Happy New Year!!!

U2 to receive Palm Springs film fest's Sonny Bono Visionary Award

U2 (Adam Clayton, left, the Edge, Larry Mullen Jr. and Bono) will receive the 25th Palm Springs International Film Festival's Sonny Bono Visionary Award. (Jennifer S. Altman / For The Times / December 29, 2013)

The members of U2 — Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. — are the recipients of the 25th Palm Springs International Film Festival's Sonny Bono Visionary Award. The group will be present to accept the honor named after the founder of the film festival at the awards gala Saturday at the Palm Springs Convention Center, a spokesman for the event said.

The film festival runs Friday through Jan. 14.

"We normally present the Sonny Bono Visionary Award to a director, but for the 25th anniversary we wanted to take the occasion to celebrate U2, a visionary group and the world's premier rock band, for their unparalleled humanitarian work against extreme poverty, disease and social injustice," said festival chairman Harold Matzner in a statement.

U2 has been nominated for a Golden Globe and a Critics' Choice Movie Award for the song "Ordinary Love" from the film "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom." U2 earned an Oscar nomination for the tune "The Hands That Built America" from Martin Scorsese's 2002 drama, "Gangs of New York."

Palm Springs honorees will include Sandra Bullock, Bruce Dern, Tom Hanks, Matthew McConaughey, Steve McQueen, Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep.

http://www.latimes.com

'Ordinary Love' - New Video By Oliver Jeffers & Mac Premo

'Ordinary Love' - New Video by Oliver Jeffers & Mac Premo


A couple of weeks back the band dropped by the New York studios of Oliver Jeffers and Mac Premo, the creative duo behind the 'Ordinary Love' lyric video.

Oliver and Mac have now come up with a new cut of the video, designed to accompany the Paul Epworth version of the song.

With 'Mandela:Long Walk To Freedom' opening all around the world, this seemed like the perfect moment to share this latest visual take of 'Ordinary Love' . 

More pics from the video, here.
http://www.u2.com

U2 returning to Island home

U2 are to go back to their spiritual home by returning to the record label that discovered them in the 1970s.
The band left Island Records more than seven years ago, unhappy with the way they were being treated.

But the Irish quartet are now planning their return to the label for a new album next year.

U2 had a long and celebrated association with Island - which has also been home to acts such as Bob Marley, Grace Jones and Tom Waits - after being signed in the late 1970s.

But the relationship soured after label boss Jason Iley was moved to sister label Mercury and, unhappy with the lack of personal involvement from his successor, the group left the company to follow their former boss.

Earlier this year the parent company Universal closed down Mercury, moving many of the acts to a new company, Virgin/EMI, although a question mark remained over where U2 would end up, with the band and record labels remaining silent on what would happen.

But a source has confirmed the band will head back to Island, which has had a change of management since their departure. "They are going back to their spiritual home," the source said.

U2 displayed their affection for the label by continuing to include its logo on their releases even though they had headed to Mercury.

The band  are understood to have already visited the label to meet some staff.

A spokeswoman for Universal said there was "nothing to report", and a spokesman for Island did not respond.

U2 recently split from their long-time manager Paul McGuinness, moving instead to work with Live Nation.

A message on the band's website earlier this month said: "Paul has saved us from ourselves many times over and we would not be U2 without him.

"Sometime soon, U2 will begin a new adventure around the world and we totally understand and respect Paul's desire to not run away with the circus - AGAIN."

The follow-up to 2009's No Line On The Horizon is expected to be released around March.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Bono and Ali make a star appearance at Leopardstown

Bono and his wife Ali Hewson have been enjoying a day at the races, as is their annual festive tradition.

The pair showed off their generous side when they decided to treat the Irish press to some St Stephen's Day bubbles.

Bono looked in a great mood as he handed out the fizz and chatted to fans and photographers.

On Christmas Eve, the star also showed his generous side by busking on Dublin's Grafton street in aid of the homeless charity Simon Community and the Peter McVerry Trust.

http://www.independent.ie/

Bono Busking in Grafton Street Again!!!!

For the fifth time Bono joined Glen Hansard , Damien Rice and other local artists to sing in Grafton Street for charity at Christmas Eve. This time they sang "Merry Xmas Everybody"and "Oh Come All Ye Faithful"

Update: Official video of Bono busking in Grafton St at Christmas Eve:

Merry Christmas!!!!

U2 talks of new album in the works, Nelson Mandela

U2 looks to Nelson Mandela for inspiration for its 'Ordinary Love' on the soundtrack of 'Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom,' and the collision of youth and hard-earned wisdom on its upcoming album.

NEW YORK — Bono took a look around the cluttered recording studio, filled with Coke bottles and laptops and vinyl records, and turned to a reporter.
'I'm not sure where we put the crack pipe," he deadpanned, pretending to riffle around a coffee table as he also poked at the band's workaholic image. "We usually leave it out for guests."
A moment later the U2 frontman had cranked up a track from the band's work-in-progress April album, an anthemic number about leaving one's hometown titled "Invisible." As the song played, he spiritedly played air guitar to it, also belting along with the track's vocals, so that, in effect, Bono was performing a duet with himself.
The 53-year-old rock star's self-mocking turn is enjoyably at odds with his self-serious public image, a sign of an icon who knows when not to be iconic. But similarly surprising is his approach to the music, a kind of boyish giddiness suggesting that, even after 12 studio albums and thousands of shows, that's really what matters, perhaps more now than in a long while.

After years of being known as much for activism as rock 'n' roll — the day after the studio session, Nelson Mandela will have passed away, and an essay from Bono recollecting his impressions of the South African leader and friend will have materialized on Time.com — U2 had perhaps its most commercially disappointing album in decades with 2009's "No Line on the Horizon." They also worked on some aborted projects that led to just one new studio album in the past nine years. So now they're shaking things up.
The band, which of course also includes guitarist Edge, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr., came up with the concept of a collection of songs told partly from the perspective of an innocent and partly from a seasoned veteran. And they brought on the electronic dance music producer Danger Mouse to help them craft it.
Told that some fans were still puzzling over how that collaboration would work, Edge, 52, laughed. "I think we're still figuring that out ourselves," he said.
On this December evening the band moved between studio rooms. In one, engineers tried different mixes as Bono sang along and gave notes in equal proportion. In another, Mullen, Edge and several others were tinkering with some rhythms. "You're seeing a little bit of creativity as it happens," Mullen said. "Like penguins in the wild."

But the first salvo in the Irish megagroup's latest musical phase has already happened. U2 recently released its first new song in nearly three years, "Ordinary Love," an ode to Nelson and Winnie Mandela that appears on the soundtrack to Justin Chadwick's newly released biopic, "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom." The song was nominated for a Golden Globe last week and is likely to get an Oscar nod next month.
"Ordinary Love" is a throwback, mid-tempo number that would not have been out of place on one of the band's 1980s albums, and a song that walks the line, as it has for U2 so many times before, between the personal and the political. "We can't fall any further if we can't feel ordinary love," it goes, narrating the tremulous relationships both among a citizenry and its symbolic First Family.
"It's a plea for common decency among the people who've been oppressed," Bono said at dinner earlier in the evening. "And it's a plea for common decency in a marriage as it starts to fall apart."
U2 hoped to portray the complexity of the Mandela relationship, according to Chadwick, who called it "a film that deals with apartheid but is really about love."

The film's producer, longtime Mandela friend Anant Singh, sent Bono love letters that Nelson Mandela wrote to his wife from his prison cell on Robben Island, and the band set about turning its poetry into lyrics.
"We thought it should be a love song, a very human song. Not epic, not earnest in dealing with world-changing political shifts," Edge said, "but personal in two people trying to hold on to one another in the face of dreadful mistreatment and heartbreak."
Mandela was a huge influence on the members of U2, who played early anti-apartheid shows. Bono and Edge said that, though it was his political leadership that the world knew Mandela for, in person it was Mandela's dry wit that would win you over.
"He would always turn on the humor, mock you a little and then mock himself. Mostly himself," Bono said.
And if he wanted the rock star to undertake a cause, he would convince him in an unconventional way — with a little reverse psychology.
"He'd say 'You shouldn't do this; it's a complete waste of your time,'" Bono recalled, rendering a spot-on impression of the South African icon's mellifluous, halting speech pattern. "'A man like you, with such responsibilities? Why would you want to be at a concert to celebrate an old man like me?'" Bono laughed. "And suddenly you were putty in his hands."
Added Edge: "That's his philosophy of dealing with the world."
It's a similar approach for the band these days. A natural extrovert, Bono in person comes off as much as a comic presence as an activist. "If you have any sense as a band that you could be not just a sop but a salve, you have a moral duty to respond," he said, when asked if the group's activist reputation ever grew burdensome. "And that," he added, with a poker face, "can make you a total pain in the" butt.
He also quipped to Edge: "The whole thing about being in a band is like being on an oil rig. Just a lot of men. We really need to change that."
Edge, in his trademark knit hat and biker-esque facial hair, volleyed back, "I told you we should have had a girl drummer."

Dressed in a green military cap, black jeans and several layers to ward off the New York chill, Bono was standing in a soundproof room filled with engineers. Every once in a while someone handed him a microphone. Bono reaches for a microphone the way a baby reaches for a lollipop, with the easy sense he knows exactly what to do with it. Barely pausing his conversation with a reporter, he began singing, rocking slowly back and forth as his facial muscles clenched. Then in a musician equivalent of a no-look pass, he handed back the mike to an engineer as he continued bantering with a reporter.

"Not to sound pretentious—not that it’s ever stopped us before,” he said as he described the new record.
Oh yes, about that record. From the few tracks heard that night, it has traces of the Clash and Sex Pistols and Kraftwerk — "stuff we were really listening to when we were younger," said Bono. But it also comes laden with soul and old-school R&B, genres the singer said he and friends were listening to in the 1970s, only "once punk came along, no one admitted it." It, too, walks the line between the political and the personal, with one song title connoting a difficult period but really referring to a personal trauma.
Thematically, the album will center on the collision between hard-earned wisdom and youthful hunger. For present-day U2  — sometimes branching out in new directions even as it so often returns to its roots, and still vital even as it stands just a few years shy of its 40th anniversary — that tension couldn't be more fitting.
The band has reportedly been entertaining corporate suitors for a Super Bowl ad to introduce the new record. But Bono waved aside a question about those plans. There's still work to be done, an album to fine tune, all-night sessions that mean dinners eaten directly off sound boards.
So engineers continued to tinker with Bono's vocal chord-straining falsetto, the sound that has defined him and U2 as far back as albums like "War" and "The Unforgettable Fire." "There's just something about a bloke who sings like a chick," Bono cracked to a reporter. And then practically in the same motion, he turned, took the mike and unleashed another one of those vocals.

steve.zeitchik@latimes.com


http://www.latimes.com

"Ordinary Love" Nominated for more Awards

The Broadcast Film Critics Association (BFCA) has announced the nominees for The 19th Annual Critics’ Choice Movie Awards. The winners will be announced live at the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards ceremony on Thursday, January 16, 2014 from the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, Calif. Among the nominees for best song is "Ordinary Love – U2 – Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom".
The U2 song has also been nominated for the Oscars in its 86th  Academy Awards.




http://www.criticschoice.com
http://www.billboard.com

Ordinary Love (Paul Epworth Version)

Bono was in South Africa this week, to join those paying tribute to Nelson Mandela at Tuesday's memorial service.

'In Ireland,' he says, 'A wake is never without humour but it's fair to say we lean heavily on the melancholy… one thing I love about Africa is they accompany the departed with dancing, lots of it, and music full of joy.'

On Thursday, 'Ordinary Love', the song the band wrote for 'Mandela:Long Walk To Freedom', was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and today the band wanted to share Paul Epworth's new version.

'We think Paul Epworth's mix is a very soulful, uplifting one and we hope our audience will agree,' says Bono. 'Nelson Mandela's life and times meant more to me than I can ever tell you, I would need a hundred songs to do that… but this complicated little love song to Winnie and South Africa is the one that landed on our lap.

'I want to thank the Hollywood Foreign Press for believing in us and the film. This is truly a great honour.' 

http://www.u2.com

Bono and Ali pay respects to Mandela

Bono and wife Ali Hewson were among mourners that filed past the body of Nelson Mandela, as he lies in state for three days.

Dressed in all black, The U2 singer was pictured holding the hands of his wife Ali and also of Zelda le Grange, the former assistant to Mr Mandela, as they walked past the casket of the former South African president.

Mandela’s coffin is currently outside the Union Buildings in Pretoria where it will lie in state for three days.

The coffin lay within a temporary mahogany structure in the open-air amphitheater with his head and shoulders visible behind a glass cover.

The first to file past his body were South African President Jacob Zuma, Mandela's wife Graca Machel and former wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and F.W. de Klerk, the nation's last white leader who shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with Mandela.

"I want my child to know Mandela has fought for her," Cynthia Shipalana, 27, said as she waited in line with her six- year-old daughter. "She should see him and tell her grandchildren about this day."

The government expects as many as 2,000 people an hour to file past Mandela's casket.

His body will be transported on Dec. 14 to Qunu, the village where he spent part of his childhood in the Eastern Cape Province, before his funeral the next day.



http://www.sundayworld.com

"Ordinary Love": Nominated for Best Song at the Golden Globes

"Ordinary Love" is nominated for Best Original Song -Motion Picture at the 2014 Golden Globe Awards.

http://www.goldenglobes.com

Music Rising in People Magazine

pic.twitter.com/FSwsfP3sQ6

http://musicrising.org/

Bono: "Mandela was a lesson in humility"

Bono in an interview with Anderson Cooper describes Nelson Mandela as a “lesson in humility”.

He also talks about Archbishop Desmond Tutu, “The Arch”.




http://www.youtube.com/user/CNNInternational

Bono arrives at Mandela's funeral

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013)R.I.P.

'With great love and respect. Go in peace Madiba.' 

- Edge, Bono, Adam, Larry 

http://www.u2.com/

U2 on Mandela for French TV

Le JT du 08/12 - U2 rend hommage à Nelson Mandela

Bono and The Edge speak about the death of their friend Madiba in New York .


http://www.canalplus.fr

Thanking Paul McGuinness

 'This week U2 finalised and signed a new management contract with Live Nation and Guy Oseary.  

The band now want to publicly thank Paul McGuinness for his extraordinary leadership, guidance and friendship over the last 35 years.  

Paul has saved us from ourselves many times over and we would not be U2 without him. 

Sometime soon, U2 will begin a new adventure around the world and we totally understand and respect Paul's desire to not run away with the circus – AGAIN. 

Perhaps more than any music management operation in history, Paul, alongside Trevor, Keryn and the team at Principle Management has always fought for our rights, for our music, for our fans and for the principles that we and he believe in. His central lesson was that if you cared for your "art", you must also "take care of business" as historically with rock and roll bands, the latter has undone the former.  

We are relieved he will remain on as the mentor-in-chief. 

We've known Guy for a long, long time, and we're excited that with Paul's blessing he's agreed to take us on. He is a brilliant man with a lot of energy, and knows he has got some big shoes to fill.'

Bono, Edge, Adam and Larry 

http://www.u2.com

"Love Rather Than Hate..."

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela ("Madiba" or "Tata") passed away this 5th December in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Bono remembers Nelson Mandela.

"It was as if he was born to teach the age a lesson in humility, in humour and above all else in patience.  In the end, Nelson Mandela showed us how to love rather than hate, not because he had never surrendered to rage or violence, but because he learnt that love would do a better job.  Mandela played with the highest stakes.  He put his family, his country, his time, his life on the line, and he won most of these contests. Stubborn til the end for all the right reasons, it felt like he very nearly outstared his maker. Today, finally, he blinked. And some of us cry, knowing our eyes were opened to so much because of him."

As an activist I have pretty much been doing what Nelson Mandela tells me since I was a teenager. He has been a forceful presence in my life going back to 1979, when U2 made its first anti-apartheid effort. And he’s been a big part of the Irish consciousness even longer than that. Irish people related all too easily to the subjugation of ethnic majorities. From our point of view, the question as to how bloody South Africa would have to get on its long road to freedom was not abstract.

Over the years we became friends. I, like everyone else, was mesmerized by his deft maneuvering as leader of South Africa. His cabinet appointments of Trevor Manuel and Kadar Asmal were intuitive and ballsy. His partnership with Sowetan neighbor Desmond Tutu brought me untold joy. This double act—and before long a triple act that included Mandela’s wife, the bold and beautiful Graca Machel—took the success of the anti-apartheid fight in South Africa and widened the scope to include the battle against AIDS and the broader reach for dignity by the poorest peoples on the planet.

Mandela saw extreme poverty as a manifestation of the same struggle. “Millions of people … are trapped in the prison of poverty. It is time to set them free,” he said in 2005. “Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome … Sometimes it falls on a generation to be great. You can be that great generation.” It certainly fell to Mandela to be great. His role in the movement against extreme poverty was critical. He worked for a deeper debt cancellation, for a doubling of international assistance across sub-Saharan Africa, for trade and private investment and transparency to fight corruption. Without his leadership, would the world over the past decade have increased the number of people on AIDS medication to 9.7 million and decreased child deaths by 2.7 million a year? Without Mandela, would Africa be experiencing its best decade of growth and poverty reduction? His indispensability can’t be proved with math and metrics, but I know what I believe …

Mandela would be remembered as a remarkable man just for what happened—and didn’t happen—in South Africa’s transition. But more than anyone, it was he who rebooted the idea of Africa from a continent in chaos to a much more romantic view, one in keeping with the majesty of the landscape and the nobility of even its poorer inhabitants. He was also a hardheaded realist, as his economic policy demonstrated. To him, principles and pragmatism were not foes; they went hand in hand. He was an idealist without -naiveté, a compromiser without being compromised.

Surely the refrain “Africa rising” should be attributed to Madiba—the clan name everyone knows him by. He never doubted that his continent would triumph in the 21st century: “We are not just the peoples with the oldest history,” he told me. “We have the brightest future.” He knew Africa was rich with oil, gas, minerals, land and, above all, people. But he also knew that “because of our colonial past, Africans still don’t quite believe these precious things belong to them.” Laughing, he added, “They can find enough people north of the equator who agree with them.”

He had humor and humility in his bearing, and he was smarter and funnier than the parade of world leaders who flocked to see him. He would bait his guests: “What would a powerful man like you want with an old revolutionary like me?”

He could charm the birds off the trees—and cash right out of wallets. He told me once how Margaret Thatcher had personally donated £20,000 to his foundation. “How did you do that?” I gasped. The Iron Lady, who was famously frugal, kept a tight grip on her purse. “I asked,” he said with a laugh. “You’ll never get what you want if you don’t ask.” Then he lowered his voice conspiratorially and said her donation had nauseated some of his cohorts. “Didn’t she try to squash our movement?” they complained. His response: “Didn’t De Klerk crush our people like flies? And I’m having tea with him next week … He’ll be getting the bill.” (On other occasions, I heard Mandela praise the courage of F.W. de Klerk, the last President of apartheid South Africa, who had his own prison to escape: the prejudice of his upbringing. We should not forget his role in this historic drama).

Mandela lived a life without sanctimony. You try it; it’s not easy. His lack of piety helped him turn former foes into friends. In 1985, U2 and Bruce Springsteen responded to Steve Van Zandt’s call to lend our voices to an artists-against-apartheid recording titled “Sun City.” Sun City had been set up on the border of Botswana to bypass the cultural boycott of South Africa. Sol Kerzner’s casino there had become a pretty busy venue. Years later, when I chastised the music producer Quincy Jones about his friendship with Kerzner, Quincy replied, “Man, you know nothing about Mandela, do you? He wasn’t out of jail seven days before he called Sol Kerzner. Since then, Sol has been one of the largest contributors to the [African National Congress].” I felt like one of those Japanese soldiers who came out of the jungle in the 1950s still fighting World War II.

Laughter, not tears, was Madiba’s preferred way—-except on one occasion when I saw him almost choke up. It was on Robben Island, in the courtyard outside the cell in which he had spent 18 of his 27 years in prison. He was explaining why he’d decided to use his inmate’s number, 46664, to rally a response to the AIDS pandemic claiming so many African lives. One of his cellmates told me that the price Mandela paid for working in the limestone mine was not bitterness or even the blindness that can result from being around the bright white reflection day after day. Mandela could still see, but the dust damage to his tear ducts had left him unable to cry. For all this man’s farsightedness and vision, he could not produce tears in a moment of self-doubt or grief.

He had surgery in 1994 to put this right. Now, he could cry.

Today, we can.

http://www.u2.com//http://world.time.com

Grammy Hall of Fame 2014 : "The Joshua Tree"

"The Joshua Tree" by U2 is among  among this year's inductees into the Grammy Hall of Fame, the Recording Academy has announced. 

Once again, 27 iconic recordings are headed for the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles. The class of 2014 includes Neil Young's 1970 album After the Gold Rush; U2's barnstorming 1987 LP The Joshua Tree (the most recently released honoree); Run-D.M.C.'s watershed "Walk This Way" team-up with Aerosmith; the Sugarhill Gang's 1979 game-changer "Rapper's Delight"; the Rolling Stones' 1969 hit "Honky Tonk Women"; George Harrison's 1970 triple-album All Things Must Pass; and Gil Scott-Heron's 1970 single "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised."

The Recording Academy head Neil Portnow said in a statement, "Memorable and inspiring, these recordings are proudly added to our growing catalog — knowing that they have become a part of our musical, social, and cultural history."


The nominations for the 56th annual Grammy Awards will be announced on December 6 at 10 p.m. EST as part of the The Grammy Nominations Concert Live!! — Countdown to Music's Biggest Night telecast airing on CBS. The 56th annual Grammys will be broadcast live on CBS on January 26, 2014 at 8 p.m. EST from L.A.'s Staples Center.


http://www.spin.com
http://www.grammymuseum.org/

Bono and The Edge Talk about "Ordinary Love"

Bono and The Edge talk about "Ordinary Love" at the premiere of "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom"





http://thesource.com/

"Ordinay Love" by Rolling Stone

By DAVID FRICKE

U2's return starts like funky church–synth-choir hosanna and the gentle hammering of electric piano – and rolls with steady, compelling restraint. Bono fires a few bolts of falsetto in the chorus, and the Edge's terse guitar break suggests the ring of a wounded church bell. But "Ordinary Love" is about the seeds of dreams, and U2 play it perfectly: down-to-earth, while looking up.

http://www.rollingstone.com

Bono on World AIDS Day and the global fight against the deadly virus.

This week’s Sunday Spotlight gives the stage to U2 frontman Bono, who has been a leader in the global fight against AIDS for more than a decade. Helping “This Week” mark World AIDS Day, Bono sat down with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos to talk about the dramatic turnaround in the battle against a virus that has killed more than 25 million worldwide since 1981.
Antiretroviral drugs, once unaffordable to the majority of people affected by HIV/AIDS, are now significantly more accessible.
“They used to cost a fortune, you know, ten grand a year. It’s down to 40 cents a day for one pill,” Bono said. “I remember being in Malawi, in Lilongwe, where there was four to a bed, queuing up to be diagnosed.  But the diagnosis was a death sentence because there was no treatment. They had the medication.  But they couldn’t give it to them.  They couldn’t afford it.”
Bono, who is co-founder of ONE and the (RED) Campaign, said a person’s ability to access antiretroviral drugs was an “accident of where you live.” Unequal accessibility to HIV/AIDS treatment, often exacerbated by political or corporate interests, made Bono “ready to put his life on the line” for the fight against HIV/AIDS.
“It actually really was an assault on my whole idea of equality.  And so the charity bit went out the window for me.  It became a justice issue,” he said. “We can’t have these technologies, simple, cheap and be denying them to others.”
But changes are happening now, he said.  And though Bono recognizes there are still obstacles, he says there is an end in sight.
“There does seem to be the political will. The American people have said that this fight against HIV/AIDS, this tiny, little virus that’s wreaked so much havoc in so many people’s lives…they got it in their sights. They want to see it done.  And that is so inspiring to me,” he said.





This year, Congress reauthorized PEPFAR, a program started by President George W. Bush, which has dedicated billions of dollars to the fight against AIDS.
“We argued with President Bush about setting up PEPFAR,” Bono said. “We thought, ‘Why not just stick with The Global Fund‘, which is the multilateral mechanism.”
But President Bush, Bono said, wanted a uniquely American organization so the government could “keep an eye on it” and do it “properly.”
Political interests are coming together this Tuesday at The Global Fund’s Conference, which the U.S. government is hosting.
“Even though originally Republicans historically supported PEPFAR, and Democrats The Global Fund, that has changed,” Bono said. “This is incredible. This is what happens when people put their ego and political point-scoring away for a bigger purpose and they stop playing politics with the poor.”
These organizations are seeing great results – but Bono’s main concern is complacency.
“There’s a chance of having the first AIDS-free generation by 2015, 2016. We can see it. We could lose that if we lose the political will,” he said. “I would just say to people, ‘Hold on tight to this one.’”
Visit World AIDS Day’s website to learn more about supporting the cause.




http://abcnews.go.com