Haiti Crisis: Questions about aid distribution network (UPDATED 3 X)

10:30 AM UPDATE
CNN has released the video of Sanjay Gupta's visit to the airport yesterday to collect medical supplies, and which I discuss at length in this post. The CNN website also provides a summary of the report, including quotes from Col. Ben McMullen:

U.S. military personnel in a warehouse tent at the airport gave Gupta a trash bag full of supplies to take back to a hospital he had visited earlier but couldn't explain why there seemed to be no organized system for distribution.

"There is stuff here waiting to be taken out, that's a true statement," said Air Force Col. Ben McMullen, deputy commander of the Joint Special Operations Air Component. "Is it a lot? I can't speak to it. I will tell you the reason you got it is that everyone on this side, specifically the U.S. government side, is dedicated to getting as much stuff outside as they can. ... [CNN's ellipses, not mine]

"It's a shame, because you would hope that everything could get out there within seconds. But that kind of infrastructure just isn't in place."

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The Port Odyssey

I'm going to have to eat a little crow -- just a wing mind you, not the whole bird -- about my smug remarks yesterday in defense of Brigadier General Mike Dana's optimistic remark on January 19 that the pier in Port au Prince would be open in "two or three days." The port did reopen yesterday but this seems to be a finger pier, not the main pier, from what John Batchelor reported on his January 21 show during the closing segment (12:50 AM ET). And it's a pretty rickety finger pier at that, from a Channel News Asia report today:

... gaping fissures still slice through the pier where ships unload, and it wobbles during each of the terrifying aftershocks that have succeeded the original temblor.

"It's not good. It's a very unstable platform at this point," US Coast Guard Lieutenant Commander Mike Pierno told AFP.

US Navy and US Army divers were due to start repairing the pier Friday -- work that was expected to last at least several weeks -- while US Coast Guard and Haitian officials will ensure it is not overused.

"Right now it's in a state where it can be repaired and we don't want to do any more damage," Pierno said.

And talk I picked up from a CNN reporter yesterday afternoon about a "south" pier seems, after I took in a different CNN report, to refer to one part of the same pier -- although I'm not entirely clear on this point and my reading of five reports filed by other news organizations didn't help clarify.

So what I'm going to do is delegate discussion of the technical aspects of the port problems to Batchelor. If he blogs on the situation today I'll link to it; otherwise you can listen to the podcast of his closing segment, which should be posted soon at the WABC radio website archives.

However, I will not resist passing along General Dana's latest prediction, from the same report I linked to above; I figure that given he's in charge of logistics for the US operation in Haiti, he's not making this stuff up out of whole cloth:

"The port is probably at 30 per cent of its capacity right now. After 21 days it will be at full capacity."

Well, from the accounts I've read it seems to be operating at 10 percent capacity as of yesterday. Anyhow, if the capacity gets up to 50 percent in a month I'll consider that great progress and be overjoyed if it's higher. Dana also said that fuel would be shipped to the port this weekend.

Sanjay Gupta's Airport Adventure

The good news is that 10 (or 30) percent port capacity is better than nothing.
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UPDATE 9:50 AM
Agencies can pick up their supplies directly from the port. It's not clear from the report I just saw on CNN whether all the supplies are picked up, or whether some are trucked to the airport for distribution from there.
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The bad news is that there's still a distribution bottleneck at the airport; I doubt UN and U.S. officials can continue denying this after they see Dr Sanjay Gupta's report last night for CNN, which was filmed earlier in the day. Here's my summary of the report for a correspondent:

"Sanjay Gupta was at a hospital that had no medicine. So he walks to the airport, which takes him about 10 minutes, and there's maybe 100 people -- he thinks they might be from aid agencies, trying to get authorization or waiting to pick up supplies -- behind a chain link fence; they're looking onto the airfield.

Gupta walks to the terminal with his cameraman; he tells the camera it takes him 5 minutes to get through the checkpoint. Then he walks onto the airfield. Camera shows pallets stacked up.

Soldier walks up to him, Sanjay asks can he look through pallets for basic medical supplies? Soldier says sure, but takes him to a small tent. (There are a few other small tents nearby). Camera isn't allowed to follow him into the tent. Cut.

Next part shows Gupta walking out of the tent holding a small plastic trash bag full of medicine bottles -- wide-spectrum antibiotics, painkiller, etc. He delivers bag to hospital.

He also interviews Ben McMullen, Col. USAF, who is in charge of -- something -- at the airport; didn't catch his title or it wasn't mentioned.

McMullen is obviously under pressure about how to answer Gupta's questions: Who's in charge of distribution network and why the bottleneck? McMullen says in essence he feels everyone's pain, military doing best they can, plenty of supplies have been delivered.

To be fair the stacked pallets on the airfield are not a forest; clearly offloaded supplies are being delivered. But McMullen's remarks sound evasive to my ears, and there was no activity at the airfield to load the waiting pallets onto delivery trucks while Gupta was there.

Weren't USAID and UN, or one or the other, supposed to be in charge of supply distribution?"
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9:15 AM ET UPDATE
A few minutes ago Sanjay Gupta elaborated on his experience at the airport yesterday and CNN re-broadcast some of the same footage of him at the airport. Gupta explained that there was some kind system in place; agencies get an authorization number to pick up their designated relief supplies from the airport but the system has obviously not been working well. And from a second look at the footage: while it isn't a forest there were more pallets stacked at the airport than I took in during the first viewing. Gupta also said that Col. McMullen was clearly frustrated with the bottleneck. However, I stick by my original impression that he was speaking evasively. So my guess is that he's not tasked to discuss the distribution system at any length because it wasn't created by the military.
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Bad memories of FEMA

CBS reporter Peter King, filing yesterday from Port au Prince, backs up what Gupta's airport adventure showed:

There is still no good distribution system for food, water or anything else. I’m absolutely floored by this. We’re told that supplies are arriving daily. We see and hear the huge cargo planes landing, but we have no idea who’s running the show, nor where all of these supplies are actually going. I may be going out on a limb here, but from what I’ve seen, this operation makes Brownie’s FEMA response to Katrina look like a crowning achievement in emergency response. That’s how bad it is.

In some places the distribution is great. According to what USAID head Dr Rajiv Shah said yesterday, there are now 300 food/ water distribution sites in the stricken areas. And according to one report I saw yesterday on CNN or Fox, U.S. helicopters are making runs every 10 minutes to drop supplies at the golf course in Port au Prince, where several thousand homeless Haitians are camped.

However, one reporter after another, from one news organization after another, is making basically the same observation that Gupta and King make. And I saw several TV interviews yesterday with aid agency and hospital people around the city that report the same. There is no question there are serious problems with the supply distribution network and that it's still unclear who's in charge of the operation.

The situation is becoming critical with regard to medical supplies because as the days wear on the injured survivors are becoming more and more ill, and developing a host of additional health problems without adequate medical treatment.

Rajiv Shah

At the same time Rajiv Shah is having praise heaped on him for his leadership of USAID during the Haiti relief operation. Dr Shah was sworn in as head of USAID just five days before the Haiti earthquake.

Several months ago Secretary of State Hillary Clinton nearly got her wrists slapped for asking in public when President Obama was going to get around to nominating someone to fill the empty post at USAID. This was after she'd tried with no success behind closed doors to get Obama moving on the nomination. And it wasn't until November that Obama came up with a nominee.

As to Dr Shah's qualification to lead USAID, the funny thing is there's no way to tell whether his credentials would suit him to lead the agency. That's because the USAID mission is murky and it's been so for years. Let us hope that Dr Shah, to whatever degree he's responsible for the distribution of supplies in Haiti, is able to quickly streamline the distribution system.

Haiti Crisis: U.S. military gets Haiti pier reopened today, lays road into the capital, starts building dirt runways at airport

Brigadier General Michael Dana, of the J4 Logistics Directorate, told Reuters on the 18th that the port would reopen in "two or three days" and the port reopened today. On the 18th I got into a debate with a correspondent about Dana's prediction; I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, the correspondent said Dana was blowing smoke because no way would the port be reopened.

Well it turns out there's a north pier and a south pier and it's the south one that was reopened today so I will magnanimously split the difference on who won the debate.

The reopening, as great as it is, is only part of today's good news:

> The U.S. military now has 63 helicopters in the region and Canadian troops are working to open an airport in Jacmel. See the CNN report below.

> CNN also reported just now on TV that the U.S. has begun extensive medevac operations, air-lifting gravely injured people to the gigantic full-service hospital ship, USNS Comfort.

> The U.S. military has also streamlined operations at the airport and is now logging 160+ flights a day.

> And Reuters reports:

Small grocery shops and barber shops, as well as some pharmacies, were open again in Port-au-Prince, some extending credit to regular customers short of cash. Banks were to reopen on Friday in the provinces and on Saturday in Port-au-Prince, giving most Haitians their first access to cash since the quake hit [...]

Now here's the CNN report:

Port-au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) -- Relief supplies were heading into Port-au-Prince, Haiti, from ships docked at a reopened pier Thursday, brought into the city on trucks traveling on a repaired gravel road leading from the port.

A Dutch Navy ship, the Pelikaan, was docked at the city's south pier Thursday, unloading 90 tons of humanitarian aid. Two other ships previously unloaded containers.

The reopened pier is older and smaller than the north pier, which was rendered unusable by the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that struck the Haitian capital January 12.

The south pier was damaged, but Haiti port authorities and the U.S. military were able to put it back in shape, although repairs continue. Workers also repaired the road leading into the city and laid gravel on it.

Unloading of aid, however, was a slow process. The road allows only for one-way traffic, meaning a truck drives to the end of the pier, is loaded with supplies, and then drives out. Also, because of concerns about overloading the pier, only one truck is allowed on it at a time.

Repairs on the pier continue, said U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Mark Gibbs. "We're working on it. We've got a long ways to go. ... If we lose this pier, that's it. We can't bring in anything."

However, the reopening of the pier and the repairing of the road represented a major development in efforts to get aid to earthquake victims, in that ships can carry much more cargo than air airplanes.

Authorities hope to get two-way traffic going on the pier by Friday, which would speed up the process.

A 5.9-magnitude aftershock Wednesday stopped efforts at the pier for about three hours. U.S. Navy divers had to go back in the water and reassess the pier's structural integrity, officials said. There was no immediate word if two less intense aftershocks Thursday, measured at magnitude 4.9 and 4.8, also caused a delay.

Lt. Gen. Douglas Fraser of U.S. Southern Command announced the pier's reopening on Thursday in Washington. Officials hope to move about 150 containers of aid Thursday and 250 on Friday. They want to increase that to 800 containers a day.

The reopening comes as U.S. officials have been stung by criticism of aid efforts in recent days.

Some of that criticism has been leveled by aid groups such as Doctors Without Borders, who blamed five victims' deaths on delays, saying several flights carrying medical supplies had been diverted from the Port-au-Prince airport into the neighboring Dominican Republic.

Working under adverse conditions with limited supplies, medical teams have been forced to improvise.Renzo Fricke, field coordinator for Doctors Without Borders told CNN this week that staffers had to buy a saw in the market so surgeons could do amputations. A CNN crew loaned a medic a pocket knife for another operation.

Lacking rubbing alcohol, doctors have used vodka to sterilize equipment and instruments. Surgical patients are being given over-the-counter pain medicine because doctors lack any stronger medication. One nurse used a string of Christmas lights as a makeshift extension cord. A belt was used as a tourniquet, and when that broke, a garden hose.

Canadian troops, meanwhile, were working to open an airport in Jacmel on Thursday, another step that could speed delivery of relief supplies.

And U.S. Southern Command, through its component Air Force South, conducted an air drop of food and water over Mirebalais, Haiti, on Thursday. Mirebalais is 25 miles northeast of Port-au-Prince. A C-17 delivered water bottles and 17,200 meals ready to eat, the military said in a statement.

Troops secured an area in which to drop the supplies and, once the supplies were on the ground, the military, the U.S. Agency for International Development and other personnel distributed them, the statement said. Nepalese troops also assisted, the Air Force said. Thursday's air drop was the second since the quake; the first was Monday.

Fraser said Thursday that 120 to 140 flights a day are coming into the single-runway Port-au-Prince airport, compared with 25 per day just after the quake struck last week. More than 840 have landed since the airport was reopened, but there is a waiting list of 1,400 to come in, he said.

A senior administration official acknowledged that not all aid, particularly medical supplies, is getting through fast enough but said that in recent days, at least half of the flights entering Haiti are carrying humanitarian supplies. Most of the other 50 percent of flights, including those of the U.S. military and foreign governments, are still carrying some kind of aid.

"Of course I'm not satisfied with getting material and personnel in for everyone who needs it," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said earlier Wednesday. "Realistically, I am aware of the difficulties that this terrible natural disaster has posed."

The senior administration official said that more than 300 aid distribution sites are up and running. Fraser said more than 700,000 meals and 1.4 million bottles of water have been delivered, along with 22,000 pounds of medical supplies.

About 13,100 U.S. troops are in and around Haiti, nearly 2,700 on the ground and another 10,400 off shore. Many Marines spend time in Haiti during the day but sleep on ships at night. More U.S. troops are scheduled to arrive by this weekend, bringing the total to about 4,600 troops on the ground.

At least 72,000 people -- including dozens of U.N. staff members -- have been confirmed dead in the earthquake, according to the country's prime minister.

International aid contributions have totaled hundreds of millions of dollars, but relief agencies working in Haiti say transportation bottlenecks and poor communications have slowed the delivery of food, water and medicine to survivors.

On Wednesday, U.S. Agency for International Development administrator Rajiv Shah ordered more medicine and other supplies to be sent within the next 24 hours, the administration official said.

Lt. Gen. P.K. Keen, the head of the U.S. military task force in Haiti, said any aircraft identified as carrying medical supplies would have priority for landing. They are turned away only "if there's no parking space on the ramp, and they don't have sufficient fuel to hold in their holding pattern," he said.

Another senior U.S. military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Wednesday that the priorities for aid flights are set "by the government of Haiti first and then by the U.N. second." But the number of flights that can land at Port-au-Prince is "a sheer issue of physics and geometry; you just can't get them all in there."

To improve the flow of air traffic, the U.S. military said Wednesday it had obtained landing rights at the Dominican Republic's air base at San Isidro, about 135 miles (220 kilometers) east of Port-au-Prince.

The U.S. military has the ability to build dirt runways that rugged cargo planes such as the C-130 Hercules can use, but the equipment needed to build those is "always at a premium," the senior official said.

The military has 63 helicopters in the region, Fraser said.

Haiti Crisis: Rage, Questions, Miracles, Sing, Work, Watch, Roar (UPDATED)

UPDATE 5:20 PM ET
By gum the U.S. military got one pier on the port reopened today, and there is more good news.

10:00 PM ET January 20

Rage
CNN's Wolf Blitzer has convened the political panel to discuss Scott Brown's victory but David Gergen, a middle-of-the-road Republican who really doesn't like to criticize Obama or anyone, for that matter, is finding it hard to concentrate on the topic. A strange look has overtaken his bland features, one I've never seen before and I've been watching David Gergen hold forth for years and years. He blurts that 20,000 people are dying every day in Haiti and that Obama really needs to be doing more. I suddenly realize the strange look is rage. I never thought him capable of the emotion.

This is already Obama's Katrina and the U.S. Department of State's worst scandal. And U.S. military reports on progress in Haiti evoke Westmoreland briefing the press on the success of the U.S. policing mission in Vietnam.

Of course there has been progress. Anderson Cooper had little to say tonight about food distribution. He had turned his focus to the need for medical supplies -- a sign that the feeding programs are sorting out. But the question I asked at 6:45 AM on January 14: "Who's in charge?" still blankets Haiti like a shroud.

I channel surf during the CNN ads and end up at C-SPAN broadcast of a Senate committee that's reviewing the report on Flight 253. Questions at that point revolve around who was in charge of decisions about visas for questionable applicants, and who was in charge of the decision to immediately treat the bomber as a criminal and Mirandize him.

Eerily the answers evoke the U.S. rescue effort in Haiti. One agency thought another agency was in charge of the decisions, another agency had no idea that they were supposed to be charge. Many agencies not in sync. The difference is that nobody died on Flight 253 because of bureaucratic snafus.

Questions and Miracles
On Tuesday John Batchelor was very leery of a rosy report about the extent of progress in getting the main port in Port au Prince up to speed. He was right. He asked on his blog earlier today:

SecDef Robert Gates from India is reported to have ordered the Navy to check, clear and rebuild the port asap. The puzzle is why this report came eight days after the port collapsed. The port handled 90% of the goods into Haiti before the event. The USCG has managed to jerryrig a finger pier that can take shallow draft barges and brown water cutters, but not the big ships that are needed. And the thousand foot pier is said to have a 200 foot hole in it so that only one tractor trailer can get through at a time.

The airport is now secured by the military and explaned to up to 120 flights per day, which is a miracle with one strip and no tower, a miracle. But still, one cargo ship can ring in the equivalent of 75-110 planeloads of stuffs. The USN and USCG are trying to use smaller ports to the north to get very heavy fuel oil onto the island for the vehicles. The Navy and Marines are running supplies onto the beach. But without the port, the lifeline to nine million people is unsustainably fragile. The aftershocks will continue. The fault lines show the risk at all times.

Anderson Cooper and another CNN reporter, who speaks French, trade observations about their day. ("We don't start out each morning with a plan, we just get in the car and drive, and whatever stories we find, we stop there and report"):

The UN is denying the report that as many as 20,000 are dying every day, "but the UN can't provide their own numbers. Even if it's not that high, it's still in the thousands," says Anderson.

The other reporter mentions the miracle he found that day: He discovers that a mother and young daughter he'd talked with in the morning had somehow made it onto a ferry that the Haitian government had commandeered. The ferry is only certified to hold 600 but thousands pile on board. They will journey about 100 miles to another part of the country where they can join with relatives.

The reporter is worried that the ferry might sink from overweight. And he learns it has to refuel in Port au Prince -- but with gasoline scarce it might have to sit, fully loaded with passengers, throughout the night, waiting for someone to scrounge the fuel. But the reporter is happy, so happy, to have found the mother and daughter, wreathed in smiles, on board.

Handlers of dogs that hunt for the living in earthquake rubble have learned the dogs can get so depressed when they repeatedly fail to find signs of life they don't want to continue to search. So a little play is staged; a volunteer will hide in a safe part of the rubble. Joyful barking when the dog finds the 'victim;' hope restored, the dog redoubles efforts to look for signs of life. Humans are like that too. It's the little miracles that keep us going amidst so much disappointment and if we call them coincidence in other times -- they are miracles now, and with so much certainty that the discursive part of our mind wisely shuts up.

People are dying because of the simplest things: surgeons in one hospital find they've run out of surgical gloves and they can't get any more. The gloves are there, at the airport, a doctor angrily tells CNN, along with many other critically needed medical supplies. Why is it taking so long to get the supplies distributed? Many reasons, but no real answer.

A hospital runs out of diesel fuel so the electricity is out, which means anesthesiologists there can't function, putting several operations on hold.

A doctor from Virginia Medical Center says the hospital he's working at hasn't had food for four days. "Staff are giving their food to the patients to keep them alive."

Amputees are having to do with Motrin or even nothing to ease the pain. And there is no follow-up care for patients recovering from surgery, no blood pressure monitors, no ICU stay. Many will die from infections that set in after surgery, Dr Sanjay Gupta tells Anderson.

Reports about violence in Port au Prince are vastly overblown, the CNN reporters agree. From their explorations of the city, the reporters see that most of the Haitians in the streets, and waiting in food lines, are mannerly and don't attack foreigners -- this is so even when gangs of looters are at work near foreigners. Anderson says there is too much emphasis on security and not enough on getting supplies out. (Could many UN peacekeepers be transferred to the task of supply distribution?)

Sing
My brain suddenly freezes, refusing any longer to take me back over the day's events in Haiti. There is something I'm trying to remember, something I saw or heard the reporters say that I thought important, but it's gone. All I can dredge from memory is footage that Anderson and his cameraman shot of a group of Haitians playing tambourines and singing hymns.

Work
In the morning Brenda at RBO sent me report on the underground economy struggling back to life in Port au Prince. I thought wryly that of course it would be a Wall Street Journal reporter who found the story of entrepreneurship amid the ruins but his tale is a point of cheer if one looks past the part about price gouging:

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti— Economic activity is sprouting up in the rubble of Haiti's ruined capital, much of it fed by looting and blighted by price gouging, but still a vibrant sign of life.

Gina Charmant set up her middleman business Tuesday on a corner of downtown's Rue du Miracle, or Miracle Street. Right across the wrecked and crowded street, more than a dozen men and women swarmed over the tumbled two-story façade of a shop where sandals had been sold before last week's earthquake.

They risked their lives diving into crevices with empty rice sacks, emerging with sacks bulging with footwear and other goods.

They also risked the wrath of police, who every now and then scattered them with long batons.

At Ms. Charmant's stand, a rickety table of wooden slats that before the quake had been another vendor's, she invited looters to let her inspect their booty. If it was right for her, they'd haggle out a price, and she'd stuff it in her own sack.

Three other women were beside her, doing the same thing. In Creole, such women are known as ti machann, or market ladies. They know everything and trade in everything. They were the backbone of Haiti's informal economy before the quake. And even though some of them lost their small inventories in the disaster, they are among the first to seek opportunity, no matter how humble or desperate, among the ruins.

[...]

Ms. Charmant declined to tell a reporter what profit she expected to make. But she said she hoped U.S. troops would come soon – she didn't know they had just arrived a few blocks away, at Haiti's wrecked National Palace – and establish order. [This was on Tuesday.]

But wouldn't that put her out of business?

"I'm only doing this because I have to," she said, explaining that her father was killed in the quake. The aid effort, she said, would "give us something to do, some real work, and we won't have to do this any more."

In a flash I saw the looting in a new light. Much of it is actually scavenging -- a hairsplitting moral difference, to be sure, but those tunneling deep into rubble to extract saleable items are risking their lives to forage for things that will probably be ground under bulldozers, anyhow. And it is indeed work -- something to do, something to keep the mind and body occupied, something to help establish a feeling of control for those who don't want to sing or pray.

Watch
We watch and wait for bureaucracies and aid agencies to sort themselves out, to mesh their gears. We watch and wait for the port to be dredged of obstacles so the big ships can dock. We watch as the biggest relief effort to ever be given so much live television coverage shows us thousands of people working to save millions.

Tempers can be short, everyone is angry and frustrated about a host of things, but there is a blessing in being there on the ground, working, instead of having to sit and watch from a distance of many miles. There is a kind of peace in action for those who have arrived to help. They arrive from all over the world, many highly skilled at doing their part of the relief and rescue work. These are tough people, very strong inside.

To refuse to watch the events unfold on television or YouTube is to be spared much horror but this is also missing much to inspire. This is a human drama the likes of which have never been seen before.

Roar
I have just remembered what a part of me wanted to forget. Anderson Cooper said there are fears that as many Haitians could die in the earthquake's aftermath as from the quake.

I won't think about that while I prepare for sleep. I will think of the millions swept up in the drama, raging, questioning, finding miracles, singing, working, watching, praying. I will think about Joan, a co-worker from long ago. Once a month several of us would converge on a bar after work and take over a bunch of tables. One evening we got too boisterous, which brought scowls from the few other customers. As we were leaving Joan looked back at the suddenly quiet bar and empty tables and whispered, "God may not like us but he'll never forget us." She was so drunk the whisper came out a roar.

Haiti Crisis: This is how you save

Email in response to my Cowardly Lion post:

"Pundita, I made the point days ago that all the money in the world could not solve this problem. There is no solution to this problem short of relocating everyone in the disaster area. As for who is to blame for not taking charge perhaps we need to look to the UN for those guidelines. There are some aren't they?"

Here is my reply:

The UN has guidelines coming out of its ass. It's not a matter of guidelines. It's a matter of heart, it's the determination to save. It's very simple, very direct, which is why I mentioned the tale of Gurdjieff and the Three Disciples.

I've been thrown into the Give Up All Hope Holocaust situation -- so had Gurdjieff, by the way; he led a band of Russian artists and intellectuals straight through the middle of the Russian revolution in order to get them to safety in France.

How is it done? How do you save anyone while hell is unleashed all around you? You fight, you forget everything else; you become cunning, cruel, vicious, you become more evil than evil. You do anything, anything, to save, anything.

But instead we have the "White Toyota" phenomenon that international aid worker Hugo Slim talked about -- thousands of aid workers converge, and their top priority during the early critical hours unravels from saving to sorting things out with each other, and politicians and international agencies trying not to step on each other's toes.

I understand there has to be a compromise between the Lone Wolf approach and the White Toyota one when you're aiming to distribute aid to millions of people within a short time. But the compromise shouldn't fall on the side of timidity, on the side of politics, should it?

While hell was unleashed the U.S. government lost time getting authorization from Haiti's President so the United States had the right to take over the airport. So now they can wave the piece of paper signed and sealed at the French Cooperation Minister, al Jazeera, Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, and everyone else who charges that the U.S. is trying to take over Haiti. So I want to know are they happy now? Are you happy now? Is this what you wanted? Is it? Because you got it.

The President of Haiti was wandering the streets, a shell-shocked, homeless survivor; the President of the Dominican Republic was frantically trying to contact him in the hours after the quake. You don't go by the book in such situations; understand? You don't look at the guidelines.

Haiti Crisis: THE STRONGEST TRIBE HAS LANDED, THANK GOD

U.S. Troops Pour Into Haiti on Aid Mission
By KEVIN NOBLET And PETER SPIEGEL
Wall Street Journal
January 19, 2010, 6:21 PM

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti—The U.S. Army arrived to Haiti's capital in dramatic style on Tuesday, landing on the lawn of the crumpled presidential palace in Black Hawk helicopters to the cheers of Haitians eager for help and more security after last week's earthquake.

Haitians crowded the fence of the National Palace, watching as scores of solders of the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne poured out of six Navy helicopters. Hundreds of Marines, meanwhile, waded ashore in western Port-au-Prince to start distributing aid there.

"They are going to do big things for us," said Marjorie Exinore, standing near the National Palace. Edson Blanc, 20 years old, said the U.N. peacekeepers in Haiti had done little to help following the quake, but hoped the Americans would. "The American troops are much stronger," he said.

[...]

The U.S., meanwhile, authorized the temporary activation of up to 900 reserve U.S. Coast Guard service men and women to bolster the more than 500 Coast Guard personnel already serving in Haiti.

After landing on the presidential lawn, across from a massive tent city of refugees, the U.S. troops walked several blocks through streets with some shattered shops to the general hospital, where they rested before fanning out to different points of the capital. Four soldiers who stood guard at the gate of the hospital, which has been a corpse-filled morgue since the quake, quickly attracted a crowd. Some Haitians begged for food or other assistance.

"What a mess," said one private, as he passed one toppled storefront. Another soldier said that, while flying in southward from the capital's airport that about 60% of the city's buildings appeared to have crumbled.

The landing was part of a broader deployment of U.S. troops throughout the capital. A group of about 800 Marines established a beachhead in the western neighborhoods of the capital, creating the first major distribution point for humanitarian supplies outside the capital's overburdened airport.

"They will reach areas we have been unable to get to yet," Maj. Gen. Daniel Allyn, the deputy commander of American forces in Haiti, said in a video conference with Pentagon reporters.

[...]

Aid also started to arrive through the city of Jacmel, about 25 miles south of the capital. The city has a small airport which the U.S. military plans to use for cargo planes. A Canadian frigate had also arrived in the port. Canadian military personnel on Tuesday began carrying the wounded to the ship, while distributing supplies to surrounding neighborhoods.

Following a successful airdrop of humanitarian rations and water on Monday, the Pentagon briefly suspended airdrops on Tuesday, but said they would resume Wednesday as U.S. forces establish secure sites to receive and then distribute the aid.

[...]

Haiti's earthquake victims and America the Cowardly Lion (UPDATED)

Leadership by Rumor

"The U.S. military controls the Port-au-Prince airport where only one runway is functioning and has been effectively running aid operations. However, the United Nations is taking the lead in the critical task of coordinating aid."

"The UN is providing the security, all right: UN personnel travel with armed guards, but the locals are left defenseless. ... Rescue teams for various countries are occasionally seen in [Port au Prince], led by armed UN personnel who are not taking chances. Little rescue work is taking place at night, especially after a UN food warehouse was looted."

So if Bill says the UN is providing the security, which is virtually nonexistent, and the UN says the US is in charge of aid distribution, which has been at a trickle, who has really been in charge of what during these past few agonizing days?

The only people who seem to know the answer are a handful of very seasoned journalists who've been slogging it out in Port au Prince since the first hours after the quake struck; among these are CNN reporter Anderson Cooper.

Anderson has toughened up considerably since he wandered weeping and dazed around hurricane-devastated New Orleans; between then and now he has been up-close witness to so many disaster-aid snafus in different world regions that he could, and should, write a field manual on how not to do disaster relief.

Out there on the ground in Port au Prince, away from the situation rooms and endless planning meetings, "Leaderships is by rumor," said Anderson last night. No one knows who's in charge, no one who knows where the instructions are coming from -- only, "I heard a rumor."

Why should things be this way?

"I keep hearing, 'We're in the assessment phase,' and 'we're doing logistics.' Too many assessment teams and not enough relief distribution and security," says Anderson.

His analysis and Irwin Redlener's of the U.S. National Center for Disaster Relief dovetail: For heaven's sake, how much assessment did you need after seeing the city in ruins?

Are aid distribution and security gridlock any worse in Haiti than in other disaster-hit regions when numerous foreign aid agencies and governments converge on the same spot at the same time, and the local government is ineffective?

Well, both Haiti's airport and seaport took a bad hit in the earthquake, which made any measurable supply distribution in the first couple days after the quake well-nigh impossible, except overland or by helicopter from the Dominican Republic's side of the island.

What was USAID doing?

But by day four the big obstacle to supply distribution was coming from inside Haiti: large amounts of supplies had been delivered and unloaded from planes but distribution from that point was ad-hoc, catch-can, every agency for itself. There was no distribution plan -- unless there were so many that the entire operation collapsed in chaos.

Yet the U.S. military held up its end: they got the airport up and running to the point where several flights a day could land and take off; they flew in forklifts and handled the offloading. From there things got fuzzy. For America's part, disaster relief in Haiti was supposed to be a joint military-USAID project. So just where has USAID been and what exactly has it been doing since the airport was made functional enough to handle relief shipments?

I'm going to take an educated guess and say that USAID has been busy coordinating with heads of governments from around the world and UN agencies. In any case, USAID is not qualified to develop a rational relief distribution plan in the wake of a disaster. The New York City or Miami-Dade County police force -- or for that matter the National Guard -- could have put together a workable relief distribution plan, and they wouldn't have needed to be on the ground doing endless assessments before coming up with the plan.

As to why President Obama didn't tap Lieutenant General (Ret.) Russel L. Honoré, who did a bang-up job of commanding the Joint Task Force for Katrina disaster relief -- and as a bonus most probably knows enough Creole and French to get by on the streets of Haiti (he's an African-Creole American) -- to head up the distribution part, stay tuned:

MREs vs nutritional biscuits

This is an unscientific survey but from what I saw with my own two eyes on CNN and Fox this weekend of the food distribution efforts in Port au Prince, there was a striking difference when the UN tried and the US military tried:

The UN truck would pull up, a crowd of Haitians would gather while people inside the truck would throw biscuit packages at them. When Haitians began fighting over the biscuits or mobbing the truck, it would speed off.

In some cases people in the crowd would shout angrily that the biscuits were no good because the expiration date was 2010; people would then throw the biscuits down and grind them to dust under their feet, the crowd would turn into an unruly mob. (The life-saving biscuits are perfectly good; the expiration date is November of this year.)

But at a food distribution site run by the U.S. military, peace reigned. The Haitians formed a line. Young American soldiers with cherubic smiles handed MREs on a paper plate to each Haitian, who collected water bottles at another point on the line. The line moved very quickly.

And the Haitians were smiling while they stood in line. Why were starving people smiling? Because they saw the U.S. military uniforms, and they saw the guns in the hands of competent soldiers -- competent, not the UN's Blue Helmets. They knew they would be able to eat the food they were given without it being snatched away by other hungry people and gangsters looking to sell the food.

So what's the real reason we didn't see the latter scene repeated all over Port au Prince as early as 15th?

U.S. Foreign Policy as Usual

I'll tell you what I think happened: Robert Gates allowed himself to be spooked. Barack Obama allowed himself to be spooked. And Hillary Clinton allowed herself to be spooked.

The upshot? The Number One Priority for the government of the United States of America in the aftermath of the one of the worst humanitarian disasters in more than a century was --

Trying to assure the rest of the world that a U.S. military presence in Haiti was not there to take over the country.

The truth is that in the face of such a crisis there's no time to do two things well at the same time. There has to be real leader and one overriding goal. Instead, there have been partnerships and 'priorities.' Gates and Clinton were more focused on State and Defense 'getting along' and demonstrating a high level of cooperation, Barack Obama was more focused on being a team player with the European Union and the United Nations, than they were on saving lives.

The But Also presidents

Someday, someday, an American man will step out the shadows, a man who is very much like Vladimir Putin, a man knows that only one priority can be at the top of any national leader's list. He will not be confused, cooperative, or coordinating. He will fight with every atom of his being to make the world respect the United States, as Putin fought to bash the Europeans and Americans back over the line and make them respect Russia's right to live.

Someday, such an American President will appear. That is my faith, my prayer, and it's all that keeps this American from despair. But he didn't appear in time to save the Haitian survivors of an earthquate from untold suffering.

Oh woe, that it should come to the point where history's longest-running democracy needs a leader like Vladimir Putin! Yet when you look over your shoulder you can see how it happened. For generations now the United States has had a series of presidents who wanted to defend the United States but also to promote world peace, but also to make the world safe from communism, but also to make the world safe for democracy, but also to cooperate with other nations, but also to improve global trade, but also but also but also but also....

These are all fine goals but the way this world is set up, you can't do myriad things equally well at the same time -- not when it comes to the complexities of leading a nation.

And so it came down to today, where the highest priority of the United States of America is harmonizing with the United Nations and the European Union.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has announced that he intends to ask the UN Security to authorize 1,500 more UN police and 2,000 more troops to join the 7,000 military peacekeepers and 2,100 international police already in Haiti. And the U.K. Mirror reported this morning:

There was still little sign of aid distribution. The airport was full of loaded planes but little was getting out. Yesterday Oxfam could not distribute water as delivery trucks were out of petrol.

The Mirror neatly summed the situation: "$600 million donated to help Haiti but you still can't get a cup of water."
**************
6:15 UPDATE - Fox News Cable report
The U.S. military has set up a food distribution station at a nine-hole golf course, where 5,000 Haitians have camped out. How is the military keeping order with such a large crowd?

First, the military designated Haitian volunteers to set up the lines and decide who's at the front of the line -- mainly children and women.

Second, when the lines get unruly, the U.S. declare a "mass timeout." They sit down on the ground, and the volunteers follow suit. This mass timeout strategy takes about a minute to restore order.

Tragically simple, eh?

Also, the food that the military is distributed at the golf course is not MREs; it's a package containing packets with enough caloric content to sustain a person for a full day.

Memo to President Obama: Haitians are asking for Marines, not the State Department

Washington Post, January 18:

Security fears mount in lawless post-earthquake Haiti

[...] Indeed, all over Port-au-Prince, signs begging for help from the Marines have been sprouting. In front of one crushed office building, a typical sign read: "Welcome the U.S. Marine. We need some help. Dead bodies inside." Another read: "U.S. Marines SOS. We need help."

Politico, January 17:

Haiti logistics: breaking the airport bottleneck

[...] The administration has faced criticism from the retired U.S. general who led the Katrina response that it was overthinking post-quake Haiti aid distribution, when it should have just pushed it out as faster at risk of it being disorganized.

"The next morning after the earthquake, I assumed there would be airplanes delivering aid," retired Lt. General Russel Honore was cited this week. "What we saw instead was discussion about, 'Well we've got to send an assessment team in to see what the needs are.' And anytime I hear that, my head turns red."

Honore also said he thought the U.S. military and not USAID should have been put in charge of the aid effort, because of its superior logistical and lift resources.[...]

Returning to the Washington Post report:

At this point, though, it's unlikely that there will be a large U.S. military presence in Port-au-Prince. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said this weekend that there will be up to 10,000 U.S. forces in Haiti and off its coast by Monday, but only a fraction of them will be on the ground.

"The bulk of them will be on ships," he said.

I'm getting a bad feeling about all this. SouthCom deputy commander Lt. Gen. Ken Keen and USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, who are 'partnering' in the U.S. relief operation in Haiti, have said that their branches are working in tight coordination, according to the Politico report. However, General Honore's opinion in the matter is not to be taken lightly.

There is perhaps too much emphasis on the U.S. military and State (USAID is a part of State) "coordinating" with each other and not enough emphasis on leadership in the mission.

I can understand State and President Obama wanting to keep the military in the background as much as possible, so as not to add fuel to criticism that the relief operation is a mask for a U.S. military takeover of Haiti. However, this is a political viewpoint and shouldn't be allowed to trump facts on the ground.

The facts are that the U.N. peacekeepers were very unpopular with Haitians even before the earthquake and now they're widely seen as ineffectual at keeping order in the post-quake environment. From the Post report:

"The blue helmets, they don't do anything," said Gregoire Sancerre, a computer technology student, echoing a frequent refrain here. "If you have trouble and call them, they won't come. They are afraid of gangsters. What use are they?"

And the police have been rendered ineffectual:

Haiti's small national police force suffered losses when a police station and prison collapsed during the quake, killing at least eight officers and eight inmates. Dozens of police uniforms were destroyed in the collapse, adding to the general sense of confusion in the streets because there are not enough uniforms for surviving officers.

The loss of the prison, in the Delmas neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, leaves police with fewer options to detain suspected criminals.

Even under normal circumstances, the national police are sorely outmatched. Port-au-Prince has long been plagued by violent gangs that control huge swaths of the city, including much of the notorious Cite Soleil slum.

So the Marines need to leave the boats and make their presence strongly felt in Port au Prince, before civilian violence in the capital city grinds relief operations to a standstill.

'Taliban' stage major attack on Kabul (UPDATED 6:30 AM ET)

UPDATE 6:30 AM ET
The Wall Street Journal reported at 6:03 AM ET that Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid is claiming credit for the assault on Kabul and it's "believed to be carried out by members of a militant network led by Sirajuddin Haqqani ..."

Almost a year ago, on February 19, 2009, intelligence analyst B. Raman reported on his blog:

2. [...] In a transcript passed to Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence in May 2008, General Ashfaq Kayani, the military chief who replaced Pervez Musharraf, was overheard referring to Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani as “a strategic asset”.

The remark was the first real evidence of the double game that Washington had long suspected President Musharraf was playing as he continued receiving US military aid while aiding the Taleban. Mr Haqqani, a veteran of the anti-Soviet mujahidin wars of the nineties, commands a hardline Taleban group based in Waziristan and is credited with introducing suicide bombing into the militants' arsenal. Washington later intercepted calls from Pakistani military units to Mr Haqqani, warning him of an impending military operation designed to prove to the US that Islamabad was tackling the militant threat.

3. Evidence of the links of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) with Al Qaeda and the Taliban and of the double game being played by Musharraf, the Pakistan Army and the ISI was available with the US intelligence since 2001, if not earlier. There were references to it in some documents of the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), which were declassified by the US Administration in September 2003.[...]

Raman titled his report OBAMA & PAKISTAN: RELUCTANCE TO CALL A SPADE A SPADE. Washington's ongoing reluctance to call a spade a spade is continuing to contribute to unnecessary deaths and maiming of U.S. military and civilians in Afghanistan. Today's very sophisticated military-style assault on Kabul is futher indication of that.

The madness of U.S. pandering to Islamabad did not start on Mr Obama's watch but it's fallen to him to end it, and he needs to do so immediately.
********************************
The following reports are republished with the permission of STRATFOR (www.STRATFOR.com):

Taliban Assault on Kabul
January 18, 2010 approximately 3:30 AM ET

A major Taliban attack began on Kabul Jan. 18. The fighting is being reported by both American and Taliban sources. According to one American source, reports of an imminent attack began circulating Jan. 17. Heavy fighting is being reported at multiple locations, apparently focused around the Serena Hotel. The hotel, which is frequented by foreign journalists and government officials, has been attacked in the past. [...] The attack is still in progress, with Taliban forces reportedly fighting Afghan security forces. Explosions, gunfire and rocket fire have been reported along with the suicide bombers. It is unclear as to whether this assault will prove larger than attacks carried out last February.[...]

STRATFOR Update approx. 4:30 AM ET

The Taliban attack in Kabul is reportedly winding down. The assault began around 9:35 a.m. local time Jan. 18 (the day the new cabinet was being sworn in) when reports of rocket fire and explosions were heard in the Afghan capital near several government buildings.

Just 23 minutes later, reports emerged that the Taliban had claimed the attack in a message to the Afghan Islamic Press. In the claim, Taliban spokesman Zabihollah Mojahed said 20 suicide assailants were attacking the Presidential Palace, the Central Bank and the Ministries of Finance, Justice and Mines and Industries. The Serena Hotel, the Defense Ministry and the Afghan Telecom had also reportedly come under attack.

A little after noon local time, militants began to lay siege on two major shopping centers, including a mall called the Grand Afghan Shopping Center near the Justice Ministry. Eyewitness reported militants carrying rocket-propelled grenades entered the second and third floors of the mall. A vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) reportedly detonated outside one of the shopping centers killing several security forces.

Around the same time, reports emerged that militants who had earlier breached the southern gate of the presidential palace had entered the building where a swearing-in ceremony for Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s Cabinet was scheduled to take place. The Afghan government denied any breach of the palace had taken place. Several minutes later, another blast was heard outside the Cinema Pamir in an area far from the other attacks, about 1 kilometer away from the Serena hotel.

The size of this attack (if it involved 20 assailants as the Taliban have claimed) is more than twice as large as the Feb. 11, 2009, attack in Kabul, which involved a team of eight attackers. While a complete and concise assessment of what has been struck is still being compiled, it does appear that the justice ministry (the main target of the February 2009 attack) was again hit hard and there are reports of a substantial fire burning inside the building. It is unclear if the fire was started by a rocket attack or assailants who had succeeded in penetrating the building’s security.

STRATFOR sources are reporting that the Taliban may have used suicide vehicle bombs and artillery rockets in addition to the suicide bombers on foot and armed gunmen. If so, this is a new wrinkle. We have seen VBIEDS and artillery rockets employed by the Taliban in Kabul, but not in coordination with an armed assault.

"World misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown"

Yesterday afternoon Brenda J. Elliot at RBO blog deconstructed the latest episode in the stupidity, chicanery, and quackery that's come to be known as ClimateGate. Here, repubished with her permission, is her Himalayan glacier meltdown meltdown:

So this is how "climate change" and "global warming" found their way into the vast global consciousness? Pay attention and follow closely, please, as we enter another "scientific" maze.

The cascading fallout from ClimateGate is providing us with a "teachable moment," or two or four or more, it seems. Jonathan Leake and Chris Hastings headlined "World misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown" in today's UK Sunday Times:

A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.

Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report.

It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

Leake and Hastings continue:

The IPCC's reliance on Hasnain's 1999 interview has been highlighted by Fred Pearce, the journalist who carried out the original interview for the New Scientist. Pearce said he rang Hasnain in India in 1999 after spotting his claims in an Indian magazine. Pearce said: "Hasnain told me then that he was bringing a report containing those numbers to Britain. The report had not been peer reviewed or formally published in a scientific journal and it had no formal status so I reported his work on that basis.

"Since then I have obtained a copy and it does not say what Hasnain said. In other words it does not mention 2035 as a date by which any Himalayan glaciers will melt. However, he did make clear that his comments related only to part of the Himalayan glaciers, not the whole massif." [...]

Graham Cogley[is] a geographer from Trent University in Ontario, Canada, who had long been unhappy with the IPCC's finding.

He traced the IPCC claim back to the New Scientist and then contacted Pearce. Pearce then re-interviewed Hasnain, who confirmed that his 1999 comments had been "speculative", and published the update in the New Scientist.

In 1999 Professor Syed Iqbal Hasnain may have been a little known-scientist. In March 2009, however, he was the recipient of the Government of India's Padmashree Award for his work on glaciers.

According to his Award profile, Professor Hasnian's credentials appear impressive. He is the sixth Chairman of the Consortium for Educational Communication Governing Board and a Senior Fellow with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), New Delhi.

Between October 2002 and October 2006 he was Vice Chancellor at the University of Calicut. Prior to that he was "Professor in Glaciology in the School of Environmental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University. He was also at the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai and Delft Technical University, Netherlands for his specialization. He spent many years researching Himalayan Glaciers and has gained international recognition for his work."

Hasnain chaired the "working group on Himalayan Glaciology within the International Commission on Snow and Ice between 1995 and 1999. He has served on the 'Hydrology 2000' working group set up by the International Association of Hydrological Science. Prof. Hasnain is also serving as a Member of the Governing Council of Indian Mountaineering Foundation and Chairing Scientific Committee of IMF which has prepared a roadmap of climate change studies in the high altitude Himalaya." Additionally, Hasnain "authored a book on Himalayan Glaciers: Hydrology and Hydrochemistry" and "published more than 40 papers in the international and national scientific journals."

Plus, Professor Hasnain is a "Visiting Professor to lecture on Himalayan Glaciers at the Universities of Nebraska at Omaha and University of Washington, Seattle."

Professor Hasnain continues with his unsubstantiated predictions. The India Tribune wrote:

“The Hindukush-Himalayan-Tibetan glaciers are the water towers of Asia,” says Prof. Syed Iqbal Hasnain of the Energy Research Institute, who has been studying the melting of the Himalayan glaciers for several years.

Looking ahead, the prospects seem to be getting worse rather than better, according to Hasnain. “Scientists have projected a 43 percent decrease in the glacial area on an average by 2070 and a 75 percent decrease in the glacial area by the end of the 21st century at the current rate of global warming,” says Hasnain.

Put this into its proper context. From the same article we learn:

Incidentally, studies to draw a precise link between the rising temperatures and the melting of glaciers are still in their infancy.

“Glaciology is a very young science and we are still learning about the relationship between global warming and the melting of glaciers,” says Rajesh Kumar, a glaciologist with the Birla Institute of Technology. Kumar, who has done pioneering work on the shrinking snout of the Gangotri glacier that feeds the Ganges.

Research on retreating glaciers has been taken up seriously only for the past 25 years. “We are depending largely on anecdotal evidence from old residents in the area for information on glaciers,” says the coordinator for the Worldwide Fund for Nature in Leh.

Key points here:

Studies "are still in their infancy..."

Glaciology is a "very young science..."

Research "on retreating glaciers has been taken up seriously only for the past 25 years."

... and "depend[s] largely on anecdotal evidence ..."

Moving on: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claims to be the "leading body for the assessment of climate change, established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to provide the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic consequences."

The IPCC makes it clear that it is a "scientific body."

The New Scientist, on the other hand, is a journal which publishes articles on space, technology, the environment, health, life, physics and math, and science in society. The New Scientist publishes in-depth articles and opinion and even has a blog. However, it is not a "scientific body."

Our case is proven by the New Scientist itself, in whose environment section (in the subsection on climate change) is found the January 13 article "Major Antarctic glacier is 'past its tipping point'" by Shanta Barley, who has also written the related November 24, 2009 article, World's last bastion of stable ice now thawing.

To give you a better idea of her expertise, Barley is also the author of the November 13, 2009 Cocaine and pepper spray – a lethal mix? and January 14, 2010 Transparent frogs, tiny geckos and snail-sucking snakes.

A cursory internet search finds Barley as a major blogger at the BBC's "Climate Change: The Blog of Bloom" -- "A surprising blog from the Bloom team about climate change and the things people are saying and doing about it."

As far as RBO can discover, the BBC "Bloom team" consists of people who choose to become "Bloomers" and participate in activities that will reduce CO₂ emissions. Bloom states on the BBC website:

We've studied over 50 things you can do to tackle climate change (with many more to follow soon). Each action is represented by a seed. Our genial gardener will ask questions to identify which ones suit you best. When you find an action you plan to do, or one you've already done, plant the seed and watch it bloom.

Your collection of Blooms shows the progress you've made. Register now to save your progress and get your actions added to our 'Full Bloom' records. This will allow you to compare your actions against other 'Bloomers' all over the UK and beyond.

Bloom is definitely not a "scientific body" -- nor is the New Scientist.

Shanta Barley is a young scientist. She graduated in 2005 with a masters degree in Oceanography from the National Oceanographic Centre. She has "worked as a science consultant at UNESCO headquarters in Paris and as a researcher at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology," where she "spent a year investigating the evolution of burrowing behaviour of marine worms - a complex issue veiled in time (and mud!)"

Barley works now as a "researcher for BBC Science and Nature in London" and was "involved in a TV program called Oceans - an underwater diving expedition exploring some of the last great underwater wildernesses on Earth."

So what does Barley really know about melting glaciers in the Himalayas? Obviously not enough to be an expert on the subject but enough to compile articles about it. Many non-scientists can do the same thing.

This brings us to several conclusions. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was willing to base information in its report on a 1999 interview published in the non-"scientific body" New Scientist journal from information gathered in a telephone interview with someone who now has what appears to be excellent credentials but whose 1999 comments were "speculative."

And, to be perfectly honest, infant glaciology is still kicking the can down the road. In a more recent bit of speculation, Professor Syed Iqbal Hasnain said, "Scientists have projected a 43 percent decrease in the [Hindukush-Himalayan-Tibetan] glacial area on an average by 2070 and a 75 percent decrease in the glacial area by the end of the 21st century at the current rate of global warming."

Professor Hasnain is also a climate change / global warming believer. He was quoted by Reuters in July 2007 as saying "It is not just greenhouse gases which are leading to melting glaciers, but it is also increased human activity and development in the Himalayas."

This same glacial area is what Professor Hasnain called "the water towers of Asia." Water indicates melting and melting indicates a meltdown, which is precisely what is happening. Research only taken up "seriously" 25 years ago takes us back to 1985 -- as well as includes an infinitesimal amount of information upon which to base any conclusions about mountains and glaciers that are considered to be millions or even billions years old. Even if the Himilayas were no older than the beginning of the Christian era, 25 years is nothing.

Haiti: Gone in 16 seconds

I was just visiting Richard Fernandez's Belmont Club blog at Pajamas Media and saw that on January 14 he'd linked to 30 seconds of very extraordinary raw video taken at the moment the earthquake struck in Haiti. Just reading his description of the footage is frightening. The first 13 seconds show a perfectly normal street scene:

Then on the fourteenth second, there’s the first shock coming straight up from the ground followed by a rhythmic 1.5 Hz pile driver of destruction kicking directly up from the center of the earth. There are 23 shocks in the next 16 seconds. The building in the background begins to disintegrate by the 24 second mark in the 30 second video. It’s still disintegrating when the video gives out. Sixteen seconds was all it took to wreck the city though doubtless it continued for a while longer.

He also provides links to technical data on the quake and satellite images of Port au Prince before and after the quake; these are more extensive than the ones that were shown on TV; GeoEye provided him with the images.

Even for those who aren't interested in poring over the technical details of the earthquake, the video, as Richard notes, is a graphic illustration of "the almost razor sharp dividing line between normal life and catastrophe."

Haiti crisis: For crying out loud, Africa, will you start acting human? (UPDATED 4:00 PM ET)

UPDATE
See Belmont Club's January 14 post for aerial footage ( more extensive than shown on TV) of Haiti before and after the earthquake and a video that was shot in the seconds immediately before and after the quake hit. The video is terrifying. Basically, a nation was devastated within 16 seconds.
**********************************
This entry picks up from the one I posted last night, in which I examined how Haiti's crisis is revealing the generosity and stinginess of governments around the world. Some governments of even poor countries acted from the heart; they made a donation even if it was no more than blankets and canned food. And some rich ones sent nothing, not even a letter of condolence.

Realize that the capital city of Port au Prince was not the epicenter of the earthquake. A town called Leogane, 12 miles west of the capital, was ground zero; it was destroyed. That's not saying anything about damage to other parts of the country. In short an earthquake devastated a nation.

So what I found particularly upsetting was the attitude of the majority of African governments.

Just a reminder: Haiti is the only nation whose independence was won as part of a slave rebellion. They paid a very high price for going up against the colonizers and slave traders, including the United States, and they've been paying right up to this day. But for any African official to shrug and say that's the problem of the ex-colonizers and ex-slave trading nations to solve -- uh, there were a lot of African slave traders in Africa. Africans were trading in slaves while the peoples who became known as European colonizers were still living in caves.

Haiti is a very special nation because of the slave rebellion that founded it. Now it's up to the world to show appreciation for this by coughing up something in the way of a donation or at least a letter of condolence. African governments are not exempted.

What had me really upset while I wrote the last post is that the African continent is surely the all-time largest recipient of foreign aid. Yet of Africa's 53 countries, Wikipedia's list showed that the governments of only three African countries -- Ghana, Morocco, and Rwanda -- had made a response to Haiti's crisis. A fourth country, South Africa, had responded through a private charity but not a peep from the government.

I should also mention that Kenya had been on an earlier publication of Wikipedia's list and then dropped; I assume this was just an oversight, which I'd forgotten about then corrected in my earlier post. However, there's been no response yet from Kenya's government that I'm aware of, although the country's Red Cross has made an appeal to Kenyans for donations to Haiti.

As of this morning I see that four more African governments have been added to Wikipedia's list, bringing the grand total to seven African governments displaying the milk of human kindness toward Haiti. Whoopee.

-- Benin's government is "organizing aid" for Haiti.
-- Gabon's government has pledged US$1m in aid.
-- Liberia's president has pledged an initial US$50,000 in aid.

-- Senegal's president, Abdoulaye Wade, has a made a promise of free land and "repatriation" for Haitian refugees on account of Haitian ancestors being originally from Africa.

I'm sure the last offer is made in sympathy even if the logic informing it is obscure: why should Haitians willingly abandon a land their ancestors purchased with labor and blood and much treasure?

But while President Wade is waiting for Haitian refugees to show up in Senegal, could he scrounge a few bottles of penicillin tablets and ship them, marked, "For field hospitals tending Haitian refugees," to the Dominican Republic?

If that's too much bother, how about texting or writing a check in the amount of US$20 to a charity helping Haiti? Or would that break Senegal's treasury?

For readers who're counting on their fingers and toes in the effort to remember all of Africa's countries, here's a list; I'll highlight the ones that have responded to Haiti's crisis. To show how even-tempered I am, I'll even highlight South Africa and Kenya.

Algeria (People's Democratic Republic of Algeria)
Angola (Republic of Angola)
Benin (Republic of Benin)
Botswana (Republic of Botswana)
Burkina Faso
Burundi (Republic of Burundi)
Cameroon (Republic of Cameroon)
Cape Verde (Republic of Cape Verde)
Central African Republic (Central African Republic)
Chad (Republic of Chad)
Comoros (Union of the Comoros)
Côte d'Ivoire (Republic of Côte d'Ivoire)
Djibouti (Republic of Djibouti)
Egypt (Arab Republic of Egypt)
Equatorial Guinea (Republic of Equatorial Guinea)
Eritrea (State of Eritrea)
Ethiopia (Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia)
Gabon (Gabonese Republic)
Gambia (Republic of The Gambia)
Ghana (Republic of Ghana)
Guinea (Republic of Guinea)
Guinea-Bissau (Republic of Guinea-Bissau)
Kenya (Republic of Kenya)
Lesotho (Kingdom of Lesotho)
Liberia (Republic of Liberia)
Libya (Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya)
Madagascar (Republic of Madagascar)
Malawi (Republic of Malawi)
Mali (Republic of Mali)
Mauritania (Islamic Republic of Mauritania)
Mauritius (Republic of Mauritius)
Morocco (Kingdom of Morocco)
Mozambique (Republic of Mozambique)
Namibia (Republic of Namibia)
Niger (Republic of Niger)
Nigeria (Federal Republic of Nigeria)
Republic of the Congo (Republic of the Congo)
Rwanda (Republic of Rwanda)
Sao Tome and Principe
Senegal (Republic of Senegal)
Seychelles (Republic of Seychelles)
Sierra Leone (Republic of Sierra Leone)
Somalia (Somali Republic)
South Africa (Republic of South Africa)
Sudan (Republic of Sudan)
Swaziland (Kingdom of Swaziland)
Tanzania (United Republic of Tanzania)
Togo (Togolese Republic)
Tunisia (Tunisian Republic)
Uganda (Republic of Uganda)
Western Sahara (Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic)
Zambia (Republic of Zambia)
Zimbabwe (Republic of Zimbabwe)

Haiti and The Tale of Mr Gurdjieff and the Three Disciples (UPDATED)

One day, while George Gurdjieff was taking a stroll in the company of three disciples, his walking cane slipped from his hand. One disciple was busy with his thoughts and didn't see what happened. Another disciple saw the cane fall and wondered whether he should pick it up or watch for a sign that the dropped cane was a test or teaching. The third disciple saw the cane fall, picked it up, and handed it back to Gurdjieff.

Excluding Haiti there are 192 societies that are widely recognized as sovereign nations; as of this hour 89 of these have mustered a response to Haiti's disaster. Drilling down into the details provided by Wikipedia and other news sources:

-- Ghana sent a letter of condolence to Haiti.
-- Rwanda committed US$100,000 (56 million Rwandan Francs).
-- Morocco released US$1 million in emergency humanitarian aid.
-- Silence from Libya, not even a letter of condolence.

-- Silence from South Africa's govenment, one of the largest recipients of humanitarian aid since the end of apartheid rule -- although a private charity is sending up to three teams of search and rescue specialists to "hopefully save some lives."

-- Silence from Kenya's government, although the Kenyan Red Cross has appealed to Kenyans for donations, to be forwarded to the International Federation of Red Cross.

-- Silence from the rest of Africa's governments; not even letters of condolence, even though the continent has probably been the world's biggest recipient of foreign aid for more than a half century. This to include Egypt, which has raked in I Don't Want To Know how much financial aid from the United States for decades.

-- Israel, which has also been a big recipient of U.S. aid but is on constant war footing, has dispatched a team of 220 doctors and professional rescue workers; two rescue planes loaded with equipment, and a field hospital including operating rooms, intensive care units, and X-ray equipment; a ZAKA team and forensic experts. And search-and-rescue team including emergency medical staff, funded by a private charity, arrived in Haiti yesterday.

-- Silence from Saudi Arabia, not even a letter of condolence.

-- Pakistan, one of the all-time biggest recipients of foreign aid, sent a letter of condolence (with a reminder that Pakistanis are serving in the U.N. peacekeeping force in Haiti).
-- Poverty-stricken Bangladesh sent a medical team, medicine and clothing -- oh yes, and a letter of condolence.

-- Tiny Malta (122 square miles) is managing to send blankets, canned food and drinking water.
-- Nothing from filthy rich tiny countries Brunei and Monaco; not even a letter of condolence.

-- Silence from Afghanistan and Iraq, which have been big recipients of U.S. aid in recent years. Not even a letter of condolence from either government.

-- Cuba's government, which as we all know doesn't get along with America's, gave permission to the U.S. to fly through restricted air space on medical evacuation flights from Haiti. This cuts 90 minutes from the flight from the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay.

Cuba also set up field hospitals in the 48 hours following the quake and sent a team of 30 doctors to join more than 340 medical and health personnel in Haiti at the time of the quake.

-- PRC China, although it has no official relations with Haiti's government on account of Haiti recognizing ROC (Taiwan) as the legitimate government of China, immediately sent a 60-member search and rescue team to Haiti (okay; that was partly to search for eight missing Chinese members of the U.N. peacekeeping force now presumed dead); the Chinese Red Cross is donating one million dollars in emergency aid, and China's Ministry of National Defense said Friday it would deliver emergency humanitarian aid worth $1.9 million to Haiti as part of a $4.4 million aid package.

-- The Dominican Republic, which has had awful relations with next-door neighbor Haiti since the 19th century, was the first country to give aid to Haiti and rallied the rest of the world to send help to Haiti in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake. The aid from DR has been in any and every way they can think of with no time to think, and the awareness that every momemt of hestiation was costing many lives.

-- Indonesia's government, which raked in and stole and wasted untold billions in financial aid in response to the 2004 Tsunami, has announced it would send a team of 30 medical personnel including surgeons, a 10-member SAR team, and 10 electrical experts, to Haiti. The remaining 25 are "experts in construction and telecommunications." The government will also send medical supplies "weighting a total of 5 tons, another five tons of food special equipment and tools for children and babies also five tons."

-- In a move that was sure not to thrill his Leftist base and Conservative critics, U.S. President Barack Obama invited Dubya to join Slick Willy at the White House today to discuss ways they could team up to help Haiti. Obama was inspired to ask former presidents George W. Bush and William Jefferson Clinton to work together because of the example set by Bush asking Clinton and his father to team up to stump for aid to Indonesia in the wake of the 2004 Tsunami.

All the above is but a sample of the interesting tales the data tell about how governments around the world have responded to one of the greatest human disasters during the past 100 years.

And the above doesn't mention that Canada and America -- the latter so deeply in debt it shouldn't give as much as penny to any country -- are carrying the lion's share of financial aid to Haiti.

Of course the United States would be considerably less in debt had it acted even a quarter century ago to stop corrupt governments from stealing large chunks of its foreign aid money.

But now is not the time for recriminations. Now is the time for new beginnings, which I mark from 1/12, the day Haiti was struck by the earthquake. The other day Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised the American people that this time it would be different; she would personally oversee how the aid for Haiti was distributed and she was instituting a new system of aid oversight at USAID.

I seem to recall that an earlier administration in Haiti ripped off USAID to the tune of billions -- bad Pundita! [slapping hand] New beginnings! To return to my point I'm sure Saudi Arabia's check is in the mail; in the meantime I'm wondering if King Abdullah could tell his defense minister to root around at a few military bases? See if he can't unearth a couple boxes of bandages that could be spared? If so, kindly send them to the field hospitals in the Dominican Republic, which are overwhelmed with Haitian patients and sending out a SOS for basic medical supplies -- nothing fancy: gauze, bandages, antibiotics.

And could Prince Phillip hit Monaco's casinos this weekend with a collection plate in hand?

In the "Ask a busy person to get things done" department, I'm not going to go through a box of Kleenex over this, but considering all the aid that was poured into Rwanda and Bangladesh over the decades I'll admit to misty eyes when I read of their donations to Haiti. Both socieites had lived for generations under European colonial rule; both experienced genocide: Rawanda from internal divisions, Bangladesh when its bid for independence enraged Islamabad. Today Rwanda is today Africa's greatest success story. The country has achieved stability, economic growth (average income has tripled in the past ten years) and international integration:

The government is widely seen as one of the more efficient and honest ones in Africa. ... In 2008, Rwanda became the first country in history to elect a national legislature in which a majority of members were women.

As for the perennial hard-luck country of Bangladesh (hit with the world's worst recorded floods in 1998), it's still poor but it's also made great strides:

[...] the poverty rate has fallen by 20% since the early 1990s. [In 2005 the country was listed among the "Next Eleven" economies. Dhaka, the capital, and other urban centers have been the driving force behind this growth.

After Mr Gurdjieff regained his cane he continued walking as if nothing had happened. He didn't thank the disciple who picked up the cane for him. He never made any reference to the incident. So, two of the disciples with him on the walk that day were left to always wonder.

Yet there's really nothing to wonder about, is there? One disciple clearly thought too little about his surroundings; one calculated too much; the third had a spontaneous heart informed by common sense.

Of course it takes all kinds in this world; if the two disciples hadn't wondered, a disciple who wasn't on the walk wouldn't have heard of the incident and recorded it. And so a nifty parable wouldn't have come down to us today. Somewhere in that observation there's perhaps a moral to be applied to stingy governments, but I'd rather not try to find it just now.

Instead I'll mention this news item, in case King Abdullah likes to wait for telethons so he can top the largest donation:

Spurred by actor George Clooney and MTV, 11 broadcast and cable television networks have signed on to air a two-hour telethon Friday that will benefit the earthquake victims in Haiti.

"Hope for Haiti," presented by MTV Networks, will air commercial-free at 8 p.m. on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN, BET, the CW, HBO, MTV, VH1 and CMT.

The event, which will raise money for five relief organizations working in the ravaged country, will be hosted by Clooney in Los Angeles, singer Wyclef Jean in New York and CNN anchor Anderson Cooper in Haiti.

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UPDATE Sunday January 17
This morning Wikipedia added a few more African nations to the list of governments respoinding to Haiti's crisis. See this morning's post, Haiti crisis: For crying out loud, Africa, will you start acting human?", for the additions and my comments.

Sing

5:26 PM ET
Dr Sanjay Gupta (in Port au Prince) now reporting to CNN that where he is, in a makeshift medical clinic, US medical personnel treating Haitians are now being told by U.N. peacekeepers to immediately stop treating patients, pack up their medical supplies, and get to a secure location because of concerns about violence, rioting, not far from the site. He reports sounds of gunfire in distance. Sanjay said it's unknown where and when the personnel would be able to set up another clinic.

5:15 PM
State Department announcement:

Two Memorandums of Understanding have been signed between the governments of Haiti and United States:

1. The United States has been given indefinite control of Haiti's international airport, making it official that the United States is in charge of all inbound and outbound flights and aid offloading. That heads off many potential problems about lines of authority.

2. American medical personnel now have permission to operate on Haitian citizens and otherwise render medical assistance without having to wait for licenses from Haiti's government and other bureaucratic red tape.

4:40 PM
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced she's traveling to Haiti tomorrow with Rajeev Shah (OFDA - USAID) to meet with Haitian president and other Haitian leaders.
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Hundreds of Haitians, mostly women and children (roughly half of Haiti's population are children), are walking through Port au Prince, clapping and singing. Surely these are the same women whose songs have pierced the pitch-black night since the earthquake first struck.

Look, Death, you cannot destroy our spirit. We pesky, stubborn humans.

Hotel Haiti

Many years ago, whenever calamity broke out somewhere in the world, I fell into the habit of adopting a journalist who'd rushed headlong into the worst of it. I pounce on every report the journalist files and wait impatiently for the next one. Until now I never stopped to wonder why I do this; I suppose it helps me personalize the victims of the calamity by giving me a particular stranger's welfare to worry about.

The adoptee for the Haiti earthquake is Reuters veteran journalist Andrew Cawthorne. His view of situations he's encountered since his mad dash to reach Port au Prince before nightfall gives his reports from Haiti the tone of a hitchhiker's diary.

This morning Andrew wrote about Villa Creole, the hotel where he and several other journalists and aid workers are staying. The generosity of the hotel's owner, who's letting everyone stay for free, and the hotel's almost magical ability to keep functioning in the midst of chaos, evoke memories of the Mille Collines, the model for the hotel in "Hotel Rwanda."

The 74-key, 3-star Hotel Christopher, which served as headquarters for the United Nations Stabilization Mission to Haiti, collapsed in a pile of rubble when the earthquake struck. The same happened to Karibe Hotel, which also housed UN workers, and the 98-year-old Hôtel Montana, a 145-key, 4-star tourist hotel, which was popular with French tourists.

About 200 United Nations staff were inside the Christopher when it collapsed; at least 36 have been confirmed dead and about 150 remain missing. Alain Joyandet, an official with France's State Department, said on Wednesday that 300 people were believed to be inside the Hôtel Montana when it collapsed and that only about 100 had been accounted for.

Late yesterday a French search team pulled two American survivors from the Montana's rubble: Sarla Chand of New Jersey and Richard Santos of Washington, DC. Richard is president and CEO of IMA World Health Organization and Sarla is the organization's vice president of international programs. The French team went on to attempt to free several other apparent survivors, "many" of them believed to be Americans, according to ABC News.

ABC also reported that late Thursday afternoon the U.S. Department of State confirmed one American death: 57-year-old Victoria DeLong, a cultural affairs officer at the U.S. Embassy in Port au Prince who had been stationed there since February 2009. She'd joined the State Department in 1983.

This morning the Guardian's Matthew Weaver reported from London that "five people, including three Americans" had been rescued from the Hôtel Montana, according to a jubilant Tweet from 'Fireside Int,' who has been posting regular updates from Haiti since Tuesday.

Haiti has been forever changed; there is now so much of the world's attention on the country it won't be allowed to wallow in its miserable existence prior to the January 12 earthquake. But between now and a corner turned in the lives of Haiti's survivors there are at least 40,000 Americans who need to be tracked down in the country and the survivors evacuated. Most poignantly, many of the Americans were in Haiti on a mission of mercy: to help the earthquake-ravaged country totter back onto its feet.

The Thursday ABC report noted that an American named Rudy Bennet is trapped in the rubble of the Hôtel Montana, and that he'd been texting relatives in the U.S. No word yet on the names of the American survivors Fireside Tweeted about.

Another day has dawned in Haiti. It's going to be another day of hell to live through, another day of hell to watch from afar. But what I took from the movie "Hotel Rwanda" is that if one's fortunate enough to find a good hotel in hell, the least one can do is stay engaged with what's going on and maintain a stiff upper lip.
****************************
See also my January 12 post Haiti Earthquake with 23 (or 24) updates. I decided it was time to start a new post after I lost track of the number of updates. Brenda at RBO added a zillion or so videos to her crossposts of all the updates. Between us we managed to chronicle our impressions of the first 48 hours of the earthquake's aftermath.

Latest Updates to Haiti Earthquake Post as of 5:20 PM ET

Crisis on top of crisis -- See Updates #18 - 22 in my original post published January 12 at 9:43 PM ET. Brenda at RBO has put up additional updates has added scads more videos to her crosspost of my updates. But #23 update: The Marines are on their way

Aaron Klein gets his own radio show! Take that, Gorgeous George!

I'm very happy to report that the intrepid Aaron Klein, investigative journalist, World Net Daily's Jerusalem bureau chief, and for years a regular contributor about Middle Eastern affairs for the John Batchelor Show, will be hosting a two-hour radio show of his own.

The show will broadcast from Jerusalem this Sunday the 17th. Air time: 4:00 to 6:00 PM Eastern time on 77 WABC-AM radio, the New York City station with the largest reach in the U.S. The show can also be heard online here at the WABC website.

Aaron will be taking questions from the audience. The call-in number to speak with him on air is 1-800-848-WABC or 800-848-9222.

The show will focus on Aaron's investigations into the Obama administration and also report on the latest U.S. and world news -- I assume with emphasis on Middle Eastern affairs and terrorism issues.

Aaron is the author of two books: Schmoozing With Terrorists: From Hollywood to the Holy Land, Jihadists Reveal Their Global Plans — to a Jew! (2007) and The Late Great State of Israel: How Enemies Within and Without Threaten the Jewish Nation's Survival (2009).

During the 2008 presidential campaign Aaron and John (whose show also broadcasts on WABC) conducted a WABC radio interview with a senior Hamas official who praised then-candidate Barack Obama. The interview made world headlines and became a dominant theme of the election campaign.

Batchelor listeners will remember that in 2005 John and Aaron had an adventure when they received permission to broadcast a show from Syria then learned Aaron was denied entry because he was Jewish. In solidarity John made a grand scene and refused to enter Syria. The show was broadcast instead from Amman, Jordan, where John and Aaron sat around and told the world what happened to them, embarrassing the heck out of Syria's government.

Those two had other adventures in that part of the world in the course of broadcasting John's show, and 'adventure' is Aaron's middle name. There was the time (Gorgeous) George Galloway threw Aaron out of his office and accused him of being a Zionist agent when Aaron referred to Hamas as a terrorist organization.

That would be the same Gorgeous George who was caught lying under oath to a U.S. Senate subcommittee, and who inspired my little musical tribute in 2005. So, in honor of Aaron's debut as a radio show host, I'll republish the tribute here. If you're not familiar with the rest of the quartet -- no matter; they're all rascals.

Vladimir "Lips" Zhirinovsky, "Gorgeous" George Galloway, David B. "Bunny" Chalmers, and Charles "Poofdaddy" Pasqua practicing for their American Idol audition:

'We're NOT crooks doo-wop doo-wop! We're not CROOKS yabba dabba! We got you goin in circles doo-wop!'

Simon to Paula: Who told them there was a Four Tops - Barber Shop Quartet - Frank Sinatra Soundalike category?

Paula to Simon: Probably the ABC Primetime crew.

Randy: (Wrapping his head in a towel) Okay dogs, you got 15 seconds.

'Doo-wop Doo-wop doop doop diddy
Talk about the boys from Ripoff City!
Talk to our bankers we ain't signed nothin
Talk to our lawyers we ain't seen nothin
O we're the same old song
Just a diff'rent meaning with the billions gone!
So here is our love song, not fancy or fine
We got you goin in circles
And we did it ouuuuur waaaaaaaaaaay
Doop!'

Americans, get to know your Mexico neighbor better. No wonder Lou Dobbs was yanked from CNN.

Before I sign off for the day I'll pass along this stomach-turning report from The New York Times (H/T Foreign Policy Initiative) dateline January 12:

When it comes to gore, Mexico’s drug traffickers seem to compete among themselves for the title of most depraved. One will chop off the heads of victims. Another will string dead rivals from bridges or burn their genitals. Recently, hit men removed the face from a dead man and sewed it onto a soccer ball.

On Tuesday, Mexican authorities announced the capture of one of those who they said had been active in this game of one upmanship, Teodoro Eduardo Garcia Simental, described as a ruthless drug lord based just south of the American border in Tijuana. Mr. García’s trademark, when not trafficking marijuana and methamphetamine to the United States, was boiling rivals in barrels of lye in what has become known as pozole, for the Mexican stew, the authorities said. [...]

Not to be tedious but when will the U.S. government break down and admit they've been pandering long enough to Mexico's oligarchs and corrupt regimes? And that they've been playing ostrich about Mexico's descent into hell, which is not simply a drug trafficking or gang problem?

And please, no huffy email from CNN. Nobody past the age of 12 believes that pressure to remove Lou Dobbs's show from CNN didn't come from the highest levels of government in Mexico and the United States.

However, the news from Haiti today, the news from Mexico, the news from John Batchelor's show about evidence of al Qaeda's involvement with Venezuela's drug trafficking, all point to the need for Washington to develop a rational strategy for U.S. relations with the rest of the Western Hemisphere.