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Haiti Earthquake: Devastation Emerges
The extent of the devastation from a huge quake in Haiti is slowly emerging, with a number of UN peacekeepers among thousands of people feared dead.
A woman sits amid the rubble in Port-au-Prince after a huge earthquake rocked the impoverished Caribbean nation of Haiti. (AFP/Daniel Morel) Jordan, Brazil and China
have all reported deaths. UN chief Ban Ki-moon said the head of the UN
mission in Haiti and his deputy were missing.
The 7.0-magnitude quake, Haiti's worst in two centuries, struck south of the capital, Port-au-Prince, on Tuesday.
The Red Cross says up to three million people have been affected.
Describing the earthquake as a "catastrophe", Haiti's envoy to the US said the cost of the damage could run into billions of dollars.
A number of nations, including the US, UK and Venezuela, are gearing up to send aid.
The quake, which struck about 15km (10 miles) south-west of Port-au-Prince, was quickly followed by two aftershocks of 5.9 and 5.5 magnitude.
The first tremor had hit at 1653 local time (2153 GMT) on Tuesday, the US Geological Survey said. Phone lines to the country failed shortly afterwards.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the UN HQ had collapsed "and it would appear that all those who were in the building, including my friend [UN mission head] Hedi Annabi... and all those who were with him and around him are dead".
Speaking on Wednesday, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon confirmed the Tunisian head of the UN mission in Haiti and his deputy were missing, along with many other UN workers.
He said hundreds of people were feared dead and aerial reconnaissance showed Port au Prince had been "devastated" by the quake, although other areas had been less badly affected.
Stressing a major international relief effort would be needed, Mr Ban said the UN would immediately release $10m (£6.15m) from its emergency response fund.
China has already indicated in reports in state media that eight of its peacekeepers are dead, with another 10 unaccounted for.
The AFP news agency quoted the Jordanian army as saying three of its peacekeepers had been killed and 21 wounded.
The Brazilian army said four of its peacekeepers had been killed and a large number were missing.
A French official also told AFP that about 200 people were missing in the collapsed Hotel Montana, which is popular with tourists.
There were also some reports of looting overnight.
Rachmani Domersant, an operations manager with the Food for the Poor charity, told Reuters the capital had been in total darkness overnight.
"You have thousands of people sitting in the streets with nowhere to go."
People were "trying to dig victims out with flashlights", he said. "Hundreds of casualties would be a serious understatement."
Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere and has suffered a number of recent disasters, including four hurricanes and storms in 2008 that killed hundreds.
'Thoughts and prayers'
With communications destroyed by the earthquake, it is not yet possible to confirm the extent of the destruction, although there were reports on Wednesday of many bodies piled in the streets.
People in the capital were lifting sheets on bodies to try to identify loved ones.
Haiti's ambassador to the US, Raymond Joseph, said there was "no way of estimating" the casualties.
"I'm quite sure we're going to face a disaster of major proportion," he told ABC.
Mr Joseph said the presidential palace, the tax office, the ministry of commerce and the foreign ministry had all been damaged.
Haitian President Rene Preval and his wife both reportedly survived the quake.
US President Barack Obama said his "thoughts and prayers" were with the people of Haiti and that he expected "an aggressive, coordinated [aid] effort by the US government".
Venezuela says it will send a 50-strong "humanitarian assistance team".
The Red Cross is dispatching a relief team from Geneva and the UN's World Food Programme is flying in two planes with emergency food aid.
The Inter-American Development Bank said it was immediately approving a $200,000 grant for emergency aid.
The UK said it was mobilising help and was "ready to provide whatever humanitarian assistance may be required".
Canada, Australia, France and a number of Latin American nations have also said they are mobilising their aid response.
Pope Benedict XVI has called for a generous response to the "tragic situation" in Haiti.
'Shouting and screaming'
In the minutes after the quake, Henry Bahn, a visiting official from the US Department of Agriculture, said he had seen houses which had tumbled into a ravine.
"Everybody is just totally, totally freaked out and shaken," said Mr Bahn, who described the sky as "just grey with dust".
He said he had been walking to his hotel room when the ground began to shake.
"I just held on and bounced across the wall," he said. "I just heard a tremendous amount of noise and shouting and screaming in the distance."
Reports on the Twitter message site, which cannot yet be verified by the BBC, expressed the chaos in the wake of the quake.
Tweets from troylivesay spoke of the worst damage being in the Carrefour district, where "many two and three storey buildings did not make it".
In the immediate aftermath of the quake, a tsunami watch was put out for Haiti, Cuba and the Bahamas, but this was later lifted.
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45 Comments so far
Show AllWow, look at the generous response of aid for the Haitian people. I mean, 200k...words fail me. If I never believed that there is a racist undercurrent to how Haiti is treated, I do now. When the tsunami wiped out Banda Aceh in Indonesia, the outpouring of aid was enormous. Two hundred thousand isn't aid...it's an insult.
It's not an insult, it's a heckofa job.
Obama "expects" US aid? WTF.
So bad. Probably hundreds of thousands are dead, injured, homeless, hungrier and thirstier than usual. 200K is less than one bankster's bonus, that we taxpayers paid for. But I have given up on our institutions to come to any poor person's aid. The money hemorrhages out unstanched for the rich or for war. But officials here would not help Katrina victims, people being evicted, the jobless, people facing all kinds of emergencies.
If I hear another powerful person offering "thoughts and prayers" instead of actual assistance... Put up or just shut up. I don't want to hear any more cheap sanctimony.
At least I see friends and relatives rallying to contribute money and time. It is something that all can agree on - from evangelicals to leftist activists.
Joe
Black_Anarch I agree that any aid forthcoming from the U.S. government is likely to be an "insult," but if you read the article carefully the 200k refers to what the Inter-American Development Bank (not the U.S. government) says it will be providing in emergency loans. A paltry sum to be sure, but the article doesn't specify any particular dollar amount of aid from the U.S. government. It will be time enough to be outraged when that sum becomes known.
Still, it doubles the $75,000 the US so graciously offered Cuba when they were wipped by that hurricane a couple of years ago. The Castro brothers told Bush what to do with it though...he he...
Well, now the White Race can FINISH the job that a terrified Thomas Jefferson started with his embargo - an embargo created because those "uppity niggers" had the temerity to overthrew their RIGHTFUL, God Ordained, French Masters, and because Tommy was afraid his "Free Labor" here at home would rise and murder him in his sleep. Now we can turn Haiti into a "proper" place, a theme park - just like New Orleans - WHITES ONLY - NIGGERS NOT WELCOME.
We always wanted them either dead, gone, or enslaved. Now we can do all three. Maybe they have a sports stadium where we can degrade the survivors, you know, a place where "they never had it so good" according to Babwa Bush, a place where we can abandon them and "watch" as they die. We like to watch. First comes the DEATH, then comes the profits.
Consider giving to the Haiti Emergency Relief - it goes directly to Hatian aid groups on the ground rather than a through a big NGO.
http://www.haitiaction.net/About/HERF/HERF.html
Thanks for the link, I will check this out.
Thanks very much for that. My wife and I always hesitate to donate money because so much id diverted to the "industry."
Another good place to send funds is Partners in Progress - It was specifically endorsed by the Haiti Solidarity Committee of Pittsburgh's Thomas Merton Center. Like the earlier link, they are connected directly with Haitian-run sustainable development organizations.
There are a number of groups of a similar name. Make sure it is the Partners in Progress, Ligonier, PA "promoting sustainable rural development in Haiti".
http://www.piphaiti.org/
This is devastating! I admit that the cynic in me is hesitating to give to these NGOs because you can't trust where the money will go!
I am standing with the Haitian people and hope that those affected and trapped receive help and comfort in trying to rebuild their lives.
Haiti was the 1st Black nation to launch a successful slave revolt and throw off the chains of tyranny and colonization, which is why this country seems always ripe for coups (removal of their democratically elected president) and why it is STILL one of the poorest nations on Earth. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20040322/wilentz
Haiti is being punished for kicking the colonizers OUT and imperialist nations don't want the other slaves of the world (the other 90%) getting any ideas.
Haiti, alone amongst american states, helped the U.S. in its revolution and was rewarded by being ignored later and then subjugated through invasions and coups by the U.S. The misery of Haiti is America's doing. All countries the U.S. "liberates" end up poor and destitute. Look closely, this is what happens to countries under U.S. domination. Watch closely because the U.S. itself is the next victim of the U.S. oligarchy. Look closely, this is typical of what the U.S. has created, misery everywhere it lands. The last U.S. coup was not that long ago (Clinton). Look closely, this is the consequence of America's imperialistic actions. Will the U.S, help? Of course not. The little bit of money the U.S. will give will go into the pockets of the rich, the allies of the U.S. empire, the very people who sold their country and its people to America.
hi pink.
you are describing with great precision what the former CIA "economic hitman:"
who worked for decades - including in latin america and the caribbean - had described..: he sums up America this way:
"MOST AMERICANS DO NOT REALIZE OR ADMIT THAT ....we are living our lifestyles -- only because it is part of a very, very vicious system of exploitation that Dehumanizes and Enslaves People Everywhere...This is our EMPIRE Project...I was part of the Project of Empire...our Foreign POlicy is DESIGNED to REnder other Nations weaker and PERMANENTLY SUJBJUGATED to our will and that of our Chamber Of Commerce".
TRUE.
HAITI WAS PUNISHED by the Big Empires of Europe and America for DARING
the become independent and actually show that it WAS going to be PROSPEROUS - worked and run and freed and defined by Black and Caribbean people. it was NOT ALLOWED.
there was a statement i read somewhere in so many readings...an american politician i believe that openly declared in congress that this was a travesty: that BLACK PEOPLE were creating a democracy and prosperity for themselves OUTSIDE of the rule of "america" or the "white man". it was NOT TO BE ALLOWED.
and the disasters that could have been FAR LESS with a more prosperous population able to withstand or survive the disasters - have gained FAR FAR greater devastation than necessary (such as from poor construction, poor roads, deforestations, mudslides, etc....-- ALL A RESULT OF SOCIAL UPHEAVALS) that are LARGELY a DIRECT CONSEQUENCE of the
AMERICAN and EUROPEAN subjugation, isolation, and supression of Haitian's independence and even destruction of what once was one of the Western Hemisphere's most prosperous new nations.
the POVERTY and the INCAPABILITY to manage things and then minimize the disaster effects on people , their livelihoods, their environment, their biosphere -- are ALL part of the legacy of the Imperialisms of the NORTH AMERICA and EUROPEAN "white rulers" and their ilk.
so -- yes -- even in THIS NATURAL disaster - POLITICS and economic sanctions and isolation and "punishment for daring to be black and prosperous and independent" has indeed played a LARGE, LARGE role in the suffering of the haitians.
anyone, especially whites, that try to whittle away at that TRUTH -- is a LIAR and willfully blinding himself or herself at the consequences of EUROPEAN and AMERICAN imperialism and enslavement.
I am embarrased for the folks here that turn a disaster into statements for their pet political and racist bigotry.
The shame is yours.
STFU, Henry8. I don't care that you don't care, especially since you didn't have the balls to reply to me. I hope your $5.00 "statement" of "aid" to Haiti goes a long way to help! Go away.
clownshoes
Little child, if you had looked at the time of posting you would have realized I was writing and posting at the same time as you. I hadn't read your posting. As far as my ball size, mine hasve been tested and not found wanting, I suspect from your childish reply that you have never been tested in any way. I also suspect you have never once put yourself out to help others. Is there something wrong with donating $5.00 in any case? I think people give what they can.
Obviously I don't value the statements of people that cannot even insult in a civil way and certainly someone of no experience, so I'll live without your approval.
Thanks for keeping the level of discourse nice and low kids.
I'm not so sure Civus is the same guy as Henry8. Their writing styles are different.
We do indeed have to be careful about bringing up the politics in times of disaster, this is not the time, right now anyway, for finger pointing.
But, having said that, it is good to keep in mind that much of, but by no means all of the death and injury is related to poor quality construction and nonexistent building codes, much less suitable seismic requirements. This, in turn, is a consequence of the poverty from destructive colonialist and neoliberal economics - particularly over the past 30 years, when so-called "free trade" put most of Haiti's farmers out of business, eliminating Haiti's food self sufficiency and sending more than a million people into the Port-Au Prince slums. And, any attempts by the progressive president Aristide to intiiate independent paths of economic development and alleviation of poverty have been answered with coup's by US sponsored thugs.
pjd 412 Now is not the time for finger pointing, eh? Well, I think you contradict yourself with the very creative and useful "pointing" that you do in your last paragraph. If we aren't going to demand accountability of people for the consequences of their actions and inactions during times of stress, when are we going to do it? Once that stress dies away, it's way too easy to go back into our lackadaisical tolerance for disaster-generating conditions. Otherwise put, as was often said of New Orleans, this disaster may furnish a valuable "teaching moment." If that's inserting politics into a time of tragedy, so be it. The real tragedy may be that it takes inhumane events like wars and natural disasters for us to begin to think about treating human beings as human beings.
phoenix20,
The last sentence of your paragraph (sadly) is so true. Well-stated.
“People have gathered outside, lighting fires in the street
and trying to help and comfort each other.”
— Stefano Zannini, Doctors Without Borders
these are people who have had to eat MUD because of the poverty to which their ONCE PROSPEROUS AND INDEPENDENT but "unfortunately for them, BLACK" nation has been reduced by particularly that "generous" , "freedom loving" country to the north - the USA.
and yet these people of Haiti show more compassion in their utter , unending suffering, with so little to give even each other.....
compared to the biggest "philanthropists" of the USA.
Just the same, the victims of an ongoing natural disaster can be very sensitive about even the least perceptions of someone making "political hay" over the disaster, even when the points seem very sensible and relevant.
When the national leaders of the Socialist Party USA, issued a condemnation of the blatant racist attacks on refugees trying to get out of New Orleans in the days after Katrina, I considered them uncontroversial - the racist response WAS as big a part of the disaster as the flood waters themselves. But nonetheless, it sent an organizer of the Western Pennsylvania Chapter of the SP-USA, who was as leftist and anti-racist as anyone else in the party, but also a Louisiana Acadian with with family impacted by the hurricane, into such a rage of accusations of playing politics with the disaster that it ended up being the end of the SP-USA in western PA.
This morning on Democracy Now, Haitian author Edwidge Danticat seemed at some points to be on the edge of getting miffed at Amy Goodman for the same reason.
When do you consider it to be the right time to bring up history? I didn't touch global warming or infrastructure and I'm tired of people like Henry8 policing my thoughts. I consider it a form of gaslighting.
Fuck, the whole world is entangled in geopolitical bullshit and you're telling ME to be careful about pointing fingers? Why are we even HERE if we can't speak truth to power, as if none of this is connected? I'm a little angry right now, please let me own this today, I don't comment often.
This is personal to me, yes, but it is ALL political. I respect your opinion and I agree with your 3rd paragraph. Thanks.
This is a tragedy of epic proportions, and my deepest thoughts and prayers are with the Haitian people. Also I will make a substantial donation to the Haiti Emergency Relief.
At the same time, one does find political irony here. Hopefully, the outpouring of aid will substantially increase once the situation is fully assessed, and the structural rebuilding process begins.
I find it interesting that the US response to this is quick, as it should be. Yet, the Palestinians continue to suffer just as badly as the Haitians, and no (badly needed) aid is allowed through Egypt and Israel.
Update | 1:04 p.m. An interesting essay on The Root by a Haitian named Joel Dreyfuss begins:
Some countries are just not lucky. Haiti is one of those places where bad things keep happening. The massive earthquake that destroyed a large part of the 250-year-old capital city, Port-au-Prince, is just the latest blow for a country that can ill afford any more disasters. In the last two decades, Haiti has suffered a series of coups, flawed elections, high crime and inept governments. Last year, back-to-back hurricanes devastated cities in Haiti’s central plain, its richest and most fertile region.
Haiti is a country with a glorious past, a brutal present, and a bleak future. It is also a country sharply divided along class and cultural lines. You will hear over and over in the coming days that it is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. What you will not hear is that it is also a country rich in culture, world-class art, and music that is celebrated all over the French-speaking world.
Mr. Dreyfuss also points out that Haiti’s misfortune may, in some sense have begun with its greatest success, a revolution by former slaves that led to independence from France in 1804:
Haiti has never had much luck with leadership, either. It was created in a profound act of defiance, breaking away from France when that country was one of the most powerful in the world. The former slaves defied Napoleon when he reversed the 1794 emancipation decree of the French Revolution and defeated an army led by his brother-in-law to restore order. Haiti was a pariah for a half century, a country run by black men at a time when all its neighbors practiced slavery built on the specious rationale that black people were not human.
Update | 12:56 p.m. CBS News has uploaded this video to YouTube, apparently showing rescue efforts at a badly damaged United Nations building in Haiti on Tuesday night:
Update | 12:15 p.m. YouTube’s Citizen Tube blog has posted a link to this video, apparently showing damage in Les Cayes, in western Haiti on Tuesday, after the earthquake:
The Global Research website today cites an article published in the Haitian newspaper Le Matin in September 2008 by a geologist, Patrick Charles, which reviews the seismic situation and concludes that a catastrophic earthquake in Port-au-Prince is virtually "inevitable." The article notes that officials in the capitol, duly warned, really did nothing to prepare for this inevitability. The comparisons with New Orleans may just be beginning, in that the same governmental carelessness about the fate of "merely black" people is likely to be unfolded yet again.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16939
But bear in mind that Haiti is so desperately poor that even if a sincere government were to there is not a whole lot they could have done.
unlike the fabulously wealthy u.s.
abuelo: what you say is perfectly true, but the fact that Haitian officials could not have "done anything about it" would not have had to preclude others in the world community trying to do something about precautionary measures to minimize the damages of an earthquake. (What for example, could the Inter-American Development Bank, which is contributing $200k to the quake relief effort, have done? Latin American countries are rife with earthquake- and tornado-prone areas, and couldn't some of that "development" money to used for the remediation of disaster hazard?) I posted earlier today an article from Global Research showing that the people of Port-au-Prince were publicly warned of a coming earthquake disaster, so there should have been an adequate triggering signal for "relief" before the disaster hit. Did anybody in Haiti, the U.S. or anywhere else pay any attention to the warning?
Look at the outpouring of assistance from outside that is now coming into the country: too late, alas, to save lives and livelihoods for the victims. If a fraction of that assistance had come to the country in advance of the quake, the human if not the property damage could have been vastly reduced. And of course there are people living in "hazardous" areas throughout the world (including people in our own country along the San Andreas fault) whose needs are not being addressed by their own governments. What will it take to mobilize a humane program of disaster preparedness and prevention that allows all of God's creatures, man and animal, to live in relatively safe environments?
But the government of Haiti IS in the US.
Not only that, but predicting an earthquake is not like predicting a storm.
There are several locations in the US about which I'm sure geologists somewhere are saying major earthquakes are "inevitable," yet I don't see any preparation for it in New York, Cinci or even San Francisco. And what about that super-volcano that's about to blow up in Yellowstone; have they even closed the park? No, and they won't because although they think it's "inevitable" they can't predict with any accuracy when to expect it to happen.
Millions of small earthquakes happen every year. We had better hope all that oil and gas we're pumping out of the earth doesn't serve a function within it.
Helena Hanbasquet: your response reminds me a bit of that fatalistic viewpoint that natural disasters are "acts of God," completely unpredictable, that we can only "hope" they don't occur but really, what can you do about them? I have studied and written about disasters from a sociological standpoint, which emhasizes that, unpredictable as their occurrence may be, there ARE things that can be done to minimize their damage: like not having people live in flood plains, on hurricane-prone coast lines, on geological fault lines, etc. And like having well-planned systems for evacuating people and just having them take appropriate cover before the event's major impacts. My point (and I think it would be that of Charles) is that there are plenty of things that officials in Port-au-Prince or New York or San Franscisco or New Orleans could have done and should have done had they really cared to protect their people from harm. In the case of Haiti, they could have discouraged the concentration of poverty-stricken people in terribly inadequate housing along the most earthquake-prone sections of the city. (Fault lines are lines and the areas of maximum danger can be plotted.) If that policy is not followed in New Orleans or in other places in the "developed" world, why should it be expected in those countries like Haiti that have been kept deliberately under-developed, by neo-liberal forces for which the poverty of the many is the condition for the wealth of the few?
I just finished posting on another thread that it's my opinion there are parts of this planet that should never have been inhabited by humans in the first place, and here you are naming them.
While some disasters can be predicted in advance with reasonable accuracy, major earthquakes cannot. I'm not trying to defend the government of Haiti, which I'm sure is as corrupt and/or incompetent as our own. I'm just saying it's easy to see how this happened, that one geologist making a prediction about an earthquake is not going to cause action on the part of any government whether it's in the third world or here. Of course there are plenty of things the officials could and should have done if they really cared to protect their people from harm, but hey, if government officials cared about such things they'd deal with poverty for the simple reason it's poverty, not because of a vague threat of a natural disaster that could happen today or at any time in the future. There's no question the US played a role in bringing about the conditions that make this natural disaster even worse than it would have been had we never had contact with the people of Haiti. It's one more thing to add to the ever-growing list of US acts that cause me to feel ashamed to be an American.
You say fatalistic, I say realistic. I observe what happens around me, apply what I know of history, and conclude what lies ahead is going to be very difficult for anyone who survives the changes not one but hundreds of scientists agree are inevitable and already taking place on this planet. I don't believe in god but I know from observation that nature is random and ruthless and yes, some natural disasters do happen without warning and there is not a thing we can do to stop them from occurring.
Donate to Oxfam in Haiti:
http://act.oxfamamerica.org/site/R?i=Igi3mToCFNr3Z_PVbgLqag..
As bad as this disaster is, it will be nothing compared to what will befall Haiti when the WTO, IMF, and World Bank come storming into demand repayment, and 'investors' swarm the newly open beach front and city ruins to 'develop' Port Au Prince into a new tourist mecca, forcing the Haitians into the hills just like they did in Sri Lanka after the Boxing Day tsunami.
Read Naomi Klein's excellent book 'Shock Doctrine' for a preview of the hell Wall Street will unleash on the devastation in Haiti.
galenwainwright: Yes, I believe those "relief" efforts are called "helping us to death." At the very least, look for the "gentrification" of Port-au-Prince a la New Orleans.
Televangelist Pat Robertson Says Earthquake Payback for Haiti's "Pact With the Devil"
Posted by Adele Stan, AlterNet at 1:10 PM on January 13, 2010.
In remarks made on his TV program, Robertson claimed that Haitian slaves won their freedom by bargaining with the Devil, who just got his due. (With video)
SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO
Every disaster that befalls a nation -- hurricanes, floods, terrorism, earthquakes -- constitutes God's punishment of a people gone astray, according to Pat Robertson, who famously blamed feminists for 9/11 and gays for Hurricane Andrew. In the case of Haiti's devastating earthquake, he blames an ostensible deal that black Haitians made with the Devil in order to win their emancipation and independence from the French colonials who enslaved them. So, in Haiti's case it might not be God who did the nation in, but rather the Devil calling in his chit.
From today's edition of "The 700 Club":
[S]omething happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French, uh you know Napoleon the third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the Devil. They said we will serve you if you'll get us free from the French. True Story. And so the Devil said "Okay, it's a deal." And they kicked the French out. You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other, desperately poor. That island is Hispaniola is one island. It's cut down the middle. On one side is Haiti, on the other side is the Dominican republic. Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, etc.. Haiti is in desperate poverty. Same island. Uh, they need to have, and we need to pray for them, a great turning to God and out of this tragedy. I'm optimistic something good may come.
Because, of course, black people couldn't possibly have the wherewithal to defeat their white oppressors without a little supernatural help -- and it sure wouldn't be coming from God, right?
The association of black people with the devil goes back to Puritan times -- remember the role of the slave Tabitha in the Salem witch trials? -- and it lives in the unconscious of a certain sort of white evangelical Christian. The sort like Pat Robertson.
Also equated with Satan by one of the leading lights of the religious right, the late theologian R.J. Rushdoony, are the spiritual traditions of voudoun and voodoo practiced in Haiti and on the U.S. Gulf Coast, respectively. Rushdoony not only called for the separation of the races, but condemned jazz as a degenerate art form for its basis in the African rhythms expressed in voodoo.
While Robertson's comments are easily written off as the rantings of the religious right's most visible fool, they reflect a sentiment expressed by one of its most influential intellectuals. As Michael Keegan, president of People for the American Way, observed in a statement, "Regrettably, Pat Robertson can’t be written off as an eccentric aberration of the right-wing -- he’s still a leading figure in the conservative movement."
VIDEO AFTER THE JUMP
Video via Right Wing Watch
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Tagged as: pat robertson, haiti
Adele M. Stan is AlterNet's Washington bureau chief.
Haiti: UN First Responders HQ Destroyed
Haiti's 7,000 U.N. peacekeepers should have been among the first responders to earthquake victims. Turns out they're victims themselves.
Ever so slightly O/T:
Today Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck spent a whole hour on his Faux TV show comparing their mutual paranoias, mutual stupidities and mutual insanities. Two self-centered jerks for the price of one! Not a single word was even uttered about Haiti...
I believe this statement by Peter Hallward of UK Guardian correctly puts in historical perspective "our" (U.S. and other western countries) responsibility for the damage inflicted by the earthquake
"The noble 'international community' which is currently scrambling to send its 'humanitarian aid' to Haiti is largely responsible for the extent of the suffering it now aims to reduce. Ever since the US invaded and occupied the country in 1915, every serious political attempt to allow Haiti's people to move (in former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide's phrase) 'from absolute misery to a dignified poverty' has been violently and deliberately blocked by the US government and some of its allies."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/13/our-role-in-haitis-plight
And, oh yes, just to show what a "humanitarian" country we are, our Homeland Security Director announced this morning that we are suspending for now the deportation of citizens of Haiti who have illegally entered the U.S.of A!
Of course you can see the full article on Common Dreams today. Do I get a finders tip, CD?
No doubt the US will soon send in a delegation of bureacrats, headed by non other than Bill and Shillary Clinton (provided they can even bother taking time off from their more pressing affairs in Tel Aviv or, in the alternative, issue a statement from their cozy resort in another Caribbean location) to bring the victims a couple of boxes of Band Aids, Aspirins and bottles of water to ease their pain and suffering while scouting for promising locations for their new military base(s) in Haiti.
With the US sending all those soldiers, most of them ignorant racist white soldiers, carrying, for some inexplicable reason, guns. I fear there will be a major massacre before this is all over.
Yes, we must do all we can to save and heal the victims of this disaster,
but, looking ahead, we, the USA, are presented with a great challenge as well as a game-changing opportunity----
to help the Haitians rebuild as THEY would have it, rather than to re-build them as we think they should be...ala 'Disaster Capitalism'(Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein).
What an astounding opportunity to keep the corporations at bay while enabling the Haitians to re-establish THEIR OWN CULTURE as best they can after such a terrible event. As a side-benefit, it would do wonders for our global reputation. A real CHANGE.
We will see lots more information coming out of Haiti as far as devastation, but this is stunning information-
I was digging around in the web this evening and found this headline-
Collapsed CARIBBEAN MARKET Sat On Huge Cache of COCAINE and DRUG MONEY. Owners Block Rescue Attempts. Many Died In Direct Result.
http://www.haitian-truth.org/
I looked a bit more into the site, and there is a TON of information there that you all will find a very interesting read.