Why Ecuador's Embassy Stand-Off With the U.K. Might Not Actually Be About Protecting Julian Assange
Max Fisher
Aug 16 2012, 12:42 PM ET
... Ecuador's decision to grant Assange asylum appears, on the surface, bizarre or even irrational, given the apparent costs. The small-ish Latin American nation has effectively blown up relations with the much more powerful United Kingdom just over Assange, whose only real interest in Ecuador appears to come from one Ecuadorian officials' late 2010 hints of asylum. But it's possible that the diplomatic stand-off itself, and not Assange's freedom, is precisely Ecuador's goal.
Though we can't know the Ecuadorian government's motivation for sure, engineering a high-profile and possibly protracted confrontation with a Western government would actually be quite consistent with Correa's practice of using excessively confrontational foreign policy in a way that helps cement his populist credibility at home. It would also be consistent with his habit of using foreign embassies as proxies for these showdowns -- possibly because they tend to generate lots of Western outrage with little risk of unendurable consequences.
In his May interview with Assange, one of the first things Correa did was make a joke about his controversial decision to refuse to renew the U.S. lease on an air force base in his country, thus effectively shuttering it, to American outrage. "OK, there isn't any problem with a U.S. base being set up in Ecuador. We can give the go ahead as long as we are granted permission to set up an Ecuadorian military base in Miami. If there isn't any issue, they will agree," he said. Assange laughed. "Are you having a lot of fun? Me too," Correa said, laughing with his host. "Yes, I am enjoying your jokes a great deal."
Correa's government first announced that it would not renew the U.S. lease in July 2008, and both his officials and he personally continued to insist as much, and to rebuff American requests otherwise, right up through Correa's April 2009 re-election, which he won handily ...
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/why-ecuadors-embassy-stand-off-with-the-uk-might-not-actually-be-about-protecting-julian-assange/261221/
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Chavez: Clear support of the majority of Venezuelans, expressed in honest, transparent, internationally monitored elections, as well as in opinion polls. High levels of public participation. Great reductions in poverty and expansions of educational opportunity. General prosperity. Low unemployment. Successful efforts at re-starting economic growth and cutting inflation. Risked losing an election on constitutional amendments in order to support women's equality (and in fact lost that vote, by a narrow margin, probably because of Catholic Church opposition). Clearly committed to expanding human and civil rights. Offended Exxon Mobil by demanding a fair deal for the Venezuelan people on the oil profits. Represents the first leftist democracy revolution of the modern era in Latin America. The Venezuelan people themselves restored him to his rightful, elected office, after the abortive, U.S.-supported fascist coup in 2002.
Castro: Cuba is peaceful; Cubans have universal free health care and universal free education through graduate school, and one of the best medical systems in the world. Cubans have guaranteed food, clothing and shelter. All of Latin America (and most of the rest of the world) considers the Cuban government to be legitimate. Although the Castros wield untoward power (undemocratic), there are some good reasons why they have done so, chiefly the relentless hostility of the giant, armed behemoth to the north, and Cubans actually have a democratic process of governance below the level of national executive power.
Correa: President of the most stable government that Ecuador has ever had. Committed to social justice. Threw the U.S. military out, in obedience to the clear wishes of most Ecuadorans. Very smart. Educated as an economist in the U.S. but doesn't buy Wall Street's bullshit. Well understands the unity needed among countries that the U.S. Corporate Rulers would like to smash to pieces and dominate. Oversaw a re-write of the Ecuadoran Constitution which, for the first time ever, recognized the rights of the Indigenous to be consulted on use of their lands. (This didn't go far enough, in their view--they wanted a veto; Correa's position was that Ecuador's resources belong to all Ecuadorans, not just the Indigenous.) This Constitution--which was overwhelmingly passed by the voters--also, for the first time ever--anywhere--recognized the rights of Mother Nature ("Pachamama"
to exist and prosper apart from human needs and desires. Though Correa has nothing directly to do with it, an Ecuadoran court recently awarded a huge multi-million dollar judgement for Indigenous petitioners against Chevron-Texaco for their horrible toxic pollution of an area the size of Rhode Island. This court action reflects the rise of real democracy in Ecuador--where the poor now have as much chance in court as the rich and the corporate--of which Correa is the presidential expression. How dare Ecuador demand accountability and reparations from Chevron-Texaco! How dare they give asylum to Julian Assange! I like this rise of democracy and assertion of sovereignty by Ecuador--and in other LatAm countries. Correa is the most visible leader of this historic political movement in Ecuador.
Morales: The first 100% Indigenous president of Bolivia, a country where the Indigenous majority has been so oppressed that, as late as the 1960s, the Indigenous were forbidden to walk on the sidewalks! He is the Nelson Mandela of Latin America. He has led a peaceful revolution against vicious racism. The poor Indigenous housekeepers and maids and gardeners of the rich white elite now have pensions and labor protections. Morales, like his leftist allies in other LatAm countries, is committed to social justice, sovereignty and independence. In his rise to political leadership, he helped throw Bechtel out of the country (for trying to privatize a city water system, including charging poor people for collecting rainwater!). As president, he threw the DEA and the U.S. (Bushwhack) ambassador out of the country for their collusion with the white separatists who rioted and murdered and beat people up, in 2008. The white separatists were trying to split Bolivia in two and commandeer Bolivia's main resource, gas. Morales nationalized the gas works and is, of course, sharing the profits among all of the people. i love the provision of the new Bolivian Constitution which declares the coca leaf (traditional Indian medicine) sacred and makes it legal. (It is not cocaine.) (Bolivia's Constitution also has the Pachamama provision.) Like the other leftist leaders in LatAm, Morales was elected by big majorities in honest, transparent, internationally monitored elections.
Fire away, naaman fletcher! What are their flaws and mixed motives? Oh, wait, you've already posted plenty of anti-Chavez articles about everything that's wrong in Venezuela. We already know he's a dictator, increasingly dictatorial, a clown, incompetent, corrupt and unforgivably popular. Forget Chavez. Just do Castro, Correa and Morales. No, Castro's too easy. Forget Castro. Just do Correa and Morales. Oh, well, do whatever you want. We need to keep up with the latest slams against these leaders. Watcha got?
I have never denied that there are problems in Venezuela. Every country has problems--especially Latin American countries, which have been relentlessly battered, robbed and controlled by the U.S. and its transglobal corporations and war profiteers for half a century. Exxon Mobil, for instance, was sucking 90% of the oil profits out of Venezuela with the other 10% going to the local rich oil elite who were running things and who utterly neglected the vast poor majority in Venezuela; couldn't care less about them; were guilty of major malfeasance, and, in the end, became violent and murdered hundreds of poor people who were protesting these conditions (the event that led to the re-writing of the constitution, its passage by a big majority in a national vote and in Chavez getting elected).
The Chavez government--at the insistence of the Venezuelan people--has achieved very significant reform on this (Venezuela's control of its major resource), on poverty reduction, on educational opportunities, on public participation, on clean elections, on public access to the broadcast media, on police response to political street demonstrations (both right- and leftwing), on fair taxation and tax enforcement, on establishing and preserving "the commons," on infrastructure development and economic growth, on unemployment, on labor rights, and other very important matters.
None of this is EVER reported by the Corporate Media, nor by you. They and you dwell exclusively on problems that have not been solved or on items that can be construed as Chavez being a "dictator" or (media cognitive dissonance) incompetent. They even used the catastrophic drought in Venezuela, that caused hydroelectric power outages, to dis Chavez and never reported that there are no more outages (why? because the Chavez government addressed and solved the problem). That he is simply a strong leader of the FDR type, using power for the 99%, rather than just for the 1%, is never considered. The premise of the Corporate Media, from the beginning, has been that any leader who uses power for the 99% must be a "dictator" and they go looking for, and exclusively publish, any item that supports that view.
They really had fun with the "free speech" issue and, of course, never considered the huge imbalance in the rightwing/corporate monopoly of the public airwaves in Venezuela, which was so bad that several corporate broadcasters supported the 2002 fascist coup attempt. Of course the Corporate Media is not going to fault their own. They used RCTV as an emblem of "free speech," when RCTV openly supported suspending the constitution, the courts, the national assembly and all civil rights, in a coup d'etat! This is the very thing that had inspired our own Fairness Doctrine (which the Reaganites dismantled)--fear of coup d'etat by private control of the public airwaves--a media coup d'etat. That is largely what happened in Venezuela in 2002, and the Chavez government, with the support of the vast majority of Venezuelans, has been trying to solve that problem ever since.
Private corporations have no inherent right to use the public airwaves. In every democracy in the world, including our own, they have to be licensed by the government. During our "Fairness Doctrine" era, they had to satisfy requirements of serving the public good to get that license. RCTV was obviously not serving the public good by leading the charge to overthrow Venezuela's democracy, and they therefore lost their license to use the public airwaves when it came up for renewal (though they retained cable broadcasting). Rather than taking the balanced, objective view of this situation that we should expect from real journalism, and faulting RCTV for its anti-democratic activity, the transglobal Corporate Media reacted with what can only be described as hysterical unbalance, ranting and raving about "free speech" (translation: corporate speech). There were no two sides to it, even. Chavez was a "dictator" suppressing "free speech."
A balanced response would include information about RCTV's role in the coup attempt--which, among other things, included refusing to broadcast anything by members of the Chavez government during the coup attempt. (The elected government of the country had no free speech rights!) (Is it any wonder that the Chavez government has stressed public access to the media, public broadcasting stations and a government channel?) A balanced response might also have included the information that the Chavez government had not addressed "Fairness Doctrine" issues in an orderly way at that time (though they have done so since then), so RCTV's license came down to a decision of the president, not by a commission (such as the FCC). That would be fair reporting, in the context of RCTV's gross misuse of its license.
The extreme unbalance in the Corporate reporting on this matter portrayed Chavez as "anti-free speech." Lordy, RCTV had silenced the elected government and had actively supported kidnapping of the president and suspending all civil rights! How about Chavez's free speech rights? Hard to exercise them with a gun at your head!
The Chavez government's efforts to expand the free speech rights of ordinary Venezuelans--and to expand other human and civil rights, and to encourage public participation--have also gone entirely unreported.
Democracy is working quite normally--and, in some ways, quite well--in Venezuela. You would never know this from the Corporate Media, or from your posts of Corporate Media articles. RCTV is just one example. The coverage is never otherwise--never! Not the slightest effort at balance. That is disinformation. That is "Big Brother." That is the "Big Lie." And that is the greatest irony of all. It is the transglobal corporations and war profiteers, who hate Chavez, who are the real "dictators." And their tools in the Corporate Media, really, have no interest in "free speech." Their purpose is to promote the enrichment of the 1%, and to monopolize public space for the purposes of greed and domination. The Corporate Media is, itself, supremely anti-democratic.
There are many ways that these powermongers manipulate public perceptions. The simplest--outright lying--is the easiest to refute. (The "miracle laptop" is a good example; "Chavez the terrorist." But then there are half lies--lies of omission--telling only one side of the story. Or mixing fact and fiction (fact: Chavez is building homes and restoring a town that got hit with catastrophic floods, using powers of "decree"; fiction: Chavez is a "dictator" who "rules by decree"; full story: the elected legislature voted to give Chavez that decree power, which includes time limits and issue limits and this is a common practice in Latin America).
Or "Big Lie" techniques of constantly hammering on certain "talking points" (Chavez the dictator, Chavez the opposer of "free speech" and then switching memes to Chavez-the-incompetent (hasn't done this, hasn't done that) until the minds of their news consumers are mush. Never ever let them think for themselves or give them information that might lead to them thinking for themselves! Control is the point--not news, not discussion, not thinking.
There are sly techniques, like "His critics say..." (an AP favorite) often with no attribution and no quotes. ("His critics say that he is increasingly authoritarian"--my favorite of the AP gems (which I tracked back to a rightwing Catholic cardinal, at the beginning of that meme)). (Now they are using it on Rafael Correa!) There are many sly journalistic tricks to pushing chosen "talking points" and distorting reality. I've seen them all in the Corporate reporting on Chavez. And they include exclusively negative headlines and stories, and NEVER mentioning WHY Chavez keeps getting elected, by big majorities, in honest, transparent elections.
I won't get into a dispute with you about what is misinformation and what isn't. You have adopted the Corporate technique of posting only negative information. It may contain facts. It is NOT the truth.
