janelane wrote:

U.S. anthropologist and longtime Haiti activist Paul Farmer called the [2008] hurricane season an "unnatural disaster," saying that a "Marshall Plan" was needed to rebuild Haiti's political institutions or the country would "have a hard time surviving the hurricane season." But the damage unleashed this week by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake was probably more than even he could have imagined.

I don't know if I'd go so far as to characterize Haiti as "the unluckiest country", but they've certainly had their fair share of upheavals and natural disasters. At some point, after floods and hurricanes and earthquakes combined with crushing dictatorships and poverty, doesn't relocation look like a pretty good idea? Maybe aid should be directed to that initiative instead of more fruitless government stabilization programs. Judging just from the information in this article, they can't even being to restore the environment to fend off natural disasters, much less revamp their entire government to enforce basic international building codes to plan for the next disaster.

Times like these I'm glad I picked engineering over PoliSci...I just have no idea what the answer is.

-janelane

I honestly believe that we should promptly invade Haiti formally, plant the flag, make it a territory, invest in its recovery, establish a provisional government, and hold a statehood/independence referendum in five years.

But then nobody gives much of a shit about dead Haitians.