Iran wasn't enough for them

 

The United States and Ecuador have launched joint military operations against “designated terrorist organizations” in the South American country, the Pentagon said on Tuesday night, in what appeared to be a major expansion of the U.S. military’s unilateral strikes against boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific that the Trump administration has accused of carrying drugs.

U.S. Special Forces soldiers are advising and supporting Ecuadorean commandos on raids across the country against suspected drug shipment facilities and other drug-related sites.

[...]

The Americans are not believed to be participating in the actual raids, but are helping the Ecuadorean troops plan their operations, and are providing intelligence and logistics support.

  NYT

Where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, Nixon in Cambodia.

In a 30-second video released by the military’s Southern Command, a helicopter is seen taking off in early morning or dusk, flying over an area, then picking up soldiers. The U.S. official said the video depicted the first in what was expected to be a series of raids across the country, some with U.S. advisers assisting nearby, some with Ecuadorean forces only. In this instance, involving mostly Ecuadorean forces, the official said, it was unclear what the mission’s objective was or whether it was successful.

So, just general chaos and bloodletting. Adds to the end of the world scenario being acted out by Christian nationalist zealots.

Big oil is pure evil

You've heard the stories, but you haven't heard any like this, because there aren't any.

How is this even possible?

Time running out for Assange?

ECUADOR’S PRESIDENT Lenin Moreno traveled to London on Friday for the ostensible purpose of speaking at the 2018 Global Disabilities Summit (Moreno has been using a wheelchair since being shot in a 1998 robbery attempt). The concealed, actual purpose of the president’s trip is to meet with British officials to finalize an agreement under which Ecuador will withdraw its asylum protection of Julian Assange, in place since 2012, eject him from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, and then hand over the WikiLeaks founder to British authorities.

[...]

Almost three months ago, Ecuador blocked Assange from accessing the internet, and Assange has not been able to communicate with the outside world ever since. The primary factor in Ecuador’s decision to silence him was Spanish anger over Assange’s tweets about Catalonia.

A source close to the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry and the president’s office, unauthorized to speak publicly, has confirmed to The Intercept that Moreno is close to finalizing, if he has not already finalized, an agreement to hand over Assange to the U.K. within the next several weeks. The withdrawal of asylum and physical ejection of Assange could come as early as this week.

[...]

Even under the best-case scenario, it appears highly likely that Assange will continue to be imprisoned by British authorities.

[...]

THE FAR MORE IMPORTANT question that will determine Assange’s future is what the U.S. government intends to do. The Obama administration was eager to prosecute Assange and WikiLeaks for publishing hundreds of thousands of classified documents, but ultimately concluded that there was no way to do so without either also prosecuting newspapers such as the New York Times and The Guardian, which published the same documents, or creating precedents that would enable the criminal prosecution of media outlets in the future.

Indeed, it is technically a crime under U.S. law for anyone — including a media outlet — to publish certain types of classified information.

[...]

But the U.S. Justice Department has never wanted to indict and prosecute anyone for the crime of publishing such material, contenting themselves instead to prosecuting the government sources who leak it. Their reluctance has been due to two reasons: First, media outlets would argue that any attempts to criminalize the mere publication of classified or stolen documents is barred by the press freedom guarantee of the First Amendment, a proposition the DOJ has never wanted to test; second, no DOJ has wanted as part of its legacy the creation of a precedent that allows the U.S. government to criminally prosecute journalists and media outlets for reporting classified documents.

  Glenn Greenwald

Yeah, well, there's a new sheriff in town.

Last April, Trump’s then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo, now his secretary of state, delivered a deranged, rambling, highly threatening broadside against WikiLeaks. Without citing any evidence, Pompeo decreed that WikiLeaks is “a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia,” and thus declared: “We have to recognize that we can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us.”

Except when it puts their man in office, he means.

Trump’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions has similarly vowed not only to continue and expand the Obama DOJ’s crackdown on sources, but also to consider the prosecution of media outlets that publish classified information.

[...]

And it was Democratic senators such as Dianne Feinstein who, during the Obama years, were urging the prosecution of WikiLeaks, with the support of numerous GOP senators.

[...]

All of this means that it is highly likely that Assange — under his best-case scenario — faces at least another year in prison, and will end up having spent a decade in prison despite never having been charged with, let alone convicted of, any crime. He has essentially been punished — imprisoned — by process.

And while it is often argued that Assange has only himself to blame, it is beyond doubt, given the grand jury convened by the Obama DOJ and now the threats of Pompeo and Sessions, that the fear that led Assange to seek asylum in the first place — being extradited to the U.S. and politically persecuted for political crimes — was well-grounded.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Just how crazy can we get?

Why, yes.  Yes we did.

A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly.

Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes.

  NYT

Let me ask you this: why would nature not provide the proper nourishment for the babies of the female of any species? But that's what we've been told for decades.

Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations.

American officials sought to water down the resolution by removing language that called on governments to “protect, promote and support breast-feeding” and another passage that called on policymakers to restrict the promotion of food products that many experts say can have deleterious effects on young children.

[...]

Ecuador, which had planned to introduce the measure, was the first to find itself in the cross hairs.

The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the resolution, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid.

[...]

In addition to the trade threats, Todd C. Chapman, the United States ambassador to Ecuador, suggested in meetings with officials in Quito, the Ecuadorean capital, that the Trump administration might also retaliate by withdrawing the military assistance it has been providing in northern Ecuador, a region wracked by violence spilling across the border from Colombia, according to an Ecuadorean government official who took part in the meeting.

[...]

The Ecuadorean government quickly acquiesced.

You read that right.

“We were shocked because we didn’t understand how such a small matter like breast-feeding could provoke such a dramatic response,” said the Ecuadorean official, who asked not to be identified because she was afraid of losing her job.

[...]

The showdown over the issue was recounted by more than a dozen participants from several countries, many of whom requested anonymity because they feared retaliation from the United States.

Health advocates scrambled to find another sponsor for the resolution, but at least a dozen countries, most of them poor nations in Africa and Latin America, backed off, citing fears of retaliation, according to officials from Uruguay, Mexico and the United States.

You can see why they would fear that.

“The resolution as originally drafted placed unnecessary hurdles for mothers seeking to provide nutrition to their children,” an H.H.S. spokesman said in an email. “We recognize not all women are able to breast-feed for a variety of reasons. These women should have the choice and access to alternatives for the health of their babies, and not be stigmatized for the ways in which they are able to do so.” The spokesman asked to remain anonymous in order to speak more freely.

They were just thinking of the mothers who can't breast feed when they threatened Ecuador.

The Americans also sought, unsuccessfully, to thwart a W.H.O. effort aimed at helping poor countries obtain access to lifesaving medicines. Washington, supporting the pharmaceutical industry, has long resisted calls to modify patent laws as a way of increasing drug availability in the developing world, but health advocates say the Trump administration has ratcheted up its opposition to such efforts.

They're just thinking of the... ... ... um, I don't have anything.

A 2016 Lancet study found that universal breast-feeding would prevent 800,000 child deaths a year across the globe and yield $300 billion in savings from reduced health care costs and improved economic outcomes for those reared on breast milk.

[...]

“It’s making everyone very nervous, because if you can’t agree on health multilateralism, what kind of multilateralism can you agree on?” [the director of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva] asked.

I think you answered your question in your question.

“What happened was tantamount to blackmail, with the U.S. holding the world hostage and trying to overturn nearly 40 years of consensus on best way to protect infant and young child health,” she said.

In the end, the Americans’ efforts were mostly unsuccessful. It was the Russians who ultimately stepped in to introduce the measure — and the Americans did not threaten them.

Imagine that.

“We’re not trying to be a hero here, but we feel that it is wrong when a big country tries to push around some very small countries, especially on an issue that is really important for the rest of the world,” said [a Russian] delegate, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Since Russia has been known for some time to push around some very small countries, I'd say this is just another little hint to His Lardship who's in the driver's seat before the Trump-Putin summit.

[T]he American delegation sought to wear down the other participants through procedural maneuvers in a series of meetings that stretched on for two days, an unexpectedly long period.

Without directly trying to pressure the Russians, of course.

In the end, the United States was largely unsuccessful. The final resolution preserved most of the original wording, though American negotiators did get language removed that called on the W.H.O. to provide technical support to member states seeking to halt “inappropriate promotion of foods for infants and young children.”

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:



And nobody was denying women access to formula with this resolution.  And if there are many women who need the opeiton of formula because of malnutrition and poverty - poverty?  is formula cheaper than breast milk, dickwad? - then how about we address the issue of poor, malnourished women instead of propping up the formula industry?

God, these asshats and their arguments are sickening.

P.S. Assange at Ecuadorean Embassy

There it is.

Quiet pressure from the U.S. government played a role in Ecuador's decision to block WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from using the internet at Ecuador's London embassy, U.S. officials told NBC News.

"It was a bit of an eviction notice," said a senior intelligence official.
[...]

In a statement, Ecuador said the decision was its own.

"Ecuador, exercising its sovereign right, has temporarily restricted access to part of its communications systems in its UK Embassy," the statement said.

  NBC

Uh-uh.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Why Is Ecuador Afraid of Hillary Clinton?

Whistleblowing site WikiLeaks has confirmed it was Ecuador that cut off Julian Assange’s internet access on Saturday after another batch of leaked emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair was released. WikiLeaks did not elaborate on the grounds for Ecuador’s London embassy, where Assange has spent more than four years after being granted asylum over fears of persecution over his publications, to restrict the whistleblower’s web access.

  RT

Maybe they have reason to be afraid of Hillary. Maybe they are making a statement about Trump. Or maybe they figure they've gone as far as they dare against US desires by housing Assange.

Or maybe it's Goldman Sachs they don't want to displease

[Wikileaks] tweeted that the internet was shut “5pm GMT, shortly after publication of Clinton's Goldman Sachs [speeches].”

....but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 10/20:

The reason: "Quiet pressure from the U.S. government."

Ecuador and Bolivia Condemn the Subversion of Democracy in Brazil

There was an attempt to bar impeached president Dilma Rousseff from running again for president, but it failed.  She is eligible to run in the 2018 elections.  Assuming the corrupt government of the new president Michel Temer (who has been banned from running for eight years due to corruption charges) hasn't done away with the constitution before then.  And I don't imagine he will be able to without incurring a popular uprising.  

The whole thing is pretty bizarre.

UPDATE:

US in Latin America: Wikileaks Cables

When Greece’s left government decided to hold a national referendum on the troika-imposed austerity program, the European Central Bank retaliated by restricting liquidity for Greek banks. This triggered a prolonged bank closure and plunged Greece further into recession.

 Though Greek voters ended up massively rejecting austerity, Germany and the European creditor cartel were able to subvert democracy and get exactly what they wanted: complete submission to their neoliberal agenda.

 In the last decade and a half, a similar fight against neoliberalism has been waged across the breadth of an entire continent, and mostly outside of the public eye. Although Washington initially sought to quash all dissent, often employing even fiercer tactics than those used against Greece, Latin America’s resistance to the neoliberal agenda has in large part been successful. It’s an epic tale that’s gradually coming to light thanks to continued exploration of the massive trove of US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.

[...]

Much of the story of the US government’s efforts to contain and roll back the anti-neoliberal tide can be found in the tens of thousands of WikiLeaked diplomatic cables from the region’s US diplomatic missions, dating from the early George W. Bush years to the beginning of President Obama’s administration.

The cables — which we analyze in the new book, The WikiLeaks Files: The World According to US Empire — reveal the day-to-day mechanics of Washington’s political intervention in Latin America (and make a farce of the State Department mantra that “the US doesn’t interfere in the internal politics of other countries”).

  Jacobin

Read more.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Hope for Julian Assange?

Known within political circles as the “Assange Act”, an amendment was made in early 2014 to the Extradition Act 2003 in the British parliament. Resulting from discontent and discomfort over the legal limbo Julian has been in for the past four years – even two years before receiving asylum from Ecuador, Assange had been on house arrest in England, pending potential extradition to Sweden – several British MPs began debating a substantive change to the law that would impede a future Assange situation from happening to someone else.

The amendment is included in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 (not the most socially-friendly name), in Chapter 12, Part 12. It specifically states that “Extradition is barred if no prosecution decision has been made in the requesting territory”, as in Assange’s situation. If the country requesting extradition has not yet charged or decided to try the individual being requested, than the United Kingdom will not extradite. This is exactly the case of Julian Assange. The Swedish prosecution has not decided to try him yet or even formally charge him, and the extradition request is merely based on the desire to “question” him about certain allegations he may or may not be involved in.

Julian’s legal team will need to challenge this law in order for it to be applied to his case, since at present it does not appear to be retroactive. [...]Ecuador’s Foreign Minister made reference to the amended law as a potential opening for dialogue with the UK government in the case. Ecuador has also offered to allow Swedish authorities question Assange inside the Embassy, or via videoconference, all to no avail.

  CounterPunch: Eva Golinger

Sounds like a case of punishment, rather than an actual desire to question the man.

Foreign Minister Patiño has stated previously that Ecuador could bring the case before the International Court of Justice in the Hague, or the United Nations. The affronts to Ecuador’s sovereignty, the failure to recognize the asylum granted to Julian Assange and the refusal to provide him with safe passage to Ecuadorian territory are all violations of international law. Julian’s human rights are also affected. [...] Were he to experience a medical emergency and need hospital attention, the British government has already made clear it would arrest him.

Find a Need and Fill It

“I want to immediately say that we don’t need to get anybody’s permission to sell products to friendly countries: as far as we know Latin America isn’t a part of the European Union,” as RIA cites [Ecuadorean President Rafael] Correa’s Tuesday comments to the Andes press agency.

His comments come a day after the Financial Times said the EU was going to persuade Latin American countries not to replace its agricultural exports to Russia.

  RT

Rich countries to poor country: We’re punishing this third country by not selling them anything, so don’t you sell them anything in the meantime. That must have gotten a belly laugh or two.

They must have another meaning for "persuade".

The Rest of the Story

Israel's official did not just call Brazil diplomatically irrelevant.

“This is an unfortunate demonstration of why Brazil, an economic and cultural giant, remains a diplomatic dwarf,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor. “The moral relativism behind this move makes Brazil an irrelevant diplomatic partner, one who creates problems rather than contributes to solutions.”

  Jerusalem Post

Channeling Richard Nixon.

And ….

The Ecuadoran Ambassador has been recalled from Israel, citing the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza which began nearly two weeks ago, and has killed over 550 Palestinians.

[...]

Turkey has been the most outspoken on the diplomatic front about the Israeli offensive, leading the Israeli government to recall most of its diplomatic staff from Turkey several days ago.

   International Middle East Media Center

Does that make Israel a diplomatic pygmy?

Chevron's Pockets Are Deeper Than Yours - and Ecuador's

[Law firm] Patton Boggs today abandoned the Ecuadorian rain forest residents on whose behalf it had fought zealously to hold Chevron responsible for contamination in the northeastern oil-producing region of the Andean country. It’s almost unheard of, however, for a major law firm to humiliate itself in the fashion Patton Boggs has done in the face of Chevron’s threat to pursue pending fraud allegations against the Washington (D.C.) firm. Patton Boggs did not admit to any wrongdoing in connection with the settlement.

[...]

Patton Boggs also agreed to provide Chevron with supportive documents and testimony and to pay the company $15 million as a tangible symbol of its abasement.

[...]

The bizarre saga stems from a February 2011 judgment in an Ecuadorian trial court that Chevron is culpable for decades of oil contamination in that country. The liability verdict was upheld by Ecuador’s Supreme Court, but the $19 billion in damages was halved to $9.5 billion.

Chevron refused to pay, arguing that the architect of the judgment, New York plaintiffs’ attorney Steven Donziger, fabricated evidence, coerced Ecuadorian judges, and participated in the ghostwriting of supposedly neutral expert reports and the February 2011 ruling itself. Chevron formalized those allegations in a U.S. civil racketeering suit against Donziger that produced a March 2014 verdict against the plaintiffs’ lawyer. Donziger denies wrongdoing and has appealed.

[...]

Patton Boggs [had] signed on as co-counsel with Donziger, agreeing to use its expertise and influence to help enforce the Ecuadorian judgment in courts around the world. That led to Chevron’s accusing the law firm of participating in the racketeering conspiracy pinned on Donziger by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan. Patton Boggs, in turn, accused Chevron and its main outside law firm, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, of abusive tactics. In the wake of Judge Kaplan’s March ruling against Donziger, however, Patton Boggs decided to throw in the towel.

[...]

Apart from Patton Boggs, a number of other former Donziger allies, including lawyers, scientific experts, and financiers, have disavowed their past relationships with the plaintiffs’ attorney and their allegations against Chevron.

  Business Week

How Handy

At the end of September, Ecuador’s foreign ministry announced that the US had seemingly denied visas to a delegation that was set to travel to the UN General Assembly in New York to present their case regarding an ongoing dispute against Chevron-Texaco.

According to the ministry’s official announcement, visas for the five Ecuadorian nationals were returned by the US Embassy in Quito “without any explanation.”

The group was to present testimony during a special event at the UN regarding the ecological impact caused by Chevron-Texaco’s oil operations in the Amazon rainforest region of Ecuador, which contaminated two million hectares, according to the country’s government.

  RT

Shouldn't the UN be its own territory? Grant its own visas? How nice for the United States that it is on US soil and subject to visa control by the US government.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

No Surprise Here

Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino Aroca has said that a hidden listening device was found in his country's embassy in London during his visit to the UK last month.

[...]

"We immediately conducted an investigation to find the source and I will release our result at tomorrow's press conference including the source of the device, who was using it and which department installed it", Patino told.

  alJazeera

It just seems so old fashioned, doesn’t it?

  ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Ruh-Roh

The plan to spirit the surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden to sanctuary in Latin America appears to be unravelling amid tension between Ecuador’s government and Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.

President Rafael Correa halted an effort to help Snowden leave Russia amid concern Assange was usurping the role of the Ecuadoran government, according to leaked diplomatic correspondence published on Friday.

Amid signs Quito was cooling with Snowden and irritated with Assange, Correa declared invalid a temporary travel document which could have helped extract Snowden from his reported location in Moscow.

In a message attributed to Assange sent to Ecuador’s foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño, and other top officials, the WikiLeaks founder apologised “if we have unwittingly [caused] Ecuador discomfort in the Snowden matter.” The note continued: “There is a fog of war due to the rapid nature of events. If similar events arise you can be assured that they do not originate in any lack of respect or concern for Ecuador or its government.”

At a press conference the president declared the travel document invalid and said Ecuador would not consider an asylum request unless Snowden reached Ecuadorean territory.

  Guardian

They Hate Us (for Our Freedoms) and They're Spreading Their Hate to Other Countries

The world has been growing increasingly sick of Washington for a long time. The bullying, the constant stream of lies, the gratuitous wars and destruction have destroyed the image hyped by Washington of the US as a “light unto the world.” The world sees the US as a plague upon the world.

Following Snowden’s revelations, Germany’s most important magazine, Der Spiegal, had the headline: “Obama’s Soft Totalitarianism: Europe Must Protect Itself From America.” The first sentence of the article asks: “Is Barack Obama a friend? Revelations about his government’s vast spying program call that into doubt. The European Union must protect the Continent from America’s reach for omnipotence.”

Der Spiegal continues: “We are being watched. All the time and everywhere. And it is the Americans who are doing the watching. On Tuesday, the head of the largest and most all-encompassing surveillance system ever invented is coming for a visit. If Barack Obama is our friend then we really don’t need to be terribly worried about our enemies.”

[...]

China’s official Xinhua news agency reported that Snowden’s revelations had placed “Washington in a really awkward situation. They demonstrate that the United States, which has long been trying to play innocent as a victim of cyber attacks, has turned out to be the biggest villain in our age.”

[...]

Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino responded to Washington’s threats with a statement that the Ecuadorian government puts human rights above Washington’s interests. Foreign Minister Patino said that Snowden served humanity by revealing that the Washington Stasi was violating the rights of “every citizen in the world.”

  Paul Craig Roberts – former Asst Secty of the Treasury under Ronald Reagan

Obama’s speech [recently in Germany] was delivered to a relatively small, specially selected audience of invitees. Even so, Obama spoke from behind bullet proof glass.

  Paul Craig Roberts

Ecuador to the US: You Can't Fire Me. I Quit.

Oh, and, before I leave…

Snowden, 30, is believed to be at Moscow's international airport.

"The petitioner is not in Ecuadorean territory as the law requires [to process a request for asylum]," government official Betty Tola said at an early morning news conference in Ecuador.

Bristling at suggestions Quito was weighing the pros and cons of Snowden's case in terms of its own interests, officials also said Ecuador would not base its decision on its desire to renew the Andean Trade Preferences Act with Washington.

"Ecuador gives up, unilaterally and irrevocably, the said customs benefits," said another official, Fernando Alvarado.

"What's more, Ecuador offers the United States economic aid of $23 million annually, similar to what we received with the trade benefits, with the intention of providing education about human rights," Alvarado added.

"Ecuador does not accept pressure or threats from anyone, nor does it trade with principles or submit them to mercantile interests, however important those may be."

  Reuters

Good on Ecuador.

Reminding me once again of the 2002 coup in Venezuela when the coup leaders tried to crash the Cuban embassy. The ambassador there replied: “We have resisted the greatest power on the planet for over 40 years and did not let them into our embassy. We will not let you.”

Americans supposedly love it when someone stands up to a bully.

Assange Update

Julian Assange has sought been granted asylum in Ecuador's British embassy where he is now trapped. He will be arrested and extradicted to Sweden if he leaves the embassy. (In case you missed it - ! - he is afraid that Sweden will send him to the US where he rightfully imagines he would be tossed in one of our many gulags and never heard from again.)

Britain is now threatening to remove Ecuador's diplomatic standing and storm the embassy! They would, however, give the embassy a week's notice. Hey, I hear we have drones that are so accurate they can literally go through a chosen window.  >:-| Why not try that? We can remove people's classification as citizens without any notice at all.

This could get interesting. It reminds me of a documentary I saw while in Caracas about the temporary overthrow of Hugo Chavez' government back in 2002. (Forgive me if I've told you this already a hundred times.) The coup leaders decided to dismantle the Cuban embassy at the same time and staged a failed attack on it. A conversation between the Cuban representative and the representative of the illegitimate temporary government of Venezuela inside the embassy was taped during which the Cuban said – and my quote will not be precise, but close - “For more than forty years we have successfully resisted the greatest power on the planet. We did not let them in. We will not let you in.”

Take heart, Ecuador.

UPDATE:  Both Assange and the Ecuadoran embassy have stated that Assange would agree to go to Sweden if he had a promise from Sweden that he would not be extradicted from there to the US. Sweden would not agree.  I guess we know what's going on here.  And Ecuador should expect any US financial aid to dry up.  Even sanctions perhaps.  We shall see.