Thursday December 1st is World AIDS day, and as expected, Bono showed his face on TV the night before, visiting Jon Stewart’s Daily Show to discuss,… of what exactly?
First, they talked for about 3:30 minutes (out of the 7-minute interview) about Bono’s health and new back, after kissing their respective asses (Bono had a little present), then, they went to the fundraising question with his foundation One and Red, and once again Bono put his savior-of-the-world shiny costume, announcing the beginning of the end of AIDS.
Why has Jon Stewart become such a soft interviewer? Why didn’t he bring up the huge problem with Bono’s foundation? You know, the lavish employee salaries and the money spent on the fancy stuff instead of going to Africa? How come numbers never come in the conversation, like the $15 million spent on employees against a mere $185,000 being actually distributed to charities?
And there’s more. Bono wants us to believe into such a simplistic vision of the reality: spend you money on Product (Red), and you will see the end of AIDS, …. except that Global Fund, from which Product (Red) depends, loses about 2/3 of the money to corruption: according to Financialtaskforce, ‘Mauritania stole 67% of an anti-AIDS program, Mali squandered 36% of funds to fight tuberculosis and malaria, and Djibouti pocketed 30% of all of its donations’, according to a report from the beginning of this year.
Bono arrives in the Daily show with his messiah aura, but in reality, he will always make his interests come first: Stewart will certainly never ask Bono what happened to his wife’s company, Edun, the organic clothing company destined to provide jobs in Africa: when finances looked bad, Edun decided to move to Asia, essentially China, where cheap labor is; instead of helping Africa, it is now working against the cause it was supposed to fight for.
And the end of AIDS? Sure we have tremendously progressed, we can extend people’s lives considerably and we may be on the right track, but Bono is neither a researcher, nor a scientist; and I couldn’t care less about him declaring the end of AIDS on December 1st just to make people spend more money on his Red campaign.