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The millions donated to Ethiopia in 1985 thanks to Live Aid were supposed to go towards relieving a natural disaster. In reality, donors became participants in a civil war. Many lives were saved, but even more may have been lost in Live Aid's unwitting support of a Stalinist-style resettlement project Isn't it better to do something rather than give in to despair or cynicism and do nothing? This is the reproachful question familiar to anyone who has criticised organisations that view themselves as dedicated to doing good in the world. To those UN agencies, relief organisations and development groups working...

The Doors: You have been bitten by an animal while trying to get it stoned. The Who: You own a Goldwing with a baby-changing station. Ted Nugent: Your hair has at some point been caught in a ceiling fan, boat propeller, or lathe. The Rolling Stones: You own three cars and no stereo. Canned Heat: You own three stereos and no car. The Beatles: You can do exactly 1.5 pull-ups. Badfinger: You are a Beatle. Deep Purple: Some part of a law named after a young girl applies to you. Led Zeppelin: The first three things you smoked were banana...

Sarah Silverman has a bone to pick with how certain household items are labeled — and she’s calling for more diversity. The comedian took to Twitter to point out that products like pantyhose and bandages come in shades marked as “nude,” though the peachy-beige tone really only applies to some white people. “I can’t [expletive] believe that there are still ‘nude’ bras and nylons and Band Aids,” she wrote. “If you are a company still using nude to describe an exclusively Caucasian shade in 20[expletive]19 you need to change now or go tha way of zee dinosaur.”

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just got a humbling lesson in the power of anti-Semitism: It can’t be bribed away with a plum subcommittee appointment or threatened out with a primary challenge. Watching the utter disaster that unfolded when congressional leaders suggested making a simple, full-throated condemnation of anti-Semitism, I tried to think of something less surprising. I couldn’t. This began bad for the Jews; it ended bad for the Jews; and in the middle was a whole heaping pile of bad for the Jews. Last week, after freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., had made the latest in a series...

Tough guy over here. A Brazilian fisherman who accidentally fired a harpoon through his own face survived with minimal brain damage -- and didn't bother to seek medical attention for more than 10 hours. Bruno Barcellos de Souza Coutinho, 34, was cleaning his fishing gear when the speargun discharged, sending the foot-long weapon approximately six inches into his skull, according to Hospital Santa Teresa. Instead of rushing to the hospital, de Souza Coutinho apparently thought he would relax and let the wound heal, prompting his aunt to call the fire department. snip

memory hole reminder The first documentary evidence that Vietnamese communists were directly steering John Kerry’s group Vietnam Veterans Against the War has been discovered in a U.S. archive, according to a researcher who spoke with WorldNetDaily. Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2004/10/27207/#615wufvA5oZXKuWK.99

We've got a Fifth Column right here at home. And now its getting stronger with the ACLU. For all of you who gave up on Oreilly, he did a great job tonite on the ACLU scumbags. The above is from Recovering Ex-Hippie on the post discussing the cameraman who caught the Marine doing his duty, saving his own life and his buddies lives. I wanted to speak about O’Reilly. Did anyone else watch his program last night. I watch it because I do not think there is anything else on. Last night was a contrast on how good he can...

Irish rock star and campaigner Bob Geldof, a driving force behind the 1985 Live Aid appeal for Ethiopia, urged Tuesday that Africa's debt problems stay a priority despite the Asian tsunami disaster. "The tsunami must be dealt with, it is an act of God, an act of nature," he told BBC radio, voicing concern the disaster would sideline chronic issues elsewhere. "Africa's an act of man. Millions die each year completely unnecessarily and that can be adjusted ... The issue is one of poverty and debt and it need not be," Geldof added. He said the government should seize the...

LONDON (Reuters) - The reworked Band Aid charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?" has clinched the coveted Christmas number one spot on the UK pop charts, the Official UK Charts Company said Sunday. As expected, Band Aid 20, a nod to the two decades that have passed since Bob Geldof (news) assembled the leading pop stars for the 1984 smash hit record, clung on to the top spot beating off competition from Ronan Keating (news) and pop queen Kylie Minogue (news). Proceeds from the new Band Aid recording -- featuring vocals from stars such as Jamelia and Coldplay's Chris...

NEW YORK (AFP) - Band Aid is making its appeal for Africa in 2004 more as a political demand than the first time it touched the world's conscious in 1985 to raise money, creator Bob Geldof said. Geldof said the people who supported Band Aid 20 years ago when it released the disc "Do They Know It's Christmas?" are now in power. "The promises of 1985 should be fulfilled politically, finally," the former punk singer told a press conference in New York where he is attending meetings for a Commission for Africa, a body set up by Prime Minister Tony...

It was meant to be a recreation of one of pop's finest moments, where the cream of the British music scene came together in the name of charity. Instead it turned into an egofuelled squabble between one of rock's elder statesmen and a flashy would-be pretender.

NEW YORK - A GOP delegate handed out more than 200 bandages with purple hearts on them Monday night at the Republican National Convention in a swipe at Democratic nominee John Kerry's war record, but national GOP officials have asked him to stop. The bandages were handed out by Morton Blackwell, a longtime GOP activist from Virginia, with the message: "It was just a self-inflicted scratch, but you see I got a Purple Heart for it." Kerry won three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a bronze star for his service in the Vietnam War. Democratic Chairman Terry McAuliffe said...

John Kerry: Your Cheatin' (purple) Heart "While in Cam Rahn Bay, he trained on several 24-hour indoctrination missions, and one special skimmer operation with my most senior and trusted Lieutenant. The briefing from some members of that crew the morning after revealed that they had not received any enemy fire, and yet Lt.(jg) Kerry informed me of a wound -- he showed me a scratch on his arm and a piece of shrapnel in his hand that appeared to be from one of our own M-79s. It was later reported to me that Lt.(jg) Kerry had fired an M-79,...

MIDI - BAND ON THE RUN (fairly long intro) We were on our swift boat...rolling down the river Kerry had been dreaming of a Purple Heart...his first Purple Heart Oh, yeah...first Purple Heart...that would...have been quite a start He was planning a future career...everything he did went to that end Everybody knew that it was true...there was no need to even pretend He would follow John Kennedy He thought he's the next John Kennedy...he was planning it out very well If his comrades would get in his way...then they all could go right straight to hell He would follow...

The Navy medic who treated Sen. John Kerry after he sustained his first battlefield wound in Vietnam said Tuesday that he thought that the injury had been inadvertently self-inflicted - raising new questions about why Kerry sought a Purple Heart after the incident. Contacted by National Review Online, Dr. Louis Letson recalled that Kerry insisted during treatment that he was injured by enemy fire while his swift boat was patrolling the Mekong Delta on Dec. 2, 1968. However, "some of his crew confided that they did not receive any fire from shore," the Navy doc told NRO. Instead, his...

Some critics of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry have questioned the circumstances surrounding the first of three Purple Hearts Kerry won in Vietnam. Those critics, among them some of Kerry's fellow veterans, have suggested that a wound suffered by Kerry in December 1968 may have made him technically eligible for a Purple Heart but was not severe enough to warrant serious consideration, even for a decoration that was handed out by the thousands. Whatever the case, Kerry was awarded the Purple Heart, and, along with two others he won later, it allowed him to request to leave Vietnam before his...

KERRY'S MEDICAL RECORDS Bill Clinton always refused to release his medical records. Speculation? Lots of it. But to this day we have no clue just why Clinton feared public scrutiny of his records. George Bush? He recently made his medical records pertaining to that period of time during which he was serving in the Texas Air National Guard public. All of them. John Kerry? Will he release his medical records for that period of time he served in Vietnam? Answer: No, he won't. And why not? We don't know ... but I have a hunch. Kerry has been making a...

Now’s the Time to Speak up, Stand up, and Fight! . . . so where’s George Bush? Many men and women are fundamentally optimists, and indeed if they were not so, sometimes the days and nights of life itself could seem somewhat intolerable. It is really grisly what has happened in the last week, with the Supremes, and Bush and his “applauding” the agenda, but as so many predicted it should not be a surprise that this would all happen under a Republican President and not a Democratic one – but it does damper optimism about our future. Because, the...