Fun Stuff > BAND

Live 8

<< < (5/7) > >>

Kill.kenada:
amen!

There was actually some rioting during the G8 marches
I mean fair enough if you disagree, but to actually try to prevent people from voicing their opinion...
just plain idiotic if you ask me

Kill.kenada:
that "amen" was to Asturge there
lol

Oerdin:

--- Quote from: Titan ---The politics of the whole thing is bullshit. Some ass-hole wrote to a talk show saying that anyone who didn't watch the damn thing has "no soul" (or something to that effect).

I didn't watch it, purely out of principle. It's just something for westerners to feel better about themselves, and in fact, any money raised will probably make the whole situation worse - most experts would agree with me here.

In short, I was insulted by the whole concept and refused to watch it.
--- End quote ---


I do have to agree that the biggest problems facing Africa have nothing to do with cash handouts.  The biggest problems are corruption & protectionism/subsidies by rich countries.  Corruption is something which seems indemic to Africa though responsible officials could solve this problem without any help from the outside world if they wanted to.  Farm subsidies and protectionism by the rich countries is something which the Africans cannot control but which causes massive economic losses for Africans.  Africa has little industry so all they have to export, and they must export since they need money, so all they have to sell is agricultural goods or raw materials.  The rich countries exept the raw materials but block everything else.  Japan, Europe, & the US subsidize their farmers to such an extent that African farmers end up selling their crops for less then it cost them to plant so they lose their land and end up poverty stricken.

If the rich countries would stop subsidizing farmers and compete fairly then we'd half world poverity over night.

Titan:
Something interesting I heard today was that if you were to totally close off Africa from the rest of the world, then within 10 years it would not only be out of poverty, but the richest continent in the world!

Of course, this is probably exaggerated and neglects to mention the millions of deaths that would take place over this time period, but it's an interesting statement, is it not?

This brings us back to the point I mentioned briefly before - the corruption. Africa has all that "raw" wealth and it is being exploited, as we should all know.

From a political sense, however, you can see why things are conducted in this way.

If you give Africa too much freedom it becomes too powerful and potentially threatens the world in a much greater way than things stand currently.
If you give them too little we have the situation we have now, where millions are dying unneccessarily.

I imagine the way things would ideally be, is the freedom would be gradual enough that when Africa was able to compete with the rest of the world, it was under a comfortable regime that understood things in western terms.

Oerdin:
Africa has more then enough self made problems where the rest of the world won't have to lose any sleep about Africa taking over the world.  ;)  Lack of infastructure, lack of basic education for young people, Kleptocratic dictators who pillage everything of value, and laws which make no economic sense (I'm thinking the Socialist experiments of the 1970's through 1990's here) all give Africa a one two punch.  I generally dispise George Bush and find his policies to be wrong headed but Bush's new appraoch to African aid is actually one place Bush has got something right.  Give more aid but give it to fewer countries so the aid does more good.  Also make African countries compete for the aid by seeing who will do the most to end corruption and improving goverment.  That's something which will improve Africa over the long run instead of the old Cold War method of just sending big checks whcih were stolen by the corrupt dictators.

Live 8 won't help advance any of this nor will it help end the ruinous farm subsidies of the first world but at least it does get people talking about Africa & thinking about ways to help Africa.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page