If we'd only listen to Sachs and not Bush

I have found this year's Reith Lectures by Professor Jeffrey Sachs completely inspirational. His world view seems to be filled with such commonsense that it is difficult to think of a single argument, except perhaps mankind's greed and natural aggression, to oppose it. If you haven't heard them, I urge you to go to the BBC Radio 4 website and listen on-line.

Best of all they have sent me back to some of the speeches of JFK, a US President who did make a difference and inspired a generation through hope and idealism rather than fear and suspicion. In view of the present incumbent's record, the following two paragraphs from a speech on 10 June 1963, a speech which had a major effect in Moscow because it was reaching out, have a bitter irony:

"Our (US and Soviet Union) interests converge, however not only in defending the frontiers of freedom, but in pursuing the paths of peace. It is our hope - - and the purpose of Allied policies - - to convince the Soviet Union that she, too, should let each nation choose its own future, so long as that choice does not interfere with the choices of others. The communist drive to impose their political and economic system on others is the primary cause of world tension today. For there can be no doubt that if all nations could refrain from interfering in the self-determination of others, then peace would be much more assured…(My italics)

"The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. (My italics) We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough - - more than enough - - of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we labor on - - not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace."

(taken from http://www.american.edu/media/speeches/Kennedy.htm)

Saltaire Sam