armament race and the most devastating trade wars in all history. And in these contests the Americas would offer the only real resistance to the Axis powers.
With all their vaunted efficiency, with all their (and) parade of pious purpose in this war, there are still in their background the concentration camp and the servants of God in chains.
The history of recent years proves that the shootings and the chains and the concentration camps are not simply the transient tools but the very altars of modern dictatorships. They may talk of a "new order" in the world, but what they have in mind is only (but) a revival of the oldest and the worst tyranny. In that there is no liberty, no religion, no hope.
The proposed "new order" is the very opposite of a United States of Europe or a United States of Asia. It is not a government based upon the consent of the governed. It is not a union of ordinary, self-respecting men and women to protect themselves and their freedom and their dignity from oppression. It is an unholy alliance of power and pelf to dominate and to enslave the human race.
The British people and their allies today are conducting an active war against this unholy alliance. Our own future security is greatly dependent on the outcome of that fight. Our ability to "keep out of war" is going to be affected by that outcome.
Thinking in terms of today and tomorrow, I make the direct statement to the American people that there is far less chance of the United States getting into war if we do all we can now to support the nations defending themselves against attack by the Axis than if we acquiesce in their defeat, submit tamely to an Axis victory, and wait our turn to be the object of attack in another war later on.
If we are to be completely honest with ourselves, we must admit that there is risk in any course we may take. But I deeply believe that the great majority of our people agree that the course that I advocate involves the least risk now and the greatest hope for world peace in the future.
The people of Europe who are defending themselves do not ask us to do their fighting. They ask us for the implements of war, the planes, the tanks, the guns, the freighters which will enable them to fight for their liberty and for our security. Emphatically we must get these weapons to them, get them to them in sufficient volume and quickly enough, so that we and our children will be saved the agony and suffering of war which others have had to endure.
Let not the defeatists tell us that it is too late. It will never be earlier. Tomorrow will be later than today.
Certain facts are self-evident.
In a military sense Great Britain and the British Empire are today the spearhead of resistance to world conquest. And they are putting up a fight which will live forever in the story of human gallantry.
There is no demand for sending an American Expeditionary Force outside our own borders. There is no intention by any member of your Government to send such a force. You can, therefore, nail -- nail any talk about sending armies to Europe as deliberate untruth.
Our national policy is not directed toward war. Its sole purpose is to keep war away from our country and away from our people.
Democracy's fight against world conquest is being greatly aided, and must be more greatly aided, by the rearmament of the United States and by sending every ounce and every ton of munitions and supplies that we can possibly spare to help the defenders who are in the front lines. And it is no more unneutral for us to do that than it is for Sweden, Russia and other nations near Germany to send steel and ore and oil and other war materials into Germany every day in the week.
We are planning our own defense with the utmost urgency, and in its vast scale we must integrate the war needs of Britain and the other free nations which are resisting aggression.
This is not a matter of sentiment or of controversial personal opinion. It is a matter of realistic, practical military policy, based on the advice of our military experts who are in close touch with existing warfare. These military and naval experts and the members of the Congress and the Administration have a single-minded purpose -- the defense of the United States.
This nation is making a great effort to produce everything that is necessary in this emergency -- and with all possible speed. And this great effort requires great sacrifice.
I would ask no one to defend a democracy which in turn would not defend everyone in the nation against want and privation. The strength of this nation shall not be diluted by the failure of the Government to protect the economic well-being of its (all) citizens.
If our capacity to produce is limited by machines, it must ever be remembered that these machines are operated by the skill and the stamina of the workers. As the Government is determined to protect the rights of the workers, so the nation has a right to expect that the men who man the machines will discharge their full responsibilities to the urgent needs of defense.
The worker possesses the same human dignity and is entitled to the same security of position as the engineer or the manager or the owner. For the workers provide the human power that turns out the destroyers, and the (air)planes and the tanks.
The nation expects our defense industries to continue operation without interruption by strikes or lockouts. It expects and insists that management and workers will reconcile their differences by voluntary or legal means, to continue to produce the supplies that are so sorely needed.
And on the economic side of our great defense program, we are, as you know, bending every effort to maintain stability of prices and with that the stability of the cost of living.
Nine days ago I announced the setting up of a more effective organization to direct our gigantic efforts to increase the production of munitions. The appropriation of vast sums of money and a well coordinated executive direction of our defense efforts are not in themselves enough. Guns, planes, (and) ships and many other things have to be built in the factories and the arsenals of America. They have to be produced by workers and managers and engineers with the aid of machines which in turn have to be built by hundreds of thousands of workers throughout the land.
In this great work there has been splendid cooperation between the Government and industry and labor, and I am very thankful.
American industrial genius, unmatched throughout all the world in the solution of production problems, has been called upon to bring its resources and its talents into action. Manufacturers of watches, of farm implements, of linotypes, and cash registers, and automobiles, and sewing machines, and lawn mowers and locomotives are now making fuses, bomb packing crates, telescope mounts, shells, and pistols and tanks.
But all of our present efforts are not enough. We must have more ships, more guns, more planes -- more of everything. And this can only be accomplished if we discard the notion of "business as usual." This job cannot be done merely by superimposing on the existing productive facilities the added requirements of the nation for defense.
Our defense efforts must not be blocked by those who fear the future consequences of surplus plant capacity. The possible consequences of failure of our defense efforts now are much more to be feared.
And after the present needs of our defense are past, a proper handling of the country's peacetime needs will require all of the new productive capacity -- if not still more.
No pessimistic policy about the future of America shall delay the immediate expansion of those industries essential to defense. We need them.
I want to make it clear that it is the purpose of the nation to build now with all possible speed every machine, every arsenal, every (and) factory that we need to manufacture our defense material. We have the men -- the skill -- the wealth -- and above all, the will.
I am confident that if and when production of consumer or luxury goods in certain industries requires the use of machines and raw materials that are essential for defense purposes, then such production must yield, and will gladly yield, to our primary and compelling purpose.
So I appeal to the owners of plants -- to the managers -to the workers -- to our own Government employees -- to put every ounce of effort into producing these munitions swiftly and without stint. (And) With this appeal I give you the pledge that all of us who are officers of your Government will devote ourselves to the same whole-hearted extent to the great task that (which) lies ahead.
As planes and ships and guns and shells are produced, your Government, with its defense experts, can then determine how best to use them to defend this hemisphere. The decision as to how much shall be sent abroad and how much shall remain at home must be made on the basis of our overall military necessities.
We must be the great arsenal of democracy. For us this is an emergency as serious as war itself. We must apply ourselves to our task with the same resolution, the same sense of urgency, the same spirit of patriotism and sacrifice as we would show were we at war.
We have furnished the British great material support and we will furnish far more in the future. There will be no "bottlenecks" in our determination to aid Great Britain. No dictator, no combination of dictators, will weaken that determination by threats of how they will construe that determination.
The British have received invaluable military support from the heroic Greek army and from the forces of all the governments in exile. Their strength is growing. It is the strength of men and women who value their freedom more highly than they value their lives.
I believe that the Axis powers are not going to win this war. I base that belief on the latest and best of information.
We have no excuse for defeatism. We have every good reason for hope -- hope for peace, yes, and hope for the defense of our civilization and for the building of a better civilization in the future.
I have the profound conviction that the American people are now determined to put forth a mightier effort than they have ever yet made to increase our production of all the implements of defense, to meet the threat to our democratic faith.
As President of the United States I call for that national effort. I call for it in the name of this nation which we love and honor and which we are privileged and proud to serve. I call upon our people with absolute confidence that our common cause will greatly succeed.
Tommy Douglas: 'All my life, I've wished that it were possible that I could attend my own funeral', Resignation as NDP Leader - 1971
24 April 1971, Ottawa, Canada
All my life, I've wished that it were possible that I could attend my own funeral and listen to the eulogies that would be made on my behalf, but I knew that this would be extremely difficult as I'd have to be dead.
Laurier LaPierre and his committee have made it possible maybe for me to listen to the eulogies without the disadvantage of having passed on to another world, but never in my wildest dreams did I expect to have eulogies delivered by such talented and eloquent spokesmen, and I would like to thank Pierre Berton, this noted author and outstanding radio personality, and to say that I know of no one in Canada from whom I would appreciate this tribute more than from this man.
I want to assure you that my wife, Irma, and myself are deeply touched by these tributes that we are profoundly grateful for this occasion. I am glad that you included Irma because, as someone has said, "Behind every successful man, there's a surprised mother-in-law," and I have been fortunate that in all my political career I've had someone who has helped me and encouraged me, and tonight I'm glad that you are paying tribute to her.
I want to say to Grant Notley that I am not saying goodbye either. I propose to stay in the House of Commons until the next election. Our supporters in the Nanaimo-Cowichan Islands have done me the great honour of nominating me to contest the next federal election and, if God gives me strength and the electorate give votes, I'll be here fighting at the same old stand for the things in which you and I believe.
But, tonight, my wife, Irma, and I did not come here so much to receive your thanks, although we are deeply grateful for it. We have come tonight to thank you, to thank the hundreds of thousands of people you represent who have made anything we have done possible.
I think of the men and women who 35 years ago and more dreamed the impossible dream, men and women who lived beyond the lean horizon of their years, who believed devoutly that it was possible to have a more humane and a more just society, and who gave up their time and their money and their energy to begin building it.
Tthe men and women who travelled in all kinds of weather and in all kinds of vehicles, who went from schoolhouse to schoolhouse organising, raising money, who canvassed from door to door, who passed out literature, who manned the polls, who drove cars on election day, you who are here and thousands whom you represent. These are the men and women to whom we should be profoundly grateful.
I feel tonight a great flow of gratitude to them, and I'm filled with wonder that I, raised in a working class home on the wrong side of tracks in the city of Winnipeg should have been given the opportunity by the working people of this country to make a contribution to the public life of Canada, which I hope will long endure.
If I were asked to sum up for the people of Canada and for the New Democratic Party what I have learned from more than a third of a century in public life, I would sum it up by saying to them that it is possible in this country of ours to build a society in which there will be full employment, in which there will be a higher standard of living, in which there will be an improved quality of life while at the same time maintaining a reasonable stability in the cost of living.
We don't have to have three quarters of a million unemployed. We don't have to choose between unemployment and inflation.
My message to you is that we don't have to do this. My message to you is that we have in Canada the resources, the technical know-how and the industrious people who could make this a great land if we were prepared to bring these various factors together in building a planned economy dedicated to meeting human needs and responding to human wants.
Mr. Coldwell and I have seen it happen. In 1937, when the CCF proposed in the House of Commons a $500-million program to put single unemployed to work, the minister of finance said, "Where will we get the money?"
Mr. [inaudible 00:08:21] asked the same question today. My reply at that time was that if we were to go to war, the minister would find the money, and it turned out to be true.
In 1939, when we declared war against Nazi Germany, for the first time, we used the Bank of Canada to make financially possible what was physically possible. We took a million men and women and put them in uniform. We fed and clothed and armed them. The rest of the people of Canada went to work. The government organised over a hundred ground corporations. We manufactured things that had never been manufactured before. We gave our farmers and fishermen guaranteed prices, and they produced more food than we'd ever produced in peacetime. We built the third largest merchant navy in the world and we manned it. In order to prevent profiteering and inflation, we fixed prices, and we did it all without borrowing a single dollar from outside of Canada.
My message to the people of Canada is this, that if we could mobilise the financial and the material and the human resources of this country to fight a successful war against Nazi tyranny, we can if we want to mobilise the same resources to fight a continual war against poverty, unemployment and social injustice.
Fifty years ago, the founder of our movement, J.S. Woodsworth, wrote a pledge. That pledge has been the beacon star of my life, and I pass it on to those of you who must continue the building of this movement, and I hope you'll make it your pledge.
J.S. Woodsworth wrote, "We pledge ourselves to united efforts in establishing on the earth an era of justice, truth and love. May our faces be to the future. May we be the children of that brighter and better day which even now is beginning to dawn. May we not impede, but rather cooperate with those spiritual forces which we believe are impelling the world upward and onward, for our supreme task is to make our dreams come true, to transform our city into the holy city and to make this land in reality God's own country."
Thank you.
Tommy Douglas: 'Don't ever let them tell you we can't afford healthcare', 50th Anniversary NDP Convention - 1983
1 July 1983, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
Douglas is the most famous liberal reformer in Canadian political history. He retired from parliament in 1979. He returned to the 1983 NDP convention to give this inspiring speech .
The second is, again, it's been mentioned, to save Medicare from subtle strangulation. When you go back to your constituency and you run into somebody who says, "It's a good idea for you soft package humanitarians, but we can't afford it," let me give you a simple statistic which you can put down on a piece of paper and carry in your head.
That is that our friends in United States are spending 9% of their gross national product. They got a higher per capita gross national product than we do. They spend 9% of their gross national product on healthcare, and 34 million of their people have no healthcare coverage.
In Canada, we spend 7% of our gross national product, and every man, woman, and child in Canada is covered under Medicare.
I want to warn you as one who started out even before I was in politics, dedicated to the idea of comprehensive health insurance. Fought for it through all my political life.
I want to say to you that Medicare and hospital insurance are already marked for destruction, unless you stop the per capita taxes and the extra billing, which most of the governments of Canada are now permitting.
Someone said, "But what I'm going to do, what I'm going to do." A per capita tax which is levied without any basis of ability to pay. A woman in Ontario with two children, having to pay over $50 a month, $600 a year, can she afford that? That's levied on a per capita basis, not on the basis of ability to pay.
I know you need money to run Medicare. I can tell you something about the cost of that. But if we need money for Medicare or for any other humane service, let it be financed on the basis of ability to pay, and not on so much per head.
We must fight as we have never fought before.
To say per capita tax for healthcare, out the window. To say there must be no extra billing or extra charges.
You say, "Why? What harm does it do?" I'll tell you what harm it does.
It means that increasingly the people who can afford to pay the per capita tax is going up, just gone up in Alberta. People who are going to afford to pay per capita tax, and the people who are going to afford to pay extra billing will pay it.
They will get the best care, they will get the most experienced surgeons and physicians, they will get into the best hospitals.
The people who can't pay, they'll take what's left. If you want a two-tiered health program, then just continue the way we're going.
I remind you that in this movement, we pledged ourselves 50 years ago, that we would provide healthcare for every man, woman, and child, irrespective of their colour, their race, or their financial status.
By God, we're going to do it.
Bernie Sanders: 'Create a government that works for all of us, not just the 1 percent', CNN Democratic Debate - 2016
14 April 2016, CNN Democratic Debate, Brooklyn, New York, USA
I grew up in Brooklyn, New York...
(APPLAUSE)
... the son of an immigrant who came to this country from Poland at the age of 17 without a nickel in his pocket, never made a whole lot of money, but was a very proud American, because this country gave him and my mom the opportunity to send their kids to college.
I believe that this country has enormous potential if we have the guts to take on the big money interests who dominate our economic and political life. And I disagree with Secretary Clinton in the belief that you can get money from Wall Street, that you can get money for a super PAC from powerful special interests, and then at the end of the day do what has to be done for the working families of this country. I just don’t accept that.
What I believe is that this country, if we stand together and not let the Trumps of the world divide us up, can guarantee health care to all people as a right, can have paid family and medical leave, can make public colleges and universities tuition-free, can lead the world in transforming our energy system and combatting climate change, can break up the large financial institutions, can demand that the wealthiest people in this country start paying their fair share of taxes.
And we can do that when millions of people stand up, fight back, and create a government that works for all of us, not just the 1 percent.
(APPLAUSE)
That is what the political revolution is about. That is what this campaign is about. And with your help, we’re going to win here in New York. Thank you. Thank you.
Winston Churchill: 'Be ye men of valour", first radio broadcast as Prime Minister - 1940
19 May 1940, BBC, London, United Kingdom
I speak to you for the first time as Prime Minister in a solemn hour for the life of our country, of our empire, of our allies, and, above all, of the cause of Freedom. A tremendous battle is raging in France and Flanders. The Germans, by a remarkable combination of air bombing and heavily armored tanks, have broken through the French defenses north of the Maginot Line, and strong columns of their armored vehicles are ravaging the open country, which for the first day or two was without defenders. They have penetrated deeply and spread alarm and confusion in their track. Behind them there are now appearing infantry in lorries, and behind them, again, the large masses are moving forward. The re-groupment of the French armies to make head against, and also to strike at, this intruding wedge has been proceeding for several days, largely assisted by the magnificent efforts of the Royal Air Force.
We must not allow ourselves to be intimidated by the presence of these armored vehicles in unexpected places behind our lines. If they are behind our Front, the French are also at many points fighting actively behind theirs. Both sides are therefore in an extremely dangerous position. And if the French Army, and our own Army, are well handled, as I believe they will be; if the French retain that genius for recovery and counter-attack for which they have so long been famous; and if the British Army shows the dogged endurance and solid fighting power of which there have been so many examples in the past — then a sudden transformation of the scene might spring into being.
It would be foolish, however, to disguise the gravity of the hour. It would be still more foolish to lose heart and courage or to suppose that well-trained, well-equipped armies numbering three or four millions of men can be overcome in the space of a few weeks, or even months, by a scoop, or raid of mechanized vehicles, however formidable. We may look with confidence to the stabilization of the Front in France, and to the general engagement of the masses, which will enable the qualities of the French and British soldiers to be matched squarely against those of their adversaries. For myself, I have invincible confidence in the French Army and its leaders. Only a very small part of that splendid Army has yet been heavily engaged; and only a very small part of France has yet been invaded. There is a good evidence to show that practically the whole of the specialized and mechanized forces of the enemy have been already thrown into the battle; and we know that very heavy losses have been inflicted upon them. No officer or man, no brigade or division, which grapples at close quarters with the enemy, wherever encountered, can fail to make a worthy contribution to the general result. the Armies must cast away the idea of resisting behind concrete lines or natural obstacles, and must realize that mastery can only be regained by furious and unrelenting assault. And this spirit must not only animate the High Command, but must inspire every fighting man.
In the air — often at serious odds, often at odds hitherto thought overwhelming — we have been clawing down three or four to one of our enemies; and the relative balance of the British and German Air Forces is now considerably more favorable to us than at the beginning of the battle. In cutting down the German bombers, we are fighting our own battle as well as that of France. May confidence in our ability to fight it out to the finish with the German Air Force has been strengthened by the fierce encounters which have taken place and are taking place. At the same time, our heavy bombers are striking nightly at the tap-root of German mechanized power, and have already inflicted serious damage upon the oil refineries on which the Nazi effort to dominate the world directly depends.
We must expect that as soon as stability is reached on the Western Front, the bulk of that hideous apparatus of aggression which gashed Holland into ruin and slavery in a few days will be turned upon us. I am sure I speak for all when I say we are ready to face it; to endure it; and to retaliate against it — to any extent that the unwritten laws of war permit. There will be many men and many women in the Island who when the ordeal comes upon them, as come it will, will feel comfort, and even a pride, that they are sharing the perils of our lads at the Front — soldiers, sailors and airmen, God bless them — and are drawing away from them a part at least of the onslaught they have to bear. Is not this the appointed time for all to make the utmost exertions in their power? If the battle is to be won, we must provide our men with ever-increasing quantities of the weapons and ammunition they need. We must have, and have quickly, more aeroplanes, more tanks, more shells, more guns. there is imperious need for these vital munitions. They increase our strength against the powerfully armed enemy. They replace the wastage of the obstinate struggle; and the knowledge that wastage will speedily be replaced enables us to draw more readily upon our reserves and throw them in now that everything counts so much.
Our task is not only to win the battle – but to win the war. After this battle in France abates its force, there will come the battle for our Island — for all that Britain is, and all the Britain means. That will be the struggle. In that supreme emergency we shall not hesitate to take every step, even the most drastic, to call forth from our people the last ounce and the last inch of effort of which they are capable. The interests of property, the hours of labor, are nothing compared with the struggle of life and honor, for right and freedom, to which we have vowed ourselves.
I have received from the Chiefs of the French Republic,and in particular form its indomitable Prime Minister, M. Reynaud, the most sacred pledges that whatever happens they will fight to the end, be it bitter or be it glorious. Nay, if we fight to the end, it can only be glorious.
Having received His Majesty’s commission, I have formed an Administration of men and women of every Party and of almost every point of view. We have differed and quarreled in the past; but now one bond unites us all — to wage war until victory is won, and never to surrender ourselves to servitude and shame, whatever the cost and the agony may be. this is one of the most awe-striking periods in the long history of France and Britain. It is also beyond doubt the most sublime. Side by side, unaided except by their kith and kin in the great Dominions and by the wide empires which rest beneath their shield – side by side, the British and French peoples have advanced to rescue not only Europe but mankind from the foulest and most soul-destroying tyranny which has ever darkened and stained the pages of history. Behind them – behind us- behind the Armies and Fleets of Britain and France – gather a group of shattered States and bludgeoned races: the Czechs, the Poles, the Norwegians, the Danes, the Dutch, the Belgians – upon all of whom the long night of barbarism will descend, unbroken even by a star of hope, unless we conquer, as conquer we must; as conquer we shall.
Today is Trinity Sunday. Centuries ago words were written to be a call and a spur to the faithful servants of Truth and Justice: “Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour, and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar. As the Will of God is in Heaven, even so let it be."