POOR IN SANTIAGO DISTRUSTFUL OF CHILE’S INSTITUTIONS

[Judi Lynn]

POOR IN SANTIAGO DISTRUSTFUL OF CHILE’S INSTITUTIONS

Senators and Judges Get the Worst Rating

(July 8, 2005) A study published this week found that Santiago’s poor have little faith in Chile’s institutional order.

Entitled “Honesty and Corruption in Chile,” the study, conducted by the Universidad Católica Silva Henríquez (UCSH), revealed that 70 percent of Santiago’s poor believe the country possesses a “high” or “very high” level of corruption.

Of those polled, 86.6 percent believed that “corruption exists in all public administration sectors” and 92.2 percent agreed that “there is more corruption than is widely known” in the country.

A decided majority also believes that senators, deputies, judges, the Supreme Court and municipal leaders have “high” or “very high” levels of corruption. Parliamentarians were rated corrupt by 65 percent of those polled; judges and the court system by 56 percent.
(snip/...)

http://www.tcgnews.com/santiagotimes/index.php?nav=story&story_id=9491&topic_id=1

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[mom cat]

1. Thank you for your ongoing coverage of Latin America. You do a

real service to the DU community and I commend you on your eforts to inform and educate us about the hest of our hemisphere. Thanks also for your recent posts about Columbia, Uribe and the attempts to make impunity the law of the land.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Thanks. I'm just one of a bunch of us who want to know what's going on.

I was hoping someone might see this article, as it reminds one of the underhanded sneakiness of a recent freep visitor, when he made a point of claiming Chile's social security program is a marvel, leaving the implication that the government created by our own treachery, and unfathomable murders of "leftists," is working well.

People who've actually read anything about it know that's a lie. Freeps' only hope of appearing to know anything about Latin America is to spin whoppers, and hope no one reading their posts knows the difference!

You might notice they always get a couple of other "DU'ers" to back them up, and then they disappear! Ha ha ha. Hmmmm.

Democratic Presidents' records in this hemisphere are a far, far cleaner story. Something to feel good about, and another reason to get more Democratic Presidents!

[IntiRaymi]

3. I am not sure I can agree with that

Hemispheric meddling has happened regardless of which party is in power.
A quick look at a timeline with a list military interventions, along with US sponsored coup d'etats, will show a uniform distribution of these, with no preference for republican or democratic administrations.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Would you post the timeline you believe bears out your claim?

Thank you.

[Judi Lynn]

5. I took the liberty of making a quick google grab to underscore my point

killer file

United States presidents and their advisers
This is a compilation of actions by presidents of the United States, and their advisers, that affected other individuals and countries featured on this website.

http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/us-presidents.html

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I know if DU'ers have time and the inclination, they have tons to add to this disagreement.

[Judi Lynn]

6. DU'ers are well aware of these great glances at Latin American monsters

and their American supporters, usually right-wing:

http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/fdtcards/SouthAmerica.html

http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/fdtcards/CentralAmerica.html

http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/fdtcards/Caribbean.html

[IntiRaymi]

7. Simple google search

http://www.zompist.com/latam.html

As incomplete as it (necessarily) will be, it is of great interest to state that:
(a) The SOA was founded during FDR's presidency.
(b) Note the abundant items found during the 1960's.
But, not to worry. There is also much malfeasance during republican administrations.

[IntiRaymi]

8. correction

(b) (above) is wrong. Truman's administration (a democrat!) founded the SOA in 1946.
let's add:
(c) Fulgencio Batista, cuban asshole, installed by FDR.

[Judi Lynn]

11. Speaking of Cuba, it may be you forgot the obsession goes back

a long way. Surely you've read the "Breckenridge Memorandum." Found a quick reference to it a moment ago:

We must destroy everything within our cannons' range of fire. We must impose a harsh blockade so that hunger and its constant companion, disease, undermine the peaceful population and decimate the army. The allied army must be constantly engaged in reconaissance and vanguard actions so that the Cuban army is irreparably caught between two fronts.'
He went on to explain the plan for the military occupation of Cuba and the temporary maintenance by force of the new independent government of a minority of the autonomists and Spaniards who remained, until it was strong enough to maintain itself against the separatists. He continues: 'When this moment arrives, we must create conflicts for the independent government. That goverment will be faced with these difficulties – These difficulties must coincide with the unrest and violence among the aforementioned elements, to whom we must give our backing – To sum up, our policy must always be to support the weaker against the stronger, until we have obtained the extermination of them both, in order to annex the Pearl of the Antilles.'
(snip/...)

http://www.rcgfrfi.easynet.co.uk/ratb/cuba/history3.htm

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The U.S. President at the time his Undersecretary of War wrote this memorandum, December 24, 1897, was William McKinley, REPUBLICAN. You may remember how overly involved Teddy Roosevelt, REPUBLICAN became in the early 1900's, as well, with Cuba.

The other Roosevelt was very late on the scene when he pampered Fulgencio Batista, who was a great fave with Eisenhower.

[fshrink]

9. That's probably because Diebold-type systems haven't een used. nt

[Judi Lynn]

10. Adding a link to refresh memory of Republicans' vicious Latin American

policy:

If we had to choose one place and time where U.S. policy towards Latin America went wrong, the date would be 1954 and the place Guatemala. Confronted with the elected government of Jacobo Arbenz, one that was less than subservient to U.S. pressures, the Eisenhower administration gave the green light to the Central Intelligence Agency to overthrow the constitutional order and install a military government, thereby igniting widespread rebellion. Over the next thirty-five years, the CIA bankrolled a war in which torture, murder and the firebombing of rural villages resulted in the deaths of 200,000 people, most of them defenseless Mayan Indians. CIA station chiefs, from their secret apartments inside the U.S. embassy, subsidized a war that consisted largely of a mindless series of military massacres. When U.S. policymakers at last lost enthusiasm for this pointless reign of terror, these station chiefs undercut and lied to U.S. ambassadors charged with helping to move the country towards peace.

As the New York Times reported (June 30, 1995), "American and Guatemalan officials, who long denied these links, now acknowledge that the CIA gave the Guatemalan military millions of dollars in the 1980s and 1990s, used some of the money as bribes to buy information from high-ranking military intelligence officers, and provided intelligence to the army for its long war against guerrillas, farmers, peasants and other opponents." In an unusually candid admission, the former inspector-general of the CIA, Fred Hitz, told Clifford Krauss of the New York Times (March 6, 1999), "It’s one of the saddest chapters of American relations with Latin America. The United States felt responsible for what it started by removing Arbenz and essentially we were trapped. We started something and didn’t know how to get off the train."

During this "noche más larga" for Latin democracy, the militaries of Central America arrogated to themselves the right to decide with deadly force who could and who could not participate in the political life of the country. In the name of anticommunism, U.S.-supported armies suppressed democracy, free speech, and human rights in El Salvador,Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. Torture and assassination of democratic leaders -including presidential candidates, journalists, priests and union officials became commonplace.
(snip)

The report, titled "Guatemala: Memory of Silence" makes grim reading. (To view the report on-line, see HTTP://HRDATA.AAAS.ORG/CEH/REPORT/ENGLISH.) It shows that the United States was not backing one side in a civil war but rather a campaign of official terror. Of the more than 200,000 victims, the commission found that the army and other state agents killed 93 percent. With direct orders from the government’s highest echelons and the military high command, soldiers carried out a scorched-earth policy burning Mayan villages and throwing the still-living victims into common burial pits. Declassified documents reveal that Washington knew of these acts of genocide yet our government continued its assistance to the Guatemalan military.
(snip/...)

http://ciponline.org/oldiprrethi.htm

Many DU'ers are learning how much has been whitewashed, swept under the rug, and denied.