The ONE Campaign

Did anyone seriously think Brad Pitt was going to open up on national TV and talk about the break-up of his marriage or whether he was actually with his sexy new co-star?

Give me a break.

God, it was painful watching Diane Sawyer attempt to probe, anyways.

You've got to admire the guy, though --- he was serious about wanting to maintain the focus on The ONE Campaign and there was a lot of good footage of Pitt and Sawyer in Ethiopia, highlighting the plight of a couple of AIDS orphans and the impact that a couple of bucks a day have on the lives of children in Africa.

It's been in the news recently in Canada that Pitt and Bono and several other celebrities have stepped forward to urge Finance Minister Ralph Goodale to cancel Africa's debt to Canada --- to wipe the slate clean and hopefully put an end to extreme poverty in some of the world's poorest nations.

As most of us know, there's a G8 summit scheduled in July and the One Campaign hopes to motivate the world's richest countries to do the altruistic thing and cancel the debt owed.

You know what was interesting? When they interviewed average Americans on the street
around Times Square and asked them how much they thought the U.S. government gave towards foreign aid each year.

Some nut jobs actually said 40%.

It's really less than 1%.

My sister turned to me at that point and said, "I wonder how much Canada gives."

"Definitely more than that," I assured her. "We give at least 2%."

Actually, I don't even know if that's true. A quick Google search indicates that in 2003, Canada donated about 0.26% of its GDP (about $3 billion) whereas the U.S. donated about 0.14%. And of course, it's important to remember that you have to take into account that the U.S. has a far greater GDP than Canada, so that comes out to even less.

Not that 0.26% is anything to brag about --- though Prime Minister Paul Martin at one point was pushing funding increase of about 8% a year until 2009. But that all went to shit.

According to Oxfam Canada, the amount low-income countries spend per day towards debt repayment is about $100 million. That's US dollars, too.

Cancelling third world debt...I really doubt that's ever going to happen.

Though...I don't get the logic: these countries owe money us money, yet we're giving them money as aid...um...doesn't that cancel each other out? Sort of?

If the G8 nations did the unthinkable and actually cancelled third world debt, it'd be awesome 'cause these nations would be able to focus on putting money towards more important things...like education. It's like that old saying goes: Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for life.

I like the fact that Pitt kept the focus on this...watched an interview this morning with Matt Lauer and Madonna --- wow. She's kinda nasty. I mean, there's a classy way to deflect personal questions and keep an interview interesting and focused on important issues and then there's the defensive, why-bother kind of interview. Pitt falls into the former category and Madonna falls into the latter.