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.
It’s election night in Argentina, primaries, and the ancap candidate is set to be “the surprise” (this is not surprising at all, considering liberals and conservatives alike have been pushing his name up like crazy).
Come to Argentina, there are very diverse candidates! We have:
THE FASCIST
THE FASCIST
THE NEOLIBERAL
THE NEOLIBERAL
THE FASCIST
THE TROT
THE FASCIST
And while primaries are… primaries, they don’t often show what the real tendencies are. Still, the ancaps are gaining momentum and it is unknown where they will end in the generals by October. Let us hope a meteor hits this country but miraculously only kills the fascists. Either way, depending on the results, I might ditch this god-forsaken country and move elsewhere. I was offered a home in Spain, which is not perfect because well, fascism, but at least I can make a decent living there and don’t have to deal with 100% annual inflation rates and fucking ancaps running the government.
I voted for the Trots, like I always do. As for the election itself it was pretty bad, long lines of people to vote and the system was mixed at least in Buenos Aires – paper ballot for president and national lower chamber, electronic ballot for city-related government positions, so you kinda voted twice in a day. And the electronic voting machines were not perfect and many people complained about issues, the process was slow and older people struggled.
I’ll throw some updates here and there. Death to Fascism.
68% of the votes counted and the ancap got 5 million votes, currently sitting first with 31%. I certainly wasn’t expecting any of this, I actually expected this guy to flop because his campaign has been in a bit of a crisis lately, but it seems that his sole figure is enough to get at least 5 million people to vote for him. Pure insanity. We will become the first Ancapistan, incredible, this country is fucking incredible.
Now I don’t know if he’s actually going to win, there’s a lot to play here. His candidates for the Chamber of Deputies (lower chamber) are having a very good election but for the Senate, not so much. The main opposition party (Juntos por el Cambio) has two candidates fighting internally, Patricia Bullrich (the pro-cop homeless killer candidate) has won. So, this election will be most likely decided between two fascists, like holy fuck this is insane.
Peronism, as expected, failed hard. The presidency of Alberto Fernandez has been a disaster, a series of terrible economic reforms, a crushing national debt, IMF loans and public scandals (mismanaged the pandemic response, plus they were seen partying and gifting vaccines as the country was in lockdown, kinda like Boris Johnson) sealed any chance he had at a second term. Current Super Minister Sergio Massa stands no chance in my opinion, he is hated by Kirchernists and Peronists alike, terrible choice of a candidate. As for the Trots, we got 2% of the votes, pretty bad considering the good job they’ve been doing in the lower chamber and in organizing strikes and such.
Fifteen years ago we were talking with Lula, Chávez and Fidel about building a common front, now we’re falling into fascism. Bleak future, I know the ancaps are winning because this is “a message to the political caste”, but it’s heavily worrying, that movement openly praises the military dictatorship of the 70s and the neoliberals of the 90s.
Okay well, at least I have family in Spain who are willing to take me in… and I am eligible for citizenship.
Argentina will elect its own (perhaps less religious) Bolsonaro. I’m very sorry but I doubt Argentina will recover from a government like Milei’s (at least Lula dissolved all Bolsonaro’s reforms on day one and started using his connections to attract Chinese and American investment), the guy will become like De La Rua and run away when the shit starts (Again, just like Bolsonaro).
Juntos por el Cambio is picking up some steam but it wont be enough to catch up Milei at least on the presidential ballot. The issue is that Milei has shown everyone that he can win just by himself, that’ll make a lot of political parties around the country to seek an alliance, which will give him the access to Senate seats and he can actually win governor positions in the provinces. It’s insane, Milei outflanked the left by using a left-wing rethoric, the “anti-political caste” belongs to the left, this guy just took it and used it to further advance capitalism into the country.
A Milei presidency will be an absolute disaster, Ancap ideals are self destruction. But on the other hand, I still firmly believe Communism will ultimately be victorious.
Lol, Bolsonaro did the same thing. These people, be it Bolsonaro, Fujimori, Camacho or the guy from Uruguay who keeps losing, say they are “anti-politics”, “old politics” or whatever. The funny thing is that these people have usually been in politics for years, if not decades. I doubt Milei will do much of what he promised, he might not even get to finish his government if he actually tries his ancap crap ideas.
The only way I see him governing is by becoming just another ghoul pushing the same garbage right-wing policies Macri did, while stealing a bunch of public funds for himself and his family, like Bolsonaro. And then in 2027 they will elect Kirchner or some socdem again. But who knows, I saw some news that he is being investigated for selling political offices before the elections or something like that. It will be very funny to see the Mercosur meeting between Milei and Lula.
Well, Milei is like Trump in the sense that they’re not career politicians, so he can easily play like the “outsider” role candidate. However, like Trump said “drain the swamp”, he immediately became the swamp as he gained power within the Republican Party, Milei is doing the same. He’s “anti-political caste”, and the moment he had to build an electoral party, he allied with a shitton of career politicians. But in the end Milei, like Trump, are no true outsiders, nor they have “revolutionary” ideals. They’re the establishment, the capital establishment, the one that doesn’t get mentioned because well, Capitalism. Their supporters get really mad once you tell them that whatever they’re trying to do is recycled capitalist garbage sold as new and innovative.
Yes, their party sold vacant places in their tickets for cash, because they are like that. There were also a big number of sexual abuse cases within the party, because of course these people hate women.
The issue is that Milei held conversations with Bullrich not long ago, they even considered going together on a single ticket. Milei is kinda hostile to Juntos por el Cambio but he likes Bullrich due to her “strong stance” against crime and narcos (which means militarized police and restricted civil liberties, in disguise), so I wouldn’t be surprised if they reach an actual agreement towards the generals in October, Bullrich can provide Milei with what he needs and Milei can provide Bullrich with a lot of young white ass cringe libertarians who think we should nuke the Central Bank or something.
With 96% of the votes counted, Milei reached 7 million votes. Barely 600k for the Trots and 1.3 million for Grabois, the christian leftist, who with every day that passes I’m more and more convinced he was allowed to run to suck off votes that would otherwise go to the Trots (not all of them, but a big part indeed).
Milei wins because something in our society is very rotten. While they can fuck off, some of the stuff they say is actually true. No, we shouldn’t nuke the Central Bank or the Ministry of Health or Social Development, but when they complain about insanely high taxes, they’re right. They see it from a crap perspective, yes, but the core of the problem persists, taxes are TOO high, and they are paid by common people. I believe, of course, taxes should be raised for the wealthy (something Milei of course is against) and significantly lowered for us, the fucking proles, but they can sense a problem, the problem is they’re fucking capitalism bootlickers and they fail to see what causes it. They believe taxation is Communism, fuck me. Also if this motherfucker gets to do what he wants, I can kiss my beloved University of Buenos Aires good bye and my career as an historian will die overnight.
I saw an article that increased trade in yuan was stabilizing things to some extent, and this was one of Massa’s ideas. Earlier this year, Fernandez was also reportedly hoping the gas pipeline from southern patagonia would help balance the budget when it came online. So it seems like this is just too little too late? Future Chinese investment in Argentina and its bid to join BRICS are likely going to evaporate if Millei wins, and from my very basic understanding that would weaken South America to US influence.