By Benjamin Norton – Jan 11, 2022
Western corporate media claims Nicaragua’s Sandinista government is “isolated,” but it has support from countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America representing billions, while US fights with EU
This January 10 was the inauguration of Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega, the leader of the socialist Sandinista Front. Western corporate media outlets are pushing a ridiculous narrative that Nicaragua is “isolated” from the so-called “international community” — by which they mean “the imperialists in the United States and European Union.”
The Economist, the coup-supporting mouthpiece of British billionaires and Western intelligence agencies, published an article that epitomizes this propaganda narrative, claiming the Nicaraguan “president is leading the country into increasing isolation.”
The piece — anonymous, like most of The Economist’s articles — happily chirped that “Dozens of countries refused to recognise the result of elections in November.” Reminder: there are 193 sovereign nations recognized by the United Nations, so a few dozen, predominately Western, countries is a small fraction of that.
The US and EU rejected Nicaragua’s November elections as “fraudulent,” and responded with economic warfare. (I’m still waiting for presidential elections to be held in the US/EU-sponsored Gulf monarchies.)
The Western imperialist powers then responded to Ortega’s January 10 inauguration with more economic warfare. Coordinating together, the US and EU jointly imposed new sanctions on top Nicaraguan government officials, as well as its military, its telecommunications institute, and a state-owned mining company.
Yet if we look past Western media distractions, we quickly see that, in reality, Nicaragua’s Sandinista government has many allies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, representing billions of people, including the largest nations on Earth.
Representatives from the following countries greeted the inauguration of President Ortega:
• China (the country with the world’s biggest population, 1.45 billion people)
• India (the country with the second-biggest population, 1.40 billion people)
• Russia (146 million people)
• Japan (126 million people)
• Vietnam (99 million people)
• Iran (86 million people)
• Turkey (86 million people)
• Korea (51 million people)
• Malaysia
• Angola
• Laos
• Syria
• Palestine
• Yemen
• DPRK
• Belarus
• Saharawi
• Cambodia
• Libya
• and of course many countries in Latin America, including Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Honduras, Mexico, and Argentina, as well as several nations in the Caribbean
• along with former government officials and solidarity activists from political organizations in many more countries
Western corporate media propagandists truly think everything on Earth revolves around the roughly 15% of the global population in the US and EU, which they dub the “international community.” They ignore the vast majority of humanity in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
When you stop seeing the world that way, it is very liberating — and you begin to realize how authoritarian and tightly controlled Western capitalist so-called “democracies” are.
It is not Nicaragua that is isolated, but rather the US and EU, who more and more keep losing their allies. Even France, a longtime colonial power, says it cannot trust the United States. And Washington threatened Germany with sanctions over its Nord Stream 2 pipeline with Russia.
RELATED CONTENT: President Daniel Ortega Inauguration: International Delegations Arrive in Nicaragua
While Western imperialists impose illegal sanctions across the planet — and fight among themselves — Asia continues to advance at a rapid pace, Latin America and Africa are gradually developing, and mechanisms of South-South integration are strengthening.
You want to know what real isolation is? More than 95% of UN member states voting every year at the General Assembly, over three decades, to condemn the illegal US blockade on Cuba. Now that’s international isolation.
For the 29th year in a row, basically the entire world voted at the United Nations against the illegal, murderous US blockade on Cuba.
184 countries voted to end the US blockade.
Only 2 voted for it: the USA and Israel.
3 US client regimes abstained: Colombia, Ukraine, and UAE pic.twitter.com/roZsqCu0NG
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) June 23, 2021
Featured image: The leaders of the Troika of Resistance – Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel – alongside China’s representative at Ortega’s inauguration in Managua
(Substack)
Ben Norton
Benjamin Norton is the founder and editor of the independent news website Multipolarista, where he does original reporting in both English and Spanish. Benjamin has reported from numerous countries, including Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Colombia, and more. His journalistic work has been published in dozens of media outlets, and he has done interviews on Sky News, Al Jazeera, Democracy Now, El Financiero Bloomberg, Al Mayadeen teleSUR, RT, TRT World, CGTN, Press TV, HispanTV, Sin Censura, and various TV channels in Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Benjamin writes a regular column for Al Mayadeen (in English and Spanish). He was formerly a reporter with the investigative journalism website The Grayzone, and previously produced the political podcast and video show Moderate Rebels. His personal website is BenNorton.com, and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.
