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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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 Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 9:36 pm Post subject: Bono wants United States of Africa |
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Pop star and activist Bono has called for the creation of a United States of Africa, saying that a pan-continental identity would serve as a catalyst for resolving its conflicts.
The U2 frontman, who was in Japan to take part in a major development conference last week, said that a United States of Africa "would be the dream" in the long term.
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"I think a kind of broader African identity is going to be very important to deal with tribal tensions," Bono told Tuesday's Asahi Shimbun, where he served as a guest-editor for a special Africa edition on Saturday.
The Irish rock star said that developing a broader identity may seem largely "poetic," but has been proven successful. |
"Irish people used to always have a little giggle when they would see Americans saluting their flags in schools, and then the whole standing there, singing the flag thing," Bono said.
"But as you get to know a little bit more about things, you start to think, ah, there's so many different tribal groups in the United States, that to create a national identity of that size, they had to really work at this kind of patriotism," he said.
The African Union was created in 2002 with inspiration from the European Union, but critics say the body has lacked the funds and political will to take effective action on the continent's flashpoints.
It intervened in 2004 in the strife-torn western Sudanese region of Darfur, but has relinquished leadership to the United Nations to form a joint peacekeeping force.
However, an African Union-backed force in March for the first time removed a renegade leader in an intervention in the Comoros island of Anjouan. |
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080603032745.7qxmid9a&show_article=1
Poetic, maybe. Naive, yes. He is looking for a pan-African identity, which is fine. The reference to the United States suggests he means a pan-African nationalist identity, like Pan-Arabism or the EU. Yes. Sudan and Botswana are going to one day be one country or state, Bono.
Africa exists in the minds of the Western geo-sissy (can't think of a better word) as a promised land of hands-across-America opportunity. The reality is a tad more complicated with race (arab, black and white), tribe, language, and of course religion. Africa could do with a whole lot more anti-malaria medication and actual development and a whole lot less of Europeans imposing their view of what should be African political economy . That was the problem in the first place. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 9:39 pm Post subject: |
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| A Western European looking to influence and shape sub-Saharan African politics in his image. Never heard of that before. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 9:41 pm Post subject: |
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| Yeah, my thoughts exactly. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 9:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Big_Bird wrote: |
| It's long been one of Gaddafi's dreams... |
And in Latin America and the Caribbean, Bolivar and his successors, including Fidel Castro, have long dreamt this dream. Yet not even Central America could hold together as a single republic. Why not?
Everybody wants to be the president, the organizing authority, and no one wants to be the compromisers or what-have-you. |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 9:55 pm Post subject: |
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Plus "Africa" is an artifical term.
Different tribes, different customs, different languages...etc...it'll never fly. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 9:59 pm Post subject: |
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Right. Also, in my view, most of sub-Saharan Africa continues to reel from its only decades-old decolonization crisis. One can say that India and Pakistan and their continuing hostility reflect South Asia's still ongoing declonization crisis and recovery.
Only some Latin American and Caribbean nation-states really got on top of it recently, in the last few decades or so. Many others remain unstable, and coups, revolutions, and demagogues keep appearing here and there.
Hard to believe that Bono, clearly just another starry-eyed idealist, all too ready to delcare this and an end to that by mere fiat, has taken any time at all to inform himself on such problems as the one he seems to want to address. This notwithstanding, his music remains great. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 10:21 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| This notwithstanding, his music remains great. |
Indeed. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 11:05 pm Post subject: |
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| If the European tribes could finally stop killing each other (for the most part) and form the EU, Africans could too if they decided to. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 11:38 pm Post subject: |
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Eh. Bono is talking about a Pan-Africa as a kind fulfillment of dream to occur in the far future. And while that may be impossible in the foreseeable future, it certainly will be necessary for various Africans to resolve ethnic and national disputes, at least with their neighbors, before meaningful commercial progress and an accompanying improvement in their health and welfare can occur.
His remarks seem sensible if a bit ivory-tower. But whatever. |
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ytuque
Joined: 29 Jan 2008
Location: I drink therefore I am!
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| Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 12:45 am Post subject: |
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Isn't he starting to look a bit like Robin Williams? |
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Tiger Beer
Joined: 07 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 1:16 am Post subject: |
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Don't know what to think.
For one, there have been COUNTLESS discussion on this for YEARS already.
So I don't get if BONO is just sharing that he also thinks this is a good idea or if he is making some great gesture as if he just thought about it and wants to share this oldly rehashed idea out to the international public.
However, with the MUSLIM Africa and the SUB-SAHARAN Africa..might be easier to have different countries which separate them. I think most would say that countries like Morocco, Egypt, Ethopia have always been their own sovereign nation, so difficult to imagine them joining in with some probably Kenyan, Nigerian or South African CONTROL of the continent. Might make more sense to have larger regional nations than one large continent of 'one people'. |
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Julius
Joined: 27 Jul 2006
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| Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 6:44 am Post subject: |
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| There has been ongoing cultural genocide inflicted on many ethnicities in North Africa for centuries. If you grant eg Darfur independent statehood it would help rid them of Arab / Muslim oppression. |
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