Dilma may cancel White House visit over NSA spying
Dilma may cancel White House visit over NSA spying
Updated: September 4, 2013 00:23 IST
Brazilian President may discuss the issue with other BRICS leaders
Outraged by the revelations that U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) targeted her phone calls, e-mails and mobile phone texts, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is seriously considering the possibility of cancelling her official visit to Washington in October if President Barack Obama fails to give “convincing answers” about the activities of the American agency in Brazil.
Though officially the cancellation of the visit, which will include a state dinner at the White House, is “not on the table”, according to close aides of the Brazilian President, she is “very angry” and feeling “cheated” by the U.S. government.
“When the NSA story first came out in July, the U.S. government assured us that the agency was only looking at the metadata that would also help Brazil. Now it has been revealed that content from the phones and e-mails of the President and her close aides was picked. This is unacceptable to us,” said a Brazilian diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.
In a report by The Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald on Globo TV on Sunday night, it was revealed how the NSA targeted Ms. Rousseff and her advisers.
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The U.S. "military-industrial-fake democracy complex" (fronted by Obama, in the current decade) has deliberately insulted Brazil on a number of occasions (that we know about--probably more in private), including announcing U.S. drone-bombing of Libya FROM BRAZIL (on Obama's visit there)--a diplomatic crudity of rather big proportions--and in the earlier overthrow of Honduran democracy, despite everything Brazil tried to do to stop it and reverse it. It has become clearer and clearer that the fascist coup d'etat in Honduras wasn't a Bushwhack time-bomb, set to go off early in Obama's first term (June 2009)--as it initially appeared to be--but had Obama's support. It was the U.S. MIFDC/Obama vs. Brazil on Latin American democracy, with the U.S., of course--as always--on the wrong side.
Now the NSA spying on Brazil's president! Reading her email. Listening to her phone calls. Probably got a red flag for "terrorism" on her "file" because she was horribly tortured by the U.S.-backed fascist dictatorship when she was young, and certainly because she and her predecessor, Lula da Silva, actively supported Honduran democracy. Democracy = terrorism, in the MIFDC's eyes, because real democracy, in Latin America, will inevitably result in the curtailment of U.S. corporate looting and plundering and of expansion of the Pentagon's "forward operating locations" and 'private contractor' profiteering in the region. Can't have VOTERS deciding policy there, any more than they allow VOTERS to decide war issues (or anything else) here.
U.S. 2, Brazil 0--to put it crudely. (3-0, if you throw in the fascist coup in Paraguay.)
Obama wasn't kidding when he told the Miami mafia that Latin America "needs U.S. leadership," during his first campaign. I thought that was bloody arrogant at the time (but gave Obama points for taking the Cuba issue into the "lion's den."
Latin America's leftist democracy movement was on a roll, with brilliant new leaders elected in numerous countries--all over South America (Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay (!), Uruguay) and into Central America (Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador). To tell them that they "need U.S. leadership" was an insult, and a thrown gauntlet, in truth. Didn't quite recognize it, at the time. Thought "bad advisors." Thought, "well, he's got Bush's wars and the banksters on his mind."
Anyway, I'm tempted to say that, if Dilma Rousseff does come to the White House banquet, in these circumstances, she will be relinquishing Brazil's leadership of the region. Brazil's massive economy, population and land base, its vast resources and its thriving democracy, make it the natural leader of the region. Lula da Silva took that role seriously. Will his protege and former chief of staff, Rousseff, do so as well?
But it's probably a mistake to think in absolutes about Latin America (or perhaps about anything). Remember when Lula da Silva came to the White House, met with Bush Jr., and made that awful palm oil "free trade for the rich" deal? Lula da Silva is one of the good guys of this world, right up there with Jimmy Carter and the late Hugo Chavez, in their commitment to real democracy, social justice and world peace. I thought long and hard about da Silva's political position in Brazil, at that time, re the strength of the rightwing and local and transglobal corporate interests. It is NOT EASY being a "good guy" in this world, especially in Latin America, given the history of U.S. horrors/domination and the octopus-like stranglehold that the U.S. seeks over all resources, peoples and governments in (as John Kerry recently reiterated) "our own back yard."
If Rousseff "crawls" to the White House, there may be much more to it than I can see. It may not at all mean that Brazil is relinquishing leadership of the greatest democracy movement that we have seen in the modern era. It may instead be brilliant diplomacy. She may instead have far more important goals than rebuffing NSA spying. (And, really, she and the other leftist leaders of the region surely realized that they were being spied upon by the U.S. It's a no-brainer.)
Also, the U.S. bombing of Syria--as with the U.S. bombing of Libya--is a much bigger problem for Rousseff. She's going to be toasted at a White House banquet while the U.S. slaughters more innocent people in the Middle East, or while Obama is saber-rattling? THAT she cannot do! She is a peace-maker, like Lula da Silva. She cannot have her name and Brazil's name associated with U.S. wars.
If Obama is true to form, though--or I guess I should say, if the U.S. MIFDC is true to form--they might try to do that to her, as they did before. I don't think she can take that chance. I think she will cancel her visit to the White House--not because of NSA spying but because of Syria.