Exit Strategy

JACMEL, Haiti — Haiti has approved plans for more than a dozen sprawling tent cities in and around Port-au-Prince, the first step in an epic relocation effort that could reshape the country as up to one million people displaced by the earthquake find new places to live.

Full text

Responsibility Grid for Haiti

It was an earthquake. A really big one. Turns out the reaction and response reaches every corner of the globe. Perturbative, this event has challenged the dimensions of security, of rules sets, of money, of infrastructure, and of resources; and the world is challenged to provide strategic flows of security, aid, money, the energy to run the country, the resettling of people.

Last week I felt that “What the world community does now, defines the dominant logic and emotion of “globalization.” At the very least “the world community response will be illustrative of the nature of the huge complex process of globalization.”

The affirmative burden of responsibility

In Haiti, I believe we are witnessing a full spectrum response, working across domains and layers of responsibility. We are prepared; but we come on the fly, as well, strategically self-organizing. Yet, as good as we do now, the questions are coming: Who should do what? And when? And how?

Going forward, What will be the dominant logic and emotion of mutually assured dependence? Where and with whom will we locate the affirmative burden of responsibility?

The following excerpts illustrate my observations of the last week. Each is linked to a full text post.

Thursday, January 14, 2010, at 5:40

Triage in Haiti

… What’s next?

To what will you commit?

For how long?

Just saying.

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Friday, January 15, 2010, at 9:30 pm

Layers

Perturbating the order of civilization

Doctors are on the way

After the aid rushes in

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Saturday, January 16, 2010, at 6:25 pm

Pocket Aces

Why why we make mistakes and the power of regret:

“If we are going to err at something, we would rather err by failing to act.”

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Sunday, January 17, 2010, at 3:06 pm

collaborate

The Crisis in Haiti

Initial Response

Sense and Structure

Global is Local, Strategically Speaking

Resilience, Revitalization

Social Networking: Enabling Resilience

Participate, React, Create, Connect

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Tuesday, January 19, 2010, at 4:04 am

Unintended Consequences by disownedlight

Earthquakes make bad laws

Immigrants and refugees: Who gets chosen?

A difficult question

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Tuesday, January 19, 2010, at 4:02 pm

Holocaust Memorial in Berlin

Let history show

When lessons are learned

The value of retrospect

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Tuesday, January 19, 2010, at 6:57 pm

Earthquake activity 13-19 January 2010

Who knew?

Earthquakes TW3: That was the week that was

Who you gonna call?

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Wednesday, January 20, 2010, at 10:40 pm

Disaster Accountability Project

Observers “R” Us

How to participate

Connect via Twitter and Facebook

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Thursday, January 21, 2010, at 9:53 am

An app for that

Regeneration

The poetic hymn

Underneath the hood

Code name: The Enterra

An app for that

The poetic hymn

“There’s an app for that.”

Underneath the hood

[black box matrix] + [secret sauce] = [recombinator], par excellence)

Code name: The Enterra

Prior art: An iPhone app, social networking recombinator.

Holocaust Memorial in Berlin

“It held the line against the bad, allowing for its deconstruction, and the universalization of our economic model, to be followed, through our continued success, by the universalization of our political model.”

via Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog.

When lessons are learned

“Germany was a country where horrible crimes were committed in the second world war, and at least on the surface of it the republic we are now has dealt with many of those crimes. There were Nuremburg trials, “Entnazifizierung”, the 60s revolts of young people looking at their parents’ generation and seeing the Nazi horrors again. And now things are…calm? When I was a teenager and learnt about what happened in Germany between 1933 and 1945, I remember feeling the guilt. It’s just hard to believe that all this happened where you now sleep and walk and laugh. Berlin is a city where the Germans have put up many memorials, and I guess one of the reasons why I think it’s a great country now: Because people have tried to put up reminders not to accuse, but to warn us from making the same mistakes again.”

via kersy83, Flickr

The value of retrospect

Lessons learned, from epic war, or humanitarian disaster: What do you see?

Unintended Consequences by disownedlight

National Post, Marni Soupcoff, Monday, January 18, 2010
“Canada’s government is suggesting that significantly relaxing requirements (family-reunification requirements, in particular) for Haitians to come here as immigrants and refugees would be a good way for us to lend a hand.”

Immigrants and refugees: Who gets chosen?

Soupcoff writes, “The move would be tantamount to a lottery –one that ignores the massive problems faced by all the other millions of human beings the world over who suffer in equally perilous and excruciating circumstances.

“Why would we choose to embrace a crushed, suffering individual from Haiti over a crushed, suffering individual from Darfur, where hundreds of thousands have died? Or Congo, where millions have perished? Because the pictures from Haiti are more graphic and top of mind? Because on a gut level we’re more sympathetic to the casualties of natural disasters than we are to the casualties of man-made conflicts?”

A difficult question

How will we ready for the next time? “If we admit thousands of Haitian immigrants now, we’ll feel good about ourselves for a few months, and help some people. But what happens the next time there is an earthquake — or a war, typhoon, tsunami, or drought? What happens when those victims come knocking? On what basis do we say no?”