Hell Newbie Friends,
This message from Shimon Peres just resonated with my respect for
the intelligence, creativity, and cooperative spirit of the many young
people who have made this valuable list, and Linux itself, work for all
people everywhere. I hope it will be a great encouragement to continue
your great work of peaceful globalization.
Lou Mulieri
Hinesburg, VT
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Shimon Peres, a former foreign affairs minister of Israel and co-author of
the Oslo Peace Agreement, was among the guests of honor at the launch of
the International Year for a Culture of Peace at UNESCO headquarters on
September 14th. He urged the world's young people to stand up and be
counted, and decision makers to make room for them.
"A NEW ERA FOR A NEW GENERATION. The age has changed. It's not the
continuation of what we know. Our history was written with red ink, a
history of war, violence, hatred. Maybe there was a justification for it
because we made our living from land and our quarrels from religions. We
have since learned that we can make a better living from science and
technology. We have learned the value of tolerance. Democracy is not a
meeting of people who are alike, nor is it a gathering of like ideas. It
is a meeting of people who are different, of ideas that differ. And we
learn that we can live together in a pluralistic world and advance our age
by education, research, and communication in a world without frontiers,
without barriers, without prejudices and without distances.
It is really an age for young people. We talk so much about globalization
of the economy (but) the most important phenomenon is the globalization of
young people. They are more globally oriented, more professionally
inclined. They hardly understand the confrontations, wars and skirmishes
we went through. Maybe they don't have a declaration. But they do have a
message. I think that the jeans and the t-shirts are a demand for
equality, for openness, so you wouldn't judge a person by his dress -
whether he is black or white, rich or poor, man or woman. And the dance
and sing in the streets and the squares so they won't have to buy
expensive tickets to opera houses and music halls. They have computers and
Internet - and once you have the Internet in your room, your room is no
longer a room, it's a globe. And basically they don't understand why we
want to mark, artificially, borders among nations. Or why we insist
unnecessarily on going to war and fighting each other. We can agree while
disagreeing. We can advance without fighting each other.
Today, a boy or a girl of 12, 13 or 14 is what we used to call a �grown-up
person.' They are better informed than we were at 17 or 18. They are
stronger, better educated. Yet they don't have a role in life. They wander
around looking for a role, for a challenge.
I think the young generation has a right to its own agenda. I, personally
would like to see young people getting organized globally - non
governmentally - trying to put their own feelings and their own vision
forward in an organized manner. We have to give them the right to have a
future of their own.
Because what's happening is a new age. A new concept. And a new
generation. Hopefully much better"
Copied by L. A. Mulieri from October 1999 issue No 116 of SOURCES, the
UNESCO magazine.
