Tag: Daniel Ortega

Nicaragua forms space agency

2:30 pm

The new colonial movement? In what appears to be a complete surprise within its own scientific community, the government of Nicaragua today announced the formation of its own space agency.

[T]he National Assembly approved the creation of the agency for the “defence of supreme interests” in space. It will seek “to expand the country’s capacities in the educational, industrial, scientific and technological branches”, according to president Daniel Ortega´s proposal.

The article at the link provides little information about this government effort, and instead is mostly filled with commentary by other scientists expressing their opposition to it. Nor can I blame them. Unlike rich countries like the UAE, Nicaragua is one of the poorest in Latin America. It can’t afford to buy the educational resources of the United States, as the UAE did.

Moreover, it is ruled by a socialist/communist government whose ability to produce wealth is exceedingly limited. If anything, the nation’s poverty is because of that government’s top-down policies. Establishing a space agency is merely another aspect of this approach, and will likely only act to provide photo ops for its leaders and little benefit to its citizens.

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Nicaraguan socialists move to kill opposition

10:17 pm

Soon to be like Venezuela: The socialist government of Nicaragua, led by liberal heart-throb Daniel Ortega, has now declared the Catholic Church its enemy, and is scaling up it assassinations and death squads against its opponents.

The government “has declared war on the church,” said Juan Sebastián Chamorro, a member of the opposition alliance.

While the church tried to strike the delicate balance between mediator and defender, it was Monsignor Báez who emerged as the face of the opposition, with a commanding presence over social media. The role gives him the freedom to denounce the government without reservations.

“What there is here is an armed state against an unarmed people,” he said in an interview at the seminary where he lives on the outskirts of Managua. “This is not a civil war.”…

Protesters die daily, and many more have been injured and arrested as the resistance hardens against the rule of Mr. Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo. Most of the dead were civilians, some teenagers — but police officers have also been killed.

This is how every collectivist/socialist/communist government ends up, with murder and violence and the imposition of tyranny. Every. Single. Time.

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Nicaragua and China break ground on new canal

2:47 pm

In a largely symbolic act, Nicaragua broke ground on Monday on the Chinese-backed construction of a new canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

The project is being pushed by Nicaraguan President (and former Marxist guerrilla leader) Daniel Ortega and financed by Wang Jing, “a little-known Chinese telecom mogul well connected to China’s political elite.” And as much as normally support any ambitious effort to create business opportunities for people in poor countries, this quote from the article raised some red flags about the project I hadn’t thought of previously:

The proposed canal is set to intersect Lake Nicaragua, known locally as Lake Cocibolca, sending cargo ships and tankers straight through the largest source of freshwater in Central America. Further, the canal is expected to displace tens of thousands of mostly rural and indigenous landholders and would likely devastate over 400,000 acres of rainforests and wetlands, which scientists say are critical to local and regional biodiversity conservation efforts.

I am usually very skeptical of environmental protests since their motives are almost always to promote socialism or communism and not to protect the environment. Here however the protests are against a project being promoted by a Marxist ruler and the communist Chinese. Moreover, it does seem a reasonable question to worry about the possible introduction of ocean saltwater into “the largest source of freshwater in Central America.”

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