Good thing I at least really do try to tell the truth.. it seems too many persons lie, especially politicians.. cops.. pastors.. the false spins and the false praise tends to bring little good results next.. Canada’s Prime Minister Harper delivered his praise at Rideau Hall Friday while handing out the prestigious outstanding achievement award to senior bureaucrats for their work in security, health and justice – and yeah not surprisingly contradicting some of my own very favorite topics I write about here.. the too often rather Inadequate Civil and public servants, Police, Inadequate Justice Ministers, inadequate health care now as well. It seems the Prime Minister and I live in two different worlds in the same country too..
The deeper historical problem facing Haiti with respect to governance, it is fragile democracy, and it’s endemic corruptions – was the “powerful parasitic local elite in Haiti that will need to be watched very closely.” and “Let’s not be naïve about that,”
Canada and the United States pretentiously warned that all Haitian monetary, goods relief should be carefully tracked but no Project management, accounting firm was given any contract to do this, clearly implying that this was no a serious recommendation..
Yes the Caribbean Islands also lie on an active fault system. Earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis are all facts of life in the islands, past and present. Haiti’s population of over eight million people occupies a territory somewhat smaller than the state of Maryland in the United States. The devastating 7.0 earthquake in Haiti has been followed by a series of large aftershocks measuring more than 5.0 on the Richter scale. It was also preceded by smaller quakes (2.9 to 3.4) in Puerto Rico, across the Mona Passage from the island Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic. The present vast deaths in Haiti due to an earthquake are very tragic. What now has happened in Haiti has no precedent. Hundreds of of thousands of people are thought to have died in this 7.0-magnitude earthquake that hit Haiti Tuesday. This map shows how strong the vibrations were in different areas of the island during the initial quake. Could the many deaths have been reduced beforehand?
Rarely do I write here about non Canadian issues? Is this really a non Canadian issue though? “Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere…” If you do not know anything about the Haiti culture and their way of life, you will be shocked by their poverty rates. Not only because the Haiti people are so much below poverty, it is estimated that four out of five people in Haiti population are suffering and living in below poverty conditions. They have no electricity, clean water, public services, or anything that is needed for civilized life. While most are on the edge of dying because of poverty, others there in direct contrast are millionaires.
And for the most part Haiti still has no national building codes. Some international construction companies, a very small minority do voluntarily follow codes like the French or Canadian standards or the International Building Code. Sad reality. “Even when developing countries have codes in place to make sure buildings can withstand strong winds or earthquakes, they’re rarely enforced, and construction companies end up cutting corners to save money. (The added cost of earthquake-proofing a building is usually around 4 percent.) After a quake hit Mexico City in 1985, for example, investigators discovered that some of the buildings that were destroyed had too much sand mixed in with the concrete, making them weaker.“ Adobe huts, more common in earthquake-prone areas of under developed countries, are especially dangerous, since they not only crush the inhabitants but suffocate them as well.
The last time an earthquake of this present magnitude hit Haiti was about 200 years ago and The same 7.0 tremor hitting San Francisco wouldn’t kill nearly as many people as in Port-au-Prince. “In the more wealthy country with good seismic building codes that are enforced, you would have some damage, but not very much.” And a poor country like Haiti doesn’t have the equipment, communications infrastructure or emergency service personnel to pull you out of the rubble in time and it will have a significant amount of related deaths And if your neighbors get you out, there’s no ambulance to take you to the hospital–or doctor to treat you once you get there… AND THERE IS EVEN NO HOSPITAL, BECAUSE THE EARTHQUAKES HAD FLATTENED THEM TOO. Ninety-nine percent of the death toll in Haiti is attributable to poverty.
ABOUT 80 YEARS TOO LATE TOO…. OTTAWA – Representatives of about a dozen countries are expected to attend a key meeting in Montreal next week on longer-term help for Haiti. The conference is expected to set the stage for a later meeting of donor nations which will look at a long-term development plan to put the troubled Caribbean nation back on its feet. http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/100118/national/haiti_cda_conference
OTTAWA – Canada’s swift response to the tragedy in Haiti hasn’t boosted the federal government’s popularity among voters, a new poll suggests. Voters apparently remain unhappy about Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s unpopular decision to prorogue Parliament and aren’t swayed by the popular effort to help Haiti, said pollster Allan Gregg. The latest Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey suggests the Conservatives and Liberals are in a statistical dead heat, with 32 per cent supporting the Tories and 31 per cent for the Liberals. The gap is well within the poll’s margin of error. http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/100127/national/tories_poll
