12.14=4 IC#20; T42 K27: 5/M17. 李登輝: 台灣要台灣獨立. Off "ROC": Chiang/US Kssngr Pino//Sddm // Viet/Iraq bloodbath; Mercosur; Rus/Eur; Fr/Rw

李登輝：台灣要台灣獨立 應跟美談法定地位. '台灣人拜台灣神...': http://tinyurl.com/y7oa3b --- / Chiang KMT should on Trial: http://tinyurl.com/ycarqc Kissinger 'Washington Bullets': http://tinyurl.com/y6w692 : Chiang Kai-shek 'Chinese Bullets' of ROC for Taiwan. / Pinochet's death: http://tinyurl.com/wr5xo > Fractured identity in Chile & Taiwan! / Saddam on Trial: http://tinyurl.com/yys5ba --------------------------------------------------- Karabakh voters back sovereignty: http://tinyurl.com/touod Fifth World Council (5WC) (17): http://register.5world.net/ 5WC: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FifthWorld/ Micronational Professional Registry (MPR) (17): http://mpr.cyberterra.com --------------------------------------------------- Viet/Iraq bloodbath: http://tinyurl.com/ygtkh5 US over Latin America: http://tinyurl.com/yxvgbt >#0. Mercosur S Am integration: http://tinyurl.com/ylfnp3 European energy & Germany < Russia: http://tinyurl.com/y845jj Belgian Rwanda in La Francafrique: http://tinyurl.com/tdt89 #0. US over Latin America: 'The Death of the Defense of Dictators', by Laura Carlsen; "Americas UPDATER" Vol. 4, No. 20; December 14, 2006: http://tinyurl.com/yxvgbt Or http://americas.irc-online.org/updater/3803 “A New World of Citizen Action, Analysis, and Policy Options” http://americas.irc-online.org/ New Content from the IRC Americas Program:--- 'The Death of the Defense of Dictators: This Week in the Americas' by Laura Carlsen 'Reflections on Pinochet’s Death: FPIF Commentary' by Juan Antonio Montecino 'Pinochet, Never Convicted in Court, Dead at 91: Report' by Gustavo González 'IDB Debt Cancellation for Haiti: FPIF Commentary by Debayani Kar and Tom Ricker 'Residents, Officials Reach Across International Boundary to Block Secret Toxic Landfill: Investigative Article' by Talli Nauman 'Calling Bad Business Good: Commentary' by Mark Engler "" Three icons of U.S.-Latin American foreign policy died this month. Milton Friedman, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Augusto Pinochet may not have met in the same room, but together they helped construct the architecture of hemispheric relations that has endured well into the current Bush government. A U.S. conservative economist, a political scientist-turned-diplomat, and a South American dictator may on the surface appear to have little in common. But they left a common legacy in Latin America. Their theories, their actions, and their protégés profoundly undermined democracy in the region, and left a trail of blood that runs from Patagonia to Mexico. Free Markets, Double Standards, and Dictators In the seventies, Milton Friedman—a professor at the University of Chicago—posited that free markets would lead to free people and economic well-being. Friedman's economic theories found a perfect laboratory in post-Allende Chile. Rarely does an academic economist have the chance to try out theories on an entire nation of people controlled under military rule. Friedman traveled to Chile and met with dictator Augusto Pinochet after the U.S.-assisted coup that brought him to power. Pinochet adopted Friedman's free market theory and applied it on a literally captive audience. Friedman's department at the University of Chicago became the training ground for a generation of Chilean economists known as the “Chicago Boys.” As Walden Bello put in a recent article: “The irony that the bayonets of one of Latin America's most bloodstained dictatorships imposed a free market paradise in Chile could not have escaped the guru.” Over 3,000 people were killed or permanently “disappeared” under the Pinochet dictatorship; 30,000 tortured or wounded; and thousands fled the country. Friedman is also credited with creating the theoretical underpinnings—some would say justification—for the Structural Adjustment Programs enforced by the multilateral lending institutions on third world countries to access development loans. Jeane Kirkpatrick's essay that catapulted her into the Reagan administration, “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” argues that right-wing dictators should be our allies in cases where the alternative is popular insurrection. “Only intellectual fashion and the tyranny of Right/Left thinking prevent intelligent men [sic] of good will from perceiving the facts that traditional authoritarian governments are less repressive than revolutionary autocracies, that they are more susceptible of liberalization, and that they are more compatible with U.S. interests.” Her later work on the National Security Council of designing and implementing the dirty wars in Central America demonstrated that her commitment to this idea was more than academic. She supported the contra wars wholeheartedly and later was drafted as an envoy to prepare the ground for the invasion of Iraq. '' '' U.S. intervention through free trade policies or covert military action, and supported by “friendly dictators,” set the region on a course that continues take a heavy toll on human and economic development. What could Chile have become if over three thousand of its most idealist and socially committed citizens had not been assassinated or disappeared? Would Central America look different if thousands had lived long lives instead of being tortured, killed, or forced into exile? Would the inequality that mars the region's economic development be less today if Allende's experiment had been forged in an open sovereign society, instead of quelled by a bloody coup? We will never know. And the three obituaries written this past month reveal important reasons why we will never know. "" Laura Carlsen is director of the IRC Americas Program in Mexico City, where she has worked as a writer and political analyst for the past two decades. The Americas Program is online at americas.irc-online.org.