January 13, 2010
Zombieland
Imagine living in a fetid hellhole of unspeakable squalor. No jobs, a hunter-gatherer economy, basic sanitation and potable water nearly impossible to find unless you are a member of the vanishingly small ruling elite. A civilization so dispiriting and pathetic it makes a cannibalistic African kleptocracy seem inviting.
Now layer a 7.0 magnitude earthquake on top of that, annihilating up to 5% of your entire population.
I have an employee from Port-au-Prince. A simply excellent fellow. He finally reached his godfather in Miami this afternoon and learned his mother is alive. His friends and the rest of his family? No idea. Apparently the entire city simply pancaked upon itself.
There must be a God, for no mortal could be so cruel. Say a prayer to Him anyway, and tremble.
Prayers going for your employee and his family.
Posted by: Jean at January 13, 2010 8:39 PMTotally unfathomable, even moreso than the tsunami of a few years ago. Haiti is a land of children. Even the adults are children and will be helpless until someone comes to "adopt" them and tell them what to do. Generations of malnourishment and unemployment have decimated what the earthquake has not.
Only a benevolent dictator with an eye toward compassion and enterprise can be of any real political service to the people there. But short-sighted "democracy" cultists will never allow such a beneficial thing to happen.
Posted by: Joan of Argghh! at January 13, 2010 10:04 PMDude.......I know yer thinkin' it.
Cash in what's left of your IRA and blow in by spook Blackhawk and drop twenty cases of chocolate bars. Then you give 'em a dose of the patented oration via Halftrack (or other appropriate armored vehicle) dragging a 50kw generator rocking the audio by Community Voice, and BOOM......they'll be two stepping around the square in no time.
But you'll need flowing robes. Lots of ermine and red velvet; maybe a Dick Williams magic trick or two....and a crown perhaps.
You got this, homes. You totally got this.
Posted by: bitterman at January 13, 2010 11:55 PMTypical French.
They bailed and left the kids to fend for themselves.
Same island, across the border in Santo Domingo..not so bad.
Somalia, Darfur same same.
Now we got the same shit in D.C.
Well, as someone somewhere else said, you can't make up a 30 point gap in average IQ with wishing.
Posted by: vanderleun at January 14, 2010 1:26 AMGod was cruel to the Haitians before he gave them earthquakes. This might be the only place on earth that will remain exactly the same for two more centuries.
Posted by: james wilson at January 14, 2010 1:40 AMGod never did anything cruel to the Haitians. The cruelest and most heartless of men with no fear of God are the ones who have continually perpetrated misery and evil acts upon the Haitians.
If it wasn't for good people moved by their Christian culture (if not specific belief) to support and feed those poor people there, the despair would be even deeper, if one can imagine it.
Posted by: Joan of Argghh! at January 14, 2010 8:21 AMYou nailed it Joan. Our own free will, not God's "cruelity" is the root cause of Haiti being lower than a canabalistic African kleptocracy; to quote V-man.
Posted by: WolfDog at January 14, 2010 10:40 AMJoan is right on. This is years of human cruelty, brought to a head by an act of nature.
Posted by: PeggyU at January 14, 2010 7:35 PMSkip, you don't know what you are talking about. The French didn't 'skip out' of Haiti. The French were expelled in a bloody revolution just over two hundred years ago, in which hundreds of French men, women and children were murdered and savaged. At the time of independence, when Haiti became the first black-ruled country in the world, it was prosperous and productive.
Posted by: Sid at January 15, 2010 9:05 AM