For the last 10 weeks the capitalist media has been whipped into a frenzy by the story of 33 trapped miners in the San Jose Copiapó copper and gold mine in Chile. Though the event has been widely covered, it has not been much reported on, but rather, it has been turned into a narrative that leaves an increasingly unoriginal Hollywood salivating with eyeball dollar signs. The television reporting, as the miners were being rescued, was nothing less than abysmal.
The huge earthquake that struck Chile back in February has revealed all the negative consequences of decades of deregulation and privatisation, as the people come to the terms with shoddy building methods and lack of services to deal with such a catastrophe. Privatisation literally kills!
The death of Pinochet sparked off celebrations in Chile and around the
world. He was a hated figure, a living example of the real nature of
capitalism. He died without being brought to justice. But his was merely the
fate of one man. The task is to make sure that the system that created Pinochet
is buried once and for all. That task lies ahead of us.
There is another 9/11 to remember today, the Pinochet coup that
overthrew the Allende government in Chile. In 1979 Alan Woods posed the question of who was
behind Pinochet's coup. What interests was he defending? What were the policies
of the Allende government and why despite all warnings was he unable to
prevent the coup? Alan Woods had previously written an article in September 1971, two years before Pinochet's
military coup, in which he warned against the threat of a military coup if the
Popular Unity government failed to mobilise the masses and carry out a genuine
socialist programme. Page 1 of 2
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