Without freedom, there is no virtue. Charity, a virtuous untertaking, presupposes free will. When Robin Hood points his arrow at you and you hand over your wallet, neither Robin Hood nor you has acted generously. Your act was compelled; Robin Hood's subsequent transfer of your lucre to the poor came at no financial sacrifice to him. The morality of governments taking your money to give to other governments is something akin to all this, only it's far worse. Robin Hood, after all, didn't distribute his plunder to the corrupt Sheriff of Nottingham or the tyrannical Prince John.

For the reasons above, there is nothing particularly noble in Live 8's call for increased aid to African governments. For another reason, there's nothing particularly effective in such socialist wealth transfers. This weekend's news of Nigeria's rulers stealing hundreds of billions from their nation's coffers demonstrates this.

Many legitimate charities help in the fight against AIDS, poverty, malaria, polluted water, and other diverse maladies that still afflict the Dark Continent. Your government is not one of these charities.

You know, there are quite a few Nigerians with massive amounts of money in frozen bank accounts. All they need is just a small investment from us and we can get a 20% commission. If we all did that every time some poor Nigerian asked for help, we could feed the whole of Africa. I wonder why Bono hasn't thought of that yet?

And let’s not forget the forgiving of the billions in foreign aid dept tied to many of these TW sink holes where that money was pi$$ed away.

If you’ve got a friend who you keep lending money to and he or she keeps coming back for more, don’t you at some point say no mas???

Most of these countries are not even our friends (nor would we want them to be) and many have never been able to take care of themselves. So how much good will should be heaped upon them?

Has anyone considered that a political stable Africa with less warlordism might actually be in our interests?

Not that this is an exactly splendid way of achieving that goal.