Author: Spencer

Following their meeting May 22 in Lima, Peruvian President Ollanta Humala and China’s Premier Li Keqiang signed ten bilateral agreements, raising to a new level their existing Comprehensive Strategic Association. In a May 21 statement, Li described the relationship with Peru in these terms:

Chief among the agreements signed was the Memorandum of Understanding signed by Brazil’s Transportation Ministry, Peru’s Transportation Ministry, and China’s National Reform and Development Commission to begin the feasibility study on the building of the transcontinental railroad between Brazil’s Atlantic Coast and Peru’s Pacific Coast. In his comments on the project, Humala stressed that it would “consolidate the local economies of Brazil, China, and Peru,” and be crucial for transporting Chinese cargo entering South America. Li’s focus was broader, affirming that the train would increase the connectivity of, particularly, South America’s Pacific nations with China, adding that it would also promote “a new type of industrialization and urbanization of the South American continent.”

Other agreements span areas of energy, mining, aerospace, agriculture and education, with special emphasis on the need to increase Chinese investment in Peru’s industrial development and “productive capabilities” and ensure technology transfer. In the two leaders’ private meeting May 22, they stressed that cooperation in these areas is particularly important, given the fragile state of the global economy and its effects on South American economies. Their joint communiqué outlines a number of industrial areas in which China plans to invest, including energy generation, petrochemicals, and metallurgy, among others. As Li emphasized in his May 21 statement, energetically promoting China’s investment in Peruvian industry, to give “new vigor to Peru’s economic development,” will bring “mutual benefit and a [strengthen] a win-win” relationship.

Throughout Li’s trip, he pointed to the special bond between the two nations, given Peru’s large population of Chinese descent, and its millenarian Inca civilization, in which Li showed great interest. He noted that Peru was one of the first nations to welcome thousands of Chinese immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries, and had been one of the first South American nations to establish diplomatic relations with “the new China.” Peruvians, he added, “tend to call the Chinese their paisanos, deepening our sense of affection and warmth, and demonstrating a friendship rooted in the deepest part of our hearts.”

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Monday’s press was filled with an all-out assault on Seymour Hersh by the Obama White House following Hersh’s publication in the London Review of Books of a 10,000- word piece declaring all the known versions of the death of Osama Bin Laden to be a White House fabrication which might have been written by Lewis Carroll.

According to Hersh’s account, Bin Laden had been captured by the Pakistani intelligence service ISI and since 2006 had been living in the Abbottabad ISI safehouse raided by our Navy Seals. The safehouse is next to a major ISI covert operations facility. A Pakistani source revealed this to the CIA in 2010 in return for millions of dollars in reward money offered for Bin Laden’s head. The Pakistanis were soon brought in on the fact that the U.S. knew where Bin Laden was and, based on generous U.S. offers of military and monetary assistance, decided to cooperate with U.S. plans.

According to the Hersh account:

Based on these factors, according to Hersh, it was agreed that Osama Bin Laden would be assassinated by the Navy Seals.  In addition, as opposed to post-raid accounts, Bin Laden had been very ill and, at the point of his murder, was an invalid.

When Obama, for his own political re-election purposes, went public with his account of the raid (it had been originally agreed that it would be subsequently announced that bin Laden had been killed by a drone attack in Afghanistan), he blew apart careful cover stories and preparations by the cooperating intelligence agencies and forced a new level of lies and contradictory stories.

There is much more to the Hersh piece, which we will cover over the coming days.

Monday’s press was filled with an all-out assault on Seymour Hersh by the Obama White House following Hersh’s publication in the London Review of Books of a 10,000- word piece declaring all the known versions of the death of Osama Bin Laden to be a White House fabrication which might have been written by Lewis Carroll.

According to Hersh’s account, Bin Laden had been captured by the Pakistani intelligence service ISI and since 2006 had been living in the Abbottabad ISI safehouse raided by our Navy Seals. The safehouse is next to a major ISI covert operations facility. A Pakistani source revealed this to the CIA in 2010 in return for millions of dollars in reward money offered for Bin Laden’s head. The Pakistanis were soon brought in on the fact that the U.S. knew where Bin Laden was and, based on generous U.S. offers of military and monetary assistance, decided to cooperate with U.S. plans.

According to the Hersh account:

Based on these factors, according to Hersh, it was agreed that Osama Bin Laden would be assassinated by the Navy Seals.  In addition, as opposed to post-raid accounts, Bin Laden had been very ill and, at the point of his murder, was an invalid.

When Obama, for his own political re-election purposes, went public with his account of the raid (it had been originally agreed that it would be subsequently announced that bin Laden had been killed by a drone attack in Afghanistan), he blew apart careful cover stories and preparations by the cooperating intelligence agencies and forced a new level of lies and contradictory stories.

There is much more to the Hersh piece, which we will cover over the coming days.

Brazil was the only member of the BRICS group not represented at the highest level at Moscow’s May 9 commemoration of the defeat of fascism. President Dilma Rousseff had intended to participate, and clearly wanted to go personally, but cancelled at the last minute, sending her Defense Minister, Jaques Wagner, in her stead. Wagner told Sputnik that she “really wanted to come, to be here to honor the 70th anniversary of the Victory Day.” Sputnik reported that Wagner “explained that she had to attend the wedding of a very close person to her, her physician, that had been scheduled a long time ago.”

Look outside Brazil for the actual reason. After Rousseff was reelected last October, on a campaign plank that included her commitment to Brazil’s participation on the BRICS, London’s financial oligarchy moved in to seize the reins of government. Under Finance Minister Joaquin Levy, interest rates have been jacked up to their highest rates since 2008, to a monstrous 13.25% for overnight bank borrowing! Brazilian Congressmen pummeled Levy in recent hearings about why he was implementing the very austerity policies which have destroyed Europe.

Simultaneously, a corruption scandal was launched against the state oil company, Petrobras (with vulture fund killer Paul Singer in the lead), which is being used to threaten President Dilma with impeachment, while paralyzing Brazil’s top engineering and construction companies, as well as Petrobras. Her Transport Minister exploded at a recent congressional hearing, that between the budget cuts and the Petrobras scandal, he didn’t even have the money to repair one highway, never mind build the rail, ports, etc. the country needs.

And then there is the White House. President Dilma has scheduled a visit to Washington to meet Barack Obama for June 30, her first since she cancelled a scheduled state visit in October 2013, after Snowden revealed that Brazil’s top businesses and the President herself were being spied on by the NSA.

For a year and a half, President Dilma had refused to reschedule until Obama gave written guarantees that the spying had stopped and would not resume—which he continues to refuse to do. Obama didn’t change, but President Dilma’s circumstances have. The visit was sealed when Dilma and Barack met on the sidelines of the Summit of the Americas in Panama on April 11.