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."
They don't make disaster recoveries like before. (Score:4, Interesting)
There's a big difference in the Red Cross these days...
Previously, the Red Cross operated in the black by collecting after a disaster not to benefit the current disaster, but to replenish their funds in reserve so they'd have money to deal with the next disaster, whatever it may be.
Then 9/11 happened. And worse yet, pinheads like Bill O'Reilly dared to attack this strategy by demanding that the Red Cross go all out to help 9/11 victims and spend all of the money it was raising. In effect, this disaster got double-funded... both from the collections after the previous disaster and the collections immediately after.
Now here's the problem: More recent disasters like Katrina and Haiti have been underfunded because the money isn't available immediately after the disaster but until news spreads and people pay for the relief. It just hasn't been the same.
I want our old Red Cross back...
Right idea, poorly phrased. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Let 'em sink... (Score:1, Interesting)
You mean Americans don't like listening to pre-packaged, heartrending stories of grief in Third-world countries, specifically tailored by marketroids to get you to CALL NOW and soothe your conscience for only $19.95 per month. How much of that twenty bucks actually goes to the poor, anyway? Those TV commercials cost money, a lot of it. NGO directors need salaries and drivers, and they don't fly in coach! No sir, first class all the way. In fact, what were you doing talking to *spit* missionaries? You mean people who actually SPREAD Christianity? Talk about evil!
FYI: Americans, particularly the working class (vilified everywhere as "mouthbreathers" and "breeders"), are the largest givers to charity in the world, by a large margin.
Dear Hugo Chavez (Score:4, Interesting)
This would be one of the reasons why we're sending our military.
Love,
The USA
Re:Try to give them help and this is what they get (Score:4, Interesting)
A few days ago I read this interesting account of another way that people can and do sometimes react:
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/man-at-his-best/# [thefreemanonline.org]
Haiti doesn't have the sort of resources that Northern California does or then did -- and I suspect that there was plenty of looting / similar in the wake of the 1906 quake, too. Just saying, it doesn't take Pollyanna to believe that people sometimes treat others like they'd prefer to be treated.
timothy
Re:Lose sovereignty, gain humanity? (Score:5, Interesting)
Before down modding, hear me out. Haiti has no feasible way out of their current situation. But the one thing that would truly pull them out of this mire as quickly as possible is probably forbidden by a jillion UN rules. But it would work. They could NOT be in a worse situation than they are with their current government.
Re:Dear Hugo Chavez (Score:3, Interesting)
The best part is the U.S. isn't even in charge of security, though they've offered. Everyone is stuck waiting on member states to donate more UN peacekeepers.
Re:Try to give them help and this is what they get (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Try to give them help and this is what they get (Score:3, Interesting)
It's rather obvious from your post that giving money is useless and worse than useless. Only giving the time and effort of actual people works. The Swiss are sitting on $1.5 billion US government dollars because they have no one in Haiti to give it to. There is a widespread belief in the first world that money is valuable. It's not. Money is completely and utterly worthless. The only time money has value is as a means to convince people to do useful things. In order to establish ready availability of clean drinking water in Haiti, a large number of skilled people have to move around a great deal of concrete and steel and assemble it into particular patterns. Money can't do that. Money sits in piles and takes up space. Only people can do that.
Here is where Haiti is currently unsalvageable. The expertise to install a drinking water system does not exist in Haiti. Anywhere. There's 8 million people there who literally do not know how to help themselves.
What would happen if somebody figured out a way to utilize those hundreds of millions of free dollars? What if the whole country had ready access to clean water? The population would burgeon to 12 million, not one of whom would know how to build or maintain that clean water system.
Money that is not used to mobilize expertise is worthless. In this case, money that is not used to create expertise is even more worthless. The ultra-rich of the first world often have trouble grasping this. So do the middle class. They think money is valuable.
Fools.
STOP GIVING! You are only multiplying the misery! Educate!