Nicaragua

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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:38 pm

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Goebbels is Alive in Nicaragua: Relentless US Conspiracy Against Nicaragua by Using Fake Narratives and Instituting Terror
April 28, 2021
By S. Brian Willson – Apr 26, 2021

“A lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.” Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, 1933-1945

President Ortega is a dictator! President Ortega is a dictator! President Ortega is a dictator! Say it over and over, and it becomes accepted truth with absolutely no evidence whatsoever. Welcome to the post-truth world—a Goebbels world.

In 1979, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN for its initials in Spanish) triumphed over the more than four decades of US-supported Somoza dictatorship. Thus ended the “stable” playground for the wealthy, right-wing Nicaraguan families and their affluent US investor friends, preserved at the expense of the vast majority of the Nicaraguan people. To this day the US has never forgiven the social-minded Sandinistas for having forced the end of the Somoza era. Many of the wealthy opposition now live in Miami, Florida.

Ten years of Reagan’s brutal terrorist war against the Sandinista government came to an end in 1990 after more than 50,000 casualties. The FSLN lost the 1990 elections in which the US financed with nearly $50 million dollars a “Liberal” Party candidate, Violeta Chamorro, as an alternative to the FSLN.[1] During run-up to the 1990 Nicaragua elections, the Bush administration stated its intention of “keeping the Sandinistas guessing” through secret intelligence operations (New York Times, June 11, 1989) aimed at influencing the election. New monies for the opposition parties were justified in order to “level the playing field” to boost the US-created opposition forces’ chance of ousting Sandinista President Daniel Ortega (Miami Herald, Oct. 18, 1989). President Bush had promised in November 1989 that the devastating trade embargo and terrorist war against Nicaragua would be immediately lifted if the US-backed presidential candidate, Violeta Chamorro, was elected by a majority of the Nicaraguan people (Washington Post, Nov. 9, 1989). Understandably, the exhausted Nicaraguans and the FSLN lost the election, but did regain power through democratic elections again in 2007 after 16 years of repressive Liberal rule.

In diplomatic cables, the US described the Violeta Chamorro government (1990-1995) as one that created “economic shambles”, and the subsequent Aleman and Bolaños administrations (1996-2006) as totally corrupt. Social progress, including women’s rights, experienced serious setbacks during this period. Nonetheless, every US administration since 2007 has continued its determination to oust the Sandinista government headed by President Ortega who remains demonstrably popular with the vast majority of Nicaraguans. The US uses the same old ad nauseum evidence-free accusations— that he’s running a corrupt dictatorship.

The incoming Sandinista-led coalition created a government where the “recuperation of rights” has played a major role, guiding diverse policies, including renewed literacy campaigns and the reconstruction of public education and public health care, among other key areas.[2] Social infrastructure, including roads, parks, farmers’ markets, child care centers and maternity homes in each municipality of the country, became the hallmark of the new government. These policies have contributed to Nicaragua having among the highest rates of economic growth in Latin America between 2007 and 2020. Nicaragua has improved its human development index score faster than other than six countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, while also reaching the highest ranking in the region for gender equality.

Examining Wikileaks cables, Department of State memos, National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and US Agency for International Development (USAID) budgets, and documents seized in arrests of the US-orchestrated 2018 Nicaraguan coup suspects, it is clear the US has expended perhaps as much as $200-300 million to oust the Ortega-led Sandinista government. Alarmed by the November 2006 Sandinista electoral victory, the US’s explicit goal has been the achievement in an immediate future of a government akin to the interest of the US government, and creation of conditions for regime change.

In a memorandum, an NED affiliate, identified ways to destabilize and change Nicaragua’s “regime” that includes strengthening civil society to facilitate a coup d’état against Daniel Ortega.[3] The US Embassy and USAID have been preparing conditions for a coup since at least 2013. Their efforts culminated in the violent but unsuccessful US orchestrated and financed April–July 2018 coup attempt that took several hundred Nicaraguan lives, including 23 uniformed police. Between 2017-2020, USAID has funded numerous “humanitarian” efforts with over $100 million dollars, all designed to weaken the Sandinista government. USAID claims its purpose is to “further America’s interest while improving lives in the developing world”.[4] In that same period, 2017-2020, NED has funded 68 projects in Nicaragua with over $5 million, ostensibly to teach Nicaraguans about Democracy, even though the US has never experienced one, nor ever intended to have one.[5]

Propaganda on steroids: Weaponizing social media [6]
The US incorporates the latest in the Defense department’s DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) tools in using social media—called the Social Media in Strategic Communication project (SMISC).[7] Using voluminous paid social media sites and platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter, complemented by the pathetic, reliable lapdog corporate media, the US and its proxies spin propaganda narratives that spread like wildfire at the speed of light with a click of the mouse. This has proven effective in creating an instant group mind, a collective hallucination convincing much of the US public, and the international community, of “repressive dictators” in social democracies. Thus, the cast is set for Congressional and public opinion support for US “corrective” intervention, i.e., “humanitarian regime changes”, even as the scripted narrative is totally fabricated and absolutely untrue. The US was able to use these communications techniques in 2018 to claim that Nicaraguans were violently oppressing its own citizens to provoke a coup.

Overwhelming power of propaganda – molding our thoughts – spin and hype
Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Propaganda Minister from 1933-1945, formulated a principle that if a lie is told often enough, it becomes accepted as the truth.[8] And he wanted the masses to believe so fervently that the people became “addicted” to the German cause.[9] Thus, through the contrived use of propaganda to manage and manipulate public opinion, one can effectuate the death of the integrity of language—distort the genuine meanings of words in efforts to convey a fact or idea to suit an agenda—or what I call linguicide.[10]

The United States obsession with ousting the democratically elected Sandinista President Daniel Ortega approaches a kind of insanity. With socialist policies benefitting the impoverished, Ortega is perceived as impeding “US interests.” But the history of US meddling and intervention reveals a vast arsenal of techniques, tricks, lies, bribery, methods for “manufacturing consent”, and infliction of domestic economic and political pressures to achieve its goals of neoliberal regime change. As many readers know, for the US privatization of capital is like a neoliberal religion, which inevitably creates de facto class warfare.

The progressive Sandinistas
Since the Sandinistas regained political power in 2007, they have overseen the emergence of the most progressive state in Central America (CA). The achievements include:

* 2nd highest economic growth rates and most stable economy in Central America (CA)

* only country in the region producing 90 percent of the food it consumes

* poverty, and extreme poverty rates halved—country with greatest reduction of extreme poverty

* reached the UN Millennium Development Goal of cutting malnutrition in half

* free basic healthcare, including medicine

* free education for all preschool, primary and secondary students

* illiteracy virtually eliminated, down from 36 percent in 2006

* average economic growth of over 5 percent for the five years preceding 2018 (per IMF and WB)

* safest country in CA with one of the lowest crime rates in Latin America

* highest gender equality in the Americas (World Economic Forum Gender Gap Reports)

* kept out drug cartels, while pioneering community policing

* has not contributed to the migrant exodus to the US (unlike Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala)

* has the best roads in CA

* leader in renewable energy

* the leading tourist destination in CA (before the 2018 US coup attempt and orchestrated media demonization campaign)

* virtually uninterrupted electricity to 99 percent of the country.

US-orchestrated but unsuccessful coup in 2018
On May 1, 2018, Benjamin Waddell wrote an article in a National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funded news website, Global Americas, “Laying the groundwork for Insurrection: A closer look at the US role in Nicaragua’s Social Unrest”. He reported that NED had funded 54 projects in Nicaragua between 2014 and 2017, promoting “a new generation of democratic youth leaders… defending democracy”. Waddell concluded by saying that “regardless of whether Mr. Ortega is removed from power, the NED’s involvement in Nicaragua reveals the power of transnational funding to influence political outcomes in the 21st century”. The problem is that Nicaragua possesses a stable democratically elected government, but the fact is simply ignored by the US because Nicaragua possesses socialist programs, rejecting strict neoliberal privatization.

RELATED CONTENT: Nicaragua: Building the Good Life (Buen Vivir) Through Popular Revolution

USAID’s and NED’s education programs at universities within Nicaragua, especially UCA and UPOLI, prepared a network of over 2,000 young people (some estimates are as high as 5,000) in courses such as social media skills for “democracy defense”. Gifting the students with computers, phones, etc., they were trained to troll Facebook and Twitter with disinformation. Use of social media campaigns where origins of information are unknown and uncorroborated, is able to create thousands of fake profiles, sponsor Facebook ads, produce thousands of WhatsApp messages to distort facts, and issue fake reports.

The DARPA SMISC program is able to identify persuasive campaign structures that influence messaging across social media sites and communities, and detects counter-messaging of adversaries. Employing fake news and false reporting on the internet traveling at the speed of light launched into the infectious cyberspace instantaneously creates rumors, lies, and misinformation. It is very difficult to subsequently correct the lies with corroborated truth. The systematic destabilization strategy often successfully manipulates public opinion.

From April 18-22, 2018, this group of social media warriors immediately shaped and controlled public opinion by “reporting” that Nicaraguan police “massacred” protesting students, which in turn contributed to violent protests throughout Nicaragua. On April 18 there were some students protesting changes to the social security laws (which made no sense since the changes were all in favor of the workers) who were all part of the US plan and had received different kinds of “democracy” training. Some of them faked being Sandinista Youth (by wearing their T-shirts) and faked hurting the “protesters” who themselves faked being hurt by putting something that looked like blood on their heads or bodies—it was all part of a well-orchestrated plan. They had still others who provocatively threw rocks or fired at the police, and the police defended themselves. The first day, April 18, the opposition convinced the nation that the police had killed a student, in reality no one was killed that day. But the entire nation was awash with news of massacres (which in fact did not happen) which inflamed the populace and enraged people in the US and Europe about the “repressive” Nicaraguan police. In fact, the first three people murdered the next day, April 19, were killed by opposition snipers: a policeman, a young Sandinista helping to guard the Mayor’s office from opposition in Tipitapa, and a passerby.

It was a planned set-up by the US, complicit with paid opposition leaders in Nicaragua and paid delinquent thugs. With the “uprising” lasting until late July, the participants were very confident of victory over the Sandinista government as they followed their disruption “instructions,” collecting huge amounts of US funds (Just USAID provided US$97.62 million from 2015 to 2018; and the Fundacion Violeta Barrios de Chamorro which is the main conduit for aid to opposition media received US$4.54 million during those same years. (See: https://explorer.usaid.gov/cd/NICUSAID). They openly and daily posted on various social media sites their murders and burnings of Sandinistas in the streets; the burning of a number of Sandinista homes, schools and offices; kidnappings and hundreds of tortures of Sandinistas; all designed to terrorize the entire population. Hundreds of roadblocks manned by heavily armed and hooded thugs were located throughout Nicaragua, making transportation both dangerous and virtually impossible. From July 8 to July 23 (“Caravana de la Paz”), the police with support from the population finally forcefully removed all the roadblocks. While many of the blockers fired at the police or refused to surrender upon police commands, there were 9 police killed during this removal process.

Edgar Chamorro, member of the prestigious Chamorro family, a former Jesuit priest and full professor at UCA (University of Central America), was an early member of the Directorate of the main Contra fighting force in the early 1980s, serving as their major public relations spokesperson. In 1987, Chamorro authored Packaging the Contras: A Case of CIA Disinformation. He wrote:

“In the excesses of inventing an artificial force, and in the need to stage events and to create impressions without consideration for substantial realities, there was no longer a distinction between reality and fiction. The image and impression were more important than substance….[L]ies were used to manipulate people and events to such an extent that behind the lies there was nothing but self-illusion and self-deception….[T]here was a negation of the moral distinction between good and evil…let to a legitimization of concepts such as a good war, a good crime, a good rape, a good lie. This is how murder and torture were justified, how the destruction of property and the sabotage of an economy and the social fabric of a nation were excused, all in the name of patriotism and anticommunism”.

This is exactly what happened in the coup of 2018, as the coup participants completely concealed reality with fiction using social media, negating the moral distinction between good and evil.

A leaked USAID memo in the summer of 2020, revealed up-to-date brazen US plans called “Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua” (RAIN) to overthrow the Nicaraguan government by “destroying public order and other violent actions”, that will include “network monitoring to create fake news”. Over 220 years ago, the Iroquois Indians described George Washington as the “Town Destroyer” (Iroquois: “Conotocarious”) after all their New York villages had been destroyed under his orders. The US has been destroying nations and villages ever since in the cause of the White Man’s Burden” (civilizing the world), justified by “exceptionalism”.

The same disinformation principles are being applied today with intentions of overthrowing the social revolutionary Sandinista government. That is why I choose to live in progressive Nicaragua, to document all the lies and disinformation produced with the intention of negating the incredible achievements of the Sandinista government.



Notes

[1] “How the US Purchased the 1990 Nicaragua Elections”: http://www.brianwillson.com/how-the-u-s ... elections/

[2] National Human Development Plan of Nicaragua (PNDH), (2012), Plan Nacional de Desarrollo Humano Actualizado 2012–2016. Available at http://www.pndh.gob.ni/

[3] “SOFT BLOW IN NICARAGUA WAS PREPARED IN ADVANCE” :https://bbackdoors.wordpress.com/2018/0 ... n-advance/

[4] Note that USAID claims its purpose is to further “America’s interest”, meaning of course, the United States of America. The US is but one of 35 “American” countries which have a combined population of just over 1 billion, residing on 16.4 million square miles. The USA with 331 million people comprises 31 percent of the “Americas” population, residing on 3.5 million square miles, or 21 percent of the “Americas” land area. Thus, USAID typically expropriates the entire Western Hemisphere as its domain.

[5] “Exposing the Founding Fathers and the US Constitution”: http://www.brianwillson.com/exposing-th ... stitution/

[6] P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking, Like War: The Weaponization of Social Media(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018).

[7] “DARPA’s SMISC Program To Identify Misinformation or Deception Campaigns on Social Media and Conduct Its Own Propaganda Campaigns”, https://idstch.com/home5/international- ... ial-media/; “DARPA wants to simulate how social media spreads info like wildfire – DARPA SocialSim program develop high-fidelity computational simulation of online social behavior,” https://www.networkworld.com/article/31 ... dfire.html.

[8] Leonard Doob, “Goebbels’ Principles of Propaganda,” Public Opinion Quarterly 14 (1950), 419-442, cited in Dan D. Nimmo and Chevelle Newsome, Political Commentators in the United States in the 20th Century: A Bio-Critical Sourcebook (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1997); Anthony Pratkanis and Eliot Aronson, Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion (New York: W.H. Freeman and Co., 1992), 8.

[9] Michael Zezima, Saving Private Power: The Hidden History of the ‘Good War’ (New York: Soft Skull Press, 2000), 4.

[10] Tragically, this long pattern of committing harm to others and the Planet Earth to materially benefit ourselves has occurred with little or no critical thought from the prevailing political, religious, economic or academic structures. Thus we tend not to think about it. When confronted by reality we have a way of denying it, and have developed such a rhetorical double-speak that we may have committed linguicide of our own English language. Our obsession with limitless materialism (and the huge profits derived therefrom) requires a constant need to steal more and more resources. Thus, we need to be assured of control over vast regions of the world where the resources, markets, and labor are located. In effect, the Cold War was a cover for this deeper battle of the Haves against the Have-Nots. Any kind of genuine local or regional people’s movement for economic and political autonomy, local reliance, and justice (the essentials of real democracy) becomes a threat to USA need for global hegemony. These perceived threats must be eliminated to assure the continuance of the American Way Of Life (AWOL). Thus, for example, Cuba’s existence as a revolutionary society has been a “threat” since its 1959 people’s revolution, as it is an experiment of a people’s society not subject to the whims and exploitation of an outside force such as the United States or Spain. Of course, many other people’s movements over the past century, especially since World War II, have been ruthlessly thwarted because they have posed similar “threats.”

https://orinocotribune.com/goebbels-is- ... ng-terror/
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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Fri Apr 30, 2021 12:54 pm

NicaNotes: IF WE’RE AT WAR, WE’RE LOSING: How Nicaragua Thrives Despite Illegal U.S. Intervention
April 29, 2021
Text and Photos by Madeline McClure

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The silhouette of Augusto Sandino looms at the site of his assassination in Managua.

In March, 2021, I traveled to Nicaragua as a delegate with the Sanctions Kill! Coalition delegation to witness the impact of the “coercive measures” the U.S. uses to impose its political and economic interests, rationalized by its allegations of repression and political crisis. Yet rather than find a people under dictatorship, I arrived to a society thrumming with autonomous productivity, bolstered by decades of redistributed wealth, historic self-determination and a disciplined sense of resiliency.

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Families enjoy Monday evening at a park in Granada. Community parks are well-attended throughout Nicaragua.

There’s a feeling in the air that the U.S. media hasn’t quite been able to put its finger on. Perhaps it’s fourteen consistent years under a government which provides its people a level of support that most in the U.S. can hardly fathom. While we, the richest country in the world, debate over trillions of dollars of student debt and a failing healthcare system that causes hundreds of thousands of deaths, the poorest country in Central America offers universal healthcare and free university education to all of its citizens.

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A paletero, or ice cream vendor, in the streets of Managua. Unlike in many countries throughout Latin America and the U.S., street vending is completely legal here.

The memory of the bloody Somoza regime, scars of the U.S.-funded contra war, and the loss of progress to seventeen years under neoliberal capitalism are felt throughout Nicaragua. The history is kept alive through the celebration of the people’s triumph. It is felt in the public parks named after children who lost their lives to contra rebels and at the Salvador Allende Port, once part of Nicaragua’s notorious garbage dump. The surrounding area is now a neighborhood of more than two hundred homes for the people who had survived picking through the dump’s refuse and who now have formal employment at a nearby recycling center. Throughout the country one finds these tangible symbols of revolution in the community’s sense of ownership over public space.

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Two boys and a goat on La Montañita, Estelí, where attacks from Somoza’s National Guard are still remembered by its residents. Today, La Montañita is home to many small scale farms.

The history is felt, as well, because the repression against Nicaragua and its people’s freedom has never ended. US economic sanctions against the country have prevented international aid, loans and trade deals for a number of years, despite the illegality of sanctions under international law. Sanctions have been particularly devastating during the pandemic, and have ruined brilliant solutions to poverty – such as the Petrocaribe Agreement between Latin American countries, an exchange of goods which moved the region away from dependence on the U.S. and World Bank. While many in the U.S. would insist that these sanctions are an acceptable alternative to ammunition, they should be widely regarded for what they are: a form of criminal warfare.

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Don Mateo at his home on La Montañita, Estelí, explaining the joy and benefit of living off the land.

But Nicaragua refuses to be colonized. Feeding over 80% of its entire population, their self-reliant food system provides an example for a world facing climate change. This was made possible by massive land reform: over half of the country’s land was redistributed to peasants and small farmers during the Sandinista Revolution (1979-1990). Now, small-scale farming produces 85% of the country’s food and owns 62% of the land. The government contributes the resources for rural landowners to live sustainably by granting loans, livestock and agricultural supplies through their bono productive (production packages) program [also known as Zero Hunger], and educational projects throughout the countryside teach agroecological methods to make the most of these resources.

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Silke and her son Alexander at the Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region of Nicaragua University.

With respect to education, Nicaragua sets another leading example. Since returning to office in 2007, the Sandinista Front provides preschool, primary and secondary students with free meals, backpacks and uniforms to supplement their education. Once graduated, students have the option of attending free technical school or public university—6% of the national budget is devoted to providing universal higher education to the population. We visited one such public university, the University of the Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region of Nicaragua, which uses Indigenous philosophy focused on rescuing generational knowledge. Their intercultural form of education provides undergraduate, graduate and PhD programs to the multiethnic communities which reside on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast.

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A fisherman points to his boat off Corn Island, located on the autonomous Caribbean coast.

The autonomous Caribbean Region is a unique example of Indigenous sovereignty organized within the national context. Self-governing municipalities have access to state programs which supply resources to the region. One year after the most recent sanctions went into effect, the Sandinista government finished the first highway to ever connect the Caribbean to the Pacific coast, creating access to areas which had previously been in isolation and allowing easier movement of people, farm and sea products. In the past several years, the region has seen massive amounts of development including going from very little electricity to nearly complete coverage of electricity and the construction of hospitals in every municipality. Last November, when hurricanes Eta and Iota ravaged the coast, 160,000 people were relocated in advance—0 died. The government has helped in rebuilding through efforts like Plan Techo, which provided over half a million new roofs to the coastal communities within a month of the hurricanes.

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Gerardo at sunset beside the Mombacho volcano.

What is clear is that the U.S. would love to see Nicaragua suffer, that it is waging its war not just against the government, but against its workers, its mothers and its children. It is clear, at least, to the Nicaraguan people; they have fought this war for over a century.

Upon returning to the U.S., news has broken that a Democratic senator is introducing further sanctions on Nicaragua, cutting it off further from developmental aid. Paid social media posts and fabricated reports bury the country’s extraordinary reality, producing their own hostile version. In Washington, the think tanks are publishing their lauded studies, while back in Nicaragua someone is doing the real work, plunging a shovel into the fertile ground.

You can help Nicaragua today by resisting sanctions. Our actions must speak louder than the propaganda—get involved by joining nicanetwork@googlegroups.com, contacting your congress members, and/or donating to the Nicaragua Solidarity Fund and AfGJ.

https://afgj.org/nicanotes-if-were-at-w ... tervention
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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Sun May 02, 2021 1:55 pm

RENACER Act: U.S. Congress to Expand Nicaragua Sanctions
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on APRIL 30, 2021
Kawsachun News

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Nicaragua’s Sandinista Revolution is being targeted with a new sanctions bill as retaliation for triumphing over Washington’s domination attempts and as President Daniel Ortega is anticipated to win this year’s election.

The Reinforcing Nicaragua’s Adherence to Conditions for Electoral Reform (RENACER) Act (full text of the bill here), introduced in March, would require the U.S. government to increase sanctions coordination with Canada and the European Union and proposes new immediate measures against the Nicaraguan government and officials ahead of Nicaragua’s November elections, all under the guise of promoting democratic elections.

A House companion bill to the RENACER Act, with the same wording of the bill to be voted on in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, will be brought to the House Foreign Affairs Committee any day now—potentially speeding up the process.

The bill would have been passed by unanimous consent, without a formal vote, like the NICA Act, if a campaign had not raised its profile. This remains the most likely scenario for RENACER which could be passed without a formal vote unless citizens appeal to their representatives to voice objection.

The Senate bill’s sponsor, Democratic Party Senator Bob Menendez, says the legislation will expand oversight of international financial institutions’ lending to Nicaragua and will add Nicaragua to the list of Central American countries subject to corruption-related visa restrictions. The legislation would require “classified reporting on corruption perpetrated by President Ortega’s government and family, as well as Russian government activities in Nicaragua; and requires reporting on human rights abuses committed by Nicaraguan security forces in rural and indigenous communities.”

This latest piece of legislation follows a leak in July 2020 indicating that a new interventionist plot to overthrow the Sandinista government is in the works and that a coup attempt, organized and financed by the United States, can soon be expected.

Two years ago this month, U.S.-backed violent protests and a terror campaign were defeated by the Nicaraguan people. What was framed as a peoples’ uprising by foreign corporate media was infact two months of terror, destruction, provocations and attacks on leftists. Just like Venezuela’s guarimbas, right-wing student fronts and armed groups paralyzed regular activities while receiving support from U.S. agencies.

Using the same playbook which has been used to destabilize Venezuela in recent years, and in Nicaragua two years ago, the reused script included lines on “free, fair and transparent elections” and made claims that the FSLN government was curtailing press freedoms, obstructing rights to demonstrate and persecuting political opponents.

A coordinated media campaign was carried out against the government of President Daniel Ortega all while lawfare and political persecution were taking place in Brazil and Ecuador: Lula da Silva was being jailed on false charges in order to prevent him from running as presidential candidate and Ecuador’s Lenin Moreno regime used the courts to jail former Vice President Jorge Glas and persecute former President Rafael Correa. In neither case did U.S. officials, the media or Washington-based human rights organizations advocate for the victims of political persecution.

Alliance For Global Justice (AFGJ), which is calling for urgent action to stop these new sanctions, says the bill is intended to reinforce the Nicaragua Investment Conditionality Act (Nica Act) of December of 2018 whose purpose was to cut off access to development financing.

During the past 14 years, Nicaragua has dramatically reduced poverty from 48.3% to 24.9% and extreme poverty from 17.5% to 6.9%, while drastically reducing its illiteracy rate to under 5%. International organizations like the World Economic Forum have recognized Nicaragua for leading gender equity (5th in the world) and material and infant mortality have been reduced by more than half since 2007.

Despite its stellar social and developmental achievements, the U.S. Department of Defense has testified that Nicaragua poses a threat to the national security of the United States, and particularly with increased China cooperation in Latin America.

Nicaragua’s right-wing has attempted to create an issue of the government’s handling of Covid-19, though the country has produced some of the lowest numbers of infections and deaths per capita in the region and world.

Aggression towards Nicaragua has continued uninterrupted through the change of U.S. administrations evident with the RENACER Act, led by Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, with the support of four other Democrats: Tim Kaine, Dick Durbin, Ben Cardin, and Chris Murphy, as well as Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio.

The government of Nicaragua has firmly rejected unilateral coercive measures against Cuba, Venezuela and all other countries, calling them illegal and a violation of human rights. A poll by M&R Consultores in 2020 revealed that 71.9% of respondents in Nicaragua disapproved of the Nica Act and 78.3% said that the sanctions would only bring harm to democracy and the economy. 83.1% reject meddling by foreign governments and international organizations.

Participating in a virtual meeting called Sanctions Kill, Nicaraguan Ambassador to the UN Jaime Hermida, stated that the programs, projects and achievements of the Nicaraguan government have been negatively impacted by the unilateral coercive measures imposed on the Nicaraguan people, adding that sanctions present an obstacle to the right to development, particularly the eradication of poverty.

A national M & R Consultores poll conducted in March, found that 6 in 10 Nicaraguans support the government, while 2 out of 10 respondents support the opposition, and 2 out of 10 said neither.

A new stage of aggression by the OAS and Nicaraguan opposition against the Nicaraguan government is being prepared for the month of May, as the electoral calendar advances. If you’re in the U.S. and would like to join the urgent call to stop new sanctions against Nicaragua, visit Alliance For Global Justice here: https://afgj.org/urgent-tell-congress-n ... -nicaragua

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/04/ ... sanctions/
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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Fri May 07, 2021 11:48 am

International Documentary Premiere: Nicaragua Against Empire
May 6, 2021
International Documentary Premiere
Saturday May 15th 5pm Pacific / 6pm Nicaragua / 8pm Eastern

View trailer
https://default.salsalabs.org/T9a55813e ... d1e2df6932

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Nicaragua Against Empire highlights resistance by the people and revolutionary government of Nicaragua against Western imperialism, including sanctions and regime change efforts.

It is dedicated to uplifting the voices of Nicaraguan people rarely heard in mainstream media, including workers, peasants, women and Afro-Indigenous communities.

The footage from this documentary was collected during the “Yes to Sovereignty! No to Sanctions!” Delegation (March 2021), coordinated by the Friends of the ATC and Sanctions Kill Coalition. Following the screening, there will be panel discussion about the documentary and delegation.

Join the premiere live on the YouTube and Facebook channels of Friends of the ATC (@friendsatc, YouTube link, Facebook link) and Sanctions Kill Coalition (@sanctionskill, Facebook link). The event will be bi-lingual in English and Spanish.

https://afgj.org/international-document ... nst-empire
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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Tue May 11, 2021 1:06 pm

Please take Urgent Actions to Stop New Illegal Coercive Measures against Nicaragua!
May 10, 2021

Dear Friends,

We’re contacting you again to ask urgently for your help to stop new sanctions on Nicaragua. There is currently a bi-partisan bill in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee called the RENACER Act that will impose a new set of sanctions on Nicaragua (Illegal coercive measures). Please see talking points below for background information on the RENACER Act.

In the House of Representatives, Rep. Sires (D-NJ) has introduced a companion bill to the RENACER Act. Thanks to your timely advocacy, Rep. Meeks (D-NY), Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has not co-sponsored this bill.

Right now, we have a small window of opportunity to continue to push back on this initiative in the House of Representatives.

Your help is needed to stop the RENACER Act.

This week, calls are needed to the office of Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA). Rep. Waters is the Chair of the House Committee on Financial Services which also has jurisdiction over this bill. Ask her not to support the RENACER Act of sanctions against Nicaragua, and do not mark it up in Committee.

You could call all of these numbers to register your opinion.

Rep. Waters DC Office: 202-225-2201

LA Office (323) 757-8900

House Committee on Financial Services 202) 225-4247



Also, please continue to call Rep. Meeks office. Thank him for not co-sponsoring the RENACER Act and register your concern about the bill. Request that as Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Meeks not mark up the RENACER bill in Committee.



DC office: (202) 225-3461

Constituent Offices: Jamaica Office: (718) 725-6000

Rockaway Peninsula Office (347) 230-4032



If anyone who answers the phone gives you a hard time for not being from their districts, say “Please give Rep. Meeks/ Rep. Waters my message, He/she is the head of their respective committee and as such he/she is my representative.”



Please continue to call all of your Senate and House Representative’s DC and local offices (find phone number on Representative’s website) and send emails to your Representative.

If you have more time, ask to speak with the Foreign Affairs Aide. If they put you through to this person’s phone, leave your message and ask that they return your call. You will have to pressure some to talk to this person. But a short chat is worthwhile as you want to establish a relationship and let them know you care about Nicaragua, that Nicaragua is doing well, but would be unjustly hurt by more sanctions.



If you don’t have time to make phone calls, please contact your Representative by email. Below is an easy way that takes only five minutes.

CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVES BY EMAIL https://afgj.salsalabs.org/votenoonther ... index.html

CONTACT YOUR SENATORS BY EMAIL https://afgj.salsalabs.org/no-to-renacer/index.html



Thank you for taking action!

Brief script for your phone calls:

I want Representative/Senator ——– to vote NO on the sanctions bill against Nicaragua entitled RENACER, Reinforcing Nicaragua’s Adherence to Conditions for Electoral Reform. (1) Nicaragua does not pose any threat to the United States. It is a small nation of 6.3 million, in the bottom ten countries in arms. (2) This bill would harm the Nicaraguan people, especially the most vulnerable, by blocking development aid from international financial institutions. (3) The bill also appears to pressure the country to choose new leadership favored by the US, but I believe the Nicaraguan people should select their own leaders. (4) In contrast to other Central American countries, Nicaragua is functioning very well – for example, very few migrants are coming to the US, and the poverty rate has been cut in half.



ADDITIONAL TALKING POINTS

Here are talking points for background and to support your advocacy work as we move forward.

The RENACER ACT in the Senate is meant to reinforce the Nicaragua Investment Conditionality Act (Nica Act) of December of 2018, whose purpose was to deny Nicaragua access to development financing from multilateral sources such as the World Bank, the IMF and the Interamerican Development Bank. It was not to be used to block pro- poor loans (loans for poverty-related items), though it is being used exactly for that purpose.

It was expected that President Biden would review US policies towards Central America to distinguish himself from the previous administration. His team announced their priorities, concentrating Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, to address their severe problems of corruption, poverty and violence, which has continued to force thousands of desperate families to go north.

Nicaragua did not qualify as a priority with those criteria. Nicaraguans are not marching north. Compared to its northern neighbors, statistically it has 0 people migrating to the US. That’s because it has the lowest homicide rate in Central America according to international organizations like the UNDP; there are no gangs, or drug trafficking cartels; the armed forces of the US and Nicaragua used to work together to stop the flow of drugs to the US. Nicaragua continues to be a retention wall against cocaine going north and money to pay for it going south, with drug and money busts every week.

The World Bank, IMF, International Development Bank and the Central American Bank for Economic Integration have all affirmed that their Nicaragua portfolios are managed with transparency and efficiency contributing to poverty reduction and economic development, especially in health, education, water, energy, roads and sanitation. Nicaragua was one of the few developing countries that achieved the UN Millennium Development Goals.

Yet recently, one of the heads of the US armed forces stated that Nicaragua poses a serious threat to the national security of the Unites States, which does not make any sense, given that Nicaragua is the third poorest country in Latin American, is in the bottom ten countries in the world in armaments, and Nicaragua’s priorities for her people are the elimination of poverty, to achieve 100% food security, 100% renewable energy, and the best health system in the region.

It would be much more useful for our country to study how Nicaragua has achieved the following in the last 14 years in order to understand how best to help the rest of Central America and even our own people in the US.

Nicaragua’s strategic response to the pandemic has resulted in the lowest number of infections and deaths per capita, and the highest recovery rate in the region whilst keeping all of its borders open under rigorous safety protocols.

Nicaragua has developed an exceptional emergency response and mitigation capacity as seen this past November with Hurricanes Eta and IOTA, the most devastating hurricanes to hit Nicaragua in 40 years. Days before, the Nicaraguan government 100,000 emergency volunteers were mobilized, 160, 000 people evacuated, 1195 shelters and 2,300 safe houses identified before the hits and supplies of food, mattresses, medicine, water, etc. were sent days earlier. No deaths were attributed to ETA but 16 died in IOTA, unfortunately all related to people who refused to leave their homes or went back against advice

Social gains over the past 14 years include:

1.Poverty reduced to 48.3% to 24.9% and extreme poverty from 17.5% to 6.9%.
2.Nicaragua is connected physically by the best highways in Central America (and in the top five of Latin America), according to the World Economic Forum.
3.Nearly 99% of the population have electricity (2006- 54%) and about 80% will soon be generated from renewable sources (26% in 2006). 65% of people in 2006 had potable water, 91.8% in 2018 and projections are 95% in 2023.
4.Best hospital system in the region. 19 new hospitals were constructed, 8 more are now under construction. There are 6,045 doctors now compared to 2,715 in 2006. The country´s health budget has risen 319% since 2006.
Illiteracy rate under 5%
5.Nicaragua is 5th in the world in gender equity (World Economic Forum).
6.Maternal and infant mortality have been cut by well more than half since 2007.

Nicaragua has a high level of food security. Their small farmers produce 90% of the food consumed in country.

https://afgj.org/please-take-urgent-act ... -nicaragua

It speaks volumes that when discussing the 'crisis at the border' that the supposed 'failing socialist dictatorship', whose people seem happy to stay home(except for a few gusanos who inevitably end up in Miami) is never mentioned by the talking heads or political hacks, either as a source of emigres or the reasons that it is not. Sand in the Vaseline of their narrative, can't have that.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Fri May 14, 2021 12:56 pm

NICANOTES
NicaNotes: Nicaragua and Central American migration
May 13, 2021
By Stephen Sefton

The current migration crisis of people from Central America traveling across Mexico to reach the United States has received widespread international coverage. Some reports and articles rightly point to the origins of the crisis in destructive US foreign policy intervention over many decades in Central America. But even many of those articles fail to make clear the difference between the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras and their fellow SICA (Central American Integration System) neighbors. Most observers agree that insecurity, high crime rates, poverty and unemployment are what mainly drive significant migration to the US from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, but writers seldom look at why is there not similar mass migration from the other main Central American countries, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama.

In Panama’s case, until the COVID-19 outbreak the country enjoyed the highest rates of growth in Central America, largely thanks to the decade long engineering program to widen the Panama Canal which ended in 2016. It remains to be seen how Panama’s population of over four million will cope with the economic effects of the measures against COVID-19 and also how the country’s economic development will adapt following the end of that huge engineering project. Panama is very much a special case in Central America because its economy is dominated by the canal and by its role as a financial center and tax haven.

Costa Rica has so far benefited from its legacy of many decades of relative general prosperity. But that prosperity is at risk now, following a period of corruption-ridden neoliberal governments under Oscar Arias, his protégé Laura Chinchilla and the continuation of their misguided policies by the ineffectual presidents who succeeded them. Over a decade of neoliberal economic policies and poor results of increased collaboration with the phony US “war on drugs” have led to widespread disaffection among people on low incomes and the country’s middle class. Now, the country has to address the effects of economic contraction resulting from the global slowdown prior to 2020, compounded by the economic effects of restrictive measures implemented to address COVID-19. The country also faces increased encroachment by regional organized crime, especially narcotics.

Image
M&R poll from Oct. 20, 2020, showing percentage of Nicaraguans disposed to emigrate

As for Nicaragua, a recent opinion poll indicated that the number of Nicaraguans disposed to emigrate has fallen by half since 2004/2005. Despite false claims in early 2020 by the UN High Commission for Refugees of a massive refugee crisis following the failed coup attempt of 2018, migration from Nicaragua has been generally stable since the mid-1990s. In terms of unemployment as a driver of migration, for decades hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans have lived legally in Costa Rica providing reliable, well regarded labor for Costa Rica’s construction and agriculture industries and also supplying domestic service for Costa Rica’s middle and upper classes.

What really explains the absence of any significant number of Nicaraguans among the tens of thousands of Central Americans seeking entry at the southern US border every month are the results of Nicaragua’s National Human Development Plan, especially since 2010. Nicaragua’s successful revolutionary social and economic policies and infrastructure investment have ensured high levels of productive economic activity, and have effectively neutralized organized crime and promoted high levels of citizen security for its population of around 6.5 million. The main components of the updated National Human Development Plan make this clear.

By 2026 Nicaragua’s free public health care system will have 104 hospitals, up from 77 now, this combined with its participatory preventive community health care model made it possible to maintain economic activity while successfully containing COVID-19 all through 2020 and to date. Similar infrastructure investment is scheduled in free public primary, secondary and higher education and in vocational training, including innovative rural outreach programs up to university level, with free school meals and scholastic supplies for primary school children.

Nicaragua is the world leader in women’s political representation and among the first five countries in the WEF’s Global Gender Gap index. Its community oriented policing prioritizes protecting youth at risk and women, in the context of a coordinated national policy to contain and dismantle organized crime, especially trafficking of people and drugs networks. Nicaragua has the lowest homicide and automobile theft rates in the region. Its population takes part enthusiastically in quarterly national civil defense exercises so as to continually maintain and develop the country’s already highly efficient civil defense risk management and disaster mitigation structures.

Since 2007, Nicaragua has dramatically democratized its economy via grass roots agricultural production and urban microcredit programs prioritizing women. The government prioritizes small and medium-sized businesses especially via strategies to increase agricultural and agro-industrial productivity and promote more intense technological development via the use of information and communications technology, in particular in rural areas. Municipal authorities actively work to promote grass roots economic initiatives. And the government has also prioritized the economic and technological integration of the Caribbean Coast. Nicaragua led the region in increased exports in 2020 and projects overall GDP growth of 3.5% for 2021, with an expected return by 2026 to the 5% growth it achieved prior to the 2018 coup attempt.

The government maintains subsidized water and electricity for vulnerable social sectors and people on low incomes. Nicaragua ranks third in all of Latin American in drinking water quality, energy and transportation according to the Inter-American Development Bank. It also subsidizes public transport in Managua as well as inter-city bus services and also water transportation on the Caribbean Coast. By 2023, 95% of the population will have access to piped drinking water. By the end of this year 99% of the country will have electricity, which by 2023 will be 90% generated from renewables.

Nicaragua has the best highways in Central America and the 5th best in Latin America. Major investment is happening in the country’s maritime ports and airports, in sports and recreational facilities and in affordable housing. The authorities will continue extending free, secure property titles beyond the over 430,000 title deeds issued thus far.

While the results of Nicaragua’s development planning are there for all to see, it is far from clear whether the US$30 billion Comprehensive Investment and Infrastructure Plan, promoted by the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean and Mexico’s President Lopez Obrador, to address the causes of migration from Central America’s Northern Triangle will be as successful in terms of integral social and economic development, security, equality and sustainability. Certainly, the Biden administrations’ heavily conditioned US$4bn plan is bound to fail. Among other fundamental weaknesses, its ill-conceived strategy will, according to Biden spokesperson Roberta Jacobson, seek to prioritize NGOs with no regional integration into central government planning.

In any case, neither the Biden plan nor even the plan promoted by the UN and Mexico are likely to have any significant impact on the causes of migration from Central America’s Northern Triangle to the US because they are too little, too late to address those countries’ deep-seated social trauma, entrenched economic inequality and accelerating climate change. Similarly, US policy blocks the Northern Triangle countries from radically changing their options for social and economic development by negotiating strategic investment from China. China has major port and free trade zone interests in Panama, El Salvador and Costa Rica and remains interested in the proposed interoceanic canal in Nicaragua. So while Nicaragua’s example shows a clear way for its neighbours to address successfully the root causes of distress-driven migration, the dead hand of US intervention chokes off all practical, realistic, successful options for a better life for the impoverished majorities of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.



Briefs

By Nan McCurdy

Nicaragua Safest Country in Central America
On May 7 the Honduran newspaper “El Heraldo” published a study entitled “2020 Homicide Rate in Central America in the Context of COVID-19,” prepared by the National Observatory of Violence of the National Autonomous University of Honduras. The study noted that Nicaragua continues to be the safest country in Central America with a homicide rate of 3.5 per 100,000 inhabitants; followed by Costa Rica 11.2; Guatemala 15.7; El Salvador 19.7; Belize 24.3 and Honduras 38.5. (Nicaragua News, 10 May 2021)

Safe Conditions for Tourism
Nicaragua is the only nation in the American continent with safe sanitary conditions to visit, according to a study conducted by the Spanish travel agency Plantys. Worldwide, Nicaragua is in ninth place, according to the study. The “10 safest countries to travel in the world”, is the title of a study prepared by the biomedical engineer Manuel Aguilar with information from Oxford University and the World Health Organization. The study is based on four basic axes to determine how viable it is to travel somewhere in times of pandemic. For example, the number of people vaccinated is taken into account. Every seven days, the study’s authors count the number of new confirmed cases in order to calculate the probability of contracting coronavirus while on vacation in a given place. Another variant of this study is the population density – if a locality has few inhabitants, the number of infections is considerably reduced. The study only took into account those places with no more than 640 inhabitants per square kilometer. The last point considered was the annual report of the Basic Capacity Index of the International Health Regulations prepared by the WHO. This document was key to knowing the public health situation of the country, to knowing how the health emergency has been handled and if it has established protocols in case of a new wave of contagions, among other data.

The sum of the four variants: vaccination, confirmed cases of coronavirus, population density and the evaluation made by the International Health Regulations, gives an approximation of how safe it is to travel to specific places in the world. The novelty of this study published by Planyts (a travel agency based in Spain and registered with the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism) is that it shows a global picture of the transition of the pandemic and how some places can gradually open their doors to tourism. The study data will be updated on Mondays and new information will be available every 15 days. (Radio La Primerisima, 6 May 2021)

Woman to Head Supreme Electoral Council
With a historic representation of the multi-ethnic Caribbean Coast and 60% of women, the ten new magistrates (including three alternates) of the Supreme Electoral Council (SEC) were sworn in May 6. Four of the ten magistrates are from the Caribbean Coast and one magistrate (Maura Alvarez) is part of the Indigenous community of Subtiava, Leon. Six Magistrates are Sandinista, one has become a Sandinista sympathizer in recent years (Amador), one was proposed by the Conservative Party (Knight), one by the Liberal Party (Blandon) and the other by PLI-ALN (Alvarez). The ten are highly educated as lawyers, or with masters, double masters, doctorates and amazing life experiences.

Brenda Rocha, from Bonanza, North Caribbean Autonomous Region, lost an arm in a Contra attack in 1982 when she was 15. She was part of the militia defending an electricity tower and was the only survivor of the attack. She is a lawyer. Alma Nubia Baltodano lost both arms to a contact bomb in the insurrection in 1979. She is a lawyer and has specialized in supporting people with disabilities. Even after losing her arms, she went on the literacy campaign, picked coffee, and was in the militia. Lumberto Campbell (current vice-president of the electoral body, from Bluefields and Afro-Caribbean, was in the insurrection and has been a leader in different areas. Maira Salinas was part of the previous CSE, also highly educated. Cairo Amador was part of the Commission of Truth, Justice and Peace after the attempted coup of 2018. Devoney McDavis is part of the Miskito Indigenous group, from Waspán, most recently was President of the North Caribbean Regional Council. She is a specialist in defense of Indigenous people. Leonzo Knight is from the Indigenous group Ulwa, speaks six languages, educator and author, and was proposed by a Conservative Deputy. The three alternate magistrates are Adriana Molina, a lawyer from Jinotega, whose father was part of the political prisoners freed by the FSLN action of 1974. Maura Lisset Álvarez was proposed by PLI-ALN Deputies and Alberto Blandón was proposed by PLC Deputies.

On May 6, the ten magistrates elected Brenda Rocha as president and Cairo Amador, vice president. The head of the FSLN in the National Assembly, Edwin Castro said on May 6 that the election of the CSE magistrates strengthens gender equity in public office and democracy in Nicaragua. There were 44 proposals for magistrates by Assembly Deputies. “These 44 met the conditions that the law and the Constitution require to be candidates for magistrate. They were voted on one by one. If a candidate obtained 56 votes or more, he or she would be elected,” Castro stated. “For the first time the Supreme Electoral Council has gender equity.” he pointed out. “There are 6 women, 4 of them proprietary and 2 within the substitutes,” added Deputy Jenny Martinez. (Radio La Primerisima, 6 May 2021, Sin Fronteras, 5 May 2021)

Electoral Calendar Presented
The Nicaragua Supreme Electoral Council presented the electoral calendar and formal call for general elections to be held November 7, 2021. The resolution published in the official newspaper “La Gaceta” states that “the participating political organizations are exhorted to duly comply with the Political Constitution, Electoral Law, and the Foreign Agents Law, as well as show respect for ethical standards, resolutions, agreements and regulations. Likewise, political organizations are urged to present 50% women and 50% men in their proposals for electoral officers and candidates, guaranteeing equity.” (Nicaragua News, 7 May 2021)

FSLN Registers Its Electoral Alliance
The Sandinista Front Party was the first political party to register its electoral alliance with the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) on May 10. The FSLN’s legal representative, Deputy Edwin Castro, accompanied by Liberal Deputy Wilfredo Navarro, registered the Alliance. The Alliance, entitled “United Nicaragua Triumphs,” includes the FSLN, the Nicaraguan Resistance Party, the Independent Constitutionalist Liberal Movement (party of Wilfredo Navarro), Christian Way, Christian Unity, Christian Alternative, among others, as well as regional Caribbean parties. (Informe Pastran, 10 May 2021)

200,000 to Be Vaccinated against Influenza
The Ministry of Health announced that medical brigades and the 19 Local Comprehensive Healthcare Systems (SILAIS) will be carrying out a National Influenza Vaccination Campaign from May 10 to 20, 2021. The Director of MINSA’s Expanded Immunization Program, Jazmina Umaña, stated that “during the vaccination campaign 200,000 doses of the influenza vaccine will be administered to persons 50 years and older, as well as people with chronic diseases; pregnant women; healthcare personnel and those who were not vaccinated during the first vaccination campaign carried out in January this year.” (Nicaragua News, 10 May 2021)

Exports Grow
The Nicaragua Export Processing Center (CETREX) reported on May 10 that exports totaled US$1.2 billion during the first quarter of this year, representing 11.2% increase over the same period in 2020. The Nicaraguan products with highest demand on the international market were gold US$275 million; coffee US$216 million; beef US$194 million; and sugar US$89 million. (Nicaragua News, 11 May 2021)

Government Supports Small Farmers
Vice President Rosario Murillo, reported that 174,000 Production Packages will be given to an equal number of families for the first planting. Forty-three thousand have already been delivered by the Nicaraguan Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA) to strengthen productivity throughout the country. Packages will also be delivered for the development of beekeeping. Production Packages will be delivered in the departments of Chinandega, Matagalpa, Jinotega, Estelí, Nueva Segovia, Madriz, Río San Juan, Central Zelaya, Rivas, Granada, Carazo, Masaya, Costa Caribe Sur and Costa Caribe Norte. See Photos: https://radiolaprimerisima.com/noticias ... e-primera/ (Radio La Primerisima, 6 May 2021)

Growth in Cocoa Production Helps Small Producers
The national cocoa production in the 2020/2021 cycle was 165,517 quintals (hundred weights), showing growth of 2.2% over the previous cycle, and 67% higher than in 2014. For the 2021/2022 cycle, 6.8% growth is expected. The Sandinista Government develops programs that provide technical support, technological packages, infrastructure, and crop management for 13,000 cocoa producers, of which 93% are small farmers. Cocoa and by-product exports grew 22% in value in 2020, compared to 2019, generating US$10 million more, and in the last ten years the value has grown 244.8%. Cocoa plantations are located mainly in the Northern Caribbean Coast, Matagalpa and Jinotega. (Radio La Primerisima, 10 May 2021)

Remittances Increase
The Central Bank reported that remittances received in the first quarter of 2021 totaled US$500 million, which represents 17.9% growth with respect to the same period of 2020 (US$424.5 million). Remittances from the US totaled US$306.5 million (61.3% of the total), which represented an increase of 28.9% with respect to the same period of 2020 (US$237.7 million). Remittances from Spain were US$77.2 million (15.4% of the total), registering a year-on-year growth of 33.8%. Remittances from Costa Rica were US$66.8 million (13.3% of the total), which reflected a year-on-year decrease of 10.7%. Remittances from these countries represented 90.0 percent of total remittances received. (Radio La Primerisima, 6 May 2021)

Solar Energy in Rio San Juan
The National Electricity Transmission Company (ENATREL) inaugurated a 124-solar panel system in the Santa Isabel de Pajarito community, in El Castillo municipality of Río San Juan Department, benefiting 646 inhabitants. The US$305,779 investment was provided by the General Budget, with support from the Export and Import Bank of South Korea (Korea EximBank) and is part of the Supply and Installation of Solar Panels in Rural Areas Project of the National Program for Sustainable Electrification and Renewable Energy (PNESER), that the Government is implementing in the 153 municipalities of the country. (Nicaragua News, 11 May 2021)

Covid Report Week of May 4 to 10, 2021
The Health Ministry reported on May 11 that there were 74 new cases of Covid-19 registered from May 4 to 10, 67 people recovered and there was one death. Since March 2020 there have been 5,649 registered cases, 5,368 people have recovered and 184 people have died. (Radio La Primerisima, 11 May 2021)

https://afgj.org/nicanotes-nicaragua-an ... -migration

What small countries, besieged and facing the existential wrath of capital, can achieve should shame us here in the belly of the beast.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Fri May 21, 2021 12:59 pm

NicaNotes: A Briefing on Electoral Reforms in Nicaragua
May 20, 2021
By Louise Richards

(This article was published by the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign Action Group (UK) on May 17 on their web page: https://www.nscag.org/resources/NSCAG%2 ... iefing.pdf )

Image

With approval ratings for the government of Daniel Ortega and the FSLN consistently high, it is looking increasingly likely that they will be re-elected in November 2021. A national M&R Consultores poll, conducted in March 2021, found that 6 in 10 Nicaraguans support the government, while 2 out of 10 respondents support the opposition and 2 out of 10 said neither.

As the election calendar advances, the United States and its allies, the Organisation of American States (OAS), and Nicaragua’s right-wing opposition are now desperate and have launched into a new stage of aggression against the country in an attempt to undermine and sabotage the forthcoming elections. In addition to illegal coercive measures (sanctions) imposed against the country by the US, the groundwork is being laid by the US and opposition forces to denounce the forthcoming elections as fraudulent before even the first vote has been cast.

Nicaragua’s recently introduced electoral reforms are being roundly and unjustly condemned by the various national and regional forces opposed to the Nicaraguan government. An OAS technical mission worked with the Nicaraguan authorities from 2017 to 2020 to make changes to Nicaragua’s electoral system. The recent reforms incorporate several recommendations of that OAS advisory team.

Despite this, the OAS has said that the electoral law is going in the wrong direction and does not promote free and fair elections and the United States Representative to the OAS stated at a special session held on 12 May that ‘The upcoming elections represent a crucial opportunity to return Nicaragua to full democracy. If President Ortega wants the international community to support election results in November, he should take steps in the coming days to rebuild confidence at home and abroad that those elections will be genuinely free and fair.’

These comments were made despite the fact that most of the electoral law has been in place since the 1980s, and that it is the same basic law which saw the opposition elected in 1990, 1996 and 2001 and attracted no complaints from the US. It is clear that the elections will only be considered ‘free and fair’ if the US-backed and financed opposition wins once again.

The following summary explains the main points of Nicaragua’s electoral reforms and deals with a number of the arguments that have been put forward by Nicaragua’s right-wing opposition and by the OAS and US and UK governments.



Electoral Reforms

A series of reforms to Nicaragua’s electoral law was approved by the National Assembly on May 4. The main purpose of the reforms was to modernise, strengthen and complement the existing law and to make it more transparent, accountable, equal and fair. This included bringing the electoral law up to date with other subsequent legislation that affected the electoral law’s provisions, for example in terms of gender equality. The reform was the result of a consultation process involving all 19 political parties legally registered with the Supreme Electoral Council.

The main points of the new law are:

A commitment to gender equality by mandating that all electoral structures of parties participating in the elections must comprise 50% women.
In order to protect national sovereignty, the introduction of measures controlling foreign funding aimed at interfering in the country’s elections. (This brings Nicaragua into line with the great majority of other countries, including the US and UK and most other European countries)
Guaranteed reimbursement of electoral costs even to small parties and abolition of the requirement that they have to poll four percent to qualify for reimbursement.
Strengthening the political rights of political parties and alliances.
Electoral mapping.
Respect for sovereignty, self-determination and independence.
In addition, the reform law regroups into a single section all the procedures to challenge the election result in case candidates and parties feel they have been victims of fraud or improper procedure. Interestingly, both this and the reform regarding reimbursement of electoral costs were recommendations put forward by the OAS, something which the OAS has conveniently forgotten.

The reforms also strengthen the relationship and co-ordination between the Supreme Electoral Council’s national and departmental offices and the municipal civil registries administered by the country’s 153 local municipal authorities, for the purpose of improving the technical administration of the registries. This was yet another OAS recommendation.

The new law also empowers the Supreme Electoral Council to establish online electoral training programmes and to create computerised and digital mechanisms for the presentation of shortlists for the composition of the different national, regional, departmental and municipal electoral structures, for the registration and accreditation of public electoral oversight officials, for the auditing and traceability of the polling station voting material and also to enable a digital application that will allow the population to find the location of their polling station and how to exercise their vote.

Nicaragua’s opposition has condemned the fact that the new reforms give the police control over permits for marches held during the electoral campaign. However, public demonstrations have always been required to seek authorization from the police, naming legally registered organisations, for example a political party or an NGO, as responsible for any damages that might result. Since the often lethal violence of opposition protests in 2018, the police have strictly enforced those requirements.



Supreme Electoral Council

With a historic representation of the multi-ethnic Caribbean Coast and 60% of women, ten new magistrates of the Supreme Electoral Council were sworn in on May 6, with seven proprietary and three alternate magistrates. In accordance with Nicaragua’s constitution, a total of 44 candidates were proposed by individual deputies of the National Assembly and by the country’s President and subsequently voted on one by one; if a candidate obtained 56 votes or more, then they were elected. With six women, four of them proprietary and two within the substitutes, the Supreme Electoral Council has gender equity for the first time in its history.

Those elected were as follows:-

Brenda Rocha, from Bonanza, North Caribbean Autonomous Region, lost an arm in a Contra attack in 1982 when she was 15. She was part of the militia defending an electricity tower and was the only survivor of the attack. She is a lawyer. Alma Nubia Baltodano lost both arms to a contact bomb in the insurrection in 1979. She is a lawyer and has specialized in supporting people with disabilities. Even after losing her arms, she went on the literacy campaign, picked coffee, and was in the militia. Lumberto Campbell (current vice-president of the electoral body, from Bluefields and Afro-Caribbean, was in the insurrection and has been a leader in many different areas. Maira Salinas was part of the previous CSE, also highly educated. Cairo Amador was part of the Commission of Truth, Justice and Peace after the attempted coup of 2018. Devoney McDavis is part of the Miskito Indigenous group, from Waspán, most recently was President of the North Caribbean Regional Council. She is a specialist in defense of Indigenous people. Leonzo Knight is from the Indigenous group Ulwa, speaks six languages, educator and author, and was proposed by a Conservative Deputy. The three alternate magistrates are Adriana Molina, a lawyer from Jinotega, whose father was part of the political prisoners freed by the FSLN action of 1974. Maura Lisset Álvarez was proposed by PLI-ALN Deputies and Alberto Blandón was proposed by PLC Deputies.

After the inauguration of the members of the Supreme Electoral Council, they elected Brenda Rocha Chacón as President of the CSE and Cairo Amador as Vice President.



Electoral Calendar

Among the first acts of the new Supreme Electoral Council was the presentation of the electoral calendar on May 11, 2021. The general elections for the Presidency, National Assembly and the Central American Parliament will be held on November 7, 2021. The election campaign will formally start on August 21, 2021. Participating political parties will have to define their candidates by mid-August with the definitive list being published by the Supreme Electoral Council on August 18, 2021.

The CSE resolution published in the official newspaper La Gaceta states ‘the participating political organizations are exhorted to duly comply with the Political Constitution; Electoral Law; Regulatory Foreign Agents Law; Defense of the Rights of the People to Independence, Sovereignty and Self-determination for Peace, as well as respect for Ethical Standards, Resolutions, Agreements and Regulations. Likewise, political organisations are urged to present 50% women and 50% men in their proposals for electoral structures and candidacies, guaranteeing equity and alternation.’



The opposition reacts

Predictably, Nicaragua’s right-wing opposition has condemned the electoral reforms, stating that they ‘reduce the competitive capacity of the opposition’ and that they do not advance any profound changes in the electoral system.

Having demanded that elections take place immediately during the 2018 failed attempted coup, the opposition now calls for a delay saying that the deadline for registering was too soon. The fact is that the deadlines for the inscription of alliances and political parties were extended by the Supreme Electoral Council as early as July 2020 by way of a resolution which was published on July 14 of that year in the official newspaper La Gaceta. The resolution stated that its intention was to ‘safeguard the certainty, legality, independence, impartiality and objectivity of the popular will in the upcoming elections’. The fact that alliances wishing to take part had to be registered in May 2021 has been known since last year, the newly elected Supreme Electoral Council simply set the precise date (May 12). Legally constituted political parties must register by mid-August.

The opposition remains weak and fragmented, with no policies and no programme other than opposing Daniel Ortega and the government. It is largely held together by US financing and attempts to unite around either a single group or a single candidate (in spite of US encouragement) have been marred by months and months of in-fighting and jostling for power, with as many as 14 different possible presidential candidates putting their names forward. Nicaragua’s right-wing opposition groups know that without a united front, they stand no chance of victory in the November elections. Yet they make excuses for their failure to unite, falsely claiming that their participation in the elections has been restricted. Their leaders have even argued that the reforms themselves aim to weakening the opposition, something in fact caused by their own failure to reach agreement.

By May 12, only one of the opposition alliances, the CxL (Citizens for Liberty), unable to come to an agreement with any of the other opposition groupings, decided to go it alone and submitted their registration. It is now likely that some of the more prominent opposition leaders such as Felix Maradiaga, Cristiana Chamorro, Juan Sebastian Chamorro and Medardo Mairena, all of whom had previously announced their wish to run for the Presidency, may seek either to become part of the CxL or to join up with one of the existing political parties.



Foreign Agents Law

A major criticism being levelled by the US, OAS and opposition groups relates to the introduction of measures controlling foreign funding of political parties which directly or indirectly interferes in the country’s elections. Nicaragua’s Law Regulating Foreign Agents was approved in 2020, along with a law addressing cybercrime, as part of the Nicaraguan authorities’ efforts to modernise and reinforce legal protections and integrity of the country’s public administration, including its electoral processes and citizen security in general. The law actually brings Nicaragua into line with the great majority of other countries in North America and Europe, including the US and UK. In fact, the UK government is proposing to enact legislation (Electoral Integrity Bill, included in Queen’s Speech on May 11, 2021) which will introduce measures to prevent foreign interference in elections. It is also proposing a Counter-State Threats Bill to introduce a US-style register of foreign agents to help counter espionage and influence from hostile governments.

The intention behind Nicaragua’s inclusion of the law as part of the programme of electoral reform is to create a tool that allows Nicaragua to prevent foreign powers, countries, governments, agencies or organisations from interfering in Nicaragua’s domestic affairs. Nicaragua’s position on this issue is based on resolutions in the United Nations, the OAS and judgements by the International Court of Justice. All these bodies condemn, in a clear and categorical way, acts of interference by any foreign government in the domestic matters of another country.

For more information about the law, see here.



Organisation of American States (OAS)

At a time when its attention would be better focussed on state repression and human rights abuses in Colombia (April and May 2021, with more than 40 peaceful demonstrators killed), the OAS has decided, yet again, to target Nicaragua. After its infamous intervention in Bolivia’s elections in 2019, its relentless attacks on Venezuela’s legitimate government and its continued false demonization of Nicaragua, the OAS has lost all pretence of impartiality. Secretary General Luis Almagro in particular has been strongly criticized by various OAS member States including Mexico and Argentina for abusing his mandate. The OAS is widely regarded in the region as a puppet dancing to the tune of the US government.

On May 12, the OAS convened a special session of its permanent Council to ‘analyse the situation in Nicaragua’. During the session, Secretary General Almagro referred to the reforms as ‘nothing more than a cosmetic change to a deficient legal body’, adding that Nicaragua is heading for ‘the worst possible election’ due to the ‘lack of guarantees to hold a free, fair, and transparent process’. He also made reference to the 2016 elections in Nicaragua, when Daniel Ortega and the FSLN won with 72% of the popular vote, alleging that these were ‘flawed’, even though they were praised by an international observer mission monitoring the electoral process and accepted as valid even by a hostile delegation from the European Union.

It Is worth recalling that the actions of the OAS are in direct violation of its own Charter, Article 19, which says that ‘No State or group of States has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State. The foregoing principle prohibits not only armed force but also any other form of interference or attempted threat against the personality of the State or against its political, economic, and cultural elements.’



Conclusion

There are fears that the current actions of the OAS could well lead to a repeat in Nicaragua of what happened in Bolivia in 2019 when an interim OAS report claiming that Evo Morales had won the election fraudulently was instrumental in motivating the right-wing opposition to mount a coup against Morales, who was forced to resign. Much later the OAS backtracked.

US aggression against Nicaragua has intensified over recent months with the proposed introduction of the Reinforcing Nicaragua’s Adherence to Conditions for Electoral Reform (RENACER) Act in the US Congress which would require the US government to increase sanctions in coordination with Canada and the European Union and proposes new immediate measures against the Nicaraguan government and officials ahead of Nicaragua’s November elections, all under the guise of promoting democracy.

The latest statements coming from the OAS, the US and members of the OAS who are closely allied to the US are cause for grave concern that things could be moving towards renewed attempts to subvert Nicaraguan democracy and even encourage another coup attempt. It remains vital to do everything possible to defend Nicaragua’s democracy and the right of its people to elect a government of their own choosing. Nicaragua presents no threat in the region, much less globally. The country is under attack because its government implements a socialist agenda with which the US disagrees. Nicaragua’s people deserve to develop their economy and society in peace.



Briefs

By Nan McCurdy

Lowest Public Debt in Region
The Central American Institute for Fiscal Studies (ICEFI) presented its Analysis of the 2020 Macro-Fiscal Profiles of Central America on May 11. The report highlighted that “Nicaragua registered a fiscal surplus going from 0.3% in 2019 to 1.5% in 2020.” It also states that “at the end of last year, Nicaragua had the lowest public debt in the region registering 45.1% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), followed by Honduras 59.4%, Costa Rica 67.8%, Panama 69.8% and El Salvador 89.32%.” (Nicaragua News, 12 May 2020)

Nicaragua: Leader in Cyber Crime Fight
Nicaragua was elected by acclamation vice president and representative of Latin America and the Caribbean on the United Nations Ad-Hoc Committee established to create the international convention on the fight against use of information and communication technologies for criminal purposes. The Nicaragua Permanent Representative to the United Nations Office in Vienna, Sabra Murillo, stated that “Nicaragua assumes this new commitment to provide the international community with a convention that governs the efforts of countries in the fight against the use of technology for criminal purposes.” (Nicaragua News, 12 May 2021)

Avianca Increases Flights to Nicaragua
Beginning May 27, Avianca Airlines will expand its operations with direct flights to two Central American cities, including Managua. The airline explained that it will have seven weekly flights from the Augusto C. Sandino International Airport in Managua, while three flights will depart from the air terminal in El Salvador. Avianca’s U.S. operation includes eight destinations with the provision of more than 94 flights and 15,500 seats. Travelers flying to Miami will have connections to seven other U.S. destinations, including New York, Orlando, Washington, Dallas, Dallas, New York, Orlando and Miami. (Radio La Primerisima, 14 May 2021)

Nicaragua in Forum on Climate Change
On May 14, Nicaragua participated in the “Forum of Designated National Authorities under the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change,” organized by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, in the context of the 2021 climate week for the Latin American and Caribbean region. The objective was to identify opportunities, exchange ideas and share tools for scaling up mitigation actions in the region in preparation for the COP26 negotiations in the United Kingdom. Latin American and Caribbean governments, United Nations organizations, and multilateral and bilateral financial entities participated in the event. The Nicaraguan delegation included Javier Gutiérrez, Secretary of Climate Change of the Presidency; Vice Minister of MARENA Liliana Díaz; and Josué Cantarero, Analysis Officer of the Secretariat of Climate Change of the Presidency. (Radio La Primerisima, 14 May 2021)

Growth in Reserves and Deposits
The Central Bank (BCN) published its financial report for April 2021. The report states that the country’s Gross International Reserves (GIR) were US$3.474 billion dollars as of April 30, representing a US$120 million increase over the previous month. BCN President Ovidio Reyes announced that deposits in the National Financial System stood at 155 billion córdobas (US$4.4 billion), registering growth of C$751 million over March and 17.2% increase in comparison to the same period in 2020. (Nicaragua News, 13 May 2021)

Support for Small Farmers on Caribbean Coast
The Nicaragua Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA) provided training and delivered Technology Packages to 400 small producers in 24 communities in El Tortuguero municipality, Southern Caribbean Autonomous Region. The Packages include improved seeds, agricultural tools, and inputs to promote cultivation of rice. The initiative is part of the Creative Economy Model the Government is carrying out in support of small producers. (Nicaragua News, 13 May 2021)

Another Women’s Police Station Opens
On May 20 the National Police and several government institutions will inaugurate the Women’s Police Station Number 68, in the municipality of Mozonte, Department of Nueva Segovia and a new Citizen Security Unit on May 21 in Totogalpa, Madriz. (Informe Pastran, 18 May 2021)

Support for Small-scale Farm Families
The government has delivered 400,000 production packages for basic grains, fruits, vegetables, coffee, cocoa, bananas, roots and tubers, and pasture to small-scale farm families. “We will accompany and develop technical capacities with 350,000 producer families in the generation of added value and agricultural, forestry, fishing, and aquaculture transformation; irrigation management in vegetables; efficient water use; integrated pest and disease management; management of quality coffee plantations with environmental sustainability; integrated management of hazardous and non-hazardous waste for the conservation of Mother Earth; and agro-ecological practices appropriate to climate change,” according to the plan. (Informe Pastran, 18 May 2021)

CSE Advancing Toward the Elections
Last week the first official steps towards the polls in November were taken with the registration and approval by the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) of the political party alliances that will run in the elections. The Sandinista National Liberation Front registered the Alliance called United Nicaragua Triumphs, which includes nine political parties, six political movements, four social movements and two personalities. The only other electoral pact registered with the CSE was the Alianza Ciudadanos por la Libertad (Citizens for Freedom Alliance), headed by the Citizens for Freedom Party (Ciudadanos por la Libertad). The rest of the parties did not manage to form alliances and will present themselves separately on the ballot. The President of the Supreme Electoral Council, Brenda Rocha, announced that the period of citizen verification of the electoral roll will be July 24 and 25. “The calendar is already running; the ethics regulation has been consulted with all the political parties; it is already published in the Gazette, and we are in the period of the assignment of the polling places to each political party,” she said. “Proposals of lists have been submitted to form the departmental and regional councils so that they can later assign the municipal councils,” she added. The next important date on the election calendar is July 28 for provisional registration of candidates for the presidency and vice presidency and deputies to the National Assembly and Central American Parliament (Parlacen). August 18 is the final publication of candidates to be registered according to political party or alliance. The electoral campaign begins 75 days before the elections on Nov. 7 and the electoral roll must be ready 60 days before. On October 10, the Voting Boards must be formed with 50% men and 50% women, including in the northern and southern Caribbean. On November 7, more than three million Nicaraguans will vote for the presidential ticket, 90 deputies to the National Assembly and 20 to Parlacen. (Radio La Primerisima, 17 May 2021)

Free Trade Zone Production Growth
The Central Bank published a report on Foreign Trade during the first quarter of 2021. The report states that the Free Trade Zones generated US$770.6 million in sales between January and April of this year, an 11% growth in comparison to the same period in 2020. Alfredo Coronel, Vice President of the National Commission of Free Trade Zones, explained that “the data presented indicates a strong recovery of production and exports by companies in the Nicaraguan Free Trade Zones that were impacted by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global economy.” (Nicaragua News, 17 May 2021)

Army Arrests Illegal Loggers
From March 25 to May 17, the Naval Detachment for Inland Waters of the Naval Force and the Ecological Battalion of the Army seized 4.6 million board feet of timber from banned species including Cedro Real (mahogany), Níspero, Cedro Macho (Crabwood), Genízaro (Monkey Pod Tree) and Guanacaste (Monkey Ear Tree) among others, which were being illegally transported in violation of the country’s laws. Likewise, three trucks and a motorcycle were seized and ten citizens, linked to this crime, were detained and handed over to the corresponding authorities together with the evidence. (Radio La Primerisima, 17 May 2021)

Covid Report May 11 to 17, 2021
For the week of May 11 to 17 the Health Ministry reported 82 new registered cases of Covid, 71 people recuperated and one death. Since March 2020 there have been 5,731 registered cases of Covid-19, 5,439 people recuperated and 185 deaths. (Radio La Primerisima, 18 May 2021)

https://afgj.org/nicanotes-a-briefing-o ... -nicaragua
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Thu May 27, 2021 11:56 am

OPPOSITION CANDIDATE IN NICARAGUA RECEIVED MONEY FROM USAID
May 25 , 2021 , 5:38 am .

Image
The opposition Cristiana Chamarro has to render an account to the Nicaraguan government for the millions of dollars that her foundation received from the United States.

Cristiana Chamorro, former director of the “Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation for Reconciliation and Democracy”, was accused of money laundering in an investigation led by the Ministry of the Interior (Migob) and the Nicaraguan Government Prosecutor's Office.

His NGO is being investigated for having received more than $ 6 million from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) since 2015. More than half of that money ($ 3.7 million) goes to influence this year's presidential elections.

According to the investigations, part of the resources delivered by USAID to the foundation were transferred to 25 media outlets, the majority involved in planning the chaos scenario with which they tried to force the departure of President Daniel Ortega three years ago. .

Some of them are in the hands of the Chamorro family. This is the case of Confidencial and Semana, two media that received around 2 million dollars and that belong to Cristiana's brother, Carlos Fernando Chamorro, also investigated by the Nicaraguan authorities.

The Chamorros have received money from the United States in other ways. Before the violent events of the 2018 coup d'état exploded in the Central American country, Confidencial and the thought tank Cinco were funded by the National Foundation for Democracy (NED) agency.

The Chamorro Foundation suspended its activities on February 5. This decision was made by Cristiana by refusing to comply with the provisions of the Foreign Agents Regulation Law, recently ordered in the framework of the next elections to prohibit foreign financing of politicians and force NGOs to account for the money they receive outside of the country.

Cristiana Chamorro aspires to the presidential candidacy; However, it was not registered in the candidate selection mechanism of any political party because it expects an alliance of the entire opposition bloc to contest the candidacy of President Daniel Ortega in the November 7 elections.

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That's OK, as long as it wasn't the Russians trying to influence another country's election...The complicity of the 'free press' in denying this information to the US masses is as blatant as the connivance itself. They got better things to do, like whipping up Cold War 2.0.
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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Sun May 30, 2021 1:53 pm

NicaNotes: NPR Should Ask Where Nicaraguan Non-Profits Get Their Money
May 27, 2021
By John Perry
(This article was originally published on May 24th by CounterPunch here: https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/05/24 ... omes-from/ )

Imagine what would happen if the US media discovered that a candidate in the mid-term elections was under investigation by the FBI for receiving money from a foreign government. Then, suppose it was one that’s hostile to the US, perhaps Syria or Iran, and that the same government was also covertly funding election coverage in, say, Fox News. How would the rest of the media respond? By claiming that the candidate’s democratic rights were under threat from the FBI? Or by expressing shock and horror at foreign interference in US elections and urging the FBI to arrest the culprits?

The answer is obvious, but why aren’t the shock and horror also evident when US media identify foreign meddling in an election somewhere else? If the meddling is by the US government, ever quick to accuse Russia if there’s any suggestion that it’s interfering in US politics, then there is also gross hypocrisy to be exposed. As a Scottish minister of justice once said (in relation to the US’s contorted involvement in Libya), ‘the US sadly often adopts a position of seeking to enforce standards on others that it will not accept or abide by itself.’ Time and again the US media also fail to hold the government to the standards they apply to other countries.

Take the case of Nicaragua. It has elections coming in November and has just introduced reforms to make its electoral process clearer and improve the tracking of the results so that any scope for fraudulence is further minimized. Another reform is a ‘foreign agents’ law which prohibits foreign funding of politicians and obliges NGOs receiving money from abroad to show how it is being used. It is similar too but less stringent than the US’s own Foreign Agents Registration Act (known as FARA), passed originally in 1938 and now accompanied by at least four other related laws. Despite these precedents, the US State Department, in full hypocrisy mode, said in February that the new law ‘drives Nicaragua toward dictatorship, silencing independent voices’. It has also criticized Nicaragua for suppressing political demonstrations when it merely requires organizers to get police permission, even while the US has itself been criticized recently by a United Nations expert for ‘the wave of anti-protest laws’ that is ‘spreading through the country’.

This week, a budding presidential election candidate and head of an NGO, Cristiana Chamorro, was under investigation by Nicaragua’s interior ministry for incorrect use of foreign funding. Chamorro was head of a non-profit, the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation, which she closed in February saying that she refused to comply with the foreign agents law. The US State Department cited this as evidence that Ortega intends to ‘take the country further away from free and fair elections in November’, describing the Chamorro foundation as a ‘bastion of free expression’. The Chamorros, one of Nicaragua’s richest and most influential families, also control the only daily newspaper, La Prensa, as well as the digital newspaper Confidencial; both are deeply hostile to the Sandinista government and are widely quoted by the international press.

The Chamorro foundation is being investigated because it has received over US$6 million from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) since 2015, of which US$3.7 million is specifically to influence this year’s Nicaraguan elections. The funding is passed on to some 25 opposition media outlets, several owned by the Chamorro family itself. For example, Confidencial and Esta Semana, both owned by Cristiana Chamorro’s brother, Carlos Fernando Chamorro, who is also under investigation, received about US$2 million. The Chamorros have received US money from other sources too: for example, both Confidencial and their think tank CINCO received funds from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which is a quasi-autonomous US agency funded by the US government, in the run-up to the violent coup attempt in Nicaragua in 2018. Even in 2021, USAID money has been distributed to opposition media which were important players in the violence three years ago.

How was the announcement of the Chamorro investigation handled by the US media? NPR led the way by immediately following the State Department’s line. Its report from Mexico by correspondent Carrie Kahn, headed Ortega Targets Opposition Figures, called the investigation ‘the latest move by President Daniel Ortega to crackdown on critics’ ahead of the elections.’ Kahn seems to have written little about Nicaragua before except, ten days earlier, when she claimed that ‘citizens are working to expose Covid’s real toll in Nicaragua as leaders claim success’, without making it clear that the ‘citizens’ are small opposition political groups, or that her co-writer on that story, Wilfredo Miranda, also writes for Confidencial.

In her latest piece, Kahn found no reason to mention that in the United States a similar NGO to Chamorro’s would have to comply with similar legislation. Nor did she point out that the US government has made numerous recent investigations of foreign funding under FARA and related regulations, while this is believed to be the first use of Nicaragua’s new law. The US government has also been accused of using these investigations to ‘attack’ non-profit bodies whose work appears to challenge government policies, for example on environmental issues. In other words, Nicaragua is simply making the same checks on foreign influence on its elections that would be made in the United States and in many other countries.

Even more bizarrely, NPR never thought to ask where the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation’s money actually comes from. Unsurprisingly, when the State Department praised the foundation, it failed to mention that the US government gives it millions of dollars each year. Yet an independent journalist such as Kahn should surely have asked this very basic question, especially as this was the reason for the interior ministry’s investigation and the funding sources can be found in public documents.

Instead of investigating the source of Cristiana Chamorro’s money, NPR unquestioningly repeats her claim that ‘she has always been honest and transparent in her foundation’s accounting’. NPR goes on to say that ‘the police raids and the allegations of money laundering against Cristiana Chamorro are the latest moves by Ortega to quash the opposition and close avenues for valid candidacies in the upcoming presidential race’. It gives no credence to their being legitimate investigations of the kind that might be carried out in similar circumstances in the US. Instead, it is taken for granted that Nicaragua’s interior ministry is simply up to no good. NPR is committed to ‘accuracy’, ‘fairness’ and ‘completeness’ in its reporting. Yet its failure to ask basic questions in this case has produced a one-sided picture that reinforces the false image of Nicaragua portrayed by its opposition politicians and by the US State Department.



Briefs

By Nan McCurdy

Foundation Investigated for Money Laundering
On May 20 the Ministry of the Interior (MIGOB) which investigates possible crime, summoned Cristiana María Chamorro, daughter of former president Violeta Barrios de Chamorro and legal representative of the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation, to answer for inconsistencies found in the group’s financial reports from 2015 to 2019. The public prosecutor is investigating the Foundation for money laundering. And on May 24 Chamorro’s banks accounts were frozen as part of the investigation. The Foundation received millions in recent years from the US and European countries.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has provided US$5.99 million to this foundation since 2015 that was then distributed to 25 opposition media outlets, active in the attempted coup of 2018. More than US$2 million was provided to media outlets belonging to the Chamorro family such as the only Nicaraguan daily newspaper, La Prensa, where Chamorro is vice president and part owner, and an online outlet, Confidential, which belongs to Chamorro’s brother, Carlos Fernando Chamorro. More than US$3.67 million was provided to opposition media in 2020 and 2021 to help them influence the elections scheduled for this November. Chamorro says she is a presidential candidate but no legally recognized party has yet named her as its candidate.

In February, Chamorro said she was closing the Foundation because she did not want to report what it received and how it was spent. This requirement is part of the new Foreign Agents Law which requires nonprofits that receive money from abroad to file reports on the money. It is similar to the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) in the US. This action by the Ministry of the Interior is based on the control, regulation and monitoring of non-profit organizations, granted by Law 147 General Law on Non-Profit Legal Entities, Law 977 Law Against Money Laundering, Financing of Terrorism in its Article 37 and Decree No. 15-2018 Regulation of Law 977 in its Article 13. (Radio La Primerisima, 20 May 2021)

New Poll Finds Broad Support for Sandinista Government
An M&R Consultores survey released on May 25 found 68.9% of the population approves of President Daniel Ortega’s administration. The same study indicates that 73% of the population say that the Sandinista government generates hope and 75.9% consider that the situation in the country is better than 14 years ago. Sixty-one percent consider that Nicaraguans would be better off with an FSLN government. FSLN Party political sympathy at this moment is 46.7%, and soft sympathy is at 22.6% for a current total possible of 69.3% in the elections. Four percent support an opposition organization and adding in their soft sympathy of 17.4% they could reach a total support of 21.4%. Just over 92 percent of those consulted have a voter identification card. Ninety percent say that under no circumstances should economic and social stability be sacrificed. Regarding presidential reelection, 85.7% say that in a democracy if the people decide in favor, politicians can be reelected to a new term. Report in Spanish: https://radiolaprimerisima.com/wp-conte ... CUESTA.pdf (Radio La Primerisima, 25 May 2021)

Some 237,500 COVID-19 Vaccines Applied
The Health Ministry has applied nationwide more than 237,500 doses of vaccines against the Coronavirus since the beginning of national vaccination with the immunization of people over sixty years of age or with kidney, heart and cancer diseases. The head of MINSA, Dr. Martha Reyes said that the population over 55 years old and employees of institutions that directly serve the population are also being immunized. The government intends to vaccinate the largest number of people possible as it continues to purchase vaccines. (Radio La Primerisima, 20 May 2021)

Nicaragua Approves Sputnik Light
The Health Ministry (MINSA) announced on May 19 that Nicaragua has authorized the Sputnik Light vaccine for emergency use against COVID-19. Health Minister Martha Reyes explained that “MINSA has approved the Sputnik Light vaccine manufactured by the Gamaleya Research Center of Russia for emergency use.” The Minister noted that the single-dose vaccine is 79.4% effective in preventing the disease, has shown high efficacy against new strains of SARS-CoV-2, and increases immunity for people with pre-existing antibodies when they have already contracted the virus. (Nicaragua News, 20 May 2021)

Nicaragua Continues to Take Health Care to the People
The Health Ministry announced that as part of the “My Hospital for my Community” Health Campaign, medical brigades and mobile clinics from departmental hospitals will carry out 90,060 medical consultations and surgeries in 840 communities this week, benefiting at least 90,060 inhabitants. This is part of the Family and Community Health care Model implemented throughout the country. (Nicaragua News, 19 May 2021)

World Bank to Invest in Peanut Production
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank Group announced that it will invest US$65 million annually in the Nicaragua Peanut Marketing Corporation (COMASA). The IFC Central America General Manager, Sanaa Abouzaid, explained that “IFC investment in the largest peanut processing and exporting company in Nicaragua is intended to safeguard rural livelihoods, improve agricultural resilience, preserve the competitiveness of the country in this sector and protect thousands of jobs.” For his part, the COMASA General Manager, Joaquín Zavala, stated “the financing will allow COMASA to continue strengthening operations, exports and access to global markets.” (Nicaragua News, 19 May 2021)

400,000 Agricultural and Livestock Packages Provided this Year
The Nicaraguan Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA), is providing 400,000 agricultural and livestock production packages this year. This is to improve productivity levels and yields with seeds, animals, equipment, training, etc. The impact that all policies have had on production has been remarkable. From 2007 to date, agricultural production has grown by 76%, the agricultural sector has grown by 86% and livestock 65%. Last year, despite the pandemic and hurricanes, the 2020-2021 agricultural cycle was very positive with growth rates between 6% and 9%. (Radio La Primerisima, 24 May 2021)

Nicaragua Awarded for Innovative Project in Solentiname Islands
The Viva Plastic Free Solentiname sustainable tourism project received the “2020 Excellence in Tourism” Award, during the “2020 Excellence Awards” at the International Tourism Fair of Spain (Fitur 2021) held the week of May 10. Created by the international communication conglomerate “Grupo Excelencias,” the Award evaluates innovative projects in the fields of tourism, art, and culture. Solentiname is an archipelago of 36 islands in Nicaragua’s Lake Cocibolca. (Nicaragua News, 24 May 2021)

Nicaragua Pyramid May Be One of the Oldest in the Americas
The discovery of the pyramid of Garrobo Grande in the department of Chontales more than 35 years ago by archaeologist Jorge Espinoza Estrada, may be one of the oldest in the Americas and others may stem from a common trunk here. It was built long before Tenochtitlan in Mexico and Machu Picchu in Peru, according to studies. It is a pyramidal construction of three tiers that are 30 by 40 meters in diameter and 6 meters high. It is the most rustic structure in America, because the other pyramidal structures use some substance to hold the stones together. In this one there is no such cementing substance and Expinoza Estrada says it is the only one with these characteristics in America. For the Nicaraguan archaeologist, the first time that steps were built in all America was there in Chontales. Espinosa Estrada believes it is the oldest in Mesoamerica. He discovered the pyramid at the beginning of the eighties, thanks to a map elaborated by Fermín Ferrer, a cartographer who was provisional president of Nicaragua for 21 days in 1856. Years later, in 2003, the same Espinosa Estrada returned to the site, this time accompanied by a team of 45 people. (Radio La Primerisima, 25 May 2021)

Opposition News
Former Liberal presidential candidate, Enrique Quiñónez maintains that the UNAB-MRS Coalition [The MRS is the Sandinista Renovation Movement that broke off from the FSLN in 1994 together with other opposition members], is now pressuring CXL (Citizens for Freedom Party), to let them use their political party spot. “What we see is a pitiful situation for them, the problem is not the Sandinista Front, the problem is those who don’t admit their own problem and blame others. This is an opposition that has left much to be desired; they are clumsy and they are demonstrating it until the last moment,” commented Quiñonez. Quiñónez, of Radio 800, went on to say, “Ms. Cristiana Chamorro, this is a serious accusation of money laundering. I have been hearing for some time about the dances of dollars in different nonprofits through the channels mainly of the US government, USAID. With all the money that came to them in 2018 – there was a great deal. Logically, when this government says give me a report there are going to be inconsistencies related to bank transfers, bank reports and financial reports of the nonprofit accountants. Or inconsistencies in what was given to whom because there are some so-called independent media that receive a lot, a lot of money to keep a lot of people’s nerves on edge.”

Former advisor of the UNAB-MRS, Bonifacio Miranda said on May 24 in a local TV channel that the opposition is still dispersed. One group continues attacking another. “There is a lot of noise and no action, no strategy, just dirty attacks one against the other,” he commented. José Antonio Peraza of the UNAB-MRS Coalition said on a radio program that the Coalition is analyzing alternatives such as talking with other parties in order to run in the elections, such as the PLC, ALN or PLI, parties which they have been attacking for years. (Informe Pastran, 25 May 2021)

COVID-19 Report Week of May 18 to 24, 2021
The Health Ministry had 102 new registered cases of Covid-19; 77 people recuperated and there was one death. Since March 2020 there have been 5,833 registered cases of Covid, 5,516 people have recuperated and there have been 186 deaths. (Nicaragua News, 25, May 2021)

Report Finds 209 Million More Poor in 2020
In a new annual report, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, ECLAC, estimates that the number of poor people in the region rose to 209 million by the end of 2020, which is 22 million more people than in the previous year. In addition, it calls for creating new welfare state measures in each country. Poverty and extreme poverty in Latin America reached levels in 2020 that had not been seen recent decades, while the indices of inequality in the region worsened along with unemployment, among women above all, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and despite the emergency social protection measures that countries have adopted to halt it.

The Executive Secretary of the United Nations regional commission, Alicia Bárcena, presented a new edition of the annual report Social Panorama of Latin America 2020. According to ECLAC’s new projections – as a result of the steep economic recession in the region, which will notch a -7.7% drop in GDP – it is estimated that in 2020 the extreme poverty rate was 12.5% while the poverty rate affected 33.7% of the population. The total number of poor people rose to 209 million by the end of 2020, affecting 22 million more people than in the previous year. Of that total, 78 million

The report indicates that the pandemic’s adverse impact on people’s income mainly affects lower and lower-middle income strata. Inequality in total income per person is expected to have grown in 2020, leading to the average Gini index of inequality being 2.9% higher than what was recorded in 2019. ECLAC urges moving towards a care society that would allow for guaranteeing an egalitarian and sustainable recovery in Latin America and the Caribbean. https://www.cepal.org/en/pressreleases/ ... ly-affects (ECLAC, 4 March 2021)

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"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Nicaragua

Post by blindpig » Mon Jun 07, 2021 1:10 pm

NICANOTES
NicaNotes: What Can We Do?
June 3, 2021
By Laura Wells

(Laura Wells is a Latin America solidarity activist living in Oakland, California. She has participated in a dozen Latin American political delegations since 2005.)

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“Tourism is often forgotten when considering how sanctions diminish the economies of beautiful countries — and the pleasures of would-be tourists.”

This article about Nicaragua reverses the typical order, it starts with the question of “What can we do?” and ends with a bit of history, Nicaragua’s and mine. As you read, if you find yourself asking, “Really?” please consider checking some of the many links.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

(1) RENACER Act in Congress — End US interference

Whatever you think of President Daniel Ortega, you can help the people of Nicaragua now. You can voice your opposition to a new, very bad bill which would ramp up Trump’s NICA Act. The proposed RENACER Act, now in both houses of Congress, would increase unilateral coercive measures (“sanctions“), which are illegal and lethal forms of warfare prohibited by the U.N. charter. You can find more information, and consider how you can help to end US interference, HERE.

(2) PRACTICE SOLIDARITY — “El pueblo unido, jamás será vencido!”

US interference is a huge problem in Latin America. Our job in the US is to organize and take action against that interference, even when we have critiques of other nations. We can take to heart the slogan, “The people united will never be defeated.”

“Divide and conquer” is the method of choice for maintaining a miserable status quo. An effective way to divide people is to personalize a struggle in the form of a single powerful person. It is much easier to malign an individual rather than attack a broad people’s movement and their beneficial accomplishments. Daniel Ortega is on a list with many other leaders in this hemisphere who have been targeted by the US, including Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and Nicolas Maduro.

Solidarity with the people and policies of Nicaragua will help that nation. Conversely, lack of support and unbalanced criticism of Daniel Ortega will help the US government and media get away with character assassination and vilification when they freely allege dictatorship, fraudulent elections, corruption, and repression of the press and the people.

El pueblo unido, jamás será vencido.

(3) RAISE OUR EXPECTATIONS — and apply pressure!

Once we see through the lies of our governments and media, we can view sanctioned countries like Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua as the “hope of a good example” rather than the “threat of a good example,” and we can learn from them.

When we look at policies and conditions we in the US have accepted without protest, and even how we have voted, it seems we have actually believed the dictum of former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, “There Is No Alternative” — TINA.

For an alternative, read this article written by Brian Willson, Vietnam Veteran Against the War and author of Blood on the Tracks. He has lived in Nicaragua for four years. The entire article is worthwhile, and be sure to see “The progressive Sandinistas” section half-way down. It lists the achievements since Daniel Ortega returned to power in 2007. Don’t you wish your country had gains like the ones the poor nation of Nicaragua achieved, rather than, for example, the gain of having the most incarcerated people per capita in the world?

We of the US can raise our expectations and apply pressure, even and perhaps especially on the “most progressive” elected officials and media outlets. The US can represent the power of a good example rather than a threat to the sovereignty and well-being of other nations.

WHAT IS THE HISTORY?

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President Daniel Ortega with Comandante Doris Tijerino, part of the FSLN early on, tortured prisoner under Somoza, and Head of the Police in the 1980s

Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas had already lost the presidency in Nicaragua by the time I became “political” in early 1992. That was the year I went from “hating politics” to resonating with the values and no-corporate-money commitment of the Green Party, a brand new party in California.

In the early 2000s I began participating in political delegations to Latin America, inspired by the many nations moving away from the control of the United States and the super-rich, and toward improving the lives of all people. To the US, however, they represented the “threat of a good example.” Three of them, Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, were designated by Trump and Bolton as the “Troika of Tyranny.”

Before late 2020, I had very little specific knowledge about Nicaragua’s history, just that Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas had been greatly admired in the US in the 1980s for their successful people’s revolution, and I knew of the movement calling for “US out of Nicaragua.” I knew that although they had lost power earlier, they regained the presidency, but I had the vague impression that Daniel Ortega had become corrupt and authoritarian. In other words, he was good before, but not now.

On December 27, 2020, when I saw an email from Alliance for Global Justice, I felt a jolt of energy and I knew I had to join the upcoming “Yes to Sovereignty! No to Sanctions!” delegation sponsored by Friends of ATC and Sanctions Kill. I knew “tyranny” was a lie about Cuba and Venezuela, countries I had already visited, and I wanted to see if it was also a lie about Nicaragua.

I learned a lot.

I learned that people are not migrating out of Nicaragua like they are from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. Unbelievably, given the media it gets, Nicaragua is a safe, low-crime country, with 90% food sovereignty, free healthcare and higher education, and improved infrastructure like roads, water supply, sewage, land titles, and electricity, all of which give people hope that they can stay in their own country rather than risk a dangerous trip leading to a hostile US reception.

A question that stuck in my mind was this: if the government is so “corrupt and authoritarian,” how is it that they have all these good things? See the more comprehensive list in Brian Willson’s article, also mentioned above.

Another question arose because I know good progressive folks who believe that between the 1980s and 2000s Daniel Ortega “sold out” his Sandinista roots, “moved to the right,” and became more “neoliberal” and “capitalist.” Why then was Nicaragua targeted with sanctions and listed with Cuba and Venezuela as a member of the “Troika of Tyranny?”

Ortega and the government of Nicaragua are not perfect, and they do not need to be. I am amazed, however, at what they accomplished with the power of the US against them since 1979, except for the 17-year period from 1990 to 2007. That’s when the US supported the Nicaraguan presidents who set about undoing benefits to the people and privatizing essential services including water and communications.

My head spun when reading about the complexities of the 2018 “Uprising or Coup.” Even though lies can be 180 degrees from the truth, they spread quickly via mainstream and social media. Refuting lies is not as quick a process as the spreading of lies. This article is a good summary and it also has a link to a free book of essays by many writers who know Nicaragua.

In 2021 this information is especially important because Nicaragua has a presidential election in November. Leading up to an election is when the US typically increases its interference — which takes us back to the top of this piece about the RENACER actions we can take now. Interference takes the form of dollars flowing into the opposition’s hands and adverse allegations flowing into our minds through the media. The most used allegations are “election fraud” and “human rights violations” and this year it’s “COVID scares.”

Regarding human rights, see Nicaragua Rebuffs Attacks at Human Rights Hearing along with Dismissing the Truth: Why Amnesty International is Wrong about Nicaragua; and Nicaragua’s Indigenous Peoples – Neocolonial Lies, Autonomous Reality.

A final note, on tourism. Nicaragua is a beautiful and safe place for tourists, with Pacific and Caribbean coasts, tropical islands, lakes, flora and fauna, and volcanoes. Tourism is often forgotten when considering how sanctions diminish the economies of beautiful countries — and the pleasures of would-be tourists.

This short 2-minute video will give you a quick flavor of the March 2021 Nicaragua delegation. See a surprising flower that had burst open in my hand in Granada, one of the many lovely areas of Nicaragua. And this feature-length documentary of the delegation Nicaragua Against Empire is beautiful and filled with great information. It premiered in recent weeks and already has more than 6,000 views. I hope you are able to see it.

El pueblo unido, jamás será vencido!

LauraWells.org

@LauraWellsCA



Dear Nica Solidarity Activist,

There’s now a new discussion group dedicated solely to Nicaragua. (Of course, the U.S. is causing problems in countless other Latin American countries, but this group is for Nicaragua solidarity activists.)

To join: <https://groups.google.com/g/nicanet>

To post: <nicanet@googlegroups.com>

This Google group is the Nicaragua Network’s public forum for exchanging ideas and information among solidarity activists who are anti-US intervention in Nicaragua. It’s a group for people who support Nicaragua’s sovereignty and the Sandinista Revolution.

As administrator, I will approve all posts before publishing them. Posts are limited to topics, articles, and discussion about Nicaragua. Sorry, but posts about other countries or about matters that do not include Nicaragua explicitly will not be approved.

We Nicaragua solidarity activists sometimes don’t know what other solidarity activists are doing to support Nicaragua. This is a great way to share your news, reading lists, upcoming programs, etc. We await your submissions!

Please join the group and send in your contributions.

In solidarity,

Arnie Matlin for Nicaragua Network—a project of the Alliance for Global Justice <https://AFGJ.org>

P.S. Some people sign up without problems. Others get an error message. If you have a problem signing up, just send me a message and I’ll manually add your name to the Google group. <ahmatlingvcp@igc.org>



Briefs

By Nan McCurdy

News Flash! Cristiana Chamorro Detained!
The National Police arrested Cristiana Chamorro Barrios, head of the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation, on Wednesday, June 2, accused of the crimes of mismanagement of property and assets and money laundering among other offenses. The arrest was ordered by Judge Karen Chavarría of the Ninth Criminal District Court of Managua. Last week we reported that the foundation’s financial reports from 2015 to 2019 were being investigated for possible money laundering, noting that the Foundation has received millions in recent years from the US and European countries. Chamorro announced that she was closing the Foundation because she did not want to report to the new Foreign Agents Law which is similar to the Foreign Agent Registration Act in the United States. (Radio La Primerisima, 2 June 2021, 20 May 2021)

Foundation’s Accountant and Administrator Accused of Money Laundering
Judge Gloria Saavedra admitted the request for the extension to 90 days of the term to investigate Walter Gómez (accountant) and Marco Fletes (administrator), in the case that the Public Prosecutor’s Office has opened against the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation. The defendants Gómez and Fletes were taken on May 29 to the Tenth Criminal Court of Hearings, for the special hearing for the protection of constitutional guarantees. During the hearing, the prosecutor, Jean Rivas, indicated to the judge that due to the seriousness of the crimes, and since the crime of Money, Property and Asset Laundering is considered organized crime, there is the probability that the accused could evade justice, for which he requested the extension of the investigation and of the detention period to 90 days. The court admitted the request, extending the term for the investigation and detention of the accused until August 26, 2021. (Radio La Primerisima, 30 May 2021)

IMF Reports on Investment, Job Stability and Resources for Health
In its May report on “Policy Responses to Covid-19” published May 7, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) states that Nicaragua has worked to maintain social and public investment programs, safeguard job stability and actively seek public financing through external resources and placement of Bonds of the Republic, registering a deficit of the non-financial public sector of 2.5% of the GDP (the lowest in the region). The report also noted that the fiscal policy measures taken by the Government in 2020 increased resources for the public health sector to face the COVID-19 pandemic and prioritized the population affected by hurricanes Iota and Eta. Regarding the COVID-19 vaccination process, Nicaragua began its vaccination program on March 2 of this year and to date 237,500 doses of the COVISHIELD and Sputnik V vaccines have been administered. The report noted that the Government signed a US$100 million nonrefundable loan with the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI) to purchase 6.86 million doses of vaccines, which would cover 69.2% of the population prioritized in the COVID-19 National Voluntary Vaccination Program which seeks to immunize 4.7 million people. (Nicaragua News, 26 May 2021; https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/imf-and-c ... o-COVID-19)

One-third of New Police are Women
The Walter Mendoza Police Institute for Higher Education announced on May 26 that 1,026 cadets have completed the Basic Police Training Course. The Deputy Director General of the Police, Commissioner General Aldo Sáenz, stated that “the graduates represent the integrity, selflessness and sacrifice that distinguishes the Police always at the service of the community, the people and the nation.” He also specified that 326 members of the graduating class are women and 700 men. (Nicaragua News, 26 May 2021)

Road Improvements Advancing in Managua
With the new roadway linking Sábana Grande just east of Managua, El Pique traffic circle and Villa Sol Bridge in Managua, the entrances and exits of the capital have been substantially improved and traffic has been expedited. The Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure inaugurated the new 2-kilometer-long roadway which included the construction of the 32-meter-long Villa Sol Bridge. Four thousand vehicles per day take this route. In Managua the Sandinista Government has built 15 important road projects with 211 km of modern highways, and 17 bridges that improve traffic in all directions. The 23-km Tipitapa-Empalme San Benito road section, and the 20-km project between the Las Mercedes roundabout and El Coyotepe, a new connection between Managua with Masaya, were built with an investment of US$17.5 million, benefiting 209,819 inhabitants. The improvement of road access in Managua will continue with the US$95 million bypass project to be financed by the Foreign Trade Bank of South Korea (Korea Eximbank) and the national budget. The project comprises two intersections, seven bridges and two overpasses. (Informe Pastran, 28 May 2021)

Presentation of Candidates for Departmental and Regional Electoral Councils
The Alliance that includes the FSLN, called United Nicaragua Triumphs, presented its list of candidates for Departmental and Regional Electoral Councils to the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) thus complying in time and form with the calendar laid out for the general elections of November 7. Through a communiqué, the CSE announced that the parties and political alliances that have complied with the requirement are the FSLN, Ciudadanos por la Libertad (CXL), Alianza por la República Party, YATAMA and the Partido Liberal Constitucionalista. The deadline for the presentation of the nominations was May 29. The nominations are for the three persons who will designate the members of the Regional and Departmental Electoral Councils. According to the Electoral Law, the proposals must comply with Gender Equity. (Nicaragua News, 26 May 2021)

100 New Homes for Mother’s Day
Vice President Rosario Murillo announced that May 29, in celebration and honor of Mothers, the Managua Mayor’s Office delivered new homes to 100 women, heads of households in the Villa Jerusalén housing development, located in Sábana Grande. With these 100 homes, 1,100 home have been delivered as part of the Bismarck Martínez Program low income housing program promoted by the Sandinista government. (Informe Pastran, 28 May 2021)

2,000 Families will have Property Titles
The week of May 31 2,000 property titles will be delivered through the Attorney General’s Office to families in Tipitapa, Murra, Boaco, San Lorenzo, Jinotega, Matagalpa, Nueva Segovia, Matagalpa, León, Estelí, Madriz and Carazo. (Informe Pastran 28 May 2021)

New Platform for Marketing Pottery and Leather Products
The Ministry of Family Economy (MEFCCA) and the Taiwan International Development and Cooperation Fund (ICDF) launched the new “otopnica” digital platform for marketing of pottery and leather products. The MEFCCA Minister, Justa Pérez, said “the new website is a space dedicated to national and international sale and promotion of artisans from San Juan de Oriente and Masaya who specialize in leather and clay products.” This initiative is part of the “One People, One Product” (OTOP) program, promoted by MEFCCA with support of Taiwan. (Nicaragua News, 26 May 2021)

30,000 Hectares to Be Reforested
INAFOR will launch the National Reforestation Campaign on June 3 in Rosita, North Caribbean Region, which has among its goals the production of 25,000,000 forest plants, establishment of 2,169 nurseries nationwide, establishment of 32,193 hectares of agroforestry systems, silvopastoral and compact plantations. Forty thousand forestry production packages will be given to producers within the zones of restoration of areas affected by hurricanes ETA- IOTA, recovery of areas degraded by fires and forest pests, as well as areas that are part of Campaigns to Love and Rescue Mother Earth. In Managua 1,195 hectares of forest plantations and agroforestry systems will be restored; 325.5 hectares will be part of the delivery of forestry packages to 1,500 farmers. (Radio La Primerisima, 27 May 2021)

New Women’s Police Station in Villa Nueva
Some 16,000 women in the municipality of Villa Nueva, Chinandega, will benefit from the 69th Women’s Police Station dedicated in memory of Inspector Francisca de la Concepción López. This is the 7th women’s police station in the department of Chinandega. (Radio La Primerisima, 27 May 2021)

Major Loan to Improve Port of Corinto
In support of the Puerto Corinto Improvement of Technical and Operational Capabilities Program, the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI) announced the approval of a loan for US$21.4 million. CABEI Executive President Dante Mossi stated that “Puerto Corinto is, without a doubt, a strategic project, which will contribute to national and regional economic reactivation, affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.” The Program includes reorganization of the port; modernization of cargo docks and container terminals; construction of a general service workshop, and an Operations and Systems Terminal (OST). (Nicaragua News, 28 May 2021)

Financing for Environmental Project on Caribbean Coast
The Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI) approved a loan extension to finance the “Bio-CLIMA Project: Integrated Climate Action to Reduce Deforestation and Strengthen Resilience in the Bosawás and Río San Juan Biosphere Reserves” on the Caribbean Coast. This project is supported by CABEI financing of US$44. 3 million, US$37.9 million from the Green Climate Fund (GCF), as well as US$26.1 million in GCF grants and an additional US$8.3 million grant from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), for a total project amount of US$116.6 million. (Informe Pastran 26 May 2021)

Weekly Covid-19 Report
The Health Ministry reported that for the week of May 25 to 31 there were 116 new registered cases of Covid, 89 previous registered people recuperated and there was one death. Since March 2020 there have been 5,949 registered cases, 5,605 people recuperated and 187 deaths. (Radio La Primerisima, 1 June 2021)

https://afgj.org/nicanotes-what-can-we-do
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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