Blindmanwithx-ray visionseescancer beforedoctorscan i second term now emerging that' 7 Adopts Plan to Save Dolphins 's Hail Decision, Other Tuna Canners Jump on Board saved my i^ehtasljingip^ and is made up entirely of ruthless women! MACHO MEN have been known to cringe and run at the sight ot a special army unit Wonder women Slugged ruppies Duaru uxl uKra-nghtlMRobenoBAubuuBRAZIL CASEY AI I Hl BA1 Gt Hubby tries to kill wife for IHURSOAY APSIt I 9 ' got. being too fat VERT jrn.r Committre. m«dv the rutrmrnl in• letter that h»didnut mike public, but -One by one in the 1960s and 1970s, South American governments fell under military control. Now the soldiers are in _retreat. The following report on Latin America’s changing political face is based on a tour of regional capitals. ECUADOR Elected civilian governmeni since 1979 PERU Elected civilian governmeni since 1980 BOLIVIA Elected civilian , government since 1982 government J Democracy demociacy n, '98$ ARGENTINA “THEY am* lo w s DOWNHK,HJTI'VENEVERSEEN MIK SWIMWITSELF I" Army trains gutsygals to kill with their bare hands tHE ALL FEMALE unit I I earning Preparation H is No. 1 target of shoplifters Menace Battles Back From Despair & Violent Rage StarKist Seafood Co. plans to exploit new policy in advertising campaigns. RHOIO Sutterers are turning to a new technique tor relief as shoplifting experts say the Hores is Preparation H. Chile following trend toward democracy GAL SOLDIERS ere all-women and lough Election set SANSALVADOR. Ei Salvador tAP) - TheCentral ____ j Alehf that rhe Wife has twins while locked in shed 6 months Walkman radio is found buried with 2,500-yr-old corpse Angry bettor shoots slow race horse Dead baby brought back to life with baking soda By CHARLES J. HANLEY SANTIAGO. Chile (AP) - Democra- *cy has a new Latin beat, one echoing up ; and down a continent. i You can hear i t in the c langor of ^pots and pans in Chile, in the samba drums of young Brazilian marchers, in the chants of election crowds in Argen- Hina, and demonstrators in Uruguay. Across South America, the m i l ita ry lockstep is breaking down. Where only two elected c iv i l ian governments existed five years ago, a half- doz^n now debate and decide the ir nat io n s ' future in the open l igh t o f parliaments and the press. And pressure is mounting on four rema in ing m i l i ta ry governments to hasten the ir w ithdrawa l to the barracks. X iv i l ian iza t ion " is contagious. Last October’s elections in A rg e n t in a in spired democrats in nearby Uruguay and Chile. And those movements now encourage others, even raising faint hopes in Paraguay, ironclad domain of - ~n n n ^ a n r .o n Alfredo Stroessner. DEMOCRACY IN SOUTH AMERICA VENEZUELA Elected civilian governments since 1958 COLOMBIA Elected civilian governments since 1957 GUYANA Civil authoritarian since 1974 [ SURINAME I Military government I smce 1980 FRENCH GUIANA oepenoancy PARAGUAY I Military govt I smce 1954 URUGUAY Senator blisters CIA director in ‘mishandling’ SyW.OALE«L*C* WASHINGTONIAP) - Srn BarryGoWwaWr on TurxHv angrily rebuk'd CIA DlrecuM William J Caseyfor Inline >»l»»him 10 »dvanreo( theagency'i role iominingNicaraguan ports, advising that If anything nmitar (o It happens again "I'm going to raise A FORMER BANK vice president Lrte insurance American foreign policy—in El Salvador or Guatemala, for instance. The authors conduct a diligent content analysis of major media to demonstrate this point. In comparing the news coverage of murdered Polish priest Jerzy Popieluszko in October, 1984 with news accounts of the assassination of Archbishop Romero, 72 religious victims of violence in Latin America from 1964 to 1978, 23 other religious victims of state terrorism in Guatemala between 1980 and 1985, and the four U.S. religious women murdered in El Salvador in 1980, we find that the amount of media coverage of this one Polish priest in The New York Times, Newsweek, Time and CBSNews dwarfed the material about all the other victims of more murderous (and even more explicit) state- sponsored violence that have occurred within the U.S. orbit. As the authors put it: The worth o f the victim Popieluszko is valued a t somewhere between 137 and 179 times tha t o f a victim in the U.S. client sta tes; or, looking a t the matter in reverse, a p r ie s t murdered in Latin America is worth less than a hundredth o f a p r ie s t murdered in Poland. Even so, The New Yorker in its “Talk of the Town” column in June, 1989, had the temerity to point out how unlucky Poland has been in its press coverage—the noteworthy May, 1989 elections were overshadowed by events at Tiananmen Square. This despite the figures revealed by Chomsky and Herman. The media is so enslaved to the peculiar necessity of cultivating sources in positions of power that nothing is done to jeopardize those sources, from reporters on the beat on up to editors and publishers. The media are essentially creatures of government, easily manipulated, shills for power. This collusion of the cultural and political agendas that determine media and governmental policy has been no more severe than in the events surrounding the 1988 Iranian Airbus hit over the Persian gulf. Beyond the rank jingoism and racism this occurrence generated, the most disquieting and disingenuous piece to appear in the tragedy’s wake was an op-ed piece in The New York Times by Senator Lowell Weiker (R- Connecticut). The gist of the article was that the • billion-dollar AEGIS electronic- warfare system had accurately identified all the parameters that should have led the crewman on the Vincennes to make the correct identification and not shoot down the airliner. Then why did they? Weiker’s point is that all the crewmen had entirely misstated “what they thought they saw” (my emphasis), and this proves that now we have systems that do not make mistakes, even if humans do. Compare this with the U.S. Navy’s initial Big Lie, about confusing transponder signals and radar readings, citing alleged AEGIS data. Then compare the cynical U.S. reactions a few years before when the Russians acknowledged they may have misidentified KAL 007 and shot that airliner down in error. The Navy Lie was never questioned, the obvious fabrications never challenged, and the mainstream media were actually running stories and comments from readers and viewers about how those in the Iranian jet somehow deserved to die. The final word in absurdity on this subject was the bombing last year of the van driven by the wife of the Vincennes' captain. The first FBI statement, dutifully repeated by the major networks, was: “We have suspects. But we have no motive.” Certainly no one can argue that various media events are designed for public consumption—that is what the business of commodiying and managing public perception is all about. Yet most of those in the business of managing perceptions—government newspeople, corporate flaks, censors of the old-fashioned variety—seem to have no hint of the expansiveness of the imagination. Two cases in point: Spycatcher, recently banned in Britain and published in the U.S., and the memoir, “Inside M16,” published December, 1988 by Harper's magazine. The Harper’s introduction points out: What is revealed, in the a c t o f sup pressing such a story, is the mind o f the censor: the way a government may use its au thority not simp ly to keep secre ts tha t affect “na tiona l secu r ity” but, even more simply, to control information, lim it debate, and enlarge its power. This raises the issue of “national security,” but misses the mark. Who is the target of this censorship? That’s the fundamental question. After the multitudinous U.S. spy scandals in recent years, it strains the government’s limited store of credibility to insist that the suppression of fact is directed at external enemies. “Countries 1-9” and their intelligence services in the Iran-Contra scandal know who they are. “National security” is an apt but inaccurate descriptor—the internal security of the ruling elite is usually at stake, not the international integrity of the nation-state. Security from one's own citizens is the real agenda. More accurate would be the term “international security,” to describe the safeguarding of secrets that affect international relations. Which is precisely the paradox in Clinton St.—Spring 1990 33
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz