Category: Third World

And Yet Again

Heroism, Marxists, Third World

As I’ve said in the past, here and here, Chile’s Augusto Pinochet was a conundrum.  Others, it seems, are even more positive than I am:

Almost nobody is more reviled by the international intelligentsia and media than the late Augusto Pinochet, the late 20th -century Chilean dictator. He holds a prominent position in the political left’s “rogues’ gallery” comprised of those who stood in opposition to their goals.
His supposed “crimes” included conducting a military coup to illegitimately grab control of the Chilean government from a popularly elected president, rounding up and torturing huge numbers of innocent citizens (killing as many as 80,000 in the process) and corruptly stealing vast sums of money while ruling as a dictator.
But many of those claims are either false or exaggerated — most credible estimates of those killed are below 5,000 — or they must be viewed in context. More important, if we raise the examination of Pinochet from the bitter soil of leftist ressentiment to the question of human flourishing, he appears as one of recent history’s shining lights.

Read the whole thing — and my earlier posts on the topic too, if you haven’t seen them before.

I will never forget two things about my visit to Chile:  the sight of old women placing flowers on the sidewalk outside Pinochet’s modest private home (now a museum) in Valparaiso, and at a formal dinner one night, one of the toasts was:  “To General Augusto Pinochet, savior of Chile.”

It was delivered without irony, well received and supported by all the guests, and even more telling, it was said in English — no doubt for our benefit, and to make a point.

Interesting stuff.

As Usual

Elections, Marxists, Third World

Following on from yesterday’s news about Chile voting to “change” their constitution — really, overturning the one passed into law by Augusto Pinochet and putting in a new, “progressive” (Marxist) one — the Left in Chile did the usual:

Violence, looting, and disorder erupted in Chile on Sunday evening after an overwhelming majority of people voted in favor of destroying the country’s constitution, replacing it with a new document more favorable to the nation’s left wing.
…
On the night of the elections, local media reported that police arrested at least 19 people for looting a pharmacy and a supermarket. In the commune of Melipilla outside Santiago, rioters attacked a police station, injuring eight officers, while also installing barricades on a carriageway to prevent the movement of traffic.

No doubt, this was all part of the “wild celebrations” that followed the vote result.

So just to be clear:  if the Left loses, they riot and loot;  and if they win, they riot and loot.

Something we can probably expect in the U.S. when Trump cleans their clock next week.  See the next post for details.

I think I’ll head off to the range as soon as it opens in a couple hours.  Handgun practice this time?  I think so.

Goodbye Chile, Hello Venezuela

Elections, Marxists, Third World

And another one bites the dust:

Wild celebrations have been seen across Chile after the country voted to rid itself of its dictatorship-era constitution left behind by Augusto Pinochet’s regime.
Chileans voted overwhelmingly in a landmark referendum on Sunday to replace the constitution, long seen as underpinning the nation’s glaring economic and social inequalities.
Thousands of people flocked onto the streets of Santiago amid a cacophony of horn-blaring to celebrate a crushing victory for the ‘Approve’ campaign – by 78.28 percent to 21.72 percent, with over 99 percent of the votes counted.

And its replacement?

People hope a new constitution would expand the role of the state in providing a welfare safety net, ensuring basic rights to health, education, water distribution and pensions.

Ah yes, an expanded state… [sigh]

And why not?  After all, they voted for it, despite the dismal track record of an “expanded state” failing everywhere it’s been implemented.

My post title says it all.

Segregation

Third World

I see that some Black people want to start an all-Black community somewhere:

“We are dealing with systemic racism,” Scott wrote in an op-ed for Blavity last month. “We are dealing with deep-rooted issues that will require more than protesting in the streets. It’s now time for us to get our friends and family together and build for ourselves,” Walters, who serves as the president of the organization, said in an interview with Yahoo News. “That’s the only way we’ll be safe. And that’s the only way that this will work. We have to start bringing each other together. We really just want you to come and hang out and feel safe,” Walters said. “You don’t have to worry about the Karens of the world and anything like that. You just come in and have fun. We’ll have a sportsman area, like a Black sportsman area with fishing, hunting, shooting range, ATV trails. We really just want to build a tight-knit community for our people to just come and breathe.”
…
Scott said in the report that black Americans need to own land and create their own social, political, and economic institutions.
“Amass land, develop affordable housing for yourself, build your own food systems, build manufacturing and supply chains, build your own home school communities, build your own banks and credit unions, build your own cities, build your own police departments, tax yourselves and vote in a mayor and a city council you can trust,” Scott wrote. “Build it from scratch. Then go get all the money the United States of America has available for government entities and get them bonds. This is how we build our new Black Wall Streets. We can do this. We can have Wakanda! We just have to build it for ourselves!”

Let’s hope this is the start of a trend.

I know, this may sound strange coming from a lifelong and bitter opponent of apartheid.  The fundamental difference between apartheid and this idea, however, is that apartheid was forced upon people by government policy.  This, however, is a bunch of people who want to band together — a natural right of free individuals, as enumerated in the First Amendment.

And I want it to work — I really do.

However, not only have I seen this fail elsewhere in the world, but we have ample evidence right here in the U.S. to suggest that even with all these good intentions, it’s likely to fail here too.  But hey:  if it worked for the Mormons in Utah, who’s to say that it wouldn’t work in Georgia — if the right people get to congregate according to this plan.

Good for them, say I.  Just as long as they don’t expect too much help from government — because that, you see, would be un-Constitutional.

Caste-ism

Immigration, Third World

It is, as they say, to LOL at this development:

In the weeks since the lawsuit was announced, more than 250 Dalits from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Netflix, and dozens of others in Silicon Valley have come forward to report discrimination, bullying, ostracization, and even sexual harassment by colleagues who are higher-caste Indians, according to data provided exclusively to VICE News by Dalit advocacy group Equality Labs.
There have been 33 complaints from Dalit employees at Facebook, 20 complaints at Google, 18 at Microsoft, 24 more at Cisco, and 14 at Amazon. There were also complaints recorded from employees at Twitter, Dell, Netflix, Apple, Uber, and Lyft — as well dozens more complaints from a range of smaller Silicon Valley companies and some companies outside the technology sector.
…
“Caste discrimination is in every U.S. company where Indians are working,” said [Indian migrant] Maya.

When I was in India fifteen years ago, I was astonished at the degree of social discrimination — which is not the same as tribalism, although it can be.

I’m no stranger to this nonsense because South Africa, where the Whites and Blacks hate each other, both hate the Indians and mixed races.  Within the White community, the English-speakers hate the Afrikaners and vice versa, but both despise the Portuguese, Italians, Chinese, Central Europeans, Lebanese and other Arabs (yes, there are quite a few of those).  Within the Black community, the hate is limitless:  Zulus hate the Sothos, the Xhosa hate the Venda, the Bapedi hate the Zulus, and so on and so on ad infinitum.  And everyone — everyone — hates the Jews.  Just one big unhappy family, the Seffricans are.

It’s the same in the Middle East, caste-wise:  at the top are the Persians, then in order come the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Lebanese, and the Jordanians.  At the very bottom of the pile are the Palestinians, who are universally despised.  (I think I’ve got that right:  it was explained to me by a Persian — not Iranian, as he stressed to me — whose family had fled Iran not because they were Sunnis, but because they were… Catholic.  Talk about an inconvenient religion.)

Now let’s talk about the Balkans… nah, let’s not.  This shit gives me a headache.

As long as there are people who are even the slightest bit different from others within the same milieu, there’s elitism and discrimination.  ‘Twas ever thus, and I’m just glad to see that the Indians have imported their little flavor of discrimination to the U.S. — as if we don’t have enough of our own local varieties already.