Citing an alleged breach of an agreement to refrain from interfering in other states’ affairs, the Ecuadorian government has cut off Julian Assange"s internet access preventing his communication with the outside world.
The post Protesters Gather Outside Embassy as Gov’t Cuts Assange’s Communication With the Outside World appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
Assange’s ID was issued on December 21, Ecuadorian outlet El Universo reports, citing “reliable sources” and providing the civil registry number to check on the government website.
Image source: Pixabay.com
The best way to raise your kids with old-fashioned American values might be to move to another country.
Mother and writer Wendy DeChambeau discovered that intriguing paradox when she, her husband and two sons moved to the South American nation of Ecuador.
“I moved my kids out of America,” DeChambeau wrote in a feature for The Week. “It was the best parenting decision I’ve ever made.”
Back in 2011, DeChambeau and her family traded their home in small town USA for life in a modest mountain village in Ecuador. Her sons were seven and nine, and she noticed some interesting effects after living in the developing nation for a few years. For one, there is a refreshing lack of materialism in Ecuador.
“Though we live comfortably here in Ecuador, my sons are surrounded by families that work hard and live simply,” DeChambeau wrote. “There is no internet shopping. There are no big box stores stuffed to the brim with the latest useless merchandise. And Christmas in these parts is about church and family, not piles of presents and deepening debt.
Are You Looking For A Second Country? We Found The Best One.
“While they’re still kids with wants and desires, runaway consumerism and material greed has passed right by my boys,” DeChambeau wrote. “When they do want something special, they’re willing to work for it — like when my oldest son baked and sold cupcakes to earn money for that electric piano keyboard he had been eyeing.”
True Adventure in Ecuador
Image source: Pixabay.com
Ecuador is a Spanish-speaking nation with an average income of just $11,000 a year, according to The CIA World Fact Book. Despite that, DeChambeau loves it there and thinks the country is great for her sons.
“Theme parks and big animal attractions just aren’t a thing here, so my kids have never seen Shamu or visited the fairy tale castles of Disneyland,” DeChambeau reported. “While some might say my children have been denied a crucial childhood experience, I would argue the opposite.
“They’ve never set foot in an adrenaline-inducing water park, but they have snorkeled with sea lions, penguins and sea turtles,” she observed. “They may not have access to larger-than-life, man-made attractions, but they have a world of true adventure at their fingertips.”
The boys also have learned important virtues like patience and hard work.
“Living in a country where instant gratification is a laughable concept, you learn to develop some mad waiting skills,” she wrote. “When my youngest found that his 11th birthday present was going to arrive two weeks late, he took it in stride. ‘That’s okay, mom, we’ll celebrate my birthday when it gets here.’ I know that if this had happened to me, my 11-year-old self would have collapsed into tears.”
When her sons return to the U.S., she said, they’ll “have a leg up.”
“In a world where the up-and-coming generation is castigated for their feelings of entitlement and inability to handle disappointment, my sons have no notions of being owed a thing,” she wrote.
What do you think? Share your thoughts in the section below:
There are few things in nature as fascinating as volcanoes. There are also few things that are as deadly. There are regular old volcanoes, and there are super-volcanoes. Super-volcanoes have the capacity to wipe out civilization, and one such super-volcano in Italy appears to be waking from a 500-year slumber. [1]
Rumored to have caused the extinction of the Neanderthals, the nearly 5-mile wide Campi Flegrei super-volcano sits on the Italian coast. Researchers are concerned that it is approaching a critical pressure point that could lead to an eruption. There are close to 500,000 people living around it.
When you picture a volcano, you picture smoke and lava erupting from its peak. But super-volcanoes are quite different. Imagine Yellowstone National Park. Super-volcanoes are formed when a volcano ejects so much magma from its center that it actually collapses on itself, leaving behind extensive fields of volcanic activity, a vast crater, as well as numerous geysers, hydrothermal activity, and sulphuric acid.
Read: Yellowstone Super-Volcano – 10% Chance of Erupting Within 80 Years
The Campi Flegrei super-volcano is made up of 24 craters and large volcanic edifices, many of which are submerged beneath the Mediterranean Sea. It formed 39,000 years ago, as part of the largest eruption Europe has experienced in the last 200,000 years.
Since its formation, Campi Flegrei has experienced 2 major eruptions – 35,000 years ago, and 12,000 years ago. A smaller eruption occurred in 1538. That “smaller” eruption, however, lasted for 8 days and spewed so much material into the surrounding area, it formed a new mountain, Monte Nuovo.
You get the point – even a “small” eruption is a huge event, so a major eruption could be catastrophic.
The eruption that occurred 200,000 years ago is believed to have triggered a “volcanic winter” that wiped out the Neanderthals. That’s pure speculation, but scientists say the eruption spewed some 1 trillion gallons of molten rock onto the surface and just as much sulphur into the atmosphere.
A team of researchers from the Italian National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology are watching Campi Flegrei very closely because the super-volcano appears to be approaching a critical pressure point that could trigger a 3rd major eruption.
ScienceAlert explains:
“This critical pressure point – referred to as critical degassing pressure (CDP) – could drive volcanic unrest towards a critical state, the team reports, by releasing jets of super-hot gas into the atmosphere, heating the surrounding hydrothermal fluids and rocks, and causing rock failure and possibly an eruption.”
Volcanologist Giovanni Chiodini says:
“Hydrothermal rocks, if heated, can ultimately lose their mechanical resistance, causing an acceleration towards critical conditions.”
Campi Flegrei has been experiencing an “uplift” for the past decade, which suggests that the volatile gases beneath it are rising to the surface at an accelerating rate. This has prompted Italian authorities to raise the super-volcano’s alert level from green (“quiet”) to yellow (“requires scientific monitoring.”)
Uplift has signaled volcanic eruptions in the past, most notably with Rabaul in Papua New Guinea and Sierra Negra in the Galapagos.
No one is telling local residents to run for their lives just yet, because it is impossible to predict what, if anything, Campi Negrei might do. Chiodini says:
“We have many uncertainties and long-term previsions are at the moment not possible! For example, the process that we describe could evolve in both directions: toward pre-eruptive conditions or to the finish of the volcanic unrest.”
Chiodini and his team hope that their latest observations will spur other researchers to monitor Campi Flegrei in the coming years, so people have some idea of just how catastrophic another major eruption could be.
On December 26, at 8:24 a.m., the Sabancaya volcano, which sits just 40 miles from Peru’s second most populous city, Arequipa, began spitting smoke and ash some 11,500 feet into the air just over a week after it became active.
Local authorities have warned the local inhabitants that they are likely to be affected by the ash from the 20,000-foot volcano, whose name translates to “tongue of fire” in the local dialect of Quechua.
Sabancaya had been dormant for 200 years until it began erupting in the 1980’s.
Just 60 miles away, the Ubinas volcano is also in the midst of spewing smoke and ash 2 miles into the atmosphere. It is Peru’s most active volcano, and was last active in April 2014. Ubinas had been dormant for about 40 years before rumbling back to life in 2006.
Authorities began evacuating the surrounding area earlier this week.
Peruvian Geophysical Institute (IGP) investigator Orlando Macedo said:
“All this activity is part of an expected process. Before the eruption, tremors were occurring closer and closer to the volcano and the crater. However, the process is taking longer than that which we saw at the Ubinas Volcano, when everything happened in a matter of days. In the case of Sabancaya, this could go on for several months.”
There was a lot of moving and shaking in December 2016.
Mount St. Helens in Washington State experienced an earthquake “swarm” of some 120 shallow temblors over the course of several days. It is considered active, but an eruption could be years away. [3]
On the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East, the Shiveluch volcano blew its top, destroying the small lava dome/plug in its crater and generating a 36,000-foot ash plume. Fortunately, the ash drifted to an uninhabited area, but an orange aviation alert was issued to warn airlines of the ash plume.
In Costa Rica, antennas on Irazu will have to be moved because of cracking on the volcano. It is unknown whether the cracking is related to any potential changes in the Irazu volcano, or if the surface blocks are just faulting.
The infamous Hawaiian volcano Kilauea experienced a small explosion, sending huge chunks of debris flying, including old wall rock and lava from the lava lake. This is a fairly common occurrence.
Lastly, scientists have noticed an increase in seismicity at Cayambe in Ecuador. An earthquake swarm that occurred there over several days in December indicate that Cayambe, like Mount St. Helens, is recharging, but no eruption appears to be imminent.
Sources:
[1] ScienceAlert
[2] Express
[3] Wired
 | Julie Fidler is a freelance writer, legal blogger, and the author of Adventures in Holy Matrimony: For Better or the Absolute Worst. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two ridiculously spoiled cats. She occasionally pontificates on her blog. |
It may be the worst possible news for Julian Assange. Or the best, depending on which exit poll of the Ecuador presidential election is right.
With the results of the Ecuador presidential run-off race set to be announced in hours, two exit polls projected two different winners in a tight election in OPEC"s smallest member nation on Sunday evening, sparking celebrations in the rival camps of a leftist government-backed candidate and a former banker. As Reuters reports, the final results could take days to tabulate, the electoral council has warned, in a race that could extend a decade of leftist rule or usher in more business-friendly policies in the oil-rich Andean country.
According to one exit poll, conservative challenger Guillermo Lasso had 53.02% of votes versus 46.98% for government-backed Lenin Moreno, an exit poll by leading pollster Cedatos showed on Sunday afternoon. With Cedatos considered one of the most trustworthy polls, the Lasso camp broke into cheers, with supporters waving flags and honking horns in wealthier northern Quito.
"Today a new Ecuador is born, the Ecuador of democracy, the Ecuador of freedom," Lasso told a crowd chanting: "Lasso President!" in his sweltering coastal hometown, Guayaquil.
Meanwhile, a separate exit poll by Perfiles de Opinion showed Moreno with 52.2% of the vote versus 47.8% for Lasso. Moreno was more measured, telling supporters in Quito: "We have a very trustworthy lead." He urged Ecuadoreans to await final results.
The results will have substantial geopolitical implications, and South America is watching closely to see if Ecuador will follow Argentina, Brazil and Peru in shifting to the right as a commodities boom ends.
But the polarized country is also bracing for potential unrest after a tense campaign. Both candidates have called for their supporters to take to the street and "defend the vote."
The two contenders could not be more different.
Moreno, 64, a paraplegic former vice-president, just missed the minimum threshold to win the presidency in the first round in February, and polls leading up to Sunday"s runoff showed him leading Lasso. Moreno, who has used a wheelchair since being shot during a robbery in 1998, has promised to boost social benefits to single mothers, pensioners and disabled Ecuadoreans while being more conciliatory than the mercurial Correa.
Lasso, a 61-year-old former head of Banco de Guayaquil who has campaigned on creating one million jobs in four years, argues that Moreno"s generous social promises risk plunging Ecuador"s economy further into debt. He also accuses the ruling Country Alliance party of covering up corruption scandals, stifling media, and stacking institutions with supporters in the vein of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a Correa ally. As Reuters notes, Venezuela"s political upheaval cast a shadow over Ecuador"s vote, with Lasso supporters fearing their country could turn the way of the crisis-hit nation.
* * *
But the biggest reason why the presidential election is being closely watched by the international community is that its outcome may seal the fate of Julian Assange.
Lasso, who according to the Cedatos poll is the winner, has vowed that if he wins the WikiLeaks founder’s time in the Ecuador embassy in London will be up. Lasso has said he would “cordially ask Señor Assange to leave within 30 days of assuming a mandate”, because his presence in the Knightsbridge embassy was a burden on Ecuadorian taxpayers.
Meanwhile, Lenin Moreno, has said Assange would remain welcome, albeit with conditions. “We will always be alert and ask Mr Assange to show respect in his declarations regarding our brotherly and friendly countries,” Moreno said.
As the Guardian wrote on March 31 ahead of Sunday"s election, the Australian’s legal team are extremely worried.
“We are obviously very concerned that any candidate would threaten to undermine the protection that the Ecuadorian state has granted Julian,” said Jennifer Robinson, a lawyer at Doughty Street Chambers who is a member of Assange’s UK legal team. “No government should play politics with the granting of asylum. It’s a legal protection provided for under international law, Ecuador has granted that protection, they have recognised him as a refugee, and now they have obligations to protect him whatever happens in the elections.”
Assange’s team are reluctant to be drawn on what legal avenues they might be able to pursue, but he is understood to have instructed lawyers in Quito, while others are looking at whether they may have potential options through the Inter-American and European courts of human rights.
Making matters for Assange worse, British authorities are adamant that, should Assange leave the embassy under any circumstances, he will be immediately arrested and sent to Sweden, which has been seeking to extradite him over an allegation of rape dating from 2010, which Assange denies.
In short, Assange’s best hope in the short term, is a Moreno victory. If that does not happen as at least one poll suggests, international human rights groups might rally in his defence, or WikiLeaks might uncover material to put pressure on Lasso. But according to Arturo Moscoso, an Ecuadorian lawyer and academic, Assange should not expect Ecuadorian public opinion to come to the rescue: “For many it’s a headache.”
“No organisation, no law and no person can prevent the president from revoking the status of political asylum.” Assange’s asylum was granted by a presidential decree and could just as easily be removed by one, he said.
Curiously, while many have implied Russian "interference" in every major recent geopolitical event, from the Brexit vote, to the US presidential election, to the upcoming elections in France and Germany, few have discussed whether or not the Kremlin would be "manipulating" the results of the Ecuador presidential election, especially since the fate of one of the men rumored to have been collaborating with Putin, Julian Assange, is now on the line and could result in a protracted prison sentence.
Then again, it"s just one exit poll, which as recent events have demonstrated, can be painfully wrong. One person - the founder of Wikileaks - will spend the night praying that it is.
