Monsanto linked to coup that ousted Paraguayan president

[Judi Lynn]

Monsanto linked to coup that ousted Paraguayan president
Monday, July 16, 2012 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

(NaturalNews) The political system in Paraguay is undergoing some major turmoil right now following the forced impeachment of former President Fernando Lugo, a "left-of-center" politician democratically voted into office by the people of Paraguay back in 2008. And among those who initiated and brought about this controversial coup was multinational biotechnology giant Monsanto, which was apparently threatened by Lugo's resistance against the company's genetically-modified (GM) crop agenda.

For years, Paraguay's government has been dominated by so-called "right-wing" politicians that have served the interests of the country's local oligarchy, as well as the interests of the U.S. embassy and transnational corporations that have established a powerful stronghold in the country. Among these corporate influences was Monsanto, which over the years has converted much of Paraguay's arable land into plantations that grow GM crops.

But with the election of Lugo in 2008, things were beginning to change in many ways, according to reports, which triggered serious upset amongst Paraguay's status quo class. Unwilling to capitulate to every demand made by the likes of Monsanto, Lugo was clearly a problem for these movers and shakers, who had long controlled national policy to their liking at the expense of the underclasses who have had to endure extreme poverty as a result.

"Monsanto planned to introduce a genetically modified seed for commercial use in the country ... (But) under Lugo's administration, Paraguay's National Service for Plants and Seeds Quality and Health (SENAVE) refused to approve the seed's use," writes Berta Joubert-Ceci of Workers World concerning Monsanto's involvement in the coup.

More:
http://www.naturalnews.com/036486_Monsanto_Paraguay_impeachment.html#ixzz20o81jmmy

[Ian David]

1. Natural News is neither legitimate nor reliable. Do you have this from someplace else? n/t

[DeSwiss]

4. Monsanto is the Spawn of Satan.

K&R

See also: Gates Foundation Pours 10 Million Dollars Into Genetically Modified Crops

[sabrina 1]

15. Thanks, Monsanto is pure evil and they are everywhere, taking control of the

world's food supply. Nothing should surprise anyone about the influence they exert all over the world.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Have never encountered this source, had no idea it wasn't acceptable.

There are other references which can help, I believe:

The Agribusiness Coup in Paraguay: Monsanto’s latest assault on democracy
Posted June 26th, 2012 by admin
By Idilio Méndez Grimaldi*, June 24, 2012
http://www.foodfirst.org/en/Agribusiness+Coup+in+Paraguay

by Global Justice Ecology Project | July 5, 2012 · 5:00 pm
Audio: The link between Paraguay, Monsanto and deforestation of the Gran Chaco
http://climate-connections.org/2012/07/05/audio-the-link-between-paraguay-monsanto-and-deforestation-of-the-gran-chaco/

Monsanto Strikes in Paraguay
Written by Idilio Méndez Grimaldi, Translation by Jim Rudolf
Thursday, 28 June 2012 15:21
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3716-monsanto-strikes-in-paraguay


Welcome to 'Democraship': Egypt and Paraguay Struggle to Overthrow the Old Order

Egyptians and Paraguayans are now realizing new democracies take years, sometimes decades, of co-existing with the nightmare of dictatorship.

July 4, 2012

~snip~
The "winners" in Paraguay had to be the usual suspects: the landowning oligarchy - and its concerted campaign to demonize farmers; multinational agribusiness interests such as Monsanto; and the Monsanto-linked media (as in the ABC Color daily, which accused ministers not acting as Monsanto stooges of being "corrupt&quot .

Agribusiness giants such as Monsanto and Cargill pay virtually no taxes in Paraguay because of the right-wing controlled Congress. Landowners don't pay taxes. Needless to add, Paraguay is one of the most unequal countries in the world; 85% of land - like 30 million hectares - is controlled by the 2% composing the rural aristocracy, a great deal of them involved in land speculation.

Thus their Miami Vice-style mansions in Uruguay's hip Punta del Este resort or, for that matter, Miami Beach; the money, of course, is in the Cayman islands. Paraguay is de facto ruled by this cream of the 2% mixing agribusiness with the neoliberal financial casino.

And by the way, as Martin Almada, a top Paraguayan human-rights activist and alternative Nobel Peace Prize winner, has noted, this concerns Brazilian landowners as well. The wealthiest soya bean producer in Paraguay is a "Braziguayan", double nationality holder Tranquilo Favero, who made his fortune under Stroessner.

More:
http://www.alternet.org/world/156169/welcome_to_'democraship'%3A_egypt_and_paraguay_struggle_to_overthrow_the_old_order?page=2

ETC.

[Bacchus4.0]

6. I see that Lugo's Minister of Agriculture approved a Monsanto cotton seed

but I fail to see the connection between Monsanto and the impeachment of Lugo.

[naaman fletcher]

11. That is because there is no link whatsoever

These articles supply exactly ZERO evidence of their assertions.

[Bacchus4.0]

12. Monsanto = "bad" Monsanto in Paraguay Paraguay has coup therefore

Monsanto responsible.

[Judi Lynn]

7. From Environment and Energy:

Posted:
pscot Mon Jul 16, 2012, 01:01 PM

2. Try this

Escobar certainly has a point of view, but he doesn't just make stuff up.

­Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar believes impeachment was orchestrated from outside Paraguay for economic interests. In an interview with RT, he listed those who, in his opinion, benefited most from Lugo’s removal.
“First of all, international agribusiness, like Monsanto and Cargill, because they are devastating enormous tracts of land in Paraguay for agribusiness to be sold to the international market,” he told RT.
Other “beneficiaries” include Brazilian land owners, Escobar continued, who “own a lot of land in Paraguay,” local “comprador elites” who are sufficiently represented in the country’s parliament and control the media, and also the United States. The latter is attempting to “torpedo” any push towards integration in South America.
“The international financial system and international agribusinesses, allied with Brazilian landowners, who own huge tracts of land, especially in eastern Paraguay, near the Brazilian border, and of course the American Embassy in Asuncion – which is, as our friends in Iran would say, a nest of spies. So all these interests converge to find the way to install a sort of democratic coup against Lugo,” Escobar said. “They used the technicality to launch an impeachment process that lasted between 24 and 48 hours. This is unheard of in modern democratic political history!”

http://www.rt.com/news/paraguay-coup-monsanto-oligarchs-078/

Environment and Energy:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/112719987

[polly7]

2. Wow.

Thanks, Judi Lynn. I shouldn't be surprised to read this though, Monsanto's evil is everywhere. Poor Paraguay

[robinlynne]

3. Paraguayan politics were not "dominated by the right wing". Paraguay was the longest reigning

military dictatorship in the hemisphere!

[roody]

8. Was the military dictatorship 'right wing'?

[Judi Lynn]

9. Alfredo Stroessner was a little "right wing," ? He took in Nazi Butcher

Dr. Josef Mengele after Germany lost the war, and generously invited him to live comfortably in Paraguay.

What a farce. The U.S. always supported Stroessner regardless of the sadistic, evil things he did to the indigenous people of Paraguay. Someone had a soft spot in his heart for him in Washington. Our corporate media never hinted there was ever a flaw in his career as a murderous, torture-loving, genocidal monster.

From a source I found once on the internet[font size =5]S[/font size]:

Genocide in Paraguay

Mark Munzel, a German anthropologist, was the first to call attention to the massacre of the Paraguayan Indians, with whom he lived for a year. He points out that "the Ache are inconvenient" - particularly, for the few enterprises with a majority of foreign (Brazilian, United States, and Western European) shares that dominate the Paraguayan economy, and for the Stroessner dictatorship that has imposed its terrorist rule with substantial U.S. support, as did its murderous predecessors. As the forests are cleared for foreign & domestic mining and cattle-raising interests, Indian removal, using some combination of outright killing and forcible resettlement , is a normal facet of "development" policy. In the case of a "poor man's Nazi" regime such as Stroessner's Paraguay, the nature of the resettlement (comparable to those in Nazi concentration camps&quot is such as to make the charge of genocide an appropriate one.

Munzel records the campaign against the Indians by manhunts, slavery, and deculturation. In manhunts with the co-operation of the military, the Indians are "pursued like animals," the parents killed, and the children sold (citing professor Sardi). Machetes are commonly used to murder Indians to save the expense of bullets. Men not slaughtered are sold for field-workers, women as prostitutes, children as domestic servants. According to Sardi, "there is not one family in which a child has not been murdered."

The process of deculturation aims at the intentional destruction of Indian culture among those herded into the reservation. Little effort is made to maintain secrecy about any of this, except by agencies of the U.S. government and by the U.S. media. For example, Munzel was offered teenage Indian girls by the Director of Indian Affairs of the Ministry of Defence, who "sought my goodwill," and he comments that "slavery is widespread and officially tolerated." Slaves can be found in Asuncion, the capital city.

Indians who survive the manhunts are herded into reservations where, according to Munzel, they are "subjected to stress and physcological degradation calculated to break the body as well as the spirit." Torture and humiliation of Indian Chiefs is a "standard procedure designed to produce the disintegration of group identity." Medication and nourishment are purposely withheld. When spirits are broken, the reservation is used " as a manhunt centre where tamed Indians are trained in fratricide." In a recent visit, Arens was impressed with the "striking absence of young adult males," the horrendous condition of the children, with festering sores, distended abdomens and widespread symptoms of the protein- deficiency disease Kwashiorkor, and the refusal of medication and medical care as a general practice. Arens, even on a guided tour, was aghast at the systematic maltreatment and felt himself "engulfed by the collective gloom of a people who had given up on life."

More:
http://www.zoklet.net/totse/en/politics/foreign_military_intelligence_agencies/parageno.html

[robinlynne]

10. hellyes. but politics were not dominated. there was NO opposition. There was no discourse.

[Peace Patriot]

13. Stroessner was leader of the Colorado PARTY, a far right political party that...

...represented the landed elite. As their party leader, Stroessner ruled the country as a cruel dictatorship for many decades, then the Colorado Party continued in power after Stroessner was removed in a coup d'etat. Of course there was opposition and discourse! You dis the memory of those who spoke out, some of whom were tortured and murdered for their discourse, by saying there was none. Stroessner and the Colorado Party routinely and violently interfered with the political opposition--arresting its leaders, torturing and murdering some, 'disappearing' others (no one knows what happened to them), violently shutting down political meetings and so on. Thousands were killed for speaking out and merely trying to exercise their civil rights.

Though Stroessner funneled most government revenue to the military, and used military power to control and oppress the country, and was himself a brigadier general, he paraded as a "president" with an election soon after his coup d'etat, and many more "elections" some of which he "won" with 80% of the vote. These were all rigged, of course, but he did not rule in the role or guise of a military dictator, even though a "state of siege" and suspension of all civil rights were routinely employed.

The Colorados made scads of money, acquired their overwhelming ownership of the land and expanded their corrupt and vast control of the government during the Stoessner period. This is very much far rightwing politics though conducted in a fake "democracy," and, quite clearly, Colorado PARTY power continues to this day. I think you will have to agree, after looking into this history, that the Colorado Party ASSENTED to this heinous dictatorship, and allowed itself to be USED to put a fake 'democratic' gloss on the dictatorship, because it greatly benefited them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfredo_Stroessner

More recently, under pressure of the awesome leftist democracy movement that has swept through South America, with the election of sturdy leftist governments all around Paraguay--in Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Uruguay and Ecuador, and the established and growing political and economic power of the left--in trade groups such as Mercosur and new regional organizations such as Unasur (all South America countries, no U.S.), the Colorados seemed to be facing the realities of this drastically changed political/economic environment just before and during the election and administration of leftist Fernando Lugo. They were compelled to repeal their non-extradition law (which was used to protect Nazi war criminals) and their law exempting U.S. soldiers from Paraguayan law, in order to join Mercosur. (That occurred just before Lugo was elected.) They also had to satisfy requirements of democracy--for instance, honest elections, at least for president.

Lugo's failure to carry the legislature may indicate continued election fraud at the local level, in addition to organizational weakness of the left in Paraguay, whose leaders, not too long ago, were being routinely murdered. They were in a similar condition as the left in Colombia, where you can get a bullet to the head for speaking up for the poor majority. That takes a great toll on political, labor and social organizations--fear, in-fighting, fractiousness, splintering...fear. The Colorados, one way or another, retained the legislature and used that body to depose Lugo basically without a hearing or even an investigation, in about a 24 hour period. Lugo abdicated to prevent bloodshed (such as occurred and is occurring in Honduras) but he soon described it as a coup d'etat and voiced his objections to this assault on Paraguay's democracy.

Lugo is known as a great peacemaker, as well as the beloved "bishop of the poor." Having followed his career for some time, I'd say that he would not risk a single life to stay in power, even with just cause to resist. I imagine that he's counting on pressure from the surrounding democracies to help put things right in Paraguay, and it is, indeed, a vitally important moment for the strength and unity of the leftist governments, leaders and peoples, and for all of South America and Latin America. With the left in the lead, Latin America has declared its independence in numerous ways, recently, and over the last decade. They have had spectacular successes--such as the growing prosperity and dramatic reduction of poverty in countries with leftist governments, due to "New Deal"-type policies of the left; in their defiance of "Wall Street's" dictates; in the assertion of an independent foreign policy, and--in a particular event--their unified action to prevent a U.S.-funded/organized coup of white separatists against the popular Evo Morales government in Bolivia in late 2008. They have also had failures--most notably, the U.S. funded/organized coup in Honduras.

But Central America is a much more highly contested region--U.S. versus democracy. There are some quite vulnerable U.S. targets there--El Salvador, Nicaragua, both with leftist governments. South America, aside from the bloody mayhem in Colombia (funded with $7 BILLION in U.S. taxpayer money) has strong and cooperating leftist governments throughout the region, except for Chile, which has always been something of a outlier in South America and may re-join the leftist alliance when they get rid of their singularly unpopular rightwing/corporate president in the next election. (They had a socialist government through most of 2000s but the word is that it wasn't leftist enough and got punished by the voters staying home, because of too many compromises with the right and the 1%.) Paraguay was notably weak, as a democracy, compared to the other countries with leftist governments in South America Analysis of Lugo's election was that he was the ONLY figure in Paraguay who could pull the notoriously splintered leftist parties together--political groups, as I pointed out above, who had been decimated by 60 years of persecution. He won, but the highly entrenched Colorados were merely biding their time, apparently--and so was the U.S. and the transglobal monstrosities and war profiteers that our government serves.

It is utterly naive to think that the U.S. was NOT involved in this coup and to demand "evidence" before even countenancing that thought. The U.S. is notorious not only for conspiring on rightwing coups and supporting rightwingers in every way, in Latin America, but also for its SECRET machinations, and, though the Bushwhacks hardly disguised what they were doing, Leon Panetta (Bush Senior close associate) is a subtler, old-fashioned CIA type player. OF COURSE the U.S. was involved in this coup--to protect Monsanto's and other U.S. and allied corporate interests, to assert the Pentagon's interests (Lugo opposed U.S. troops on the ground in Paraguay--the coup government immediately started making deals for just that), and to create a launching pad for U.S. interference in the region (as Honduras once was--during the Reagan horrors--and is becoming once again). Honduras and its fake "constitutional crisis" was the prototype for Paraguay, for godssakes. It is no doubt outlined in a secret USAID template with a PowerPoint presentation, designed by some private succubus on the U.S. taxpayer in luxury offices in Washington DC, and is buried so deep that we, the people, may get a gander at it fifty years from now. But we can--and must--make educated guesses NOW, if we want to understand U.S. government policy and how it is made and for whom.

I don't quite understand your distinction between a military dictatorship and a rightwing dictatorship, in this case. What point are you trying to make? That rightwingers were not responsible for the Stroessner dictatorship? They most certainly were. You're saying the rightwingers were "victims"? That, because there was "no discourse," they really can't be held responsible for the murderous silencing of the left? That...um...because they were given unfair advantage in "political discourse" by brutal oppression of opposing voices, they really can't be held responsible for their unfair advantage?

That's what I'm getting from your comments. Please correct me if I'm wrong. The rightwing political PARTY in Paraguay, the Colorado Party, SUPPORTED Stroessner's dictatorship and helped him run FAKE, fraudulent elections that gave THEM entrenched power and vast wealth. They were not helpless. They were not victims. They were co-conspirators in the violent oppression of their own people. It was political policy to do this: the rich get richer, the poor get tortured, murdered and silenced. There was "no discourse" because the Colorado Party didn't want there to be.

This is where rightwingism combined with transglobal corporate monstrosities like Monsanto and war profiteers like those running the Pentagon inevitably leads. It is NOT "conservative" in any sense (if that is the definition problem you are having). It is radical fascism--and it has reared its ugly head again in Paraguay, in this new form: fake "constitutional crisis," precipitous and indefensible removal of the elected president, return of the U.S.-friendly rightwing to executive power. Can the wanton murders of trade unionists and other advocates of the poor--that we have seen in Colombia and that we see unfolding in Honduras--be far away? And, even if these rich bastards and their transglobal friends don't get quite so monstrous this time, in Paraguay, what of social justice, what of the poor in Paraguay--one of THE poorest countries in Latin America--what of the rule of law, what of democracy?

[robinlynne]

14. I'm saying it WAS a military dictatorship pure and simple. Elections were yes or no.

there was no other candidate but Stroessner on the ballot.
I went there once during the dictatorship. It was freezing cold and most people had no shoes. There was no middle class, barely a working class.
There were huge mansions and poverty. Nothing in the middle. Stroessner was not elected. I went to the American embassy for shelter, and to get out.
it was in a huge mansion. They said they would register my name in case I disappeared. They would not let me sleep there.

party? There may be a party in name only . It was pure dictatorship, supported by the US, like all the other Latin American dictatorships.
Party implies that there is more than one, that there is a discourse. Poor Paraguay is the poorest country in Latin America, just like Haiti in the Caribbean. Brasil and argentina waged wars against Paraguay, and there were almost no men alive in Paraguay for a generation every time there was a war from the two giant neighbors.

What I'm saying is that fascism is different than political discourse. Dissidents are murdered. There is no discourse. And the dictatorships in Latin America would not have survived without American military strategies and finance.

Of course there was huge opposition to the Nazis in Germany, but there was no political discourse. Fascism does not permit discourse.