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.
I've seen it, the videos coming out of Gaza of the huge crater made by the US-made bomb dropped on a refugee camp by the zionist genocidal entity. This, coupled with the very recent video of a palestinian emergency worker carrying the lifeless body of a young girl amid the rubble, whose head is completely cracked open and is later seen being filled with pieces of cloth just to give it some proper form for a proper humane burial... It's over, it's completely over. If the continued stream of horrific information that comes out from Gaza doesn't turn you into a radical anti-Zionist and anti-Genocide person, you're dead to me and to everyone else. There is no more room for doubters, either you're against this genocide or you fully embrace it and celebrate it. Large portions of the western world fall into the latter. Let us not forget about the decadent comprador regimes and royals who plague the Arab World, those like Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia... whose lack of response directly aids the genocidal effort of "Israel".
There is no more discussion to be had, it cannot get any clearer than this, it is impossible. "Israel" has done everything they can to show the world their genocidal intentions, they're very open and shameless about it. Whoever doubts, at this stage, is supportive of genocide.
Meanwhile this is a headline on Newsweek today:
The propaganda machine in the west is completely insane.
Egypt tired of Israel posteruing and aggression on it's border. Therefore Egypt must pay.
How did they violate the treaty?
They blew up a refugee tent area and played the fucking
bullshit card.
zionists are absolutely vile and won't be happy until they've wiped out all life there. they're just nazis hiding behind the shield of "antisemitism" whenever people try to criticise them. I agree with you that once people are confronted with what's actually going on, there should be no further debate on what's really happening
These fascist monsters even had the gall to do their usual bullshit about "minimizing civilian casualties".
The pit is too good for these people.
Human rights investigators HATE this weird trick! Just don't count how many people you killed!
I saw that. What was that??????? The crater was at least 20 feet deep and very very wide. >100 feet.
In one of the previous school massacres, people reported that the bodies were being turned into small pieces and they speculated that it was a new type of bomb.
i'm on tiktok and it's full of CIA and Israeli botting. they're always throwaway accounts with everything set to private. they will say that China is committing genocide (with no evidence) and just cite CIA propaganda all day long
Look I just don't think that's a helpful mindset, there are still good people who don't understand and or don't agree. They probably treat these videos and news as misinformation or just tell themselves it's a necessary evil in a fight against an even greater evil, remember they think that gazans are mostly united in their hatred against Jews and would like to see them eliminated woldwide, not that this ought to make much of a difference in the calulation of whether or not to kill an entire culture with no power to fight back... but I have to admit that if I believed this to be true I would be less invested emotionally. Or they just haven't seen the information at all, that's probably the bulk of it actually.
It's incredibly hard to let go of an ideology, and liberalism and to a lesser extent democratism are quite powerful and seductive from the standpoint of someone embedded in American society who hasn't seen the light when it comes to the whole America being evil thing. As emaciated and I'll defined as our culture it, it is still a culture nonetheless, or it appears to be at least, it's something many people cherish and will want to protect, and when an inclination is so deeply ingrained it creates enormous potential for self deception and willful ignorance.
So do I have trouble not hating them, yes, but on the other hand I also see where they're coming from, their experiences have likely been quite different from my own, and that means there may be potential for conversion via the inception of new experience You have to admit it's already happening to an extent, there are a lot of libs out there who have been partially black pilled by this whole genocide thing, which they still see as merely another war, albeit a particularly gruesome one. They're on the right path. Are they moving too slowly, more disinterested in completing the journey of enlightenment than they need to be, perhaps not even aware they haven't reached the end? Yes. Will most of them never make it? Probably. But some will and I happen to believe that if you are potentially a future ally you should not be treated as an enemy, at least in the absence of other mitigating circumstances.
What lies between us and the truth of this situation is a window crystal clear to you, to me, to some still in the "progressive" category who keeps themselves well informed. What we sometimes forget is that it is our ideology and education and personal inclinations give us X-ray vision, we see certainly things with such clarity that we forget the window is there at all, and that it is opaque to certain frequencies of light. But that type of vision is not yet available to all, some may have ways of devoping it to various extents, but they all will involve some level of pain, guilt, loss, grief, and sheer effort.
The effort, we're all quite tired, we need our sleepy time, and yet some person, who my friends tell me I should hate or ignore, is telling me to get out of bed and embark on some spirit quest which, if my friends knew I had gone along, could jeopardize our relationships? Oh and this person btw appears to be even more tired and quite miserable compared to me, and filled with anger? No thanks, I'll just get a good night's sleep instead. After all I have work in the morning.
We have the majority very roughly on our side, but we need even more and we need to smooth out that roughness, that is part of our job right now. We need to recognize when this is and isn't feasible and accept that polishing a surface is sometimes a many step process, especially if that surface is particularly hard or too brittle, but if we are too picky about the tools we are willing to apply, the raw materials we're willing to work with, we are using our labor inefficiently and we end up with fewer and lower quality products which might otherwise have been unique items of great use in enacting our plans.
It is not about morals or anything. If you look at all the suffering in this and say whatever the empire wants you to say, you are too far gone. This is the defining moment. If you look at this and still side with the empire, you are too much brainwashed. There is no going back. There is no redemption. You are a threat to every single children your empire wants exterminated. You might be the nicest person people have known but it does not matter. You will side with empire until your last moments. No amount of further proof will convince you that empire is evil
You're describing like 95% of the entire USA though, and 80% of the entire world. I am also prone to judging humanity as not so great, but we literally need them for the revolution. Well maybe not the initial part, but we'll need most of them to get with the program in short order.
can you give me the link to the videos?
Thank you comrade