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 extremes. 1. Pinochet is most famous for his role in the dirty war that left 3200 people dead in Chile. People were grabbed from the streets by creepy little men in grubby leather jackets and without trial, hurled into secret prisons, where many were tortured…
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 more for the better. He was the biggest democratic revolutionary of our age. Friedman won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1976. He brought forward free market ideas that were grounded in an Aristotelian understanding of human nature. Among his great ideas are that profit…
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 Party had betrayed Salvador Allende as well as the revolution. The fallout was absolutely astronomical. Relations between the two countries have never been so low. If Chavez ever thought he had a chance of gaining Chile’s support — probably one of the most important countries…
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 seat, but didn’t bother Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet all that much. More recent Chavista attacks over the weekend, charging her with being rightwing – on the weekend she laid a wreath at the spot where Allende’s foreign minister, Orlando Letelier, was assassinated, was an entirely…
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 will lead, just as it has in the past, to greater prosperity for both. China and Chile have signed a free-trade agreement, Beijing’s first in South America. The deal will give China better access to Chile’s extensive natural resources, such as copper, while Chile will…
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 harshest challenge to her government, and curiously enough, led by the far-left. Troy University political scientist Steven Taylor at PoliBlogger points out that on the surface, the studiously balanced cabinet, between men and women, remains. But idea-wise, the shift has moved a little to 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 America seemed poised to begin a virtuous cycle of economic progress and improved democratic governance, overseen by a growing number of centrist technocratic governments. In Mexico, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, buttressed by the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, was ready for…
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 of Chile, who’s since been succeeded by Michelle Bachelet, the fine new leader of Chile who’s already made her sentiments about the Venezuelan dictator very well known indeed. And for a bit of fun, here’s a shot of President Lagos bidding farewell to Cristina Kirchner,…
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 message to the clown that he’s not to try to upstage her during her historic presidential inauguration on March 11. Chavez is to take no ‘awards,’ make no ‘speeches’ and pander to no local leftists who might want to ‘honor’ him. If he wants that,…
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, too. But go see all of them and see what you think. It’s a don’t miss here. Randy Paul at Beautiful Horizons has some interesting – and rarely noted – facts about the issues Bachelet is likely to face regarding privatization, labor, and the social…
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 Yaracuy also has a excellent sober analysis of Chile’s election, and its contrast to Venezuela. He writes: It seems that the changes in Chile are deeper than one would have thought, perhaps the first country getting into a right/social-democrat European pattern for the good fortune…
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 are celebrating, and no bombs are going off. All in all, a model democratic election. It is a reward for sixteen years of reform. President Lagos is retiring with a popularity rating near 75%, and there is no reason to believe that there are any…
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 wire on Sunday’s elections. This whole election will serve as a benchmark to the rest of Latin America of what a good election should be. All countries should try to measure up to this excellent Chilean standard. Agencia EFE has a great profile of one…
…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 has her new Index of Economic Freedom out, with a discussion of Estonia’s “revolutionary reforms” (you think she reads Publius???) and of Latin America’s increasingly braked reforms, something worth considering as we watch Latin America slide ever further into the leftist vortex of no return.…
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 they didn’t buy any of the cheap, available, and pro-offered flood insurance from him, it’s nevertheless natural to ask. Times are unusual and politicians often respond to large numbers of people making the same request. It’s not unexpected that they might ask their owners for…
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 still be in the country to provide you all with on-the-ground liveblogging goodness. The campaign will now be between Socialist Michele Bachelet and centre-right Sebastian Pinera, who have both promised to continue the fantastic economic policies of President Lagos while vowing to cut unemployment and…
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 were killed. SANTIAGO, Chile (Reuters) – One day before his 90th birthday, former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was under house arrest on Thursday and facing tax fraud and human rights charges in his toughest legal situation yet. On Wednesday, Pinochet was placed under house arrest…
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 money to Allende and helped organize the communist opposition. The Times has an interesting excerpt from a soon-to-be published book called The Mitrokhin Archive Volume II, which talks about this.
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 CAFTA, as special interests howl like jackals in the desert. Chile’s citizens have three more bright lights on their horizon while Chavez’s Venezuela slips further into economic darkness, blaming the U.S. all the way down. And while the U.S. tries to decide between Big Sugar,…
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 U.S. debates adopting the wonderful Chilean system – which, by the way, has a lot to do with why Chilean stocks are so hot in the market – Miguel Octavio asks the penetrating question of: Why isn’t the rest of Latin America looking at Chile’s…
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. His Colonia Dignidad cult – braided-haired hausfraus and lederhosen-clad men – also was active in child abuse. What does this have to do with revolutions? It is that savages should be caught the first time, so they can’t set up shop in places like Chile…