[Peace-discuss] If you think Democracy Now's reporting on Nicaragua ignores US influence, past and maybe present ...

Fri Jun 15 15:24:20 UTC 2018

If you think Democracy Now's reporting on Nicaragua ignores US influence, past and maybe present ...  people are urging Democracy Now to bring in other voices - Camilo Mejia (who had been prominent in speaking against the Iraq war as a member of IVAW), and Brian Willson.

 -- Stuart
-------- Original message --------From: Kevin Zeese <kbzeese at gmail.com> Date: 6/14/18  22:24  (GMT-06:00) To: Mitchel Cohen <mitchelcohen at mindspring.com> Cc: Thomas Scott Tucker <scott at tstucker.com>, ufpj-activist <ufpj-activist at lists.mayfirst.org> Subject: Re: [ufpj-activist] Marc Cooper reporting from Nicaragua 
This just in from Nicaraguans concerned with the biased reporting on Democracy Now.

Dear US friends Today we have a very concrete, specific action we urgently ask you to help us achieve. We need as many people as possible to write to Democracy Now and request that they interview Camilo Mejia and Brian Willson about the situation in Nicaragua. The email address is producers at democracynow.org. Can you please write them an email and share this request with others?Thanks

KZ at KBZeeseBuild power and resistancePopular Resistancewww.PopularResistance.orgShift Wealth: Economic DemocracyIts Our Economy www.ItsOurEconomy.USDemocratize the Media
Clearing the FOG (Forces of Greed) 
Radio http://www.ClearingTheFOGRadio.org

On Thu, Jun 14, 2018 at 11:09 PM Mitchel Cohen <mitchelcohen at mindspring.com> wrote:

I went to a public event about Nicaragua last night, co-sponsored by the
Marxist Education Project, and I didn't know which Looking Glass I'd
stepped through. Only saw a handful of people I knew there -- unusual,
for this kind of issue. What's happening in Nicaragua today is just
awful, but there didn't seem to be any reflection on the role of the
U.S., nor any sense of continuing the work of the Sandinista revolution.
The speakers were calling for the removal of Daniel Ortega as president
(can't say I blame them, he's awful these days), but they kept repeating
the tropes of the right wing. I wasn't sure who the speakers are nor much
of the audience of around 100 people, nor who they were representing or
being funded by.

Still, they had very legitimate concerns -- and outrage! But the students
who spoke there, with their faces masked, didn't seem to have any
appreciation of the the Sandinista revolution and their fight against the
contras. The revolution was, after all, almost 40 years ago! And it comes
on the heels of Mark Rudd meeting with David Hogg of the Parkland High
School students. Mark reported that David didn't really have any idea of
-- NOR INTEREST IN -- the history of the fightbacks of the 60s and 70s
and 80s, and will therefore never learn lessons from them about how to
fight successfully without getting co-opted or bought (without even
knowing it!).

The Nicaraguan speakers didn't once mention U.S. imperialism, except for
U.S. writer Dan La Botz, whose new book is out: What Went Wrong? The
Nicaraguan Revolution: A Marxist Analysis . I was shocked, actually,
by the lack of explicit connection to history as well as opposition to
the U.S. government's role there.

Mitchel Cohen

At 10:58 PM 6/14/2018, Kevin Zeese wrote:

People in Nicaragua are very
upset that Democracy Now is presenting the regime change narrative
without having on any people from Nicaragua or who are involved in
Nicaragua who support Ortega, which is the vast majority of the people as
their lives have greatly improved during his government. The propaganda
is thick on Nicaragua as it as been on VeneuelaÂ and other countries
where the US is working to put in place the neoliberal, DC Consensus
government they want.

If anyone has contacts at Democracy Now, let them know people are
concerned about their biased coverage against Ortega, and in favor of
regime change. They may not even realize they are being used.

KZ

@KBZeese

Build power and resistance

Popular Resistance

www.PopularResistance.org

Shift Wealth:Â Economic Democracy

Its Our EconomyÂ 

www.ItsOurEconomy.US

Democratize the Media

Clearing the FOG (Forces of Greed) 

RadioÂ

http://www.ClearingTheFOGRadio.org

On Thu, Jun 14, 2018 at 9:32 PM Lee Loe
<lee.t.loe at gmail.com>
wrote:

ThankÂ  you so much, Kevin! Lee Loe

Â 

From: ufpj-activist
[
mailto:ufpj-activist-bounces+lee.t.loe=gmail.com at lists.mayfirst.org]
On Behalf Of Kevin Zeese

Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2018 7:35 PM

To: David McReynolds

Cc: Thomas Scott Tucker; ufpj-activist

Subject: Re: [ufpj-activist] Marc Cooper reporting from
Nicaragua

Â 

This is the US false news line to get people to ignore US regime
change. I was confused by Nicaragua until I talked to people who had
followed the country closely for years and heard from people living in
Nicaragua. The line reported here is the US propaganda line to support
regime change -- something the US has worked for in Nicaragua for a long
time.

Â 

Nicaragua is complicated. There are former Sandinistas who worked
with Ortega who are now neoliberals calling for sanctions and regime
change. Just because someone says they are or were a SandanistaÂ does not
mean they are telling the narrative of the people of Nicaragua.Â

Â 

The retirement issue has been taken totally out of context. A much
more restrictive neoliberal proposal was put forward by the IMF and the
equivalent of the Chamber of Commerce in Nicaragua, Ortega took a
compromise position with fewer cuts etc. But, the US has been funding the
opposition in Nicaragua for years, creating a neoliberal oppositionÂ to
Ortega. It is bizarre that students are protesting retirement cuts -- not
the usual student issue. But, it is really only wealthy students from
private universities who have been funded by NED and USAID and developed
into the Ortega opposition. They are the propaganda tools of US regime
change.

Â 

Here are some articles that break through the US, neoliberal and
oligarch propaganda coming out of Nicaragua. SeeÂ

https://popularresistance.org/tag/Nicaragua/

Â 

KZ

@KBZeese

Build power and resistance

Popular Resistance

www.PopularResistance.org

Shift Wealth:Â Economic Democracy

Its Our EconomyÂ 

www.ItsOurEconomy.US

Democratize the Media

Clearing the FOG (Forces of Greed) 

RadioÂ

http://www.ClearingTheFOGRadio.org

Â 

Â 

On Thu, Jun 14, 2018 at 6:25 PM David McReynolds
<
davidmcreynolds7 at gmail.com> wrote:

Â 

Â 

On Thu, Jun 14, 2018 at 5:38 PM, Thomas Scott Tucker
<scott at tstucker.com>
wrote:

Â 

Â 

https://www.facebook.com/marc.cooper1/posts/10106244011412905

Â 

Marc Cooper is with

Bianca Jagger and
3
others.

3
hrs Â· 

Warning: This is a long post.

Daniel Ortega's Sandinista (FSLN) govt is now a full blown dynastic
dictatorship that has gunned down almost 100 protesters in the last
month. But the Left cannot find its voice on this issue.

I say this as someone on the left, who spent much time reporting in
Nicaragua in the 1980's. I was certainly an FSLN sympathizer. I led a
group to dig defensive trenches on the Honduran border against the
Contras. I lived in Ortega's house as I wrote a profile of his wife,
Rosario Murillo. I interviewed Daniel several times one on one. I was
there in the early morning hrs of 1990 when he and the FSLN were voted
out of power.

But it seems the American Left, much of it having trekked to Managua
in the 80's as a sort of revolutionary Mecca, have stopped paying
attention over the last 28 yrs or have simply closed their eyes to events
that do no fit their preferred narrative.

In the transitional period after his defeat, Ortega and a small group
within the FSLN immediately privatized much of the economy and amassed
great wealth. The Left said nothing.

During the 90's, while in opposition, Ortega purged the FSLN of all
dissenters and democratic elements and reshaped the party more or less to
be a mafia like version of the Mexican PRI. The Left said nothing. When
he was revealed as someone who molested his adolescent step daughter
(whom I know well) the Left said nothing. When he pacted with the
oligarchs' party to divvy up the country. the Left said nothing.

When he was re-elected president a decade ago, still draped in the
black and red cloak of revolutionary Sandinismo the Left briefly
rejoiced. After all he DID give vocal support to Chavez and Castro so he
must be a good guy. That he campaigned literally on the bible, that he
outlawed all abortion, that he turned loose goon squads to batter
protesters in the street, was also apparently of little interest to the
Left. As has been his billion dollar boondoggle with Chinese capitalists
to build a trans oceanic canal while displacing tens of thousands of
mostly indigenous farmers.

Last year when he appointed his mostly now whacked out wife as VP,
beginning a Somoza like dynasty, and as she has taken to to the air
almost daily to make Col. Kurtz-like rambling speeches peppered with
scripture(!), again the Left was deaf and dumb. Dissident Sandinistas who
left the party and country have come to deride her as La Gran Hermana, or
The Big Sister (in honor of Orwell).

But the wheels started coming off a month ago when Ortega announced
crippling cuts to social security, a blow to the country's large majority
of impoverished.

Protests broke out. So did the cops, army and lethal Sandinista Youth
goon squads who comport themselves exactly like the S.A. Bodies littered
the streets. Ortega predictable labeled the protesters as hooligans and
criminals. The Left was still silent.

Now there's more or less a general uprising taking place shaking
Ortega's grip on power. These are not right wing led movements as Ortega
is really the right winger here.

And yes, the Left, at least the American Left still remains
silent.

Why> What's behind this cowardice? I think the answer is easy.
Consciously or otherwise the guilt-ridden Left is mired in Mao's old and
ridiculous axiom "That the primary contradiction we face is the
conflict between US Imperialism and the world's peoples."

This notion robs anybody in the world of agency except the CIA and
ignores what should be obvious: the primary contradiction in the world is
between the rich and powerful and the poor and powerless among nations
and INSIDE every nation.

But it's no problem, apparently, for the Left to sit back comfortably
in its hipster and university communities and say while they are for
democracy and rule of law (for themselves), the people of Cuba, Nicaragua
or Venezuela really don't need any of it as long as they have (fill in
the blank)...free medical care, or rationed food, or "an
anti-imperialist" govt.

Things in Nicaragua are spiraling downward and many more will die in
the coming days as the Ortegas cling to their dictatorship. I have no
idea how this will unfold. There's only one certainty: The Left will
remain silent just as it has on Venezuela.

It's no fun to write these sort of things as I remain a socialist
(who believes in democracy). But I cannot tolerate those who defile its
name with dictatorship. Here's what I wrote about "the lost
revolution" way back in 2001
--->
https://bit.ly/2H1ztfc

Â 

About this article

news.sky.com

Students take over Nicaragua university as protests against President
Daniel Ortega turn ugly once again

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Larry Gross

Professor

School of Communication

Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

University of

Southern California

734 West Adams Blvd.

Los Angeles, CA 90007-7725

213-740-3770

Â 

Editor, International Journal of Communication

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Â 

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