Pinochet Legacy

[_JS]

Ha. This is an obvious invitation.

45% of Chile's population lived below the poverty line in 1988 Mike. That was 15 years after the coup  and 15 years of wonderful Milty Friedman Chicago School Economics forced down people's throats with a gun.

The current leader of Chile is a woman whose family fled Pinochet's Fascism and took refuge in East Germany (DDR). She attended Karl Marx University where she became a surgeon as well as learning military studies. She speaks fluent Spanish, French, English, German, and Portuguese. Michele Bachelet is a remarkable woman. What they don't tell you is that Chile's economy has thrived since Pinochet left and that social benefits increased rapidly after 1990 and especially under Bachelet (the same time period that the Chilean economy grew!).

Of course Pinochet knew about the torture and the death camps. And so did the "Chicago Boys" the economists who graduated under Milton Friedman's tutelage. In fact, they had worked closely together with one another (the military and the economists) in the pre-coup planning. What the folks who like to lick Friedman's orifices don't want to admit is that the Free Market free for all failed miserably! It was a disaster. Inflation was in the thousands of percents. While wages sank in real terms. Unemployment hit a third of the population.

They actually managed to do worse than when the United States was waging economic war on the elected government of Salvador Allende. And what really pissed them off and drove them to perform the coup is that Allende actually gained seats in the midterm election just before the coup! They had spent nearly 20 years in a program of seeking students and sending them to the Chicago School of Economics through grants paid for by the US Government. The program's goal as it was designed by Harberger and later Friedman (Economics professors at Chicago University) was to train these great laissez faire economists and send them back to Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. There, these great economic minds would win the minds of the people and that would translate into electoral vicrtories for the free market in Latin America. But the reality was that those nations couldn't stand those idiots. They rejected their ideas over and over again.

Friedman's bullshit theory that free markets = free people was a lie. So what did they do? They had military coups in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay. All of them became Fascist police states of the worst kind. And all of them had "Chicago Boys" in top economic posts. It turns out that free markets = military police states. And by Fascist I mean Fascist, the real thing with actual Fascist parties. They even had old German Nazis, one of which Pinochet made an advisor and he refused to extradite to West Germany on war crimes charges!

These were states of terror. And amazingly you have "libertarians" and right-wingers defending this shit today. And in Orwellian fashion they use terms like "freedom" and "democracy" when they speak in hallowed reverence to megalomaniacs like Pinochet or useless twats like Milton Friedman.

Personally, I like to sit back in the irony that the lady who is the elected leader of Chile went to university in the DDR at a school names Karl Marx University.

[Michael Tee]

<<Ha. This is an obvious invitation.>>

You de man, JS.

I almost tossed my biscuits when I read Weyrich's piece on Pinochet.  Talk about a tissue of lies!  It was a solid shitstorm of lies without a break.  I guess there were some nuggets of truth in there somewhere, for example Weyrich actually did provide us with the knowledge that there was a country called Chile somewhere in South America and that General Pinochet seized power there in a coup.

The capstone on this ludicrous odyssey of lies was when the CIA "Factbook" was cited in support of it.  Sorta like quoting the official Nazi Party handbook to support the challenged passages in Mein Kampf.  Unconsciously hilarious, but hilarious nevertheless.

Thanks, JS.  You came to the rescue like Superman speeding to a collapsing mine shaft.

[Universe Prince]

And so did the "Chicago Boys" the economists who graduated under Milton Friedman's tutelage.

I would be interested in seeing some evidence that they were all some sort of slavishly obedient disciples of Friedman. You are trying to lay this all at Friedman's feet, are you not?

What the folks who like to lick Friedman's orifices don't want to admit is that the Free Market free for all failed miserably! It was a disaster. Inflation was in the thousands of percents. While wages sank in real terms. Unemployment hit a third of the population.

But did any Chilean indeed have that better life because of free-market policies? It is a matter of faith among the left that Chile in fact had its economy destroyed by rampant Friedmanism. In an excellent article (not available online) that appeared in the August 1983 issue of Inquiry magazine in the midst of Chile's first severe recession after some early market reforms, called "Did Milton Friedman Really Ruin Chile?" Jonathan Marshall pointed out that both Friedman, who was too quick to declare permanent victory for free-market reform in Chile, and his detractors, who thought his policies had brought the nation to ruination, were missing some important details: "Friedman's own proteges abandoned laissez-faire economics at certain critical junctures, and these departures, not any maniacal monetarism, produced Chile's suffering." Marshall particularly fingered Chile's very un-Friedmanlike insistence on fixing the price of the Chilean peso to U.S. dollars in the early '80s, creating an overvaluing of the peso that devastated the Chilean export market. He also noted Chile's continued system of crony capitalism in which those with access got special government credit, and bailouts when free-market risk hurt them. Those sorts of policies, as well as a worldwide collapse in copper prices, Chile's prime export, were to blame for Chile's early '80s recession, not a mad rush for too-free markets.

http://www.reason.com/news/show/117278.html

So, what Chile had that failed was not a free market for all. The failures were a result of departure from free market policies, not because of them.

It turns out that free markets = military police states.

Excrement.

These were states of terror.

And none were bastions of free markets or laissez-faire economics.

And amazingly you have "libertarians" and right-wingers defending this shit today. And in Orwellian fashion they use terms like "freedom" and "democracy" when they speak in hallowed reverence to megalomaniacs like Pinochet or useless twats like Milton Friedman.

I would never say anything positive about Pinochet, but Friedman was hardly a "useless twat". I'm not saying you have to agree with his economic ideas, or even Friedman as a person, but there is no reason to be an ass and talk as if Friedman were some sort of idiot. You hate him for his (really) slight connection to Pinochet? Okay. I'm not Friedman's #1 fan either, but let's be fair here. While everyone picks on the Pinochet connection, Friedman was being called on by heads of state in Europe and Asia for economic advice. He did win the Nobel Prize in Economics (back when winning a Nobel Prize meant you deserved it, not because the prize committee desired to make a political statement) and helped influence the Gates Commission to put an end to the draft.

[Plane]

<<Ho Chi Minh killed two million Vietnameese.>>

Bullshit.  He led his country in a war for independence from foreigners, and the last foreigners he defeated were the Amerikkkans.  In the course of his driving the Amerikkkan invaders out of his country, 2,000,000 Vietnamese had to die, most of them killed by Amerikkkans. 

It seems to be typical of criminal fascist regimes to blame the victims of their aggression.  Hitler blames the Jews for the gas chambers, and Amerikkka blames the Vietnamese for the deaths of 2 million Vietnamese.  Too bad nobody except the fascists and their stooges is taken in by it.

<<Pinochet is such a piker.>>

Agreed.  But a piker when compared to Hitler.  You can't even compare him to Ho Chi Minh.  Uncle Ho was a courageous leader of his people in their long fight for independence, not a stooge of the CIA and an agent of U.S. imperialism.  Apples and oranges.

  This is what I am getting at, North Vietnameese who might have disagreed with Ho Chi Minh were no better off than Cheilian Communists.
Ho as a stooge of his Soviet masters is an apple.

[_JS]

UP, the problem for Friedman apologists is that the program was set up as early as the 1950's to train these men ("the Chicago Boys") in pure laissez faire economics policy. They were very much disciples of Friedman and Harberger. Graduates from those programs became economic ministers and advisors in every one of those countries. It was based on the "Berkeley Mafia," a group of right wing economists from Cal-Berkeley (this was before the 60's and Cal's change in political culture) and their rise in prominence in the CIA aided coup of Suharto in Indonesia. Another, very bloody coup. The Berkeley Mafia weren't the purists of the Chicago School, but they did their part in opening Indonesia up for foreign (read Western) investors and cutting government programs.

Am I laying it all at Friedman and Harberger's feet? No. I am saying that they have responsibility for the torture chambers and death camps in the Southern Cone of Latin America. Consistently the two men denied that their economics policies ever had anything to do with the military's policies. But that was a blatant lie. The two could not exist without one another. That is my point. And it was confirmed by the ministers and economists themselves.

And did the "Chicago Boys" follow their mentors? Yes. And their mentors were extremely proud of them, both Harberger and Friedman made statements that demonstrated their pride in their former students.


You point out a couple of ways in which Chile or Argentina were not pure lily white free market states. Therefore, Friedman is vindicated. Actually, I tend to believe and there is evidence aplenty that the purist view is essentially part of the problem. It is nearly religion. It is a purism of which economists and military worked together to "cleanse" society of any impurities. The interrogators in Chilean death camps would tell their victims that they needed to be cured. It mimiced the racial purity of Nazism.

The evidence you show came from 1983, ten years after the coup and eight years after Friedman's famous letter which had promised results in "months." Pinochet had abandoned some of the purist principles by then and had removed some of the "Chicago Boys." Some of them were involved in financial rackets that were technically legal (and from which they made millions) but were beginning to cast a dark shadow over Pinochet's Fascist utopia. Of course, Pinochet himself had made hundreds of millions too!

You can say "excrement", but the historical truth is the historical truth. Friedman's freer markets came about only through military coup. There was no election of these juntas. The people and culture of Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay never supported these governments or these economic policies. In elections they supported socialists or centrist Christian Democrats (or a similar styled party), both of whom supported an array of social benefits programs. At the time it was called developmentalism and both Friedman and Harberger hated it.

So where was the freedom in these countries? Elections were gone. Political parties were outlawed. Freedom of assembly and the press were gone. Trade Unionism was obliterated. The freedom to disagree with the government was gone. The freedom to disagree with Milton Friedman's beliefs was gone. Did free markets = free people. Hell no! To "free the markets" it took torture, death, murder, disappearing, rape. The people targeted were the working class, unionists, poets, musicians, journalists, professors, peasants and it went into the heart of society UP. Chile made it illegal to have students give group reports, because that defied the logic of individualism. Think about that.

So if I sound passionate about it, it is because I am. These people laid waste, not just to leftists, but to an entire culture and society. And worst of all...the United States supported it, not just with money, but with active participation of agents and corporate interest. Milton Friedman always claimed to separate the economics from the horror of the realities in those countries - but that was the worst lie of all. Do you hear many people avidly separating Nazi economic policies from their other policies? No, it went hand-in-hand. There was no Nazism without anti-Semitism.

I'll be honest and say that I've been hard on Friedman's intelligence. The guy was brilliant. But, he was brilliant in the same manner that Machiavelli was brilliant. It does not mean I have any respect for the person. His attempt to divorce himself from The pain, death, and suffering he caused is one of the great myths.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Pinochet was not only a traitor, a tyrant and a murderer, he was also a thief. He stole millions.

Allende was elected as a member of the Partido Socialista. His party was allied with the Communists, but was larger. The Christian Democratic candidate came in second, and also advocated nationalization of the copper mines and other industries. They got almost as many votes as Allende's coalition. So a solid 65% or so of all Chileans voted for nationalization. Only the National Party was against nationalization.

The Brezhnev Doctrine had nothing to do with Chile, because Chile did not have a Communist governmernt then, or ever. Your article is full of crap.

[Michael Tee]

<<This is what I am getting at, North Vietnameese who might have disagreed with Ho Chi Minh were no better off than Cheilian Communists.>>

And you know this because . .  ?

Actually you don't know it because it is not true.  You make this stuff up as you go along, but that's OK.  I would like to know WHY?  Why would you want to make up stuff like this?  And what if anything does it add to this discussion?  You know and I know that there is not a shred of evidence to support what you say.  Are you making it up because you think, "That's how it must have been.  Ho was a communist.  Communists don't tolerate dissent.  Communists must torture their opponents to death?"

Help me out here, plane.  I just want a window into your mind.  You know you're lying.  I know you're lying.  It's OK, I don't give a shit, you're saying something that's not true, it's not the worst thing in the world, but I'd really like to know why you do it.  I'd really like to understand somebody like you.  If I understood you, I could maybe reach you.  whether you realize it or not, people like you are a big part of the world's problem.  You don't MAKE the wars, but you support the ones who do - - even when it's directly to your own disadvantage and everyone else's disadvantage.  And I really cannot figure you out.

<<Ho as a stooge of his Soviet masters is an apple.>>

That's hilarious - - you obviously know absolutely nothing about Ho Chi Minh or Viet Nam.  Ho was receiving aid from both China and Russia, so it was impossible for him to tie himself too closely to one side or the other of the "Sino-Soviet split."  As a matter of fact from the time that Khruschev began touting his bullshit policy of "peaceful co-existence," around 1960, Uncle Ho moved noticeably closer to the Chinese side and stayed there until Khruschev was removed from power.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Plane hears stuff on Rush. But not just Rush. It is as though he was a magnet for disinformation and propaganda. It apears to stick to him like superglue.

Like Reagan, he knows tons and tons of stuff, and like the stuff Reagan knew, most of it it isn't actually true.

[Religious Dick]

Ha. This is an obvious invitation.

And you're an obvious idiot!

Here's a Wikipedia article showing the GDP trend of Chile from 1955.

And let's note, despite being governed by your Marxist-trained leader, Chile's equivalent of Social Security is still private, and still pays better returns than our does, and the economy is still essentially free-market based.

I'll also note you've yet to produce a scrap of documentation supporting your contention that Pinochet's economic policies produced the disaster you claim for them. By any quantifiable measure, that's simply not true.

[_JS]

Ha. This is an obvious invitation.

And you're an obvious idiot!

Here's a Wikipedia article showing the GDP trend of Chile from 1955.

And let's note, despite being governed by your Marxist-trained leader, Chile's equivalent of Social Security is still private, and still pays better returns than our does, and the economy is still essentially free-market based.

I'll also note you've yet to produce a scrap of documentation supporting your contention that Pinochet's economic policies produced the disaster you claim for them. By any quantifiable measure, that's simply not true.

Wow. A Wikipedia article that shows nominal GDP. Yipee. That was meaningless.

Now read from an economist who was there: Link and Link

Naturally nominal GDP will skyrocket in terms of the nation's currency when inflation is in the thousands of percent.

This discusses poverty in Chile under Pinochet. Remember that the government statistics did not always mesh well with reality. Pinochet and the Chicago boys made sure to put Chile in a positive light that hid the desperate poverty of most of the people. His entire "experiment" depended on the success of Chicago School economics.

In 1982 and 1983, Chile?s GDP fell by 16 percent. The collapse of the financial sector cost Chilean taxpayers between 30 and 40 percent of GDP. Unemployment shot up to 30 percent. Around 50 percent of the population fell below the poverty line. Extreme poverty affected 30 percent of the population.

The above is from this report of the World Bank, which had been an avid supporter of Pinochet.

They go on to add:

People living below the poverty line still represented 45 percent of the population in 1987. Additionally, a key decision by the Pinochet government to reduce taxes and government expenditures in 1988 had a further negative impact in social policies. The decrease in social expenditures was equivalent to 3 percent of GDP, resulting in severe deterioration in the coverage and quality of public health services, lower wages for teachers, and lower pensions for the elderly.

Always nice when the World Bank, not known for its concern for the poor, blasts one's record on poverty!

If you need more it will have to wait until I am home and have my books. That supports the quantitative data you were seeking. Unless 50% below poverty is your cup of tea.

[Universe Prince]

You point out a couple of ways in which Chile or Argentina were not pure lily white free market states. Therefore, Friedman is vindicated.

The problem here is not that Chile or Argentina were somehow just ever so slightly blemished free market states. The kind of crony capitalism that went on is not free market capitalism.

I watch people insist that Goldberg's new book Liberal Fascism is somehow in complete error because liberals would never support the Nazi racism and nationalism. This ignores that many of the domestic policies of Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy had a lot in common with liberal politics of the time and even of today. So, if we're going to argue that Chile was some sort of example of unadulterated free market capitalism, then let's all agree that Goldberg is right and fascism is basically liberal/socialist at heart. And I suppose next someone is going to tell me how China is a libertarian paradise.

Actually, I tend to believe and there is evidence aplenty that the purist view is essentially part of the problem. It is nearly religion. It is a purism of which economists and military worked together to "cleanse" society of any impurities. The interrogators in Chilean death camps would tell their victims that they needed to be cured. It mimiced the racial purity of Nazism.

Not at all like the socialist leaders who imprisoned or killed "enemies of the state". But please, by all means, find me some statement in Friedman's words that supports "cleansing" society in the manner your describing or anything remotely similar. I'm not saying Friedman was a saint, but let's not conflate free market ideas with authoritarianism. Yes Pinochet and others may have done so, but that hardly means we should make the same mistake.

So where was the freedom in these countries? Elections were gone. Political parties were outlawed. Freedom of assembly and the press were gone. Trade Unionism was obliterated. The freedom to disagree with the government was gone. The freedom to disagree with Milton Friedman's beliefs was gone. Did free markets = free people. Hell no! To "free the markets" it took torture, death, murder, disappearing, rape. The people targeted were the working class, unionists, poets, musicians, journalists, professors, peasants and it went into the heart of society UP. Chile made it illegal to have students give group reports, because that defied the logic of individualism. Think about that.

Again, they didn't have free markets. And they didn't have them because the governments were authoritarian, as you just illustrated. If anything, we do not see here examples of free markets=fascism, but rather that free market ideas mixed with tyranny don't work.

So if I sound passionate about it, it is because I am. These people laid waste, not just to leftists, but to an entire culture and society. And worst of all...the United States supported it, not just with money, but with active participation of agents and corporate interest.

And you'll get no argument from me there. I'm no fan of that.

Milton Friedman always claimed to separate the economics from the horror of the realities in those countries - but that was the worst lie of all. Do you hear many people avidly separating Nazi economic policies from their other policies? No, it went hand-in-hand. There was no Nazism without anti-Semitism.

How about Soviet Russia's economic policies? Are those separate from, say, Stalin's atrocities? Is socialism responsible for the government sanctioned deaths and rights violations that went on in the U.S.S.R.? I don't believe you'll say yes to that. I think maybe you might even argue that Soviet Russia was not really a good example of socialism. But I'm supposed to believe Chile was some sort of example of free market ideas being inseparable from Pinochet's tyranny? Go on, pull the other one.

[Plane]

<<This is what I am getting at, North Vietnameese who might have disagreed with Ho Chi Minh were no better off than Cheilian Communists.>>

And you know this because . .  ?

Actually you don't know it because it is not true.  You make this stuff up as you go along, but that's OK.  I would like to know WHY?  Why would you want to make up stuff like this?  And what if anything does it add to this discussion?  You know and I know that there is not a shred of evidence to support what you say.  Are you making it up because you think, "That's how it must have been.  Ho was a communist.  Communists don't tolerate dissent.  Communists must torture their opponents to death?"

Help me out here, plane.  I just want a window into your mind.  You know you're lying.  I know you're lying.  It's OK, I don't give a shit, you're saying something that's not true, it's not the worst thing in the world, but I'd really like to know why you do it.  I'd really like to understand somebody like you.  If I understood you, I could maybe reach you.  whether you realize it or not, people like you are a big part of the world's problem.  You don't MAKE the wars, but you support the ones who do - - even when it's directly to your own disadvantage and everyone else's disadvantage.  And I really cannot figure you out.

<<Ho as a stooge of his Soviet masters is an apple.>>

That's hilarious - - you obviously know absolutely nothing about Ho Chi Minh or Viet Nam.  Ho was receiving aid from both China and Russia, so it was impossible for him to tie himself too closely to one side or the other of the "Sino-Soviet split."  As a matter of fact from the time that Khruschev began touting his bullshit policy of "peaceful co-existence," around 1960, Uncle Ho moved noticeably closer to the Chinese side and stayed there until Khruschev was removed from power.

So what does happen to free thinkers in Vietnam?
They don't dissaper or show up years later "re-educated"?
Did a million Chlians become "boat people"?

Ho had every quality you did not like about Pinohet  every single one.
But haveing one quality you do like excuses all.

[The_Professor]

Plane hears stuff on Rush. But not just Rush. It is as though he was a magnet for disinformation and propaganda. It apears to stick to him like superglue.

Like Reagan, he knows tons and tons of stuff, and like the stuff Reagan knew, most of it it isn't actually true.

Actually, Plane listens to quite a lot of NPR and is heavy into documentaries, certainly NOT the type of leisure time spent by someone who is as screwed in the head as you seem to not only imply but state.

I happen to agree with him on this issue, and I have noticed I tend to generally even though he does support Bush a little much, I'd say, so am I part of this "vast rightwing conspiracy" as one of your Leftist leaders said?

[Plane]

Plane hears stuff on Rush. But not just Rush. It is as though he was a magnet for disinformation and propaganda. It apears to stick to him like superglue.

Like Reagan, he knows tons and tons of stuff, and like the stuff Reagan knew, most of it it isn't actually true.

Actually, Plane listens to quite a lot of NPR and is heavy into documentaries, certainly NOT the type of leisure time spent by someone who is as scrwwed in the head as you seem to not only imply but state.

I happen to agree with him on this issue, and I have noticed I tend to generally even thoguh he does support Bush a little much, I'd say, so am I part of this "vast rightwing conspiracy" as one of your Leftist leaders said?

Don't tell them enough to blow my advantages TP.
Are you comeing to the big VRWC picnic this year?

[Michael Tee]

So what does happen to free thinkers in Vietnam?
They don't dissaper or show up years later "re-educated?
Did a million Chlians become "boat people"?
=========================================
I don't think much of anything happens to "free thinkers" in Vietnam, unless they are dumb enough to challenge the Party or take active steps against the government.  Maybe write a newsletter that deals with human rights or something like that - - then I would think they would get beaten up and/or thrown in jail.  The Party spent a lot of blood and lives of people near and dear to them to bring independence and socialism to the Vietnamese people, and they aren't too anxious to see the gains they bled and died for eroded by the activities of anti-social schmucks.  Not after what they had to sacrifice to get there.

I think if there is injustice in Vietnam - - well, I don't mean "IF," there is injustice, of course there is, there is injustice everywhere on earth, even, believe it or not in God's Country, the United States of America - - most of the injustice would involve real or perceived class enemies - - a man who used to be a merchant, or the son or even grandson of a family of landlords.  These guys can wind up in jail for years for essentially nothing - - selectively enforced laws, like black marketeering, for example, when the whole fucking village was doing it and this one guy gets singled out.  What a coincidence, his grandfather was the landlord!

As far as I know, there is no significant number of "disappeared" in Viet Nam.  I personally have never even read of any, let alone met anyone claiming to be a survivor of the disappeared.  In Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, the secret police habitually after torturing a prisoner to death or to the point of death, would just make the body disappear - - bury it in a remote desert grave, or drop them, many times drugged and still alive, from night flights over the ocean.  There are associations of the families of the disappeared in the "Southern Cone," the best-known being Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, who gathered weekly in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, wearing white scarves.  One of the mothers was even herself disappeared by the Argentine junta, but the mothers couldn't be scared off.  My wife heard one of them address our synagogue years ago, and her impression was that these were women who felt that they had nothing left to lose.   Although I guess in the torture chambers that one kidnapped mother realized just how wrong she had been.  The courage of those women always amazed me.  I could never have taken the risks they took.  We were in Buenos Aires in December and the first place we wanted to go was the Plaza de Mayo (this was on a Thursday, the day of the Mothers' weekly walk) but we found out that their last walk was taken about a year before.   All the families want is to know finally the fate of their loved ones, to know where is the grave.  There are no family-of-the-disappeared organizations in Viet Nam (as far as I know) and if you know anything about the Vietnamese, you will know that family graves are very important.  Families gather there to pray and remember.  If there were a need for such organizations - - if there were lots of disappeared - - the need would have created the organization.

You also mentioned the re-education camps.  Again, being re-educated and released is not even remotely comparable to being tortured to death.  Only a moral imbecile could equate the two.  A long war of sacrifice had been waged by Uncle Ho against the French, the Japs, the Chinese, the French again and then the Amerikkkans.  In the course of that war, there were traitors to their own people, traitors who had joined the foreigners (or at least the French and then the Amerikkkans) to fight against, torture and kill their own people for the sake of their foreign masters.  Instead of killing them all immediately for their treason (which I admit is how I myself would have handled them) Uncle Ho decided instead to re-educate them.  I'm no expert but my impression seems to be from the reading I've done and the Vietnamese that I've met here, the average re-education took around five to six years in a camp, less for the low-end civilian and military flunkies - - but here's a paper based on the experiences of a Lt.-Col. who was in for 11 years:  http://www.hmongstudies.org/PeterVanDoAReeducationCampStory.pdf  It's interesting to note that although there are lots of complaints about poor health and sanitation, near-starvation rations, untreated illnesses, many of them fatal, there is not a single complaint of torture in the entire document.  Again, compared to Pinochet, the contrast couldn't be clearer.  In my eyes, Uncle Ho is a humanitarian for not killing the whole damn bunch.  Also their sentences - - while prisoners of the Amerikkkan fascists face death sentences and probably will rot for 30 years to life, the longest that Uncle Ho held a treasonous rat in custody was 11 years.

<<Did a million Chileans become boat people?>>  Another comparison that only a moral imbecile could make.  Someone who can't see the difference between allowing someone to take a boat ride to a new life, and torturing someone to death.  No difference at all.  Yep, that proves it.  Yes, after  a war whose Amerikkkan phase alone had lasted ten years, had taken 2 million lives and had poisoned the earth, air and water of the nation, you might think there would be some degree of popular anger directed at the sell-outs and quislings who had fought for the Amerikkkan invaders.  I would not want to hang around very long either had I betrayed my country to the invader and had the invader then been driven out by the Resistance forces.  There is always the possibility of the righteous anger of the people delivering a little sidewalk justice one day when you least expect it.