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-- Latin America: Ecuador President Jerks Washington's Chain Over Manta Air Base
Latin America: Ecuador President Jerks Washington's Chain Over Manta Air Base
I lol'd and then thought.......why the fock not??
This is just another example of the US and its kind of thinking about Latin America/South America......
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Drug War Chronicle - world�s leading drug policy newsletter Latin America: Ecuador President Jerks Washington's Chain Over Manta Air Base Printer Friendly Version Printer Friendly Version Email this Article Email this Article from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #507, 10/26/07 If the US wants to keep using a drug war air base in Ecuador, it must let Ecuador open a military base in Miami, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa told Reuters in an interview in Italy Monday. Correa, a popular leftist leader, promised during the 2006 election campaign that he would never renew the 10-year lease for the air base at Manta, in northern Ecuador.  President Correa "We'll renew the base on one condition: that they let us put a base in Miami -- an Ecuadorian base," Correa said in Italy. "If there's no problem having foreign soldiers on a country's soil, surely they'll let us have an Ecuadorian base in the United States." US officials consider Manta critical to anti-drug surveillance on Pacific drug-smuggling routes. The lease on the base, negotiated with a previous government, is set to run out in 2009. Correa said earlier that he would chop his arm off before he renewed the lease. According to a US embassy in Quito fact sheet, over 60% of illegal drug seizures in the eastern Pacific in recent years resulted from intelligence gathered thanks to the air base. The fact sheet said that 15 permanent and up to 150 rotating US military personnel involved in anti-drug activities are stationed at the base at any given time. The fact sheet sought to portray the base in the best possible light, even resorting to noting that the base's "full-time Ecuadorian employees include persons with physical challenges whom the [base] is helping to integrate into the workforce through an innovative program" and that the base "provides financial support to multiple local charities in an effort to be good citizens and guests in Manta. US personnel help tutor English in a local community center and support charities including orphanages and a school for children with disabilities." But embassy PR wheedling notwithstanding, Correa is tapping into broad public resentment of the base, much of which is rooted in dislike for Plan Colombia and suspicion about what other uses the US could put the base to. Correa campaigned strongly against Plan Colombia in the 2006 election, as tensions between the neighbors heightened over US-backed aerial fumigation of Colombian coca groups and its impact on adjacent Ecuadorian territory. "The nationwide position not to involve Ecuador in Plan Colombia is the first reason why Ecuadorians do not want the US military to remain in Manta," Fredy Rivera, professor and researcher with the Ecuadorian branch of the Latin American University for Social Sciences, told ISN Security Watch during a recent interview. A second reason for Ecuadorian opposition to the base was suspicion over US plans, he said. "The surveillance equipment can be used to watch activity in Colombia, Peru, parts of Venezuela and Bolivia, and of course Ecuador," Rivera said, adding, "this is official discourse." But even though Correa is refusing to renew the base's lease and has publicly called President Bush a "dimwit," he rejected the idea that rejecting the base should hurt US-Ecuadorian relations. "This is the only North American military base in South America," he said. "So, then the other South American countries don't have good relations with the United States because they don't have military bases? That doesn't make any sense." http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle...se_miami?&print |
Re: Latin America: Ecuador President Jerks Washington's Chain Over Manta Air Base
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| Originally posted by LazFX I lol'd and then thought.......why the fock not?? This is just another example of the US and its kind of thinking about Latin America/South America...... |
Kinda makes me think that these South American leaders are in on the drugs themselves, but I am not a firm believer in that. At first I thought that maybe the base serves as an impingment point for US covert activities in that country (especially when you look at the country's history), but I think that the Ecuador's call just illustrates that America is alienating itself in the region. American military should do more and co-operate greatly with the regional governments and be more open. It also appears that the base is not much of an interest for Ecuador and probably not much of a factor in stemming the flow of drugs through a defenseless Mexican-US border. Rightfully, USA should take it like a man and pull out of that country until Ecuador comes back begging for help. If USA has other more important interests in the region which I am so sure they do, American government will then show that by offering them a very good deal. American interests in Ecuador are far bigger than just the war on drugs - I figured that out after reading the great book called Confessions Of An Economic Hitman. Drugs is the primary source of income/funding of the resistance in the region who are fighting against the corporate and foreign forces who are occupying the jungles and driving those native people out, polluting their lands all to get rich from the massive natural resources that lie there.
It's impossible to stamp out underground markets. When there is demand, there will always be someone who wants to supply. The US Drug War is a farce..economically speaking, it's unfeasible...
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| Correa said earlier that he would chop his arm off before he renewed the lease |
f**k'em. don't renew it. like we won't be able to put 150 cops somewhere else. then we'll see what rats crawl out from underneath Ecuadorean and neighboring rocks
but we'll see what he says when Billary is president. that should be interesting, petty bitch.
Re: Re: Latin America: Ecuador President Jerks Washington's Chain Over Manta Air Base
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| Originally posted by Lira Living in South America, this kind of attitude from smaller countries seem more obvious as the time passes by. There have been some articles in Brazilians magazine about this "left-turn" in South American politics. |
Re: Re: Re: Latin America: Ecuador President Jerks Washington's Chain Over Manta Air
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| Originally posted by atbell I've always been curious about the US war on drugs in South America. What keeps nagging at me is why the US feels it has such a huge drug "problem" but other countries don't feel the same need to crack down on ... well crack. Is drug consumption an issue in Brazil? (consumption, not the killing and guns that go along with the dealing / production of drugs) |
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