MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Wikileaks knocks out second US ambassador in Latam: this time in Ecuador
Ecuador is expelling the U.S. ambassador over a 2009 diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks in which the diplomat accused the country’s former police chief of corruption. Read full article
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Disclaimer & comment rules“According to the paper, Hodges says the commander should be stripped of his U.S. visa, alleging he used his position to commit financial crimes, facilitate human trafficking and obstruct investigations of corrupt colleagues.”
Apr 06th, 2011 - 11:56 am - Link - Report abuse 0Human Traffiking is against the law and automatically denies individuals rights to enter the USA.
So Ecuador sacks the ambassador rather than the Police Chief . . . . . . always easier to 'shoot the messanger'.
Equally: “the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Carlos Pascual, resigned after a leaked cable showed that the diplomat doubted the Mexican government's ability to combat that nation's drug war.”
This is exactly the sort of information any good ambassador is employed to communicate to his country. This is why countries have ambassadors.
Though I don't have much doubt about this report and it's facts,.. what scares me is that Wikileaks rules foreign policy now. No one seems to talk about this or Wikileaks agenda. It is also important to note, that at any time in the future, Wikileaks can “wag the dog's tail.”
Apr 06th, 2011 - 12:59 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Ptolemy #2,
Apr 06th, 2011 - 08:33 pm - Link - Report abuse 0perhaps the USA is thinking to hold leakers incommunicado, in a state of unspoken, permanent torture, without trial, for the rest of those persons' lives.
It got good practice with Guantanamo and at Abu Ghraibe.
It would certainly discourage future american leakers.
But it does behove all other countries to do the same to their first miscreants, in order to shut the door firmly on such behaviour worldwide.
Only then can we get back to work with our back-channels of communication safe and sound.
But would we really want to live in this world of Kafka?
GeoffWard #3
Apr 06th, 2011 - 10:04 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I didn't mention the USA, Guantanamo, zionism, or whatever is in the rest of your rant, I was discussing the concept of wikileaks and it's potential.
wikileaks is great. It shows how INCOMPETENT policians are WHO WORK FOR THE PEOPLE and behind close doors stupid things say or the truth, but aren't able to say the truth in front of the camera.
Apr 06th, 2011 - 10:57 pm - Link - Report abuse 0(3)
Apr 07th, 2011 - 04:30 am - Link - Report abuse 0“Pearls to the pigs” dear Winston Smith………….ENGNAT is strong in here…..
Ptolemy #4,
Apr 07th, 2011 - 10:04 am - Link - Report abuse 0You fail to understand that different contributors have different perspectives and wish to discuss different aspects of the debate than you - in spite of this I refered my comment to you as the only other contibutor.
My contribution is to offer comment on nations' responses to individuals that make public their nation's private communications, as well as the way they make it public - Wikileaks.
The USA has given us the most public insight into how this is done. My comment considers that other nations are similarly at risk and need to similarly protect themselves. As the most effective protection involves punitive treatment to discourage the acts, then the only way an individual of any given nation can believe that THEIR nation will respond in this fashion is to have evidence that it has done so to others.
It is a self-fulfilling situation. The individual must believe that if he/she leaks state information he/she will 'die like a dog' (Kafka).
That is why I referred you and other readers to Kafka - and particularly to The Trial/Der Process, 1925.
But I could equally have referred you (like Think) to Orwell or Huxley.
My implicit question is , of course: What sort of world do we want to live in?
GeoffWard (#)7
Apr 07th, 2011 - 12:25 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Are you referring to“an individual ,” to Bradley E. Manning?
(7) “Like talking to a cabbage”............................
Apr 07th, 2011 - 12:43 pm - Link - Report abuse 0What sort of world do we want to live in?
Apr 07th, 2011 - 03:48 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Not in your brainwashed / brain dead world.
Manning? - yes, of course.
Apr 07th, 2011 - 05:52 pm - Link - Report abuse 0What sort of world do we want to live in? - Not one where those not yet taken to trial are subjected to Manning's treatment. “Innocent until proven guilty” is the maxim in my world; so being treated as such demands respect for the person and treatment that you or I would wish were we in this situation.
This would be a good time to nationalize the oil industry, maybe Ecuador can use this excuse to renew the way corporate operate and force them into an eco-friendly future, fines can go a long way to make corporations change their bad ways, if the 40 year CIA occupation of Colombia didn't teach LatinAmericans anything we might all really be mentally challenged, only time will tell.
Apr 08th, 2011 - 02:38 pm - Link - Report abuse 0#12
Apr 08th, 2011 - 05:05 pm - Link - Report abuse 0If the last 25 years of Ecuador's state oil extraction in a World Biosphere Reserve in Ecuadorian amazonia are anything to go by - give me a company like Chevron every time.
GeoffWard (#)11
Apr 08th, 2011 - 11:24 pm - Link - Report abuse 0You need to educate yourself on the subject of: Uniform Code of Military Justice. Look it up. Manning does not fall under civilian law because he in the Army. He can be treated the way he is treated because he signed up for it. He knows this. If you could ask him, he would tell you himself. He is in a Miltary prison, (not Guantanamo.) Miltary prison is quite different to a civilian prison. He, (Manning,) can actually be fed only bread and water under the right circumstances. (Read up on it.) Like I said before, he signed up for it. He knew what he was doing.
Yes, I realise that 'innocent until proven guilty' does not apply once you are conscripted or chose military service - I am more concerned with a pattern of human (military/political) behaviour which is VINDICTIVE and which uses soft(?) torture as routine - pour encourager les autres Voltaire: Candide).
Apr 09th, 2011 - 12:41 pm - Link - Report abuse 0There are many aspects of the human condition that are despicable - this is just one of them, and today's target is the USA.
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