Nelson Mandela Marks His 89th Birthday

[Snazzy]

Source: AP

Nelson Mandela Marks His 89th Birthday


Jul 18, 3:29 PM (ET)

By CELEAN JACOBSON

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) - Nelson Mandela celebrated his 89th birthday Wednesday by joining with other Nobel peace laureates, politicians and development experts to form a "council of elders" dedicated to fostering peace and resolving global crises.

The event kicked off with about 250 people, including former President Jimmy Carter, singing "Happy Birthday" as a beaming Mandela took the stage, accompanied by an aide and leaning heavily on his cane.

...

The new humanitarian alliance, called the Elders, was an idea of British entrepreneur Richard Branson, who shares a birthday with Mandela, and musician Peter Gabriel. Branson helped raise the $18 million in funding over three years for the group.

Along with Mandela, Carter and Tutu, the Elders are former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan; Ela Bhatt, an Indian women's rights campaigner; former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland; Li Zhaoxing, a former Chinese envoy to the U.N. who worked in Africa; Mandela's wife, Graca Machel, a longtime campaigner for children's rights; former Irish President Mary Robinson; and Bangladeshi micro-credit pioneer Muhammad Yunus.

....

Read more: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070718/D8QF6KMG3.html

[Jack Rabbit]

1. Happy birthday. President Mandela

Many happy returns to one of the greatest men of our time and one of the world's few true leaders.

[applegrove]

2. Happy Birthday to Nelson Mandela. What a hero. And what he did

during the transfer of power in the 1990s was a miracle of peace. One all world leaders should learn from. I'm glad he had a few "friends" to celebrate with. Best wishes.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

3. It's nice to see one of the good guys live long for a change. -nt

[ClintonTyree]

4. Long may he live.....

much longer, that is. :) A great, great man.

[aaronbees]

5. What a great way to celebrate a birthday

Happiest of birthdays to a true hero.

[David__77]

6. Best wishes to Nelson Mandela.

He deserves much praise for never wavering in his commitment to physically annihilate apartheid fascism. Time and again, the apartheid rulers offerred clemency in exchange for Mandela's repudiation of armed resistance, and each time he heroically said "no." Thanks to his personal sacrifice, South Africa's revolution won victory.

[MasonJar]

7. Happy Birthday to a great citizen of the world!

[struggle4progress]

8. Our dear elder brother Nelson! How happy you must have been on the day Nkosi Sikelel'iAfrika

became part of your country's national anthem! What a life!

audiofile

Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika

... Songs are contextualized through their histories, performance arenas, and the presence of other songs and rituals performed in sequence with them. Analyzing a song as a single tune and text in terms of its fixed verse structure stabilizes it in a Western format and establishes the song as a cultural object about which claims of authorship and authenticity may be made. In 1897, Enoch Sontonga, a teacher at a Methodist mission school in Johannesburg, composed “Nkosi” as part of a repertoire of songs prepared for the students in his school (Jabavu 1949: 56-58; Coplan 1985: 44-45). He wrote the opening stanza of the song in Xhosa, and the song was first performed publicly in 1899 at the ordination ceremony for a Tsonga pastor, Reverend Mboweni. Some sources describe Sontonga as Xhosa, while others suggest that he was Tsonga from the north of Transvaal (Jabavu 1949: 56-58). In any event, he used Xhosa as a lingua franca that appealed broadly to the local black elite. In 1927, renowned Xhosa poet Samuel E. Mqhayi added seven more verses to “Nkosi”. The original song reflects patterns of both Methodist hymnody and African praise singing. Historical records do not indicate whether the tune already existed in the form of a vernacular piece that may have inspired Sontonga. Nevertheless, he took the step of combining a generic Methodist harmony and concept of redemption with an African blessing. The invocation of the Holy Spirit (Moya) combines fundamentalist Protestantism with African traditions of ritual cleansing (Turner 1968: 21-22). This combination has led to the song’s widespread and deep-seated appeal across a variety of religious and secular communities and opens up an ethnotheological discussion about notions of life, death, blessing, and salvation.

In 1923, Solomon Plaatje, a founding member of the African National Congress (ANC) arranged for the recording of “Nkosi” in London. The song was performed at the South African Native National Congress in 1912 ... Then the ANC adopted it as an official hymn in 1925. In various iterations, the hymn punctuated the ANC’s victories and struggles as it traveled across borders into exile ...

Sontonga’s original song was a plea for help and blessing in an oppressive environment in need of mourning and healing .. As part of South Africa’s rising black elite at the turn of the century, Sontonga wished to impart a sense of hope and dignity to his students. Although the descriptions of Sontonga’s piece refer to it as “melancholy” and almost dirge-like .. this impression emerges from both Sontonga’s social discontent and his efforts to bring together two musical and cultural traditions with a feeling of solemnity and reverence. The moderate political tone of the original song may also have expressed some self-censorship on Sontonga’s part ...

http://etudesafricaines.revues.org/document4631.html

[DeepModem Mom]

9. K&R!

[babylonsister]

10. Thank you, Nelson Mandela, for always fighting for what's right. nt

[mogster]

11. Happy B-day, Mandela!

I hadn't heard of this council before, but it seems like a great idea.

About Muhammad Yunus; he and his bank project was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. When accepting the prize last year, he also took on one of Norway's biggest telecom companies, Telenor, which started a telecom company called Grameenphone with Yunus in 1996 as a development project. The deal was that Telenor should sell their stock down to 35% to Yunus after six years, but refused to do so when due (the company earned good money), and still owns 62% of the shares.
From Wiki:
"Althiugh GP is the leading Mobile Company in Bangladesh, it has established a monopoly market in the country. General customers allege that GP is not reducing its call rate, rather it is trying to grip the market in the name of different promotions. Every promotion of GP aims at either attracting new customers or retaliating promotions offered by other companies. Reduced rate facilities are often followed by deduction of certain amount from customers' balance on monthly basis, which does not always serve the interest of the majority customers."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grameen_Phone

Monopoly is the bread and butter of Telenor, which is one Norwegian company that matches closely the 'new' corporatism. They have invested about 500 million NOK in the company's development, and the value of their post is now more than 12 billion NOK, an increase of more than 2000%.

[HamdenRice]

12. happy bday kr! nt

[Dragonbreathp9d]

13. Happy Birthday!

:yourock:

[Vidar]

14. Happy Birthday to a true hero.

[FarrenH]

15. Happy Birthday Madiba!

Nelson Mandela has been a hero of mine since I first became politically conscious, but for many other white South Africans he was a "communist terrorist". Yet many who were completely immersed in the propaganda and cognitive dissonance of Apartheid and were full of fear as it crumbled were amazed to discover that the real Madiba was more like their favourite grandparent than the monster they had been taught to see him as. It is a testimony to the extraordinary achievement of the man that even those white South Africans who are unapologetic for Apartheid and still long for the "good old days", regularly criticize the current leadership by comparing them not to the Nationalist government, but to Mandela. Even the crypto-racists who still constitute a fair proportion of white South Africa will often admit to a soft spot for Mandela.

He really did embrace peace and do everything in his power to heal and unify a nation bitterly divided by racist policies. He donned a rugby jersey and celebrated wins by the national team in a sport that was seen as an exclusively white preserve. When some young ANC leaders caused a stir by chanting anti-white/anti-afrikaans/anti-farmer slogans at rallies, he personally attended the largest convention of white farmers in the country (traditionally the most racist sector of white SA) and extended his apology on behalf of the ANC. He didn't forgive in a grudging manner or speak peace out of one side of his mouth while using fighting words out of the other. He embraced reconciliation, forgiveness and inclusiveness with a sincerity that would be impossible to fake.

Before his imprisonment, Nelson Mandela was among the young turks that successfully argued that the ANC should move away from its decades-long policy of passive resistance and take up arms against the increasingly brutal Nationalist government. But he was also a strong supporter of another cause within the ANC: that it be a movement for the liberation of all South Africans, not just the oppressed, but the oppressor. Mandela was as concerned with the liberation of white South African minds as he was with the liberation of black South African bodies. He didn't just seek an end to Apartheid, he sought an end to all the reactionary, conservative and selfish ideas that it was premised on, ideas that still have political currency in many of the world's so-called free and democratic nations.

Nelson Mandela was a true progressive. Although he was raised in a very traditional manner, with all of the superstition and sexism of rural Xhosa society (I know I'm gonna get flack for saying that but WTF), he fought for an end to sexism, to homophobia, to discrimination founded on anything that was irrationally reactionary. Which is among the reasons (with credit to many other people who were involved too) that South Africa, despite having fairly conservative values across all races, has the most (IMHO) enlightened constitutions in the world, even constitutionally protecting sexual orientation. Mandela fought for far more than simple emancipation of his ethnic group. He fought for a human-rights culture.

In so many former colonies of Europe, liberation movement leaders have been narrow nationalists or trapped within the confines of their cultural backgrounds, which has led to results ranging from disappointing to downright tragic once "liberation" was achieved. For us South Africans to have a man like Mandela to lead us into liberation and democracy was an astonishing stroke of luck, for which most of us will be eternally grateful.

[IndyOp]

16. The Hungry White Ghosts & The Elders...

Thom Hartmann once asked a Native American Elder how his life would be different if whites had succeeded in completely wiping out Native American culture -- had succeeded in getting the tribe elders to stop communicating their knowledge about spirituality, community, the land, the sacred places to the young.

The Elder looked at Hartmann with an alarmed expression and said that that would be a nightmare, a barely imaginable horror.

Hartmann replied, "That is who we are - we whites have been cut off from the knowledge of our elders many generations ago."

The Elder responded, "That explains why you whites are hungry ghosts."

There is so much we need to return to life, but don't know how to get.

If you haven't visited The Elders website - the images are gorgeous, as is Mandela's speech. This is a terrifically hopeful project.

Happy Birthday, indeed, Mr. Mandela. Namaste.

Mitakuye Oyasin
http://www.healthynewage.com/mitakuyeoyasin.html

There is a simple but profound Lakota prayer: Mitakuye Oyasin.

These two words mean All My Relations or We are All Related.

To pray this prayer is to petition God on behalf of everyone and everything on Earth.

Mitakuye Oyasin honors the sacredness of each person's individual spiritual path, acknowledges the sacredness of all life (human, animal, plant, etc.) and creates an energy of awareness which strengthens not only the person who prays but the entire planet.

Soon after I first learned this prayer, I saw that it represented all that needed to be said. It was a prayer of respect, honor and love for all of mankind, and for the Earth. It was a prayer that said "I wish goodness and peace for all. I would leave no one out. I pray for all." It was a prayer that crossed the barriers of religion and could be prayed by one of any faith. It was a prayer that united, instead of dividing. It was an amazing prayer.