Miranda's rights: how Europe can learn from Latin America's independence
Miranda's rights: how Europe can learn from Latin America's independence
Brazil's action over the detention of Glenn Greenwald's partner shows South American nations no longer toe Washington's line
Mark Weisbrot
Secretary of State John Kerry meeting Brazil's Antonio Patriota, 2013
US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Brazilian counterpart, Antonio Patriota, meeting this month in Brazil. Patriota told Kerry that the NSA must 'stop practices that violate sovereignty'. Photograph: Evaristo SA/AFP
With a few exceptions, most of Europe hasn't had an independent foreign policy for the past 70 years, and the UK stands out as a prime example of this. I remember discussing British foreign policy with a UK member of Parliament a few years ago, and he said to me:
Do you want to know what the Foreign Office is going to do? Just ask the (US) State Department....
It is interesting, too, because the UK government had previously kept a relatively low public profile on the Snowden case, despite the fact that Snowden had leaked files from its own intelligence-gathering and not just the NSA's. Until Sunday, it looked as though the British authorities had learned at least a little bit about public relations after their international embarrassment last year, when they threatened to invade Ecuador's embassy in order to capture Julian Assange. Nevertheless, they are still keeping Assange trapped in the Ecuadorean embassy, illegally, and presumably at the behest of you-know-who.
Now, the editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, has revealed that the UK government, at the highest levels, has been very seriously threatening and harassing his newspaper in an attempt to silence its reporting.
At the other end of the spectrum of national sovereignty are the independent nations of Latin America, three of whom have officially offered Snowden asylum, and others who would never turn him over to the United States if he were to land on their territory (or seek asylum in their embassies). These governments have played a significant role in the Snowden affair and NSA spying scandal because they have achieved a "second independence" over the past 15 years – one that enables them to pursue an autonomous foreign policy.
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On the positive side, Latin America has done quite well over the past decade, since its people became free enough to elect left governments. These have subsequently led the fight for independence and transformed regional relations. Regional poverty dropped from 41.5% to 29.6% from 2003 to 2009, after showing no significant improvement for more than 20 years. Income per person has grown by more than 2% annually over the past decade, as opposed to just 0.3% over the prior 20 years – when Washington's influence over economic policy in Latin America was enormous.
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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/20/miranda-rights-europe-latin-america?CMP=twt_gu
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