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Originally Posted by onesnowyowl
James, the African countries who wish to receive aid are required to follow certain rules. As Tony Blair said at a news conference in early June, following an announcement for more aid to Africa: "We require the African leadership also to be prepared to make the commitment on governance against corruption -- in favor of democracy, in favor of the rule of law."
Africa is prepared to step up to the bat. The African Union has met and is in the process of putting together a message to the G8. They too realize that eliminating corruption in Africa is a major step towards improvement.
I like that Blair is insisting that Africa meet the G8 halfway, and I like that Africa is willing to do so. Perhaps this will work out after all.
A columnist in the Guardian pointed out that today's rulers need to realize that all the "kids" attending the Live 8 shows and wearing the white ONE wristbands are the voters of tomorrow. I can say that there's one "kid" with a white wristband who is a voter of today and will be a voter of tomorrow too.
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The problem with that is how will their compliance be enforced? After the Iraq situation, it's clear that the int'l community has no stomach for actual warfare, so what other ways of influencing the African countries is there? You can withhold more aid, but all that does is give the despots more money (in the form of the initial misappropriated funds) without solving any problems. And economic sanctions would be a joke for many African nations, as their economies are so screwed up that it would be difficult to damage them more. Those who control the resources and/or are running the gov'ts wouldn't feel the brunt of the sanctions anyway, it would just make things worse on the people if there was any noticable effect at all (the same as Iraq). At this point, Blair's statements are toothless threats and nothing more.
And as for the concert itself, it seems little more than Lollapalooza/Lillith Fair/any random large concert with different sponsors and a veneer of altruism. Few people attending actually care, they want to see certain acts while being able to seem trendy by attaching themselves to a cause, without actually making any sacrifice. This is like the Rock the Vote, Vote or Die, etc. movements of the last election, where outside of looking cool little action is actually accomplished.
I personally would leave U2 out of much of my earlier comments, simply because even though I don't know how much he actually knows about issues and at times can be quite a pretentious ass, Bono does seem to care about many world issues and tries to make himself knowledgable about them. I can respect someone like that who does make the extra effort and goes beyond the usual empty-headed celebrity issue advocation.