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  1. Originally posted by Mr_Trek:I believe that what Bono does for Africa is more important than what he does in U2. He can go on and on and on about it if he wants to.

    I'm one of the people that hates what Bono does for Africa. I can't stand to hear him pester world leaders for money and x amount of GDP to help people in Africa, when countries like Australia can't even look after their own people first. We spend all of this money every year giving people halfway around the world money, yet 10% of our own population has a life expectancy gap of 17 years, lives in poverty, rapes their own family, abuses their families, has no job, has wars in the streets of our towns throwing spears at each other and hacking one another with machetes like savages, has substance issues (alcohol, maraijuana, petrol), can't feed their own kids and steals from others who have worked to get where they are, vandalising and destroying public and private property in the process.

    It makes me fucking sick to see us sending all this foreign aid around the world when we can't even give the money to citizens in our own country.
  2. I'm not sure about Australia, but the U.S. currently gives less than 1% GDP to foreign aid, which is obviously next to nothing, yet it has been helping millions.
  3. I don't care what the US does, look where helping other countries has gotten them in the past. Done such wonderful things for their country!

    It just makes me wild that we can't even get things right in our own country, yet we're giving all this attention to refugees, asylum seekers and people 10000km away, while aboriginals live like they do in OUR country. Get shit right here before you worry about anywhere else.
  4. Just looked it up: Australia spends 0.35% of its gross national income on foreign aid in its 2013 budget. I think you can afford it. So it's not really a question of doing one over the other...(functioning) countries should have the ability to operate on both a domestic and international level. If Australia is having domestic issues, it's not the fault of its spending on international assistance, but rather problems with the current administration. Whole other can of worms that's unrelated to the world's poor.

    What do you mean with your sarcastic remark about the U.S. helping other countries? From what I know, it leads the way in foreign aid and it's working (see Bono's TED talk).
  5. Yeah and 0.35% of our GDP in a country of 22 million where a whole race of people live in poverty is a lot of help to get things right. You clearly have no idea about any of the issues occurring in Australia if you think it's a problem with the 'administration', so please just don't talk to me about this. It's not like you've grown up seeing it on a daily basis.
  6. Originally posted by LikeASong:ok writing from outside of.Bonos house b4 i run out of battry;
    Joe, one of the security guys, has seen me freezing ourside and has gotten me a cup of hot coffee and told.me..

    the guys are recording tje album right now - out of dublin (no word where but the guy smiled slightly when I mentioned South of France) - wont be in dublin for another 3 weeks or more.

    u2start spy in action
  7. Originally posted by dylbagz:Yeah and 0.35% of our GDP in a country of 22 million where a whole race of people live in poverty is a lot of help to get things right. You clearly have no idea about any of the issues occurring in Australia if you think it's a problem with the 'administration', so please just don't talk to me about this. It's not like you've grown up seeing it on a daily basis.

    Not to interject in an argument that may be already over, but Australia isn't exactly exclusive when it comes to the situation you're describing. The States have the same problems going on and deal with the same argument you're making here, but that doesn't mean help can't be put elsewhere. Some problems aren't fixed by throwing money at them while some are. The problems you mentioned have nothing to do with getting antibodies to fight diseases like malaria or getting help with diseases like AIDS. Again, they do happen in our own countries, but isn't that kinda like seeing a homeless person on the street, having 5 bucks in your pocket but buying a McDonalds burger for yourself because you're hungry? Sure you need the food, but A) he probably needs it a lot more and B) you probably have an easier time getting it if you need it.

    If I'm completely wrong just say so, my intention isn't to argue, just to illuminate!
  8. Originally posted by RattleandHum1988:[..]

    Not to interject in an argument that may be already over, but Australia isn't exactly exclusive when it comes to the situation you're describing. The States have the same problems going on and deal with the same argument you're making here, but that doesn't mean help can't be put elsewhere. Some problems aren't fixed by throwing money at them while some are. The problems you mentioned have nothing to do with getting antibodies to fight diseases like malaria or getting help with diseases like AIDS. Again, they do happen in our own countries, but isn't that kinda like seeing a homeless person on the street, having 5 bucks in your pocket but buying a McDonalds burger for yourself because you're hungry? Sure you need the food, but A) he probably needs it a lot more and B) you probably have an easier time getting it if you need it.

    If I'm completely wrong just say so, my intention isn't to argue, just to illuminate!

    No I understand completely what you're saying. It's just that over here everytehing else is just as bad as what happens in Africa, maybe worse. The crime, the rape, the violence, just everything that goes on is horrible, yet Australia listens to people like Bono and gives all this aid and goes and fights in wars that don't affect us at all, yet we can't even fight the problems that are occurring in our streets and communities day in day out. Pretty sure that aboriginals have the highest suicide rate in the world. That's how bad they have it.

    According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, "In the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population, the highest age-specific rate of suicide was among males between 25 and 29 years of age (90.8 deaths per 100,000 population)." On wiki the highest national average for males is 133.8 in Greenland - aboriginals in one four year age bracket is 75% of that.

    Another site states "in the Kimberley region – Western Australia’s tourist mecca, the Aboriginal homelessness rate is sky high – and in some of its towns the suicide rates are up to 100 times the national average.

    In the Kimberley last year 40 young Aboriginal people took their lives.

    Six of Mowanjum’s people took their lives – Mowanjum’s population is just under 300.

    The tragedy is endemic throughout Australia – Last year a Northern Territory Select Committee on Youth Suicides tabled its report into youth suicide and found the obvious; that there are significantly higher rates of Aboriginal suicides when compared to the national average.

    Between 2001 and 2006, the Northern Territory suicide rate for those aged 15 to 24 was 3.5 times that in the rest of the nation. The report highlighted the young ages at which Aboriginal youth were committing suicide – and the rise of young Aboriginal women suiciding.

    “The suicide rate for Indigenous Territorians is particularly disturbing, with 75 per cent of suicides of children from 2007 to 2011 in the Territory being Aboriginal,” stated the report.

    “For too many of our youth there is not enough hope to protect them from the impulse to end their lives.”

    The suicide rate doubled for youth between ages 10 and 17 – up from 18.8 per cent to 30.1 per cent per 100,000 – in contrast to non-Aboriginal youth suicides which dropped from 4.1 per cent to 2.6 per cent.

    The report highlighted the underlying causes to Aboriginal youth suicide as mental illness, substance abuses and sexual abuse trauma but failed to highlight acute poverty and a suite of rights denied to this day to Aboriginal peoples in many of these troubled communities – What is missing in many of these communities are the pathways and access to opportunities and to the benefits of education and hard work which the rest of Australia does have access to. These communities continue to be neglected by State and Federal Government jurisdictions and their agencies – services and layers of community infrastructure have not been grafted into these communities and instead they are dilapidated third-world environments.

    ...Western Australian Aboriginal communities, challenged only by communities in the Northern Territory and Queensland, have the highest suicide rates not only in the nation but in the world. Mowanjum and Derby have the highest Aboriginal youth suicide rates in Australia...In NSW, with Australia’s largest Indigenous population, the youth suicide rate is one in 100,000. In the Northern Territory, the rate is 30 deaths in 100,000. In the Kimberley, with an Indigenous population at 15,000, the rate is at a rate of 1 death in 1,200, over 80 per 100,000."

    I'm not sure about you, but to me, that happening in my own backyard is more important than what's happening in 11701km in Africa. That's just how I feel. People won't like it. I get it. But it disgusts me that we are so worried about fighting wars in other nations and 'saving' people's lives by spending $4795000000 (0.35% of our GDP, $1.37 trillion) in foreign aid when people in our country have a life expectancy of 20 years less than white people (81.44-20 = 61.44 years, which puts their life expectancy on par with African nations like Namibia, Sudan and Ethiopia) and the highest suicide rate in the entire world.
  9. Im of the opinion that Australia should give more, when people are still dying from an insect bite, you know something isnt right in the world.
  10. Originally posted by Andrew_C:Im of the opinion that Australia should give more, when people are still dying from an insect bite, you know something isnt right in the world.

    Survival of the fittest? Maybe it's evolution at work.
  11. To comment on the on-topic part of this argument, even if this giving is the reason for all this mess you described about Australia, I still don't see how it makes you angry at Bono. He's not forcing the Australian government to help. He just lobbies and persuades...it's the governments' responsibility to see if they can afford to help others or not.

  12. That is pretty much argumenting against yourself, because that very argument could be used against Australia's native population.

    You should also remember that the rich wealthy world is a main reason for Africa's problems. We've exploited them.
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