Radio Hams Fired Upon In Haiti 265
Bruce Perens writes "A team of radio ham volunteers from the Dominican Republic visited Port-au-Prince to install VHF repeaters, only to be fired upon as they left the Dominican embassy. Two non-ham members of the party were hit, one severely. ARRL is sending equipment, and there is confusion as unfamiliar operators in government agencies join in on ham frequencies."
Re:Try to give them help and this is what they get (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps it isn't so much about shooting aid volunteers as it is about shooting Dominicans. I imagine you can easily find some Hatinas that feel strong aversion towards them (easily manifested especially in such times?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsley_Massacre [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antihaitianismo [wikipedia.org]
Re:Try to give them help and this is what they get (Score:5, Informative)
The "right hands"? That's rather arrogant of you.
And it's rather ignorant of you. In situations like this in developing nations, warlords (or gangs or whatever they are in the current country) often hijack the emergency supplies and try to sell them, give them to their friends, or even dump them. If you are bringing aid to an under-developed country, this is definitely something you want to think about. Furthermore when people go hungry, they don't get violent, they get lethargic. Try skipping food for a few days yourself, and see how many faces you want to bash in. No, these people doing the shooting have been stealing enough food all along, and are well fed.
It's like when you've got a person who's gone overboard and they're struggling to stay afloat -- the one thing you never ever ever do is jump in after them. That's a nice hollywood touch, but in the real world that person is desperate and will octopus-death-grip anything that's floating that comes near it -- which includes you.
And it looks like you learned your life-saving skills from Hollywood or some other unreliable source. If you can't throw a rope or something to the person, then you swim up behind them, hold them against your body with your arm around their neck, and sidestroke back to shore. If they grab onto you with the octopus-death-grip, duck under the water and they will let go quickly. If my kid, or friend, or even random stranger is out there drowning and I have nothing to throw, you can believe I will go in after him.
Re:Try to give them help and this is what they get (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Try to give them help and this is what they get (Score:5, Informative)
Haiti has had, and will continue to have problems. Keep in mind, the US government has given on average $300 million in aid to Haiti per year for the last 5 years. During the early Bush administration, they tried to give money for clean drinking water, but Baby Doc Duvalier took 88% (more than 25 million US) and the Tonton Macoute took more than 4.6 million U$. No clean drinking water. Later the Swiss government had their banks seize the money, and have tried to return the money back to Haiti (but to a non-corrupt government). My next door neighbours' went with their church 5 years ago to Haiti to set up a hospital and (with a dentist who attends the church) perform free dental work. When they returned they said that there is nothing there. Few people are working, they had to pay bribes to both the government officials and local gangs for their 'safety', and still they managed to build a clinic with clean running water, and perform 300 dental surgeries. Not bad for a week. But there is so much corruption. The gangs are so bad. The local population has no work but the population still managed to swell from 6 million to 8 million in 10 years (and still the life expectancy for anyone who makes it past 5 years old is 50). Poverty, disease, corruption, natural disasters, illiteracy, crime, few natural resources, a local population that manages to squander what little foreign aid manages to reach them -- Haiti has it all! On the other side of the island, the Dominican Republic is doing quite well. Tourism, foreign investment. The truth is, since independence, Haiti has had a new fresh coup-de-tat government every 6.25 years (32 coups in its 200 year history). Necklacing [bbc.co.uk] is not uncommon in Haiti, as is corrupt government. The fact that a group of radio amateurs got shot at in Haiti is unremarkable. Its a sad tale, but not unexpected.
MOD PARENT: BULLSHIT (Score:5, Informative)
This is unequivocally false. I work for the [American] Red Cross and can assure you that ARC does not charge for disaster assistance. If you google: red cross charge assistance ... you will see several hits (snopes, etc) confirming this is a bullshit FUD tactic.
Re:Should you send the army into mainland USA? (Score:1, Informative)
Except most of the evidence seems to suggest that the 19th century attitudes are true. See also Liberia, Zimbabwe, Congo...
interesting frequencies to listen to (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Dear Hugo Chavez (Score:2, Informative)
From the "USA #1, USA #1, USA #1! English Redneck Dictionary":
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Lose sovereignty, gain humanity? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Dear Hugo Chavez (Score:1, Informative)
And you do? Mind you, I live 2 km from Hugo himself (thus I post AC), and hear him bellow what the GP reported and worse every week.
The GP argued that HC and his pals are "dangerous dictators", which is debatable, and that we have a long history of them, which is confirmed by any history book even if some digress as to who are the dictators. Argue back or *you* STFU.
Re:Try to give them help and this is what they get (Score:3, Informative)
-- Epicurius
Oh, and next time you talk to Santa Claus, could you tell them that Haiti needs more milk and cookies?
Thanks, bro.
Re:Silence, house slave (Score:1, Informative)
Let me guess. Business Was Good until Chavez came along, and decided that a nation with a very rich elite and a huge population of people in extreme poverty wasn't a good thing.
Guess again. My prospects as a student-then-worker who wanted to own an apartment in the city I work in were promising, until a huge population in varying degrees of poverty decided that anyone who spoke bad of the rich must be good, together with more than a few that were fed up with the corrupt, descredited governments of lately.
He decided that the resources of Venezuela belonged to the Venezuelans, not foreigners and the house slaves that provide them legitimacy, so he nationalized those resources, and took away your income that you didn't work for?
He decided that the resources of Venezuela belonged at least in part to other Latin American nations which happened to have rulers sympathetic to him. So he gave away resources that could've given the poor a better chance at getting out of the gutter, threw a few scraps at those who had been ignored thus far, and made awful decisions that all but stalled the economy as a whole. He hasn't nationalized my workplace, but the income I work really hard for has taken a serious hit.
The United States has been funding guerilla wars in Central America and murdering innocent people for decades to ensure that it's interests are attended to by dictators they have put in power. To believe otherwise is to simply be a fool.
This is not Central America (look it up). I damn well know about the dictators propped up by the US, but this has shit to do with the US and imperialism. Maybe the best way to know what's happening here is to live and earn a typical salary for a year or two. Pay rent, look at the ads for an apartment of your own, express your car payments as a % of your income, try to save at 25% inflation. Otherwise you're looking at a very shallow picture of this country.