"It is obvious that while the numerous initiatives which are now taken by the Iraqi side with a view to resolving some longstanding, open disarmament issues can be seen as active or even proactive, these initiatives three to four months into the new resolution cannot be said to constitute immediate cooperation. Nor do they necessarily cover all areas of relevance. They are, nevertheless, welcome. And UNMOVIC is responding to them in the hope of solving presently unresolved disarmament issues. "
-----Hans Blix, Cheif UN Weapons Inspector in Iraq, in a speech given to the UN security council this morning.
Friday, March 07, 2003
Wednesday, March 05, 2003
George MacDonald | 1824-1905
Between Charles Dickens's and Oscar Wilde's noted American tours came George MacDonald's. In the United States, the fantasy writer and philosopher MacDonald was received as the eminent Victorian he was in 1872, meeting with Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. His British literary connections were no less impressive: he numbered among his friends and confidantes John Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Lewis Carroll (MacDonald's children were among the first to read the Alice books in manuscript), and his influence can be traced in C. S. Lewis and W. H. Auden. Little read now, MacDonald's fantasies for children and adults were critically and popularly well received when they were published from 1855 until the end of the century. These fantasies include the adult work Phantastes (1855) and MacDonald's stories and poems for children, Dealings with Fairies (1867), At the Back of the North Wind (1871), The Princess and the Goblin (1872), and The Princess and Curdie (1883). Like Andrew Lang, who would compile collections of fairy tales in the 1890s, MacDonald rejected realism as a viable mode of storytelling. Although realism was the dominant form of writing in the 1870s and '80s (think of the novels of George Eliot and Anthony Trollope), MacDonald rejected it, as well as the increasing Victorian reliance on science and rational experiment. For MacDonald, realism and science constrained and damaged the imagination, placing limitations on the world of the spirit and the inner life. MacDonald frequently went against the grain of prevailing Victorian belief: His career as a Congregationalist minister ended after only three years, when his sermons were found to be objectionable and lacking in sound dogma. With his insistence on the world of fantasy as the means by which to improve one's understanding of "real life," MacDonald stood as a potent ancestor of imaginative writers of children's literature including Beatrix Potter, Kenneth Grahame, and A.A. Milne.
Between Charles Dickens's and Oscar Wilde's noted American tours came George MacDonald's. In the United States, the fantasy writer and philosopher MacDonald was received as the eminent Victorian he was in 1872, meeting with Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. His British literary connections were no less impressive: he numbered among his friends and confidantes John Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Lewis Carroll (MacDonald's children were among the first to read the Alice books in manuscript), and his influence can be traced in C. S. Lewis and W. H. Auden. Little read now, MacDonald's fantasies for children and adults were critically and popularly well received when they were published from 1855 until the end of the century. These fantasies include the adult work Phantastes (1855) and MacDonald's stories and poems for children, Dealings with Fairies (1867), At the Back of the North Wind (1871), The Princess and the Goblin (1872), and The Princess and Curdie (1883). Like Andrew Lang, who would compile collections of fairy tales in the 1890s, MacDonald rejected realism as a viable mode of storytelling. Although realism was the dominant form of writing in the 1870s and '80s (think of the novels of George Eliot and Anthony Trollope), MacDonald rejected it, as well as the increasing Victorian reliance on science and rational experiment. For MacDonald, realism and science constrained and damaged the imagination, placing limitations on the world of the spirit and the inner life. MacDonald frequently went against the grain of prevailing Victorian belief: His career as a Congregationalist minister ended after only three years, when his sermons were found to be objectionable and lacking in sound dogma. With his insistence on the world of fantasy as the means by which to improve one's understanding of "real life," MacDonald stood as a potent ancestor of imaginative writers of children's literature including Beatrix Potter, Kenneth Grahame, and A.A. Milne.
Wednesday, February 26, 2003
At present, oil companies from France, Russia, and China have
contracts to help develop Iraqi oil fields. Europe depends far more upon oil
from Iraq than America (only a tiny fraction of U.S. oil comes from Iraq,
about six percent). Oil from Iraq, indeed oil from the entire Middle East,
ranks higher among European national interests than American. For some
years, the United States has been moving to draw the preponderance of its
oil from our own hemisphere, mostly from Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela, and
to cut back steadily on its use of Middle Eastern oil, to the level now of
26 percent of its annual. Europe is far more dependent on Iraqi oil, and far
more involved with the Iraqi oil industry.
contracts to help develop Iraqi oil fields. Europe depends far more upon oil
from Iraq than America (only a tiny fraction of U.S. oil comes from Iraq,
about six percent). Oil from Iraq, indeed oil from the entire Middle East,
ranks higher among European national interests than American. For some
years, the United States has been moving to draw the preponderance of its
oil from our own hemisphere, mostly from Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela, and
to cut back steadily on its use of Middle Eastern oil, to the level now of
26 percent of its annual. Europe is far more dependent on Iraqi oil, and far
more involved with the Iraqi oil industry.
Thursday, February 20, 2003
Bono Interview:
Q: Does your humanitarian drive have roots in your religious upbringing, your family, your youth? What motivated you?
A: I'd say megalomania. It might start with that.
Q: You can satisfy that impulse just by being a rock star.
A: Noooo, that's just invading Poland. (Laughs) There's the rest of the world! I think I want to change the world, and I want to have fun. I don't know anyone who doesn't, by the way. Those two instincts shouldn't be mutually exclusive. Sometimes when you succeed in one area of your life, like music, you think you can apply that same momentum to other things. I suppose that's what I thought. Everything is analogous, in a way. The music industry is not that difficult to figure out. It's not rocket science. Neither is economics, as it turns out. And neither is an understanding of what is wrong with the body politic at the moment. I think it's clear we're at a real impasse.
Q: You've channeled so much of your energy toward Africa. Why do you see it as this generation's defining crisis?
A: About 2.5 million Africans are going to die next year because they can't get access to drugs that we take for granted in America and Europe. If that is acceptable then I think our age will be deemed irrelevant by history. Civilization becomes too strong a word if you can live comfortably with those kind of fatalities. I don't think you have to be that clever and smart to work that out. It's just absolutely clear. What annoys me the most is stupidity. People are dying for the most stupid of all reasons: money.
Q: How do you persuade the public that a calamity on that scale is fixable? Many people would feel overwhelmed and helpless against a tragedy that widespread.
A: It's so doable. If the political will is there, we can afford it, believe or not. Anyone who says we can't is telling lies. But people get beaten down, and people don't believe the world is as malleable as it turns out to be. People are more powerful than we think. The United States, where I look for leadership at times like this, is enjoying unparalleled economic, military, technological and cultural power. When President Kennedy said in the early '60s, "We're going to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade," he knew it wasn't going to be easy. It wasn't even on everybody's mind. He wasn't checking the pulse. It was about leadership. Right now democracy is at a crisis point. You can't have the benefits of globalization without some of the responsibilities.
Q: And what happens if the West fails to act?
A: If we miss this opportunity to do what we do best, which is deliver the technology and pharmaceuticals to people in need, suddenly this great culture will get ugly. It will start to look like Pompeii or the fall of Rome. I can't get over it. We were standing on the runway at JFK sending off 6 million shoe boxes from children around the world to AIDS orphans and AIDS-suffering children in Africa. People were saying it would be the last Christmas for a lot of these children. And I just thought, "Why, by the way? Why?" These kids don't have leukemia. These children have AIDS. We have drugs. They don't have to die. My mind is bent trying to get my head around it.
Q: How do you respond to people who say the cost of treating the African AIDS crisis is too high?
A: It doesn't have to be. I'm not against the pharmaceutical companies making profits. They need to make profits to research and develop. But remember when CDs first came out and we'd see pictures of people in space suits in glass fridges carrying these high tech tablets? We were being taught that we're going to have to put our hands deep in our pockets and pull out $15. Now we know they cost 25 cents apiece.
Q: You've said that celebrity is currency in this mission. Yet you've gone beyond simply raising awareness and reaching people of influence. How did your role evolve to include negotiating?
A: I ended up in a place of arbiting and deal-making through default. It was my job to make the United States aware of the Jubilee 2000 movement that was so big in Europe. I found it difficult because you can't make a movement. You grow one. You can't buy it, but you can build it. And we didn't have time. I called on people for help, and my friend Bobby Shriver helped me start working the back roads of influence. Arnold Schwarzenegger, [Shriver's] brother-in-law, introduced me to his Republican friends - like John Kasich, who fought very hard for us and made the whole thing bipartisan. I started to meet economists and got to know the argument, because I realized the work would be done at the table, not on the street.
Q: The table doesn't quite have the mystique or excitement of the street, which is the usual forum for rock and roll rebels.
A: And I do good placard! I prefer it. It looks better. It's much more glamorous for a rock and roll star to be on the barricades with a handkerchief over his nose throwing stink bombs than it is to be in a bowler hat with a briefcase. But we didn't have time.
Q: As MusiCares Person of the Year, you join some stellar company -- Paul Simon, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Bonnie Raitt. How do you feel about MusiCares honoring you for both your music and philanthropy?
A: MusiCares [does] such great things, it was impossible for me to turn them down. It is an excruciating experience to be given an award for one's humanitarianism because it seems to suggest that other people don't have it, which is never true. I always reckon that I just do what other people would do if they had the time and money.
Q: Are you concerned about the cynics who cast a jaded eye at superstar do-gooders?
A: We should start with the projectile vomit factor and how to prevent it. Is that possible? I expect that cynicism to be thrown at me. I'm always available for mud pies, rocks and small assault weapons.
Q: So you'd be more comfortable getting a GRAMMY than the Nobel Peace Prize?
A: I like GRAMMYs! More, please, more, more, more. It's a difficult issue. People refer to your "charitable work." As it says in the Scriptures, if your left arm knows what your right arm is doing, it is not charity. Anything people do publicly is not charity. You might be promoting an idea or yourself or both at once. But in the end, I guess you can't look at the motives. That's the position I take, anyway. I don't care what reasons people are doing things as long as they're doing things.
Q: You, along with Ashley Judd, Chris Tucker and Lance Armstrong, just completed a Heart of America tour by bus to push for AIDS relief. How did Midwesterners respond to celebrities with a political agenda?
A: The first thing I'd say at the truck stop or the town hall or the college or the church I was speaking at is: On this trip, I'm not a rock star with a cause. I've been one before, and I'll be one again, but this is an emergency, because 6,500 people are dying of AIDS in Africa every day, and they don't have to. I understand the cynicism attached to "rock star with a cause." I mean, I wince, and I am one. This is different. I'm in there going, "Can somebody shout FIRE here?" The siren of a rock and roll band is helpful in this case. We're in the business of noise. We can stir things up.
Q: Is the possibility of charity fatigue demoralizing?
A: If people have lost their compassion, they've lost their humanity, and I don't believe that's happening. People change the channel because they feel impotent and unable to affect change. So what's the point in reminding yourself of what you're not doing? Our message is exactly the opposite. You really can change things. And by the way, we're not asking for your money. We think you've given already. We're asking you to give the president of the United States and the prime minister of England your permission to spend your money saving these lives.
Q: And how is this cause more urgent than, say, community problems with crime or poverty?
A: We're talking about a holocaust and the same kind of questions you'd be asked if you were a German living at the beginning of the Third Reich. When Jews were being loaded on trains, how did you let that happen? This is like setting dogs on black people in the South in the '50s. How did you let that happen? History has a way of making ideas that once were acceptable ridiculous. I think of the '80s. What was acceptable has been made ridiculous by history -- the mullets, the shoulder pads, the silk tour jackets with radio station numbers on the back. But Live Aid didn't become ridiculous. Musicians stepped into a void left by politics and just said no.
Q: Live Aid left an indelible impact on what's become known as cause rock, but some players never got past the marquee. In that same year, you and your wife did volunteer work in Ethiopia. How did that experience fuel your activism?
A: An enormous amount. It brought us in touch with the awe-inspiring beauty of that continent, the strength of the spirit of Africans and an idea of the obstacles in their way, some of which has to be said are their own doing. They replaced the colonial bullying and slave trade with their own despotism a little too quickly. But some of their problems are structural, and we in the West are part of very corrupt relationships -- debt-servicing and holding children to ransom for the deaths of their great-great-great-great-grandparents, trumpeting free trade while not letting them put their products on our shelves. You can't fix every problem, but the ones you can, you must.
Q: You co-founded DATA to address some of those issues. How much progress has been made?
A: Not enough. We've got some very smart people at DATA. Bill Gates is remarkable. He's doing more than any single person has ever done. For him, it's not just a salving of a conscience. He has become as involved in the minutiae and the small print of these problems as I'm sure he was at Microsoft. DATA is at the beginning of a steep incline. What we've got to do is glue together the different factions into a real movement. I want to get back to my day job. I think I'm much better at being in a band than I am in this. I keep waiting for people here to discover that I'm actually Irish and to throw me out of the country. I can't believe I'm getting away with this.
Q: Explain your love affair with America.
A: I'm fan and critic. I love the fact that it's not just a country; it's an idea, an idea that's supposed to be contagious. Right now, the United States can not afford to be a subcontinent behaving like an island. If you read, as I have recently, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the lines written on the Statue of Liberty, you realize what a great idea this country is and what a great tragedy it would be if the country moved away from its essence.
Q: Turning a conservative icon like Jesse Helms around on the issues of debt relief and AIDS funding requires considerable tact. Did growing up with a Protestant father and Catholic mother help you hone these diplomatic skills?
A: Ours was a house full of arguments. It was Meet the Press every morning, particularly on Sundays. There were bloody battles, and the biggest were always fought Christmas Day. Then, of course, just being in a real band is a lesson in diplomacy. You're living in each other's pockets. You have to know when to have that row or not. Or else you'll destroy the thing you've all been working on.
Q: U2 has always expressed its political stands on stage and off. But your solo forays into the political fray take you away from the band. How difficult is it to juggle these two callings?
A: It has been problematic. It has pushed the band's patience, but they are supporting me, not just in terms of the time off, but financially at times. And they take the heat. This is really unhip stuff. We're taking a big risk by saying, "Let's reach out to the churches and corporate America, let's not posture, let's not play good guys and bad guys." There are too many lives hanging in the balance. If we don't get a result here, if we really don't get this [campaign] off the ground, people are going to say that I was had. And they might be right. So I'm taking a big risk, and I just hope it doesn't look bad on the band.
Q: Looking back at U2's odyssey -- an amazingly strong rise in the '80s, an equally robust but radically different course in the '90s -- how do you account for the band's stability and durability in such a fickle and volatile business?
A: Curiosity, I think. Also, an idea that music and friendship are kind of sacraments. Maybe that's over the top, but maybe not. And the sense that we got coming out of punk rock of not turning into monsters through laziness. The gift is not enough. It's what you make with it. And we've always had a sense that we have to justify this life we've been given. It's like there's a deal in place, where we get to not worry about paying the bills or where our kids go to school and in return we mustn't, one, bend over, and two, think that turning up is enough. Every album has to justify our existence. It's some weird freaked-out Irish Catholic guilt meets punk rock.
Q: On the eve of releasing All That You Can't Leave Behind, at the 43rd GRAMMYs, you gave notice that U2 was reapplying for the job of biggest rock band in the world. Few would argue that U2 owns that title, but throwing down the gauntlet was a tad reckless, wouldn't you say?
A: I knew it would take some outrageous remarks to draw attention to us. I am the singer, so I know how to find the spotlight, and that was a way of saying, "Don't miss what we do, even if you're watching to see us fail."
Q: All That, the magnet for seven GRAMMY awards, including back-to-back wins for Record of the Year, is a hard act to follow. How is the next U2 album shaping up?
A: I just came from the studio today, and it's ridiculous what's going on. Edge is just on fire; he's making the most extraordinary things come out of his guitar. It's astonishing. We came up with a tune today called "Lead Me In The Way I Should Go," which could be a big song. Another one, provisionally titled "Full Metal Jacket," is pure chrome. I'm very excited about what we're doing, and I don't think we're facing that difficult second album syndrome.
Q: Which means you could be making another stroll to the GRAMMY podium in 2004. Is it still gratifying to get that kind of acknowledgement from your peers?
A: Very. Whereas the GRAMMYs don't often reward the most innovative or challenging music, in our case, they do! (Laughs). I love it best when rock and roll crosses the road and rubs up against hip-hop and country. I like radio stations like that. I like MTV for that reason. And that's what the GRAMMYs is. It's not in its own ghetto.
Q: All That You Can't Leave Behind came out before Sept. 11, 2001, but took on extraordinary resonance after the terror attacks, especially in the context of the Elevation Tour. How did you finesse the delicate dance between tragedy and entertainment?
A: I often feel we may have Tourette's Syndrome. The thing you're not supposed to do is the very thing we'll do. A lot of people cancelled their tours after Sept. 11. We came in. I wanted to put the names [on an overhead screen] of those who lost their lives to make the point that they were people, not statistics. People said, you can't do this. And I was convinced that we must do this. Our music is church to me; where else are we going to talk about these things?
Q: Audiences were clearly touched by the Sept. 11 references and the show's healing tone. Was the band similarly affected?
A: We were all very moved to be a small part of that [recovery process]. God was in the room. For once, I don't mean me.
Q: You've said that being relevant is harder than being successful. How does U2 hang on to relevance?
A: By trying, by failing. We're nothing if not fearless. We work well in an atmosphere of chaos. The moment you know too much about what you're doing, you're in trouble. The bankruptcy we played with in the Zoo TV tour is something I'm most proud of. The knowledge that we could lose everything kept us awake. I'm reminded of that Van Morrison lyric: "Didn't I come to bring you a sense of wonder." I do think we still have a sense of wonder and awe.
Q: Does your humanitarian drive have roots in your religious upbringing, your family, your youth? What motivated you?
A: I'd say megalomania. It might start with that.
Q: You can satisfy that impulse just by being a rock star.
A: Noooo, that's just invading Poland. (Laughs) There's the rest of the world! I think I want to change the world, and I want to have fun. I don't know anyone who doesn't, by the way. Those two instincts shouldn't be mutually exclusive. Sometimes when you succeed in one area of your life, like music, you think you can apply that same momentum to other things. I suppose that's what I thought. Everything is analogous, in a way. The music industry is not that difficult to figure out. It's not rocket science. Neither is economics, as it turns out. And neither is an understanding of what is wrong with the body politic at the moment. I think it's clear we're at a real impasse.
Q: You've channeled so much of your energy toward Africa. Why do you see it as this generation's defining crisis?
A: About 2.5 million Africans are going to die next year because they can't get access to drugs that we take for granted in America and Europe. If that is acceptable then I think our age will be deemed irrelevant by history. Civilization becomes too strong a word if you can live comfortably with those kind of fatalities. I don't think you have to be that clever and smart to work that out. It's just absolutely clear. What annoys me the most is stupidity. People are dying for the most stupid of all reasons: money.
Q: How do you persuade the public that a calamity on that scale is fixable? Many people would feel overwhelmed and helpless against a tragedy that widespread.
A: It's so doable. If the political will is there, we can afford it, believe or not. Anyone who says we can't is telling lies. But people get beaten down, and people don't believe the world is as malleable as it turns out to be. People are more powerful than we think. The United States, where I look for leadership at times like this, is enjoying unparalleled economic, military, technological and cultural power. When President Kennedy said in the early '60s, "We're going to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade," he knew it wasn't going to be easy. It wasn't even on everybody's mind. He wasn't checking the pulse. It was about leadership. Right now democracy is at a crisis point. You can't have the benefits of globalization without some of the responsibilities.
Q: And what happens if the West fails to act?
A: If we miss this opportunity to do what we do best, which is deliver the technology and pharmaceuticals to people in need, suddenly this great culture will get ugly. It will start to look like Pompeii or the fall of Rome. I can't get over it. We were standing on the runway at JFK sending off 6 million shoe boxes from children around the world to AIDS orphans and AIDS-suffering children in Africa. People were saying it would be the last Christmas for a lot of these children. And I just thought, "Why, by the way? Why?" These kids don't have leukemia. These children have AIDS. We have drugs. They don't have to die. My mind is bent trying to get my head around it.
Q: How do you respond to people who say the cost of treating the African AIDS crisis is too high?
A: It doesn't have to be. I'm not against the pharmaceutical companies making profits. They need to make profits to research and develop. But remember when CDs first came out and we'd see pictures of people in space suits in glass fridges carrying these high tech tablets? We were being taught that we're going to have to put our hands deep in our pockets and pull out $15. Now we know they cost 25 cents apiece.
Q: You've said that celebrity is currency in this mission. Yet you've gone beyond simply raising awareness and reaching people of influence. How did your role evolve to include negotiating?
A: I ended up in a place of arbiting and deal-making through default. It was my job to make the United States aware of the Jubilee 2000 movement that was so big in Europe. I found it difficult because you can't make a movement. You grow one. You can't buy it, but you can build it. And we didn't have time. I called on people for help, and my friend Bobby Shriver helped me start working the back roads of influence. Arnold Schwarzenegger, [Shriver's] brother-in-law, introduced me to his Republican friends - like John Kasich, who fought very hard for us and made the whole thing bipartisan. I started to meet economists and got to know the argument, because I realized the work would be done at the table, not on the street.
Q: The table doesn't quite have the mystique or excitement of the street, which is the usual forum for rock and roll rebels.
A: And I do good placard! I prefer it. It looks better. It's much more glamorous for a rock and roll star to be on the barricades with a handkerchief over his nose throwing stink bombs than it is to be in a bowler hat with a briefcase. But we didn't have time.
Q: As MusiCares Person of the Year, you join some stellar company -- Paul Simon, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Bonnie Raitt. How do you feel about MusiCares honoring you for both your music and philanthropy?
A: MusiCares [does] such great things, it was impossible for me to turn them down. It is an excruciating experience to be given an award for one's humanitarianism because it seems to suggest that other people don't have it, which is never true. I always reckon that I just do what other people would do if they had the time and money.
Q: Are you concerned about the cynics who cast a jaded eye at superstar do-gooders?
A: We should start with the projectile vomit factor and how to prevent it. Is that possible? I expect that cynicism to be thrown at me. I'm always available for mud pies, rocks and small assault weapons.
Q: So you'd be more comfortable getting a GRAMMY than the Nobel Peace Prize?
A: I like GRAMMYs! More, please, more, more, more. It's a difficult issue. People refer to your "charitable work." As it says in the Scriptures, if your left arm knows what your right arm is doing, it is not charity. Anything people do publicly is not charity. You might be promoting an idea or yourself or both at once. But in the end, I guess you can't look at the motives. That's the position I take, anyway. I don't care what reasons people are doing things as long as they're doing things.
Q: You, along with Ashley Judd, Chris Tucker and Lance Armstrong, just completed a Heart of America tour by bus to push for AIDS relief. How did Midwesterners respond to celebrities with a political agenda?
A: The first thing I'd say at the truck stop or the town hall or the college or the church I was speaking at is: On this trip, I'm not a rock star with a cause. I've been one before, and I'll be one again, but this is an emergency, because 6,500 people are dying of AIDS in Africa every day, and they don't have to. I understand the cynicism attached to "rock star with a cause." I mean, I wince, and I am one. This is different. I'm in there going, "Can somebody shout FIRE here?" The siren of a rock and roll band is helpful in this case. We're in the business of noise. We can stir things up.
Q: Is the possibility of charity fatigue demoralizing?
A: If people have lost their compassion, they've lost their humanity, and I don't believe that's happening. People change the channel because they feel impotent and unable to affect change. So what's the point in reminding yourself of what you're not doing? Our message is exactly the opposite. You really can change things. And by the way, we're not asking for your money. We think you've given already. We're asking you to give the president of the United States and the prime minister of England your permission to spend your money saving these lives.
Q: And how is this cause more urgent than, say, community problems with crime or poverty?
A: We're talking about a holocaust and the same kind of questions you'd be asked if you were a German living at the beginning of the Third Reich. When Jews were being loaded on trains, how did you let that happen? This is like setting dogs on black people in the South in the '50s. How did you let that happen? History has a way of making ideas that once were acceptable ridiculous. I think of the '80s. What was acceptable has been made ridiculous by history -- the mullets, the shoulder pads, the silk tour jackets with radio station numbers on the back. But Live Aid didn't become ridiculous. Musicians stepped into a void left by politics and just said no.
Q: Live Aid left an indelible impact on what's become known as cause rock, but some players never got past the marquee. In that same year, you and your wife did volunteer work in Ethiopia. How did that experience fuel your activism?
A: An enormous amount. It brought us in touch with the awe-inspiring beauty of that continent, the strength of the spirit of Africans and an idea of the obstacles in their way, some of which has to be said are their own doing. They replaced the colonial bullying and slave trade with their own despotism a little too quickly. But some of their problems are structural, and we in the West are part of very corrupt relationships -- debt-servicing and holding children to ransom for the deaths of their great-great-great-great-grandparents, trumpeting free trade while not letting them put their products on our shelves. You can't fix every problem, but the ones you can, you must.
Q: You co-founded DATA to address some of those issues. How much progress has been made?
A: Not enough. We've got some very smart people at DATA. Bill Gates is remarkable. He's doing more than any single person has ever done. For him, it's not just a salving of a conscience. He has become as involved in the minutiae and the small print of these problems as I'm sure he was at Microsoft. DATA is at the beginning of a steep incline. What we've got to do is glue together the different factions into a real movement. I want to get back to my day job. I think I'm much better at being in a band than I am in this. I keep waiting for people here to discover that I'm actually Irish and to throw me out of the country. I can't believe I'm getting away with this.
Q: Explain your love affair with America.
A: I'm fan and critic. I love the fact that it's not just a country; it's an idea, an idea that's supposed to be contagious. Right now, the United States can not afford to be a subcontinent behaving like an island. If you read, as I have recently, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the lines written on the Statue of Liberty, you realize what a great idea this country is and what a great tragedy it would be if the country moved away from its essence.
Q: Turning a conservative icon like Jesse Helms around on the issues of debt relief and AIDS funding requires considerable tact. Did growing up with a Protestant father and Catholic mother help you hone these diplomatic skills?
A: Ours was a house full of arguments. It was Meet the Press every morning, particularly on Sundays. There were bloody battles, and the biggest were always fought Christmas Day. Then, of course, just being in a real band is a lesson in diplomacy. You're living in each other's pockets. You have to know when to have that row or not. Or else you'll destroy the thing you've all been working on.
Q: U2 has always expressed its political stands on stage and off. But your solo forays into the political fray take you away from the band. How difficult is it to juggle these two callings?
A: It has been problematic. It has pushed the band's patience, but they are supporting me, not just in terms of the time off, but financially at times. And they take the heat. This is really unhip stuff. We're taking a big risk by saying, "Let's reach out to the churches and corporate America, let's not posture, let's not play good guys and bad guys." There are too many lives hanging in the balance. If we don't get a result here, if we really don't get this [campaign] off the ground, people are going to say that I was had. And they might be right. So I'm taking a big risk, and I just hope it doesn't look bad on the band.
Q: Looking back at U2's odyssey -- an amazingly strong rise in the '80s, an equally robust but radically different course in the '90s -- how do you account for the band's stability and durability in such a fickle and volatile business?
A: Curiosity, I think. Also, an idea that music and friendship are kind of sacraments. Maybe that's over the top, but maybe not. And the sense that we got coming out of punk rock of not turning into monsters through laziness. The gift is not enough. It's what you make with it. And we've always had a sense that we have to justify this life we've been given. It's like there's a deal in place, where we get to not worry about paying the bills or where our kids go to school and in return we mustn't, one, bend over, and two, think that turning up is enough. Every album has to justify our existence. It's some weird freaked-out Irish Catholic guilt meets punk rock.
Q: On the eve of releasing All That You Can't Leave Behind, at the 43rd GRAMMYs, you gave notice that U2 was reapplying for the job of biggest rock band in the world. Few would argue that U2 owns that title, but throwing down the gauntlet was a tad reckless, wouldn't you say?
A: I knew it would take some outrageous remarks to draw attention to us. I am the singer, so I know how to find the spotlight, and that was a way of saying, "Don't miss what we do, even if you're watching to see us fail."
Q: All That, the magnet for seven GRAMMY awards, including back-to-back wins for Record of the Year, is a hard act to follow. How is the next U2 album shaping up?
A: I just came from the studio today, and it's ridiculous what's going on. Edge is just on fire; he's making the most extraordinary things come out of his guitar. It's astonishing. We came up with a tune today called "Lead Me In The Way I Should Go," which could be a big song. Another one, provisionally titled "Full Metal Jacket," is pure chrome. I'm very excited about what we're doing, and I don't think we're facing that difficult second album syndrome.
Q: Which means you could be making another stroll to the GRAMMY podium in 2004. Is it still gratifying to get that kind of acknowledgement from your peers?
A: Very. Whereas the GRAMMYs don't often reward the most innovative or challenging music, in our case, they do! (Laughs). I love it best when rock and roll crosses the road and rubs up against hip-hop and country. I like radio stations like that. I like MTV for that reason. And that's what the GRAMMYs is. It's not in its own ghetto.
Q: All That You Can't Leave Behind came out before Sept. 11, 2001, but took on extraordinary resonance after the terror attacks, especially in the context of the Elevation Tour. How did you finesse the delicate dance between tragedy and entertainment?
A: I often feel we may have Tourette's Syndrome. The thing you're not supposed to do is the very thing we'll do. A lot of people cancelled their tours after Sept. 11. We came in. I wanted to put the names [on an overhead screen] of those who lost their lives to make the point that they were people, not statistics. People said, you can't do this. And I was convinced that we must do this. Our music is church to me; where else are we going to talk about these things?
Q: Audiences were clearly touched by the Sept. 11 references and the show's healing tone. Was the band similarly affected?
A: We were all very moved to be a small part of that [recovery process]. God was in the room. For once, I don't mean me.
Q: You've said that being relevant is harder than being successful. How does U2 hang on to relevance?
A: By trying, by failing. We're nothing if not fearless. We work well in an atmosphere of chaos. The moment you know too much about what you're doing, you're in trouble. The bankruptcy we played with in the Zoo TV tour is something I'm most proud of. The knowledge that we could lose everything kept us awake. I'm reminded of that Van Morrison lyric: "Didn't I come to bring you a sense of wonder." I do think we still have a sense of wonder and awe.
Sunday, February 09, 2003
Wednesday, February 05, 2003
Saturday, February 01, 2003
I was deeply moved today by the loss of the shuttle Columbia. It's ironic that events like this move me more than millions of people dying in some far off land (although that moves me too, when I engage my imagination), but there is just something about the space program tradgedies that touches a very sensitive nerve. Maybe it's that the space program encapsulates so many of our dreams, our strivings to understand who we are and our incessant desires to rise above the day to day circumstances of life. It's almost as if our hopes in some way rest with our abilities to do great things, to be transcendant, if only for a moment.
I grieve also for the struggling nation of Israel. All the strife that the Israeli's have gone through over the last two years, with the new intifada, and this was to be their one moment of hope, their one bright ray in an otherwise dismal existence. All the nation watched on TV, their hopes and pride once again being blown to pieces. It's really almost too much to think about at times.
I grieve also for the struggling nation of Israel. All the strife that the Israeli's have gone through over the last two years, with the new intifada, and this was to be their one moment of hope, their one bright ray in an otherwise dismal existence. All the nation watched on TV, their hopes and pride once again being blown to pieces. It's really almost too much to think about at times.
Tuesday, January 28, 2003
Monday, January 27, 2003
Okay, I finally went out and purchased Beck's new album, Sea Change. I have to admit, I think I actually like this album, but not for the reasons I expected. I figured this would be a groundbreaking piece of work, but what I discovered is that it's really OK Computer "countrified." That's right, I'm making up a new word; "countrified." I guess I shouldn't be surprised by this album. You put Nigel Godrich of Radiohead fame on the boards, and get Beck in one of his hipster-doofus country moods, and you're bound to get a quasi-masterpiece.
All in all, a good album for the range-riding-neurasthenic-somnambulists among us.
All in all, a good album for the range-riding-neurasthenic-somnambulists among us.
Wednesday, January 22, 2003
Thursday, January 16, 2003
Tuesday, January 07, 2003
Sunday, January 05, 2003
Friday, January 03, 2003
"An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons -- marriage, or meat, or beer, or cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning."
-----C.S. Lewis, "Mere Christianity"
Tuesday, December 31, 2002
"God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn't. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down."
-----C.S. Lewis, "A Grief Observed"
-----C.S. Lewis, "A Grief Observed"
Thursday, December 26, 2002
Saturday, December 21, 2002
Tuesday, December 17, 2002
"Beginners in the spiritual life are apt to become very diligent in their exercises. The great danger for them will be to become satisfied with their religious works and with themselves. It is easy for them to develop a kind of secret pride, which is the first of the seven capital sins.
Such persons become too spiritual. They like to speak of "spiritual things" all the time. They become content with their growth. They would prefer to teach rather than to be taught. They condemn others who are not as spiritual as they are. They are like the Pharisee who boasted in himself and despised the publican who was not as spiritual as he.
The devil will often inflame their fervor so that their pride will grow even greater. The devil knows that all of their works and virtues will become valueless and, if unchecked, will become vices. For they begin to do these spiritual exercises to be esteemed by others. They want others to realize how spiritual they are. They will also begin to fear confession to another for it would ruin their image. So they soften their sins when they make confession in order to make them appear less imperfect.
They will beg God to take away their imperfections, but they do this only because they want to find inner peace and not for God's sake. They do not realize that if God were to take away their imperfections from them, they would probably become prouder and more presumptiuous still.
But those who are at this time moving in God's way will counter this pride with humility. They will learn to think very little of themselves and their religious works. Instead, they will focus on how great and how deserving God is and how little it is that they can do for Him. The Spirit of God dwells in such persons, urging them to keep their treasures secretly within themselves."
----St. John of the Cross, from "Dark Night of the Soul"
Such persons become too spiritual. They like to speak of "spiritual things" all the time. They become content with their growth. They would prefer to teach rather than to be taught. They condemn others who are not as spiritual as they are. They are like the Pharisee who boasted in himself and despised the publican who was not as spiritual as he.
The devil will often inflame their fervor so that their pride will grow even greater. The devil knows that all of their works and virtues will become valueless and, if unchecked, will become vices. For they begin to do these spiritual exercises to be esteemed by others. They want others to realize how spiritual they are. They will also begin to fear confession to another for it would ruin their image. So they soften their sins when they make confession in order to make them appear less imperfect.
They will beg God to take away their imperfections, but they do this only because they want to find inner peace and not for God's sake. They do not realize that if God were to take away their imperfections from them, they would probably become prouder and more presumptiuous still.
But those who are at this time moving in God's way will counter this pride with humility. They will learn to think very little of themselves and their religious works. Instead, they will focus on how great and how deserving God is and how little it is that they can do for Him. The Spirit of God dwells in such persons, urging them to keep their treasures secretly within themselves."
----St. John of the Cross, from "Dark Night of the Soul"
Thursday, December 12, 2002
Friday, December 06, 2002
A friend forwarded the transcript of Bono's Dec. 1 interview with Larry King of CNN (I checked but the transcript is not yet online). Here are three things Bono said:
== "...religion is this sort of -- religion is the artifice, you know, the building, after God has left it sometimes, like Elvis has left the building. You hold onto religion, you know, rules, regulations, traditions. I think what God is interested in is people's hearts, and that's hard enough."
== "I'm half Catholic and half -- I mean, I'm not doubting. I don't doubt God. I have firm faith absolutely in God. It's religion I'm doubting.."
== "America is not just a country; it's an idea. You have to defend the idea as well as the country, and that idea is being attacked."
== "...religion is this sort of -- religion is the artifice, you know, the building, after God has left it sometimes, like Elvis has left the building. You hold onto religion, you know, rules, regulations, traditions. I think what God is interested in is people's hearts, and that's hard enough."
== "I'm half Catholic and half -- I mean, I'm not doubting. I don't doubt God. I have firm faith absolutely in God. It's religion I'm doubting.."
== "America is not just a country; it's an idea. You have to defend the idea as well as the country, and that idea is being attacked."
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