"The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes." - Stanley Kubrick
This diary is about how the new President of Ecuador is telling the United States and its corporate cronies, including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and Chevron/Texaco, to take a hike, despite a former populist President of Ecuador having been assassinated for trying exactly the same thing.
If you'd like to find out how a Big Part of the world works, look no farther than the book "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" by John Perkins. It' a real eye-opener. Perkins confesses to being part of a great conspiracy to enslave smaller nations throughout the world, using the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Basically what they do is this:
A group of "economists" goes into a country and conducts a "study", which reports to the country's leaders how their country can experience a massive wave of economic growth if these men (who represented U.S. corporations) are allowed to bring in corporate "development" such as dams, oil fields, electric plants, and the like. But the economists deliberately inflate -- wildly inflate -- the economic data, painting a falsely rosy picture of the future. Then, huge amounts of money are loaned, from the World Bank and the IMF, (which then flows into the pockets of the corporations to build these "projects") -- but no problem! The huge and inevitable economic growth that will inevitably result from their development will make it EASY to pay back the loans! Right?
Wrong. If it goes according to plan, the economic boom is always be far smaller than promised. The country finds itself unable to repay these giant loans. The World Bank and the IMF would then move in for the kill, making financial deals that would keep the client state in a constant state of debt-slavery to the nations (usually the United States) and its corporations, basically forever. The only winners are, of course, the United States and its corporations that are in on the con, and the ruling families of the client country, who are awarded nice fat kickbacks in order to keep the lid on the festering populist anger and dissatisfaction that will surely result.
If a client state puts up any resistance, other forms of pressure are brought to bear. If that still doesn't work, what Perkins describes as "The Jackals" would move in, and the country's leader might find himself dying in a plane crash or some other unfortunate "accident".
Ecuador has already had this happen to them. Once. Their popular president Jaime Roldós was assassinated in a fiery crash. But today they have a new leader. And their new leader is showing the world how it IS, now, possible to stand up to the Jackals of the United States. He's doing it, he's getting away with it (so far), and he's inspiring many others. How is he doing it?
To start, read what John Perkins has to say about his own book:
Perkins writes, "The book was to be dedicated to the presidents of two countries, men who had been his clients whom I respected and thought of as kindred spirits–Jaime Roldós, president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama. Both had just died in fiery crashes. Their deaths were not accidental. They were assassinated because they opposed that fraternity of corporate, government, and banking heads whose goal is global empire. We Economic Hit Men failed to bring Roldós and Torrijos around, and the other type of hit men, the CIA-sanctioned jackals who were always right behind us, stepped in.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the CIA is involved. What a surprise. If you haven't read Perkins' book, you really should. It should be required reading of every U.S. citizen. It should be read in the eighth grade along with Huckleberry Finn.
What inspired me to write this was my channel-surfing experience the other day. I have DishTV, and on the far, far end of the channel spectrum are two channels, "Free Speech TV" and "Link TV". They are channels 9415 and 9410. They actually show "Democracy Now" and other really interesting and truthy shows, telling stories that our Corporate Media would never touch. And I stumbled across this documentary which was done by Greg Palast for the BBC.
Soon thereafter I found an article based on the same documentary, here, titled "Good and Evil at the Center of the Earth".
Palast had gone to Ecuador to document the abuses of the land and the peoples of Ecuador by Chevron/Texaco, where they committed environmental crimes that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Palast would mean jail time had they been committed in the United States:
I’d returned from a very wet visit to the rainforest - by canoe to a Cofan Indian village in the Amazon where there was an epidemic of childhood cancers. The indigenous folk related this to the hundreds of open pits of oil sludge left to them by Texaco Oil, now part of Chevron, and its partners. I met the Cofan’s chief. His three year old son swam in what appeared to be contaminated water then came out vomiting blood and died.
President Correa had gone there too, to the rainforest, though probably in something sturdier than a canoe. And President Correa announced that the company that left these filthy pits would pay to clean them up.
But it’s not just any company he was challenging. Chevron’s largest oil tanker was named after a long-serving member of its Board of Directors, the Condoleezza. Our Secretary of State.
The Cofan have sued Condi’s corporation, demanding the oil company clean up the crap it left in the jungle. The cost would be roughly $12 billion. Correa won’t comment on the suit itself, a private legal action. But if there’s a verdict in favor of Ecuador’s citizens, Correa told me, he will make sure Chevron pays up.
Is he kidding? No one has ever made an oil company pay for their slop. Even in the USA, the Exxon Valdez case drags on to its 18th year. Correa is not deterred.
He told me he would create an international tribunal to collect, if necessary. In retaliation, he could hold up payments to US companies who sue Ecuador in US courts.
This is hard core. No one - NO ONE - has made such a threat to Bush and Big Oil and lived to carry it out.
Palast reminds me that our Secretary of State, Condi Rice, was on the Board of Directors of Chevron. They liked her so much they named an oil tanker after her. Here's a photo:
So who is this insanely brass-balled new President Correa of Ecuador? Well, he's one of the first brown-skinned people to be elected to office in Ecuador. Furthermore, he has a PhD in economics, and until recently was a professor at the University of Illinois. His poverty-stricken father committed suicide after being deported back to Ecuador from the United States, broke and humiliated. But most importantly, Correa has friends. Friends who gave him an alternative to the slavery of the World Bank and the IMF:
Professor Doctor Correa is one tough character. He told George Bush to take the US military base and stick it where the equatorial sun don’t shine. He told the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which held Ecuador’s finances by the throat, to go to hell. He ripped up the “agreements” which his predecessors had signed at financial gun point. He told the Miami bond vultures that were charging Ecuador usurious interest, to eat their bonds. He said ‘We are not going to pay off this debt with the hunger of our people. ” Food first, interest later. Much later. And he meant it.
It was a stunning performance. I’d met two years ago with his predecessor, President Alfredo Palacio, a man of good heart, who told me, looking at the secret IMF agreements I showed him, “We cannot pay this level of debt. If we do, we are DEAD. And if we are dead, how can we pay?” Palacio told me that he would explain this to George Bush and Condoleezza Rice and the World Bank, then headed by Paul Wolfowitz. He was sure they would understand. They didn’t. They cut off Ecuador at the knees.
But Ecuador didn’t fall to the floor. Correa, then Economics Minister, secretly went to Hugo Chavez Venezuela’s president and obtained emergency financing. Ecuador survived.
So the Jackals lost out. Why? Because there is now an alternative to the slavery of the World Bank and the IMF, and ironically its funded by the same oil that fueled the profits of Exxon/Texaco (whose profits last year were bigger than the GDP of Ecuador), only this oil is sitting in Venezuela and is controlled by a man who refused to be a slave to the U.S. and is more than willing to tell the U.S. to stick it where the sun don't shine.
And there's nothing the U.S. can do about it. Except try very hard to get rid of Chavez.
The blowback isn't confined to this. Chavez is also trying to get OPEC to quit using the dollar as the main currency in the international oil market. Iran has also. The Saudis are refusing. Looks like we all could be victims, some day, of our country's bullying arrogance. If they quit using the dollar, the dollar ain't gonna be worth squat. And we all know it's already dropping like a rock, which means everything we buy is getting more expensive. Nice, isn't it?
Correa’s not unique. He’s the latest of a new breed in Latin America. Lula, President of Brazil, Evo Morales, the first Indian ever elected President of Bolivia, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. All “Leftists,” as the press tells us. But all have something else in common: they are dark-skinned working-class or poor kids who found themselves leaders of nations of dark-skinned people who had forever been ruled by an elite of bouffant blonds.
When I was in Venezuela, the leaders of the old order liked to refer to Chavez as, “the monkey.” Chavez told me proudly, “I am negro e indio” - Black and Indian, like most Venezuelans. Chavez, as a kid rising in the ranks of the blond-controlled armed forces, undoubtedly had to endure many jeers of “monkey.” Now, all over Latin America, the “monkeys” are in charge.
And they are unlocking the economic cages.
Maybe the mood will drift north. Far above the equator, a nation is ruled by a blond oil company executive. He never made much in oil - but every time he lost his money or his investors’ money, his daddy, another oil man, would give him another oil well. And when, as a rich young man out of Philips Andover Academy, the wayward youth tooted a little blow off the bar, daddy took care of that too. Maybe young George got his powder from some guy up from Ecuador.
I know this is an incredibly simple story. Indians in white hats with their dead kids and oil millionaires in black hats laughing at kiddy cancer and playing musical chairs with oil assets.
But maybe it’s just that simple. Maybe in this world there really is Good and Evil.
The Palast story is also available here.
In the midst of our own primary season, we need to ask which candidate will best stand against the Jackals, and stand up for human rights.