Diary of a Worm’s Life in a Home “Growing Power” Box and Garden
Rain Garden
August 2010
Tomatoes & Basil
from Front Lawn
Garden 2010
Back Yard
Garden 08/02/09
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Messengers of Death - Friday, October 28, 2011
An article I saw online from Spiegel magazine in Germany, Are Drones Creating a New Arms Race? that really sacred me. The author states “They are difficult to detect, deadly and cheap to build. Despite the dubious legality of assassinating suspected terrorists and Taliban without a trial, the market for drones is heating up around the world. With Israel and China moving into the market, are we about to see a new arms race?
When the existence of ”Killer Drones” first came to my attention with the heavy use of them by President Obama I felt some great doom and gloom, like the explosion of the first Atomic bomb, had just changed the rules of war and escalated into a new level of killing. We have move from individuals killing each other to mass killings to killing by remote control. The depersonalization of killing is scary.
I remember seeing the movie Braveheart with my wife some years ago. She thought the scenes of man to man killing were violent and gross. I thought it was a good anti-war movie. Killing by sword or by drone is still killing. Making killing easy and out of mind and sight is not a good thing.
Last summer in our Drone and Clown marches our message was simple “Drones cost money and lives.” Some people did not like us showing pictures of innocent children killed by drones. If you kill quietly I guess it is okay. By Breaking the Silence about “killer drones” we were disturbing people.
However, the people who lost family and friends to drone warfare are more deeply disturbed. A new arms race, led by the US, is frightening, not in the fun way like Halloween or a scary movie, but in the way where are brothers and sisters human beings lose lives to unmanned “Killer Drones”. Drones are messengers of death.
On this sad note I am taking some time out from posting till next Friday, Nov. 4th, when we march on Marquette University that hosts the teaching of war and senseless killing.
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No Common Sense - Thursday, October 27, 2011
A friend called tonight to ask me about what her friend can do about a son who is seriously ill with a mental illness or, as I call it, a brain disease. Sad to say there is not much that can be done for her friend’s son even thought he is dangerous to himself and others. Now if this person was lying sick and unaware at his home with another other physical serious illness the parents could call an ambulance and take him to a hospital. I told her about getting a commitment order which is hard to do and does not really help if the county behavior health system releases him in a few days when he is still ill. In fact she told me, upon a complaint, the police had come out to his apartment, he resisted, the police teaser him and took him out to the mental health complex. However he was released in two days and stays very sick in his apartment.
In the Western world only in the USA does a poor person with a serious illness have no right to health care? If the poor person has a brain disease, like this young man, he has less a chance for health care. If the poor person with a brain disease is an African American man the chances of getting health care are slim. However, the chances of a young African American, with or without a mental illness, going to jail is extremely high. The largest populations of persons with mental illnesses are in our prisons and jails.
Prisons and jails costs society much more than health care but we choose prisons and jails for the poor, ill and young African American adults. It makes no sense but common sense is not a trademark of discrimination.
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Roses Are Forever? - Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Rose Bush Today
I know diamonds are forever but not roses. But do not tell that to the rose bush in the rain garden in my front yard. It is still in full bloom today and new buds are developing.
A friend that came over last night saw the rose bush as he was leaving the house and said it was a ‘miracle’ that the rose bush was still blooming. I said it was not a ‘miracle’ but the good homemade soil that was in the rain garden.
But whatever the reason, miracle or homemade soil, the facts are that the rose bush will eventually die at some point soon and rise again next spring. Roses, like all of us, grow and die. However, roses, unlike all of us, with care, come back again the next spring.
So if the rose bush blooms all winter it will be a miracle. However, if it dies this winter and with some care, it will come back next year. Maybe roses are forever?
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Compassion Wish - Tuesday, October 25, 2011
For a variety of reason the word ‘compassion’ has come up in conversation or in my reading. So it was only right that a picture quote with a definition of ‘compassion come my way. It reads: “Compassion is the wish to offer unbiased service to all beings, whether they are friendly or hostile to you.” - Dalai Lama
In this definition the word ‘unbiased’ stood out. My disdain for discrimination of any type, based on income, race, illness religious or age, has really bothered me the last few years. But before I could rejoice in my bias against people who discriminate I read the rest of the sentence which says “to offer unbiased service to all beings, whether they are friendly or hostile to you.” The word ‘hostile’ makes living this principle of compassion difficult, since people who I believe to be discriminating are usually hostile to me for pointing it out.
But I do ‘wish’ to be compassionate to all beings, even those who are hostile to me. So if compassion is the wish I guess I am okay for now.
You can view the picture quote in full size below.
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Pain, Pray & Pay - Monday, October 24, 2011
Pain & Pray
Tonight I watched a TV show I had taped from PBS Nova, “How does the brain work?”. For the last few years I had a major interest in neuroscience, the scientific study of the nervous system. Neuroscience is an infant science but the brain holds the key to much understanding of how the body and mind works.
With my son, mother and father having various forms of brain diseases, from Alzheimer to Schizo-affective disorder, motivates me to learn how the brain operates. Study of the brain can bring new cues to many illnesses.
Cue of brain disorders cannot come too soon for my friend, Ann. She has been suffering from severe pain for about four or five years now. She has gone through four surgeries, two procedures and many doctors and is still in constant pain. After many diagnosis doctors are now calling it Fibromyalgia, a medical disorder characterized by chronic widespread pain and allodynia, a heightened and painful response to pressure. It is a nervous system disorder for which there is not cue. For my friend now all there is left is control of the pain. So far medication,therapy and an internal pain pump has not worked. She can be very depressed and tired at times and wish she would die; but her faith sustains her. Although she is unable to attend church she has strengthen her faith through visits from friends, spiritual reading and listening and, most of all, by prayer. When she says she will pray for you or “God bless you” you really feel the blessings and prayers are working.
Most of all have had moments of intense pain but to live in pain, like my friend, is hard to imagine. Persons who live in pain pay and pray for the rest of us.
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Hail Mary Pass - Sunday, October 23, 2011
‘Hail Mary pass’
The Wisconsin Badgers Football team lost a game last night when the other team threw a ‘Hail Mary pass’ and scored a touchdown in the last seconds of the game. A ‘Hail Mary’ pass is one in which the quarterback, with seconds to go in the game, throws the football high into the end zone and hopes one of his players catches the ball or it is deflected into his teammate’s hands. The referee said the person catching the football was down a few inches from the goal line but instant replay overthrew this call and called it a touchdown.
Quite often in life all we can do with a crisis or problem is throw a ‘Hail Mary pass’ and pray and hope it is completed. Mary, the Mother of God, is looked on in some religions as the great mediator or intercessor with God, since she is the mother of God’s son Jesus.
In our Faith In Recovery, a mental health support group, gathering this morning we talked about doing our best but being helpless often to change people. We try very hard to change people with a brain diseases or mental illnesses but quite often all we can do is accept it as any other disease with professional health treatment and just love and respect the ill person.
There is a story in the Gospel when Jesus was talking with what some considered ‘crazy talk’. Out of concern for him his mother, Mary, and his brothers and sisters were called to come and take him home. When his family arrives Jesus utters the famous lines of who is my mother or father, brother or sister? He answered his own question by saying anyone who does the Will of God.
This begs the question of how do we know the will of God. When Jesus was tested in today’s Gospel he gave a simple answer: “Love God with all your heart, soul and mind and love your neighbor as yourself.” If this answer does not work you can just do your best and throw up a ‘Hail Mary pass’. If that does not work ask Mary for a replay.
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Change of Mind on UN - Saturday, October 22, 2011
A friend, actively involved in the local United Nations organization, sent me some information on a lecture coming up. I wrote back saying that from what I saw of the UN military occupation in Haiti, I had my doubts about the role of the UN. She quickly wrote back “Just so I know where you stand, do you think the UN has the potential to be improved? Do you like the concept of it?” I wrote back saying: “Yes! The way to improvement is realize the mistakes and not make them again.“ I promised to send her an article I received from another member of our SOAWatch delegation to Haiti on the UN forces that was published in the English section of a Haitian newsletter called Haiti Liberte.
As I was posting this article,REFLECTIONS FOLLOWING A DELEGATION: HOW MINUSTAH HURTS HAITI, on the web page Haiti Return to Slavery of Freedom I read it. I was reminded how repressive this UN military occupying force is on the people of Haiti.
Also tonight at a birthday celebration for the 25th anniversary of Welfare Warriors, a group fighting for the mothers and children living in poverty]], I was reminded by a friend how two countries, the United States and Israel via the UN are blocking the lifting of the boycott of Cuba (which is largely ignored). How two countries can override all the other countries in the world in the United Nations made me realize how deeply flawed the structure of the UN is.
Thus I must now write my friend again about my view of the United Nations and say this time: “Yes, I like the concept of a United Nations but I do not like the structure of the present UN. It is deeply flawed and suggests that supporters trying to improve the UN spend their efforts on restructuring it. Can I change my mind about the UN based on reflections on Haiti?”
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The Way - Friday, October 21, 2011
The temperature is going down but there is still work to be outside in the gardens. I sifted some castings from the Worm Box today, build up the compost pile and worm depository in the backyard and brought in some planters into the sun room. I felt sad working in the dying backyard garden today but it was a peaceful type of sadness.
Tonight my wife and I went to see the last of the Harry Potter movies at the Budget Theater. I thought we were the almost the last people to see on a big screen but my son called to say he and his family had just seen it tonight at a Budget theater up north. My grandson Carson started reading the books when he was in 3rd or 4th grade and now he is eighth grade. The movie is full of violence that probably sacred my seven year granddaughter but the movie had a happy ending. It seems like we all are, except young children, becoming somewhat desensitized to violence on TV and in the movies.
The movie I want to see, that just came out tonight, is “The “Way” starting Martin Sheen and written and directed by his son, Emilio Estevez. It is a story about four people on a Pilgrimage in Spain on the Camino de Santiago. I read that none of the Hollywood production companies wanted to produce it since it lackrf ‘vulgarity’. Critics are giving it great reviews and I might have to see it on a regular large screen since it probably will not come to the budget theater. From what I heard and saw from interviews and clips it is a funny and deeply spiritual movie without hitting you over the head with religious messages. But sadly it will never be a hit like Harry Potter or Avatar, which might have good messages of good overcoming evil but is full of death and violence.
Violence, sex and vulgarity sells in movie. But real, life with its joyful and sad moments is not found in most movies or even reality TV but in pilgrimage of life, in the way.
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Death Benefits - Thursday, October 20, 2011
School Children in Haiti do the
Hat Dance with a Milwaukee
Brewer baseball cap
Today in an email to a friend I mentioned how facing death like I did in Haiti and with the death of my son had some benefits. God’s death benefits I guess you can call them.
The big news of the day was the killing of Colonial Gadhifi of Libya. His convoy was spotted by a killer drone, fired on but he escaped. He was captured alive, tortured and then killed by of the ‘rebels’ who now in control of the country. His murder was hailed by Libyans and lauded by President of the United States called it a “victory for the revolution and by a local congressperson as “justice served”.
This is not the kind of death that I was talking about in saying “God’s death benefits.” In my opinion killing without self defense by the State in the death penalty, an unborn baby by an abortion, in war of a captured person has no benefits. It only creates more violence and killing.
The U.S “killer drones”, unmanned airplanes, kill human beings by remote control. The drone operation is controlled out of the White House and operated by the CIA. Drones have the opposite of death benefits by death liabilities. The use of drones in countries like Pakistan and Somalia, where we are not at war and drones also kills innocent people, leads to more resistance and hatred of the United States and often are used by our enemies for recruiting.
Death by neglect also has no benefits as in Haiti. One member of our delegation to Haiti wrote a poem that is used by a member in her reflections of the trip. It ties in the death of Haiti to the death penalty in the U.S.A.
Yes, my name is Troy Davis,
but my name is also
Haiti
But Haiti isn’t dead.
sentenced to death by
debt, coup, occupation, earthquake, cholera, and NGO
Haiti refuses to die.
God’s death benefits come when an individual or nation faces death and continues to live with a whole new perspective on life. This kind of dying is part of the power of nonviolence and has “death benefits.”
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No Labels Please - Wednesday, October 19, 2011
The Occupy Wall Street movement seems so far to have avoided being labeled, tagged or put in a corner and thus more easily dismissed. Not to be classified as liberal or conservative, right or left wing is difficult to accomplished these days. This movement focuses on the message not individuals or groups. To the question of what are their demands they say: “We are our demands. #OWS is conversation, organization, and action focused on ending the tyranny of the 1%.” When a movement is institutionalized and put in neat boxes it dies. The enemies of the movement want to focus on the messengers, praise or vilify them, and thus avoid the message.
A good example is the Jesuit Father Ignacio Ellacuria of El Salvador who in 1985 in an interview said about military training at Georgetown, a Jesuit University: “Tell the Jesuits of Georgetown that they are committing mortal sin because they are supporting the forces of death which are killing our people.” After he and other Jesuits at his university were martyred by soldiers training in the US Jesuit schools started to praise and honor him. Now Georgetown has an “Ignacio Ellacuria” chair in school of Theology and host the Ignatian Spirituality Conference. Yet Georgetown still host military training that teaches killing.
I have been called a ‘liberal’, conservative, activist, crazy, wise, reactionary and radical. There is some truth to all those tags but none of them defines me or my messages or my struggle for truth. Everyone wants to be known for whom they are, not the labels, stigmas or tags put on them. Not to label something is hard to do, but it is the true source of creativity. No labels please.
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What If? - Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Driving my friend Tom today to visit his mother in an assisted living home, I found myself preaching to him to “live one day at a time” or one “moment at a time”. A lot can happen in a moment as evidenced is this military video of a compilation of Apache Gunship Combat Footage. As in a Killer Drone attack people can be walking around, driving or at home one moment and then dead the next moment by an assailant in the sky.
Today Israeli traded with the Palestinian party of Hamas over a 1000 Palestine prisoners for one Israeli soldier. People say how they can do that. The reality is that, just like in Iraq and Afghanistan, one Israeli or American life, is worth 1000 lives of the enemy.
Although we gave much money to Haiti after the earthquake the reality is that people are still dependent on aide and still being neglected and dying. Few fund raisers and foundations in the USA are doing what the What If Foundation is doing, providing funds for partnering Haitian organization to rebuild their society, for Haitians to provide food and education for themselves.
What if everyone thought of the people of Haiti as their brother and sister like my friend Lisa did in her Reflections on the Haiti journey we just made. What if soldiers realized what they were doing before pushing the trigger on an Apache helicopter? What if we consider all life to be valuable and sacred, be it Palestinian or Jewish.
Living deep in the moment helps us realize that what if is now.
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Facing Death In Living - Monday, October 17, 2011
Haitian man suffering from
cholera seeks help on the streets
Word came tonight that Father Dean Brackley S.J. died in El Salvador. He died at 65 from cancer. I had the privilege of meeting him when he was at Marquette University for a semester. Right after the six Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter were killed in El Salvador by School of Americas (SOA) trained soldiers he volunteered to go the Central America University in San Salvador. He kept the memory and message of the Jesuit Martyrs alive.
One of the organizers of our delegation to Haiti sent us today from Venezuela her reflections on our experience. Tomorrow I will put it on the web page Haiti, Return to Slavery of Freedom. She, like many of us, felt the deep sense of death in Haiti.
Tomorrow we have a bi-weekly Faith Sharing gathering. Our hour of sharing was inspired by three persons who founded or participated in the group that now have died. Tomorrow the spouses of all three plan to be present.
As I was working in the gardens today I saw many signs of death in nature, in the dying of the plants to the falling of leaves.
Death is something that I did not feel for many years. After the death of my son I was faced with a sense of death. Death is hard to face but when faced loses its fear and gives us a better appreciation of life. In facing death we can live life more fully.
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Free To Be - Sunday, October 16, 2011
Amidst a busy weekend of sports viewing,(Badgers and Packers Win and Brewers Lose), Pat and I managed to take a brief walk today in nearby Lapham Peak Glacier Park. Fall has fallen more than I thought. Many trees were bare already. We had to walk slowly due to Pat’s muscle disease but slow is good when one wants to observe and see the beauty around them. Nature in this park is free to be.
Tonight watching the Brewer’s baseball team lose the final game of the National Championship game, I put the rest of my pictures of Haiti on Flicker. In these Images of Haiti you can learn much about the state of this country now. Eventually I will add words, stories, to each picture but for now the pictures speak for themselves of the condition today of Port au Prince and Haiti. I put the first article on the web page Haiti Returning to Slavery or Freedom, an article by Bill Quigley, a member of our delegation, asking the obvious questions that comes from seeing these images: “Where is the Money?”
As fall fades into the cold of winter, the people of Haiti sweat in the heat and rubble of this land. How can we treat our brothers and sisters like we do? We need to slow down, stop doing and listen to the people of Haiti. There is beauty and blessings in Haiti if we can just allow the people, like the trees in Lapham Peak, be free to be.
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Stigma Stains The Soul - Saturday, October 15, 2011
Our translator in Haiti took us to where he grew up in Cite Soleil, an extremely impoverished and densely populated community in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area in Haiti. Although he has escaped from this slum he comes back to head a recreational and education program for the children. He talked a lot about the ‘stigma’ this area and the people from it have faced over the years, even from the poor of Haiti.
When he was talking about stigma, I thought of our deceased son and the overwhelming stigma he faced that caused him great suffering. I remember how hard it is for me when others stigmatize people, be it because they are poor, have a brain disease or are just for saying what some do not want to hear.
A few years ago I wrote in the posting for the Diary of the Worm for March 22, 2009 a poetic essay that captured my feelings and still rings true today. I repeat
“Stigma Stains the Soul”
Stigmatizing a person
Is like calling the person morally defective,
A flawed human being.
In every stigma there is some truth,
The ‘mentally ill” usually are persons with a mental illness,
Persons who “talk too much” are usually very vocal.
“Terrorists” often do promote terror.
However, a stigma depersonalized the person receiving it,
Often justifying cruel and inhumane treatment.
It is difficult for one to accept the truth of the stigma,
Since accepting it often means accepting being less a human person.
Often, the people in the system that ‘treat’ the person with stigma,
The very persons that desire to stamp out the stigma,
Impose the biggest stigma of all on a person
By the way they treat the person with the stigma.
Sometime they are too condescending, talk about the person in their presence, like the person is a third party and not part of the conversation.
The best way, perhaps, to deal with stigma
Is to look at it as it as violence to the mind
And treat it in a creative non-violent way.
Thus not to react to it,
But to absorb it as it is,
No matter how much it hurts.
So that by not reacting,
Not letting it stick to one’s soul,
It will naked, exposed and made powerless,
Thus be seen for what it is,
A stain to be cleaned,
Hurtful not healing.
Then and only then
Can the person stigmatizing see it?
And stop it,
And the person being stigmatized
Not identify with the stigma
But use it to more deeply understand who they are.
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The Nature of Fall Flowers - Friday, October 14, 2011
Fall Flowers Picked Today
When we think of fall we think of the color of falling leaves. One advantage of a rain garden in the front lawn is that you can see the fall color of flowers. The perennial flowers of the rain garden provide three seasons of beauty outside and in a vase inside. However, the flowers in the rain garden seem to be particularly beautiful and colorful in the fall. Today it was good picking for the vase on our kitchen table.
Although dying in nature is common in the fall, there is a particular beauty to nature of fall flowers dying. The perennials will return next spring, summer or fall and shine their beauty till winter comes again.
Today with the sun back out I feel more hopeful and motivated than the dark rainy day yesterday. As fall passes into winter there will be more dark days when I need to remember that the winter of dying will spring into new life, grow in the heat of the summer only to turn colorful and dye once more in the fall.
In some countries like Haiti or southern India there is only one temperature, in these two it is hot. Other places like Hawaii enjoy mild, sunny weather all year around. The flowers I picked today remind me there are some advantages to having four seasons. Primary is that we can observe all four seasons and see how they blend into each other.
One of my favorite Picture Quotes is by Joseph Campbell and reads: “The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.”
The nature of fall flowers is to remind us to match our nature with Nature.
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Painful Peace - Thursday, October 13, 2011
Today with the rain and darkness my spirits were down. This usually happens when the weather is gloomy but today, with the memory of conditions in Haiti still fresh in my mind, it was particularly tough to motivate myself. Not being able to work outside I did some things on the computer and with household chores to keep myself busy. One of thing I did was prepare some of the pictures I took in Haiti that give a living color view of conditions there. The conditions are terrible and we need to ask Where did all the money go? but in a color digital picture the sadness and joy are more manageable.
My companions on the journey have send me some reflections and pictures which I hope to share with all soon on a web page called Haiti, Return to Slavery or Freedom. In the meanwhile you can find some of the pictures on Flicker at Haiti.
I have talked before about all I learned from my deceased son Peter on being down, rejected and feeling stigmatized. While in Haiti I thought a lot about Peter and while there, seeing and hearing the cry of the poor, or on gloomy days like today his spirit keeps me going. My heart is in pain but thanks to God and my son it is a peaceful pain
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Red is the Color of Revolution - Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Fruit of the Garden Today
In 1968 my last year as a Jesuit seminarian I was finishing my graduate work for a Masters in Sociology at Marquette University. My last course was one in Research methodology taught by a Jesuit priest who was known for giving young Jesuit students who were active in peace and justice issues, like me, a hard time. He was not a very good teacher and placed the whole of the course on a research paper due at the end of the semester. I did my paper on the Sociology of Revolution and thought I had done a good job. However, at the end of the semester there was a civil rights outburst by students and the professor used a technicality not to even read my paper and gave me a F.
I remember that one of my findings at the time was that revolution did not happen were people were very poor or very well off. It happen when they were on the way up in the economic and freedom scale and desired more. Today we probably can say it can happen when the people in a well off nation, like the USA, are losing their wealth and freedom and are their way down.
The color of revolutions is red. The American CIA has attempted to call their aided revolutions a variety of colors, orange, green and pink but clearly the color associated with a revolution is red.
When I was working in the front yard garden today I noticed the prominent color in the vegetable garden and rain garden was red. The red roses were in full bloom in the rain garden and the red tomatoes were ready for picking in the vegetable garden. The garden is going through a revolution from summer to winter, a change we call fall.
Maybe red is the color of revolution because true revolution, violent and nonviolent, needs sacrifice which is represented by the red of blood. Red is the color of revolution
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Time Matters? - Tuesday, October 11, 2011
“It is astonishing how short
a time it takes for very
wonderful things to happen.”
Francis Burnett
Today at the city dump I arrived one minute after 3pm, one minute too late to pick up wood chips for compost. Time matters.
My time in Haiti last week went slow. Perhaps because it was so painful to see a people neglected, rejected and suppressed in their own land. Someone commented that it seemed like we were there a very long time. Time matters.
To change the world we must change ourselves and be like Gandhi said: “Be the Change we want to see”. Making time for change can be difficult but time matters.
We all want to be accepted, be popular and likeable. But at times that cannot be and rejection is the way to be true to self and beliefs. Time matters.
We want results for our actions but often there are no results to be found. Yet as time continues without results we must take the time to be persistent. Persistence and Time matter.
Yet in each moment of time there is a sense of timelessness. In the silence of moment we find timelessness. I once heard a great musician say that it was the use of silence between the words and notes that made great music.
Time matters and we must live in time but it is the moments of timelessness that really matter.
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Return To Freedom - Monday, October 10, 2011
Hope of Haiti
Today I tried to spend time catching up with what when undone when I was in Haiti. But after our visit to Haiti not much seem of real importance in light of the life and death struggle of the people of Haiti. I did enjoy catching up with the garden. Working with the soil today reminded me of the featured article Nature’s Bounty, Soil Salvation. The article speaks of how working with the soil not only produces vegetables and fruits but working with the soil has a physical affect on our well being.
From my late son Peter and from my own life experiences I have learned a lot about stigma and how stigma stains the soul. But to discover in Haiti a people that have been stigmatized was very painful although it a peaceful way.
What brought me joy and hope was the children, youth, and what we call the young adults, of Haiti. Tomorrow I hope to begin a home web page dedicated to Haiti and amidst all the information, descriptions and pictures of Haiti I plan to have a page of the faces of the youth of the country.
From the youth, like from the soil Haiti will rises again to be a free and independent country. The youth of Haiti, the majority of its citizens, are the hope of Haiti to return to Freedom.
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Return To Slavery - Saturday, October 08, 2011
New Slave Quarters in Haiti
I have just returned from a delegation to see and hear the needs of the people of Haiti. Haiti, a country created by slaves who overcame their captors, is now being returned to the conditions of slavery. There will be a page on this web site, devoted to Haiti but for now here are a few thoughts written on the plane back to USA.
Africans were captured, placed in the hole of a ship in darkness, without food, drink or care of for their health. All they had was their mind and imagination. If they survived the journey to the new world they became slaves to the French who had taken part of an island we now call Haiti. French used the fertile land and resources of Haiti with slave labor to bring wealth to France.
The slaves of Haiti rose up against the armies of Napoleon and in 1804 obtained their freedom or independence, or so they thought. Over the years, the powers that be, U.S.A., Canada, France and Spain never allowed freedom and independence to happen.
Now in 2011 Haitians, descents of the African slaves live in tents or tin huts without electricity, sanitation, clear water, health care. The people in these camps are being expelled with nowhere to go while the NGO’s (Non Government Organizations) and government organizations drive around towns with their large SUV’s. They have abandoned their care of the people in the camps. Where did all the millions and millions we gave to Red Cross, Catholic Relief Service, Oxfam and the hundreds of other organization go?
Haitians have no jobs, land or opportunities while well meaning missionaries leave their job and family to fly to Haiti to provide basics, food, medical care or housing for a week or so at a time. Yet the air fare of all these missionaries would be enough to supply jobs and resources for so many in Haiti.
One third of the money the US government gave to the people of Haiti after the earthquake was used to reimburse the US military for its services. One third was given to large NGO’s who were
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