Jumping on the bandwagon?

[anto1208]

lads to have your debt cleared by a g8 country the african country has to prove none of the money will go to the goverment to build big palaces but guns etc there debts will be cancelled as soon as they can prove they are conrupt and they have a lot to prove , its like like trowing money at the problem


the fair trade thing is , all the extra food our goverment pays farmers to over produce is sold in african countries at a much lower price than the farmers there can afford to sell it so they cant afford to keep there families because of the cheap imports

also the thing about u2 is not that they are tight over the money she wrote a book with a lot of rubbish in it and the band fell out with her over the book , and dont feel that someone that stabbed them in the back should make money from selling there stuff .



but it really annoys me when people have a go at bono or geldof , so what if they are doing it to improve there image (which i dont think they are i think they are just decent blokes) people are f***ing starving to death every few seconds and if this whole campain saves even just one extra person then its worth it .whats worse are the people that do nothing but come on forums and slag of the whole thing

the concerts are paid for by people txt n for the tickets which are free (price of a txt ) all artists play for free all roadies etc work for free , and the concerts are to keep pressure on the leaders of the g8 countries

[patsh]

The most important thing that needs to be done is to END THE ARMS TRADE.

Close down the munitions factories, the rifle, gun, mine and bullet factories, etc. etc.
This aim is probably more achieveable than making poverty history, yet nobody is making this a big campaign.
This is what people should be campaigning for, it's the reason why most countries are in debt in the first place, and it's why despots, crackpots and murders are in power in too many countries.

I'll be cqalled a tree-hugger or a do-gooder by some, but this is an achevable goal that will do much, much more for the worlds poor than any debt-relief or anything like that.

[anto eile]

rich people telling me what to do with the fvck-all amount money i have ****es me off. geldof needs a shave a haircut and a wash.scruffy knacker. as for bono. the *****r is suing in court for 15 year old items worth a lousy E5,000, when their world tour has already grossed a A QUARTER OF A BILLION EURO so far!!what a cvnt

[jjppc]

but is validating and supporting people and systems who are contributing to the problems that these campaigns seek to cure such a good idea.

:

Good point, but is there a realistic alternative.

[REVIP]

Don't get hung up on Geldof and U2.

Some of us have been campaigning for years.

Parnell Square at 6.30 tomorrow. 5,000 + expected

[liam88]

The most important thing that needs to be done is to END THE ARMS TRADE.

Close down the munitions factories, the rifle, gun, mine and bullet factories, etc. etc.
This aim is probably more achieveable than making poverty history, yet nobody is making this a big campaign.

What about freeing Burma-this is realistic but nobody in power will do anything about it because theya re all to scared of the French and Total!

Don't get my wrong-I'm all for Make Poverty History-I stayed out all night on the Lodnon vigil and my best wishes to REVIP and everyone else campaigning and going to Live 8! What I'm saying though is if we can end world poverty (which we can and will) we can easily free Burma. Saturday's concert will probably change the world-and at the end of the day it doesn't matter if people are "jumping on the bandwagon" as long as they put pressure on the leaders to Make Poverty History.
If a big concert was staged in London to raise awarness about Burma it would be amazing and even those jumping on for the music etc. would get to know about the situation there. It could make a real difference!

Free Burma
Stop the Arms Trade
and yeah....MAKE POVERTY HISTORY!

[liam88]

One more point-Adam it's a shame every site on the internet hasn't got one of those bands-THAT would be cool.....good stuff and fair play to ya!

[anto1208]

rich people telling me what to do with the fvck-all amount money i have ****es me off. geldof needs a shave a haircut and a wash.scruffy knacker. as for bono. the *****r is suing in court for 15 year old items worth a lousy E5,000, when their world tour has already grossed a A QUARTER OF A BILLION EURO so far!!what a cvnt

if you only had a clue what you are on about you wouldnt look so silly , read my post above there are nt asking for money nor is bono sueing her for the lousy 5,000 euro .

[Troy.McClure]

The most important thing that needs to be done is to END THE ARMS TRADE.

Close down the munitions factories, the rifle, gun, mine and bullet factories, etc. etc.
This aim is probably more achieveable than making poverty history, yet nobody is making this a big campaign.
This is what people should be campaigning for, it's the reason why most countries are in debt in the first place, and it's why despots, crackpots and murders are in power in too many countries.

I'll be cqalled a tree-hugger or a do-gooder by some, but this is an achevable goal that will do much, much more for the worlds poor than any debt-relief or anything like that.

Not so my tree hugging do-gooder friend

[brendy_éire]

Free Burma
Stop the Arms Trade
and yeah....MAKE POVERTY HISTORY!

Free Burma? Fair enough, but they'll still be getting screwed by the west no matter who their government is. It won't make much of a difference to the lives of ordinary people.
The arms trade won't stop whilst there's demand for weapons. It's easy money.
Making poverty history, as has been pointed out, is unachievable. Poverty is relative. Without relative poverty, capitalism simply wouldn't work. To make profit, one must make another person less well off. With no poverty, you'd have no profit motive.
And besides, any measures we take to make a real difference to the poverty in the rest of the world will inevitably mean a cut in our living standards. Why the **** would we want to do that? We've been brought up to be better capitalists' pawns than that.
Everyone's for reducing poverty, but will we pay for it from our own pockets? Will we give up our PCs and airplanes so that people in the developing world can have running water? Will we ****!
Like it or not, that's the way capitalism works. 'I'm doing grand, so **** everyone else'. There's no halfway house between capitalism and communism. Whinging about it won't change that.

[paul_oshea]

With capitalism, there will always be the rich and the poor. With communism, there are only the poor.

profound.

[jjppc]

There's no halfway house between capitalism and communism. Whinging about it won't change that.

What we have is winner takes all capitalism, look at the Scandinavian models of capitalism, not many poor Swedes or Finns there are over ways.

With capitalism, there will always be the rich and the poor. With communism, there are only the poor.

Compare Cuba as a communist state to similar capitalist countries in the same region like Guatemala and Honduras and I know where I would rather live.

[brendy_éire]

What we have is winner takes all capitalism, look at the Scandinavian models of capitalism, not many poor Swedes or Finns there are over ways.

Compared to most states, aye. But within Sweden and Finland there is still relative poverty. There's modification of the capitalism, but essentially, it's the same. There's still a rich class and a poor class in relation to each other.

Compare Cuba as a communist state to similar capitalist countries in the same region like Guatemala and Honduras and I know where I would rather live.

Well, Cuba's not communist, it's capitalist, with more state ownership than usual. They've done a decent enough job compared to their neighbours, but there's still inequality, and hence poverty, in Cuba.

We're getting a bit sidetracked here though. I see today that Bush is announcing more debt relief, more aid, etc, etc. Which has made me think, what exactly does Geldof and Co. want? At what point will they be happy that poverty has been made history? If poverty is relative, then surely they won't ever be happy until we have global equality? He's not claiming to be communist though. I don't get it.

[Troy.McClure]

Compared to most states, aye. But within Sweden and Finland there is still relative poverty. There's modification of the capitalism, but essentially, it's the same. There's still a rich class and a poor class in relation to each other.

Ya but at least they can still feed themselves

[liam88]

Free Burma? Fair enough, but they'll still be getting screwed by the west no matter who their government is. It won't make much of a difference to the lives of ordinary people.

Rubbish! The "ordinary people" you talk of include half my family-fine after the British left and the before the regime took over. Look at Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Japannot getting "screwed by the West"; with Aung Sung Suu Kyi-the rightful democratically elected Prime Minister in charge well be fine! Before the regime Rangoon was the busiest airpot in the far east!

Communism doen't work-at the end of the day total communism is the same as facism-state ownership, dictator, persecution

[anto eile]

if you only had a clue what you are on about you wouldnt look so silly , read my post above there are nt asking for money nor is bono sueing her for the lousy 5,000 euro .

bono is in court over the sake of items worth 5000euro.

and i dont like it when priests and preachers preach to me so why would i want rockstars doing so?

saying sommunism doenst work is easy. but look at all the poor capitalist countries.you could easily justify condemning capitalism as a result. its more the peopel running the system , rather than the system itself

[dcfcsteve]

The two most impactful ways to Make Poverty History in Africa would be to make corruption and political ineptitude history.

A lot of African countries have phenomenal natural resources - whether it be oil in Nigeria, wildlife in Kenya/Tanzania, gold in Angola or diamonds in South Africa. Yet, despite having natural wealth that Ireland couldn't even dream of, out of 52 countries there isn't a single success story in Africa. Instead, the countries there are the world's poorest (Mozambique/Zimbabwe) and they're by and large economic failures and political basket cases. A very large part of this is down to endemic corruption and political ineptitude.

Immense sums of money are being generated every single day throughout Africa through its natural resources, yet none of this is going to the ordinary people. That is a sure sign of corruption. The political elite in African nations are responsible for this, and even in the more enlightened countries like South Africa they refuse to do anything about such abuse amongst their neighbours (why won't Mbeki condemn what Mugabe is doing - particularly as a lot of Zimbabwean refugees are creating a social and economic headache for South Africa) ?

African political elites have also proven themselves time and again to be politically inept and/or unconcerned with trying to improve the lot of their people. The BBC did an interesting feature comparing Ghana with Malaysia. Both had the same start in life - becoming independent from England in 1957, when both had roughly the same average per capita income and the same large dominant industry (sugar cane). Fast forward nearly 50 years, and the comparisons are zero. Despite being a relative success case in Africa, Ghana is sh!t poor and has made a ballax of its sugar cane industry - still focusing on small scale inefficient production methods. Malaysia meanwhile has soared economically, is no longer dependent on sugar cane, and has a much more efficient sugar industry anyway. The reason for these differences? Political leadership and policies...

It was once suggested to me that corruption is endemic in African political systems, as a result of the fact that the continent has a tribal culture. Under tribal systems, the tribal chief officially owns everything that his tribe owns. However, the tribal chiefs tend to be genuinely concerned about their people, so ensure that the whole tribe has what it needs from 'his' welath. However - when that same cultural system was transferred to a national scale, the political leaders still acted like tribal chiefs - assuming everything was theirs - but did not have that same connection to the people to give back to them accordingly. Hence - they just take the wealth of the nation for their own small clique, and leave nothing for everyone else.

Initiatives like Live8 are very important, but I honestly believe the focus is wrong. The light needs to be shone on the political systems in Africa, as much as on the debts that are currently owed. The political culture of African nations requires wholesale change. I don't believe that there is any way of handing money over to nations in Africa without corruption kicking-in - it's nigh-on impossible. It is therefore not the people who will be the main beneficiaries from fairer trade and debt relief under the current corrupt systems. But sadly, a campaign entitled 'Make Corruption/Ineptitude History' just wouldn't catch the public's imagination or fill Hyde Park....

[paul_oshea]

dcfcsteve, that is a fair point that you have made, and a well read one also, no arguing with the facts(unless you are JMPlain or conor74). however 34/48 countries that are suffering extreme poverty are not run by corrupt politicians/government, so there is no excuse for not cancelling the debt for these countries, however aid must also increase.

The reason for these differences? Political leadership and policies...

there is more to it than that though steve...
just to add to your 4th paragraph, is that why south africa has been a little bit more of a success story??? I mean im not being racist but the white man being part of this, indirectly has it brought the country further? Also look at india for this, any indian i have asked has been fair in the assessment that the english did rid the country of a lot of the tribal social status power etc.

whatever happens, it is going to be another generation before the countries improve dramatically. as steve pointed out these countries have enough natural resources to remain self sufficient, and that is what they have to try to aim to acheive, self sufficiency, otherwise the problem never goes away and only aid and more aid will stabilise poverty for a given time. i heard the bbc reporter say something similar yesterday, its fine for us to give 5 euro or whatever a month, and yes that feeds a child for a week, however after that 5 is gone they need another $5 to live for the next month, however if these people were able to use this money to grow crops etc, they would feed themselves and have a continuous supply....basically i think the strategy used in aiding these countries needs to be changed so that the people can help themselves, how can we help a nation if that nation cant help itself?????

But sadly, a campaign entitled 'Make Corruption/Ineptitude History' just wouldn't catch the public's imagination or fill Hyde Park....

sadly i think it would fill hyde park, if the lline up was the same. most people were there to see pink floyd or u2 or robbie or the who or whoever. it was lost on a majority id say....

[anto1208]

bono is in court over the sake of items worth 5000euro.

and i dont like it when priests and preachers preach to me so why would i want rockstars doing so?

saying sommunism doenst work is easy. but look at all the poor capitalist countries.you could easily justify condemning capitalism as a result. its more the peopel running the system , rather than the system itself

she wrote a book with a load of lies etc in it to make money of the back of there success , would you let some one that has stabbed you in the back continue to make money of you by selling some thing you gave them as a pressent .

who is preaching to you? , they are asking very nicely for your help to keep pressure on the g8 they arent asking for a penny ,they are just using there status to reach more people , if ann murphy from cork asked no one would hear it wounld nt make the paper but bono and geldof ask and who see what happens .

[patsh]

if ann murphy from cork asked no one would hear it .

Well I've never refused to do anything Ann Murphy asked of me!.....