Blogging the democratic revolution
Augusto Pinochet, 1915-2006 Source: CNN Chile’s former military strongman, Augusto Pinochet, has died in Providencia, Chile at age 91. Half of Chile is rioting in joy and the other half is rioting in rage. It seems about fitting, because not only did this guy do good and bad things through his life, these acts spanned…
Milton Friedman, Democratic Revolutionary Source: John Petrie’s Milton Friedman Quotation Page The great Milton Friedman died yesterday in San Francisco. His ideas changed the world the most in our era. When we say ‘free markets,’ we think of him. I can think of no one whose ideas made more revolution and genuinely changed the world…
StJacques over at Free Republic has translated a fabulous Chilean editorial from El Mercurio blasting the Venezuelan dictator as dangerous for Chile’s interests, right on the heels of Mexico’s blast at Chavez for his ego. Read it here.
Not that he ever really had it, but President Bachelet was considering supporting Venezuela’s candidacy for a rotating seat on the United Nations security council that’s coming up. Possibly no more. A.M. Mora y Leon already posted up an article showing Bachelet’s absolute fury over remarks made by the Venezuelan government that the Christian Democrat…
The mystery country in the United Nations voter lineup for Security Council seats, Chile, led by a socialist with roots in the Allende era, is apparently fed up to the quick with the government of Hugo Chavez. Chavez’s anti-American diatribes disgusted most nations that had planned to support Venezuela over Guatemala for the Security Council…
Just over three years ago, the United States and Chile signed a free trade agreement, opening up markets and allowing for greater prosperity in both countries. Now, Chile has signed a free trade agreement with China, the first between the Asian giant and a Latin American country, bilaterally opening up markets on both sides. It…
Moderate democratic socialist President Michelle Bachelet of Chile looks to be slightly edging toward the right, given a recent cabinet shuffle. Three cabinet officials, from education, economy and interior have been replaced. This follows recent street protests from students who were demaning that the government raise funding and bus fares for education. It was the…
Read this entire article in the latest edition of Foreign Affairs. But if you don’t, then you should at least see the following, which is relevant. It is written by Jorge Castaneda, once Mexico’s foreign minister, regarding to two different lefts in Latin America. A TALE OF TWO LEFTS Just over a decade ago, Latin…
To give you an idea of just what Chile, a country governed by democratic socialists, thinks of Venezuela’s banana-leftist Hugo Chavez, just click on the link here and get an eyeful. The short story is he cut the pendejo dead. The elderly gentleman featured in the mini-film is President Ricardo Lagos, the honorable outgoing president…
Michelle Bachelet of Chile has just kicked Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez where it hurts again, and this isn’t the first time. Awhile back, the Venezuelan dictator said he wanted to ‘hug’ her and was met with stony silence. She’s been even more assertive on other fronts with him as well. Today, she’s somehow gotten the…
There’s some great thinking and analysis out there on Chile’s election. Here are some of the best items I’ve found so far: First stop, check out Boz at Bloggings by Boz‘s Five Points on Chile, describing the implications of the election. I in particular agree with Point One, and think his Point Five is excellent,…
Katy at Caracas Chronicles stayed up late to watch Chilean elections, because she’s got family in Chile but also because she sees Chile’s polar opposite, nightmarish Venezuela, up close. Her contrast of the two systems, and her good common sense on what next for Latin America’s brightest democracy is well worth reading here. Daniel in…
The results are in! After a nail-biting month, Concertaci????n candidate Michelle Bachelet has won the Chilean presidential run-off election with 53.5% of the vote. It’s the fourth straight victory for the center-left coalition, and they have won a slight majority of seats in both houses of Congress as well. The opposition has conceded gracefully, people…
This Sunday, Chile will undertake a great expression of democracy in its relatively new republic through its presidential elections. Gone are the days of dictators and caudillos and tinpots. Having totally renounced them and their lack of democracy, what’s left are two good candidates, one leaning left and one leaning right, heading down to the…
…in the context of Latin America’s failed economic reforms is a truly interesting comparison. After all, failed reforms in Latin America have left it at the mercy of increasingly hostile, unproductive, dead-end leftist leaders, while rule-of-law-loving Estonia has seen itself vault to nearly first-world status in just a few short revolutionary years. Mary Anastasia O’Grady…
Tens of thousands of Chilean copper-mining contractors have gone on strike for higher bonuses in a time of record-high copper prices. They’re contractors rather than employees, and don’t exactly have a contractual right to demand this money. But for the same reason that uninsured New Orleans homeowners still seek money from Uncle Sam, even though…
I must admit that I was getting more excited about this election than I was about the U.S. presidential ones. I’m not so sure why, because I realize that no matter who wins the same policies of free-markets and good governance will continue. There will now be a runoff on January 15, which means I’ll…
It looks like the courts in Chile may finally be getting their man once and for all. General Pinochet, who overthrew the Soviet-funded communist government and served as president until he stepped down in 1990, has been charged by the court for abused of human rights during his rule in which more than 3000 people…
While the big story has always been that Pinochet came to power through a CIA-organize military coup, most people forget the influence that the Soviet Union and Cuba had on Chile at the time. There’s really two sides to that coin, but most contemporary leftists ignore the inconvenience of the fact that the KGB gave…
Marvellous, prosperous, democratic, revolutionary Chile, which has already signed free trade pacts with the U.S. and other nations, has signed three more free trade pacts with Brunei, New Zealand and Singapore. While Hugo Chavez up north and his Master in Havana scream about how bad they are. And the U.S. thrashes about trying to decide…
I spent the day on the phone, talking to people in Chile. Somehow, Chile’s famous world-class social security system always got brought up, and on every occasion, Chileans, no matter who they were, expressed a vibrant enthusiasm for the program. I can’t describe how intense it was – and it was utterly real. As the…
The name Paul Sch????fer is too mild-mannered for a case as weird as this one. An ex-Nazi called that was recently caught in, where else, Argentina. However, he had a whole family cultie enclave in Chile dedicated to torture, to which dictator Augusto Pinochet seems to have outsourced some dirty-war work. That was not all….