Of U2’s Bono, truth and fiction

PAUL David Hewson, alias “Bono” is an Irish celebrity who made millions trying to sell poverty and human rights by sugar-coating this with emotional blackmail in his concerts worldwide. He is the front act of U2 a rock band. I must admit that I like the message of the few songs I heard which he had composed until I got wind of how he evaded paying taxes in his own native land. The millions that he made he parked in the Netherlands, a tax avoidance center, and then later in Malta because of its low tax policy and tax rebates. Bono’s worth had been placed at close to a billion dollars but to avoid paying taxes in Ireland he moved this to the so-called “tax havens”.

What he does to evade paying taxes in his country and how he invests his money is none of my business but staging concerts in other countries, the Philippines included, to raise funds and insults governments for not giving more to charity to help the poor is another story. For one, Ireland could have extended additional assistance to countries that it gives aid to if Bono pays his taxes in his homeland. There is so much pretense and hypocrisy there.

Fame has gone to his head. Before he can start with his concert in the Philippine Arena in Bulacan, he dished out snide remarks like he does not think he will see President Duterte. He also lectured about press freedom and human rights and being a poster boy of Amnesty International (AI).

Later in his concert, he flashed across the screen the faces of Cory Aquino and Maria Ressa maybe to put a message for women empowerment and what-have-you.

The problem with Bono is that he carries his prejudice against the Philippines where he is being received with dignity, hospitality, and his fans’ unbridled fanaticism. Bono’s infidelity to his country is not known to his swooning fans but who cares.  Bono moreover is as famous as he is an ignoramus when it comes to the Philippines.  Maybe, he believed what AI had declared before the start of the  ASEAN Summit in 2017 in Manila that there were 30-million Filipinos killed via extra-judicial killing.  Bono might have believed what European Parliamentarians claimed that Leila de Lima was incarcerated not because of her involvement in big-time drug syndicate operating inside the state penitentiary but as persecution for being an outspoken critic of President Duterte. And Bono too must have considered a biblical truth that Maria Ressa is being harassed and her press freedom curtailed because of her critical views against the President and not because she violated constitutional mandate that Philippine media establishments should be 100% owned by Filipinos. The rock star must have empathized with Maria Ressa who tells the world that she is being harassed and persecuted for her critical stand against the government and not because she was being prosecuted in the court for tax evasion.

Bono should have checked his facts. He flashed the face of Cory in the wide concert screen to project what? Human rights abuses? He is not aware that while so much had been written in the Western media about victims of Marcos martial law, the  American-backed Cory revolutionary government conveniently mowed downed by machinegun fire farmers who stage peaceful rallies in Plaza Mendiola and those in the gates of Hacienda Luisita. They were merely asserting their rights as land reform beneficiaries of that vast estate. Is Bono playing to the tune of the moribund Aquino regime and believed that Cory Aquino is really that icon of democracy?

I can forgive you Bono for your ignorance for not a few among westerners – politicians and journalists- succumbed to fake news that our own politicians and some journalists conjure. Let me just point out some painful facts. The incumbent President you sneered at took over a government-run by Benigno-Simeon Aquino III that was nearly on the edge of a failed state. Graft and corruption had been institutionalized and criminality was commonplace. The Philippines is almost a narco-state assuming it was not yet. When Duterte took over the helms of government several police generals, politicians were involved in drug syndicates. Drugs sold in streets, school campuses and in some concerts like what you are staging now, are made of chemicals we call “shabu”. It’s not the “grass” that westerners are hooked to. Senseless crime including rape of innocent children was committed and linked to addiction of shabu. Shabu laboratories were operating with impunity all over the country and trading is even done even inside a state penitentiary.

Against this background, Duterte waged a total war against drugs. He had dismantled all drug laboratories nationwide and ran after members of the syndicates. Big-time drug lords, some of whom were untouchable politicians, were neutralized. The network of distribution dismantled. Close to 8,000 suspects were killed while over a million victims of drug-dependents were rehabilitated. You only heard of the exaggerated figures of drug pushers killed which the local and western media contrived. You only read about sad stories of victims killed either in a crossfire or mistaken identity. Your press gloss and gloat over these few unfortunate events. The western press dubs thousands of those innocent civilians killed in carpet bombings as “collateral damage” but the few unfortunate victims in my country call “victims of extrajudicial killings”.  They even attributed it to the so-called Davao Death Squads which they claimed were organized by Duterte.  That too is a blatant lie that the “noble” western press propagates as truth.   

While today, there are still incidents of street crime it is a rarity and often involved foreign nationals themselves.  

So Mr. Paul David Hewson welcome to the Philippines and I hope you disabuse yourself with the diatribes that are being dished out by the critics of Duterte.  You are being mobbed anywhere you go to but being mobbed by fans does not come close to the description that the Philippines is a war zone according to your heroine of the press – Maria Ressa. Think of this. If you have a President who gets an approval rating of 82% from his constituents, surely between those people you adored and believed you can easily surmise where truth and fiction lies.