Israeli President Isaac Herzog (right) with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Jerusalem, on January 30 / credit: Olivier Fitoussi / JINI via Xinhua
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in Peoples Dispatch.
Adalah, the legal center for Arab minority rights in Israel, on Monday, January 30, filed an objection to the U.S. move to build its new embassy in Jerusalem on land stolen by Israel from its original Palestinian owners. It called for the immediate cancellation of the plan.
The objection was filed by Adalah to the Jerusalem District Planning Committee, U.S. ambassador to Israel Thomas R. Nides, and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on behalf of 12 descendants of the original owners, four of them U.S. citizens.
Blinken was in Israel on Monday to meet Israeli President Issac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other state officials.
In a press release on Monday, Adalah called the move to build a U.S. diplomatic compound in Jerusalem a violation of international law related to the respect of private property.
Israel confiscated the land from its original Palestinian owners under the Absentees’ Property Law, passed in 1950. Israeli state archive records, published by Adalah in July 2022, make Palestinian ownership clear. The documents reveal that the land was temporarily leased to British mandate authorities by its Palestinian owners well before the creation of Israel in 1948.
Adalah also called Israel’s Absentees’ Property Law “one of the most arbitrary, sweeping, discriminatory, and draconian laws enacted in the state of Israel.” It further said that the “law was drafted with racist motives and its sole purpose was to expropriate the assets of Palestinians.”
Israel had forced more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes and villages at the time of its creation in 1948, during the Nakba, and confiscated much of their land using the 1950 law. It is also doing the same in the occupied territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in its attempt to Judaize them.
Adalah underlined that if the United States proceeds with the plan, “it will be a full-throated endorsement of Israel’s illegal confiscation of private Palestinian property and the state department will become an active participant in violating the private property rights of its own citizens.”
The U.S. embassy is currently located in Tel Aviv, which was recognized by the U.S. as the capital of Israel until 2018. Under the Donald Trump presidency, the U.S. government changed this long-standing policy and officially designated Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Plans to move the embassy to Jerusalem were put in place then, and final proposals for the same were submitted in February 2021 under Joe Biden’s administration. Israel has already leased the land to the U.S. State Department.
The United States remains the only major country to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. The UN considers the city disputed territory as Palestinians also claim the city as their own.
On September 10, sections of the second Nord Stream 2 pipeline laid from the German shore and Danish waters were connected in a so-called above-water tie-in in the Baltic Sea. The opposing pipe strings were lifted from the seabed by the lay barge, Fortuna, and the pipe ends were cut and fitted together. The welding to connect the two lines took place on a platform located above the water on the side of the vessel. Then the connected pipeline was lowered to the seabed as one continuous string / credit: Nord Stream 2 / Axel Schmidt
Editor’s Note: This analysis originally appeared in Counterpunch.
Amid escalating tensions between U.S./NATO and Russia, all eyes are on Ukraine, but Nord Stream 2, a pipeline built to bring Russian gas under the Baltic Sea directly to Germany, is an integral part of the story.
U.S. Under Secretary for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland asserted (January 27), “If Russia invades Ukraine one way or another … we will work with Germany to ensure it (the pipeline) does not move forward.” Delayed by U.S. threats and sanctions, Nord Stream 2 highlights why countries are challenging U.S. leadership.
Since the 1960s when Europe first began importing Russian gas, Washington perceived Russian energy as a threat to U.S. leadership and Europe’s energy security. More recently, with fracking, the United States has become the world’s largest gas producer and a major exporter of LNG (liquefied natural gas). It wants to muscle in on Europe’s huge market, displacing Russian gas. With Nord Stream 2 completed and filled while it awaits German regulatory approval, the stakes are high.
Soon after pipeline construction began in 2018, the United States passed a law threatening sanctions on the Swiss ship laying the pipe. The Swiss pulled out and two Russian vessels completed the line despite sanctions. The United States threatened German contractors too, but Germany stood firm.
In 2021, with construction almost complete, German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited the White House, insisting on Nord Stream 2. U.S. President Joe Biden gave way. He wanted to mend relations with Germany—the European Union’s most powerful country.
Nord Stream 2, like its predecessor Nord Stream 1, began as a joint venture (51% Russia’s Gazprom, 49% Royal Dutch Shell as well as Austrian, French and German companies). Then Poland’s government agency responsible for monopoly regulation forced European partners to relinquish their share, creating another delay. The European companies gave up their shareholding but remained as equivalent financial investors in the pipeline.
Upon the Europeans relinquishing their shareholding, Gazprom became the sole pipeline owner. It is also the world’s largest gas supplier, with a gas pipeline monopoly in Russia. Gazprom wants to deliver its own gas via its pipeline to Europe. The EU, on the other hand, has maintained since 2009 that pipeline operators, in order to encourage market competition, cannot own the gas they carry. After construction of Nord Stream 2 began, the EU extended its rules to new marine pipelines originating abroad.
Nord Stream 2 was the only pipeline affected. While those pipelines completed prior to May 2019 were exempt, its completion was delayed by U.S. sanctions on pipelaying. Gazprom claimed discrimination and appealed. In August, a German court rejected the appeal. Gazprom then appealed to Germany’s Supreme Court.
German industrialists are desperate for Russian gas. Germany has only 17 days of gas supply in storage. Volatile short-term spot prices have compounded their woes. EU gas imports have increasingly shifted from long-term contracts with prices indexed to crude oil toward short-term deals by multiple traders in spot markets.
In 2020, spot prices were roughly half those of Gazprom’s long-term contracts. They surged as much as sevenfold in 2021, reflecting a mix of factors. On the demand side, economic revival from the pandemic boosted demand for gas in Asia as well as Europe. On the supply side, green sources of energy diminished in central Europe because of cloudy windless days. With the decommissioning of coal and nuclear power stations, utilities turned to natural gas.
European politicians blamed Russia for high gas prices, but Gazprom affirmed it was supplying the amounts stipulated in its long-term contracts. Gazprom wants long-term contracts to underpin the huge capital costs of gasfield and pipeline investments.
Russia is a petro-state. It’s the world’s single largest exporter of natural gas, and the second largest oil exporter—just behind Saudi Arabia. Pipelines and sea routes to market are vital to its economy. Russia wants to sell oil and gas in Asia and Europe, and they want to buy it. Nord Stream 2 makes commercial sense. It incurs no transit fees. The route to market is much shorter than aging pipelines via Ukraine. For its part, Ukraine depends on transit fees from gas shipped through these pipelines.
Nord Stream 2 remains controversial, bitterly opposed by Poland and Ukraine who presume it will reduce volumes and transit fees on pipelines through their countries. Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic and others want it. Germany, which carries huge weight in the EU, sees gas as a transition fuel after phasing out nuclear and coal.
Numerous hurdles during and since construction have delayed Nord Stream 2’s certification. The most recent forced its Swiss operating company to form a German subsidiary for the pipeline section in German waters. Upon eventual certification, Germany will become Europe’s main entry point for Russian gas.
The current crisis between Russia and United States/NATO has been brewing for many years. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, NATO expanded membership to Eastern Europe. NATO facilitates U.S. leadership, keeping European countries on its side against Russia. From a Russian viewpoint, NATO is provocative and threatening.
Part of the agreement underpinning the USSR’s dissolution was Western assurance that it would not expand into Russia’s sphere of influence, a pledge NATO most recently violated by stationing troops, ships and planes along Russia’s borders. The West accuses Russia of interference in Ukraine. Russia points to a 2014 Western-inspired coup in Ukraine and legitimate grievances of Russian-speakers in the breakaway Donbass republics. I document the two narratives in my book Oil and World Politics.
In December, Russia presented draft treaties to the United States and NATO, demanding a complete overhaul of Europe’s security architecture. Russia stressed the principle of indivisible and equal security for all countries, as agreed by all 56 members of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) at Istanbul (1999) and reaffirmed at Astana (2010). Members expressly agreed not to strengthen their security at the expense of other members’ security. The United States is a signatory.
President Putin warned that if the West continued its aggressive policies (NATO’s expansion and missile deployment in eastern Europe), Russia would take ‘military-technical’ reciprocal measures. He said, “they have pushed us to a line that we can’t cross.”
Russia’s initiative put the cat among the pigeons. A succession of high-level meetings occurred between Russia and the United States, NATO and OSCE. Washington presented written responses (January 26), seeking to narrow the debate to Ukraine and alleging the Russians were poised to invade it. Russia insisted repeatedly it would not initiate an invasion but would support Donbass if the latter were attacked.
The United States escalated tensions by repeating claims of an upcoming Russian invasion, even as Ukraine’s leaders expressed doubts. Washington threatened sanctions of unprecedented severity, including major Russian banks, high-tech goods, the SWIFT financial messaging system, and Nord Stream 2.
France and Germany balked because the sanctions would backfire on their economies. They appeared unconvinced Russia intended to attack unless provoked. A flurry of high-level bilateral discussions with Russia followed.
Significantly, representatives of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine (Jan 26) confirmed support for the 2015 Minsk II agreement and an unconditional ceasefire. Minsk II requires Ukraine to negotiate with the two Donbass republics on autonomy within a federalized Ukraine but, thus far, no negotiations have been held.
The EU imports 40 percent of its gas from Russia. For Russia, the routes through Ukraine and Poland are unreliable, because of hostility in both countries. Ukraine has a long-term deal with Gazprom for gas transit until 2024. Ukraine earns big transit fees, roughly $2 billion USD per year, and desperately wants to keep them. For its internal market, Ukraine buys Russian gas indirectly from Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
Whatever happens with Western sanctions, Russia has a strategic new market in China. Russia’s Power of Siberia pipeline began exporting gas from east Siberia to northeast China two years ago. The two countries have agreed to build a second line, Power of Siberia 2. It will bring gas from the Yamal peninsula in the Russian Arctic to China’s northeast. That means Yamal gas will be able to flow to China as easily as to Europe.
The current situation is dangerous and could easily escalate. Nord Stream 2 is critically important but national security trumps all. Security can only be achieved if it is universal. U.S. efforts to contain Russia and maintain leadership over Europe are not working. The world has become multi-polar and Nord Stream 2 is a fulcrum at the centre of the current crisis.
John Foster, international petroleum economist, is author of Oil and World Politics: the Real Story of Today’s Conflict Zones (Lorimer Books). He held positions with the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, BP and Petro-Canada. His blog johnfosterwrites.com and former TF guest editor Charlotte Dennett’s FollowthePipelines.com examine new issues.
For unionized rail workers, the train derailment exposes systemic failures in a railroad system that is driven by profit, not safety / credit: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in Peoples Dispatch.
On February 3, a Norfolk Southern freight train derailed in the town of East Palestine, Ohio. 50 out of 100 train cars ran off the tracks, igniting a massive fire that could be seen from miles away. Governor Mike DeWine of Ohio issued an evacuation order on February 5, due to the possibility of a major explosion. Local community members and activists across the country have sounded the alarms regarding the impacts the incident could have on public health and environment. Many have pointed to reports of animals dying en masse as evidence. Yet, despite the public outcry over the environmental and public health catastrophe, the actions of Ohio authorities reflect an attitude of concealment.
A reporter with NewsNation was recently violently arrested while covering one of Governor DeWine’s news conferences regarding the derailment. Police officers claimed that the reporter, Evan Lambert, was being too loud while the governor was speaking and in response, tackled him to the ground and handcuffed him. Lambert was released from jail the same day. “No journalist expects to be arrested when you’re doing your job,” Lambert toldNewsNation.
Ohio officials claim that they have received no reports of animals dying in or near East Palestine, despite multiple public reports of local animal deaths. NewsNation obtained a video of dead fish in the Ohio River near East Palestine. According to Wildlife Officer Supervisor Scott Angelo, these fish could have died due to toxic fumes dissolving oxygen in the water, although the causes have not been confirmed. Farmer Taylor Holzer claims that his foxes have fallen mortally ill after the derailment.
Many concerns of East Palestine residents, as well as those of the rest of the nation, stem from the fact that the derailed train had 20 cars carrying hazardous materials. Norfolk Southern Railroad conducted a “controlled release” on February 6 of several tankers that ran the risk of explosion. State officials are yet to inform residents of East Palestine about what effect this “controlled release” of toxic fumes, combined with a massive fire burning for five days, will have. Five of the derailed cars contained vinyl chloride, a carcinogen linked to various forms of cancer. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is monitoring two other toxic chemicals: phosgene and hydrogen chloride. Public health experts have already indicated that the effects of these chemicals could last decades. “There’s a lot of what ifs, and we’re going to be looking at this thing 5, 10, 15, 20 years down the line and wondering, ‘Gee, cancer clusters could pop up, you know, well water could go bad,” Silverado Caggiano, a hazardous materials specialist, toldNewsNation. Most recently, the EPA discovered that three other toxic chemicals were present in the derailed train.
Railroad Workers Point to Cost-Cutting As the Culprit
For unionized rail workers, the train derailment exposes systemic failures in a railroad system that is driven by profit, not safety. Railroad Workers United (RWU), a cross-union workers’ organization, writes, “in the last 10 years, the Class One carriers [rail companies with the highest revenues] have dramatically increased both the length and tonnage of the average train, while cutting back on maintenance and inspection, and we have a time bomb ticking.”
A report by The Lever highlighted that in 2017 during Republican Donald Trump’s presidency, Norfolk Southern lobbyists successfully rescinded regulations aimed at improving railroad safety regulations. Specifically, the company successfully beat back measures that would require train cars carrying hazardous, flammable materials to be equipped with electronic brakes which can stop trains more effectively than conventional brakes. Railroad company donors delivered over USD$6 million to Republican Party campaigns in the 2016 election cycle, but still claimed that safety regulations would “impose tremendous costs without providing offsetting safety benefits.”
Norfolk Southern made a record of over USD$12 billion in revenue last year, and recently announced a USD$10 million stock buyback program.
Last year, railroad workers in the United States were on the cusp of a strike, which would have shattered the U.S. economy as rail workers are some of the most essential workers in the nation. Workers were demanding more sick leave to combat the effects of “Precision Scheduled Railroading,” a corporate scheme to cut costs by demanding more work from fewer workers. Infamously, U.S. President Joe Biden and the U.S. Congress blocked rail workers’ right to strike by rapidly passing legislation that forced workers to accept an agreement without sick days.
Railroad Workers United argues that Precision Scheduled Railroading, and the overworking, lay-offs and lack of safety measures that unionized workers were fighting for last year were a primary reason for the derailment. One of the causes of the derailment, RWU argues, is that a damaged car was allowed to leave a terminal due to cut inspection times and layoffs. The train was also not blocked properly, the group claims, because blocking a train properly takes longer and therefore has been mostly done away with by rail companies. More Perfect Union has pointed out that rail companies have cut 22 percent of railroad jobs since 2017. Unionized workers were planning to use their right to strike to combat this trend in 2022. Instead, they were forced back to work on penalty of arrest.
Many Nicaraguans expressed support for their country’s voting process on November 7 as 2.8 million people cast their votes for as many as 6 national parties / credit: Julie Varughese
This article is the first in a series on Nicaragua’s elections.
Just three days after Sandinista revolutionary Daniel Ortega won his fourth term as Nicaragua’s president with 75.92 percent of the vote, U.S. President Joe Biden signed the RENACER Act.
An acronym for the “Reinforcing Nicaragua’s Adherence to Conditions for Electoral Reform Act of 2021,” RENACER slaps sanctions on Ortega government officials, attempts to restrict multilateral financing to Nicaragua, monitors Nicaragua’s relationship with Russia, punishes the country for alleged human-rights violations and targets reported corruption inside Nicaragua, among other items.
Then on November 12, 25 member states of the Organization of American States’ (OAS) Permanent Council voted in favor of a resolution that criticized the elections as not free and fair and urged further action.
The OAS resolution and fresh U.S. sanctions, as well as social media platforms suspending known Ortega supporters a week before the elections and corporate media outlets inaccurately reporting on Ortega make clear the United States is the primary contradiction in the Nicaraguan people’s struggle for liberation.
A view of Victoriano Potosme’s farm in San José de los Rios in Ticuantepe, Nicaragua. Peasants like Potosme won land ownership when Sandinistas took power in 1979 / credit: Julie Varughese
Social Markers Improve
Ortega, a militant in the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (the Sandinista National Liberation Front, or FSLN for short), was first elected president in 1984. His defeat in 1989 to neoliberal Violeta Chamorro, a scion of the landowning class, kicked off 16 years of neoliberal rule. During that time, Sandinista reforms were rolled back and social outcomes plummetted. That is why the era from 1990 to 2006 is referred to as the Neoliberal Period.
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega in 2013 / credit: Fernanda LeMarie/Cancillería del Ecuador
When Ortega was re-elected in 2006, the maternal mortality rate—a key marker of a country’s well-being–was 92.8 deaths per 100,000 live births. By 2020, that number dropped 60 percent to 37.5 deaths per 100,000 live births because of programs that include “maternity homes” to monitor pregnant women close to their due date. Other improvements include a 41 percent decrease in poverty, 100 percent electrification, 100 percent mobile-phone access, 85 percent internet accessibility, as well as a 100 percent increase in the amount of renewable energy the state generates. A free-trade zone employs 120,000 Nicaraguans, who work for foreign companies. Those corporations are required to abide by Nicaragua’s laws as well as respect the environment and workers’ rights. All of this means few people leave the country, but many have arrived from neighboring neoliberal Honduras.
Farmers Defend Nicaragua
Victoriano Potosme once labored under the orders of “latifundistas,” white plantation owners in Nicaragua.
“We were slaves under them,” he said while standing on his mountaintop farm in San José de los Rios in Ticuantepe, about an hour from the capital of Managua. There, he and his family grow award-winning fruits and have developed an internationally acclaimed organic fertilizer called BIO Buena Vista.
Victoriano Potosme (left), pictured with female relatives, speaks to a group of international visitors about the impact of the Sandinista Revolution on his family’s life as they farm on land seized from white wealthy landowners in San José de los Rios in Ticuantepe, Nicaragua / credit: Julie Varughese
For campesinos like Potosme, the November 7 elections were critical. After the Sandinista Revolution, peasants like Potosme were able to own the land they worked because of reforms that put 235,000 acres into their hands.
“If we go back to the neoliberal period, it would take us back 150 years,” he said a few days before casting his ballot.
The Human Rights Question
Biden released a statement on Election Day, citing the Inter-American Democratic Charter as justification for intervening in Nicaragua’s affairs. That charter was adopted on September 11, 2001, by the Organization of American States (OAS), a multilateral body the United States slapped together in the early 20th century as part of its efforts to control the Western Hemisphere. Per the Monroe Doctrine, the United States considers the rest of the hemisphere its “backyard.” After years of dormancy, that colonial term re-emerged during the Trump administration.
Then after the election, the OAS also chimed in.
“We reject the results of the illegitimate elections in #Nicaragua,” tweeted OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro. “I urge countries of the OAS to respond to this clear violation of the Democratic Charter during its #OASassembly.”
We reject the results of the illegitimate elections in #Nicaragua.
I urge countries of the OAS to respond to this clear violation of the Democratic Charter during its #OASassembly.
The OAS General Assembly held its 51st regular session this past week in Guatemala. The organization could not be reached for comment as of press time.
But numerous commentators have pointed out the hypocrisy of the United States and the OAS using terms like “democracy,” “self-determination” and “rights.”
Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) National Organizer Ajamu Baraka, who has taught U.S. history in universities, recently wrote an analysis in which he said all settler-colonial states like the United States have criminality at their core because they were born out of “systematic, terroristic and genocidal violence against Indigenous populations.” The United States now is the largest empire in recorded human history.
“Democracy and human rights are no more than ideological props to obscure the real interests and intentions of the rulers and to build domestic support for whatever criminal activity the state has embarked on,” Baraka went on to write. (Full disclosure: This reporter coordinates a wing of BAP.)
Killer Sanctions
Ordinary Nicaraguans understand the pain of sanctions.
“They are going to kill all the farmers, who dedicate themselves on a daily basis to life, to building, to working the land,” Jhaniors, a youth organizer in the Managua department, told a journalist who traveled with this reporter on a recent Friends of the ATC delegation. “The sanctions don’t help—they kill.”
Today Biden signed the “RENACER ACT” that sanctions the Nicaragua gov’t. Sanctions kill ppl. Over 40,000 ppl died from sanctions in Venezuela. How is sanctioning Nicaragua going to help the ppl?
Listen to Jhaniors, a youth organizer in Nicaragua speak on how sanctions will hurt: pic.twitter.com/iPU393viuH
Farmer Saul Potosme of Ticuantepe was positive the FSLN party would win the November 7 election / credit: Julie Varughese
Potosme’s son, Saul, said when the U.S.-funded, right-wing attempt at a coup took place in 2018, his family lost out on the opportunity to sell 30,000 to 40,000 pineapples. Participants in the attempted coup had blocked the path for trade to take place unless farmers paid up.
“We had no way of sustaining our families,” Saul said as he handled a bottle of his family’s award-winning organic fertilizer, BIO Buena Vista. “Many farmers here within this community rose up to get rid of the golpistas because we were sick of the coup attempt.”
“Golpistas” means “coupmongers” in Spanish.
The farmers traveled an hour to Managua to confront the coupmongers.
“It was a hard fight,” Saul said. “The reality is farmers are the ones who sustain a nation.”
After the coup attempt, the Ortega government implemented a program to create alternative ways for Nicaraguan farmers, young people, and women start and sustain businesses.
Nicaraguans on Election Day
In the run-up to Election Day, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken denounced the “sham of an election.” Then major social-media platforms like Facebook and Twitter disappeared the accounts of pro-Sandinista activists a week before the elections.
Voters in the city of Chinandega display their freshly inked thumbs, which indicates they recently cast their ballots / credit: Julie Varughese
Despite the saber-rattling and repression, more than 2.8 million Nicaraguans cast votes in a process that appeared more organized than what this reporter has witnessed in various jurisdictions in the United States. Nicaraguans took between five and 10 minutes to vote, while U.S. voters have had to stand on lines in the sweltering sun for as long as 11 hours, as seen during the 2020 presidential election. While U.S. voters must figure out how to get to the polls between long commutes, jobs and other obligations, Nicaraguans are given the day off. Plus, Nicaraguan college students get a week off to travel to their home departments to vote.
Some people are confused about how many parties/alliances are competing in Nicaragua’s elections today:
There are 7 options in total, but 1 party is regional, only in the Caribbean Coast (which has autonomy)
Support for Ortega’s party, the FSLN, was overwhelming on Election Day, resulting in an almost 76 percent victory, with 65 percent of people voting.
“I voted for Commandante Daniel Ortega for the benefit of the community,” said Raul Navarretto, 64, as he walked out of a voting center in Chinandega, a Sandinista stronghold three hours north of the capital of Managua.
Nineteen-year-old Arlen Rueda, who strolled a toddler out of a voting center, also voted for Ortega, saying she supported the government’s efforts to provide food to its population, among other endeavors.
Armando Casa Y Padilla, 75, would not divulge to this reporter for whom he voted. “Es una secreta.” Yet, he valued the voting process. “Only people can make democracy happen.”
I’m on Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. Garifuna, Creole, Mestizo, Miskito managed polling with all candidates on ballot. Strong support for government in formerly neglected area. Education, transportation, healthcare improvements given as reasons.@Blacks4Peace#Nicaraguapic.twitter.com/0IQGhqVBK0
There is so much propaganda and fake news in the corporate media trying to discredit Nicaragua’s elections. I visited 4 voting centers, and there were a lot of people voting in a very efficient, quick, and transparent process.
Election night, Sandinistas inundate the streets to celebrate the victoria of the FSLN. Here they celebrate as the preliminary results come in. pic.twitter.com/6C3KB6fSgC
While the corporate media spoke of Nicaraguan candidates and journalists being thrown in jail, the only people who were actually detained include “criminals, drug traffickers and golpistas,” according to Fausto Torrez, who handles international relations for the Associación de Trabajadores del Campo (Rural Workers’ Association, or ATC for short), an independent farm workers organization, as well as for the Coordinadora de Latinoamericana Organizaciones del Campo (the Latin American Coordinator of Rural Associations, or CLOC for short). CLOC is made up of 84 rural worker organizations in 18 Latin American countries.
Despite what the Western corporate media has reported, “pre-candidate” is not an official designation in Nicaragua. Those who wish to run for office must do so under the banner of one of six registered national parties, five of which are anti-Sandinista.
Many media outlets are opposed to the Ortega government and yet are allowed to operate. For example, the Chamorro family still operates La Prensa, a newspaper.
“Here, we hear from people who are against the government, but we don’t accept people taking U.S. money for coups,” Torrez said.
The Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation accepted $7 million between 2014 and this year from the U.S. Agency for International Development. Nicaragua has been cracking down on U.S. funded operations that seek to subvert their progress. That includes groups who were involved in the 2018 coup attempt that killed more than 300 Nicaraguans, most of whom were Sandinistas. Plus, this past September, Cristiana Chamorro, the foundation’s founder and daughter of former right-wing president Violeta Chamorro, was arrested for money laundering.
“In other places, they go to college and get drunk in financial paradises,” said ATC Secretary-General Edgar Garcia. “But here, they are in jail.”
This is the first in a series of articles on Nicaragua’s November 7 elections. The second article can be read here.
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.
