Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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The Memorial Day 2015 Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean

LatinAmerToday we commemorate those who died for our great nation.

ARGENTINA
Argentinian Falklands veterans take ‘torture’ case to international arenaVeterans of the 1982 conflict recount their ordeal and the anti-Semitic abuse they faced in a press conference, including instances of beatings and sexual violence

Do orang-utans have human rights?Argentinian court hears arguments on whether keeping Sandra the orang-utan in a zoo is a human rights violation, but the Nisman case got dismissed.

BOLIVIA
NARCORREVOLUCIÓNEl negocio cocalero de Evo Morales y Nicolás Maduro

Almost 500 Students, Teachers Poisoned in Northern Bolivia

No marraqueta for you! Bakers Stop Baking Traditional Bolivian Bread in La Paz

The bakers of La Paz will not bake ‘marraqueta’, a traditional Bolivian bread symbolic of the city, as a part of a strike in opposition to the Bolivian government’s removal of a flour subsidy, a trade-union source told Efe.

BRAZIL
Unlike my former neighbors in Princeton, I don’t share their fascination with Albert Einstein, but here it is anyway: A 65-year-old letter written by Albert Einstein found in Brazil schoolThe letter was reportedly discovered in a safe at a school in Porto Alegre in the south of the country

CHILE
Clashes as Chile’s Bachelet seeks to regain popularityPresident looks to get reform agenda back on track in annual address to Congress as protesters and police clash outside.

COLOMBIA
Colombia Rebels Suspend Unilateral Cease-Fire after Army Operation

Farc rebels killed in new air strikeColombia’s security forces kill at least five rebels from the Farc a day after the left-wing rebel group suspended its unilateral ceasefire.

CUBA
Cuban torturers sent to Vietnam to ‘extract’ information from American prisoners

Syrian Regime Officials Visit Cuba, Learn From Castro’s Outmaneuvering of Obama

Trafficking With the Enemy, American Taxpayers Deserve BetterDo Your Due Diligence Before Engaging in Authorized Transactions in Cuba, Especially When it Comes to the Confiscated Lands Issue

The Pope, Liberation Theology, Palestine and Castro…One by one, the great Western institutions have fallen to the infection of the left. Have they now captured the Church of Rome? Yes.

ECUADOR
Chevron Update

EL SALVADOR
Msgr. Romero Beatified in El Salvador Before Crowd of 300,000

Crowds greet Romero beatification
Huge crowd attends Romero's beatification ceremony

Huge crowds in El Salvador attend the beatification of Oscar Romero – the Roman Catholic archbishop murdered during the 1980-92 civil war.

Division remain over ‘martyr’

El Salvador Needs Economic Development, Rule of Law

GUATEMALA
MOB BURNS GIRL ALIVE IN CENTRAL AMERICA **GRAPHIC VIDEO**

Guatemalan Central Bank Chief Arrested on Corruption Charges

GUYANA
Guyana’s electionA time to healThe new government could narrow the racial divide

IMMIGRATION
Telemundo Ignores Conservative Immigration Initiative. The Spanish-language networks are so awful at news, 80% of so-called Hispanics in the U.S. get their news elsewhere.

JAMAICA
Jamaica rejects buggery law repeal, same-sex marriage

MEXICO
Mexico investigates new Guerrero disappearances

AT LEAST 42 GUNMEN AND ONE COP KILLED IN MEXICAN CARTEL FIREFIGHT

Gulf Cartel Had Camera Surveillance System Across Mexican Border City

PANAMA
‘No peace dividend’ for Panama border force

“Peace is not a bad thing, but it’s unlikely to solve our problems,” says Director of Panama’s Border Police, Frank Abrego.
He is referring to the prospect of a peace deal between the Colombian government and left-wing rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).

Follow Panama: Dollarize

PARAGUAY
Counterfeit goods are big business in Paraguay

PERU
Peru declares state of emergency over mining violence

PUERTO RICO
Final Section of Modern, Regional Undersea Cable Comes Ashore in Puerto Rico

URUGUAY
Matías Campiani Private Equity Executive to Be Released From Uruguay Prison

VENEZUELA
Will the Venezuelan State Fail?

NYC’s most legendary prosecutor sees a darker threat in Venezuela’s alleged global cocaine hub

 Morgethau believed, and still does, that Chavez’s regime was allowing Iran to use the country’s banking system, and that former Venezeulan Interior Minister Tarek El Aissami specifically helped Iran’s agents obtain Venezuelan passports so they could travel freely around the world.

The week’s posts and podcast:
Memorial Day Commemoration Ceremonies

37 MS-13 indicted in Charlotte

VDH’s Pathei Mathos

Argentina: Veterans take torture case to inter-American court of human rights

Cuba and terrorism

Brazil: Up next, China’s 3,000mile railroad?

Communism: When the only way out is death

Mexico: Human rights division head resigns over Iguala case

Venezuela: Diosdado and drugs – whose powerplay?

Ecuador: Brazilian prosecutor sides with Chevron



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Ecuador: Brazilian prosecutor sides with Chevron

Paul Barrett reports, Senior Brazilian Official Backs Chevron in Oil Pollution Case
Prosecutor recommends that Brazilian courts reject $9.5 billion Ecuadorian contamination judgment (emphasis added):

. . . Donziger and his legal team can’t enforce the Ecuadorian judgment in that country, because Chevron has no assets in Ecuador. So the plaintiffs have sought to enforce the verdict in other countries where the oil company does have assets worth billions of dollars.

One of those countries is Brazil. The Brazilian Superior Court of Justice asked the Brazilian Attorney General’s Office for its view of the complicated international case. In a 16-page nonbinding opinion dated May 11, the prosecutor’s office recommended that the Brazilian court reject the Ecuadorian verdict for much the same reasons that the U.S. court found it unenforceable.

The Brazilian Attorney General’s Office cited at length the March 2014 U.S. court ruling and said that the Ecuadorian judgment was thoroughly infected by “corruption.”

Read the whole article.



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Ecuador: Correa thinks Brad bought the wrong book

Brad Pitt bought the movie rights to Paul Barrett’s 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.

Rafael Correa is not happy:

Ecuador’s president urges Brad Pitt to scrap Amazon oil spill movie
Socialist leader Rafael Correa concerned film will be based on a book he alleges covered up actions of oil giant Chevron

He said: “Now they’ve brought out a book, Law of the Jungle, all paid for by Chevron, in which we look like savages in a country without any separation of powers. If he has any doubts, we invite him to come to Ecuador and scoop up with his hands the oil which still lies in pools 30 years later and which was left by that corrupt oil company Chevron-Texaco, continuing to pollute our forest. Given the clarity of the facts, anybody who signs up to or collaborates with Chevron is an accomplice to that company’s corruption.”

Correa seems to have heeded John Oliver’s advice to stay away from Twitter, but there’s a hashtag all the same – #braddotherightthing.

One with misspellings, complete with photo of Brad’s 2012 trip to Lago Agrio,

One grammatically correct,

Correction:
In my original post, I snarked about Brad Pitt. I reconsidered, and apologize for unduly casting aspersions.



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Ecuador: Chevron may “conduct discovery”


Mary O’Grady has the story:
Chevron Takes Ecuador’s Government to Court
By fighting a dodgy lawsuit, the giant oil company may help the country’s democracy.

New York federal judge Lewis Kaplan ruled last week that Chevron may “conduct discovery” regarding a $6.4 million contract between the government of Ecuador and MCSquared, a Brooklyn, N.Y., public-relations firm. Score another victory for the oil company over plaintiffs seeking to blame it for environmental damage in the Ecuadorean jungle.

But how would that help the country’s democracy?

No opposition member of the national assembly has access to public contracts under Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa. Requests for such information are batted away by the government-controlled legislature and ignored by the attorney general and comptroller general.
. . .
Yet a cool $4.5 million is still unaccounted for. That’s the difference between the $1.9 million in disbursements detailed in MCSquared’s September filing and the total amount paid to MCSquared according to the July filing. The government has not denied paying the full amount of the contract but will not answer Andrés Páez’s inquiry about where the rest of the money went.

Where did the $4.5 million go? Chevron may even find out.

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The Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean

LatinAmerARGENTINA
Argentine Government Blasts “Speculation” by Grain Exporters

Argentina Creditors’ Lawyers, Mediator to Meet
A court-appointed mediator will meet next week with lawyers representing Argentina and its holdout creditors, the mediator said Friday

BOLIVIA
Morales confident he will win Sunday’s election in all nine Bolivian districts
At an event to mark the closing of his campaign ahead of Sunday’s elections, a self-assured Evo Morales told Bolivians that he will win all over the country and will even take the opposition’s bastions of support in the east.

Bolivia’s election
Happily Evo after
A third term for a “non-stick” leader

BRAZIL
Number of Attacks in Southern Brazil State Rises to 100
The wave of violence, which has left at least three people dead and 41 buses destroyed, has spread to 31 cities in Santa Catarina, whose authorities say the attacks are ordered by a criminal gang from Argentina.


Brazil’s Election Shows How The Left Thrives On Welfare Dependency

The Key Proposals Of Brazil Presidential Hopeful Aécio Neves

Brazil Suspected Ebola Case Tests Negative
A West African man held in isolation at a Rio de Janeiro hospital on suspicion of bringing the deadly Ebola virus to South America has tested negative for the disease, the Health Ministry said Saturday.

CAYMAN ISLANDS
Former Cayman Premier Acquitted

CHILE
Experts Lower Chile’s Growth Forecast to 1.9%

COLOMBIA
Colombia Authorized Guerrilla Leader’s Trips to Cuba

Hours later, President Juan Manuel Santos said that he personally signed off on the trips, which he described as “part of the process, normal.”

Washington Post reporter: White House spin on Cartegena is “demonstrably false”

CUBA
CASTRO’S MOMUMENT
The Castro Legacy: Untold Thousands of Watery Graves

World Bank Touts Cuba’s Communist Education as Exemplary
All the Better to Indoctrinate Students, Exiles Contend

Cuban: I’d Rather Die Trying to Reach Freedom, Than Live on My Knees Living in Tyranny

ECUADOR
El escándalo uruguayo

A Raúl Sendic, candidato vicepresidencial de Uruguay, junto a Tabaré Vásquez, por el movimiento izquierdista Frente Amplio, del presidente José Mujica, le salpicó la “maldición“ del petróleo. Un cuestionado convenio de canje de crudo por derivados entre Ancap/Trafigura/Petroecuador que involucra USD 6.400 millones, empezó a pasar las primeras facturas, en medio de la campaña electoral. El escándalo ampliamente cubierto por la prensa uruguaya, hace referencia al libro Ecuador Made in China, y a una carta remitida al gobierno uruguayo y a varios legisladores de ese país.
. . .
La referida cláusula del Convenio señala que Ecuador proveerá hasta 36000 barriles diarios de crudo, sin embargo en el contrato firmado el mismo día en Montevideo, se estableció la entrega de hasta 100000 barriles diarios, con lo que se violó el Convenio. Incluir un volumen de 100000 barriles día notificaba al más ingenuo que el crudo no estaba destinado a la refinería uruguaya, cuya capacidad máxima, cuando está operativa, es de 50000 barriles día, y de un crudo diferente al ecuatoriano. Al respecto, la Contraloría abona con conclusiones que dejan sin respuesta a los autores del Acuerdo: “se contrató con Ancap, sin que existan estudios técnicos que demuestren los beneficios para el país de una contratación directa”, señala en organismo.

Feminists Weigh In for Chevron in Racketeering-Oil Pollution Case

The Women’s Legal Defense and Education Fund urged the appeals court to rule for Chevron on a highly technical but critical issue. You read that correctly: The nation’s oldest women’s-rights legal advocacy organization, a left-leaning group that helped enact the landmark 1994 Violence Against Women Act and represents victims of sexual harassment and spousal brutality, supports the multinational oil company in its struggle against a crusading lawyer who claims to represent the impoverished and oppressed.

O’Reilly Discusses WFB’s Reporting On Ecuador PR Firm Paying Liberal US Celebrities

EL SALVADOR
El Salvador tries to rein in crime with community policing

IMMIGRATION
FUSION TV LAMENTS ‘UNDOCUMENTED’ WOMEN HAVING HARD TIME GETTING ABORTIONS IN TEXAS

MEXICO
Mexico Arrests Alleged Head of Juárez Drug Cartel
Federal police arrested alleged Juárez drug cartel leader Vicente Carrillo Fuentes in the northern city of Torreón on Thursday, Mexican officials said. His Arrest Is Seen as Symbolic Amid Police Scandal

Iguala, Mexico and police crimes

NICARAGUA
Russia ban opens opportunities to Iran, Nicaragua

PANAMA
Panama’s National Assembly Ratifies Trade Pact with Mexico

PERU
The Man Behind Peru’s Culinary Ascent
Chef Gastón Acurio Built an Empire With 44 Restaurants in 13 Countries on Ceviche, Guinea Pig and Ethnic Influences

Divide and bribe
Corruption and political fragmentation threaten Peru’s democracy

PUERTO RICO
No More Dunkin’ Donuts for Puerto Rico
Island’s Franchisee Fails to Make Payments, 18 Stores to Close

TRINIDAD TOBAGO
Trinidad and Tobago Mulls Postponing Carnival over Ebola Fears

URUGUAY
Uruguay Welcomes First Group of 42 Syrian Refugees

VENEZUELA
Wouldn’t it be better if they had done this while Maduro was speakinVenezuela: Exxon wins $1.6 billion settlementg at the UN? UN urges Venezuela to release dissenter leader Leopoldo López
The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention of the United Nations (UN) described as illegal the actions of the Venezuelan authorities in the proceedings against the political opposition leader for the events of February 12

Venezuela: a land of political killings and gang turf wars
Politician Robert Serra was murdered in his home
The grisly murder of a young politician and killing of a pro-regime militia leader in police shoot-out signal a bloody power struggle for the legacy of Hugo Chavez, writes Phillip Sherwell

Miami Venezuelans vs. Mary Landrieu

The week’s posts and podcast:
Why Venezuela should not have a seat at the UN Security Council

Could capitalism save the Arabs?

Mexico: Government paying its citizens to avoid deportation from U.S.

Venezuela: Exxon wins $1.6 billion settlement

No More Che Day

4 ISIS Terrorists Arrested in Texas

Mexico: 43 students missing since September 26

Brazil: Aécio’s plan is the economy

At Da Tech Guy Blog:
Why bother covering up the Cartagena, Colombia, prostitution scandal?

Ecuador’s “dirty hand,” and Mia Farrow’s greased palm

Podcast:
US-Latin America stories of the week.

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Ecuador: Celebrities for hire

Well, it’ll come as no surprise to anyone who reads Paul M. Barrett’s book Law of the Jungle, but the Ecuadorian government paid celebrities to tour areas of the rainforest allegedly contaminated by Texaco.

Allow me a Capt. Louis Renault moment,

Apparently Mia Farrow received from PR firm MCSquared $180,000 and Danny Glover $300,000. As you may remember, Danny reportedly received US$18 million bucks from the late Hugo Chavez for making a movie about Toussaint D’Overture, the Haitian slave that led the revolt against the French and declared himself emperor.

We’re still waiting for Danny’s movie.

But back to Mia, she and filmmaker Phelim Mcaleer engaged in a discussion on Twitter,

after which she deleted the tweet and blocked Mcaleer, to the amusement of those following the exchange,

[Meme translation:
Danny, we’re broke and forgotten.
Mia, let’s go to Ecuador. The Boss is sure to give us dough]

Bianca Jagger is another celebrity who headed to Lago Agrio, and later protested against Chevron in New York,

Is that a fur coat?

Daryl Hannah, Sting and wife Trudie Styler, and Al Gore also turned up at the old Texaco site, as Barrett reports in Law of the Jungle. No word on how much they got.

AND,
I posted yesterday on Law of the Jungle. For a full book review, read When oil first flowed through a new pipeline in 1972…


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Ecuador whines at the UN Human Rights Council

Ecuador Times reports that

Today in the Twenty-sixth Session of the Human Rights Council, the Chevron case and its impact on the Ecuadorian Amazon will be submitted. The meeting will be held in Geneva and will finish on June 27.

I doubt that Ecuador will start its presentation with Judge Kaplan’s 500-page decision against Donziger (via Business Roundtable), where Kaplan found not only Donziger but the entire Lago Agrio plaintiff team guilty of fraud,

[Donziger] and the Ecuadorian lawyers he led corrupted the Lago Agrio case. They submitted fraudulent evidence. They coerced one judge, first to use a court-appointed, supposedly impartial, “global expert” to make an overall damages assessment and, then, to appoint to that important role a man whom Donziger hand-picked and paid to “totally play ball” with the [Lago Agrio plaintiffs]. They then paid a Colorado consulting firm secretly to write all or most of the global expert’s report, falsely presented the report as the work of the court-appointed and supposedly impartial expert, and told half-truths or worse to U.S. courts in attempts to prevent exposure of that and other wrongdoing. Ultimately, the [Lago Agrio plaintiff] team wrote the Lago Agrio court’s Judgment themselves and promised $500,000 to the Ecuadorian judge to rule in their favor and sign their judgment. If ever there were a case warranting equitable relief with respect to a judgment procured by fraud, this is it.

However, I fully expect that “ethically diverse demonstrators” may find employment during the HRC junket, as long as there’s any media willing to watch them.


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