From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!CAD:ucbesvax!turner
Newsgroups: net.college
Title: Flame, Anyone? - (nf)
Article-I.D.: ucbcad.702
Posted: Thu Feb 24 03:53:07 1983
Received: Fri Feb 25 03:02:44 1983

#N:ucbesvax:2900008:000:3863
ucbesvax!turner    Feb 24 03:17:00 1983

	There's a misinterpretation going on here that I don't feel
    responsible for: it is not the demonstrators who were seeking a
    forum (which you mistakenly equate with press coverage.)  Rather,
    the demonstrators were protesting the LACK of free speech in those
    countries for which Kirkpatrick is a professional apologist.  I have
    taken pains to point this out repeatedly.

	Certainly, this protest is getting press coverage.  Whether the
    demonstrator's cause has been damaged remains to be seen.

	A personal anecdote:

	The group staging this protest (Students Against Intervention
    in El Salvador - or SAINTES, drolly enough) had, in 1980, invited
    representatives from the main aboveground resistance movement in
    El Salvador to give a presentation on recent developments in that
    country.  There was a short film and short speech.

	The short speech was about a massacre on the border of Honduras
    and El Salvador, where Honduran troops had, in cooperation with
    the Salvadoran forces in pursuit, blocked a group of refugees, and
    cornered them at a bend on a river bank.  This group of refugees
    consisted mostly of older men, women and children.  Salvadoran troops
    opened fire on them after they had been safely moved into a convenient
    position.  Upon hearing rumors of this incident, representatives
    of church and human rights organizations went to investigate.

	They couldn't see the bodies for the vultures.  The death toll
    was around 600.

	I heard this story in the fall of 1980.  This was at least four
    months after it had happened.  It was another FIVE months after this
    presentation before it reached the papers in my area.  And then it was
    treated rather lightly, and disappeared.

	In the meantime, visiting home for Christmas, I told my father
    what I had learned.  He was deeply shocked.  He asked, "But...
    why haven't we heard about this?"  This was still several months
    before the story reached the papers in dilute form.

	And I gave him the only answer I could think of, given the timely
    exposure of this incident everywhere else in the world (except the
    U.S. and El Salvador.)   I told him, "We have a controlled press in
    this country."  My father is a conservative man, who would normally
    have objected to this statement.  This time, however, he was too
    confused.  He felt hurt that his ears had somehow been judged too
    sensitive for certain kinds of news.  He had no response.

	Do you see the point I'm trying to make?  Perhaps it IS "boorish"
    to shout down a U.N. Ambassador.  Maybe being so vocal in this way
    does harm to the cause of truth.  Perhaps shrill screams are of
    no avail against injustice.

	But please exercise your imagination to this extent: think of
    shrill screams against injustice all around you on a river bank
    in Central America, while machine-gun bullets shred you and your
    family into meat for birds.  Hey, this is real!  This is the Fascism
    that Americans feel so morally superior about having defeated in
    World War II.  American tax dollars feed it.  American corporations
    make money on it.  American politicians get elected on platforms of
    keeping it alive as a bulwark against International Terrorism.

	And American newspapers cover it up.

	So I've had it with "freedom of speech" snobs.  Heckling (and
    snappy come-backs to hecklers) is a well-honed part of the political
    process in places like England.  Only Ivy League prima donnas get all
    miffed when someone tries to make them look silly.  Smart people with
    something to say can defend themselves.  And if Jeane Kirkpatrick can't?
    Draw your own conclusions.

		Shrilly, Arrogantly, Irrationally, Stupidly
		and Boorishly Yours in Ignorance of Basic Human Rights,
		    Michael Turner