August 9, 2007    Carlos Alberto Montaner, one of our favorite historians of the rise of idiots as they march across the Andes, notes that Ecuadoreans are committing suicide not just by selfishly and willfully selecting national and personal blindness, deafness, disease but a whole body suicide. He writes, "In Venezuela, Ecuador and Nicaragua, the democratic political class committed suicide. It irresponsibly walked into the slaughterhouse. It chose to go blind as long as it could poke its political rival in the eye, even though both belonged to the same democratic family. Finally, when both were blind, the enemy of republican values leisurely took over the presidential palace and began the demolition."
 
Montaner is absolutely correct, (read here) that Ecuadoreans are irresponsible and criminally negligent regarding their own well being, security and state of affairs, which of course has led to its current rankings as close to the bottom of the trash heap of history while not one moves to rectify the utter garbage pouring from Quito. It is time to clean house and take out the trash. Ecuador can have a functional democracy and can return to sane governance but this will require some work.
 
Helping Rafael Correa and Hugo Chavez hide from the realities of this national disgrace comes the CRISIS GROUP's latest report on Ecuador. The CRISIS GROUP is not affiliated in any way with ECrisis, primarily because the larger supporter of the Crisis Group has always been George Soros who actually makes money off of crises- global financial crises- just as Correa and Chavez do, too. The Crisis Group's "leadership" is overtly populated by a Who's Who of the Soros-aligned actors of a more executive level than the more obvious Soros backed anti Bush street protesters who repeatedly rally against the USA and more recently, Alvaro Uribe and his principled positions. For its part, ECrisis is just an electronic communications tool- a small web site committed to bringing forward stronger liberties in the Americas. If ECrisis has a goal, it is to put itself out of business which it hopes is soon for that would mean that the Castro-Chavez war of attrition in Ecuador has ended. Meanwhile, the Crisis Group is aligned with speculators who make money from crises in every sense [and cents] of the word. We again ask: who paid for this Report on Ecuador? While we grasp the idea that Madeline Albright and Hillary Clinton are astonishingly aligned to this day with Soros, and we grasp the concept that the U.S. Department of State/ US AID is about 1/2 committed to Madeline and Hillary's overtures, what we do hope is that not one penny of U.S. tax dollars went in to this Report on Ecuador as is indicated. We no doubt will be tragically saddened to discover who paid for this malarkey.
 
We applaud fact based reports regarding Ecuador and commend any who have been requesting official documentation about Ecuador which is not especially important geo physically but has always been dearly important geo politically. However, if Secretary Rice or John Negroponte are silly enough to believe that the Crisis Group's August 7, 2007 report, Ecuador: Overcoming Instability? is any substitute for informed reporting on Ecuador, they are badly misled and have succumbed to accepting so called informed reports with as much credibility as the last decade's silliest reports by US AID regarding Ecuador. This report is no less silly, however much we applaud their full use of foot notes.
 
While we call the Crisis Group's report silly- and it is- we must give them credit for some obvious fact sharing about the turmoil in Ecuador. Nonetheless, the Crisis Group makes the grave and sloppy error, so common today, to commence all review of Ecuador with Bucaram's bizarre bordello-style government. As with so many badly educated analysts regarding the Andes today, it is common to claim, as they do, that Ecuador's primary problem is political instability. Indeed, this is historically inaccurate as a quick scan of the facts relays the history that Ecuador was genuinely most often aligned with North America and historically more or less a rather sleepy, more serene nation. It would also be correct to notate that the Ecuadorean's prime problem remains yet stubborn pockets of corruption which could and can yet be dealt with effectively with common sense reforms...if the chance to progress were not complicitly misaligned with a sweeping insertion of the Chavez-Correa corruption plan which they sometimes call communism or socialism but is really old fashioned dictatorship of the few for blockading the many while their chosen business operatives clandestinely burrow away removing what lies underground for resale. In fact, one can say that it is a foolish goal to insist that stability, however much we know it to be the sine qua non of all acts, is itself a chimera for goal seeking. Just look at Castro's Cuba....Cuba is stable and has been stable for the last fifty years. A horrible gulag, island prison of human misery but stable Cuba is dependably disgusting for human life.
 
We do fully agree with the Crisis Group that Ecuador's primary challenge is to reinsert rule of law. We vehemently disagree with their recipes and recommendations for how to get there, which are scanty at best, enabling of additional corruption at worst, because so much of their report is simply flawed. For example, the Crisis Group wants to revise history some and tell us all that Ecuador's external debt was a big problem in the 1990s. It was. Indeed, Chavez's new contractor, former president Rodrigo Borja tragically moved Ecuador in to a quasi socialist state. The Crisis Group fails to report on the fact that heavy central government spending for actual statism creates a huge tax payer burden. President Duran Ballen's presidency is hallmarked by a return to open, competitive trade and job-expanding economic reforms....which led to about 1/2 of the current employment sector jobs outside government. Direct foreign investment for Ecuador, still badly needed but non existent today, was completely predicated on Ecuador's agreement to enter the Bi Lateral Investment Treaty, which Duran Ballen actually supported. The Crisis Group forgets to report these facts and why it is that corrupt governments, like Castro's Cuba and Zimbabwe, repulse sane investors.
 
The Crisis Group likes to report that Ecuador's oil industry does not create many jobs. That is actually not quite correct. Under the old Borja plan, Ecuador's oil revenues, such as they are....and they are falling, contrary to what the Crisis Group reports, due to incompetence and theft, and actually feeds a mighty arsenal of mostly inept state paid functionaries that populate Quito, Ecuador at such high levels as to be noteworthy. As most state employees are basically unionized with no capacity to ever fire their incompetent persons, Ecuador has oil for functionaries in perpetuity. The Crisis Group reveals its bias when it cheerfully tells us on page 10 that the high court under president Palacio upheld the ridiculous Hydrocarbon Law that authorized a blanket theft from American oil companies, most notably Occidental. The Crisis Group does not break down nor give any analysis of the political jiggerings that went in to the Ecuadorean court decision to approve thefts. But the Crisis Group tells us that these acts of burglary "may make Ecuador less attractive for investors." May make? Might happen? Ecuador has no meaningful direct foreign investment exactly because of this wholesale theft and remains incapable of any return to investment grade status unless and until it returns to a more honest and less deceptive national approach. In other words, a nation cannot have rule of law when it is busy stealing and lying and preventing transparent data about its own activities with Iran and Hugo Chavez.  The Report likes to tell us that PetroEcuador's production is down due to insufficient investment and modernization. Again, we reject their statements. Oil is down because of incompetence, theft of assets, mismanagement, corruption and self enrichment of the few.
 
As to the Crisis Group's blithe history of the Peru-Ecuador Border War of 1995, we can only ponder if Luigi Einaudi and Peter Romero did not sign off on their friends' draft report. It is correct to state that the Border War in historic point of fact had and held a cease fire shortly after hostilities broke out in 1995 with a full compliment of military observers at the border flash points, paid for by Ecuador and probably also Peru. The Crisis Group correctly tells us that "Ambassador Luigi Einaudi, the U.S. representative, is credited with the idea".... of the `symbolic gesture of one square kilometer inside Peru as given to Ecuador for its winning the 1995 battle. In other words, Ecuador itself formally and officially requested a cease fire, requested international monitors, believed that fair play would be at hand, won that small battle and gained for its troubles ...a gift of a memorial park inside Peru. The Crisis Group forgets to tell us that Einaudi was always historically in close contact with his asset in Peru, the shadow president Vladimir Montesinos who is currently in prison in Peru.
 
Again showing its Soros-based pro drug proclivities, the Crisis Group tells us about Correa's Plan Ecuador to counter Colombia's efforts to end the narcoterrorist sub strata often called the weaponized and heavily violent FARC. The Crisis Group fails on all reporting about the welter of pro-FARC activists crawling over Ecuador to turn public opinion against counternarcoterrorism.
 
 
If any still remain unconvinced about what Rafael Correa and Hugo Chavez are doing in Ecuador, simply listen to their words or read reports from the mouths of these men today who are significantly shattering all of Ecuador's structures to insert a full system of a closed, corrupt economy for the few and an entire rewriting of history, replacing local history with a bastardized, faux series of historic self justifications which are neither based in fact and are merely tools for self promoting propaganda.
 
Nowhere is the Chavez-Correa manipulation of history more precise than their abuse of the great military strategist, Mariscal Sucre who today is no doubt rolling around in his grave wishing he could speak loudly and correct the abuses of his memory, words and deeds as underway. Chavez and Correa hit head on the true man, Sucre this week and revised his person and his place in history with strings of untruths and fake or revised statements about the man and his place in time and history. These criminal caudillos killed Sucre for a second time. In fact, Correa claimed Sucre as a model for his perverse communism and corruption when Sucre himself was always a defender of liberty. No one- no one at all- defended Sucre this week from Correa's misinformation campaign to abuse the historic Mariscal Sucre and use him for propaganda purposes as if by invoking a fake Sucre, the Chavez political machine gained the blessings of history. What Chavez and Correa have done is to gain a fake blessing of lies. This would be akin to Chavez visiting Mount Vernon and proclaiming that George Washington was actually a disciple of Fidel Castro and Vladimir Lenin when of course Washington never once supported communism. The same can be said for Sucre who tragically died far too young by the hands of self enriching criminal caudillos exactly like Correa and Hugo Chavez. For their part, Ecuadoreans need to review Sucre's actual words and writings, readily available if any decide to stop lazily accepting Chavez and Correa's lies, and challenge these propagandists whose crimes against history must not lie.
 
 
Chavez and Correa have announced "strategic alliances" with Iran and Chavez has not once ceased his day to day micromanagement of his new colony, Castro's Cuba. Chavez and Correa have today announced that Ecuador and Venezuela are now fully married...standing proudly together to fight against functional liberties and are determined to willfully lie not only about history but about what they actually are doing.
 
Here is a medical prescription from one of Chavez's so called medical clinics in Venezuela. It is an actual prescription for an actual hapless patient. This speaks volumes about what is actually going on in Ecuador, Cuba and Venezuela for any who have eyes to see and ears to hear. What we do not approve, besides the wholesale slaughter of liberty in the Andes, is that reports such as the one this week by the job corps for retired leftist functionaries-  consulting group, the Crisis Group had full access to official U.S. Embassy materiel in Quito and rather than factually reporting on the Chavez take over plan inside Ecuador, deemed itself the arbiter of the truth and once again failed to report the facts.