BRICS Under Attack: The Empire Strikes Back In Brazil

Despite all the fancy anti-corruption rhetoric, the assault on President
Rousseff’s leftist government is the result of a coordinated campaign by
business interests tied to Washington and Wall Street.



NEW YORK — (Analysis) The last decade has seen a remarkable coalescing of
non-Western nations in both economic and political partnerships. These
multilateral institutions have been championed as alternatives to Western organs
of political and economic power such as NATO, the International Monetary Fund,
and the World Bank.

From the growth of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to the establishment of
the Eurasian Economic Union, China’s “One Belt, One Road” strategy to link much
of the Eurasian landmass via trade and investment, and most recently the
establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, many have viewed
these developments as essential for the decentralization of global power away
from the imperial centers of Washington, Wall Street, London and Brussels.

But perhaps none of the emerging Global South international groupings has been
more promising in terms of both public relations and real economic partnership
than that of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South
Africa).

BRICS countries account for 46 percent of the world’s population – over 3
billion people, as of 2015 – making it the single largest bloc in terms of human
capacity among global alliances. The scope of BRICS, combined with its
increasing assertiveness as an economic power unto itself, has undoubtedly
ruffled a few feathers in Washington and elsewhere in the West.

It should come as no surprise that major moves have been taken in the last 12 to
24 months to undermine each BRICS member nation and destabilize them through
political and economic means. And it is no coincidence that those leaders shown
smiling and shaking hands at recent BRICS summits are now either the targets of
destabilization efforts and subversion – as in the cases of Brazil, Russia,
China and South Africa – or are a target of a military and political charm
offensive, as in the case of India. In each case, the United States and its
allies benefit significantly from the latest developments.



Brazil in the crosshairs

One of the U.S. empire’s tried and true methods of destabilizing a targeted
country is through manufacturing and promoting political scandals and/or
political movements that appear oppositional but whose interests, whether
consciously or not, align with the ruling establishment in the West. Both of
these elements are at play in Brazil, which has been moving toward increased
economic, and consequently political, independence in recent years.

In Brazil, the government of Dilma Rousseff is facing a major destabilization
campaign orchestrated by powerful right-wing elements in the country and their
U.S. backers. Under the always convenient banner of “anti-corruption,” millions
have turned out in the streets to demand the ouster of the twice-elected
Rousseff government on the heels of a series of revelations about alleged
corruption pertaining to the quasi-state, quasi-private Petrobras oil company.

According to the allegations, a number of leading political figures, some of
whom are connected to President Rousseff and the Workers’ Party, have skimmed at
least 3 percent of the billions in oil revenue from Petrobras, illustrating the
still active tradition of corruption in Brazil.

The latest target is former President Lula da Silva, who was forcibly removed
from his home in an ostentatious show of force by law enforcement authorities
meant to humiliate the 70-year-old founder of the Workers’ Party. Because of his
working class background, the former president was seen as the hope and pride of
the left in Brazil, and the public removal from his home earlier this month
sparked the latest round of protests.


But what — or who — is really behind the soft coup in Brazil?

The right wing is the driving force of the protests, despite any
progressive-minded, anti-corruption sentiment being expressed by various
segments of the protest movement. Two of the principal groups responsible for
organizing and mobilizing the demonstrations are the Free Brazil Movement (MBL)
and Students for Liberty (EPL), both of which have direct ties to Charles and
David Koch, the right-wing, neocon, U.S. billionaires, as well as other leading
figures of the far right, pro-business neoliberal establishment.

(Click to Expand) The bio of Fabio Ostermann from the Atlas Network website.

(Click to Expand) The bio of Juliano Torres from the Atlas Network website.

MBL is fronted by Fabio Ostermann and Juliano Torres, both of whom were educated
in the Atlas Leadership Academy, a satellite of the Atlas Economic Research
Foundation, which is directly funded by the Koch brothers. EPL is a direct
affiliate of the U.S.-based Students for Liberty, a well-known Koch brothers
outfit with deep ties to the right-wing political establishment in the U.S.

One of the leading faces of the movement is Kim Kataguiri, a 20-year-old
“activist,” who is both a founder of MBL and a leader in EPL. Unabashedly
pro-big business, he’s an adherent of the so-called Austrian School of
Economics, the economic ideology that advocates total deregulation of the
economy in the interests of private business, and a great admirer of Milton
Friedman, the father of what is known today as neoliberal capitalism.

Kataguiri and his fellow right-wing activists have been quick to distance
themselves from the blood-soaked legacy of right-wing coups in Brazil and Latin
America for obvious reasons. Yet they espouse precisely the same economic
policies as those enacted throughout the region, perhaps most famously in Chile
under the brutal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, whose economic policies were
directly guided by none other than Friedman.

As Kataguiri explained to The Guardian in 2015:

“We defend free markets, lower taxes and the privatisation of all public
companies. … In Brazil, the left is still seen as cool by young people. … We
want to destroy this idea that if you defend free markets then you’re an old man
who is asking for a dictatorship. … Unfortunately, we don’t have any big
sponsors. The government and some sectors of the press say that we are financed
by rich people. We would have no problem in being financed by rich people.”

Unfortunately for Kataguiri, Ostermann, Torres and their colleagues, the truth
about their connections to powerful finance capital and business in the U.S. and
throughout Latin America is well known. Still, the corporate media whitewashes
these connections, presenting the protests as some sort of pure expression of
people’s discontent, rather than a manufactured form of political manipulation
and destabilization which has seized upon difficult economic times to cynically
exploit public opinion. Brazil’s economic downturn over the past two years has
made this much easier.

Other influential groups such as VemPraRua (“Come to the Streets”) are directly
funded by powerful right-wing business interests inside the country, including
Brazil’s richest man, Jorge Paulo Lemann. As Bloomberg noted in a 2013 profile
of Lemann:

“In the U.S., Lemann is virtually unknown, even though he and his two longtime
partners, Marcel Herrmann Telles and Carlos Alberto Sicupira, now control three
icons of U.S. consumer culture: Heinz ketchup, Burger King, and, after the $52
billion takeover of Anheuser-Busch in 2008, Budweiser beer. The combined market
value of the companies they run is $187 billion—larger than that of Citigroup.

In Brazil, Lemann is a business-class hero. … Worth some $20 billion, Lemann is
No. 32 on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, seven slots behind George Soros and
three ahead of Carl Icahn.”

Meanwhile, the reactionary, pro-U.S. elements inside (and outside) Brazil are
particularly angered at the Workers’ Party and, more broadly, the left. This is
not because of corruption – though corruption undoubtedly remains a problem –
but because of the ascendance to power of political forces representing working
class and poor Brazilians.

As the North American Congress on Latin America correctly assessed in April
2015: “Don’t believe the right-wing media’s emphasis on corruption—the recent
demonstrations are motivated by entrenched elite discontent over expanding
economic and political inclusion for the nation’s majority.”



Bringing BRICS to heel

In short, despite all the fancy anti-corruption rhetoric, the assault on
Rousseff’s leftist government is the result of a coordinated campaign by
business interests tied to the U.S. Washington and Wall Street that see in
Brazil a dangerous precedent in which a left-wing government sympathetic to and
allied with Bolivarian movements in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and until
recently, Argentina, was able to gain power and preside over an economic boom.

A graph demonstrating the correlation between expansion of anti-government
sentiment and the stagnation of GDP growth.

Indeed, this point should not be understated — namely, the economic downturn in
commodities such as oil which has put the brakes on Brazil’s rapid economic
progress.

In fact, recent data shows that the expansion of anti-government sentiment
directly correlates to the stagnation of GDP growth, which itself directly
correlates to the decline in commodities prices. As many have convincingly
argued, the collapse of oil has no doubt been fomented and encouraged, if not
directly orchestrated, by the U.S. and its allies in the Gulf in order to target
non-Western countries whose economies are tied to oil and gas revenue —
Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, and especially Russia.
Essentially, what’s unfolding in Brazil is a multi-pronged effort to destabilize
the country via a variety of political and economic means, with the ultimate
goal of bringing to heel a key member of BRICS. But it is not the only one.

Brazil is certainly not the only BRICS member facing an offensive by the
U.S.-NATO system. The next article in this series will examine the destabilizing
forces reaching into South Africa. Future pieces will examine the growing
military relationship between the U.S. and India, as well as the multi-faceted
strategies to contain, isolate, and destabilize Russia and China.


In
MINTPRESSNEWS
http://www.mintpressnews.com/brics-attack-empire-strikes-back-brazil/214943/
March 22, 2016