Apparently U2 won't be coming back until November :(

I find it hard to take him that seriously when he's talking about saving the world knowing he describes himself as the Imelda Marcos of sunglasses, unfortunately. I'm sure he's done a lot of good and saved a lot of lives, but I'd be more impressed if I knew he didn't have a penchant for blowing (assumedly) zillions of dollars on something as useless as sunglasses.

I dunno. I was pretty impressed with Bono.

The sunglasses are all part of his image though, and it's that image that puts him in a position to do some good. He's also disgustingly rich so i guess he does what he likes and doesn't even have to think about cost (which he also admitted in the interview).

The problem with getting aid to africa is getting the money past the corruption. I remember hearing some expert saying that pretty much none of the money from Live Aid 1 actually made it to poverty stricken people. It just gets stolen by the governments n s***, and people like Bob Geldof and Bono were kidding themselves.

Still, I think they do a lot of good.

Yeh, I'm sure he does a lot of great stuff (as I said). He did come across pretty well overall in the interview (not that I watched the whole thing).

One thing I didn't like though was his response when asked about what he thought on the whole condom question. He pretty much dodged the issue by saying "don't asked nuns to give out condoms" - which is a fair enough policy. But I think he either dodged the question, or at best didn't understand it - my impression was Denton was asking him WHY, STILL, in this day and age when AIDS is such a problem in Africa, is the Church still a big stick in the mud when it comes to using condoms. It seems to me that they're going to save more lives than they're going to prevent.

Yes u make a good point trog. But at the same time Bono is appealing to all different sides/sectors of religion/politics/countries/etc so he's walking a fine line between where people stand on things. His fence sitting is necessary so he 1) doesn't offend any groups; and 2) gets all the different groups to contribute how they see fit.

As soon as he publicly takes a strong stance on anything, he's gonna piss off 3/4 of the people he's trying to convince to help.

Essentially, he's acting as a mediator and also encouraging groups to help in whatever way they want/can, as long as they're helping.

if countries were genuinely interested in helping africa they'd abolish their own agricultural subsidies and tarifs. until that happens any foriegn aid to africa will be trying to fix a bullet wound with a band-aid, and people like bob geldof, who i'm sure has a genuine desire to help, achieve f*** all realistically.

edit: there's also a saying which goes a little something like: "foreign aid involves poor people in rich countries giving to rich people in poor countries". While that is an exaggeration, whoever said above that the aid never reaches those who need it is right.

last edited by taggs at 14:47:49 14/Mar/06