russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to us. there hasn't been anything good on t.v. . it is to get the maximum political impact. the source material is what helps keep journalism honest we. we want to present. something else.

i mean julian assange. just stress it is true which is why we expose the world secrets these jackets belong united states government been attacked by the united states strongly condemn going after. illegally shoot some five hundred days now i've been detained without charge. that hasn't stopped us. today we're on a quest for revolutionary ideas that can change the world tomorrow. out of the public on a new generation of latin american leaders has arisen this week i am joined by the president of ecuador. korea correia is a left wing populist who has changed the face of a quibble but unlike his predecessors he holds a ph d. in economics according to u.s.

embassy cables caray is the most popular president and ecuador's democratic history but in two thousand and ten he was taken hostage in an attempted coup d'etat he blames the coup attempt on corrupt media and has launched a controversial counter offensive correia says the media defines what reforms are possible i want to know you see justified and what he's beaten for latin america. i can hear you president carter the. truth. well are you in england i am in england under house arrest now for five hundred days five hundred days. to see that i was. spanish you know ok so let's see if we can do that. what is the ecuadorian

perspective on the united states this is a long perspective of us u.s. involvement i'm not asking for a caricature of the united states but what do. people think about the united states and its involvement in latin america and in ecuador. well as ever says the only country that can be sure never to have a coup d'etat is the united states because it hasn't got a us embassy. in any event i'd like to say one of the reasons that led to police discontent it was the fact that we cut all the funding the us embassy provided to the police. for and even a year after we took office we took a while to correct this before there were whole police units key units fully funded by the us embassy his offices in command were chosen by the us ambassador and paid

by the us and so we have increased considerably the police's pay however as their salaries were coming from somewhere else they didn't even notice we did away with all that there are some who still long for those times which will never come back although relating to the us has always been a relationship based on affection and friendship by guards in the framework of mutual respect and sovereignty. i lived in the us for four years have two academic degrees from there i love and admire the american people a great deal you know believe me the last thing i'd be is anti american. i will always call a spade a spade and if there are international u.s. policies that are detrimental to our country or even to that of latin america i

will denounce them strongly and i will never ever allow my country's sovereignty to be affected by them. because. they may base their government close the u.s. base. can you tell me why you decided to close this place because they said that here you know that's it would you accept having a foreign base set up in your country julian. in any case if the matter is as simple as i once said you know ok it's not a problem to set up a u.s. base in ecuador but if we can give the go ahead as long as we are granted permission set up an ecuadorian military base in miami there is not an issue they should agree. are you having a lot of fun with the it if you julian i'm glad to hear that you need to.

present the. president. why did you want us to release all the cables but again they know that those who don't know anything have nothing to fear we have nothing to hide your wiki leaks have made us stronger as the main accusations made by the american embassy due to our excessive nationalism and defense of the sovereignty of the ecuadorian government. indeed we are nationalists and indeed we do defend the soviet t. of our country on the other hand wiki leaks wrote a lot about the goals that the national media pursue you know about the power groups who seek help and report to foreign embassies keeping up but we have absolutely nothing to fear let them publish everything they have about the ecuadorian government but you will see how many things about those who oppose the

civil revolution in ecuador will come to light things to do with opportunism betrayal and being self-serving. subsequently you kicked out the u.s. ambassador to ecuador as a result of with your its publication of cables why did you kick her out it's seems to me it would be easier to go well i have these cables from this ambassador i know how she thinks isn't it better to keep the devil you know. she was told this filled with our against she said she had nothing to say but she was a woman totally against down government a woman of extreme right wing views he still lived in the cold war of the one nine hundred sixty s. and what broke the camel's back the last straw was wiki leaks where she wrote her own ecuadorian contacts told her that the chief of the national police was corrupt

and that surely i had given him that post knowing he was corrupt so that i could control him the lady ambassador was called and asked to give an explanation for the loftiness insolence imperial as she puts on that she said she had nothing to account for and as we hear respect our country we threw around. the test and your kid is he like us who may i'd like to say some months ago after almost a year of inquiry commander hurtado that falsely accused in that wiki leaks cable by the ambassador was found not guilty of all charges in all sane shows once again intentioned u.s. officials due to their ill will towards progressive governments that are seeking change my report on anything groundless based purely on rumors and gossip provided by their contacts who are usually people in opposition to our government to miss

this will contact i cannot a moment the son of a party daughter had a daughter who had a most. president korea how did you find the trion is to deal with they are a big powerful country is. wonderful for another in in dealing with the trying. but who knows whether or not i'm a commitment you know she first of all we don't work with devils that. segment of anyone comes up to us as a devil we simply tell him no thank you secondly you can see a bit of the selling out snobbery that even the neo colonialism of our elite media wonders when sixty percent of our trade in the bulk of the investment concentrated in the us we were left with no money to move our economy forward it wasn't an issue now that we are the country where most of the chinese investment in the region takes place is suddenly become an issue because the chinese are not to already

looking because they don't have lost their cool devils now enough of that you know if even the united states itself is being financed by china you know how wonderful it is that if you know it's wonderful that it provides funds for oil extraction mining hydroelectric power stations then we are not only getting chinese funding also attracting investment from russia brazil we have expanded our markets and our funding sources however there are people who are born with the yoke attached to the neck and who prefer to go on with that level of dependency so that's it president korea as you know for many years i have been fighting a fight for freedom of expression for the right for people to communicate for the

right to publish true information how is it that your reforms will not lead to the suppression of true information. we're not auto numb we were numb we're gradually. but inside. the world julian you are a good example of what the press is like as well as these associations like the interim american press association which is simply an association of newspapers in latin america many books have been written about your wiki leaks in latin america the last one by two argentinean authors featuring a country by country analysis and in the case of ecuador it shows how in a shameless way the media did not publish those cables or news which affected them for instance disputes amongst information and news groups in the end to avoid being discredited they reach an agreement not to air their dirty linen in public i will

read you one of the wiki leaks documents the ecuadorian press never published we don't know get a fact the press feels free to criticize the government and yet it is unable to do so with a fugitive banker and his family business is speaks volumes about where power resides in ecuador is a poorly of course we can leaks these other messages are made public by wiki leaks published by the ecuadorian press. this is just for you to see what we face in ecuador in latin america yeah we believe my dear julian so the only things that should be protected against information sharing of freedom of speech and the comments are those set in the international treaties that are in the into american convention on human rights the honor and the reputation of people and the safety of people and the state naca the rest the more people find out about it the better model but you have voiced your fear recurrent in journalists of good faith but

these are stereotypical fears that the state may restrict freedom of speech in the me this is hardly ever seen in latin america it's. these are just myths please bear in mind here the media power was and it probably is greater than the political power. in fact it usually has a self-serving political economic social power and above all informative power this political drama. and it is the big voters the powerful legislators see the mighty judges the have set the media agenda is this way they have subdued governments presidents and courts. let's stop a train this image of poor and courageous journalists the same like media trying to tell the truth and tyrants autocrats and dictators trying to hinder that when it

isn't true is the other way round the governments trying to do something for the majority of the people are persecuted by journalists we think that by having a pen and a microphone log they can direct even their resentment against you so much they often insult and slander out of sheer dislike what they mean these are mass media serving someone's private interests. it's not about anti bacteria because at least let the world know about what happens in latin america maybe when i took office there were seven national t.v. channels there wasn't state owned television but they were all private and five of them belong to bankers and no obvious ear canal is that then we shall nationality not as you can imagine if i wanted to take measures against banking in order to prevent for instance the crisis and the abuses which are now taking place in europe especially in spain i had to face a merciless t.v.

campaign aimed at defending their owners interests the owners of the t.v. networks who were the bankers there's no fool ourselves let's get rid of these forced air. types depicting wicked governments get her sick eating saying like in courageous journalists the news outlets often. the other way around what you had no money to buy last medicine he had not merely colleagues evaluate the photo the image you know they could want to see on foot it wasn't them and they had to get at least people disguised as journalists to do politics to destabilize our governments so the new change takes place in our region not for fear of losing the power they have always flaunted about their c.m. but i want the. president correct i agree with your market description of the media and we have seen this again and again that big media organizations that we have worked with like the guardian el pais new york times and

jewish beagle have censored al material against al agreements when they published it for political reasons or to protect. all the docs like to me from the ukraine who was hiding her wealth in london or big corrupt italian oil companies operating in kazakhstan we have proof of this because we know what the original document contains and we can see what they printed and we can see what they have have removed but it's seems to me that the correct approach to deal with monopolies and you will please and cartels you know market is to break them up. or to make it so it is very easy for you publishers to enter in to the market shouldn't you create

a system that protects the ease of entry into the publishing market so that small publishers. and individuals are protected and have no regulation and that these bigger publishers are broken up or regulated if you look at them not that is what we are trying to do julian for over two years we've had this debate about a new communications law aimed at segmenting the radio and television industry that we only want to third of all radio and television broadcasters to be private and profit making another third should be nonprofit and belong to the community and the remaining third should be state owned not run just by central government but also by local authorities municipalities and parochial bodies when you see people who are not particularly the process is taken two years and all this despite the fact

that this order is part of the constitution approved by voting in two thousand and eight despite the fact that the order was up held by the ecuadorian people during last year's referendum nevertheless this new law has been systematically blocked by the big media outlets that are paid legislators they have in the national assembly defend their interests they refer to it as the guy claw while the only thing we are trying to do is to make information and social communication and ownership of the media more democratic voice but clearly we face opposition on the part of the media owners and their lobbyists in the ecuadorian political arena. i spoke to the president of to me here recently and i asked him was he surprised about how little power the president has to change things. have

you found me the second here said that he said it. was a good and good look they have chosen to demonize even the concepts of political leadership was one of the biggest crises in latin america during the one nine hundred ninety s. at the beginning of this century during the long and neo liberal know it was the crisis of leadership what is leadership the ability to influence others that is a capacity now you can have good leadership using this ability to serve others and bad leadership sadly we have seen a lot of this in latin america the kind of leaders that take advantage of others to pursue their own interests i think leadership if you can is paramount even more so during times of change my so in process can you envisage the us independence without the great leaders behind it can you envisage the reconstruction of year of after world war two without the great leaders behind it in order to oppose these

new changes about by strong and good leaders they now denounce leadership as tyranny populism and evil properly. president then there's a leader who in this kind of leadership is all the more important julian please let me finish the idea i mean when we are not managing the system in latin america and in ecuador in particular we are not managing the system but changing it because the one we had for centuries was a total failure because we have turned into a region with the biggest inequality in the world a region riddled with poverty and misery yet having all it takes to be the most prosperous in the universe it isn't like in the us what's the difference between a republican and a democrat i believe there is a far greater difference between what i think in the morning and what i think in the afternoon the myths the parties. came and it's only because they are just managing the system get them. here we are changing the system and you need

leadership digital democratic power in order to change the governance structures and institutions in our country for the benefit of the majority. yes it's seems to me that president obama. is unable to control the vast forces that are around him isn't this true for all leadership and how is it that you have been able to change so much in accord or is it a sign of the times is it your personal leadership is it your party what is the what is the force that is permitting you to do something that barack obama is not able to do. first address your last question the compromise the consensus is something desirable but it's not an end in itself to me it will be dead easy to agree to this compromise to this consensus giving up giving in and it

will make a lot of people happy but it wouldn't change anything at all that they would please above all the powers that be in this country that everything will remain the same way sometimes it is impossible to reach a consensus sometimes it is essential to deal with things corruption we have to deal with it that abuse of power we have to tackle it lying we have to tackle it i mean social vices such as these so damaging to our society we cannot allow but i met a basis look at secular what has been achieved in ecuador isn't down to me it would be wrong to think like that it's people who change it's countries that change not just because of their leader the leader might be the coordinator of this change but by and large it's happening because of the will and determination of the nation what led us to power was the outrage of all the ecuadorian people put on automatic

and i think that this is exactly what the us people need for president obama to make real changes in that country young this outrage this occupy wall street movement this demonstration by the ordinary citizens against the system so it needs to be gone stronger more organic more permanent so that obama could make the necessary changes to the american system going to get us in there much as i want to look at where you think ecuador is going in the long term and where south america is going in the long term. it seems to some degree that there's a lot of good things you know there's great integration in south america the standards of living have been increased the amount of influence that the united states and other countries outside latin american apply to it is also decreasing but where do you think it's going in ten years twenty years.

in the link you have said the u.s. influence is steadily decreasing and that's good that's why we have stated that latin america is changing from the washington consensus to the consensus without washington. maybe with a sound forward consensus consensus without washington exactly ok. if there were no and this is great as the policies dictated by the us had nothing to do with our needs in latin america but were rather good to the interests of those countries they were concerned to interest in particular if you make an analysis of the economic policy modesty apart i know something about it or at times the policies could have been good or bad but they all had a common feature they all catered to the interests of the big capital and above all

financial capital and this luckily is changing what they want i have a great deal of hope but i am very realistic although i know we have made significant progress there is still a long way to go i know that our achievements can be rolled back i know that if we get the same people we used to have ruling our countries everything could go back to what it used to be but we are optimistic but a time when we have demi steps we believe latin america is changing and if we keep on going down that path of change the change will gain momentum. no it is not just a time of change we are witnessing a change of pox in latin american history we have to go on with these policies to introduce economic policies where society rules the market and not the other way around when society life and people turn into merchandise to continue to pursue justice and social equality overcoming the many injustices of previous centuries

respecting our indigenous peoples and afro descendants and other minority groups this see if we remain committed to all this latin america will have a great future and it is the region of the future we have everything it takes to be the most prosperous region in the future if we haven't achieved it yet. because of bad leaders bad policies and bad governments. and this is what is changing in our america i'm not here to look at that. thank you president correa as what i'm going to fellowship is really a pleasure to meet you julian at least in this way and welcome to the club of the persecuted. thank you. take a. pass thank you. that's something we have to avoid every day.

week. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harvey welcome to the big picture.

me me me me. to.

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