Live Aid

Reading about the upcoming Live 8 concerts, which are set to coincide with the G8 conference in Great Britain, made me think back twenty years to Live Aid. It was a pretty amazing day, from what I remember, having watched a good chunk of it after coming home from working at Dunkin Donuts (and smelling like shortening, confectionary sugar, and honey glaze), as some of the performances were electrifying. I specifically remember U2, youthful and earnest, moving me through the television set. I remember Madonna was just awful. Led Zeppelin were even more awful, as I expected more of them. And above all of them, Queen simply lit up entire event; it was at that moment that I realized that if there was ever a guy that was a born star, Freddie Mercury was that guy. To this day, I've never seen anybody work a crowd better than Freddie Mercury, and Queen, while embodying all that was and is cliche within rock and roll (fist pumping the air, imploring the crowd to clap along, mucho power chords, and pompously triumphant lyrics) managed to employ all these cliches in a way that was truly inspirational and not the least bit cringe-worthy to even the most discerning of music listeners (which I was, even at the age of 16). I was never, and continue not to be, a huge Queen fan, although I like them very much, but they stole the day, and even U2's inspired performance didn't compare. But enough of music.

While watching Live Aid that long ago Saturday, I felt like I was watching something historic, something epic. Youthful naivete prevented me from understanding at the time that it was all for naught. It certainly was inspirational to see such an array of acts get together for such a noteworthy cause, namely the famine in Ethiopia. Rock and roll can change the world, right!?! And Live Aid did raise a boatload of cash from around the world, around $100 million. But in the end, it did nothing to stop the famine in Ethiopia. If anything, it elongated the misery.

You see, the famine in Ethiopia wasn't a famine. It wasn't on par with, say, the American Dust Bowl of the 1930's, where a confluence of economic and natural distasters destroyed or severely damaged the agricultural sector of a society. It was a famine similar to the one the Ukrainians in the 1930's endured, as in there being plenty of food, but the people, for political reasons only a psychotic gangster like Joe Stalin could understand, weren't allowed access to it and were starved to death. That was the famine that was going on in 1980's Ethiopia. And who was at the center of this forced starvation? A communist thug by the name of Mengistu. And where did over 90% of the 100 million that was raised by Live Aid go to? The Mengistu government, the very same government that was starving its people to death for political reasons. Live Aid didn't help the very people it sought to relieve one bit. It actively hurt and killed more of them. This fellow blogger put it best:

More aid was never the solution to the problems of the developing world. But it was always an easy way out, because all you had to do was to send (in most cases) somebody else's money without worrying too much about the consequences. The act of charity was an end in itself. But poverty is not a problem, it's a symptom of a problem, that being lack of democracy, freedom, transparency and sensible economic policies - and more money, like giving dope to an addict, only serves to be exacerbates these conditions.

Bill O'Reilly pointed out three and a half years ago that the money raised by the 9/11 celebrity telethon featuring the likes of Julia Roberts and George Clooney wasn't getting to the people it was supposed to get to (namely victims' families of 9/11). Night after night, he grilled high ranking members of the United Way, March of Dimes, the American Red Cross, etc. to find out where the money was, when it was going, where it was going, and when the families would get it. Six months after the telethon, the money had still not been distributed. Needless to say, the Hollywood establishment went ballistic that O'Reilly questioned their humanitarianism. It wasn't their humanitarianism that O'Reilly was questioning; it was their commitment to see the their humanitarian effort through. Of course, once they put in their face time, looking earnest and sympatico, they showed no concern for where the money they helped raise went. But O'Reilly was right, and they were wrong. If Bob Geldof, the organizer of Live Aid had refused to hand over any money to the Mengistu government until it was ensured that the aid would get to the starving Ethiopian horde, it might've made a difference. But then, why would Mengistu feed his people with Live Aid money when he was actively trying to starve them to death in the first place? No one affiliated with Live Aid ever commented on that, to my knowledge. If they did, they would've prima facie rendered the whole enterprise a quixotic display of do-goodism, which in the end, it was. I commend Geldof and all the participants for their earnestness, but I condemn them for their ignorance of the true reasons behind this forced starvation, as they could've told us about it, instead of depicting it as a natural disaster. It's not like these people, many of whom participated in the Nelson Mandela concert, were averse to criticizing a repressive government. It's merely that criticizing a repressive, communist, indigenous African government led by a black thug just didn't seem like much of a juicy target. If there was ever a leader that has the capability of murdering by the thousands with nary a voice of dissent from the so-call activists, it's a black one. Mengistu was a case in point, the same as Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe is presently. I guess they only see evil through their right eye, but not their left.