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AN IRISH DUO planning to become the first Irish team of explorers to reach the North Pole have been forced to turn back.
The two-person team of Clare O’Leary and Mike O’Shea said it became impossible to complete the challenge when their plan to share charter logistics with other teams fell apart. The team would have needed between €120,000 and €180,000 to continue the expedition.
Mike O’Shea said that the decision to turn back had been very difficult:
We never anticipated this turn of events. It’s very hard to explain how difficult it is to walk away from an expedition into which we have invested so much time, energy and money – especially when it feels like things are going well for us.
The team had been making good progress through one of the toughest parts of the trek to the North Pole.
“We had been moving well through one of the hardest sections in a period of uncharacteristic bad weather, but with our opportunity of shared resupplies removed we were left with no choice but to return to the start point,” said O’Shea. He said that the team expect to be picked up from their start point on 15 or 16 March.
The expedition was expected to have taken between fifty and sixty days through average daily temperatures of between minus-40 and minus-60 degrees Celsius.
Expeditions to the North Pole have a success rate of around 30 per cent. If O’Shea and O’Leary had made it, they would have been the first Irish expedition to make it to the remote Arctic point.
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How about they post details of how much money donated actually reaches the victims before they go blaming the donors. Food supplies entering black Market, stealing, local corruption, lack of accountability? Don’t blame me if you want to get another donation, you are a professional charity, it’s your failure to communicate and react to the situation.
Economic issues matter more than human life. It is a shame that famine gets ignored because there is an over abundance of food in this world and yet we can’t share it. The idea that governments running these country’s that are famine hit are keeping funding and food supplies is also sickening. Something needs to be done but if governments stop aid from getting to the people that need it, then UN should be the ones policing this yet they seem to be unresponsive as they do not want conflict even though it means saving lives.
“I want proof”, in another words “I know well its happening, I just want to relieve myself of the guilt of it by pretending I think its not happening”
Foreign aid is killing Africa, a number of African economists have written about it. The West is failing to grasp that the intuitive thing to do doesn’t always solve a problem.
2012…and this is still happening,all the charities are doing thier best but still not enough…were do we go from here…is heartbreaking to see a human like this…
A lot of this is due in no small part to the IMF, this is the style their help comes in. Too many of the African countries that received or were put in a position to accept such loans had to face severe austerity or hand over rights to mineral or other national resources to the IMF and global corporations. Slowly stripping these countries with even the means to finance the ability to repay its loans.
Sounds familiar today doesn’t it?
The value of human life is shocking. They shipped my cousin with an automatic weapon on his back to Afghanistan in a heart beat (unfortunately he was happy to go) but mobilize to help starving children. use a super power to cut out the corruption, the back handers and get the food directly to those who need it and help them actually build their country properly…………not today pal. John Pilger made a great documentary in which he stated that in the 85-86 after live aid Africa gave more cash to the west than we gave them. I think bono would have more success for his cause if he organised mass protests in front of world bank and IMF head quarters instead of throwing a gig.
incredible that the wikipedia story gets more views than this
@ Harry I agree but I think people bury their head in the sand when it comes to these types of stories and particularly with that heart wrenching picture of the (probably now deceased) child. Its just mind boggling how one half of the world is up to its eyeballs in an obesity epidemic but these poor people are left to waste and die.
The western governments, huge private companies (is there a difference?) and the animals the west uses to control and rape these countries of there natural resources are completely responsible.
I am so sorry but I can not read this or look at the pictures .Too horrific . I can donate to charities …. Was it lways so bad through the decades and centuries in these places ?? Or is this an historically recent phenonomon ? I am sorry if I am displaying ignorance,I do not want to offend anyone.
Charities really just don’t cut it when it comes to issues on this scale, yet the members of the government don’t need to worry about someone dying if it’s not in their family.
It also doesn’t help that there are 10 different charities with the same goal. Can’t see why they don’t just amalgamate into one, would save costs on admin and other stuff too.
How the western nations attempts at a painfree solution to the crisis of their own making is crippling developing nations.
http://economichorizon.blogspot.com/2010/11/sound-dollar.html
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