Haiti Earthquake Day 3 News Roundup: The Future of Haiti, Helping Haiti...

The Wikipedia page on Haiti Earthquake has become a comprehensive effort by now. it starts: The 2010 Haiti earthquake was a catastrophic magnitude 7.0 Mw earthquake centered approximately 25 kilometres (16 mi) from Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, which struck at 16:53:09 local time (21:53:09 UTC) on Tuesday, 12 January 2010. People, including rescuers are living in tent cities, if all of them have found a tent.

The Economist asks, "Is this the end of Haiti?" , a broken state, smaller than the state of Maryland in America, where 80% live below the poverty line.

It is going to be a long term thing
Pointing to a long-term U.S./U.N./Both Haiti operations, Tyler Cowen asks,

In what sense does Haiti still have a government? How bad will it have to get before the U.N. or U.S. moves in and simply governs the place? How long will this governance last? What will happen to Haiti as a route for the drug trade, the dominant development in the country's economy over the last fifteen years? What does the new structure of interest groups look like, say five years from now?

Consultants will collect large fees. Bill Clinton, who has been serving as the pied piper for Haitian development, will bring investors on another trip to look for opportunity - construction companies will surely join the delegation this time.

Helping Haiti and you
Reliefwork in the first 72 hours after any earthquake is critical
People have used their mobile phones to donate more than $3 million towards Haiti relief. This story also reveals that while AT&T charges a text-message fee to donate money for Haiti , Verizon and T-Mobile don't.

Helping Haiti via Text messages
1. The Red Cross has set up a system where a cell phone user can text "Haiti" to the number 90999. The text message will result in a $10 donation to the Red Cross.
2. Or, you can text "Yele" to 501501. Doing so will result in a $5 donation to Yéle Haiti, a grassroots organization started by singer Wyclef Jean of the Black Eyed Peas, who is originally from Haiti.

Helping Haiti Aid organizations directly
Red Cross http://www.redcross.org/
UNICEF http://www.unicef.org/
Doctors Without Borders http://doctorswithoutborders.org/
Yéle Haiti http://www.yele.org/
Partners in Health http://pih.org/

How You Can Directly Help Haiti
Hands On Disaster Response, www.HODR.org) has set volunteer centers so that anyone can spend a day/week/month volunteering and doing meaningful work to help people recover from a natural disaster.
The organization says that the immediate needs will be for cash donations and for PR help.

Cash donations can be made directly on our website www.hodr.org/haiti_earthquake and our Development Officer Andrew Kerr is available via email at Andrew@HODR.org or by phone at 919-830-3573 for inquiries. We can also use support in spreading the word about us and the work we do. Any connections to the national media or to PR firms willing to help with Pro Bono work would be greatly appreciated.

Spread the word. Let your people know about us and if you need any information, photos, material, etc. contact Andrew@hodr.org or by phone at 919-830-3573.

Read more

A Manhattan plastic surgeon announces on Twitter, of all places, he will donate all the proceeds from Botox and fillers to Haiti relief efforts on January 20.

Gawker publishes a smart guide to promoting causes on Twitter

The significant part:

The best, most effective way to help is to give money, as you may have already figured out. And social networks can be very effective in soliciting micro-donations; by early this morning, over $2 million had been donated to Red Cross relief efforts via text message, something that your friends undoubtedly promoted heavily ("Text "HAITI" to 90999 to donate $10 to @RedCross efforts in Haiti"). This is one of the best uses of social networks.

Somewhat less effective is broadcasting to everyone you know that you just texted HAITI to 90999 and donated $10 to @RedCross efforts in Haiti. Yes, you get to feel virtuous, and possibly remind people that they too should donate. But really, your friends will probably just roll their eyes at you and think you are being sanctimonious.

How the Haiti Media Coverage shaped up
The New York Times story quotes the CNN Managing Director who says, “Outside of a military conflict, this is the biggest international deployment since the tsunami” in 2004. The Times story says that it took some time before the media organizations got into action, sending people to the field. Till then they augmented their reporting by using Twitter feeds cellphone videos of ground witnesses.

Twitter is only the first draft of history. Now the place is swelling with journalists, some of whom arrived before the aid organizations did. Some journalists hitched rides with aid organizations.

Read here about how NPR in America is using social media tools including Twitter and Facebook to report Haiti Earthquake News.

Now, the Oscars for most idiotic Haiti Quotes
Best Oscar quote from Christian Right: Rev. Pat Robertson, on his TV show, "The 700 Club" says this: "Thousands dying because Haitian slaves 'swore a pact with the devil' for their freedom"
Best Oscar Quote from Media right: Rush Limbaugh, the lunatic on the radio says, "We've already donated to Haiti. It's called US income tax."