Assange Lightning Rod Places U.S. Bullying and South American Contradictions on Vivid Display
Published on Sunday, August 19, 2012 by Common Dreams
Assange Lightning Rod Places U.S. Bullying and South American Contradictions on Vivid Display
by Nikolas Kozloff
For just one man, Julian Assange has certainly managed to discombobulate and disrupt a large swathe of the geopolitical system. Not only is Sweden gunning for Assange, but there is little doubt that Britain and the U.S. will now stop at nothing to get their hands on the controversial founder of whistle-blowing outfit WikiLeaks. Having apparently concluded that he could no longer count on the support of his native Australia, which is beholden to Washington, Assange has now thrown in his lot with the tiny South American nation of Ecuador. Could this John Le Carré story of diplomatic intrigue get any stranger?
It now seems fair to say that the high stakes drama unfolding in London and the Ecuadoran Embassy has taken on wider political implications. Indeed, the Julian Assange imbroglio highlights the escalating tug of war which has been playing out between the United States and South America for some time. Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s combative leftist/populist president, has felt encircled and pressured by Washington and may have felt that he had nothing to lose by offering diplomatic asylum to Assange.
By over-reacting and daring to suggest that it might even raid the Ecuadoran Embassy, which would constitute truly rogue-like behavior, the Cameron government has only managed to harden the resolve of Correa and his allies in South America, who may surmise that Washington was probably egging on the UK all along. For now, Correa seems to be winning the battle of public relations, yet it’s far from clear that the Ecuadoran leader’s high stakes gamble will pay off in the long run. Indeed, if anything the Assange matter will further strain Ecuador’s relations with Washington and Correa could wind up paying a steep political price for challenging “the Empire.”
Ratcheting up the Anti-Imperialist Rhetoric
Over the past few days, South America seems to have hardened its position on the Assange affair and this has certainly benefited Correa. There’s no love lost between Washington and ALBA, Latin America’s populist left bloc led by Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, and, true to form, the organization lost no time in making hay out of the WikiLeaks imbroglio. “We hope that the British government respects not only international law but the right to political asylum that Assange has received,” remarked Venezuela’s Foreign Minister, Nicolas Maduro.
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...Beltway thinking, in-progress spin and strategies to defeat the leftist democracy revolution in Latin America that are in progress or being considered.
But his articles are not easy to analyze. Their "liberal" gloss, smooth style and pretensions to being "in the know" mask an agenda. What his writing most reminds me of is Time magazine in its more lengthy endeavors to get the corporate/war profiteer viewpoint across--the fake aura at objectivity, the slick, zippy writing, the masked attacks on progressive ideas, the obvious effort to control the "narrative" of American life and political events, and so on--but Time doesn't add the "liberal" gloss layer to its tasty cakes. That's a problem with Kozloff--compounded, in this case, with its publication at Common Dreams (where the writing is generally more knowledgeable, deeper and more progressive).
The opening paragraph is very Time magaziney, concluding with a reference to a high-brow spy novelist (John Le Carré), which subliminally sets the tone that this political asylum situation and Ecuador's role in it and Latin America's pursuit of social justice and independence are a sort of fiction and only valuable as entertainment. Get ready for a spy novel! O0-oo! Nothing to do with you ordinary folks. We're going to see actors in a movie scripted by Kozloff with touches of Le Carré.
Kozloff also, in the first paragraph, tries to establish "liberal" creds, by stating the following:
"Not only is Sweden gunning for Assange, but there is little doubt that Britain and the U.S. will now stop at nothing to get their hands on the controversial founder of whistle-blowing outfit WikiLeaks.". --Kozloff
It is an easy concession. Lordy, everybody in the world knows this by now, except the dumbest of dummies and corporate/war profiteer propagandists. But it was, of course, the left that pointed it out first. The "sex crimes" non-charges are a smear. Sweden wants custody of a man whom they have not charged with any crime, for the purpose of "rendering" this journalist to the U.S. to be buried with Bradley Manning. And the U.K., of course, is being the U.S. "poodle" again (a real barky, vicious little poodle). Kozloff saying it, though--(with different wording than mine)--is setting things up to skewer Correa in the rest of the article (along with another U.S./U.K. target--Cristina Fernandez, president of Argentina).
In paragraph two, he sets the scene--"the escalating tug of war which has been playing out between the United States and South America for some time," in which the Julian Assange "imbroglio" is taking place, and immediately starts telling us what Rafael Correa is feeling:
"Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s combative leftist/populist president, has felt encircled and pressured by Washington and may have felt that he had nothing to lose by offering diplomatic asylum to Assange." --Kozloff
He offers no evidence that Correa feels "encircled and pressured" by Washington. In fact, the opposite is more likely true--that Correa feels quite confident in his presidency (with something like a 75% approval rating!) and energized and optimistic given the success of the leftist democracy movement in South America and the strong and unified regional leftist alliance of which he and his country are a part. Kozloff thereby--by means of his scene-setting (Correa "encircled and pressured by Washington"
--portrays Correa's decision to give Assange asylum as a sort of slapdash, cavalier move, driven by desperation, as if to say, "All is lost! Why not do this?"
Again, the evidence very much contradicts this portrayal. Correa, first of all, took a long time to make the decision. It wasn't slapdash at all. It was very deliberative. Secondly, other LatAm leaders have been quick to back up Correa, and he them, in an number of circumstances involving U.S. hostility over the last half decade. He would feel confident that his allies would have his back, and, as these leaders do on many issues and events, he no doubt consulted closely with them as he made this decision. They share intelligence, for instance. They share common goals and meet frequently to discuss how to achieve them. And their response on the Assange matter confirms this. When England threatened Ecuador's embassy, Unasur (all South American countries--no U.S.) immediately called a meeting to defend Ecuador, and got a big majority at the OAS for a meeting on Friday in Washington DC (the U.S. and Canada voted no--they don't want such a meeting). (Sovereignty is a common issue between left and right in LatAm. Assange enumerated some of the countries that voted for the OAS meeting and they included U.S. client states, for instance, Colombia).
Kozloff reads Correa's situation entirely wrong, in my opinion. It's as if he got his view of Correa from a spinning U.S. State Department which would like everybody to believe that they have Correa "encircled and pressured." And either Kozloff just swallows this "inside" information--the way Time magazine gets used as a dump for the latest U.S. government "talking points"--or Kozloff knows what to say--how to "frame" this article--up front and doesn't have to ask. In any case, he ignores considerable evidence to the contrary, that Correa actually feels confident and assured of his allies' support. And this view--my view--is what is unfolding in Latin America this week.
In paragraph three, Kozloff elaborates on his "desperate Correa" phantasm.
--
"For now, Correa seems to be winning the battle of public relations, yet it’s far from clear that the Ecuadoran leader’s high stakes gamble will pay off in the long run. Indeed, if anything the Assange matter will further strain Ecuador’s relations with Washington and Correa could wind up paying a steep political price for challenging 'the Empire.'” --Kozloff
--
Correa giving asylum to Assange, in Kozloff's view, is a "battle of public relations." It's not real, in other words. It's not about human rights. It's not about U.S. torture and detention without trial. It's a movie, aimed at a "pay off." There is no evidence whatever that Correa is going to pay "a steep political price for challenging 'the Empire.'" The opposite is true. His numbers couldn't be better. Ecuadorans love him generally and love him even more for this. But what is clear is that Washington is going to try to make him pay. That's the thinking.
Kozloff is not only trivializing the matter--as some sort of "shoot-out" between Correa and "Washington"--he treats Correa as if he were stupid--which is far, far from the case--and has ignorantly stepped on Godzilla's toe. Correa and his allies--most of South America--have been "challenging 'the Empire'" for some time, on many fronts--economic, political, the sovereignty of their resources, labor rights, social justice, repelling U.S. interference, rejecting the U.S. military presence in LatAm, punching Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Bechtel in the nose, creating a new "level playing field" for foreign investment, demanding responsible investment, defying Wall Street's dictates and those of the IMF/World Bank, opposing U.S. wars, expanding human and civil rights and running "New Deal"-type governments that respond to the poor majority.
Kozloff summarizes all this as "the escalating tug of war which has been playing out between the United States and South America"--another trivialization, as if it were a game, a "tug of war," and not an historic and amazing revolution. He acknowledges that it has been going on for some time but is blind to its implications, particularly to the implication of its UNITY (that Correa is not acting alone), not to mention its success (big reductions in poverty in leftist country after leftist country; 5% to 10% economic growth rates in the midst of the Bushwhack worldwide depression; honest, transparent elections, big voter turnouts, big approval ratings for leftist governments, high levels of public participation, high levels of satisfaction and optimism). This is not a "tug of war." It is not a P.R. game. It is not cowboyism--Correa grandstanding. Correa is standing with his people and with his allies in an unprecedented program of social justice and a continental declaration of independence.
I see that I haven't even got to paragraph four--with its subtitle: "Ratcheting up the Anti-Imperialist Rhetoric."
So let me summarize the Beltway thinking, the in-progress spin and the strategies to defeat the leftist democracy revolution in Latin America that are in progress or being considered, as they are inadvertently disclosed by Kozloff in this article.
The on-going strategy of those who rule over us is to "divide and conquer" the South American Left. Thus, articles like this that are generated by those who rule over us, or are designed to get their points across, often stress "the contradictions"--any evidence of differences of any kind (Venezuela is big, Ecuador is small; Brazil's leaders are "more moderate" (less socialist, more business-friendly), etc.), or they just plain invent rivalries that don't exist (for instance, between Chavez and Lula da Silva, whose alliance is actually characterized by friendliness, cooperation and common cause). This is the theme--rivalry, egotism, competition. And this is the strategy--to isolate individual leaders and stir up rivalry, egotism and competition.
Then there is the P.R. (brainwashing) for home consumption. We've seen this tactic as to Chavez. Those who rule over us want us to think of Correa as a grandstanding lone cowboy out to score points with his anti-American constituency, ambitious to take over leadership of the left in Latin America and recklessly risking his peoples' welfare in a P.R. game with Washington. In addition to propagandizing us, this portrait of Correa is by way of a warning, via Kozloff, to Correa: 'We will smear you, too, as we did to Assange. We will bankrupt your country, as we did to Wikileaks. We will invade your embassy and stomp all over your precious sovereignty. We will make you PAY."
But Correa--and Chavez, and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil (who was imprisoned and tortured by the U.S.-backed dictatorship), and Jose Mujica of Uruguay (who was also tortured by a U.S.-backed dictatorship) and Evo Morales (who threw the U.S. (Bushwhack) ambassador out of his country for colluding with white separatist rioters and murderers) and all the rest of these new LatAm presidents--have heard all this before. They have already weathered smear attempts and efforts to destroy their countries' economies. They have already rejected U.S. threats and U.S. dictates. They have already gone through fear of being isolated. Some have endured U.S.-supported coup attempts. They have unified around these experiences, and that unity resulted in this asylum decision by Correa, not the other way around. Not Correa going off and doing some cowboy thing alone, and desperately hoping for some support--but rather asylum for Assange is the logical consequence of the remarkable political movement of which Correa is a part.
Kozloff calls him a "firebrand." But they are ALL firebrands.
In 2009, it was Lula da Silva who took on the mantel of this movement and led the response to the U.S.-supported coup in Honduras. In 2008, it was then president of Chile, leftist Michel Batchelet, who took on the mantel, in regard to the U.S. coup attempt in Bolivia. Recently, it was Morales of Bolivia, who took on the mantel as to the leftist position on global warming. It was Chavez who took up this mantel at the UN regarding the U.S. war on Iraq (when he called Bush "the devil" . It was Nestor Kirchner (Fernandez's husband, now deceased) who took on the World Bank. It was da Silva again who took on Wall Street, and also tried to head off war on Iran. The role of "world leader" is passed around! There is no question of rivalry. These are unified positions, worked out in numerous meetings, and expressive of their common experience at the hands of the U.S. and their commitment to changing that power relation--for the benefit of their people and in response to their people.
It is that unity that Kozloff, in his petty way, is trying to disturb, and that the U.S. government and its corporate/war profiteer dictators want desperately to break up.
They may well try to "isolate" Correa and damage Ecuador's economy--but the response will be the same. The others will come to Correa's and Ecuador's rescue, if they need it. They likely have already figured that Ecuador will lose U.S. business and "trade preferences."
Just want to mention Argentina/Falklands. Kozloff includes a little hit piece on Cristina Fernandez and predicts that she will use the Assange asylum meetings for "political advantage" and as "fodder" on the Falkland issue. Latin America is pretty much united on the Falklands--that they belong to Argentina. And the same colonial power that claims them--the U.K.--just threatened to storm the Ecuadoran embassy in London. A whole lot of people in LatAm see these issues as related. Kozloff tries again to paint one of these leaders as "grandstanding." But why shouldn't the Falklands issue be discussed, with relations with the U.K. on the table?
The U.S. and the U.K. don't want this to happen. Kozloff therefore ridicules and trivializes it. The U.S./U.K.'s strategy on this will be to try to suppress discussion of it, and to isolate and punish Argentina for asserting it. (You gotta laugh at this isolation and punishment thing. There are so many LatAm countries on the list!)
Kozloff then says that Brazil doesn't care about any of this. Obviously bribes and enticements are going to Brazil. Hard to say how they will be received in Brazil, given the frosty reception they gave Obama a while back. But Kozloff is very, very wrong about Dilma Rousseff (Lula da Silva's former chief of staff, now president of Brazil). She doesn't forget. And, quiet as she is, I think she may be the hottest "firebrand" of all, when it's her turn to take on the mantel.
