"Venezuelan and Ecuadorian Presidents Seal Friendship"

[Peace Patriot]

"Venezuelan and Ecuadorian Presidents Seal Friendship With Joint Declaration

"Friday, Dec 22, 2006

"By: Venezuelanalysis.com

"Caracas, December 22, 2006 (venezuelanalysis.com)— Ecuador’s President Elect Rafael Correa arrived in Venezuela Tuesday to strengthen his friendship with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and to sign cooperation commitments. The two presidents signed a joint declaration to promote integration via the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) and for energy cooperation. Correa also requested that Venezuela rejoin the trading group of the Community of Andean Nations (CAN).

(snip)

"With regard to energy cooperation, Venezuela committed itself to train Ecuadorian specialists in the areas of oil exploration, production, transport, storage, processing, and commercialization. Also, the state oil companies of the two countries, PDVSA and Petroecuador would create joint ventures in the area of oil refining, so that Petroecuador can modernize and increase its refining capacity in Ecuador. Until this is underway, though, Venezuela would offer to refine Ecuadorian oil in Venezuela.

(snip)

"Another area that the two presidents committed themselves to cooperate in is the area of communication, so that Ecuador might soon join the Telesur TV channel. Telesur is the continent-wide progressive Latin American news channel, which is currently supported by Venezuela, Cuba, Uruguay, and Argentina.

(snip)

"Correa received important backing from Chavez on the issue of Colombia’s drug fumigation along the Ecuador-Colombia border. Correa has complained about the program, saying that it is bad for Ecuadorian crops and people’s health. // According to Reuters, Chavez supported Correa’s position by saying, 'The battle against drug smuggling has been an excuse that imperialists have used for several years to penetrate our country, trample our people and justify a military presence in Latin America.'

(snip)

"(Correa) is renowned for making fiery speeches against the US government much like Chavez. In fact, when asked recently to comment on Chavez’s description of President George W. Bush as the devil he said that, 'Calling Bush the devil offends the devil. Bush is a tremendously dim-witted President who has done great damage to the world.' // He was elected president November 27 with 57.9% of the vote after running on a platform that promised to rein in political elites."

(MORE)

[Peace Patriot]

1. NOTE FROM PEACE PATRIOT: Important elections & joint ventures

NOTE FROM PEACE PATRIOT: The recent Ecuadoran election was an extremely important event--for Ecuador, and for South American self-determination and regional cooperation, key to the future in Latin America--and it was a major blow for the Bush Junta, which has been pouring many millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars into political interference in the Andean democracies and military aid and "free trade" (global corporate predator) bullying and bribery, in a fruitless effort to stem the overwhelming socialist/leftist/majorityist tide that has swept South America, with leftist governments elected in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Venezuela, Bolivia and now Ecuador (and next election cycle, Peru).

Bush & brethren could take a lesson from King Canute, whose fawning courtiers attributed inhuman powers to him, and who commanded them to carry his throne down the seaside, where he demonstrated to them, by his inability to command the ocean waves, that he was a mere human. Arrogant monarchs and imperialists, beware! As Evo Morales, the new president of Bolivia--and the first indigenous Andes indian to hold that office--has said; "The time of the people has come." And when such events occur--the formative tides of history--nothing can stop them.

Our war profiteering corporate news monopolies have done a tremendous disservice to the American people, including businesspeople, by their obsessive focus on Hugo Chavez, and their use of Bush State Department's memos, that he is some kind of Castro-like dictator, as their common news line. Chavez is no such thing. And what is happening in South America goes far beyond Chavez, and far beyond the borders of Venezuela, although Chavez has been an inspiration to many, with his idea of a "Bolivarian Revolution"--that is, fulfilling the dream of the great Latin American revolutionary hero, Simon Bolivar, of a "United States of South America." The events occurring in South America now--the election of so many anti-neoliberal (anti-global corporate predator) governments, the new discussions about forming a South American "Common Market," and a common currency--are going to change the nature of South American politics and economics, and South America's relationship to the U.S. I recommend this news and opinion web site--www.venezuelanalysis.com--for info on what is happening in South America that you cannot find in our extremely biased press. Here's another...

Poll: Venezuelans Have Highest Regard for Their Democracy
Wednesday, Dec 20, 2006
By: Gregory Wilpert - Venezuelanalysis.com

Note: This poll reveals that Venezuelans hold their democracy in higher regard than any other South American peoples, except Uruguay. It also reveals that Ecudorans hold their democracy in low regard, but I think the recent election of Rafael Correa is going to change that very quickly. He is a dynamic young leftist economist determined to reverse the impacts of neo-liberalism, to create real prosperity and to bring justice to the poor (who have suffered the most).

[Cha]

2. Thanks for this, Peace Patriot, I

find it fascinatingly surreal.. like out of a novel.

There's too many of those South American left wing countries to stage coups! :applause: :toast: :loveya:

[Vidar]

11. Great news. Thanks PeacePatriot.

[muntrv]

3. Any chance that this phenomenon could move north through Central

America up to Mexico?

[Peace Patriot]

5. It IS moving north! Nicaragua just elected Daniel Ortega president. And

there is an enormous leftist (majorityist) movement in Mexico, centered in the southern states, especially Oaxaca, and in Mexico City--very similar to the other social movements that resulted in leftist governments in Bolivia, Argentina and other South American countries. The impoverishment that U.S.-style neoliberalism has caused can no longer be denied, and the vast poor populations of these countries are rising up and taken power by peaceful, democratic means. Mexico has special problems, being right on the U.S. border, and of course special measures have been taken there, on behalf of U.S.-based global corporate predators (all the usual suspects) to extend theft and profiteering for as long as Calderon can last. But it is only a matter of time. The Oaxaca uprising was amazing. The brutal fascist governor--whom the locals say stole the 2004 election--attacked the teachers who were engaged in a rather routine strike for higher wages. He assaulted them in the middle of the night with police forces (they were camping out), and the entire community rose up to demand the governor's removal. That was back in June. The people of Oaxaca then proceeded to set up an alternative government, based on the "uses and customs" provision of the Constitution (old indigenous rules), and held the state capitol city for five months, holding assemblies, setting up their own government systems--all entirely peaceful and democratic (high participation)--even as the Governor's paramilitaries were kidnapping, raping, torturing and murdering people. Around 20 people were killed. Still the community remained non-violent. Then Calderon stole the national election, and, together with Fox, brutally invaded Oaxaca, with a federal army of Darth Vader troops, on the side of the murdering S.O.B. governor, and have arrested and disappeared hundreds of people, including union leaders, community organizers, indigenous elders, youngsters--all the leaders. The whereabouts of many are unknown. Their offenses are unknown. They have been kept incommunicado, and no doubt tortured. It is outright fascist and a huge scandal in Mexico. Clearly, the Corporate Rulers were out to break the back of this movement, but they have only succeeded in writing the death warrant for Corporate Rule in Mexico.

Guatemala and Honduras have basketcase economies, and highly corrupt governments. I know very little about the rise of a popular movement there, currently, but what's happening in South America and southern Mexico is likely happening there as well, but on a more subsurface level. You can only keep people down with fascist measures so long. Guatemala got rid of the horrendous series of dictators who slaughtered thousands of indigenous, peasants and leftists, with the full support of Ronald Reagan--one of the greatest monsters of American history, although little of Reagan's complicity is known here. An estimated TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND people, mostly indigenous Mayans--entire villages of men, women and children--were killed, mostly in the 1980s. Tens of thousands were tortured. Women were often raped before they were killed. The scale of the horror beggars the imagination. Only Iraq is comparable. The region has hardly had time to recover its population of indigenous, let alone its political activism. That may be the reason for the quietude in these countries.

http://consortiumnews.com/2006/121606.html

"In 1992, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Rigoberta Menchú, an indigenous human rights activist, for her efforts to bring international attention to the government-sponsored genocide against the indigenous population."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala

Also from the wikipedia article...

"During the first 10 years, the victims of the state-sponsored terror were primarily students, workers, professionals, and opposition figures of all political tendencies, but in the last years, they were thousands of mostly rural Mayan farmers and non-combatants. More than 450 Mayan villages were destroyed and over one million people became refugees. This is considered one of the worst ethnic cleansings in modern Latin America."

[hadrons]

10. it sort of did reach Mexico ....

its just that the right down there got Dumbya's 2000 playbook and stole the election there

[Zorra]

4. "Bush is a tremendously dim-witted President

who has done great damage to the world."

Well, apparently Correa has a knack for stating the obvious.

[David__77]

6. ALBA is a good alternative to neo-liberalism.

I wish it success across the region.

[roody]

7. Viva Correa!

[Judi Lynn]

8. Big plans afoot, and it's about time! Good for South America.

I hope destiny will allow them the progress which has been denied them by right-wing U.S. pResidents' hellish interference in the lives of these nations.



President-Elect Rafael Correa, President Hugo Chavez

[Peace Patriot]

9. Thanks for the pix, Judi Lynn. Until Muntrv asked the question above,

I wasn't aware of the scale of death in Guatemala. I knew about it generally, but had not investigated the details. While we slept in the U.S., only two countries away, horror beyond belief was unleashed by the Reaganites and their lapdog dictators. I do remember in more detail--and knew of it at the time--of the horror Reagan inflicted on Nicaragua and El Salvador, and I was struck by the limp reaction of the Democratic Congress at the time, which had specifically forbidden Reagan to make war in Nicaragua, and then failed to hold Reagan accountable for it. He should have been impeached. I knew that then. But the details of Reagan's complicity in the slaughter of 200,000 people, mostly Mayan villagers, in Guatemala, was deliberately hidden from view, and I did not know his part in it, nor the scale of it. I guess I should not be surprised at the current crop of Democrats and their yawn at Bush's genocide in Iraq. But what I think is happening is that the "ghost of Christmas past" is now haunting the U.S. in so many ways (Iran comes to mind as well), and our better leaders had better wake up to the reality that the rest of the world does not forget these things--you don't forget them when they happen in your own country--and is pulling together in many ways to curtail U.S. power, and this will likely mean--it is already happening--hardship for our population, which has not been able to control this Bush Junta. We see, in this embrace of Correa and Chavez, the future of Latin America, and while these leaders and their constituents do not hate us as a people--a rather remarkable development--they are determined that our out-of-control government will not harm their countries again, and they are very smart in the ways they are going about creating that security. I have not mentioned, in my postings, Spain, the country that had such a profound influence on Latin America, which ALSO now has a leftist government. The entire Latin culture (also Italy, the mother country of Latin itself!) is awakening. It heartens me to see other countries banding together for their own security, because I see, here, that we cannot. Our government wants to give our ports away to the fascist rich sultans of the U.A.E. They permitted Al Qaeda to attack us. Our vice president acts on the word of the King of Saudi Arabia. They have driven us into $10 trillion worth of debt, owned by China and the Saudis. It does not bode well for us.

[Judi Lynn]

14. You might find this transcript from the Charlie Rose show interesting.It features Elliot Abrams,

Robert Torricelli, and Allan Nairn, Nairn being a brave journalist who had the guts to speak truth to Elliot Abrams power during the show. Here's a glimpse:

Guatemala Massacre

Excerpts from "Charlie Rose," March 31, 1995
Guests: Rep. Robert Torricelli, Elliot Abrams, Allan Nairn

This may not be news to most Deep Times readers, but it is a conveniently packaged interview that might be effective with students when discussing "human rights" and imperialism. The massacre in Guatemala of 100,000 is on a proportionate scale, equivalent to TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND Tienamien Square incidents. That's 25,000 times as many deaths, in relation to the size of the country, and of course, students know quite a bit more about the China incident than they do about Guatemala.
-----(forwarded by Alan Spector)
(snip)

Nairn: Across the board. And in the face of this systematic policy of slaughter by the Guatemalan military, more than 110,000 civilians killed by that military since 1978, what Amnesty International has called a "government program of political murder," the US has continued to provide covert assistance to the G-2 and they have continued, especially during the time of Mr. Abrams, to provide political aid and comfort. For example,

Abrams: Uh, Charlie.

Rose: One second.

Nairn: during the Northwest Highland massacres of the '80s when the Catholic Church said: "never in our history has it come to such grave extremes. It has reached the point of genocide," President Reagan went down, embraced Rios Montt, the dictator who was staging these massacres, and said he was getting "a bum rap on human rights." In 85 when human rights leader Rosario Godoy was abducted by the army, raped and mutilated, her baby had his fingernails torn out, the Guatemalan military said: "Oh, they died in a traffic accident." Human rights groups contacted Mr. Abrams, asked him about it, he wrote back -- this is his letter of reply -- he said: yes, "there's no evidence other than that they died in a traffic accident." Now this is a woman raped and mutilated, a baby with his fingernails torn out. This is longstanding policy.
(snip)

http://www.copi.com/articles/guatmala.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For any DU'ers who read the transcript who haven't heard of "Bamaca" (as I hadn't until a couple of years ago, and heard it first from DU'er Say_What, I'm glad to say) I should say I have seen his widow, Jennifer Harbury, on C-Span, along with another woman, a nun, Diana Ortiz, with whom she wrote her last book, and started trying to keep her name in mind from that time onward. Here's a transcript to an interview she gave to Amy Goodman:

Wednesday, July 27th, 2005
Wife of Guatemalan Rebel Killed by CIA Asset Says CIA Operatives Engaged in Criminal Acts Should be Exposed

AMY GOODMAN: Jennifer Harbury, you took a case against the U.S. government to the Supreme Court. You fasted endlessly in both Guatemala and the United States to find out what had happened to your husband. Can you talk about what happened in taking on the U.S. government, how ultimately, you found out what happened to Everardo, what happened to your husband Ephraim Bamaca Velasquez?

JENNIFER HARBURY: Well, I first, of course, had been told by the Guatemalan military that he had shot himself in combat to avoid being captured alive. Six months later, a young prisoner of war for the first time was able to escape from a Guatemalan military base and explain to me that he had not been killed in combat, he was captured alive, that they had fabricated this story about his combat death in order to torture him long-term for his information. And in fact, they had doctors present -- because of his great intelligence value, they had doctors present to make sure they didn't accidentally kill him. They then opened the grave and found the body of a very different young man, a young soldier who had been killed as a decoy.

For the next two-and-a-half years, I carried out efforts with the O.A.S. I went to the United Nations. I went everywhere and got no results. No one was able to force the Guatemalan military or the U.S. State Department to carry out any serious actions. And the Embassy, the U.S. Embassy told me and also sent form letters repeatedly to concerned members all over Capitol Hill, representatives and senators, that there was no information at all about him.

After my third hunger strike, it was, of course, disclosed that the C.I.A. had known from the week of his capture that (a) he had been captured, (b) they were faking his death, and (c) they were torturing him. And that memo went straight to the State Department. We also found out that when I first started looking for him and was opening the grave with the State Department and embassy sending people to stand next to me, they knew he was still alive and that so were 350 other prisoners of war in Guatemalan military hands and, in fact, they also knew that he was in the hands of our own paid informants whom we could have, of course, pulled into line. In other words, at that point in time, we could have saved 350 lives, including my husband's. During all of my efforts they continued to tell me and to tell the United States Congress and Amnesty, etc., etc., that there was no information.
(snip/...)

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/27/1422249


Jennifer Harbury
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/gbase/cityweek/Content?oid=oid:65054
Article on Harbury on a book tour to Tucson.

Wednesday, October 12th, 2005
Jennifer Harbury on Why Guatemalan Villagers Refuse Military Aid in Mudslide, Remembering Decades of Torture and Massacres

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/12/1416231

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On Allan Nairn, the journalist in the Charlie Rose interview:

Allan Nairn
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

Allan NairnAllan Nairn (b. 1956) is a U.S. investigative journalist who became well-known when he was imprisoned by the Indonesian military while reporting in East Timor. His writings have focused on U.S. foreign policy in such countries as Haiti, Guatemala, Indonesia, and East Timor.

Nairn was born in Mobile, Alabama to a Puerto Rican mother. In high school, he got a job with consumer activist Ralph Nader, working for him for six years.

In 1980, Nairn visited Guatemala in the middle of a campaign of assassination against student leaders amidst a chaotic counterinsurgency campaign against Marxist guerrillas active in both urban and rural areas. He interviewed U.S. corporate executives there, who endorsed the death squads, and he decided to further investigate death squad activities in that country and in El Salvador, also in the throes of civil war.
(snip/...)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Nairn



Sister Diana OrtizJanuary 29 / 30, 2005

A Note to Bush from a Survivor of Guatemalan Torturers
Stop the Torture
By Sister DIANNA ORTIZ

On Thursday, January 20, I listened to George W. Bush take the oath of office as President. He made many promises. One promise he did not make is to end the torture his administration has not only tolerated but facilitated. It left me wondering what his promises to uphold the law and fight for freedom and liberty really mean.

I am a survivor of torture. On November 2, 1989, I was abducted by members of the Guatemalan security forces. I am still talking today about the torture that followed because it is with me at every moment. I carry it with me physically"I wear in my skin the marks of 111 cigarette burns. But the scars go as deep as my very being. I was tortured for twenty-four hours, and in that time who I was, who I had been for 31 years, died. I was a nun, a missionary, a teacher of children. But now there was no God. People could not be trusted. And I could not trust myself.

Those were the lessons I learned. But in that clandestine prison there was one person who reached out to me, a woman who had also been tortured. She asked me my name and took my hand. I made a silent promise to her that, if I managed to survive, I would tell the world what had been done in that secret prison, to her and to others. I would not let her simply vanish, as tens of thousands had at the hands of the Guatemalan army.

I honored my promise. I spoke out about my torture and filed criminal charges in a futile effort to obtain justice in Guatemala. I called on the U.S. government to reveal information about the American who entered the secret prison, ordered my torturers to let me go, and escorted me out. Who was he? How did he know the location of a secret torture center? Why did the Guatemalan torturers obey him, as if he were their boss? Why did he leave all the others there, under torture?
(snip/...)http://www.counterpunch.org/ortiz01292005.html

[Acadia Blue]

12. I hope other countries stay out of these guys internal affairs. Latin

America's dire poverty can only be solved by Socialism, democratic style. The difficulty of any leaders is to redistribute income from the very very powerful and criminal oligarichal families. I hope they succeed in creating better societies where all members get to share the fruits of their work.

[Judi Lynn]

15. The system they've been using for decades, killing everyone who could remotely seem to be a leftist,

which was felt to be ENTIRE VILLAGES at times, or massacres which sent any survivors streaking off to live deeply in the forest for ages, displacing hundreds of thousands, seems a little flawed, somehow.

Makes it harder to claim they win landslide elections when there is no one left to vote for the opposition because they are either all dead or hiding or simply "disappeared."

I dispise it when freepers come here and swagger around pointing out that socialism, etc. have been proven to be inferior because they disappeared. The PEOPLE have disappeared. Ordinary resistance to the right-wing puppets tended to disappear because people learned they would get vaporized trying to stand up to them. Some triumph, right? Sheesh.

A grass roots effort, with a few brave individual serving as focal points to move them ahead might finally pull the countries together and return their self-respect to them which was destroyed so very long ago under the weight of mass murders, massacres, stylized methods of killing which were designed to strike terror into the minds of survivors, and torture.

For any DU'er who hasn't read about this yet, here's the info. on a Chilean professor who unexpectedly discovered himself staring at a man who had been his torturer in Chile:

From the issue dated August 17, 2001

Justice, Memory, and a Professor's Accusation
One scholar charges another with participating in his torture in Chile, and many academics feel the reverberations

By MICHAEL EASTERBROOK

Felipe Aguero could not believe what he was seeing that day in 1988. Mr. Aguero, at the time an instructor at Duke University, was once more in Chile, a country he had left six years earlier with an overwhelming sense of relief.

Even though about 15 other people were in the room, he couldn't stop thinking about a man on his right. They were sitting around a table at a Santiago hotel, participating in a conference organized by the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences. Mr. Aguero tried to act normal but felt nervous and self-conscious.

"I was staring in disbelief," he recalls. "I couldn't put together the fact that here, in an academic workshop, was a man who I clearly remember as having been in my own personal torture chamber."
(snip/...)

http://chronicle.com/free/v47/i49/49a03601.htm



the tortured, the torturer

After that article was posted here the first time, a man who reads DU, who has lived in Chile for years, discussed it with his wife who knew him years ago, before the torture, and learned in later years what he had done. His previous occupation is common knowledge in that country. I can't imagine how the people there must feel, knowing they can actually bump into people like this monster in every day life. My God.

[dailykoff]

13. Chavez is turning out to be quite the international statesman.

I hope it spreads north. :)

[oblivious]

16. This is so cool. I love it!

[Judi Lynn]

17. Correa Brings Hope to Ecuadorians

Correa Brings Hope to Ecuadorians
Written by Cyril Mychalejko
Tuesday, 26 December 2006

When Ecuadorians went to the polls on Nov. 26 they collectively said no to neoliberalism as they voted overwhelmingly for maverick candidate Rafael Correa over billionaire banana tycoon Alvaro Noboa. The choice between Noboa and Correa was a choice between the past and the future, a future that undoubtedly makes Washington very uneasy as yet another country in Latin America elected a left-of-center candidate.

Noboa represented Ecuador's (and Latin America’s) oligarchic past. The man who owns the fourth largest banana company in the world and who amassed his wealth off the backs of children and by violently confronting striking workers and unionists, expectedly promoted free market policies to "save" the country from its pervasive poverty. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Ecuador has had negative growth of GDP per capita over the last 25 years. Ecuador’s growth, or lack there of, is not an exception but rather the rule for Latin America, which has suffered abysmal growth rates, as well as seen increased poverty and inequality since adopting neoliberal (or free trade, free market) policies beginning in the late 70’s and early 80’s.

Despite this downward trend, Noboa promised voters that he would continue down this path of misery by signing a free trade deal with Washington. He even suggested that he would invite the California-based oil company Occidental back into the country. Occidental, which was hugely unpopular with Ecuadorians (as are many foreign corporations), had been expelled in March for violating Ecuadorian law.

While Noboa represented the hopes and dreams of Washington and Wall Street, Correa’s campaign was essentially shaped by the social movements, his presidency is owed to them, and ultimately whether he lasts a full term will be determined by them. (Ecuador hasn’t had a president last a full term in over ten years.)
(snip/...)

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/561/1/



Rafael Correa, in lime green shirt looking at kid with belt (his name means "belt," which was used symbolically to illustrate his administration would drive out a bad government, or something similar).



Say "goodbye" to Alvaro Noboa