i agree but with how the UN is operated at present, but it has to be there for the future. the world cannot operate in a more peaceful manner without an organization such as the UN. i just believe it needs huge reforms, and states should not have the power to just ignore this reformed UN. this means all nations, from dictatorships (so basically those who sign up have to follow the rules or the UN forces other nations to intervene- trade refusals etc, which all other nations must agree on)... to major powers such the US, the US must be also held accountable ehich means it needs to join the ICC. peacex
hoping that this quote was ironic if not then please learn a bit more abouit africa before making absolutely, offensive, disgraceful posts thank you
In that sense I sort of agree with you, we need to do more then just throw money at the problems in Africa, in many cases in Africa and elsewhere aid money has been stolen from by dictators to raise armies and buy palaces. Like I said, I clearly support a military presence for peacekeeping in Africa, the military is not only the most mobile force for humaitarian situations in the world, *tsunami* it also needs the ability to prevent governmetn sanctioned murder. I think the best solution to the problem of soverignty so there isn't a feelings amongst cilvilians that theres an invasion is to officially put many of our troops to under AU orders to preserve peace in Africa, and also boost funding to the AU to intervene in huam rights crises. If this doesn't work other means would have to be looked into, but I think giving the impresion that Africans are responsible for solving africas problems are important. We need to persuade the EU to help out Africa too. Impireialism is certainly main cause of these poblems, they can at least spare some peacekeeping troops and trade incentives to African nations. Still probably piss off a few people here, who would shriek colonialism. but it would definatly be lthe right thing to do for Africans living in fear of genocide and forced starvation from african governments. I disagreee about the UN in the aspects of the creation of the WHO and the FAO, which have done more to promote development and aleviate suffering than about any other orginizations. For the UN's political weight I mostly agree with you, while the US should hold itself responsible for Abu Ghraib and we shouldn't hold foreigners detained for more then a few months without bringing up charges, China shaking its finger at us for human rights is insane. They also couldn't bring up enough support to intervene in the Balkans. And then Miloseic was trying to have NATO generals charged as war criminals... the UN actually had to mull it over for a second.
the trouble is that you say you are joking, but then the line above says that you also verify this statement. so what do you believe? many children are born through rape, accidents, they do not have the facilities in the majority of africa you have. they do not have the oportunities of abortion and what not. i just feel your post had no part to play and you were just writing to piss people off. peacex
why do you come in these forums, to spread your hate instead of discussing the issues. to push your opinion, believe it or not, not everyone in the world has the same american ideals, there are millions who disagree with your system of gov't
i don't attack you rmessage, i attack that you came into a discussion surrounding africa and you made a troll-like comment on something that i find quite idiotic, basically saying i won't help them because they keep giving birth. what if i use the same idea for america- the third world would be better of if no more americans were born, maybe a bit of fairness would arise?? i would never say this comment because its moraonic. i do not care if you will not help them, there are a lor of people around the world who want to help and are helping, whether it is volunteering, buying fairtrade and other things. i call these humans compassionate without stats, have you ever been to sub-sahara africa?? i think they have more to worry about then counting what is going on, lets just stay africa is in a mess and only with human help can they pull themself out of it. we need to help them help themself, not just one sided peacex
80% is 'aid'??, maybe america is very different to the rest of the world, but the majority of aid in africa is from private charities, that is real aid that goes towards the people and helps them set up schools, hospitals, drinking water and they are the institutes i support
You just completly made those statistics up, while it was there have been several cases of money stolen by dictators, improvments in aid practices have made this much rarer. I dunno where you got 80% from. Past problems in aid techniques don't mean we should ignore the suffering of 800 million people. And all third world countries are growing at fairly rapid paces, while populations of developed nations are dropping, and that's a reason we should clearly support African development. The problems facing africa aren't too many kids to take care of. The root problems are extreme poverty, disease, and political unrest/war. Theres a larger part of the solution then just throwing money at it, but doing nothing makes the US responsible to all of Africas problems. The US is responsible for much of the poverty facing Africa. Agriculture subsidies are more responsible for any other factor then keeping africa poor. The US subsidizes cotton about 25,000 cotton farmers which means aout ten million west african's could never get beyond the poverty line. And in Europe, cows are subsidized two dollars a day... thats more then double the average amount a person earns in Africa.
you are correct, everyone is too blame, so everyone should help, it is just that the us and europe is where the wealth is so therefore they can afford to help but choose otherwise. 80% is not a fact, i am pretty damn certain of that, that estimate is sooo way off. if you think of aid as different to actual solid money, where money is put to use with volunteers, workers building school, hospitals etc then the gov't of said nation is not really just accepting money, they are accepting help. it is true some money does go to dictators, but if we believe this and exaggerate this fact as many do then nothing would be ever given and africa would be in a worse state. if you worry about your money going towards dictators then choose to give to a cause that states how it goes about its mission. i help oxfam in the uk that doesn't give money to the gov't but builds and helps communities, i also have signed up to do two years volunteer work in africa after university to do some teaching. you must be the change you wish to see in this world. we must accept that africa needs help and at present cannot help themselves. peacex
I'm an American and I never said everything was the US fault. Europe did that colonialism thing. Toor apart their governing systems, redrew boundries with no historical perspective of racial relations, crippled the industry, pillaged the resources, and then left hastily while putting no transitional governments in place and armed a bunch of militias to decide. I disagree with you there. Aid to africa is important to build hospitals and roads, but Africa sure as hell can help itself. Like I said, Africa isn't poor cause Africa can't help itself, it's poor because of massive social unheavel due to colonialism, and crippling economic practices, which among other things, means that while Africa has probably the worlds largest agriculture market, in many cases they lose money when they sell it. So most African farmers rely on sustenance farming, this coupled with lack of infrastructure like roads and markets, means that while Africa produces enough food to feed everyone several times over, more food rots in Africa then anywhere in the world. I said it before, but this isn't about African aid, this is about African justice. http://www.africafocus.org/docs05/ras0507.php
i do believe at present africa cannot help itself, africa has a real problem with education, clean water and disease that at present it cannot solve without outside help, many africans nations admit this, they do not need water just to learn how to 'fish' to help itself. if i honestly believed the problems could be solved by africans helping themselves, and that they did not need our help, then i wouldn'be interfering. but i am disagree with you on this, i have heard interviews with people in africa who are in such trouble, yes some areas of africa do not need outside help but there is a hell of a lot who do peacex
... It sounds like you just agreed with me, but I'm not sure. Like I said, African aid is very important. But attacking the root causes which keep Africa in poverty is more important then just throwing money at them. I give money to HRW and it's obviously apparent that Africa needs aid. They need tons of aid, but there are a lot more things we should be doing that will have much more of an impact then giving them money. As mentioned above.
Africa clearly has those problems, and we can't tackle them all for them, we should help out but if we also took the steps nessecary to lift Africa out of poverty we would be doing so much more for them then the gesture of giving some money and saying good luck with that. Aid is very important.
oh do agree with you, just disagreed on the comment that africa does not need outside help that you said. i believe it does, i strongly believe in aid in africa, and when i mean aid i also means things such as clean water, treatment for disease, and most importanatly education programs peacex
how do you mean? whats the plan, i am doing what i canj right now to help out, because at present i have just started university studying international relations, and i plan to do a 2 year volunteer status in africa once i have finished, but if i can help i will, just post the details and if possible i will do what i can peacex
It's international money 'given' to Africa. Without bitching about your source too much, the Telegraph is a tabloid. What they don't say is that most of this money was given during the cold war to support either Soviet or anti-Soviet regimes. It also compares money stolen by dictators from Nigerian oil revenues and money spent on Africa in an unclear way. They say for the past 300 years, so I assume they are talking about the use of Nigeria as a slave port in the 1700's. They also present money spent by England to promote Apartheid regimes as aid. The comparison to the Marshall Plan (which is brought up twice in that article* is sophistry. It's comparing two completly unrelated situations because they we're both desperate political situations, proposes no solutions for African aid other then critiscising G8 for "writing off" African debts, and assumes that all money given to prop up regimes counts as aid. They also don't mention that international trade for western Europe was highly industrialized for the war, and adjusting it to economic purposes was very easy with that much aid, particuarly on the labor of African colonies. Money given in the 40's to promote white resorts and then abandon them isn't aid. You are very wise to question aid though. The intentions behind money given to Africa through the years has been largely to prop up regimes to preserve the economic status quo of the west, or diseminate the USSR's perverse philsophy. And although 80% is a totally made up number, Abacha was one of the worst theives in modern African history. Giving money to dictators and saying 'help out your people' is clearly not an option. Like I said, in many cases where that has happened its been used for palaces for dictators and as cash to raise militias, which have commited the most heinous war crimes imaginable. The most dangerous type of aid given to Africa today though, is food aid. In most cases, food aid is a terrible thing. This isn't true in humanitrain crises, such as Darfur where they can't get food. But Africa as a whole produces much more food then it needs. But African farmers can't make enough profit to support themselves. Europe already has the advantage of a highly advanced corporate agriculture sector which can make many more crops per acre then poor African slash and burn cropers can, and on top of that, all the EU crops are subsidized making African crops unable to compete. And on top of this, flooding the market with free food from the US and the EU means that African farmers are losing money by even growing crops. Most people in Africa die of malnutrition related hunger rather then not having enough food. Furthermore, many of the governments aren't too concerned with making markets in the middle of a desert of jungle so the people there can access this food. Theres tons of food in Africa. Grain dumping in Africa means Africans can't compete. Again, this isn't in the case of hunger crises, because of the lack of trade between African nations due to no market because of causes listend above, and when a drought happens in one area, we should give food aid. I'm not pretending theres an Easy option, first off aid money should be drastically increased, and more importantly, given to aid charities working in the region, not corrupt African governments. Secondly most agriculture export subsidies should be lifted to Africa, another important thing we can due for Africa is to promote the African union as a revolutionay force in Africa, and encourage them to become more involved in peackeeping processes. I'll post some more things to throw out there later.
Oh, another thing that might not seem that important, but is really underrecognized is the appointment process of diplomats. Appointing heads of departments is an important power of the President, and I'd say it's a good thing. Diplmoats on the other hand, should at least be selected from a list by a committee and presented to the executive. The system we have now leaves presidents appointing positions like foreign ministers to Burundi, which usually ends up with his golf buddy from college trying to explain African affairs to the government.
Don't even get me started. On the other hand, Jesus pulls up 78 million results while America pulls up a whoping 1.2 billion. Google knows who butters their bread. Suck on that lord.
