Did Nicaragua really just abolish elections, as headlines from the New York Times to the BBC to the UN claimed last week? I am joined by journalist Ben Norton, host of the Geopolitical Economy Report YouTube channel, and fresh from Managua's 47th anniversary celebrations of the Sandinista Revolution, to separate fact from a deliberately distorted quote. Ben explains that Co-President Daniel Ortega's speech, stripped of context, was not a renunciation of elections but a sovereign measure barring foreign-funded parties from contesting them, following the stolen election in Honduras and Gustavo Petro's accusations of US-Israeli interference in Colombia. We trace this back through the Contra war and neoliberal privatisations to Nicaragua's present accomplishments like free healthcare and education, low crime, and Chinese-backed infrastructure, as Marco Rubio names Nicaragua next in line after Venezuela and Cuba.

GEOPOLITICAL ECONOMY EXPLAINER

Just over a month ago, the world was abuzz with talk of the Donroe Doctrine? Radhika explains what the so-called "Donroe Doctrine" was supposed to be, what it really was, how it lined up with the Monroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt Corollary, and why it is hardly surprising that it was barely proclaimed before it was violated. The explanation may surprise you.

Do the Democrats and Republicans really differ, or are they two wings of the same corporate machine? I am joined by economist Michael Hudson to examine why no progress can be made for American wage earners until the whole electoral system is changed. Michael Hudson argues that the DNC's dependence on Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and AIPAC financing has made it as captured by capital as the Republicans it claims to oppose, a capture traceable to the Clinton-era abandonment of the working class and the sidelining of Bernie Sanders. The coming midterms, they argue, are shaping up as a civil war within the Democratic establishment between an emboldened democratic-socialist left and an old guard that would rather lose with a corporate centrist than win with a candidate beholden to ordinary voters.