Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘dead dictator pool’

If you picked this week, you may want to start mentally planning what you’re going to do with all the cash. The secrecy surrounding Castro’s condition would seem to indicate that he’s going from bad to worse.

Luckily for Fidel, he’s already managed to pass his revolutionary torch.

That’s the key lesson from Augusto Pinochet’s death today, which some Chileans are mourning while many others celebrate:

More than 3,000 people died in political violence under Pinochet’s rule, many at the hands of repressive secret police. Some 28,000 people were tortured in secret detention centers and hundreds of thousands of Chileans went into exile.

Car horns blared as detractors of the deceased former dictator danced and cheered in Plaza Italia, a major intersection near the city center where Chileans usually congregate to celebrate sporting victories.

“I’m going to celebrate with my family the death of the tyrant. I even have a bottle of Brazilian cane alcohol we’ve been saving for 25 years to celebrate this day,” said Santiago Cavieres, a 75-year-old lawyer.

“I was in the National Stadium (a sports stadium used as a concentration camp in 1973) and from there they sent me to the Chacabuco concentration camp, where I was for eight months… Everyone there was tortured,” he said.

Despite Pinochet’s human rights record, many Chileans loved him and said he saved Chile from Marxism. Supporters say his economic reforms put Chile on track to become Latin America’s model economy.

Pinochet’s coup to gain power, supported by the Reagan administration, is often pointed to as yet another example of American interference gone wrong. And while it’s easy to understand why – at a time when Communism was perceived as the biggest threat facing America – the decision to support Pinochet was made. The United States is not the only country guilty of this, but there have certainly been numerous prominent examples of it in the last number of years stemming from U.S. policy.

The problem is, the world isn’t divided into good guys and bad guys, white hats and black hats, Cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers. Politics isn’t like a bad Western movie (and Reagan knew a lot about bad Western movies). Oftentimes, the enemy of my enemy is also a bad guy, and is also an enemy.

We’re still making that mistake today. The U.S. allying with extremist Shi’ite Muslim groups in Iraq, post-Saddam, is just one more chapter in this saga. And we can already see just how well that’s working out.

The trouble is, often the only person strong enough to oppose one bad guy is another bad guy; moderates tend to be weak in countries facing war and lack of law and order. Faced with the choice of backing the strong extremist or the weak moderate, most will choose the strong extremist and close their eyes to his darker deeds.

But it didn’t work then, and it’s not working now. It’s time to change how we look at the world, to stop breaking it into good guys and bad guys, and to stop supporting an enemy’s enemy that will only come back to bite us in the ass.

(By the way, who had Pinochet in the Dead Dictators Pool?)

Yasser Arafat is really, truly dead now… or maybe not… or maybe yes:

Palestinians senior sources in Paris report Yasser Arafat is dead. Palestinian leader is said to have expired minutes after Palestinian PM Qureia visited him at Percy hospital in Paris.

Latest word is that Arafat will be buried in Ramallah. Palestinian delegation will fly home Tuesday night after reaching agreement with Suha Arafat’s lawyers. News conference cancelled.

Or then again, maybe not:

A Percy Hospital spokesman has refuted reports that Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat had died. The statement was made after a flurry of rumors began circulating about his death, which were then denied by Palestinian officials.

You know, this whole thing has caused an additional state of existence to come into creation. Before, there were two: dead or alive. Now there are three: dead, alive, or Arafat.

If and when the reports of Arafat’s death are confirmed, Meryl’s making a $25 donation to Magen David Adom as part of her Dead Dictators Pool Matching Fund initiative. I happen to think that it’s an ironically appropriate way to mark the passing of a dictator who caused so many innocent people to need MDA’s services, and I plan on joining her in matching it. If you’d like to do the same, visit her site for details.

For Canadian readers, you can send your donations to CMDA. (And yes, contrary to the issues of a couple of years ago, it’s tax-deductible.)

Reuters, by the way, is calling this the “possible Arafat death”. It’s almost funny watching the reporters falling all over each other to get the contradictory news straight.

CBC is reporting that Arafat is dead.

I can’t say I will grieve for him or mourn him. He was a terrorist responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent people – including large numbers of his own people.

But this is as much the end of an era as the beginning of one. Palestinians are sure to mourn en masse, even the majority of them who hated the man. He’s the only leader they’ve ever really had. And his death creates an enormous power vacuum that’s sure to lead to Palestinian civil war. What the next 72 hours will bring is anyone’s guess.

Update: The various media networks can’t seem to agree yet even on whether Arafat is dead or alive. CNN says he’s in a coma in critical condition. Reuters cites Israeli TV in saying he’s “clinically dead”. But Ahmed Qurie is denying this saying he’s critical but still alive. One thing for sure: if he comes out of a coma after being declared dead, Arafat will have achieved the one thing still eluding him: godlike status.

Update #2: AP confirms that French media are reporting Arafat clinically dead, in an irreversible coma.

Update #3: Reuters now says he’s still alive, making Arafat the only man in the world who can be both dead and alive at the same time.

The news of Arafat’s heart attack last week has caused quite a stir in the blogosphere. Charles is waiting for him to kick the bucket. Damian thinks he should suffer. Meryl’s even got a song about it. Unconfirmed reports of his death have caused some of the bloggers to cross their fingers and start “death watch” reports.

I wonder how bad someone’s gotta be for it to be okay to wish he’d just die already. How many innocent people would he need to have killed? As a general rule, I’m uncomfortable with the notion that anyone should wish for someone to die.

But I have to concede that there are exceptions. People like Hitler, Stalin, Milosovic . . . people who contributed nothing but harm and suffering to the world. And though Arafat has merely killed thousands, he is also responsible for the continued suffering of millions of his own people, by having elected to pursue a terrorism strategy rather than taking the necessary steps towards achieving peace and statehood.

So while I am not going to jump around gleefully praying for Arafat’s death, I have to say I won’t exactly be mourning him once he’s gone. He devoted his life to killing innocent Jews. If I believed in hell, that’d be definitely a good reason to go there. (If Arafat’s expecting 72 virgins, he’ll be pretty disappointed).

But then, of course, Arafat’s already handpicked his successors – all people loyal to him and with no intention of fighting terrorism. Will any of them really be any better than Arafat?

Mind you, how could they be much worse?

Update: Like any good personality-cult dictator, Arafat is having his advisors deny that he had a heart attack and claim he’s in perfect health. How long will they lie about his condition is the only question? How long will they keep propping up an inflatable Arafat doll after he croaks?