From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (misc.activism.progressive co-moderator)
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive,alt.activism,soc.culture.latin-america
Subject: "Totalitarianism" in Nicaragua (II)
Date: 26 Sep 92 08:43:23 GMT
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Organization: misc.activism.progressive on UseNet ; ACTIV-L@UMCVMB
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu

"Totalitarianism" in Nicaragua (II)

    "We might, incidentally, ask what would happen if a Libyan
    official or Qaddafi enthusiast were to arrive in Tel Aviv to
    deliver a public address praising Abu Nidal..."

[From _Is Peace At Hand?_ (see below)]

Washington has also attempted in other ways to elicit a hostile
Nicaraguan response that might be utilized by the State
Department Office of Public Diplomacy in its struggles in "enemy
territory" at home.  The Reagan administration sent Secretary of
Education William Bennett, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and assorted contra
supporters (David Horowitz, Ronald Radosh, etc.) to Nicaragua,
where they delivered inflammatory public addresses denouncing the
Sandinistas and praising the U.S. proxy army attacking Nicaragua,
prominently reported in the press (with approval, in @u<La
Prensa>).  But unfortunately, these efforts elicited no reaction
that could be exploited for propaganda purposes.

We might, incidentally, ask what would happen if a Libyan
official or Qaddafi enthusiast were to arrive in Tel Aviv to
deliver a public address praising Abu Nidal.  Or suppose a
Japanese cabinet minister had landed in Washington in 1942 (when
the national territory was not under attack or even threat -- in
fact, it had not been threatened since the War of 1812) to
deliver diatribes about American racism and injustice and to call
for the forceful overthrow of the government by the "freedom
fighters" then liberating the Philippines and other Western
colonies.

We need not speculate, since as distinct from totalitarian Nicaragua,
Israel and the United States would never tolerate any such act for one
instant.  In fact, the U.S. has barred even anti-Sandinista Nicaraguan
legislators who are opposed to contra aid, mothers tortured by
Duarte's security services who were invited by NOW to speak in New
England towns, a delegate from the Salvadoran Human Rights Commission
to a UN session on disarmament and development that the U.S.
boycotted, among many others -- for example, the Canadian publisher of
several of my books, still barred from our sacred soil because he
opposed U.S. aggression in Indochina.  All such matters are off the
agenda, and in our extraordinary imperial arrogance, we take for
granted that Nicaragua must tolerate the infantile antics and vulgar
abuse that are a Washington specialty, in a manner that no other state
would endure -- surely not the U.S. or its allies.

	[Chomsky could cite other examples, such as the USA Today
	article I have somewhere amidst piles of Free Press reporting,
	on the Columbian journalist arrested upon her entry to the
	U.S. as her opposition to Washington's central american
	policies constituted a "security threat" (surely the officials
	of the former USSR would have understood the logic). She had
	intended to appeal an expulsion, but it had been arranged that
	she would have had to stay in the rather unpleasant prison
	*during* the course of her appeal, at which point, her lawyer
	reported, she decided to drop the appeal, wanting to just get
	out of the prison where she had been confined. --Harel]

The attack against Nicaragua and the programs of state terror to
suppress democracy and social reform in the client states reflect
an elite consensus.  That is why they are not discussed in any
minimally serious way.  The media will not expose what they know
to be true, and Congress will not constrain the terrorist
commanders as long as they seem to be succeeding in their tasks. 
The fate of the Central American accords lies in the hands of the
domestic enemy of the state, the citizens in "enemy territory" at
home.  As so often in the past, dissent, protest, pressures of a
wide variety that escape elite control can modify the calculus of
costs of planners, and offer a slight hope that Washington can be
compelled to permit at least some steps towards "justice, freedom
and democracy" within its domains.

From _Is Peace At Hand?_ by Noam Chomsky, premier issue of Z magazine,
January 1988. [Copy by email from harelb@math.cornell.edu; similarly
for more info. about 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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