February 8, 2008  Rule of law- long absent from Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela by complicit, coordinated and well funded design, is making a come back, thanks to the principled position of EXXON Mobil to state the facts about Hugo Chavez's rampant criminality. Instead of running away from the facts about this criminal dictator, EXXON has gone public and we commend any efforts to tell the truth.
 
Abandoning rule of law may be profitable for off shore derivatives traders of murky Russian style machinations and Chavez-aligned self enriching actors [called mafias], but it is not healthy for nations and regular citizens. It is long past time to scrap, also called de-fund/pull support for the illicit acts of the few to promote narcoterror and esteem lawlessness while cartels obliterate all that mankind used to hold dear. In other words, all who promote terminating rule of law to benefit illicit cartels, rackets and murky financiers and the end of accountability and normative law and order must be defunded and all support for their activities exposed, denounced and corrected. We do not benefit from aiding and abetting rackets and cartels. Global freedom lovers do not co fund their acts, as has been the case since about 1998 [commencing with Mahuad's sole and highly overpaid economic advisor named Jeffrey Sachs - whose tenancy led to Ecuador's financial collapse- who is of course a Soros fund man as is Joseph Stiglitz] across Latin America, more noticeably in Venezuela and Ecuador which are more noticeably failed states because of this.
 
When victimized by state theft and asset seizure in Latin America, one can note the appropriate steps taken by EXXON as a text book case as contrary to the lose-lose approaches taken by the soft-on-crime apologists who have aided and abetted the criminally negligent deterioration of the very things they are supposed to protect and defend.
 
Rather than abandoning company assets and positions of principle to the tender mercies of paid infiltrators, unregistered lobbyists and mouth organs for dirty money mafias offshore, any who holds freedom effectively will coalesce today and stop ignoring the march of history which seeks to reinsert the core tenant of democracy: rule of law, without which there is no democracy, regardless of what the ridiculously pathetic Insulza wants you to believe and however much Insulza seeks to retain his curried favor with the Soros off shore derivatives funders. Rule of law is essential for any democracy. Contrary to what liars, ninnyhammers, dimwits and dunces have been spewing for years....that rule of law is too expensive, that rule of law must be replaced by some goofy notion of transgender sex human rights in lieu of contract law [ whatever that confused theory holds], and too difficult for Andean nations, we remind that nations without rule of law are dying or are failed states now...as is the case with the very oil rich Venezuela, the assets rich Argentina and the somewhat sustainable Ecuador which are all disasters today...because they have failed themselves by failing to retain and act upon rule of law, abandoning rule of law at every step.
 
No nation without rule of law can stand for long because no nation without rule of law will not turn on its own, as we see daily in Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela.
 
For its part, the U.S. government's so called reform and democracy contractors have criminally offended any efforts to promote rule of law by its lies and deceptive contractors who debase freedom's promise to promote the string of contractor lies that rule of law is unbearably challenging and therefore to be dismissed/altered as if in some parallel universe where lawlessness is functionally enshrined as has actually occurred in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela. This is of course the first step to moral depravity and the unending criminal cartels running Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia today. Lawlessness is legitimized today in Ecuador and Venezuela. Bolivia's Morales is trying very hard to enshrine the illicit in Bolivia also.
 
Any review of Ecuadorean and Venezuelan laws and decrees and regulations will confirm the fact that in each nation, one sole actor controls their nations, essentially commandeering the courts, the media, the banks, the state assets, transportation, oil production, communications and private property as well as consumer goods which are increasingly either missing or available only as pirated, unregulated goods of low quality in yet one more racket of price fixing.
 
Hugo Chavez and Rafael Correa are making money from price fixing, remonopolization, running illicit contraband and crafting fiscal harm by design to force out/harm private business even as both nations suffer the largest crime wave in their history, thanks to the government's complicity to aid and abet the FARC and known cartels.
 
Today we hear folks from the Andes express shock! awe! surprise that EXXON would do what it has just legally done. They profess astonishment as if they themselves have just heard some news from outer space. We remind that what EXXON has just done is a simple act which has been readily available to others who act to appropriately seek justice- not appeasement and not extortion- under rule of law and never by the dirty deal for Chavez and Correa's protection rackets, called fake rule of law in Ecuador and Venezuela which is of course the state extortion rackets as currently exist.
 
Free media reported, such as the WASHINGTON POST here on the EXXON awards as if coming from an alternative planet to most in the Andes who expressed complete astonishment over the news about EXXON which is of course due solely to their addiction to remaining stubbornly undereducated and pretending that their own media is free and open when it is not as is the case in Ecuador and Venezuela where self censorship is rampant and denial of wholesome fact sharing is cut off to financially benefit the Chavez-Correa media cartels, sometimes called TELESUR or the Iranian News Agency with whom they are both financially partnered with for broader statist media controls and profits.

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The DOW JONES wires reported this:
DJ Exxon Wins Freeze On More Than $12 Bln In Venezuela Assets
   By Raul Gallegos and Chad Bray
   Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
    NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) has secured court orders to  freeze more than $12 billion in worldwide assets of Venezuela's state-owned oil  company, as it prepares to dispute the nationalization of a multi-billion dollar oil project. 

    The move limits Petroleos de Venezuela's (PVZ.YY) room to maneuver as it fends off challenges from major western oil companies over President Hugo Chavez's 2007 decision to nationalize four heavy oil projects in the Orinoco Basin. According to documents filed in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Exxon Mobil has secured an "order of attachment" on $315 million in cash held by PdVSA. Exxon Mobil also filed documents with the court showing it had secured a freeze on $12 billion in PdVSA's worldwide assets from the High Court of England and Wales. 

    A spokesperson for Exxon Mobil couldn't immediately comment. A PdVSA spokesman declined to comment.  The orders were intended "in aid of a multi-billion dollar international arbitration that (Exxon Mobil's) Mobil CN will commence in the Southern District of New York," the oil giant said in the court filing. In a filing, PdVSA disputed the need for a freeze. A hearing was scheduled in New York for Feb. 13.
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Note that EXXON did not succumb to the tender mercies of the Correa and/or Chavez extortion rackets. EXXON did not buy in to the phony stories that if they speak the facts that they will be dead soon. Note that EXXON does not seek political solutions or....what do they call today's political solutions supposedly far more beneficial than contract law....diplomatic solutions, we recall?...but instead quietly and simply state their facts. This is commendable.
 
We have also heard more misinformation in the last 24 hours that tells us foolishly that EXXON simply has better lobbyists that Chavez in this matter. That too is a lie. Like Rafael Correa of Ecuador, it is a known fact that Chavez has hundreds of overly paid lobbyists and propagandists crawling over Quito, Washington, DC, London and Caracas today. EXXON does not do this nor would EXXON debase functioning rule of law by its very public acts to simply and quietly and legitimately state the facts. EXXON does not hold a monopoly on truth telling: they have simply chosen to tell the truth and not succumb to the tender mercies of debauched "advisors" and extortion rackets and protection arms. Others could have and should have chosen this path and indeed have an obligation to their public, their shareholders and their families instead of the current wave of paid agents to debase the facts and cut murky deals. Fact based reporting of all activities by corporations is still the law in many successful nations and avoidance of reporting is still a crime in successful, free nations.
 
Like John Walters did a few weeks ago to quietly and honestly state the facts that Hugo Chavez is aligned with the FARC, because Chavez told us this, we commend truth tellers and continue to notate the very ones who denounce rule of law, deny normative justice and pretend that honesty has no place in today's modern world. We would not be so debased or cynical. We are not here to expand the Faustian bargains nor play Monopoly with the Devil, as the brilliant Salvadorean Mr. Hinds would remind us.
 
Rather than make the Faustian bargain and more importantly, rather than make the unlawful extortion deal with Chavez or Correa, we reject paid extortion rackets and stand to applaud EXXON for its position of clarity and its public acts under rule of law which are the opposite of CHEVRON's willing submission to Chavez's extortion rackets, itself a crime in the USA and a debasing act of greed known as such to its shareholders. Note too that EXXON does not work with the phalanxes of ethically questionable oil traders...what do they call themselves ....financial advisors?... active across many continents now to move Chavez's money and spot oil buys. Nor did EXXON participate in the collapse of Venezuela's bond values and credit worthiness, seen in a massive point drop. Unlike Chavez and Correa and the major oil companies they do now criminally command in full called PdVSA and PetroEcuador, EXXON does not extort markets and rig financial contracts or bonds. Noteworthy also is that pretrial, a preliminary hearing is set for 2-13-08, prejudicial comments are not forthcoming from EXXON. It is also noteworthy that the on-average 22 to 24 year life span for single cases of any magnitude to be completed in most Latin nations where justice delayed is of course justice denied, the U.S. courts generally carry an obligation to move along, considering it a right to a speedier trial. This is a real distinction between real time "rights" as guaranteed under most 1st and 2nd tier nations but wholly missing in 3rd, 4th and failed status nations. Again, rule of law to protect rights is a key ingredient to success. Today this lawlessness under Correa and Chavez is costing their nations billions in lost revenues and global standing. No one- no one at all- trusts or likes these desperadoes of deception and self enriching caudillos of communism.
 
GOLDMAN SACHS astutely writes today in its Emerging Markets Report,”
If successful, the arbitration injunctions will be a blow to the strong-handed nationalist policies being pursued by the Venezuelan government which have led to unilateral changes in existing contracts and some high profile expropriations of assets held by large multinational companies in oil, telecommunications, and electricity sectors.

An unfavorable arbitration ruling would certainly tighten the cash-flow picture of the already strained PdVSA (and indirectly would also affect the cash flow picture of the government) and would therefore warrant a higher risk premium on all Venezuelan asset prices.

In terms of regional spillovers, if the Venezuelan government is forced to award significant compensation to claimants in international courts it could see its cash-flow situation tightening which would naturally reduce the appetite to engage in regional financing operations with governments with which it sees some political affinity (e.g. Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, etc.).
 
And finally, we pay attention to the closed door deals being struck by the paid lobbyists for the pro-Chavez, pro-FARC and anti-Uribe/anti USA effort, notably seen by the U.S. Democrats. U.S. Senator Harry Reid illegally promised Quito's Chamber of Commerce that he would deliver the entire U.S. Democratic party, per the overpaid request of Ecuador's lobbyists who also assist the pro drugs group to harm Uribe and assist Hugo Chavez and vowed support for Correa's unjustified demands that Correa secure at ATPDEA free trade extension with no facts on the table and with nothing extant , except lies and propaganda, to justify this U.S. tax payer give away, as required by U.S. law except the promise to aid and abet the Soros groups to destabilize Uribe's Colombia. It is a package deal.
 
Either Harry Reid broke all U.S. Senate rules and regulations- bowing to lies and propaganda to help promote the FARC or else the Quito Chamber of Commerce is lying to the media. It is not both. As we all know- and as Goldman Sachs just stated, Hugo Chavez's illicit money is running not only the pro FARC campaigns but also the government of Rafael Correa. What Harry Reid is doing to aid and abet all this- to keep his donor pledge to do anything that Soros asks of him to help the pro drugs actors- warrants a full review.
 
Harry Reid and his willful complicity to aid and abet the pro FARC actors owes both the people of Ecuador and the people of the USA a full explanation for his unwarranted back room deals with these anti USA actors, abusing U.S. monies with no justification other than personal political donor gambits. What the Quito Chamber of Commerce, following the Ecuadorean-American Chamber of Commerce or AMCHAM which takes its instructions from the Moss brothers to help their old friend, Correa's lobbyist Paul Reichler, is doing in complicity with the Correa-Chavez protection and extortion rackets is now open for review.
 
We simply do not understand why politicians want to reward criminal rackets and agents of harm. Can you explain this to us?
 
-Pedro Camargo for Ecrisis