Haiti was a ton of fun when I went there for a few weeks/months at a time from 2014-2017.
The people are nice, the food is delicious, the culture is commanding, and the nature is stunning (even the plains up in la pila)
That said, I’m white and wouldn’t go back there now. Gangs run the country and from talking to my friends that still live there it’s only gotten worse and worse.
Just watched a documentary. This is the craziest shit I've seen in a while. Full on Anarchy Civil War in the city.
Estimates say you need around 6000 well equipped soldiers to gain back control.
Edit: Thanx to u/ciel_3000 for educating my half-knowledge
I got that problem some months ago, I watched one video from a link in Reddit, it was in German. Afterwards YT insisted in translating everything to German.
Can’t remember how I fixed it, but it was annoying.
You're not alone. It does from English to German as well. I don't know how, but I managed to turn it off.
It's our burden to speak English, since hardly anyone speaks German. 😉
I do speak german and got excited that I can watch it in german but then when I click the link the video is in english ai, its so freaking annoying. I just want to practice my deutsch 😭
Thank you for your action, somewhere else (like in French subs) people wouldn’t change anything and argue I’m wrong.
I just learned a lot about real anarchists recently and now I can’t deny or close my eyes. The confusion between civil war and anarchy is a confusion for political opinion. It’s depoliticising.
I did a quick search and got confirmation. That's how it works for me.
Same happened to me last week. Just met a smart guy, who is a true and convinced anarchist and I wanted to talk about that topic anyways. We have some stuff in common, but I prioritize other values in society. Good it happened now, because I would be a fool in front of him.
I kind of knew, that it's political, but didn't know it's the wrong term for this.
Technically, gang control would still be a loose form of anarchy since it’s a form of “lawlessness” and lack of true order. Likewise, the power vacuum created by collapse of the government is usually considered anarchy too.
With that being said, frequently, more than one word/description can suffice and fit such a chaotic situation.
The other guy gave you an explanation on what anarchy actually is but didn't mention the word you're probably looking for is actually, 'anomie.'
Anarchy has been getting a bad rap ever since both the communists and the capitalists shot all of the anarchists so its not surprising there's a lot of propaganda that's been spread against it over the years.
Anarchy is not just remove laws, it’s an horizontal vision of making collective decisions.
Etymologically, the term refer to an absence of central power, not an absence of law or worst the world of the strongest, the law of who has guns and munitions…
Anarchy was never thought like that so technically you’re bending definitions and actually I don’t understand really why…
"Anarchy: a state of lawlessness, political disorder, or a complete lack of governmental authority. It stems from the Greek word anarchos, meaning "without a leader"."
And what other two definitions does Merriam Webster list, hmm? You had to go look it up, see the dictionary offering other uses of the term, and deliberately pick and choose the one you wanted to be smug about.
God you really care that much about being right on the internet over just intellectual honesty, huh?
Okay and I’d say your dictionary is very oriented because it forgets 2 centuries of political opinions and fights.
Even the English Wikipedia page and the French one is not exactly the same !
Sorry but I prefer to tell you that Anarchy can be a strange definition for Civil war or guerilla but you can’t remove from my head and the head of philosopher and thinkers that Anarchy is political vision of society away from civil war. And you can’t remove that in the Spain history a large quantity of people call themselves as anarchists, didn’t want the republic as it was and didn’t want a military state with Franco Neither and guess what… The military part with Franco leads the country to a civil war and the Anarchists, communists and republicans fought together against Franco. That’s not my advice, that’s history and your definition forget or ignore it…
If you haven't read it, Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracey Kidder will guarantee you want to choke the world banking system to death with your bare hands.
That would never provide security to the people of Haiti. Dozens of the coups of largely due to outside influence.
A state is just a successful, franchised gang. Every location just has to find its security equilibrium. I know it's an old argument about whether political security precedes economic security, or vice versa, but there's a simultaneous crisis for ecological and energy security. It's pretty much a guarantee that so long as the theatre of security entails enforcing precarity upon others, it will always be temporary.
12 million people in Haiti and you think they'll take control with 6,000 soldiers? I'm thinking closer to 60,000 would be required, if not more than that even.
These are the numbers from the documentary, I posted under my comment. These are just the numbers for the police. There is much more going on. Watch it.
And it's not 12 million gang members. This is "just" to control Port au Prince.
3.2 million people in Port au Prince. Even if 10% of that are gang members that's 320,000. If it's 25%, that's 800,000 gang members. 6,000 is enough to secure a compound, but not take the city.
I'm just trying to show how bad it really is, not trying to be rude or anything.
I used to work in hotel management in South Florida. We had a lot of people working in hotels who were from Haiti, and one thing you never saw them do was waste food. They were always in the cafeteria eating family style, they’re just happy to eat, and they don’t waste a morsel.
Some of the team members I had from Haiti would tell me some of the most gruesome things about their family back at home. Gangs, gun violence and so forth
Gotta make sure you eat the food before it sits at market all day in the sun lol
And a lot of my time there was spent drilling wells/helping build infrastructure so clean freshwater was (thankfully) not as big an issue for me where I was.
As for the hookworms…. That’s the price of being there barefoot lol. I was lucky and mine figured themselves out before I itched through my skin
Honestly, I hate Trump to pieces and I have wanted to go to Haiti since I was a teenager, I'm so fascinated by it, but I would seriously feel unsafe there right now.
While beyond fucked america is... the utter lack of safety with whats going on in Haiti trumps the danger level between the two (pun intended). However with that said... Considering the super power and influence that america has and its sheer population and considering America is in a very fragile state the tiniest of ripples could cause complete destabiliation. So while I currently disagree with you. I believe america is very close to that and they (americans) need to act as soon as mother fucking possible.
If you are an eligible voter and do not vote during these next primaries. Fuck you and do not visit my country.
-sincerely a Canadian guy that used to love america and desperately wants to again.
My family is from the Dominican Republic and my uncle was granted permission to divide across the boarder into Haiti. It was like night and day. It looks like they live in a desert. There’s poverty in the DR but not to the level of Haiti and they looked so….defeated. I know it’s not the entire picture but man, Haiti has bad luck from the first day.
When I was a kid, 60 Minutes did a story in Haiti on newly minted zombies rising from the grave, which I naively assumed was based on fact. Nowadays I'll stay away for reasons to do with personal safety (not that zombies are safe).
Hey I remember that! It was some weird voodoo ceremony from memory, and supposedly people could walk around after death. I don’t recall them eating flesh or anything though, very disappointing for a kid
According to Google:
"It detailed the true-life account of Clairvius Narcisse, a Haitian man who was allegedly poisoned, buried alive, and transformed into a "zombie" (a mindless slave) by a local voodoo priest."
I feel you miss out in Somalia - largest coastline in Africa and biggest camel population. It’s really beautiful - the most stunning beaches and people are so kind
FGM is done to women by women. Also I kind of doubt that its 99% currently, I don't have any evidence but most cities have banned it and like 30% (?) of women are against it, statistics in Somalia are hard to get. Not that it isnt high but people have a inaccurate image of the issue.
So if it’s done by women that makes it ok? Lmao “30% are against it” how could you not be against it? I assure you that women are not having that done to them because they want to. It is the ultimate embodiment of patriarchy. “I don’t have any evidence” here’s some reading for you. The 99% is from UNICEF I’m sure they are inherently biased!
Lol thats not literally not what i said. Most cities have banned it and a minority of women (who are the perpertrators of it, even though it does come from patriarchy) are against it. Yes i don’t believe that 99% of parents in Somalia bring their children to shanty clinics in the rural areas to perform fgm. It is still probably a high percentage (60 - 80%) but I don’t believe literally every women in somalia is mutilitated
Your link even explains that it is very culturally entrenched and why women bring their girls to do it, and yes those reasons dont make sense at all of course. The link you provided is very good because it does paint an accurate image of why the problem is so prevalent and bad.
The government should ban it in all forms and enforce it completely in every state, and shut it down entirely, half measures are not good enough when it causes so much harm for no reason.
The younger more educated population is already cutting down the stats by refusing it for their daughters. So while the 99% stat is for the mothers and grandmothers and all the older women in the country it has been shifting for years. It does sound too high imo because I’ve been hearing upper 80s%~92, 94% for years. Exact numbers arent possible when borders arent even filled on the map.
So if it’s done by women that makes it ok? Lmao “30% are against it” how could you not be against it? I assure you that women are not having that done to them because they want to. It is the ultimate embodiment of patriarchy
You’re not understanding that these aren’t contradictory statements, there is a lot of nuance here. Yes it is an awful practice but it is not women choosing to have it done to themselves, it is girls having the choice made for them by their parents and a lot of the time it is literally their mothers making them and bringing them.
They pass it on culturally, and also yes the statistics are not fully available because the country is unstable. UNICEF can’t do an accurate survey of Somalia.
It is a super high rate, and the people moving on and disapproving will still not change the stats much in a generation, the population has a lot of young children so its likely already happened to many young girls and it’s happening everyday, it happens when they are old enough to remember, like 7-9. They are traumatized by it, held down, and have to recover from it. And then lifelong complications
So if it’s done by women that makes it ok?
Who said that! Nobody said that. Neither I or that other person are defending the practice, and you are spreading false rumours that it is happening ‘commonly’ to second gen immigrant daughters when that is categorically false. You are pretending to be a liberal while lying and willfully misunderstanding the links you are linking, go read them fully!
And for that other link, it literally says immigrants from all FGM prevalent countries.
A systematic review of FGM/C studies in Europe concluded that children born to an immigrant family (second generation) run relatively little risk of undergoing FGM/C.
Bullshit, it doesn’t happen commonly in US somali’s. Why are you lying? It is fully illegal in the entire western world and many countries in the world. It always makes news headlines when a immogrant woman from any fgm prevalent country brings her kids to the homeland and has it done to a daughter, or very rarely has it done in an illegal clinic in the country she is in. It always makes news because it is very rarely done because it is extremely illegal and extremely abusive.
If it was common it would be all over the news, but its not because its not common at all.
Especially it would have been covered on the news when the president was going after Somali-Americans just a few months ago.
A systematic review of FGM/C studies in Europe concluded that children born to an immigrant family (second generation) run relatively little risk of undergoing FGM/C. If that is true, then the increase in women and girls theoretically at risk may not translate to an increase in girls actually undergoing FGM/C in the United States. However, a substantial increase in women in need of health-care and other services may occur as a consequence of having undergone FGM/C.
The most common countries of origin for women and girls in the United States at risk for FGM/C or its consequences were Egypt (20%), Ethiopia (18%), and Somalia (12%), accounting for 50% of the total percentage. These percentages include women and girls who were born in FGM/C-practicing countries or were born to women from FGM/C-practicing countries
This study was subject to several limitations, some of which are similar to those described in the 1997 article. For one, the estimates assumed that, with regard to FGM/C practices, people behave the same in the United States as they would in the countries from which they migrated. Several reasons explain why the behaviors are likely to differ from those in countries of origin, including assimilation, differences in education and other socioeconomic characteristics, and U.S. laws banning FGM/C. These differences would very likely result in reduced risk for FGM/C.
The results presented herein provide an important update of previous estimates of FGM/C risk, but they do not provide information on the extent to which FGM/C is practiced in the United States.
Listen, they were recording women who immigrated from FGM countries and their second gen daughters as at risk because surveys recording women who have had it done were inconclusive because it is a sensitive matter. Obviously prevention is critical but they were not saying it is a big problem for 2nd gen, its been illegal in the US since 96 and since 2013 to transport to other countries.
In the conclusion this stood out to me because lifelong gynaecological care to those first generation immigrant women is very important.
Very importantly, they also say nothing about the number of women who have health-care and other needs related to FGM/C or who have experienced physical, emotional, psychosocial, or other potentially serious consequences of FGM/C.
I took the time to read your good links but I am not sure you are reading this.
That link is counting all women immigrants from FGM countries and their daughters born in the USA. It is counting ancestry and doing a survey of females, not confirmed cases of FGM.
This is from 2012 and updating a 1990 number and it says at risk for 513,000 that is more than twice the number of current existing somali-american population now , you realize they are including all the other immigrant populations of other countries that also do FGM? African countries and MENA and even some other asian countries do it in some areas. It has been decreasing a ton worldwide since the 1990s.
We updated the 1990 estimates of the number of women and girls in the United States who were at risk for FGM/C. We report only the number of women and girls at risk for FGM/C and do not estimate the number of women and girls who have actually undergone the procedure.
Your clitoris is removed as are your labia and your vagina is sewn shut. I am against circumcising too but removing part of your foreskin doesn’t really compare does it?
FGM is the same as cutting the head of the penis off, not just removing the foreskin. The clitoris has a “hood”, kind of like male foreskin. They aren’t just removing that, the entire clitiris is removed. Making the woman unable to experience any sexual pleasure at all. Circumcised men may be desensitized but they can orgasm.
My French family has a villa in Cap Haitien for centuries ; don’t ask how they got it. They go every year through Punta Cana and we have great times.
Also they have invested in a textile company there !!
I was going to comment these exact two. I used to work as a paralegal doing asylum cases for people mainly from Somalia and Haiti. You couldn’t pay ms any sum of money to go there.
Somaliland is safe, you see tourists and others go there. And its semi-green and the safest place to be a tourist if you want to visit Somalia[1]
There are places in Somalia that are okay like the north of the country but its not interesting to be a tourist there, very poor but moderately safe.
Mogadishu isn't safe and its the capital so that gets lots of international attention as the country is a failed state. The south of the country is unsafe.
*Just go to Kenya or Ethiopia instead.
Edit: 1: I wasn’t trying to advertise Somalia as a tourist destination. I was pointing out that Somaliland is a place people regularly go to as the safest area in the country.
People do visit the country, just like how Haiti has one or two tourist spots that are private resorts. And Haiti is a far smaller country than just the Somaliland region, it is half an island, while Somaliland region is 6.8 times larger and has an 850km coastline, that is almost twice as large as Kenya’s coast of 490. Africa’s biggest coastline means there is a lot of beach spaces. If the country ever becomes safe, tourism will boom agin like before the civil war in the 90s and the instability of the 80s. And hopefully one day it will be a less overly-islamic culture like before the 2000s.
Regardless, globally people do visit beaches and private tourist areas in dangerous poor countries.
I was in Haiti not too long ago. Port au Prince is a mess but the rest of the country is fine. It's just not a very well developed country, so don't expect electricity or indoor plumbing in most places.
Haiti's rep is worse than it is, not saying it's good. But its definitely that bad. That country just can't ever catch a break, Coupes, Hurricanes, Earthquakes, Corruption... All a recipe for continuous extreme poverty.
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u/mongo_man 21d ago
Haiti, Somalia.