Draughts of History

Chileans are protesting over the presence at London's Tall Ships Festival of La Esmeralda, a naval training vessel and sometime floating torture chamber. The ship was used in the 1970s to provide short, sharp shocks to opponents of the sainted Thatcher's chum, General Augusto Pinochet; enhanced incentivisation methods included rape, the use of electric shocks, mock executions and beatings, as routinely prescribed by defenders of democracy from that day to this. According to Britain's leading liberal newspaper, the only role the USA had in Pinochet's coup was to commission a 1986 report exposing the régime's maritime indiscretions; the Chilean protestors are exercised because the navy has not yet acknowledged its role in these well-intentioned yet mistaken anti-terrorist activities. One of the victims was partly British, which seems sufficient reason for Britain's leading liberal newspaper to think we should care.