December 27, 2007    South America is ripped in half now by the Marxist haves versus the freedom loving have-nots. Liberty lovers have not the right to free speech, open and fair elections, have no representation in their own government and have soaring income redistribution plans which are couched under so called tax reform efforts. In their march to the sea....connecting the Pacific to the Atlantic- a feat we remind that even Simon Bolivar never attempted...Chavez is spreading his criminal cartels across the hemisphere denying liberty to entire nations now while unaccountably enriching his inner mafia-like circles because we let him. In a huge effort to pretend that Chavez's criminality is helping the poor, no one at all acts to denounce the sheer corrosion of an entire continent now in an epic struggle.
 
And so we are thrilled to share the WASHINGTON POST's analysis that no one should be fooled that Argentina is fair or free and instead reminds us that Chavez bought Argentina's allegiance for a mere door opener of $4 billion in bonds. Using descriptive words such as " Venezuela's self-styled socialist revolutionary dispatched a bagman to Buenos Aires last August with $800,000 for Ms. Kirchner's election campaign...Venezuelan and Argentine authorities conspired to cover up the matter by offering the intermediary $2 million in hush money. " The whole article here calls in to question the legitimacy of the Kirchners and their willingness to be bribed and extorted by the Chavez thugs.

ECrisis here has printed the summary to date of the U.S. case charges against the Chavez thugs. The facts reveal Chavez's DISIP and PdVSA criminal extorting, bribing and buying the souls of politicians and money launderers and racketeering agents. We have no cause to assume that Argentina was alone in being receptive to Chavez's money and extortion rackets. To be sure, we have every cause to watch Chavez's agents crawling across Ecuador hand in glove with their easily extorted Ecuadoreans whose complicity with Chavez has plunged the country in to a rock bottom status. It is as if the entire nation had tied a rock around its neck and willfully threw itself, with gay abandon, overboard to drown in its own cesspool of crime with the Correa-Chavez mafia dons. Meanwhile, Ecuadoreans refuse to self renovate and stop the rampant march propelling their own demise by irresponsibly blaming everyone else for their own complicity with crime. Primary in their complaining and whining is their correct depiction of U.S. ambassador Jewell as first hawker for Correa and Chavez. While this is despicably true, and Jewell is on the record in numerous instances across Ecuador and the USA as crooning love ballads to Rafael Correa's foolishness, Ecuadorians took the low road and pretended that just because Jewell loves Correa that no one would receive the facts about Correa's crime spree. Ecuadoreans have been so  badly wrong for the last 3 years that we cannot but be repulsed by their reluctance to self protect, abandoning all hope in their unending fight to do nothing. And worse- represent nothing which leads Ecuadoreans to stand for nothing and be nothing except empty shells full of empty rhetoric and vacated purpose.
 
As we see in Argentina, "Néstor Kirchner, [is] a populist who allowed Mr. Chávez to use Argentina as a staging point for anti-American demonstrations... Argentines and Americans who hoped the change of presidents would lead to an improvement in U.S.-Argentine relations are disappointed; some, demonstrating their ignorance of the U.S. legal system, blame the Bush administration for the results of a criminal investigation. The Kirchners' reaction shows that hopes for a change in Argentina's foreign policy were probably misplaced."  In other words, the Kirchners. like Correa's team, have been aligned with Chavez for several years if anyone cared enough to look at the facts/be honest and the Kirchners, like the Correa cabinet and asambleistas, are now exposed for their preferred position in life which is to be as ignorant of global affairs as they possibly can be, instead relying on tawdry, thin propaganda instead of facts. As a nation which has crashed from one of the Top Ten leading countries of the globe to the bottom third of the world's nations in less than 5 years, Argentineans now pretend that this is all the fault of the USA. The USA has much dirt on its hands- primary of course is the stupidity of the U.S. to not press the facts about the Kirchner-Chavez financial rackets while pretending that diplomacy is more important than the facts or continental wide money rackets underway in Latin America. We remind that diplomacy, like any household, which is not primarily honest, is a failure. Diplomacy which masks criminal behavior is itself corrupted, serving as does Insulza of the OAS in complicity so overt that we can only ponder why this remains in play.
 
Today Argentina is a failure. It is a failed state, like Ecuador, with no friends except Hugo Chavez's criminal rackets. Argentina, like Ecuador, has no friends because it wants no friends or allies. Instead, like all complicit on crime actors of manipulative mannerisms, the Kirchners are actually fearful of transparency- fearing that anyone will look too closely under their bed and see what is stashed there.
 
And what is hidden under the Kirchner bed is a marriage of convenience based on extortion and a grab for power in name only.

None feel any allegiance to the Kirchner-Chavez duopoly just as none feel allegiance to Rafael Correa and his Chavez-Correa duopoly.

What Argentineans and Ecuadoreans have in common is a remarkable reluctance to claim that relationships that are in name only...presidencies and marriages and leadership in name only....that is values and legitimacy in name only....is just all right even though the legality and the values of the actors turned off their lights of affection and liberty long ago. Like the Kirchners and the Correas, no one seriously believes that theirs are not marriages of convenience, pumped up by the outward appearance of relationships for show only and yet remarkably devoid of any true affection...except for fake power and real, hard cash. While we commend couples for refusing to present fake, for show only affection, it has long been apparent that the in-name only power couples of the Kirchners and the Correas are fake marriages ginned up by the Opus Dei mentality that marriages are to be called sacred in order to hide their own refusal to work to build their own marriages in to a meaningful growing, honest relationship. Thus, as our Opus Dei religious friends remind us...once the wedding rings are on, one need never do anything more to grow a marriage except make regular for-show only religious showings and give money to the Opus Dei members' only club for growth...buying indulgences to retain failed relationships in name only. Opus Dei offers no meaningful marriage counseling because marriages they tell us are perfect and can never be questioned no matter how abusive, no matter how phony and no matter how much the couples and families are locked in to/self imprisoned in failure. This manipulative deceit plays quite well in to the hands of the Chavez-Correa fake Marxist-Liberation Theology statist cult for societal self imprisonment because both religiosities are dishonest and refuse to first honor truth telling and organic affection which is never static and seeks growth and progress instead of statist income redistribution and Orwellian machinations of the person and soul. These two book ends now have squeezed the last drop of vibrancy from Ecuadoreans.

Surrender is underway which always leads to abandoning progress and the urgency for self survival takes over. This retreat of the soul dooms the Andes now.
 
Argentina's Kirchners have perversely followed this dysfunctional Opus Dei style plan for in-name only fake leadership and a road map for fake government too. As in Argentina, noteworthy too is the refusal of all Ecuadorean so called educated leaders to join with their Venezuelan friends to support the Venezuelan Bishops' warning of Chavez's freedom killing government. Not one Ecuadorean raised even a finger in support of Venezuela's call for help as their need is most dire. Indeed, the Catholic Church- divided as it is in Ecuador between the politically controlling Marxist priests who call themselves Liberation Theologists but are in fact deeply compromised socio-political activists of the worst sort and the utterly vapid Opus Dei commandeers who retain an arrogance so shockingly profound that one can only grasp their inertia by realizing that Ecuador's Opus Dei have never lifted one finger in any meaningful sense to help any one at all, preferring instead to remain closeted inside their expensive compounds and self congratulating their members-only show of outward ritual which remains as about as meaningful as a dead dog for its lack of application to daily life. Ecuadoreans who are supposed to be educated and lead by example instead have retreated in to the vapid lures of self prescribed religiosity which gives each a free pass to do anything meaningful, a free pass to be responsible in all arenas and a mind numbing ethos that as long as one pays up, one can be a Chavista and one can enjoy the bribery and extortions of the Chavez-Correa-Kirchner plan while smugly growing one's bank account. For a while until one realizes that the economy has collapsed, jobs have vanished and criminals are  murdering as many as they can in Ecuador while still no one lifts a finger as their neighbor is bleeding to death in the murder capitol of the globe called Ecuador whose own citizens refuse to lift one finder to stop their own murder spree. This is called enabling and is every bit as awful as the fake Liberation Theology Marxists or the fake economies preached by political mavens such as Joe Stiglitz. . Neither theologies are honest and neither move any actor toward a functional, meaningful relationship to anything except their own cults, both of which involve lots of money whether from the previously known as oligarchs for the Opus Dei indulgences or the Chavistas for their supposedly liberating Marxist-Christian fakeries hiding now their criminal extortion rackets. In the case of the Kirchners and Correas, instead of buying their indulgences from Opus Dei, they bought their indulgences from Hugo Chavez's Russian-Cuban-Iranian money rackets. In all instances, the Faustian Bargain is now the primary control agent, however manipulative, and there is no way out from these buyers clubs which used to be called governments and are no longer. No way out that is without serious work.
 
Following the same play book as Ecuadoreans, the Kirchners have faked their way in to a bought relationship with Chavez's rackets. The Kirchners, like the Correas, lead their countries in name only while the real work is carried on by Chavez's handlers, advisors and money men fully littering governmental offices and crawling under every bed now- ready to extort, bribe and threaten whenever one is perceived to stray. Like an Opus Dei marriage, all life is now controlled by the Correa-Chavez-Cuban spies as we all pretend that our lives have meaning while we are sore afraid of the DISIP spies listening at every key hole and door way now, manipulating and controlling the end of freedom.
 
Faustian bargains- the selling of one's soul for profit and false appearances- always exact a price. Primary in the sell out is the incapacity of those who have sold out for fake alliances to be prepared to move flexibly because they are already crowded with restrictions to protect the false and fake or the original bargain. Add to this political extortion for money and the Chavez-Correa threats of loss of property, tax seizures and removal of justice and due process, and suddenly you see that Ecuadoreans, like Venezuelans are all boxed in now with no where to go.

There is no justice to turn to. Democracy's promise now exists in  an alternative fake democracy where crime is king and rule of law was sold out long ago. There is no self defense to rely on. There are no walls of power separations left in Ecuador, Venezuela and soon Argentina and Bolivia between the individual and the state. All personal liberties, protections and freedoms have just been bought and sold by these governments to the higher powers of the state extortion rackets called Bolivariansim. And we let them do this to us because it felt normal...and only one step removed from what we have been doing in our schools, our homes and our work places: selling out to manipulations. This addiction to manipulation does now cost us our self respect, our jobs, our future potential, our freedoms and our capacity to enjoy liberty which we long ago surrendered in small seemingly inconsequential ways but do now  reveal their complicity in the full collapse of any serene assurances. Quality of life does not exist in Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia...soon to be enjoined by Nicaragua and Argentina following the debauched lives of their mythically revered Cuban failures. We are all Venezuelan-Cubans now. The only difference is that Cubans are granted immediate asylum inside the USA while Ecuadoreans have yet to tell their story. And  where Cubans claim VIVA  CUBA LIBRE, Ecuadoreans run for the nearest shopping mall for sanctity of life.
 
Most Latins- also are all Kirchners now. Many more are all Rafael Correa now because they follow their example in hundreds of smaller ways. Were this not so, the remarkably incompetent albeit amazingly deceptive and dishonest burglar Rafael Correa could never in a million years have a toe hold inside Ecuador, no matter how badly educated and personally debauched he may be...for he is. Indeed, Correa succeeds because he is us- morally sold out in far too  many ways and exhibiting a shocking refusal to state what we all know which is that Ecuador has deteriorated to almost last place in the world and its reputation of the people and by the people is so filthy that no one- no one at all- actually welcomes or likes Ecuadoreans because Ecuadoreans do not like or trust themselves. Ecuadoreans are now a nation of manipulators and manipulated. Ecuadorians are repulsive because they want to be repulsive and actually want to tell you why it is that they have been victimized in to this pathetic zone of disgrace. There are not many real victims in Ecuador and there are an awful lot who want to blame everything else as they themselves do nothing while crime soars, bodies bleed in the streets and jobs, already scarce, take our futures with them as they are so repulsed that employers barely exist now.
 
Unlike Venezuelans who suffer the physically repulsive face of Chavez, Ecuadoreans suffer the less obvious scapegrace of Chavez because their only public face now is the non face of any with principles and purpose. Like Chavez and Correa, the entire nation of Ecuador is now covered in shameful dirty amorphous mass of meaninglessness and deadened, alcoholic-like non-potential. Ecuadoreans want this and appreciate the fact that they do not need to do anything meaningful any more with their lives because now the state will happily do it all for them, just as our children are taught that their parent will do it all for them, never needing to be mature or responsible. And if you seriously believe that the over paid vacationing Asambleistas in Montecristi under the Cuban-Chavez plan as written through Chavez's Marxist managers headed by Sr. Viciano Pastor will lead to a better more meaningful life, then you should sit down and write a Thank You note to DISIP in Caracas for giving you what you want: a brave new world under the control of the state. Of course you will have no freedom and no rational thought but you did not want this anyway. Or so we have been told. And so we have seen by the inertia, the irresponsible non action and the rasher of sell outs across Ecuador.
 
Ecuador's dilemma is not new. It is as old as mankind. What is stunning is the wholesale retreat...how easy it is now to buy silence in Quito.

What is shocking is the gay abandon of principled positions in a land where no real morals have lived for the last decade. Claiming that the media still reminds us of the Correa-Chavez debaucheries, none do much more than recycle the half truths from Ecuadorean media which still is barred from Montecristi and only is permitted a small amount of shallow reflexive hyperactive media as if the real facts are being covered when they are not. Ecuador's media is tragically sold out and has not defended its own position as guardian of free speech, abandoning mankind's greatest gift of open media for the self enriching lures of our limousine liberal media conglomerates, last seen in the back seat of a limousine speeding down Brickell Avenue in Miami with all the commitment to democracy retaining free speech of a teen age cell phone junkie and the useful content of same. Even more irresponsible is the refusal to study and learn from functioning governments, functioning economies, functioning free speech, and functioning societies, rejecting any entreaty for progress with phony excuses now.
 
Ecuador long had and held good men and women whose unerring commitment to progress and freedom stood in her good graces. Long silenced now by those who self profit from manipulative reactions and actions, Ecuadoreans can hope for a miracle... a reawakening of their sensibilities but this will not come without some pain of real work not to be  found on Brickell Avenue in Miami which of course means that some will have to abandon their extortion/manipulation rackets which do now seize their days. It is a cold wind which has blown across Ecuador for some time but in fact, the coldness is lived daily in lives of no integrity, no honesty and no real relationships with the future except those few permissible by the manipulated. And as we see with the Kirchners, this locks them in to a now prescribed sub set of behaviors which henceforth will never be honest and will always be concerned with the Faustian Bargain first and foremost. We become our own jailers now, trapped inside the fake deals we made because we let ourselves make fake deals which we knew were not honest but....seemed expedient at the time.

Good government, like a good marriage, is never in name only nor is it made...on the cheap. Sovereignty whether in a marriage or in a government must live its purpose and must have meaning...and not the phony claims to sovereignty with no function. Respect in name only is as fake as Correa's commitment to law and order or democracy. Eventually we all get sold out and abandoned like so many pawns in a chess game because the goal was always about power and never about truly living a purposeful, meaningful life.
 
Like fake diplomacy for the lazy and the willingly undereducated, expediency and enabling are but one tiny step away from surrender.

Today Ecuadoreans wear a badge on their lapels that says, `We have abandoned our commitments to functional living.' This is repugnant.
 
Ecuadoreans today are pawns in the Chavez-Correa-Cuban game of life. Ecuadoreans have chillingly cut themselves off from functional relationships with functional liberty lovers across the globe because they today are embarrassed by their own loss of functionality and how rapidly they have abandoned principles. This is the self imposed isolationism practiced by all cults and indeed defines cult like behavior which is an epidemic now in Ecuador. All cults preach the motto that ` I am OK and you are not OK.' And while all normative societies sustain a certain flexibility across a normative strata, cults shutter free speech, wall off contact with normal behaviors and self imprison behind shuttered compounds to further deify their manipulative controls.  It is a cold landscape with nothing heartening in sight for the longer term. Everything now is about the immediate, or the next four hours, as if long range stability and hopes for the future are unattainable now. This is a hopelessness that always leads to despair and suicidal tendencies. It is only countered by the liberating theology of truth telling and a concerted effort to stop manipulative living habits which abound in private and public arenas.
 
Today in the WALL STREET JOURNAL is a superb piece by the economist many call the godfather of dollarization, Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins and co authored with Stanford's McKinnon.  The piece notes " Mr. McKinnon is professor emeritus of economics at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. Mr. Hanke is a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute."
 
Instead of lying about dollarization and Ecuador's foolish abandonment of rule of law and legitimate fiscal applications as well as its refusal to reinsert rule of law in to the now almost completely lawless Ecuador as propagandized by the foolish and deceptive Joe Stiglitz recently in Ecuador, far better to cease enabling criminal regimes and face some facts. Rather than singing a capello like some pre-pubescent chorus member of the Chavez cartels as Stiglitz does, far better to perform fact based analysis, forensic audits of PetroEcuador, and rejoin the world's club for growth and abandon the Cuban club for crime. Hanke and McKinnon remark, "A stronger, more stable dollar will ensure that it retains its pre-eminent position as the world's reserve, intervention and invoicing currency. It will also provide an anchor for inflation expectations, something the Fed is anxiously searching for. The current weakness in the dollar is cyclical...But foreign-exchange markets -- like those for common stocks and house prices -- can suffer from irrational exuberance and bandwagon effects that lead to overshooting. This is precisely why the dollar has been under siege...But there's a catch. Under the normal operation of the world dollar standard which has prevailed since 1945, the U.S. government maintains open capital markets and generally remains passive in foreign-exchange markets, while other governments intervene more or less often to influence their exchange rates.

Today, outside of a few countries in Eastern Europe linked to the euro, countries in Asia, Latin America, and much of Africa and the Middle East use the dollar as their common intervention or `key' currency. Thus they avoid targeting their exchange rates at cross purposes and minimize political acrimony...Cooperation is a win-win situation: The gross overvaluations of European currencies would be mitigated, large holders of dollar assets would be spared capital losses, and the U.S. would escape an inflationary conflagration associated with general dollar devaluation... "

Contrary to the foolish Stiglitz who preaches that using the U.S. dollar feeds George Bush's power, a claim so utterly lacking in reality but well received by the isolationist criminal cartels who fear mature financial growth, here we see two of the world's chief economists- Hanke and McKinnon- reminding us that no man and no economy of any scale ever succeeds by being an island, by being isolationist Instead they correctly pronounce that cooperation is a win win situation.

While first-rate economies and first-tier leaders pay attention to wise men such as Hanke and McKinnon, Ecuadoreans do not even have the grace or the will to review Hanke's common sense approach to restoring Ecuador's now failed state. Instead, they herald Chavez and Soros's paid hack Stiglitz who aberrantly advises more cover ups of crime, recommends the most foolish and aberrant financial plans based on illegitimacy, unaccountability and isolationism.

Hanke has noticeably been a public friend to Ecuadoreans for over a decade. Today, that friendship is repaid with excuses and the undignified refusal to exhibit any graciousness for service, preferring instead the avatars of Chavez's criminal rackets over common sense. It is the Ecuadorean way now to fail friends, abandon common sense, and fail ourselves in so doing. We can only hope that Ecuadoreans restart sustained communications with the globe's leaders and abandon their selfish addiction to irresponsibly abandoning their own national accounts, leaving them by all accounts unaccountable and debauched.
Confirming the fact that matters are never stagnant, comes another superb piece on Andean trade called "Peru Down, Columbia to Go" from the JOURNAL,  is run here:
  
 "The 110th Congress did one very good deed this month, as the Senate passed the U.S.-Peru free trade accord, 77-18. That follows the 285-131 vote in the House last month, and is a glimmer of pro-growth policy amid what has otherwise been a tide of tax increases and regulatory and lawsuit expansions.

Credit in particular goes to Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel, who managed the deal around and through the Democratic caucus. Kudos as well to GOP leaders, who provided enough House votes to make up for the fact that a majority of Democrats opposed the bill. In the House, the partisan breakdown was 109 Democrats and 176 Republicans in favor, 116 Democrats and 16 Republicans opposed. In the more free-trade Senate, a majority of both parties voted aye.

Peru is one of Latin America's fastest growing economies, and adding it to our club of free-trade partners is a strategic triumph in a hemisphere menaced by Hugo Chávez. The question now is whether Democrats will press ahead with the even more crucial Colombia free trade pact, or decide that Peru is enough.

By now, most unbiased observers have noted the remarkable job Colombian President Álvaro Uribe has done to return peace and security to that country since taking office in 2002. And we're confident Mr. Rangel wants to do the right thing, but he keeps getting whipsawed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the AFL-CIO.

Mr. Rangel recently said that failing to approve the Colombia FTA would be an `a rebuff to a great president and to a great country and a great ally.' A day later, he released an email statement clarifying his position: `I do not support passage of the Colombia FTA -- there simply are not enough votes to take up this agreement.' Do Democrats really want to lose Colombia?"

This piece raises numerous thorny questions, not the least of which is the ploy that there are not enough votes to approve the Colombia-U.S. FTA when there are. More importantly is why anyone would cheerfully be whipsawed by the dysfunctional labor unions and an undereducated and badly prepared woman named Nancy Pelosi who uses her labor union and Soros donations like a manipulative shield to refuse the facts and fail to lead, also shown in her deteriorated and sustained unpopularity. But for now Pelosi has the power to manipulate because....Americans let her. Colombia has done nothing wrong and has done everything right and should be credited with this. Colombians themselves do not want a return to the bad old days when the FARC ran everything and their lives were as meaningless as Ingrid Betancourt's except...as a money making ploy or a hostage swap for Carlos the Jackal to make Chavez happy.

Principled leaders do not hold progress hostage just because their major donors and Russian mafia linked actors want to see narcotics more readily available and the FARC released and unfettered. Pelosi, like the Kennedy clan, Congressmen Serrano, McGovern and Delahunt and Senators Reid, Dodd, Clinton, and Obama, need to give back all Soros monies and return the favor to the American public by refusing to align with Chavez, with Fidel Castro, with Rafael Correa, and the FARC.

Ecuadoreans should applaud Peru's hard work and Uribe's positions of principle as well as the Catholic Bishops of Venezuela. In their rush to tell us that all is lost, Ecuador foolishly self imprisons inside its own sheltering self imprisonment.

More important is the question, Do Ecuadoreans really want to lose Ecuador? Today this appears to be the case.
We are asking for proof of life and looking hard for it.

-Pedro Camargo for Ecrisis