Give to the Rich to Help the Poor!
As an introduction to this item, a short TikTok on the courage of the Al Jazeera reporter Anas Al-Sharif, recently slaughtered in his tent, trying to catch up on some sleep, among with four of his colleagues.
This blog essay refers back to piece of polemic about Bono and his 'charidee' efforts which was written in 2009... and I decided to update it after U2 released statements on The genocide that fell far short of being honest and viable.
Bono and Label Red, a 'well meaning' scam?
Back in 2009 I had been doing a lot of reading on the American Express and Bono founded Label Red campaign.
Label red was founded in 2006. The idea was that 1% of sales of goods using the Label Red marker would go to AIDS charities working in Africa. Young people were exercised on the issue of African impoverishment. Companies were seeking young people as evolving consumers....
In 2008 American Express joined the campaign, issuing new car scheme targeting younger consumers. The business objective of their campaign was to enrol a million new young customers, hopefully as life long users of the service.
What I found as I read more and more was quite disturbing, yet not at all surprising. More about that below.
Celebrity is a weapon of Wealth-as-Power.
Seeing pop stars who are incredibly wealthy stand next to political leaders who cause great harm makes sense.
Celebrities are not really real people - they are performance theatre, actors performing for the purpose of extracting wealth, and when they join the Wealth-as-Power Class they enter the class war, because they stay silent on the causes of impoverishment, warfare, racism, misogyny that emanate from the process of Wealth-as-Power extraction of wealth from exploited populations.
Update to 2025...
Bono and the Band U2 release public statements on The Genocide, having supported Israel and America all the way these past two years and more... their statements protect Israel, lay all the blame on Netanyahu and Hamas, evade confronting USUK and EU Governments directly, they silence the voices of Palestinians by exclusion of any mention of their voices and they amplify the bands public hand wringing escapism. Bono accepted a medal from Biden, in the midst of the Genocide - he should have rejected it publicly, if he really was going to support the Palestinian people as a public voice.
Here is just one example of the kind of false, bland, unexamined narrative Bono deploys in his 'opinion piece'. clearly he has made no effort any all to understand the details of the complexity and see what is it that complicates the Western response - what complicates the Western response is that Israel is a British Empire Weapon, since 1915 and the first insertion of European Jewish refugees...
Bono is an Honoury Knight Commander of the British Empire. Bono's words ring hollow, masked propaganda most of his fans ought to see right through.
"Yahya Sinwar didn’t mind if he lost the battle or even the war if he could destroy Israel as a moral as well as an economic force. Over the next months as Israel’s revenge for the Hamas attack appeared more and more disproportionate and disinterested in the equally innocent civilian lives in Gaza… I felt as nauseous as everyone, but reminded myself Hamas had deliberately positioned themselves under civilian targets, having tunneled their way from school to mosque to hospital."
1. Bono has no idea what Yahya Sinwar 'minded'. Furthermore Sinwar was a representative of a larger body of people than himself, and was quite clearly not driven by self interests of any kind. His last moments demonstrated the courage that the 1916 Rising fighters, including who were executed by British Military order in 1916. Yahya Sinwar's writings and public utterances, which no doubt Bono has not pored over with any great interest, and his actions throughout his life, all of which are quite well documented, support that contention. A philosophy of courage, resistance and service to his people. Bono's sentence implies Sinwar was casual about all of this. As if he could't care less. Bono's self serving attitude leaks out.
2. The 'disproportionate' quality of the Israeli response was obvious within the first month of the Military assault. Israeli leaders had already publicly committed to a genocidal war, with leading politicians in the cabinet declaring their intent and espousing their view of Palestinians in Gaza (and the West Bank) as 'human animals'. A registry of comments by leading Israeli legislators that are quite blatantly genocidal exists and can be verified. This is not a compilation of anti-Israel propaganda. It is the self incriminations of the Israeli political leadership supported by 90% of the Israeli population.
3. "I felt as nauseous as everyone" awe, didums... Bono remained silent, as we who protested immediately, aware of what was being done, were turning sleepless nights, nursing broken hearts, trying to calm our outraged minds, witnessing horrors on our media streams we did not know were possible. Our hopes dashed repeatedly as the West refused to act according to international law. And what we were experiencing was a luxury compared to what the people of Gaza and West Bank and the Palestinian diaspora were living through. Bono's claim that the complexity of the situation barred him from public commentary is banal, effete and ludicrous. His claim to being emotional afflicted is gaslighting.
There was no sign of nausea as he accepted an award from Biden, who was participating in the Genocide.
4. There is no reliable evidence anywhere what Hamas military wing deliberately placed themselves behind, within or under civilian infrastructure. Bono was not reminding himself of anything other than his acceptance at face value of Israeli lies, as if they were the honest truth, so cross my heart... Yes, there were tunnels, no there is not one shred of evidence of them linking civilian or religious infrastructure to evade Israeli surveillance and its bunker busting bombs, or of using civilians as shields.
I could go on. If I am wrong here, please point it out in the comments.
~
Here's a link to their full statements on their own website - readers can read. Make up your own minds. I'm clear on where I stand.
Here follows the rest of the original blog posting...
Marina Hyde, writing in the Guardian 'comment is free' web pages outlines a fantastic new philantrophic concept designed by elites themselves, the super-duper rich.
"Give to the rich to help the poor? An idea worthy of Bono."
Satire? No - a genius really has concocted a tax proposal to put our aid budget in the hands of the super-rich"
"On Tuesday night, 100 billionaires will gather at London's sumptuous Dorchester hotel, to watch Mr Ted Turner in conversation with Ms Carol Vorderman. Ms Joss Stone will sing, and some model or other will be in attendance. Can you guess the aim of this evening, which I trust you would cross continents to avoid in the infinitely unlikely event that you had been invited? No? Then allow me to assist. The aim is to make the government give tax breaks to the super-rich, in order to tempt them to give the same percentage of income to charity as the poorest 20% of people in this country already do.
Feel free to be taken unwell.
Initially I assumed the Fortune Forum, for so it is named, was an elaborate living satire, designed to highlight practically everything that is wrong with contemporary life. Alas, The Fortune Forum is all too real. It was dreamt up by an heiress called Renu Mehta, as a kind of vaguely benevolent mini-Davos."
Marina continues to explore this fantastic fantasy escapist world ... I think she doesn't go far enough. Like George Monbiot, she holds back the full fury of common-sense empathy and outrage.
Nonetheless, 'It' has to be said. And both are saying it with some subtlety.
The hubris of these immensely rich people, often from long lines of generations of wealth, has become, for the majority of people, an almost pathological issue, in that it is an attitude that informs many of the practices which we know are harming rather than assisting life, geared towards gathering and hoarding 'resources' and wealth, and often with great violence, and these super rich people know this, and they continue nonetheless, sitting on charitable boards, with all that is going on around the world, driven by their pride in their immense wealth and paranoia about their 'strategic interests'.
I have re-written the song 'streets with no name' as 'thieves with no shame', as a parody. I don't sing the song, as I find the melody irksome. I do sing 'I don't like geldof' and parody of 'I don't like Mondays'..... Goldloaf at least wrote some catchy tunes...
Both have done more harm than good.
http://www.corneilius.net/
There's also background info on Geldof and Bono business dealings and investments, and an analysis of Label Red, sponsored by Bono, American Express and the large pharmaceutical companies who control aids medicine patents.
Article on Label Red - Bono and Africa, and the clever little scam. The information on AIDS assistance is horrifying.
I have sent this out before, it's not my own research, so blessings to all the various people and ways that info flows.
And it's worth repeating, it's worth all the effort to expose these fools to their own folly, and show them how they can help, if they seriously want to help, if it is to do with their experience of their common humanity, common soul, common nature and common sense!
We'll show them how by doing it ourselves, as many are already doing. Ask Jane Goddall....
Ask the lovley people, voluteers all, who facilitated The Spike community centre evicted by Southwark Council from their home in Peckham! A home the Council are selling to property developers, handing it over to the private sector for profit.... wealth is transferred, from poor to rich yet again, another drop in the constant flow.
One the one hand the rich have charidees, and on the other hand their ideology keeps shutting these grass roots initiatives down.....!
Kindest regards
Corneilius
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