Haiti

I don't think I can add much just to say that everyone should think of donating as much as they can to the DEC Haiti Earthquake Appeal (https://www.donate.bt.com/dec_form_haiti.html).

It has been truly terrible to see the pictures coming out of P-au-P, so I was astonished by the staggeringly insensitive comments first made by Pat Robertson and the Rush Limbaugh.
The former (who tried to run for President in 1998) claimed that Haiti had sworn a "pact to the Devil" to be liberated from France, so all Haitians were "cursed" and the earthquake was their punishment from God.
What a hateful and mean little man.

Possibly a hundred thousand dead and the same number injured and this "man of the cloth" conjures up a vengeful Old Testament Jehovah to justify his own warped and perverse prejudices?

Limbaugh is just a loud-mouthed spiteful buffoon who saw in the earthquake an"opportunity" for the Obama administration and advised Americans not to donate to Haitian relief, because they "already give" and "it’s called the income tax".
Thank heavens that these two are in no way representative of the vast majority of generous and open-hearted Americans.

Haiti has endured much and will survive even this catastrophe. After all she was only the second independent country in the New World, the first post-colonial black-led state in the world, and the only country who gained her independence because of a successful slave rebellion, read C. L. R. James cracking book, The Black Jacobins.

She survived and eventually ousted that horrible dynastic dictatorship Papa and Baby Doc and their murderous thugs the Tonton Macoutes, and no less than four hurricanes in 2008.

After the immediate disaster relief, the long-term solution for Haiti must include a programme of reforestation, building up the country's infrastructure, and massive investment in health and education.