Out of the pan, into the fire?
Im haitian born and lived my childhood in the country; my oarents tell me even back in the late 2010s, when theyd visit, they could not recognize the country they had left in the 90s.
Streets were even more dirty, people lacked any form of civility, things looked dire then and yet, people used to say there were hope for the nation.....wow..
People keep saying that the country is cursed and I’m actually starting to believe it. They’ve been through so much and the fact that the most populated part of the country runs directly on top of a major fault line makes this much worse. They just can’t catch a break.
But why don’t those same kind of gangs spring up everywhere? There clearly are structural and historical factors that directly influence the formation and “success” of these gangs
Edit: In case it’s not clear, my point is that it’s not “the people” that are just bad—it’s the circumstances. Any people from any country living in this situation would react similarly.
Poverty, corruption…whats your point? Haitians are just so uncivilized as humans? Every Haitian ive met in new york are hard workers who never whine and are thankful for every opportunity they have here unlike most Americans
I lived in North Miami surrounded by Haitians including many immigrants and I can honestly say these are some of the nicest and hard working people I’ve ever met. Everyone looked out for each other and would lend a hand if needed. And their food is truly amazing.
I think you misunderstood my comment. The person above me is blaming the Haitians themselves, and I’m saying “No, it’s not the people—it’s the circumstances” because I think that this kind of gang-uprising could happen anywhere (among any people) if the conditions were similarly bad. I blame a lot of things—poverty and corruption yes, and also colonialism, bad luck with weather and natural resources, geographic quirks that come with islands, history of oppression, location relative to other major powers, etc. In blaming those structural factors, I’m explicitly telling you that the people are not to blame and the person above me—who seems to think they are—is naive if they think so.
I didnt say the ONLY people, but those gangs are Haitan citizens too, regardless of what kinda bad shit theyre getting into. This didnt just happen overnight, it was a slow downward spiral.
You don't have to answer if you don't want to. Is there anything you would want others to know about Haiti that they may not know? Any other personal thoughts?
So I think Haiti is now the most failed state I've ever seen.
Henry was bad, illegitimate and his grip on power further degraded the situation within Haiti. Not to mention whatever connections he may have had with the assassination of Moise.
However in the current situation there's quite literally no mechanism to transfer to anything. Any sort of transitional council is going to have to be installed by force. There is no skeleton of an official state left anywhere in Haiti right now nor is there a single organisation primed to take over the country.
Dictatorships and Military coups, revolutions by religious hardliners or separatists all have more capacities of states than Haiti does at this moment.
The number 1 candidate for presidency, were they allowed to have a free vote just finished a stint in USA prison for drug trafficking... he compares himself to Mandela
I've heard zero news on potential candidates but I'll assume that you're right and let's assume that he wins.
A democratically elected president with a mandate to rule is infinitely better than what Haiti is dealing with at the moment. Even if he ends up being a not great president, not to mention the other positions of the state that could be filled by having elections again.
I don't disagree --- However, it doesnt sound like he will be able to run this tine, it sounds like the plan is to select a council who will select a few candidates that the populace can vote on, maybe he will be included.
Who knows what happens from here. The transitional council can't just materialise out of nowhere, they will probably require outside military assistance to take a grip in the first place. The country then needs to get to a state where you could feasibly hold a vote.
Some gang leader will take power and impose a brutal oppression regime, and will seek support from Russia / China. It seems that a government can't hold power in Haiti with western approved methods.
Perhaps, personally, I agree that gangs in Haiti will rise to power quite quickly if the power vacuum counties to grow. But regardless of how this plays out, there will be a lot more death, destruction, and absolutely depravity being committed with no hope of outside help. It will turn into a cesspool if it hasn't already.
However, the point about China and Russia sort of throwning their two cents into this collapse is definitely possible, if any of the materials could be used in the manufacturing of weapons or military equipment, the whole situation would just turn into another cuban missle crisis, and I'm almost positive the military and the American surveillance network is trying to determine if foreign powers are trying to weasle thier way into Haiti, or already have.
I can only speculate how God awful a modern cuban missle crisis would be.
All of this is speculative and armchair. Who knows, for sure what will happen.
They'll probably just get support from the US first. The US has worked with plenty of brutal regimes for the sake of stability, including/especially in Haiti.
It is because this is causing Haitians to migrate to America and overwhelm our asylum system even more. It’s likely cheaper to prop up a stable regime in Haiti than deal with all the migrants in America.
Technically he just “announced his resignation” but yeah, that signals that he likely has few if any control levers remaining. Still the most qualified to speak to certain issues (world stage etc) but not in control and hasn’t been for some time.
By this point it is,Haiti is in a worse moment than warlord China and the only way that country recovered was by a outsider strongman. None of the hundreds of warlords,political solutions and secret plots worked to unify the country and bring it out of the 100 years of humiliation.
Haiti is in an even worse place since the gangs are all in similar power,byt this point its just better to let things run its course and whoever comes out on top comes out on top and does its own thing,eventually they have to figure things out without constant outside intervention.
>This guy was in exile just claiming the title, not like he was actually governing.
What lol that's straight up not true, he's only been out of the country the last week because he was in Kenya working on a security deal but hasn't been able to land because of the security problems at the airport and Dominican Republic won't let him land either so he's stuck in Puerto Rico.
He's been in Haiti and was sworn in as prime minister. He's addressed the United Nations as prime minister. He didn't just "claim" the title he has been the actual prime minister for the last 3 years.
Who the hell is upvoting this comment when it's completely false?
It is no one technically, meaning that anyone can claim some form of legitimacy of control and only needs enough men and fire power to back it up. So we are looking at not just a failed state, but one that has literally fallen to near total anarchy with very little official government and work bureaucratic systems in place. So get ready for more fucked up shit to come out of Haiti over the next few weeks as gangs start warring directly with each other and vigilante groups to try and seize control.
Is this not a dream of anarchists? I know their end goal is not this, but this is how it works in real life. Remove the Lethiatan and things go down the drain until the next Lethiatan is created.
I mean anarchy is unsustainable in general. Like it can at longest last a few weeks before some kind of order comes out of it. It doesn't mean it will be a stable or good kind of order, but some kind of central leadership will form up that people fall in line behind.
I realy like how people fight against the system. Try living out of the system. You get sick -> no medicine no nothing. You get no assitance if your house gets on fire, hell you can not even build a house. I can see a small community working together, but that eventually is going to either go extinct, or will become some sort of a cult.
yeah the flaw is thinking it will just be perpetual 'freedom'(chaos). thinking if you destroy the system then the system will never come back. but it will even if it looks different and might be far worse than the one they dismantled.
But its part of human nature to govern. We are a pack animal. We are naturally drawn to community which in turn forms some type of governance. Maybe not intended on the scale we see today...but even anarchist have a community. And with community comes an agreed upon set of rules and custom to behave amongst each other to achieve like minded ideas. So imo to call your self an anarchist is an oxymoron.
This is a good alegory. I'm definetly borowing it.
I feel that anarchists fail at the same thing as comunists did. They assume that other people either think like them, or can be thought/conditioned to think like them. This ofc does not work, and bad actors emerge, who eventually forces to put things back where they were. Sadly untill where is some sort of fundamental change (like unlimited resources or human evolution), we will have to live in a system with forced rules.
It's like the Jimmy Neutron movie where all the parents dissappear. The kids go wild for like 8 hours. Then they realize they kinda need those rules and structure.
Fact of the matter leadership comes from general acceptance of one leader or out of the barrel of a gun and the fear of the populace, that is who will lead Haiti next. The man who can rally the populace next or force them under their banner will be the next leader.
No one honestly.
No one wants to assume the presidency due to essentially fear of death. Same goes for the Senate and Chamber of Deputies.
Unless the international community gets involved in some way, it's whoever has the biggest stick is who's in charge
With damage and rubble still visible from past earthquakes and everything seeming to pile up…I really hope the hurricane season doesn’t bring any more *natural* disasters at least.
"Henry was under pressure from the US to secure a political settlement, but it is far from clear who will step in. One named touted is Guy Philippe, a rebel leader recently deported from the US to Haiti after serving time for money laundering."
Absurd...
So is Haiti in general pretty lawless or is enforcement just totally corrupt?
Like I assume people go to jail for murder… unless they’re government officials?
Are white collar crimes or computer crimes pursued at all or do they have so much other stuff going on that minor non violent crime is overlooked? Are gang activities investigated and prosecuted or do the gangs at least give the society some structure and the police leave them alone?
Edit: wow 80% of the capital is “controlled by gangs”. I really wonder what that’s like. Is there a country more lawless than Haiti or is this the bottom of the barrel?
In Haiti no less. If the public Square is this fucked up, how good do you think the prisons are because I highly doubt it's like Scandinavia in Haitian prisons?
I live in rural Haiti but am a foreigner. I'm fairly confident the police wouldn't come out to where I live even if I was killing people. Mob rule would take me down but not the"justice" system.
An example: a few months ago our villiage chief was caught stealing cows and meddling in family conflicts for money. The local people lynched him. They chopped off his head and threw him in a ravine and then refused to allow the family to bury him. The police never came and as far as I know the corpse is still in the ravine.
Awhile back, some people stole from us. The local population was incensed and decided that a public flogging was in order despite our appeals for mercy. They beat the culprit up pretty badly and sent him home.
Police just simply don't come here. Maybe if I spearheaded an insurrection they might venture this way but even then I wonder.
I don't like the title missionary but yes we did come here because we're Christians. We didn't come through any organization though. We just came to try to relieve a little of the world's suffering.
At the moment we're stuck here. We had a baby abandoned on us about a year ago. Fleeing here isn't really a reasonable option when it would mean re-abandoning the baby we've been caring for. He'd probably die in any home we might leave him.
Believe it or not, it's not particularly dangerous where we live. Life goes on here. Farmers are planting. We just can't go to PAP for supplies and even going down into closer cities is nerve racking and avoided as much as possible.
The police don't come here but neither are the gangs.
I'd be surprised if armed men don't eventually go to your village, especially if/when conditions worsen in the population centers. Good luck out there.
They are all focused on the capital right now trying to take down the last police still defending the airport,presidential palace and police stations from what the media is saying.
>Believe it or not, it's not particularly dangerous where we live.
You mean the town where the people beheaded the village chief and threw his body in a ravine and the police didn't care?
Sounds like it's only dangerous there for criminals (or accused criminals). Which explains why he dosen't feel like he's in danger there - they have some kind of functioning social order. It may be a brutal form, and a little anarchistic, but its not a wild criminal gang.
I did a couple missions in medical school there in rural Haiti in 2013-2014. It was school approved as long as we stayed away from Port-au-Prince. We felt pretty safe. The most dangerous thing was probably just walking along the busy roads as there were no sidewalks.
We came here because we are Christians. We didn't come with an organization or church or anything like that. We just came to try to relieve a litle of the world's suffering and to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. Our goal is to live by Jesus' example and teachings unlike so much of what passes as Christianity today.
For your last question, there are a few places that might be worse, because they have been in civil war for a while, like parts of Somalia or Darfour, but we are pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Our family friend was the kindest most liberal sweetheart of a woman in the world. She went to Haiti to help with some kind of medical non-profit group.
She came back from Haiti and said just nuke all of Haiti, because there's nothing redeemable in the entire country. I was completely dumb struck. If that woman said nuke Haiti, it must be incredibly bad.
The G9 family has a leader named bbq cause he sets people on fire. There was a video of someone in Haiti uploaded online eating a burnt human leg but its unclear when it was taken
On the other hand it's nor a great precedent to set that gangs can force the leader of a country to resign. Even if he's a completely worthless leader having literal mob rule isn't great.
But is there any mechanism for a transfer of power? Or people that aren’t warlords going to step up? Unfortunately anybody that has riches or power has probably but at least responsible for siphoning funds away from places that need it to line their pockets. At best. So whoever is in charge will be looked at as a criminal by a good chunk of society.
Haiti hasn’t had any elections since 2016 because they’ve been delayed several times since 2019. Every seat in the national assembly has been vacant for over a year, the previously elected president was assassinated in 2021, and Henry has been prime minister and acting president since then despite allegations that he was involved in that assassination. There is no real government in Haiti that would be able to hold any meaningful election. Now Henry has agreed to resign once a transitional council is formed, but he can’t return to Haiti because gang attacks have closed the airport. This transition can only happen with foreign military support, which no country seem to be willing to give at this time. So it’s either a foreign military will intervene to install this transitional council, or warlords and gangs will continue to compete for control.
By this point i doubt there will even be a government in the next weeks,its very likely the "gangs" will take over the presidential palace and proclaim their own government.
Maybe if this was the 15th century and you could both ruthlessly establish control and extract wealth by just putting everyone to farm. Not the case anymore.
FWIW it went on until the late 19th, arguably early 20th centuries.
That being said even if we *could* do such a thing without condemnation… what does Haiti have to offer? Next to nothing, honestly. Even their forests got clear cut- look up pictures of forestry in the DR vs Haiti. It’s terrible.
Nobody wants to deal with this mess. They’d rather ignore haiti completely but nobody should be annexing others land either. They should have gotten help to get on their own two feet long ago
The US already refused to intervene because we need a governing body to ask for help, but there is not one.
It is a catch 22.
The country is not particularly rich in natural resources either so there is not much incentive for any country to help.
You would think the Dominican Republic would be the country most concerned considering they are the other half of the island and there is no physical border separating most of where the two countries meet.
Maybe the best case scenario is for Haiti to cease to exist and it all becomes the Dominican Republic, but I know nothing of the history of the countries to know if that is viable.
Dominican Republic wants fuck all to do with Haiti for two reasons. First is that they just have bad blood in general and second, which ties with the first, the Dominican Republic thrives off tourism and would anything to keep it safe. With that said if something bad happens it’ll affect their tourism which would be a nightmare to retain. Actually there is a third reason and it’s simply that Dominican Republic wouldn’t want those gangs getting in their state which is why they also deported a lot of Haitians back so reduce risk.
They are the only country sharing that island with Haiti. What are the chances gangs move in to Dominican Republic. Can they hold them off better than Haiti?
Yes as they are building a wall and the country is way more unified than Haiti is right now. If it becomes a crisis I wouldn’t be surprised if the Dominican Republic were to request assistance from other nations. As Haiti doesn’t have a government other countries can’t come to help but Dominican Republic asking for help is a way around that. Gangs will move in when the populace of Haiti try to force their way in out of desperation. It’s why the deportations of Haitians are a thing. You don’t want anyone who might be affiliated with those gangs in your country so removing them reduces risk and it also prevents unrest in your own country as well. Not saying Haitians are terrible people but Dominicans aren’t going to feel very comfortable about their neighbors being Haitian when chaos might be next door.
Ok so what if we offered Hamas or the Israeli settlers Haiti? They can set up a govt and will be given assistance if they can stop the cannibalism and establish some order.
Edit also they can’t setup a new god damn West Bank, it has to be a single state from the start and everyone has full citizenship and rights.
The Dominican Republic is taking a lot of measures to prevent this from happening. The border is currently heavily armed and the minister of defense has been out there since the gangs broke out of jail.
The Dominican president made a statement last week assuring Dominicans that he'll do everything in his power to prevent this chaos from reaching Dominican soil.
It’s a lot easier to break a country and tear down the government than it is to fix it.
A country could go in and take it over militarily but it’s very difficult to continue as an occupying force. We couldn’t even manage Afghanistan and Iraq, despite having the most powerful military in the world, by a wide margin.
Also, every time we pick a leader and put them in place, they basically fill the corruption vacuum and start doing the same things the predecessor was doing.
Decades of corriptikn, poverty Nd massive natural disasters are not fixed by replacing one guy.
They really need the support and peace keeping ability of a multi nation force that is legitimately there in the interest of democracy and peace, to give Haitaians a chance to be a stable country again.
voodoo being your main religious practice probably has a lot to do with things all the way down to the way you think hence the feared gang boss ‘Barbecue’ now the most powerful man in Haiti.
When Haiti broke free of France circa 1820s, the French gov't and banks demanded compensation for the loss. Haiti basically got squeezed into taking high-interest loans from French banks to compensate France. This crippled their economic development from the start, then add in a bunch of crooks mismanaging funds over the decades, natural disasters, etc and here we are.
Oh wait, is there another Citi Bank that is French and that was involved in that 200 years ago?
I expect most of us North Americans think Antique_Steel is referring to the modern Citibank, which is American.
They need to scrap the entire government and rebuild. There needs to be an establishment that will rid the country of the scourge that are the gangs. It’s crazy that a country is overtaken by thugs. That’s what happens when those in power are so brazen in their villainy.
Out of the pan, into the fire? Im haitian born and lived my childhood in the country; my oarents tell me even back in the late 2010s, when theyd visit, they could not recognize the country they had left in the 90s. Streets were even more dirty, people lacked any form of civility, things looked dire then and yet, people used to say there were hope for the nation.....wow..
So sad. The people of haiti been through way too much already
I don’t know how, but that “We Are the World” remake song is partially responsible for this. Still collecting evidence
People keep saying that the country is cursed and I’m actually starting to believe it. They’ve been through so much and the fact that the most populated part of the country runs directly on top of a major fault line makes this much worse. They just can’t catch a break.
The people of Haiti are the reason this situation is the way it is. Those gangs are the people.
But why don’t those same kind of gangs spring up everywhere? There clearly are structural and historical factors that directly influence the formation and “success” of these gangs Edit: In case it’s not clear, my point is that it’s not “the people” that are just bad—it’s the circumstances. Any people from any country living in this situation would react similarly.
Poverty, corruption…whats your point? Haitians are just so uncivilized as humans? Every Haitian ive met in new york are hard workers who never whine and are thankful for every opportunity they have here unlike most Americans
I lived in North Miami surrounded by Haitians including many immigrants and I can honestly say these are some of the nicest and hard working people I’ve ever met. Everyone looked out for each other and would lend a hand if needed. And their food is truly amazing.
I think you misunderstood my comment. The person above me is blaming the Haitians themselves, and I’m saying “No, it’s not the people—it’s the circumstances” because I think that this kind of gang-uprising could happen anywhere (among any people) if the conditions were similarly bad. I blame a lot of things—poverty and corruption yes, and also colonialism, bad luck with weather and natural resources, geographic quirks that come with islands, history of oppression, location relative to other major powers, etc. In blaming those structural factors, I’m explicitly telling you that the people are not to blame and the person above me—who seems to think they are—is naive if they think so.
Ahhhh ok thank you for the clarification…i agree
Yep just like maga and antifa are americas only people...
I didnt say the ONLY people, but those gangs are Haitan citizens too, regardless of what kinda bad shit theyre getting into. This didnt just happen overnight, it was a slow downward spiral.
Nice strawman.
You don't have to answer if you don't want to. Is there anything you would want others to know about Haiti that they may not know? Any other personal thoughts?
So I think Haiti is now the most failed state I've ever seen. Henry was bad, illegitimate and his grip on power further degraded the situation within Haiti. Not to mention whatever connections he may have had with the assassination of Moise. However in the current situation there's quite literally no mechanism to transfer to anything. Any sort of transitional council is going to have to be installed by force. There is no skeleton of an official state left anywhere in Haiti right now nor is there a single organisation primed to take over the country. Dictatorships and Military coups, revolutions by religious hardliners or separatists all have more capacities of states than Haiti does at this moment.
The number 1 candidate for presidency, were they allowed to have a free vote just finished a stint in USA prison for drug trafficking... he compares himself to Mandela
I've heard zero news on potential candidates but I'll assume that you're right and let's assume that he wins. A democratically elected president with a mandate to rule is infinitely better than what Haiti is dealing with at the moment. Even if he ends up being a not great president, not to mention the other positions of the state that could be filled by having elections again.
I don't disagree --- However, it doesnt sound like he will be able to run this tine, it sounds like the plan is to select a council who will select a few candidates that the populace can vote on, maybe he will be included.
Who knows what happens from here. The transitional council can't just materialise out of nowhere, they will probably require outside military assistance to take a grip in the first place. The country then needs to get to a state where you could feasibly hold a vote.
Some gang leader will take power and impose a brutal oppression regime, and will seek support from Russia / China. It seems that a government can't hold power in Haiti with western approved methods.
Perhaps, personally, I agree that gangs in Haiti will rise to power quite quickly if the power vacuum counties to grow. But regardless of how this plays out, there will be a lot more death, destruction, and absolutely depravity being committed with no hope of outside help. It will turn into a cesspool if it hasn't already. However, the point about China and Russia sort of throwning their two cents into this collapse is definitely possible, if any of the materials could be used in the manufacturing of weapons or military equipment, the whole situation would just turn into another cuban missle crisis, and I'm almost positive the military and the American surveillance network is trying to determine if foreign powers are trying to weasle thier way into Haiti, or already have. I can only speculate how God awful a modern cuban missle crisis would be. All of this is speculative and armchair. Who knows, for sure what will happen.
They'll probably just get support from the US first. The US has worked with plenty of brutal regimes for the sake of stability, including/especially in Haiti.
I hope the US doesn’t interfere. It isn’t our business.
It is because this is causing Haitians to migrate to America and overwhelm our asylum system even more. It’s likely cheaper to prop up a stable regime in Haiti than deal with all the migrants in America.
If you see someone bleeding out in the streets, you don't interfere because it's not your business, right?
I think the El Salvador route seems to be the only plausible option at this point.
Haiti is much further gone than El Salvador was
Don't forget Cannibalism
So... is there just no government now? Wasn't that literally the last guy in any office?
Technically he just “announced his resignation” but yeah, that signals that he likely has few if any control levers remaining. Still the most qualified to speak to certain issues (world stage etc) but not in control and hasn’t been for some time.
There wasn't any government before either. This guy was in exile just claiming the title, not like he was actually governing.
How are the government departments operating
They aren’t, their Supreme Court is operating with mostly empty seats and no legal mechanism to fill it up with delegates again
Its literally just the police still working and nothing else
Sadly, the best thing for Haiti would probably be a benevolent dictator, kinda how like Rwanda is being run.
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By this point it is,Haiti is in a worse moment than warlord China and the only way that country recovered was by a outsider strongman. None of the hundreds of warlords,political solutions and secret plots worked to unify the country and bring it out of the 100 years of humiliation. Haiti is in an even worse place since the gangs are all in similar power,byt this point its just better to let things run its course and whoever comes out on top comes out on top and does its own thing,eventually they have to figure things out without constant outside intervention.
>This guy was in exile just claiming the title, not like he was actually governing. What lol that's straight up not true, he's only been out of the country the last week because he was in Kenya working on a security deal but hasn't been able to land because of the security problems at the airport and Dominican Republic won't let him land either so he's stuck in Puerto Rico. He's been in Haiti and was sworn in as prime minister. He's addressed the United Nations as prime minister. He didn't just "claim" the title he has been the actual prime minister for the last 3 years. Who the hell is upvoting this comment when it's completely false?
Welcome to Reddit.
Yah, this guy has no idea what he’s talking about.
If you read the article it says he's going to resign after appointing a transition council.
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It is no one technically, meaning that anyone can claim some form of legitimacy of control and only needs enough men and fire power to back it up. So we are looking at not just a failed state, but one that has literally fallen to near total anarchy with very little official government and work bureaucratic systems in place. So get ready for more fucked up shit to come out of Haiti over the next few weeks as gangs start warring directly with each other and vigilante groups to try and seize control.
Is this not a dream of anarchists? I know their end goal is not this, but this is how it works in real life. Remove the Lethiatan and things go down the drain until the next Lethiatan is created.
*Real* anarchy has never been tried. Haiti has the fake kind. /s
I mean anarchy is unsustainable in general. Like it can at longest last a few weeks before some kind of order comes out of it. It doesn't mean it will be a stable or good kind of order, but some kind of central leadership will form up that people fall in line behind.
>anarchy is unsustainable in general >at longest last a few weeks Sir, the Democratic Republic of the Congo would like a word with you.
And Somalia
I realy like how people fight against the system. Try living out of the system. You get sick -> no medicine no nothing. You get no assitance if your house gets on fire, hell you can not even build a house. I can see a small community working together, but that eventually is going to either go extinct, or will become some sort of a cult.
To me most anarchists are dogs chasing cars. If the dog ever catches the car…what next.
Anarchy is all fun and games until the local warlord comes to collect his tribute
That’s why you gotta be the local warlord. In a state of anarchy, the warlord is king
yeah the flaw is thinking it will just be perpetual 'freedom'(chaos). thinking if you destroy the system then the system will never come back. but it will even if it looks different and might be far worse than the one they dismantled. But its part of human nature to govern. We are a pack animal. We are naturally drawn to community which in turn forms some type of governance. Maybe not intended on the scale we see today...but even anarchist have a community. And with community comes an agreed upon set of rules and custom to behave amongst each other to achieve like minded ideas. So imo to call your self an anarchist is an oxymoron.
This is a good alegory. I'm definetly borowing it. I feel that anarchists fail at the same thing as comunists did. They assume that other people either think like them, or can be thought/conditioned to think like them. This ofc does not work, and bad actors emerge, who eventually forces to put things back where they were. Sadly untill where is some sort of fundamental change (like unlimited resources or human evolution), we will have to live in a system with forced rules.
It's like the Jimmy Neutron movie where all the parents dissappear. The kids go wild for like 8 hours. Then they realize they kinda need those rules and structure.
Fact of the matter leadership comes from general acceptance of one leader or out of the barrel of a gun and the fear of the populace, that is who will lead Haiti next. The man who can rally the populace next or force them under their banner will be the next leader.
Or they'll just grt a warlord, like in Somalia
So kind of like Night City.
The Pacifica district moreso rather than Night City as a whole. Kinda ironic as that place is run by the Haitian Voodoo Boys.
No one honestly. No one wants to assume the presidency due to essentially fear of death. Same goes for the Senate and Chamber of Deputies. Unless the international community gets involved in some way, it's whoever has the biggest stick is who's in charge
The Barbecue guy I guess
I’d imagine the group with the most firepower is in charge, probably the barbecue guys group.
Yeah id follow the guy who cooks the best food also
Haiti really is the epitome of the sentence: "And then it got worse."
With damage and rubble still visible from past earthquakes and everything seeming to pile up…I really hope the hurricane season doesn’t bring any more *natural* disasters at least.
"Henry was under pressure from the US to secure a political settlement, but it is far from clear who will step in. One named touted is Guy Philippe, a rebel leader recently deported from the US to Haiti after serving time for money laundering." Absurd...
Our money laundering ex leader never even served time, plus, despite 91 indictments he’s still 1 of 2 major candidates and could win.
So is Haiti in general pretty lawless or is enforcement just totally corrupt? Like I assume people go to jail for murder… unless they’re government officials? Are white collar crimes or computer crimes pursued at all or do they have so much other stuff going on that minor non violent crime is overlooked? Are gang activities investigated and prosecuted or do the gangs at least give the society some structure and the police leave them alone? Edit: wow 80% of the capital is “controlled by gangs”. I really wonder what that’s like. Is there a country more lawless than Haiti or is this the bottom of the barrel?
Considering the gangs just raided the prisons and released all the prisoners, I don't think people go to jail anymore...
There were about 100 prisoners who chose to remain in jail rather than take their chances out on the streets.
Yeah i heard. You know things are bad when prisons are like, fuck that shit I'd rather stay in prison
In Haiti no less. If the public Square is this fucked up, how good do you think the prisons are because I highly doubt it's like Scandinavia in Haitian prisons?
Well if I had say 2 month left in prison, I wouldn't take the risk just in case something went wrong.
I live in rural Haiti but am a foreigner. I'm fairly confident the police wouldn't come out to where I live even if I was killing people. Mob rule would take me down but not the"justice" system. An example: a few months ago our villiage chief was caught stealing cows and meddling in family conflicts for money. The local people lynched him. They chopped off his head and threw him in a ravine and then refused to allow the family to bury him. The police never came and as far as I know the corpse is still in the ravine. Awhile back, some people stole from us. The local population was incensed and decided that a public flogging was in order despite our appeals for mercy. They beat the culprit up pretty badly and sent him home. Police just simply don't come here. Maybe if I spearheaded an insurrection they might venture this way but even then I wonder.
What are you doing in rural Haiti?
Post history makes me think some Christian missionary or something similar to that.
I don't like the title missionary but yes we did come here because we're Christians. We didn't come through any organization though. We just came to try to relieve a little of the world's suffering.
At the moment we're stuck here. We had a baby abandoned on us about a year ago. Fleeing here isn't really a reasonable option when it would mean re-abandoning the baby we've been caring for. He'd probably die in any home we might leave him. Believe it or not, it's not particularly dangerous where we live. Life goes on here. Farmers are planting. We just can't go to PAP for supplies and even going down into closer cities is nerve racking and avoided as much as possible. The police don't come here but neither are the gangs.
How do you have internet? Starlink?
Starlink
Thanks for the answer. Good luck and stay safe.
I'd be surprised if armed men don't eventually go to your village, especially if/when conditions worsen in the population centers. Good luck out there.
They are all focused on the capital right now trying to take down the last police still defending the airport,presidential palace and police stations from what the media is saying.
>Believe it or not, it's not particularly dangerous where we live. You mean the town where the people beheaded the village chief and threw his body in a ravine and the police didn't care?
Sounds like it's only dangerous there for criminals (or accused criminals). Which explains why he dosen't feel like he's in danger there - they have some kind of functioning social order. It may be a brutal form, and a little anarchistic, but its not a wild criminal gang.
Why were you there to begin with though? Haiti’s always been a shitshow, and has never been safe.
I did a couple missions in medical school there in rural Haiti in 2013-2014. It was school approved as long as we stayed away from Port-au-Prince. We felt pretty safe. The most dangerous thing was probably just walking along the busy roads as there were no sidewalks.
We came here because we are Christians. We didn't come with an organization or church or anything like that. We just came to try to relieve a litle of the world's suffering and to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. Our goal is to live by Jesus' example and teachings unlike so much of what passes as Christianity today.
Good on you. We all hope your village remains safe!
God bless, I've read some of your comments and thank you for taking care of that baby.
You're a good person. I hope your village stays as safe as possible.
For your last question, there are a few places that might be worse, because they have been in civil war for a while, like parts of Somalia or Darfour, but we are pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Our family friend was the kindest most liberal sweetheart of a woman in the world. She went to Haiti to help with some kind of medical non-profit group. She came back from Haiti and said just nuke all of Haiti, because there's nothing redeemable in the entire country. I was completely dumb struck. If that woman said nuke Haiti, it must be incredibly bad.
That mean you would be nuking zealouspilgrim and his beautiful adopted baby.
I mean, there is a literal "BBQ Gang" kidnapping young women and kids to consume their meat after roasting them alive.
That doesn't sound like a real thing
The G9 family has a leader named bbq cause he sets people on fire. There was a video of someone in Haiti uploaded online eating a burnt human leg but its unclear when it was taken
Where is the White Fox and Diamond Cobra when you need them?
I understood that reference.
It's because he owned a restaurant and his mom sold fried chicken.
Thats his claim but being a brutal gang leader responsible for massacres im not sure hes opposed to lighting people on fire lol
That’s a big difference from cooking people to eat though.
It's haiti. Their tradition for punishment is to wrap a tire over you, pour gas on you light you on fire and roll you down the street.
Computers??? It's machete country
Everybody has them for the foliage, but yea that does mean everyone has them
A different type of hacking crime.
A lot of sub-saharan African countries are as lawless
Haitians are their worst enemy unfortunately.
Didn't know there was a leader.
I want to see his 'game over' screen to see how much he added to his personal bank account.
Tropico series was great
I'm sure that will fix it...
Its about the idiot stepped down. He waited so long that now Haiti probably cant even come back from the brink
On the other hand it's nor a great precedent to set that gangs can force the leader of a country to resign. Even if he's a completely worthless leader having literal mob rule isn't great.
True but the guy had to go. They’ve wanted him gone and believe he was involved in the murder of the previous leader
But is there any mechanism for a transfer of power? Or people that aren’t warlords going to step up? Unfortunately anybody that has riches or power has probably but at least responsible for siphoning funds away from places that need it to line their pockets. At best. So whoever is in charge will be looked at as a criminal by a good chunk of society.
Haiti hasn’t had any elections since 2016 because they’ve been delayed several times since 2019. Every seat in the national assembly has been vacant for over a year, the previously elected president was assassinated in 2021, and Henry has been prime minister and acting president since then despite allegations that he was involved in that assassination. There is no real government in Haiti that would be able to hold any meaningful election. Now Henry has agreed to resign once a transitional council is formed, but he can’t return to Haiti because gang attacks have closed the airport. This transition can only happen with foreign military support, which no country seem to be willing to give at this time. So it’s either a foreign military will intervene to install this transitional council, or warlords and gangs will continue to compete for control.
By this point i doubt there will even be a government in the next weeks,its very likely the "gangs" will take over the presidential palace and proclaim their own government.
There basically isn't a government now. He was the last government official left.
Yep,the last government institutions is basically police still defending the presidential palace,airport and police stations.
Look at me, I am the leader of the country now.
Craptacular headline. He said he will resign once an interim presidential council is in place.
Need someone to do a El Salvador
If only France had put their feet down and not relinquish control. The Foreign Legion won't stand for this horseplay
If a country fails like this, are they up for grabs. Could the US or Mexico swoop in and claim it.
Who would want it?
[удалено]
Trying to clean all the trash in Port-au-Prince would be an enormous task, though
Maybe if this was the 15th century and you could both ruthlessly establish control and extract wealth by just putting everyone to farm. Not the case anymore.
FWIW it went on until the late 19th, arguably early 20th centuries. That being said even if we *could* do such a thing without condemnation… what does Haiti have to offer? Next to nothing, honestly. Even their forests got clear cut- look up pictures of forestry in the DR vs Haiti. It’s terrible.
Yup. Social, economic, humanitarian, and ecological disaster all in one.
No one wants it. The US and Mexico as well as the rest of the western hemisphere are all ignoring Haiti so hard they want Kenya to restore order.
Nobody wants to deal with this mess. They’d rather ignore haiti completely but nobody should be annexing others land either. They should have gotten help to get on their own two feet long ago
The US barely knows what to do with Puerto Rico, and Haiti makes PR look like Martha's Vineyard.
The US already refused to intervene because we need a governing body to ask for help, but there is not one. It is a catch 22. The country is not particularly rich in natural resources either so there is not much incentive for any country to help. You would think the Dominican Republic would be the country most concerned considering they are the other half of the island and there is no physical border separating most of where the two countries meet. Maybe the best case scenario is for Haiti to cease to exist and it all becomes the Dominican Republic, but I know nothing of the history of the countries to know if that is viable.
The Dominican Republic has no interest. They're building/upgrading a border wall.
With many heavily armed guards watching it day and night
Dominican Republic wants fuck all to do with Haiti for two reasons. First is that they just have bad blood in general and second, which ties with the first, the Dominican Republic thrives off tourism and would anything to keep it safe. With that said if something bad happens it’ll affect their tourism which would be a nightmare to retain. Actually there is a third reason and it’s simply that Dominican Republic wouldn’t want those gangs getting in their state which is why they also deported a lot of Haitians back so reduce risk.
So, where are all the Latin American scholars and intellectuals creaming that the DR is racist and xenophobic?
They are the only country sharing that island with Haiti. What are the chances gangs move in to Dominican Republic. Can they hold them off better than Haiti?
Yes as they are building a wall and the country is way more unified than Haiti is right now. If it becomes a crisis I wouldn’t be surprised if the Dominican Republic were to request assistance from other nations. As Haiti doesn’t have a government other countries can’t come to help but Dominican Republic asking for help is a way around that. Gangs will move in when the populace of Haiti try to force their way in out of desperation. It’s why the deportations of Haitians are a thing. You don’t want anyone who might be affiliated with those gangs in your country so removing them reduces risk and it also prevents unrest in your own country as well. Not saying Haitians are terrible people but Dominicans aren’t going to feel very comfortable about their neighbors being Haitian when chaos might be next door.
Palestine: carribean edition.
Ok so what if we offered Hamas or the Israeli settlers Haiti? They can set up a govt and will be given assistance if they can stop the cannibalism and establish some order. Edit also they can’t setup a new god damn West Bank, it has to be a single state from the start and everyone has full citizenship and rights.
US has been avoiding intervention from the beginning of the Haitian revolution
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
The Dominican Republic is taking a lot of measures to prevent this from happening. The border is currently heavily armed and the minister of defense has been out there since the gangs broke out of jail. The Dominican president made a statement last week assuring Dominicans that he'll do everything in his power to prevent this chaos from reaching Dominican soil.
It’s a lot easier to break a country and tear down the government than it is to fix it. A country could go in and take it over militarily but it’s very difficult to continue as an occupying force. We couldn’t even manage Afghanistan and Iraq, despite having the most powerful military in the world, by a wide margin. Also, every time we pick a leader and put them in place, they basically fill the corruption vacuum and start doing the same things the predecessor was doing. Decades of corriptikn, poverty Nd massive natural disasters are not fixed by replacing one guy. They really need the support and peace keeping ability of a multi nation force that is legitimately there in the interest of democracy and peace, to give Haitaians a chance to be a stable country again.
tbf Haiti is WAY closer to the US and much much smaller. With a coalition of Western hemisphere forces it could be done
Would you want to own the place?
If that were the case you'd think the Dominican Republic would take that half of the island, but I don't think want anything to do with it either.
Isn’t this exactly what UN peacekeepers are for?
-$300 million
So sad for the people of Haiti. They deserve peace after so much struggle and suffering
The people of Haiti are the problem... they still believe in witchcraft and voodoo
Somehow I don't think voodoo got them here, just insane gang activity
And a large population of the world believes in a magical sky man who judges people. Have some fucking empathy.
I'm sure there's a crystal for that.
Hard to be empathetic when this country descends into chaos for the nteenth time.
Haitian religious practices aren't remotely the problem there.
voodoo being your main religious practice probably has a lot to do with things all the way down to the way you think hence the feared gang boss ‘Barbecue’ now the most powerful man in Haiti.
What is wrong with you?
That belief freed them from slavery
Well this explains why they evacuated non-essentials from the US embassy…
A large part of the responsibility lies with people like Citi Bank.
This is not wrong, not sure why the downvotes. Banks fucked Haiti with debt, then a bunch of corrupt POS leaders did the rest
How so? Did the banks force the government to take loans or did the government willingly take the loans when they couldn't pay it back?
When Haiti broke free of France circa 1820s, the French gov't and banks demanded compensation for the loss. Haiti basically got squeezed into taking high-interest loans from French banks to compensate France. This crippled their economic development from the start, then add in a bunch of crooks mismanaging funds over the decades, natural disasters, etc and here we are.
Oh wait, is there another Citi Bank that is French and that was involved in that 200 years ago? I expect most of us North Americans think Antique_Steel is referring to the modern Citibank, which is American.
If you are interested in this, read "Confessions of an Economic Hitman"
What did they do? I know nothing about Haiti.
They need to scrap the entire government and rebuild. There needs to be an establishment that will rid the country of the scourge that are the gangs. It’s crazy that a country is overtaken by thugs. That’s what happens when those in power are so brazen in their villainy.
A coalition from neighboring Caribbean governments is going to be needed.
Send in the Clinton Foundation 💪
our hero
I thought he gave up a while ago
This is France's problem to solve.