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: