...when she was young, elected president of Brazil as the Workers Party candidate, and overwhelmingly popular, now to be feted at the White House!
This would be Obama's "good angel" which has also spoken to him about supporting the Colombia/FARC peace negotiation (and maybe about Colombian president Manual Santos' call for legalization and the end of the "war on drugs" and maybe about the diceyness of supporting the coupsters in Venezuela). His "bad angel," however, far from giving up, has won many victories, including U.S. support for the rightwing coup in Honduras, U.S. support for the rightwing coup in Paraguay, U.S. troops on the ground in both countries, U.S. support of the coupsters in Venezuela despite warnings from his "good angel," the CIA's nefarious activities throughout the region ("Give the CIA everything it wants"--Barack Obama, quoted in the latest issue of the New Yorker, re: drone assassinations), continued reactivation of the U.S. 4th Fleet (mothballed since WW II, rebirthed by the Bush Junta) in the Caribbean, coverup of what may be vast Bush Junta crimes in Colombia, appointment of Bush Junta operative, William Brownfield, as "drug czar" of Latin America (gawd) and appointment of Chiquita "death squad" International's lawyer, Eric Holder, as Attorney General of the U.S. (gawd x 1,000), among other things.
Rousseff mostly heeds her "good angel," so this ought to be an interesting fete-ing.
Hard not to be cynical about U.S. intentions (for instance, "dividing and conquering" the vast, leftist democracy movement that has swept South America). But it would be a mistake to underestimate Rousseff. Those who have done so are still in a state of bewilderment as to what hit them. And she is rock solid on "raising all boats" in Latin America (the policy originally promulgated by her mentor, Lula da Silva, and Hugo Chavez), no matter the slaverings of the Brazillian business class over sweatshop labor in Paraguay. They hate her and the Workers Party, of course, but they and their ilk are way outnumbered in countries with real democracies, like Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia and Uruguay, where socialists have the upperhand (soon to be re-joined by Chile with the re-election of re-radicalized, socialist Michele Batchelet this November after an ugly but short hiatus of rule by the 1%). (Three female presidents in South America, all socialists! Brazil, Argentina and soon Chile. That will be something!)
(That iconic photo of Chavez, Correa and Morales, in colorful Bolivian ponchos, with their nut-brown faces, will be supplemented with an equally stunning photo, sometime soon, of the new trio, Rousseff, Fernandez and Batchelet, the icons of women's equality and social justice in Latin America.)
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