The Elders To Solve The World’s Problems
Speaking of The Elders, there was a nice story with a Kansas City twist posted by Steve Phillips on their messageboard last week.
Peter Gabriel has been involved in all sorts of wonderful things since leaving Genesis. His song Biko about the prisoner Steve Biko quickly became an anti-apartheid anthem; he was a founder of the WOMAD festival giving exposure to musicians from all over the world; and in a similar vein founded his Real World record label and studio.
A week ago an idea Gabriel first fermented with Richard Branson and proposed to Nelson Mandela back in the 1990s came to fruition on Mandela’s 89th birthday.
The idea was for a small, dedicated group of world leaders, working objectively without any vested personal interest to solve difficult global conflicts.
The Elders as announced by Nelson Mandela are Desmond Tutu, Graça Machel, Kofi Annan, Ela Bhatt, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Jimmy Carter, Li Zhaoxing, Mary Robinson, and Muhammad Yunus.
Notably absent - and marked by an empty seat onstage - was an elder invited, but unable to attend because she is under house arrest in Burma, Nobel laureate and human rights advocate Aung San Suu Kyi.
ABC News has some more on the story:
“The structures we have to deal with these problems are often tied down by political, economic and geographic constraints,” Mandela said. The Elders, he argued, will face no such constraints.
And the Kansas City angle? Steve Phillips posted that Gabriel’s office suggested trading the domain name TheElders.org - then owned by KC’s Celtic rock group, for the domain Gabriels group owned, TheElders.com.
And as it made sense for both, they did. Great stuff all round!
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
