Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet must be kicking himself. If only
he鈥檇 gone to the US for his medical treatment. At least there the alleged human
rights abuser might not have met with the wall of condemnation that has greeted
him in Europe. Why? Because the US government鈥檚 support for Pinochet鈥檚 release
back to Chile to face 鈥渢rial鈥� was doubtless inspired by American collusion in
Pinochet鈥檚 ascent to power. Names could have been named in court鈥攏ames
that are probably censored in the declassified National Security Agency
documents on the Web, which show how American agencies assisted the dictator in
his rise to power in the 1972 coup. The documents at
http://www.seas.gwu.edu/nsarchive/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/nsaebb8.htm
have some sections blacked out by a censor, but you鈥檒l get the drift.
Speaking of friends in high places, British ex-premier Margaret Thatcher
defended the tyrant by pointing out that he had helped Britain in the Falklands
War. Netropolitan suggests she peruse
http://www.trentu.ca/~mneumann/pinochet.html
to refresh her memory of Pinochet鈥檚 alleged crimes.
The Pinochet affair has highlighted the fact that dictators may no longer
be immune from prosecution in countries they visit. Useful information on the
international law covering human rights abuses can be found at
http://www.law.ecel.uwa.edu.au/intlaw.
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On a lighter note, escape autocratic angst at a fun website called Guess
The Dictator, where you go through a kind of Turing test鈥攂ut not to see
whether there is intelligent life at the keyboard. The aim is rather to see
which dictator you are posing as. At
http://www. smalltime.com/nowhere/dictator/
you assume an identity and the site asks you questions to guess who you are.
However, Netropolitan would make a pretty poor despot: the site decided we just
had to be that pretentious fashion victim from hell, Edina from the BBC鈥檚
Absolutely Fabulous.
