The following is transcript of Bono's recent appearance on CNN's American Morning Show. After the Bono backlash in the Warren Buffet thread I want to know if you think this counts as media whoring or grandstanding?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

S. O'BRIEN (voice-over): He's the frontman for one of the world's great rock bands. And the pointman for the Global Aid for Africa Campaign. Bono's interest in Africa dates back to the mid- '80s, and the Band Aid and Live Aid projects, all efforts to raise money and awareness of famine in Africa. Bono wanted to know more and wanted to help. He went to Africa and spent six eye-opening weeks working at an orphanage in Ethiopia. Since then, he's been tireless in his efforts to end poverty in Africa. He founded the group DATA, which stands for debt, AIDS, trade, Africa.

BONO, SINGER/ACTIVIST: I don't think what's happening in Africa, with AIDS in particular and just the poverty and despair there, is a cause. I think it's an emergency. And lots of people have causes, and I have. But 69,000 people die ever day -- not a cause, an emergency.

S. O'BRIEN: Last July, Bono and Bob Geldof staged Live 8, billed as the biggest rock concert ever with a powerful message for the world's most powerful leaders. Days after Live 8, members of the G8, the world's eight most industrialized countries, responded. They pledged to cancel the debt of the 18 poorest African nations, and to increase aid by $50 billion by 2010.

Bono is the only person to be nominated for a Grammy, an Oscar and the Nobel Peace Prize.

S. O'BRIEN (on camera): It's been almost a year since those G8 promises. So what is the status? Bono joins us from Monaco this morning. It's nice to see you. Thanks for talking with us.

DATA said it was going to...

BONO: Thanks. Thanks for having us on.

S. O'BRIEN: It's our pleasure.

DATA said it would have this report to serve as a report card, but also a road map for the next years coming. So let's start with the report card part of it. Would you say it's been successful, it gets a stellar grade, or would you say that the G8's commitments get a failing grade at this point so far?

BONO: Well, there's good news and bad news, the DATA report shows. There's a couple of high grades to be given. Maybe we should start with those. I mean, just in the United States, you should be very proud that you have a truly historic AIDS initiative. It was an unfathomable, even a few years ago, to imagine that you could get, I think it's probably 600,000 people on anti-retroviral drugs in an 18- month period. On motorcycles and on bicycles, those drugs got out there, and I think you should be very proud about that.

Though, that said, Congress in the last months have tried to block the president's request for his AIDS money for next year, and that, that's bewildering. You know, I was just in Africa a few weeks ago, and there's kids following me around like I'm a hero. They think I'm American. I don't explain where Ireland is. And I'm saying, you know, the reason she's following me around is because her mother, her father, her sister, her brother, all HIV-positive, all going to die, but these drugs are on their way from America.

S. O'BRIEN: What you're talking about...

BONO: And she thinks I'm a hero. The idea of going back to that kid and saying actually, the Congress cut the budget, sorry about that, is just obscene.

S. O'BRIEN: You're talking about this $3 billion that they're debating right now, and Congress is sort of saying, well, no, more like $600 million is what we're thinking about, which is a, you know, massive percentage cut there. Is the crux of the problem that the leaders of the G8 can pledge all they want, but at the end of the day, if you don't have public support and if you don't have congressional support, and then, frankly, if you don't have the president willing to put political capital on the line and push it through, it's just not going to happen.

BONO: Soledad, you're exactly right. And I think the cavalry here are going to turn out to be the American people. They're organizing in ways that are very inspiring, across the political spectrum, you know. There's two -- I think it's maybe 2.2 million Americans have joined the one campaign recently, one.org, because they're serious about this. They're soccer moms. They're student activists. They're NASCAR dads. They're hip-hop stars. I mean, it's not just rock stars and policy wonks that are on this. And I think it says something deep about the way Americans feel about America right now, which is, they do not like to see their flag disrespected in far- off places around the world. They're very proud of this AIDS initiative. They want to put kids in schools, because they know that Democracy is being taught in those schools.

I was in a school in Abuja with Gordon Brown, the finance minister, the chancellor of (INAUDIBLE), the U.K. And next door to where we were sitting, there was a class being taught in Nigeria about democracy, complicated questions that the kids could easily answer.

A thousand miles from there in northern Nigeria, there are madrassas where children are being taught to hate us.

So I think that it's a missed opportunity not to keep the promises made in the G8 and get more kids to school. Because of the debt cancellation movement -- that's another thing I want to give a good mark on, debt cancellation. They did follow through on that, and when I was recently in Africa, 15 million more kids were going to school, because of the drop-the-debt movement. And all the people that got out on the streets there should, you know, should give themselves a high five. That was really something.

But there's 40 million more African children that want to go to school who can't, and in these dangerous times it might be just smart to get them to school.

So, unless we keep track of these promises and fulfill them, they won't go to school. So that's the kind of yin and yang of this DATA report.

S. O'BRIEN: There is a theory, Bono, as I'm sure you've heard before, that people will say, listen, what Africa really needs is something that money can't buy. Africa needs political growth and socioeconomic growth. And by -- sometimes by giving large chunks of money, what you really do is fund brutal dictators, who often, as we know from Africa's history, steal the money, take the money, and it never gets to the people who really, really need it. How do you make sure that doesn't happen?

BONO: That used to be true. The Cold War was fought on the African continent, and we in the West propped up some very dangerous dictators by giving them loans and throwing aid at them, because they were not communists. And we can't then point to the waste of those resources as just their fault.

Anyway, that era is over. Now we only increase aid to countries where we can see that they're tackling corruption, where there's a clear and transparent process. If there's not, we pull out. In Ethiopia, things were looking great for a while, and then we couldn't see where the money was going, people pulled out. In Uganda, the Global Fund, this extraordinary organization that gets AIDS drugs to people and fights TB and malaria, they pulled out of Uganda because they couldn't see the -- where the money was going.

It's a new era of aid, and I think Americans will become much more generous when they know that the money is being spent well. And I can assure you, with the Millennium Challenge corporation supported in Congress, that's what will happen.

S. O'BRIEN: Let's look ahead in the little time I have left with you. You say it's a report card and a road map. You point to a lot of nations that are behind, that aren't really on track to meet their goals, the U.S. included. What has to happen to make sure that in 2010 we're meeting that goal? What has to happen next?

BONO: I think the dawning of on the body politick that this strategic value in dealing with Africa's problems. It's a 40 percent Muslim country. A country like Nigeria is a big oil-producing country. And it would be awful to see Nigeria get into trouble. I think then just at the grassroots level, as we get into the 2008 election, I think politicians will be wise to pay attention to this movement, because it will be five million by then. And you know, that's like -- that's real political muscle.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

S. O'BRIEN: If you want more information on Bono's campaign to help fight poverty, go to data.org, or one.org

Bono's doing what he's always done, using star power to attract attention to a worthy cause. Nothing wrong with that.

BOOYA!!!!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The world's richest countries are falling short on pledges made last year to provide Africa with life-saving AIDS drugs, expanded trade and increased aid, said rocker-activist Bono.

Bono and fellow Irish rocker Bob Geldof have used their fame to fuel a campaign for Africa, organizing concerts last year to press leaders of rich countries at a meeting in Scotland to wipe out poverty.

"They started out to climb an Everest but over the past year they got lost at base camp," Bono told Reuters in an interview after the release of a report by his lobby group Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa group, or DATA.

"I'd like to think that the DATA report is a kind of a GPS system for how to get back on track and back up the mountain," said Bono, who formed DATA with Geldof.

The report said wealthy countries had delivered on their promise to cancel the debts of 19 poor countries, most of them in Africa, with 44 countries eligible under World Bank and International Monetary Fund programs.

"Overall, there is one cheer on debt, half a cheer on AIDS and boos and wolf-whistles for what is happening on trade," Bono said.

The report said relief from burdensome debt payments in Cameroon, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia has already swelled spending on education, health and AIDS.

In London, Geldof said politicians needed to be kept accountable, pointing to the DATA report.

"Here's the evidence, here's the empirical proof, here's the political arm, do this thing. We're really serious," he told Reuters. "You've got us wrong if you think we're going away. We ain't going away."

MORE NEEDED TO FIGHT AIDS

The report said much more was needed to provide access to drug therapy to fight HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Globally, AIDS funding has grown to $8.3 billion in 2005 from $300 million in the late 1990's. In Africa, the number of people being treated rose to 800,000 last year from 100,000 in 2003.

DATA said, however, that donors were spending half of what was needed to meet the goal of getting AIDS treatment to at least four million Africans by 2010.

The report commended the United States for leadership on AIDS programs in Africa, and Britain and France for their contributions to a Geneva-based global fund for AIDS.

Canada, Italy, Japan and Germany were laggards, it said.

"Breaking your promise is always bad but breaking a promise to people whose life depends on it is unforgivable," said Bono, who recently traveled to Africa.

The report castigated the G8 for failure to reach a trade deal that would open markets for African products.

As trade negotiators haggled over details of farm products, which Africa wants to export, in talks in Geneva on Thursday, DATA said wealthy countries lacked ambition and urgency.

"It's like they're playing a macho game," said Bono, who argues that farm subsidies and other trade barriers in the large U.S. and European markets hurt African producers.

"We have to do better in communicating that French or American small farmers are not the problem here and that these giant subsidies are in general for big corporations," he said.

The DATA report said the G8 was collectively off target in 2005 on their promises to double aid to Africa by $50 billion by 2010. Only France was on track for its 2010 goal, the report said.

To keep its aid promises, the report said wealthy countries should have increased aid by $3.6 billion last year, but spent $1.6 billion.

Bono urged more progress by the next summit.

"Next year when we get to Germany and we're not back on track we won't be talking pop concerts ... we will be demonstrating in very different ways," he said.

(Additional reporting by Mike Collett-White in London)


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I don't think it's fair to judge just this article. Let's judge the whole charade.

It's media whoring, and it's grandstanding.

There is one thing that this sham is not. And it's charity work.

Vegman, you say he's doing the same thing he's always done, he's using his star power to attract attention to a note worthy cause, but that doesn't qualify as charity work in my book. Charity work gets results. Charity work is the people that go and clean up parks and highway roadsides. The label of charity worker belongs to the individuals that are actually over there in any manner of capacity acually doing something to make the world a better place.

I'm sorry, I'm a results oriented kind of guy, and Bono's strategy switch isn't generating results. In fact, it's just creating unneccessary beauracracy and complicating things even more. He hasn't accomplished anything.

Question for you. What do the people of Africa care that you know about their problems because Bono told you?

Is he just asking for money from governments, or also for money from private citizens?

I do quite a bit of charity work myself and I never said what he is doing is charitable, but I don't see it as a negative. Maybe it is a bit of grandstanding, but if he raises even a moderate amount of money, why should that be the source of such anger??

The guy is a rock star, not an elected official or even a civil servant.

There was a time when Bono himself raised money. Live Aid, and the other the other concert he did, he raised money. Back then he was all about trying to raise money.

He totally changed his position with this last charade. He said he didn't WANT money from people, and the entire fiasco was done in order to pressure governments to increase their aid to Africa and for Aids. Something that I consider bankrupt.



Okay, so then why doesn't he use his star power to get results? Instead of illuminating the world to the situation, but doing nothing about it?

I will say that I see this as a negative. I see it as a negative because I think he's sending the wrong message. If Bono was actually raising money, or started his own charitable organization which he really has the power to do, I'd laude him like I've been lauding Buffet. But he's not doing that. If he's not getting results, then all you are left with is an enormous amount of facetime in all media fronts for Bono, Geldof, and all the people that participated in Live8. If there is indeed an concerted effort to achieve something here, then I would consider it all a gigantic waste of time.

Again, these positioned themselves in such a way that they could have generated an immense amount of good. Instead, they just wasted time, resources, got tons of positive exposure, and made a lot of money.

I'm not down with his assumption that governments are the only ones with the power and resources to get something done. The money has to come from somewhere, so why not just go directly to the source and ask the common folk for money?

LW, this is a quote from you in the Rush Limbaugh thread in this forum:



This is a quote from a CNN.com article about data.org, an organization founded by Bono and Bill Gates centered on Third World debt forgiveness and trade increase.




So my point is that raising the awareness of citizens and governments alike can be a benefit to Africa, and that debt forgiveness and trade increase can have just as large of an effect on the quality of life in Africa as can monetary donations.

I'd also like to know if it is a fact that Bono hasn't donated a large amount of his own money to charity? Not that it's really my business anyway. I've never heard him speak of it one way or the other.

I think that I'm a pretty good example of why Bono's approach and many other NGO's approach does not work. There are two facets to this. A.) We are so far removed from Africa (as Gates eludes), that we just cannot possibly grasp just exactly what it is. Go read my Djibouti threads. And B.) We are TOTALLY desensitized to it. To American's, it's just another poverty pic. To American's, all of those numbers Bono rang off in the original article are JUST NUMBERS! They're statistics. We have absolutely no connection to it. There's a thread floating around about Iraq and how we feel more pain, and connect more to 2500 dead American's than we do for 50,000 dead Iraqi's. You go and ask an American how many American's have died in Iraq, and they can ring it off like it's nothing. You ask them how many people die in Africa every year because of malaria, and they wouldn't know. Ask them how many live on less than a dollar a day, or how many have AIDS, how many of them recieve treatment, and nobody cares. Nobody knows. If you ask them how much aid we give, they wouldn't know, but I would really, honestly be willing to bet that if you asked 2000 people if they thought we were giving enough to Africa, that they would say we are. I really do. I think we're all that far out of touch with it. Seriously, it's like a broken record so far as strife and famine goes over there. One year it's Nigeria, then it's Darfur, then the next year it's Chad and Niger, and now the Horn of Africa is just getting slammed by problems from Moqadishu to the famine. Admit it or not, but rolls off of our backs. Because we see it day after day, cycle and cycle. And Bono putting together concerts, ringing off random statistics on stage, that rolls off backs too. And when he's out demanding that GOVERNMENTS make change, and not us, I think that sends the wrong message. Particularly when governments are only going to give enough to appear compassionate to us. But since we're so far removed from it, have no association to it, have no ability to grasp how awful it is, we have no scope as to what is actually necessary to do something that's beneficial. On top of that, this place we've lived in all our lives is sooo grand, so beautiful, so close to perfection that...we just can't grasp the concept of an urban slum. To live a moment in places like that is unbelievable.

We're not just numb to statistics, but we're numb to images too. "Oh wow, that sucks," we say. My mom, she's great, she's the sweetest lady in the world, everyone loves her, she's religious, liberal as hell, but even when I describe the slums and show her pictures it's just, "Oh wow, that's awful, I can't believe the people live like that." That's it. She has NO CONNECTION to it, because she's not there. They're just like pictures in Time Magazine, or pictures from John Goodman in Uganda, or Bono in Lilongwe Malawi. NGO's are completely complicit in this, and started in the eighties with the Ethiopian famine. It's called famine porno. Showing pictures of naked, starving, bloated belly children. Showing starving babies suckling on dry breasts. These NGO's put out the most AWFUL images they can find, it doesn't depict the reality of the situation, and it desensitizes us ALL to it. And it just escalates.

And again, I KNEW about it. I HEARD Bono speak. I was aware of the problems in Africa and actually pretty aware of stats before I went. But ya know what, I had soooo many misonceptions about it, and even though I listened to Bono, Sally Struthers, watched infomercials, my neighbors sponsored a kid over there, my priest was a missionary for years and even spent time in Djibouti, even through ALL that. I still felt that way, and most American's are like that. The average American just doesn't feel like giving to this cause. So when you have someone like Bono and Bob Geldof put these huge shows together, they get everyone emotional, and wanting to make change, and instead of playing on that and starting their own charity that can DIRECTLY effect the people of Africa, they go after government budgets... Man, I'm sorry, that's not gettin' it done. That's NOT effectively using your star power to make change.

I read your Dijbouti threads, or as many as I could, and I don't feel like reading any more of them. I'm not making Bono out to be a hero, just a rock star trying to shed light non a huge problem. If you want to get all worked up about it, so be it.
I don't think the guy's all that bad.

Ever think that the only reason you are over there or been there is because your imagination was sparked by the awareness.

No, I went over there because President Bush said, Lance Corporal LittleWing, you're going to Djibouti! And so I went.

i think i agree with littlewing.

bono does come off as a huge prima donna. no doubt he is giving money and time and energy to these causes, but his ambition i think gets in the way; he is a rock star after all, and that smushes up his message and makes people pissed off at him.

in his defense, it is still better than sitting back and doing nothing at all.

I'm with Vegman as far as attracting attention to a cause. I've stated that before. I'm also with Littlewing regarding Live8 - why not have made it even $10 to go to one of the concerts and $5 to watch it on the internet or television? People would have paid it and it would have raised millions.

However, what happens to those millions? Does a corrupt official take it in Africa? Does it buy food, and if so, what happens when that food runs out? Do we hold more concerts and buy more food, creating entire nations dependent upon the charity of others? Is it put into agricultural programs and water treatment plants?

I'm not being a wise-ass here. I'm seriously wondering, what will actually be done and how much $$$ is needed?

As a general rule of thumb, countries shy away from outright food donations. Ironically, the US is about the only country that still does it. The rest give food vouchers. The reason you don't send in outright food, and why a lot of nations have grown to shy away from it, is because it undercuts and kills local food markets. In many places, it's wiped out food markets. From what I saw, the societies over there are not to the point where they are completely reliant on aid, or in a welfare state. These people want to self-sufficient, been when four years of drought wipe everything out, there's little else left.

So far as private charitable organizations go, they are much much much more efficient and effective than the UN, UNHCR, The World Food Program, and other internationally managed organizations. This is one reason why I tip my hat to Bill Gates and now Buffet. If Buffet had donated his money to one of the other orgnizations it would have been wasted. The money would have largely gone to first world contractors and beuarocrats, and small portion of it actually reaching the ground where it's needed. The beauty of Gates' organization is how direct his help is. He sees concerns and he immediately directs it, and it gets done.

Bono is in a position to have a similar organization. Or he could even have kicked the money towards Gates foundation. Just so long as it's good, and it gets done, whatever it is, it's fine by me.

So, had he not, what would have made you any different from the 'disconnected' masses, then? Without Bono, or anyone else up there, would you have magically known of the troubles in Djibouti? Would you have dropped your life, and magically found the money to go to Africa and actually be in a position to help? Because, you know what? I can have all of the good intentions in the world. But if I took off to Africa right now, I doubt without government backing making sure I had my 3 squares and a roof, that the $565 in my bank account would let me be a whole hell of a lot of use. Fuck, I couldn't GET to Africa on that.

You were sent somewhere at someone else's will. You saw a problem, and were moved to help change it. But guess what? My boss isn't likely to be sending me over to Africa any time soon. It's just not in the cards. Am I supposed to quit my job, quit my life, and fake my way into the military on some off chance that I'll be sent to Africa?

Don't impose on yourself some false sense of nobility, thinking you're better than everyone else because you were SENT to Africa for your JOB, and you feel as though you're being more useful to the rest of us. We're doing our jobs and trying to live our own lives the best we can.

Bono's not my favorite person. He's not doing as much as he could, clearly. But our government sure isn't doing anything at all to bring these issues to public light.

I won't criticize celebrities for any charitable donations and/or endorsements they make. There's little, if any, negative effect, and any rare negative effect that there is, is probably not the fault of the celebrity (ie: evil dictator punishes citizens for criticism by acelebrity).

Absolutely Nothing. In fact, I absolutely garauntee you, that I would still hold the same opinions (of before I went and saw it first hand). I'd still be desensitized to famine porno. I'd still be disconnected from it.



With or without, I still wouldn't understand it. I might know of it, be aware of it. But I wouldn't do anything about it, and I would just shrug it off and be like, "YEAH! THESE CONCERTS ROCK! YEAH!" It all would have just been statistics to me. In one ear and out the other.



Fuck no! Since I was ten, I knew what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to be involved in racing, I knew I wanted to build racecars, and make racecars safer, I knew I wanted to go to RIT and get an engineering degree, I knew I wanted to end up in Tennessee or North Carolina, I knew I wanted a 2500 square foot house in the foothills of Appalacha with ponds full of fish, and four awesome kids and a beautiful wife, with three sweet cars sitting in the driveway. I knew that for a looong time. And if I would have stayed here, I'd have my degree, and I'd either be at Robert Yates Racing or Dow Chemical right now doing research. Now, my life is upside down and in complete turmoil because I don't know if I want, much less need, ANY of that any more.



I know. I feel your frustration more than anybody. I've been doing all I can to get into the State Department in any capacity. This shit is sooooo hard to do without being under the banner of religion, or knowing a colonial language. And when it even comes to missionary work, or USAid work, even volunteering, you will likely only get a monthly stippen that may feed you over the course of the month.



Maybe not. Remember though, I have said time and time again that I understand that not everyone can go over and do something. I understand that part. But, we all CAN do something in some manner or capacity here with the lives we have.



I'm not, never have, never will. I don't even know how proud I am of what I do. I provide security for a base of operations for humanitarian missions on a very small scale, under the guise of the military. I represent something, that in all honesty, I wish I wasn't representing anymore (my obligated contract ends in August). If it seems like I have an overwhelming sense of nobility I'm sorry, because I don't. I've done little small things here and there. Don't mistake understanding for nobility.

I will tell you straight up. Some of my most shameful moments I lived in my entire life were over there. In fact, I will go so far as to say the MOST shameful moments of my life I lived over there. Moments where I got back to my tent, or my hotel room, shut the lights off and said, "what the fuck am I doing." Trust me, you have no idea what has been running through my mind these days. I gotta be honest. I've been a fucking disaster. This is like, some awful Nicholas Sparks coming of age novel.



I know, and so am I. It doesn't mean we can't do more. This is as much an indictment on myself as it is the rest of America.

I refuse to discuss anything with you until you get my name right.

He was 5 for 8 on that post!