Huge earthquake in Haiti

[TAE]

Do you really want people to avoid every word which sounds slightly like another racist word?

 

[derf]

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1725/is-niggardly-a-racist-word

Perhaps.

But it sounds as if it has a racist bent. I would not myself use it for fear of being misunderstood. It is dated and easily taken in the wrong way.

I once read on another forum a poster complaining the use by the BBC of the word "chink"
The Chinese guy was bleating on about BBC racism totally failing to realise that the word was used in the phrase "A chink in his armour".
I also recall a gang attacking the home of a pediatrician because they were too stupid to understand the word.
Because someone is too thick or lazy to look up a word they don't know is no reason to stop using a word.

 

[Diamond]

Just rang DEC, it was automated, why can't i speak to a human being? its so impersonal, I felt like ringing off tbh

I don't mean to be harsh but, seriously, WTF?

Which do you think has greater priority when an emergency organisation allocates resources:

a) your consumer experience

or

b) maximising revenue for aid?

 

[moonsi til]

I donate to Oxfam via my wages so I'm on their mailing list. I had a letter this morning urging me to give further which I decided to do. I called them and my card was refused. I was informed that this had been happening a lot due to people using stolen credit/debit cards to donate to charity.

I had to speak to 2 people at my bank and give an account for about 5 transactions to get my card unblocked. Though the guy I spoke to said he wasn't sure why it happened with Oxfam/DEC but in his mind it was them that were causing it... I requested that he looked into it further as it might stop donations getting made.

 

[TAE]

People are using stolen cards to give to a good cause?

 

[Diamond]

People are using stolen cards to give to a good cause?

The complex morality of the modern fraudster...

 

[e19896]

THE USA is trying to occupy Haiti instead of helping it after last week's massive earthquake.

That is the view of a French government minister, who said the UN would have to clarify the Americans' role on the island.

Reported The Times: "Thousands of American soldiers have poured in to Port-au-Prince airport since President Obama announced that he was ordering a 'swift and aggressive' campaign to help millions of Haitians left homeless by last week's 7.0 magnitude earthquake.

"Six days after the quake, however, precious little aid is getting beyond the airport perimeters - largely because of security concerns - and aid agencies with long experience of operating in disaster zones have complained that their flights in are being blocked unnecessarily.

"Among the aircraft turned back by American air traffic controllers who have assumed control at Port-au-Prince airport was a French government Airbus carrying a field hospital.

"The plane was able to land the following day but the decision to turn it back prompted an official complaint from Alain Joyandet, the French Minister for Co-operation who is overseeing the French aid effort.

"Speaking to Europe 1 radio from an EU ministerial meeting in Brussels this morning, Mr Joyandet said that the UN would have to clarify the role of the US in the Haitian aid effort. 'It's a matter of helping Haiti, not occupying Haiti,' he said.

Venezuelan president Hugh Chavez has also criticised US 'humanitarian' efforts in Haiti, reported the Press Association.

"It appears the gringos are militarily occupying Haiti," Mr Chavez said. "Obama, send medicine, doctors and water - not more soldiers."

Link

 

[weltweit]

They do seem to have the biggest shortage of doctors and medicine.

But there is a US hospital ship on its way I believe.

They needed doctors from day 1 though.

 

[samk]

This cruise is apparently still going on

 

[Jeff Robinson]

Naomi Klein on how capitalist shitbags are trying to profit from Haiti's suffering:



Excellent Zizek review of a book concerning Haiti from last year:

http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2008/08/haiti-aristide-lavalas

 

[derf]

They have another big problem now.
The news teams are looking for stories to keep this alive and are coming up with coverage of armed gangs on the streets raiding whatever they can.
I have just been watching pictures on local TV of gangs armed with sticks looting semi demolished shops and houses.
While I'm pretty sure this is a small minority of idiots, it's what is making the news and may have a negative effect on relief donations.

 

[likesfish]

the US are running the airport because the haitian air traffic controllers are dead or missing its one runway and cargo handaling is grunt power or the odd forklift theres also no fuel so some of the first aid planes to arrive are still there
US general on the ground was quoted as saving all things considered people are behaving quite well.
Bodyguard firm in london which provided armed guards for aid workers in haiti half its work force is missing. There is concern that kidnapping aid workers for cash might increase again which was a problem in haiti hence armed guards for aid workers
Not even the US military can ramp up a major operation in 24 hours.

 

[spring-peeper]

Canada's teams are arriving and have been assigned an area. We got the same area that our Governor General is from, but the media says it's just a coincidence.

Nearly 2,000 troops will mount Canada's largest-ever relief mission in an isolated triangle south and west of Haiti's capital, clearing roads and providing relief to the hard-hit area around the epicentre of the earthquake.

Cut off from the rest of the country by roads clogged with rubble, the Canadian relief zone is a ravaged district of towns and countryside that stretches from the outskirts of Port-au-Prince to Jacmel, a town of 40,000 on Haiti's south coast.

Despite the arrival of 2,200 U.S. Marines aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Bataan, the massive international effort is still failing to bring security or deliver significant amounts of aid to the people.

U.S. military officers controlling Port-au-Prince's airport have been effectively in charge of co-ordinating relief efforts. But Canadian officials said they have been asked by the United Nations and Haiti's barely functioning government to take control of the area between Jacmel and the capital.

“The hospital was half-destroyed, and even prior to the earthquake the hospital was in a deplorable situation. You can just imagine what it is like now,” Canada's ambassador to Haiti, Gilles Rivard, told reporters in Port-au-Prince. “The road is cut. Jacmel is cut from the world.”

The Canadian Forces' Disaster Assistance Response Team, or DART, moved into Jacmel Monday to establish an emergency hospital and provide clean water.

Two Canadian navy ships carrying 500 soldiers and sailors and relief supplies will arrive Tuesday. The military personnel will bulldoze rubble from blocked roads, allowing aid to reach Jacmel from the airport in Port-au-Prince.

The frigate HMCS Halifax will take up a position off Jacmel, using small boats to ferry engineers and equipment ashore to clear the road to Leogane. At the same time, the destroyer HMCS Athabaskan will arrive off the coast west of Port-au-Prince, deploying its personnel to clear a road from Léogane to the Port-au-Prince airport.

The object of the Canadian operation is to ease the flow of aid from the airport into Port-au-Prince and the countryside.

A contingent of 1,000 troops preparing in Valcartier to deploy to Haiti will mostly move into the Canadian aid zone, although some will take up security and other duties around the airport and at the Canadian embassy in Port-au-Prince, officials said.

“Here we have an engineering regiment coming out of Valcartier and those are all the people operating heavy equipment to open up the roads, repair bridges and move some of this rubble so that we can actually get to some of these locations,” Gen. Natynczyk told a press conference at the military base near Quebec City Monday.

On a mission to survey Jacmel Monday, the commander of the DART team, Colonel Bruce Ewing, said the town emerged as the obvious place to deploy during a meeting with Haiti's President and Prime Minister, who talked about the need in Jacmel for clean water – a DART specialty.

Col. Ewing said he expects to have 110 soldiers in Jacmel when HMCS Halifax arrives Tuesday. Soon there will be a camp for the team to live in, and eventually a medical clinic capable of treating 250 people a day, he said.

“I've got a couple of small water purification units coming … and that would give us some potable water. But I'm also using a couple of ROWPUs, which are large machines that purify water which would give us a lot of water for the local community.”

Dan Dugas, a spokesman for Defence Minister Peter MacKay, said Ms. Jean had no role in choosing the town where Canada will focus its efforts. But on her 2006 return to Haiti, the Governor-General left little doubt of what Jacmel means to her.

“Here stands my childhood,” she said then.

source

 

[dilute micro]

They have another big problem now.
The news teams are looking for stories to keep this alive and are coming up with coverage of armed gangs on the streets raiding whatever they can.
I have just been watching pictures on local TV of gangs armed with sticks looting semi demolished shops and houses.
While I'm pretty sure this is a small minority of idiots, it's what is making the news and may have a negative effect on relief donations.

doubt it. this happens anywhere

 

[derf]

doubt it. this happens anywhere

I hope you are right.

 

[frogwoman]

There was looting during the floods in the UK. And if most of your family and friends had just been killed and you had to sleep under plastic next to their decomposing corpses you would probably want to go and run around violently with a stick.

 

[Crispy]

"looting" is "getting what I can to feed, clothe and house me and mine" in a situation like this

 

[weltweit]

I saw a film on BBC news last night of some police / army people wandering about with guns, basically kicking anyone with any packets of food and demanding they give it back. At one point they had a guy on the ground and stomped on his head.

There do seem to be quite a lot of people with guns there now.

Anyhow hopefully the aid distribution should be getting into shape shortly, the people have had to wait long enough.

 

[e19896]

"looting" is "getting what I can to feed, clothe and house me and mine" in a situation like this

Let’s start with the definition: “looting,”

According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, means to “steal goods from (a place), typically during a war or riot.” So is it fair to call post-earthquake scavenging for food, water, and goods in Haiti “looting,” as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Daily Beast have done?

It may make semantic sense, but a rising backlash of (mainly left-leaning) bloggers says the mainstream media’s embrace of the term is not only unfair, but even racist. Critics–spearheaded partly by burgeoning hipster-pundit site The Awl–argue that the media is too quick to see “looting” in desperate Haitians’ hunt for food and water. Here’s why:

* Media Just Following a Script, argues Chris Lehmann in The Awl. Lehmann writes a barnstormer take-down of the term, digging into details of WSJ and NYT articles that suggest Haitians were taking and sharing goods out of necessity. He concludes “It is, of course, an article of faith in Timesland, and the mediasphere at large, that reckless disturbance of the social peace is the role scripted for poor people in the wake of a disaster–especially those who happen to be darker complexioned, and thereby conveniently saddled with all the coded insinuations that typically accompany “culture of poverty” arguments.”

* Remember Katrina’s ‘Looting?’ Cord Jefferson at Campus Progress reminds readers that reports of violence and theft in Katrina’s aftermath turned out to be exaggerated. He interviews Dr. Kathleen Tierney at the University of Colorado, who says in both Haiti and Katrina’s case “There is an institutionalized racism in the way these poor black disaster victims are treated.”

* Foreign Media Using Word, Too, Despite Slim Evidence, writes Marc Herman at Global Voices. Herman says that Polish, German, French, and Spanish journalists have all resorted to counterparts of the word to describe the chaos. Yet, Herman notes, “blog and media reports of looting appear to be based on only a few cases”

* Is Taking a Bag of Rice While Starving ‘Looting’? Choire Sicha and Tom Scocca at The Awl debated one of the first reports on looting. Reacting to news of people taking rice from a “half collapsed” supermarket in Port-au-Prince, Scocca deadpans “I’m sorry, if an earthquake hits Silver Spring, I am more than ready to go scavenge a bag of rice from the half-collapsed Giant.” Eric Zorn at the Chicago Tribune echoes a similar idea, asking “What wouldn’t you do if members of your family were dying? If you thought you could save them with a little humanitarian freelance redistribution of resources?”

​

http://projectsheffield.wordpress.c...chy-in-haiti-or-just-imperialist-racist-lies/
‘looting’ doesnt exist. Its called survival..

 

[e19896]

They have another big problem now.
The news teams are looking for stories to keep this alive and are coming up with coverage of armed gangs on the streets raiding whatever they can.
I have just been watching pictures on local TV of gangs armed with sticks looting semi demolished shops and houses.
While I'm pretty sure this is a small minority of idiots, it's what is making the news and may have a negative effect on relief donations.

‘looting’ doesnt exist. Its called survival..

 

[likesfish]

the US is doing air drops seems the big plan isn't working

air drops are fairly random and a very expensive way of doing things also unless your careful you can kill the people your trying to help

 

[likesfish]

the airport can support 90 planes a day total.
air traffic control consists of a portable caravan.
even the US attempt of an aerial reccie flight was delayed and had to fly higher than it wanted because of congestion

 

[weltweit]

the US is doing air drops seems the big plan isn't working

air drops are fairly random and a very expensive way of doing things also unless your careful you can kill the people your trying to help

I don't think they are actually dropping stuff as in freefall or parachute. I think they are helicoptering stuff to outposts and then lowering it to the ground to a place where there are troops already in place.

The trouble is that the roads are impassable.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

Canada's teams are arriving and have been assigned an area. We got the same area that our Governor General is from, but the media says it's just a coincidence.

Good job Canadians! That's enough troops that the French will be accusing you of invading.

 

[weltweit]

I don't think they are actually dropping stuff as in freefall or parachute. I think they are helicoptering stuff to outposts and then lowering it to the ground to a place where there are troops already in place.

Perhaps I was wrong.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8468367.stm

The US Air Force C-17 dropped the relief supplies on Monday into a secured area five miles (8km) north-east of Port-au-Prince, US Army spokeswoman Maj Tanya Bradsher was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.
...
the US military are now securing the areas before the pallets of food and water are parachuted in.

 

[spring-peeper]

Good job Canadians! That's enough troops that the French will be accusing you of invading.

It's almost as many as we have in Afghanistan. I remember reading something this morning about possibly not having enough left to guard the Olympics. It had never occurred to me that the Army would be at the Olympics....

 

[weltweit]

How long can survivors last under rubble?
One week since the devastating earthquake hit Haiti, the UN says "hope persists" in finding more people alive in the ruins of buildings.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8467520.stm

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

How long can survivors last under rubble?
One week since the devastating earthquake hit Haiti, the UN says "hope persists" in finding more people alive in the ruins of buildings.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8467520.stm

Well an elderly woman was found today, so there's still hope

I'm hoping that's not old news though as I can't find anything about it

ah, found something

At least one person was pulled alive from rubble in Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, seven days after the earthquake. Ena Zizi was rescued from rubble either at or near the national cathedral, CNN's Anderson Cooper reported

 

[spring-peeper]

Well an elderly woman was found today, so there's still hope

I'm hoping that's not old news though as I can't find anything about it

ah, found something

Until every stone has been lifted, there is still hope. If I'd managed to survive and was trapped, I would not like to think that after x number of days they stop looking.

The will to live is strong in our species

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

Until every stone has been lifted, there is still hope. If I'd managed to survive and was trapped, I would not like to think that after x number of days they stop looking.

The will to live is strong in our species

I'm sure those babies from the Mexican earthquake lasted as long as a week as well.

Apparently a German team and a Taiwanese team were also apparently looking for some survivors after their equipment/dogs may have picked up signs of life.