Winds of Change.NET Regional Briefings run on Tuesdays & Wednesdays, and sometimes Fridays too. This Regional Briefing focuses on Latin America, courtesy of Randy Paul.
TOP TOPICS
- Colombia and Venezuela: Two hardheaded leaders butt heads, but in the end can they both just get along?
Other Topics Include: As Vicente Fox slides deeper into irrelevancy, will Mexico move to the left or return to the cruel embrace of the PRI?; Has Bolivia's President Carlos Mesa, in trying to please the population of Santa Cruz province, opened up the floodgates for other regions wanting more autonomy?; Gerard Latortue calls for elections in Haiti, but all available evidence shows that a year after Aristide, the situation has gone from bad to worse; Lula gets razzed at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre; Were you aware of the devastating floods in Guyana? Apparently the media have been ignoring it.
COLOMBIA & VENEZUELA
- Late last year Rodrigo Granda, the "Foreign Minister" of the FARC terrorist group showed up in Cúcuta, Colombia near the border with Venezuela under arrest. He was given the standard perp walk by the Colombian government before the media and for several weeks the official position was that Granda was arrested in Colombia, despite allegations to the contrary by the government of Hugo Chávez that Granda was kidnapped from Venezuela.
- Unfortunately, President Uribe forgot that the repercussions from a coverup are often worse than the act being concealed. What's worse is that Uribe was obliged to acknowledge that Chávez was right and that Granda had been caught by bounty hunters operating in Venezuela without the knowledge of the Venezuelan government. Chávez, never one to shrink from unleashing a torrent of bombast screamed foul. As much as it pains me to admit it, he has a very legitimate beef, although as could be expected, he overreacted by putting on hold several commercial deals, recalled his ambassador and threatened to sever relations.
- There are ways to arrest fugitives. One submits arrest warrants and works through law enforcement in the host country. If they are uncoöperative then one has the opportunity to raise the stakes. I'm sure that President Uribe would not want to see Venezuelan bounty hunters operating on the loose in Colombia. Adam Isacson's excellent blog, Plan Colombia and Beyond at the Center for International Programs has an excellent and thoughtful analysis of the incident that places some of the blame on Chávez's tacit acceptance of some FARC members engaging in political missions in Venezuela. In any event, as both sides have declared the issue resolved, one hopes that there will be no such incidents in the future. Both nations need each other's assistance on these issues.
- It hasn't been a good past couple of weeks for Uribe. Despite resolving the row with Venezuela, a recent donors conference consisting of representatives from twenty-four nations to gain financial support for efforts to demobilize the AUC terrorist group resulted in a firm and unanimous refusal without punishment for the members of the AUC. I agree. The AUC has massacred civilians, enriched its members through narcotrafficking and land theft and has terrorized countless others in the Colombian countryside. For a look at some of their handiwork, click here.
MEXICO
- Last month I speculated that this year may show the return of the PRI to power in Mexico in advance of next year's presidential election. On Sunday, the New York Times had a profile of the PRI leader, Roberto Madrazo Pintado who will likely be the PRI's candidate for president next year.
- The voters in the state of Guerrero, famous for its beach resorts like Acapulco and Zihuatanejo on the coast and poverty in the interior, had other plans. They elected Zeferino Torreblanca of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) governor in what appears to be a sound defeat of the PRI. This could give the PRD a significant leg up in the presidential election next year.
- Meanwhile, Vicente Fox slide into irrelevancy goes from bad to worse. The latest embarrassment: allegations that a mole had infiltrated Fox's travel staff and was passing information to a drug cartel. I'm convinced more and more that Fox's tenure will be remembered as an endless string of wasted opportunities and unrealized potential. Running a nation is a lot different than running your nation's Coca-Cola bottling company.
BOLIVIA
- Bolivian President Carlos Mesa has one of the most thankless chief executive jobs in Latin America. Having taken over from Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada after popular street protests forced him out, Mesa has been desperately trying to maintain order and placate the different political and regional forces in Bolivia.
- Last month, in an effort to quell popular protests in El Alto, a town that figured largely in the protests that ousted his predecessor, he canceled a water concession to a French utility that was charging high prices to the very poor residents. he followed this action with a rollback of a diesel and gasoline fuel increase that he had implemented less than a month earlier in the comparatively wealthy province of Santa Cruz. In an additional effort to placate the Cruceńos, he essentially looked the other way while the residents of Santa Cruz province declared themselves autonomous, which media in the capital labeled an "act of sedition." His poll numbers have suffered as a result of his actions.
- Bolivia must be one of the most continually troubled nation in South America. The cultural differences between the largely Aymara and Quechua Andean region and the mestizo and European-descended residents of the Eastern lowlands are dramatic. The nation has lost territory to Brazil, Paraguay and Chile. Chile now possesses what used to be Bolivia's coastline and controls its outlet to the Pacific which has fueled a great deal of enmity between the two nations.
- Mesa is a historian and he is well acquainted with his country's history. He knows that the typical response to civil unrest in Bolivia has been a military one and he is to be commended for not wanting to take that route. However, continuing to accommodate the needs of everyone who makes noise will leave Mesa with not much left to give - except his resignation.
HAITI
- Haiti's interim leader, Gerard Latortue, along with the Provisional Electoral Council, have announced that elections will be held in October and November. The question remains how?
- Latortue's leadership has been a disaster. He has paid
bribesback pay to former soldiers (Haiti's army was dissolved in 1994) while doctors remain unpaid for more than three months. Police are clashing with former soldiers, many of whom envision the revival of the notoriously brutal army. A recent investigation of the human rights situation by the University of Miami Law School makes for absolutely horrific reading.
- What is truly upsetting is that it didn't have to happen this way. There was an opportunity to establish a power sharing government between Aristide and the opposition and it was wasted. Elections don't make a democracy when one side seeks to maintain all power at whatever cost. The citizens of Haiti are once again paying the price for the stubbornness and selfishness of their leaders.
BRAZIL
- What a difference two years makes. In the World Social Forum in 2003 Lula was the darling of the attendees. At last month's WSF, Lula was the focus of some boos and a great deal of criticism from the activists attending the conference. There is a great deal of disenchantment from the far left towards Lula, including those within his own party affectionately referred to as "Shiites."
- The Brazilian president is capable of giving as good as he gets and he can count on a record trade surplus last year as well as the lowest unemployment rate in three years as wellas continued popularity among the public at large. Nevertheless, such are the growing pains of learning to govern from the inside after years of criticizing from the outside.
GUYANA
- Were any of you aware of the devastating floods that ravaged Guyana nearly a month ago, affecting about half of the nation's population as well as the epidemic of leptospirosis, a disease which is usually spread in floods?
- I wasn't either, and while some of the coverage may have been blunted by the overwhelming horror of the Asian/African tsunami deaths, a Google News search shows that most of the large media outlets have devoted scant, if any attention to this. Any ideas as to why? Put your answers in comments.
Randinho's Latin America Briefing will be back next month. Meanwhile, regular updates concerning Latin American events can be found at Beautiful Horizons.
Not only are FARC rebels just operating in Venezuela, but they have Al Quaeda style training camps set up along the border.
Chavez is a screwed up character. The current land redistribution he is engaging is stupid at best, communist at worse. His close relations with Castro are also flaring to a blaze, with recent Venezuelan legislation allowing Cuban police to operate and arrest people in Venezuela.
Uribe is the arguably the best leader in Latin America. A president american-style, a man that tackles the problems, something pretty uncommon there.
Certainly the paramilitaries and "death squads" would agree that Uribe is "arguably the best leader in Latin America."
Chicago Tribune Editorial
Some quotes"His tentative strategy already has come under fire from members of Colombia's Senate and international human rights groups. It would give too easy a pass to paramilitary leaders charged with narco-trafficking, human rights atrocities and assorted banditry, in exchange for their putting down their weapons." and "Human Rights Watch has strongly criticized Uribe's proposal for failing to investigate paramilitary leaders' involvement in massacres and kidnappings and failing to demand that they admit to crimes and identify collaborators. The proposal also does not require paramilitary leaders to disclose and turn over all ill-gotten funds and properties.
"
I guess as long as the death squads kill in the name of "freedom" and "democracy", all right-thinkers must support them.
I gotta agree with Tom Volckhausen. Uribe has been willing to let off the AUC with little more than slaps on the wrists and it is only through international pressure has he been willing to modify the stance somewhat, but his plan provides for no real training of demobilized paramilitaries in addition to the aspects of the plan that reek of impunity.
I will acknowledge that Uribe has an extremely tough job. I also don't have a problem with him going a little easier on the AUC if they are willing to acknowledge their crimes, do some time (obviously not as much as if they didn't demobolize) and give up the riches they have obtained from their crimes. That's essentially what the donors told him in Cartagena.
As for the best leader in Latin America, I'll put my money on Ricardo Lagos.
So would I. But I think we must acknowledge that most of the hard work the chilean economy needed, such as social security privatization, was done by Pinochet, the dictator that sent to kill around 3,000 person. It is unfair to decouple one thing from the other.
Latin American politics are pretty special indeed, they cannot be easily compared to anything in the developed world, but at least Uribe is trying to change things in a country that is in civil war for half a century. That's much more than it is being done in neighbouring countries. I think he deserves our support.
But I think we must acknowledge that most of the hard work the chilean economy needed, such as social security privatization, was done by Pinochet, the dictator that sent to kill around 3,000 person. It is unfair to decouple one thing from the other
I don't agree with that. To begin with the success of Chile's privatized social security certainly seems to be a mirage at best. Chile's greatest success came long after Pinochet was voted out.
In addition allegations of corruption are now dogging Pinochet with the Riggs Bank scandal. In my mind he doesn't deserve an ounce of credit.
Uribe deserves our support only when he comes up with a sincere plan to resolve the violence coming form both left and right in Colombia and takes into account the victims of the AUC's violence, drug dealing and land theft.
To Robert Mayer: Who was the Oracle of the American Revolution? Did he ever advocate land reform? Why do you call America's Oracle a Communist?
To Joe_A: Uribe was the Mayor of Medillin. He has long time links to drug traffickers and killers. I don't think you really know Uribe Perhaps you just like that he was the only South American leader to support Bush's War on Iraq.
The rest of the commenters seem OK to me :)
Great post and summary!
I thought it was well balanced
I see Chavez doing the same thing that caused the coup by Pinochet, he is bringing in Castros stalinst thugs, and people are beginning to disappear in the night, and there is the Mugabe/Maoist Communist "Land Reform"
We see a stalinist hellhole in the making.
Pinnochet killed leftist killers, probably saving the lives of 100,000 innocents from the leftist mass grave. and left a liberal democracy in his wake. the leftist religion of mass death lost in Chile, thats the beef they have with Pinochet.
After all, Castro and his ilk can murder with inpunity, even Sadamns mass graves might be begrudgingly admitted by a leftist, but you wont see them mentionaing them on their own, not even mass graves of children.
Where are the mass graves of Chile ?
Exactly, death there was, but we wont find mass graves of kids there, still clutching thir toys.
Castro has gulags, and the lobodomy drill is often used to deal with those that become too annoying.
but that dont stop leftist praise and love and glorification of his infamous "health care" and the doctors he sends abroad (while holding familly hostage under threat of death at home, to ensure obedience.
And no leftist concern for EU leete sex vacations to bed Castros goverment owned underage child whores.
No all outrage is reserved for those lacking proper socialist credentials, or "worse" anyone that effects a setback to the march of communism, like Pinnochet.
I dont expect Chaves to allow himself to be voted out, all points to his self instalation as a new socialist dictator and maximum leader, the cuban enforcers are marching into country, just like they did in Chile, where is a Pinnochet for Venezuela ? because its getting very clear they will be needing one.
You're attempting to rewrite history and ese perro no cazará.
The disappearances and murders in Chile happened under Pinochet and yes there were people secretly buried in Santiago's General Cemetery, two to a grave. Pinochet's sick and depraved response was to praise the economy of burying two to a grave. Venezuela doesn't need another Pinochet (no place in the world needs another Pinochet). Venezuela needs an opposition that can effectively articulate a response to Chávez and provide a viable alternative to his demagogic rule while taking into account the corrupt history of Venezuela's elite and the needs of the poor.
As for your other comments, I consider myself of the left and have vigorously criticized Fidel Castro and Chávez on my blog. So does Marc Cooper I also protested Saddam's rule when the Reagan administration was sucking up to him so I find your sweeping generalizations to be less than persuasive.
That's the beauty of dealing with sweeping generalizations; they're so easily disproven.
You disprove nothing
For one i reject your leftist history, your leftist news, and your fake equality
Two to a grave ? compared to leftist mass graves ?
That choice is easy
Even Pinnocet is perferable to any communist.
And "disapearances" ? Sorry, but Pinnocet did his killing right in the open, if you was blood stained leftist mass murdering scum, you was labeled for death when you was admitted to the damn camps, some 3000 is said to have been killed in them, the rest set free "without explanation" the leftist news said.
Nope, sorry, Pinnocet killed commies, mass murdering, 174 Million Murdered, cuban thug inviting commies, and left behind a liberal democracy in his wake after losing a democratic vote that took place on his orders.
And what was the content exactly, of Reagans "sucking up"
Was it anything like Carter and Clintons gifts of lightwater reactors and fuel to North Korea !
Another land of leftist mass death, complete with family death camps, under the rule of the man the Leftist media whitwashed as a Teddy Bear.
Is that "sucking up" of the kind your talking about !
No, I reject your fake leftist history and your fake leftist controled news, and the leftist evaluation of just who, is guilty of "sucking up" to evil men.
Chile's own official government report (aka known as the Rettig Report) contradicts your account of events supporting Pinochet.
Your method of argument is mere contradiction, and frankly owes more to John Cleese than it does facts and history. I wasn't drawing a comparison to to make the deaths committed by leftists and rightist dictatorships equal. I deplore them both. More's the pity that you don't.
As for your praise for Pinochet, why do you praise a man whose government was responsible for an act of terrorism in Washington, DC?
Hysteria and hyperbole don't make history. Facts do. I'll stick to the facts.
I have no respect for fake leftist "facts".
Pinochet killed commies the way we need to be killing terrorists.
Now, Chavez is doing the same thing that gave Pinnochet cause, where is a Pinnochet for Venezuela ? because its getting very clear they will be needing one, and it had better be soon.
Because we need some commie killing going on down there, the extermination of another 3000 commies will probably save the lives of 100s of thousands of "enemies of the people".
I've always believed that when one screams and distorts all your intended audience realizes is that you're screaming and distorting.
Thanks for proving my point.
Typical leftist misdirection.
The point is that Communist mass murder, and we have a communist thug inviting in Cuban thugs, its stalinist mass murdering death camp operators comming to power, leftism the most evil of all evils, measured in their mountain of 174 Million skulls that has ever troubled planet earth.
We need no further schooling to know the nature of these creatures, and YES, even Pinnocet, and the liberal democracy he left behind, was such a more positive outcome compared to the rule of any communist thug, that only the worshipers of the leftist religion of mass death themselves dare say any different.
Damn right, a repeat of the Chile example, would deliver a far better outcome, with far less innocent death, than allowing another Commie mass-murderocracy to establish itself there.
If you're going to defend a criminal against humanity whose secret police commited acts of terrorism on three continents, then I really have nothing to say to you.
You oppose killing criminals against humanity, and call the liberator of Chile, who killed the killers, a criminal against humanity.
How quaint.
"Soft Power" lefties always advocate the inaction that leads always to the opression of the leftist iron boot, mass graves and gulags.
You have nothing to say, because there is nothing to say, Chile is better off because of Pinnochet, he saved lives, he killed commie thugs, saving lives, he exterminated commie vermin, delivering freedom.
Every free man in Chile alive today owes his freedom to Pinnochet
And thats what sticks in your craw.
Even the name "velvet revolution" for what happened after the fall of the USSR in the eastern bloc is a lie, it ignores the 62 million lives exterminated, untill the killers lost the desire for killing, that was the price paid in blood for the freedom many enjoy today.
Thanks to Pinochet, the people did not have to suffer mass death and the iron boot of a Castro of Chile.
Pinnocet was a good thing to happen to chile, despite his excesses and crimes, it remains a fact, that Chile is free today, due to Pinochet.
Leftists are the enemy of humanity, as their mountain of 174 Million skulls attest
And Pinochet's extermination of them, and the free liberal democracy he gave Chile, is a far better outcome than the rule of any leftist thug.
Hugo is inviting in Cuban killers, its deja vu all over again. so where is a Pinnochet for Venezuela?
They could sure use one to save them right now.
Mr. Moyers:
I've thought long and hard about your tone and this is what I would like you to consider:
1.) I'm entirely comfortable engaging people who disagree with me.
2.) I will not accept abusive comments directed at me or anyone because they do not share someone else's political beliefs. There is a way to discuss matters even with those with whom you disagree without resorting to name-calling or accusing someone of being a liar because they don't view history the same way you do.
3.) I have the authority to delete comments within my posts that I find violate the comments policy of this site. I suggest that you go to the front page of the site to read the comments policy.
Reasonable people can disagree on issues and discuss them without resorting to name-calling and without poisoning the discourse. The manager of this site and I certainly don't see eye-to-eye on many issues, yet we have found a way to communicate with each other without insulting each other. I also have nothing but the highest respect for Joe Katzman and others with whom I disagree, but who manage to maintain a civil tone.
If you find that you are unable to maintain a civil tone and feel a need to insult me and others with whom you disagree, I would suggest that you don't comment at any of my posts.
Govern yourself accordingly.
Mr. Moyers:
I've thought long and hard about your tone and this is what I would like you to consider:
And then go on to decribe great disconfort.
Abusive ? where ?
Name calling ? where ?
Liar ? where ?
History is an objective truth, the humans that describe it are imperfect, and perspective and opinion are mallable and eternally variant, but the actual events are not, those are facts, truth is a discovery, not an invention.
The way to debate your differences in history, is to point out and debate your difference in history.
Here you are avcusing me of .. what, because you state no particulars.
This is a diservice to be sir, its the very unfairness you intend to slime me with,
Ive told Both Jow and Marc to do just that, ive got finite live energy allocated to my mortal coil, and can easilly expend my time an attention elsewhere if i find the enviroment suffocating.
And the way to do that is to disagree with reason, its called a debate.
Insulting who ? uncivil to who ?
There you go accusing me without any particulars, is that not a bit uncivil ?
There you go accusing me again.
That sounds like a threat of some kind, based on what ? due to what, just what, in particular do you protest ?
You have not noted one insult or inaccuracy.
I must say, what you said to me here is far more harsh and insulting than anything ive said.
A assert my facts are provable, that it clings to objective truth, and a reasonable interpetation of the facts.
And I reject the idea that i am personaly insulting anyone, nor am i exibiting any lack of reason in my opinion.
Raymond, as a member of the WoC team I agree with Randy.
We welcome diverse viewpoints, including those that are strongly held.
However, your comments are sucking the oxygen out of discussion on several threads here recently. We very seldom ban commenters or delete comments, but if you persist in dominating threads this way the administrators will have no choice but to do so in order to make room for other voices.
Thanks, Robin.
Mr. Moyers:
1.) Leftists are the enemy of humanity, as their mountain of 174 Million skulls attest
2.) Every free man in Chile alive today owes his freedom to Pinnochet And thats what sticks in your craw.
3.) I have no respect for fake leftist "facts".
4.) No, I reject your fake leftist history and your fake leftist controled news, and the leftist evaluation of just who, is guilty of "sucking up" to evil men.
You've called me the "enemy of humanity," a "fake" and sought to stereotype me based on what you perceive to be my thoughts. Reread your comments and consider your tone.
I don't mind debating and engaging people, but that's not what you are doing.
Sucking the oxygen ? Dominating ?
Just that is that, exactly
Thats a good email address in my comment header, of all the things that should not belong here, its this public flogging, based on ... what exactly ? that does not belong in the comments.
Ive had two posts nuked, one by Joe, one by Marc, I invited them to do just that, they told my why, in the particualar, and i used their objections to guide my further participation.
What is being done here however, accusation based on .. something, indictment of wrongdoing citing ... you will not say.
This in unfair.
I suspect its the opinion, and not the packaging, that is the irritant.
Ok then, no problem, I will remove myself from your orbit.
Thats a good email address in my comment header,
Yes - and I both respect and value that.
I want to be very clear: it is not Raymond's opinions that Randy and I object to. It's the vehemence and repetition with which they are posted.
Raymone: I value your presence here, if you can take a deep breath and sometimes let the conversation go on without a point by point rebuttal in length.
This is a fact, you are disputing this ?
You can start with R.J. Rummel,Professor Emeritus of Political Science. University of Hawaii.
He has published twenty-four nonfiction books (one that received an award for being among the most referenced), four novels, and about 100 peer-reviewed professional articles; has received the Susan Strange Award of the International Studies Association for having intellectually most challenged the field in 1999; and was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award 2003 from the Conflict Processes Section, American Political Science Association. He was a 1996 Nobel Peace Prize finalist.
He has a blog here and has his democide research here
Thats a fair deduction, its a true assertion, and just how does a moral man square with the fact that the fredom of so many is owed to a man considered by many to be so vile ? I think i can prove that this conjuction is the pivot at the center of the revolving angst.
The problem is that those who love their freedom but hate the man, let the hate of the man ruin their ability to celebrate their liberty
Others not only hate the man, but are leftist who have no love of liberty, but love an all powerfull state imposing their egalitarian schemes at gunpoint.
To the first, you do not need to love the man to enjoy the liberty he gave them, to the second, well we are ina basic struggle of good and evil with those.
Too bad both march together, because in this case, the former are sleeping with evil, sharing the venue with evil. Bagdad mcDermit standing on mass graves of kids (figurativly) to support an evil regime, M Moores "Potemkin Village" defense of the PolPot of babylon.
I also reject the glorification of killers, the excuse of mass killers. a mountain of 174 Million skulls and still the socialist religion has a frightening army of followers.
Leftist evil is an imposing invading force, its the imposition of power, its the invading Veitmin, the Red Kihmers or perhaps a misguided social engineer back with govt goons with guns to impose his policy opon you.
In America, the consitution and bill of rights, almost entotal, is restrictions on government. limits on authorty, and limits of what a majority can demand of even the single person.
3.) I have no respect for fake leftist "facts"
You deny the leftist media ? from Walter Durranty, who helped Stalin murder 10 Million in the Ukraine, to the media that depicted every American victory in southeast asia as a defeat, even covering up the Treason of a certian John Kerry, who colaborated with the Regime of the 5% death quota, to help the south become enslaved and introduced to mass death, gulags and 100s opon 100s of thousands lost in the south China sea ?
All the way to the leftist fraud by Beselles, part of the leftist attack on our gun rights, and the leftist redefinition of the 2nd amendment to deny that its the single citizen that has a right to Own and Carry a gun.
The examples are legion and they are examples of the rule, not the exception.
No i do not accept leftist propaganda offered as fact, or leftist news offered as information.
Truth is a discovery, not an invention, perception may be imperfect, emotion can cloud thinking, and humans can often have difficulty adjusting their worldview based on new discovery.
But difficult is not the same as impossible, all of our progress so far can attest to that.
And the day the religion of the MOST mass death wears the badge of infamy it deserves, communism, and all it variant flavors. that will be great progress indeed.
I agree with everything Robin said, including and especially the last paragraph.
The problem here is that you paint with a broad brush.
I consider myself to be on the left, but I also criticize and detest Castro, I don't defend Hugo Chávez and routinely criticize him. I have absolutely no use for nor patience with anyone who praises literacy and medical care in Cuba while ignoring the repressive government there.
Of course Walter Duranty and what he did was detestable. I also found it equally detestable that Jeane Kirkpatrick when visitng Chile as US Ambassador to the UN met with Pinochet and refused to meet with Jaime Castillo, a Christian Democrat and head of the Chilean Human Rights Commission. I find it detestable that Reagan said that Efraín Rios Montt was "getting a bad rap" on his human rights record when all available evidence indicated that Rios Montt's rule was without question the most brutal in Guatemala during the military dictatorship years. I find it detestable that the Reagan administration tried to claim that the El Mozote Massacre didn't take place.
One of the people who Pinochet tried to have assassinated who opposed him was Bernardo Leighton a co-founder of the Christian Democrat party in Chile. Another who Pinochet may be indicted for killing was his predeccor as Commander of the Chilean Army, General Prats who was killed with his wife by a car bomb in Buenos Aires. Pinochet's secret police also killed Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt via car bomb on Embassy Row in Washington, DC.
I consistently criticize human rights abuses by both left and right. I just find it puzzling that you feel comfortable defending a man whose government used helicopters to fly people drugged and tortured out over the ocean where their bodies were tossed overboard and who helped form an organization that among other things, planned to assassinate a US Congressman.
If you're comfortable making that moral equation, so be it. I certainly wouldn't be comfortable defending anyone - regardless of their political leanings - who was involved in such activities.
That alone will make you persona non grata to the majority of leftists, in fact, one wonders just that it is that has you claiming to be a leftist, and to have problems with castro.
Me thinks you have mislabeled yourself.
The Jenen Massacre, didnt happen, it was a leftist news fraud, France2 seems to be caught in another leftist fraud
We also see that our media is doing in Iraq, the Eason Jordan affair, where if it wasnt for the blogs, a fake history of our troops deliberatly murdering Journalists would have become the next leftist "fact".
What we are finding out is that we are drowning in fake history and fraudulent events.
Leftism and disinfomation are as inseperable as your chromosome pairs. all totaliatrian idologies depend on it.
Thats why leftist states have no free press.
Untill the rise of talk radio and the internet, information was under leftist control, and i no longer accept leftist news as truth, and when they report on something factual, I know there is so much leftist spin on it the truth might be close to the opposite of what they reported
There is one thing that is beyond dispute however, if Pinnochet was the evil villan .. whats the deal with giving Chile a liberal democracy ?
Evil men dont do that kind of thing
Its enough to call all the rest said about him into question, especially since it comes from the left, the religion of the totalitarian regime, the potemkin village, and the largest mountian of skulls ever created by any evil of any kind.
No truly evil men, willing to kill to remain in power, have no problem staying in power, Castro, Saddam Kim Jong, Lenin Stalin Mao PolPot onlt death deposes the evil tyrants with the will to murder.
Well except for an invasion by the US armed forces !
And as for the human rights organisations, most seem to say that the only real evil in the world is the USA, they are usually leftist front groups, even in the United Nations, look who is in charge of "Human Rights" there.
Nope I have no faith in the so called "Human Rights" activists.
Seems to me, the most major organization that has ever delivered "Human Rights" to peoples is the US Military.
Well, with exception of Pinnochet, he gave freedom to the whole of the country of Chile, perhaps some credit is due there too.
Pinochet the commie-killer gave freedom to Chile like Hitler the commie-killer gave freedom to Germany, only smaller. But I notice, Raymond, that you've never acknowledged even Hitler's anti-Communism as having gone too far. Perhaps the Holocaust is another fake leftist fact. (After all, since the Jenin Massacre was a fake, then the El Mozote Massacre must be a fake, then by extension the Warsaw Ghetto Massacre must be a fake.)
So Chile's liberal democracy is like National Socalist Germany under the Socialist Dictator Hitler ?
Heh, not one of your better moments Andrew.
Further than the communists at the time had gone ?
The German Workers' Party name was changed by Hitler to include the term National Socialist. Thus the full name was the National Socialist German Workers' Party Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP) called for short, Nazi. By the end of 1920 it had about three thousand members.
The USSR had some 20 Million in mass graves by the time Hitler had chosen his parties new name, but never you mind, he was going to enter a murder-athon race to catch up to the communist mass grave size, well, or would have done better had they not used ovens, something hard for me to reconcile with the german energy shortage.
Hitler is closely tied to Stalin in magatude of mass murder, but the USSR is an 70+ year marathon of mass death, body count 61,911,000
Hitler was a leftist, a typical "Capitalist roader" Socialist, like Tony Blare and Bill Clintons "Third Way"
Sweden has this model of socialism, not as far left as Hitler or Benito however.
Nope, Sorry Andrew, before Hitler had harmed a soul, the communists had already exterminated a larger mountain of helpless innocents by outright summary execution than Hitler would later try to equal.
Communism = Mass murder, that was an objective truth in the 1930s already, if killing commies was all that Hitler did, He would have gones down as a Heroic figure, and a savor of humanity, But, Hitler you see, was a socialist, and like all Socialist dictators, mass murder define these evil creatures.