The Defense Department did just set up a separate Africa Command, Africom or something like that. Maybe Bono wanted to make sure that he wasn't advocating debt relief to people who were about to be bombed.
I remember when Bono and former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill were touring Africa and discussing debt relief. Considering nearly every economic institution founded in this country is geared toward making least developed countries (otherwise known as raw material extraction centers) get deeper and deeper into debt, both of these ventures went nowhere. I applaud Bono for trying, but as long as Republicans are in office, with top donors coming from the "vulture capitalist" elite(the people who buy up thirdworld debt for pennies on the dollar and then sue against any aid package headed for that country to collect the debt), we will likely not see true debt relief anytime soon. US administrations prefer pliant corrupt dictators fed by US foreign aid rather than democratic idealists anyways. The good guys get to go down in "mysterious" plane crashes.
Why don't people like Bono just give money to people.
Easy one.
It's not an instant media circus if they do it that way.
I didn't know hubris watched farscape
Bono just hired Matthew Dowd, the guy who masterminded the '02 Republican congressional campaigns and the '04 Bush campaign, to be his lobbyist. Dowd is all reformed and shit now, although he's moved on from whatever transitory regrets he might have momentarily felt, except the part where his kid got shipped to Iraq.
Sigh.
I was never on the Bono craze.
U don't make change by playing nice with the Bad guys.
i liked their first couple albums, but they lost me at "achtung baby". i think that was about when mr. huson started thinking of himself under the questionable rubric of "statesman".
sadly, mr. stipe has suffered a similar disease, only his questionable rubric is "filmmaker".
bono was relivant?
Celebrities are the saints of the religion of Consumer Hedonism.
I think once you reach a certain level of celebrity and / or wealth, your brain is assaulted by your ego complex and loses the conflict.
And then sh*t like this happens.
Why don't people like Bono just give money to people.
Because it's so much more fun to be like Princess Di. Gallavant all over the world exhorting middle and working class people to donate their hard-earned money to your pet charity, get all the credit for it, and then leave every dime of your own money to your inbred brats.
Well aren't we all morally superior to the rich-because-they're-famous. When did it become immoral to redistribute one's ill-gotten gains? I'm sure none of you take your children to a library built by that filthy industrialist Andrew Carnegie.
Angelina Jolie has done more damn good for Cambodia, which for statistical purposes (as opposed to geographic ones) is in sub-Saharan Africa, than all 1200 other American moms with Cambodian born kids. She's not bragging on it to get attention, because the last thing in the world she needs is attention. Instead she's going to Davos and putting her celebrity to work to do some good.
Bono has been bringing attention to poverty in Africa for over a decade. At some point he became a genuine expert, not a rock star dilettante. Pick up Jeffrey Sachs' The End of Poverty and get back to me.
If Africa was an easy place to "fix" then someone would have done it long ago.
I find it difficult to criticize or find fault with the efforts of people like Bono or Angelina Jolie. At least they can make a credible claim to having left the world a better place for their presence, which is more than most of us can say. How effective has Bono been? I really can't say because I don't follow this issue very closely. But I'm sure he's done more than most.
In any event, I tend to reserve my scorn and outrage for far more worthy targets.
In any event, I tend to reserve my scorn and outrage for far more worthy targets.
As an artist, the only thing Bono owes me is his best effort on a U2 album. As a person, as long as he isn't debasing himself or hurting his family, what's the problem with him trying to help people in some way?
Wasn't he nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize? Not many people on the planet can tell the grandkids that.
Put down your cup of hater-ade, pal. You're pissing up the wrong tree.
One of Bono's tactics is to advocate debt forgiveness for poor nations who are held back because they're crushed by payments on bad debts from years ago, which often went into the pockets of dictators rather than aiding the people.
You can't really just write a check for that kind of thing; you need to get the creditor nations on board.
As far as Gates' involvement, it's my understanding that the US military has some involvement in Africa doing humanitarian work. My brother, who was in the Engineer Corps, kept getting sent to Djibouti for one thing or another.
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