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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