BTW, a bunch of Tory grandees held a group grope in London Tuesday this week to demonstrate their solidarity with celebrated privatization hero and world-class thug Augusto Pinochet. Here's how the UK Telegraph reported it (best quote is at the end, from Robin Harris):
Gen Augusto Pinochet is "the closest thing Britain has to a political prisoner", one of Lady Thatcher's closest aides told a rally in London yesterday attended by hundreds of the general's Chilean supporters. Robin Harris, former director of the Conservative Research Department and senior adviser to the former Prime Minister since 1990, claimed that the former Chilean president was a victim of "something very like politically inspired kidnap". He spoke to the rally as the crucial law lords' hearing into whether Gen Pinochet, 83, is entitled to sovereign immunity from extradition to Spain to face charges of genocide, murder and torture entered its second day. Dr Harris's presence on the platform with two former Tory ministers, Lord Lamont, the former Chancellor, and Sir Ray Whitney, the former Foreign Office minister, indicated a far more robust public defence of the general's record by British politicians than taken previously. Lord Lamont told the meeting that he had visited the general: "He was in excellent spirits, as you would expect of the good and brave and honourable soldier that he is. It was a private visit just to shake his hand and tell him there are many people in this country who deplore what's happening and wish to see him return to his own country." Lady Thatcher, who entertained Gen Pinochet to tea at her Belgravia home shortly before his arrest on Oct 16 had previously called for him to be sent back to Santiago. She authorised Dr Harris to write a pamphlet, A Tale of Two Chileans: Pinochet and Allende, defending the general's record. It was launched at the rally. Some 20,000 copies will be distributed in Britain, Spain, America and Chile. Dr Harris's speech was punctuated with ecstatic applause by hundreds of Chileans, many of whom had flown to support Pinochet on package tours arranged by the Pinochet Foundation in Chile. He claimed that Gen Pinochet and the armed forces were "morally and constitutionally" justified in seizing power in 1973 from the "corrupt, chaotic and revolutionary" Marxist government of Salvador Allende. Dr Harris said: "Allende must not be allowed this posthumous revenge against the man who stopped Chile becoming another Cuba and who then turned Chile into Latin America's most successful capitalist economy." [end] Carl Remick