Evo
Morales, the President of Bolivia, Accuses the White House of
Kidnapping Him by Getting European Allies to Force-Land His Plane in
Austria
MARK
KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
3
July, 2013
Was
it an act of intimidation or was it a violation of international
protocol and law to mid-flight deny the presidential plane of Evo
Morales, president of Bolivia, air passage over France, Portugal and
Spain? Or was it both?
It's
a murky story with the US government not issuing any statements, as
of Wednesday morning, about the forced diversion of Morales's
presidential plane to Vienna, where it was thoroughly searched by
Austrian officials to see if Edward Snowden was on board. The
Bolivian foreign minister charges the US with threatening the life of
Morales because the plane was running low on fuel.
"The
decisions of these countries violated international law. We are
already making procedures to denounce this to the UN secretary
general," he [the foreign miniter of Bolivia] said.
"We
have no doubt that it was an order from the White House....For no
reason whatsoever should a diplomatic plane with a president [inside]
be diverted from its route and forced to land in another country."
France,
Portugal and Spain all offered rather vague and unconvincing excuses
for their actions. After Snowden was not found on the plane and it
was refueled in Vienna, Austrian authorities granted it permission to
depart on Wednesday.
Morales
had been returning from a conference in Moscow, but his plane left
from a different airport than the one Snowden is ensconced in.
Morales,
who was re-elected president by a landslide vote of 64% in 2009, has
long had a contentious relationship with the United States, including
expelling the US ambassador in 2006 for allegedly undermining
democracy in Bolivia.
Although
Morales had
told Russian Television
that he would consider asylum for Snowden, it is highly likely that
the US would have known that Snowden had not been transferred to
Morales's plane given its "surveillance state" capabilities
that one assumes extend to Moscow.
Therefore,
it is a strong possible theory that the Obama administration was
doing what it has been doing to whistleblowers, journalists, and
international opponents of neo-liberalism: intimidating them.
In
essence, the White House and the military-industrial
complex-surveillance state apparatus were putting world leaders who
might be contemplating granting asylum to Snowden on notice: "We
can reach you anywhere: don't mess with us by giving Snowden a refuge
from our prosecution of him."
The
BBC reports that Morales, who is indigenous and usually wears a
colorful wool Andean coat to diplomatic events, was a tad indignant
about being treated like at outlaw:
Mr
Morales said presidents should have the right to travel anywhere in
the world.
"It's
not an offense against the president, it is an offense against the
country, against the whole of the Latin American region," he
said before taking off.
He
described the incident as "almost a kidnapping of 13 hours."
Meanwhile
on the home front, all that "false misunderstood information"
that Snowden was accused of leaking. Well, here is what the BBC
reports:
The
leaking of thousands of classified intelligence documents prompted
revelations that the US has been systematically seizing vast amounts
of phone and web data.
National
Intelligence Director James Clapper apologized on Tuesday for telling
Congress in March that the NSA did not have a policy of gathering
data on millions of Americans.
He
said in a letter to the Senate intelligence committee that his answer
had been "clearly erroneous."
So
the US admits now it is collecting data on millions of Americans as
it diverts our attention by having allies divert the "Air Force
One" of Bolivia.
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