Zitat des Tages über Nicaragua:
It seems to be that when these communist regimes take over - if you look at the example of Vietnam or Cambodia or Nicaragua - that even in conditions of peace they don't seem to be able to figure out how to support their people, and the human suffering is enormous.
My son lives in Nicaragua. My daughters live in the United States.
There isn't any way for the people of Nicaragua to find out what's going on in Nicaragua.
I think the difference between El Salvador and Nicaragua is that in Nicaragua you had a popular insurrection, and in El Salvador you had a revolution.
There was time in the first half of the '80s when what I was saying on the stage was controversial. A lot of things I was talking about - Nicaragua and American foreign policy.
During the Reagan Administration, so much attention was devoted to fighting Marxism in Nicaragua and El Salvador that Washington lost sight of longer-term challenges in other countries.
My mother would take groups of students to different countries and always brought us along, so by the time I was 10, I had been to Russia, China, Nicaragua and several other countries.
Most people at CMU thought it was perfectly reasonable for the U.S. to invade Nicaragua. They somehow thought they owned it.
There is a question for which we will never know the answer: had the U.S. not launched the Contra war to overthrow the Sandinista government, would they have succeeded in bringing socioeconomic justice to the people of Nicaragua?
It is pretty amazing. My parents, who came from Nicaragua to the U.S. - who would have thought that they would have American kids on the Olympic team? I think that's the epitome of the Olympic dream.
I made a gym, it's the best gym in Nicaragua, I have kids that this year July 6th through the 11th will be fighting and then will go on to the Central American Games and I'm sure at least one will win a gold medal.
I often traveled to Nicaragua to speak against repressive policies by the Sandinista government.
I think there, there also had been just before I got to Honduras a rather spectacular capture of an arms shipment that from Nicaragua across Honduran test, territory destined for El Salvador and I think that some of that equipment had been also to Cuba and the Soviet bloc.
I am still profoundly troubled by the war in Nicaragua. The United States launched a covert war against another nation in violation of international law, a war that was wrong and immoral.
The British Red Cross asked me to help them spearhead a fundraising campaign for the victims of the war in Nicaragua. It was a turning point in my life. It began my commitment to justice and human rights issues.
Nicaragua is fast becoming a terrorist country club.
The U.S. embargo imposed on Nicaragua, rather than weakening the Sandinistas, actually maintained them in power.
Also, people are not often aware of the way the United States' policies influence what happens in places like Haiti or El Salvador or Nicaragua. Or in Columbia right now.
The two largest oil-producing countries in Latin America, Mexico and Venezuela, sold petroleum to Nicaragua at concessional rates for several years beginning in 1980. The program was curtailed because Nicaragua could not make even reduced payments.
And Walker was made with a Mexican crew, although it was shot in Nicaragua.
There was the situation in Nicaragua where the Sandinistas had taken over a couple of years earlier. There was a civil war going on in El Salvador and there was a similar situation in Guatemala. So Honduras was in a rather precarious geographic position indeed.
Violence has been Nicaragua's most important export to the world.
Honduras is strongly anti-Communist, maintains no diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, and has provided vital support for United States-backed rebels fighting to overthrow the Sandinistas in neighboring Nicaragua.
Each of the bracelets I wear is from a long trip I've taken. One is from Nicaragua. One is from Nepal. One is from Guatemala. One is from Laos. They don't come off. I walk into a lot of very high-level boardrooms now, and I present to distinguished conferences, but these bracelets remind me of the places I've been and the people I've met.
I know who I am as an artist and I know what my sound is, but I wanted to know what I could do in order to take it to that next level. So the experiences I had last year of moving to California and traveling to places like Rome and Nicaragua where I met a lot of people just had a really big impact in my life.
I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
The CIA created, armed and financed the Contras. My father backed them with everything he had. It was my father's war, and almost everyone in Nicaragua has lost somebody as a result of it. I couldn't go down there, being his daughter, and expect not to feel those people's wrath.
I don't claim to know Israel. I don't speak Hebrew; my contacts are pretty limited. But I didn't know Vietnam; I didn't know Nicaragua, El Salvador or Honduras. It doesn't mean you can't reach your conclusions.
I was in Nicaragua with the Sandinistas. I've argued for Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal, the United Farm Workers. I've been a radical for a long time. I guess it's too bad. I'd be more marketable as a right-wing redneck. But I got into this to tell the truth as I saw it.
