Jan

17

Help – at what price?

January 17, 2010 | Leave a Comment

HAITI NEEDS all the help it can get, and everyone is talking the big talk, from Brangelina, Sandra Bullock and other stars pledging millions to help the island, to the Obama-Bush-Clinton plea for dollars to go to the island.

But what about hidden agendas? How will the United Nations and other feet on the ground cope with the lack of infrastructure and resulting distribution obstacles, security concerns? Most of all, how soon will the people stuck in devastation while politicians are fighting over logistics and a bigger say in what gets done, when?

Al Jazeera’s Inside Story asks: Has the world failed Haiti?

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Jan

13

Haiti hit by 7.0 quake

January 13, 2010 | Leave a Comment

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THE REPUBLIC of Haiti sits side by side with the Dominican Republic on the island of Hispaniola, between the islands of Cuba to the west, and Puerto Rico to the east. On his voyages in 1492 and 1493 Christopher Columbus founded the first European colonies; now Hispaniola, one of the largest islands in the world, is the most populous island in the Americas and the 10th most populous in the world.

Because of its location, the island is a prime target for colonisation, plunder of its natural resources, and strategic occupation. It is also vulnerable to natural disasters like the 2008 hurricanes Gustav, Hanna and Ike, since it sits directly in the hurricane, and prone to devastating earthquakes sometimes occurring many decades apart (e.g. 1751, 1770, 1842, 1946).

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