Monday 4 July 2005
David Rieff on Live 8: dangerous pity?
Summary
It is twenty years since the Live Aid concert when pop stars exhorted us to send money and ‘feed the world’.Back then all attention was focussed just on Ethiopia which was in the grip of a terrible famine…
Today, Ethiopia is the third poorest country in the world. And despite millions in aid life expectancy rates have actually dropped.
David Rieff argues that Sir Bob Geldof’s last crusade to save the starving in Ethiopia may in fact have done more harm than good.
Tonight he compares the 1985 Live Aid concert with last weekend's Live 8 concerts and the campaign to 'Make Poverty History'.
Guests on this program
David Rieff
Author: "A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis"
Publications
Dangerous Pity
Author: David Rieff
Publisher: Prospect Magazine, July 2005
http://prospectmagazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=6937
At the Point of a Gun : Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention
Author: David Rieff
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (USA March 1, 2005)
A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis.
Author: David Rieff
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (2002)
Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West
Author: David Rieff
Publisher: Touchstone Books, 1996
