Yeeeesssssssss my precioussssssss, we wants our lootersssssss, yesssssss we doesssssssssss.

Yeeeesssssssss my precioussssssss, we wants our lootersssssss, yesssssss we doesssssssssss.
So much of the public response to this catastrophe is disquieting, to say the least. I am speaking further than the vile and determined ignorance in particular, on the part of those who really should know better, like megadweeb David Brooks, but by those who believe they know our national history. They too prefer in the end to blame the victims, to wear a blindfold when it comes to the responsibility on the part of this nation and others for the wreckage.

That's why they don't see anything wrong with the bodies bullldozed into mass graves without any attempt to photograph the faces for later recognition, because, yannno it will be worse if we don't. Regretable, perhaps, but nothing to get ourselves heated about. Only irrational people like Haitians are upset by this. Bad for public health (since when has Haiti's pubic health -- or our own national public health, for that matter -- mattered to the U.S.A.?) However, those who actually work in public health say there is no proof that dead bodies, per se, cause disease.

Nevertheless I'm told in tones that one uses to an unreasonable child that my concern about this behavior indicates that I'm "too emotionally involved and am not seeing straight." Such behavior has nothing to do with racism or colonialism. It's because there's nothing else to do.

There's no infrastructure there! No government! No organization! And so many bodies! You can't do anything else. Too bad, but, well, that is how it is. I'll send another check to Doctors Without Borders -- which, by the way, aren't allowed to fly into Haiti's only functional airport because it is controlled by the U.S. military and the U.S. military isn't allowing them in. (Shades of New Orleans -- assistance and supplies kept out of the city at gunpoint -- remember?) They have to go to the DR and truck the personnel and supplies across the mountains instead. How long before our looters and other criminal elements start highjacking? (We must have our looters, and even will bring them into being, if needs be ....

Funny, these same people didn't say that of me when it was Katrina's disaster of the levees destroying New Orleans. Then one and all were more than willing to throw the blame where it belonged. But they saw what happened to New Orleans as a consequence of a particular moment in U.S. history and believed if bushcheneybrownies etc. were gone nothing like this would happen again. But what happened in New Orleans is part of the continuum of our national policies that are also executed in Haiti.

Haiti's condition, like New Orleans' isn't something that has happened in an isolated moment of history, but is yet another disaster for Haiti in a continum of U.S. and neo colonialist policies and power. Which means we're all responsible, to the degree that we've ignored Haiti and what our nation does there and has always done there. But we want to believe that sending a check to Doctors Without Borders absolves us of any personal blame or responsibility, and additionally, it allows so many of us to re-blame the victims. Thus we must have our looters and our homicides -- our 'breakdown of law and order.' When it has been this nation's policy to have no law and order in Haiti other than what it chooses to underwrite and enable -- empowering thugs to keep the population in line.

None of us without food or water for going on 5 days, no home, no NOTHING, with our loved ones dead and dying and lost all around us, would ever get unreasonable much less irrational or ever consider lashing out. It's all right to throw a Haitian's relatives into a mass grave with no photograph that might tell her and the grieving remainder of the family where they might be. But not our relatives. That's different. They are nice respectable Americans, not a poor blameful disaster victims in Haiti (or, in fact as so many said and still say, in New Orleans).

And we will continue to refuse to see why Haiti has no infrastructure, no functioning government, no organization -- hardly even hospitals -- that most of the functioning health care in Haiti has has long been provided by the medical people of another poor Caribbean nation, Cuba -- nor shall we in this country even mention that this is so, because Cuba like Haiti, made a deal with the devil.

Why it is particularly important for Haitians to know where their dead are, read Madison Smartt Bell's Haiti in Ink and Tears: A Literary Sampler in today's NY Times Week in Review.

You will also wish to read John Maxwell's column in the Jamaica Observer.  JM is a grand old life-time Jamaican activist, a big stick in the eye of destructive capitalism in Jamaica and throughout the Caribbean.

-- Remedial Haiti 101.

Haitian Earthquake

M's immediate birth family have regrouped and reached her. But at least one of her aunts is dead.

The woman who is the vignette on the cover of The World That Made New Orleans, has lost many family members. Also the house she was building with every penny she has been saving for 15 years. It is now dust.

Madison's in touch now, and his people are mostly all right, physically.

E's family is still not in touch at all.
FF's daughter has checked in, but his son is missing.
Nothing from Boukman Eksperyans.

On and on.

Bodies are being bulldozed into mass grave.

Even in Tsunami photos were taken of the dead. Nothing for Haitians. Nothing for New Orleans. They are black. Send 'em, down. Doesn't matter.

African diaspora peoples. If there is ANYTHING at all that is pan-African, pan-Caribbean, it is the respect for the ancestors. This is obscene.

Larry Hama, Marvel Cartoonist, Celebrity Postmamboist 003

Postmamboists care about Haitians and Haiti.

Who wears Postmamboism? Larry Hama, that's who, Marvel Cartoonist, writer, band member THE KOTICS.

Haitian Art, Haitian Music, Haitian Culture, Haitian Religion, Haitian People

I keep thinking of the artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat, who was the first Haitian I met, who was my introduction to Haitian culture. It was the first window that opened to me of Afro-Caribbean, or at least African-Caribbean culture in Diaspora. He'd be working so hard right now to help, if he were still alive
Soon after I met LoLo and the members of his Boukman Eksperyans group, then Richard Morse and Ram. Lolo is a houngan. He provided my first introduction and instruction in Vodún
Now there are Michelle and so many others.

Ed Schultz -- On Top of the Haitian Earthquake Catastrophe

The Ed Schultz Air America radio program has a list of reputable organizations for help.

http://www.wegoted.com/news/detail.asp?newsID=3047

His program today is really ON TOP of the catastrophe, with informed figures and Haitian specialists reporting the progress of what's going on with orgs around the world tryiing to help, the history of Haiti, everything.

Ed Schultz hasn't know much if anything previously about Haiti. His astonishment at learning that 75 percent of adult Haitians don't have jobs has left him boggled. And, bless his heart, enraged. You hear him attempting to track through how a population in this condition, that literally lives from day-to-day, can be on this nation's doorstep. To him this is incomprehensible.
What is also interesting is what is not being mentioned by anyone in connection with the wreck that Haiti is, is the history of Haiti and French colonial status whose economy was entirely slave-based, and the subsequent racism practiced against Haiti by everyone from Jefferson on. That this is the consequence of refusal to recognize a black state's integrity with refusal to trade, or have any relationship with this state other than as a subserviant, client, under white imperialist thumbs.

Strongest Earthquake Ever Recorded in the Caribbean Basin

It was a 9, rather than a 7, as initially reported.

Many of us didn't get much sleep last night.

Information is hard to get, particularly after Richard Morse's batteries died (he owns and lives in the famous Hotel Olaffson, and is the head of the Haitian music group, Ram). His tweets were  the closest to real information a lot of us had.

To make an emergency donation to Oxfam:


https://www.oxfam.org.uk/donate/haiti-earthquake/index.php

A worse problem than raising money is going to be the lack of organizational infrastructure with which to coordinate and distribute aid. How do you get drinking water to two million people? A number of people seem to be ready to go down as volunteers, as per the comments on

http://redcrosschat.org/2010/01/12/earthquake-in-haiti/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedCrossChat+(Red+Cross+Chat)

No word yet of the situation of the Cuban doctors who are in Haiti on an ongoing basis.

The best composite source I've seen is the "The Lede" blog at the New York Times -- too long and too many widgets to copy into an e-mail -- with updated information about resources for information and contributions, as well as tweetlinks, pictures, video, etc.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/gleaning-information-from-haiti-online/?hp

There is a State Department number to call for information about family members in Haiti: 1-888-407-4747. I don't know how useful that will be.

There is a site set up to collect information:

http://www.haiti.ushahidi.com/#

It doesn't have a lot of material yet, but it reports that the P-au-P airport is functioning. On the other hand, CNN's Anderson Cooper reported that a helicopter he was in almost collided with a small plane -- that is, there is no functional air-traffic control.

There have been numerous aftershocks. An explanation of the tectonics underlying the quake is at

http://scienceblogs.com/highlyallochthonous/2010/01/tectonics_of_the_haiti_earthqu.php

Photographer Daniel Morel's twitpic blog, if you can bear to look at it, is

http://twitpic.com/photos/photomorel

There's also a flickr feed:

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=haiti&ss=2&s=rec

For vodouisants, Tuesday was Dantor's day, today, Wednesday, is the day of Papa Ogou.

Haiti - Earthquake

Our Friends.
O Our Friends.

Even though I hope this latter is way overblown.

7.0 earthquake hits Haiti sparking tsunami watch.