Is this the worst Christmas song ever?

“Do They Even Know It’s Christmas?” is voted as the worst Christmas song ever by this writer at a Catholic site. It's from Band Aid 1984. He says it disrespects Africa and has images of neo-colonialism. However, efforts to end poverty or hunger always improve the heart of the giver, and rarely the recipient in the long term, in my opinion.

http://www.catholicismusa.com/worst-christmas-song-ever-po…/

Frankly, I didn’t remember it, even when I found it on the internet it brought back no memories.  But it must mean a lot to some because there were people defending it, believing they had made a difference.

http://thefederalist.com/2014/12/03/do-they-know-its-christmas-is-the-worst-christmas-song-ever/

http://www.acton.org/pub/commentary/2014/12/17/worst-christmas-song-ever

“Do They Know It’s Christmas?” was released in 1984 as part of Band Aid, an effort organized by Bob Geldof in response to a famine that struck the east African nation of Ethiopia. The song certainly captures the spirit of the season, as its charitable aims are noble enough. The problem, however, is in how these good intentions are translated into word and deed. The song describes Africa largely as a barren wasteland, “Where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears.” It continues in this vein. Africa, the onetime breadbasket of the Roman Empire and home of the Nile River is a land “where nothing ever grows, no rain nor rivers flow.” The title question likewise plays into the supposed desperation of the continent. The only “Christmas bells that ring there are the clanging chimes of doom.” The response to this call is supposed to be charity from the affluent West, to “feed the world” and thereby “let them know it’s Christmastime again.”

https://medium.com/@magattew/stop-raising-money-for-relief-and-start-investing-in-africa-bd5c44a75557

In 1984, when Geldof’s first African Christmas song was released, no one thought of investing in Africa. Since then, China and India have already begun their path to prosperity.

Now some of the fastest growing nations on earth are African. Yes, Ebola is an urgent humanitarian cause that must be addressed, but we have long passed the point where it is legitimate (if it ever was) to re-enforce the stereotypes of a billion people when we have a very specific health crisis at hand.

Timothy Geithner and Bill Gates: A New Initiative to Feed the World

Tax Cheat Geithner wants to feed the world. Excuse me, if I'm not impressed.

"Today, the United States, Canada, Spain, South Korea and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are making a commitment to fight the threat of global food insecurity. Together we are launching the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program, a new fund to help the world's poorest farmers grow more food and earn more than they do now so they can lift themselves out of hunger and poverty."

Timothy Geithner and Bill Gates: A New Initiative to Feed the World - WSJ.com

In one of my other lives I worked in the agricultural credit field on a US AID grant. Fascinating work. One of the most important things I learned was that there was no shortage of food, no shortage of calories. Even using outdated and non-scientific methods (although the push for the green revolution was huge in the 70s). No. It was corrupt governments and bad infrastructure that caused hunger and starvation. Crops rotting in the fields due to civil wars, or no roads, or no trucks to bring them to market or ports. Or pirates when the food stuffs did get there. And in the 70s, malaria was under control--all that has been made worse by environmentalists removing DDT from their tool box.

So if this aid is going to farmers we aren't going to see much change. In fact, there's very good evidence that foreign aid, particularly from former guilt-ridden colonial European countries has actually hurt many third world countries by ruining their markets for their own products or creating dependency on government aid.

How the election of a black President will help black Africans

The United States of America now has what no other country in the world has, a democratically elected black leader of a free, constitutional republic. Europeans, the descendants of the slavers who purchased black Africans from the Arab Africans to be shipped to the "new world," can claim no African or even mixed race leaders; Africa can claim no free democracies (with the exception of Botswana which seems to be a model which all Africa could look to). Kenya had looked hopeful until Obama's cousin Odinga's followers massacred a few thousand after losing an election.

With his plans to destroy our current sources of energy--coal, gas and oil--his plans to raise taxes on successful small business, his plans to strengthen unions while discouraging business growth, his plans to bring the corrupt ACORN to the top (they are already at the table), his plans to allow millions more to flood our borders to bankrupt our social systems, his plans to shut down opposition in the press and airways, and his plans to reduce the military, the USA will be so weak that there will be nothing left over for the bailouts and food subsidies through various ill-advised and poorly planned NGO and government aid to African dictators and monarchs. Much of our aid simply destroyed African markets, however well intentioned. Other, initiative and ambition. Since none of this has helped Africa in 50-60 years, indeed has kept the former European colonies in a perpetual stage of adolescence, the reduction of American aid (and European, particularly France) to shore up weak leaders and economies in Africa will in the long run help Africa. It's the least he can do for change.

4341

The AIDS Estimate

What's the reason for overestimating the effects or spread of a terrible disease? WaPo reports on the inaccuracy of the UN estimates of the size and course of the AIDS epidemic.

The United Nations' top AIDS scientists plan to acknowledge this week that they have long overestimated both the size and the course of the epidemic, which they now believe has been slowing for nearly a decade, according to U.N. documents prepared for the announcement.

AIDS remains a devastating public health crisis in the most heavily affected areas of sub-Saharan Africa. But the far-reaching revisions amount to at least a partial acknowledgment of criticisms long leveled by outside researchers who disputed the U.N. portrayal of an ever-expanding global epidemic. Source Washington Post (may need registration)

It is good that 40% fewer will suffer, unfortunately I doubt that it means that the programs in place have been successful, but rather those who run the programs have been inflating the numbers in order to get more money. The unintended consequences are probably doner fatigue both from NGOs and governments, and less money directed to other programs that need it.

I've written about this before: "Western interference in the economies, politics and cultures of third world developing countries has not turned out well. The American Left loves to point fingers at Christian missionaries who started hospitals, schools, churches and developed a written language for Africans, Asians, and Islanders, but their footprints are tiny compared to the disaster of foreign aid from Europe and the U.S. The missionaries at least were accountable to God and their denomination; the governments and the U.N. agencies who soaked the guilt-swamped for more money funded various interventions in their societies which were accountable to no one, not even us taxpayers, elevating a class of dictators, bureaucrats and home grown thieves."

For all the statistics on what aid has done, check The White Man's Burden; why the West's efforts to aid the rest have done so much ill and so little good, by William Easterly (Penguin Press, 2006) and The Trouble with Africa; why foreign aid isn't working, by Robert Calderisi (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). From WaPo's review of Easterly's book: [He writes about] "the spirit of benign meddling that lies behind foreign aid, foreign military interventions and such do-gooder institutions as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the United Nations. In his account, such efforts are fatally contaminated by what the philosopher Karl Popper called "utopian social engineering." Easterly's list of well-meaning villains stretches from the economist Jeffrey Sachs to the rock singer and charity impresario Bono."

3451 Why aid for economic development fails

and often hurts the very people it tries to help. In the late 1970s I had a wonderful 3.5 year contract as a bibliographer/reference librarian in agricultural economics. More specifically, I was paid by the U.S. Department of State, Agency for International Development, through a grant won by Ohio State University's College of Agriculture, Department of Economics who wanted a librarian to help develop a collection of research about how local, home-grown small grants for credit, not gifts, to people with little or nothing lifted families and villages out of poverty and hunger. To correct a problem created by an earlier group of well-intentioned social scientists in the 1950s-60s post-colonial era, these grants also went to women and to small collectives in rural areas. Perhaps it was credit to buy several sewing machines, or looms, small tools, or a working well for a village which could then sell the water. Savings and investments are concepts totally foreign to many cultures and I don't know the success rate of these programs over the long run. Really, compared to the amounts you think of as "aid," these grants were very small, but they were not Utopian or from the top-down. The aid went to the entrepreneurial and those with a network of family or friends who would use their services. And don't forget those of us along the way who were paying our mortgages, tuition and Lazarus' bills with these grants--we benefited too. It paved my career path for two more contracts, and then a 17 year faculty position in the Veterinary Medicine Library.

Western interference in the economies, politics and cultures of third world developing countries has not turned out well. The American left loves to point fingers at Christian missionaries who started hospitals, schools, churches and developed a written language for Africans, Asians, and Islanders, but their footprints are tiny compared to the disaster of foreign aid from Europe and the U.S. The missionaries at least were accountable to God and their denomination; the governments and the U.N. agencies who soaked the guilt-swamped for more money funded various interventions in their societies which were accountable to no one, not even us taxpayers, elevating a class of dictators, bureaucrats and home grown thieves.

For all the statistics and scholarly stuff, check The White Man's Burden; why the West's efforts to aid the rest have done so much ill and so little good, by William Easterly (Penguin Press, 2006) and The Trouble with Africa; why foreign aid isn't working, by Robert Calderisi (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). Both authors were officials with the World Bank (one for 16 years, the other for 30) and have seen this problem from the inside out. And just to balance out your public library's collection, you might recommend either or both titles, after you've done your own research. [UAPL owns 2 copies of the Easterly title.]

Some reviewers found Easterly's writing style "cynical and breezy" choosing to criticize how he said it--even his chapter headings--rather than what he said. This is a tried and true method to keep people from reading or buying a book. One review of the Calderisi book starts out by comparing the number of people who died in the WTC with the number of Africans who die of AIDS, and how much the EU spends helping its own farmers. This is also a diversionary tactic to not deal with the book in hand. Build a straw book and burn it. Easterly and Calderisi clearly show that aid has not produced the desired results; Africans are now being victimized by their own rather than Europeans. The naysayers will want to kill the messenger and want to do business as usual either from guilt or because they are in the money pipeline.