Oct. 6, 2008 Rabbi Yitzchok R. Rubin: Mamma to the masses Jonathan Tobin: Ahmadinejad Isn't Too Impressed Oct. 3, 2008 Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: The 'living dead' are all around us Caroline B. Glick: Olmert's parting blows Oct. 2, 2008 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: Often customers looking for our competitor accidentally enter our store. Can we just serve them without comment? Jonathan Tobin: Jewish pundit quiz on next year's news Sept. 29, 2008 Rabbi Eli Gewirtz: Lehman Brothers and the Day of Judgment Rabbi Leiby Burnham: Apples, Honey and You Sept. 26, 2008 Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The shofar and the Echo of Sinai Caroline B. Glick: A road paved on reality Sept. 24, 2008 Greg Crosby: Home for the Holy Days Ethel G. Hofman: Rosh Hashanah Favorites: Old-fashioned taste, reduced calories Sept. 23, 2008 Caroline Glick: Liberalism or lives!? Michael Ledeen: Dear President Ahmadinejad Sept. 22, 2008 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: I gave a check to a local merchant, but it hasn't been cashed in months. Probably they lost it. Do I have to tell them? Diana West: We are losing Europe to Islam Sept. 19, 2008 Rabbi Berel Wein: On harvesting success Caroline B. Glick: It is time to act Sept. 18, 2008 Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Is camping the panacea to save Jewry from self-destruction? Craig Gordon: Was SNL hilarity too much for Hillary? Sept. 17, 2008 Jonathan Tobin: The Whole World Is Watching The Kosher Gourmet By Linda Gassenheimer: East meets Southwest in this quick meal: MEXICAN-ASIAN TOSTADOS Sept. 16, 2008 Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. : Into the fire Everything's Relative : Your Official Jewish Guide to the 2008 USA Presidential Election Sept. 15, 2008 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Enabling risky behavior Diana West: A day that will live in ... accommodating Islam Sept. 11, 2008 Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The skeleton in my closet Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein: Persecution and systematic destruction of Christians in the Middle East must be stopped Sept. 10, 2008 Jonathan Tobin: There's Something About Sarah The Kosher Gourmet by Kathy Manweiler: Who needs Chili's when you have these? Recipes for Mexican that taste great and are dietetic! Our commitment to freedom Sept. 9, 2008 Daniel Pipes: Must counterinsurgency wars fail? Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Sept. 8, 2008 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: How far must one go to help somebody out of a contract? Barry Rubin: Waiting For Something Sept. 8, 2008 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : How far must one go to help somebody out of a contract? Barry Rubin: Waiting For Something March 22, 2007 J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !) Oct. 29, 2003 Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review July 8, 2005 / 1 Taamuz, 5765 Mercenaries, Not Musicians, for Africa By Max Boot http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Anyone who has visited a shantytown in Africa can applaud the impulse behind Live 8 and the Make Poverty History campaign. It would be swell if, as we are repeatedly told, "for the price of a Big Mac" we could save 20,000 people a day who die from extreme poverty. But there is little reason to think that aging pop stars have figured out how to achieve a goal that has eluded generations of policymakers. The solution being promoted by Live 8 is simple: Send beaucoup bucks. The anti-poverty campaigners are grouchy because the wealthy world spends only 0.25% of its gross national income on aid —a mere $76.8 billion last year. They want to nearly triple that, to 0.7% of GNI. The United States, in particular, is castigated for its stingy development budget —only 0.16% of GNI. This obscures the fact that, in absolute terms, the U.S. government spends far more on foreign aid ($19 billion last year) than any other nation. And that's only a small part of our total contribution. Thanks in part to our lower tax rates, Americans give far more to charity than do Europeans. If you include private-sector donations, the Hudson Institute finds, U.S. foreign aid totals $81 billion, or 0.68% of GNI —close to the U.N. Millennium Development Goals. And that's not counting the billions the U.S. spends to subsidize global security or the billions more it sends abroad as investment capital. By any measure, the U.S. is extraordinarily generous, and President Bush is making us more generous still. He has already tripled development aid to Africa and plans to double it again. But for the anti-poverty campaigners it's not enough. It never is. Their animating idea is the same one that was behind Lyndon Johnson's Great Society: Massive transfers of wealth can eradicate poverty. It didn't work in the U.S., and it has even less chance of working abroad. In the last 50 years, $2.3 trillion has been spent to help poor countries. Yet Africans' income and life expectancy have gone down, not up, during that period, while South Korea, Singapore and other Asian nations that received little if any assistance have moved from African-level poverty to European-level prosperity thanks to their superior economic policies. Economists who have studied aid projects have found numerous reasons for the failures. In many instances, money was siphoned off by corrupt officials. Even when funds did reach the intended beneficiaries, the money often distorted local markets for goods and labor, creating inflation that drove local businesses out of business. Only one major research paper in recent years has found any positive correlation between foreign aid and economic growth, and that only in countries "with good fiscal, monetary and trade policies," which excludes much of Africa. Most experts think even that conclusion is too optimistic. The International Monetary Fund recently issued two reports that find "little evidence of a robust positive impact of aid on growth." Jeffrey Sachs, economist-in-residence at Rock 'n' Roll U., airily waves away such objections. Yes, aid hasn't worked in the past, he concedes, but he's come up with some boffo (or is that Bono?) ideas that really, truly will break a half-century of futility. Maybe he's identified the key barriers to growth; maybe Africa really does need more leguminous trees. Or maybe not. But his impassioned assurances offer scant cause to throw good money after bad. Oddly enough, Sachs ignores the most obvious obstacle to Africa's escape from the "poverty trap," what his pal Bob Geldof has accurately described as "corruption and thuggery." (This was also Sachs' blind spot when he tried to reform the Russian economy in the 1990s.) Yet not even Sir Bob has offered any plausible ideas for addressing these deep-rooted woes. Africans continue to be tormented not by the G-8, as anti-poverty campaigners imply, but by their own politicos, including Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who is abetting genocide in Darfur, and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who is turning his once-prosperous country into a famine-plagued basket case. Unless it's linked to specific "good governance" benchmarks (as with the new U.S. Millennium Challenge Account), more aid risks subsidizing dysfunctional regimes. Any real solution to Africa's problems must focus on the root causes of poverty —mainly misgovernment. Instead of pouring billions more down the same old rat holes, maybe the Live 8 crew should promote a more innovative approach: Use the G-8's jillions 2 hire mercenaries 4 the overthrow of the 6 most thuggish regimes in Africa. That would do more to help ordinary Africans than any number of musical extravaganzas. Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. BOOT'S LATEST The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power   The book was selected as one of the best books of 2002 by The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The Christian Science Monitor. It also won the 2003 General Wallace M. Greene Jr. Award, given annually by the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation for the best nonfiction book pertaining to Marine Corps history. Sales help fund JWR. Max Boot is Olin Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He is also a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and a weekly columnist for the Los Angeles Times. To comment, please click here. Archives © 2005, Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate

Mitch Albom  Michael Barone   Dave Barry  Tony Blankley  Andy Borowitz  David Broder  Stratfor Briefing  Mona Charen  Linda Chavez  Ann Coulter  Greg Crosby  Rod Dreher  Larry Elder  Suzanne Fields  John Fund  Frank J. Gaffney  Lloyd Garver  Jonah Goldberg  Michael Goodwin  Julia Gorin  Jonathan Gurwitz  Paul Greenberg  Victor Davis Hanson  Betsy Hart  Nat Hentoff  David Horowitz  Laura Ingraham  Jeff Jacoby  Paul Johnson  Jack Kelly  James Klurfeld  Ed Koch  Ch. Krauthammer  Jonathan Last  Michael Ledeen  John Leo  David Limbaugh  Kathryn Lopez  Rich Lowry  Michelle Malkin  Jackie Mason  The Medicine Men  Dick Morris  Bill O'Reilly  Clarence Page  Kathleen Parker  Dennis Prager  Wesley Pruden  Tom Purcell  Jonathan Rauch  Celia Rivenbark  Robert Robb  Cokie & Steve Roberts  Pat Sajak  Debra J. Saunders  Culture Shlock  Roger Simon  Michael Smerconish  Thomas Sowell  Mark Steyn  John Stossel  Cal Thomas  Jonathan Tobin  Bob Tyrrell  Diana West  Dave Weinbaum  George Will  Walter Williams  Mort Zuckerman  Robert Arial  Chuck Asay  Chip Bok  Dry Bones   Lisa Benson  John Branch  Gary Brookins  John Cole  J. D. Crowe  John Deering  Brian Duffy  Everything's Relative  Mallard Fillmore  Jake Fuller  Bob Gorrel  Joe Heller  David Hitch  Jerry Holber  Steve Kelley  Jeff Koterba  Dick Locher  Chan Lowe  Ranan R. Lurie  Jimmy Margulies  Rick McKee  Michael Ramirez  Jeff Stahler  Danna Summers  John Trever  Gary Varvel  Kirk Walters  How 2  Know-It-All  Lori Borgman  The Savvy Consumer  Elder matters  Fixit  Dr. Peter Gott  Marybeth Hicks  GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko  Richard Lederer  Tech Maven  Nutrition Myths  Supermarket Shopper  Bruce Williams  How Stuff Works