March 26, 2008   Today, the MIAMI HERALD reports that Iran is on the state sponsor of terror list. We at ECrisis predict that soon enough Venezuela and its bunk mate Ecuador will join Iran for their marriage of convenience with Iran and the FARC which of course has led these two states in progressing from the soul deadening status of marriage of convenience to marriage with the FARC and Iran in reality. Human nature is always thus and state actors no less- what we allow to proceed eventually becomes reality, unless checked either by moral attentiveness or obedience to moral, ethical systems. Nothing in Ecuador or Venezuela today complies with anything moral or ethical: they have abandoned all state compacts with justice.
 
The HERALD writes, "Washington has warned international financial institutions to beware of doing business with several Iranian banks, citing concerns about Iran's lack of regulations to prevent money-laundering and the financing of terrorism. Included on the list of more than 50 private and state-owned banks is an Iranian bank in Venezuela, Banco Internacional de Desarrollo, based in Caracas, as well as others in Italy, Hong Kong, Paris, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom. The Treasury Department issued the advisory last week, warning that `through state-owned banks, the government of Iran disguises its involvement in proliferation and terrorism activities through an array of deceptive practices specifically to evade detection.' Treasury said the Central Bank of Iran and Iranian commercial banks have recently requested that their names be removed from global transactions to make it more difficult for other banks and regulators to determine who is behind each transaction. "
 
There is no question that Correa's government in Ecuador, which has no Congress, has no justice and has only the iron hand of Correa and his mobsters running this land have made it impossible to legally trust their financial empires, making it "more difficult for other banks and regulators to determine who is behind each transaction." Indeed, as in Venezuela, there is an organized effort underway to disguise illegal acts and shield illegal money movements while today there is nothing meaningful at all in Ecuadorean and Venezuelan banking transactions for regulation or crime prevention: their fiscal houses have gone lawlessly wilding.
 
Into the non regulated and never audited and always dishonest governments of Chavez and Correa breezes the FARC and the more appealing Iranian money movers without so much as a by your leave. Both the FARC and Iran's arms [and now legs it appears] are known sponsors of terror. One would have hoped that Correa and Chavez would clean their own state corruption rather than be shunned by global financiers. Alas- both Correa and Chavez continue to reveal their complicity with criminal terror cartels and are connected by their own psychoses to a life of criminal maladjustments. Worse, they send out a FARC moll named Piedad Cordoba to tell us all that the FARC must be respected and treated gently to release the FARC's now dead thousands of bodies and their illegally retained captives. The MIAMI HERALD apparently thought it useful to publish the Piedad Cordoba-FARC-Chavez and Correa promotional photos from these state propagandists to further enable the Iranean-FARC-Chavez-Correa crime spree.
 
Here is a glowing photo promotional of Cordoba from the MIAMI HERALD to sympathize with Cordoba's challenging work, operating as she does from Miraflores Palace while running up huge shopping expenses and expensive personal wardrobes at Venezuelan taxpayer expense and while lying a lot about her work before the U.S. Congress and all known and readily available patsies from the U.S. AID system of NGOS to further her message in complicity with the FARC. The photo captions are from the HERALD. We cannot understand why that newspaper is determined to run these pufferies to assist the fake premise that Cordoba is legitimate for she is a do-terror, do drugs FARC moll. And an expensive one at that, even though her residence at Miraflores appears tax free.
 
We lead off with Nestor Kirchner and his allies of a fools errand:



In this image released by Argentina's government palace, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, left, talks with Argentina's former President Nestor Kirchner, center, and Colombia's Senator Piedad Cordoba at the airport in Santo Domingo, Venezuela, Friday, Dec. 28, 2007. AP from the MIAMI HERALD
 
(Note “comrade Juan” – aka Ecuadorian Cabinet Minister Larrea behind Chávez)
 
....and here is Piedad with a biting cartoon showing her and Chavez complicit. She calls this a challenge/not welcome and she is sad. We call the cartoon realistic. We call her a FARC moll because she is. A moll is defined by WEBSTERS as a mistress for a gangster. We call the FARC gangsters, murderers, terrorists and traitors. We also call her acts treason for her hard work to bring down the legitimate government of Alvaro Uribe and try to elevate the terrorists called the FARC:


Senator Piedad Cordoba receives from the hands of a senate caricaturist a drawing that depicts her hughing Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, a not so welcome gift, Bogota, Colombia, March 11, 2008. CARLOS VILLALON / FOR THE MIAMI HERALD 
 
And here again is Piedad with her paymasters- Chavez and the FARC. This is supposed to make us sympathetic to the "humanitarian" FARC. Cordoba wants the FARC declassified as a terror group. Correa and Chavez tell us the same thing. Correa tells us he is neutral about the terrorizing murdering FARC. He is not neutral: he is also in bed with the FARC as is Chavez and Cordoba. We call this not a PR puff piece of happy diplomats but a perp walk:



Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, center, speaks with the media as he is flanked by Ivan Marquez, representative of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, or FARC, left, and Colombian Senator Piedad Cordoba, right, after a meeting at Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Thursday, Nov. 8, 2007. GREGORIO MARRERO / AP 

Encouraging fake politics to cover up criminal behaviors by state actors is not acceptable. It is rather like the use of colorful, expensive head scarves to cover up what lies beneath. And yet we question why US Speaker of the House Pelosi, under the guidance of her Soros counsel, spends more time with Cordoba on behalf of legalizing that which should never be legalized- which is what Soros wants- instead of time well spent with honorable men such as Alvaro Uribe. Clearly Soros and his minions such as Congressman McGovern and Delahunt - and their armies of attrition called NGOs- want Uribe gone in order to legitimize that which should never be legitimized and create a more perfect union of narcostates in the Andes.
 
Writing about false faces/fake politics, author Christopher Hitchens is good- very good- when he is at his best covering politics. Hitchens detects a double standard in U.S. politics today, -read it here-. He takes U.S. candidate Obama to task and his Chicago minister Wright, trying to explain away their sustained politics of hatred: "This flabbergasting process, made up of glibness and ruthlessness in equal proportions, rolls on unstoppably with a phalanx of reporters and men of the cloth as its accomplices...But is it "inflammatory" to say that AIDS and drugs are wrecking the black community because the white power structure wishes it? No. Nor is it `controversial.' It is wicked and stupid and false to say such a thing. And it not unimportantly negates everything that Obama says he stands for by way of advocating dignity and responsibility over the sick cults of paranoia and victimhood...To have accepted Obama's smooth apologetics is to have lowered one's own pre-existing standards for what might constitute a post-racial or a post-racist future. It is to have put that quite sober and realistic hope, meanwhile, into untrustworthy and unscrupulous hands. And it is to have done this, furthermore, in the service of blind faith. Mark my words: This disappointment is only the first of many that are still to come."
 
Today the Marxist-populist network of actors crosses over often with the pro FARC and pro Chavez actors. A primer is here, which reflects a Who's Who of U.S. and international actors, also called populists and Sorosites, who would not stop their own adventurism in the Andes to legalize that which should not be legalized. Leaders from the USA such as Soros-backed Jim McGovern and Jan Schakowsky [award winner] promote Piedad Cordoba.
 
Tragically, many of the Hugo Chavez and Rafael Correa political dirty tricks and false polemics sound like the Soros-paid politics of hatred whose man today in none other than Barack Hussein Obama who might be elected the next president of the USA if voters continue to pretend that the Politics of Hatred- sold to them by George Soros's propaganda- and now sold to the voters as only having a chance of being healed by the self same Soros acolyte named Obama, is possibly a success story for Soros. But it is a disaster for human reasoning. If a higher purpose is to exhibit "dignity and responsibility [ of the individual] over the sick cults of paranoia and victimhood....if each of us is ultimately responsible for our lives to each of us alone and none other- then what will stop this wretched, soul deadening game of victimhood, hatred and paranoia? Certainly not Chavez or Correa, imbued as they are with this disease. And certainly not the sustained societal response by individual Ecuadoreans, bred as they are by diseased mamas who tell them that they will hold advantages in life by removing responsible adult behaviors and acting the victim, being paranoid and nervous all the time. It is a disease: it is a national past time and it is long past time to stop this politics of self hatred and hating the good and responsible and start living responsibly. There will be no end to the reign of Chavez and Correa unless and until each stands for responsible adult-like behaviors. Better yet to cease lowering one's own standards and relegating one's own life in to the hands of criminal accomplices named Chavez and Correa...in the service of blind faith to a Marxist state that will only perpetuate hatred of all others and more relevant-self hatred.
 
Worse yet is the stubborn obedience in the Andes to the teachings that if- and only if- we as a people create a parallel universe where no man is beholden to law and order/where law and order essentially does not exist, where uniform governance is reduced to a sloppy, torpid protection racket by the bribed and for the bribed and extorted, where we permit- as is the case of Bolivia, fully separate and distinct two track legal systems and tax codes, we are fooling ourselves into irresponsible adolescent tyrannies, run by sociopaths and adolescent tin pot dictators. As we see in Bolivia, legalizing narcotrafficking for the so called Indigenous and giving these criminals a free pass on normative societal rules is a fools errand. Ecuador's CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY out of Montecristi proposes the same for all intents and purposes, never mind that less than 7% of all Ecuadoreans are actually indigenous. And who is to say when one non lawful zone overlaps an ostensibly lawful zone? This is crass appeasement of the criminal for the criminal, once again debasing the local "poor" whom they pretend to help but in fact relegate to the ranks of global scumbags for their own lawlessness, never rising to the ranks of respectable, law abiding citizens. This is not a human rights give away: it is an ethical sell out. Justice is best crafted when it is color and race blind. The road to this point has been rocky and full of lapses but a full retreat from color blind justice in to a two tiered state is not essential nor is it sustainable. A house divided against itself will not stand, unless of course one thinks like Ecuadoreans do today where all households are cheerfully divided against themselves except in one commonality- their commitments to lie, deceive and manipulate. This is not healthy.
 
Where terrorism and all its progeny: rape, fear, extortion, money laundering, instability, lawlessness, murder exist, democracy is shuttered along with all rights which we should hold dear but readily sell out to our primary addiction that manipulative living is the best course ...when it is not.
 
The falsity- the inoperability- of the nationwide addiction to manipulative living by deceit in Ecuador- and the utterly false and vapid external piety that attends this self righteous delusion - is seen in the massive murder rate in Ecuador. Thousands are murdered freely, with gay abandon, each year and murders are considered as simply needing more love, not prosecution thus sayeth the sociopathic leader of Ecuador in his unending efforts to justify his own criminal family tree. Ecuador is the world's murder capitol because no one cares and life is considered expendable when neither the church writ large nor the government knows one modicum of developing and sustaining legitimate institutions for the betterment of all while insisting that the state system alone-Marxism- will serve the loss of all creeds, all beliefs and all ethics.
 
Ecuador today is lost because it is by its own desires, hollow/empty/vain/selfish/manipulative and dishonest.
 
Like Hugo Chavez incredulously blaming the free press and free speech for terrorizing his comfy little criminal empire with the terrorizing light of day with the facts as a window in to his criminal enterprises, sometimes called transparency, which he fears more than he fears bombs, we see a world turned upside down while state controlled monopolies and state run rackets manage most every formerly held private or competitive enterprise. Chavez and Correa essentially call democracy's vow of private living in unity with the whole as evil. Correa even goes so far as to rewrite de Tocqueville's treatise on democracy in the early North American states, telling us he has studied his writings when he has clearly not. What are we to make of these liars, ninnyhammers, dimwits and badly undereducated dunces? To be sure, they need to be in jail at once and not just for torturing history, current affairs or even the sacred memory of Mariscal Sucre and Simon Bolivar. Real crime is consorting with terrorists, is money laundering and is extortion rackets. Who will prosecute these thugs when there are no courts/no justice? Who will protect and defend truth tellers, so few now, when their truths are more than self evident?
 
With Chavez and Correa informally known today as state sponsors of terror with the FARC and fully complicit formally with known state sponsors of terror, also called the Iranean government, the U.S. Treasury, never one to rush in and always cautious, released this [ shortened here]:



March 12, 2008
HP-869

Treasury Designates Iran-Controlled Bank for Proliferation

Future Bank Controlled by Iran’s Bank Melli

Washington − The U.S. Department of the Treasury today designated Future Bank B.S.C. for being controlled by Iran's Bank Melli, which was previously designated by the Treasury Department for facilitating Iran's proliferation activities.

"Bank Melli goes to extraordinary lengths to assist Iran's pursuit of a nuclear capability and ballistic missiles, while also helping other designated entities to dodge sanctions," said Stuart Levey, Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI).  "Banks and other entities owned or controlled by Bank Melli pose a serious threat to the integrity of the international financial system."

Future Bank is being designated pursuant to Executive Order 13382, an authority aimed at freezing the assets of proliferators of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and their supporters.  Bank Melli was designated by the Treasury Department under E.O. 13382 on October 25, 2007.

Future Bank was established in 2004 as a joint venture between two Iranian banks, Bank Melli and Bank Saderat, and a private bank based in Bahrain.  Bank Melli and Bank Saderat each hold 33.3 percent of Future Bank's outstanding shares.  At the time of designation, Bank Melli and Future Bank publicly identify the same individual as chairman of both institutions.  Other information available to the U.S. Government also demonstrates that Future Bank is controlled by Bank Melli.

The Government of Bahrain has taken responsible steps to try to prevent Future Bank from abusing the country's financial system.

"Bahraini authorities have been closely monitoring Future Bank and took some steps after Treasury's designations of Banks Melli and Saderat to attempt to prevent abuse by this institution," Levey continued.
This designation is consistent with United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1803 of March 3, 2008, which calls upon Member States to "exercise vigilance" with regard to activities between financial institutions in their countries and all banks domiciled in Iran, in particular, Iran's Bank Melli and Bank Saderat.  UNSCR 1803 specifically calls on States to take such action in order to avoid these activities contributing to either proliferation sensitive nuclear activities or the development of nuclear weapons systems, as referred to in UNSCR 1737.

Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated Bank Melli pursuant to E.O. 13382 for providing, or attempting to provide, financial support for entities involved in Iran's nuclear and missile programs.  These include: the Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group, the Defense Industries Organization (DIO), Bank Sepah, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).  These entities have also been designated under E.O. 13382 and have been listed in UNSCRs 1737 and 1747.  OFAC also designated four financial institutions that are owned or controlled by Bank Melli, including Melli Bank plc, Arian Bank, Bank Melli Iran ZAO, and Bank Kargoshaee.
On that same day, OFAC designated Bank Saderat pursuant to E.O. 13224 for providing support to the terrorist organizations Hezbollah and Hamas.

Since President George W. Bush issued E.O. 13382 in June 2005 and identified eight entities in the Annex to the Order, a total of 51 entities and 12 individuals have been designated as proliferators of WMD.  Specifically, the Treasury Department has designated:

• 36 entities and 11 individuals tied to Iranian proliferation activity;
• Nine entities and one individual tied to North Korean proliferation activity; and
• Three entities tied to Syrian proliferation activity.

Additionally, the State Department has designated three Iranian organizations as entities of proliferation concern, including Iran's Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL), the DIO, and the IRGC.
The designation announced today is part of the ongoing interagency effort by the United States Government to combat WMD trafficking by exposing and blocking the property of entities and individuals that engage in proliferation activities and their support networks.
-------------------

Further, the U.S. Treasury Department states on its web site that "Counterterrorism and security policy have traditionally been the province of foreign affairs, defense, intelligence, and law enforcement officials – not Finance Ministers. But finance ministries worldwide are now working closely with the traditional security ministries to meet the government's first responsibility: ensuring the safety of its citizens. Promoting a safe, sound, and secure financial system will enable us to work toward that end." - Under Secretary Stuart Levey
 
While we commend Stuart Levey, we do not commend Hugo Chavez or Rafael Correa because the promotion of "a safe, sound financial system" in the duality called the Ecuadorean-Venezuelan bloc is not occurring at all in these two nations, committed as they are to running narcoterror and Iranean monies, weapons and trans shipping illicit goods while amassing major weapons of aggression. Correa and Chavez are committed to unaccountable, illicit financial schemes and nothing is legitimate in these two countries which are legalizing that which should never be legalized.
 
Do you know what Ecuadorean money laundering laws look like? They are by design [and this took many years to enshrine] a joke- a welcome mat for all global criminals in this place where no criminal goes unrewarded while law abiding citizens are hiding.
 
-Pedro Camargo for ECrisis