Ecuador: The Next Threat to World Peace

The ostensibly small South American country of Ecuador could be trying to set itself up as the Western world's next Great Satan. A vast oil field has been discovered underneath the Yasuní national park, which contains a great many frogs and toads and various other uninteresting things; and the Ecuadorean oil minister Alberto Acosta claims, in defiance of Shell's efforts in Nigeria and BP's in the Gulf of Mexico, that exploitation "would lead to contamination, deforestation, extinction of cultures and destruction of social structures".

In defiance of the more enlightened practices in other Third World countries such as the United Kingdom, Acosta has also been listening to scientists and non-governmental organisations, rather than relying on the word of oil companies and the strength of his faith in money. "The reality is that oil has not brought development," he blasphemed. "It has brought us immense contamination and environmental destruction. Since the 1950s the impact on people has been dramatic. Pollution and deforestation bring problems everywhere the oil is. Oil has not solved the problems of Ecuador."

Hence, the Acosta dictatorship's solution to the Yasuní problem is potentially so fiendish as to be worthy of the evil socialist pineapple god Hugo Chávez. He has indicated Ecuador's willingness to be bribed to leave the frogs and toads alone. In return for half the theoretical value of the oil, Ecuador will "guarantee" to keep Yasuní from being developed. Such is Mullah Acosta's anti-Western megalomania that he has even threatened to spend the money on education, hospitals and other national parks rather than compensating the oil companies for artificially limiting their profits at a time of global economic crisis.

Tellingly, supporters of this plot to corrupt international relations include Mikhail Gorbachev, who did so much to deprive the West of the single most enduring and useful Great Satan of the twentieth century, forcing the free world to rely on cheap substitutes like Manuel Noriega, Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Tony Blair's chum Colonel Gadafi.