By omitting crucial information about the recent presidential election in Ecuador, such as how the leftist front-runner Andrés Arauz has had to overcome countless obstacles in order to participate, the US media once again contribute to the effort to undermine a free and fair election, says media analyst and Ecuador specialist Joe Emersberger.

By omitting crucial information about the recent presidential election in Ecuador, such as how the leftist front-runner Andrés Arauz has had to overcome countless obstacles in order to participate, the US media once again contribute to the effort to undermine a free and fair election, says media analyst and Ecuador specialist Joe Emersberger.

Transcript

Greg Wilpert

Welcome to theAnalysis.news, I'm your guest host, Greg Wilpert.

On Sunday, February 7th, Equador held a presidential election in which leftist candidate Andrés Arauz led the election result with 33 percent of the vote, Arauz is the standard-bearer of the Citizens' Revolution movement that former leftist President Rafael Correa launched in 2007. Arauz's nearest challenger was the conservative banker and one of Ecuador's wealthiest individuals, Guillermo Lasso, who won about 20 percent of the vote, and surprisingly, the third candidate was Yaku Pérez of the Pachakutik indigenous party, which also nearly got 20 percent of the vote.

Now it looks like there will be a runoff election between Arauz and Lasso on April 11th. I say that it looks that way because there have been several concerted efforts, including from international actors, to derail the runoff election in order to prevent Arauz from winning the presidency in April. Joining me now to discuss the situation in Ecuador is Joe Emersberger. Joe writes regularly on Latin America, particularly on Ecuador and Venezuela, for a wide variety of outlets such as Counterpuncher, FAIR, and ZNet, among others.

Thanks for joining me today, Joe.

Joe Emersberger

Thanks, I appreciate you having me.

Greg Wilpert

So I should add that we both have a bit of a history with regard to Ecuador. I lived there for nearly five years from 2014 to 2018 while I was working first for Telesur English and then for The Real News Network, and you have a family background in Ecuador, even though you're Canadian, both your wife and your mom are Ecuadorian, right?

Joe Emersberger

Yes. I've been back and forth from Ecuador all my life since I was a little boy.

Greg Wilpert

So I want to start with this article that you recently published for the media watch group FAIR, where you pointed out many of the distortions in the U.S. media with regard to Ecuador. So let's start with how they – that is the U.S. media – have tended to characterize the presidencies of Rafael Correa and his successor, the current president in Lenín Moreno. That is first. How would you say are the two usually depicted and what is wrong with their depiction?

Joe Emersberger

OK, well, Correa, I should say, was depicted basically as authoritarian, and he especially got rapped for having a poor record on press freedom because he had a very contentious relationship with the press, that's certainly true, but he was depicted as basically clamping down on press freedom, and that Ecuador was a very dangerous or difficult place to be critical of Correa's government, which was a total falsehood. Mind you, there are things that you could criticize about Correa's government along that lines, which is the fact the libels part of the criminal code, things like that.

Like any country, there are definitely things you could criticize, but I would say just the press that Correa got was very bad. Private media was constantly against him and he answered back through the public media, and there was basically an ongoing battle going on. What happened when Moreno won the presidency in 2017,

By omitting crucial information about the recent presidential election in Ecuador, such as how the leftist front-runner Andrés Arauz has had to overcome countless obstacles in order to participate, the US media once again contribute to the effort to undermine a free and fair election, says media analyst and Ecuador specialist Joe Emersberger.

Paul Street argues that it's wrong to call January 6th an "insurrection"; this wasn't a grassroots rank and file populist uprising by the people, it was instigated from the top down and part of a larger organized fascist effort.

Paul Jay

Hi, welcome to theAnalysis.news. I'm Paul Jay. Please don't forget there's a donate button at the top of the webpage.

Is Trumpism fascism? There's been quite a bit of debate about this over the last four years, coming to a head after the events of January 6th. Was the riot on Capitol Hill, the last act of an attempt by Trump's forces to organize a military coup? Watch and read my piece titled Trump's Treason and McConnells Mayhem, where I lay out the argument that there was such an attempted military coup as delusional and unsuccessful as it was, but are the forces behind this coup attempt and the Stop the Steal campaign fascist? Is that the right use of the word? What about the millions of people that continue to believe the elections were stolen? Franklin Roosevelt said that fascism is when one section of corporate capital seizes control of the state.

If so, is the cancerous growth of the power of finance over the economy and government – a process known as financialization – the systemic basis upon which there is a malignant tumor? Whose face for now is Trump's. Of course, both major parties are primarily the parties of finance, but does that make them more or less an equal threat to the people? There are some on the left who don't take the Trump malignancy as a serious threat. Some say that because the economic policies of the corporate Democrats helped till the soil for the rise of Trump and certainly they did, there's really no difference between the two, or some argue the Democrats' foreign policy is even more dangerous than Trump's, and those working within the Democratic Party are by definition selling out, or the Democrats are more deceptive and thus more dangerous.

They are all essentially saying it's wrong to use the word fascism when talking about Trumpism. My guest has been going through the various arguments and in several articles tried to provide some answers. Paul Street is an independent progressive policy researcher, an award-winning journalist, historian, author, and speaker based in Iowa City, Iowa, and Chicago. He's the author of nine books to date.

His most recent books are They Rule: The 1% vs. Democracy and Hollow Resistance: Obama, Trump and the Politics of Appeasement. Paul writes regularly for Counterpunch. Thanks for joining me, Paul.

Paul Street

Thanks for having me on Paul.

Paul Jay

So let's start with January 6th and what happened. Some people are calling this an insurrection. Some people are using the word it should be described more as an attempted fascist coup. What's your thinking on?

Paul Street

Well insurrection I think is misleading. It implies a kind of grassroots rank and file populist uprising by the people, when in reality this was instigated from the top down. This is consistent with what even Trump insiders like Michael Cohen and others from within the administration and within the Trump circle have been warning us about for quite some time, which was that Trump would not leave peacefully. He would not accept a peaceful transition of power if he lost the election. He said it himself. He said it himself.

In fact Trump, even in 2016, wouldn't guarantee that he would honor the outcome of an election, that didn't go his way. He said the only way he can lose if it was rigged. Well, if it was rigged, that means it's illegitimate. If it was illegitimate,

Paul Street argues that it's wrong to call January 6th an "insurrection"; this wasn't a grassroots rank and file populist uprising by the people, it was instigated from the top down and part of a larger organized fascist effort.

Paul Street argues that it's wrong to call January 6th an "insurrection"; this wasn't a grassroots rank and file populist uprising by the people, it was instigated from the top down and part of a larger organized fascist effort.

Abby Martin explains what President Biden really means by the duplicitous language in his major Feb. 4 foreign policy speech on ending the Yemen war.

Transcript

Joe Biden has made a major announcement that he is taking action to end the Yemen war. This, of course, is encouraging news to the many anti-war organizations who have been fighting to stop this US backed genocide. But with so much at stake, it’s important to take a careful look at what Biden actually said.

Saudi Arabia and its allied Gulf dictatorships have been bombing the world’s poorest country since 2015 to fight the Houthi rebels that they claim threaten them. The threat the Houthis actually posed was ousting a Saudi puppet who had been sending all of Yemen’s wealth to Saudi princes, and imposing severe austerity measures on the Yemeni people at the behest of the International Monetary Fund.

As a result of the US-backed war, Yemen reels from a catastrophic humanitarian crisis, where millions teeter on the brink of starvation from a Saudi imposed blockade. According to the UN, 80% of Yemen’s 30 million people are on the verge of famine.

So ending the war, which Biden pledged to do during his campaign, is an urgent necessity. Let’s look at how he phrased his policy change during his February 4th foreign policy speech, paying attention to certain keywords:

“Ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen.”

That sounds like good news, and a significant shift from Trump, who could have stopped the US backed carnage years ago, but instead opted to veto a resolution that would have ended US weapons shipments to Saudia Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In fact, one of his last acts was expediting MORE weapons to the coalition bombing Yemen.

But the keyword used by Biden here is “offensive” operations. Why did Biden need to add the qualifier “offensive,” rather than just say he was ending support for military operations? See, according to Saudi Arabia and its allies, the entire war is defensive! In fact, the word “defensive” was used to justify the US getting into the war in the first place under the Obama/Biden administration.

Up until now, the US has been providing training, logistical, tactical support for targeting and more. But by the Pentagon’s logic many, or even all, of these actions could be considered “defensive.”

In the same speech he said this:

“At the same time, Saudi Arabia faces missile attacks, UAV strikes, and other threats from Iranian supplied forces in multiple countries. We’re going to continue to support and help Saudi Arabia defend its sovereignty, and it’s territorial integrity and its people.”

Ok, hold on. This leaves the door open for a lot. It could mean the same exact operations against Yemen will continue, but reframed as “defending Saudi sovereignty.”

Let’s look at more of Biden’s statement:

“Ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arm sales.”

Ending arms sales to the Saudi coalition, used to relentlessly bomb poor Yemenis and commit countless war crimes––Like the Lockheed Martin bomb that struck a school bus in 2018, killing at least 26 children and wounding 19 more--would be a very important policy shift.

Biden says he has only “paused” such shipments--implying it’s temporary. But why did Biden announce he would be ending “relevant” arms sales, not arms sales in general? Because he knows the US will continue to sell the same weapons to the war coalition, as long as they are officially not “relevant” to the “offens...

Abby Martin explains what President Biden really means by the duplicitous language in his major Feb. 4 foreign policy speech on ending the Yemen war.

Abby Martin explains what President Biden really means by the duplicitous language in his major Feb. 4 foreign policy speech on ending the Yemen war.

YouTube has censored and suppressed my report on the events of January 6th. I'd like to know why, but Google doesn't owe me an answer. They can promote or suppress whatever they please. 

Transcript

Hi, I'm Paul Jay; welcome to theAnalysis.news. 

YouTube has censored and suppressed my report on the events of January 6th. I'd like to know why, but apparently Google doesn't owe me an answer. They can promote or suppress whatever they please. 

I am an experienced journalist and filmmaker. My documentary work has appeared on major television networks around the world. For ten years, I was the Executive Producer of Counterspin, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's news channel's primetime daily debate program. I am the creator and host of theAnalysis.news, distributed on YouTube and its website. 

I posted a video on YouTube on February 7th titled, "A Failed Coup Inside a Failed Coup." According to an email I received from YouTube, it violated their policies. How? “Content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches changed the outcome of the U.S presidential election is not allowed on YouTube.” 

In fact, the video said the opposite of that. The report's central theme was that the events of January 6th were the final act of a failed military coup attempted by Trump after his false claims of fraud failed in the courts. All the sources in my report were from mainstream news outlets, like the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Time Magazine. The video did include clips of Trump's speech on January 6th, where he claimed the election was stolen from him, but that was clearly to illustrate his role in inciting the crowd. I appealed the takedown to Google, so far there's been no reply. 

Thinking that the Trump clips had triggered an algorithm looking for content calling the elections a fraud, I posted a new version of the story without any clips from Trump's speech. This video was titled "Trump's Treason and McConnell's Mayhem." This story included evidence that Majority Leader Mitch McConnel knew the mob's intentions and did not take measures to secure the Capitol buildings properly. YouTube has allowed this video to remain on the site, but when I tried to promote the video with Google Ads, my entire Google Ads account was suspended. Google policy states that a suspension takes place when there is an egregious violation of YouTube policy. What is an egregious violation? According to Google, "an egregious violation of the Google Ads policies is a violation so serious that it is unlawful or poses significant harm to our users or our digital advertising ecosystem." Further down, it says, "Given that egregious violations will result in immediate account suspension, upon detection and without prior warning, we limit these to cases when such action is the only effective method to adequately prevent illegal activity and/or significant user harm." I've appealed this action to Google as well, and that appeal has now been reviewed and turned down. I've been banned from all Google advertising forever. 

I don't know how my report causes such "user harm" unless the users are Trump, McConnell, and the corporate elites who would like the attempted coup covered up. 

Why did Google do this? That's the thing; Google doesn't have to justify its decision at all, so I don’t know. They are a private company; they can do as they please. Whether this censorship is the result of a crazy algorithm or a just as crazy human decision, this is the shape of things to come . . . censorship by monopolies of the only public platforms available for independent journalism. In the name of suppressing Trump's ravings,