Bulletins and News Discussion from September 9th to September 15th, 2024 - Viva Sandino! - COTW: Nicaragua
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.
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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.
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Here we see an example of how ostensibly "pro-Resistance" or "Pro-Russian" media is weaponized in service of imperialism.
The narrative has been escalating that Iran is sending IRBM's to Russia and today it came to a climax where a whole host of new sanctions have been implemented, including the banning of flights to Iran from France Germany and UK.
Whether they have sent them or not is irrelevant. The Iranian FM has categorically denied sending missiles to Russia and all the reports otherwise are coming from western outlets. The only report I could find of the Iranian parliamentarian "confirming" it is from a website called "Iran Watch."
Despite the official denial, almost all media is parroting the lines about Iranian missiles which then justifies the genocidal sanctions.
And yes, sanctions can and do get worse.
So western media fabricated a story about Iran arming Russia to justify more sanctions on Iran.
Maybe I'm missing the point but what does that have to do with pro-Resistance" or "Pro-Russian" media?
Sorry I didnt make clear. They are involved because even pro-Russian and pro-Resistance media was repeating the narrative and saying "Woohoo Iran is arming Russia and its a good thing!"
I don’t think some Z telegrams cheering at new Iranian missiles has any effect on the legislative policies of imperialist states. They fabricate the evidence themselves and do whatever they want. 99.99% of westerners will never read these pro-resistance telegram posts
Correct it does not affect legislators in nazi countries. But it does obfuscate what is really happening while empowering twisted imperialist narratives that discredit the Iranian government in the eyes of people around the world. "Look the Iranian & Russian governments is liars" which is a recurring information warfare theme.
What is really happening is the US objectively escalating these wars by ratcheting up sanctions.
Now I understand
To be clear, the point is not whether they did or did not send missiles.
Iran electing pro reconciliation leaders is just really funny to me.
You can’t negotiate with someone who wants you dead. Putin and Russia realized this eventually.
Will it ever sink in with Iran?
There are people in here who are infinitely more knowledgable on the Iranian electorate than I am, so I will hold off from any half-assed analysis, but there's possibly a compare-and-contrast to be made with the less powerful socialist states that did survive the fall of the USSR (namely Cuba, the DPRK, Laos, etc) and how their populations seem to have generally held on to a belief in socialism despite hardship; and then a country like Iran, where the population doesn't seem sufficiently inspired by the more anti-imperialist government. Is the hardship is too much? Or perhaps the information warfare too much? Has the domestic leadership and policies been much less effective than in Cuba or the DPRK? Another W for socialism, I suppose.
I don't know what is funny about a multi-billion dollar hybrid warfare campaign based on sanctions that are designed to starve and kill and amplified by an incredibly complex apparatus of information warfare, cyber warfare, psychological warfare, and terrorism.
It’s darkly funny to me that the great Satan can leave such an enormous mountain of corpses in their wake and retain a positive reputation in so much of the world.
It leaves everything seeming a little mad. Sometimes you have to laugh to avoid crying.
It honestly doesn't pass scrutiny. Iran sending missiles to Russia as if Russia needs Iranian missiles is just playing into the tired "Putler is gonna run out of rockets" cope that NAFO has been holding on for years. Your average pro-Russian Twitter account in general is a lot worse than your average pro-Axis of Resistance Twitter account in terms of being more reactionary, having shittier analysis, and just being dumber in general. They would fall for this pretty obvious Western psyop.