Live Aid/Live8
 

I know I may annoy some people by what I want to say but fuck it here goes
I'm fed up about feeling guilty about Africa. Live8 and all the weeping and gnashing of teeth
from all these millionare rock stars, fuck give me peace.
When have these Bastards had to worry about bills,living,making sure your kids are fed and watered
I'm sorry that Africa is a shit hole but hey its not my fault.
How many countries in Africa are in civil war Two or more tribes fighiting for what.
how many countries where the men refuse to use condoms to eleviate the spread of Aids/HIV but will rape a Baby
on a witchdictors advice.
How many Dictators are in African countries with well fed armies if they don't care about
their own why am I guilty for the problerms ..

I put my hand into my pocket when needs be but It's not my fault I didn't make it happen
the problems with Africa is not so simple than the West charging Interest rates on loans from the IMF.

maybe it's the fact that the problems in Africa are so overwhelming that make you feel like you don't care. When I feel overwhelmed, I'm just like, screw it. But that doesn't get me anywhere.

So if I overwhelm you...you'll just like....... :blush:

I agree that wealthy, self-indulgent rock stars and celebrities probably aren't going to make much of a dent in Africa's problems by doing what they do, but on the other hand, what they did was largely very cool today...they played *music*.

How bad can that be? I enjoyed the hell out of it, even though I was changing out a broken toilet at the time.

I wish those MTV assholes would shut up. :mad:

Sometimes (frequently) I'm glad I don't have television, although I am getting a taste of it from you guys. There are more complaints about commercials than anything else.

I wonder what all those rock and movie stars would do if a significant portion of their audience decided to stop purchasing their product and instead spent the money normally earmarked for entertainment on helping those in need.

The reason I'm sick of hearing about Africa is that they are starving because there are too many people for the resources so they are slaughtering each other over it and if we don't rush in and give them money and food they scream "Genocide!!! We are being wiped out, you have to make it stop!". Like idiots we go in and bail them out over and over and over, so they can get back on their feet for long enough to start killing each other again. But if we try to put in place any plans for women's health care and birth control so that they can have some decent kind of life, they all start screaming "Genocide!!! You are trying to wipe us out!" At this point, I'm ready to say "Have it your way then, leave us out of it." :headshake

I don't give a shit about Africa, beyond knowing that's where gold and diamonds come from. No amount of "awareness" or money will change the corrupt governments and quasi-governments that exists on most of that continent. I don't think any siginficant "awareness" was raised regaring the whatchamacallit. I didn't go to the concert despite being less than 1/2 hour away.

I knew they would not disappoint me, and here it is in the paper this morning:


In Johannesburg, South Africa, some 40,000 people gathered to listen to the music and to denounce the selfishness of the world's richest countries.

"They owe us," said the South African pop star Zola, speaking of Europe. "They are the ones who brought slavery, killed our ancestors. If anybody must pay, they must pay us back so that we can have jobs and education."

"History and the generations to come will judge our leaders by the decisions they make in the coming weeks," former South African President Nelson Mandela said after taking the stage in Johannesburg. "I say to all those leaders: Do not look the other way. Do not hesitate... It is within your power to prevent a genocide."


Well, maybe South Africa thinks they are unique, but I know they DO teach history there so somebody is chosing to ignore the fact that slavery was well established in Africa for millenia before the European whites got there. So was genocide. And both are alive today and flourishing without any help from us. In fact, when the freed blacks were sent back to found Liberia in the early 19th century, the first thing they did was set themselves up with plantations complete with their own slaves, causing a social rift which is ripping that area apart even today. Uganda and Rwanda have systematically carried out genocide in their areas without any white man in sight. You can buy any slaves you want in the Muslim black countries, and their governments refuse to do anything about it although the US and Europe have been protesting that for many years. African tribal groups can murder, plunder, rape, and devastate at their ease, and they resent our "interference". I think they ought to send Mr. Mandala to Dafur, let him tell his brothers there how much the white people are messing things up.

It was totally inspiring to me to see Pink Floyd pull it off so well, and to see Macca in top form.

I don't know about debt relief except that normally when people go into too much debt they can declare bankruptcy and start over. If this has happened to a continent, there should be a way out in the same fashion.

But it does start with the creditors getting a portion of whatever they have left, not with an angry demand that the debt is the other way around.

http://www.panoramas.dk/

Our panoramic photographer friends were there. I don't know...doesn't look like folks were THAT excited to help stamp out world debt.

Or much else for that matter.

Wow, Dagney! Looking at that pan picture of Philly makes me glad I wasn't there. :headshake
Wonder what the fence was about?

Riot Control?

Divide and conquer? :confused:

I don't really have much to say, except, yeah, I was one of those misguided, apathetic assholes who actually attended the Philly event. To my friends and me, the entire concept was completely ridiculous, but our policy went something like, "if they're going to hold the event, why not take advantage?" Maybe the organizers secretly intend to create an association between "Piss-drunk at Over-hyped Concert" and "Defeating Poverty," because all the clueless teenagers would start having delusions that Saving Africa *can* closely resemble a ginormous beer-guzzling neo-hippie fest. Far out, dude.

Hahah, I just remembered my friend spent 75% of the day yelling, "Save Africa! Smoke a joint!"

Anyway, here are some pictures. Nice ones. I think.
http://www.supdogg.com/photo/Live8/le01.jpg

http://www.supdogg.com/photo/Live8/le02.jpg

Oh this one is so corny.
http://www.supdogg.com/photo/Live8/le03.jpg

I think the US concert got the shaft... London was where it was at!!! Coldplay... nuff said! :)

Philly was the big winner.....Michael Jackson didn't show. :D

For all you Live8 sycophants...
 

http://music.channel.aol.com/live_8_...philly_toronto

On July 2, the world's biggest musicians converged at global concerts aimed at ending world poverty. AOL Music captured every note, and it's the only place you can relive every performance on-demand!
Click an artist name to see all of the songs played, then watch each performance as many times as you like.
Also, watch highlights on-demand.

on africa's problems:

I do coke so I can work longer so I can make more money so I can do more coke so I can work longer so I can make more money so I can do more coke.......

The selflessness of these bands is inspiring. To hold all of these concerts to bully our governments into raising our taxes to send money to the coffers of so many needy dictators and despots! It just brings a tear to my eye. And the grab bags they gave each band were only valued at $12k each. The sacrifice! The nobility!

You should care about Africa. If for no other reason than your own military defense. An AIDs ravaged and politically crumbling war torn continent , that's not good for you, either.

a well planned firebombing campaign could solve their AIDS problem. :bolt:

oh don't get me wrong, Africa clearly needs help. I just don't think it should be government mandated. and I don't like pampered celebrities guilt-tripping others who are far less equipped than they are to help with the problem.

Um, the majority of the "power" a celebrity has isn't money, it's their ability to reach a wide audience. What they are doing is what they are best equipped to do.

aw hell, it is our fault they are in this mess anyway. we were effing them on national tv in the '80's. if we hadn't raised all that money and sent all of that food over there then more of them would have died then and there would be less over-population, disease, and war.

we sure suck for causing these problems.

i am, of course, employing dark humor here. but from another perspective, admittedly a callous and uncaring one, it would seem that by continually providing food and medicine to a group of people that can't support themselves, can't take precautions against more disease, and continually breed we are only fanning the flames.

will eliminating their debt get stop their wars? will it get them to quit reproducing? will they suddenly say "hey, we now know what causes AIDS"? or will it just make a group of people who happen to be in their country but aren't living in poverty and disease more rich?

describe to me a REAL solution for the problems they have.

EDIT: ok, warch pulled her comment, but that is who i was talking to here.

give a man a fish, he eats for a day - teach him to fish and he eats for life. granted his 20 kids from five different wives (who may be relatives that he raped) will all have to fight over the fish.........and I don't know how good fishing is in Africa...........but you get my point.
either that, or what lookout said back in #23.

In all seriousness (I'm not sure how serious I was up until now), Africa needs to get its own houses in order before any kind of aid will do much good. We see people lining up at the feed bags with their bowls and sacks and think we've done some great thing. But their land is barren from drought and shitty farming practices, the local warlord stifles any possibility of commerce by killing all the potential trading partners over some political slight, and then of course there's the disease.

AIDS is rampant there not because "we" haven't found a cure, but because there is rampant unsafe sex and misinformation. Many times, African people suffering from AIDS (particularly those in the bush) don't even seek real medical treatment that would prolong their lives. They listen to the village medicine guy who says it's some kind of curse, waves a dead chicken over them, and sends them back out thinking they're cured. Most refuse to wear condoms and refuse to be monogamous. How can you stop AIDS under those conditions?

You can't just throw money at things and make them go away. (Except me -- if you throw money at me I'll go away)

:mg:

i don't know how much of that is reality vs stereotype, but i get your point. i know that i've read an article or two about the spread of AIDS in relation to the widespread frequency of rape.

IMO, we can paint it to look however we want, but money isn't the issue there. corruption and the absence of rule of law are at the core of the problem.

I got a teeshirt. It's cool.

I got to see Pink Floyd play one last time, that's good enough for me.

And Geldof should be made the next Secretary-General of the United Nations.

He'd be much better than Bill Clinton.

Geldof is an asshat like all of the rest of the pretentious self-congratulatory fuck-tards out there. He and the rest of the ignorant monkeys like Angelina Jolie just need to shut the fuck up and make movies and music and the such. Being a celebrity doesn't make you smart, or enlightened, or better than everybody else. It just means that the epsilons out there like you because you make the day go by faster.

Ever since Heston, Taylor, and some other guy got up on television and said they'd make any movie as long as they got paid a million dollars it's all been down hill.

A lot of people have said Geldof is very knowledgeable.
Your attempt to paint him with a broad <STRIKE> brush</STRIKE> roller sounds a bit biased and unfair. :eyebrow:

Who said life was fair?

And besides, what makes those other people any less baised or unfair?

I mean, they're probably hippies or limousine liberals or some other shade of commie pinko fag.

You know, if people ask *me* what I think (like here on The Cellar, for example), no one really cares what I think, no matter how much I talk.

If someone asks a star what they think, and they tell us, isn't it *us* who has the problem if we put any more import on it than we would if *we* were talking?

Stand back, I think my head may implode.

Els, I'm a little confused by your post. That by itself is a rare event, since you're usually very articulate. I pay attention to your posts, and now you're saying no on cares about what you say? *whoa, there's that recursive paradoxical pull of gravity again.*

If I'm following your post, you say I should ignore your post?

Too late. *pop!*