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>What's fun about this piece is that it puts into perspective how absurd, unworkable, and thoroughly ripped off of Star Trek the Chilean control room was, which
by DoctorNick 7y ago
>What's fun about this piece is that it puts into perspective how absurd, unworkable, and thoroughly ripped off of Star Trek the Chilean control room was, which is thoroughly entertaining.
Pretty presumptuous, considering how it was never really put into practice before Allende was murdered and Pinochet's brutal regime was installed by the CIA.
Reminds me of a quote:
“The boys of Capital, they also chortle in their martinis about the death of socialism. The word has been banned from polite conversation. And they hope that no one will notice that every socialist experiment of any significance in the twentieth century – without exception – has either been crushed, overthrown, or invaded, or corrupted, perverted, subverted, or destabilized, or otherwise had life made impossible for it, by the United States. Not one socialist government or movement – from the Russian Revolution to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, from Communist China to the FMLN in Salvador – not one was permitted to rise or fall solely on its own merits; not one was left secure enough to drop its guard against the all-powerful enemy abroad and freely and fully relax control at home.
It’s as if the Wright brothers’ first experiments with flying machines all failed because the automobile interests sabotaged each test flight. And then the good and god-fearing folk of the world looked upon this, took notice of the consequences, nodded their collective heads wisely, and intoned solemnly:
Man shall never fly.” – William Blum
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- yowlingcat 7y agoYou're of course correct about the brutal coup and how genuinely dark it is a splotch on history (one of many during the time, to be sure). I may have spoken a little clumsily there, but I think that's what makes this black humor. The sad truth is that neither regime really had a fighting chance against the CIA geopolitical regime.
- NaggingGranpa 7y agoYou give the CIA too much credit. Much of the armed forces and the civilian populace hated Allende and his policies. Pinochet was an opportunist who jumped on the bandwagon when it was already in motion. The CIA had it easy. In South Vietnam, under more adverse conditions, the CIA failed miserably.
- monocasa 7y agoNixon was extremely concerned about Chile, had constant updates from, and made it a high level goal of his presidency to overthrow Allende. The trashman strike was for sure CIA organized for instance. And it's a lot easier for your propaganda to take when your troops aren't committing massacres in the country like in Vietnam.
- NaggingGranpa 7y agoNixon also made Vietnamization a high level goal of his presidency. How did that work out? Propaganda? Latin America is based on caste. If your "revolution" is based on stealing from the Spanish-blooded landowners to feed Amerindian losers who breed like rabbits, you will get opposition. Not much propaganda needed. And when the landowners send their sons to the army officer corps, you will have opposition with actual teeth.
- DoctorNick 7y ago>Propaganda? Latin America is based on caste. If your "revolution" is based on stealing from the Spanish-blooded landowners to feed Amerindian losers who breed like rabbits, you will get opposition. Pretty clear what your views are.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- eirini1 7y ago> If your "revolution" is based on stealing from the Spanish-blooded landowners to feed Amerindian losers who breed like rabbits, you will get opposition. this is some real mask-off shit.
- monocasa 7y agoFor real. Keep this kind of stuff in mind when watching what's going on in Chile and Bolivia today. Or anytime someone from Miami says that every Cuban they know hates Castro (or now Diez-Canel) and we should help get rid of him.
- brokenkebab 7y agoThe quote conveniently omits the fact that socialist regimes, and movements never were like a hippie commune trying to just "rise on its own merits". They were at least as much as aggressive trying to subvert their capitalist adversaries. And in this war (both overt, and covert) socialist side often had advantages stemming from centralization, mobilization, and relative closeness of its leader states, i.e. one couldn't protest Soviet foreign military operations the way it was possible in the US, UK, or Germany, or France, and spying/sabotaging was harder to do in USSR, then in any opposing country. In the end, ability to innovate, and provide people with food, and comforts decided the outcome. And it tells us something.
- stebann 7y agoAllende's Chile wasn't USSR. It was a democratic government. And USA HELPED too kill that democracy that was the promise of Latin America...
- brokenkebab 7y ago>Allende's Chile wasn't USSR I didn't state it was. My answer is for popular conspiracy theory about CIA as the main reason for socialism's failures. Nevertheless, "promise of Latin American" is a little bit too rosy description for the gov't which ended with hyperinflation through printing money.
- DoctorNick 7y agoIt's not a conspiracy theory when it happened over forty times.
- jancsika 7y agoEaster egg inside that metaphor: One day some Spanish anarchists built a functioning helicopter. Upon seeing it fly, the Wright brothers immediately teamed up with the auto industry and shot up everyone in the testing facility. Then the Wright brothers intoned: Not invented here. That was found crossed out in one of William Blum's manuscripts with these words written in red ink: "too inside baseball."
- DoctorNick 7y agoOh William Blum, still pining for Catalonia...
- jancsika 7y agoI mention it on HN because it's a lot like that time the bearded guy and the clean shaven guy convinced their camps that their descriptions of the scientific method were different enough to warrant distinct sets of conferences. But at least in that case the result was only monumentally boring and not deadly.