Kofi Annan Quotes
The Arab Spring reminds me a bit of the decolonisation process where one country gets independence, and everybody else wants it.
Annan, Kofi. Interview with The Telegraph, 20 May 2012.
In 1937 the U. S. Treasury Department commissioned a pair of large murals to decorate the lobby or the Ariel Rios Federal Building in Washington DC. On the mural was depicted a U. S. Mail Service from Alaska to Puerto Rico. It showed four Puerto Rican women reading a letter in the Inuit dialect presumably delivered from Alaska. The authorities loved the mural until they discovered the translation of the Inuit letter. This was a direct reference to the Puerto Rican Nationalist Independence Movement. That year 18 Puerto Rican Nationalists were killed and over 100 wounded when police fired into a crowd of demonstrators on March 21. Kent, a famous artist, planted a newspaper story with the translation and soon media all over the company were drawing attention to the Puerto Rican movement, just as Kent had intended.
Nostradamus made thousands of prophecies most of which seem not to have occurred as he predicted. However there were a few that some people believe predicted later events. In this case some think that he predicted the colonization and independence of America.
In the negotiations the Indian nationalists of the Congress Party did not get everything that they wanted. Rarely does anyone in legitimate negotiations. This was a masterful example of oratory where Nehru wanted to produce the euphoria and historical gravitas that was appropriate when the largest group of people in world history gained self-government and independence. Yet the Congress Party had made promises in the platforms over the years that had not been kept. The partition of the one nation into a Muslim state as well as India denied the Indians of some of their historically and economically most important territories and he had to acknowledge that failure without dampening the public enthusiasm for the great achievement. This was a masterpiece.
Chile with help from San Martin had ejected the Spanish. O’Higgins, the Chilean leader had joined up with San Martin and served under his command. The sectional rivalry bothered men like Carrera. Instead of seeing all the South Americans fighting the Spanish as allies as O’Higgins did, Carrera and his brothers refused to join a government of unity and they and their troops were just as dictatorial and cruel as the Spanish had been. O’Higgins gave Indians and Blacks equal rights with whites which distressed the aristocratic Carrera’s. Finally the Carrera’s tried to set up their own government, and the new Chilean government disarmed their militia and executed two of the three Carrera brothers who were leading the militia troops who were little more than thieves and brigands.
In one of the most unusual revolutions in world history, Brazil became independent from Portugal via a revolution led by the son of the Portuguese King and heir to the throne, Pedro I. The crown prince of Portugal, led Brazil in her breakaway from Portugal and by popular acclaim became Pedro I, Emperor of Brazil. He is probably the only monarch in history who was the heredity monarch of one kingdom and selected by popular acclaim to the throne of another.
Executed by the English for his part in the Easter Uprising.
The glorious spectacle of eighteen millions of people, struggling to burst their chains and be free.
The entire speech was translated into Spanish and read to great applause to Latin American revolutionary regiments.
In 1837 and 1839 there were insurrections in Lower Canada against British rule. The British put down the rebellions and executed a few of the leaders.
He had been King of Portugal and then had come to the Portuguese colony of Brazil where he led a revolution against Portugal, declared independence from the “mother country, and was elected as Emperor of Brazil. The Colony was much larger and richer in natural resources than the “mother country.”
Kofi Atta Annan was a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations from January 1997 to December 2006. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize. He was the founder and chairman of the Kofi Annan Foundation, as well as chairman of The Elders, an international organization founded by Nelson Mandela.