Since the beginning of the Western-engineered crisis in Ukraine, the world has been bombarded with propaganda about how Evil Russia is. Yet, despite what we’re all being asked to believe, there was no “Russian invasion”, MH17 was not shot down by Russia, and Ukraine hasde facto split in two. While these manipulated events on Russia’s borders grab the headlines, let’s take a look at what is going on behind the scenes in “America’s backyard”, as John Kerry shamelessly described Latin America in April this year.

The century-long pretense upheld by American leaders that their country is a Republic is betrayed by Kerry’s imperious language, and he obviously needs diplomacy (not to mention geography) lessons. Besides, he was clearly referring to Latin America, even though, technically, the US is also part of the “Western Hemisphere”.

Anyway, you’ve also probably heard about President Putin’s visit to Latin America and the BRICS’s Summit in Brazil. The existential danger that BRICS presents for the Western ‘elite’ is obvious; the alliance between Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa represents a serious political and economic alternative to the current US system of global hegemony. And it’s growing, with countries like Argentina, Venezuela, Iran, Mongolia, Malaysia and others interested in joining. Currently, BRICS represents almost half of the world population and close to a third of the global GDP.

This is what Vladimir Putin had to say during an interview regarding BRICS before the Summit:

The modern world is indeed multipolar, complex, and dynamic – this is objective reality. Any attempts to create a model of international relations where all decisions are made within a single ‘pole’ are ineffective, malfunction regularly, and are ultimately set to fail.

Those are the reasons why the interaction format proposed by Russia for such influential states such as the BRICS members has proved to be needed. Our joint efforts have contributed to enhancing predictability and sustainability in international relations.

I believe it is time to raise the BRICS’ role to a new level and to make our association an unalienable part of the global management system for sustainable development.

* How can this be achieved in practice?

First, develop cooperation in the UN in every possible way, to persistently counteract individual states’ attempts to impose on the international community the policy of displacing unwanted regimes and promoting unilateral solutions to crisis situations. We propose to create a mechanism of regular high-level consultations between our foreign ministries on different regional conflicts to agree, where possible, on common positions and joint efforts to ensure their political and diplomatic settlement.

We should coordinate BRICS policy more actively and counteract security threats and challenges. Among other ways, this can be achieved through the mechanism of counter-terrorism consultations. An important place on the agenda will beexpanding cooperation to combat drug trafficking. We are ready to build up joint efforts to reinforce the international legal regime of drug control.

Cooperation in setting rules of responsible behaviour in the global information space is another important issue. Such rules must be based on the principles of respect for a country’s sovereignty, non-interference in domestic affairs, observance of human rights and freedoms, as well as equal rights for all countries to participate in Internet management. I think our joint efforts will ensure that the BRICS countries hold a leading position in strengthening international information security.

We are going to thoroughly analyse the situation in the planet’s hotspots. Those include Syria and Iraq, where the positions of extremist and terrorist groups are gaining strength. Serious attention should be given to the crisis in Ukraine and the international community’s measures to stop the bloodshed in the southeast of the country.

In the economic sphere, we are going to discuss IMF reform. The BRICS countries are concerned about the unreasonable delay in holding a debate of this subject. This jeopardises all the efforts of G20 in this direction. It is the case of fulfilling the rightful demands of “new economies” to balance the IMF according to the 21st century reality.

One more important question is the increasing cases of unilateral sanctions. Recently Russia has been exposed to a sanction attack from the US and its allies. We are grateful to our BRICS partners who have criticised such practices in different forms. At the same time, substantive conclusions should be drawn from the current situation. Together we should think about a system of measures that would help prevent the harassment of countries that do not agree with some foreign policy decisions made by the US and their allies. […]

It is in our common interest to use the complementarity of national economies to the maximum. This is a market with almost three billion consumers. The BRICS countries have unique natural resources and a substantial technological, financial and industrial potential.

Another important initiative that is underway is creating a BRICS pool of foreign currency reserves. It will become a safety net to help us form a joint response to economic challenges.

Another long-term common interest of the association’s members is strengthening the rule of international law and the UN’s leading role in the international system. To be honest, without Russia’s and China’s principled position on Syria in the Security Council the events in that country would have followed the Libyan and Iraqi scenario.

Boy did Putin ever hit ALL of the US’ sensitive spots! International currency regulation, an international drug control operation (including the CIA’s South American drugs playground); sorting out the ‘terrorism’ problem; stopping ‘certain states’ (i.e. the US) from overthrowing regimes that don’t fall in behind the US; and ensuring political settlements in places the US would rather bomb back to the stone age. Putin’s statement was nothing less than the announcement of a plan to completely overhaul the unipolar world dominated by the US and establish a more egalitarian system. No wonder the US State Department has Putin in their sights!

Putin’s words are clearly not just rhetoric. Since the BRICS Summit Russia has written off 90 percent of Cuba’s $32 billion Soviet-era debt, putting the remaining 10 percent in investment of joint infrastructure projects in the island. It also signed a peaceful nuclear power deal with Argentina, and created a $100-billion BRICS Development Bank with a reserve currency pool of another $100 billion. This action alone will go a long way to unshackling those countries that have fallen prey to US, World Bank and IMF predatory loans that can never be repaid, leaving them in permanent debt slavery to the US Empire. On BRICS’ website we read:

“[The Development Bank] will have a $100 billion budget, and could represent a solid attempt by developing economies to become less dependent on loans from such international organizations as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.”

Likewise, the BRICS also concluded the agreement that creates the Contingent Reserves Arrangement (CRA), a fund with an initial sum of US$ 100 billion, which the BRICS countries will be able to use to forestall short-term liquidity pressures. One of the objectives of the CRA is to contribute to international financial stability, by providing an additional line of defense to the BRICS.

In addition, one of the BRICS countries’ major goals is the creation of a joint alternative currency to counter the US dollar and possibly create a safe haven for when it finally collapses. The BRICS countries pose a direct threat to US global hegemony because they are simply stating their desire and intention to divest themselves from the toxic influences of American political and military control. How DARE they!

Russian involvement in helping the Eastern Ukrainians gain independence is obviously not the only reason for the ridiculous sanctions imposed on Russia by the U.S. and their European lackeys. The US Empire has a MUCH bigger problem than Ukraine.

The Imperial warmongers in Washington are certainly not going down without a fight, however. They have already opened up their bag of dirty tricks in an effort to sabotage BRICS and retain their control over their Latin American “backyard”.

Argentina

The BRICS website reference to solving “short term liquidity” problems is probably a reference to the June attack on Argentina by ‘vulture capitalists’ (coincidentally, right before the BRICS Summit in Brazil). During the brutal US-backed dictatorships of the 70s and early 80s, and later under the ‘neoliberal’ regimes of Carlos Menem (and his foreign minister, Harvard-trained US puppet Domingo Cavallo) in the 90s and Kirchner in the 2000s, state assets and government bonds were sold off to ‘foreign interests’ for criminally low prices and Argentina was loaded up with outrageous IMF and World Bank debts, all of it in breach of the country’s constitution. Argentine taxpayers now find themselves in the position of ‘owning’ debts that they never agreed to absorb. The Argentinian government recently attempted to pay off some of the debt by offering 30 cents on the dollar to creditors (the same price the creditors bought them for), but several ‘vultures’ refused to accept the price they paid for bonds and demanded 100 cents on the dollar. As an example of the extent to which Argentina is financially controlled by the US, it was a US federal judge who decreed that the ‘vultures’ were owed the full current value of their ill-gotten bonds.

The subject of the legal battle is the payment for the bonds that have been issued before the Argentine sovereign default in 2001. While most of the bondholders participated in two bond-swaps, basically allowing the country to restructure its debt and extend the maturity of its bonds, some bonds ended up in the hands of so-called “vulture funds”. Such funds are specialized in extracting value from “troubled” bonds. While some vultures feed on the carcases of animals, the “financial vultures” try to use the courts for making issuers pay in full for the bonds acquired by the “vulture funds” at steep discounts.

[…]

Several US courts have ruled that Argentina has to repay the vulture funds around 1.33 billion dollars, before it can continue paying the bondholders who agreed to restructure the Argentine debts in the aftermath of its 2001-2002 default. President of Argentina, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner slammed the court rulings, describing the actions of the US judiciary system as “extortion”.

The deadline for paying the vulture funds is June the 30th and if the country doesn’t pay up, it will lose the possibility to pay other bondholders through US banks and will face the risk of having its international assets confiscated. Moreover, Argentina risks to face a situation similar to the situation of Iran, because it will be locked out of the dollar-based financial system and will be unable to repay its creditors in dollars or seek dollar-denominated funding.

The timing of all this seems a little too coincidental. This is a forced default and pressure is being put on Argentina to pay the ‘vultures’ before it has the chance to join BRICS, which would help it deal with precisely the problem of the ‘vultures’. A solution to this problem is proposed here and it amounts to removing the almost unlimited power that the U.S. exerts over Argentina and so many other nations. The fact of the matter is that speculative funds and vulture capitalists would not be possible if the world’s economy didn’t revolve around the ‘almighty’ dollar. Interestingly, China has just helped Argentina in this matter by moving further away from the dollar and allowing for the use of the yuan in their international transactions. And the UN’s General Assembly has just passed a resolution to create legal frame work for sovereign debt restructuring, which will change how debts are managed in the future. (Not all EU countries voted in favor, but it was passed nonetheless).

Brazil

On August 13th, Eduardo Campos, presidential candidate and leader of the socialist party in Brazil died mysteriously in a plane crash. At the time, he ranked third in the polls, with 8% support. Since his untimely death, the political landscape in Brazil has undergone a dramatic change.

The investigation into Campos’ death (a joke, really) leaves us with the strong impression that the CIA had its grubby little hands all over it. Such untimely and mysterious small aircraft crashes have been one of the CIA’s favored methods of getting rid of political figures that stood in their way of making the world safe for US corporations, and there are several details surrounding the death of Campos that just scream conspiracy. The author of this article highlights the main points. For example:

Disturbing questions are being raised about the ownership of the aircraft bearing the tail number PR-AFA. The plane’s murky record of owners and registration, along with the lack of cockpit voice recordings thanks to an apparent malfunction in the plane’s cockpit voice recorder, has a number of Brazilians wondering whether the plane was sabotaged by the United States. Rather than having the recording of the conversations of Campos’s flight crew, the recorder only had the voice recordings from a previous flight.

The plane was flying en route from Rio de Janeiro-Santos Dumont Airport to Guaruja when it crashed in a residential area of Santos.

The plane was operated by AF Andrade Enterprises and Holdings, which is based in Ribeirão Preto in Sao Paulo state, but leased from Cessna Finance Export Corporation, a division of Textron, a major U.S. defense and intelligence contractor. Cessna is a division of Textron. The malfunctioning cockpit voice recorder was manufactured by another U.S. defense and intelligence contractor, L-3 Communications. AF Andrade’s business is centered on its ownership of a distillery. A spokesman for AF Andrade said the $9 million aircraft had not been recently inspected but stressed that it had a perfect maintenance record.

However, the spokesman for AF Andrade could not specifically state who owned the aircraft but admitted that the plane, but likely only the lease, was up for sale and had recently been purchased by a group of «factory owners and importers» from Pernambuco. Campos was a former governor of Pernambuco.

The purchasers turned out to be a consortium that included Bandeirantes Tires, Ltd. The tire company said that negotiations on transferring ownership were ongoing when the plane crashed and that Cessna Finance Export Corporation had not yet approved the final leasing rights. Brazilian observers believe the Cessna that crashed was a «ghost plane»,with murky ownership in order to cover up the plane’s use for covert operations involving the CIA. Similar planes with spotty ownership and registration records were used by the CIA to rendition kidnapped Muslims for interrogation and imprisonment at American «black sites» around the world.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) sent a team to Brazil to investigate the plane crash. However, if the NTSB’s performance on such crashes as TWA 800 and American Airlines 587 is any indication, the agency only excels at cover-ups of criminal actions.

This raises the question of ‘who benefits?’ and why?

Marina Silva is a Brazilian politician, former senator, former environment minister in Lula da Silva’s administration (2003) and currently one of two main contenders for the Presidency when elections are held in October this year. Currently, polls have her ‘neck and neck’ with Lula da Silva’s former Chief of Staff and presidential incumbent, Dilma Rouseff, which is certainly a strange situation given that a little over a month ago Silva wasn’t even a Presidential candidate.

Whether by ‘good luck’ or dirty tricks on her behalf, Silva will have the death of Campos to thank if she is elected President of Brazil. Late last year Silva attempted to register her own political party, presumably with the intention of running for the Presidency, but her application was rejected by the Electoral Supreme Court. At that point Campos decided to form an alliance with Silva’s Sustainability Network and soon thereafter chose Silva as his running mate for the Presidency. With Campos sudden death, Silva was chosen to replace him.

Current president and Silva’s rival, Dilma Rouseff, has largely carried on the work of her former boss Lula da Silva, who was a close ideological confidant of Hugo Chavez and has been described as “a man with audacious ambitions to alter the balance of power among nations“. Rouseff then, is, at the very least, an independence-minded nationalist who has actively opposed NSA spying and has been in favor of building alliances with Russia. Rouseff’s opponent Marina Silva, on the other hand, appears to be a creature of rather different persuasion.

From the article: ‘Marina Silva: The Zionists’ Brazilian Trojan Horse‘

As an Assemblies of God Pentecostal Christian, Silva is a member of a denomination that provides core membership for the worldwide movement of “Christian Zionists” who are as avidly pro-Israel as such Zionist Jewish organizations as B’nai B’rith and the World Jewish Congress.

One of Silva’s biggest backers is banking heir and philanthropist Maria Alice Setubal, more commonly referred to as Neca, who is also acting as a campaign coordinator for the candidate. A member of one of Brazil’s most distinguished banking dynasties, Setubal is a shareholder of Sao Paulo-based conglomerate Itausa, which has interests in finance, real estate and a range of industries. Itausa also controls Itau Unibanco, the largest bank in the southern hemisphere with total assets of $500 billion.

Marina Silva has no trouble admitting that she supports the Israeli regime, GMOs, big corporations and “a new Brazil”, feeding off of the masses’ frustrations, and promising “Hope” (hey, it worked for Obama) without a real plan of action to match her grandiose promises. There’s no surprise then when we read the Western media referring to her as the ‘Brazilian Obama’ and stating:

To many, she carries the same promise of change that fuelled Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign in the United States

What the Brazilian people should be wondering is if Silva also carries the potential for the same level of massive betrayal of the ordinary people displayed by the Obama administration after it swaggered into power on a wave of “hope”.

“It will be super-important for Brazil to have a black president, as it was in the US with Obama. It would signify a big advance for our country against discrimination,” said Alessandro Alvares, a member of the PSB and one of the few non-white faces in the room.

We know how well naive belief in the empty promises of psychopaths in power worked out of the American people, including African Americans, not to mention millions of of ‘non-whites’ around the world who are enjoying the fruits of the Obama administration’s love of drone and proxy warfare.

If Marina Silva wins the upcoming elections, we shouldn’t be surprised if her presidency proves to be a major obstacle to the BRICS countries’ attempts to build a multipolar world.

Chile

A series of mysterious bombings have rocked Chile in recent days, and nobody appears to know who was responsible. On Monday, September 9th a bomb exploded on the Escuela Militar (Military School) subway station in Santiago wounding 14 people. The government called it a “terrorist act”. Last Friday, two homemade bombs exploded in the Open Plaza mall in Viña del Mar.

There have been several similar attacks over the years in Chile. The bombs are quite basic in design and there have been no claims of responsibility. Could these bomb attacks have something to do with the US’s general desire to destabilize South America? The timing is interesting, for sure. The explosions came as Chile was preparing itself for the 41st anniversary of the US-backed September 11th 1973 coup that overthrew socialist president Salvador Allende and launched dictator Augusto Pinochet’s 17-year despotic rule. It sure is a “funny” way to remember that bloody event.

Put together, these events leave me with the impression of a US elite that is growing increasingly desperate in its efforts to maintain its fast-waning global supremacy, using dirty tricks and outright lies like those surrounding the shooting down of MH17. But this time, they’re not fighting “terrorists hidden in caves”, but an entire network of powerful countries and their new allies.

EU involvement

While the circus act that is modern geopolitical strategy carries on, incredible earth changes around the world are vying for public attention. While old and rich European countries push forward with their support for the US’ inane and ill-advised sanctions, the same countries are being hit by drought, hail storms and floods that can destroy their crops in one evening. Maybe they’ll start to re-prioritize when the situation gets so bad that hungry people start protesting in the streets. Don’t bet on it though, because the pusillanimity of EU ‘leaders’ appears to know no bounds.

When Russia stated that it would look to Latin American markets to fulfill its import needs that have been ‘sanctioned’ by the EU, EU nations tried to persuade Latin America not to export food to Russia. The level of hubris here is staggering. EU representatives appealed to Latin American countries, telling them that siding with Russia would not be “loyal”, and that they should reconsider having deals with such an “unreliable business partner” as Russia. Wow! Did you get that? Coming from countries who for decades have blindly supported the US-UK-Israel Axis of Warmongering Assholes?? Countries who, because they are acting as Washington puppets, are being more than disloyal to their own citizens and putting their own population at risk with these ridiculous sanctions? When they are supporting the Nazis in Kiev? What is “disloyal” about Latin America wanting a respite from the US’ hegemony?

The CIA was heavily involved in creating and/or propping up dozens of South American dictatorships throughout the 20th century. Since then, it has pretty much ruled the region economically. It has drowned those countries in debt, taken over their lands via pathologically greedy corporations, funneling Latin American resources into private US coffers. And throughout all of it, we didn’t see the EU being “loyal” to anyone or speaking out against America’s brutal foreign policy towards Latin America. What is disloyal about having hope in a better system? The truth of the matter is that Putin is offering these countries a way out from under the jack-boot of US imperialism, and a legitimate one at that. He’s certainly a better business partner than all the power-drunk psycho nutjobs in the EU and the US, in spite of the “communist propaganda” that, apparently, never gets old.

So, as you can see, things aren’t so quiet in the US’ “backyard”. As Washington experiences the first truly strong kick back against its fascist, imperialist policies, and while the dollar shows signs of imminent collapse, it keeps the population distracted with the phony war on terror (terrorists made in the USA), and the campaign against the new “evil boogeyman” Russia, which, incidentally, didn’t invade Ukraine and is, on the contrary, advocating for global peace and cooperation.

In many countries linked to the BRICS, or with a history of oppression at the hands of the US, you see leaders saying “Stop imperialism!”Even Putin’s unexpected visit to Nicaragua, a country with a history of CIA and Mossad involvement that is not even disguised on Wikipedia, encouraged its President Ortega, to say:

“We are ready to take part in Russia’s initiatives in maintaining peace in the entire planet and in its regions,” he said. “Conflict settlement lies not in bombing but in reasonable approaches. The most vital thing is to lend an ear to the will of the people.”

President Ortega also spoke out against the genocide in Gaza, suggesting that Netanyahu is ‘possessed by the devil’. The Nicaraguan Contras, trained and armed by the CIA, does remind us a bit of the current “terror” behind the Islamic State, doesn’t it?

Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro has also offered humanitarian aid to Palestine, and accused Israel of massacring innocent civilians.

And the list goes on. Could the new hope of a multipolar world have given them the strength to speak up?

Recently, Spanish RT published this picture, depicting in a funny way how the West sees the rest of the world:

“Countries not belonging to the world”, eh? The US has always shown contempt for the people of the “backyards” of the world. And when those people start seeing that there is hope somewhere else, the end of US global hegemony is in sight, unless of course the US resorts to doing what it does best: corrupt, kill, destabilize territories, and poison with propaganda. The CIA’s black operations aren’t called “fun and games” for no reason, and they’ve had their dirty hands in Latin America for generations.

The question is whether enough people are going to see this and refuse, at last, to be bullied, or if the fear that the US provokes is going to continue to keep them cowed. I only hope that the masses aren’t too far gone, and actually want better leadership. Countries like the ones listed in this article have trauma carried from decades of dictatorships, many supported or even installed by CIA coups. When trauma wins over minds, it is very difficult to gather courage to actually look for better solutions. The population has been immobilized.

Let’s hope that the “backyards” of the world can actually see that there can be a different choice than a) being tortured or killed or b) allowing the US to invade. The possibility for leaders with Conscience exists. But in order for them to succeed, we all have to stand our ground in this Media War, a Media War where the casualties are more than just truth and justice. Real people are dying as a result of all the Lies.

http://www.sott.net/article/285779-Divide-and-Conquer-in-Latin-America-Sabotaging-BRICS-in-our-backyard