united-states-ambassadors-to-india

"Keating was not someone who could be easily dismissed. He was a formidable political figure in his own right.... Sydney Schanberg remembers him as an old-fashioned conservative, a moderate Rockefeller Republican. Schanberg liked him: “He was very undiplomatic.” As the shooting started, Keating was near the end of his career and his life, unafraid to speak his mind. In Delhi, he absorbed the outrage of Indians there. Major General Jacob-Farj-Rafael Jacob of the Indian army recalls, “Keating agreed with me entirely.” The general remembers Keating turning red when asked why the United States was supporting Pakistan despite the atrocities. Thus Keating became an outspoken advocate for both India and the Bengalis, repeatedly lending his own gravitas and respectability to the Dacca consulate’s dissenters. “Bless him,” says Meg Blood. “He was strongly for us.”"

"When Keating saw Blood’s cable, he immediately backed it, firing off an equally furious cable of his own with the same jarring subject line of “Selective Genocide.” He wrote, “Am deeply shocked at massacre by Pakistani military in East Pakistan, appalled at possibility these atrocities are being committed with American equipment, and greatly concerned at United States vulnerability to damaging allegations of associations with reign of military terror.” The ambassador—making a complete break with U.S. policy—urged his own government to “promptly, publicly and prominently deplore this brutality,” to “privately lay it on line” with the Pakistani government, and to unilaterally suspend all military supplies to Pakistan. He urged swift action now, before the “inevitable and imminent emergence of horrible truths and prior to communist initiatives to exploit situation. This is [a] time when principles make [the] best politics.”"

"On June 15, Keating got his chance to directly confront the president. Waiting in the Oval Office for the showdown, the president groused to Kissinger, “Like all of our other Indian ambassadors, he’s been brainwashed.” He added, “Anti-Pakistan.”... “What do they want us to do?” asked Nixon, about the Indians. “Break up Pakistan?” Keating assured him they did not, but they could not stand the strain of some five million refugees. Nixon suggested, “Why don’t they shoot them?”"

"Within a short time, Ambassador Kenneth Keating, the ranking United States diplomat in New Delhi, had added his voice to those of the dissenters. It was a time, he told Washington, when a principled stand against the authors of this aggression and atrocity would also make the best pragmatic sense. Keating, a former senator from New York, used a very suggestive phrase in his cable of 29 March 1971, calling on the administration to “promptly, publicly, and prominently deplore this brutality.” It was “most important these actions be taken now,” he warned, “prior to inevitable and imminent emergence of horrible truths.”"

"Archer Blood had been easily dismissed, but it was trickier to oust a well-connected former Republican senator. It would look bad to fire the ambassador in the middle of a crisis. And Keating leaked plenty to the press while he was still working for the administration; he could have done far worse if sacked. “He’s got all the credentials,” remembers Samuel Hoskinson, Kissinger’s staffer. “When he says it, then people have to listen to it.” Hoskinson recalls Nixon and Kissinger’s anger: “We were aware that Keating was on the bad guy list. ‘What’s happened to Ken?’ ” He explains, “What really upset them is Keating is not just another ambassador. He is a man of Washington, with an independent reputation. He knows how to get the word out, he knows how to deal with the media, he has his own base of influence, he’s well respected by other Republicans. This is not just Archer Blood anymore, not this guy out there in Bangladesh and a couple of Foreign Service Officers.”"

"I know of no word in the English language other than massacre which better describes the wanton slaughter of thousands of defenseless men, women and children."

"Rather than merely sending toothless notes, Keating wanted U.S. economic aid to Pakistan to be conditional on an end to the killing. Echoing Blood, he reminded Kissinger that the army was concentrating on the Hindus. At first, the refugees fleeing into India had been in the same proportion as existed in the overall population of East Pakistan, but now 90 percent were Hindus.... The next day, in the Oval Office, Kissinger complained to Nixon, “He’s almost fanatical on this issue.” Nixon resented having to meet with Keating. The president thought his man in Delhi had gone completely native: “Keating, like every Ambassador who goes over there, goes over there and gets sucked in.” Nixon asked, “Well what the hell does he think we should do about it?” When Kissinger explained—“he thinks we should cut off all military aid, all economic aid, and in effect help the Indians to push the Pakistanis out of” East Pakistan—it was more than Nixon could take: “I don’t want him to come in with that kind of jackass thing with me.”"

"Nixon and Kissinger wanted retribution against their underlings. They fixated on Kenneth Keating, the ambassador to India who had dared to challenge the president in the Oval Office, and was still firing off angry cables. Despite his formidable connections and credentials, the former Republican senator’s job was on the line. “All things being equal, I think they would have removed Keating,” says Samuel Hoskinson, Kissinger’s staffer at the White House. “We’ve got to put some kind of a leash on Keating,” Nixon told Kissinger. The president recalled with satisfaction that when he had raised this with William Rogers, the secretary of state had said that Keating was senile. Nixon later said, “Keating’s a traitor.” Nixon told Kissinger that they should fire him. The Indians, Nixon said, were “Awful but they are getting some assistance from Keating, of course.” Kissinger agreed: “A lot of assistance; he is practically their mouthpiece.” He added, “He has gone native...“"

"In the Oval Office, the ambassador directly told the president of the United States and his national security advisor that their ally was committing genocide. The reason that the refugees kept coming, at a rate of 150,000 a day, was “because they’re killing the Hindus.” He explained that “in the beginning, these refugees were about in the proportion to the population—85 percent Muslim, 15 percent Hindus. Because when they started the killing it was indiscriminate. Now, having gotten control of the large centers, it is almost entirely a matter of genocide killing the Hindus.”"

"We believe our campaign isn’t just about the Games in our city in 2024. We believe this bid is about ensuring that the Games are sustainable and relevant in every year beyond 2024 as well. This bid isn’t only about L.A.’s future — it’s about our collective future. We are planning a great Games in Los Angeles — make no mistake — but we’re also laying the ground work along with you for future Games."

"[In response to using profanity] I think I was just being myself for a moment there...Look, I think people should be kind of light about this. It's something that plenty of people have heard in their lives for sure."

"[In response to using profanity] We didn’t win lawn bowling, we won at hockey...Kids out there, do not say what your mayor said today."

"It's extraordinary to see these graduates who come from all 50 states. They come from over 50 countries and they're here in Manchester today. It's the face of the world as it looks. The face of the nation as it is today."

"Please don’t doubt us. America’s diversity is our greatest strength. Diversity is not easy. Diversity is a leap of faith that embraces all faiths. And that’s why I believe L.A. is a perfect choice for the 2024 Games, because the face of our city reflects the face of the Olympic Movement itself."

"I'm just your average Mexican-American Jewish Italian."

"We want L.A. to be the leading destination for people starting new businesses, and there are no better guides for our efforts than successful entrepreneurs themselves."

"If we can do it in L.A., I want to say, we can do it across this country. In many ways, the West Coast is leading, and hopefully inspiring the nation to do the same."

"[On the Yes California secession movement] I love this country too much to even consider an exit. I want to be a part of an America that continues to stand up for all of us, not bail on all our friends across the country."

"Los Angeles has one of the best home recycling programs. Now, we are going to expand that to businesses and apartments where we can recycle 70 percent of our trash instead of putting it in landfills...Nothing upsets me more than to hear people say they want to recycle but are unable to."

"There are two rules in politics. They say never ever be pictured with a drink in your hand, and never swear. But this is a big fucking day. Way to go, guys."

"[On Donald Trump] America doesn't need a political pyromaniac for president. His voice is loud, his language is coarse, and his politics has a darkness that would not only stop but reverse the march of progress."

"In 1929 the discovery of the wonders of the geometric series struck Wall Street with a force comparable to the invention of the wheel."

"Of all the weapons in the Federal Reserve arsenal, words were the most unpredictable in their consequences."

"To a few alarmed observers it seemed as though Wall Street were by way of devouring all the money of the entire world. However, in accordance with the cultural practice, as the summer passed, the sound and responsible spokesmen decried not the increase in brokers' loans, but those who insisted on attaching significance to this trend."

"People are the common denominator of progress. So, paucis verbis, no improvement is possible with unimproved people, and advance is certain when people are liberated and educated. It would be wrong to dismiss the importance of roads, railroads, power plants, mills, and the other familiar furniture of economic development. At some stages of development — the stage that India and Pakistan have reached, for example — they are central to the strategy of development. But we are coming to realize, I think, that there is a certain sterility in economic monuments that stand alone in a sea of illiteracy. Conquest of illiteracy comes first."

"Clearly the most unfortunate people are those who must do the same thing over and over again, every minute, or perhaps twenty to the minute. They deserve the shortest hours and the highest pay."

"The imperatives of technology and organization, not the images of ideology, are what determine the shape of economic society....I am led to the conclusion that we are the servants in thought, as in action, of the machines we have created to serve us."

"Meetings are a great trap. … they are indispensable when you don't want to do anything."

"You will find that [the] State [Department] is the kind of organisation which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly too."

"In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability."

"In the autumn of 1929 the mightiest of Americans were, for a brief time, revealed as human beings."

"Total physical and mental inertia are highly agreeable, much more so than we allow ourselves to imagine. A beach not only permits such inertia but enforces it, thus neatly eliminating all problems of guilt. It is now the only place in our overly active world that does."

"In the really hard cases you're choosing between the disastrous and the catastrophic, and it's hard to tell someone which one is which."

"When you see reference to a new paradigm you should always, under all circumstances, take cover. Because ever since the great tulipmania in 1637, speculation has always been covered by a new paradigm. There was never a paradigm so new and so wonderful as the one that covered John Law and the South Sea Bubble — until the day of disaster."

"This view that the action of the Federal Reserve authorities in 1927 was responsible for the speculation and collapse which followed has never been seriously shaken. There are reasons why it is attractive. It is simple, and it exonerates both the American people and the economic system from substantial blame... Yet the explanation obviously assumes that people will always speculate if only they can get the money to finance it. Nothing could be farther from the case. There were times before and there has been long periods since when credit was plentiful and cheap—far cheaper than in 1927-29—and when speculation was negligible. Nor was speculation out of control after 1927, except that it was beyond the reach of men who did not want in the least to control it. The explanation is a tribute only to a recurrent preference, in economic matters, for formidable nonsense."

"It was not hard to persuade people that the market was sound; as always in such times they asked only that the disturbing voices of doubt be muted and that there be tolerably frequent expressions of confidence."

"Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable."

"There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting."

"I never enjoyed writing a book more; indeed, it is the only one I remember in no sense as a labor but as a joy."

"In the first place I identify this ["the equilibrium of poverty"] with primitive agriculture, and two factors have been at work there. One is, of course, population growth. If you were a poor farmer in India, Pakistan, or in much of Africa, you would want as many sons as possible as your social security. They would keep you out of the hot sun and give you some form of subsistence in your old age. So, you have pressure for population growth that is, itself, the result of the extreme economic insecurity. This is something which hasn't been sufficiently emphasized."

"There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth."

"Also present, as a kind of co-host, was the rector of the state university. He asked me if I knew the difference between capitalism and socialism. In capitalism man exploits man. In socialism it is just the reverse."

"One must always have in mind one simple fact — there is no literate population in the world that is poor, and there is no illiterate population that is anything but poor."

"We can safely abandon the doctrine of the eighties, namely that the rich were not working because they had too little money, the poor because they had much."

"The great dialectic in our time is not, as anciently and by some still supposed, between capital and labor; it is between economic enterprise and the state."

"People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy."

"There's a certain part of the contented majority who love anybody who is worth a billion dollars."

"The contented and economically comfortable have a very discriminating view of government. Nobody is ever indignant about bailing out failed banks and failed savings and loans associations... But when taxes must be paid for the lower middle class and poor, the government assumes an aspect of wickedness."

"We now in the United States have more security guards for the rich than we have police services for the poor districts. If you're looking for personal security, far better to move to the suburbs than to pay taxes in New York."

"In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong."