August 18, 2008    Rafael Correa is illegally spending lots of Ecuadorean money to promote his support for state theft plus specious law suits which Correa dishonestly tells us all will pull in lots of money for Ecuador's hidden cartels plus destroy a hated enemy- capitalism viz the USA. This is repulsive.
 
But we know that the world understands this and concurs simply because no one who is clean or decent teams up with Ecuador under Correa today in general. Investors of any decency have mostly all fled the foolishly incompetent and dishonest capitol of the lazy crazies called Quito. 
 
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The Wall Street Journal
    

Banana Republic Behavior, Cont.
August 18, 2008
Last time we checked on Ecuador, the South American country was making itself notorious for a multibillion dollar legal shakedown of Chevron on bogus pollution charges. Now its President (and Hugo Chávez wannabe) Rafael Correa is lobbying the U.S. to renew Ecuador's preferential trade treatment, which is set to expire at the end of the year. What's Quichua for chutzpah?

We happen to support renewal of those preferences, granted under the 2002 Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act. Ecuador is not (yet) Venezuela, and to the extent that trade preferences promote free-market political forces, so much the better. Then again, Mr. Correa's own behavior is the biggest political threat to those preferences. Since coming to power last year, Mr. Correa has threatened to default on Ecuador's debt, harassed the press, ejected numerous opposition leaders from congress, and rewritten the constitution to concentrate power in his hands.

Mr. Correa has also refused to renew a military basing agreement with the U.S. -- never mind that the U.S. soldiers there are involved in the kind of drug eradication that motivated the U.S. trade preferences in the first place. In March, the Colombian military raided a base run by the FARC in Ecuador and seized documents indicating close ties between the terrorist group and Mr. Correa's government, including FARC donations to his Presidential campaign. Mr. Correa dismissed the information, though Interpol has confirmed the documents as genuine.

Given his behavior, it's not surprising the country has the second-lowest rate of foreign direct investment in Latin America as a share of GDP, according to the Latin Business Chronicle. Mr. Correa seems to think a public relations campaign in the U.S. will ease his troubles here. He'd impress more Americans if he obeyed the law at home and abroad.
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Read this again: the most important newspaper in the world, read by decision makers in every nation, factually states that Correa's regime is making yet another criminal shakedown on fake charges while applying its propaganda team, also busily working concurrently for Aristide, Ortega, the Hamas-Hezbollah groups, plus Barack Hussein Obama's campaign as well as hundreds of Soros and Chavez propaganda efforts, also sometimes called paid USA contractors under US AID and/or Chavez [ for reasons that evade us].
 
Yes- it is true: Rafael Correa makes illegal shake downs and hires very expensive pro Marxist propaganda groups to spread more lies, believing that the truth can always be purchased. Correa believes this because it is how he was raised by his family and is reinforced by most Ecuadoreans who are so irresponsible today that they seriously believe that legitimacy, like affection, can be purchased and manipulated to hide realities. False faces do hide what the heart knows but Ecuadoreans revere and hold in esteem all false faces and never seek the facts.
 
Yes- it is true...Ecuador deserves no free trade preference status renewal. The JOURNAL is just about always correct but their piece above is dead wrong about Correa fighting narcoterror, which he does not. Contrary to the superb fact based reporting from the JOURNAL, mistakenly they have relied on the U.S. Department of State and Correa's own propagandists which tell us that Ecuador is a member on the war on drugs while there is no verifiable data to back this up whatsoever in the last year. In fact. Correa has de facto legalized narcotics and released all drug runners from prison. Correa likes to tell us that Ecuador does not grow drugs. So what? Neither does Antarctica and Ecuador never did....it does not have enough arable land for coca production and besides, most of their pro drugs business is involved in the more lucrative shipping end of the narco trade. With Bolivia and more of Peru plus Brazil producing more and more narcotics producing products, Ecuador's role in all this is the refining and shipping, which is more lucrative, as well as the banking and laundering of illicit drug money called free dollar exchange, also called black peso laundering schemes. Correa will run the laundering and shipping business and leave the growing to others.

So we disagree with the JOURNAL and the US Department of State which tells us that Ecuador is a partner against crime when each and every known crime, including narcotrafficking, is on the menu is Ecuador today which just opened up its country to anyone with no papers, no passport, no legitimacy. It is a nation in free fall and fully a place of criminality run amuck.
 
The JOURNAL is absolutely correct: Correa seeks to buy an over-ride to law and order through paid propaganda.
This is a criminal adventure.
 
While Correa was busy trying to impress Ecuadoreans with his radio broadcast on Saturday from Guayaquil, numerous students rejected Correa's lies and peacefully demonstrated in support of freedom. Correa ordered his goons- the military and police- to shut them down and repressed free speech....as he does daily. This link has a video of interviews with two of the students. 

Again...On Saturday Aug. 16, Correa decided to broadcast his weekly radio show from the auditorium at U. Catolica in Guayaquil. The president of the federation of students seems to have stated that the University supports Correa and his constitution. The students of the University, as seen in the unedited interview, rejected this, and they were at the campus on Saturday to peacefully demonstrate to proclaim that they are for freedom and not for tyranny. Correa ordered state repression. Rafael Correa has not only bought up a dizzying array of formerly privately owned media but is estimated to commandeer now about 70% of all media in Ecuador, supplanted by TELESUR, Chavez and Ahmadinejad's business enterprise which is partially owned by Correa too. There can be no doubt that these actors perform illegal acts such as racketeering and monopolization of private entities.
 
The JOURNAL supports free trade. So we do likewise at ECrisis. But a significant hallmark of nations as undeserving of free trade is their unwillingness to stand for normative law and order. Correa has a much worse track record that Chavez on this in his unending march to denying all law and order in Ecuador unless it is commandeered by his tender extortionist mercies...for profit or political pull. The JOURNAL would have been well served to note that Chevron-Texaco faces no justice in Ecuador's courts because the case against Chevron is enjoined by Correa who has replaced all justices with his pet kangaroos, allegiant only to him while usurping all federal laws, norms and regs with his "new" constitution. Free trade also depends on contract law which Correa holds in no regard whatsoever while converting PetroEcuador to his new partnering with PetroBras while contracting out Ecuador's military and police to Chavez's DISIP and militias. This is no mere Banana Republic: it is a narcostate with no definable resemblance to a Republic in any sense.
 
We commend the JOURNAL in general but they need to wake up and report on Ecuador today. Lawless Ecuador is no longer a Republic, banana or otherwise. Today it is just a proxy for Iran -Hezbollah and is simply a narcostate with aspirations toward a link in the Russo-Iranian largesse. 
 
On August 17, 2008  the mercopress noted that "Chile, Brazil and Mexico are among the countries which could be visited by United States presidential candidate Barack Obama before the November election, following on recommendations for a Latinamerican tour from his political advisors.

The purpose of the visit would be to deliver strong messages of rapprochement to the region, basically to the largest economies (Brazil and Mexico) and to Chile as the outstanding model of economic and social development. Besides it would look to counteract the Republican candidate John McCain visit to Colombia.

The news was born last week when Chilean ambassador Mariano Fernandez in Washington was invited to the Lower House Foreign Affairs Committee, where apparently the initiative was confirmed by several Democrat members of Congress.

Apparently the Obama team also consulted with Senator Chris Dodd and New Mexico governor Bill Richardson who are considered experts in the area, about which countries to visit and that was when the three names were mentioned.

Furthermore State Department sources confirmed that the Obama team was working on the tour and informal contacts with the Chilean embassy in Washington had already been established."

MERCOpress tells us that Obama, also called promoting George Soros's business interests in Chile and Brazil, will sing of rapprochement. Rapprochement with what? Rapprochement with liars, ninnyhammers, dimwits and dunces? Rapprochement with more and more of the same foolishness that Iran and Hugo Chavez, also called Putin's newest proxy, can do what ever they want with no accountability? Oh- that kind of rapprochement- dishonest, manipulative and oh so normal to Ecuadoreans.

And this, they tell us ridiculously, will "counter" McCain's visit to Colombia? Counter what? What did McCain say or do that warrants/deserves countering? Did McCain misrepresent the people of the USA? Did he lie? Must he be countered? On what grounds?

What needs to be said is that honesty and fact based reporting is needed today more than ever. And no one should take that away from us. Ecuador today is not a Republic by any stretch, banana or otherwise.

-Pedro Camargo for ECrisis