Image is sourced from this article.
It takes very little effort to find an article from Western state propaganda decrying Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas as authoritarian and rife with human rights abuses. This is the natural reaction the US has to any successful liberation movement. This fairly long report from Jason Cohen, a socialist who travelled to Nicaragua one week ago, should quell any suspicions.
He describes a country with high political consciousness among the masses, who are working to construct critical infrastructure for the country and their communities. There is a virtual education system that is free across the entire nation, which serves the dual goal of democratizing education and ensuring that those in rural areas or without much free time for university can still achieve degrees and a quality education; and these classes cover technical skills in the production of infrastructure and agriculture, but also political and ideological education in order to counter the fascist propaganda produced by imperialist nations abroad.
While Nicaragua is deeply invested in its nationality and national figures who led to their socialist revolution, such as Sandino, they are also immensely proud of their indigneous history, recognizing it as also part of their anti-colonial history which continues to the present day. Additionally, they honour the struggles of other nations on the continent, such as the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, as well as Castro in Cuba and Allende in Chile. Countries around the world are also celebrated and admired, such as Burkina Faso; during the Reagan administration, Nicaragua and Burkina Faso were comrades in arms, and now Traore is continuing the legacy of Sankara’s anti-imperialism in the present. Perhaps most relevant today is their dedication towards Palestine, involving the creation of the Parque Palestina (shown in the post image), in which the Palestinian flag flies alongside the flag of Nicaragua. In July, Leila Khaled of the PFLP gave a speech in Nicaragua, in which the solidarity of the two nations was highlighted.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you’ve wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don’t worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is Nicaragua! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week’s thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
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.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
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/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
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/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
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.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
The Trump campaign has laid out a peace plan for the war in Ukraine that would have Ukraine surrender the land Russia has taken (the thing that’s going to happen eventually anyway).
Does that make Trump the harm reduction candidate?
everyone who tried to claim voting Biden was harm reduction in 2020 should be feeling pretty stupid right now
They aren’t, they are saying to vote Kamala as harm reduction in 2024
Believe it or not, they’re smug!
You know how vampires are incapable of self-reflection? They’re actually waaaaaay ahead of Americans who vote red or blue.
They think Ukraine is good guys and Trump is abandoning the innocent freedom fighters
from purely a foreign policy perspective, if it was possible to somehow lock-in Trump on his policies and force him not to back away from them, I say with total sincerity that he would be a better president than Harris. still not good, he’d still be pretty awful, but simply ending the war in Ukraine would put an end to so much needless death, and deal a stinging blow to NATO that could - could - become existential, especially if he then tried to force Europe to once again pipe their savings into NATO spending on top of the current domestic crises knocking out government after government in Europe over the last couple years. again, this is just on foreign policy; domestically he would be worse than Harris.
in practice, on day one of his presidency, he’d be taken into a side room by some CIA guys, and half an hour later, he’ll once again be committed to Biden’s current imperial strategy. hell, as people here have noted, he wasn’t exactly against the US arming Ukraine in the leadup to 2022, so his anti-Ukraine-war stance almost certainly has no genuine sincerity behind it. he’d probably throw the odd wrench in just due to sheer incompetence, but 95% the same. therefore, as everybody here knows, there’s no credible left-wing position that would allow us to vote for him.
This, I don’t have any trouble believing Trump personally wants to end the ukraine war because it means that he can claim the mantle of peacemaker or something (even if liberals and people from his own party will hate him for it), the question isn’t whether he’s sincere, it’s whether he’ll fold once he gets set aside by the deep state and made to understand the importance of shackling europe’s security to america.
Unironically if project 2025 was real, and trump actually made an attempt to get rid of non-party but probably democrat-inclined officials in the us government and state department I’d actually put money that he’d end the war too.
Above even that, I’m sure Trump has a personal grudge against Ukraine and Zelenskyy after his first impeachment.
even that is far fetched. the west will need to accept the following russian terms: no NATO for Ukraine ever. All Russian oblasts will be officially annexed, including the entire territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, Crimea, etc.
In the eyes of liberals this is unacceptable.
No. Boeing, lockheed, raytheon etc would never allow their gravy train to stop like that. And then there’s all the large investment firms that have gobbled up cheap ukrainian land and resources, a valuable portion of which has been annexed by Russia.
lmao they’re going to be left holding the bag whether the US approves of it or not.
Imagine buying land from someone who effectively doesn’t own it.
It might stop anyway. AFAIK they can’t manufacture the weapons fast enough to meet current demands.