new nation discovered

[uki]

absolutely amazing story. :D

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI—Less than two weeks after converging upon the site of a devastating magnitude 7.0 earthquake, American anthropologists have confirmed the discovery of a small, poverty-stricken island nation, known to its inhabitants as "Haiti."

Located just 700 miles off the southeastern coast of Florida, the previously unaccounted-for country is believed to be home to an estimated 10 million people.
Even more astounding, reports now indicate that these people have likely inhabited the impoverished, destitute region—unnoticed by the rest of the world—for more than 300 years.

"That an entire civilization has been somehow existing right under our noses for all this time comes as a complete shock," said University of Florida anthropology professor Dr. Ben Oliver, adding that it appeared as if Haiti's citizens had been living under dangerous conditions even before the devastating earthquake struck. "Of course, there have been rumors in the past about a long-forgotten Caribbean nation whose people struggle every day to survive, live in constant fear of a corrupt government, and endure such squalor and hunger that they have resorted to eating dirt. But never did we give them much thought."
Added Oliver, "Had it not been for this earthquake, I doubt we would have ever noticed Haiti at all."

Though anthropologists said they still did not know much about Haiti's history, they claimed that, by observing the Haitians' reactions to this particular disaster, and studying the way the people had come together and taken solace in one another's sorrows, it appeared as if most of them were accustomed to tragic, even horrific, events.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/massive_earthquake_reveals_entire

[Dragonzbane76]

tragedy brings out compassion in most of us. to bad we don't look at the world like that 24/365.

[David Jamieson]

It's unfortunate that due to their own corruption and poorly managed country, despite all our best efforts they will likely only be merely raised back to their regular level of despair and impoverishment.

I'm not sure if they were ever ready for independence. By the look of things that followed, I'm pretty confident they weren't. they have snakes at the top and poor voiceless people everywhere else. It's a mess and it was a mess before the earthquake.

As an example fo what I mean when I speak about ready for independence, recently, the Turks and Caicos Islands had their Government dissolved and a British governor reinstalled in the islands because of Corruption!

Brilliant move by the brits and at the full request of teh people of turks and caicos.
What it revealed was that governance, good governance is important to a people.
Anarchy does NOT work.

[SanHeChuan]

Acute vs. chronic problems.

Acute problems are easier to understand and fix. Natural disaster? Provide relief.

Chronic problems? How do make a people govern well? We could support a coup, but history has shown that most anyone strong enough for a military coup is not going to govern well. We could try to incite a revolution, but frankly if they aren’t willing to do it themselves already, they’d just expect us to do all the work anyway. So that leaves us with invading and taking over a country, which is generally frowned upon. And then you usually end up with resentment from the populace, and then they start blaming you for all their problems and then they try to kill you, it’s just bad juju all around.

All the charity in the world wouldn’t help Haiti’s chronic problems, many of the people we send aid to gets stolen by their corrupt governments anyway, so we end up really just supporting their oppression. Funnling money into corrupt governments just makes the rich richer.

What are you going to do?

[GeneChing]

Americans may have discovered Haiti, but how many of them realize that it's the same island as the Dominican Republic? Talk about selective attention.

I've got a friend down there now. I'll be very curious to hear his first hand reports.

[Hardwork108]

It's unfortunate that due to their own corruption and poorly managed country, despite all our best efforts they will likely only be merely raised back to their regular level of despair and impoverishment.

Here, educate yourself!!!

The Right Testicle of Hell: History of a Haitian Holocaust

Sunday, January 17, 2010
Blackwater before drinking water
by Greg Palast for The Huffington Post

1.
Bless the President for having rescue teams in the air almost immediately. That was President Olafur Grimsson of Iceland. On Wednesday, the AP reported that the President of the United States promised, "The initial contingent of 2,000 Marines could be deployed to the quake-ravaged country within the next few days." "In a few days," Mr. Obama?
2.
There's no such thing as a 'natural' disaster. 200,000 Haitians have been slaughtered by slum housing and IMF "austerity" plans.
3.
A friend of mine called. Do I know a journalist who could get medicine to her father? And she added, trying to hold her voice together, "My sister, she's under the rubble. Is anyone going who can help, anyone?" Should I tell her, "Obama will have Marines there in 'a few days'"?
4.
China deployed rescuers with sniffer dogs within 48 hours. China, Mr. President. China: 8,000 miles distant. Miami: 700 miles close. US bases in Puerto Rico: right there.
5.
Obama's Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, "I don't know how this government could have responded faster or more comprehensively than it has." We know Gates doesn't know.
6.
From my own work in the field, I know that FEMA has access to ready-to-go potable water, generators, mobile medical equipment and more for hurricane relief on the Gulf Coast. It's all still there. Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who served as the task force commander for emergency response after Hurricane Katrina, told the Christian Science Monitor, “I thought we had learned that from Katrina, take food and water and start evacuating people." Maybe we learned but, apparently, Gates and the Defense Department missed school that day.
7.
Send in the Marines. That's America's response. That's what we're good at. The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson finally showed up after three days. With what? It was dramatically deployed — without any emergency relief supplies. It has sidewinder missiles and 19 helicopters.
8.
But don't worry, the International Search and Rescue Team, fully equipped and self-sufficient for up to seven days in the field, deployed immediately with ten metric tons of tools and equipment, three tons of water, tents, advanced communication equipment and water purifying capability. They're from Iceland.
9.
Gates wouldn't send in food and water because, he said, there was no "structure ... to provide security." For Gates, appointed by Bush and allowed to hang around by Obama, it's security first. That was his lesson from Hurricane Katrina. Blackwater before drinking water.
10.
Previous US presidents have acted far more swiftly in getting troops on the ground on that island. Haiti is the right half of the island of Hispaniola. It's treated like the right testicle of Hell. The Dominican Republic the left. In 1965, when Dominicans demanded the return of Juan Bosch, their elected President, deposed by a junta, Lyndon Johnson reacted to this crisis rapidly, landing 45,000 US Marines on the beaches to prevent the return of the elected president.
11.
How did Haiti end up so economically weakened, with infrastructure, from hospitals to water systems, busted or non-existent - there are two fire stations in the entire nation - and infrastructure so frail that the nation was simply waiting for "nature" to finish it off?
Don’t blame Mother Nature for all this death and destruction. That dishonor goes to Papa Doc and Baby Doc, the Duvalier dictatorship, which looted the nation for 28 years. Papa and his Baby put an estimated 80% of world aid into their own pockets - with the complicity of the US government happy to have the Duvaliers and their voodoo militia, Tonton Macoutes, as allies in the Cold War. (The war was easily won: the Duvaliers’ death squads murdered as many as 60,000 opponents of the regime.)
12.
What Papa and Baby didn't run off with, the IMF finished off through its "austerity" plans. An austerity plan is a form of voodoo orchestrated by economists zomby-fied by an irrational belief that cutting government services will somehow help a nation prosper.
13.
In 1991, five years after the murderous Baby fled, Haitians elected a priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who resisted the IMF's austerity diktats. Within months, the military, to the applause of Papa George HW Bush, deposed him.
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. The farce was George W. Bush. In 2004, after the priest Aristide was re-elected President, he was kidnapped and removed again, to the applause of Baby Bush.
14.
Haiti was once a wealthy nation, the wealthiest in the hemisphere, worth more, wrote Voltaire in the 18th century, than that rocky, cold colony known as New England. Haiti's wealth was in black gold: slaves. But then the slaves rebelled - and have been paying for it ever since.
From 1825 to 1947, France forced Haiti to pay an annual fee to reimburse the profits lost by French slaveholders caused by their slaves’ successful uprising. Rather than enslave individual Haitians, France thought it more efficient to simply enslave the entire nation.
15.
Secretary Gates tells us, "There are just some certain facts of life that affect how quickly you can do some of these things." The Navy's hospital boat will be there in, oh, a week or so. Heckuva job, Brownie!
16.
Note just received from my friend. Her sister was found, dead; and her other sister had to bury her. Her father needs his anti-seizure medicines. That's a fact of life too, Mr. President.
***

[Hardwork108]

Brilliant move by the brits and at the full request of teh people of turks and caicos.
What it revealed was that governance, good governance is important to a people.
Anarchy does NOT work.

I have news for you, the British government is one of the most corrupt governments on the face of this planet. Just in the recent years they have conned their population into allowing them to enter various illegal wars; frightened and traumatized them by using engineered "terrorist" attacks into accepting a great amount of reduction on their human freedoms; Just like the US, the UK is turning more and more into a surveylance society with literally millions of high tech cameras recording the population's every move. The public is also spied on in other ways!!!

Some of that same population are TAXED up to 70% of what they earn, and this in one of the richest countries in the world!!!

Yet, there is never enough money for hospitals, social projects and thorough police work!!!

However, there is always enough money to go and spend billions of tax payers money (that are transferred to arms companies or correctly, their owners' pockets) on illegal wars and mass murder!!!!

Of course and as always, there are also millions of pounds/dollars available for the millions of, and ever increasing, high-tech cameras in Britain's cities!!!

Yes, that is corruption that dwarfs anything that you may find in Haiti, specially now that you know that the US (and probably by extension, the UK) were backing the murderous regime in Haiti!

And don't forget that whatever Britain happens to be and is doing, is also reflected and paralleled in the US!!!

[uki]

LOL... this is great. http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=674 :D

[David Jamieson]

Americans may have discovered Haiti, but how many of them realize that it's the same island as the Dominican Republic? Talk about selective attention.

I've got a friend down there now. I'll be very curious to hear his first hand reports.

Yes, it will be interesting to see how things go as people become more distracted with other things.

During the olympics, it was as if nothing ever happened in Haiti.

Where will Sauron's eye of media turn next I wonder? :rolleyes:

It's odd how we collectively stop caring as soon as something new and shiny comes along.

Here's to the people that stick with it to the end.

[KC Elbows]

Some of the missionaries who got in trouble over there were from my area. I took a wait and see attitude about what happened with them.

However...

When they came back here, their spokesman, one of their number said "God helped us through this ordeal."

Ordeal? You were held for a matter of days, and you call that an ordeal, when the very people who decided not to hold you any longer probably lost family in a real ordeal, and the majority of people around have faced real ordeals?

Douchebags.

[Dragonzbane76]

Some of the missionaries who got in trouble over there were from my area. I took a wait and see attitude about what happened with them.

However...

When they came back here, their spokesman, one of their number said "God helped us through this ordeal."

Ordeal? You were held for a matter of days, and you call that an ordeal, when the very people who decided not to hold you any longer probably lost family in a real ordeal, and the majority of people around have faced real ordeals?

Douchebags.

yeah i didn't understand a lot of that crap either... all i got was somewhere someone made a mistake (missionaries)... and it wasn't good, so they deported them back. Don't know how you could F up helping people... really...

agree douchbags....

[David Jamieson]

Some of the missionaries who got in trouble over there were from my area. I took a wait and see attitude about what happened with them.

However...

When they came back here, their spokesman, one of their number said "God helped us through this ordeal."

Ordeal? You were held for a matter of days, and you call that an ordeal, when the very people who decided not to hold you any longer probably lost family in a real ordeal, and the majority of people around have faced real ordeals?

Douchebags.

well, it's relative.

even wealthy successful people who want for nothing, experience what they believe to be hardship. It's a human thing more than a d-bag thing.

now, i think that you are probably right, but they did have good intentions.

really, they are living examples of how the road to hell is paved aren't they? :)

[KC Elbows]

really, they are living examples of how the road to hell is paved aren't they? :)

One single post at a time?

[David Jamieson]

One single post at a time?

yes, so long as it is filled with good intention.