While we have been sumberged here beneath royal mourning, Americans have naturally focused on the 21st anniversary of the 9/11 attacks overnight, commemorating the thousands of lives lost in those atrocities.
There is another “9/11”, one of longer historical provenance: yesterday marked the 49th anniversary of the coup in Chile that saw the democratically elected Salvador Allende removed from power and murdered by a military coup backed by the Nixon administration. The ensuing dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet saw the murder of thousands and the imprisonment and torture of tens of thousands of Chileans, and the brutal application of neoliberal economics by Chicago School economists (of which Milton Friedman would later boast).
Australia had its own role in that coup, but it remains a mystery: as Crikey discussed last year, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) was on the ground in Santiago during the Allende government, at the request of the CIA.
UNSW Canberra Professor Clinton Fernandes has long sought access to files on ASIS’ role in 1973, but has been blocked by the intelligence establishment and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
Unless things change, Chileans next year will commemorate 50 years since those bloody events while Australians are still kept in the dark about the role of our intelligence service in them.
Bernard, you are absolutely right to remind readers of this shocking and despicable act that the Americans helped to orchestrate on September 11th, 1973. I remember that event well. I was on my way to a night class at the time at a local technical school and was horrified by what I was hearing on the radio (I think it was on the ABC’s PM program). I hope that academics and journalists persist in their efforts to uncover the role of the Australians in this atrocity.
By the way, reading this piece causes me to have one regret about Crikey – and that is that I did not take out a subscription many more years ago.
As I have always maintained Bernard, you are doing a brilliant and extremely valuable job as a journalist. Thank you so much for all your efforts!!
Chile, Timor Leste, Viet Nam. It’s all despicable.
Ah Bernard, you waste too much sympathy on dead and tortured Latino untermenschen. It’s only the deaths of 3,000 people in the US that ‘changes the world’. 12 million estimated deaths of non-yankees since 1945 is neither here nor there when they’re caused by the US.
Another good reason to examine and change the membership of the AAT. As for ASIS, do they have a legal leg to stand on, given that there’s no threat involved to Australia?
Well it was a pre runner to the dismissal. Thus there is most likely some common threads. Only the truth will determine if there was and to what extent. Perhaps that is what our spooks are scared of revealing.
Whitlam ordered the ASIS involvement shut down. Whether they complied, or not, is unclear. The CIA have long, vengeful memories, with their clear involvement in orchestrating his downfall.
Many in the establishment in Australia still believe the US are our friends. The gobsmacking naeivity is astounding.
Yes I remember well the outrage I felt on Pinochet’s assumption of power after the brutal coup.
The corporate capitalist west, led by the UK and the US with Australia one of their main vassals will oppose by economic or if necessary military force any form of socialist state, even benign and successful ones like that started by Allende.
Our resources sector being 80% owned by foreign multinational (mainly the US and UK) has been supported by governments increasingly since Whitlam. It’s clear the corporates rule the Coalition and Labor. This I believe will crumble when the majority see what’s going on and elect many climate independents with policies to dismantle multinational corporate power in Australia.
I was always interested to know that the Queen owned a big slice of Rio shares: doesn’t it go around!
Without those corporate capitalist mining companies, ordinary Australian consumers wouldn’t be able to purchase air conditioners, flat screen TVs, iphones, Macbooks, dishwashers, hair dryers, BMWs, Toyotas or overseas holidays. That’s why they tolerate all these human rights abuses in distant lands.
Rubbish. Home grown resource extraction and processing companies could do those jobs easily. I worked in the industry. The one difference would be that billions of royalties would remain in Australia and directly benefit our citizens.
Which 100% Australian owned resource extraction and processing companies are you thinking of, Oztralian?