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BONO WANTS YOU TO SHOP YOUR WAY INTO WORLD HEALTH
Bono - who managed to amass a few tens of millions dollars last year himself - has popped up at Davos to launch an initiative to raise tens of millions pounds brand awareness for some companies ("tens of millions for AIDS campaigning.
The product he was launching was a brand (called Red) which will be stripped across other companies' products (Converse, Gap, American Express, and so on). The companies involved will make lots of cash, and get positive publicity through being involved with Mr. Bono and ticking all sorts of corporate responsibility boxes. Oh, and some money will go towards the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. But, of course, if the companies were really that interested in that, they could just direct some of their enormous profits straight there without trying to turn an extra buck for themselves out of compassion.
Still, it marks some sort of new low-water mark for humanity: they've created a brand image for humanitarian aid.
Bono was launching the thing at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos - an event when the shape-shifting lizards who run the world let their scales down. It's perhaps indicative of just how cosy Bono is at the top table these days that nobody is going to double take finding out he's there.
4 comments:
It strikes me as a grotesque irony that Bono is asking people to support the "Red" campaign by, among other things, signing up for an American Express credit card. People who bought Christmas presents using plastic are now being confronted with the reckoning. More consumers than ever before are having serious problems brought on by the easy availability of credit. Is Bono comfortable in aligning himself with one of the major credit card providers? Oh, sorry, should have realised, silly question, wasn't it?
Is that the same Gap who petitioned the WTO to lower the minimum wage in El Salvador from $0.60 to $0.36? And have a habit of putting pop stars like, um, Madonna and Juliette Lewis, in their ads? I wonder why they chose to support this campaign?
See, now, this is the kind of thing I was talking about yesterday when I said you should be having a go at big business!
It's fully ok to slag Bono for being involved with scum like AmEx and GAP, as he really should know better.
Sure, some will go to help charity again, but as these firms are complicit in keeping the third world poor so that they can serve us in the rich countries, it's like giving back 1% of the millions you stole from someone and expecting them to be grateful.
Is Bono really so naive?
I'm sure Bono would reply with one of his variants on "sometimes you have to hop into bed with money-grabbing corporations, homophobic preachers, and warmongering presidents and get nothing in return except truckloads of publicity in order to get things done"
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