No progress at Genoa despite Bono contention

So Bono was upset by my castigation last week of his antics at the G8 summit in Genoa. I wrote of him and his fellow pop singer Bob Geldof:

The spectacle of Bob Geldof and Bono bear-hugging G8 leaders in Genoa on Saturday was revolting. It was not just the manic presumption that they would have an iota of influence, nor the phoniness and the crass attention-seeking of the exhibition that was stomach-churning. It was their giddy association with the rulers of the world and their eloquent dissociation from the tens of thousands who had gathered to protest against the unfairness and inequities of the new world order.

Instead of responding directly to the criticism, he gave an interview to Saturday's Irish Independent. This was followed by a letter from an offended Bono in a Zurich hotel which, because, I am told, it is off the record, I feel unable to quote from - although why it is off the record I don't know, since it repeats more or less the same sad fantasies revealed in the star-struck interview. I will not quote from the letter, just the interview.

Bono is of the view that he shapes world events. He told the Irish Independent: summits (of world leaders) work for us, politicians are listening to our arguments. He claimed he had worked on the MAP (Millennium Africa Plan) at Jubilee 2000 (described in the article as his organisation) with the African leaders who came to Genoa to make their arguments at the G8 summit. He promised to be at the next G8 summit in Canada and the reason for this summitry apparently is that when G8 leaders look into each other's eyes, well, anything is possible. That's what he said. Honest to God. Had it not been for the letter I would have thought the Irish Independent had got carried away.

Jubilee 2000 is an international organisation bringing together groups throughout the world campaigning for the write-off of all Third World debt. Bono is used by them to get publicity. Jubilee 2000 lobbies international institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank and governments throughout the world on the debt relief issue.

All very laudable. But the contention that Bono influences world leaders, such as George Bush, Tony Blair, Vladimir Putin, Jacques Chirac and the rest on Third World debt or on world trade policy or on anything else is sheer fantasy. Indeed the idea that anybody anywhere outside the US influences US policy on anything is also fantasy, as the recent instances of American global vandalism demonstrate. In the last few months they have promised to break an international treaty on nuclear arms control, they scuttled a small-arms control agreement, they have abandoned an environmental treaty and, most recently, they have sabotaged an agreement to control the use and proliferation of chemical weapons and threatened to boycott a UN conference on racism.

As for the effectiveness of Bono's endeavours at Genoa, nothing whatsoever was achieved on debt relief, the AIDS package was a fraction of what is required, there was no progress at all on opening up world trade to the poorer nations, nothing on environmental protection, no budget on arms control, nuclear or otherwise. Nothing.

Bono explained away the jubilation with Vladimir Putin and Tony Blair by claiming that just as a photograph was being taken Vladimir told a joke about something, that's why they were laughing. But why were they hugging? Was it because of another joke or the same joke and is it just Russian leaders, whose hands are mired in the blood of tens of thousands of Muslims, that one hugs when they tell jokes?

But let's be kind and accept that Bono just got carried away. As a publicist for Jubilee 2000 he has added to pressures for relief of Third World debt.

Entirely by coincidence, I came across a report in Harvard College Gazette of Bono's address to the Class Day ceremonies on June 6th last. Unfortunately, there is a picture of Bono giving the stiff right-arm victory salute, but that aside, he spoke eloquently about the plight of the Third World and of the necessity for debt relief. He referred to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the West poured in money to prop up Mobutu during the Cold War to keep Africa safe from communism; Mobutu personally appropriated almost all the loans, and the impoverished people of the Congo were expected to pay it back.

There were curious bits to the speech too: I am a singer. You know what a singer is? Someone with a hole in his heart as big as his ego. When you need 20,000 people screaming your name in order to feel good about your day, you know you're a singer. Rubbing shoulders with the rulers of the world can't be bad either or, better still, a little platonic bear-hugging.

By the way, I wrote to Bono several months ago asking him to do an interview for The Irish Times. I heard nothing until the other day. Maybe it is because I am not enough of a fan. The invitation is still open, man.

vbrowne@irish-times.ie