The Clintons are singing a different song today than the one they sang back when Bill was president.
President Bill Clinton's demands that Haiti slash tarrifs & enforce a NAFTA-style free market, privatize public services, rewrite corporate laws (sound familiar, everyone?) and accept food imports all helped destroy Haiti's economy. Clinton and his corporate friends such as Disney, Coca Cola, R J Reynolds and others didn't want a "savior" such as Aristide to interfere with their sweatshops. Now we are to believe Hillary and Bill have sympathy for the plight of these people?
Haiti – Regime Change: Caught between a rock and a BushBy William Bowles
Food First, a US NGO in a report identified US policies as directly responsible for the destruction of Haiti’s indigenous food production.
Moreover, the Clinton administration demanded that the main condition for the removal of the military junta which had deposed Aristide’s government in 1991 was the acceptance of US-imposed conditions which included,
" eliminat the jobs of half its civil servants, massively privatize public services, dramatically slash tariffs and import restrictions, get rid of price and foreign exchange controls, grant "emergency" aid to the export sector, reinforce an "open foreign investment policy," create special corporate courts where "judges are more aware of the implications of their decisions for economic efficiency," rewrite its corporate laws, limit the scope of state activity and regulation and diminish the power of the executive branch in favor of the traditionally more conservative Parliament."The Food First article continues,
"In 1994 USAID claimed it was feeding upwards of 70,000 Haitians per day. It insists U.S. food aid is not competing with Haitian production because the food provided is not grown in Haiti. But Haitian and U.S. researchers have concluded what Food First has argued for years-that U.S. food aid is undermining local production. Massive increases in U.S. food aid drove down the prices of Haitian agricultural goods in local markets
Please go to
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3594.htmto read the rest of the informative article.
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