Haiti gangs force prime minister to resign
Plus, a potential government in Libya, and humanitarian abuses in Syria
Enjoy the issue! On Saturday, I published a discussion forum that created some interesting dialogue. Read it here, and even add some thoughts. There is no time limit.
Followups on A6 topics
U.S. to Send $300 Million in Weapons to Ukraine Under Makeshift Plan
Gaza war: Netanyahu vows to defy allies on Rafah invasion
U.S. lawmakers try to ban TikTok
A6 - Where the World Happens
Haiti’s prime minister to resign
Haiti Prime Minister Ariel Henry said last week he would resign as violent gangs gain increasing power and now want a seat at the political table.
The gangs, which control 80% of the capital city of Port-au-Prince and have officially outgunned the police, prevented Henry from entering Haiti after he visited Kenya on a diplomatic mission to attempt to recruit police officers.
In his absense, the gangs shut down the airport, stranding Henry in Puerto Rico.
Political experts also warned that changing leadership is unlikely to change the reality on the ground, and any future government likely has to deal with the gangs.
While there are more than 200 gangs in the country, they are mainly split between two coalitions: the “G9 and Allies,” which are led by a former cop named Jimmy Chérizier; and “Izo,” whose leaders seem to be more traditional gangsters.
Chérizier is believed to have orchestrated a widespread attack on critical infrastructure in Haiti while Prime Minister Henry was in Kenya, which paused its participation in a UN plan to send foreign police officers to Haiti.
Henry is not an innocent victim in all of this, as his rise to power was connected to the assassination of President Jovenel Moise. Chérizier started to accumulate power in part because of his opposition to Henry.
In 2022, Henry himself survived an assassination attempt, and Chérizier called for a coup in September 2023.
Washington has called on Henry to “expedite” Haiti’s political transition, but the island nation’s tragedy is that it is unclear what that means for its future.
Libya is trying to form a government
Leaders in Libya have agreed to a tentative plan to form a government in an attempt to end a 13-year-long conflict that came to define the country’s years after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi.
While the attempt is noble, Libya's last attempt to hold elections was in 2021, a process that collapsed over disputes about the eligibility of various candidates.
The latest attempt involves three people who are already leading various factions of the country and who will attempt to unify and form a functioning government.
Those people are Mohamed Menfi, president of the Presidential Council; Mohamed Takala, the head of the High State Council; and Aguila Saleh, speaker of the House of Representatives.
They hope the government will take the first step towards holding elections by creating a bureaucratic body to organize the process. The trio called on the UN to support their proposal.
One concern of the proposal is that none of the politicians were elected, and they simply announced themselves as the new leaders of Libya. But, that country has spent a decade in near-anarchy, so this might be a case of “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.”
One problem the trio might face is that a man named Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah, who is not part of the future plans, still claims the prime minister seat. He was installed in a UN-backed process in 2021, but the parliament does not recognize his leadership. Al-Dbeihah has refused to step down unless he loses in national elections.
There are also doubts within Libya that any of the three leaders would willingly cede power if they were to lose a future election.
Report describes child humanitarian abuses in Syria
The destruction of the Syrian Civil War was obvious when it crested in the 2010s, but the long-term effects of that brutal period in its history are starting to become apparent as the country tries to rebuild now that the worst of the war seems to be over.
One demographic that has been particularly victimized is the children of the Islamic State (ISIL), who are stuck in prisons, camps, and rehabilitation centers. A UN-backed report found that around 30,000 children in the country are experiencing abuse in these living conditions.
The kids were mainly brought to Syria and Iraq by their parents when ISIL established a caliphate in the region from 2014-2019.
The children are mostly held in the al-Hol camp in Syria, which houses 45,000 people, mostly the families of ISIL militants and their supporters. Teenagers are typically kept in jails run by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
The commission said that the camps “amount to cruel and inhuman treatment and outrages on personal dignity.”
The camps have come to symbolize the challenges of reintegrating people associated with ISIL into their various homelands.
Most of the children had no choice about “joining” ISIL, and they often were horribly abused during that regime. But now, many countries refuse to repatriate them out of fear of extremism.
The population at al-Hol has dropped from 73,000 people to around 45,000 because of repatriation efforts made by Iraq and countries that were once part of the Soviet Union.
The US has a shipbuilding problem
The US military-industrial complex dominates most statistics, the most famous of which is that it outspends the next 10 countries combined. But the US is no longer good at building ships.
When it comes to shipbuilding, America is being dominated by much of the world, and the clear leaders in 2024 are China and South Korea. China built nearly 26 million tons in ships in 2022, compared to the paltry 73,000 tons in the US.
Military officials believe the sluggish industry would become a real problem if Washington finds itself in a true major power conflict in the next decade.
Last week, the US Steelworkers Union sent a petition to the Biden Administration alleging that China uses discriminatory practices to unfairly dominate global shipbuilding.
The US Trade Representative office has 45 days to respond to the claims, which could result in tariffs and port fees on Chinese-built ships that dock in the US.
But blaming China is also a convenient excuse to distract from the reality that there are real problems in domestic shipbuilding.
In the US, private company contracts with the military are often ad hoc, so repair delays or parts procurement are inefficient. The Navy is constantly in the news for the protracted length of its repairs.
In China, shipbuilding is a national security focus, and it dumps significant resources into subsidizing the industry, which is the core of the US steelworker’s complaint.
In my opinion, I think it is within any government’s prerogative to artificially support a domestic industry and it’s up to the rest of the world to adapt accordingly.
Climate Change: Chile court puts break on data center
A court in Chile delivered environmentalists a rare win last week when they ordered Google to revise its application to build a US$200 million data center in the capital city of Santiago.
In the age of the internet, data centers have become one of the underrated contributors to rising greenhouse gas emissions. The warehouses must be relatively cold, or the servers risk overheating and collapsing. So, they run some form of cooling system 24/7.
The plan in Chile was initially approved in 2020, but it faced intense resistance from locals, who were worried that the requirement to use water to cool the servers would exacerbate a long drought.
A previous court decision required Google to reveal that the server would use 7.6 million liters (2 million gallons) of water a day, which highlights the resource suck these centers can become.
Now, Google will need to adjust its plans for the data center to be more environmentally friendly or scrap the deal altogether.
Kevin’s article: Pork helped the earliest Chinese immigrants to America find success despite racism
From the first four paragraphs:
The US is famous for being a land of immigrants, but its history is also defined by its xenophobic and racist past.
The Chinese Exclusion Act passed in 1882 was the first race-based immigration restriction the country passed, and it would be followed with increasingly draconian updates until the law was repealed in 1943.
During that period, a large Chinese population decided to stay in the US and often tried to forge their future in the years after completing jobs building America’s railroad system.
Those people faced steep odds and would have faced intense racism along their path. But they built a resilient and stable support system. One such example was a complex Chinese economic network in Los Angeles built around pork butcher shops.
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