Senator Debbie Halvorson, Illinois Senate Majority Leader, has no opposition in the Democratic primary to win the open seat for Illinois’ 11th Congressional District.   This seat is open due to the late announcement by Republican Congressman Jerry Weller that he would not run again for the seat he won in 1994.  The Chicago Reader and Chicago Tribune had run damaging articles about his land dealings in Guatemala and Nicaragua and his marriage Zury Rios Sosa, the daughter of former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt.  See: http://www.chicagoreader.com/...

This is a short diary about Jerry Falwell's friendship with Efrain Rios Montt, genocidal dictator of Guatemala.  Maybe Efrain Rios Montt will show up at Falwell's funeral.  Open question: what sort of "friends" were they?

I’ll not apologize for the smile brought to my lips by Augusto Pinochet’s death this week. He deserved a trial, but, obviously, his protectors were going to make sure he never got one, So, adiós sin compasión to the beast. His final hours were a good deal more comfortable than those of his thousands of victims. If I could afford the flight, I’d shit on his grave ... except that his family took his ashes home to their ranch to avoid such acts of desecration.

My grim glee has been tempered because another mass murderer enabled by U.S. machinations and complicity and money, a man still very much alive, may Pinochet himself out of the grasp of justice. His name is José Efraín Ríos Montt, retired general and president of Guatemala, graduate of the notorious School of the Americas, and right-wing evangelical Christian who counts Pat Robertson as a personal friend. In the 18 months he headed the country after a CIA-backed coup d’etat in 1982, Ríos Montt presided over at least five times as many killings as Pinochet, and, with other generals, rained terror onto hundreds of Mayan villages and towns. Ronald Reagan, the sainted Republican icon, helped him do it and publicly defended him for getting a "bum rap" at the same time Ríos Montt’s soldiers were tying people’s thumbs behind their backs, shooting them in the head and dumping them in mass graves across the Guatemalan highlands and elsewhere. All in the name of crushing a communist guerrilla insurgency that arose because U.S. ideologues couldn’t stand to see democracy in Guatemala.

Today, Ríos Montt has it much better than Pinochet in his final years. He roams free as head of one of the country’s largest political parties, the Guatemalan Republican Front, and came in third in the 2003 presidential election. The good news is that he might not be free that much longer.

During the worst period of Guatemala's long internal armed conflict, Guatemalan security forces sought to exterminate large parts of the indigenous Mayan population, killing tens of thousands of civilians. A U.N. sponsored truth commission concluded that acts of genocide had been committed, "through methods whose cruelty has outraged the moral conscience of the civilized world."

General Ríos Montt headed the Guatemalan military government from March 1982 to August 1983. During that period, the government carried out a scorched earth campaign which resulted in the most extensive human rights violations of the 36-year internal armed conflict. He remains an influential and powerful politician in Guatemala.

NISGUA also does Human Rights work and Actions in Guatemala.

Take the poll here from the Morris Daily Herald Newspaper - alleged hometown of Congressman Jerry Weller, R-Guatemala. Then Please sign the Kankakee Voices petition asking Weller to step down from his seat as Vice Chairman on the International Relations Committee, Western Hemisphere. You don't have to live in the 11th congressional district of Illinois to sign, our congressman doesn't.

Today, we begin a new series--a two-parter on what is probably the most influential guy you've never heard of in dominionism (Paul Yonggi Cho--the head of Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul (which is the world's largest megachurch, with 780,000 members) and head of the World Assemblies of God Council.  

We are going to begin this series in a somewhat unconventional manner--beginning with my personal interest in researching Cho's part in being a promoter of dominionism and his connection with what is known as one of the darkest chapters in Guatemala's history--the genocidal rule of dominionist-preacher-turned-general Rios Montt and one of Montt's proteges nearly successful attempts to restore the Reign of Terror, and Ted Haggard's New Life Church--the same church that is the world headquarters of the National Association of Evangelicals.

Youth With a Mission, the Christian Right organization said to have helped fund "Path to 9/11," has long been interested in terrorism. In the past, they've supported it.

Sara Diamond, an established and respected Christian Right researcher, documented in her 1989 book "Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right" that YWAM was a key player in the Reagan administration's campaign to organize Christian Right support for a murderous regime in Guatemala...

Conflicts of interest and silence...

Today, the Chicago Reader, an alternative newspaper with a large circulation in the city, ran a front-page article on our Congressman here in Illinois-11, Jerry Weller.

Weller is the first elected official in United States history to marry a member of  a foreign legislature. Zury Rios Sosa is a third-term legislator in Guatemala's congress, and also has the distinction of being the second most powerful leader of the Guatemalan political party, FRG. There's a lot of questions surrounding the ethical problems Weller's relationship has produced...

Imagine for a moment what the Republican Party would do to Sherrod Brown if:

(1) His father in law was an indicted war criminal;
(2) His wife was the political advisor to an indicted war criminal; and,
(3) He met with both to determine US policy on CAFTA

Jerry Weller (R, IL-11), like Sherrod Brown, serves on the US House Committee for International Relations.  His father-in-law, Gen. Efriam Rios Montt was just indicted in Spain for his part in war crimes, including torture and extrajudicial executions, during the Guatemalan civil war. Now a US organization has joined in this legal battle. This should be a major issue in the upcoming election in Illinois' 11th Congressional District, where Weller faces challenger John Pavich.  More below the fold.

A Spanish judge Friday issued an international arrest order for two former Guatemalan military dictators, Efrain Rios Montt, (Congressman Jerry Weller's Father-in-law and head of the FRG, Weller's wife's politcal party) and Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores, along with five others accused of genocide during Guatemala's civil war.

A ruling by Spain's constitutional court in 2005 allowed its tribunals to hear cases involving crimes against humanity, even if Spanish citizens were not affected.

The director of the Rigoberta Menchu Foundation, Eduardo de Leon, said the failed attempt to hear testimony in Guatemala doesn't prevent the judge from continuing with the case. De Leon said the legal process in Spain wasn't going to stop because the hearings couldn't take place here in Guatemala. The judge has weighed the situation and decided to proceed in this way.