November Vigil: 16-18,2007
Take a Stand for Human Rights!
No, I have never BEEN to Georgia for this event. However, I have helped locals organize for this annual event since 1968! This is simply a MUST DO commitment for anyone truly concerned with ending bloody neocolonialism And HATS OFF! to Evo Morales.


On the weekend of November 16-18, thousands will gather at the gates of Fort Benning, Georgia for the Vigil and the Nonviolent Direct Action to Close the School of the Americas and to end the racist system of violence and domination that the SOA represents. Take a Stand for Justice!

The weekend will include a massive rally, nonviolent direct action training, workshops, benefit concerts, puppet shows, teach-ins and more! Please check back soon for schedule changes and updates.

EVENTS: See a detailed schedule of this weekend's many gatherings, teach-ins, films, and concerts in Columbus, Georgia. Click here for information about reserving a table.

Please download the November flier and spread the word about the School of the Americas (SOA/WHINSEC) and upcoming vigil and nonviolent direct action.

HOTELS: See a list of hotel and other accomodations in and around Columbus, Georgia. If you are looking for housing, contact Ashley at the Columbus Visitors Bureau to see which hotels have vacancies. Reach the Visitors Bureau at 1-800-999-1613. MEDIA OUTREACH: Taking a little time to carry out a handful of media-related tasks before you head to Georgia can profoundly impact the number of people in your area who know about the SOA/WHINSEC issue and the number of people who get involved in the work to close it down. Read about how you can work with your local media or contact us in the SOA Watch office at 202-234-3440 or media@soaw.org">media(at)soaw.org for more information and resources. TRAVEL: See information on traveling to Columbus, whether by plane, car, bus, train or something more creative. ATTENTION! - If you are not a U.S. citizen or resident or will be traveling with someone who is neither, please make sure to inform yourself and your friend or loved one on some of the possible risks. SOA Watch supports the struggle for immigrant rights and we therefore provide the following information: - SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS for persons without U.S. citizenship considering participating in the November Vigil - IMMIGRATION CHECKLIST for November Vigil participants RIDE BOARD: Need a ride? Have a ride? Want to share a bike/car/van/bus/scooter with other fellow human rights advocates? See our Ride Board where you can post or find a ride to this year's Vigil. ACCESSIBILITY & INTERPRETATION: ASL and English<>Spanish interpretation services will be available during the vigil weekend. Find out more about interpretation services, large print and Braille programs and wheelchair accessibility. PEACEMAKERS NEEDED:SOA Watch is looking for Peacemaker Volunteers to work at the vigil this year. Read more about how you can participate, and how to contact Peacemaker coordinators. LOCAL GROUPS: Do you know others in your area that are working to close down the School of the Americas? Connect with others now before heading to Georgia. Click here for a listing of SOA Watch local groups. If your group is not listed, please add your contact information. Don't see a group for your area? Consider starting one! For more information, contact us at info@soaw.org or at 202-234-3440 or contact your regional representative for more information about those in your region working to close the SOA/ WHINSEC. NOVEMBER ORGANIZING PACKET: The November Organizing Packet is a great resource for you and your community as you spread the word about the SOA/ WHINSEC and as you make plans to attend the November 16-18 Vigil to Close the SOA at Fort Benning, Georgia. In it, you'll find information about what to expect at Ft. Benning, logistical information to assist your trip planning, media, legislative, fundraising and outreach tips and resources, and flyers you can reproduce and use in your community. Download the 2007 November Organizing Packet Order a hardcopy of the November Organizing Packet for $3 from SOA Watch, PO Box 4566, Washington, DC, 20017. Read about past Vigils to Close the School of the Americas. Photos by Cally Golding, Andi Gelsthorpe and Ted Stein Evo Morales Announces: "No More Bolivian Soldiers to the SOA/WHINSEC!" We are very excited to share that on October 10th, 2007, President Evo Morales announced that Bolivia will gradually withdraw its military from the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), renamed in 2001 the School of the Americas (SOA). Bolivia is now the fifth country - after Costa Rica, Argentina, Uruguay and Venezuela - to formally announce a withdrawal from this brutal military training school. "We will gradually withdraw until there are no Bolivian officers attending the School of the Americas” said Morales. Questioning the U.S. government foreign policy he noted that “they are teaching high ranking officers to confront their own people, to identify social movements as their enemies.” This is a great victory for torture survivors, social movement leaders and human rights activists of Bolivia and the Americas. The SOA/WHINSEC has played a significant role in Bolivia’s recent political history, Hugo Banzer Suarez, who ruled Bolivia from 1971-1978 under a brutal military dictatorship attended the school in 1956 and was later inducted into the school’s “hall of fame” in 1988. The SOA has trained tens of thousands of Bolivian military officers in the past fifty years. In October of 2006, two former graduates of the SOA/WHINSEC, Generals Juan Veliz Herrera and Gonzalo Rocabado Mercado were arrested on charges of torture, murder, and violation of the constitution for their responsibility in the death of 67 civilians in El Alto Bolivia during the “Gas Wars” of September-October 2003. In March 2006 a School of the Americas Watch (SOAW) delegation led by Lisa Sullivan-Rodriguez, Salvadoran torture survivor Carlos Mauricio, and SOA Watch founder Father Roy Bourgeois met with President Evo Morales to request that Bolivia cease to send troops for training at the SOA/WHINSEC. Read more about the SOA Watch Latin America Project

Jon Stewart tells Bolivian president America's elections are 'rigged'

Mike Aivaz and Jason Rhyne
Published: Wednesday September 26, 2007

Bolivian president Evo Morales and his translator joined Jon Stewart to discuss the leader's rise from poor farmer to Bolivia's "first indigenous president." Morales also made use of the the opportunity to take some jabs at America and the West.

"I understand that all have rights. It's not just intellectuals and professionals who can become president," Morales said through translation. "People who have other experiences, who have a working life as well, can become president. Therefore indigenous persons can also become president."

"In Bolivia," Steward deadpanned. "In America, it's a little rigged."

"So if it's rigged, then something needs to be done to change that," the leader said.

Discussing Morales's accomplishments, Stewart noted that the president's campaign promises, which had included pledges to nationalize resources, convene a constitutional assembly and institute agrarian reform, were all completed within eight months of his election.

"What are you trying to pull?" Stewart asked.

"On the issue of nationalization of oil and gas," Morales said, "in 2005, before I came president, the Bolivian state received only 300 million dollars from its oil and gas exports. And now since they've been nationalized, the Bolivian state receives more than two billion dollars. Therefore, we followed through on what we promised."

"We are going forward with the idea of a multi-cultural state," he continued, "a multi-national state, trying to live in unity at the same time respecting our diversity."

"We're so diverse, there are blue and green-eyed people like you,"the president joked, pointing at Stewart.

Responding to a question about the US and its relationship with countries including Venezuela and Cuba, Morales said the nations should come together to think about "how we can support life and human kind."

"It should be the millennium of life," he said.

"I personally know that there are presidents in countries who send troops abroad to save lives," Morales added later in the program, "but there are also countries who send troops abroad to take away lives. If we compare these two things...certainly we're going to the conclusion that these policies must change."

"And please don't consider me to part of the axis of evil," he begged.

Event in Washington denounces injustice in the case of the Cuban Five A Travesty of Justice: The Cuban Five. The media has devoted almost no attention to it, despite international ramifications of the case with regard to the US judicial system and the US harboring of terrorists. To learn about a case destined to become infamous was the call of prestigious American intellectuals as author Saul Landau, veteran journalist Peter Eisner and lawyer Jose Pertierra.
Evo Morales Joins Call for the Release of the Cuban Five Bolivian President Evo Morales joined Tuesday the world movement demanding the release of five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters unfairly imprisoned in United States. Morales condemned a week ago the US government for keeping the Five in prison, while criminals like Luis Posada Carriles and ex Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Losada are walking free in that nor

A Travesty of Justice: The Cuban Five. The media has devoted almost no attention to it, despite international ramifications of the case with regard to the US judicial system and the US harboring of terrorists. To learn about a case destined to become infamous was the call of prestigious American intellectuals as author Saul Landau, veteran journalist Peter Eisner and lawyer Jose Perti

Events Since The Oral Argument Of February 14th

In the five months since the oral argument the following events of note have occurred that support both the substantive defense of the Five as well as their argument on venue: a Cuban terrorist arrested with more than 1500 weapons, another one confessed having given $1.4 million to purchase weapons for overthrowing the government in Cuba, and a member of the Miami Board of Education confessed feeling threatened if he votes against the exile wishes.

	Mission Against Terror
	When stripped to its essentials, this story is truly heart-breaking and asks the obvious question: Why? What did they do to warrant such ruthless punishment? Why aren’t they spoken of in the United States? The answer finds itself in the unexplainable: it’s incredible that thousands, no, millions of people should be so well informed and so obsessed by the war on terror and not know anything at all about these five Cubans that are suffering a total of four life sentences plus 75 years in prison for fighting against terrorism. By ignoring them – unconsciously or otherwise – there is an acceptance of the criminal hallucination that the US judicial system employs when dealing with anything related to the Cuban Revolution.

	Additional Punishment
	On December 14, 2001 the judge of the court that sentenced the Cuban Five imposed an additional sanction that actually helps terrorism. According to the sentence applied to René González - and two weeks later against Antonio Guerrero - once they had finished their prison terms they would not be allowed to frequent places where criminal groups operate in South Florida.

	Alarcon: "The Cuban 5 Have Been the Victims of Torture by the US"
	Deliberately isolated in five different prisons spread throughout the immense U.S. territory, the Five are also suffering from the fact that the District Attorney's office and the FBI constantly separated them from their families in order to try and crush their spirits, explained Ricardo Alarcón. This article was published on December 18, 2004 by the American Political Newsletter COUNTERPUNCH.

	Bush's Hypocrisy: Cuban Terrorists
	Bush can count on cheers whenever he delivers a favorite line from the Bush Doctrine enunciated after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks: "Any country that harbors a terrorist is equally guilty as the terrorist." But this supposedly clear cut rule applies differently when a Bush ally is implicated in terrorism and the Bushes are the ones doing the harboring. While the anti-harboring principle is cited when invading Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush administration continues to turn a blind eye to the presence of right-wing Cuban terrorists living in the United States.

Gutierrez pushing FTAs with S, Korea, Columbia, Panama

Gutierrez Promotes FTAs to Poultry Industry in Atlanta

I have received a comment that the above material is copyright and that I must edit it.

In three years on the blogosphere, I have never received a complaint before as long as I provided a link.

So all materail regarding Secretary Guterriuz' announcement can be read by my readers at the link above.

If you decide to use this material yourseslves, please contact the publishers before you using it.

[And the only other complaint I recieved was from someone running a survival blog who I strongly suspect was running a cointel survival blogsite - you know, something to make on totally paranoid. Someone once filed a complaint against me to google making allegations anonymosly and google investigated and found them groundless. In that case, I was pretty sure that they had ties to the RNC. Not saying anything- just making an observation.]

# 19 People’s Movement Challenges Neoliberal Agenda
Sources:
Trade Matters, American Friends Service Committee, May 3, 2006
Title: “Is the US Free Trade Model Losing Steam?”
Author: Jessica Walker Beaumont
http://www.afsc.org/trade-matters/trade-agreements/LosingSteam.htm

International Herald Tribune, December 28, 2006
Title: “Economic Policy Changes With New Latin American Leaders”
Author: Mark Weisbrot
http://www.cepr.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=773&Itemid=45

International Affairs Forum, March 31, 2007
Title: “Is Hugo Chavez a Threat to Stability? No.”
Author: Mark Weisbrot
http://www.cepr.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1102&Itemid=45

Student Evaluator: Toni Catelani
Faculty Evaluator: Phil Beard, Ph.D.

The US Free Trade model is meeting increasingly successful resistance as people’s movements around the world build powerful alternatives to neoliberal exploitation.

This is particularly evident in Latin America, where massive opposition to US economic domination has demanded that populist leaders and parties take control of national governments in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, Nicaragua, and Uruguay.

Latin American presidents are delivering on promises to fix the mistake of twenty-five years of neoliberal reforms that resulted in the region’s worst economic collapse in more than one hundred years. In the two decades preceding World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) policies, 1960-1980, the region’s income per person grew by 82 percent. By comparison it grew just 9 percent 1980–2000, and only 4 percent 2000–2005.

Strong ties between Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Cuba’s Fidel Castro, and Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, along with cooperative relationships with major economies including Argentina and Brazil, are creating the real potential for autonomous alternatives to US-dictated economic policy in the Western Hemisphere.

In the past year alone several leaders have announced plans to cut ties with the World Bank and IMF. After a sweeping reelection in December 2006, Chavez announced April 30, 2007 that, having paid off debts to the World Bank and the IMF, Venezuela would cut ties with both institutions.1 Chavez has been able to put his nation on a path of solid growth by fulfilling his 1998 campaign promise to renationalize Venezuela’s oil industry (PDVSA). Though fierce US opposition to his move to end foreign privatization led to a failed US-backed military coup in 2002, nationalized oil is now the source of nearly half the Venezuela government’s revenues and 80 percent of the country’s export earnings. Venezuela’s economy has grown 38 percent in the last three years.

Chavez plans to set up a new lending institution run by Latin American nations and has pledged to support it with Venezuela’s booming oil revenues.1 Venezuela’s $50 billion in foreign exchange reserves is providing financial support to countries in the region without the exploitive policy conditions attached to WTO and World Bank lending. Leaders are thus able to deliver on promises to their people, contributing not only to stability but to the strengthening of Democracy in the region.

In April 2006, Evo Morales announced his rejection of the IMF and any future FTA with the US. He instead launched the Bolivian Peoples Trade Agreement (PTA), a socialist alternative to the neoliberal free trade model. The PTA emphasizes support of indigenous culture, reciprocity, solidarity, and national sovereignty. Above all the PTA emphasizes improved living conditions for the whole population as a result of international trade and investment. Bolivia’s 2005 passage of a Hydrocarbons Law raised the royalties paid by foreign gas companies to the government of Bolivia. While infuriating US corporations, the resulting tens of millions of dollars in revenue have enabled Bolivia to pay off its IMF debt and begin to build social programs and national reserves.
In December 2006, Rafael Correa, who recently won the presidential election in Ecuador on an anti-privatization, anti-US military base platform, announced plans to restructure Ecuador’s foreign debt in order to increase spending on crucial social programs. Ecuador has since paid its debt to the IMF and announced plans to sever ties to the institution. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has also announced negotiations toward an IMF exit.

Argentina was one of the IMF’s most publicized “successes” turned-crushing-failure at the end of the last century. From 1991 to 1998 the country adopted a host of IMF-recommended reforms including large-scale privatizations. The economy grew substantially during this period but went into a terrible downward slide beginning in mid-1998. At the end of 2001 the whole experiment fell apart, with the country defaulting on more than $100 billion of debt. The currency collapsed soon thereafter, and the majority of people fell below the poverty line in a country that had previously been one of the richest in Latin America.2

When Argentina’s President Nestor Kirchner finally refused the IMF’s debilitating repayment mandates, Argentina’s economy began to rebound—and it hasn’t stopped growing. In a remarkable expansion, which was never supposed to have happened according to IMF predictions, Argentina’s economy has grown by 47 percent in the past few years, making it the fastest growing economy in the Western Hemisphere, and pulling more than nine million people (in a country of 36 million) out of poverty.2 Argentina decided to make its break with the IMF in January 2006 by paying off its remaining $9.9 billion debt.

As of December 2005, Brazil is also free to make its own decisions, free from IMF interference, after paying off its debt two years ahead of schedule. “We repaid the money to show the world that this country has a government and it is the owner of its own nose,” Lula said at the time, adding, “Brazil has been able to decide that it does not want another IMF deal.”3

While it is an expanding reality that many strong and growing people’s movements have not been so fortunate as to have representative governments—the people of India (see story #8), Mexico (see story #18), and Niger (see story #3) are but a few examples—more and more elected leaders in Latin America are providing models of true democratic leadership that is of, for, and by the people.

Citations
1. Jorge Rueda, “Venezuela Pulling Out of IMF, World Bank,” Associated Press, May 1 2007.
2. Mark Weisbrot, “IMF’s Fall From Power,” Washington Post.com, April 13, 2007.
3. Xinhua, “Early Debt Payment Enables Brazil to Make Own Budget Decisions,” Peoples Daily Online, December 16, 2005.

UPDATE BY Jessica Walker Beaumont

Written a year ago, the American Friends Service Committee article “Is the US Free Trade Model Losing Steam?” accurately predicted a growing resistance among Latin American and African leaders to the current “one-size-fits-all” US trade policy model.

Proponents of the current US free trade model seem willing to do whatever it takes to keep the free trade train moving down the track. However their time is literally running out, in part due to the looming July 1 expiration of “fast track” authority that gives the Bush administration the power to negotiate free trade agreements on behalf of Congress.

Although Bolivia, Ecuador and Southern Africa stand firm against US Free Trade Agreements (FTA), there remains a “coalition of the willing” lining up to get their trade agreements. Pending trade pacts for Congressional consideration include those with Colombia, Peru, Panama and Korea. Greasing the wheels to pass these FTAs is a new “breakthrough trade deal” with the Bush administration announced by Democratic leadership on May 10, 2007.

It is said that the deal would improve new free trade agreements by requiring that they include labor and environmental standards, and by insuring better access to essential medicines. Sounds good right? Well, the deal was negotiated in secret with only a handful of Congressional members, the legal text is still not released, and high-powered big business groups are supporters. The official outline of the deal reveals all that is excluded, ignoring a cry for substantial rethinking of US trade policy.

Meanwhile Bolivia continues to advance its People’s Trade Agreement. In April, 2007 Bolivia (along with Venezuela and Nicaragua) decided to withdraw from the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) housed at the World Bank. This came out of the social movement started in 2001 against the US multinational Bechtel that sued Bolivia under the ICSID for $25 million after it was thrown out during the Cochabamba Water War. Dropping out of the ICSID sends a clear message that protecting private investment at the expense of the rights of the people will not be tolerated.

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, elected into power on an anti-FTA and anti-US military base agenda, is considering doing the same. In April Correa expelled the World Bank’s representative in Quito, accusing him of withdrawing funds in protest over the government’s oil sector reforms.

Costa Rica offers a new beacon of hope as they have yet to ratify the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). Huge resistance to CAFTA grew as people learned it would require the dismantling of Costa Rica’s public telecommunications sector that is funding education. On April 12, 2007 the Supreme Electoral Court approved a measure calling for a binding referendum on CAFTA, likely to take place in August or September. The CAFTA referendum will be Costa Rica’s first public referendum since it gained independence from Spain in 1821 (Inside US Trade, May 4, 2007).

Evo Morales stiirred up UN drugs control investigations

Empty Words on Money Laundering and Narcotics, from the UN, Georgia and Equatorial Guinea

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee, Inner City Press U.N. Correspondent

UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 28 The International Narcotics Control Board released its 2005 annual report on Tuesday, during an embargoed briefing by retired U.S. diplomat and Board member Melvyn Levitsky. Asked by Inner City Press if the Board has taken a position on statements about coca by Bolivia�s new president Evo Morales, Mr. Levitsky responded that while the report ends with November 2005, Bolivia is a signatory to treaties that cover coca, and that the twenty five year opt-out for medical uses is not applicable. Mr. Levitsky confirmed that opium production in Afghanistan has increased since 2001, and ascribed this to areas of the country being outside of government control. The question arose, if the military firepower currently supporting the government of Hamid Karzai can't or won't turn the tide on opium production, it will be difficult to see anti-drug goals of the Board realized.

Earlier in the briefing Mr. Levitsky had said that Afghan production is moving through Iran and Russia; asked to clarify, he said trafficking would have to move through the �former Soviet republics of Central Asia in order to get to Russia.
The report, in its 552^nd paragraph on page 79, states that Turkmenistan, whose extensive borders with Afghanistan, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are inadequately controlled, continues to be used as a transit country by trackers of Afghan opiates.

Also reported, but not connected, is the Board�s note a page earlier that �current legislation in Armenia, Georgia and Turkmenistan is insufficient to deal with the problem of money laundering; the Board urges the Governments of those countries to remedy the situation without delay.

Interviewed after the briefing by Inner City Press, Mr. Levitsky said that money laundering is not in the mandate of the International Narcotics Control Board. �We don�t have a section that monitors flows,� he said. Asked if the Board provides narcotic-specific information to the Financial Action Task Force, Mr.Levitsky shook his head and mentioned changes in Swiss and even Russian banking secrecy laws, but nothing about Turkmenistan, much less Georgia.

Georgia�s permanent representative to the UN, Revaz Adamia, confirmed in a Feb. 1 press briefing quotes by National Bank of Georgia president Roman Gotsiridze regarding Russian banks money laundering in Abkhazia. Mr. Adamia spoke of money laundering for �terrorism,� and said that he would more get more specifics from the National Bank of Georgia. While such information has yet to be provided, in Tbilisi Mr. Gotsiridze has said more, being quoted in a Rustavi-2 TV report on February 23 that

The National Bank has asked the FATF to examine illegal activities of Russian commercial banks in Abkhazia. Here is a list of the Russian commercial banks that have been illegally operating in Abkhazia and laundering massive amounts of black money. It is not ruled out that there may be even more serious violations, for example financing of terrorism, going on in this uncontrolled area. Banks operating in Abkhazia are illegal and unlicensed banking establishments. The Russian legislation itself prohibits any economic relations with unlicensed organizations.

Inner City Press on Feb. 28 posed written questions to Georgia�s mission to the UN; the questions were not responded to by deadline.

International Narcotics Control Board briefer

Footnote on a footnote: The report states that Equatorial Guinea remains the only State in Africa that is not yet a party to any of the three main international drug control treaties (page 42). The Secretary-General on Feb. 27 met with the long-time president of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, and afterwards hailed him. One wonders if the topics of money laundering came up...

On the Web: http://www.incb.org/incb/en/annual_report.html

A related previous Inner City Press report --

Abkhazia: Cleansing and (Money) Laundering, Says Georgia, Even Terror�s Haven

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee, Inner City Press U.N. Correspondent

UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 1 -- The situation in Abkhazia should be internationalized, said Georgia's ambassador to the United Nations, Revaz Adamia, on February 1. Briefing reporters at the UN Headquarters, Mr. Adamia characterized the plight of ethnic Georgians in Abkhazia as one of ethnic cleansing and even genocide. He cited a figure of 10,000 dead (as well as 100 Russian soldiers killed). His prepared remarks referred to �de facto annexation� and that �acquisition of property in the conflict zones, including property of refugees and IDPs, by the Russian entities is underway at full steam.�

As Inner City Press reported in December, the President of Georgia's National Bank Roman Gotsiridze has accused Russian banks in Abkhazia of money laundering and of financing terrorism. At the Feb. 1 UN briefing, Mr. Adamia responded to questioning by reiterating the allegation, and specifying that the perpetrator of particular terror attacks in Turkey is living in Abkhazia, he has a shelter there. Mr. Adamia promised to provide Inner City Press with further information and evidence; watch this space.

On January 31, the Security Council extended the UN Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG) until March 31. The mission consists of 122 military observers and 13 civilian police officers.

After the briefing, in an interview with Inner City Press, Ambassador Adamia provided an update on the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline. He stated that the Georgian section pipe is full of oil, but that this is not yet the case in Turkey. He stated that Turkmenistan wants to use the BTC pipeline, but that the Kremlin for now is blocking it. This, Adamia said, makes more likely the construction of an underwater trans-Caspian pipeline. Pipe dream? Rose (revolution) colored glasses? Only time will tell.

Other Inner City Press reports are archived on www.InnerCityPress.org -

In Locked Down Iraq, Oil Flows Unmetered While Questions Run in Circles

What is the Sound of Eleven Uzbeks Disappearing? A Lack of Seats in Tashkent, a Turf War at UN

Kosovo: Of Collective Punishment and Electricity; Lights Out on Privatization of Ferronikeli Mines

Abkhazia: Cleansing and (Money) Laundering, Says Georgia, Even Terror�s Haven

Post-Tsunami Human Rights Abuses, including by UNDP in the Maldives

Halliburton Repays $9 Million, While Iraq�s Oil Remains Unmetered

Darfur on the Margins: Slovenia�s President Drnovsek�s Quixotic Call for Action Ignored

Who Pays for the Global Bird Flu Fight? Not the Corporations, So Far - UN

Citigroup Dissembles at United Nations Environmental Conference

Other Inner City Press reports are archived on www.InnerCityPress.org -

For reporting about banks, predatory lending, consumer protection, money laundering, mergers or the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), click here for Inner City Press's weekly CRA Report. Inner City Press also reports weekly concerning the Federal Reserve, environmental justice, global inner cities, and more recently on the United Nations, where Inner City Press is accredited media. Follow those links for more of Inner City Press's reporting, or, click here for five ways to contact us, with or for more information.

Evo Morales tells it like it is to Jon Stewart

"I personally know that there are presidents in countries who send troops abroad to save lives," Morales added later in the program, "but there are also countries who send troops abroad to take away lives. If we compare these two things...certainly we're going to the conclusion that these policies must change."

read more | digg story

A open letter to President Evo Morales Ayma

My question is what are you doing in terms of education for the young in Bolivia to prevent the same cycle that realist my age have seen happen again and again. The fuel of Capitalism is greed. Greed can only be controlled with early education. Can Morales defeat the twins capitalism and war?

read more | digg story

Paulson's Plan to Punish the Public; The Motley Fool

Remember as you read this - you can't SIMPLY put the squeeze on Hank and George, this is a problem of long standing, going right back to the S&L crisis. maybe right back to 1941 when FDR bailed out that housing crisis by means of a WAR.

The PTB simply had to do something before the Christmas season. But this is a real good essay, a true, "wish I could say it that well" kind of item.

As for Hank, he deserves a right good bollocking as the Brits say.

As for being antiEvo, Hugo Chavez, and Ahmadinejad, as long as they follow the rule of law I see no reason to get intense about them. But those labels have a way of getting in the way of people seeing how nations conduct business within that framework are not the real target.

Bear in mind what I told you about MASSIVE jobcuts in the financial sector and how the corporate culture cannot handle the paperwork of ARMs? Well, this bailout is an attempt to end run around that problem .. but there will still be massive layoffs. And I still think we are going to see many huge office towers built to accomodate financial weath silent, empty, lights turned off before this all over. Have a look at your city's skyline as it is today and tell me what you see in about 1-2 years time.

Veeger

If you don't learn from the past ...

If the mortgage crisis and housing bubble have taught us one thing, it should be to watch out for the unintended consequences of greed. Unfortunately, our nation's legislators and political appointees haven't learned that lesson. Recent plans for housing and mortgage bailouts generally run from dumb to dumber. Today, The Wall Street Journal reported on yet another scheme, reportedly being spearheaded by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. It's an idea so naively populist and antimarket that you would think it came from Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, if not for its cringe-inducing, Beltway-wonk moniker: the Hope Now Alliance.

In short, bankers and loan-servicing outfits are going to lower interest rates on strapped borrowers so they don't lose their houses. How much, how long, and who qualifies are all still up in the air. No doubt, this will sound good to those folks who signed on for mortgages they can't actually afford. It will also look good to politicians angling to score points before the next election, and to bleeding hearts everywhere. It will also look good to select mortgage-industry players -- like Countrywide Financial (NYSE: CFC) and Citigroup (NYSE: C), which could really use a government-led bailout.

Unfortunately, this ill-conceived salve will ultimately punish the silent majority of Americans, people who didn't go out and make boneheaded financial decisions over the past half-decade. Let's take a look at why.

A history of the housing Ponzi scheme
Since 2001, too-cheap financing pumped up housing prices to ridiculous levels. This was enabled by speculative lending from Wall Street to Main Street: Big banks like Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), Bear Stearns (NYSE: BSC) and others were providing the lending capital to outfits like death-watch candidate Countrywide, mostly dead NovaStar Financial and Impac Mortgage Holdings, along with dozens of completely dead lenders. They did this by purchasing mortgage loans from these lenders so that they could chop them into mortgage-backed securities of dizzying complexity and dubious credit quality, which were, in turn, sold to suckers ... er, "investors" all over the world.

This provided a musical-chairs-like situation in which lenders produced as much volume as they could, no matter how bad the loans or credit risk, because they got paid to pass that risk along, through Wall Street's Wise bankers, to whatever "investor" ended up with the loans, in the form of stuff called MBS, CDOs, CDO-squared, R2D2, and so on. There was a flood of money to the lenders, which stimulated excessive demand, in turn stimulating excessive price appreciation. (You will note that there was no Paulson-led "Hope Now Alliance" coming together at that point to try and rein in this dangerous orgy of greed, though the consequences were plain to anyone who bothered to examine it.)

Greedy flippers and naive homebuyers resorted to gimmicky loans, like interest-only and "option" adjustable-rate mortgages, because it was the only way they could pay inflated prices for the properties they wanted. They got a few years of artificially low payments, thanks to artificially low teaser rates. The catch was that when the loans reset after a few years, they'd jump up several points, to 9%, 10%, 11%.

This may not sound like a big deal, until you run the math on the payments to see that many people would be facing twice the mortgage bill they were used to. Now that those mortgages are resetting and home prices are dropping like rocks, they can't make their payments, and they can't flip the houses for a profit, so loans are defaulting. The fancy securities -- what I call Wall Street dog food -- have become nearly worthless, and the music has stopped, without any chairs for anyone. Ironically, stupid, leveraged bets on these lousy securities have crippled the banks themselves, and CEOs and other execs have been getting the boot at places like Citigroup, Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER), and Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS).

Hank to the rescue!
Hank Paulson's latest plan to protect homebuyers from their own mistakes is simple: Lenders extend those teaser rates for a few years. It's a win-win, right? What's the harm, especially when there's no bill to pay? You just reset those interest rates to low levels, and everything will be fine, right? Who could be against a policy that would keep Americans in their homes? One negotiated with the private sector itself?

This Fool, for one.

Making the credit crunch crunchier
Remember, the only reason those teaser-rate loans were made in the first place was because lenders (and thus the investors buying the mortgages from the lenders) could count on a much larger, contractually guaranteed payoff in the future, when those interest rates were due to reset. Take away that payoff, and you take away any incentive to loan to borrowers of marginal credit quality. Usher in an era when government and banks reset loan rates at their whim, and you can be sure that investors will never again buy securities based on adjustable-rate mortgages.

If you think credit is tight now, just wait until you yank away potential returns from the people putting up the capital for all those loans.

And let's not forget that Paulson's plan introduces an incredible moral hazard. By rescuing greedy and naive borrowers from their mistakes, our government encourages others to take big, stupid, bankruptcy-inducing risks, secure in the knowledge that the government will bail them out when times get rough. That means trillions of dollars in capital will be ill-invested yet again, something that's much less likely to happen when speculators are made to suffer the consequences of their behavior.

No free lunches
Here's another problem. Someone is going to have to foot the bill for this. Banks and associated entities that will, over the short term, finance this homeowner bailout are not going to do it out of the goodness of their hearts. Reported Hope Now Alliance honchos such as Countrywide and Citigroup (NYSE: C) are, I'm certain, only doing this because they hope it will be cheaper than having to pay up for their lending sins all at once. Moreover, it gives them a chance to look like good guys who care about the commoners -- never mind that they were quite happy to fleece borrowers with gawd-awful mortgage "affordability products" for years.

Still, this will sting some of these banks and mortgage servicers, so you can bet they're going to pass along the costs. They're going to do it by firing employees. (Countrywide and Citigroup are already doing that.) They're going to do it by moving offices to offshore tax havens, outsourcing, closing branches, lowering deposit rates, hiking fees, and whatever else it takes. (Golden parachutes for Wall Street failures are pricey.)

Worst of all, they're going to do it by soaking future borrowers -- people like the majority of us, who didn't do something stupid -- with higher rates than we would have otherwise paid for mortgage loans, credit cards, and commercial loans. They'll have to. They've got their own lenders to pay, and those lenders aren't going to simply hand over-stretched Americans a pile of money.

Foolish final thought
There's another reason that Paulson's latest plan will punish the public. It will have the effect of artificially supporting a home-price bubble that desperately needs a correction. Historical rent-to-purchase data show just how far home prices need to come down in order to return to mean. That requires a painful drop, and it will happen sooner or later.

Paulson's plan means fewer homes dumped back on the market at lower prices, where they belong. Now that he's a politician and not the CEO of Goldman Sachs, Paulson apparently believes that the market shouldn't be allowed to correct on its own. He's wrong about that, and he's wrong to support any plan that will only delay the inevitable. Better the quick, painful correction than the decades-long, slow bleed that he's nurturing now. For evidence of how ugly things get when policymakers try to coddle the financial industry rather than let the market apply its harsher, faster, medicines, just take a look at how long the banking mess continued in Japan.

Of course, a decade from now, if the economy is still suffering because of an ill-conceived housing bailout plan designed to win favor with the public and cover the economic hind-end of his boss, George Bush, Paulson won't have to issue any gomen nasai. He'll already be long gone, retired to his millions.

You and I will pay the bills.

• Bernanke's Plan to Pick Your Pocket
• More Excess to the Rescue
• Prince Chokes on Wall Street's Dog Food

Paulson's Plan to Punish the Public; The Motley Fool

Remember as you read this - you can't SIMPLY put the squeeze on Hank and George, this is a problem of long standing, going right back to the S&L crisis. maybe right back to 1941 when FDR bailed out that housing crisis by means of a WAR.

The PTB simply had to do something before the Christmas season. But this is a real good essay, a true, "wish I could say it that well" kind of item.

As for Hank, he deserves a right good bollocking as the Brits say.

As for being antiEvo, Hugo Chavez, and Ahmadinejad, as long as they follow the rule of law I see no reason to get intense about them. But those labels have a way of getting in the way of people seeing how nations conduct business within that framework are not the real target.

Bear in mind what I told you about MASSIVE jobcuts in the financial sector and how the corporate culture cannot handle the paperwork of ARMs? Well, this bailout is an attempt to end run around that problem .. but there will still be massive layoffs. And I still think we are going to see many huge office towers built to accomodate financial weath silent, empty, lights turned off before this all over. Have a look at your city's skyline as it is today and tell me what you see in about 1-2 years time.

Veeger

If you don't learn from the past ...

If the mortgage crisis and housing bubble have taught us one thing, it should be to watch out for the unintended consequences of greed. Unfortunately, our nation's legislators and political appointees haven't learned that lesson. Recent plans for housing and mortgage bailouts generally run from dumb to dumber. Today, The Wall Street Journal reported on yet another scheme, reportedly being spearheaded by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. It's an idea so naively populist and antimarket that you would think it came from Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, if not for its cringe-inducing, Beltway-wonk moniker: the Hope Now Alliance.

In short, bankers and loan-servicing outfits are going to lower interest rates on strapped borrowers so they don't lose their houses. How much, how long, and who qualifies are all still up in the air. No doubt, this will sound good to those folks who signed on for mortgages they can't actually afford. It will also look good to politicians angling to score points before the next election, and to bleeding hearts everywhere. It will also look good to select mortgage-industry players -- like Countrywide Financial (NYSE: CFC) and Citigroup (NYSE: C), which could really use a government-led bailout.

Unfortunately, this ill-conceived salve will ultimately punish the silent majority of Americans, people who didn't go out and make boneheaded financial decisions over the past half-decade. Let's take a look at why.

A history of the housing Ponzi scheme
Since 2001, too-cheap financing pumped up housing prices to ridiculous levels. This was enabled by speculative lending from Wall Street to Main Street: Big banks like Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), Bear Stearns (NYSE: BSC) and others were providing the lending capital to outfits like death-watch candidate Countrywide, mostly dead NovaStar Financial and Impac Mortgage Holdings, along with dozens of completely dead lenders. They did this by purchasing mortgage loans from these lenders so that they could chop them into mortgage-backed securities of dizzying complexity and dubious credit quality, which were, in turn, sold to suckers ... er, "investors" all over the world.

This provided a musical-chairs-like situation in which lenders produced as much volume as they could, no matter how bad the loans or credit risk, because they got paid to pass that risk along, through Wall Street's Wise bankers, to whatever "investor" ended up with the loans, in the form of stuff called MBS, CDOs, CDO-squared, R2D2, and so on. There was a flood of money to the lenders, which stimulated excessive demand, in turn stimulating excessive price appreciation. (You will note that there was no Paulson-led "Hope Now Alliance" coming together at that point to try and rein in this dangerous orgy of greed, though the consequences were plain to anyone who bothered to examine it.)

Greedy flippers and naive homebuyers resorted to gimmicky loans, like interest-only and "option" adjustable-rate mortgages, because it was the only way they could pay inflated prices for the properties they wanted. They got a few years of artificially low payments, thanks to artificially low teaser rates. The catch was that when the loans reset after a few years, they'd jump up several points, to 9%, 10%, 11%.

This may not sound like a big deal, until you run the math on the payments to see that many people would be facing twice the mortgage bill they were used to. Now that those mortgages are resetting and home prices are dropping like rocks, they can't make their payments, and they can't flip the houses for a profit, so loans are defaulting. The fancy securities -- what I call Wall Street dog food -- have become nearly worthless, and the music has stopped, without any chairs for anyone. Ironically, stupid, leveraged bets on these lousy securities have crippled the banks themselves, and CEOs and other execs have been getting the boot at places like Citigroup, Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER), and Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS).

Hank to the rescue!
Hank Paulson's latest plan to protect homebuyers from their own mistakes is simple: Lenders extend those teaser rates for a few years. It's a win-win, right? What's the harm, especially when there's no bill to pay? You just reset those interest rates to low levels, and everything will be fine, right? Who could be against a policy that would keep Americans in their homes? One negotiated with the private sector itself?

This Fool, for one.

Making the credit crunch crunchier
Remember, the only reason those teaser-rate loans were made in the first place was because lenders (and thus the investors buying the mortgages from the lenders) could count on a much larger, contractually guaranteed payoff in the future, when those interest rates were due to reset. Take away that payoff, and you take away any incentive to loan to borrowers of marginal credit quality. Usher in an era when government and banks reset loan rates at their whim, and you can be sure that investors will never again buy securities based on adjustable-rate mortgages.

If you think credit is tight now, just wait until you yank away potential returns from the people putting up the capital for all those loans.

And let's not forget that Paulson's plan introduces an incredible moral hazard. By rescuing greedy and naive borrowers from their mistakes, our government encourages others to take big, stupid, bankruptcy-inducing risks, secure in the knowledge that the government will bail them out when times get rough. That means trillions of dollars in capital will be ill-invested yet again, something that's much less likely to happen when speculators are made to suffer the consequences of their behavior.

No free lunches
Here's another problem. Someone is going to have to foot the bill for this. Banks and associated entities that will, over the short term, finance this homeowner bailout are not going to do it out of the goodness of their hearts. Reported Hope Now Alliance honchos such as Countrywide and Citigroup (NYSE: C) are, I'm certain, only doing this because they hope it will be cheaper than having to pay up for their lending sins all at once. Moreover, it gives them a chance to look like good guys who care about the commoners -- never mind that they were quite happy to fleece borrowers with gawd-awful mortgage "affordability products" for years.

Still, this will sting some of these banks and mortgage servicers, so you can bet they're going to pass along the costs. They're going to do it by firing employees. (Countrywide and Citigroup are already doing that.) They're going to do it by moving offices to offshore tax havens, outsourcing, closing branches, lowering deposit rates, hiking fees, and whatever else it takes. (Golden parachutes for Wall Street failures are pricey.)

Worst of all, they're going to do it by soaking future borrowers -- people like the majority of us, who didn't do something stupid -- with higher rates than we would have otherwise paid for mortgage loans, credit cards, and commercial loans. They'll have to. They've got their own lenders to pay, and those lenders aren't going to simply hand over-stretched Americans a pile of money.

Foolish final thought
There's another reason that Paulson's latest plan will punish the public. It will have the effect of artificially supporting a home-price bubble that desperately needs a correction. Historical rent-to-purchase data show just how far home prices need to come down in order to return to mean. That requires a painful drop, and it will happen sooner or later.

Paulson's plan means fewer homes dumped back on the market at lower prices, where they belong. Now that he's a politician and not the CEO of Goldman Sachs, Paulson apparently believes that the market shouldn't be allowed to correct on its own. He's wrong about that, and he's wrong to support any plan that will only delay the inevitable. Better the quick, painful correction than the decades-long, slow bleed that he's nurturing now. For evidence of how ugly things get when policymakers try to coddle the financial industry rather than let the market apply its harsher, faster, medicines, just take a look at how long the banking mess continued in Japan.

Of course, a decade from now, if the economy is still suffering because of an ill-conceived housing bailout plan designed to win favor with the public and cover the economic hind-end of his boss, George Bush, Paulson won't have to issue any gomen nasai. He'll already be long gone, retired to his millions.

You and I will pay the bills.

• Bernanke's Plan to Pick Your Pocket
• More Excess to the Rescue
• Prince Chokes on Wall Street's Dog Food

Greg Palast on Ecuador

Good and Evil at the Center of the Earth:
A Quechua Christmas Carol
By Greg Palast
GregPalast.com

Monday 24 December 2007

Quito - I don't know what the hell seized me. In the middle of an hour-long interview with the President of Ecuador, I asked him about his father.

I'm not Barbara Walters. It's not the kind of question I ask.

He hesitated. Then said, "My father was unemployed."

He paused. Then added, "He took a little drugs to the States ... This is called in Spanish a mula [mule]. He passed four years in the states - in a jail."

He continued. "I'd never talked about my father before."

Apparently he hadn't. His staff stood stone silent, eyes widened.

Correa's dad took that frightening chance in the 1960s, a time when his family, like almost all families in Ecuador, was destitute. Ecuador was the original "banana republic" - and the price of bananas had hit the floor. A million desperate Ecuadorans, probably a tenth of the entire adult population, fled to the USA anyway they could.

"My mother told us he was working in the States."

His father, released from prison, was deported back to Ecuador. Humiliated, poor, broken, his father, I learned later, committed suicide.

At the end of our formal interview, through a doorway surrounded by paintings of the pale plutocrats who once ruled this difficult land, he took me into his own Oval Office. I asked him about an odd-looking framed note he had on the wall. It was, he said, from his daughter and her grade school class at Christmas time. He translated for me.

"We are writing to remind you that in Ecuador there are a lot of very poor children in the streets and we ask you please to help these children who are cold almost every night."

It was kind of corny. And kind of sweet. A smart display for a politician.

Or maybe there was something else to it.

Correa is one of the first dark-skinned men to win election to this Quechua and mixed-race nation. Certainly, one of the first from the streets. He'd won a surprise victory over the richest man in Ecuador, the owner of the biggest banana plantation.

Doctor Correa, I should say, with a Ph.D in economics earned in Europe. Professor Correa as he is officially called - who, until not long ago, taught at the University of Illinois.

And 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.

And thrived. But Correa was not done.

Elected President, one of his first acts was to establish a fund for the Ecuadoran refugees in America - to give them loans to return to Ecuador with a little cash and lot of dignity. And there were other dragons to slay. He and Palacio kicked US oil giant Occidental Petroleum out of the country.

Correa STILL wasn't done.

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.

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.

And, in an office tower looking down on Quito, the lawyers for Chevron were not amused. I met with them.

"And it's the only case of cancer in the world? How many cases of children with cancer do you have in the States?" Rodrigo Perez, Texaco's top lawyer in Ecuador was chuckling over the legal difficulties the Indians would have in proving their case that Chevron-Texaco caused their kids' deaths. "If there is somebody with cancer there, [the Cofan parents] must prove [the deaths were] caused by crude or by petroleum industry. And, second, they have to prove that it is OUR crude - which is absolutely impossible." He laughed again. You have to see this on film to believe it.

The oil company lawyer added, "No one has ever proved scientifically the connection between cancer and crude oil." Really? You could swim in the stuff and you'd be just fine.

The Cofan had heard this before. When Chevron's Texaco unit came to their land the the oil men said they could rub the crude oil on their arms and it would cure their ailments. Now Condi's men had told me that crude oil doesn't cause cancer. But maybe they are right. I'm no expert. So I called one. Robert F Kennedy Jr., professor of Environmental Law at Pace University, told me that elements of crude oil production - benzene, toluene, and xylene, "are well-known carcinogens." Kennedy told me he's seen Chevron-Texaco's ugly open pits in the Amazon and said that this toxic dumping would mean jail time in the USA.

But it wasn't as much what the Chevron-Texaco lawyers said that shook me. It was the way they said it. Childhood cancer answered with a chuckle. The Chevron lawyer, a wealthy guy, Jaime Varela, with a blond bouffant hairdo, in the kind of yellow chinos you'd see on country club links, was beside himself with delight at the impossibility of the legal hurdles the Cofan would face. Especially this one: Chevron had pulled all its assets out of Ecuador. The Indians could win, but they wouldn't get a dime. "What about the chairs in this office?" I asked. Couldn't the Cofan at least get those? "No," they laughed, the chairs were held in the name of the law firm.

Well, now they might not be laughing. Correa's threat to use the power of his Presidency to protect the Indians, should they win, is a shocker. No one could have expected that. And Correa, no fool, knows that confronting Chevron means confronting the full power of the Bush Administration. But to this President, it's all about justice, fairness. "You [Americans] wouldn't do this to your own people," he told me. Oh yes we would, I was thinking to myself, remembering Alaska's Natives.

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.

Maybe Santa will sort it out for us, tell us who's been good and who's been bad. Maybe Lawyer Yellow Pants will wake up on Christmas Eve staring at the ghost of Christmas Future and promise to get the oil sludge out of the Cofan's drinking water.

Or maybe we'll have to figure it out ourselves. When I met Chief Emergildo, I was reminded of an evening years back, when I was way the hell in the middle of nowhere in the Prince William Sound, Alaska, in the Chugach Native village of Chenega. I was investigating the damage done by Exxon's oil. There was oil sludge all over Chenega's beaches. It was March 1991, and I was in the home of village elder Paul Kompkoff on the island's shore, watching CNN. We stared in silence as "smart" bombs exploded in Baghdad and Basra.

Then Paul said to me, in that slow, quiet way he had,

"Well, I guess we're all Natives now."

Well, maybe we are. But we don't have to be, do we?

Maybe we can take some guidance from this tiny nation at the center of the earth. I listened back through my talk with President Correa. And I can assure his daughter that she didn't have to worry that her dad would forget about "the poor children who are cold" on the streets of Quito.

Because the Professor Doctor is still one of them.