Bush & Paraguay: a resource-rich Colonia Dignidad for C21st criminals

[Jan Klimkowski]

Fascinating updates from Wayne Madsen, with a great map at the url:

http://www.cco.net/~trufax/general/bush_...ay_up.html

Bush Family Paraguay Hideaway Update: WMR's Paraguayan sources have confirmed that George W. Bush recently bought 42,000 hectares (over 100,000 acres) of land in Paraguay's northern "Chaco" region.

The land, near the town of Chaco, sits atop huge natural gas reserves, according to sources in Asuncion. Moreover, the land deal was consummated in a dinner meeting between Bush's daughter Jenna and Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte. Although Jenna, who was in Paraguay under the cover of a 10-day UNICEF trip to visit child welfare projects, put the Bush family seal of approval on the land deal, the actual legal papers were worked out by Bush family lawyers and business representatives. Jenna Bush is supposedly working for UNICEF in Panama City. The Bush land is close to a new U.S. military installation, the Mariscal Estigarribia Air Base. It is also nearby a huge tract of land purchased by Sun Myung Moon that sits astride Latin America's largest water aquifer, the Guarani aquifer. According to earlier Madsen reports, Bush and the Carlyle Group are also the owners of major tracts of land along the proposed US super-highway linking Mexico and Canada, land that will be worth hundreds of millions more when the highway is completed.

Neo-Con Escape Plan to Paraguay? Fascists seem to have a penchant for escaping to this place. Apparently Bush and cronies are allegedly buying land down there .. "An Argentine official regarded the intention of the George W. Bush family to settle on the Acuifero Guarani (Paraguay) as surprising, besides being a bad signal for the governments of the region...Luis D Elia, undersecretary for the Social Habitat in the Argentine Federal Planning Ministry, issued a memo partially reproduced by digital INFOBAE.com, in which he spoke of the purchase by Bush of a 98,842-acre farm in northern Paraguay, between Brazil and Bolivia." Related Article: Bush Buys Land in Northern Paraguay

CIA Fact book Data: Paraguay

The unruly region at convergence of Argentina-Brazil-Paraguay borders is locus of money laundering, smuggling, arms and illegal narcotics trafficking, and fundraising for extremist organizations

major illicit producer of cannabis, most or all of which is consumed in Brazil, Argentina, and Chile; transshipment country for Andean cocaine headed for Brazil, other Southern Cone markets, and Europe; corruption and some money-laundering activity, especially in the Tri-Border Area; weak anti-money-laundering laws and enforcement

Fantastic subversive use of the CIA Factbook in the service of Truth by Wayne Madsen...

Our paranoid friends over at Bring It On have put together a story that hasn’t exactly made Washington Whispers. It’s real short and real simple:

* The Cuban news service reports that George W. Bush has purchased 98,840 acres in Paraguay, near the Bolivian/Brazilian border.

* Jenna Bush paid a secret diplomatic visit to Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte and U.S. Ambassador James Cason. There were no press conferences, no public sightings and no official confirmation of her 10-day trip which apparently ended this week.

* The Paraguayan Senate voted last summer to “grant U.S. troops immunity from national and International Criminal Court (ICC) jurisdiction.”

* Immediately afterwards, 500 heavily armed U.S. troops arrived with various planes, choppers and land vehicles at Mariscal Estigarribia air base, which happens to be at the northern tip of Paraguay near the Bolivian/Brazilian border. More have reportedly arrived since then.

What the hell, after the jump. Plus a BREAKING UPDATE involving, of course, The Moonies!

Now, Prensa Latina is a Cuban-government operation that is not exactly friendly toward Washington, what with Washington trying to kill Castro for 50 years and all.

But Prensa Latina didn’t invent the story. It’s all over the South American press — and not just Venezuela and Bolivia.

Here’s a version from Brazil.

Here’s one from Argentina.

And here’s one from Paraguay itself.

As far as we can understand, all the paperwork and deeds and such are secret. But somehow the news leaked that a new “land trust” created for Bush had purchased nearly 100,000 acres near the town of Chaco.

And Jenna’s down there having secret meetings with the president and America’s ambassador to Paraguay, James Cason. Bush posted Cason in Havana in 2002, but last year moved him to Paraguay.

Cason apparently gets around. A former “political adviser” to the U.S. Atlantic Command and ATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic, Cason has been stationed in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Panama … basically everywhere the U.S. has run secret and not-so-secret wars over the past 30 years.

Here’s a fun question for Tony Snow: Why might the president and his family need a 98.840-acre ranch in Paraguay protected by a semi-secret U.S. military base manned by American troops who have been exempted from war-crimes prosecution by the Paraguyan government?
Here’s a little background on the base itself, which Rumsfeld secretly visited in late 2005:

U.S. Special Forces began arriving this past summer at Paraguay’s Mariscal Estigarribia air base, a sprawling complex built in 1982 during the reign of dictator Alfredo Stroessner. Argentinean journalists who got a peek at the place say the airfield can handle B-52 bombers and Galaxy C-5 cargo planes. It also has a huge radar system, vast hangers, and can house up to 16,000 troops. The air base is larger than the international airport at the capital city, Asuncion.

Some 500 special forces arrived July 1 for a three-month counterterrorism training exercise, code named Operation Commando Force 6.

Paraguayan denials that Mariscal Estigarribia is now a U.S. base have met with considerable skepticism by Brazil and Argentina. There is a disturbing resemblance between U.S. denials about Mariscal Estigarribia, and similar disclaimers made by the Pentagon about Eloy Alfaro airbase in Manta , Ecuador. The United States claimed the Manta base was a “dirt strip” used for weather surveillance. When local journalists revealed its size, however, the United States admitted the base harbored thousands of mercenaries and hundreds of U.S. troops, and Washington had signed a 10-year basing agreement with Ecuador.

BREAKING, UPDATE, LITTLE SIREN GRAPHIC:

We’ve been directed to yet another parapolitical theory here at Rigorous Intuition, where it is reported that Rev. Moon bought 600,000 hectares — that’s 1,482,600 acres — in the same place: Chaco, Paraguay.

Another twist: The first story, from Paraguay, apparently refers to the senior George Bush as the owner of the 98.840 acres in Moon’s neighborhood.
Bush 41 was the first bigshot politician to go prancing around with Rev. Moon in public. Especially in South America:

“In the early stages of the Reagan Revolution that embraced the Washington Times and Moon’s anti-Communist movement, it was embarrassing to be caught at a Moon event,” wrote The Gadflyer last year. “Until George H.W. Bush appeared with Moon in 1996, thanking him for a newspaper that ‘brings sanity to Washington.’” That was while on an extended trip to South America in Moon’s company. A Reuters’ story of Nov 25 of that year describes the former president as “full of praise” for Moon at a banquet in Buenos Aires, toasting him as “the man with the vision.” (And Moon helped Bush out with his own vision thing, paying him $100,000 for the pleasure of his company.) Bush and Moon then traveled together to Uruguay, “to help him inaugurate a seminary in the capital, Montevideo, to train 4,200 young Japanese women to spread the word of his Church of Unification across Latin America.”

Isn’t that special?

Oh, and both the Moonie and Bush land is located at what Paraguay’s drug czar called an “enormously strategic point in both the narcotics and arms trades.” And it sits atop the one of the world’s largest fresh-water aquifers.

Bush Family-98,842 acres and a Mule [Bring It On]

Bush Paraguay Land Grab Incites Unease [Prensa Latina]



Secret Invasion: US Troops Steal into Paraguay

By W.T. Whitney Jr

12/29/05 "ICH" -- -- The Bush administration has sent troops into Paraguay. They are there ostensibly for humanitarian and counterterrorism purposes. The action coincides with growing left unity in South America, military buildup in the region and burgeoning independent trade relationships.

In a speech on July 26 in Havana, Fidel Castro took note of the incursion and called upon North American activists to oppose it. In that vein, an inquiry is in order as to why the US government has inserted Paraguay into its strategic plan for South America. In addition, we should look at factors that favor Bush administration schemes for the region and others that work against US plans.

In December 2004, the Bush administration canceled $330 million in economic and military aid to 10 South American countries. They were being penalized for turning down a US request for granting its soldiers immunity from prosecution for crimes they commit within the countries’ borders.

On May 5, however, the government of Paraguay took the bait. It signed an agreement authorizing an 18-month stay, automatically extended, for US soldiers and civilian employees. The previous limit had been set at six months. On May 26, in a secret session, Paraguay’s Congress passed legislation protecting US soldiers from prosecution for criminal activity, both within Paraguay and by the International Criminal Court.

Reportedly, 400 or 500 US troops – estimates vary – arrived in Paraguay on July 1, with planes, weapons, equipment and ammunition. They are billeted at a base near Mariscal Estigarribia, a small city located 200 kilometers from the Bolivian border in the arid, sparsely populated Chaco area of Paraguay. That facility, built by US contractors in the waning years of the Stroessner dictatorship (1954-1989), offers a runway long enough to accommodate large military transport planes and bombers. It provides barrack space for 16,000 troops.

Journalist and human rights activist Alfredo Boccia Paz, stated in Asuncion that immunity from prosecution for US soldiers, extension of their stay, and joint military exercises all provide the groundwork for the eventual installation of a US base in Paraguay. He quoted Argentine Nobel Peace laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel: “Once the United States arrives, it takes it a long time to leave. And that really frightens me.”

The US embassy in Paraguay declared that the United States has “absolutely no intention of establishing a military base anywhere in Paraguay” and “has no intention to station soldiers for a lengthy period in Paraguay.” The government of Paraguay seconded that notion. Brazil, however, responded. In late July, its army undertook military maneuvers along that country’s border with Paraguay. Paratroopers staged a mock occupation of the Furnas electrical substation, located on the Brazilian border with Paraguay.

Paraguay’s vice president, Luis Castiglioni, met with Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and former Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs Roger Noriega last July in Washington. Observers suggested that this welcoming committee was unusually high-powered for a visiting vice president of a small South American nation. According to Rumsfeld, experts would soon be going to Paraguay to develop a “planning seminar on systems for national security.” The secretary visited Paraguay in August. The FBI announced that it would be opening an office in Paraguay in 2006.

The official US version of the Paraguay initiative is that for the next 18 months, in addition to joint military exercises, 13 US military teams would be working on humanitarian aide projects, provide counterterrorism and police training and ameliorate the effects of poverty. It turns out that US military personnel have been providing medical care for poor peasants in a northern province since 2002. Boccia Paz commented: “These missions are always disguised as humanitarian aid.… What Paraguay does not and cannot control is the total number of agents that enter the country.”

There is of course no shortage of US bases in Latin America. They are located in Guantánamo, Cuba; Fort Buchanan and Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico; Soto Cano, Honduras; and Comalapa, El Salvador. New US air bases are situated in Reina Beatriz, Aruba; Hato Rey, Curacao; and Manta in Ecuador. The latter was officially described as a weather station on a dusty road, until it came out that a full-fledged air base had materialized on the site at a cost of $80 million. Washington also operates a network of 17 land-based radar stations (three in Peru, four in Colombia, plus 10 mobile radar stations in secret locations.) All of these installations come are under the control of the US Southern Command, based in Miami.

The US rationale for converting Paraguay into a military satellite is worth exploring. For one thing, Washington is responding in catch-up fashion to mounting popular resistance in the region to US bullying. In neighboring Bolivia, for example, two US-friendly presidents have been chased from office in the past two years. And mass opposition to the US-backed candidate in last December’s national election was no exception to the trend.

There’s more. Paraguay’s neighbor, Uruguay, put a social democrat into the presidency in 2004, and last February President Kirchner of Argentina violated world financial orthodoxy when his government negotiated a 60 percent cut in Argentina’s $82 billion debt obligations. Both Argentina and Brazil have quietly rejected the FTAA. Paraguay has joined them in the South American Common Market (Mercosur), which shelters its members from US and International Monetary Fund dictates. For Paraguay to defect would serve US ends.

Washington took major exception to declarations emanating from a gathering March 29, 2005 of Brazilian, Colombian, Venezuelan and Spanish heads of state at Ciudad Guayana, Venezuela. They had discussed the use of raw materials and regional trade patterns to combat poverty and secure peace in South America. A few weeks later Washington was miffed when its candidate for the secretary generalship of the Organization of American States was rejected. And right under the US nose, Latin American nations are coming together to form Telesur and Petrosur, continent-wide television and energy corporations, and developing banking services that serve people’s needs.



Natural resources may also figure into the US motivations for expanding its military presence in South America. One branch of the main opening for a huge Bolivian natural gas field apparently crosses the international border and is accessible in Paraguay at the Independencia I site, not far from Mariscal Estigarribia. If US troops occupied the base there, they would be in striking distance of the Bolivian provinces of Santa Cruz and Tarija, where US natural gas corporations are active. Bolivia will soon be voting on autonomy for the provinces. A “yes” vote is expected to result in privatization. In the event of civil unrest following that outcome, the corporations could call for military protection.

The military base overlies the Guarani aquifer, one of the world’s largest underground fresh water reserves. Already water wars have riled Bolivian politics. Oligarchic interests in both the United States and South America have great longings to advance the process of turning water into a commodity.

The Bush administration has an additional interest in Paraguay through its war on terrorism. The so-called triple border, where Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay meet along both sides of the Parana River, is the storied locus for smuggling, money laundering, commerce in child prostitutes, counterfeit operations, and fixing of illegal border crossings. Some 20,000 Middle Eastern, Muslim expatriates, most of them Lebanese in origin, live in Ciudad del Este on the Paraguayan side of the river and Foz do Iguacu in Brazil. The cities supposedly are centers for Islamic extremism and sources of funding for terrorist groups. Al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah operatives reportedly have passed through the area, and training camps, sleeper cells, and passport factories are said to be located there. After September 11, 40 FBI agents joined Paraguayan colleagues to investigate some of these networks. Dozens of suspects were arrested. US military authorities advertise their operatives moving into Paraguay as experts in counterterrorism.

US meddling in South America has great potential to add to existing tensions in the region as it adds its might to ongoing South American military expansion. According to Uruguayan Raúl Zibechi, an expert on the continent’s military landscape, South America is experiencing unprecedented military growth. Nations there have reacted to the excesses of US Plan Colombia and to new military modalities, particularly the privatization of military forces on display in Columbia. They are also attempting to emulate Brazil’s new posture of strategic military autonomy. And, as is their habit, ruling circles in many countries, following Washington’s lead, respond to social unrest through military expansion.

In December 2004, Venezuela agreed to buy 110,000 Kalashnikov rifles, 33 helicopters and 50 fighter-bombers from Russia. Spain supplied Venezuela with naval aeronautical material, 10 transport planes, and four coast-guard cutters. Venezuela will be buying 50 training and combat jets from Brazil. Venezuela earlier this year activated a two million-member reserve component of its national military force.

Yet according to the journal Military Power Review Venezuela comes in at sixth place among South American nations in terms of military strength. Brazil is far in the lead; Peru places second; Argentina, third; followed by Chile and Colombia.

Increased military power, operating in tandem with nationalist stirrings, may inhibit US military meddling. Brazil, for example, with its own strategic defense plan and brisk economic growth, is an unlikely US acolyte. The nation is the 10th largest industrial power in the world and has become the world’s fifth largest arms exporter. Brazilian industry builds warships, several types of fighter jets, and is constructing a nuclear submarine. And to facilitate its expanded trade with China, Brazil is paying 70 percent of the $1 billion cost of a 1,500 mile long highway that extends from Peruvian ports to Santos on Brazil’s Atlantic coast.

Brazil recently sent military planners to Vietnam to learn about guerrilla war. The head of Brazil’s Amazon military command, General Claudio Barbosa, has predicted that Brazil may in the future face wars similar to the war that convulsed Vietnam and the one transpiring in Iraq now. The priority would be guerrilla warfare, “an option the army will not hesitate to adopt facing a confrontation with another country or group of countries with greater economic and military power.” What nation could the general be thinking of?

Brazil opposes Plan Colombia. The nationalist orientation of its industrial leaders persuaded them to put off joining FTAA. Brazil has no US bases on its soil, nor does Brazil engage in joint military exercises with the United States. Military cooperation between Brazil and Argentina apparently is flourishing, and in February, Brazil signed strategic accords with Venezuela. The Brazilian example of independent pursuit of national interests has emboldened other South American nations.

The single-minded pursuit of national interests, however, may work against popular struggle and Latin American unity. Analysts agree that Brazil and Argentina’s preoccupation with internal interests has created a power vacuum that encouraged Washington to court Paraguay successfully. Relations between the two nations have long been plagued by trade clashes.

Ideally, Brazil might have utilized its economic power to further Latin American unity and ward off predatory US behavior. Instead it operates according to free market rules and, unlike Venezuela, looks for salvation through from the US-led world market economy, distancing itself from Latin America’s agenda. Worse, jostling for market advantage creates divisions that lay the region open to tactics of divide and rule.

The Herculean labors of unified democratic struggle elsewhere in Latin America point to strategies through which Bush scheming and US military probing in the region might be resisted.
The example of the FARC-EP, in its survival and apparent growth, has meaning for revolutionaries far beyond Colombia’s borders. The organization now maintains a presence in nearly 100 percent of the municipalities in Colombia, and, according to Monthly Review, “with the exception of Cuba, [the FARC-EP] has become the largest and most powerful revolutionary force – politically and militarily – within the Western Hemisphere.”

Chávez forces in Venezuela, under the aegis of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), have fused the twin causes of Latin American unity and social justice. Mass protests in Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, even Chile keep empire minders in Washington on edge. The point here is that growing solidarity on the part of US activists with struggles throughout Latin America may act as a brake on US meddling in Paraguay.

Opposition likely will materialize within Paraguay itself. In recent years peasants there have mounted protests against privatization, economic restrictions imposed by the International Monetary Fund, unfair land holding patterns, and antiterrorism legislation.

There is no lack of awareness. Orlando Castillo of the human rights group Servicio Páz y Justicia recalls that, “US soldiers taught torture and other forms of human rights violations in courses at the School of the Americas.” He warns that “the United States has strong aspirations to convert Paraguay into a second Panama for its troops and is not far removed from reaching its objective of controlling the Southern Cone.”

While attending the 2nd Jubilee South World Assembly in Havana, Sixto Pereira of the Paraguayan Initiative for People’s Integration told Cuban-based Prensa Latina:

We demand the abolition of regulations that harbor and give impunity to Pentagon troops. It is a demand in favor of Paraguay and Latin American integration.

Pereira indicated that mobilization against the presence of US troops is gaining momentum in Paraguay.

Mariscal Estigarribia is a town in the Boquerón Department, Paraguay. It is located at around 22°1′60″S, 60°37′60″W, close to the borders of Bolivia and Brazil.

A military training agreement with Asunción, giving immunity to US soldiers, caused some concern after media reports initially reported that a base housing 20,000 US soldiers was being built at Mariscal Estigarribia within 200 km of Argentina and Bolivia, and 300 km of Brazil, near an airport which could receive large planes (B-52, C-130 Hercules, etc.) which the Paraguan Air Forces do not have. [1] [2]. The governments of Paraguay and the United States subsequently declared that the use of an airport (Dr Luís María Argaña International)[1] was one point of transfer for few soldiers in Paraguay at the same time. According to the Clarín argentinian newspaper, the US military base is strategic because of its location near the Triple Frontera between Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina; its proximity towards the Guarani aquifer; and, finally, its closeness toward Bolivia (less than 200 km) at the same "moment that Washington's magnifying glass goes on the Altiplano and points toward Venezuelian Hugo Chávez—the regional demon according to Bush's administration—as the instigator of the instability in the region" (El Clarín [2]). In October 2006, US President George W. Bush was reported to be negotiating for purchase of a 400 km² ranch in this region[3][4].

More at the link...