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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsEcuador: Media Distorting Our Words. We're Pulling Out of US Trade Agreement. Offer US Economic Aid
Published: June 27, 2013 | 9:34 GMT
The Foreign Minister of Ecuador, Ricardo Patiño, said some media distorted his statements on the time necessary to consider the Latin American country not to grant political asylum to the CIA excolaborador Edward Snowden.
Journalists referring to Patino reported that Ecuador would take more than two months to review Snowden's application. "In Kuala Lumpur I stated that the decision of asylum could be resolved in a day, in a week or, as happened with Assange, could take two months. The media removed the first part of the statement and left only the second. They're trying to cause confusion, as we already know," Patiño wrote in his Twitter account.
http://actualidad.rt.com/ultima_hora/view/98552-patino-medios-distorsionar-asilo-snowden
And another thing
Ecuador can't currently grant asylum to #Snowden, obstacle that he's not on its soil - officials http://on.rt.com/agi12q
12:44 GMT: Ecuador says it has not processed Snowdens asylum request because he has not reached any of its diplomatic premises.
Fascinating stuff from #Ecuador in response to #US #Snowden #trade threats: they've dropped #ATPDEA rather than having US revoke it. Astute.
Ecuador's Secretary of Communication announced that Ecuador renounces the US preferential trade agreement (Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act) and offers economic aid to the US
Secretario de Comunicación anuncia que #Ecuador renuncia a preferencias arancelarias #ATPDEA y ofrece una ayuda económica a EE.UU.
GAWD the US government and its lackeys are fucking tone deaf. Latin America made it clear it's SICK of the US drug war, and the US held that agreement over its head? After all the ALBA countries had already publicly pledged to kick out the USAID? And that they were SICK of being called (John Kerry that was you recently) and treated as America's backyard? Who's running this show?
Published June 27, 2013
Associated Press
QUITO, Ecuador Ecuador's communications minister says the country is renouncing trade preferences that are up for U.S. congressional renewal.
It comes as Ecuador considers the asylum request of NSA leaker Edward Snowden, which has prompted critics in the U.S. to suggest retaliation against the South American country.
Minister Fernando Alvarado told a news conference Thursday the benefits were originally granted for help in the fight against drugs but have become "an instrument of blackmail." He said "Ecuador unilaterally and irrevocably renounces said preferences."
...
Alvarez said his country won't bow "to mercantile interests, as important as they may be."
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/06/27/ecuador-renounces-renewed-trade-benefits-from-us-congress/
Through his Twitter account the president (Correa) stressed that the Washington Post had "accused" Ecuador of having double standards.
They have managed to focus on Snowden (an ex-intelligence agent who fled the United States) and the "evil" countries that "support" him, making us forget the terrible actions he denounced against the U.S. people and the whole world, he expressed on Twitter.
"The world order is not only unjust, it is immoral," stressed the president.
...
The Ecuadorian government puts principles above its interests, said Foreign Affairs Minister Ricardo Patiño in a press conference from Vietnam where he was on an official visit.
http://www.plenglish.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1552231&Itemid=1
In a deliberately cheeky touch from the leftist government of President Rafael Correa, Ecuador also offered a multimillion donation for human rights training in the United States.
...
"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.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/27/us-usa-security-ecuador-idUSBRE95Q0L820130627
Update with video
ProSense
(116,464 posts)http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023107941
karynnj
(59,475 posts)I suspect he may be in Russian airport longer than anyone would want to be.
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)they can move him direct to their Embassy in a diplomatic car.
Zorra
(27,670 posts)Words I would dearly love to hear a US president say.
K&R
Catherina
(35,568 posts)and Correa has been creating jobs, pulling people out of poverty into homes and security.
Will we ever learn that people need to be put ahead of capital for a society to grow?
I just added and love this part:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/27/us-usa-security-ecuador-idUSBRE95Q0L820130627
Ikonoklast
(23,973 posts)So easily fooled by autocrats, just as long as they mumble vaguely leftist rhetoric and hate the U.S.
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)Junkdrawer
(27,993 posts)Bacchus4.0
(6,837 posts)Importers will turn to Colombia, Chile, and Peru to buy the products as they have free trade agreements with the US.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/27/us-usa-security-ecuador-idUSBRE95Q0L820130627
I guess that's to down play his country's own abuses (http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3110238) and the benefits of the agreement.
In Washington, the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has threatened to lead the effort to remove preferential trade treatment for Ecuadorian goods if the country decides to offer asylum to Snowden.
"Edward Snowden is a fugitive who has endangered the national security of the United States," Sen. Robert Menendez said in a statement released late on Wednesday. "Trade preferences are a privilege granted to nations, not a right. I urge (Ecuadorean) President Correa to do the right thing by the United States and Ecuador, and deny Snowden's request for asylum."
In 2012, Ecuador exported some $5.4 billion worth of oil, $166 million of cut flowers, $122 million of fruits and vegetables and $80 million of tuna to the United States.
Menendez said he would lead efforts to stop the renewal of Ecuador's duty-free access to America markets under the Generalized System of Preferences program, which expires on July 31. He also said he'd try and block renewal of the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act, which also expires at the end of July.
- more -
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/27/19166043-obama-not-scrambling-jets-to-get-nsa-leaker-snowden
Catherina
(35,568 posts)This country has already been dragged through the mud for sheltering Julian Assange, and it is willing to stand up to the US
Mark Weisbrot
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 27 June 2013 12.00 BST
...
The media took advantage of the fact that most of the world knows very little about Ecuador to misinform their audience that this government "represses the media". The same efforts are already under way in the Snowden case. Without defending everything that exists in Ecuador, including criminal libel laws and some vague language in a new communications law, anyone who has been to the country knows that the international media has presented a gross caricature of the state of press freedom there. The Ecuadorian private media is more oppositional than that of the US, trashing the government every day.
...
The great irony is not that Snowden should enlist help from Ecuador, or even Russia and China for that matter, in escaping political persecution. Has any journalist or human rights advocate criticised the thousands of Salvadoran refugees who escaped US-sponsored murder and repression in the late 1970s and 80s by fleeing to the United States, "the world's greatest purveyor of violence," as Martin Luther King once described it?
...
Washington would almost certainly retaliate against Ecuador for granting asylum to Snowden. In addition to commercial sanctions, there are possible covert actions. In 2010 there was a coup attempt against Correa; although there is no direct evidence of US involvement, the police who led the uprising had a long relationship with US officials, including funding. Many in Ecuador's government believe that Washington was involved, and if it wasn't, this would be the first coup attempt in at least 60 years against a left-wing government in Latin America that Washington had nothing to do with.
...
If Washington is ultimately forced to respect international law in this case, it will be because many countries, most strikingly in South America, no longer fear US retaliation. Since Snowden did a huge public service by revealing government wrongdoing, this is another example of how US citizens contrary to what our media tells us every day actually benefit from the development of a more multipolar world.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/27/ecuador-ideal-refuge-edward-snowden
ProSense
(116,464 posts)By David Weigel
<...>
But why Ecuador? First, the country has an enviably loopholed extradition treaty with the United States. Outlaws wanted for offenses "of a political character" can dodge extradition. The oh-so-bright American senators who rushed to call Snowden a "traitor" have certainly created the impression that Snowden is wanted for political reasons, and in his interviews he's happy to reinforce this.
Second, the ruling regime in Ecuador doesn't really care what America thinks. In 2006 the country gave its presidency to Rafael Correa. A fan and ally of Hugo Chavez, Correa reversed decades of Ecuadorian kowtowing to the United States by declaring the national debt illegitimate and defaulting on the country's bonds. A country that had adopted* the U.S. dollar as a default currency had sparked a nationalist debt revoltand it sort of won. Correa, never as colorful as Chavez, still consolidated power and won a landslide re-election. Giving asylum to people who make America look weak, and spill its secrets, is easy politics for him.
The result: Snowden, avoiding extradition, is on a world tour of regimes generally more hostile to press and information freedom than the United States is. At the moment he's less concerned with irony than with avoiding jail.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/06/23/why_ecuador.html
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)The shaded area was sold to China this spring.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)Because that's what Ecuador did--sold about 20% of its land mass to Chinese oil companies, who'll have free reign to massacre the indigenous tribes there and ruin the ecosystems.
We buy Chinese goods.
China bought Ecuador.
There's a difference.
Correa is given a free pass on this around here because he's a leftist.
former9thward
(31,805 posts)China doesn't need to buy states. The Chinese finance our spending and if we ever stopped using Chinese goods our inflation rate would go to the sky. The government would not have the cheap Chinese products to keep the rate low so they don't have to pay people on SS any COLAs.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)like India, the Phillippines etc.
China holds less than 7% of US national debt, and it only holds that much due to complications in repatriating foreign currencies earned.
Ikonoklast
(23,973 posts)You got it backwards.
Until China develops a much larger internal market for products they produce, for them it is "Export Or Die".
Who controls your destiny as a business? Your biggest customer does.
former9thward
(31,805 posts)The U.S. made a weak protest. I don't think I have it backwards.
Ikonoklast
(23,973 posts)under Chinese control.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)of Amazonian rainforest he auctioned off to Chinese oil companies so they can destroy entire ecosystems.
"We in Ecuador proclaim that we don't belong to the United States. Ecuador belongs to China!"
former9thward
(31,805 posts)Snowden is now responsible for destroying the ecology of Ecuador.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)Bacchus4.0
(6,837 posts)from your link:
An OPEC nation of 15 million people, Ecuador exported $5.4 billion worth of oil, $166 million of cut flowers, $122 million of fruits and vegetables and $80 million of tuna to the United States under the Andean trade program in 2012.
Termination of the benefits could hurt the cut flower industry, which has blossomed under the program and employs more than 100,000 workers, many of them women.
Critics of Correa say Ecuador's embrace of Assange - and now possibly Snowden - is hypocritical given what they say is his authoritarian style and suppression of media at home.
Supporters of Correa say he has simply taken on media and business elites who were trying to erode what the president calls his "Citizens' Revolution."
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)So, he recognizes he can't serve two masters.
railsback
(1,881 posts)According to the U.S. trade site, Ecuador currently exports, on average, $600 million per month to the U.S., while the U.S. exports around $1 billion to Ecuador. Already over $12 billion in debt, which is massive to a tiny country of 15 million, what exactly would be the point of cutting off your populous from a very lucrative trade deal that benefits a good chunk of Ecuador?? And then offering up $23 million in aid you don't have to combat human rights violations while you're silencing your own opposition through government force? LoL.
I still believe Correa isn't an idiot, and I hope for Ecuador's sake, I'm not wrong.
limpyhobbler
(8,244 posts)byeya
(2,842 posts)and has not begun to clean up the death trap they left behind.
"Unlike the Exxon Valdez disaster that spilled over a million gallons of crude during a one time cataclysmic event, Texaco's oil extraction system in Ecuador was designed, built, and operated on the cheap using substandard technology from the outset. This led to extreme, systematic pollution and exposure to toxins from multiple sources on a daily basis for almost three decades.
In a rainforest area roughly three times the size of Manhattan, Texaco carved out 350 oil wells, and upon leaving the country in 1992, left behind some 1,000 open toxic waste pits. Many of these pits leak into the water table or overflow in heavy rains, polluting rivers and streams that 30,000 people depend on for drinking, cooking, bathing and fishing. Texaco also dumped more than 18 billion gallons of toxic and highly saline "formation waters," a byproduct of the drilling process, into the rivers of the Oriente. At the height of Texaco's operations, the company was dumping an estimated 4 million gallons of formation waters per day, a practice outlawed in major US oil producing states like Louisiana, Texas, and California decades before the company began operations in Ecuador in 1967. By handling its toxic waste in Ecuador in ways that were illegal in its home country, Texaco saved an estimated $3 per barrel of oil produced."
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)Catherina
(35,568 posts)Fire Walk With Me
(38,893 posts)Ichingcarpenter
(36,988 posts)nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)S
This is from the Foreigns affairs head, Patiño...there goes the he is not at transit lounge theory ongoing. I mean, what could he know?