5452: Re: 5451: Re 5423: The phrase - a new version (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Florence Delimon <fdd7929@garnet.acns.fsu.edu>

Ah, Guy Antoine, how cheerful and optimistic you are.

The phrase "Haiti, the poorest country in the Northern hemisphere..." will
never go, because the bottom line is how much your country produces, and how
much money your country generates (for somebody else, mind you) - and on the
international market, Haiti produces nothing - if not headaches and
seemingly senseless diplomatic deadlocks.

That Haiti is much more than the sum of problems that it has been going
through for over a decade, that all these problems, and this poverty, did
not come to fruition out of a vacuum is, well, too complex to deal with and
make sense out of...  So why not stick to good ol' "Haiti, the poorest
country in the Northern hemisphere...".

Your complaints?  Our dignity?  Do you bring enough money (for somebody else
to profit from it, of course) to the table to have the right to ask for
"equitable treatment"? Naaah.

I am as upset as you are, Guy Antoine, and I don't think my answer here is
bringing solace or help.  Let's just say I am sarcastically venting and
chorusing with you.  I also wish that my own complaints would be heard, and
that I, as a Haitian woman, would stop being labeled as a citizen of the
poorest nation in Northern hemisphere.  We are all worth more than that.
But since we are not establishing the "grading" criteria, I am afraid the
label is stuck, for now and for a long time.

Florence