Haiti
Week in Review: January 17-23, 2010
25/January/2010 11:51 Filed in: Week in
Review
Today begins this new column focusing on the events
of the last week, and their potential ramifications
on future developments. Whether this week in review
becomes weekly is probably dependent upon the weeks
themselves, well as outside forces directly related
to enterprise priorities. No matter how you choose
to view the stupendous changes of this week we must
agree there was a lot going on in the United States
and her close neighbors.
Last week began recovery in Haiti, where the shift took place from looking for buried survivors in the quake’s rubble, to attempting to recover the now dead and decaying bodies. The last estimate I heard stated that total deaths may approach 200,000. This week, while the recovery of bodies continues, the true survival situation is reaching critical mass. So far the Haitian people have been very well behaved as aid has been slow getting into the country and out to the people. Perhaps that peace was, and is just the shock of trying to mentally cope with these catastrophic events. For the foreseeable future, the extremely difficult job of just surviving date to day, amongst the destruction, disease, poverty, hunger, and thirst of just plain life will begin to take a physical and emotional toll. That is true both within the country's citizens as well as those trying to minister help.
On Tuesday Massachusetts elected Scott Brown its first Republican Senator to fill the seat of the late Ted Kennedy, which had been in the Kennedy family since 1952. Brown was the first Republican Senator elected in the Commonwealth since the 1970s. Scott Brown is a center right Republican with a constitutional governance philosophy much the same as the recently elected governors in New Jersey and Virginia . While this is hailed as a great Republican victory and the end of the filibuster proof Senate, in a way it further points to the fact that the establishments of both the Republicans and the Democrats represent fringe views of the majority of the American people, which will make for more very interesting times as the Congressional elections approach this fall.
Read More...
Last week began recovery in Haiti, where the shift took place from looking for buried survivors in the quake’s rubble, to attempting to recover the now dead and decaying bodies. The last estimate I heard stated that total deaths may approach 200,000. This week, while the recovery of bodies continues, the true survival situation is reaching critical mass. So far the Haitian people have been very well behaved as aid has been slow getting into the country and out to the people. Perhaps that peace was, and is just the shock of trying to mentally cope with these catastrophic events. For the foreseeable future, the extremely difficult job of just surviving date to day, amongst the destruction, disease, poverty, hunger, and thirst of just plain life will begin to take a physical and emotional toll. That is true both within the country's citizens as well as those trying to minister help.
On Tuesday Massachusetts elected Scott Brown its first Republican Senator to fill the seat of the late Ted Kennedy, which had been in the Kennedy family since 1952. Brown was the first Republican Senator elected in the Commonwealth since the 1970s. Scott Brown is a center right Republican with a constitutional governance philosophy much the same as the recently elected governors in New Jersey and Virginia . While this is hailed as a great Republican victory and the end of the filibuster proof Senate, in a way it further points to the fact that the establishments of both the Republicans and the Democrats represent fringe views of the majority of the American people, which will make for more very interesting times as the Congressional elections approach this fall.
Read More...
Haiti reflections
16/January/2010 12:38 Filed in: Special
Report | Oikos
Thoughts
by Jerry Bannon
We began this year in our original installment of “Why Me?” with a brief discussion of survival. For the last few days and for weeks and months forward we will see real life survival situations playing out on our televisions and featuring the people of Haiti. I used the term “playing out,” because when the video and the commentary are combined, we really cannot comprehend the reality of the situation. But it is reality.
The projected death toll continues to rise. News I heard last evening stated that the total deaths might reach two hundred thousand, with other casualties reaching three million. This within a country with a total population of eight to nine million, depending upon the source, which compares well with New York City.
How do you survive a situation like that?
The reality, after you subtract the death toll, is that you are almost totally dependent upon the good will of external aid and the grace of God. In the case of Haiti crushing poverty, before the quake, exacerbates those problems.
In the still richest country in the world, the effects of hurricane Katrina are still present in the city of New Orleans, as today their National Football League team battles to continue the city’s mental recovery.
Survival is essentially a mental and spiritual happening. Right now in Haiti and in all our other catastrophic recovery efforts, we focus upon immediate material aid, and once the crisis is over, survivors are pretty much on their own to answer the stupendous challenge of “Why Me?”
Our global economy essentially says, “It is not our problem, survival of the fittest is the supreme natural law.” Then they move their consumer kitsch factory to some other place.
Religion in common and specific senses, typified by the fundamentals of Judeo-Christian values, are the only support that will remain, but those efforts will be greatly hindered by the lack of capital to rebuild and restore human lives. The people of the United States will lead in that rebuilding effort, because they still are the most religious and graceful people in the history of the world. That is simply because the American ethos, really hasn’t changed, as it also has been pillaged by the global reach of what is beginning to be feely called “crony capitalism.”
As the United States moves forward, we too will be making survival decisions. God willing, those changes will not be as stupendous as now being forced upon the people of Haiti. In the battle of morals and morale, we will hear many words of our founding fathers, one of the most quotable being Thomas Jefferson. Let those words not neglect Jefferson’s vision of a nation of self-sufficiency in the form of yeoman farmers, freeholders, not of a mortgaged suburban home, but owners and stewards of their natural subsistence.
These diverse opportunities are in direct opposition to the attempts to create urban monocultures of consuming union factory and service workers. Extreme specialization is a genetic agenda that attempts to create dependency at the expense of common sense. In that comparison, the currently struggling people of Haiti, have been given an opportunity to rebuild, a more just and sustainable society than they have had in their history.
We the people and citizens of the United States of America, face a very different challenge. Our challenge is not to return to our roots that made the American Dream, the great hope of mankind, but instead to prune the tree of the excesses of all consuming material prosperity.
Contrary to what we are now being told that cannot come from governmental regulations and the redistribution of wealth. Nor can that change come from individual initiative without respecting the divine creation of all of humanity and the initial goodness of all of God’s creation.
Survival from stupendous change takes many forms on this small blue globe, orbiting in the universe of space. But we are not alone, we have a God that sustains it all and created us in his image, and we have each other, which reflects the unity and diversity of the Trinity, through individuals, tribes, and nations. So instead of believing that we have all the answers, we must go back to the fundamental common questions:
Where did we come from?
Why are we here?
What are we to do?
Where will we go when we die?
In God’s common grace if we work to understand the life questions in the middle, he will take care of the bookends.
We began this year in our original installment of “Why Me?” with a brief discussion of survival. For the last few days and for weeks and months forward we will see real life survival situations playing out on our televisions and featuring the people of Haiti. I used the term “playing out,” because when the video and the commentary are combined, we really cannot comprehend the reality of the situation. But it is reality.
The projected death toll continues to rise. News I heard last evening stated that the total deaths might reach two hundred thousand, with other casualties reaching three million. This within a country with a total population of eight to nine million, depending upon the source, which compares well with New York City.
How do you survive a situation like that?
The reality, after you subtract the death toll, is that you are almost totally dependent upon the good will of external aid and the grace of God. In the case of Haiti crushing poverty, before the quake, exacerbates those problems.
In the still richest country in the world, the effects of hurricane Katrina are still present in the city of New Orleans, as today their National Football League team battles to continue the city’s mental recovery.
Survival is essentially a mental and spiritual happening. Right now in Haiti and in all our other catastrophic recovery efforts, we focus upon immediate material aid, and once the crisis is over, survivors are pretty much on their own to answer the stupendous challenge of “Why Me?”
Our global economy essentially says, “It is not our problem, survival of the fittest is the supreme natural law.” Then they move their consumer kitsch factory to some other place.
Religion in common and specific senses, typified by the fundamentals of Judeo-Christian values, are the only support that will remain, but those efforts will be greatly hindered by the lack of capital to rebuild and restore human lives. The people of the United States will lead in that rebuilding effort, because they still are the most religious and graceful people in the history of the world. That is simply because the American ethos, really hasn’t changed, as it also has been pillaged by the global reach of what is beginning to be feely called “crony capitalism.”
As the United States moves forward, we too will be making survival decisions. God willing, those changes will not be as stupendous as now being forced upon the people of Haiti. In the battle of morals and morale, we will hear many words of our founding fathers, one of the most quotable being Thomas Jefferson. Let those words not neglect Jefferson’s vision of a nation of self-sufficiency in the form of yeoman farmers, freeholders, not of a mortgaged suburban home, but owners and stewards of their natural subsistence.
These diverse opportunities are in direct opposition to the attempts to create urban monocultures of consuming union factory and service workers. Extreme specialization is a genetic agenda that attempts to create dependency at the expense of common sense. In that comparison, the currently struggling people of Haiti, have been given an opportunity to rebuild, a more just and sustainable society than they have had in their history.
We the people and citizens of the United States of America, face a very different challenge. Our challenge is not to return to our roots that made the American Dream, the great hope of mankind, but instead to prune the tree of the excesses of all consuming material prosperity.
Contrary to what we are now being told that cannot come from governmental regulations and the redistribution of wealth. Nor can that change come from individual initiative without respecting the divine creation of all of humanity and the initial goodness of all of God’s creation.
Survival from stupendous change takes many forms on this small blue globe, orbiting in the universe of space. But we are not alone, we have a God that sustains it all and created us in his image, and we have each other, which reflects the unity and diversity of the Trinity, through individuals, tribes, and nations. So instead of believing that we have all the answers, we must go back to the fundamental common questions:
Where did we come from?
Why are we here?
What are we to do?
Where will we go when we die?
In God’s common grace if we work to understand the life questions in the middle, he will take care of the bookends.
