Whitney Houston – Your Brain on Crack…

If you have ever been involved in the addiction treatment of a relative or friend, or volunteered to work in an Addiction Treatment program – one of the most pernicious impacts of drug addiction is it’s long term impact on the brain. The answer to why addiction is so hard to quit, and why addicts do such “stupid” things is – the drugs often damage the brain. And that damage may take several years to recover from.

Now, I’m not going to lay this all automatically on Whitney – I’ve run into several situations over the last year, particularly on Delta where some of the flight crew were waaaaaay out of bounds, discourteous, and downright rude.

So here is the case of Whitney – reportedly sans crack -

Whitney Houston - Flight Crew Threatens … Fasten Your Seatbelt, Or Else

Whitney Houston isn’t on drugs anymore … she’s just crazy — and yesterday she almost got kicked off a Delta Airlines flight … because she refused to buckle her seatbelt.

Multiple sources tell us … Whitney boarded a flight in Atlanta Wednesday afternoon … and when she settled into her seat, a crew member asked her to buckle up.

We’re told Whitney refused and “got diva” on the crew member … until another crew member came over and warned Houston that if she didn’t buckle up, she would have to get off the plane.

Whitney eventually allowed one of the crew members to grab the buckle and fasten it for the singer — and the plane was then cleared for takeoff.

Sources close to the singer tell us … Whitney “overreacted a little bit after missing an earlier flight but she’s still 100% sober and was on the way to Detroit for her first day of shooting a new movie.”

It’s not right, but it’s OK …

And the opinions expressed in this article aren’t mine. I really hope she can stay with it – and that beautiful voice comes back…

Gabrielle Giffords Has Her IPad Going!

Apparently Cong Giffords has re-connected with her IPad!

That is a great sign!

Wishing the Queen Of Soul a Healthy Recovery – ReRe Has Surgery

Back when Re Re was the Queen -

Aretha Franklin recovering from ‘highly successful surgery’

Aretha Franklin is doing well after undergoing a mystery surgery on Thursday.

“The surgery was highly successful,” Franklin, 68, said in a statement. “God is still in control. I had superb doctors and nurses whom were blessed by all the prayers of the city and the country. God bless you all for your prayers!”

She underwent the procedure about 5 a.m. Thursday at a Detroit hospital.

The reason for the surgery was not revealed. In November, her publicist announced that she had canceled all her performances through May.

 

Haiti – “A Real Motha For Ya!”

Don’t know if Mr Nicholas D. Kristof over at the NY Times will ever read this – but here goes…

Haiti, Nearly a Year Later

Ultimately what Haiti most needs isn’t so much aid, but trade. Aid accounts for half of Haiti’s economy, and remittances for another quarter — and that’s a path to nowhere.

The United States has approved trade preferences that have already created 6,000 jobs in the garment sector in Haiti, and several big South Korean companies are now planning to open their own factories, creating perhaps another 130,000 jobs.

“Sweatshops,” Americans may be thinking. “Jobs,” Haitians are thinking, and nothing would be more transformative for the country.

Let’s send in doctors to save people from cholera. Let’s send in aid workers to build sustainable sanitation and water systems to help people help themselves. Let’s help educate Haitian children and improve the port so that it can become an exporter. But, above all, let’s send in business investors to create jobs.

Mr. Kristof  - I have been working on various projects in, and for Haiti now for 10 months. I have been there a number of times to meet and work with Haitian officials. By and large I have had the same experience with the Haitian people as one of your commenters, CK (#46), who said:

These are an entrepreneurial, industrious people. However, I can tell you that individuals can’t clear the rubble in any reasonable time frame. I spent 4 hours with 200 people trying to clear out the rubble in one large, collapsed building. We were in lines of 4 passing down the bricks and stones. We didn’t finish. An excavator and dump truck could have done the job in 30 minutes. No one was being paid for that work, and given the workload of day-to-day survival, I think that most people can understand that clearing by hand for nothing that brings clean water and food to families isn’t particularly viable. Though plenty of people are trying…

To be honest – seeing the Haitian people’s perspicacity on my first trip there reduced me to tears.

Your idea to “send in investors” is a good idea…

Except for one little thing.

To create any sort of modern business in Haiti (or anywhere else in the world today) you need functional infrastructure. I mean in terms of the United States and other first world countries it isn’t asking for much to have reliable electricity, clean water, high speed communications, passable roads, specialized facilities, and a large cadre of educated people.

Haiti has none of those in adequate supply. Which means few investors.

You are right that simply sending in doctors, food, and aid isn’t going to ultimately result in creating a better country…

But it keeps people alive until those of us working on building the infrastructure can get the core stuff done from which some sort of economy can be leveraged. And no, Mr. Kristof – you don’t build a septic plant handling 2.5 million people in two months… Or even 12 months. Or power plants, or an electric grid, or an internet backbone, or marine ports, or airports. Some of these projects are on the scale of years.

You don’t train 5 million illiterate people to be Rocket Scientists in 6 months.

Ain’t that a “Real Motha For Ya!“

It’s going to take 5-10 years… Maybe more.

Sean Penn Lays it on the Line About Haiti Aid

There is a huge stinking dead elephant in the room right now concerning Haiti. BTx3 has been working on this since shortly after the quake in January – so I’m fairly well versed on the problems (an there are a mess of them).

The issue here is that after committing nearly $10 billion to a 10 year recovery plan for Haiti, things hit a roadblock. The inborn corruption which has dominated Haiti’s serial failure for the past 80 years showed no sign of abatement in the face of the country’s most terrible catastrophe. Indeed – by some estimates over $150 million worth of the delivered $850 million in AID so far has been “disappeared” either by street “pirates” or by a group of corrupt Government officials (who by no means represent anything but a portion of the Government officials in the country)…

Resulting in the promised AID being suspended. There was a meeting at the United Nations back on April 30th where the 22 Nations which are footing the $10 billion laid down the law. There would be no more money as long as the corrupt officials held power. The donor nations KNOW WHO THEY ARE. The crooks got to keep what they stole, as long as they just left…

The problem is – the corrupt officials are sitting on lots of ill gotten gains. They are not the ones living under blankets strung out over the mud in the massive refugee “cities” which have sprung up full of people displaced by the quake damage. They also know that under current conditions an additional 200,000 or more could die due to typhoid or some other epidemic embarrassing the first world countries into acquiescence.

Business as usual in Haiti.

In the meantime, some basic shit isn’t happening. The 1.3 million folks living under blankets in “tent” cities aren’t seeing much hope of getting out of those cities, they aren’t getting enough food, and the medical support is strained to the limit. Violent criminal gangs are again roaming the streets, while the police – who lost 2,000 of their 8,000 man force and nearly half their equipment are struggling just to provide basic law enforcement, against at leat one, and possibly two “super gangs” who now outnumber the police force.

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