AP Wire | 05/31/2005 | Philly to again host Live Aid concert

Twenty years after the historic, yet ineffective, Live Aid concert, five concerts, dubbed Live 8, will take place in London, Paris, Berlin, Philadelphia and Rome on July 2, just days before G-8 leaders meet in Scotland. About 100 bands will perform worldwide. The goal of the Live 8 concerts is to raise awareness about African poverty and put public pressure on G-8 summit leaders to approve a proposal to cancel debt for the poorest African nations. “We’re not asking for your money, we’re asking for your voice,” said Jamie Drummond, executive director of Debt AIDS Trade Africa (DATA), an advocacy group founded by U2 singer Bono.(By the way, someone should tell Mr. Drummond that forgiving debt and asking for money are kind of the same thing.)

It should be a marvelous show with lots of great music and positive self-feelings. It is a rare chance for all of the bands participating to feel good about themselves and that in itself is worth a lot to these musicians—who otherwise would be jockeying to get their homes on MTV’s “Cribs”.

But will it mean anything to the people of Africa? Not likely.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Geldof unveils Live 8 show plans

Some economists were sceptical the aims of the Make Poverty History campaign would help the people it was targeted at. Kendra Okonski, of the International Policy Network, said debt relief, aid and trade justice had been a “demonstrable failure” for decades. “Aid has tended to reward failing governments and undermine democracy,” she said. “In the case of Uganda, they’re waging an illegal war with aid money that’s given by the United States. “Debt per se is not a bad thing. Lots of us have mortgages. “If you say all debts are forgiven it actually punishes countries which are doing a good job paying back their debt.”

So what are these concerts going to accomplish? Probably not much other than good TV. I don’t know what reforming the Spice Girls for one night is going to do about hunger in Zimbabwe and other kleptocracies in Africa. In Zimbabwe, there are severe shortages of food after the failure of this year’s harvest due to agricultural policies that included the racist and illegal confiscating the lands of productive farms. Maybe Mr. Geldof is hoping that when President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe sits down in front of his Plasma TV to watch the spectacle and then sees pictures of starving African children set to the music of the Boomtown Rats he’ll feel compelled to stop his campaign of terror? I guess we won’t know until we try.

Maybe what has been needed all along to get the perpetrators of the genocide in Sudan to stop their slaughter is a riveting set of the Killers?

If the Live 8 concert series works as well as the organizers hope perhaps Mr. Geldof will then put together other concerts to cure cancer, end illiteracy and then a big summer jam to end hatred of all kinds. We can only hope.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 6th, 2005 at 8:33 am by Insider and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.