Nick Westover

This is a few months old but I’ve been on blog vacation over the summer. And though it’s not photography related it seems important:

Who knew that photocopiers had hard drives that keep an image of every document you copy?! Since 2002 apparently.

Used to be that before travelling I would zip around to the local postal outlet and make copies of all my documents – passport, drivers license, credit & ATM cards, birth certificate, health card, traveller’s cheques serial numbers (back in the old days), immunization card – whatever would have benefitted from copies to make for speedier replacement or assist in ID’ing me should things go missing. Now I just scan these things but only because it’s more convenient. How often have you photocopied your tax return or some other important documentation at Kinko’s or the corner store? Or what about the copier that’s on the network at your office?

A couple of years ago I photographed a web security guy for a story in a technology magazine, someone that consults to the RCMP and FBI on the issue. He said that the only surefire way to keep on top of this stuff is to track your own credit rating through the credit reporting agencies Equifax and TransUnion. He mails in the request for his free credit report to both of them – every month!

It seems like all those little spills of personal information from retailers, your local health authority or whoever are small peanuts compared to the potential for identity theft that photocopiers represent. Check the CBS News report:

Do donate to the emergency aid and reconstruction efforts but also advocate for reconstruction grants, not loans.

When it is said that Haiti was a disaster zone even before this earthquake remember it did not get to be a hopeless place on its own, there is a history to the nation: upon winning its independence from France in 1804 this country of newly free slaves was – 20 years later – made to pay France 180 million francs as reparation for the loss of their slaves, the citizens. It is the only country to have been formed out of a slave rebellion, however this freedom came at a steep price – the debt that France imposed was only settled in 1947.

Since then successive corrupt dictators, elites, interference and self-serving foreign aid from a variety of countries have combined to suffocate Haiti under a massive debt load from which it has never been able to remove itself.

Yes, donating money is good – news of new loans? Not so much.

The Sunday Times has a good background article by Alex von Tunzelmann dating from 8 months before the earthquake here.

The WHO has astounding stats from five years ago – Canada’s child mortality rate was 6 for every 1000 children under five, and Haiti? 119.

Here’s a list of the larger international NGO’s working in Haiti. And for information about the Canadian government’s matched funding program go here.

In a quick search I can’t find the CIDA listing of organizations eligible for these matched funds so here’s a list of the bigger organizations in Canada, all of whom, I believe, are eligible:

ADRA
Canadian Red Cross
CARE
Médecins du Monde
Médecins Sans Frontières
Mennonite Central Committee
Oxfam Canada
Oxfam Québec
Plan Canada
Save the Children
World Vision
and a combination effort, The Humanitarian Coalition

(Keep in mind that following the 2004 Asian Tsunami MSF declared it had received enough donations specifically tied to its emergency work there and requested further donations be made to its general fund so they could allocate it where it was most needed.)

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