Poor people have been around for far too long.
Live 8 is a series of concerts and events across the world which are being staged to highlight the problem of global poverty. It's a chance for ordinary people to call on world leaders at this year's G8 summit and tell them to put a stop to the needless deaths of 30,000 children every single day.
You want to stop the deaths of tens of thousands of children every day? Outlaw abortion.
You want to put an end to poverty in Africa? Topple every single brutal, corrupt government on that continent.
Take, for example, Nigeria. Nigeria's past rulers stole or misused some $400 billion during the last four decades of the 20th century,
Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, the chairman of Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, said $400 billion was "squandered" between independence from Britain in 1960 and the return of civilian rule in 1999. The $400 billion is about the same amount of ALL western aid to Africa in the last 40 years.
And then there's this from townhall.com.
What happened to the $2 billion raised with Live Aid? Moreover, over the last decade government and private charities have poured over $25 billion into Africa for seemingly little effect? In fact, Africa has had an aggregate g.d.p. reduction of about 25 percent since the Live Aid concerts two decades ago. Without question the issue at hand is poverty in Africa, but overlooked by well meaning rockers is that as long as tyrannical governments control the distribution of funds those targeted for relief never get it. Starvation is indeed a problem in many parts of Africa, most especially in the Sudan. But in this nation emergency food relief sent by the U.S. and others is used as a weapon to subjugate designated enemies of the government. This has been a pattern observed earlier in Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea. ...As Peter Baur, the father of development economics once noted, "foreign aid is little more than poor people in rich countries giving money to rich people in poor countries." ...Surely this should have been learned from prior experience. Unfortunately when it comes to aid, the lessons of the past are either ignored or are bypassed by the expression of good will.
If you list the world's poorest countries from Sudan to Burma to North Korea, you'll see that they are also the most repressive and corrupt.
The Live 8 organizers want the G-8 nations to double aid to poor nations, drop their debt and make trade laws fair (whatever that means). Well, that sounds simple enough. And then we'll end war by just refusing to fight. After all, what if they held a war and nobody came? And hey, as long as we're at it, let's end world hunger by feeding everyone.
These people are simpletons. More aid and less debt for Africa will just mean more corruption and more poverty.
“The big elephant in the room is African governments. Africa has been totally mismanaged and misruled in the past decade, but nobody wants to talk about that because of political correctness. Africa's begging bowl leaks horribly. As a matter of fact, the African Union itself estimated that every year corruption alone costs Africa $148 billion. If African leaders could cut that in half, they'll find more money than what Tony Blair is trying to raise for them.” - George Ayittey, economics professor at American University
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