Here you can write a post describing what issues are being debated in the media worldwide about the earthquake in Haiti. What do you think are the most important issues?
Hello everyone, I'm Roxana from the B2 course and I'd like to describe one of the Haiti's issues being debated in the media . Last weak we talked about immigration in the southern Italy.By the way,I came across an article about immigration in Haiti. "The American Spectator" said that the next question for president Obama will be whether to grant temporary legal residence to tens of thousand of illegal immigrants and legal visitors from Haiti. The United States grants "temporary protected status" to several countries and can extend that status to others .Haiti is one of the countries that has sought for ,but been denied such status. The authorities are conscious they should halt deportations for Haitian illegal aliens ,the problem is that they want to make sure that this doesn't become a permanent amnesty.They agree to grant temporary protected status to haitians who have deportation orders and who are in the US illegally or on legal temporary visas.They pointed out that,despite the devastation in Haiti, they still have to protect their borders and secure their citizens from those people who continually attempt to come through their borders . I read the comments to the article and I noticed that there were two groups:one ,who was in favour of illegal immigants deportation and an other who was against .The first group claim that this is a perfect opportunity to deport all identifiable Haitians ,so they can go home and help rebuild their country,more,as a bonus the US will pay for the trip and give them a little spending cash ,whereas the other group accused them of racism by saying Haitian people helped build their infrastructure. However ,it seems that those Haitians currently in the US will be given temporary legal residence for 18 months .
Since the earthquake happened in Haiti on January 12th, the whole world has followed the events from the Caraibian island. Most of the news from the newspapers, radio and tv news are concerning the disaster, the basic survival issues, the security of the country, especially for children, the economy and all the political aspects involved in the event, both internal government and international politics. Recollecting memories from the Indonesian tsunami, what I have noticed is a different kind of worry for this country, it seems to me that there is the need to proof that the emergency there is real. Reading some articles, from the BBC website and The New York Times, I could understand that the situation in Haiti is really difficult to repair, not just because the earthquake has distroyed every thing there, buildings, hospitals, schools, churches, there is no water, no food, there are millions of homeless now living in poverty, surviving, and they have no medical support, no medicines, no doctors, no medical instruments, but also because all this misery was already there before the earthquake; the economy there is extremely poor but above all the politics situation is a disaster because of corruption, the human rights abuses and the government instability, and that's why people needs proof: the country has lost, already many years ago, his credibility. "The central problem is how their own government, having so utterly failed to deliver services for decades, can muster the capacity, the knowledge, the will and the credibility needed for such a complex task." (John Miller Beauvoir said - from The New York Times article http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/world/americas/31reconstruct.html?scp=1&sq=haiti%20canvas&st=cse). After three weeks from the Haiti earthquake, the news are now complaning about the inefficient and slow help arrived from UN in the distroyed area, news are reporting the "ambiguous" behave from the US and also the worry about the security for children that can be taken from traffickers for illegal adoption. The whole world is wondering how Haiti can raise up from this last disaster ad restart with a program able to give works to Haitians and to refresh the economy, just thinking that they even didn't have one before.
I read an English newspaper ("The Guardian") and an Italian one ("Il Corriere della Sera") everyday so that I could compare them day by day pointing out the differences between their topics about Haiti. I think the main difference is that in Italy we are more interested in political facts like the discussion between Bertlolaso and H.Clinton than in more important facts such as women who are in danger of sexual abuse or the fact that the Haitian government has asked people to leave Port-Au-Prince. Luckily Italian newspapers also give importance to the subject of the adoption of Haitian children and to the reconstruction of the Haitian state. In "The Guardian" I found lots of interesting articles about the devastation. For example the question about whose fault Haiti's earthquake is and I've been impressed by one of the answers: a small minority of Haitians blames an American evangelist who said that the Haitians swore a pact with the Devil to gain their independence! However, in both newspapers we can find the same topics. For example the occurrence of 10 American soldiers who tried to kidnap 31 children. Both the newspapers agree that it's important to rebuild Haiti as soon as possible to create a state able to do more than preside over the chaos. Another topic in common is that desperation is turning into violence so the UN are calling for more peacekeepers and, as I said before, everyone puts the safety of women at the core of their work. I only hope that Haiti's problem won't disappear like the news we usually read in newspapers or watch on TV.
There are different issues debated in the media. The main issues regard the help to Haiti's population. They need sanitary assistance because they lack food and water and they also need military assistance to protect them from the gangs which are exploiting the lack of police forces to commit sexual abuse, robbing and other illegal activities. The media also reported the trafficking of children for illegal adoption. There are a lot of couples (abroad) waiting for adoption abroad and illegal adoption is a way to avoid to deal with bureaucracy. Illegal adoption could be justified with the idea of giving a better life to the children but it's selfish to steal a child from his home and to think that money would make his life better. There are interviews of the surgeons working in temporary hospitals in Haiti and they report their happiness when they manage to save lives. The patients who can't be cured in Haiti are transferred to other countries. Florida's hospitals complain because they're overwhelmed as they're the only ones accepting patients from Haiti and they are asking for help from other countries. I read a report which says that 60% of deaths in natural disasters are caused by earthquakes. The main problem is the population is not prepared to face the disaster and the buildings are not built keeping the likelihood of earthquakes in mind. Nothing can be done to avoid earthquakes but we can take them into account in urban planning. The report also says that there are more earthquakes than in the past but there are fewer victims and that's due to the work done in the direction of safety planning. Going back to Haiti's issues, there is the need for reconstruction and a lot of fund raising initiatives are going on around the world. In England there was a poetry reading fund raising event to buy corrugated iron sheets to help the building of a roof over Haitians' head but this is just a temporary solution. Much more has to be done to help Haitians.
The quake in Haiti has provoked lot of coverage in the media, pointing out that this event occurred in a country that already had many serious economic and social problems .The figures talk about 200.000 dead, 1.5millions homeless and 3millions in need of aid. The disaster has attracted the attention of the media all over the world ,from newspapers to the internet. Many American actors, like John Travolta, flew there .Criticism has been raised about the work of the United Nation ,blamed for its lack of organisation . Many televisions showed the Haitians with requests of help written on signs in front of their tents. The emotional aspect of this event has been focused :the pain of the Haitians searching for their loves ones with bare hands, thousands of children left alone in a country with thousands of orphans. Lots of calls for aid have been made by emergency organisations, mobile phone companies have asked for money. Besides the social aspect has also been considered .First of all the repeated warnings from Unicef about the child trafficking, the women abuses and the continued looting. Furthermore hospitals crammed with the injured, doctors complaining because they haven’t enough antibiotics so that they have been forced to amputate arms and legs. Consequently, many Haitians without arms or legs ,will no longer be able to work in a country where the manual labour is the main source of income. Considering all these difficulties ,what will be the future of Haiti? It will also be necessary to decide who will organise the rebuilding ,whether an international organisation will take over it from outside or the Haitians themselves will manage to deal with it. Let’s hope that even when the emergency finishes ,all the attention to the problems of Haiti won’t fall.
The wretched become the desperate. The Independent focuses attention on the aid delivered by the United Nations in favour of Haiti's victims.In this article there are two relevant topics which highlight how the desperate situation in Haiti is far from a solution. The first one concerns the several lacks of water,food,and medical care, the other one is related to the increase of violence and crime. These two aspects are extremely linked to each other. That's because despite the efforts to help Haiti the aid rarely reach the places and the people in greatest need. In fact the supplies are constantly stolen by the high number of looters,who lay into everything they are able to find. However, although the situation in Haiti seems to be a neverending disaster, countries and people from all over the world are giving their own contribution. These countries under the UN' coordination are sending supplies and medical aid to Haiti, promoting at the same time public and private donations with the aim to keep hope alive.
Hi everyone! I'm Sonia from the B2 course. Among the various issues debated about Haiti's disaster I've decided to focus my attention on the children. This morning I've read an article on BBC News web site where Haiti's Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive criticisms about the failed attempt by the New Children's Refuge to take Haitian children into the Dominican Republic are described. I completely agree with him when he describes these people as kidnappers because they have tried to take the children out of Haitian borders without any kind of paperwork as the law requires. On the other hand they replied they "didn't know what they were doing was wrong" and that they were trying to help those children whose parents were dead during the heartquake. But how it is possible that they can know what children are orphans. Even the autority cannot due to the difficulty of locating people who are trying to survive in tent city spread all around among ruins? And really do they want to help these children or is the reality more horrible than we can imagine? The comforting news is that according to UN guidelines, two years should pass after the disaster before adoption can be considered. For further information http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8491996.stm
In my opinion lots of issues about the earthquake in Haiti have been debated during last weeks. I would like to focus on two of them which I find very interesting and maybe not enough emphasized.
The first one is the key role played by new media in breaking Haiti earthquake story to the outside world. For over 24 hours after the quake, most of reports and images didn't came from established news organizations but from ordinary people on the spot. This was made possible by the communications opportunities offered by Internet. Moreover, during the first hours after the earthquake, traditional media like CNN and New York Times simply aggregated, sorted and presented user-generated contents: in fact, damages to the communications and transport infrastructure, power failures and damages to key buildings in the capital prevented traditional reporters from reaching the spot. These news media include microblogging platforms (like Twitter), video-sharing platforms (like YouTube) and Internet telephone applications (like Skype).
International relief efforts have been charged with inefficiency, not only by Bertolaso. So I wondered: what are the major problems to tackle when delivering aids in a crisis situation? Airports and ports, when usable, are often not equipped to deal with the volume of aid traffic arriving. Damaged roads make it harder to move resources around. If communications infrastructure is damaged, then it's difficult to communicate and coordinate aid activities. Security issues must be taken into account to deter looting and violence. Coordination is needed between military troops, international agencies and aid organizations, so that available resources are properly exploited and don't go to waste. In conclusion, the situation in Haiti is not easy to manage at all, but I don't have enough elements to determine if international relief efforts are doing a good work.
After one month since the Haiti's earthquake these are the most debated issues I found reading some online newspapers. The most important one seems to be that the G7 has announced plans to cancel debt owed by Haiti: UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown hailed the pledge saying: "It must be right that a nation buried in rubble must not also be buried in debt". Other issues are about victims and children adoptions. In these days many people from all over the world are mobilising to help the Haitians in different ways, but there were also problems with one US organization: Haiti has charged 10 US missionaries with child abduction and criminal conspiracy for allegedly trying to smuggle 33 children out of the country and this case has probably become the biggest thing since the quake. Last, the background issue seems to be the challenge of rebuilding: government and international officials are drawing up a strategy to help rebuild this country, pledging to assist Haiti with billions of dollars in assistance, not only to help in the immediate aftermath of the devastating earthquake, but also in the long-term reconstruction.
All articles are followed by photos, videos, reportages and comments, but only the Times Online and BBC News dedicate many, many pages to this topic. I only hope mass media will not forget Haiti next month.
Some days ago I was looking for some news about the earthquake that devasted Haiti and I came across the comment by an Italian journalist, M. Gramellini on which I'm going to focus my attention. He posted on his blog a thought that has shown a different point of view about this kind of tragic events. Better, he has tried to awake our conscience a shock. Last days we have been surrounded by the images of this tragedy. I think watching those images and listening to those news shocked all of us. Mr Gramellini, after being devasted by the apocalyptic effects of the earthquake in Haiti, has begun searching for information about how life in that island was before the catastrophe. He found out that the eighty per cent of the haitians live (or lived) with less than a dollar per day; the ninty per cent live (or lived) in huts without drinkable water or electricity. He discovered also that life expectancy is (or was) fifty years old and that one out of three children dies before he's five years old. Also, one of those three children would have been certainly sold as a slave. At this point his conscience was asking if death can be considered worse than this life. And he's also wondering why their death shoock him whereas he hadn't care a rush about their life. He says that it's clear that we can't be torn by worldwide suffering. Neverthless he can't get out of thinking about the irony of a situation which, by the evocative power of images, let him cry for a child buried beneath the debris, without thinking he's the same starving child who was dying on the same street some weeks before. He concludes saying that the fear that somethig like that could happen also here seems to worry him more than haitians' suffering which has already existed. I should confess it, when I read these words I thought an idea like this never crossed my mind before. But I think that at least once, everyone has been worried by the fear that a dying like this could also happen here. And this fear sometimes and not only the solidarity for their shocking living conditions seems to worry us.
Hello everybody. The earthquake in Haiti, as all the natural catastrophes, gives rise to a lot of serious humanitarian, social and economical problems. Trying to give a summary of all the issues is too difficult for who haven't followed day by day the events. I agree with Emanuela when she said that the situation become worse because of the general misery of Haitians, caused by years of government corruptions. But, what about us? What about the northern world nations that now are trying to appear the brave rescuers for the inhabitants of Haiti? Well. Let's have a look to the century of history after the Haiti independence. It's not a mystery that USA have supported for years military and paramilitary groups in all the nations of southern America to make weak their governments. When the political and social situation is not stable, is easier to exploit people and resources and to make deals with corrupted administrators. In these conditions, and most of all in the last six years of civil war, poverty and misery have spread out in Haiti, which now is one of the poorest countries in the world. What is unfolding in Haiti seems to be part of what Naomi Klein has labelled the "Shock Doctrine". Indeed, on the Heritage Foundation blog, opportunity was being found in the crisis with a post titled: "Amidst the Suffering, Crisis in Haiti Offers Opportunities to the U.S." "In addition to providing immediate humanitarian assistance, the U.S. response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti earthquake offers opportunities to re-shape Haiti's long-dysfunctional government and economy as well as to improve the public image of the United States in the region," wrote Heritage fellow Jim Roberts in a post that was subsequently altered to tone down the shock-doctrine language. But in the original Jim Roberts words we can find the true meaning of the shock doctrine framework, in which all the catastrophes are considered as ideal situations to restore the political and financial control of rich countries on the poor countries.
I have been working in tertiary education and foreign language teaching for over 16 years. My professional areas of interest are Language Awareness, Tandem learning, Learner Counselling, Cross Cultural communication and language learning in multimedia environnments including Second Life.
Hello everyone,
ReplyDeleteI'm Roxana from the B2 course and I'd like to describe one of the Haiti's issues being debated in the media .
Last weak we talked about immigration in the southern Italy.By the way,I came across an article about immigration in Haiti.
"The American Spectator" said that the next question for president Obama will be whether to grant temporary legal residence to tens of thousand of illegal immigrants and legal visitors from Haiti.
The United States grants "temporary protected status" to several countries and can extend that status to others .Haiti is one of the countries that has sought for ,but been denied such status.
The authorities are conscious they should halt deportations for Haitian illegal aliens ,the problem is that they want to make sure that this doesn't become a permanent amnesty.They agree to grant temporary protected status to haitians who have deportation orders and who are in the US illegally or on legal temporary visas.They pointed out that,despite the devastation in Haiti, they still have to protect their borders and secure their citizens from those people who continually attempt to come through their borders .
I read the comments to the article and I noticed that there were two groups:one ,who was in favour of illegal immigants deportation and an other who was against .The first group claim that this is a perfect opportunity to deport all identifiable Haitians ,so they can go home and help rebuild their country,more,as a bonus the US will pay for the trip and give them a little spending cash ,whereas the other group accused them of racism by saying Haitian people helped build their infrastructure.
However ,it seems that those Haitians currently in the US will be given temporary legal residence for 18 months .
Since the earthquake happened in Haiti on January 12th, the whole world has followed the events from the Caraibian island. Most of the news from the newspapers, radio and tv news are concerning the disaster, the basic survival issues, the security of the country, especially for children, the economy and all the political aspects involved in the event, both internal government and international politics.
ReplyDeleteRecollecting memories from the Indonesian tsunami, what I have noticed is a different kind of worry for this country, it seems to me that there is the need to proof that the emergency there is real.
Reading some articles, from the BBC website and The New York Times, I could understand that the situation in Haiti is really difficult to repair, not just because the earthquake has distroyed every thing there, buildings, hospitals, schools, churches, there is no water, no food, there are millions of homeless now living in poverty, surviving, and they have no medical support, no medicines, no doctors, no medical instruments, but also because all this misery was already there before the earthquake; the economy there is extremely poor but above all the politics situation is a disaster because of corruption, the human rights abuses and the government instability, and that's why people needs proof: the country has lost, already many years ago, his credibility.
"The central problem is how their own government, having so utterly failed to deliver services for decades, can muster the capacity, the knowledge, the will and the credibility needed for such a complex task." (John Miller Beauvoir said - from The New York Times article http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/world/americas/31reconstruct.html?scp=1&sq=haiti%20canvas&st=cse).
After three weeks from the Haiti earthquake, the news are now complaning about the inefficient and slow help arrived from UN in the distroyed area, news are reporting the "ambiguous" behave from the US and also the worry about the security for children that can be taken from traffickers for illegal adoption.
The whole world is wondering how Haiti can raise up from this last disaster ad restart with a program able to give works to Haitians and to refresh the economy, just thinking that they even didn't have one before.
I read an English newspaper ("The Guardian") and an Italian one ("Il Corriere della Sera") everyday so that I could compare them day by day pointing out the differences between their topics about Haiti. I think the main difference is that in Italy we are more interested in political facts like the discussion between Bertlolaso and H.Clinton than in more important facts such as women who are in danger of sexual abuse or the fact that the Haitian government has asked people to leave Port-Au-Prince.
ReplyDeleteLuckily Italian newspapers also give importance to the subject of the adoption of Haitian children and to the reconstruction of the Haitian state.
In "The Guardian" I found lots of interesting articles about the devastation. For example the question about whose fault Haiti's earthquake is and I've been impressed by one of the answers: a small minority of Haitians blames an American evangelist who said that the Haitians swore a pact with the Devil to gain their independence!
However, in both newspapers we can find the same topics. For example the occurrence of 10 American soldiers who tried to kidnap 31 children. Both the newspapers agree that it's important to rebuild Haiti as soon as possible to create a state able to do more than preside over the chaos. Another topic in common is that desperation is turning into violence so the UN are calling for more peacekeepers and, as I said before, everyone puts the safety of women at the core of their work.
I only hope that Haiti's problem won't disappear like the news we usually read in newspapers or watch on TV.
There are different issues debated in the media. The main issues regard the help to Haiti's population. They need sanitary assistance because they lack food and water and they also need military assistance to protect them from the gangs which are exploiting the lack of police forces to commit sexual abuse, robbing and other illegal activities.
ReplyDeleteThe media also reported the trafficking of children for illegal adoption. There are a lot of couples (abroad) waiting for adoption abroad and illegal adoption is a way to avoid to deal with bureaucracy. Illegal adoption could be justified with the idea of giving a better life to the children but it's selfish to steal a child from his home and to think that money would make his life better.
There are interviews of the surgeons working in temporary hospitals in Haiti and they report their happiness when they manage to save lives. The patients who can't be cured in Haiti are transferred to other countries. Florida's hospitals complain because they're overwhelmed as they're the only ones accepting patients from Haiti and they are asking for help from other countries.
I read a report which says that 60% of deaths in natural disasters are caused by earthquakes. The main problem is the population is not prepared to face the disaster and the buildings are not built keeping the likelihood of earthquakes in mind. Nothing can be done to avoid earthquakes but we can take them into account in urban planning. The report also says that there are more earthquakes than in the past but there are fewer victims and that's due to the work done in the direction of safety planning.
Going back to Haiti's issues, there is the need for reconstruction and a lot of fund raising initiatives are going on around the world.
In England there was a poetry reading fund raising event to buy corrugated iron sheets to help the building of a roof over Haitians' head but this is just a temporary solution. Much more has to be done to help Haitians.
The quake in Haiti has provoked lot of coverage in the media, pointing out that this event occurred in a country that already had many serious economic and social problems .The figures talk about 200.000 dead, 1.5millions homeless and 3millions in need of aid.
ReplyDeleteThe disaster has attracted the attention of the media all over the world ,from newspapers to the internet. Many American actors, like John Travolta, flew there .Criticism has been raised about the work of the United Nation ,blamed for its lack of organisation .
Many televisions showed the Haitians with requests of help written on signs in front of their tents. The emotional aspect of this event has been focused :the pain of the Haitians searching for their loves ones with bare hands, thousands of children left alone in a country with thousands of orphans. Lots of calls for aid have been made by emergency organisations, mobile phone companies have asked for money.
Besides the social aspect has also been considered .First of all the repeated warnings from Unicef about the child trafficking, the women abuses and the continued looting. Furthermore hospitals crammed with the injured, doctors complaining because they haven’t enough antibiotics so that they have been forced to amputate arms and legs. Consequently, many Haitians without arms or legs ,will no longer be able to work in a country where the manual labour is the main source of income.
Considering all these difficulties ,what will be the future of Haiti? It will also be necessary to decide who will organise the rebuilding ,whether an international organisation will take over it from outside or the Haitians themselves will manage to deal with it. Let’s hope that even when the emergency finishes ,all the attention to the problems of Haiti won’t fall.
The wretched become the desperate.
ReplyDeleteThe Independent focuses attention on the aid delivered by the United Nations in favour of Haiti's victims.In this article there are two relevant topics which highlight how the desperate situation in Haiti is far from a solution. The first one concerns the several lacks of water,food,and medical care, the other one is related to the increase of violence and crime. These two aspects are extremely linked to each other. That's because despite the efforts to help Haiti the aid rarely reach the places and the people in greatest need. In fact the supplies are constantly stolen by the high number of looters,who lay into everything they are able to find. However, although the situation in Haiti seems to be a neverending disaster, countries and people from all over the world are giving their own contribution. These countries under the UN' coordination are sending supplies and medical aid to Haiti, promoting at the same time public and private donations with the aim to keep hope alive.
Hi everyone!
ReplyDeleteI'm Sonia from the B2 course. Among the various issues debated about Haiti's disaster I've decided to focus my attention on the children. This morning I've read an article on BBC News web site where Haiti's Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive criticisms about the failed attempt by the New Children's Refuge to take Haitian children into the Dominican Republic are described.
I completely agree with him when he describes these people as kidnappers because they have tried to take the children out of Haitian borders without any kind of paperwork as the law requires. On the other hand they replied they "didn't know what they were doing was wrong" and that they were trying to help those children whose parents were dead during the heartquake. But how it is possible that they can know what children are orphans. Even the autority cannot due to the difficulty of locating people who are trying to survive in tent city spread all around among ruins? And really do they want to help these children or is the reality more horrible than we can imagine?
The comforting news is that according to UN guidelines, two years should pass after the disaster before
adoption can be considered.
For further information http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8491996.stm
In my opinion lots of issues about the earthquake in Haiti have been debated during last weeks. I would like to focus on two of them which I find very interesting and maybe not enough emphasized.
ReplyDeleteThe first one is the key role played by new media in breaking Haiti earthquake story to the outside world. For over 24 hours after the quake, most of reports and images didn't came from established news organizations but from ordinary people on the spot. This was made possible by the communications opportunities offered by Internet. Moreover, during the first hours after the earthquake, traditional media like CNN and New York Times simply aggregated, sorted and presented user-generated contents: in fact, damages to the communications and transport infrastructure, power failures and damages to key buildings in the capital prevented traditional reporters from reaching the spot. These news media include microblogging platforms (like Twitter), video-sharing platforms (like YouTube) and Internet telephone applications (like Skype).
International relief efforts have been charged with inefficiency, not only by Bertolaso. So I wondered: what are the major problems to tackle when delivering aids in a crisis situation? Airports and ports, when usable, are often not equipped to deal with the volume of aid traffic arriving. Damaged roads make it harder to move resources around. If communications infrastructure is damaged, then it's difficult to communicate and coordinate aid activities. Security issues must be taken into account to deter looting and violence. Coordination is needed between military troops, international agencies and aid organizations, so that available resources are properly exploited and don't go to waste. In conclusion, the situation in Haiti is not easy to manage at all, but I don't have enough elements to determine if international relief efforts are doing a good work.
Roberto
After one month since the Haiti's earthquake these are the most debated issues I found reading some online newspapers. The most important one seems to be that the G7 has announced plans to cancel debt owed by Haiti: UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown hailed the pledge saying: "It must be right that a nation buried in rubble must not also be buried in debt".
ReplyDeleteOther issues are about victims and children adoptions. In these days many people from all over the world are mobilising to help the Haitians in different ways, but there were also problems with one US organization: Haiti has charged 10 US missionaries with child abduction and criminal conspiracy for allegedly trying to smuggle 33 children out of the country and this case has probably become the biggest thing since the quake.
Last, the background issue seems to be the challenge of rebuilding: government and international officials are drawing up a strategy to help rebuild this country, pledging to assist Haiti with billions of dollars in assistance, not only to help in the immediate aftermath of the devastating earthquake, but also in the long-term reconstruction.
All articles are followed by photos, videos, reportages and comments, but only the Times Online and BBC News dedicate many, many pages to this topic.
I only hope mass media will not forget Haiti next month.
Some days ago I was looking for some news about the earthquake that devasted Haiti and I came across the comment by an Italian journalist, M. Gramellini on which I'm going to focus my attention. He posted on his blog a thought that has shown a different point of view about this kind of tragic events. Better, he has tried to awake our conscience a shock.
ReplyDeleteLast days we have been surrounded by the images of this tragedy. I think watching those images and listening to those news shocked all of us.
Mr Gramellini, after being devasted by the apocalyptic effects of the earthquake in Haiti, has begun searching for information about how life in that island was before the catastrophe. He found out that the eighty per cent of the haitians live (or lived) with less than a dollar per day; the ninty per cent live (or lived) in huts without drinkable water or electricity. He discovered also that life expectancy is (or was) fifty years old and that one out of three children dies before he's five years old. Also, one of those three children would have been certainly sold as a slave.
At this point his conscience was asking if death can be considered worse than this life. And he's also wondering why their death shoock him whereas he hadn't care a rush about their life. He says that it's clear that we can't be torn by worldwide suffering. Neverthless he can't get out of thinking about the irony of a situation which, by the evocative power of images, let him cry for a child buried beneath the debris, without thinking he's the same starving child who was dying on the same street some weeks before. He concludes saying that the fear that somethig like that could happen also here seems to worry him more than haitians' suffering which has already existed. I should confess it, when I read these words I thought an idea like this never crossed my mind before. But I think that at least once, everyone has been worried by the fear that a dying like this could also happen here. And this fear sometimes and not only the solidarity for their shocking living conditions seems to worry us.
Hello everybody.
ReplyDeleteThe earthquake in Haiti, as all the natural catastrophes, gives rise to a lot of serious humanitarian, social and economical problems. Trying to give a summary of all the issues is too difficult for who haven't followed day by day the events.
I agree with Emanuela when she said that the situation become worse because of the general misery of Haitians, caused by years of government corruptions.
But, what about us? What about the northern world nations that now are trying to appear the brave rescuers for the inhabitants of Haiti?
Well.
Let's have a look to the century of history after the Haiti independence.
It's not a mystery that USA have supported for years military and paramilitary groups
in all the nations of southern America to make weak their governments.
When the political and social situation is not stable, is easier to exploit people and resources and to make deals with corrupted administrators. In these conditions, and most of all in the last six years of civil war, poverty and misery have spread out in Haiti, which now is one of the poorest countries in the world. What is unfolding in Haiti seems to be part of what Naomi Klein has labelled the "Shock Doctrine". Indeed, on the Heritage Foundation blog, opportunity was being found in the crisis with a post titled: "Amidst the Suffering, Crisis in Haiti Offers Opportunities to the U.S." "In addition to providing immediate humanitarian assistance, the U.S. response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti earthquake offers opportunities to re-shape Haiti's long-dysfunctional government and economy as well as to improve the public image of the United States in the region," wrote Heritage fellow Jim Roberts in a post that was subsequently altered to tone down the shock-doctrine language.
But in the original Jim Roberts words we can find the true meaning of the shock doctrine framework, in which all the catastrophes are considered as ideal situations to restore the political and financial control of rich countries on the poor countries.