Latin America

By Jim Lobe WASHINGTON, Dec 18 2014 (IPS) – In perhaps his boldest foreign-policy move during his presidency, Barack Obama Wednesday announced that he intends to establish full diplomatic relations with Cuba. While the president noted that he lacked the authority to lift the 54-year-old trade embargo against Havana, he issued directives that will permit […]

Africa

Using up Everything Fast: Extractive Capitalism, Sealing and Muslim Slaves in Latin America

contributors

(By Greg Grandin) The Two Faces of Empire Melville Knew Them, We Still Live With Them By Greg Grandin A captain ready to drive himself and all around him to ruin in the hunt for a white whale. It’s a well-known story, and over the years, mad Ahab in Herman Melville’s most famous novel, Moby-Dick, […]

Government surveillance

President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil at UN delivers Stinging Rebuke to Obama on NSA Spying (Lazare)

Juan Cole

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 […]