G-8 Aid to Africa

[The Guru Kid]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wo...l=la-home-world

Does this remind anyone else of little Nicci from Faith of the Fallen?

Even if we, for a moment, forget that that money is forcefully taken from the citizens of the country, aid to Africa does not WORK!

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiege...,363663,00.html

While i'm at it, i also want to comment on a tv commercial i saw. It went something like, "This little girl [somewhere in Latin America] has to walk miles barefoot because she cannot afford shoes". um, so what? I have been in plenty Indian villages where people walk fine without shoes.

Not that i'm advocating to stop stomping on mother nature with man's evil creation of shoes, but to point out that many in the west feel that just because people do not live in the same conditions as they do, that it must be hell on earth.

[softwareNerd]

For aid to Africa to work in the long-term, that aid should target ideology and politics: change Africa's intellectual and political outlook and everything else will follow.

Currently, many altruists -- like Gates -- understand that giving someone a meal is very short term. So, they try to focus on longer term things like health care and infrastructure. However, without a change in Africa's politics, the situation will not improve dramatically.

You mention India. That's a good example (as is China), where the change that brought about the most dramatic improvement in people's lives was a change in outlook (i.e. intellectual change) and in politics.

[The Wrath]

I, for one, am sick of seeing the self-righteous hypocrisy of millionaire tax-evaders Bob Geldoff and Bono, as they bitch and moan about the fact that the G-8 leaders don't pour more tax money into "aid" programs, when that "aid" will inevitably wind up in the hands of Robert Mugabe and his ilk.