How to fix Port-au-Prince From above, much of Port-au-Prince looks more like a great grey beach of crumbled concrete than the bustling port city of 2.8 million people that it once was and will be again. Entire city blocks have collapsed upon themselves, the streets that bisected them now filled with the rubble of people's homes and apartments. The shattered hospitals are in as much of need of help as the sick and wounded streaming toward them. The offices of some international organizations - the people who usually help to rebuild after a disaster such as Tuesday's devastating earthquake - also were destroyed, and aid workers are among the missing and dead. With as many as 45,000 people believed to be dead, it's hard to imagine that eventually life will return to something approaching normal in Port-au-Prince. But history tells us that Port-au-Prince will rebuild and recover, at least to its previous state. Recent precedents are encouraging. "The reality is that this will take a long time to rebuild.
racismreview.com The Top Ten Percent policy is one of the key issues in the case filed by Abigail Fisher against the University of Texas now before the Supreme Court. Fisher alleges that her rejection from the University of Texas was based on discrimination due to her race (white). One of Fisher’s principal arguments is that the Top Ten Percent Rule has produced sufficient levels of diversity, i.e., that it already increases minority enrollment. A number of states such as California, Texas, and Florida have created “Top Ten Percent” (TTP) rules that guarantee admission to public universities for students who graduate in the top ten percent of their classes. In Texas, House Bill 588 created this rule in 1997 as a way to avoid the stipulations of the Hopwood v. Texas case that barred the use of affirmative action in application decisions. A recent working paper posted on the University of Michigan’s National Poverty website discusses the impact of the TTP plan on admissions at Texas public universities.
If Anderson Cooper Can’t Win After an Earthquake, When Can He Wi Earlier this week, CNN came under scrutiny by media watchbirds for participating in the epic story that is the aftermath of last week's devastating Haiti earthquake. After Anderson Cooper saved a child on-camera, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta put his medical skills to use operating on a girl whose life was in danger, critics like Poynter's Bob Steele accused them of "muddling the journalistic reporting." While Gupta and Cooper used their unique talents (in Gupta's case, his surgical skills; in Cooper's, the bulging biceps he's always careful to show when he's on location in an emergency), at-home anchor Campbell Brown fought back tears while reading the news. Cooper has made his reputation at CNN on his in-depth, sometimes difficult-to-watch reporting from disaster areas like Darfur and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. So how has he done these past few weeks, during the aftermath of the Haiti quake? Disasters are CNN's bread and butter, for Cooper more than anyone.
Black Agenda Report | News, analysis and commentary from the black left -The Best Place- Spinning the Economic News Last Friday a Bloomberg.com headline read: “U.S. Stocks Gain, Treasuries Drop as Unemployment Rate Declines”. Let’s have a look at the reported decline in the rate of unemployment. Do you believe that the US auto industry added 28,000 jobs in July amidst GM bankruptcy, sell-off and close-down of GM auto divisions, and demise of GM suppliers? No? Well, that’s what the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. The 28,000 new jobs were created by “seasonal adjustments.” More phantom jobs were created by the “Birth-Death Model.” The employment outlook was further improved by pushing another cadre of workers, who have been unemployed for too long, off the unemployment rolls. All sorts of distortions can find their way into the official statistics. Nominal retail sales figures can increase from an uptick in inflation. An increase in real GDP can be the result of underestimating inflation. Other distortions come from the year to year comparisons.
Is the U.S. doomed to forsake Haiti once more? - The Globe and M Haitians," François (Papa Doc) Duvalier self-servingly said in 1966, "have a destiny to suffer." For millions of his countrymen, it seemed a good enough answer, maybe the best. And just as it was during his murderous reign of terror, it may be the closest the Haitian people come to settling on an explanation for the unspeakable pain their country is experiencing today. Superstition, animism, voodoo - call it what you may - continues to condition how Haitians view the world and their place in it. Papa Doc conveniently drew on this belief system to cast as predetermined the nature of his own election and inauguration and even the assassination of John Kennedy - all took place on the 22nd day of the month. The particularisms of Haitian culture have also long split the global community - and especially the superpower most equipped to help its impoverished Caribbean neighbour - on how to help the country get its act together. In the middle of all of this stands Barack Obama.
The Angry Arab News Service. A source on politics, war, the Middle East, Arabic poetry, and Art Haiti Disaster Capitalism Alert: Stop Them Before They Shock Aga Readers of the The Shock Doctrine know that the Heritage Foundation has been one of the leading advocates of exploiting disasters to push through their unpopular pro-corporate policies. From this document, they're at it again, not even waiting one day to use the devastating earthquake in Haiti to push for their so-called reforms. The following quote was hastily yanked by the Heritage Foundation and replaced with a more diplomatic quote, but their first instinct is revealing: "In addition to providing immediate humanitarian assistance, the U.S. response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti earthquake offers opportunities to re-shape Haiti’s long-dysfunctional government and economy as well as to improve the public image of the United States in the region."