Rep. Maxine Waters has called for $300 million in emergency assistance for Haiti. She is not asking for grassroots support for the bill at the time, but we will issue an alert if appropriate.

There is more durable good news- for nationals of Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua. TPS was extended for those three countries on September 26, on the basis of the devastation caused in 1999 in Honduras and Nicaragua by Hurricane Mitch, and in 2001 in El Salvador by earthquakes. Jonathan “Jock” Scharfen the Acting Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that the extension “continues the United States’ long tradition of providing relief to our visitors who, for reasons beyond their control, can’t return to their homes.” Why do visitors from those countries continue to receive TPS status for natural disasters from seven and nine years ago, while Haitians are denied the protection for four storms that hit in the last six weeks? Because their friends, family and supporters speak up for them! Voters tell the Administration and Congress that TPS for those countries is important, so the government makes it a priority.

This week’s action: Speak up for non-resident Haitians in the United States: tell Acting Director Scharfen that justice demands that Haitians who can’t return to their homes should benefit from the United States’ long tradition of providing relief to our visitors. You’ll be in good company, joining members of the House of Representatives, the Miami Herald, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, religious leaders, Haiti’s President and the Organization of American States. A model letter is below. Feel free to personalize it. If you don’t have time for a letter, click here and leave a comment on Mr. Scharfen’s article on the USCIS Leadership Journal blog.
[Read more…]

A leaked email from a BBC editor highlights the Western media’s lack of interest in Haiti. David Edwards writes

The whistleblower’s editor had listed several stories which he described as “not that interesting”, followed by the comment: “Dull stories - every one of them, don’t you think?” These were the stories:

“The leading anti-drugs judge in Afghanistan has been assassinated. “There’s been an angry reaction in France following the magazine publication of photos of Taleban fighters displaying trophies they’d stripped from French soldiers killed in an ambush. “The authorities in Haiti say the number of those killed in the wake of Tropical Storm Hanna has risen to more than sixty. “A United Nations report says the world’s wealthiest countries are failing to deliver on their promises to boost development aid.”

By the end of the week the number of Haitian dead had risen to 500 and now it is estimated that at least 1000 have died. The number of displaced is in millions. It’s not just Haitian stories that are dull and not worth the words on the paper. Another example of the discrepancy in reporting and value attached to people’s lives is the reports on the floods in the Indian state of Bihar. Hardly a word has been heard on the British TV and radio news including the World Service. Apparently Westerns are not able to empathise with people who live in places like Bihar and Gonaives. Black people, People of Colour - are too remote to reach people’s imaginations.

“[I]t would be dishonest to ignore some of the darker reasons for the discrepancy in the media coverage of these two disasters. One is a failure of empathy in the West. People can envisage themselves stranded in New Orleans, but not a village in Bihar. And then there is the sad reality that, even in our globalised age, lives lost in the developing world are regarded as less newsworthy than lives lost in the rich world. Even when subject to the undiscriminating violence of nature, it would appear that all men and women are nothing like equal.”

Dan Beeton writing in the Upside Down World interviewed a number of journalists on why they failed to report on Haiti. Their answers show a mixture of laziness, disdain and racism.

Jennifer Bauduy, a former Reuters correspondent who reported from Haiti for two years, explained in an e-mail: “Haiti is not rich in resources, is not a significant trading partner, is not a major tourist destination, and so is not significant to the U.S. media. Added to this is a combination of racism and the language barrier.”

New York Times investigative reporter Walt Bogdanich characterized part of the challenge to presenting a balanced picture of developments in Haiti as such: “Any story that veers from the conventional wisdom is going to encounter resistance.”

Veteran freelance reporter Reed Lindsay described U.S. reporting on Haiti as suffering from a kind of parachute approach, in which correspondents unfamiliar with the country swoop in for a week or two. “Their coverage,” he said, “tends to be very superficial at best, and often very distorted, because they don’t have time to get to know the country.” He said biased reporting often results from correspondents’ reliance on elite sources.

Some actions readers can take:

Links: Media Lens “Not very interesting news…”

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you do write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

Ask the Independent why it has had so little to say about the crisis in Haiti.

Write to the Independent’s foreign news editor, Katherine Butler Email: k.butler@independent.co.uk

Write to Roger Alton, editor of the Independent Email: rogermalton@googlemail.com

Please send a copy of your emails to us Email: editor@medialens.org

Tags:
Haiti
Media

The situation in Haiti is truly horrible - Faye, Gustave, Hanna, Ike. Haiti Action has an appeal out for donations to help those in Gonaïves and elsewhere in the country. Paul Farmer who started Zanmi Lasante Hospital, describes the situation…

The need is of course enormous. After 25 years spent working in Haiti and having grown up in Florida, I can honestly say that I have never seen anything as painful as what I just witnessed in Gonaïves—except in that very same city, four years ago. Again, you know that 2004 was an especially brutal year, and those who work with PIH know why: the coup in Haiti and what would become Hurricane Jeanne. Everyone knows that Katrina killed 1500 in New Orleans and on the Gulf Coast, but very few outside of our circles know that what was then Tropical Storm Jeanne, which did not even make landfall in Haiti, killed an estimated 2000 in Gonaïves alone.

We’re faced with another round of death and obliteration. Haiti’s naked mountains promise many more unnatural disasters. We know that a massive reforestation program and public works to keep cities safer are what’s needed in the medium and long term. But there’s a lot we can do in the short term to help out with disaster relief.

Gonaives 4 years ago after Hurricane Jeanne.

Haitians have had to deal with rising food prices over the past 12 months and now with the hurricanes most of the rice crops are ruined which will inevitably lead to more price hikes and more food crisis. If the aftermath of 2004 is anything to go by things will not be easy Blog de Port au Prince doesn’t hope for much after this last series of hurricanes……

I made contact with my mother’s neighbor, a women of fifty, later that day:

“Everybody is being moved to the mountain,” she said “We are now in the mountain. You cannot arrive in Gonaives without a helicopter. Our situation is very complicated, It is a desperate -no hope for us in Gonaives.”

She then explained what made her feel worse than anything:

“…they won’t help us. They will take the aid money for their own businesses as they did in 2004….our situation can be better that it is now. It is worst than Jeanne.”

Gonaives 2008

Donations are desperately needed and can be made through Zanmi Lasante / Partners in Health or through the Vanguard Foundation [Danny Glover and Harry Belafonte]

Links:
Interview with Paul Farmer on Democracy Now
Haiti Liberte

Tags:
Haiti
Hurricanes

Photos from “Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta

The lure of oil is its cheapness. What we mean is that oil is a cheap source of energy. It is cheap partly because oil’s costs of extraction—in the Niger Delta and much of the tropical world—are not reflected in the price at the pump, and what Calvino called the “puny power of paper money,” .

One consequence of the unfettered and wreckless exploration and exploitation of oil in the delta is that the poor people continue to subsidize the costs of crude oil through the losses they suffer in environmental services, quality of life, and extreme environmental degradation. In turn, opportunistic groups— oil bunkerers, gangs, militants—find space to extract (and extort) financial gains from the system.

Rather than getting better, the crisis in the Niger Delta appears to be getting more intractable. Meetings, programs, projects, and commissions multiply—yet the many-headed hydra that is mass poverty in the Delta simply grows more appendages. The path of crude oil development is strewn with skeletons and soaked in human blood across the world.

Tags:
Nigeria
Niger Delta
Oil
Shell + Nigeria

After three weeks a much belated report on the impact of the Tsunami on Somalia is published today on IRIN News. The tsunami which travelled at about 805km per hour retained most of its force when it hit the Somali coastline wiping out entire villages.    This report and other smaller ones give a confusing picture of what exactly is happening in the various villages and areas hit. In some places there has been outbreak of diseases such as malaria, typhoid, respiratory-tract infections, and diarrhea. 

Garacad one of the cities that was hit is a major fishing industry centre selling seaford to markets in the Middle East and Africa.   The livelihoods of 780 families (4,8000 people) were affected.   In the region of Puntland, 16,270 families (100,000) people were affected.

The Somali transitional government appealed to the international community to aid the tsunami affected people who have so far received very little aid or acknowledgement of their plight.   

"I would like to appeal to the international community for strong assistance in order to help these affected people to help these people is very important - the assistance to other countries has been great, while the assistance to Somalia as yet has been minimal.

"Our people have been through four years of drought and now the tsunami. There are no medical facilities or means of emergency care in most of these areas."

The worst hit area, Hafun has received some aid from UNICEF and the Red Crescent to provide clean water.  200 children have been vacinated against measles and women are to be vacincated against tetanus.

Like most coastal areas, the main industry is fishing and all the fishing equipment, boats and homes have been destroyed.   Although a few agencies have tried to bring in aid their job has been  hampered by  extremely poor roads and a general lack of infrastructure.   Meanwhile after three weeks people in some many communities are stilling living under plastic sheets on high ground some way from the coastline, still waiting for the aid organisations to reach them with food, shelter and medical equipment as well as help to rebuild their lives.