Hope—and Coin—for Haiti

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It's been what Christie would call a craptastic week. Since it's pretty likely the powerlines hereabouts will snap under the weight of ice and wind before the weekend's over, I just ask you to keep one thought, one act in mind:

hopeforhaitinow.org

In Fargo, school kids are gathering up pennies. Dimes or dollars, do what you can. What you will.
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crossposted at firedoglake's The Seminal

Help Haiti Today

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You can help the people of Haiti. Huffington Post is building a comprehensive list. As one commenter there noted, you can make sure your money goes to a charity that will really help the people by checking charitynavigator.org.

In the early days of Prairie Sun Rising, I wrote "Let Them Eat Mud Cookies" about the dire everyday poverty of Haiti.

Now, the island has been devastated by an earthquake. For those who have so little, even a little contribution will go a long way. And it only takes a little time.

A Fargo group sponsored by Triumph Lutheran Church was already in Haiti on a service mission. They're okay. But they're going to be busy. I know of medical volunteer teams who have given of their own time to go over the years.

But the truth is, the need, the poverty, the circumstances of life in Haiti is so dire that these groups can't begin to do what needs doing alone. And now, the earthquake jolts us. We get caught up in our daily lives, the issues we care passionately about. But we can all help, even in the comfort of our own homes.

For the least of our brethren.... Remember? The lesson we were supposed to learn from Katrina?
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crossposted at firedoglake's The Seminal

UPDATE: The President has spoken about Haiti and the massive logistical effort already underway overnight to lead our partners in the region and globally in the Haiti relief effort. Actions speak louder than sloganeering, now don't they. Information on how you can help at whitehouse.gov.

News coverage is heavy and fast moving, both at CNN and MSNBC. You'll find additional links on ways you can contribute at MSNBC.

Hungry...for Food, for Truth, for Life

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Google "Haiti hunger riots" as I did this morning and you'll get 165,000 links and counting... we touched on this issue back in January in Let Them Eat Mud Cookies... and then we got distracted again by "larger" world issues...

• the Iraq occupation/fiasco
• the assault on the Constitution, Yoo-hoo, anybody seen my civil liberties lately?
• the political campaign season and the media's best efforts to trivialize it to horserace and gotcha status...which spouse has the corniest jokes, or the most troweled-on cosmetics, or the most money-grubbing ties to Colombia....

When what we should all be doing is paying attention to our world. The media doesn't help. Shiny objects--the latest blonde in distress--get more attention than hunger. It's about ratings and profit centers and who's got the get... and there just is nothing glamorous about a starving nation, now is there? And we don't have to look to Darfur and Africa to find that.

We can look right in our own hemispheric back yard. Where Haitian immigrants fleeing their desperate straits across dangerous waters get turned back while Cubanos are welcomed to South Florida with open arms. Where rightwing ranters fly over on the way to Dominica and its sex tourism trade and juicy cigars.

And the rest of us "fly over" too, turning a deaf ear to the cries for food, for help; a blind eye to the gaunt desperation that drives people to riot, to burn buildings, to attack their neighbors. To foment the seeds of revolution.

We have a Current Occupant who doesn't have a problem with dictators, as long as they're "our" dictators; we have leadership on both sides of the aisle who go along, we have media who hide the truth or slant it for their cronies' convenience and their profit margins.

We are urged to SHOP--Self-absorbed hypnosis on parade.....

Where is our Golden Rule? Our Christian compassion? Our "whatsoever ye do unto the least of my brethren...."? An overarching government policy based on humanitarianism instead of warmongering, unity instead of divisiveness, diplomacy instead of saber-rattling and bombs is good business in the long run.

Starving people without decent jobs do not good consumers make.

This transcends a single program or policy. No matter how much I may care about a single issue, like healthcare, or restoring scientific research, or bringing our troops home, or..... I truly believe we must embrace the "and." Because this year, single issues are more of the same ol' destructive road we've been travelling far too long.

Hunger intersects with economics, and environment, and immigration, and global climate change, and revolutions, and we must look at the big picture we've ignored far too long, no thanks to the slice-n-dice political posturants and the media.

Let Them Eat Mud Cookies

This morning in Prairie Country, the usual parade of honkin’ big Hummers and SUVs bearing one parent-one child were on their way to the school we pass by daily. This being Country, there’s plenty of talk around here about energy costs, and are those out in the western oil patch a getting a fair price for their crude, and should we build a refinery…hey, we have our own state-owned bank and state-owned mill. That’s us, a little bit Red State, a little bit shhhhh “socialist.”

Will there be a surge in gas prices again this spring? Will it hit $4 a gallon? How’s that going to affect the farmers growin’ for biodiesel? Yeah, there’s a whole lotta talk about energy around here.

This day in Haiti, mothers will be making mud cookies to feed themselves to keep from starving. Yes, “cookies” made from dirt, a bit of shortening, and water. Think about that the next time you’re bellyin’ up to the drive-thru lane at McDonalds…or belly-achin’ about the high costs you pay for grapes this time of year, or the cost of gas at the pumps.

The local daily, part of a network of family owned newspapers, published the same story as you’ll find at the link to National Geographic News. Funny thing, though. Apparently they figured we readers couldn’t understand the story without a third of a page photo of the “cookies.” Unfortunately, something had to be cut…and for them it was the section about the impact of Big Oil prices on food in the Caribbean.

So for any readers out there who live in Prairie Country, here’s what you missed:

Food Prices Up

Food prices around the world have spiked because of higher oil prices, needed for fertilizer, irrigation, and transportation. Prices for basic ingredients such as corn and wheat are also up sharply, and the increasing global demand for biofuels is pressuring food markets as well.

The problem is particularly dire in the Caribbean, where island nations depend on imports and food prices are up 40 percent in places. [Credit: Associated Press]

For too long we’ve been led around by a business philosophy that neatly—for themselves—looks at the quick fix, short term profit numbers and ignores the real costs of doing business. And that’s not just about people starving because their food costs are too high because Big Oil is profiteering from their puppet in the White House. Remember, it was George himself who described the “haves and the have-more’s” as his base. He should’ve called ’em the Vampire Capitalists that they are. Sucking the lifeblood from people literally and economically.

These guys are feeding off themselves, though, too. And that’s the bitter pill that will ultimately catch up on all of us unless something changes. While poverty festers around the globe, the fat hogs of Big Oil and the Tweetymedia, which divert attention from reality with American Idol-style tracking of political campaigns, take away from what could be savvy business for the long term.

Bring people up out of poverty, here and abroad, and you create a global population of consumers who can afford to buy your products. Sustain the planet with wise use of resources and innovative technologies, and you can begin to reach out to the stars…literally, not just in nostalgic replays of “one small step for mankind….” Or the latest sequel to Star Trek.

We lost the hemp industry to timber lobbying crying crocodile tears about marijuana menace—a big lie, and now renewable crops/agricultural income are lost. Vast swaths of timber are razed to make paper that crumbles into dust within short years while the air breathes a little harder without the trees’ recirculating power.

The cycle repeats itself now with Big Oil with its grotesque profits and still we subsidize and the President holds hands with the subsidizers of those who have already tumbled our Twin Towers and want to do worse.

At the end of the day, all these issues are interwoven. There is no energy policy without impact on food. There is no trade policy without impact on the pockets of Main Street and no street.

The president’s favorite philosopher said: whatsoever ye do to the least of my brethren. And Do Unto Others. So, how’s that Stewardship of the Planet thing workin’ out?

Yesterday was a disappointing day because John Edwards suspended his presidential bid. But my disappointment is tempered with the fervent hope that the Vampire Capitalists out there—and the politicians and media who harbor them—will have a lot more to fear from John Edwards, the proven champion already, as Paladin fighting poverty than as President sitting in the Oval.