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.
alright chat what did i miss re: the debate? i was at work.
From the top of my head:
Broadly I think Harris went into the debate with the same kind of 2020 Biden debate mindset of "make this guy look ridiculous and distant from the issues that actual Americans care about," and she had a couple moments that I'm sure will be widely spread but I don't think she managed anything quite like the "shut up, man" thing that Biden did. Meanwhile Trump was relatively chill, that wasn't his most incredible performance but he seemed fairly coherent and on-topic compared to his usual speeches. Lots of "tremendous" and "milyons and milyons" and so on. Harris sounded slightly drunk because she occasionally slurred a word but it was probably just an accent or nerves thing, she was audibly very good (compared to the very low bar of Biden, she was amazing)
Some funny Trump moments were a) when he started talking about immigrants coming to America and eating pets(???) Like, he's seen news about people's dogs going missing or something?? b) whenever he said "she" in relation to Harris, it sounded like "chi" so there were a lot of Xi jokes in the comments, and c) he referenced Harris' "I'm speaking" moment by interrupting her and saying something along the lines of "Hey, I'm speaking. You'd know a lot about that, right?" in a kinda mocking tone. It was pretty baller of him lmfao.
I don't think there was a clear winner in the debate overall.
funny, but definitely not his peak.
There's some bs story spreading among maga Karens about Haitain immigrants stealing people's pets to eat them.
Harris reassured us that she will not listen to any of this racist bullshit while she feeds Haitians in to the woodchipper of state.
debate tldr
wow two hitlers? i cannae believe it.
America, with it's typical excess, has two hitlers.
One of them is just 99% Hitler
If she isn't also 100% Hitler at this point, when will she ever be?
smdh they will never let a woman break the hitler ceiling.
Sorry, typo, I meant to type 999% Hitler
And the other one is Kamala Harris! Folks,
I'm seeing double here! Four Hitlers!
Imagine two hitlers, each insisting that they are more hitlerian than the other.
Imagine two Hitlers. One of them always tells lies and the other always tells the truth.
Imagine two Hitlers. One of them always lies and the other also always lies.
One of them shows a minor difference in the particle count from the other.
Imagine two Hitlers. One of them is progressive Hitler, the other one is rude Hitler.
the first half was good, kkkamala was aggressive and trump was losing it
then after the break it got boring, there was one time kkkamala called trump "this fella" which made me laugh for a little bit. Also trump began to ramble about solar energy as he usually does.
at the end kkkamala repeated the "the most lethal force in the world" line to reassure that the Genocide will indeed continue but now under her direct command.
how progressive
edit: do we have an emoji for the "we're getting bombed by a woman now" comic?
yesssss
Nothing major. Trump made unhinged comments about immigrants. They both tried to outflank each other on being Hitler wrt the border and Palestine. Kamala bragged about her lifelong support of the Zionist entity.
dont forget her life long commitment to fracking and her acknowledgment that climate change is an existential threat.
SUPER COOL AND NOT BAD AT ALL
Well comrade, you see, there are two fascists...
Democracy: You have two Hitlers. One of them is campaigning on doing more Hitler shit. The other one is also campaigning on doing more Hitler shit. You vote for the other Hitler to get less Hitler shit.
Not much tbh
SAD!