Thought number 2023568/My thoughts on Happiness
Everyone wants to be happy, but not everyone knows how. I'm going to tell about a way that works for me.
First of all how you define happiness? The things that make you say huh? English being the dynamic language that it is, we sometimes come up with our own definitions to words.
Some people think happiness is getting all or most of the things they want. They always have a list of new things they want or are about to get: cars, vacations, bigger homes, nicer clothes, newer furniture, or the latest high tech electronic toy. The last one, guilty as charged I'm not perfect . But often these people are deeply discontented, for no matter how much they acquire, it never seems to be enough.
A new acquisition brings them pleasure, but only for a little while, and then they move on. Happiness is always in the future, always appearing, and always disappearing as well. Some one once said, and don't ask me who. There are two ways to be happy: The first is to have all the things you want; the second is to have wisdom to enjoy the things you have. When you practice the second way, you are able to appreciate the beauty that exist in the simplest elements of life.
Even in hardship, believe it or not you'll find many reasons to find joy on a daily basis. Oh sure you'll feel good when you acquirer something new. After all most of us live in a materialistic state of mind and are surrounded by a capitalistic nation that confronts, and challenges us to take more than we really need.
I once met a person who claimed they were rich because they had so much money. Well the word rich has several definitions and they all don't wrap around money. This person was wealthy and wasn't truly happy with the way the way their life was going. I went on to say; You're only rich if you're truly happy and have prosperity. This isn't something that money can really buy. You may be able to put down payment on happiness, but it will only sit in lay away until you time to afford it. Sure enough this sunk in, and reality was a slap in the face. The next time I saw this person, they were truly rich, because they found simplistics of happiness.
But you know, your real and lasting happiness will be found in relationships, in simple pleasures, in nature and inaction's that show love. If you remember that the time to be happy is now, and the place to be is where you are. Like where you stand, where you sleep, where you eat, and of course the greatest secret is the happiness inside of you. A smile is only a smile unless it comes from the inside and works it self out. With this mind, you will a joy that no amount of money can buy. Dont worry be happy. (By R.F.C.)
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Thought number 2026528A/ My thoughts on Success (S=A)
Alright. I'm going to give you some advice on success, and I'm going to stick it to you straight. Before I get into this, I'm going to say success is truly what you make it.
I have spent a substantial amount of time with people who are successful and with those who claim they were successful. I've also been around those punted.
So what makes a person successful? What makes some people succeed and others fold? The difference, in short, between the cans and the can-nots, and do's and the do-nots from my point of view. I would honestly have to say confidence.
Short and sweet, no kiss, no K-Y!
Confidence is the key element and if you multiply confidence by four you get attitude. Trust me people, in my observations C=A.
Funny huh? The funny thing is this no secret.
Let me tell you, people who succeed dont have fewer problems than other people. They dont all come out the womb with greater brain power. They all dont have better parents, or eat off a silver spoon either. Some times they start off on their paths with incredible odds. So get over it! But you know one thing they do is have a way of looking at things, a way of seeing obstacles as a possiblities, a way of hanging in there, and making the most of every opportunity. Truly that almost quarantees success.
I like exercise, and I use to train for power lifting competitions. Some days I would go into the gym in a total slump. I didn't want to train hard or push myself to lift heavier weight. One day I ask myself. Why am I declining? I should be get getting stronger. Well I tried an experiment, and on the way the gym I tried visualizing myself training harder, and sure enough it work. I was snatching up weight that once was heavy to me. I know thats a weak example, but I think you get the point.
Its the big A of attitude.
Heres something else you know about successful people. Thier flexible, optimistic and hard working too. So lets wrap this up by saying; Success is more than anything else and with out a doubt, a question of attitude. Trust me on this, I'm speaking from experience. You can either make it or break it. So ask yourself, What is your attitude? Or as my late mother use to say. Whats your problem? Whats holding you back? (By R.F.C.)
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Thought number 2026528B/ My thoughts on Where Do You Want To Go?
Okay; so where do you want to go? If you dont know the answer to this question, I guess you'll never know how to get there. There are two perhaps three thing you should know, and have to know if you want to plan this journey for yourself.
So lets pretend we have a suitcase and get ready to pack it. Lets start with the most important thing or item. You need to know where you are now, and then you have to know exactly where you want to be. Simple enough huh? Maybe, maybe not. But think of it this way once you know these two things, I assure the rest becomes fairly simple.
Okay lets break out an inmaginary map. This is where you come up with a plan or strategy. and once you have it coursed it out you must stick to it like glue because this is your plan.
Going through life with out a clear goal is almost like starting a vacation trip with no clear picture on where you going.
Some where along the line in your life, you will have the face the facts and make some choices.
Now would you rather decide where to go based on the things you happen to have with you, or would you rather pack things that are appropriate for the destination?
Get a clue, buy a vowell!
Having clear enough goal helps you avoid time consuming side trips down roads to no where. Trust me on this, I've found these unmapped dead end streets. Clear goals its fair to say are like rudders on a ship, or steering wheels on a car. They steer you in the direction you have chosen, and they help you avoid dangerous currents, or down dark streets with a unpleasant surprise.
Last and not least, goals give you a sense of pride and a good reason to reward your self for your accomplishments. So, do you know where you want to go in life. If not its never too late to find out, and it will be worth your time and energy to plan it out. Start small, and grow at a pace that suits you. Shoot for the moon, and if you miss atleast you land among the stars. Wherever it is, I'm sure you can get there. (By R.F.C.)
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Thought number 2026528c/ My thoughts on Choices
I have a funny; okay strange way of thinking about free time and it may shock you. Alright probably not. What if I said, unless you are actually in prison all your time is free.
You probably say; "What?!" Have you lost it, and what planet do you live on?
You're probably thinking, if that is true....I would be on vacation every flipping day of the week.
But if you dont go to work or to school, how can you have a vacation?
So, check this out, and you just confirmed it. You do have a choice about everything you do in life. There are no absolute have to's except for death. You dont have work, you dont have to exercis. You dont have to take care of children and believe it or not you dont have pay taxes. The I.R.S. may feel different ab0ut that, but its a fact.
Now you're scratching your head and saying, Wait a minute. If I dont pay taxes, I'm asking for trouble. Yes, you are asking trouble, but you do have a choice. Every choice has conequences.
So we think about what will happen if we make a decision and sometimes we think about what will happen if we dont, and then choose (A or B) Sometimes we choose a short term gain only to sacrifice long term happiness. Or we may give up something now for a greater gain later.
The point I'm making here is that when you return to work or school after taking time off on the vacation you decided to take. Just remember you have to accept the respondsibilty for your choices and now except the consequences.
Become accountable for all your time and all your choices, and you'll grow enormously as a person. This I guarantee. (By R.F.C.)
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Thought Number 2036528/ My thought on Wishes and Hopes
Hello again, and welcome to my thinking corner and up above is the title of another thought.
Do you know the difference between a wish and a hope? How are they different?
Well, lets explore this and see if I'm on right track and see if you can join me.
First of all, lets compare and look at how their simliar. I would say that each one is very good to have, and each one concerns something we'd like to see happen sometime in the future. Are you with me? Hopefully your answer is yes.
A wish or hope is something we normally long for, like blowing out those ever growing birthday candles. or tossing a penny in a foutain. But its ot likely to be something we think about every waking day of the week.
If it should happen to come true, we might say " Well glory be a miracle!" or something along those silly lines.
Who knows? Maybe you still have a fairy godmother hanging around.
Goals on the other hand are much different. Goals demands our focus and makes us step out of our comfort zone. Hmmmm; that's another thought, comfort zones, but we'll touch on that subject another time. As for now my goal is to stay focus with this thought. How about that? Goals are very specific, like running a marathon, or working the yardish towards a touch down. A clear goal helps us tune in and sometimes tune out so we wont be interupted. Sometimes with this focus we become sort of sensitive to the things we may not have noticed before that can help us achieve this goal. Ever study movement? Dont answer that.
But heres the big part: goals are much more likely to happen than wishes or hopes, because their dog gone specific and we think about them every waking moment. Agreed? Yes would be the answer.
We write these goals down, develop a strategy to help us make them materialize.
They become some serious stuff. Do you have any wishes or hopes that you'd really like to come true? If you do, dont wait for that fairy to come around because it may be busy. Turn those wishes and hopes into goals and see what happens. It just might change your life around. (By R.F.C.)
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Thought number 2036530 /Where Are You Going ?
Here is one question that begins to surface for many of us as we find ourselves at the beginning of a new year. It is a very important question that you should ask yourself: "Where am I going?"
If you follow your current direction, where will you be in a year? In five years? In ten? And is that where you really want to go? Be honest with yourself.
We need to do the same thing in our lives.
If you ask yourself this question and you don't like the answer very much, it is important to realize that you have the power to change your direction.
You can do it today. In fact, you can do it this very minute, if you really want to.
All that is required is that you choose to change with all your heart, and then you follow through on that commitment with appropriate action, one day at a time.
You don't have to know exactly where you are going or precisely how you will get there. But you do have to have a good sense of when you are moving in the right direction. And how do you know when that is happening? Slow down, take time to reflect, and ask yourself, "Does this feel right?" Then listen for the answer, and make any necessary corrections as soon as possible.
(By R.F.C.)
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Thought number 2047878 To Control Or Not Control
Do you believe you can exert control over your future, or do you feelthat you are at the mercy of fate?
Lets talk about howbeliefs affect what happens to us.The amount of control you believe you have over your life has a greatdeal to do with what you are willing to try, and therefore it also has agreat deal to do with what you accomplish.
Theres a story about a depressed musician for whomneither therapy nor prayer was helping. Inmagine that. One day, the man's car had aflat on the highway, miles from a phone. At first, he stood staring atthe car, paralyzed, realizing it had been years since he had changed atire. Although he wasn't sure how to use the jack and other tools, he began towork on the task. After an hour of sweat and struggle, he finally gotthe spare tire on. Back in the car, he realized that he was no longerdepressed!This small success showed him the way to approach his larger problems.
He clearly had more control over his destiny than he had thought. Hecould do more than he thought, if only he would try, if only he wouldbelieve in himself enough to plunge in and start.
He did not need to beperfect and he did not need to have all the answers before he started.He could take control, and when he did, it felt good.
So if you are feeling helpless and victimized, take heart and takeaction - any action you can manage that will get you moving in thedirection you want to go.
By RFC
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Thought number 2047879 Perfection
Are you a perfectionist? Do you know anyone who is? Let's talk about the drive to be perfect and what it can cost you.
What is so bad about being good? Nothing at all. But trying to be perfect can cost you a lot in terms of mental health and harmonious relationships.
You see, people who can mobilize themselves in the face of tough problems are usually folks who don't worry about being perfect. They are happy to move ahead with a partial solution, trusting that they will invent the rest as they go along.
Now, perfectionists will try to tell you that their relentless standards drive them to levels of productivity and excellence that they could not otherwise attain. But often just the opposite is true. Perfectionists usually accomplish less, because they waste so much time paralyzed by fear of failure. They will not start anything until they know how to finish it without any mishaps, and that is a mistake.
Even though they don't know exactly how they are going to do something, high-performance people keep their vision of the end-result uppermost in their minds and forge ahead anyway. They believe that they will get the help they need, find the resources they need, and figure out the how-to's as they go - and they usually do.
If for some reason they do not achieve the outcome they wanted, high-performance people don't waste energy beating themselves up about it.
They simply learn from the experience and move on.
So, what kind of person are you?
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Thought number 2051111 Needs Vs Wants
All of us have legitimate needs. We need to have food to eat, water to drink, air to breathe. But, all too often, when we listen closely to how we talk to ourselves and others, we will hear about all kinds of pressing"needs": "I need to get that promotion." "I need to sit by the window." "I need her to call me." "I need you to stand up for me."And, most often, we will also hear about the tension and stress that go along with these so-called needs, because, after all, what if we don't get what we need?
It is a sign of real maturity when we can upgrade most of our needs to wants or preferences, and it is a sure-fire way to lower our stress quotient, as well. For example, supposing the status-giving promotion you needed so badly doesn't come through.
You're devastated, right?But what if you change your thinking from a need to a preference? Sure, you wanted the recognition that promotion would have brought, but you are not going to drop dead without it, and there are many good things about your present job, too.
Maybe your desire for recognition can be met in some other way. Volunteer work, for instance.See what I mean? There is a whale of a difference in how you experience life when you make this shift. Try it and see.
Thought number- 2055555 YOU ARE WHAT YOU THNK
Do you ever catch yourself saying things like, "Nothing ever goes right for me?" If so, pay close attention to what I have to say today.
Do you think that nothing ever goes right for you? Do you believe that you are just an unlucky person, and that no matter what you do, you will probably fail? Well, you are right, but not for the reason you think. We've been talking about beliefs for about a week now. You have probably surmised that each one of us has a set of beliefs, and we act in accordance with those beliefs.
Now, perhaps you had a few setbacks that you were taught to interpret as failures. Next thing you know, you have a belief about yourself that says, "I just can't succeed, no matter what."
Then, in order to make life match up with your belief (which is important for your sanity), you begin to act in ways that reinforce your belief.
You may even unconsciously sabotage things, so that you will fail. But you will be acting like you know yourself to be, which is what all of us do. You create what is called a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So if you want to change your life, what you need to do is first change your beliefs. And yes, this is possible. Then, you will continue to act like yourself, but you will see yourself differently, so your behavior will be different. And when you change your behavior, you change the results.
AND I QUOTE
Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit." Abbie Hoffman
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THE OBAMA RACE(inserts from an interview on the show Democracy Now) January 08, 2008
AMY GOODMAN: The battle for the Democratic nomination now moves to Nevada, where the powerful Culinary Workers Union is expected to back Obama; South Carolina, where African American voters are expected to make up about half the electorate.
We turn now to a debate on Barack Obama. Michael Eric Dyson is a professor at Georgetown University, where he teaches theology, English and African American studies. He’s author of fourteen books, including Debating Race, Come Hell or High Water and Is Bill Cosby Right? He has been named by Ebony magazine one of the 100 most influential African Americans. Michael Eric Dyson, endorsing Senator Barack Obama, joining us from Washington, D.C.
And Glen Ford is a veteran journalist, executive editor of blackagendareport.com. In the late ’70s, he launched America’s Black Forum, a national black news TV program, and in ’87 he launched the first nationally syndicated hip-hop music show called Rap It Up. He also co-founded the weekly political journal Black Commentator in 2002. Glen Ford is not endorsing Senator Obama. He joins us here in our firehouse studio in New York.
Michael Eric Dyson, your response to last night’s, well, loss for Barack Obama.
MICHAEL ERIC DYSON: Well, I think, as you pointed out, that Barack Obama was predicted to be far behind, initially, in this race, and then, of course, the pollsters got it wrong, in terms of his overwhelming victory.
But I think a couple of things. First of all, there may be more a bit of play here of telling pollsters one thing, what they expect to hear when it comes to race, not simply because people have racist intent, but because of the historic lag between publicly identifying and embracing a person of color—in this case, a black man who is transcending what they believe to be race—to represent the entire swath of the population, on the one hand, and the persistence of a kind of resistance and skepticism, on the other. We don’t know how that will play out; we’ll see.
But secondly, I think that in his speech about “Yes, we can,” obviously he had tailored that speech for a victory, but I think what he is pointing to among his followers and the people who support him is that it was still nonetheless an extraordinary victory in overcoming such initial odds against him and then moving forward. His eye was on the future, so to speak, in Nevada and in South Carolina, where this debate will be waged bitterly, where the campaign battle is on.
And I think Barack Obama has extraordinary momentum, regardless of the perceived—of the loss last night. That loss last night didn’t lose him many more delegates, but at least the perception of being the inevitable nominee for the Democratic Party. But I think Barack Obama has extraordinary wind behind his wings and will obviously ascend much higher.
AMY GOODMAN: Glen Ford, your response to the New Hampshire loss and the Iowa victory?
GLEN FORD: Well, it wasn’t really a loss. He only lost by a couple of points. I think with New Hampshire and Iowa, Barack Obama has won a great unprecedented historical victory in proving that he can win the support of huge numbers of white people in essentially white primaries. And by doing that, he has accomplished the central mission of his entire campaign, which is to prove that a black man can be embraced by masses of white people.
The problem is, he has done that at the expense of black people, by constantly, relentlessly sending out signals to white people that a vote for Barack Obama, an Obama presidency, would signal the beginning of the end of black-specific agitation, that it would take race discourse off of the table. And he’s gone to extraordinary lengths to accomplish that.
He said things that white Democrats would—that no white Democrat would ever say—for example, the ridiculous statement that blacks had already come 90% of the way on the road to equality, with the implicit idea that a vote for him would take black people the other 10% of the way. Now, it’s a ridiculous statement. It’s based on no substance whatsoever. No indexes show blacks 90% of the way towards equality in any area of life. We’ve never made 65% more in income than white people. Black median household wealth is one-tenth white median household wealth. And on and on and on and on. In fact, we can’t find 90% figures relevant, outside of NBA teams and prison. But no white man, no white Democrat who said that would avoid being excoriated by the entire spectrum of black political opinion.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Dyson, your response?
MICHAEL ERIC DYSON: Well, I think that there’s no question that the politics of race, when it comes to Barack Obama, are complicated. There is the repudiation of a certain narrow conception of skin nationalism when it comes to race, and yet if you look at audacity of hope, where Barack Obama discusses the issue of race, it’s a much more nuanced and complex comprehension of the racial factors that remain.
I obviously share, as a person who’s written greatly and a great deal about race, that certainly we are not in a promised land by any measure, but I think what Barack Obama is pointing to is the fact that, as a person who can carry the water for not only African American people, but for the American population, the notion that a black man can be president then has to be put squarely in front of the American population, at least on the table.
On the other hand, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and other political critics and activists are not going to be out of job when Barack Obama becomes president. I think there’s an illusory notion that perhaps Mr. Ford might want to at least pay more strict attention to, and that is the fact that there’s a bifocal vision going on here. Barack Obama’s ascent to the presidency doesn’t destroy black poverty, radical inequality, social injustice, the need to pay attention to all of those issues that he should be held accountable for once he ascends to the presidency.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Dyson—
MICHAEL ERIC DYSON: My support of Barack Obama is not predicated upon a denial of the legitimacy of social critique arguing for the development and betterment of African American people. So I think we have to keep our eyes on both of those issues at the same time.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Dyson, I interviewed the Reverend Jesse Jackson on Sunday. He supports Barack Obama. I asked him why he’s not out stumping for him.
AMY GOODMAN: So you would go out on the campaign trail for Barack Obama if he asked you to?
REV. JESSE JACKSON: Well, I would have to discuss that with him. He has not asked me to. That’s not an issue for me, frankly. My issue right now is—
AMY GOODMAN: Has he asked you not to?
REV. JESSE JACKSON: No. And I tell you that I respect the distance he is trying to create for his own strategic purposes, and I accept that.
AMY GOODMAN: What is that? Why is that?
REV. JESSE JACKSON: I don’t know.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Dyson, your response?
MICHAEL ERIC DYSON: Well, Jesse Jackson is one of the greatest freedom fighters in the history of this country, certainly in the twentieth century, and he is an ally and an asset to any campaign. I think when he talked about the strategic distance, that’s an acknowledgement and a nod to the kind of burden that Jesse Jackson may carry among the white population of people who potentially could vote for him, the same way that Hillary Clinton has to be very careful in terms of how she uses Bill Clinton, whether use him as a person to leverage her authority or as a wedge between her and that vote. So that’s a calculation that has to be dealt with.
I think that Jesse Jackson is an incredible asset, a brilliant politician. Without him, Barack Obama wouldn’t exist. At the same time, I think his disappointment, perhaps, in his acknowledgement of that painful lag is a realpolitik of race in American culture. And again, this is part of the very difficult and complex argument made on behalf of a person like Barack Obama seeking to represent all of America, and at the same time not losing sight of what Mr. Ford has talked about: the issues that are gritty, that make a difference for black people. I happen to believe that a Barack Obama presidency would speak poignantly to those issues, but would not nullify or eradicate the necessity for strategic political intervention on behalf of those interests. It’s not an either/or [inaudible].
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s get Glen Ford’s response.
GLEN FORD: Yes. Barack Obama does not carry our burden, in addition to other burdens. He in fact promises to lift white-people-as-a-whole’s burden, the burden of having to listen to these very specific and historical black complaints, to deal with the legacies of slavery. That is his promise to them. That is what allowed him to amass huge, huge numbers of white votes. And he will amass larger and larger percentages of black votes now that black folks see that white folks will vote for Barack Obama. Finally, there’s somebody who has a chance. But he can only do this—he has only pulled this off by these continual assurances to white people that race will be off the table. At least, that is the way it is received. It’s received by masses of white people. It’s even received in that way by hard-right ideologues like Bill Bennett and George F. Will, who seems to be fascinated by Barack Obama.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, let me ask you about Secretary of State—the former Secretary of State Colin Powell. The television/radio host Tavis Smiley recently interviewed Powell on his show. Tavis asked Powell what he thought of Obama’s candidacy. This is some of what Powell said.
COLIN POWELL: I’m terribly excited. I’m impressed, and I’m happy for Barack Obama. I know him. I’ve met with him a couple of times. And I think this is such an important event for America, for the American people. We can show to the rest of the world that it’s possible to have a Kenyan father, to be a black man, to have gone to school in Indonesia, come back, gotten your education in this great country, and now you can put yourself forward for national office.
I mean, this argument about him not being black enough, that’s just absolute nonsense, and I’m glad that he doesn’t respond to that kind of challenge. What he has put himself forward as is as a person who has a belief in the country, who is competent, and he is putting himself forward not as a black man, but as an American man who wants to be president of the United States of America, and he’s going to take his case to the American people, just as all the other candidates are. So we should see Barack as a candidate for president who happens to be black, and not a black candidate for president.
AMY GOODMAN: Former Secretary of State Colin Powell. Glen Ford, your response?
GLEN FORD: Naturally, I’m not impressed by Colin Powell’s endorsement, but I’m glad you played it, because we’re in this era of firsts, and the ultimate first, a first—possibly a first black president. But we already had two firsts. Colin Powell was one of them, and Condoleezza Rice, his successor as secretary of state. How did that redound to the benefit of black people for the United States to have a black—put a black face on imperialism, on aggressive war, on violations of international law? How does that make black people look better in the world? Is that the kind of burden that black people want to carry around? Certainly, there will be no exemption for African Americans internationally after these kinds of experiences.
And Barack Obama shows quite definitively that he, being the political twin of Hillary Clinton, will also put forward that same aggressive, bellicose face to the world. How else to explain his call for 100,000 additional US Marines and soldiers? For what purpose? Even as he speaks vaguely about withdrawing from Iraq, as vaguely as Hillary Clinton does, he wants 100,000 more soldiers and Marines. What will he do with them? Clearly, he is talking about expanding, continuing US efforts to dominate militarily.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Dyson?
MICHAEL ERIC DYSON: Yeah, I think, look, that when you make the argument, first of all, implicitly that there’s a relationship of similarity between Colin Powell, but especially Condoleezza Rice, and Barack Obama, I think that’s patently unfair. First of all, the ideological matrix from which Barack Obama emerges and the grid that he has attempted to deploy is radically dissimilar to any rightwing interest.
That doesn’t mean that there’s not room for severe and serious critique of any political candidate. I have no investment in these people as deities or demiurges or gods. What is suggested in the real world of politics, however, what Mr. Ford has not yet grappled with, is that the alternative to a Barack Obama or, for that matter, for those people who are concerned about it, even a Hillary Clinton, the reality is this is the game we’re in. This is the game that’s being played. To limit the scope of African American intelligence, interest or political concern to the fact that a president is being put forth who happens to be a black man versus the interests of African American people, I would not be so naive as to assume that the presidency of a Barack Obama would in any way mitigate against or militate against the vast region of problems that black people face. That would call for a kind of political naivete that should be suspected from the beginning.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me—
MICHAEL ERIC DYSON: What I’m suggesting is that African American people have the ability to understand his presidency, at the same time deal with these persistent issues. And to Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and others, strategic interventions need to be made by those people, as well as a Barack Obama presidency. It’s not an either/or.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me a clip of what Hillary Clinton said a few days ago about Barack Obama’s reference to John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. She was speaking to a crowd of supporters in Salem, New Hampshire.
SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: Senator Obama used President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to criticize me and, you know, basically compared himself to two of our greatest heroes, saying, well, they gave great speeches. President Kennedy was in the Congress for fourteen years. He was a war hero. He was a man of great accomplishments and readiness to be president. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led a movement. He was gassed. He was beaten. He was jailed. And he gave a speech that was one of the most beautifully, profoundly important speeches ever delivered in America: the “I Have a Dream” speech. And then he worked with President Johnson to get the civil rights laws passed.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Hillary Rodham Clinton. Your response, Glen Ford?
GLEN FORD: Well, Dr. Dyson doesn’t seem to know what a rightwing interest is. An expanded US military, 100,000 new troops, isn’t a rightwing interest? An expanded military budget that sucks up all of the money for healthcare, for revitalization of the cities, for a rebuilding of America’s infrastructure, for all the projects that black folks hold dear, all of which would go down the tubes, will be postponed indefinitely with the kind of expanded military budget that clearly follows from Barack Obama’s proposal for 100,000 new troops. And so, it is not in black folks’ interest. It’s really not in anyone’s interest, of course. But it is diametrically opposed to the historic black political consensus on domestic development to be proposing expanded military activities and budgets for the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: We only have thirty seconds. Michael Eric Dyson, your response?
MICHAEL ERIC DYSON: Well, listen here. I think that that is a legitimate comment to be made in terms of the critique of a potential Barack Obama presidency. Let’s see it get here first. I think that a Barack Obama presidency at least holds out the possibility of engaging these forms of critique, engaging the form of the black political consensus about which Mr. Ford has spoken, but also to deal with the fact that we have to be bifocal. The presidency—the people who are making critiques of the system, if he’s part of the system, he will be critiqued legitimately. And African American people will be able to enjoy the victory of the grassroots being able to speak, while at the same time being part of a political process that includes us in a very serious way. I think a Barack Obama presidency—
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there, but this is part one of this debate. Professor Dyson, thanks for joining us, from Georgetown University; Glen Ford, executive editor of blackagendareport.com.
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The Struggle for the Soul of the 21st Century
by Bill ClintonDecember 14, 2001
Lord Keynes once said how difficult it is for nations to understand one another, even when they had the advantage of a common language; "everyone talks about international co-operation, but how little of pride, of temper, or of habit."
Tonight I want to talk a little bit about the prospects for international co-operation, and the problems of pride and temper and habit standing in the way, knowing that co-operation is the living legacy of Richard Dimbleby and the continuing mission of the BBC. In the poetic words of its motto "nation shall speak peace unto nation". The BBC first spoke to another nation in an experimental broadcast to the United States in 1923. At the time it was questionable that we spoke the same language, it took a team of translators a week to figure out that "bangers and mash" were not some veiled British threat. By the end of the Second World War, the BBC was broadcasting globally in more than forty languages, setting the standard for the kind of international reporting we see down to the present day in Afghanistan.
It was exactly a year ago today, near the end of my tenure as President, on my final trip overseas, that I went to Warwick University with Tony Blair to deliver a speech. As Mr Dimbleby said just a few moments ago, none of us at that time could have foreseen the exact difficulties of this time, but what many of us could see even then and what Prime Minister Blair and I talked about, was a larger battle brewing, one that made it clear to us, at least, that we could no longer delude ourselves that the harsh realities a world away are without real consequence for our own people.
On that day a year ago, I said "we have seen how abject poverty accelerates conflict, how it creates recruits for terrorists and those who incite ethnic and religious hatred, how it fuels a violent rejection of the economic and social order on which our future depends". The world has now witnessed a tragic, graphic illustration of that new reality, one that, as Mr Dimbleby implied, has made a lot of people rethink their rosy projections for this new century. I come here to tell you that on balance, I remain quite optimistic. I am absolutely confident that we have the knowledge and the means to make the twenty first century the most peaceful, prosperous, interesting time in all human history. The question is whether we have the wisdom and the will.
The terrorists who struck the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre believe they were attacking symbols of corrupt power and materialism. My family and I have a different view of that, I was Commander-in-Chief of the people who worked at the Pentagon. My wife represents the people of New York in the Senate, I knew people who were on those airplanes. My daughter was in lower Manhattan. I met one of her friends who lost her fiancé. I talked to victims who lost their loved ones who were Jews and Christians and Hindus and Muslims, who came from every continent, including over 250 from the United Kingdom. I talked to children in schools who lost their school buildings on September 11th in lower Manhattan, whose parents come from over eighty different national racial and ethnic groups. To me, all these victims represent the world I worked very hard for eight years to build, a world of expanding freedom, opportunity and citizen responsibility, a world of growth in diversity and in the bonds of community. The terrorists who killed all these people, they thought they had the truth and because they had the whole truth, anyone who didn't share it, was a legitimate target. They thought that the differences they have with us, political and religious, were all that mattered and served to make all their targets less than human. Most of us believe that our differences are important and make our lives interesting but that our common humanity matters more. The clash between these two views over this simple question more than any other single issue, will define the shape and the soul of this new century.
I think victory for our point of view depends upon four things. First we have to win the fight we're in, in Afghanistan and against these terrorist networks that threaten us today. Second, we in the wealthy countries have to spread the benefits of the twenty first century world and reduce the risks so we can make more partners and fewer terrorists in the future. Third, the poor countries themselves must make some internal changes so that progress for their own people becomes more possible. And finally, all of us will have to develop a truly global consciousness about what our responsibilities to each other are and what our relationships are to be. Let me take each of these issues quickly in turn.
First, terror. The deliberate killing of non-combatants has a very long history. No region of the world has been spared it and very few people have clean hands. In 1095, Pope Urban II urged the Christian soldiers to embark on the first crusade to capture Jerusalem for Christ. Well, they did it, and the very first thing they did was to burn a synagogue with three hundred Jews, they then proceeded to murder every Muslim woman and child on the Temple Mount in a travesty that is still being discussed today in the Middle East. Down through the millennium, innocents continued to die, more in the twentieth century than in any previous period. In my own country, we've come a very, very long way since the days when African slaves and native Americans could be terrorised or killed with impunity, but still we have the occasional act of brutality or even death because of someone's race or religion or sexual orientation. This has a long history.
Second, no terrorist campaign apart from a conventional military strategy has ever succeeded. Indeed the purpose of terrorism is not military victory, it is to terrorise, to change your behaviour if you're the victim by making you afraid of today, afraid of tomorrow and in diverse societies like ours, afraid of each other. Therefore, by definition, a terror campaign cannot succeed unless we become its accomplices and out of fear, give in.
The third point I want to make is that what makes this terror at the moment particularly frightening, I think first is the combination of universal vulnerability and powerful weapons of destruction. Both those airplanes on September 11th, the anthrax scare and all the other speculation that all of you have seen in the days since. Now, in any new area of conflict, offensive action always prevails in the beginning. Ever since the first person walked out of a cave millennia ago with a club in his hand, and began beating people into submission, offensive action prevails.
Then after a time, someone figured out, well I could put two sticks together and stretch an animal skin over it and I would have a shield and the club wouldn't work on me any more.
All the way through to the present day, that has been the history of combat - first the club, then the shield; first the offence, then defence; that's why civilisation has survived all this time even in the nuclear age. So it is frightening now because we are in the gap, and the more dangerous the weapons, the more important it is to close quickly the gap between offensive action and the construction of an effective defence. We have not quite closed the gap and it's especially frightening for young people who didn't even know about the Cold War. When my daughter's generation started thinking about politics, the Cold War was over, nobody talked to them about Vietnam. They didn't grow up on memories of Korea and World War II or like my generation, having drills at school where we'd go to a bomb shelter to be prepared when the Soviets dropped bombs on us, in the fond illusion that we could actually survive it.
So we have to be sensitive to the fact that there are objective reasons for people to be concerned, and we have to work very hard to close the gap. The modern world has been virtually awash in terror: since 1995 there have been twenty one hundred terrorist attacks. Before September 11th, fewer than twenty had occurred within the United States and only Oklahoma City had claimed a significant number of lives, though we've been dealing with this since the early '80s when over 240 of our Marines were killed by a suicide attack in Beirut.
In the years in which I served as President, we worked very hard to prevent a day like September 11th ever happening. Far more terrorist attacks were thwarted at home and around the world than succeeded, large numbers of terrorists who did commit crimes were brought to justice. We strengthened our defences in chemical and biological areas, we spent more money to protect the nuclear stocks in the former Soviet Union, we dramatically increased our terrorist budgets, we trained several response teams in our largest cities to deal with outbreaks of bio-terrorism. Good people had been working on this a long time but we haven't completely closed the gap.
We still have much more to do to know that all of our transportation, our water supplies, and our computer networks are secure. We have more to do to know we have done everything we can to break into terrorist money networks which keep them going. We have to upgrade and integrate our own information systems so we can keep up with potential terrorists and we have to do more to protect the still massive stocks in the world of chemical, biological and nuclear materials which could become terrorist weapons.
But the larger point holds. In terror's long history, it has never succeeded and it won't this time. The war in Afghanistan will be won shortly, the Al-Qaeda network will be broken up, our defences at home will improve. I can't say there won't be more terrorist attacks, there probably will be, but I can say for sure it won't prevail unless we decide to give it permission and I do not believe we are about to make that decision.
Now that brings me to the second point. We're gonna win this fight - then what? The reason September 11th happened, and it was shocking to Americans, because it happened on our soil, is that we have built a world where we tore down barriers, collapsed distances and spread information. And the UK and America have benefited richly - look at how our economies have performed, look at how our societies have diversified, look at the advances we have made in technology and science. This new world has been good to us, but you can't gain the benefits of a world without walls without being more vulnerable. September 11th was the dark side of this new age of global interdependence. If you don't want to put those walls back up and I don't think you do, and we probably couldn't if we tried. And you watch, if you look at some of the recent elections, we're gonna see some people who try to do that. And if you don't want to live with barbed wire around your children and grandchildren for the next hundred years, then it's not enough to defeat the terrorist. We have to make a world where there are far fewer terrorists, where there are fewer potential terrorists and more partners. And that responsibility falls primarily upon the wealthy nations, to spread the benefits and shrink the burdens.
Very briefly, what are the main benefits of the modern world? The global economy; it's lifted more people out of poverty in the last twenty years than at any time in history. It's been great for Europe and the United States, in the last few years I was President. It led to huge declines in poverty even as more people were getting rich.
Second, the information technology revolution: when I became President in 1993, there were only fifty sites on the worldwide web - unbelievable - fifty. When I left office, the number was three hundred and fifty million and rising. Even before the anthrax scare, there were thirty times as many messages delivered by email as by the postal service in the United States.
Third, the advances in science. Scientists from the UK and the United States and other countries finished the sequencing of the human genome in a project funded largely with government funds during the time I was President. It was thrilling to me. We've already identified the major genetic variances that predict breast cancer, we're very close on Alzheimer's and AIDS and Parkinson's. We're developing diagnostic tools using something called nano-technology, super-microtechnology that will enable us to identify tumours when they are just a few cells in size, raising the prospect that we will be able to cure all cancers. Researchers are working on digital chips to replicate sophisticated nerve movements in spines, raising the prospect that they will work for damaged spinal cords the way pacemakers do for hearts, and people long paralysed will be able to stand up and walk. There's no question that quite soon the women in this audience who are in their childbearing years will be able to bring children home from the hospital with little gene cards and life expectancies in excess of ninety years.
And finally, the great blessing of the global age is the explosion of democracy and diversity within democracy. You can argue that those changes make all these other good things possible. This is the first time in history when more people live under governments of their own choosing than live under dictatorships. It has never happened before.
But what are the burdens of the twenty first century? They are also formidable. Global poverty - half the people on earth are not part of that new economy I talked about. Think about this when you go home tonight. Half the people on earth live on less than two dollars a day. A billion people, less than a dollar a day. A billion people go to bed hungry every night and a billion and a half people - one quarter of the people on earth - never get a clean glass of water. One woman dies every minute in childbirth. So you could say "don't tell me about the global economy, half the people aren't part of it, what kind of economy leaves half the people behind?"
Second big problem, the global environment. The oceans that provide most of our oxygen are deteriorating rapidly. There's a huge water shortage. I already said a quarter of the people never get any. It could change everything about how we grow food and where we live.
And finally global warming; if the climate warms for the next fifty years at the rate of the last ten, we'll lose whole island nations in the Pacific that will be flooded by the rising water table as the South Pole and the North Pole get smaller. We will lose the Everglades in America that I worked so hard to save, we will lose fifty feet of Manhattan island - prime real estate - gone. But more to the point there will be millions of food refugees created, more terror, more destabilisation.
But you could argue that long before we have to worry about global warming, we will be consumed by the rise of global epidemics accelerated by the breakdown of public health systems across the globe. This year, one in four of all the people on earth who die, will die of AIDS, TB, malaria and infections related to diarrhoea. Most of them, little kids that never get any clean water. If you just take AIDS alone we have forty million AIDS cases, that is 8,200 people a day dying. Thirteen million orphans. We're projected to have a hundred million AIDS cases by 2005. If that happens, it will be the biggest epidemic since the plague killed a quarter of Europe in the fourteenth century.
And it will destabilise countries and a whole lot of young people around the world will say "well, I'm HIV positive, I've got a year or two to live, why shouldn't I go out and shoot up a bunch of other people?" It'll look like one of those Mel Gibson road warrior movies in a lot of countries if we have a hundred million AIDS cases. And lest you think it's an African problem, the fastest growing rates of AIDS are in the former Soviet Union, on Europe's backdoor. The second fastest growing rates of AIDS in the Caribbean on America's front door. My wife represents a million people in New York state from the Dominican Republic alone. The third fastest growing rates of AIDS and the largest number of cases outside South Africa are in India, the world's biggest democracy. And China just admitted they have twice as many cases as they thought: they had a 67% increase last year, and only 4% of their adults know how AIDS is contracted and spread.
And finally, one of the big burdens of the modern world is high tech terrorism - and a lot of people knew it before September 11th. The marriage of modern weapons to ancient hatreds: Rwanda, Sierra Leone, the Balkans, East Timor, the Middle East or - until, God bless them, the people of my ancestors, the Irish, did the right thing - Northern Ireland. Don't you think it's interesting that in the most modern of ages, the biggest problem is the oldest problem of human society - the fear of the other. And how quickly fear leads to distrust, to hatred, to dehumanisation, to death.
So we now live in a world without walls that we have worked hard to make. We have benefits, we have burdens, we have to spread the benefits and shrink the burdens. Very briefly, let me mention some specifics. First we have to reduce global poverty and increase the economic empowerment of poor people. We know how to do this and it doesn't cost that much money. Last year we had this phenomenal global effort to reduce the debt of the poorest countries in the world, with everybody from the Pope to Bono to Jesse Helms for it. Usually when everybody's for something, there's something wrong with it; in this case there wasn't. You can only get this debt relief if you put the money into education, healthcare or development. The results have been stunning. Just give you one example: Uganda took their debt relief savings and in one year doubled primary school enrolment and cut class size. We ought to do more of that.
America funded, when I was President, two million micro-enterprise loans in poor villages around the world, I've been to African villages where the local village treasurer would show me his pencilled notes to prove that he had taken all the money that he thought I had personally sent to him and loaned it out in an efficient way to create a market economy in his village. We should do more of that.
The great Peruvian economist, Hernando de Soto, has told us something we should have recognise a long time ago, which is that poor people in the world already have five trillion dollars in assets in their homes and businesses but they're worthless to them except to live in or use, because they can't be collateral for loans. Why? Because they're outside the legal systems in their country. Many of them live in shacks with no addresses, no title, no access to a court that would validate the title. Many of them run businesses that would literally take more than a year to legalise. I've seen the map on Cairo, I tell you, if you went to Cairo tomorrow and opened a bakery and handled it in the normal fashion, it would take you over five hundred days to complete all the government paperwork to legalise your bakery.
So de Soto is going through the works trying to rationalise the business laws and rules and make it cheaper for people to have legal businesses than to pay the taxman to look the other way. And then trying to organise the property system so people can legalise their homes so poor people can get credit, because they have collateral. The key in a market economy, both personal advance and national economic growth. We gave him a little money when I was President, we ought to do more of that.
We in the rich countries ought to open our markets to poor countries. Last year, in my last year as President, we opened our markets more to Africa, to Vietnam, to Jordan, to the Caribbean. In less than a year we increased our purchases from some African countries by a thousand percent. It didn't hurt the American economy, but it sure helped theirs. The same argument goes for education. In a poor country - and AIDS, keep in mind, is largely a poverty disease - in a poor country one year of education is worth about 10% increase in income. There are a hundred million kids who never go to school. Part of our problem in Afghanistan and in the Muslim world is all these kids who couldn't go to public schools so they went to madrassas where they were indoctrinated instead of educated, not because their parents were radical: their parents couldn't afford to send them to school. Now, we could send all these kids to school. Two examples: Brazil is the only poor country in the world that has 97% of its kids at school. You know how - they pay mothers, not fathers, mothers, in the poorest 30% of the families, if they send their kids to school, every month, up to forty five dollars a month. It increases the family income up to 30%, 97% going to school. Last year I got three hundred billion dollars to provide a nutritious meal to children in school but only if they would come to school to get it. You know how many people you can feed all year long in poor countries for three hundred million dollars? Over six million. And, you ought to see where we've done this, enrolments are exploding, people are coming in. We ought to send those kids to school.
The same argument applies to healthcare. Kofi Annan just won the Nobel Peace Prize - richly deserved - for promoting peace. He knows if we have a hundred million AIDS cases, we'll have more war, and he asked us for ten billion dollars to fight AIDS, TB, malaria and other infectious diseases. America's share would be a little over two billion dollars, Britain's share would be a little under a half a billion dollars. We ought to give it to him.
Look, we can turn this AIDS thing around. It, to me, is the most frustrating of all problems. We're gonna have medicine because of the South African drug case being settled. Uganda cut the AIDS death rate in half in five years with no medicine. Brazil cut it in half in three years with prevention and medicine. I have been in health clinics all over the world, I've seen kids in remote African villages doing plays to talk about AIDS but AIDS has been around twenty years. Last year I talked to world leaders who were friends of mine who told me they really couldn't talk about AIDS because after all, there's all this cultural resistance. How many people have to die before your cultural resistance melts? So we've got to pay for it.
Now you can say that the same argument applies to global warming except it's the only area we'll actually make money out of. There is a trillion dollar market today in alternate energy sources and presently available energy conservation technologies that will create jobs in Europe, in America, in the developing world and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We're being hurt by denial there.
Now, the other stuff will cost money. It will cost money but I can tell you this, it's a lot cheaper than going to war. We will spend far more to pick up the pieces of destroyed lands and shattered lives if we do not do these things. We will spend much more. We're spending - America - about a billion dollars a month in Afghanistan, that's as cheap as a war gets. We will never fight a conflict for less than a billion a month. For twelve billion dollars a year, we can pay America's share of all those initiatives I just mentioned and have money left over. So I urge you to think about that.
The next point I want to make very briefly is that we can do all these things and there are some countries in which it will make no difference. There are changes that poor countries have to make within that make progress possible. For example, it's no accident that most of these terrorists come from countries that aren't democracies. If you never get to take responsibility for yourself, and you're never required to take responsibility for yourself, then countries are like people, you're kept in sort of a state of permanent immaturity where it's quite easy to convince you that your distress is caused by someone else's success.
It's no accident that Jordan is the most stable country in the Middle East. Ten years ago, King Hussein basically made a social compact with all elements of society including fundamentalist Muslims and he said "here are the powers I will give up, here are the powers that Parliament will get, anybody can run, anybody can serve, but here's what you cannot do to destroy the fundamental character of our society" and it has worked. So here's a country that's majority Palestinian, quite poor, quite young, and in a dicey position geographically, still chugging along partly because the people have some way of taking responsibility for themselves.
Same thing is true in Iran: the government's very anti-Western, but the people aren't, in part because they have real elections and real votes, and the only time that real democracy is thwarted is when their own people do it, so they don't blame us. So we should be advancing democracy and human rights and once a country makes a decision to be more open and free, we should help them be more successful. Elections are only part of the job.
And finally we have to be in this debate in the Muslim world. I think we have demonstrated that America's not the enemy of Islam. I was the first President ever to recognise the feast of Eid al-Fitr every single year at the end of Ramadan, to bring in large numbers of Muslims to consult in the White House. One of the best things President Bush has done in this whole mess is to go almost immediately to a mosque and meet with Muslim leaders after September 11th and then to break the fast of Ramadan in the White House with a meal, to illustrate that we have six million Muslims in America who are pursuing their faith and doing well.
But most Muslims in the rest of the world don't know it. There are some other things they don't know. They don't know five hundred Muslims died on September 11th, a direct violation of the Koran and Sharia law, to deliberately kill other Muslims. They do not know that the last time the United Kingdom and America used military authority was to protect the lives of poor Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo. They do not know when eighteen American soldiers died in 1993 in Somalia - in that raid, Mr Bin Laden loves to brag about, he brags about how he helped train the Somalis to kill the Americans, but he never tells you what the Americans were doing there. They were part of a United Nations peacekeeping force, asked by the United Nations to go arrest Mohammed Adid because he, Adid, had murdered twenty two of our fellow peacekeepers, all Pakistani Muslims. They do not know that before I left office, I recommended and Israel accepted, but the PLO rejected, the most dramatic peace proposal for a comprehensive fair peace in the Middle East to give the Palestinians a state on the West Bank in Gaza and protect Muslim and Palestinian religious and political equities on the Temple Mount, the Haram al-Sharif. They don't know any of that.
Now that's maybe our fault, but we've got to get into this debate and we have to fight. And let me say it's a debate, you know as well as I do, not just in the Middle East. But there are people in this country and in my country who are sympathetic with the terrorists. We had an Afghan mosque in New York City, where on September 12th, the Imam was a stand-up guy and he got up there and said "this terrorism is terrible, it is wrong, it is immoral, it is a violation of Islam." But a minority of his congregation walked out and started worshipping in the parking lot.
So this is a fight we have to make everywhere which brings me to my last point, and the most important thing of all - although it may sound naïve to you. What this is all about is that simple question: which will be more important in the twenty first century - our differences or our common humanity? This encounter we have had with the Taliban and Mr Bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda and all the debate that has filled the airwaves since, has given us a picture of this debate and of the very different ideas we have about the nature of truth, the value of life, the content of community. Like fanatics everywhere throughout history, these people think they've got the truth, and if you share their truth, your life has value. And if you don't, you're a legitimate target, even if you're just a six year old girl who went to work with her mother at the World Trade Centre on September 11th. That's what they think. And they really believe it, like fanatics everywhere. They think to be in their community, you have to look like them, think like them and act like them and they know people will stray every now and then, so they pick a few people to beat the living daylights out of those who stray.
Now most of us believe that no-one has the absolute truth. Indeed, in our societies, the most religious among us sometimes feel that most strongly because we believe as children of God, we are by definition, limited in this life, in this body, with our minds. That life is a journey toward truth, that we have something to learn from each other, and that everybody ought to have a chance to make the journey. So for us, a community is just made up of anybody accepts the rules of the game, everybody counts, everybody has a role to play, everybody deserves a chance and we all do better when we work together. Now, that's what this is about.
This is not complicated. The people that want to kill us over our differences do so because they think their life doesn't matter except insofar as they are different from and better than others. Those of us who are trying to change ourselves and change them, we think our common humanity is more important and if we could just live up to its potential, the world would be a better place. And which side wins will shape the twenty first century. What do you think is more important? The answer is easy to give, but very, very hard to live. Think about this as you go home tonight.
Think about how important your differences are to you. Think about how we all organise our lives in little boxes - man, woman, British, American, Muslim, Christian, Jew, Tory, Labour, New Labour, Old Labour, up, down - you know, everything in the world. I like red ties, I got a blue shirt on, you laugh about it, think about everything you define yourself by. Our little boxes are important to us. And indeed it is necessary, how could you navigate life if you didn't know the difference between a child and an adult, an African and an Indian, a scientist and a lawyer? We have to organise that, but somewhere along the way, we finally come to understand that our life is more than all these boxes we're in. And that if we can't reach beyond that, we'll never have a fuller life. And the fanatics of the world, they love their boxes and they hate yours. You're laughing, that's what this is all about. And it's easy to give the right answer but it's hard to live.
When I was my daughter's age, just about to embark on my great adventure in England, just before that Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, two of the heroes of my youth, were murdered by their fellow Americans for trying to reconcile the American people to each other. Gandhi, the greatest spirit of the age, murdered, not by an angry Muslim but by a fellow Hindu because he wanted India for the Muslims and the Jains and the Sikhs. And the Jews and the Christians. Sadat - murdered not by an Israeli commando, but by a very angry Egyptian - a member of the organisation now headed by Bin Laden's number two guy - an angry Egyptian. Because how could he be a good Egyptian or a good Muslim because he wanted secular government in Egypt and peace with Israel, though he got the desert back. And one of the people I have loved most in my increasingly long life, Yitzhak Rabin, was murdered not by a Palestinian terrorist, but by a very angry young Israeli Jew who thought he was not a good Jew or a good Israeli because he wanted lasting peace for Israel through the recognition of the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians for a homeland. And that guy who murdered him got exactly what he wanted - he derailed and delayed the peace process and let it be swarmed and mauled by all those people who were under the foolish illusions that their differences matter more than the fact that they are all the children of Abraham.
So that's what I want you to think about. It's great that your kids will live to be ninety years old but I don't want it to be behind barbed wire. It's great that we're gonna have all these benefits of the modern world, but I don't want you to feel like you're emotional prisoners. And I don't want you to look at people who look different from you and see a potential enemy instead of a fellow traveller. We can make the world of our dreams for our children, but since it's a world without walls, it will have to be a home for all our children. Thank you very much.
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The Top Scientific Breakthroughs Of 2007
10. Transistors Get Way Smaller
In the race to make computers faster, chipmakers rely on exotic new materials. In January, Intel announced that the element hafnium and some new metal alloys will allow them to make the millions of switches on their microprocessors far smaller. Gordon Moore, co-founder of the company and father of the law that bears his name, called it the biggest change in transistor technology since the 1960s. The tremendous accomplishment allows Intel to squeeze features on each chip down to 45 nanometers from the current standard of 65 nanometers. But the greatest benefit may be an increase in energy efficiency. That improvement comes along with the hafnium alloys that will prevent electricity from leaking across the tiny switches.
Intel started using the technology, codenamed Penryn, in November in high-end servers. Home users can expect the chips in early 2008.
9. Scientists Clone Rhesus Monkey to Produce Stem Cells
At Oregon Health and Science University, Shoukhrat Mitalipov and his team cloned a Rhesus Monkey and used the resulting embryo to create stem cells. Until then, the impressive feat had been performed only with mice.
In November, the team reported in Nature a surprising key to their success: avoiding ultraviolet light and dyes -- tools that are almost always used in cloning experiments -- because they can damage delicate cells.
Stem cells could be used to repair nearly any damaged organ, but they are useless if they upset the immune system. By cloning sick patients and using cells derived from their own bodies, doctors could skirt problems similar to those experienced by people with organ transplants. But some say the No. 1 discovery on our list makes cloning unnecessary. Nonetheless, some scientists, including stem-cell researchers at Harvard, say cloning is still necessary.
8. Planet Discovered That Could Harbor Life
Astrobiology enthusiasts have had many reasons to rejoice this year, but one of them has been somewhat controversial. After Stéphane Udry and his colleagues found a pair of planets that they believed could harbor life, other researchers disputed which of the two is most habitable, but agreed that the distant solar system is worthy of further study.
Using a Canadian space telescope and the European Southern Observatory in Chile, Udry inferred that the most promising object is slightly larger than earth, circles its sun in 18 days, and may be rocky. In a late April issue of Astronomy and Astrophysics, the University of Geneva professor provided details about his sophisticated search. Both of the celestial bodies orbit the red dwarf star Gliese 581, which is only 20 light years from earth. Although prospects for the two planets may be less hopeful than Udry and his associates projected, the methods that they used to locate the small planet could be used to make many more discoveries.
7. Engineers Create Transparent Material as Strong as Steel
Engineering researchers at the University of Michigan have created a material similar to "transparent aluminum," the fantastic substance described by Scotty in Star Trek IV. In the Oct. 5 issue of Science, Nicholas Kotov showed that clay is good for far more than making bricks and expensive skincare products. The earthen material is made up of phenomenally strong nanometer-sized particles. When arranged neatly between thin layers of a sticky but weak plastic, the tiny bits of dirt act as the ultimate reinforcements -- giving the ordinary material extraordinary strength. The sturdy composite could be used in lightweight armor or aircraft.
6. Soft Tissue from T. Rex Leg Bone Analyzed
This spring, the oldest patient in the pathology department of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston was a 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex. For the first time, scientists have analyzed biological molecules from the ancient creatures. Working with soft tissue from a leg bone that was extremely well-preserved in prehistoric Montana sediments, John Asara read the chemical recipe of a protein that served as a springy structural element in the dinosaur's bones. In the April 13 issue of Science, he and his colleagues compared the deadly predator to animals that roam the earth today and concluded that it has a lot in common with chickens.
5. Laboratory Mice Cured of Rett Syndrome
Researchers affiliated with the Wellcome Trust have shown evidence that Rett syndrome, a neurodevelopmental disorder that afflicts one in every 10,000 female births, might be curable. Caused by a mutation, the disorder prevents children from walking, talking or developing normally and gives them terrible tremors. By creating mice with a similar affliction, Adrian Bird and his colleagues at Edinburgh University and the University of Glasgow tested the effects of fixing the bad gene. In the Feb. 23 issue of Science, they explained that the disease does not cause permanent damage to nerve cells, and breathing problems and tremors in mice stop when they are nudged into producing normal MeCP2 -- the protein corrupted by the disease.
4. Enzymes Convert Any Blood Type to O
Several major Type O blood shortages, including crises at the National Institutes of Health this fall and throughout Georgia in late summer, highlight the importance of creating a versatile blood type. In the rare instance that someone receives a transfusion of the wrong type, deadly reactions (caused by sugar molecules on the surfaces of red blood cells) can cause the immune system to go haywire.
In April, Henrik Clausen, a professor at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, published research in Nature describing a way to convert any kind of blood into Type O -- the type that almost anyone can tolerate. He discovered enzymes that shear the problem-causing sugars from the surfaces of A, B and AB type red blood cells. Produced by bacteria, the molecular machines could theoretically turn any kind of blood into Type O. Clausen and his colleagues described their search for the pacifying proteins in the April 1 issue of Nature Biotechnology.
ZymeQuest, a startup company from Massachusetts, is now developing a device that hospitals can use during blood shortages.
3. Mummified Dinosaur Excavated and Scanned
Paleontologists from England's University of Manchester have excavated the mummy of a nearly intact plant-eating dinosaur. Preserved by minerals for over 65 million years, the petrified body is in such pristine condition that the researchers could see a striped pattern on what remains of its scales. The scientists transported the fossilized hadrosaur this fall to a giant CT scanner in Canoga Park, California, where technicians captured terabytes of 3-D images that have already revealed surprises about the creature's muscle mass and the spacing of its bones. Tyler Lyson, now a graduate student in geology at Yale University, made the initial find seven years ago while fossil hunting in the Hell Creek formation of North Dakota.
2. Chimpanzees Make Spears for Hunting
Two anthropologists watched in mixed amazement and horror as several female chimpanzees crafted spears and used them to somewhat brutally hunt smaller mammals. Following a troop of the primates in a Senegalese savanna, Jill Pruetz of Iowa State University and Paco Bertolani of Cambridge observed them breaking the branches off of trees, picking leaves from the sides, and sharpening the tips to deadly points. In the March edition of Current Biology, the scientists explained that such sophisticated animal behavior could reveal a great deal about how early humans used primitive tools.
1. Researchers Turn Skin Cells to Stem Cells
Using a virus to reprogram skin cells, two teams of scientists managed to skirt the greatest ethical issue facing regenerative medicine -- the destruction of human embryos. Groups led by Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University and Junying Yu of the University of Wisconsin coaxed a type of skin cell called fibroblasts into forming muscle, heart, fat and nerve tissues without using any eggs. Unfortunately, the hijacked cells often became tumors. Following up on his initial discovery this November, Yamanaka told Nature Biotechnology that by inserting three growth genes instead of four, the lab-grown flesh can be controlled without becoming cancerous.
