(06-21-2002) Bush Bails on Bono - AlterNet

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http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13429


So this is the thanks Bono gets?


Just weeks ago, the U2 frontman was jetting through Africa with Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and exploring the deep poverty of the continent. With a gaggle of media in tow, the unlikely duo visited cities and villages, often inspecting hospitals, orphanages and clinics where the tragic effects of the AIDS pandemic could be witnessed. One day, O'Neill was filmed tenderly cradling a small baby girl who has AIDS. Look how cute she is, he said, visibly moved, as Bono looked on.......
 
Can I just say something here?

I've never heard of this news source "alternet", they are obviously anti-Bush in their writings though. I tend not to trust sources as such, as to their spin on the story and how it unfolded (to include the activities of the key players in Bush, Helms, etc.)

However, I guess the facts remain. I am for us helping Africa and AIDS is not just an Africa problem.

Keep in mind any reasoning that might have changed Bush's mind, if that is even what happened:

a rather costly war on terrorism that may have had an unforseen change since the March Bush-Bono summit.

I would also take not of Bono's comment about this being a start.

Also, how many other countries are giving $500 million to Africa?
Just wondering
 
z edge said:
Can I just say something here?

.

Also, how many other countries are giving $500 million to Africa?
Just wondering

Ehh, here we go again. How much intrest is pulled out of Africa by rich country`s. How much money does America make with selling arms to poor country`s ? For $500 million you can`t even buy 2 fighterjets.
 
Bush Bails on Bono

Ah! What clever alliteration there. Anyhow, here's a very interesting article i ran across at youtwo.net and thought I'd share.

June 23, 2002
From AlterNet.org:

Bush Bails on Bono
David Corn, AlterNet
June 21, 2002

So this is the thanks Bono gets?

Just weeks ago, the U2 frontman was jetting through Africa with Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and
exploring the deep poverty of the continent. With a gaggle of media in tow, the unlikely duo visited cities and
villages, often inspecting hospitals, orphanages and clinics where the tragic effects of the AIDS pandemic
could be witnessed. One day, O'Neill was filmed tenderly cradling a small baby girl who has AIDS. Look how
cute she is, he said, visibly moved, as Bono looked on.

By conducting high-visible public appearances with O'Neill and George W. Bush -- Bono visited the White
House in March when Bush announced a 14 percent boost in the paltry foreign aid budget -- the rock star has
shared his hipness with the Bush squares. (Not since a decked-out Elvis Presley posed with President
Richard Nixon has there been such a lopsided transfer of cool in Washington.) By offering words of
encouragement for Bush's modest foreign aid initiatives, he has granted the administration a seal of
semi-approval. To be fair, he has probably prompted the misers to open the purse more than they otherwise
would. But when Bush the other day announced a supposedly "important new" anti-AIDS program for
Africa, it was not only an insult to the millions being killed overseas by this plague, it was a slap in the face
to Bono.

At the White House, Bush said, "In Africa, the disease clouds the future of entire nations ... In the hardest hit
countries of sub-Sahara Africa, as much as one-third of the adult population is infected with HIV, and 10
percent or more of the school teachers will die of AIDS within five years." He proposed "to make $500
million available" to prevent the transmission of HIV from mother to children. Stopping inherited AIDS is
one of the best bang-for-a-buck components of an assault against AIDS. A single dose of medication given at
birth will work half the time. This is also one of the least controversial aspects of AIDS prevention because it
has nothing to do with sex -- or condoms. It focuses on newborns, not adults. Consequently, it does not
offend the religious riight and cultural conservatives.

So what's the catch? First, Bush was proposing funding that does not meet the actual need. Second, he was
taking credit for money already approved by Congress. Finally, he was covering up the fact that his
administration had pressed Congress to lower spending for this activity. Bush was spreading it thick in the
Rose Garden.

The President expects his project to prevent nearly 150,000 infant infections over the next five years. The
problem is, there are about 800,000 children born with AIDS each year, according to the UN. That means the
Bush initiative is aiming at helping less than 4 percent of this population. Moreover, $200 million dollars of
this supposedly "new" initiative were approved for use this year by Congress days before Bush's
announcement. What he added was $300 million for this type of AIDS prevention in the following two years.
Which averages out to $150 million a year -- a cut from the current level. It gets worse. At the start of June,
several Republicans -- notably, Senators Bill Frist and Jesse Helms -- were trying to raise overseas AIDS
funding this year by $500 million. But the White House leaned on Frist and Helms and got the pair to slice
that to $200 million.

The bottom line? When Bush hailed his initiative as one that would save lives, he could have as easily said,
thanks to me, this program will save fewer lives than it would have had Frist and Helms gotten their way. As
Senator John Kerry, a Democrat who has worked with Frist and Helms to increase global AIDS funding,
griped, "Just as we've achieved bipartisan momentum to make a real difference on the toll this devastating
disease is taking on Africa, the Administration announces a retreat and pretends it's a forward charge."

Bush boasts that his administration committed nearly $1 billion to global HIV/AIDS assistance this year and
has sent $500 million to the global fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. That sounds like a healthy
contribution. But relief and medical groups argue this is far from sufficient. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
has been pressing the international community to kick in $7 billion to $10 billion a year to the global
anti-AIDS fund, with the United States covering about one-fifth of that. Catholic Relief Services has called for
a $2 billion increase in US funding for the effort against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, of which half would
go to sub-Saharan Africa, where an estimated 28 million people have AIDS. (AIDS in Africa has left up to 13
million children orphaned.)

Bush shows no signs of rising to the challenge. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee recently passed --
unanimously! -- legislation that would more than double US spending on global AIDS, financing treatment
vaccines and education, and requiring the US government to create a five-year plan to significantly reduce the
spread of AIDS overseas. Bush has okayed a 13 percent hike in the billion-dollar program. Here's some
budgetary perspective: Under this Senate measure, US funding for anti-AIDS work in Africa (and everywhere
else abroad) would be about $2 billion -- the amount New York State spends on its HIV/AIDS programs.

On June 10, Stephen Lewis, Kofi Annan's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, delivered a passionate
speech to an assembly of religious leaders in Nairobi, Kenya. His words unintentionally provided context for
Bush's recent move. Lewis said:

"There's never been anything like the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Comparisons with the Black Death of the 14th
Century are wishful thinking. When AIDS has run its course -- if it ever runs it course -- it will be seen as an
annihilating scourge that dwarfs everything that has gone before. I think we may have reached a curious and
deeply distressing lull in the battle against AIDS. The [anti-AIDS] global fund has received no new sizeable
contributions for many months. The G8 summit later this month in my country, Canada, has made it clear in
advance that significant additional money will not be forthcoming. A series of reports to be released in the
near future will acknowledge progress made but at the same time recite blood-chilling statistics on the
situation of youth and children -- statistics which make you wonder whether the world has fallen into a
stupor of indifference."

Urging his audience to action, Lewis remarked,

"The thing I find by far most emotionally difficult as I travel through Africa, is meeting with you women,
stricken by AIDS, who know they're dying or soon to die, with two or three young children, and they ask
me, frantically, 'What's going to happen to my children when I've passed -- who will look after them." And
then they add, without using these exact words, but the meaning is clear, 'Mr. White Man, you have the drugs
to keep us alive, but we can't get them. Why? Why must we die?' And I want to tell you: I don't know how
to answer that. I have never in my adult life witnessed such a blunt assault on basic human morality. In my
soul, I honestly believe that an unthinking strain of subterranean racism is the only way to explain the moral
default of the developed world, in refusing to provide the resources which could save the mothers of Africa."

Hours after making his disingenuous AIDS announcement, Bush attended a black-tie Republican fundraising
extravaganza that collected $30 million or so, with a major portion of that coming from pharmaceutical
companies. In fact, Robert Ingram, GlaxoSmithKline's chief operating officer, was the numero-uno fundraiser
for the event. This drug company not too long ago tried to prevent the South African government from
manufacturing lifesaving anti-AIDS drugs. This event was, sadly, a true Washington moment. After
undermining a more generous AIDS initiative, Bush bagged millions from drug companies that have opposed
measures to make anti-AIDS medication cheaper and more readily available in Africa.

That day, Bono issued a statement in response to Bush's "new" AIDS program. "This crisis urgently
demands an historic presidential AIDS initiative," the U2er observed, "This isn't it, but could be the beginning
of it." Bono deserves credit for pushing the tightwads of Washington and the West to acknowledge publicly
the problems of global poverty and global AIDS. How long, though, can this Irish musician sing a song of
hope regarding Bush, O?Neill and the rest, when he still hasn't found anything close to what he -- and those
African mothers -- are looking for?

David Corn is the Washington editor of The Nation.
 
Please also support Interference by reading U2News.com, which also carried the Alternet article.

As well as the new U2 News Forum right here on the Forum.
 
Rono said:


Ehh, here we go again. How much intrest is pulled out of Africa by rich country`s. How much money does America make with selling arms to poor country`s ? For $500 million you can`t even buy 2 fighterjets.

Now I think you took my question the wrong way. I am genuinely concerned / curious as to how much money is being given towards Africa. It is a valid point too, funny as soon as I even mention it I have somebody bringing up other unrelated topics to try and distract my original question.

As a member of the Air Force, I wasn't aware the fighters (which jets?) cost $250 million a piece. Of course, when I see them they never have price tags on them. I wouldn't be suprised if they were that much though, after all they have a lot of overpaid morons like me putting them together:wink:

If anyone knows or has any figures, I would still be interested in knowing who is giving what to Africa.
Thanks
 
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