Sunday, September 17, 2006

Back to PeaceJam!

The Post has quotes from some of the Nobelians in a handy-dandy quotables of the laureates magical shrinking sidebar. I guess they're from this weekend. In any case, some of them are quite interesting.

Oscar Arias, president of Costa Rica: "As scary as terrorism is, there are far scarier threats to human security that receive only a fraction of the attention."

Rigoberta Menchu (thar she blows!):
Our society is not only the human life, but also the flowers. These flowers have life. The rivers, the mountains, our mother Earth, all of that is also life. This world, is a very materialistic world.
So we can assume then that notwithstanding the no-doubt-large income she derives from her untrue but best-selling book, and the fact that she flies all over the world to tell people how materialistic they are, Rigoberta is still living the simple life? Wonder how big her carbon footprint is.

Shirin Ebadi (whom the Post describes here as an "Iranian activist for peace, democracy, and women's rights") pulls off the neat trick of threatening world annihilation at a gathering of pacifists:
When people are oppressed all their lives and they are deprived of their most basic human rights, they may lose control and set fire to a world where they themselves and others may die. When 80 percent of the wealth of the world belongs to one percent of the world, how can we expect peace?
These people make me tired.

Update: East High student Rose Green blogs on what she learned at PeaceJam:
The most important thing to do to change the world is education. America is incredibly guarded from reality. We do not hear about many of the worst things and most important issues occurring around the world. For those of us who do know, it is our reponsibility to continue the education until every last person cannot sleep at night until they do something.
Time, as the song says, to get out of Denver.

Update II: The Post has taken down the handy-dandy quotations and posted a tongue-bath of the Dalai Lama.

Update III: Sorry about the several typos in this post. Fixed (more or less) now.

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