h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I see all the naive lentil-eaters have unsurprisingly jumped on the band wagon, sending in their £1.50 text applications for tickets to the pathetic Live 8 concert. And yes, I do mean the people from the above conversations.

Aid for Africa? Why do they deserve it? They've p1ssed away every penny they've been sent since the first Live Aid concert and they're no better off whatsoever. And that which hasn't been p1ssed away has been stolen by their corrupt leaders.

As for the aims of the Make Poverty History brigade, what sort of message does this send to the world's poor? Surely letting these countries off their debts will only encourage the feckless and stupid to take out Ocean Finance loans and refuse to pay them back?

Why do people pay Bob Geldof any attention at all? Haven't they had enough of do-gooders such as that sanctimonious arsehole Bono ramming environmental liars down their throats?

I don't know what made me smile more: the thought of a million unwashed students getting off their backsides to avoid lectures and personal hygiene for a few days or "Sail 8" the thought of hundreds of Guardian readers bobbing about in the English Channel giving hundreds of asylum seekers a free ticket into Britain.

It sounds like the sort of idea that sounds great when you're really p1ssed, then laughably pathetic the next morning!

Doubtless the veggies amongst you will dismiss this rant as a biased, bitter tirade. To you I say: how gullible can you be? Aren't you angry that our illustrious leaders are giving away our money to people who don't deserve it? It's bad enough in this country, where our government is quick to waste our taxes on the poor. Let them swim in their own filth. They deserve it.

Wow, ok so right off my knee-jerk is to say that you're a sick, sad human being. So its ok for European countries to colonise other parts of the world?- make slaves of people for almost 400 years and then ust walk away and say - well tough - we've taken what we wanted from Africa - mined all the wealth etc out of it so now we;ll bugger off?

How about simple humanity? How about a continent of people who never got access to education and were demoralised and de-humanised for centuries. I agree, if you have access to education and to the same "menu" of education and oppourtunities as the next chap and you still screw it up then fine - go wallow - but to just ignor mass poverty and suffering just cause you think the sufferers brought it on themselves (which they didn't but even if you thought they did) is just inhuman.

You're one of the kind of people that make me embarrassed to be called a human being.

Kosh

My knee-jerk is that it would be stooping to a very low level to reply to the chap at the top

Good answer, Kosh

This post has been removed.

Just the sort of namby-pamby reply I'd expect from a lentil-eating tree-hugger who lists his interests as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace! And SCOUTS! Surely normal people stop being Scouts when they're about 15 years old?! Unless you have a special interest in your fellow Scouts (who I assume ARE 15 or less)...

Just in case there's a shred of intelligence somewhere out there - and in case someone really wants to know why ebay-moons verbal vomit is such b/s - Lets talk about third word debt for a moment:

The rich G8 nations are being applauded for canceling Third World nations’ debt to alleviate their poverty. The reality is that the poor countries owe the rich nothing. THE Third World is presumed to be financially indebted to the First World. It is a fact that for centuries the Third World has subsidised, supported, industrialised and developed the First World at the expense of its own solvency.

It has never been the 1st world’s burden — it has always been the 3rd world’s — from colonisation to globalisation. Afro-Asian colonies were regarded as cheap sources of raw materials. It was against the interest of the industrialised north to develop them.
Colonisation was one-way traffic, the transfer of the wealth of the colonies to the European metropolises. We are today in the throes of globalisation and the traffic hasn’t changed.
The world economy is controlled by the finance institutions of the powerful nations of the industrialised north. They set the prices of world commodities and control the so-called “free market”, which is presented as a sort of mystical force operating independently of human agency, rather like the force of gravity, determining our economic destiny.

The problem is not with loans, but the motive for granting them. Loans are often necessary; after all, the First World consumes by far the greater part of the world’s capital loans, as it does everything else. But First World loans are used productively to develop that world and accumulate profits. Third World loans arrest development and shackle its economies to the First. The average annual growth rate of Third World countries fell from 6% in the pre-loan 1970s to 3% in the post-loan 1980s. Likewise, per-capita growth fell from 3.5% to 1%.
South Africa is spending 12% of its national budget on servicing debt. It is the fourth-highest item on the budget at R50.16-billion. That money, if released, could go a long way towards development.

The liberalisation of exchange controls has inflated the profits of foreign investors, while workers in the thousands in the clothing, textile, footwear, mining and other industries have lost their jobs.
When we ask for the wiping out of the Third World debt, we also ask that poor countries be given the kind of kick-start that the war-ravaged countries were given in the 1940s. Yet the former colonies continue to be exploited, not helped. When they are given loans, it is more to exacerbate their exploitation through money-farming than to develop them.

In 1972 the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) raised the price of crude oil by 400% and banked considerable parts of their newfound wealth in northern banks which, in turn, dumped a good part of it on the Third World in the form of loans.
The leaders were virtually bribed to borrow — they were seduced with low interest rates that then increased dramatically, from 6.1% in 1976 to 16% in 1981.
The leaders borrowed; the people paid and continue to pay. In 1980, Third World debt stood at $600-billion. By 2001 it had grown to $2.45-trillion. During that same period, the debtor countries had made repayments totalling $4.5-trillion.
In other words, these countries had by 2001 repaid their original loans MANY TIMES OVER!!

The reality, then, is that when First World financiers are asked to wipe out Third World debt, they are in fact being asked to wipe out nothing.

By the 1980s, it became evident that Third World countries could not cope with their debt. They were bankrupt, but according to the rules set by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, countries are not allowed to become bankrupt, and unlike private firms cannot apply to a court for relief and start again.
The bankrupted countries are forced to continue paying and they are helped to do so by the World Bank and the IMF through further loans on condition that they submit to the agencies’ Structural Adjustment Programmes. This compounds their misery. Their currency is devalued, interest rates rise, government spending on social services is drastically reduced or eliminated, subsidies are withdrawn, workers are retrenched, and trade and industry are exposed to foreign competition. The result is massive unemployment, massive poverty and massive damage to domestic production and trade.

The great majority of the world’s population, 3.5billion (of a total world population of 5.7 billion) share 5.6% of the global income, while the richest 10% consume 60% of the Earth’s resources. The world cannot, should not, tolerate such inequalities.

The wiping out of the Third World debt is the first step towards the elimination of world poverty. The second and the more fundamental step demands the injection of a moral ethos into our national and international economic arrangements. The legitimated stealing, defrauding and cheating that is built into the neo-liberal capitalist system must be abolished and replaced with fair and just rules.

This is just logical and sensitised, concious humanity. Of course when people blurb off about things they know nothing about - they simply compound ignorance and nothing changes - people continue to die - REAL people, with children and families and conciousness.

Hail Geldof and Bono for their efforts - at least they took the time to DO something. Now that's an expample of a humanity I'm proud to be a part of.

KPOW

Kosh

And I think it's very sweet of you to single me out for personal abuse. Makes me feel very special, you know?

Keep up the pathetic, ignorant tirades!

Good heavens, what a long lesson full of unprovable "facts" and meaningless percentages! Did you cut and paste all that propaganda straight from the Friends of the Earth or Greenpeace website?!

Getting back to what was (mostly) my original post - the pointlessness of the Live 8 concerts to change Africa for the better. They may well raise awareness about the African plight. They may well cause a few lentil-eating, Scout uniform wearing, weirdo sanctimonious busy-bodies to go up to Scotland and protest from behind police barriers erected in specific positions so that none of the leaders will even see so much as a single protester.

Skankyrich may well believe I'm ignorant, but try and deny this, tree-huggers:

Blair/Bush, etc simply don't CARE about the opinion of the great unwashed.

Look at the last mass demonstration we saw in England - about not going to war in Iraq - there was what, 250,00 people saying "No" to war? And how much notice did Blair did take of those people? None whatsoever. Why the hell do you think he'll take any notice of you lot?

So Koshana, pray tell how these self-important millionaire musicians doing something they perceive as "good" just to feel better about their enormous bank-balances are going to help the African people? Twenty years on from Live Aid, nothing's changed (apart from certain countries being AIDS-ravaged even further in debt).

Anyone who thinks that the uncaring politicians will give a t*ss is as naive and blinkered as Bob himself...

Hey Skankyrich

I certainly hope I didn't offend you in any way and that the comment was directed at the other chap . I apologise too, I should have here-here'd your reply in my long response too.

Keep Passing open windows

Kosh

Yes, of course it was

I just don't have the energy to argue with these muppets any more. (Probably something to do with all the lentils I eat making me weak, I suppose ) I wouldn't mind if there was a single sensible, coherant argument in anything the lovely gentleman is saying. Hope he grows up sometime soon, or at least develops a shred of humanity or self-belief. I'd hate to feel that powerless.

By the way, Kosh, hasn't your Afrikaans phrases entry been in PR for a very long time? I remember reading it ages ago

Hello again, naive do-gooders.

Guess I'm not the only "ignorant" person:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/4637801.stm

Furthermore, your lack of response (both of you) to a perfectly reasonable point (about the Live8 concerts not doing any good whatsoever) leads me to believe that you have no argument and that I'm right. Thanks for conceding!

I remember David Stubbs saying Gay Dad were set for world domination when he was at the NME, so I wouldn't take his word as law, to be honest

Far from conceding, I'm rather enjoying your hopeless helplessness. Please continue on another shallow rant, the ignorance you propound really makes my day!

Ebaymoon;

Frankly, I don’t really care about you very much. I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention to the situation in Zimbabwe over the last few years, or if you remember Bosnia, or the Congo. You can sit there on your high horse being utterly uncaring, holding the likes of Mr Stubbs in higher esteem than Mandela. You can do nothing, be completely silent, lost in the fact that you feel powerless to enforce any change whatsoever. That is your choice.

However when I see pictures of a grandmother flattened by bulldozers outside her house, because she was too weak with hunger to get out of the way, simply for being an opponent of the Government, I feel that’s wrong. I feel that if that was one of my relatives, I’d be comforted by the idea that people across the world would care. And I want to make my voice heard. And it is. Bush and Blair both got vastly reduced power as a result of their war on Iraq, and who knows what the ultimate ramifications will be. Foreign policies of both countries have changed since the war. The first Gulf War passed almost without comment, the second did not. A third would clearly be stopped.

You may mock my membership of Surfers Against Sewage, Greenpeace et al. I live on the south west coast of England; we’ve had many pollution accidents and near misses over the years as I’m sure you’re aware. The whole livelihood of the area depends on tourism and conservation. If I imagine that one radioactive boat having an accident as it goes by (latest incident involved a ship going aground off Cornwall after the captain caught his trousers on the bridge and stumbled, knocking himself out) – all the places I love, all our livelihoods, all our homes gone – just as the Torrey Canyon did a generation ago – I have a right to protest about it, I have a duty to do all I can to avoid a repeat. You would do the same, friend.

Maybe you should consider a few days’ break in Kinshasa or Darfur to get the idea first hand? The one thing you can say in defence of Bob, Midge, Bono and all is that at least they’re getting to grips with their beliefs and making a stand in their defence. You have clearly never done more than complain that your change was short. Grow up, and start thinking for yourself.

Incidentally, I had some soup with lentils in around Christmas, but the nearest I’ve got to that since was beans on toast. My last two breakfasts have been pig-infested fry-ups, and tonight had a large mixed grill at a Hungry Horse. Hope this sets the record straight – you obviously only consider carnivores to be worth the time

Though I hold you beliefs in utter contempt, I will defend to my death your right to hold them.

Here here and well done! How well said!!

The fact that there are other people in the world that think like ebaymoon is exactly what is wrong with the world. Appathy is killing humanity faster than any other corrosive. That other people share your perspective ebaymoon, is a cause for lament, not a generator of respect.

I will dissagree with something Skanky said, he does actually care what you think - not you specifically but the "you's" out there in general and that is the difference between living conciously and being a petty wining snivelly person - which you seem to be behaving live ebaymoon. Skanky cares, in general, about the world and justice and humanity, ebaymoon's comments are indicative of a person who clearly does not.

Its a small expression of a war that's raging arround the world - a war between humanity and apathy, selfishness and distain for the wellbeing of others. I hope to God that its Skanky on the winning side when the final bell tolls.

Skanky, as to my various articles in states of disrepair, I'm afraid I just havn't had the time lately to get to them. Its about time I did . . . but with days filled with NGO's looking for funding to house and feed yet annother 100 AIDS orphans found living together in a delipidated house, or the programs on debt relief for families earning less than 700 rands per month, I just havn't. It gnaws on my conscience though so no doubt I'll get there soon.

Keep passing open windows all


Kosh

PS: Here's an idea tho - i'd love to hear ebaymoons opinions after just a couple of days at one of the orphanages. Then lets here about how these 1month to 12yearold children created their own problems and should be left to fot in Africa because people no longer care . . . .

I have two words for all the people that still think action is futile and their voices blow lonely in the wilderness: Rosa Parks.

We have the power, and we're realising it for the first time. We are becoming mobilised. Yesterday 2,500,000 found that they could almost instantly sign a petition to be delivered to the G8 leaders. That's a big number - in fact nearly a quarter of the total votes Labour polled in the last election. And, from a moral perspective, we cannot lose. Our action in standing for what we believe is right is a victory in itself. When that bells tolls, Kosh, we'll still be standing

>That other people share your perspective ebaymoon, is a cause for lament, not a generator of respect.

Well put

And as for the entry mentioned in post 11, hopefully there'll be some movement on that one soon

SA Slang phrases is fixed now - I hope! So you should be able to see the corrected version now.

Keep passing open windows,
Kosh

Wonder who picked that one?