{"id":62041,"date":"2013-08-23T09:40:04","date_gmt":"2013-08-23T08:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/what-the-irish-hate-about-bono\/62041\/"},"modified":"2013-08-23T09:40:04","modified_gmt":"2013-08-23T08:40:04","slug":"what-the-irish-hate-about-bono","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/what-the-irish-hate-about-bono\/","title":{"rendered":"What the Irish Hate About Bono"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"frontman\"<\/a><\/div>\n

What sticks in the craw about Bono with most people in Ireland is his crafty avoidance of massive tax liabilities at home while simultaneously strutting the world stage as a Messiah, a \u2018jumped up Jesus\u2019 (Bono\u2019s own words), intent on \u2018saving\u2019 Africa\u2019s poor.<\/p>\n

O dear.<\/p>\n

Up to now, and the publication of ex-Irish Times<\/em> writer Harry Browne\u2019s book, The Front Man: Bono (In the Name of Power)<\/i><\/a>, ammunition to sling has been thin on the ground. \u00a0Deliberately so. \u00a0From the get go, when U2 were kids bawling out songs at the Dandelion Market in Dublin, Bono\u2019s ambitions were as high as his stacked heels; when he and U2\u2019s legendary manager Paul McGuinness teamed up, a roadmap exploiting Bono and the boys\u2019 talent, plus Bono\u2019s ambition, joined with Mc Guinness\u2019s ruthless understanding of how to \u2018PR the PR\u2019 was laid down. The image was going to be everything.<\/p>\n

So far, so rock and roll.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, it was fellow rocker, Bob Geldof, who opened the door to international stardom.<\/p>\n

At the Live Aid gig Bono stole the show \u2014 grabbing a girl from the crowd, dancing with her on stage and <\/i>borrowing some of Geldof\u2019s thunder, by \u2018discovering\u2019 Africa. \u00a0Within a month, he and his wife Ali were in Ethiopia for a month as volunteers.<\/p>\n

Browne says what perhaps started out as genuine desire to help those less well off than himself quite quickly morphed into the Bono we see today \u2014 Rockstar Dude who\u2019s going to save the world, or St. Bono, who has gatecrashed the inner circles of the world\u2019s power elite preaching charity and debt reduction, and now, thanks to years of schmoozing, casually name checks George Bush, (Senior and Junior), Paul Wolfowitz, Tony Blair, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Warren Buffet,.<\/p>\n

In \u2018Frontman\u2019 Browne manages to peel back some of the PR aspic covering St. Bono to reveal Paul Hewson, a tough businessman firmly astride a very tough business empire which aggressively avoids the tax man, particularly in Bono\u2019s own, bankrupt homeland, Ireland.<\/p>\n

During the years of tax exemption for artists here, Bono and Co made millions, however, as soon as the Irish government put a cap of \u00e2\u201a\u00ac250,000 per anum (a great deal more than many writers or artists ever make) in 2006, Bono and Co\u2019s tax affairs were transferred to The Netherlands quicker than you could say Joshua Tree.<\/p>\n

During the Celtic Tiger \u2018boom\u2019 years this was bad enough, but since Ireland\u2019s economic collapse, it\u2019s felt toxic. \u00a0\u00a0Bono may be the darling of American chat shows, with Oprah Winfrey saying that in her eyes he is the \u2018living embodiment of hope\u2019 \u2014 here in his hometown, graffiti in the inner city offer a different opinion: \u2018Bono is a poxbottle\u2019. Or as another wag put it, \u2018What\u2019s the difference between God and Bono? God doesn\u2019t strut around Dublin all day thinking he\u2019s Bono\u2019.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, \u2018The Frontman\u2019 hits the shelves at a time when national governments, their hands forced by hard pressed tax payers, are questioning the tax practices of giants Amazon, Starbucks, Apple, Google et al, who earn millions in profit and pay pennies in tax.<\/p>\n

In the UK in 2012, Amazon paid 2.4 million in tax, on sales of 4.2 billion.<\/p>\n

In 2010, U2 Ltd paid \u00e2\u201a\u00ac16,500 in corporate tax, while U2 the band two yearly returns showed they grossed $736,137,344.<\/p>\n

Not only that, the biggest tax avoiders \u2014 the Apples, Starbucks, Googles and \u00a0Facebook \u2014 are the very people Bono is in bed with.<\/p>\n

Take his company (RED) \u2018a model of opacity\u2019 \u2014 a company supposed to garner millions for the world\u2019s poor by selling its conscience friendly branding to the world\u2019s rich. \u00a0In returns posted in 2009 (actual figures for all of Bono\u2019s companies are notoriously difficult to come by) just $18 million reached its parent company the Global Fund, while a staggering $100 million went on advertising.<\/p>\n

Yikes.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the core of all Bono\u2019s transactions Browne argues \u2014 neo liberal clothing covering brutal self enrichment.<\/p>\n

Even Bono\u2019s wife, Ali, through her \u2018ethical\u2019 clothing company Edun, now outsources manufacturing to China (not so ethical), while collaborating in Uganda with the American right wing, evangelicals \u2018Invisible Children\u2019, or the people who made the discredited \u2018Kony\u2019, child soldiers, video.<\/p>\n

Sadly, for Africa, American right wing evangelicalism is at the heart of many of Bono\u2019s activities, and at the heart of many of his best buddies activities too. \u00a0While Bono gives a cheery TED talk on how world poverty and AIDS are on the decrease (thanks largely to him being the subtext), the truth is less benign: \u00a0AIDS drugs come with evangelical puritanism. Birth control drugs come with more puritanism. The rise of anti gay and anti abortion movements in many African countries is no coincidence, says Browne.<\/p>\n

Even more alarmingly the big boys Bono is in bed with \u2014 the Bill Gates and the Warren Buffets \u2014 are part of the newest global power broking deals that see Africa as an inchoate resource to be milled. Land to be \u2018managed\u2019 for global food production (hello Monsanto). Resources to be grabbed (hello virgin lands, oil, gas, gold, diamonds).<\/p>\n

Instead of fighting for African farmers to be paid properly for what they produce (African coffee growers get 0.25 cent per pound of coffee while we in the West sup cappuccinos at \u00e2\u201a\u00ac3 per cup), it\u2019s more politically advantageous to Bono and his pals to say Africa needs aid, specifically the very questionable aid of multi billionaires who\u2019ve spent their lives avoiding tax, crushing competitors, asset stripping weakened colleagues.<\/p>\n

Bono\u2019s real dangerousness, argues Browne, is as a \u2018Frontman\u2019 for these super rich now planning to launch what many see as another wave of colonialism, under the aegis of the very questionable, New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition \u2014 launched at the G8 last year and enthusiastically supported by Bono. A danger picked up, and amplified by George Monbiot in his review in The Guardian,<\/em> and later, in the same paper, Terry Eagleton, who dismissed Bono as \u2018a crony of bankers and neocons\u2019.<\/p>\n

Or as Harry Browne puts it in \u2018Frontman\u2019, Bono\u2019s approach to Africa is \u201ca slick mix of traditional missionary and commercial colonialism, in which the poor world exists as a task for the rich world to complete\u201d.<\/p>\n

Naturally Bono has activated his (considerable) PR department to try counter the dark picture Harry Browne has painted in \u2018The Frontman\u2019 \u2014 bringing in pals Bill Clinton (\u2018Bono is the best advocate for the poor I have ever worked with\u2019), appearing on TED, (everything\u2019s groovey man, in 5 more years aids and world poverty are OVER), having cosy chats with Charlie Rose on CNN (\u2018Transparency is the vaccine for corruption\u2019). And appearing here in Ireland with fellow saint, Gay Byrne, on the hour long \u2018The Meaning of Life\u2019 programme.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most bizarre piece of PR however was Bono and Ali\u2019s \u2018private lunch\u2019 with Michelle Obama here in Dublin at the beginning of the Summer. \u00a0While her husband, Barak Obama, was in the North of Ireland at the G8 \u2014 pushing for tax transparency, she and her daughters were being lunched by one of Ireland\u2019s biggest tax avoiders, the lunch date kept absolutely secret until the very last minute, presumably to stop us natives revolting.<\/p>\n

Some commentators argued the Michelle lunch date was a sop to Bono for not being invited personally to the G8, others saw it as both an astonishing snub to our President, our Prime Minister, our many women\u2019s organisations, and an indication of where the real power in the world now lies, i.e., with the super rich.<\/p>\n

To show just how far Bono (and Paul McGuinness\u2019s) power reaches not one newspaper of quality in Ireland has seriously addressed the issues raised in \u2018The Frontman\u2019, instead attempts to rubbish it have been everywhere, with one senior journalist dismissing it as \u2018just a bunch of newspaper clippings\u2019.<\/p>\n

Interested Irish have had to search the web to find intelligent critiques; a bizarre situation indeed.<\/p>\n

Still, the facts assembled by Harry Browne in \u2018The Frontman\u2019, cannot be so easily schmoozed: \u00a0Bono has spent his life becoming filthy rich (grand); he now uses his rock and roll celebrity status to gain access to, and sprinkle some rock and roll gold dust on \u2018the suits\u2019 in power (not so grand), and preaches aid, and AIDS, in the company of some really nasty, right wing tax dodgers, while tax avoiding and asset accumulating with the best of them (not very grand at all).<\/p>\n

As legendary left wing activist from the Bogside, passionate music lover, Eamonn McCann put it at the launch for \u2018The Frontman\u2019, Bono\u2019s political antics are a \u2018dishonour to the tradition of rock and roll\u2019.<\/p>\n

Rock and roll was music\u2019s high rolling apex. Orgiastic, wild, explosive \u2014 the music of Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, the Rolling Stones. Rock and roll was <\/i>the counter culture. Delusions of saving the world did not figure. For true rock and rollers here in Ireland, to see it\u2019s global commodification energetically helped along by one of our own, moreover, used as a shield for billionaire neocons, is too sad.<\/p>\n

One can only hope that Harry Browne\u2019s book will bring \u2018Bono, The Frontman\u2019 back to us. Back to earth. \u00a0And back to the music. \u00a0Bono and U2 did after all give us all some unforgettable rock anthems and for those many, many thank you\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Dave Marsh, editor of Rock and Rap Confidential in the US, saw in his June review, \u2018Bono as that little boy in man\u2019s boots, surrounded by forces he fathoms no more than a five-year-old fathoms the perils of the sea\u2026 not so much a huckster as a sucker; not a con man so much as a victim of the world\u2019s greatest con artists; not an egomaniac but someone so insecure he has found ways to be shielded from almost all harsh realities\u2019.<\/p>\n

Huckster or sucker? Read \u2018The Frontman\u2019 and see. Perhaps \u2018our\u2019 Bono still hasn\u2019t really found what he\u2019s looking for?<\/p>\n

Rosita A. Sweetman<\/strong> lives in Ireland.<\/em><\/p>\n

Republished from: Counterpunch<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What sticks in the craw about Bono with most people in Ireland is his crafty avoidance of massive tax liabilities at home while simultaneously strutting the world stage as a Messiah, a \u2018jumped up Jesus\u2019 (Bono\u2019s own words), intent on \u2018saving\u2019 Africa\u2019s poor. O dear. Up to now, and the publication of ex-Irish Times writer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-62041","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}