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Daily (?) update. 4th February, 2010

Text: Daily (?) update. 4th February, 2010

from Peter Ravenscroft, 04.02.10

Update 1

In the last 18 hours, only Mark has emailed in, re Google Earth. All other emails blocked, to here. Or, there is no-one there any more. No Gilbert, no John, no Carmen. No one translating, no-one in going there, no one in Haiti and hungry, nothing from the city of Miami, nothing from any government about the airdrop?

And all the journos have obviously gone home, as if you look on Google News, checking country after country, you will see that Haiti is no longer there, on the front page. Anywhere.  Just occasionally, on the back pages, where celebities are raising money.

Welcome to the Brave New World, folks. The US is too busy cooking up fairy stories so they have an excuse to attack Yemen, to bother with Haiti, now. 
Great folk, land of the free, all that ...... Sorry Haiti, no-one in any government cares. Should not have let your ancestors be shipped to a place with earthquakes, seems to be their attitude.

-----

Hi all,

Missed a  few.

No new members for a while, still have no idea who several are in this group, as no profiles. And no comments, I think.

No direct word from John Gillen for several days. Curious. So I do not know the state of play for the recce trip to the Momance, etc..

Meanwhile, back at the disaster area.

Gilbert is doing or has done the big white cross, and with luck will be contacting Rear Admiral Branch on the USS Carl Vinson on the phone, to ask if he can send a test chopper. To where, hopefully, Gilbert will have his unloading crew lined up, in an orderly row, with the crowd kept back and under control. At the drop zone flight line centre at Delmas.

Unless I am living entirely in dreamland, and none of that is happening. Not exactly easy to tell, out here on the very weird cyber frontline.

Nothing whatever back from the countries asked to pitch in, or from the BBC, contacted from both here and from Spain by Carmen. Or from the mayor of Miami, the only sister city of Port au Prince. Who, one imagines, might like to help further.

Oxfam, bothered about security and "the orderly distribution of food" reversed its support for airdrops, which is probably why they stopped. I said we think this has to be reversed again, as a very urgent thing, because at least a million folk and maybe 2 million, are not getting any food aid. Because it is too dangerous to go far, and the roads to where they live are blocked, and not nearly enough aid is being sent or delivered. The Red Cross says the aipot is still the bottleneck.

The people of Haiti have asked for the airdrop. They are starving. Oxfam has decided to send tents and water and water purifying tablets. Sure. So the people can sit in their new tents, drink pure water which they have never had in their lives, and starve to death. Oxfam is a wonderful outfit, but everyone gets things wrong when all is chaos. The airdrop must resume and go flat out. I have asked Oxfam here to ask Oxfam in London to reverse its airdrop policy, and to support the airdrop asked for by the people of Haiti. Via Gilbert and his people, now 100 people, he reports.

Next, Mark, working on Google Earth, thinks the folk I think are missing are probably there, so I will take his word for it and stop bothering. Non-existant people do not eat aid food anyway. Not when it can't be shipped out of the country.

Mark is concerned that the folk he can see campimg n the river may be caught in flash floods when the rains come, or just have nowhere to go when the water comes up slowly. I will try get the two operating radios, Radio Signal FM and Radio Metropole, to put the warning on air. If the emals go through.

Most folk in Water Drovers are dead quite, and seem to have lost interest. Or maybe, were never really interested anyway, can't tell. Very common with disasters.

The media is full of how their darling celebrities are rising mega-bucks, wonderful. But one or two million people are slowly starving, while the glitter unfurls.

Re Snoopy. We seem to have a working relationship going at last, who knows? They do not speak directly. The assumption here is we are all on the same side, and trying to help the folk in Haiti. Fairly simple.

All for now,

Peter.

p.s.ravenscroft@gmail.com

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