Pinochet victim poised to run Chile

[sasha031]

Michelle Bachelet, a 54-year-old who was tortured during Augusto Pinochet's regime, is favourite to win the final round of the Chilean presidential race and so become the first woman elected to lead a South American nation.
A single mother, she is unusual in the politics of the continent in being neither the wife nor the widow of a former president. Opinion polls last week showed Bachelet with a 53 per cent share of the vote - a five-point lead over her opponent, billionaire businessman Sebastián Piñera. Bachelet's brand of democracy has motivated Chileans to register and vote by the hundreds of thousands. She exerts a special appeal to lower-class women - and has pledged to appoint women to half the posts in her cabinet.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,16937,1686657,00.html

[CrazyOrangeCat]

1. That is awesome!

What a brave lady.

[malaise]

2. Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees

There is hope in South America.

[CrazyOrangeCat]

4. I knew I should've . . .

. . . worked harder in Spanish class.

;)

[sasha031]

3. Latin America is truly finding their way

:applause:

true Democracy at work

[Jade Fox]

5. It's pretty amazing, isn't it?

One strange "advantage" of the US imbroglio in the Mid-east is that we don't have the man power (apparently) to screw up the good stuff going on south of the equator.

[malaise]

7. Don't know if you saw this

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_20593.shtml

[sasha031]

10. thank you for the article

I have had one burning question for some time.

For Al Gore, Clinton and Jimmy Carter to advocate NAFTA gives me the sinking impression that it was just a continuation of business as usual, I find it hard to believe that they wouldn't realize it was just another way of history repeating itself.

These thoughts are depressing because it would mean there is no real difference.

I just answered my own question, DLC

[malaise]

12. Until the Dems separate themselves from

the neoliberal agenda, there is no real difference. Dems need to get back to their base - the ordinary people across the globe.

[chat_noir]

6. The other 9/11

The Chilean Sept. 11th as remember by Montrealers


For much of the world, the date of Sept.11 will forever be inextricably linked to images of hijacked airliners impaling the Twin Towers of New York in a scene of almost unfathomable horror and destruction.

But for the people of Chile, Sept. 11 also conjures memories of a national cataclysm, one whose consequences were equally, if not more devastating for its thousands of victims.

SNIP

The victims of the terrorist attacks in New York, were mostly American but, in 1973, it was the American government, under U.S. President Richard Nixon, that orchestrated the coup that launched Pinochet's reign of terror

The Nixon administration's point man on Chile was Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Kissinger, who once summed up his contempt for the people of Chile by saying they were too "irresponsible" to choose their own government, has been directly implicated in the assassination of Chilean General (and constitutional loyalist) Rene Schneider. Schneider's murder paved the way for Pinochet's power grab.

In a bitterly ironic twist, Kissinger, one of those chiefly responsible for Pinochet's rise to power, was President George W. Bush's original nominee to head the investigation into the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

http://www.theconcordian.com/media/paper290/news/2003/09/17/News/The-Chilean.Sept.11th.As.Remember.By.Montrealers-469809.shtml?norewrite&sourcedomain=www.theconcordian.com


Declassified Documents Relating to the Military Coup, September 11, 1973

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 8

These documents include:

CIA memoranda and reports on "Project FUBELT"--the codename for covert operations to promote a military coup and undermine Allende's government. The documents, including minutes of meetings between Henry Kissinger and CIA officials, CIA cables to its Santiago station, and summaries of covert action in 1970, provide a clear paper trail to the decisions and operations against Allende's government

National Security Council strategy papers which record efforts to "destabilize" Chile economically, and isolate Allende's government diplomatically, between 1970 and 1973.

FBI documents on Operation Condor--the state-sponsored terrorism of the Chilean secret police, DINA. The documents, including summaries of prison letters written by DINA agent Michael Townley, provide evidence on the carbombing assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in Washington D.C., and the murder of Chilean General Carlos Prats and his wife in Buenos Aires, among other operations

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/nsaebb8i.htm

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

8. Obviously she wasn't advised by the DLC about being "too liberal".

Only "moderates" can win, doncha know?

[malaise]

9. No she was watching Bolivia

where the first indigenous South American won the election.

[Terran1212]

11. Can you say PAYBACK?

[oasis]

13. Chimpy's new "Axis of Evil" emerging from South America. (eom)