Radio Hams Fired Upon In Haiti

Bruce Perens writes "A team of radio ham volunteers from the Dominican Republic visited Port-au-Prince to install VHF repeaters, only to be fired upon as they left the Dominican embassy. Two non-ham members of the party were hit, one severely. ARRL is sending equipment, and there is confusion as unfamiliar operators in government agencies join in on ham frequencies."

Comments

Re:Try to give them help and this is what they get

[girlintraining]

unless your an expert on every society and culture in the world you can't tell shit about what a given group of people are going to do.

Well, I know the difference between "your" and "you're", use proper punctuation and grammar, and try to avoid using offensive language except ironically or for emphasis. I believe I would pass better for an expert than you would, if our posting styles are representative.

there are cultural influences in how a group of people react that greatly influence how they will react to a situation.

If you have food, and I have a gun and am starving, do you truly believe cultural influences matter that much? Or perhaps you are just reluctant to entertain the prospect that morality is a social construct, nothing more than a set of coping mechanisms that we interpose between ourselves and our environment to ensure our survival? It is likely that you are taking the position you are out of a need to preserve your worldview rather than because you have made a critical study of human behavior.

haiti for example has a long history of violence and unrest, so it's no suprise there's lots of bottom feeders there willing to shoot at people helping them.

As opposed to in this country where our median incomes are far, far higher -- and so there were no incidences of looting in the aftermath of Katrina because of our moral superiority? In fact, one of the common threads you will find in any widespread disaster where the survival of large numbers of people is precarious, the first thing to go is any sense of order, civility, or morality.

Re:Dear Hugo Chavez

[PCM2]

I'll grant you your points, though I think Chavez' "populism" is a whitewash. Week in and week out, he's exercising dictatorial control over his government. Most recently, he revalued the Venezuelan currency and threatened to nationalize any business that raised prices as a result. Having multiple parties doesn't mean much when Chavez can eliminate term limits and run rigged elections, effectively declaring himself president for life. Current protests demonstrate he's not as popular a leader as he claims.

And I'm saying this as a resident of ultra-liberal San Francisco. I haven't been to Venezuela myself, but a friend went on vacation there recently, expecting to find the enlightened liberal paradise of the Western hemisphere. Instead, he found troops on the streets and a subdued, melancholy mood, and he came back disheartened and depressed.

Morales in Bolivia came to power as a champion of the farming class, but he represents primarily coca farmers. That's worrying enough, but alienating his country from the U.S. isn't going to help his people in the long run. His government is running out of cash, but he resists calls to stimulate private industry. Like Chavez, his brand of socialism is based on populism -- and like Chavez, as his country's economic straits worsen and his policies start to ring hollow, he will have to exert greater and greater authoritarian control to maintain his power: another president for life.

Not to go all Godwin on the thread, but I remind you that dictators are often elected. I call these men dictators in that their style of government is not truly representative of the will of their populations, let alone their best interests, and yet they can't be easily replaced. Dangerous, because they seem myopically focused on local issues to the detriment of world stability and, to a certain extent, the welfare of their own people.

Yes, the U.S. has a bad history in Latin America. I don't see that as an excuse for jingoism. From the average guy on the street, maybe; from leaders, no. It's pathetic.