SPECIAL REPORT. U.S. fomenting "constitutional coups" in BRICS alliance by Wayne Madsen Report

SPECIAL REPORT. U.S. fomenting "constitutional coups" in BRICS alliance

by Wayne Madsen Report
When President Obama flies over Brazil on his way from Cuba to Argentina, he will be flying over the latest member of the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South African (BRICS) alliance to feel the effects of the Central Intelligence Agency's new brand of coup generation. After trying to mount an electoral defeat of Brazil's progressive leftist president, Dilma Rousseff, through a combination of presidential candidate assassination, "rent-a-mob" street demonstrations, and corporate media propaganda, the Langley spooks are now trying to run Rousseff from office through a "Made in America" impeachment process. Aware that Rousseff's progressive predecessor and mentor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has been targeted by Brazilian prosecutors on the CIA's payroll, for arrest and prosecution for bribery, she has appointed him to her government with ministerial rank. 

Bribery charges, involving Brazil's state-owned oil company Petrobras and, in the case of Lula, construction firms, have also been leveled against Rousseff. George Soros, whose operatives in Brazil have been involved in launching "themed revolution" street protests, has made no secret of his desire to see Petrobras totally privatized so he can sink his fangs into the company and drain it for all it is worth. Soros operatives have turned thousands of people out into the streets of Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Brasilia, and Rio de Janeiro in the "green and yellow" revolution. Protesters carry green and yellow banners and signs and dressed in green and yellow clothes have been confronted by an equal number of government supporters dressed in the red color of the ruling Workers' Party.

The anti-Rousseff/Lula movement bears a signature Soros name, "Vem Pra Rua," Portuguese for "To the Street." As with the disastrous Soros-inspired and CIA-nurtured Arab Spring protests in Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Tunisia and Euromaidan protest in Ukraine, the Vem Pra Rua movement is basically nothing more than a politically-motivated capitalist campaign using Facebook, Twitter, and pro-insurrection television and radio networks, newspapers, and websites.

Vem Pra Rua's protests were marked by quickly-manufactured inflatable dolls of Lula in black and white prison garb and a placard cartoon drawing of Rousseff with a red diagonal "No" sign drawn through it.

Brazilian prosecutors on Langley's payroll recently arrested the popular Lula after staging a massive police raid of his house. Police also arrested the former First Lady of Brazil, Lula's wife Marisa Leticia. Lula said he felt that he was kidnapped by the police. In 2009, Honduran troops actually kidnapped President Manuel Zelaya in the middle of the night and detained him in a military cell prior to expelling him from the country. That operation, like the one against Lula and Rousseff, was backed not only by the CIA and NSA, but by the U.S. Southern Command in Miami. The Honduran coup was also backed by the Supreme Court of Honduras. To prevent a further political arrest of her predecessor, Rousseff has made Lula her chief of staff, a cabinet position that affords Lula protection from continuing prosecutorial harassment and legal proceedings by the federal court.


Soros's and the CIA's latest themed uprising, the Green and Yellow Revolution in Brazil. Soros's "revolutions" only serve the interests of Wall Street, the Pentagon, and Israel.

On March 16, Judge Sergio Moro, who is in charge of Operation "Lava-jato" ("Carwash"), the two-year investigation of Petrobras and the alleged bribery involving Rousseff and Lula, released two taped intercepts of phone calls between the president and former president. The bugged phone conversation involved Rousseff's plans to appoint Lula to her cabinet as a way to afford him some protection from the CIA's judicial-backed coup operation now in play. When the classified National Security Agency documents leaked by whistleblower Ed Snowden illustrated how NSA had spied on Rousseff's office and mobile phones, President Obama said he had ordered an end to such spying on world leaders friendly to the United States.

Rousseff, in a 2013 speech to the UN General Assembly in New York, said the following about the NSA spying on Brazilians: "Personal data of citizens was intercepted indiscriminately. Corporate information, often of high economic and even strategic value,  was at the centre of espionage activity . . Also, Brazilian diplomatic missions, among them the permanent mission to the UN and the office of the president of the republic itself, had their communications intercepted." President Obama followed Rousseff on the General Assembly's podium and, in answer to Rousseff's blistering attack on the U.S. and NSA, stated, "We have begun to review the way that we gather intelligence, so as to properly balance the legitimate security concerns of our citizens and allies, with the privacy concerns that all people share." Obama did not say that the U.S. would not use intercepted phone calls and email to bring down foreign leaders.

The NSA's wiretaps of Brazilian leaders and businessmen involved systems with such cover terms as SILVERZEPHYR, BLACKPEARL, FLYING PIG, and ROYALNET.

NSA spying on Rousseff and Lula continuing. Intercepted phone calls being turned over to Brazilian judge with CIA ties.

Judge Sergio Moro's name appears in one of the leaked State Department cables. On October 30, 2009, the U.S. embassy in Brasilia reported that Moro attended an embassy-sponsored conference in Rio de Janeiro held from October 4-9. Titled "Illicit Financial Crimes," the conference appears have been an avenue for the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies to train Brazilian federal and state law enforcement, as well as other Latin American police officials from Argentina, Paraguay, Panama, and Uruguay, in procedures to mount bogus criminal prosecutions of Latin American leaders considered unfriendly to the United States. Former Argentine president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and members of her leftist political party also faced investigations by prosecutors and judges on the CIA's payroll. The State cable from Brasilia states: "Moro . . . discussed the 15 most common issues he sees in money laundering cases in the Brazilian Courts." Moro is also taking inspiration for his prosecution of Lula and Rousseff from the prosecutors in the Watergate affair that brought down President Richard Nixon.

The recent intercepts of Rousseff's phone conversations with Lula, believed to have been gathered by NSA and turned over to Moro by the U.S. embassy in Brasilia, shows that Obama lied. The American president's forthcoming visit to Latin America has avoided Air Force One touching down in Latin America's biggest power, Brazil. Obama, who once prepared Latin America analytical reports for CIA front company Business International Corporation, is keenly aware that Brazil is now undergoing a "constitutional coup" aided and abetted by the CIA and Soros. Obama cannot be seen giving the imprimatur of legitimacy to a government being actively targeted by Langley and other U.S. intelligence agencies, including NSA.

The transcript of one phone call between Rousseff and Lula is hardly a reason to impeach Rousseff and throw her and Lula into prison, regardless of the aims of Soros, the CIA, and their Brazilian lackeys:
Phone call between Rousseff and Lula, 16 March

Rousseff: Hello.

Lula: Hello.

Rousseff: Lula, let me tell you something.

Lula: Tell me, my love.

Rousseff: It’s this, I am sending Messias [Jorge Rodrigo Araújo Messias, deputy head of legal affairs at the cabinet office] round with the papers, so that we have them, just in case of necessity, that is the terms of office, right?

Lula: Uh-huh. Ok, ok.

Rousseff: That’s all, wait there, he is heading there.

Lula: OK, I’m here. I’ll wait.

Rousseff: Right?

Lula: OK.

Rousseff: Bye.

The phone call is hardly an impeachable offense but a tactical move to protect Lula from a runaway prosecutor.
----
The CIA previously used judicial cover in its coups against Honduras's Zelaya in 2009 and Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo in 2012. Both Zelaya and Lugo were ousted by a relatively new CIA methodology for deposing leaders its dislikes -- the "constitutional coup" -- using legislatures and high courts to justify ousters brought on by Soros-financed street demonstrations and manipulation of private media, including newspapers and television. Rousseff and Lula are using the legal powers afforded to the Brazilian presidency to bring charges against Moro.

Lula sees Moro as the CIA rat he is. He condemned Moro's witch hunt, saying that "with the press leading the investigative process they [the prosecutors] are going to re-found the republic. We have a totally cowardly Supreme Court, a totally cowardly High Court, a totally cowardly parliament  . . . a speaker of the house who is fucked, a president of the senate who is fucked, I don’t know how many legislators under threat, and everyone thinking that some kind of miracle is going to happen."

In South Africa, the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), which receives its support from Soros and the Jewish-dominated South African diamond and gold industry, is targeting president Jacob Zuma. The CIA has traditionally maintained strong influence over the DA, especially when it was led by Tony Leon, a former visiting fellow at the right-wing libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, DC. The tactics in South Africa are similar to those in Brazil. There are calls for Zuma to resign because of alleged bribes received by the wealthy Gupta family and influence peddling by the family. The charges against Zuma also extend to the ruling African National Congress (ANC), which has, since the apartheid era, been the target of the CIA. Even the South African Communist Party, a member of the ANC government, has taken on the taint of a Soros-infiltrated party by demanding Zuma reveal the full nature of his connections with the Guptas or face the political "consequences."

As far as Brazil is concerned, it is apparent that the CIA and Soros want to see Rousseff and Lula gone and in prison by the time the Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics opens in August. The goal of the anti-government agitators in Brazil is to see a head of state chosen by the usual globalist suspects opening the Olympiad before an international audience.

Attention! Coup Attempt in Brazil!

17/03/2016 Miguel do Rosário

Por Diego

Don’t be mistaken, what is underway in Brazil is an attempt at a coup. 

Following the illegal tapping by the Federal Police of a private conversation between President Dilma Rousseff and former President Lula, at the orders of lower court judge and selectively disclosed by the media, we hereby express our deepest concern about the erosion of the rule of law in Brazil. Today’s events are extremely serious and have a real potential to escalate into social unrest and bloodshed.

On 31 March 1964 a military coup was trigged against the legally constituted government of João Goulart. This was a day that lasted 21 years. Only in 1988 was a new Constitution drafted and Brazil began its democratization process. Similarly, to 1964, the current coup attempt is backed by the largest Brazilian media group - Rede Globo. Unlike 1964, the current coup attempt is the result of an ideologically-driven judiciary that has three purposes: to overthrow a democratically elected President; prevent former President Lula from running in the 2018 elections; and ultimately making the Brazilian Workers Party illegal.

There is no doubt that Brazil is undergoing extremely serious political instability. President Dilma Rousseff was re-elected for her second term in 2014. At the beginning of her second term, Petrobras, the Brazilian state-owned oil company, became involved in corruption scandals. However, only an extremely naïve person would believe that the Brazilian Worker’s Party invented corruption. In his memoirs, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the former PSDB president reported that on he was told that a huge corruption scheme taking place at Petrobras while he was President. Unlike Dilma, Cardoso did not have the courage to initiate any investigation.

While the Cardoso administration carried out 48 federal police investigations in 8 years, under the Brazilian Worker’s Party 250 were carried out. Concomitantly to a significant increase in federal police operations aimed at tackled corruption, both the Lula and Rousseff administrations strengthened and devolved more powers to judiciary. Prior to 2003 most investigations were the responsibility of the government. 

Despite the fact that over the past several months the Federal Police has intentionally and illegally leaked information about ongoing investigations involving people linked to the Brazilian Worker’s Party, last week events escalated with the kidnaping for a few hours of former President Lula. Using the term ‘kidnapped’ is no exaggeration, as Brazilian legislation does not permit the occurrence of this type of event.

As a result of the above events, President Dilma decided to invite Lula to became the chief of staff of the government in order to re-establish governability. The opposition accused Dilma of offering this position so that Lula would enjoy an immunity granted to ministers. This is completely wrong … Those who make these claims forget that in this case Lula would be judged in the Supreme Court, a significant disadvantage as unlike all other citizens he would lose the benefits of surfing the various judicial spheres …

For those who did not see the coup coming, it is now more than evident. On the same day that Lula was appointed to the Cabinet, the Federal Police backed by a lower court judge, decided to publish conversations between Lula and Dilma with the intention to causing a social convulsion that could potentially lead to the overthrown of Dilma as President. 

Brazilians must ensure that the rule of law is re-established and that the democratically elected government can continue its mandate. Tomorrow we will take to the streets to defend the democratically elected president and demand respect for our constitution and for the rule of law! 

Não Passarão!

Soros and Kochs team up in Latin American staged protests by Wayne Madsen

Soros and Kochs team up in Latin American staged protests
by Wayne Madsen
In what could have major ramifications around the world, paid Brazilian protest provocateurs for George Soros have been discovered teaming up with operatives on the payroll of American billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. After the plan by the CIA and Soros to unseat President Dilma Rousseff, thus drive a knife into the emerging BRICS alliance of Brazil, Russia, China, India, and South Africa, through the aerial assassination last year of presidential candidate Eduardo Campos, Langley has opted for an eastern European-style themed revolution in Brazil. Campos died in a suspicious plane crash that resulted in Rousseff facing off against a Soros operative and Campos's vice presidential running mate, Green Party leader Marina Silva. Rousseff won re-election in a tight race against Aecio Neves, the right-wing candidate who surged past Silva to face Rousseff in the run-off.

Three major groups have joined forces to demand that Rousseff either resign or be impeached from office over charges that her Workers' Party government has engaged in corrupt practices, mostly with regard to Brazil's state-owned Petrobras oil company. The oil company has been eyed for some time by Soros and the Rothschild banking family for whom he fronts globally, as well as the anti-government, libertarian-bent Koch Brothers.

The March 15 national protests against Rousseff were coordinated across the country in a typical Soros-backed social media operation. In the past, anti-Rousseff activities in the country have also involved U.S. embassy and consular political officers, some using their diplomatic status to mask their Central Intelligence Agency affiliations. Some protest signs called for the Brazilian military to overthrow the Rousseff government. In the past, the CIA was responsible for a number of military takeovers in Brazil.

In a Gene Sharp-like operation, a common protest meme was created that appeared on protest signs and banner: "Fora Dilma!" or "Dilma out!" Other signs said Brazil would not become another Venezuela, a reference to that nation's progressive leftist government of Nicolas Maduro, who has been facing his own Soros- and CIA-backed uprising against his policies. The Obama administration recently called Venezuela and its socialist government a threat to U.S. national security.


Standard Soros-Gene Sharp staged protests being carried out in Brazil to undermine a progressive government. The Koch Brothers have joined Soros is financing these operations in Latin America.

The right-wing participants in Brazil's protests are linked directly with the Koch Brothers, particularly the group, “Free Brazil Movement” (Movimento Brasil Livre - MBL). The group is also financed by Warren Buffett's billionaire Brazilian partner, Jorge Paulo Lemann, Brazil's wealthiest man, whose investment group owns Heinz, Budweiser, and Burger King. Lemann has avoided answering questions about his religion, choosing to call himself a "Calvinist." However, his use of the term is in relation to his personal frugality.

Soros-backed groups have used social media to organize Brazilian celebrities to support the anti-Rousseff protests. They include the actors Caio Castro, Malvino Salvador, Marcelo Serrado, Alessandra Maestrini, singer Wanessa Camargo, and former soccer star Ronaldo (Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima). The Soros-backed protesters have organized under the banner of the "Come to the Street" movement. They have had a testy relationship with the Koch-backed MBL, especially over calls by the latter for the Brazilian military to overthrow Rousseff in a coup and re-introduce a military dictatorship. The Koch Brothers' activities in Brazil also bring up charges that the two are violating the U.S. Logan Act of 1799, which prohibits Americans from engaging in their own foreign policy.
MBL denies it is funded by Koch Industries but its two main principals, Fabio Ostermann, a member of the Institute of Business Studies and director of the Liberal Institute, and Rodrigo Constantino, who chairs the Liberal Institute and is a columnist for Veja magazine and a founding member of the liberal Institute Milenium (IMIL), are linked to Koch-funded think tanks in other countries, including the neocon Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute in the United States. "Liberal" in the context of these Brazilian groups means "libertarian" of the Ayn Rand variety, a cause supported by the Kochs.

The same "libertarian" fingerprints have been found on staged protests in Ecuador and Argentina. The linkage of Soros and Koch Brothers overseas activities in undermining democratically-elected governments has raised alarm throughout Latin America and around the world.
Mutiny On Line is the central social networking operation being used to coordinate opposition to Rousseff. The group's inspiration comes from Brazilian deputy Jair Bolsonaro, a supporter of a right-wing military coup and a fervent opponent of gay rights and proponent of lowering the legal age of consent. The group rails against "Bolivarianism" in Brazil, a reference to the Bolivarian socialism of Venezuela's government. The group sells anti-Rousseff protest kits on-line which carry the message"God, Family and Freedom."

At the same time staged protests have swept through Brazil and Venezuela, protesters in Ecuador have turned out on the street to protest against the trade policies of President Rafael Correa. Right-wing groups and Soros-backed NGOs have united in their protests against the economic situation brought on by the drop of oil prices but also, curiously, against new import tariffs announced by Correa that are seen as detrimental to the "free trade" aspirations of the wealthy bankers and investor community. 

Who is behind the "poor little rich boys" who are trying to bring about a Coup in Brazil...The Koch Brothers

Who is behind the "poor little rich boys" who are trying to bring about a Coup in Brazil...The Koch Brothers

“Estudantes pela Liberdade” (EPL) são financiados por corporação petroleira norte-americana que ataca direitos indígenas, depreda ambiente e tem interesse óbvio em atingir a Petrobras

Por Antonio Carlos, no Outras Palavras

David Koch se divertia dizendo que fazia parte “da maior companhia da qual você nunca ouviu falar”. Um dos poderosos irmãos Koch, donos da segunda maior empresa privada dos Estados Unidos com um ingresso anual de 115 bilhões de dólares, eles só se tornaram conhecidos por suas maldosas operações no cenário político do país.

Se esses poderosos personagens são desconhecidos nos Estados Unidos, o que se dirá no Brasil? No entanto eles estão diretamente envolvidos nas convocações para o protesto do dia 15 de março pela deposição da presidenta Dilma.

Segundo a Folha de São Paulo o “Movimento Brasil Livre”, uma organização virtual, é o principal grupo convocador do protesto. A página do movimento dá os nomes de seus colunistas e coordenadores nos Estados. Segundo o The Economist, o grupo foi “fundado no último ano para promover as respostas do livre mercado para os problemas do país”.

Entre os “colunistas” do MBL estão Luan Sperandio Teixeira, que é acadêmico do curso de Direito Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo e colaborador da rede Estudantes Pela Liberdade (EPL) do Espírito Santo; Fabio Ostermann, que é coordenador do mesmo movimento no Rio Grande do Sul, fiscal do Instituto de Estudos Empresariais (IEE) e diretor executivo do Instituto Ordem Livre, co-fundador da rede Estudantes Pela Liberdade (EPL), tendo sido o primeiro presidente de seu Conselho Consultivo, e atualmente, Diretor de Relações Institucionais do Instituto Liberal (IL). Outros participantes são Rafael Bolsoni do Partido Novo e do EPL; Juliano Torres que se define como empreendedor intelectual, do Partido Novo, do Partido Libertários, e do EPL.

Segundo o perfil de Torres no Linkedin, sua formação acadêmica foi no Atlas Leadership Academy. Outro integrante com essa formação é Fábio Osterman, que participou também do Koch Summer Fellow no Institute for Humane Studies.

A Oscip Estudantes pela Liberdade é a filial brasileira do Students for Liberty, uma organização financiada pelos irmãos Koch para convencer o mundo estudantil da justeza de suas gananciosas propostas. O presidente do Conselho Executivo é Rafael Rota Dal Molin, que além de ser da Universidade de Santa Maria, é oficial de material bélico (2º tenente QMB) na guarnição local.

Outras das frentes dos irmãos Koch são a Atlas Economic Research Foundation, que patrocina a Leadership Academy, e o Institute for Humane Studies, às quais os integrantes do MBL estão ligados.

Entre as atividades danosas dos irmão encontra-se o roubo de 5 milhões de barris de petróleo em uma reserva indígena (que acarretou uma multa de 25 milhões de dólares do governo americano) e outra multa de 1,5 milhões de dólares pela interferência em eleições na Califórnia. O Greenpeace considera os irmãos opositores destacados da luta contra as mudanças climáticas. Os Koch foram multados em 30 milhões de dólares em 300 vazamentos de óleo.

As Koch Industries têm suas principais atividades ligadas à exploração de óleo e gás, oleodutos, refinação e produção de produtos químicos derivados e fertilizantes. Com esse leque de atividades não é difícil imaginar o seu interesse no Brasil — a Petrobras é claro. Seus apaniguados não escondem esse fato.

O MBL, que surgiu em apoio à campanha de Aécio Neves, não esconde o que pretende com a manifestação: “O principal objetivo do movimento, no momento, é derrubar o PT, a maior nêmesis da liberdade e da democracia que assombra o nosso país” disseram Kim Kataguiri e Renan Santos em um gongórico e pretensioso artigo na Folha de S.Paulo. Eles não querem ser confundidos com PSDB, que identificam com o outro movimento: “os caras do Vem Pra Rua são mais velhos, mais ricos e têm o PSDB por trás” diz Renan Santos. “Eles vão pro protesto sem pedir impeachment. É como fumar maconha sem tragar”. Kataguiri não se incomoda que seja o PMDB a ascender ao poder: “O PMDB é corrupto, mas o PT é totalitário”. Mas Pedro Mercante Souto, outro dos porta-vozes do MBL, foi candidato a deputado federal no Rio de Janeiro pelo PSDB (com apenas 0,10% dos votos não se elegeu).

Apesar do distanciamento do PSDB a manifestação do dia 15 parece ser apenas uma nova tentativa de 3º turno, mas como vimos ela esconde uma grande negociata. “Business as usual”.

CIA big guns still aiming for Rousseff prior to second-round election by Wayne Madsen

CIA big guns still aiming for Rousseff prior to second-round election

After the corporate media and the CIA and George Soros manipulators tried to engineer Green Party-turned-Brazilian Socialist presidential candidate Marina Silva into the Brazilian presidency after the classic CIA textbook aerial assassination of Socialist Party presidential standard bearer Eduardo Campos, these same forces are at it again on behalf of Social Democratic Party candidate Aecio Neves. Neves finished second ahead of Silva, who came in third, in the first-round of the Brazilian presidential election that has seen the CIA, Soros, and the other agents of Wall Street try every trick in the book to ensure that President Dilma Rousseff fails to win a second term.

Even after the suspicious August 13 plane crash that killed Campos, who was running in third place in opinion polls behind Neves, and a series of contrived opinion polls that, Rousseff finished first in the October 5 first round election. That has sent corporate media outlets opposed to Rousseff's plans to create an alternative development bank among Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa to compete with the World Bank into extreme propaganda mode with questionable polls suggesting that Rousseff and Neves are running neck-and-neck as the October 26 second round election approaches.

Neves's grandfather, Tancredo Neves, a left-of-center threat to the longtime military dictatorship, fell seriously ill just as he was to sworn in as president on March 15, 1985. Neves's illness resulted in his lackluster and more conservative vice presidential candidate José Sarney being sworn in as president. Tancredo Neves never recovered from what was said to bediverticulitis and he died on April 21. Later, it was revealed that Neves had a cancerous tumor that was not discovered until it was too late. Rousseff's sudden illness after her October 16 televised debate with Aecio Neves alarmed a number of Brazilians who remember the fate of Tancredo Neves.

In addition to the Central Intelligence Agency arranging for convenient plane crashes such as those that killed Portuguese Prime Minister Francisco Sá Carneiro, Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos, and Ecuadorian President Jaime Roldos all within a six-month period between December 1980 and April 1981 [after the election of Ronald Reagan as U.S. president and the return to power within the CIA of George H W Bush's and William Casey's infamous gunslingers], the agency's Technical Services Division pioneered in the use of biological weapons, including cancer weapons, to assassinate its political targets.

In recent years, a number of Latin American leaders have been felled or have been stricken with cancer or heart attacks. The two most notable victims were Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Argentine President Nestor Kirchner. Kirchner's wife, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, was reported to have thyroid cancer, later denied by her spokespersons. The sudden onset of varying degrees of cancer also plagued such Latin American leaders as former Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo (later ousted in a CIA-engineered coup), Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos (after he signed a peace agreement with the left-wing FARC guerrilla movement), former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Bolivia's recently-reelected President Evo Morales.

Guyana's President Forbes Burnham died from throat cancer and Nauru's President Bernard Dowiyogo died from a sudden heart attack while being cared for in Washington, DC hospitals. Suspicions surrounded the two deaths at Georgetown University and George Washington Hospitals, respectively.

The CIA's macabre Jewish-Hungarian chief scientist Dr. Sidney Gottlieb developed a host of biological weapons for the CIA's MK-ULTRA program during his over 20 years of service with the agency. One was a biological toxin that was put inside a tube of toothpaste that was to be used by Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and another was a botulism-infected handkerchief that was to be handed to Iraqi leader General Abdul Karim Kassem.

As for Aecio Neves abandoning the left-of-center credentials of his grandfather, this represents another aspect of CIA influence operations. Aecio Neves, who represents the interests of Wall Street who dearly want to privatize the Brazilian state-owned Petrobras oil corporation, has been handsomely bought off by the same globalized financial interests who attempted to engineer Marina Silva into office. With her defeat, these same forces have rallied behind Neves.

It actually doesn't matter to Aecio that the CIA may have played a part in assassinating his grandfather. Omar Torrijos's son, Martin Torrijos, became president of Panama only to sign a pro-Wall Street free trade agreement with Washington. Martin Torrijos also gladly followed the global bankers' orders to increase Panama's retirement age and reform social security. Martin Torrijos also became a close ally of U.S. President George W. Bush even though Bush's father, George H W Bush, likely signed off on the CIA's operation to assassinate Torrijos's father.

George Soros's favorite Asian opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, does not seem to mind the fact that it was Soros's friends at the Office of Strategic Services/CIA who ordered British intelligence to assassinate her father Aung San. Aung San, a founder of the Burmese Communist Party, was slated to become independent Burma's first post-independence leader. Aung San was killed by terrorists working for pro-British former prime minister U Saw. The weapons for the assassins came directly from British Army Captain David Vivian, who managed to escape from a Burmese prison in 1949.

Canada's Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau, the son of former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, has, unlike his father, warmed up to the United States, Wall Street, and globalization. Justin Trudeau and Aecio Neves are prime examples of how the CIA eagle will take under its wings the progeny of leftist icons to achieve its goals.

The CIA eagle will always try to grab up the progeny of leftist leaders by its talons.

President Rousseff's policies have created powerful enemies within the walls of the CIA in Langley, Virginia and among the board rooms of Wall Street and the West's most powerful corporations. She succeeded in proving the polls and pundits wrong on October 5 but October 26 remains yet another hurdle.

THE ROVING EYE = The geopolitics of the World Cup By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE The geopolitics of the World Cup By Pepe Escobar SAO PAULO - One of the defining images of the World Cup - so far - has been the sight of the Mannschaft - aka the German team - fraternizing with Pataxo Indians a few hundred meters away from the spot where Brazil was "discovered" in 1500. Call it a European re-discovery of the exotic tropics. Then there's the English Team frolicking by the seaside, inside a military base, with the Sugarloaf as gorgeous backdrop, backed up by a scientific expert in humidity and industrial ventilators aplenty (after all there's the Rumble in the Jungle against Italy this Saturday "deep in the Amazon rainforest", as British tabloids tell it.) The World Cup - the greatest show on earth - kicks off just as a relentless Made in the West (client states included) anti-Chinese and anti-Russian propaganda/downright vilification shatters all known hysteria levels. And that means the BRICS are a target; in the case of Brazil, an emerging power sitting strategically over the bulk of the Amazon rainforest just as progressive Latin American integration has dared to turn the Monroe Doctrine into (branded) toilet paper. Recently, Brazil brought at least 30 million people out of poverty. China invests in medical care and education. Russia refuses to be bullied as in the drunkard Yeltsin years. In the past few years, the World Cup has been all about the BRICS: South Africa in 2010, Brazil now, and Russia in 2018. Qatar in 2022 - if it ever happens - is more like a Gulf petrodollar-fueled bribery racket gone wrong. It's amusing to check how the City of London - which loves Russian cash, craves Chinese investment and has a soft spot for Brazilian soft power - takes it all in. With an added strand of British humor, they could easily have interpreted the Rumble in the Jungle as NATO battling it out in the middle of the much-coveted rainforest (think the water wars of the near future). That other World Cup  And then, just two days after the start of the World Cup, Brazilian neighbor Bolivia hosts no less than a G-77+ China summit - actually 133 UN member-nations, the whole thing presided over by Evo Morales, who is a sort of Andean distant cousin of the Pataxos who so fascinated the Germans. Call it also the meeting of ALBA (the Bolivarian Alternative to the Americas, which includes Cuba) and the BRICS (only Russia won't be present). American exceptionalists are furious that the BRICS are spearheading the transition towards a multipolar world - something that's already at play in football (think Spain, Germany, Italy on one side, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay on another). Emulating football, a South-to-South counterpunch to the hegemony of the industrialized North is also in play. Brazil, China, and Russia, in their different strategies, are all betting on more South-South integration - from the Banco del Sur (the Bank of the South) to the upcoming BRICS development bank (there's a crucial BRICS summit next month in Brasilia), on the way to a more egalitarian system that ideally could be financed by a percentage of foreign debt, a percentage of military expenditure and a global tax on speculative financial transactions. And it's never enough to remember that the G-77 is about decolonization; no Empire of Bases; and no interference of the NSA-coordinated Orwellian/Panopticon complex in the Global South. Now compare it with the official Adidas Coca-Cola Hyundai Kia Motors Emirates Sony Visa Anheuser-Busch InBev (Budweiser) Castrol Continental Johnson & Johnson McDonald's Itau FIFA-sanctioned entertainment and fun 2014 World Cup Brazil - which industry bible AdvertisingAge broke down as "the Super Bowl every day for an entire month". Firmly opposing it, we find an array of South-South associations/solidarity/social movements denouncing everything arguably embedded with the mighty enterprise, from hardcore post-capitalist neo-colonization to outright criminalization of the poor. And among these movements we find, not surprisingly, Global South icon Diego "Hand of God" Maradona, who said this week, "FIFA gets $4 billion (out of the Cup) while the champion nation gets $35 million. This is wrong. The corporation is delivering a death blow to football". Football is war  Much has also been made of the parallel between hyper-capitalist globalization - as graphically expressed by the World Cup and the mega-business of contemporary football - and nationalism. Well, the world is not and will never be flat; it's a Himalaya/Pamir/Hindu Kush of varied inequality altitudes, subjected to snow avalanches including trade, commerce, immigration flows and technology breakthroughs. None of these are able to shatter national fibers. It's still "us" against "them", as much in the Global South defining Americans and Europeans as "gringos" as in swathes of the industrialized North patronizing/profiting from the "exotic" Global South. There's nothing post-national about the World Cup. In the terrain of hardcore geopolitics, the highly centralized European Union is fragmenting under the weight of a bunch of right-wing or extreme right-wing nationalist parties; in football, the major difference, compared to hardcore geopolitics, is that there's not only one exceptionalist power but a handful, from Spain to Brazil, from Germany to Italy, from Argentina to France. Rinus Michels, coach of the Clockwork Orange, the Dutch national team that startled the world in 1974 (alas, they didn't win), once said that football is war (compare it to maverick director Samuel Fuller, who said cinema is a battlefield). The World Cup is war by other means; an officially sanctioned, ritualized clash of nationalisms. So it's all about Pick your Tribe; only that after your tribe is out of play you switch to another, replacement tribe - which any effete epicurean would arguably define as Italy. After all they have the most stirring national anthem. They've got the best food and the best clothes. And of course, they've got Andrea "the Magician" Pirlo. A new way of playing ball? Brazil, widely praised as The Land of Football, also happens to be the global leader in reduction of carbon emissions, according to recent research published by Science magazine, managing at the same time to increase agricultural production while saving more rainforest. And yet, and as usual with all things Brazil, all things World Cup got incredibly messy - a running metaphor of the typical assortment of ills faced by the struggling Global South. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has been forced to appeal to the historical stereotype of the Brazilian "cordial man" and stress tolerance, diversity, dialogue and even sustainability, as well as condemning racism and prejudice, to exhort the population to forget about their troubles and welcome an army of foreign visitors. That's a given, considering the average Brazilian is heartwarming and exceedingly friendly; the devil is in the details - as in, for instance, at least 200,000 poor people evicted from their places or at least threatened with eviction, to make way for major works bound to increase "urban mobility". Well, only 10% of these works were finished, due in most cases to massive corruption. In Rio, not a single real was invested in a chaotic transport system serving the proletarian peripheral sprawl. Wildly popular Lula, when he was still the president of Brazil in 2009, said that no taxpayer money would be spent on the World Cup. Well, not directly; most of the funding came from the National Bank for Economic Development, a bank that lends money to banks. Builders of new stadia also benefited from generous tax exemptions. The bottom line is that Rousseff's government ended up losing the media battle. Over and over, Rousseff has had to explain that the Cup will cost a fraction of what is invested in health and education (that's open to debate.) Virtually half of the Brazilian population is not convinced. And still what's certain is that a Brazilian World Cup winautomatically ensures Rousseff's re-election. But the recent wave after wave of protests has in fact transcended the current administration. It's as if all these diverse social movements have been manifesting the ultimate utopian desire; to erase, in one go, centuries of injustice perpetrated by Brazil's notoriously rapacious and arrogant/ignorant elites - which have always implemented total political and economic exclusion based on noxious race and class prejudice. So this whole drama is not simply about "anti-neoliberal" or "anti-capitalist" stirrings. It goes way beyond nationalism. And it could be way more transcending than the textbook for a revolution using football as a pretext. Whatever the final result of this war revolving around a football, Brazil could yet teach a lesson to the whole Global South. In victory, and even in glorious defeat, Brazil may end up finding the stamina to pursue a new strategic overture - a new, non-arrogant, non- neocolonial, non-weaponized, non-exceptionalist way to lead and exercise power, build alliances and clinch grand geopolitical agreements in a multipolar world. A new way of playing ball. So let this New Great Game begin. Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

Brazil's Street War Not For Resale Abroad - by Pepe Escobar

As much as their attention may be focused on the stinging cold-war battle being fought by the two Koreas, Pentagon analysts have got to be paying close attention to what's going on in the steamy slums of Rio de Janeiro. After all, this is revealing itself to be an unprecedented tropical remix of the Pentagon's long - infinite - war applied to global urban poverty.

First, let's take a look at the chronology. A week ago, two major Rio narco-trafficking gangs - the Red Command and Friends of Friends - launched a series of urban terror attacks, burning cars and buses and hitting police stations; the whole thing was orchestrated by some of their leaders locked up in an out-of-state maximum-security prison, basically in reaction to a 2008 government program that so far has established police pacification units (UPPs) in 13 of Rio's 1,000 favelas (shanty towns).
Unlike in previous instances, the Rio police response was swift - maximum force in the streets. Then the federal highway patrol stepped up its operations, the central government sent marines and then army units, and the federal police also got into the fray. An essential measure has been to transfer gang leaders to an even more remote maximum-security facility near the Amazon rainforest, 3,500 kilometers from Rio.

Last Thursday, a 200-strong contingent of the no-nonsense Special Operations Batallion (BOPE) - a sort of Brazilian SWAT - took the Vila Cruzeiro slum, while at least 300 hardcore hoodlums left on foot and on motorbikes for the nearby, sprawling, hilly Alemao shanty-town complex, as big as 10 Rio neighborhoods, with a population of 400,000.

Police/military units started surrounding the complex - while a deadline given for the narco-traffickers to "surrender with arms in the air by sunset" expired on Friday (those few who did were convinced by their families and by Christian priests). Finally, on Sunday morning, came the go-ahead to swarm into the Alemao, which was conquered in less than two hours by 2,600 police and soldiers, using tanks and marine-corps armed personnel carriers, and supported by helicopters. 

In a distant echo of American surges in Pashtun lands, BOPE specialists have realistically admitted that they have encountered far less resistance over the hills than expected. They are now firmly established literally at the top of a hill - with a strategic view of all surrounding areas; a Brazilian flag is now flying on the spot, symbolizing the state retaking what until now was lawless territory. 

At least 200 narco-traffickers may still be hiding in family homes, keeping civilians as human shields. The police/military have vowed to search each of the 30,000 homes in the slum complex - with each team assigned its own perimeter. An immense amount of drugs - including at least 40 tons of hash and 200 kilos of cocaine - and loads of weapons have been seized, with lots more to come. 

Tropical COIN

Pentagon analysts will immediately recognize this as no-holds-barred MOUT - Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain - territory. And experts at the Santa Monica-based Rand Corporation - which helped to set the strategy for the Vietnam war in the 1960s - may mistake this shanty-town complex in Rio for a "liberated zone in urban shanty towns" when it was in fact, until now, a deserted-by-state-power zone. Anyway, the Rand gang would obviously be thinking about Baghdad's Sadr City, where Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army made life hell for the American occupier. (No wonder Sadr City's squalid main boulevard was called Vietnam Street.) 

Most of all, US military strategists won't fail to recognize that what has just taken place in Rio illustrates what the Journal of the Army War College "prophesized" years ago; that "the future of warfare lies in the streets, sewers, high-rise buildings and sprawl of houses that form the broken cities of the world". 

Quite a few police/military specialists in Rio are in fact stressing that this is a never-before-seen urban operation, not even in Iraq (and certainly not in Gaza, where an occupying army may use the same tactics against a cowed, slum-style population). Some Brazilian army units may have used their experience as part of the United Nations peacekeeping force in Haiti - but still they never had to clear a slum in Port-au-Prince. 

The takeover of the Vila Cruzeiro slum and the Alemao slum complex also rank as classic David Petraeus-style counter-insurgency (COIN) - as in "take, clear, hold and build". "Take" has been fast as lightning; "clear" may take days if not weeks; "hold" has been solemnly promised by state and federal authorities; but "build" is a much more complex and long-term proposition. 

There are reasons to believe that this COIN Brazilian-style might work where the American version was not exactly successful in either Baghdad or the Sunni triangle or in southern Afghanistan. The swift, massive, coordinated show of force did destabilize organized crime; the element of surprise was key. Moreover, perhaps for the first time ever in Rio, this police/military invasion of a slum was not regarded as the action of an occupying army - but as the state affirming its will and empowering law-abiding citizens.

The sight of tanks in the streets finally sold the whole operation to a tired, jaded public - not only the society at large, but especially the slum dwellers themselves. And the sight of once powerful drug lords scurrying around like cockroaches demystified their power. Thus the Mao Zedong "fish among the sea" element deserted the narco-traffickers; unlike the Taliban in Pashtun lands they simply could not count on local popular support, or at least the Mafia-style "law of silence" they imposed. Even the narco-traffickers' own families advised them to surrender (those who didn't may be trying to escape through the sewage system). 

The background 

It took the Brazilian state at least four decades to muster the necessary political will for this massive offensive, coupled with ample police/military coordination and widespread support of public opinion, to rout what is one of the three top Rio narco-gangs. 

But this is only the beginning. 

The nexus between crime and politics in Brazil for a long time intertwined police, the judiciary, the executive, the legislature, private enterprise and criminals around the same rackets. It's what has been described as "the Brazilian delinquent state". Ringleaders - including mayors, senators, judges, police and district attorneys - made much more serious money than, for instance, the favela-based drug rings. 

This process started during the 1960s military dictatorships in Latin America, which stimulated an organized crime boom by creating the institutional framework for criminal freedom. Under Cold War logic - courtesy of the Pentagon - the priority of the dictatorships was internal repression. "Micro-criminality" was deemed irrelevant. The result of at least two decades of negligence was catastrophic. Police were left with no investigative capacity. 

Social anarchy, unstable governments and an absurdly high concentration of wealth were the hallmarks of the neo-liberal, post-dictatorship era. Crime flourished not only in Brazil but all across South America, with Colombia setting up powerful, regional mafias. In Italy, the legendary Mani Pulite (Clean Hands) operation became the paradigm for the repression of mafia activities under the framework of a democracy. In Brazil, as usual, things were and remain much more complicated. 

The military dictatorship ended in 1984; that was the same year that a hurricane of blow started sweeping through sensuous, tropical Rio - that is, Brazilian/Colombian narco-traffickers unloading pure cocaine at ridiculous prices into an incipient consumer market. The explosion of demand led to the consolidation of a group called Red Command, extremely powerful in the Rio favelas and associated with Colombian and Paraguayan narcotraficantes. 

Then in the 1990s, globalization turbo-charged a remix with special effects - courtesy of the Italian and Russian mafias, which for their part diversified into kidnappings and weapons trafficking. In Colombia, the fragmentation of drug cartels led to a proliferation of smaller groups, much harder to detect. And the same happened in Brazil. The Red Command gang, for instance, gave birth to a splinter group. 

Now, with Brazil collectively engaged in a major drive to become an essential global player, there seems to be a consensus that the time is right to start tackling the big picture. It will be a long and winding road, full of treacherous, slum-dwelling alleyways, before the 2014 Football World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympic Games - where Rio will be the superstar. So cleaning up is a must. 

This does not mean just sending in the tanks to take over a slum. What comes afterwards is the real test; to purge the penal system of abysmal corruption; to change legislation which in many ways protects criminals; to better patrol the country's borders to minimize the non-stop flow of drugs and weapons; to pay more decent salaries for police officers; to try to break the connections between those hoodlums in the favelas and "invisible" higher-ups; to invest in infrastructure and services for poor people; to stop stigmatizing them just because they are poor; to invest heavily in education. Meanwhile, a touch of MOUT will do no harm. But - Pentagon be warned - only because this is no foreign occupation army.

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com. 

THE ROVING EYE - An American dream made in Brazil

By Pepe Escobar

SAO PAULO - Brazil is a country the world loves to love. Brazil is a (joyful) riddle wrapped in a (chaotic) enigma, with the added complexity that the riddle and the enigma are ritualistically juggling with football, dancing a samba, ogling a sensual mulata, watching a telenovela and sipping a lethal caipirinha - all at the same time.

The distinctive cultural trace of Brazil is anthropophagy - from culture to technology, the legacy of a former, lazy European monarchy in a tropical country where the aborigines, after banqueting over the odd whitey, were merrily exterminated while Europeans and black slaves copulated freely, with no Catholic guilt involved (there's no sin below the Equator). If this sounds like the plot of a carnival parade, that's because it is.

French general and statesman Charles de Gaulle once quipped that Brazil "is not a serious country". Multi-ethnic, multicultural Brazilians, addicted to tolerance but most of the time drenched in complacency, preferred to believe - and joked about - the eternal promise of "the country of the future" (as Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig coined it over 70 years ago).

Now Brazil is on a roll - and profiting from global goodwill has become a crucial element of its re-turbocharged soft power. It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that Brazilian swing. The country is the "B" in Goldman Sachs-coined BRIC - the new, emerging global powers; less inscrutable and misunderstood than China, less authoritarian than Russia, less shambolic than India (and with no religious problems). And let's face it; much more fun. A new, two-fold national narrative has taken over; Brazil will become "the fifth power" - that is, the fifth-largest global economy (bye-bye Britain and France). And the New American Dream is made in Brazil.

Surfing USA, remixed
No wonder Anglo-American elites of the North tend to fry their brains confronted with so much tropical ebullience. At the Group of 20 (G-20) in London, United States President Barack Obama could not contain himself. "I love this guy," he said of Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, "He's the most popular politician on Earth." Time magazine recently named Lula as "the most influential person in the world". The Economist, never a fan of hyperbole, is convinced Brazil will become the fifth power by 2025.

But was the London Independent hyperbolic when it blared, "The world's most powerful woman will start coming into her own next weekend?" On Sunday, Dilma Rousseff, 63, Lula's former chief of staff, may indeed become the next Brazilian president, even without a run-off on October 31. She may become more powerful than German Chancellor Angela Merkel or US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton - but Brazilians would quip, what about celebrities Madonna and Angelina Jolie?

The Financial Times, for its part, preferred to buy lunch last Friday in Sao Paulo for former president (1995-2002) Fernando Henrique Cardoso, colloquially known as FHC. It may have been a matter of the wrong president at the wrong (overrated) restaurant. Never one to shy away from self-promotion, FHC the peacock, multiple honorary PhD sociologist grumbled, "I did the reforms. Lula surfed the wave."

FHC's key reform was to crush hyperinflation by launching the "real" - the new Brazilian currency - plan in the mid-1990s; but it's telling how he still refuses to give Lula credit for responsible fiscal management and for fighting exclusion (but not corruption), and lifting about 30 million Brazilians out of poverty.

Welcome to Brazilian idiosyncrasy; a new poll by the Pew Global Attitudes Project reveals that 79% of Brazilians see political corruption as a "major problem", even while 75% approve of Lula's government, and no less than 80% take Lula personally to the skies.

But even enjoying this stratospheric 80% approval rate Obama can only dream about, Lula is not a god; in eight years in office, he couldn't push a crucial tax reform through an inept, corruption-corroded congress. And without it, the New American Dream - essentially concerning a newly empowered lower-middle class consuming homes, cars, televisions and computers like there's no tomorrow - can't rally take off. As much as the current Brazilian boom - essentially fueled by the non-stop sale of commodities to China - cannot be sustainable forever.

Lula - issued from a very poor family in the poor northeast, and a former metalworker - rattled the nerves of the old-style Brazilian sub-imperialist comprador elite to an extent that is hard to fathom abroad. Historian Jose Honorio Rodrigues has pointed out how these elites have always been "alienated, anti-progressive, anti-nation and anti-contemporary". And they "have never reconciled with the people". The recent, vicious Brazilian corporate media anti-Lula drive can be explained as a war against poor people that are finally emancipating themselves and following a path whose trailblazer was Lula himself. Who said class struggle was dead? One just has to visit Brazil - still the most unequal society in supremely unequal Latin America.

Stella by starlight
Lula once again seems to surf on the right wave of history as the takes a formidable risk by picking as his successor an austere and until recently obscure middle-class apparatchik who has never faced the ballot box. The daughter of a Bulgarian immigrant, Dilma "Iron Lady" Rousseff, or colloquially Dilma, as a kid dreamed of becoming a ballerina, a firefighter or a trapeze artist. But then the Brazilian generals smashed democracy in 1964 and installed their own tropical brand of the war on terror - to defend what they called "national security".

It's fascinating to observe today that Lula essentially did what the Joao Goulart government was trying to do before the military coup in 1964; to empower urban and rural workers. The comprador elites only cared about exports and an upper middle class mired in conspicuous consumption - the auto industry was the axis of the Brazilian economy at the time. The military dictatorship favored corporate - national and international - capitalism; those who profited immensely included Brazilian media groups, controlled by eight families.

Dilma fought against the dictatorship development "model" by joining the clandestine Palmares Armed Revolutionary Vanguard. Her codename was "Stella". Stella, like musician Jim Morrison of the Doors did, wanted to change the world, and change it now. These vanguards, in the 1960s and 1970s, used to kidnap foreign diplomats for ransom and shoot foreign - some American - torture experts training the dictatorship's death squads (hello General David Petraeus; does that ring a bell?) Dilma was tortured by the secret police in Sao Paulo's then Abu Ghraib, given a 25-month sentence for "subversion", and only recovered her freedom three years later. She was ready to try to change the system from within.

How Brazil beat the crisis
Developmentalism will be the name of the game in a Dilma government. It's gonna be a bumpy ride - especially because Brazil's infrastructure is in shambles and education levels are still on the slightly better side of appalling. It's unclear whether Dilma will follow to the letter the mantra among luminaries of her Workers' Party (PT) - that Brazil can keep growing without foreign investment in oil and agriculture, for instance.

Dilma holds on to a key guru - her former economics teacher Luciano Coutinho, now head of the humongous National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES). He may be Brazil's next finance minister. With Sao Paulo functioning as Brazil's Wall Street, no wonder the city's big bankers and financial markets, not to mention rentiers, are not amused.

The key criticism is that the Brazilian Treasury has been showering BNDES with cash, thus ballooning public debt. But this process also explains why and how Brazil won against the 2008 Wall Street-provoked global financial crisis.

When China announced its massive, nearly US$600 billion stimulus package in late 2008, the economists at BNDES knew they would have to, literally, follow the money. There were no lines of credit to anybody, Brazil included. So to fight an inevitable recession approaching, a $60 billion loan from the Treasury to BNDES was designed. This was the absolute opposite of the capital market-crazy FHC years. Coutinho recently insisted to journalist Consuelo Dieguez that countries with strong public banks, such as Brazil, China, India and South Korea, were the ones that really managed to beat the crisis.

Brazil may be allowed to hold a slight grudge against the US that explains why the country did not modernize much earlier.

The steel giant CSN - still in business - was built in 1941 with full American support; the US badly needed Brazilian steel for World War II. The Brazilian government was led to believe that after the war, Washington would keep investing in the country's modernization; Franklin Roosevelt, or FDR, had even organized a committee to study a development plan for Brazil, including massive financial help

. But FDR died in April 1945. Harry Truman preferred to rebuild the losers in the war, Germany and Japan. The problem is, the war automatically fostered protectionism. From the 1940s ahead, Brazil was an economy almost as closed as current fellow BRICs Russia and China at the time.

Yet it took only a decade for Brazil to develop a serious industrial base; starting in the early 1960s, Brazil's economy jumped from 50th in the world to eighth. Gross national product at the time was growing at 7% a year. That was the so-called "Brazilian miracle". The problem is, the military only favored businessmen close to the regime with massive BNDES loans. After the 1973 oil shock, reality set in. With no oil and no cash to pay interest on foreign debt, Brazil tanked.

Flash forward to the 1990s. In an irony noted by many a Brazilian economist, the BNDES was reborn from the ashes to run the privatization drive; instead of developing state companies, it was ordered to dismantle them. And yet once again, those who profited handsomely were very close to the government, that is, flashy FHC and his coterie.

Now BNDES is betting on commodities companies to become Brazil's national champions; cellulose, food, meatpacking, petrochemicals, oil, mining. No sign of high-technology companies. A non-governmental organization study claims that mining, steelmaking, ethanol, cellulose, oil, gas, hydroelectric power and agrobusiness received almost half of the nearly $280 billion BNDES funds during the eight years of Lula. JBS, for instance, became the world's biggest meat producer.

Lula policy entails, for instance, borrowing money

at a 10,75% interest rate to buy oil giant Petrobras shares. These Treasury loans do not appear on the budget, increasing gross debt but not the net debt. Brazilian gross debt has already reached a staggering 63% of gross domestic product (GDP). No wonder hordes of economists are horrified; there's a hurricane of money to lend, but few good ideas, and no sign of an industrial policy strategy. And why is that? Essentially because the country lacks a solid, well planned project for long-term development. Dilma will be smart enough to notice that China buying loads of commodities cannot drive Brazil's industrial policy.

The name of the game in the complex China-Brazil relationship is "pockets of prosperity". China is now Brazil's top trading

partner, ahead of the US for the first time in 2009. China consumed almost 14% of Brazil's exports in 2009, and Brazil consumed almost 13% of Chinese exports. If you're a Brazilian soy exporter, you're a certified multi-millionaire. If you belong to the once-thriving Brazilian shoe industry, you're about to go bankrupt.

Relying on China is not exactly a recipe for sustainable growth. The obvious way out for Brazil is to sell not only commodities but added-value goods; to follow the Samsung way. And here's the supreme catch; Brazil can't do it without urgently updating the decrepit infrastructure in ports, airports and highways (a 2007 study by the Transport Confederation found that 74% of Brazilian roads were in "terrible or bad" condition); it needs to modernize the notoriously Byzantine tax code; and it must smash the nerve-wracking bureaucracy that slows down businesses in Brazil, the so-called "Brazil cost" (the country is 129th out of 183 in terms of ease of doing business, according to a 2009 World Bank report).

Dilma has vowed to invest more than $550 billion between 2011 and 2014 to improve Brazil's agricultural export drive and to prepare for the 2014 football World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. But not much has been discussed about the tax code reform and the bureaucratic machine. The tax burden is at 34.4%, much higher than fellow BRICs and even developed countries such as Japan (17.6%) and the US (26.9%), according to a recent study by the Brookings Institution.

Last Friday, when Lula opened the Sao Paulo stock exchange

, the Bovespa index jumped in market value

to become the world's second-biggest because of Petrobras selling a whopping $68 billion worth of shares in the biggest share issue in corporate history. Excited investors from Brazil and abroad had asked for double that amount.

The capitalization of Petrobras - now the second-biggest oil company in the world just behind Exxon - took the state participation to 48% and in fact graphically reverted the FHC years, when control of Brazil's most strategic company was broken up and pulverized. Now come the customary market doubts over efficiency and productivity at Petrobras. The company is launching a monster $224 billion investment program

for 2010 to 2014. For those like the PT staunchly defending Brazilian sovereignty, this Petrobras on steroids will be essential in the exploitation of pre-salt oil and its probable 50 billion barrels lying at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

Another Brazilian giant is miner Vale, which the Boston Consulting Group says has created more value over the past decade than any other large firm in the world. Once again, thank China; with a market capitalization of $147 billion, Vale is now the world's second-largest miner behind BHP Billiton.

The new Kuwait
Inevitably, the Brazilian boom would generate its share of megabillionnaires. Such as Jorge Paulo Lemann, Brazil's second-richest man worth $11.5 billion, who engineered the $52 billion takeover of Anheuser-Busch Cos., founded Brazil's largest investment bank and recently conducted the $3.3 billion takeover of Burger King, the biggest restaurant acquisition of the past 10 years.

But the top dog is undoubtedly EBX Group owner Eike Batista. Excited investors are placing a value of about $5 a barrel on Batista's subsidiary OGX's estimated seven billion barrels of shallow water oil reserves. No wonder China's Sinopec Group and CNOOC are about to buy into OGX assets. Just as a comparison, if someone invested $100 in OGX in September 2009, now that would be worth $180, compared with a meager $80 in Petrobras and $113 in the Bovespa stock index. OGX, a start-up, has a market capitalization of about $38 billion and is not generating any revenue - yet.

Batista predicted in an already notorious interview on Charlie Rose that Brazil would be producing 5 to 6 million barrels of oil per day (bpd) by 2020, with OGX itself betting on 730,000 bpd by 2015 and 1.4 million bpd by 2019. Batista could have a net worth of $100 billion by 2020; not accidentally his dream is to become the world's top multibillionaire.

He's also fond of repeating the mantra that "we are today the United States of the 1950s". So foreign investment is more than welcome; "Come! It's the time to make your bets on a country with 200 million consumers and the perfect demographics for the next 10 years. This oil story is a 30-year growth story." And what's good for him is good for Brazil. Inevitably, Batista also predicted that Brazil should become the "fifth power" by 2015-2020, behind Germany, Japan, China and the US.

No wonder American economists are raving. Last week, at a seminar on global governance in Brasilia, American economist James Galbraith stressed, "Social inequality in Brazil is being reduced in the last few years because the country spends less money to help the financial sector and more money to help Brazil." And he took no time to once again smash neo-liberal dogma; "There can be sustainable social and economic growth

side-by-side with a functional democratic process."

Brazil entertains high hopes of entering Standard Chartered's recently coined "7% club" - that is, countries with annual GDP growth of 7% or more for an extended period. Based on the 10 years up to 2008, club members are China (9.7% average), followed by India, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Uganda and Mozambique. Several countries are not far behind the BRICs and could hit the top four before 2030. In this case, Russia might "fall" - or even Brazil. Thus, the future of BRIC may be to become BRICI (with Indonesia), BRICK (with South Korea) or even BASIC (Russia replaced by South Africa, or Afrique du Sud).

University of Missouri's Michael Hudson, who's also recently been to Brazil, insists the main task of the BRICs is to build an alternative for the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. And Brazil must create "its own development strategy" - which, as we have seen, is still non-existent. Hudson ominously predicts that Washington will do everything in its power to oppose this independence - referring to what happened to Iran in the 1950s when it wanted to control its own oil, and to Afghanistan when a secular government took over in the late 1970s.

A new social contract?
Amid so much ballyhoo, it's always healthy to find dissenting voices. Marxist historian Paulo Alves de Lima stresses how Brazil is now living the construction of a new national mythology:

It's the formulation of a project for the monopolistic capitalism created by the military dictatorship. A new ideology for the future has been born; universalization of the middle class, the end of poverty with the exploitation of pre-salt reserves, stable democracy, strength of the industrial-military complex ... They are promising paradise while Obama must declare to the world that American poverty is increasing. Top universities are embracing the myth and the concept of 'superior society' - neither capitalist nor socialist, and even less defined as subordinate capitalism. Our future is to march to this new paradise.

Undoubtedly, shades of FDR are everywhere. Mainstream media are obsessed with the notion that Brazil is now a middle-class society. It's true that tens of millions now can afford their own house. Their self-esteem has ballooned; and most people live "an admittedly decent material life". But wait a minute; that's American economist Paul Krugman describing the US in the 1950s and 1960s. Is there at least a psychological parallel - like in an overwhelming feeling of optimism, the "future is in your hands" style?

These new individualistic Brazilians indeed resemble the Americans of the 1950s and 1960s. Essentially, their priorities are family, stability and professional success, no matter their social class and the region from which they come. With poverty in Brazil falling 41% from 2003 to 2008, technically almost half of the Brazilian population is now "new middle class". But this is not the traditional American middle class. Families with a maximum per capita income of $2,500 monthly, qualified as the "C" class, make up 40% of Brazil's overall income. The "B" and "C" classes, together, make up for almost 70%. For a country always defined by inequality (third place in the world until recently, only behind Bolivia and Haiti, according to the United Nations Development Program, and now 11th), that's a lot.

In developing countries, the so-called "global middle class" groups around 400 million people; and 2 billion others may join them before 2030. Social mobility in Brazil is only beginning. But millions do indeed feel that Brazil today feels like the US in the 1960s in terms of jobs on offer, rising income, and unlimited opportunities. Yet essentially this is still a very poor middle class - reflecting the extreme inequality that still prevails.

Dilma anyway inherits a unique historical conjuncture generated by Lula; for the first time inequality, injustice and social exclusion in Brazil actually decreased. It's imperative to know in relation to what; that happened in relation to the overwhelming inequality of the model privileged by two decades of military dictatorship. Leftist sociologist Emir Sader insists the process is only beginning, and still has to break the monopolies of financial capital, powerful landowners and the power of monopolistic media.
He could be referring to a struggle now going on all over South America. With a fearful Europe increasingly turning to the right and extreme-right and a dejected New Great Depression US at the mercy of wacko populists of the Tea Party variety, it is South America - and parts of Asia and Africa - that now seem to be on the right side of history. The American television series Mad Men celebrates the (now dying) American dream. Maybe now the time has come for the Mad Men from the tropics.


Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.