Haiti: Before You Give, Know Your Charity

The following is an email I received from a very trusted nurse and friend to the healthcare reform movement.

I DO NOT RECOMMEND GIVING TO THE RED CROSS.
I volunteered as an RN and also worked for Red Cross in the 1980's. They are not that same organization since Elizabeth Dole became the first of several questionable 'CEOs' in the 1990's. ARC DOES NOT ALWAYS USE THE MONEY COLLECTED FOR THE PURPOSE IT AS DONATED! ARC controversies ensued after 9/11, Hurricaine Katrina and after the SriLankin Tsunami. ARC has a much lower ranking with www.charitynavigator.org than many other worthy service groups and relief providers.

I did medical relief work in New Orleans just after the hurricaine...and the Red Cross was shameful in it's hands off distancing from those in need. They even refused to give aid to Latino resident hurricaine vicitms who didn't have their ID's. Gathering millions of dollars in donations, ARC sent trucks to the Common Ground Relief storage, attempting to take our donated supplies which we were distributing to areas in need that Red Cross wouldn't even go to! Some Medical volunteers who came with the Red Cross defected to other groups due to frustration with the organization's lack of genuine assistance to the disaster victims.

Read about these scandals /problems if you are interested. Articles from the LA Times, NY Times, Wash Post, Toronto Star detailing ARC transgressions can be found at www.commondreams.org . search.

1. Partners In Health
888 Commonwealth Avenue
3rd Floor
Boston, MA 02215
tel: (617) 432-5298
fax: (617) 432-5300
EIN: 04-3567502 http://www.standwithhaiti.org
Mail donations to:
P.O. Box 845578
Boston, MA 02284

RANK 66.98 ****

MEDICAL care. Dr. Paul Farmer and Tracy Kidder longtime Haiti advocates recommend this group. They have operated in Haiti for 20 years.
Mission

Founded in 1987, Partners In Health's (PIH) mission is to provide a preferential option for the poor in health care. The work of PIH has three goals: to care for our patients, to alleviate the root causes of disease in their communities, and to share lessons learned around the world. Through long-term partnerships with our sister organizations, we bring the benefits of modern medical science to those most in need and work to alleviate the crushing economic and social burdens of poverty that exacerbate disease. PIH believes that health is a fundamental right, not a privilege. PIH works in Haiti, Rwanda, Peru, Russia, USA, Malawi and Lesotho, and supports projects in Mexico and Guatemala.

2. Doctors Without Borders, USA
333 Seventh Avenue
2nd Floor
New York, NY 10001
tel: (888) 392-0392
fax: (212) 679-7016
EIN: 13-3433452

RANK 61.22 ****
Providing trauma and surgical care.

Mission

Doctors Without Borders, USA (DWB-USA) was founded in 1990 in New York City to raise funds, create awareness, recruit field staff, and advocate with the United Nations and US government on humanitarian concerns. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international medical humanitarian organization that provides aid in nearly 60 countries to people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe, primarily due to armed conflict, epidemics, malnutrition, exclusion from health care, or natural disasters. In 2007, MSF-USA raised $152.1 million and sent 200 aid workers to work overseas.

Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)

Haiti Earthquake Response - Doctors Without Borders
donate.doctorswithoutborders.org
Your gift today will immediately support emergency medical care for the men, women, and children affected by the earthquake in Haiti. Please give as generously as you can to our Haiti Earthquake Response and help us save lives.

3. Operation USA

Disaster relief & development since 1979

International : Humanitarian Relief Supplies

Operation USA
3617 Hayden Avenue
Suite A
Culver City, CA 90232
tel: (800) 678-7255
fax: (310) 838-3477
EIN: 95-3504080

RANK 68.30 ****

Mission

Founded in 1979, Operation USA helps communities alleviate the effects of disasters, disease and endemic poverty throughout the world by providing privately-funded relief, reconstruction and development aid. We provide material and financial assistance to grassroots organizations that promote sustainable development, leadership and capacity building, income generating activities, provide education and health services, and advocate on behalf of vulnerable people. Operation USA rapidly and expertly provides on-the-ground aid by sending vital life-saving supplies and cash grants to assist communities in rebuilding. Partnering with grassroots organizations, Operation USA specializes in reaching vulnerable populations who are in the greatest need, yet who are often ignored by governments and larger aid organizations.

4. Oxfam America
226 Causeway Street
5th Floor
Boston, MA 02114
tel: (800) 776-9326
fax: (617) 728-2594
EIN: 23-7069110

RANK 63 ****

Oxfam assigned to lead aid groups on water and sanitation Update: During the next two weeks, Oxfam will coordinate international aid groups on the ground in Haiti in the delivery of emergency water and sanitation services. Water is the most critical need in a country where this week’s earthquake left at least 250,000 people homeless.

5. United States Fund for UNICEF
125 Maiden Lane
New York, NY 10038
tel: (800) 367-5437
fax: (212) 779-1679
EIN: 13-1760110

RANK 61.55 ****

Mission

The United States Fund for UNICEF was founded in 1947 to support the work of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) by raising funds for its programs and increasing awareness of the challenges facing the world's children. The oldest of 37 national committees for UNICEF worldwide, we are part of a global effort to save, protect and improve children's lives. Every moment of every day, UNICEF is on the ground providing lifesaving help for children in need. We provide families with clean water and sanitation, we vaccinate against childhood illness, and we help protect children against malaria. We provide nourishment to fight malnutrition, and we care for children affected by AIDS. We protect children from abuse, and we give them an education. We are here to make sure that all children lead a healthy, humane, and dignified life.

A Film Festival Genome Project

I had a thought after listening to Tim Westergen talk about Pandora Radio and The Music Genome Project , and how that should be applied to films. Many filmmakers are frustrated with the rejections they get from film festivals. Arin Crumley and Susan Buice really shed a lot of light on this process with Four Eyed Monsters and the accompanying vlogs where they talk about the festival and marketing processes they went through. So add 2+2 and what you get is this: a gnome film festival.

If you're not familiar with Genome, listen to Tim on the Workbook Project's This Conference is being Recorded archives. The Genome project categories music, one track at a time into about 400 attributes with ratings in each one (as I understand it). As Tim says, this translates into a truly democratic form of music promotion based on these categories and based on comparing the music that a listener wants to hear with other music that has the same characteristics.

So there would really be no direct all encompassing human judgment factor on rating an entire film. It's more on these individual traits. In film you could have categories like acting, actor, directing, director, photography, DP, genre, running time, locations, production company, on and on.

This makes so much sense for film festivals where fairness really is an important issue and one that is now clearly forsaken over branding, theme, diversity and other marketing factors that really are what drive film festivals.

Of course the Genoming [sic] of thousands of films submitted to festivals would be a monumental undertaking. So I think it would have to be something of a universal service for all festivals (like Withoutabox, which in fact already does this on a very small scale of non-merit factors), where you have a company categorize films and then you'd have festivals look at that database and select what they want. But again you could end up with festivals choosing films based more on marketing factors than quality or originality or other more merit type factors, and you'd also have to deal with devising a good objective way to rate acting, writing, directing and artist type performance.

Perhaps there could be a new wave of festivals that would choose film solely on the merit and quality categories, or at least those could be the primary factors with marketing playing a secondary role.

Another important point here is that filmmakers need and even crave objective feedback. This would give them that feedback and could even serve as a marketing information database for the entire industry. Filmmakers, studios, distributors and anyone involved with film production or distribution should be willing to pay at least something for such a service.

I'm both a filmmaker and an experienced data-driven software project developer and I think his would be really not a big deal to make happen. But it would cost. It would take a lot of labor to categorize films, and ongoing labor to maintain it; plus coming up with categorization strategies would also be a major hurdle. But probably Tim and the Gnome Project could help out with some insight on that.

A Fresh Start for Whitey

It's 2010! Happy New Year, whop-dee-do, and all that! I've decided the world has brought us to a new place, a new beginning of a new decade where we will see great new things happen.

Lets take stock of what brought us here. First of all we now have corporations in this country that are "too big to fail," so big in fact that they don't even have to make a profit to stay afloat. They get government corporate welfare. Now what other country has that shit going for it?

I think we should all welcome this new change in America as we move now toward a corporate socialism, where companies will no longer have to worry about competition, or those antiquated ideas like "build a better mouse trap" or " the customer is always right" or making money because they "EARN" it. It's the new millennium folks and time we all move on from the antiquated failed industrial ingenuity capitalism of the 18th century to the new corporate socialized welfare state.

Now, in celebration and as part of the PR campaign to bring this new change home, it's time we upgrade our flag. 13 stripes and 50 stars? Come on. Are we kidding? How many hundreds of years have we had that crap? Sure it was exciting when every few years they added a new star. But those times are long gone. Ain't no more states gonna join this union. No fucking way. The only union anyone is gonna join is the E Union. I mean come on now. One currency and multilingual, plus they got the Riviera, nude beaches, and the Cannes film festival. Sheeeet. I'm going EU baby. Screw this USA bullshit.

So to upgrade our flag and at least make like we even want to be an EU contender I say with spiff it up with the AIG, CitiBank and Bank of America logos. Money talks folks. Yesserieebob. Ain't but one thing that will garner people's attention away from boobs on the beach, and that's green currency baby.

Now while we're at it, we have to set people straight on what the good ole USA is all about. This whole equality thing is getting way too embarrassing. How can we have a Declaration of Independence and a Constitution that talk about equality when we have to get on with racial tazer profiling and Muslim only lines at our airports? Everyone knows that when our forefathers spoke of all men being created equal, what they really meant was all rich whitey men who married their cousins. They didn't mean "women." They didn't mean blacks or Hispanics or any of all these other growing hoards of races infiltrating our country to the point of actually making whitey the minority. So it's time we clarify this shit for all people to understand. RICH - WHITEY - MARRIED THEIR COUSINS. That's it! Everyone else can go fucking die.

Which brings me to health care in this country. If your ain't rich and white, then go die. Whitey ain't paying for non 'a y'all.

So let's review. We'll need to amend the Constitution to rewrite the Constitution to more accurately reflect the reality of the USA. Hey, this is nothing more than truth, honesty and the American way. Equality ain't truth. Capitalism ain't truth. But, Whitey rules in America? Now that' s a truth we can all agree on. Ain't it the truth?