En Passant

This September 11 marks the 39th anniversary of the US backed coup in Chile.
American henchman Augusto Pinochet killed Salvador Allende, the democratically elected President, and imposed a reign of terror on the Chilean people. Pinochet was Richard Nixon’s man.

 

Chilean presidential palace bombed

These butchers on the payroll of American power rounded up over 3000 leftists and executed them in the capital’s main sports arena. Something like 15,000 died at Pinochet’s hands in the years after.

This makes the main American political players in the coup – Nixon and Kissinger – the moral equivalents of Osama bin Laden.

As the US elite cynically manipulates the deaths of those killed eleven years ago on September 11 in America, where are their tears for the many dead in Chile, killed by the agents of their predecessors on the same day 39 years ago?

Chile under Pinochet became an experiment in free market economics. The imposition of laissez faire on the Chilean people needed a strong repressive state to ensure the real objective – more wealth for the rich – was carried out without too much resistance from the 99 percent. .

Bush used the terrorist attacks of September 11 on New York as justification for US state terrorism against Afghanistan and then Iraq. Reliable estimates are that over 1 million innocent Iraqis have died as a result of the American invasion. This is the equivalent of 9/11 every few weeks in Iraq.

In Afghanistan the total is tens of thousands of civilians dead.

Apparently we moral relativists should accept that the 3000 killed by terrorists in the US are of much greater importance than the millions killed by US terrorists.

Ah but that’s the point, isn’t it? The one percent’s remembrance of 9/11 is designed as a cover for US terrorism and to reinforce and strengthen the rule and sway of the war mongers.

Barack Obama continues this criminal tradition with his slaughter in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Pakistan.

It gets worse. Every day 30,000 children die of avoidable causes, brought about by the inequalities global capitalism creates.

An alternative to the brutality of modern capitalism appeared briefly on the streets of Melbourne eleven years ago on 11 September. Tens of thousands of demonstrators protested against the World Economic Forum and showed the rich and powerful the anger of the streets.

It was a small small glimpse of the possibility of a new world, of open displays of anti-capitalism and rejection of the neoliberal straight jacket, and it revitalised for a time the left in Australia.

Now the resistance to neoliberalism is globalising. The strikes across Europe, the swing to the radical Left in countries like Greece and the uprisings across the Arab world for freedom and food, justice and jobs offer real hope to humanity – that people come before profit and that only with the triumph of a cooperative and democratic society worldwide can we end all the September 11s.