Hybrid War
Hyenas Tearing Brazil Apart
By Pepe
Escobar
May 17,
2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "RT"
-
The gloomy and
repulsive night when the female president of the 7th
largest economy in the world was the prey of choice
fed to a lynch mob of hyenas in a drab, provincial
Circus Maximus will forever live in infamy.
By 367
votes for and 137 against, the
impeachment/coup/regime change-light drive against
Dilma Rousseff cleared the Brazilian Congressional
circus and will now go to the Senate, where a “special
commission” will be set up. If approved,
Rousseff will then be sidelined for 180 days and a
low-rent tropical Brutus, Vice-President Michel
Temer, will ascend to power until the Senate’s final
verdict.
This lowly
farce should serve as a wake-up call not only to the
BRICS but to the whole Global South. Who needs NATO,
R2P (“responsibility to protect”) or “moderate
rebels” when you can get your regime change
just by tweaking a nation’s political/judicial
system?
The
Brazilian Supreme Court has not analyzed the merit
of the matter – at least not yet. There’s no solid
evidence anywhere Rousseff committed a “crime of
responsibility”; she did what every American
President since Reagan has done – not to mention
leaders all across the world: along with her
vice-president, the lowly Brutus, Rousseff got
slightly creative with the federal budget’s numbers.
The coup
has been sponsored by a certified crook, president
of the lower house Eduardo Cunha; reportedly the
holder of several illegal accounts in Switzerland,
listed in the Panama Papers and under investigation
by the Supreme Court. Instead of lording over
near-illiterate hyenas in a racist, largely
crypto-fascist circus, he should be behind bars. It
beggars belief that the Supreme Court has not
launched legal action against Cunha. The secret of
his power over the circus is a gigantic corruption
scheme lasting many years, featuring corporations
contributing to his and others’ campaign financing.
And that’s
the beauty of a regime change-light/color revolution
of Hybrid War when staged in such a dynamically
creative nation such as Brazil. The hall of mirrors
yields a political simulacrum that would have driven
deconstructionists Jean Baudrillard and Umberto Eco,
if alive, green with envy; a Congress crammed with
fools/patsies/traitors/crooks, some of whom are
already being investigated for corruption, has
conspired to depose a president who is not under any
formal corruption investigation – and has not
committed any“crime of responsibility”.
The neoliberal
restoration
Still,
without a popular vote, the massively rejected
tropical Brutus twins, Temer and Cunha, will find it
impossible to govern, even though they would
perfectly incarnate the project of the immensely
arrogant and ignorant Brazilian elites; a neoliberal
triumph, with Brazilian “democracy” trampled
down six feet under.
It’s
impossible to understand what happened at the Circus
Maximus this Sunday without knowing there’s a gaggle
of Brazilian political parties that are seriously
threatened by the non-stop overspill of the Car Wash
corruption investigation.
To ensure their survival, Car Wash must be “suspended”;
and it will, under the bogus“national unity” proposed
by lowly Brutus Temer.
But first,
Car Wash must produce a high-profile scalp. And that
has to be Lula in jail – compared to which the
crucifixion of Rousseff is an Aesop fable. Corporate
media, led by the noxious Globo empire, would hail
it as the ultimate victory, and nobody would care
about Car Wash’s enforced retirement.
The 54
million-plus who voted for Rousseff’s reelection in
2014 voted wrong. The overall “project” is
a government without vote and without people; a
Brazilian-style parliamentary system, without
bothering with pesky “elections” and
crucially, including very “generous” campaign
financing flexibility not bound to incriminate
powerful companies/corporations.
In a
nutshell, the ultimate aim is to perfectly “align” the
Brazilian Executive, Legislative, Judiciary and
corporate media interests. Democracy is for suckers.
Brazilian elites remote controlling the hyenas know
very well that if Lula runs again in 2018, he will
win. And Lula has already warned; he won’t buy any “national
unity”crap; he’ll be back in the streets
fighting whatever illegitimate government pops up.
We’re now open for
plundering
As it
stands, Rousseff runs the risk of becoming the first
major casualty of the NSA-originated,
two-year-long Car Wash investigation. The President,
admittedly an incompetent economic manager and
lacking the right stuff of a master politician,
believed that Car Wash – which practically prevented
her from governing – would not reach her because she
is personally honest. Yet Car Wash’s not so hidden
agenda was always regime change. Who cares if in the
process the nation is left on the verge of being
controlled exactly by many of those indicted by the
anti-corruption drive?
Lowly
Brutus Temer – a vanity case version of Argentina’s
Macri – is the perfect conduit for the
implementation of regime change. He represents the
powerful banking lobby, the powerful agribusiness
lobby and the powerful federation of industries in
Brazil’s economic leader, the state of Sao Paulo.
The neo-developmentalist
project for Latin America – uniting at least some of
the local elites, invested in developing internal
markets, in association with the working classes –
is now dead, because what may be defined as
sub-hegemonic, or peripheral, capitalism is mired in
crisis after the 2008 Wall Street-provoked debacle.
What’s left is just neoliberal restoration. TINA (“there
is no alternative”). This implies, in the
Brazilian case, the savage reversion of Lula’s
legacy; social policies, technological policies, the
drive to globally expand large, competitive
Brazilian companies, more public universities,
better salaries.
In a
message to the nation, Brutus Temer admitted as
much;“hope” after impeachment will be
absolutely swell for “foreign investment”,
as in let them plunder the colony at will; back to
the trademark history of Brazil since 1500.
So Wall
Street, US Big Oil and the proverbial “American
interests” win this round at the circus –
thanks to the, once again proverbial,
vassal/comprador elites. Chevron execs are already
salivating with the prospect of laying their hands
on the pre-salt oil deposits; that was already
promised by a trusted vassal in the Brazilian
opposition.
The coup
goes on. The real hyenas haven’t yet pounced. So
it’s far from over.
Pepe
Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst. He
writes for RT, Sputnik and TomDispatch, and is a
frequent contributor to websites and radio and TV
shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He is the
former roving correspondent for Asia Times Online.
Born in Brazil, he's been a foreign correspondent
since 1985, and has lived in London, Paris, Milan,
Los Angeles, Washington, Bangkok and Hong Kong. Even
before 9/11 he specialized in covering the arc from
the Middle East to Central and East Asia, with an
emphasis on Big Power geopolitics and energy wars.
He is the author of "Globalistan" (2007), "Red Zone
Blues" (2007), "Obama does Globalistan" (2009) and
"Empire of Chaos" (2014), all published by Nimble
Books. His latest book is "2030", also by Nimble
Books, out in December 2015. |