¿ Paraguay? ¡Porque no!There's a big election in Paraguay today. Here's the guy who's ahead in the polls.
Ex-bishop Fernando Lugo shakes up politics in Paraguay
The leading presidential candidate is seen as an agent of change by supporters and as a leftist fanatic by critics.By Patrick J. McDonnell
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
8:05 AM PDT, April 19, 2008
VILLARICA, PARAGUAY — A sense of new possibilities courses through the crowd even before "the bishop of the poor" shows up in the plaza of this sugar-cane farming center.
"I'm not here to hand out beer, liquor, sausages," Fernando Lugo advises, alluding to the traditional giveaways of Paraguayan pols on the stump. "I'm here to share the hope of change with the people."
Tiny, landlocked Paraguay, still recovering from the stultifying legacy of the 35-year dictatorship of Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, will cast ballots Sunday to elect a new president. The stunning emergence of Lugo, a former Roman Catholic bishop, as the leading presidential candidate has turned the place upside down.
The so-called pink tide of left-leaning leaders has altered the face of Latin America. But there has been no candidate quite like Lugo. Supporters see him as the embodiment of hope amid gloom. Critics warn of an impending conflagration if the arm-waving orator wins.
"From today on, my cathedral will be the country," Lugo declared when he resigned the priesthood in December 2006. The Vatican, irritated by the public gesture, says Lugo remains a priest and is barred by canon law from seeking public office.
Voters in the United States may question whether any U.S. presidential aspirant will deliver on the "change" mantra. Here, not even Lugo's fiercest enemies doubt that he is capable of shaking up sleepy Paraguay.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-lugo20apr20,0,886758.story Paraguay is a happening place. Just ask Neil Bush and Rev Sun Myung Moon.
Here's Neil outside the presidential palace
with his new friend, current Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte.
The president wanted to change Paraguay's constitution
to allow him to run for a second term.
It's never too late, for friends of the Bush network.
With help from Rev Moon's Swiss bank account and
Poppy Bush's swell Cuban friends,
that could easily be arranged.
Rev. Moon-allied group hosts Bush brother in Paraguay
Neil Bush is the guest of a group founded by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon
President Bush's younger brother meets Paraguay's president, group delegation ASUNCION, Paraguay (AP) -- Neil Bush, younger brother of President Bush, called on Paraguay's president as the guest of a business federation founded by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.
A presidential press office source, who spoke on condition of not being named, confirmed the younger Bush met President Nicanor Duarte on Thursday along with a delegation from the Universal Peace Federation, a group associated with Moon.
SNIP...
Betancourt said Bush later attended a leadership seminar sponsored by the federation.
The federation's Web site says it is trying to promote peace in the Middle East, South Asia and other regions, as well as proposing a 50 mile (85-kilometer), $200 billion tunnel linking Siberia and Alaska.
A leading Paraguayan newspaper, ABC Color, reported Friday that Bush spoke at the leadership seminar about instilling a "culture of service" and better uniting individuals and organizations behind objectives that serve peace and the common good.It said the seminar, held at an Asuncion hotel, was entitled "Toward a New Paradigm of Leadership and Government in Times of World Crisis."
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http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/02/29/paraguay.neil.bush.ap/index.html Neil intside with Paraguay's president and one of Moon's sons in February, 2008.
The decider guy who ran Paraguay for 35 years was buds with Spain's Franco,
Europe's most-successful and longest-lived fascist dictator.
Stroessner's Colorado Party lasted 68 years in power -- longer than Mao's crowd.
One of the things about being dictator, Stroessner decided who could stay and who could go in Paraguay.
In his reign, President Gen. Stroessner sheltered NAZIs that include Klaus Barbie and Dr. Josef Mengele.
CONDOR archives unearthed in Paraguay expose U.S. allies' abusesBy Diana Jean Schemo, New York Times, 11 August 1999
A SUNCION, Paraguay—When Martin Almada asked a judge for records of his arrest under the dictatorship of Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, he hoped merely to learn more about his own private tragedy: nearly four years of captivity, during which the police telephoned his wife so she would hear his screams under torture.
Instead, the one-time schoolteacher unearthed a mountain of records detailing repression among United States-backed military regimes throughout South America during the cold war. From floor to ceiling, five tons of reports and photos detailed the arrest, interrogation and disappearance of thousands of political prisoners during General Stroessner's 35-year dictatorship.
The documents trace the creation and work of Operation Condor, a secret plan among security forces in six countries to crush left-wing political dissent.
Paraguayans quickly named the files the archives of terror. Though discovered six years ago, the files have gained new prominence throughout Latin America with the arrest of Chile's former dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, in London last October. To this day, they remain the only extensive collection of public records of a project by the region's military rulers that succeeded in exterminating thousands of political opponents.
The files have given a kind of vindication to survivors, their families and the families of those dead and missing by delivering concrete proof of a darkly secretive era.
The archives have also provided fodder for the developing case against General Pinochet, the only one of the region's dictators to face the prospect of trial. General Stroessner remains a fugitive from justice living in Brazil.
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http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/42/158.html In the fight against communism...and leftists...and liberals...and intellectuals...tens of thousands were disappeared in South American countries.
Those new to the subject will find a wealth of information here:
LETELIER-MOFFITT ASSASSINATION
30 YEARS LATER
National Security Archive calls for Release of Withheld Documents Relating to Pinochet's Role in Infamous Act of Terrorism in Washington, D.C. on September 21, 1976Archive releases new document on CIA approach to Manuel Contreras on Operation Condor
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 199
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB199/index.htm Operation CONDOR enabled assassins to cross international borders anti-communist witch hunt. Its agents even killed former Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier and Amercan Ronni Moffitt in Washington, D.C. CIA Director George H. W. Bush covered up these murders as a matter of "national security." Ye-up.
Well, that's relatively well known compared to the other thing America's Corporate McPravda has ignored:
Dark Side of Rev. Moon: Hooking George BushBy Robert Parry
ConsortiumNews
Last fall, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's latest foray into the high-priced world of media and politics was in trouble. South American journalists were writing scathingly about Moon's plan to open a regional newspaper that the 77-year-old founder of the Korean-based Unification Church hoped would give him the same influence in Latin America that the ultra-conservative Washington Times had in the United States.
As opening day ticked closer for Moon's Tiempos del Mundo, leading South American newspapers were busy recounting unsavory chapters of Moon's history, including his links with South Korea's feared intelligence service and with violent anti-communist organizations that some commentaries said bordered on neo-fascist.
Indeed, in the early 1980s, amid widespread human rights abuses, Moon had used friendships with the military dictators in Argentina and Uruguay to invest in those two countries. Moon was such a pal of the Argentine generals that he garnered an honorary award for siding with Argentina's junta in the Falklands War.
More recently, Moon has been buying large tracts of agricultural lands in Paraguay. La Nacion reported that Moon had discussed these business ventures with Paraguay's ex-dictator Alfredo Stroessner. (Nov. 19, 1996)
Moon's disciples fumed about the critical stories and accused the Argentine news media of trying to sabotage the newspaper's inaugural gala in Buenos Aires on Nov. 23. "The local press was trying to undermine the event," complained the church's internal newsletter, Unification News.
Given the controversy, Argentina's elected president, Carlos Menem, did decide to reject Moon's invitation. But Moon had a trump card to play in his bid for South American respectability: the endorsement of an ex-president of the United States, George Bush. Agreeing to speak at the newspaper's launch, Bush flew aboard a private plane, arriving in Buenos Aires on Nov. 22. Bush stayed at Menem's official residence, the Olivos. But Bush failed to change the Argentine president's mind.
Still, Moon's followers gushed that Bush had saved the day, as he stepped before about 900 Moon guests at the Sheraton Hotel. "Mr. Bush's presence as keynote speaker gave the event invaluable prestige," wrote the Unification News. "Father (Moon) and Mother (Mrs. Moon) sat with several of the True Children (Moon's offspring) just a few feet from the podium."
Bush lavished praise on Moon and his journalistic enterprises. "I want to salute Reverend Moon, who is the founder of The Washington Times and also of Tiempos del Mundo," Bush declared. "A lot of my friends in South America don't know about The Washington Times, but it is an independent voice. The editors of The Washington Times tell me that never once has the man with the vision interfered with the running of the paper, a paper that in my view brings sanity to Washington, D.C. I am convinced that Tiempos del Mundo is going to do the same thing" in Latin America.
SNIP...
Money Talks
But Bush's boosterism was just what Moon needed in South America. "The day after," the Unification News observed, "the press did a 180-degree about-turn once they realized that the event had the support of a U.S. president." With Bush's help, Moon had gained another beachhead for his worldwide business-religious-political-media empire.
After the event, Menem told reporters from La Nacion that Bush had claimed privately to be only a mercenary who did not really know Moon. "Bush told me he came and charged money to do it," Menem said. (Nov. 26, 1996). But Bush was not telling Menem the whole story. By last fall, Bush and Moon had been working in political tandem for at least a decade and a half. The ex-president also had been moonlighting as a front man for Moon for more than a year.
In September 1995, Bush and his wife, Barbara, gave six speeches in Asia for the Women's Federation for World Peace, a group led by Moon's wife, Hak Ja Han Moon. In one speech on Sept. 14 to 50,000 Moon supporters in Tokyo, Bush insisted that "what really counts is faith, family and friends." Mrs. Moon followed the ex-president to the podium and announced that "it has to be Reverend Moon to save the United States, which is in decline because of the destruction of the family and moral decay." (Washington Post, Sept. 15, 1995)
In summer 1996, Bush was lending his prestige to Moon again. Bush addressed the Moon-connected Family Federation for World Peace in Washington, an event that gained notoriety when comedian Bill Cosby tried to back out of his contract after learning of Moon's connection. Bush had no such qualms. (WP, July 30, 1996)
Throughout these public appearances, Bush's office has refused to divulge how much Moon-affiliated organizations have paid the ex-president. But estimates of Bush's fee for the Buenos Aires appearance alone ran between $100,000 and $500,000. Sources close to the Unification Church have put the total Bush-Moon package in the millions, with one source telling The Consortium that Bush stood to make as much as $10 million.
Bush also may have other Argentine business deals in the works with Moon. On Nov. 16, 1996, La Nacion quoted businessmen as saying that Bush and Moon were keeping an eye on plans to privatize the hydroelectric complex of Yacyreta, a joint $12 billion Paraguayan-Argentine project to dam the Parana River.
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http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/moon1.html
Besides military, political and economic repression,
there's one big industry in the Cone...
Moonies accused of involvement in drugs
The Reverend Moon has carved out a section of Paraguay that is twice the size of Luxembourg. Séamus Mirodan went to see it. (Here’s his report.)By Séamus Mirodan
Irish Times Thursday, Oct. 14, 2004
Paraguay -- The Reverend Moon has carved out a section of Paraguay that is twice the size of Luxembourg. Seamus Mirodan went to see it
Reverend Sun Myung Moon, spiritual leader of the Unification Church, self-proclaimed Messiah, multimillionaire and a generous contributor to the US Republican Party, has been showing a strong interest over the last five years in little-known Paraguay at the centre of the South American continent.
Since 1999, Rev Moon has built his personal empire which begins on the marshy banks of the River Paraguay and stretches beyond the hazy, level horizon through 600,000 hectares of arid land - equivalent to more than two Luxembourgs - punctuated by solitary clusters of withered trees and sad bushes which struggle desperately for air.
The scorching sun beats relentlessly on one of Latin America’s most desolate zones. It is here in the northern province of Chaco, directly above the GuaranI aquifer, the largest resource of fresh drinking water in the world, where Moon’s associates claim he wishes to build an ecological paradise.
Nevertheless, national Senator Domingo Laino sees a different pattern in Moon’s acquisitions. “There are two principal branches to Moon’s interest in Paraguay,” he said, “control of the largest fresh drinking water source in the world and control of the narcotics business”, which is so prevalent in this area. “President Lula told me that Brazil took serious measures to curb Moon a few years back as it became evident that he was buying up the border between our two countries,” said the senator.
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http://www.rickross.com/reference/unif/unif240.html Visitors also find the region relatively unpolluted and largely unspoiled.
And when the world's ecosystem goes kaput, they'll find plenty of water and relatively cool temperatures compared to what the proles and paupers of the northern hemisphere and southern Africa will have to deal with.
The US Military Descends on ParaguayWritten by Benjamin Dangl
The Nation
Monday, 17 July 2006
While hitchhiking across Paraguay a few years ago, I met welcoming farmers who let me camp in their backyards. I eventually arrived in Ciudad del Este, known for its black markets and loose borders. Now the city and farmers I met are caught in the crossfire of the US military's "war on terror."
On May 26, 2005, the Paraguayan Senate allowed US troops to train their Paraguayan counterparts until December 2006, when the Paraguayan Senate can vote to extend the troops' stay. The United States had threatened to cut off millions in aid to the country if Paraguay did not grant the troops entry. In July 2005 hundreds of US soldiers arrived with planes, weapons and ammunition. Washington's funding for counterterrorism efforts in Paraguay soon doubled, and protests against the military presence hit the streets.
Some activists, military analysts and politicians in the region believe the operations could be part of a plan to overthrow the left-leaning government of Evo Morales in neighboring Bolivia and take control of the area's vast gas and water reserves. Human rights reports from Paraguay suggest the US military presence is, at the very least, heightening tensions in the country.
Soy and Landless Farmers Paraguay is the fourth-largest producer of soy in the world. As this industry has expanded, an estimated 90,000 poor families have been forced off their land. Campesinos have organized protests, road blockades and land occupations against displacement and have faced subsequent repression from military and paramilitary forces. According to Grupo de Reflexion Rural (GRR), an Argentina-based organization that documents violence against farmers, on June 24, 2005, in Tekojoja, Paraguay, hired policemen and soy producers kicked 270 people off their land, burned down fifty-four homes, arrested 130 people and killed two.
The most recent case of this violence is the death of Serapio Villasboa Cabrera, a member of the Paraguayan Campesino Movement, whose body was found full of knife wounds May 8. Cabrera was the brother of Petrona Villasboa, who was spearheading an investigation into the death of her son, who died from exposure to toxic chemicals used by transgenic soy producers. According to Servicio, Paz y Justicia (Serpaj), an international human rights group that has a chapter in Paraguay, one method used to force farmers off their land is to spray toxic pesticides around communities until sickness forces residents to leave.
GRR said Cabrera was killed by paramilitaries connected to large landowners and soy producers, who are expanding their holdings. The paramilitaries pursue farm leaders who are organizing against the occupation of their land. Investigations by Serpaj demonstrate that the worst cases of repression against farmers have taken place in areas with the highest concentration of US troops. Serpaj reported that in the department of San Pedro, where five US military exercises took place, there have been eighteen farmer deaths from repression, in an area with many farmer organizations. In the department of Concepción there have been eleven deaths and three US military exercises. Near the Triple Border, where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet, there were twelve deaths and three exercises.
"The US military is advising the Paraguayan police and military about how to deal with these farmer groups.... They are teaching theory as well as technical skills to Paraguayan police and military. These new forms of combat have been used internally," Orlando Castillo of Serpaj told me over the phone. "The US troops talk with the farmers and get to know their leaders and which groups, organizations, are working there, then establish the plans and actions to control the farmer movement and advise the Paraguayan military and police on how to proceed.... The numbers from our study show what this US presence is doing. US troops form part of a security plan to repress the social movement in Paraguay. A lot of repression has happened in the name of security and against 'terrorism.' "
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http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060717/dangl Why would fleeing NAZIs, Rev. Moon and the Bush family want to go to Paraguay?
Why Paraguay? Lovely, little, lonely, landlocked Paraguay?
Did we say "unspoiled"?
Jenna visited Paraguay "for UNICEF" in 2006
and then met with El Supremo III o IV pa' din din.
Paraguay in a spin about Bush's alleged 100,000 acre hideawayTom Phillips in Cuiab
The Guardian, Monday October 23 2006
Meeting the new couple next door can be an anxious business for even the most relaxed home owner. Will they be international drug traffickers? Have they got noisy kids with a penchant for electronic music? As worries go, however, having the US president move in next door must come fairly low on the list.
Unless of course you are a resident of northern Paraguay and believe reports in the South American press that he has bought up a 100,000 acre (40,500 hectare) ranch in your neck of the woods.
SNIP...
Rumours of Mr Bush's supposed forays into South American real estate surfaced during a recent 10-day visit to the country by his daughter Jenna Bush. Little is known about her trip to Paraguay, although officially she travelled with the UN children's agency Unicef to visit social projects. Photographers from the Paraguayan newspaper ABC Color tracked her down to one restaurant in Paraguay's capital Asunción, where she was seen flanked by 10 security guards, and was also reported to have met Paraguay's president, Nicanor Duarte, and the US ambassador to Paraguay, James Cason. Reports in sections of the Paraguayan media suggested she was sent on a family "mission" to tie up the land purchase in the "chaco".
Erasmo Rodríguez Acosta, the governor of the Alto Paraguay region where Mr Bush's new acquisition supposedly lies, told one Paraguayan news agency there were indications that Mr Bush had bought land in Paso de Patria, near the border with Brazil and Bolivia. He was, however, unable to prove this, he added.
Last week the Paraguayan news group Neike suggested that Ms Bush was in Paraguay to "visit the land acquired by her father - relatively close to the Brazilian Pantanal
and the Bolivian gas reserves".
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/oct/23/mainsection.tomphillips
And Jenna can still drive a Mercedes.