Latin America united against US spy program - Michele Steinberg
Press TV has conducted an interview with Michelle Steinberg, Executive Intelligence Review from Leesburg, about the issue of anger rising in pro-US Latin American governments over US intelligence gathering against their countries disclosed by ‘on-the-run’ American whistleblower, Edward Snowden. The following is an approximate transcript of the interview.
- As far as Latin America’s anger goes, certainly Latin America has been in the news a lot with Venezuela even offering asylum to Snowden.
How do you think the relationship has changed between the US and Latin America especially in light of these NSA revelations?
- Well, I think the latest article in our global that appeared on Tuesday revealing that Columbia may be the third most spied upon country in the world by the Obama administration, by the National Security Agency, is a wake-up call.
Last week we had the plane carrying the President of Bolivia Evo Morales essentially downed in Europe at the request of the Obama administration on suspicion that Edward Snowden was onboard, which of course he was not.
Now, that created a bit of a furor, but Columbia being the country that has a free trade agreement and as mentioned before a close military alliance with the United States, Columbia thought they were immune from this kind of spying.
Brazil, which just had a big conference with the United States on global warming and bio-fuels, they also thought that they were in a special category. And now they find out that the spying extends to them.
This is going to really cause a huge backlash against the Obama administration and it is very much in sync with what is going on in Congress and with the American people against Obama. Barak Obama right now is becoming Nixon-ized at a very, very fast pace.
- Does that mean essentially that the relationship between the United States and Latin America has been irreparably damaged?
- I think in the long term it will recover. But right now it is at a crisis point.
The Organization of American States adopted a resolution Tuesday that condemned the incident involving Evo Morales’ plane and the attempts by the United States to have relations with two different Latin Americas: the one that they call a kind of pro-Cuba with Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Cuba on one side; and the rest of the countries on the other. This is falling apart right now.
You are going to see a solidarity in Latin America that the United States is not ready for.