Tragedy in Haiti

[Devastatin Dave]

My thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Haiti. Please donate to the Red Cross and other charities.


And Pat Robertson can burn in hell.

[Ronin]

And Rush can join him

[Crazed Rabbit]

A true tragedy.

From the US State Department:

Private Offers of Assistance for Haiti Relief Efforts
Anyone wishing to donate or provide assistance in Haiti following the devastating earthquake that struck near Port au Prince on Jan 12, 2010, is asked to contact the Center for International Disaster Information. The Center, operated under a grant from the United States Agency for International Development's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance and initial support from IBM, has become a valuable resource to the public, as well as US government agencies, foreign embassies and international corporations. CIDI has established a dedicated page to coordinate Haiti support at: http://www.cidi.org/incident/haiti-10a/

You can also text "HAITI" to "90999" and a donation of $10 will be given automatically to the Red Cross to help with relief efforts, charged to your cell phone bill. Or you can go online to organizations like the Red Cross and Mercy Corps to make a contribution to the disaster relief efforts.

And Ronin - that's a lot different than Mr. Robertson and shaky sourcing.

CR

[Scienter]

And Rush can join him

He makes me so mad. I saw a clip of him talking about Haiti on the news tonight. Ugh.

[A Very Super Market]

Poor Haitians. First they get their forests cut up for charcoal, ruining whatever fertility they had, and now this. Although apparently, the poorer quarters were better off, as their shacks were too light to seriously injure someone if they collapsed. Of course, it won't change anything, and Haiti will probably continue to be dirt poor. A sad existence.

[Aemilius Paulus]

Yeah, the worst always happens to the poorest wretches... I read a few years ago the Haitian GDP growth ground down to -4% just as a result of a single hurricane. And now this... How can one say there is a God and He controls nature if calamities befall randomly, on anyone, and only where it makes geologic sense?...



As for Rush... Him showing some decency and wisdom will only come after after Putin becomes a hippie and apologises to Georgia... He stopped surprising me. The only question is such: Rush or beck - who is worse? Oh, and Palin will soon join. As if Fox had not already gathered the vilest and sauciest blockheads from all of US.

[Hosakawa Tito]

For those who wish to donate to aid the Haitians, beware the inevitable scams that are going to be out there.

[Fragony]

Red Cross can get my donation from the 700k their co makes.

[Cute Wolf]

Nah, everyone in and near the Tropical line seems to get a lot of disasters recently, we have minor flood

[KukriKhan]

CNN was first with feet on the ground that I saw, with CBS ABC & NBC borrowing their clips. FOX is off in fantasy land talking elections 8 months away, as of last night.

I hope relief gets there soon. I saw video of a thousand people, sleeping in a park; someone shouted "Water", and they all ran, dropping their meager armful of stuff on the ground, in mob-panic, only to return, empty-handed, 30 minutes later when "Water" proved to be a hoax.

[Vladimir]

So is this a thread about the earthquake in Haiti or people venting their own political rant?

Or another perspective: As terrible as the plague was, didn't it lead to an improvement of life in Europe?

[Aemilius Paulus]

Or another perspective: As terrible as the plague was, didn't it lead to an improvement of life in Europe?

Don't count on it

For one, Europe was pretty well off for its time, or at least not lacking the resources. Secondly, it was a once-in-a-several-millennia cataclysm. Anything less rarely spurs people into meaningful action. Even if Haitian wanted to, say, build better buildings, they lack the money and building materials to do so.

[al Roumi]

So is this a thread about the earthquake in Haiti or people venting their own political rant?

Or another perspective: As terrible as the plague was, didn't it lead to an improvement of life in Europe?

er, which plague and how exactly did a plague directly lead to "an improvement of life in europe"???

[Vladimir]

er, which plague and how exactly did a plague directly lead to "an improvement of life in europe"???

This is the Backroom, not the monastery.

Edit: Being an enlightened despot means you never have to explain yourself.

[A Very Super Market]

Less people, more demand, must appease those people with better rights.

But this is Haiti we're talking about. It isn't feudal. They can't grow anything.

[Scienter]

Such a tragedy. Those people had very little and now they have nothing.

[Lemur]

Haiti has one of the longest histories of straight-up sadness. They're some kind of record-holder. They're like Sri Lanka without the Grameen Bank.

There's a (somewhat) local group that was already setting up a clinic in Port-au-Prince, now they're trying to treble the capacity to help the victims. I guess I'll be talking to them later today, see what they need.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

If there is a better example of a "failed state" than Haiti, I have yet to see it. Toussaint L'Overture wasn't just the founder, he was the high point. Sadder, in its own way than is the tragedy as a whole.

[Fragony]

Red Cross can get my donation from the 700k their co makes.

scrap that is much much worse then I thought, population is angry and rioting they are building roadblocks with corpses.

[Jolt]

If there is a better example of a "failed state" than Haiti, I have yet to see it. Toussaint L'Overture wasn't just the founder, he was the high point. Sadder, in its own way than is the tragedy as a whole.

Somalia. It fails so hard it doesn't even have a State. I shudder to imagine what would happen if an equal Earthquake hit Somalia. At least in Haiti you can get relief aid there. In Somalia, the world'd be welcomed by Warlord Clans seeking desperatly to remain in control after a natural disaster restricting aid as much as possible to avoid external influences seeping into their domains, religious fanatics hoping to exploit such a tragedy and the incoming relief people so they could then target Westerners for maximum kidnapping and deaths possible, pirates welcoming the great influx of ships in the region to take their slice of the pie, etc.

The end result is that if there was something like what happened in Haiti, in Somalia... Wretched, wretched Somalis.

[Lemur]

If you're interested, this is a pretty decent guide to charities working in Haiti.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Here's another guy for hell - Danny Glover, actor;

“When we see what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens, you know what I’m sayin’?”

Perhaps we should let Robertson and Glover fight it out over who's to blame, and why they're punishing Haiti.

CR

[Devastatin Dave]

Did anyone see what Danny Glover said about the crisis? He's as nutty as Rush and Robertson

LOL, the Rabbit beat me to it..

[Vladimir]

Here's another guy for hell - Danny Glover, actor;

“When we see what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens, you know what I’m sayin’?”

Perhaps we should let Robertson and Glover fight it out over who's to blame, and why they're punishing Haiti.

CR

Did anyone see what Danny Glover said about the crisis? He's as nutty as Rush and Robertson

LOL, the Rabbit beat me to it..

Most virulent case of Lemur's disease ever.

or: Amid crisis, Lemur's disease spreads to Haiti.

[Strike For The South]

Glover is getting to old for this human excrement

[Lemur]

Well, if we can look past the ramblings of drug-addled radio race-baiters and washed-up Mel Gibson sidekicks, the Red Cross is reporting record-breaking funds pouring in. That's the good part. Now let's see how quickly they can translate that into action on the ground.

[Devastatin Dave]

Well, if we can look past the ramblings of drug-addled radio race-baiters and washed-up Mel Gibson sidekicks, the Red Cross is reporting record-breaking funds pouring in. That's the good part. Now let's see how quickly they can translate that into action on the ground.

The biggest issue right now is the deplorable infrastructure, which was almost as bad before the earthquake. Right now many countries are organising centralised dumping stations and spreading supplies by helicoptor. Unfortunately, with the lack of water and medical supplies, we are going to witness more suffering than previously predicted. We must hope that there are not any large aftershocks.

[Devastatin Dave]

I think Lemur you are on to something. The money is good but doesn't amount to crap if its not used properly at a neck breaking speed.

[aimlesswanderer]

Here is the Pat Robertson vid mentioned earlier, love that Christian compassion.
Lovely chap, this Pat Robertson character

[Skullheadhq]

Apparently, the US annexed the Airport, they say it's "US Territory" now
Them yankees taking every opportunity to annex things