Live Squat

Live Earth is a 24-hour, 7-continent concert series taking place on 7/7/07 that will bring together more than 100 music artists and 2 billion people to trigger a global movement to solve the climate crisis.

So, the archsongsters of environmentalism are convening a global community sing to proclaim their looming apocalypse, otherwise known as 'Global Warming'. A scant 22 years ago, another band of well-meaning musicians put on a similiar event, called 'Live Aid', to eliminate hunger in Ethiopia. It was a smashing success, as far as raising money is concerned. £150M successful.

Ethiopian President Mengistu Haile Mariam was very grateful for the generous donations. So grateful, in fact, that he was able to expand his army and maintain his fleet of soviet-made armor, needed to secure his Marxist government against surging domestic rebel groups. His starvation of opposition populations in his own country was what spurred the Live Aid project to begin with, so the whole decade from 1976 to 1986 was win, win, and win. Some figures claim Mengistu's Derg party was responsible for 1.5 million dead Ethiopians. So, Mengistu's government got paid £1000 for each person they killed. Nice.

So, who's the money going to this time, and who are they being paid to kill?

Tolerance, Eh?

"From my point of view, I would ban religion completely. Organized religion doesn't seem to work. It turns people into really hateful lemmings and it's not really compassionate." - Elton John

So much for tolerance for the hateful lemmings, eh? That kind of generalization is what the gay lobby has been trying to shrug for years, so why are they engaging in the very stereotyping and dehumanization as their "oppressors"? If you can find some essential difference between labelling folks "hateful lemmings" and "flaming butt pirates", you're much more the scholar than I.

Religious leaders have also failed to do anything about tensions and conflicts around the world, he said.

"Why aren't they having a conclave? Why aren't they coming together?" he asked.

I guess that Elton doesn't keep up with Vatican news releases, him being him and all. Unfortunately, all we can do is tell people how they should be towards each other, we can't force them to actually do it. If religious authorities had that sort of power, Elton would be the first to decry it when it conflicts with his carnal predilections. So if believers cannot bring peace, who can? Elton knows:

"It's like the peace movement in the '60s. Musicians got through to people by getting out there and doing peace concerts, but we don't seem to do them any more," he said. "If John Lennon were alive today, he'd be leading it with a vengeance."

Those peace concerts were really successful, weren't they? Tibet is free from Chinese domination, everyone in Africa has something to eat, and the family farm is flourishing. Oh, none of those happened? But the musicians played, sang, and shouted for "Peace".

Oh. and by the by, if John Lennon were alive today, he would be crushed to death inside his cremation urn.

h/t Dad29