Conor Meagher Fan Club

By now you probably have seen the Live 8 Concert on VH1 and ABC asking for no money, but your voice. It is commendable that the networks are giving it some exposure instead of another episode of Behind the Music: Backstreet Boys or Dancing with the Stars. But I think what’s lacking is the overall all message. The main purpose for this concert is to put pressure on the countries attending the G-8 Summit in Edinburgh, Scotland today. The billion dollars debt relief and materials for fighting disease especially HIV/AIDS is important, but there are far more the G-8 members could do that would make a healthier Africa. Trade (which is grossly unfair), Substitutes, Civil War, and Human Rights just to name a few. A good book that goes in to detail about these things is Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph E. Stiglitz. Also when the summit is finally over and a deal is made, I would read the details and situplations that are assoicated with the aid. It’s not like they just send a big wad of cash to Africa and say “Here, pay us back whenever you want.” Ties to oil revenues and other self interest issues are planned to be added. Read the article by the BBC on the protests and what is really needed.

It’s ironic that the United States has spent an upwards of $150 billion dollars on a war that demolished a country with free healthcare, free education, and 100,000 more innocent cilivians while multipule countries in Africa, who are the poorest in all of the world, plan to get only 8.8 million from the US.

Makes you go hmmm…