Motorists pass under a footbridge that has collapsed over the Panamerican Highway after a major earthquake in Curico February 27, 2010. A huge magnitude-8.8 earthquake struck Chile early on Saturday, knocking down homes and hospitals, and triggering a tsunami that rolled menacingly across the Pacific. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado (CHILE - Tags: DISASTER ENVIRONMENT) TOP STORY - 8.8 magnitude earthquake hits Chile, tsunami warning issued (Christian Science Monitor)
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10 comments:
Just got power and internet back here about 40 miles se of Santiago. That was the scariest thing i have ever experienced. The earthquake was very strong here and very loud, the earth rumbling, the plates I guess. The aftershocks keep coming, they are mostly mild but every time, I wait for another big one. I hear 700 people dead now and everyone in the area is fine. Old adobe structures collapsed but there are not many of those around here, as in Santiago. I am so sad for Chile today.
Glad you're doin' okay, Laura. Keep us posted on anything the mainstream news doesn't tell us.
Limitations to the Power of Rulers : Absolutism and Despotism : Montesquieu, Montaigne, and La Boétie - Glory of Ancient French Political Philosophy
The Colombian Constitutional Court forbids further discussions in the future for all presidents about prolonging their mandates, as Anti-Constitutional, Opposed to the Laws, and against Tradition, History and Customs.
The President of Colombia Alvaro Uribe and his Pocket Congress have subjected and submitted to the power of the Constitutional Court.
And the most intellectual newspapers and magazines resurrect the Glories of Ancient France : Montesquieu, Montaigne, and La Boétie.
Montesquieu (1689 – 1755) is the theoretician of "Separation of Powers" : Executive, Legislative and Judiciary. But there were two Great French Philosophers of Political Theory before him.
With Help from Wikipedia, let us study these two Great Men - I extract very few excerpts from long articles in that wonderful Encyclopedia :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tienne_de_La_Bo%C3%A9tie
Étienne de La Boétie (1530 – 1563) :
La Boétie was a French judge, writer, political philosopher and friend of Montaigne, author of the Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (Discours de la servitude volontaire)
He served with Montaigne in the Bordeaux parlement and is immortalized in Montaigne's essay on friendship. La Boétie’s writings include a few sonnets, translations from the classics, and an essay attacking absolute monarchy and tyranny in general, Discours de la servitude volontaire ou le Contr'un (Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, or the Anti-Dictator).
The essay asserts that tyrants have power because the people give it to them. Liberty has been abandoned once by society, which afterward stayed corrupted and prefers the slavery of the courtesan to the freedom of one who refuses to dominate as he refuses to obey. Thus, La Boétie linked together obedience and domination, a relationship which would be later theorised by latter anarchist thinkers. By advocating a solution of simply refusing to support the tyrant, he became one of the earliest advocates of civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance.
It was once thought, following Montaigne's claims, that La Boétie wrote the essay in 1549 at the age of eighteen but recent authorities argue that it is "likely that the Discourse was written in 1552 or 1553, at the age of twenty-two, while La Boétie was at the university."[2] The essay was circulated privately and not published until 1576 after La Boétie's death. He died at Germignan near Bordeaux in 1563. His last days are described in a long letter from Montaigne to his own father.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_de_Montaigne
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533 – 1592) :
Montaigne had a direct influence on writers the world over, including René Descartes[2], Blaise Pascal, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Stefan Zweig, Eric Hoffer[3], Isaac Asimov, and perhaps William Shakespeare (see section "Related Writers and Influence" below).
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The spirit of freely entertaining doubt which began to emerge at that time. He is most famously known for his skeptical remark, 'Que sais-je?' ('What do I know?'). Remarkably modern even to readers today, Montaigne's attempt to examine the world through the lens of the only thing he can depend on implicitly — his own judgment — makes him more accessible to modern readers than any other author of the Renaissance.[citation needed] Much of modern literary non-fiction has found inspiration in Montaigne and writers of all kinds continue to read him for his masterful balance of intellectual knowledge and personal story-telling.
The Future of Foreign Policies :
Prophesizing.com
Vicente Duque
The mainstream news throws so much at us without really telling us anything...so I have been hopping around trying to read everything. The best thing is that the plates became "unstuck" with this quake so it should be less stressed I think. Also people here are so calm and patient-no cell phones or power but mostly they just shrug. President Bachelet and Pinera seem to be doing an almost co-presidential thing, both speaking at times and visiting areas affected most by helicopter. (Pinera takes office in 2 weeks I think.)Bachelet at first didn't accept help but now is. I wonder if Pinera has to do with that, his politics tend to include the IMF while Bachelet's coalition paid off the IMF debt incurred by the last right winger who also happened to be a dictator. Pinera no dictator but the laissez faire economics is par for the course for he and his cabinet stuffed with Chicago boys types. I would watch whether he borrows(accepts "help") from the IMF. Chile has been out of debt for many years now-what a shame.
It's interesting that you mention that, Laura. I've been looking at the data on IMF loan disbursements to Latin America, and I noticed that Chile hasn't taken any IMF loans since the '80s. Smart move on the part of the Concertacion. Better to avoid the Fund if you can.
I have a link somewhere-Chile's last disbursement from the IMF was in 1989 -Pinochet's last year. Then they paid the debt down under the Concertacion years. Chile was then very careful fiscally and saved all that money-a huge surplus, the price of copper helped in later years. This means independence from the IMF etc. and if you look at all the other Latin countries that have paid off the IMF debt, it explains a lot. It seems that I remember Argentina and Brazil were the largest IMF debtors until recently.
The IMF always requires privatization and they want the debt paid in dollars-Btw, Argentina defaulted on the bonds but not the debt-they paid the debt, just not the future interest. The bond holders were mad, hey they had a nice stream of future income at nice rates.
One more thought on the IMF. In the 80's, I think someone made the decision that countries could be controlled by economic means-that is when the IMF started doing the privatization techniques/pressure.This was just after Chile's privatization measures-Chile was the first really. Now that countries, especially Latin American ones, are getting out from under the IMF, I wonder if military means come back into play.
Laura, best to you and your loved ones. Interesting that such a tramatic event is part of the Earth alleviating pent up pressure. Gological history is ponderous, and it is apt that we put human events within such an evolutionary perspective.
Think what you will of Chavez, Morales, and Castro, but they have contributed greatly in the current situation. It would be highly counterproductive for the US to engage militarily in the Americas for many reasons.
The timing for socialists like Allende was not propitious-- but challenging the pathological nature of imperialism and capitalism is becoming commonsense.
It is about our survival on a planet that is worth living on. Simple as that.
Not to revel in a tragedy that causes so much sorrow-- but this event will put a damper on the rightwing fantasy of Chile being a place where Latin American socialism was to be kept in check.
Nature is a mo'fo when it comes to puncturing diseased delusions.
Human solidarity triumphs--or, indeed, we're all dead (because we have not developed societies that are capable of co-evolving with all other life on this good earth).
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