Exhuming an ugly history:

As Chile and other countries wrestle with whether it's better to exhume their dark pasts or to leave them buried and try to move on, the current, elected government of President Michelle Bachelet, who herself was detained and tortured by the Pinochet regime, has moved to make that black period in Chile's history part of the country's national heritage.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/...

In EcoNoticiario #7 we have (Spain) feuding between irrigators and "hippies" over water, (Mexico) a report of a possible new eruption of the Chaitén volcano in Chilean Patagonia, (Costa Rica) conflict between bicyclists and drivers in San José, (Guatemala) heavy rainfall leads to landslides and loss of life, (Colombia) the Colombian authorities launch a campaign to pick up plastic-bag litter, and (Chile) the Chilean government decides to extend it's restrictions on electricity use for a couple more months.

Today's Spanish Words:

ice core--testigo de hielo

ice cap--casquete de hielo

ice sheet--casquete glaciar

ice shelf--banco de hielo

polar ice cap--casquete polar

iceberg--iceberg

The current edition of Econoticiario brings you stories from Spain (the end of the Catalan drought?), Mexico (a slideshow of a glacier crumbling in Patagonia), Costa Rica (results of a new study on the migratory habits of leatherback turtles), Colombia (Costa Rica announces carbon offset program for air travelers), and Chile (tightening of rules in Santiago on who can drive on "pre-emergency" days)

Your Spanish words of the week:

tar sands--arenas alquitranadas

energía mareomotriz--wave power/energy

energía solar--solar power/energy

energía eólica--wind power/energy

energía geotérmica--geothermal power/energy

I have to confess, I am a jenny-come-lately to the Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. I am still reading the first half of the book.

I bought the book a several months ago, but haven't read it due to the fact that I got the general idea already and the fact that I knew it was gonna be depressing. Basically, I knew that the idea was that corporate forces use natural and man made disaster and create war and disaster in order to take over and privatize entire economies. The privatization is done at these times in order to subvert the will of the people.

Well the "general idea" actually doesn't do a service to the incredibly rich, nuanced and well researched experience that is this book.

EcoNoticiario # 5 covers a broad range of topics: health of forests and wetlands in Spain and Cuba, a whole range of environmental news from Colombia, the effects of drought, rising energy costs and volcanic eruptions in Chile, and the ongoing farmers' strike in Argentina.

[I have been writing about the Spanish water crisis in a separate series of diaries. For the latest news see my recent diary: Ten Things America Can Learn From Spain's Water Wars.]

Your environmental word of the week:

sequía-drought

[As always: All translations are mine.]

Perhaps I'm a bit paranoid. But I just got done reading Naomi Klein's shock doctrine book, and Senator Hillary, and Senator MCCain's gas tax proposals contain elements that are clearly laid out in Naomi's book.

According to Naomi, the ruling elite have trouble passing the economic 'reforms' that they want when democratic societies are humming along normally. Common themes include less government spending, elimination of trade barriers, privatization of state owned wealth, eliminating price controls, corporate and financial deregulation, and bath-tub blah blah blah. You know what I'm talking about.

Since these 'reforms' cannot easily be implemented with normal democratic processes, other methods are employed. Naomi documents in her book the evolution of the shock therapy that is employed just before the Reaganomics are shoved down the throat of unsuspecting countries.

If you read the Washington Post as religiously as I do, you probably have a pretty good grasp of the taxonomy of Latin American leaders.

April 7th is World Health Day, and today, we will be taking a look at some of the serious health problems around the world and what Barack Obama plans to do about global health.

UN aims for an AIDS-free Generation:

The United Nations is intensifying its worldwide efforts to help create a new generation of children who will be born free of HIV/AIDS, a disease that has particularly devastated parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

While the news is "mixed", achieving an "AIDS-free generation is possible", predicts a new U.N. report released Thursday.

In 2007, an estimated 290,000 children under age 15 died from AIDS, and 12.1 million children in sub-Saharan Africa lost one or both parents to the widespread disease.

"For millions of children, HIV and AIDS have starkly altered the experience of growing up," says the report.

The Washington Posthas a story out about a new book by a top diplomat from Chile, who was heavily involved in negotiations in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

He paints a picture of Bush Administration oifficials strong-arming countries to back the invasion and even threatening trade reprisals.

The rough-and-tumble diplomatic strategy has generated lasting "bitterness" and "deep mistrust" in Washington's relations with allies in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere, Heraldo Mu¿oz, Chile's ambassador to the United Nations, writes in his book "A Solitary War: A Diplomat's Chronicle of the Iraq War and Its Lessons," set for publication next month.

"In the aftermath of the invasion, allies loyal to the United States were rejected, mocked and even punished" for their refusal to back a U.N. resolution authorizing military action against Saddam Hussein's government, Mu¿oz writes.

For many years, South America has been a zone of negative peace, where it appeared that the military competition that had characterized the continent for much of this century had yielded to economic competition. It was living proof of the liberal belief that trade brings peace.  To quote A.O. Hirschmann, the interests (commerce) had tamed the passions (conflict), and one of the most potent political arguments for capitalism was given physical form. Even the backlash against neo-liberalism at the beginning of this decade looked to accept the central premise that the world was a positive sum place, but the political underpinnings had to be moved to allow for economic justice.

What the cultural phenomenon of "¿Por qué no te callas?" glosses over are some real issues that were attempting to be addressed at the 17th Ibero-American summit in Chile

Uncle Miltie Friedman wrote in 1982

Only a crisis⎯actual or perceived⎯produces real change.  When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.  That, I believe, is our basic function:  to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.

This is the statement that lies at the heart of what Naomi Klein calls "The Shock Doctrine" in her new, brilliant, courageous and genuinely frightening book on Milton Friedman and his Chicago Boys’ repackaging of feudalism.  Shape shifters, she calls them.  (I've been a fan of Klein's gift for wording things since I discovered her in 2004.)  From the atrocities in Chile that began on September 11, 1973 to Iraq to the Tsunami to Katrina, Friedmanomics has shape shifted, Klein says, into "disaster capitalism".  But whatever shape it takes it remains committed to the unholy "policy trinity" of "the elimination of the public sphere, total liberation for corporations and skeletal social spending."

GBCW

As in "Gonna Be in Chile on Wednesday."

The big day is arriving.  The house is packed, loaded and on a slow boat to Santiago.  Me, the hubby, da boyz and El Perro Grande get on the plane tomorrow.

Look out, Chile.  Here we come.

Imagine you're being tortured, held captive by your own government, brutalized by soldiers wearing the flag of your own country. In that hell, a priest arrives offering solace. There's just one catch: the priest is working with the bad guys..

A court in Argentina has convicted a former Roman Catholic police chaplain of collaborating in murders during the country's military rule.

Christian Von Wernich, 69, was convicted for involvement in seven murders, 42 abductions and 31 cases of torture during the 1976-83 "Dirty War".

As he was sentenced, Father Von Wernich showed no emotion. Protesters torched his effigy outside the court.

Von Wernich denied any guilt. The jury didn't buy the lies and the torture priest was sentenced to life. Watch the You tube video, the monster is defiant; the families of the victims, ecstatic.

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa won overwhelming backing for his plans to rewrite the country's constitution and expand state control of the Andean nation's economy.

Correa, an economist with a U.S. doctoral degree who calls himself a ``friend'' of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, has said ``the long night of neo-liberal policies is over,''

Currently in places like Venezuela, Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Nicaragua, about 300 million of the 365 million people in Latin America have adopted a leftist political direction after years of failed economic policies dictated by Washington.

This news was mentioned briefly as part of a news summary digest last Saturday.  But on Democracy Now this morning, Amy Goodman emphasized that this is the very first time that a former Head of State has been successfully extradited from one country to the country where charges where being filed against him.  There were instances where heads of state where extradited to the World Court, but this is different.  We can hope that is a precedent of which we will see more in the future - hopefully, not long after the criminals in the White House leave office.  

More below the fold..

Hundreds of real and suspected Allende supporters were gunned down in Santiago's soccer stadium, fashioned into a torture center and concentration camp.  Across the nation, in the streets and military detention centers, Pinochet's forces murdered 20,000 and tortured 60,000 in the first few months after 9/11/1973. One million Chileans were forced into exile. According to leading international relations analyst William I. Robinson, it was "the bloodiest coup in Latin-American history" (Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention, and Hegemony [Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1996], p. 46).

Remembering Chile's 9/11 by Paul Street

The terrorists hate our freedoms," the Chilean workers, peasants and students could have echoed George W. Bush's post 9/11/01 comments. They would be explaining, however, what lay behind the US and Chilean military plotters who helped make the coup possible, just as George W. Bush simplistically explained the 2001 attack from the mostly Saudi Arabian terrorists.

Chile: The Other, Almost Forgotten 9/11 by Saul Landau

[Cross-posted from Edgeing]

"The War on Democracy" is John Pilger's first major film for the cinema - in a career that has produced more than 55 television documentaries.

"The film tells a universal story," says Pilger, "analysing and revealing, through vivid testimony, the story of great power behind its venerable myths. It allows us to understand the true nature of the so-called war on terror".

The film is set in the Latin American states known as "America’s backyard" and it's about the relationships between these states and the USA.