!['Don't you know the boys from Brazil are little Hitlers? I saw it in a movie ... whose name I can't remember]( "'Don't you know the boys from Brazil are little Hitlers? I saw it in a movie ... whose name I can't remember")
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:
- 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 NATO’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]
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First daughter Jenna Bush is working as an intern for UNICEF in Panama, The Washington Post's "Reliable Source" column reports.
Rumors had circulated for months that the 24-year-old would be working south of the border as a teacher after she left her job as a Spanish-immersion instructor at a Washington, D.C.-area charter school in the spring. She spent her summer living with her parents in the White House.
A Panama City newspaper reports that Bush has been working for the United Nation's Children's Fund at its offices near the country's Pacific coast, says the Post.
The White House – which is traditionally mum on Jenna and her twin sister Barbara – would not comment, according to paper.
However, last week the Associated Press reported that Bush was in Paraguay to participate in a UNICEF program for young professional volunteers, and was due to be in the country for 10 days.
"The visit is strictly private in nature," UNICEF said in a statement. "She will get to know the UNICEF activities in Paraguay and some of the programs it cooperates in."
Local news media reported that the first daughter flew into the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion on a commercial flight. On her itinerary were dinner with Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte and his family at their official residence and a meeting with U.S. Ambassador James Cason.
