"Frustrated throngs flee Haiti’s capital; Aid still mired, survivors head for rural areas" by Maria Sacchetti, Globe Staff | January 18, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Thousands of injured and homeless Haitians fled the ruined capital yesterday in a chaotic cloud of dust, squeezing onto motorcycles, piling into pickup trucks, and clinging to the roofs of dangerously crowded buses headed for the countryside.
Frustration over the scarcity of aid in the days following Tuesday’s powerful earthquake led to the frenzied exodus. As international aid groups struggled with bottlenecks in getting supplies into the devastated capital, those fleeing said they had run out of food and money and given up on overwhelmed hospitals. They were heading to far-flung hometowns or to find relatives who might feed and care for them.... after nearly a week of living on the streets - sleeping on the asphalt at night, as the ground trembled with aftershocks.
Many were eager to reunite with loved ones in the countryside, saying they had not been able to communicate since the magnitude-7.0 earthquake ravaged the capital and surroundings.
But it was unclear what those fleeing might find at their intended destinations. Reports on conditions outside Port-au-Prince have been spotty, and it was impossible to verify yesterday how much aid had reached outlying areas or whether far-flung clinics could handle an influx of injured refugees.... Those who fled the capital said it was worth the risk to escape the stench and the misery of the city. The smell of bodies still stuck in the rubble filled the air, creating a smell so strong that many smeared toothpaste under their nostrils to mask the odor.
At the bus terminal, people fled in all manner of vehicles, on the backs of open wagons, in the cargo holds of windowless delivery trucks, and in “tap-taps’’ - colorfully painted buses with names emblazoned on the front, such as “God is love,’’ “Higher Grace,’’ and “So Much Despair.’’
When the seats of tap-taps were filled, people climbed onto the roofs or clung to the ladders on the sides.... For many passengers, the trip turned into an ordeal as buses broke down or were mired in traffic on the narrow, broken road south that runs just steps from the ocean.
In Merger, a town outside of Port-au-Prince, a wilting and anxious group of passengers stood forlornly in the heat beside a broken-down bus. The driver had disappeared with their money, so they were sticking by the bus in hopes of a refund. The travelers included a man with a broken arm, a howling little boy with a bandaged head, and a worried young woman escorting her injured sister home to Petit-Goâve, in hopes that the hospital there could help her.
Soon, a crowd of men marched the driver back to the bus, and the group turned into a mob as they clamored for refunds, fearing they would get stuck on the road, penniless. A mob of travelers jumped onto the driver’s side door and stuck their hands through the open windows.
The weakest passengers got their money last. Miland Vamir, a 28-year-old single mother, banged on the side of the truck with a stick of sugar cane, and dropped her suitcase in frustration. She was barefoot and balancing her 1 1/2-year-old son Wodley, two bags, and his toy helicopter. “Give me my money,’’ she yelled. Finally, it appeared that everyone in the group had found seats on other buses, eager to leave the death, the rubble, the misery, even though what lay ahead was uncertain.
Lesage Lemorain, 49, who lost four relatives, including a daughter, offered an explanation....
Almost seems like it isn't even worth helping those corrupt Haitians, huh?
"Persistent cries for help, prayers ring from capital; Anger mounts as aid is slow to reach many" by Michelle Faul and Jennifer Kay, Associated Press | January 18, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Prayers of thanks and cries for help rose from Haiti’s massed homeless yesterday, the sixth day of an epic humanitarian crisis that was straining the world’s ability to respond and igniting flare-ups of violence amid the rubble of Port-au-Prince.
I'm sick of excuses, I really am.
Haitian police struggled to scatter hundreds of stone-throwing looters in the city’s Vieux Marche, or Old Market.
Are you sure they were looters, because previous stories have described neighborhood men defending things the same way?
Elsewhere downtown, amid the smoke from bonfires burning uncollected bodies, gunfire rang out, and machete-wielding young men roamed the streets, their faces hidden by bandanas. A leading aid group complained of skewed priorities and a supply bottleneck at the US-controlled airport. The general in charge said the US military was “working aggressively’’ to speed up deliveries.
Yeah, looking MORE and MORE like a U.S. OCCUPATION!
Beside the ruins of the Port-Au-Prince cathedral, where the sun streamed through the shattered stained glass, a priest told his flock at their first Sunday Mass since the earthquake struck, “We are in the hands of God now.’’ But anger mounted that other helping hands were slow in getting food and water to millions in need.
“The government is a joke. The UN is a joke,’’ Jacqueline Thermiti, 71, said as she lay in the dust with dozens of dying elderly outside their destroyed nursing home. “We’re a kilometer from the airport, and we’re going to die of hunger.’’
There is your testimony.
Water was delivered to more people around the capital, where an estimated 300,000 displaced were living outdoors. But food and medicine were still scarce. The crippled city choked on the stench of death and shook with yet another aftershock yesterday.
Notice how the MSM haven't made much of a deal about that until yesterday?
On the streets, people were still dying, people were on their knees praying for help, pregnant women were giving birth on the pavement, and the injured were showing up in wheelbarrows and on people’s backs at hurriedly erected field hospitals. Authorities warned that looting and violence could spread. At the Vieux Marche, police tried to disperse looters by driving trucks through the crowds, as hundreds scrambled over partly destroyed shops grabbing anything they could.
Police used tear gas to scatter looters at street markets near the collapsed presidential palace. At the Cite Soleil slum, moments after police drove by, a reporter spotted a gunman stealing a bag of rice from a motorcycle rider.
Of course, I heard on the radio it was just people looking for things to survive, but this is my newspaper and I know they would never distort or lie about anything.
“This is one of the most serious crises in decades,’’ United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said as he flew into the Haitian capital. “The damage, destruction, and loss of life are just overwhelming.’’
Just wondering what the carbon footprint on that flight was, Ban.
A reliable death toll may be weeks away, but the Pan American Health Organization estimates 50,000 to 100,000 died in the 7.0-magnitude tremor, and Haitian officials believe the number is higher. Work went on, perhaps in its desperate final hours, to find survivors buried in the vast rubble of Port-au-Prince.
That death toll will be going up soon.
At the UN headquarters destroyed in the quake, rescuers lifted a Danish staff member alive from the ruins, just 15 minutes after Ban visited the site, where UN mission chief Hedi Annai and at least 39 other staff members were killed. Hundreds of peacekeepers and other UN staff remain missing. At a collapsed Caribbean Supermarket where search teams from Florida and New York City worked overnight, a police officer reported that three people had been pulled out alive around 6 a.m. More than 1,700 rescue workers had saved more than 60 lives since the quake, UN officials said....
I feel better now at the great job they are doing.
The World Food Program was “pretty well on target to reach more than 60,000 people today,’’ up from 40,000 the previous day, WFP spokesman David Orr said. But UN officials said they must raise that to 2 million within a month.
How about NOW?! WTF?!
The US aid chief, Rajiv Shah, told “Fox News Sunday’’ that he believed the US distributed 130,000 “meals ready to eat’’ on Saturday, but that the need was much larger. In a further sign of the delays, the aid group CARE had yet to set a plan for distributing 38 tons of high-energy biscuits in outlying areas of Haiti, CARE spokesman Brian Feagans said yesterday. He did not say why.
The Geneva-based aid group Doctors Without Borders put it bluntly: “There is little sign of significant aid distribution.’’ The major difficulty, it said, was the bottleneck at the airport, under US military control. It said a flight carrying its own inflatable hospital was denied landing clearance and was being trucked overland from Santo Domingo, almost 200 miles away in the Dominican Republic, delaying its arrival by 24 hours.
Yes, we are the U.S. military and we have come to occupy your nation under the pretext of help.
French, Brazilian, and other officials had earlier complained about the US-run airport’s refusal to allow their supply planes to land. A World Food Program official told The New York Times that the Americans’ priorities were out of sync, allowing too many US military flights and too few aid deliveries. The United States has completely taken over Port-au-Prince airspace, and incoming flights have to register with Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida, said Chief Master Sergeant Ty Foster, Air Force spokesman here.
Yeah, this is ALL ABOUT OCCUPATION and a BASE for the WESTERN HEMISPHERIC WAR!
The on-the-ground US commander in Haiti, Lieutenant General Ken Keen, acknowledged the bottleneck. “We’re working aggressively to open up other ways to get in here,’’ he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.’’
Yeah, sure.
--more--"
Of course, more excuses are proffered:
"Violence hindering aid work, US official says" by Associated Press | January 18, 2010
WASHINGTON - Some acts of violence in Haiti have hindered rescue workers trying to help earthquake victims, a top official leading the US government’s relief efforts said yesterday.
Providing humanitarian aid requires a safe and secure environment, said Lieutenant General Ken Keen of the US Southern Command. “We’ve had incidents of violence that impede our ability to support the government of Haiti and answer the challenges that this country faces,’’ he said.
Keen said that about 1,000 US troops are in Haiti, and that 3,000 more are working from ships. More than 12,000 US forces are expected to be in the region by today. Fear of looters and robbers has been one of the factors slowing the delivery of food, water, and medical supplies to earthquake victims. After the earthquake Tuesday, maintaining law and order fell to the 9,000 United Nations peacekeepers and international police already in Haiti, even though those forces also sustained heavy losses in the disaster. Keen said US troops are working with UN peacekeepers, and that local police are beginning to assist in providing security.... President Obama has issued an order allowing selected members of the military’s reserves to be called up to support operations in Haiti, the White House said yesterday.
Yeah, guy at the gas station told me that last week.
Signed Saturday, the executive order permits the Defense Department and Homeland Security Department to tap reserve medical personnel and a Coast Guard unit that will help provide port security. The White House said the authority will be used on a limited basis. No numbers of personnel or names of units were provided. Also yesterday, former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton appeared on five television talk shows as part of their effort to lead private fund-raising efforts for Haitian relief, including immediate needs and the long-term rebuilding effort. Obama asked them to lead the bipartisan effort. “I’d say now is not the time to focus on politics,’’ Bush said. “There’s a great sense of desperation. And so my attention is on trying to help people deal with the desperation.’’
I thought we got rid of him.
Bush said he does not know what critics are talking about when they claim Obama is trying to score political points with a broad response to Haiti’s woes. Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh has urged people not to donate and said he would not trust that money donated to Haiti through the White House website would go to the relief efforts. Clinton said, “I just think it doesn’t do us any good to waste any time in what is in my opinion a fruitless and pointless conversation.’’
Or continuing to read or post the Boston Globe and its globalist promotions.
--more--"
Speaking of the two brothers of H.W.:
"George W. Bush consulted with Clinton while in office
George W. Bush had a special phone friend during his White House years: Bill Clinton.
Asked on CBS’s “Face the Nation’’ whether it was true that he often called Clinton, Bush replied: “I don’t know about often, but I did. I called him. He didn’t call me because he knows how busy a president is. I called him and we chatted on occasion.’’
Neither said what they discussed. “I was always pleased when he called me,’’ Clinton said as he sat beside Bush for the interview. “I make it a practice never to bother the president. I don’t call President Obama either.’’
The two met President Obama at the White House Saturday and taped segments for five Sunday news shows to appeal for donations for Haiti relief.--more--"
Isn't that special, Americans?
So much for the vicious political language and charges, 'eh?
More aftershocks:
"Haitian Christians attended Sunday religious services for the first time since the magnitude-7 earthquake struck the Caribbean country Tuesday. Hundreds filled pews in Protestant and Catholic churches, where prayers were offered for the dead, injured, and rescue workers.
--Tremors rumble at Boston churches--"
Leogane, a coastal city of about 11,500 18 miles west of Port-au-Prince, is near the epicenter of Tuesday’s 7.0-magnitude earthquake and was hit hard, with most of the city’s buildings leveled and many of its residents killed....
The hospital was in shambles, and people lay dead or injured around the neighborhood....
They had only Tylenol and ibuprofen to give to screaming children with compound fractures and multiple broken limbs....
Pfft!
The group stayed and worked until Friday. Weak, out of supplies, and with nowhere to sleep, they accepted a ride to New Jersey on an Air Force C-17 cargo plane. After a flight from Newark to Boston, and a ride to New Bedford....
One of those flights out of the airport.
She said she’ll return with a team as early as this week, when she can make sure supplies are getting there - and once her strength returns. Although she lost her so many possessions in the quake, she [said she was happy]....
What is with the Globe? Another leave you feeling happy PoS!
--more--"
And finally, FINALLY!
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - About 40 members of a Massachusetts medical brigade arrived in the devastated heart of this city late last night to begin erecting a field hospital.
The Massachusetts-1 Disaster Medical Assistance Team pulled in about 10 p.m. to establish a tent hospital in a school courtyard. Just beyond the school, hundreds of people huddled in a tent city. As the medical workers’ convoy of white dumptrucks laden with supplies pulled into a parking lot, the displaced throngs looked on passively.
The medical workers arrived after a five-hour odyssey that began at the US Embassy. Over the course of the day they encountered a series of delays, much as they have since landing in Haiti on Friday. The team spent Saturday at the airport in Port-au-Prince expecting to be dispatched with supplies that appeared that morning. Instead, delays in arranging a security escort forced them to head to the embassy.
Yesterday, with six trucks filled with medical supplies and equipment sitting in a dusty parking lot, the disaster response squad again whiled away the day as they waited, and again security was the issue. It was not until almost 5 p.m. that they got word that the 82d Airborne would provide protection for them.
Last night, as they prepared to assemble the hospital, they were watched over by 30 soldiers.Also counted as "aid" money spent. That's why the numbers sound so good with no action on the ground.
--more--"
Let's pick it up right there:
"Tackling a mountain of suffering; Mass. medical team becomes first from US to treat earthquake victims" by Stephen Smith, Globe Staff | January 19, 2010
Erline Michelle held her one-week-old niece as they waited to be seen at a hospital a Massachusetts disaster medical team set up yesterday in a schoolyard in Port-au-Prince. (Dina Rudick/ Globe Staff)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Patient number 4, swaddled in a baby blue blanket and pink cap, entered a disaster field hospital yesterday morning cradled in the arms of a young Boston doctor.
The dehydrated baby was met by an exultant and determined Massachusetts medical team that, after three days of bureaucratic fumbling, was eager to do what it came to do: save lives.
It was the first US government medical mission to treat patients in Haiti after last Tuesday’s massive earthquake....
ONE WEEK LATER!!! This is why I call it a failure.
On the Massachusetts-1 Disaster Medical Assistance Team’s first day of operation, the collection of three taupe government-issue tents welcomed a steady stream of patients. The team found a queue of 28 people seeking treatment, some of whom had been waiting for days. Some moaned or writhed in pain; others were covered with flies....
Their efforts culminated a Kafkaesque odyssey that was a maddening coda to days of frustration. And it was an illustration of the challenge medical workers confront in trying to provide care in a country in disarray. After flying in Friday, they waited for their supplies to arrive. Saturday, the cache landed at the city’s overwhelmed airport, but there was no security escort available to guarantee safe passage of the supplies - and the disaster team - to its site.
Finally, late Sunday, the security escort arrived. Thirty members of the 82nd Airborne, guns slung over their shoulders, descended. The convoy of supplies and medical workers lumbered through Port-au-Prince, past a tableau of devastation, medical workers ducking to avoid low-hanging wires and tree limbs. Next to one collapsed building, a prayer service rang out, the faithful with outstretched arms. Shortly before 10 p.m., the Massachusetts medical team eased up to a soccer field converted into a tent city by the displaced. Dozens gathered, watching the trucks, faces weary. The crisis medical team learned its field hospital would be built in a leafy school courtyard next to the encampment. In deep darkness, the squad hoisted themselves from the trucks and staked out the courtyard....
--more--"Okay, let's get started treating those Haitians:
"Efforts boosted, but thousands wait unaided; Relief deliveries given priority at Haiti airport" by Alfred de Montesquiou and Mike Melia, Associated Press | January 19, 2010
A Massachusetts disaster medical team set up a mobile hospital in Port-au-Prince as hundreds of people waited for medical treatment. (Dina Rudick/ Globe Staff)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - The staggering scope of Haiti’s nightmare came into sharper focus yesterday as authorities estimated 200,000 dead and 1.5 million homeless in the heart of this luckless land, where injured survivors still died in the streets, doctors pleaded for help, and looters slashed at one another in the rubble.
Yeah, this has been a smashing success for the world community and global government.
The world pledged more money, food, medicine, and police. Some 2,000 US Marines steamed into nearby waters. And ex-president Bill Clinton, a special UN envoy, flew in to offer support.
All that help and attention makes you wonder why Haiti is in such bad shape, huh?
But hour by hour the unmet needs of hundreds of thousands grew. “Have we been abandoned? Where is the food?’’ shouted one man, Jean Michel Jeantet, in a downtown street.
The UN World Food Program said it expected to boost operations from feeding 67,000 people on Sunday to 97,000 yesterday. But it needs 100 million prepared meals over the next 30 days, and it appealed for more government donations. “I know that aid cannot come soon enough,’’ UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in New York after returning from Haiti. He urged officials to “unplug the bottlenecks.’’ Ban asked for 1,500 more UN police and 2,000 more peacekeepers to join the 9,000 or so UN security personnel in Haiti. The Security Council was expected to approve the reinforcements tomorrow.
Yup, the occupation deepens!
In one step to reassure frustrated aid groups, the US military agreed to give aid deliveries priority over military flights at the now-US-run airport here, the WFP announced in Rome. The Americans’ handling of civilian flights had angered some humanitarian officials. The US Air Force itself resorted to an air drop of aid. A C-17 parachuted pallets of food and water into an area outside Port-au-Prince secured by US forces. The Americans have been reluctant to use air drops for fear of drawing unruly crowds. Sunday’s looting and violence raged into yesterday, as hundreds clambered over the broken walls of shops to grab anything they could, including toothpaste, now valuable for lining nostrils against the stench of Port-au-Prince’s dead. Police fired into the air as young men fought each other over rum and beer with broken bottles and machetes.
Yeah, FIGHTING TO SURVIVE is LOOTING in the eyes of the agenda-pushing, property-controlling papers and their elite masters!
Hard-pressed medical teams sometimes had to take time away from quake victims to deal with gunshot wounds, said Loris de Filippi of Doctors Without Borders. In the Montrissant neighborhood, Red Cross doctors, saying they “cannot cope,’’ worked in shipping containers and lost 50 patients over two days, said international Red Cross spokesman Simon Schorno. The latest casualty report, from the European Commission citing Haitian government figures, doubled previous estimates of the dead from the magnitude-7.0 quake, to approximately 200,000, with about 70,000 bodies recovered and trucked off to mass graves.
Some have said the toll could reach HALF a MILLION, although we will never really know.
If the death toll projection is accurate, it would make Haiti’s catastrophe almost as deadly as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed about 230,000 people in a dozen countries.
Yeah, this is a historic catastrophe.
European Commission analysts estimate 250,000 people were injured and 1.5 million were made homeless. Masses are living under plastic sheets in makeshift camps and in dust-covered automobiles, or had taken to the road seeking out relatives in the safer countryside.
European nations have pledged more than a half-billion dollars for the relief effort, on top of at least $100 million promised by the United States.
Seems a MERE PITTANCE when you consider the TRILLIONS we gave to WAR LOOTERS and BANKS!
An impoverished nation, Haiti will need years or decades of expanded aid to rebuild. For the moment, however, front-line relief workers want simply to get food and water to the hungry and thirsty. The delays aren’t “so much about food supplies as logistics,’’ said Brian Feagans, a spokesman for the aid group CARE.
With the U.S. running the show!
The priorities are clearing roads, ensuring security at UN food distribution points, getting this city’s seaport working again, and bringing in more trucks and helicopters, WFP executive director Josette Sheeran said in Rome. The UN humanitarian chief, John Holmes, said in New York that not all 15 UN food distribution points were up and running yet. “That’s a question of people, trucks, fuel, but the aid is scaling up very rapidly,’’ he said.
C'mon, guys, it's BEEN a WEEK!!!!
Evidence of the shortfall could be found at a makeshift camp of 50,000 displaced people spread over a hillside golf course overlooking the city. Leaders there said the US 82d Airborne Division had been able to deliver food to only half of the people. American forces were to be reinforced by 2,000 Marines arriving off Haiti’s shores aboard three amphibious landing ships.
Yeah, this is LOOKING MORE and MORE like an EXCUSE to OCCUPY Haiti again!
Getting clean water into people’s hands was still a dire concern. “People can survive a few days without food but we must try to avoid major outbreaks of waterborne disease,’’ Feagans said.
Clinton and his daughter, Chelsea, who accompanied him to Haiti, pitched in. They helped unload cases of bottled water from their plane to a UN truck.
Pfft! If HE LOVES Haiti so much, why is it a hell hole? Or is it just the cut of the drug trade profits Big Bill cares about, huh?
Some aid groups and foreign officials have blamed the US military for slowing down aid deliveries, saying the American units that took charge of the small Port-au-Prince airport gave priority to US military flights. Doctors Without Borders said yesterday its specialists were 48 hours behind on performing surgery for critically injured patients because three cargo planes loaded with supplies were denied clearance and forced to land almost 200 miles away in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. France’s cooperation minister, Alain Joyandet, also complained yesterday, saying the UN must “clarify’’ the dominant US role here, suggesting the Americans were “occupying’’ Haiti.
And if THEY CAN SEE IT!!!
The WFP’s Sheeran said things would change. She announced an agreement with the United States so that “we now have the coordination mechanism to prioritize the humanitarian flights coming in.’’ At the airport, a US military spokesman said the parking ramp designed for 16 large aircraft at times was holding 40. “That’s why there was gridlock,’’ said Navy Commander Chris Lounderman. He said about 100 flights a day were now landing.
There remained a “huge demand for lifesaving surgery for those who suffered terrible injuries,’’ Doctors Without Borders reported.
And TIME is RUNNING OUT!
Across the city, countless abandoned bodies had been picked up by government crews, but residents still dragged others to crossroads, hoping municipal garbage trucks or aid groups would deal with them.
Can you imagine it, America? Dragging your dead to a collection point?
Meanwhile, those looters you hear so much about?
"Violence flares amid desperate hunt for food; Supplies scarce, hundreds swarm ruined warehouse" by Maria Sacchetti, Globe Staff | January 19, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Hundreds of people desperate for food and supplies swarmed downtown Haiti yesterday, climbing atop piles of broken rubble and shards of glass to get to canned goods, powdered milk, and batteries buried underneath. On the main boulevard, the Grand Rue, their desperation flared into violence at times as teenage boys and men scuffled over goods, and some sparred with sticks. Police fired warning shots into the air but were powerless to halt them.
Yesterday, most in the crowd focused only on finding food. They included laborers, old men and women, and street vendors who said they were hungry and running out of time.
I don't consider them looters despite what my agenda-pushing and racist(?) newspaper tells me.
Although the stream of aid pouring into the capital continued to grow, there were few signs yesterday that it was trickling down to the street level. On the Grand Rue, men and women in desperate straits rummaged frantically through the debris of a ruined warehouse, stuffing their burlap bags with staples to bring home to their families.
You know, looters.
As they worked, some in the crowd carried scrap wood to protect themselves from people who tried to steal their goods, and kept an eye out for police. A dead body lay on top of the rubble.
Some foragers emerged with intact products, but one elderly man raced off with boxes of chicken patties that had been lying unrefrigerated for six days. The damp box said “Keep Frozen.’’
“There’s no food,’’ said Joel Honorat, a 34-year-old trombone player in a band called Take Off, as he stood before the former warehouse. “If the government told us where we should stand to get food, we would stand quietly to get food. We’re trying to find something to eat.’’
Down the street, a group of men rummaging through a different shop that had broken open in the 7.0 earthquake looked up in surprise when a reporter asked if they were looters.
“No, no, no, no,’’ they said in unison. They said they were looking for canned food to eat, and anything they could use to barter or sell.
Daniel Dominique, a 28-year-old air conditioner repairman, emptied his pockets to prove that he was not a thief. Out came a Bible covered in soft blue vinyl, with family photos inside, a battered cellphone, and a white handkerchief.
“If I were a thief, I would break down those doors,’’ Dominique said outside the shop, gesturing to a closed business across the street. “This is open.’’
Later, the panicked foragers turned into a mob running down the Grand Rue.... From a distance, the scene appeared chaotic. But up close, an organization seemed to unfold. Relatives and friends worked together in groups, often guarded by someone with a stick to prevent thugs from stealing their goods....
That certainly hasn't been the tone set forth by the newspapers, has it?
Nope, one little island of green truth amidst all the MSM garbage.
Back on the Grand Rue, the crowd swelled as the day dragged on. Asked about the danger of buildings collapsing further amid aftershocks, many people just shrugged and shook their heads, pointing to their stomachs. Some were so hungry that they immediately started to munch on chips or crackers they had scavenged.
SO WOULD YOU!!!
All yesterday morning, police and United Nations authorities drove down the Grand Rue, past the swarm on the pile. For a while, two police officers stood guard, and occasionally smacked someone away with a stick. One UN truck filmed the crowd foraging on the hill.
They have time to do that, huh? Pffft!
A national police officer, who waved his stick at people gently, said they were trying to prevent people from getting hurt, and to protect the inventory of businesses that were not damaged.
It's always about that with police, isn't it? The thin blue line looking out for elites.
“If it’s open like this, I’m not bothering them,’’ said the officer, who declined to give his name because he was not authorized to speak, as he pointed to a shop with the door popped open. “We’re trying to clear this [area] because we don’t want it to fall down.’’
Across the street, a small group of men hacked at a water pipe in the ground, to gather the clear water in dusty pails. Many residents urged aid workers to get the food and water to them directly. “Otherwise,’’ said Dominique, the air conditioner repairman, “it will never get to us.’’
--more --"Of course, when it comes time to put their money where there mouth is, AmeriKa declines:
"US officials take steps to prevent mass refugee migration" by Spencer S. Hsu, Washington Post | January 19, 2010
Haitians crowded a ship near Port-au-Prince. US officials said Haitians caught trying to escape by sea would be sent back. (Candice Villarreal/ U.S. Navy via Associated Press)
Yup, turn back the Haitians to a hell hole while the illegals swarm across the southern border.
WASHINGTON - As a massive international relief effort lurches into gear, US officials are stepping up measures to prevent last week’s earthquake in Haiti from triggering a Caribbean mass migration not seen in two nearly two decades.
Federal officials said most Haitians who try to escape by sea would be sent back if they are caught.
Which is strange because US government granted "temporary protected status to Haitians in the country illegally, so they cannot be deported to Haiti during the crisis."
So if you are already here you can stay, but if you are in hell.... ???
South Florida counties have readied contingency plans and immigration authorities have cleared space in a 600-bed immigrant detention center in Miami. Some refugees could also be housed temporarily at the Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Related: U.S. to House Haitians at Gitmo and Other Horror Stories
I'd rather stay in Haiti.
There are no signs yet of a seaborne exodus, but history shows that such events are difficult to predict, officials said. Obama administration officials have begun discouraging Haitians from attempting the hazardous 600-mile sea crossing to Florida.
This whole thing is discouraging Haitians.
“Please, if any Haitians are watching, there may be an impulse to leave the island and to come here,’’ Janet Napolitano, Homeland Security secretary, said Saturday. “This is a very dangerous crossing. Lives are lost every time people try to make this crossing.’’
What do you think is happening now?
And given the choice of a chance at life or certain death in a hell hole, guess what I'm doing? That's right, hopping a ship!
Napolitano addressed Haitians directly as she joined Vice President Joe Biden in speaking to relief workers at a federal staging area at Homestead Air Reserve Base in Florida. “Please do not have us divert our necessary rescue and relief efforts that are going into Haiti by trying to leave at this point,’’ Napolitano said.
Oh, so THAT is another reason we went right there: to keep the refugees out! This was NEVER ABOUT helping the Haitian people!
The warnings come paired with a giant humanitarian operation to rebuild Port-au-Prince, position US military assets in the area, and adjust US and international immigration policies....
Need I even type it?
American presidents since Jimmy Carter have grappled with flows of migrants from the Caribbean triggered by political crises, wars, and natural disasters. The sudden influx of 100,000 Cubans and 25,000 Haitians in the 1980 Mariel boatlift left some refugees in US camps for years. After a coup in Haiti in 1991, the US government housed 12,000 Haitian migrants in Guantanamo Bay and admitted 10,000 before a new government was in place in 1994....
Yeah, just step ight over those CIA-sponsored coups and their effect on Haiti. MSM.
--more--"
And the troops have received the occupation orders, folks!
ABOARD A US MILITARY AIRCRAFT - US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said yesterday that the US forces in Haiti for earthquake relief can defend themselves, innocent Haitians, or foreigners if lawlessness boils over.
Gates said he does not foresee an expanded policing role for the United States, however. The United States is chiefly involved in distributing relief and will support the United Nations in providing security, Gates said. “I haven’t heard of us playing a policing role at any point,’’ Gates told reporters traveling with him to India for talks on defense cooperation, trade, and relations between India and Pakistan....
Those meetings sure have been kept quiet in my BG.
About 3,000 US troops are on the ground in Haiti, including 2,000 Marines who arrived yesterday. In addition, 3,000 more US troops are working from ships. More than 12,000 US forces are expected to be in the region within a week.
But no expanded role?
Fear of looters and robbers has been among factors slowing aid delivery.
You saw the green above, right?
After last Tuesday’s 7.0-magnitude earthquake, maintaining law and order fell to the 9,000 UN peacekeepers and international police already in Haiti, even though those forces also sustained heavy losses in the disaster. A joint statement Saturday from Haiti’s president and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton referred to an expanded US security role.
“President Preval, on behalf of the government and people of Haiti, welcomes as essential the efforts in Haiti by the government and people of the United States to support the immediate recovery, stability, and long-term rebuilding of Haiti.’’ The statement said the United States has been asked to assist with security as needed, in conjunction with Haitian authorities, the United Nations, foreign governments, and international aid agencies.
So Gates is just a LIAR, isn't he?
President Obama issued an order allowing selected members of the military’s reserves to be called up to support operations in Haiti. Signed Saturday, it lets the Pentagon and Homeland Security Department tap reserve medical personnel and a Coast Guard unit that will help provide port security. More than 250 medical personnel from the Health and Human Services Department are in Haiti.
One wonders when we actually reach the point of a draft.
After the next "terrorist event?"
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But help is coming!!!
WESTWOOD - The 53-year-old nurse practitioner at Brigham and Women’s Hospital is one of a growing number of medical personnel volunteering to leave their families and everyday life behind to respond to the overwhelming demand for emergency aid.
Yesterday, the divorced mother of 10-year-old twin boys was waiting for a call to tell her when her plane would be leaving and whether she would be sent to Haiti or the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola and has become a staging area for much of the relief efforts.
Waiting being the operative word for Haitians.
“I’ll go wherever they need me,’’ she said yesterday as she tried to appease the concerns of her boys, apprehensive about their mother leaving them for a danger zone. “It isn’t easy to go, but I have the skills; I have something to offer, and every once in a while you have to step out of your comfort zone and use your skills to do something important.’’
So why where Haitians not important until no, and how come Palestinians are still not?
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Yesterday afternoon, as she shoveled the driveway of her suburban home and refereed as her boys pelted each other with snowballs, she tried to imagine what it will be like in such a different world with so many pressing needs....
There won't be any snowballs in Haiti.
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But the MONEY is FLOWING IN!
"Record sums propel charities; Online methods boost donations for Haiti relief" by Megan Woolhouse, Globe Staff | January 19, 2010
Serving the poor in Haiti for more than two decades has earned Partners in Health respect but not top billing among the world’s aid agencies.
That’s changing quickly.... A host of celebrities have taken on its cause. Not On Our Watch, a nonprofit whose founders include George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Matt Damon, donated $1 million, and Clooney will host a star-studded telethon on MTV later this month, with part of the proceeds going to Partners in Health. On Sunday, Meryl Streep plugged the organization during her acceptance speech Sunday night at Golden Globe Awards, and the nationally televised event helped the group raise a cool $800,000 in donations....
Which is great; however, I'm tired of having Hollywood and celebrity shoved down our throats by agenda-pushing MSM.
And the effort must be failing because the Globe cut coverage down to one item today:
"A week after Haiti quake, aid for all is elusive" by Jonathan M. Katz, Associated Press Writer | January 19, 2010
People beg for food and water outside a supermarket in Port-au-Prince, Monday, Jan. 18, 2010. Troops, doctors and aid workers flowed into Haiti on Monday even while hundreds of thousands of Tuesday's quake victims struggled to find water or food. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti --The world still can't get enough food and water to the hungry and thirsty one week after an earthquake shattered Haiti's capital. The airport remains a bottleneck, the port is a shambles. The Haitian government is invisible, nobody has taken firm charge, and the police have largely given up.
Even as U.S. troops landed in Seahawk helicopters Tuesday on the manicured lawn of the National Palace, the colossal efforts to help Haiti are proving inadequate because of the scale of the disaster and the limitations of the world's governments.
Then the New World Order has FAILED!!! This was a GREAT VEHICLE to PROVE how much they could do, and THEY FAILED!
Expectations exceeded what money, will and military might have been able to achieve so far in the face of unimaginable calamity.
Then the MSM shouldn't have done so many promotion pieces when this first started.
"God has abandoned us! The foreigners have abandoned us!" yelled Micheline Ursulin, tearing at her hair as she rushed past a large pile of decaying bodies. Three of her children died in the quake and her surviving daughter is in the hospital with broken limbs and a serious infection.
Rescue groups continue to work, even though time is running out for those buried by the quake.... Those who survived the quake from the beginning but had lost their homes and possessions were growing desperate as they camped out in the streets and in a plaza across from the National Palace.
"We need so much. Food, clothes. We need everything. I don't know whose responsibility it is, but they need to give us something soon," said Sophia Eltime, a 29-year-old mother of two who has been living under a bedsheet with seven members of her extended family. She said she had not eaten yet Tuesday.
WTF, U.N?
It is not just Haitians questioning why aid has been so slow for victims of one of the worst earthquakes in history: an estimated 200,000 dead, 250,000 injured and 1.5 million homeless. Officials in France and Brazil and aid groups such as Doctors Without Borders have complained of bottlenecks, skewed priorities and a crippling lack of leadership and coordination....
Hey, AmeriKa is in charge!
Governments have pledged nearly $1 billion in aid, and thousands of tons of food and medical supplies have been shipped. But much remains trapped in warehouses, diverted to the neighboring Dominican Republic, or left hovering in the air. The nonfunctioning seaport and impassable roads make it even more difficult to get aid to the people.
Aid is being turned back from the single-runway airport, where the U.S. military has come under criticism for poorly prioritizing flights. Doctors Without Borders said a plane carrying 12 tons of medical equipment, including drugs, surgical supplies and two dialysis machines, had been turned away three times from the Port-au-Prince airport since Sunday night, resulting in the deaths of five patients. "We were forced to buy a saw in the market to continue amputations," coordinator Loris de Filippi said Tuesday in a statement.
The U.S. Air Force said it had raised the airport's daily capacity from 30 flights before the quake to 180 on Tuesday..... The World Food Program said more than 250,000 ready-to-eat food rations had been distributed in Haiti by Tuesday, only a fraction of the 3 million people thought to be in desperate need. There have been anecdotal stories of starvation among the old and infirm, but apparently no widespread starvation -- yet.
The WFP said it needs to deliver 100 million ready-to-eat rations in the next 30 days. Based on pledges from the United States, Italy and Denmark, it has 16 million in the pipeline. So far, international relief efforts have been unorganized, disjointed and insufficient to help a people in need of such basics as food, water and medical care.
I'll bet they wouldn't be if it were Israel.
"It's frustrating to see planes landing, officials coming in and military planes coming in, carrying military personnel and their supplies," Marie-Noelle Rodrigue, Doctors Without Borders' deputy operations manager, said from Paris. "We see there are priorities being given but don't understand on what grounds."
French Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet went as far as demanding a U.N. investigation into U.S. aid efforts, although his boss, President Nicolas Sarkozy, defended the U.S. on Tuesday, as did the United Nations. U.N. spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs credited the U.S. with bringing in great amounts of aid and expertise, and said the airport wouldn't be working without U.S. military help....
In on it together, huh?
The U.N. was sending in reinforcements as well: The Security Council voted Tuesday to add 2,000 peacekeepers to the 7,000 already in Haiti, and 1,500 more police to the 2,100-strong international force. "The floodgates for aid are starting to open," Matthews said at the airport....
Been hearing that for a week!
The effort was also hampered by a lack of leadership. With its seat of power destroyed and many officials dead, the Haitian government has largely disappeared. President Rene Preval hasn't addressed the nation, beyond sending one taped message to a radio station. He is only known to have toured briefly one of the thousands of sites where people are dead or dying....
Some police are urging citizens to take the law into their own hands, and neighborhoods are creating their own security forces, forming night brigades and machete-armed mobs to fight bandits....
And then they are called looters.
Despite the criticism, some aid officials defended their efforts and said the world is judging them too harshly....
Honestly, I'm tired of whing governments after all the slack they have been cut.
I meant a reedited, rewritten, and replaced item:
"US, UN send more troops to protect Haiti aid; Public shunts fears of foreign intervention" by Marc Lacey, New York Times | January 20, 2010
That's all we know how to do anymore.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - US military helicopters landed yesterday at Haiti’s wrecked National Palace, and troops began patrolling the capital’s battered streets - signs of the growing international relief operation here....
And Gates said we were not expanding our role, huh?
Haiti’s long history of foreign intervention, including a US occupation, normally makes the influx of foreigners a delicate issue. But with the government of President Rene Preval largely out of public view and the needs so huge, many Haitians are shunting aside their concerns about sovereignty and welcoming anybody willing to help - in camouflage or not....
I'd say welcome in the CIA but they were already there.
At the international airport, where the US Air Force now controls incoming and departing planes, Haitian officials are on hand and insist that it is still theirs, even if it more resembles a military base....
In Port-au-Prince, the capital, foreign rescue teams scoured buildings around the capital for survivors under the rubble, and foreign doctors provided medical care and carried out scores of life-saving amputations. But the demand for medical care far outstripped the supply of doctors. Debarati Guha-Sapir, a professor of epidemiology and the director of the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at the University of Louvain in Belgium, said deaths in large earthquakes generally decline after the first day or two.
“Haiti, I think, is going to be a little different,’’ she said. “They will die simply because there is no care. People will die of wounds. They will die of lack of surgical care. They will die of simple trauma that in almost any other country would not lead to death.’’
FAILURE!
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Pffffft!!
Don't they have OTHER THINGS to WORRY about?
"Resources few, urgency constant for N.E. trauma doctors in Haiti" by Stephen Smith, Globe Staff | January 21, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - The decision was clear, especially here, in a field hospital with limited resources, in a city where the medical network has collapsed: The fingers would have to be amputated....
This is catastrophe medicine, where resources are scarce, time short, options few. It is a world apart from the exacting standards of the high temples of modern medicine in Boston and other US cities where members of two disaster teams now working in a Port-au-Prince school yard usually ply their trade.
Here, they conduct surgery inside a sweltering tent without high-beam surgical lights or stools for the surgeons. Supplies dangle from the walls, and what passes for an operating table doesn’t move up and down. “You’ve got to do stuff you just wouldn’t do in the States,’’ Mooney said. “You’ve just got to go back to 1930s surgery. . . . Even if it means losing another finger - that’s what you’ve got to do.’’
Wearing a blue gown, yellow gloves, and Philadelphia Eagles bandana, he used a surgical saw to amputate the fingers. He perched on two black plastic crates. About 10 minutes into the procedure, the anesthesia machine suddenly went silent. “I was afraid of that,’’ O’Young said. “We’ll be fine for 5 or 10 minutes. Work fast, guys.’’
Good God, readers!!!!
The machine was humming again in less than 10 minutes, but would shut down once more 20 minutes later, as the surgery was wrapping up. Heat was the likely culprit. The teenager, stoic when he was diagnosed, stoic as the surgery began, awoke with a start. His hand was bandaged, the two fingers gone.
His father, Brinele Simon, said through a translator in the recovery room that he “thanks the Americans, very much.’’ Then father and son slowly walked through the school’s gate, the father grasping his son’s intact left hand.
*********************************
A 57-year-old man whose spinal cord was broken in the earthquake. His kidneys were failing. His heart, too.... died at the field hospital. Doctors toiling in disaster zones also must be realistic about the circumstances into which patients are discharged. A life spent in squalor and privation is incompatible with an extended, difficult recovery from surgery. And, yet, in the past two days, lives have been saved in the cramped operating room, broken bones fixed - in no small part because of the ingenuity and experience of the medical workers....
I don't know; this " we are doing great" Globe stuff is starting to get to me.
--more--""A week later, dignity in death is still a luxury; Sacred rites are bypassed for thousands" by Maria Sacchetti, Globe Staff | January 21, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - The strains of Auld Lang Syne pierced the dusty air at the city’s main cemetery. A woman in black sobbed, “I lost my baby.’’ A coffin appeared, ferried by grieving men.
It was a sacred rite that has eluded many relatives of those killed in the Jan 12 earthquake: A proper funeral.
The final journey of 24-year-old Miguel Delancy Jr. to his resting place high on a hill this week was a luxury in a nation overwhelmed by the task of attending to its dead. Many victims are still buried under the rubble. Others have been dumped on the streets, at the morgue downtown, or even outside the cemetery. The bodies of untold thousands of men, women, and children have been buried in unmarked mass graves outside of the capital.
“I want to make sure that he’ll be in peace, that’s all,’’ Miguel’s uncle, Michael Morency, 57, said at the gray crypt, which sits along a narrow path near brightly painted tombs. “We want to make sure he is somewhere we can visit him.’’
The earthquake has transformed everything in this city, even the rituals of death. As in many cultures, Haitians hold elaborate mourning ceremonies, raising money in their neighborhoods to buy fancy coffins and space in tombs that are painted blue, green, and gray.
And here the MSM makes it seem like they are all a bunch of savages.
But last week’s earthquake left thousands of survivors with no chance to grieve or say goodbye. At the city morgue, grieving relatives pay people to watch over bodies, or they don masks and search through the hundreds of dead themselves.
One early morning last week, Pierre Michel rushed from the city of Taba to the morgue to collect the bodies of his daughters, Eunice, 21, and Edna, 11. “I did not want to lose them to a mass grave,’’ Michel, a 56-year-old street vendor, said at the morgue, as he and his son placed the coffins in the back of a yellow pickup truck. “We’d like to put them somewhere we can always go and talk to them.’’
Delancy was pulled dead from the rubble of his apartment, and everyone wanted to give him a funeral. He was one of the most popular young men on Romain Street, a rap singer who was funny, handsome, and sweet. Relatives and friends pooled their money to buy a polished black coffin, and donned black mourning clothes if they had them.
The Haitians are AMAZING PEOPLE, America, and WE COULD LEARN FROM THEM!!!
At the entrance to the cemetery, the funeral procession paused. A cross dangled crookedly on an arch above them, and chunks of concrete littered the sidewalk around them. One of his aunts shuddered and collapsed. But she refused to step inside, unable to bear the stench from bodies left decomposing in the cemetery or on the street. The men kept going. They heaved the coffin up a cobblestone road, past bodies rolled in bedsheets or placed on the ground and burned. A young man carried a boombox blasting rap music, and mourners leaned on one another in the heat. “He was like a son to me,’’ said Delancy’s friend, Emmanuel Bonnefil, 44.
Because of a space shortage in the family’s tomb, relatives decided that Delancy’s coffin would replace that of an uncle who had died earlier. The uncle’s casket would be discarded and his remains, still in his funeral clothes, would be placed in a nearby tomb. Placing Delancy here meant that they could visit him in November, on the Day of the Dead, when people flock to cemeteries to remember friends and relatives who have died. He would rest among dead of other families, the St. Hilares, the Bernagénes and the Labossieres. “I will visit him here,’’ said Fritzi Casseus, who grew up on Romain Street with Delancy.
Maybe WE should have a DAY like that, America!!!
There was no priest, so the young man’s father, Miguel Sr., numbed by too much rum, sat on the casket and said a few words.
Hey, I WOULD BE DRINKING if I lived down there, too -- and I DON'T EVEN DRINK!
A cemetery worker pounded the casket with a hammer to make sure it would fit into the crypt. He was also damaging it intentionally to deter thieves who, even before the earthquake, would regularly break into fresh tombs to sell the coffins on the black market.
We call them grave-robbers up here!
The openings of many tombs throughout the cemetery are covered with bricks and iron grates and padlocked shut. Just after 9 a.m., the men pushed the casket into the tomb. His father collapsed against another tomb in grief. A cemetery worker sealed the entrance to the tomb with bricks and mortar. It was the first burial of the day. “There will be more,’’ said Donald Courant, 40, carrying a cinderblock in each hand. The mourners departed, walking back down the hill. Seven days after he died, Delancy was at rest.
And so is this post.
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