So finally General Pinochet, after 47 years as dictator of Chile, yielded power to his ageing brother in the wake of emergency intestinal surgery. It’s true that he ruled with an iron fist, allowed conservative spokesmen, but at least he made Chile the economic powerhouse of South America, made individual Chileans prosperous with his radical pension reform, and exported its wine to all the world.
Oh dear. Wrong dictator! And of course, Gen. Pinochet didn’t rule for half a century. After the coup in which he ended the chaotic rule of Salvador Allende, he put Chile on the road to prosperity and returned it to democracy.
Unlike Fidel Castro. On Monday night, he handed over power, temporarily, to his brother Raúl, as he underwent intestinal surgery. And he put off his 80th birthday celebration till December.
But today, everyone will be delighted to hear, he is feeling better.
Oh yes, he did wonders with education and health care (but how good is that education and health care really? Has anyone ever checked it out?).
But overall, economic growth in Cuba is estimated at minus 0.5 percent per year since 1959. Not that anyone is allowed to do an independent audit of Cuba’s economy.
But the way to think of Cuba’s half-century under dictatorship is to imagine how it would have been reported by our objective MSM if, instead of the lefty hero Castro, it had been ruled by a right-wing thug.
Forget about the extenuating circumstances, the education, the health care, the charm of Old Havana. Dictatorship would have been dictatorship, fascism, red with the blood of its victims: journalists and political human rights activists.
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