Posted on 07/18/2007 12:39:00 PM PDT by kddid
Nelson Mandela marked his 89th birthday on Wednesday by launching an international group of elder statesmen, including fellow Nobel peace laureates Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter, to tackle the world's problems.
As birthday tributes poured in, Mandela said the group of "elders" would use almost 1,000 years of collective experience to dream up solutions for seemingly insurmountable problems like climate change, HIV/AIDS and poverty.
The leaders, who include former Irish President Mary Robinson and former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, would also use their political independence to help resolve some of the world's most intractable conflicts.
"Using their collective experience, their moral courage and their ability to rise above nation, race and creed, they can make our planet a more peaceful and equitable place to live," said Mandela, wearing his trademark silk African-style shirt.
The leaders heaped praise on Mandela, South Africa's best-loved citizen and global icon for justice and reconciliation, and guests at the launch sang Happy Birthday to "Madiba" -- the clan name by which he is affectionately known.
"How God must love South Africa to have given us such a priceless gift," Mandela's friend and one-time fellow activist Tutu said of the country's former president.
British entrepreneur Richard Branson and singer Peter Gabriel -- who performed an a capella version of his anti-apartheid protest song 'Biko' at the launch -- came up with idea of launching a braintrust of world leaders seven years ago.
They asked Mandela, who has officially retired from public life and will not play a major role, to launch the group and select its members.
The group did not give specific details on the problems the group will seek to address and how. When asked about the political crisis in South Africa's neighbor Zimbabwe, Tutu said the group may achieve more by working behind the scenes.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said governments had frequently failed to tackle the world's big issues and conflicts because they were beholden to voters, inhibited by their own political agenda and beset with domestic problems. "We will be able to risk failure ... and we will not need to claim credit for any success," he said.
Aides say Mandela is in good physical health for his age, and that he is spending his retirement quietly devoting time to his large family and wife Graca Machel, whom he married on his 80th birthday in 1998.
South African newspapers were full of birthday wishes for the man who won the first all-race elections that buried apartheid in 1994.
"Madiba takes the cake" Johannesburg's Star newspaper said, running page after page of tributes and congratulatory messages from its readers.
Mandela's birthday was also to be marked in Cape Town on Wednesday with a special soccer game between African football stars and a selection of great world players.
Too late on the AIDS one. I solved it in my tagline a long time ago!
You can’t make this stuff up.
Well ... that makes 3/4 of one brain cell .... one more to go for a complete cell.
I'm going to conveve my own "brain trust" of 200 five year olds. They'll do a better job of dreaming up solutions than this gaggle of has-beens and failures.
Put 1,000 Jimmy Carters together and you’ll get 2% of a Thomas Sowell intellect.
What the hell is that supposed to mean? Were they that quiet during apartheid? Is the situation any less desperate for human rights now? I think not!
“to dream up solutions for seemingly insurmountable problems like climate change, HIV/AIDS and poverty.”
Didn’t notice terrorism mentioned. OH YEAH! All those things cause terrorism.(s)
Thought I read the words “Carter” and “Brain” in the same sentence. Nah...couldn’t be.
Carter Says U.S. Should Embrace Nepal Maoists
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter called on his country’s government to establish formal relations with Nepal’s Maoists. Carter conceded that these former rebels, who remain on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations, had slaughtered many innocent people in their struggle for power, but that it is “time for us to turn the other cheek.”
Carter called the Maoist leader, who goes by the single name Prachanda, “a really cool guy.” “You know that ‘Prachanda’ means ‘the fierce one,’” Carter gushed. “I met him in a Nepalese bathhouse. His sweat-moistened body was very impressive. He is very strong and has killed many of his enemies with his bare hands. America must make peace with strong foreign leaders. We must not give such people any cause to want to hurt us.”
Carter said that he chided Prachanda for his past “mischief” and received assurances that “only ‘capitalist exploiters’ need fear his righteous wrath.”
For his part, Prachanda said he was very delighted to have been able to talk with a former U.S. president. “President Carter is a man of great obsequity,” Prachanda said. “Many of our problems would be solved if more of America’s leaders were like him.”
Prachanda complained that the US designation of his group as a terrorist organization fails to take note of its good deeds. “We do not videotape and broadcast the beheading of our enemies like some do,” Prachanda pointed out. “We are discreet. We are sensitive to the feelings of aggrieved relatives. When time allows, those we have killed are thrown into holes or ditches and covered over with dirt or debris.”
read more...
http://www.azconservative.org/Semmens1.htm
Carter=brains
Clinton=honor
Carter, Mandela and Annan don’t have one between the 3 of them.
One brain that is.
Jimmy Carter is one of the world’s few living brain donors.
I think that's the Quote of the Day! LOL!
Carter and Nelson....birds of a feather...an old one
There's a great deal of difference between 1,000 years of experience and 1 year of experience 1,000 times.
what a disappointment
I sure hope someone out there can help Jimah' find his-self a brain...
Regards,
GtG
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