@enoch

I'd agree Friedman wasn't directly responsible, but served more as an academic influence and a proponent of a particular approach because many of the Chilean economists who influenced policy had studies in Chicago.

As far as exploiting a crisis, arguably the crisis itself warranted dramatic action. High levels of inflation caused by Allende's money printing to support wholesale nationalisation of industries pretty much required this.

As inflation is self perpetuation by its continuous expectation and can continue even after the original stimulus is gone, there was little choice here. After all it took Volker nearly half a decade of high interest rates to tame it in the US in the early 80s, to do that after an economic and political crisis in a undeveloped country was an entirely different scale of difficult.

Successive governments likely reversed some of the economic policies enacted under his regime, but the foundation I meant was particularly the budgetary position, free trade, and a competitive cadre of private sector exporters. The welfare, health and educational spending were all made possible by this. Without a credible tax base, trying to enact spending on this level while also raising the tax rises would have just precipitated another crisis.

Coming back to inflation and economics, I believe policies against inflation especially, are generally misunderstood in the short term and their benefits unrecognised in the long term. I would probably say the reverse of what you said, economic policy rarely shows tangible results in the short term but almost always in the long term.

It's certainly not perfect. After all economics has the unfavourable position of being the combination of social science, lacking the ability to test results in clinical conditions isolating a single factor and yet requiring highly specific answers to solve its questions. At its best, it offers answers based on the cumulative knowledge accrued from iterative policies, at each point being based on the 'best available knowledge at the time'.

But it has worked, as I like to often mention, with independent central banks, essentially the most technocratic and pure application of economic theory, inflation has become a thing of the past in those countries that have adopted it.

Then again I'm biased as I majored in it at uni

>> ^renatojj:

@.


Np, glad you liked them. I'm not saying there is only one account of what went down, I'm saying that it is fact that America was most prosperous when taxes were the highest. You don't need to be a historian or theorizer to use Google and check that for yourself.

Your quick Google search brung up an article that deals only in theory, and the argument they use is that people that are taxed 0% are more motivated than people that are taxed 100% - so that the imperitive becomes to cover Govt. expenses while keeping the taxes as low as possible to maintain motivation. That makes perfect logical sense and doesn't disagree with the facts I bought to the table, that America has been most prosperous during periods of high taxation, it simply proves that low is subjective. Taxing someone who earns $10,000 50% of their income means they take home a tiny amount of money, the same tax rate on a billionaire means they still take home five hundred million dollars, more than enough don't you think? If all income was related to productivity then my argument would be different, but quite simply it's not. Look at derivatives trading or inheritence funds as a couple of examples.

Fixing tax rates is also just the beginning, there needs to be a complete overhaul of your taxation system, there is plenty of information out there that details how dozens of your fortune 500 companies are paying no tax at all (e.g. GE and Boeing), Pepco Holdings Inc had a negative 57.6% tax rate for 2010 according to this article:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/03/us-usa-tax-corporate-idUSTRE7A261C20111103

So not only are the tax rates poorly thought out, the tax system allows companies that rake in billions in profits ways by which to avoid paying any tax at all (and even get refunds).

The same goes for individuals as well, Mitt Romney, who made over twenty million in 2010, and has at least thirty million stashed in over 138 investment funds in the Caimans paid close to 15% tax in that same year. That's the same tax rate that someone earning $10,000 would have to pay.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/romney-parks-millions-offshore-tax-haven/story?id=15378566#.Tx-lKm_9PUd

Is he using this additional money he's making from not paying his taxes for productive purposes? It would appear not... His motive is profit, and to that end he's closed plants, cut employee wages, laid off American workers and outsourced their jobs to other countries, all while he and his partners have made tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars, while the companies he's invested in have often ended up going bankrupt:
http://www.romneygekko.com/mitt/

So my point is that it's a pipedream to think that lower taxes on the rich has only one effect, to make them more productive, it also carries with it a myriad of negative consequences as I've illustrated, the worst one being lobbying, which is rampant in your country. In terms of Chile, you say that all education there is state funded? Have a look at this report and you will see that the total investment in tertiary education Chile makes is probably close to about half a percent of their GDP, which is indeed lower than any other country surveyed, they are also at the very bottom of the list when it comes to actual dollars invested in public education. Meanwhile the cost of education for students is the highest of any OECD country.
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/45/48/37864432.pdf

The reasons for that come full circle back to your economic theories. Have you heard of Augusto Pinochet? America installed him as the dictator of Chile after the CIA organised a successful air strike on the palace of the existing democratically elected leader - Allende, which resulted in his death. It's well known that Pinochet relied on the Chicago boys for economic policy, who in turn were trained by Milton Friedman. Friedman was ... the major free-market economist of his time, and it's these exact same policies that still linger around today in the education system thanks to Patricio Aylwin and others. It's clear evidence that your model has flaws, and it's also clear who benefits the most from it.

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^rougy:
Because capitalism just isn't the same without a little friendly torture.

Not just "not the same." You can't do it...you have to "Shock" the system. According to the "Shock Doctrine" at least...good read.


It's on my list.

Saw a documentary a while ago about how Friedman and the Chicago school of economics influenced Pinochet and the atrocities in post-Allende Chili. Made my blood boil.

Hardcore capitalists have some kind of fundamental resentment toward the working class and any gains that they may make, however modest.

There aren't enough downvotes. My own country suffered a dictatorship not too long ago and sooner or later there are always people who show up saying:

"There were some minor problems but we were better with glorious leader."

"Then what about all the tortured people, the wars, the misery of so many, barely with enough to eat, no health, no education, no future?"

"Well, I was all good with it, so fuck you and your well documented suffering."

War On Democracy is great at exposing the kind of people that approve of this kind of regime. Entitled rich vampires that think the world was made for them and their family to shit on and distant armchair general intellectuals that imagine the whole world to be some kind of thought experiment made just to test their ridiculous ideas on.

Also, blankfist, I find it enormously hilarious that you think it's right and proper for the US to stay the fuck out but then conveniently forget that if not for interventionism, there would be no Pinochet to obey the dictates of the States, no so called "miracle". Chile would be Socialist and on Allende's path to provide jobs, health and education to the masses.

"...Nixon instructed CIA director Helms that Allende's election was "not acceptable" and ordered the agency to "make the economy scream" and "save Chile," as Helms recorded in his notes."

Common Dreams

Another typical example of conservative Republican ideas about "freedom."

It doesn't matter what the people of Chile want.

It's what corporate America wants.

And they're doing the same shit right now to Bolivia.

I love isabelle allende, but I don't think the sift does. Long talks are always hard to sift.
*discard

reason, it's really plaigarism if you're copying and pasting and not acknowledging your sources. It's also a cheap shot not to include the response to the points you're making, or at the very least, a counter-point to said response.

And my most significant point, however, is to call BULLSHIP on the claim that Allende was organizing a bunch of armed groups or other such nonsense. Historical fact (from the same Wiki article as above, and from Klein's book among other sources):
"Increasingly annoyed by the long negotiations, Leigh gave the order to bomb La Moneda. However, he was informed that the Hawker Hunter fighter jets were running late and that 40 minutes would pass before they arrived at Santiago's downtown. Pinochet meanwhile ordered that tanks and infantrymen besiege the palace and destroy all the opposition. They encountered none during their path to La Moneda and only when they got to the palace did they meet a few easily-defeated socialist gunmen. At noon, the jets finally arrived and proceeded to bomb the palace. Allende committed suicide soon after." (emphasis mine)

If he *were* in fact assembling groups of armed supporters in the streets, shouldn't they have been fighting back tooth and nail with their weapons?

Buddy had a military that was - as was proven - a coup threat, and he was taking steps to allow civilians to exercise greater control over the unruly men with guns. Sounds like a Good Idea to me.

The excessive show of force - i.e., having jets fly in as if it's a real war - ties in neatly with Klein's theories about the Shock Doctrine, in particular the idea that the military had to dazzle and cow their opponents (dazzle and cow... a.k.a., shock and awe, she would and did say).

Besides, if it was a true 'people's' revolution or something like that, shouldn't you see the people themselves marching through the streets (think the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine)? This was a reactionary takeover by the elites, plain and simple.

Echoes of Burma? Hell yeah.

written by Krupo in that thread. (unless you've got it bookmarked you wouldn't know the thread was updated )

Good in '71 Bad in '72. It's a short track record. I'm not saying he was perfect, but have you considered that external governments could also try and screw with Chile and their currency? I haven't done extensive research into it, but it *is* a threat these days - IMF/WTO spook the global markets (because money is all about perception rather than reality), and the country in question is SCREWED.

And although the regime was accused of various things, those are accusations rather than convictions. I'm sure Chile has an impeachment process like any other country. Why should you get the military involved immediately, if at all? There's a reason you have elections - to foster an orderly handover of power. I'm sure millions of Americans would be pleased if some F-16's attacked Dubya, but that's not the way you do things.

In an effort to add a bit more depth, I poked around a bit more. Turns out you need a 2/3 majority for the resolution you refer to to have legal force. So using the word "passed" is a bit misleading - that's a 63.3% margin, close, but not legally binding (source is WikiTalk, but I'll buy it unless someone has evidence to the contrary).

Do check out that Wiki-talk page, looks like there's some lively to and forth on the topic.





In reply to this comment by reason:
Why not address these facts?

On August 22, 1973 the Christian Democrats and the National Party members of the Chamber of Deputies passed, by 81 to 47 votes, a resolution entitled "Declaration of the Breakdown of Chile’s Democracy", which called upon the military to "put an immediate end" to what they described as "breach[es of] the Constitution… with the goal of redirecting government activity toward the path of Law and ensuring the constitutional order of our Nation and the essential underpinnings of democratic coexistence among Chileans."

The resolution declared that the Allende government was seeking "...to conquer absolute power with the obvious purpose of subjecting all citizens to the strictest political and economic control by the state... [with] the goal of establishing a totalitarian system," and claimed that it had made "violations of the Constitution" into "a permanent system of conduct." Many of the charges came down to disregarding the separation of powers and arrogating the prerogatives of both the legislature and judiciary within the executive.

Among other particulars, the regime was accused of:

* ruling by decree, thus thwarting the normal system of adopting legislation
* refusing to enforce judicial decisions against its own partisans and "not carrying out sentences and judicial resolutions that contravene its objectives"
* ignoring the decrees of the independent General Comptroller's Office
* various offenses related to the media, including usurping control of the National Television Network and "applying ... economic pressure against those media organizations that are not unconditional supporters of the government..."
* allowing its supporters to assemble even when armed, while preventing legal assembly by its opponents
* "...supporting more than 1,500 illegal 'takings' of farms..."
* illegal repression of the El Teniente strike
* illegally limiting emigration

The resolution finally condemned the "creation and development of government-protected armed groups which... are headed towards a confrontation with the Armed Forces." Allende's efforts to re-organize the military and police, which he could not trust in their current forms, were characterized as "notorious attempts to use the Armed and Police Forces for partisan ends, destroy their institutional hierarchy, and politically infiltrate their ranks."


And as for the economic boom?

In 1972, the monetary policies of an increase in the amount of currency, which had been adopted by the Minister of Economics, Pedro Vuskovic, led to a devaluation of the escudo and to renewed inflation, which reached 140% in 1972.

Mmm, here, more background:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_coup_of_1973

"Chamber of Deputies' Resolution
<already cited above, snip>

Among other particulars, the regime was accused of:
<snip>
The resolution finally condemned the "creation and development of government-protected armed groups which... are headed towards a confrontation with the Armed Forces." Allende's efforts to re-organize the military and police, which he could not trust in their current forms, were characterized as "notorious attempts to use the Armed and Police Forces for partisan ends, destroy their institutional hierarchy, and politically infiltrate their ranks."

[edit] Allende's response

Two days later (August 24, 1973), Allende responded [9] characterizing Congress's declaration as "destined to damage the country's prestige abroad and create internal confusion," and predicting that "It will facilitate the seditious intention of certain sectors." He pointed out that the declaration (passed 81-47 in the Chamber of Deputies) had not obtained the two-thirds Senate majority constitutionally required to convict the president of abuse of power: essentially, they were "invoking the intervention of the Armed Forces and of Order against a democratically elected government" and "subordinat[ing] political representation of national sovereignty to the armed institutions, which neither can nor ought to assume either political functions or the representation of the popular will." Allende argued that he had followed constitutional means in bringing members of the military into the cabinet "at the service of civic peace and national security, defending republican institutions against insurrection and terrorism." In contrast, he said that Congress was promoting a coup or a civil war, using a declaration "full of affirmations that had already been refuted beforehand" and which, in substance and process (handing it directly to the various ministers rather than delivering it to the president) violated a dozen articles of the then-current constitution. Further, he argued that the legislature was trying to usurp the executive role.

"Chilean democracy," Allende wrote, "is a conquest by all of the people. It is neither the work nor the gift of the exploiting classes, and it will be defended by those who, with sacrifices accumulated over generations, have imposed it... With a tranquil conscience... I sustain that never before has Chile had a more democratic government than that over which I have the honor to preside... I solemnly reiterate my decision to develop democracy and a state of law to their ultimate consequences... Parliament has made itself a bastion against the transformations... and has done everything it can to perturb the functioning of the finances and of the institutions, sterilizing all creative initiatives." Economic and political means, he said, would be needed to get the country out of its current crisis, and Congress was obstructing these means; having already "paralyzed" the state, they were now seeking to "destroy" it. He concluded by calling upon "the workers, all democrats and patriots" to join him in defense of the constitution and of the "revolutionary process.""

I appreciate these opinions about Chile in 1973, which helps to give more information on the issue.

While informative, the information you've provided is absolutely no reason or justification for our country (CIA) to use its resources to help overthrow another country.

With the specifics you've brought up, please take a look at your list and notice the similarities to what our own government has been doing.

In addition, I would suggest citing your information.

thx

In reply to this comment by reason:
Why not address these facts?

On August 22, 1973 the Christian Democrats and the National Party members of the Chamber of Deputies passed, by 81 to 47 votes, a resolution entitled "Declaration of the Breakdown of Chile’s Democracy", which called upon the military to "put an immediate end" to what they described as "breach[es of] the Constitution… with the goal of redirecting government activity toward the path of Law and ensuring the constitutional order of our Nation and the essential underpinnings of democratic coexistence among Chileans."

The resolution declared that the Allende government was seeking "...to conquer absolute power with the obvious purpose of subjecting all citizens to the strictest political and economic control by the state... [with] the goal of establishing a totalitarian system," and claimed that it had made "violations of the Constitution" into "a permanent system of conduct." Many of the charges came down to disregarding the separation of powers and arrogating the prerogatives of both the legislature and judiciary within the executive.

Among other particulars, the regime was accused of:

* ruling by decree, thus thwarting the normal system of adopting legislation
* refusing to enforce judicial decisions against its own partisans and "not carrying out sentences and judicial resolutions that contravene its objectives"
* ignoring the decrees of the independent General Comptroller's Office
* various offenses related to the media, including usurping control of the National Television Network and "applying ... economic pressure against those media organizations that are not unconditional supporters of the government..."
* allowing its supporters to assemble even when armed, while preventing legal assembly by its opponents
* "...supporting more than 1,500 illegal 'takings' of farms..."
* illegal repression of the El Teniente strike
* illegally limiting emigration

The resolution finally condemned the "creation and development of government-protected armed groups which... are headed towards a confrontation with the Armed Forces." Allende's efforts to re-organize the military and police, which he could not trust in their current forms, were characterized as "notorious attempts to use the Armed and Police Forces for partisan ends, destroy their institutional hierarchy, and politically infiltrate their ranks."


And as for the economic boom?

In 1972, the monetary policies of an increase in the amount of currency, which had been adopted by the Minister of Economics, Pedro Vuskovic, led to a devaluation of the escudo and to renewed inflation, which reached 140% in 1972.

Why not address these facts?

On August 22, 1973 the Christian Democrats and the National Party members of the Chamber of Deputies passed, by 81 to 47 votes, a resolution entitled "Declaration of the Breakdown of Chile’s Democracy", which called upon the military to "put an immediate end" to what they described as "breach[es of] the Constitution… with the goal of redirecting government activity toward the path of Law and ensuring the constitutional order of our Nation and the essential underpinnings of democratic coexistence among Chileans."

The resolution declared that the Allende government was seeking "...to conquer absolute power with the obvious purpose of subjecting all citizens to the strictest political and economic control by the state... [with] the goal of establishing a totalitarian system," and claimed that it had made "violations of the Constitution" into "a permanent system of conduct." Many of the charges came down to disregarding the separation of powers and arrogating the prerogatives of both the legislature and judiciary within the executive.

Among other particulars, the regime was accused of:

* ruling by decree, thus thwarting the normal system of adopting legislation
* refusing to enforce judicial decisions against its own partisans and "not carrying out sentences and judicial resolutions that contravene its objectives"
* ignoring the decrees of the independent General Comptroller's Office
* various offenses related to the media, including usurping control of the National Television Network and "applying ... economic pressure against those media organizations that are not unconditional supporters of the government..."
* allowing its supporters to assemble even when armed, while preventing legal assembly by its opponents
* "...supporting more than 1,500 illegal 'takings' of farms..."
* illegal repression of the El Teniente strike
* illegally limiting emigration

The resolution finally condemned the "creation and development of government-protected armed groups which... are headed towards a confrontation with the Armed Forces." Allende's efforts to re-organize the military and police, which he could not trust in their current forms, were characterized as "notorious attempts to use the Armed and Police Forces for partisan ends, destroy their institutional hierarchy, and politically infiltrate their ranks."


And as for the economic boom?

In 1972, the monetary policies of an increase in the amount of currency, which had been adopted by the Minister of Economics, Pedro Vuskovic, led to a devaluation of the escudo and to renewed inflation, which reached 140% in 1972.

From Six Questions for Greg Grandin on Che’s Legacy:

Forty years ago this month, Che Guevara was captured and executed as he tried to lead a guerilla insurrection deep in the Bolivian jungle. Despite questions about his sometimes violent tactics and effectiveness as a revolutionary leader, Che remains an iconic symbol—even though he’s now been dead longer than he was alive. Che’s popularity in this country might stem more from how he looks on album covers and T-shirts than from his ideas or actions, but in Latin America, Che is remembered for his willingness to stand up to the United States. Greg Grandin, a history professor at New York University, is the author of several books on American influence in Latin America, most recently last year’s Empire’s Workshop.

1. How is Che currently viewed in Latin America and how different is his image there than it is here?
There are those in the U.S. who see Che as a generic symbol of rebellion against power and some who even think seriously about his political legacy, but he is more readily available as a pop and commercial icon. His image has been co-opted, following in the tradition of Warhol’s silk-screened Mao. In Latin America, some of this banalization exists, but the popularity and understanding of Che goes well beyond that. I was living in Guatemala a decade ago when peace accords ended that country’s 36-year civil war, in which hundreds of thousands of civilians died. Suddenly Che’s image was everywhere. One street vendor told me that during the first three months after the war ended she sold more images of Che than she did of pop stars or the Virgin Mary. So Che–who was no fan of free speech–became a symbol of exactly that in a country long repressed. Throughout the region, Che remains a multifaceted symbol of reform, embodying anything from anti-imperialist resistance to revolutionary purity. And of course it doesn’t hurt that he is so good looking—I.F. Stone said that he was the first man he had ever met who he thought not just handsome but beautiful. In recent years, a number of admirers have been elected leaders of a number of countries: Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, and Argentina’s Nestor Kirchner all have embraced Che. Even more cautious reformers like Brazil’s Lula feel compelled to pay homage to his legacy.

2. How has his image evolved over the last four decades in Latin America?
His popularity has increased since his death. When he was alive, the Cuban Revolution, of which he was one of the most visible spokesmen, represented a divide between Latin America’s old, reformist, Communist Party Left, and a new, insurgent left. Today, those debates are largely the stuff of history and his appeal is practically universal save among the most hidebound. Look at Bolivia to get a sense of just how much his reputation has evolved–it was there, in the remote village called La Higuera, that Bolivian forces, aided by CIA agents, executed Che. His Bolivian expedition was a complete failure and his capture had much to do with the fact that he didn’t receive much support from either the Bolivian Communist Party nor from peasants. But today Che’s image is everywhere in Bolivia and he is particularly esteemed by that country’s powerful peasant and indigenous movement. President Morales is reported to keep a picture of him in his wallet and just last year, upon winning the presidency, he participated in an unofficial inauguration, where he claimed Che as a patron saint of indigenous rights, saying, “The struggle that Che Guevara left uncompleted, we shall complete.”

3. What do you say to those who object to this canonization of Che, claiming that he’s nothing more than a totalitarian murderer?
I’d say tell it to the millions of Latin Americans, many of them at the margins of society, fighting for a just, truly democratic world, who still find inspiration in his struggle and image. To them, there is no confusion. Do our political commissars, always on the hunt for any whiff of residual sympathy for the militant New Left, really want to dismiss those people out of hand as irrelevant or misguided? Over the last two decades, social movements inspired by Che have fought against free-market orthodoxy. Those movements are bearers of the social-democratic tradition and are seeking to advance democracy.

4. The vision Che had for Cuba and the Third World in general did not develop. How does that effect his legacy?
You could argue that the failure of the Cuban model has actually benefited Che’s legacy, which has evolved from the specific political project he was associated with. Forty years ago. Che died trying to export the armed tactics of the Cuban Revolution elsewhere. There were many reasons why the Left by that time had embraced violent insurrection as a strategy, not the least of which was the refusal of the region’s elites, fortified with support from Washington, to give up even the slightest of its privileges. Since then, the Latin American Left has evolved. Today it is profoundly peaceful and democratic, despite having adopted an icon of insurrection as its talisman.

5. What are some of the common misperceptions about Che in the United States?
My guess is that the American public knows very little about Che. If they saw the movie Motorcycle Diaries, they may have learned that he was Argentine, not Cuban. But few know that just after that tour around Latin America, where he first began to develop a pan-American consciousness, he wound up in Guatemala, a country that at the time was undergoing a profound democratic revolution. Che practiced social medicine in the country’s rural highlands, ministering to the country’s most marginal. He was in Guatemala during the CIA’s 1954 coup that ended that country’s democracy, and he saw firsthand the U.S. role in restoring a regime that would go on to kill hundreds of thousands of its citizens. He always cited his experience in Guatemala as a turning point. Prior to the coup, the Latin American left, including Communist groups, still believed it was possible to work with a country’s national bourgeois to achieve social democratic reform. Afterwards, it was increasingly difficult to do so. Che himself would go on to taunt the United States, saying “Cuba will not be another Guatemala” to justify the restrictions of civil liberties in Cuba, since it was through the subversion of the press, the Church, and independent political parties that the CIA did its work in Guatemala, and subsequently elsewhere.

6. How have American policies in Latin America following Che’s death impacted his image in the region?
Che was executed in 1967, and some of the worst interventions by Washington in Latin America were still to come. Most people are aware of the CIA’s involvement in the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973 and Reagan’s wars in Central America in the 1980s. Less known is U.S. involvement in, or at least sanctioning of, coups in Uruguay in 1973 and Argentina in 1976. Following the demise of the Soviet Union, Washington moved away from its reliance on repressive Latin American proxies, banking instead on its ability to project its power through elections and economic pressure. This worked throughout the 1990s, as heavily indebted countries governed by centrists submitted to the command of the IMF. Over the past few years, roughly since Chávez’s landslide victory in 1998, the system has started to break down. The “Washington consensus,” as this set of policies came to be called, proved an absolute disaster. Between 1980 and 2000, in per capita terms, the region grew cumulatively by only 9 per cent. Compare that with the 82 per cent expansion of the previous two decades, and add to it the financial crises that have rolled across Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Argentina over the past 15 years, sweeping away accumulated savings, destroying the middle class, and wrecking the agricultural sector, and you will get a sense of why Evo Morales is calling for the completion of Che’s struggle.

-- continued.

One year after the US-instigated coup, President Gerald Ford - in the oval office thanks to some domestic White House "black ops" that garnered unfavorable attention in the imperial homeland (Watergate) - claimed that US actions in installing Pinochet were "in the best interests of the people of Chile and certainly in our own best interests."


Historical Connections

Twenty-eight years to the day after Chile's 9/11, the world witnessed a different, more spectacular form of unimaginable violence, broadcast live on national TV, with different ideological and geo-political parameters. The culprits were almost certainly based in the extremist Islamic terror networks of the Middle East.

There are some interesting, dark connections, however, between these two Nine-Elevens. The US policy of deterring democracy and social justice in the perceived interest of US multinational corporations and world capitalism was hardly restricted to Chile and the official Cold War era (1945-1991). In pursuit of the same basic goals that informed the US/Pinochet coup, the US has supported and in some cases conducted anti-democratic coups against excessively (from a US perspective) "left" governments (any state that proposed to encourage development of its sovereign territory in significant autonomy from the US-dominated world capitalist economic system) in Syria (1949), Iran (1953), Iraq (1963), Indonesia (1965), and Greece (1967). It provided massive economic and military assistance to authoritarian Middle Eastern regimes that suppressed democratic and left opposition and kept their domestic economies open to foreign and especially US corporate penetration and domination. It armed Israel, waged war and enforced a deadly, decade-long sanctions campaign against Iraq, stationed troops indefinitely in the Islamic Holy Land, and provided cover for Israel's prolonged, racist annexation of Palestinian territory. The US funded the Arab far-right, supporting arch-reactionary Islamic extremists like Osama bin Laden, valued as weapons in the same Cold War that provided cover for the US campaign to crush national self-determination, democracy, and social justice in places like Iran, Vietnam, Nicaragua, and Chile.

By largely eliminating the left, undercutting democracy, and generally subjecting regional developments to imperial fiat both during and after the official Cold War, the US shrunk the available space for "normal" (Western-style/parliamentary) airing of social, political and related international grievances in the Middle East. This, in turn, brought "blowback" (an internal CIA term for the unintended consequences of secret US foreign policies) from America's imperial periphery to the skies and streets of New York City and Washington DC, where Pinochet's henchmen (part of a CIA-sponsored team of international assassins code-named "Operation Condor") killed a former Allende supporter and his American driver (Olando Letelier and Randy Moffit) in 1976. How darkly appropriate, then, that George W. Bush attempted to put Kissinger, a leading perpetrator in the state-terrorist events of 9/11/73, at the head of a federal commission to investigate US security lapses prior to 9/11/2001, which opened the door for new levels of US and US-sponsored state terrorism.


Worthy and Unworthy 9/11s

Of course, only a tiny percentage of the US population knows about Chile's 9/11, for reasons that go beyond obvious gaps of time, geography, and language. A relevant explanatory text here is the second chapter, titled "Worthy and Unworthy Victims," of Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman's Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of The Mass Media (New York, NY: Pantheon, 1988), published as the Cold War was nearing its partial conclusion with the collapse of the Soviet deterrent (itself part of the context for 9/11/2001) to American global ambitions. "A propaganda system," the authors noted, "will consistently portray people abused in enemy states as worthy victims, whereas those treated with equal or greater severity by its own government or clients will be unworthy." Identified with the official US Cold War "enemy" force of socialism or Marxism - really social egalitarianism and national self-determination (still the basic adversaries of US policy in the "post-Cold-War era") - Pinochet's victims have only recently attained a small measure of historical worthiness in dominant US corporate-state media. This slight retrospective legitimacy comes far too long after the terrible facts. It is no match for the worthiness bestowed on the most officially precious victims in US History: the Americans who died on the only 9/11 that matters in a nation that drifts through history in a dangerous fog of selective, top-down remembrance.


Paul Street (pstreet@cul-chicago.org) will speak on "State-Run Media" on Friday, September 26, 2003 at a conference titled "Is Our Media Serving Us?" at Columbia College, Hokin Annex, 623 S. Wabash, Chicago, IL, 12:45 PM.


Appendix: Selected Sources on US Involvement in 9/11/73 and Related Developments in Chile

US Senate, Select Committee to Study Government Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities, Covert Action in Chile, 1963-1973 (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1975); United States Congress, Select Committee to Study Government Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities, Interim Report: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 94th Congress, 1st Session, November 10, 1975 (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1975); William Blum, The CIA: A Forgotten History (London: Zed, 1986), pp. 232-243; Seymour M. Hersh, "The Price of Power: Kissinger, Nixon, and Chile," Atlantic Monthly, 250 (1982), no. 6, 21-58; Poul Jensen, The Garotte: The United States and Chile, 1970-73 (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 1988); Christopher Hitchens, The Trial of Henry Kissinger (New York, NY: Verso, 2001), pp. 55-76; "Why Is the U.S. Mum About Pinochet?," CNN.com (November 25, 1998), available online at http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9 811/25/pinochet.us/; National Security Archives, The Chile Documentation Project (2000-2001), available online at http://www.gwu.edu/~ nsarchiv/latin_america/chile.htm.

Remembering Chile's 9/11
by Paul Street

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=4162

September 10, 2003

"Close to Perfect:" A Different, Bloodier Nine-Eleven

The events of September 11th were horrific, tragic, and criminal on a monumental scale. Planes flew low over an American nation's leading city. Buildings erupted in flames. There was an official death toll of more than 3,000. Thousands of innocent people were ruthlessly slaughtered. Their loved ones were placed in horrible suspense, waiting to learn the fate of missing husbands, wives, sisters, cousins, and children. An American country was left in shock, with an uncertain future, as the perpetrators evaded capture and punishment. September 11th was a dark, bloody day of historic proportions. It was a prelude to regression, repression and heightened bloodshed.

Yes, the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Chile's president Salvadore Allende on September 11th, 1973 was a terrible watershed. The low-flying planes belonged to the Chilean Air Force. They came on the orders of Chilean General Augusto Pinochet to bomb La Moneda Presidential Palace, where Allende, a self-declared Marxist, killed himself before he could be assassinated. Hundreds of real and suspected Allende supporters were gunned down in Santiago's soccer stadium, fashioned into a torture center and concentration camp. Across the nation, in the streets and military detention centers, Pinochet's forces murdered 20,000 and tortured 60,000 in the first few months after 9/11/1973. One million Chileans were forced into exile. According to leading international relations analyst William I. Robinson, it was "the bloodiest coup in Latin-American history" (Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention, and Hegemony [Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1996], p. 46).

According to a report from Patrick Ryan, the US Naval Attaché stationed with the United States Military Group in Chile that black September, the coup was "close to perfect." It was, Ryan told his superiors, a great victory for "free men aspiring to goals which are to the benefit of Chile and not self-serving world Marxism." (Situation Report, Navy Section, United States Military Group, Valparaiso, Chile, October 1, 1973, available online at http://www.gwu. edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/ch21-01.htm)

This state-terrorist rampage targeted the left and the mass popular social movements ("Marxist" and otherwise) that brought Allende to power in September 1970. Chilean trade unions and other popular organizations were dismantled. Clinics serving the poor were closed down. Twenty-six newspapers and magazines were shuttered. Chilean state and society, exceptional among Latin American states in the degree or its respect for civic freedoms and bourgeois-democratic political institutions, was militarized at every level.

Next came the restructuring of Chile's political economy along "free market" lines, meaning state protection for the wealthy and savage market discipline for the poor. Land, factories, mines, and mills that had been put under public direction for public service were returned to their "rightful" owners, "rescued" for the noble pursuit of egoistic, capitalist profit. This was consistent with the counsel of University of Chicago economic "experts," who arrived to spread Milton Friedman's delusional notion that capitalism and democracy are identical phenomena.

The socioeconomic consequences of the new "freedom" and "democracy" were striking. As the Chilean rich got richer during the first ten years of Pinochet's rule, the number of Chileans living below the official poverty line rose from 17 to 40 percent. The related slashing of health expenditures and programs led to an explosion of poverty-related diseases at the bottom of Chile's increasingly steep pyramid. Those who questioned the policies leading to these aristocratic outcomes did so at the risk of torture and murder by the fascist "free market" state.

"In Our Own Best Interests": Saving Chile from the "Irresponsibility" of Its Own People

It was all carried out to the applause and with the assistance and political cover of the US power elite. When the American ambassador to Chile expressed misgivings about Pinochet's use of torture, he received a sharp rebuke from US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who oversaw US covert actions and made sure that the ambassador was kept out of the "black-ops" loop during the early 1970s. For Kissinger and President Richard Nixon, humanitarian concerns were irrelevant. The higher Cold War goal was to protect global capitalism and American multinational corporate interests from the virus of "Marxism." Stated more accurately, the purpose was to crush the contagious notion that national social and economic policy should and could be conducted with collective and egalitarian purposes and national self-determination in mind. Kissinger seems to have been most concerned with the demonstration effect successful Chilean left-democratic governance might have on Italy, where left parties were in a position to make gains within the existing parliamentary political system.

Upon learning of Allende's election in 1970, Nixon informed Kissinger and CIA Director Richard Helms that the newly elected government of Chile was "unacceptable." He instructed his dark foreign policy stars to devise a scheme for keeping Allende out of office. "Not concerned risks involved," read Helms' notes on Nixon's instruction. "No involvement of the embassy. $10,000,000 available, more if necessary. Full-time job - best men we have...Make the economy scream. 48 hours for plan of action."

Kissinger saw "no reason," he once remarked, that the US should stand by and let a nation "go Marxist" because "its people are irresponsible." Consistent with that judgment, Kissinger and the CIA were centrally involved in efforts to de-stabilize and overthrow the Allende regime through various means, including military force. This pivotal, illegal US intervention in Chile's internal affairs is now a matter of voluminous documentary and scholarly record, much of which can be perused in a number of sources listed in an Appendix at the end of this article.

(to be continued)