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Author Topic: Augusto Pinochet is dead
robbie_dee
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Babbler # 195

posted 10 December 2006 09:56 AM      Profile for robbie_dee     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Breaking news, no link yet.
From: Iron City | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
Michelle
Moderator
Babbler # 560

posted 10 December 2006 10:00 AM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Now he can join Reagan (and others) for a BBQ.
From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Sineed
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Babbler # 11260

posted 10 December 2006 10:02 AM      Profile for Sineed     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Here it is.
From: # 668 - neighbour of the beast | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged
Ken Burch
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8346

posted 10 December 2006 10:12 AM      Profile for Ken Burch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Anyone know who we call to book a charter flight to Santiago for for an all-Babble clog dance on the old boy's freshly dug grave?
From: A seedy truckstop on the Information Superhighway | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5594

posted 10 December 2006 10:22 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
encore
Angels sing: "Will I ever see your face again ?."

Audience: NO WAY! GET FUCKED! FUCK OFF!


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Steppenwolf Allende
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 13076

posted 10 December 2006 11:39 AM      Profile for Steppenwolf Allende     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Hey! Seems like Hell is on winning streak recruiting a lot of very famous evil souls lately.

Pinochet, the mass murdering sack-o-shit boss of Chile went to live with his economic mentor Milty Friedman, who kicked it just recently. And that was not too long after another Milty fan, Pic Apartheid Botha. And Saddam’s on Death Row waiting his turn.

Not a good month for the heroes of corporate capitalism.


From: goes far, flies near, to the stars away from here | Registered: Aug 2006  |  IP: Logged
sidra
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 11490

posted 10 December 2006 03:25 PM      Profile for sidra   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Another one bites the dust. Might it redeem somewhat his deeds if he donated his carcas to feed a few hungry stray dogs in Chile.
From: Ontario | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged
Sam
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Babbler # 4645

posted 10 December 2006 04:18 PM      Profile for Sam   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Breaking News...rioting on the streets of Santiago by students...no link yet.
From: Belleville | Registered: Nov 2003  |  IP: Logged
Sam
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Babbler # 4645

posted 10 December 2006 04:55 PM      Profile for Sam   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Clashes break out after Pinochet's death

EDUARDO GALLARDO
Associated Press

SANTIAGO, Chile - Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who terrorized his opponents for 17 years after taking power in a bloody coup, died Sunday, putting an end to a decade of intensifying efforts to bring him to trial for human rights abuses blamed on his regime. He was 91.

Violent clashes broke out between police and Pinochet opponents who threw rocks at cars and set up fire barricades on the city's main avenue. Police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse the crowd. Authorities said there were a number of arrests, but no immediate reports of injuries.

Hundreds of Pinochet supporters gathered outside the hospital, weeping and trading insults with people in passing cars. Some shouted "Long Live Pinochet!" and sang Chile's national anthem.

Many Chileans saw Pinochet's death as reason for celebration. Hundreds of cheering, flag-waving people crowded a major plaza in the capital, drinking champagne and tossing confetti.

Supporters saw Pinochet as a Cold War hero for overthrowing democratically elected President Salvador Allende at a time when the U.S. was working to destabilize his Marxist government and keep Chile from exporting communism in Latin America.

But the world soon reacted in horror as Santiago's main soccer stadium filled with political prisoners to be tortured, shot, disappeared or forced into exile.

Pinochet's dictatorship laid the groundwork for South America's most stable economy, but his crackdown on dissent left a lasting legacy: His name has become a byword for the state terror, in many cases secretly supported by the United States, that retarded democratic change across the hemisphere.

Pinochet died with his family at his side at the Santiago Military Hospital on Sunday, a week after suffering a heart attack.

"This criminal has departed without ever being sentenced for all the acts he was responsible for during his dictatorship," lamented Hugo Gutierrez, a human rights lawyer involved in several lawsuits against Pinochet.

"Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile represented one of most difficult periods in that nation's history," said Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman. "Our thoughts today are with the victims of his reign and their families."

Chile's government says at least 3,197 people were killed for political reasons during Pinochet's rule, but courts allowed the aging general to escape hundreds of criminal complaints as his health declined.

The mustachioed Pinochet left no doubt about who was in charge after the Sept. 11, 1973 coup, when warplanes bombed the presidential palace and Allende committed suicide with a submachine gun Fidel Castro had given him.

"Not a leaf moves in this country if I'm not moving it," Pinochet said.

But he refused for years to take responsibility his regime's abuses, blaming subordinates for killings or tortures.

Only on his 91st birthday last month did he take "full political responsibility for everything that happened" during his long rule. But the statement made no reference to the rights abuses, and said he had to act to prevent Chile's economic and political disintegration.

Born Nov. 25, 1915, the son of a customs official in the port of Valparaiso, Pinochet was appointed army commander just 19 days before the coup by Allende, who mistakenly thought Pinochet would defend constitutional rule.

The CIA had worked for months to destabilize the Allende government, including financing a truckers strike that paralyzed the delivery of goods across Chile, but Washington denied having anything to do with the coup itself.

Soon after Pinochet's seizure of power, soldiers carried out mass arrests of leftists. Tanks rumbled through the streets of the capital, and many detainees were herded into the National Stadium, which became a torture and detention center. Other leftists were rounded up by death squads, and the "Caravan of Death" to Chile's forbidding Atacama desert left victims buried in unmarked mass graves.

Pinochet disbanded Congress, banned political activity and crushed dissent. In addition to the dead, more than 1,000 victims remain unaccounted for. Thousands more were arrested, tortured and forced into exile.

Pinochet defended his authoritarian rule as a crusade to build a society free of communism. He even claimed partial credit for the collapse of the Soviet bloc.

"I see myself as a good angel," he told a Miami Spanish-language television station in 2004.

He showed no mercy to his perceived enemies. When investigators uncovered coffins that had been stuffed with two bodies each in the aftermath of the coup, he dismissed it as a "a good cemetery space-saving measure."

Pinochet seized power at a time when Chile's economy was in near ruins, partly due to the CIA's covert destabilization efforts and partly to Allende's mismanagement.

He launched a radical free-market program that at first triggered a financial collapse and unprecedented joblessness. But it laid the basis for South America's healthiest economy, which has grown by 5 percent to 7 percent a year since 1984.

Pinochet lost an October 1988 referendum to extend his rule and was forced to call an election. He lost to Patricio Alywin, whose center-left coalition has ruled Chile since 1990.

Pinochet avoided prosecution for years after his presidency. He remained army commander for eight more years and then was a senator-for-life, a position guaranteed under the constitution his regime wrote.

It took a Spanish judge to remove Pinochet's cloak of invincibility, and inspire Chileans to make their own efforts to hold him to account. He was in London for back surgery in 1998 when the judge asked Britain to extradite him to Spain for human rights violations. British authorities ruled he was too ill to be tried, and sent him back to Chile, where ghosts of the past were coming forward.

More than 200 criminal complaints were filed against him and he was under house arrest at the time of his death, but courts repeatedly ruled he could not face trial because of poor physical and mental health.

Even longstanding Pinochet allies abandoned him in 2004, when a U.S. Senate investigative committee found Pinochet kept multimillion-dollar secret accounts at the Riggs Bank in Washington. Investigators said he had up to $17 million in foreign accounts, and owed $9.8 million in back taxes. He, his wife and several of his children were indicted on tax evasion charges.

During his final years, Pinochet lived in seclusion at heavily guarded Santiago mansion and his countryside residence.

He is survived by his wife, Lucia, two sons and three daughters.

The army said Pinochet will lay in state Monday and Tuesday at the Military Academy in Santiago. The government of President Michelle Bachelet - whose father died in Pinochet's prisons - said he would not receive the state funeral usually due former presidents.

His body was to be cremated. Pinochet's son Marco Antonio said his father feared a tomb would be desecrated by his enemies.


From: Belleville | Registered: Nov 2003  |  IP: Logged
sidra
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Babbler # 11490

posted 10 December 2006 05:00 PM      Profile for sidra   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
"Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile represented one of most difficult periods in that nation's history," said Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman. "Our thoughts today are with the victims of his reign and their families."

Hypocrite representatives of the evil empire !!


From: Ontario | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged
Mick
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Babbler # 2753

posted 10 December 2006 07:15 PM      Profile for Mick        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Madrid

Santiago



From: Parkdale! | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5594

posted 10 December 2006 07:35 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Two Friedmans, One Pinochet and the Fairy-Tale Miracle of Chile:Questioning Globalization's Genesis Myth

from The Best Democracy Money Can Buy by Greg Palast

Note: Palast has lectured at Cambridge University and the University of São Paulo. He lives in London and New York City. Palast is originally from Los Angeles, the "scum-end of LA, between the power plant and the garbage dump", and was educated at the University of Chicago, where he studied with the "Chicago Boys".


quote:
I have an advantage over globalization fetishists like Thomas Friedman, Mr. Lexus-and-Olive-Tree. I was there at the beginning, at the moment of globalization's conception when the sperm of Milton Friedman's oddball economic theories entered the ovum of the fertilized mind of Ronald Reagan, who was then governor of California. I witnessed the birth of Thatcherism before Thatcher there, at the University of Chicago, in the early 1970s, as the only American member of an elite group later known as the Chicago Boys. Professor Friedman (no relation to Thomas) was the economic god who walked among us, soon to win the Nobel Prize for his extremist laissez-faire theories. Other academics found Friedman intriguing, but considered his free market fanaticism off the kooky edge. But the Chicago Boys believed; and, quite different from other students, were handed an entire nation to experiment on, courtesy of a coup d'etat by a general in Chile. Most of the Boys were Latin Americans, a strange collection in white turtleneck sweaters and dark shades, right out of the movie Missing, who would return to Chile and make it into a Friedmanite laboratory. ...

These are the facts. In 1973, the year the General seized the government, Chile's unemployment rate was 4.3 percent. In 1983, after ten years of free market modernization, unemployment reached 22 percent. Real wages declined by 40 percent under military rule. In 1970, before Pinochet seized power, 20 percent of Chile's population lived in poverty. By the year President Pinochet left office, the number of destitute had doubled to 40 percent. Quite a miracle.

Pinochet did not destroy Chile's economy all alone. It took nine years of hard work by the most brilliant minds in world academia, that gaggle of Milton Friedman's trainees, the Chicago Boys. Under the spell of their theories, the general abolished the minimum wage, outlawed trade union bargaining rights, privatized the pension system, abolished all taxes on wealth and on business profits, slashed public employment, privatized 212 state industries and sixty-six
banks and ran a fiscal surplus. The general goose-stepped his nation down the neoliberal(free market) path, and soon Thatcher, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, the IMF and the planet would follow.

But what actually happened in Chile? Freed from the dead hand of bureaucracy, taxes and union rules, the country took a giant leap forward . . . into bankruptcy. After nine years of economics Chicago-style, Chile's industry keeled over and died. In 1982 and 1983, gross domestic output dropped 19 percent. That's a depression. The free market experiment was kaput, the test tubes shattered. Blood and glass littered the laboratory floor. ...

New Deal tactics rescued Chile from the Panic of 1983, but the nation's long-term recovery and growth since then is the result of? cover the children's ears, a large dose of socialism. To save the nation's pension system, Pinochet nationalized banks and industry on a scale unimagined by the socialist Allende. The general expropriated at will, offering little or no compensation. While most of these businesses were eventually reprivatized, the state retained ownership of one industry: copper. University of Montana metals expert Dr. Janet Finn notes, It's absurd to describe a nation as a miracle of free enterprise when the engine of the economy remains in government hands. (And not just any government hands. A Pinochet law, still in force, gives the military 10 percent of state copper revenues.) Copper has provided 30 to 70 percent of the nation's export earnings. This is the hard currency that has built today's Chile, the proceeds from the mines seized from Anaconda and Kennecott in 1973, Allende's posthumous gift to his nation.


Viva la revolucion!

[ 10 December 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
sgm
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5468

posted 12 December 2006 12:49 AM      Profile for sgm     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Quite predictably, the National Post has chosen the occasion of Pinochet's death to shame itself still further by publishing two pieces apologizing for the brutal dictator.

A short editorial entitled 'Pinochet's mixed record' reminds readers of Pinochet's special merits:

quote:
But unlike many South American strongmen of his day, Gen. Pinochet should be remembered for more than just thuggery. His market-oriented economic policies helped Chile escape the stifling statism that bedevils many of the continent to this day. He also helped fight the encroachments of Marxism at a time when the Soviet Union was actively seeking to export its totalitarian political model worldwide.
Picking up on the 'not just a thug' theme was a think-piece by John O'Sullivan of Benador Associates, which ran on the opposite page.

'Judging a Dictator' makes this crucial point in defence of the Chilean dictator:

quote:
That brings us to Pinochet. His victims are estimated at approximately 3,000. One innocent murdered is one too many. But since we are talking comparisons, Pinochet’s total is not many more than the victims of Gerry Adams in Northern Ireland and far fewer when population size is taken into account.

But his economic legacy outstrips that of most advanced democracies, let alone Franco among dictatorships. Within a decade of the 1973 coup, Chile was a stable growing economy with export-led growth brought about by monetary, supply-side and labour market reforms introduced by Pinochet following advice from the "Chicago Boys."


I won't here get into the shameful rhetorical tricks O'Sullivan uses to 'get us talking comparisons' among brutal dictatorships.

Instead, I'll simply point out that the inhuman paragraph that speaks of "Pinochet’s total [being] not many more than the victims of Gerry Adams in Northern Ireland and far fewer when population size is taken into account" could have been written by Swift's projector in 'A Modest Proposal.'

We should reflect carefully upon that fact, in my view.

It goes without saying that neither of these two disgraceful pieces in the National Post honestly acknowledges either the economic or the human cost of Pinochet's crimes: no serious mention is made of Nixon's plan to 'make the Chilean economy scream', nor of the tens of thousands people tortured under Pinochet.

Rather, the O'Sullivan piece implies that Pinochet was no more guilty of torture than anyone else, and that everything was justified by his economic 'success' anyway.

Shameful.

A few weeks ago, on the occasion of the National Post's 8th birthday, blogger Paul Wells mocked what he called

quote:
"the thankfully small minority of inexplicably gormless colleagues at other papers who think Canada's news industry would improve if a national newspaper closed."

With all due respect to Mr. Wells, who is a fine writer and political analyst, I happen to think that his colleagues are rather more 'gormful' than he's willing to admit.

Surely Canada's news industry would improve if a national newspaper were to close that was known for its promotion of xenophobia; its reckless support of nuclear proliferation; and its apologies for a murderous dictator who routinely practiced torture.

The Post has published all of this and worse.

Surely basic human decency would be the winner in Canada were the National Post to stop publishing tomorrow.

Surely.

[ 12 December 2006: Message edited by: sgm ]


From: I have welcomed the dawn from the fields of Saskatchewan | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
N.Beltov
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4140

posted 12 December 2006 02:49 AM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I see that other babblers have already provided links and noted Pinochet's damage to the Chilean economy and unprececented creation of mass poverty. It seems to be the pro-Pinochet line that the terror, torture and atrocities were somehow mitigated by "the economic miracle".

quote:
Barely a few week after the military coup in Chile on September 11, 1973, overthrowing the elected government of President Salvador Allende, the military junta headed by General Augusto Pinochet ordered a hike in the price of bread from 11 to 40 escudos, a hefty overnight increase of 264%. This economic shock treatment had been designed by a group of economists called the "Chicago Boys".

At the time of the military coup, I was teaching at the Institute of Economics of the Catholic University of Chile, which was a nest of Chicago trained economists, disciples of Milton Friedman. On that September 11, in the hours following the bombing of the Presidential Palace of La Mondea, the new military rulers imposed a 72-hour curfew. When the university reopened several days later, the "Chicago Boys" were rejoicing. Barely a week later, several of my colleages at the Institute of Economics were appointed to key positions in the military government.

While food prices had skyrocketed, wages had been frozen to ensure "economic stability and stave off inflationary pressures." From one day to the next, an entire country was precipitated into abysmal poverty; in less than a year the price of bread in Chile increased thirty-six times and eighty-five percent of the Chilean population had been driven below the poverty line.


... from the Preface to the Second Edition of The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order by Michel Chossudovsky.

That's a useful quote to identify the links between neoliberal economic atrocities and the other sorts of things that governments do that are called atrocities and human rights violations. There are, increasingly, regular links between the economic institutions of neoliberal globalized capitalism and the military institutions and alliances of same. There is no "invisible hand" without an (invisible) fist.


From: Vancouver Island | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
Lard Tunderin' Jeezus
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Babbler # 1275

posted 12 December 2006 07:51 AM      Profile for Lard Tunderin' Jeezus   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Surely Canada's news industry would improve if a national newspaper were to close that was known for its promotion of xenophobia; its reckless support of nuclear proliferation; and its apologies for a murderous dictator who routinely practiced torture.

The Post has published all of this and worse.


So very, very true. And let us not forget their complicity in the Maher Arar case:
quote:
Consider the National Post, which was repeatedly cited by Justice Dennis O'Connor in his 1,200-page report on the Arar affair released in September.
As investigative reporter Andrew Mitrovica documents in his exhaustive media post-mortem for the December/January issue of The Walrus, the earliest headlines on Arar's deportation quickly morphed from the Canadian Press's "U.S. deports respected Canadian to Syria" to the Post's "United States deports suspected terrorist to Syria."
"This judgment would come to represent the Post's intransigent stance vis-à-vis Arar," writes Mitrovica, a former producer with CTV News, W5 and CBC's the fifth estate. "Indeed, in March 2003, one perceptive Post reader had a letter published pointing out that `in the past six months, the Post has run 40 stories on [William] Sampson [a Canadian consultant tortured in Saudi Arabia], including eight editorials, almost all in support. In the case of Mr. Arar ... not a single editorial was published. A total of eight news stories on Mr. Arar appeared in your paper, in which he was always referred to as a suspected al-Qaeda (sic) terrorist.'"
Med ia Share Blame in Arar Case

From: ... | Registered: Aug 2001  |  IP: Logged
jeff house
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 518

posted 12 December 2006 12:59 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
CBC Radio today had an interview with Prof. Nibaldo Galleguillos of McMaster University. At the time of the coup in Chile, he worked for the "Vicaria de Solidaridad", an organization founded by the various churches to help those affected by the coup.

He worked as a lawyer trying to get some sort of justice for the thousands who Pinochet imprisoned.

He said two things which struck me. First, he was asked if any of his clients were tortured. He said that EACH AND EVERY CLIENT, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, who he defended, had been tortured.

He said a second interesting thing. He said that Pinochet leaves a legacy of treachery. He violated the oath he took to the democratically-elected President. He violated the trust of his fellow officers, who he murdered as soon as their backs were turned. He said that the name Pinochet is synonymous with "betrayal."


From: toronto | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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Babbler # 5594

posted 12 December 2006 06:32 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
He should have been made to admit his crimes to the world with a trial. Western hypocrisy at its worst. And there are more of the bastards, just as bad as Pinochet, still stinking up Latin America from operation condor days. No justice no peace.

[ 12 December 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
gram swaraj
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Babbler # 11527

posted 14 December 2006 12:25 AM      Profile for gram swaraj   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I hope now he will be able to meet all the souls that he made "disappear."

Let's not forget September 11, 1973!!!

[ 14 December 2006: Message edited by: gram swaraj ]


From: mon pays ce n'est pas un pays, c'est la terre | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged
Michelle
Moderator
Babbler # 560

posted 14 December 2006 03:59 AM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I watched The Agenda last night on TVO (mostly because I knew Judy Rebick was going to be a panelist) and they got talking about Pinochet during the last quarter of the show. There seemed to be an almost-consensus (almost, because Judy certainly wasn't part of it) that Pinochet had been vilified and that at least the economic reforms he brought in had made Chile the "jewel of Latin America".

Then, when Judy talked about all the people Pinochet murdered and tortured, there was this one really right-wing freak on satellite from Washington on there who kept interrupting her and bringing up Cuba, saying that unlike Pinochet's wonderful economic successes in Chile, Castro had destroyed that country, and demanding that she denounce Castro the same way. It was unbelievable. I don't know how she kept her cool; if it had been me, I'd probably have wanted to reach through the monitor the guy was being broadcast on and wring his neck!

Here's the episode info - they'll probably have it up in either podcast or video format soon.


From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Brett Mann
rabble-rouser
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posted 14 December 2006 06:20 AM      Profile for Brett Mann        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I saw the Agenda last night. It's quickly becoming one of may favourite programs. Judy Rebick stood her ground magnificently, but it was amazing to see the disconnect between the Canadians and Americans on this one. In the brain-washed, media circus of lies in America, apparently it has become a "fact" and an article of faith that Castro is an evil dictator who has murdered thousands, despite the lack of evidence for such a view. When smart Americans (call it the Ignatieff effect) participate in debates like this one, they are flabberghasted that Canadians do not share their same "facts" and myths. I absolutely love it. Let's start an urgent remedial education campaign for American journalists and "intellectuals."
From: Prince Edward County ON | Registered: Jul 2004  |  IP: Logged
BleedingHeart
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posted 14 December 2006 02:06 PM      Profile for BleedingHeart   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I always like the headline in National Lampoon when Franco died: "Franco dies, goes to hell"
From: Kickin' and a gougin' in the mud and the blood and the beer | Registered: Nov 2002  |  IP: Logged
Erik Redburn
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posted 14 December 2006 05:12 PM      Profile for Erik Redburn     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I bet some highly placed Yanquis like Kissinger are breathing a sigh of relief now that Pinochet has taken some state secrets to his grave. Wonder if the Americans played any role in getting him released and returned to his homeland where they could put off his conviction.
From: Broke but not bent. | Registered: Feb 2004  |  IP: Logged
Dead_Letter
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posted 14 December 2006 06:59 PM      Profile for Dead_Letter     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
This thread makes for some very distressing reading.

I say the trial should happen posthumously. Any chance of that? Is anybody mentioning it in Chile?


From: Vancouver | Registered: Jun 2006  |  IP: Logged
sgm
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5468

posted 24 December 2006 02:01 PM      Profile for sgm     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Pinochet's posthumous Christmas message:
quote:
SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) – In a letter to Chileans written to be published after his death, Gen. Augusto Pinochet said he wished he hadn't had to stage the bloody 1973 coup that put him in power, and called the abuses under his long rule inevitable.

[snip]

The former dictator, who died Dec. 10 of heart failure at age 91, insisted the military takeover avoided civil war and a Marxist dictatorship, and said his 1973-90 regime never had "an institutional plan" to abuse human rights.

"But it was necessary to act with maximum rigour to avoid a widening of the conflict," Pinochet wrote.

[snip]

"How I wish the Sept. 11, 1973, military action had not been necessary!" Pinochet wrote. "How I wish the Marxist-Leninist ideology had not entered our fatherland!"

He insisted the rights violations under his regime were inevitable because "as part of the characteristics of our rivals, it was necessary to implement certain procedures of military control, such as temporary imprisonment, authorized exile, executions by firing squad after military trials."

"As long as ideological and armed fanaticism continued to endanger stability, we could not lower our arms," he said.

The remains of more than 1,000 of the people killed for political reasons under the dictatorship have never been found, and Pinochet wrote that the circumstances of many of the deaths and disappearances will never be known.

"I state that I am proud of the huge action that we had to undertake to prevent Marxism-Leninism from reaching total power," he said.

But he added: "If the experience was to repeat itself, I wish I had a greater wisdom."



From: I have welcomed the dawn from the fields of Saskatchewan | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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Babbler # 8273

posted 24 December 2006 02:04 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
"Marx and Lenin made me do it!"
From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged

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