"It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but I had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did; nobody else." ["farmers"? - perhaps a euphemism for giant Agro-industry corporations]. Clinton is mentioned twice in Randall Robinson's An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President.

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Bill Clinton Apologizes to Haiti

"It may have been good for some of my farmers[*] in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake," Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 10. "I had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did; nobody else."

"A combination of food aid, but also cheap imports have ... resulted in a lack of investment in Haitian farming, and that has to be reversed," U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes told The Associated Press. "That's a global phenomenon, but Haiti's a prime example."

The best-seller comes from Riceland Foods in Stuttgart, Arkansas, which sold six pounds for $3.80 last month, according to Haiti's National Food Security Coordination Unit. The same amount of Haitian rice cost $5.12.

"National rice isn't the same, it's better quality. It tastes better. But it's too expensive for people to buy," said Leonne Fedelone, a 50-year-old vendor.

Riceland defends its market share in Haiti, now the fifth-biggest export market in the world for American rice.

But for Haitians, near-total dependence on imported food has been a disaster.

Cheap foreign products drove farmers off their land and into overcrowded cities. Imports also put the country at the mercy of international prices: When they spiked in 2008, rioters unable to afford rice smashed and burned buildings. Parliament ousted the prime minister.

Now it could be happening again. Imported rice prices are up 25 percent since the quake and would likely be even higher if it weren't for the flood of food aid, said WFP market analyst Ceren Gurkan.

Three decades ago things were different. Haiti imported only 19 percent of its food and produced enough rice to export, thanks in part to protective tariffs of 50 percent set by the father-son dictators, Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier.

When their reign ended in 1986, free-market advocates in Washington and Europe pushed Haiti to tear those market barriers down."

Bill Clinton's Empty Mea Culpa on Ruining Haiti's Agriculture Sector, 4/1/10 Democracy Now:

Bill Clinton apologized at a hearing last month before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, "Since 1981, the United States has followed a policy, until the last year or so when we started rethinking it, that we rich countries that produce a lot of food should sell it to poor countries and relieve them of the burden of producing their own food, so, thank goodness, they can leap directly into the industrial era. It has not worked. It may have been good for some of my farmers* in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake. It was a mistake that I was a party to. I am not pointing the finger at anybody. I did that."

Amy Goodman: That was former President Bill Clinton speaking last month. Well, on Wednesday, Kim Ives of Haiti Liberté asked Bill Clinton about his change of heart at the donors conference.

Kim Ives: But what about the change in your thinking to have you issue your apology the other day about the food policies?

Bill Clinton: Oh, I just think that, you know, there's a movement all around the world now. It was first--I first saw Bob Zoellick say the same thing, the head of the World Bank, where he said, you know, starting in 1981, the wealthy agricultural producing countries genuinely believed ... for twenty years that if you moved agricultural production there and then facilitated its introduction into poorer places, you would free those places to get aid to skip agricultural development and go straight into an industrial era.

And it's failed everywhere it's been tried. And you just can't take the food chain out of production. And it also undermines a lot of the culture, the fabric of life, the sense of self-determination.

So we genuinely thought we were helping Haiti when we restored President Aristide, made a commitment to help rebuild the infrastructure through the Army Corps of Engineers there, and do a lot of other things. And we made this devil's bargain on rice. (Haiti reduced its tariff on rice imports to 3%) And it wasn't the right thing to do. We should have continued to work to help them be self-sufficient in agriculture...

KIM IVES: What about the return of Aristide, which has been asked for by demonstrations even right across the street today? (During an invasion, President Aristide, was taken in a US Army plane to the Central African Republic in 2004 and since then has been denied reentry into Haiti.)

BILL CLINTON: Well, that's not in my purview. That's up to the Haitians, including those that aren't demonstrating.

In 2000 Aristide published a book, The Eyes of the Heart: Seeking a Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalization, which used Haiti as a case study of globalization, Aristide specifically points out problems with the World Bank and the IMF in creating larger problems within Haitian society and the economy.

Former US President Clinton is mentioned twice at the end of An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President by Randall Robinson, Basic Books, 2007

Among the paragraphs on page 257 describing the presidential inauguration in 2006, appears:

"In the reviewing stand near Bill Clinton sits former Haitian General Prosper Avril. During his rule over Haiti, the ruthless military dictator made lurid public displays of political opponents he had tortured, parading their battered bodies before TV cameras.

Between Feb. 29, 2004, the day of the abduction of President Aristide, and May 14, 2006, the day of President Rene Preval's inauguration, an estimated four thousand Haitian men, women, and children were killed by the American-armed thugs, the interim government's national police force, as well as by the American, French, Canadian, and UN troops. On the day of the inauguration of, however, the Haitian commonalty appeared to have lost none of its tenacity and determination.

Although UN forces tried to keep the mobile crowds from assembling in front of the National Palace, the mass of people eventually overcame the pepper spray, broke through the military barricades and took over the street.

Although the police and UN Mission to stabilize Haiti (MINUSTSH) had established a ban on all vehicles in the vicinity of the Parliament, Cathedral and National Palace, the street leading from the Cathedral to the Palace, was choked with masses of people. In front of the palace, hundreds of UN troops - grouped in national contingents from China, Nigeria, Senegal, Pakistan, Benin, Brazil, etc. held back a boisterous sweating sea of humanity.

Yvon Neptune, Aristide's Prime Minister, sits in prison as the crowd shouts derision for the new PM Gérard Latortue surrounded by the Clintons and representatives of other nations that helped the US and France overthrow and remove Aristide twice elected by the greatest majorities and twice overthrown.

The Aristide that had his Aids reducing and treatment programed acclaimed by the UN Health Agency, made more schools and hospitals, increased the minimum wage, (which seal his fate) and brought real democracy with participation of the masses of poor.

Four thousand Aristide supporters are still held in the new government's jails.

The above passages seem relevant to Clinton's apology. It was murderous politics the US was openly involved in, including two brutal invasions that removed Aristide from power that allowed for the punishing economic programs Clinton was apologizing for to be put into place and continued.

* Arkansas "farmers" was heard by this author as a euphemism for the giant Agro-industry corporations who probably contributed to Clinton"s political career.

Authors Website: http://prosecuteuscrimesagainsthumanitynow.blogspot.com

Authors Bio:

Jay Janson is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer; has lived and worked on all continents; articles on media published in China, Italy, UK, India, in Germany & Sweden Einartysken,and in the US by Dissident Voice; Global Research; Information Clearing House; Counter Currents; Minority Perspective, UK,and others; now resides in NYC; First effort was a series of articles on deadly cultural pollution endangering seven areas of life emanating from Western corporate owned commercial media published in Hong Kong's Window Magazine 1993; Howard Zinn lent his name to various projects of his; Weekly column, South China Morning Post, 1986-87; reviews for Ta Kung Bao; article China Daily, 1989. Is coordinator of the Howard Zinn co-founded King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign, and website historian of the Ramsey Clark co-founded Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now Campaign, which contains a history of US crimes in 19 nations. Dissident Voice supports this website with link at the end of each issue of its newsletter.