Posted on 03/23/2011 7:22:13 PM PDT by WilliamHouston
January 12, 2010
A 7.0 magnitude earthquake strikes approximately 16 miles west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. It kills anywhere from 92,000 to 220,000 people, injures 300,000, and leaves approximately 1.5 to 1.8 million homeless.
Led by the United States, the international community launches a massive rescue operation to save the survivors, and puts helicopters into the air and ships to sea to distribute hundreds of thousands of meals and bottled waters to the victims.
World governments, NGOs, multinational corporations, and private individuals raise billions of dollars for the Haitian relief effort. The World Bank waives Haiti's debt repayment schedule for five years. Volunteer doctors and surgeons flock to the troubled country.
Haiti is a welfare state kept afloat by foreign philanthropy: three fourths of its economy consists of remittances and international aid.
Bleeding hearts soon flocked to the scene of the disaster - Sean Penn, Nicholas Kristof, a "human rights activist" and "Malcolm X scholar" named Amanda Kijera, who in "solidarity" with the oppressed went to Haiti to disprove exaggerated Western stereotypes of violence against women, and after suffering the misfortune of being raped all night on a rooftop by one of her Haitian hosts, returned home "grateful for the experience."
Bono, Jay Z, and Rihanna recorded a hit song called "Stranded" for the Haitian reflief effort. Collectively, Lady Gaga, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Madonna donated well over a million dollars.
A year later, Haiti is still a bottomless pit of death, poverty, and despair. This comes in spite of an unprecedented outpouring of world charity. Even Gabon pledged a million dollars to the recovery effort.
Before the earthquake, Haiti had more foreign aid workers than any nation on earth. After the earthquake, 12,000 NGOs operating in Haiti couldn't stop a cholera epidemic from claiming thousands of lives.
The national government is utterly paralyzed. In Port-au-Prince, a mere 5 percent of the rubble has been removed. Over a million people are living in tent cities. Thousands of criminals who broke out of prison in the chaos are still on the loose.
With the UN on the ground, Haitian women are being sexually exploited by gang leaders. Babies and toddlers are being sold as slaves to foreign sex tourists.
Within a week of the Haitian earthquake, looters and machete wielding gangs were preying on the weak, and in the months that followed the American media gradually lost interest in reporting on the story.
This is your nation on progressivism, liberal charity, and world government.
March 11, 2011
A 9.0 magnitude earthquake strikes 45 miles off the coast of Japan and 232 miles from Tokyo - an earthquake over 100x more powerful than the Haitian earthquake of 2010, and the 7th largest earthquake in recorded history.
The earthquake triggers a tsunami on par with the one that struck Indonesia in 2004. It hurtles toward the ancient city of Sendai which has a population of 1,031,704 people. Reeling from the damage of the 9.0 earthquake, the residents of coastal Northern Japan have less than 15 minutes to escape the tsunami.
Buildings sway in Tokyo, the Japanese capital, which unlike Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, the U.S. Air Force burnt to the ground in 1945.
The Japanese people, who manufacture more consumer electronics devices than anyone else on earth, are warned of the impending tsunami by countless electronic gadgets, products of their own technological genius - over 99.9 percent of whom in the affected region survive to tell the tale.
The Japanese government has officially confirmed the deaths of 9,523 people. 16,094 are still reported as missing. 2,755 are injured. The majority of Japanese citizens who died in the tsunami were the sick and elderly who didn't have enough time to escape.
In addition to a 9.0 megaquake and an Indonesian-style tsunami, the Japanese are also simultaneously struck by a nuclear disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, which (combined with the shutdowns at other plants) knocks out electricity to approximately 4.4 million people, and forces the evacation of a 12 square mile area.
Fueled by the U.S. media, hysteria breaks out on the U.S. West Coast as Americans consume anti-radiation capsules. Meanwhile, Japanese workers stoically endure the radiation, restore electricity to the damaged reactors, and appear to be increasingly successful in averting another Chernobyl- style nuclear disaster.
The Nikkei stock exchange takes a 16 percent haircut, but soon starts to rebound. By March 21, the Japanese have restored electricity to all but 242,927 people in Northern Japan.
After suffering the most expensive natural disaster in world history, Americans and Westerners (who subscribe to the leftwing theory that "all cultures are equal," vicious and virtuous ones alike, otherwise known as "multiculturalism") are amazed by the almost complete absence of looting in Japan - granted, there has been some "looting," people taking basic necessities from grocery stories, using gasoline from ruined vehicles, but the Japanese Police Agency say these incidents number only in the dozens.
Generally, by all accounts the people of Japan have endured their national crisis with almost unparalled grace and restraint. When Nicholas Kristof lived in Japan, he fondly remembers that the Japanese didn't use substitute teachers, because the Japanese children would convene at school and hold their own classes. So far it hasn't occurred to him to draw the logical conclusion.
As most of us expected, the Japanese reconstruction effort is already roaring along: for example, this section of Great Kanto Highway was completely destroyed on March 11, rebuilt by March 15, and traffic had been restored by March 19.
Two weeks after the 9.0 Japanese earthquake and tsnuami, the U.S. media has turned its attention to the U.S. intervention in Libya - the general assumption being that the Japanese are rapidly bringing the situation under control.
Although I know Anderson Cooper made a brief appearance in Haiti, I am not sure if Sean Penn has changed his mind and decided to live in Sendai for the rest of his life. Maybe Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie will adopt a fashionable new Japanese orphan. Somehow I doubt it.
This is your nation on nationalism, culture, and self reliance.
Any questions?
That is because Obama took the lead and insisted some gov't agency other than the military step in and provide immediate help. This is more COA -- Cover Obama's [rear].
Yes, that like ruins (and conflicts with) an otherwise fine article.
Sheesh!
My dad was the perennial Memorial Day speaker in my hometown, and in 1995 he made the papers after his speech, shown here:
It was the year of the 50th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, and my dad got up there and said it was the right thing to do. Completely unapologetic, matter of fact. Up here in liberal Massachusetts, that non-PC talk is akin to heresy. Didn't faze him at all.
The newspaper headline said something like "WWII Veteran Advocates Use of Nuclear Weapons on Japanese".
Whether we burnt it down for an excellent reason or for a despicable reason (n.b. I lean towards the former) the fact is, we burnt it to the ground. Not only did they rebuild it, they still have the wherewithal to survive this disaster that was 100x worse than the one in Haiti. By getting caught believing that the author is questioning the wisdom of bombing Tokyo, you’re potentially missing the entire point of the comparison between Haiti and Japan, which is a pity because he makes an absolutely excellent point, and he makes it well.
US Air Force was established until 1947.
was=wasn’t
Astoundingly politically incorrect. Sure to offend and cause fainting spells among the multicult zombies.
And totally spot on accurate, and exactly true.
I agree. I don’t think he was making a negative point about the AAF...it didn’t hit me that way, but I can see in some way how someone might get that impression.
Oh yeah - apropos of nothing, we just went over there and burned down Tokyo. What a bunch of crap!
At least he could have tried to get it right; U.S. Army Air Corps, not Air Force.
I'd never heard of this multicult fool Kijera until tonight, but Google turned this up: http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?178510-Liberal-Activist-Goes-to-Haiti-Gets-Raped-Blames-White-Men
A perfect window into the mindset of the self-loathing leftist.
By UN gang leaders as well, if history is any indication.
Never underestimate the Freeper capacity to nit pick while totally missing the point.
I'm not here to say that the Japanese are much different than anyone else, but maybe that's all I'm saying - the Japanese are not much different than anyone else. There wasn't anything about Japanese culture that prevented the Japs from beheading American POW's, forcing them to eat maggots, or literally working them to death. And, there wasn't anything about Japanese culture that prevented the Japs from burying civilians alive in order to terrorize what they thought were inferior peoples and cultures. The Japs would have readily agreed with you that not all cultures were "equal" to theirs.
But, I'm not so sure that the Japs are all that special.
Gee, that’s relevant to the topic. /s
Having read through the thread, I know that this was already pointed out to you, but, I’ll add my 2 cents worth anyway. You totally and completely misread the author’s intent of his words. He was attempting to compare the difference between the two cities hard hit by large earthquakes - the Japanese, after suffering significant damage to Tokyo (not to mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki), managed to rebuild. Whereas, despite all the foreign aid that has poored into Haiti, nothing!! I’m at a loss for how some on FR manage to fail to see the forest because of the trees.
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