September 11

[Zoot]

Well, it's September 11. Well, it's September 12 where I am, but it's September 11 in a country that was brutalised by violence on this date in history. Yes, that's right, I'm talking about the US-backed coup in Chile that ousted the democratically elected Marxist government of Salvador Allende, resulting in thousands upon thousands of deaths of US-backed Pinochet's political opponents, and other people too.

30 years ago to the day. It was one of the greatest blows to democracy the world has ever known.

For a compilation of information from the Associated Press, ABC News, Washington Post, and BBC News, citing declassified CIA documents now available to the public, click here: http://www.socialconscience.com/articles/2002/chile.htm

 

[yen]

Pretty interesting read, gonna research that one a bit more.

 

[Zoot]

Please do so. If you find anything really interesting, please let me know. I haven't looked all that much into it, myself. Had the opportunity yesterday to hear someone speak about it, but was stuck with work commitments and didn't get to go.

 

[Dyrwen]

I think I first heard about that with Bowling for Columbine. Pretty interesting stuff.. didn't ever get into it much in US History class. But that's when I first realized what happened, reading ahead.

 

[Wolseley]

I guess this means that those 2000+ Americans in the Towers deserved to die, huh?

Serves them right.

 

[yen]

I don't think this was meant in that manner, that Americans deserved to die. Nobody deserves such a fate such as those. It is simply bringing attention to events many are unfamiliar with, to help show others that Sept 11th isn't only a grieving day for the US, but for others as well.

 

[burrow_owl]

"I guess this means that those 2000+ Americans in the Towers deserved to die, huh?"

a more conservative reading of the original post is that America's constant self-glorification is really self-serving and disingenuous. Of course those people didn't deserve to die, but it's just wrong for America to try to take the moral high road, as if we've never done anything bad to anyone. We can't just sit back and say "poor us." This crazy time should serve as a period of reflection upon our engagement with the world - both bad and good.

We hear nothing but empty plattitudes about america the great america the free america the just blahblahblah, and it's just wrong that people don't know about, say, the School of the Americas. America is a great country, but if you don't love her with warts and all, it's a useless love.

 

[Wolseley]

Still a bit tacky to bring it up on the memorial of those Americans who died those deaths on that day, though....

Don't you think?

 

[Zoot]

I guess this means that those 2000+ Americans in the Towers deserved to die, huh?

*blink*

Eh?!

 

[datan]

Still a bit tacky to bring it up on the memorial of those Americans who died those deaths on that day, though....

Don't you think?

what do you mean? The event he is referring to occured on the same date...so why not?

 

[Zoot]

You're right, Wolseley. It was tacky. America owns the date "September 11" now, and other atrocities occurring on the same date will no longer be mentioned, or they will be sued for copyright infringement. I'll be sure to tell any Chileans I meet that they're not allowed to talk about any deaths of family members today.

If next September 11, 6000 Chinese die in a terrorist attack, will it suddenly become tacky to remember the World Trade Centre?

 

[Philosoft]

Still a bit tacky to bring it up on the memorial of those Americans who died those deaths on that day, though....

Don't you think?

Absolutely. We should immediately forget that anything else ever happened on any other 11 Sept.

11 Sept. used to be my cat's birthday. Not anymore.

 

[Zoot]

In my defence, written by me on September 14, 2001:

I've been given a telling off a couple of times in the last few days for feeling bad about thousands of Americans being killed, since "Americans do this kind of thing to other people." What the <expletive>.

a) not every person born or living in America is responsible for the actions of the nation.

b) that this tragedy has been televised more than other tragedies in the past does not strip it of its tragedy status.

c) that the American military has been shoving its <expletive> around all over the world for ages does not make the lives of American citizens any less sacred.

d) America's president being a bit of a joke in most circles doesn't mean that all American people are a joke, or that their lives aren't worth considering sacred. Hell, George W. Bush's life is also sacred, as far as I'm concerned. He's a human being.

.



This whole thing, for people not immediately affected by it, is quickly becoming more an excuse for various political views and rantings than an actual event that killed actual people. The smugness of many people who aren't from America, secretly or openly pleased to see an arrogant nation get its comeuppance, makes the whole thing seem more and more like a movie that everyone's seen, and everyone has some l33t opinion of.

Yes, we're concerned that America will indiscriminately lash out with its military. Yes, we're concerned that xenophobia and paranoia in Armed American Civilians will skyrocket. <Expletive>, we're concerned about a whole lot of things. The illusion of security has been shattered to a greater or lesser extent for just about everyone in first world countries. But this "I'm too cool to feel bad for America without pointing out the sins of the past" thing is getting beyond a joke.

It was not America that was attacked, they are not Americans who are dead, they are not friends and family of American who have been killed, they are human beings. No less or more human than any other human being on the planet. That we are more aware of their deaths than the deaths of people in war-torn countries in the past, killed by Americans or by anyone else, is only evidence that we ourselves were not as aware as we should have been of the horrible things that are happening in the world.

 

[datan]

You're right, Wolseley. It was tacky. America owns the date "September 11" now, and other atrocities occurring on the same date will no longer be mentioned, or they will be sued for copyright infringement. I'll be sure to tell any Chileans I meet that they're not allowed to talk about any deaths of family members today.

if they can copyright "Let's roll" I don't see why they can't copyright "September 11"

http://crime.about.com/library/blfiles/blawsuit-letsroll.htm

 

[Wolseley]

Well, I thought it might be sort of nice to maybe display some consideration for the people who lost loved ones here on September 11, 2001---not to mention those who lost their lives; perhaps show some respect and observe the solemnity this date has in America.

I apologize for being wrong.

 

[Zoot]

It's somehow stopped being about the bloody coup in '73.

Can we please to back to it being that? Even if no one has anything to say about it.

 

[DoomMoose]

America can never be wrong so lets try to erase the bad things from their
memory. America has done some bad things in the past but some try to forget.

 

[Zoot]

I apologize for being wrong.

Do you?

There are other threads respecting those who died in the 9/11/01 crime. 9/11/73 has become known as "The Other September 11", which makes it sound secondary in some way to the more recent crimes. Crimes (rather than natural disasters) causing the deaths of so many people at once occur very infrequently, thank God, but none of them should be forgotten or disregarded, especially for a reason as silly as them being on the same date as another one.

It is unlikely that anyone who died in the '01 crimes was involved in the backing of the '73 coup. It was not my intention to imply that the government of America's crimes in '73 in any way detracted from the crimes against the people of America in '01. Both are equally tragic, though apparently you'd only like to have memorials for one of the two.

If you have any thoughts about the coup in '73, or the state of affairs in Chile today, please contribute.

 

[yen]

Well, I thought it might be sort of nice to maybe display some consideration for the people who lost loved ones here on September 11, 2001---not to mention those who lost their lives; perhaps show some respect and observe the solemnity this date has in America.

So we shouldn't so any consideration at all of those that were lost in Chile? They shouldn't be mentioned once? That is pretty sad imo. They were humans with families, they deserve to be noticed and honored just as much.

 

[Zoot]

From Reuters: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N11292463.htm

SANTIAGO, Chile, Sept 11 (Reuters) - While the rest of the world remembers the attacks on New York and Washington on Thursday, Chileans mark their own Sept. 11, the 1973 military coup that three decades later still scars the national soul.


During the coup, socialist President Salvador Allende shot himself in the government palace and a military junta took power, ushering in the 17-year dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, whose so-called dirty war against leftists claimed some 3,000 lives.



Allende's Marxist-inspired land expropriations and Pinochet's ironfisted purges split Chile along extremist lines, and even though democracy was restored in 1990 Chileans have moved only recently to a middle ground.



The 30th anniversary has become hugely significant, with a frenzy of soul searching art exhibits, television documentaries and memorial concerts as Chileans seek to understand what their country went through and prevent it from happening again.



"This September is charged with painful memories for most Chileans. This country is still not reconciled and we still have a limited democracy," Allende's widow Hortensia Bussi, 89, said on Wednesday at an official tribute to Allende in the government palace.



Almost half of Chileans have been born since the coup, but those who were adults vividly remember the fear and uncertainty of the 1970s.



"Looking back I don't know how we had the strength to deal with it. I was followed all the time by secret service cars searching for my niece," Laura Moya, 76, said at a candlelight vigil on Wednesday night outside the secret service house where her niece died under torture in 1974.