November 16, 2008   ECrisis recommends that the people of Ecuador and the people of the United States decide what it is they are supporting about the Correa narco-cartel administration of Ecuador, which today is simply a criminal cartel couched under the thin veneer of a so called Republic, which it is not any more.
 
Following are words and photos from a sister organization to WOLA and numerous other George Soros- US AID backed organizations. This one is called CIPCOL which is part of the Soros-backed CIP and shows its trip last week which the employee Adam Isacson calls "a congressional delegation to Ecuador."

This is somewhat confusing: either Isacson is telling the facts that this adventure  for him and McGovern was an "official" US taxpayer Congressional delegation to Ecuador, as he calls it a ` congressional delegation' which is supposed to mean CODEL, or else this is a Soros group adventure or a US taxpayer adventure paid through US AID to help Soros and his anti Plan Colombia NGOs and activists, also concurrently helping bankrupt Chevron Texaco in a massively dishonest law suit series of unfounded claims, which Correa has enjoined Ecuador in to and co funds the so called plaintiffs while not once proffering an independent forensic audit of any claim. So which is it? Who paid for this trip? McGovern did not buy his own plane ticket nor were the US governmental autos handed over for free. Who paid for this? Any guesses? You can ask Correa or you can ask Amb. Hodges or you can ask US AID or you can ask the photo-lobbying- propagandist Isacson.
 
Other than prurient interest to check up on how metrosexuals launch propaganda campaigns against U.S. interests, we find this entire CIPCOL review of Ecuador revealing of something beyond the facts. And who passed out the Obama tee shirts to the so called anti Chevron plaintiffs who seem to don them proudly as if Obama himself will jigger justice and hand them....Something for Nothing while Correa pretends that the $50 million in environmental funds gifted to Ecuador for environmental restoration by Texaco....simply disappeared. Somehow we do not think this was being discussed at the meetings shown below, not even in the one memorialized in the first photo:
 

 
 
 U.S. Ambassador Heather Hodges and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), Quito, November 12, 2008 


 
 Press at meeting between Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, November... 
 

 
 Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) with Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, Quito, November 12, 2008 

 
 Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) with Ecuadorian Defense Minister Javier Ponce, Quito, November 12, 2008
 
 
 Nov 14 2008             cipcol.org
Back from Ecuador
Relations with Ecuador, U.S. Congress, Beyond Colombia | Permanent link 4 Comments »
We returned last night from our visit to Ecuador with Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts). The delegation spent three days in Ecuador’s eastern Amazon basin region, near the border with Colombia. We visited sites that had been badly contaminated by oil production, the subject of ongoing litigation between U.S. oil company Chevron and thousands of citizens from the region. We visited towns bordering Colombia where local populations were dealing with continued high refugee flows, threats from illegal armed groups, and violence from a narco-economy that continues to flourish. And we spent a day in Quito meeting with officials.

We will post more about what we saw soon. In the meantime, here are some photos from the trip. More can be viewed here and here.

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) at Yuca 5 oil well site, November 9

Visit to San Carlos, Orellana, November 9

Shushufindi 38 Oil Well Site, November 10

Shushufindi 38 Oil Well Site, November 10

Shushufindi 38 Oil Well Site, November 10

On a barge outside Lago Agrio, Ecuador, November 10

Visit to Cofán indigenous community in Dureno, Sucumbíos, November 10

Visit to Cofán indigenous community in Dureno, Sucumbíos, November 10

On the road between Lago Agrio and Barranca Bermeja, Sucumbíos, November 11

In Barranca Bermeja, looking across the San Miguel River at Putumayo, Colombia, November 11

Meeting with community leaders in Barranca Bermeja, Sucumbíos, November 11

Meeting with community leaders in Barranca Bermeja, Sucumbíos, November 11

Meeting with community leaders in Puerto Mestanza, Sucumbíos, November 11

Meeting with President Rafael Correa, Quito, November 12

Nov 08
Off for a few days
I’m headed to the airport in a few hours, accompanying a congressional delegation to Ecuador. I’ll try to post pictures and give updates from there, but it’s not clear how much downtime-with-Internet-access I’ll have to do that. I’ll be back in Washington on Friday.

In the meantime, here is a link to my co-worker Abigail Poe’s post on the “Just the Facts” blog: a fascinating rundown of what Latin America’s governments and editorial boards said this week about Barack Obama’s election victory.

Here is an older blog posting on Ecuador:

The quarrel with Ecuador continues
Relations with Ecuador | Permanent link 16 Comments »
The Colombian government this week scuttled a Jimmy Carter-brokered deal to set Colombia and Ecuador back on the road to diplomatic relations, which were broken following the Colombian raid into Ecuadorian territory that killed FARC leader Raúl Reyes. Here is an analysis, and a translation of Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa’s strong comments, from CIP Associate Abigail Poe.

On March 3rd of this year, Ecuador pulled its ambassador from Colombia, halting diplomatic relations two days after the raid on a FARC camp in Ecuadorian territory that killed Raul Reyes and 24 others. At the time, it was not clear when diplomatic relations would be restored - but it would have been hard to believe that two and a half months later, relations between Colombia and Ecuador would still be broken off, and on the verge of getting worse.

Tensions have stayed high, and the potential for restored diplomatic relations delayed, by documents from Raúl Reyes’ computer hinting that officials from the government of Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa maintained ties to the FARC. However, two weeks ago, with the help of mediation by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, Ecuador and Colombia agreed to restore diplomatic relations at the charge d’affaires level. According to the two governments, the restoration of relations at this level was to happen sometime this week.

Over the weekend, though, the agreement to renew diplomatic relations between Colombia and Ecuador collapsed when Colombian Foreign Minister Fernando Araújo said his country would hold back its diplomats in response to Correa’s “aggressive” comments published in an Argentine newspaper, Página 12, on Sunday. In the article, Correa stated that in order to reestablish full diplomatic relations with Colombia, the Colombian government would have to fully explain the March 1 raid, adding charges that the bombs used in the attack came from the United States.

Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Maria Isabel Salvador, who told El Tiempo last week that the restoration of diplomatic relations to the charge d’affaires level was “only one step in the total re-establishment of confidence between the two countries,” responded to Araújo with a declaration that Ecuador has dropped plans to renew ties with Colombia and is considering limiting bilateral trade “if the situation does not improve, above all in Colombia’s position toward Ecuador.”

Just last week, it looked like Colombia and Ecuador were on the path toward ending what has become one of the longest-lasting diplomatic standoffs in Latin America’s recent history. Unfortunately, today’s news makes it look like the bickering between two neighboring countries may continue for an indeterminate period, especially if Ecuador goes through with limiting trade.

Here is a translation of a portion of the interview with Correa that inspired Colombia’s government to postpone the re-establishment of diplomatic ties once again:

(From: “Ganar las elecciones no es ganar el poder,” by Mario Wainfeld, Pagina 12, 6/22/2008)

- What is the current situation with Colombia, given last month’s international aggression?

- We are the assaulted ones, we get to set the timetable. We have taken a step, to reestablish relations at the chargé d’affaires level. We have a very hot border, it is good to have fluid communications. But in order to establish full relations, we are going to demand that this attack be fully clarified. The bombs were North American and, according to reports by our armed forces, they could not have been dropped from Colombian planes. It is very probable that three of the wounded, according to forensic reports, were finished off after the attacks. The Ecuadorian citizens who were killed there died from blows to the neck and not from shots or bombs.

- To what point can Ecuador control the border militarily?

- Impossible. It is a very porous border. The United States can’t control the passage of immigrants to their territory and are building a wall. And there isn’t a jungle there. Here, there are 400, 500 kilometers of the Amazon jungle. The world has to understand that the problem is not Ecuador, that the problem is Colombia. And that each time a FARC patrol crosses into Ecuador, it means that it crossed out of Colombia. We have 13 military posts on the border, when we would need (in times of peace) one-fourth that amount. Colombia has two. Colombia’s strategy is to resolve the problem by removing forces from its southern border, they want to involve us.

-T he hypothesis is that Ecuador is a kind of wall…

- It is the Yankee strategy: they attack from the north to the south, leave the southern border unmanned so that we must make the effort. This also infuriates us. Do you know how many Colombian refugees we have in our country? Four hundred thousand Colombians, seventeen thousand with refugee status, there are many more requests. The problem is not with the Colombian people, the problem is with Uribe.

Mar 14
Relations with Ecuador, Alvaro Uribe, Free Trade | Permanent link 12 Comments »
“Chemical Reactions,” a new report from the Washington Office on Latin America on the U.S. fumigation program in Colombia. The report, the culmination of a long research project over at WOLA, is the definitive dismantling of this failed policy, and does an expert job of questioning claims that the fumigation program poses no health or environmental risks.

Sorry not to have posted in 48 hours during such an eventful week; I spent my blogging time yesterday writing a post-mortem of the Venezuela-Ecuador-Colombia crisis that will soon be available on the opendemocracy.net website (not there yet). [3/17: here it is.]

In the wake of the crisis, the Bush administration has decided to go for the so-called “nuclear option” - introducing the Colombia Free Trade Agreement in Congress, setting in motion the countdown for a required vote, with no certainty that the accord can pass. In the middle of a presidential election campaign and an economic recession, no less.

How do you make such a difficult sale? Apparently, by making it a “national security” issue. The pitch uses language reminiscent of the Reagan administration’s 1980s appeals for aid to El Salvador and the Nicaraguan contras. Said President Bush: “The region is facing an increasingly stark choice: to quietly accept the vision of the terrorists and the demagogues, or to actively support democratic leaders like President Uribe.”

(So apparently, it’s Uribe’s way or the terrorists’ way. Needless to say, we reject this false, dishonest dichotomy in the most strenuous terms.)

The rhetoric is familiar - only this time, the “evil empire” in question is not Soviet expansionism but Hugo Chávez, who leads a country of only 26 million people and gets his dollars from our own oil purchases.

Will the Bush administration put Venezuela on the list of U.S. terrorist-sponsoring states? Probably not, for now at least.

At a House hearing yesterday, the Southern Command gave its annual “Posture Statement” (PDF). Southcom’s commander, Adm. Jim Stavridis, urged Congress to pass the FTA (an issue apparently popular [PDF] with Southcom chiefs) and presented plans to make Southcom into an “inter-agency coordinator” of U.S. policy toward the region.

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa remains angry at the United States. “In Washington, they say we help the FARC. Let them come and put American troops on Colombia’s southern border,’ Correa said. ‘Let them suffer deaths and bloodshed, and we’ll see if they keep talking.’”

CIP Colombia Program staff:

Adam Isacson, director of programs: Adam Isacson has worked on Latin American security issues, particularly U.S. policy toward Central America and Colombia, since 1995 at the Center for International Policy. He has been to Colombia more than twenty-five times, including thirteen of the country’s thirty-two departments. Mr. Isacson holds an MA in International Relations from Yale University. He worked previously for the Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress in San José, Costa Rica. Most of his publications since 1999 can be found online here. Abigail Poe, associate: Poe is the associate for the Colombia program at CIP, where she has worked since 2005 as both director of operations and special projects manager. She is currently obtaining her MA in Latin American Studies at Georgetown University and holds a BA in Environmental Studies and Policy from Bates College. Before coming to CIP in 2005, Poe spent two years in Quito, Ecuador, where she produced a news-commentary radio show, developed and managed an online, direct-to-consumer flower company and volunteered as a project developer for a local non-profit. Center for International Policy
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-The Editors, ECrisis