Please donate to Haiti humanitarian aid

     Haiti - Quake Survivor 
    Originally uploaded by The Peacekeepers

    Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

To donate $10 to the Red Cross for Haiti earthquake relief, text the word HAITI to 90999.
To give $5, text YELE to 501501 - this goes to Wyclef Jean's grassroot organization Yele Haiti.
Or you can text HAITI to 25383 to give $5 to the International Rescue Committee.

The amount will be charged to your phone bill and phone carriers will give 100% of donations to the respective organizations. They also vouched to waive texting fees. It seems that it will take thirty to sixty days for the money to reach their target - phone companies will pay up when users pay their phone bills - but many of these organizations upfronted cash on hand (Red Cross -10 million dollars) to buy much needed help in Haiti right now. Let's hope all this is true, so give.
For those living outside the U.S. and for those preferring to donate via credit card, there are other options and other organizations to give to, detailed in this article: Haiti Quake: How to Help.

The earthquake combined with the already-existent wretched living conditions, i.e., extreme poverty and the long history of misuse of this land by other nations amount to an almost-unparalleled human tragedy. No pig should live in such squalor, let alone a human.

Here is another good photojournalistic report of the current situation in Haiti. 

An everyday account of life in Port-au-Prince in images. More hunger and rage.

Feel free to skip this NY Times article about the recent tragedy - not much historical accuracy here - but do read the comments if you want to learn a bit about Haiti's troubled history. I often find I learn much more from readers' comments to a piece rather than directly from the article. With a reader's ability to respond it seems that journalism has drastically changed since twenty years or so ago, no? There is much more room for debate.
A contributor's article is likely to present one point of view (or usually strives for objectiveness outside the opinion section). Thus I get the feeling I have incomplete information about a topic unless I at least skim through the comments. These present many brilliant responses, well-thought-out reviews and novel viewpoints, sometimes backed by first-hand experience.
I have now come to assess a paper by the quality of the readers' responses. Sure, I still think the Times has the duty to pick their contributors with greater care. Case in point: Brooks on Haiti; Friedman on anything?! But it should not bother one too much that while these characters are allowed to write for a major newspaper one gets the feeling some skipped history lessons en masse or are simply too creative, inaccurate writers. Because they fill a minor role. If the readers are the audience as well as the participants in the debate, Brooks is simply the guy who announces the topic. Not even the one who pulls the little paper describing the topic out of the black hat. His editor does that, choices shaped by current events. So, you can ignore him and read the comments - but do lick on that block of salt!  Ah, the wisdom of the masses...

Note: Thanks to flickr users The Peacekeepers and Jan Sochor for use of their photographs.

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