Samuel: come on, you’re doing the old lefty disaster: letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Of course companies, and consumers, should give more to charity, but in practice they don’t. The whole point of RED is that it recognises that far more people are going to spend £300 on a RED iPod than give it away; and companies are far more likely to spend millions advertising their products to make both themselves and charities a bit of money, than to give even that equivalent amount of money away right away.

It’s true that some people will tell themselves that buying RED trainers means they can cancel all their charity direct debits. But those people are dumb, and I doubt there are very many of them, for the simple reason that hardly anyone has charity direct debits anyway…

Bono is one my favorite contemporary hero’s. I dont know if he’s naive or quixotic about putting his faith in these corporations, Bush or any pro-establishment entity. His heart is in the right place, Im sure of this. From what I understand the 50 billion I believe that was initially asked for turned out to be a few billion. Many debts were forgiven to only be bought up by investors as vulture funds, in which once these investor bought em at a extremely reduced rate they would then demand the full amount from these 3rd world

just to respond quickly, sure.  but if these companies cared at all about what was ‘good’ for people, not just their profits (and the fact that they can market themselves as ethically sane), why not donate the advertising money instead of having it be funneled back through the profit-making apparatus?  it’s good business for these companies to do it, but it’s completely wasteful to incorporate such a type of bloated capitalism into the process.  and for the consumer, why not just say ‘screw the red campaign, let me give to oxfam’ - and buy something that’s not armani, gap, etc. (and thus innately less expensive)?  it’d be hugely more efficient.

The $100 million costs of Red were from private company marketing budgets. Converse, Armani etc are just promoting their Red products as they would their normal products. So the $25mn is a straight benefit to the Fund.

are we serious?  bono is super lame.

for one, bono’s take on trade is merely a more friendly capitalism - it does nothing to address the problems and inequities inherent in the current system of international finance.  and anyone who has a heart/has read at least one article on the subject is a proponent of debt elimination.  for two, his red campaign raised 25$ million, sure, but over 5x that was spent on marketing and advertising.  he is being used by these companies and power brokers… 5 billion for aid?  why not more?  and where does that money go?  this is seriously chump change when it comes to other government programs.  and three, we need not just one rock star to request attention… we need action from all of us.  this video is a pathetic overture to apathy; a flowery portrait of someone who has not, really, done jack for the world.

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/politicshiv/2007/03/05/re d-campaign-earns-just-18mn/

and

http://www.buylesscrap.org/