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Haiti is the third most corrupt country in the world, according to corruption watchdog Transparency International

Death by Hypocrisy


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By —— Bio and Archives January 16, 2010

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The media has reluctantly broken away from its latest celebrity tabloid feeding frenzy, to shamelessly exploit the disaster in Haiti, and everyone from credit card companies to aid groups to the news media to the corrupt government of Haiti are looking to profit from the disaster.
Accompanying this are attacks on anyone who points out that would have been a manageable disaster everyone else, is unmanageable in Haiti because it lacks a working society. Rush Limbaugh is being savaged for questioning Obama's willingness to throw 100 million and troop deployments to Haiti, at a time when Americans at home need help, some no less so than Haitians. But the United States has been helping Haiti all along, with no good result, as the National Review points out.
Since 1973, the United States has been the world’s largest foreign-aid donor to Haiti, which ranks among the world’s poorest countries. From 1990 to 2005, the U.S. sent $1.46 billion to Haiti in aid from development assistance and children's health through the Economic Support Fund, the U.S. food program, the Peace Corps, and foreign military training (although that was only $4.6 million, with $3 million coming in 1995). More recently, In May 2008, the Bush administration announced that it would send an additional $25 million in emergency food aid to Haiti, bringing its total emergency contribution to $45 million . . . Congress provided $100 million for hurricane relief and reconstruction assistance for Haiti and other Caribbean countries in the FY 2009 continuing appropriations resolution, signed September 2008. Haiti received an estimated $287 million in regular appropriations for FY 2009.
So much for Clinton's "modest aid"... And all the aid in the world won't do any good, when your country is run like this.
Since 2004, a 9,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force has been on the ground. Haiti is the third most corrupt country in the world, according to corruption watchdog Transparency International, compounding the difficulties agencies face in delivering aid in an accountable and transparent way. Power lies in the hands of a few elite, leaving ministries unable to implement policies and divert funds to the local level.
Aid to Haiti is the same old, "give a man a fish" routine that makes most of our attempts to help the world's hungry and needy so ultimately pointless. More aid won't help Haiti, regime change might. Haiti isn't responsible for the earthquake, but it is responsible for a mismanaged society that isn't capable of taking care of earthquake victims. And while I sympathize, I have to ask when was the last time Haiti or any of the countries we help out sent us aid. Bill Clinton, the UN's special envoy to Haiti, who will be heading up relief efforts... bears some of the responsibility for the current state of Haiti today. And you can't have a disaster without celebrities blaming Bush, or in this case the failure of the Copenhagen talks. Danny Glover, one of the smartest actors working in Hollywood today, explained that earthquakes are caused by global warming
“What happened in Haiti could happen to anywhere in the Caribbean because all these island nations are in peril because of global warming.” “When we see what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens, you know what I’m saying? We have to act now!”
This is the response? Is Glover claiming that the earthquake was a response by mother earth to China's sabotage of Copenhagen? Figuring that out would require someone to translate from stupid to English. But Glover's hysterical "act now" mantra is a familiar one to anyone who has listened to global warming advocates rant on and demand that we stop questioning and take immediate action! Right now! You know what I'm saying! And it can't be ruled out that given a day or two, Dr. Michael Mann will emerge with a new explanation that has global warming affecting tectonic plates by agitating the earth's crust, or something equally stupid, but reproducible in Time and Newsweek and on the CBS Evening News with Botox Barbie herself. (Previously NASA's global warming advocates had blamed global warming for Alaskan earthquakes, but Haiti is a bit too warm to blame on the glaciers, unless someone can find glaciers off the coast of Haiti.) But they've all been topped by Haiti's consul in Sao Paulo who had the following to say;
The consul of Haiti in Brazil, George Samuel Antoine, said the tragedy was being good for the country, which was becoming known. The statement was given on Thursday, not realizing that he was being recorded... The consul also said that the earthquake may have been caused by "voodoo". "De tanto mexer com macumba...não sei o que é aquilo. O africano em si tem maldição", comentou momentos antes da entrevista. "From both mess with voodoo ... do not know what that is. The African itself is a curse," he said moments before the interview.
So far only one english language outlet has covered these remarks, and that is the British Guardian. The US media which spent days outraged over Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh's comments hasn't even picked it up. But why bother being outraged when there's no political gain to be had. Meanwhile Israel, where over 20 percent of the population is below the poverty line and 1 in 3 children goes hungry... is sending its own aid mission to Haiti.
The IDF's aid mission to Haiti left Israel overnight Thursday with equipment for setting up an emergency field hospital. Around 220 soldiers and officers are in the delegation, including 120 medical staff that will operate the hospital in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince.
I can understand sending teams for rescue operations, since Israel has some of the best personnel and dogs when it comes to rescue work from underneath rubble, thanks to a need created by Islamic terrorism. Aish makes a religious case for sending aid. On the flip side of that there's the Haitian ritual "bwile jwif", which means "Burn the Jew".



Daniel Greenfield -- Bio and Archives | Comments

Daniel Greenfield is a New York City writer and columnist. He is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and his articles appears at its Front Page Magazine site.


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