From: delval@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Alvaro del Val)
Subject: Re: El Salvador: Death Squads Escalate
Organization: Stanford University CSLI
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 02:56:50 GMT

In article <1992Aug19.040844.17554@oracle.us.oracle.com> mfriedma@uucp (Michael Friedman) writes:
>In article <1992Aug15.075012.1099@Csli.Stanford.EDU> delval@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Alvaro del Val) writes:
>>In article <1992Aug10.180615.2587@oracle.us.oracle.com> mfriedma@uucp (Michael Friedman) writes:
>>>In article <9208100603.AA07430@poly.math.cornell.edu> harelb@MATH.CORNELL.EDU (Harel Barzilai) writes:
>>>>[From PeaceNet's reg.elsalvador via misc.activism.progressive ]
>
>>>>                Death Squads Escalate "Dirty War" 
>
>>>>     A series of unsolved killings, many of them carried out in 
>>>>characteristic death squad fashion, are threatening to undermine El 
>>>>Salvador's peace process. [...]
>
>>>>*  On July 31, an employee of the telecommunications company ANTEL 
>>>>was shot in the capital. 
>
>>>>[More Killings]
>
>>>>*  Ads from clandestine right wing groups continue to appear in the 
>>>>press.  A July 27 ad charged that the Truth Commission and the Ad 
>>>>Hoc Commission were created to destroy the Army, and added that the 
>>>>peace accords have no legal validity because they are not the law 
>>>>of the republic. 
>
>>>Does anyone else find the inclusion of right wing ads in a list of
>>>murders revealing?  Apparently right wing ads are just as bad as
>>>killing activists, eh Harel?  But if the people you support get
>>>control of El Salvador they'll end all that, won't they?  Free speech?
>>>Who needs it?
>
>>How tempting it always is to quote out of context, right?
>
>Are you accusing me of quoting out of context?  If so, you are a liar.
>
>I challenge you to find anything in the original post that I omitted
>that would change the meaning of what Harel wrote and I excerpted.
>
>Once again, you are a liar.
>

Yes, I'm making that charge, and no, I'm not a liar. Suppose a news
report about the increase of nazi activities in Germany mentions both
physical attacks on jews and non-white inmigrants and some other
pacific nazi activities, taking both as evidence of an intimidation
campaign against jews and inmigrants. If you take the mere fact that
both types of evidence are mentioned in the same report as evidence of
the totalitarian tendencies of its writer, and "forget" to mention
that they are only put together because both are relevant to establish
the existence of such an intimidation campaign, then you are quoting
out of context. So that tells you what your "omissions" were; I also
quoted them in my previous post.

Furthermore, taking the fact that both types of item are mentioned in
the news report as evidence that the writer thinks that both are
equally bad, displays, in my opinion, a simple lack of common sense.

As for the rest of your post (which I deleted), no, I don't think
anybody should be banned from the political process.  This applies to
the ban on the Nazi party in Germany, to the ban on the Communist
party in Russia, and to the far right in El Salvador. I would however
expect that if anybody from these parties in any of these countries
engages in criminal activities then s/he would be prosecuted, an
expectation which is not fulfilled in El Salvador and which the ads in
dispute try to make sure is never fulfilled. In so far as their goal
is to make crime go unpunished, they are intimidating. But, no, I
don't excuse censorship, nor support banning these ads. Which doesn't
prevent me from seeing them as what they are (which doesn't mean that
I think they are as bad as the killings!!!!)

My main point in answering your post was to reply to (what I perceived
as) your swift dismissal of news about worrisome developments in El
Salvador on the basis of your dislike for the political views of the
poster.  Turning around the saying, "don't kill the message only
because you don't like the messenger".

Alvaro


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