Bob Geldof, ‘Sir Bob’ as he is known in some circles has been very active in raising money to feed the hunry.

Band Aid has become internationally famous.

Band Aid is the British and Irish charity founded by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure in 1984 in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. The result of the charity drive was to collect millions of dollars in money and food that was sent to Ethiopia to help relieve the famine. It also extended the war in the region by helping to feed the soldiers who stepped up their attacks after securing food and supplies. The instability of the region continues to this day as a new war threatens to erupt because Ethiopia is invading neighboring, starving and poor Eritrea.

That is not really talked about.

Neither is that while Bob Geldof, who was apparently educated by Jesuits at a small school called Blackrock, near Dublin, is helping to feed the hungry an oil company by the name of Tullow Oil is helping to take that food out of their mouths.

The Company was founded in Dublin around 1985 and now has company headquarters registered in London. It is very much an Irish company.

Tullow began working in African market, not unlike Geldof. Like Geldof they soon found out that high profiles and large profits lie in the poorer regions of the world.

Aidan Heavey is the Group's Chief Executive. In 1986 Tullow signed a license to work in Senegal and began gas production and sales in 1987. At around the same time representatives from aid organizations that have loose ties with Bob Geldof’s project were entering the area. They were developing large scale irrigation projects to assist the local farmers bring their desert land back to life.

Within a short period of time OFADEC (Office for Development and Cooperation in Africa) and the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) were providing money and technical assistance to build irrigation projects. The water came up from the ground and soon the people were growing their own food. Then they were encouraged to plant bananas. Nearly 30 percent of Senegal’s banana crop now grows on the regions that were irrigated by the aid agencies but the people that lived on the land were pushed off. In fact Senegal has widespread hunger and disease. At the same time is has a reliable banana market that not only feeds the capital of Senegal it is used to export as a cash crop.

In 1989 they were listed on the London and Irish Stock Exchanges and later that same year started UK development.

In 1990 Tullow again took strides in the third world by taking up its first license agreement with Pakistan.

The people of Pakistan in many regions live on a near starvation diet. Their lack of planning and brutal backward government had led to US sanctions for many years. Sanctions were recently lifted and grain began flowing into Pakistan from the United States. Excess grain was diverted to North Korea. North Korea has been using their currency to buy grain on the world market but with the grain from Pakistan they were able to transfer currency to buy missile and nuclear technology from Pakistan.

Today Pakistan is ruled by a dictator and its hinterland is controlled by religious and racist fanatics.

In 1994 Tullow discovered the Sara gas field in Pakistan and started exporting from it some time in 1999.

Fueled by success and seemingly walking in the footsteps of Bob Geldof in 1996

Tullow entered Bangladesh and Côte d'Ivoire and took over rich gas and oil fields.

Hunger and starvation are not new to Bangladesh. In 2003 a report from Dhaka, Bangladesh stated that because of the region's severe droughts came with a 400 percent increase in the prices of essential left about two million people in northwestern at starvation levels. The people were subsisting on boiled weeds or banana leaves.

What was Bob up to? In 2003 Bob Geldof appeared on the television show, ‘Grumpy Old Men’.

In the year 2000 Tullow began taking over gas fields and other items in the UK Southern North Sea from British Petroleum.

In 2004 Tullow grew again by acquiring Energy Africa for $570 million and now controls another source of production and cash that used to circulate in the African economy.

Tullow Oil is becoming a leader in gas in the UK Southern North Sea and oil in West Africa. They continue to press and expand their operations in South Asia.

They are active in 16 countries most of which have chronic starvation, poor education and high levels of corruption.

Bob Geldof has had nothing but nice things to say about the American administration of George Bush, "You'll think I'm off my trolley when I say this, but the Bush administration is the most radical - in a positive sense - in its approach to Africa since Kennedy."

George Bush had this to say about Africa, “To meet a severe and urgent crisis abroad, tonight I propose the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief - a work of mercy beyond all current international efforts to help the people of Africa...I ask the Congress to commit $15 billion over the next five years, including nearly $10 billion in new money, to turn the tide against AIDS in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean." (State of the Union address, January 28, 2003)

Then :

"Next week, I will go to Africa to meet with leaders of African countries and with some of the heroic men and women who are caring for the sick and are saving lives...They deserve our help, without delay. And they will have our help." (White House news conference, July 7, 2003)

Apparently President Bush promised $15 billion over 5 years which works out to $3 billion a year to fight AIDS. It has been pointed out that in the 2004 budget request that he asked for less than half a billion dollars ($450 million) for 2005.

Instead of $3 billion per year most of the money will not be requested until 2005 and beyond. That is after President Bush has left office.

Unless Bob Geldof was making a sick joke about the fact that the United States sent a man to the moon 7 years after President Kennedy promised to do it (he had been dead those 7 years) I find it hard to understand what he was talking about.

Bob Geldof has likewise been effusive in his praise of Tony Blair and Chancellor Brown in their effort to relieve African debt by talking the poorest nations in the world to sell their debt (in bonds) on international markets in London and New York.

Bob Geldof has made some interesting music. He has brought together a wide variety of people and has brought light on starvation in suffering in many areas of the world. As soon as he has done that, however, his neighbors at Tullow have moved in and taken up their own positions – in Bangladesh, East Africa and other distressed areas of the world.

It would be right to ask what is going on when a man who is supposed to be dedicated to world hunger takes on the appearance of being an advance man for the very people he is reportedly opposing.

Geldof had three children with his first wife. They are Fifi Trixabelle, Peaches Honeyblossom and Pixie. His ex-wife killed herself after a long and protracted custody battle.

Speaking of his ex-wife and her new husband Bob Geldof is quoted as saying, “They thought they were Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall. In fact they were more like Tom and Jerry.”

If the result of Bob Geldof’s operations are only to move people off their land and turn it over to international oil and banana companies (and that certainly seems to be the case) I can only look at him as a modern Pied Piper leading the future of our humanity into a cold, dark void in the side of a mountain.