Looters fight for products at a business area in Port-au-Prince
Posted on 01/17/2010 10:43:42 PM PST by bruinbirdman
Six days after the Port-au-Prince earthquake large areas of the city remain untouched by the global aid effort as bottlenecks continue to clog the airport and looting threatens to descend into wholesale violence.
Convoys of lorries headed for the city’s worst-hit areas last night but there were signs they had come too late to prevent another tragedy, with Haitians turning on each other.
Mobile water stations were mobbed by crowds who have lived without basic sanitation for nearly a week. By text message and word of mouth, reports spread of a woman decapitated for whatever she had been carrying near one of the few functioning markets. Police shot and killed a man suspected of looting. Where police failed to intervene, crowds resorted to lynching, leaving fresh bodies on streets just cleared of those left by the earthquake.
Looters fight for products at a business area in Port-au-Prince
Some 70,000 bodies have been buried in mass graves and a state of emergency has been declared until the end of January, a Haitian government minister said.
President Préval said 3,500 US troops, confined until yesterday to the airport, would fan out to help Haitian and UN police to keep order. Yet there was little sign of them in the vast refugee camp near the ruins of the Presidential Palace. Security improved at the camp yesterday, but only briefly, as troops cordoned off a sector for a visit by Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary-General.
“We have 2,000 police in Port-au-Prince and 3,000 bandits who have escaped from prison,” Mr Préval said before the visit. “That gives an idea of how bad the situation is.”
It is not being helped by the UN’s move to defer decision-making on aid distribution and rescue teams to a government that scarcely exists
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Sounds like a lovely place. How much has George Soros given? has he bought the whole country yet?
Sounds like a lovely place. How much has George Soros given? has he bought the whole country yet?
Yes, actually, if you look into it.
Then he must be delighted by all this.
And Haiti has had such a wonderful history of peaceful coexistence, harmonious culture, and society based on mutual respect.
such a shame
Seen a lynching myself in Haiti in 1989 in Petit Goave...grandmas and kids and everybody else first stoned nearly to death some road bandits and then butchered them like hogs with machetes and finally the local hoogan (voodoo man) came and dumped chicken scratch on what was left of them to damn them basically to hell....I will never forget their screams and the smell of guts slashed open...worse than deer
being the one white guy (with my mulatto Jamaican partner) in a veritable sea of angry pure black folks with machetes....I was cautious but not afraid like I might have been in Camden NJ
it can be a tough room down there....
God help the decent folks down there...it's a cataclysm...we cannot fix Haiti ..no one can...but we can stop folks from dying now
Sounds like it’s fun for the whole family.
the site of the grandmas with the cloth wraps on their heads they carry washloads with to and from roadside creeks taking part in the stoning and slashing was remarkable
they left the 4 corpses ...what was left...on the roadside of the main coast road there..two lane...for days in the lovely 96 degree high humidity sunshine....dogfood literally
necklacing victims during coup battles or ton ton macoute score settling....same deal...bodies to rot on sidewalk while parochial schoolkids in uniforms skip by carrying knapsacks...the irony of “uncle knapsack” being ton-ton macoute legend...lol...not really funny but you know what I mean
Have no fear! Bill Clinton’s on the way into Haiti. That’s just what they need. More congestion at the airport. Maybe he’ll bring some SPIN with him. By flying into Haiti so early in the crisis, Bill and Hillary are hurting more than they’re helping. If they really cared about Haiti more than they do themselves, they’d know to stay away and let the real relief workers do their jobs with as few distractions as possible.
I suppose I do. I think it is a mistake for anyone to think that he himself is above such feelings and even actions. I refer you to a scene described in WITH THE OLD BREED by E.B. Sledge, whereupon he comments on page 120, "Such was the incredible cruelty that decent men could commit when reduced to a brutish existence in their fight for survival amid the viloent death, terror, tension, fatigue, and filth that was the infantryman's war".
i just remember the kids with napsacks walking past fried and necklaced former Macoutes...or folks so accused
and remembering the old Ton Ton Macoute legend ..uncle napsack....”The phrase “Ton-Ton Macoute” is actually a phrase in Haiti, meaning “bogey man” (literally: “Uncle Bagman”) in the Haitian language. “Ton-Ton Macoute” was the name Papa Doc Duvalier used for his secret Police, who wreaked havoc in Haiti in the 1950’s. The “bogey man” of Haitian folklore refers to a man visiting during Christmas Eve, entering peoples homes at night and taking naughty children into his knapsack”
“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.” William Shakespeare
Quark from Deep Space Nine: Let me tell you something about humans, nephew. They’re a wonderful, friendly people as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people become as nasty and as violent as the most blood thirsty Klingon.
“WITH THE OLD BREED by E.B. Sledge
Gene Sledge was a family friend and one of my professors. I took several courses in biology in classes that he taught.
I never knew what he had been through or even that he fought in WW2 until he published his book. He never even alluded to it.
In class he used to say “OK folks, let’s fall back, regroup and press on with renewed vigor.” I assume it came from his military days.
He was an excellent teacher, and a “Gentlemans’ gentleman.”
Reading his book is horrifying to say the least, but paints a picture of war that is hard to forget.
There is a difference between scavenging for survival needs and looting. Unfortunately, the difference is not likely to be recognized by a mob.
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