Ex-Bishop Leads Left-Right Coalition as Paraguay's New Leader

What an amazing achievement for Fernando Lugo and his party, the right and the left of them! Let's look forward to a better future for Paraguay.
ASUNCION, Paraguay: The world's longest-ruling political party lost its six-decade grasp on power in Paraguay with the presidential victory of a former Roman Catholic bishop.
Opposition candidate wins presidential election in Paraguay
Political newcomer Fernando Lugo, a charismatic 56-year-old who resigned from the church to run for president, put an end to the Colorado Party's 61-year reign in Sunday's election, rallying voters against political corruption and economic disarray.
Emerging from a 1947 civil war, the Colorado Party was marked by the right-wing dictatorship of the late Gen. Alfredo Stroessner until his ouster in 1989.
Lugo said Monday that his first priority would be to help Indians mired in poverty and to seek more revenues from Brazil from a dam on a river border between the two nations.
[...] The triumph of Lugo's eclectic opposition coalition — the Patriotic Alliance for Change — is the latest in a series of electoral wins by leftist, or center-left, leaders in South America.
Mark Weisbrot, at the Washington think tank Center for Economic and Policy Research, said Lugo's election is a sign of "deep and irreversible ... changes sweeping Latin America."
The U.S. on Monday signaled willingness to work with the new government. State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters that the elections are a "step forward" after Paraguay's "rather difficult history in terms of the development of democracy."
[...] But Lugo faces many challenges: 43 percent of the country's 6.5 million people live in poverty, illiteracy is high, 300,000 landless peasant farmers are clamoring for help and Paraguay's corruption is notorious. Lugo, who has never held public office before, forged his anti-Colorado coalition just eight months ago.
[...] Lugo became a bishop in 1994 but resigned the post in December 2006 to sidestep Paraguay's constitutional ban on clergy seeking office. He says he is neither on the left nor the right and has distanced himself from the region's more radical leaders, such as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.
Eight months ago, Lugo melded leftist unions, Indians and poor farmers into a coalition with Paraguay's main opposition party, the conservative Authentic Radical Party. [Attention, K-Mart Shoppers! We have a winning product in Aisle Paraguay!] He now vows to use his five-year term, which begins Aug. 15, to right economic problems dating back decades.
About 100,000 Paraguayans are identified as Indians from 17 ethnic groups, according to the most recent national census. Lugo is fluent in the Guarani Indian language, an official language in Paraguay alongside Spanish
Associated Press Writer Pedro Servin contributed to this report.
http://iht.com/articles/ap/2008/04/21/news/Paraguay-Election.php
For more on this region, see November 17, 2007, Sinister or Silly? Bush Buys Paraguay Property

Sinister or Silly? Bush Buys Paraguay Property

Keep your ears open for this story.
Hideout or Water Raid?
Bush's Paraguay Land Grab
By CP News Wire
Asuncion, Paraguay.
The land grab project of U.S. President George W. Bush in Chaco, Paraguay, has generated considerable discomfort both politically and environmentally.
The news circulating the continent about plans to buy 98,840 acres of land in Chaco, Paraguay, near the Triple Frontier (Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay) is the talk of the town in these countries.
Although official sources have not confirmed the information that is already public, the land is reportedly located in Paso de Patria, near Bolivian gas reserves and the Guarani indigenous water region, within the Triple Border.
..Concern increased last week with the arrival of Bush's daughter, Jenna, and a source from the Physical Planning Department saying that most of the Chaco region belongs to private companies.
http://www.counterpunch.org/cp10202006.html
Here's another source on this hard to find story from BBC News:
Tuesday, 10 September, 2002, 16:37 GMT 17:37 UK
Frontier in terror spotlight
By Andrea Machain, In Paraguay
The so-called Triple Frontier is a border area shared by three South American countries -Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, with a reputation as a centre for drug trafficking and money laundering
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2248487.stm
Why would Bush want to live where terrorists hang out? Searches for this story have brought dead ends, Cuban sites that "can't" be entered, stories about 9/11 and other oddities. Considering what we know about the Bush family, I doubt anything good will come of it.
CNN -- INSIGHT, Aired November 7, 2002 - 17:00:00 ET
The border region between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay has long been known as a classic frontier region where people who want to disappear loiter and where the shops are awash with smuggled goods.
But in recent years, there have been allegations that the area isn't just a collection of freewheeling border towns, but a major center for groups the United States considers terrorists. Now claims that it's from this area that the next major attack against United States interests will originate.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0211/07/i_ins.01.html
I'm getting way over my head now. I implore anyone knowing more about this to please post comments and/or contact me. Here's the last link I can stomach today:
Exclusive: Breaking 9-11 scandal
Feds knew about 9-11 bribery conspiracy before attacks
by Tom Flocco
Khalil bin Laden linked to evidence of terrorism in Brazil’s Triple Border region?
…According to a German news report, seven weeks after the September 11 attacks Brazilian police placed Khalil bin Laden--brother of Osama, under investigation due to reports of his visit in September, 2001 to a province near the tri-border region of Brazil-Paraguay-Argentina--an area suspected as a site for Hezbollah terrorist training camps, according to Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA). (12-03-2002) The results of that investigation have not been publicly revealed. And the Joint Congressional Intelligence Committee and 9-11 Commission have never mentioned Khalil or his ties to Triple Border's suspicious connections to terrorism.
"The region is the Hilton of Islamic extremism. It’s been on the radar since the early 90’s but no one’s done anything about it," said Magnus Ranstorp, director of the Centre for the study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Fife, Scotland. (Vanity Fair, December, 2002)
Ranstorp added "the day after September 11, the CIA had a team of investigators [in Triple Border] there," continuing, "Brazilian authorities have intercepted numerous phone calls from clandestine telephone exchanges in Triple Border and Afghanistan [from cell phones in caves?] and last year a CNN reporter in Kabul found a large tourist poster from Triple Border at an al Qaeda safe house in Afghanistan."
According to U.S. cable television terrorism analyst and author of the Vanity Fair piece--Sebastian Junger, "Triple Border is now a thriving nexus of drugs, weapons, and money-laundering operations," adding "the Paraguayan consul [stationed] in Miami, Florida was recently arrested for allegedly selling a batch of 300 passports to foreigners--including terrorist suspects from the Middle East, who planned to move to Ciudad del Este, Paraguay."
Junger said "bank records show that a Lebanese businessman and shopping mall owner in Ciudad del Este named Assad Ahmad Mohamad Barakat....has transferred thousands of dollars to Hezbollah over the years," while Junger also revealed that "in [Barakat's Paraguay] office the police found scores of copies of an al Qaeda promotional video--providing yet more evidence that Khalil bin Laden’s links to terrorism allegations in Brazil should have been well worth exploring before the White House let him leave the U.S. after the attacks.
Vanity Fair and Junger said another Moroccan named Gueddan Abdel Fatah--incarcerated in Sao Paulo, handed a typed letter to attorney Edith Espinosa at the prison just six days before the September 11 attacks--and begged her to give it to the Federal Police in Brazil in the presence of U.S. Embassy and Israeli diplomatic officials.
In the letter, Fatah said "there were going to be ‘two explosions’ in the United States in the near future," but Espinosa neglected to pass the letter along, while Fatah said "he had gone to Triple Border the year before and had attended meetings at a mosque in Foz do Iguacu where Shiite and Sunni Muslims--ordinarily enemies--talked openly about ‘blowing up’ the United States."

…Whistleblower Retaliation

[Mary] Schneider said she specifically contacted other key government officials before the September 11 attacks: Immigration & Naturalization Service (INS) Office of Internal Audit Director John Chase, The New York Joint Anti-Terrorism Task Force, INS Internal Audit Assistant Director Sue Armstrong on August 9, 2001, Ft. Lauderdale DOJ Office of the Inspector General Special Agent-in-Charge Alan Hazen six times, and Miami INS District Director Robert Wallis and Deputy District Director John Bulger on Nov. 1, 2000--less than a year before 9-11. Both have since been promoted despite failing to take action before the attacks.

Because she repeatedly alerted multiple federal officials, Miami U.S. attorney Guy Lewis and Congress about terrorist threats, Department of Homeland Security whistleblower Mary Schneider is currently being harassed, threatened with termination after 30 years federal service--but prior to pension benefits, issued unsatisfactory work evaluations based on trumped up allegations, had her official whistleblower status recently revoked by the courts, and had her Title VII civil rights violations lawsuit against Attorney General John Ashcroft dismissed just one day prior to jury selection in a manner similar to FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds.
Instead of promoting Schneider and giving her a raise for attempting to protect the American people, current congressional oversight permits the executive branch of govenment to commit what amounts to financial and emotional attrocities against a loyal and honorable federal employee.
http://www.tomflocco.com/fs/FedsKnewAbout911.htm