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 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.
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.
To me it just seems like they're being set up to become like a permanent occupying force like the US in the middle east. At some point they'll have to draw a line somewhere I would think.
edit: just having a really hard time imagining a scenario where this doesn't continually devolve I guess, not trying to be a doomer or anything, and like I said, I know basically nothing about the conflict.
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.
Good info I had no idea thanks.
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.
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
When the us hit the middle east they went in fast and hard and declared victory before even fighting. There were still significant amounts of the actual army that hadn't even fought yet and there were significant amounts of young men willing to fight.
Right now ukraine cant find willing men to conscript they have to kidnap them. If Russia occupied ukraine right now nobody would be willing to fight an insurgency. There wouldn't be anyone to try to recruit to an insurgency much less anyone willing to die for a country that already threw half the men they knew into a meat grinder.