7.0 Earthquake Tuesday in Haiti

[Posting a link?]

Forum Guidelines
Posting a link? Read This!

Forgot your password? Need help?
Click Here To Contact Us

Mudflats Merchandise
AKMuckraker Amazon Store
Support AKM Merchandise

Download it here!

[daMamma]

Mid-wives are really needed, she'd be a real bonus.  Hope she gets to go!

[judi]

going to do a fundraiser as she has to raise the expenses to travel there...but how cool...just the fact that she WANTS to go...and she is wonderful at helping moms deliver...many kids around here came into the world with a bit of help from her...

[daMamma]

I think it is totally cool.  I hope she gets to go, her skills are very much in need and would be hugely valued.

Personally I would have preferred a midwife when delivering my kids.  Sadly everything about each of them was so high risk I had to stick with doctors and hospitals.

[Forty Watt]

The BBC's Huw Williams in Port-au-Prince says a new relief programme is under way, with the United Nations paying Haitians to help clear rubble from the streets.

A UN spokesman said thousands of local people were being paid up to $20 (£14) a day under the Cash for Work programme, giving them a guaranteed wage for the foreseeable future, our correspondent reports.

With an estimated 1.5 million homeless and more than 75% of Port-au-Prince destroyed, plans are also underway to prepare for the rainy season.

Mr Mulet said, areas around Port-au-Prince are being prepared for the creation of tented settlements for the homeless currently living in makeshift camps.

He said 200,000 heavy-duty tents had been ordered to cope with Haiti's rainy season, which typically begins in May, and its hurricane season, which is expected to start around June.

Haitian President Rene Preval earlier this week called for the urgent airdrop of 200,000 more tents and 26 million ready-to-eat meals before the rainy season begins.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8488697.stm

[daMamma]

Oh yeah, that's right.  Hurricane season is coming up.  Tents aren't going to be enough when that starts.  This nation always seems to right in the way when those things come through.  Might be okay for rain, I'm not sure how much or how hard that comes down.  Hurricanes are another story altogether.

[Sirenoftitan]

<snip>
Mr Brown also announced the government had bought all of the UK's available corrugated iron to provide shelters for victims of the earthquake.  The prime minister, who was accompanied by his wife Sarah, said helping Haiti was "the test of our humanity".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8489308.stm

Hope that's better than canvas.

[daMamma]

I'm hoping this year, and the next couple are light on the hurricanes hitting the island.

[Sirenoftitan]

US doctors in Haiti have voiced concern about the suspension of evacuation flights to America for critically injured Haitian earthquake victims.  A senior US medic told the BBC that scores of patients could die if they did not get treatment in the US soon.  The US military stopped the flights to Florida on Wednesday.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8489392.stm

[Sirenoftitan]

<snip>
"In the time frame that they were with us the team deeply fell in love with the children," she said.  "They are very precious kids that have lost their homes and their families, and are so, so in need of God's love and compassion and a very nurturing setting."  Ms Silsby said the group had received the children from a legitimate orphanage in Haiti and did not realise that additional paperwork was needed to take them out of the country.
<snip>

"And she told us, crying, that she does have parents. She says she thought she was being sent to boarding school or to summer camp."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8490515.stm

[Sirenoftitan]

US doctors in Haiti have voiced concern about the suspension of evacuation flights to America for critically injured Haitian earthquake victims.  A senior US medic told the BBC that scores of patients could die if they did not get treatment in the US soon.  The US military stopped the flights to Florida on Wednesday.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8489392.stm

<snip>
The military had taken hundreds of critically injured Haitians to the US on board its planes before halting the flights on Wednesday. Since then, at least a handful of patients were flown on civilian aircraft, and other flights continued to carry US citizens and other mostly non-injured passengers.

The White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said the medical airlift was set to resume early todayafter assurances were given that additional medical capacity for the patients existed in the US and among its international partners.

US to resume Haiti earthquake victim medical evacuations AP

[daMamma]

The adoption scandal.  This church group had been in Haiti before the earthquake.  Many of the kids they had taken, the parents as well as the kids thought they were going to a summer camp style vacation or to boarding school. 

If this were all on the up and up, why lie?  Why try to smuggle the kids to another country?  And what the heck is up with a sea side resort for prospective adoptive parents? 

The arrested Americans include members of the Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, and the East Side Baptist Church in Twin Falls, Idaho. They are part of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is America's largest Protestant denomination and has extensive humanitarian programs worldwide.

The Idaho churches had elaborate plans before the earthquake to shelter up to 200 Haitian and Dominican boys and girls in the Magante beach resort, complete with a school and chapel as well as villas and a seaside cafe catering to adoptive U.S. parents.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CB_HAITI_AMERICANS_DETAINED?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

At least 10 of the 33 Haitian children a group of American Baptists tried to take across the border into the Dominican Republic have parents, says the group taking care of them while the Haitian government investigates an alleged case of child trafficking.
<snip>
The church organizing the transfer of the children says the group had only the best of intentions, that it wanted to put the children in a Dominican Republic orphanage and that it was sure all the children were parentless.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/baptist-group-accused-of-child-trafficking-in-haiti/article1451438/

I'd read a story on Friday evening where the preacher of this group had the congregation crying and praying for these folks because of Satan's lies got them in trouble.    None of it was true, how they needed to defeat Satan in Haiti.  yadda, yadda.  It was all very interesting and I wish I could find it to post.

[peter d]

Looters always seem to show up at a disaster. The Idaho Baptist wasted no time getting to Haiti. It seems the Idaho Baptist clime it’s all a paper work mess up. I’d agree having no paper work is a mess up.  Ya think? But what has me at a total loss. How can anyone having anything to do with orphans in Haiti, not know that Haiti Prime Minister Max Bellerive made it very clear that no children were to be removed from Haiti without his personal consent. SOS Children's Village International has now been entrusted with the children by the  Haitian Social Ministry.  But the other fishy thing is how did these Baptist not know that as many as 10 children were not orphans?   If a 9year old girl is crying, saying I have parents and I'm not an orphan. There something very wrong here. And this Baptist minister from Idaho “link below” does not seem to do much for his case. 

http://videos.idahostatesman.com/vmix_hosted_apps/p/media?id=9966508&item_index=1&all=1&sort=NULL

Haiti Prime Minister Max Bellerive 

"It is clear now that they were trying to cross the border without papers. It is clear now that some of the children have live parents,"  "And it is clear now that they knew what they were doing was wrong."

And this will break your hart. The Lawyers for the Baptist say there clients are being treated poorly:

"There is no air conditioning, no electricity. It is very disturbing,"

    I think the Baptist need a new Lawyer. Don’t think that will fly in Haiti. 

[Writing from Alaska]

This is one sad mess. At the very least, it demonstrates American ignorance about other countries and respect for other governments. I guess they thought that because they are Americans, they could just come in and do what they thought was OK without regard to anyone else.


yeek.

[futurexpat?]

This is always what happens when you are sure you have God on your side and you have the moral high ground.

I believe that after the 2004 tsunami that thousands of "orphaned" children were "rescued," many of them disappearing into the sex trade.

I'm not saying this is the exact equivalent, but I don't like it when children are "rescued" for the ends of anyone but the children.

[daMamma]

What surprises me are how many people around the web are in support of this group.  The consensus seems to be that the parents of these children simply "breed" enormous amounts of kids they cannot feed or take care of and they really aught to be sterilized or at least taught how to use condoms.  What these people were doing was better for the kids, because obviously living in the states in a middle class household is much better than their own families.

Supporters are convinced there kids really would have been better off and the Haitian government is wrong to lock them up in jail.  Also that our government should demand their release or take our aid away.

I am really floored by the attitude.  Especially given all the circumstances/evidence surrounding the event.

[ds55]

What surprises me are how many people around the web are in support of this group.  The consensus seems to be that the parents of these children simply "breed" enormous amounts of kids they cannot feed or take care of and they really aught to be sterilized or at least taught how to use condoms.  What these people were doing was better for the kids, because obviously living in the states in a middle class household is much better than their own families.

Supporters are convinced there kids really would have been better off and the Haitian government is wrong to lock them up in jail.  Also that our government should demand their release or take our aid away.

I am really floored by the attitude.  Especially given all the circumstances/evidence surrounding the event.

That's typically a Christian missionary attitude.  "Go teach those savages a better way of life.  They'll thank us for it later."
It's also a great shield to throw up if you're kidnapping kids for the sex trade.

[Lani]

There is a long, tragic history of separating children from their families and culture "for their own good".  In the US the native American children were stolen.  In Australia, the Aboriginal children.  And in the UK, temporary foster children as well as orphans were sent around the world to populate the British colonies well into the 1960's.

[daMamma]

Here in Canada it was the aboriginal children sent to boarding schools (catholic schools) where their language and customs were taboo and often times beaten out of them.  They were nothing more than savages that should learn better from the 'white man's ways'. 

Personally I find such attitudes appalling to say the least.  What makes one person's faith better than another's?  What makes one person's culture more important or valuable than another's?  I do not understand the mindset.  In my own heart I have always believed each person unique, each culture important, each faith of equal value. 

I was born white, to a christian family, western European heritage, American by birthright, and somehow this makes me better than everyone else how?  I am not better.  Equal to all perhaps, but I am not better.  In spite of my differences, because of them or in spite of my sameness or because of it, I am not better. 

Maybe because I understand this, accept it and embrace it, I do not understand the whole "I am better" from others who justify their superiority because of the very things I denounce as "better".  I don't know.  To me it is all craziness and I just do not understand it. 

[Lani]

More on the Haitian children recovered at the border.

CALLEBAS, Haiti — Parents unable to feed or clothe their children after an earthquake devastated their Haitian village handed the youngsters over to a group of American missionaries who promised to give them a better life.

In a testament to the misery of a nation that was the western hemisphere's poorest even before the Jan. 12 earthquake, many parents say they wouldn't know what to do if they had to take the children back, after the missionaries were arrested and charged with child trafficking.

... The stories the villagers told The Associated Press on Wednesday contradict claims by the Baptist group's leader that the children came from orphanages or were handed over by distant relatives.

US Baptists to appear before Haitian prosecutor http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20100204/cb-haiti-americans-detained/

[pacos_gal]

10 Americans in Haiti Are Charged With Abduction

Ten Americans detained after trying to take 33 Haitian children across the border last week were charged Thursday with abduction and criminal association, according to prosecutors.

The charges, which carry prison terms of up to 15 years, were announced after a closed-door court hearing in which prosecutors questioned the Americans, most of them members of a Baptist congregation from Idaho. The case has become a flashpoint for Haiti’s fears of foreign encroachment in the aftermath of the Jan. 12 earthquake.

There is a chance that the Americans would be returned to the United States to stand trial.