Around the World + Helping Prison Libraries in MD + Death of Fiction/Lit Mags + Translation Errors

The other day, in the midst of more hairpulling over the current US political paralysis and continuous series of bad choices that the administration and Congress keep making, as if they're trying to crash through a 2010 looking-glass version of 1994 but with potentially far more disastrous outcomes, I asked myself: what else is going on in the rest of the world, in addition to the terrible post-quake situation in Haiti, which has gotten a great deal of attention.I began to catalogue some of the things I was somewhat aware of, just off the top of my head, and am listing them here. What am I missing?

• Angola continued on as the host of the African Cup of Nations, after the deadly attack on the Togolese team in the restive Cabinda province
• Argentinian leader Cristina Fernández de Kirchner fires central banker, battles other government officials, economy faltering

• Australia has recently witnessed repeated violent attacks, including murder, on South Asian residents, many of them students (the cartoon at right has sparked outrage)
  
• Bolivians reelected Socialist president Evo Morales
• British ruling party facing likely defeat in upcoming elections
• Canada prepares for winter Olympics in Vancouver (someday I'll actually see this supposedly very beautiful city and region)
• Chile elects right-wing billionaire president, first rightist in half a century
• China and Google in tiff over hackers, Net control, censorship
• Colombia moves forward with extension of presidential terms for conservative, pro-US president Álvaro Uribe
• France's government considers ban on burqas/face covering garments
• Honduras' ex-president, Manuel Zelaya, overthrown in coup, will go into exile in Dominican Republic
• Iraq in turmoil in lead-up to January 30, 2010 governmental elections, multiple bombings over last 3 days, former Saddam-era official executed
• Japanese city elects anti-US military base mayor, negotiation over Okinawa installation likely
• Nigerian President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua out of country since late fall, feared dead, sparking a political crisis, recently issued a tape saying he's okay; sectarian riots in central Nigerian city of Kos have led to the death of hundreds of people
• Northern Ireland government teetering after sex scandal revelations involving conservative leader's anti-gay wife, Iris (Mrs.) Robinson, crisis talks underway
• Portugal legalizes same-sex marriage
• Somalia remains wracked by civil war
• Sri Lanka's civil war is over, but a battle brews between the president who won it and his top general
• Turkey and Israel in a tiff over Israeli ambassador's public humiliation of Turkish ambassador, Israel apologizes
• Venezuela's leader, Hugo Chávez, devalues currency, bolivar, begins reelection push
• Yemen is the site of increased US military and intelligence activity

These were the first few news factlets that came to mind, and the situations in Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, one of the US's major sources of oil, and the one from which the alleged recent airline bomb-plot participant came; and in Iraq, which the US is currently occupying and which the news media have all but disappeared, both really deserve far greater scrutiny. But then what's happening across the globe, including both in the US's front yards and far away, should receive far greater media and public exploration and discussion. What else am I missing?

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From Reggie H, I received this appeal from a Maryland librarian who coordinates a program involving bringing books and other reading materials to incarcerated people. Their funding has just been slashed, so the library, Glennor Shirley, writes:

From: "Glennor Shirley" Sent: Tue 26/01/10 12:19 PM Subject:GED books and dictionariesCorrectional Education Libraries lost all their funding due to the state budget crisis. That has affected our ability to purchase materials for inmates who read a lot and who we are preparing to returning to society to be productive citizens. We will accept:

• Reference materials no older than 2 years.
• Current Non Fiction ( psychology, self help, self improvement, relationships, starting your own business, business plans, career, English language dictionaries, health information
• Anything on the NYT and Washington Post Bestseller Lists
• Popular authors, like Grisham, Ludlum, Patterson, Stephen King,
• Alice Walker, Patricia Cornwell, Grafton, etc.
• Mysteries, horror, romance, books by African-American writers.
• GED Books,
• English language dictionaries

Call or email me if you have any good offers. Read my vignette at: ALA: "Vignettes from a Prison Librarian"Glennor Shirley http://prisonlibrarian.blogspot.comLibrary CoordinatorCorrectional Education LibrariesBaltimore MD 21201email: gshirley@dllr.state.md.ushttp://www.dllr.state.md.us/ce/lib/

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Someone is always figuratively announcing, proclaiming or predicting the death of one of the arts, or a sub-genre within them. Painting was dead 10 years ago, long live painting. The novel's utility long ago vanished, here come the novels. Video art was just a passing fad, but biennials can't get enough of video art. Etc. What is sometimes true is that the delivery systems by which we access certain types of art do change, thereby changing our experiences with and relationship to them. Drive-ins, those relics of an older, suburbanizing, car-focused culture, which were still around in my youth, are all but gone these days. But the arts aren't going away. Ted Genoways, editor of Virginia Quarterly Review, however, expounds in Mother Jones not only that American fiction is kaput and American poetry doesn't deal with the "big issues," but that literary journals are disappearing. Going, going, gone. Of course he extrapolates from a few anecdotes (one of them incorrect), providing no statistical data to back up his projections, nor does he seem to be aware of the increasing number of online journals, or the countless ones that have replaced the older formats (newspapers, general interest magazines, etc.) that he's citing. He isn't the first to bemoan the parochialism of American literature, and won't be the last, but to leap from that critique to the death of lit mags is, to put it simply, pushing it. The story about the former Yale Review editor becoming a US Senator from Connecticut Senator is, if nothing else, inspiring, though, and I could even see a university--Yale?--adding this to its marketing materials: Students, there are many more things you can do with creative writing and literary and cultural studies than you might have imagined, including replacing those sorry excuses for legislators Chris Dodd and Joe Lieberman!

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Did you see the translation of the Aimé Césaire (a Martinican and one of the great poets of the Caribbean and Francophone literature) poem in the recent issue of The New Yorker? You know, the issue with the paean to writer Neil Gaiman; the insightful as always discussion of memoir-writing, authenticity and truthfulness by Daniel Mendelsohn; and the "short story" by evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson? It was titled "Earthquake," and was translated by Paul Muldoon. A friend forwarded it and, for several different reasons, it rubbed me the wrong way. (Why not a poem by a Haitian or Haitian-American poet, like Frankétienne, Phébus Étienne, Paul Laraque, Georges Castera, Jean-Euphèle Milcé, Patrick Sylvain, Jacqueline Scott, René Philoctète, Danielle LeGros-Georges, Carlo Paul, Ella Turenne, or Gina Dorcely, just to name a few? When was the last time any Haitian or Haitian-American poets appeared in the pages of The New Yorker?) Little did I know.... (H/t Reggie H, Randall H)

Danticat on Family & Haiti + Saints & Colts to Super Bowl

Haitian-American Edwidge Danticat (at right, www.swisseduc.ch) one of the most talented writers of her generation, writes in this week's New Yorker about the death of her cousin and one of his daughters, in the house she called home on her visits to Haiti, and how family members there are dealing with the tragedy. It's a brief yet powerful piece, made ever more so by Danticat's prose, with its casual unfolding, precise observations and gentle humor, appropriate here despite such a terrible tragedy. A snippet:

By the time Maxo’s body was uncovered, cell phones were finally working again, bringing a flurry of desperate voices. One cousin had an open gash in her head that was still bleeding. Another had a broken back and had gone to three field hospitals trying to get it X-rayed. Another was sleeping outside her house and was terribly thirsty. One child had been so traumatized that she lost her voice. An in-law had no blood-pressure medicine. Most had not eaten for days. There were friends and family members whose entire towns had been destroyed, and dozens from whom we have had no word at all.

Everyone sounded eerily calm on the phone. No one was screaming. No one was crying. No one said “Why me?” or “We’re cursed.” Even as the aftershocks kept coming, they’d say, “The ground is shaking again,” as though this had become a normal occurrence. They inquired about family members outside Haiti: an elderly relative, a baby, my one-year-old daughter.

The entire piece is available at the New Yorker's site. Also on the site, George Packer's article on rebuilding Haiti.



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I'm really glad I caught yesterday's division championships; they were just the thing for the January doldrums I've been feeling. In the early afternoon game, for the AFC Championship, the New York Jets, all but given up for lost by mid-season, faced the powerhouse Indianapolis Colts, the league's arguably best team with its arguably best quarterback, Peyton Manning. The Jets were leading the Colts at halftime, an inconceivable achievement and one that made me pinch myself, but in the third quarter, Manning began to pick apart the Jets' defense as if they were toy soldiers, landing many of his corkscrewing gems in the waiting arms of wide receiver and Haitian-American Pierre Garçon, while the Colt's defense clamped down and didn't allow the Jets any further points, for a 30-17 victory. At times I felt like Manning was putting on a passing clinic for the fans, his teammates, and the Jets, and he did rack up 377 yards on 26 for 39 passing, with three touchdowns. The Jets' rookie QB, Mark Sanchez, was no slouch with 257 passing yards and two touchdowns, but he also threw a one of his notorious 4th quarter interceptions, sealing his team's fate. Indianapolis, which has a new and different (and black, for the second time) coach, Jim Caldwell, since its last trip five years ago to the Super Bowl, and many new players, but it still has Manning, who when he's on really rivals the best ever at his position. I certainly wouldn't want to be a cornerback or safety having to go up against one of his laser throws.


INDIANAPOLIS - JANUARY 24: Wide receiver Pierre Garcon(notes) #85 of the Indianapolis Colts celebrates with the Haitian flag after the Colts defeated the New York Jets 30-17 in the AFC Championship Game at Lucas Oil Stadium on January 24, 2010 in Indianapolis, Indiana. (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)

In the evening game, the New Orleans Saints, a team that's never gone to the Super Bowl, met the Minnesota Vikings, led by the unretired former Green Packer star Brett Favre, in the rebuilt Superdome. The game was mostly an offensive affair, with Favre and the Vikings leading in total yards, rushing yards and passing yards, but New Orleans's offense did enough to keep it competitive, and the game ended at regulation with a 28-28 tie. The Saints settled the matter by marching to the 40-yard line where kicker Garrett Hartley kicked the winning field goal. Favre, who is again considering retirement, is probably wishing he could have taken back his errant throw in the 4th quarter, when his team was leading, that allowed New Orleans back in, while the Saints' offensive and defensive squads are probably trying to figure out how to tighten up in order to be competitive against the Colt's stronger, tighter machine.

NEW ORLEANS - JANUARY 24: The New Orleans Saints celebrate with the NFC Championship trophy after they won 31-28 in overtime against the Minnesota Vikings during the NFC Championship Game at the Louisiana Superdome on January 24, 2010 in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images)

The Super Bowl will take place on February 7 in Miami. I think Indianapolis is the stronger team, but I'd love to see New Orleans literally get its day--its first Super Bowl victory--in the sun.

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day + Rebuilding Haiti + Ray's Candy Shop + Jets Win!

Readers, I am now having to confront regular spammers who, I assume, are paid to post ad, phishing or malbot links on the blog. If these continue, I may have to move to a moderated comment approach, though I've always wanted to avoid that because I want it to be easy for people to post directly to the blog. I've been flamed on here only a few times; one of the most memorable to me was during the middle of George W. Bush's second term, when I posted snarkily on the Disaster-in-Chief and a pro-Bushite posted to defend him and slam me. Another came when I gave a mixed review of John Adams's opera Dr. Atomic (great music, muddled, undramatic libretto). But I'm willing to live with respondents, even negative, vituperative ones. Spammers are in a completely different category...

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It's Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and it strikes me that the Reverend Dr. King Jr. (1929-1968), who gave his life so that we could be free, would have had some profound things to say about our current era, including our first African-American president, Barack Obama, whose election he made possible; the ongoing and proliferating wars and imperial projects, promoted by said African-American president, that the US is involved in; the terrible financial situation wrought by conservatives and neoliberals, and the struggle, by millions of Americans and American immigrants, for a decent and sustaining wage, a roof over their heads, an affordable education, and the ability to live in dignity and be treated with respect; the continuing cancers of racism, sexism and misogyny, classism, and, I believe, homophobia and heterosexism; and the situation in our Hemisphere and continental neighbor, Haiti.

Jack & Jill Politics is already on this meditation, so I'll link to their post from several days ago, on Rev. Dr. King Jr.'s actual birthday (January 15), called "What Martin Luther King Would Say About Haiti On His Birthday." What they note is that Rev. Dr. King Jr., as is well known, spoke out about the Vietnam War and American imperialism, and they quote his speech on this topic to extrapolate on how he might respond to the multiple challenges Haiti is facing. One noteworthy issue, which I hope our government notes, is the discrepancy between the billions being blown on military engagements (Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Colombia, etc.) and support of dictatorial regimes (Egypt, Uzbekistan, etc.) and the comparatively paltry $100 million the US pledged towards Haitian relief. Many of those billions, of course, ought to have been and should be spent rebuilding the US ECONOMY, which was effective nuked by the conservative-neoliberal fantasists of the last 25 years, instead of being funneled into a for-profit military-industrial machine whose actions and accounting most taxpayers will never know. But I know that I'm talking about a fantasy of recognition that won't be happening. Instead, we will keep pouring money into "war on terrorism" phantasms, which is to say, the military industrial complex, and scolding Haiti when it doesn't turn things around fast enough, or pay off the onerous debts and financial burdens that so terribly weakened its foundations, and those of numerous other countries around the world, before the earthquake hit. Now, to quote the incontrably more eloquent Rev. Dr. King Jr.:

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

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With regard to the physical reconstruction of Haiti, Anne Kiremidjian, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, offers some suggestions on CNN's site. Kiremidjian is an earthquake expert; from 1987 to 2002 she served as the Director and Co-Director of Stanford's John A. Blume Earthquake Engineering Center. Her suggestions about how to improve Haiti's infrastructure include the following thoughts:

To prevent future disasters, the country needs to develop, or at the very least adopt, a seismic building code from other earthquake-prone regions. Adopting the seismic components of the International Building Code would be a good place to start.

Sure, measures such as adding lateral reinforcement to columns and adding steel reinforcements at joints between beams and columns to transfer forces will be more expensive, but they are clearly necessary.

Adopting a seismic code by itself, however, does not solve the problem and all the money in the world can't make reconstruction happen immediately. Local engineers and planners need to be trained in proper design and construction practices, and most importantly, there has to be a regulatory body that oversees the implementation of such codes.

It strikes me that down the road, as the process of reconstruction begins, the Haitian government, in consultation with citizen stakeholders (and this must be central to any move forward), local and international engineers, environmentalists, and NGOs, could rebuild not only Port-au-Prince, Leogane and Jacmel, but remake (with regulated building codes, reforestation and sustainable agriculture, etc.) many parts of the country so that the majority of the Haitian people, as opposed to just élites, will benefit, for years to come.

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Memories of youth. And one of those memories involves grabbing cheap, delicious snacks at Ray's Candy Store, on Avenue A in the East Village, after a night of clubbing. The 24-hour store/restaurant/hangout, which faces Tompkins Square Park, opened in 1974. You know what's coming: Ray's is on the verge of being shuttered, because Ray Alvarez, the 76-year-old owner, is 2 months behind on rent. The New York Times article points out that back in 2000--which would have coincided with the surge in gentrification of the area--his landlord shifted his lease to month-to-month, and hiked his rent from $800 to $3500 (+ $650 for a 1BR apartment above the store), 500%. Meaning it would be easier to oust him and turn the property into one of the luxury venues that now grace the East Village. According to the article, some locals have cobbled together about $850, but that's a long way from the $7000 that Alvarez needs to stay in business, and if he goes, so would pass yet another longtime outpost of pre-gentrified-and-now-collapsing New York. If you know someone who's got the loot and wants to help an old man and a great institution out...Ray's Candy Shop photo (image from Yelp.com, by Andrew K.)

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And last but not least, let me not forget those New York Jets, the 5th seed in the AFC playoffs, who defeated the 2nd-seeded San Diego Chargers 17-14 to head to the AFC championship. Rookie RB Shonn Greene (at right, AP), subbing for starter Thomas Jones, broke off a 53-yard run in the 4th quarter that gave his team the game, rookie QB Mark Sanchez limited his mistakes to one interception, and the defense sparkled throughout. The Jets, who were 4-7 and facing yet another losing season in late November, went on to real off 3 straight wins, and then capped the season with two more, including one against the last league's final undefeated team, the powerhouse Indianapolis Colts. The Jets will face Indianapolis in the championship game, and should they win, they'll be heading to the Super Bowl. A nice turn for a team that was written off only two months ago, but as pro sports show, while the odds are usually on target, anything is possible.

Is Obama Really Colin Powell? + Teddy Pendergrass RIP + Noam Chomsky on Haiti

Some weeks back, perhaps at the start of the new academic quarter when I had a smidgeon of time and was feeling thoughtful, I tweeted about a hypothetical situation which had struck me that day: what if instead of electing Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 we had elected Republican Colin Powell to the presidency, and how, in practical terms, would a Powell presidency be different?

What prompted me to ask this was a year's worth of reflection on Obamatude, and how, in so many ways, instead of a true, clean break with the last administration, what we've gotten, and what's become a source of distress for many progressives and independents not bound by hero-worship of the President, is a continuation of the Bush's and the GOP's policies, just in slightly attenuated form. This thinned yet still toxic broth we're being served daily has led me to wonder where Obama, who ran as an agent of "change"--even if his own record hovered between post-partisan beliefs and neoliberal policies relabled as "pragmatism," and sometimes impressively progressive symbolism and rhetoric--has differed from what a counterfactual Powell administration might have looked like. Comparing the record of the real administration with the fictive one, I cannot see where there is much difference, except perhaps in the nomination of someone like Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, though even in this instance, I would not have put it past Powell, with a nominally Democratic Congress, to make such a symbolic, if politically risky, move.

Let me begin by saying that I was happy that Barack Obama and Joe Biden defeated John McCain and Sarah Palin in November 2008. Like many Americans, and almost every black person, American or otherwise that I know, I continue to be both amazed and proud that we now have an African-American president in the White House. I am also proud of my fellow Americans for making this choice. In terms of Obama's first year of governance, I do not agree that he hasn't accomplished some substantive things, but I continue to be disappointed that he has repeatedly backed away from pushing the status quo, that he will not make a more sustained public case for his policies or politics, that he will not push the Congress more to do the proper thing, and that he appears to be more effective as a symbol than as a leader. This, in a sense, is his great triumph so far: symbolic leadership. It led to the premature Nobel Prize; it continues to garner him adulation in this country among elements of his base, as well as across the globe (and I saw this this year in Cuba and Italy); and it endows what leadership he does demonstrate with something extra, a value-added spark and cachet. I try never to forget the importance of this symbolic element of Obama's tenure, and am always urging that he use it more. (Drew Westen's excellent piece on Obama explores this and related issues.)



That said, I have also thought about what it would have meant to elect a black Republican like Powell as president, and how Obama in some ways seems to be behaving as if he were one. As recently as 2000, before the taint of his ineffectual stint in the W Bush administration, Powell was arguably the most popular and electable--at least at the presidential level--major black political figure in the landscape. In many ways, one can draw parallels between Powell and Obama. Like Obama, he had black immigrant parentage (his mother and father were Jamaicans); like Obama he married an African-American woman (from Alabama in Powell's case); like Obama he grew up in a working-class milieu, and has passed through multiple levels of American society, though in Powell's case it was through the older method of the government, and specifically, the US military. Like Obama Powell is an effective speaker, possessed a palpable élan, and, before the Iraq War debacle, projected leadership. Like Obama, Powell was inoffensive to large portions of the white population, and his politics, combined with his military background, gave an especial appeal that other black politicians or public figures interested in politics couldn't claim. Had he chosen to run and been elected in 2000, say, he would have become our first African-American president; had he chosen to run against Obama in 2008, he would still have claimed that mantle, and very well might have made it a closer election. Powell was and has been consistently silent about the extremists on the right, choosing instead to either ignore or conciliate them, much as Obama has done, to his detriment, but vocal about criticizing critics on the left. In so many ways, in fact, Obama is governing as if he were Powell, though without the latter's confident approach to the military hierarchy or related matters, and in such a way that he now finds himself attacked both by the left AND the right, much as Powell was at the end of Bush's disastrous mess of a first term.

Take, for example, the economic policies under Obama. How do they differ from what a moderate Republican might have overseen? At every step, the administration, in collusion with the Democratic-controlled Congress, has taken steps that are friendly to business interests and less beneficial to the majority of Americans, the middle and working-classes and the poor. Salon's Michael Lind has called it "corporate welfarism," as opposed to the sort of New New Dealism that many Americans were expecting. Obama reappointed the "libertarian Republican" Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke, who presided over the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. Most of Obama's economic advisors during the campaign came from the "Chicago School" of economics, and the current leadership includes people who accept the basic premises of Friedman, Becker, etc., the Reagan economic and political Revolution, and Clintonian neoliberalism. The only truly progressive economist in their midst works out of the Vice President's office. Obama continued the bank bailout plan initiated by George Bush, on terms that also continue to give away the financial store; his Treasury department seems to be an annex of Goldman Sachs and a department of J.P. Morgan Chase; his stimulus package--i.e., jobs bill--was watered down by centrist and conservative terms, undermined by unnecessary tax cuts, and has been less effective than it could have been; and his mortgage legislation, instead of forcing an effective revaluation of loan principals, instead ceded the power to the banks, wrapped in a net of bureaucracy, making it far less effective--it has been a bust--than it could have been, with the resultant effect that the housing market will continue to ail for some time to come. Indeed, whenever and wherever this administration has had the opportunity to intervene directly in some aspect of the economic turnaround vs. negotiating and then handing power to a middleman, using our tax dollars, they have chosen the latter. Given Powell's moderate instincts vs. outright Hooverism, is there any sense that he would have behaved differently, especially with a Democratic Congress in power?

Then there are the military policies. Obama has not withdrawn the troops from Iraq as he promised, and instead of winding down the war in Afghanistan, he has instead pushed through two surges, with attendant war funding. He claims that the US government does not torture, but allegations of torture continue from Guantánamo, which he promised to shutter, yet which is still operating. He has pressed for no investigations of the prior administration's lies, war crimes, or corrupt accounting. He continues to permit Blackwater/XE to work with US intelligence agencies. He is permitting drone attacks in Pakistan--in fact, he made this a centerpiece of his campaign--and is launching them in Yemen. He continues military aid to "anti-Islamicists" in Somalia, and the US-proxy Ethiopian forces, and is underwriting ongoing military aid to the right-wing government in Colombia. On top of this, he did almost nothing beyond issue mild condemnation of the military coup in Honduras. He has even backed away--or is at least being vaguer--about his mild approach to the Israeli settlements, and has said nothing publicly about the Bush administration's failed policies and alleged attempted coup in Gaza that has created incredible suffering for Palestinians living there. And then there is the abomination of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. How, can anyone tell me, does this differ from what Colin Powell, a militarist Republican, might have done?


On civil liberties, we continue with a milder form of Bushism, as opposed to a break. I have yet to see any public discussion, led by the President or his administration, or leading figures in the Congress, about the 8 years of warrantless wiretapping (illegal spying) on US citizens under Bush, which began in January 2001, yet could not stop the 9/11 attacks, the anthrax attacks, the Shoe Bomber, the numerous terrorist attacks across the globe allegedly launched by Al Qaeda, nor, most recently, another potentially tragic attack on the international and domestic airline system. (Could someone in Congress EVER investigate and publicize what this illegal spying was for and why it began in January 2001? Is that too much to ask?) Indeed, Obama has repeatedly pushed to hide the Bush administration's crimes, arguing on behalf of the state secrets doctrine; has not suggested returning to the pre-Patriot Act FISA situation, but rather wants to keep the odious, invasive new laws in place; and has proposed an incoherent system of trying the alleged terrorists, with some going to federal courts, others being subjected to military courts, and others being kept in long-term detention, which is to say, as political prisoners without trial. Obama's and his administration's public rhetoric appears to take a different turn, but as Glenn Greenwald and others have noted, the noxious Bush-era systems continue. And I ask again, how would a Powell administration, led by someone who essentially agreed with Bush on most of these civil liberties issues, differ from what we've seen on Obama?

Then there are LGBTQ issues. Again, wherever possible, Obama has been halting, timid, seemingly more concerned with symbolism and appearance over substance, unwilling to take public stands that might demonstrate an real belief in full equality, and some horrible missteps, such as the initial brief from his Justice Department that compared gay people to child molesters. Even with the Matthew Shepard Act, which did pass, he was tight-lipped until the bill finally made it through Congress. There was no vocal advocacy, no sense from him of how important addressing the ongoing violence against gay people, ranging from bullying of children to murder of adults, really is. With DADT, with the Employment Non-Discrimation Act (ENDA), as with repealing the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), it appears as though a hands-off approach is the one this administration feels it must take. All of this I would have expected from a Republican like Powell, but from Obama, it has been nothing short of disgusting.

Perhaps one area where Obama has differed is in the appointment of a few truly progressive individuals who would be out of place in a Powell (or any other likely Republican president's) administration. Hilda Solís, the outspoken, progressive Secretary of Labor, who has provoked extensive grumbling from the corporate sector, is one example; I cannot imagine Powell's advisors permitting, let alone him daring, to appoint someone as pro-worker and pro-labor as Solís. Perhaps another would be Amanda Simpson, soon to be Senior Technical Advisor in the Bureau of Industry and Security, and the first transgender person to be appointed to an executive branch-level position. Again, the anti-gay and Christianist branches of the GOP, who have criticized Simpson's appointment, would be trying to string Powell up for such an appointment. Yet beside both of these nominations there is the case of Office of Legal Counsel nominee Dawn Johnsen, an outspoken critic of Bush's criminal actions; after being stalled by Republicans for nearly a year, the administration did and said nothing to support her, the nomination lapsed, and she was only renominated, receiving support from GOP apostate Arlen Spector this month. Yet the administration is still refusing to argue on behalf of someone who not only would be an excellent employee, but who would boost their cred in the eyes of many frustrated supporters. While these nominations and appointments are worthy of celebration among many progressives, the critique remains that Obama hasn't gone far enough, and has squandered his political capital in an attempt to curry favor with the obstructionist, nihilist GOP and placate his corporate funders. Powell, being a moderate, very likely would find himself in similar pincers, though he would have the Democratic Congress to run against, and they have done themselves no favors over the last year either. The health care reform bill, which became a health care industry giveaway, is proof of this, as is the watered down and now disintegrating financial reform effort. Under a Powell administration, I could not imagine bolder efforts on either front, and envision the former not occurring at all. (In fact, just this summer, Powell counseled Obama to take baby steps.) Instead, we'd be muddling through with our horrid health care system, and watching Democrats silently twist themselves into knots to please Wall Street, while being rhetorically shredded by the GOP and their corporate allies.

Perhaps President Obama and Congressional leaders will wake up and figure out that dishwater W-Bushism mixed with distilled Clintonism--an approach I feared more than anything else, and which I would have expected under a moderate Republican, like Powell--will be his and the Democrats' undoing. If establishmentarian stenographers like the New York Times's Adam Nagourney are to be believed, however, the Democrats are drawing the exact opposite lessons from their rising unpopularity. Instead of more social progressivism, more transparency, more direct and immediate relief for struggling and suffering Americans, and less warmongering, we have repeatedly gotten the opposite. Instead of telling Wall Street that with the bailouts come tough conditions, they are setting the terms; instead of sweeping clean the legacy of Reagonomics and neoliberalism, they have provided the framework for every step this administration has taken. They are currently fretting over the potential loss of Teddy Kennedy's former Massachusetts Senate seat to a really far right-winger, anti-gay, anti-abortionist, pro-rape Birther sympathizer Scott Brown, but they have created the conditions that are making this possible. Lackluster, milquetoast establishmentarian candidates, like Martha Coakley, who offer dispassionate bromides and espouse corporatism and neoliberalism are not going to cut it, either with many on the left, or with the GOP, who will institute the same or worse policies, but with even greater pain on the middle-class and poor, but on their own terms. President Powell perhaps would have realized this but very likely would have remained silent and muddled through, as he did for the majority of his service under Bush. President Obama, who is currently in office, cannot and will not succeed if he continues to do so.

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As is probably the case for many people growing up in inner-city America during the 1970s, the music of Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, and later on especially Teddy Pendergrass, formed part of the musical soundtrack of my childhood and early teenage years. He was one of the supreme male crooners and sex symbols bar none (Marvin Gaye and Barry White would have been two of the other major ones), whose voice could seduce the bark off trees and the drawers, as I once heard someone say, off even proper church ladies; the stories of women tossing their panties at him as he sang on stage are legendary. While I loved his songs and his voice, especially "Love TKO," "Get Up, Get Down, Get Funky, Get Loose," and "Turn Off the Lights," the hypermasculinist image he projected felt like an admonition and a repudiation of who I felt myself becoming at the time, particularly at a moment when I was very unsure of my own sense of (not traditionally masculine adolescent) self, and I found it tough to reconcile my love of his music with the image he represented to and for me. What I was specifically struggling with was a sense that being a man, a straight black man, in part meant mirroring the sort of heterosexual dynamo that he appeared to be. It was therefore a shock, as it was perhaps to many others, when I heard about his disabling, tragic car crash, in 1982 (I was in high school then), in which he was paralyzed from the neck down, and the transsexual transvestite who was in the car with him. The crash shifted my perspective back to his music, which remains transcendant, and some of the most erotic soul every recorded, and my appreciation for his gifts grew to the extent that I was delighted when he returned to the stage after a gap of many years, to resume performing. This past week he passed away, at age 59, after suffering through colon cancer. As NPR reported recently, "Before his death, Pendergrass had co-written songs for the biographical musical production I Am Who I Am: The Story of Teddy Pendergrass." His voice and songs remain with us.

EJ Flavors, the music man, has a wonderful Teddy Pendergrass/Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes hits podcast.

***

Some of the rhetoric about Haiti's pre-earthquake state has been, to put it simply, ahistorical. There are reasons why Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and none of them are by accident. Chapter 8 of Noam Chomsky's book Year 501 is entitled "The Tragedy of Haiti," and you can read it here for some background on the history of what had once been France's richest colony in the New World, a virtual mint, run by the blood and sweat of Africans, for the Bourbon and other dynasties and the bourgeoisie around them. Two paragraphs, in case you did not know this history:

The [Haitian] rebellion had broad consequences. It established British dominance of the Caribbean, and impelled its former colonies a long step further on their westward course as Napoleon, abandoning his hopes for an empire in the New World, sold the Louisiana territory to the United States. The rebel victory came at tremendous cost. Much of the agricultural wealth of the country was destroyed, along with perhaps a third of the population. The victory horrified Haiti's slave-holding neighbors, who backed France's claims for huge reparations, finally accepted in 1825 by Haiti's ruling elite, who recognized them to be a precondition for entry into the global market. The result was "decades of French domination of Haitian finance" with "a catastrophic effect on the new nation's delicate economy," Farmer observes. France then recognized Haiti, as did Britain in 1833. Simon Bolívar, whose struggles against Spanish rule were aided by the Haitian Republic on condition that he free slaves, refused to establish diplomatic relations with Haiti on becoming President of Greater Colombia, claiming that Haiti was "fomenting racial conflict" -- a refusal "typical of Haiti's welcome in a monolithically racist world," Farmer comments. Haitian elites continued to be haunted by fear of conquest and a renewal of slavery, a factor in their costly and destructive invasions of the Dominican Republic in the 1850s.
The US was the last major power to insist that Haiti be ostracized, recognizing it only in 1862. With the American Civil War underway, Haiti's liberation of slaves no longer posed a barrier to recognition; on the contrary, President Lincoln and others saw Haiti as a place that might absorb blacks induced to leave the United States (Liberia was recognized in the same year, in part for the same reason). Haitian ports were used for Union operations against the rebels. Haiti's strategic role in control of the Caribbean became increasingly important in US planning in later years, as Haiti became a plaything among the competing imperial powers. Meanwhile its ruling elite monopolized trade, while the peasant producers in the interior remained isolated from the outside world.

Remembering Jacmel Too

Today's New York Times has a Lede blog post about a Miami Herald report on the situation in Jacmel, Haiti, the country's arts capital, which sits to the southwest of Port-au-Prince. Jacmel/Jakmèl also suffered considerable damage during Tuesday's earthquake, whose epicenter lay between the two cities. While the media have focused a great deal of attention on the situation in Port-au-Prince, the people of Jacmel are suffering as well. To give one example, an estimated 100 students and teachers were crushed to death when the building housing the Eunasmoh Institute, a technical college, collapsed. Further complicating matters, the road north to Port-au-Prince remains blocked by debris, making it very difficult for rescuers or supplies to get through.

The Times blog post points to this Vimeo.com page, set up by students at Jacmel's Ciné Institute, that documents the devastation in that city. Ciné Institute is reportedly Haiti's only film school. According to the Times, the school's building and many of its cameras were destroyed, but all but one of the 60 students survived, and when they returned to the rubble that had been their schoolbuilding, they found six cameras, which some have been using to report on the situation in Jacmel. Its Flickr site, with post-quake images, as well as many photosets of school projects, is here.

Here is a video by student Fritzner Simeus on the aftermath of the earthquake:

Report from student: Fritzner Simeus from Jacmel from Ciné Institute on Vimeo.

And here is one by student Keziah Jean on the post-quake situation:

The Victims In Jacmel : Keziah Jean reports from the field (subtitled) from Ciné Institute on Vimeo.

One person in Jacmel I've been wondering about is an artist named Joanne Florent, whom we met in Santo Domingo several years ago. She was selling t-shirts she'd created featuring Haitian vèvès, along with other handsewn clothing and artwork, and had invited us to visit her in Jacmel. I hope she and her family survived the quake and are doing okay.

Deals With the Devil

Today....Haiti!

First of all, there's nothing to mock about disaster. Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere and to put it bluntly, they're effed. If you feel the need to donate to help these folks out, I've placed a banner over there on the right hand side of this here blog. The banner was downloaded straight from the American Red Cross website, so you know that any donations will go to the place where they are intended to go. The last thing anyone needs is to be sending money that is intended to go towards aiding those people in Haiti and have it instead going into the pocket of some shady blogger or worse...a Tweeter. Please don't be giving away your hard earned money blindly and just sending it off with every official looking email that you receive (unless it's from President Barry, as he seems like a pretty good guy). Make sure you know where your donation is going.

Now that I'm done reprimanding you for money that you may or may not be giving, let's move on to some people who really need reprimanding in regard to this situation. First up...newsholes!

Shortly after this earthquake hit, I began hearing reports of the "estimated" numbers of potential casualties. (If you're new to the newshole business, "casualties" means "deaths".) At first, I was hearing "thousands". Then I began hearing "tens of thousands". When I first heard "hundreds of thousands", that's when I lost it.

Hundreds of thousands? Really? I don't think so. And I, apparently unlike the irresponsible newsholes who are reporting such garbage, do not get some sort of orgasmic thrill when I hear a ridiculously high number of casualties being bandied about. Do you people really want there to be that many casualties? I don't think that you do. But let's look at what we can probably expect here, since the newsholes are unwilling to do that for us.

Haiti is an island nation. That means you're going to have a hell of a lot of people all compacted into certain areas and you're not going to have anywhere else to go. Hence the term "island". But while it is an island, that doesn't mean that people can't be spread apart. People can be spread apart. And while Port au Prince is the capital and the most populous region of Haiti, it's not like there aren't other places on the island to live. But if you're a newshole, you'd report casualty figures as if Port au Prince was the ONLY place to live.

The population of Haiti is around 9 million. The population of Port au Prince is somewhere in the neighborhood of 704,776 if you're going to believe Wikipedia. And for some inexplicable reason, let's say that we do believe Wikipedia (please don't make a habit of it). And let's also say that we believe The Telegraph that went with the headline: "Haiti earthquake: hundreds of thousands feared dead". Plural? Really? Hundreds?

Let's do a conservative estimate of that wildly speculative and highly irresponsible headline. Let's go with the lowest of all the plurals, the number two. Let's say two hundred thousand perished. That's over a quarter of the population of the city. And while I understand how that could happen (there IS a reason for an international building code), what I'm saying is that it's unlikely that it DID happen. And just doing the simple, basic, speculative guesstimating math would have told the newsholes the same thing: that it's unlikely there are that many casualties. But yet they go ahead and report it anyway under the guise of saying things like "We've heard there could be up to or possibly more than one hundred thousand casualties." So, what if I just said that I think there are a million casualties? I've said it and you've heard it so now you can report it?! I don't think you can I know for certain that you shouldn't. (By the way, the Red Cross is estimating somewhere in the area of 45,000 -50,000 deaths "based on information from the Haitian Red Cross". What a novel idea! Asking the Haitian Red Cross what they think the numbers might be! Fascinating. Wait. Let me write that down so I can shoot off an email to those newsholes who are just pulling numbers out of their newsholes to report. Morons.

Speaking of morons, let's move on to Pat Robertson, shall we? It won't take long. Pat Robertson is the Grand Poobah of something called the 700 Club. I don't know what that is supposed to reference, but it certainly isn't his IQ. He's a religious guy with a TV show. Enough said? I thought so. Anyway, he summed up what has happened down there in Haiti. Rather, he has summed up why the earthquake happened. Did people need to be told why? Shifting of the tectonic plates and all? Release of built up energy? Don't we know that? What's that? Oh, it wasn't because of the tectonic plates? I see. It was because...of...the devil, of course. Wait. What?

Correct. This jackass Pat Robertson has said that the reason that there was an earthquake in Haiti is because "Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you'll get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it's a deal....ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other"

::: blink ::: ::: blink :::

What the what? I'm pretty sure that those folks that were over there in that earthquake did not make a pact with the devil. And even if they did, what kind of a pact would that be? You free us from that shrimpy little Napoleon dude and in exchange, we'll let you devastate our capital in 2010? What kind of a dumbass pact would that be (provided that you even believe in the whole "making deals with the devil" theory in the first place)?

Robertson goes on to explain why this is clearly the case by stating: "That island of Hispaniola is one island. It is cut down the middle; on the one side is Haiti on the other is the Dominican Republic. (He does have a firm grasp of the geography of the situation, I'll give him that.) Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, etc. Haiti is in desperate poverty. Same island." Um, might I make a comparison? The United States and Mexico. The United States is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts like Dollywood and Graceland, etc. Mexico is...well...Mexico is not. Same island. Er, continent. Same continent. (Sorry, Canada/America's Hat. I suppose I could have put you in the equation with you being on the US side of things, but if someone is going to be as simple minded as Mr. Robertson or to consider what Mr. Robertson had said, I felt it best to keep things as simple as I could. We still love ya, but I just couldn't fit you into my rebuke against pacts with the devil to explain Haitian earthquakes. Sorry.)

Did Mexico make a pact with the devil? See, I don't know much about this sort of thing, so as you can imagine, I have a myriad of questions. Where exactly does one go to find this devil character in order to make said pacts? Can you just come up with your own terms or are there pre-written pacts to choose from? Can anyone make a pact? Do you need good pact credit? Is there a three day window in case of buyers remorse if I decide to go with a pact? Can you only make one pact? How many people can be included in said pact? I could go on, but as you can see, I bring up some valid questions about how all of this works.

Fortunately, he did manage to include at the end of his idiotic explanation "But right now we are helping the suffering people and the suffering is unimaginable." (Please don't send that man any money. Ever.) I think the only thing that I find more reprehensible than his comments is the reaction of the person sitting next to him. Who is that nitwit? How on earth can you sit there and just nod your head and utter "Mmm-hmm" when he's spouting off something like that? How?! How can you just sit there and act as if those are words being spoken by a sane individual? You can't! Unless you're equally insane, which I'm going to have to assume that she is.

Speaking of equally insane, let me wrap this up with Rush Limbaugh. Rush is a doughhead at best. He has an act and he's good at what he does. And unfortunately, around 20 million people listen to this windbag regularly. This man makes a gazillion dollars a year. (For those of you unclear on the monetary denomination of a gazillion, it's right around $38 million a year for 8 years plus a $100 million signing bonus. Yep. That's a gazillion all right.) And because he's been so fortunate in his lifetime, he's going to be more sympathetic to the plight of others, especially in times of disaster, correct? Um, not...not so much.

Rush Limbaugh told a caller to his show "...that all helping out will do is get someone on Obama's campaign email list" according to Swamp Politics (they're a blog over at the Chicago Tribune). I highly doubt that's all a donation is going to do, but just in case people weren't swayed by that logic, Limbaugh went for the ol' one-two punch by adding "We've already donated to Haiti,. It's called the U.S. income tax." Oh, for God's sake. Shut up.

You know, the donations that are being asked for en masse are in amount of five bucks and ten bucks. The a-hole that is Rush Limbaugh makes $38 million a year in salary (and I'm sure that he endorses some piece of crap or sells gold bars or something in his spare time to earn more). The average annual income in Haiti is around $400. That's about $1.10 per day. And Limbaugh is trying to discourage people from helping out. Why couldn't he have made a pact with the devil?

Writing in Flight + More on Haiti + Congrats to Jeffery Renard Allen

I'm beginning this blog post with a little test: using GoGoinflight.com's service, I'm connecting to the Net while on my flight. I learned about this from tech guru @karsh (many thanks!), and signed up as soon as I could. From what I can tell, it's available only on certain airlines and certain flights. The American Airlines one I'm on had "Wi-fi on board" signs running along the length of the overheard storage area, alerting me that it was available, but most of the ones I've been on have not had Wi-fi service. It's not cheap, so I probably won't be using it that often, but I wanted to try it out. Given the costs of flights these days, Wi-fi should be free. But that's another matter.

+++

Speaking of Twitter, I have incorporated tweeting into one of my undergraduate classes, and so the brilliant seniors in the required "Situation of Writing" class now have a wonderful feed going at @GetItWrite392 . They are tweeting on various aspects of the writing world and life, publishing, literary culture, and so forth, and have so far linked to some great material, including a witty piece by Colson Whitehead and an article on MFA programs. If you're at all interested or amenable, please follow their tweets, and if you have suggestions for articles, let them know by tweeting to @GetItWrite392 . We're landing soon, so I'll post more later.

+++

Rays of good news amid the ongoing tragedy in Haiti: Chelsey Kivland, the sister (and in-law) of friends of mine, had not been heard from since the earthquake had leveled most of Port-au-Prince. Chelsey is a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Chicago, and has been studying and living in Haiti for several years now. Her family in suburban Chicago was terribly worried about her. According to the Consular Section of the US Embassy, she has contacted her family to say that she's alive and okay. I know they are hoping to see her at home very soon. Another friend, Philippe, wrote to say that his grandmother in Jacmel, which was also hit by the earthquake, has been located and alive, and our neighbors, who have an extensive family network in Haiti, have also said that their family members have been reached and are okay.

Philippe also sent this link to Tracy Kidder's very thoughtful New York Times Op-Ed piece on Haiti, "Country Without a Net," which focuses on supporting organizations in Haiti run by Haitians.

In the Daily Beast, Tunku Varadarajan drops some serious science on France's particularly brutal and venal history involving Ayiti/Haiti. A pretty picture it ain't.

Back in 2008 in the New York Review of Books, Madison Smartt Bell offered an overview of Haiti and Haitian culture via its literature, one of its great gifts to the world.

Foreign Policy offers this rundown of Haitian history, from the French colonial period to today. (Note, FP's slant is right of center, but it's still informative).

We shouldn't ever forget that part of that history includes 750 Haitian troops under French General Lafayette helping the American revolutionary forces to defeat the British at the Siege of Savannah, in 1779.

+++

The most recent news from Haiti, however, is still extremely dire. Estimates of the dead there range from 50,000 to 200,000, with many hundreds of thousands more injured, which would make this one of the most destructive natural disasters ever to have occurred, and one of the worst in the Western Hemisphere as well. Nevertheless, Haitians themselves, along with the search and rescue teams, have continued to pull people from the rubble and debris that now covers Port-au-Prince. Some of these rescues verge on the miraculous, and the more people and equipment that are in place the more possible they are. Another immediate necessity is getting water and food, medical care, clothing, and various forms of mobile shelter, to the living, and according to the reports I've read, this is occurring, though slowly.

In addition to short term medical, financial, rescue, logistical, administrative, resource, and other kinds of aid, the country will need longer-term assistance to help rebuild its infrastructure, its economy, and its civil society, all of which were already severely stressed. It has been very encouraging to see the commitment that other countries, and millions of people in the US and across the globe, have made to help the people of Haiti out, and I hope that the funds and resources reach the people instead of flowing into the pockets of middlemen, crooks and others. If you are unsure about where or whom to donate to, pick one of the traditional organizations, like the Nobel Prize-winning organization Doctors Without Borders/Médicins sans frontières, who have a proven track record of excellent work. Every little bit counts!

+++

To end on a better note, let me congratulate a friend, Jeffery Renard Allen, whose collection of stories, Holding Pattern, was awarded the 2010 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence! Allen, a Chicago native, sets these sometimes impressionistic, vernacularly grounded stories in play through his poet's ear for language and eye for place, giving them a linguistic texture and richness that's unlike a great deal of what constitutes contemporary American short story writing. (This collection and others of Jeffery's have been among the J's Theater monthly Book picks.) It's wonderful to see that this collection and Jeffery, who teaches at Queens College-CUNY and New School University, being honored in this way, and in the name of one of the important living 20th century African-American fiction writers, whose best known works might be the 1971 novel The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and the 1993 National Book Critics Circle winner A Lesson Before Dying. Congratulations to Jeff, who will be honored in Baton Rouge on January 28, 2010, and do pick up this volume and his other work when you can!

More on Haiti, Ways to Help

The post-earthquake news out of Haiti is very bad. According to President René Préval, many thousands of people may have died, and many more are injured. President Préval, speaking of the "unimaginable catastrophe," is appealing for immediate and substantial international help, and noted that he has stepped over dead bodies and has heard cries of assistance from the rubble of the destroyed Parliament building. (All photos below from the Miami Herald.)



The capital city of Port-Au-Prince, home to around 2 million people, has been largely destroyed, and Haiti's arts capital, Jacmel, very close to the epicenter of the earthquake and the aftershocks, which have continued throughout the night and into today, has suffered serious damage. The head of the UN Mission, whose building was completely destroyed, is presumed dead, as is the Archbishop of Port-Au-Prince, who died in the collapse of the one of the many now-leveled churches, and UN peacekeepers from Brazil, Jordan and China are also said to have died.

Last night, Haiti's Ambassador to the US, Raymond Joseph, stressed that the Haitian government is in control, but he was unable to say anything about the fate of lawmakers or those working in the Presidential Palace, beyond asserting that the President and First Lady were fine. Because of the widespread destruction, Haiti is facing a tremendous civil and humanitarian and civil crisis. Without electricity, drinking water or shelter, many people who have survived the quake risk serious illness or death. As I noted yesterday, the US has pledged unqualified help, as have other nations, and search and rescue, reconstruction and other teams have already begun to depart from Santo Domingo, the capital of Haiti's neighbor, the Dominican Republic, and from Florida and elsewhere.


As I appealed yesterday, there are various ways you can help. I know we are all financially stressed these days, but funding is crucial especially in the early days of this horrific tragedy. Options include:

Two very immediate options I've tried and know are working:

You can text HAITI to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross relief efforts in #Haiti (via Red Cross)

You can text Yele to 510 510 and donate $5 toward #Haiti earthquake relief. (via Wyclef Jean's Yele.org)

Also:

You can go to WhiteHouse.gov for ways to donate to Haiti.

CNN's Impact has a long list.

Doctors without Borders/Médicins sans frontières does excellent work all over the world, and they are active on the ground in Haiti.

Unicef is always a very good option, and the money is targeted towards children.

Fokal.org, recommended by actor Hill Harper, is an NGO that works with Haitian young people. (Supposedly 100% of your donation will directly to relief.)

Oxfam.org's Appeal:


A Spanish video feed:

Major Earthquake Hits Haiti

My thoughts, heart and prayers go out to the people of Haiti, where, as has been widely reported, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck 10 miles (15 km) southwest of the capital city of Port-au-Prince, a city of 2+ million people, at 4:53 pm (2153 GMT) Subsequent temblors of 5.5 and 5.9 magnitude also struck the area. According to the reports, there has been widespread damage, with the capital largely destroyed (AP), and huge numbers (many thousands) of wounded people. President Barack Obama has expressed his thoughts and solidarity with Haiti, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has pledged US support.


(All photos from Twicsy/Twitpics--please note some are extremely graphic, NSFW)

The beautiful Presidential Palace, the main Cathedral, the police station, the World Bank's headquarters, and countless structures, including homes, have been severely damaged or destroyed. (The President, René Préval, and First Lady of Haiti have not been injured.) After the earthquake clouds of gray smoke filled the air, and fires were reportedly still burning across the capital. As noted above, AP is reporting that the capital city is largely destroyed. There is no electricity and no gas. The American Embassy, amazingly, appears not to have been damaged. In neighboring Pétionville, a hospital is said to have collapsed, as has a major hotel, the Montana, and an American official said that homes had fallen into a ravine. (UPDATE: Right now I'm listening to the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, and a reporter based on the north coast, Luke Renner, is saying that north of the capital and in countryside, there doesn't appear to be as much damage.)


The Presidential Palace

A great many people have probably been injured, many gravely. American diplomats are reporting that there are dead and injured people throughout the capital. Already there is an immense need for humanpower, supplies, fresh and potable water, portable hospitals, medicine, and all kinds of other resources. If you can afford to and want to help out, CNN has this list of options. Maddow's links are here. If you have family members in Haiti you are trying to reach, the State Department has set up a toll free number you can call: 888-407-4747.



There is never a good time for an earthquake, but this is an especially fraught moment for Haiti, the most densely populated and poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Haiti is still recovering from the aftereffects of hurricanes over the last several years, and was also beginning to reconstruct its severely damaged manufacturing sector in an effort to jumpstart its economy. For its recovery, the support of the US, Canada, the EU, and many other countries will be absolutely necessary, and as I've noted above, the US has already pledged whatever support Haiti needs.



On the DR1 forums, people living in some Dominican cities, such as Cabarete and Santiago, reported feeling the quake, but there doesn't appear to have been much, if any damage, on the Dominican side of the border. On CNN, I saw reports that tremors were felt in eastern Cuba. There was a tsunami watch for many of the nearby islands as well as Hispaniola itself, and on DR1 someone linked to a report of a small tsunami.

Maddow's report is below:

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