Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site mmintl.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka From: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: El Salvador, Nicaragua Message-ID: <766@mmintl.UUCP> Date: Sun, 3-Nov-85 23:43:13 EST Article-I.D.: mmintl.766 Posted: Sun Nov 3 23:43:13 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 5-Nov-85 07:44:05 EST References: <531@nbires.UUCP> <7280@ucla-cs.ARPA> <347@ubvax.UUCP> Reply-To: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) Distribution: net Organization: Multimate International, E. Hartford, CT Lines: 50 In article <347@ubvax.UUCP> tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch) writes: >In article <7280@ucla-cs.ARPA> ekrell@ucla-cs.UUCP (Eduardo Krell) writes: >>La Prensa IS NOT a right wing newspaper. The Chamorro family who owns >>the paper were antisomozas and took a leading place in demanding from >>Somoza to step down. La Prensa, just like many other nicaraguans, found >>that the Sandinistas were betraying their own principled of having free >>elections and a democracy. La Prensa is now the only opposition media >>in Nicaragua. > >This defense of La Prensa is disingenuous to say the least. Agreed, the fact that La Prensa is run by a member of the Chamorro family proves nothing. But, while I have no direct evidence (do you?), I doubt very much that La Prensa is a right wing newspaper. It is certainly the most right wing of Nicaragua's newspapers, but the entire right wing of Nicaraguan politics has been eliminated or forced underground. I believe that there were truely right wing newspapers, which were forced out of business by the Sandinistas. >Before federal institutions like the New Deal programs and DOD had >legitimacy and consensual support of the US population, censorship >was a very common practice here. Pacifists were imprisoned, WWII >reporting was under complete censorship, etc.. > >Only after we had won the war and everyone saw their interest in >supporting a large interventionist national state and a bipartisan >foreign policy built on foreign aid and military power did the US >state have enough confidence to add "freedom of the press" to the >laws currently in force. Give me a break. Newspaper censorship in this country took place only during declared wars. The rest of the time, we've had freedom of the press. >The problem with lazy applying ideas of "democracy" and "freedom" to other >nations like Nicaragua is that these ideas when enunciated here carry >so much connotation from US history and experience, and so much >forgetting and erasing of US history to suit the current ideal, >that applying them to other nations without great care amounts to >assuming that those nations have had a history similar to the US >with similar lessons learned and the same "good" morality developed. The question is not so much how free the country the is, but which way it is going. It is hardly a valid criticism of the U.S. to say that it has gotten more free with time. Unfortunately, after a promising start after the ouster of the Samozaists, Nicaragua now seems to be going the other way. Frank Adams ihpn4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka Multimate International 52 Oakland Ave North E. Hartford, CT 06108