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| January 16, 2010 |
Port-au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) -- U.S. helicopters carrying food hovered above the ground in one area of the battered Haitian capital on Saturday, flinging out boxes to the anxious crowd. It was a chaotic scene as hundreds of Haitians without food and water for four days swarmed toward the boxes, ignoring the wind and dust kicked up from the helicopters' blades.
How we Can help Haiti
Great relief agencies working in Haiti.-Partners in Health www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti
- International Medical Corps <https://www.imcworldwide.org
- World Vision <http://www.worldvision.org
-American Red Cross <http://www.redcross.org
- CARE: http://www.care.org
- Catholic Relief Services <https://secure.crs.org
- World Food Programme <http://www.wfp.org
- Save the Children <http://www.savethechildren.org
- UNICEF http://unicefusa.org
- Americares <http://www.americares.org
- Doctors Without Borders <http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org
- The International Committee of the Red Cross <http://www.icrc.org
- The Salvation Army <http://www.salvationarmyusa.org
-Clinton Bush fund ,http://www.clintonbushhaitifund.org
To text a donation:
Red Cross/ US Government joint rescue/relief effort- text 90999 type HAITI then 10 dollars will automatically be added to your phone bill.
For information about relatives in Haiti 888-4074747
- International Medical Corps <https://www.imcworldwide.org
- World Vision <http://www.worldvision.org
-American Red Cross <http://www.redcross.org
- CARE: http://www.care.org
- Catholic Relief Services <https://secure.crs.org
- World Food Programme <http://www.wfp.org
- Save the Children <http://www.savethechildren.
- UNICEF http://unicefusa.org
- Americares <http://www.americares.org
- Doctors Without Borders <http://www.doctorswithoutbord
- The International Committee of the Red Cross <http://www.icrc.org
- The Salvation Army <http://www.salvationarmyusa.
-Clinton Bush fund ,http://www.clintonbushhaitifund.org
To text a donation:
Red Cross/ US Government joint rescue/relief effort- text 90999 type HAITI then 10 dollars will automatically be added to your phone bill.
For information about relatives in Haiti 888-4074747
| January 15, 2010 |
30 countries have responded with the US taking the lead, deploying warships, a fully equipped floating hospital, 5,500 soldiers and marines. But the port is damaged and closed to large ships. The single runway airport is clogged and not nearly big enough. Planes filled with supplies circle for hours but eventually they are able to land. Piles of life-sustaining supplies are accumulating on the tarmac but distribution is another matter. Centers must be set up with guards to protect desperate people from stampeding. The Haitian Government is completely overwhelmed and barely existent. Reporters say Haitian police are not visible in the streets. The UN team was a peace keeping team, now it must regroup with experts in to ensure the aid is distributed in an orderly manner as quickly as possible. Haiti's people have been left to fend on their own, still digging for loved ones with their hands and hammers. Some are using car tires as funeral pyres to burn the bodies of relatives, but countless unclaimed bodies are piled in the streets, outside the morgues and at the graveyerds. Reportedly 8000 bodies have been deposited in a mass grave. There are not nearly enough doctors or nurses, there is little medical care to be found anywhere. The wounded suffer outside the crumpled hospital and flattened medical clinics.
Tomorrow will be day 4. The people watch the helicopters circling and the planes landing, but so far there is little relief for the hungry and thirsty. Too many of Haiti’s children were already malnourished. How long can they survive?
| January 13, 2010 |
More photos, taken by me in 2008 are in 'photo' gallery at right of homepage.
Doctors Without Borders were mobbed by people with severe traumas and crushed limbs, and by people begging for help in rescuing trapped relatives. Most of the medical centers in Port-au-Prince have collapsed. Electricity and communication lines are down, so it is difficult to assess the damage and locate lost aid workers.
Many international relief agencies have had large presences in Haiti since a series of hurricanes in 2008 caused drastic levels of flooding, mudslides and devastation. They were struggling now to get people and supplies into the country and then distribute them. The survivors are trying to dig buried people out from the rubble. The wounded and the dead fill the streets.
The Pentagon is sending an aircraft carrier to Haiti. It is expected to arrive by Friday and it will serve as an offshore staging area for helicopters and air support for the island. The Pentagon also ordered a hospital ship but officials said it was still assembling a crew and had not yet sailed. The United States Coast Guard dispatched four cutters, some equipped with helicopters, early Wednesday morning and had helicopters there helping with surveillance. More Coast Guard helicopters and aircraft were sent from the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands. China has sent a plane with relief workers and supplies.
France said it would send three military transport planes, including one from nearby Fort de France, Martinique, with aid supplies, and that 100 troops based in the French West Indies would be sent to help. Britain said it would send an assessment team as soon as snow could be cleared from a runway at an Airport near London. Germany, too, is sending an assessment team, and said it would make 1.5 million euros, or about $2.2 million, available for emergency assistance.
About 800 people from Doctors Without Borders, were already in Haiti when the quake struck. They treated more than 600 patients in various locations for fractures and other injuries and for burns, many of them caused by domestic cooking-gas containers that exploded as buildings collapsed. But even as Doctors Without Borders tried to mobilize staff and supplies, they could not get very far, roads that were not strewn by rubble were made impassible during the night by people sleeping or lying wounded there.
Partners in Health, working with medical centers throughout Haiti, said it was trying to send supplies to the capital from its nine medical centers in the Central Plateau of Haiti, about 100 miles from Port-au-Prince, which were not damaged in the quake. "We have to make sure that when we do bring aid in, we have a system that we can use effectively," said Andrew Marx, a spokesman for the organization. "The important thing is getting what we already have in country to the place that it's needed - there has to be a 'there' there."
The World Food Program -www.wfp.org/haiti is airlifting additional food supplies from its emergency hub in El Salvador, which will provide more than half a million emergency meals.
| January 12, 2010 |
January 11, 2010
To the Editor:
Re “After Years of Mass Killings, Fragile Calm Holds in Darfur <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/02/world/africa/02darfur.html> ” (front page, Jan. 2):
Contrary to the impression given in your article, it is not the rebels but Omar Hassan al-Bashir, Sudan’s president, who is the real catalyst for seven years of government-sponsored terror in Darfur, resulting in 300,000 deaths and the displacement of about three million more.
This same man, who has been indicted on war crime charges, and his National Congress Party were responsible for the deaths of two million in southern Sudan during two decades of civil war as they sought to protect their hold on oil resources.
The “fragile calm” your article depicts in Darfur exists only because Mr. Bashir has largely finished his work there. He is now focused on other priorities, most important of which is rigging the coming elections to maintain his grip on power. Before an election farce legitimizes his reign, the Obama administration should impose strict consequences on his brutal regime. Otherwise, southern Sudan may descend into another war, and three million Darfuris suffering in camps may never be able to go home.
Susan Morgan
The writer is co-founder of Investors Against Genocide and executive director of Pax Communications.
Ms. Gies, a Catholic, risked her life to keep the eight alive, bringing them fresh food, books and newspapers. In 1944 they were betrayed by an unknown informant and taken to concentration camps. Again risking her own life, Meip Gies went to Gestapo headquarters and tried in vain to secure their release by offering money.
Anne, by then 15 and her older sister Margot died in Bergen-Belsen in 1945.
Otto was the sole survivor of the Frank family. Ms Geis gave him Anne's diary which she had saved and which became, after the bible, the best selling non-fiction book in the world.
I had the great privilege of spending time with Miep Gies, in New York and in Amsterdam. I was eager for my children to meet her, and to try to learn what it was within her that caused her to do these extraordinary things. Why Miep Gies? Why Raul Wallenberg? Why Schindler? And most importantly, why not everyone?
Miep shed no light on her decisions. "Of course it was not easy", she told me," But what else could I do?" The profundity of her response lies in its simple ordinariness. For Miep, there were no other options. She could not have done otherwise.
I have a Rwandan friend who survived the 1994 genocide but lost most of her family and was witness to unimaginable atrocities. Based on what took place in her country, she calculates that "95% of people will pick up a machete and kill strangers and friends alike for 90 days. This we know. 3%--they don't want to kill, they will run away."
My friend's words dropped me into the bleakest silence. But eventually I thought "Two percent! That's not zero! We have something to build on."
Miep Gies always insisted, " I am not a hero. There is nothing special about me." I respectfully disagree. Ms Gies was among the "two percent" who set the bar, show us the way, and help us all feel more hopeful about being human.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eve-ensler/ten-radical-acts-for-cong_b_418... <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eve-ensler/ten-radical-acts-for-cong_b_418425.html>
‘Sexual terrorism was imported into the DRC like a plague about 12 years ago years ago, after a 1996 military operation know as Operation Turquoise - a plan supported and implemented by the international community which allowed murdering Hutu militias of Rwanda (FDLR) into Eastern Congo. Since then, this sexual terrorism has been sustained by these and other parties interested in the minerals, (coltan, gold, tin), that are serving you. Like a plague, this rape and sexual violence has spread infecting the Congolese Army and even the UN peacekeepers who are there to "protect" the women. Put pressure on the international community to remove all outside militias. They brought them there, they are responsible for getting them out.
Read the latest U.N. human rights reports:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/world/africa/13iht-congo.1.18648435.ht... <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/world/africa/13iht-congo.1.18648435.html> )
Visits these sites:
AFEM
http://englishafemsk.blogspot.com/
Friends of Congo
http://www.friendsofthecongo.org/
Read the recent Human Rights Watch reports:
http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2009/12/14/you-will-be-punished-0
Read the history:
http://www.amazon.com/King-Leopolds-Ghost-Heroism-Colonial/dp/0618001905
We know what is happening in the DRC. Now is the time for action.
Support the local groups and campaigns that already exist, that have existed. They need your support to continue to exist. Fight to make sure the money headed for Eastern Congo actually gets to the women on the ground - the grassroots groups who need it most like AFEM, the South Kivu Women's Media Association, Panzi Hospital in Bukavu and Heal Africa Hospital in Goma, women's collectives like I Will Not Kill Myself Today and AFECOD, and the Women's Ministry and Laissez l'Afrique Vivre.
Visit https://secure.ga4.org/01/drcongo to donate.
Write to President Obama and ask him to make finding a non-military solution to the war in Congo a priority in his foreign policy agenda:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/
Educate yourself about how conflict minerals are illegally and inhumanely pillaged from the Congo and make their way into your cell phones and the computer you are using to read this post right now. Demand that electronics companies alter their mining and trade policies so that conflict-free minerals are used in our electronics. Until this happens, we all literally have blood on our hands.
Investigate where and how your electronics companies are purchasing their materials. As a consumer, demand that they use conflict-free minerals in their parts.
Feel what your sister, mother, grandmother, daughter, wife, girlfriend would be feeling if she were being gang raped or held as a sex slave for years or if her insides were destroyed by sticks and guns and she could never have another baby.
Eve Ensler, a playwright and activist, is the founder of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls.
-
| January 10, 2010 |
Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn is essential reading for every global citizen.
A book that is being referred to as a manifesto for our times. Kristof and WuDunn expose a global human rights crisis that is estimated to have killed more little girls and women in the last 50 years than the total number of the men lost in all the wars of the 20th century.
| January 8, 2010 |
Keep conflict minerals on your radar-I have provided sites below which will put you in touch with those trying to get a crucial bill passed which would require transparency so that US companies aren't fueling the violence through gold, tin (caserterite) and other minerals.
You can inform yourselves on the sites listed here and let your voices be heard
ttp://www.raisehopeforcongo.org/conflictminerals_faq
http://money.cnn.com/2009/03/27/news/international/congo.fortune/
| January 7, 2010 |
Thu Jan 7, 2010
By Opheera McDoom
KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudanese aid agencies must be helped to fill in the huge gaps left in Darfur's aid operation by the expulsion of 13 humanitarian organisations last year, Oxfam America said on Thursday.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir in March last year for war crimes in Darfur. He responded by expelling the major aid agencies from Darfur, leaving a hole in the world's largest humanitarian operation. Oxfam America was one of the small agencies left in Sudan which had to step up its work to fill the gap, but country director El Fateh Osman Adam said there was still much to do. "We worked hard to address the immediate life-saving issues, provide water, sanitation," he told Reuters in an interview. "If it was not provided we may have seen humanitarian catastrophe," he said. "But there are gaps in a number of areas, livelihood... protection... and nobody is talking about education."
Sister agency Oxfam GB was one of the largest and oldest agencies working in Sudan before being expelled last year.
Adam said his organisation's priority was to support Sudanese aid agencies to one day take the lead in the humanitarian operation in their own country.
"It's not something that will happen in one day -- we have to have the patience until we build the capacity of our local partners," he said.
"The expulsion showed that you can suddenly lose everything ... but if you are supporting other (local) actors then what you have done can continue."
Adam said international aid agencies, the United Nations and the Sudanese government should all work to help local organisations to lead the aid effort themselves.
Link to complete article
http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE6060HF20100107
Speaking via satellite telephone Al Tigani Kurshaom, a JEM commander in the area, told the Sudan Tribune that three children and two women were killed during the Antonov attacks as well as hundreds of camels belonging to the nomads in the areas.
"We regret that these indiscriminate attacks target mainly civilians and their livestock", said the deputy head of JEM's nomad division, who belongs to Darfur Arab tribes.
The rebel official further urged international protection of Darfur nomads, saying Khartoum is targeting them now after their refusal to implement Khartoum's plans in the region. "Khartoum government is targeting the Arabs after they decided to join their hands with the rest of Darfur tribes. We are against the marginalization and the genocide of Darfuri because we are part and parcel of this region."
"The army now is attacking our people and the international community has to stop this new genocide, particularly the (UN/AU peacekeeping mission) UNAMID which has to protect the civilians," he stressed.
Excerpt from a Sudan Tribune article linked here.
http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article33702
| January 6, 2010 |
http://www.girleffect.org/video
Breaking the cycle of mineral-fueled violence in eastern Congo will require a coalition of private and public actors ranging from the largest of multinational electronics and jewelry companies all the way to the most knowledgeable and dedicated Congolese civil society voices.
Urge your Representative to support legislation for conflict-free cell phones, laptops and other electronics by cosponsoring the Congo Conflict Minerals Trade Act of 2009 (HR 4128) <http://www.enoughproject.org/conflict_minerals_trade_act> . The bill will indentify any conflict minerals from Congo imported into the United States. It is the strongest effort to stop the scourge of conflict minerals in Congo.
Contact these influential members of the Foreign Affairs Committee now:
Mike Pence (R-IN)
Email <https://forms.house.gov/pence/IMA/webforms/contact_form.htm> Rep. Pence urging for support
Call (202-225-3021) Rep. Pence’s office directly
Send Rep. Pence a message on Facebook <http://www.facebook.com/mike.pence.usa?ref=search&sid=14600442.772246115..1>
Tweet <http://twitter.com/> Rep. Pence @RepMikePence about conflict mineral legislation (HR 4128)
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL)
Email <http://ros-lehtinen.house.gov/IMA/issue.htm> Rep. Ros-Lehtinen urging for support
Call (202-225-3931) Rep. Ros-Lehtinen’s office directly
Tweet <http://twitter.com/> Rep. Ros-Lehtinen @IRL to support conflict mineral legislation (HR 4128)
Ed Royce (R-CA)
Email <http://royce.house.gov/Contact/> Rep. Royce urging for support
Call (202-225-4111) Rep. Royce’s office directly
Send Rep. Royce a message on Facebook <http://www.facebook.com/EdRoyce?ref=search&sid=14600442.1974795186..1#/EdRoyce?v=wall&ref=search>
Chris Smith (R-NJ)
Email <http://chrissmith.house.gov/Email/
Call (202-225-3765) Rep. Smith’s office directly
Contact Your Own Representative
CALL <http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm> , CONTACT <https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml> , or EMAIL <http://www2.americanprogress.org/t/1659/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6281>
Urge him or her to support conflict mineral legislation (HR 4128)
or
Dial 1-800-GENOCIDE. By inputting your zipcode, you will have access to
the contact information for elected officials ranging from your state Governor
to your Senator to the President.
Take Action: Urge Industry Leaders to Make Conflict-Free Products
We need your help to increase demand for conflict-free electronics products. As a consumer, we can influence electronics industry leaders as they weigh whether or not to invest in making their supply chains transparent and producing verifiably conflict-free products. Tell companies that if they take conflict out of their products, you'll buy them.
Go to this website and through them you make your voice heard at Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Microsoft, Canon, IBM,Intel Apple, Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo. Rim,Nintendo, Phillips, Panasonic
http://www2.americanprogress.org/t/1659/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6265
| January 4, 2010 |
Israeli Arab and Jewish activists marched on Saturday in the city's Rabin square, chanting slogans and waving signs calling for "Freedom and Justice in Gaza".
The protesters demanded Israel end the blockade, deeming its continuation a "war crime", the AFP news agency reported.
The Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli blockade since 2007 when Hamas seized power in the territory.
Hundreds of international protesters held a similar demonstration on Thursday on both sides of an Israeli border crossing to the Palestinian territory.