If you haven't already visited http://www.one.org/, than you ought to immediately. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, do not get a snack from the fridge. Just check it out and if like what the campaign is about, sign the letter to President Bush urging him to do more to help the poorest of the poor nations by getting serious about debt relief for these nations.
Lots of pop/rock/rap/etc. stars are participating in concerts around the world this weekend to bring publicity to the cause. (Bono and Bob Geldof are the driving musical forces behind the event.) It is well timed as the big summit of the G8 powers is happening this coming week. What the little old people like you and I can do is make sure that our leaders know we are concerned and take this problem seriously.
If you haven't heard about the ONE campaign, here is a brief description from the web site:
"ONE is a new effort by Americans to rally Americans – ONE by ONE – to fight the emergency of global AIDS and extreme poverty. The ONE Campaign is engaging Americans through a diverse coalition of faith-based and anti-poverty organizers to show the steps people can take, ONE by ONE, to fight global AIDS and poverty."
REMEMBER - While many of us our enjoying our summer vacations:
38 million people around the world are infected with HIV/AIDSBottom Line - There is a lot of work to do. One concert isn't going to change everything. One petition isn't going to change everything. But one small step at a time, we can change things if we work together.
1 in 5 people around the world live on an income of less than $1 per day
104 million children around the world do not attend grade school
1 person in 7 has no access to clean water for drinking, cooking or washing.
1 person in 7 suffers from hunger
Millions of the world's children have become orphans because of AIDS, war, or other causes
Instead of spending money on these problems, many governments around the world are spending money paying back debt to the world's wealthy nations and international institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Every year Sub-Saharan Africa, the poorest region of the world, spends $14.5 billion dollars repaying debts.
Many of the poorest nations have governments that are rife with corruption.
1 comment:
Hey Coraggio! I'm at Princeton right now and taking a really amazing foreign policy class, and I was wondering if I could have some advice for my research paper.
I'm writing my foreign policy paper on how the US has lost all of its soft power (not economic/military, but the intangible powers) and how its in a crisis state because without soft power to back up hard power, there's only a 50/50 chance that the threat of hard power will actually work to secure our wants/needs.
In my paper im going to suggest that the best way to regain our political and influential power as well as credibility and respectability is to first and foremost cease torture policy to set an example for the rest of the world as well as to give ourselves the right to monitor human rights violations in other nations. However, I have to review alternative ideas for solving the problem of a lack of soft power and discuss their merit, then prove why they aren't as good as my plan for solution. If you have any ideas for other methods to solve the problem or information to back up my plan of action, feel free to let me know :-D
email me at kendlina@yahoo.com or post on my xanga (I have a picture of my dorm at Princeton on there, you should check it out)
http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=Kendlina
Happy 4th of July!
-kendle
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