Memo to the People of the US

A better Sunday than most for most.

Get It Try It

Sunday is Fun Day!

FOX has Daytona 500 qualifiers. NBC has the Penguins battling the Sabres on ice. CBS has the Northern Trust Open. Things are looking good!

All the family spread out in front of the 48-inch plasma screen. Buckets of KFC and spare ribs, potato salad, Bud Lite and Coke. Great day!

A bit further to the south, there are elections in Ecuador. Ecuador's on the equator (thereof the name) and on the Pacific Ocean. It's a beautiful place. From Montañita on the coast with a view of the whales, from the Galapagos Islands and the tortoises, to Puerto Lopez, to the capital of Quito.

Ecuador, like many of the countries in the Americas, has long been impoverished. But things are changing rapidly. Hillary Clinton's hate object Cristina Kirchner, the lovely lady leading macho Argentina, refused a typical IMF bailout and took her country out of debt in record time - then turned around and sued those responsible. Ecuador's Rafael Correa is pressing US giant Chevron to come clean and pay damages for tens of billions. Eva Morales and Hugo Chavez are doing the same thing: taking their peoples out from under the heel of the 'gringos'.



And it's working. Ecuador has less poverty than the US - and a much better social system to boot. People in so many places are seeing that justice can be done, that they don't have to be oppressed by the US anymore.

But whilst you sit there gorging yourself on your junk food, watching the NASCAR qualifiers or the hockey match or the golf tournament, consider this: your government channeled $60 million of your taxpayer dollars into toppling Ecuador's president Rafael Correa. And it's not working.

Your government's Central Intelligence Agency started a 'Contras' operation out of Chile to run drugs through South America to further finance efforts to topple Correa and reinstall a puppet regime. That's a lot of suffering and death for your benefit.

Rafael Correa was close to getting ousted once. The media are controlled by powerful organisations and funded by your tax dollars. WikiLeaks cables showed what the US ambassador was doing behind Ecuador's back and so Correa tossed her out. Correa also tossed out all the prelates of the Catholic church and told them they could come back when they were prepared to work for the people and not against them.



Correa won't allow a US military base on Ecuadorean soil. One of the few places where they can't have one. (They have close to 800 worldwide.) Correa, always the wit, once joked that the only country in the Western Hemisphere that won't be risking a coup d'etat is the US because they don't have a US embassy!

Correa was educated in the US. He knows how the bad guys think.

Legendary hacker Kevin Mitnick is on hand in the Ecuadorean capital to make sure the US forces don't try any tricky stuff with the election results. And Correa's been predicted to win by a landslide.

South America and Central America are coming on strong. Argentina is now the world's eighth most powerful economy. This so pissed the US that they expanded the infamous 'G8' to 'G10' just so they could get their friends in Italy back in.

There's no love lost between the 'Americas' and the US. And whilst the US economy continues to tank, the economies of the 'Americas' continue to boom.

The US would love to be able to overthrow Rafael Correa, and given half the chance, wouldn't hesitate. They've tried everything from exploding cigars to bombing commercial airplanes to destroy Castro. But so far they've been powerless in Ecuador.



Ecuador has an ideal climate. Hot but never too hot and absolutely never too cold. Cost of living is very reasonable. Ecuador is becoming the retirement destination of choice for 'gringos' in the autumns of their lives. It's a lovely country.

And Rafael Correa and his friends have done a magnificent job. As Christine Assange joked with him on her visit, in obvious sarcasm against the smears from the US and allies, 'what a lovely dictatorship you have here!'

Anyway. Have a great day in front of your telly. Don't worry too much about the US economy. Or the drones. Or the lack of freedom of speech. Or Fox News. Or any of the other scary things that seep through the cracks of your ever-vigilant mainstream media. Tune all that out. Enjoy a relaxing day with the family. And don't choke on the chicken.

See Also
Rixstep: Offending the United States
Rixstep: Assange and the Attack on the Republic of Ecuador