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Nicaragua

Daniel Ortega Is No Bukele

Opposition media from both Nicaragua and El Salvador, along with the Washington Post, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch, all vilify Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega by equating him with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. Although Ortega and Bukele are both serving consecutive terms, and a Central American polling firm reports that they enjoy high popularity among their respective populations, the two presidents actually offer a study in contrasts. Bukele is praised for drastically reducing violence in El Salvador, but his political career is actually based on perpetuating it. First, some history.

Washington Targets Achievements Of Cuba, Nicaragua, And Venezuela

“We look for the poorest patients,” the Cuban doctor in charge of the eye clinic said. “Often we travel to remote rural areas and bring them to the clinic in a bus.” The clinic, in Ciudad Sandino, Nicaragua, was part of Misión Milagro (Miracle Mission), run jointly by the Cuban and Venezuelan governments. The larger mission has treated over seven million patients in 33 countries since 2004. Local Nicaraguan doctors, trained by the Cubans, are now in charge in Ciudad Sandino. Misión Milagro is despised by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Washington has imposed sanctions on officials in countries using this and other Cuban medical missions. Supposedly aimed at stopping the “trafficking” of medical staff, the real intent is to destroy services that have proved immensely popular for their free, high-quality treatment, often in remote areas with few health facilities.

US Reinstates Funding To Propaganda Outlet

The brief freeze and rapid partial reinstatement of National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funding in early 2025 helped expose it as a US regime-change tool. Created to rebrand CIA covert operations as “democracy promotion,” the NED channels government funds to opposition groups in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, meddling in their internal affairs. In 2018, Kenneth Wollack bragged to the US Congress that the NED had given political training to 8,000 young Nicaraguans, many of whom were engaged in a failed attempt to overthrow Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. Wollack was praising the “democracy-promotion” work carried out by NED, of which he is now vice-chair.

Latin America’s Long Fight Against The US For Sovereignty

“An American team will win the next soccer World Cup,” a Nicaraguan boy once told me. It took me a second to realize he meant Brazil or Argentina, not the United States. Greg Grandin’s new book shows that “America” (or, in Spanish, América) was the name used for the whole hemisphere by the late 17th century. In the 18th, the great liberator Simón Bolívar set out his vision of “our America”: a New World free of colonies, made up of distinct republics living in mutual respect. He even cautiously welcomed the newly declared Monroe Doctrine as a rejection of European imperialism. Bolívar died without realizing his dream of a Pan-American international order but, Grandin argues, his ideals live on in Latin America today.

Meet The DC Think Tanks Impoverishing Masses Of Latin Americans

Sanctions are a form of hybrid warfare that harms or even kills the target populations at little cost to the country imposing them. In Latin America alone, US sanctions (correctly known as “unilateral coercive measures”) have killed at least 100,000 Venezuelans. The US blockade of Cuba has been so destructive that one in ten Cubans have left the country. Sanctions have similarly deprived Nicaraguans of development aid worth an estimated $3 billion since 2018, hitting projects such as new water supplies for rural areas. Who formulates these devastating sanctions, covers up their real effects, works with politicians to put them into operation and promotes them in corporate media?

Nicaragua’s Opposition Media Welcome Trump’s New Tariffs

Five countries in Central America, together with the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean, have a free trade agreement with Washington, but this didn’t protect them from the punitive tariffs announced on President Trump’s “Liberation Day.” A minimum 10 per cent tariff on exports to the US will hit low-income countries throughout the region. But exports from Nicaragua have been saddled with an even higher tariff of 18 per cent. Delighted opponents of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government have blamed it, rather than Trump, for the country receiving this additional penalty. However, simple examination of the figures shows that Nicaragua’s tariff was calculated in the same way as every other country’s.

Veterans For Peace Delegation Visits Nicaragua

In a powerful demonstration of international solidarity, seven members of Veterans For Peace (VFP) visited Nicaragua in mid-to-late March as an official VFP delegation. Veterans from five U.S. states flew to Nicaragua on March 19 for a week-long visit to community clinics, regional colleges, vocational schools, youth groups and mayors in several Nicaraguan cities, including the capital Managua, Matagalpa, Masaya and Ciudad Sandino. The veterans were most impressed to learn that Nicaragua, the third poorest country in the western hemisphere, is providing free, high quality healthcare and education for all its people.

Nicaragua Ranks Highest In Gender Equity In The Americas

If you asked 100 people in the U.S. or the U.K. to name the country leading gender equity in the Americas, it’s unlikely anyone would correctly answer Nicaragua. This lack of awareness reflects the success of a decades-long imperialist campaign to discredit and undermine Nicaragua’s remarkable achievements since the 1979 revolution. The U.S has continuously attempted to destroy the Sandinista revolution, from the contra wars, through active support for the 16 years of neo-liberal government, to the 2018 attempted coup, and the current punitive economic sanctions.

‘Biased’ UN Report Ignores Victims Of US-Backed Opposition Violence

Masaya, Nicaragua – Reynaldo Urbina rides his motorbike around the streets of Masaya, Nicaragua, with agility, despite having only one arm. Nearly seven years ago, at the height of a US- supported coup attempt against Nicaragua’s left-wing Sandinista government, Urbina was one of those guarding the city’s municipal warehouse when it was attacked by around 200 armed protestors. Warned of the impending attack, the guards had been ordered to hide their weapons and not resist capture, to minimize casualties.

Nicaragua Withdraws From United Nations Human Rights Council

The Nicaraguan government announced its withdrawal from the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) in protest against the falsehoods and slanders against the country perpetrated at the institution. In a statement issued on Thursday, February 27, the Nicaraguan authorities stated that the UNHRC has become a platform for those who are attempting to destabilize Nicaragua and are the perpetrators of numerous murders, abductions, and violations of human rights of the Nicaraguan people. The statement further stressed that the report against the Nicaraguan authorities by the self-styled group of “experts” is evidence of the double standards and politicization of the multilateral mechanisms where human rights are being weaponized.

Is USAID A ‘Criminal Organization?’

U.S. President Donald Trump has just closed down USAID after Elon Musk branded it “a criminal organization,” adding “it’s time for it to die.” Is there any truth to Musk’s allegation? One “beneficiary” of USAID is Nicaragua, a country with one of the lowest incomes per head in Latin America. Between 2014 and 2021, USAID

Development Banker Says US Knew Of Plot To Oust Him Over Nicaragua Loans

After Nicaragua suppressed a violent US-backed 2018 coup d’etat which saw hundreds of deaths, Washington enacted the “Nica Act” sanctions bill in 2018, which largely succeeded in cutting off the country’s funding from international institutions such as the World Bank. According to Nicaragua’s former finance minister, the sanctions had two immediate effects: First, the World Bank stopped financing anti-poverty projects in Nicaragua, meaning that the poorest communities lost funding of around US$500 million annually.

20 Years After His Death, Gary Webb’s Truth Is Still Dangerous

Twenty years ago this month, on December 10, 2004, former San Jose Mercury News investigative reporter Gary Webb died by apparent suicide, following a stretch of depression. The subject of the 2014 film Kill the Messenger, Webb had left the newspaper in 1997 after his career was systematically destroyed because he had done what journalists are supposed to do: speak truth to power. In August 1996, Webb penned a three-part series for the Mercury News (8/18–20/96) that documented how profits from the sale of crack cocaine in Los Angeles in the 1980s had been funneled to the Contras, the right-wing, CIA-backed mercenary army responsible for helping to perpetrate, to borrow Noam Chomsky’s words, “large-scale terrorist war” against Nicaragua.

Human Rights = Right To Live!: Sanctions Kill! Webinar December 10

On International Human Rights Day, Tuesday, Dec 10, 2024, learn how U.S. sanctions violate human rights, with speakers from Palestine and diplomats from Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Also speaking will be representatives of the Sanctions Kill / Americas Without Sanctions Campaign and Zone of Peace. Human Rights Day is observed annually around the world on December 10, the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which enshrines rights that everyone is entitled to as a human being. As this Human Rights Day approaches, we are horrified that the genocidal terror on Gaza is not only continuing but spreading throughout the region.

From Venezuela To Palestine, US-Imposed Sanctions Are A Crime

December 10 is the anniversary of the signing of the United Nations' Universal Declaration on Human Rights. Organizers with the Americas Without Sanctions campaign are holding an event (in-person and virtual) in Washington, DC to raise awareness of the US's illegal economic war on one-third of the world's population on Human Rights Day. See SanctionsKill.org for details. Clearing the FOG speaks with Barbara Larcom of the International Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition and Cheryl LaBash of the National Network on Cuba about the event and the current crises facing Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela as a result of US sanctions on them and how these are connected to the liberation of Palestine.
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