The Generation who watched our African brothers and sisters get put on the trains?

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Dreadsox,


The demise of the Peace Garden project at your school is very sad. A lack of compassion indeed.

I agree that states are in dire trouble - but there has been a decrease in expected tax revenues due to the Stock Market bust. It's not all caused by overspending & not spending responsibly. September 11th must have impact in our state's current financial situation. While I agree that all overspending and not spending responsibly must stop - cutting taxes isn't the answer to me. If taxes are cut - will there be a sum left to help Africa? What about Americans that need assistance? What happens to the people kicked off of Medicaid since there is no more $. Even if we cut taxes, it doesn't mean that the money left will be spent wisely. I don't think taxes should be raised, but I also don't see how there can be a tax cut when everything else we do goes up.

It appears that the goal would be to make the plight of Africa very newsworthy. Perhaps our letters should start to go to news people along with the government?

Anne
 
Scarletwine said:


I think the distinction Bono is trying to make about Africa, is that it is am emergency with 6500 dying daily and another 9500 being infected. They need help now, not in a few years.

yes thats exactly what needs to be heard but not everyone is listening to that.


and with what Bostonanne said about when she talks to pple about in Africa, I get the same exact thing happening to me too.
 
BostonAnne said:
Dreadsox,

I agree that states are in dire trouble - but there has been a decrease in expected tax revenues due to the Stock Market bust. It's not all caused by overspending & not spending responsibly. September 11th must have impact in our state's current financial situation. While I agree that all overspending and not spending responsibly must stop - cutting taxes isn't the answer to me. If taxes are cut - will there be a sum left to help Africa? What about Americans that need assistance? What happens to the people kicked off of Medicaid since there is no more $. Even if we cut taxes, it doesn't mean that the money left will be spent wisely. I don't think taxes should be raised, but I also don't see how there can be a tax cut when everything else we do goes up.

Anne

I agree the stock market has to have something to do with it as well. I am not necessarily for a tax cut, but I am not for more taxes. There is too much waste. I am also watching our class sizes grow and grow and services being cut and cut in school. I think NB hit it best.......as long as politicians are more worried about getting re-elected we will not see money spent wisely.

As to the media......RATINGS RATINGS RATINGS

Peace
 
Dreadsox said:


I agree the stock market has to have something to do with it as well. I am not necessarily for a tax cut, but I am not for more taxes. There is too much waste. I am also watching our class sizes grow and grow and services being cut and cut in school. I think NB hit it best.......as long as politicians are more worried about getting re-elected we will not see money spent wisely.

As to the media......RATINGS RATINGS RATINGS

Peace

I didn't realize that we are on the same page with the tax cut issue. I agree not to increase taxes, but to use the money received currently more wisely. :)

I have an idea - how about a SURVIVOR show set in an African village? The new Survivor cast can walk miles each day for clean water and try to find the money to start an infrastructure when you owe tons of money to rich countries that has been paid off over and over in interest fees.
 
BostonAnne said:


I didn't realize that we are on the same page with the tax cut issue. I agree not to increase taxes, but to use the money received currently more wisely. :)


I am a McCain Republican:yes:

I like your idea for the TV Show. They make it too easy on the survivors!!!!!!

Peace
 
BostonAnne said:
What can be done to combat "compassion fatigue"? As America is in such an unsecure place - I feel that combating "compassion fatigue" is going to get harder and harder. People need to grasp their minds around the whole situation now - before our economy worsens and before we end up going to war. As you can tell, I am not feeling very confident in America right now.

I think one tact might be to point out that this issue is not about charity; it's about justice. We're not handing out money to the poor with debt relief. We're getting out of their way so they can become independant.

Dreadsox, I've enjoyed your posts on this thread. I hope you've let your leaders know how you feel by writing or calling! :) You too, Adamswildhoney! :)

SD
 
found this on a GOP news site:


Odd Couple 2

Fired Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill is getting on with life. Associates say he has big plans that could include a healthcare center in Pittsburgh and helping poor African nations like the few he visited with U2 singer Bono last year. Those memories have been captured in a video titled The Odd Couple Tour of Africa, a fast hit inside the administration. Taken by deputy Treasury spokesman Rob Nichols, the 51-minute video includes funny outtakes, like when O'Neill trades his bifocals with Bono's trademark wraparounds. "I'm Bono," O'Neill chirps. And then, grabbing his glasses back: "I need something I can see with."
 
BostonAnne said:


I have an idea - how about a SURVIVOR show set in an African village? The new Survivor cast can walk miles each day for clean water and try to find the money to start an infrastructure when you owe tons of money to rich countries that has been paid off over and over in interest fees.

this is not such a bad idea, speaking of media attention. lots of other intriguing scenarios: we could all watch contestants avoid malaria-causing mosquitos, running water that causes blindness, guerilla rebels, and eating left over genetically altered corn.

dunno, would that prompt us to do something about those trains?

like scarletwine, said, it's an urgent matter, and time is not on our side. what can overcome compassion fatigue? some interventions that actually see results, like some type of Marshall Plan for AIDS relief...another thread, the one on Clinton's AID article, I think, has a mention from sharky of an article about the efforts of the man who got the Green Revolution in India going trying to do the same in Africa, check that out! the only other alternative is to repeat history and rig some kind of Pearl Harbor to spur us to action, before the vast majority of the world living on less than a dollar a day gets fed up with our displays of wealth.

and hey, I forgot to mention, Diamond, that was a nice post, very true!

we need to put our hearts into it, and then somehow the money will be there.
 
deep said:
found this on a GOP news site:


Odd Couple 2

Fired Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill is getting on with life. Associates say he has big plans that could include a healthcare center in Pittsburgh and helping poor African nations like the few he visited with U2 singer Bono last year. Those memories have been captured in a video titled The Odd Couple Tour of Africa, a fast hit inside the administration. Taken by deputy Treasury spokesman Rob Nichols, the 51-minute video includes funny outtakes, like when O'Neill trades his bifocals with Bono's trademark wraparounds. "I'm Bono," O'Neill chirps. And then, grabbing his glasses back: "I need something I can see with."

lol, any bootlegs? and is the Administration taking to this for a reason other than admiration of the trip?

way to go, O'Neill, and Bono!
 
Sherry Darling said:


Dreadsox, I've enjoyed your posts on this thread. I hope you've let your leaders know how you feel by writing or calling! :)

SD

Just this thread:cute:

I have let them know that we need to be there helping because in my heart I believe that this is the best way to prevent another 9/11 long term down the road.:up:

Unfortunately, there seems to be many things that our country does not feel affects us. With economic times worsening it is going to be harder to convince many that this issue is a pressing one.

Again, I wonder where our churches are on this issue. That is where I think the case needs to be made. That is where this administration believes charity should come from. You may find Republican Representatives leaning more in that direction.

Peace

Peace
 
deep said:
found this on a GOP news site:


Odd Couple 2

Fired Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill is getting on with life. Associates say he has big plans that could include a healthcare center in Pittsburgh and helping poor African nations like the few he visited with U2 singer Bono last year. Those memories have been captured in a video titled The Odd Couple Tour of Africa, a fast hit inside the administration. Taken by deputy Treasury spokesman Rob Nichols, the 51-minute video includes funny outtakes, like when O'Neill trades his bifocals with Bono's trademark wraparounds. "I'm Bono," O'Neill chirps. And then, grabbing his glasses back: "I need something I can see with."

Wow. That's almost even...endearing. Who knew? :) God bless the man if he's gonna keep fighting the fight. Maybe he'll find it easier out of office.

Dreadsox :wave: -- I'll add you right away! Anyone else who has written, LET ME KNOW! I'll add you and you can get the credit you deserve! :) That's hardly the point, but I like to give it anyway! :)

SD
 
Sherry Darling said:


BTW, all new Angels are now added and the new forum is up and working! Come on over and say hi and see your name in lights! ;) Link's in my sig!

SD

Hey Sherry, great site! thx in the name of love.

U2 Bama: Good points.
 
Aids in Africa: 'Mass murder by complacency'

January 11 2003 at 07:53PM



By Caroline Hooper-Box

The United Nations special envoy for HIV/Aids in southern Africa has warned of "a crescendo of rage and desperation which governments will ignore at their peril" in a hard-hitting new report on the spread of the pandemic on the continent.

Stephen Lewis, who is UN secretary-general Kofi Annan's special envoy, has accused world governments of "mass murder by complacency" for neglecting the food and Aids crisis in southern Africa, and has warned of the "failure" of southern African states "10 or 15 years down the road".

Among the recommendations that Lewis made regarding the HIV/Aids pandemic and the hunger that is stalking Africa are that anti-retroviral programmes be supported by governments, that southern African governments do all they can to get food to their people, that the international community finds the political will and money to deal with the pandemic and the food shortages, and that the vulnerability of women and children in the region become a priority.

'Hunger and Aids have come together in a Hecate's brew of horror'
Lewis, a former Canadian ambassador to the UN, this week delivered a hard-hitting mission report in New York after a tour of Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia in December.

He is to begin a follow-up tour starting in the "absolutely impoverished" Lesotho on January 22, along with James Morris, the World Food Programme head, to examine the link between hunger and Aids in the region.

The UN tour takes place in the same week that the health forum of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) meets in Pretoria. The meeting has already run into controversy.

Aids activists and scientists reacted with horror this week at the news that Dr Roberto Giraldo, a well-known Aids dissident, who denies a link between HIV and Aids, has been invited by the SADC health sector to speak on Aids therapy and treatment at the forum. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, the health minister, chairs the sector. The United States-based Giraldo, a member of President Thabo Mbeki's controversial Aids advisory panel, argues that those who promote the use of condoms and clean needles do so for their own financial gain.

Lewis, in an interview with The Sunday Independent, hit out at the dissident view, saying: "The UN repudiates any proposition claiming that HIV does not cause Aids and that heterosexual transmission is not part of the spread of the disease. The UN simply gives these views no credibility whatsoever."

'Worried that war with Iraq would eclipse every other international human priority'
He said he expected the SADC meeting to focus on the link between famine and Aids, and "I would think one of the things raised would be a call to deal with question of anti-retroviral treatment.

"Zambia has announced it will put 10 000 people on treatment. Mozambique is looking at putting 50 000 people on anti-retrovirals through the private sector. Zimbabwe and Lesotho are both looking at anti-retroviral treatment, and Namibia has started treatment. Botswana brings a lot of experience to the SADC meeting."

Lewis said Tshabalala-Msimang would have to examine costs and numbers involved in implementing anti-retroviral programmes.

"Everyone hopes South Africa will at the earliest possible opportunity be able to provide anti-retrovirals - because of the leadership position South Africa invariably and inevitably has."

According to the UN and aid organisations, more than 14 million people are threatened with starvation over the next six months as a result of food shortages brought about by adverse weather conditions and poor government planning.

"There is absolutely no doubt that hunger and Aids have come together in a Hecate's brew of horror. You can't till the soil, grow the crops or feed the family when disease stalks the land," said Lewis in his briefing at UN headquarters in New York on Wednesday.

Lewis said he had seen on his southern African tour "a crescendo of rage and desperation which governments will ignore at their peril".

"This pandemic cannot be allowed to continue, and those who watch it unfold with a kind of pathological equanimity must be held to account," he said.

"There may yet come a day when we have peacetime tribunals to deal with this particular version of crimes against humanity."

The 15 to 35 percent Aids prevalence rate in the region, and the "incessant, cumulative death of so many productive members of society, means, ultimately, that things fall apart," he said.

There is "no question" that the Aids pandemic can be defeated "with a joint and Herculean effort between the African countries and the international community".

But the Global Fund, set up in 2001 to give assistance to countries in need of money for HIV/Aids prevention and treatment programmes, will be in a critical situation next month.

"If the United States, and the other members of the G7 don't augment their contributions to the Global Fund in the immediate future, we will be in desperate trouble."

Lewis said he was worried that war with Iraq would "eclipse every other international human priority, HIV/Aids included".
 
I'll bet you never thought the CIA was on board:

The CIA, recognizing AIDS as a national security issue, projects HIV infection rates for India that indicate that HIV will kill many more people than would a full-scale war with Pakistan. These projections are being branded as alarmist, but perhaps it's time to be an alarmist. Despite years of work among gay men in San Francisco, sex workers in Calcutta and long-distance truck drivers in Africa, we have failed to make a serious dent in the crisis. Yes, there is good news about some local communities changing their destiny by effective action. Yes, new drugs are widely used in rich countries. But overall, the passage of HIV around the world has continued roughly as if we had done nothing.

Taken from this article here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41441-2003Jan11.html
 
Last edited:
It is good to know that the CIA is capable of good research.



___________________

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a hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer...
If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire
For we have some flax golden tails to spin!
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Shel Silverstein
 
"There may yet come a day when we have peacetime tribunals to deal with this particular version of crimes against humanity."

why doesn't somebody just cut off their dicks?
 
to be fair to the us, it wasnt just the united states who didnt want jews back in the day.

it amazes me just how much rascism existed in all walks of life just 60 years ago. im sure a lot of it is still there, but its now put behind clever masks.
 
I have come to learn through this thread and a little personal experience that comparing to Africa to the Holocaust just shouldn't be done. The emotions that rise when people even think that we could have stood back and let it all happen is such a huge issue that it can't be reconciled to be compared to Africa in the first place.

To raise the necessary attention that Africa needs, it shouldn't be compared to such a touchy subject. Africa's emergency gets lost while people reconcile to themselves the past.
 
he who forgets the past is condemned to repeat it (- a very famous person i forget)

"we're not so clever as we seem to think we are" -Julian Lennon

it's fine to eat tuna, the stuff in the can is not as bad as a fillet, says our pres bush, and i eat it all the time :)
 
bostonanne, i agree to an extent, but i can still see the comparison and i do believe it is relatively fair.

i think he was saying it to really get the attention of the reader/listener. well, thats obvious i guess.
 
Cow of the Seas said:
bostonanne, i agree to an extent, but i can still see the comparison and i do believe it is relatively fair.

i think he was saying it to really get the attention of the reader/listener. well, thats obvious i guess.

so now we're all watching Bono!
 
C o' S, if Pres Roosevelt (just to name a someone we have heard of) went to England and gave a big speech about stopping the loading of Jews onto trains heading for God Knows Where, and then the US media and all these little groups of people sat around discussing this speech, we would have lost that many more trainloads of Jews. Does that make sense?

then again, if he had gotten run over by a train, we'd all demand that German trains be halted.

Schnell!
 
DebbieSG said:
C o' S, if Pres Roosevelt (just to name a someone we have heard of) went to England and gave a big speech about stopping the loading of Jews onto trains heading for God Knows Where, and then the US media and all these little groups of people sat around discussing this speech, we would have lost that many more trainloads of Jews. Does that make sense?

then again, if he had gotten run over by a train, we'd all demand that German trains be halted.

Schnell!

Debbie, I'm still confused.:huh: Are you saying that if people discussed what was happening sooner than more people would have been lost?
 
BostonAnne said:


Debbie, I'm still confused.:huh: Are you saying that if people discussed what was happening sooner than more people would have been lost?

No. People should have been talking sooner, but they didn't and the time for a spreading epidemic has increased. but talk ALONE will not solve the problem. Are you trying to decide if you want to help? if you have the time? if you can do anything? how many people must you talk to? who will have the answer you think will be the one that will be the RIGHT thing to do. how long?

a man is taking out a gun. duck!

all talk and no action...it almost says that people feel it really is ok that people are dying this way. America went right into a campaign to use protection. Madonna went on record for this. weren't the Africans listening? what can help them now?
 
DebbieSG said:


No. People should have been talking sooner, but they didn't and the time for a spreading epidemic has increased. but talk ALONE will not solve the problem. Are you trying to decide if you want to help? if you have the time? if you can do anything? how many people must you talk to? who will have the answer you think will be the one that will be the RIGHT thing to do. how long?

a man is taking out a gun. duck!

all talk and no action...it almost says that people feel it really is ok that people are dying this way. America went right into a campaign to use protection. Madonna went on record for this. weren't the Africans listening? what can help them now?

Oh, now I understand. I do find it amazing that it is in a "talk" process. All countries should be helping by now. It is so frustrating to want to help and feel like others don't get the emergency or don't care.
 
So I've head the following point brought up by Bono, and by others involved in this fight. Wondering what you call think of it.

The point has been made that racism, latent or otherwise, is a factor in our collective complacency. If this were going on in the US, Europe, etc, we'd have it at the top of the adgenda. I frankly think there is something to this. Opinions?

SD

Boston Anne, I hear ya...
 
I definitely think race has an effect on our response to the crises in Africa. It has been a factor in our foreign relations forever. We have treated Africa as a second class continent. With the Administrations intense ecomonic, racial, and religious conservatism this trend will continue.

Sherry in your other thread you praised my senator, Mike Dewine for his backing of 180,000 million in aid. I feel that is such a small amount and almost half of what was promised (300,000), that I have no praise for him. It is nothing more than a TOKEN a bone thrown for effect. If our government was serious about the issue they would appropriate much more.

How about taking the tax money they are attempting to give to gas-guzzling SUV's and give that to Africa?
 
It is most certainly a race issue. The West's attitude has been disgustingly paternal right up to the present. We seem to consider Africa a dissolute son who won't get his act togetehr and has no intention of doing so. WE CREATED THE PROBLEMS

You don't gut a continent with colonialsim for a couple centuries, destroy all of its social structures, grind its people into the dust, keep them uneducated and unskilled and then expect them to be just fine when you up and leave one day. Then you tell them to solve their problems with Western methods (cause those are the best of course) at the same time as raping the countries of teh resources and any wealth left. Then you bring down anyone who resists you (Patrice Lumumba in the Congo) and keep petty dictators in power. To expect Africans to do just fine after all that would be a grand joke if it weren't for the millions of African corpses piling up every year.

The West has a blood debt that growls larger with every passing hour. And still it treats Africans as children.

This kind of racism is easy since you never see the target of you rprejudice and therefore are never confronted by it. THEY are over there so passing judgement is very easy.
 
Dreadsox said:


As to the media......RATINGS RATINGS RATINGS

Peace

Great News on the media front. The Boston Sunday Globe had whole section devoted to getting people's attention this weekend. The Washington Post has Bono's open letter to the President. Let's hope that the media starts to open a lot of people's eyes!



Lives Lost

None of them had to die

Yesterday, 24,000 people worldwide could have been saved with basic care.

The same number could have been saved the day before, and the day before that. In all, over the last year, 8.8 million lives were lost needlessly to preventable diseases, infections, and childbirth complications.

The number of deaths is so vast, so unthinkable, that it seems to make sense only between the covers of a report by the World Health Organization, which issued the estimate. Perhaps it helps to note that the figure is roughly the population of New York City, or the population of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine combined.

But what makes the number real is to see someone die, and to know that this man, woman, or child would have survived in the United States or in much of the world.

The Globe undertook to become witness to some of these deaths. Only as a witness could we tell the stories of people who were dying by the thousands -- of how they died and why, and how they could have been saved if there had not been such maddening barriers to simple health care.




http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/lives_lost/
 
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