http://www.chfi.com

I have mixed emotions about the orgy of images and information coming out of Haiti in the wake of last week’s earthquake.

Certainly the world’s resources should be mobilized and of course we should give what we can to help but we are naive if we believe things are much worse in Haiti today than they were before the earthquakes

The difference is the disaster has shined a spotlight on the suffering on North America’s doorstep.

Haiti has been the stepchild of the Western Hemisphere for decades. It is a failed state and some are concerned shipping billions in aid to Haiti is barely a short term solution.

America has invaded Haiti twice in the past, the last time when Bill Clinton was president and he moved in to oust a gang of thugs who were slaughtering civilians after a quasi-coup.

He left after a few months and after democracy had supposedly been restored

We lack the fortitude to stick with Haiti in the long haul. That is true of all western states.

I fear this disaster will pass and the troops and mash units will leave and Haiti will slump back into its typical state of not-so-benign neglect.

While I applaud the celebrities who are taking part in Friday night’s telethon, I am also left a little crawly. Are they really doing something or they just being seen to be doing something?

I have enough more pressing doubts about reporters who are in Haiti and helping reunited children with parents or protecting the vulnerable from armed gangs of looters.

I would applaud their efforts if the networks weren’t so quick to re-package their heroics into ads for news programs.

I think the work the troops and NGO’s are doing in Haiti is commendable but let’s face it, the only people who will make a lasting difference are those who have invested years and years trying to help, not to mention the Haitians themselves.

We should know by later today if Conan O’Brien’s last night hosting the Tonight Show will be Friday.  TMZ.com reports he is about to sign his exit deal with NBC.  Conan will reportedly walk away with 32 and a half million dollars and his staff, which recently moved from New York to Los Angeles, which be paid severance.  The two sides are still discussing who has the rights to characters including  Triumph, The Insult Dog.

Conan has apparently agreed to a 6-month, non-compete clause which would mean he couldn’t start hosting a show on a rival network until the fall.

This whole thing has been badly handled, but it’s no surprise. NBC botched the Tonight Show handover when Johnny Carson retired. You may remember from the best seller “The Late Shift” it was Jay Leno’s agent who started that rumour and many felt Leno helped push him out before his time.  This is nice-guy Jay Leno who congratulates Conan for being such a gentleman.  No wonder Jay can be magnanimous- he gets to look like the nice guy while painting Conan as the failure.  Let’s not forget it was Jay’s poor performance at 10 pm that prompted NBC affiliates to panic and force the change. Let’s also not forget that these are the same NBC suits that botched the first Tonight Show succession.

So what could they have done differently? Jay was beating Letterman in late night so why did NBC make the change in the first place?  And what about Conan’s career now?  He can always get a gig as a writer, but there aren’t alot of talk show spots out there and Fox is still an iffy proposition.One suggestion I read was that Conan should be hired by Comedy Central to host a late night show after Jon Stewart and Stephan Colbert. It would be a good fit!

But for Conan it would mean downsizing his dream, not to mention his paycheck.

Some random thoughts to kick off the New Year.  I feel for the people in Britain who are suffering through one of the coldest winters in decades.  A lot of those homes don’t have proper central heating and try finding a toque in a London store.  Still, history shows that this winter isn’t the worst in the U.K., not by a long shot.

Britain suffered through something called “The Little Ice Age” which lasted from the 1500s to the 1800′s.  You may not be able to find out much about this because some idiots have deleted references about this era from Wikipedia. It didn’t fit with the canon on global warming.  By the way, some scientists have shamefacedly admitted that global temperatures will be colder than normal for the next 30 years.  Some say global cooling is more likely than global warming because of sunspots.  It’s hard to believe in science when there is all this controversy about those involved.  The one story says that the man who kicked off much of the current thinking based his predictions about global warming on Siberian tree rings but he only studied three trees!

Here’s why I worry if they are wrong; we are committing trillions of dollars to new technologies based on the idea of global warming and North America will lose hundreds of thousands of jobs because of these policies.

I also don’t like the fact that people who question the science of global warming are called “deniers”, like holocaust deniers, like this is some kind of religion or an affront to humanity if a person is cynical.

My other thought about the so-called impartiality of science.  An expert with the European Union says that the pharmaceutical companies pressured the World Health Organization into declaring the swine flu pandemic.  We already know that they changed the rules this year and declared a pandemic even though the H1N1 virus was not  as virulent as past pandemics. How many billions were wasted on vaccines that will sit in storage until after their expiry date?

Scientific missteps can cost jobs, money and lives.

I know it’s near-impossible for people to shed their personal bias but too many times scientists frame the question to suit the results they want to achieve instead of waiting to see what the facts and research determine