Ecuador offers WikiLeak's founder Assange residency, no questions asked | Hacker News Reader

Ecuador offers WikiLeak's founder Assange residency, no questions asked

ottawacitizen.com

95 pointszalew78 comments

I doubt Assange would really consider it. In my opinion Ecuador is just trying to appear brave against the U.S. without really doing anything. That pays a lot in the internal politics in Latin America.

considering that the current president at one time shut down tv stations and radio stations serving the opposition, this is one of those offers you just pass on. http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,CPJ,,ECU,,48a57540c,0...

What happens when he releases information that is sensitive to Ecuador's interests?

Ecuador is not known for its law abiding practices, it will not be smart for Mr Asange to live there. It will be easy to the government of Ecuador or anyone with some power to get him in shit trouble down there.

Ecuador is not known for its law abiding practices

I don't think that's a very accurate characterization. While Ecuador does currently have a volatile government, the country is democratic, with relatively fair elections and reasonably comprehensive civil rights. It's not the US, or even Costa Rica, but Ecuador is also not some corrupt banana republic.

That just sounds snarky, knee jerk to put down Ecuador without any context. A coup attempt was made against Ecuadorian President Correa, a coup attempt was made against Venazuelan President Chavez, destabilizing efforts are done against Bolivian President Morales, Haitian President Aristide was kidnapped out of Haiti in 2004, Honduran President Zelaya was ousted in a coup in 2009. The article points out Ecuador's motives are exposing the cables related to Latin America, not some claim to freedom of information. For Assange to go to Ecuador and start criticizing the government of Ecuador would just be politically rudderless and stupid.

Sorry, I don't mean it as a slight toward Ecuador. My point is that it's easy to espouse objectivity when it's someone else's dirty laundry being aired. I question whether any nations' leadership (not just Ecuador) would remain friendly to Assange if it were their own diplomats' private communications being exposed.

I don't think any nation's leadership would remain friendly if they were hurt by leaks. I don't think someone like Assange can be politically neutral and just release any leaked information. People who leak the information are political, the slant on the story is political (as many here criticized WikiLeaks for how they handled the helicopter attack on civilians in Iraq), how reporters prioritize stories is political. For example, staying focused on prioritizing women's equal rights in Iran over some nations efforts to overthrow Iran's government may be more motivated in destabilizing Iran than women's rights. If you factor Iran has more women in college than men and it took the U.S. until the 60's to match Iran and Iran's revolution was in the 70s, then I don't think the U.S. can be one to criticize and claim they are more progressive with women's rights.

Edit: Mistake about the 60's being when U.S. women grads surpass men. I think that is more recent in the U.S., like this decade.

Interesting. Ecuador's current government is quite leftist, and very friendly with Chavez, despite close ties to the US. There used to be a huge US naval base in Manta, although it was closed when I was there this summer.

While Internet coverage is spotty enough to disuade permanent residence for someone like Assange, I could see him trying to get some support in South American countries. He's helped by two things: The Internet culture there is still very Wild West, 1998-style, and they absolutely despise the US (with good reason). In fact, the one constant in South America is how much they hate the US, although attitudes toward individual Americans varied.

> In fact, the one constant in South America is how much they hate the US

I am not sure where you have been or what you have experienced, but I wouldn't call it a constant. I never noticed this widespread hatred towards the US you mention in Brazil, Argentina or Chile. I understand most of the northern Latin America may harbor strong negative feelings towards the US, but I can tell you Brazilians really don't care that much.

Besides that, it's really childish to hate a country.

Distance makes the heart grow fonder

Sorry, you're correct. I was inaccurate with my claim. The antipathy towards the US is much stronger in Central America and the Andean regions (Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, etc)

As for being childish, the US has done a whole lot to earn that enmity. I'd recommend reading Open veins of Latin America, by Eduardo Galeano. It's a difficult read, due in no small part to the author's support of the Cuban Revolution and Castro's government. It helps, however, to recognize that the book was written in 1971, long before it became apparent that the Cuban experiment with Communism had some serious humanitarian costs, despite its successes. At the time, Cuba was the only real counterpoint to American economic imperialism in Latin America, so it's easy to see why he would offer such strong support for that regime.

Despite that, the book is meticulously researched and cited, and many of the events it details are frankly despicable. It's also by no means an attack on the US, as it covers 500 years of history since the Spanish invasion of the continent. It really is a good read.

> As for being childish, the US has done a whole lot to earn that enmity.

That's quite an understatement.

Some people have done a lot, sometimes with government support, but those are a tiny minority when compared to the people they represented.

You shouldn't judge a people by the actions of their leaders.

> You shouldn't judge a people by the actions of their leaders.

That becomes a difficult argument beyond a certain point. Especially if the leaders are (in theory, at least) representing the people.

The point is that "in theory" a democracy represents the ideals of all its people. Usually, a democracy represents a fraction of the will of a people. Plus, the fraction that agrees with everything the leader does is even smaller.

The problem that line of argument runs into is that the American people has also failed to hold its democratically elected government responsible for the shadier things its done (I'll stop just short of calling them atrocities, though some of it crosses that line).

Hell, the sorry state that much of Latin America is in right now is largely directly attributable to the direct intervention of the USA (see redthrowaway's post re: coups and installation of brutal military dictatorships friendly to US interests). These crimes have essentially gone unpunished, or hell, unanswered entirely back at home.

When the government purports to represent the people, the people rightly bear responsibility for its actions. While it is unrealistic to expect said government to do no wrong and always abide by the democratic principles on which it is founded, at the very least its abuses, once known, need to be reigned in by the very people who put them in charge. This is largely not happening.

I agree apathy and ignorance, usually fueled by propaganda, played a role in this mess, but to blame all Americans for that misses the point. Americans should have held their representatives responsible, but they failed to even get interested. How many Americans can point Chile or Nicaragua on a map?

They get free public education for a reason. That was a fairly outrageous proposition back in the day. (More so than free healthcare would be nowadays). But they get primarily so they make rational voting decisions. Math and literature is nice as a side-effect but that was not the original intent.

Now when they see their kids getting left behind and brainwashed by the school system they should be doing something about it.

Otherwise they should be held responsible for being apathetic.

> They get free public education for a reason.

It's obviously not working.

I never imagined I would one day say something like it, but we all need more lawyers and politicians.

You should judge a people if they fancy themsevles a democracy (especially if they think their democracy is so good it deserves to be "exported" to other countries!)

and should you judge the people if they fancy themselves a federal republic?

I see what you are saying. Technically we are a federal republic but that doesn't matter in this particular argument. We (US) are boasting at being a democracy to the rest of the world. In the propaganda domain we are a democracy. Our citizens have the potential of affecting the political establishmnt through voting.

This comes in constrast to say North Korea, China or Lybia. If their government does something outrageous, one can blame the people to some extent, but they should also get plenty of slack since standing up and otherthrowing the leadership would take a lot lives, blood, and suffering. It is not just a walk to the voting booth.

In general one can argue that the people of a country should be the responsability for their government's action in proportion to their ability to influence that government's actions.

It's only one walk to the voting booth if there's an alternative available to vote for. Significant changes in US politics have cost lives, blood, and suffering.

The first step is for the majority to recognize the dysfunction of our democracy. People have to realize that self-censorship and self-imposed oppression is keeping them down.

As long as the large majority are drinking the kool-aid they will just end up being manipulated powerful elites and they will vote against their own interests.

On the other hand, in US most people still have access to the voting booth, and to alternative media channels via the internet.

Aside from being added to various shadow 'watchlists' most American can (still!) join an activist group or can try to contant their elected official without a fear of imprisonment, torture and death.

But in more general terms, I was referring mostly to the propaganda domain, in which we project ourself to be a beacon of democracy. I was offering a potential contra-propaganda point that citizens of such self-professed democracies should be held accountable for the actions of their government. Whether we are an actual functioning democracy is another story (I don't think we are ...).

I am not sure why what a government says about its own qualities should determine the level of responsibility its people bear for it's actions.

Because unlike other people, most Americans drink their own kool-aid, and most believe the fictitious qualities that the government tells them to believe.

When we grew up in Soviet Union, we knew propaganda when we heard it or saw it. We didn't criticize it in public, but in private we laughed at it.

I am surprised at how uncritical Americans are of their own history, political issues, external relations, and media bias,

Most believe they have the most objective and free press and the most democratic government system (they are even willing to export it!).

So if most feel like they live in a democracy and feel like they can vote and their vote can really count, then they should be held responsible for the result of their vote (or lack of).

Constitutional republics are a form of democracy.

Then it's time for judgement of the people of pretty much every democracy outside of Switzerland.

The US might have the most imperialist foreign policy on the planet, but many democracies have relatively fresh blood on their collective hands, and many more haven't washed off the dried blood.

"Some people have done a lot?"

-CIA backs military coup in Chile to overthrow democratically elected president. Cue almost 20 years of brutal military dictatorship. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_coup_of_1973

-Funding and arming right-wing paramilitary militias in Nicaragua to overthrow another democratically elected government http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua#Sandinistas_and_the_C...

-Hell, blanketting the entire damned continent in brutal military dictatorships. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_America_%E2%80%93_United_...

-Overseeing said brutal dictators' plans to assassinate political dissidents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor

-Training the armies of said dictatorships in the methods that made them notorious http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_the_Americas#Human_ri...

And that's just before the "War on Drugs" era. The US has earned the enmity of Latin Americans the honest way.

How many people were really involved? A hundred? Two hundred? A thousand? Is that a significant part of all other Americans who didn't know what their government was doing?

They think they live in a democracy and are even willing to export it, therefore they should be responsible for the actions of whoever they voted (or didn't vote).

I understand what you say, but I maintain that most of them cannot understand what is going on. They were educated this way and are no more responsible for their government actions than are North Koreans or Iranians (or Portuguese, Greek and Irish) for theirs. They have been lied to for generations.

Indeed, there is a lot of hate in the Latin America which is harvested by many politicians for their own political gain.(in the same way that Palin and Co harvest hate against illegal immigrants) One day the U.S. will have to acknowledge to start the healing process. It is amazing, the other day I was watching "The history of the U.S" and they completely skipped how the U.S. took California, Arizona and New Mexico.

You were probably watching "The history of the U.S. made in U.S." and there is the difference between that and the real history of the U.S.

Sorry for the sloppy reference. I think it was in "The History Channel". They described the American invasion to mexico in about five seconds just showing how the U.S. suddenly grew. The show was very entertaining but skipped on one of the main passages of history.

"one of the main passages of history."

A small correction of perspective: it's the history of two countries, and it's only a major passage for one of them.

This asymmetry is one of the main reasons of international disputes.

Thanks for your reply. I know you mean well. I could argue that it is the history of California, and it is important just because of the relevance of California to the world.

:-) Someday I must learn more about the history of other places.

It was clear quite a long time before 1971 that Castro's regime 'had humanitarian costs', as you euphemize'; note that Che did all his torturing and murdering before he died in 1967.

"It's a difficult read, due in no small part to the author's support of the Cuban Revolution and Castro's government. It helps, however, to recognize that the book was written in 1971, long before it became apparent that the Cuban experiment with Communism had some serious humanitarian costs, despite its successes."

I don't understand why leftists have gotten into the habit of apologizing for collateral damage. The US never did. You can be thoughtful of "Amnesty International morality" (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n23/neal-ascherson/victory-in-defea...) but if it's your overriding criteria we'll all just end up living in Paul Treanor's democracy, and that's a depressing thought.

The number of times the US have tried to meddle in these countries' business may have something to do with it: http://www.zompist.com/latam.html

>I understand most of the northern Latin America may harbor strong negative feelings towards the US

That is what Chavez wants you to think. I agree there is some part of the population in Venezuela that does not like the US but I think is mainly because they are being told not to like them.

I believe that most of Venezuelans have always looked up to the US and are pro-yankee. Given the choice (specially Chavez supporters) will prefer the american way of life or the american dream over this new Socialism of the 21st century.

Sorry, what? Was this intended to be satire?

The US has done a great many things to make itself very hated in Latin America, and that is far from limited to, or even primarily in, Venezuela.

Just curious, what's your experience living or traveling in Latin America? Have you seen or experienced this widespread hatred first hand?

I obviously don't deny that the USA committed terrible abuses in Latin America, but I have yet to see the widespread resentment you speak of; not everybody walks around with a copy of The Open Veins in their pocket down here. Latin Americans can be as ignorant or apathetic of history as anybody in the USA.

I am not a Chavez supporter, but the claim that he or many Venezuelans "hate the USA" lacks nuance to say the least. If that were the case, Johann Santana would be reviled as a traitor for playing baseball in the USA, rather then being received by Chavez as a hero.

I wouldn't call it widespread hatred. I certainly didn't see any evidence of hatred towards individual Americans. It's more a widespread opinion that the United States is at best questionably moral. There are certainly many who think it is evil, and if you ask the average person on the street they'd probably have mostly negative feelings towards the US.

I haven't been to the Middle East, but I imagine the sentiment to be very similar. People have an odd way of resenting you when you back brutal dictators that kill thousands of civilians.

I asked if you have lived in or traveled in Latin America, but you didn't answer me. Does that mean you have not actually been here?

I ask you because I do, in fact, live in Latin America and my experience has not been what you describe.

> People have an odd way of resenting you when you back brutal dictators

Actually people tend to first resent the brutal dictators themselves. The person paying the hit man isn't usually as hated as the guy who actually stuck a gun in your face.

I've spent time in Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador. I never claimed Latin Americans blame the US for all the things that the juntas did, merely that there's a fairly strong undercurrent of resentment towards the US there.

I'm sorry... I give you an insight about the country I was born and raised for 30 years and you see it as satire and the general opinion is that I need to be down-voted?

Honestly don't know what to make out if this.

Anyway have an up-vote, because in fact the US has done many things to be hated... as well as many things to be loved.

I, like many, many of my fellow Venezuelans, are very much, pro-USA.

How about we ask the audience? There must be at least one South American on HN willing to comment.

I'm from Uruguay. Here US is hated by only a few, left ideas oriented people. I think the reason that make US to be hated is because its support to dictatorships and its imperial behavior over almost every country. But trust me, it is hated by only a few (at least here and the surroundings).

I can only speak from my experience as an American living in Argentina for a little under 10 years, who was a Spanish major in college, and has travelled a fair bit around the continent.

The idea that people in South America "hate the US" has never been my experience. People in the USA on both the right and the left seem to have a paranoid fantasy that everybody everywhere hates Americans. Right wingers think people are jealous of us, while left wingers think we have pissed people off too much because of our abuses of power. I think both of them suffer from the same root problem: the delusion that people everywhere are obsessed with the USA and Americans.

In my travels, people I meet usually see the USA as just another country like any other - they may have a more or less favorable opinion, but Americans are lumped in the same category with Bulgarians and Poles as "foreigners." I've also observed that people are usually smart enough to separate the USA's government from its people. When Bush was in power, people used to sometimes ask me about him, usually in the context of "wow, I really feel sorry for you having a guy like that as your leader." Keep in mind that Bush was extremely unpopular here in Argentina.

I know this may be hard for some Americans to come to terms with, but while there are things that make us a wonderful country, and also some terrible aspects of our past... we are really just like everybody else, and at least in my experience that's just how people here have treated me.

Your milage may vary. :)

> I think both of them suffer from the same root problem: the delusion that people everywhere are obsessed with the USA and Americans.

I wouldn't be able to say it any better.

> Bush was extremely unpopular here in Argentina.

I really can't imagine a place where he was popular... Poland, I was told, but a statement so unbelievable required more proof than I had at the time.

Considering the downvotes, Poland and HN...

I'm South American (from Uruguay) and there are many more here on HN :)

I'm not representative of my country, and my country is atypical by Latin American standards, but that said, there is quite a bit of animosity against the US, particularly by the old-school leftists (those that were adults during the US-sponsored military dictatorships in the 70s).

The newer generations and the old-school right-wing people bear no such animosity here.

I haven't seen much hatred against the US in Argentina or Brazil either (in Brazil they actually want to measure against and compete against the US in the global stage, not hate them), and there's quite a bit of envy involved.

All Latin American countries consume a lot of US entertainment and media and culture, too.

> Besides that, it's really childish to hate a country.

Perhaps, but it's rather mature to hate a country's government, particularly when that government is busily taking away people's freedoms, e.g. with the ACTA treaty.

> it's rather mature to hate a country's government

On reflection, I think this is too strongly worded. Hating a government can be counterproductive because the emotion can get in the way of devising an optimium strategy to counter what one doesn't like.

"Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment." -- Michael Corleone, Godfather III

On a related note, a big online library of Russian books is managed from Ecuador (used to be hosted there as well).

They used to openly call themselves pirates, but Russian publishers couldn't do much to the site legally due to Ecuador copyright laws. Publishers then tried to bring the site down by DOS attacks, but didn't quite succeed.

Probably not the best idea.

More info http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21...

Joke all you want, it appears the tables of what constitutes a free country have turned dramatically.

Uh, a country does not become "free" by symbolically offering one person the privilege of freely attacking an entity it is at best ambivalent about. That's just falling for the propaganda move hook line and sinker.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot

I don't think Ecuador has the infrastructure to support WikiLeaks. Hosting on a different continent seems scary in this situation where you're pissing off governments.

The offer is to Assange, not to wikileaks, so no infrastructure required.

All it takes to manage wikileaks is ssh access to a bunch of servers hosted all over the place.

Exactly, that was the second half of my post. It doesn't seem like a normal SSH situation when angering governments.

Hah, I doubt he'll go, I think he'd rather stay in Switzerland or some other 1st world country, than going to Ecuador where he's at mercy of US' interests.

Most developed nations have extradition treaties with the US - and Assange has a good chance of independently pissing them off in the future if he leaks info on them.

Wikileaks has already leaked private bank memos, which the Swiss in particular don't take kindly to.

Ecuador is no fan of the US, and it tends not to be a very interesting nation from a leaking perspective. It'd be a better choice than most developed nations.

If push comes to shove, they'll just use him as a bargaining chip for something they want.

Yes but he'll need a heck lot of protection.

It's a trap!

...thus making the job of finding Assange easier for the hired assassins

Sarah Palin said today that he should be hunted down like Osama bin laden.

Really? You mean with a complete and utter lack of success? Zing!

edit: you know, when someone who is cited as a possible presidential candidate reflexively reaches for an extra-judicial solution to resolve the releasing of state information by a foreign whistleblower then ... what? i don't know, but it's very telling. the road back towards the rule of law is going to be long and difficult one.

Last night, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a press meeting that Wikileaks should be labeled a terrorist organization. I find it frightening that the government has reached a point that they will label anyone they don't like as a terrorist so that they can bypass the legal system. I didn't realize that exposing information could be an act of terror, but Clinton would like to have you believe so.

Edit: I did a quick Google search to find a news piece about this. The first one I found was this:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/gop-rep-wikileaks-deemed-...

That article tells us who lobbied Clinton to label Wikileaks as terrorists, but it also references the Pentagon Papers case, which I cited from in a comment in another discussion about Wikileaks (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1948911).

"Last night, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a press meeting that Wikileaks should be labeled a terrorist organization."

[citation needed]

So, Clinton did not say in a press meeting that Wikileaks should be labeled a terrorist organization?

Yeah, right. Mr Assange is currently having the time of his life, travelling around the world, pretending to be on the run from authorities which don't seem to have much interest in actually pursuing him, talking to the media a lot and having possibly-consensual sex with hot Swedish chicks. You think he wants to go hang out in Quito for the rest of his life?

Wow, I sure got downmodded for that. A lot of Quitoans in the audience? I'm sorry, I'm sure your city is a very nice place.

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