Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott’s house — he’s lost his entire house — there’s going to be a fantastic house. And I’m looking forward to sitting on the porch.

- George W Bush, Mobile (Alabama), 2.9.05 (source)

Football stadia have been symbols of the worst moments in their nations’ history in a few countries over the past four decades. In Chile, Afghanistan, Iraq, football stadia have been the scene of torture and public executions. The New Orleans Superdome stands as a monument to a different kind of torture and death, the result of governmental incompetence and neglect.

Thousands of people entered the Superdome, seeing it as a place of shelter from the hurricane outside. They would never had expected the betrayal of trust, the indifference of the institutions responsible for the safety and security of all American citizens.

It can be argued that it is still not the time to play politics and point fingers over issues such as the existence of global warming, the deployment of National Guard troops to Iraq, the tampering with the path of the Mississippi River and so on. But one cannot ignore the screamingly obvious - that government at federal, state and local levels have all failed to cope with a catastrophe which was always a risk.

I mean to say, a large city built below sea level in a hurricane belt - where was the disaster plan?

It’s not political to say that Bush’s display of leadership over the past week has been utterly dreadful. His speech from the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday was described in a New York Times editorial as one of his worst. His major priority on Thursday was to bring in daddy and Bill Clinton as celebrity fundraisers. And on Friday it was important to single out the loss of Senator Trent Lott’s mansion as a symbol of the Gulf Coast homeless.

Vice President Dick Cheney was on holiday in Wyoming until Thursday, when he returned to Washington DC. I have seen no evidence that he has done anything since then, let alone provide leadership and support to the people of New Orleans and beyond. But maybe he is hot on the trail of irrefutable evidence that the Iranian government was responsible for Hurricane Katrina.

When the time for inquest arrives, there should be a litany of senior administrators and public servants held responsible for criminal negligence over the tragic debacle of the past week (and, of course, still going). Is it too much to ask for the President to be impeached on charges of manslaughter?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/15/opinion/15tonme.html

Cameroun international law consultant Jean-Claude Shanda Tonme has his say on the uselessness of Live 8.

London get the 2012 Olympics. New South Wales flog Queensland in SOO3. What an eventful five minutes.

Now, let’s concentrate on the G8. Several options for live audio from the Radical Radio Coalition’s G8 Audio website.

I haven’t found an exact quote, but Bob Geldof has been reported as saying that “three billion” people were watching the telecasts of the Live 8 concerts.

Which begs the question: If global poverty is such a big problem, then how come half of the world’s population has access to a television set?

If you care, here’s the home page of BBC’s coverage of the concerts. Better still, keep an eye on the Make Poverty History website, which includes live links to the Indymedia audio coverage of protests in Edinburgh.

I wasn’t going to mention him again before that old boys’ reunion concert next month, but it’s good to see the world’s most prominent spiritual leader telling the Pope what to do…

http://au.launch.yahoo.com/050621/11/4×5n.html

I’m going to try and make this my final word on Barnacle Bob Geldof and the Good Ol’ Boys concerts, brought to you by AOL, Clear Channel, and Corporate Boxholders Unlike You.

Not to mention the following corporation. This press release overnight from the India Resource Centre:

Coca-Cola Must Not Sponsor Live 8
Coca-Cola’s Egregious Record in India and Colombia Antithetical to Live 8 Goals

June 15, 2005 (London): The India Resource Centre and its allies are expressing serious concerns over news that Live 8 is in negotiations with the Coca-Cola company to seek sponsorship for the Live 8 concert.

Coca-Cola’s sponsorship of Live 8 is completely antithetical to the goals of Live 8 and the India Resource Centre and its allies are demanding that Live 8 organizers immediately discontinue negotiations with the Coca-Cola company.

The Coca-Cola company is the target of intense campaigns by community groups in India and internationally.

Thousands of rural Indians are facing severe water shortages and polluted groundwater and land - directly as a result of Coca-Cola’s operations. The company has also distributed its toxic waste to farmers around its plants under the guise of fertilizer, and Coca-Cola sells products in the Indian marketplace with high levels of pesticides that could never be sold in the US or EU because they do not meet US and EU standards.

Coca-Cola’s crimes in India are no small matter. In a country where over 70% of the population still makes a living related to agriculture, taking away the water and poisoning the remaining water and land is a sure recipe for disaster. Thousands in India have lost their livelihoods, and in a country where over 40% of the population lives below the poverty line, the difference between life and death is a fine line.

Coca-Cola’s main Latin American bottler, Panamco, is on trial in the US for hiring right wing paramilitaries to kill and intimidate union leaders in Colombia. Since 1989, eight trade union leaders from Coca-Cola bottling plants have been murdered by paramilitary forces, and the lawsuit, filed by the United Steel Workers of America, charges that the paramilitary worked with the blessing of, or in collaboration with, company management.

A formidable international campaign has emerged to hold the Coca-Cola company accountable for the serious crimes it is committing against humanity.

It is simply not acceptable to the India Resource Centre and its allies that Live 8 seek the sponsorship of a company that is perpetuating poverty in India and promoting a reign of terror in Colombia.

The Live 8 organization will become the target of the India Resource Centre and its allies if it chooses to proceed with an invitation to the Coca-Cola company as a sponsor.

“Coca-Cola is responsible for creating severe water shortages and pollution in India, and thousands have lost their livelihoods as a result. It is absurd to think that a poverty creating company can sponsor a poverty alleviating endeavor such as Live 8,” said Amit Srivastava, director of the India Resource Centre which campaigns with Indian communities to hold Coca-Cola accountable.

The India Resource Centre is a bi-national (India-US) campaigning organization working to support local struggles against corporate abuses.

For more information, visit www.IndiaResource.org

Finally, this thread from the Guardian’s newsblog.

“Naive and stupid” is an expression I generally associate with the totality of Shane Warne’s off-field career. But it fits perfectly in describing Bob Geldof’s approach to his latest competition entry for the Nobel Peace Prize… namely the Live 8 concerts.

A noble (no pun intended) cause for sure, publicising the issue of third world poverty and timed to coincide with the G8 meeting in Edinburgh. So why has he announced, at short notice, a string of Boring Old Farts rock concerts which sound sadly like Live Aid 1985 revisited.

I have nothing against the original Live Aid. I enjoyed it. I put it all onto VHS tape, complete with titles inserted via software on my Commodore 64. (64K of RAM, one 170K external 5.25 inch floppy drive, no telecomm connection… sigh those were the days!) Mind you, the tapes have long since been chucked out by virtue of old age. And that’s what should be done with the Live Aid approach. It’s so 1985…

Geldof’s myopic vision for Live 8 was borne out when his original guest list was released. (I do look forward to the National Geographic documentary on The Disenbalming of Midge Ure.) No non-white artists, no one from the continent whose children the father of Fifi Trixibelle, Peaches Honeyblossom and Pixie is endeavouring to save.

One can just imagine the reaction at Chateau Geldof:
Oh. Erm. Woops. Let me make a quick phone call…….. Of course we’ll have African performers at Live 8. Youssou N’dour is going to appear in my concert. In fact, he’ll appear in two concerts!

So Youssou N’dour is once more, as he has been for nearly two decades of stadium charity gigs, the Token African Artist.

As a Geldof spokesperson was quoted by the Guardian on June 2 as saying:

“Bob had just three weeks to put it all together, and he went to his address book and rang the people that he knew…”

Lots of questions beg there. And I haven’t even started on the silly stunts of sending rowboats over the English Channel to bring protestors to Edinburgh (let me check that map of Great Britain again), or of getting the schoolkiddies of the UK to wag two days of school to wave placards in front of distant barricades miles from the G8 conference.

The danger here is that third world poverty will be deflected into becoming another “cause celebre of the month”, which is a fate that seems to have befallen the victims of the December 26 tsunami in the eyes of the West. If Bob Geldof is not careful (and he hasn’t shown much care to date), Live 8 will succeed only in trivialising a serious global crisis and adding another line to his annual Nobel Prize nomination CV (which, hopefully, the Nobel Committee will never fall for).

Today’s kiddies and MIX-FM jocks seem oblivious to the fact that Geldof’s band, the Boomtown Rats, recorded many - and better - songs other than “I Don’t Like Mondays”. May I commend the song entitled “Elephant’s Graveyard”…

A few references for further reading: the Guardian’s coverage of the leadup to G8, Geldoffest and all; the G8 Gleneagles website; the UK Make Poverty History website; the Inter Press Service’s development news section; and the official Live 8 website.

The United Nations’ Department of Public Information has released its second annual list of Ten Stories The World Needs To Know. These should be compulsory topics for media coverage and national debate… and asking the question What Are We Going To Do About Them?

The ten stories for 2005 are:

• Somalia: Steps on a path to fragile peace in a shattered country
• Tragic blind spot in health care for women
• Northern Uganda: A humanitarian crisis that demands sustained focus
• Sierra Leone: Building on a hard-won peace
• Actors for change: The growth of human rights institutions
• Cameroon: Farming in the Dark
• Island after the hurricane: Grenada struggles to recover from devastation
• Behind closed doors: Violence against women
• A viable alternative: curbing illicit drugs through development
• Environment and health: New insights into spread of infectious diseases

(The Ten Stories site links to features on each of these.)

There’s a 90 minute video (Real video) of the launch of the 2005 Ten Stories list as part of May 3’s World Press Freedom Day.

It’s worth noting the inaugural list from 2004.

I’d love to see an NRL team do something similar to this!

The Guardian of October 19 reported that Inter Milan has donated €5000, an ambulance and the number 4 jumper of Javier Zanetti to the Zapatista guerrilla army in the Chiapas region of Southern Mexico.

So when will we see, say, the Wests Tigers supporting the West Papuans? The North Queensland Cowboys backing the Bouganvilleans? The Melbourne Storm sponsoring the People’s Republic of Sunraysia??

Bono Watch: The lad got a gig as guest speaker at the UK Labour Party conference on Wednesday. He addressed the party faithful with his DATA hat on, describing Tony Blair and Gordon Brown as the John Lennon and Paul McCartney of world development. I don’t remember Paul secretly plotting for John’s place in the Beatles.

Here is the transcript of his address to the Labour Party conference. It can also be found on the DATA website, the official U2 website, and the @U2 fan website.

Reports on the speech from the Guardian’s Kevin Maguire and Simon Hoggart. On the other side of the fence, the Telegraph reported his speech by quoting four paragraphs without comment. Oxfam issued a press release coinciding with Bono’s speech, while the BBC website has video of his address.

Before the conference began, Gordon Brown signalled that the British Government will pay off 10% of the money owed by the world’s poorest countries to the World Bank and the African Development Bank. Report in the Guardian.

The G7 Board of Governors annual meeting will be held in Washington this weekend.