Today, I look back

Today, I'm thinking of elections.  There is a recall election in Wisconsin happening today.  There is a presidential election that will take place this year in November.

As I think of this election, I am also thinking back to things I wrote during the last election cycle.

Today, I am really grateful for all of my followers, for all of my commenters.  I love seeing that people actually read what I write.

Most of my posts, lately, are pretty light-hearted.  It wasn't always so.

Today, I remember a post that received some serious negative feedback from commenters.  I am remembering all of the research I put into some of my posts.

I would like to take a trip down memory lane with you today.  I know some people don't like clicking links or reading old posts, but I promise, these are some good ones from my old, more serious, often political days of blogging.

First up, Response To Some Readers.  This post was a response to some negative feedback I got after I wrote about how lack of insurance and lack of adequate healthcare could have led to an event my friend and I encountered.  Even after this response, I still got some negative comments from readers.  It got to the point where I couldn't even respond, but fortunately, KBO responded well for me. (In this post, I was still using the moniker, Stuck In My Head).  WARNING: It is very liberal in my thoughts, don't hate me if we don't share the same ideas about government... we can still get along and hopefully, you will still read my posts in the future that are not political!

I also have posts that I just enjoyed doing research for.  Perhaps my future could include some "serious" journalism.

In Considering Politics & Religion I wrote about different people's desire to make race an issue in the election of 2008.

After the current administration came into office, I still wrote about politics as it ties to education.  Obama - We Need More Than Education To Help Minorities was a post where I addressed the discrepancies in punishments and treatment of students in schools.  I talked about the need for better classroom management and for more organizations like College Summit to get involved in schools.

Not all the posts I reflect on today were tied to politics... well not really.

I did a lot of research for a post on Haiti after the earthquake of 2010 that led to some questionable donating organizations (Haiti Needs Help - Be Careful How You Give It).  I wrote about about the history of the nation and its long-standing debt and the fact that many donor organizations don't actually give money to places they say they give to.  (Seriously!! Look into the organizations you donate to!!)  If there are so many NGOs and groups giving money to Haiti, why does it still look almost the same as the day the quake happened?  Why are there still SO MANY people living in tents to this day?!?!

I've connected with other bloggers doing Bloggers Unite.  For World AIDS Day in 2008 where I supplied a lot of information about the disease and those it impacts.  For Refugees in 2008 since there was a serious discrepancy in the number of refugees allowed into certain nations.

And, finally, there is the post This Always Tickles Me.  Because Vitas Bumac always does just that!!  I love him and the way he sounds.  And I can't help but smile at the way he can hit his notes.

Haiti needs help - be careful how you give it

My thoughts keep getting back to the people in Haiti for many reasons.  One is the damage that has occurred due to the earthquake this week.  Another reason is because I have long been questioning what has been going on with regard to aid in that nation.  As the news keeps announcing, they are the poorest nation in the western hemisphere. 

They are also a large recipient of aid from various nations and organizations throughout the world.  From 1990-2003 they received over $4 billion in aid.

I am by no means saying that they don't need help, but I am saying we really need to be thinking about and addressing what is going on in that nation and with the people trying to help them.

If you want to give them aid at this time, please read on and really look into what you are doing and who you are doing it through.  You can use charitynavigator.org and guidestar to check on the status and spending of organizations you wish to donate to or that you wish to know more about.

A lot of the aid they receive comes from Non-governmental organizations (NGOs).  These sort of organizations have a history of aid, but also are so large that at times they are not really giving as much money as people think to the "charities" they are supposed to be supporting. 

They are organizations who use their money to basically promote their liberal ideology.

They help those who they feel are less off than themselves.  It is the same as people in this nation who basically give money to charities.  They give money, they give water, they give food, they give used or new clothes -- all helping them to feel better about themselves.  If they give a little to help the lesser of those, then it does not really hurt for them to live in their fancy homes.  It is ok for them to eat at fancy places.  It is acceptable for them to by clothes, cars, and other items in excess.  

They provide aid, but are not really addressing the problem.  Most of these organizations are not doing anything to really solve the problems.  They are not helping the people to gain jobs.  They may help some one learn to farm (which is great), but they are not helping them to be able to transport their food to various parts of their nation so that they can help sustain more people.  

The typical solutions are not sustainable. 

Aid agencies and foreign governments often do not fully involve the local leaders in making decisions about what will truly help the nation succeed.

And with Haiti, although there were 28 countries gathered together spring 2009 for the International Donor's Conference who agreed to provide the island nation with $353 million to help reduce poverty, there is really not much to show for all the aid that has been given to them over all these years.

I believe it ties back to the start of the nation.  It is a proud history for them as the enslaved people of Haiti were able to overthrow their oppressors back in 1791.  They were named a republic officially in 1804.  They had been ruled by the French and the French were not easily going to give up a colony of theirs full of people they could force to work and build the imperial status of France.  They demanded for Haiti to pay the French government 150 million gold francs (which in today's dollars would be about $20 billion).  The Haitians spent over 100 years trying to pay this off since they felt it would help them become stable since they would gain acknowledgment and acceptance from the major powers if they completed paying the money out.

That is a lot of debt.  They still have a lot of debt to this day. The debt was at around $1.4 billion in the early part of 2009.  Last year, the US canceled $1.2 billion of the debt.  But that is after they have been working to repay that debt for so long. 

Think of what they could have been doing with the money they have had to be paying back to various nations.  Think of what they could have done to help their nation if they were not busy using (probably aid money) funds to repay nations.

Some nations, including Haiti have a history of some corruption.  

That is not an excuse for them, and it is not a reason to stop trying to help them out of their situation.  

It is a reason to have donors hold the government accountable to the money that is given to them.  

How do you keep giving nations money and the people see nothing from it.  

Like I said earlier, in just a 13 year period, the island of Haiti received over $4 billion.  Think how the people's lives could have been improved if that money had just been distributed to the people.  The nation is one that has not enough food produced on their land to sustain the people.  According to USAID 54% of Haitians live on just over 50 cents a day, unemployment is between 70-80% and over 40% of the people there do not have access to drinkable water.

Providing the people with health services is great, but we need to help them so that they can help themselves.  They need to be taught skills that will help them in the future to be able to build their infrastructure and develop jobs and have an education.  Most of the people there do not have higher than a primary education and only about 52% of the adults over 15 are fully literate.  According to the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, about 30% of Haiti's GDP comes from Haitians living and working abroad sending money back home to their relations.

They need more than just food and water and vaccines.

And they need it from more than the numerous nations that are supposedly helping Haiti.  Seriously.  Look at this massive list of NGOs that are said to be aiding Haiti in some way.  Look how many organizations there are, but what do they have to show for their "aid".

The Council on Hemispheric Affairs says that "[P]art of the problem begins with the widespread notion that over half of international aid goes toward NGO 'overhead' costs."

So be careful when you donate to some of these organizations.  They are basically taking your money and paying themselves with most of it rather than distributing it to the people they are saying they are helping. 

Makes sense with regard to Haiti's situation.  Look at that NGO list again.  If all of them are supposed to be giving money or some other sort of aid to Haiti, how is Haiti broke and still in dire conditions?

Also from the Council on Hemispheric Affairs site:

Roger Annis, of the Toronto Haiti Action Committee (THAC) professed that during a 2007 visit to the island, his entourage was repeatedly appealed to by locals to publically disseminate news of the failure of aid programs in order to bring about significant solutions to development issues. “I saw no evidence of Canadian aid programs reaching that desperately poor population,” alleged Annis. The underlying reason that aid is often ineffective is that it is simply not reaching the people on the ground. In addition to holding aid agencies accountable for their commitments, incorporating local communities into the decision of how best to use aid is an approach that could readily improve the effectiveness of the distributed funds.

The work being done is not really getting to the people.  The aid agencies are somehow getting donations, saying they are going to help, but really not doing much.

Top that with the different leaders of Haiti that have dug into the coffers and helped themselves to various funds leaving most of their people suffering.

Peter Mott of Interconnect Newsletter said of some of the aid missions that

With 9,000 soldiers from 42 countries, led by Brazil, the UN Mission to Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH) has spent $2 billion fielding armed patrols throughout Haitian poor neighborhoods to repress and intimidate the people, arbitrarily killing civilians, and sometimes sexually assaulting young girls and women.  In the meantime, the economic conditions worsen and the basic needs of the population remain unmet.

 There has to be a better way.

I hope that as you reach out to help the Haitians in their time of need, that you really think about who you are giving money to -- research the organization to find out what they actually do with their money.

Check out the video on Guernicamag.com about aid giving and its impact.

Here is some Haitian history from the Haitian Blogger and you can see recent updates on from the Haitian Blogger.

Another great link with information on the US involvement in Haiti is the Haitisolidarity.net - including information on Aristide.

And please don't see the situation as Pat Robertson does -- what a prick.

Thanks for reading my rant.

Addendum:

Here is a link to some information on what Wyclef Jean has done with his donations in the past.  Just what I talked about here. Not sure if this is some sort of action to attack him and get people to not give to his organization or what.  I just hope that money gets to the people and the people that can help the people.

No reason for AIDS to be spreading as it is

Another day for the world to briefly think about the disease that is ever increasing its scope in the world despite the fact that it is highly preventable.  World AIDS Day 2009.  It is sad that so many people continue to spread this disease; it is sad that so many in young age brackets are transmitting this disease without realizing what they are doing.  It is sad that many schools and parents do not feel it necessary to teach young people about safe sex practices, and then when they go ahead and have sex or perform oral sex or have anal sex (which are not considered sex in many minds) despite their promises not to or the special rings on their fingers, they are not in the know of the simple latex protection they can use to help prevent AIDS and many other STDs.

Some statistics for you...

Right now there are :

• 33.4 million people living with HIV worldwide
• 31.3 million adults
• 15.7 million women
• 2.1 million children under 15

In 2008 alone -- new HIV cases:

• 2.7 million people
• 2.3 million adults
• 430,000 children under 15

In 2007 there were 2 million total HIV-related deaths.

You can get some ideas about what you can do (besides just wrapping it up and getting you and your partners tested) on this World AIDS Day site.  Respect and Protect.  I remember a line from Michael Franti's Spearhead: I know these things and these things I must know 'cause it's better to know than to not know!

If you are in the Saint Louis, Missouri area, you can learn more about the St. Louis Effort for AIDS.

Five times the fears, almost zero times the help

Why have this family not received as much help as others who have multiple children in one birth?

Could it be because they are brown? Because they are foreign? Because they are from a distressed area of the world?

I don't know.

I hope that Oprah, or TLC, or some diaper companies, or some scholarship funds, or some food companies, or just some regular Joes and Bumquishas step up and help them the way people have helped people like the Duggars and John and Kate + 8. They need help just as much.

Bloggers Unite for World AIDS Day 2008

1 December is the 21st World AIDS Day. I am joining a ton of other bloggers again to unite for a common, awesome cause. Bloggers Unite for World AIDS Day 2008. After you read my post, check out the other bloggers writing on this cause to inform people.

Yet, this diseases is still spreading, still killing, still being ignored by so many who don't want to simply get tested.

And contrary to some opinions, the crisis is not overblown. There are still people contracting this disease that could be prevented. That simple fact makes it still a crisis. There are other humanitarian issues as well, but HIV/AIDS is a worldwide one that still needs to be addressed along with the flu and malaria and the various causes of diarrhea.

Worldwide there are 33 million people living with HIV. Here are some more statistics from NAT:

• 30.8 million adults
• 15.5 million women
• 2.0 million children under the age of 15

And there are steadily more and more new cases of this disease being found (these are stats from 2007:

• 2.7 million total new cases
• 2.3 million adults
• 370,000 children under the age of 15

Because of so many great treatments and even a new ray of hope just last month of a man who appears to have been cured of AIDS.

HIV-related deaths in 2007:

• 2.0 million total deaths

According to Avert.org there have been 25 million people who have died of AIDS since 1981. There are 11.6 million AIDS orphans in Africa.

But this disease is mostly preventable. Be safe. Get tested.

One in 250 in the USA are carrying HIV, according to the CDC.

Young people under 25 account for 1/2 of all new HIV infections worldwide. That is insane. I know that there are a lot of other STDs going around in the young people I teach, but I'm not sure that they understand that this disease CAN affect them. I'm not sure that YOU know that it could affect you. I'm sure the students at St. Louis' Normandy High School thought they were immune to this disease, but they received a rude awakening earlier this fall.

President Bush has never gotten props from me, but he can get a slight tip of the mini-afro for his work on PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief - reauthorized just this past July). According to their site, this legislation is working in an effort

combat global HIV/AIDS [At $48 billion, it is] the largest commitment by any nation to combat a single disease in human history. The new legislation will dramatically increase the financial commitment to this fight -- authorizing up to $48 billion to combat global HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria... [It] will support treatment for at least 3 million people; prevention of 12 million new infections; and care for 12 million people, including 5 million orphans nad vulnerable children.

In developing and transitional countries, 9.7 million people are in immediate need of life-saving AIDS drugs; of these, only 2.99 million (31%) are receiving the drugs.

Give money and support organizations working to find a cure as well as organizations working to help those who are living with this HIV/AIDS.

It's as though we all hear this information so much, that it seems irrelevant to us.

Get tested. Care about those who are infected. Give money to those that are working toward a cure.

It's that simple, yet that complicated.

Bloggers Unite for Refugees 10 Nov 08: A bit on Iraq displacement

Today is another of those occasions when Bloggers Unite for a cause -- this time about refugees.

Since the United States has been in Iraq for a long time and seems as though the occupation will never cease, I decided to touch on a bit of the refugee problems in that nation.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 4.7 million Iraqis have had to leave their homes. They go either to other nations or to other cities that are not threatened by war violence. According to Refugees International a lot of the people fleeing their homes are moving into neighborhoods that are more homogeneous making relations more divided based on the sects. Many of them move into homes of the opposite group who fled to another region or another nation.

Many of these families have been separated -- children from parents, spouses from their lovers. It's sad. It's horrifying. I can't imagine this happening to me or any one I know. Yet, it is happening to so many throughout the world.

Not only does this cause problems for the nation, so does the number of professionals leaving the nation or leaving the regions where they once lived. An older Time Magazine article wrote that "Iraq's doctors, once considered the best in the Arab world, no longer have access to advances in medical science because they have no books, no Internet connections and barely any money to attend international conferences." Now they all flee for better, safer jobs in other regions of the nation or other regions of the world. This leaves the hospitals searching for ways to lure doctors back to the region with higher salaries and better protection.

But who are they kidding? Why would you go back there when there are constantly bombings, whether by suicide bombers, U.S. military, or the hired help? Some people have returned to their homes in Iraq - this is used by the U.S. to show the success of its "surge" - but there have been no strategies developed to really alleviate the problems under the surface in this nation. Iraq needs help figuring out how to create and maintain peace, how to convince the displaced that it is safe to return, and how to settle economic and property disputes that will inevitably surface upon the return of the masses if they choose to go back home.

If Sweden can admit 80,000+ Iraqi refugees, then, surely, the United States can do more.

This is international. But there are refugees in every state of this United States, and all over the world. And they are not all Iraqi. There are problems occurring throughout the world in nations that are not publicized in the mainstream media that need assistance.

You can easily look up what people in your local area are doing to help the people who have come for safe-keeping in your city or state or nation.

Here are a few sites with more information:

• Refugees International
• The UN Refugee Agency
• Amnesty International
• Center for American Progress
• U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants
• Eyes on Darfur
• List of Agencies (not sure if some still work, but it is a good place to start)
• International Rescue Committee

In St. Louis:

• International Institute
• Refugee and Immigrant Consortium of St. Louis
• Immigrant and Refugee Women's Program