August 8, 2010 Before Rafael Correa jets off to Belgium, home of EURO Reds and his wife’s family for about 10 days or….whatever, we are compelled to bring Correa’s latest fake betting tools to your attention. Correa wants you to believe he actually cares about conservation when he has done nothing but give life to pagan worshipping of fake, fat goddesses known only to the perennially stupid and drug abusers called Pachamama.

Correa does now take unknown billions of U.S. dollars- some say $3 and some say $5 billion from the United Nations, which when coupled with additional U.S. tax payer gifts to Correa’s scam, we are probably in the neighborhood of around $5 billion for Correa’s wallet, which he calls the globe’s unending stupidity to hand him money to not drill for oil in a park reserve. Correa of course knows how amazingly stupid the U.S. taxpayers remain for funding 2/3 of he UN and gifting him with even more direct cash. Correa has not once- ever- been honest or accountable in one single thing. Correa does deliver fake governmental reports on all manner of items ranging from the environment to false charges against the Isaias family, Chevron Texaco, DynCorp, Occidental and on and on. Not once ever has the government of Rafael Correa done or practiced one thing that is honest, accountable or transparent. And you want him to keep taking and taking to keep himself in power? And Mrs. Clinton should be embarrassed for backing, with unaccountable US dollars, this fraud. As a matter of fact, where is the US Inspector General on this crime?

Correa cannot even be honest about the FARC, Hezbollah, Iran or even Raul Reyes. Correa is not honest about himself or his politics. And he deserves $5 billion or so? To be sure, Correa will use this money for some off the books carbon betting frauds, also called cap and trade just to make sure that the Obama fools and the Soros idiots keep plowing money his way. Carbon offset bets are, as every European now knows, running at 95% fraud….and it is probably 100%. Knowing of course that everything Correa does is a fraud, we know that he will be happily defrauding the USA, the UN and every environmentalist swooning at his greatness to ….steal other people’s money while pretending he cares about the Yasuni. With Carlos Larrea as “technical advisor” you can be sure that fraud is underway. You think a Yasuni Guarantee Certificate is anything but a scam?

The world's first really green oil deal
Ecuador's £3.6bn scheme to save its rainforest from exploitation could point the way to sparing other threatened landscapes

By Esmé McAvoy

Sunday, 8 August 2010      The world's first genuinely green energy deal is about to be sealed. In a plan which could be a blueprint for saving large tracts of the planet from exploitation, a greater value is being put on a pristine wilderness than on the oil that lies beneath.

While the world's industrialised countries are building complex carbon markets to enable them to carry on polluting, Ecuador has come up with a much simpler idea for mitigating climate change: leave the oil underground. It is promising to lock up as much as a fifth of its oil reserves indefinitely, providing rich nations pay out at least half the market value of the oil – some $3.6bn – as compensation.

The trail-blazing proposal was first floated in 2007, but it took a step towards reality last week when the UN Development Programme signed an agreement with the Ecuadorean government to be the independent administrator for the project's trust fund. The accord makes Ecuador the only country in the world offering to leave lucrative oil reserves untapped in an attempt to slow climate change.

Crucially, the oil in question – some 846 billion barrels of crude – lies beneath the Yasuni National Park, one of the most bio-diverse swathes of rainforest on the planet. Located in the heart of the Ecuadorean Amazon, one hectare contains more tree species than the whole of the US and Canada combined. It is also home to 105 amphibian species – the UK has six – more than 500 birds, 200 mammals and countless insects and plants. Declared a world biosphere reserve by Unesco in 1989, the park is also the ancestral land of two of the world's last remaining uncontacted indigenous tribes, the Tagaeri and the Taromenane.

The plan, backed by Greenpeace, the WWF and even the oil-producing Opec countries – applies to a 675sq mile area of Yasuni known as the ITT block after the three oil-fields that lie beneath it. Locking up the oil would not only protect the rainforest and the indigenous tribes, but it would also stop at least 407 million metric tonnes of CO2 being released into the atmosphere, according to Carlos Larrea, the initiative's technical adviser. "That's more than the total annual emissions of France or Brazil," he said.

In return, Ecuador is asking for $3.6bn – roughly half the expected revenue if the oil was extracted and sold at current prices – to be invested in renewable energy developments to help the country further cut its carbon emissions.

If it works, the scheme could be rolled out to countries such as Colombia, Peru and the Philippines which face similarly stark choices between protecting globally significant ecosystems and oil. "Ecuador began exporting oil in 1972, and oil now accounts for over 60 per cent of exports," Mr Larrea said. "Locking away 20 per cent of our oil reserves is a bold decision but we can't do it without international support."

Yet, after three years, securing anything more concrete than praise has proved elusive. At the end of last year, President Rafael Correa embarked on an international tour, including the UK, France, Sweden and Canada, to drum up support for the proposal before December's climate change summit in Copenhagen. But none has offered a firm cash commitment.

The Yasuni-ITT committee was originally poised to sign the agreement at the summit, but Mr Correa, unhappy with the terms, baulked at the 11th hour. His actions, and subsequent statements, led to several resignations from the Yasuni-ITT board. But a new board was assembled, with some original members, and the contentious points in the agreement have been ironed out.

Despite the setbacks, Germany remains a supporter and is likely to contribute around $50m, although no figures are confirmed. Signing up an independent body such as the UN to oversee the trust fund was a key German criterion, along with the support of at least one other country. With the trust fund in place, Mr Larrea is confident the final obstacle will be removed. "Spain and Belgium have expressed support, as have a number of other European countries. We're very optimistic."

Contributions to the fund would be spread over at least 10 years and countries would be issued with Yasuni Guarantee Certificates (CGYs in Spanish) to the value of the non-emitted CO2 their contribution has secured. Should any future Ecuadorean government break the commitment and drill for oil, the certificates entitle their holders to their money back with interest.

From next month, individuals and private companies will also be able to donate via the Yasuni-ITT website. "We hope individuals and environmentally aware companies all over the world will be excited by what we're doing and want to contribute as a gesture of solidarity," Mr Larrea said. "Supporters will be symbolically 'buying' their barrel of oil with the guarantee it will stay underground." Such international "crowd funding" would create an intimidating network of public opposition should any future government try to break the pact.

The $3.6bn will be invested in renewable energy to reduce the country's oil dependency and cut carbon emissions. These investments are expected to generate annual returns of about 7 per cent, which will go into a second pot to fund environmental and social development projects, such as reforestation, social programmes for indigenous groups and eco-tourism. Projects will be decided by a steering committee of representatives from the Ecuadorean government, the donor countries and a nominated public representative.

Reducing illegal logging is the top priority, according to Mr Larrea. Ecuador has one of the highest rates of deforestation in South America, despite protected areas covering over a quarter of the country. Matt Finer of the environmental organisation Save America's Forests has called the Ecuadorean Amazon "a complicated and confusing array of overlapping protected areas, indigenous reserves and crude oil concessions", testament to the way conservation has regularly been sidelined by oil interests. Legal loopholes have permitted oil concessions within national park boundaries and even where areas are protected, they are woefully understaffed.

Ecuador's northern Amazon bears the scars of decades of reckless oil extraction. One of the biggest environmental lawsuits has been raging for 17 years between the oil giant Chevron and 30,000 Ecuadoreans whose land and water are contaminated by oil spills and toxic open waste pits. If found liable, Chevron faces damages of more than $27bn.

However, groundbreaking changes to the constitution in 2008 mean Ecuador is the only country in the world to recognise the rights of nature and ecosystems to survive and flourish, permitting any Ecuadorean citizen to sue on nature's behalf if these rights are infringed.

Understandably, the Ecuadorean government isn't prepared to wait for ever for international co-operation: "If by December 2011, Ecuador doesn't receive at least $100m, the government has the right to call off the proposal," said Bisrat Aklilu, the executive co-coordinator of the UN's multi-donor trust fund office that will administer the Yasuni fund. "The government will repay contributors the face value of their contribution and then make up their own minds about whether to drill."

For some, the plan amounts to little more than blackmail, with Mr Correa holding the Amazon to ransom; if Ecuador can get funding for Yasuni, what's to stop other countries cashing in? Saudi Arabia made possibly the most audacious bid for financial support yet this week, claiming compensation for the expected loss of oil revenue should climate change agreements result in a drop in production.

Against a backdrop of public outrage at the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the argument for "post-oil" economies seems stronger than ever. Maria Espinosa, Ecuador's Heritage Minister, agrees. "Ten years from now projects like this will be the rule, not the exception," she said last week.

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ECrisis wants you to study Castro’s state media here. Correa and Chavez are running fake money called the SUCRE- an invisible, illicit and unaccountable scam to pretend that they are doing something legal when they are not. The USA cannot be backed in to running its trade with Ecuador in such a wild eyed fake scheme. Further, although Correa says he wants the dollar gone, it is getting close to the time for the USA to yank Correa’s money making schemes to launder the dollar for fees from Iranian and FARC money managers.
 
Trade with SUCRE Will Rise to $400 Million

viernes, 06 de agosto de 2010

06 de agosto de 2010, 08:47Caracas, Aug 6 (Prensa Latina) Non-traditional imports and exports between countries that ratified the United System of Regional Compensation as an exchange currency will reach $400 million by 2010, officials said.

  The president of the Regional Currency Council, Eudomar Tovar, said the use of this currency, the SUCRE, will increase trade between Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador and Venezuela as countries that joined the SUCRE zone.

To date, trade using the SUCRE has occurred between Venezuela and Cuba and Ecuador but Tovar said preparations are in progress for the first transactions between Caracas and La Paz and Quito and Havana.

This system offers a platform to deepen relations within the framework of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America, which had trade of $6.5 billion dollars before the SUCRE was approved.

As the Venezuelan Central Bank explained, in the initial phase of this trade system, the Sucre is a virtual unit of currency used by the central banks of member countries for financial transactions.
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We suggest a more effective next step: unless and until Correa steps up and mans up with some honest accountability and stops all his frauds, the USA must end the US taxpayer give away called the ATPDEA to Correa for duty free shakedowns.

-Pedro Camargo for ECrisis