Posted on 06/11/2006 8:12:03 AM PDT by doug from upland
9 June 2006 – Employing examples drawn from the headlines and from popular culture, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today urged a group of high school graduates in New York to use their education for the good of others, aware that their actions can reverberate across the globe.
“In an interconnected world, none of us can be indifferent to, or immune from suffering,” Mr. Annan told graduates of the UN International School (UNIS) at a ceremony held in the General Assembly Hall.
He emphasized that what the students undertake can profoundly impact the lives of others. “You are not in a ‘waiting period’ – waiting to be leaders, waiting to make a difference. You matter now! You can make a difference now,” he declared.
The Secretary-General pointed out that people are interconnected and interdependent as never before. “Means of communication have reduced global distances to mere nano-seconds. Consequently, whatever may happen at one end of the globe can intensely affect large populations at the other,” he said.
“No, I don’t just mean the worldwide gasp at Chris Daughtry’s exit from American Idol,” he added, referring to the unexpected defeat of a rocker contestant widely favoured to win a popular talent search televised across the United States.
“I also have in mind the cartoons, published in one corner of the world, which cause widespread and agonized convulsions in lands far away,” Mr. Annan said.
Applying the UN’s ideals of understanding, open-mindedness, community service, respect and communication across all cultures, the students, he said, can naturally become “the best kind of world citizen.”
Ping
Build the WALL!
ILLEGALS! LOL
that's right. burden high school kids with guilt for the suffering of the world. How about teaching them how to balance a check book, hold a job, keep a marriage together?
I wish that POS would go back to where he came from before he was born.
Just another world terrorist that needs removing.
Well, let's vote him off the show.
Where do I apply to get my UN passport as a "world citizen?"
The whole speech is to lay the predicate as these kids come of age that national borders must give way to international governance.
That is why this mountebank has declined to repudiate the prepared remarks of his own chief of staff to the effect that America is derelict for not preventing its citizens from criticizing the UN.
I guess a true (brave new) world citizen must not engage in that kind of hate speech.
Still want that passport?
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