The Camera Is Mightier Than the Sword
INSPIRATIONAL, 31 Aug 2015
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service
From 1936-79, Nicaragua was ruled by the corrupt Somoza family, which owned more than half of Nicaragua’s land. In the 1970s, the Sandinista guerrilla movement fought against the Somoza dictatorship.
The movement took its name from Augusto Cesar Sandino (1895-1934), a resistance leader, who was lured by General Anastasio Somoza to the government palace with the promise of peace negotiations, but then brutally murdered. Because of US military aid to the Nicaraguan government, the Sandinistas had little prospect of defeating the government army.
Then in 1979, a soldier of Somoza’s troops shot an American journalist, who was kneeling on the floor, in cold blood in the back from a short distance and killed him. Another journalist was able to capture that scene on a film camera and escape. This tape was shown repeatedly on US television, and the public outcry forced President Carter to suspend weapons shipments to the Nicaraguan army.
Shortly afterwards, the Somoza dictatorship fell. The pen–or the camera–is mightier than the sword.
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Dietrich Fischer, born in 1941 in Münsingen, Switzerland, got a Licentiate in Mathematics from the University of Bern 1968 and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from New York University 1976. 1986-88 he was a MacArthur Fellow in International Peace and Security at Princeton University. He has taught mathematics, computer science, economics and peace studies at various universities and been a consultant to the United Nations.
Excerpted from Dietrich Fischer’s Stories to Inspire You – TRANSCEND University Press-TUP.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 31 Aug 2015.
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