Ecuador Must Ban Iranian Press
January 26, 2012 Of all the items stacking up on the To Do List for Ecuador, removing Iranian Media is at the top of the List, along with removing Iran in all ways.
Great Britain has banned Iranian media and Ecuador really must- now.
Correa stole Ecuador’s decent media and controls directly or by his censorship all the rest.
Correa has inserted Iranian News every chance he can. This is just awful. And of course he has installed his baby faced ambassadress to lie to American media all she can…along with the Iranians.
-Pedro Camargo for ECrisis
Here are some of the reasons why, including the fact that nothing Iran ever ever eversays is honorable or helpful:
gopusa.com
Why Doesn’t Obama Ban Iranian Press TV?
By Kenneth R. Timmerman January 26, 2012
Authorities in Britain revoked the license of the Iranian regime’s English-language global television channel known as Press TV because of evidence that it is a propaganda outlet controlled by the Iranian regime. But the Obama Administration permits the channel to operate on American soil without a license and in violation of U.S. sanctions regulations, which ban commercial transactions with Iran. It appears to be another example of Obama coddling the terrorist regime.
British authorities justified the move by citing the specific example of a Press TV 2009 interview with a Newsweek correspondent held in an Iranian jail. British telecom regulator Ofcom found that the interview by Press TV with Maziar Bahari, who was jailed by the Iranian regime over his reporting of the disputed presidential elections in June 2009, was conducted under duress. It held that Press TV was in violation of its British broadcasting license because its content was dictated by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, the state broadcasting authority, and instructed the satellite carrier BSkyB to remove Press TV from its platform.
In the United States, the situation is even worse because although it operates openly in Washington, D.C., New York and Los Angeles, and regularly conducts interviews with such figures as Republican Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul, it does not have a license from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). So far, the Obama Administration has done nothing to shut it down.
What appears to be lacking is a determination from OFAC pointing out the obvious—that the Iranian state propaganda channel is operating illegally in the U.S. Because of this failure to enforce the law, Press TV is able to operate a propaganda facility in downtown Washington, D.C. with a prestigious K Street address and send its operatives to observe and survey U.S. Government offices, under the cover of “freedom of the press.”
“While other countries might not respect the right to a free press, this is something we take very seriously,” an administration official told this reporter. “We like to stay true to our values.” But why do our values permit accommodating the actions of an illegal television entity devoted to propaganda and support for an outlaw regime that the Obama Administration itself says supports international terrorism?
In the case at issue in Britain, Bahari was picked up by the Iranian authorities at his parents’ home in Tehran on June 21, 2009, and jailed for four months in Iran. After an international campaign won his release and he returned home four months later that October, Bahari said that his captors had forced him to read a prepared script in front of Press TV cameras, just as American POWs were forced to do in Vietnam. Press TV has scrubbed the interview from its website but it was widely reported at the time. In the script his captors gave him to read, Bahari accused Western reporters of working “as spies,” and “confessed” that he had been covering “illegal demonstrations” as part of a Western effort to promote a “color revolution” in Iran. His family and the media dismissed his “confession” as clearly coerced.
Clinton Excuses Tehran
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pushed Iran hard to release Bahari, but never made a statement condemning Press TV for airing the coerced interview. “We’ve been condemning the Iranian government writ large on this, not any specific agency,” a State Department spokesman said.
The Obama Administration has continued to allow Press TV to operate unhindered in the United States, despite clear evidence that it is operating as a propaganda arm of the Iranian regime. Indeed, the State Department regularly entertains questions from Press TV reporters, and allows bloggers on its “DipNote” website to plug rabid anti-American and anti-Israel propaganda with links to Press TV articles and interviews.“If Press TV were to request a license to operate here in the U.S., the activities that led to having their license removed in the UK would certainly be reviewed by us,” a U.S. official said. “But for now, we cannot take a similar action because they have no license.”
So because it operates illegally in violation of the law, the U.S. will take no action. This might be enough for administration lawyers, but it defies common sense.
Other Propaganda Outlets
Press TV is not the only Iranian government media organization operating in the United States. The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting ... operates Aftab TV, which broadcasts in Persian and operates a prominent website. On December 28, 2006, for example, Aftab featured an interview with prominent pro-Tehran advocate Trita Parsi, who heads the National Iranian-American Council, NIAC. In prefacing the interview, Aftab stressed the importance of the “Iranian American lobby on behalf of the Iranian regime” and described it as the regime’s “unofficial diplomacy.” Last year, IRIB opened yet another 24-hour TV network they billed as “Iran’s CNN,” called Islamic Republic of Iran News Network, IRINN TV. They began broadcasting in the U.S. with an hour-long live program from a new Washington, D.C. studio on April 6, 2011. Their flagship U.S. show is called “Two half-hours (Dow Nim Saat) that airs from 11 a.m. to noon everyday.
While most programs are in Persian, IRINN also broadcasts news in English via satellite to the U.S.
The regime has also lavished money on the print media as a means of maintaining an intimidating presence within the Iranian-American community. The U.S. edition of the Tehran daily, Etelaat, was printed in New York and flown via Federal Express to a dozen distribution points around the country for over two decades, until it was shut down last year after an undercover FBI investigation determined it was being funded illegally out of the Iranian Permanent Mission to the United Nations, a source involved in the investigation told me. With the exception of Etelaat, the Obama Administration has continued to allow Iranian government media organizations to operate freely in the United States, mostly without licenses, despite nearly two decades of Iran sanctions that prohibit commercial exchanges between the U.S. and Iran.
Doubletalk from Obama
In a series of email and telephone exchanges, officials at the Department of the Treasury refused to acknowledge whether the administration or its predecessors had granted Press TV a license to operate in the United States. “We are unable to comment publicly on organizations that may or may not have received licenses from OFAC. However, we note that as an official propaganda arm of the Iranian government, Press TV has a history of fabricating news and has faced lawsuits in the UK for airing forced confessions,” a Treasury Department official said. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Controls issues trade sanctions guidelines and maintains the list of “Specially Designated Nationals” (SDNs) banned from doing business with U.S. persons.In the case where an organization subject to U.S. sanctions continues to operate in the United States by moving money under the radar, OFAC has often acted quickly and without warning to shut them down. But not in this case.
Spewing Filth
Press TV spews out unending streams of anti-American propaganda in a full-service program mix that includes talk shows, news reports, and TV magazines, aimed at an American audience via satellite. Professionally-produced—often times by Americans—these shows trot out a congeries of conspiracy theorists, Holocaust deniers and their apologists, masquerading as “analysts” and “political commentators” to give them a veneer of respectability.
In this case, Press TV appears to be emulating the old Soviet Union, which specialized in propaganda for the regime and against its enemies. The Soviet-led Comintern sent propaganda specialist Willi Muenzenberg to America to recruit propaganda agents. The Iranian regime has invested heavily in Press TV because it understands the value of propagandists who speak unaccented English and who are not openly tied to the regime to spread its ideological “payload.”
Muenzenberg wrote the playbook that was later used by Press TV and much of the “politically-correct” left in the 1920s and 1930s, when he set up a vast web of cover influence operators stretching from media to academia to America’s newsrooms that continue to make their message felt way beyond the grave.
As former CIA propaganda expert Kent Clizbe explains in his book on Muenzenberg, “the goal of the operations was to make Americans feel that their country was bad.”
“You claim to be an independent-minded idealist,” said Muenzenberg’s widow, Babette Gross. “You don’t really understand politics, but you think the little guy is getting a lousy break… You are shocked, frightened by what is going on right here in our own country… You believe in peace… You yearn for international understanding… You think the capitalist system is corrupt.”
The propaganda from Occupy Wall Street appears to be a modern-day example of the Muenzenberg approach.
Press TV takes the anti-American propaganda to a global level. Like the old Soviet propaganda networks, Press TV uses Americans to make the case against their own government and society. Consider the case of James Fetzer, “a prominent philosopher” who went on Press TV to comment on the violent turn of the Occupy movement in Oakland last November. He blamed the police. A professor at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, Fetzer said, “We are seeing the increase in militarization of the police forces throughout the United States and that is a very bad tendency that has been taking place since 9/11. We see the rich getting richer and the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. This gap has been widening since the administration of Ronald Reagan,” Fetzer said.
He went on: “What they are doing, the politicians are ignoring the needs of the average American and the working families. We have had increasing foreclosures, and unemployment is seen as the tip of an iceberg resistance to the corruption of politics in America… I believe this movement is not going to go away, and that what we are seeing is the real face of the police state of America has become.” As it turns out, James H. Fetzer is indeed well-known—as a conspiracy theorist.
In a Wikipedia entry tagged by editors as “an autobiography,” Fetzer is described as “a well-known conspiracy theorist,” who has written extensively on the JFK assassination, 9/11, and the plane crash that killed U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone. Fetzer claims, for example, that the film footage taken of the aircraft that crashed into the World Trade Center towers on 9/11 was “video fakery” caused by “holographic projects,” because the high-speed crash was “in violation of Newton’s laws” of physics. His own website highlights his book, The 9/11 Conspiracy: The Scamming of America. A YouTube video shows Fetzer arguing that Senator Wellstone was assassinated, not killed by accident in a plane crash.
After a federal judge in District Court in New York issued a finding last December that Iran “shared responsibility with al Qaeda” for the 9/11 attacks, Press TV naturally turned to Fetzer for comment. Calling the ruling “preposterous,” he said he knew who was responsible for the attacks: Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad. “Multiple investigations by independent journalists have revealed that Israel—the Mossad—played a key role in 9/11,” Fetzer said. “Look up ‘the dancing Israelis.’ Look up ‘urban moving systems.’ Look up ‘CITS ‘and you’ll find ample indication that Israel was profoundly involved in 9/11.”
Another Press TV Propagandist
Another propagandist used by Press TV as an on-air commentator is Mark Dankof, whose support for the Ron Paul presidential campaign we highlighted in an earlier story. In a May 2011 article aimed at discrediting the Ofcom case against Press TV in Britain, Dankof hauled out the big artillery. Why was the British government attempting to shut down Press TV? It was, of course, all because of the Jews. “It may not be a coincidence that the British Ofcom case against Press TV Iran pops up against the backdrop of Netanyahu’s state visit to the United States to press his own case for ongoing Talmudic Death and Destruction in the Middle East,” Dankof wrote.
The “logic” of his case went like this: Press TV accuser Maziar Bahari was a contributor to Newsweek, whose late chairman, Sidney Harman, was married to Rep. Jane Harman of California, a Jewish Democrat. “Mrs. Harman, in turn…proves to be the very member of Congress wiretapped by the American National Security Agency (NSA) conveying promises to Israeli agents that the dogs would be called off from tailing and successfully prosecuting the espionage case involving key executives of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC),” Dankof wrote. In the article, “Empire continues to sweat over Press TV,” he went on, “This is the transparent connection in this case, as it is in other recent attacks on Press TV in the West involving media outlets and correspondents with provable connections to the American Jewish lobby; Israeli intelligence; and Neo-Conservatives thirsting for a War of Civilizations with Iran specifically, and the Islamic world generally.”
“If anyone wanted to run the traps and understand the connections, they should read the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,” Dankof concluded. Press TV was being persecuted because it was “one of the few exceptions to The [Jewish] Lobby’s control of global print and electronically transmitted news and analysis.”
The Protocols was a Russian forgery designed to blame the Jews for the world’s problems. Muslim religious leaders and political leaders have touted its “accuracy” to me in interviews throughout the Middle East for decades.
More material of this sort can be found in the innumerable interviews Press TV conducts with “expert” Paul Sheldon Foote, whose favorite line is that “Crypto-Jews” have initiated a war between Christians and Muslims. Such arguments harken back to the ugliest forms of Western anti-Semitism.
The Rise of Press TV
When Press TV CEO Mohammad Sarafraz announced the creation of the new English-language satellite broadcasting channel in June 2007, he stated at the get-go that the goal was to spread the propaganda payload of the Tehran regime.“Since September 11, Western bias has divided the media into two camps: those that favor their policies make up one group and the rest of the media are attached to radical Islamic groups like Al-Qaeda. We want to show that there is a different view. Iran, and the Shi’ites in particular, have become a focal point of world propaganda. From the media point of view, we are trying to give a second eye to Western audiences,” Sarafraz said.
While Press TV made some effort in its U.S. programming to invite guests who weren’t always fans of the Iranian regime, all pretense of its propaganda aims disappeared in May 2009, just before the stolen elections that gave Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term in office.
That was when a group of Ahmadinejad supporters raided the petty cash desk at Press TV’s Tehran headquarters and used the money to support Ahmadinejad’s election campaign, according to Press TV insiders who subsequently left or were forced to leave the network. Since the June 2009 elections, opposition politicians, such as Mir Hossein and other challengers to Ahmadinejad, have been banned from the airwaves and Press TV has abandoned any pretense of even-handedness.
Skirting the Sanctions
Press TV has used a number of subterfuges to skirt the U.S. sanctions on commercial transactions with Iran.
From the start, Press TV has maintained close ties to the Iranian Mission to the United Nations, the Iranian regime’s only legal financial base in the United States. The UN mission may have paid some staff in cash brought in through the diplomatic bag. Press TV maintained an official presence at the Iranian Mission.
Because it could not incorporate directly in the United States, Press TV worked through production companies operating in the U.S., which in turn hired crew, correspondents, and producers.
Former Atlantic Television News (ATN) correspondent Colin Campbell questioned U.S. officials on Press TV’s behalf. ATN Productions Ltd. has seven reporters currently registered with the Senate Press Gallery: Nicholas Ewing, Affra Khallash, Taleb Khallash, Zina Khallash, Dirik Rice, Mohamed Said Ouafi, and Firas Tuma. The company is registered in Denmark and produces the weekly magazine show “American Dream,” hosted by an American, Nisa Islam.
ATN operates out of production studios located on K Street in downtown Washington, D.C. AIM Center for Investigative Journalism director Cliff Kincaid was invited and appeared on its “American Dream” program a couple of times, before realizing that ATN was operating as a front for the Iranians. When he criticized the Iranian regime on one of the programs, he was not invited back. Press TV contacted Accuracy in Media on another occasion, looking for a guest for one of its programs to discuss why Republican Representative and presidential candidate Ron Paul was not getting more favorable attention from the U.S. media. Paul has pleased the Iranian regime by defending its pursuit of nuclear weapons. AIM declined the invitation but considered the request as more evidence of how foreign propaganda channels, such as Press TV and Russia Today, have embraced the foreign policy views of the Texas congressman.
The Press TV Media Universe
Press TV also contracts with American Press and TV Services (APTVS), an outfit run by Egyptian nationals Gamal Hassanein and Samir Ezeldin. Like ATN, they hire producers and camera crews to film events and conduct interviews at Press TV’s request. “Gamal and Sam were running the operation, because Press TV was not allowed to incorporate here,” a former Press TV insider told me. APTVS took over Press TV’s bureau at the United Nations in 2010. Like ATN, their correspondents and camera crews have all received press passes for the U.S. Capitol complex from the Senate Press Gallery. They hired Colin Campbell away from ATN, and have also registered the following staff with the Senate Press Gallery: Ibrahim Alshamrani, Moaz Attawia, Fahd Banhawy, Umut Colak, Samir Ezeldin, and Mike Kellerman.
The Senate press passes not only give the Press TV contractors access to the House and Senate chambers, but serve as accreditation for a much wider range of events reserved for members of the press corps, including White House, State Department, and Defense Department briefings. Although each of these three issues its own credentials to beat reporters (the “White House press corps,” etc.), the Senate press pass gets most reporters through the door for the occasional event.
Although APTVS and ATN are not part of Press TV, they produce “works for hire” for Press TV. Should OFAC decide to enforce the law, this could be construed to mean that they are engaging in unlicensed commercial transactions with Iran. In an effort to forestall precisely such an investigation, APTVS for several years received payment from Press TV through a Palestinian production company in Ramallah run by silent partner Maher Shalabi, according to former Press TV insiders. On his Facebook page, Shalabi identifies himself as General Manager of that company, PMCC TV.
“Press TV used to contract Maher, and he then contracted with APTVS in Washington,” a former insider said. “APTVS then booked the guests and studios and conducted the interviews or satellite link-ups.” Shalabi also works for “Palestine TV,” and conducted a high-profile interview with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for that channel in 2010. Do the activities of Press TV and these production companies fall within the “information” loop-hole of the Iran sanctions?
“If I am sending an academic journal, or some materials that actually will help the exchange of knowledge, that is allowed,” an Obama administration official told me. “But if I am actually conducting paid journalistic work, right now I still need a specific license to allow that to happen.”Press TV does not have a license, this official hastened to add. “Therefore, they are operating illegally.”
Yet, the Obama Administration permits the channel to continue to operate in violation of the law. Congress should investigate.
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The death of press freedom in Correa's Ecuador
By Alberto de la Cruz, on January 26, 2012, BABALU
Ecuadorean dictator Rafael Correa knows an effective plan for complete control over a population when he sees one, and that is why he is busily implementing the Fidel Castro method of repression, domination, and propaganda. Like his mentor Fidel did in Cuba, Correa is taking control of the press in Ecuador, threatening the few remaining independent news agencies in the country with fines and imprisonment if they dare print or utter a critical word regarding his dictatorial rule. And just like Castro, he and his minions are engaging in superfluous propaganda to both vilify his opponents and hide his regime's oppression.
In an editorial that appeared in last Sunday's Miami Herald as well as other media outlets, Correa lackey and new Ecuadorian ambassador to the U.S. Nathalie Cely penned quite a laughable piece of propaganda defending her dictator and his assault of press freedoms in Ecuador. Here it is in its entirety:
Rights and responsibilities of Ecuador’s media
By NATHALIE CELY
From the beginning of time journalists and elected officials in democratic societies have had painful and interdependent relationships. It is the nature of democracies to try to provide maximum freedom for responsible journalists and publishers while preventing dangerous misbehavior, libel and abuses of power.
A number of U.S. defenders of a free press, from The Miami Herald and Washington Post to the Committee to Protect Journalists, have taken an ongoing legal dispute between a powerful publishing family in Ecuador and Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa and have written of it as though it represented some new sort of Armageddon for the journalism profession.
To be very clear, no journalist in Ecuador has gone to jail, been kidnapped or paid a significant fine in the five years of the Correa presidency, even though El Universo, the newspaper owned by the Pérez family that these media watchdogs defend, published a scurrilous column about the president and an attempted coup against him that was factually untrue and far beyond any reasonable norm for criticism. Here is the background:
In September 2010, President Correa went to a rally of national police in Quito to respond to protests over changes in their compensation schemes. It soon became clear that this was not a peaceful rally. Shots were fired and there were casualties. He was taken to a hospital for the effects of tear gas, but the police and their allies surrounded the hospital and threatened more violence. Members of the military came to escort him out. It was a scary moment in a country that, before the president’s inauguration in 2007 had seven failed presidents in a decade.
Last February, a columnist for El Universo who now lives in South Florida wrote an attack in which he never used the president’s name, referring only to “The Dictator.” He claimed to have proof that the president ordered troops to fire on innocent people and accused him of “crimes against humanity” — genocide. The president demanded proof or a retraction, but got neither. And so he sued under a longstanding law that allows any citizen to sue when he feels libeled. He won the case in a court of law and so far has won each appeal.
The president has said that he will waive some or all of the penalties provided he gets a retraction of the offensive column.
So who is the victim in this dispute? Not the people of Ecuador. A recent objective analysis of Latin American public opinion by the Mexican polling firm Consulta Mitofski shows that President Correa is among the most popular leaders in the hemisphere. All social indicators in the country are heading in the right direction: employment is up; wages, up; literacy and health measurements, up; public engagement, up. The electorate will decide next year, assuming he seeks re-election, whether they think their president is a “dictator” or their chosen leader.
What should anyone do when lies are published about him? It appears to me that President Obama has been harmed by ludicrous false charges about his birthplace, citizenship and religion in the U.S In the U.K., journalists illegally routinely spied on ordinary citizens to get their stories. Where do ethics come into play in these situations? What are the rights of those who are injured or offended by these lies? Even elected officials have some right to the truth. Where is the public self-criticism among publishers and journalists?
Ecuador and Latin America — probably also the United States — all need more honest debate and dissent to build better democracies. But should principles of press freedom have no limit? Do honest journalists support the work of those who are unethical in their writings? Can you deliberately and falsely call me a narco-trafficker and then hide behind grand principles of media freedom?
At a time when winds of change whip through the world, perhaps it is time for a re-examination of the special immunities and responsibilities of the media. That’s what is underway today, in a messy, public and democratic way, in Ecuador.
Nathalie Cely presented her credentials to President Obama last week as the new ambassador for the Republic of Ecuador in Washington, D.C.
A few facts Ms. Cely leaves out of her ridiculous defense:
The courts and the judicial system in Ecuador has been systematically taken over by Rafael Correa in a fashion similar to what dictator Hugo Chavez has done in Venezuela. Therefore, to claim Correa's complaints about the free press in Ecuador have been vindicated by the courts is at best laughable, and at worst, sinister.
Moreover, Ms. Cely unwittingly proves the corruption of the Ecuadorean judicial system when she states "[t]he president has said that he will waive some or all of the penalties provided he gets a retraction of the offensive column." If Ecuador is truly a democracy and the judicial branch is independent of the executive branch, where does Correa get the power to "waive some or all of the penalties" levied against a journalist by a supposedly independent court? Obviously, as dictator, he only needs to make a phone call and the judges do as they are ordered.
And lastly, Cely closes her remarks with an impassioned call for a re-examination of the immunities and responsibilities of the independent media. An interesting request considering the fact that Correa now controls 95% of the media in Ecuador. Apparently, that 5% is still considered a threat, and if you want to believe Cely, freedom of the press in Ecuador will not be safe until Correa controls 100% of the press.
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News Highlights of the week: HACER
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Jan. 25, 2012
Public spending fuels Ecuador leader's popularity
By GONZALO SOLANO Associated Pres MIAMI HERALD
In this photo taken on Nov. 19, 2011, Ecuador's President Rafael Correa talks during his weekly media program "Enlace Ciudano" in Quito, Ecuador. Correa is regularly assailed by human rights, press freedom and business groups as intemperate, autocratic and intolerant of dissent. Yet he is popular among millions of Ecuadoreans for programs which, like the initiative for the disabled, have improved their quality of life. Amparo Martinez's universe is two small, tidy rooms in a poor Quito neighborhood that she shares with her 83-year-old mother and a severely handicapped daughter.
Her predicament makes holding a job impossible, so the three depend on a $240-a-month government stipend introduced by President Rafael Correa under a program for the disabled.
Martinez adores Correa.
"I hope he's re-elected many times," she says.
Correa is regularly assailed by human rights, press freedom and business groups as intemperate, autocratic and intolerant of dissent. Yet he is popular among millions of Ecuadoreans for programs which, like the initiative for the disabled, have improved their lives.
An array of state-funded programs implemented or broadened since Correa's 2006 election have brought stability to this traditionally unruly South American nation that previously churned through six presidents in 10 years.
A doubling in public spending under Correa adheres to a formula that has also aided the political longevity of his leftist allies Presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Cristina Fernandez of Argentina and Evo Morales of Bolivia.
But Ecuador devotes a greater share of its economy to public investment than any other nation in Latin America and the Caribbean, spending 10 percent of gross domestic product.
The main strategic ally of this tall, pugnacious U.S.- and European-trained economist has been the high price of oil, currently at $99.50 per barrel, which helped fuel 8.9 percent economic growth last year.
Oil accounts for about a third of government revenues in this OPEC member nation, whose proven oil reserves of 6.5 billion barrels are surpassed in South America only by those of Venezuela and Brazil.
According to Oil and Gas Journal (OGJ), Ecuador held proven oil reserves of 6.51 billion barrels in January 2011 the third largest reserves in South America after Venezuela and Brazil. Ecuador is the fifth-largest producer of oil in South America, producing 486,000 bbl/d of oil in 2010 (almost all of which was crude oil), down from a 2006 peak of 536,000 bbl/d. Data from the first half of 2011 show a rebound in production, which averaged 501,000 bbl/d through June.
Straying from Latin American custom, Correa has also engineered a vertiginous rise in income tax collection, boosting compliance by businesses and professionals. From $4.9 billion in 2007, income tax receipts rose to $8.4 billion last year.
He has exhibited uncanny resolve in coaxing higher numbers into the revenue columns of the balance sheet in a country that made the U.S. dollar its national currency in 2000.
That included rewriting oil extraction contracts with multinationals to radically boost the state's share of windfall profits. Some multinationals left, others stayed.
The government is now on the verge of reaping more raw material royalties. It is set to shortly sign contracts designed to yield the state $3 billion annually from the mining of gold, copper and other metals.
Correa has been coy on whether he'll run for re-election in balloting that could come as early as a year from now. If voting were held today, he'd be difficult to beat. Never in five years in office has Correa's approval rating dipped below 50 percent. It currently stands around 70 percent.
Critics accuse Correa of building castles in the air by creating expectations on the uncertain promise of continued high oil prices. If oil drops below $73 a barrel, they say, his ambitious public spending will need to be curbed.
"It's not sustainable as an economic model over time," said Xavier Ordenana, an economist with the Escuela Politecnica del Litoral in Guayaquil. "It can last for some years but not forever."
Ordenana says the government realizes the private sector must also grow or it risks insolvency. Heavy industry, export-oriented manufacturing and high-tech work remain scarce in Ecuador.
In all, 5 million of Ecuador's total population of 14 million have personally benefited in some measure from government largesse, researchers at the FLACSO graduate school calculate. Under Correa, the state has built homes for 30,000 families, plowed $8.5 billion into education and $5.3 billion into health care. It has rebuilt or improved nearly 3,400 miles (5,500 kilometers) of roads, nearly two-thirds of Ecuador's highway system, spending $4.5 billion.
Other programs have zeroed in on helping individuals and families.
The government says the program for the disabled, a flagship Correa initiative, has benefited 300,000 people. They receive medical attention, welfare payments and equipment including wheelchairs. Some have even been given housing. Public wheelchair access is improving.
Another popular program provides a $35 monthly boost to 1.6 million poor people, chiefly homemakers with no other formal income.
"My husband died many years ago but now I have the president as a spouse because he gives me a little money every month," said Maria Pillajo, a stooped 67-year-old who scrapes by washing clothes and loading baskets in the market of Quito's poor southern district of El Camal.
"Until poverty is eliminated it's a good measure," Correa said of the program when asked about it during a recent meeting with foreign correspondents. The government says the poverty rate stands at 29 percent, down nine percentage points from when Correa took office. Meanwhile, unemployment is officially at 5.1 percent.
It's not just the poor for whom the government is writing checks.
Some 100,000 middle-class first-time home buyers have received a $5,000 one-time "housing subsidy" grant that enable them to afford down payments.
"The payments have a direct bearing on the president's image. In political terms, they have the excellent effect of sustaining his political project," said Simon Pachano, a FLACSO political scientist.
Correa has also plowed millions into education, giving free uniforms to a million students, texts to 3 million and regularly feeding 1.6 million breakfast.
"It's a great relief because sometimes we just don't have the money," said Francisco Carvajal, a 28-year-old father of three who said he earns $750 a month from his job as a construction material sales company.
His children got free uniforms and texts as well as English and computing classes free of charge.
Correa is far from Ecuador's first populist leader. Yet he has been hounded by none of the accusations of corruption that drove previous presidents from office.
His popularity is anything but universal, however.
In striving for what he and Chavez call "21st-century socialism," Correa has alienated bankers, industrialists, the Roman Catholic Church and even indigenous groups. Initially backing him, the latter now object to his insistence that the state can extract minerals from their traditional lands without their consent.
Many business leaders are angry with Correa over his chumminess with Iran, fearing that he is distancing Ecuador from Washington, still the country's top trading partner.
On no adversary has Correa unleashed such bile as on the opposition news media, which he claims "oligarchs" have used to seek to discredit him.
Correa has had a columnist and three directors of the opposition newspaper El Universo successfully prosecuted for criminal defamation. They have been sentenced to three years in prison each and a collective total of $40 million in fines, though the sentence is on appeal.
Human Rights Watch has decried how Correa used a May referendum to obtain a popular mandate for reforms that could "constrain media and influence the appointment and dismissal of judges."
It also complained that people involved in protests where violence occurs "may be prosecuted on inflated and inappropriate terrorism charges."
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