Sophie Perchellet
Member of CADTM Committee, Belgium.

Geography and bad luck are only partly to blame for Haiti’s tragedy. Haiti was born of slavery and revolution, declaring independence from France on 1 January 1804. In exchange for diplomatic recognition, France forced the new republic to pay enormous reparations. Ever since, Haiti has been trapped in a spiral of crippling debt and exploitation through decades of US occupations and policies combined with strangling IMF-World Bank diktats. The fundamentals of the Haitian human tragedy can hardly be pinned on nature.
Extending a hand to the Africans
Barack Obama’s three misdeeds in Africaby
Éric Toussaint, Damien Millet, Aminata Barry Touré, Emilie Tamadaho Atchaca, Ibrahim Yacouba, Jean Victor Lemvo, Luc Mukendi, Solange Koné, Sophie Perchellet, Victor Nzuzi

Obama’s revamping of the Unites States’ image is still in full swing. In a speech delivered in Accra before the Ghanaian parliament, he reached out to Africans and vowed to help them defeat under-development. As previously in Cairo and Moscow, Obama’s rhetoric charmed the western media - at last relieved to have a winsome ’emperor’ to report on - but was strongly rebuked by those for whom his message was intended. Leading members of the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt (CADTM) analyse Obama’s paternalistic discourse.
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