Reflections

( This picture of Salvador Allende has been borrowed from Flickr) There has been an outpouring of sentiment, and rightly so, for the victims of the 9/11 tragedy in New York on the occasion of its tenth anniversary. Islamic militants, sitting in caves and safe sanctuaries in Afghanistan and Pakistan, planned and executed a dreadful plan which led to the death of thousands and has set off some intended and some unintended consequences that have consumed many more thousands of lives and look set to consume many more before the fires are doused. However of those of us with less longer and less Americoentric memories, 9/11 was the anniversary of one more tragedy, again planned with chilling callousness and for gain in distant offices and executed by local mercenaries. That tragedy, for various reasons, did not achieve iconic status (American lives being much more precious than others), but it still stands as one of the biggest criminal acts ever committed for ideological reasons....