Ecuador to Renegotiate Oil Leases `Case by Case,' Correa Says

[Judi Lynn]

Ecuador to Renegotiate Oil Leases `Case by Case,' Correa Says

By Jeb Blount

Dec. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Ecuador will renegotiate the oil production contracts of Brazil's Petroleo Brasileiro SA and other foreign oil companies on a ``case-by-case basis'' depending on the return existing agreements give the state.

The renegotiations are necessary because some, but not all, of the agreements between the oil companies and the government fail to share as sufficient amount of profits with Ecuador, said Rafael Correa, Ecuador's president-elect at a press conference in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
(snip/)

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=axH5U6XvM9jU&refer=latin_america

[Judi Lynn]

1. "Copper War" in Ecuador: Ascendant Copper vs. Local Communities

"Copper War" in Ecuador: Ascendant Copper vs. Local Communities
Written by Carlos Zorrilla
Thursday, 07 December 2006

It's the kind of scenario that makes shambles out of the carefully crafted image the mining industry has spent millions on creating: A transnational mining company using retired military officials, military helicopters and hundreds of contracted armed personnel – "paramilitary force" according to a respected human rights organization- shooting their way through to their mining concessions.

The pre-dawn military-type operation failed, in spite of more than 50 hired goons using tear gas and hundreds of rounds of small arms and machine guns against unarmed community members. The men and women from the community were able to send this group of invaders packing after they ran out of ammunition, but not before one community leader had been shot in the leg. However the failed incursion combined with the presence of hundreds of outsiders forming part of what is seen locally as paramilitaries, has served to rally support against the mining company and its project like nothing before. Of course, it also didn't help the company's image that they actually went out and hired a military helicopter to fly around the area, to attempt, presumably, to intimidate the communities and the opposition. It didn't work.

Soon after seeing their town overrun by paid thugs, and upon hearing of the shooting confrontation, the local government of Garcia Moreno, where the concessions are situated, unanimously decided to withdraw all support for the company, and called on the rest of the Intag region to back the communities. The communities and organizations responded by sending hundreds of people to support the communities at risk. It is currently believed that there are still over one hundred armed "private security personnel" in the area, and more and more communities are sending their people from all over Intag, and Cotacachi County to support Junin; including indigenous communities.

The hard-to-believe scenario is taking place right now in the biodiverse forests of Intag, Ecuador, where the people have been fighting mining development for the past 12 years. All nine local governments of the Province of Imbabura, along with the overwhelming majority of the organizations working in the region, have joined Intag's communities in their rejection of the mining project. The only entity supporting Ascendant Copper Corporation's Junin copper-molybdenum project at this time is the Ministry of Energy and Mines (the Canadian company is listed in the Toronto Stock Exchange and its headquarters is in Colorado). The bad news for the company is that the officials supporting the company are on their way out in January with the outgoing Palacio government. Thus, the last-minute outrageous aggressiveness and violent tactics are likely linked to the political scenario facing Ascendant of doing business with a leftist government that publicly said they will not give away the country's natural resources to the transnational extractive companies.
(snip/...)

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/536/1/

[aquart]

2. We put all our eggs in the ME instead of sucking up to our neighbors.

[Warren Stupidity]

3. It is a start.

When do we get to renegotiate the shitty deals we have with the kleptocracy?

[Peace Patriot]

4. Thanks, Judi Lynn, for these two reports on Ecuador. They indicate just

how important Rafael Correa's election was--and also, the profoundity of the leftist (majorityist) movement in South America, especially as revealed in the second article. It is the community cohesion, and independent networks of communication, that are so impressive. This is not so much leftist leaders leading as it is ordinary people--poor peasants and others--becoming great citizens.

Rafael Correa's election (and he won big) is a sock in the nose to Bush. Correa quite deliberately endorsed Hugo Chavez's UN remark that Bush is "the devil" (Correa said it was an insult to the devil). There is nothing the Bush oiligarchy wanted more than to stop this leftist movement in South America, and in particular to stop the wasteful expenditure of profits from natural resources on the poor people who live there, and the rampant neglect of the super-rich by these governments. Don't they know that the super-rich need help? They can't earn anything on their own. They have no skills. They are not educated in any useful trade. They need government handouts--big government handouts. The leftist governments in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Ecuador can't seem to get this through their heads They expect people to work for a living. They expect that schools and medical care for the poor will create a productive population. They aren't teaching people that "might makes right" and that the way to get money is to steal it by the fistfuls. But I digress.

So they did their best--WITH OUR TAX MONEY--to defeat Correa in Ecuador and Chavez in Venezuela (both up for election recently), plus a lot of badmouthing of Chavez and plotting against him, all of which failed. I'm beginning to think that the Bushites really are just lazy rich people--or maybe they are a bit distracted these days about pending investigations of their crimes. They throw millions of our dollars into it, and some arm-twisting on trade deals, but the smart voters in these countries just ignore it. They've seen it all before. They have grown wise.

The sock in the nose to Bush and to the Corporate Rulers comes from THEM--from the people of South America. The leaders of these countries are an expression of the people (unlike in our miserable nation). But I think what doesn't get through to these fascists is that it's not really a negative movement. It is a very positive achievement of democracy itself, and of the empowerment of the people, especially the long neglected and oppressed poor. Its goals are self-determination and justice. It is about sovereignty. It is thus not a very ideological movement (and the stronger for it, too). These peoples and their governments will work with any entities--corporate or otherwise--who respect their sovereignty, their right to regulate their resources, and their right to determine their own domestic and foreign policy. They don't particularly want to kick anybody out (except truly bad actors, like Bechtel in Bolivia, and the World Bank in Argentina). They just won't want to be--and will not be--kicked around any more.

Correa's election is an expression of these positive goals. Our corporate press might obsess on the leader and what he says--the "devil" remark. But both Correa and Chavez said it more for the amusement of their people, and others in the know, than for a "sound bite" in our hostile press. It is a joke to poor South Americans. They mean it and they don't mean it. They are winking at each other. And our stupid corporate news monopolies really missed this nuance. The poor, the beaten, the brutalized, the exploited--the people whom US-backed dictators have oppressed for so long--are in power now, and they are going to make their own judgments about things, and they are going to say what is amusing and what isn't. The power of sovereigns!

Peace and justice are not established yet in South America. And I'm sure that the global corporate predators are not done with trying to steal their oil, gas, minerals and other resources, and trying to turn them into slave labor. But this new attitude in South America is the most powerful force they have ever faced, in pursuing their greedy and merciless objectives. This movement cannot be decapitated. It is entirely peaceful and democratic in its means. And it has already weathered serious attempts to undermine and defeat it. It is not about leaders. It is about the people--as the people of Intag and Imbabura, in Ecuador, are showing. This has been the case in Bolivia as well, in Venezuela, and, indeed, throughout continent. In Venezuela, this movement is not about Chavez; it's about the people who support Chavez, and their amazing self-empowerment and solid organization.

The Corporate Rulers are losing! We may not be able to see that very clearly, from here in the U.S. But just scratch the surface of the news in the South America, and it shines through brightly.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Info. we didn't hear here: massacres near Ecuador's border by Colombian paramilitaries

(You may remember the last two or three weeks have provided story after story after story of news breaking in Colombia, swirling around info. FINALLY being revealed about paramilitaries and their own Congressmen who serve them, in large numbers, going all the way up the line to, it is believed, Alvaro Uribe, the little Colombian pResidential best buddy of _{George W. Bush.})

Massacre Near Ecuador Border

La Hora
November 10, 2004

Early in the week of November 8, hundreds of Colombian campesinos fled a massacre near the border with Ecuador in which presumed members of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) reportedly killed some 100 people in the villages of El Afilador, Dios Peña, Las Brisas, San Carlos, El Tigre and Albania, in Putumayo department, near the north bank of the San Miguel river, which separates Colombia from Ecuador. At least 300 of the refugees have crossed the border into Ecuador, seeking safety.
Survivors who fled the massacres say paramilitaries forced residents of the villages to stand in columns, then tied them up, interrogated them and tortured them physically and psychologically before hanging them from beams and cutting them to pieces with machetes and chainsaws. Some of those killed were Ecuadorans who were working as day laborers on coca plantations. Witnesses say the bodies remain in the villages, since no one dares to retrieve them and bury them.

The fear has spread to villages on the Ecuadoran side of the border such as Puerto Mestanza, where only one family remains; the remaining residents have abandoned their land and fled to Nueva Loja because of paramilitary threats. (La Hora (Quito) 11/12/04)

(snip/)

http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/ecuador/2697.html

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Look at THIS situation Rafaél Correa will be confronting. You will see the NAME OF THE CANDIDATE WHO RAN AGAINST CORREA, NOBOA the Banana plantation owner, the richest man in Ecuador:

WIDESPREAD LABOR ABUSE ON BANANA PLANTATIONS IN ECUADOR

Ecuadorian children as young as eight work on banana plantations in hazardous conditions, while adult workers fear being fired if they try to exercise their right to organize, Human Rights Watch found in a new report. Ecuador is the world's largest banana exporter and the source of roughly one quarter of all bananas on the tables of U.S. and European consumers.

"Tainted Harvest: Child Labor and Obstacles to Organizing on Ecuador's Banana Plantations" documents labor rights abuses and the failure of the Ecuadorian government to enforce its labor laws in that country's banana sector. Human Rights Watch urged banana-exporting corporations such as Ecuadorian-owned Noboa and Favorita, as well as Chiquita, Del Monte, and Dole, to demand that labor rights be respected on their supplier plantations and to monitor compliance with this requirement.

The report was covered by the Financial Times, the Economist, and the BBC, as well as Ecuador's main newspapers and other newspapers in Latin America.

In May and June, Human Rights Watch plans to meet with corporate representatives, members of banana producers' and exporters' associations, International Labor Organization officials, Ecuadorian government officials, and partner Ecuadorian NGOs and worker organizations.

Read the report online at http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/ecuador/
Press release at http://www.hrw.org/press/2002/04/ecuador0425.htm

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Can you BELIEVE the same idiot who ran against Rafaél Correa ALSO abuses child labor laws?