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.
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.
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Will usa cross 2 trillion deficit per annum
US Budget Gap Reaches $1.9 Trillion as Fiscal Year Nears End (boomerberg)
The interest burden on outstanding US debt remains a major drag on the budget. Interest costs in the first 11 months of the fiscal year totaled $1.05 trillion, up 30% from 2023. Interest costs have never exceeded $1 trillion a year before now, though Treasury officials noted that as a share of gross domestic product, the ratio was higher in the early 1990s.
ehehehe. (mmt enjoyers - shoo, people buying amerikan debt are not mmt aficionados)
Its quite funny how usa unloads its shit onto the world (eu/japan) and they just eat it.
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If i were usa i would simply not enter into recession.
Stock market will jump, cause yay, our p/e doesn't suck ass compared to treasuries. What is interesting though is that either companies will load up on credit and go on their marry way (and mortgages will happen) (il soft landing) or stock market will burst when it will become unsustainable (cause p/e of 40 is just silly if you operate on cashflow and 401k inflow will slow down). Deficit question is completely detached from it, its just usa bleeding dollars to porkies and bond-holders. What is very interesting though is that boomers retiring from this plane fucks up stock market by itself see net assets change in 2021-2022 pg4 here, they spend money into health services yes, but inheritors likely won't. So there is some fuckery here as well.
Fundamentally usa doesn't have a reason for recession, it has however reason for stock market crash. I feel like ai bubble will fuck it up (but a lot of people talk about it, so maybe not)
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Is it the one with wolf? I agree debt is unimportant (in general) for USA, however trade deficit coupled with scarily increasing debt is. Because fundamentally it describes discount on the commodities traveling to usa (sell shit to usa, oops dunno what buy with dollars, buys treasury bills). Big
here, this system is not infinitely scalable. Yes, the discount works, but with 5 % interest rates (which you can fix in your portfolio, if you hedge around), that discount will be paid in 20 years (for sake of argument round numbers). At some point you will want to buy real (tm) shit with it (means of production, climate adaptation tools), at which point inflation (or dollar devaluation) explodes due to mismatch between supply and demand of real shit (tm) sold in dollars. The other option - sovereign wealth funds (with aging and retiring population, mind you) and cbr swaps just grow, forever, in dollars, never buying anything.
I think they are bailing out select industries in real time via injecting the stock market full of funny money secretly as part of their "soft landing" policy. So we see everything cost more but the 
due to devaluation of the dollar. The whole thing is propped up by debt backed by sucking the value out of every past, present, and future dollar.Debt is fine when it goes to public assets which return value. Debt is austerity when it goes to 2000lbs bunker buster bombs that vaporize refugee tents.
The "defense" budget just got $500 billion larger! Take that deficit!
Hurry blow more fiat up at it! Let's get this hyperinflation cooking!
the MIC parasites should buy up and hoard all the corn
otherwise it just ends up being higher and higher numbers on spreadsheets doing nothing.
and yet they keep saying interest rates hikes are to reduce inflation
they are to induce unemployement, its funny that they say it to everyone faces, and no one gives a shit.