HAITI — what more can it take?

From TeleSur is some of the first reportage on the 7.0+ earthquake that seems to have destroyed most of what public service infrastructure that exists in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince.

With the virtual destruction of its entire ecosystem shortly after independence (by the armies of Napoleón Bonaparte, whose sense of Liberté, égalité, fraternité did not extend to the ex-slaves who wanted to liberate themselves from their French overlords ) the country has been short of everything except need ever since. Under quasi-occupation by foreign troops (as it has been on and off ever since a joint British-German-United States occupation force first landed in January 1914), consistently misruled by foreign-backed kleptomanics and plain ordinary maniacs like U.S. backed Papa Doc (and the only democratically elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristides run out by a U.S. backed military coup) AND having undergone the collapse of the nation’s only reliable food source (swine flu killed off the naturalized pigs in the 1980s), today’s earthquake promises to be one of the worst calamities to befall the Republic yet.

Cash donations to the Red Cross, OsFam, Catholic Relief/Caritas or other reputable relief organizations go further than trying to figure out what supplies are needed where at this point. Some immediate relief efforts — especially from Cuba, which has an excellent record in disaster preparedness and relief — have been hampered by fears that the quake will be followed by a tsunami in the Caribbean. The United States, Venezuela and Dominican Republic have, however, dispatched some relief teams already. Colombia, Panama, Canada, Mexico and Honduras have already signed on to provide additional assistance, as well as France and the World Development Bank.