Sour Grapes of Wrath

[Urbane Guerrilla]

First Chilean head of state, won his head-of-state spurs by victory in the Battle of Chacabuco (Feb. 12, 1817) against the royalists. Might have done better as "Interim Supreme Director of Chile" had he been able to get along better with the aristocracy and the Church, though admittedly these were tenaciously clinging to exactly what is wrong with Latin American economies generally: being colonized by a sprinkling of large property owners replicating the economy of medieval Spain rather than the American-style flood-tide of smallholders that constituted a middle class without hardly trying, a byproduct of each running his own small show.

O'Higgins got himself exiled for his pains, spending his last couple of decades in Peru, dying in 1842 in the month of October.

[Undertoad]

There is definitely a political bias to the media and not seeing it is perspective, but how hard is it to gain perspective? Really hard, you have to follow several different sources on a single story and see what differs.

But there are bigger biases in the media. The biggest bias of them all is for sensationalism. If it bleeds it leads.

Bias for soap opera value: is it something people will not only talk about, but continue to talk about? So they have to stay tuned/keep reading?

Bias for comprehension: they will report on things they understand, and not on things they don't.

Bias for story value: if on TV they are more likely to report something if they have video segments they can use. If on paper they are more likely to report something if they can send a reporter to do original reporting, which usually means getting original quotes.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

First Chilean head of state, won his head-of-state spurs by victory in the Battle of Chacabuco (Feb. 12, 1817) against the royalists. Might have done better as "Interim Supreme Director of Chile" had he been able to get along better with the aristocracy and the Church, though admittedly these were tenaciously clinging to exactly what is wrong with Latin American economies generally: being colonized by a sprinkling of large property owners replicating the economy of medieval Spain rather than the American-style flood-tide of smallholders that constituted a middle class without hardly trying, a byproduct of each running his own small show.

O'Higgins got himself exiled for his pains, spending his last couple of decades in Peru, dying in 1842 in the month of October.

Nice job of googling. O'higgins was exciled because he tried to bring democracy to Chile and the Church and big land owners were not pleased with his efforts.

I'd love to see some valid sources for your figures on both Allende and Pinochet. Your post is in and of itself proof that no one muzzles the press - either liberal or whacko.

PS At the time, I told you that it would take me a day or two to get back to you since I was in the middle of a 400 mile move. Mayflies have such short little spans of attention, don't they?

[Aliantha]

I've been wondering why, if the majority votes left wing, they're sheep, but if the majority votes right wing, they're smart (according to the right wingers of course).

[Pangloss62]

Jeez guys. Don't get your panties in a bunch. My point was to show that some Right Wing pundits want to spin this mid-term sea change like it was all about people being duped by biased media.

It has always seemed to me that if the media simply reports the "news," the facts of what occurs on the ground, the deaths, the violence, the civillian casualties, that they are accused of being "biased" or "negative." WTF?

I agree that many media outlets do the "if it bleeds it leads" routine, but there are so many objective outlets to get a more objective view: BBC, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, etc.

Whatev.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Pangloss62

Jeez guys. Don't get your panties in a bunch. My point was to show that some Right Wing pundits want to spin this mid-term sea change like it was all about people being duped by biased media.
~snip

Haven't you learned buy now, you can't sail a thread, only launch it and watch it drift.

[Pangloss62]

Haven't you learned buy now, you can't sail a thread, only launch it and watch it drift.
11-10-2006 08:34 PM

I think I'm learning.

I've been lost in the wide sargasso sea for years.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

But there are bigger biases in the media. The biggest bias of them all is for sensationalism. If it bleeds it leads.

I have to agree with Tony. The Haggard story was sensational becuase Americans have a sore spot for hypocrisy. Actually, the bias was in not running the story because a sex scandal in a national church is national news, and the only difference in organizations is how it is handled.

Fox News has an obvious but sometimes subtle bias. Fox Friends has an in-your-face bias. The one concession to present a 'balanced' view is Alan Colmes, who is usually outnumbered and outgunned. His appearance on Fox is much the same as the token conservative on Bill Maher.

Of course we do have to distinguish between news and commentary. Even so, MSNBC is less biased than Fox when it comes to straight news. Heck, even the BBC is less biased than Fox.

BTW, whatever happened to that junket of conservative reporters who were going to go to Iraq to bring back the 'good news' that was being overlooked by rest of the press. Did they ever make it outside of the Green Zone?

[DanaC]

You can always count on Right Wing organizations to give themselves names that either say nothing about their agenda, or sound just the opposite of what they really are; think "Clear Skies Initiative."

Yup. My favourite of those was the BNP (British National Party- a breakway party from the National Front) whose female members started a group called 'Mothers Against Paedophiles', whose raison d'etre seemed to be an attempt to convince the British public that Pakistani men are fair queuing at the end of decent peoples' streets, intent on grooming and using little white girls.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by marichiko

I'd love to see some valid sources for your figures on both Allende and Pinochet. Your post is in and of itself proof that no one muzzles the press - either liberal or whacko.

So I duly went looking, first for my notes and then for the source material. Still haven't found the notes, reread the source, and discovered my memory wasn't quite the steel trap I'd like it to be, but here we go:

The March '06 American Spectator article is by James R. Whelan, and is a review, indeed a refutation, of Jonathan Haslam's The Nixon Administration and the Death of Allende's Chile. In the June issue of this year, there is a further exchange -- Haslam's try at a rebuttal, and Whelan's counter-rebuttal.

Whelan's credentials as a South American scholar and historian seem not only solider, but downright formidable, comprising thirty-eight years of study and experience, a Harvard Fellowship, the history Out of the Ashes: Life, Death, and Transfiguration of Democracy in Chile 1833-1988.

Hardly the stuff of "yellow journalism" that your ideological blinkers made you allege it is, not too long ago. Mari, dear, please accept this life lesson: blinkers deny you data and make you talk silly. Lose the blinkered ideology and you'll be much harder to patronize, which I really only do to the easy targets. I should think you'd find that a plus, all things being equal.

Whelan got the gig to write a review of Haslan's book and found such lacunae in its scholarship and available sources uncited or only the most nail-paring snippets therefrom, that he quit numbering his notes after about problem/error number 149, by his count. Whelan does not complain that his work wasn't cited to speak of. He learnedly takes issue with Haslan's main contention that it was really the Nixon Administration that did in the Allende government, and carries the day. Bone-deep anti-Americanism can make even Cambridge professors lose their abilities at scholarship seems the lesson here -- a third of the book is written to slap the Nixon Administration around.

From Whelan, quoting Allende cabinet member Voloida Tetelbaum, 1 Mar 1973: "A civil war in Chile would probably mean immense loss of life, half a million to one million." This was in a context of what the Allende government would have to set about doing to consolidate its power. The entire population of Chile in 1970 was 9.3 million -- and was the cite which I remembered, being in the same column of print with the civil war quote; mea culpa. These guys were looking at decimating Chile -- after being elected, mind you.

As for the casualties of the Pinochet era, Whelan again, and worth quoting in some extent: "Closer to home, there's the startling absence of the three-volume Informe de la Comision Nacional de Verdad y Reconciliacion, compiled by a commission formed after Pinochet had relinquished power. . . [the Rettig commission] was decidedly hostile to the military regime. Indeed, its report is the preferred bible of leftists the world over. It details the background of the political upheavals leading up to and during the Allende and Pinochet years: describes the terrorist/guerrilla forces that sprang up during those years, and the security forces that combated them; and (mainly) provides a laboriously detailed accounting of the killed and missing during the Pinochet years. (If Haslam had bothered to consult it, he might have learned that in the entire period between September 11 and December 31, 1973, [emph. mine, and this is probably the number I remembered and cited] the total dead and missing was 1,261 -- of the grand total of 2,279 dead and missing during the 17 years of the Pinochet government. In his book, Haslam gives the toll of dead on September 11 as 3,500, including 700 soldiers. The Rettig Commission report lists a grand total, in all 17 years, of 132 military dead.)" (This board does not support Spanish diacriticals, so we must spell 'em as best we can without.)

Twelve hundredish during the coup when a fair bit of lead was flying around the streets, like from the Cuban embassy, and then a thousandish over the next sixteen years. Economical, compared to Tetelbaum's civil war ideas above. One might say conservative -- and from an unfriendly source at that.

From Whelan, quoting a June 1973 remark by Eduardo Frei Montala, President of Chile 1964-70: "Chile is in the throes of an economic disaster -- not a crisis, but a veritable catastrophe no one could foresee would happen so swiftly nor so totally . . . the hatred is worse than the inflation, the shortages . . . the economic disaster. There is anguish in Chile."

So, says Whelan, the Chileans turned on Allende, leaving everybody else standing.

In the June '06 issue, Haslan replies, "Whelan accuses me of believing Communists are just deluded altruists. Surely people can genuinely believe in socialism or communism without becoming monsters?"

That ivory-tower remark from George Orwell's countryman -- oughtn't he to know better? -- causes me to stare. In my experience, if they put these beliefs into actual practice they inevitably do become monsters, by force of those beliefs. The harder they go at it the worse they turn out.

Haslan sticks to his thesis that the Nixon Administration went all out to kill the Allende government: "The White House suspected the [CIA's] Latin Americanists were too soft on Communism in Latin America because the Latin Americanists favored taking the long view -- namely the Allende regime would implode through incompetence and the absence of outside aid from Moscow or Beijing; at that there was therefore no need to pull it down through a golpe negro (a bloody coup), a golpe blanco would suffice. . . Once it failed, Nixon, now beside himself with anger, resolved to revert to a golpe negro." Whelan remarks that absolutely no one of the numerous principals in the matter that he polled on this had ever, nor had he himself ever, throughout his 38 years of South American study, heard either term.

Haslan: "the blank check Allende came to collect in Moscow was denied him despite [Communist Party chief Luis] Corvalan's extensive lobbying." Whelan's reply, "It is not true that Allende emerged empty-handed from his mission to Moscow. They did not give him the $80 million he sought, but they did give him $45 million, on top of 200 million in earlier ruble credits."

Whelan again: "'If Mr. Whelan had read the book calmly and carefully in order to see whether there was something new to learn instead of erupting like a spluttering, formerly extinct volcano. . .' Any number of commentators through the years have referred to my qualities as a meticulous (acusioso) investigator. I bring that same zeal to books I review, as well as those I write. (When I stopped numbering my notes on this one they stood at 149, not counting a number of others drawing on related books. There is scarcely a page of Haslam's book that is not decorated by one or more of my comments.) To what I can only suppose is his sorrow, read it thoroughly I did."

"I have no doubt that Professor Haslam is quite diligent about his work, but he is, after all, a 'parachutist,' dropping in on the country in the fashion of most foreign scholars and authors. And, although he would choose to scorn it, my works include a history of this country . . . surpassed to that point (1995) only by the works of Chile's own two leading historians. . . [and] what would mere Chileans know about Chilean affairs?"

Sooooo... they just did not look at Fox at all, right?

[Tonchi]

UG, I have not felt like calling you a moron for a long time, too bad you had to revert to type. Please explain to us why, since according to your sources there were "ONLY" a few thousand people murdered by Pinochet and his goons, that his own country has tried him for murder and crimes against humanity and sentenced him to be executed? He gets a free pass, though, because he is about to croak any minute from a variety of illnesses. Are you suggesting that your supposed number is "acceptable collatoral damage" for a US-backed dictatorship? Gee, Pinochet accomplished so much to keep US interests functioning in Chile, when you factor it those lives probably average out to 20 million bucks per which we got in return, a real bargain!

As for why it was so "vital to our national interests" to kill a legally elected head of state and hurl Chile into a vicious military dictatorship, you do not have to look for communists under every bush. The Mormons had more to do with our getting involved than the Russians did!!! In case somebody doesn't know, they own the largest copper producers in the US. Think they contribute much to politicians here to protect THEIR interests?

Here is information from a research paper I found online, which sums up what I already knew about the role of the US copper industry as key players in getting us into the mess:

MNCs took action in Chile in order to prevent Allende from being elected before his election. The purpose was to prevent Allende from accomplishing his intention to nationalize the copper industry along with other profitable subsidiaries in Chile. In order to do this, International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation (ITT), Anaconda Copper, and Kennecott Copper helped to fund Allende’s opponent, Jorge Allesandri, with the help of the CIA. ITT has good reasons to back up Jorge Allesandri in the election against Allende because it had a total investment of $200 million in Chile, the largest holding of any single corporation. In addition, “ITT president Harold Geneen offered $1 million to the CIA to help defeat Allende” (Online posting, Corporate involvement).

[Urbane Guerrilla]

So the Chileans are mad at Pinochet. How much madder, do you think, would they have been at Tetelbaum and Allende should they have gotten that decimation program, a/k/a a civil war, going. Proportionately? Some arbitrary multiplier? The thing you're failing to see was Allende, perverted by Marxism, was a worse fuckup than Hugo Chavez, which is saying something.

I should have thought it was clear that Chile succeeded in dodging no mere bullet, but something like a 155mm shell, those days in 1973. Mr. Whelan (of whom you clearly haven't read even the snippets I have) seems considerably more to be trusted than the something you got off the net. Bear in mind that Whelan is my source, not Brent Bozell.

What is absent from your something from the 'net is any indication that these entirely understandable efforts at influencing events (after all, if you're a major player, do you just sit back passively or do you try and be proactive?) had any effect on the course of events at all. One shouldn't regard every effort to secure a liveable environment for business and trade as some kind of evil machination -- down that path lies socialist poverty, and that's nowhere you want to live, Tonchi. If you didn't know. Nationalizing an industry is a quick way to screw it up, as its fiscal efficiency goes to hell, followed by collapse, and a resumption of what should have been the case all along: keep the business in the private sector.

Did we play ball with the Pinochet government, wrt Chilean affairs, later? Yes -- precisely in accord with our habit from the earliest days of our nation, that of keeping our hands off the local politics in order not to impair trade -- however much that may be honored in the breach or in the observance, for we've had both, in this case the former. What seems to establish the tipping point is whether politics impairs trade, such as Cuban politics from July 1959. Castro deliberately had things screwed up by the end of that year. Nice for the dictator's grip on power, lousy for everyone not in his inner circle. Now Cuba has enjoyed an equal division of the misery for going on four decades. The place won't come right until the Communists are gone.

It was vital to the Chileans' national interest to kill the guy, as the reputable historians apparently understand. Was I somehow unclear about this in my previous post(s)? They did it. Nobody else really got the chance to.

Frankly, Tonch, your "moron" call cannot stand, and you should withdraw it, instead spending your energies doing your homework. My "type," as you harrumph it, is anticommunist, which is smarter than any communist. More moral too. Plenty of room on the bright side, Tonch; come on over and leave the collectivists to rot in their own malaise and malheur.

[DanaC]

My "type," as you harrumph it, is anticommunist, which is smarter than any communist. More moral too.

O...kkk...aaa...y.

Tonch may I humbly suggest that rather than 'withdrawing' your moron comment, you instead carve it in stone for all prosperity to witness?