Word: paradoxical
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Four years after the popular uprising that overthrew the bloody and grasping dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle, Nicaragua is still lurching through an erratic political and social transformation, in which many of the ultimate goals of the regime are, at best, haphazardly defined. Consequently, Nicaragua abounds in paradox and ambiguity as its leadership claims to be launched upon a new experiment: an attempt to align Marxism-Leninism with the principles of political pluralism and democracy. Says a sympathetic American observer: "The Sandinistas really like to believe they have invented a new way, a laissez-faire, nonstructured Marxism in which people...
...convicted on questionable grounds, the release of information on the issue brings some insight--a value in itself--to what was otherwise a blot on the country's upholding of human rights ideals. National security is a consideration, but so are individual freedoms; and it would be a sad paradox to deny freedoms at home to secure ourselves against a government whose very repressiveness is what we strive to combat...
JOURNEY THROUGH PARADOX...
...journey through China today is a journey through paradox. But no one can understand the paradoxes unless one keeps in mind the history behind them. The men who dominate China were, long ago, students and idealists. They became cruel as they fought and, as they governed, the logic of Communism drove them to further cruelty ?until they learned that absolute cruelty has its limits in absolute madness. What they are doing now is trying to untangle their old dreams from the madness those dreams begot...
...epicenter of the paradox lies in the everlasting clash of constraint (unlimited government control) with freedom (unlimited license to people). China's leadership knows that China cannot go forward without huge grants of initiative to its people. But the clash begins at the very bottom, in the danwei, the lowest-level building block of the party's control, which denies every grace of liberty to its members...