The Paraguayan Model

On June 22nd, Paraguay quickly impeached its leftist President, Lugo, and installed vice President Franco (from a right of center party), as the new President. A month later, the new President's government pushed forward negotiations with Rio Tinto Alcan for building a huge aluminum plant on the Parana River. It offered $700 million in infrastructure to enable the plant's construction, and agreed to thirty years of subsidizing its electricity supply from its two hydroelectric facilities, enough power to provide electricity to 9.6 million people, while many Paraguayans go without. All this for 2,500 jobs at a cost of about $560,000/job up front..

Former President Lugo had blocked Rio Tinto.

The former President had also blocked Monsanto's application to plant GM. Franco approved it, meaning that large-scale agriculture will continue to dominate the country, in tandem with Monsanto; the majority of landless peasants will continue to be excluded from landownership.

CBS played up, however, Franco's claim of issuing 79 land titles to landless people in his first 15 days in office, while the former government issued only 3 in six months, but it was the dispute over land reform that did in the former President. He had favored land reform, but had been unable to implement it, because of opposition by large landowners, including foreign corporations. The opposition blamed President Lugo for a confrontation between police and land occupiers in which seven police and 11 occupying peasants died. Lugo was impeached by Congress one day and expelled from office by the Senate the next, giving him only two hours to defend himself.

Large multinational corporations benefited from the change in government almost immediately. At the same time, Latin America's Mercosur governments, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and applying member, Venezuela have all denounced the "coup" and withdrawn their ambassadors.

The US pretends to be neutral, just as it was in Honduras, before recognizing the coup regime there, also a pro-business takeover.

Land ownership in Paraguay is even more extreme than the US's unequal distribution of wealth. Much of the land held by the elites was expropriated (sometimes violently) from campesinos who had lived and worked it; they held no legal title: it had been common land, or traditional landholding. Large tracts have been converted into agribusiness holdings, with widespread use of GM soy and intensive spraying of pesticides and herbicides. The toxins have literally driven out neighboring campesinos.

In both Honduras and Paraguay, their takeovers put a small elite, backed by foreign corporations, back in control after a short-lived challenge to their power.

Will the US do something similar through unlimited billionaire and corporate campaign funds? Paraguay looks more like Fifth Century Roman society than does the US, so the parallels between the US and Paraguay highlight US similarities to Roman Senators' takeover of all wealth and power prior to Rome's fall.

The World Map: Moral Decline of Empire

Amnesty's map is gray, so much of it, gray because people are arbitrarily imprisoned, tortured, and/or dissenters are violently repressed. There are a few white spots; France, Germany, Spain. Ironically, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary. And then there's Canada, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Australia, New Zealand.

The US is gray, as is the UK, China, India, Russia and South Africa, most of Africa, Asia and more than half of Latin America. Yes, America is not an exceptional island of humanity and civil liberties. Bolivia is, and so is Uruguay.

Two years after Obama pledged to close Guantanamo, it's still open for business, still holding people without charges and without justification. And there are still reports of abusive treatment of prisoners. June 3, 2009, Muhammad Ahmad Abdallah Salih succeeded in committing suicide, somehow, despite being on a suicide watch: he and five others had been force-fed through their noses for years.

And then, of course, there is Bradley Manning, who has been confined for almost a year now, has been held in solitary most of that time, with extreme isolation enforced (not even allowed to exercise in his cell, not even allowed clothes some of the time), yet he is still not charged--with anything! Many torture specialists say isolation like this is worse than physical torture; it melts the mind.

Until this spring, we also sent some of our detainees to Mubarak, have him overtly torture for us. Thanks, Hosni! Still, when the Egyptian Spring happened, we reluctantly climbed on and threw Hosni under the bus.

So, the US, even under Barack Obama, is no oasis of humanity. Canada is; Costa Rica is; Chile is; even Paraguay is, but it almost looks, when you look at this gray map of the world, that only minor nations, ones without imperial or regional ambitions--with the exception of France and Germany--can any longer "afford" to honor human rights.

Was there a time when an American President could truthfully say, "We don't torture," "We don't detain people arbitrarily?" FDR could boast the first, but not the second (the Japanese-American detainment camps), but after WWII we could boast both, with the possible exception of Vietnam, until George W. But now, still, with Obama, champion of human rights and peace, both practices are even admitted. Obama has drawn a line: excluding most direct physical torture, including water-boarding, but the treatment of Manning is on his watch, and it's torture, too: for an American citizen who has yet to be charged with a crime!

Such is the cost of Empire. Americans, struggling now to dominate the world, (remember Full Spectrum Dominance?) are now so insecure we have to torture our own to insure our "security." We have to give up our rights and allow our leaders to imprison and torture us arbitrarily (oh, there are rules and regs about how to do it, but still it's arbitrary).

This is life in the American Empire, in its rapid decline.