Birdnow's Aviary

September 06, 2019

The Paving of the Road

Timothy Birdnow

Here is an old article that illustrates the utter stupidity of liberal feel-goodism and how the mainstream media lies to the public. It revisits the Live Aid concerts and shows how, instead of helping the starving people in Ethiopia, it actually empowered those who were hurting them.

From the article:

I asked Bob Keating, a superb young investigative reporter who had just started working with us, to look into this for a story. The assignment was simple â€” all this money had been raised, where was it going, was it actually doing good?

He discovered it was not doing good, but, horrifically, unimaginably, the exact opposite. The Ethiopian dictator, Mengistu, until then deadlocked in the war, was using the money the west gave him to buy sophisticated weapons from the Russians, and was now able to efficiently and viciously crush the opposition. Ethiopia, then the third poorest country in the world, suddenly had the largest, best equipped army on the African continent.

By this time we had all seen the pictures and TV footage of Bob Geldof, the figurehead of Live Aid, bear hugging and playfully punching Mengistu in the arm as he literally handed over the funding for this slaughter. It was on TV now alright, but as an endless, relentless reel of heroic Bob Geldof highlights. He drenched himself in the adulation and no one begrudged him it, until our investigation exposed the holocaust that Live Aidâ€™s collected donations had help perpetrate on the Eritrean independence fighters.

Most damningly, Keating reported that Geldof was warned, repeatedly, from the outset by several relief agencies in the field about Mengistu, who was dismantling tribes, mercilessly conducting resettlement marches on which 100,000 people died, and butchering helpless people. According to Medicins Sans Frontiers, who begged Geldof to not release the money until there was a reliable infrastructure to get it to victims, he simply ignored them, instead famously saying: "Iâ€™ll shake hands with the Devil on my left and on my right to get to the people we are meant to help.â€

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:26 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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1 Geldof's not very smart. But then, he's a rock "musician" and they aren't noted for deep intelligence. Yes, I know that may be stereotyping, and yes, there are some who are quite intelligent; but as a rule we aren't describing rocket scientists here, and this article proves it.
Wasn't it Geldof who was doing a concert in Scotland, and at one point stopped and started clapping his hands, about once every second, and said "Every time I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies," and a loud, rough Scots voice yelled "Well, quit fookin' doin' it, then?"
It was Geldof or one of that virtue-signaling crowd, though we didn't call it by that term then.

Posted by: Dana Mathewson at September 06, 2019 09:09 AM (1xXOY)

2 Heh! Hadn't heard that story, Dana; it's hilarious! And I'm not surprised.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at September 06, 2019 09:19 AM (D28R3)

3 The Scots have always been good at administering needed doses of reality. I suspect its the whisky they drink. There's nothing better in the universe.

Posted by: Dana Mathewson at September 06, 2019 05:43 PM (jDPtg)

4 I would say Skoal! but that's a German thing. What do Scotsmen say when they hoist a glass?

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at September 07, 2019 06:50 AM (gEjPp)

5 "Skoal" is Scandanavian; Germans say "Ein Prosit." I'm not sure what Scotsmen say; it's hard enough to understand 'em when they're sober.

Posted by: Dana Mathewson at September 08, 2019 08:23 AM (w+lqe)

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