Comments on: Comments on 19929

Post number 19929

raaka — Wed, 11 Sep 2002 16:21:18 -0800

September eleventh certainly is an anniversary, but of more than you might remember. Historical Hindsight is a short piece on why some events are remembered and others forgotten. "The things that get remembered serve a purpose. They have to do something relevant in the present."

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Wed, 11 Sep 2002 17:45:27 -0800

fwiw, things seem to have been quite peaceful here today (in chile), although there have been some arrests and some barricades, a mass at the military school for those from the army that died on 73-9-11, and some confrontation with mapuches (an indigenous people) down south. at one point someone at work claimed there was a bomb attempt (presumably petrol - nothing very exciting) outside pinochet's house - he's been wheeled out to his "ranch" - but i can't find any confirmation (there was a small bomb at the water co and another at a building owned by mormons). there's also been some arrests, tear gas etc at the pc (communist party) march this evening. as far as i can tell, activity is mainly restricted to the poorer areas of the city - i live and work in adjacent affluent districts and saw nothing unusual all day. curiously, the headline news inthe local papers (at least online) is about the usa, but conversation at work is about local protests.

By: raaka

raaka — Wed, 11 Sep 2002 20:47:41 -0800

andrew, did ya'll stop observing 9-11 as a national holiday last year? Not in response to what happened in the US, but for some other reason?

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Thu, 12 Sep 2002 03:10:30 -0800

afaik it had nothing to do with the usa - i guess it's that the government wanted to avoid so many troubles, also not that many people want to celebrate it. wed + thur next week are the national (independence) holiday, so there were calls to make make the following friday a holiday instead, but that didn't happen. so the country with the second longest (average per capita) working hours in the world (after taiwan; i've been working 6 day weeks since the beginning of last month, often 12 hour days; productivity, of course, is crap) just lost a public holiday.