Comments on: What Bono says and what he does

By: sylent1

sylent1 — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 02:14:23 +0000

Bono needs to realize that when 90% of global wealth is in the hands of 1% of the population it's up to HIM to help the third world. Taxes MUST come from that sector because that is where the money is and allowing them to hide their finances in other countries prevents the flow of cash that prevents hardship on his OWN people. Rock stars are no different than profit glutted indistrialists-they need to come up off the cash even if it means they have to switch to a cheaper brand of caviar. And as to Bush helping the African nations-what a buncha crap…I worked in Nigeria for years and during the Bush administration. The petroleum industry has helped create and maintain some of the vilest dictatorships in the world. Stop singing the praises of a president who spied on his own people, authorized torture for political prisoners and engineered wars for profit. America would have elected a monkey to get the taste of George Bush out of their mouths.

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 03 May 2009 04:38:16 +0000

Beware of human rights activists who pose for pictures with warmongers like Bush Jr. while giving the peace symbol.

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 03 May 2009 01:38:49 +0000

Mark, it is sad that you feel the need to belittle someone who clearly is far more educated and intelligent than you by referring to her as an “econo-babe,” but my thinking is that this will not Steyn your reputation anymore than it already is. You are in Maclean’s, after all.

By: What we want, What we say and What we do: Not quite the same « Sahar’s Blog

Fri, 01 May 2009 13:58:44 +0000

[...] What Bono says and what he does [...]

By: Wayne

Wayne — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:04:36 +0000

I’m rubbing my eyes too – lipid dross of flaccid critics! (Damn that’s good – not exactly sure what it means but think I’m close .. might even steal it from you sometime)

By: Karen

Karen — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:47:01 +0000

Who cares?!?!?! He is a ROCK star! NOT a world leader! His music might be more enjoyable if he wasn’t such a pain in the ass!

By: Remainders: What’d McCaskill almost forget? And who’s car is this?

Remainders: What’d McCaskill almost forget? And who’s car is this? — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:32:05 +0000

[...] Is Bono a tax evader?!? [...]

By: archiepo

archiepo — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 07:04:16 +0000

Well, quite so, Mr. Steyn. I refer you to the age-old saw that foreign aid translates as poor people in rich countries giving money to rich people in poor countries. Enough already!

By: Bernito

Bernito — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 05:25:17 +0000

even socially conscious celebrity types are not immune from the human desire to stockpile wealth as a status symbol …. it’s kind of funny to some extent … like john lennon writing “imagine no possessions” in his mansion

By: Top Posts « WordPress.com

Top Posts « WordPress.com — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:05:57 +0000

[...] What Bono says and what he does After playing the Obama inauguration a couple of months back, the pop star Bono flew back home to a rare barrage of [...] [...]

By: Steynian 349 « Free Canuckistan!

Steynian 349 « Free Canuckistan! — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 21:42:29 +0000

[...] ROCK’N’ROLL’N’REVENUE: DUTCH COURAGE– Bono and taxes …. [...]

By: So Cal Mike

So Cal Mike — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 17:21:38 +0000

Exactly!! Lori nails it! The hypocrisy from Bono is rank!

By: vincentkcng

vincentkcng — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 09:47:36 +0000

People should be allowed to keep their money. So what if he doesn’t pay all his taxes in Ireland. Quite frankly with the money that Bono saves, chances are it’s more likely to go to a better cause or at least not going to cause more evil. I think if the Irish government is going to be critical about it, then honestly don’t be a free market society. Honestly, why should people be punished for being smart, especially when being smart isn’t hurting someone. Money is not meant to be the end all be all..it’s meant to help people be comfortable.

By: Lori

Lori — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 23:53:31 +0000

Beware of rich philanthropists who constantly beg for money.

By: peimac13

peimac13 — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 20:53:53 +0000

That’s my point and felling exactly. They yelp and wave their arms so much that they waste their energyand money instead of helping their supposed causes. HMMM Ireland is a candidate to be need IMF help. wonder why they might be upset at Bono eh?

By: Jack Mitchell

Jack Mitchell — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 18:46:28 +0000

I’m sure you’d get by.

By: nd

nd — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 18:44:42 +0000

Jack, let’s wait for horatio in the parking lot and beat him up after school.

By: Gaunilon

Gaunilon — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 18:41:12 +0000

We can’t all be witty intellectuals with higher-level reading skills like you and Mike T, Mitchell. Otherwise we’d have no one to adulate.

By: Jack Mitchell

Jack Mitchell — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 18:34:29 +0000

Steyn is notionally Canadian.

By: Jack

Jack — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 18:29:00 +0000

I agree he should be allowed to keep as much of his earned money as he can, but so should we. The trouble is, he demands more from us than he is willing to give himself. It’s easy to pontificate how others should manage their money and/or their lives. That’s what he does, essentially “do as I say, not as I do.” He has, arguably, way more resources to donate than the vast majority of his fans. So if he calls for more donations from the people who support him, he should donate more by a greater percentage. The fact that he doesn’t makes him a hypocrite.

And it’s not just Bono. Virtually any “celebrity” can get up and tell us how we should run our lives, but they won’t practice what they preach.

By: nd

nd — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 18:23:26 +0000

In that vein, why don’t they just hire Doctor Congressman and President for Life of the Internets, Ron Paul? He’s guaranteed to drive traffic to your website through the roof!

By: Jack Mitchell

Jack Mitchell — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:47:32 +0000

It’s interesting that no one who follows Steyn fanatically has a sense of humour. And I mean not a drop.

By: horatio dunesbury

horatio dunesbury — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:45:55 +0000

jack mitchell you like to hear that your fellow liberals are a bunch of raving violent lunatics? Interesting, that puts all your comments in perspective.

By: nd

nd — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:40:49 +0000

He is extremely funny indeed.

By: nd

nd — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:32:13 +0000

Yeah, depending on the source, it’s about 6%, it seems – I must have used out-of-date sources.

Of course the usual caveats apply – a great number of Dutch Muslims, particularly those of Turkish origin, profess Islam but do not practice it.

By: Critical Reasoning

Critical Reasoning — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:18:55 +0000

before you know it, they’ll comprise as much as 5% of the Dutch population!

There are about one million Muslims in the Netherlands, out of a total population of 16.5 million. So the percentage is just over 6%. Before I looked it up, I assumed that the percentage was 10% or more, given the level of hand-wringing on the subject.

By: sallyfarrar

sallyfarrar — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:18:06 +0000

Bono should be allowed to keep as much of his hard earned Euros/pound sterling as he can. He is a generous man and he gives away probably more than he keeps. What he is doing is smart: setting things up so HE can decide where his money goes rather than some stupid damn bureaucrat or politician making that decision.
Leave the man alone.

By: Jack Mitchell

Jack Mitchell — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:09:08 +0000

I doubt it does much for sales of the print edition, but you’ll notice his online column is always at the top of the “Most Read” list, even when the comments are few. Insofar as there’s money to be made with ads & hits & clicks, Steyn brings in his Wacky Legion. And apparently the publishers don’t particularly care why.

By: robscott2007

robscott2007 — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:47:43 +0000

Really, I thought you’d come up with a new ACRONYM.

By: nd

nd — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:43:18 +0000

Isn’t it funny how a man who spends the better part of his time indulging in all manner of pathological Canada-hatred isn’t above accepting a paycheque from a Canadian magazine, one that’s subsidized by the federal government no less!

It’s not just that Steyn is profoundly stupid, I mean, profoundly stupid people can be entertaining on occasion. It’s that he’s imported the most toxic brand of European far-right politics into North American political discourse that had, on the whole, been mercifully free of the type of reactionary wingnuttery flavoured with Islam-baiting that Steyn is so fond of.

I suppose I should feel a little proud that he’s found Canada such infertile ground for his ideas (for which he’s repayed us with unrelenting bile), but I can’t help wondering why the country’s most prominent political weekly would choose to give him a soapbox. Ugh.

By: Scott M.

Scott M. — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:28:24 +0000

I assumed it was Fajitas, but I can’t remember — is that foreign-bad or foreign-good in Steyn’s eyes?

By: Jack Mitchell

Jack Mitchell — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:21:51 +0000

LOL — right. BUT it was in the third paragraph, just to get the drones over the hump into the rest of the article. Baby steps . . .

By: nd

nd — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:17:23 +0000

He still couldn’t resist getting a cheap shot in at Rotterdam’s mosques. Oh Lord in Heaven the Muslims are coming – before you know it, they’ll comprise as much as 5% of the Dutch population!

By: Bill P.

Bill P. — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:10:00 +0000

Mark, I agree about not giving money to kleptocrats, just like US taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to subsidize Israel screwing the Palestinians. The way I see it, if the Israelis can afford nuclear weapons, they can afford to fund their own military agression.

By: Jack Mitchell

Jack Mitchell — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:06:08 +0000

Good to hear; rather puts to rest the “leftists are cowards” trope that Steyn is so fond of.

By: Gaunilon

Gaunilon — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:20:10 +0000

Personally I think the comments on this board are quite a bit better than the average. It’s a good discussion, other than those who just show up to make snide remarks and haven’t even read the article.

By: Gaunilon

Gaunilon — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:59:44 +0000

I know lots of conservatives who’ve been assaulted by liberals for speaking or writing what they think (by “assault” I mean physical assault. Verbal asault is now so common it doesn’t bear mention.) It’s happened to me once as well, and I’m just a nobody.

By: sukiho

sukiho — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:54:26 +0000

naughty bono, obviously his mother didnt spank him enough

By: Gaunilon

Gaunilon — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:53:09 +0000

Mitchell’s point is a good one, but it’s worth noting that Israel receives aid not because they are poor or because they haven’t put an ordered society together, but rather in the form of military hardware and technology so that they can defend themselves. Israel is similar to someone living in a tough neighborhood having their security fence subsidized.

With African aid for poverty, however, the situation greatly resembes welfare. Nations that had no semblance of self-reliance were given aid, and so never had to become self-reliant. Bad mistake. Compare to nations like Gabon, for example, that became prosperous through private investment in business rather than having public aid donations stolen by corrupt officials.

By: Zsuzsa

Zsuzsa — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:18:04 +0000

There is a part of me that would like nothing better than to leave Africa alone for a few decades and see what would happen. But there are at least two reasons that we can’t do that.

1. Humanitarian. When one society has so much and another society has so little, it’s hard not to want to help. While aid doesn’t seem to work, it feels like there ought to be something we can do. I’m not sure what “something” is, but that doesn’t mean I want to stop looking for it.

2. Globalization. Africa doesn’t exist on some other planet or in an alternate dimension that can be walled off from the rest of the world. What happens in countries like Zimbabwe or Nigeria can affect Europe and North America. Failed states have a way of exporting their problems to the rest of the world (see Afganistan and North Korea). Thus far, no African country has caused the West the same headaches, but that isn’t to say that none could.

All in all, I don’t think it’s an option to just wash our hands of the situation and say, “Not our problem.”

By: VWKirk

VWKirk — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:52:12 +0000

I haven’t had a chance to read through all the comments, so perhaps someone made this point, but, I’m a little disappointed that Steyn did not take the opportunity to point out that the EVIL George W. Bush provided more aid to Africa than any U.S. president, BUT, he also (and this is why he is EVIL), attached that aid to accountability and tracking of dollars — in other words — transparency, so that corrupt officials couldn’t squirrel it away in Swiss Bank accounts. He also (again, very EVIL) refused to deal with Africa’s ruthless dictators who did not embrace democratic reforms or free markets. Even though he is EVIL, my guess is, if you go to Tanzania, Ghana, Rwanda and a few other nations where the U.S. provided aid under the Bush years, you will find that many of the people actually think very highly of this EVIL president.

BTW, for those of you with no sense of humor or sarcasm, I was being sarcastic in my references to EVIL.

By: Scott M.

Scott M. — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:45:15 +0000

Good points, all.

By: Madagarfo

Madagarfo — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:39:51 +0000

3 things:

1. My nice country didnt send money to thaiti, we just send soldiers to stop the civil war, and input a president system. And is working better than when UN was controlling the thing. If no one take ahead the situation will get worst everyday. They need a common leader, to lead them to the right way, showing what the euro nations did ages ago, about territory division, and people division also. Its a European and north american debt. They did it. They have to help now.

2. Ohh, Bono is using fiscal paradises? **** ***… its his money, he earned. And i really like of he get more money, than he send it to the treasure. Common, everyone like of get more money. Or just dont leave it to the president. And off course, with this money, he do anything he want. At the same time he said that he cant change it alone, but with all of us.

3. Nice, we are wasting hours to chat about Bono actions… And what are u doing to Africa?? Uhm? Did u send money? Medications? Soldiers? Anything, nice words? Did u prayed for his childrens?
Listen, talk less, and do more.

Bono Vox is doing his part. With his own money. You dont need to follow his asks. Just follow his samples. Have a nice day. =|

By: Mike T.

Mike T. — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:59:26 +0000

Absolutely. It’s not like I’ve never read his stuff, I stopped because it was below the level I demand in my reading material. Now I scan the comments to get a sense of his stuff.

By: peimac13

peimac13 — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:49:47 +0000

This will take more flack than Steyn’s earthly musing attract:
What if we do nothing in Africa? No money, no aid, no military/ UN? Not one licken iota of interest beyond token embassy’s, archeology and environment monitoring?
Seriously let things evolve as they will. We’ve meddled there enough. Allow the people in the struggling regions to make their own choices rather than holding them to camps waiting for more food aid to arrive or a rouge army to chase them away.
Cruel? Not if you consider keeping them like herded cattle in camps at our charitable whims to be inhuman.
Europe was just a cold ruthless place until people had a chance to succeed from failure.