I understand your point that fixing the problems of a developing community by just stepping in and doing it yourself doesn't affect lasting change. Feel-good projects like building schools in Africa often end up abandoned by the community once the builders leave because we try to implement solutions that are specific to our society without considering that other societies simply work differently. In the long term, projects that instead empower the community to solve their own problems (for instance, micro-lending organizations like Kiva) are much more effective.

However, unlike projects that try to make the world a better place for generations to come, providing network access in Haiti was never intended to be a long-term fix... Rather, it was more like an air drop of emergency rations to bombed-out areas. The network access that's being provided is free and is absolutely temporary, so I don't see how this could be construed as a ploy to create dependencies.

There are lots of instances where aid is provided in a non-beneficial way, but this isn't one of them. Stop trying so hard to be cynical.

If the government really didn't care, I would agree with your point. However, I think they really do care.... They have just realized that in the current circumstances, it's more effective to keep wearing the happy face and lose some trust than to open up and try to improve legitimacy.

However, it's a really precarious balance. It works right now because the government has the power to keep most people quiet. This way, not as much talk is spread, and only a few people at a time get upset enough about the lying and oppression to really start trying to affect change, and those few people can be stopped. However, there are tools which are a threat to that balance because they let people be really noisy about the lies and rile other people up. They've evidently identified Gmail as one of these threats, and are now blocking it.

The act of blocking Gmail shows that they care a lot about what people are saying about the lies. At the same time, it shows us that there is something we can do besides feel sorry for their citizens-- and that's advance the tools that let people be noisy. We're a geeky bunch, and we've all heard of them before: Tor, I2P and Psiphon all help people communicate openly. All of those organizations could use your support, whether that's donating money or just running a Tor relay. And if you're really committed, all of those organizations have open positions!

I know that it seems like this is totally out of our control sometimes, and often I feel like there's nothing I can do besides just go, "damn, I'm sorry," but actually, it turns out that we really want to, we can help.