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Ecuador

Ecuador Endangered

In the last year, the Ecuadorian government has quietly granted mining concessions to over 1.7 million hectares (4.25 million acres) of forest reserves and indigenous territories. These  were awarded to transnational corporations in closed-door deals without public knowledge or consent. This is in direct violation of Ecuadorian law and international treaties, and will decimate headwater ecosystems and biodiversity hotspots of global significance. However, Ecuadorian groups think there is little chance of stopping the concessions using the law unless there is a groundswell of opposition from Ecuadorian society and strong expressions of international concern. The Vice President of Ecuador, who acted as Coordinating Director for the office of ’Strategic Sectors’, which promoted and negotiated these concessions, was jailed for 6 years for corruption. However, this has not stopped the huge giveaway of pristine land to mining companies.

Britain Wants A ‘Way Out’ Of The Julian Assange Standoff

By Julian Assange for The Guardian - Maria Fernanda Espinosa, foreign minister, says UK and Ecuador working on an ‘opening’ Britain is interested in finding a solution to the standoff that has led to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange being holed up in Ecuador’s London embassy for five years, the foreign minister of the South American country has said. In May, Sweden dropped an investigation into rape allegations that led Assange, 45, to seek asylum in the embassy in 2012, but British police said he would still be arrested if he left the building. “The United Kingdom wants a way out, but evidently that is in the hands of the UK justice system, they have their procedures, their ways,” the minister, Maria Fernanda Espinosa, told reporters on Thursday. “This opening has been there, and we are working on it.“ A British court issued an arrest warrant for Assange when he failed to surrender to the court on 29 June, 2012, and the Metropolitan Police Service is compelled to execute that warrant, the London police said in May. Assange, who denies the rape allegations, fears being handed over to the United States to face prosecution over WikiLeaks’ publication of thousands of classified military and diplomatic documents in one of the largest information leaks in US history.

Ecuador Expects ‘Safe Passage’ For Julian Assange

By Jim Wyss for Cuenca High Life. The government of Ecuador on Friday said WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange should be granted safe passage to the South American nation after Swedish authorities dropped their investigation of him. Assange has been holed up in Ecuador’s London embassy for five years avoiding extradition to Sweden where he was wanted for questioning on allegations of sexual assault. Prosecutors eventually interviewed him at the embassy in November. Sweden dropped the investigation on Friday. In a series of tweets, Ecuador Foreign Minister Guillaume Long questioned the delays. “Ecuador regrets that it took Swedish Prosecutor more than four years to carry out this interview. This was a wholly unnecessary delay,” Long wrote.

The Latin American Left Today Global Center For Resistance

By Staff for Telesur. From Brazil to Venezuela there have been radical shifts in the geopolitical landscape of the region. However, Latin America remains a global center for creativity and resistance. Torn between right and left – and dealing with the significant pressures of imperialism and a colonial legacy – popular forces have been fighting for their social rights and progress, making significant strides and remaining vital despite setbacks. Amid this complicated scenario, teleSUR takes a look at the Latin American left of today – from the Indigenous councils to the national assemblies, the urban centers to the rural villages – which continues to stand strong and fight for an integrated, united and socialist future.

Ecuador Shows Why National Sovereignty Is So Important

By Mark Weisbrot for The Hill - National sovereignty is an undervalued asset in today's world, especially by the international media, where the views of Washington and its allies largely prevail. This is true with regard to economic as well as political issues, and its consequences can be quite heavy in a region like Latin America, long regarded by U.S. officials as their backyard. The election in Ecuador is being watched, as well as contested by, forces that have opposing views on this question. On the left, there is the presidential bid of former vice president Lenín Moreno, and his party — which has already won a majority of the Congress — Alianza PAIS (AP).

Ecuador Presidential Hopeful Promises To Evict Julian Assange From Embassy

By Jonathan Watts for The Guardian - Julian Assange will be given a month’s notice to leave the Ecuadorian embassy if the country’s main opposition candidate wins the presidency in next week’s election. In an interview with the Guardian, Guillermo Lasso, of the rightwing Creo-Suma alliance, said it was time for the WikiLeaks founder to move on because his asylum was expensive and no longer justified. “The Ecuadorian people have been paying a cost that we should not have to bear,” he said during an interview in Quito. “We will cordially ask Señor Assange to leave within 30 days of assuming a mandate.” That possibility is still some way off. In the most recent poll, Lasso is seven points behind the ruling party candidate Lenín Moreno, but the former banker has been gaining ground ahead of the first round of voting on 19 February and is widely tipped to force a runoff.

Ecuador’s Indigenous People Take Their Case Against Chevron To Canada

By Yasmin Khan for Counter Punch - With eyes red with fatigue, Pablo Fajardo stood in front of a room of activists in Toronto, Canada explaining the plight of the more than 30,000 indigenous peoples and farmers whose lands in the Ecuadorian Amazon are covered in toxic sludge. Fajardo was presenting evidence that the pollution stems from decades of oil extractions by Chevron-Texaco, one of the world’s largest oil companies. He and his clients are fighting a drawn-out legal battle that is part of a growing list of high-profile cases brought by indigenous communities against extractive industries...

Ecuador’s Raphael Correa: Neoliberalism Has Failed, Not Socialism

By Staff of Tele Sur - Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa rejected the notion that the leftist and revolutionary governments in Latin America have failed and instead posited that the real failure in the region has been the neoliberal economic model. “Inequality in a poor country means misery, generalized misery. We must seek out other forms of developing ourselves that are distinct from those fantasies of trickle-down theories,” said President Correa in an interview Sunday.

Ecuador: Power From Below Despite Great Adversity

By CROAR for Roar Magazine. It is a well-known fact that, unfortunately, in natural disasters the ones most affected are always the common people, the same people who suffer disproportionately from the calamities of capitalism. It seems as if the impact of the imbalance between nature and human beings — an imbalance caused by a predatory economic system — falls on the shoulders of the most humble and those least responsible for provoking it, given their limited access to material and consumer goods. Apparently, the lower social strata are more harshly affected by natural and human disasters, including the burden of sustaining the system that dominates them with their labor — and not only that. Most soldiers and policemen — the ones who defend those above — stem from a similar background.

The US Returns To Latin America

By Vijay Prashad for the Hindu and Counterpunch. The financial crisis of 2007-08 dented China’s economy and saw the slow deterioration of commodity prices. It took a few years for the economic impact to strike Latin America with ferocity. A sharp tumble in oil prices in the summer of 2008 put the brakes on many of the social programmes that had become essential to the Bolivarian dynamic. It signalled the weakness in the experiment against Western domination. President Barack Obama’s administration focussed intently on Latin America. Opportunity struck with the 2009 coup in Honduras against the Left-wing government of Manuel Zelaya. Mr. Obama recognised the new military-backed government. It opened the door to a more aggressive stance vis-à-vis Latin American states. The presidency of Peru’s Ollanta Humala (2011) and the second presidency of Chile’s Michelle Bachelet (2014) — both ostensibly of the Left — hastily drew in cabinet members vetted by the bankers and made their peace with the hegemony of the U.S. Chávez’s death in 2012 meant that the Bolivarians lost their most charismatic champion. The impact of the Honduran coup and Chávez’s death had made itself felt along the spine of Latin America. The U.S., it was being said, is back.

Newsletter: The Unfolding Story Of Latin America

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers for Popular Resistance. Latin America has been a key battleground in the conflict between neo-liberal capitalism and US hegemony against the growing people power that is demanding a more equitable economy that builds from the bottom up and is more democratic. Venezuela has been the focal point of the campaign against the progressive cycle. The amnesty bill shows the extreme actions the US and oligarchs are willing to take to wrest power from the people and return it to the wealthy business interests. The wealthy have made progress in some key countries leading to people ask whether the progressive cycle has come to an end and what lies ahead for the region.

Is South America’s ‘Progressive Cycle’ At An End?

By Claudio Katz for Venezuelanalysis. The progressive cycle arose in popular rebellions that brought down neoliberal governments (Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina) or eroded their continuity (Brazil, Uruguay). These uprisings modified the power relations but did not alter South America's economic insertion in the international division of labour. On the contrary, in a decade of rising prices for raw materials all countries reinforced their status as exporters of primary products. The right-wing governments (Sebastián Piñera in Chile, Álvaro Uribe-Juan Manuel Santos in Colombia, Vicente Fox-Enrique Peña Nieto in Mexico) used the foreign exchange bonanza to consolidate the model based on openness to free trade and privatizations. The centre-left administrations (Néstor and Cristina Kirchner in Argentina, Inácio Lula da Silva-Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, Tabaré Vázquez-José “Pepe” Mujica in Uruguay, Rafael Correa in Ecuador) promoted increased internal consumption, subsidies to local business owners and social welfare programs.

Correcting Propaganda: Ecuador, China, Indigenous & The Amazon

By Stansfield Smith for Counter Punch - The end of January a news article appeared, “Ecuador To Sell A Third Of Its Amazon Rainforest To Chinese Oil Companies,” and has resurfaced again and again on the internet. Posted on progressive websites such as Reader Supported News, Daily Kos, “The PeoplesVoice.org,” “ThinkGlobalGreen.org,” the story often comes with maps of the affected area, and include pictures of indigenous peoples living peaceably with nature or protesting against oil drilling.

Leftist Network Calls For Unity Against Neoliberalism

By Staff of Telesur. Quito, Ecuador - Representatives of a newly-founded network promoting regional integration and sovereignty has called on countries of Latin America and the Caribbean to unite to confront the threat of neoliberalism in the region. The Parliamentary Network for Latin American and Caribbean Sovereignty and Unity, officially founded earlier this week at the CELAC Summit in Quito, Ecuador, by lawmakers from 17 countries in the region, stressed the importance of unity to protect progressive achievements in the face of a right-wing resurgence and the “threat of a neoliberal agenda” in the region. Ecuadorean National Assembly Chief Gabriela Rivadeneira presented the new Parliamentary Network’s manifesto on Thursday to the newly elected pro-tempore presidency of CELAC, Dominican President Danilo Medina.

Ecuador’s Citizens’ Revolution: Retaking Power From Old Elites

By Staff for Telesur. President Rafael Correa marks nine years in office Jan. 15, 2016, having overseen the transformation of Ecuador. It will be his last full year in power after his recent decision not to stand again. Correa will go down in history as one of the most successful Ecuadorean presidents. Ecuador before Correa was defined by its political and economic instability, with seven presidents forced out of office in a decade. Neoliberal measures applied by previous administrations left the country one of the poorest and least-developed in the region, but the government of Rafael Correa has undertaken a series of deep reforms, which have delivered remarkable changes for Ecuador's long-excluded majority. President Rafael Correa said in 2014, “People must prevail over capital,” adding that politics is about whose interest governments serve: “Elites or the majority? Capital or humankind? The market or society? Policies and programs depend on who holds the balance of power."
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