 17 Apr 2005 @ 07:30, by Tlingel
Picture: Coluche, a French actor, an officer and a gentleman a clown and a comedian, created the "Restos du coeur" for the poor and homeless. He died in a road accident in 1986. He remains one of France's most popular comedians persons.
Aujourd'hui, on n'a plus le droit
Ni d'avoir faim, ni d'avoir froid
Dépassé le chacun pour soi
Quand je pense à toi, je pense à moi
(...)
J'ai pas mauvaise conscience
Ça m'empêche pas d'dormir
Mais pour tout dire, ça gâche un peu le goût d'mes plaisirs
C'est pas vraiment ma faute si y'en a qui ont faim
Mais ça le deviendrait, si on n'y change rien
—Les Restos du coeur 86 
(Jean-Jacques Goldman)
* The Turn of the Century
by Wislawa Szymborska
(translated by J.M.Trzeciak)
It was supposed to be better than the others, our 20th century,
But it won't have time to prove it.
Its years are numbered,
its step unsteady,
its breath short.
Already too much has happened
that was not supposed to happen.
What was to come about
has not.
Spring was to be on its way,
and happiness, among other things.
Fear was to leave the mountains and valleys.
The truth was supposed to finish before the lie.
Certain misfortunes
were never to happen again
such as war and hunger and so forth.
These were to be respected:
the defenselessness of the defenseless,
trust and the like.
Whoever wanted to enjoy the world
faces an impossible task.
Stupidity is not funny.
Wisdom isn't jolly.
Hope
Is no longer the same young girl
et cetera. Alas.
God was at last to believe in man:
good and strong,
but good and strong
are still two different people.
How to live--someone asked me this in a letter,
someone I had wanted
to ask that very thing.
Again and as always,
and as seen above
there are no questions more urgent
than the naive ones.
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1. Between 8 and 9 million people die each year because they are too poor to survive.
2. Though it's not easy to see it from the well-fed West, a third of the world goes hungry.
3. 31% of the World's urban population lives in slums.
4. 100 million people have no housing.
5. Five years after almost every single country in the world signed up to new pledges (Millennium Development Goals) on eliminating global poverty, scarcely any progress has been made.
We are the first generation that can look extreme poverty in the eye, and say this and mean it – we have the cash, we have the drugs, we have the science. Do we have the will to make poverty history?
—Bono, September 2004
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• Related NCN Entry: Top Problems and Solutions
• UNA-USA's National High School Essay Contest:
read the winning essays
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