What the media didn't report on Chili

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Forums > All Posts > What the media didn't report on Chili

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2010-10-15 09:07 AM

Schmidt
Colorado Springs, CO
Posts: 1058

Reference: John Pilger, Chili's ghosts are not being rescued, New Statesman, October 14, 2010

Watching the Chilean miners being rescued over the last few days, one gets the impression of a fervently patriotic nation solidly behind the President Sebastián Piñera as he personally greeted every miner on his return to the surface. But there is another story behind the scene that went unreported. As John Pilger writes:

"The rescue of 33 miners in Chile is an extraordinary drama filled with pathos and heroism. It is also a media windfall for the Chilean government, whose every beneficence is recorded by a forest of cameras. One cannot fail to be impressed. However, like all great media events, it is a façade.

"The accident that trapped the miners is not unusual in Chile, but the inevitable consequence of a ruthless economic system that has barely changed since the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. Copper is Chile's gold, and the frequency of mining disasters keeps pace with prices and profits. There are, on average, 39 fatal accidents every year in Chile's privatised mines."
Also not reported is the plight of the indegenous Mapuche people, including 38 hunger strikers demanding an end to the anti-terrorism laws enacted them under the fascist Pinochet regime. Those laws have deprived them of their lands and in effect made them political prisoners in their own country.

Read Pilger's article in the New Stateman for the rest of the story.

2010-10-15 09:43 AM

Schmidt
Colorado Springs, CO
Posts: 1058

In reading the comments at the bottom of the New Statesman article above I found one by gwyn@ibw.com.ni
14 October 2010 at 17:08, describing first hand the scenes he witnessed in Chili when Pinochet seized power.

I'll extract a portion:

"For weeks and then months people were dragged from their homes, often to disappear forever, dead bodies would appear in the river or be left lying at the roadside in the city centre: a warning to us all of the consequences of dissent. Miraculously, all those basic products - coffee, toilet roll, sugar, etc. - which Allendes´Govt had "caused" a shortage of, were again on sale in the shops. It was rumoured that the British Embassy had channelled the US supplied dollars in support of the trucker´s strike that did so much to undermine Allendes´ Govt. and "justify" the "golpe de estado" or military "pronouncement" as Pinochet and his murderous thugs preferred to call it.. And through it all, the chilean middle classes flew their national flags and hooted their car horns in celebtration, just as they now do in Catacamas."

Could that scene replay in America one day if the right wing extremists being manipulated by the corporate elite get in power? Some of them are calling for Obama's impeachment. If that happenes will the middle class hoot their horns in celebration as the seeds of fascism in America take root?

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