Rousseff Under London and Washington Pressure

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.