Kalistan

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Minor Princess Speaks to Kaliburg Nationalist Club
Short Speech focuses on the Youth's perspective
Kaliburg, Grand Duchy of Ananto
November 8, 5722


Her Highness, the Minor Princess introduces Lady Melanie Alvarez-McLinn at Nationalist Club fall Meeting

Her Highness, The Minor Princess Jennifer-Ericka Rebecca Ananto-Rosenfeld spoke this week at the Fall meeting of the Kaliburg Nationalist Club.  She was an invited guest of Lady Melanie Alvarez-McLinn who was scheduled to be the key note speaker, and was asked to try her hand at oratory before the largely friendly audience.  The Minor Princess took the opportunity to present a short speech to introduce Lady Alvarez and talk about the demands of Kalistan’s youth for more aggressive challenging of nations who are actively polluting the environment.  Below are her introductory comments:

"Thank you Mr. Kinnison for the kind words.

I am here to perform the function of introducing the Chancellor of the Empire, Lady Melanie Alvarez-McLinn.  She is a woman who needs absolutely no introduction from me.  Her courage and tirelessness in the promotion of our National Interest greatly precedes her, and of course you all know her as an active member of this Club and of the Nationalist movement in our nation.  She is one of my many mentors, and like my mother, she is a political hero of mine personally.  One may be so lucky as to grow up to be half the woman she is, and a tenth of the leader. 

This rather presents me with a small quandary then:  If my task is to introduce a person who needs no introduction, and yet I am expected to speak for a little time, how do I complete these mutually exclusive tasks simultaneously?  I asked her what she would suggest and she asked me to say a word about youth issues in Kalistan.  I admit, in this area, I am certainly no expert, and so she declared it a challenge for me to do my research and take an opportunity to learn about the youth.  Naturally, therefore, I asked my peers.

Young people in Kaliburg want to be inspired.  They feel that politics happens around them, and to them, but never includes them.  Never includes us.  It's always adults talking about the future, but never actually consulting people who are very much the future of this nation.  My mother is, well, she is who she is.  But she is not who she was born to be.  And at some point, she wondered why the adults were always the ones talking about the youth, but never with the youth.  I wonder the same thing and so do my friends.

When the adults talk about what our national interests are, they do not talk about what they should be, very often.  The kids today do not want a polluted environment.  We want a clean environment, and we want to see those who are destroying it punished for that crime against the future.  We want peace:  We don't want to see our future squandered at the alter of the war machine.  We want good jobs, work that we can feel proud of, work where we can say "This is what I contributed to my nation today.  This is how I helped my people.  This is how I fed my family."

Lots of kids I spoke with today didn't feel that our Government, and forgive me, Lady Alvarez if this seems like criticism, but its what I found--They don't feel that our government is doing enough to clean the environment.  Kalistan has clean air and clean water, but an oil spill in Gaduridos will poison half of our country and will wipe out our fish stocks that we rely upon in the Southern Approaches.  What are we doing to encourage Gaduridos to stop producing oil?  My peers see no efforts on our part to encourage our so called allies from stopping to exploit oil.  Gaduridos is not the only nation who calls themselves friends of Kalistan through agreements like Altea Accords---Egelion exploits the Rossfada Formation and sells that oil throughout the world while it continues to militarize with abandon though there is no threat whatsoever from any quarter that it needs to defend against, while Nadiya burns crude oil like it is infinite with no regard to the environmental destruction they are causing.  It almost looks like we associate with those polluting nations because security is more important than clean air, when we should be putting pressure on them to at least cut back on that.  It seems easy enough to me.

One of the largest polluters in Kalistan is our own Military.  We have cut petrochemicals almost completely out of the picture to the degree we are able.  We limit our usage of kerosene jet fuel.  We run our navy on hydrogen fuel cells, and our land vehicles are run on electricity.  But have we ever stopped to count the environmental destruction we are doing with expended ordinance?  There are places like Bozo River Training Base which are positively littered with exploded ordinance--they live fire more than 300 days out of the year there.  Have we ever considered that ordinance is toxic to the land?  The chemicals necessary for causing explosions are incredibly poisonous, and this is not counting the physical destruction they do to the landscape.  Some estimate that if we abandoned Bozo River today, that place would not be fit for human habitation for 1000 years.  And Green County is otherwise so pretty and natural.  And that sort of thing is going on all over this nation.

Along with these things, we are only now just getting a handle on mining waste.  In Neveras, did you know there is a resevoir with enough heavy metals in it that if it flooded and got into the water shed, it would kill everything within 300 square miles of that place?  Can you imagine that?  This environmental pollution was caused by our own KALNAFERCO in their relentless quest to tear mountains out of the ground to get at iron ore and other ores, and process those ores into steel.  They are one of many companies, even national ones, who, despite our best efforts, focus more on production than the damage they are doing to our future, to the world me and my friends will inherit.

When will we make ecology our National interest?  When will a clean world direct our National Policies?  Nothing in the world could be better for our nation than clean air, land and water, where our resources are responsibly and sustainably shepherded for the betterment of my generation, my childrens' generation and their childrens' generations into infinity.  We live in abundance here in Kalistan and we do better than most, to be sure, but we still need to do more.  So I call upon my mentor, and should I also say, my friend, whom I love and respect like an aunt, to do more, for these kids in this country who are counting on you.  Don't leave us a filthy planet when you retire.  This  matter is not only an imperative for the present but also for the future.  Whatever you are doing right now, you need to do more.  Everyone does.

And those people who refuse to do more, those nations who gleefully pollute our planet for their profit, these are the people who would smother us under a blanket of toxic air, turn our seas into a dead hellscape of acidic sea water that burns when we swim in it, and so spoil our land that less grows from it now than before, until we all starve because we can no longer grow food--These people are not our friends.  They are trying to actively kill Kalistan's children.  I don't particularly care what their motivation is:  They are hurting Kalistan and they are not our friends if they hurt Kalistan, even unintentionally.  But when you point it out, and they still tell you they don't care, their money is more important than your children's lives, lungs, and skin, these can not be said to be Kalistan's friends at all but our enemies.

It is my hope that this message finds listeners in this room--I don't expect liberals would care at all, which is why I am not delivering this speech to that lot.  My mother has heard it a million times from me.  She knows how toxic some food has become to her own child.  But she is only one woman.  This should be a national priority.  You are nationalists, it is time you actually start standing up for Kalistan's kids.  We are your future.

Thank you for indulging me this long.  I will now let you have the real speaker for the evening.  This is Her Excellency, descendant of the Empress Nicolette I Ananto the Great, Countess of Lucid and Chancellor of our Empire, a woman who truly needs no further introduction and a woman who I look up to and hope to be more like when I become an adult, your Keynote Speaker for this Fall Meeting of the Kaliburg Nationalist Club, Lady Melanie Alvarez-McLinn."

The Minor Princess stepped down and shook the hand of the Chancellor as she stepped onto the dais to great applause by the more than 600 attendees at the dinner.  The Chancellor's speech began by mentioning that she had a whole speech prepared, but it is impossible to follow such a stirring and passionate speech without acknowledging the accomplishment.  "This was the Minor Princess' first public speech," explained the Chancellor, "and I am sure it will be studied for decades by future rhetoric students for its eloquence, pathos, and reason.  Her Highness has illuminated for us, as Nationalists and Institutionalists, our agenda going forward and we look forward to welcoming her to our ranks in just over a year when she hits her political majority."

Following the keynote speech, during the reception, many of the attendees took the opportunity to introduce themselves to the Minor Princess.  While personal photos were forbidden at the event, the jostling for her attention was clear.  Lady Alvarez meanwhile was seen talking with representatives of KPO and KFO who happened to be in attendance, as well as numerous reps from the energy sector, all of whom were enthusiastic to talk with her about ideas they might have for acting on the Princess' charge.

The Princess will remain in Kaliburg until mid-December, when schools go on break for the New Year, and then will travel with the Empress and the Prince Consort, and her sister, Her Highness the Minor Princess Victoria-Monica Miriam Ananto-Rosenfeld to Athosia for a short vacation over the new year before returning to Kaliburg in mid January.  Meanwhile, most everyone in attendance agree, she stepped out into public in a major way and has a major career ahead of her, whatever way she chooses to go.

@TheRepublic