He just can’t keep his ignorance from spewing forth.

There are bricks in my Mother’s fireplace that know more about history than Robotson.

He didn’t have guts enough to wear the robes and hood that normally accompany this bit of racial libel. Some people feel the need to believe that there had to be some supernatural reason that blacks were able to establish their own nation in the Americas, so the “deal with the Devil” was created. [This is not the first time I have heard this particular piece of garbage. I grew up in the segregated South.]

The creation of the nation of Haiti was not as simple or straight forward as is normally presented in US history books. It was an extended struggle, not a simple slave revolt. It is more accurate to say the main war was to prevent the reintroduction of slavery by a foreign army. It has to be seen in the context of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.

As a side note, by the time the man who would become Napoleon III was born, the main war was over. Napoleon III mucked about in Mexico and the US Civil War, not Haiti.

The ABC has a Haiti section on their site, as does CNN, which apparently remembered what it is supposed to be doing.

CBS reports on the U.S. Military Response to Haiti Crisis. The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson and an amphibious task force are on their way, to join the Coast Guard which is on the scene. It sounds like, though the report doesn’t specifically say, that a combat air control team flew in from Hurlburt to get air traffic flowing at the Port au Prince airport, just as they did in New Orleans, when they were finally allowed to after Katrina.

Port au Prince is under 200 miles East-Southeast of the US facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and they have already medevac-ed injured US citizens to the base for treatment.

The latest report from the ABC, Night settles on devastated Haiti, has the estimated death toll from 30 to 100 thousand, tens of thousands injured, and as many as 3 million, 30% of the population, homeless.

The head of the UN mission is reported killed, and over 100 other UN personnel are reported missing. The main headquarters of the mission collapsed in the earthquake.

None of the utilities are functioning around the capital, and many are fleeing to the mountains with whatever they can carry to escape the dozens of aftershocks that have occurred.

The BBC is reporting hundreds, but it is probably more accurate to think in terms of thousands killed and injured.

The earthquake was shallow and close to the city, and pictures from the scene seem to indicate that almost everything two stories and above was flattened or severely damaged, including hospitals and government buildings. It was the worst tremor in two centuries.

Jill mentioned Direct Relief International and I have seen good work by Doctors Without Borders around the world.

The UN mission in the country has apparently lost its headquarters and an unknown number of people who had the primary responsibility for security in the nation.

Haiti has been hammered in the last few years with rains from tropical storm, and now this. They were already on the bottom of the economic ladder in the hemisphere, and this is one more obstacle.

If you can afford it, give through the organization you trust to do the right thing with the money. If that means the Red Cross, wait until they establish a specific fund for Haiti. I’m not criticizing the Red Cross, it is just the way their system works that you should be aware of before giving, if you want the money directed to a specific event.