Neighbors...
Paraguay in a spin about Bush's alleged 100,000 acre hideawayTom Phillips in Cuiab
Monday October 23, 2006
The Guardian
Meeting the new couple next door can be an anxious business for even the most relaxed home owner. Will they be international drug traffickers? Have they got noisy kids with a penchant for electronic music? As worries go, however, having the US president move in next door must come fairly low on the list.
Unless of course you are a resident of northern Paraguay and believe reports in the South American press that he has bought up a 100,000 acre (40,500 hectare) ranch in your neck of the woods.
The rumours, as yet unconfirmed but which began with the state-run Cuban news agency Prensa Latina, have triggered an outpouring of conspiracy theories, with speculation rife about what President Bush's supposed interest in the "chaco", a semi-arid lowland in the Paraguay's north, might be.
Some have speculated that he might be trying to wrestle control of the Guarani Aquifer, one of the largest underground water reserves, from the Paraguayans.
Rumours of Mr Bush's supposed forays into South American real estate surfaced during a recent 10-day visit to the country by his daughter Jenna Bush. Little is known about her trip to Paraguay, although officially she travelled with the UN children's agency Unicef to visit social projects. Photographers from the Paraguayan newspaper ABC Color tracked her down to one restaurant in Paraguay's capital Asunción, where she was seen flanked by 10 security guards, and was also reported to have met Paraguay's president, Nicanor Duarte, and the US ambassador to Paraguay, James Cason. Reports in sections of the Paraguayan media suggested she was sent on a family "mission" to tie up the land purchase in the "chaco".
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1928928,00.html The Welcome Wagon:
Paraguayans accuse Moon of carving out an empire of smack Senator Domingo Laino (above), a former presidential candidate, is charging the Unification Church with mischief.
Moon's agenda in Paraguay: Ecological paradise without labor laws, or one-stop narcotics supershop twice the size of Luxembourg? The question is explored in today's article from the subscription-only Irish Times, by reporter Seamus Mirodan of the UK's Telegraph.
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.
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.
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http://www.iapprovethismessiah.com/2004/10/paraguayans-accuse-moon-of-carving-out.html The action is where the water is. And if global warming goes haywire, like recent observations show outrunning even the most pessimistic models, Paraguay may be one of the few survivable parts of the planet. It certainly is defensible, which is where the Pentagon comes in.
US military presence in Paraguay irks neighbors
The Pentagon denies desire for a permanent base, but there are many skeptics. By Kelly Hearn | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
posted December 02, 2005
CUIDAD DEL ESTE, PARAGUAY – Outside the Jebay mall, a bustling hive of black market shops guarded by men with pistols and shotguns, a motorcycle taxista shouts from inside his helmet: "They want to control all this. They think terrorists are here."
"They" means the US military.
The recent arrival of US troops in this landlocked nation of 6 million is brewing fears of the repeat of cold-war intervention in the heart of South America. And in cabs, newspapers, courtyards, and restaurants throughout region, conspiracy theories about Washington's intentions are spreading like wildfire.
In May, Paraguay rankled neighbors by hosting 400 US troops for 13 joint military exercises that began this summer and will end in December 2006. Washington is paying $45,000 for each exercise, some of which are humanitarian, and Paraguay reportedly hopes to land $35 million in extra aid.
When President Bush arrived in Argentina for the Summit of the Americas last month, civic groups in Paraguay simultaneously announced a forum to address the US troop deployment in the country. Many here fear the troops are laying the groundwork for a permanent base similar to the Pentagon's Manta Base in Ecuador. But US and Paraguayan officials are vehement. "The United States has absolutely no intention of establishing a military base in Paraguay," said an official at the US Embassy in Asunción, Paraguay's capital.
Skeptics point out, however, that the US initially denied the Manta base would be permanent back in 1999.
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http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1202/p25s02-woam.html It's like theirs is an empire of evil, or something.