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Latin American integration/cooperation and Latin American independence from U.S. dictates--all key polices of Lula's Workers' Party. Lula da Silva's emergence as a leader who defied U.S. dictates on "isolating" Hugo Chavez, on the coup d'etat in Honduras, on U.S. economic policy (Wall Street/bankster looting), on Cuba, on Iran and on so many issues--especially on U.S. "divide and conquer" efforts--is a remarkable development, and I presume that Dilma Rousseff has similar views and will continue on a path of Latin America independence.
It is a sad and tragic fact that, wherever there is good social justice policy in Latin America, the U.S. government is on the wrong side of it, and wherever there is egregious injustice--as in Colombia and Honduras--the U.S. government strongly supports those who are inflicting it. U.S. government policy--that is, U.S. multinationals and war profiteers' policy (for they are one and the same)--has not been as openly hostile toward Brazil's leftist government as it has been to others, but it is undoubtedly true that our true rulers would like to see the Workers' Party gone and that they have poured resources (including covert resources) into defeating them. It must frost their collective corporate asses that Lula followed the Chavez model on use of Brazil's new oil find--that is, insisting on Brazilian government majority control of the project and use of a large portion of the profits to benefit the poor. Lula has been a staunch defender of Chavez, especially at key moments--when it counted most--of U.S. attack on Chavez--and that sense of unity in Latin America is critically important to Latin America's prosperity, peace and well-being, and to its future as a potentially very powerful economic/political force on the world stage. The U.S. and Europe have "divided and conquered" Latin America forever. Chavez, Lula, Morales and the others were not the first to perceive this--that honor goes to Simon Bolivar--but they are the first Latin American leaders to successfully fight back against it. Nestor Kirchner's reply to the Bushwhacks, when they tried to bully him into "isolating" Chavez, sums it up. Kirchner said, "But he's my brother!"
I do worry about Diebold's operations in Brazil, though. If vote counting gets privatized there, the way it is here, there could be trouble ahead. Lula and Rousseff create prosperity and then the corporates move in and loot it all--as they have done here? I don't know enough about their vote counting system to predict such an outcome but I do know that Diebold has a foot in the door. The Diebold coup here took about a decade to prepare--a decade of the quiet re-writing of the election laws--but when it happened, it happened fast (2002 to 2004), and now, with the ES&S recent buyout of Diebold and their conquest of New York, it is complete. They may bide their time in Brazil--and let the Workers' Party "fatten the calf," so to speak--and, when the time is ripe, (s)elect the Looting Party, as happened here. I am not sure of the relationship of Diebold/ES&S-USA to Diebold-Brazil and I have no idea how aware Brazilians are of the huge danger of 'TRADE SECRET' code voting systems. I am hoping they are smarter than our people have been--and I have reason to believe that Latin Americans, in general, are. (They've put A LOT OF EFFORT into clean, transparent elections--Venezuela's system being a prime example. Venezuela uses electronics but it is OPEN SOURCE code and very well audited.)
If there is a surprise reversal in the Rousseff/Serra contest, we will know where to look for the explanation.
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