Bulletins and News Discussion from August 7th to August 13th, 2023 - White Blows From A Black Hand
Image is of the American military during their occupation of Haiti at the beginning of the 20th century, taken from this NYT article from 2022: Invade Haiti, Wall Street Urged. The U.S. Obliged.
In the aftermath of the assassination of Jovenel Moïse in 2021 and his replacement by Western comprador Ariel Henry, the situation in Haiti is the most dire it has been in decades - by some metrics, even worse than the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake (CW: rape, violence including against children). Millions do not have enough food. Outbreaks of disease are rampant. The government - such that it still exists, which is becoming increasingly debatable - has only a minority control over the capital city, with some estimates putting the influence of armed groups at 80%.
America's search for somebody, anybody, to intervene in Haiti has ended, with Kenya answering the call. President Ruto has announced that he will send 1000 police officers to Haiti. Kenya's Foreign Minister has tried to sell this intervention as pan-Africanism. Other Caribbean states, like the Bahamas and Antigua and Barbuda, have offered to send police officers too.
I can't really say it any better than the Black Alliance for Peace's own statement:
Kenya has offered to deploy a contingent of 1,000 police officers to help train and assist Haitian police, ostensibly to “restore order” in the Caribbean republic. Yet, their proposal is nothing more than military occupation by another name; an occupation of Haiti by an African country is not Pan-Africanism, but Western imperialism in Black face. By agreeing to send troops into Haiti, the Kenyan government is assisting in undermining the sovereignty and self-determination of Haitian people, while serving the neocolonial interests of the United States, the Core Group, and the United Nations.
There is an urgent need for clarity on the issue of occupation in Haiti. As described in a recent statement on Haiti and Colonialism, Haiti is under ongoing occupation. No call for foreign intervention into Haiti from the administration of appointed Prime Minister Ariel Henry can be considered legitimate, because the Henry administration itself is illegitimate. BAP has repeatedly pointed out that Haiti’s crisis is a crisis of imperialism. Haiti’s current unpopular and unelected government is propped up only by Haiti’s de facto imperial rulers: the unseemly confederacy of the Core Group countries and organizations, as well as BINUH (the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti), and a loose alliance of foreign corporations and local elites.
Henry and the UN have made a mockery of sovereignty by mouthing the slogan “Haitian solutions to Haitian problems,” yet finding the only solution in violence through foreign military intervention. After repeated failed attempts to organize an occupying force to protect their interests and impose their will on the Haitian people (including appeals to the multinational organization, the Caribbean Community [CARICOM] for troops), they have now found a willing accomplice in Kenya, an east African country with its own set of internal problems.
Indeed, what’s in it for Kenya? An opportunity to both train and enhance the salaries of local police forces and garner a patina of prestige, or at least bootlicking approval, from the West. And for Haiti? White blows from a Black hand and a further erosion of their sovereignty.
And, by the way, here's the Black Alliance for Peace's statement calling for no intervention by ECOWAS in Niger, calling the organization a Western comprador organization similar to CARICOM's role in Haiti.
Welcome to our friends throughout the Lemmyverse!
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
Short soviet tanks have bad gun depression for shooting overhills but have lower profiles and are harder to hit at distance. NATO tanks are historically the inverse
Yeah, I was wondering if there was a consensus with whatever the new generation of tanks was. The soviet tanks became more western over time, I think, but the T14 (whatever its faults) has a very small turret compared to Leopard 2, Abrams, and Challenger 2. But it could be very thin and tall and allow for gun depression? idk
I'm throwing together an RC turret in stormworks that's pretty much just the cannon and the extractor, if it was IRL I could probably cut it down even more. I'm experimenting with gun elevation range by having a much longer mantle, which wears out whatever servo mechanism I have for the gun because of weight, but allows for pretty extreme elevation and depression. The weapon could take on secondary duty as artillery or anti-air as well as an MBT.
I think other than the T14 the Germans have a modern tank coming down the pipeline maybe? Or the Israelis? I feel like everyone is just upgrading their late cold war tanks with ADS to give them a new lease of life, which is perfectly fine. My hypothetical counter to ADS being on every tank is small anti-rad KEP missiles (like, a little tungsten dart with a rocket, maybe 1-2 km range, and an antenna that homes in on RADAR/wifi). Once it picks up enough speed, it's immune to modern ADS (unless you take the Russian's claims about their new ADS at face value) and knocks out the key component to ADS. Optimistically, could fit in a 40 mm soft-launch kit.
The T-14 has an unmanned turret, so it can be very small because it doesn't need to fit any crew. Prior Soviet/Russian tanks' turrets, while not as compact, were also still smaller compared to Western ones because they used an autoloader for the cannon, so they could have one less crew member and thus keep the turret smaller.
The Germans have the KF51 Panther (Panther? hmm... ), but it's still under development, and I doubt it will be issued anytime soon. I guess part of the problem is that Western-style MBTs are already so heavy and expensive that adopting a whole new tank that was even more expensive (and had even more features weighing it down) is just not something most militaries are looking forward to - the Americans for example recently adopted the MPF, sort of like a revival of the WW2 assault gun concept, a vehicle meant to support infantry by taking out stuff like fortifications and lighter vehicles, and the whole motivation behind it is that the Abrams is so fucking heavy and burns so much fuel that it really limits where it can be deployed and used, so they needed a lighter and more economical vehicle to support infantry.
My turret is unmanned, so it can be cut down a lot
the "pretty much just the cannon and the extractor" part made me think of the Stryker MGS:
That might be a similar arrangement to what you're going for, the turret's very minimal and primarily there to house the cannon and autoloader, the guys sit right bellow the gun itself. Although apparently one unfortunate side-effect of this is that in the event of jams, the crew being separated from the cannon is actually problematic, since they'll need to exit the vehicle in order to have access to the cannon and be able to clear the jam.
Yeah, I was reminded of that. Bit more armour and there's a secondary commander turret on top as well.
It would really depend on the reliability of the autoloader whether it would be worthwhile; redesigning the turret to have crew would basically redesign the entire vehicle. Fortunately not something I have to deal with in game
Thinking on it, I'll include an internal turret camera and some manual servo controls so you can jiggle jammed up mechanisms, but really you probably want to retreat if anything serious is going on.
That said, at least footage from Ukraine shows crews abandon vehicles pretty early on once they start taking serious fire, so fiddling around with heavy ammunition loading systems in combat may not actually happen that much.