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From: jim@ISM780B.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Orphaned Response
Message-ID: <39000034@ISM780B.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 30-Nov-85 04:50:00 EST
Article-I.D.: ISM780B.39000034
Posted: Sat Nov 30 04:50:00 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 3-Dec-85 20:50:50 EST
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Nf-From: ISM780B!jim    Nov 30 04:50:00 1985


>He probably does, but that is not the *good* reason why he doesn't
>clamp down on the press - not the reason acceptable to you
>and me. You wouldn't like to be at the mercy of his whim, would
>you ? The good reason is that he *can't*. Think of Presidents
>Johnson and Nixon, driven from power they loved so much, by
>hostile press. You may be sure they felt the press was unfair
>and subversive. They were sorely tempted - if they only could !

I won't argue that a president could simply eliminate the press if he wanted
to, but it seems to me that Watergate, Congress, public opinion, had something
to do with Nixon leaving office.  And to apply the statement to Johnson
is rather simplistic too, it seems to me.

>(1)They call themselves Leninist;
>Lenin scorned press freedom as a bourgeois superstition; he finished
>it off in the first days of his rule.

Guilt by association and simplification.  Certainly many Sandinistas call
themselves Marxists; do you have documentation of them calling themselves
Leninists?  (Surely you don't equate the two, do you?)  Even if they do,
do they have the same tastes in food as Lenin?  Do the Sandinista priests
have the same attitude toward religion as Marx or Lenin?  I consider Einstein
a personal idol, and I agree with much of what he said, but it doesn't include
his views on quantum mechanics or his apologies for Stalinism.  La Prensa
printed quite freely at first, and is still in business, so the Sandinistas
differ at least in degree from Lenin.  Judge the Sandinistas by the evidence
you have about the Sandinistas, not through guilt by association.  You can
imagine what label I apply to that technique.

>(2)If I am not mistaken,
>La Prensa censorship precedes any serious military pressure.

You may be mistaken.  Can you document it?  If you do, be sure to
include what was censored.  Many nations in the "Free World" censor their
press to some degree, but we don't try to overthrow them.  In the U.S.,
printing pictures of mutilated bodies over articles about U.S. officials
is not generally tolerated.  Do you apply the same standards to the
Sandinistas as you do to everyone else?  If not, why not?

>(3)Finally, the censorship is universal, not just military (*that*
>could be justified *now*).

Do you mean universal to subjects that La Prensa covers, or universal
throughout Nicaragua?  If the latter, can you document the claim?
Please clarify.

>So it looks like a combination of bad
>intentions (less important) and absolute power.

There is no absolute power.  They are not absolutely powerful against
the U.S., nor are they absolutely powerful against dissention and eventual
resistance.  However, I grant that it can come pretty close; an example
we can certainly agree on is the Ayatollah's Iran.  But unlike you I
don't believe this view of power of the Sandinistas follows from the evidence.

>True,  *safety valve* isn't the only reason. There is also the
>*showcase* reason, for foreigners.

I agree that, regardless of the Sandinista's goodness/badness,
keeping La Prensa running positively affects their image.  But that seems to
me pretty small compared to the negative effects on PR of the shutdowns and
of the state of emergency in general.  It seems almost as though you are
using the fact that they *do* keep La Prensa running as evidence that they
are villains.  It feels a whole lot like a hostile bias against the
government and a friendly bias to La Prensa.  It seems to me that there
is a causal relationship between what La Prensa prints and the government's
actions towards them.  Only a detailed examination of that relationship
can possibly yield any truth about the motivations involved.

-- Jim Balter (ima!jim)