BootsnAll Travel Network



Archive for July, 2007

« Home

Getting political again

Monday, July 23rd, 2007

A bill is going into the senate regarding free health care to children, please sign the petition to urge your senators to vote yea on it.

It’s an important step for health care at least give the children protection you never know who might one day make policy decision for us!

http://pol.moveon.org/pac/kidshealth/

‘Elders’ revealed by Mandela

Sunday, July 22nd, 2007

Mandela marks 89th birthday by launching braintrust

By Rebecca Harrison

Reuters
Wednesday, July 18, 2007; 10:24 AM

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – 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.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Quinn)

Fembots Among Us…

Friday, July 20th, 2007
There was this article about supposed fem-bots, this new breed of women twentysomethings and thirtysomethings who were detached, selfish and competitive. Sounds like neo-feminazism? Well, it just described women that didn't feel the need to get emotional, were ... [Continue reading this entry]

starting a gratitude journal

Friday, July 20th, 2007
I'm grateful that I go into the kitchen and there is something that I can eat or make to eat. I am grateful for having a comfortable bed to sleep in. I am grateful for having my parents I am grateful for having ... [Continue reading this entry]

Okay, I’m getting political….

Wednesday, July 11th, 2007
Impeachment. Yes, Bush should be impeach, but then who would be left, but the man behind the curtain. Click below to impeach him, for god sakes.... http://actforchange.workingassets.com/campaign/impeach_cheney/ixu7iks4hwe7jw3?