Latin America

Reuters reports on President Roussef’s speech condemning US spying on her country and on her personally: Sarah Lazare writes at Commondreams: In a furious critique that opened the UN's General Assembly meeting Tuesday immediately before President Obama took the podium, Brazil's president Dilma Rousseff blasted U.S. secret surveillance programs for violating her country's national sovereignty, […]

Government surveillance

Brazilian President Snubs Obama: How US Cyber Espionage will Destroy the Internet

Juan Cole

The USG Open Source Center reports on Brazilian press reaction to President Dilma Roussef’s decision to cancel her state visit to Washington DC this fall, after revelations by Edward Snowden that the US National Security Agency not only intensively spied on all Brazilians online and engaged in industrial espionage but that special efforts were made […]

Government surveillance

Argentina’s President Kirchner: US Industrial Espionage gave me Chills down my Spine

Juan Cole

The relationship between the United States and Latin America may have just plunged to its lowest level since the 1910s and 1920s, the height of US imperialism in the area, when United Fruit and the Marines imposed themselves on the region. Glenn Greenwald, Roberto Kaz and José Casado revealed in an article for the Brazilian […]

Government surveillance

Evo Morales of Bolivia joins in Offering Leaker Snowden Asylum

Juan Cole

Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, on Saturday said that he would offer Edward Snowden asylum if asked. He joins the presidents of Venezuela and Nicaragua in that offer. Morales said that he made the decision as a just protest against his own treatment last week, when his jet was denied overflight rights in France, […]

Government surveillance

Venezuela’s Maduro: Unlike US Asylees, Snowden didn’t Blow anything Up, just said ‘This is not Right’

Juan Cole

Globovision reports that President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela on Friday offered asylum to US leaker Edward Snowden, in order, he said, to protect him from “imperial North American persecution,” describing the US government as among the “most oppressive in the world.” He said he hoped Snowden would be able to live “quietly in the free […]

Government surveillance

Snowden Fall-out: European Denial of Overflight to Bolivian President Angers South America

Juan Cole

As Bolivian President Evo Morales was returning from Moscow in a private jet after consultations on energy, his pilot was suddenly informed that France and Portugal had revoked overflight permissions, along with Spain and Italy. Spain ultimately relented, and Morales’s plane refueled there, before heading to Vienna to overnight. The Bolivian government is furious at […]

Domestic Surveillance

Correa on Smearing of Snowden: “The World Order is not only unjust, it is immoral”

Juan Cole

The USG Open Source Center gives highlights from the Ecuadorean press on the issue of asylum for Edward Snowden. It includes a translation of President Rafael Correa’s tweet slamming the Washington Post and other US media for making Snowden the issue rather than reporting on the NSA abuses he revealed Ecuador Media Watch: USG Making […]

Domestic Surveillance

Why Correa might give Snowden Asylum: All the Horrible things the US has done to Ecuador

Juan Cole

Rafael Correa of Ecuador, who won a third term this year, has significantly improved the lives of his people, reducing poverty rates and building out infrastructure. Correa, an economist trained at the University of Illinois, has a nuanced view of the US, but he has had significant frictions with the behemoth of the North, which […]