Money Raised for Africa ‘Goes to Civil Wars’
Published on 2008-05-14 00:00:00
Imagine my shock.Do you really think that anyone who’s ever made a loan or grant to any dictator, anywhere in the world, has any doubt about what is going to happen with the money?
Sure, Bono is an idiot, people will say. Woops. Silly Bono.
While there are lots of idiots in the world, not many of them just happen to be A) responsible for genocide, directly, indirectly or otherwise and B) an honorary Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.
It’s all a coincidence, of course. As usual.
Via: New Zealand Herald:
Billions of dollars raised for African famine relief by celebrities Bono and Bob Geldof have instead funded civil war across the continent, says terrorism expert Dr Loretta Napoleoni.
London-based Napoleoni, in Auckland to appear at the Writers & Readers Festival, has written two books, Terror Inc: Tracing the Money Behind Global Terrorism and Insurgent Iraq: Al-Zarqawi and the New Generation, on the economics of terrorism.
Her latest book, Rogue Economics, studies the destabilising effect of economic globalisation, focusing in part on why more than half a trillion dollars worth of aid sent to Africa since the 1960s failed to reach the intended destination - developing the nations’ economies.
That huge amount of aid, which includes money from the United Nations and donations generated by Live Aid for Ethiopia, organised by Geldof, and the Live 8 concert in 2005, organised by Bono, has instead “served as a rogue force, notably as an important form of terrorist financing” in countries such as Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Kenya. Ethiopia, for example, received $1.8 billion in foreign aid between 1982-85, including a large contribution from Live Aid; $1.6 billion of that, she points out, was spent on buying military equipment.
Research Credit: samadhisoft.com