COMMENTS/FURTHER
INFORMATION
Transcribed
by Glen Philip Hansman from a videotape of the 2 July 2005 Live 8 Concert:
"I'm going to sing some songs that I wrote as a result of my first few encounters with what we think of as the 'Third World' quite a few years ago now. Although sometimes the first impressions they don't go deep, they are intense — and those are the things that make songs. But I just wanted to make an observation about a phrase like 'Third World.' We can say 'Third World' and we form a picture in our mind of whatever that means to us. But what a lot of us don't include in that picture is that the 'Third World' is made up of people, of human beings just like us — in the same boat as us, with the same kinds of dreams and hopes and wishes for a happy life. Their dreams may be a little scaled down from some of ours. They may be hoping that their kids will live to see the age of five. You know, most of us can assume that's going to happen, but in a lot of the world they don't. But you know, these are people with human faces, with lives, with individual talents and characteristics.
"Sometimes you'll
hear the professional cynics in the media telling you
that all of this is bullshit, that we're not really accomplishing
anything here because the countries in question are ruled by corrupt
leaders who are just going to take the money and do something with it
that we don't approve of. And you will hear that said. But what you
don't hear said at the same time, and it should be, is that these
corrupt leaders have been historically propped up in the positions
they're in by the same governments, the eight countries we're addressing
today. So now is the time to make oneself hear. If the G8 pulled their
support for these leaders, they would topple.
"I wrote this song [Waiting for a Miracle] for all the people who put their lives on the line working to accomplish some of the same things that we're trying to accomplish today. But there's a whole lot of people who never get attention (and maybe they don't really want it either) who are out there working for charitable agencies, working for all sorts of different organizations with the people in the countries in question. They are the true heroes of this day and of every effort to change things for the better."