Image via WikipediaEngineer-Poet authored a piece I noted years back with extensive and genuine admiration for the breadth of thought it entailed. Sustainability, energy independence and agricultural policy
http://ergosphere.blogspot.com/2006_11_01_archive.html is still my benchmark for the need to 'think outside the box.'
Then he asks a question like this...and cuts off comments because his tender feelings are being hurt.
Who will admit Haiti's real problem? - overpopulation
http://ergosphere.blogspot.com
Tell you what. Being enslaved, occupied and otherwise oppressed does not do a big job of allowing people a fair shake. When history is not known...so is the villainy that allows one's soft spot of privilege. Blaming the victim does not fly.
Interestingly, the premise echoes that of the Global Warming Hoax meme : 'Carrying Capacity'. I say hoax because monopolist/empire techniques of destroying others' resources hardly counts as fair assessment/allocation/husbandry.
But. Where in the U.S.A.'s travesty of a 'communications network' or 'educational system' would he find sensible alternatives to Why Haiti Is So Hopeless; And A Very Modest Proposalhttp://www.vdare.com/sailer/100117_haiti.htm
Amy Goodman on Riz Khan: “The Role of Media in the USA”
Has the mainstream media in the US replaced serious coverage with “junk news” and tabloidism? Especially in foreign affairs, are Americans less informed than ever? Who is shaping their perceptions of the rest of the world? And who is policing US foreign policy?http://www.democracynow.org
Soapbox time. If you read reports from F.A.I.R. or Sourcewatch, or perhaps a Whistleblower publication, you know that all is not well. This is scarcely news to the legions of YouTubers or aficiandos of Real News or many social networks. And if you read foreign, Indian ( either ), socialist, Pakistani, Iraqi, central or south American, black, anarchist or union news...Fox is a swearword. CNN et al are in close pursuit.
That's what news aggregation and search terms from foreign sources are all about : though cultural shift in the British Commonwealth supports UK/USA's Fantasia. ( Avatar really is classic sci-fi : dressing horrific reality up in socially acceptable stage dress for a MindWashed audience. )
It brings up orientations like Stop terrorizing the world
“War on terror” as a cover for US terrorism
http://www.redress.cc/americas/pjballes20100120
In Haiti, Words Can Kill
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175194/tomgram:_rebecca_solnit,_in_haiti,_words_can_kill/
In place of the world came endless stories of a tiny number of riveting rescues from the rubble (“miracles”) by international rescue teams -- less than 150 saved when possibly tens of thousands of buried Haitians would not be dug out and conceivably up to 200,000 had died. Along with this went the usual self-congratulatory reporting about American generosity and the importance of American troops (they secured the airport!) in a situation in which aid was visiblynot getting through, in which people were not being saved.
When the Media Is the Disaster
Covering Haiti
Soon after almost every disaster the crimes begin: ruthless, selfish, indifferent to human suffering, and generating far more suffering. The perpetrators go unpunished and live to commit further crimes against humanity. They care less for human life than for property. They act without regard for consequences.
I’m talking, of course, about those members of the mass media whose misrepresentation of what goes on in disaster often abets and justifies a second wave of disaster. I’m talking about the treatment of sufferers as criminals, both on the ground and in the news, and the endorsement of a shift of resources from rescue to property patrol. They still have blood on their hands from Hurricane Katrina, and they are staining themselves anew in Haiti.
Within days of the Haitian earthquake, for example, the Los Angeles Times ran a series of photographs with captions that kept deploying the word “looting.” One was of a man lying face down on the ground with this caption: “A Haitian police officer ties up a suspected looter who was carrying a bag of evaporated milk.” The man’s sweaty face looks up at the camera, beseeching, anguished.
Another photo was labeled: “Looting continued in Haiti on the third day after the earthquake, although there were more police in downtown Port-au-Prince.” It showed a somber crowd wandering amid shattered piles of concrete in a landscape where, visibly, there could be little worth taking anyway.
A third image was captioned: “A looter makes off with rolls of fabric from an earthquake-wrecked store.” Yet another: “The body of a police officer lies in a Port-au-Prince street. He was accidentally shot by fellow police who mistook him for a looter.”
People were then still trapped alive in the rubble. A translator for Australian TV dug out a toddler who’d survived 68 hours without food or water, orphaned but claimed by an uncle who had lost his pregnant wife. Others were hideously wounded and awaiting medical attention that wasn’t arriving. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, needed, and still need, water, food, shelter, and first aid. The media in disaster bifurcates. Some step out of their usual “objective” roles to respond with kindness and practical aid. Others bring out the arsenal of clichés and pernicious myths and begin to assault the survivors all over again.
Racist Responses to Looting in Hait and Blaiming Haitian for their Failed State
http://current.com/items/91930367_racist-responses-to-looting-in-hait-and-blaiming-haitian-for-their-failed-state.htm?xid=45
Disputes emerge over Haitian aid control
The Haitian government has signed a memorandum of understanding formally transferring control of the Port-au-Prince airport to the US.
France protested when an emergency field hospital was turned back. The foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said the airport was not for the international community but "an annexe of Washington", according to France's ambassador to Haiti, Didier Le Bret.
Brazil was also indignant when three flights were not allowed to land.
The Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières complained about flights with medical staff and equipment which were re-directed to the neighbouring Dominican Republic."
Obstructing assistance from other countries, refusing to allow people to escape, and sending in the military ... and right about now I'm guessing you're remembering the US relief efforts following Katrina.
CBC : "About 7,000 UN military peacekeepers and 2,100 international police are in Haiti. Ban said Monday he asked the UN Security Council to add 2,000 troops and 1,500 police.
About 180 tonnes of relief supplies arrived Saturday, but scores of people on the street say none of it is reaching them.
Geneva-based Doctors Without Borders said: "There is little sign of significant aid distribution."
Canadian trio helps deliver clean water to desperate Haitian communitieshttp://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5i3WmlSqnj4lXEypz21cl-UvnqwLA
"It still seems that most of the aid supplies are stopped up at the airport. I really don't understand what the holdup is."
"All day long, heavy helicopters whack-whack-whack across the skies. They never land," said Putt. "Several commented that we are the first aid of any kind that they have seen."
Haiti and the perennial challenge of information lock-in
http://ict4peace.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/haiti-and-the-perennial-challenge-or-information-lock-in
Riz Khan / Riz Khan - Children of Haiti
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGCX9UirY-o
The worst tragedy is not being
able to do more
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2010/enero/lun18/with-the-cuban-doctors-in-haiti-ingles.html With the Cuban doctors in Haiti
U.S. troops invade Haiti
http://www.workers.org/2010/world/haiti_0204
Pentagon sabotages relief effort, escalates suffering
The U.S. secured its occupation of Haiti when the Pentagon placed 13,000 troops in the country around the capital and on nearby ships, with at least 4,000 more scheduled to arrive. It’s now two weeks after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake leveled the capital city and nearby towns, wreaking havoc on the population, and in doing so eliminated the Haitian government bureaucracy, police and the United Nations military mission.
Washington has rushed in its own military to re-establish a repressive force under cover of a “humanitarian” mission needed to bring aid to people who are injured, hungry and thirsty, and without shelter.
Spokespeople from what is left of Haiti’s government estimate that some 200,000 people have died in the disaster, that hundreds of thousands have left the capital area to seek shelter in the North of the country, and there are still some 609,000 without shelter in the capital area itself. (Reuters, Jan. 25)
The U.S. Marines and Airborne forces have seized the destroyed presidential palace, the banks, the Port-au-Prince airport and the severely damaged seaport. The U.S. forces took control of air traffic at the airport on Jan. 14. Currently 120 planes can land daily on the one runway, but 1,400 planes are backed up waiting for U.S. permission to land.
Accompanying the U.S. troop surge, the U.N. forces that have occupied Haiti since 2004 have rebuilt their command, which was severely damaged by the earthquake, and are increasing the number of troops from 9,000 to 12,500. Canada, which invaded Haiti in 2004 along with the U.S. and France after the U.S. deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, has doubled its contingent to 2,000 troops.
All reports on the ground from Haiti show that Washington gave first priority to the military buildup, while delaying emergency aid. Comments from officials engaged in aid and rescue missions — even from U.S. allies — show that by giving the military priority, Washington hampered the international humanitarian effort.
UN thugs in Haiti
http://radyananda.wordpress.com/2010/01/23/un-thugs-in-haiti/#more-2095
For those interested in a populist view of Haitian neocolonialism, recommended are two independently produced documentaries. The Media Haiti site has posted a 15-minute film, Haiti as Invisible and BrassCheck TV has posted an 88-minute film, Haiti: We would rather die standing.BrassCheck writes this introduction to Die Standing:
“In 2004, democratically elected Jean-Betrand Aristide was kidnapped by US and Canadian forces in the middle of a coup attempt and taken to “safety” in Africa.
“Aristide was elected by wide margins twice and thousands protested Aristide’s removal and demanded democratic elections that included him as a candidate.
“This is how protestors, mostly from poor neighborhoods, were treated by UN ‘peacekeepers.’”
Note that 16 UN members are dead, 150 missing in Haiti’s recent earthquake. What the hell were 175+ UN Members doing in Haiti, a country of 9 million people? The short, Haiti as Invisible, answers that question. New York University’s Justin Podur: “Most of the countries of the world are involved in the occupation of Haiti.” It is retribution, he says, for the successful slave revolt of 1791-1803.Deposed president Jean-Bertrand Aristide authored The Eyes of the Heart: Seeking a Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalization, which used Haiti as a case study of globalization. Aristide is quoted in this book review, where “Aristide specifically points out problems with the World Bank and the IMF in creating larger problems within Haitian society and the economy.”
As Haiti Toll Revised to 230,000, Journalist Reed Lindsay Reports on Scarcity of Aid in Devastated Port-au-Prince
One month after the earthquake in Haiti, the official death toll is now at 230,000. On Tuesday, Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said it would take another ten years to rebuild Haiti and admitted officials have no clear plan for relocating the one million Haitians made homeless by the earthquake. We go to the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince to speak with journalist Reed Lindsay Journalist Kim Ives on How Western Domination Has Undermined Haiti’s Ability to Recover from Natural Devastation
http://i5.democracynow.org/2010/1/20/journalist_kim_ives_on_how_decades
About twelve years ago under the first administration of René Préval, they privatized the Minoterie d’Haiti and Ciment d’Haiti, the flour mill, the state flour mill, and the state cement company. Now, for flour, obviously, you have a hungry, needy population. You can imagine if the state had a robust flour mill where it could distribute flour to the people so they could have bread. That was sold to a company of which Henry Kissinger was a board member. And very quickly, that flour mill was closed. Haiti now has no flour mill, not private or public.
Here is a country which is mostly made of limestone, geologically, and that is the foundation of cement. It is a country which absolutely should and could have a cement company, and did, but it was again privatized and immediately shut down. And they began using the docks of the cement company for importing cement. So when we drive around this country and we see the thousands of cement buildings which are pancaked or collapsed, this is a country which is going to need millions and millions of tons of cement, and it’s going to have to now import all of that cement, rather than being able to produce it itself. It could be and should be an exporter of cement, not an importer.
It’s not now that a bunch of Marines have to come in with big M-16s and start yelling at them. Watching the scene in front of the General Hospital yesterday said it all. Here were people who were going in and out of the hospital bringing food to their loved ones in there or needing to go to the hospital, and there were a bunch of Marine—of US 82nd Airborne soldiers in front yelling in English at this crowd. They didn’t know what they were doing. They were creating more chaos rather than diminishing it. It was a comedy, if it weren’t so tragic.
Here is—they had no business being there. Sure, if there’s some way where you have an army of bandits, which we haven’t seen, on any mass scale going and attacking, maybe you might bring in some guys like that. But right now, people don’t need guns. They need gauze, as I think one doctor put it. And this is the essence of—it’s just the same way they reacted after Katrina. It’s the same way they acted—the victims are what’s scary. They’re the other. They’re black people who, you know, had the only successful slave revolution in history. What could be more threatening?
Haiti, Forgive Us
The tragedy of the Haitian earthquake continues to unfold, with slow delivery of aid, the horrific number of amputations performed out of desperate medical necessity, more than a million homeless, perhaps 240,000 dead, hunger, dehydration, the emergence of infections and waterborne diseases, and the approach of the rainy season, which will be followed by the hurricane season. Haiti has suffered a massive blow, an earthquake for which its infrastructure was not prepared, after decades—no, centuries—of military and economic manipulation by foreign governments, most notably the United States and France.
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2010/2/10/haiti_forgive_us
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