Friday, September 13, 2013

Alto las prensas

The Santiago Times comes out against freedom of the press!
Agustín Edwards, founder of Santiago’s El Mercurio and owner of the newspaper network bearing the same name, is to be investigated for his involvement in the overthrow President Salvador Allende in 1973.
....As the country marks the 40th anniversary of the 1973 Sept. 11 military coup, Judge Mario Carroza ordered the Human Rights Brigade of the investigative police (PDI) “to find and interview” the newspaper owner to evaluate his potential illegal involvement in the lead up to the coup.
That's what Salvador Allende wanted to do back in the days when the friend of Fidel was riding high; silence the opposition press.  The Chilean Supreme Court ruled that Allende was acting unconstitutionally, and the Chamber of Deputies voted 81-47 to remove Allende from office less than a month before the coup that finally put Chile back on the path to democracy and economic sanity.

That bit of historical fact seems to be regularly ignored by the Santiago Times.  Maybe they should interview Agustín's cousin Jorge Edwards. Or read his book--Persona non Grata: A Memoir of Disenchantment with the Cuban Revolution--detailing his first hand discovery of just what Allende and Castro had in mind for the future of Chile.

He who does not learn from the past, is destined to write vapid newspaper pieces--for one thing, this Edwards (Agustín Edwards Eastman) is the great grandson of the founder of the paper. And is in his eighties and probably incapable of defending himself against this despicable act of political retaliation.

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