Addendum

Excerpt from Miguel Guevara ‘s
morning Press Briefing, April 9, 2045

 

Good morning. As usual we have a lot of ground to cover so let’s begin.

If you will bear with me a minute, I would like to offer a few words before taking your questions.

Yesterday President Malcolm King spoke to the UN General Assembly and the world. His speech was simple, emotional, even blunt. It reflected unfolding events and aspirations.

In the first part he apologized. In the second part he promised. In the third part he celebrated. In the conclusion he embraced.

The apologies were for our country’s military and fiscal role in international mayhem and injustice from World War II and before to the present, from Latin America to Asia and from Europe to Africa. He apologized for Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, Guyana, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, the Congo/Zaire, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Chile, Greece, East Timor, Nicaragua, Grenada, El Salvador, Libya, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Yugoslavia, Iran, Venezuela, Somalia, Syria, and more. He apologized for our support of dictators, exploitative extractions, arms shipments and arms use, threats, boycotts, and destruction, for our massacring native Americans, our slavery and racism, our sexism and sexual predation, and for Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and more.

He promised to reverse our history of exploitation and violence toward others and in its place enact a new agenda of sharing and respect. He promised we would study war no more and instead foster solidarity and mutual aid with the same energy and effort that we previously put to war making and profit seeking. He promised and evidenced an entirely new and compassionate, internationalist mindset.

He celebrated transforming our defining institutions of polity, economy, culture, and kinship, and our relation to the natural environment to remove hierarchies of wealth and power and to attain a sustainable new historical beginning.

He embraced all those who have already or who will now take up similar aims, as they deem suitable, worldwide. Amidst our tremendous, sustaining, and enriching diversity, Malcolm urged that we also need to embrace our shared universal humanity. We need to celebrate and apply our shared values of human liberation – solidarity, diversity, equity, self management, international peace, and environmental balance – to our own countries, each in mutual aid with the rest.

He urged that we let go of greed and profit seeking, self aggrandizement and power wielding, and together usher in a new time of joyous exploration of our capacities. Malcolm embraced all who will do so, and the UN itself as a valuable tool for the task.

Now, if you have questions…yes, Leslie, why don’t you begin…