WTF
In some ways I kind of appreciate it when the propaganda machine starts to focus on Nicaragua cos I actually researched it in a lot of detail for my undergrad dissertation thingie.
When I see the disconnect between what I know to be true and what papers like this print, it reminds me that whatever they say about any other country is likely to be just as much a barefaced lie and projection.
Quite radicalizing, being an expert in something and then having newspapers write about it.
And especially because there is no way anyone with a semblance of a conscious could think US support for the Contra terrorists was anything other than evil.
Yup. The US, through Contra movements, actively encouraged the kind of evil shit that ISIS got up to against a fledgeling democracy that frankly was far more democratic than the US has ever been.
There really is no moral ambivilence here. The US is evil.
Subjectively, from I know I'd say the evil shit the Contras did was worse than ISIS.
In some ways I kind of appreciate it when the propaganda machine starts to focus on Nicaragua cos I actually researched it in a lot of detail for my undergrad dissertation thingie.
what are the modern sandinistas like?
This was about 15 yrs ago now, and when I was studying them I was much more focused on the FSLN and associated movements up to the election in the 90's where they basically lost due to a decade of having an economic war as well as US sponsored terrorism strangling their ability to make good on their planned reforms. I'm afraid I wouldn't consider myself qualified enough to pass any kind of judgement on the modern movement.
Democracy is when you pay death squads to scoop out priest eyeballs, and the more eyeballs you scoop out the more democratic it is.
Oh man, that didn't really work out. I guess America has to stop intervening in the thankless global south and spend that money on something like healthcare instead.
wapo is slang for handsome in Spanish because it's phonetically identical to guapo
The more you know
The phonetic inventory of Spanish is like 20 phonemes and native speakers still reduce sounds lol. Looking at you, aspirated s.
That's good, actually. I still hate all of those "th" and "ng" phonemes.
It was very expensive to commit those ware crimes! Reagan kept forgetting to bill the correct government.
Didn't they fuckup a half billion dollar payment from the sultan of brunei?
NYT slammed Bernie for being at a Sandinista rally in the 80s last year.
I guess the mainstream consensus is now "Contra death squads good actually."
While I would hardly call myself an expert or historian about the political, government and/or broader socialist movement of Nicaragua, I understand that the establishment consensus of the country is that it is a brutal authoritarian country where nobody is free.
Obviously, this far from the case.
It's not even relevant what the government is like in Nicaragua now, what's relevant is that the Americans were absolutely on the wrong side of the Contra-Sandinista conflict in the 80s. I wasn't alive during the scandal to say this with complete confidence, but reading about the Iran-Contra affair it seems like the general consensus was that the Reagan administration seriously fucked up and the stuff we've learned about the Contras (and America's direct involvement with their atrocities) have only made the entire thing seem that much worse. There's no real argument about what came before the Sandinstas either because the Somoza regime was pretty transparently brutal and repressive.
It seems to me like everyone is playing revisionist history and pretending that the Contras were the good guys and that America was just "promoting democracy." Idk, maybe I'm wrong and the narrative about Nicaragua and the Contras has always been terrible, but I'm honestly surprised to see how successfully the MSM is able to push these kind of lies when the Iran-Contra affair was such a major event in the 80s.
They've had a crosshair on Nicaragua for a while now, ever since Bolton was NSA. Remember "Troika of Terror"?
Pretty much. He’s not good again, punches left, but is pushing back against imperialism so we very critically suppprt him.
democracy is when you have the rule of the people. A timeless question to political theorists: who truly are "the people"? WaPo knows. The people are raytheon executives.
No, but gotta very critically support him against US imperialism
