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Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 07:28:40 -0800 (PST)
From: MichaelP <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Subject: INVESTOR's newspaper glows about Pinochet
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This may only be a published opinion, not the publication's
The author is --
Paul Craig Roberts .. the John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute
for Political Economy in Washington, D.C., a senior fellow with
the Independent Institute in Oakland and a former distinguished
fellow of the Cato Institute.
Cheers
MichaelP
==================
Investor's Business Daily
December 9, 1998
Viewpoint; Pg. A24
A Political Kidnapping
By Paul Craig Roberts
If you have investments in Latin America, you might want to lighten
up, if you haven't already done so. The reason isn't a currency or debt
crisis, but the attack by the international left on Chile's democratic
capitalism.
The successful policies of the ''Chicago boys'' -- U.S.-trained economists
who served as ministers during the government of Augusto Pinochet -- made
Chile the role model for Latin America. Chile's market orientation and
successful privatization efforts have inspired other Latin American
governments to open their economies and de-emphasize the role of
government.
The international left has never forgiven Pinochet for de-socializing
Chile. Unable to attack him on these grounds, the left has falsely branded
Pinochet a ''war criminal'' for putting down a communist-led terrorist
insurrection.
Baltasar Garzon, a low-level Spanish magistrate operating independently of
his government, seized on the allegations against Pinochet to make a name
for himself. Garzon is making extra-territorial legal claims against
Pinochet.
Cornell University Professor Jeremy Rabkin has shown that there is no
international law giving Spain jurisdiction over Chile, which is an
independent country, not a Spanish colony. But Garzon hopes to create such
a law by asserting it.
If the British Labor government, which has detained Pinochet, hands him
over to Garzon, the precedent will establish a law that is on no nation's
books.
For British Prime Minister Tony Blair, it's purely a political
calculation. Pinochet gives Blair an opportunity to throw a bone to the
Labor Party's defanged left wing.
The skin off Blair's nose is ruptured relations with Chile, which is
strongly protesting the political kidnapping of its former president.
The left is so determined to get Pinochet that Law Lord Leonard Hoffman
exposed himself to a massive conflict of interest by casting the deciding
vote to overturn Pinochet's release by a lower British court. Lord Hoffman
is a director, and his wife is a full-time employee, of one of the ''human
rights'' groups screaming for Pinochet's head.
Pinochet won't be the first and last. The international left is also
attempting to sweep up Pinochet's ministers in the same net. The
Institute For Public Accuracy put out a bulletin against Jose Pinera,
branding him ''a vital cog in the Pinochet dictatorship's ability to
implement a draconian labor code'' and dismantle workers' rights.
Pinera's ''crime''? He privatized Chile's Social Security system. By
giving Chileans a stake in capitalism, the success of Chile's privatized
Social Security system has spoiled the appetite for socialism.
Worse, Pinera is spreading the word of Chile's success throughout Latin
America and Europe. In the U.S., he heads the Cato Institute's Social
Security privatization project.
The core of all welfare states is a retirement system based on
intergenerational transfer payments funded by a payroll tax. Socialists
worship this system, because it destroys individual responsibility,
prevents people from acquiring a stake in private means of production and
rests on the principle of collectivism.
The left thought it had won this battle. But Chile's successful
privatization effort has reopened the issue as other countries follow
Chile's lead.
Now Pinera has to go -- or at least be made too fearful of traveling
abroad, lest he, too, be kidnapped like Pinochet. In its ''news release,''
the IPA called on the Cato Institute to cut its ties with Pinera.
In the twisted mind of the political left, it's ''repression'' to make
workers owners, as Chile did. When workers become owners, they lose the
revolutionary zeal to help left-wing intellectuals overthrow ''bourgeois''
society and seize the means of production in the name of the workers.
Overthrowing bourgeois society is what Salvador Allende was doing in Chile
until the elected representative body, the Chamber of Deputies, denounced
him for treason and called on the military to overthrow him and his
paramilitary bands that were destabilizing Chile's economic and political
order.
Pinochet answered the call, restored the economy, set up a new
constitution, gave amnesty to both sides, reconciled the nation and
stepped down. His unlawful detention in Britain is aimed at shattering the
national reconciliation that is the basis of Chile's success.
If Chile can be thrown into turmoil again, the political left can start
reclaiming lost ground in Latin America.
_________________________________
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