Haiti Essay Outline

Thesis: Given that Haiti has a history with natural disasters, they should have been better prepared for the 2010 Earthquake by having stronger infrastructure, better crises management, and more governmental honesty.

A)   The lack of a strong infrastructure in the cities of Haiti caused more damage than there should have been.

                        i.         No reinforcing of construction plans

                       ii.         Lack of building codes

                     iii.         Damage caused to infrastructure, delayed aid.

                     iv.         Rubble and debris caused by collapsed constructions caused roads to constantly be filled with people seeking open space, restricting movement.

                       v.         Stronger infrastructure makes a difference in amount of damage, ex: Chile.

B)   In a developing country governmental honesty is essential for future success but Haiti’s government did not have that.

                        i.         Corruption causes the people to loose trust in their government.

                       ii.         Dishonesty causes economic decline/ problems.

                     iii.         Mal-management of dilemmas/ issues leads to problems such as Haiti having no controlling/ strong government during disaster.

                     iv.         Disorganized hierarchical structure of authority and decision-making disables ability to advance and improve.

                       v.         Political Figures not doing their job leads to gaps in the governing system. i.e. Rene Preval

C)   Haiti should have had a customized crisis management plan, considering their vast experience.

                        i.         Haiti followed the basic Crisis Management Plan that is traditionally used as an outline for creating customized plans.

                       ii.         Formal disaster planning tends to 1. Fail to be implemented or 2. Help with the occurring disaster.

                     iii.         Inaccurate record keeping i.e. count of injured, missing, and dead makes it hard for organizations to help to their full extent.

                     iv.         Rescue and recovery plans of individual relief agencies, tend to conflict with the government’s.

                       v.         NGO’s follow their own aid plans, causing varying methods, which result in confusion of the people.

                     vi.         Lack of a good crises management plan causes ground organizations struggle when helping survivors.

Location-ing

Quality of life based on location. What does this mean? Simply, it means, if you live in a place where money is not an issue, typically with high- income and mid- high- income families, it tends to feel safer. The community has the money available for whatever necessities they have, and for whatever luxuries that they want to have. Children grow up highly protected, with just about all the things needed to be successful in life. Sadly, with lower-income families, that is not the case. They live in overpopulated areas where most of the population is in public housing. Most of these neighborhoods are usually, not only lacking resources to improve their conditions but also lack the ambience and safety needed to raise children and to help them develop a more productive mind-set. It is usually in these neighborhoods where the most danger and violence develops.

So this brings on the question, should neighborhoods be mix-income housing or should things be left as they are?

It’s a debatable subject. The ideal neighborhood is one where families of mixed- income are able to live fulfilled and happy lives with safety and good education for their children, and in a nice environment surrounding them. Would it work? I think the ability of such a complexly built community to exist depends on the open- mindedness of those living in such places. Mixed- income calls for more racial and ethnic diversity. It also makes the contrast between cultures more noticeable and present, which could be both a good thing and a bad thing, once again, depending on the open- mindedness of the people. For such communities to develop in the city of Chicago would call for a dramatic change. Whether we’d like to admit it or not, Chicago really is a very segregated city, and has been that way for many generations. Some of these are of course, self-created by mostly immigrants who wish to connect with others of similar believes, that’s why they also say Chicago is a very very diverse city. But back to the idea of mixed- income neighborhoods, I think it would have a positive effect in not just those who live inside them, but also those around them.

If high and low income neighborhoods ceased to exist, I think that  the inequality in the treatment of certain neighborhoods and those attending those surrounding schools, along with the contrast of each neighborhood’s quality, would also cease to exist or at least lessen by a great amount. I disagree that mixing these two would only impoverish those that are already poor but that live in a place where it’s mostly wealthy people, because through mixed- income, that wouldn’t happen, they’d be just about balanced out and the public education would be more beneficiary and we would be rid of the problem of some schools being better than others because of the location of them. So yes, mix- income is ideal and would be much better, but the only way for it to work is for people to be willing to help improve their own and other’s lives.

History Sources: Part 3...even more

-(SECONDARY - ANALITICAL ARTICLE)

Piotrowski, Chris. "Earthquake in Haiti: A Failure in Crisis Management?" Organization Development Journal 28, no. 1 (2010): 107-112. http://search.proquest.com/docview/197985782/13314E9C6779D86269/1?accountid=3360

-(PRIMARY- Article)

Suozzi, Marguerite. "Haiti: Damage to Infrastructure Delays Aid Deliveries." Global Information Network, Jan 15, 2010. http://search.proquest.com/docview/457549060?accountid=3360.

-(PRIMARY- Report)

Margesson, R., Taft-Morales, M. "Haiti Earthquake: Crisis and Response" Congressional Research Service, Jan 15, 2010: 2-25

http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/R41023_20100115.pdf

-(SECONDARY- Analitical)

Bradt, G. "Haiti and Crisis Management" Prime-Genesis (Online), Jan 15, 2010. 

http://www.primegenesis.com/blog/527/haiti-and-crisis-management/  

-(PRIMARY- Article)

Lobe, J. "Haiti: U.S. Acts Quickly on Debt Relief Ahead of Preval Visit." Global Information Network, Mar 09, 2010. http://search.proquest.com/docview/457549296?accountid=3360

“Haiti.” The New York Times, October 26, 2011. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/haiti/index.html (accessed November, 2011)

Romero, Simon, and Marc Lacey. "Fierce Quake Devastates Haitian Capital." The New York Times. (2010). http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/world/americas/13haiti.html


"Haiti earthquake: history of natural disasters to hit the country." The Telegraph. (Jan 13, 2010). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/haiti/6978919/Haiti-earthquake-history-of-natural-disasters-to-hit-the-country.html



"Timeline of Haiti's natural disasters." ChinaDaily. (2010). (accessed November 2011). http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2010-01/14/content_9316563.htm

War is Bad

In my opinion, war is bad. I'm not saying that it's bad because I dislike violence or because I believe that there should be peace on earth, but because overall, war has proved to be for the most part, a bad thing for us. Through out history, our governments have resorted to wars as away to get what they want, but to what cost? Valuable money from taxpayers. Although we say money can’t buy us happiness, it sure can buy us health, or better said, help us be healthy. With money being used for war, as the war progressed and the government felt a need to prolong the war in order to win, they usually sought out to raise the cost. This in turn rose the percentage of population living under the poverty line, which led to malnutrition issues in families. But all the negatives that are usually cause by the government's need for war, including debt and lowering the economic status of the country, in the future, whether close or far, lead to improvement in living. Of course, that is only once the war has ended. When looking at individual countries and their progress after a war, most of the time, that progress is in such an amount, that if it were to be graphed, it would be highly noticeable. This is the good thing about wars, and post war times, people are brought together in search of a better way of living because war is a terrible time.

War is a terrible time. Although not in all wars, but in many through out history, men (mostly) were drafted and forced into fighting. Since in most families, it’s the men that were in charge of maintaining the family economically well, or as best as possible, the drafting that occurs in wars, such as in the Great War led to women having the chance to step up. This "stepping up" was a great step in women empowerment through knowledge. Its crazy how something as terrible as the Great War can lead to something as productive as the empowerment of women, through means of jobs. Another thing that war can do is can create job opportunities which in the long run helps pay off war debt and like in the United States, can boost the economy. But as we learned in class, while wars may have positives to it, it also has really bad negatives. For the Great War, millions of people from various places got together in a small area and fought one another for long amounts of time. We carry many viruses within us but we don't have a reaction to them since we've lived with them for so long, developing an immunity. This however, does not mean that others whom we meet wont get those viruses, that is exactly what happened in WWI. So all the interaction with people who carried various viruses and diseases got many people sick who later, if they lived through it, would return home and give it to others. So many people die not only because of war itself but also because of the conditions in which soldiers live in while in war.

How Bizarre Time Really Is..

If you really think about it, time is an incredible thing. Time is what makes our lives move. In history, time is different. Ten years can be anything and not important or it can be short lived but incredible. Usually, it is not important and basically, non-existent. But ask an average normal person how they feel about it and they’ll tell you, ten years, a decade, is a very large amount of time. Why is it? Well, I think it is because our lives are relatively short. Most of us try to hold on to everything and do as much as we can and I have come to believe that it is because through the advancements we have made, the speed at which things move along also increases, making time go by faster. But the idea of time is still fascinating and this change in the amount of things accomplished in a certain time frame also increases, as we get more advanced.

In this modern age, as humans, we are all moving at a fast pace. We are always busy. But how does time relate to history and to what we have been reading? Easy…

The Black Death. It was a terrible time, people were dying all over Europe and as time continued, it seemed as if it would never end. The expression forever relates to the feeling of something either highly desired or highly undesired seeming to continue for an extended amount of time, in this case, undesired. Meaning it went by slowly. Much of the world’s known population at that time was lost and all kinds of people were struggling to cope with the after-effects left by the plague. In other words, things were tough all over and life was basically at a halt for most people. Soon, things slowly went back to normal and life sped up again, to it’s previous, if not a little faster, speed. Although the pandemic was not terribly long lasting, the effect and influence it had in our capability to continue improving as a specie made it that much more important. It’s a good example of how things happening in short amounts of time can be highly influential and important.

The Industrial Revolution. It was clearly the moment at which time really began to pick up a faster pace. Humans became more influential to one another, interactions rose, and a day had more activities in it. The development of cities and the increase of population caused a constant need of supplies being provided, sources being used, and of energy circulating. The image that pops into my head when thinking of the revolution is of a petroleum pumper slowly increasing it’s speed, and also, the most commonly seen image, people walking and increasing their speed as their surroundings change. It’s interesting. The first image, the one of the petroleum pumper relates in my head to the symboliscism of earth not having unlimited resources and the second image relates to the so commonly seen sign of STOP.

That leads me to how they both connect to time and speed, literally, how. As our pace increases, is it possible that at one point, everything we know of will come to a sudden stop? Or will it reach a peak and just begin to fall?

Analysing: The Black Death in Europe by Giovanni Boccaccio

To start out, I would like to mention something that I noticed. This is not the author's, Giovanni Boccaccio, original piece, it is a translated version. I think that it would have been better for us to read his original work because we would pick up on key words used by the author to explain a certain something. While this version might be just as good as the original, it isn’t ideal. We have to rely that the translation stays true to the original text and does a good job transmitting us the ideals and emotions, along with mental images that Giovanni Boccaccio would have wanted his readers to experience.

P.A.P.E.R.

From what I understood, the main purpose of this article was to inform the reader about the black plague and it's impact as well as its possible reasons for spreading. The way that it is written, one would not immediately notice the references to religion because while it is not excessively noticeable it is also not non-existent. These references in the text are well woven in. This is because during the time in which the original author lived, religion was something that dominated and was a huge part of people’s everyday lives so it was normal for such references to be included into what was written. We notice such references as soon as we begin to read the article, “thirteen hundred and forty-eight years had already passed after the fruitful incarnation of the Son of God….” There is also a part where he mentions that the plague was so virulent that no medicine or praying/ faith could stop it. So basically, one can tell he is someone who has strong connection to religion. It is also noticeable that he is someone who is part of the high class because he talks about the way that most of the sick were those poor because they did not even have servants to attend them. He also says “ the plight of the lower class, and, perhaps, a large part of the middle class was even more pathetic,” while it could have been true, there were also those who belonged to the high class and fled their cities. The way it is said, suggest that he did not belong to either groups, meaning he was either middle class that did not flee or high class who according to him, had not need to. For the most part, as I read this, I found myself picturing him as someone who could have bee alive during our time because while religion is present, he also makes sure to include that things happened not because of God but because of our decisions and our form of living. It seems to me that the author intended the reader to be someone who did not experience the effect of the black plague, did not see it, or was unaware of it, it is shown by the way that everything black related in very emphasized and explained.

A few of the methods mentioned that were used to avoid getting the plague seem unreasonable to believe now a days but seemed to be very common back them We can also notice that while there were many that believed such methods, there were some parts that Boccaccio himself believed untrue. For example, he mentioned a few things by using “they believed” instead of stating the actions taken as facts. He also omits a few things, although it could be said that technically mentions it, he avoid telling it up front. He goes a few times around the idea of the plague spreading due to the repositioning of people to other plague-free places, and while telling it, he mentions certain groups instead of people in general which makes it as if he is trying to keep that information hidden.

In the other reading on the black plague we did on our text books, the idea that most people relied on both medicine and God to save them was shared with this article and so is the opinion that the poor were the ones who suffered the most and it makes sense because as there was a high increase in amount of doctors, only some of them actually knew what they were doing and those few were out of budget range for the poor which would explain why so many of them died.

Industrialization+time= Modern day Views on the Revolution

“The modern world is still trying to understand the many consequences of the Industrial Revolution on the world as a whole.” For the most part, I have come to gather that many us that form the modern world believe that the Industrial revolution was net positive because while pollution and population reached their highest point many, advancements were made along with discoveries after the beginning of this. I would say that this view that most of our modern day population has is a very unavoidable and understandable view but nonetheless, selfish. This view basically says, sure this industrial revolution brought negatives such as pollution and increase in usage of sources, but look at all that we have accomplished because of it also. We have extended our life expectancy, made amazing medical discoveries, and in one sentence, we have improved our lives as a whole population. I describe this as selfish because it takes the view from something that is made up of us. Our advancements…

While selfish has many definitions, I use it in this post to describe our need for survival and view on it and using it. The industrial revolution is a great example. We say it is something mostly positive because it has helped us. Yes, it has helped us, we have made medical advancements, we have increased our life expectancy, we have developed a more efficient way of living, and we have accomplished great things through the usage of machinery that the industrial revolution brought with it.

Survival. Our views on what is mostly good or mostly bad is based on the chances of survival it gives us. Of course the survival of us as a specie is highly dependant on the state of our surrounding environments so this would automatically be included into what it means to survive, right? Well, as it widely known, and as I have come to learn through readings, the Industrial Revolution did not only bring with it positives and a few here and there bads cause by the positives, it brought with it the power to quickly unbalance things. At the rate in which things improve, the possibility of a disaster increases. We have experienced many of these disasters and the reason we have been able to cope with them is because of technology we have had at the time or developed soon after the disaster. This is good, right? Well, it is good for us but not the ecosystem in which it happens. Disasters are defined as bad things with major impacts and consequences. That is exactly what happens every time there is one. But as long as we survive, it’s all good.

This is the mentality that we have developed as a modern world.

We like commodity and we like living with things ready for us to take/buy. We like this new live that the Industrialization brought to us, but does liking something mean it’s net positive? Or does it just mean we don’t really care about the negatives as long as we get what we want?