Archive for the 'Global issues' Category

Suspicious and vulture business in Haiti is on the rise after the earthquake last week. For the people of this country it is very hard to get food and water, but there are people using that opportunity to their advantage and are earning money through scamming and ridiculously high prices.

Bed in a regular hotel costs $200 (before the earthquake it was $70), and you can get a breakfast consisting of 2 scrambled eggs for $13. Fraudsters are selling a bottle of water at double the regular price, gasoline is also 2 times more expensive than before the disaster.

Looted goods from destroyed supermarkets are being sold on the streets of Port-au-Prince. More than 90 percent of restaurants and shops in the city are razed to the ground. According to journalists who arrived from all over the world, its very hard to get a descent meal.

– The meal is luxury – they said.

Unfortunately, the earthquake in Haiti is also used as a bait for potential Internet frauds. A Danish company that deals with Internet security, revealed more than 250 sites that are falsely representing as charity organizations and are collecting money to help the population of Haiti. But in fact, they are stealing the money of donors.

The most common form of fraud is sending the spam emails with an invitation to make a donation.

Similar scams have occurred after the tsunami in 2004 and after Katrina hurricane in New Orleans in 2005.
Theses websites serve only one purpose. When you scroll the text in an attempt to read how to make a donation, you can notice that the rest of the site is dysfunctional.

According to the latest data, the earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12th. killed at least 75.000 people, 250.000 were injured and around 1 million people are homeless.Haitian civil protection is estimated that the earthquake destroyed half the buildings in the capital of the country – one of the poorest in both American continents

Non-governmental organizations have opposed the adoption of children from Haiti, the mania that caught the world. More British NGO’s said that adopting Haitian children, that left without parents, immediately need to be suspended.
Organizations like Save the Children, and Red Cross have sought an urgent moratorium on new procedures for children adoption. The main reason for this is in belief that some parents are still alive under rubbles of Port-au-Prince. A few days ago the rescuers pulled out several people from the ruins. Because of that, if approved procedures are not suspended, some families might be broken forever.

According to some estimates the catastrophic earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12th, probably killed between 100.000 and 200.000 people.

– Adopting children outside Haiti would mean a permanent separation of thousands children from their families – said Jasmine Whitbread, director of Save the Children.
She and her colleagues believe that “children at this time should not leave Haiti, unless they go with members of their families or if the initiated procedures previously collected all the necessary documents”.

According to estimates by international humanitarian organizations, tens of thousands of children were left orphans after the devastating earthquake. It is assumed that many children are left alone among the destroyed buildings and the streets of Port-au Prince. Nevertheless, more countries announced that they will accelerate the adoption Haitian children.
Before the earthquake in Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world, was 380.000 orphanages or fosters.
But the European Commission called EU countries to be cautious during adoption procedures.

– Some EU countries, including Italy and Netherlands, have already announced that they will speed up the procedure for the arrival of children and their adopting – said a press spokesman of the European Commission.

He added that the countries face a very difficult situation, but caution is needed in terms of accelerating the adoption procedures.
– It is very difficult to understand when it is indeed to adopt children, even those who have lost their parents. Maybe adopting is not very best idea – added the spokesman.

It is unbearable to watch, let alone experience, the latest tragedy that has struck Haiti. The religious evangelist and the host of The 700 Club Pat Robertson describes how these poor Haitians have made a pack with the devil for wanting independence from the French therefore god has now struck them with this tragedy. I adhere to a different view. That is I believe the devil has designated Pat Robertson as its spokesman.

It is heartwrenching to see the tragedy that has unfolded in this Caribbean country for the past several hundred years. Under the French Colonial rule, Haiti was subjected to the worst form of human exploitation possible. The same kind that the religious leaders practiced in the Untied States at the time. With the blessing of the Christian church leaders, a system of eradication, subjugation, slavery and exploitation of natives and Africans took place. The Haiti of today is the product of the religious establishments of the west that Pat Robertson and others adhere to.

The ideology of racism, intolerance, and lack of respect for all human life by the imperialists has created a country in despair-a country that does not have a single roof over its people and can not provide shelter, food, and safety for its citizens. Shame on the west and civilized world for letting a place like Haiti exist while spending trillions on unjust wars and corrupt financial institutions.

It is in places like Haiti that corruption, extremism and violence can breed. In another corner of the world you can see the impact of another religious extremism. Look at Afghanistan as an example. War and poverty in the past 50 years has produced a land where parents have no choice but to send children to ideological Islamic fundamentalism boarding schools for a loaf of bread. You can never fight the brainwashing when its done by the person that feeds you through a barrel of a gun. Or how Yemen, a country with over 50% of the population living in poverty, is the new breeding ground of terrorists and hate. Look at the conflict in Gaza and the West Bank. 60 years of occupation has produced economic despair and created the largest open-air prison in the world in the hand of Zionist extremists and Pat Robertsons. The tragedy that is taking place for half of the world’s population living on less then 2 dollars a day can not be resolved through military industrial complex, but through creation of sustainable nations with viable economies and governments.

No country or people can exist in a state of hopelessness and despair for long. If dictators can not be overthrown through nationalistic democratic movements then the population gravitates towards the next outlet, in most cases the religious institutions. Religious governments and institutions are more oppressive compared to the dictators that they replace. Look at the current religious government of Iran. Unfortunately, as we see in countries all across the globe, the price of installing friendly dictators may cost the West its national security, or at least its wealth through unjust wars.

It would be much more beneficial if our politicians and religious leaders conducted business through diplomacy and nation building rather than through war, conflict, and exploitation by religious institutions or the military industrial complex.