The BBC reports that the Chilean government will be paying 28,000 victims of torture at the hands of Pinochet's regime a pension of about $190 a month, for life. This is about 93% of the minimum wage there.

Meanwhile Pinochet may have lost his mental faculties just in time to avoid being prosecuted for his hideous crimes against humanity. And his former spokesman is objecting to the whole thing, saying the old wounds have "already healed"!!

What a horrible, grim joke.

I few months ago I read an essay by Eduardo Galeano that was really incredible, called "To Be Like Them." The other day I found it on line. It's about the global South being promised it can be like the North, if only it follows the rules of free trade and structural adjustment which the North doesn't even follow for itself. It asks the question, even if it were possible, does the South want to be like the North, and is there a chance to say "no?"

Can everyone in the world live like North Americans? No. The earth would not support it. Can the South learn another way to "develop?"