Pinochet is Dead!!! 2nd Massive Stroke

[Aro]

The kid is the minister of Culture, Gilberto Gil (btw, a very fine and important musician - a lot of Grammies and so...)

Btw, this is the cartoon I'm publishing tomorrow. My newspaper editor published that photo (posted before) in the front page today, and I used the photo as a “motif”, an inspiration.

[Dinner]

I put Pinochet in the same basket as Franco. They were both mean ass dictators who did some terrible things but it could have been much worse. For all of his short comes he didn't ruin his country and loot it for all it was worth like so many other dictators have done in the past.

[Drake Tungsten]

AUGUSTO PINOCHET, who died Sunday at the age of 91, has been vilified for three decades in and outside of Chile, the South American country he ruled for 17 years. For some he was the epitome of an evil dictator. That was partly because he helped to overthrow, with U.S. support, an elected president considered saintly by the international left: socialist Salvador Allende, whose responsibility for creating the conditions for the 1973 coup is usually overlooked. Mr. Pinochet was brutal: More than 3,000 people were killed by his government and tens of thousands tortured, mostly in his first three years. Thousands of others spent years in exile.

One prominent opponent, Orlando Letelier, was assassinated by a car bomb on Washington's Sheridan Circle in 1976 -- one of the most notable acts of terrorism in this city's history. Mr. Pinochet, meanwhile, enriched himself, stashing millions in foreign bank accounts -- including Riggs Bank, a Washington institution that was brought down, in part, by the revelation of that business. His death forestalled a belated but richly deserved trial in Chile.

It's hard not to notice, however, that the evil dictator leaves behind the most successful country in Latin America. In the past 15 years, Chile's economy has grown at twice the regional average, and its poverty rate has been halved. It's leaving behind the developing world, where all of its neighbors remain mired. It also has a vibrant democracy. Earlier this year it elected another socialist president, Michelle Bachelet, who suffered persecution during the Pinochet years.

Like it or not, Mr. Pinochet had something to do with this success. To the dismay of every economic minister in Latin America, he introduced the free-market policies that produced the Chilean economic miracle -- and that not even Allende's socialist successors have dared reverse. He also accepted a transition to democracy, stepping down peacefully in 1990 after losing a referendum.

By way of contrast, Fidel Castro -- Mr. Pinochet's nemesis and a hero to many in Latin America and beyond -- will leave behind an economically ruined and freedomless country with his approaching death. Mr. Castro also killed and exiled thousands. But even when it became obvious that his communist economic system had impoverished his country, he refused to abandon that system: He spent the last years of his rule reversing a partial liberalization. To the end he also imprisoned or persecuted anyone who suggested Cubans could benefit from freedom of speech or the right to vote.

The contrast between Cuba and Chile more than 30 years after Mr. Pinochet's coup is a reminder of a famous essay written by Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, the provocative and energetic scholar and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who died Thursday. In "Dictatorships and Double Standards," a work that caught the eye of President Ronald Reagan, Ms. Kirkpatrick argued that right-wing dictators such as Mr. Pinochet were ultimately less malign than communist rulers, in part because their regimes were more likely to pave the way for liberal democracies. She, too, was vilified by the left. Yet by now it should be obvious: She was right.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/11/AR2006121101166.html

The Washington Post ed board is on fire this week...

[Chilean President™]

Amazing draw Aro!!! I'll show it to some friends. You should get in contact with Chilean leftwing newspaper, they'll print it in a second! Probably in The Clinic (a leftwing magazine named after the London Clinic where Pinochet was arrested in 1998) would put it in the cover!!!

You really did a great job! I'm amaze... if I weren't rightwinger (light of course ) I'll add it as my MSN avatar

[Sava]

edit: damn image wouldn't link properly

[trev]

Pinochet's legacy of 3000 dead or 20 000 or whatever is almost cetainly less than would have died if he had not intervened to rescue a country in economic paralysis and civil disorder with many of the population determined to strike until the government fell. A country in economic paralysis and civil disorder will have people dying regardless even if it is from starvation, uncured illnesses because treatment is not available, uncontrolled criminal behaviour etc.
A serious unprejudiced look at the conditions that were created in Chile by Allende will support my contention that NO GOOD solutions were available.

[Bosh]

So whenever there's no good solution availalbe its OK to slaughter people? Good to know.

[trev]

You keep choosing to ignore the greater loss of lives that probably would have resulted if someone had not fixed up the Chilean mess, I suppose its ok to you if people die because of a president's ideological obsessions, after all they are deaths resulting indirectly from his actions, not directly.

[Wernazuma III]

Originally posted by trev
You keep choosing to ignore the greater loss of lives that probably would have resulted if someone had not fixed up the Chilean mess, I suppose its ok to you if people die because of a president's ideological obsessions, after all they are deaths resulting indirectly from his actions, not directly.

Please back up: which of Allende's policies was directed to inflict massive murder, as you seem to insinuate? Your gut feeling that this is a sure thing for any socialist government?

[bondetamp]

He shouldn't be burried in a coffin. He should be impaled outside the stadium as a warning to future and present dictators that no matter how many people you kill, someone will outlive you.

[Chilean President™]

Good bye to General Augusto Pieceofsh¡t.




























In voyage to Viña del Mar for cremation.

[Imran Siddiqui]

[SIZE=1] Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
The Washington Post ed board is on fire this week...

And no one can dare accuse them of being right wing mouthpieces.

[SlowwHand]

No offense intended, but those coneheads are odd looking.

[Whoha]

you're thinking of the washington times?

[Aro]

Originally posted by Chilean President™

They really should change the shape of their helmets…