Pinochet: savior of Chile or useless fascist?

[amadeus]

I suppose you also think the 99.99999999999% Castro gets in every election is genuine too.

 

[Brian Shanahan]

Reply back when you look at the graph.

I did, and I still saw nothing that disprove my previous convictions.

But in response, reply back when you get a graph that is not deliberately mendacious, and when you admit that you are wrong on the issue of Pinochet.

Oh, and every time you make an arguement as bad as this in a topic I'm viewing I will be sure to bring the hammer down full force to destroy your arguement.

 

[Formaldehyde]

I suppose you also think the 99.99999999999% Castro gets in every election is genuine too.

I suppose you think coming up with an obvious red herring, instead of addressing the issues which have been already raised, is "debate"?

 

[Communisto]

He murdered the uncle of one of my best friends. I tend to take that kind of crap personally so I'ma go with fascist pig on this one.

 

[Richard Cribb]

How exactly do you define economically right?

Just please remember you are asking an American. Prepare to be confused.
(Political right and economical right. Moses.)

This is an awesome quote. I'll be storing this one away.

Feel free to use it, I did unfortunately not invent it myself.
Will not spoil the daily fun of the history nerds to inform who originally is supposed to have said it, though.

I suppose you think coming up with an obvious red herring, instead of addressing the issues which have been already raised, is "debate"?

Finally somebody said it. Famous work, sir!

 

[amadeus]

I did, and I still saw nothing that disprove my previous convictions.

Then the graph should be higher after Pinochet implemented those policies (hint: it wasn't right in September 1973), not the aftermath of Allende's reign of incompetence.

But in response, reply back when you get a graph that is not deliberately mendacious, and when you admit that you are wrong on the issue of Pinochet.

(1.) I didn't make said graph. (2.) The graph would make Allende look a whole hell of a lot worse.

See new graph

Oh, and every time you make an arguement as bad as this in a topic I'm viewing I will be sure to bring the hammer down full force to destroy your arguement.

Ow!

I suppose you think coming up with an obvious red herring, instead of addressing the issues which have been already raised, is "debate"?

How am I supposed to argue with things Castro lied about? Wasn't 50 years of ardent Marxist rule enough? Wasn't maintaining Cuba's rotten system for nearly two decades after the collapse of the USSR enough? Wasn't Castro's rhetoric for that half-century enough? No, instead you find a few quotes from the fifties. Good job.

 

[Hygro]

Yay a debate!

Boo, the tenor of it sucks

I will jump in later and use my own plastic hammer!

 

[Formaldehyde]

How am I supposed to argue with things Castro lied about?

Especially when they are completely irrelevant to the topics being discussed?

No, instead you find a few quotes from the fifties.

That's the great thing about history. It remains essentially the same despite continued efforts by the far-right to fabricate it into a different form.

 

[Dachs]

That's the great thing about history. It remains essentially the same

No, it really doesn't

 

[amadeus]

New graph:

Source: World Bank Development Indicators

That's the great thing about history. It remains essentially the same despite continued efforts by the far-right to fabricate it into a different form.

I think my fifty years of actions beat your snippets.

 

[Formaldehyde]

What actions might that be? The overthrow of democratically elected governments and the implementation of brutal authoritarian regimes in their place? The deliberate inactivity and slights which caused Castro to go to the Soviet Union instead of the US for support? The use of red herring instead of discussing the issues?

 

[amadeus]

Fifty years of Castro's actions.

 

[Azale]

Yay a debate!

Boo, the tenor of it sucks

I will jump in later and use my own plastic hammer!

Masada comes in, makes a bunch of good points with some debating wiggle room, and people like Cribb come in and do what people like Cribb usually do. Masada proceeds to dismantle his entire post, Cribb proceeds to take potshots and construct semi-incoherent one liners

At least you got a few good links out of the thread?

 

[Left]

The US also cut economic aid to Chile under Allende. Also, this:

1 in 10 chance perhaps, but save Chile! worth spending; not concerned; no involvement of embassy; $10,000,00 available, more if necessary; full-time job — best men we have; game plan; make the economy scream; 48 hours for plan of action.

Notes taken down by CIA director Richard Helms on Nixon's orders for a plan against Salvador Allende of Chile. (15 September 1970). Document reproduced as part of George Washington University's National Security Archive.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon

 

[Formaldehyde]

Fifty years of Castro's actions.

While deliberately ignoring the actions of the US over the same period? The tail is wagging the dog again.

 

[Traitorfish]

Please name on fascist regime that did not rule their economy by one man fiat.

Name one that did.

 

[h0ncho]

So much bad history ITT. It is late and I should go to bed so I do not have the time to correct it all, but...

Has anyone heard of the declaration of the breakdown of the Chilean democracy?

Thing is, the Chilean parliament got together and voted on the following resolution, which was passed with 81 votes to 47:

Considering:
1. That for the Rule of Law to exist, public authorities must carry out their activities and discharge their duties within the framework of the Constitution and the laws of the land, respecting fully the principle of reciprocal independence to which they are bound, and that all inhabitants of the country must be allowed to enjoy the guarantees and fundamental rights assured them by the Constitution;
2. That the legitimacy of the Chilean State lies with the people who, over the years, have invested in this legitimacy with the underlying consensus of their coexistence, and that an assault on this legitimacy not only destroys the cultural and political heritage of our Nation, but also denies, in practice, all possibility of democratic life;
3. That the values and principles expressed in the Constitution, according to article 2, indicate that sovereignty resides essentially in the Nation, and that authorities may not exercise more powers than those delegated to them by the Nation; and, in article 3, it is deduced that any government that arrogates to itself rights not delegated to it by the people commits sedition;
4. That the current President of the Republic was elected by the full Congress, in accordance with a statute of democratic guarantees incorporated in the Constitution for the very purpose of assuring that the actions of his administration would be subject to the principles and norms of the Rule of Law that he solemnly agreed to respect;
5. That it is a fact that the current government of the Republic, from the beginning, has sought to conquer absolute power with the obvious purpose of subjecting all citizens to the strictest political and economic control by the state and, in this manner, fulfilling the goal of establishing a totalitarian system: the absolute opposite of the representative democracy established by the Constitution;
6. That to achieve this end, the administration has committed not isolated violations of the Constitution and the laws of the land, rather it has made such violations a permanent system of conduct, to such an extreme that it systematically ignores and breaches the proper role of the other branches of government, habitually violating the Constitutional guarantees of all citizens of the Republic, and allowing and supporting the creation of illegitimate parallel powers that constitute an extremely grave danger to the Nation, by all of which it has destroyed essential elements of institutional legitimacy and the Rule of Law;
7. That the administration has committed the following assaults on the proper role of the National Congress, seat of legislative power:
a) It has usurped Congress’s principle role of legislation through the adoption of various measures of great importance to the country’s social and economic life that are unquestionably matters of legislation through special decrees enacted in an abuse of power, or through simple "administrative resolutions" using legal loopholes. It is noteworthy that all of this has been done with the deliberate and confessed purpose of substituting the country’s institutional structures, as conceived by current legislation, with absolute executive authority and the total elimination of legislative authority;
b) It has consistently mocked the National Congress’s oversight role by effectively removing its power to formally accuse Ministers of State who violate the Constitution or laws of the land, or who commit other offenses specified by the Constitution, and;
c) Lastly, what is most extraordinarily grave, it has utterly swept aside the exalted role of Congress as a duly constituted power by refusing to enact the Constitutional reform of three areas of the economy that were approved in strict compliance with the norms established by the Constitution.[........]


The Chamber of Deputies agrees:
First: To present the President of the Republic, Ministers of State, and members of the Armed and Police Forces with the grave breakdown of the legal and constitutional order of the Republic, the facts and circumstances of which are detailed in sections 5 to 12 above;
Second: To likewise point out that by virtue of their responsibilities, their pledge of allegiance to the Constitution and to the laws they have served, and in the case of the ministers, by virtue of the nature of the institutions of which they are high-ranking officials and of Him whose name they invoked upon taking office, it is their duty to put an immediate end to all situations herein referred to that breach the Constitution and the laws of the land 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;
Third: To declare that if so done, the presence of those ministers in the government would render a valuable service to the Republic. To the contrary, they would gravely compromise the national and professional character of the Armed and Police Forces, openly infringing article 22 of the Constitution and seriously damaging the prestige of their institutions; and
Fourth: To communicate this agreement to His Excellency the President of the Republic, and to the Ministers of Economy, National Defense, Public Works and Transportation, and Land and Colonization.

Thing is, Allende had tried to make his own private militia, to shut down free speech and to beat up people who disagreed with him. As a result, the majority of the parliament of Chile asked the army to take him out.

Sadly, the Junta did have certain excesses. However, it is not even a ripple compared to the tsunami of violence that characterizes communist nations like Cuba, which was the direction in which Allende wanted to go.

As for free trade, most people in this thread clearly does not have a clue. Pinochet was certainly no free trader, and immediately after he took over the state his attempt to fix the economic problems was to implement a typical paternal socialism with heavy state control and regulation. By 1975 however it became apparent that this failed, and he asked the leading economist of the day - Milton Friedman - for advice, which Pinochet to his credit implemented.

There are some attempts to undermine the success of these reforms, and they all rely heavily on looking at the closed interval following the 1980's crash in copper prices. In the interest of greater clarity, I present to you this chart I made some time back:

 

[Brian Shanahan]

H0ncho, where did you pick up all that rubbish from (not the quote though I never saw that before), but the fallacy that Pinochet ever tried "paternal socialism", the first thing he tried was Friedmanism, then he tried it harder, and finally when neither worked, he renationalised a lot of the recently privatised industry. These facts are indisputible, just like the fact I'm Irish.

 

[Traitorfish]

Sadly, the Junta did have certain excesses. However, it is not even a ripple compared to the tsunami of violence that characterizes communist nations like Cuba, which was the direction in which Allende wanted to go.

I wonder how this would stand up in court? "Yes, your honour, I confess that I did indeed mug Old Mrs. McLaughlin, but that's not nearly as bad as killing a kitten. Which, incidentally, is totally what Old Mrs. McLaughlin was going to do, before I heroically mugged her."

 

[CaptainF]

How anyone could argue that Pinochet was good for Chile is beyond me. I've spoken with Chileans about the Pinochet years and they are all universally remembered with bitter hatred.

But no, some righties will try to argue that he, like Jorge Videla, was "necessary" to stop Communism, a favorite excuse.