Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa came up with scalding online remarks over criticism his country faced from the US press for potentially granting asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
“They’ve managed to focus attention on Snowden and on the ‘wicked’ countries that ‘support’ him, making us forget the terrible things against the US people and the whole world that he denounced,” Correa said Wednesday in response to a Tuesday Washington Post editorial.
“The world order isn’t only unjust, it’s immoral,” Correa added.
The US newspaper accused Correa of adhering to double standards in the NSA leaker case, as Ecuador is considering harboring Snowden from prosecution over US espionage charges. It descried the Ecuadoran president as “the autocratic leader of a tiny, impoverished” country with an ambition to replace the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez as “the hemisphere’s preeminent anti-US demagogue”.
The Washington Post lashed out at a legislation recently adopted by Ecuador, saying that it diminishes freedom of press. It also said Ecuador is profiting from duty-free trade with the US while criticizing Washington’s policies.
Earlier this week US Secretary of State John Kerry chose rhetoric similar to that of the Washington Post as he admonished China and Russia for failing to apprehend Snowden and extradite him for trial in America.
“I wonder if Snowden chose Russia or China for assistance because they are such bastions of internet freedom,” he said sarcastically.
Cost of non-compliance
US officials are also mounting pressure on Ecuador over its stance in the leaker debacle. Senator Robert Menendez, who heads the Foreign Relations Committee in the Senate, said such a move would hurt Ecuador’s international trade, which is highly dependent on export to the US.
“Our government will not reward countries for bad behavior,” the influential US lawmaker said, as he was warning that he would target two trade programs with Ecuador for accepting the NSA leaker.
Menendez said he would lead the effort to prevent the renewal of Ecuador’s duty-free access to US markets under the Generalized System of Preferences program. He also said he would block renewal of the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA). Both programs expire at the end of next month.
Bunches of roses from Ecuador are stacked for delivery at Liberty Wholesale in the flower market.(Reuters / Lucy Nicholson)
The major commodities of Ecuador’s export to the US are crude oil, cut flowers, fruits and vegetables, shrimp and prawns. Duty-free access to US markets is supporting roughly 400,000 jobs in the country of 14 million people.
Ecuador is the last remaining recipient of the ATPDEA, which used to include Bolivia, Colombia and Peru in the past and was not expected to be renewed for Ecuador even before Snowden came up with his revelations of the US phone and internet surveillance programs.
The country has been lobbying the Obama administration to include additional goods under the Generalized System of Preferences program to soften the blow from the cancellation.
Source: RT
I think Ecuador is one of the best countries in the world to retire. It has an ideal climate. All their fresh fruits and vegetables are organically grown without chemicle furtilizers and pestisides. The cost of living is one of the losest in the world. There are many benefits to living in Ecuador. They have national health care. For seventy five dollars a month that includes medical, dental and eye glasses. Transportation is cheap. You can ride a bus or taxi for a dollar an hour. The price of food clothing housing and health care and transportation if reasonable. If you have your home payed for, you can live comfortably for around six hundred dollars a month. Food is cheap. You can buy enough groceries from the farmers market for twenty dollars that would last you for a week. If you have money to invest or an income stream, ecuador is the best place in the world to retire. Why would anyone wan’t to stay in the U.S. and go down an inflationary suck hole while you can live your remaining years in Ecuador in security?
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At least Ecuador is mostly self sufficient. They produce all their needed food stuffs. They will not starve like America when it comes to a total shutdown.
Just sayin!
Stupid politicians.
“They’ve managed to focus attention on Snowden and on the ‘wicked’ countries that ‘support’ him, making us forget the terrible things against the US people and the whole world that he denounced,” Correa said Wednesday in response to a Tuesday Washington Post editorial.
He is right. Have you noticed that no domestic news source has reported on the atrocities committed by the US govt that Ed reported? The US media is more of a propaganda service for the US govt today than Pravda ever was during the Stalin years in Russia.
CAJONES