(WMR)—Russian President Vladimir Putin is visiting Brazil where he will participate in the 2014 summit of the BRICS nations of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa held in the city of Fortaleza.
The BRICS summit comes as members of the Obama administration, including neocons like Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, have instituted plans for increased sanctions against Russia. Putin and his BRICS colleagues will sign an agreement in Fortaleza on establishing a development bank that will help bypass the neocons’ attempt to isolate Russia from international banking networks. Any strengthening of sanctions in the same manner that U.S. sanctions have been imposed by Washington on Cuba and Iran runs the risk of punishing Brazilian, Indian, Chinese, and South African banks and other corporations, something that could land the Obama administration before the World Trade Organization court that rules against trade practices that violate WTO regulations.
The legacy of the Obama administration is that its Cold War-era policies directed against Latin America will permanently end America’s long-standing political and economic domination of the Western Hemisphere. The interventionist policies in countries like Venezuela and Honduras, carried out by Nuland’s fellow neocon ideologue and co-religionist Roberta Jacobson, the assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, have resulted in a large contingent of Latin American leaders in joining Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and the other BRICS leaders in Brazil for a summit where the United States will not have a seat at the table. In fact, the United States and its imperialistic policies will be a major subject in Brazil, a country that has seen its telecommunications, including the private calls and e-mail of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, routinely spied upon by the U.S. National Security Agency.
Putin is making the most of his six-day visit to Latin America. He forgave Cuba’s debt to Russia while visiting Havana and also stopped in Nicaragua and Rio de Janeiro. While in Cuba, Putin met with former Cuban leader Fidel Castro and his brother, Raul Castro, Cuba’s president. Putin attended the final game of the World Cup in Rio. Russia is the host of 2018 World Cup. After attending the BRICS summit in Brazil, Putin will also visit Argentina where he will sign a deal on nuclear energy. The interest of Iran, Argentina, Nigeria, Syria, and Egypt in joining BRICS may soon see the group’s acronym become “BRICSIANSE.”
Xi will help Venezuela thumb its nose at proposed sanctions by Washington by visiting Caracas and supporting Maduro in his stand-off with CIA-financed opposition elements. Xi will also visit Cuba and Argentina.
The Obama administration could not convince a single South American leader to avoid the BRICS summit in Brazil. In fact, two of the South American leaders sitting down with Putin, Xi, Rousseff, and the other leaders in Brazil, Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro and Suriname’s President Desi Bouterse, have been the subject of CIA- and State Department-linked destabilization efforts and sanctions threats. Also in attendance at BRICS are Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Bolivia’s President Evo Morales, Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet, Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos, Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa, Guyana’s President Donald Ramotar, Paraguay’s President Horacio Cartes, Peru’s President Ollanta Humala, and Uruguay’s President José Mujica.
America’s sanctions against Russia and its saber-rattling against China on behalf of Japan and the Philippines have fallen on deaf ears in South America. The teen-like antics of Nuland and Jacobson, along with those of U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice and U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, are sure to be discussed in sideline gossip by the leaders gathered in Fortaleza.
While in Rio, Putin also met with Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago Kamla Persad-Bissessar, and Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne, in addition to Hungary’s Prime Minister Victor Orban, Namibian President Hage Geingob, Gabon’s President Ali Bongo, and Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel. Merkel and Rousseff have much in common as both had their personal cell phone conversations monitored by the NSA, a fact that Putin, who has provided asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, was likely sure to have mentioned in passing.
The only attempt the United States could make to have Latin America criticize Putin’s contact with Western Hemisphere leaders was to get Trinidad opposition leader Keith Rowley to condemn his country’s prime minister’s private trip to Brazil and her and her grandson’s meeting with Putin in Rio amid a union dispute in the island nation’s immigration department. The power of Washington to influence events in the Western Hemisphere has truly plummeted to new depths.
The agenda of the BRICS nations is as diversified as that of any G-7 meeting, no longer called G8 after Russia was expelled. Subjects on the agenda in Fortaleza are laid out in the 2013 BRICS Durban Summit Compliance Report covering the period March 27, 2013 to July 1, 2014, a copy of which was sent to WMR and available by clicking here.
On the BRICS summit agenda are trade, development, macroeconomic policy, energy, finance, terrorism, climate change, regional security, drug smuggling and trans-border crime, industrialization of Africa, and, what should serve as a wake-up call to Wall Street, the World Bank, European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and other tools of western capitalism, international financial institution (IFI) reform.
The security operations by BRICS in Afghanistan stand to replace those of the United States after the withdrawal of its troops from that country. Russia has led BRICS efforts on dealing with money laundering and cross-border crime and it has drawn the participation of Belarus, India, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in its efforts. Observers from Mongolia and Armenia also joined the talks. In the area of security, synergism is apparent between the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) that brings Russia and China into a common security policy with central Asian states like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Russia and China appear determined that Ukraine and Georgia will be the “line in the sand” for any further encroachments by George Soros- and CIA-led “themed revolutions” in the Eurasian space.
Copyright © 2014 WayneMadenReport.com
Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
Fantastic! Thank you, Mr. Putin and all of the countries’ leaders who are finally taking steps to reduce Washington’s coercive and extremely destructive economic, social and environmental power in the world. The world (including the American people) needs to de-americanize.
As a European, I want the US to stop interfering in Europe and get back to its own side of the Atlantic.