Bulletins and News Discussion from September 9th to September 15th, 2024 - Viva Sandino! - COTW: Nicaragua

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.

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Just random thoughts incoming:

My son is already two months old, time just passes so quickly. This mf is growing fast on that breast milk diet. He's balding though, guess I'll take him to Turkey soon. On a different note, I'm going to need an archive of communist cartoons soon to start the training early.

Asian Qualifiers for the Great Satan World Cup in 2026 has started, with a great start for Iraq and surprisingly Palestine who drew with South Korea in Seoul. Iraq should make it in this group, while Palestine could possibly be in a decent position if they beat Jordan tomorrow. Iran won their first match, they'll make it for sure. North Korea sadly lost to Uzbekistan (we should a Central Asian COTW period btw), their chances look below average.

Ugledar is about to be encircled, very big news for us Ugledar haters. Very stupid town, but a marvel of Soviet engineering. Ukraine have mainly stopped the bleeding near Pokrovsk, but they're quickly losing ground in the Kurakhove sector and near Kupiansk. Important weeks incoming now before mud season.

Damn when will Iran stop edging, we need them to goon soon

My wife's sister is getting married in Iraq next month, very annoying timing because we can't travel yet with the lil kid. In her defence, the wedding was supposed to be like 7 months ago, but the groom's uncle suddenly died like a month before the wedding.

What is Israel even doing right now? They've been in Gaza for like 11 months now with barely anything tangible achieved, their internal situation is kinda complicated, Iran keeps edging them, the US fired like 50 missiles into Yemen and was like "bro I'm all out of ideas", peace negotiations keep getting wrecked by Satanyahu. What's the long-term goal here, I'm not sure that there's one.
- What is Israel even doing right now?
  
  i think they are in zugzwang. they are internally divided in many ways, from the settlers in the north who have been driven out to the haredi to the people angry about the hostages and i wouldnt be surprised if there was more i was forgetting. it's divided politically too, this government is held together by threads between parties who really fucking hate each other. they are unsure of how to actually eliminate the resistance, they are terrified of hezbollah and iran's full arsenals. so what options are they left with? every option seems to be a losing move for them.
  
  like so many asymmetrical wars have shown, brutality and genocide towards civilians does not actually win you the war, so trying to do some final solution on gaza where they completely restrict food imports to try and starve the entire civilian population have very little benefit compared to the risks massive escalation that they are terrified of. they can't get their men to go clear the tunnels, because the rank and file of the IOF arent exactly eager to go into certain death in those tunnels (maybe if they were a unified country they would have the willpower to do it, but like I've pointed out they are far from united), and forcing them and gun point and potentially spreading mutiny throughout your army would be an even worse idea. they can't go for peace because it could cause a civil war, nethanyau needs to hold onto power to avoid prosectuion, and they are genocidal racists. so what action is left? pretty much the only thing i can see is trying to play chicken and get hezbollah and iran to back off so they risks of going the final solution route are lowered?
- On a different note, I'm going to need an archive of communist cartoons soon to start the training early.
  
  I am at least partially qualified to help with that.
  
  go on
  
  Apologies for the lateness.
  
  I was falling asleep at the time, so I might have interpreted what you said somewhat incorrectly - not all of the cartoons that I was/am about to recommend have communist messaging (and, unless memory betrays me, almost none have explicit communist messaging), but they were made under the USSR (and one in the 90s Russia, but I think that its messaging is good).
  
  The cartoons that I did intend to recommend off the top of my head:
  
  The Cheburashka and Gena series.
  
  The Prostokvashino series.
  
  1980s Treasure Island adaptation (the one which birthed the Livesey phonk meme; although, this one is an adaptation, so might not count as 'communist')
  
  The 1990s Dunno on the Moon series (The character's name is transliterated into English as 'Neznayka'). This one, despite being made in the 90s offers some criticism of capitalism.
  
  Also, I intend on rewatching Mystery of the Third Planet and watching for the first time the Captain Vrungel series to check if I would recommend them.
  
  Admittedly, my initial enthusiasm was probably premature, as I might not be able to find the English-dubbed versions of these, only the subbed ones.
- They've been in Gaza for like 11 months now with barely anything tangible achieved
  
  It's wild to say that they have not achieved anything tangible. The Gaza Strip is practically uninhabitable, confirmed deaths are on the order of 2-3% of the population of the strip, and given the mechanics of how civilians suffer from war, the death of a further 10-20% of the gazan population is more or less baked in. These are awful, genocidal acts committed by a state that is actively, methodically and purposefully doing genocide. Genocide is a tangible activity.
  
  "Militarily relevant" is probably the better term, but tbh I don't even really know what genocide tangibly achieves for Israel. Let's say Israel just goes for it tomorrow and starts dropping the largest bombs they have on every single refugee camp in Gaza; the current massacre but times 10,000, kills hundreds of thousands of people in a week. Quite possibly the greatest catastrophe and murder spree that humanity has ever seen outside of the World Wars. What does that achieve for Israel, specifically? There are still millions of Palestinians in the world, Hamas is still present and fighting, Hezbollah is still there and an existential threat, Iran is still there and an even more existential threat. They are in precisely the same situation that they were a month and 2 million people before they started, and now everybody that isn't a Western stooge is much angrier at them.
  
  Demoralization of the Palestinians? To what end? The process of making (civilian) Palestinians "give up" and "lose hope" leads to what actual outcome, exactly? If the Hope Gauge reaches a certain number, does Gaza fall?
  
  Moralization of the Israelis? To what end? Internal schisms inside Israel will not rely on whether a certain number of Palestinians have been killed today, either from a sympathetic faction (which is an absolute minority inside Israel) or from one that bays for blood and wants a certain number to die every day (what is their interest in rebelling against a government protecting them from the Resistance?) It'll rely on the economic and military pain of the warfare being conducted.
  
  My point is, basically, that all the civilian deaths and destruction of the buildings inside Gaza just seems pointless - even counterproductive - and a waste of resources and manpower and time even if you're the most immoral, cold-hearted person on the planet, whose sole goal is to ensure the survival of the Israeli state, whatever conclusion that brings you to. If anything, that immoral person might want to keep the civilians reasonably unharmed in order to avoid further economic pain from sanctions/decoupling, and perhaps try to drive wedges between the civilians and Hamas. And looking back for a historical parallel, we can see that the many, many massacres and atrocities committed by Western empires throughout the last 500 years ultimately produced the conditions for the overthrow of that colonial rule - they did not prevent it. Once national consciousness spread to the colonized nations, the West kept trying to do the atrocities and concentration camps and such, but it routinely failed and was too costly for those imperialist nations to continue doing. A million people being murdered in Algeria did not stop them from fighting and may have provided further drive to keep fighting. Similar situation in the Korean War and Vietnam and India.
  
  They are continuing this with the goal of improving moral. They know their internal politics are even more fucked if the killing stops. So this way they can deal with the contradictions all the while the US will just pour money and weapons in and give them total support. If Israel was having this internal conflict without the war the US would probably pick a side again like when they gestured towards getting Bibi out of there a few years ago, iirc backing Bennet
  
  Yes. The Lancet estimate suggestions that Israel has murdered approximately 10% of all Palestinians in Gaza and is likely an undercount.

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