Silfray Hraka was just a tad unimpressed with the Live 8 concerts and offers a succinct and witty criticism of the wisdom of throwing perfectly good money after bad governments in the name of charity or the alleviation of poverty.
Meanwhile, USS Neverdock noted a slight change in Bob Geldof's speechifying and may have detected an endorsement of Bush Administration policy.
I'm not sure why I'm still thinking about this. Maybe it's nostalgia for the warm, fuzzy-focused, well-meaning though inconsequential self that I was twenty years ago. Maybe it's because I wish that I was still living in the land of "what if" and hope and hands across America.
Or maybe it's that Bob Geldof is twenty years older, too. Maybe I'm hoping that he has come around to a more realistic, pragmatic and ultimately, successful view on how to battle poverty.
I've pointed out that Geldof is actually saying the right things about America's contributions to Africa. But now, he's adding, delicately because he knows who he's talking to, that before all this aid and relief can be effective, governments have to change. He means African (and other tyrannies, of course) governments. In other words, he's calling for regime change. He's saying that at very least, part of the problem is that there are too many kleptocrats running governments in Africa.
We can discuss how these governments got where they were--and Europe bares the lion's share of blame, here--but Geldof seems to be concerned more with results than assigning blame.
Geldof still strikes me as a moral person who feels deeply about his cause. He will be more successful, and those people whom he longs to save will have a better chance, if he can convince his constituents that increasing aid and canceling debt alone won't work. All that would do is assuage some western guilt and put more money in the coffers of corrupt government officials' Swiss bank accounts. Aid is likely to be--and should be--tied to governmental reform.
Yes, there were loads of bloated egos on stage the other day. And there was some fairly bad music. However, I didn't detect anything worse than is displayed by our average politician and some of the people on stage actually did some entertaining between the preaching.
Geldof brought of this event in about two months. Pretty impressive. Maybe he should run for parliament.
UPDATE: This isn't about Live 8, but Dean Esmay's post fits well with the subject and should be read just for the value of understanding what is in the true liberal heart when it comes to aid, the spread of democracy and real chance of tackling some of the world's most intractable problems.
This has the potential to become more than just an intellectual exercise. What does "liberal" mean anymore? I'm going to leave this for another day, but I will say that I'm beginning to see a way that the "neocons" can accomplish things that "liberals" have been harping on for years, without any real results.
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