those who help Haiti

I imagine that the urge to do something real occasionally takes people over and spirits them off to join emergency aid workers, ignoring all of their at-home troubles and suchlike. I confess, I'd like to go make myself useful there, any amount of even untrained manpower has got to be useful now--but, well, I'm not either altruistic or shortsighted enough to run off like that (even if I do know a little French and well that comes in handy--as for something like the Peace Corps? Two years and the political bias...no thanks).

Anyway, what's really troubling is the impact this earthquake had there, as opposed to how it would have been in, say, Southern California. There, one would have had plenty of early warning--the shockwave is preceded by a primary wave and, in general, lots of small tremors over a span of time--not to mention earthquake friendly building.

By some kind of coincidence, I just read a bit about the health crisis in Haiti and how it, and the rampant poverty and decades of civil ills, contributed to the misattribution of AIDS to being Haitian.

So that's another crisis on our hands, and to deal with it--as an inevitably political historian--I see the solution as a stable government. Yes, it would have to be totalitarian in aspects. Democracies take far too long to make decisions, and are so indecisive about them besides--but, obviously, one would have to avoid a militaristic regime because of its inevitable fall into the bad kind of tyranny.

Plutocracy it is! But it has to be a plutocracy of the natives...good luck there....


Here's a list of cool places to donate money or supplies to, if you are so inclined.