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| Jumping Jack |
Jest? The root cause of most African countries is their corrupt governments that victimize their populations for personal profit. Throwing money (or forgiving debt that was stolen) doesn't fix that problem any more than the food for oil program fed poor Iraqis.
It is interesting to me that the people who care most about the problem are least willing to address to fundamental problem and prefer to waste other people's money to make them feel better.
Why do so many people listen to uneducated, narcissistic, self promoting entertainers who are grossly overpaid and become so full of themselves that they think they have the solutions to all the world's problems?
Babs, Tom Cruise, Michael Moore, most of Hollywood, and particularly Bono has egos that are totally out of control. Credit the Stones for never falling into that self indulgent trap.
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| Voodoo Scrounge |
Would have to agree with that Jumpin Jack. It does make me laugh when you see stars like Bono and McCartney telling us that we should pledge as much money as we can and then you look in the yearly celebrity rich list and see what those guys are worth.
Now I am not saying that they dont pledge money, but you would think that with a bank balance like theirs they would make a huge donation.
However, we are getting side tracked from the point. The point is, we are seeing the same pictures of a desperate Africa 20 years on from Live Aid. Im affraid that in another 20 years time it will be the same. That is because of a few reasons.
1) On the whole, African governments are notoriously corrupt and against their own people.
2) Africa is on the whole a baron land. The climate in most areas is no good for farming and neither is the soil.
3) Africa is densly over populated. The African mentality isnt to have a reasonable amount of children in each family and survive. It is to have a large family.
4) Contraception is unheard of. A vast majority of Africans dont or cant use contraceptives. This means more babies and more mouths to feed.
I fear that I sound very right wing and biggoted but I do believ that sometimes its the simple things that can help. |
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| Gazza |
Again, how do you know they DONT make a large donation? If they came out and publicly declared what they donated, they'd still get shit for doing so. No win situation.
A lot of your points are reasonable enough (and no, I dont think youre being bigoted) but some poor bastard starving in a desert is hardly going to be in a position to do anything to correct how corruptly run his government happens to be. And most of that contraception/AIDS argument is down to plain ignorance and lack of education. There are parts of Africa (South Africa I think, actually) where one of the reasons why AIDS is so out of control is that it's believed that a cure for it is in having sex with a virgin! You can only imagine the rape figures as a result of that, not to mention an obvious link to the spread of the disease
I don't see why the likes of Bono or Geldof come in for quite so much vitriol on this issue. Is it better to use a position in the public eye to try and change things for the poorest in the world, or to simply avoid anything that isn't directly related to the business of making music (and money) and defending one's privacy like a rabid pit bull, the way most rock/pop stars and celebrities generally seem to?
Even the combined total worth of some celebrities wouldn't bring about fundamental and lasting change, which is what they're currently about. For them to donate privately to charities would be almost pointless, given the much greater good they can maybe achieve by being very loudmouthed about the situation. Being high-profile could (a) inspire others in large numbers and make a much greater difference in the short term and (b) pressure the self-serving weasels that attain political power in every country in the world to do someting about the underlying situation.
If they get some free publicity through it, so what? In any event, I thought Bob Geldof now made most of his money on the production side of TV and radio, where I doubt if his charity work creates too many new commissions. I doubt if too many people buy U2 records for that reason either. I've certainly never bought any of them other than for the reason that I think they're quite good.
[Edited by Gazza] |
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| Voodoo Scrounge |
Im just sorry to say that I feel there will be no change in Africa in our lifetime. Even if the countries huge debts are dropped over the next few months, how long will it be beofre they get into debt again because their continent is a baron watseland? |
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| Jumping Jack |
I feel charitable giving should be voluntary and those handling the funds should assure transparancy in the transactions to assure the money goes to what it was intended for. Those soliciting the giving have an obligation to assure that transparency or are otherwise co-conspirators in the theft.
Live Aid 1 resulted in widespread theft of the donations. BG should be ashamed and offer public appologies to all he ripped off. Knowing that people won't be foolish enough to throw money away again, BG and Bono decide to promote the new scam of forgiving debt which actually means dumping the cost on American taxpayers among others. Not only is this not voluntary, the money didn't go where it was supposed to go.
I didn't vote for Bono or BG to represent my tax money. The situation is truly outrageous, but overlooked by those who feel they are smarter than I am entitled to decide where the proceeds of my hard work are spent. Frankly, I would rather walk around downtown Atlanta and hand money out to the homeless than to give it to corrupt African warlords because that's Bono's idea of saving the world. |
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| corgi37 |
Geldof is such a drag. It's getting bad press over here (mainly from U.K.) articles that sometimes get re-printed here. People are asking: "If the shows are not to raise money, what are they for?"
Sure as hell aint to provide African artists with a showcase! I read a comment from Noel Gallagher. Its not verbatim, just what i can recall.
Ah-hem...
"Oh, i get it. 1 of those G8 fuckers is gonna see Annie Lennox singing "Sweet dreams are made of this" and go, "Yeah, lets solve the problem". I fucking mean, aint gonna work, innit?"
He is 1 spot on mudda-fukka!
I must say the care factor is zilch. People are just saying "Africa? That old chestnut!".
1 thing will change Africa.
Re-surrect the "Enola Gay" for a bit of a comeback. Then start again.
Either that or send Tom Cruise there.
Same effect.
They'd all be fucked. |
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| Gazza |
Tom Cruise would feel pretty safe.
No water for some smartarse to squirt in his face like in London last week! |
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| Voodoo Scrounge |
I really do feel bad when I see all those youngsters starving and dying over there. But then I get really angry and think to myself "How the fuck can they make more babies". Its outrageous. Its allmost as if they need to replace what they have lost. It shouldnt work like that. |
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| Gazza |
well thats the mentality, unfortunately. With a high infant mortality rate, parents have children to look after THEM when THEY get old. Vicious circle. |
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| Voodoo Scrounge |
Sterilisation.
Severe, but effective |
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| gimmekeef |
The African situation is perhaps the most complex human tragedy facing the world.Why would anyone expect G8 photo op assholes to have even a clue how to start fixing it.And playing some music is a nice feel good gesture that is like throwing a shot of water on a raging fire.Enough of my tax money has already been spent on corrupt programs that have done nothing.I'm sickened by the situation the children face but new answers are needed.Forgetting debt is far too simplistic of a bandage.Real change always comes from within..... |
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| maumau |
"I fear that I sound very right wing and biggoted"
no you're not VS but then, sterilisation is truly a rght wing and bigotted shortcut to solve a complex problem 
Bono, Geldof but also all the left wing, No, Nu, Anti global leaders don't answer enough or convincingly enough to the question of the corruption of local governments
i think the problem with them is that, if they do, what they should say will sound pretty much as the "need for regime change" that is the neocon strategy...
Here it is where i think their political engagement falls short. If this is not about raising charity money (that i think it is good for the single but calls for trouble if it is of the mass) it could or should be about raising consciousness, political consciousness.
Of whom? Bush? Blair? Chirac? If the mesage is for them i think Bono could knock on the door at downing street and ask for a cup of tea with the Prime Minister, i think he would be glad to let him in and receive the message
But if this Live-8 is for the raising of political consciousness of a problem (poverty in the 3rd world) and its causes, i think they should take more risk and go straight against the reassuring belief of the white nu global youngsters that are so "sharp" and "smart" in saying who are the bad guys in the world and who are the good ones. They could have the charisma to dismantle many stereotypes and give them a little shock, and also shock a little bit more the newscasters by not stating the obvious, that is the obvious things that you expect from left wing intellectuals or political leaders.
it would be more effective
but they don't want to challenge the mass beliefs (the mass of young people that "cares" about poverty blaming just the north/west world for it)
maybe just because they don't see the problem of corrupt local masters of war leaders
maybe because it's easier not to see it
maybe because it would damage their popularity
i dont know
i have nothing against pop stars using their popularity to make a political statement
i am not convinced by this political statement
another thing that they (Bono, Bob, and all the others nu global) overlook completely is the role of the catholic church and the missionaries in the problem of overpopulation and also the Aids
there's a very loud cry against the "evil" pharmaceutical companies being blamed of not solving the problem by giving their patents away to let them have cheap medication
and this sure is a problem
they do not help to give a REMEDY
what about the ones who don't help at all to cancel the CAUSES of this problem
Church "help" through missions in Africa is widely responsible in the "non education" of people about what can be easily done to avoid infection, or at least overpopulation
but you won't see Bono screaming out loud against the Pope, it is easier that you see him perform in front of him as even Bob Dylan once did |
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| Jumping Jack |
Here is an interesting NY Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/26/opinion/26brooks.html?hp
Liberals, Conservatives and Aid
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: June 26, 2005
Karl Rove has his theories about what separates liberals from conservatives and I have mine. Mine include the differences between Jeffrey Sachs and George Bush.
Jeffrey Sachs, as you may know, is the Columbia University economist who has done more to put poverty in Africa atop the global agenda than anybody else. He has hectored and lobbied the developed world to forgive debts, set goals and increase aid to ameliorate the suffering of the extremely poor.
But Sachs is a child of the French Enlightenment. At the end of his new book, "The End of Poverty," he delivers an unreconstructed tribute to the 18th-century Enlightenment, when leading thinkers had an amazing confidence in their ability to refashion reality so that it would conform to reason.
Throughout the book, Sachs comes across as a philosophe for our times. He is, he writes, a "clinical economist," who diagnoses the maladies that affect nations the way a doctor diagnoses and holds life-or-death sway over a human organism. One of the striking features of his book is the absence of individual Africans. There is just the undifferentiated mass of the suffering poor, trapped in systems, and Sachs traveling around the globe prescribing treatments.
Sachs is also a materialist. He dismisses or downplays those who believe that human factors like corruption, greed, institutions, governance, conflict and traditions have contributed importantly to Africa's suffering. Instead, he emphasizes material causes: lack of natural resources, lack of technology, bad geography and poverty itself as a self-perpetuating trap.
This gives him an impressive confidence on the malleability of human societies. Though $2.3 trillion has been spent over the past 50 years to address global poverty, without producing anything like the results we would have hoped for, Sachs is sure that with his insights, and most important, with more money, extreme poverty can be eliminated with one big, final push. "We can realistically envision a world without extreme poverty by the year 2025," he writes. "Ending the poverty trap will be much easier than it appears," he declares.
Sachs, who tends to regard anyone who disagrees with him as immoral, is contemptuous of the Bush administration. The Bush folks, he charges, have failed the poor.
The Bush administration has nearly doubled foreign aid, but it will not spend the amounts Sachs wants. The Bush folks, at least when it comes to Africa policy, have learned from centuries of conservative teaching - from Burke to Oakeshott to Hayek - to be skeptical of Sachsian grand plans. Conservatives emphasize that it is a fatal conceit to think we can understand complex societies, or rescue them from above with technocratic planning.
The Bush folks, like most conservatives, tend to emphasize nonmaterial causes of poverty: corrupt governments, perverse incentives, institutions that crush freedom. Conservatives appreciate the crooked timber of humanity - that human beings are not simply organisms within systems, but have minds and inclinations of their own that usually defy planners. You can give people mosquito nets to prevent malaria, but they might use them instead to catch fish.
Instead of Sachs's monumental grand push to end poverty, the Bush administration has devised the Millennium Challenge Account, which is not dismissed by Sachs, but not heralded either. This program is built upon the assumption that aid works only where there is good governance and good governance exists only where the local folks originate and believe in the programs. M.C.A. directs aid to countries that have taken responsibility for their own reform.
It has the faults of its gradualist virtues. I recently sat in on a meeting in Mozambique between local and American officials. It was clear that the program, while well conceived, has been horribly executed. The locals had been given only the vaguest notions of what sort of projects the U.S. is willing to finance. After two years of trying they had received nothing.
Nonetheless, the Bush approach, when reformed, at least builds on the experience of the past decades, while Sachs, as reviewers have noticed, repeats the 1960's. If, ā la Sachs, we assume money translates easily into growth, if we pour aid into Africa without regard to local institutions, we will do little good, we will exhaust donors and we will discredit the aid enterprise for years to come.
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| glencar |
Wow, unintelligible gibberish isn't much fun in the late morning. Maumau, the neo-cons will do more for Africa than the idiotic UN has ever done. Allowing corruption to proceed for a half century is unforgivable. |
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| maumau |
sorry glencar for the "unintelligible gibberish"
i try to do the best i can with my english
if you want you can to take your revenge by posting in italian
beside that your remark would be a good summary of what i tried to say
anyway, the article posted by JJ is interesting even if i think it gives way too much credit to the "bush folks"
on the other hand i agree completely with his criticism of liberal professors |
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| glencar |
quote:
maumau wrote:
sorry glencar for the "unintelligible gibberish"
i try to do the best i can with my english
if you want you can to take your revenge by posting in italian
beside that your remark would be a good summary of what i tried to say
anyway, the article posted by JJ is interesting even if i think it gives way too much credit to the "bush folks"
on the other hand i agree completely with his criticism of liberal professors
maumau, I didn't realzie you weren't an English speaker. My apologies, my Itie friend! The writer of JJ's article is a Bush supporter so it seems likely that he would give some praise. Perhaps someday Africans will get their act together but it seems like many of the brighter ones are just leaving the place. |
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| maumau |
it's ok glencar
"Perhaps someday Africans will get their act together but it seems like many of the brighter ones are just leaving the place"
that's why "regime change" sound good to me
if they come here to survive or get their share of hope
we can go there and help them (the poorest, those who could not even afford a ticket to our world) change their regimes
we will all benefit from those regime changes
my objection to the "bush folks" are
1) the way the choose their (not even america's) priorities
2) they like guns way too much over politics |
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| glencar |
I beg to differ. The President's priorites almost automatically become the country's priorities. And when they go with politics over guns (N. Korea) they catch just as much heat. |
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| maumau |
President's priorites almost automatically become the country's priorities.
I'd prefer it could be the other way around
And when they go with politics over guns (N. Korea) they catch just as much heat.
i see. and i won't support o "pacifist" perspective on that
but i think often the "realist" or "conservative" way to deal with such problems can be very short sighted and ineffective...then time passes, problems grow, begin to touch your interests more and then...there you go, you wake up and the only thing that is left to do with the problem is to unfold the gun...
guns are for extreme measures but i think there's always a lot that can be done before you got to that point
(remember former jugoslavia, milosevic and our idiotic european leaders and UN officials? they did nothing political to solve the problem when they had the chance to and then...they did not even want to use guns...those idiots!)
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| Jumping Jack |
Since Live Aid was 20 years ago it seems fair to ask who will be eating better in 20 years, Iraqis or Somalians?
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| jb |
quote:
Jumping Jack wrote:
Since Live Aid was 20 years ago it seems fair to ask who will be eating better in 20 years, Iraqis or Somalians?
LOL...... |
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| glencar |
quote:
Jumping Jack wrote:
Since Live Aid was 20 years ago it seems fair to ask who will be eating better in 20 years, Iraqis or Somalians?
he shoots, he scores! |
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| Joey |
quote:
Jumping Jack wrote:
Since Live Aid was 20 years ago it seems fair to ask who will be eating better in 20 years, Iraqis or Somalians?
That's what my little friends and myself running around the Plains of Nebraska with knickers on and stick ball bats in our hands used to call "Postin'!"
You're POSTIN' baby!
The Joey - As seen on the reality show "That's Postin'!", 10:00 PM CDT Sundays.
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| glencar |
Always knew you were a 'reality show' type o' guy! |
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| pdog |
quote:
Joey wrote:
You're POSTIN' baby!
When or how did I lose your LOVE ?!?!?!?!?
[Edited by pdog] |
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| FPM C10 |
quote:
Jumping Jack wrote:
Since Live Aid was 20 years ago it seems fair to ask who will be eating better in 20 years, Iraqis or Somalians?
So...America should invade Somalia and get mired down THERE for the foreseeable future?
Hmmm...is there any oil in Somalia? Because, see, our escapades in Iraq are 100% paid for by Iraqi oil! They don't cost us a cent!
Wh-wh-wh-wha-a-a-a-at???
Oh. Scratch that last part. Seems to have been some bad intel.
Well, the good news is the insurgency is on their last legs. We should be out of Iraq in 12 years or so. Then we'll come over and sort out Somalia!
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| jb |
LOL...12 yrs...and gas will cost $12.00 dollard a gallon...and the funny thing is, that the macho fucks who voted for Bush, have no $$$$$$$$$... |
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| Jumping Jack |
Ineffective governments need to be fixed locally. Having twits like Bono funneling money (voluntary donations or stolen by taxation) to the corrupt regimes to keep them in power only prolongs the oppression.
I have no problem letting the Africans sort out their own solutions. I do think it is clear that with Africa's wealth of resources including oil that the problem is with their own self governance, not the lack of free money being sent to them. The sooner Bono and the rest of the celebrities come to that realization the better.
David Brooks is right, aid only works where there is good governance and local folks originate and believe in the programs.
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| texile |
hate to agree jj - but that's true. |
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| PeerQueer |
Hold on there JB - how do you know the folks who voted for Bush have no $$$$$$$$$$$$$$?????????/. I know of many many very wealthy conservatives who were serious Bush supporters. Your overly broad statement makes no sense to me and is the kind of soft-blanket bigotry that is among the most annoying luxuries so many intellectually lazy Americans participate in.
Every great leader throughout history was during their day, villified by many, be it Jesus Christ, Churchill, or Reagan. (Now there's a dinner party!) History will be the judge of Bush - and right now it is far too early to say. Neither I nor you are capable of grasping the long term implications of what is going on in the Middle East right now.
Take the two most recent comparisons: Clinton and Bush
Clinton wrote historical footnotes, Bush, for better or perhaps worse, is writing historical chapters. If Bush succeeds, he will in time, be rated as one of our stronger leaders - if he fails, he will go down in smoke, and rightly so. The final verdict for that success or failure is years, if not decades away, and I for one think the vast majority of people need to shut the fuck up about things of which they are completely clueless on.
My only first-persons understanding of the current Iraq situation is a family who rents one of the duplex units I own in Vancouver B.C. They are thrilled with the United States intervention in their country and according to their near daily correspondence with family still in Iraq, so too are the vast majority of Iraqis.
I for one really hope their current hopes for a free Iraq are met. Anyone who doesn't is a complete moron, only able to project their negativity because they have the supreme comfort of doing so as an American. |
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