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Cybersyn And Early Uniminds

Posted by Hemos on from the i-can-see-your-house-from-up-here dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Guardian Website is running a story on Cybersyn. An experimental computer network based on cybernetic principles that was used by Chile's revolutionary government between 1971 and 1973 to provide a real-time, decentralized form of economic analysis in the nationalized sector of the Chilean economy. The network has been described as Chile's Internet. There is a photo of the control room which looks something like the deck of the Starship Enterprise. The whole thing was the brainchild of Stafford Beer, a sort of British Buckminster Fuller. All very Orwellian and Big Brother, the whole experiment was brought to an end by the CIA sponsored coup d'etat on the September 11th, 1973."

34 of 339 comments (clear)

  1. As opposed to "nutritional principles"? by rot26 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I bet "Cybernetic Principles" sounded really groovy in 1971, although I'm curious how you can build a computer network, or a computer-anything for that matter, without them.

    --



    To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
    1. Re:As opposed to "nutritional principles"? by yintercept · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I need to check a history book, but I think both computers and telephone networks existed in 1971. I think maybe there was even color TV. I suspect the reason that people couldn't hook a ton of cool gadgets to the telephone system in the US was more a matter of the AT&T monopoly than lack of imagination.

      Most of the ideas that we think are cool today are really just twists or refinement of ideas that have been around for a long time.

  2. Re:Kissinger by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Remember, you're only a war criminal if you're on the losing end of the war. This is why Saddam will be tried as a war criminal if we ever capture him, as he should, but Bush won't.

  3. CIA sponsored coup d'etat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How can the americans say so lightly that cia organised a coup, and in the same breath ask why people around the world dislike them?

    34

    1. Re:CIA sponsored coup d'etat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      Amusing, eh? The Americans even had to pass a law saying that Americans couldn't sit in on torture sessions to obtain information from suspects outside the US. Any other countries have the need for such a law?

    2. Re:CIA sponsored coup d'etat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      For a couple of reasons.
      Firstly, the USA is an extremely large country, and only has one neighbour of any relative population size. This helps make the USA far more of a self-contained world than just about any other country out there. It also means that ~97% of television content is locally produced, furthering this.

      America is extremely nationalistic and has a national myth of grandious pridefulness 2nd to very few. Most Americans don't want to tolerate anything that gets in the way of that nationalism. It skews the mind into thinking that Americans are superior and that foreigners are inferior, no matter what the ears hear and the eyes see.

      So if the USA is taking out governments in places like Venuzvela, Chile, Greece, Zaire etc, it is because they're 'enemies of freedom', while supporting evil regimes like the government of Turkey for 'the greater good'. I doubt anyone much in America sees the oxymoron of this.

      It was much the same with the British Empire. It stood for 'freedom' and 'christian charity' and so on. In reality, the people in power were just cold greedy sociopaths. Same with America. And the people cling to the national myth out of their personal fears, and in part because the people against the national mythos are for sociological reasons often even more dysfunctional than those for it.

    3. Re:CIA sponsored coup d'etat by LWATCDR · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Funny how can Britsh sit so smug when they Forced China to accept drugs so the English could have their tea. Or the French forget that they sat around or helped send thousands of Men, Women and childern to Hitlers gas chambers, Or ..... At the time the where claiming to be MARXIST. From reading the artical the CIA might have help the coup along but it seems there was a lot of support for it. The economy was in the dumper. Things where not working. At the time the US thought Marxist==evil. At the time if you look at the pain and suffing that the Marxist goverments in the USSR and China had caused the people in there countries it was not that bad of an unsumption. Do I think it was a good idea? Not really but then I have 30 years of history to look at.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    4. Re:CIA sponsored coup d'etat by bhima · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Americans also tend to think that their way of doing things is better, in all situations and culture, than any other methods currently in use. This is true for politics, banking & economic policy, patent, copyright, and drug law. In this case the Americans decided they could run Chile better than the Chileans and couldn't. History is filled with other counties doing this, colonialism and the cold war jump to mind. America is simply doing this now, and doing it poorly.

      --
      Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
    5. Re:CIA sponsored coup d'etat by OscarGunther · · Score: 2, Insightful
      How can the americans say so lightly that cia organised a coup, and in the same breath ask why people around the world dislike them?

      Because Americans do; we do not reflect. We consider everything through the prism of self-interest--is it good for the U.S. or bad for the U.S.? This is probably the secret of our national strength: we're so self-absorbed and so confident of success that we don't consider alternatives, but spend our energies moving around or through whatever obstacles are in our way.

      It's telling that our national game is poker, while that of the Russians is chess. We didn't beat "communism" (meaning, really, totalitarian socialism) with guile or brains, we overwhelmed it with GDP, like we did the Fascists in WW2.

      Americans are supremely pragmatic, which is why libertarianism hasn't taken as much hold as you would expect. The final arbiter seems to be whether it (the tactic du jour) gets the job done. In this light, our willingness to overthrow an ideologically-unfriendly--albeit democratically-elected--regime in Chile is easily understandable. We don't let our principles get in the way of our goals, which we assume are consistent with our principles. Can't stop to think about that now; gotta get shit done.

      And yet it's the greatest country in the world. Every day I'm grateful my parents voted with their feet to come here.

    6. Re:CIA sponsored coup d'etat by mesocyclone · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It is easy in retrospect to ignore the forces at work in the world in the 1970s. The US knew that the USSR was sponsoring coups and otherwise undermining countries throughout the world, with the ultimate intent of world conquest. This has been solidly established with the information released since the fall of the USSR, although it was obvious as early as the 1930's (and eloquently described by Winston Churchill just after World War II).

      The US (with the constant agreement and assistance of the UK, btw), had a policy developed in the late '40s called "containment" - which meant that it would use its means to stop the expansion of USSR power wherever possible. While leftists love to believe that the Allende regime was one of flowers and love and all that, in fact it had its own repressive and murderous side. It was also greatly helped by the communist bloc.

      The reason investment dried up was that companies were not interested in putting money into a regime which confiscated property, as Allende had done. In fact, people in general would be pretty stupid doing so.

      The CIA was active in the containment effort, and did indeed sponsor the coup. An interesting thing about this is that Pinochet, who came to power as a result, voluntarily returned the country to democracy some years later... unlike any communist nation except the USSR itself, which did so only after a total collapse of its economy and moral as a result of the inevitable corruption and inefficiencies of communist systems.

      Furthermore, the US ceased its meddling after Jimmy Carter took office and congress, full of peaceniks, tore it apart. During that period, a number of communist revolutionary movements, all allied to the USSR or China, took power. Reagan revitalized (to some extend, always hobbled by a hostile congress) the US efforts to contain, and even roll back the communist hegemonic efforts. He was most successful in Nicaragua and El Salvador.

      The overthrow of the Panamanian government was made after a number of hostile acts against America and Americans by the Noriega, and was not done by the CIA (contrary to other posters) but by main force military attacks. Since that time Panama has had an independent, democratic government and is doing fine.

      People hate the US because we are the most powerful nation on earth, economically and militarily, and they are envious. They hate us because our culture is displacing theirs in the mass media (which is their choice, not ours, since there is no US government pushing our pop music and movies and other crap down their throats). They hate us because we are willing to defend ourselves against those who would destroy us, rather than blindly trusting in a highly non-democratic, corrupt and illogically organized international organization (the UN) which succors dictators and tyrants. They hate us because we have an attitude which says that while we may listen to you, we will make up our own minds as to what is in our national interest. They hate us because we admit that we have a national interest of our own. They hate us because we support Israel, the only truly democratic nation in the middle east (with the exception of Turkey, which we also support).

      They also hate us because we have been very generous, with the Marshall plan rebuilding Europe after WW-II, and vast amounts of foreign aid over the decades. We are currently spending billions to rebuild Iraq, and, as we always do, we will eventually leave Iraq to its own government.

      If we act out of a generous motives, European "sophisticates" laugh at our naivette. If we act out of our own national interest, Europeans attack us for being selfish.

      Europeans in partiocular hate us because their source of information tends to be highly biased (for example, the Guardian) and because our power and European lack of responsibility has left Europe almost irrelevant to international affairs, except when it can force us to obey the UN, where a minor country (France or Russia) can veto any action that it dislik

      --

      The only good weather is bad weather.

    7. Re:CIA sponsored coup d'etat by DunbarTheInept · · Score: 2, Insightful


      Firstly, the USA is an extremely large country, and only has one neighbour of any relative population size. This helps make the USA far more of a self-contained world than just about any other country out there. It also means that ~97% of television content is locally produced, furthering this.
      All this is true. (It's also why people in the USA are rarely bilingual. There's no practical use for a second language for many Americans. Anyone who learns a second langauge is just doing it for the sake of rounding their education, not becuase they actually expect to need to use it. I think this has a lot to do with it the attitude as well, since learning to "think" in another language helps make someone less insular in their views. I learned a little French in school but never needed to use it for anything, so I don't rememeber enough of it to use. I have to travel over 1,000 miles to get to the nearest place where English is not the primary language, and that's just Quebec, which has English as a secondary bilingual language so that doesn't count as somewhere where another language would be helpful. And even if you think of Central and South America (the next nearest places) those only have two languages over such a vast area - Spanish, and Portugese. Over here in the Western Hemisphere, we don't have a lot of variety of languages.)


      America is extremely nationalistic and has a national myth of grandious pridefulness 2nd to very few. Most Americans don't want to tolerate anything that gets in the way of that nationalism. It skews the mind into thinking that Americans are superior and that foreigners are inferior, no matter what the ears hear and the eyes see.
      This paragraph, on the other hand, is total bunk. We are very distrustful of our own government. Although we are very prideful of our history, this pride does not extend to whomever is currently in power in the government. Foreigners often fail to understand this and make the mistake of assuming American pride equals slavish loyalty to the current leader. It doesn't work that way. Most of those opposed to Bush still believe in that prideful view of our history just as much as those that support him do.

      And as far as the "Americans are superior" attitdue - it is held by a vocal minority. They have every right to say what they want and we don't go out of our way to suppress them, but they do make for an embarassing misconception of what Americans are like to the outside observer.

      If we are guilty of anything, it's complacency, not egotism. It is very common to hear people who never bother voting complaining about how they have no power and don't like the current leader.

      In short, I'm not denying that many people in the USA fit your image of them. I'm denying that those people constitute the majority.

      --

      Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.

  4. "Orwellian and Big Brother" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Actually it sounds more like modern "enterprise software". But I guess because a far-left government was doing it we have to assume it's evil.

  5. Who said we took it lightly? by MyNameIsFred · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Your assumption is wrong, that the American people ignored the actions of the CIA. Many people in the US objected to the CIA sponsored coups. The events in Chile along other CIA sponsored coups were the primary reason that the American people forced the government to put the CIA on a leash. So did the American people recognize that something wrong was being committed in their names? Yes. Did they act to stop it? Yes.

    1. Re:Who said we took it lightly? by fenix+down · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Nobody can stop the CIA. The president only gets their attention when he tries to fuck with their funding. Even then they have a good degree of freedom based on the fact that they're employing the top 100 worst potential terrorists in the world at any given time. Just threaten to fire some of the field operatives and they've got the funding back plus a bonus. That's what happened when Carter tried to fuck with them. Unfortunately he didn't cave fast enough and they fired a few guys that started up the hijacker training camps in Libya.

  6. Re:Sept 11 reference? by 10Ghz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why shouldn't it be mentioned? Or are you saying that if someone mentions that "Yes, US has overthrown democratically-elected leaders and put brutal dictators in their place", it just shows that those people are "anti-american"? I mean, they are merely stating a fact? Do we have to glorify USA all the time, and if we fail to do so, we are "anti-american"?

    I for one find the whole deal in Chile a perfect example of american hypocrisy. Democratically elected leaders are OK only as long as they agree with USA. If they don't, they are bad and must be got rid of. That puts the whole "US's crusade against tyranny and dictators" in to a whole new perspective wouldn't you say?

    --
    Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
  7. Ministry of love... by Noryungi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hmph. At the risk of sounding like a leftie:

    All very Orwellian and Big Brother, the whole experiment was brought to an end by the CIA sponsored coup d'etat on the September 11th, 1973.

    Why is this "Orwellian and Big Brother[ish]"? You seem to forget that the "CIA sponsored coup" was actually a pretty bloody affair itself... More than 3000 people "disappeared" (tortured and fed to the fishes), some because they were just suspected of left-of-center sypathies.

    But don't take my word for it, read the following:
    Amnesty International 1, Amnesty International 2, Amnesty International 3, Human Rights Watch, and even this week's Economist, etc... I could go on, but you get my drift.

    --
    The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
    1. Re:Ministry of love... by hummassa · · Score: 3, Insightful

      With the difference that Allende wanted a richer, democratic Cuba, and Pinochet is a father-of-the-people tradition-country-family do-what-I-say-or-else-i'll-throw-you-from-a-plane- above-the-Andes bloody murderer. Leandro, go talk to some chilean people. Every chilean person I met (righties, no less, I'm not talking lefties like if there was any alive today) feared Pinochet as much as the devil. They didn't like the lines to get toilet paper, too, but they wouldn't choose our friend el generalissimoAugusto.

      --
      It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
  8. Re:Didn't work by StaffordBeerIsMyHero · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What they got was a real-time view of a country falling under CIA coup. Quite a different thing, and says nothing about the functionality of the system (which was fine).

  9. If this is Orwellian by panurge · · Score: 3, Insightful
    (An epithet meaning "Old-Etonian with assumed name, badly behaved Englishman with chip on shoulder dying of tuberculosis in post-war Britain, but I'll assume the usual ludicrous use of the word to mean "totalitarian") then what does that make MRPII and ERP systems? Are you suggesting, since the control available to managements nowadays is so much greater than this little low-bandwidth system, that big business is ultra-left wing and ultra-totalitarian?

    No, I don't think so either. Most sane people would think that giving a business the information it needs to stay in business is a good thing. And if you actually RTFA, you will see it describes how the system was able to keep the Chilean economy functioning during a national strike. It made the economy more resilient. Isn't that what software is supposed to do?

    I feel a major rant coming on, but it's off-topic.

    --
    Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
    1. Re:If this is Orwellian by frank_adrian314159 · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Are you suggesting, ... that big business is ultra-left wing and ultra-totalitarian?

      No. Actually it's ultra-right wing and ultra-totalitarian. The only difference is that employees of this totalitarian system have the possibility of disengaging. Remember that Henry Ford was an early economic advisor to the Bolsheviks and businesses are still run in much the same way as in his day - the tools may have changed, but in the final analysis, it's still all about command and control.

      --
      That is all.
  10. Re:Kissinger by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    If its an accident, the evidence will support that and the charge will be dropped. Would you like to have the Police in the US automatically exempt from trial for any of their acts? Given the evidence over the past few years, I don't think anyone could say yes to that. Now thats kind of how the rest of the world feels when the US decides it is automatically exempt from the reach of the ICC. Let the evidence decide the matter.

  11. Pakistan.. by k98sven · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So did the American people recognize that something wrong was being committed in their names? Yes. Did they act to stop it? Yes.

    So.. could someone please explain to me why the USA is now best-friends with Pakistan?
    Musharraf ousted an elected civilian regime and replaced it with a military dictatorship.
    This was harshly criticized by the international community, including the USA.

    Come 9/11 and we're suddenly best friends?

    This entire "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" and
    "ends-justify-the-means" mentality is exactly the same reasoning that
    caused the USA to back Pinochet in Chile.

    1. Re:Pakistan.. by doktor-hladnjak · · Score: 2, Insightful
      So.. could someone please explain to me why the USA is now best-friends with Pakistan? Musharraf ousted an elected civilian regime and replaced it with a military dictatorship. This was harshly criticized by the international community, including the USA.

      I'm not sure I agree with the whole Pakistani bloodless coup. However, I know a lot of Pakistanis and they seem to imply that a majority of their fellow citizens had no problem with the coup. A lot of Pakistanis felt the "democratic" government had become corrupt and/or functioned extremely poorly.

      Granted, I still think Musharraf needs to move towards democracy, because dictators in the long term especially turn out to be a bad situation for a nation.

      As for why the US is friends with Pakistan... Well, that's probably because of a few big factors (in no specific order): 1) has a very long land border with Afghanistan 2) has a government that is not controlled by religious extremists (although they have influence) 3) is very undeveloped due in large part to scarce foreign investment and is willing to be on the US's good side to get more aid from western nations 4) it has the bomb.

  12. Not "Revolutionary" by SAN1701 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Allende was democratically elected, in an election far less suspitious than what happened in Florida.

    There was an U.S. sponsored coup after, and then the most brutal regimem of the 20th century in americas took power.

  13. Re:The US will eventually have a planned economy. by ksheff · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Electronic transfers in and out of bank accounts via debit cards or ACH transfers isn't good enough? Also, guess which is the most expensive way for a retailer to take payment? Cash! It's more difficult to keep track of due to 'sticky fingers' or just plain incompetance. One also has to take the time and risk of transferring it to a bank or hiring an armored car service to pick it up.

    Our economy is as vibrant as it is because it's not planned. Bureaucracies are notoriously inefficient when it comes to such planning. Federal, state, and local governments waste billions a year because of it. There is no real way that any bureaucracy can anticipate the actions of a few hundred million people.

    Whether you like it or not, usary and the increased value of money over time is a good thing. It gives incentives to those with capital to temporarily give it to those who need it in order to grow businesses, own a home, etc. Otherwise, the poor would have an extremely hard time rising above their situation and the rich would stay rich unless they were robbed. That's one of the reasons behind the massive amounts of unemployment in the Arab world. Their religion forbids usary and as a result entreprenuers have a much harder time getting capital. The concept of 'micro-loans' in India is helping industrious people pull themselves out of poverty. Again, this is something a centrally planned, top down economy can't really anticipate, no matter how wired it is. Stop watching Star Trek.

    --
    the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
  14. Another Connection in your Observations. by purrpurrpussy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Britain is a fairly populous and rich country that has NO neighbours at all. At the time of the empire all propoganda was internal. The Irish were not to be trusted. A highly "internalised" country if ever there was one.

    Now our media comes from 2 places. Ourselves and the US! Great! That's a healthy balanced view of the world.....

    --
    "None of this shit works" -W.Shatner
    1. Re:Another Connection in your Observations. by vidarh · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Expansion, yes. But consider the average British person during the empire's height - were they likely to be aware of the viewpoints of other subjects of the empire outside Britain, or those officially sanctioned by the British elite, and by extension the British media of the day?

      That is the point. The US is very much in a position today were only a relatively small minority of US citizens are exposed to any degree to foreign opinions of them except as digested by US media, whereas in most smaller nations that is much less likely to happen.

      Poverty can do it - you'll likely find many third world nations where the majority of citizens are largely unaware of the politics of the rest of the world, but then most of these countries have little impact on the world.

      Apart from the US, there are perhaps a handful of countries where the general populace are so isolated from foreign culture and viewpoints and that have anywhere near the influence on the world. Russia doesn't really apply - while powerful, it is also politically and culturally extremely influenced by a lot of surrounding countries and the West. China, possibly, given that the majority of the populace is relatively isolated from surrounding countries or any influence from the west. India certainly not - it's a melting pot of a wide variety of political and cultural influences, drawing both on the West and influence from a variety of it's neighbours.

      I'm not sure how much I agree with the idea of US isolationism, but it's an intriguing idea, and superficially it would seem to explain a lot of why US opinion generally seem so completely unfazed and unaware of what happens internationally

  15. Re:USA overthrowing governments by 10Ghz · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Personally, I've nothing against the idea of pre-emptive self defense...


    OK. Could the rest of the world then invade USA? I mean, USA seems to be the biggest threat to world peace these days, invading other sovereign countries at whim. I mean, there's nothing wrong with pre-emptive self-defence, right?
    --
    Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
  16. Venezuela anyone? by zenyu · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Your assumption is wrong, that the American people ignored the actions of the CIA. Many people in the US objected to the CIA sponsored coups. The events in Chile along other CIA sponsored coups were the primary reason that the American people forced the government to put the CIA on a leash. So did the American people recognize that something wrong was being committed in their names? Yes. Did they act to stop it? Yes.

    There were hearings, the Republican administration withheld information from the Congress that showed how personally involved Nixon was in the murders. The sickness of the CIA was obvious enough that it was still put on a leash, but it continued to exist. Fast forward to today...

    Condaliza welcomes the CIA's new dictators in Venezuela hours after the coup. Democratically elected leader was lucky enough to be forewarned due to one Constitution loving patriot in the US government who leaked the sad plot days earlier. The military regiment he left in the basement of the presidential palace arrests the Venezuelan 'leaders' of the coup. Bush team lucky enough that some New Yorkers are killed, providing enough confusion that a majority of American's still don't realize the other oil rich country we decided to implement regime change in was Al Qaeda biggest enemy. America supports the dictator of Pakistan, Al Qaeda's biggest friend, rinse, repeat.

    It is such a strange thing that as citizens we overwhelmingly want democracy to spread but so many of us vote for a neo-con puppet, the same people who write about establishing a Pax Americana and consolitating power with pretty lies. Anyone remember "Iraq will be a cakewalk", want to compare today's, "We knew Iraq would not be easy"...

    Things are not helped by crappy papers like the NYT, whose international pages seem to be about as accurate as the "Voice of America" propaganda machine. Remember the protest in Venezuela? They showed a picture and story about the anti-government protest, but said nothing of the pro-democracy rally that had many many times the number of participants. Enough to remind me of the hundreds of thousands of protestors in New York last March which were not mentioned on the nightly news in New York, but a pro-Iraq rally consisting of 20 people the next week got a 3 minute segment. But I have to assume even those who vote for the likes of the current administration do read an international paper on the internet once in a while, and so have noticed what crap we are fed by our papers and TV news outlets.

    While the Bush's may have stolen the last election, I'm more ashamed that it was so easy for him to actually win support of 48% of eligible voters who showed up at the polls, than less than half a million Democrats his brother illegaly removed from the rolls and a few hundred voting machines he rigged to swallow bad ballots in black districts and to spit out for revote in conservative white districts.

    Until the CIA is dissolved and amnesty is given to lesser functionaries to provide evidence against the worst criminals in the agency, I won't believe we've taken Chile to heart. If the government needs better data on what's happening in the world let them subsidise the news media to cover foreign news properly.

    1. Re:Venezuela anyone? by Geezle2 · · Score: 2, Insightful
      This sounds a lot like the reaction from Japanese associate of mine to comments about the Rape of Nanjing. Offering up proof, in the form of photographs, eye witness accounts and even official Japanese government documentation of the events only triggered furious denial with claims that the photos were staged or doctored and the reports were all from Japan-haters anyway.

      The point is that he didn't want proof, despite demanding it, and there was no proof that could change his mind about what REALLY happened in Nanjing.

      I short, I don't think you want proof either. Proof and evidence for points 1 and 6 above are readilly available. Documents related to the role of the Nixon administration in the overthrow and assassination of Allende where declassified a couple years ago. Try googling on "Kissenger+Allende" for starters.

      Don't demand that everyone else has to try to manouver the facts past your nationalist blinders. . .Just remove you head from your ass and look around. Do a little bit of the work yourself. It is not like these things are real big secrets. Sure, Fox and CNN don't force feed this stuff to you but that is to be expected.

  17. Re:Allende and the CIA coup by StaffordBeerIsMyHero · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I'm not sure what you're saying here.

    There is a possibility that the elected Allende government would have deteriorated into chaos or civil war or totalitarianism. There is a possibility that it wouldn't. The article you quote obviously assumes this would be the case, by using right-wing economic models. If you use left-wing economic models this isn't so clear. Obviously all we are seeing is a difference of opinion, not "confusion about exactly what Allende was".

    I find it difficult to justify CIA intervention in the internal affairs of another country, no matter what any economic model predicts.

  18. Have you actually ever talked to anyone in Chile? by TheNarrator · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I have been to Chile many times. I've talked to people who live there. The 1970s coup was very necessary. The whole country was an economic disaster and there were massive food shortages and the country was quickly being taken over by the radical left supporters of Allende and their Cuban backers. Businesses were being nationalized and the chilean supreme court had ruled that the Allende government was violating the constitution in trying to impose communism, though they were ignored.


    Over 15 years, 3000 people were killed, but this was remarkably humane compared to the communist revolutions at the time. Around the same time in Cambodia, 3,000,000 people (That's 1000 times more people) were executed by a fanatical communist regieme. In the aftermath of Vietnam there were 10s of thousands killed in political executions.


    Communists hate Pinochet because he was the only person to ever remove a communist government from power. Up to that point it was assumed that the world would soon be 100% communist because slowly but surely every country was turning communist and no country had ever gone back.


    Today in Chile many people marvel at the non-Chilean's media's obsession with the Allende Coup. Today Chile has the best economy in Latin America, and the least corrupt, most well run government in the region that actually does a great job at promoting things like public health.

    I was there during the 2000 election between Lagos and Lavin and if you read the Chilean or Argentinan press you saw story after story about Lagos and Lavin's varying postitions on the economy, education, etc. If you read the international press the whole thing was Pinochet vs Allende , Pinochet vs Allende. It's as if you were reading about the 2000 U.S election in some newspaper and they were framing the whole thing as an election where the primary issue was the Vietnam War.

  19. Re:Have you actually ever talked to anyone in Chil by vidarh · · Score: 3, Insightful
    The 1970s coup was very necessary.

    If so, then why didn't the opposition arrange demonstrations, arrange strikes without massive CIA intervention and actually manage to keep the strikes going, and demand changes?

    Fact is, Allende was democratically elected, and the opposition, even with CIA help, didn't manage to raise enough support in the population to get anywhere near overthrowing his government before they decided to start murdering innocent people.

    If Allende was so bad for Chile, why couldn't the CIA stay out of it and let Chileans decide for themselves and throw him out of power?

    And why did they support a fascist dictator if the goal was to "save" the Chilean people from suffering?

    You try to justify it by pointing to Khmer Rouge, but "forget" that Khmer Rouge and Allende had wildly differing political platforms. You also conveniently "forget" that the "communist" Khmer Rouge was finally stopped not by the US, or any of it's cronies, but by "communist" Vietnam.

    Allendes regime was different from either in that it didn't murder the opposition or anyone that ever looked like they might consider possibly opposing them, and was democratically elected. If you want to equate Allende and Pol Pot, I would submit that Mother Theresa was really Stalin in drag, and claim that it is just as plausible.

    Try telling the hundreds of thousands of people that had close friends or relatives killed because of Pinochet that the coup was "necessary", and that you think the CIA and a small group of military officers, none elected officials, had a right to take that decision on behalf of the Chilean people.

    If you truly believe that, then would you also support the removal of the US government if some small group, say Al Quaeda, decides that they think it is necessary to do so on behalf of the American people?

    If not, then who do you think have the right to decide that it is "right" to overthrow a foreign democratically elected government?

  20. Capitalist Nes Network. by Geezle2 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    In the US, the broadcast news networks are all anti-Bush and pro-internationalism in their coverage. The same is true of CNN. Only Fox and conservative talk radio present the other side.

    Really?? I have yet to see an anti-Bush story on the Capitalist News Network (CNN). Considering that the guy is little more than a chimp in a suit and tie it is almost impossible not to ridicule him nonetheless ALL of the networks put a great deal of effort into making our village idiot look Presidential. Perhaps they are not as quick to apologise for, rationalize and justify Bush II comments, actions and policies but they certainly never call them into question either. Sure, they don't pull their punches but that is just because they never throw any punches in the first place.

    This is actually a huge problem that could do serious damage to what remains of the principles of democracy in the US. For democracy to work the press has to be critical of those in power. Big business media in the US is not only consistently failing in this regard but shamelessly cheerleading for monkey boy's regime.

    Yep, there are big problems with the media in the US but the 'Liberal bias' that you imagine is not one of them.