Ecuador: fight for the right to abortion

While President Correa shames himself and all the Left claiming that he will step down if abortion is legalized in Ecuador, a dozen women protested in Parliament FEMEN-style for its legalization. 

The President of the Ecuadorean Parliament, Roxana Alvarado, impeded that police evicted them saying: "gentlemen of the public force, we have not requested your intervention". 

She added: this is a public space and demonstration is allowed, I request that the public force retreats and let them demonstrate in freedom. 

In Ecuador abortion is only allowed for women with severe mental problems, less than 1% of the population. 

Meanwhile the Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa has strongly tied himself to the reactionary fundamentalist Christian dogma by advancing that he won't sign such legislation and even blackmailing his own coalition Alianza País with his resignation if the law is passed. 

Correa accused the MPs of his own party who support freedom of abortion of "disloyalty" and by the moment he has achieved that Paola Pabón retired her proposal to legalize abortion. 

Shame on you, Correa!

Ecuador accuses the UK of violating international law in Assange case

The government of Ecuador, in whose embassy is refuged Julian Assange, accuses the United Kingdom of violating international law and the human rights of the journalist by not granting him a safe-conduct. 

Assange has been besieged by UK forces in the Embassy of Ecuador since almost a year ago. 

Source: Webguerrillero[es].

Spain sued before European Human Rights Court for its draconian foreclosure policy

The accuser is the Ombudsman of the Republic of Ecuador, Ramiro Rivadeneira, who considers (correctly) that the laws and regulations of this practice in Spain are against the most basic human rights.

Spain is one of the few countries in the World that allows a mortgage debt to persist even after the foreclosure has been completed. This is used by banks to their benefit, purchasing the foreclosed homes at half price and keeping therefore citizens in debt bondage forever.

This does not affect only Spaniards but also foreign residents, and it is in defense of an Ecuadorean who demanded giving the home back in payment for his debt, as happens in most countries, that the South American Ombudsman is acting for.

Source: Madrid Rebelde[es].

Is Monti a "technocrat" or rather a "fundamentalist" who is dooming Italy?

From New Economic Perspectives:

Why is the failed Monti a “technocrat” and the successful Correa a “left-leaning economist”?

By William K. Black
(Cross posted at Benzinga.com)

The New York Times produces profiles of national leaders like Italy’s Mario Monti and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa.  I invite readers to contrast the worshipful treatment accorded Monti with the Correa profile.  The next time someone tells you the NYT is a “leftist” paper you can show them how far right it is on financial issues.

The NYT’s slant in describing Monti as a “technocrat” and Correa as a “left-leaning economist” is typical of the dominant media.  Monti and Correa both have doctorates in economics from U.S. universities and both have been professors of economics.  

Why does the NYT treat Monti reverentially and Correa dismissively?

There are a series of factors that the U.S. media normally uses to judge relative merit among those with elite qualifications and national leaders.  The media normally values most highly national leaders who demonstrate:

1. A track record of success
2. Courage and leadership in making the tough decisions that produce success
3. Rising from humble circumstances through hard work and self-sacrifice
4. Repeated success in democratic elections
5. Dedication to the interests of those with the greatest needs rather than to the wealthy
6. Bold, innovative policies

A track record of success

Readers of the Monti and Correa profiles would not be able to judge their relative success as economists and national leaders, but that is not because the facts are not readily available.  Under Monti, Italy’s economy sank back into a serious recession because of the self-destructive austerity policies that Monti strongly supported.  

(...)

Correa’s track record is one of dramatic success.  Ecuador did not fall into recession even when the financial crisis caused the Great Recession.  This was a remarkable achievement, for Ecuador uses the dollar as its currency, has extensive trade with the U.S., and was harmed greatly by the fall in oil prices in 2008.  Since 2008, Ecuador has demonstrated fairly robust growth of real GDP, substantially reduced unemployment, reduced poverty, and established a far more effective safety net to reduce misery for the poor.  Unemployment in Ecuador (4.6%) is less than half of Italy’s rate (11.1%).  Unemployment in Ecuador has been falling under Correa while it has risen in Italy under Monti.

 

Correa inherited a more crippling debt crisis than did Monti.  He used his skills as an economist to devise a default on that debt and a buy-back of the debt at a dramatically discounted rate.  He did all of this while producing robust growth.

(...)

... read full article at New Economic Perspectives.

UK threatens to break in Ecuador's embassy

Downing Street claims that, under British law, a week advance notice would be enough to strip the embassy from diplomatic immunity. However such an assault would be almost unprecedented.

For example many North Korean refugees use the principle of (relative) extraterritoriality of embassies to gain asylum after reaching China. China does not assault embassies for that reason. Similarly Honduras did not assault the Brazilian embassy when legitimate President Manuel Zelaya used it as safe platform to gain back access to the country after the military coup.

Recent history is full of examples of not assaulting embassies on political refugees' crisis. So why would the United Kingdom circumvent this diplomatic principle in order to arrest someone who is accused of sex without condom? 

This kind of attitude only adds weight to the claims by Julian Assange that he is the victim of political persecution and not a common case of sexual misdemeanor. 

As you may know the defense of Assange claims that neither Britain nor Sweden nor much less his home state, Australia, guarantee his rights and that all them will probably end extraditing him to the United States where his human rights would be severely violated on emergency laws, with even risk of summary execution, never mind torture. 

Ref. Reuters.

Update:

Ecuador finally granted political asylum to Julian Assange after procrastinating on the matter for two months. The formal reason is that Assange risks being extradited to the USA, where his human rights would not be guaranteed. 

The United Kingdom has previously extradited even its own citizens to the USA, state with whom Great Britain has an unsymmetrical extradition treaty (the UK extradites its own citizens to the USA but not vice versa) which effectively makes it a vassal state at the same level of Colombia. 

It is unclear if Sweden or Australia could extradite Assange to the USA as well. 

Ref. Público[es].

Amazon basin way to many and way too big reservoirs threaten the Amazon basin itself

From Everyone (PLoS ONE community blog)

Note: the Public Library of Science (PLoS) is a leading open access (free) scientific publisher and PLoS ONE is their lead magazine (the 21st century's Nature, so to say).

Although the nationally celebrated Earth Day has just passed, it’s important to consider our impact on the environment every day.  In their recently published article “Proliferation of Hydroelectric Dams in the Andean Amazon and Implications for Andes-Amazon Connectivity,” authors Matt Finer and Clinton N. Jenkins highlight a constant environmental concern; meeting the world’s growing energy demands. Finer and Jenkins developed a strategic ecological impact assessment of planned dams from the Andes to the Amazon. Their findings point to the need for this kind of heightened environmental awareness every day.

Abstract

Due to rising energy demands and abundant untapped potential, hydropower projects are rapidly increasing in the Neotropics. This is especially true in the wet and rugged Andean Amazon, where regional governments are prioritizing new hydroelectric dams as the centerpiece of long-term energy plans. However, the current planning for hydropower lacks adequate regional and basin-scale assessment of potential ecological impacts. This lack of strategic planning is particularly problematic given the intimate link between the Andes and Amazonian flood plain, together one of the most species rich zones on Earth. We examined the potential ecological impacts, in terms of river connectivity and forest loss, of the planned proliferation of hydroelectric dams across all Andean tributaries of the Amazon River. Considering data on the full portfolios of existing and planned dams, along with data on roads and transmission line systems, we developed a new conceptual framework to estimate the relative impacts of all planned dams. There are plans for 151 new dams greater than 2 MW over the next 20 years, more than a 300% increase. These dams would include five of the six major Andean tributaries of the Amazon. Our ecological impact analysis classified 47% of the potential new dams as high impact and just 19% as low impact. Sixty percent of the dams would cause the first major break in connectivity between protected Andean headwaters and the lowland Amazon. More than 80% would drive deforestation due to new roads, transmission lines, or inundation. We conclude with a discussion of three major policy implications of these findings. 1) There is a critical need for further strategic regional and basin scale evaluation of dams. 2) There is an urgent need for a strategic plan to maintain Andes-Amazon connectivity. 3) Reconsideration of hydropower as a low-impact energy source in the Neotropics.

Spanish Police kills Ecuadorian man

The Citizen Watchtower for the Control of Police reports (via Infomiranda and Sare Antifaxista) of a death in an incident in which police attacked some Ecuadorian immigrants at a local football match in Miranda de Ebro (formally Castile but historically akin to the Basque Country and a major riot police base for use in Basque territory mostly). 

The victim, a man aged 45, was pushed in the attack and fell hit the corner of a sidewalk, dying on the spot. Another person who was filming with a mobile phone was also attacked and the telephone robbed.

The Citizen Watchtower for the Control of Police (Observatorio Ciudadno por el Control de la Policía) denounce that these aggressions are not anything new but that since a person has been killed, they demand a throughout investigation. 

Petition that will surely remain unheard, mind you.

Ecuador offers assylum to Assange

The vice-chancellor of Ecuador, Jacinto Lucas, declared that his country would set course to a hypothetical asylum request by persecuted founder of Wikileaks, J. Assange, against whom an Interpol notice has been issued irregularly (as there is no country yet where he has been charged for anything). (Source: Tercera Información[es])

He would not be the first person persecuted by the every day more totalitarian USA which finds asylum in  Latin America. This is also the case of persecuted Ground Zero videographer Kurt Sonnefeld who had to find refuge in Argentina after he revealed he had incriminating evidence against the USA in th 9/11 self-attack.

[Update: Al Jazeera reports that President Correa has rebutted his minister Lucas on this matter, saying that his offer has not yet been approved by either the Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño or the President]

It is becoming difficult to obtain the raw information anymore, as Wikileaks is being subject to a sustained DDOS attack and the five media which have been privileged with advance knowledge of the cables are not publishing them properly (that is at least the case with The Guardian, which I early used as reference).

However I must mention here the cable from the Tegucigalpa (Honduras) embassy where it is set clear that the 2009 coup was a clear coup (totally illegitimate in motivation and procedure). You can read an Spanish translation at La Haine.

Update: Wikileaks is now more or less reachable. The Tegucigalpa embassy document I mentioned above can be read here in the original English version. Excerpt:

4. (C) In our view, none of the above arguments has any 
substantive validity under the Honduran constitution.  Some 
are outright false.  Others are mere supposition or ex-post 
rationalizations of a patently illegal act.  Essentially: 
 
-- the military had no authority to remove Zelaya from the 
country; 
 
-- Congress has no constitutional authority to remove a 
Honduran president; 
 
-- Congress and the judiciary removed Zelaya on the basis 
of a hasty, ad-hoc, extralegal, secret, 48-hour process; 
 
-- the purported "resignation" letter was a fabrication and 
was not even the basis for Congress's action of June 28; 
and 
 
-- Zelaya's arrest and forced removal from the country 
violated multiple constitutional guarantees, including the 
prohibition on expatriation, presumption of innocence and 
right to due process. 

Ecuador coup fails

I must say that I was, it seems, mislead yesterday night when reading about the coup attempt in Ecuador. The information from Al Jazeera talked of budget cuts and divisions in the ruling party, Alianza PAIS. 

All that seems nothing but an intoxication: there were no budget cuts planned nor there is any apparent division within the party. It was merely a coup by police forces. The details will surely be clarified as the day goes on. 

I feel ashamed to have been victim of an intoxication and of having issued  unwarranted opinions that I must now retract on light of what actually seems to have happened. I should be smarter and more cautious, specially in such a confuse situation. 

Still it seems valuable lessons can be learnt. Always double-check, read alternative information sources, and specially don't issue opinions when you have no idea of what is actually going on. Also Al Jazeera is anyhow just another mainstream media and, as such, subject to manipulations, intentional or unconsciously. 

What did actually happen?

According to Eva Gollinger, both police and army have been for some time infiltrated by US agents, who have manipulated the police particularly. Radio del Sur also reports that at least two opposition politicians from Sociedad Patriótica helped to create the informative confusion. Even the indigenous movement Pachakutik was manipulated in making calls against Correa's supposed authoritarianism.

The effect was a mutiny of some police forces, who suddenly (too suddenly) feared from their salaries, at least that was the pretext and what probably moved many of the agents. President Correa risked his life trying to address the mutinied troops but was attacked, hit and gassed, being then brought to a military hospital. Police then took the hospital and kept him kidnapped for 11 hours. 

Meanwhile the streets of Quito, the capital, became chaos, with the civilian population apparently going en masse to the streets to defend democracy and the President. The information is still confuse but it seems that the army finally intervened to rescue Correa, what the eventually achieved after a shooting. No figures of victims are known yet. 

The police chief, Freddy Martínez, who apparently tried to force policemen from mutinying, has resigned. Correa and the general attorney have promised punishment for those involved in what now seems clearly a coup attempt.

La Haine reports on the details of the coup:

11:30 (Ecuador time, 16:30 GMT) The coup happens. Correa is injured and police attempts to take the hospital. Denounciation of former president Gutiérrez as the one behind the attempt are already known. Mutinied police are in control of military base no. 1 of Quito, military complicity is suspected. From Venezuela, Chávez calls to support Correa.


13:30 First fatal victim is reported in police shooting against pro-democracy demonstrators. Thousands mass up around where the President is kidnapped.

17:15 Demonstrators finally breach the police belt around the hospital where Correa is kept.

Several injured and one dead (same one as before?) reported by indiscriminate police shooting.

18:15 Lucio Gutiérrez' attorney, Pablo Guerrero, leads the assault against public TV, which failed.

19:30 The President of the Amazonian Parliament, Eddy Gómez, denounces the USA as being behind the coup, comparing it with the one in Honduras last year.

19:40 Alba TV denounces again the USA being behind. Some names are mentioned: Philip Agee, former CIA agent in Ecuador, Martha Youth, press aggregate in the US embassy in Quito, and Ecuadoran general Mario Pazmiño, deposed because of not revealing the intelligence behind the attack against the FARC's peace camp in Ecuador's territory in 2008.

19:45 Police keeps shooting and charging against civilian demonstrators.

19:55 Police shot gas canisters force demonstrators to retreat but not too far. Some policemen repress in civilian clothes with masks. Fires are light.

20:10 Venezuelan President Chávez calls for the mobilization of the Venezuelan people against the coup, making an appeal to arm the people.

20:20 People again reach near the hospital's gate. One person is hit by a gas canister shot directly against his face.

20:40 The massive use of gases by the police causes many to faint for lack of oxygen. Ambulances arrive but are blocked by police. Military forces arrive, nobody knows yet what side they will take.

20:52 Six military trucks march against the hospital surrounded by civilians. Shootings happen.


20:59 Some 200 soldiers march on their feet supporting the trucks. Shooting continues. A young man is injured.

21:04 Soldiers finally enter the hospital. Shooting declines.

21:10 More soldiers arrive. Some 100 of them plus some civilians march against the hospital. A soldier has been injured.

21:21 Shooting continues. At least eight soldiers are injured. More people arrives but police keeps shooting, preventing them from approaching.

21:27 President Correa finally leaves the building escorted by soldiers and boards a military vehicle. Shooting intensifies.

21:35 Soldier numbers grow, they already control three floors but police resistance continues. Correa is reported in good health.

21:42 Rafael Correa addresses the people from the balcony of the Presidential Palace.

22:04 Correa confirms that the coupists are aligned with Gutiérrez. Laments dead and asks for a minute of silence.

22:12 Shootings continue at the hospital. People asked for weapons to the soldiers but these declined. Finally the troops made the civilians retire and finish the takeover on their own (unclear details). A lot of injured reported in all sides.

22:50 Analyst Carlos Fazio denounces that, besides the Police, part of the Air Force took part in the coup, taking the international airport. Part of the Army was also involved, he said, but finally commanders realized that they had not enough support to carry the coup ahead.

23:45 (4:45 GMT) President Correa speaks in TV, denouncing that the police mutiny was not caused by any pay issues but by a conspiration. He says that the coup will leave scars that will take much time to heal.