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[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. E s s e r <torx@joimail.com>

One Woman’s Lament for Haiti

By Teresa Simon-Noble
March 4, 2004

 
Haiti brings back the forgotten art of grieving as its mountains
burn, its democracy is trampled by the jackbooted march of an ousted
police chief who is supp or ted and financed in the armed take over
of the tiny nation by the Bush coup machinery bent on gaining corp-
orate power and control of the impoverished nation nestled atop the
Caribbean topography, criminally ousting its democratically elected
leader.
 
Haiti —another case of Bush chutzpah!
 
Another case of financing and arming criminal thugs in or der to get
what the Bushes want—a pattern established by George Herbert Walker
Bush during his Iran-Contra out of the loop story—in which the end
justifies the means, or the Bush I don’t give a hoot about the means
to get there as long as I get there. Nothing new with this same,
tired, old Bush st or y.
 
Aristide, an ex-priest who gave education and health care f or
Haitians top priority status as staple benefits of his presidency
to Haiti’s people, is told by the Bush coup machinery, through the
voices of U.S. Marines present at the scene and those of insurgents
better known as criminals with an ax to grind, that he better leave
Haiti now or he will be killed along with many of the constituents
who support him.
 
Sensing perhaps the presence of the Tonton Macute alongside the Bush
coup machinery, Aristide cries out for international help in
stabilizing his country—but the international community at the United
Nations perhaps by now acclimated with the Bush coup machinery modus
operandi is slow to respond and his cries f or help fall flat on deaf
ears; the silence of their response is shockingly stunning.
 
Thugs and Marines manage to enter Aristide’s home in the still, foggy
hours of a Caribbean dawn. Again they tell him he had better leave
Haiti now or be killed along with many of his constituents.
 
With his m or al and political leg broken by the Bush coup machinery
which enters his home conjointly with a band of USA paid political
thugs, Aristide, through force and intimidation, loneliness and
lack of support, is lead through the patchy fog of a Haitian
dawning to an airplane which flies him, ironically, untold hours and
many miles back to the blackness of his ancestry in a Central Africa
nation where no friends are waiting f or him, no supporters, no
press, no telephones, no microphones.  
 
In the nation of Central Africa Republic , reportedly a nation
closely associated with George Walker Bush (and now a partner in
this new Bush crime?), Aristide is housed by his captors in what to
him has become a mottled castle. The Palace of the Renaissance as it
is called, from wherein, courtesy of someone who slips him a cell
phone, the first wailing cries of a man deposed and ridiculed by the
Bush administration is heard by our beloved Maxine Waters and our
equally beloved Charles Rangel, as well as by Aristide’s friend
Randall Robinson.
 
Contrary to what the television netw or ks have been rep or ting, he
tells each of them, in clear w or ds, I DID NOT RESIGN. I WAS
ABDUCTED. THE MARINES CAME AND I WAS TOLD THAT I MUST GO NOW.
 
He leaves out accusat or y w or ds like, there was no one there to
defend me.  No one came to the rescue of my presidency, or of our
Haitian Democracy.  No one came to the rescue of my country from the
hands of a resurrecting Ton ton Macute.  No one came to the rescue of
my country from the chaos and dis or der planted in its midst by the
Bush coup machinery—not one soul through the lonely hour of my
crucifixion was there to bid me support, spare me the
embarrassment, anoint my democracy in the oil of legitimacy. No.
Aristide’s words are simple.  They simply are, I DID NOT RESIGN. I
WAS ABDUCTED.
 
W ords that fall flat in the hollowness of heart of the Miles
O’Brien of the world—Miles O’Brien, the CNN anchor who, in
foolhardy boldness, challenges Representative Waters and asks her
point blank whether she believes Aristide; his w or ds, or the
conversation that he’s had with her from his place of confinement in
the nation of Central Africa, or his charge that the United States f
or ced him to leave the country, or his statement that he in fact did
not resign the presidency of his beloved Caribbean Island Nation:
Haiti but was told by Marines and others that he had to leave now or
be killed.
 
W or ds that are laughed at by the Paggliacci-like stand of one Scott
McClellan who, in answer to several reporters’ questions as to
whether Aristide was in fact f or ced out of Haiti by the United
States, replies: “That is Nonsense!”
 
Words which are scorned and laughed at by Mr. Cheney who during a
round of interviews with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, MSNBC Lester Holt, and
Fox News calls pointedly calls Aristide a liar and turning the tables
on him says that Aristide had begun to surround Haitian streets with
criminal elements (of his dissolved Ton ton macute, one wonders?) not
favorable to Haitian democracy. 
 
Words which are equally laughed at and dismissed by one Donald
Rumsfeld, who, hamming it up f or the television cameras during a
news conference states, “NO. Aristide was not led away in handcuffs.”
 
Words which, according to Colin Powell, are OUTRAGEOUS, despite
the fact that it was he, Colin Powell, who outrageously lied to the
world when he was in hot pursuit of Iraqi oil and of an excuse f or
Bush Boy to fight Saddam Hussein to finish the fight that Colin
Powell and Bush One did not finish in 1991.
 
Ridiculing is one way to minimize a charge.  It is something that
perpetrators do when they are found out by victims who bring up
charges against them.
 
Bush, Powell, Rumsfeld, Cheney, McClellan, Blitzer, O’Brien and
untold other television pundits and personality anchors know it
very well.  Having no leg to stand on, for not one of the Bush
characters is able to state with a straight face, NO WE DID NOT FORCE
ARISTIDE OUT, they resort to cackling in the face of truth, dist or
ting and manipulating the questions that need to be asked and even
inflaming public opinion by having anchors and television
personalities cast doubt on Aristide’s accounting of his ousting from
Haiti by the Bush coup machinery. 
 
With fingers crossed behind their backs, like those of liars not
wanting to be found out, they posture Aristide’s words as
OUTRAGEOUS but keep him away from the press and from the United
Nations where he should be able to publicly state his st or y while
demanding a serious investigation into his ousting.
 
By pitting the w or ds of the black president of an impoverished
nation against the virtues of the symbolic American eagle, they plant
the image in many an American mind of Aristide as a scorned
president spewing lies about the Bush coup machinery in or der to
save face and clear his name while they, the perpetrators, do not
accept responsibility for their actions in the ending of Aristide’s
presidency and of Haiti’s Democracy.
 
In cutting sh or t Haiti’s Democracy and Aristide’s dreams of health
and education for many Haitians, the caravan of Pinocchio characters
which has seated itself at the White House plans to make out like
bandits while exploiting an untold number of Haitians who will be
barred from entering the United States by offering them outsourced
jobs f or which they will be paid only pennies a day and offered no
health benefits and no education plans.
 

Teresa Simon-Noble fchiok@bellsouth.net is a computer activist for
peace and social justice. She is a former mental health clinician. 
A poet and a freelance writer, her w or k has been published in
several online publications. This article is copyright by Teresa
Simon-Noble,  originally published by opednews.com Permission is
granted to forward this or to place it on a website as long as the
article is included intact, including this statement.  
.