‘Made in USA’: 3 key signs that point to Washington’s hand in Brazil’s ‘coup’
Brazil's
President Dilma Rousseff. © Ueslei Marcelino / Reuters
As
Brazil’s left-wing president, Dilma Rousseff, has been suspended
from office to face trial for disregarding budget laws, details have
emerged on key figures involved in what Rousseff supporters are
calling a coup, hinting at a covert plot involving Washington.
Following
last week’s vote in the Brazilian Senate that led to the suspension
of the country’s first female president, the left-wing politician
herself noted that she “never
imagined that it would be necessary to fight a coup in this country.”
While
Latin America’s modern history is riddled with well-documented
examples of US operations aimed at overthrowing regimes, some would
argue the situation in Brazil is tied to a popular protest movement
that has sprang up due to the corruption scandal and slumping
economy. However, profiles of those at the center of current events
offer clues as to why Washington’s hand might be at play.
1. From US informant to Brazil’s acting president
After
it emerged that Rousseff’s old ally and former vice-president,
Michel Temer, would succeed her as an interim head of the country,
the murky details from his past have emerged on Wikileaks. The
whistleblowing website said it has published proof Temer served as an
embassy informant for Washington.
Two
cables dated January 11, 2006, and June 21, 2006, obtained by
WikiLeaks reveal that Temer, a member of the centrist Brazilian
Democratic Movement Party party (PMDB), briefed US diplomats on the
political process in Brazil and his party’s aspirations to gain
power at the time of 2006 elections, which were won by Luiz Inácio
Lula da Silva from the Workers’ Party.
Interestingly
enough, US consul general in Sao Paolo McMullen, one of the two
addressees of the documents marked“sensitive
and unclassified,”labeled Temer’s
party as an “opportunistic” group
with “no
ideology or policy framework.” It
eventually entered into coalition with the Workers’ Party.
While
it might seem that makes Temer an unlikely candidate for Brazil’s
highest office, Greenwald alleges that his appointment can serve
perhaps not the nation’s, but perhaps some other party’s
interests.
“He’s
planning to appoint Goldman Sachs and IMF [International Monetary
Fund] officials to run the economy and otherwise install a totally
unrepresentative, neoliberal team,” Glenn wrote in
the article for The Intercept.
2. Senate impeachment leader with suspiciously close ties to US
Senator
Aloysio Nunes, of Temer’s Brazilian Democratic Movement, who led
Rousseff’s impeachment in the Senate, came to Washington for a
three-day visit just a day afterward to meet with US officials. Some
of the people Nunes met with included members of the US Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, lobbying firm Albright Stonebridge
Group, chaired by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and a
former US ambassador to Brazil, Thomas Shannon, among others, The
Intercept reported.
Speaking
to RT, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research
Mark Weisbrot said that Shannon “has
been involved in helping other coups in the region,” including
in Honduras in 2009 and in Paraguay in 2012.
Nunes
himself repeatedly spoke in favor of closer relations with the US in
an attempt to remedy the espionage scandal between Brazil and the US.
3. ‘Coup-experienced’ US ambassador
Not
only the former, but also the current US ambassador to Brazil,
Liliana Ayalde, might also boast an experience of taking part in
overthrowing foreign governments
WikiLeaks
Current US Ambassador to #Brazil Served in #Paraguay Prior to 2012 Coup http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/US-Ambassador-to-Brazil-Served-in-Paraguay-Prior-to-2012-Coup-20160514-0017.html …
Before
she was sent to Brazil, Ayalde had served as an ambassador to
Paraguay ahead of the 2012 coup, which saw the country’s president
Fernando Armindo Lugo Méndez ousted from office through impeachment
in a procedure similar to that of Rousseff’s.
Meanwhile,
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro says the question of who is
pulling the strings behind Brazil’s impeachment is not rocket
science
“I
have no doubt that behind this coup is the label ‘made in USA,’” he
said.
The
aim of “powerful
oligarchic, media and imperial forces” in
the Brazilian political crisis was to get rid of “progressive
forces, the popular revolutionary leaderships of the
continent,” Maduro
said.
He
described the events in Brazil as “a
grave threat for the future stability and peace of all the
continent,” expressing
concern that the next victim may be Venezuela.
Relations
between the US and Rousseff’s cabinet were marred by the scandal
that broke out due to the US National Security Agency whistleblower
Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 that showed that US
intelligence was spying on Rousseff by intercepting her
communications. The scandal resulted in a cooling of ties, with the
Brazilian president cancelling her visit to the US in the wake of the
revelations. In 2015, WikiLeaks revealed that the NSA was tapping the
cell phones of 29 Brazilian top officials, including Rousseff
herself.
Yes, Brazil is another nation that has been overthrown by and for Oil-Qaeda.
ReplyDeleteI saw it coming and wrote about it half a decade ago (The Fleets & Terrorism Follow The Oil - 2).
No biggie, the same imperial habit was written about in 1944:
"The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims, while incidentally capturing their markets; to civilise savage and senile and paranoid peoples, while blundering accidentally into their oil wells or metal mines."
(The Authoritarianism of Climate Change, quoting "As We Go Marching").