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Monday, July 10, 2006 3:48 p.m. EDT

U2's Bono Backs Anti-Chavez Video Game

Liberals are sounding a sour note over U2 rocker Bono’s backing of a video game that depicts Venezuela as a banana republic led by a power-hungry tyrant.

The "Venezuela” in the game is a fictitious country, but lefties are distressed that it demonizes Venezuela’s real leader Hugo Chavez, known for his Marxist domestic policies and virulent anti-Americanism.

A private equity firm established by Bono – the Irish star who has been touted for a Nobel Peace Prize for his campaign for Third World debt relief – invested $300 million in Pandemic Studios, maker of the video game "Mercenary 2: World in Flames,” according to the New York Post.

A player assumes the role of a mercenary sent to Venezuela, where a dictator has seized control of the nation’s oil.

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  One left-winger sounding off against Bono’s investment is Jeff Cohen, author of "Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media” and a recent visitor to Venezuela, who told the Post’s Page Six column:

"It’s hard to fathom why an artist who claims to be about new paths to justice for developing countries would be mixed up in a computer game that glorifies stale, old mercenary approaches.”

And David Lindorff, co-author of the new book "The Case for Impeachment,” said: "This kind of right-wing war game plays to the propaganda message that the Bush White House has been pushing for years: that Chavez is a dictator oppressing his people . . . Bono should use his financial interest in the company to kill it, or better, he should pull out entirely as an investor.”

Lindorff called the video game "imperialist garbage.”

As for the "propaganda message” supposedly being sent out by the White House, it might be noted that since taking office in 1998, Chavez has, among other things, seized control of the nation’s broadcast media, rewritten Venezuela’s constitution to enhance his powers, purged critics in the military and sent thousands of young Venezuelans to Castro’s Cuba for indoctrination.

Even Venezuela’s highest Catholic prelate has called Chavez a dictator.

Editor's note:
U2`s Bono Shakes Up Faith and Politics
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