Many of us have been moved to tears watching the Haiti tragedy, have celebrated the discovery of survivors even at this late date, have contributed money to “the cause,” and really, really wondered how church people can get arrested for “kidnapping” children.
Day after day the begging for money for Haiti goes on. It is the sob story du jour. Everybody’s begging and using Haiti to make money, like the strip club in Toledo that used lap dances.
Imagine all those politicians, celebrities and movie stars flying in and clogging up the airport at Haiti, touring the country just as they did to New Orleans so they can say, “Look at me, I’m such a good person that I actually HELP people who are absolutely destitute.”
Billions of dollars have poured into Haiti. Help needs to continue. The problem is that it’s become so commercial and we never hear anything good about what’s being FIXED down there.
As usual, the US contributes millions and millions of taxpayer dollars and US citizens contribute likewise because we are a generous country. We help in Africa and around the world, first thing.
Christian organizations do this ALL THE TIME, yet all they get is criticism and mockery when THEY do it. Now we have these movie stars, with their thousand dollar outfits and their lip gloss shining, singing about how we are all the world together, like nobody does anything to help anybody because Americans are such a selfish people.
Americans are accused of being selfish people all the time, particularly by the Malibu, $500 haircut, pampered lot out in LALA land.
That crew is almost always whining about AIDS in Africa, but then would you ever see them acknowledge that Bush poured more money into AIDS in Africa than any other president?
But then they’ll make their tour to Africa to make sure they get the photo ops to prove that they are benevolent and good-hearted people, in spite of their vast riches, daily massages and trainers and generally pampered lifestyles where nothing more unpleasant than the maid quitting intervenes into their lifestyle.
What is sad is that many of us are now becoming so cynical over Haiti relief efforts that we need to distance ourselves spiritually from the constant guilt and hectoring.
We can’t go an hour without hearing something about Haiti. Most organizations have taken up the drumbeat daily.
It would be nice to see some positive results from what we are doing down there. It would be nice to see that Haitians are learning to help themselves. It would be nice to see that Haiti itself isn’t clogged up by rich white people flying in to oogle the damage and then fly home on their jets, drinking champagne and simpering over the poor black people they just left.
If we are to believe the G7 finance ministers, Haiti is on its way to getting something it has deserved for a very long time: full "forgiveness" of itsforeign debt. In Port-au-Prince, Haitian economist Camille Chalmers has been watching these developments with cautious optimism. Debt cancellation is a good start, he told al-Jazeera English, but: "It's time to go much further. We have to talk about reparations and restitution for the devastating consequences of debt." In this telling, the whole idea that Haiti is a debtor needs to be abandoned. Haiti, he argues, is a creditor – and it is we, in the west, who are deeply in arrears.
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