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Pinochet, the Untold Story Humberto Fontova Thursday, Dec. 14, 2006 To read the mainstream media lately, you'd think Augusto Pinochet's villainous henchmen, while twirling their pointy black mustaches and snickering maliciously, overthrew a Chilean "president" (Salvador Allende) somewhere on the order of Jimmy Carter. Then they lined up 3000 harmless sociology professors and innocent leftist parliamentarians and shot them, for the sheer heck of it. The real story, as you might imagine, is a tad more complicated — despite the media/academia black legend regarding Chile. Upon Stalin's death in 1953, Chilean communists held a "homage to Stalin" in Santiago's Baquedano...

Allende: The Untold Story By Humberto Fontova FrontPageMagazine.com | December 14, 2006 To read the mainstream media lately you'd think Augusto Pinochet's villainous henchmen, while twirling their pointy black moustaches and snickering maliciously, overthrew a Chilean "President" (Salvador Allende) somewhere on the order of Jimmy Carter. Then they lined up 3000 harmless sociology professors and innocent leftist parliamentarians and shot them, for the sheer heck of it. The real story, as you might imagine, is a tad more complicated—despite the media/academia Black Legend regarding Chile. Upon Stalin's death in 1953, Chilean Communists held a "Homage to Stalin" in Santiago's Baquedano...

ANTIAGO, Chile - The grandson of Gen. Augusto Pinochet will soon leave Chile's army after causing an uproar with his eulogy that denounced judges who had tried the late dictator, his father said Wednesday. ADVERTISEMENT Capt. Augusto Pinochet Molina, 34, defended his grandfather's bloody 1973 coup at his funeral Tuesday and said judges who later sought to prosecute him were seeking "notoriety, not justice" — a comment that brought applause from mourners and censure from the president. The reaction demonstrated yet again the deep divisions in Chile over the former military dictatorship. President Michelle Bachelet — herself once imprisoned under...

AUGUSTO PINOCHET, who died Sunday at the age of 91, has been vilified for three decades in and outside of Chile, the South American country he ruled for 17 years. For some he was the epitome of an evil dictator. That was partly because he helped to overthrow, with U.S. support, an elected president considered saintly by the international left: socialist Salvador Allende, whose responsibility for creating the conditions for the 1973 coup is usually overlooked. Mr. Pinochet was brutal: More than 3,000 people were killed by his government and tens of thousands tortured, mostly in his first three years....

Persistent Persecution of Pinochet by James R. Whelan THE NEW AMERICAN April 10, 200 Under General Pinochet¡¯s leadership, an incipient Communist dictatorship in Chile was stopped cold. Rather than suffer excoriation at the hands of the media, this man should be honored as a hero. A longtime foreign correspondent in Latin America, James R. Whelan is the author of six published books, including a history of Chile acclaimed by the principal newspaper of that country as, "without question, the most complete history of our country published in this century," with the exception of the country¡¯s own two leading historians. The...

Pinochet tortured and murdered. His legacy is Latin America's most successful country. In the past 15 years, Chile's economy has grown at twice the regional average, and its poverty rate has been halved. It's leaving behind the developing world, where all of its neighbors remain mired. It also has a vibrant democracy... Like it or not, Mr. Pinochet had something to do with this success. To the dismay of every economic minister in Latin America, he introduced the free-market policies that produced the Chilean economic miracle -- and that not even Allende's socialist successors have dared reverse. He also accepted...

THE 'BEST' DICTATOR By JOHN O'SULLIVAN December 12, 2006 -- GEN. Augusto Pinochet, who died Sunday, was the most successful dictator of the 20th century - yet also one of the most vilified. Dictators are supposedly judged by two tests. How many people did they kill? And did they bring prosperity to their people? These two tests hang together because Marxists believed that their various ideological despotisms (in Cuba, China, the USSR) would eventually midwife a utopia - justifying their mass murders retrospectively. So how did individual dictators fare? Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Mao Zedong each murdered tens of...

Augusto Pinochet died on Sunday at the age of 91, more than 18 years after he agreed to a 1988 plebiscite that turned him out of power. The standard Pinochet narrative is to emphasize the loss of liberty during the 17 years he ruled the country as a military dictator. The real story is more complicated. Though General Pinochet became a devil symbol of the international left, he was a far more complex figure and cannot be understood apart from the global Cold War conflict of which he and his country were a part. Pinochet's legacy is a paradox--a long...

He's a regular on Mother Angelica's network Church officials here are under growing pressure to remove Fr. Raul Hasbun, a controversial TV figure, from Chile's Catholic University channel. Hasbun is a Santiago diocesan priest and a strong supporter of former dictator Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, under arrest in London following an extradition request by Spanish courts, Hasbun, 65, has a high profile in Chile. For many years he has delivered a "spiritual commentary" during the Catholic University channel's Friday evening news. He also conducts a regular feature on the Spanish-language edition of Mother Angelica's EWTN. His words have irritated many Chileans...

Gen. Augusto Pinochet -- hero of the Chilean people By Charles A. Morse web posted May 29, 2000 No one alive today is more loathed by the Communists and their fellow travelers and camp followers than Chilean General and former President Augusto Pinochet Ugarte. The reasons are two fold. Pinochet defeated the hated Communist terrorist militias, the internationally armed financed, and staffed "revolutionaries" on the battlefield and by doing so, ended their attempt to communize Chile in the name of "the people". Pinochet then "transformed" Chile into a peaceful democracy with one of the most prosperous economies in the region....

Archives > October 22, 1998 PINOCHET IS A HERO NEW YORK - Chile’s former strongman, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, is the Great Satan for leftists everywhere. This week, Pinochet, now a Chilean senator, was arrested in London, where he had gone for back surgery. Britain held the 82-year old retired general after a Spanish judge sought to have Pinochet extradited to Spain to face charges of ‘genocide, torture, and other crimes’ rising from the disappearance of Spanish marxists during Chile’s ‘dirty war’ of the 1970’s. Ironically, Cuba’s communist caudillo, Fidel Castro, whose firing squads have executed thousands, and whose prisons are...

Though Augusto Pinochet, with the armed forces behind him, could have held on to power in Chile, he made a deal to bring about a peaceful transition to civilian rule. In return for resigning as head of state, he would not be prosecuted for alleged crimes during and after the coup against Chilean President Salvador Allende and, in addition, he would have a Senate seat for life. This could not affect the charges brought against him by a Spanish judge in a British court, which led to a period of house arrest in England; but it now seems that the...

SANTIAGO DE CHILE - Gen. Augusto Pinochet took full responsibility for the first time Saturday for the actions of his 1973-90 dictatorship, which carried out thousands of political killings and is blamed for widespread torture and illegal imprisonment. At a celebration of his 91st birthday, Pinochet also defended the bloody military coup that toppled freely elected Marxist President Salvador Allende, in a statement read aloud by his wife as he sat by her side. "Today, near the end of my days, I want to say that I harbor no rancor against anybody, that I love my fatherland above all and...

To some he was a tyrant, to others a hero. In life and in death, Chileans remain divided over the former dictator As news of the death of Augusto Pinochet spread through Chile last night, scores of jubilant people blasted car horns and danced in the streets of the capital Santiago with relief at what they called the country's "liberation" from the last vestiges of the former dictator's control. But others wept outside the military hospital where he died aged 91, a week after a heart attack, singing in broken voices the national anthem and praises to their deceased general....

Chile’s former military strongman, Augusto Pinochet, has died in Providencia, Chile at age 91. Half of Chile is rioting in joy and the other half is rioting in rage. It seems about fitting, because not only did this guy do good and bad things through his life, these acts spanned extremes.

Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who terrorized his opponents for 17 years after taking power in a bloody coup, died Sunday, putting an end to a decade of intensifying efforts to bring him to trial for human rights abuses blamed on his regime. He was 91. Violent clashes broke out between police and Pinochet opponents who threw rocks at cars and set up fire barricades on the city's main avenue. Police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse the crowd. Authorities said there were a number of arrests, but no immediate reports of injuries. Supporters saw Pinochet as a Cold War...

<p>Having recovered from the worst of his own socialist deliriums, George Orwell wrote, after viewing the carnage of the Civil War in Spain: "At an early age, I became aware that newspapers report no event correctly. But in Spain, I read for the first time articles which bore no relation to the facts, not even the relation implicit in an ordinary lie." Of no nation since would that doleful observation apply more keenly than to the Chile of Salvador Allende and of Augusto Pinochet.</p>

Former Prime Minister Baroness Thatcher is "greatly saddened" by the death of Augusto Pinochet, said a spokesman. Chile's former military leader, who has died aged 91 in hospital, backed the UK during the Falklands conflict. Baroness Thatcher also pressed for his release after his arrest in London in 1998 over alleged human rights abuses. Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett used the death to pay tribute to Chile's "remarkable progress" since Gen Pinochet left office. Mrs Beckett said Chile had become "an open, stable and prosperous democracy" since 1990. A spokesman for Baroness Thatcher said the former PM would not be issuing...

Fighting serious illnesses in their old age, Cold War icons Fidel Castro of Cuba and Augusto Pinochet of Chile are united in stubborn adherence to their opposing and now largely unfashionable ideologies. In Havana 80-year-old Castro, leader of Cuba for more than four decades, handed power to his brother on July 31 after an operation and has not reappeared in public. Despite official denials, many Cubans believe he is terminally ill. Pinochet, 91, military leader of Chile from 1973 to 1990 and now pursued by courts for human rights and financial crimes, was recovering after a heart attack nearly killed...

Pinochet Is History But how will it remember him? An NRO Symposium Former Chilean dicator Augusto Pinochet died Sunday at age 91. National Review Online asked some experts how he ought to be remembered