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
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.
I thought that the first Trump shooter might have been a NAFO, which was proven incorrect, but it's hilarious that this one is as NAFO as you can get.
The first shooter being a young hermit who no one has any information on, and proceeded to do the shooting wearing a gun YouTubers merchandise, is honestly also a weirdly amusing story.
Libs embracing propaganda by the deed now. What a time to be alive.
imagine being like "This war HAS to keep going, MORE people have to die. I'm willing to give up my entire life for the mere opportunity for more Ukrainians to be killed by artillery."
This guy was clearly a Zelensky sleeper agent. Tip of the spear in the "stabbed in the back" Ukronazi revenge arc.
I think it’s hilarious that there was apparently another attempt on Trump’s life and all people are saying about it is “you gotta see this guy’s tweets.”
What's a NAFO? Still new to all the cool hexbear lingo lol
Nafo was a group started by a neonazi on the internet. They wear mentally handicapped pictures of doge and spam anyone saying anything negative about ukraine with "vatnik", racism and propaganda. They do this incessantly, day in and day out.
Think about the Pepe profile picture nazis from a while back, it's like that but with a doge and Ukraine support.
Thousands of liberals jumped on board this and basically became unwitting nazis themselves. It's an evolution of old Groyper stuff, which goes pretty far back into the days when fascists used to be fringe and not a threat at all.
they're a unique type of Ukraine supporter, who make the defense of NATO and opposition to Russia basically their whole identity, which is only increasingly bizarre as the number of people in the West who actually give a shit about the war anymore is fairly miniscule and mostly limited to the top strata of politicians, as well as their underlings who occasionally make comments about it.
it's very meme focussed. one of their big symbols was/is doge; I think conceptualizing them as "4chan in 2016 but if it was rabidly pro-Ukraine" is pretty close to reality. their contribution to the warfare is propaganda, focussed on the younger demographic, who have that sort of irony-poisoned "non-political" nihilism where they don't really care about the serious adult stuff about NATO defending democracy and standing up against dictators as much as being seen as a rebellious nuisance where they're trying to annoy their enemies to death instead. "trolling for teh lulz" stuff but for zoomers.
as I said before, they were really only notable earlier on the war because that's when more people cared about it and when Ukraine had some resources which could potentially, if they played their cards very well, lead to a genuine stalemate or even negotiated victory over Russia. at this point, when Ukrainian defeat is truly inevitable, Russia has not collapsed, and American imperial decline is visibly continuing, it's just a rather sad remnant of grifters.
People of NATO