Liberals Don't Care About Consequences So Long As They Feel Good About Themselves

I've said it time and time again that one of the hallmarks of liberal thinking is the selfishness wrapped up in their desire to "just do something" to solve whatever real or imaginary problem presents itself. They simply don't care about the consequences, as long as they feel good about doing something and/or can virtue signal to their friends.

    I was reminded of this when I came across an article (I believe via Peter Grant's blog) about the Live Aid concert of 1985. Some of you are probably old enough to remember the concert. If you are not, but happened to watch the movie Bohemian Rhapsody, you might remember that the climax of the story was Queen's performance at the Live Aid concert held in the UK.

    The purpose of the concert was to raise money to assist people starving in Ethiopia, supposedly because of a severe drought. I remember at the time that the news seemed to bring us almost daily the images of starving Ethiopians--especially focusing on children. Strangely, though, the couple Ethiopian exchange students attending my high school were not bothered by it. But they were from comparatively wealthy families. The concert seemed a brilliant idea to allow everyone to do something about the starving children, and was successful in raising a considerable amount of money for relief aid.

     But all was not as it seemed. Ethiopia was in the midst of a civil war, and the hunger was mostly the fault of the Ethiopian dictator, Mengistu. In 1986, Spin magazine published a scathing article revealing that the funds, and the food bought with funds, from the Live Aid project and related charities, were not going to the people in need, but were being used by the Ethiopian dictator to pay his troops and purchase weapons from the Soviet Union. And the organizer of the Live Aid concert knew it. In 2015, Spin decided to republish their article with some commentary of how it was vilified in the press until, slowly, as more and more investigative reporters looked into it, the story was reluctantly verified.

     The key point from the original 1986 article:

      The Ethiopia that Live Aid began raising money for is not the Ethiopia to which the money has gone. That is the simple, harsh truth. Ethiopia, which has the largest standing army in Africa, is embroiled in four internal wars, the major fighting going on against revolutionary forces in the northern provinces of Tigre and Eritrea. There government troops have systematically scorched the farmlands, destroying crops and killing oxen, used napalm on starving noncombatants, and according to U.S. intelligence reports, employed chemical warfare and nerve gas on their own people.

      To the outside world, the Ethiopian government portrays resettlement as one of its projects for the salvation of its people in the north. In reality, it is a vicious and brutal plan carried out by the army, using food to lure the peasants into camps.

      “Food has been given to Ethiopia for humanitarian purposes,” says Bonnie Holcomb, “but it has served as bait in a trap that is part of an ongoing program to restructure Ethiopia’s society.”

      In concept, resettlement is a voluntary program to help the people of Ethiopia. But it is neither voluntary nor a help. Last October 25, a unit of Ethiopian soldiers invaded a relief center at Korem in the province of Wollo, looking for “volunteers.” Run by the Save the Children Fund and Medicins sans Frontieres, Korem is one of the largest feeding stations, attracting peasants from miles around. Three times before, it had been hit by government troops. As the army poured into the center, 20,000 people fled in terror into the bitter cold of night, but an unlucky 600 were rounded up at gunpoint, loaded onto trucks — three of which belonged to Save the Children — and driven off to be resettled.

      “Don’t take these horror stories lightly,” says Terry Norr. “They’re just the tip of the iceberg.”

       Before they are sent to the resettlement camps, the victims are taken to a holding center to await transportation. There are no latrines and little food or water in the overcrowded and disease-ridden centers. Those who have escaped to refugee camps in Sudan tell horror stories of being beaten, being shot trying to escape, or of watching their families separated and brutalized. The survivors are loaded on trucks and planes for a long and horrible journey. Soviet Antonov planes, designed to carry 50 paratroopers, were put into duty moving 350 to 400 people more than 500 miles to the camps in the south.

      “People were crushed to death on the impact of takeoff and landing,” says Holcomb, who interviewed scores of survivors. “They were suffocating, throwing up on each other, literally being asphyxiated. One woman was standing on a body that she didn’t know if it was dead or alive — but she couldn’t move. Children had to be held over people’s heads so they wouldn’t be smashed. Women miscarried and bled. And then the army would come in with a hose, wash the plane out, and go back and do it again.”

      More than 600,000 people were relocated this way, and 100,000 died in the savage transport. Last spring, 70,000 people were being moved this way each week. Today, the resettlement program has slowed while another plan, called “villagization,” which will move 33 million Ethiopians, more than three-quarters of the population, to state villages, has been stepped up.

       The terrible truth of what is really going on in Ethiopia has been kept an ugly secret among the relief agencies who are in business there. It is a business that some don’t want to see end or have jeopardized.

      “We’ve put years into Ethiopia,” says Brian Bird of the World Vision organization, “We cannot in good conscience sacrifice all that work to make a grand political point. We are guests of that government, and our entire program rests upon their approval.”

      “If they start raising a ruckus or shifting their policy around, they’ll lose their money from the public,” countered a fieldworker, who asked not to be named. “Then their own bread won’t be buttered.”

In the more recent commentary, Spin notes:

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.

    Spin tried to go to Bob Geldof, the Live Aid organizer, about the issue, but he refused to talk to them. Finally, they published their exposé and were tarred and feathered in the media. According to Spin:

At first our story was met with a terrific backlash. We were vilified by a disbelieving media, who felt we sensationalized the situation in Ethiopia to sell magazines.  Our music industry advertisers pulled their ads. We went on the offensive and I personally did hundreds upon hundreds of interviews, with anyone who would talk to me. Every interview concluded with my saying, “You’re a news organization, look into it yourself!” Many did, and then more, and slowly the tide turned as they began to realize we were right. Live Aid had, through its missteps, exacerbated the already terrible humanitarian crisis.

Eventually, the Wall Street Journal confirmed Spin's reporting, and other news outlets started admitting the truth. But by that point it was too late: Live Aid and the "humanitarian" work it had done was already a legend. And today, no one remembers Live Aid as resulting in evil consequences, only that it showed how much the West, and, in particular, the West's music stars, cared.