Bottom Line, I’d Much Rather See Haitian Uniforms Wringing Haitian Necks
...but there's no way this would be circulating if it didn't evoke a lot of other meanings, too -- about U.S. power and also our longstanding local "influence."
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Haiti: As We Approach Week Four
From the pictures and reports of continuing ineptitude distributing food and water, many Haitians -- far from any opportunity to "get in touch" with their despair -- continue to be traumatized.
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Haiti: Convoy to Nowhere
How FUBAR is the process of delivering aide accumulating at the Port au Prince airport? And, why -- after seventeen days -- isn't there more basic coordination taking place between the US Military and the UN? The slideshow at WSJ by Peter van Agtmael is a must see.
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What The Haitians Did With All That Stuff They "Stole"
I can't help wondering how many of those scenes in which Haitians were construed to be stealing might have had something to do with the near-miraculous overnight tent cities they've been lauded for constructing.
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Haiti, 1915: …Or, I Have Often Walked Down These Streets Before
Given America's 20 year occupation of Haiti starting in 1915; it's hand (not so publicized these past two weeks) -- through Bush 1, Clinton and Bush 2 -- in ushering in and out the various dictatorial, military as well as democratically-elected regimes; and the push now to take a...
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Your Turn: Those Haiti Cruises — The Fun Is Just Beginning
You knew the newswires were bound to publish photos like these soon enough. They involve passengers from a Celebrity Cruise ship docked Friday in Labadee, Haiti, enjoying themselves while, to the south, the country has been devastated by a massive earthquake.
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Seeing the Haitians
Of course, what the photo raises, as much as anything, is the uneasy role of aide provision and how much America (captured in the vector of this soldiers gaze) can actually see the Haitian people at all.
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Why and How I Lost It Yesterday (Over CNN "Getting Off" On a Haitian Victim Rescue)
I confess. I lost it yesterday. If you saw my post (Please Stop, Anderson. Just STOP), I appealed for readers to contact CNN and use the Twitterverse to complain about Anderson Cooper's visual exploitation of the Haitian people. Because many of you wrote for more explanation, let me explain what...
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Please Stop, Anderson. Just STOP.
This is a message to Anderson Cooper and CNN... As American citizens concerned about the humanity of the Haitian people, the sensationalist and self-promoting tendencies of American media and the power of pictures, we urge you to: Please stop using the camera to rob people of their dignity when...
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Beyond Burning Bodies, High-Impact Mobilization and Those Haitians Down There
On the surface, this doesn't seem to have much to do with Haiti. Nothing is collapsed or broken, and there is no blood, no open wounds or stumps instead of hands or feet, no burning bodies. But then you read the caption: "Alex Alexis collapsed when he learned that...
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Playing the Palace
I would love to know how the US military thought this picture/photo-op would play (in Haiti -- after the rush; domestically; abroad) in landing American troops at the Haitian Presidential Palace and claiming use of the place.
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Your Turn: Haiti, On a Not-Insubstantial Level, A Show
For days now, we have been flooded by absolutely horrific, increasingly grizzly and often factually fragmentary images pouring out of Haiti and distributed not just via broadcast, but faster and more widely than ever before, through the proliferating and voraciously "page view" hungry on-line media.
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That "Looting" — Revisited
By the time they got to the reporter he had determined that what he thought might be violence breaking out because all the food was gone - was in reality children who had discovered a field full of empty boxes and had started an impromptu game of throwing them...
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Haiti: The Great U.S. War Machine
What if President Obama went on TV tomorrow and announced that the entire 70,000 person U.S. military mission in Afghanistan was going 100% humanitarian?
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If You're As Tired As I Am From Watching
If You're As Tired As I Am From Watching reports harping over-and-over (to the consternation of the locals) about how violence must just be right around the corner, this U.N. video is a necessary infusion of reality.
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Your Turn: Bush Clinton Obama Haiti
Can Bush really help, or his public involvement mostly symbolic, and even a face-saving gesture?
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That "Looting"
I think media has got to be very careful in using the term "looting" in the midst of Haiti's overwhelming humanitarian crisis, especially given how much that term calls to mind generations of violent protests and riots over civil rights.
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The Rescuers
In the faces of these Haitian rescue workers having just saved a baby on Thursday, all I can see -- besides tremendous sadness and obvious exhaustion under excruciating and increasingly desperate circumstances -- is exceptional character.
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