QUITO, ECUADOR — “We don’t have a state! We don’t have any state!” The lady’s voice projects through a loudspeaker amid the crowd. She’s not having it. Nor is the groundswell of hundreds, if not thousands who’ve converged at Plaza Grande trolley stop, just meters from Simon Bolivar’s statue at the entrance to Quito’s historic…

Whitney Webb and Alan MacLeod discuss this week’s headlines, including Venezuela leaving the OAS, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s re-election in Israel on the anniversary of the Deir Yassin Massacre and Lenin Moreno’s move towards authoritarianism in Ecuador. The post MintCast Episode 1: Venezuela, Ecaudor and Netanyahu appeared first on MintPress News.

Whitney Webb and Alan MacLeod discuss this week’s headlines, including Venezuela leaving the OAS, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s re-election in Israel on the anniversary of the Deir Yassin Massacre and Lenin Moreno’s move towards authoritarianism in Ecuador. The post MintCast Episode 1: Venezuela, Ecuador and Netanyahu appeared first on MintPress News.

LONDON — Like the proverbial “shot heard round the world,” the U.K.’s arrest and imprisonment of publisher and journalist Julian Assange officially signaled the Western world’s war on a free press. The Australian who founded WikiLeaks, but stepped down as editor-in-chief last year, was ousted from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London last week after Ecuador…

Now that journalist Julian Assange is in the hands of Western authorities thanks to Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno, their media lapdogs are scraping from the bottom of the barrel to smear the WikiLeaks editor with increasingly absurd claims. While Assange is no stranger to smears, this set is particularly distasteful. It started with Ecuadorian Interior…

QUITO, ECUADOR — Last week, Ecuador’s government gravely undermined not only its own national sovereignty but international refugee and asylum laws by allowing U.K. police into its London embassy to arrest then-Ecuadorian citizen, Ecuadorian asylee, and journalist Julian Assange. As has been observed by many analysts, the shocking yet somewhat anticipated decision has shown that…

Ecuador has partially restored Julian Assange’s communications in their London Embassy after UN officials met with Ecuador’s president, Lenin Moreno on Friday, reports the Belfast Telegraph. Assange, who has lived in the embassy for over six years, had his phone and internet access taken away in March over political statements he made in violation of “a written…

BRUSSELS — Three months after an Ecuadorian court requested that Interpol issue a “red alert” to detain, imprison, and extradite former Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa, the former head of state remains free and has continued to wage his legal defense against charges emanating from officials in the government of President Lenin Moreno. According to Correa’s…

MADRID — Speaking in Madrid on Friday, Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno told an audience that WikiLeaks founder and editor-in-chief Julian Assange would need to leave Ecuador’s London embassy “eventually.” Moreno offered no time-table for Assange’s possible exit, which several sources just last week asserted could take place within “weeks” or even “days.” Assange has spent…

LONDON – Julian Assange, London’s – and perhaps the world’s – most famous political prisoner and refugee, is in grave danger as the threat of his arrest and subsequent extradition to the United States appears imminent. The U.S. has been preparing espionage and treason charges against Assange, the editor-in-chief of transparency organization WikiLeaks since 2010…

QUITO, ECUADOR (Analysis) — Ecuador’s government has pulled the plug on its support for peace talks between the Colombian government and the leftist National Liberation Army (ELN), noting that it would not condone such talks as long as the ELN continues to wage its armed struggle against the state. The guerilla group remains the largest…

LONDON — You can call the Ecuadorian government’s disconnection of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s internet connection and ban on contact with the outside world a lot of things: unfair, treacherous, a signal of surrender to the West. Such was the reaction of internet users and journalists throughout the world following an announcement by Ecuador that…