Where Was The True God

During The Haitian Earthquake?

Haiti: Possessed By Voodoo

A Nation Of Extreme Poverty,

AIDS, And Sodomy

...And he shall say, Where are their gods, their rock in whom they trusted, Which did eat the fat of their sacrifices, and drank the wine of their drink offerings? let them rise up and help you, and be your protection.

(Deut. 32:37 -38)

Relief Trickles In, But Not Enough

Jan. 16, 2010

Relief trickles in, but not enough

by The Associated Press, The Miami Herald, & The New York Times

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/world/stories/DN-haitiquake_16int.ART0.State.Edition2.4bccd19.html

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The U.S. military brought some relief to earthquake-ravaged Haiti on Friday, taking control of the airport, helping coordinate aid flights and evacuating foreigners and the injured. Medical teams, meanwhile, set up makeshift hospitals, workers continued to clear the streets of corpses and water was being distributed in pockets of the city. But three days after the earthquake struck, not nearly enough rescue teams or emergency supplies could get in: The United Nations said it had fed 8,000 people, while 2 million to 3 million people remained in dire need.

     Patience was wearing thin, and reports of looting increased, as another day went by with no power and limited fresh water. Aid workers warned that unless they can get help to people quickly, Port-au-Prince will degenerate into lawlessness. Time also was running out to rescue anyone still trapped alive in the many buildings in Port-au-Prince that collapsed in Tuesday's magnitude-7.0 quake. "Around three days would be where you would see people start to succumb," said Dr. Michael VanRooyen of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative in Boston.

     An Australian TV crew pulled a 16-month-old girl from the wreckage of her house Friday – 68 hours after the earthquake struck. Although her parents were dead, Winnie Tilin survived with only scratches and soon was in the arms of her uncle, whose pregnant wife was also killed. "I have to consider her like my baby because mine is passed," Frantz Tilin said.

     In dire need: The Red Cross estimated that 45,000 to 50,000 people were killed in the quake and that a third of Haiti's 9 million people were in dire need of aid. The effort to get help to the victims has been stymied by blocked roads, congestion at the airport, a damaged and closed seaport, limited equipment and other obstacles. The U.S. military had several hundred personnel on the ground Friday, including more than 100 troops from the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division. Hundreds of sailors arrived in Port-au-Prince harbor on the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson. Within hours, an 82nd Airborne rapid response unit was handing out food, water and medical supplies from two cargo pallets outside the airport, a helicopter lifted off with water to distribute and a reconnaissance chopper went searching for drop zones around the capital to move out more aid.

     Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in Washington that 9,000 to 10,000 U.S. forces were expected in Haiti, on shore and off, by Monday, and that the Pentagon was poised to send more. Meanwhile, the commander of the U.S. military relief effort, Gen. Douglas Fraser, said supply lines had finally begun moving. "If the citizens of Haiti will just remain in place and remain calm, help is on the way," Fraser, the head of the U.S. Southern Command, said in Miami. The Haitian government, he said, had begun broadcasting the locations of distribution centers for food, water and medicine. "Go to those places, use those places," he said. Fraser acknowledged there were still major obstacles and said he could not estimate when aid would begin arriving in the hardest-hit areas.

     There was also little evidence of relief in the streets of Port-au-Prince. In front of the collapsed National Palace, thousands of desperate people staying in makeshift camps were waiting for help. Marimartha Syrel, a nurse, said nobody had provided even water since Tuesday. "We can't cook food. We can't do anything," she said. "They are very hungry," said Rivia Alce, a 21-year-old street vendor. If no help comes, "we will die." Emilia Casella of the U.N. World Food Program said that agency would start handing out 6,000 tons of food aid recovered from a damaged warehouse in the city's Cite Soleil slum and was preparing shipments of enough ready-to-eat meals to feed 2 million Haitians for a month.

     Fearing violence: Tom Osbeck, an Indiana missionary whose Protestant-run Jesus in Haiti Ministry operates a school north of Port-au-Prince, said nerves were becoming increasingly frayed. "Even distributing food or water is very dangerous. People are desperate and will fight to death for a cup of water," he said. Asked about the concern of frustration spilling into violence, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said his peacekeepers, working with Haitian police, "are now taking charge of law and order in the city." As temperatures rose into the high 80s, the sickly smell of the dead lingered over Port-au-Prince, where countless bodies remained unclaimed in the streets. Hundreds of bloated corpses were stacked outside the city morgue, and limbs of the dead protruded from crushed schools and homes. The United Nations said that 9,000 people had been buried in mass graves – and collecting bodies had become one of the few ways to earn money. "They pay me $100 a day," Valencia Joseph, 32, said Friday. "We must have picked up 2,000 bodies. And there's more."

Haiti: Possessed by Voodoo

July 7, 2004

Haiti: Possessed by Voodoo

by Sharon Guynup
National Geographic Channel

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/07/0707_040707_tvtaboovoodoo.html

     The ceremony begins with a Roman Catholic prayer. Then three drummers begin to play syncopated rhythms. The attendees begin to dance around a tree in the center of the yard, moving faster and harder with the rising pulse of the beat. The priest draws sacred symbols in the dust with cornmeal, and rum is poured on the ground to honor the spirits. One woman falls to the ground, convulsing for a moment before she is helped back to her feet. She resumes the dance, moving differently now, and continues dancing for hours. It is perhaps no longer she who is dancing: She is in a trance, apparently possessed by Erzuli, the great mother spirit.

     It is an honor to be entered and "ridden" by a Loa, or spirit. In Haiti these rituals are commonplace: Voodoo is the dominant religion. "One common saying is that Haitians are 70 percent Catholic, and 100 percent voodoo," said Lynne Warberg, a photographer who has documented Haitian voodoo for over a decade. In April 2003 an executive decree by then president Jean-Bertrand Aristide sanctioned voodoo as an officially recognized religion. "It is a religion in the same way Judaism or Christianity is," said Bob Corbett, professor emeritus of philosophy at Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri. "Voodoo doesn't have a sacred text, a church, or a hierarchical structure of leaders, but it is very similar culturally" (However, nothing to do with the Bible and the true God, the Lord Jesus Christ).

     Ancient Traditions: Voodoo, meaning "spirit," may be one of the world's oldest ancestral, nature-honoring traditions, according to Mamaissii Vivian Dansi Hounon, a member of OATH, the Organization of African Traditional Healers in Martinez, Georgia. Today an estimated 60 million people practice voodoo worldwide. At a voodoo ceremony, believers gather outdoors to make contact with the Loa, any of a pantheon of spirits who have various functions running the universe, much like the Greek gods. There is also a responsibility to care for beloved and deified family spirits and to honor a chief god called Bondieu. During the ceremony, the houngan or mambo—priest or priestess—sacrifices a sanctified chicken or other animal to the Loa. Participants then ask the spirits for advice or help with problems. More than half the requests are for health.

     It is said that the Loa sometimes communicate prophecies, advice, or warnings while the believer is possessed. Other messages are sent through the priest or priestess, or sometimes come later in dreams. These disembodied spirits are believed to become tired and worn down—and rely on humans to "feed" them in periodic rituals, including sacrifices. Haitians believe that the Loa most often express their displeasure by making people sick.

     In Haiti voodoo began as an underground activity. During the 1700s thousands of West African slaves were shipped to Haiti to work on French plantations. The slaves were baptized into Roman Catholicism upon their arrival in the West Indies. Their traditional African religious practices were viewed as a threat to the colonial system and were forbidden. Practitioners were imprisoned, whipped, or hung. But the slaves continued to practice in secret while attending Catholic mass.

     Hybrid Rituals: It was easy to meld the two faiths, because there are many similarities between Roman Catholicism and voodoo, Corbett said. Both venerate a some sort of supreme being and believe in the existence of invisible evil spirits or demons and in an afterlife. Each religion also focuses its ceremonies around a center point—an altar in Catholicism, a pole or tree in voodoo. Their services include symbolic or actual rituals of sacrifice and consumption of flesh and blood, Corbett noted. Many of the Loa resemble Christian saints, endowed with similar responsibilities or attributes. For example, Legba, an old man, is said to open the gates between Earth and the world of the Loa, much like St. Peter traditionally throws wide the gates to heaven.

     "The Haitian people have a view of the world that is unimaginably different from ours," Corbett said. The Loa are believed to determine our lives to an astonishing degree, he explains, and they are always present in great numbers: There might be two people in a room, but there are also 20 Loa. "Our view is dominated by physical, touchable reality. In Haiti the spirits are as real as your wife or your dog," Corbett said.

Haitian Views Of Sodomy

Jan. 17, 2010

Haitian views of sodomy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_topics_and_Voodoo

     Voodoo is an ancestral religion, and viewed by some Western anthropologists as an ecstatic religion. It is not a fertility-based religion. This means that the majority of its members are not required by any religious law to reproduce, and homosexuals are not pressured to do so. Haitian Voodoo views sexual orientation as a part of the way god makes a person; homosexuals are free to pursue members of the same sex just as heterosexuals are free to pursue members of the opposite sex.

     In Haitian Voodoo, male homosexuals are seen as under the protection of the Erzulie Freda, loa of love and beauty. She is very feminine, allowing gay men to exhibit stereotypical traits during religious ceremonies. The documentary "Des hommes et dieux" presents interviews with several men who feel Erzulie made them gay. Erzulie Dantor is seen as the patron of lesbians, although she is herself bisexual having a lot of children and two husbands, Simbi Makaya and Ti Jean Petro, though she is said to prefer the company of women.

AIDS In Haiti

2005

AIDS in Haiti

FrontLine PBS.org

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/aids/countries/ht.html

• Living with HIV (2005): 190,000 (3.8% pop.)
  Receiving Drugs (2005): 6,500-7,000 (20% of those who need them)

• Est. AIDS Deaths (2005): 16,000

• Figures reflect statistics from UNAIDS and the World Health Organization.

     At the end of 2008, an estimated 240,000 people were living with HIV and AIDS in the Caribbean. Some 20,000 people were newly infected during 2008, and there were 12,000 deaths due to AIDS. In two countries in this region - the Bahamas and Haiti - more than 2% of the adult population is living with HIV. Higher prevalence rates are found only in sub-Saharan Africa, making the Caribbean the second-most affected region in the world. Half of adults living with the virus are women. AIDS is now one of the leading causes of death in some of these countries, with Haiti being the worst affected. An estimated 7,500 lives are lost each year to AIDS in Haiti, and thousands of children have been orphaned by the epidemic.

     Looking back through retrospective research, AIDS first emerged in Haiti in the late 1970s -- the same time it emerged in the United States. As one of the poorest nations in the world -- 65 percent of Haiti's citizens live in extreme poverty -- the small island nation is plagued by severe political instability, endemic diseases including malaria and tuberculosis, and a nearly non-existent national health care system. Haiti had minimal defenses against the onset of the epidemic.

     Around the same time the disease was discovered in Haiti, it was also found in Haitians who had migrated to the U.S. in search of a better life. Dr. Margaret Fischl uncovered some of the first cases among Haitians in Miami. She says the CDC "didn't believe" that her patients were suffering from the same disease plaguing American homosexual men and injection drug users. But by 1982, the CDC named four groups as "risk factors" for HIV infection: homosexuals, heroin addicts, hemophiliacs and Haitians. The stigma conferred by the new disease on all these groups -- who were flippantly designated by some in the popular press as "the 4H Club" -- was immediate and severe, but only in one case did an entire nation suffer the consequences.

     "It killed tourism in Haiti," says Dr. Jean Pape, who has been treating AIDS in Haiti since the beginning and who founded the Haitian Study Group on Opportunistic Infection and Kaposi's Sarcoma (known by its Haitian acronym GHESKIO) in May 1982. Tourism formed the backbone of the Haitian economy. "...Within a year the tourism industry decreased by 80 percent," Pape tells FRONTLINE. "Goods manufactured in Haiti could not be sold in the U.S."

     Although American public health officials argued that the rates in the Haitian population in the U.S. were high enough to warrant the high-risk designation, Haitian doctors and politicians suggested the labeling was unfair and racist. An international war of words broke out: U.S. newspapers suggested Haitians brought the disease to America and linked HIV to Haitian voodoo rituals. Haitians said homosexual American sex tourists brought AIDS to their country. The stigma was so severe that Haitians in the U.S. couldn't get work or sell their homes. According to Dr. Pape, doctors were "ashamed" to ask their patients about homosexual activity and patients rarely volunteered that information. Three years into Haiti's epidemic, AIDS spread to the heterosexual population: Many Haitian males who had sex with other males also had sex with women. Today women comprise half the number of Haitians living with HIV/AIDS.

     Rates have declined only slightly in rural areas; young Haitians are reporting sexual activity at earlier ages; and only 15 percent of females and 28 percent of males aged 15 to 24 report knowing how to prevent HIV infection. And some of the drop in infection rates may be due to large numbers of people dying. Despite operating a clinic in one of the most dangerous parts of Port-au-Prince, where one or two murders occur daily outside his office and staff members have been raped, Dr. Pape remains optimistic. "Look at Haiti," he says. "The country is in total disarray and yet we are containing one of the most devastating diseases, which is AIDS." Dr. Farmer concurs. "You hear bad news about Haiti all the time, and you hear bad news about AIDS all the time, but we can give you some good news about AIDS in Haiti," he says.

Where Was The True God During The Haitian Earthquake?

     Haitians practice Voodoo, sodomy and demon possession is the damnable life or the majority in Haiti. They have reaped extreme poverty, AIDS, and death. The Lord has sent many true, Bible believing missionaries over the centuries and still the nation refuses to repent. The Lord will not help because the Haitians are not trusting in the true God nor have repented and asked the Lord for His help. The Lord is asking where are the false gods of the Haitians now. They have sacrificed and worshiped these false gods that cannot see or hear and they cannot help them now. It is nice the world is pouring help into Haiti but it will be pouring money down the drain. The Haitians must turn and repent to the true and living God, the Lord Jesus Christ for real help. Until then, Haiti will continue to perdition trusting in their worthless false gods and false religion of Catholic voodoo and sodomy.

They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation. For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains. I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon them. They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust.

...And he shall say, Where are their gods, their rock in whom they trusted, Which did eat the fat of their sacrifices, and drank the wine of their drink offerings? let them rise up and help you, and be your protection.

(Deut. 32:21-38)