America, Cease Nation Building, Get Out of Haiti

[Kramer]

America needs to stop our occupation of Haiti. The imperial American military has to leave Haiti immediately. Obama and the occupiers are war criminals that should be tried by the World Court then hung with piano wire for crimes against the Haitian people.

[BT]

Nonsense.

We need to be there to avoid a Somali West.

[Kramer]

Nonsense.

We need to be there to avoid a Somali West.

oh yes glasshoppa the Domino Theory of course why didn't I think of that

[Kramer]

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60G2DW20100117?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews&rpc=22&sp=true

[BT]

Chavez is Chavez, But on the bright side even he is criticizing Obama.

[Kramer]

Chavez is Chavez, But on the bright side even he is criticizing Obama.

apparently kissing Hugo's ass didn't work all that good for Obama

http://themoderatevoice.com/29538/were-obama-and-chavez-all-handshakes-and-smiles/

[BT]

Of course not, he is a tool of wall street.

[Plane]

The federal government is playing a major role in earthquake relief and recovery efforts in Haiti, aided by an array of technology tools, some of which were not been available in past disasters. Social media, satellite communications and other innovations could make a real difference as the battered island nation struggles to regain some degree of normalcy.

Social media tools, significantly Twitter and Facebook are playing a major role in communicating information about the effort. The State Department began sharing information on its official Facebook pages hours after the earthquake struck.

One post told people who want to donate money or provide assistance whom to contact. Persons responding to the post shared other ways to provide assistance.

State's Web site points people wishing to donate or provide assistance to the Center For International Disaster Information. The center operates under a grant from the United States Agency for International Development’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance and support from IBM.

http://fcw.com/articles/2010/01/14/social-media-haiti-earthquake-relief.aspx?s=fcwdaily_150110

[Kramer]

The federal government is playing a major role in earthquake relief and recovery efforts in Haiti, aided by an array of technology tools, some of which were not been available in past disasters. Social media, satellite communications and other innovations could make a real difference as the battered island nation struggles to regain some degree of normalcy.

Social media tools, significantly Twitter and Facebook are playing a major role in communicating information about the effort. The State Department began sharing information on its official Facebook pages hours after the earthquake struck.

One post told people who want to donate money or provide assistance whom to contact. Persons responding to the post shared other ways to provide assistance.

State's Web site points people wishing to donate or provide assistance to the Center For International Disaster Information. The center operates under a grant from the United States Agency for International Development’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance and support from IBM.

http://fcw.com/articles/2010/01/14/social-media-haiti-earthquake-relief.aspx?s=fcwdaily_150110

be careful where you donate money is all I can say.

[Michael Tee]

Yep, Chavez is Chavez.

from the article that Kramer himself linked to:

<<A perennial foe of U.S. "imperialism," Chavez said he did not wish to diminish the humanitarian effort made by the United States and was only questioning the need for so many troops.

<<The United States is sending more than 5,000 Marines and soldiers to Haiti, and a hospital ship is due to arrive later this week.

<<The country's president said U.S. troops would help keep order on Haiti's increasingly lawless streets.

<<Venezuela has sent several planes to Haiti with doctors, aid and some soldiers. A Russia-Venezuela mission was set to leave Venezuela on Monday carrying aid on Russian planes.

<<Chavez said Venezuela's planes were the first to land in Haiti after Tuesday's 7.0 magnitude earthquake, . . . >>

Anyone got a problem widdat?  Nothing wrong with Chavez being Chavez, far as I can see.  Looks to me like the world needs a lot more Chavez and a lot less George W. Bush.

[BT]

    Retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, who led relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina in 2005, said the evacuation of the clinic?s medical staff was unforgivable.

    ?Search and rescue must trump security,? Honor? said. ?I?ve never seen anything like this before in my life. They need to man up and get back in there.?

    Honor? drew parallels between the tragedy in New Orleans, Louisiana, and in Port-au-Prince. But even in the chaos of Katrina, he said, he had never seen medical staff walk away.

    ?I find this astonishing these doctors left,? he said. ?People are scared of the poor.?

The medical staff in questions? First the Canadians and then the Belgians.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/16/haiti.abandoned.patients/index.html

[Michael Tee]

Wow, good for Sanjay Gupta.  He's a hero.  And shame on the Canadians and the Belgians, that was disgraceful and there's no excuse. 

Same combination of Belgians and Canadians let down the Rwandans too, in the Rwandan massacres.  Maybe they're no good for each other.  They ought to be separated in all future UN operations.

[BT]

Don't know if i would stick around either if i had the key to the pharmaceutical grade morphine locker and marauding machete wielding looters were heading my way and nary a gun toting defender in sight.

And my guess is that is why the Marines are on the ground now.

[Michael Tee]

All the more reason why Sanjay Gupta deserves his props.

It's kinda like the dilemma in Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim.  You can escape with your life, but then you have to live with the knowledge that you jumped and abandoned your post.  Here it's worse, because the knowledge you must live with is that you abandoned your patients to the "machete-wielding looters."

[Kramer]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/haiti/7020908/US-accused-of-occupying-Haiti-as-troops-flood-in.html

France accused the US of "occupying" Haiti on Monday as thousands of American troops flooded into the country to take charge of aid efforts and security.