Dead Wrong
Simultaneous concerts at London’s Wembley Stadium and JFK Stadium in Philadelphia were joined via satellite linkup for a global television audience. Ethiopians were suffering from dire famine, and promotional posters proclaimed this would be “The day the music changed the world.” They called it Live Aid…
Recently released CIA documents from 1985 (and a subsequent BBC investigation) suggest that so much of the money went to arms instead of food that it may have prolonged and deepened Ethiopia’s humanitarian catastrophe.
Full article on the failure of the Live Aid model.
Shows that Hollywood is populated with airheads. But we already knew that.
Almost invariably Hollywood can be counted on to do more harm than good.
You guys (contributors to this blog) have been very good on all things Africa. It’s a refreshing change from all the nonsense that appears on other blogs and at other news outlets.
Keep up the good work.
Foreign aid of any type is often fungible. For example, if taxpayers provide food stamps but stipulate I cannot use them to buy beer and cigarettes, the fact that I have my food paid for means I can use money I otherwise would have used on food on beer and cigarettes. Aid to dictators is the same. Paying one bill frees up resources for other uses such as arms. In the case of monetary aid, it’s probably misappropriated for arms.
Very sad statement about humanity.