End poverty... oh not now, we're busy!

Spicks & Specks was great last night, and there was one comment made by Allen Brough that almost had me lying on the floor, convulsing with gleeful laughter. He had to belt out some lines sung by Bono from some Christmas song, which he did, and then made the comment of, "Gee, I feel so self-righteous after that!"

*bwahahaha*

Okay, okay, for those of you who like U2, sorry! But seriously... I'm glad that I'm not the only person who thinks that Bono is often on some kind of tour of self-righteous duty. Oh, and I read this morning that he's been named as one of Time magazine's Persons of the Year. I dunno, I guess if I were serious about wanting to cut poverty in Africa, I wouldn't be buying $8000 sunglasses, but cheap rip-off ones from Groove or wherever and donating the remaining $7976 to a charity or something like that, but maybe that's just me...

And then with Sir Bob Geldof with Live 8 in July... hmm...

Realistically, what difference has the Live 8 thing made a few months on? Has it changed the world from 20 years ago when it was first held with its "hideously white" lineup? (errmmm, let's not mention that things have gotten worse) Did it have the huge desired impact of making G8 leaders fall on their knees, crying, "We must protect the poor of Africa! I am personally going to donate my parliamentary salary to a small village and work to make trade fair!" No. They made promises instead. Just promises, not resolutions, and we all know how good politicians are at keeping promises... *note sarcasm* Just like after the last Live 8.

And it was kind of bizarre that Bob Geldof was quite explicit about the point of not raising money though the concerts for the starving masses it was setting out to get money for. To me, Live 8 just sort of seemed like, "Here, if you listen to us tell you about people dying, we'll get some famous people to play music for you! Look! Shiny things! People dying and shiny things go so well together! We're making a difference and we're special because of it!"

And then there was the whole way it still comes across as colonial, imperialistic crap. Sort of like they can't fix it themselves because they're too busy being stupid and starving so the brave white people from the Western world have to fix it for them.

Approximately 5 billion people live in developing countries. 40% of those living in poverty in the world are in India, where 81% of people live on less than $US2 per day. Half of the world lives on less than $US2 per day. A quarter of the world's population lives in severe poverty. Nearly 1 billion people entered the 21st Century unable to sign their own names, let alone read. The developing world pays $US13 on debt repayment for every $US1 it receives in grants. Approximately 790 million people in the developing world are chronically undernourished, with two-thirds of them living in Asia and the Pacific. An estimated 1 billion children live in poverty.

Surely there are bigger issues facing Africa than poverty alone. There are HUGE problems with HIV/AIDS, which killed 500,000 people in Africa in 2001 alone, and that seems to be something no-one wants to go near addressing or start criticising large pharmaceutical companies for not working to provide legitimate help to those who can't afford their price-gouging medicines or demanding that governments start working on serious programs to educate their people about the disease. The HIV/AIDS pandemic is something that's only going to magnify poverty and chronic hunger problems as people who work with food production, infrastructure and so on die. The deaths of those 500,000 people in 2001 led to a food shortage in 2002/2003 that effected 14 million people.

Chuck in global warming, lack of education and subsequent lack of ability to go on and break out of the poverty cycle by getting well-paying jobs or at least gain higher qualifications, minimal infrastructure, restrictive social hierarchies in some countries,
and HIV/AIDS just adds weight to the pressure that people are already under. Then you get all sorts of corruption and cronyism in many African governments where money for aid never actually gets through to the people who need it.

Providing more aid isn't the issue. What's really needed is education, infrastructure, fair trade (no, that's not free trade because that doesn't help anyone in the long run, but fair trade), an end to corruption in governments, police forces and so on and putting a stop to civil wars that have run on for decades. Once those sort of things are addressed and implemented, THEN poverty is going to be impacted in a way that's so much more beneficial than throwing a few dollars their way.

It's like the old saying about giving a man a fish or teaching him to fish. Which one's going to be of the most help in the long run...

But then I guess the only way for capitalism to survive and Bono to continue to be able to buy $8000 sunnies and Bob to get $20,000 per appearance for talks is to have poverty elsewhere... hmmm.