Now isn't this interesting. Keane Bhatt of the Manufacturing Contempt blog on the website of the venerable North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) calls out the mainstream media, e.g. The Economist and the Los Angeles Times, for hypocrisy in pointing out that Rafael Correa's Ecuador, where Julian Assange is seeking asylum, has a less than stellar record on press freedom. By contrast, Bhatt notes, no eyebrows were raised when Emilio Palacio, an editor at the Guayaquil daily El Universo who was convicted of libel against Correa in Ecuador,  fled to Miami last year—despite the fact that the USA doesn't have a stellar record on press freedom either. Bhatt points to the case of Sami al-Hajj, the Al Jazeera cameraman who was imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay for over six years before being released without charge. He also points to Abdulelah Haider Shaye, a Yemeni journalist imprisoned on dubious charges of al-Qaeda collaboration after reporting on US missile strikes. According to Jeremy Scahill in The Nation, Obama pressured the Yemeni regime to keep him locked up.

Now isn't this precious. We have been struggling for months to bring attention to the fact that WikiLeaks is credibly accused by rights groups of supplying intelligence on dissidents to the repressive regime of Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus, "Europe's last dictatorship." Now, just as Ecuador has granted asylum to WikiLeaks mastermind Julian Assange, it seems that President Rafael Correa's government is considering rescinding the asylum status granted last year to one Aliaksandr Barankov, an exiled whistleblower from—Belarus. Here are the basic facts from the Associated Press, Aug. 21:

First in Sudan, now Belarus. From Amnesty International, Aug. 14:

Photos of Teddy Bears Land Belarus Student Behind Bars
Anton Surapin did what millions do every day: he posted photos of something interesting online. But he lives in ex-Soviet Belarus, the most authoritarian state in Europe, and the photographs in question were of teddy bears that had just parachuted out of the sky carrying a pro-human rights message.