Escape Valve? Bush Buys 100,000 Acres on border of Paraguay & Brazil

Pimpin' Turtle:

Buenos Aires, Oct 13 (Prensa Latina) 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.

The news circulated Thursday in non-official sources in Asuncion, Paraguay.

D Elia considered this Bush step counterproductive for the regional power expressed by Presidents Nestor Kirchner, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Evo Morales, Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro.

He said that "it is a bad signal that the Bush family is doing business with natural resources linked to the future of MERCOSUR."

The official pointed out that this situation could cause a hypothetical conflict of all the armies in the region, and called attention to the Bush family habit of associating business and politics.


Additional Report from WMR:

October 23, 2006 -- George W. Bush's Paraguay land deal. 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 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. A troubling aspect of the land deal is the role played by James Cason, the US ambassador to Paraguay, in a private Bush family business venture. Cason is a career Foreign Service officer whose previous assignment was the head of the US Interests Section in Havana, where he managed to stir up tensions between the mission and Cuban authorities with his anti-Castro advertisements placed in the windows of the U.S. offices. Cason also has a long history of cooperating with the Defense Intelligence Agency in such locations as Honduras, El Salvador, Panama, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Cason also served as the Guatemala Desk Officer at the Department of State.

from Wiki: [link to en.wikipedia.org]

"The Guaraní Aquifer...is one of the world's largest aquifer systems...It is said that this vast underground reservoir could suppy fresh drinking water to the world for 200 years."

"US President George W. Bush allegedly has recently purchased a 98,842 acre farm in Chaco, Paraguay atop the aquifer.

The Reverend Moon has purchased 1,482,600 acres in Chaco, Paraguay."

For additional info re: Bush/Moon/Paraguay connection ---> [link to wonkette.com] *

"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?"

Good question! Why?


* hmmm... since both the original as well as google cached pages
of the Wonkette article referenced above have now been deleted
from Google, i will post 'my' saved copy from that link below:

Quoting: Wonkette:

We Hate To Bring Up the Nazis, But They Fled To South America, Too

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.

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

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.”

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.

Operation Commando Force 6, scheduled to go on until next month.

The whole package is part of a controversial military agreement between Paraguay and the United States endorsed by the Paraguayan Congress more than a year ago. The US Special Forces are guaranteed total immunity and diplomatic status. They are free to import and export, they don't pay any taxes, and what they trade is not subjected to any inspections. Contraband kingpins at the Triple Border would kill for a deal like that.