Consider a Red Cross donation to aid Haiti

Here's your link. (Update: Yahoo!/The Huffington Post put together a great list of donation routes available to us, including something as simple as sending a text to Wyclef Jean's foundation.)

What can we do really beyond this? Give 'til it hurts. It'd be kinda cool if we had the military resources like National Guardsmen to help Haiti out in a big way, but we're too busy spending $740,000,000,000 per annum (borrowed at interest no less) sending those guys to blow shit up in poor countries in Western Asia that already struggle with infrastructure problems on a good day. It's not like we could use those helicopters and 20 year olds closer to home, when hurricanes and earthquakes hit. (Parts of New Orleans are still screwed beyond recognition by the by; when will Kanye West point out that Barack Obama doesn't care about black people?)

A few weeks ago I was shown a YouTube clip of a severely physically handicapped kid reciting some poetry. It was more of a "hey look at this" positive thing than a gawking/laughing thing. What stuck with me was a comment left by a visitor, "Poor little guy. Fuck you GOD."

Indeed. Not that I believe in an ordered universe (beyond a few physical and chemical axioms) with a plan-centered creator. That being the case, said creator would be one sick fuck and I'd have to start playing Anton LaVey albums and start reading Aleister Crowley.

So by all means, for hitting one of the poorest countries in the world with a devastating earthquake of the once every-few-hundred-years variety during a period when the country has no ability to provide basic services on a calm, sunny day, I would give the finger to any diety if I believed in one.

Beyond the unavoidable earthquake, Haiti has been beset by 400 years of colonial and neo-colonial misrule, including a very dark period of economic rapine by the father-son Duvalier dictatorship tag team, backed by the United States, the World Bank/IMF system and that other vicious charlatan Mother Teresa.

Natural disasters happen, but as Harry Shearer among others is fond of reminding us, the general conditions created by government misrule and infrstructure neglect make their results anything but "natural" in a poor area.

Haiti's one of those places that those of us in the industrialized world literally owe our standard of living to, and I reckon that helping them out in this time of dire need is more a repayment of outstanding debt than "aid." Hell, our baseballs were even sewn there for years, taking advantage of the cheap-ass labor.