Sandinista! and the ugly American media.

I was shocked this morning to hear CBS's Katie Couric (? or whatever her name is) refer to "U.S. nemesis Daniel Ortega". At least, that is what I think I heard her say. Other media called him "an old Cold War enemy". Printed media tends to be less hostile than televised media. I was forced to face the facts: Americans still haven't given up imperialist schemes to dominate Nicaragua.

What did Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas ever do to become the "nemesis" of the United States?
They overthrew a dictatorship. (an American-made dictatorship)
They established constitutional government after four and a half decades of the corrupt U.S.-made-and-supported Somoza dictatorship.
They set up a democracy. Nicaragua has had free elections since 1984.
They raised the literacy rate from 50% to 88%.
They set up a national effort to improve health care.
They expanded civil liberties after overthrowing the dictatorship.

What did the U.S. do to Nicaragua?
The U.S. invaded and occupied the country from 1922 to 1934.
The U.S. killed the popular charismatic leaders of Nicaragua.
The U.S. established a brutal dictatorship to run Nicaragua for 43 years from 1936 to 1979.
The U.S. used the CIA to finance, arm, and train former members of Somoza's National Guard as Contras.
The U.S.-backed Contras mined Nicaragua's harbors, raped, tortured, and killed Nicaraguans.
The U.S. raised money for these death squads by selling arms to Iran and crack cocaine in U.S. cities, through a deal between Oliver North and Manual Noriega.
The U.S. continues to manipulate events in Nicaragua through financial aid and advice to regressive political parties there.

The U.S. owes Nicaragua an apology. We should face the responsibility for what we have done, cease all meddling, and begin to make amends in a new relationship based on equality.

Other colonial powers also sometimes tend to have a condescending and hostile attitude toward former colonies, partly out of shame, like a man who has raped a woman, and is enraged with some form of self-hate when he sees her again. We see this in Japan and Europe, too. Even if the rapist was your grandfather, not you, you need to educate yourself, climb up from your ignorant state, and face the reality squarely and without affectation.

In an ideal world, the newscasters should be the first to find and face reality, but being corporate news networks (cash-stream media or CSM) whores, they will never deliver reality but only twisted reflections distorted by greed, guilt, arrogance, manufactured needs and desires, and those other aspects of the corrupt system… and inner evil wolf. I didn't mean Blitzer, the bastard child of a wolf and one of Satan Klaus's material girl reindeer.

FSLN stands for Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional.

More information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandinista
http://www.answers.com/topic/sandinista-national-liberation-front