Think you can take this guy, motherfuckers? Rafael Correa says “Make my day, punk”:
The president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, said today that there is an alleged plot by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to prevent his re-election in the presidential elections, to be held on February 17, 2013.
The head of state denounced the matter by way of his Twitter account, referring to an article published on a blog by the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray.
“British ex-ambassador says the CIA has plans to topple Rafael Correa,” wrote the president.
According to Craig Murray’s blog, the CIA has invested 87 million US dollars into its efforts to sink the Ecuadorian president.
Following the Venezuelan presidential elections of October 7, in which Hugo Chávez was re-elected president for the third time, the Pentagon tripled its budget for influencing the Ecuadorian elections, writes Murray.
“This will find its way into opposition campaign coffers and be used to fund, bribe or blackmail media and officials. Expect a number of media scandals and corruption stings against Correa’s government in the next few weeks,” added the former British diplomat.
Craig Murray maintains that the State Department was surprised by the triumph of Hugo Chávez in the last Venezuelan elections.
He adds: “I do not have much background on Ecuadorean politics and I really do not know what Correa’s chances of re-election are. Neither do I know if any of the opposition parties are decent and not in the hands of the USA. But I do know that the USA very much want Correa to lose, were very confident that he was going to lose, and now are not.”
According to US sources cited by Murray, the administration of president Barack Obama will not use those funds to foment another coup against Correa. “That has apparently been ruled out.”
In the event of a pro-US leader coming to power in Ecuador, the asylum granted by Correa’s government to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange could be cancelled, the ex-diplomat said.
“[T]he Metropolitan Police [could be] invited in to the Embassy of Ecuador to remove him, and Assange sent immediately to Sweden from where he could be extradited to the United States to face charges of espionage and aiding terrorism.”
Assange has been taking refuge since last June in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, following a request for political asylum, which Quito granted near the end of last August.
The Australian applied for asylum in Ecuador to avoid being extradited to Sweden, where the authorities have laid claim to him over accusations of sexual assault, which he denies.
Assange fears that this would be a step towards extraditing him to the United States, where he would be tried for espionage or sentenced to death for publishing thousands of secret diplomatic cables on his website.
Translation mine. Linkage to Craig Murray’s blog added.
Incidentally, Craig Murray says it’s the UK’s coalition government that is the main reason why the US hasn’t extradited Julian Assange from London yet. They are too divided amongst themselves to arrive at a consensus regarding Assange. An interesting theory, but it can’t be the only reason; I suspect that the real problem is not so much getting the UK government to hand over the pesky Aussie (I’m sure they’d be only too glad to get him out of their hair!), but rather the need to prove that the US have a claim to him. That means having to prove that he actually committed espionage on someone else’s behalf. A tall order, since there is not a shred of evidence that he was working for any foreign government or terror group. And the Swedes have already made it clear that they don’t want him, either. They don’t even want to question him; they already have, and they let him go! They are, however, less divided and more docile than the UK government, and so more likely to hand him over to the US even without demonstration of probable cause. (Those rape charges? Might as well have gone poof. We’ll never see him prosecuted on those, bet on it.)
Meanwhile, under Correa, Ecuador has enjoyed previously unheard-of political stability and economic progress, and even is making some encouraging noises on the environmental front. Meaning, Big Oil, with its extensive CIA ties (and these go way back, right to the agency’s successful coup against Mossadegh in Iran, if not earlier) has a vested interest in seeing him toppled for their own benefit. Even if Julian Assange airing all their dirty laundry via Wikileaks weren’t an issue, Rafael Correa insisting that they pay fair prices for Ecuadorian oil (and cough up for the clean-up of all the rainforests they’ve fouled) would still be a major thorn in their collective side.
So yeah, Craig Murray’s analysis is right on the money insofar as his prediction that there will be a lot of dirty tricks on the opposition side of the electoral campaign. And the Ecuadorian private media, too; we already know from how they behaved during the coup attempt what bag those cats come out of. Expect a big hue and cry from the IAPOA about supposed interference with “press freedom”, and nary a word about how fascist, and beholden to foreign interests, that “free” press actually is.
And not a word about the press freedom of Wikileaks, either.
