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

1) there has been no other country than Africa mentioned.
2) sometimes working in something can make you too close....it doesn't make any other opinion invaled.
3) and playing the guilt card is very much part of Live Aid/Live8.

1. I never called it a 's**t hole'. That's what context means.
2. I'd have thought someone in a really rather informed position would be the ideal person to listen to.
3. Guilt has nothing to do with it. Slavery has nothing to do with it. Having some humanity has everything to do with it.

1) some confusion there...

2) no opinion is invaled, neither does the job you do necessarily mean your opinion is right.

3)if slavery is irrelevant, why has it been used as one of the reasons for Africa's problems recently, while talking about Live8 on TV?

I take your point, but some opinions are morally invalid - take the opinion of a paedophile or murderer. Working with Aids victims on the ground gives you a far more informed opinion, for example, than someone who's never even met one (I pick this as an example - I've never met you and have no idea what you do!) Kosh is actually there at the sharp end, though, and her opinions carry a lot of weight, at least with me.

Your whole view of slavery being a key element of the Live8 coverage seems to me to be down to an argument you had with someone. I certainly didn't see any coverage mentioning western, or African, wrongs in the past - which is not to say there wasn't. The focus was on what we can do now. Does it matter if the president of a country buys the condoms, or if they come through aid? The new focus of aid is that governments must be accountable in where it goes, that debt reduction is conditional on corruption being tackled, that the aid gets to those who need it. Everyone accepts that this has not always happened in the past. Everyone accepts that greater education is key, as you imply. Everyone accepts that the sex trade is awful (no one is forced to sleep with a prostitute - but poverty forces many onto the streets) - but this stems from poverty, caused in part by our complicity in allowing our governments to continue taking repayments of debt that exacerbate the situation. What we cannot do is consider ourselves civilised while we allow the situation in Africa to continue - and I'm sorry, but if the fact that a child dies every three seconds, or that only 1 in 7 of the world's people have a tap, doesn't stir you into action, frankly there's something wrong with your heart.

.....this is in danger of going around in circles, and I'm tired and going to bed, so lets's close the matter, adios.

Yes, sleep well

........hope you watched the Scotish Live8 tonight on BBC3, in a way it was better than Saturday one, more intimate. I will let the mentions of slavery by Nelson Mandella and Eddie Izzard pass though.

.....Shame about the G8 riot though, sure don't help your cause, even uncle Bob told them to shut up.

To be honest, I've been w*rking far too much to watch any TV since the main event, and I missed most of that! Haven't even seen the G8 riot either, just got in... I'm sure it's the anticapitalists moving in and causing trouble. They seem to give every major protest a bad name

Anyway, I'm glad you posted back. I've popped to your PS and clearly you're not a bad person or anything, am really sorry if I've said anything personally offensive or derogatory. I'm quite passionate about this; I try not to have too many things around I don't need and subscribe to a lot of (mainly environmental) charities - and am working a lot and can get a bit blunt at times. Have to go as it's really late, but will hopefully catch up with you in a few days (am teaching kids in the forest til Saturday) and maybe have a natter about some other stuff? Will add you to my friends list at least

Not to keep flogging a dead horse here - but why shouldn't there be guilt exactly?

Now I dont like to blamed for stuff either, but just take one scenario. Read up about the gold standard and then search for information on the gold price thereafter - there is now documented evidence that shows that after the US dropped the gold standard, Congress was buying up large stashes of gold and dumping them on the market periodically to hold the gold-price at a false low. (aprox $200 lower than the market trend shows it would have been if not for the dumping). Now in africa $200 can feed a family for a month - and that's just the difference on one bar - so calculate that back over 30 years.
Why did the US do it? Cause the majority of the worlds gold lies in africa and russia - couldn't have russia making more money now could they?
So the result is billions of dollars of lost revenue in africa over the last 3 decades - money that could have gone into upgrading education, standards of living - paying for a movie or two or some education comapigns etc etc etc.
And you say the west has nothing to be guilty for? BS! Sorry but this is just one example, there are many, many more. How greed, political manoevering or just plain extortion (like the loans from the Opec members to african countries at exhorbitant interest rates) has directly cause deaths - hundreds of thousands of them. And unlike Zimbabwe, the countries responsible have truly democratically elected governments (not elections at the end of a gun) - and in a decomcracy - the population does bear the responsibility of their elected government - good or bad.

On the the matter of blaming a 12-year old for contracting aids .... when last did you switch off your electricity, give away or hide all your money from yourself and live - on nothing, with no electricity or running water? Until you've been there - even just as an experiment in deprivation of things we take for granted - you wont have an idea of what it is like to live in a township in africa.

I seriously want to run "adventure tours" for people like you. Get friends of mine in Tladi in Soweto to put you up for a week in a house with at least running water - and speak to you again after just one week. *sigh* You just have no idea of the levels of hopelessness and surrender most people live under. Just the history of South Africa and the actions of the colonists - from the dutch to the french to the Brittish is horrific! There's just no kind way to view the whole subject - mankind's greed and arrogance has lead us to the point where a huge portion of the worlds population is in serious trouble - most innocent of any wrongdoing besides ignorance and hopelessness.


Kosh

......can't be bothered to read your message.....were too busy counting the bodies from the bombs in London this morning.

......Kosh

.....I have de-linked this entry.

.....although I am sure you mean well, sometimes going at it like a bull in a china shop is not the way to influence people, and get what you want.

.....well meaning sentiment gets lost in a tirade, softly, softly will win you more friends and ultimately you will reach your goal quicker.

.....goodbye.

*sigh*

>going at it like a bull in a china shop

Aka explaining facts....

Nice to se it's not just me who finds both of your "holier-than-thou" attitudes thoroughly tiresome...

Koshana - do you ever take your foot off the accelerator? You appear to be nagging that StrangelyStrange chap from the same essay as you did me! Chill out, have a beer or two - you don't have to have a bee in your bonnet about something or other all the time (but I bet you do).

As the horrific events in London proved last week, before the politicians worry about Africa, there's more impotant stuff to sort out on our own doorstep first...

Not that I'd trust Blair to sort out a p**s-up in a brewery. He's gotta take at least a tiny bit of responsibility for what happened last week, seeing as his actions in Iraq/Afghanistan have played right into the hands of the terrorist extremeists.

I'm really sorry about what happened in London, it was terrible. Thousands of people die everyday in Africa though - not seeing that on the front page of anything . . . . .. and not only of HIV but Genocides and terrorist activities etc.

And no, as long as there is apathetic ignorance out there I wont stop, not for one moment.

Kosh