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nah, i welcome legal music to my illegal music collection :) It's the starving kids i could careless about ;)

>It's the starving kids i could careless about>

I totally agree. Its great and all that we want to help other nations and their inability to foster prosperous lives but I really think we should take care of our own BEFORE we hand out money to other countries. How many benefits and donations has been given to Africa? Sadly, with all the millions and millions of dollars and food we have given them, that country is no more close to solving their food problems now than when we started giving. Forget food, give them condoms and vasectomies. That will solve the starving children problem.

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Jmeredith,

Why do i bother to share my views? Well, lets see. Perhaps because just as you can act holier than thou and as the thought and expression police, I have the same right to express my opinions. Dont like it? Deal with it. Leave the forum again. Doesnt matter to me.

The point of the matter is simple even you can understand it (I know its a stretch but give it a shot.) The orignal post says to go to some site, buy some songs to support the cause, and not to think about it, just do it. This is a Sony forum afterall. While we may have plenty of posts that are off topic, this thread was inappropriate.

Furthermore, my point is dead on the money. Africa is notorious for this. They get all kinds of aid from the world but yet they keep reproducing beyond their means. Then the rest of the world is supposed to be compassionate and help them out. Its aiken to funding a drug addicts attempt to get clean yet they keep turning back to the drugs. Simply put, quit producing kids at an alarming rate and there will be enough food to go around. Again, condoms, not food.

I can relate and understand more than you give credit for from last summer. In my times of disaster, there was no one there to replace all that we lost in the hurricanes. There was no one there to give me and my family a hot meal. It didnt stop me from helping others clean up their houses and help them restore the lives they had before, something I wasnt afforded. It was i who helped others that were hurt by the storms with food and money only to have these same ingrates turn around and steal from me and my family. So dont sit there on your throne looking down on me as if I have never been compasionate or leant a helping hand. Ive done way more than that.


Since you were so cool to leave me with a few quoets Julie, ill leave you with one of mine.

"Girl, dont go away mad, just go away" - Motley Crue

And on a slightly different note I watched a two hour edited version last night and the difference between the images from the PAL / SECAM countries and the NTSC ones was very noticable.
Bob.

jmeredith,

If you are going to have the balls to post. Have the balls to NOT delete them afterwards.

Whatever people think of the Politics surely NO one could walk past a starving Kid Dying while they pig out on gourmet food ...

The trouble is with contraceptives is people need to be educated... OR perhaps we do...Perhaps the more kids they have, the more help you have to farm or find food ...Anyway whatever the reasons of course they need to be fed ..Also we all need to learn about contraception including religons and ALL societys.. We all have to stop producing so many kids.. The best way to help with Poverty is a massive injection of cash and education with people to supply the neccesary training and building infrastrucures ect ..

Although if the west are taking an interest in Africa then there is something they Likely want to take...Probably its assets ...

Anyway whatever the Politics we should always help people as best whatever the outcome.. Giving a little is no hardship and every life given hope and saved has been worth every penny...

Quoting Motley Crue , come on now Patrick , I know you can do better than that !

What can I say, LOL, I blocked and that was the only thing that came to my mind. :)

I am all for helping feed the needy and do so once a week at a local soup kitchen. I agree that contraception and education would be good for those people but they still end up in the same situation. How many times have we showed them how to farm and live off the land? I know we did that back in the 80s and 20 years later they still havent learned.

Perhaps I may have been a bit over the top in my response but seriously, this is all I have heard, read, or watched this weekend is how its our human duty to give to the cause. I had three phone calls soliciting donations to the Live8 cause and even had one person cuss me out and asked what I was having for dinner last night and when I replied "steak and potatoes" they said they hoped I choked on it while those kids starved. Maybe that has soured me. I am sure not everyone involved in the cause is like that but you know what they say about being guilty by association.

Ok, heres a better quote. "Life Will Kill Ya and then you'll be dead" - Warren Zevon

>"but I really think we should take care of our own BEFORE we hand out money to other countries"

I cannot restrict myself to just being a Christian, but didn't Jesus tell a story about "Who is thy neighbour?".

>" How many times have we showed them how to farm and live off the land?"

How many times have we made it impossible for them to sell their produce to world markets by having "free" trade agreements with other rich countries?

Peter, theres a reason they cant sell what they farm and thats because the majority is below market quality or has disease. Sorry, but just because we are smarter and more efficient in the marketplace when it comes to trade doesnt mean we should have to foot the bill for it.

You know the sad thing about all of this is those that donate (as I have donated much in the past), those they wish to help will hardly see much of the money or food to begin with. For just $.30, you can adopt a little child and help them learn to read. Oh, fine print is that a portion of your donation helps to cover the cost. The truth is, the majority of your donation is the cost with remaining going to grain and what not.

How long did they run those Sally Struthers commericals? They havent even begun to make a dent in the hunger there. But it doesnt stop those people from pro-creating on an annual basis.

Last, with regards to my remark about helping our own, its the truth. I am more likely to give back to my community before I give to a nation where I will never see the change. At least if I do it in my city, I know whether or not my donations are being put to use properly and can see the change. Theres no way for me to monitor how my contributions are used in another country so i no longer make them.

It just baffles my mind, how we all support this help to stop hunger yet when we walk by a homeless person, we ignore, ridicule, spit, and lie about not having any money to spare. Yet, the second a big concert happens in the name of hunger for some other part of the world, its the hip cool thing to be a part of. So do you think those musicians fast for the entire day to relate to what those kids are going through? No way. I saw an interview earlier today (band name escapes me) and behind the band was a fully loaded buffet table. Wow. For most of these bands, they play a free concert, get some pub, sell more records because they are hunger concious and caring. I call BS. Its all about money they can convince you to give for their cause and the money they can get you to give for thier music.

If these stars were serious about making an impact, then why donate ALL proceeds of record sales to the cause? Its not like none of them couldnt afford it. Why not have your pro atheletes donate a major portion of their salary to helping the less unfortunate (some do but the majority do not.)

I would love to make a boat load of cash. If I ever do, you can bet half of what I make will be used to help those less fortunate. I have four scripts I have written and once I get a decent camera, they will be shot. The money I make will be used to put back in the communities I am involved in. Once that problem is solved then i will start looking overseas to help out any way I can.

The easiest way to combat hunger on the home front is to look no further than your local resturaunts. Do you have any idea how much food is thrown away at the end of the day or how many hamburgers are tossed because they sit too long in the windows at McDonalds? Why not give to people who are homeless or hungry? Its because if they give it away they cannot write it off on taxes.

To sum up what really pisses me off is that those that are rich have to means to make a difference here in our country and many of them choose not to but jump at the chance to make a difference somewhere else because its cool and sexy. Loving thy neighbor is a daily thing and its unconditional. Here in our country, loving thy neighbor only applies if its the "in thing" or latest cool thing to be a part of.

I wouldn't deny that a lot of the instances you cite are real, but I see the present push more towards changing a system than simply donating. Sure, there are hungry and poor in our own countries and the same applies - it's not about donating, but changing our attitudes and structure to make it as unlikely as possible that others are excluded. Exclusion, or not having a feeling of belonging, underlies a great deal of crime.

Let's face it, we, the European colonials of the past, have made fortunes by exploiting the resources of the "third world". The resentment that remains is a large cause of conflict. It's no good only helping those in our immediate vicinity whilst the rest of the world is festering.

"How can we sleep while our beds are burning?"

Midnight Oil was a great band.

I agree with your points. But if we are to help, we should help all of the time instead of one day a year is the point I am trying to make. Its like Christmas and Thanksgiving where people are kind for those days only. The way we treat people on those days should be the way we treat everyone daily. Same thing should be practiced on the fight against hunger and homelessness on a daily basis as well.

Yep.

Pmasters, You have your reward. The praise of men and not from GOD.

I guess you must buid yourself up. I'm clapping you've done some wonderful deeds. So you've got my praise. Clap, clap, clap.

MAC

An estimate was done on what yearly dollar figure it would require to eliminate hunger from the face of the planet for good and provide clean daily water for every soul.

And that number .....only $18 billion per year. (This isn't getting people out of poverty, but you cant eliminate poverty until you have the essentials nailed down).

That is less than a month of trade between Canada and the U.S. It is less than 6 months to fund the war effort in Iraq. More money was spent on many stupider things on this earth and yet we still have this problem.

Although the west has exploited Africa in the past, Africa also rarely misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity to develop on its own(read Rwanda). It cant break free from its primitive tribal ways.

The west may have pilaged resources and even taken land, but they didnt take the entire continent away nor the knowledge to grow your own food. This is the cradle of civilization, every skill we needed to survive was learned here.

My country, Canada, gets a tiny fraction of the rainfall that africa gets plus it has basically 9 months where nothing grows due to winter, yet we feed the world. Surely Africa with year round temperate climates and probably 2 or 3 growing seasons per year can get some sort of agricultural base going.

How much of the resources of Africa are actually owned by Africans, instead of giant American, European and Asian companies? Awfully hard to make a profit on resources when you don't own them, and aren't given a fair price for them. Shell Oil owns Nigerian oil, DeBeers owns South African diamonds... the list goes on and on. World Bank policies actually discourage the kind of subsistence agriculture that sustained Africa for generations. Instead the World Bank insists farmers grow luxury crops for export to the West. Ever tried to survive by eating coffee beans? Colonialism never went away, it just went corporate.

Meanwhile any attempt by Africans to regain control of their own resources is put down by violent, ruthless armies supplied by the United States, France and others. (Ask the Congolese what happened to Patrice Lumumba... assassinated by a CIA hit squad.) And are there any African nations whose borders have any relation at all to ancestral tribal boundaries?

The United States spends a smaller percentage of its GNP on foreign aid than any other industrialized nation. It also spends a higher percentage of its GNP on its military than any other industrialized nation. Any foreign aid we do give often has strings attached: loan payments back to U.S. banks, opening of markets to U.S. companies, "austerity" programs forcing local governments to cut social service, health care and other non-business programs, no support of any kind of birth control because of fear of offending our own religious right. U.S. and European drug companies fight tooth and nail against anyone with the audacity to suggest that maybe people should get life-saving drugs at a price they can afford.

No wonder Africa's a mess. We put it there, and have done everything in our power to make sure it stays that way.