Tomas Borge Quotes
If I could go, I would tell the truth to the North American people. President Reagan personally ordered my visa to be denied.
Borge, Tomás. Quoted in "U.S. Denies Visa for Sandinista" by John M. Goshko. The Washington Post, 30 Nov. 1983, p. A1.
President Wilson had gone to Paris for peace treaty negotiations. Ex-President Roosevelt was on his deathbed. But even then TR was his politically contentious self.
This remarkable quotation illustrated a CIA director who took the position that his agency should assassinate foreign leaders who are enemies without discussing the prospect or getting the specific permission of the President of the United States.
This another DeLay quote that deviates from the truth. After 9-11, almost ALL Americans supported the effort to go into Afghanistan and attack the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. However, after President Bush invaded Iraq and tried to justify it as a part of the War on Terror, many liberals and Democrats opposed and protested that part of the war. However so did most of the conservative Libertarians, and many main line Republicans also opposed that part of the war effort. Many in the media opposed the Iraq war efforts, but almost as many supported it—especially most radio talk show hosts. Fox News where he did this interview was a major supporter of the war along with many other media outlets. At the end of President George W. Bush’s second term, a majority of Americans opposed continued fighting in Iraq and most of the media so reported that. Reporting anti war public opinion was interpreted by DeLay as “undermining” the war effort. Later, DeLay was convicted and sentenced to jail for money laundering and illegally spending and raising campaign funds. He was also reprimanded by the House Ethics Committee for unethical methods of fund raising for other earlier actions.
The Federalist Party had controlled the Executive and Congress for the first 3 Presidential terms (2 for Washington and 1 for John Adams) but Thomas Jefferson and his Democratic Republicans were threatening to unseat the Federalists. Even with the Sedition Act, the Jeffersonians won and the Federalist Party was destroyed forever. Ironically, Jefferson and subsequent administrations saw advantages to the incumbent in the Sedition Act so did not repeal it. It was not until John Quincy Adams (John Adams’ son) had finished his Presidency and became a Congressman that he led the movement to finally repeal the hated Sedition Act.
Before the Communists, the Nationalist Chinese government controlled the press even more so than the Communists did. And the Chinese Emperors before the Nationalists had a well educated elite of administrators who ran the government but the great mass of the people knew virtually nothing other than what the rulers wanted them to know. With mass illiteracy, there was no efficient way to communicate with the masses anyway. China, with a history of great intellectual accomplishment, has had the most ignorant people in the world by virtue of its size and general illiteracy.
At the time there was no Secrecy & Classification System nor any laws enforcing secrecy or confidentiality. However there was no freedom of information laws of expectations even on the part of journalists. This was the first Freedom of Information policy of the American government. Some politicians were more open than others but there was no national, governmental before this. There were however leakers and whistleblowers though the terms were not in use. Note that Roosevelt herein created the first whistle blower protection—himself.
Tomás Borge Martínez was a cofounder of the Sandinista National Liberation Front in Nicaragua and was Interior Minister of Nicaragua during one of the administrations of Daniel Ortega. He was also a renowned statesman, writer, and politician. Tomás Borge also held the titles of "Vice-Secretary and President of the FSLN", member of the Nicaraguan Parliament and National Congress, and Ambassador to Peru. Considered a hardliner, he led the "prolonged people's war" tendency within the FSLN until his death.
