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.

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

    Russia got too comfortable with the mild sanctions effect in the first two years that they actually believed they can rely on China forever. They are now paying the price.

    This is entirely expected, but it wasn't a "mistake". The entire dedollarization rhetoric is a relic of 2022 when it was looking like China was actualy willing to take an independent and adversarial stance against the west. This meant BRICS could have been a viable alternative for a multipolar world under Chinese leadership. Maybe if China continued on that path and decided 2022-2025 would be the time period to settle the Taiwan question using BRICS as their defensive bloc.

    Instead of course we get the opposite. The west complained, a Pelosi humiliated them and the media called them "wolf warriors" then everything took a 180 turn. China since then reassured the west that they wont even try to use BRICS as their own bloc/platform and that they only want "collaboration" and "peace".

    I'll quote MR way from April '23 where he basicaly confirms all these "difficulties" with dedollarization(putting it mildly)

    spoiler

    It’s undoubtedly true that the imposition of economic sanctions on Russia employed by the imperialist governments – banning of energy imports; seizing FX reserves; closing international banking settlement systems – has accelerated the move away from holding the dollar and euro. However, Lagarde added the caveat that this trend is still way short of dramatically changing the global financial order. “These developments do not point to any imminent loss of dominance for the US dollar or the euro. So far, the data do not show substantial changes in the use of international currencies. But they do suggest that international currency status should no longer be taken for granted.”

    Lagarde is right. As I have shown in previous posts, that although the US and the EU have lost ground in the share of world production, trade and even currency transactions and reserves, there is still a long way to go before declaring a ‘fragmented’ world economy in that sense.

    The US dollar (and to a lesser extent the euro) remains dominant in international payments. The US dollar is not being gradually replaced by the euro, or the yen, or even the Chinese renminbi, but by a batch of minor currencies.

    The US dollar and its hegemony is not under threat yet because “50-60% of foreign-held US short-term assets are in the hands of governments with strong ties to the United States – meaning they are unlikely to be divested for geopolitical reasons.” (Lagarde). And it’s even the case that ‘anti-US’ China remains heavily committed in its FX reserves to the US dollar. China publicly reported that it reduced the dollar share of its reserves from 79% to 58% between 2005 and 2014. But China doesn’t appear to have changed the dollar share of its reserves in the last ten years.

    As Patrick Bond put it recently: “The “talk left, walk right” of BRICS’ role in global finance is seen not only in its vigorous financial support for the International Monetary Fund during the 2010s, but more recently in the decision by the BRICS New Development Bank – supposedly an alternative to the World Bank – to declare a freeze on its Russian portfolio in early March, since otherwise it would not have retained its Western credit rating of AA+. ” And Russia is a 20% equity holder in NDB.

    Ouch

    Since the stupid embarrassing Xi-Biden meeting in Nov '23(which happened over a month after Oct 7th and after everyone knew what the Gaza genocide looked like), China says US bad for everyone that wants to hear. Then they turn around and literaly welcome the same people we call nazis here. They are following through with what they say, like it or not.

    I think dedollarization is still possible but it requires commitment to creating a crisis for the global economy and sadly nobody wants that. Sadly atm there is not much to look forward to, there is no indication China will change their stance.

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

          Unabated genocide, check

          anti imperialists choosing to coexist with imperialists, check

          Any hope at a shift in the status quo being steadily erased, check

          American liberalism is back in fashion utterly kneecapping the only smidgen of resistance since 2020, yerp

          That’s right, it’s news time

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

            Its saddening to see china pass up this opportunity to challenge the west and just continue to cooperate with them

            i was really hoping that this could be it, where russia and china could use their combined power to at least destablize american hegemony by pushing. Russia capitulating fully to socialism is a pipe dream that is completely unlikely, but theyve engaged directly through war with ukraine. China has let me down though. They probably know something I dont, maybe they aren't ready, or america is still too strong they'd lose even if challenged?

            Capitalism still is the strongest on earth and nothing seems to change that. Socialism is gaining ground too slowly...

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

        Personaly climate change is still the main issue. The data showed the COVID lockdowns were similar to what would be necessary to avoid 1.5C.

        At the bare minimum if you wanted to be "civil" about it, we would need global governments to completely enforce a survival mode only economic system, no economic activity beyond the stritcly necessary.

        On that front China should absolutely be praised as they're literaly the only ones improving massively, but unfortunately its not enough, the longer we take the more drastic measures would be necessary. Crazy to think but its 2025 already and literaly all projections followed the "worst possible" or "Unexpected" projection lol.

        A large part of my frustration is that our past revolutionary comrades never predicted or had to deal with such a hard deadline. Lenin, Mao or Castro etc, none of them were told "if you fail humanity will die in less than a generation".

        And it is this lack of urgency that is worrysome. I realy couldn't care less about Chinese or Soviet "diplomacy" towards the US if the year was 1955 and all we fantasized was FALGSC in the year 2000.

        Instead its 2025 and we count how many different climate disasters are going to happen within the next 10 years.