Posts from — January 2010

Lately Feedjit has been reporting me as being from Baker and Marianna, Florida.

Thanks to FDR, they do have electricity, and they also have had telephone service for years, now, but DSL would really be pushing the envelop for them.

Last I knew, they relied on satellite dishes for tv, so I assume they would use satellite dishes if they wanted broadband access.

They are nice enough small towns up towards the Alabama border in the pine woods.

(Picture from Google Map satellite view)

That is the Port au Prince airport, and the situation there is a US problem because the US built it with this crappy design. As is obvious, anything larger than a Cessna has to do a 180° turn after roll out on landing and exit via that central taxiway to the terminal area. That ties up the runway. The aircraft taking off have to enter the runway, taxi to the end and then execute a 180° turn to start their take off roll, again, tying up the runway. This was not designed for efficiency.

The problems have led some to claim the US is hogging the airport. Hey, if someone else wanted to control the airport, all they had to do was send in a team to get it up and running.

The Brazilians are thumping their chests about leading the UN Security mission, to which I say, wonderful, so lead already.

People are claiming that the US is fixated on security, pointing to the special arrangements to get the troops from the 82^nd Airborne Division into Haiti on a priority basis. The problem is that the 82^nd isn’t in the country for security: they set up a landing zone at country club near the US embassy that enabled supplies to be air-dropped by C-17 transports, and then transferred to helicopters for distribution, increasing the amount of supplies in the country and relieving some of the pressure on the airport.

There are about 2,000 Marines arriving by sea shortly, but I hope no one is counting on them for security, because they are bringing heavy equipment with them to start cleaning up so the rebuilding can take place.

The Coast Guard has already started working on clearing up the port facilities so they can be used.

Unless someone specifically asks for US security assistance, it doesn’t look like Southern Command is going to provide any, other than for their sites. I’m sure some people are going to have a fit over that.

Campus Progress ran one of their “Ask the Expert” features on the media and disasters, The Looting Lie. Basically the media sets up a self-fulfilling prophesy by talking up the possibility of violence at some disasters, not others, and then reporting anything that seems to fit their narrative, even if it’s a rumor.

I’ve been in a few hurricane disasters, and there has certainly been looting and violence take place. Greed overcomes common decency, and people snap after putting up with extended periods of pressure. I doubt that anyone who isn’t from this area has even heard of our problems after hurricanes, because the cases take a while to go through the court system and aren’t very exciting. It’s part of the package of living in a hurricane prone area.

Everyone thinks that Katrina had extraordinary amounts of both, but once the hype died, New Orleans had a good deal less crime during and after Katrina, than normal. The only verified looting I actually heard reported was by a wealthy doctor who waited too long to evacuate, and while stranded broke into a pharmacy to get antibiotics. I know about it, because he said he did it on NPR, but he didn’t see it as “looting”, just a necessary precaution. After all, his platinum credit cards weren’t working and there was no one to staff the drug store, so it was OK for him to burglarize the store and steal the drugs. Only poor people are looters, not wealthy doctors. 😈

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All of the aid problems being experienced in Haiti are caused by logistics, and the logistical problems are caused by the destruction of the infrastructure.

First a little geography. Port au Prince is about 200 miles from Guantanamo, 400 miles from San Juan, Puerto Rico, 700 miles from Miami. It only has one airport capable of accepting reasonably sized cargo aircraft.

Some people talk about using the Dominican Republic, but its airport has a shorter runway, and the two southern roads that connect Haiti and the Dominican Republic can best be described as tertiary. With continuing aftershocks, the northern road through the mountains is probably not a good choice as it may be blocked with rock slides. The southern road to not paved all the way, and is a narrow two-line road at best.

The US Coast Guard did the initial survey, and determined that there was one, undamaged, runway at the Port au Prince airport, but the control tower was unusable; and the port facilities were destroyed. As a result, the US Southern Command sent a AFSOC Special Tactics team to reopen the airport, and started an amphibious assault group toward the area. Initial aid was shifted to the aircraft carrier, USS Carl Vinson, because it could off-load its supplies with helicopters.

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The BBC notes that the German government warns against using MS Explorer

The German government has warned web users to find an alternative browser to Internet Explorer to protect security.

The warning from the Federal Office for Information Security comes after Microsoft admitted IE was the weak link in recent attacks on Google’s systems.
…

However, Graham Cluley of anti-virus firm Sophos, told BBC News that not only did the warning apply to 6, 7 and 8 of the browser, but the instructions on how to exploit the flaw had been posted on the internet.

The Microsoft response, after admitting the problem exists and they have no fix, other than to crank up the security settings to 11.5, was “don’t worry, be happy”, we’ll do something eventually.

Actually this wouldn’t be a major problem, except that the flaw is “in the wild” and the attacks will start.

Update: The authorities in France and Australia have joined the Germans in calling for people to avoid IE.

Update II: Microsoft patches Internet Explorer hole. Patch released at 1800 GMT [Noon CST] 01/21/10.

[Attention – IE is poisonous.]

OK, first off the military is not acting as “Meals on Wheels” in Haiti or anywhere else, except where individual members volunteer their time to the program, which many of them do. The military community provides a lot of support to aid agencies through direct payroll deduction. Although they are not paid like bankers, they have always been generous.

Much of what the military is doing in Haiti is good training for their primary mission, and they have to train to maintain that proficiency. The pararescue mission is no different in collapsed building caused by earthquakes, or those collapsed by bombing. Setting up emergency airfields in primitive conditions, is what Special Tactic teams of the Spec Ops Command does, and they are working with aircraft from multiple nations, as they do in NATO operations, like Afghanistan.

When the amphibious force under the USS Bataan arrives they will start moving cargo from ships to shore where no docking facilities exist. That’s what their military mission is, and this is just another mission.

The Haiti mission will probably include at least one field hospital, and military medicine has been doing this since at least the Civil War.

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While the USS Carl Vinson has arrived and the guys from Special Ops are pushing through four-times the normal traffic at the Port au Prince airport, Danger Room reports U.S. Diverts Spy Drone from Afghanistan to Haiti

As part of the Haiti relief effort, the U.S. military is sharing imagery from one of its high-end, high-flying spy drones, the RQ-4 Global Hawk.

This image, shot yesterday by a Global Hawk, shows damage to the National Cathedral in Port-au-Prince. U.S. Southern Command is sharing the images so that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and relief groups can get a better picture of the situation on the ground.

They are not getting the highest resolution photos the system is capable of, but they are damn good, and allow people to gauge the areas of destruction in and around Port au Prince, something that usually tied up helicopter time and resources.

With so many roads blocked with debris, NGOs can now map routes to different areas and have a feel for what they will find. This is a capability that NGOs just don’t have, but the military does, and it will speed up the delivery of relief.

The Local Puppy Trainer let me know that AT&T launches local 3G network. Wow, you now have some form of 3G connectivity along the coast from Panama City to NOLA. Of course, there is none inland, and forget the coast between Panama City East to Tampa, but you can now use the iPhone on the beach in Northwest Florida, just like Wichita Falls, Texas.

The Charity Navigator has a list of organizations to Help Survivors of the Earthquake in Haiti. They are a rating service that looks at charities and ranks them on their effectiveness. The charities they list for Haiti are groups with a track record in providing aid, and spend the money they collect on their stated goals.

They have brief descriptions of what the various charities do, i.e. medical assistance, or food, or housing, etc.

They note that after a wave of public pressure, Credit Card Companies Waiving Fees. These are not blanket waivers, and there may be restrictions, so check with your credit card issuer before using it.

Washing Up

Rasp, rasp, rasp, rasp…

[Editor: Lucrezia grooming in anticipation of dinner.]

Friday Ark

That’s the Humanitarian Service Medal. It counts for promotion like any other “Service” medal. The mission to Haiti will rate its reward to those who participate in the operation.

I assumed that the Air Force Special Operations Command people at the local Hurlburt Field had been sent to re-open the airport, and AFSOC has a press release confirming it: Special Tactic Airmen provide humanitarian relief to Haiti.

The BBC has more coverage on the military response: US rushes troops to Haiti earthquake zone.

I’m happy to see that the USS Bataan is leading the amphibious group. The Bataan is the vessel that followed Katrina in the Gulf and was ready to immediately supply New Orleans with assistance, but Rumsfeld refused to allow it for days.

When you see what the US military can and will do to merit their HSMs in Port au Prince, think about the difference they would have made if Rumsfeld had sent them to NOLA, a thousand miles closer.

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.