Image is of the American military during their occupation of Haiti at the beginning of the 20th century, taken from this NYT article from 2022: Invade Haiti, Wall Street Urged. The U.S. Obliged.
In the aftermath of the assassination of Jovenel Moïse in 2021 and his replacement by Western comprador Ariel Henry, the situation in Haiti is the most dire it has been in decades - by some metrics, even worse than the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake (CW: rape, violence including against children). Millions do not have enough food. Outbreaks of disease are rampant. The government - such that it still exists, which is becoming increasingly debatable - has only a minority control over the capital city, with some estimates putting the influence of armed groups at 80%.
America’s search for somebody, anybody, to intervene in Haiti has ended, with Kenya answering the call. President Ruto has announced that he will send 1000 police officers to Haiti. Kenya’s Foreign Minister has tried to sell this intervention as pan-Africanism. Other Caribbean states, like the Bahamas and Antigua and Barbuda, have offered to send police officers too.
I can’t really say it any better than the Black Alliance for Peace’s own statement:
Kenya has offered to deploy a contingent of 1,000 police officers to help train and assist Haitian police, ostensibly to “restore order” in the Caribbean republic. Yet, their proposal is nothing more than military occupation by another name; an occupation of Haiti by an African country is not Pan-Africanism, but Western imperialism in Black face. By agreeing to send troops into Haiti, the Kenyan government is assisting in undermining the sovereignty and self-determination of Haitian people, while serving the neocolonial interests of the United States, the Core Group, and the United Nations.
There is an urgent need for clarity on the issue of occupation in Haiti. As described in a recent statement on Haiti and Colonialism, Haiti is under ongoing occupation. No call for foreign intervention into Haiti from the administration of appointed Prime Minister Ariel Henry can be considered legitimate, because the Henry administration itself is illegitimate. BAP has repeatedly pointed out that Haiti’s crisis is a crisis of imperialism. Haiti’s current unpopular and unelected government is propped up only by Haiti’s de facto imperial rulers: the unseemly confederacy of the Core Group countries and organizations, as well as BINUH (the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti), and a loose alliance of foreign corporations and local elites.
Henry and the UN have made a mockery of sovereignty by mouthing the slogan “Haitian solutions to Haitian problems,” yet finding the only solution in violence through foreign military intervention. After repeated failed attempts to organize an occupying force to protect their interests and impose their will on the Haitian people (including appeals to the multinational organization, the Caribbean Community [CARICOM] for troops), they have now found a willing accomplice in Kenya, an east African country with its own set of internal problems.
Indeed, what’s in it for Kenya? An opportunity to both train and enhance the salaries of local police forces and garner a patina of prestige, or at least bootlicking approval, from the West. And for Haiti? White blows from a Black hand and a further erosion of their sovereignty.
And, by the way, here’s the Black Alliance for Peace’s statement calling for no intervention by ECOWAS in Niger, calling the organization a Western comprador organization similar to CARICOM’s role in Haiti.
Welcome to our friends throughout the Lemmyverse!
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
This week’s first update is here in the comments.
This week’s second update is here in the comments.
This week’s third update might not happen because I’m busy dunking.
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Last week’s discussion post.
> looking for a new source on China
> ask the liberal if their source is CIA or Zenz
> they don’t understand
> pull out illustrated diagram explaining what is CIA and what is Zenz
> they laugh and say, “It’s a good source sir”
> click the link
> its Zenz
man, getting more and more exposure to the libs on here, it’s just…
I, too, once thought Castro was a dictator. I, too, once thought that China was a totalitarian hellscape in which people are governed by social credit scores. I, too, once thought that the DPRK was a so-called “hermit kingdom” of its own making with effectively hereditary monarchs. I, too, once thought that the Soviet Union was an abject failure, or at best a highly imperfect project that “proved” that communism cannot work in practice. I, too, thought that liberalism and civility and rational debate and compromise between differing political parties was the only way to really achieve anything, and that you must always take the high road even while your right-wing opposite takes dishonourable stabs at you. I believed that swathes of Africa and Asia were undeveloped - rather than underdeveloped - because of corruption, not exploitation. The war in Iraq might have been bad in retrospect and we shouldn’t have gone in based on a lie, but somebody had to be the world police. That’s obvious, right? The police are what keeps us safe!
These were all beliefs I had when I was young and sheltered from the world, when the hard edge of economic consequences hadn’t yet really hit me. When those consequences and problems did hit me, I didn’t have the classic experience of going from a dreamy liberal living in fantasies of equality to a hardened conservative who understood that things have to be unfair because that’s just life. I realized, through personal experiences and also through exposure to ideas from the left, including some of the people on here, that most of what I knew about other countries and history was tainted with misinformation, or twisted beyond recognition, or just flatly not true. I wasn’t brainwashed. I haven’t been turned into an agent for a foreign government. I’m certainly not in an echo chamber - I’m literally surrounded by contrary ideas every day because other people play the radio or watch the television around me and expose me to the latest and greatest of liberal arguments for X and Y.
Others have expressed this point before, what strikes me about all the libs on here is that they seem totally unaware that the vast majority of us once held the exact same positions that they once did and have moved past them. That we might have been in their shoes. We all know the arguments, we’ve not only seen them, many of us were previously convinced by them.
Before federation I had so much trust in fellow hexbears that I would upvote before reading the comment. Now however, I have to properly read what is being posted before upvoting and this requires more effort. Once again the libs causing me great pain
Rule of thumb for all hexbearian comrades: You see a hexbear post, you upvote it because you like it! Get it to the top of the lemmyverse charts so everyone can appreciate our big beautiful posters!
I’d like to thank federation for reminding me that liberalism is a festering husk kept afloat solely by the collection of literal compound interest on 500 years of genocidal plunder.
The liberal mind is where critical thinking skills go to lay down and die. Lemmy and the anglosphere writ large is a space of pure mental atrophy where you can see reflected the decline of the Western bloc in real time. No one left to fill critical roles, every administrative organ just exposed to open air, infected and dying.
Colonisers were never supposed to believe the words they were saying.
Really seems that way. A lot of the people who think they are “left” are just the losers in the capitalist system who would like the capitalist system to reward them for being white and living in the imperial core.
That’s seriously what it boils down to??
I forgot what it was like to interact with that flavor of NPC.
Really seems that way. A lot of the people who think they are “left” are just the losers in the capitalist system who would like the capitalist system to reward them for being white and living in the imperial core.
The consequences of
Those that remember at one point back on
people would unironically believe he was “hiding his power level”(e.g random tankie reddit discourse lol lmao even).
it’s really driven home to me how many of their worldviews aren’t actually connected to the world around them. it’s the political equivalent of saying “assume a spherical unicorn” and then just not going to check whether there are any spherical unicorn, or even unicorns at all.
it’s one thing for us to say “oh yeah, liberals are bound by idealistic notions and theories whereas communists tend to be more interested in materialistic ones” but actually seeing a dude, idk, say that the layoffs of hundreds of thousands of people in capitalist developing countries due to recessions are actually because their governments haven’t been pro-capitalist enough and those people need to go negotiate their labor for money is like… what do you even say to that? how do you become this person in the first place? I can only assume that they’re like 14 years old? every time I think homo economicus might be on the way out, another person who believes we are all cyborgs comes along
There are only two types of liberals: those who don’t have a connection to the working class, and those who wish they don’t have a connection to the working class.
I like to imagine people stomping in here from the fucking 900 comment thread going on right now, taking off their blood-stained helmets, laying down their gore-dipped swords against the wall, taking off their ragged armor
this really has be the funniest week on this site in a while, federation was a great idea. just imagining the typical reddit liberal who has experienced no pushback whatsoever on any take on China or Taiwan or Russia for years and getting ready to bask in the upvotes again by saying “China bad, everybody is a slave” and then being attacked by a hive of hornets
the communists remaining on lemmy trying to keep the liberals out like at Helm’s Deep and then Hexbear arrives. “at dawn, look to the east.”
c/news is the 11th most subbed comm in lemmyverse
The offensive failed
So it’s time for peace talks then?
It’s time for peace talks, right?There’s some unironic NAFO fella in one of the China threads. Bonus is they’re from the Canadian instance lmao
I like how libs come from other instances to say this place is an echo chamber, when like half of our news stories in the socialist news mega come from the FT, WSJ, and other Western business press.
Hope he doesn’t. Elon unbanning Trump only for him to just ignore it and continue using Truth Social was hilarious
him refusing to recognize elon’s rebrand is also pretty funny
I bet he forgot his password.
It’s gonna be a very, very wet 2024, isn’t it?
I’m just hoping he does the debate. It has the potential to be very funny. The gop choices are: wet boy, the weirdest guy ever, and a variety of unhinged losers
Trump getting band for bigotry and hate speech.
Trump getting banned for refusing to say “X” instead of “Twitter”the wettest boy of all time is returning
seeing an opportunity to rake in some ad money from Musk and taking it
sidenote: calling it twitter is correct - it’s named X, it’s called twitter
seeing an opportunity to rake in some ad money from Musk and taking it
Thanks to you it just clicked for me in my head that this is why
did this, it was all a way to bribe Trump back to twitter without publicly sucking up to him
Elon made it chud enough for his Moistness !
He
doesn’t missmisses often but not this timeRemoved by mod
thinking about when Kamala got her big moment at the dem primary debate in 2019 and used it to say Trump should be banned off twitter
I mean, her other big moment was in pointing out that Biden is a segregationist. But she blew that too, by turning right around and showing she loves him anyway and was glad to become his Vice-Fascist.
It’s so funny how libs stumble in here peddling their tired bullshit that they’re used to getting absolutely zero pushback on and then going “I can’t believe the Hexbear fascists don’t Slava their Ukrainis, my word!” and running off to their home instance bitch and cry about it while their fellow cretins pat each other on the back for how brave they are for standing up to Hexbearian fascism and how they’re never wrong and always right
Extremely sad that I was able to find actual conscription/draft defenders in the year 2023. Liberals on the lemmyverse have gotten really scratched lately.
Imagine defending military conscription for the Ukraine war. Seriously. Absolute ghoul behaviour.
Libs when Ukrainians don’t want to fight the Russians because they don’t care about their Identity™ and just want to live.
they’re always pro-draft until it happens to them
I’ve seen people calling draft dodgers traitors for wanting to not be conscripted.
They’re Americans, naturally, and in no way threatened at all by war.
Liberals got their first taste of fascism and they’re fucking loving it.
Ukraine is literally doing covert genocide by massively conscripting russophone Ukrainians and sending them to the death. Of course their precious galician master race hasn’t really suffered any large scale recruitments.
supporting the draft to increase the chance of a revolutionary mutinyI wonder how many of them would be so gung ho if the draft was happening in their countries.
The chickenhawks can always lead by example.
Also, meeting some Cuban communists in a few hours.
Lukashenko boots Wagner out of Belarus
Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko has reportedly kicked the Wagner PMC out of Belarus, after refusing to finance the Russian mercenaries.
Wagner forces left Russia for Belarus as part of a settlement deal brokered by Lukashenko following the armed mutiny on June 24 that saw Wagner’s leader Yevgeny Prigozhin turn on his boss, Russian President Vladimir Putin.
But reports have now emerged suggesting Lukashenko has refused to finance their stay in the country and the mercenaries are being “bussed” back to Russia for a “vacation.” According to the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel, operations to remove all Wagner Group men began earlier in the month, with a second phase to remove the rest going into effect this weekend.
Wagner’s services don’t come cheap. Putin recently admitted that the Kremlin has spent around $1bn on the private military company last year, using state budget funds. Previously the Kremlin denied all knowledge of Wagner.
VChK-OGPU said the men headed for Russia are mercenaries that rejected re-assignment to Libya, where the Group has been operating for years.
“A source of the Cheka-OGPU said that after the meeting of PMC Wagner, everyone who did not sign up for a business trip to Libya was urgently sent on vacation to Russia,” VChK-OGPU posted on its channel. “Right now, mercenaries in Belarus are packing their bags and going back to Russia on vacation. At the same time, everyone was asked to stay in touch with PMCs, since at any moment a certain command from above could follow.” Earlier Lukashenko said that the Wagner forces would be used to train the Belarusian army.
lmfao
“nah, actually, get out of my country, freeloaders!”
