Over at East Side Mario’s at Sunridge, I’m sipping a glass of wine and reading the London Economist when a pretty waitress asks if I’m enjoying the show.
Looking up at a giant TV screen, I see a bewildering sight, a large uncouth mob of crazed individuals with their faces in contortions.
It’s all very reminiscent of the dreadful movie I’d unfortunately seen at the Sunridge Odeon Cineplex the previous day, Land of the Dead.
Well, I decidedly wasn’t going to enjoy this show anymore than the movie the day earlier.
Yet, admittedly both the entertainers and audience at Bob Geldof’s Live 8 concerts bore a stark resemblance to the crazed zombies in George A. Romero’s fantasy, and Geldof’s show was for free.
Now, following “A better way” (July 3) in which I trampled on Geldof and his associate Bono, several readers phoned and one condemned me for suggesting all the rock ‘stars’ in the Live 8 concerts were talentless and the pitch for billions of dollars in aid for Africa fraudulent.
What about Paul McCartney, one asked? OK, OK, McCartney actually is talented. But what about this—his personal fortune is conservatively estimated at half-a-billion dollars US.
Topping that off, he owns the copyrights and performance rights to hundreds of songs, and the royalties come rolling in by the day.
Rather than try to persuade governments to up taxes on us working stiffs to hike foreign aid, why doesn’t McCartney hand over his $500 million US?
With money still pouring in, he’d hardly notice his assets had been depleted. Indeed, why don’t all these filthy rich ‘stars’ put their money where their mouths are instead of trying to soak the rest of us for dough.
Before getting all weepy-eyed over the Live 8 stunt, I’d advise everyone to read Peter Goodspeed’s probing series on Africa in the National Post. Few will be enthralled with the Live 8 circuses after that.
Goodspeed points that out over the past several decades, the western industrial democracies have poured $500 billion in foreign aid into Africa. Totalled with loans, which are frequently written off, the sum is a staggering $1 trillion U.S.
Yet, despite this largesse, Africa has become steadily poorer. In sub-Sahara Africa, the number of poor increased from 164 million in 1981 to 316 million in 2001. In 40 years Africa’s share of world trade fell from 6% in 1980 to 2% today.
That’s despite, Goodspeed explains, Africa having 90% of the world’s cobalt, 90% of the world’s platinum, 50% of its gold, 98% of its chromium, and 64% of its manganese. It has one-third of the world’s uranium, and, Alberta’s oil sands aside, more oil than North America. It is, in short, a fabulously rich continent.
Realistically, it shouldn’t need foreign aid or the current write-offs on $40 billion in loans.
The Economist itself notes the so-called crushing interest on foreign-aid debts is fiction.
Madagascar, for instance, receives 14 times the amount in foreign aid than the yearly interest it pays on its debts.
The truth, as Goodspeed and others have noted, is much of the foreign aid ends up in the Swiss bank accounts of the continent’s dictators, or to build up their military machines. A lot more is used to build lavish palaces such as the one for Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe.
More goes to line the pockets of other corrupt officials.
As the Sun pointed out in its editorial “Live 8 flat notes” (July 2) if we are going to help Africa, we shouldn’t be transferring vast sums of money to that continent’s governments.
Rather, we should be backing reputable aid organizations such as World Vision, CARE, the Red Cross, Samaritan’s Purse and my own favourite, Street Kids International.
Free trade—despised by the hypocritical New Democrats—has done marvels to pull poorer countries out of the depths.
Just check the label on the next few items of clothing you buy. Over the past decade, for the first time, a middle class has been created in Mexico because of free trade.
Killing agricultural subsidies to farmers in Canada, the U.S. and Europe would immediately open up production and markets for peoples in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
As with free trade, which dramatically brought down the costs of consumer products, it would also dramatically lower the cost of the food we put on our tables and eat in restaurants.
Western Europe, the U.S. and Canada didn’t become wealthy and prosperous because of handouts. Nor, obviously, will Africa. So, no, I didn’t get misty-eyed over Geldof’s conscience-stricken carnival, and neither should you have.
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