Live 8

A very good post from the Agitator about this current foolishness

It's all the more perverse when you consider that corporate farms in Europe, Japan, and the U.S. are a big reason why Africa remains so poor. In heavily subsidized crops like cotton and corn, farmers in these countries can sell their crop on the international market for less than what it costs them to grow it. There's simply no way poor farmers in emerging economies can compete with that. So lavish subsidies in rich countries keep poor countries from competing, which in turn keeps them poor. The rich countries feel guilty, so they sap taxpayers to come up with aid projects that don't work, and really only benefit the exact same industries that benefit from the subsidies. All the while, each time public aid does fail, it makes private donors think Africa's a lost cause, and therefore makes them less likely to give. Which is tragic, because private aid does seem to work. It's more likely to find its way around the corruption, and hit the people who need it.

Which brings us back to Live 8. The whole purpose of the event, Geldoff kept telling us, was not to raise private funds for Africa. Rather, it was to encourage the citizens of developed countries to lobby their governments for more public aid. Oh, and also to make spoiled rock stars feel better about their respective social consciences.

There is also this very good post from Josh Trevino who's reporting on the G-8 protesters

But the true believers exist, and they are capable of organizing themselves. A counterintuitive thing, one would think, but the anarchist/hard left capacity for assembling at set times and doing set things is a well-proven one. Just like libertarians availing themselves of public services, the contraindicating intersection of reality and ideology is often employed, but never acknowledged. As at Seattle, DC, and Genoa, so too Edinburgh: the city is overrun in a well-planned influx from across the developed, Western, wealthy world to protest developed, Western, wealthy things.