A Rant at a Charitable cause
Right...ok....*gears himself up for a rant*
live 8,
What I don't get about charity stuff like this...although no doubt is a damn good cause, the celebrities that say please donate even just a pound...etc well..they have a fortune, why don't they donate that?
and talking about cancelling debts that poor nations owe big nations...what people dont realise is that britain STILL is paying off America for all the help they supposedly gave us...I say supposedly because America (even though i admit we couldna have won the war without you) didnt get into the war until 1941 and we had been fighting ALONE until that point, so why should we pay america for preventing hitler from controlling all of europe it's ridiculose(sp???)
anyway you probably all hate me for ranting at charities but i had to get it out...peace!
Re: A Rant at a Charitable cause
Actually Live8 was about raising awareness not fundraising.
I was actually really impressed about that. I suspected that it would just be like LiveAid and be rubbish and pointless, but it was actually more intelligent and at least the musicians didn't really pretend to be experts on the subject.
But yeah your point on international debt is valid. Everyone owes everyone loads. Still, it has it's uses. No one is going to attack someone who owes them money are they? And you can't attack someone who can suddenly pull in the huge debt you owe them.
Re: A Rant at a Charitable cause
good point, i still think are so called debt to america to be written off, it's stupid us having to pay for saving europe, my point wasnt about live 8 personally, i thought it was good, it was about celebrities who could probabl;y feed a whole lotta orphans yet donate just as little as we do...i aint talking bout people like U2 cause they're cool
Re: A Rant at a Charitable cause
perhaps the UK should repay their debt based on resale value. Whatever weapons, tanks, planes, guns they borrowed from the US should be repayed based on todays value. So how much would a Sherman tank cost today for the military? 200 Quid, etc. etc. Piss us off pretty good, but it would funny to stiff the feds like that. Britain borrowed 20,000,000 or so from the US, how much are the weapons worth now? 50,000... haha
Re: A Rant at a Charitable cause
What Africa needs is to import capitalism not charity. Anyway your not alone.
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Aid to Africa redux
Herb London (archive)
July 2, 2005 | printer friendly version Print | email to a friend Send
President Bush described Bono, the lead singer of U2, as "a man of depth and a great heart who cares deeply about impoverished folks on the continent of Africa." I don't have any reason to challenge the president's sentiments or to question Bono's motives. But I do think the humanitarian impulses now ascending should be subject to the constraints of reality.
President Bush has tripled aid to Africa since the Clinton administration with just under $4 billion in development assistance and emergency aid. In addition, the president announced a plan to spend $15 billion over five years to turn the tide against AIDS in Africa.
Last month after the Bush-Blair news conference, the United States and Great Britain agreed to a $40 billion debt relief program through the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and African Development Bank.
Even these steps do not fully describe American aid to Africa since they exclude private charity from foundations, churches, unions and corporations. Live 8, arguably the century's most elaborate concert, with 100 artists performing in seven cities over 24 hours, will be yet another private effort to combat poverty and starvation in Africa.
This concert is not unlike Live Aid, a concert that celebrated its 20th anniversary on July 13. That was a 17 hour musical marathon reaching a television audience of more than 2 billion people and raised almost $2 billion to help famine-stricken people of Africa.
The force behind Live Aid was Bob Geldorf, band leader of the Boomtown Rats, who waxed emotional about the morality of rich nations assisting the poor and impoverished. Now he is back as one of the promoters of Live 8 featuring the most prominent names in the music business.
While these "feel good" activities have their place, they also raise essential questions. What happened to the $2 billion raised with Live Aid? Moreover, over the last decade government and private charities have poured over $25 billion into Africa for seemingly little effect? In fact, Africa has had an aggregate g.d.p. reduction of about 25 percent since the Live Aid concerts two decades ago.
Without question the issue at hand is poverty in Africa, but overlooked by well meaning rockers is that as long as tyrannical governments control the distribution of funds those targeted for relief never get it. Starvation is indeed a problem in many parts of Africa, most especially in the Sudan. But in this nation emergency food relief sent by the U.S. and others is used as a weapon to subjugate designated enemies of the government. This has been a pattern observed earlier in Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Despite the claim of Jeffrey Sachs of the Earth Institute that America foreign aid to Africa is niggardly, the problem that neither he nor his colleagues consider sufficiently is how best to ensure that these foreign aid dollars end up in projects for which the money is earmarked rather than Swiss bank accounts for corrupt leaders.
As Peter Baur, the father of development economics once noted, "foreign aid is little more than poor people in rich countries giving money to rich people in poor countries." For some, this statement may seem cynical. However, if one considers the way in which Mobutu, Mogabe, and a host of African leaders dealt with foreign aid, there is at least some validity to Baur's argument.
Eliminating poverty anywhere in the world is a worthwhile, if utopian, goal. But, money alone won't do it when those funds aren't used to address the problem. All the serenades of "We Are The World" and "Do They Know It's Christmas?" won't amount to a hill of beans unless there is accountability for the billions of dollars that will be contributed.
Surely this should have been learned from prior experience. Unfortunately when it comes to aid, the lessons of the past are either ignored or are bypassed by the expression of good will.
Herbert London is president of Hudson Institute. He is also Professor Emeritus at New York University and author of the recently published book, Decade of Denial (Lexington Books).
©2005 Herb London
Re: A Rant at a Charitable cause
It wasn't charity. It was to raise awareness, they weren't asking for money. Oh, BDC already said that...
Importing capatlism isn't the answer. It's time for the better off countries to stop spending billions on ways to kill, and start helping people live.
Re: A Rant at a Charitable cause
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Importing capatlism isn't the answer. It's time for the better off countries to stop spending billions on ways to kill, and start helping people live
Ah my liberal fried this is where you are wrong. Throwing money at things doesnt fix them How long have we been fighting the war on poverty over here? How many Billions have we pumped into it. No tthe answer is to make people self sufficient so they dont need charity and capitalism is the best way anyones found yet to accomplish this.
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It wasn't charity. It was to raise awareness, they weren't asking for money. Oh, BDC already said that...
I know what it was about. Thats because even they realise that money alone aint gonna do it.
Re: A Rant at a Charitable cause
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Originally Posted by Steppe Merc
It wasn't charity. It was to raise awareness, they weren't asking for money. Oh, BDC already said that...
Importing capatlism isn't the answer. It's time for the better off countries to stop spending billions on ways to kill, and start helping people live.
Since LiveAid the number of people in Ethiopia on the brink of starvation have doubled... Ethiopia has been a communist/warlord ran country all that time.
Look at Zimbabwee.
Democracy and Capitalism is the answer, at least we invest money in education, sports, health, police, universities. Not bulldozing millions of our own people out of their homes.
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Moeletsi Mbeki, the brother of South African President Thabo Mbeki, said Live 8 would only make matters worse by obscuring the real issue - "the theft of the riches of the continent by its own leaders".
"Throwing money at African governments is not the answer," he said, adding that it would serve only to make African governments less rather then more transparent.
Re: A Rant at a Charitable cause
How can captilism or any sort of government succeed when the governments are so corrupt? Most people don't have educations, what sort of job would they get? Sure there are the typical labor jobs, but how many people can work as laborers?
The author just seems to attack people who want to do the best they can and actually help without give any better advice on how to import capitalism. I can't imagine getting countless of people fair jobs and reconstructioning the governments of those places to insure the people's safety is going to happen anytime soon, or any governments are going to start helping. Perhaps the author would like to suggest to the American government how to fix it instead of telling people that their charity is worthless.
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"Throwing money at African governments is not the answer," he said, adding that it would serve only to make African governments less rather then more transparent.
What money is getting thrown? And Live 8 can't make it worse than it already is. People would have resented them if they had gotten up and preached about why Africa needs new leaders. It doesn't matter what they did, some people will always think that just because people are rich and celebrities means that they shouldn't have opinons.
Re: A Rant at a Charitable cause
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Originally Posted by Papewaio
Since LiveAid the number of people in Ethiopia on the brink of starvation have doubled... Ethiopia has been a communist/warlord ran country all that time.
Look at Zimbabwee.
Democracy and Capitalism is the answer, at least we invest money in education, sports, health, police, universities. Not bulldozing millions of our own people out of their homes.
Amen, IMHO capitalism alone will not help (now all the continents money will disappear into kickbacks for corrupt politicians). They need an accountable system of government as well... sadly the powerbrokers are unwilling to relinquish their thrones, and as long as people keep blindly throwing money in their direction (do they care it's to help the poor?) nothing will be achieved.
Re: A Rant at a Charitable cause
IMDHO a true democracy has to be accountable, it really is only a sham if it calls itself a democracy and has no accountability.
As for the amount of money $5000 per person has been donated to the people of Africa since the 1960s or about $100 per annum, most of which has probably been siphoned off for the people running the aid agencies, the government burecrats in the receiving countries, the corrupt leaders and militia of the country etc etc.
There is no point giving money to the likes of Zimbabwee when it will just go to the President and his cronies. Nor do the surrounding countries want to step in and stop it. Africa is stuffed because of its own politics, money or recognition or trade will not stop the basic corruption and murder that is draining these countries.
Re: A Rant at a Charitable cause
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How can captilism or any sort of government succeed when the governments are so corrupt? Most people don't have educations, what sort of job would they get? Sure there are the typical labor jobs, but how many people can work as laborers?
Your question was already answered
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Democracy and Capitalism is the answer, at least we invest money in education, sports, health, police, universities. Not bulldozing millions of our own people out of their homes.
You have to teach people to take care of themselves. Thats why education is so important in a demcracy.
Re: A Rant at a Charitable cause
Capitalism is the only economic system that can work under extreme corruption & croneyism. Socialism is indemically weak to it. Allowing a central body to 'look to the needs of the many with the resources of all' only works if you believe in the integrity of that central authority. Otherwise, it goes right into the pockets of those guys. Capitalism, which distributes wealth to the individual instead of a central authority, produces all sorts of income disparity and corruption of it's own. BUT it is the only system that the poor have a fighting chance under, because they can control the price of their labor. The system itself also demands that the entrepreneurs (or the evil rich, as Jag would call them) only profit so much from their endeavours and plow the majority of their money back into their enterprise.
What's more, capitalism gives the working poor more of a voice. Labor unions have much more impact in a capitalist versus a socialist economy. A strike is an annoyance to Ericsson. It would cripple, and possibly kill Motorola.
Re: A Rant at a Charitable cause
No system can succeed if the powerful people of a nation do not want it. A dictator is a terrible thing, but they live by the sword, the stolen aid money and the corrupt corporate handouts. Lose these and they stand to lose everything. However I feel that imposing an alien system (democracy for example) either through economics or warfare cannot work. Home grown solutions work best. If this involves corruption, chaos, revolution and genocide then so be it (though it will be a shame to see Ethiopia finally collapse). The history of Africa has been a story of First World interference for centuries and it is time for that to end.
In fact I firmly believe that we should stop interfering with Africa entirely. Cancel the debts, the aid and the economic links and let them sort their own mess out. I know that we, especially Britain, feel the need to somehow make things better to ease our guilt over colonial days but I wonder whether our attempts help at all. Short-term we may save some lives but long-term I think we do more damage. Let the nations and tribes fight for ground, let them assume their own identity rather than that of our making and see what happens.
Re: A Rant at a Charitable cause
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Originally Posted by Papewaio
Since LiveAid the number of people in Ethiopia on the brink of starvation have doubled... Ethiopia has been a communist/warlord ran country all that time.
That's an excessively negative slant to put on the country. Mengistu's Stalinist regime was overthrown by rebels from the province most affected by the 1984 famine. Yes, the EPRDF of Meles Zenawi had a Marxist ideology, but they have liberalised the economy a lot and consequently, its grew strongly in the 1990s. Zenawi is widely seen as an intellectual and articulate leader, hence his being chosen to be a member of Tony Blair's Commission for Africa. The party was endorsed in multi-party elections in 1996 and 2001. There's another contested election going on there right now, IIRC.
Yes, Ethiopia is still desperately poor - hence the stories of people on the "brink" of famine. But we've seen no actual famine like the 1984 one thanks largely to the change in government. (The Nobel prize winner Amartya Sen has claimed that no country with a democratic government and a free press has had a famine.) Ethiopia still faces an uncertain future - its stupid war with Eritrea raising big question marks over its leadership in my eyes. But the country has come a long way from 1984, quite contrary to the Zimbabwean example you coupled it with.
Best moment of Live8 for me was when Geldof showed the photo of the starving little girl from Ethiopia in 1984 and then brought her onto the stage, a beautiful young agriculture student. Africa has many problems, but excessive negativity from outsiders is, IMO, one of them. The sub-continent has improved its economic policies and political regimes a lot since 1984. Tariffs have been roughly halved and multi-party democracy has become the norm, rather than the exception. Zimbabwe is salient partly because it represents a return to the bad old ways in what should be one of the most advantaged African states.
Re: A Rant at a Charitable cause
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Africa has many problems, but excessive negativity from outsiders is, IMO, one of them.
Excessive negativity is hardly the reason millions die of famine, millions get their houses bulldozed, millions die of aids or millions die in inter tribal warfare.
Nor will flagellation by rock concert resolve the very real issues.
Re: A Rant at a Charitable cause
Live8 certainly was soliciting for money; just in a more indirect way than is usual
they were saying that normal people should pressure their politicians to send average joe's hard-earned tax money to go help strangers in a foreign land rather than helping the starving/homeless etc. in their own country first
and it's true that the billionaire celebrities should sell a few of their mansions and donate that money if they really wanna make a difference. but of course that's not gonna happen.
Re: A Rant at a Charitable cause
I agree somewhat with Gawain here again. I am reminded of an old saying
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."
This is how the richer countries should help the poorer countries: Education !
Re: A Rant at a Charitable cause
Kiwitt, I think you got the quote mixed up. The correct version is: "Give a man a fish and he owes you one fish. Teach a man to fish and you forfeit your monopoly on fisheries."
Re: A Rant at a Charitable cause
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Originally Posted by Lemurmania
Kiwitt, I think you got the quote mixed up. The correct version is: "Give a man a fish and he owes you one fish. Teach a man to fish and you forfeit your monopoly on fisheries."
You're on to something there. Africa needs trade, not aid.
