Hundreds of Kenyan police officers have arrived in Haiti as part of a US-backed security intervention aiming to rescue the Caribbean country from a criminal insurrection that toppled the prime minister and brought death and chaos to the streets.
Kenyan news reports suggest they will be responsible for defending key infrastructure including the airport, the port, the presidential palace, and the gang-controlled highways connecting the besieged capital with the rest of Haiti.
Biden said the eventual 2,500-strong force would also count on personnel and financial support from Benin, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Belize, Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, Bangladesh, Algeria, Canada, France, Germany, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, the UK and Spain.
The UN says more than 2,500 people have been killed or wounded this year as increasingly powerful gangs launched a coordinated uprising that paralysed the capital and forced the prime minister, Ariel Henry, to resign.
The international mission will be led by Noor Gabow, a senior Kenyan officer who studied criminology at Bramshill police college in the UK and has experience in peacekeeping operations in Sierra Leone and Rwanda.
Many Haitians resent relentless foreign meddling in their affairs, particularly after the 2004-2017 UN stabilisation force, Minustah, was accused of human rights violations, sexual abuse and causing a devastating cholera outbreak.
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Some backstory: The Haitans succesfully ousted American puppet Ariel Henri. But we're not about to let these people have their independence. Time to install another puppet regime!
Now, another yell is coming from Port-au-Prince. In October, the government of Ariel Henry, Haiti’s de facto prime minister and president, called for a foreign military intervention—“the immediate deployment of a specialized armed force, in sufficient quantity” to stop the street gangs that are terrorizing the population and cutting off access to Haiti’s ports, most crucially the one that receives and stores Haiti’s imports of oil and gas. He did not specify which nation would oversee this armed force. But anyone with even a cursory knowledge of Haitian history—or access to a map—knew the only country he could be referring to.
In Haiti—which has its own obvious problems with narcotrafficking—the U.S.-supported rot runs even deeper, to the democratic vacuum that a century of U.S. invasions, occupations, and interference has left in its wake. Sending an armed force to do battle with one Haitian gang and its sponsors may briefly win the de facto government (or Chérizier’s other rivals) access to the fuel port, but it will do nothing to make Haiti a safer or more stable place for its people to live in the medium or long term.
I haven’t seen any alternative to this action other than allowing the warlords that are mustering power to run rampant. The most notable of them is a guy known as Barbecue for setting people on fire. I’ve looked into them and I haven’t found a set of political aims from any of these groups; they don’t strike me as revolutionaries
Probably won’t fix things, I agree. I just don’t see any good options. I feel terrible for Haiti, they’ve deserved better for as long as they have been a state.
The previous UN intervention force was disastrous. From the article:
Many Haitians resent relentless foreign meddling in their affairs, particularly after the 2004-2017 UN stabilisation force, Minustah, was accused of human rights violations, sexual abuse and causing a devastating cholera outbreak.
“The last UN mission ended disastrously,” said Isaïe Delson, 33, a barber forced to abandon his business in downtown Port-au-Prince by this year’s bloodshed. “Will [the Kenyan force] create more injustices?”.
It's unlikely that angry revolutionaries will be the best option in the short term but since we keep kicking Haiti when they're down they cannot build up their country while it remains under puppet regimes.
Kenya may be a relatively stable democracy in Africa, but there’s still rampant corruption in their police forces. Police officers are typically underpaid, so to supplement their income they’ll do things like set up random checkpoints on roads in order to shakedown drivers for money. Them going to Haiti doesn’t seem like it’s really going to help with anything.
Kenya's outgoing Deputy President William Ruto has won a narrow victory in the presidential election over his rival Raila Odinga. However, four of the seven election commissioners have contested the results
Yeah, they’ve had shitty elections for years now. Odinga has been in like every election and contests it everytime, even causing really bad election violence at multiple points. This led to them reviving the role of Prime Minister specifically for him to placate Odinga that election. They’ve literally only ever had two prime ministers in their history (President is their head of state), they abolished it again after Odinga’s term was over.
a Taliban spokesman also denied there had been any arrests for “bad hijab” and said: “The issue of rape is not at all possible because there is not just one or two people [in the room with a prisoner] and when there are three people, such a crime would not happen …[this is] a very sensitive issue for the Taliban. I am sure such a thing did not happen.”
And it was a west-leaning country in a region full of oil and big trade routes.
Other way around - their loyalties weren't firmly lodged with either of the superpowers, so the US in the 70s and 80s put a lot of time and effort into wooing them.
Their loyalties still aren't lodged with anyone, but we keep sucking them off anyway.
Contrary to the delusions of realpolitik types, international relations are a matter of relations, not purely moment-to-moment vulture capitalist behavior. Israel is coasting on internal factors within the US government at present - the lack of actual mutual loyalty means that, should those internal factors (Israeli dark money and the political influence of evangelical millenarians) ever weaken, the institutions of the US will see little reason not to throw Israel to the wolves.
… is something important enough to kill a 100 JFKs for.
To the Israelis, maybe. To Americans, Israeli money has become a polarizing issue over the past decade.
It’s a state sporting F35s and such.
Man, plenty of US allies are involved in the F-35 program and the US doesn't bend over backwards for them. It's really not that important in the grand scheme of US-Israeli relations.
It's rather weird that a Christian cult would spend so much on people who are, according to that cult, pariahs.
I don't think support of Israel is that much connected to Christianity. It's rather that when you have Israel, supporting it is a huge reputational counterweight to any fascist action you take.
Pariahs who need to have their own state for armageddon to happen. Remember that these are the same mental giants who invented the prosperity gospel. Not a cult so much as the entirety of southern baptism.
I did read it a lot, it's just that Christianity over the pond is weird. Weirder than in China and Japan, I can understand where their traits of it come from, but in USA it's something hard for me to emotionally grasp.
The USA's relationship to Christianity is unique in that the first fuckers to come colonize the place were too strict even for Christianity in 17th century Europe. The Puritans were a blight upon this world and the ramifications are still sending aftershocks to the present day.
I should have added that practical Catholicism in South America doesn't seem to have this kind of weirdness, so indeed it's Puritans or even more generally, the spirit of a closed small sect, where the religion itself is not as important as the sect loyalty and uncritical following. Only it's neither closed nor small.
Yep, starting with the first paragraph. The author might have skipped his Sunday school or something. In Christianity it's considered that "God's chosen people" has been extended to the whole humanity.
"I don’t think these people even know what that truly means" - maybe most of them don't, but they are using the designation correctly.
"Arab citizens of Israel have the same rights as Jewish citizens" - well, the statement is kinda true ; technically false due to Israeli laws being a patchwork of weird shit with some inheritance from the Ottoman millets system, which is the same as apartheid give or take, but that's not why the author is wrong. It's just that most of Arabs living under Israeli military control are not citizens of Israel.
Why am I even commenting that, there are sometimes outrageous texts with which it's a dubious, but still pleasure to argue with. This one is just some jellybrain's product.
OK, it's totally false now, but before that bill it was technically false, but practically usually true. I don't live in Israel and kinda forgot that whole thing due to being more interested in it in the context of Israel arming Azerbaijan.
Israel has a huge intelliegence network that the US help them build by giving them billions of dollars.
The US relations with that area is already really poor. Pulling support of Israel will bring the US back decades of relationship building, billions of dollars invested, and losing the location. The location is important because Israel is in the center, near water, and isn't an island.
Morally, being allies with Israel is not good, logically it makes sense.
It being that important, surely somebody in the US government and intelligence have thought that they might not be abusing only that importance for funds, but the ties themselves for influence. In the sense of spying at the US, corruption and such.
Over an active genocide? I would immediately end a friendship with a country and as many times as it takes to not be responsible for enabling a genocide. Allies don’t let allies commit genocide, everyone knows that. Besides it takes more than a president to do a genocide.
I knew this would come up, which is why i specified this. Might as well as cut the head off the “every country has committed genocide at some point” argument. Not every country is actively committing genocide, Israel is. America is their chef supplier of power. America is actively Shielding them from the consequences of committing genocide.
So we should stop backing a country that is actively committing genocide full stop. No money, no weapons, no blocking sanctions, no threatening countries and organizations trying to help the victims. This is the literal bare minimum, as we should be sanctioning them, we should be guaranteeing humanitarian aid to Palestinians.
When is it not an active genocide? When the genocide stops.
Possibly, at that point it would be based on trust that the administration would not continue genocide actions. If Israel changed the ruling party and immediately stopped their genocide then that would be the fastest means to return. I have issues with the land grab into Palestine for the same reason i side with Ukraine. But genocide gives me more than just issues.
Okay you have an issue with the land grab so you stop being allies with Israel. They won't stop the genocide. Israel will continue with the weapons they already have. Now they think they absolutely need to take over Palestine because they can't have neighbors that are controlled by Hamas.
Was that the right choice? Should the US stop the genocide by sending troops and money to government of Palestine? Maybe the money that was intended for Israel?
That sounds like an abusive relationship to me, regarding Israel. But if we could not stop Israel from committing genocide no matter what, then i would have us not enable it. If they have the resources available to commit genocide without our help, then they don’t need our help covering their defense, economy, nor political sway either.
Would actively sending our money and troops to Palestine to attack Israel be the correct play? It’s not so cut and dry as the Ukraine/ Russia war. But that money could go tword humanitarian efforts in Palestine, i am not so much concerned about the Palestinian government as i am the Palestinian people.
I did not know it was so many, but i know they were specifically targeted.
I guess i should answer your real question, what would it take before the US should go to war with Israel? I am hesitant, they are possibly a nuclear armed power, and a war would cost even more innocent lives. But if i had to choose i would have already effectively done so.
This article is from 7 months ago so it is more. Some people just want to feed children and their trucks are being blown up. It is fucking horrible.
I ask you these questions because these are the questions I have asked myself and I always end with the same conclusion. Israel is an information super power. The US needs Israel more than vice versa. The infromation provided by Israel has helped keep the US and other allies safe.
The question I get asked is "if that information is so valuable, then why didn't they keep themselves safe?" They did know about the attacks. Israel allowed the attack to happen thinking it would allow them in the eyes of the public to take Palestine.
Wikipedia link - look at the "Events leading to the attack" and the "Israeli intelligence failure" sections.
I agree that Isreal getting attacked was needed to begin the land grab and to maintain power of the political party, and to attempt to justify murder. I also agree that one reason the US is allied to Isreal its for a for hold in the region for us to project power. But that is about it. I don’t hold that America needs this partnership, to such a degree to overlook genocide.
People know the effects, people see the effects, people don’t care.
Just seems like a silly outdated idea. Isn’t it well established that the best way to stop people from buying stuff like this is plain white packaging and advertising restrictions?
That's still just a superficial solution, you need to go deeper and address the reasons these foods exist in the first place, and why people buy them, because it really isn't the ultra processed foods in themselves that are the issue, it's that the system is geared not only to encourage producing food as cheaply as possible, but also for people to work for such long hours to barely survive, and be so badly educated about food and nutrition, that fast food, and filling the pockets of those who sell it, is their best option (in terms of time, money, and other physical and mental resources that go in to consistently and reliably preparing food from scratch).
So much of the damage being attributed to these "ultra processed foods" is almost certainly actually due to stress and poverty, which are what (alongside a multi-trillion dollar marketing and advertising industries) lead people to eat them in the first place.
That's why they are advocating for a tax on those items as well. Makes them similarly priced to non-UPF options while also givign money to something useful like healthcare.
I don't even know what an "ultra processed food" •IS•.
How is it different than the "processed cheese product" that passes for most individually wrapped "American cheese" cheese slices? Or is that ultra processed?
Are Doritos ultra processed or just the regular kind of processed?
Which kind of ground beef qualifies for "ultra"? Only the pink slime or anything that's been chemically treated?
I'm not being a pedantic contrary asshat, I legitimately do not know what qualifies something to be in this category and why it's worse than normal processing.
Bpa from plastic tubing used in the processing of Annie's organic leeched into the food. Is that considered contamination or a side effect of processing?
Hilarious? Folks don't usually downvote things that make them laugh. It was my belief that putting a link up as a follow up to his question was helpful.
Did you have a point relevant to UPF? The fact that my post above had maybe 9 upvotes and 12 downvotes does show that some folks found it helpful. In the early days of the publicly-available internet, folks tried to help each other. Now the world is on the edge of WWIII and folks are beating folks down where they think they can. I kinda miss the old internet. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Ignoring your crazy old man rambling, people likely downvoted a link to Wikipedia because it's low effort. If you'd taken a little time to give a short summary and included your link as a source, you would likely have received better reception.
No one wants to say, "I don't understand this very well", only to be told to go read about it. They want human conversation and explanation.
My dude, if you don't know that Doritos are ultra processed food, this is living proof that the government needs to step in and provide warnings to people..
They're processed, yes. The corn is milled, pressed into triangles, coated with preservative-heavy flavor powder and cooked in one order or another, possibly repeatedly.
What makes it ULTRA processed?
Frickin... most raw potatoes are "processed" because they're typically not covered in topsoil when they get put in 5lb plastic bags.
A grass-fed organic, antibiotic free, roaming free-range massaged poterhouse steak is "processed" because it's not still attached to the cow.
I'm trying to understand the definition, here. Almost everything is processed to some degree or another.
Is white flour ultra processed because they bleach and de-hull the wheat berries? Or only when it's made into cake flour? Or do both of those count as "processed" and only "cake MIX" counts as "ultra processed"?
Yes! Various countries implement a "traffic light" style health meter that is legally required to be on the front of packaging that also gives a little subtext to say what causes it to be yellow or red (least healthy). So it will say stuff like "excess sodium" or "too much sugar" which actually does work. People don't even realize that some staples are considered UPFs because of preservatives (Tortillas), or are otherwise unhealthy (too much sugar and preservatives in 'health' cereals and yogurts).
This allows people to find staples that do not contain shocking amounts of sugar, preservatives, or highly processed options within the same category. It's worked when implemented well :)
In the case of tortillas I imagine the label would do more harm than good. Because what are people going to do, stop buying tortillas? They'd just learn to disregard the label. The only way I could imagine it working is if some tortillas had the label and others were safe, then you could buy the safe ones.
On the other hand, why not just ban the dangerous preservatives and let them all be safe?
Unless we are saying that it's ok for poor people to eat dangerous food if they can't afford the good kind
The alternatives for tortillas would be purchase from a bakery (made fresh so no preservatives), purchase frozen (so no need for added preservatives), or make at home (surprisingly easy to do).
There are usually safe ones as well, just some that might need to be frozen instead of left out.
Fwiw, I always assumed tortillas were just like...flour and water and a bit of fat. Had no idea they had preservatives because I never paid attention to the label until I saw an article on surprising UPF foods in the NYT a few months ago. I'm more careful with my consumption of them now!
But if we're putting warnings on things and trying to influence behaviour around tobacco and alcohol consumption (don't get me started on drugs) then we might as well do it with foods that can cause serious health problems and are arguably addictive.
More pointing out that there is a correlation with our modern diet and the rise of colon and rectal cancers in young people. UPFs are most likely not the sole issue but a contributor along with other things that are now in our food that weren't in the past.
My friend was just one of those that developed such a cancer and died from it young.
From my understanding: we extract many micronutrients from food by having bacteria in our digestive tract pre-process the food.
When you eat primarily eat junk food for a long time, the bacteria die of starvation. Once this happens it's hard to get them back and you are crippled by not being able to fully digest healthy food to its full potential.
TL;DR humans need to consume more than just calories and protein
Unfortunately, the "Processed Food Moral Panic" has been taken over by the meat and dairy industries, so people will not be learning why it's important to eat lots of plants as whole foods.
It's a waste of time, the "NOVA" system is subjective and it makes testing it a dead end. Your question will not be answered.
It also doesn't teach nutrition to the people; the core application of it is demonizing food that isn't cooked at home, as if something made in a small home kitchen is magically healthful.
A US backed gang will remove the ruling gang. Okay. That sounds not healthy although the US backed gang will be easier to control once the ruling gang is displaced properly. This is why I stay in my house and never leave. The world is messed up.
These (UPFs) products are characterised as industrial formulations primarily composed of chemically modified substances extracted from foods, along with additives to enhance taste, texture, appearance, and durability, with minimal to no inclusion of whole foods.
A practical way to identify an ultra-processed product is to check to see if its list of ingredients contains at least one item characteristic of the NOVA ultra-processed food group, which is to say, either food substances never or rarely used in kitchens (such as high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated or interesterified oils, and hydrolysed proteins), or classes of additives designed to make the final product palatable or more appealing (such as flavours, flavour enhancers, colours, emulsifiers, emulsifying salts, sweeteners, thickeners, and anti-foaming, bulking, carbonating, foaming, gelling and glazing agents).
So I guess a "whole food" is a food that doesn't contain High fructose corn syrup or additives. But if they are making this direct link between ultra-processed foods and increased mortality, then surely it's these specific substances that are responsible for it? So why aren't we banning high fructose corn syrup and these additives?
Surely it doesn't need to be more complicated than that?
"What happens when we eat these substances?"
"we tend to die more quickly then if we didn't eat them."
Human health and nutrition is, of course, highly complex. A substance may be generally healthy in one formulation/concentration, and tend to cause health problems in in another.
A "whole food" is not strictly defined, but is "Group 1" in the Nova food classification you mentioned.
I'm pretty sure high fructose corn syrup is banned here and when my wife from the US moved in with me she kept complaining how things don't taste as sweet until she got used to it.
But if they are making this direct link between ultra-processed foods and increased mortality, then surely it's these specific substances that are responsible for it?
Not necessarily. Think about it like cigarettes. The nicotine is what gets you addicted, but it is not what kills you. In a similar vein, these additives might cause you in some way or another to consume an unhealthy diet in the most general sense. So the effect can be more indirect.
At this point I don't know which country is more ridiculous, Israel or North Korea. They're basically the same, a tiny pariah state barking loud at anyone that looks at them while getting support from a rich neighbor.
They're the same country but ones wrapepd in religous propaganda and backed but the US and the others wrapped in Leftist propaganda and tolerated by the Chinese.
Leftist and progressive is different. Unless I missed the part where Israel claims it's buisnesses are owned in common by the people through the government.
theguardian.com
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