You know, it's nice that Bill Clinton was all teary-eyed about the effect his and everyone else's American policies had on poor battered Haiti, but the fact is, the country is still colonized by corporations and I don't see him doing a damned thing to stop it:

Hinche, Haiti - Last week, thousands of farmers and supporters of Haitian peasant agriculture marched for hours under the hot Caribbean sun to call for more government support for locally grown seeds and agriculture.

The demonstration was organized by the Peasant Movement of Papay and other farmer associations, human rights and women’s groups, and the Haitian Platform for Alternative Development (PAPDA), the Haitian online agency AlterPresse reported from the march. The official theme of the peaceful demonstration was “Land Grabbing is Endangering Agricultural Sovereignty.”

Singing slogans like “Long Live Haitian Agriculture!” and “Long live local seeds!” the crowd – wearing straw hats and red T-shirts – wound its way on foot, donkeys, and bikes through this dusty provincial capital. The demonstration ended at a square named for farmer Charlemagne Péralte, who lead the “Caco” peasant revolt against the U.S. army occupation from 1916 until 1919, when U.S. Marines assassinated him.

One year ago, thousands of farmers covered the same march route to protest the import of a “gift” of seeds from Monsanto. The farmers burned some of the seeds, calling them a “death plan” for peasant agriculture.

Last spring, in violation of Haitian law, the Minister of Agriculture gave the agribusiness giant Monsanto permission to “donate” 505 tons of seeds to Haiti. The first shipment of 60 tons, reportedly of maize and vegetable seeds, arrived in May 2010. Some of the seeds were coated with a chemical (Thiram)[1] so toxic that the EPA forbids its sale to home gardeners in the U.S.. Monsanto announced its $4 million gift was “to support the reconstruction effort” in Haiti.

I'll try to keep this simple: The Nation published a Wikileaks story which it then pulled to run Wednesday with the Haitian publication with which it partnered. But the Columbia Journalism Review picked it up anyway, because it's such an important story - namely, that it's apparently U.S. policy to further undercut wages in the Third World, not incidentally making it even less likely that manufacturing jobs ever return to the U.S..

The Nation didn't pull their other Wikileaks Haiti exposé (see video above), which recounts how the U.S., pressured by Exxon and Chevron, tried to interfere with an oil agreement between Haiti and Venezuela that would save Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, $100 million per year:

Two years ago, Haiti unanimously passed a law sharply raising its minimum wage to 61 cents an hour. That doesn’t sound like much (and it isn’t), but it was two and a half times the then-minimum of 24 cents an hour.

This infuriated American corporations like Hanes and Levi Strauss that pay Haitians slave wages to sew their clothes. They said they would only fork over a seven-cent-an-hour increase, and they got the State Department involved. The U.S. ambassador put pressure on Haiti’s president, who duly carved out a $3 a day minimum wage for textile companies (the U.S. minimum wage, which itself is very low, works out to $58 a day).

The Nation:

Still the US Embassy wasn’t pleased. A deputy chief of mission, David E. Lindwall, said the $5 per day minimum “did not take economic reality into account” but was a populist measure aimed at appealing to “the unemployed and underpaid masses.”

Well, hey. Imagine Haitians doing things for their “unemployed and underpaid masses” rather than rich Yankee corporations. The outrage! No wonder we have 9.1 percent unemployment and 16 percent underemployment here while the folks who sent the economy in the tank are back making millions.

Let’s do a little math. Haiti has about 25,000 garment workers. If you paid each of them $2 a day more, it would cost their employers $50,000 per working day, or about $12.5 million a year.

Zooming in on specific companies helps clarify this even more. As of last year Hanes had 3,200 Haitians making t-shirts for it. Paying each of them two bucks a day more would cost it about $1.6 million a year. Hanesbrands Incorporated made $211 million on $4.3 billion in sales last year, and presumably it would pass on at least some of its higher labor costs to consumers.

CJR points out that Hanesbrands CEO Richard Noll, on the other hand, got a nice cushy $10 million compensation package last year.

And that five dollars a day that wasn't "economic reality" for the U.S. embassy representative? The Nation reports that a Haitian family of three (two kids) needed $12.50 a day in 2008 to make ends meet. So the U.S. is on the record in favor of poverty.

Wyclef Jean has filed papers to run for president of Haiti, and Sean Penn is skeptical.

Interviewed on CNN last night as Wyclef officially announced his bid, Penn said, "This is somebody who's going to receive an enormous amount of support from the United States, and I have to say I'm very suspicious of it, simply because he, as an ambassador at large, has been virtually silent. For those of us in Haiti, he has been a non-presence," Penn said.

Penn, who has been active in Haiti since the earthquake, highlighted allegations that Wyclef mishandled $400,000 donated for the country through his Yele Haiti foundation. "He claims he didn't do it. That has to be looked into it," said Penn, who has been running a 55,000-person tent camp through the J/P Haitian Relief Organization he co-founded. "I've been there. I know what $400,000 could do for these people's lives."

He added, "I'm not accusing Wyclef Jean of being an opportunist; I don't know the man," Penn told Wolf Blitzer, who was filling in for Larry King. "One of the reasons I don't know very much about Wyclef Jean is that I haven't seen or heard anything of him in these last six months that I've been in Haiti."

(Image credit to Dropstone Farms.)

This is how our corporations practice disaster capitalism. They insinuate themselves into these fragile economies in third-world countries under the guise of "help", usually in the form of signing contracts they either don't understand, or that are overwhelming coercion. So it's heartening to see Haitians fighting back:

“A new earthquake” is what peasant farmer leader Chavannes Jean-Baptiste of the Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP) called the news that American agribusiness giant Monsanto will be donating 60,000 sacks (475 tons) of hybrid corn and vegetable seeds to Haiti—some of them treated with highly toxic pesticides. The MPP has committed to burning Monsanto’s seeds, and has called for a march to protest the corporation’s presence in Haiti on June 4, World Environment Day.

In an open letter sent May 14, Jean-Baptiste, both Executive Director of MPP and the spokesperson for the National Peasant Movement of the Congress of Papay (MPNKP), called the entry of Monsanto seeds into Haiti “a very strong attack on small agriculture, on farmers, on biodiversity, on Creole seeds…and on what is left of our environment in Haiti.”[1]

Haitian social movements have been vocal in their opposition to imports of seeds and food from agribusinesses, which they say undermine local production and local seed stocks. They have expressed special concern about the import of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). For now, without a law regulating the use of GMOs in Haiti, the Ministry of Agriculture rejected any offer of genetically modified Roundup Ready seeds. In an email exchange, a Monsanto representative assured the Ministry of Agriculture that the seeds being donated are not genetically modified.

With that exclusion, the Haitian Ministry of Agriculture approved the donation (Elizabeth Vancil, Monsanto’s Director of Development Initiatives, called the news “a fabulous Easter gift” in an April email). [2]

Monsanto is known for aggressively pushing seeds, particularly GMO seeds, in both the global North and South—including through highly restrictive technology agreements with farmers who are not always made fully aware of what they are signing. According to interviews by this writer with representatives of Mexican small farmer organizations, contracted farmers then find themselves forced to buy Monsanto seeds each year under conditions they find onerous and at costs they sometimes cannot afford.

The hybrid corn seeds Monsanto has donated to Haiti are treated with the fungicide Maxim XO, and the calypso tomato seeds are treated with thiram. [3] Thiram belongs to a highly toxic class of chemicals called ethylene bisdithiocarbamates (EBDCs). Results of tests of EBDCs on mice and rats caused concern to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which then ordered a special review. The EPA determined that EBDC-treated plants are so dangerous to agricultural workers that they must wear special protective clothing when handling them. The EPA also ruled that pesticides containing thiram must contain a special warning label. The EPA also barred marketing of the chemicals for many home garden products, based on the assumption that most gardeners do not have adequately protective clothing. [4]

Monsanto’s passing mention of thiram to Ministry of Agriculture officials in an email contained no explanation of the dangers, nor any offer of special clothing or training for those who will be farming with the toxic seeds.

As I've noted before, Haiti's earthquake recovery problems were exacerbated by the economic and trade policies pushed on them by the United States. Now Bill Clinton has admitted as much:

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- The earthquake not only smashed markets, collapsed warehouses and left more than 2.5 million people without enough to eat. It may also have shaken up the way the developing world gets food.

Decades of inexpensive imports - especially rice from the U.S. - punctuated with abundant aid in various crises have destroyed local agriculture and left impoverished countries such as Haiti unable to feed themselves.

While those policies have been criticized for years in aid worker circles, world leaders focused on fixing Haiti are admitting for the first time that loosening trade barriers has only exacerbated hunger in Haiti and elsewhere.

They're led by former U.S. President Bill Clinton - now U.N. special envoy to Haiti - who publicly apologized this month for championing policies that destroyed Haiti's rice production. Clinton in the mid-1990s encouraged the impoverished country to dramatically cut tariffs on imported U.S. rice.

"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."

Clinton and former President George W. Bush, who are spearheading U.S. fundraising for Haiti, arrive Monday in Port-au-Prince. Then comes a key Haiti donors' conference on March 31 at the United Nations in New York.

Those opportunities present the country with its best chance in decades to build long-term food production, and could provide a model for other developing countries struggling to feed themselves.

"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. I think this is where we should start."

It's a classy move on the part of the former president. While greeting Haiti citizens as part of the Clinton Bush Initiative for Haiti relief, watch carefully as GWB shakes hands with a Haitian and then wipes his hand off on Bill Clinton's shoulder. I guess that's better than turning around for a squirt of hand sanitizer by a waiting assistant. Maybe. Sort of.

By the way, along those lines, Bill Clinton did something astounding the other day: he apologized for the economic policies he pursued during his tenure as president that he admitted had devastated the Haitian economy.

Decades of inexpensive imports - especially rice from the U.S. - punctuated with abundant aid in various crises have destroyed local agriculture and left impoverished countries such as Haiti unable to feed themselves.

While those policies have been criticized for years in aid worker circles, world leaders focused on fixing Haiti are admitting for the first time that loosening trade barriers has only exacerbated hunger in Haiti and elsewhere.

They're led by former U.S. President Bill Clinton - now U.N. special envoy to Haiti - who publicly apologized this month for championing policies that destroyed Haiti's rice production. Clinton in the mid-1990s encouraged the impoverished country to dramatically cut tariffs on imported U.S. rice.

"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."

Wow. What an amazing admission. The sad thing was that it was buried within a story on WaPo published Saturday far from the front page.

Bob Marshall is the Virginia Republican legislator who recently made a name for himself by claiming that God punishes women who have abortions by giving them disabled children.

Now we have footage of the guy who introduced Marshall at last week’s anti-Planned Parenthood press conference in Richmond, and it ain’t pretty.

Rev. Joe Ellison – with Marshall at his back – vouched for Pat Robertson and said that God punished Haitians with an earthquake because they practice voodoo. Then he introduced Marshall as a "warrior who will fight for our cause." Two minutes later, Marshall made his infamous remarks about God punishing women who have abortions. Here's Ellison, in the video above:

"From a spiritual standpoint, we think the Dr. Robertson was on target about Haiti, in the past, with voodoo. And we believe in the Bible that the practice of voodoo is a sin, and what caused the nation to suffer. Those who read the Bible and study the history know that what Dr. Robertson said was the truth."

Does Marshall stand behind Ellison and his remarks on Haiti? He would no doubt say no. After all, he is running away from his own remarks and lashing out at the student-run Capital News Service, which broke the story and ran circles around veteran statehouse reporters.

But the video of Marshall’s remarks speaks for itself, and the Ellison video is the nail in the coffin. Both men – like Pat Robertson – believe that God exacts vengeance on those who do not follow their peculiar and ultraconservative interpretation of the Bible.

Marshall is entitled to his offensive views, but he should not run from them. Pat Robertson, if there’s one thing you can say about him, at least has the courage of his convictions.

Mock, Paper, Scissors: Family Values in Texas

Evil Slut Clique: Huge (un)ethical issues marketing to, and from, Mommybloggers.

Group News Blog: Lower Manhattanite is back, with a very long but very worthwhile post on Haiti.

The Black Snob: Something in R&B Music does not compute.

Rumproast: Republicans are weirdos.

Guest round up by Blue Gal; Mike returns tomorrow. Send tips to finnsagain AT aol DOT com

The arrest of ten Baptists in Haiti for attempting to kidnap and deal in child trafficking (allegedly) brings out the usual right wing defenders. Too bad the religious right acts more like a partisan political party instead of promoting true religious thoughts.

Glenn Greenwald documents the hypocrisy.

To J-Lo, human decency and real human rights are only to be delivered to her tribe.

I am so pleased this is finally happening. Haiti has been burdened by its national debt for a long time and this will help speed their recovery from the massive earthquake:

The world's leading industrialised nations have pledged to write off the debts that Haiti owes them, following a devastating earthquake last month.

Canada's finance minister announced at a summit in Iqaluit, northern Canada, that Group of Seven countries planned to cancel Haiti's bilateral debts.

Jim Flaherty said he would encourage international lenders to do the same.

Some $1.2bn (£800m) of Haiti's debts to countries and international lending bodies has already been cancelled.

"We are committed in the G7 to the forgiveness of debt, in fact all bilateral debt has been forgiven by G7 countries vis-a-vis Haiti," Mr Flaherty said at the end of the two day gathering of finance ministers.