Popular thoughts on my mind... and in my public journal:

The Red Campaign

Recently a friend gave me the audio book of the 2005 Massey Lecture Series where Stephen Lewis presents at five Canadian universities, giving a first-hand account of the unfathomable challenges Africans are facing as a result of AIDS. After hearing Mr. Lewis' speaches, I immediately felt the need to do something. But where do I start? The future of Africa is really bleak - even if we were able to erradicate AIDS today! So what if I try to help, can I even make a tiny dent? Mr. Lewis mentions that because AIDS has been destroying communities in Africa for the past two decades, in many towns and villages throughout the continent there are no adults! Everyone between the ages of 20 and 50 are dead! The elderly are too old to work the land, and the young haven't had anyone to teach them life/survival skills. So people are starving to death while living on fertile soil. In many cases a child as young as 8 - the oldest in the family - was left to care for their younger siblings, as both parents and grandparents had died. Where do we start!!?!?!

I did develop some ideas that I will post in a future blog...

But for the purposes of this entry, I want to applaud someone who has decided to do something: Bono. His RED campaign is truly remarkable. The problems facing Africa are so daunting that anyone who actually stands up and does something deserves a true salute. If their efforts fail to meet their goals, then we need to reasess - rather than decry. I started writing this post after reading an article in AdAge that really troubled me. AdAge effectively called Bono’s campaign a failure (excerpt below). Their facts seem skewed... but even if their facts are correct, as I wrote above, coming down hard on Bono is just plain dumb. Convincing as many companies as he did to incorporate a “real” cause into their products, raise money, and more importantly raise awareness about Aids in Africa is an amazing accomplishment.

Please let me know what your thoughts are on Bono's efforts. And if you think his efforts are flawed, please offer some suggestions to fix them...

Excerpt:
Costly Red Campaign Reaps Meager $18 Million

Bono & Co. Spend up to $100 Million on Marketing, Incur Watchdogs’ Wrath

The Red charity advertising campaign endorsed so lavishly by Hollywood celebrities including Bono, Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, Christy Turlington and Chris Rock has taken in only $18 million worldwide since it was launched a year ago. And the disproportionate ratio between the marketing outlay and the money raised is drawing concern among nonprofit watchdogs, cause-marketing experts and even executives in the ad business...

Labels: Activism, AIDS, Human_Rights

This entry was posted on Mar 6, 2007 at 3/06/2007 12:04:00 AM. There are . If you want, you can leave your own response by clicking here. You may also send this post to a friend of yours via email, or bookmark it for yourself by using icons below;

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Israel Defending itself

I have one question maybe someone can answer. After 9/11, America went (with the full support of the world - both ideologically and militarily) to Afghanistan, and blew the shit out of that country. Note the US traveled half way around the world to do this - it was that high of a threat.

The logic was that Afghanistan had been hijacked by the Taliban, and that since the country couldn't do anything about the Taliban, the US and several other countries had to go in and take care of the problem.

Would civilians die? Yes. Would infrastructure be torn apart? Yes. Did anyone seem to care? Not really.

So, as for my question. With noting the facts above... How is the situation Israel is confronting now ANY DIFFERENT? Other than Hezbollah is still lobing bombs 9 days in a row, and is sitting on Israel's border, a few hundred feet away, not half a world away?

I've certainly developed more "left-leaning" ideas in the past few years... but in this case, where Israel was attacked for no reason other than what every "Arab Expert" is saying on TV "for their crimes committed since 1948"... what's going on now is outrageous.

It really makes me sick to see the news media give so much air time trying to dissect the questions of "is Israel responding too hard?" and "when will Israel stop?" and "will there be a ceasefire?"

These are totally inappropriate questions to be asking as long as Hezbollah continues to lob bombs, retain Israeli hostages, and be the instigator. Just as in Afghanistan, if Lebanon is unable to contain and control Hezbollah, they have no right to ask Israel to stop defending itself. Lebanon may not be directly responsible for Hezbolla's actions - mainly because they're not strong enough to combat Hezbollah - but they will suffer the consequences of harboring a terrorist entity.

Maybe if the UN, the EU, and the news media at large would focus on sending in their own forces to help Israel dismantle Hezbollah (as they did in the wake of 9/11), the fighting would stop, and Iran would get the same message the Saudis did - support terrorists and you'll feel the wrath of the world.

Labels: Human_Rights, Israel, ridiculous, war

This entry was posted on Jul 20, 2006 at 7/20/2006 01:28:00 AM. There are . If you want, you can leave your own response by clicking here. You may also send this post to a friend of yours via email, or bookmark it for yourself by using icons below;

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