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.
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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 dipped a toe in the lib blogosphere recently just to see how the election coverage was looking from their perspective, and it's amazing how orthogonal their news is to ours. Daily Kos has regular feature called "Russian Stuff Blowing Up" and tons of Ukraine war coverage but is essentially silent on Palestine. There's a single recent, highly detailed diary that goes into Israel's role in the October 7th casualties and is highly critical of America and Israel, and it has less than a tenth of the engagement as "Russian Stuff Blowing Up," where they're busy cheering on the possibility of a Ukrainian strike on Iran. The rest of the front page diaries are about Trump or the election (front page right now: Trump, DeSantis, Trump, Trump, political cartoon about Trump).
I've spent about 8 years at this point drifting more and more leftwards after watching the fallout from the election and results (or lack thereof) of the marches and protests that happened immediately afterward, and it's a little disorienting to see people I would've mostly agreed with inhabiting an alien world and speaking a totally different language. The comments sections suggest that there's several people there who might be reachable but it seems like the majority is pretty much what you'd expect from an r/politics thread.
Apparently Ukraine is doing some saber rattling over the news that Iran is delivering drones and SRBMs to Russia, and the libs thirst for vengeance.
Sample comment:
What about interdicting those Iranian missiles in transit, or even within Iranian territory? We keep hearing about Israel being such an intelligence asset for the US as part of the justification for us arming them. Israel has previously shown that it has significant intelligence capabilities regarding Iranian arms production. Ukraine has previously demonstrated its willingness to operate to some extent extra-territorially in Mali, something not even directly linked to their own war to defeat Wagner there. What is the downside for Ukraine for attempting an operation that might require them to take action within Iranian territory or a neighbor’s territory that the missiles are shipped through? It may be beyond their reach, but it may not be as well.
I'm sure the Iranians are quaking in their boots.
Churchill once said in a choice between the devil and Hitler, he’d back the devil and the libs finally got their chance when Cheney came out in support of Kamala Harris.
It's extremely disconcerting how little people seem to remember and/or care about what happened during the Bush years. January 6th really seemed to rattle them more than the all of the erosion in civil liberties and general skullduggery that has been ongoing since 2000, and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars aren't even on their radar. I want to say the domestic policy myopia is new compared to how it was back in like the '08 election season but maybe all they really cared about in the those wars were the domestic impacts.
I relate to this so much. Sometimes I look at libs and take a step back and think, "wow, if things had gone differently this would have been the kind of thing I believed in today"