Common Dreams – by Sarah Lazare
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, attacking its democracy, and infringing on the human rights of its citizens.
“In the absence of the right to privacy, there can be no true freedom of expression and opinion, and therefore no effective democracy,” she declared in her strongest statements yet in the fallout following revelations that the NSA had directly spied on Rousseff. “In the absence of the respect for sovereignty, there is no basis for the relationship among nations.” Continue reading “In Stinging Rebuke at UN, Brazilian President Rails Against NSA Spying”