From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (misc.activism.progressive co-moderator)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: "Totalitarianism" in Nicaragua (V)
Date: 9 Oct 92 17:00:09 GMT
Organization: misc.activism.progressive on UseNet ; ACTIV-L@UMCVMB

"Totalitarianism" in Nicaragua (V)

Chomksy's reply in _letters_ section in Z magazine, reply to letter
form J.H. Spyker who wrote that "La Prensa's editorial staff did not
all go over to Nuevo diario. Nuevo Diario is a subvented Sandinista
paper, hardly the successor to La Prensa":

Chomsky Replies:

"The remarks on La Prensa to which Mr. Spyker refers were accurate. To
add further details, after editor Pedro Joaquin Chamorro was
assassinated by Somoza in 1978, his brother Xavier became editor. He
remained so until spring 1980 when a labor conflict briefly closed the
paper and the owner ousted him, at which point he and about 80% of the
staff left and founded El Nuevo Diario, which is the successor of the
journal that opposed Somoza if we take a journal to be constituted of
its editor and staff, not its owners and equipment.

The new editor of La Prensa, Pedro Joaquin Chamorro's son, had
previously been selling advertising. Later, he joined the CIA-ruin
contra directorate, while the journal openly support the U.S. attack
against Nicaragua, as indicated by a few quotes that I gave in Z. The
new La Prensa is hardly more than a propaganda organ of the U.S.
Embassy and the contras. Having recently read all issues from its
reopening in October through December, I can easily provide ample
evidence of this fact; studies of the earlier post-1980 period support
the same conclusion.

I agree with Spyker that terror does not justify "authoritarianism,"
and would only add that anyone who condemns the still harsher measures
of western democracies under far less threatening circumstances has
the moral right to criticize repressive acts against the opposition
that supports the U.S. attack against Nicaragua and its U.S.-funded
journal. There may exist a handful of such people, though few are on
record concerning Israeli practices, those of the U.S. and other
democracies during wartimes or lesser emergencies, and so on. On the
part of others, the condemnation of Nicaragua is as significant as the
condemnation of U.S. civil rights violations by Soviet commissars.

Noam Chomsky
July/Aug 1988 Z magazine


            =============================================
            T h e   " N i c a r a g u a   L i b r a r y "
            =============================================

*
* =========
* Nicaragua
* =========
*
  WHO-WERE CONTRAS    Contras' origins; make-up; practices - documented
  FSLN     H-RIGHTS  Documented HRs comparison w/Somoza,Guat,ES,others
  FSLN     MISKITOS  Sandinista treatment of Miskitos;Charges & Realit
  FSLN     NICAJEWS  Debunks charges of Sandinista 'Anti-Semitism'
*
  OXFAM84  NICARAG   Oxfam America's 1984 report on Nicaragua, in full
  FSLN     ACHIEVE   Documented: achievements of the Nica. revolution
*
  NICA-84  ELECTION  Documented: Fair under Sandinistas; US subversion
  FAIRNESS NICA-USA  Flwup:`Is Nicaragua More Democratic than the US?'
  NICRAGUA ELECTION  Study in US subversion of '90 Nicaraguan election

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