1. Bangladesh.... In 1971 ... Kissinger overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.... This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger’s undisclosed reason for the ‘tilt’ was the supposed but never materialised ‘brokerage’ offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the course of secret diplomacy between Nixon and China.... Of the new state of Bangladesh, Kissinger remarked coldly that it was ‘a basket case’ before turning his unsolicited expertise elsewhere.2. Chile.... Kissinger had direct personal knowledge of the CIA’s plan to kidnap and murder General René Schneider, the head of the Chilean Armed Forces ... who refused to countenance military intervention in politics. In his hatred for the Allende Government, Kissinger even outdid Richard Helms ... who warned him that a coup in such a stable democracy would be hard to procure. The murder of Schneider nonetheless went ahead, at Kissinger’s urging and with American financing, just between Allende’s election and his confirmation.... This was one of the relatively few times that Mr Kissinger (his success in getting people to call him ‘Doctor’ is greater than that of most PhDs) involved himself in the assassination of a single named individual rather than the slaughter of anonymous thousands. His jocular remark on this occasion—‘I don’t see why we have to let a country go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible’—suggests he may have been having the best of times....3. Cyprus.... Kissinger approved of the preparations by Greek Cypriot fascists for the murder of President Makarios, and sanctioned the coup which tried to extend the rule of the Athens junta (a favoured client of his) to the island. When despite great waste of life this coup failed in its objective, which was also Kissinger’s, of enforced partition, Kissinger promiscuously switched sides to support an even bloodier intervention by Turkey. Thomas Boyatt ... went to Kissinger in advance of the anti-Makarios putsch and warned him that it could lead to a civil war. ‘Spare me the civics lecture,’ replied Kissinger, who as you can readily see had an aphorism for all occa

~ Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens 1971 1971 Bangladesh Atrocities 1972 Nixon Visit To China 1973 Chilean Coup D Etat 1974 1975 Assassination Athens Bangladesh Bangladesh Liberation War Central Intelligence Agency Chile China China Pakistan Relations Civil War Coup D État Cyprus Democracy Diplomacy Doctors Doctors Of Philosophy East Timor Ecclesiastical Coup Fascism Foreign Policy Foreign Policy Of The Us Greece Greek Cypriots Henry Kissinger India Indo Pakistani War Of 1971 Indonesia Indonesian National Armed Forces International Law Iran Iran Iraq War Iraq Iraqi Kurdistan Israel Israeli Lebanese Conflict Jakarta Junta Kurdish Iraqi Conflict Kurdish People Kurdistan Lebanon Makarios Iii Marxism Military Of Chile Missionaries Mohammad Reza Pahlavi Monroe Leigh Morality Murder News Leaks Pakistan Pakistan United States Relations Partition Politics Portugual Portuguese Empire Refugees Rene Schneider Richard Nixon Saddam Hussein Salvador Allende Schneider Doctrine Second Kurdish Iraqi War Shah Sino American Relations Slaughter Thomas D Boyatt Turkey Turkish Invasion Of Cyprus United States Walter Isaacson War War Crimes Yahya Khan

In Santiago, the capital of the kingdom of Chile, at the moment of the great earthquake of 1647 in which many thousands lost their lives, a young Spaniard called Jeronimo Rugera was standing beside one of the pillars in the prison to which he had been committed on a criminal charge, and he was about to hang himself.

~ Heinrich Von Kleist

Heinrich Von Kleist Chile First Sentence History Prison Suicide

There was something indomitable about Maria – like Britannia. He’d heard that she kept her head during a Chilean earthquake the year before when men of greater age and experience had panicked. Afterwards she was discovered calmly taking notes, recording the way the land hand risen, for publication, she said.

~ Sara Sheridan

Sara Sheridan Britain Chile Earthquakes History Strong Female Characters Travel

I read not so long ago about the construction of a large telescope in Chile's Atacama Desert, where rainfall can average a millimetre a year and the air is fifty times as dry as the air in Death Valley. Needless to say, skies over the Atacama are pristine. The pilgrim astronomer ventures to the earth’s ravaged reaches in order to peer more keenly at other worlds, and I suppose the novelist is up to something similar.

~ Brad Leithauser

Brad Leithauser Astronomer Astronomy Chile Metaphor Novelists Telescope Writers Writing Writing Craft Writing Life

The experience taught him [Salvador Allende] too late that a system cannot be changed from the government but from the power.

~ Gabriel García Márquez

Gabriel García Márquez Allende Chile Government Power

It’s an old story, amigo mío. Be careful of those closest to you because they can do the most damage.

~ Theodore Jerome Cohen

Theodore Jerome Cohen Antarctica Chile Murder O Higgins Suspense Thriller

Laughing like crazythe child goes back to the citygives birth to monsterscreates earthquakeshairy women run nakedold folks who look like fetuses laugh and smoke.

~ Nicanor Parra

Nicanor Parra Antipoetry Child Chile City Earthquakes Hairy Naked Women Laughter Monsters Old Folks Smoking