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.


  • Torenico [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    I’ve seen it, the videos coming out of Gaza of the huge crater made by the US-made bomb dropped on a refugee camp by the zionist genocidal entity. This, coupled with the very recent video of a palestinian emergency worker carrying the lifeless body of a young girl amid the rubble, whose head is completely cracked open and is later seen being filled with pieces of cloth just to give it some proper form for a proper humane burial… It’s over, it’s completely over. If the continued stream of horrific information that comes out from Gaza doesn’t turn you into a radical anti-Zionist and anti-Genocide person, you’re dead to me and to everyone else. There is no more room for doubters, either you’re against this genocide or you fully embrace it and celebrate it. Large portions of the western world fall into the latter. Let us not forget about the decadent comprador regimes and royals who plague the Arab World, those like Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia… whose lack of response directly aids the genocidal effort of “Israel”.

    There is no more discussion to be had, it cannot get any clearer than this, it is impossible. “Israel” has done everything they can to show the world their genocidal intentions, they’re very open and shameless about it. Whoever doubts, at this stage, is supportive of genocide.

  • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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    4 months ago

    the debate, especially the parting words, was a fantastic demonstration of the two ways that the American political class as well as citizenry is responding to its decaying empire:

    1. denying it as hard as possible and demanding that people disbelieve their lying eyes; everything is fine and if it’s not fine, it was because of Trump

    2. admitting to it but flailing around trying to blame everybody but themselves; everything is bad but if we oppress powerless minorities hard enough, things will get better

    simultaneously hilarious and depressing

  • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    Watching the debate just ended up reinforcing my belief that Kamala Harris has serious issues with her rhetoric on non white/POC men. Literally everytime she brought them up implicitly in the debate, she associated them with making and selling fentanyl and other drugs, brought up the fake Hamas sexual assault myths, and bragged about her job locking these people up and working on the border. Just despicable.

  • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    The position liberals have is basically nazism. They want you to support the democrats despite the fact they’re committed to performing genocide because they have the inherent belief that they are better than people in the rest of the world. They are asking you to support the lives of people in one place over the lives of the inferiors in the periphery.

    It’s nazi shit. How is this not nazi ideology? “We are better and you should support us because it’s better for us, regardless of what happens elsewhere”.

    We’re beyond Hitler particles here. It’s just repackaged master race supremacist shit. Imperial core people are better than the periphery and therefore you shouldn’t care about these people getting genocided.

    What hurts most is that these liberals can see it too, but Marx and Engels were right, people do mainly only care about their own conditions and what materially affects them.

  • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    Went onto Reddit out of curiosity and saw a comment comparing Tim Walz to Henry Wallace. Somebody gave a good response on his flaws and a liberal responded with. “I’m not reading all that lil bro” and I logged out.

    American libs seem to like using illiteracy as some kind of smug one-liner

  • Evilphd666 [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    Guy who bushnell in front of the Israeli consulate is Matt Nelson.

    https://xcancel.com/samhusseini/status/1834604438440362274

    “My name is Matt Nelson and I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest. We are all culpable in the ongoing genocide in Gaza… We are slaves to capitalism and the military industrial complex. Most of us are too apathetic to care. The protest I’m about to engage in is a call to our government to stop suppling Israel with the money and weapons it uses to imprison and murder innocent Palestinians, to pressure Israel to end the genocide in Gaza, and to support the ICC indictment of Benjamin Netanyahu and other members of the Israeli government… A democracy is supposed to serve the will of the people, not the interests of the wealthy. Take the power back. Free Palestine.”

    Aparently he’s still alive.

  • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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    4 months ago

    WaPo must be utterly perplexed that a high-ranking official fucks up and instead of receiving no negative consequences and then being promoted to Chief Organ Harvester at the IMF, the guy is actually removed from his position and access to power.

    Qin Gang got involved in, and proceeded to try and hide, an extramarital affair with a reporter, which is a potential liability for state security. I’ve seen rumors in articles that the reporter had Western intelligence connections but nothing I can substantiate.

  • Wertheimer [any]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    @sexywheat@hexbear.net Here’s why the Zionist entity has been doing polio vaccinations in Gaza:

    Although polio has been eradicated in most developed nations, Israel has particular reason to be concerned about the disease. The country has at least 175,000 vulnerable children—the offspring of the ultra-Orthodox, or haredim, who are notorious for their opposition to vaccinations.

    Because the haredim comprise 17 percent of Israel’s Jews and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs their support to remain in power, his government has exempted hundreds of thousands of haredim from Israel’s immunization program against polio as well as measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis and HPV, influenza, and COVID-19—despite the threat to domestic and global health from these vaccine-preventable diseases.

    https://archive.ph/NSGXt

  • Redcuban1959 [any]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    So, I just saw on twitter that the elections for São Paulo (Brazil’s largest city) had a debate, and a neoliberal candidate just used a chair to hit a neonazi (bolsonarista) candidate in the head live on Brazilian TV lol. I think the Bolsonaro candidate called him a rapist and mocked the fact that his mother-in-law died.

    During the São Paulo mayoral debate, candidate Datena attacked Pablo Marçal with a chair after Marçal called him a “coward” for not being man enough to slap him in the face.

    tweet

    Pablo Marçal (Bolsonarist) is injured, with suspected fractured ribs and difficulty breathing - according to a journalist from TV Cultura

    After hitting Pablo, journalists asked Datena if he regretted the aggression

    Journalist: You don’t regret [using the chair to hit Pablo].

    Datena: Of course not.

    lol