Haiti: The Suffering Overflows

Forgive that this diary is too short.

The New York Times his evening is reporting that the cholera epidemic in Haiti is growing rapidly:

The death toll in Haiti’s cholera epidemic has reached more than 900, the government reported Sunday, as aid groups rushed soap and clean water to a disaster-wracked population to fight the disease.

The Ministry of Health reported that as of Friday, there had been 917 deaths and more than 14,600 were hospitalized with cholera-like symptoms. That is up from the 724 deaths and 11,125 hospitalizations reported a few days before.

The disease has been found in 6 of Haiti’s 10 provinces, known as departments, and is most severe where it originated, in Artibonite, which accounts for nearly two-thirds of the deaths.

Several epidemiologists have said the disease has not peaked and will likely worsen and break out in other regions of the country, with United Nations health officials estimating about 270,000 may be sickened in the coming years.

And the disease has clearly arrived in Port au Prince, where hundreds of thousands still are living in tents or under tarps or are homeless:

Hospitals in Port-au-Prince, where more than one million earthquake refugees live in congested, squalid tent encampments, are overflowing with patients exhibiting cholera symptoms, and the death toll there has reached 27. The disease was first reported in the capital on Nov. 8.

President René Préval, at a conference on the disease on Sunday in Port-au-Prince, urged people to wash their hands frequently and drink only potable water, The Associated Press reported. But even before the earthquake, most of the population lacked access to clean water and sanitation.

There is very little you and I can do about this other than stand by in horror and watch thousands of people die of the disease. What we can do is two things: we can make a donation to ngo's who are on the scene providing medicine and care for stricken people. I recommend Doctors Without Borders, but there are many other ngo's doing exemplary work in Haiti.

And we can get on the phones and send email and write letters urging our congresspersons to make sure that the 1.15 billion appropriated after the January earthquake is actually delivered to Haiti. There is an immediate need for $170 million for cholera care; that could be eased if the US funds are released.

I am sorry that I didn't provide you with links. And I am sorry that I have been writing basically the same diary for the past week with little attention. It is the least I can do. All that remains is to offer prayers for the health and safety of Haiti's people.

Haiti: UN Appeals For Aid, US Sits On Wallet

Haiti is in need of millions of dollars to combat the cholera epidemic, but the US is still holding back $1.15 billion in Aid that has already been appropriated. It's time to tell your congress members to stop sitting on the wallet and get that money to Haiti, where it's urgently needed.

AFP today reports on the need for $164 million in aid to combat the cholera epidemic in Haiti:

GENEVA — The United Nations on Friday appealed for nearly 164 million dollars in aid to tackle cholera in Haiti and avoid being "overrun" by the growing epidemic.

"We hope we can get this otherwise all our efforts will be overrun by the epidemic," said Elisabeth Byrs, a spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Byrs said UN, other aid agencies and Haiti's health ministry needed 163.8 million dollars for a strategy to stifle the sudden epidemic, which has infected more than 11,000 people and killed 724 since last month.

The strategy drawn up by the UN "anticipates up to 200,000 people to show symptoms of cholera ranging from cases of mild diarrhoea to the most severe dehydration" over a period of about six months, OCHA and the World Health Organisation said.

That's an urgent need for $163.8 million dollars.

The US previously appropriated $1.15 billion dollars in aid for Haiti, but guess what? That money has not been delivered. In other words, the funds needed to combat the cholera epidemic are already appropriated in the US but Congress is sitting on the wallet and the aid has not been delivered. That means that unless the US releases these funds, aid for fighting the cholera epidemic has to come from elsewhere.

Yesterday's Miami Herald Editorial, which is worth reading in its entirety because it describes the situation in Haiti fully, made the point about these funds clearly:

President Obama can send a signal by calling for lawmakers to move quickly to allow disbursement of $1.15 billion in reconstruction money for Haiti. The president signed a bill approving the money last July, but the funds remain stuck on Capitol Hill while lawmakers quibble over the details of a spending plan.

I agree with that. I haven't heard the President or anybody in government call for the immediate release of these funds. So yesterday I wrote requesting that all of us immediately email and phone and write our congresspersons to demand the release of these funds. Yesterday the silence that resulted from this was disturbing. You'd think we'd want to get these funds released.

So I am trying again today and sending the same message:

It's simple what to do. Email or call your Senators and Congresspersons. Ask them, please, to make sure that these funds get released.

Here's my email, that I sent to Senators Schumer and Gillibrand:

I am deeply concerned that the cholera epidemic in Haiti endangers the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and that US aid to the country is bogged down and has not been received. The Congress appropriated more than $1 billion for aid to Haiti after the earthquake earlier this year. Today's Miami Herald Editorial notes, "President Obama can send a signal by calling for lawmakers to move quickly to allow disbursement of $1.15 billion in reconstruction money for Haiti. The president signed a bill approving the money last July, but the funds remain stuck on Capitol Hill while lawmakers quibble over the details of a spending plan." I am writing because I want you to do whatever is in your power to get this aid delivered to Haiti. This aid is already long overdue. And receipt of this aid in Haiti is urgently needed to save lives.

Please pitch in. I don't want to sit here and watch this cholera epidemic unfold without a major effort to stop it.

The small act of writing or calling Congress can save thousands of lives in Haiti. Please join me in getting these funds released.

Haiti: Time To Email And Call Congress

Enough. I've been writing for the past week, daily, because I'm concerned that the cholera outbreak in Haiti endangers the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and especially threatens the more than a million Haitians who are living in tents or under tarps in Port au Prince and elsewhere in the country.

This morning's Miami Herald Editorial captures exactly what needs to be said in the US about this impending public health disaster:

As of Wednesday, cholera had claimed at least 583 lives and sickened more than 9,000, according to the Health Ministry. Frantic aid workers are fighting to keep the outbreak from spreading into congested earthquake survivor camps in Port-au-Prince.

This is misery piled upon misery, part of the burden of history in a country where natural disasters are practically a chronic affliction. But this time around Haiti's problems have been compounded by the inexcusably slow pace of recovery and reconstruction.

Ten months after the earthquake, more than one million people still live under plastic sheeting, vulnerable to rainstorms and other menaces. Security in these camps is woefully lacking.
Much of the devastation, meanwhile, has not been cleaned up. Mountains of rubble are evident wherever the earthquake hit. So far, only 5 percent has been removed, far short of the amount that could reasonably have been expected. Bureaucratic delays in disbursing available funds are a major reason for the lack of progress.

These are basic relief tasks that have been left undone. Tireless work by an army of relief workers has stabilized the situation, but the cholera epidemic threatens to undo their efforts.
The reasons for the shaky start are not hard to fathom -- the scale of the devastation, widespread poverty, an ineffective government that suffered a crippling blow when the earthquake destroyed virtually all of the federal buildings and killed thousands of public employees.
But that was, we repeat, 10 months ago. Humanitarian emergencies are never easy to cope with, particularly an off-the-charts disaster like the one that rocked Haiti. Yet despite an encouraging international response at the outset and promises of coordination and cooperation at all levels, the effort has bogged down.

You already know that. The editorial then repeats something I have been saying since the first news of cholera was reported and which is the reason we now need to take action:

President Obama can send a signal by calling for lawmakers to move quickly to allow disbursement of $1.15 billion in reconstruction money for Haiti. The president signed a bill approving the money last July, but the funds remain stuck on Capitol Hill while lawmakers quibble over the details of a spending plan.

It's simple what to do. Email or call your Senators and Congresspersons. Ask them, please, to make sure that these funds get released.

Here's my email, that I sent to Senators Schumer and Gillibrand:

I am deeply concerned that the cholera epidemic in Haiti endangers the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and that US aid to the country is bogged down and has not been received. The Congress appropriated more than $1 billion for aid to Haiti after the earthquake earlier this year. Today's Miami Herald Editorial notes, "President Obama can send a signal by calling for lawmakers to move quickly to allow disbursement of $1.15 billion in reconstruction money for Haiti. The president signed a bill approving the money last July, but the funds remain stuck on Capitol Hill while lawmakers quibble over the details of a spending plan." I am writing because I want you to do whatever is in your power to get this aid delivered to Haiti. This aid is already long overdue. And receipt of this aid in Haiti is urgently needed to save lives.

Please pitch in. I don't want to sit here and watch this cholera epidemic unfold without a major effort to stop it.

Haiti: Cholera Epidemic Grows

The news from Haiti continues to be simply awful. The cholera epidemic that started elsewhere has now reached the Haitian capital, Port Au Prince, where it threatens the 1.5 million people who were displaced by the recent earthquake. "Displaced" is a sanitary way of describing the squalor of terrible living conditions which only foster the spread of the disease.

The epidemic threatens the lives of people who suffered so much in the earthquake and who then survived the rain and flooding caused by Hurricane Tomas. Even before these natural disasters, Haiti was wracked by hunger, poor infrastructure, high infant mortality, short life span, poverty and disease. Now weakened people face the onslaught of a cholera epidemic.


The Miami Hearald reports:

PORT-AU-PRINCE -- With 73 people hospitalized for cholera in this quake-battered capital, the epidemic is spreading and has officially made its way into Haiti's largest city.

``We are on a rise,'' said Christian Lindmeier, spokesman for the World Health Organization in Haiti. ``The figures will climb.''

The cholera death toll now stands at 583, and 9,123 Haitians have been hospitalized with acute diarrhea, Haiti's health ministry said Tuesday.

The increase comes amid fears that flooding from last week's Hurricane Tomas will trigger more hospitalizations and even more deaths from the illness that is spread by drinking contaminated water.
Haitian government health officials acknowledged that the epidemic is evolving and has not yet peaked.

The Ministry of Health says the obvious, that the situation "is now a matter of national security." There's no doubt about that:

The spread of the disease to Port-au-Prince is worrisome because the overcrowded capital is not only home to most of the 1.5 million people displaced by the Jan. 12 earthquake and still living in tents or under tarps but also to hundreds of thousands of other people living without access to safe drinking water and proper sanitation.

Among those who have become ill are 115 people who sought treatment at a hospital in Cité Soleil, a teeming slum in the capital, Timothee said. Officials say they are still awaiting lab results to see if the patients have cholera or another illness that causes similar symptoms.

What emerges is a dreadful picture of widespread, unmitigated suffering of the Haitian people.

What is to be done about this? As I wrote yesterday and the day before,

Two things are clear: all US aid that was appropriated for Haiti, more than a billion dollars, needs to be freed up and delivered there. And it is also a good time to make contributions to organizations that aid Haiti. I recommend Doctors Without Borders.

I am horrified by what I see approaching in Haiti and the scale of human suffering that it portends. I continue to write about this, but I feel like Cassandra, that I combine insight into the future with utter helplessness.

Haiti: Cholera Found in Port Au Prince

As feared, Cholera appears to have arrived in Port Au Prince, Haiti. A first confirmed case has now been reported: the 3 year-old child with the disease had not left Port Au Prince. This outbreak is a major threat to millions of people. The report:

Haiti's cholera outbreak has spread to the capital Port-au-Prince, putting the lives of millions of homeless people at risk.

Health authorities said a three-year-old boy who has not left the city in the last year had caught the disease....

More than 100 suspected cases of cholera among residents of the capital are being investigated.
The outbreak has already killed at least 544 people in other areas of Haiti, according to health ministry executive director Gabriel Timothee.

He said many of the patients in hospital in Port-au-Prince are believed to have recently arrived from the Artibonite Valley, an agricultural area where more than 6,400 of Haiti's known 8,138 cases have been recorded.

The water-borne disease had never been reported in Haiti before its appearance last month.

The earthquake in Haiti demolished much of the weak infrastructure of that impoverished country. Even before the earthquake, sanitation and drinking water and food were major concerns. The earthquake made conditions far worse, evicting thousands form substandard housing and pushing them into make shift tent and shack encampmets in the capital. Then Tomas arrived. The storm brought intense rain and flooding, which seems to have overwhelmed the city's remaining sanitation systems. The street reek. Excrement is everywhere. It was only a matter of time in these conditions before the disease emerged.

Haiti's suffering continues. And now, there is an even greater risk to the lives of Haitians in the capital. As I wrote just yesterday,

Two things are clear: all US aid that was appropriated for Haiti, more than a billion dollars, needs to be freed up and delivered there. And it is also a good time to make contributions to organizations that aid Haiti. I recommend Doctors Without Borders.

Haiti: The Threat Of Cholera Continues

Hurricane Tomas could have been significantly worse. The storm moved slightly to the West; it didn't strike Port au Prince directly. Twenty people were killed. The news is reporting that fewer than 6,000 more people were rendered homeless by the storm. Against a backdrop of long term, pervasive suffering, the Hurricane did not harm as many as was feared. But now, amid all of the misery, another threat looms. Will the flooding make the cholera epidemic in Haiti even worse? CNN reports:

Experts feared Monday that the hurricane that battered Haiti over the weekend could worsen the outbreak of cholera that has killed hundreds of people and hospitalized thousands since it began last month.

The official death toll attributed to the outbreak was 544, with more than 8,000 confirmed cases, Health Minister Alex Larsen told CNN Monday.

Though no cases have been confirmed in Port-au-Prince, tests were being carried out on 91 residents of the capital -- all of whom live in or near the city's densely populated Cite Soleil slum, Larsen said. Except for one person who died over the weekend, all the others have recovered, he said.

Hurricane Tomas' trek past Haiti killed 20 people and injured another 36, a Communications Ministry official said Monday. Seven people were missing and 5,954 were homeless, the official said.

Health officials fear that the water dumped by the storm will worsen the outbreak. The concern is that overflow from latrines and septic tanks could contaminate the supply of fresh drinking water and contribute to the spread of the bacteria.

In the capital, the canals were not overflowing, said American Red Cross spokeswoman Andrea Koppel. But that was not the case in cities west of the capital, which bore the brunt of Hurricane Tomas, she said.

Still, even Port-au-Prince looks and smells like a dump -- a caldron of water, garbage and human waste. "We get used to it," said one resident.

It is extremely difficult to grasp how horrible conditions in Haiti truly are. Even before the recent earthquake, conditions were simply dreadful: poor sanitation, lack of clean water, widespread disease, gnawing poverty, pervasive hunger, high infant mortality, on and on and on. Haiti is by far the poorest country in this hemisphere. And this is nothing new. In 2008 the New York Times ran an article implying that conditions were so bad many Haitians wished they were still under the heal of the Duvaliers. That speaks eloquently to desperation.

The earthquake, of course, brought Haiti to a new level of national misery. And now Hurricane Tomas has made its own contribution to increasing Haiti's suffering. Has all of this brought Haiti now to the threshold of a huge cholera plague?

Two things are clear: all US aid that was appropriated for Haiti, more than a billion dollars, needs to be freed up and delivered there. And it is also a good time to make contributions to organizations that aid Haiti. I recommend Doctors Without Borders.

Haiti: Tras La Tormenta

(CBS/AP) Hurricane Tomas was downgraded to a tropical storm early Saturday as it passed over the Turks and Caicos Islands, losing steam a day after battering seaside towns in Haiti.

Haiti was pummeled with 85 mph winds and from five to ten inches of rain. A foot of standing water fills the capital of Port-au-Prince, where four people are dead and two are missing. ...

It's been raining all night in Port-au-Prince and, for earthquake refugees living in tent cities, it has been a miserable night, reports CBS News producer John Bentley.

There over a million people living in the portable structures, and the rain has been coming down since the sun went down. The streets are flooded and a lot of rivers and streams are overflowing, causing a lot of problems. But as far as Hurricane Tomas goes, Haiti dodged a bullet - the eye missed Port-au-Prince.

If they didn't get the strong winds and major flooding they were worried about, the other problem will be how the storm affects the water and sewage supplies - important as Haiti battles a cholera epidemic in which 400 people have died.

source

The details:

On Friday, panicked residents fled a coastal city in Haiti that had been slammed twice already this decade by killer floods. The hurricane spared most earthquake-refugee camps in the capital but battered a seaside town to the west that was nearly destroyed by January's earthquake.

Coming ashore at Haiti's far southwestern edge, Tomas slammed the coastline with 85-mph winds and killed at least four people with storm surge and rains.

It then flooded camps harboring earthquake refugees, turning some into squalid islands in Leogane, a town west of the capital that lost 90 percent of its buildings and thousands of people in the Jan. 12 quake. Two people were missing in the city.

Tomas turned streets of the capital, Port-au-Prince, into canals of flowing garbage. The storm largely spared the city's vast homeless encampments, however, allaying fears that an estimated 1.3 million displaced people would suffer from high winds and rain on hillsides and in parks and streets.

Haitians had high hopes that the storm would move on before triggering floods in Gonaives, a northwestern coastal city that completely flooded in 2004 and again in 2008, killing thousands. As rains fell on the city's slums of Raboteau and Jubilee, people living in the low-lying areas began heading for high ground.

"It's not a major flood, but it's flooding in some areas," Doctors Without Borders spokesman Francois Servranckx told The Associated Press.

And so the storm has passed Haiti. It has left a new disaster in its wake. And Haiti will now, again, fade from the traditional media and disappear behind a curtain. That would make this a great time to remember the suffering in Haiti and to send a donation-- even small donations mount up-- to Doctors Without Borders.

May all in Haiti be free from suffering. May all be well. May all be safe.

Haiti: On The Effectiveness Of Ceremonies, Part II

This is working. Really.

The idea is to shoot the gap. Put Tomas between the islands. So far so good. A little to the West might be better, but this is definitely looking good.  A work that is progressing.  Whatever you are doing, keep doing it.

On The Effectiveness Of Ceremonies

In connection with yesterday's ceremonies to spare Haiti the brunt of Hurricane Tomas, we find this article today:

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- What had been Hurricane Tomas is now a disorganized tropical depression, and forecasters don't expect it to regain hurricane force.

The storm, with winds near 35 mph, is about 390 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and moving west-northwest at about 6 mph.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami believes it will reach Haiti by Friday after brushing past Jamaica.

One forecaster says he's baffled by the sharp decrease in the storm and the hurricane center says there's still a possibility that it will regain strength.

Tomas has already killed at least 14 people and left seven missing in the eastern Caribbean nation of St. Lucia.

That speaks for itself.

And, of course, a very special thank you, thank you, thank you, gracias, gracias, muchas gracias.

Haiti: Hurricane Tomas And Today's Ceremony

This map warns of impending devastation. The news from Haiti this morning remains frightening. Bloomberg reports on the huge scale of the looming disaster:

Tropical Storm Tomas strengthened over the Caribbean Sea as Haiti braced for the system to hit as a hurricane at the end of the week....

Haiti’s government, the United Nations and humanitarian agencies are working on a response based on a projection the storm may affect 500,000 people, according to a statement on the website of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The nation is already reeling from a cholera outbreak and a magnitude 7.0-magnitude earthquake in January that killed an estimated 300,000 people and caused $7.8 billion in damage. ...

The Haitian government has agreed to allow the U.S.S. Iwo Jima to dock in Port-au-Prince if needed for disaster relief, according to the UN. Emergency groups are stocking up on tarpaulins, blankets, soap, hygiene kits and rehydration salts, it said.

More than 1 million Haitians have been living in camps since the January earthquake, while an outbreak of cholera has killed 337 people and infected more than 4,764, the World Health Organization regional branch said on Nov.1.

An article in the Miami Herald provides additional worries:

In Haiti, however, wind speeds won't be as critical as rainfall totals.
Flooding from Hurricanes Hanna and Ike in 2008 killed more than 800 people and the four hurricanes that hit Haiti that year left $1 billion in damage. A tropical deluge also could overwhelm efforts to contain an outbreak of cholera, caused by drinking contaminated water, that already has killed more than 300 people.

Meeting with authorities from the surrounding vulnerable regions around Les Cayes in southwestern Haiti, ... The health ministry was evaluating the possibility of evacuating patients at the government-run hospital, which is prone to flooding....

Still, the southern coast's largest city -- and Haiti's fourth largest, Les Cayes -- is vulnerable to floods even with normal rainfall.
``Once a hurricane hits us, we are in a mess,'' said Pierre Leger, a Les Cayes businessman, recalling how twice in two years mud burried the city of Gonaives after hurricanes.
``We have two canals -- one on the left, one on the right. They are blocked with trash, there are houses built on them. What happened to Gonaives could happen to us.''

I've been writing about this now for a few days, beginning when I saw that the projected track for the storm turned North, toward the south coast of Haiti. I've hoped that the Traditional Media would pick up the story, and that there could again be an outpouring of aid, this time before the disaster strikes, in time to do some good. That hasn't happened. Watching the animated tracks at NOAA and the flash and java versions feels to me like watching a slow motion train wreck.

I've suggested making donations to Doctors Without Borders and other Haiti aid organizations. I've posted these essays at various group blogs and on Facebook. Response to what I see as an enormous emergency in this Hemisphere has been slight. I choose not to analyze why this might be so: following that thread only makes my small essays seem like the unheeded, repeated warnings of Cassandra.

So I decided to call for help from my friends in the Shamanic Community across the world. I've sent emails (yes, you can send emails to Shamans), I've posted on Facebook (yes, Shamans are on fb), and I've talked with Shaman friends (you don't need Quetzel feathers and a bone through your nose to be a Shaman, btw). Consider, if you've read this far, that this is your personal invitation to help, also. At 11:30 am ET today, I will conduct a small ceremony, and I will ask Pachamama, Santa Madre Tierra, Mother Earth please to turn Hurricane Tomas away from Haiti, and if she must put Hurricane Tomas's landfall in or near Haiti, I will ask Pachamama please to be compassionate and merciful, please to protect the lives of all of those in Haiti, to recognize that they have been devastated already, and are in serious danger. I know already that others on three continents will do ceremonies at the same time. The more, the better. And, of course, there's no prescribed liturgy: each of us will do what we can, each of us will do what feels like the right thing to do in that moment.

In my email I described my plan:

Hurricane Tomas is about to run over Haiti. What do we know about Haiti's current situation? Well, it's dire. The Earthquake destroyed the infrastructure. Many thousands of people are homeless or in shelters that don't really provide shelter or in badly damaged, unreliable housing. There's a cholera outbreak. And now, Hurricane Tomas is coming. If it arrives with any intensity at all, and it appears that it will, it will create even more havoc: loss of life, loss of shelter, loss of food, loss of drinking water. Medicine will be even more scarce, and even more people will need it. The cholera will expand. There will be flooding. Unsanitary conditions will abound. Because of extensive deforestation, there will be mudslides. Roads that are barely repaired from the earthquake will again be impassable. Hospitals will again be overwhelmed and unable to care for the injured and ill.

So what I propose is that we all have ceremonias tomorrow (November 2, 2010) at 11:30 am ET. And that we forward this email to all of our fellow Shamans who might be interested, and that we ask them please to make offerings and do ceremonias at the same time, that we ask for their prayers and offerings. Together we need to move the hurricane to the West so that the most vulnerable people in Haiti will not be harmed. And we need to ask the hurricane, if it must come ashore in Haiti, to be compassionate, merciful, to spare the most vulnerable, to be as gentle as possible.

... I believe that Pachamama responds to these ceremonias, that she guides these storms on their courses, and that when we honor and acknowledge our inner Hurricanes and destructive storms, as Pachamama wants, she in turn is happy to spare others from an actual, fierce Hurricane. ...

I will make a fire at 11:30 am tomorrow. If one of you is in the area, please join me.

In my view, the part about honoring and acknowledging my inner Hurricanes and destructive storms is a key. I dreamt that last night, and I am carrying it and turning it inside myself today.

Thank you for reading, and thank you for your contributions.

A Slow Motion Train Wreck: Haiti

A picture is worth a thousand rants. The big island to the right of Cuba is Hispaniola. And the country on the west side of that island, the country that is about to be run over by Hurricane Tomas, is Haiti.

What do we know about Haiti's current situation? Well, it's dire. The Earthquake destroyed the infrastructure. Many thousands of people are homeless or in shelters that don't really provide shelter or in badly damaged, unreliable housing. There's a cholera outbreak. And now, Hurricane Tomas is coming. If it arrives with any intensity at all, and it appears that it will, it will create even more havoc: loss of life, loss of shelter, loss of food, loss of drinking water. Medicine will be even more scarce, and even more people will need it. The cholera will expand. There will be flooding. Unsanitary conditions will abound. Because of extensive deforestation, there will be mudslides. Roads that are barely repaired from the earthquake will again be impassable. Hospitals will again be overwhelmed and unable to care for the injured and ill.

I know that tomorrow is Election Day in the US, and that the Traditional Media are all focused on the T-party and the horserace aspects of the electoral process. But please. Could we please also spread the word on what is happening in Haiti and urge our fellow writers and readers to begin making donations to Doctors Without Borders? That could actually save some lives.

Haiti: Yet Another Disaster Lurks

Hasn't Haiti suffered enough? Centuries of grotesque exploitation and purposeful neglect. And most recently, the devastating earthquake. Then an inadequate relief effort that has left thousands and thousands homeless or stuck in makeshift, flimsy camps, without adequate housing, food, medicine or sanitation. An outbreak of Cholera. And now, on top of all of that, the unimaginable: a possible Hurricane this week. And a very big one at that.

The model predicts the storm will make a right turn. In fact, almost all of the models say it will make a right turn. And when it does, it will come ashore in Haiti. This will cause loss of life, flooding, further outbreaks of disease, loss of even temporary shelter, unavailability of food. A nightmare for those living in Haiti.

I've asked before that we contribute to Doctors Without Borders, specifically for Haiti Aid. Now I'm asking again. What else can be done? What else can I or you do?

Money for specialized aid is extremely important. As important, and perhaps more important in the long run, I think is for US citizens to being to know Haiti's history and the story of its relationship to the US, in other words, the story of how it got to be the way it is now. I'm sure we all realize that Haiti didn't get to its present horrendous situation all by its self, without a lot of US and European "help." To ferret how all of this has happened, a great starting point is this dailyKos essay by allie123. It's part of a series. Each piece is important on its own. Please take the time to read them.

For now, though, please consider an immediate, small donation to Doctors Without Borders. It might save some lives in Haiti. It might alleviate some of the suffering.

Death In The Time Of Cholera

Haiti, ravaged for centuries and suffering long before its enormous, destructive earthquake, now braces for a huge cholera epidemic. The cholera epidemic on Saturday had already killed more than 200 and there are more than 2600 reported cases. Today the news is still bad. The NY Times reports:

Diarrhea, while a common ailment here, is a symptom of cholera. And anxiety has been growing fiercely that the cholera epidemic, which began last week in the northwest of Haiti, will soon strike the earthquake-ravaged Port-au-Prince metropolitan area.

“It travels with the speed of lightning, I’ve heard, and it can kill a person in four hours,” said Jean Michel Maximilien, a camp leader. “So of course we are all on edge.”

For now, the cholera outbreak, with more than 250 deaths and more than 3,100 confirmed cases, has been contained to the central rural regions around the Artibonite River, 60 miles north of the capital. But Port-au-Prince is tensely preparing for its arrival in the densely populated slums and tent camps here, with treatment centers being established, soap and water purification tablets being distributed and public safety announcements stressing hygiene. ...

Since the January earthquake, this devastated country has been bracing for a secondary disaster — a hurricane, an eruption of violence, an outbreak of disease. But nobody anticipated that cholera would make its first appearance in 50 years. It was “the one thing we thought we were relatively safe on,” said Imogen Wall, spokeswoman for the United Nations humanitarian coordination office.

Because so many in Haiti teeter on the brink, and because a cholera epidemic in Port au Prince and the rest of that beleaguered nation can be so horrible, this is a good time to make a small donation to Doctors Without Borders, who are already on the scene and providing treatment.

And then there's Philip Roth's most recent book, Nemesis, that explores a polio epidemic in Newark, New Jersey in 1944. I finished reading it last night; I had read the reviews when it came out earlier this month. If like me you know Newark, and particularly the Weequahic area, the book brings back memories of the 50's and early '60's. And Bucky, the main character, is as familiar to you as any other kid you played stickball with. If you don't know that particular Newark, maybe you don't quite get the book in the same way.

The epidemic in Newark, like the threatening one in Haiti, has its many mysteries. Nobody knows exactly how it is spread. Nobody knows what to do to stop it. Flight seems a good idea, until the disease and death arrive anyway. There is seemingly no escape. There is no way to predict who will become ill and who will be untouched and who will die. And in Haiti the options, because of the grinding poverty are far fewer. Treatment will remain mostly unavailable. There will be many more fatalities even if the outbreak can be isolated in Antibonite. What a horror.

My heart goes out to Haiti. And to those who are there now. May the epidemic be contained. May they all be well.

Please make a donation to Doctors Without Borders. This can help.

Please Remember Haiti

My son just got back from a week in Haiti. Haiti was impoverished beyond belief before the earthquake. And now it is difficult to describe the pervasive suffering. His descriptions bring me to tears.

And then there's this:

NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas (AP) -- After the Haitian national soccer team couldn't eat another bite of chef-prepared pork or ice cream, and before going back to its cabins at a Texas resort, coach Jairo Rios asked for a favor.

Tents. As many as they could haul back to Haiti.

''I eat well here. I sleep well,'' forward Charles Herold Jr. said in French, speaking through a translator. ''But I cannot help but think of my friends and family who don't have that. I can't get that off my mind.''

I can't get that off my mind either. I hope you won't be able to get it off your mind. The futbol players can't get it off their minds, either:

Players are already wrestling with the guilt of their relatively better fortunes. Forward Eliphene Cadet, 29, escaped from his house in Port-au-Prince after the roof caved on him and two children.

Leaving Haiti meant leaving his family in a tent in a field, near where his house once stood. Other players left their families in similar conditions.

''All the guys talk about it,'' Cadet said. ''I know that they're here. There are still tremors now. That's our biggest worry.''

So as the rains come, shelter is extremely important. And of course medical aid continues to be important. And, of course, drinking water and sanitation are critical.

There are so many of us, and we have so much. Can we use this essay to develop a list of organizations that will accept our small donations to continue aid in Haiti? Can we work together on this? Can we make some donations?

Haiti: We Are The World

The question, the eternal question about this is, and remains: how do you take the energy of this performance into the world and keep it going? How do you make it bloom? How do you keep it new? How do you ride it to a better world?

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

A Song For Haiti: Let's Do It Together

Wear Red for Haiti
Date: Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Time: 12:00pm - 11:55pm
Location: Everywhere (There's no specific place, it's a nationwide/worldwide event)

Description: Everyone should listen to this. It's called Together (A Song for Haiti) and was recorded by the High School of Recording Arts. The "first step" that they're talking about? It's exactly what you all are doing right now, coming together to show your support. By showing our support for these people, we WILL increase the donations given and we WILL make a difference in the lives of everyone affected by this quake.

Show your support for the victims of the earthquake disaster in Haiti by wearing red on January 19. We're all one people and we all share this world, and we must stand up for one another when others begin to fall apart.

IF YOU HAVE A TWITTER, TWEET THE LINK TO THIS EVENT SO THAT ALL OF YOUR FOLLOWERS WHO HAVE A FACEBOOK WILL BE AWARE OF IT! TELL THEM TO CONTINUE TWEETING IT AS WELL!

If you are interested in donating money to the victims, you can do so in several different ways:
1. Text "HAITI" to 90999 to donate $10 to the American Red Cross which is also aiding in the efforts.
2. Obviously if you are aware of any charities sending money to the victims, these would work as well.

There is a long list of organizations participating in Haiti as of right now, so if you have the money to spare, please give what you can to help these people.

Action: Stop Deportations To Haiti

This is a straightforward and important request.

The Friends Committee on National Legislation, a a Quaker-based and widely respected Washington lobby for peace and justice, is asking for letters to President Obama and our Congresspersons urging the U.S. government to immediately act to grant Temporary Protected Status to the 30,000 Haitian immigrants presently facing deportation. That means that attempts to deport Haitians back to their ravaged country would be halted.

The Friends Committee has made this easy. Just click here and follow the instructions.

Let compassion guide us on this.

US Kakistocracy In The Caribbean: Haiti

Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti

This morning's NY Times has an extremely strange story about Haiti. The premise is that things are now so bad in Haiti, that some Haitians wish they still had Papa Doc or Baby Doc Duvalier back as their military despot:

But Victor Planess, who works at the National Cemetery here, has a soft spot for Mr. Duvalier, the man known as Papa Doc. Standing graveside the other day, Mr. Planess reminisced about what he considered the good old days of Mr. Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude, who together ruled Haiti from 1957 to 1986.

“I’d rather have Papa Doc here than all those guys,” Mr. Planess said, gesturing toward the presidential palace down the street. “I would have had a better life if they were still around.”

Mr. Planess, 53, who complains that hunger has become so much a part of his life that his stomach does not even growl anymore, is not alone in his nostalgia for Haiti’s dictatorial past. Other Haitians speak longingly of the security that existed then as well as the lack of garbage in the streets, the lower food prices and the scholarships for overseas study.

Haiti may have made significant strides since President René Préval, elected in 2006, became the latest leader to pass through the revolving door of Haitian politics. But the changes he has pushed have been incremental, not fast enough for many down-and-out Haitians.

The article is worth reading in its entirety, primarily because of its conceit that Haiti, seething on one end of the island of Hispaniola in the midst of the US sphere of influence in the Caribbean, has developed its present dystopia all by its lonesome self, without any assistance worth mentioning from its gigantic hemispheric neighbor, the United States.

The United States has always stirred the pot in Haiti. The first United States occupation of Haiti began on July 28, 1915 and ended almost two decades later in mid-August, 1934. Other US occupations began in 1994 and in 2004, and were conducted under the auspices of the United Nations.

Memory for events in this hemisphere is unbelievably short. Some may recall that four years ago, in 2004, the elected-- the 2000 election in Haiti, like the one in the US was disputed-- Haitian president Bertrand Aristide left the country in circumstances that are still debated:

On March 1, 2004, US Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), along with Aristide family friend Randall Robinson, reported that Aristide had told them (using a smuggled cellular phone), that he had been forced to resign and abducted from the country by the United States. He claimed to be held hostage by an armed military guard.

Aristide later repeated similar claims, as in an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! on March 16. He was pressured to resign from office by U.S. soldiers and James B. Foley, U.S. Ambassador to Haïti, on February 29. An aircraft provided by the U.S. carried Aristide and his wife, Mildred Trouillot Aristide, into exile to the Central African Republic. Goodman asked Aristide if he resigned, and President Aristide replied: "No, I didn't resign. What some people call 'resignation' is a 'new coup d'etat,' or 'modern kidnapping.'"

Many supporters of the Fanmi Lavalas party and Aristide, as well as some foreign supporters, denounced the rebellion as a foreign controlled coup d'etat orchestrated by Canada, France and the United States (Goodman, et al., 2004) to remove a publicly elected President. A new book on the subject, Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment by Peter Hallward, scrupulously documents the events leading up to February 29, 2004, and concludes that what occurred during the "rebellion" was in fact a modern coup d'etat, financed and orchestrated by forces allied with the US government. /snip

Some have come forward to support his claim saying they witnessed him being escorted out by American soldiers at gunpoint.

Sources close to Aritistide also claim the Bush administration blocked attempts to reinforce his bodyguards. /snip

According to a Washington Times, article of April, 2004

Mr. Aristide, who accuses the United States and France of conspiring to force him out of power, filed a lawsuit in Paris last week accusing unnamed French officials of 'death threats, kidnapping and sequestration' in connection with his flight to Africa.

The Bush administration insists that Mr. Aristide had personally asked for help and voluntarily boarded a U.S. plane. 'He drafted and signed his letter of resignation all by himself and then voluntarily departed with his wife and his own security team,' Mr. Powell said.

The US have denied the accusations. "He was not kidnapped," Secretary of State Colin Powell said. "We did not force him onto the airplane. He went on the airplane willingly and that's the truth." The kidnapping claim is "absolutely false," concurred Parfait Mbaye, the communications minister for the Central African Republic, where Aristide's party was taken. The minister told CNN that Aristide had been granted permission to land in the country after Aristide himself – as well as the U.S. and French governments – requested it.

According the US, as the rebels approached the capital, James B. Foley, U.S. ambassador to Haiti, got a phone call from a high-level aide to Aristide, asking if the U.S. could protect Aristide and help facilitate his departure if he resigned. The call prompted a series of events that included a middle-of-the-night phone call to President Bush and a scramble to find a plane to carry Aristide into exile. He traveled voluntarily via motorcade to the airport with his own retinue of security guards, including some contracted Americans. Before takeoff, Aristide gave a copy of his resignation letter to Foley's aide."

Following Aristide's departure, the first elections were held two years later, on February 8, 2006 to elect a new President. Rene Preval was declared to have won:

Partial election results, released on February 9, indicated that he had won with about sixty percent of the vote, but as further results were released, his share of the vote slipped to 48.7% – thus making a run-off necessary. Several days of popular demonstrations in favour of Préval followed in Port-au-Prince and other cities in Haiti. On February 14, Préval claimed that there had been fraud among the vote counts, and demanded that he be declared the winner outright of the first round. Protesters paralyzed the capital with burning barricades and stormed a luxury hotel to demand results from Haiti's nearly week-old election as ex-President Rene Preval fell further below the 50 per cent needed to win the presidency. On February 16, 2006, Préval was declared the winner of the Presidential Election by the Provisional Electoral Council with 51.15 percent of the vote, after the exclusion of "blank" ballots from the count.

And what did Preval do right after being declared the winner? Upon his taking office he immediately signed an oil deal with Venezuela and traveled to the United States, Cuba, and France. But it's the economic connection of impoverished Haiti with Venezuela that may be upsetting to the present United States government:

Haiti under Preval has been cooperating diplomatically and fraternally with its fellow countries of Latin America. The slowly-stabilizing country has seemingly benefited in a rather solid economic partnership with Venezuela. This recently-forged friendship between Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and the Haitian president has resulted in various economic agreements. 4 power plants (a 40 megawatt, a 30 megawatt, and two 15 megawatts) are set to be constructed in Haiti. An oil refinery is also scheduled to be installed in the country, with a production capacity of 10,000 barrels of oil per day. Venezuela's assistance to Haiti is founded upon a historic act where the newly-independent Haiti welcomed and tended to Simón Bolívar and provided military power to aid Bolivar's cause in liberating much of South America. Haiti's Latin American alliance provides the country with much of its needed aid. Fidel as well as Raul Castro and other Cuban diplomats such as Vice President Esteban Lazo Hernandez have thanked Haiti for consistently voting in the United Nations General Assembly against the United States embargo against Cuba.

And so, despite long term United States occupation and repeated military involvement, Haiti has begun to reach out to its wealthy southern neighbor and forge bonds with Venezuela. And just as the United States is upset by Chavez's alliances with Bolivia, and Chile, and Nicaragua, and Cuba, so too an alliance of Haiti with Chavez marks a loss of US influence in its own backyard.

Is that why the New York Times is today talking to its readers about the potential return of Duvalier? Is that why the Times claims that changes in Haiti aren't proceeding quick enough for the poorest of the poor and implying that a rightwing military despot might be a better choice?

Ranas Perdidas y Ranas Extintas

cross posted at daily Kos

How very strange and disquieting. Frogs are disappearing from our planet. Many species have already become extinct and even more are being driven toward extinction.

In 2006 the Washington Post reported:

Rising temperatures are responsible for pushing dozens of frog species over the brink of extinction in the past three decades, according to findings being reported today by a team of Latin American and U.S. scientists.

The study, published in the journal Nature, provides compelling evidence that climate change has already helped wipe out a slew of species and could spur more extinctions and the spread of diseases worldwide. It also helps solve the international mystery of why amphibians around the globe have been vanishing from their usual habitats over the past quarter-century -- as many as 112 species have disappeared since 1980.

Apparently, rising temperatures make frogs more vulnerable to disease.

J. Alan Pounds -- the resident scientist at the Tropical Science Center's Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve in Costa Rica and the study's lead author -- worked with 13 other researchers to pin down the link between rising tropical temperatures and the spread of the deadly chytrid fungus that has wiped out dozens of species of harlequin frogs in recent years.
"Disease is the bullet killing frogs, but climate change is pulling the trigger," Pounds said. "Global warming is wreaking havoc on amphibians and will cause staggering losses of biodiversity if we don't do something first."

According to researchers, around 122 amphibian species have become extinct worldwide since 1980, and another 32 percent are currently considered at risk of extinction.

source

I am not a herpetologist. And I hadn't heard this news. Or if I did, it somehow didn't make a very deep or lasting impression. But I read Latin American literature extensively. I just finished Mayra Montero's gem of a novel In the Palm of Darkness, which is about love and politics and, yes, the extinction of frogs. The story is a search for the last of the species "grenouille du sang", the Haitian name for "Eleutherodactylus sanguineus" by an American herpetologist and his Haitian guide.

I'm not going to summarize the plot of the book; that would be a disservice. It should be read in its entirety. One quick point: when Latin American writers set a novel in Haiti, they bring their "A game." And Montero's book is a small wonder.

Two vignettes convey the ecological problem:

Every spring thousands of samll, golden frogs belonging to the species known as Bufo pereglenes would appear in the rivers and ponds of the Monteverde forest in northern Costa Rica.

It was the season when they engaged in a curious mating ritual that lasted for several days.

In 1988 only one golden frog was seen in the entire range of the forest.

Two years later, in 1990, the Bufo periglenes becamse completely extinct.

page 67.

In, 1992 four frog species disappeared from Casuco National Park in Honduras.

Eleutherodactylus milesi, Hyla soalia, Plectobyla dasypus, and Plectrobyla teuchestes, whose populations once abounded in the region, had given no prior indications of problems in the habitat, or any signs of decline.

The frogs disappeared without a trace, and not a single tadpole of the four species could be found in any of the numerous bodies of water in the area.

Biologists have emphasized "the catastrophic, unexplainable nature" of these disappearance.

page 157

My grief on learning of these extinctions is palpable. I have no quick solution. There may be no solution.

I hope that mentioning the frogs and Montero's novel can move us toward awareness of the devastating consequences of our failure to pay attention to our surroundings.