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.
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Ukraine does not have unlimited resources. They have a lot of people that they're willing to sacrifice, but it's been the case for many, many months now that Ukraine has been operating with much less equipment and artillery and ammunition and airpower than Russia, hence why the territorial acquisition has been accelerating and the Kursk salient is collapsing. Wars of attrition are slow and tedious, whether you're talking about Russia attriting Ukraine or the Resistance attriting Israel, and it's often unclear to bystanders without the intel of how much equipment is present, the current rates of losses, etc, how long it's going to take or which side is even winning. It's pretty odd that we're privy to so much information compared to previous wars, which I imagine were fairly opaque without the rapid spread of information that the internet allows.
Russia win's condition is literally to just keep doing what they're already doing until the front line has been pushed back as far as they desire; they don't need to engage with PR in the way you're suggesting and a pullback at this point would be the most counterproductive move in the history of human warfare.
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There is an important difference between the US's campaigns in the middle east and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And that is the kind of societies and terrain we are talking about.
The United States invaded, sought to occupy, and also fundamentally change tribal societies where things like justice were issued on a grassroots basis (moreso in Afghanistan than Iraq).
Ukraine meanwhile is a post industrial society where social cohesion depends on the State. Simply put, Afghans can self mobilize for government and resistance. Ukrainians - like most people today - can only self mobilize as far as calling the local police force.
If the Ukrainian State collapses, it will have no basis by which to mount an armed resistance (even more so given how said resistance would occur in the open steppe or in cities that Russia re-built from the ground up). While it was easy for the Americans to collapse the Iraqi or Afghan states, convincing everyone to accept the american occupation governments was something else entirely.
Edit: this is why even early in the war a lot of people in Europe started talking about arming a resistance in Ukraine. It would have to be like the French Resistance in WW2. Something that relied on foreign state power for organization, direction, recruiting, and supplies. As opposed to, say, the northern vietnam army which benefitted from chinese supplies and soviet (later chinese) instructors, but which was self organized at the grassroots.
Also it’s a lot easier to annex neighboring territory and bring it under control of an already stable state system than it is to try and set up a brand new government on the other side of the planet from nothing.
In addition, the US wasn’t even really trying to statebuild. That was their bullshit cover story. They were there for oil and opium and staging areas for further invasions. They wanted the “war” and occupations to last forever. Russia wants to end their war, not have it extend indefinitely like American projects
Definitely true. Even so, the interesting thing about the situation is that what little state-building the Americans did in Afghanistan was in itself disruptive of tribal society. And sowed the seeds for Afghanistan's rapid collapse thereafter.
For an example, imagine a mountain valley shared by a number of tribes. They use the valley in different ways at different times of the year. Informal agreements define ownership of said valley, even if in theory it belongs to a given group. Except now there's a judge in Kabul and he's made a ruling. The new Afghan state must enforce property rights. Whichever group does not own the deed to the valley suddenly finds itself fighting for its livelihood, probably against the people they had working agreements with. Multiply that times a million and that is how the taliban went from deeply unpopular in Afghanistan to the only option to oppose a careless government.
Keep in mind that they still haven’t taken the entirety of the areas that want to be a part of Russia. The areas past that which are required for defensible borders are probably going to empty out/ self-select anyways.
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Russia has no interest in occupying the Banderite and Galician portions of Ukraine. They will only annex the Russian majority areas and that’s it. The rest is the west’s problem
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I don't think NATO has actually given Ukraine the permission to use those long range weapons for deep strikes within Russian territory. It looks like NATO has backed down with regards to that, according to the latest news and statements from Lloyd Austin and John Kirby. But the situation is fluid and this could change at any time.
Ukraine has been hitting Moscow with missiles and drones for months now. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. The long range strikes are already happening, what is this charade?
Yes Ukraine had been doing that with their own weapons and drones, not with missiles such as the UK made Storm Shadow or American made ATACMS. This is an important difference, as the British and American weapons would require British and American technicians to input the targeting information, which would mean that NATO military officers would be directly targeting Russia with NATO weapons. All Ukraine would be doing is pushing the button to fire, if that at all.
I’m quite certain ATACMs have been used in the Kursk and Belgorod regions for months
Border skirmishes in Kursk and Belgorod is quite different from launching strikes hundreds of kilometres into Russian territory. At least to Putin, as his red line is that. And given the fact that Biden and Starmer have not given the permission for long range strikes, it seems that his "red line" is being respected for now.
Though the most pessimistic Russian sources are saying that NATO is busy selecting targets and have already given permission for long range strikes with NATO weapons, and that they don't want to make a public announcement in order to maintain the element of surprise. I don't believe that though, it would be a wild escalation given Putin's statements, and Russia's statements at the UN.
The line is ATACMs in pre-2014 Russian borders right? That line has long been crossed, permission has already been granted and they are out of ATACMs. Everything else is kayfabe. Western cope narrative to distract from them losing the war. “We would totally be winning if the US wasn’t making us fight with one hand behind our backs”
They’ve been fighting with both hands this whole time and lost. That’s the reality.
the line is ‘strikes at the operational depth’ of russia, and the tit for tat response would be russian strikes on staging bases in hungary and romania. kursk and belgorod are not at operational depth for the russian military, even though ukraine has been bombing them. you are very right about atacms being used to strike russia the whole time; jassms are worse/ cheaper missiles, and the move to those suggests the USA is out of missiles or willingness to send them off. i think the US war department made an announcement a few days ago along the lines of “we’ll let ukraine make deep strikes if they can show an actual plan.” this reflects that ukraine is increasingly stuck with terror bombing without an actual plan for victory
Majority of the Arab world hates the Ukraine because they're western-backed zionists, even sans the whole Nazi thing which might not get reported as widely. The issue is what can the global south really do to stop it? The west has shown that it will even ignore UNGA and UNSC resolutions when it comes to it.
Ukraine was among the biggest forces that participated in the second irak war as well along with the Americans and poles.
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This I think is bad thinking. It is in your head.
Russia is capable of waging a hot war against the entire of nato, not just Ukraine. Russia will lose, but nato will also lose. The resources Russia commands are comparably large. This is how significant the reduction in industrial capacity of the nato block by neoliberalism and globalisation is.
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It’s not a question of if Russia ends up taking whatever amount of the ukraine they decide is required to have a defensible border, it’s a question of time and cost. If they start getting hit by long range missiles deep within their pre-war territory the gloves might finally come off which would end the war much more quickly since such strikes aren’t something that can be tolerated for long.
Russia does not yet control the full territory of the annexed oblasts, so they need to advance on those and remove the Ukrainians from Kursk. I think that after that, depending on how stiff Ukrainian resistance remains after what would constitute a pretty comprehensive defeat of their army, Russia might halt instead of extending an occupation much further beyond the Russian-speaking areas more friendly to them.
Which would be total Russian victory with all objectives reached
i'm sure they'd go further for buffer and bargaining if it is possible without substantial losses tho
Sure, but at the final negotiating table I don’t think they will demand to hold onto any land west of the Dnipro river
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Russia can go back to what it was thinking about initially and arm the Houthis. They didn't after pressure from the US and Saudi Arabia, but they can always turn around and tell the Saudis that the Houthis having cruise missiles is the price they will pay for being US lapdogs.