Is Ecuador America's new enemy number one? President Correa could come under attack for appealing to Assange — RT

Is Ecuador America's new enemy number one? President Correa could come under attack for appealing to Assange — RT:

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LP - We're just awaiting  for their media wing to gin up the case against him.

The Unites States’ relationships with Latin American countries have been largely bittersweet, especially since the Cold War created a national enemy out of Cuba’s Fidel Castro. Since retiring from that post, Hugo Chavez has succeeded Castro by fulfilling the position of the United States’ Latin American scapegoat. Now battling cancer, Chavez may soon find another Latin American president becoming America’s arch enemy. In the last few years, President Rafael Correa has come to fruition as a Latin American leader that is not only encouraging change in his country of Ecuador, but is being subjected to increased scrutiny from the US by his refusal to side with American agendas.

As Assange awaits Ecuador’s response to his request for asylum, the future of the famed WikiLeaks leader isn’t the only question left unknown. Pending Ecuador’s answer, the United States might very well use it as an excuse to go after Correa.

“I love and admire the American people a great deal. Believe me, the last thing I’d be is anti-American. However, i will always call a spade a spade,” Correa told Assange during a recent episode of the his television program on RT. “And if there are international US policies that are detrimental to our country, or even to that of Latin America, I will denounce them strongly. And I will never, ever allow my country’s sovereignty to be affected by them.”

“Relating to the US, ours is always been a relationship based on affection and friendship,” says Correa. The bond between the two nations, however, is once that must rely on mutual respect and sovereignty, he adds.

Although the United States and Ecuador were allies during the early days of the Correa administration, the two countries have been at odds in recent years over America’s insistence on pushing policy south of their own border. In response, Correa has insisted on abolishing funding the US embassy provided to Ecuadorian law enforcement and led a campaign to successfully close America’s military base in the city of Manta, one of the largest air fields operated by the United States outside of the continental US.

“It’s not a problem to set up a US base in Ecuador,” Correa tells Assange. “We can give the go ahead as long as we are granted permission to set up an Ecuadorian military base in Miami. If it’s not an issue, they should agree.”

Relations between the countries have only worsened in the last year after a diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks revealed that the United States ambassador to Ecuador was critical of the Correa administration, prompting the president to remove her from the role.

“She was a woman totally against our government,” Correa tells Assange. “A woman of extreme right wing views that still lived in the Cold War of the 1960s.” According to the cables released by WikiLeaks, Correa says the former ambassador “wrote that her own Ecuadorian contacts told her that the chief of the national police was corrupt and that surely I had given him that post knowing he was corrupt so that I could control him.”

According to Correa, reform is necessary in Latin America, especially in Ecuador where he believes that money is influencing politics to a degree that isn’t being brought to attention outside of the country’s borders. His agitation with oil companies has irritated the US in the past, but now his campaign against the banking giants that own the Ecuadorian media is causing a stir as well. Correa has praised WikiLeaks for letting the world know the true intentions of secret governments, and says that he salutes them because he has nothing to lose through another leak.

“Those that don’t owe anything have nothing to fear,” says the president. “We have nothing to hide. Your WikiLeaks has made us stronger.”

That same stance, however, has been the impetus behind America’s attack on Assange and WikiLeaks. Correa says that Ecuador’s media “was and probably is greater than the political power,” and that WikiLeaks is instrumental in informing the rest of the world that, as he puts it, “the big voters, the powerful legislators, the mighty judges, that have set the media agenda; this way they have subdued government, presidents and courts.”

As America continues to find a way to fly Assange to the states to prosecute him for his role in leaking classified documents, the behind-the-scenes war between the US and Ecuador may soon heat up. And as Correa is expected to come to power as the most important name in Latin American politics, it wouldn’t be unlikely that the US will be looking for reasons to rally against Ecuador.

Originally published: http://rt.com/usa/news/correa-assange-us-latin-318/

Assange plot thickens as UK police say he faces arrest | Reuters

Assange plot thickens as UK police say he faces arrest | Reuters:

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Assange's 11th-hour decision to seek refuge in the embassy was more reminiscent of Cold War-era episodes seen in authoritarian countries than of the British legal process.

Swedish prosecutors want to question Assange about allegations of sexual assault made by two women, which he denies. The justice ministry in Stockholm said on Wednesday it expected Britain to extradite Assange, but authorities in London said he was beyond the police's reach in the Ecuadorean embassy.

Ecuador said Assange had accused his native Australia of abandoning him and expressed fears that if sent to Sweden he would be extradited onwards to the United States where he believes he could face criminal charges punishable by death.

Assange's website, WikiLeaks, angered Washington in 2010 by publishing secret U.S. diplomatic cables.

"I genuinely believe, and I know him well, that he fears for his life," said Vaughan Smith, founder of a now defunct TV news agency, who hosted Assange at his country mansion for 13 months after the Australian was freed on bail in December 2010.

"He fears that if he goes to Sweden he'll be sent to America and you only have to look at the treatment of Bradley Manning by the Americans to fell that he's right to be fearful," Smith told the BBC.

Manning, the U.S. intelligence analyst accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of government files to Wikileaks, faces a court-martial in September at which he could be jailed for life.

Russian television interviews Assange's mother

As the Julian Assange case took a turn for the dramatic with his asylum request to Ecuador, in an exclusive interview to RT Christine Assange called the Australian government a puppet of the US that aided and abetted the persecution of her son.

RT:  Now Julian hasn’t been charged yet, but he’s already seeking political asylum, so why now? Is it too early to take such a step?

Christine Assange:  Julian not only hasn’t been charged, he hasn’t even been questioned despite asking the Swedish government to do so for the last two years. The concern is of course that given the flagrant abuses of his human and legal rights in the Swedish case for two years, their refusal to adhere to their own police procedures and their own prosecutorial standards, that were he to go to Sweden, where he would be jailed straightaway, uncharged and unquestioned, he would not have the opportunity then to seek political asylum. 

RT:  Ecuador has an extradition treaty with the United States, so even if the Latin American state gives the green light and shelters your son, do you think he’s going to be 100% safe there?

CA: Ecuador I believe does have an extradition treaty, but if it’s ascertained from the investigation that the person seeking asylum is actually a political prisoner, then they don’t hand that prisoner over. Now this is something that many nations have signed up to, but a lot of them aren’t actually acting upon it, including the UK.  They should have turned down that European arrest warrant coming from Sweden, because Julian had made himself very much available for questioning in Sweden, contrary to what the mainstream media and our own attorney general is saying to the public. He could not get the Swedes to actually question him on the second rape allegation; the first time it was raised it was quashed within 24 hours by the chief prosecutor of Stockholm, it was then resurrected ten days later by a politician lawyer running for election. The woman submitted a condom which she said Julian had torn, but upon investigation by the forensics department, there was no DNA evidence, it was appealed to the prosecutor, they shopped around until they found one, and the prosecutor upheld the appeal, and Julian was not even told about the hearing, and so these abuses of his human rights and legal rights in Sweden, they go on and on and on.

RT:  Let’s now talk about the reaction to this in Canberra, In Australia his home country. Earlier Julian said he was abandoned by his own country, so what reaction would you like to have seen from Canberra at this point? 

CA:  Well unfortunately we have a puppet government in Australia, it’s run by the US, but I would have liked to have seen the Australian government stand up and have some independence from US foreign policy, and say “no, what you’re doing is persecuting a journalist who has not been charged with anything and under your own first amendment has done nothing wrong.”  They didn’t stand up, they should have stood up.  They should have protested vehemently to the UK government for its disgraceful display during the hearings.  It is unheard of in the last hearing that a court of appeals would introduce new evidence at the appeal, it’s absolutely unheard of. They should have protested to the US that calls are being made to incite murder upon my son. They should have protested that the grand jury being run by the US is not a due legal process, it has no judge or prosecutors, no defense material is allowed, and the jury comes from a pool of military contractors. They should have protested all of those things, and they’ve done nothing. In fact, they’ve aided and abetted the US in persecuting my son.

Full story: http://www.rt.com/news/julian-sweden-prosecutor-rights-284/

South America woke up - Europe is waking up - America?

Julian Assange Seeks Asylum In Ecuador

Julian Assange Seeks Asylum In Ecuador:

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QUITO, Ecuador -- Ecuador's foreign minister said Tuesday that WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange has taken refuge in the South American nation's embassy in London and is seeking political asylum.

Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said Ecuador is weighing the request.

The move comes less than a week after Britain's Supreme Court rejected Assange's bid to reopen his attempts to block extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning after two women accused him of sexual misconduct during a visit to the country in mid-2010. He denies the allegations.

His legal struggle to stay in Britain has dragged on for the better part of two years, clouding his website's work exposing the world's secrets.

Patino told a news conference that Assange had written to leftist President Rafael Correa saying he was being persecuted and seeking asylum.

He said that Assange, who is Australian, had argued that "the authorities in his country will not defend his minimum guarantees in front of any government or ignore the obligation to protect a politically persecuted citizen."

He said it was impossible for him to return to his homeland because it would not protect him from being extradited to "a foreign country that applies the death penalty for the crime of espionage and sedition."

The reference is to the United States, as Patino says the letter spells out.

Assange, 40, claims the U.S. has secretly indicted him for divulging American secrets and will act on the indictment if Sweden succeeds in extraditing him from Britain.

Full story: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/19/julian-assange-seeks-asy_n_1609725.html

Drones Over America