Haiti: WTF?

(Haiti's was almost 7 BILLION, btw)

i'm not defending them, just trying to figure out how the money flows

don't really know what that $2.2 M means though. they're giving that much cash but i'm assuming big countries are all sending military + doctors, food, hospital ships, and other stuff? i agree it looks bad.

yeah, me too xposst

I guess this rings really hollow to me, particularly today, because I listened to this arrogant fucker at work give a presentation at work about shitty mobile application he had developed for the low low cost of $100,000, despite the fact that it had been made clear months ago that the application he was developing was almost identical to an application that already existed and was available for free for iPhones. And no one gave a shit. $100,000, down the fucking drain, like it's nothing. And it IS nothing to the U.S., and Germany, and the E.U. 2.2 million dollars is 22 of these idiotic redundant mobile applications that no one will ever use.

^^^^^^^^^^

don't really know what that $2.2 M means though. they're giving that much cash but i'm assuming big countries are all sending military + doctors, food, hospital ships, and other stuff?

I hope you're right. I just keep checking the news waiting to hear about how everyone is swarming in to help, and...nothing.

Obama wants $22 billion so we can go kill more people in poor countries.

it's funny how the money never runs out for that

lol ;_;

"We have a long history that ties us together"

well played, Mr President.

yeah it's ridiculous...

iirc when the tsunami happened there was a gradual raising of stakes in terms of aid donations; america announced it was sending some ridiculously small amount, then japan far outstripped it with like $500m, and so america bumped its bid to fit in/not look like dicks. similarly i seem to recall that the british government's amount somehow correlated with public donations. so hopefully this is a tentative first step.

i hope so.

christ, it seems like all of the major landmarks just crumbled--the presidential house, the parliament, the cathedral. what's left? i can't recall a recent natural disaster when, aside from 1,000s of poor people in poor housing seeing their lives destroyed, you actually have many wealthy, well-positioned people suffering horribly--those in government, U.N. officials, etc.

i wonder whether even these major buildings were made with earthquakes in mind. although a 7.x earthquake striking just beneath a major city is likely to topple even the hardiest buildings.

Um, the local news has reported that help is on the way from the U.S.: A battleship left port in Virginia on Wednesday, headed to Haiti.

??

Local News in Flabbergasting Horrible News Shocka, I know. They also noted that experts say there is a 36 hour window to rescue people who may be trapped under rubble, and that 29 hours have passed. But don't worry the battleship is on the way.

i don't think the point of the battleship is immediate help! they started sending planes and helicopters with rescue people a while ago. the local news just wants to show you that because you're close to it.

You're right, of course. tbh I had one of those days at work that actually qualifies as "worst of the year", and I'm pretty much in the most pessimistic mood possible right now.

That said, this NYT article also mentions the aircraft carrier deployment as one of the lead examples of what the U.S. is doing, and contains this graf: "In addition, White House officials said the military was looking into sending the Southern Command’s hospital ship, the Comfort, in light of reports that most of Haiti’s medical facilities were severely damaged if not destroyed. The Coast Guard also dispatched four cutters."

I think it's safe to say that it would be appropriate to just go ahead and send the hospital ship, although looking into it is great and all.

I heard on NPR tonight a group of doctors from the University of Miami flew a charter plane into Haiti and set up a field hospital in the hangar at the Port Au Prince airport (? I thought the airport was out of action, so that geog. detail might be mistaken). They're making splints out of magazines and anything they can find.

Compare that to hearing the meeting that Bloomberg set up in Brooklyn with Haitain locals saying, well we can't do anything yet becaase we have to wait, etc etc... and I'm like...well, those doctors didn't wait and they seem to be helping.

And they talked to a local priest who knew the archbishop that died in the quake...he said they're already suffering with the destruction, and to know that we have lost our father makes it something else entirely. So fucking sad.

I could understand the need to wait. Organization, coordination, providing the RIGHT kind of aid and making sure it gets to the people who need it most all takes some time to figure out, I'm sure.

^Put another way, using finite resources in inefficient ways is not a good idea.

xxxpost:
(AP) — BALTIMORE - The Navy says a hospital ship based in Baltimore, the USNS Comfort, is being activated in case it's needed to support humanitarian operations in earthquake-stricken Haiti.

The Defense Department's U.S. Southern Command hasn't officially said the ship will sail.

But the Navy's Military Sealift Command says the Comfort is starting to "crew up" for a trip. Sealift Command spokeswoman Laura Seal says the ship could be ready by Monday.

A spokeswoman for Democratic Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland says that's when the Maryland Port Administration expects the ship to leave.

First, however, the Navy must bring the crew up from about 70 to nearly 800-mostly doctors, nurses and technicians from the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda.
© 2010 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

am just heartbroken.

last year I worked with a missionary's daughter who grew up in Haiti. her family's alright but many of her friends are still mia and unaccounted for. this is terrible.

Author Ned Sublette who has written about Haiti (in his book on Cuban music) has been e-mailing about the situation. He recommends

>During this period, if you or anyone you know are planning to make a
>donation to assist those in need, please consider the Haiti Emergency
>Relief Fund. Donations will be forwarded to our partners on the ground to
>help them rebuild what has been destroyed. There are two ways to donate:
>By Pay Pal at: <http://www.haitiaction.net/About/HERF/1_12_10.html>; or
>Mail check made out to: "Haiti Emergency Relief Fund/EBSC" donations tax
>deductible - send mail to: East Bay Sanctuary Covenant / 2362 Bancroft Way
>/ Berkeley, CA 94704 // EBSC is a non-profit 502(c)(3) organization tax
>ID#94-3249753

Richard Morse, a Haitian-American who founded the Haitian band Ram, has been tweeting from Haiti-

http://twitter.com/RAMhaiti

Fox News headline this morning: "Anti-American Countries urge aid for Haiti."

Rush Limbaugh was pushing his own take yesterday as well regarding Haitians being more important to Obama than stopping the underwear bomber.

Also, Pat Robertson still scheduled to be special guest of incoming Virginia governor McDonnell at his inauguration.

Update | 10:21 a.m. Reuters reports that the “United States was sending 3,500 soldiers and 300 medical personnel to help with disaster relief and security in the devastated Caribbean capital, with the first of those scheduled to arrive on Thursday. The Pentagon was also sending an aircraft carrier and three amphibious ships, including one that can carry up to 2,000 Marines.”

oh & re: aid contributions:
Update | 10:12 a.m. The Associated Press reports that President Obama announced on Thursday that the United States government is making an initial $115 million in relief aid available to Haiti.

On Wednesday, The A.P. published a list of the aid already pledged to Haiti.

alright Bam that's a good start

am i a bad person for hoping that the silver lining from this might be a functioning public health infrastructure in Haiti, courtesy of Western donors?

or am i just delusional

i've been thinking the same thing, but even talking about it feels like a jinx.

one of my good friends works at a hospital and knows a lot of haitian guys, including one that i've chilled with a couple times. i asked him how they were doing. none of them had heard anything from the island. i can't even imagine that feeling....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP_z2hpjXJ8&feature=player_embedded

from 0:20 the buildings starts to collapse

a good friend of mine from hs has family in haiti. he said theres a number at the state dept that you can call and they can try and check records, give you any news, but theres still so much to be done and so many people missing that its difficult to get hard news one way or the other.

am i a bad person for hoping that the silver lining from this might be a functioning public health infrastructure in Haiti, courtesy of Western donors?

or am i just delusional

more the latter. there'll be a big burst of aid, but it will peter out pretty quickly, and it won't even be enough to replace what's been destroyed, much less build something better. i don't think there's a silver lining in sight here. it's pretty clear the rest of the world, starting with the u.s., will tolerate just about any kind of horrible conditions in haiti. we get briefly interested every 4 or 5 years, when there's a disaster or a government collapses, but "doing" anything significant would require the kind of longterm focus and investment that we're just not going to make in a country of 9 million poor black people.

yeah :(

https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dDBZYTZlSDBMN2ZuNTk5cU40V3NKa3c6MA

my friend B3th and i just begged everyone in class today to give (funds will be matched), and it was really tough for her. when i asked her what she's heard she said "some good, some bad, but mostly we don't know anything"

http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/01/haiti-imagery-layer-now-available.html

Donated 20 bucks via Red Cross, certainly wish I could do more, but unemployment doesn't really allow that.

you done good man. this is just really hitting me hard for some reason.

If every person in the world who is able donated 20 bucks...

All the $10 and $20 Red Cross donations so far have added up to more than $3 million just from mobile users, so good on you. My wife and I gave $10 each.

can everyone plz ignore Pat Robertson unless you're going to kill him

Interesting: % of Red Cross mobile donations by state

http://mgive.com/HaitiGraphs/PercentDonations.html

this is just really hitting me hard for some reason.

― call all destroyer, Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:42 AM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah ditto

academic q, but: wonder if MN will see an influx of haitian refugees. we usually receive an influx after every major conflict/disaster

kinda depends on what names the state dept draws out of a hat, right? i thought that's how it worked. maybe cities with a lot of haitians will get more, but MN does have a good track record.

just off the top of the dome, a lot of MN's refugee populations are those where there was no prior community before, right? but i rly don't know what i'm talkin about

hey pancakes i see nothing when i go to that graph....what states donated the largest %?

CA, Ny, Fl, TX, (1,2,3,4)

this is just really hitting me hard for some reason.

― call all destroyer, Thursday, January 14, 2010 11:42 AM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah ditto
--everybody's into weirdness right now (gbx)

Same here

I'd like to see that chart broken down by per-capita donations, it's no shock that the states with the largest populations have contributed the most.