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.

  • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    133·
    1 year ago

    > 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

  • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
    117·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • Alaskaball [comrade/them]@hexbear.netMEnglish
    91·
    1 year ago

    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!

  • Victor_Lucas [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    87·
    1 year ago

    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.

    lenin-cat

  • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
    83·
    1 year ago

    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.”

    • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      55·
      1 year ago

      It’s like she’s the American grim reaper or something. Wherever she goes, that country is soon to be fucked with.

      From Reuters:

      U.S. State Department’s acting No. 2 traveled to Niger and held talks on Monday with senior officials from the country’s junta which seized power last month, but made no progress in meetings she described as “difficult”. U.S. Acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland was in Niamey, she told reporters in a call, and met with Moussa Salaou Barmou, the self-proclaimed defense chief of Niger’s junta and three other colonels supporting him. Washington offered ways to restore democratic order, Nuland said, but the junta officials showed little interest. The U.S. side conveyed what is at stake in terms of economic assistance and other aid if the situation is not reversed, she added.

      “These conversations were extremely frank and at times quite difficult, because, again, we’re pushing for a negotiated solution. It was not easy to get traction there. They are quite firm in their view of how they want to proceed, and it does not comport with the Constitution of Niger,” Nuland said.

      …

      Nuland spoke two hours with Barmou and his team and there were some side conversations. Her requests to meet with ousted president Mohamed Bazoum or with junta leader Abdourahamane Tiani were not granted.

      …

      “This was a first conversation in which the United States was offering its good offices. If there is a desire on the part of the people who are responsible for this to return to constitutional order, we are prepared to help with that, we are prepared to help address concerns on all sides. I would not say that we were in any way taken up on that offer but I hope that they will think about it,” Nuland said.

      I think this does at least quiet down the ideas that the United States was planning this coup as a way of striking against France. Unless she’s lying about the contents and subject of the meeting.

      • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
        57·
        1 year ago

        “These conversations were extremely frank and at times quite difficult, because, again, we’re pushing for a negotiated solution. It was not easy to get traction there. They are quite firm in their view of how they want to proceed, and it does not comport with the Constitution of Niger,” Nuland said.

        Sounds like they’re telling her to fuck off so she’s drumming up the regime change rhetoric.

        I hope that they will think about it,

        This is a threat.

      • Rod_Blagojevic [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        38·
        1 year ago

        Just wanting a country you dont even live in to return to constitutional order doesn’t sound weird at all. Also, I hate lib obsession with legalism and proceduralism. Fuck your constitution.

  • LargePenis [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    75·
    1 year ago

    New rankings after my mountain retreat. I don’t know what federation is, but welcome or whatever. Slimmed down RUS-UKR ranking because nothing is happening.

    Russia - Ukraine cuck n chad power ranking

    Gigachad Chad Neutral Beta Male Virgin Cuck
    Lukashenko (Forever chad) non-Nazi Ukrainian troops (brave dudes that keep getting killed due to the incompetence of command) Kadyrov (prolonged inactivity) Putin (no SA trip for this cuck) Zelensky + Ukrainian command (sending men and equipment to certain death for 2 months non-stop) ⬇️
    Prigozhin (survived the failed coup and now main character in Africa) ⬆️ SuriyakMaps (good neutral objective maps) Rybar (producing good maps as always) Shoigu (gets a rare upgrade due to being cool in the DPRK, still beta though) ⬆️ The Russian government (neoliberal cucks)

    International cuck n chad power ranking

    Gigachad Chad Neutral Beta (Fe)Male Virgin Cuck
    Bashar Al Assad (guaranteed spot for the Lion as always) Niger coup dudes (things still unclear, but anything anti-France=good) South African leftists (keep rocking bros, but chill on the murder stuff) Macron (clearest case of beta I’ve seen) pro-ECOWAS Africans (is there anything more cucked than wanting to stay under the boot?)
    Cpt Ibrahim Traoré (he’s good folks) Nigerian senators (told the cuck Tinibu to fuck off) Japan (I respect that their average age is like 70, but they’re still trying to fight China) Kenya (doing proxy imperalism just to lick some boot) Lemmy.world (I don’t even know what a lemmy is, but I was told that they’re cucks)
    All senile politicians (keep tanking America chads) UFO dude in congress (shit rocks) Trump (he’s a vile person, but I respect the grind at this point) McDonald’s (they keep “accidentally” hiring literal kids) Ron DeSantis (congrats, worse campaign than Jeb! already)