Live 8
June 2nd, 2005
Live 8 is an activist concert series.
The name comes from a combination of Live Aid, a rock benefit concert used to raise over $100 million for famine relief in Africa in 1985, and G8, an annual economic and political summit of the heads of 8 of the world’s most powerful nations. The concert series, this time, asks for voices rather than money to end global poverty.
Catch the concert, free, July 2nd in Philadelphia, London, Paris, Rome, or Berlin.
Popularity: 2% [?]
June 22nd, 2005 at 6:32 am
Personally, these ‘stars’ are little more than drug peddlers criticising the system that makes drug addicts out of people whilst profitting from it. They criticise the G8 and the capitalist establishment for hoarding surplus wealth whilst they themselves do the same thing with the surplus wealth they accumulate from the their ‘sing-one-time & earn-a-life-time’ approach to their labour. If you look at the total wealth of the world, you’ll find much of it clogged up the drainpipes of the likes of Bob Geldoff, Bono and their other capitalist counterparts.
June 24th, 2005 at 3:49 pm
while i agree that there is an arguement to be made for the hypocrisy of rich artists calling to aid poor countries without loosening their grip on their millions, i do agree with Live 8 supporters in that the difference we can make in the lives of those starving around the world by altering the course of action of the world’s leading powers far surpasses what we can do for them by only charitably and publicly dropping a few dollars their way (which many of us do anyway).
as for reducing all artists to little more than strike-it-rich easy “drug peddlers”, I accuse you of gross over-simplification and too much media-watching.
June 24th, 2005 at 3:50 pm
also check out Bob Geldoff’s I-don’t-quite-know-what -to-make-of-this Sail 8. _