Ray

Mostly of Elvira and her bleedin opera ...

User Name

Just part of the Special Relationship that we hear some much about.

Just Jenney

Most (not all) of the Chileans I knew were anti-Pinochet, and quite a few of them grew up outside of Chile when their families fled after the coup. I know that many of them took issue with the US's involvement in the coup.

However, it does not come up in conversation with Chileans as much as you would think. Like sex, religion and politics, Chileans generally stay away from talking about the dictatorship. It's like an open wound that is trying to heal, and talking about the dictatorship is like picking at that scab and keeping the wound fresh. Most Chileans wanted to focus more on the present and the future, rather than go on and on about the past. I had many Chileans tell me not to even consider broaching the subject of Pinochet, etc., so I rarely did -- and neither did they.

Also, the dictatorship didn't have the same impact on my Chilean friends as it did on their parents' and grandparents' generations. Since many of my Chilean friends grew up outside of Chile (US, UK, South Africa, Australia, etc.) and returned after Pinochet was deposed in 1990, I got the very strong impression that they were disheartened and disappointed by how much Chilean culture had become Americanized. That it was not the culture they had grown up hearing and learning about, but that it was now somehow tainted.

~ Jenney

Elvira

Speak for yourself.

I victimise people

Rushman

Here here

Elvira

Hear Hear

There there

AmerLisa

Ahhh, its nice to have company.

Bob

This month, or could have been last months, National Geographic had a really good story on the place now and what's being done to try and bury the palce again, as well as photo's from within the control room and the like...quite interesting stuff really

TouristTrap

Bob dear. I have a verb for you. EBAYER.

User Name

When you rite "bury the palce again", do you mean the entire site?

I haven't been following the Chernobyl farce of late, but the remaining nuke reactors on the Chernobyl site were not permanently taken off line - if memory serves me right, there are two other nuke reactors that were kept working to generate electricity for the Ukraine population. The Chernobyl reactor explosion (a hydrogen gas explosion) and subsequent fire generated enormous amounts of radioactive fall out, some of which fell over Europe, including parts of the UK. The amount of fallout from the Chernobyl reactor explosion and subsequent fire was far more (probably hundreds of times more) than would be released by a relatively small nuke powered bunker buster bomb.

Bob

they shut the last reactor down in 2000...
but the sarcophagus that they built, that's falling apart, so there' building a arch that looks like a footie stadium on sliders that they'll slide over the place and basically lock it down because it's still not safe to spend much time on the reactor site.

the whole thing, fall out, decay, cancer, it's being used as a study for how a city in the west would fair up if a dirty bomb were to be detonated.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...chernobyl.html

That was a story a couple years ago, don't think they have put up the new story yet, I think it was this months edition.

User Name

Thanks for the update Bob.

anotherlimey

There was something in the New Scientist last week... about the material still in the old reactor core.

If I recall correctly, they think there's still a good few tons of highly radioactive material in there.

Bob

Yup, the story in the NG was pretty good, especially the photo's, that's what grabbed me initially anyway....but anyway, yeah, there's quite a lot of nasty stuff still there, and the big worry is the casing will collapse and pump a lot of dirt back up into the atmosphere...quite worrying really.

silvermine

you know the royals are quite popular here... maybe more than in the u.k.,lol!

why not have a bit of fun and give them your title, ''esquire'' ,and then watch them!