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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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.
In October last year Danish Social Democrat MP Kasper Sand Kjær surprisingly resigned from parliament, stating that he "wanted to try life outside of politics". The resignation was unexpected as he was predicted to have a great career in the party that leads the country's ruling right-wing regime.
Today he is standing trial, pleading guilty to charges of credit card fraud for an amount equal to USD 6.700. The fraud was committed while on a trip to Vienna with a parliamentary committee in may last year where he falsely reported his card stolen and tried to get the bank to cancel a number of transactions.
The prosecution is recommending a prison sentence, possibly a suspended sentence with conditions of community service, to the court.
After a trial that lasted just half an hour, Kjær has received a suspended sentence of 60 days in prison. The suspension is conditioned on him completing 80 hours of community service.
He has decided not to appeal the sentence and no new information was revealed in court.
Remember kids, never spend money on sex work. Once you sober up, you will panic and do dumb stuff like this.
Or just fucking use your own credit card like a grown up. Such a weird thing to lose an entire parliamentary career over, especially because he was one of the SocDems who seemed perfectly happy just being a toadie to the PM.
Edit: LMAO, he got convicted in 30 minutes. Admitted to the whole thing and just started talking about being "vewwy sowwy"
Maybe there's a wife somewhere who would get mad at him for partying too hard?
That's what tends to happen. You wake up and realize in a panic that $1500 has just been spent on your card. Odds are this isn't the first time you've done this, it's a consequence of alcoholism more than anything else. Still, not sure if it is possible to do stuff like that in moderation.
6700 dollars? L.
MP salary not enough?
They get a base salary of USD 106.704 a year. I'll let you be the judge of whether that's enough.
In your opinion could this potentially be reasonable given the cost of living there?
I've sometimes wondered if elected officials actually ought to be paid much more than they typically are in western governmental systems. I don't know if it would discourage bribes because the politician wouldn't be short of legitimate cash, or if it would just make the politician look for bigger bribes as they get used to a life of comfort.
It is more than what most people make and their pensions and expenses comes on top of that.
While the "I'm not paid enough to not be corrupt" argument might be valid for some global south cop I am very sceptical about applying it to people who are already in the best-off decile. Politicians doesn't do corruption out of need, they do it because they are greedy and unlike needs that can be satisfied, there's never going to be enough to satiate the rich.
If anything, politicians should earn less so those motivated by money are discouraged and so that they are themselves going to feel the consequences of the decisions they make for ordinary people.
Keeping politicians honest is done by having them be responsible to and rooted in the community, like they do in Cuba, not by trying to bribe them not to be corrupt.
There are USA states that pay local legislators peanuts for pay, New Hampshire paying only $100 a year, and that drives only rich people to run for those offices
I'm not saying that they shouldn't be paid at all, just that the pay they get should be similar to that of the people they govern and presumably represent. Ultimately the big problem is not the pay but that politicians are not dependent on the people. A system like the Cuban one where campaigning and parties are banned and the way to get elected is to be a trusted an liked person in your local community and where they have to answer to the community on a regular basis, is the ideal.
afaik this is what singapore does to prevent bribing, alhough corruption in capitalist systems is still a thing (kickback, networking etc)
Denmark isnt THAT expensive.