Exclusively in the new print issue of CounterPunch

HOLLYWOOD AND THE CIA — Film historian Ed Rampell details Hollywood’s entangled relationship with the CIA and the Pentagon; HOUSES OF THE DEAD: Nancy Kurshan exposes the cruel human rights offenses taking place inside America’s vast gulag of Control Unit Prisons; BROTHERHOOD OF SUMMER: David Macaray charts the history of the most powerful union in the US: the Baseball Players Association; TAR SANDS COME TO AMERICA: Steve Horn explains how the Keystone Pipeline debates have diverted attention from Big Oil’s other plans to transport Alberta’s oil into the US. PLUS: Jeffrey St. Clair on CONSTITUTIONAL ENTROPY; Mike Whitney on HOW THE BANKS TARGETED BLACKS; Chris Floyd on THE RISE OF BRITAIN’S TEA PARTY; Kristin Kolb on THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE; Kim Nicolini on the FILMS OF WILLIAM FRIEDKIN; and Lee Ballinger on POETS VS. THE ONE PERCENT.

Weekend Edition May 27-29, 2006

An Open Letter to Bono Why Are You Financing a Video Game on Invading Venezuela?

Why Are You Financing a Video Game on Invading Venezuela?

by SCOTT MICHAEL PEREY

It is extremely disheartening to discover your good name closely associated with a business that seeks to profit from a pathological culture of ill-will and military perversion and, more specifically, in tandem with a very pointed and insidious work of propaganda that reads straight out of the playbooks of George Bush, the Republican Party, and the Project for the New American Century.

Without promoting its title, let me describe the story line for a soon-to-be-released video game of the (sadly) popular "kill and destroy" variety: as protagonist, you play by "no rules" and even have access to "mini-nukes" as you lead an invasion of Venezuela to "profit from chaos" as a "power hungry tyrant messes with Venezuela’s oil supply," to quote directly from the video game’s website. As the leader of the madness and destruction that ensues, you, the game player, more or less represent the Halliburton criminals and their ilk: "Dirty deeds, done for exhorbitant fees," as your line of work is described further.

I won’t name the game itself, but I will mention that the company releasing it is called Pandemic, which has very recently been absorbed into a corporate entity called Bioware/Pandemic Studios, which was created by a $300 million dollar investment from the venture capital group Elevation Partners, a new private equity firm which boasts none other than you, Mr. Bono, as a managing director and co-founder. In fact, Bioware/Pandemic was your new group’s very first investment.

I would like to believe that this is something that just happened to slip under your radar, Mr. Bono. I know you’re a very busy man involved in many honorable activities. But your firm’s website boasts only one other portfolio company in addition to this one, and upon inspection of your firm’s own webpage, the obsession with death and warfare seems clearly to be the prevailing tone of this company’s video games, if not the only one.

In short, Mr. Bono, you are notably invested in a video game that is targeted towards young men of prime military recruitment age and promotes Mr. Bush’s very dangerously misguided and malintentioned foreign policy towards a small country that, ironically, is actually reaching out economically to poverty stricken citizens of the United States and Europe. Being both a recent Nobel Peace Prize nominee and a person of sizeable and direct influence in this matter, to say the least, what are you going to do about it?

SCOTT MICHAEL PEREY can be reached at: friendsofvenezuela@yahoo.com