Mark Weisbrot Lies when he Reports that Correa's Government is the Most Honest Ecuadorean Government-Ever
July 27, 2007 Contrary to all fact based reporting, Mark Weisbrot serves up yet another convoluted and irresponsible propaganda piece in support of Chavez and company....that is the new group of neo-coms [governments claiming the virtues of communism but in fact are simply old fashioned criminal nations] currently running their governments like a cheap Russian mafia backed derivatives fund with all the hallmarks of same: gross malfeasance, internal self enrichment/state kleptocracy and full controls on all levers of government, including the media which is either shuttered, infiltrated or too lazy to do anything anyway. You know them by the company they keep: Iran, Libya, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Bolivia and of course their soul mates: Cuba and the FARC drug running Marxists. What Weisbrot tells us is that Rafael Correa is building a paradise for the poor of Ecuador when in fact, because of his ridiculously inept policies, Ecuador stands to lose over one half its GDP and is itself rated today almost on par with such states as Haiti and Zimbabwe for corruption, denial of basic liberties, non growth and failed quality of life. Rafael Correa will insure that these failed ratings get even worse.
What the GUARDIAN newspaper, itself not so different from the NATION or WORKERS DAILY, fails to do is to inform its readers that all indicators lead to the fact that Weisbrot has failed to disclose that he is a propagandist for the nation of Venezuela and possibly also receiving funding from the Chavez triad of interlinking drugs and thugs cartels called the Bolivarian axis. Worse yet, Weisbrot has also failed to inform the U.S. IRS that his tax free status should be cancelled for his interwoven money making scheme to serve as a paid mouth organ for a foreign nation, an economic advisor for a foreign nation and a general provocateur for non diplomatic Venezuelan actors hiding behind a thin veneer of diplomacy when in fact they should hastily enjoy their diplomatic credentials being revoked for the Venezuelans have no diplomats in the USA or in the UK- they have propagandists and infiltrators...not diplomats.
But Weisbrot forgets to inform the media, the US government and more importantly, the US IRS just how many meetings he takes with Chavez and his handlers. He also forgets to tell us why his non profit organization, so exquisitely linked with another person called a statesman by Insulza but of course is not....George Soros, strongly backs Weisbrot. Seeing no conflict of interest between the pro Chavez and pro Soros affiliations, the U.S. government continues to pour money in to the Soros non profit money making businesses {Soros's words...not ours]. Weisbrot is just one more Tokyo Rose- a shill for the new communists who are really more like a Russian mafia backed derivatives fund than a government.
Here is Weisbrot in the GUARDIAN telling us all basically that all of Ecuador's and Venezuela's media were disgusting and deserve to be shut down for the avenging angels of liberty for all....the Chavez-Castro angels of freedom.
Rafael Correa, all on his own, pledged to Fidel Castro his loyalty and promised to install in Ecuador a replica of Castro's Cuban paradise. And Weisbrot would call this a good thing. Weisbrot also overlooks the fact that Correa himself was elected because he lied to the voters of Ecuador and misled the people.
Weisbrot's revisionist history regarding Ecuador is specious. With no fact checking and certainly nothing even remotely resembling fact based reporting, Weisbrot tells us that Ecuador's economy- never robust- had failed for the last 25 years. Ecuador's economy, however bumpy, failed only once under Jamil Mahuad under the direct advice of his sole economic advisor Jeffrey Sachs at the urging of the Clinton's Peter Romero.
To say that Ecuador's economy has not had some upticks in 25 years would be news to Ecuadoreans, the World Bank and the Inter American Development Bank. Indeed, dollarization has saved Ecuadoreans from massive self inflicted inflation, removing one more problem of currency manipulation so jealously sought by currency vultures. But the U.S. Federal; reserve cannot help Ecuador's ruinous substandard governmental plans today to drive away investors, plunge credit in to the stratosphere and mark Ecuadoreans as slimy, dishonest manipulators for some years ahead. Ecuador has indeed seen cycles of economic growth and none in Ecuador can deny that since 1981, goods and services improved [albeit spottily] but improve things have so done [after slightly repairing somewhat the shocks and bank closures under Jamil Mahuad] in general, witness the large fleets of shiny new homes, shopping malls and massive HUMVEES on the highways. Today, however, quality of life under Correa's disastrous government has dovetailed nicely with Alfredo Palacio's disastrous government which dovetailed with the ruinous last year of Lucio Gutierrez's government.
Ecuador's governments of late are disastrous because they hasten the failure of dignity and suspend justice at the point of a gun. Or a seizure. Or a threat to seize or shoot. There remains not one thing to defend or support in the Correa regime. Not one.
Weisbrot seems to want to tell us that Rafael Correa is a US trained economist. That is simply not true. Correa's short lived education and his shallow shopping mall style Ph.D. thesis from a massive university mill indicates that his so called economic theories were in fact forged long before he came on grants/by the generosity of the U.S. people to the USA. Correa's predilection was hardened in Belgium, along with his hardened position that capitalism is bad, free trade is a sin and that the USA is naturally evil. For this, he calls President Bush a "dimwit." Correa's own preset convictions were enhanced at Urbana-Champagne under well known admirers of Brazil's past forays into nationalistic socialism. It is no surprise that Correa's sloppy so called research is shallow, incorrect and reflects propaganda more than any real research which is not seen in his thesis, which itself extracts research from the IDB.
Weisbrot of course does not know Ecuador. Otherwise he would state what all Ecuadoreans know...which is...after the Mahuad years, there existed no elites in Ecuador and no cartels and no political controls of the old elites. They were simply gone, replaced by newer voices and new persons. Weisbrot is dead wrong to attempt to set up the same old trick of waging an ` Us versus them,' oligarch versus the teeming poor schemata in Ecuador: it does not reflect the facts.
As all Ecuadoreans know, the media in Ecuador is in no way a monopoly by any definition. The media owners, about as close as one can get in Ecuador to the last outpost of utterly unsympathetic media moguls and vestiges of the old arrogant oligarchs who sincerely and ridiculously would tell anyone who listened that simply being "rich" remains life's highest accolade, are in no way criminals or in any fashion monopolies. Of course being financially successful is no crime and in fact, successful businesses support thousands of families whose bread earners depend on fair wages for a fair days' work. Ecuador's media owners may be unsympathetic but they are not criminals. And they are not monopolists. In fact, Ecuador retains a well deserved pride in many of its highly professional journalists who of course will lose their jobs very soon under Rafael Correa. But Weisbrot never took the time to actually get to know and review the quality of Ecuadorean media and this of course offends.
Weisbrot tells us that Correa intends pro-growth economic plans for Ecuador. In this too his pretext is showing. Ecuador's plans for growth under Correa includes criminal bond market racketeering with Venezuela, hidden financial schemes and deals with Iran and any country stupid enough to waste their monies in Ecuador when common sense businesses refuse to put their good money after bad and are running for the exit door because of Correa. Direct foreign investment [DFI] is almost at an end in Ecuador unless one cheerfully piles up stats from their best investors: the FARC and Chavez's money laundering friends. That is of course not legitimate DFI. If Weisbrot wants to tell us that Correa's pro growth policies include seizing free media and sending Ecuador's bonds in to the toilet where most respectable investment houses will not even trade Ecuadorean bonds today for their utter filth, we have to ponder what exactly Weisbrot is selling...and what the GUARDIAN is buying from him...because it is not the truth. In fact, Weisbrot's piece is more aligned with the fabulous reporting standards we see in AL JAZEERA, also called TeleSur and its business partner, Iranian News Agency, also called Hugo Chavez's business partners. And if Correa's pro growth policies include wasting thousands of tax dollars on hotel rooms where all manner of slimy activities take place, he truly has a perverted sense of stewardship.
Chavez and Correa are shutting down and seizing free media to force the public into buying their money making monopoly ventures. No sane audience chooses TeleSur over say, for example, the DISCOVERY Channel. But Chavez will remove all competition and so too apparently is Correa to force their peoples into making more money for the Chavez business profiteers. Of course controlling all media messages eliminates those pesky free speech ideas too.
But Weisbrot tells us that free speech is Orwellian and that the Chavez-Correa state control over free speech is the real deal and not Orwellian. Mark Weisbrot lies here. Chavez and Correa are installing Orwellian state controls over free speech to financially benefit their own pockets and serve their political controls of same.
Weisbrot is not just confused...he is duplicitous and sets about to aid and abet totalitarian regimes in their seizure of liberty's freedoms.
Weisbrot calls this "Correa's War." This is no mere war against the oligarchs as Weisbrot tells us. This is part and parcel of the war against Western civilization and the good that men can do when they stand for liberty. Weisbrot wants none of it and wants us to fall in behind the Chavistas and Correa gaggle of incompetent goofballs in a totalitarian state run by adolescent princelings of corruption, free sex for their politburos and non application of anything remotely resembling integrity, ethical leadership and accountability. We would prefer it if Weisbrot kept to his previous work promoting Hugo Chavez's paradise and leave Ecuador alone.
-Pedro Camargo for ECrisis
What the GUARDIAN newspaper, itself not so different from the NATION or WORKERS DAILY, fails to do is to inform its readers that all indicators lead to the fact that Weisbrot has failed to disclose that he is a propagandist for the nation of Venezuela and possibly also receiving funding from the Chavez triad of interlinking drugs and thugs cartels called the Bolivarian axis. Worse yet, Weisbrot has also failed to inform the U.S. IRS that his tax free status should be cancelled for his interwoven money making scheme to serve as a paid mouth organ for a foreign nation, an economic advisor for a foreign nation and a general provocateur for non diplomatic Venezuelan actors hiding behind a thin veneer of diplomacy when in fact they should hastily enjoy their diplomatic credentials being revoked for the Venezuelans have no diplomats in the USA or in the UK- they have propagandists and infiltrators...not diplomats.
But Weisbrot forgets to inform the media, the US government and more importantly, the US IRS just how many meetings he takes with Chavez and his handlers. He also forgets to tell us why his non profit organization, so exquisitely linked with another person called a statesman by Insulza but of course is not....George Soros, strongly backs Weisbrot. Seeing no conflict of interest between the pro Chavez and pro Soros affiliations, the U.S. government continues to pour money in to the Soros non profit money making businesses {Soros's words...not ours]. Weisbrot is just one more Tokyo Rose- a shill for the new communists who are really more like a Russian mafia backed derivatives fund than a government.
Here is Weisbrot in the GUARDIAN telling us all basically that all of Ecuador's and Venezuela's media were disgusting and deserve to be shut down for the avenging angels of liberty for all....the Chavez-Castro angels of freedom.
Rafael Correa, all on his own, pledged to Fidel Castro his loyalty and promised to install in Ecuador a replica of Castro's Cuban paradise. And Weisbrot would call this a good thing. Weisbrot also overlooks the fact that Correa himself was elected because he lied to the voters of Ecuador and misled the people.
Weisbrot's revisionist history regarding Ecuador is specious. With no fact checking and certainly nothing even remotely resembling fact based reporting, Weisbrot tells us that Ecuador's economy- never robust- had failed for the last 25 years. Ecuador's economy, however bumpy, failed only once under Jamil Mahuad under the direct advice of his sole economic advisor Jeffrey Sachs at the urging of the Clinton's Peter Romero.
To say that Ecuador's economy has not had some upticks in 25 years would be news to Ecuadoreans, the World Bank and the Inter American Development Bank. Indeed, dollarization has saved Ecuadoreans from massive self inflicted inflation, removing one more problem of currency manipulation so jealously sought by currency vultures. But the U.S. Federal; reserve cannot help Ecuador's ruinous substandard governmental plans today to drive away investors, plunge credit in to the stratosphere and mark Ecuadoreans as slimy, dishonest manipulators for some years ahead. Ecuador has indeed seen cycles of economic growth and none in Ecuador can deny that since 1981, goods and services improved [albeit spottily] but improve things have so done [after slightly repairing somewhat the shocks and bank closures under Jamil Mahuad] in general, witness the large fleets of shiny new homes, shopping malls and massive HUMVEES on the highways. Today, however, quality of life under Correa's disastrous government has dovetailed nicely with Alfredo Palacio's disastrous government which dovetailed with the ruinous last year of Lucio Gutierrez's government.
Ecuador's governments of late are disastrous because they hasten the failure of dignity and suspend justice at the point of a gun. Or a seizure. Or a threat to seize or shoot. There remains not one thing to defend or support in the Correa regime. Not one.
Weisbrot seems to want to tell us that Rafael Correa is a US trained economist. That is simply not true. Correa's short lived education and his shallow shopping mall style Ph.D. thesis from a massive university mill indicates that his so called economic theories were in fact forged long before he came on grants/by the generosity of the U.S. people to the USA. Correa's predilection was hardened in Belgium, along with his hardened position that capitalism is bad, free trade is a sin and that the USA is naturally evil. For this, he calls President Bush a "dimwit." Correa's own preset convictions were enhanced at Urbana-Champagne under well known admirers of Brazil's past forays into nationalistic socialism. It is no surprise that Correa's sloppy so called research is shallow, incorrect and reflects propaganda more than any real research which is not seen in his thesis, which itself extracts research from the IDB.
Weisbrot of course does not know Ecuador. Otherwise he would state what all Ecuadoreans know...which is...after the Mahuad years, there existed no elites in Ecuador and no cartels and no political controls of the old elites. They were simply gone, replaced by newer voices and new persons. Weisbrot is dead wrong to attempt to set up the same old trick of waging an ` Us versus them,' oligarch versus the teeming poor schemata in Ecuador: it does not reflect the facts.
As all Ecuadoreans know, the media in Ecuador is in no way a monopoly by any definition. The media owners, about as close as one can get in Ecuador to the last outpost of utterly unsympathetic media moguls and vestiges of the old arrogant oligarchs who sincerely and ridiculously would tell anyone who listened that simply being "rich" remains life's highest accolade, are in no way criminals or in any fashion monopolies. Of course being financially successful is no crime and in fact, successful businesses support thousands of families whose bread earners depend on fair wages for a fair days' work. Ecuador's media owners may be unsympathetic but they are not criminals. And they are not monopolists. In fact, Ecuador retains a well deserved pride in many of its highly professional journalists who of course will lose their jobs very soon under Rafael Correa. But Weisbrot never took the time to actually get to know and review the quality of Ecuadorean media and this of course offends.
Weisbrot tells us that Correa intends pro-growth economic plans for Ecuador. In this too his pretext is showing. Ecuador's plans for growth under Correa includes criminal bond market racketeering with Venezuela, hidden financial schemes and deals with Iran and any country stupid enough to waste their monies in Ecuador when common sense businesses refuse to put their good money after bad and are running for the exit door because of Correa. Direct foreign investment [DFI] is almost at an end in Ecuador unless one cheerfully piles up stats from their best investors: the FARC and Chavez's money laundering friends. That is of course not legitimate DFI. If Weisbrot wants to tell us that Correa's pro growth policies include seizing free media and sending Ecuador's bonds in to the toilet where most respectable investment houses will not even trade Ecuadorean bonds today for their utter filth, we have to ponder what exactly Weisbrot is selling...and what the GUARDIAN is buying from him...because it is not the truth. In fact, Weisbrot's piece is more aligned with the fabulous reporting standards we see in AL JAZEERA, also called TeleSur and its business partner, Iranian News Agency, also called Hugo Chavez's business partners. And if Correa's pro growth policies include wasting thousands of tax dollars on hotel rooms where all manner of slimy activities take place, he truly has a perverted sense of stewardship.
| Worse yet. EL TELEGRAFO is relaunched following Correa's illicit seizure of that once august newspaper. This first time sample edition lauds Insulza, Correa and Chavez-Castro on the cover. (picture taken from El Universo.) |
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Chavez and Correa are shutting down and seizing free media to force the public into buying their money making monopoly ventures. No sane audience chooses TeleSur over say, for example, the DISCOVERY Channel. But Chavez will remove all competition and so too apparently is Correa to force their peoples into making more money for the Chavez business profiteers. Of course controlling all media messages eliminates those pesky free speech ideas too.
But Weisbrot tells us that free speech is Orwellian and that the Chavez-Correa state control over free speech is the real deal and not Orwellian. Mark Weisbrot lies here. Chavez and Correa are installing Orwellian state controls over free speech to financially benefit their own pockets and serve their political controls of same.
Weisbrot is not just confused...he is duplicitous and sets about to aid and abet totalitarian regimes in their seizure of liberty's freedoms.
Weisbrot calls this "Correa's War." This is no mere war against the oligarchs as Weisbrot tells us. This is part and parcel of the war against Western civilization and the good that men can do when they stand for liberty. Weisbrot wants none of it and wants us to fall in behind the Chavistas and Correa gaggle of incompetent goofballs in a totalitarian state run by adolescent princelings of corruption, free sex for their politburos and non application of anything remotely resembling integrity, ethical leadership and accountability. We would prefer it if Weisbrot kept to his previous work promoting Hugo Chavez's paradise and leave Ecuador alone.
-Pedro Camargo for ECrisis
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