Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in Multipolarista.
The U.S. government has imposed aggressive sanctions that aim to “kneecap” China’s tech sector and halt the country’s rise, Washington policymakers and industry analysts have admitted.
The Joe Biden administration took the extraordinarily aggressive action this month of blocking China from importing most semiconductors, machines to create chips and supercomputer parts.
A former Pentagon official acknowledged that this was a “disproportionate” and “unilateral” attack, amounting to a “form of economic containment.”
Jon Bateman, an ex-analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) who served in several important policy roles in the Pentagon, wrote that U.S. officials have “imposed disproportionate measures” and “strong-armed others into compliance.”
Washington’s “mindset all but guarantees a continued march toward broad-based technological decoupling,” he concluded.
Bateman stated that the “increasing boldness of U.S. unilateral actions, and Washington’s open embrace of a quasi-containment strategy” reflect the U.S. government’s new cold war goal: “China’s technological rise will be slowed at any price.”
Today, Bateman is a senior fellow in the technology and international affairs program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a powerful Washington-based think tank that helps Washington craft policy – with plentiful funding from the U.S. government, its allies, large corporations and banks, and billionaire oligarch family foundations.
Bateman is by no means a pro-China advocate. In April, he published a report for Carnegie called “U.S.-China Technological ‘Decoupling’: A Strategy and Policy Framework.”
In the lengthy document, Bateman “offered a concrete picture of what centrist decoupling might look like and how implementation could work at the agency level.”
Bateman wrote the Foreign Policy article as part of a debate with more hard-line hawks in elite Washington policy-making circles. He warned that their “maximalist” strategy could backfire and hurt the U.S. and its allies, and instead promoted a more cautious, incrementalist approach.
“America’s restrictionists—zero-sum thinkers who urgently want to accelerate technological decoupling—have won the strategy debate inside the Biden administration,” he warned.
“More cautious voices—technocrats and centrists who advocate incremental curbs on select aspects of China’s tech ties—have lost,” Bateman lamented.
He acknowledged that Washington’s new cold war on China has been completely bipartisan, but “Donald Trump’s scattershot regulation and erratic public statements offered little clarity to allies, adversaries, and companies around the world,” whereas “Joe Biden’s actions have been more systematic.”
“The United States has waged low-grade economic warfare against China for at least four years now—firing volley after volley of tariffs, export controls, investment blocks, visa limits, and much more,” he wrote.
Bateman said the Biden administration’s new sanctions, however, “more so than any earlier U.S. action, reveal a single-minded focus on thwarting Chinese capabilities at a broad and fundamental level.”
“Although framed as a national security measure, the primary damage to China will be economic, on a scale well out of proportion to Washington’s cited military and intelligence concerns,” he wrote.
He added, “The U.S. government imposed the new rules after limited consultation with partner countries and companies, proving that its quest to hobble China ranks well above concerns about the diplomatic or economic repercussions.”
Bateman noted that the United States is trying to pressure allies to join its new cold war on China, leading an international campaign to economically isolate Beijing by building a “Chip 4” alliance with South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan – which control the vast majority of the global semiconductor industry.
Bateman’s fears that these aggressive new cold war policies could backfire have already come true. Washington’s rapid attempt to decouple the U.S. economy from China is taking a toll on U.S. universities.
At least 1,400 scientists of Chinese descent have left U.S. research institutions and instead gone to China, according to a report published this October by academics at Harvard, Princeton, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
The South China Morning Post reported that the “high number illustrates a ‘chilling effect’ resulting from U.S. government policies deterring research and academic activity by scientists of Chinese descent and suggests American research could suffer.”
The tech press has sounded similar alarm bells about Washington’s bellicose attacks on Beijing.
Electronics industry website EE Times quoted a corporate analyst who said the U.S. “sanctions put a temporary checkmate on China developing their foundry industry at more advanced nodes.”
The website also used cold war rhetoric to refer to the aggressive U.S. policies, writing:
The latest U.S. salvo in the chip war against China will set back its domestic chipmakers by generations, while global suppliers of semiconductors and fab tools will incur billions of dollars in lost sales because of a giant dent in demand out of China, analysts told EE Times.
The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has strengthened Cold War measures from longer than 40 years ago. In its new rivalry, the U.S. aims to freeze China’s advancement on a new front: chip technology that is critical for economic development and military superiority.
Wired said Washington’s “sweeping new controls are designed to keep [China’s] AI industry stuck in the dark ages while the U.S. and other Western countries advance.”
The tech magazine quoted Gregory Allen, director of the AI governance project at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), an influential neoconservative think tank in Washington that is bankrolled by the weapons industry, U.S. government, and Washington’s allies.
Allen summed it up: “The United States is saying to China, ‘AI technology is the future; we and our allies are going there—and you can’t come.’”
Benjamin Norton is founder and editor of Multipolarista.
View from the Pamir Highway in Afghanistan / credit: EJ Wolfson on Unsplash
On July 2, fleeing questions from reporters about U.S. plans in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden sought refuge behind the July 4 Independence Day holiday. Yet, he obliquely acknowledged the United States will use some level of “over the horizon” air attacks to prevent the Taliban from taking power, attacks that will include drones and manned aircraft, possibly even B-52s.
Here is a portion of Biden’s remarkable exchange with the press, which occurred at the close of his comments on the June 2021 jobs report:
Q: Are you worried that the Afghan government might fall? I mean, we are hearing about how the Taliban is taking more and more districts.
THE PRESIDENT: Look, we were in that war for 20 years. Twenty years. And I think — I met with the Afghan government here in the White House, in the Oval. I think they have the capacity to be able to sustain the government. There are going to have to be, down the road, more negotiations, I suspect. But I am — I am concerned that they deal with the internal issues that they have to be able to generate the kind of support they need nationwide to maintain the government.
Q: A follow on that thought on Afghanistan —
THE PRESIDENT: I want to talk about happy things, man.
Q: If there is evidence that Kabul is threatened, which some of the intelligence reports have suggested it could be in six months or thereabout, do you think you’ve got the capability to help provide any kind of air support, military support to them to keep the capital safe, even if the U.S. troops are obviously fully out by that time?
THE PRESIDENT: We have worked out an over-the-horizon capacity that we can be value added, but the Afghans are going to have to be able to do it themselves with the Air Force they have, which we’re helping them maintain.
Q: Sir, on Afghanistan —
THE PRESIDENT: I’m not going to answer any more quick question on Afghanistan.
Q: Are you concerned —
THE PRESIDENT: Look, it’s Fourth of July.
When Biden refers to “over-the-horizon capacity that we can be value added” he is referring to a plan, that appears might cost $10 billion, to fly drones and manned attack aircraft from bases as far away as Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait to assist the current Afghan central government in defending itself against the Taliban.
His statement is the first acknowledgement that the “over-the-horizon” air operations, that reportedly may rely very heavily on drone assassination and drone targeting for manned aircraft, will be directed at the Taliban. In Congressional testimony in June, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that “over-the-horizon” operations would focus on “elements that can possibly conduct attacks against our homeland,” suggesting Al Qaeda and ISIS as targets but not foreclosing attacks against the Taliban.
Biden’s remarks about “over the horizon” as “value added” flowing into “but the Afghans are going to have to be able to do it themselves with the Air Force they have”, is reminiscent of former President Richard Nixon’s attempt to argue that the puppet government of Viet Nam was developing the power to defend itself, attempting to cover U.S. tracks out of the horribly disastrous U.S. colonization project in Viet Nam.
“Our air strikes have been essential in protecting our own remaining forces and in assisting the South Vietnamese in their efforts to protect their homes and their country from a Communist takeover”, Nixon said in a 1972 speech to the nation.
The apparent U.S. decision to continue to assist the Afghan central government from the air comes in company with a New York Timesreport saying that President Biden has placed “temporary limits on counterterrorism drone strikes and commando raids outside conventional battlefield zones like Afghanistan and Syria, and it has begun a broad review of whether to tighten Trump-era rules for such operations, according to officials.”
A similar report in Foreign Affairs, says that there has been an apparent reduction in U.S. drone attacks, and details elements of a “bigger rethink” process that the Biden administration is said to be going through to limit civilian deaths and reevaluate how the U.S. should respond to “the overseas terrorist threat.” A goal of the Administration, the report says, is to end the U.S. “forever” wars.
It must also be said, however, that these reports indicate that President Biden fully intends to continue the U.S. drone assassination/pre-emptive killing policy of Bush, Obama and Trump, possibly with more care for civilians casualties but in defiance of international principles of war, as outlined on BanKillerDrones.org, that would rule out the use of weaponized drones and military drone surveillance altogether whether inside or outside a recognized combat zone.
It appears that the reformist talk from Biden officials, much of it unattributed and therefore having no accountability, is intended to divert and placate those of us citizens who are revulsed by continuing drone atrocities, such as those leading 113 peace, justice and humanitarian organizations who signed a letter demanding “an end to the unlawful program of lethal strikes outside any recognized battlefield, including through the use of drones.” Apart from the view, noted above, that drone attacks and surveillance are illegal anywhere, we have the question of the U.S. having turned the entire world into a potential “recognized battlefield.”
Even though U.S. ground forces have largely left Afghanistan, it is clear that the Biden administration considers Afghanistan a legitimate battlefield for U.S. air forces.
In Biden’s “value added” remark, one can see a clear message: Regardless of talk of a more humanitarian policy of drone killing and ending “forever” wars, the president has decided that prolonged civil war in Afghanistan is in the interest of the United States. Possibly this is because continued turmoil in Afghanistan will be unsettling and preoccupying to her neighbors, Iran, Pakistan, Russia and China. Possibly it is because a civil war will make it easier for corporations and banks to exploit Afghanistan’s mineral, fossil fuel and opium wealth.
Certainly, continued U.S. air assaults in Afghanistan will generate money for U.S. military contractors.
With continuing U.S. air and commando attacks, Afghanistan can turn into a Libya, a divided, stalemated, suffering, bleeding country, where Turkey, Russia and China test their weapons and seek advantage.
Indeed, the U.S. is negotiating with Turkey, over the objection of the Taliban, to maintain “security” at the Kabul International Airport. Undoubtedly, the Turkish political/military/corporate elite, who have their own expansionary ambitions, will use its drones, among them the semi-autonomous Kargu 2, to try to hold the airport and surrounding territory.
The Black Alliance for Peace released a statement on June 25, opposing “any effort to prolong the U.S. war on the Afghan people, including efforts to keep the United States engaged in any form in Afghanistan.” The statement expressed concern for “the continued operation of U.S. special forces and mercenaries (or contractors) in Afghanistan, as well as U.S.-pledged support for Turkish military defense of Kabul International Airport, a site that has continued to be a major U.S. military stronghold to support its imperial presence.”
Biden would do well to heed this statement, along with a petition to him, circulated by BanKillerDrones.org, urging no further U.S. air attacks against the Afghan people.
Now that Independence Day has passed, perhaps Biden will be more willing to answer questions about the real goals of “over the horizon.”
Nick Mottern co-coordinates BanKillerDrones.com and is coordinator of Knowdrones.com.
A mass rally in Havana, Cuba, began on July 17, 2021, with former President Raul Castro, President Miguel Diaz-Canel and former U.S. political prisoners, the Cuban 5, at front. Thousands of supporters of the government had arrived starting at 5 a.m. on Havana’s Malecon, just a few blocks from the U.S. Embassy / credit: CubaDebate
During the early morning of July 17, Johana Tablada joined tens of thousands of Cubans as they gathered along the Malecón boulevard in Havana to stand with the Cuban Revolution. “We are human beings who live, work, suffer, and struggle for a better Cuba,” she told us. “We are not bots or troll farms or anything like that.” She referred to what has been called the Bay of Tweets, a social media campaign developed in Miami, Florida, that attempted to inflame Cuba’s social problems into a political crisis.
The social problems, Tablada told us, derive from the U.S. blockade of Cuba that began in the 1960s but has been deepened by former U.S. President Donald Trump’s 243 coercive measures. “The United States has criminalized Cuban public services,” she said, “including our public health system and our public education system.” These sanctions make it impossible for Cubans to visit their families in the United States. They make it impossible for remittances to be sent into Cuba, and they make it impossible for Cuba to access essential goods and services (including fuel). On top of everything else, Trump designated Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism,” a decision which U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy called “frivolous.” The U.S. government claims that the blockade and these coercive measures are to punish the government, but—says Tablada—they “criminalize the country.
The Miami Mafia
Tablada keeps a close eye on the Cuban policy being shaped by Washington, D.C., and Miami, where right-wing Cuban exiles effectively drive the agenda. She does this in her role as the deputy director-general in the Cuban Foreign Ministry in charge of U.S. affairs. There is a cast of characters in this story that is little known outside the world of U.S. right-wing politics and the Cuban exile community. Of course, four well-known elected officials lead the attempt to overthrow the government in Cuba: Republican Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott of Florida, as well as Democratic Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey and Republican Representative María Elvira Salazar of Florida. Beside them are other politicians such as Miami Mayor Francis X. Suarez and a range of Cuban American businessmen and professionals such as Emilio Braun of the Vulcan Funds and the lawyer Marcell Felipe.
These men are at the core of a set of organizations that lobby U.S. politicians to harden the U.S. blockade on Cuba. Felipe runs the Inspire America Foundation, which Tablada describes as the “heir to the most anti-Cuban, reactionary, and pro-[former military dictator of Cuba Fulgencio] Batista traditions from South Florida.” This foundation works with the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance—a coalition of anti-communist groups that calls for a U.S. invasion of Cuba. At the center of these men is Mauricio Claver-Carone, a former head of the Cuba Democracy Advocates, who was Trump’s main adviser on Cuba and is now president of the Inter-American Development Bank based in Washington, D.C. Claver-Carone, Tablada tells us, “has been nothing short of the leading lobbyist of the groups acting politically against Cuba in the United States, in the U.S. Congress, representing those entities who benefit from this policy of hatred and aggression against my country.” “If you ever mentioned [Fidel] Castro, he’d go berserk,” recalled Claver-Carone’s friend about his attitude in the 1990s.
“The main goal of these people,” Tablada said, “is to overthrow the Cuban Revolution.” Their plan for Cuba, it seems, is to revert it to the days of Batista when U.S. corporations and gangsters ran riot on the island.
Lester Mallory’s Memorandum
In 1960, the U.S. State Department’s Lester Mallory wrote a memorandum on Cuba. Mallory said that most “Cubans support Castro” and there is “no effective political opposition.” Mallory said that there was only one way to go: “The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship.” There has been no change in policy. The entire embargo is based on Mallory’s memorandum.
In 2019, Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton gave a speech to the veterans of the Bay of Pigs. He said that the U.S. government would use every instrument to suffocate tourism to Cuba. The Trump-era coercive measures are intended to deprive Cuba of any means to conduct normal trade and commerce not only with the United States but also with other countries and firms. Sixty-three companies that sell oil do not want to challenge the U.S. embargo, Tablada said.
Let Cuba Live
The Trump policy continues into the Biden administration. “There are 22 signed agreements that Trump didn’t revoke,” Tablada told us. “They could be implemented. Today, we could’ve been cooperating against COVID. Nobody knows why Biden excluded Cuba from one of his first executive orders in which he instructed a complete review of the sanctions that hindered the capacity of states to respond to COVID-19.” In fact, on February 24, Biden signed an executive order to continue the national emergency with respect to Cuba (which prevents traffic between the countries).
While the economic stranglehold has been severe, the information war against Cuba has been equally vicious. Certainly, Cubans migrate to other countries, as the weight of the blockade is difficult to bear. But there is a higher migration rate from Central American countries and other Caribbean islands into the U.S., Tablada said. The U.S. government’s embargo costs Cuba $5 billion per year, Tablada told us, while the U.S. spends “tens of billions of dollars trying—and failing—to drive us to defeat.” There is cruelty in these policies.
Tablada considers what it would mean if Biden ended Trump’s 243 coercive measures against Cuba. As a result of the blockade, she said, Cuba produced 90 percent of its medications. It is out of this tradition that Cuba’s scientists were able to develop five COVID-19 vaccine candidates. “If Trump’s measures were lifted,” she said, “Cuba would be able to buy necessary inputs to produce medication.” In which case, Cuba’s medical internationalism would be enhanced.
“Even if Biden does nothing,” Tablada said, “we’ll still pull through. It may cost us a bit more, but we have a plan, we have a strong social consensus. None of these plans include giving up socialism. The ordinary Cuban—all of us—is capable of sacrificing our individual interests because we know that it is essential for us to have a sovereign homeland [that is] free [and] independent, and that might be as far as we go.”
Manolo De Los Santos is a researcher and a political activist. For 10 years, he worked in the organization of solidarity and education programs to challenge the United States’ regime of illegal sanctions and blockades. Based out of Cuba for many years, Manolo has worked toward building international networks of people’s movements and organizations. In 2018, he became the founding director of the People’s Forum in New York City, a movement incubator for working-class communities to build unity across historic lines of division at home and abroad. He also collaborates as a researcher with Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and is a Globetrotter/Peoples Dispatch fellow.
Celebrations in the northern Nicaraguan city of Estelí on November 8, the day after the elections. President Daniel Ortega won re-election by more than 75 percent / credit: twitter/maria_arauz
This is the second in a series of articles on Nicaragua’s November 7 elections. The first article can be found here.
The Republic of Nicaragua announced on November 19 its intention to pull out of the Organization of American States (OAS), in the latest in a series of events that have transpired in the small country’s struggle with the United States and its allies.
Earlier in the week, U.S. President Joe Biden issued a proclamation that prevents certain Nicaraguan officials—including President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo—from entering the United States because they allegedly prevented a “free and fair” election.
The suspension of travel comes amid an escalation of aggression against the Central American country that the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (Sandinista National Liberation Front, or FSLN for short) has governed for the past 15 years.
Aside from the travel ban, the United States slapped sanctions November 15 on Nicaraguan officials. The Organization of American States (OAS) also voted on November 12 to approve a resolution that condemned Nicaragua’s elections as not “free and fair” and called for “further action.”
“We are not concerned about the illegal measures the U.S. imposes against government officials or against Sandinistas,” said Nicaraguan Minister Advisor for Foreign Affairs Michael Campbell after Nicaragua’s National Assembly denounced the travel ban.
However, many myths continue to circulate in the corporate media about Nicaragua’s elections. This reporter was in Nicaragua to cover the elections and reported in a November 14 article on ordinary people’s opinions of the government. Toward Freedom believes it is necessary to report answers to commonly misreported beliefs.
Did the Ortega Government Ban Opposition Parties?
The following parties were registered to run in the November 7 elections:
Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (Constitutionalist Liberal Party or PLC)
Alianza FSLN (Alliance of Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional or Sandinista National Liberation Front Alliance, which is made up of nine parties)
Camino Cristiano Nicaragüense (Nicaraguan Christian Way or CCN)
Alianza Liberal Nicaragüense (Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance or ALN)
Alianza por la República (Alliance for the Republic or APRE)
Partido Liberal Independiente (Independent Liberal Party or PLI)
The Caribbean Coast has two autonomous regions. Indigenous peoples run the South Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region while Afro-descended people control the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region. Unlike voters in the rest of the country, people in these regions could choose a seventh party when voting for regional candidates. That party was called the Yapti Tasba Masraka Nanih Aslatakanka (YATAMA).
Parties were allowed to campaign from August 21 to November 3, but rallies were prohibited because of COVID-19 restrictions.
Why Is Daniel Ortega So Popular?
This year’s election can only be viewed in the context of the 2018 coup attempt that has the United States’ fingerprints all over it because of heavy U.S. funding to groups that carried out violence that killed more than 300 Nicaraguans, many of whom were Sandinistas. Nicaraguans say they continue to feel emotionally impacted by the events of that year. Nicaraguan farmers were devastated by the “tranques” or barricades coupmongers built on roads that blocked trade, as reported in a November 14 article. Below is a video of one college student, who recounted her experience and decried the United States’ role.
Hear from college student Daniela as she recounts her experience during the violent US backed coup attempt that rocked Nicaragua in 2018.
This is the death & destruction the US would like to see more of in Latin America, all in the name of "democracy." pic.twitter.com/gtG5HEXVm9
Government officials explained the economic impact of the 2018 coup attempt at a summit for international election companions and accredited press held the day before the elections. Nicaragua’s Central Bank President Ovidio Reyes said the country has experienced negative Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth since 2018. “Just as we were getting out of that cycle, the pandemic struck,” he said, adding two recent hurricanes on the Caribbean coast also impacted trade. However, this year, the country started to see the economy turn around. Much of that officials credit to the country’s policy of increased public health initiatives in lieu of a nationwide lockdown, which they say would have hurt the small country. “If we don’t work, we don’t eat,” said Laureano Ortega, who promotes Nicaragua to foreign investors, repeating the words of his father, President Daniel Ortega. And so came door-to-door visits to provide information, as well as a campaign involving mask wearing, handwashing and social distancing. As a result, Nicaragua has what appears to be the lowest amount of COVID-19-related deaths in the Western Hemisphere.
Why Are Nicaraguan Opposition Leaders in Jail?
In 2020, Nicaragua’s National Assembly passed Law 1055 or the “Law for the Defense of the Rights of the People to Independence, Sovereignty, and Self-Determination for Peace”. Under this law, it is a crime to seek foreign interference in the country’s internal affairs, request military intervention, organize acts of terrorism and destabilization, promote coercive economic, commercial and financial measures against the country and its institutions, or request and welcome sanctions against Nicaragua’s state apparatus and its citizens.
Nicaragua also has a law called article 90, chapter IV, that governs the financing of electoral campaigns, according to government documents.
“The financing system for parties or alliances of parties establishes that they may not receive donations from state or mixed institutions, whether national or foreign, or from private institutions, when they are foreigners or nationals while abroad. They may not receive donations from any type of foreign entity for any purpose.”
Article 91 also prohibits foreign donations to elections.
Article 92 lays out the punishment for breaking electoral finance laws. Consequences can include candidates paying a fine, being eliminated from running for elected or party positions, and being barred from serving in a public office from two to six years.
The Ortega government had offered amnesty in 2019 to opposition members who had helped organize the 2018 coup attempt. However, opposition leaders this year have faced arrest and jail time because they violated the above laws. The corporate media has used the terms “pre-candidates” and “presidential hopefuls” to describe these people.
Many countries around the world, including the United States, prohibit accepting money from foreign governments, foreign private institutions or individuals who are based abroad.
Nicaragua’s Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) governs elections and is considered the fourth branch of the country’s government. The same cannot be said in the United States, for example. The CSE is comprised of members from each of the 19 political parties that can register to run a candidate in the elections.
Weren’t Opposition Parties Barred from Participating?
After 100 percent of votes were counted, the FSLN prevailed with more than 75 percent. The second-place party, Partido Liberal Constitutionalista (PLC), received 14 percent, while other parties picked up only single-digit percentages. All opposition parties are anti-Sandinista.
#EleccionesSoberanas2021🇳🇮| Tercer Informe con 100% de Juntas escrutadas y computadas Elección: Presidente/a Vicepresidente/a🗳
— Consejo Supremo Electoral de Nicaragua 🇳🇮 (@cse_nicaragua) November 10, 2021
In the run-up to Election Day, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken denounced the “sham of an election.” In doing so, he reinforced the foundation for increased U.S. aggression on the small country, about the size of the U.S. state of Pennsylvania.
However, this reporter and close to 70 other journalists reporting on the elections found a calm and organized voting process at stations we visited across the country. Some of the protocols involved included:
Voters must display special identification created just for voting purposes to voting station workers
Voters names can be found in a computer database and on paper
One voter per station (which was usually the size of a classroom)
Handwashing, hand sanitizer and masks were provided
Ballots indicate parties along with the photos of each of the presidential candidates
Ballots are inserted into a box after voting
All ballots are counted at voting centers, not transported to another site as has been seen in the United States, which has resulted in missing ballots being found on streets and claims of fraud
Members of each political party participating in the elections were in the voting centers to monitor vote counting
How Do the Opposition Relate to the Ortega Government?
Below is a video (courtesy of Friends of Latin America) that shows two opposition-party monitors—one from the Independent Liberal Party (PLI) and the other from the Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC)—explaining that they both oppose what they deem “intolerance” among a certain section of the Nicaraguan opposition that supported the violence of the 2018 attempted coup. They also condemned U.S. sanctions, which they said would affect all Nicaraguans, regardless of political affiliation.
In the following video by Ramiro Sebastián Fúnez, a former Contra militant leader explains why she allied with the Sandinistas and the Ortega government.
Were Foreign Journalists and International Observers Allowed In Nicaragua?
This reporter, as well as 66 other journalists, were accredited as press prior to the elections. Not a single journalist on the ground reported seeing or hearing of their colleagues being banned from entering. A few election companions had trouble entering Nicaragua if they did not provide a negative COVID-19 test result on a printed document that contained both the seal from the testing facility as well as a doctor’s signature.
Meanwhile, no journalists from corporate media outlets were on the ground. Yet, outlets like the New York Times went on to claim the elections were dubious in nature. One Times reporter, Natalie Kitroeff, was met with facts from journalists on the ground while she tweeted from Mexico City that the elections were rigged.
Absurd fake news from US gov't mouthpiece NY Times: Unlike this propagandist I'm actually in Nicaragua, reporting on the elections
I went to 4 different voting stations; they were all full, with a totally calm, transparent process
Aside from 67 journalists, 165 international “accompañantes electoral,” or election companions, were allowed to participate. The journalists and election companions traveled from 27 countries. Some flew from as far away as Russia and China, while 70 election companions traveled from the United States.
Despite corporate media’s claims of being denied access to Nicaragua, this reporter only knows of one journalist who was denied access. But the Nicaraguan government wasn’t involved. Steve Sweeney, international editor at the Morning Star, a socialist newspaper in the United Kingdom, tweeted he had been detained in Mexico en route to cover the Nicaragua elections. Over three days, he was denied food and medical access as a diabetic, as he describes in the tweet below.
Coverage of my detention in Mexico where I was held in conditions some are describing as torture, having food withheld for three days.
Meanwhile, the corporate media has not raised their voices to decry the conditions under which Wikileaks Publisher Julian Assange and independent journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal have been held, both of whom the United Nations has reported are being tortured in prison.
Only one European Parliament member attended. Mick Wallace represents Ireland in the parliament and opposed the European Union cooperating with the United States to engage in a hybrid war against Nicaragua. He can be seen expressing opposition in the video below that he tweeted on November 11.
Recent statements from MEP's + #EU Officials on the #Nicaragua Elections have no basis in reality, are an affront to the people of Nicaragua + #UN Charter's principle of non-interference – Only crime is that they've pushed back against #US Imperialism to help their own people… pic.twitter.com/0mBaH796dB
A “hybrid war” is a term historian Vijay Prashad uses to describe the documented U.S. policy of wearing down a country’s defenses through “unconventional” tactics such as economic sanctions, funding proxy groups and NGOs, and distributing misinformation.
Nicaragua decided not to use the term “election observers” because of how OAS and EU election observers in the past had used their role to legitimize meddling in the country’s affairs, according to Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry representatives. Because of that history, as well as the OAS’ documented role in helping create the 2019 coup in Bolivia, Nicaragua did not allow the OAS to send election companions.
Were Nicaraguans Prevented From Voting?
Despite mainstream media claiming people were sometimes violently kept from voting, journalists on the ground in cities as diverse as Bilwi in the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region, Bluefields in the South Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region and in the Pacific northwestern city of Chinandega found a free, fair and transparent process in which Nicaraguans voted. Voters in Bilwi told The Convo Couch, a U.S.-based media outlet, that the government’s response after two hurricanes last year hit the Caribbean coast solidified support for the FSLN.
The Foreign’s Ministry’s Campbell told journalists 10 departments (Estelí, Chinandega, León, Rivas, Chontales, Matagalpa, Masaya, Granada, Carazo and Managua) and two autonomous regions contained 63 voting centers and 791 voting stations.
Everywhere foreign journalists and election companions visited contained a peaceful and orderly voting process. Voters expressed gratitude and pride in their country’s elections, which took a year to plan, according to government officials.
Many journalists recorded election workers supporting elderly and disabled people to vote, many times carrying them to voting stations.
Below are videos journalists on the ground developed to show how voting looked in different Nicaraguan cities.
Voting in Bilwi
Voting in Bluefields
Voting in Chinandega
Julie Varughese is editor of Toward Freedom. She spent a week traveling through Nicaragua as part of a delegation organized by the Associación de Trabajadores del Campo (Rural Workers’ Association, or the ATC for short), an independent farm workers’ organization.
