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Haiti is Bleeding… So too is Afghanistan, Iraq and the Arizona Desert
The images from Haiti compel us to look at the mirror and ask ourselves, if we have a heart and a face? What we see compels us to ask if we are the human beings that we profess to be. The answer moves us to act.
As Haiti bleeds, we don’t ask for proof of their humanity; we feel it. We do not ask if we are related; we know it. As Haiti bleeds, we do not ask for their citizenship nor do we ask their religion. We… we realize that the world is we and we have become one. And so their children are our children and their elders are our elders. And all nations open up their borders.
As Haiti bleeds, we all open up our hearts. Celebrities freely lend their names, their words, their music and songs and we respond by sending ten dollars via a text message. Is that enough? Can we do more than simply send some bucks for a tax-break? Can we give of ourselves? Can we give blood? Indeed, some do more.
Yet, deep down, we all know that no matter how much is raised, it won’t be enough. On the disaster scale, Haiti is 100 times Katrina.
Haiti is in danger of becoming one gigantic and permanent undignified Sally Struthers plea for assistance. Haiti does not need pity; it needs to be rebuilt. $100 million from the U.S. government and assorted charities will not suffice (This is 1,000 times less than the U.S. has spent on its current wars). Beyond that, Haiti needs to be brought into the family of nations, with dignity and a clear path to self-determination and self-reliance.
Haiti’s tragedy was not borne of a natural disaster; it was a tragedy before the quake. The U.S. imperial footprint is all over Haiti’s corridors of power and thus it cannot return to what it was. But that’s a narrative that will have to be written by Haitians, which may include the return of Jean-Bertrand Aristide – Haiti’s first democratically elected president that has been ousted several times by U.S.-supported forces.
The other narrative that Haiti has already changed is that mirror that the rest of the world now wakes up to each morning.
We now know that when Haiti bleeds, we too bleed. Perhaps people will come to understand that about Afghanistan and Iraq too. The people there daily bleed, not because of earthquakes or hurricanes, but because something has happened to dull U.S. minds and eyes. Something has prevented us from seeing our true hearts and our true faces. It is a smoking mirror. It is what has permitted illegal, immoral, senseless, costly and bloody wars to be waged in our names to the tune of over $1 trillion. And that’s but the short-term financial cost.
For at least a decade, U.S. bombs have been dropped all over those two nations with our names inscribed upon them. Our silence permits the carnage. Hundreds of thousands have been killed and maimed and millions have been displaced. Yet, we don’t have an actual count because the U.S. government doesn’t even bother; this is the meaning of dehumanization. As far as this government is concerned, everyone there is a potential enemy, a terrorist or collateral damage. And we all accept their deaths and this generalized and permanent war as necessary to maintain “our freedoms” and “our safety.”
Most of us know better, yet we’ve grown accustomed to looking the other way. Perhaps it is war fatigue. Most assuredly, there is no urgency, nor are there mass appeals to stop this destruction. If we protest the illegality and immorality of these wars, we are told that they are yesterday’s wars or yesterday’s news. But they are being fought today and tomorrow. But already, today and tomorrow is Yemen and Pakistan, Somalia and the Sudan. Possibly even Cuba and Venezuela.
We have found our collective humanity in Haiti and it now compels us to remove that smoke from our mirrors. It compels us to act, not just in Haiti and not just abroad, but even at home.
Perhaps we are not far off from the day when people will also feel compelled to demand from the U.S. government to put a halt to its draconian, anti-immigrant policies that contribute to the killing fields along the U.S. Mexico border. In this decade, more than five thousand corpses have turned up in the mountains and desert, yet where are the mass appeals? Where is our humanity?
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19 Comments so far
Show AllPosted before, but methinks it bears repeating:
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News coverage of Haiti moved me to write this poem: "BROKEN"
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Haiti is huge human tragedy made personal, brought home to us by media focus on heroic and heartbreaking rescue efforts of individual innocent children.
It rivets our attention. It stirs our sense of shared humanity and compassion. It moves us ...to action.
The United States is spending millions to save these children, all the while it is spending millions to kill other innocent children.
How would your sense of shared humanity and compassion be stirred to watch frantic families digging through rubble with their bare hands to rescue their children buried in a drone missile attack, or a mother shrieking, carrying her glazed-eyed child who just had his feet blown off by a cluster bomblet?
What if you watched THAT every night, hours on end, day after day? How many days, months, years have we been bombing in Iraq, Afghanistan and God knows where else? Not one of us could stand it.
There is a reason our media doesn’t show us these stories: we would all be out in the streets, clogging the gears of government, DEMANDING an end to this carnage in our name. But we don’t, and our silence is our secret complicity in this killing.
From the nightly news you wouldn’t even know that we are war. Out of sight, out of mind.
I have to think we like it that way.
I don’t.
But don’t feel chastised, or God forbid, offended: I don’t feel morally superior either.
When I could be running to my rooftop screaming bloody murder, all I do is write a little poem:
BROKEN
We can’t stop earthquakes,
But we can stop bombing.
Little girls’ broken bodies
Don’t know the difference.
US humanity? Lost in its imperial Manifest Insanity. Stop BAracKA Bomber along with his DEMikaze and miserepublican axis of evil!
WARNING ---- SMOKE SCREEN BELOW
Even more stressful and confusing then the article above, is the blinding of the mind below, by the burning of your emotions so.
Mr. Rodriguez has sounded a call for compassionate treatment of our immigrants in exactly the right tone: what we do, we must do in the spirit of humanity, however foreign this may be to the way we have been treating people in other countries as well as in our own. Haiti may not be the best example of a humanizing moment in our collective conscience, since apparently there's a lot of "business as usual" occurring there: the usual business of the poor being further ground down by the "humantarian" aid that they are (or are not) being given. But still it's the right message, if you understand it as an appeal to think of immigrants, Afghans, Yemenis, etc. as humans whose suffering can not be chalked off on the moral scoreboard as balanced by the "protection" or the "safety" we wrongly think is being gained by these inhumanities which make us less safe, less protected and even less authentic human beings ourselves.
There's a simple way to stop the "Arizona desert bleeding". Stop crossing the the border in the middle of the friggin desert. There's checkpoints set up for that.
chameleon: also, there's an easy way to stop the bleeding in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine if the natives there would just start obeying the friggin checkpoints in their countries. You were being satirical, weren't you? (I am).
FWIW, I don't know if "chameleon" is being satirical or not, phoenix20.
But I do know that any CD article referencing US immigration, and especially the Mexican border, draws reactionary nativists exactly as most articles about Israel draw "hasbarists" who robotically and absolutely defend the rogue state of Israel and its criminal policies and practices.
There are commenters who seem otherwise thoughtful and humane, but when the topic turns to certain oppressed groups, e.g. "illegal immigrants", those unable to get medical insurance, or even the homeless, they suddenly become vicious, self-righteous reactionary hardliners.
Its as if the topic pushes their "Social Darwinist" buttons.
· Yr Obd't Servant
YOS: I think it's survival of the most vicious.
Why is it that any opinion is fine except the one that says a border is a border?
Why does supporting a LEGAL immigration policy mean you are a troll?
There are a lot of us here that are progressives that simply believe that our borders are just that and we support legal immigration.
I have a foreign born wife and have lived outside the US for years at a shot, yet I want a border and I want to have some say about who comes into my country.
I can't go to New Zealand and just settle down because its nice or there is a job there. I can't move to Japan without paperwork. I have a friend that had a three year German visa for a contract job and two days before the visa was up, the police came around and checked on him to be sure he was packing and had his plane tickets. They actually checked. Why are they right and we wrong?
Don't jump on people that don't believe an open border is a good thing, it isn't fair.
Not really, open-border, neo-liberal types refuse to accept that most progressives don't consider allowing illegal immigration as part of the progressive platform. It's clever pro-immigration activist types like Rodriquez who attempt to make the so-called "plight of the illegals" comparable to Haiti and Afghanistan. One thing you should know about Rodriquez, he really isn't interested in 'all" people only his own. He's changed his editorial style for the pro-immigration movement; one of the reasons I consider much of CD co-opted.
I tend to run with open-minded people with a good sense of fairness. Most don't share the sense of outrage that you or Rodriquez expect from us when it comes to illegal immigration.
Oh, stop it, Obedient!
Everybody knows that history started yesterday. It's not like those poor people south of the border have anybody but themselves to blame for their poverty. It's not like they have a powerful neighbor to the north that has been destabilizing their countries one way or another for well over a hundred years. It's not like they have ever been colonized and their resources have been stolen for hundreds of years in the name of Christianity, civilization, and then freedom and democracy. No?
What next - are you going to suggest that maybe the US should stop interfering in their affairs, and maybe even pay them reparations for all the damage inflicted over the years?
Or maybe that agribusiness and corporations that run the sweatshops south of the border should start actually paying their workers a living wage?
Hmm. Wait a minute. Now, that's an idea. Maybe that would make them stay home?
Actually I was being dead serious (pardon the pun). I didn't comment about Iraq and Afghanistan as I kinda agree with the author on those points.
The comparison however, is flawed. The people of Iraq and Afghanistan are fighting an occupying force thru no fault of their own. The people who cross the border are doing so of their free will and know the risks.
Before someone calls me a reactionary nativist, I am also an immigrant to this country, and know a lot of other immigrants. None of then ever complained of the so called "anti-immigrant policies". Personally I have never experienced that. Also, I did not find any issues with the immigration process itself. Talking to others I know it takes anywhere between 6 months to a year to get the coveted "green card" if you have right qualifications. That's shorter than it takes to immigrate to Canada which has a free immigration policy.
A lot of my US born friends think the same way (one cannt come to the US easily). They are actually surprised when I tell them how easy it was for me to immigrate.
Mexican immigrants into the USA are economic refugees, fleeing north as victims of a cabal of USan/Mexican elites working to destroy the mutli-millenia agricultural tradition in southern Mexico, like how the Chinese are forcing culture change upon Tibet. The long life of the Mexican agriculture tradition makes the European colonization of the Americas look like a small glitch in history. This tradition will survive the onslaught of petro-fried franken-corn the USans are illegally dumping in Mexico, a "strategeric" racket hatched out of Capitalist Central Planning in Washing-town. Dumping is illegal, of course, but we can hardly keep up with all of the elitevil's lawbreaking. Most of it becomes buried in the noise of the munny churn.
This is like saying poor people just need to go their banks and withdraw funds from their bank accounts to get the money they need for food, medicine, health care, transportation, education, shelter, and anything else they might "want". What an idiot!
Hey, newbie, try at least in your first post post not to insult site veterans. While tempers might flare here sometimes, especially when illegal immigration is concerned we try and keep a civil dicussion even if we totally disagree with each other. Capisce?
Anyway, you are wrong in your analogy. It would be closer to do not hold up the bank instead of filling out a withdrawal slip. In other words, don't break the law. And, if you don't do business with the bank in your analogy then don't bother walking in.
"Our silence permits the carnage. Most of us know better, yet we’ve grown accustomed to looking the other way.
Where is our humanity?" Roberto Rodriguez
We Americans ARE selective and fickle in our compassion.
It is natural to want to reach out and HELP those in need and hurting.
As Roberto applies our selective compassion to war, we can also see a parallel with the war on animals.
How much longer and at what cost will we continue to look the other way and permit the carnage on FACTORY FARMS of 40 billion animals every year?
WHERE is the collective compassion for the plight of animals who are subjected to mutilation of their genitals, beaks, tails, skin and bodies WITHOUT anesthetic, held in extreme confinement, tortured and beaten and brutally slaughtered and skinned often while STILL alive?
Does our compassion END where our stomachs and gluttony begin?
A new worldview is inclusive of our HORRIFIC treatment of animals who are suffering by OUR hands and mouth.
Our defensiveness of our OLD habits must give way to a kinder and healthier plant-based diet benefiting our bodies, minds and souls as well as that of the planet and the animals.
"My name is Charlie Simpson. I want to do a sponsored bike ride for Haiti because there was a big earthquake and loads of people have lost their lives," said Simpson on his JustGiving page, a fundraising site which launched his efforts.
"I want to make some money to buy food, water and tents for everyone in Haiti," he said.
===============
IN one STATEMENT AND ACT ...THIS BOY says what centuries of politics and "economic wisdom" could not achieve....
do something and state something from the heart - for the proper purpose of helping those in need. no other questions or discussions needed.
HAVE these corporate profiteers -- growing out of the old imperial, colonial exploiters -- which is globally a particularly WESTERN and American habit - have NO SHAME at all?
=============
as these "masters of the universe" concont yet more schemes on how to profit from disaster and human suffering.....
a little boy of 7 shows real wisdom, real compassion, real humanity with the simple stroke of doing what he could....try to raise 500 Pounds for others suffering in haiti ....
and instead raises over 100,000 Pounds..with nary a thought for HIMSELF and "profit"....PURELY the thought of helping those in need.
the "masters of the universe" and those that participate and actively support their schemes have NO SHAME.
==================
http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/WORLD/europe/01/25/uk.boy.charity.haiti/t1larg.ladonbike.jpg
BOY, 7 , RAISES $200,000 FOR HAITI APPEAL.
By Agnes Teh for CNN
January 25, 2010 -- Updated 1949 GMT (0349 HKT)
Simpson's efforts have been described as "bold" and "innovative" by Unicef's UK executive director.
Simpson's efforts have been described as "bold" and "innovative" by Unicef's UK executive director.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* Charlie Simpson has raised nearly $200,000 for UNICEF Haiti Earthquake Children's Appeal
* Donations pour in amid media coverage with many cheering Simpson on
* Funds raised will provide water, sanitation, education, nutrition and supporting child protection
London, England -- He's no Wyclef Jean or George Clooney, but that hasn't stopped seven-year-old Charlie Simpson from raising more than £120,000 ($195,000) for the Haiti earthquake.
Simpson from Fulham, west London had hoped to raise just £500 for UNICEF's earthquake appeal by cycling eight kilometers (five miles)around a local park.
"My name is Charlie Simpson. I want to do a sponsored bike ride for Haiti because there was a big earthquake and loads of people have lost their lives," said Simpson on his JustGiving page, a fundraising site which launched his efforts.
"I want to make some money to buy food, water and tents for everyone in Haiti," he said.
Donate to Charlie Simpson's Haiti fundraising page
And with that simple call, messages of support flooded the site.
"Such a big heart for a young boy, you're a little star!" wrote one supporter. "Well done Charlie. A real celebrity," said another.
More donations began pouring in after the story caught the attention of the British media -- with many cheering Simpson past the £100,000 mark.
Even British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is spreading the message. His "Downing Street" Twitter alias said: "Amazed by response to the great fundraising efforts of 7 yr old Charlie Simpson for the people of Haiti."
David Bull, UNICEF UK executive director described Simpson's efforts as "very bold and innovative."
"It shows he connects with and not only understands what children his own age must be going through in Haiti," Bull said in a press statement.
"The little seed -- his idea -- that he has planted has grown rapidly and his is a place well deserved in the humanitarian world.
"On behalf of the many children in Haiti, I thank Charlie for his effort."
Money raised by Simpson will go towards UNICEF's Haiti Earthquake Children's Appeal which will provide water, sanitation, education, nutrition as well as supporting child protection.
You have not found your collective humanity in Haiti. You have found a sop to your conscience.