Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

September 17, 2014 By Fausta

Ecuador: If Correa ain’t happy . . .

. . . he hires Putin’s PR people.

Two items from Ecuador,

First:

I’ve been hesitating to review Paul M. Barrett’s new book, Law of the Jungle: The $19 Billion Legal Battle Over Oil in the Rain Forest and the Lawyer Who’d Stop at Nothing to Win about fraudster Steven Donziger.

While the book is interesting, I find statements like “While not a materialistic person driven by financial rewards, Donziger sometimes groused about the cost of his career choices” (page 134) exasperating. Paul Barrett may believe that Donziger was not “driven by financial rewards” while setting up a Gibraltar corporation to hold proceeds of the judgment, but readers of Law of the Jungle should read Judge Kaplan’s 497-page decision, which quotes Donziger’s personal notebook on April 4, 2007:

. . . I sit back and dream. I cannot believe what we have accomplished. Important people interested in us. A new paradigm of not only a case, but how to do a case. Chevron wanting to settle. Billions of dollars on the table. A movie, a possible book.I cannot keep up with it all.

That said, Barrett is now under attack by the Republic of Ecuador’s U.S. public relations advisers, New York-based Ketchum. His article, What It’s Like to Be Attacked by Putin’s American Flack explains the latest,

Ketchum’s memo about my book connects the dots regarding why Ecuador cares so passionately about the case. Among the “difficult questions” Law of the Jungle raises, according to Ketchum:

Barrett’s book does raise many questions, among them,

• “Ecuador took the biggest part of the income obtained from petroleum extracted from the Amazon, approximately $23.5 billion against $1.6 billion for Texaco-Chevron.” The precise figures are subject to dispute, but according to government records, the split was roughly 90-10 in favor of Ecuador. This contradicts a central theme of the plaintiffs’ (and Correa’s) narrative: that Texaco derived all the benefit from industrializing the rain forest and left the host country with only the nasty side effects. The Ketchum memo warns the embassy that my reporting raises additional questions: How did Ecuador spend its majority proceeds from oil exploitation? Why wasn’t this money spent on environmental controls? Why was the money not used to help those harmed by the drilling?

Make sure to read Barrett’s full article. You can find all of his very interesting Business Week/Bloomberg articles here.

Ecuador engages in “widespread repression of the media”; now they try to export the repression to our shores via a public relations firm.

The second item:

As you may recall, president Rafael Correa has come up with a fake currency to cover up a fiscal deficit, including debt service, of some $9.2 billion.

Correa claims there’s no plan to replace the dollar. Steve Hanke, who 14 years ago was the chief intellectual architect of the nation’s switch to the dollar, is skeptical,
Ecuador’s Dollarization Architect Doubts Correa’s Pledge

“What Correa’s trying to do is kind of loosen the straitjacket that dollarization has him in,” Hanke said. “If you go off, the fiscal deficit gets bigger, the level of debt gets bigger, inflation goes up and economic growth goes down. All the economic indicators just go south.”

Correa is expected to run for a fourth presidential term in 2017, having changed the law on presidential term limits.

Ketchum may be looking forward to it.

RELATED:
For Ecuador’s PR Firm, Celebrity Backing Carries Hefty Price Tag
MCSquared paid more than $500,000 for Mia Farrow, Danny Glover junkets

UPDATE,
Linked to by Bad Blue. Thanks!


Share

Filed Under: books, Communism, Condoleezza Rice, Ecuador, Rafael Correa, Vladimir Putin Tagged With: Fausta's blog, Law of the Jungle: The $19 Billion Legal Battle Over Oil in the Rain Forest and the Lawyer Who'd Stop at Nothing to Win, Steve Hanke, Steven Donziger

September 1, 2012 By Fausta

How to avoid lipstick on your teeth, & other links

Looking at the important issues:

FASHION
How to Avoid Condi Rice Lipstick on Teeth’

Paul Ryan said he ran a marathon under 3 hours 20 years ago, and Joyner’s readers are apoplectic. So… I’m supposed to give a damn about guys bragging over their workouts. In other topics, whatever happened to that lawsuit over Fast & Furious? Or is that a distraction?

UPDATE: iOwnTheWorld has the right response,

Paul Ryan was on the Hugh Hewitt radio show and mentioned that he once ran a sub-3 hour marathon. That’s an elite amateur time. So THIS, THIS, is what perks up journalists out of their 4 year long slumber.

Ryan’s claim turned out to be off by an hour. That’s a lot. That’s something one should have gotten right. So today, Ryan made a statement saying that “he misspoke.” Yada. That his brother actually has the best time in the family and it isn’t sub- 3 hours. Yada. Yada.

NO! NO!

That is NOT the way to respond to this.

This is how:

Ryan Spokesman:

Sooooooo. It took you this long to fall into our little trap? Of course he never ran a sub-3 hour marathon. You’ve proven that you have the ability to dig when you want to, and we want that same standard applied to the other side of the ticket.

Where are the Obama college records? Obama doesn’t even have to lie about how he got straight A’s and is the smartest man in the history of the presidency – you guys do that for him.

We’re running against Joe Biden, a guy that has in the past made dubious claims about everything from his intellect to his family history. We anticipate that he will be doing the same in the upcoming debate. We just wanted to make sure that journalism wasn’t dead. Now that this has been established let’s see if it is only dead when it comes to going after the left.

Thank you.

Otherwise, we’re looking at the start of the Palinization of Paul Ryan.
Sent by a reader, from 2008, Why Biden’s plagiarism shouldn’t be forgotten. Marathon fibs ought to keep a man from being VP? Plagiarism didn’t.

POLITICS
Who do you want to be your daughter’s role model?

Obama speech to soldiers met with silence

Obama follows Romney to Louisiana (Romney went yesterday, Obama’s going on Monday), after discussing Isaac over the phone while flying back from a rally.

Vanished!… Islamic Jumah Disappears From Official DNC Schedule. It’s not vanished, it’s sitting on a chair!

ECONOMICS
World Hyperinflations

INTERNATIONAL
Hugo Chavez is sending Cuba 100,000 bb of oil daily, and extra cash (to the tune of $1billion on the last quarter of 2011), supposedly to pay for all those Cuban doctors in Venezuela. Yeah, right, to pay for doctors.

It’s Labor Day weekend, so keep your lipstick off you teeth and have a great time.


Share

Filed Under: Barack Obama, Condoleezza Rice, Hugo Chavez, Paul Ryan, politics, Republicans, Venezuela Tagged With: Fausta's blog

May 3, 2009 By Fausta

“Foreign policy is full of tough choices.”

Condoleezza Rice gives an impromptu lesson:

Via The Telegraph.

Share

Filed Under: Condoleezza Rice Tagged With: Fausta's blog

March 31, 2008 By Fausta

Insane

One of the great flaws in American foreign policy is that second-term presidents start looking to their “legacy” and of course want to be The one who make permanent peace in the Middle East possible.

The Bush administration is now in full “paving the legacy” mode: US says Mid-East peace on track

What does “on track” mean? It means more concessions from Israel, of course.

(h/t the Baron) MIDEAST: RICE WRINGS CONCESSIONS FOR WEST BANK FROM ISRAEL

(ANSAmed) – TEL AVIV, MARCH 31 – U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, during her third Middle East trip for the past months, received from Israel a list of measures which will be introduced in the immediate future to ease the living conditions in the West Bank.

The 35-page dossier includes the construction of thousands of new homes in Ramallah; the removal of “some 50” roadblocks along the roads in the West Bank and of a military checkpoint; the strengthening of the operative capacities of the police of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and several thousand new entrance permits in Israel for Palestinian workers.

“We’ve been told that this is going to start and, hopefully even be completed in a relatively short period of time. I am expecting it to happen very, very soon,” Rice said. Saturday, Rice met in Jerusalem Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Yesterday, she met Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayad for the first time together with Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, then had talks with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and the leader of the rightist opposition Benyamin Netanyahu (Likud). Rice also visited Amman for a meeting with PNA President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). Today she will meet Olmert again.

In a move, which Barak defined as “calculated risk”, Israel has also decided to remove from the streets in the West Bank some 50 roadblocks (of the over 459 counted by the Israeli human rights organisation Betselem) and a military checkpoint (of a total 99) south of Jericho from where Palestinians will be able to reach the northern coast of the Dead Sea, a famous tourist destination, so far forbidden.

Say good-bye to the resorts.

Israel will allow the construction north of Ramallah of between 5,000 and 8,000 homes for Palestinians, a measure announced a year ago and affirmed now.

Israel has also agreed to grant 5,000 work permits to Palestinians, to add to the previously issued 18,500 permits.

The functioning of the PNA police will be strengthened: the Palestinian police will be allowed to dislocate 700 agents in Jenin, while 25 Russian armoured vehicles will enter service in Nablus.(ANSAmed).

I have said in the past that there is no “cycle of violence” because Israel will be bombed no matter what.

Why do I believe this?
Because I’ve been watching the puppet shows.

UPDATE, Tuesday 1 April
What if Condoleezza Rice came to Jerusalem, and nobody cared?, via Judith.

Digg!

Share on Facebook

Share

Filed Under: Condoleezza Rice, Israel, Middle East.

September 15, 2007 By Fausta

Damned because of party affiliation, again

Imagine how the Democrat party would be partying away IF they had a beautiful black lesbian Secretary of State. Picture the rhapsodizing over the multicultural diversity of sexual expression, the lyricism of equal opportunity and affirmative action, the role model for the younger generations. All of which would be accompanied by the world’s smallest violin playing in the background a tune of victimization…

Now here’s what it looks like when the said Secretary of State is a Republican:

For the record, in the book Kessler goes into the long-discussed rumors about Rice and the few times her sexual orientation has been gossiped about or discussed in the media, but he also talks about how single, older (heterosexual) women often “unfairly” have their sexual orientation questioned, and says in the book that Rice has been the target of “nasty attacks” in this regard. He mentions that she was linked to a man once — back in college. Even if Rice is heterosexual, however, it is fascinating and mind-boggling that this woman whose best male friend is an openly gay liberal and whose best female “friend” is a “liberal progressive,” would work for a president who has opposed every gay rights initiative and tried to enshrine religious hatred in the Constitution. What does it say about them as well?

I wish they had listed “every gay rights initiative” they want, while calling for the resignation of a gay man playing footsie in the bathroom. Interesting, also, how they claim Pres. Bush “tried to enshrine religious hatred in the Constitution” – rich, isn’t it, coming from the people who constantly insult Catholics and Christians, and drill Mitt Romney with impertinent questions on being a Mormon when their own Senate majority leader is a Mormon.

More here:

The GOP is great at trotting out a few Auntie Toms to show you how loving they are.

Racial slurs combined with sexual innuendo, indeed.

And let’s not get into all the outrage when people question Hillary’s sexuality. By their criteria, the right to privacy applies only to members of the Democrat party, and only conservatives have psycho-sexual issues, at least according to them.

Not that I’m surprised. After all, as Gerard wrote about The List

A morally aware person with a respect for the privacy of a fellow human being’s sexuality would not write about such a list at all. Case closed. But I don’t look for any real moral awareness to rise from the reactionary spear carriers of the party of “post-modern moral certitude and relativistic rectitude.” It’s just another example of the extremes of the Democratic Party going after the blood of the moderates, Democrat or Republican, straight or, in this instance, gay.

As Gagdad Bob was saying the other day,

One of the appeals of leftism is that you can never be called a hypocrite. That is, if you have no standards, then there is no standard by which to judge you.

Technorati tags: Condoleezza Rice

Digg!

Share on Facebook

Share

Filed Under: Condoleezza Rice, Democrats, politics, Republicans

January 12, 2007 By Fausta

And now childlessness is an issue

Now that Grandma Nancy’s going to clean the house and take care of the children,
the Dems are insisting that women aren’t qualified to hold office if they don’t have children: Read about it from Darleen, who lets it rip (language not suitable for work):
Barbara Boxer – Insufferable Bitch*

Newsbusters has the details, and how the media has reacted:

In fact, few of the dozens of stories of Rice’s appearance before the committee even mentioned Boxer’s foolish attack.

I woudln’t call it foolish, but I won’t post in this blog the words I have in mind.

Hot Air has video.

I’ve said it before and I’ll continue saying that women and minorities who do not toe the Liberal line are insulted, mocked, derided and dismissed, no matter what.

Update
The NY Post:

Breathtaking.

Simply breathtaking.

We scarcely know where to begin.

The junior senator from California ap parently believes that an accom plished, seasoned diplomat, a renowned scholar and an adviser to two presidents like Condoleezza Rice is not fully qualified to make policy at the highest levels of the American government because she is a single, childless woman.

It’s hard to imagine the firestorm that similar comments would have ignited, coming from a Republican to a Democrat, or from a man to a woman, in the United States Senate. (Surely the Associated Press would have put the observation a bit higher than the 18th paragraph of a routine dispatch from Washington.)

But put that aside.

The vapidity – the sheer mindlessness – of Sen. Boxer’s assertion makes it clear that the next two years are going to be a time of bitterness and rancor, marked by pettiness of spirit and political self-indulgence of a sort not seen in America for a very long time.
…
But even to suggest that Condoleezza Rice is not fit to serve her country because she is childless is beyond bizarre.

It is perverse.

Update 2 The more I think about this, coming from a Senator who

does not support restrictions on the availability of abortion, such as late term (“partial-birth”) abortion procedures, and parental notification requirements

the angrier I get.
When I read this story my first thought was: “only super-evangelical freakshows like the Jim Phelps crew turn on a woman for not having children…”

Boxer’s Low Blow With Condi (Video)

Update 3: Tuna
Pelosi Lied, American Samoans Cried.
More from Powerline (h/t Larwyn)

Update, 13 January, The sad, sad state of Barbara Boxer -which Obi’s Sister filed under “Somebody needs to go back to Charm School”

Share

Filed Under: Barbara Boxer, blogs, Condoleezza Rice, Democrats, Iraq, Nancy Pelosi

Tweets by @Fausta
retirees_raise-2015_300x250

Pages

  • About
  • Email

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Previous Posts

  • Mrs. Maisel goes full Alinsky on Mrs. Schlafly
  • Venezuela: Did the Minister of Defense back out at the last minute?
  • You need to unfriend me
  • Go ahead and Kiss the Girl, if you dare
  • Ashamed

Recent Comments

  • John on Mrs. Maisel goes full Alinsky on Mrs. Schlafly
  • Today’s hot topics: Democrats’ collusion shift, tax-return rift, Venezuela drift, and more! – PoliticalWitchDoctor.com on Venezuela: Did the Minister of Defense back out at the last minute?
  • Today’s hot topics: Democrats’ collusion shift, tax-return rift, Venezuela drift, and more! - AmericanTruthToday on Venezuela: Did the Minister of Defense back out at the last minute?
  • Did Venezuela’s Minister of Defense Back Out At The Last Minute? on Venezuela: Did the Minister of Defense back out at the last minute?
  • Roseanne Not Back, Khan not Invited, Operaman’s back, Jobs back, Fausta’s back (but not here yet) Thoughts under the fedora – Da Tech Guy Blog on Venezuela: Did the Minister of Defense back out at the last minute?

Archives

  • 2019
    • December 2019
    • May 2019
    • January 2019
  • 2018
    • December 2018
    • October 2018
    • July 2018
    • June 2018
    • April 2018
    • March 2018
    • February 2018
    • January 2018
  • 2017
    • December 2017
    • November 2017
    • October 2017
    • September 2017
    • August 2017
    • July 2017
    • June 2017
    • May 2017
    • April 2017
    • March 2017
    • February 2017
    • January 2017
  • 2016
    • December 2016
    • November 2016
    • October 2016
    • September 2016
    • August 2016
    • July 2016
    • June 2016
    • May 2016
    • April 2016
    • March 2016
    • February 2016
    • January 2016
  • 2015
    • December 2015
    • November 2015
    • October 2015
    • September 2015
    • August 2015
    • July 2015
    • June 2015
    • May 2015
    • April 2015
    • March 2015
    • February 2015
    • January 2015
  • 2014
    • December 2014
    • November 2014
    • October 2014
    • September 2014
    • August 2014
    • July 2014
    • June 2014
    • May 2014
    • April 2014
    • March 2014
    • February 2014
    • January 2014
  • 2013
    • December 2013
    • November 2013
    • October 2013
    • September 2013
    • August 2013
    • July 2013
    • June 2013
    • May 2013
    • April 2013
    • March 2013
    • February 2013
    • January 2013
  • 2012
    • December 2012
    • November 2012
    • October 2012
    • September 2012
    • August 2012
    • July 2012
    • June 2012
    • May 2012
    • April 2012
    • March 2012
    • February 2012
    • January 2012
  • 2011
    • December 2011
    • November 2011
    • October 2011
    • September 2011
    • August 2011
    • July 2011
    • June 2011
    • May 2011
    • April 2011
    • March 2011
    • February 2011
    • January 2011
  • 2010
    • December 2010
    • November 2010
    • October 2010
    • September 2010
    • August 2010
    • July 2010
    • June 2010
    • May 2010
    • April 2010
    • March 2010
    • February 2010
    • January 2010
  • 2009
    • December 2009
    • November 2009
    • October 2009
    • September 2009
    • August 2009
    • July 2009
    • June 2009
    • May 2009
    • April 2009
    • March 2009
    • February 2009
    • January 2009
  • 2008
    • December 2008
    • November 2008
    • October 2008
    • September 2008
    • August 2008
    • July 2008
    • June 2008
    • May 2008
    • April 2008
    • March 2008
    • February 2008
    • January 2008
  • 2007
    • December 2007
    • November 2007
    • October 2007
    • September 2007
    • August 2007
    • July 2007
    • June 2007
    • May 2007
    • April 2007
    • March 2007
    • February 2007
    • January 2007
  • 2006
    • December 2006
    • November 2006
    • October 2006
    • September 2006
    • August 2006
    • July 2006
    • June 2006
    • May 2006
    • April 2006
    • March 2006
    • February 2006
    • January 2006
  • 2005
    • December 2005
    • November 2005
    • October 2005
    • September 2005
    • August 2005
    • July 2005
    • June 2005
    • May 2005
    • April 2005
    • March 2005
    • February 2005
    • January 2005
  • 2004
    • December 2004
    • November 2004
    • October 2004
    • September 2004
    • August 2004
    • July 2004
    • June 2004
    • May 2004
    • April 2004
    • March 2004
Content Copyright Fausta's Blog

Site Developed and Managed by 300m.com