Generosity
: Australia is offering $1 billion in aid to Indonesia and also subsidizing volunteers’ airfare and health insurance. We like this guy.
Later: But he’s not for debt relief.
15 responses to “Generosity”
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It is great, but that is in Australian Dollars which is equivalent of $765 Million US.
ALso, Germany’s Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, has pledged $660 Million US. -
Also, it’s AUS$1 billion over five years; that’s about US$140 immediately.
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Yes, but that’s Australia. 20 million people. That’s a lot less than the US or even Germany
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What’s your point? I hate all this who’s more generous than who stuff that’s happening at the moment. Let’s face it, we’re not generous, we are greedy to the point of evilness. If we were generous there wouldn’t be so many people constantly living below the poverty line or even starving to death while we talk about problems like obesity and global warming due to all our cars and holidays etc.
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Offering it over five years is a good idea. Yes, a lot of aid is required right now, but it’s going to be required further down the track as well. A huge cash injection now will mean nothing if the Western world doesn’t follow through in the long run.
I hope the West learns from this — see Jeffrey D. Sachs’ essay in Time — though I have a feeling that it won’t. -
I think that it is great that so many countries, organizations, and individuals are stepping up and making contributions to the relief effort.
I find it interesting however that so many are willing to donate to this relief effort, while other disasters relatively ignored. For example, the earth quake in Iran that killed 30,000, or the thousands upon thousands of people starving in Africa every day. It appears that some efforts are more fashionable than others. I do not mean to say that the unbelievable support is not a great thing, I simply find it interesting that some efforts are supported while others seem to be ignored.
Carmine -
Yeah, all this ‘competing’ about which country is more generous is silly (let’s see what actually happens, not just what is pledged when the camera lights are on). The West is very generous. Certainly not evil. You think not? Compare the response to the tsunami tragedy and the world’s response to the floods/cyclones in Bangladesh in the early 90s that killed almost 140,000 people. I think the current response has been awe-inspiring. Kudos to those who are doing the work.
Debt relief is a tricky thing because then you don’t have control of the funds and you can’t assure it gets into the right hands. For all you know, you are just allowing a poorly run goverment more funds to be poorly run on. -
Carmine, your point is a particularly interesting one. I wonder why we in the West pay so much more attention to some disasters than others?
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We’re a very visual culture. While it may not be totally off-base that we’re only paying so much attention to this disaster because it affected so many vacationing Westerners, I think a better underlying explanation is the fact that there is so much high-quality coverage of the tragedy itself.
Listening to or reading a report about the earthquakes that devastated Iran last year just couldn’t convey the sheer horror that the video clips that have been circulating from SE Asia over the past two weeks. Sure, cameras went to Iran to survey the devastation, but that was after the fact, whereas we actually got to see the tsunami sweep people away without mercy.
Of course the video was only available because of the vacationers to begin with, so there’s some circular reasoning here. But I would attribute our varying interest in disasters more to what impacts us viscerally and not necessarily impute such selectivity to racism. -
also, the damage of the tsunami can be alleviated relatively easily
Bam had a huge response, but it was hampered by the regime’s resistance to aid by western (especially US and Israeli) sources and by the massive corruption of Iranian society. IT is very hard to make things happen long term in Iran, as the mullahs and their progeny have fingers in everything. a project that I am well acquainted with involving assisting setting up a bank (by a non-american group of professionals) took over a year to stick handle through senior levels, after negotiating for more than a year. never mind the difficulties of operating on a massive number of individual projects that Iranians would want to profit from etc…
the tsunami can be aided more easily as the damage is immediate, massive, undeniable, and incorporates so many countries. we are able to do more, the nationalism or resentment is minimised due to the scale of the disaster (not just one city, but hundreds of miles of coast line), there are so many western eye witnesses, and many of the regions were key engines of economic development and global investment.
You will notice that we have not been able to go into Burma (Myanmar if you want to acquiesce to the evil bastards in control), where the government denies that anything major happened. This is obviously non-possible, given the geography (Burma is just up the coast from the hard hit areas of Thailand) and the population distribution in Burma. But due to the regime’s sensibilties, no one will be allowed to help.
As to Darfur: its so much harder to fix. The government is attacking (or aiding and abetting those attacking) its own citizens. You need to go in and seize all or part of the country to render assistance. Aid workers are targeted by the janjaweed. The government declares aid work illegal (a la Zimbabwe).
As always, the world is not as simple, nor the west as evil, as the left would have us believe.
I think that we should invade Sudan, have no problem with colonialism (as long as its not tied to mercantilism), and believe that any government that does not accept the freedom of its citizens is illegitimate and should be replaced by any means necessary. That’s one of the reasons why I support the Iraq war, want Iran, NK, Sudan, and most of the rest of the ME and Africa invaded and occupied. The left is guilty of so many crimes against humanity, of which anti-colonialism is but one. -
Whose society does greed work well in? This from the economist is worth reading. What we think we are and what we actually are may be quite different. Also linked by Andrew Sullivan:
http://www.economist.com/world/na/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3518560 -
“It is great, but that is in Australian Dollars which is equivalent of $765 Million US.”
I guess, as an Australian this is the only comment that gets me angry…basically it’s “my dollars more important than yours” crap.
This BILLION dollars is going to cost my country and its people dearly (yep there’s only 20 million of us so we *dont* have a big economy), in infrastructure, economic budgeting, investment and AU Dollar management(the AU$ went DOWN in global markets when this got announced, and for the uninitiated this means imports cost more, inflation goes up and jobs here get lost).
My experence is that what I buy for an AU$ here you can get for US$.70 in your country so (given parity in pay) I’m possibly working harder to feed my family than you are. This is a BIG and risky effort for us, but NO ONE here is complaining. Lets not even get started on the 140 Million(australian) dollars the public has raised so far here…and that’s $7 per man, woman and child in the country.
I guess this doesn’t read as a humble post, and that’s what I’d be advocating for everyone (especially our US friends), so mea culpa. -
Oh, one more (not so humble) thing, in aid of clarity. That was 1 billion for Ache, we’ve already commited $30Million to other nations.
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Yes, and it will be a lot more in private donations after Saturday night’s televised event from the Sydney Opera House (reach out to asia) and Monday’s cricket match at the MCG (Asia vs the rest of the world – what an idea).
One big reason driving all this is that Australians regularly travel to many of these places and they feel connected to them.
This is a real turning point in Australian history, we’ve been talking about being part of ‘our Asian neighbourhood’ for a generation. But now ordinary Australians really to seem to feel that connectedness.
Plus I think after the years of hearing about the ‘war on terror’ people now want to do something positive and constructive rather than huddling in fear.
The crisis is actually empowering for Australians in those senses. -
“Jakarta, January 6: An effort by the United States, Japan, India and Australia to coordinate tsunami relief will be disbanded and folded into the broader UN-led operations, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Thursday.”
Good news.
