British whinge-rocker Chris Martin of Coldplay called Live 8 "the greatest thing that’s ever been in the entire history of the world." (Says Wesley Pruden: "Since ’the entire history of the world’ includes the extinction of the dinosaurs, the eruption of Krakatoa, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the construction of the pyramids, the Resurrection of Christ and man’s landing on the moon, Live 8 had to be impressive mush.") Well, we all get carried away sometimes--but the fact is that Live 8 may be one of the worst things that’s ever been, if not in the entire history of the world, at least in the history of Western aid to Africa.
Am I getting carried away now? I don’t think so. Live 8 reinforces on a massive scale, with an obscenely self-serving public spectacle, the very popular and very misguided notion that simply increasing aid to Africa will make a difference. We recently learned from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission that
in the 45 years since Britain granted independence in 1960 a succession of despots squandered $387 billion (that’s a "b," not an "m"), almost to the dollar the sum of all Western aid to all of Africa between 1960 and 1997.This news proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that money is not the issue, but that fact has been studiously ignored by all our favorite wristband-hawking celebrities. And why shouldn’t they ignore it? Asking other people to throw their money down a hole is a lot easier than, you know, doing something. But somebody’s doing something, and you’ll never believe who the Times’s Nicholas Kristof says that somebody is.
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