Lenin Moreno, left; Guillermo Lasso, right
First, some recent history.
From Roger Harris at CP on Feb. 21: ‘Lenin Wins: Pink Tide Surges in Ecuador…For Now’
“Much more than the fate of Julian Assange of WikiLeaks rests on last Sunday’s general elections in Ecuador. As Al Jazeera framed the election, “socialism is on the line.”
Having ducked into Ecuador’s London embassy in 2012 to seek political asylum, Assange has been unable to leave for fear of being extradited to the US. The right-wing candidates in Ecuador’s presidential race promise to send Assange packing.
Pink Tide Ebbs
On a broader geopolitical scale, the so-called Pink Tide in Latin America has been receding after a decade of success by left-leaning governments in raising living standards for the poor and creating regional alliances independent of the US (e.g., ALBA, UNASUR, CELAC).
A commodities boom had buoyed the Pink Tide, allowing Latin American left-leaning governments to increase social spending. Then oil and other commodity prices crashed, eroding the ability of these governments to serve their constituents.”
Harris then narrates some of the pink tide ‘ebbs’: soft coups in Brazil, Paraguay, right-wing takeovers in Argentina, Peru,a right-wing MUD win in Venezuela with a little help from the US and bogus human rights organizations. The US-backed candidate won in Haiti, in a fraudulent election in January. Hardest hit in the western hemisphere, still Ecuador had emerged as a success story, albeit against the wishes of the US and allies who’d actively sought regime change. But oh, my; Maduro is under the gun big time once again by not only the opposition, but the OAS and other puppets of the US wanting regime change. The calumny and soft coup afoot in VZ deserves a diary of its own.
“Correa’s Alianza PAIS government achieved a 38% reduction in poverty and a 47% reduction in extreme poverty over the past decade. Social spending as a percentage of GDP more than doubled.
All hangs in balance with the elections in Ecuador.”
After the run-off elections, Correa’s VP, Lenin Moreno, if elected today, would be the first paraplegic head of state in Latin America. Lasso is campaigning on promises of tax cuts, austerity, and throwing Julian Assange out of the Ecuadoran Embassy.
Let’s hear from WikiLeaks on Twitter:
The Hill link goes to CEPRs Mark Weisbrot, who opens with:
“As Ecuador heads toward the second round of its presidential election on April 2, a scandal has broken out over the opposition candidate Guillermo Lasso’s financial dealings.
The accusations are serious and largely based on public records, with most of it verifiable on websites such as the Panamanian Public Registry and Superintendency of Banks and the Ecuadorean Superintendency of Companies. The newspaper that broke the story was Página/12 of Argentina, with two articles there in the last week by journalist Cynthia Garcia, as well as on her website.
Yet, as of this writing, the major international media covering the election, as well as the big privately owned Ecuadorian media, have pretended for a week that the story does not exist.
Lasso has been routinely described as a “former banker” who allegedly retired from banking activities five years ago. However, he remains a major shareholder in Ecuador’s largest bank, Banco Guayaquil (through a trust named with his initials, GLM). And evidence from minutes of board meetings of Banco Guayaquil’s parent company indicate that he is still a key decision-maker at the bank, where he has been executive president for more than 20 years.”
Weisbrot writes that that’s bad enough, but in 2007, Lasso’s bank created a bank in Panama with another sort of covert history, hidden money, that directly aided capital fight from Ecuador for his family and cronies and 50 discrete companies. All of this is illegal in Ecuador as per the Feb. 15 citizens’ referendum.
Telesur will offer live updates on the election; polls open at 7, close at 5 local time. Voting appears to be mandatory.
Polls closed a couple hours ago, and this from Telesur on the exit polls, whatever they’re worth:
“Polls closed in Ecuador’s presidential elections Sunday in the race between leftist candidate Lenin Moreno and right-wing banker-turned-candidate Guillermo Lasso, with Perfiles de Opinion releasing an exit poll showing Lenin ahead by 52.2 percent to 47.8 percent, with others putting Lasso ahead. The National Election Council will make its first official bulletin at 8 pm local time.”
Ecuadoran indigenous art
Update: ‘Ecuador‘s Lenin Moreno Defeats Banker in Presidential Election’, via Telesur:
“Progressive candidate and renowned disability activist from the ruling Alianza Pais, Lenin Moreno has won the Ecuadorian presidential election Sunday. With 94.18 percent of the official vote counted, Lenin defeated former banker Guillermo Lasso, candidate for the right-wing CREO-SUMO alliance with 51.07 percent to 48.93 percent, according to results issued by the country’s National Electoral Council on Sunday night.
In what many had already predicted, right-wing vice presidential candidate Andres Paez has called for a recount, even though the CNE said it was a transparent and successful election process, calling for everyone to respect the results.
Moreno is set to continue and expand social programs introduced under outgoing President Rafael Correa, for whom Lenin served as vice president from 2007 to 2013, before working as the UN special envoy for Disability and Accessibility.
Moreno who has been wheelchair bound after being shot and paralyzed in 1998, has been well known for his advocacy work for people with disabilities and supporting public education. Jorge Glass, who also served in the Correa administration will now serve as vice president. The new administration will be officially inaugurated on May 24.” and so on.
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
Congratulations, Wendy.
In readings of various websites focused on Latin America, getting the ‘strait scoop’ from the national media here in the US, is virtually non-existent.
Keep up the hard and diligent work to bring forth our mutually exclusive for “truth-telling and shaming the devil.”
And yes, you are vital part of the “Deep State” when I view our internet as today’s proverbial Deep State. As such, bringing people and ideas together defines my version of the Deep State.
Jaango
bless your heart, jaango, and more tomorrow i hope. for tonight i’m sincerely outta juice. but see:
‘Ecuador Votes Today Updated: it’s Moreno! Woot! (see update at the end)
https://cafe-babylon.net/2017/04/02/ecuador-votes-today/
Wendy,
To date, I had had a one-sided and ongoing Argumentation with the National Security Center located at the Fordham Law School located in the Big Apple. And speaking of Ecuador, the non-public behavior within our National Security and Defense Systemic is very seldom publicized, and subsequently, my view that America is now a Dunce Nation, will stand the Test of Time.
So, here’s my focused attention and posted at our Cactus Juice Commentaries segment and which is applicable to over 40,000 college-educated military vets.
The Chicano’s “deep state”
During Eisenhower Presidency, and prior to leaving the Oval Office in 1961, he thoughtfully articulated his concern that our future should include the myriad results that are the rhetorical flourishes on capitalism, and thusly, that being his advisory that implored future presidents to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”
And the “deep state” of today’s political action comes from the “specialized experts” and who in the long term connect themselves to special interest entities such as think tanks. Further, these think tanks are not to be underestimated, given that the Reagan Agenda was crafted by the Heritage Foundation for the most part. Moreover, the Bill Clinton presidency was dedicated to the “”conservative” or “neoliberal” Democrats and espoused by the Democratic Leadership Council and which led to his presidency. And today, this “deep state” is presently visible from either side of the political aisle. To wit, the conservatives and ultra conservatives are the Republican Party and within the Democratic Party, the conservative Democrats are the movers and shakers, as evidenced by Hillary Clinton’s presidential loss. And no political attention was given to the middle class but the focus was on the “wants and desires” of the large dollar donors.
Now, to the Chicano “deep state” I am reminded that any think tank dedicated to the advancement of our future, is seminally lacking, or so I am thinking. And yet, our historical think tank was the Chicano Movement that was created by returning military vets from World War, and subsequently, became well known in the 1960s and 1970s.
Consequently, with today’s advent in Latino community politics, almost 50% of the “chicano” continues apace, especially when the person encounters the racism and hate of on periodic basis. Thus, the indisputable voter suppression behavior done locally and nationally is just one among the many other issues and which continues to animate this Chicano Movement.
With regard to our national governance mode and today’s behavior, the Obama “deep state” consisting to the intelligence agencies and for their daily leaks made available to news media outlets, the Trump administration is crafting its own version of what he is determined to “manage and control” daily news story, as his starting point in combating the divisiveness that he has now encountered among the Republican faithful.
Therefore, President Trump has surrounded himself with the “nationalists,” a circle of political operatives that arrived into this arena and were formerly campaign operatives with virtually no sizable experience in “governing.” And this political behavior will define his presidential legacy for many years to come. However, had he reached into the “experience pool” readily available to him, he would have surrounded himself the requisite expertise that would have met with the approval of his base.
Take, for example, these well-experienced experts would have encouraged President Trump to “reorganize” government from the focal point and to bring forward the shortened span of control and starting with both the Department of Defense and the State Department, and done in the following manner.
Thus, the Argumentation for re-crafting the National Security and Defense Construct:
And first and foremost, is my Argumentation for re-organizing the Department of Defense and which is to be focusing on the following elements:
1. A CINC for Naval Warfare
2. A CINC for Mountain Warfare
3. A CINC for Desert Warfare
4. A CINC for Air Warfare
5. A CINC for the Academic-Military Draft
6. A CINC for Military-Civilian Affairs
And the above is just for starters.
As to the Second Element that is National Security and Defense, is the designated responsibility via the Secretary State and comes in this re-organized form and which is:
1. Deputy Assistant for Sovereign Nations
2. Deputy Assistant for Embassy and Consular Operations
3. Deputy Assistant for International Organizations
4. Deputy Assistant for Humanitarian Endeavors
5. Deputy Assistant for Geographical Regions
6. Deputy Assistant for Civilian-Military Affairs
And this is the shorter version that emanates from any of the non-existent Chicano think tanks. However, the Chicano Think Tank does exists and yet, it’s called the “internet” and on an internet that is used effectively to bring people and ideas together and subsequently voters together. Take, for example, today’s exemplar is found in the Great State of California and their approach to crafting legislation at the State Legislature and is to be seen as the forefront of national politics and a dire anathema or a competitive status to Trump’s self-governing model. Further and pending on what occurs in the next few years, the Great States of New York, Florida and Texas, will re-institute a more effective and helpful governance model, and where these states will contribute to over half of all electoral votes cast at the Electoral College. And waiting in the wings are Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado.
So, we, the military vets, Chicanos and Native Americans here in our wonderful Sonoran Desert, will target our attention, not to infrastructure but to the Appropriations process in both chambers of Congress and where the ultra conservatives and conservatives will attempt to exterminate the premise and elements that conjoined the politics and which led to President Johnson’s War on Poverty.
And in one of today’s issue is the historical funding for the Corporation for Legal Assistance, and which has proven beneficial and quite successful for our fellow veterans as well as for confronting domestic abuse and other neglected behaviors as well as a substantive frontline challenge at the Court for adequate delivery of this legal representation. And without this legal representation to over 70 million of our fellow citizens, we won’t have Justice, of any sort.
In closing, President Trump effortlessly digressed when addressing our National Security and Defense Systemic, and consequently, we, the general public, will have to educate ourselves far better than we have, even when the well-intentioned “experts” address our collective future. And especially when the special interests have no particular advocacy for the inter-families located here in the US and the sovereign nations located in this Indigenous hemisphere. Thus, this early April’s presidential election in Ecuador is just another of today’s high drama exemplars.
Jaango
thank you, jaango, not that i understood it all. ;-) but no apology is necessary.
As I follow your proposals for reorganizing the national security and foreign service functions of the US government, I see a worthy attempt to revisit the institutions that the National Security Act of 1947 created 70 years ago, institutions that now absorb more money than the value they deliver. I was struck that the proposal did not include the intelligence community and it 16 agencies that emerged from the CENTRAL Intelligence Act of 1949.
Today’s organization of both the Department of Defense and Department of State have functional (accounting, purchasing, logistics), regional (as would indicate and empire), and strategic chains of command, which always is anchored in the civilian-controlled Department of Defense chain of command. Some functions have more civilian levels before it gets to the uniformed military and some fewer. And all of this creates a matrix of support and personnel for a network of bases. Are you proposing continuing this matrixed structure or collapsing it to a single chain of responsibility in which each functional chain (Mountain, Naval, Desert, Air, Academic, Civilian Relations) has its own non-centralized functional offices to serve its particular requirements?
For State, what does Sovereign Nations do that Embassy Operations doesn’t? Where exactly in this do ambassadors and the Foreign Service fall? And how do DoD and DoS coordinate with each other?
In the thread about Alexander Hamilton the other day, I mused whether it just might be helpful to go back to having a War Department, which ballooned out and receded as wars came and went instead of a permanent national security apparatus that upped the size of all competing national security apparatus of other countries. And a navy and air force that primarily had logistical assignments until a time or war. That is, most of national security was conducted through the effective use of diplomacy, detente, and some form of trade.
Interesting strategy to focus on the Appropriations process. I wish you well putting pressure on the folks from the states you named. And good luck getting ways of funding necessary legal representation to deal with the issues of daily life. The Corporation of Legal Assistance has been on the target list since the Nixon administration created it as a means of killing the legal assistance program under the Office of Economic Opportunity. Howard Phillips, the current right-wing shock jock botched up that by drawing a lawsuit that reversed his ham-handed failure to spend money that Congress had appropriated for its intended purpose.
Wendy,
My apology for this ‘first’ draft. Since, I have done the edit and is now posted and available to our military vet membership.
Jaango
If you’ll notice that in my “reorganization” of both Departments, I have included “civil-military” relations with the obvious purpose and reason, that what the “contractors’ do that is detrimental to existing sovereign nations, and done on the behalf of Special Interests, must be disclosed and therefore, becomes part of the process that is required by both Chambers of Congress. And anything less is unacceptable. As such, our nation’s “clean and clear hands”!!!!
And “its” this information that should and must be disclosed to the general public.
Jaango
thanks for explaining, amigo. good to know that so many folks at cactus juice will be able to read your plans.
Bravo, Wendy. I’ve been looking for coverage of this election. You came through when most all of the regular media I checked overlooked it for other things.
well, silly mon; it’s been up since april 2; dunno why you hadn’t seen it. you have to wonder how many ecuadorians were made aware of lasso’s dirty dealings offshore, and so forth, don’t you?
but i’m happy you did find it; such good news! i get notifications from wordpress when folks ‘follow’ the café, but i dunno how they arrange that, to say the truth. hope your outside projects are going well. ha; it was 19 degrees here yesterday mornin’. brrrrrr.
I’m so glad to see this. An oasis of hope in a desert of gloom. And not just because Julian can be safe for now, God bless him.
See, that’s what happens when I try to make corrections.
it was a bit of cheery news, wasn’t it? hell keeps marching onward for maduro and chavismo in VZ, though. i keep fearing he’ll be assassinated instead of soft-putsched, though.
Yeah, they will try to undermine it in some way. As Trump would say, sad!
ha; i’d like to make herr T sad, myself, as he’s continuing O’s attack on venezuela (oil rich, nationalized oil) and has also declared maduro’s VZ a direct threat to amerikan security. well, it is, in that the Empire can’t afford to let any of the bolivarian socialist nations stand, can it? the citizens might get ideas about what democracy can really look like!
oh, and i just checked at telesur; apparently they did a recount, and lenin still won. it may be challenged again, of course…
did i get all your corrections and additions right? (she asked hopefully…) and a question: do emails i’ve sent to the address you use here get to you? if so, not responding to them via email is fine, truly.