Who cares about Haiti?

It seems like you care, you bothered to make a whole new thread about it.

Even though shit does happen, I feel no country as a whole should suffer like they are. But I got my own family to worry about, so I just donated $5 and went on about my day.

As far as the rest of America goes, they still probably haven't put too much thought into how much is considered enough to get Haiti back on its feet, while not hurting their own pockets and saving time for relevant events in their lives.

Are people who work in media, not suppose to report shit like the rise of a death toll, civilian conditions, etc? That way people who actually care, will know what's going on?

 

I don't seem to recall as much media coverage in comparison to Katrina as well.

I think there's a lot of subtext behind US involvement across the board, though no one really comes out and admits to it.

Corporations, for instance, have had their back against the wall lately, being painted with a pretty ugly brush by the administration and the media. It's possible they're being so generous with regard to Haiti to win over some public opinion.

The administration is in a slump ATM and has a lot of ambition in terms of legislation and initiatives, as well as maintaining a majority in Congress and the next election to keep in mind. It's possible they're showing so much support and devotion in order to win some sympathy votes and smoke-screen some of the other issues that are going on.

America as a whole isn't in the best graces on the world stage as consequence from the conflicts in the Middle East, among other things, so it's possible America is trying to win back some brownie points by being internationally charitable and helpful with regard to Haiti.

As far as charitable giving goes, this is no surprise to me. Americans have, generally, always been amongst the top in charitable giving.

 

I love how our economy and homelessness problems are right now yet we can still pull $60m out of our asses for Haiti.

 

this must be another manifestation of my evil ethnocentrism, the fact that im not on a relief ship to haiti right now... but i dont feel guilty bc i know that nothing i do or say one way or the other is going to change anything.

haiti is a shithole all the time, as is plenty of the rest of the world. people are dying, suffering, starving, 24 hours a day every day, and we dont really think about it which is just as well bc we couldnt do anything to change it anyway since those circumstances are created by factors we have absolutely no say in or control over. and even if we could do something about it, we wouldnt, bc we're too wrapped up in modern life.

sure it makes me ill to think about people suffering like that, in general and currently in haiti, but im not switching into haiti relief mode just bc the (i never watch tv) media and internet tells me its important. its like a fucking brand name, a concert or someting, 'haiti aid.' and dont tell me that all of the money people are donating is going to the cause bc thats just naive. its very admirable to donate money, but im not doing it bc how do i know its helping anyone?

if i want to help someone, ill go give a bum a sandwich or something, ill go down to mexico when they have a disaster and ill donate time and sweat, but sorry, i dont need a haiti aid tshirt. id even be willing to go to haiti to help out, if the world wasnt so fucked over and twisted around and dangerous as a result of so many generations of heirarchy and various forms of slavery.

 

200k dead, 250k gravely injured, 3 million homeless, all governmental buildings destroyed, basically, the country is gone.. not sure why people making such a big deal...


edit: truthfully though it is plastered all over the media for photo ops/rating/sales in other words.. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

 

Exactly, even the country's president is sleeping in a tent now.

 

I'm not eating up all the bullshit on the media about it, but I donated my $10 and I hope everyone affected by the disaster gets the relief they deserve.

 

Yea i kept on hearing about the 3 million homeless but as the poorest country in our hemisphere i wonder how many of those 3 million where homeless before the quake, or of that 3 million how many of their homes where little tin shacks? I deff am for people uniteing to help others, but as for our country taking our tax dollars and giving them i dont entirely agree with, especialy whn considering that the US doesnt have any money....we are in crazy debt yet we borrow money to give it away? Also, that place was a hell hole before the quake, why whernt we concerned with bettering their situation then? My heart goes out for families torn apart and have donated to private charities (just hope the money goes where they say it does) Just we dont ever look at how we live or day to day actions that have an effect on others in the world untill a "catastrophe" happns then its hands across the world for the cause. "catastrophes" happn everyday. A third of our homeless on our soil are military vets....thats a catastrophe in my oppinion

 

Watch this short PBS video for all your answers:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiwfBxycu3Q]YouTube - A Poem and Hope for Haiti - PBS[/ame]



Bottom line - The people in Katrina were protected by US labor laws.

 

the US as well as France are both responsible for the situation before and after the quake.. I have a thread about this on another forum but not gonna repeat it. anyways, check into he history of Haiti, and check out some of the "alternative" news sources, the US and UN are being bashed badly for the situation in Haiti, and the bashing is well deserved.

 

this guy is a fucking lunatic (the psycho preacher at the beginning lol) decent video by the way, i just got enraged at seeing that preacher... he is a sick man.. it leaves out a few things though, makes America and France seem a little bit too innocent

 

Wheres the thread? I would like to read up on it. Deff imperialistic govts treated countries like haiti as cum wrags. Took advantage, reaped nations of their resources/wealths. But why is france and america responsible for them being poor? cause they borrowed money they couldnt pay back and we took it from their national income?

 

Try watching that video... already in this thread... for a little history on why Haiti is poor.

 

here's an article courtesy of a friend of mine from africaspeaks.org dug up somewhere. It gives some of the back story that the pbs video did, but doesn't pull punches..



The immense death and suffering inflicted upon the people of Haiti by the January 12 earthquake has laid bare a massive international crime by US imperialism, which prepared this catastrophe with a century of oppression and is now attempting to exploit the disaster for its own ends.

The estimated 200,000 who have died, the quarter million or more injured and the three million whose homes have been destroyed are victims not merely of a natural catastrophe. The lack of infrastructure, the poor quality of construction in Port-au-Prince and the impotence of the Haitian government to organize any response are determining factors in this tragedy.

These social conditions are the product of a protracted relationship between Haiti and the United States, which, ever since US Marines occupied the island nation for nearly 20 years beginning in 1915, has treated the country as a de-facto colonial protectorate.
It subsequently backed the three-decade-long dictatorship of the Duvaliers, extending a series of loans that went into the family bank accounts, with the impoverished Haitian people left to foot the bill.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Washington promoted free market policies based on eliminating any safeguards for Haitian agriculture and the privatization of government enterprises and services. The results have been mass poverty, the increasing migration of destitute peasants to the shantytowns of Port-au-Prince, and the hollowing out of the country's government and infrastructure-all conditions that have compounded the social and human costs of the earthquake.

Now, for an entire week, with the whole world watching, millions of Haitians have been left abandoned without medical care, food, water or shelter, as US military cargo planes have ferried in thousands of soldiers and Marines, and US Naval and Coast Guard vessels have mounted patrols off Haiti's shores to prevent anyone from trying to escape.

The absence of any concerted rescue effort is not an accident, nor is the agonizingly slow arrival of food, water and medicine in far from adequate quantities merely a matter of logistics. The claim that the US military, which was able to pour a quarter of a million troops into Iraq and conquer Baghdad within barely two weeks, could not rush water, food and supplies to traumatized earthquake survivors 700 miles from the US mainland is a contemptible lie.

What is involved is a deliberate and sinister policy characterized by a gross indifference to human life that borders on the genocidal.
Within the Obama administration and the American ruling elite, definite calculations were made. What was the use of saving injured members of an impoverished and chronically unemployed population that US capitalism has long treated as surplus labor? Why dig people out of the rubble only to have to provide them with medical care when Washington is attempting to ration health care within the US itself?

Even as people were still being pulled out alive from demolished buildings, US and UN officials insisted that further rescue operations were hopeless.
At the very least, saving lives has not been the priority of the US intervention in Haiti. Wherever rescue and relief have come into conflict with the primary focus of Washington's efforts-the military occupation of the country-they have taken a back seat.

The cargo planes that are bringing in US military personnel and supplies, it should be noted, fly back empty. There is no desire to bring injured Haitians, who will die without medical care or face the amputation of their limbs for lack of medical supplies, back to the US where they could be healed and their lives saved.

So blatant has the US military operation been that its ostensible allies in Haiti like Brazil, which heads up the United Nations peacekeeping force there, and France have registered protests with Washington. French Secretary of State for Cooperation Alain Joyandet went so far as to call for the UN to clarify Washington's role, saying that the mission was “helping Haiti, not occupying Haiti.”

Groups involved in rescue and relief operations have also publicly condemned the US military response.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) protested Tuesday that its cargo plane carrying 12 tons of desperately needed medical equipment had been turned away three times from the US-controlled Port-au-Prince airport since Sunday night, despite being assured that it would be allowed to land. Since January 14, five of the organization's planes have been diverted to the Dominican Republic. The result, the group said, is the deaths of hundreds of its patients, and hundreds more injured Haitians are dying daily.

“We don't have any more morphine to manage pain for our patients,” said Rosa Crestani, MSF medical coordinator for Choscal Hospital. “We cannot accept that planes carrying lifesaving medical supplies and equipment continue to be turned away while our patients die. Priority must be given to medical supplies entering the country.”

Similarly, a Spanish aid group active in Port-au-Prince called a press conference at the Madrid airport Tuesday to denounce the US militarization of the response to the Haitian earthquake and to warn that the “obsession with security” was disrupting efforts to save lives. The group-Intervención, Ayuda y Emergencia-said that it had never encountered anything like it in responding to disasters from Sri Lanka to Turkey.
The real character of the US “aid” effort is expressed in President Barack Obama's choice of his predecessors, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, to lead it. Both have Haitian blood on their hands. The Bush administration orchestrated the 2004 coup that ended with the kidnapping and expulsion of elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, together with the killing of thousands by CIA-trained death squads. Clinton sent troops into Haiti in 1994.

It is the Democrat, Clinton, who in some ways has expressed most nakedly the attitude of the US ruling elite, which is characterized by class hatred for Haiti's oppressed and barely concealed racism.

In media interviews, Clinton has praised the government of President Réne Préval for its subservience to Washington's demands. He has spoken of Haiti coming out of the earthquake better than before, treating the mass carnage and social disaster as little more than a speed-bump on the road to progress, which is to be measured in increased US investment.
This is Washington's real and malignant purpose. It aims to exploit the country's tragedy in order to impose more direct colonial control and create conditions for US firms to make massive profits by exploiting virtual slave labor working for starvation wages.

At the same time, it is reasserting its domination in an area that it long regarded as its “own backyard,” the birthplace of Yankee imperialism. Facing growing challenges from its economic rivals in Europe and China for trade and investment in the Western Hemisphere, as well as a deterioration of its influence over the states of the region, Washington is utilizing military force to pursue its interests.

The corporate-controlled US media has played a particularly odious role in supporting this process. It has glorified the role of the US military, while deliberately concealing the obstructions that the US occupation forces have placed in the way of rescue and aid work.

At the same time, it has sensationalized stories about “looters”-for the most part, hungry people searching through the rubble for some means of sustenance-in order to provide a pretext for the massive military response. The real criminals under these conditions are not the so-called looters, but the hoarders-those who defend private, profit-making control of vitally needed supplies and those who withhold them from the hungry and homeless people.

The crimes being carried out against the Haitian people are inseparable from the assault on the conditions of the working class and the oppressed masses all over the world, which is driven by the economic crisis of capitalism. The rescue of Haiti's workers and oppressed from the conditions created by over a century of oppression can be achieved only by uniting their struggle with that of workers in the United States and across the globe to put an end to the profit system.

 

k, but that video didnt really bring anything into the limelight? Theres a 1000 countries that developed (or lack of) that exact same way. I would say its more corporations faults more so than any one govt. Yes, corporations as special interest groups are involved (heavily) in our govt, but maybe we as consumers should pay more attention to where these corporations manufacture their goods and under what circumstances and choose not to buy these goods. There is much blame to be passed around

 

That article was kind of more geared to be an anti capitalism arguement more so then informing. ( a poor argument at that)

 

Where else is Haiti supposed to get help from? At least with Katrina, it happened in the US, so the US supported it obviously. Haiti is a poor country, so who is going to help?

 

Nations all over the world, aside from the US, have been providing aid to Haiti since the disaster, actually. It's not like the US is the only nation capable of offering help, and if we do not, Haiti will just be dead in the water.