The arrogance of Saint Bob Geldof

[Peter Presland]

Agreed Jan and Sting is not far behind either.

Ditto

Though I'd probably put Sting ahead by a whisker in the insufferably sanctimonious ego-trip stakes - and let's not forget Bono either.

Take a look at the attached picture.

That's our Mr Gordon Sumner sitting beside one Gulnara Karimova, daughter of the man whose security forces particular speciality in the torture stakes is immersion in boiling water, on his recent soiree to Uzbekistan.

This from Craig Murray:

Sting has come out with a spirited defence of his visit to Tashkent as the guest of Karimov's daughter:

'I supported wholeheartedly the cultural boycott of South Africa under the apartheid regime because it was a special case and specifically targeted the younger demographic of the ruling white middle class. 'I am well aware of the Uzbek president’s appalling reputation in the field of human rights as well as the environment. I made the decision to play there in spite of that.
'I have come to believe that cultural boycotts are not only pointless gestures, they are counter-productive, where proscribed states are further robbed of the open commerce of ideas and art and as a result become even more closed, paranoid and insular.
'I seriously doubt whether the President of Uzbekistan cares in the slightest whether artists like myself come to play in his

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/art...tator.html
But this really is transparent bollocks. He did not take a guitar and jam around the parks of Tashkent. He got paid over a million pounds to play an event specifically designed to glorify a barbarous regime. Is the man completely mad?
Why does he think it was worth over a million quid to the regime to hear him warble a few notes?
I agree with him that cultural isolation does not help. I am often asked about the morality of going to Uzbekistan, and I always answer - go, mix with ordinary people, tell them about other ways of life, avoid state owned establishments and official tours. What Sting did was the opposite. To invoke Unicef as a cover, sat next to a woman who has made hundreds of millions from state forced child labour in the cotton fields, is pretty sick.