caveat #1
i can’t stand bono. i think he’s a nauseating, self-seeking, aggrandizing superstar with a distorted sense of his own importance.
caveat #2
i can’t stand the charity [RED]. it perpetuates the need for consumption, under the guise of helping others, rather than seeking to change behaviours. i know that you can’t change self-centered people and this is utilising the fact that people are selfish, and turning it into money for people who need it, but i still don’t like it. it leaves an awful taste in my mouth.
having said that, i’m finding myself siding with bono and his grandstanding do-gooders, in relation to this amazing financial vortex that is encompassing the western world at the moment.
how is it, that 8 years ago, when bono asked the american government, and other G8 governments (those same G-peeps who are putting together a bail-out plan as we speak) to contribute $20 billion dollars to wipe third-world debt and make a huge chunk in the weight of world hunger, that it was impossible. that ‘economics just doesn’t work that way’, that it would not help them help themselves, that that kind of money wasn’t available to just ‘give away’, etc, etc, etc.
yet in the last fortnight, we’ve seen $700 billion dollars being given to private banks, the responsibility of the most-privileged and affecting the least-privileged, in order to ‘save’ them and the economies of the countries whose econoomies they support. surely this isn’t how economics works? surely that kind of money isn’t available to just ‘give away’, surely it doesn’t hold them accountable and help them to help themselves?
you know what i really hope? that the US becomes a banana republic and that the rand and the zimbabwean dollar become the strongest in world currency, giving those in abject poverty access to decent food, shelter and medication as they deserve.