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

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.


  • kleeon [he/him, he/him]
    ·
    2 months ago

    Can he just stop praising genociders? This is getting really annoying

    Show

    ADOLF HITLER DESTROYED MUSSOLINI soypoint-1

    • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]
      ·
      2 months ago

      Pretty sure his editors are huge libs. He played Nazi music while reading her statement on Israel-Palestine

      • bbnh69420 [she/her, they/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 months ago

        The editors are massive libs but I can’t get over the lib audience. He clearly hasn’t impressed Harris’ hitlerian nature on them

        • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]
          ·
          2 months ago

          No and they’re insufferable. Biggest group of radlibs I’ve come across. Only a few principled leftists with the rest being “progressives”

        • somename [she/her]
          ·
          2 months ago

          Fundamentally if you’re doing propaganda, your audience is always going to be a bit more lib than you are.

          • Commiejones [comrade/them, he/him]
            ·
            2 months ago

            Hassan is not a propogandist. He is an agitator. His job is not to have the answers his job is to make people ask questions. He isn't the main attraction he is the guy outside the tent yelling "step right up!"

            • somename [she/her]
              ·
              2 months ago

              You just pulled that out of your ass. He doesn't tell his base to vote for Kamala.

              • SeekTheDeletion [none/use name]
                ·
                2 months ago

                Regardless of what he says, his entire audience are Kamala voting radlibs so either this is the end results of his propaganda, or his propaganda is ineffective

                • CleverOleg [he/him]
                  ·
                  2 months ago

                  I just started watching his stream recently. I had no real opinion on him or his fans, but I have no idea what you are talking about. He is not voting for Kamala and from what I can see in his chat neither are at least 95% of his fans.

                  • bbnh69420 [she/her, they/them]
                    ·
                    2 months ago

                    Read the comments on the video. They’re all either dunking on Trump or saying how they have no choice but to vote for Harris

                    • somename [she/her]
                      ·
                      2 months ago

                      you aren't using Youtube comments of all things as a reason why Hasan is actually a radlib right? Like, I have various criticisms of him and some of his stances, but I think it's crazy how quickly we jump straight to liberal grifter.

                      • bbnh69420 [she/her, they/them]
                        ·
                        2 months ago

                        The commenter said 95% of his audience aren’t voting for Kamala based on chat. I provided a similar metric

                        • somename [she/her]
                          ·
                          edit-2
                          2 months ago

                          YouTube is not his chat. It’s not a similar metric at all. It’s a way wider and less invested audience, it’s naturally going to skew even more liberal. Also it’s fucking YouTube comments lol.

      • kleeon [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 months ago

        can't he ask his editors to stop cheerleading for a genocide perpetrator? It's his own editors that he pays money to. Obviously Hasan is fine with it on some level, otherwise he would have told them to stop

          • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]
            ·
            2 months ago

            I’m not even a Hasan defender. I’ve always gotten flak for being annoyed at his liberal tendencies and constant defense of AOC. But his editors are just obnoxiously liberal and noticeably more than he is.

            He doesn’t seem to really care what they put out and this approach enables the heavy liberalism in his community to flourish.

    • EnsignRedshirt [he/him]
      ·
      2 months ago

      Last night was really helpful for cleansing my twitter feed. General consensus was obviously that Trump ate shit, but you could tell from the comments who was watching the debate to hear what the candidates were saying vs who was there just to cheer on Harris and/or see Trump fail.

      One of the minor but notable differences I’ve noticed between Canadian electoralism and American is that there’s very little room in American discourse for just being a hater. It seems like you have to pick a side, and if you say anything bad about one side then you must necessarily be supportive of the other side.

      In Canada, we have the same two mainstream neoliberal parties that are the only ones who ever form government, but then there are several other parties and interest groups that have legitimate amounts of support and some representation in the legislature. If you say you hate Trudeau, there are too many possible angles you might be coming from for me to make any assumptions. You could be a conservative, an NDP/Green supporter, a Quebec nationalist, an indigenous person, anyone from BC or Alberta, the list goes on. It’s true of any Canadian politician, party, or interest group, so you can freely shit on anyone and everyone without people being able to assume your specific political leanings.

      In Canada, someone like Hasan would be able to be like “Boy, that debate sure was a pile of dogshit” and proceed to roast each candidate on the merits, but in the US the algorithm needs you to declare or else it presumably shunts you into the unserious crank category.

    • GeorgeZBush [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      This really makes all of his coverage of Gaza seem completely insincere. Fuck streamers.

      • kleeon [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        2 months ago

        actual cognitive dissonance moment. I literally don't understand how you can do normal debate coverage while one of the debaters is currently overseeing a genocide

      • Fishroot [none/use name]
        ·
        2 months ago

        It’s like christians confessing their sins so they can sin better in the future

    • Hexboare [they/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      welcome to the resistance mr piker

      (Also isn't he related to Cenk Uygur? Unsurprising turn)

        • SeekTheDeletion [none/use name]
          ·
          2 months ago

          The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I remember having these exact arguments about “propaganda” and lib whispering about TYT a decade ago

          • PointAndClique [they/them]
            ·
            2 months ago

            All I know is that he's his uncle, but whether by birth or by marriage idk. Also I don't think that's a fair judgement call given 1) it sounds a bit deterministic, 2) class traitors exist and 3) Hasan has called out TYT since leaving them. And 4) i don't follow any streamers so don't really have a horse in the race

                • SeekTheDeletion [none/use name]
                  ·
                  2 months ago

                  I am just tired. I’m an old jaded communist who lived through the collapse of the USSR and multiple iterations of westoid leftism and pointing out patterns to people isn’t enough to convince them for some reason.

      • spectre [he/him]
        ·
        2 months ago

        If you think it's a "turn" you obviously don't watch his content, which is fine.

          • spectre [he/him]
            ·
            2 months ago

            Correct, but Hasan is consistently "fine" if you actually watch him which is pretty damn good for a streamer.

    • somename [she/her]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      I think to be blunt, some of you don’t really know how propaganda works. That or you don’t know what he’s actually saying and just reading off this thumbnail. Which is admittedly a bad thumbnail.

      Yeah he covered the debate, and yes he said that Kamala beat Trump overall, but if you think that was “praising” or positive idk what to tell you.

      • kleeon [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 months ago

        this is propaganda of Hasan's own brand and nothing else. I skimmed through this videos and it's basically just a restreamed debate with occasional soy facing over how good of a job kamala is doing

        • somename [she/her]
          ·
          edit-2
          2 months ago

          He wasn't soy facing lol. Admittedly this bit was more on the libshit side. It is a presidential debate after all, and doing any form of electoral analysis is going to dance in that zone.

          But with propaganda you have to look at the entire arc of it, of what kinds of things are getting said and pushed over time. He's been saying Kamala and the state department have been committing genocide. A few days ago he even started talking about how foreign policy is a bipartisan consensus, and started walking chat through the ideas of bourgeois dictatorship, and slowly towards the idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat.

          He's not the end of the pipeline by any means, but I think he's doing a very valuable thing. Radicalizing people is a multi-step process, and people rarely jump straight to the end.

          For fucks sake, he managed to get a twitch chat conditioned to praise China. That's not an accident.

            • somename [she/her]
              ·
              2 months ago

              Believe it or not, he makes more content than thumbnails.

              • SeekTheDeletion [none/use name]
                ·
                2 months ago

                You can’t say he wasn’t soyfacing when he very obviously is. The thumbnail is a screenshot from the stream

                • somename [she/her]
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  2 months ago

                  Alright if you want be like this, yes, I technically am wrong that he, at certain points during the broadcast moved his facial muscles in a soy like motion.

                  I was talking about the character and tone of his coverage, not his literal fucking face.

        • SeekTheDeletion [none/use name]
          ·
          edit-2
          2 months ago

          Look up Nakoichi on the mod log you will see multiple death threats aimed at me and others. Notably removed for the reason “chill” while I was banned, despite breaking no rules

          • somename [she/her]
            ·
            2 months ago

            While that wasn't a good thing they said to you, it doesn't look like you were banned for bringing that up as part of some Hasan protection conspiracy lol. More like failing the vibe check and drama baiting after.

            • SeekTheDeletion [none/use name]
              ·
              edit-2
              2 months ago

              oh so it's ok for mods to make death threats and remain mods. And me complaining about that is "failing the vibe check" and "drama baiting". HOW ABOUT THEY APOLOGIZE AT MINIMUM?! How about any justice gets done at all and we don't leave unhinged people on as mods?

              Nope, when I brought it up they doubled down and got all their mod friends to ban me from multiple comms.

              do you want users on this site? do you think mods going around making death threats towards other communists is conducive to a good website? This shit is not defendable and they should have been instantly de-modded

                • Breath_Of_The_Snake [they/them, comrade/them]M
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  2 months ago

                  Please report/ link. Harassment can cause harm. If somebody is actively harassing, I want them gone. If this place has any value, most of the rest do as well. That sounds fucked up.

                  • HelltakerHomosexual [she/her, comrade/them]
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    2 months ago

                    i will if pressed but i buried this hatchet a long time ago, it pisses me off yeah but i've moved on

                    i brought it up out of stupidity and honestly i just dont care anymore, im sorry for the bother

                  • SeekTheDeletion [none/use name]
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    2 months ago

                    it's mods. they will just continue banning us and all methods of appeal or recourse have long been closed. They have investigated themselves, found they did nothing wrong, then banned the victims.

                    Unless you have jurisdiction to get mods removed from other comms, doesn't seem like there's anything that will be done. we just have to use this site knowing we can have death threats lobbed at us, then be banned and punished if we complain

                    • Breath_Of_The_Snake [they/them, comrade/them]M
                      ·
                      2 months ago

                      So I looked into it, wasn’t the comment not even directed at you? It was about the Twitter guy. Please link if I’m wrong.

                      For what it’s worth, I think that closing the user union comm was a mistake. The way it was had to change, but pure removal wasn’t ideal.

                      • SeekTheDeletion [none/use name]
                        ·
                        edit-2
                        2 months ago

                        There were two death threats. One towards me and one toward BadEmpanada. I’m referring to the one directed at me.

                        Said I should touch grass six feet under (telling me to commit suicide)

                          • SeekTheDeletion [none/use name]
                            ·
                            edit-2
                            2 months ago

                            https://hexbear.net/comment/5311481

                            Show

                            Show

                            apparently not serious enough to take any action against a mod though, because I "fail the vibe check" so I deserve to get harassed with death threats and banned I guess

                            • Breath_Of_The_Snake [they/them, comrade/them]M
                              ·
                              2 months ago

                              Looking at the content: Nak explicitly said that content towards BE and you made it clear to support comrades BE would not.

                              Maybe it genuinely wasn’t directed at you?

                              • SeekTheDeletion [none/use name]
                                ·
                                edit-2
                                2 months ago

                                No it was directed at me specifically. He was accusing me of being BadEmpanada, and I said I dislike BE as well and pointed out how my position differed from BE's.

                                Their response to this was "Please fucking touch grass. Actually touch dirt six feet beneath grass". This was directed at ME, SeekTheDeletion, the user. This is quite clear. He's giving direct commands, this isn't third person.

                                Later when I confronted this mod about this, they doubled down and said they did nothing wrong and stood by everything they said and were completely unapologetic - directly ignoring the comment removals and showing no change in behavior or remorse.

                                Also, can you explain mods of this comm agreeing with the mod and saying it's defensible to make death threats and suicide bait? Why is the removal reason "this is defensible"? Is it the official stance of the mods of this comm that death threats and suicide bait are acceptable behavior for mods to engage in? Banning the victims is defendable?

                                Show

              • somename [she/her]
                ·
                2 months ago

                HOW ABOUT THEY APOLOGIZE AT MINIMUM?!

                The vibe check being typing stuff like that, at me, who's entirely uninvolved and has no power lol

                • SeekTheDeletion [none/use name]
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  2 months ago

                  I forgot being cringe is a worse offense than being an unhinged murderous lunatic. It's crazy how you jumped from apologetics of Hasan right to apologetics of murderous mods. Don't you have a bone of principles in your body that you can back away from your ego to admit this was bad and not acceptable?

                  The moment you started licking mod boot and justifying death threats, you became complicit