Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Africa Needs Capitalism, Not Good Intentions

What rocks is capitalism... yeah, yeah, yeah
By Mark Steyn - The Telegraph

'To sneer at such events," cautioned The Sunday Telegraph apropos Live8, "demeans the generosity which they embody".

Oh, dear. If you can't sneer at rock stars in the Telegraph, where can you? None the less, if not exactly a full-blown sneer, I did feel a faint early Sir Cliff-like curl of the lip coming on during the opening moments of Saturday's festivities, when Sir Paul McCartney stepped onstage.

Not because Sir Paul was any better or worse than Sir Elton or Sir Bob or any other member of the aristorockracy, but because it reminded me of why I'm sceptical about the "generosity" which these events "embody". - More...

Africa Needs Capitalism, Not Good Intentions
Rush Limbaugh

RUSH: Have you heard some of the quotes coming out of LIVE 8? Bob Geldof -- Boomtown Rats, Bob Geldof – said, "Something must be done; anything must be done, whether it works or not." Something must be done whether it works or not? Sir Bono of U2 said that 3,000 Africans, mostly children, are dying every day from mosquito bites. I ran the numbers. You know, 3,000, that's 1.365 million a year. That's just children, mostly children from mosquito bites. If you add AIDS and genocide to it, there ought not be anybody left in Africa. So we shouldn't have to send any aid at all. But he said with all these mosquito bites we gotta do something, and something can be done. No, it can't, not since Rachel Carson got DDT banned. You get DDT back over there, you might be able to stop some of the malaria, some of the mosquito bites. But you look at these people with their good intentions and all that, and you realize... Two of the most amazing stories in the New York Times about this, and I don't know what happened to the editing process; I don't know how these two stories made it past the editor. One's a story -- both are columns, one from yesterday, one from today. Do you know since 1963 -- just the US, Mr. Snerdley, since 1963 -- gave $568 billion, just to Africa. Just to Africa 568 billion! - More...

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