Free Republic

Chile is now essentially a first-world country. Say what you like about General Augusto Pinochet bringing in the “Chicago Boys,” a group of free-market economists. Good or bad, the general left Chile with a major world-class economy. And Chile ranks as an extraordinarily free nation, ranking freer than the USA. So one would think that Chile would take a standard western line on core issues, for example, the present war in Gaza, but you would be wrong. Chile has a bizarre profile when it comes to the Mideast. Starting in the late 19th century, Christians in the Holy Land started...

AP style will continue to lowercase the term white in racial, ethnic and cultural senses. This decision follows our move last month to capitalize Black in such uses. We consulted with a wide group of people internally and externally around the globe and considered a variety of commentary in making these decisions. There was clear desire and reason to capitalize Black. Most notably, people who are Black have strong historical and cultural commonalities, even if they are from different parts of the world and even if they now live in different parts of the world. That includes the shared experience...

Leftist Congressman Gabriel Boric, 35, will become the youngest president in Chile’s history after winning a comfortable victory in the South American nation’s most polarized election since its return to democracy more than 30 years ago. With virtually all of the vote counted, the millennial progressive who burst into prominence a decade ago as a shaggy-haired student protest leader had garnered almost 56% of the ballots. That compared with about 44% for his opponent, José Antonio Kast, 55, a far-right career politician and admirer of Chile’s former military dictatorship. *** the results represented the latest triumph for the left in...

On September 11, 1973 the Chilean military led by General Augusto Pinochet slapped Fidel Castro and his Soviet mentors so smartly that his Stalinist regime (and its dutiful U.S. media minions) are still sniveling and sniffling and wiping away tears of shock, pain and humiliation. True to form, The New York Times and CNN rank among the lead snifflers. A few years ago the former published an article decrying the Chilean “tragedy” (i.e. Chile saving itself from Castroism with a military coup and shortly becoming among the richest nations in Latin America.) The latter ran an article just prior to...

ATLANTA (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday sided with Georgia in ending its eight-year battle with Florida over water that runs through Atlanta’s thirsty metro region and downstream past cotton and peanut fields to Apalachicola Bay and its depleted oyster fisheries. ...In a unanimous 9-0 decision, the court ruled that Florida did not prove that its proposed water diversion caps on Georgia were warranted, given the balance between the needs of Georgia’s population and agricultural needs versus the needs of Florida. Nor did the court accept that water depletion was the cause of the Florida’s declining oyster beds....

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) suggested Thursday that the Ethics Committee should launch an investigation into allegations that Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) engaged in sexual relations with an underaged girl, a case currently under investigation by the Justice Department. Pelosi emphasized that if the allegations prove to be true, Gaetz would be subject to criminal penalties falling outside the jurisdiction of Congress to punish its own members, including efforts to strip transgressive lawmakers of committee assignments. But citing the importance of maintaining "the integrity of the Congress," Pelosi indicated that the Ethics panel could examine the allegations while the Department of...

Spain will keep a registry of individuals who refuse to be vaccinated for COVID-19, the country’s health minister announced Monday. Salvador Illa said during an interview on Spain’s La Sexta TV that the registry will not be made public and vaccinations will be voluntary. “What will be done is a register, which will be shared with our European partners … of those people who have been offered it and have simply rejected it,” Mr. Illa said, the BBC reported. Mr. Illa stressed that people who decide not to get vaccinated are making a “mistake” but are still within their rights....

Portland’s descent into blue-haired, gender-confused madness is something new in America. The city’s criminal justice system tolerates vandalism and assaults by communist thugs, while punishing normal Americans who dare to protect themselves. Street commie antics in Washington, D.C. last weekend suggest this political rot is spreading. If we give anti-American Portlandesque district attorneys a bit more time, the scoundrels may turn a blind eye to more violent crimes as well. The arsonists are practicing. Chile provides an example of how this could go. In the early 1970s, under the Marxist president Salvador Allende, Chile’s criminal justice system began ignoring crimes...

Emails from a former business associate of Hunter Biden's inner-circle who's serving time in prison for a 2016 investment scheme reveal that Hunter and his colleagues used their access to the Obama administration to peddle influence to potential Chinese clients and investors - including securing a private, off-the-books meeting with the former Vice President.Devon Archer (left) with Joe and Hunter Biden The emails, given to investigative journalist Peter Schweizer by former Biden associate Bevan Cooney and published by Breitbart also reveal that in 2011, the younger Biden and his business associates discussed strengthening relations with "China Inc." as part...

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has come under fire for his inability to stop praising authoritarian communist regimes. "When dictatorships, whether it is the Chinese or the Cubans, do something good, you acknowledge that," Sanders said during the Democratic debate in South Carolina on Tuesday. The socialist septuagenarian has been particularly enamored of late with the "massive literacy program" implemented in Cuba under Fidel Castro, citing them as evidence that it's "unfair to simply say everything [in Cuba] is bad." Regrettably, the candidate's narrow focus on the educational achievements of his fellow communists is...

That Castroite Cubans not only influence the relevant power centers in socialist-destroyed Venezuela (i.e. military & secret police,) but staff and control these power centers, must be old- hat to Townhall readers by now.It’s been the catastrophic state of affairs for years by now: “Venezuela today is a country that is practically occupied by the henchmen of two international criminals, Cuba's Castro brothers,” declared Luis Miquilena who served as Hugo Chavez’s Minister of Justice for three years before finally resigning in disgust. “They (the Cubans) have introduced in Venezuela a true army of occupation. The Cubans run the maritime ports,...

Its become a common Anti American trope to blame the United States for PinochetÂ’s atrocities. Despite the fact that there was never any American Involvement in the 1973 coup which installed Pinochet, a criticism of US Foreign Policy has been of its support of Dictators and one of those commonly named is Pinochet. However the notion that the United States supported Augusto Pinochet is also a false one. From the Years of Upheaval By Henry Kissinger; "It soon emerged that there were major obstacles to assisting the new Chilean authorities. To be sure, loans from private banks increased sharply as...

Ironically I was having a discussion this morning about Franco, Pinochet and Diem with two of my employees as to whether or not it was right to support them and other dictators simply for being anti-communist. After watching this movie, we all agreed it was for the best.

<p>February 20, 2004 -- Remember "Missing," the 1982 movie by left-wing director Costa-Gavras, which starred Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek? The hit film accused the U.S. government of complicity in the disappearance and murder of a young New Yorker in the days following the 1973 military coup that toppled Chile's Marxist president, Salvador Allende, from power.</p>

The “Art school, President General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte” is set to open on the southern island of Chiloe.

Songs by the Spanish crooner Julio Iglesias were used "to inflict psychological and physical damage" on prisoners detained during the military dictatorship of Chile's Augusto Pinochet. Dr Katia Chornik, a researcher at Manchester University, has looked into how the military dictator employed songs by Spain's most internationally celebrated singer as part of a "torture soundtrack". Other songs by former Beatle George Harrison, Italian pop artist Gigi l'Amoroso and the soundtrack to Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange were played over and over again at high volume in the countless torture houses and concentration camps of Chile's dictatorship years. "Pinochet's system used...

Chilean film “No” recently vaulted into international consciousness after winning the Art Cinema Award at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, for its depiction of a plebiscite in 1988, in which General Augusto Pinochet peacefully relinquished his power after 7 years and 6 months as President. The film generated a wave of international coverage, and brought the spotlight back to the administration of Pinochet, who passed away in 2006. Much of the focus of attention has placed more emphasis on his administration than the film itself. In 1976, the KGB approved “Operation TOUCAN,” as a propaganda initiative to capitalize on Pinochet’s...

An Argentine priest kidnapped and tortured during the South American country’s “dirty war” said Friday that he has since reconciled with Pope Francis. Jesuit Fr. Francisco Jalics was kidnapped in 1976 along with a fellow priest by the military junta who ran the government as a dictatorship from 1976-1983, Argentina’s “dirty war.” The Associated Press reported Friday that the priest, through a statement on the German Jesuits’ website, said he and Francis met “years later,” believed to be in 2000, to discuss the events. “Following that, we celebrated Mass publicly together and hugged solemnly. I am reconciled to the events...

History: President Salvador Allende of Chile really did commit suicide in 1973, an inquest concluded on Tuesday. Now will the Left stop saying the U.S. and Chile's army did him in? Except perhaps for Che Guevara, no one has quite been the heroic totem to the global left than the late Marxist president of Chile, whose death in 1973 made him a martyr to socialism. Allende seemingly legitimized socialism as a democratically elected leader, the first Marxist who in 1970 didn't shoot his way to power.That gave the left hope for more. Elected with just 36% of the vote in...

Economy: President Obama had nothing but praise for Chile's democracy and economic miracle, declaring it a model "for the region and world." So why is he obstructing the same reforms in the U.S. that gave Chile its success? Arriving Monday in Santiago on the second leg of his Latin American tour, the president told El Mercurio he picked Chile as one of his three stops because: "The Chilean experience, and more particularly its successful democratic transition and sustained economic growth, is a model for the region and the world. ... It is also a powerful example of how the opportunities...