Serious Aid and Live8

MSM is going for broke; Live8 is on every page and every screen today, and rightly so. However, as they consider their readers and spectators a bunch of idiots, they are simplifying the real message behind Live8 reducing it to a mere charity ball, and taking the opportunity to attack Bush, Blair and whomever does not share their simplistic and fake vision of the world.

Make no mistake, this is what Bob Geldof is saying:

Let it be equally clear that, at the same time, African governments must be free from corruption and thuggery and put in place recognised practices of good governance, accountability and transparency towards their own people and to the world. Twenty years ago at Live Aid we asked for charity. Today at Live8 we want justice for the poor.

In these twenty years, the damages, even ravages, of unfettered aid have devastated Africa, propped up inhuman regimes and set back the clock a good many years. At long last, even "celebrities" are grasping the fact that the real world is not a song.

As I said in a previous post:

Very little of what has been given in the form of aid has been used by the beneficiaries for its intended use; therefore this plan [debt relief], which is meant to give them the chance of starting from scratch, without a heavy backload of debt, must be implemented, but - this time - not to appease our consciences or to make more or less shady business deals, but to see real progress on the ground while demanding good governance.

This time, Geldof and I agree. Make dictatorship history.