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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Reading some of the comments lately has caused me to doom so fucking hard that I legit had trouble sleeping last night and I almost felt slightly nauseuous.

I typed up a long vent/screed. CW for some things such as doomerisms, mentions of suicide, violent fantasies, and really unhinged worldbuilding. I can't tell you how much of it is sincere or how much of it is coming from my deteriorating mental state

I apologize in advance

Also since this is really long I think I need to split it into two parts

Part 1:

spoiler

God has Fascism ever truly lost? It feels like they always get the last laugh. People here call it unsustainable but it seems like it's able to sustain itself entirely through pure ideology. It doesn't need to be efficient or build anything, it just needs to control the world's resources with an iron grip and burrow its vile ideology into the minds of everyone, and it just becomes self-perpetuating. God why do so many people love fascism so much?

Fuckfuckfuck it's starting to look like Fascism never really loses, it just suffers setbacks. The Nazis failed to conquer the Soviet Union, but that doesn't matter because the west preserved Nazi ideology whereas the Soviet Union collapsed, it was ripped apart and its legacy is being torn to shreds. The Nazis got what they wanted in the end.

The Vietnam war? Vietnam has to live in a US-led world order and has to play by their rules. Same with every country that has had a successful revolution. Cuba's still being strangled by the U.S. DPRK is isolated while occupied Korea stands entirely on U.S. backing. The Black Panthers were broken.

Spain's first astronaut? Okay I don't know much about Spain but I presume things aren't good there, despite some fascist shitbag getting owned. Once again, only a setback, but not a defeat.

And apparently the dollar is an invincible weapon that China and Russia can't do anything about. With the way things are going they're totally just going to succumb and become U.S. colonies aren't they?

And China raising the retirement age? That's a sign, the beginning of the end. This will soon lead to China's collapse and the west will pick its carcass dry again. In fact it might happen in the next 5 minutes after this post!!!!

Settler colonialists have always been successful in genociding the natives: Americans, Aussies, and soon it will be Israel too. We continue to live in the fucking aftermath of said genocides. We might not have been born in time to witness the liberation of Palestine. Instead we may have been born in time to witness yet another successful genocide being carried out, and the beginning of Israel becoming the eternal hegemon of the middle east.

Do we just passively accept that Fascism really is the strongest and most supreme ideology? That white people really are the master race? That they've been able to cow and domesticate every country and keep them under their stranglehold for centuries, and they're still doing it and nothing can stop them? That they'd burrow their ideology into the minds of every single human being in the world? Look at how it maintains itself and self-perpetuates, it just keeps going and going and going and going and going and going and going and going and going. No amount of fuckups will ever change that. Countries like China need to do everything right or they're doomed, but the west can shoot itself in the foot constantly and still win.

They're laughing. The Fascists and libs must be living in fucking heaven right now. They're experiencing nothing but constant sheer euphoria every single day because the powers that be are catering to their every whim. Same for the Zionist scum knowing that with the U.S. backing them it's impossible for them to lose, that they will eventually finish their genocide without setbacks. They know the world is biased towards them, they know that if there is a God, it is a God that favors all the Hitlers of the world. Meanwhile China doesn't do everything we want, while the U.S. does literally everything the fash want. If the good guys always win then that means Fascism, genocide, and colonialism are considered good in the eyes of this God right? Then it is a cruel God that deserves to be attacked and dethroned.
- Part 2:
  
  spoiler
  
  They're laughing. They know we're powerless. They know that we're forced to play by their rules and we have no power to change that. They know they've completely domesticated the left, and there is no real anti-imperialits force that can challenge them. They know they've got the world under their heel. If we kill ourselves, they'll just laugh at us. If we continue to live just to "spite" them, they'll still take joy in our continued suffering. The only thing I can think of that can wipe that smug look off their faces is to live to hurt them, not just spite, but hurt them. Inflict a permanent injury on them, traumatize and scar them so much that they can never enjoy the world they've created.
  
  This is unacceptable. We should never just shrug our shoulders and say "oh you know that's just how it is we can always make the world better UWU" and continue to play by their fucking rules while they continue and continue to perpetuate their vile ideology while we pretend we have any power to change it.
  
  We're on our way to the "real" end of history aren't we? With the U.S. becoming the world's first and only forever empire. Liberal/Fascit ideology (Liberalism is a form of fascism) will survive the earth being engulfed by the sun. It will survive the heat death of the universe.
  
  How do you avoid becoming a misanthrope. To believe that human beings are inherently fascits, that fascim is the natural state of humanity. That genocide is human nature.
  
  If that's the case, humanity needs to have their evil nature supprssed. God I just wan tto wipe the fucking slate clean. We shit on the "better dead than red" meme but honetlyy I'm no better. I'd rather burn the world in nuclear armageddon than let the fascists win yet again. Wipe the slate celan, start over, and ensure that any that tries to perpetuate fascist ideology is suppressed with extreme prejudice. Hell even just for thinking about it.
  
  Yes I would literally punish you for thought crimes. Don't like it? Have better opinions then, jackass.
  
  Also I will literally make the story of Yakub official history. fuck you.
  
  Why do Communists have to be merciful? Why do they have to be "Better" than their enemies? Fascits can committ all sorts of atrocities and butcher innocents and still be hailed as heroes, why? becaue they won. They write history. Their victims are powerless to do anything about them, so why do they matter? Fascitsts today are still celebrated, their atrocities either ignored or aslo celebrated. Committing war crime and atrocities just doens't fucking matter does it? They alway get away with it. Just look at those fucking demons who worked at Unit 731. Why can't we be crueler than our enemies? Terrorize and butcher them as they would us? I don't want to do this libshit "they go low we go high" garbage. I want to punish them. I want to break them. Every war criminal nation got off scot free, why can't we? Look at the world now, every fascist nation that has committed atrocities never had to answer for their crimes, and their oppossition has no fucking powerto do anything about it. Almost every fascst scum died peacefully in their sleep, having accomplished all of their goals, and their legacy still stands strong today. And even for those who didn't die peacefully, their goals were accomplished post-humously anyways! Turns out, atrocities and war crimes don't fucking matter. So why shouldn't we do the same!?
  
  Is this the future we are headed for? Imagine this, the United States has completely bent every nation on earth to its will. Its ruling class has achieved a form of "Godhood," with omnipotent powers at their disposal. They have not only rewritten, but completely recreated history, to mark the western world, but the United States especially, to be the harbingers of civilization itself. White people have been branded as the "Golden Race," sent down by the US ruling class (now the eternal God-kings of the world) from heaven to "tame" and "civilize" the "savage wastes" and domesticate or wipe out the "savages" (non-whites). The U.S. at this point has developed mind control chips to surgically implant within the brains of dissidents, but especially non-whites in order to keep them docile and happy with oppression. The worship of the U.S. ruling class and white Americans has been enforced as the world state religion, with Mount Rushmore becoming a holy site.
  
  They enforce a brutal caste system that follows these lines:
  
  The US ruling Class
  
  The Acolytes of the world state religion
  
  The "Golden Race" (white americans)
  
  The lesser "Golden Race" (other whites)
  
  The "Chosen" (non-whites who have willingy chosen to be compradors and help the whites colonize their people. They have roles such as monitoring their communities and delivering newborns to the Acolytes to have the brain chips implanted)
  
  and the very bottom: non-whites, who occupy servant and slave roles, are treated entirely as property, and used as the playthings for the higher-ups. They are heavily monitored and every newborn is delivered to the Acolytes to have the brain chips implanted to keep them happy and complacent. The brain chip makes them feel joy from being enslaved, and even being abused or discarded. It makes them only care about pleasing their "master." Feeding and care is optional, since if they die or get injured, their owners can just buy a new one. The mind control chips also compel them to kneel whenever in the presence of any "Golden Race" caste members, and thank them for "civilizing" them and "Gracing them with their presence."
  
  Oh god I'm dooming too hard please just tell me I'm wrong about all this. I'm losing my goddamn mind.
  
  Also if anyone replies with some libshit platitude you'll just make it worse and I will add you to a kill-list (not really but you get the sentiment)
  
  :::
  
  God I'm sorry
  
  you live in the belly of the beast, but things are going to come to a fever pitch, there will likely be a terrible war, and the anti imperialist camp will likely win. The US can't defeat russia, it cant defeat iran, it cant even defeat yemen, US imperialism is crumbling, they dont and cant produce anything, all they cling to is their financial weapons, which will fail when a real war breaks out. I have no doubt there will be a war with china, and i have no doubt the US will lose.
  
  Edit 1:
  
  Settler colonialists have always been successful in genociding the natives
  
  Nazi germany failed.
  
  Edit 2:
  
  The Vietnam war? Vietnam has to live in a US-led world order and has to play by their rules. Same with every country that has had a successful revolution. Cuba's still being strangled by the U.S. DPRK is isolated while occupied Korea stands entirely on U.S. backing
  
  Each of these have been stunning victories against capitalism, and pave the path for other oppressed nations going forward
  
  Edit 3:
  
  Same for the Zionist scum knowing that with the U.S. backing them it's impossible for them to lose, that they will eventually finish their genocide without setbacks.
  
  The Zionist Entity is currently actually collapsing, they have the "strongest military in the world" backing them and they can't even fucking defeat a guerilla force
  
  How do you avoid becoming a misanthrope. To believe that human beings are inherently fascits, that fascim is the natural state of humanity. That genocide is human nature.
  
  Look to every brave person that has fought against the fascist scourge, you live in the fascist metropole, of course the people around you are fascists
  
  Edit 4:
  
  And China raising the retirement age? That's a sign, the beginning of the end. This will soon lead to China's collapse and the west will pick its carcass dry again. In fact it might happen in the next 5 minutes after this post!!!!
  
  I guess this is a joke maybe? But every project will suffer setbacks, a revolution is not a dinner party, every project must deviate from its ideals in order to weather a storm, and if the chinese govt believe thats the correct path I frankly believe them
  
  yeah sorry I've just been slowly going insane due to a shortage of good news. :doomjak:
  
  no need to be sorry comrade
  
  Hey what book is that image from? Looks interesting, and I love Losurdo so somebody he found "common ground" with is probably a good read as well.
  
  "Socialism With Chinese Characteristics" By Roland Boer https://archive.org/details/socialism-with-chinese-characteristics/page/n7/mode/2up
  
  I havent read it but i remember Roderic Day posting this screencap on twitter and its stuck with me.
  
  Edit: looks like red sails hosts a couple of shorter articles by him too which might be a good starting point https://redsails.org/@boer/
  
  Comrade, as the others said, I have never been more certain that we will win. Be strong and be well!
  
  Permanently Deleted
  
  Great share, well worth the reread x4
  
  here's a quasi-philosophical, quasi-therapeutic blob of text that may or may not help you or other people in your position
  
  spoiler
  
  I could go through each of your points in turn and disprove them but I don't think that would be terribly helpful. I think you're feeling merely the "vibe" of late-stage capitalism which feels very... gestalt. Greater than the sum of its parts. As if, even you go through and knock down every pillar supporting it by disproving every argument above, proving that its defeat is inevitable, it would still remain standing, seemingly uncaring about the fact that it should have collapsed. It's an almost religious force. I think finding ways to mentally contain and/or contend with that almost supernatural feeling of capitalism's permanence and "stay in objective reality" (so to speak) is something most people go through, though not that many are able to specifically name their malaise in that way due to a lack of political reading, and it instead comes out in a massive array of forms, sometimes liberatory, sometimes reactionary.
  
  As all humans are not capable of perfectly logical thought, at least not for very long, we do have to live in our feelings and find coping mechanisms in order to keep functioning. Some go to stoicism as a coping mechanism, while others choose to ignore politics entirely and live as hedonically as possible. Personally, I would say I have three coping mechanisms to deal with the Bad Vibe, though nobody else here must (or even should) follow them:
  
  A fatalistic view of the past and future. There's only one path that we shall ever experience, and so our "job" is to find the best way to react to and understand events as they come; we should not stress about all the possibilities. I do think this is literally true in a physics perspective (until the many-worlds-hypothesis is proved true, at least). This isn't to deny human agency; if anything I'm a firm believer in it, and come down on the "indomitable human spirit" side, against the "cold indifference of the universe" side. I just believe that humans and their organizations are "wielded" by historical forces and are how change comes about, whether those humans are aware of it or even hate that fact. I think there's a Mao quote around where he remarks on how capitalism or colonialism in China didn't end itself through deterioration into nothing, it was the Communist Party that destroyed it. I think that is true, but a key part of the deterioration of capitalism is precisely the creation of revolutionary organizations which will replace it. Lenin, Stalin, and Mao were wielded like swords by history against capitalism, in the same way that Napoleon was wielded as a sword by history against feudalism. Today, Sinwar and Nasrallah and al-Houthi and others are wielded as swords by history against Israel. But there are many potential swords in history's arsenal, and so Great Man Theory is still essentially false.
  
  Taking a far-future view of current events. I've talked about this before in a comment months ago, where I said that one example I like is imagining some now-nameless individual who lived during the Mongol conquests of Asia - caught up in momentous events in which they heard of far-away cities being sieged and burned, not knowing if they would soon also be killed, and yet nonetheless needing to feed the cattle and harvest the fields and wash their clothes in the river and raise their family, because what other options are there? I then imagine myself, say, 300 years into the future, looking back on the events of today, when the great ongoing genocides and pandemics and horror of war has been made distant by history, where the Ukraine War is just as distant as the American Revolutionary War is today, and I imagine how little my current worries and anxieties about the future matter in the face of such large and inevitable historical forces. It's a human-centric version of when people look up into the sky at billions of galaxies and think about how little things matter down on Earth. I think that can eventually generate a sort of... antipathy towards humanity and can feed into a "humans are the disease" ecofascism, whereas keeping humanity front and center is better.
  
  Trying to maintain "socialist realism", in the face of capitalist realism. This is the mechanism that most directly stabs at the heart of the problem, and so I try and cultivate a genuine belief that socialism not only can win, but that it must win. A Good Vibe, to counter the Bad Vibe. I think the best way to do this is a method that is generally difficult for people raised with the belief in taking in all information and trying not to be biased. That method is to simply and knowingly try and pay most attention to the good news, at the expense of the bad news. That's not to say you should ignore the bad news per se, but I merely use the other two coping mechanisms to minimize their mental impact. Bad events can be safely quarantined in fatalism or through a far-future lens, but good news can be fully enjoyed. Doing this is nearly impossible without decent social media discipline and requires you to give up, at least a little, on the idea that "echo chamber = bad" as well as the idea that it's your "duty" to witness suffering online despite (or even because) how bad it makes you feel. Some people, maybe even here, may fight you on those tendencies. But it's worth doing in order to have substantially better mental health in my opinion.
  
  I suffered through fairly intense social anxiety in my childhood and adolescence, and so I eventually had to formulate and dedicate discipline to these kinds of coping mechanisms to remain functional through personal and geopolitical hardship. It's served me pretty well both irl and on this site, where doomers and irony-poisoned people are pretty common.
  
  Peasant revolts almost always lost, got to just deal with it.
  
  Don't be sorry. We all have times of doubt and its healthy to give those doubts voice and see them all in one externalized screed like this.
  
  When you look at the whole picture it can seem hopeless but this is tangled mess held together with feelings that are not in line with fact. Now you just have to pick through it all and identify the various parts of your fear blob and untangle them. Its like cleaning your bed room as a kid. It looks hopeless but you just put things away one by one. Take each individual fear match it with facts of how it can be/has been overcome and stack it neatly to the side. When you are done instead of a mess of doomerism and fear all you'll be left with is a sorted pile of all the bad things happening and how they can be fixed.
  
  It is true that fascists never went away they just went under the radar for a bit. But they were defeated don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise. They had to hide in fear for decades. Now that they have returned in force they will be defeated again. And because our ancestors didn't do a good enough job the first time don't you think the victors will be more strict in their efforts to stamp them out this time? (fool me once...)
  
  Fascism is an ideology based on falsehoods and defined by the people it excludes. It cannot be the cornerstone of a stable society. Even if the fascists "win" they can't win because they need conflict with the "other" to keep cohesion. They define themselves based on the struggle against who and what they exclude. In the absence of an enemy they have no defining parameters so a new enemy is created from within their ranks. If fascism were allowed to continue without opposition it would lead to everyone being dead except one person.
  
  I appreciate the share, it gives perspective.

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