There I was, minding my own business, doing the dishes when the nice UPS man left me this…
The Nook from Barnes and Noble
WOW!
I didn’t order THIS!
OMG!! My cousin sent it to me!
Holy [bleep]! WOW!
Can’t breathe.
It’s charging.
World: See you later.
Why are “missionaries” running down to Haiti for children after being warned not to take children out of Haiti without proper papers?
In this Saturday, Jan. 30, 2010 file photo, Americans, from left: Steve McMullen, Jim Allen, Carla Thompson, Silas Thompson, Paul Thompson, Laura Silsby, Drew Culberth and Nicole Lankford stand at police headquarters in the international airport of Port-au-Prince. Haitian officials said Monday, Feb. 1, 2010 they are thinking of sending the U.S. Baptists to the United States for prosecution after they were arrested trying to take 33 children out of the country without government permission. Photo: Ramon Espinosa / AP2009
I think Mike Doughney has a good answer to that question in his article about the arrest of PersonalShopper.com CEO Laura Silsby in Haiti.
Laura Silsby, second person from right (front) above, is among the “missionaries” arrested in Haiti trying to cross the border into the Dominican Republic with Haitian children. Prior to venturing into Haiti, journalist and human rights activist Anne-Christine d’Adesky told Silsby that proper documentation is required to take Haitan children out of Haiti.
Following the earthquake, several aid groups raised concerns about human trafficking in Haiti. (See Aids groups are worried human traffickers and slave dealers are taking advantage of the chaos.)
Following the group’s arrest, d’Adesky emailed the UN (From Topix.com: Haiti Allows Adoptions, Queries Missionaries):
New light was shed on the early activities of the missionaries by Anne-christine d’Adesky, a writer and human-rights activist from a prominent Haitian family who is a U.S. citizen. She emailed several U.N. authorities and said she met Laura Silsby, the leader of the American group, on Jan. 24 in a hotel in the Dominican Republic.
Ms. Silsby said her authorization to collect Haitian orphans and bring them to the Dominican Republic was from an unnamed Dominican official, according to Ms. d’Adesky’s email.
“I informed her that this would be regarded as illegal even with some ‘Dominican’ minister authorizing, since the children are Haitian,” Ms. d’Adesky wrote, adding that she directed Ms. Silsby to U.N. agencies helping the Haitian government handle orphans and adoptions.
In a telephone interview, Ms. d’Adesky said she recalled Ms. Silsby’s response: “We have been sent by the Lord to rescue these children, and if it’s in the Lord’s plan we will be successful.”
Ms. d’Adesky also told the U.N. officials that Ms. Silsby had planned to bring children back to the Dominican Republic on Jan. 25, four days before the group was arrested. She therefore urged the U.N. officials to “check on the orphanage” in the Dominican Republic because children might have been brought there before the group was arrested.
Having been made aware of the need for documentation, what could possibly possess an intelligent business woman like Laura Silsby to “Drive bus from Santo Domingo into Port au Prince, Haiti and gather 100 orphans from the streets and collapsed orphanages, then return to the DR?” Yes, these words are from her “Rescue Mission” document. (Just in case that document mysteriously disappears, Mike Doughney has a copy on his site.)
Do you really expect me to believe she knows nothing about due diligence?
Who in their right mind would think that gathering children off the streets of a foreign country – or hell, ANY country – and transporting those children out of the country, without documented permission, is anywhere near “ok” or acceptable? I call that stealing babies. I call that human trafficking.
So what is Laura Silsby and her group doing? If I look for her best intentions, I see a poorly formed plan offering some good publicity for her, her group and possibly her business. I’m not sure how the children fare in this situation. When the new wears off, then what? When she’s reached the end of her plan, what’s next?
Mike Doughney has his opinion of her intentions.
People like Laura Silsby are seeking to establish an industry of extracting Haitian children for adoption by Americans. The third page of their so-called “rescue mission” lays out a long-term plan – hopefully permanently derailed – to create a fully vertically-integrated industrial operation in Santo Domingo to obtain and prepare Haitian children for export, into international adoption. From PersonalShopper.com CEO arrested while returning from child shopping trip to Port-au-Prince
Given that Anne-Christine d’Adesky made it crystal clear to Laura Silsby that documentation is required, I am inclined to think Laura Silsby had her mind set on doing things her way, documentation be damned. So I ask myself, who wants to avoid procedure? Who is it that does not want the properly documented blessings of a recognized authority to move a child without a parent from one country to another?
Do I slide down the slippery slope and ask, if she is unwilling to follow procedure during a time of crisis in Haiti, what other laws or procedures might she disregard? Does she think she is above the law? Does she think these procedures do not apply to her? How will the children in her care fare in this situation?
Adoption is an expensive proposition. And a lucrative business, especially under the guise of a “non-profit.” Imagine you can lower your “acquisition costs” by avoiding procedure. You stand to make more money when you sell those children to their adoptive parents, sexual predators or enslavers. As a non-profit, that could mean more money for you: bigger salaries for employees, posh get-aways, expensive cars…
If you want to help the children of Haiti, either donate money or move to Haiti! Take your medical and health skills there. Build infrastructure. Grow food. Teach a classical education and leave God out of it. And one more thing… Get documented permission first!
Please don’t try to tell me how they’ll have a better life somewhere else. You really don’t know that and it is not up to you to decide. A child loved by her parents, grandparents and siblings is better off with her family than anywhere else, including our Western society with our incredible standard of living.
Please don’t tell me their mothers or fathers did not want them. I say prove it; show me the paperwork. In the aftermath of disaster, without documentation, you cannot immediately prove a family or relative did not want that baby or that child.
Instead, it looks like you are stealing babies from Haiti. Doing so leaves your motives in a questionable state. Trafficking in babies and children is a dark enterprise.
Haitian Mothers and Fathers have a right to self-determination. They have a right to their children.
If giving children a better home is your goal, you don’t have to travel to far away places. You can look in your own backyard and likely find more than enough children who need love and attention, who need a good home.
You can follow procedure and the law of the land right where you are.
Removing children from Haiti without proper documentation and without proper reunification efforts is a violation of their basic human rights and leaves any family members who may be searching for them with no recourse. We insist on the absolute necessity of taking the time required to conduct a thorough search, and we support an expanded set of methods for creating these records, including recording oral histories. From the “Statement on Haiti” Adoptees of Color Roundtable
Thankfully, child protection teams are on guard in Haiti to stop trafficking.
Having a documented procedure for adopting children helps ensure the safety of our most vulnerable: our children. Following that procedure protects families from lifelong loss. I would not want to be the Mom or Dad searching for a child taken without permission, with no paper trail and no way to find their baby.
Audience: US Income Tax filers who itemize Deductions
Sub-Audience: Haiti Disaster Relief Donators
Relevance: You can take a deduction for 2009 OR 2010
Action: Donate through March 1, 2010
Action: Save your receipts
Summary
If you’ve made a cash donation for disaster relief for Haiti to a qualified charity and you itemize deductions on Schedule A of your tax return, your donations are deductible on your 2009 tax return according to the IRS. This includes donations made by text message.
For donations by text message, a telephone bill will meet the record-keeping requirement if it shows the name of the donee organization, the date of the contribution and the amount of the contribution. For cash contributions made by other means, be sure to keep a bank record, such as a canceled check, or a receipt from the charity showing the name of the charity and the date and amount of the contribution.
If this post is relevant to you, please read the IRS news release: IRS: Haiti Disaster Relief Donations Qualify for Immediate Tax Relief.
The style of this post was inspired by Justin Kownacki’s article, The Relevance Economy in which he puts forward the idea that “relevance” of information is the metric that should drive “influence” rather than simply the “amount” of or curation of information. With a glut of information, varying wildly in quality, it becomes necessary to do more than acquire or curate information. Instead, he puts forward the need for “Chief Context Officers” or “Contextualizers” to deliver relevant information to different audiences: the general public, decision-makers in companies and organizations, elected officials.
Meta-data is necessary to put information in context. Thus, “audience,” “sub-audience” and “relevance” could be meta-data, unseen by the reader but used by a set of scripts to determine relevance on a per person basis. Amen to content in context!
Chief Brainstormer and Web Strategist. Pilot. Perpetual Pollyanna. Bubblette's Mom. Mission Man's Wife. When not working, you'll find her in the air, on the water or in her garden cursing weeds and praying to the Tomato God.
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Screw the Outsider: Self-Serving Zero Sum Games
Perhaps on a macro-level, non-zero sum games ala Robert Wright, are the way of the world. Perhaps, in total, non-zero is the winning sum.
But “screw the outsider,” a decidedly self-serving, zero-sum proposition, is played out on the micro-level in the lives of individuals daily. Scapegoats and whipping boys are the results of zero-sum games like “screw the outsider.”
As @TalesfromthHood explained in his post describing this behaviour,
When individuals, comfy in their thin-walled, make-believe castles, act collectively out of fear to protect their real or imagined, tenuously-situated power bases, you can be certain “screw the outsider” is at play.
Hey as long as you get yours, the end justifies the means, right? One more tin soldier rides away.
But I naively never expected it in aid work until I read his perspective on aid work in Haiti. I chuckled morbidly. Screw the outsider… the unfortunate modus operandi of some on our planet.
But that’s not the only zero-sum game on the planet.
Baksheesh: Everybody’s Got Their Hand Out
For 4 days of work and $60,000 you too can play “Everybody’s Got Their Hand Out” just like fired Haitian attorney Edwin Coq.
Accused of taking part in a scheme to extort money from the families of the 10 Americans jailed for kidnapping Haitian children, Coq was fired Saturday.
According to the Associated Press article, Jorge Puello, the Dominican attorney retained by the Americans hired Edwin Coq. He then fired him Saturday because of his involvement with unnamed Haitian government officials who were conspiring to extort money from the Americans in exchange for their release.
Coq defended his request for $60,000:
Sure, if you can get it.
Yes sir… Everybody’s got their hand out. Screw the outsider.