Rock Star Bono - Please Think Again

Bono with George Bush

April 4, 2007 -- Bono's Venezuela attack game. The Venezuela Solidarity Network has sent the following appeal to Bono, the so-called "humanitarian" rock star:

Bono (of U2)
Principle Management
30-32 Sir John Rogerson’s Quay
Dublin 2, 1111
Ireland


Dear Bono,


On the “Hearts & Minds” page of your website, you open with an appeal to others with a quote from Mahatma Gandhi, “We must become the change we want to see in the world.” Your appeal goes on to highlight the many philanthropic efforts of U2 over the years. These have included benefit concerts and other worldwide campaigns for issues such as human rights, sustainability, debt reduction, AIDS, poverty, disease, militarism, and political oppression.

Given this background, many people around the world have been shocked to find out that you are a part owner, through Elevation Partners, of Pandemic/Bioware, producers of “Mercenaries 2”.

As you must know, “Mercenaries 2” is a war game that simulates the invasion of Venezuela in the year 2007. Of course, at this point, we have only been able to see the web-based sample of the game. However, even this is enough to see that the game is designed to demean the Venezuelan people, to undermine the democratically elected government of Venezuela, and to strike fear in the hearts of ordinary Venezuelan citizens who, through this game, can witness their very neighborhoods, villages, and capital being blown up and their virtual selves being massacred by a band of marauding mercenaries, who are clearly working for foreign interests who want to take control of the country’s oil industry. Please note that in one of the scenes in downtown Caracas one of the buildings being blown up belongs to the state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela. This building is amongst a group of easily recognizable residential buildings, in which it is presumed thousands of innocent people are being burned alive. You may also want to note that this oil company (PDVSA), which owns CITGO, is the only oil company to offer discounted heating oil to residents of poor neighborhoods in the United States.

We have family and friends in Venezuela and many of us have walked and stayed in the places featured in the war game. To us, these are not just clever abstract pictures. They are scenes of a place we consider our second home. Please try to imagine how Venezuelans must feel viewing a bulky, blonde, military man laying waste to their country, a country that is finally rising above a 500-year history of oppression and exploitation by foreign powers. To them, this game is simply another sign of the racist, interventionist, arrogant, and uncaring attitude of the United States and Europe toward Venezuela.

Clearly, this issue goes beyond Venezuela. As you know, your company, Pandemic, has developed video games with military applications for the Pentagon and the CIA. “Full Spectrum Warrior” is one example of this. “Mercenaries 2” is obviously an offshoot of this Pentagon/CIA funded development. Here is a web reference about this: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3131181#storyContinued.

In addition to the concerns we have expressed, it seems that you would want to give some consideration to how this “game” will be received by people in Venezuela, Latin America, and throughout the world. We can only imagine that the general impression will be very negative and this negativity will reflect on you and on U2. Is there any “upside” to the release of this game, other than some short term profits in the U.S. and European markets?

Potentially, all of the work you have done for the causes mentioned on your “Hearts & Minds” page could suffer because of your association and ownership of this game.

One would think that you might also give consideration to how this video game, like many others, may be used as a recruiting tool. The game is targeted to teenage and 20-something males, the same target market for military recruiting. Bono, are you now joining the recruiting efforts of the U.S. military?

In addition to impressionable young people who may be stimulated by this to join the military or become mercenaries, it is clear that another side effect of such a game is that it contributes to the process of desensitizing people to the horrific violence of war. In the case of “Mercenaries 2,” it also could help people rationalize the invasion of countries by the United States and its allies for the sake of controlling natural resources. Given your “public persona,” it is hard to imagine that you think this is a good thing.

We realize that for you this may seem like a smart investment and you may not even be aware of the nature of this video game. That said, on behalf of reasonable people everywhere, we appeal to you to re-think your association with this game and your ownership of this company. Please take steps to stop the release of this game.

Our hope, and that of many, is that you will do the right thing and stop the release of this virtual rape and devastation of a small, developing country. Would you see fit to release a version of this game set in South Africa, Haiti, or Ireland?

If that would be objectionable to you, then why are you singling out Venezuela? One can only conclude that there are motives beyond the immediate profit that may be gained by selling the game.

Sincerely,
Chuck Kaufmann
Actions/Emergency Response Committee

To The Devil's Excrement Blog (and other Venezuelan purveyors of raw fertilizer).

I sometimes drop by Devil's Excrement blog to read what the hysterical Venezuelan oppositionists are trying to convince citizens of The United States of America to believe and at times I drop off a comment (or two or three). Here is one that might not have actually posted (I sometimes get "forbidden" responses but find the post active later).
In one post I wa accused of trying to tell Venezuelans what they ought to do and here is my response>


I don't specialize in telling Venezuelans what they ought to do, but I do notice what they are doing, at least to the extent of what I read in the media, and learn from people I know who live there. And even here (in the Devil's Excrement blog) there is this cry that the oppositionists need to get off their ummm chairs and "do something."

Well, maybe they are enjoying life too much to bother. I think that's a very strong possibility.

I never called myself a "Chavista." I do not and do not need to believe that everything Hugo Chavez says or does is marvelous to believe that my country, the United States of America (aka North America, which also disrespects Canada and Mexico) olught not to meddle and interfere in the internal affairs of another country.

As coming from the left and being a more or less rehabilitated atheist (I know that there is a God) I have said elsewhere that it is clear that human beings are actually "hard wired" to believe in a diety or dieties (that's certainly not my original idea) and that a big problem with the old "Socialist Bloc" was that they thought they got rid of God but ended up deifying individuals - and that God ought to be deified, not men.

I hope Venezuela avoids this fault. You could say I even advise that they do. That does not change the facts that overall things are getting better for the majority, that the people duly voted this government in, and that my country ought not to meddle there.

A country embracing socialism is a country making a revolutionary break with the past, in that way similar to those movements once led by Bolivar, Washington and Lincoln. So yes the country's institutions will have to be a part of that for the process to be successful. And yes, there does need to be a leader, just not a mangod.

English language media that is consistently against the elected government of Venezuela, and that consistently make outrageous claims of living under a dictatorship are not engaging in the political porcess in Venezuela. They are engaging in the political process here in the United States. They are lobbying for US intervention. That is what this website (devil's excrement) is for.

Shuffle of the living dead.

The revolutionary people and government of Venezuela are generous, good hearted and patient, maybe to a fault. I read in the excellent informative blog OIL WARS of how the good people of Caracas suffered through a funeral for the soon to be off the air Radio Caracas TV. I would not even try to compete with Oil War's coverage and analysis of the participants in this funeral procession,or of the history of RCTV's active subversion of the political process in Venezuela, something that suddenly the oppositionists so dearly cherish and prize.

Hats off to OIL WARS.
Part of the reason I will probably be retiring to Venezuela is the sweetness and goodness of its people. Man, here in the US they would never,and I mean never tolerate what the RCTV management tried to pull in 2002. It's this sweetness that explains why RCTV has remained on the air since that time and why its owners know that they can walk and drive through the streets of Caracas or anywhere else in Venezuela. Had they pulled the stunts here that they tried there they might very well be in Guantanamo. The government waited for the license to broadcast expired, refused to renew it and that was that. Lucky luckito are these oppositionists in Venezuela.

Lincoln and Chavez I - or later for Teodoro's Complaint.

The tired old new left was/is always hung up on "process" instead of "results".

What matters is that the army not become an instrument of counter revolution. The people voted for a revolution!

Abraham Lincoln disregarded constitutional norms (the United States were and are plural, so said and so says the US Constitution) when he had to.

Thank God he did, he just didn't do enough of it.

How's this for a constitutional catch 22 - the secessionist states never legally seceded (supposedly) but were not allowed to re enter the Union unless they voluntarily ratified the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the constitution.

Had this not happened we might still have slavery here in the US.

Because it did not happen thoroughly enough we ended up with Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan.

So congratulations to President Chavez for telling his army officers that they are either for the revolution or they ought to resign. Later for the oppositionists like Teodoro Petkoff and his bullshit complaint squealing about niceties. Niceties never bothered the right wing before. The people voted rojo rojito, Teodoro and rojo rojito Venezuela shall be.

When push came to shove niceties didn't bother Abraham Lincoln either!

Coming soon - Abraham Lincoln and Hugo Chavez

You won't be neutral on this one either.

Hugo Chavez, Child Abuse, and Me

Beaver Cleaver is a television show.

If you look at my profile you'll see that I am a veteran (ex) child abuse investigator here in New York City. I'm becoming something of a crusader against the child abuse/foster care industry and I have an anecdote about Hugo Chavez that he might or might not enjoy were he ever to read it but it makes a point that needs to be made.

It is widely said that Hugo Chavez was an abused child and it seems that that is true in the sense that we understand it - and that understanding ought to change. They say that as a boy Hugo Chavez was frequently beaten with a belt by his parents and that he would sometimes run to his grandmother's house for some relief.

Fortunately for him he did not live in an enlightened place like New York City @ 1980-today. Had he lived in such a place he most likely would have been subject of a child abuse or child maltreatment investigation (likely several). He could then have ended up in foster care.

Had he gone into foster care he very likely would have been eventually a career prisoner and not an army officer and later president of his country.

I once had a girlfriend who was raised in NYC public housing like I was. She once told me (I was still working as a baby snatcher) that she had often wished that someone like me had come to her home to rescue her and her siblings from her angry violent father. Lucky for her this never happened. She was spared the trauma of seeing her parents turn her in, give her up, surrender her, hand her over to an unspeakably cruel odysey of neglect and abuse called foster care. Better her angry father's belt than this crippling betrayal.

This woman went on to become a high ranking New York State official, a holder of a Doctorate and a university professor. She harbors angry memories and feelings about her childhood, but as imperfect as it was, and her childhood was no fairly tale, she was not mortally crippled by it as millions like her were not (all of her siblings made it into the middle class by the way). Lots of Venezuelans, even Chavistas, look to the US as some sort of golden world that needs to be emulated. In a perfect world no child would grow up angry at her parents. No child would be hit by a belt. We don't live in a perfect world. Foster care is not the answer.

I hope they never emulate our "Child Protective Services" in Venezuela.

I don't want to make light of child abuse. I would like it to be properly defined, though. The Bible itself advocates corporal punishment of children. I don't agree with it, but most people raised in the Judeo/Christian/Islamic world have experienced it, some more than others. When all is said and done it is parents and no one else held responsible for what their children do and what they grow up to be.

Another gringo Venezuela blog...

Yeah, well I'm aiming to make mine different. Oil Wars and BoRev and others are good blogs but I'm not here to reprint what they say or to imitate them. They should be read by people who want to know about Venezuela.

I want to say something though about the Posada matter.

Posada is a self proclaimed bomb plotter who is wanted in the murder of seventy people who died when a Cuban airliner was blown up in flight. He entered the US illegally, held a press conference, got arrested for being illegal and let out on bail, with no charges against him for murder.

This country locks people up indefinitely without trial for much less than what Posada already has said he did.

If he murdered seventy Venezuelans, Cubans and people of other nationalities he must be punished. Meanwhile he is wanted by a duly constituted State, Venezuela, who is now asking the United Nations to prevail upon the United States to adhere to law and extradite him.

It's not as though this news is hidden from my compatriots, it is not. True it isn't on the front page, and true it is not repeated and repeated, like for example the clip of some R and B singer's breast sticking out on television, but the news media here in part "give the people what they want" and they do not want to be repsonsible for the doings of their government, and want to know as little as necessary about it.

Posada no doubt has the goods on the CIA, and can provide a lot of very damaging information about the first Bush, especially about his reign over the CIA and the South Florida ("anti") Drug Task Force.

So once again my country forfeits any legitimate claim to tell anyone anything about terrorism. What a shame.

Hear No Evil See No Evil Speak No Evil

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