The Terrible Truth About ‘Live Aid.’:
The assignment was simple — all this money had been raised, where was it going, was it actually doing good? He discovered it was not doing good, but, horrifically, unimaginably, the exact opposite. The Ethiopian dictator, Mengistu, until then deadlocked in the war, was using the money the west gave him to buy sophisticated weapons from the Russians, and was now able to efficiently and viciously crush the opposition. Ethiopia, then the third poorest country in the world, suddenly had the largest, best equipped army on the African continent.
By this time we had all seen the pictures and TV footage of Bob Geldof, the figurehead of Live Aid, bear hugging and playfully punching Mengistu in the arm as he literally handed over the funding for this slaughter. It was on TV now alright, but as an endless, relentless reel of heroic Bob Geldof highlights. He drenched himself in the adulation and no one begrudged him it, until our investigation exposed the holocaust that Live Aid’s collected donations had help perpetrate on the Eritrean independence fighters.
Most damningly, Keating reported that Geldof was warned, repeatedly, from the outset by several relief agencies in the field about Mengistu, who was dismantling tribes, mercilessly conducting resettlement marches on which 100,000 people died, and butchering helpless people. According to Medicins Sans Frontiers, who begged Geldof to not release the money until there was a reliable infrastructure to get it to victims, he simply ignored them.
It was the birth of the concept of “virtue signaling.”
I had forgotten about it.
Mainly because by the mid-80s, everything “new” became merely a derivative of what came before.
What would the enviro-whackos say about that today?!
I wonder how the Rastafarians felt about what Mengistu ended up doing to their “God”, Haile Selassie?
The concert can be watched on YouTube if interested ...
That pretty much sums up the left in a nutshell. Virtue signalling and absolute crap results. I recall watching a bit of it but never sent any money as I had become wary of charity stuff like We are the World and Do they know its Christmas from that time period.
I think we knew at the time that it was a textbook Communist-created famine, so not at all surprised that Mengistu simply stole the money, or that St. Bob Geldof ignored the warnings.
As to the argument that “Live Aid ruined music,” I think the author is confusing correlation (or temporal proximity) and causation. Music did indeed fall off a cliff in the mid-late 80s, but I don’t think it was “because of” Live Aid. Even had their been no Live Aid, the wells of creativity were running dry at that time.
...not a resuscitation but a last grab by financiers and producers for any money they could get from fans for the artists who were no longer producing anything new, certainly not compared to their older stuff. The "charity" was just a cover.
By 1985 the bands had their best work behind them, some by decades.
-Adam Ant
-Black Sabbath
-Bob Dylan
-Crosby, Stills and Nash
-David Bowie
-Dire Straits
-Duran Duran
-Elton John
-Eric Clapton
-Four Tops
-Joan Baez
-Keith Richards
-Kenny Loggins
-Led Zeppelin
-Mick Jagger
-Neil Young
-Phil Collins
-Queen
-REO Speedwagon
-Ronnie Wood
-Sade
-Santana
-Spandau Ballet
-Sting
-The Boomtown Rats
-The Hooters
-The Who
-U2
I say all this as the former operations manager for an internationally-focused Christian charity.
Wow, how many things can they get wrong in 1 article. I mean nostalgia had been selling well for over a decade before Live Aid. Shanana got their prime time TV show. Punk lasted a lot more than 4 years and was no where near its peak in 1978. He says it was bad for newer artists and then lists a bunch of newer artists that got huge career boosts from Live Aid. What happened to pop after that had nothing to do with Live Aid and everything to do with the rise of metal, specifically hair metal, but with hair bringing millions of fans to metal it moved from underground to the dominant form of popular music for the next decade and change.
As for whether it helped Africa, hey at least Bob tried. He saw a problem and instead of saying “somebody should do something” he said “what can I do”. And he did a lot. Raised a lot of awareness, brought a lot of international pressure, taught popular music to try. Unfortunately in the end none of it worked, because dictatorships are hard. But he gave it a shot. Who among his critics that insist he failed put more effort in?
I imagine the money from Farm Aid similarly bypassed the intended recipients.
Music is *always* being ruined forever, in the opinions of the people who are old enough to remember and like whatever it was that came before whatever it is that’s popular now.
Queen has one of the greatest live performadces in history.
Which was quickly spread around to the corrupt politicians of Ethiopia. It certainly didn't 'feed the world'. What a bunch of posers and phonies.
it’s a Yahoo article which are mostly wrong on everything.
I kind of remember Live aid, don’t remember why but the music is still good.
So the money raised didn’t do what it was suppose to do because the productor didn’t do due diligence.
Africa has always been a hole to throw money in.
“According to Medicins Sans Frontiers, who begged Geldof to not release the money until there was a reliable infrastructure to get it to victims, he simply ignored them. “
WHY the HELL would Geldof do that? WHY? Why wouldn’t he listen to people in the field or simply use his own experience knowing what these dictators are like?
As a child of the 50’s & 60’s when rock & roll was born, there hasn’t been any good music after the mid-80’s anyway.
I think God gave me a healthy scope of sarcasm and cynicism to protect me from crap like this.