Friday, January 15, 2010

A Challenge

A Challenge

Yes, I am offering a challenge. Haiti is predominantly a Christian Country no matter what the Pat Robinsons of the world are trying to tell you.
Now, I want to see if all you sign waving screaming people at the abortion clinics can put your signs down and stop whining over a cluster of cells and get your little minds and wallets involved in helping the thousands of orphaned, living children in Haiti wandering the streets and laying in gutters with broken bones. They aren’t as lovable as cluster of cells, but they need the help more. They are here. They are living. They are hungry. They are hurt. They are crying.
I want to see if all you teaming masses of mercenaries, I mean Missionaries, can turn on your godless hierarchy, refuse the boxes of bibles and demand they send you to Haiti with medical supplies and food. Yes folks, the local Evangelics are planning a massive strike into Haiti for recruits. Saving souls is more important than saving lives. They are lighter, don’t complain and can’t be counted.
This is a chance, born of death, pain and suffering, to right a long time wrong. Now, let me tell you why I am offering this challenge and looking to see if one person has the guts to stand up to these leaders who are more interested in converts which equal more money and publicity than alleviating human suffering. Will you stand up to a government whose powerful are calculating how much the companies contributing to their campaigns can make off this tragedy? Do you know the credit card and bank executives getting those million dollar bonuses are making at least 3% off every donation you make to your charity? Yes, they get 3% in processing fees, more in many cases because charities are considered risky businesses and pay more for processing. That includes Paypal folks! I am a merchant. I know how much they take. Even your debit card costs to process, often way more than a credit card. Are you beginning to see why everything costs so much?
Wrap your head around this one. The Golden Globe awards give out goodie bags to celebs, who are already in the millionaire/billionaire category, attending the awards. They really need them. I just copied this off the Extra Web Site: the bag contains $15,000.00 worth of junk and a trip to Antigua. The estimated actual value is 35,000.00 according to another news service. They really need more jewelry, perfume and dust catchers. Turn the plane ticket in and trade it for a ticket for a doctor to get to Haiti. Buy some food and water with the $15,000.00 dollars. Are you not embarrassed to even touch that bag?
My father, standing in a town where the primary business was the manufacture and sale of children’s coffins, was trying to explain he really couldn’t do anything for the line of children with bellies so bloated with tape worms they wouldn’t make it to the next month, as he pried open a crate of what was thought to be food trucked in from an American church, only to find it stuffed full of bibles, each with a heart felt message inscribed from the donor who paid around twenty five dollars (make that at least 150 in today’s economy) for a 3.00 bible delivered by the relative of minister in the USA at a hefty profit to a town of starving people, all written in English. The bad news is the only person in the town who spoke English was my father and he was no Christian. Those bibles made nice fuel for fires when they found something to cook. They thought he could cure those children because he was an American and we are after all: gods. Did you see those poor Haitians looking at the reporter saying, “America help us.” They actually think we can.
Shift to another country, running security at an airport without all those modern conveniences like X-rays, when he noticed the missionaries’ suitcase weighed 50 pounds which is awful heavy for clothes. At that point, the nuns leaving were also stopped and everyone had their suitcases opened. The only clothes in those suitcases were being used to wrap the gold artifacts being smuggled out. You should have heard the American consulate screaming it was against the rules to search the luggage of Religious Missionaries, Pastors and Catholic Church officers. I can’t print the answer they got but it did involve the word god several times and some impossible references about where to put the complaint.
Switch the scene to me laying on the ground after a bullet missed my head by one inch and two more hit around me. A little note, if you are going to be a sniper, never fire three times. You will be located in minutes. We pulled him out of the bell tower of the Catholic church nicely armed with an American made sniper rifle. Nice work shooting 7 year old children, if you can get it. Next time, aim for one that isn’t psychic and really fast on her feet. Of course, he isn’t around. It’s not nice or very smart to piss off a father who carries a gun. Sorry about the priests, but it was hard to believe he concealed a rifle in a pair of pants and a shirt. Stick to the immaculate conception story next time. It is easier to believe.
Try rolling into town and being invited to dinner by the grossly overweight town priest and his nemesis the Baptist minister at the other end of the block. Take a look at three kinds of meat, bowls of fresh vegetables and lavish deserts being laid out for you when you just saw people barely surviving, children bloated with hunger and old people dying because they simply were no longer useful. Seems in lieu of being able to donate money, everyone in town delivered what ever food they could to the local church so their souls could be saved. Well, at least the two maids and the cook were eating well there. By the way, they quickly decided they would rather have their bodies saved and hungry people can get real mean.
Try living in a world when you keep a pillow beside your bed at night so when they start shooting you can just roll off the bed and go back to sleep. Shock: a lot of people still do live in that world and they don’t have the luxury of a pillow and a concrete block wall to stop the bullets. How about a world where anyone wearing a uniform is probably the enemy? How about a world where you can be dragged out of your home in the middle of the night and if you are lucky, shot in the head in the street. If you aren’t, you have several hours or days of torture until you die. You learn to sleep with a gun under your pillow with your hand on it real fast, oh and by the way, it is really lumpy.
Imagine being burned in every place on your body with a red hot poker until no one can even place a straight pin on your body without touching a burn. The man’s brother was suspected of being a member of the resistance since he had disappeared. Unfortunately, the American supported military had forgotten they drug him out of the house and shot him two weeks earlier. You can blame it on bad book keeping.
Imagine having the chief of police tell you to close your eyes and hold out your hands, he was a surprise for you. The surprise is your husband’s eyeballs and he was alive when they removed them. Let’s see you calm that woman down with Reiki.
Welcome to the world I grew up in. I hope you never have to visit it. But I fear, your innocence is now gone. Mine left me before I was six years old so celebrate the years you had it. The world is now on your doorstep and it will probably kick the door down instead of knocking. These are not isolated incidents of my youth, they happen every day in this world, today, NOW. This is millions of people’s reality on a daily basis. They will wake up to it tomorrow. Now do you understand me a little better? This was my world for a long time and no, I am not going back. I did my best. The same people or their clones are still in power, still being supported by us, their governments propped up by us. Nothing has changed. Maybe you can do better.
Now, let me give you some practical suggestions and maybe someone is listening. Canada is sending a team to assess the damage. According to Obama, we need a coordinated effort with the Haitian government. WAKE UP! Coordinated effort means how much can the police and the military sell these supplies for. They need guards to venture out of the airport. Who has the guns? Let me give you a hint and maybe you can apply some of your American Idol brain cells to it. It will not be the people in the streets. So who are the relief workers afraid of? Gee, do you think that might have something to do with how many people risk their lives to get here every week? Wonder who they are afraid of…..Same people???
We drop entire tanks by parachute to exact targets with no problem at all. Do you have any idea how many tons a tank weighs and how big it is? Is there any reason we can’t drop food and water the same way right after one of these disasters? Heck, Costco already has it nicely wrapped on pallets. Go buy a few. The military has warehouses full of parachutes they sell yearly as surplus. Blanket the area with food and water. So what if a few bottles break. No one on the ground is going to complain or sue you. I can buy gigantic generators, ready for transport right now for pennies on the dollar off the military web page. Buy a couple and drop them. Who cares where they land. Trust me, people will get to them. Do you have any idea how much surplus is going to the dump right now that could be used? Full meals, water, medical supplies are just sitting there. They may be out of date, but believe me, those meals look like ambrosia when you are starving and you really can’t get that much sicker. You are dying anyway. They are willing to take a chance on out of date meals.
After the quakes in Brazil, we developed a system for delivering food. You could not land because the people were so hungry they would tear the plane apart trying to get to the food. So, we used old prop planes like C46’s and Conairs, outfitted them with extra fuel tanks so they would not have to land in the affected area. Then we installed harnesses in the cargo area to attach the men to so they couldn’t fall out of the plane. We opened the doors and did what is called a touch and go. You come in for a landing, touch down and take off without actually landing. The plane is moving relatively slow for the middle part. We opened the cargo doors and just shoved the food on pallets out the door. Stuff broke and people were eating the food off the tarmac and scooping it up in their hands and running. By the time the plane circled for the second touch and go, the run way was clean. It took two touch and goes to empty the plane and fly off. This worked well in areas where the landing strips were damaged or too short. We didn’t even use parachutes. The governments were livid and even threatened to shoot the planes down. They did shoot at the planes coming in for a landing but those guys are really bad shots. They never hit anything vital. They were also shooting at the people trying to grab the food as the soldiers came out in jeeps to grab the food to sell it in town. Welcome to Brazil. Such a lovely country. Those pilots knew how to fly under radar back then so we laughed. Hey, we used to dump guns, ammo and explosives using the same techniques and they never got us. Some of those pilots still have licenses or at least, they can still fly. Simply blanket the country with food and water in such a way there is too much for any single force to grab. Yup, the soldiers got some of the food, but the people got more. Trust me, it would be cheaper to send every man, woman and child a check for a 100.00, more than they see in a year, than to send in the military with one missile. Give everyone guns. That will be real surprise for the local warlord next time he rolls into the village. Just give women the right to inherit property and a gun while explaining how easily they go off when you are cleaning them. No foul if you accidentally shoot your husband. The Taliban will be history in a week. Every species knows the female is more deadly than the male and she will protect her young. Yes, that is playing dirty and that people is how you win. Feed, arm, educate and level the playing field. The third world will be a democratic, prosperous area in a few years. But, we don’t want to win this war, do we? Where would we get cheap junk to buy at the dollar store so we can fill the landfill up with it and make huge profits for the Wartmarts of this country? It might infringe on your next episode of Jersey Shores or WTF it is called. I know, it is way too much of a sacrifice. Watching future alcoholics trolling for sex and fighting is way more fun than watching people starve. After all, they will be producing our next generation of brain damaged voters so let’s vote them on the Island.
If you figure out how and why you are being manipulated by these shows don’t bother emailing me because I will probably have died of old age by then.

1 comment:

aswesow said...

Wow...you have said alot. (Show me your faith without the works. I'll show you mine by my works.) You aren't completely fair to Christians...still...well I'm speachless. Anyways, your challenge has got me thinking...I do know of one way I can help, and I may be able to do more. I don't apologize for being a Christian, nor will I ever be ashamed of my Christ. For me to not share the good news...well that would be awful. I am not beyond reproach, tho I strive to be...still, the gospel is about grace. Were it not a message of Gods grace, I would have no hope. Sharing the good news is a difficult. You see the same creation I see, obviously there is a higher power. I say the bible is the word of God...but unless you believe that too...well I can't cram scripture down your throat and expect any good to come of it can I? I'm sure we both agree that there is a spiritual dimension, that is no less important than the physical. We both agree there are also spiritual battles being fought, I can't wrap my mind around it all, but the battles are here, in our homes, universal. Still, there are some places, like Haiti, that you might consider front line. You seem to know alot more than I do about Haiti. We had missionary friends in Haiti...some 30 years ago. Anyways...you definately got me thinking!! I'll try to rise to your challenge. I think I'll share this on twitter too...alot of my followers are evangelical Christians as myself. Anyways, it sure is relevant