Live 8...a success??

[The_Falcon]

Where's the UN when you need it?   : Africa is a continent in shambles, superstar Bono can kiss my big hairy *** if he believes the superstar bonanza will make a difference. I don't see a fix to this problem. What would you do? The world would have to go into each individual country and stablize them one at a time, how freaking long would that take? Sadly I don't see how any of this can be fixed in our life times.

The UN hahahah, are they already there in some countries.  Look at the difference they are making  :.  Bono is a pompous @$$.  In that MuchMusic show Ed did about him they were unable to find any record or statement by the artist (Bono) that he himself has actually given any money to his "pet" cause.  His M.O. is guilt tripping people into giving up their money, instead of leading by example.

Yep...You'd have to go from one country to another, removing dictators along the way...Then the oh-so-well-informed peace freaks would protest (just as they do now) against it!

Africa has to fix itself...We cannot be held responsible for those countries unless we have the power to go in and fix them. And we don't!

But that is how the peaceniks like it, give lots of money that no one can keep track of so they can contiually make their claims.  If some force were to go into Africa and remove all the dictators and install governments that made changes for the better, the charities would have nothing to do and cease to have a reason to exist meaning they would get no money anymore.

 

[The_Falcon]

Came across this article By the Toronto Suns Peter Worthington that i think nails it.

http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Worthington_Peter/2005/07/05/pf-1117707.html

By PETER WORTHINGTON

TWENTY YEARS ago when Ethiopia was in famine, Bob Geldof invented the Live Aid concert to attract the world's attention to misery there.

It was an astonishing success, raised millions, caught the humanitarian emotions of the world, contributed to him being knighted -- and achieved absolutely nothing for the wretched of Ethiopia.

That country's homicidal Marxist regime of Col. Haile Mariam Mengistu even charged duty on aid that was donated by the outside world. Appropriately, Mengistu today has sanctuary in Zimbabwe, where his Marxist soulmate, Robert Mugabe, has savaged one of Africa's most hopeful economies and made tyranny endemic.

In the 1980s, food aid to the starving of Ethiopia was diverted to the Ethiopian army, although the Geldofs and aid bureaucrats of the world were in ferocious denial. Filmmaker Rob Roy and I were with fighters in Eritrea when they routed and ransacked an Ethiopian division. In the army kitchens we found sacks of Canadian wheat flour that was intended for refugees.

I took photographs, reported the findings, but the Canadian government wasn't interested. It refused to see the truth about humanitarian aid.

So much for Geldof's passion then. Now there's something of history being repeated with a series of Live 8 concerts around the world, timed for this week's G8 summit meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland. This time the concerts are more ambitious than just raising money for Ethiopia. This time it's all Africa, especially the 14 African countries that are among the world's 18 poorest.

We never learn.

Ethiopia is still dirt poor -- but affluent enough to wage war against Eritrea, which is also poor but has a better record of fighting corruption and rejecting aid with strings attached.

It's hard to write realistically about Africa without seeming callous. It's estimated that in the past 50 years of anti-colonialism, $1 trillion has been given to Africa. Yet the people of many African countries are worse off today.

Britain's Tony Blair, host of the Gleneagles summit, is carrying on from where Jean Chretien left off at the 2002 G8 summit at Kananaskis, Alta., by urging more largesse for Africa.

A BASKET CASE

Blair, being a socialist, feels guilty about Africa and says it's a "scar on the conscience of the world" -- a basket case instead of a potential cornucopia.

This is a prevalent attitude, but it's also condescending, patronizing, elitist and nuts. Now the push is for developed countries to write off $40 billion in debts that Africa owes, as well as increasing aid to $50 billion a year by 2010, and $75 billion a year by 2015. Put that in everyday terms: Would it make debtors more responsible if banks cancelled debts and gave, rather than lent, more money? Is compulsive gambling cured by providing unlimited funds to gamblers? Are alcoholics helped by giving them free booze?

Africa's greatest problems are corruption and tribalism (i.e., racism). Foreign aid tends to keep dictators in power and prevents the people from being able to choose wise leaders and provide for themselves.

NO ACCOUNTABILITY

Tyranny thrives on foreign aid which, like the Live 8 concerts around the world, makes donors feel good but does little to encourage responsibility and accountability.

Richard Dowden of London's Royal African Society has it right when he says, "Only Africans themselves can change Africa," and points out that much of Africa is worse off than before massive aid injections were funnelled mostly to those in charge.

As for our own Prime Minister Paul Martin, he is captive of foreign aid rhetoric, but wary about actually delivering -- witness his pledge of $425 million for victims of the South Asian tsunami disaster last Christmas, precious little of which has yet to reach those who need it most.

 

[a_majoor]

Good summing up:

Aiding Africa
Trade, not welfare, is the answer.

By Alex Massie

Edinburgh has not awaited an invasion with quite this degree of trepidation since Charles Edward Stuart led his Highlanders into the city in 1745. As then, businesses have closed and many residents have taken the prudent option of leaving the city for a few days until the storm passes and life can return to normal.

At least this time, however, the city is better defended. In 1745, it was defenseless and opened its gates to the Jacobite army. This week, all police leave has been cancelled and extra forces have been drafted in from across the United Kingdom to monitor the hundreds of thousands of protesters occupying the city during the G8 summit at Gleneagles Hotel, just 40 miles up the road. The army is also on standby.

Bob Geldof called for a million people to descend on the Scottish capital (population 450,000) as part of what he terms "A Long Walk to Justice," to increase pressure on the G8 leaders to do more to alleviate African suffering and poverty. The latest indications are, much to the relief of the city council, that far fewer will make the trip.

A spokesman for Geldof admitted that the Long Walk might also be a comparatively Lonely Walk. "There isn't a march as such. It's a metaphorical, symbolic thing which Sir Bob Geldof was talking about. It doesn't really matter where you march. It doesn't matter whether you are there physically as long as you are there in spirit."

Indeed. In truth, the protests are entirely unnecessary. They are doubtless well-intentioned, but, in many cases, promise little more than the satisfaction to be gained from self-indulgence.

Tony Blair has spiked the protesters' guns by dedicating much of the summit's public agenda to the question of debt relief and aid for Africa. This not only ensured that, all being well, this summit might actually be remembered for something other than the organized mayhem of protesters and the fine but synthetic communiqués issued from the meetings themselves â ” it also took Iraq off the agenda.

Although Saturday's "Make Poverty History" march in Edinburgh, expected to draw perhaps 200,000 people, will be followed by a predictable "Stop the War Coalition" rally, the war is not the fulcrum for protesters' rage, even if the usual suspects will be in attendance.

In Britain at least, anti-Americanism has become the last refuge of the conformable. The United States can't win. As Andrew Natsios, the head of USAID, noted recently, if America did double the amount of aid it offered to Africa it would be accused of "imperial development."

Although the anti-globalization crowd may find George W. Bush repulsive, he is right. You can be certain that few among the kaftan-wearing hordes agree with Bono and Geldof's assessment that Bush has done more for Africa so far than Bill Clinton ever did. The president is right when he demands that in return for debt-cancellation and increased aid African governments commit themselves to being "agents of reform" rather than "passive recipients of money." As Bush put it on Thursday, "partnership not paternalism."

This demand for accountability is oddly controversial. But it seems axiomatic that anyone with Africa's interests at heart would want, indeed demand, that aid be spent on those it is designed to help rather than sequestered in Swiss bank accounts or squandered to satisfy the whims of a kleptocratic elite.

An appraisal of the history of aid to Africa is enough to make you weep. In the last 45 years the developed world has handed out more than $450 billion in aid. Yet according to Marian Tupy at the Cato Institute, African GDP declined by 0.59 percent per annum from 1975 to 2000. South Asia, which received just 21 percent of the aid Africa did, has increased GDP by 2.94 percent a year during that same period. Even allowing for different circumstances, that comparison is striking and ought to suggest that more aid is not necessarily the answer to African woes.

As Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown told MPs recently, "We should be opening our markets and removing trade-distorting subsidies and, in particular, doing more to urgently tackle the waste of the Common Agricultural Policy by now setting a date for the end of export subsidies."

This would do more than anything else to aid the developing world. Brown is the son of a Church of Scotland minister and grew up in Kirkcaldy, the birthplace of Adam Smith, just across the Firth of Forth from Edinburgh. Although a more traditional Labour figure than Blair, Brown has, in this instance at least, shown his appreciation of the fact that Presbyterianism and free markets have long been honorable and highly moral companions.

The same criticism of EU agricultural policy could and should be leveled at American farm and cotton subsidies. Indeed, while the president and Condoleezza Rice have admirably insisted that political liberalization is essential if the Middle East is to develop the kind of civil society that helps inoculate a population against extremism, the administration does not make it clear nearly as frequently that political freedom without economic freedom is only half a loaf.

Prosperity kills fanaticism just as surely, and perhaps even more effectively, than democracy â ” provided, that is, that the latter exists in any meaningful sense. In that regard, tariffs on textile imports from countries such as Pakistan and Egypt are harmful to American national security as well as offensive to free-traders' principles.

Those concerns will be far from the minds of most of the protesters this week, however. Repeat after me: "Trade Not Aid! Free Trade Not 'Fair' Trade!" Is it too much to hope that this romantic but right message might be heard?

â ” Alex Massie writes for the Scotman.
 
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/massie200507060811.asp

 

[I_am_John_Galt]

Even more succinctly:

 

[Britney Spears]

I don't understand your comment Brittany.  Wealth per person and education per person in both Japan and Singapore are amongst the world's highest because they have amongst the lowest birth rates in the world.

Right, birthrates != absolute population. Both countries are heavily populated, so it's not a simple matter of having x amount of land for x amount of people. Birhtrates and smaller families are just one social factor.

 

[Cpl.Banks]

Frankly I don't care much about Africa, I'm not racist, far from and I am not in human but... Why do we keep wasting OUR money which we could use to help fix OUR problems such as homelessness and natural disasters etc... notice the emphasis on OUR. People like Mugabe make me sick, the white farmers were farming for his country feeding his people employing his people giving them hope and a better future. But no he let his racial prejudices get in the way  and so we have a country starving, although it is getting aid. Some countries can be trusted to try and help their populous but who? If we do not trust their govt give them nothing, whereas a country that you can trust you can send equipment and fund to help them develop but nothing substantial because they must progress. Give them the building blocks and they can build it for themselves.
"Catch a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for life!"
This is my oppinion you are allowed to disagree that is a right we have in this country but don't tell me ever that we shouldn't take care of ourselves because if we don't who will? Africa...don't think so...

~Rant over~going to work
UBIQUE!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[camochick]

Why do we keep wasting OUR money which we could use to help fix OUR problems such as homelessness and natural disasters etc...

I agree that charity should begin at home but I hate when people whine about homelessness in Canada. Yes, in some cases people have been down on their luck and have ended up homeless or people with disabilities not getting enough money and such and we should help those people. But as Canadians we can chose to work a job and make money unlike people in Africa(or any other poverty stricken nation). I live in Alberta and i see so many homeless cracked out people and I don't have any sympathy for them. It's Alberta, there are plenty of jobs here, the cost of living isnt that high, apartments are affordable, we don't even pay provincial sales tax here for cripes sake. Maybe I am being too harsh but i really think that alot of times, laziness is the biggest factor in homelessness in the western world. The homeless here atleast can beg for a little change for food(or drugs) and not have to walk 20 miles for a bucket of water.

 

[The_Falcon]

The homeless problem in the cities here in Canada is another story altogether.  While some of the reasons people wind up homeless are related to money issues, alot of it has to do with substance abuse, mental illness, domestic violence/abuse (the big reason why street kids wind up on the street). Its not as simple as people being "lazy" although there are those out there who are.

 

[Sh0rtbUs]

Domestic violence/abuse is a big one. I've done work with Torontos homeless on several occassions, and out of the majority of people i meet, they started off fleeing an abusive home. Others simply missed a medication dose, and went downhill from there. The majority of them, are truely in a rut from no fault of their own, and simply cant get out. My father was one for many years...

 

[Kat Stevens]

Forgive my non poli-sci, uneducated take on this.  Do we seriously expect to ever see the debt from the third world repaid?  We're never gonna see it, write it off as a bad debt and move forward.  Just my .02, as usual

Kat

 

[Rebel_RN]

We will never see the debts re-paid. If they don't have the money (available to the general masses) then they sure as heck don't have the money available to pay their debt's to us.

All of this crying and moaning about the poor and pitiful state that these countries are in does absolutely nothing, and neither do the concerts, gala's, dinner's and other charitable events. It's not a new concept to learn, when a dictator has control over the why's and how's money, food and other various items are issued and distributed then it's relatively simple to see that said dictator and all those who can help him in any way will continue to see the majority of said items and financing. Simply put, the rich get richer. This doesn't change until the dictator is changed/removed.

The other issue is that these charitable events, while providing some mild forms of entertainment, do little else. Sure there are some in the world who will look and participate and then spend a week bemoaning the "poor poor Africans" and feel as though they are somehow helping their plight by talking about their problems, asking what they can do to help, feeling all warm and fuzzy inside, but when that event, day or week is over they go on thinking about they're own problems/issues and very rarely give a second thought to all the do-gooding they were going to do the week before. Simply put alot just like to talk the talk.

I'm not saying that there aren't some who do try to "help" these countries, but seems to me that there are an awful lot of wannabe's or pseudo do-gooders whenever an event like this rolls around. All of this of course IMHO

 

[GO!!!]

It has been addressed several times on army.ca and other forums that the problems with africa are centered on ignorance and a lack of birth control. Period.

Africa will continue to be poor, violent and diseased until;

1) governments begin to redirect funding from other projects to the education of children - especially girls. This education of females is proven to raise the standard of living and lower the birth rate - two birds at once.

2) If education is made to encompass agricultural techniques, the standard rises even more, as most of Africa grows cash crops to sell to us - the first world. If they could be convinced to grow food instead....

3) We in the western world stop relying on the miserable tin pot dictators that got Africa into this mess once the European colonialists were done with them in the first place. As has been alluded to, pouring untied aid into these breathtakingly corrupt regimes does little to alleviate poverty at the bottom of the social scale.

4) Foreign aid must be tied. Nations/groups must apply for it and meet strict guidelines regarding Human rights and where the money will be spent. And this aid must be pulled if it is not being spent correctly.

These are not new suggestions, just ones that Bono and Geldof conveniently ignore when chastising the rest of us for being cheap.

 

[Benoit17]

To help with your question in depth, here are certain websites that ar part of  behind the scene of Live8 and at the core of the activities to make poverty history.  http://goodwillwars.blogspot.com/    http://valuegandhi.blogspot.com/  http://www.grameen-info.org/  http://www.makepovertyhistory.org/  http://www.whiteband.org/  http://universityofstars.blogspot.com/  http://www.valuetrue.com/home/default.cfm

(and now, here is a letter I posted on the website where these people meet to brainstorm.  One of their member is Mary Robinson who was President of Ireland in the 90s  Live8 is only one event in a sequence of events intended to narrow the gap between rich and poor) 
Dear Chris and all,
On Saturday,evening, my wife, daughter and I went for a 10th anniversary celebration for an up an coming multicultural community in downtown Edmonton.  A group of men from Sudan came at the end and when they started playing music, it got me on my feet to dance and finaly the ice broke and several girls danced.  The smile that came up on the Sudanese  elder's face was priceless.  If truth be told though, they would most certainly prefer getting on talking about how can our land be returned to justice and to peace?  There were also Central and South Americans who performed, some Jamaicans and Russians.  Each in their own traditional sound and instruments.  We could all sense the pleasure of the moment, but from inside a gigantic ice cube that can only be melted away by the heat of love we can generate at the moment we are in each other's presence.  It was a genuine 10th year of ice melting.  But it was also an evidence that this ice is so much thicker that what any one person can do anything about.  The connection to these people of Sudan and almost everyone there was that they come from where their land is ravaged by genocide, which directly or indirectly is caused by the good intentions of the West.  One of the most involved volunteer and I chatted a little.  When he said that his ancestors were from Africa but he from Jamaica, I asked if his ancestors had been taken to Jamaice as slaves and he said yes, looking at the floor.  Then I said, "man, all these continents of people wanting justice from the Empire.  Not too many in the West stop to face that reality even now."  Here we were signing, totaly powerless because of each one's own insecurity.  That is what and where the battle is at.  It is by fostering consciously the reconciliation at the ground level of the universal disconnection from personal insecurity.  That is where the experience of spiritual unity which is questing for home in each one's own heart and spirit.  Now, dear Mice, here is a letter that I sent in Feb 2005 to a man who was the UN appointed general during the  Ruwanda genocide.  When he asked for the help he needed from his superiors,  he was left hanging in the middle of the situation with the sight of slaughter in front of him and no support from his superiors.  He is the 2nd man  whom I contacted a few months prior to their becoming appointed as senators, before they even knew themselves.  A while after his return he brke down and disapeared for a few days.  When he was found, he was naked in the rain under a bus stop bench.  He recovered and went to visit Uganda and he confessed his sin on his behalf and on behalf of humanity for having let them down.  When he did so, there were 100,000 people assembled in a soccer stadium, listening to him in French.  On the day after I saw the documentary of this story on telivision, I reached out for him with this letter.  He is one with whom I pray to connect in the same way as you have allowed me to do so with you dear Mice, as you will see in this communication.  He is former general Romeo D'Allaire.

Greetings Mr. D'Allaire,

I am working to promote unity in and amongst Canadians, from a socio-cultural healing approach.  The event I would like to promote starts with a 3 day symposium to include yourself, Bono of U2, David Suzuki, Roberta Jemison, Phil Fontaine, Bruce Cockburn, Patrick Watson and a series of personalities who represent justice and mental health in the heart and minds of the private and public in Canada.  The intent of the symposium is to lay the foundation for the development of the faculty of living.  The citizenship of Canadians, our identity itself that is, needs a way to clearly define authority, obedience, discipline and mutuality, in the way that will cause a wake up call to all the Louis Riel and Romeo D'Allaire who don't know how to get away from living under the rule of ignorance of their own as well as society's.  Many are in jail or live sub-human conditions, in the underground cavities or recluded psychiatric cases.  They did not make it out of the grip of stress and insanity the way you did.  Praise God for your recovery.  That recovery  is at the heart of a sequence of cultural, social and political events which are converging to lay down the tracks of restorative justice and community mental health in the nation.  This will provide Canadians with a national  opportunity to free ourselves from the agitations of the terror-anti-terror crisis.  Part of that sequence calls for citizens to get positioned for the next federal election to go from competing to completing and from the never ending political power struggle to the voter's power handle and straight for community self-governing.  The attachment                                        http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lovingGod/files/  (file: New final crystals)  I am sending you goes from 2 meditations that I use to help recovering people and it goes on to draw a picture of growing unity that comes together like a greening spring in April; and in the end, I address Mr. Bush on the terms of faith all the way.  At worst, it should give you a smile.    The following address is a group I opened this week end on Yahoo.  I posted some of my writings in there.  If you enjoy the bit I am sending you, I'll be honoured to welcome you at:  unityincanadians-subscribe@yahoogroups.com  Now please understand that I speak to you from a not so good reputation when it comes to social status.  After being rescued myself from the bottom of sanity after falling from  playing with junior canadian at 17, I stayed where I could help people get  off the street; people  who find themselves in the spiralling desolation of their souls and minds for what ever reason.  When I heard you on CBC last week, I thought it might be worth the long shot toward you, as you well know now from your own experience, of the invisible enemy upon humanity's well being,  Thank you sincerely for your time, and I hope to hear from you, Benoit

 

[GO!!!]

So Benoit, what is your opinion on a workable solution to relieve Africans of despotism by third world elites and the poverty of millions?

 

[Roy Harding]

From the New York Times - 15 Jul 05:

All Rock, No Action

By JEAN-CLAUDE SHANDA TONME
Published: July 15, 2005

Yaoundé, Cameroon

LIVE 8, that extraordinary media event that some people of good intentions in the West just orchestrated, would have left us Africans indifferent if we hadn't realized that it was an insult both to us and to common sense.

We have nothing against those who this month, in a stadium, a street, a park, in Berlin, London, Moscow, Philadelphia, gathered crowds and played guitar and talked about global poverty and aid for Africa. But we are troubled to think that they are so misguided about what Africa's real problem is, and dismayed by their willingness to propose solutions on our behalf.

We Africans know what the problem is, and no one else should speak in our name. Africa has men of letters and science, great thinkers and stifled geniuses who at the risk of torture rise up to declare the truth and demand liberty.

Don't insult Africa, this continent so rich yet so badly led. Instead, insult its leaders, who have ruined everything. Our anger is all the greater because despite all the presidents for life, despite all the evidence of genocide, we didn't hear anyone at Live 8 raise a cry for democracy in Africa.

Don't the organizers of the concerts realize that Africa lives under the oppression of rulers like Yoweri Museveni (who just eliminated term limits in Uganda so he can be president indefinitely) and Omar Bongo (who has become immensely rich in his three decades of running Gabon)? Don't they know what is happening in Cameroon, Chad, Togo and the Central African Republic? Don't they understand that fighting poverty is fruitless if dictatorships remain in place?

Even more puzzling is why Youssou N'Dour and other Africans participated in this charade. Like us, they can't help but know that Africa's real problem is the lack of freedom of expression, the usurpation of power, the brutal oppression.

Neither debt relief nor huge amounts of food aid nor an invasion of experts will change anything. Those will merely prop up the continent's dictators. It's up to each nation to liberate itself and to help itself. When there is a problem in the United States, in Britain, in France, the citizens vote to change their leaders. And those times when it wasn't possible to freely vote to change those leaders, the people revolted.

In Africa, our leaders have led us into misery, and we need to rid ourselves of these cancers. We would have preferred for the musicians in Philadelphia and London to have marched and sung for political revolution. Instead, they mourned a corpse while forgetting to denounce the murderer.

What is at issue is an Africa where dictators kill, steal and usurp power yet are treated like heroes at meetings of the African Union. What is at issue is rulers like François Bozizé, the coup leader running the Central Africa Republic, and Faure Gnassingbé, who just succeeded his father as president of Togo, free to trample universal suffrage and muzzle their people with no danger that they'll lose their seats at the United Nations. Who here wants a concert against poverty when an African is born, lives and dies without ever being able to vote freely?

But the truth is that it was not for us, for Africa, that the musicians at Live 8 were singing; it was to amuse the crowds and to clear their own consciences, and whether they realized it or not, to reinforce dictatorships. They still believe us to be like children that they must save, as if we don't realize ourselves what the source of our problems is.

Jean-Claude Shanda Tonme is a consultant on international law and a columnist for Le Messager, a Cameroonian daily, where a version of this article first appeared. This article was translated by The Times from the French.