Mutual Aid, Not Charity.

         All of us with some political awareness, understand that large charities are not the answer, in this economic system, they are part of the problem. I have no doubt that some do great work, but collecting money from the people, to go and buy goods from the corporate world, is hardly anything approaching mutual aid. They help feed the banks, and big business, as well as paying fat salaries to CEO. They help oil the wheels of commerce with public money. Charities are in fact a symbol of system failure.

        When they do good work, that's a bonus, but mostly the fail miserable through a mixture of red tape, ineptitude, corruption and simply because economics is not the right tool in an emergency. 

         If the following report is true, and I have no reason to doubt it, then this must be the biggest example of that red tape, ineptitude, corruption and economic greed and madness, and further proof, that it is the entire system that has to be scrapped, and a system of true mutual aid built in its place.

This from Truth Out:

      The neighborhood of Campeche sprawls up a steep hillside in Haiti’s capital city, Port-au-Prince. Goats rustle in trash that goes forever uncollected. Children kick a deflated volleyball in a dusty lot below a wall with a hand-painted logo of the American Red Cross.
       In late 2011, the Red Cross launched a multimillion-dollar project to transform the desperately poor area, which was hit hard by the earthquake that struck Haiti the year before. The main focus of the project — called LAMIKA, an acronym in Creole for “A Better Life in My Neighborhood” — was building hundreds of permanent homes.
     Today, not one home has been built in Campeche. Many residents live in shacks made of rusty sheet metal, without access to drinkable water, electricity or basic sanitation. When it rains, their homes flood and residents bail out mud and water.
      The Red Cross received an outpouring of donations after the quake, nearly half a billion dollars.
       The group has publicly celebrated its work. But in fact, the Red Cross has repeatedly failed on the ground in Haiti. Confidential memos, emails from worried top officers, and accounts of a dozen frustrated and disappointed insiders show the charity has broken promises, squandered donations, and made dubious claims of success.
      The Red Cross says it has provided homes to more than 130,000 people. But the actual number of permanent homes the group has built in all of Haiti: six.

Read the full article HERE:

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A VISION OF THE FUTURE???

     Sometimes you come across an article and it just slaps you in the face with its facts figures and analysis, it hits you and you don't know how to respond.  This is three excerpts from what to me was such am article. You could say that this is just a stone's throw away from what is probably the richest country in the world.

 1 "If Katrina revealed America’s third world, then the earthquake revealed the third world’s third world. Haiti is by nearly every metric one of the poorest nations on the planet—a mind-blowing 80 percent of the population live in poverty, and 54 percent live in what is called “abject poverty.” Two-thirds of the workforce have no regular employment, and, for those who do have jobs, wages hover around two dollars a day. We’re talking about a country in which half the population lack access to clean water and 60 percent lack even the most basic health care services, such as immunizations; where malnutrition is among the leading causes of death in children, and, according to UNICEF, 24 percent of 5-year-olds suffer stunted growth. In Haiti life expectancy hovers at around 60 years as compared to, say, 80 years in Canada. As the Haiti Children Project puts it:"

 2    "Never fear, though—if anything is certain it is this: There will be more Haitis. Some new catastrophe will strike our poor planet. And for a short while the Eye of Sauron that is the globe’s fickle attention span will fall upon this novel misery. More hand wringing will ensue, more obfuscatory narratives will be trotted out, more people will die. Those of us who are committed will help all we can, but most people will turn away. There will be a few, however, who, steeling themselves, will peer into the ruins for the news that we will all eventually need."

3     "One day somewhere in the world something terrible will happen, and for once we won’t look away. We will reject what Jane Anna and Lewis R. Gordon have described in Of Divine Warning as that strange moment following a catastrophe when “in our aversion to addressing disasters as signs” we refuse “to interpret and take responsibility for the kinds of collective responses that may be needed to alleviate human misery.”

      One day something terrible will happen and for once we will heed the ruins. We will begin collectively to take responsibility for the world we’re creating. Call me foolishly utopian, but I sincerely believe this will happen. I do. I just wonder how many millions of people will perish before it does."

Read the full article HERE:

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