The real 9-11 - America attacks Chilean democrats

[VineyIsLORD]

On this day in 1973 the United States committed a terrorist attack against the people of Chile, turning that nation into a plantation for the 1%.

60,000 dead civilians, mostly students, trade unionists and democrats.

One day the terrorist state of the USA will answer for this travesty. But for Australians, we can take solace in the fact ours was the only western nation to grant refugee status to Chilean people fleeing the murderous fascist government of Pinochet. All thanks to Gough Whitlam's courage in defying the status quo.

AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE.

 

[little graham]

BHP still profiting from that.

 

[medusala]

All thanks to Gough Whitlam's courage in defying the status quo.

Well there was plenty of room after he refused to take the yellow boat people.

 

[VineyIsLORD]

Well there was plenty of room after he refused to take the yellow boat people.

To be fair one group were a bunch of democrats being persecuted for being democratic.

The other were a group of fascists who lost a war against their own people.

 

[Todman]

Allende wasn't a democrat, he was a Marxist.

 

[Geelong_Sicko]

Allende wasn't a democrat, he was a Marxist.

But he and his party won an election?

https://www.google.com.au/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=_eQmWOymGK7u8wewhKAg&gws_rd=ssl#q=definitin+of+democrat

democrat
noun
1.
an advocate of democracy.
2.
a person who believes in the political or social equality of all people.

Even though he won by run-off in the 1970 elections rather than being voted in by an outright majority it is by definition that he both believed in the democratic process (having abided by previous election failures yet still participating in democracy and democratic processes) and believed in the social equality of all people (as a socialist) and so is therefore a democrat.

Isn't he?

 

[Todman]

Even though he won by run-off in the 1970 elections rather than being voted in by an outright majority it is by definition that he both believed in the democratic process (having abided by previous election failures yet still participating in democracy and democratic processes) and believed in the social equality of all people (as a socialist) and so is therefore a democrat.

from Wikipedia

He didn't win the run-of in the 1970 elections, In 1970, he won the presidency in a close three-way race. He was elected in a run-off by Congress as no candidate had gained a majority. Allende assumed the Presidency on 3 November 1970 after signing a Statute of Constitutional Guarantees proposed by the Christian Democrats in return for their support in Congress. In an extensive interview with Régis Debray in 1972, Allende explained his reasons for agreeing to the guarantees.[29] Some critics have interpreted Allende's responses as an admission that signing the Statute was only a tactical move.[30] In short he'd sign anything for power then he promptly ignored it.

 

[Geelong_Sicko]

Well there was plenty of room after he refused to take the yellow boat people.

A fair point. Australia blindly following Washington's backing of South Vietnamese dictator Ngo Dinh Diem (he visited Australia in the late 1950's and even received an honourary Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George by Governor-General William Slim)

(PHOTO)
http://archival-classic.sl.nsw.gov.au/item/itemLarge.aspx?itemID=74789

It them blindly followed the misrule of several U.S-backed South Vietnamese generals and their short-lived terms of Presidential office following Diem's assassination in 1963 through to the inept tenure of Nguyen Van Thieu, who oversaw the Republic of South Vietnam's collapse in 1975.

It is fair to say Australia owned part of the absolute disaster that was the Republic of South Vietnam, and so had an obligation to look after the resultant broken pieces like the flood of refugees that followed.

Whitlam's rejection seems to be almost 100% ideological, at least according to this article;

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/...oor-on-refugees/2006/04/17/1145126051892.html

...evidence from the files released by the National Archives of Australia (some material has been withheld for security and other reasons) reveals the following. First, Whitlam's opposition to accepting asylum seekers from South Vietnam was motivated by a policy not to upset the communist regime in Hanoi. For example, a message from Canberra to the embassy in Hanoi instructed it to advise the North Vietnamese government that Australia "would be very sorry to see the refugee question affect" relations between the two nations.

Hanoi was also to be told that "Australia has not been engaged in mass evacuations from Vietnam; indeed, apart from the special case of the orphans, fewer than 80 Vietnamese were flown out of Vietnam by Australia". In fact, Australia boasted to Hanoi about its hard line on asylum seekers.

Another cable, sent to Australia's embassy in Saigon shortly before the fall of South Vietnam, had an empathetic message: "Locally engaged embassy staff are not to be regarded as endangered by their Australian embassy associations and therefore should not, repeat not, be granted entry to Australia." In other words, the Whitlam government directed its diplomats to deny asylum to South Vietnamese employed at the embassy even if they had a well-founded fear of persecution.

Some of the few South Vietnamese who made it to Australia were required to sign an undertaking as a condition of their entry that they would not engage in political activity in Australia. Again, the prime policy consideration was not to upset the regime from which the asylum seekers were fleeing.

Second, Whitlam did not want anti-communists to settle in Australia, irrespective of whether they were genuine asylum seekers. Here his stance differed from the position he took following the overthrow of Salvador Allende's left-wing government in Chile in 1973. Departmental files reveal that in 1975, a senior foreign affairs official reminded the government that "the prime minister directed in November 1973, during the right-wing military coup in Santiago, that the Australian embassy should grant diplomatic asylum to all who sought it".

Whitlam's attitude to Asian anti-communists was different. His office file contains a handwritten note: "Do not accept that a person claiming to be a refugee … is entitled to claim residence in Australia. War criminals from Baltic States + Yugoslavia, not from Vietnam". Here Whitlam was running the line that Australia had accepted war criminals from Eastern Europe after 1945 and would not do so again. Yet there was no evidence that any Vietnamese seeking refuge in Australia in 1975 was a war criminal. Whitlam just did not like anti-communists...

While I can see how Gough might have come to his conclusion as informed by his own ideology, I think that like it or not Australia held at least some of the responsibility for the war whose aftermath these refugees were fleeing and so, on top of the more usual human rights reasons, should have let a whole lot more in no matter if they were pro or anti war in the first place.

 

[Geelong_Sicko]

from Wikipedia

He didn't win the run-of in the 1970 elections, In 1970, he won the presidency in a close three-way race. He was elected in a run-off by Congress as no candidate had gained a majority. Allende assumed the Presidency on 3 November 1970 after signing a Statute of Constitutional Guarantees proposed by the Christian Democrats in return for their support in Congress. In an extensive interview with Régis Debray in 1972, Allende explained his reasons for agreeing to the guarantees.[29] Some critics have interpreted Allende's responses as an admission that signing the Statute was only a tactical move.[30] In short he'd sign anything for power then he promptly ignored it.

Happy to stand corrected on the run-off

Only interpreted his responses? Interesting. From that DeBray/Allende interview (I've bolded and underlined the important bit highlighting Allende's democratic socialist philosophy);

http://www.nytimes.com/1971/10/15/archives/regis-debray-talks-to-president-allende.html?_r=0

...Debray: I've seen an article on Chile in a French left‐wing magazine which carried the headline: “The Revolution Without Guns.” Does this formula seem realistic to you? Of course, there has been no use, or very little use, of guns here in Chile, but is what is happening here really a revolution?

Allende: I believe so. We are at revolutionary stage. Tell me, how do you define a revolution? From the sociological point of view?

Debray: I would like to clear up one point straight away. For me, the question of violence is not a vital issue.

Allende: Good. It is the transfer of power from a minority class to majority class.

Debray: It is indeed—at least as bare definition.

Allende: Here the minority class has been ousted by the people, and this has been demonstrated, because if the minority class were in power, there would be no nationalization of copper, no nationalization of the banks and no land reform, Regis.

Debray: But to date, the (Allende) Government has not, shall we say, stepped outside the reformist framework. It has acted within the Constitution it inherited from the previous, bourgeois Government; it has acted within the established institutional framework, and it can therefore be said that what there has been to date is reform. It was in about 1905, I believe, that Lenin made the distinction between two types of reform, that which is destined to open the road to Socialist revolution, and that which is destined to sidetrack it, and finally obstruct it.

Allende: I believe that we have used those which open the road to revolution. We make the claim, and I say this in all modesty, that we are creating a different way and demonstrating that it is possible to make the fundamental changes on which the road to revolution is built, We have said that we are going to create a democratic, national, revolutionary and popular government which will open the road to Socialism because Socialism cannot be imposed by decree. All the measures we have adopted are measures which lead to the revolution...

 

[Todman]

Allende attitude had changed by 1973.

 

[Geelong_Sicko]

Allende attitude had changed by 1973.

Of course it had - he was dead!