June 8, 2007         The Editors of ECrisis watch with scorn and revulsion as the Correa administration launches its second wave of foul misinformation campaigns targeted at the U.S. Congress in its run up to the end of June U.S. congressional vote on a U.S. taxpayer give away to Ecuador to reward its support for counternarcotics efforts even as illicit narcotics and human trafficking/transshipments soar with no visible effort at any meaningful reduction from Correa's team.All past ATPDA extensions have been predicated/based on the existing BiLateral Investment Treaty (BIT) with Ecuador and respect for standard norms of international law. As Rafael Correa states boldly on his administration's web page, the Correa team has no interest in supporting the CIADI arbitral systems nor in upholding any revisit to the BIT.
 
We insist that Rafael Correa and his team cease their misleading misinformation campaign across Washington, D.C. The people of Ecuador should review how much money the government has spent on paid lobbyists such as Sandinista and Aristide supporter Paul Reichler, Fenton Communications whose paid propaganda supports for Chavez is well known ,and Roger Noriega. It is Ecuadorean monies being spent and the citizens should know what is going on. On June 6, 2007 their Embassy team of propagandists hosted a top drawer, very expensive event at the University Club in Washington to further lobby the already in the pocket U.S. Democratic party staffers who have bought the false line that the "poor" are best served under Rafael Correa and his promise to shred normative, legitimate relations with the USA and the EU. While we cannot blame anyone for enjoying an expensive meal- a very expensive meal, it is shameful that "the poor" of Ecuador are feeding fat cats who willingly believe the pap they are handed.
 
Minister Espinosa claims that based on a one hour meeting with Secretary Rice in Panama that they are "new best" friends- which she calls a new "empathy." We remind "the Minister" that Condoleeza Rice may not herself agree with standard Ecuadorean theories of manipulating information and friendships, which is in and of itself repulsive although it seems to be a national past time across Ecuador these days. We have observed Rice and find her to be a woman whose persona; characteristics and principles appear to include core principles. We suspect that Rice would maintain a healthy, honesty about what friends really are. Honest friends, grown in more than one hour, are always engaged in mutually supportive endeavors. In this case, Minister Espinosa has literally and figuratively embraced Chavez and his unholy take over of Venezuela and his dysfunctional outlook on breaking all common sense regarding Latin America and Iran. If Minister Espinoza is truly a friend to Rice, why has she not once defended Secretary Rice's principled position regarding Chavez's theft of RC TV and his disgusting, sick jokes about Rice? Why does la Ministra think that Hugo Chavez is so embraceable?  Minister Espinosa lies when she says that Rice is her new best friend. Manipulative friends such as the Minister are no friends at all. Friends do not manipulate or lie, no matter what the political excuse.
 
As reported in El Comercio today, see here, Ecuador's Foreign Affairs Minister is said to have "calmed" the U.S. Congress and charmed them in to supporting her spate of lies that Ecuador is a full ally of the USA when nothing could be further from the truth. Apparently, the Council of the Americas itself has been charmed by their old friend. What Chris Sabatini is doing, along with Dan Fisk of the NSC and others to encourage their old boss in his paid adventures, do look as if they too have abandoned common sense about Ecuador while ignoring the fact that Ecuador has installed an unholy marriage of dysfunction and criminality with Hugo Chavez and his goons plus Iran, while booting out legal justice systems and ousting legitimate congresspersons at gunpoint.The Correa team supports stealing billions from U.S. companies while profiteering from causing harm to U.S. bond holders and crafting additional harms to Wall Street, which of course is harming Ecuador itself.
 
Chairman of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, Rangel also appears to have succumbed to criminal violations of his high post. That is- Rangel has forgotten to perform not only due diligence but justify the budgeting of precisely why the USA should give away lots of money to Ecuador which itself is no friend to the USA in word or deed. Rangel has seemingly bought the "We love Aristide and we love Fidel Castro" propaganda play book, with no real data in his hands except paid propaganda from the same group that gas bags around about Castro and the glorious revolution ....against the USA. Charlie Rangel would do well to start by asking Minister Espinosa why she thinks CHE! was such a great leader, why her adminitration has vowed to Castro to install a replica of the Cuban gulag in Ecuador, and why Ecuador has fully enmeshed its sovereignty with the Chavez bloc of drug runners and democracy murderers. It would be a good place to begin.
 
As it is, Rafael Correa of Ecuador has destroyed his nation already and actively pays to lie about the conditions inside Ecuador. Direct foreign investment (DFI) has dried up. Private business see that access to capitol is increasingly denied them or is so expensive that it is prohibitive. (See Miami Herald story here). Ecuador's risk premiums are the highest on the 2 hemispheres of the Americas. Correa's position, as noted inside his so called Ph.D. thesis, is that global markets are evil and that socialism is great. Today, Correa believes that it is patriotic to cause harm to Wall Street, the financial engine of the USA. Why Charlie Rangel would give away U.S. tax dollars to such a regime will create voter revulsion in 2008.
 
We insist that Correa and his ministra come clean and reveal across the USA what they say and do inside Ecuador and the region. We demand that the dual track lobbying efforts: one message for their home grown radicals and another message to assuage/manipulate the U.S. media and the U.S. Congress be denounced for what it is...lies. We also remind that it is against U.S. laws to lie to the U.S Congress. These adolescent manipulations from the Correa team have gone too far. It is time to tell them to grow up and stop  manipulating feckless, well padded Democrats from the pro Chavez action rolls.
 
- The Editors, Ecrisis