Bush caught purchasing property in Paraguay

The RAT is jumping ship.

Kay, I dont know much about George Bush but, I wouldnt mind purchasing some property for me and you to live in.. what do you think?

Well, if you had nominated me for GLP poster of the year, I might have considered it... but you didn't so forget it!

i bet there is either oil or diamonds on that land.

Or both. The Bushes are nothing if not opportunistic.

Didn't a couple of Sharon cronies buy large tracts of land in Patagonia a few years ago?

Say, where is that triangle that is supposed to be full of Al Qaeda? Isn't it at the border of these three countries? Right where he bought this land, if I'm not mistaken.

Er..., darn, it is!

I have ton of property Mista Bush can buy! Cheap!

Quote

I have ton of property Mista Bush can buy! Cheap!

Great find! Wow. Is this reported anywhere else?
Two things come to mind
1. Exploiting natural resources
2. Nazis have always flocked to South America

Quote:

The Tri-Border Area (TBA) that binds Puerto Iguazu, Argentina; Ciudad del Este, Paraguay; and Foz do Iguacu, Brazil, is another center of lawlessness and lucrative criminal activity in South America that includes Russian and Asian gangs, in addition to South American criminal syndicates. Hezbollah is reported to operate extensive operations involving fundraising and money laundering amidst the region’s sizeable Arab community in the TBA...


[link to www.jamestown.org]

[link to en.wikipedia.org]

US Military in Paraguay: Threatening the Left and Eyeing Gas and Oil in Latin America

by Benjamin Dangl

Preparations for renewed US intervention in Latin America are underway. To protect its hegemony and economic interests, the US government is using the threat of terrorism as an excuse for military operations aimed at destabilizing leftist movements and governments and securing natural resources such as oil and gas.

By focusing on land reform and social programs such as education and healthcare, many of the new leaders in Latin America have put the needs of the people ahead of the demands of multinational companies. This leftist resurgence in the region makes corporate investors and other champions of the free market nervous. Recently, the George W. Bush administration has gone to extreme measures to check the resurgence.

Hundreds of US troops arrived in Paraguay on July 1st for secretive operations and are believed to be populating a military base 200 kilometers from the Bolivian border. Political analysts in the region believe this questionable activity is part of a strategy to quell popular uprisings in Bolivia -- where upcoming presidential and and national assembly elections are expected to favor a leftist candidate -- and take over the country's vast gas reserves.

Bush administration officials blame left-leaning "instability" in Latin America, particularly in Bolivia, on funding and support from President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Fidel Castro in Cuba. Lately, Bolivia has gone through politically tumultuous times; protests against plans to privatize the country's gas reserves have ousted two presidents in two years.

President Chavez says his oil-rich country is targeted for US intervention. Recent US allegations that the leader is fomenting rebellion in Latin America may be a prelude to it.

"Unhelpful Ways"

On the plane to Paraguay, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld discussed the alleged Cuban and Venezuelan roles in Bolivia: "Any time you see issues involving stability in a country, it is something that one wishes would be resolved in a democratic, peaceful way," but "[t]here certainly is evidence that both Cuba and Venezuela have been involved in the situation in Bolivia in unhelpful ways" (U.S. Department of Defense, "News Transcript," 16 August 2005).

Speaking to reporters on the same trip, a top Rumsfeld aid charged that Cuba had "reactivated its underground networks throughout the region, particularly in Bolivia" and warned that Cubans were "providing political guidance, stimulating street violence and attempting to discredit the country's democratic institutions" (qtd. in Jim Shultz, "Bush Brings the False Intelligence Game to South America," Venezuelanalysis.com, 1 September 2005).

However, US officials have yet to offer any evidence to support their allegations, citing concerns that doing so would reveal secret sources.

A Bolivian president ousted by popular protests might have been expected to be the first to claim that rebellion in his country is funded and supported by leftist leaders abroad. That's not the case, however, with ex-president Carlos Mesa, who was driven from office by massive protests in May 2005. In an interview with the Argentine paper Clarin, Mesa said that though sympathies between Chavez and protest groups in Bolivia are widely known, he "had not seen any evidence of Venezuelan interference" ("US behind Bolivia Crisis -- Chavez," BBC, 13 June 2005):

{SNIP)

Terror and Resource Wars

"What is the U.S. government looking for? . . . They're looking for oil. This is part of the [energy] crisis that is looming in the horizon," said Venezuelan President Chavez when commenting on US foreign policy during an interview conducted by Democracy Now! ("Hugo Chavez: 'If the Imperialist Government of the White House Dares to Invade Venezuela, the War of 100 Years Will be Unleashed in South America,'" 19 September 2005) . This impending energy crisis may direct much of the Bush administration's policies in Latin America, where the "threat of terrorism" offers a convenient excuse for securing natural resources.

Many in the US mainstream media are using rhetoric of "counter-terrorism" to President Chavez as a dangerous influence in the hemisphere. While interviewing the Venezuelan leader on ABC News ("Transcript: Hugo Chavez Interview," 16 September 2005), Nightline host Ted Koppel asked, "I've been told by contacts of mine in the US intelligence community that you have members of Al Qaida . . . who are allowed to operate within Venezuela. Not true?" Chavez, of course, responded, "It's absolutely false." But what matters to Washington is only that the media keep raising questions of terrorism -- regardless of Chavez's answers to them.

The US is predictably seeking to justify its current military presence in Paraguay by citing Islamic terrorist activity in the triple border region where Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina meet, an area home to the largest water reserves in the hemisphere. In March, William Pope, the U.S. State Department's principal deputy coordinator of counterterrorism, said that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed is believed to have visited the tri-border area for several weeks in 1995.

A military base in Paraguay believed to be used by US forces is 200 kilometers from Bolivian natural gas reserves, the second largest on the continent. The fact that the military operations coincide with an upcoming presidential election in Bolivia has also been a cause for concern among activists in region. Bolivian Workers Union leader Jaime Solares, and Movement Toward Socialism Legislator Antonio Peredo, have warned of US plans for a military coup to frustrate the elections. Solares said the US Embassy backs rightwing ex-President Jorge Quiroga in his bid for office, and will go as far as necessary to prevent any other candidate’s victory. According to the most recent polls, leftwing candidate Evo Morales is leading the presidential race.

(SNIP)

Benjamin Dangl has worked as a journalist throughout Latin America and is the editor of www.UpsideDownWorld.org, an online magazine about activism and politics in Latin America. |

i don't know why some people keep tring to paint hitler and bush with the same brush... perhaps it is an inability to grasp hystorical subtleties... let alone the glaring differences...

i don't know why some people keep trying to paint hitler and bush with the same brush... perhaps it is an inability to grasp hystorical subtleties... let alone the glaring differences...

re: MERCOSUR:

Puerto Iguazú, Argentina, July 8, 2004—

Finally, after eight years, five protocols, and a decade of applications and frustrated attempts, Venezuela joins the Common Market of the South (Mercosur). Venezuela was admitted as “associate member” number four, this July 8, during a marathon meeting of the presidents’ summit that took place in the Argentinean city of Puerto Iguazú, on the border with Brazil and Paraguay.

Mexico received “observer status” in Mercosur, while the small print is fixed, which would allow it to join as well.

For the government of the “Bolivarian Revolution” this is a political and diplomatic triumph, perhaps its most important since the reconstruction of OPEC, between 1999 and 2000. The best expression of this reality we received from a high official in the Argentinean foreign ministry, who told us, off the record, “Now what will they accuse Venezuela of? It is our ally in Mercosur. We will not forget the generosity of its supply of gasoline our energy crisis this past February."

This is enough to make sense of the happy faces of the participating heads of state in Iguazú, who refuse to support the isolation that the U.S. is submitting Venezuela to in the United Nations, the OAS, and the international media.

The entry of Venezuela into Mercosur is more valuable diplomatically, at this moment, than its membership in the OAS, where the U.S. would like to isolate Venezuela with the Democratic Charter.

The membership institutionalizes, in a sub-regional context, Venezuela’s tight new economic and political relations with Brazil and Argentina. The doubling of trade with Argentina and the tripling with Brazil will be sustained from now on a supra-state level.

Chavez summed up this new institutional reality in a phrase with strategic content: “We want to see in our ships, in our pipes, in our medicines, and in other goods the words, ‘Made in Argentina’ or Made in Brazil’ instead of ‘Made in the U.S.A.’”

The Venezuelan Dimension of Mercosur

When the meeting ended, today, July 8, the salutes to the Venezuelan president were visible, for an association that the presidents of the summit evaluated as their most recent diplomatic triumph. But each salute was differentiated by the degree of closeness of distance to the nationalist leader. The coldest were those of Jorge Batlle, the president of Uruguay, and of Ricardo Lagos, the president of Chile.

The first is an incorrigible neo-liberal, while Lagos has maintained a position that is distant from the Bolivarian process, above all since 2003, when the Venezuelan president said he dreamt of “bathing on a Bolivian beach in the Pacific,” in a clear gesture of support for the Bolivian claim against Chile, for access to the sea.

Venezuelanalysis.com was able to register declarations from several of the heads of state. Brazil’s president told us, “Venezuela will be a fundamental element in giving Mercosur a new dimension.” His strongman in South American politics was even more emphatic: “Without the entry of Venezuela and soon of Mexico, Mercosur would not have a clear destiny.”

Argentinean president Kirchner told us, as Chavez was leaving for the countryside outside of Buenos Aires, for a rally with workers, that “for Argentina it is not only an honor, it is above all a necessity to have Venezuela with us, so as to deepen the changes that we want to bring about.”

For his part, President Meza of Bolivia emphasized, “the new political dimension that President Chavez and his government will imprint upon Mercosur.” The Bolivian president considers that “a new phase has begun for Mercosur and President Chavez has much to contribute and to do with this.” More effusively, Paraguay’s president: I salute “a great advance in Venezuelan diplomacy and its entry into the [trade] block, which we have been waiting for.” The others were more aloof.

The agreed upon formula was that of the Economic Complementation Agreement (ACE, in its Spanish acronym). Under this agreement Bolivia joined in 1995, Chile in 1996, and Peru in 2003. Popularly this is known as the “four plus one” formula. The four founding countries are Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay, on March 27, 1991, via the treaty of Asunción.

This would allow the Venezuelan economy, among other things, to trade with tariffs that are three times lower among a list of products that could exceed 500 in a first phase. In addition, it would facilitate special co-investment agreements in infrastructure and strategic projects such as satellites, ships, a TV channel of the South, medicines, food and combustibles. At this moment, 19 Argentinean businesses are negotiating with Venezuelan authorities for projects to install laboratories and industrial plants on Venezuelan soil. Five hundred business people from both countries will meet on Margarita Island on July 23rd, for the Venezuela-Argentina Mega Business Round.

the rest here:

[link to www.venezuelanalysis.com]

Oh, come on. Do you think Bush would move his family down to a war zone?

These guys are obviously in bed together. Smelling sulphur, indeed!

Sure!

Europe Intelligence Wire/October 14, 2004

Paraguay -- The Reverend Moon has carved out a section of Paraguay that is twice the size of Luxembourg. Seamus Mirodan went to see it

Reverend Sun Myung Moon, spiritual leader of the Unification Church, self-proclaimed Messiah, multimillionaire and a generous contributor to the US Republican Party, has been showing a strong interest over the last five years in little-known Paraguay at the centre of the South American continent.

Since 1999, Rev Moon has built his personal empire which begins on the marshy banks of the River Paraguay and stretches beyond the hazy, level horizon through 600,000 hectares of arid land - equivalent to more than two Luxembourgs - punctuated by solitary clusters of withered trees and sad bushes which struggle desperately for air.

The scorching sun beats relentlessly on one of Latin America's most desolate zones. It is here in the northern province of Chaco, directly above the GuaranI aquifer, the largest resource of fresh drinking water in the world, where Moon's associates claim he wishes to build an ecological paradise.

Nevertheless, national Senator Domingo Laino sees a different pattern in Moon's acquisitions. "There are two principal branches to Moon's interest in Paraguay," he said, "control of the largest fresh drinking water source in the world and control of the narcotics business", which is so prevalent in this area. "President Lula told me that Brazil took serious measures to curb Moon a few years back as it became evident that he was buying up the border between our two countries," said the senator.

[link to www.rickross.com]

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.”

[link to www.politicalaffairs.net]

No way. You made that up. I don't believe it. It is too funny, too comical, too... far out!

Oh, we have to have the rest of that rickross article - it is too much!:

Allegations from local law enforcement officials support this claim. The so-called Dr Montiel, Paraguay's drugs tsar from 1976-89, said: "The fact that they came and bought in Chaco and on both sides of the Brazilian border is very telling. It is an enormously strategic point in both the narcotics and arms trades and indeed the available intelligence clearly shows that the Moon sect is involved in both these enterprises."

Paraguay is the major drugs port through which virtually all the cocaine produced by Bolivia and Peru passes. In the world's second most corrupt country, "the ease of buying influence is second to none", said Montiel. "Corruption reaches dangerous levels and he who wants transparency in Paraguay is a dead man. Indeed the famous Iran contra affair was operated from Ciudad del Este" on the south-east Paraguayan border with Argentina and Brazil.

Not content with expanses of potentially invaluable land, Rev Moon has also taken over entire towns, including factories and homes. In Puerto Casado, tensions between Moon disciples and locals led to violent confrontation over the last year following the closure of the only source of work, a lumber factory, and the dismissal of 19 workers who tried to form a union in order to demand an eight-hour day and the national minimum wage of GBP80 sterling per month.

According to Senator Emilio Camacho: "The Moon sect is a mafia. They seek to subvert government control and are effectively building a state within a state. I believe they are hoping the local population will leave so they have unquestioned authority in the zone and are free to do whatever they want."

This is not the first time such accusations have been levelled against Rev Moon and his associates in South America. Last June, the Chilean government refused to recognise the sect as a religious association and accused them of being "a danger to society". An aid to the Chilean Interior Minister described Rev Moon's ideology, somewhere to the right of the Taliban's Mullah Omar, as "profoundly anti-communist, xenophobic and with a marked Nazi inspiration". Venezuela and Honduras have expelled the cult.

Rev Moon's South American adventure began in 1994 during a fishing trip. Rev Jung Min Hong, vice-president of Victoria S.A., said: "A golden El Dorado fish jumped into his boat. The reverend was awestruck by its beauty and decided that he must invest here for love of the environment, in order to protect nature."

Having decided to buy land in the area, he first visited (according to local Zeta magazine) the city of Pedro Juan Caballero in the province of Amambay. Provincial governor Mr Roberto Acevedo said: "This is the Mecca of the narcotics trade where dealers live with complete immunity. They own judges, the police, even politicians."

Rev Moon travelled there with Fermin De Alarcon, a Spanish financier, in the latter's private jet. Mr De Alarcon tried unsuccessfully to sell the religious leader his Banco General and is currently a fugitive from the Paraguayan justice system after withdrawing all the funds in that and other banks before disappearing.

Rev Moon bought the Banco de Credito in 1996, in nearby Uruguay, the banking hub of Latin America. On the day of opening under its new ownership, the Uruguayan bank employees' union blew the whistle on a suspected money-laundering scheme after a procession of 4,200 Japanese women, all Moon-followers, allegedly deposited up to $25,000 each in cash. By the end of business that day, $80 million had been deposited.

The same year saw the inauguration of Rev Moon's local media empire: Tiempos del Mundo, a newspaper distributed in the majority of the major capitals across South America. At the opening of the offices in Buenos Aires, George Bush snr was guest of honour and referred to Rev Moon, one of his major benefactors at the time of his first electoral campaign, as "a man of honour". Indeed the reverend forged strong links with the Republican Party, not least by opening the Washington Times in 1982, estimated to lose some $50 million a year and once described by Bush as "so valuable in Washington, where we read it every day".

From Amambay, Rev Moon moved across the border to the town of Ponta Pora in the southern Brazilian province of Mato Grosso do Sul, famous for its vast marijuana plantations. He bought nearly 200,000 hectares and built a "model city" called the New Hope Garden. He also owns a hotel there in the city of Porto Mortinho, home to Fahd Yamil, who Governor Acevedo described as "the Vito Corleone of the zone. He commands the price of everything and everyone who operates in the zone has to pay him for protection."

In 1999, the Brazilian federal police launched an investigation into the involvement of Rev Moon's associates in money-laundering and tax evasion, amidst accusations of drug-running. By October of that year, he had down-sized his operation in Brazil and bought land in Paraguay. According to local landowners, everything was paid for in cash, often for more than it was actually worth.

Construction began immediately on a new model city, Puerto Leda. Reverend Sano, the secretary-general of Rev Moon's Foundation for Sustainable Development, which has its base in Leda, claimed only $4 million was invested to build everything from a landing-strip to a power plant. The town is also equipped with a 25-metre swimming pool and its own police and navy stations, even though Rev Sano claims it is only home to 10 Japanese sect members.

Rev Moon's first involvement in the continent came during the late 1970s when his organisation donated the first $100,000 to Oliver North's Nicaraguan Freedom Fund. The religious leader was implicated in many of the so-called Contra scandals during the Reagan-Bush administration.

Rev Moon's ideology allowed him to cuddle up to many South American dictators during this era. Indeed, according to Bolivian intelligence reports at the time, he sought to recruit an "armed church" of 7,000 Bolivians receiving paramilitary training to support the infamous cocaine coup which brought Gen Carlos Meza to power with Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie running his security operations.

Asked about these activities, Rev Sano admitted his organisation was "very anti-communist ... The third world war will be fought between those who believe in God, namely democrats, and those who do not believe in God - communists."

==============================


Amazing!

I know I know. There is also a lot of interesting stuff about the old man Bush/Moon love relationship. Moonie spells money. Too much to post but they are

Check this out, it's a year later:

Rev. Moon offers land donation to avoid parcel's expropriation
EFE News Service/November 24, 2005

Asuncion, Nov 23.-- The firm representing the interests of South Korea's Rev. Sun Myung Moon in Paraguay is offering to donate 30,000 hectares (75,000 acres) of land to avoid the expropriation of almost twice that amount of the property he owns in the northern Chaco region.

In September, Congress voted to seize a property encompassing just under 52,700 hectares (130,000 acres) administered by Moon's Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity and located outside the town of Puerto Casado.

The offer to donate the smaller parcel was presented to President Nicanor Duarte and to Congress and also includes the joint exploitation of another 150,000 hectares (375,000 acres) of Paraguayan land owned by Moon, according to a letter signed by association president Jacob Thiessen and printed Wednesday in the daily Abc Color.

In the letter, Thiessen says that the Delaware-sized estate, which totals some 600,000 hectares (1.5 million acres), has not been exploited "rationally and conveniently" and that to provide a social solution to the inhabitants of Puerto Casado, Moon is offering to donate the 30,000-hectare zone which includes the town itself located on the Paraguay River on the border with Brazil.

The expropriated parcel forms part of the estate that Moon bought in 2000 from Argentine firm Carlos Casado. That corporation purchased the entire Paraguayan Chaco region totaling more than five million hectares (12.35 million acres, an area the size of Vermont and New Hampshire combined) in the late 19th century.

The dispute over the expropriation divided the 6,000 townspeople of Puerto Casado.



===================

Look how big that parcel of land is that Moon bought! It is the size of Delaware!

sounds like he is ready to bail.

The Gov. or CA, The Arnold, brought about 100,000 acres in Paraguay, about 1 year ago. The most fertile soil, fresh water, region is the country.

ouch! dam Le Norman you got told

so what!

he can buy anything he wants and so can you!

Here is a good overview:

US Base in Paraguay Protects Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Land

August 12, 2005
Wayne Madsen / Madsen Report

[link to www.envirosagainstwar.org]

WASHINGTON, D.(August 9, 2005) — With US troops currently protecting Halliburton’s oil operations in Iraq and the CentGas pipeline in Afghanistan, US troops are now being sent to Paraguay, complete with immunity from criminal prosecution by Paraguay or the International Criminal Court, to protect the millions of acres of Paraguayan water and land resources bought over the years by religious cult leader Sun Myung Moon.

It is not coincidental that Moon’s Unification Church has many followers within the Bush administration. Last month, 500 US troops arrived in Paraguay to expand the Mariscal Estigarriba air base to handle large US military transport planes. Moon’s land acquisitions in Chaco Province are just north of the huge Guarani aquifer, one of the world’s largest sources of fresh water.

In addition, Moon has acquired large tracts of land on the Brazilian side of the Paraguayan border. Local villagers in Paraguay and Brazil claim that most of Moon’s land acquisitions were fraudulent and illegal.

Moon’s World Unification Church operates in Paraguay under a corporate contrivance called the Victoria Company. Paraguay has also announced that everyone entering and leaving Paraguay will be photographed and fingerprinted. Not coincidentally, the new border control system is being financed by South Korea.

There is clearly a split within the Paraguayan government, with the Vice President and Pentagon neo-con ally Luis Castiglioni negotiating, along with a majority in the Paraguayan Congress, close bilateral military ties with the United States, apparently without the concurrence of President Nicanor Duarte. It is no coincidence that considering the oil-centric Bush administration, the Mariscal Estigarriba air base is close to large Bolivian natural gas reserves in the neighboring Bolivian provinces of Santa Cruz and Tarija.

The US move in Paraguay comes at the same time the US is stepping up its “counter-narcotics” operations from its Manta, Ecuador base and Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez is accusing the United States of using Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) personnel in Latin America as espionage agents trying to destabilize his government.

In addition, the Paraguayan military operations are seen as a Bush administration attempt to intimidate neighboring Bolivia, where MAS Socialist party and coca farmer (cocalero) leader Evo Morales is poised to become the next President in scheduled December elections after years of popular demonstrations which saw Bolivian workers and peasants deposing a series of pro-US presidents. A Morales government would add another anti-US and free trade government in South America, joining Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

So soon, the mothers and fathers of US military personnel will be able to take comfort in sacrificing the lives of their sons and daughters for a self-proclaimed Messiah, a non-English speaking Korean who claims to have saved the souls of Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, Buddha, Stalin, and Hitler and communicates regularly with others in his departed flock of adherents, including all the deceased Presidents of the United States (who, Moon claims, appointed Richard Nixon as their spokesman from the “hereafter”).

Copyright © 2005 Wayne Madsen Report
[link to www.waynemadsenreport.com]

Has Nancy said we should all move the South America?

I seem to recall something about it being safe...