Live Aid Wasn’t All That Great.

David Rieff presents his slightly revisionist version of the Ethiopian famine. Worth reading. I say "slightly revisionist" as there were those making these points at the time, that at least part of the cause of the problems was the resettlement programme….yes, there was indeed a drought but that could have been coped with if it had not coincided with the collectivisation plan very much along the lines of Stalin’s Ukraine, with the same dismal results.

Rather backs up Amyarta Sen’s point that you don’t get famines without bad government.

3 responses

  1. dearieme Avatar
    dearieme

    “Amyarta Sen’s point that you don’t get famines without bad government”: a tautology?

  2. There was an excellent Live Aid 20 years on retrospective on BBC2 Saturday night. There’s was plenty early on that I didn’t realise or had forgotten. The best bit, possibly in December of 1984, was when Bob Geldof was visiting Ethiopia for the first time with a press pack in tow that he was anxios to avoid shooting him in a sort of contrived way up in the famine stricken areas. On returning to Addis Ababba somehow he’s taken to meet Mengistu, and, as we all know by now, Bob’s no fool, he’s done his home work. “Is it true you murder 60 people a day, you’re a f-ing c… aren’t you. This is all on film. It got a giant round of applause in our house. How I’d love to mouth off to the world’s grade ‘a’ socialist assholes in full view of the world. What a guy!

  3. Interesting post and comments, thanks.
    I’ve read somewhere that genocide and famine would not occur within a modern day democracy.

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