Disappearances, torture and nun-killings. How’s the media to make use of historical context when history itself seems stuck on repeat? Not a week after the murder of an American nun who spent her life working to defend Brazilian peasants against corporate interests, President Bush has appointed former U.S. diplomat John Negroponte as the nation’s first director of national intelligence. John Negroponte, who was tied to the Honduran death squads responsible for the 1981 murder of 32 Salvadoran nuns and women of faith, for the “disappearances” of political enemies, and other human rights abuses then accepted as part of Reagan’s counterinsurgency policy. No irony here, nor nearly enough memory. But if we’re too forgetful, Negroponte is remembered well enough by Central American activists and politicians such as Tomas Borge, the only surviving founder of the Sandanista movement. But Borge’s not surprised by Negroponte’s appointment, instead seeing it as the most fitting representation of Bush’s “primitive” international security policy…