September 12, 2011  Although the lights are barely out in his State Department office in Washington, D.C., newly retired Arturo Valenzuela summed up several President Obama policies to explain why the USA will ignore the deteriorated Latin American nations mysteriously aligned with Castro’s Cuba and Iran and gloss over the cartel rise of Ecuador under its current administration. In Ecuador's El Comercio, Valenzuela glaringly dodges key issues in his soft ball interview and bases numerous justifications on shallow, revisionist histories of the region as if to justify the Obama team’s uneducated refusal to discern real time facts while selling a false reality of Andean corruption. Although U.S. history will not long remember Valenzuela as a key actor, Ecuadoreans- lacking all discernment- rush to gush over his very words while Americans would not even cross a street to greet this policy purveyor whose shortened professional stature is his hall mark.

            Of particular interest is Valenzuela’s wrong-headed justification for re-establishing diplomatic relations with Ecuador, which is of course the reason for this interview as well as his particulars in review of the Ecuadorean removal of all features of democratic governance and just why Valenzuela seems to think this is just fine. Like a bad hair comb-over for pompadour wearing men of certain heights, Valenzuela’s comb over of Ecuador’s refusal to abide by U.S. regulations, treaties and theft-like disrespect for USA donated sensitive materiel has not been restored nor will it. To reinstate diplomatic relations dishonestly as if rewarding criminal acts is itself a crime.

            We have never understood the Obama team’s failure to comprehend the harsh acts of the stubborn, sustained caudillo governance in the Andes nor its refusal to review the essentials nor have in hand any updated fact based dossiers on the Andean collapse of freedoms. It is as if the Obama government seeks some higher purpose in its abject failure to deliver the essentials of diplomacy- the facts-  while seeking some popularity contest boost, maybe some nascent Obama donor preferential trade or perhaps as rumored- bundled re election dollars-  by failing to be honest. Whatever the reason, the Obama administration clearly fails to summon itself to complete not only factual reporting on Andean matters but furthers its disgrace with inchoate, vapid justifications for its own inertia and incompetence.

            In point of fact, Valenzuela tells us that Ecuador, which has lost all meaningful and provable tenants of democratic governance, is some work in progress, suffering as it has- he says- from 200 years of never practicing democracy. This is canard and rings untrue. However tenuous in certain eras, Ecuador has had its moments in history of sustained tenures of democratic practices, highlighted with bursts of tranquility and slow growth. Indeed, by 1996, the glass seemed half full for Ecuador as it privatized and opened its nation to expanding horizons. However disconcerting Ecuador’s internal political strife transpired since 1998, in general the nation rebounded with adherence to its own weak kneed constitutions. With the insertion of the September, 2008 constitution, the nation of Ecuador plunged itself into a wholly bizarre scenario, legalizing all that should never be legalized and amassing full, undemocratic and freedom-ending powers in the hands of the central government. In fact, the Cuban-ALBA constitution remains one of the worst articles of non-faith and liberty-killing refinements in the world.

            While it is impossibly naïve for Valenzuela and the Obama administration to refuse to comprehend the total structure of freedom-ending governance in the Andes, it is past logic to fail to review the march of facts in Ecuador as recently as September 9, 2011 with the merger of Iran with Ecuador. (See article below)

            Moreover, Valenzuela practices not just fact free diplomacy but that special moral equivalency which hallmarks the Obama team. Valenzuela tells us that NEWS CORP is dirty and therefore, media which is not controlled by central governments can be injurious to the state. This is a poignant failure to grasp the Ecuadorean take over of private media by president Correa who now controls and rolls out about 95% of all media while owning a hefty chunk of Iranian News and the now merged ANDES and TELESUR systems with Castro and Chavez’s state propaganda machines. President Correa has mandated that all media be instructed in his propaganda steps as well as controlled by the state for what they say and when. Failure to continually lie about the glories of the Correa cartel lands dissenters in jail with heavy fines, prison terms, confiscation and bankruptcy under Correa’s non-justice.

            It is true that rule of law does not exist in Ecuador. Valenzuela fails to mention this. All judiciaries are subsumed under Correa’s control while the media as well as elected officials are simple kangaroos for the state positions. While promising the false face of a perky, young Ms. Cely as ambassador to Washington, D.C., under the false veneer of restored relations, Correa practices the high art of dishonesty in all matters. His nominee, Ms. Cely vows to sell Ecuador for foreign monies but fails to yield any facts to attract investors. Indeed, she has no interest in reality while pretending that if one simply states that all are welcome, they will come. Discerning investors are repulsed by Correa’s refusal to abide by any U.S. treaty, law and regulation- all ripped up on his watch. There is no trust in Correa’s Cuban-Marxist activities, now merged with Iran.

            The only U.S. and European money of late into Ecuador are activist hedge funders….one set is waging an unholy war to fund actors to bring down America’s 2nd largest employer, Chevron, while three hedge funds have teamed together in London to not only launch a new stock offering for “energy” management and delivery systems  while the foundation of their “value” stems from energy work in Burkina Faso and Ecuador. Shysters are born every day but with not one scrap of independent verification nor transparent reviews of the APR “energy” efforts in Ecuador [let alone Burkina Faso], this is a seeming sham seeking to  boost its principal based on unknown, uncorroborated opaque services and contracts.

            Thus, while we have no basis to abjure hedge funds, it is more than passing odd that the primary USA relations are based on two efforts in Ecuador resting on unknown investors moving mountains of millions offshore,  with not one iota of accountability, to launch lawfare against an American company while taking over full management of all energy grids in Ecuador….sight unseen. Meanwhile, over 90% of all Ecuadorean imports to the USA today  roundly consists of heavy crude oil for USA refining. It is said that this oil , which receives U.S. duty and tariff free price cuts under the undeserved ATP DEA [subsidized at almost $ one billion by US taxpayers] is refined at Chavez’s refineries in the USA and heads back out for China, yielding unfair price advantages to Correa’s purchasers. If this seems to break the spirit of the WTO ethos and fair trade, it is because the government of Correa’s Ecuador while at first glance utterly corrupt, dishonest and fully merged with Iran has no intention of disclosing anything, including its trade with the USA.

            Is Valenzuela simply pretending to hide the deteriorated facts about Ecuador’s total state controls or is he hiding facts to boost hedge funds now standing as the two primary sources of DFI for Ecuador in partnership, like Iran, with the government?  While Patton Boggs is suing Chevron based on its Correa and hedge fund monies- unknown and untraceable, Boggs continues to lobby the U.S. Congress on behalf of Correa to secure free duty benefits with no justifications for same. Valenzuela clearly ignores this conflict of interest, not to mention that all this USA largesse is poured down an unaccountable Ecuadorean rat hole. Ecuador demands USA money for its untraceable accounts.

            Notable is the utterly laughable Iranian-Ecuadorean Money Laundering MOU of last week. To be sure, Correa makes hefty bucks for his own wallet by washing Iran’s dirty money into U.S. dollars. This fee for service- aka illegal money laundering- is a particular service by Correa for Russian mobsters, now-banned Iran, narcoterrorists such as Hezbollah, the FARC, ETA and Chavez’s hidden assets. In addition, Correa’s government, as we use the term loosely, makes money by selling fake VISAS, passports, human beings and does now produce heroin poppies as well as safe transport for same. Trafigura seems to have benefited from obscure transport deals while none can ignore the illegal shipments out of the Manta port and Guayaquil which has returned to its primary role as contraband shippers or pirates for fees. Not once in four years have any summarized the massive human in flows to Ecuador of FARC actors, Cubans [estimated at 40,000] who serve as intel gatherers and spies, Hezbollah and Mexican cartel vermin as Ecuador washes criminal acts while dishonestly lying to the US Congress, assisted by the U.S. Department of State and Mrs. Clinton’s risible claims- unfounded yet today- that Correa’s is a nascent democracy, is advancing “ecologies,” struggling to assist the poor while requiring U.S. tax dollars. Indeed, none of  Valenzuela’s and Mrs. Clinton’s claims are based on fact.

            Arturo Valenzuela correctly states, “ Freedom of the press,  free expression, freedom of enterprise, freedom of assembly, freedom to criticize, freedom of opinion” are de rigueur essentials of “democratic” allies. He utterly fails to comprehend the facts that these democratic essentials are now removed and barred in today’s Ecuador. Theft, asset seizures, mismanagement, and crime have superseded all boundaries. There is nothing left for any person of integrity regarding Ecuador to do but to stop lying about the cartel situation and cease all USA monies from propping up a total cartel nation. Clearly Valenzuela did not get this Memo. Valenzuela is selling something…perhaps seeking more US AID contracts from the State Department for Georgetown University but we do not know. Is it to hawk the wonderful world of his Georgetown University colleagues and current State Department contract holders Madeline Albright and Sandy Berger who have launched major speculative monies in to Ecuador through APR Energy, now hawking their glories on the London exchange for any sane investor would deem its corpus of work….the unfit and unserious Ecuador as no basis, along with Burkina Faso, as no way to seed a stock offering because nothing is accountable and nothing is transparent in Ecuador, let alone Burkina Faso. Hundreds of overpaid US AID and US Department of State employees overpopulate Ecuador today, all busily churning out dishonest propaganda that the nation is open for business when Ecuador is not open for anything honest or accountable. All this seemingly promotes the fact free blessing of the USA to protect and defend hidden, unknown, unholy dirty money which solely benefits the two largest USA efforts in Ecuador: fraud against a U.S. oil company conspiring to cause it harm and insertion of unknown, hidden money to not only supposedly generate power but also control the energy grid while speculating wildly on oil and energy prices. The U.S. tax payer needs to spend its hard earned money on boosting hedge funds partnered with Iran and the utterly corrupt/lawless Correa of Ecuador? Has the USA nothing better to do with its unaccounted expenditures? A few billion dollars seems obscure and barely worth retrieving. And yet- the ignominious interference by team Obama  to provide false data has got to end.

            For its part, the shell company APR Energy – funded by three hedge funds which supposedly has tripled its value in 3 years, is now itself moving onto the London Exchange with false tales.  APR tells us that theirs is “temporary” energy delivery. No temporary electrical generation provides billions in profits from rock concerts or Papal visits on a hill side. The UK’s Campion made much from pizza deliveries and runs now hedge funds, backing APR as does Soros and Albright. Profiteering APR Energy PLC in Ecuador is not temporary and is said to now “manage” Ecuador’s energy grid and sell its Ecuadorean generated electricity to northern Peru while charging high kilowatt hour fees to customers who have no chance of competitive pricing under APR’s total control with the uncompetitively priced in all things Correa’s team. Other reports claim that APR is moving in to actual energy production- gas and oil. We do not have full facts. As for their deal with the world’s 3rd poorest, starving nation [while rich in gold mines, narcotics transports and cotton production] Burkina Faso, we are all aware that this tiny land is utterly depraved.

            Questions arise today as to why Obama’s Latin performance, sometimes implausibly called foreign policy, is disingenuously dishonest while simply boosting Obama’s campaign donors now moving in Ecuador in the worst of complete, opaque state deals, aka APR Energy, currently seen as a turn key out of the state of Florida as if operating from someone’s garage while the real action is not that this so called Florida based company will list its new stock on any US stock exchange but rather avoids those pesky disclosure questions and launches itself, backed by three unknown, undisclosed asset holding  hedge funds, on London’s FOOTSIE. This is why the USA spends so much time and money lying about Ecuador? We can find no other benefit to anyone except cartel criminals for expanding the lie that all is well in Ecuador or at best  U.S. claims that “we are concerned” or “we are worried.” Worried was an appropriate sentiment as Correa rang down the curtain on liberties in 2008 with his horrifying constitution, which State Department refused to even review, offering instead 4 passages as if this explained hundreds of pages. The U.S. Congress with the incompetence of any substandard US AID contractor, protected its prerogatives and failed to review why USA monies flowed in to this unaccountable sink hole, boosting the veneer that Ecuador was a US ally when it is not. Ecuador is a state ally of offshore speculators, the FARC, Iran and Russian mobsters.  To continue to pretend otherwise, and give fact free history revising interviews such as Valenzuela’s parting words, is past risible….it is criminal.

            Again, we ask- what is Valenzuela doing? Is Obama’s foreign policy not more than a propaganda set piece for hedge funds and cover ups for their sponsoring investor hedging nations in dark places? Why is the same law firm seeking to cause harm to an American energy firm the same law firm lobbying the U.S. Congress to ignore all facts [ also called lying to Congress] and install false investor –speculator inflows where due diligence and data do not exist?

            We can only hope that Georgetown’s Jesuits do not permit any retirement fund and pension monies to boost APR Energy’s speculative steps.

Pedro Camargo

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Translation of Interview with  Arturo Valenzuela, former Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, published  September 11, 2011 EL COMERCIO

‘Relations between Ecuador and the U.S. go Beyond Ideology’

Does the relationship between the government of Ecuador and the U.S. continue to deteriorate?

The Relationship has had highs and lows, but has entered a positive phase with the mutual announcement of sending back ambassadors to the respective capital cities.

Many were surprised by this news. What factors motivated both governments to go back to dialogue and  achieve a diplomatic agreement?

It is true that  relations were frozen due to the problem of the Ambassador’s expulsion (Heather Hodges last April). But on the margin of that fact, diplomatic relations were not broken and collaboration in important topics such as security and ecology continued.

Even if they don’t explicitly say it, do both regimes need each other?

They have common and important interests and the best way for those interests to flow is with a respectful diplomatic relationship even with disagreements on some topics.

There are strong ideological speeches from both governments where differences are evident

The United States has relationships with regimes of  wide ideological diversity, including those that have wider differences than Ecuador with respect to the United States.

Is the U.S. an imperialistic regime as some left sectors call it?

We are in a time where there is no room for old fashioned speeches. We live a very different situation to what was happening between the U.S. and Latin America in the times of the Cold War.

In that line, how different are the relations between the U.S. and Venezuela and the U.S. and Ecuador?

The scenarios are different. Ecuador’s  history is different to Venezuela. In Ecuador there is a past of deep instability, presidents that did not finish their terms and even one, Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra, that was elected five times, but only finished one term.

What does the U.S. government expect of Ecuador’s future?

Undoubtedly, what president Barack Obama wants is for the government of Ecuador to be successful and in that way the citizens of your country improve their quality of life.

Why Obama wants the success of ideas contrary to his?

The U.S. government respects all the rest, but promotes for all the regimes to respect the sovereign will of their people and, at the same time, structure the democratic system in all its dimension.

Each government seems to have its own idea of what democracy is…

Governments can be of the right, the center of left, but in all cases must respect democracy in its widest sense in benefit for all its citizens.

And, what if freedoms are in danger despite talking about electoral democratic legitimacy?

In the case of the countries where this danger exists, there are multiple declarations of president Barack Obama in the sense that the essential of the government is to be transparent, democratic and express the will of the people in its actions.

But the ones of Obama are only declarations

Let me be clearer: independent of philosophies and ideological schemes, what is imperative in all governments is the respect for fundamental freedoms of its citizens. There could be internal divergences and different conceptions but it is not possible to stop respecting liberties.

Which ones are those non waver freedoms?

Freedom of the press, expression, freedom of enterprise, freedom of assembly, freedom to criticize, freedom of opinion.

What is the position of the United States government with respect to the situation of freedom of expression and the press in Ecuador?

There are expressions of preoccupation about certain tendencies, but we have to be very clear in the topic of press freedom, it is a complex topic where what the goal is  for the government to respect that freedom but also the media to be responsible and not to abuse the powers they could have. In both cases the lack of government respect and media abuse could hurt democracy.

Meaning, freedom of expression is a matter of both sides, not unilateral?

What is happening in Latin America is a very interesting debate.  No doubt regimes must respect freedom of the press, but at the same time it is mandatory that economic interests behind some media (the scandal in England, with the Murdock newspapers is an example) cannot be above citizens’ interests. It is one thing to defend freedom of the press, another to defend monopolies.

A true democracy must have equilibrium between political power and the press

That is right. The press needs to be independent of any influence, not only political but economic. The press cannot be attacked for its opinions or information, but the press cannot, must not, attack the government just for any reason. That equilibrium is fundamental for a healthy society. That is why it is important to have regulations to impede abuses, especially of media monopoly.

Do you mean it is legitimate to have laws and norms and regulations over media content such as the communication law currently in the hands of the National Assembly?

I refer to monopolies in both senses. There must not be private media monopolies but not governmental either. None of those options is good for democracy and society. Then, those laws must regulate that no one controls information, not the government nor the private enterprise. And I want to reiterate that no country can say it has freedom of expression if that equilibrium between private and public does not exist.

Is that the way for ideas to flow freely and for society to think over without pressure or manipulation?

The key for democracy is the respect of absolutely all citizens’ view points. And that must be demanded by citizens to both sides.

Does the United States government consider that president Rafael Correa is respectful of those freedoms?

President Obama has expressed some worries in some moments but the key is to ensure that in a country with such an unstable political past that independence of institutions is strengthened.

As is the case of the legislative and judicial powers?

Exactly. Here in the United States, for example, the parliamentary debate is hard but democratic. Justice is handled with total freedom with respect to the political power.

And, what if that is not happening?

If there is no rule of law with independent and impartial institutions, democracy is in danger.

And if a government tries to control the administration of justice

When justice is not independent of the political powers, independent of the ideology of the governors, to control justices is an attempt against human rights and civil rights of the people.

And, has that a strong impact in the present and future of the country?

That is very serious because the key to democracy is the respect to citizens’ rights.

In these circumstances, what should be the role of the common citizens to demand respect for their rights as well as the non - interference of the political power in the other branches of government and to be accountable?

In a true democracy citizens have the right to participate, of expression, for organization, to protest. to assemble and even propose points of view and ways to see reality not shared by the majority of the population; democracy is also to respect the voice and words of minorities that are critical to the regime.

And, is that happening in Ecuador?

As I said at the beginning of this interview, political instability in Ecuador was a situation that needed urgent correction and I believe what is being lived there now is a democracy under construction. Let’s hope that construction strengthens the country and the society.

How to build a true democracy in countries as unstable and conflictive as Ecuador?

It is very clear that there is no possible democracy when there are no strong political parties, when there is no highly respectful opposition, when there are no strong and independent institutions, and, specially, when citizens do not find channels of direct participation.  There is no democracy either where there are strong leaderships without real parties.

In reality in Ecuador, is there a democracy or a beginning of a democracy?

I insist that in Ecuador a democratic process is being built within a history with less democratic tradition. The construction of a democracy takes time and that means that the government does what corresponds to it but also means to respect the rights of the opposition and not intervene in the institutions.

And, what if that does not happen?

Once I told my students that what has always happened in Ecuador is that all the ones in the bus throw themselves over the driver and want to take the wheel. It is obvious that if that happens, the bus will go to the brink.

Curriculum

Arturo Valenzuela

Who he is. Diplomat, analyst, teacher. American citizen with Chilean roots. Former Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere.

His point of view: a government must be transparent and respectful

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  Last Update:  11 September 2011 17:17  GMT                                                        Volume. 11244