VIDEO of Chavez and Lugo singing "Todo Cambia" -check it out...

http://www.borev.net/2008/08/revealed_video_evidence_of_ven.html

As BovRev says, "As if you needed more proof that Latin America was backsliding into the 'dark nights of tyranny' or whatever, this SHOCKING VIDEO has emerged showing Hugo Chavez and Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo singing about their plot to 'change the world' at some shadowy leftist karaoke hoedown last weekend. 'Enjoy.'"

Off key, but hey...GO, REV!

Quite a world away from the burned out old farts playing to their "base" in Washington, like the vision of _{George W. Bush} rolling them in the aisles with his madcap imitation of himself looking for weapons of mass distruction, "They're not over there, they're not under there, etc."

So far away from the dazzling brilliance of K-K-Karl Rove and he lurched, staggered, rolled around aping rap singers, in his world-famous send-up, "I'm M. C. Rove." Oh, God, I never thought I'd stop laughing..... yeah, sure.

~~~~~

One great big, CELEBRATING, wildly happy audience. Very cool.

Found an account of the festivities in Asunción:

Fernando Lugo Presidency Brings Hope in Paraguay
by Clifton Ross / August 21st, 2008

~snip~
While they processed me, I watched Lugo on television which was on in the office, the image moving about on the screen from a distracted camera person, shooting from too great a distance from the stage where Lugo was speaking.

The taller woman noticed I was watching and she pointed at Lugo, his image dancing back and forth as the camera tried to find his focus.

“We love our president,” she said, and then she handed me my passport.

I took a cab the twenty or so miles into Asunción. I asked the driver what he thought of the new president. “Well, we’ll have to see, won’t we? But he has promised to give his presidential salary to the poor. That’s a first for this country. Maybe they’ll rob less than all the others.” He shrugged and turned back to focus on his driving.

We couldn’t get near the Plaza de Independencia so I got out seven or eight blocks away and walked to the plaza, passing blocks and blocks of soldiers filling the outlying streets. It looked more like a military coup than an inauguration.

I found myself walking beside a woman and her daughter who were also unfamiliar with Asunción and who had come in just for the celebrations. We were both lost so we stopped to ask a soldier. Her subservient posture, and the slight bow she made as she asked directions to the Plaza de Independencia, revealed that Paraguayans still haven’t fully recovered from their fear of the police and military who terrorized the country under the Stroessner dictatorship and over sixty years of one-party rule.

“Soldiers will never again be sent out to kill campesinos,” Lugo promised, but the uniformed men who passed through the crowds nevertheless drew quiet, suspicious looks. Their olive green uniforms still in some sense symbolized the forty-year-long Stroessner dictatorship.

By the time we arrived in the Plaza the inauguration had ended and a few minutes later the new President rode by, followed by guards on horseback.

Lugo had broken all protocol by dressing in sandals and a typical Paraguayan shirt, an aopo’i, and he began his speech in Guarani, the indigenous language spoken by over 95% of the people of Paraguay.

The leaders of the “Pink Tide” arrived in force, most notably Presidents Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa, Michelle Bachelet, Tabaré Vázquez, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. In addition, two elders of Liberation Theology, Gustavo Gutierrez and Leonardo Boff appeared, along with Fr. Ernesto Cardenal. Eduardo Galeano also made an appearance.

But more importantly, the plaza was full of tens of thousands of the people who had brought Fernando Lugo to power: the indigenous and campesinos from distant parts of the country as well as the slum dwellers who had ventured into the Plaza from their shacks made of cardboard, wood from pallets and roofed with corrugated fiberglass or sheetmetal held down by stones, old boards, rusting bicycle frames. These structures line dirt roads that twist down toward Rio Paraguana and house a large number of the quarter or so Paraguayans who live on something like one US dollar per day.

In the shade of the trees in the plaza people sat, sharing their maté tea, talking and laughing. I’d missed the elation of Lugo’s speech, but the crowd was still wearing smiles everywhere and people were posing for pictures they could carry away to remember the historic moment of transition when the Colorado Party fell from power after 61 years of rule.

Nevertheless, the sense of hope was anything but drunken or delirious. The people I met and with whom I spoke mentioned that they were indeed optimistic, but also cautious in their optimism, much like the taxi driver who had delivered me as close as he could to the plaza. “I’m hopeful that we’ll see changes here,” a young woman told me,”but we’ll have to see, won’t we?”

The crowd was composed of a broad mix of people from tribal indigenous to mestizo; well-heeled urbanites and campesinos in traditional sandals; businessmen in suits and street vendors in rags; young kids with piercings and tatoos and elders walking with the aid of their middle-aged children. Lugo’s support clearly crosses all lines drawn across Paraguayan society and he seems to have inspired a cautious optimism even among members of the Colorado Party.

I joined the crowd leaving the Plaza and by chance I ended up in a demonstration led by, and almost wholly composed of, members of the P-MAS Socialist Party (Movement toward Socialism Party). I was on my way to find a hotel at the time, so I was glad for the company. The young people who form the core of the P-MAS are among the most enthusiastic of Lugo’s supporters. Their party was founded two years ago to promote the Socialism of the 21st Century and it has grown dramatically, especially among the youth. Although they won no seats in the parliament (which the party attributed to fraud), several members won relatively high posts in the new government, including Camilo Soares, who was named Minister of National Emergencies, and two other members named as vice-ministers of culture and of youth.

That night I went to the free concert in front of the National Palace. The high point was the arrival of Chavez and Lugo, who took seats in the audience and eventually took the stage, not with speeches, but with poetry recitals and songs.

Chavez, of course, went first, reciting a long poem to Bolivar, “Por aquí pasa,” by Venezuelan Alberto Torrealba. Chavez was accompanied by the quintet of Venezuelan singer and member of parliament, Cristóbal Jiménez. Later, Chavez returned with President Lugo to sing a reggae version of Mercedes Sosa’s song, “Todo Cambia,” arranged by Lugo’s head of Security, Marcial Congo, a long-haired, bearded man who looked to be pushing sixty. The group accompanying them was led by rock musician Rolando Chaparro who had begun his set with a soulful rock guitar version of Paraguay’s National Anthem,

More:
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/08/fernando-lugo-presidency-brings-hope-in-paraguay/

Here's a google translation of the song, "Todo Cambia," by Mercedes Sosa:
Change the surface
Changes also the depths
Change the mindset
Change everything in this world

Climate change over the years
Change the shepherd his flock
And just as everything changes
To my change is not strange


Change the most brilliant fine
From hand to hand its shine
Change the bird nest
It changes the feeling a lover


Change the course walkers
While this will cause damage
And just as everything changes
To my change is not strange


Change everything changes
Change everything changes
Change everything changes
Change everything changes


Change the sun in his career
When the night remains
Change the plant and dresses
From green in spring


Changes coat the beast
Change your hair the elderly
And just as everything changes
To my change is not strange


But does not change my love
It is less that I find
Neither the memory nor the pain
From my people and my people


What changed yesterday
You'll have to change tomorrow
Just as I change
In this distant land


Change everything changes
Change everything changes
Change everything changes
Change everything changes


But does not change my love

Cambia lo superficial
Cambia también lo profundo
Cambia el modo de pensar
Cambia todo en este mundo

Cambia el clima con los años
Cambia el pastor su rebaño
Y así como todo cambia
Que yo cambie no es extraño


Cambia el mas fino brillante
De mano en mano su brillo
Cambia el nido el pajarillo
Cambia el sentir un amante


Cambia el rumbo el caminante
Aúnque esto le cause daño
Y así como todo cambia
Que yo cambie no es extraño


Cambia todo cambia
Cambia todo cambia
Cambia todo cambia
Cambia todo cambia


Cambia el sol en su carrera
Cuando la noche subsiste
Cambia la planta y se viste
De verde en la primavera


Cambia el pelaje la fiera
Cambia el cabello el anciano
Y así como todo cambia
Que yo cambie no es extraño


Pero no cambia mi amor
Por mas lejos que me encuentre
Ni el recuerdo ni el dolor
De mi pueblo y de mi gente


Lo que cambió ayer
Tendrá que cambiar mañana
Así como cambio yo
En esta tierra lejana


Cambia todo cambia
Cambia todo cambia
Cambia todo cambia
Cambia todo cambia


Pero no cambia mi amor

Here's a 30 minute sample of Mercedes Sosa singing "Todo Cambia:" Wow, what a voice!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/recsradio/radio/B000001FMF/ref=pd_krex_listen_dp_img?ie=UTF8&refTagSuffix=dp_img

On edit:
The author wrote that the Uruguayan author, Eduardo Galeano was there. He wrote an amazing book, which I got for Christmas and still haven't had time to read completely, yet. You would love it if you've not seen it, yet:

OPEN VEINS OF LATIN AMERICA
Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent

by Eduardo Galeano
Translated by Cedric Belfrage
New Introduction by Isabel Allende


“A superbly written, excellently translated, and powerfully persuasive expose which all students of Latin American and U.S. history must read.” — CHOICE, American Library Association

Since its U.S. debut a quarter-century ago, this brilliant text has set a new standard for historical scholarship of Latin America. It is also an outstanding political economy, a social and cultural narrative of the highest quality, and perhaps the finest description of primitive capital accumulation since Marx.

Rather than chronology, geography, or political successions, Eduardo Galeano has organized the various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five centuries of exploitation. Thus he is concerned with gold and silver, cacao and cotton, rubber and coffee, fruit, hides and wool, petroleum, iron, nickel, manganese, copper, aluminum ore, nitrates, and tin. These are the veins which he traces through the body of the entire continent, up to the Rio Grande and throughout the Caribbean, and all the way to their open ends where they empty into the coffers of wealth in the United States and Europe.

Weaving fact and imagery into a rich tapestry, Galeano fuses scientific analysis with the passions of a plundered and suffering people. An immense gathering of materials is framed with a vigorous style that never falters in its command of themes. All readers interested in great historical, economic, political, and social writing will find a singular analytical achievement, and an overwhelming narrative that makes history speak, unforgettably.

This classic is now further honored by Isabel Allende's inspiring introduction. Universally recognized as one of the most important writers of our time, Allende once again contributes her talents to literature, to political principles, and to enlightenment.

http://www.monthlyreview.org/openvein.htm

~snip~
Eduardo Galeano was born in Montevideo into a middle-class Catholic family of Welsh, German, Spanish and Italian ancestry. He was educated in Uruguay until the age of 16. "I never learned in school," he once said. "I didn't like it."

In adolescence Galeano worked in odd jobs - he was a factory worker, a bill collector, a sign painter, a messenger, a typist, and a bank teller. At the age of 14 Galeano sold his first political cartoon to El Sol, the Socialist Party weekly. Galeano's pseudonym was Gius. His first article was published in 1954.

At the age of twenty Galeano started his career as a journalist. He was the editor-in-chief of Marcha, an influential weekly journal, which had such contributors as Mario Vargas Llosa, Mario Benedetti, Manuel Maldonado Denis and Roberto Fernández Retamar. For two years he edited the daily Épocha and worked as editor-in-chief of the University Press (1965-1973). As a result of the military coup of 1973, he was imprisoned and then forced to leave Uruguay. By that time he had published a novel and several books on politics and culture. In Argentina he founded and edited a cultural magazine, Crisis.

Las venas abiertas de América Latina (The Open Veins of Latin America) made Galeano one of the most widely read Latin American writers. It was also the first book by the author to be translated into English. In the well-documented series of essays the central theme was the exploitation of natural resources of Latin America since the arrival of European powers at the end of the 15th century. The Open Veins of Latin America was written "in the style of a novel about love or about pirates", as the author himself said.

In 1975 Galeano received the prestigious Casa de las Américas prize for his novel La cancion de nosotros. After the military coup of 1976 in Argentina his name was added to the lists of those condemned by the death squads and he moved to Spain. Galeano lived mainly on the Catalan coast and started to write his masterpiece, Memory of Fire. In 1978 Galeano received again Casa de las Américas prize, this time for largely autobiographical work, Días y noches de amor y de guerra.

At the beginning of 1985 Galeano returned to Montevideo. During his exile, Galeano started to write Memoria del fuego, a story of America, North and South, in which the characters are real historical figures, generals, artists, revolutionaries, workers, conquerors and the conquered. Galeano started with pre-Columbian creation myths and ended in the 1980s.

More:
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/galeano.htm

In his book, "Open Veins of Latin America," Galeano mentions seeing a sign written on a wall of a building in South America:

"Let's save pessimism for better times."

SECONDS! Jeez. Quite a difference between half a minute and thirty minutes!

On edit:

Uh, oh, here we go! Here's a YouTube video of Mercedes Sosa singing "Todo Cambia!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ta2JOnnfi8k

What ignorant assholes we are, up here in the fabled "land of the free, home of the brave"!

Myself included.

I shall have to get that one

...a roughly translated poem). I shall try my hand, since writing poetry was my first love...

-----

Change changes everything


Changes the surface
Changes also the depths
Changes the mindset
Changes everything in this world.


The climate changes over the years
The shepherd changes his flock
And just as everything changes
My change is not strange


Change is brilliant, change is fine
It shines from hand to hand
Changing the birds in their nest
Changing the feel of a lover


Changes the path of the hikers
Sometimes causing damage
But just as everything changes
My change is not strange


Change everything changes
Change everything changes
Change everything changes
Change everything changes


Changes the sun as it careens
across the sky
Into abiding night
Changes the plants to cloth of green in spring


Changes the coats of the beasts
Changes your hair as you age
And just as everything changes
My change is not strange


But my love doesn't change
No less love do I find
In the memories and pain
Of my pueblo, my people


Whatever changed yesterday
We will find changed again tomorrow
Like the changes in me
In this faraway land


Change everything changes
Change everything changes
Change everything changes
Change everything changes

But my love doesn't change.

--Peace Patriot, transliteration of "Todo Cambia" by
Eduardo Galeano

which is a better rendition OF a literary work than a rough translation (such as Google's). A transliteration is based on the rough translation, and can be done by a good writer even if the writer doesn't know the original language well, or at all. This rough Google translation just needed a few tweaks to make it make more sense. I didn't take many liberties. I just guessed the writer's meaning, checked with the original as well as I could, and wrote what is a better song lyric in English, but may not be very exact as a translation. Google's version was really garbled.

which seems so large.

It's a deepening expression, isn't it? Opposite a materialistic, shallow view of life. That's what rushes us along here, sells products, "grows" our economy. Impulsive, thought-free living.

This poem/lyric evokes a distancing from the immediate appearance of things to find a deeper, truer anchor, a point of view.

You may remember at one point in the video, Lugo's head of security or something, who happened to also create the reggae arrangement of "Todo Cambia" (I don't recall his exact job designation), the man who stood to Lugo's right, turned and smooshed around Lugo's hair, and it irritated me as I was thinking he should remember who the hell's the President here. I think now he was probably illustrating the part of the song they were singing which describes the hair changing with age.

Your treatment of the lyric, capturing the gracious expansive calming positive large spirit needed to author this poem seemed to directly evoke a familiar presence encountered earlier within the most inspired, mystical, religious writing I've seen, with a sense of wonder, a voice which has always been there, in one way or another, in every intense focused transcendent writing. It's large, and self possessed, affirming, optimistic, assuring.

in a segment with Amy Goodman and Greg Grandin, whom you may easily have read many times on Latin American news:

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/19/inauguration_of_paraguays_new_president_fernando

Only takes 15 minutes to watch, or hear, or you can simply read the transcript. It's always a gift to hear another well-informed American discussing the subject at a time we've been starving for real information for YEARS.

He stresses that you really CAN'T separate the various Latin American leftist leaders into two categories, as the _Bush clowns attempt, the "good left" and the "bad left." Very cool hearing someone who knows what he's talking about, and then some, say that out loud. Hoo hoo hoo.

Oh, there's a clip with Evo Morales sending a welcome to Lugo. He says, "Welcome to the Axis of Evil." Very cool! The whole world knows who the evil people are by now, and it's useless for them to scream and point elsewhere.

http://www.filminamerica.com.nyud.net:8090/Movies/InvasionOfTheBodySnatchers1978/invasion23.jpg

:rofl:

:rofl:

Some background: If Paraguay was long considered remote, it was probably because its politics made it more than a little uninviting. The Lonely Planet travel guidebook sums up its recent, head-spinning history like this: " brief civil war brought the Colorado Party to power in 1949. Five years later, a military coup saw General Alfredo Stroessner installed as president. A vainglorious man, he employed torture, murder and bogus elections to remain in power for the next 35 years." When he "was overthrown in 1989, 75% of Paraguayans had known no other leader. Stroessner was replaced by General Andrés Rodríguez. Formerly Stroessner's right-hand man, he canceled the country's perennial state of emergency, eliminated censorship, legalized opposition parties and released political prisoners....The 1993 presidential election of Juan Carlos Wasmosy, a free-market zealot and former member of Stroessner's faction, inspired a number of nationwide strikes - he came under scrutiny for shady business dealings....In May 1998, the Colorado Party reconfirmed its staying power with the election of President Raul Cubas. However, he was accused of abusing his powers by freeing conspirator general Lino Oviedo from prison, despite orders to keep him there. When Vice President Luis Argaña was gunned down by assassins in 1999, popular sentiment linked Cubas and Oviedo to the murder and Cubas was forced to resign. Luis González Macchi was sworn in while Cubas and Oviedo fled to neighboring countries."

The travel guide adds: "In 2000, a judge ordered the extradition from Brazil of Alfredo Stroessner," but that never happened; instead, the notorious strongman died in exile in Brazil in 2006. "In 2002, President Macchi was charged with embezzlement but survived impeachment. On leaving government, he was put on trial on charges of corruption. Nicanor Duarte Frutos (another Colorado party member), came to power in April 2003 claiming he'd 'break the stronghold of the elite.'...Government efforts to implement free-market reforms were highly unpopular, leading to peasant-led land invasions in 2004. The same year, the wheels of justice turned against Oviedo when he was imprisoned upon his return from exile." The C.I.A. World Factbook notes that "Paraguay has held relatively free and regular presidential elections" since Stroessner was ousted in 1989. However, it describes the country as a "major illicit producer of cannabis, most or all of which is consumed in Brazil, Argentina, and Chile," and as a "transshipment country for Andean cocaine headed for Brazil, other Southern Cone markets, and Europe." The U.S. spy agency views the area where the borders of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet as "unruly." Marked by "weak border controls, extensive corruption and money-laundering activity," the region is a "locus of...smuggling, arms and illegal narcotics trafficking, and fundraising for extremist organizations," the C.I.A. reports.

Commentator Enrique Vargas Peña, writing in the Paraguayan paper La Nación, notes that the big challenge Lugo faces and that he must take on is that of busting the authoritarian attitude and behavior of the long-dominant Colorado Party and its honchos. He argues that they have always regarded government only as a "conquest" of power for its own sake to benefit a few, not as an institution by means of which to formulate and implement policies to benefit the many. To not grasp this "great lesson of Latin America of the last 70 or 80 years," Vargas Peña notes, would be to run the risk "of repeating the bloody cycle that have so definitively marked our continent.More:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=15&entry_id=29294

means "Everything changes". Think so anyway.

Much , much for the better.

Nice rhythm on that track : Reggae or Rocksteady ?

in a reggae form.

I was wondering why the guy thought he could just smoosh Lugo's hair like that, but apparently they're well acquainted, and Lugo doesn't lord his position over him.