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Meaning Well, Ending Problematically

WEDNESDAY JUNE 29 2005 12:00 PM

Submitted by Dr_Frank. Edited By Dr_Frank.

On the eve of Live 8, Prospect's David Rieff revisits Live Aid, and the vexing topic of how politics and the behavior of totalitarian regimes can complicate the ethics of even the best-intentioned relief efforts:

Did the mobilisation of public opinion through celebrity endorsement really play the positive role with which it is now credited? To ask this question is emphatically not to turn hagiography on its head and to demonise either Geldof or Live Aid. There is no smoking-gun evidence demonstrating that Live Aid achieved nothing, or only did harm. But there is ample reason to conclude that Live Aid did harm as well as good. It is also arguable that Live Aid may have done more harm than good...

The [Ethiopian] famine was the product of three elements, only one of which could be described as a natural event—a two-year long drought across the Sahel sub-region. The other two contributing factors were entirely man-made. The first was the dislocation imposed by the wars being waged by the central government in Addis Ababa against both Eritrean guerrillas and the Tigrean People's Liberation Front. The second, and by far the most serious, was a forced agricultural collectivisation policy pursued with seemingly limitless ruthlessness by Mengistu Haile Mariam and his colleagues in the Dergue (committee) who had overthrown emperor Haile Selassie in 1974 (and officially adopted communism as their creed in 1984). This collectivisation was every bit the equal in its radicalism to the policies Stalin pursued in the Ukraine in the 1930s, where, as in Ethiopia, the result was inevitable: famine.

It was this policy that western aid would unwittingly assist, even as it saved lives...


There's also this jaw-dropping (and revealing) quote from Bob Geldof, who blithely imagines a kinder, gentler World War II, in which a Live Aid-like organization would "help people" by delivering supplies to Auschwitz:

If Live Aid had existed during the second world war, and if we'd heard that there were people dying in concentration camps, would we have refused to bring food and assistance to those camps? Of course not!


There's the flaw in Geldof's worldview in a nutshell, perhaps. Of course, he means well. But maybe we need some smarter saints around here.

 
waldo

waldo

I'm lost
June 2004

JUN 29, 2005 05:08 PM

Any saint at all is an improvement.

Dr_Frank

Dr_Frank

Oakland, CA
May 2005

JUN 29, 2005 05:24 PM

really?

jerseystreets

jerseystreets

Rutherford, NJ
March 2003

JUN 30, 2005 07:29 AM

yeah, I kind of agree with Waldo. You've used up quite a bit of space on this site trying to wage some wierd attack on Bob Geldof and these charity shows. Yes, the money raised by Live Aid could have been spent in a better way, but that goes for most charities.

And I don't see anything "jaw dropping" about the quote that you sneer at. The impulse to come to the aid of the suffering is a noble impulse, no matter how "naive" you deem it to be.

Dr_Frank

Dr_Frank

Oakland, CA
May 2005

JUN 30, 2005 08:12 AM

Well, you're entitled to your opinion of course. I guess if you can't grasp the absurdity and craziness of that quote, I won't be able to explain it to you. The way to confront the Holocaust would have been to funnel Western aid to the Nazi regime? Well, at least it's a noble impulse. Sorry, but my jaw just dropped again.

PointBlank

PointBlank

New York, NY
November 2004

JUN 30, 2005 08:15 AM

Dr_Frank said:
Well, you're entitled to your opinion of course. I guess if you can't grasp the absurdity and craziness of that quote, I won't be able to explain it to you. The way to confront the Holocaust would have been to funnel Western aid to the Nazi regime? Well, at least it's a noble impulse. Sorry, but my jaw just dropped again.


Not just Western aid...but a concert for raising aid!!

And, yes, it seems like more than a few people missed the ignorance of that comment.

VivaHST

VivaHST

Milwaukee, WI
July 2005

JUL 02, 2005 05:34 PM

Bob Geldof is a facist. Seriously, I saw this documentory where he shaved off his eyebrows and led a Nurenburg-like concert/ralley. He also made inflamitory statements about Jews and blacks (calling them coons) and said if he had his way he'd have all of us shot. So is this quote a surprise to anyone?

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