It seems like I am the only one who does not care about the Haiti earthquake. The people of Haiti raped their land and burned their forests untill there was nothing left...when you see an airial image of the border, you can easily tell Haiti from the Dominican Republic...Haiti is the side with no trees, crops, or even grass. So now mother nature gives them a poke on the arm after they stabbed her in both eyes...and people feel sorry for them? I say screw 'em. Life in Haiti has always been crap...if anything, this earthquake will make things better by killing off some of the mouthes that they can't feed anyway. Oh, and if you still feel sorry for them, why now? This country has made Iraq look like a nice place to live for the past 40 years...why do you suddenly care? These people had nothing (having destroyed their tropical paradise), and thus they have lost nothing. Sure...lots have died, but when you consider the rates of starvation and disease related death, this earthquake seems rather mild.
Your Callous alright. I find it hard to not feel sorry for people suffering and the fact some have made mistakes doesn't matter to me. I mean who hasn't.
I do feel sorry for most people that are suffering...but there are billions suffering and I just don't have the energy to care about the ones who do it to themselves...even when something happens to them. I was watching the news and they were talking about how there are only like 2 bulldozers in the whole country, and how they were just leaving the bodies scattered around in the streets...they complain that no one is helping, despite the fact that every bit of runway and seaport available is in use providing support (and they are doing airdrops)...it is like the whole country is run by children.
I understand your point. It is hard to feel sorry for them when they seem so dependant on the rest of the world to help them. However if you were unfortunate enough to be living in Haiti would things have been different? Most of the people suffering are not responsible for the state of the country merely victims of those who are.
I have a few thoughts on our unconditional "aid" to the third world countries. I remember the scenes of the starving people in Ethiopia and the way the world jumped in and sent food. Nothing was done to improve or modernise farming methods or to stop soil erosion.. We just put back the next disaster while our input of food just allowed the population to continue to grow. It doubled during the years we fed them. While people were starving the Ethiopean government paid £1 million for scotch whiskey, and continued to be one of the worlds largest exporters of coffee. Hmmmmm.. and nobody in the developed world seemed to care as long as we continued to get cheap coffee. Nothing was or has been done to improve the farming, or to pay a better price to the actual growers for their coffee. The middle man continues to get rich while the population exists on the same knife edge where starvation is only one failed rains away. Now we have a similar situation.. an earthquake in a poverty stricken country. A country which honestly should be rich enoughto do more to help themselves. But.. what do we do? .. again we throw our money and aid workers in to help pass the crisis but after it is all fixed then what? .. I guess it will be back to business as usual with the large Western corporations exploiting the people and using them as a cheap source of goods and labour. A cheap holiday in other peoples misery.. a very good way to put it. We should feel guilty, because a lot of the problems are directly and indirectly our fault in the first place. We trade with these countries without any kind of conditions being imposed on them. We exploit and use the people to feed our greed for cheap products. Ongoing situations like Ethiopia and the human rights abuses in China paint a lurid picture of what we in the West really think and care about others. As long as we get our cheap stuff we don't look at where it comes from or the misery it causes as our middle men get disgustingly rich while the people doing the work exist on the edge of starvation. We need to look at teh wider picture.. while it is a great placebo to stick some aid in after the disaster we should do much more to improve the lot of the ordinary people on a day to day basis, helping them to become self sufficient and not require our handouts all the time. That isn't going to happen while we continue to live off these people in our unsustainable ways using them to prop up our unsustainable lifestyles and over populations. Remember it isn't the Kenyan or Ethiopein farmer who is living in an unsustainable fashion.. their countries could easily feed all their people and have a surplus. It is our greed for cheap products which forces these people to grow cash crops for export instead of feeding and putting themselves first. I heard last week about Western business buying vast tracts of farmland in Africa.. why? http://en.afrik.com/article15161.html An interesting read. Now is that going to help or hinder the developing countries as they struggle to drag themselves up into the modern world?
Good points scum. I heard on tv a couple of weeks ago that the world could not support it's current population if the 3rd world lived like the west and thats why really we don't want them to progress because it would affect our standard of living.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/wor...treets-quake-hit-island-descends-anarchy.html Now they are complaining about the bottleneck at the airport. It's common propaganda that the US Marines Pioneers can build an airstrip in 8 hours.. so why don't they do that.. Sometimes aid agencies and governments can't see the wood for the trees.. and I'm pretty sure the Haiti police wouldn't mind a couple of thousand marines to help them keep law and order.
I think they already have a few thousand US troops helping them...and why bother building an airstrip when you are practicaly blocking out the sun with airdrops? The biggest problem with distributing aid right now is security...it is pretty bad when you are giving things away for free and you still fear for your life.
