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“If you assume that there’s no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there’s a chance you may contribute to making a better world. That’s your choice.” (Noam Chomsky)

And what a choice that is. If you live in Haiti the choice is trying to sneak into the crowds of people lining up for aid or joining a gang raiding the parts of the country not safeguarded by the US marines. I read some interesting things along with the horrors in Haiti. For instance, that one week after the earthquake a platoon of UN soldiers guarded a waterfront area where about a thousand tourists were located, spending their time jetskiing, diving, with wellness- and fitness-hours and the luxury dinners they had booked for their travel. For instance, that one of the most important things in a catastrophe area is to install toilets or at least places where people can relief themselves, because otherwise they’ll take a crap anywhere and thereby increase the risks for cholera or thyphoid epidemics. But people rather donate 50 Euros for the welfare of a little child than donate that amount for portable toilets. For instance that one of the founders of Twitter asked himself how many of the people re-tweeting calls for donations had actually donated something. For instance that a vessel of the US marine has taken over flight control in substitution of the destroyed tower in Port Au Prince, but that they refused entry to a Doctors without Frontiers plane because there was too much traffic in the air, but allowed 2000 marines to land at the same time. For instance that emergency trucks loaded with food and medicine trying to get into Haiti have to wait for hours and hours at the border, because according to local law any kind of vehicle driving in Haiti needs a local license plate and the issuing and production of these license plates takes at least one hour per piece. But all of this has always been the same, hasn’t it? Beaurocracy and militarist thinking always win over charity. The director of the humanitarian broadcasting – the branch of the Austrian public broadcast company that organizes humanitarian campaigns – earns well over 200.000 euros per year. Half of that money would help a lot of people, wouldn’t it? By the way, what is Steve Jobs doing to help the people of Haiti? Summing up, we can state that there are choices you can make yourself and that there are choices that other people make, which in turn influence the choices you can or have to make. And then there are facts that just are, like the weather, gravity and that every day you need to eat, drink, shit and sleep. And all of this is connected with the choices you have or have to make. Sometimes you have no choice at all, even if there are a lot of people shouting: you always have a choice. Yes, true in a sense, but a choice to live or die really is not a choice at all.

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