Well put.

Interesting take on Pinochet's economic machinations here:

http://www.gregpalast.com/tinker-bell-pinochet-and-the-fairy-tale-miracle-of-chile-2#more-1551

- enjoy! -

Maybe Kerrs constitutional coup went down without bloodshed only because australians are too dim to realise what happened or too spineless to do anything about it?

Fascists naturally want to portray Pinochets bloody coup and barbaric regime as somehow justified, it helps them fake humanity to themselves and their families. At least the fawning by Margaret Thatcher & Ronnie Reagan on General Pinochet made their feelings on torture, rape, and murder clear, but i'm still naive enough to be surprised by Mr Flints historical revisionism, taken straight from the script by US 'Special Attache for Death Squads' Negroponte.

Jesus Chris!

The article reads like what Margaret Thatcher did to Britain and what John Howard is doing to Australia!

Laim,

Right on again !

Pinochet engaged in a military takeover of an elected government which, based on local elections a year prior, was becoming more popular. For Marxists it was proof that parliamentary democracy was a sham. For supporters of parliamentary democracy it was an inexcusable problem.

Whilst much is made that Allende achieved a plurality of the Presidential vote, not a majority, it is worth recognising that the third place Chrisitain Democrat Radomiro Tomic (with 27.9%) of the vote had a very similar programme and endorsed Allende's election. The preference of the Chilean people cannot be disputed under these circumstances.

Allende's programme included nationalisation of the copper industry, land reform and education reform. Allende's economic program was very successful in the first year with massive economic growth and a collapse in unemployment, but faltered in following years as the copper prices plummeted in the world market (50%+ of the nation's exports).

Was Pinochet's economic model a success? Some do not think so.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/HL06Dj01.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chile_under_Pinochet#Economy__and_Free_Market_reforms

Maybe "only", 3000 people were killed. But tens of thousands were taken away in the night, tortured, and abused. The Latin American Institute on Mental Health and Human Rights (ILAS), claims a figure of 200,000 Chileans experienced "situations of extreme trauma".

But of course, one can't prevent democratic socialism without breaking a few eggs, right?

Chris, thanks for the link.

I visited Chile 5 years after coup and I was shocked by the grinding poverty and fear. The infrastructure was being rapidly run down and 80% of the population hated the military and their families guts. A police bus was blown up outside the hotel I was staying in and all the hotel inhabitants, except me, were taken away for questioning. On every bus journey, all bus passengers were hauled off the bus, questioned and searched each time we entered and left a town. When I got to Bolivia I met Chileans who had been exiled.

Peru wasn't much better at that time, I remember seeing an Indian peasant shoving a log in the railway track to derail the train I was about to catch. Shining Path gained a lot of popular support because once again the military shopped at PXs and the rest of the populace had to survive on limited overpriced food and goods.

I'll never forget flying back to Australia. When we stopped in Tahiti and were on a bus the people on the bus started singing songs - beautiful sounding songs of loss, freedom, and longing and every one was crying. The songs were clearly banned in Chile.

David Flint seems to be suggesting that Chile would have been a lot better off in 1973 if they had a monarch, a queen. I would suggest that if he wants to stave off any future armed coups against elected governments in Chile that he "hot foots" it there immediately.

Liam,

I must be very slow, but I don't understand why you term John Kerr's actions as a coup. Could you explain? Perhaps you think that just because a party has a majority in the House of Representatives they are entitled to govern. If so, please tell me where it says that in the Constitution.
Similarly, it was alleged that a government was entitled to enjoy a term of three years, providing they maintained their majority in the House of Reps. Is this what you think? If so, please point to the section of the Constitution that provides this.

What about Governor Game? His situation with Jack Lang was close to Allende, as Lang refused to withdraw regulations that the High Court had ruled to be illegal.
What I simply can't understand is that it is fair enough for someone to say that the Senate shouldn't have the power to defer supply, or even exist, but to say that they don't have this power is directly contrary to the plain words in section 53 of the Constitution.

Perhaps the use of the term "coup" is more for effect.

I showed David Flint's article to some friends, former refugees from Chile, who fell about laughing. When their hysteria subsided, they got angry - a dilettante has the gall to re-write Chilean history in such a partisan and ignorant manner.

They told me that if there has been any economic change it had come very late and at huge human cost. Pinochet abolished civil liberties, dissolved parliament, abolished the socially-progressive economic reforms brought in by Allende, banned unions, and outlawed strikes and collective bargaining (shades of Howard's IR laws!). He did away with all political parties. Dissenters including clergymen just disappeared overnight. My friends were tearful when they reminded me that Pinochet's junta jailed, tortured, and executed thousands of Chileans including members of their own families. The junta maintained itself by repression through the army and secret police - and was backed by a self-interested ruling elite, huge foreign corporations and foreign financiers.

My friends were there in September 1980 when a constitution was approved in a phoney national plebiscite. It established that in 1988 Chile would have another plebiscite in which the voters would accept or reject a single candidate proposed by the Military Junta. Surprise! Pinochet was that sole candidate but, much to his suprise, 54.5% of voters denied him a second 8 year term. Only after that was there a gradual return to democracy.

Flint outlines allegations against the deposed President Allende but says this is "neither to justify Pinochet’s coup, nor the brutal methods he used". But he does not condemn Pinochet. Rather he cites the ultra-conservative Rettig Commission finding that at least 3,000 people were killed (or “disappeared”) between 1973 and 1990 and Flint concludes, "By Latin American standards, some say that this is restrained". Moreover, Castro was allegedly worse. Flint's argument then degenerates - the Chilean economy improved so the ends justify the means.

Flint believes that "Most commentators in the Western media seem to come down against Pinochet..." (Does he ever wonder why?), yet the only contemporary sources he cites are those who are pro-Pinochet. What's your point Flint?

Flint is wrong on a number of points here:

1) Coups or more generally, illegal regime change do no always bring economic chaos. The russian and german economies were pumping along in the 30s while the market economies languished in the depression. Less recently the french revolution restructured the economy in such a way that it took all of Europe 20 years and an industrial revolution to stem it.

2) Pinochet's human rights record was shocking. Sure there were worse dictators but that is no excuse. In the absence of Abu Graihb style photos we have been bombarded in the last week with pics of Pinochet in his darth vader style cape and supporters giving Nazi salutes over his open coffin.

3) To suggest that Chilean situations could happen here if we change the constitution is frankly preposterous. Laws including the constitution are a living entity that change from time to time as our values change. If they were set in stone we wouldn't need politicians.

Thank god our ancestors had more wisdom when the magna carta was introduced in the 13th century.

4) Whether coups and revolutions are likely to succeed in a country has much more to do with national character than a chance occurrence of a political crisis. Our national ethos is build around the individual stoically fighting on against the odds at Gallipoli or the pioneer clearing his field. Contrast this against France and the US nations born in revolution and whose citizens take to the streets very quickly. In the Philippines where people tasted "People Power" a generation ago we have seen this tactic employed several times since.

Democracy and market economies are a fragile combination but once they are well established they gain a degree of robustness.

I can't think of any situation in which the ADF would remove the government.

SMALL COUP IN CHILE. NOT MANY DEAD

In the 1920s Claud Cockburn won an unofficial contest among the sub-editors on The Times for the most boring headline they could get published. He won with "Small earthquake in Chile. Not many dead" It seems David Flint wants to rewrite this as "Small coup in Chile. Not many dead".

3,000 (or more) dead, civil rights trampled, secret police, a reign of terror, but as far as Prof. Flint is concerned, its all about the constitution. What absolute tosh, Pinochet and his droogs would have marched right through any constitution. As we've just seen in Fiji "constitutional crisis" is often simply code for "the government's getting in the way of my coup".

Flint downplays the horrors of Pinochet's regime and exaggerates what might have happened instead. According to James Whelan Pinochet "averted civil war and saved millions from the destruction of socialism". Ah now I see, the noble Pinochet brought down a democratically elected government and ruthlessly crushed oppostion to save Chile from the horrors of socialism. George Orwell would be proud.

Which brings us to the tawdry denoument of Prof. Flint's article. The Australian system "should be honoured and treasured" and preserved from harm because it protects us from ruthless despots like Pinochet. Yes, THE QUEEN, God bless her, is our champion against the forces of evil.

So let me get this strait...

Mass-murder is alright, so long as it's done by a right-wing dictator and the victims are all "Lefties".

..and..

Such oppression is fine so long as the corporations and the market are doing well (Hmmmm...I know of a sniveling little bastard in Canberra who would agree with that one).

Simplistic of me to say these things, I know. But basically, that's what David Flint and James Whelan (who he quotes) are implying.

I certainly hope not everyone on the Right has the same under-lying, deranged feelings. Especially when it comes to mass-murder. That would make them almost as bad as *gasp* THE SOVIETS!

I am wondering what is driving Flint re Pinochet - Andrew Bolt has followed a similar but even more intense line on the same topic -

wouldnt surprise me if Anne Coulter does a similar thing in her report next week - although in her case if it happens overseas it is as if it never really happens - unless there are US troops on the ground.

I get the sense that for whatever reason the more conservative side of politics are committed to pre emptive intellectual strikes all the time as Flinty and Bolters actions imply -

So the point is, that coups sometimes are better....well, DUH. Would Flint be against this happening in Australia right now if the result would be beneficial for Australia, and him and his family would be murdered, tortured or exiled? No.

Flint's articles are carefully designed to focus on a narrow aspect of a topic and diminish the flaws in his argument or counterargument. Someone could write a piece about Adolph Hitler's positive impact in revolutionising Germany and thumb their nose at the Holocaust, in the same way. Or Saddam Hussein's extremely organised control of Iraq. Neither makes their crimes any less heinous.

Mr Man"Mass-murder is alright, so long as it's done by a right-wing dictator and the victims are all "Lefties".

..and..

Such oppression is fine so long as the corporations and the market are doing well (Hmmmm...I know of a sniveling little bastard in Canberra who would agree with that one)."

That about sums it up :D At least Flint's argumentative devices and construction of his articles are obvious to some readers. He is pathetic I'm willing to bet he considers his revisionist articles to have historical merit.

What a squalid revision and he has the nerve to point the finger of bias against the ABC. 3,000 dead and that is restrained? I'd like to know what Professor Flint considers unrestrained.

There are plenty of other tyrants he can apologise for. Perhaps he will grace us with an article on Robert Mugabe? Zimbabwe is, after all, part of the Commonwealth so I'm sure he can spin a line on the Monarchy.

I wonder if David Flint's "rewrite" of Pinochet's institutional savagery in Chile reflects the views of his beloved Queen. It certainly reflects those of Margaret Thatcher, who described Pinochet as a couragious warrior against Leftism. Enough said?

I really don’t care wether I am being imprisoned or killed for my opinion in Moscow, Santiago under Pinochet or Cuba under Castro. And I utterly reject the fools who continue to believe that Castro is somehow better and good. My views would certainly have brought me prison or bullets under any of these regimes.

Fact, however, remains that Allende fundamentally respected democratic rule. There is nothing to indicate that he was on a path of ultimately rejecting Chiles old and in this respect well functioned constitutional democratic institutions and violently coerce his political opponents. Yhe only reason why the right went to the guns and not to the polls was that they feared that Allende would win the next election too. And this, Flint argues, is ground enough to support Pinochet??

Now respect for the democratically elected government is in my view paramount (even if I find its policy utterly unacceptable or indecent and lacking in integrity as in case of the ‘children overboard’ affair) as long as this government respects people’s right to be in opposition and right to vote them out of power at the next election.

Flint disguise his argument slightly behind some rather doubtful constitutional arguments. Yet it remains rather obvious that he disagrees with the fundamental principle of democracy, insisting on old extremists arguments used many times by the far right as well as by the far left, that there is a right to do away with democracy if the wrong people are in power.

This is rather thought provoking. It appears that Flint's monarchist views have led down the track of powerful antidemocratic tendencies and sympathies.

This article is worth reading. It parallels the issues which Chile faced and contexts a crisis in Australian politics.

Certainly one of the strategic reasons for supporting Pinochet was to keep Castro off the SA mainland. When nations face a common enemy, the expediency results in some strange bedfellows.

Certainly comments which compare Chilean coups to democratically elected British and Australian Governments (Liam, Iluvatar) display a naivety and lust for hyperbole which beggars belief. Grow up you sound like a pair of hysterical school girls reading the latest copy of “Dolly”

It seems to pass our biasd freind Col's attention that it was the extremist author of the article that was the first to make this silly comparison

It is extremist black-or-white fallacy thinkers like Flint that has brought mad and catastropical policies on the US such as bay of pigs, Vietnam, the overthrough of democratically elected governments in Chile and elsewhere and more lately the invasion of Iraq and the re-introduction of US torture and human rights abuses. Reality is that it is the policy of loosers and it has never done anything but damage the struggle for democracy.