It could be a better world. If we learn to love each other.

The Greatest Speech ever made

Hope… I’m sorry but I don’t want to be an Emperor – that’s not my business – I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that.

We all want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone.

The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls – has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in: machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little: More than machinery we need humanity; More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say “Do not despair.” The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people and so long as men die [now] liberty will never perish…

Soldiers – don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you – who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder.

Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate – only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers – don’t fight for slavery, fight for liberty.

In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written ” the kingdom of God is within man ” – not one man, nor a group of men – but in all men – in you, the people.

You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let’s use that power – let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfil their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.

Soldiers – in the name of democracy, let us all unite!

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Look up! Look up! The clouds are lifting – the sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world. A kind new world where men will rise above their hate and brutality.

The soul of man has been given wings – and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow – into the light of hope – into the future, that glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up. Look up.”

From TorrentDay Turtles

 

Oil prices down in Asian trade

Crude prices were lower in Asian trade Thursday as investors awaited more data indicating the health of the US economy, the world’s biggest oil consuming nation. The US government is expected to release figures on jobless claims and inflation in the world’s biggest economy, which is struggling to avoid dipping back into recession. 

A stronger US dollar also helped push prices lower as it makes the dollar-priced commodity more expensive for buyers using other currencies, dampening demand, analysts said. New York’s main contract, West Texas Intermediate light sweet crude for September delivery, was down 33 cents to $87.25 a barrel in Asian morning trade. Brent North Sea crude for October fell 30 cents to $110.30.

“Jobs are where the angst resides, the inflation call is more benign, though not completely,” DBS Bank said in a market commentary on the US economy. “Poor sentiment of the past two weeks is bound to feed into some of the hard data and the fact is that labour/jobs data are the most prone of all to sentiment,” it said. “Another fact is that jobs data make for the biggest headlines and nobody wants to see more sand thrown into the wind just now. So if we can get through this week and next week without a surge in jobless claims, then the outlook for Q3 has just gone up by an order of magnitude.”

Investors are closely watching the health of US economy amid fears it could sink into another recession because it consumes more oil than any other country in the world. Victor Shum, an analyst with Purvin and Gertz energy consultancy in Singapore, said oil prices were also edging down “in parallel with the strengthening of the US dollar against the euro”.

Agence France-Presse
11:18 am | Thursday, August 18th, 2011