Posted on 07/02/2005 9:39:24 AM PDT by My Favorite Headache
"but would Nugent have gone?"
Will Rush play? (not the radio guy)
I don't know that Blackmore has ever done much with them since he went solo though I seem to recall some kinda conflict back in the late 70's or 80's when DP would play some of Blackmore's hits in their sets or vice-versa or something ...
see you guys , I gotta go downtown , hope I get back for Floyd
Correction.. Green Day use to F'n rock.
Who ever is singing right now said she is, “ashamed that we created a world were people suffer and injustice.” Well I guess she supports the war in Iraq, because it liberated Millions.
On Live 8 day, Niger shows West's apathy on Africa
Sat Jul 2, 2005 11:29 AM ET
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By Matthew Green
NIAMEY (Reuters) - Ask the man in charge of saving thousands from starving to death in Niger what he thinks of the Live 8 concerts and he shrugs: he hasn't heard of them.
What he does know is that the leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized countries whom the organizers want to pressure into doubling aid to Africa have largely ignored his country's pleas for help to tackle a devastating drought.
"People have to start dying before the international community starts taking any notice," Seidou Bakari, the coordinator of the government's food crisis unit said on Saturday, hours after the Live 8 extravaganza began.
"The response is very slow, and we can't understand it," he told Reuters in an interview in his office in Niamey, the capital of the West African country on the edge of the Sahara.
Niger said nine months ago that drought and locusts had wiped out harvests, confronting 3.6 million people with food shortages, but emergency donations to the mainly desert nation have only begun trickling in during the past few weeks.
Aid workers say children have already begun to die of hunger and disease in villages around the southern town of Maradi, where people are simply too poor to buy food, and that unless help comes soon thousands could die.
The tragedy is that it did not have to be this way.
"We launched an appeal in November, but who has responded?" said Bakari. "We would have reinforced our capacity to deal with the crisis. We're relying virtually entirely on our own funds."
CALLS GO UNHEEDED
Live 8 organizer Bob Geldof hopes the concerts held in cities including London, Tokyo and will pressure the leaders of the G8 to take concrete action to help Africa at a summit in Scotland next week.
Niger shows just how little they often give Bakari said G8 members Britain, the United States, Canada, Italy and Russia had yet to send any money to Niger's government to tackle the crisis, despite months of appeals.
France, which is the key donor for a fund to tackle hunger in Niger alongside the European Union, has contributed a further 1.5 million euros ($1.8 million) in the last few weeks. The EU has just given an extra 1.7 million euros in emergency aid.
Japan and Germany have also chipped in.
The second poorest country in the world, Niger is a perfect example of where rich governments respond to African crises only when they reach emergency levels, missing opportunities to save lives by intervening earlier.
Bakari said Niger's government had been appealing since 2003 for help to build up its cereal reserves, which had fallen to the equivalent in stocks and cash of about 40,000 tonnes that year, compared with more than 80,000 tonnes in 1991.
Supplies fell partly due to political instability during the 1990s, which had perhaps discouraged donors from contributing.
Bakari said had the aid come, there would be no crisis.
"We wanted to tell them that even though we didn't have a famine, we needed to build up our stocks," he said.
"They did nothing." ($1=.8275 Euro)
Ted might have gone but the point is he'd probably never be asked ... as for Rush I'd presume they'd play on the Toronto bill but don't see them listed.
Rainbow had some good stuff.
hey , here's a name ,... Charlie Musslewhite , rock some blues y'old dinosaur[I can dream,right?]
Alicia Keys was raised to speak proper English and when she became "a star" she immediately began to speak with a pseudo-black accent which she has worked on for a couple years now. Stunning.
I'm not sure if Rush would play for such a useless cause. Perhaps, they are more liberal than I think.
No. Rush members do not believe these kinds of concerts work and passed on performing at this event.
Neil Peart of Rush on Live Aid, From Metal Hammer, April 25, 1988
"I get so impatient with the pop side of causes, the whole sensibility of, "Let's get together and change things" because these people just do not know what they're talking about and don't take the trouble to find out how they can really change something. It's a Sixties mentality -- it had no action then, and has no action now. It's just sound and fury. And, let's be honest, how many of these people are only lending their names as a career move?!
Geddy was involved with the 'Northern Lights' charity record here in Canada, although Rush weren't invited to participate in the 'Live Aid' event -- mainly because if you look at the guest list, it was very much and 'in-crowd' situation.
We didn't refuse to take part because of any principles. Mind you, I wouldn't have been happy being part of this scenario. Those stars should have shut up and just given over their money if they were genuine. I recall that 'Tears For Fears,' who made a musical and artistic decision to pull out of the concert, were subsequently accused of killing children in Africa -- what a shockingly irresponsible and stupid attitude to take towards the band. But I have nothing bad whatsoever to say about Bob Geldof; he sacrificed his health, his career, everything for something he believed in. But others around him got involved for their own reasons.
Some of those involved in 'Northern Lights' were actually quoted as saying that their managers told them to get down to the recording sessions because it would be a good career move! What a farce!
I don't believe that all this ballyhoo changed anything. Even now, trucks full of food are blasting through Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, trying to get to the Sudan and Ethiopia and they're being robbed and shot at and turned back. I was in East Africa last Autumn, so I got a first-hand insight into what's going on and whilst I was there no less than 55 trucks laden with food were stuck in Uganda, with no was through because of the political situation. It's not a lack of food, nor a drought that's causing the problems, but civil war!
People are starving others deliberately and how do you change that via a rock concert?! I don't decry charity causes, but if someone were to ask me to do a concert in aid of Ethiopia I'd say NO! I would quite happily donate some money or do anything else that might help, but I believe you have to get involved far more then just giving money to salve your conscience... even that type of charity is so negative because it's self-serving and shallow."
well..... I dig their latest endeavor......... so they definitely... ROCK .... for me.......
the is a story for the time capsule
Sorry, I'm still living in the past... I found American Idiot offensive so I never listened to the rest of the CD.
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