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For security / crime / drugs and all that fun stuff (in English) I like InSight: http://www.insightcrime.org/ It also breaks down by country so you can read about failed Honduran prison reform and other really niche news. The downside is that it definitely reads along the lines of Washington-oriented and moderate consensus, down-the-middle analysis. A lot of "on the one hand / on the other hand" formulations when discussing about why a particular country is going down the drain. But they're pretty knowledgeable. BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 08:28 on Dec 1, 2014 |
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Dec 1, 2014 08:26
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http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article17053712.html Haitian president Michel Martelly's approval rating is 57 percent. While 70 percent of Haitians think the country is heading in the wrong direction and 80 percent are unemployed. 
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Apr 8, 2015 02:08
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  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A15B9Sdavc BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Apr 11, 2015 |
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Apr 11, 2015 22:41
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El Chingon posted:It is the first time a helicopter is shot down by a rocket during the drug war, so this is moving the public opinion towards violence further escalating. The link is a little bit old: The CJNG is an odd duck. Very well-armed, very regional. They actually make their own AR-type rifles, believe it or not. They're widely blamed for standing up paramilitary groups like the Mata Zetas and beefing with other cartels while putting out statements about protecting "the people." Which isn't that crazy, considering how awful the Mexican police can be. The helicopter was a big deal, but it followed an ambush where something like more than dozen Mexican security troops died on the highway to Puerto Vallarta. There was another ambush in Guadalajara. I wonder why the situation deteriorated so badly in the past few weeks. icantfindaname posted:The Mexican government should probably just legalize the sale and distribution of all drugs straight up, because it's 100% the United States' fault that this is a thing and would shift the problem entirely onto us
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May 15, 2015 00:14
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Azran posted:Anyways, on topic now - I've spent quite a bit of my free time lately reading on the regimes with horrible human rights records, namely Stalinist Soviet Russia and North Korea. I've heard enough about the Venezuelan shitshow in the Venezuelan Politics therad, but what about Cuba? How totalitarian has Castro's regimen been? Is it closer to China's "yeah we don't really care about human rights and democracy but we are pretty functional" than Venezuela's "oh god everything falling apart"? The good is that it could never be as bad as the Eastern European and Asian totalitarian regimes because the country is way too beautiful, and the Cubans never demolished all the old buildings to make way for Borg-like monumentalism. There's also different kinds of repression -- and Cuba is probably way less repressed in terms of gender and race than many other countries in the world. You're not going to get thrown in a forced-labor camp for having a counter-revolutionary haircut or wearing the wrong clothes like in North Korea. It's not even in the same universe as a Saudi Arabia. Crime is far, far lower than many other countries in the region. So yeah, it's not all bad. It's falling apart but it's doing so extremely slowly. Cuba is stagnant. The bad is that it's the most repressive country in the Western Hemisphere by far. I'd describe Cuba as like 5 percent tropical resort and everything outside of that is tropical East Germany that's very gradually moving toward a Chinese/Vietnamese model. Outside of the tourist sectors that most outsiders see, the country is poor, run-down and kind of bombed-out looking with people living on $20 equivalent per month. It has a huge problem with prostitution. It has a secret police system probably on par with East Germany. But it's also less overtly repressive in keeping people in because it's an island -- so they just outlaw private ownership of boats. Brutal North Korean-style repression doesn't exist there because it doesn't have to. Cubans can't escape unless they go over the water. It's far more difficult to smuggle stuff into the country compared to just hopping over a land border. The only TV is state-owned or imported from Venezuela. There's no internet practically to speak of, the internet that does exist is monitored and restricted, nor could most Cubans afford it. I couldn't imagine an East German-style popular uprising or political crisis because the country isn't connected by land and most economic and political activity is kept on lockdown. So people keep their heads down and go about their lives or wait until they can jump ship to Miami. You wouldn't want to live there, suffice to say. But it's not a psychotic North Korean style freakshow that people go just to gawk at. People who defend the Cuban system point to countries like Honduras (which is seriously hosed) as a way of saying Cuba is OK. But these are very different countries, and Cuba should be far wealthier than it is. Before the revolution, Cuba was one of the wealthiest countries in the hemisphere ... and one of the most unequal. Hence why there was a revolution. But the communist system did not make everyone rich; it just made the country artificially poor. BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 01:08 on May 15, 2015 |
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May 15, 2015 00:25
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Dias posted:How's the public infrastructure systems, if you don't mind me asking? A lot of hard-left leaning acquaintances of mine seem to think the healthcare system in Cuba is pretty solid, for instance. As a Brazilian, sometimes it's kinda hard to have a fair view of our neighbouring countries and Latin-American neighbours, and the info we get is either "HOLY poo poo LOOK AT THOSE POORS/COMMUNIST HELLHOLES" from mainstream media or, if you had a Social/Humanes Sciences education, "EVERYONE IS LYING GLORY BE UNTO THE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION". I know Cuba isn't North Korea levels of hosed, and Venezuela is...interesting, but it's hard to get a fair look at those places. Transportation is interesting. There's not many cars -- about as many per capita as Yemen and Angola -- and that's more in Havana. But hitchhiking is ubiquitous so people get around. It's a practical solution but you also have to remember that it's a necessity there. Buying a bus ticket from one city to another is very expensive on a Cuban salary. The roads are ok because the country is pretty flat and easy to navigate. If you read travel guides that hype the bad situation, you'll see things like "beware of animals wandering the roads ... you'll crash and die!" But it's no more dangerous than anywhere else that has deer or other wildlife. Maybe less because cows don't really move all that fast. I think one of the biggest problems Cuba has is that it's stifling. Communists in the 20th century assumed that what people basically want out of life is a roof over their head, food, health care, a job, a school, some parks to take their kids on the weekends, etc. and not a whole lot else. Have those things* and you'll just be a happy worker all day long (can you tell that a German invented this doctrine?). Not to get too philosophical but Cuba doesn't offer a whole lot beyond that. What does the average Cuban have to look forward to? Again, people go about their lives and raise kids, play baseball, grow old, etc., but things are not measurably improving very much and haven't for awhile. It's stagnant. And that's why the U.S. and Cuba restoring relations, I think, was greeted with such relief there. *quality may vary Azran posted:I never stopped to think something as minor as outlawing private ownership of boats would be as important for the regime as it currently is. BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 00:24 on May 22, 2015 |
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May 21, 2015 23:53
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AGGGGH BEES posted:You know, randomly clicking this thread and seeing the exact same people stanning for Morales that were stanning for Maduro in the Venezuela thread in the exact same ways is highly amusing to me. It's literally exactly the same, all the way down to nebulous unsubstantiated claims of CIA interference and casual hand-waving of really obvious blatant election fraud. https://twitter.com/GrayzoneProject/status/1194130819985620992
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Nov 12, 2019 07:23
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