“If you shared my pain you would not continue to make me suffer, to torture me, to deny me my dignity and my rights, especially my rights to self-determination and self-expression.” So begins a passionate piece by the Jamaica Observer’s John Maxwell, on the response to the disaster that the people of Haiti are currently struggling to survive. The disaster was not the earthquake that shook the nation but that the nation was so weak and so easily felled. 
The January 17 op-ed “No Mister You Cannot Share My Pain”, opens up the chasm of lies proliferated by western democracies, primarily the United States, which are directly responsible for the current state of affairs in Haiti.
It further exposes the media in the United States, the United Kingdom, France and other countries that have for years reported very selectively on the abuses taking place in Haiti. Today this biased press continues to misrepresent the situation in Haiti, absolving their governments of their sins against the people of Haiti and Africa, and placing the blame on the shoulders on the Haitians.
Once again they set us to tear each other’s throats, while they rob the bread even out of the mouths of our babies.
Other Caribbean states are not as weak, but Haiti we too, caused your pain. Because we stood meekly by and let injustice after injustice by heaped on your head, we too are culpable. While we may not have the power of a US, UK or France, we have the voices to speak, and loudly, about the wicked acts that have been, and continue to be carried out in the name of democracy for the sake of capitalism. The truth may not set Haiti free tomorrow but every voice of truth adds to the chorus that will create an earthquake of consciousness to shake the world into action.
Read Maxwell’s op-ed at: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/Maxwell-Jan-17 
Hot Bread n Butter 
