Should Canada stop/withhold/redirect funding from UN Agencies that are not competent
- Thread starter Goober
- Start date
Pero's, we don't do it because the UN asks, we do it because Bono asks. When Bono speaks, he's listened to, he is a pop musician after all.
Yeah screw that! If you really want to know what is really going on what you do is ask a politician or a member of top brass government and they will tell you what's what and where the money should really go. Like Muskoka in Tony Clement's riding for example.
It's simple, go to Africa and spend a little time there. You'll get it before long. People need help and there are those who want to help them but lack the money and support to do that. Along with those who want to control the people by fear and murder, there are also scam artists who love to soak the West for aid. Often both groups have plenty of guns to back them up. Also part of the aid sent from developed countries. Those politicians don't talk about that part very much.
If nothing at all is spent on support for Africa by the West, Bono doesn't lose anything. He's not connected to the Teat of Government Spending. But he has a couple of things that most politicians don't have. A relationship with some of the poorest people in the world and a huge platform to speak from.
Neil Peart said that Africa is a continent that was hard to see into and hard to see out of. Like here, they are after you take away the brutal dictators, violent chieftains, militants and takers, the people are just people. Trying to get from one pay check to the next. Most of them need help.
But you can't just march into a country and start doing this and that. You have to parley with those who run the show there and sometimes you're going to get burned. We need to accept that and focus rather on the women and children who fetch water from a distant well, work for their living in the road side markets and make what they have stretch to meet the length of the day.
If you are so worried about being ripped off, consider how many times a year someone takes advantage of you and if need be, don't spend another dime on anything until you can guarantee that you will never be ripped off again.
While that sounds far fetched, it's what you're say we do with Africa.
I respect your reasoning but I am personally more concerned about the situation at home, I would rather gamble our money on our own people opposed to people in a distant land with little return on the investment. It is not out duty or obligation to fix the various problems in Africa, the various countries of the continent need to figure that out them selves.
We caused plenty of them not to mention our wealth next to the wealth of the average African. Forget religion, morals dictate we reduce needless suffering when we can when we see it.
No one in Canada is without potable water for any other reason than greed. There is no one here that can't be cared for by the social infrastructure we have in place. If you work for it, you can bring yourself out of poverty here. Not in Africa. There is a huge difference.
Our problem isn't that we don't have enough, but instead we don't care enough.
Forgive my ignorance of Africa, but what specifically has Canada done to Africa or are you speaking of a broader Western guilt? If morals dictate we fix what is broken, we would run out of money quick. There are many other underdeveloped and extremely poor countries besides the African one's, they don't seem to get the Bono endorsement though.
We have had many cases of reserves having substandard drinking water in the past which cannot be blamed solely on greed, incompetence and poor planning/design being big contributers as well. It's a delusional pipe dream to think that we can lift Africa out of poverty, it will never happen. We have been shoveling money over there for decades now with little positive results.
You're right, we don't care enough but perhaps that it is due to donor fatigue, shoveling money into a bottomless pit of corruption & waste.
Yes indeed... I agree 100%. And like many bogus charities I would bet that much of that money lines individuals pockets instead of the people that need it.
Others with more knowledge have answered.
It does not mean much as nobody pays attention and it is not enforced.
The Peacekeeping that worked only worked when the combatants were done fighting.
What did the UN do there? Just asking as I don't know.
Again, not enforced and there is no will or means for the UN to enforce it when a nation refuses to abide.
Well for starters Africa is a continent not a country. There are many countries within Africa.
Colonization that often traded guns for Ivory, Nuts and Palm oil is the basis for it. It lead eventually to a destabilized politically and socially. Infrastructure was created to serve European investment and boundaries were drawn up based on their wishes. Amalgamation of some 10,000 pre-existing political units into about 40 and at the same time communities bisected and trisected which mostly reflects the countries today.
It's not at all outrageous to think we could have perfectly good drinking water on all reserves in Canada. Before the year is out. We just don't want to waste any more money on those damn Indians. Of course there are a number of Aboriginals who get it and are front and center to bring clean drinking water to the poor reserves through out Canada. Most are dirty dealing and live quite nicely off the skimming they do thank you very much. Just try and say this guy or that guy is a thief and watch the human rights cases fly over those racist comments. Of course you could just put a few good people on it and the same guys who line their pockets will be standing up with guns and warriors in road blocks because the treaties aren't being honoured. Anything to slow the flow you know. But it's not like we couldn't have clean water on reserves if we wanted to. It just doesn't matter if a few vulnerable bite it while we jockey our committees around.
There are positive results but we don't see them much at all. All those religions who need money for the children are doing pretty good with their signing the locals up with Jesus. Nice missionaries, with scenic views and lots of bibles.
If corruption and waste is in the system it's our duty to clean it up. We dole out the money and aid and we choose who it goes to. If we're making bad choices that way we need to change those people who dole it out so that the aid gets where it's supposed to go.
If Churchy isn't getting the job done, then fine someone else. I don't know about corruption and waste in Bono and Bob Geldoff's system but I bet it's not as bad as the status quo running now.
Your whole line seems to be off on a tangent but one point I will raise to you, is that Canada wasn't even around as a nation to be involved in colonial Africa. Sure, we were around for the end but we were only a fledging nation ourselves, so saying Canada is to blame for the ills there is a bit of a stretch. We've tried to help at times, with mixed results, but it has never really been our mess to feel guilty about. We have our own here at home.
If corruption and waste are part of the existing culture, then the only sure way to eliminate it is to refuse to supply any aid or do any business with those who support that culture... in other words, let them sort themselves out. We can't make choices for others, and its as wrong of us (if not worse in some cases) to support bad choices as to just let people deal with their own problems.
If corruption and waste are part of the existing culture, then the only sure way to eliminate it is to refuse to supply any aid or do any business with those who support that culture... in other words, let them sort themselves out. We can't make choices for others, and its as wrong of us (if not worse in some cases) to support bad choices as to just let people deal with their own problems.
You keep speaking generalities about the problems we have created within Africa, that's how I replied to it. I am well aware that Africa is a continent.
I don't recall Canada colonizing any countries within Africa, so why exactly does Canada have to fix the problems there?
Canada as part of her Royal Majesty's Empire ay one time are very much responsible for the problems in Africa. Cutting it into countries without regard to tribal territorial boundary's.
If that's the case, then Barbados, Bahamas, Australia even Ghana etc etc are also responsible for imperialism in Africa?
I'll correct you there. The colonies are still victims of HRM.. We ought to be getting big-fat bonus cheques along with the African nations to compensate for the heinous psychological damages thrust upon us in the past and continuing into the future.
You see ironsides, we Canadians are but hapless victims in this ongoing saga and only money will wash away the painful memories and act as a very small start to aiding our wee nation in achieving the potential that we Canadians know we are capable of.
That said, please make out your cheque, money order or certified funds to:
Captain Morgan
c/o Compensation for Colonized Canadians (CCC)
1234 Beaver Street
Canada.
PS - Tell your friends and neighbours: Also, I'll be accepting Visa, MC and AMEX soon!
You're kidding right? Canada was involved in the Boer war on behalf of Imperial Britain's colonization of Africa.
We sent troops there to fight. Further, there have been and currently are Canadian companies in mining and oil resource management in Africa today. Many of the people that had to evac from Lybia are there working for Canadian companies. All those resources didn't just dig themselves up and make their way to Canadian refineries all on their own.
Preposterous! Taking that advice we would not do a single thing because there sometimes are bad things that come with the good. Some people cheat on their taxes, go ahead and try not paying yours and see where that gets you.
Set aside for a moment the moral obligation for those with to help those without, your argument fails in the same way that someone arguing the US shouldn't help Canada should it come to pass, because what has Canada to do with the US? Or why should Canada help the US.
We've taken huge amounts of resources out of Africa not to mention many of the smartest people there in the brain drain of Africa.
You can as it is your right, sit next to a starving kid and eat most of a huge hamburger and feed the rest to the pigeons all you want. But that doesn't mean everyone has to.
People in Africa are suffering. Some of that suffering is caused by people of our country. There is a history between the people of Canada and the people of Africa. We should acknowledge that and pay our respects not just as a good and upstanding country, but as brothers and sisters to those people there who are good people just like you find here. That kind of thing could use a little support too.
There are a lot of fingers in that pie mate. I will say that someone's refusal of a moral debt, doesn't change that of your own one iota.
Remember when we used to go around at Halloween with UNICEF boxes to collect change that funded the Small Pox/Polio program instead of illegal flat taxes on our GDP? I do. At that time vaccines were public domain too and dirt cheap.
Why not recognize the moral and ethical obligation of those people to pull themselves out of the crushing poverty that they are in... What about the moral obligation to take care of those that kick into the kitty first - as promised - before you bankrupt a nation in a futile attempt to provide temporary, band-aid solutions to those nations that have consistently not cared about solving their own problems.
They were stolen, were they?.. Those African nations never saw any investment dollars filter through their economy? No infrastructure development that brought them from the stone-age into the 21st century? No roads, hospitals, schools or libraries?
Make no mistake on the resources issue, these nations are getting a fat slice of the pie, but the problem is that the dictatorial regimes are pocketing the cash at the expense of the people that they represent.
You wanna talk about moral obligations some more?
I can sit next to a starving kid in Toronto, Vancouver or Winnipeg. Africa doesn't have an exclusive on poverty of personal problems... On that note, at some point, the participants in the baby-making process may wish to consider bringing a kid into their own world wherein they can't even feed themselves, let alone an infant.
It wasn't colonization that is forcing these populations to extend themselves far beyond what their capabilities will allow.
People in Weyburn Sask are suffering as a result of Canadian tax dollars being diverted from Canada to Africa.
Where is your moral indignation on this issue or are the peoples of Africa more morally deserving than an impoverished family in Canada?
Wait until fuel prices jump again because oil pumping in SE SK and West MB has halted. I can hear it already.
Sure. We (as a fledgling nation) sent troops on behalf of the British Empire and their interests. That doesn't put us on the hook for all the ills that the colonial powers inflicted on Africa, Asia or Australia. WE are a former colony ourselves.
Well, I won't argue that Canadian companies aren't operating in Africa (Talisman has a much publicized field in the Sudan, just for one example) but a) you are overstating our presence there: Canadian companies are bit-players in Africa and b) that is between the gov't of the country the houses the resource/development and the companies involved, not the Canadian people as a whole. As far as the oil in Canadian refineries, the vast majority of it is coming from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (including the oil sands), not from Libya, Nigeria or anywhere else in Africa.
No, what you are talking about is feeding self-destructive societies (ones that let corruption, graft and nepotism rule the way things are done). We have no moral obligation to those people. One could argue we have no moral obligation to anyone that we do no wrong to, and to be honest, Canada has spent billions of dollars on African aid over the decades, and to what end?
Whats this "we" stuff? You have worms or something? As for the brain drain aspect, many nations have to deal with this: Canada has deal with losing some of our best and brightest to the US and Europe. The answer is create an environment for your professionals and great thinkers to thrive at home, but some people are always going to want something more or to see something different.
Nice exagerated analogy but you are correct: there is no Canadian obligation to feed Africa.
Again, there is no Canadian debt to Africa. We may have debts to others (i.e. some of our own indigenous people) but we owe Africa nothing. That is not to say we shouldn't help if we can but we don't have to, and if we decide not to, its nothing for anyone to lay a guilt trip on us about, anymore than wars and famines in other parts of the globe.