'They are Occupying Haiti Undercover'

It's not quite Danny Glover crazy, but crazy nonetheless. Yeah, we're just there to steal their precious natural resources or something.

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez on Sunday accused the United States of using the earthquake in Haiti as a pretext to occupy the devastated Caribbean country and offered to send fuel from his OPEC nation.

"I read that 3,000 soldiers are arriving, Marines armed as if they were going to war. There is not a shortage of guns there, my God. Doctors, medicine, fuel, field hospitals, that's what the United States should send," Chavez said on his weekly television show. "They are occupying Haiti undercover."

"On top of that, you don't see them in the streets. Are they picking up bodies? ... Are they looking for the injured? You don't see them. I haven't seen them. Where are they?"

They're actually massing on your border, crazy man, waiting until you're not looking so they can invade.

That Didn't Take Long: Danny Glover Blames Haiti Earthquake on 'Climate Change'

I doubt the idiot Danny Glover will be receiving the full Pat Robertson treatment, but is this lunacy any more daft?

With thoughtful insight into the devastation that struck Haiti yesterday, Link TV board member Danny Glover spoke with our friends at GRITtv today to discuss steps forward for the Haitian capital. Glover points out that in this great moment of internationalism, the U.S. has the opportunity to rebuild its relationship with Haiti, and he voices a warning that disasters like this will inevitably strike again as climate change continues.

Listen closely for this gem toward the end of the clip.

“When we see what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens, you know what I’m sayin’?”

Tim Blair calls it a Pact with Gaia. I call it stupidity.

Linked at Big Hollywood. Thanks!

Religion of Peace: What Earthquake?

While countries and organizations around the world are ramping up efforts to assist those in Haiti affected by the recent earthquake, one sector of the world seems to be very silent. In reading the various news stories I certainly see where the United States, as expected, is rushing critical resources to the region, several countries in Europe are working to provide aid, our neighbors to the south are trying to do what they can and still no word from any Islamic group or country.

Could it be because the major religion in Haiti is Catholic?

CNN

Fox

MSNBC

If somebody comes across some Islamic aid being sent to Haiti post it in the comments. I would love to hear about it. Special message to Iran: Remember Bam?

UPDATE: A quick trip around the various Middle Eastern newspapers and you have to wonder if the folks in the Middle East, other then Israel--which is sending some rescue teams--even know that an earthquake has occurred. The only mention I found of it was in the Al-Arabiya newspaper and it has some choice comments.

The High Cost of Inflation ... and A Few Other Factors: Haitians Reduced to Eating Mud

Surely, someone will blame this on global warming. There certainly are residual effects on Hispaniola from the hurricanes in 2007, but Haiti in particular has been a hellhole for so long, it's a wonder whether it can ever function properly.

Either was you cut it, this should not be happening in the civilized world.

Poor Haitians resort to eating dirt

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - It was lunchtime in one of Haiti's worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud. With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest can't afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies. Charlene, 16 with a 1-month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau.

The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places like Cite Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene shares a two-room house with her baby, five siblings and two unemployed parents, cookies made of dirt, salt and vegetable shortening have become a regular meal.

"When my mother does not cook anything, I have to eat them three times a day," Charlene said. Her baby, named Woodson, lay still across her lap, looking even thinner than the slim 6 pounds 3 ounces he weighed at birth.

Though she likes their buttery, salty taste, Charlene said the cookies also give her stomach pains. "When I nurse, the baby sometimes seems colicky too," she said.

Food prices around the world have spiked because of higher oil prices, needed for fertilizer, irrigation and transportation. Prices for basic ingredients such as corn and wheat are also up sharply, and the increasing global demand for biofuels is pressuring food markets as well.

The problem is particularly dire in the Caribbean, where island nations depend on imports and food prices are up 40 percent in places.

The global price hikes, together with floods and crop damage from the 2007 hurricane season, prompted the U.N. Food and Agriculture Agency to declare states of emergency in Haiti and several other Caribbean countries. Caribbean leaders held an emergency summit in December to discuss cutting food taxes and creating large regional farms to reduce dependence on imports.

Believe it or not, some say eating dirt isn't all that bad.

Assessments of the health effects are mixed. Dirt can contain deadly parasites or toxins, but can also strengthen the immunity of fetuses in the womb to certain diseases, said Gerald N. Callahan, an immunology professor at Colorado State University who has studied geophagy, the scientific name for dirt-eating.