photo: -lucky cat-
It’s very revealing and symbolic that President Morales’ plane should have been forced to land in a European Union country after the withdrawal of overflight rights by other EU countries, because this, of course, shows how the European poodle jumps at the American circus master’s command. European governments are very obviously under the thumb of the Americans, they have shown this very blatantly. And the reason why I say it’s symbolic is that the abuses which Snowden has revealed — the explosion of espionage activity against US citizens and against the people around the world by the US government — is only one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is that there has been massive increase in cooperation in intelligence sharing between the United States and its European Union allies in the last ten years and certainly since 9-11. So it’s entirely appropriate, if you like, that the whistleblower should have been attempted to be caught by European Union countries, because the problem that he has revealed concerns intelligence sharing between the European Union and America as well as the increase of espionage by the American security forces.
We have to see, of course, how the Latin American leaders react after this extraordinary violation of aviation law and of diplomatic immunity [in the forcing down of the Bolivian President’s plane]. I mean the idea, like some gangster or a pirate, a country can simply order a presidential plane to land because they suspect they’ve heard a rumor that someone might be on that plane, is absolutely shocking. It should shock anybody who is interested in human rights and the rule of law. Edward Snowden is not in the Interpol “wanted” list, there is no justification for this kind of gangster activity. If he is to be extradited to the United States, then that must, of course, happen according to legal procedures. That is to say, according to the extradition treaties where they exist. If the Americans and their European allies are going to say that these well-established rules and principles no longer matter, then they are showing themselves up to be what in fact they are: completely hypocritical on human right issues. Of course that will bring about untold opposition from Latin America, from China, and probably from Russia.
The Americans and the Europeans are hand in glove, but this isn’t the first time that we’ve known about this. Let’s not forget when the CIA rendition scandal broke several years ago, that’s to say the scandal of people being kidnapped by American officials, by American soldiers, and then taken to secret centers for interrogation, those secret centers, as we know, were in Poland and Romania. They were in EU and NATO states. So we know that the American and the European intelligence agencies operate extremely closely together. We know that the European treaties, the Lisbon treaty, for example, commit the European Union to working hand in glove with NATO. So this in a sense should not really come as a surprise to anybody.
Excerpted from an interview on RT, reprinted with permission.
