The Brazilian government began an investigation Monday into whether telecommunications firms operating in the country cooperated with the U.S. as part of a spying program that has collected data on billions of telephone and email conversations. - Anatel, the government agency that regulates the telecom sector in Brazil, said it's working with federal police and other government agencies on the investigation. The O Globo newspaper reported this weekend that information released by the National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden showed Brazil is the top target in Latin America for the NSA's massive intelligence-gathering effort aimed at monitoring communications around the world. Brazil isn't alone in its concern; London-based advocacy group Privacy International filed lawsuit on Monday over alleged spying of internet and phone users in Britain. Earlier, official in Germany, France, Hong Kong and other nations lodged complaints.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has confirmed that his country received an official request for asylum from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden on Monday. This comes after Nicaragua received his asylum application at its Moscow embassy. - “We received a letter requesting asylum” from Snowden, revealed Maduro, during a press conference prior to a meeting with Panama’s president, Ricardo Martinelli. The fugitive "will need to decide when he will fly here," added the Venezuelan head of state. Maduro last week said that his country would provide Snowden with a safe haven from "persecution from the empire." Snowden, who last month leaked confidential information revealing NSA’s massive electronic surveillance program, known as PRISM, is currently facing charges of theft of government property, and two counts of espionage – one for leaking classified to data to those without a security clearance. The 30-year-old has not been seen in public since late June in Hong Kong, but is widely believed to be in the transit zone at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport.

Nicolás Maduro says whistleblower has 'told the truth in spirit of rebellion', while Nicaragua also weighs asylum offer. - Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro said on Friday he had decided to offer asylum to former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, who has petitioned several countries to avoid capture by Washington. "In the name of America's dignity...I have decided to offer humanitarian asylum to Edward Snowden," Maduro told a televised military parade marking Venezuela's independence day. Maduro said Venezuela was ready to offer him sanctuary, and that the details Snowden had revealed of a US spy program had exposed the nefarious schemes of the US "empire". "He has told the truth, in the spirit of rebellion, about the US spying on the whole world," Maduro said.

RNV: Gobierno venezolano ofrece asilo humanitario a Edward Snowden + Audio
Venezuela Analysis: Maduro: Venezuela Will Offer Snowden Political Asylum
CNN: Venezuela offers asylum to U.S. intel leaker Snowden, "state News" says
Jason Ditz: Venezuela Offers Asylum to Snowden, Nicaragua Also Hints at Possibility

Latin American leaders meet to discuss the "hijack" of Bolivian president Evo Morales' plane in Austria. Regional leaders presented a united front, defending Latin American sovereignty in the face of what they see as post-colonial imperialism. International affairs analyst Pepe Escobar says such a turnover in Snowden chase could significantly increase NSA Whistleblower's chances on asylum in one of Latin America's countries.

Russia Today: Latin America rising: Outrage at ‘imperial hijack’ of Morales’ plane - Latin American leaders are meeting to discuss the “hijack” of Bolivian president Evo Morales’ plane in Austria. Regional leaders presented a united front, defending Latin American sovereignty in the face of what they see as post-colonial imperialism. The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) will hold an emergency meeting to discuss the EU air blockade that forced the Bolivian President Evo Morales to land in Austria on Wednesday. France, Spain, Portugal and Italy all closed their airspace amid suspicions the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden had stowed away on board the president’s craft. The 12 nations that are part of the regional block will have a ministerial meeting in the Peruvian capital of Lima to discuss the consequences.

CNN: Morales challenges U.S. after Snowden rumor holds up plane in Europe - President Morales: "Message to the Americans: The empire and its servants will never be able to intimidate or scare us. European countries need to liberate themselves from the imperialism of the Americans."

PressTV: We do not need US Embassy: Morales
USA Today: Rerouted Morales plane has South American leaders irate
Sabina Becker: They are SO FUCKING PARANOID

A hidden microphone is found in the ambassador's office, during routine security search, Ecuador foreign minister says. - Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino Aroca has said that a hidden listening device was found in his country's embassy in London during his visit to the UK last month. At Tuesday's press conference in the capital Quito, minister Patino said that the hidden listening device was found during a regular security check by the Ecuadorian intelligence for the Ecuadorian embassy in the UK on June 16. The microphone was found in the office of the ambassador Ana Alban. "We immediately conducted an investigation to find the source and I will release our result at tomorrow's press conference including the source of the device, who was using it and which department installed it", Patino told. Patino added that he hoped relevant countries or organisations could offer a reasonable explanation for the hidden listening device. However, he denied it had anything to do with the US extensive surveillance programme known as PRISM, which was revealed by Edward Snowden, former technical contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA).

France24: Hidden microphone found in London embassy: Ecuador
Russia Today: ‘Infiltrated from all sides’: Bug found in London’s Ecuadorian embassy

Faced with several days of overt threats from the Obama Administration and top senators threatening to revoke a key US-Ecuador trade pact if they dare to grant asylum to Edward Snowden, the Ecuadoran government has told the US what they can do with their frozen broccoli and fresh cut flowers, and has cancelled the pact themselves.

An estimated 1 million people took to the streets in cities across Brazil on Thursday as the country's biggest protests in two decades intensified despite government concessions meant to quell the demonstrations. - Undeterred by the reversal of transport fare hikes that sparked the protests, and promises of better public services, demonstrators marched around two international football matches and in locales as diverse as the Amazon capital of Manaus and the prosperous southern city of Florianopolis. While the protests remained mostly peaceful, the growing number of participants led to occasional outbursts of violence and vandalism in some cities. In central Rio de Janeiro, where 300,000 people marched, police afterwards chased looters and dispersed people crowding into surrounding areas.

Google/AFP: Brazil's mainstream media slammed for protest coverage

Gilad Atzmon: In the last few days, we have been learning about the emerging unrest in Brazil. The protests began early this month in response to a rise in bus fares in São Paulo and elsewhere, but have grown rapidly into a general outpouring of discontent after widespread anger at the heavy-handed police crackdown. In case you are perplexed by Brazil’s police violence, The Lab, a new Israeli film by Yotam Feldaman, provides the answers. Watch the Brazilian Gaza. The 'numbers' are also familiar...

The message is clear, Israel exports death, in other words, we are all Palestinians.

Ecuador's foreign minister on Tuesday accused the British government of trampling on the human rights of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange by refusing to allow him to travel to Ecuador, which granted him political asylum almost a year ago. Assange, 41, took refuge in Ecuador's tiny embassy in London last June to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over sex assault and rape allegations. He denies the allegations. Ecuador's socialist president, Rafael Correa, angered the UK by granting Assange asylum in August on concerns that the former computer hacker might be further extradited from Sweden to the United States. Ecuador's government late last year said the Australian citizen was suffering from lung problems.

The grandson of the late African-American human rights activist Malcolm X has been killed in Mexico, a report says. - The Amsterdamnews.com reported that Muslim civil activist Malcolm Shabazz was killed early Thursday due to injuries, but the exact circumstances of his death are still unconfirmed. Reports say that he suffered the fatal wounds after he was thrown off a building or shot as he was being robbed in the city of Tijuana. Terrie M. Williams, a close friend of the Shabazz family, stated in a message posted on Twitter, “I’m confirming, per US Embassy, on behalf of family, the tragic death of Malcolm Shabazz, grandson of Malcolm X. Statement from family to come.”

AWIP: FBI arrests Malcolm X grandson en route to Iran [02/04/13]

Indigenous groups claim they have not consented to oil projects, as politicians visit Beijing to publicise bidding process.

Ecuador plans to auction off more than three million hectares of pristine Amazonian rainforest to Chinese oil companies, angering indigenous groups and underlining the global environmental toll of China's insatiable thirst for energy. On Monday morning a group of Ecuadorean politicians pitched bidding contracts to representatives of Chinese oil companies at a Hilton hotel in central Beijing, on the fourth leg of a roadshow to publicise the bidding process. Previous meetings in Ecuador's capital, Quito, and in Houston and Paris were each confronted with protests by indigenous groups. Attending the roadshow were black-suited representatives from oil companies including China Petrochemical and China National Offshore Oil. "Ecuador is willing to establish a relationship of mutual benefit – a win-win relationship," said Ecuador's ambassador to China in opening remarks. According to the California-based NGO Amazon Watch, seven indigenous groups who inhabit the land claim that they have not consented to oil projects, which would devastate the area's environment and threaten their traditional way of life.

Venezuela's Supreme Court has ruled out a recount of the country's disputed presidential vote, saying there is no legal basis for the opposition's push for a vote-by-vote recount. - The head of the country's Supreme Court, Chief Justice Luisa Morales, said on Wednesday that manual vote counting was not possible, citing the country's 1999 constitution that "eliminated the manual electoral process." "In Venezuela the electoral system is completely automated. Therefore, a manual count does not exist. Anyone who thought that could really happen has been deceived," she said. "The majority of those who are asking for a manual count know it and are clear about it. Elections are not audited ballot by ballot but through the system," she added.

Stephen Lendman: Destabilizing Venezuela - On April 14, Venezuelans elected Nicolas Maduro president. He won fair and square. It's official. A nationally televised Monday ceremony announced it. Opposition candidate Henrique Capriles cried foul. He called Maduro "illegitimate." He refuses to recognize election results. He demands a recount. He wants "every vote" counted. National Electoral Council (CNE) president Tibisay Lucena responded. A manual recount of all votes isn't needed to confirm accuracy, she said. Proper auditing checks were implemented. It's routine. They're done before, during and post-elections. Over half the Sunday vote total was checked. She called doing so "a statistical proportion that in any part of the world (would be) considered excessive." Fourteen audits were conducted. They assure a free, open and fair process.

Bolivia’s President Evo Morales says the United States is planning to stage a coup in Venezuela, condemning Washington’s questioning of the Venezuelan presidential election results as interference. - In a press conference on Tuesday, the Bolivian president said that the US is getting ready for a coup d’état in Venezuela. He also rejected the White House’s moral authority to question electoral results worldwide, after Washington demanded Caracas to hold a full vote recount.

PressTV: President-elect Nicolas Maduro: US Embassy is behind unrest over vote in Venezuela
Russia Today: Venezuela's Maduro accuses US Embassy of supporting violent protests
Stephen Lendman: Destabilizing Venezuela
Sukant Chandan: Imperialist Regime Change Operation Underway
Le Monde: Manifestations au Venezuela : au moins 7 morts et 61 blessés

Among the cables, a series of diplomatic communications exposes the relationships between the Vatican and a number of dictatorial regimes, from Chile’s Augusto Pinochet to Argentina’s Jorge Rafael Videla to Spain’s Francisco Franco. On September 11, 1973, a CIA-backed coup led by general Pinochet overthrew the elected government of Socialist Party President Salvador Allende. In Pinochet’s 17-year dictatorship, thousands of left-wing activists, students, trade unionists and anyone suspected of opposing Chilean and international capital were killed or disappeared by the regime. Hundreds of thousands were jailed and tortured, or sent into exile.

Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles said he will not accept Chavista candidate Nicolas Maduro’s victory until a full audit of the election results is carried out. Capriles has slammed the ruling party with allegations of election fraud. - With the vote split almost equally acting President Nicolas Maduro has won Venezuelan presidential election to replace Hugo Chavez. Venezuelan election authorities have announced that with 99.12% of votes counted Maduro is leading with 50.66 per cent of the votes cast. Capriles is dragging behind with 49.07 per cent. Around 77 per cent of the eligible voters cast their ballots, officials said.

The victory is a long time coming. - The decree banning GMO foods was drafted in 2008. It not only bans GMO crops like Monsanto’s BT-Corn, but also expands on a prior law that required all foods on supermarket shelves that contain GMOs to be labeled. Those GMO containing foods will now be completely banned. After being subjected to public discussion, being amended, and finally passed in the Peruvian congress in April of 2011, the ban is finally going into effect this week. A study done in April of 2011 by the Peruvian Association of Consumers and Users (ASPEC) tested 13 products purchased in major supermarkets and shops in Lima, Peru. Unsurprisingly, 10 out of 13 tested positive for containing GMOs.

Venezuela is the top target for US media, not to mention the State Department, legendary director Oliver Stone said at a special screening of his film on Hugo Chavez. Sunday's vote is a choice between two very different futures for Venezuela, he said. - American filmmaker Oliver Stone, whose 2009 film “South of the Border” attempted to help Chavez’s image in the US, bemoaned the western media’s portrayal of Chavez as a clownish thorn-in-the-side of democracy. When asked about the perception that US President Barack Obama betrayed the country, Stone reminded the audience that the people of Venezuela will ultimately be responsible for their own success on the global stage.

Banana Giant Fears National Security Archive “Media Campaign”. - [NSA] Chiquita Brands International last week filed a “reverse” Freedom of Information lawsuit to block the release of records to the National Security Archive on the company’s illegal payments to Colombian terrorist groups, according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court. At issue are thousands of documents the company turned over to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from 1998-2004 as part of an investigation of the company’s illegal transactions with leftist insurgents and right-wing paramilitaries from the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). Two years ago, the Archive published “The Chiquita Papers,” a declassified collection of more than 5,000 pages of internal Chiquita documents turned over to the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation as part of a criminal investigation of more than $1.7 million in payments to the AUC over six years, and for nearly three years after the group was formally designated as a terrorist organization. That case resulted in a 2007 sentencing agreement in which Chiquita admitted to more than ten years of payments to a variety of Colombian guerrilla and paramilitary groups.

Ecuador's President Rafael Correa says Britain is not in a position to preach about its decision to offer asylum to Julian Assange when it failed to extradite former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet. Correa has infuriated British officials by offering protection at the Ecuador embassy in London to the Wikileaks founder who is wanted for sex assault and rape allegations in Sweden. 'Pinochet was not extradited for humanitarian reasons, when there were dozens of Europeans and thousands of Latin Americans who were murdered, and tens of thousands of people were tortured during the Pinochet dictatorship,' he told reporters in the country's capital Quito. Pinochet was arrested by British police at a hospital in London in 1998 after Spain demanded his extradition for alleged torture and murder, including of Spanish citizens, during his 1973-1990 rule. The British government decided in 2000 that the frail Pinochet was unfit to stand trial and free to fly home. He died six years later in Santiago, Chile, aged 91.

In a secret US cable published online by WikiLeaks, former ambassador to Venezuela, William Brownfield, outlines a comprehensive plan to infiltrate and destabilize former President Hugo Chavez' government. - Dispatched in November of 2006 by Brownfield -- now an Assistant Secretary of State -- the document outlined his embassy’s five core objectives in Venezuela since 2004, which included: “penetrating Chavez’ political base,” “dividing Chavismo,” “protecting vital US business” and “isolating Chavez internationally.” The memo, which appears to be totally un-redacted, is plain in its language of involvement in these core objectives by the US embassy, as well as the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), two of the most prestigious agencies working abroad on behalf of the US.

WikiLeaks Central presents an exclusive interview with Chilean journalist Patricio Mery, who claims the CIA has been actively plotting to destabilise or even assassinate Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa, after US anger over decisions such as the granting of political asylum to Julian Assange and the termination of the US lease on a military base in Manta. Mery claims the CIA is running an Iran-Contra style drug operation in Chile, trafficking “about 200 kilos of cocaine per month” from Bolivia in order to fund anti-Correa operations. Early last year, Italian police discovered 40 kilos of cocaine in Ecuador’s diplomatic mail. Mery alleges senior Chilean officials were involved, and he has a dossier of proof for the Ecuadorian government.

Press Core/SOTT: CIA Targeted Assassinations by Induced Heart Attack and Cancer

Ecuador plans to auction off more than three million hectares of pristine Amazonian rainforest to Chinese oil companies, angering indigenous groups and underlining the global environmental toll of China's insatiable thirst for energy. On Monday morning a group of Ecuadorean politicians pitched bidding contracts to representatives of Chinese oil companies at a Hilton hotel in central Beijing, on the fourth leg of a roadshow to publicise the bidding process. Previous meetings in Ecuador's capital, Quito, and in Houston and Paris were each confronted with protests by indigenous groups. Attending the roadshow were black-suited representatives from oil companies including China Petrochemical and China National Offshore Oil. "Ecuador is willing to establish a relationship of mutual benefit – a win-win relationship," said Ecuador's ambassador to China in opening remarks.

The biggest emerging markets are uniting to tackle under-development and currency volatility with plans to set up institutions that encroach on the roles of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The leaders of the so-called BRICS nations -- Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa -- are set to approve the establishment of a new development bank during an annual summit that began today in the eastern South African city of Durban, officials from all five nations say. They will also discuss pooling foreign-currency reserves to ward off balance of payments or currency crises.

The War on Democracy is a 2007 documentary film directed by Christopher Martin and John Pilger. Focusing on the political state of Latin America, the film is intended as a rebuke of both the United States' intervention in foreign countries' domestic politics, and its "War on Terrorism". [The film] explores the current and past relationship of Washington with Latin American countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile.

Using archive footage sourced by Michael Moore's archivist Carl Deal, the film shows how serial US intervention, overt and covert, has toppled a series of legitimate governments in the Latin American region since the 1950s. The democratically elected Chilean government of Salvador Allende, for example, was ousted by a US backed coup in 1973 and replaced by the military dictatorship of General Pinochet. Guatemala, Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador have all been invaded by the United States. John Pilger interviews several ex-CIA agents who took part in secret campaigns against democratic countries in the region. He investigates the School of the Americas in the US state of Georgia, where Pinochet's torture squads were trained along with tyrants and death squad leaders in Haiti, El Salvador, Brazil and Argentina. The film unearths the real story behind the attempted overthrow of Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez in 2002 and how the people of the barrios of Caracas rose up to force his return to power.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the former Archbishop of Buenos Aires who was elected Pope by the papal conclave on Wednesday, was intimately involved in Operation Condor’s “Dirty War” in South America. - Bergoglio headed up the Catholic church during the successful effort by the globalists to dismantle Argentina’s economy. The country’s military dictatorship was supported by Wall Street bankers and David Rockefeller. “One of the key appointments of the military junta (on the instructions of Wall Street) was the Minister of Economy, Jose Alfredo Martinez de Hoz, a member of Argentina’s business establishment and a close friend of David Rockefeller,” writes Michel Chossudovsky. “The neoliberal macro-economic policy package adopted under Martinez de Hoz was a ‘carbon copy’ of that imposed in October 1973 in Chile by the Pinochet dictatorship under advice from the ‘Chicago Boys’, following the September 11, 1973 coup d’Etat and the assassination of president Salvador Allende.”

Bill Van Auken: The “Dirty War” Pope - [Some] of Bergoglio’s harshest critics come from within the Catholic Church itself, including priests and lay workers who say he handed them over to the torturers as part of a collaborative effort to “cleanse” the Church of “leftists.” One of them, a Jesuit priest, Orlando Yorio, was abducted along with another priest after ignoring a warning from Bergoglio, then head of the Jesuit order in Argentina, to stop their work in a Buenos Aires slum district.