at the closing of the year

This just in from Time Magazine Person of the Year Bono:

Thank you for starting a movement to save lives. Thank you for asking your friends and family to join ONE.org. Thank you for calling on the President, Congress and the heart of America to do more for the world's poor.

Thank you for being one of the first 2 million of us crazy enough to say America won't stand for global AIDS and stupid poverty. And thank you to the people who joined campaigns in other countries to make their governments come to the table and do more for the world's poor.

Thank you for the concrete results that came from calling on America to invest more in fighting poverty and disease in Africa and around the world. In July, the whole world heard you: the leaders of the 8 richest nations - the G8 - pledged an additional $50 billion annually to poor countries by 2010, half of it for Africa.

Already our money is getting results. Thank you America for putting over half a million people on life-saving AIDS medicines and leading an effort that has provided 8 million anti-malaria bednets and treated 1 million people with TB. And thank you for pushing our governments to use this money to provide AIDS drugs to everyone who needs them and basic schooling for every child.

Thank you for being part of a campaign that will cancel the crushing debts of up to 36 countries, and more to come.

Thank you to the people who called on government to act and thank you to the people in government, who started to listen and who will have to make sure we keep these historic promises and build upon them.

We must keep the positive pressure on our leaders if we want them to follow through. Americans must give these leaders permission to invest just a fraction more of the budget in what we know works, from $5 mosquito nets to drug treatments that cost pennies apiece.

If ONE thing is certain for 2006, this campaign will keep growing, your voice will grow louder, your compassion and thirst for justice will keep saving more lives. By 2008, ONE needs to have 5 million supporters, each of us doing what we can, learning more, telling friends, calling Congress.

Take one minute and ask three friends to join ONE and make the impossible possible with you in 2006.

Beating AIDS and extreme, stupid poverty, this is our moon shot. This is our generation's civil rights struggle, our anti-apartheid movement. This is what the history books will remember our generation for — or blame us for, if we fail. We can't afford to fail nor will we.

We've come a long way, and we've got a long way to go. Now let's really get started.

Thank you,

Bono