******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. *****************************************************************
What has shocked so many -- especially those of us who were active in the international Sandinista solidarity movement in the 1980s -- is the wave of repression unleashed by the Ortega-Murillo regime since April 19. Never before in Latin America has a government claiming to be on "the left" turned its police (and, in Nicaragua, paramilitaries and sharpshooters) on peaceful, unarmed demonstrators in the streets -- shooting hundreds, wounding thousands, even denying them hospital care. Louis, in his rambling early attempt to figure out what was happening, cited below, simply avoids referring to the initial repression, which in subsequent weeks escalated until the Nicaraguan government itself now admits to some 230 deaths (overwhelmingly non-police), while independent human rights organizations have documented more than 400. This balance sheet itself -- and the whitewashing of it by the "oficialista" left (Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, etc.) on the usual pretext that the US must be behind it -- calls for serious reflection about the state of the left today not only in Nicaragua but throughout the region. As Lou demonstrates in his own reactions, we are facing here some of the same conflicting reactions that we saw in the initial responses internationally to the Assad regime's violent suppression of the popular protests in Syria. Earlier today, Lou posted a reply to an article in the Scientific American by a critic of Nicaragua's environmental abuses. It is worth reading the article that is the target of the author, Paul Oquist: Nicaragua's Acions Cast a Shadow over Its Leadership of Major Climate Group, http://tinyurl.com/ybf9akgq. As a quick google search reveals, Oquist apparently hires himself out as a scientific "advisor" to poor countries in the Central American-Caribbean region. In Nicaragua, Ortega has even given him cabinet rank. At the Paris climate summit in 2016, where he represented Nicaragua in place of Ortega who couldn't be bothered attending, Oquist cast the lone vote against the final accord saying it did not go far enough. However, when Trump later pulled out of the agreement Ortega decided to sign on to it, and with Syria's recent adhesion only the United States lies outside of it. But Oquist is not just an expert on climate change and environment. He is a vocal defender of the politics of Ortega-Murillo. For example, take a look at his defence of the regime in a two-part interview on Democracy Now: Extended Conversation with Nicaraguan Government Minister Paul Oquist on Escalating Crisis http://tinyurl.com/yc7qsmjp Richard -----Original Message----- From: Marxism [mailto:marxism-boun...@lists.csbs.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Louis Proyect via Marxism Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2018 10:07 AM To: rfid...@ncf.ca Subject: [Marxism] Nicaraguan Contradictions ******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. ***************************************************************** https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/05/04/nicaraguan-contradictions/ _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/rfidler%40ncf.ca _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
