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.
Also, meeting some Cuban communists in a few hours.
Be sure to introduce them to Hexbear.
Dope. Say hola to them for us!
Oh wow! they are some of my favorite kind!
Given how Cuba has combined socialism, anti-imperialism, and enlightened LGBT+ values, I’d argue that they’re absolutely my favourite kind. No “some of” qualifier needed.
It’s so frustrating seeing so many countries that get one of those things right, but then completely shit the bed on one of the others. Russia, for example. Anti-imperialist? Definitely. Socialist? Well, a return to a national economy is a good start. But they’re horrific on the LGBT+ front.
Or my home country Canada. Socialism? Well, there’s a kinda-sorta functioning social safety net. LGBT+ rights? Probably as good as there is in the world today. But anti-imperialist? Definitely not, we’re obedient lapdogs for the US government.
You can’t really compare them like that. Cuba had the “luxury” of resisting Western/US influence for more than half a century. This allowed progressive movement to grow from within in relative isolation.
The price for Cuba to pay? Being sanctioned by much of the rest of the world, with a living standards that are barely adequate compared even to many developing countries. (Honestly most Western leftists who fetishize Cuba probably won’t like living there because it means giving up a lot of their treats that are ubiquitous in where they come from)
The rest of the world can’t really afford that, unless they are absolutely prepared to embrace becoming Cuba, Venezuela and the DPRK. You only have to count how many progressive movements across the world that had been silenced, neutered and brutally crushed by Western-backed operations to know how difficult it is to decouple yourself from the Western world.
I’m having difficulty following your thought process.
Let me explain - let say you are a newly elected leftist government in a third world country. You have campaigned on nationalizing your country’s natural resources, advancing women’s rights and reforms that promise a more egalitarian distribution of wealth to the people.
What’s your first major challenge? It’s not the local right wing oppositions, it’s the support behind them. Your government is now a threat to Western imperialists who have long cultivated a close relationship with right wing dictators in the region to ensure their economic interests are well preserved even after your country had achieved independence in the 20th century.
Now, because you are a threat to “democracy” and “freedom”, your government’s first major challenge will come from foreign capital investors, who threaten to withdraw their investments in your country. This means job losses, reduced revenues in exports, fall in industrial production, and ultimately recession and popular unrests, which will be cleverly exploited by the right wing oppositions.
Secondly, as the economy begins to take a toll, you will need loans. The State Department will pressure through diplomatic channels and global financial institutions to cut you off access to much needed credit unless you promise to do what is called “structural adjustments” by the IMF, i.e. austerity. Cut healthcare, social spending, education, privatize your public sectors, let the foreign capitalists come in and take control. This will lead to even more unrest and right wing oppositions gaining ammunitions to use against your government as you fail to implement your campaign promises.
Third, scandals will begin to emerge among the ranks of your government and the news will be circulated to the media, cleverly devised to damage the reputation of your government and whatever trust the public has left in you.
As you begin to face popular unrest, all the campaign promises are now being thrown out of the window. You have two options here: yield to the pressure exerted upon you by the imperialists, or double down by cracking down dissent i.e. go full “authoritarian” mode like in Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea.
If you choose the former, then you have already lost. No reform is ever going to take place in your country. You will lose the next election if you refuse to collaborate with foreign imperialists, and the right wing parties will take over.
If you choose the latter, a coup will be engineered against your government in the name of “human rights abuses” and “authoritarian crack down on democratic voices of dissent”. If you’re unlucky, you’re immediately executed by right wing death squads. If you’re lucky enough to resist against all pressures (which means doubling down more on suppressing dissent), then a military operation might be mounted against your government to “liberate the people from oppressive government.” Worst case scenario, you get bombed to hell like Libya and Iraq.
Best case scenario though, you manage to survive through all the economic sanctions, political blackmails, foreign interventions and military conflicts, all of which requiring rule of extreme iron-fist to weed out provocateurs, saboteurs and foreign agents within your country. This means you have practically turned your country into Cuba, isolated from much of the rest of the world, and surviving mostly through means of subsistence (and worse, because the USSR no longer exists, nobody could sustain your country with large sums of financial aid).
It is only under such environment of extreme isolation that you’ll finally be able to implement the reforms you first promised in your electoral campaign, many many crises ago. Progressive movements will finally be able to grow from within this society promising more equality and egalitarianism. The cost to such progress? Pretty much everything else.
This is why Mao made it very clear that the principal contradiction of the developing countries is Western imperialism, not local class conflicts even though they do exist at every level.
Lmao Canada is in no way socialist
very cool
say hello to justin for me